New immigrants in the Northeast have been able to feel the emperor's benevolence since they crossed Shanhaiguan. The pilot program of barefoot doctors also started in the Northeast.
In Guangdong, where the commodity economy is already very developed, there are now "bell doctors" everywhere. They carry special bells and medical equipment, usually with a young apprentice, and walk around the streets to deliver doctors to their homes.
Citizens who suffer from common diseases usually seek treatment from doctors in medical clinics or pharmacies. Doctors cannot get this market. Therefore, they do not generally treat common diseases, but take a special approach: specializing in difficult and complicated diseases.
For example, for snakebites, rheumatoid arthritis, vitiligo, stranguria, etc., Dr. Ling, who claims that his own plaster is "Yitieling", has eight hundred if not one thousand. Some folk remedies can kill a cat in a blind attempt. Many patients who were sentenced to death by famous doctors actually experienced miracles under Dr. Ling's folk prescriptions. This also leads to the fact that even in cities with medical school graduates, Dr. Ling still has his customer base.
There is also a type of doctor who works in brothels, specializes in hidden diseases of men and women, and provides abortion services. If they are really capable, they will also have a high reputation in secret channels. Some of them are tired of walking, and they will change from working as a doctor to sitting in a brothel.
Of course, all of the above are considered Ling Yi’s good aspects. In fact, most bell doctors are a kind of liar. They may know some medical skills, but these medical skills are far less brilliant than their words.
The Wu family of Zhangmen was fooled. Because her family's business failed, the old woman became anxious and suffered from a strange illness. Symptoms include eyebrows and eyelids moving up and down when talking to others, facial muscles twisting and making faces, and gradually descending to unconscious dancing of arms and even body.
She changed doctors many times, prescribed numerous prescriptions, and prayed to gods and made wishes everywhere, but nothing could alleviate her condition. The old woman did not think about food and drinks, and was gradually losing weight. His son Zhang Xiaoyi gave up his business and went out to seek medical treatment. Suddenly one day, Dr. Ling came to Wu's door and said he specialized in treating difficult and complicated diseases. Wu hurriedly sent the girl out to bring him and his young apprentice in.
When the doctor came in, he didn't expect to hear anything. Just look at the old lady's face, like a fortune teller. Then he made a final assertion: "This disease is called eyebrow-twitching disease - did the old lady get it from a sudden attack on the heart?"
After hearing this, Mrs. Wu immediately nodded in agreement. Doctor Ling said again: "It must be money." Mrs. Wu nodded again.
Doctor Ling looked at Mrs. Wu's clothes again and said with a smile: "It's still caused by old grudges. Although it's not easy for the old lady to be a widow for many years, she still doesn't have enough food and clothing. It's all the legacy of her late husband. Now she doesn't care about the underground people. ”
After hearing this, Mrs. Wu exclaimed: "I don't care about him! He gave up when he was five years old, and it's been twenty years now. He doesn't care about hundredth days, anniversaries, birthdays, Ghost Festival, ghost festivals, not chanting sutras, doing rituals, etc." How much money and paper money was spent!”
Dr. Ling smiled and said: "Hey, I have been traveling around for many years, and I don't know how many people with diseases like yours have encountered! Old lady, if your deceased husband is still here, what do you do every day to make a living?"
Mrs. Wu heard this and said: "If he had lived to establish a family, I would not be like this every day, taking care of the cooking and female celebrities? What else could I do? When he kicked his legs, Xiao Yi was still ignorant. Fortunately, his uncle and My uncles are here to help me, and that’s all I do.”
The doctor sighed and said: "That's right. You only think about him three to five days a year, and the rest of the time you don't live your own life! Has he ever worn a piece of clothing made by you or eaten a bite of it in the past twenty years? The food you cooked. I don’t know how much resentment I have accumulated.”
This was the first time Wu had heard of such a weird statement, but after thinking about it deeply, she could justify it, which made some sense. So he asked him: "What should we do?"
Dr. Ling felt relieved when she saw that she recognized this section. After glancing at the young apprentice, the two quickly entered the scam mode, and finally succeeded in defrauding the doctor's fee of ten taels, and disappeared without a trace in Shunde City.
Wu spent money, but his illness was not cured. When Zhang Xiaoyi came home and heard about it, mother and son smiled bitterly at each other. Zhang Xiaoyi sighed: "I didn't expect that my mother pushed me to grow up, but I lost all my pension money. My son is unfilial." After saying this, he shed tears.
It turned out that when Wu's late husband died, because Zhang Xiaoyi was there, her husband's family did not take back her land and asked her to live with her son guarding the forty acres of mulberry forest.
If you rent out twenty acres of this mulberry forest, you can get sixty-five taels of silver. For the remaining twenty acres, you can get seventy-five taels of silver from wholesalers and retail traders who collect leaves. The income of 140 taels of silver per year supports the mother and two children, which goes without saying about the quality of life.
