The reason why the court's affairs are done quickly is because there is no distance restriction. After Shen Shixing and Gao Pragmatic reach an agreement, it will take at most one day to inform the officials of their faction, and then hold the court promotion step by step.
In contrast, things in shopping malls are not done so quickly, because the main battlefield of this business war is far away in Jiangnan.
Shen Shixing obviously did not know that a family named Rothschild later made its fortune by relying on rapid information. Therefore, although he sent someone to Jiangnan to deliver the message the day after his meeting with Gao Pangshi, he did not pay much attention to the delivery. The news was so fast that his messenger chose to take the convenient post route.
The Convenient Post Road was the product of the reform of post stations promoted by the imperial court through the highly pragmatic "Shu Post Road Shu" in the early years. At that time, this reform was under the responsibility of Guo Pu and was carried out in two stages. It took a total of eight years to be fully completed. .
The "convenient post road" is the focus of reform in the latter stage. The core of this convenience post road reform is to semi-commercialize the post stations that originally belonged to the imperial court.
It would be too lengthy to explain this matter in detail, so I’ll just give it a rough outline. To put it simply, after this reform, the inn became a highway service area with the function of a guest house.
Regarding court officials, official correspondence, and military intelligence briefings, the court and relevant yamen are each responsible for their respective parts according to the previous standards (standards after the first stage of reform).
At the same time, the inn has also begun to open to the public. As long as civilians present relevant documents (mainly road guides), they can use the inn and enjoy related services - including but not limited to accommodation, carriages, catering, etc.
As for the price, it is a little higher than the price that can be reimbursed at public expense, but it is still cheaper than traveling on your own, and it is safer and more secure - because the fees at the inn are clearly stated in accordance with high pragmatic requirements and accepted at any time. reported.
However, this reform caused some controversy at the beginning. Many officials said that semi-commercialization squeezed their original services, and there were often situations such as rooms being occupied and a shortage of carriages and horses. There are also some officials who believe that it is inappropriate for officials and civilians to sleep together, which is simply "indecent."
However, they obviously underestimated the self-regulation ability of the post stations after commercialization. Many inns later expanded themselves, usually to expand the civilian part. This greatly reduced the pressure of the new inn system to be criticized within the bureaucracy, and was finally settled.
Speaking of which, this reform is still a major political achievement of Gao Gong, Guo Pu and Gao Pragmatic, because the current inn system costs the court very little money every year, especially the inns on several main roads, and they can even turn in money every year. Part of the surplus was given to the court.
If it weren't for the underdevelopment of the civilian systems of some border post stations—for example, Gansu and other regions are still losing money—perhaps the entire post station system would now be self-sufficient.
However, Gao Pragmatic believes that as reforms continue to advance and Daming's business activity gradually increases, this new station system will be profitable sooner or later, but the specific time is uncertain, and even he cannot calculate it.
It was normal for Shen Shixing's messengers to choose the convenient post route, because most people would choose this way when traveling far away, but he underestimated the importance Gao Pragmatic attached to information transmission.
Gao pragmatism has two information transmission chains, land and sea. Needless to say, the sea route is definitely very fast. However, the sea route sometimes has restrictions, such as only sending to coastal areas, if the wind direction is needed, etc. (hard sailing boats can also go in the wrong wind direction, But the speed will decrease). On the land route, the advantages of high pragmatism are also very great.
Because high pragmatism has no shortage of horses.
As the reincarnation of Shunyi King's Anda of Hannaji and King Jiang III of right-wing Mongolia, Gao Pragmatic has long been the number one middleman in the Mongolian horse trade. Although he himself rarely interfered with these affairs, Cao Gan, the leader of the horse bandits at that time, These border trade transactions are managed very well, and Jinghua has no shortage of good horses.
Jinghua, which has no shortage of horses, will certainly leave good horses for the transmission of information that Gao pragmatism attaches great importance to, especially letters sent from the capital to various places. Although Jinghua's messengers also use inns, they all use their own horses, usually in the form of An ordinary traveler would travel at more than twice the speed, equivalent to the imperial court's 600-mile rush.
As a result, by the time the message sent by Gao Pragmatic had been delivered to Shanghai Port and Ningbo Port, Shen Shixing's messenger had just passed through Shandong and entered Xuzhou, which was almost half as slow.
At this time, the person in charge of Jinghua in Songjiang was Shuai Jiamo, the same manager of Jinghua Seaport and the director of Shanghai Private Port - the same mathematical talent who was pulled over by Gao Pangshi during the Huizhou Silk Case.
