Johime Three Kingdoms

Chapter 176 Yan Yin is born
After exercising in the early morning, Bai Tu was dining with Lu Bu, Lu Lingqi, and Tai Shici.

Taishi Ci refused at first. His duty was to protect Bai Tu. As for Lu Lingqi... although she was technically a member of the Suwei under his command, Taishi Ci felt that at this point, there was no need for him, as a superior, to interfere.

Not to mention Lu Bu, the relationship is here, after coming to "train" Bai Tu every day, isn't it normal to have dinner together?

But Bai Tu was really awkward. There was someone standing next to him while he was eating, so if Tai Shi Ci caught up, Bai Tu would usually pull him to eat with him...

Unless it was a formal banquet, Bai Tu would not tolerate this corrupt behavior of having others serve him.

Many people couldn't understand Bai Tu's "awkwardness"—is this awkward?A truly aristocratic family, not to mention serving when eating, even has a special servant to "fart". The function is to take the blame when the master farts!

"The fish Xingba brought back tastes good." Lu Lingqi said.

"When the matter with Yuan Shu is over, we can go back and try something new." Bai Tu said helplessly.

This breakfast is quite distinguished!

It was millet porridge, pickled vegetables, and [-] catties of wild large yellow croaker... pickled salted fish.

If it were a modern wild large yellow croaker weighing more than 20 kilograms, it would probably fetch millions, right?
But there is no way, from Wu County to Hefei, even if it is "riding the world of mortals and Bai Gongxiao", it is unlikely to eat fresh "goldfish". After all, the road conditions here are such that they can only be salted.

"Actually, I still prefer last night's bacon." Lu Lingqi said.

"Jiangdong and Huainan are not as cold as Bingzhou. Don't eat so many fatty foods, otherwise unnecessary fat will slow down your speed and reaction." Lu Bu reminded.

Lu Lingqi rolled her eyes. Compared to Bai Tu... Lu Bu had higher requirements for Lu Lingqi.

Well, after all, Lu Lingqi is now Baitu's "Guardian", if there is an enemy, she will go first...

"Ahem, bacon and ham must be promoted in the future," Bai Tu said.

As a major pig farmer, Bai Tu naturally knew that the supply of pork was increasing significantly.

Be it bacon or ham, not to mention the taste, the amount of salt consumed will be a satisfactory amount!
In fact, the price of ancient salt has nothing to do with the cost, especially after the emergence of the sun salt method... its essence is a "tax".

Whether it is a rural farmer or a boudoir lady, everyone has to eat salt, which is a disguised head tax.

At the same time, foods containing a lot of salt, such as salted fish and cured meat, are actually given extra taxes invisibly!
Therefore, unlike the cooking method of yellow croaker, Baitu decided to spare no effort to promote the preparation methods of bacon, cured meat, ham... this kind of food.

When salt production is mainly controlled by Bai Tu, the heavier the taste of the people in the world, the better!
These are all taxes...

Bai Tu even wanted to publicize: You are not eating bacon, you are helping the Han people!

According to the World Health Organization, the optimal daily salt intake for humans is 5g.

In the eyes of modern people, especially those in heavy-flavored areas, it is a very "light" amount.

And in Bai Tu’s view, at least in farming civilization, pursuing the best value is completely nonsense – manual workers who farm in the open air under the sun will definitely not have the same demand for “salt” as modern white-collar workers.

At least in the history of Chinese civilization, until modern society, "salt" has always been in short supply.

Bai Tu saw in a certain paper that after all kinds of fancy calculations about the salt intake of the people in the Han Dynasty, the data obtained was that during the Spring and Autumn Period... the state of Qi, which was a large salt producer, consumed nearly 5g of salt per capita. Three to four times the limit.

However, Baitu can now responsibly say that there is a big problem with the calculation method of that paper...

The first and most important point is that the data used as the theoretical basis comes from "salt consumption."

You must know that in ancient times when there were no refrigerators, a large part of the salt was used to store or pickle ingredients!

There is a lot of loss in pickling, and there is a big deviation between salt consumption and intake...

At this time, the consumption of "salt" by the people in Jiangdong was roughly the same. Judging from the sales channels of seventeen salt merchants, about 30 stones of sea salt cooked every year were consumed in Jiangdong.

In general, it is similar to the Qi State in the Spring and Autumn Period. After all, there was no qualitative leap in salt production technology from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Han Dynasty.

Moreover, Qi State was also a major salt producer in the Spring and Autumn Period.

Of course, considering that people must cook salt privately, the per capita salt consumption in Jiangdong is actually higher than that in Qi, but not too much.

In other words, even in Jiangdong, a salt-producing land, the salt intake of ordinary people is slightly lower than the "light" health standards of modern people!

Lu Bu just reminded Lu Lingqi not to eat too fat, but did not say not to eat too salty, which also proves this point.

From this point of view, the common people at this time still have great potential to help the Han Dynasty...

Of course, another prerequisite is that they must become rich first, otherwise they won’t mind eating lighter!
After breakfast, Bai Tu received an "email" from Lu Su from Jinling at Ji's place in Hefei, which contained the price of salt from various places.

