Chapter 11 Diao Family

The following year, the various brokers bought out all the tea from Qiong, Peng, Jia, and Mian prefectures in exchange for Meng Xiao's silk. The Grand Administration Office issued the silver bonds, but the few present today still didn't see the profit Meng Xiao was aiming for. What they didn't know was that Meng Xiao's primary goal was to expand the Meng family's production of silk and brocade to include silk. In recent years, with the growing sophistication of the Chengdu brocade court, the profits from weaving brocade for tribute had dwindled significantly. After deducting bribes to officials, the profit was minimal. Now, they were exchanging silk and silk for tea, acquiring silver bonds through the tea-buying scheme. These bonds were then lent to merchants at a marked-up price through silver shops. The proceeds were used to purchase tea seeds and loan them to tea farms, both to guarantee the next year's tea supply and to offset the price of the tea. The proceeds were also used to purchase koji, pay the wine tax, and purchase distilleries, resulting in a multiplier in profits. The merchants holding the bonds valued the silver bonds, which could appreciate along with silver, potentially yielding a profit, even exceeding its value. Meng Xiao initially intended to offer merchants a discount, but the profit was modest. His focus now lay not on profit but on reputation. When money returned to the market, it was exchanged for tea, wine, medicine, and grain through brokers. The collateral for the debts issued by the money shops shifted from silver to silver certificates. Silver certificates, while not directly redeemable for silver, offered sufficient cash to cover the interest on the certificates. The nominal guarantor of the silver certificates also shifted from the Supervisor of the Tea and Horse Bureau to the Lizhou Road General Administration. Some locals said that for the bulk purchases of tea, wine, medicine, and grain, the Meng family was the only one in Shu who could handle the task.

Later, Meng Xiao transformed the ten silk markets into silk markets. The silk produced was largely exchanged for goods, which were then bought and resold by brokers in and out of Sichuan, practically monopolizing the public property and the miscellaneous goods market. Losses and gains were temporary, but once the money was in the bank, it was always profitable. The cheaper the money, the more expensive the silver. However, only cash notes and silver coupons were exchangeable in the market, and silver had been absent for years. If all the accounts were exchanged for silver, with most of it paid by the Northwest military and a small amount purchased from outside, would it be sufficient? The locals replied: No. Then how could it be profitable? The answer: cash notes. Who controlled the flow of this silver? The answer: the Meng family and Wu Lang.

A few years later, the economic people in Qiong, Peng, Jia and Mian finally knew that the guarantor who was willing to cover for Meng Xiao and let Du Da lend money, and facilitated this series of business, was Wu Lang from the beginning. There were three Wu Langs, one was stationed in Xingzhou, one was the Sichuan Xuanfu Envoy last year, and the other was the Pacifier in Lizhou Road. The profits from Meng Xiao's resale of tea, wine, medicine and grain were multiplied and eventually flowed into two streams. One stream went to the Meng family, and the other stream went to the Wu family. Meng Xiao's business with the Wu family lasted until the year of Wu Zi in the Qiandao period. In that year, a lay Buddhist in Jianzhou wrote "Ji Mi Shi Hu" (The Control of Food and Goods), and in his "Tea and Horse" chapter he said:

Since the Longxing era, the Northwest Military Commission (commanding the military and horses of the headquarters) has recruited a merchant named Meng to enter the capital. He issued coupons based on the Yongxi law and paid them with military silver. In the Bingxu year of the Gandao era, they collected grain, wine, and silk worth a million yuan, which was paid to Meng. The coupons were then sold to the market through Meng, and the profit often reached hundreds of thousands of yuan. While Shu's grain, wine, salt, silk, and other goods should be sold profitably by the people, the Meng family now controls all the miscellaneous goods sold in the market. Six-tenths of the wine shops, tea plants, and silk markets are under Meng's control. The people suffer greatly from the lack of profit in trade."

Years later, someone with inside knowledge asked Meng Xiao how much silver he had issued in bonds. He replied, "One hundred thousand." Then someone asked, "How much debt did you, the Tea and Horse Department, and the General Administration Department issue in total?" He replied, "Probably several million." Then someone asked, "Do you know this is illegal?" He replied, "If I hadn't done it, there wouldn't be any law I'd be breaking."

The locals said that at the end of Shaoxing, Chengdu Prefecture paid a wine tax of one million strings, and Meng Lang still owed 800,000 strings. Otherwise, it should be 1.8 million strings. After this word spread, another official came out to clarify, saying that the Meng family brewed "reward wine", which was to be transported to the military wine warehouse and then distributed to the Sichuan and Shaanxi armies, so the tax was low. He also said that they paid for the brewing of official wine, and the tax was deducted from the processing fee. The locals said, "I deducted a ghost from you." At this time, everyone said that raising a tiger would bring harm, and the news and rumors in the county and towns, true and false, all had the surname Meng. If these news and rumors were true, there would need to be ten or eight Meng Xiaos to be enough. However, the locals argued that now one Meng Xiao earned the money of ten or eight Meng Xiaos. If the news and rumors were made up, were the money of the old Meng family also made up?