Since Shuai Jiamo is from the south, after many years of training in Tianjin Port, he was sent to Songjiang to take charge of the construction and development of Shanghai Port. Not long ago, he was promoted by Gao Pragmatic and added the position of "harbour manager" , that is, he has the right to intervene in all Jinghua's seaports in the Ming Dynasty.
There is also a manager of Jinghua Seaport, but it is only in name - Gao Wujian, the fourth brother of Gao Pragmatic, is the manager of Jinghua Seaport, but he actually stays in the capital and does not care about anything. Gao Pangshi is sending someone to slowly explain various port affairs to him, and plans to let him take up the post in Tianjin in a year or two.
Shuai Jiamo was very excited after receiving the urgent and confidential letter from Gao Jingshi. This operation was what he had been looking forward to for a long time, and Gao Jiamo was also very reassured by him and asked him to preside over this "shopping mall business" operation.
Although after Gao Wujian became the harbor director, Shuai Jiamo estimated that his position in Beijing could no longer be improved, but he also had to consider the future: the master has many younger brothers, and I heard that his wife seems to be pregnant, so The six-bedroom house in the east house will definitely become larger in the future. If you don't show enough ability, won't you be replaced sooner or later?
Shuai Jiamo was the general person in charge. Under him was a deputy and acquaintance - Wu Xun, Wu Dui's son, who was also in charge of Ningbo Port at the time.
The two of them are the main and second-in-commands who want to set off this huge business wave for Jinghua.
If it is in the commercial era of later generations, Jinghua, as the number one overlord in the Ming Dynasty shopping mall, will have many options to choose from, such as the simplest and crudest one: competition is too troublesome, then I will buy you.
But this method was not easy to use in the Ming Dynasty, because people at this time attached great importance to "ancestral property" and would never sell it unless it was a last resort. If you want to buy his family's ancestral property, to a certain extent, it is the same as Digging his family's ancestral graves is similar in nature.
So acquisition is not a good idea, we have to find another way.
Originally, Shuai Jiamo had several plans, but due to Gao Pragmatic's temporary order not to bring matters to the government level, some of the plans were aborted. Now there are only a few purely commercial ones that can be implemented. Planned.
Fortunately, Shuai Jiamo thought about it and felt that commercial means alone should be enough to make the other party drink.
After notifying Wu Xun at Ningbo Port by express letter, he took action himself.
On September 21st, Jinghua Shanghai Port suddenly announced that due to the tense situation in Myanmar, Siam and other places, Jinghua's two-ocean fleet needed to mobilize a large number of ships to escort. Therefore, the escort fleets in various ports in the Ming Dynasty will be downsized at the same time, and they will no longer accept escort services from non-Jinghua series port ships. All merchant ships in non-Jinghua series ports will no longer be escorted by the Jinghua fleet.
At the same time, and for the same reason, Jinghua will take back the "Book and Sword Flag" previously issued. Merchant ships that do not go to sea from Jinghua's private ports will no longer be allowed to fly the "Book and Sword" flag - this means that Jinghua They will no longer be provided with protection, nor will services such as the recovery of looted goods be provided.
As a result, Jinghua's marine insurance business was also suspended. Merchant ships that had originally purchased the insurance period retained the remaining period of insurance, but their services were suspended "until the situation improves."
When the news came out, businesses along the southeast coast were in an uproar.
Over the years, they have long been accustomed to Jinghua's escort business. Now that they suddenly lost Jinghua's escort, it felt like the house collapsed while taking a shower. Everyone was panicked and felt like they had nowhere to hide.
The owners of private ports in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, including Xujia Private Port, quickly contacted Shuai Jiamo, Wu Xun and others to ask what happened in Nanyang and why Jinghua suddenly came to do this?
Shuai Jiamo and Wu Xun's answer was of course: "I'm really sorry, this matter is confidential, so I have no comment."
Of course, the merchants from Dahai were not satisfied with this answer, and asked how they could know the inside story. The two of them tacitly expressed to them that they needed to consult the capital directly.
In other words, we have to ask our employer. We two wage earners are just following orders. How can we know the details?
Of course they were not in a hurry, but the big merchants had to be anxious. Storing goods here may seem innocuous, but if you don’t sell them, there will be no income. Let’s just say that there is a cost in storing goods here. Every day of delay is equivalent to a drain of money. Who can bear this?
