Chapter 648: Bad News
At first, there were twenty or thirty people who wanted to go to the government office to ask for an explanation.
But as they walked along, passersby curiously asked them what they were doing. No one kept it a secret, and the passersby decided to follow them to see what was going on.
Therefore, more and more people are being dragged along the way.
Finally, they arrived in groups in front of the Zhuozhou government office, and were then stopped outside by officers and soldiers.
This matter was reported to Zhao Minglou, but he chose to avoid it.
With the soldiers blocking their way, the common people did not dare to act too aggressively. In the end, they could only turn around and cause trouble for the wealthy donkey families like the Cai and Lu families.
Wang Dong watched from a hidden place in the back and thought to himself, this is just the beginning.
Before the worst of the situation, the people can still maintain their rationality and retreat after being intimidated. However, when the situation becomes more severe, the use of force will be difficult to deter and may even have the opposite effect.
On this side, Cai Guang is still trying to save himself.
Cai Guang tried contacting major clients he had previously worked with in Zhuozhou, hoping to sell the Cai family's donkeys to them at a discount. Coincidentally, one of the clients he found was Anhe Pharmacy.
When he went to contact them, the other party told him the bottom line. They had signed a contract with someone and could buy 100,000 donkeys for 600,000 taels of silver, which was equivalent to 6 taels of silver per donkey.
Cai Guang was stunned when he heard the news. In other words, it would be difficult to sell their donkeys for more than six taels of silver.
All the surrounding roads were blocked, and they couldn’t sell their donkeys without losing money!
But a donkey cost less than six taels of silver, which is really a huge loss.
Zhuozhou is finished!
As the saying goes, it rains all night when it leaks, and a hemp rope breaks at its thinnest point.
Not long after the donkey price plummeted, Pingzhou took action again.
After Pingzhou announced that it would no longer purchase donkeys from Zhuozhou, Pingzhou began to tighten its food purse strings and raise food prices.
The bad news came one after another.
As if in response to the order to raise grain prices in Pingzhou, grain prices in various parts of Dali also rose, among which the grain prices in Zhuozhou and surrounding areas rose even more rapidly.
In fact, grain prices in Dali have recently risen. After all, March and April are the lean seasons, and grain prices tend to rise slightly during this time. Furthermore, last year, Pingzhou merchants were constantly buying and selling in Dali, exchanging goods for grain, which resulted in less food for the common people. Therefore, the increase in grain prices in Dali was higher than usual.
The grain prices in Pingzhou have always been maintained in a relatively low price range. Now that the grain prices in Pingzhou have risen, the grain merchants in Dali have increased their prices without hesitation, and they feel justified in doing so.
As the grain prices in Dali rose, the people of Zhuozhou complained bitterly.
There was nothing left at home, no food, no money, only a few donkeys.
The key point is that the common people’s donkeys were slaughtered a month later than Cai’s and have not yet been sold.
It takes one year for their donkeys to grow up. Before one year old, it is the golden period of their growth and the peak period of growth and development. The consumption of food and grass is huge. If the food and grass are cut off, they will lose weight quickly.
In other words, the food supply cannot be cut off.
It's really frustrating. The price of donkeys has been falling, while the price of grain has skyrocketed. It seems like God is leaving us no way to survive.
Some people say that if the donkey cannot be sold at a good price, the worst that can happen is that it can be killed and eaten for meat.
But the common people were thrifty and knew that slaughtering a donkey for meat wasn't cost-effective. After all, even if a donkey could only be sold for five or six taels of silver, the grain bought with those five or six taels of silver could feed the family for a long time if they ate sparingly. And how many meals could they possibly eat if they slaughtered a donkey for meat? Furthermore, most of them were still facing the risk of famine.
In short, Zhuozhou is now shrouded in a cloud of gloom.
Pingzhou, Changli
Lu Songli and others were also paying attention to the situation in Zhuozhou.
Now the donkey market in Zhuozhou is in a stage of mutual trampling and market crash.
Pingzhou posed a difficult problem to the Dali court: should the court take over this hot potato of Zhuozhou or not?
Will the imperial court save the Zhuozhou market or not?
If the imperial court did not take action, Pingzhou's trick of wealth disappearance would directly cause most of Zhuozhou's wealth to evaporate, and Zhuozhou's people's livelihood and economy would be largely destroyed.
Now it depends on whether the court is willing to fill this hole, or ignore it or choose to add insult to injury.
Anyway, they in Pingzhou have made preparations for both situations, and boxes of silver are ready.
…
Xie Zhan, Liao Xuewang and others from Qingzhou have been secretly paying attention to the situation in Zhuozhou.
The changes in the situation in Zhuozhou are shocking.
Liao Xuewang said, "Grand Commander, the situation in Zhuozhou is not good."
