Early the next morning, he had someone hitch the carriage. He was now in the west of the city. If he wanted to reach Liu Haojia's fiefdom, he had to pass through Tianjin County.
After a night's rest, Shopkeeper Hu felt much better. He sat in the carriage and looked around without saying a word.
As a person who often moved back and forth in the north of Ming Dynasty, he was familiar with urban life. In his opinion, no matter how many times he visited these cities, they would not change much! But this year he saw too many differences in Tianjin County!
First of all, none of the idle men on the street have disappeared! And these idlers are the beginning of trouble in the city! They will never be merciful when they find someone they can blackmail, and if they find they can't swallow it, they will transfer the business to other gangs! Moreover, these people are still secretive in their work and cannot be caught with any charges, so being able to clean them up is a great change!
When he entered the main street in the city, he found that the houses on both sides had not changed much, but many storefronts had been replaced with larger and more beautiful plaques! The pedestrians on the street seemed to be in a hurry, no longer as lazy as before.
Moreover, with his sharp eyes, he discovered with certainty that there were no beggars or refugees in this city! Moreover, there are very few idle people on the street, making the street seem much deserted.
And he also looked from the branch street next to it and found that many buildings inside were being renovated! He even saw that some houses were being raised!
Shopkeeper Hu traveled all over the country and knew the layout of the general city. This branch street contains the most shops, inns and other businesses, and then there are residential houses with gardens. Ordinary people will not live here. And the large-scale renovation and reconstruction here shows that the flow of people here is enough for the boss to make a decision!
Shopkeeper Hu and his party quickly passed through the city. After leaving the city, they discovered that there were many people traveling with them! Most of them were merchants like him, and there were also many convoys that looked heavy and were pulling goods.
Moreover, he also saw many people who looked like workers rushing towards the seaside. He glanced at the sun and saw that so many workers were rushing towards the dock, which meant that there must be many people working there. .
Shopkeeper Hu didn't want to be dragged into the queue, so he signaled to the servants to slow down, got out of the carriage, sat on the shaft and looked at the surrounding situation. They slowed down one by one and fell behind the large group of people, but he was not in a hurry and looked at everything around him leisurely.
Just when they had gone not far, shopkeeper Hu saw a group of children who were playing with stones on the roadside suddenly running toward them! Shopkeeper Hu smiled slightly when he saw it, knowing that today's matter would fall on these children!
The first person to run over was a little boy of twelve or thirteen years old. When he rushed to the side of the carriage panting, he slapped the shaft of the carriage hard and made a "pop" sound! And the children behind him invariably let out a wailing sound!
Shopkeeper Hu knew that this was a sign of the little boy's victory, so he didn't interrupt, just watched them do it with a smile. What didn't disappoint him was that the other children who didn't take the picture of the car's shaft all scattered away. Two children who looked stronger than him didn't say anything else, they just waved their fists at him to demonstrate.
At this time, when the little boy saw that the other friends had dispersed, he gasped hard and tried to speak clearly, and said: "Master, is this your first time to the Marquis's fief? Let me show you the way. There’s no place here that I’m not familiar with!”
Shopkeeper Hu said with a smile: "Then how much do you charge per day?"
The little boy quickly looked up and down Shopkeeper Hu, then glanced at the clothes of the servants around him, then tentatively reported a number and said: "Thirty cash a day!"
Then he felt that the offer seemed a bit high, so he quickly said: "I brought my own dry food!" ap.
Thirty pennies was naturally less than a drop in the bucket to Shopkeeper Hu, but he also knew that the price quoted by the little boy was a little exaggerated, so he bargained according to business rules and negotiated the price to twenty-five cents a day!
After the little boy joined the team, he naturally wanted to chat. Through chatting with Shopkeeper Hu, I learned that the little boy’s name is Chen
Ermao! This name is so popular among ordinary people that some people can even count from 10 cents to 56, 780 cents!
Shopkeeper Hu and Chen Ermao were chatting when they suddenly noticed a road made of gray-white stones in front of them! Each of these stones is extremely huge, almost eight feet square! And the surface is extremely smooth! Shopkeeper Hu and others’ eyes were wide open when they saw it!
They didn't know how much manpower and material resources it would cost to quarry such a big stone from the mountains, and they couldn't calculate it at all! And they have never seen this kind of gray-white stone!
Chen Ermao said proudly: "Further ahead is the outskirts of the Marquis' fiefdom, so the Marquis specially built such a road!"
A servant asked: "Where did he get the stones? He really has enough money to pave such a luxurious road!"
Chen Erbao gestured and said: "This is not a stone collected from the mountains, but made of something called cement! It is said that it is fired, and then the cement is poured into the wooden frame and it is ready!" "
Shopkeeper Hu's eyes lit up when he heard this! He instantly thought of several uses for cement, not just for paving on the road! So he immediately asked: "What does this cement look like? Do they sell it?"
Chen Ermao said: "The cement was originally like a pile of soil, but after adding water and sand, it turned into this after two days! As for selling it, they still sell it! But I have heard people say that these It is best to bake the cement wherever it is used, otherwise it will not be cost-effective to transport it over long distances! Not only is this thing too heavy, but it is also afraid of water during transportation! If it touches water, it will clump together and become unusable!"
Chen Ermao also did his homework carefully for doing business. He talked for a long time. In addition to how to bake, he also explained clearly how to use cement and its effects! This made Shopkeeper Hu and others even more impressed that cement is such a good product!
One servant in particular said: "If this thing is used to build a fort outside the side wall, no amount of people can break in!"
By the time they finished speaking, the carriage had already driven onto the gray-white road. Shopkeeper Hu jumped out of the carriage and stamped his feet vigorously. The head servant even hit the scabbard several times, only to find that there was nothing on the ground under his feet!
