Chapter 200 Xiao Cao is capable of great things

Money is not everything, but without money, nothing is possible.

The Neiku has a lot of income every year, but its expenditure is even greater.

According to the Imperial Book of Rites (royal archives), there were many members of the Ming Dynasty royal family. Calculated at 100 taels per person per year, the royal expenses alone amounted to 2 million taels.

The various expenses in the harem were also extremely extravagant. Not to mention other things, just looking at the Guanglu Temple is enough to see that there were only 20,000 people in the palace, and the annual food expenses were 800,000 to 900,000 taels, with an average of nearly 50 taels per person per year for food.

What does this mean? For people living in villages around Beijing, the annual consumption of a family of five is about 2 taels of silver.

The ancients talked about the right time, right place and right people. Zhao Huan's situation was getting worse and worse.

First, let's talk about the weather. The last few decades have been the most pronounced period of the Little Ice Age, with alternating severe droughts and floods in the summer and extremely cold winters, often with snowfall before the Mid-Autumn Festival.

A passage in "Records of Northern Travels" reveals the extent of the cold in southern China during the Little Ice Age. In late July of 1517, Tan Qian departed from his hometown of Hangzhou and sailed along the Grand Canal to Beijing. He arrived in Tianjin on November 7th, but by the 18th, the canal was frozen over. Tan Qian remained in Beijing for three years. In March 1521, the canal thawed on March 7th, and he sailed south back to Hangzhou. This suggests that the Grand Canal remained frozen for up to 110 days each year.

Heading north along Ma Xing Street, past the Xiaohuohang Shilou and Daguchuan Pharmacy, you'll reach the Old Fengqiu Gate. Both sides of the street are lined with pharmacies run by renowned medical officials, including Du Jingou's, Cao's Dusheng Pills, Shanshui Li's Oral and Throat Medicine, Shiyuer's Ban Fangyu, Yinhaier's Xianglangzhong Pediatrics, and Daxie Ren's Obstetrics. Besides the pharmacies, this street is home to shops selling various spices and the residences of court officials. I won't go into detail here. The night market on Ma Xing Street is a hundred times more lively than that at Zhouqiao. The traffic is so heavy and crowded that it's practically impossible to stand still. People in Kyoto call this street "Inner Head."

The direct impact is poor harvests and the displacement of the people. Without the people, how can taxes be collected?

The Ming Dynasty's existence in the Central Plains was already difficult, and the ethnic minorities in the north were even more miserable. The land was dry and the grasslands were degraded. To avoid starvation, the ethnic minorities in the north frequently moved south, and battle after battle was fought at the border.

Wars are fought for money.

Let's talk about the geographical advantages. Officials gathered at the foot of the emperor's city walls, and a thrown brick could easily knock down a group of fifth-rank officials. These civil servants, nobles, relatives of the emperor's wife, and eunuchs all owned vast tracts of land and divided up various businesses.

The emperor cannot do business. The civil servants will be very excited and will make suggestions to the emperor, saying that the emperor is competing with the people for profit. Then these civil servants who always represent the people will start to bully the people and act tyrannically.

Finally, let’s talk about harmony. Emperor Hongzhi only had one woman in his life, Empress Zhang. He was frugal during his reign and saved a considerable amount of money in the inner treasury. Unfortunately, it was squandered by his adopted cousin Zhu Houzhao.

To be disrespectful, the number of women Emperor Hongzhi had seen was less than that slept with by Emperor Zhengde. According to the records in "Qijuzhu", Emperor Zhengde had three to five beautiful women every night.

In addition, Emperor Zhengde was also a good warrior. He pacified Prince Hua and Prince Ning, and defeated the Mongolian prince. As mentioned above, wars are fought for money.

In the end, Emperor Zhengde walked away, leaving Zhao Huan with a mess.

I'm worried. How can I get the money? Raising revenue requires a battle of wits and courage with the ministers, and saving requires a falling out with the imperial family. If only there were some money blowing in from the wind, free money, I could hire five thousand people.

Are there things that the ancients disdained but are actually very valuable? If so, wouldn't that be a disguised way of picking up free money?

Zhao Huan began to recall the novels he had read about time travel back to the Ming Dynasty, wondering how the protagonists got their first bucket of gold and became rich.

There is a novel called "Bringing Warehouses to the Ming Dynasty". As the name suggests, it is about time travel. The novel is about traveling back in time to the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty with millions of tons of cargo in the entire New York Port. Sniper rifles are conventional weapons, and tanks can arm an entire division, helping Zhu Zhanji to make trouble all over the world.

There's also a novel called "The Prodigal Son of the Ming Dynasty," in which the protagonist, Fang Jifan, is a Ming Dynasty history expert with a memorized archive of information from the period. He exploits the time difference in information to hoard ebony, earning a million taels of silver. He also knows the exam questions for the Ming Dynasty's imperial examinations and cultivates a family of students, enabling them to enjoy a life of loving fatherhood and filial piety.

There's also a novel called "Rise of the Poor," where the protagonist, Zhu Ping'an, possesses the ability to see other people's fortunes and has a childhood sweetheart who's a super-rich woman. Truly, his debut is a peak moment.

After more than twenty days in the Ming Dynasty, Zhao Huan had confirmed he had no cheat codes. He hadn't had any cheats, but his starting point was lower than everyone else's. Though they were both transmigrated souls, he had no memory of his former lover and couldn't even write calligraphy. He tried to draw a world map, but ended up creating a circle within a circle.

The only thing we can refer to is "The Prodigal Son of the Ming Dynasty". The author knows a lot of historical materials, which is his ability. It is more meaningful as a reference than such unreasonable cheating.

The one million taels of silver he earned from hoarding ebony was just an appetizer. Later, he mined and sold coal, used coal to burn glass, built greenhouses, built roads and railways, built horse-drawn carriages, and built trains during the Ming Dynasty. Finally, he went to Europe to cheat people out of money.

I don’t know if what is recorded in the novel is true. There is anthracite on the surface of Xishan that is easy to mine. If it is true, can it be replicated?

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