After Ambassador Hou recovered, everyone left the dock.
Zhao Hao looked around and saw that he was already deep in the mountains. The surrounding mountains were high and the valleys were narrow, with gullies crisscrossing. A castle was hanging high on the top of the mountain, and it seemed that one man could block the way for ten thousand men.
Ambassador Hou looked pale, but he still played the role of a tour guide and said, "This place is connected to the capital in the east and the desert in the west. It is the last line of defense west of the capital. However, there is a riverside city not far ahead. If there is no beacon fire over there, there will be no trouble here."
Zhao Hao nodded. He could already see the houses like scales at the foot of the village.
Because of coal, this place has become a bustling market town.
When they arrived in the town, they saw that there were no coal stacks as they had imagined, but there were more brothels than they had imagined, and the sanitary conditions were particularly poor... uh, I'm talking about the streets.
"This is where the coal mine owners and accountants live. We also come here to discuss business with them." Ambassador Hou covered his nose and introduced: "The coal miners all live in the mine. They are watched by the big and small foreman, and they can't go down the mountain all year round."
Zhao Hao nodded. He could get a lot of useful information in such a place.
Anyway, they had to wait for the horsemen to join them, so he took Ambassador Hou for a walk on the street.
Zhao Hao first went to a coal shop to inquire about the price of coal.
From the broker, he learned that 100 jin of coal only sold for 80 wen, while the price of anthracite was nearly twice as high, about 150 wen per 100 jin. Of course, this was the price of coal in the dining hall, and the freight to Beijing would cost another 20 to 30 wen.
"How much are firewood and charcoal?" Zhao Hao began to calculate the interest rate difference here. You know, except for the capital and Shanxi, most people in the country still burn firewood, especially in the Jiangnan region. Many people don't know what coal is.
"I don't know about this place. In Beijing, firewood costs about 150 wen per hundred catties, and charcoal costs 400 to 500 wen per hundred catties." Ambassador Hou is indeed a professional and answered like he knew everything.
"It's not that different..." Zhao Hao muttered, thinking that if the production and sales volume could not be increased, there would be no profit.
It's simply because he made money too easily that he became inflated.
The coal business has almost no costs except for labor and freight, and its sales volume is stable and has a long history.
If anyone can open a small coal mine and earn two or three thousand taels a year steadily, he would have to be a big landlord.
"Beijing has a population of over one million, and the nearby hills have long been chopped bare, so they have to switch to coal." Ambassador Hou quickly added: "Rich families still burn charcoal. After all, no matter how good anthracite is, it can't compare to charcoal."
"Yes. If the ducks at Bianyifang were roasted over coal, I guess we wouldn't be able to sell a single one." Seeing that his uncle looked a little serious, Zhao Shizhen made a joke, which really made everyone laugh.
The current positioning of coal is still as a substitute for firewood and charcoal.
Except for Zhao Hao, no one knows that this extremely cheap fossil energy contains the power to change the world!
~~
Apart from brothels, the most common business in the town is human labor brokerage.
Coal mining is a labor-intensive industry, especially in this era. Wu Kangyuan told Zhao Hao that at least 20,000 to 30,000 refugees were digging and transporting coal. Zhao Hao thought it was a bit exaggerated at the time, but when he saw the situation on the street with his own eyes, he completely believed it.
The streets were full of ragged, skinny refugees who had come looking for work because of the fame.
There was also a human trafficker who was shouting and driving these refugees into the store like cattle.
Zhao Hao also mixed in the crowd and entered a dental clinic, where he asked the refugees where they came from. It turned out that they were from Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, and Liaodong.
Not all of these refugees fled to Beijing to escape the Tartars.
In fact, since the middle of the Jiajing period, the Eurasian continent has shown signs of entering a long Little Ice Age. Abnormal climates such as severe cold and floods, extreme cold and extreme heat have appeared one after another, and crops in various places have failed or even failed, forcing farmers to abandon their farmland and flee.
In fact, the reason why the Tartar invaded so frequently was largely due to the massive death of livestock in extreme weather conditions...
All of this was just the beginning of a small glacier that lasted for more than a hundred years. It wasn't even an appetizer...
Of course, climate cooling is not completely useless, because at this time, humans will experience two beneficial advances: one is a great burst of ideas; the other is the improvement of technology...
And from a cold, purely capital perspective, the large number of refugees caused by climate change are exactly what industrial production needs, and they are a large number of laborers leaving the land.
~~
While Zhao Hao was daydreaming, he heard a clang and someone struck a gong.
It turned out that the store was full of people, so a broker struck a gong to quiet everyone down, then shouted loudly:
"Hu's Third Kiln is hiring 30 miners and 30 porters. Food and lodging are provided, and the wages are generous."
"Excuse me, how much is it per day?"
"The kiln doesn't charge by the day, but by the load. A load delivered from the mine is ten cents, and it costs twenty cents to carry it down the mountain from the kiln." The agent answered loudly.
"The Hu family is so generous? Last year, I only gave half the money to another family." A tall and thin man sighed.
"Yes, such a boss is rare. I heard that the Hu family's cooking team is well fed every meal and even has meat every now and then." Another horse-faced man agreed.
When the other refugees heard this, their eyes lit up.
“It’s obvious that these guys are veterans and know their stuff.” The agent nodded with a smile.
"How long can it last?" asked the tall and thin man.
"The work will end in May next year. If you are willing to work, please sign your fingerprints now. Otherwise, you will miss it forever." After the agent said this, he waved his hand and asked his human traffickers to take out a stack of written contracts.
"That's good. I don't have to worry for half a year. I, Liu Laoliu, have to sign it quickly." The tall and thin man immediately squeezed to the front, reported his name, and then pressed his fingerprint on a contract.
"Count me in!" The horse-faced man also pressed his handprint.
When the others saw someone taking the lead, they no longer hesitated and rushed to sign up and put their fingerprints on the form.
Zhao Hao moved closer and saw that the contract was full of harsh conditions, even including a ridiculous clause like 'If you suffer work-related injuries or death, you will be responsible for it yourself'... But he estimated that no one in the room could understand it.
He couldn't stand it anymore and quit the business.
Ambassador Hou whispered to him, "That tall guy and the horse-faced guy are hired by the pawnbroker."
Zhao Hao nodded, and then he continued: "It would be good enough if these people could get half of the promised wages."
After the broker collected the stack of contracts, the foreman sent by Hujia Kiln would lead them to the mine.
Zhao Hao looked at the workers who were being driven along the mountain road like animals by the foreman, and felt uncomfortable. These refugees who had never seen the world were so easy to deceive.
This is completely different from the "cunning" folks from Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
When he turned around, he saw the tall man with the horse face again, and he went into another dental clinic...
ps. The second guaranteed update is here, please give me monthly votes and recommendation tickets~~~