Although the Tian family's business is so big, this is already the limit.
Although the Song Dynasty had a developed grain transport industry, in an era without Jiaozi and silver bills, if you wanted to trade bulk commodities, you had to carry so much money and things with you. One hundred thousand strings of money was equivalent to 640,000 jin, or 320 tons, and it would take at least four large grain ships to transport it.
If the value of goods on a trip could reach 300,000 guan, they would have to pay 50,000 to 60,000 guan in tolls along the way. After deducting various costs, they really didn't make much profit.
Therefore, the Song Dynasty's commerce flourished and then declined. It was entirely because the imperial court squeezed the people, small and medium-sized landlords, and merchants to death that it could collect such high tax revenue every year. Otherwise, the Southern Song Dynasty would not have been able to collect over 100 million guan of tax with half of the country, which was more than five times higher than the Ming Dynasty's annual tax of about 20 million liang.
Zhao Jun saw everything, but didn't say much. He had no way to fix these things, at least for now. If he wanted to change the Song Dynasty's distorted finances, he had to wait until Old Fan resolved the invasions of the Western Xia and Liao before he could slowly implement reforms, rather than rushing into it.
The boat docked at the shore, and a night passed quickly. The next morning, Zhao Jun and his party got off the boat. They did not enter Yingtian Prefecture, but went to the rural areas outside Yingtian Prefecture to see the condition of the fields there.
They walked for a day and visited many villages. The situation was similar to that in Bianliang. There were self-cultivating farmers, but their number was half and half with that of landlords.
That is, in a certain village, or even in several surrounding villages combined, thousands of acres of land were owned by one or two or three landlords. Then there was a certain class of rich peasants, and below them were about half of the self-cultivating farmers.
This is obviously not a good thing for agriculture.
Moreover, Zhao Jun discovered during his inspection that many landlords had a large number of tenants, long-term workers and short-term workers. After asking around, he learned that the drought in the nearby Huainan East Road had hit them two years ago, and many people had fled here since the previous two years to escape the famine.
Some wanted to go to Bianliang, some stayed in Yingtian Prefecture, but the handicraft manufacturing industry had limited capacity after all, and many people could not find jobs, so they had to work for the landlords.
There are black-hearted landlords and there are kind-hearted landlords as well. This kind of thing can be hidden from the emperor who is high above and from the officials who are in office but doing nothing, but it cannot be hidden from the common people. If you go to the farmlands and the countryside and ask people, you will find out everything clearly.
Even though many farmers dared not cause trouble and did not dare to say anything, there were still some who dared to speak. After all, they were just a few strangers they had never met before, so what could they do?
Zhao Jun didn't say anything, just recorded it.
These things were just the tip of the iceberg. He couldn't reveal his identity immediately to punish the landlords. He just wrote a letter and sent it back to Bianliang, letting Lu Yijian and others deal with it. He also had to conceal his identity and go to other places to continue investigating the grassroots situation.
For four or five days in a row, Zhao Jun strolled around the rural areas and county towns around Yingtian Prefecture. The Jingdong Road Transport Commissioner and the Yingtian Prefecture Governor had no idea that a big boss had come to their territory.
On the sixth day, Zhao Jun had almost finished his research around Yingtianfu. In the early morning, as he prepared to leave, he boarded the boat and suddenly turned to Tian Chang and asked, "Master Tian, you've been following me around so closely these days that you've even given up on business. I'm afraid it's not just to curry favor with me."
Tian Chang was stunned at first, then, as if he had made up his mind, he knelt down and said to Zhao Jun, "Please ask the court to judge for my brother Zhang. Guo Chengyou, the governor of Bozhou, has been plotting to destroy the Zhang family in order to seize their ancestral heirlooms. He even killed my brother on a trumped-up charge!"
Zhao Jun's eyes turned cold in an instant.
The updates are unstable and not ideal. It's not that I'm stuck. There's no need to write the protagonist's research process in too much detail and length. Basically, it can be done by just hacking along the line. But my health is really poor and I'm about to cough out my lungs. I always thought that Yang was over, but I didn't expect it to still exist and there are various variants. Everyone should take care of their health.
(End of this chapter)
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