Bingzhou timber merchant Qiao Xitong and Xin'an porcelain merchant Hu Jiangyi also looked solemn.
After receiving the summons from Xie Zhan, Qiao Xitong and Hu Jiangyi came to Qingzhou secretly.
Xie Zhan didn't say anything, but fiddled with the documents in his hand.
Cai Guang was able to get the news about Anhe Pharmacy, and Xie Zhan also got the news. He had a hunch that the contract with Anhe Pharmacy was related to Pingzhou.
He placed the contract between Ding Jun and the Cai family, and the contract between Anhe Pharmacy and Zhou Yi in front of him, one on each side.
Xie Zhan called Liao Xuewang and others, "Come and take a look at these two contracts."
Xie Zhan compared the two contracts and vaguely saw the outline of the scheme set up by Pingzhou.
If he had intervened and lowered the price of donkeys when he realized that Pingzhou was setting up a trap to buy deer to control Chu, Pingzhou's losses would not have been so great.
It should be said that if he had taken action at the beginning, under the price control of the court, Pingzhou would not have suffered any major losses regardless of whether the donkey price rose or fell.
Liao Xuewang, Qiao Xitong and Hu Jiangyi are all big businessmen. They looked at each other and understood that Pingzhou had completely transferred the risk.
What a superb commercial method!
They looked at the two contracts with fiery eyes.
Xie Zhan calmly pointed out, "The price of donkeys in Zhuozhou will continue to fall, probably to below five or six taels."
For big buyers and customers like Anhe Pharmacy, even without the contract, they would hope that the price of the donkey would be as low as possible.
Liao Xuewang took a breath of cold air, how cruel.
Qiao Xitong said with concentration, "In this situation, it depends on whether the imperial court will intervene. If the imperial court intervenes to save the Zhuozhou donkey market, the people of Zhuozhou will not suffer too much."
Hu Jiangyi shook his head. "That's both right and wrong. If the imperial court is willing to take action, it depends on the strength of the action."
"If the measures are strong, then the people of Zhuozhou can make a small profit."
"The effort is average, a year's work is wasted! Or even a small loss."
"If the force is not enough, haha."
Liao Xuewang also said, "Yes, Old Qiao, what good things are you thinking about? To provide a safety net for the people of Zhuozhou, the court will have to pay a heavy price."
"Grand Commander, what do you think?" Qiao Xitong asked Xie Zhan.
"The imperial court probably won't take action. The cost would be too high," Xie Zhan replied.
"From last year to this year, the cost of raising donkeys in Zhuozhou was very high, with each donkey costing as much as seven or eight taels of silver. How many donkeys are there in Zhuozhou now?"
"A conservative estimate is that there are over one million, perhaps even over two million."
Many people who originally lived in Daijun, Yanmen, Xinxing and other places flocked to Zhuozhou, Changshan, Taiyuan, Leping and other places.
Because of Zhuozhou's special geographical location, many people have flocked in. According to statistics, there are 50,000 households, and almost every household raises donkeys.
The donkeys in Zhuozhou had to be sold for eight taels of silver each to allow the common people to barely break even. This also meant that the imperial court had to come up with at least eight million taels of silver, or even sixteen million taels of silver, to stabilize the donkey market in Zhuozhou.
Moreover, once you choose to take over Zhuozhou, it means that you will have to compete with Pingzhou in the commercial economy, so you must be on guard against Pingzhou, so you have to make more preparations in terms of money and food.
Xie Zhan was well aware of the current financial situation of the Dali court, and he also knew Song Mo well. He would not spend tens of millions of silver taels just for the sake of a small, far-off Zhuozhou, whose danger did not threaten Song Mo.
Qiao Xi, Liao Xuewang and the others looked at each other. If the imperial court did not take action, the people's livelihood and economy in Zhuozhou would really be ruined.
"What about Mr. Zhao Minglou?" Liao Xuewang asked hesitantly.
Now Zhao Minglou is the chief officer of Zhuozhou. Zhuozhou's economy has been destroyed by Pingzhou, and he cannot escape blame.
"Now that public resentment is boiling, someone has to take responsibility." Xie Zhan said coldly. It was the Zhao family who had to plunge into it in the first place.
"Let's not worry about this. What do you think Pingzhou will do next?" Xie Zhan asked Liao Xuewang and others.
Qiao Xi, Liao Xuewang and the other two looked at each other. The commander-in-chief was too calm. Once he found that things were impossible to do, he would never fight to the end.
Xie Zhan ignored the quarrel between them, and Zhuozhou was doomed. When Pingzhou successfully set up this trap against Zhuozhou, Zhuozhou was doomed.
Along the way, he and Lu Songli fought against each other, and both won and lost.
He lost this round, so he focused on the next one and tried to snipe the opponent from the front.
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