The insider replied, "The news and rumors are fabricated, and so is the money of the old Meng family." If the news and rumors are credible, then the money of the Meng family is also credible. The locals say you are bragging." The insider said, "Who says it's not? Just like the paper in your hand has one string of money written on it. If you believe it is one string, others will believe it too, and the paper can be spent. If you don't believe it, others will believe it, and they can spend it too. People nowadays don't necessarily believe that silver certificates can be exchanged for silver, but they believe that they can always be sold at a good price. One ounce of silver is two strings of money, which will be three strings after the new year. Three strings of money are written on your paper, do you believe it is money? If you don't believe it, don't believe it at all, and don't believe the other paper with three strings of money written on it.

By the Jiashen year of the Longxing reign, one tael of silver and two strings of cash could be exchanged for three strings of cash after the Lunar New Year. The credit for generating profits shifted from tea to wine. At the beginning of the Longxing era, Su's honey wine flourished. The Chengdu wine market opened in October, and the official koji collected 200,000 strings of cash in taxes. In mid-October, Meng Xiao leaned on the balcony of a brothel, looking down at the donkeys and rows of large brown-glazed pottery jars.

The woman asked from inside the house, "Is the wine good?"

Meng Xiao dipped his finger into the salt dish, then into the wine, took a sip, and replied, "It doesn't taste good."

The woman said, "Nonsense! It's sweet, so how can it not taste good?"

Meng Xiao said, "Ginger wine is bitter, and rock tea is astringent. Honey is sweet, but when added to wine, it becomes spicy."

The woman said, "You, a monk, are going to teach Chengdu people how to drink?"

Meng Xiao said, "How can a monk like me drink? Only people from Luzhou can teach people from Chengdu how to drink." So he went to Luzhou and bought wine at 20 coins per catty for the wine immortals and poets in Chengdu to drink.

The wine fairy drank with the poet without saying a word. After a while, his face turned the color of pig pancreas, and he said, "I don't understand what I'm drinking. It's sour and hard to drink. It smells like barley."

Meng Xiao said, "This is Fu Weng's Jade Pot Wine, 'Nighting in Love,' and the sourness is from the cooked pepper. You've tried everything, but you'll have to drink this kind of wine a hundred times before you get used to it. You're wine enthusiasts, so you'll definitely get used to it in the future."

The wine immortal and the poets said: "Wine that costs twenty coins a pound, what's the point of drinking it?"

Meng Xiao said, "In the past, those seeking fame and fortune in Chang'an drank first-class wine worth a hundred strings of cash a day, used gold as their tripod, and used jade for their meals. This was certainly pretentious. Pretentious means being meticulous and meticulous without merit or fault, but not using their power for fear of committing sin, and using it to buy wine. They think of committing sin when they have nothing to do, and slap themselves in the face and cry out in pain, like the people of Qin. There's a saying that a gentleman would rather burn himself than be a duke, and that even the most resourceful of schemes are inferior to those of a king. A hundred strings of cash a bowl isn't wine; only twenty strings of cash a pound are."

The wine immortal and the poets took the jade pot home to drink and recite Fu Weng's poems. The locals said the wine was unpalatable. A few months later, the 21-jin (150-pound) jade pot of wine replaced honey wine, selling for 100 coins per jin and paying a monthly wine tax of 100,000. As the locals drank, they said, "It's damn unpalatable."

The natives drank wine and ate scallions, ginger, garlic, lard, and salt. As they ate, they chatted, moving from the topic of oil and salt to Meng Xiao. It was as if Meng Xiao had crawled out of some crevice, landed on the table, and been snatched into someone's mouth by chopsticks. "Meng Lang loves birds." This was first said by Luo Paozi, the Meng family's cook. The Mengs often had the meat of Qionglai tits and wood thrushes. Birds were stir-fried with houttuynia cordata, adding herbs and salt. Mushrooms and bamboo shoots were mashed into a paste, mixed with wood mushrooms and shark fins, and then wrapped in paper-thin mixed noodles, steamed, and eaten with white wine.

"This is a waste," the native said. "Is it fair for a bald man to eat meat? Not to mention that it must be bitter when fried with medicine and salt. How can pork be compared to shark fin?"

Luo Chef said that this story started with Zhang Shangying. Meng Lang's master was a disciple of Qingyuan Weixin, and Zhang Shangying was an old friend of Meng Lang's master's master. It's said that Zhang Shangying met Congyue at Yuxi Ci. After the two discussed Zen, Zhang had an epiphany in the middle of the night when he "touched an overturned chamber pot." Congyue said, "You have deeply understood that the only purpose of practicing Zen is to ensure the continuity of life." Zhang told this to Meng Lang's master's master, who then learned the mental method of "being unhindered when faced with a situation and unconstrained when responding to things." He passed this method on to Meng Lang, which is why he didn't observe the precepts. The locals said that Zhang Shangying kicked over the chamber pot, and from then on, this sect stopped eating vegetarian food. Luo Chef said, "That's not the way to put it; it's just empty talk." The locals said, "Then why not put all the gold, silver, and jade in your house aside and eat pigs?" Luo Chef said, "Meng Xiao loves to eat pigs."