In fact, Bai Tu and Lu Su have discussed this issue for a long time before, and now it is just the final confirmation. After all, the Ministry of Civil Affairs Yanyin will be officially launched soon.

Each "yin" can be exchanged for five hundred stones of salt at the salt field, but the salt is not sold at the salt field.

Although many articles describe ancient salt as comparable to gold, often hundreds of times the price of rice, in fact in most "normal" times, the price of salt is far from that high.

Moreover, the price of salt is actually much more stable than the price of grain. The price of grain can easily vary dozens of times in years of disaster or good years. However, there are only two possibilities for the price of salt to be falsely high - either the court is short of money, or the salt merchants are out of control. Already...

The price of salt in the Han Dynasty was generally around one thousand qian per stone, which was four times the price of grain in normal times.

However, in these troubled times, Jiangdong's grain prices have still tripled under the pressure of relief grains - which is already very conscientious.

The price of salt at this time was about two and a half times the price of rice.

Although the Han Dynasty is short of money now, and the wealthy families who cook salt also want to lose control and feel refreshed, but...the latter has no basis to monopolize the salt industry now, and the former cannot collect a penny and can only wait. For ambitious people like Bai Tu to "help the Han Dynasty", the price of salt will naturally only rise slightly and cannot take off.

According to the history of "Another World", the price of salt was basically stable during the prosperous Tang Dynasty, but because there was too much food, the price difference was dozens of times higher. After the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty was really short of money, so it increased its efforts to purchase salt and iron. , causing the price of salt to soar. During the Song Dynasty, in most periods, the price of salt would not exceed ten times the price of grain, but it would probably rise every time there was a chaos.

Now the Ministry of Civil Affairs has set the base price of Yanyin as 1 stones of grain, which means that the ratio of salt to grain is almost 1:[-]...

The basic price of salt can be purchased in Wu County. You can use grain, money, or silk.

However, at this price, retailing it is at most twice the cost, and there are also transportation and other issues to consider, so the profit is not high.

The more earned salt is distributed in Hefei, Guangling and other places. It only costs [-] shi of grain, and must be settled with grain - that is, everyone is encouraged to transport grain to Huainan.

Animals have their own paths and rats have their own paths. If you really transport food from Jiangdong, half of the consumption is the minimum. Especially now that the drought in Huainan has caused a surge in transportation consumption. In this case... it is better to give full play to the subjective initiative of each family. , to see if there is any potential to be tapped.

And without Bai Tu's guidance, they consciously began to acquire the owned land in Huainan - as for the unowned land?Sorry, the ownerless ones are all used to "support the Han Dynasty", and are now managed by the General's Office.

Even the General Mansion is personally buying up land in Huainan, but what Bai Tu values ​​​​are open areas suitable for military settlements and collective farming, and he doesn't bother to look at every corner.

In addition, in places adjacent to Jingzhou such as Chaisang, if it can be proven that the grain was transported from Jingzhou, there is also a half-price discount of 250 shi...

The effect is very significant. Sure enough, these nobles still have potential to be tapped. Previously, because the price of food in Jiangdong did not rise due to the suppression of relief grains, there was no siphon to the surrounding areas.

And as soon as the salt was drawn out, boatloads of grain flowed from Jiangxia to Jiangdong...

When Bai Tu asked for an official transaction before, Liu Biao directly refused, but now it is all "civilian behavior" that is broken up into pieces, and he is powerless to intervene. After all, his degree of control over the wealthy family under his jurisdiction is far less than that of Bai Tu. picture.

Because you can go down the Yangtze River, the cost of transporting grain to Jingzhou is low, and Jingzhou is not greatly affected by drought. Moreover, many wealthy families have their own business in private, and the price of grain in Jingzhou has also been raised. Three points.

There are rumors that Liu Biao cursed his mother after hearing the news.

Baitu's salt is not only subject to a salt tax, but is also undergoing a series of changes!
Some ruthless people were even blown up, such as... Guangling Zhang's cooperation with Wujun Zheng's, Zhang took out [-]% of the originally abundant grain and sent it to Guangling City. After that, there was a big branch that went directly to After receiving the relief food, he moved to Jiangdong.

Of course, there were some in-depth transactions between the two parties. For example, before the Zhang family moved away, they first traded land to the family who stayed in Guangling, so they could take out so much grain and trade their land from the Zheng family. The land of Shanyin in Kuaiji.

And Zheng's has also become the largest salt agent in a short period of time...

Chen Gong naturally welcomed this kind of saucy operation. Zhang Hong, the representative of the branch that moved the Zhang family to Jiangdong, was also appointed as Guangling's chief registrar, his assistant in Guangling, and promised to take him back with him later. Jinling, recommending him to join the center - the reason why he moved to Jiangdong Branch was not only for money, but also to place a bet on Bai Tu.

Bai Tu has seen even more coquettish operations. When he was in Hefei and saw someone bringing grain from the direction of Shouchun to exchange for salt, he couldn't help feeling worried about Yuan Shu, and silently offered another [-]% discount to the visitor. …

(End of this chapter)