"Yuan Zhiwang." A name came out of Tian Meng's mouth.
Hearing this name, Li Ke paused slightly. Is this a coincidence? "Just follow what they said. This Master Yuan studied agriculture?"
"Yes, Master Yuan's ancestors are said to be farmers." Tian Meng nodded.
"Yes, tell Master Yuan that if you need anything, just ask. We will provide any fields they want to do experiments, as well as tools, etc." Li Ke said, "By the way, please explain, in Lingnan Road, Jiannan Road, and Huainan Road purchased part of the land respectively and cultivated and planted spice crops such as pepper."
"Yes, Your Highness, I have already sent someone to give you the instructions. This part of the spice habit cannot be grown here, so I have sent people to purchase the relevant land on Lingnan Road." Tian Meng said.
"Well done." Li Ke nodded with satisfaction. His subordinates must have this kind of subjective initiative. Otherwise, Li Ke will have to answer for himself, so Li Ke will not do anything every day.
"Report on the progress of the renovation of Chang'an City." Li Ke said.
"Your Highness, we have completed 60% of the renovation of Chang'an City. All major roads including the palace city have been renovated. The same is true for important roads such as East and West City." Tian Meng said. He said, "It can be said that we have announced that it is completed."
"Oh? So fast?" Li Ke was a little surprised.
"Yes, Your Highness, because the remaining 40% is currently because the population of these cities is not full, so it is just a field. There is no need to complete the road construction. We will wait until people live in this part of the area. Road construction can also be done, except that all roads, drainage canals, etc. in Chang'an City have been repaired."
"The reason why it's so fast is because your highness told you before you left that you should not refuse any people who wanted to work. In the second month after your highness left, we had more than 20,000 people starting construction in Chang'an City at the same time! At our peak, we even reached 33,000 people. Such a large number of people is also the reason why our project progresses so quickly." Tian Meng explained.
Li Ke was in a daze. No wonder many projects in ancient times felt that the efficiency was not slow. When workers were piled up, although the tools were primitive, the efficiency could not be said to be slow.
Obviously, more people are always more powerful. More importantly, more people like Li Ke are different from more people doing corvee work. There is no salary at all when doing corvée work, and it is free, and sometimes even corvée work is done. You also need to prepare your own food.
In this case, few people would work hard, but Li Ke paid directly to hire people, so their efficiency was much higher than that of corvee labor.
This is why the renovation project of Chang'an City went much faster than Li Ke imagined.
"How much did it cost?" Li Ke was a little curious.
"The actual cost is 2.2 million yuan." Tian Meng gave a low figure, "Mainly expenses on food, monthly salary of personnel, etc."
"Only more than 2.2 million guan?" Li Ke was speechless. If he remembered correctly, the total amount including donations was more than 7.3 million guan, right? In other words, Li Ke seems to have made more than 4 million yuan?
I'm so annoyed, why can't I spend all the money?
"Actually..." Tian Meng hesitated.
"What?" Li Ke looked at Tian Meng strangely.
"Actually, we have made back more than 90% of the monthly expenditure of more than 2.2 million yuan, because most of these people will choose to buy ironware at our blacksmith shop or purchase related rough goods at our cloth shop. Linen, fine linen, silk and other clothing, and when salt begins to be sold in the later period, these people will spend more money," Tian Meng said quickly.
Li Ke: "..."
"What are our main expenditures?" Li Ke was speechless. It was not good to have too much money in his hands. He spent it quickly and threw it into the hands of the people.
"The main expenditure is the construction of Shuwangzhuang. The total cost is close to three million yuan. This part of the funds is also spent on the monthly money of the refugees and the surrounding people. In addition, it is used to purchase a large amount of food. Storage, but in fact, a considerable part of the money will still flow back into our hands." Tian Meng looked at Li Ke like he was looking at a god.
Because the money in Li Ke's hands now is really... more than the national treasury! The Tang treasury was not as rich as Li Ke.
Li Ke scratched his head. The money must not have included his profits in Xizhou, but Xizhou currently relies entirely on his food stamps for internal operations. But in fact, food stamps are also money, because the scale of Li Ke's sound field and supplies are expanding. ah!
With such a terrifying amount of money in his hands, Li Ke felt that he couldn't let his father know about this money. If his father knew about it, Li Shimin's jaw would probably fall to the ground, otherwise... he would do more. How many sets of identical clothes? Continue to pretend to be poor?
It is not difficult to spend the money, but what should it be used for?
After much deliberation, it seems that the only way to go is to collect grain, because grain was hard currency anyway in ancient times.
In the third and fourth years of the reign of Emperor Zhenguan of the Tang Dynasty, there were successive natural disasters. Many people in the Tang Dynasty starved to death. However, in fact, the overall food supply in the Tang Dynasty was not lacking at all. There are two main reasons for this strange situation. One is the hoarding by the powerful families of the Tang Dynasty. There was a large amount of grain, but at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, there was not much grain in the national stockpile, which could not effectively provide disaster relief.
This is one, and the second is that the slump in commercial trade has a lot to do with it. Not only the wealthy families have food in their hands, but also because of the disaster, many people in areas that were not affected by the disaster began to stockpile food. There are quite a few, but they are not sold and no one buys them, which leads to the failure of state regulation.
Due to the slump in business, very little of the grain harvested in the world during the Taketori years was in the hands of merchants. Even if the court wanted to buy grain for disaster relief, there was no place to buy it. It could not go to the farmers to harvest it one by one and wait for the harvest to come. After transportation, the day lilies became cold.
This is where useful food cannot be sold in urgent need, so it cannot tide over the difficulties.
In fact, in the middle and early stages of the Tang Dynasty, if we consider the overall food supply, there was really no shortage of food, even if there were natural disasters. This was because the population of the Tang Dynasty was small, and the Tang Dynasty allocated fields according to 100 acres per household, so the per capita cultivated land was large. , including those who suffered disasters, it is enough to feed the people of the world.
However, there is a lack of strong national macro-control measures, which results in the inability to centralize the supply of food. Then, disaster-stricken areas are so miserable that they have to change their food to eat. In non-disaster areas, people are afraid of disasters, and a lot of the food they hoard is moldy.
If this money is used to hoard food in various provinces in the Tang Dynasty, it would be a good use. But what Li Ke was thinking about was how to hoard food and how to maximize the interests of the people.