So everyone quickly reached a consensus and immediately sent people to the capital at high speed, directly asked Gao Gongbao about the situation, and urged him to solve the problem as soon as possible and resume escort.
Some maritime merchants even discussed privately, believing that the pirates in the outer seas have been almost wiped out by Jinghua in the past few years. Now that Jinghua has just announced that it will stop escorting, the pirates must not have received the news, otherwise we will take a gamble. Well, how about going directly to sea without Jinghua escort?
Most maritime merchants are not very optimistic about this proposal. The reason is that although the large group of pirates in the outer seas have been cleaned up by Jinghua, many of them have been temporarily dispersed by Jinghua and are now divided into seventy. A small band of pirates.
Although this small group of pirates is not as ferocious as the previous large group of pirates, and they dare to eat the entire fleet in one bite during robbery, they still have a lot of success in taking down two or three ships at one time.
Although it would not be a big problem for large merchants to go to sea together in a team and lose two or three ships at a time, this is not how the accounts are calculated.
Although they are called an alliance, they are not a single entity like Jinghua. Whose responsibility is it if these two or three ships are lost? Should the loss be counted as the entire alliance's loss and everyone should bear it together, or should the loss be counted as someone else's loss?
If we count the losses of the entire alliance, not to mention whether everyone agrees or not, at least the goods on the ship must be announced in advance, right?
Who wants to make it public?
You know, since the imperial court only considers the size of the ship and not the quantity of goods when levying tariffs, everyone secretly made various small moves. Obviously, these small moves can only be known to themselves, and cannot be "shared" even within the alliance.
If it were made public that you smuggled pig iron and he smuggled saltpeter, how could everyone happily call themselves gentlemen? If internal conflicts arise in the future, or there is a traitor within the alliance, and they are reported to the government, what will happen?
So this can't be done like this.
Since we can't share the responsibility together, we have to take care of our own affairs, but there are also problems in taking care of each other. Some merchants who have ships on hand that have taken a long time to build and are slower at sea strongly objected - if you encounter pirates, you will run away first because of the newness of the ship, leaving my people to fall into the sea to feed the fish?
So the two sides quarreled for a while and then broke up, and the discussion ended.
Everyone had no choice but to calm down and wait for the reply from Jinghua headquarters.
But before they could wait for a reply, Jinghua's second wave of offensive arrived. Jinghua suddenly announced that due to the Myanmar Peace Treaty, there are now a large number of Yunnan trade orders that need to be processed quickly, so Jinghua's inland logistics system will shift its focus to the southwest.
The tilt to the southwest didn't seem to concern these large merchants, but what they didn't expect was that Jinghua's tilt would really affect them - because Jinghua wanted to complete the "list" of the southeast in advance, so it accelerated its previous agreement We have even delivered goods that were supposed to be delivered to Jiangnan in the middle of next year in advance. It is expected that it will only take another one or two months for all of them to be delivered to Jiangnan.
This will cost you your life!
In the past, when large-scale merchants placed orders, they would place orders based on the normal delivery speed. However, in this era, they were basically only worried about delivery being too slow. No one had yet considered the consequences of being delivered too quickly. The result is that now they Calculate with your fingers - Oops, the goods arriving more than half a year early will cause huge pressure on your own storage, and since the current goods cannot be shipped to sea, this pressure will be doubled!
Damn your grandma, this is really going to kill you, even having too much stuff will kill you! All the goods have been delivered, where will I pile them?
Everyone was suddenly so anxious that their tongues were sore. After asking each other about it, they found that they were all brothers in distress.
Finally, someone remembered something: Jinghua's port was built with a large-scale "standard warehouse", and now Jinghua's own ships can still go to sea, wouldn't their warehouses have a surplus? If we really can't do it, we can rent their warehouse. At least we can get over the current difficulty first!
So everyone had to go find Shuai Jiamo and Wu Xun again. Regardless of whether it was Songjiang or Ningbo, the merchants almost surrounded their residences.
However, Shuai Jiamo and Wu Xun politely rejected their request. The reason is that "because Jinghua is rapidly constructing Siam Dinnan City in accordance with the contract requirements, the warehouse is already full of cement and other materials that Jinghua Infrastructure wants to transfer to Siam." Supplies, I don’t have enough time to help you now, I’m really sorry.”
The maritime merchants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang took a deep breath and thought to themselves: This is broken, how could it be such a coincidence?
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