Later, it was confirmed by Meng Tie's grandson, Meng Shangong (Quan): Meng Xiao did eat pork, and it started in the temple.

Meng, the chef, explained that rumors about Meng Xiao abounded in both Chengdu and Jiangjin County, mostly gossip and little substance. The only reliable sources were those told by the Meng family themselves. According to Meng Xiao's fifth aunt, Tian, ​​in the first year of the Gandao reign, Meng Xiao married Diao, and the wedding banquet hosted a thousand guests. Hundreds of people, claiming ancestry from the Diao and Huang clans alone, attended. Diao's father, a descendant of Diao Guangyin, had previously married the daughter of Huang Yan, a descendant of Huang Jucai, whose father, Huang Quan, was a disciple of Diao Guangyin. Huang Quan was the Imperial Censor of Later Shu, and Meng Lang was the eighth-generation grandson of the Shu king. This marriage was a fortuitous match. However, this marriage, favored by the people of Chengdu, was not favored by the descendants of Huang Quan, the Imperial Censor of Shu. Huang Quan's descendants recognized Huang Yan as the head of their family. Huang Yan, in turn, had always been skeptical of his son-in-law, Diao's father. Huang Yan often told people that he married Huang into the Diao family because of his eight generations of ancestors. The Diao family was considered prominent in Shu, so the Meng family, with seven generations of merchants, certainly didn't catch Huang Yan's eye. Huang Yan, acting stubbornly, didn't care whether Meng Xiao's ancestor was Meng Zhixiang. He simply insisted to Diao's father that Meng Jian's ancestors, Meng Xiao's son, were masons and carpenters from Huanglongxi. Meng Xian and Meng Jian were both wealthy and frivolous, and Meng Xiao was bald. When sixteen-year-old Diao heard this, she burst into tears, saying, "How can I have sex with him if he's bald? Wouldn't marrying him make me a widow?" She then went to her grandfather and said, "My father wants to sacrifice me to a monk." Huang Yan, the grandfather, then confronted Diao's father, demanding, "How could you, a useless man, give my granddaughter to that bald, pig-eating, stinking wine man?" Diao's father was henpecked, and even more terrified of his father-in-law. He had no choice but to go along with Huang Yan and also expressed his disapproval of the Meng family. Huang Yan asked Diao's father to cancel the engagement, and Diao's father had no choice but to agree.

A year later, Meng Jian, who had arranged a marriage for his son at the Diao family, died. Diao's father went to the Meng family to offer condolences, hoping to find an opportunity to cancel the previously arranged marriage. However, after meeting Meng Xiao, Diao's father not only did not cancel the engagement, but also gave Meng Xiao a sum of money, urging him to marry Diao as soon as possible. Huang Yan was furious when Diao's father failed to cancel the engagement. Diao's father said that Meng Lang had a big business and could make the family rich. Huang Yan scolded him for being ridiculous, saying that he was a descendant of Zuo Zanshan, the founder of the Qiyun School, and that he was a descendant of the "Huang family's wealth." He said that painting was not necessary, but his face was. If you want to do business, do you have to give him your daughter and then pay him? If you want to do business, go ahead. I will never deal with unscrupulous and dishonest businessmen! Huang Yan never spoke to Diao's father again. On the day Diao married Meng Xiao, Huang Yan brought fifty of the Huang family's descendants to the wedding banquet, creating a grand spectacle, hoping to make Meng Xiao as henpecked as Diao's father. Among the fifty descendants of the Huang family, there are officials, clerks, scholars, hermits, and professors, but there is no businessman. This tells Meng Xiao that your family is small and talented, and you are not considered a celebrity in Shu. During the banquet, Meng Xiao toasted Huang Yan, but Huang Yan pretended to be deaf and refused to drink. After the banquet, Meng Xiao entered the bridal chamber and saw Diao sitting through the carved screen. He felt that this woman looked a bit like her grandfather and did not dare to go forward. Although Meng Xiao was drunk at this time, he still remembered his father's advice when he was alive: "Talk in the bridal chamber should not exceed ten sentences." So he got straight to the point and said, "To be honest, my lady, your grandfather just insulted me."

Diao said, "It's a common thing."

Meng Xiao asked, "Madam, are you willing to see me?"

Diao glared at him. Meng Xiao walked around the screen, swaying like a flame, and walked up to Diao. He took a piece of dessert from his sleeve and handed it to Diao. Diao took it and tasted it. Meng Xiao asked, "Is it delicious?"

Diao said, "It's not tasty."

"It's not tasty, why wait for me?" Meng Xiao said, blowing out the candles. He then grabbed Diao's hips, pulled her legs over his, wiped off her shoes and socks, lifted her foot, and took a bite. This is what Meng's fifth aunt, Tian, ​​said. Sixth aunt, Hu, said Shi Lang didn't bite her feet that night, but her neck.