Wu was considered a very wealthy widow in Shunde City. Although there are more disputes at home, Wu's natal family has brothers and her son has uncles who can support her. She hired a few honest servants and women, who stayed close to the house every day and did not interact with the three aunts and six wives. She endured the emptiness, loneliness and coldness until her son grew up.
Although his son Zhang Xiaoyi is not good at reading, he is smart and can read and write without any problem. He likes to listen to books and read newspapers. He subscribes to a copy of "Nanjing Daily" at home. In addition to reading the serials above, Zhang Xiaoyi also likes to study other news in depth.
One day I read a piece of news: "The Ming Dynasty exported silk to Japan for 20 yellow yen per foot. After dyeing in Japan, it sold for 100 yellow yen. Two and a half times the profit was in the hands of the Japanese. It is a pity."
Xiao Yi has a mulberry forest at home and is familiar with the entire silk production process. After going out to investigate, I found out that there are no large-scale dyeing workshops in Shunde. When he came home and discussed it with his mother, he started doing it in a big way.
Shunde, Guangdong Province at this time produced the flagship product of the Ming Dynasty's silk industry - angustifolia silk, also called Xiangyun yarn. Its front is black, with a faint luster, like black pottery. The reverse side is brown with irregular cracks, like the texture of a Ru kiln.
When this kind of silk is worn and walked, the clothes rub against each other and make a rustling sound, so the silk is also called "Xiangyun Sha". Later, it was renamed "Xiangyun Sha" based on its homophonic pronunciation. It is a high-end fabric and is especially favored by Japanese aristocrats.
When Zhang Xiaoyi intervened in this market, although Xiangyun yarn was expensive, the output was not large. Zhang Xiaoyi also produces according to the traditional process, which is called "sunshi". First, use a boat to fish out river mud and smear it on silk soaked in potato juice. Because the iron content in the river mud is just right, it reacts with the yam juice to dye silk. After letting it stand, wash it, spray the potato juice again, and place it on the dewy grass to "spread the mist" - that is, to absorb the moisture. Then it is dried in the sun and left for four months to form fragrant cloud gauze.
Zhang Xiaoyi made some good money in the first two years - twice as much. In the third year, Zhang Xiaoyi invested 2,000 taels to expand the workshop three times, preparing to capture half of Shunde's silk production. Unexpectedly, a new trading company in the north also saw the profits from this area and opened a Xiangyun yarn production trading company in Foshan.
Zhang Xiaoyi heard about this trading company and was not worried about it. Because no one has thought about this business before, but no one has succeeded after leaving Shunde. Shunde people believe that this is a local specialty and no one can imitate it.
But things took a turn for the worse the next year. Foshan's Xiangyunsha Trading Co., Ltd. has found a trick - no one knows how to break through, and this thing has no technical content to begin with. But then a large amount of extremely cheap Xiangyun yarn appeared on the market, and Shunde's Xiangyun yarn was unsaleable.
Zhang Xiaoyi once went to Foshan and pretended to be a recruiter to investigate. I found that Foshan Trading Co., Ltd. does not use the process of river mud and can directly produce Xiangyun yarn of similar color by sealing buttercups six times. He was puzzled.
The old craftsmanship of scooping river mud, smearing river mud, and crossing river mud requires a lot of strong labor. After Zhang Xiaoyi's investigation, he found that the labor cost of his workshop was still high compared with the trading companies in Foshan, and he could not compete with them.
In fact, the trick found by Foshan Trading Company is very simple. They dug up river mud in Shunde and sent it to the Jingshi Institute of Geosciences to analyze the components involved in the chemical reaction. They only need to prepare the corresponding solution according to the iron content in the Shunde river mud to produce it.
Although the quality of Foshan Xiangyun yarn is worse than that of Shunde, it is difficult for ordinary people to distinguish the difference if two pieces of silk from different origins are not placed together. The high-volume and low-price Xiangyun yarn hit the export market and wiped out all the Shunde workshops in one fell swoop.
Zhang Xiaoyi spent all his family's savings over the years and owed more than 200 taels of foreign debt to pay for the workers. There are also a large number of unemployed sunflower workers in Shunde. ——This is just a small microcosm of the turmoil caused by the improvement of production efficiency throughout the empire.
In fact, after Zhu Yijun took the initiative to start the primary industrial production model, not only acanthus silk, but also dozens of industries such as raw silk, silk, cotton spinning, ironware, grain and feed processing, etc., caused huge turmoil.
This kind of turmoil differs between the north and the south. To the north of the Huaihe River, because industrial production absorbs a large amount of labor, there is a prosperous scene everywhere. Although there are occasional conflicts caused by mining and farmers competing for land, most of them are caused by improper local management.
In the southern part of the empire, a large number of small production workshops were destroyed by more efficient large trading companies, resulting in a large number of unemployed people with no place to absorb them. This was a huge conflict with the previous situation of fewer people and more people on site, which attracted great attention from the emperor and the court. .
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