By the time the group of people on horseback arrived at the dining hall, it was already dark.

The group found an inn in the town to spend the night, and set out for Miaofeng Mountain before dawn the next day.

The anthracite from Miaofeng Mountain is of the best quality, and Guanglu Temple purchases a lot of it every year. Some of it is used for court banquets, and some of it is given as "charcoal tribute" to the ministers and officials.

Several bosses of the Miaofengshan coal mine all live in the town, and Ambassador Hou had completed the tasks he wanted to complete last night... In fact, if it weren't for the need to accompany Zhao Hao, he would have directly called the bosses to Beijing to complete the task, and he could have also had a good time drinking and partying.

Along the mountain road, we often saw foremen holding whips, driving teams of hunched-backed porters down the mountain. The shoulder poles on the porters' shoulders were bent into crescents, and the weight of the coal in the baskets was probably at least 100 to 200 kilograms...

"Is this how coal is transported down the mountain?" Zhao Hao asked in surprise the Miaofengshan coal boss who accompanied him.

"In other flatter places, we can use wheelbarrows." The coal boss surnamed Niu hurriedly replied with a smile: "We can't do anything about it. The road on Miaofeng Mountain is too steep... But they can earn more by carrying goods this way, so they prefer it."

Zhao Hao nodded without comment, and then asked Boss Niu about the situation of the entire Xishan coal mine.

"There are probably about four or five hundred coal mines in the entire West Mountain. It's hard to tell the exact number," said Boss Niu. "Because coal mines are prone to water seepage, once water seeps in, it quickly fills up and we have to abandon it and dig a new one. So they are often abandoned and opened, and no one has an accurate number."

"How many of these coal kilns are official kilns and how many are private kilns?" Zhao Hao asked again.

"More than 80% are private kilns, and official kilns and coal kilns in the palace account for only more than 10%. Moreover, they are all entrusted to us for operation. As long as the coal is delivered to Beijing on time and in quantity, we don't care about the rest..." Boss Niu wanted to say that this is the relationship between Guanglu Temple and us, but he didn't know how Ambassador Hou talked to the young man, so he stopped talking.

"Is the tax heavy?" Zhao Hao asked again.

"Heavy, of course it's heavy?" Boss Niu said with a bitter face.

"Isn't the tax one in thirty?" Zhao Hao thought to himself. This guy really is not satisfied.

"It's true that the tax rate is 30% to 1%." Boss Niu immediately complained, "But in addition to the mining tax, the county also has various levies. If we can't get them to do anything, they will say that we are taking in refugees and directly close the mine..."

Zhao Hao sneered secretly, thinking, "Are you feeling suffocated?" When Emperor Wanli releases his mining supervisor and tax collector in thirty years, you will know what cruelty is.

By then, you will definitely miss the Emperor Longqing who had light taxes and levies and did not cause trouble...

~~

After walking along the steep mountain road for more than an hour, Zhao Hao and his party arrived at the mining area in the valley in the morning.

From a distance, one can see 20 to 30 small mines on the hillside like a hornet's nest, with hundreds of black miners going in and out, carrying baskets of coal like ants moving house. After the accountant checks and weighs the coal, the coal carriers waiting outside use shoulder poles to carry the coal baskets down the hillside. When a team is formed, a foreman will supervise them to carry the coal to the Yongding River at the foot of the mountain.

After just a tour of the mine, Zhao Hao came up with a dozen ways to improve production efficiency.

However, he had already made up his mind that he would just observe and ask without saying anything today, and naturally he would not tell the coal boss named Niu.

"Are these all your coal mines?" Zhao Hao asked casually while standing outside a dark coal mine.

"If I had so many kilns, wouldn't I be the richest man in Mentougou?" The coal boss couldn't help but laugh: "There are six kilns in total, and only five belong to me."

"I think you are almost as rich as the richest man." Ambassador Hou joked.

As the two were joking, Zhao Hao suddenly remembered his reputation as the richest man in Caijia Lane. He awkwardly changed the subject and asked the coal boss how he found this coal-rich valley among the mountains.

At that time, there was no concept of surveying and geological exploration, but the kiln owners had their own set of techniques for finding coal on the spot, similar to the "Starry Night".

Although they would not reveal the secret of eating to Zhao Hao, for Ambassador Hou's sake, they still showed him the tools used for prospecting, such as the measuring tape, compass, pole, bucket and shovel, as well as their hand-drawn terrain map.

On that topographic map, Zhao Hao even saw contour lines, a mapping method that was not adopted by the West until 150 years later.

On the contrary, there is nothing surprising about the coal mines themselves. The coal mines here are very shallow, with the deepest being only twenty or thirty feet deep, and most of them are abandoned after being dug to about ten feet from the ground.

This is because, firstly, due to the limitation of the level of tools, it is not cost-effective to dig deeper. Secondly, the Xishan area happens to be where Beijing's groundwater is rich. Often, if you dig ten feet down, water will seep out. If the water is not drained in time, the well will soon become unusable.

In addition, the coal resources in this area are so abundant that the kiln owners are too lazy to spend money to drain the water. They might as well find another coal mine...

And because the mines were not deep, most of them were well ventilated. In a few deeper mines, hollow bamboos were sufficient for ventilation, and no ventilation machinery such as windmills, wind cabinets, and fans were used, which made Zhao Hao a little disappointed.

However, through conversations with several coal bosses, he found that they were also very dissatisfied with the current, skimming mining method. After all, no matter how rich the coal mines in Xishan are, you can't just dig a shovel and get coal. Abandoning the coal pits casually is a huge waste for them.

Therefore, if there are tools that can automatically drain and transport water, they are very willing to use them.

~~

After visiting the small coal mine, Zhao Hao's attention was attracted by a high-walled courtyard covered with thorns.

"This is the pot house built by the six of us together. It's where the workers eat and sleep." Boss Niu explained hurriedly.

"Let's go in and take a look." Zhao Hao said.

"Sir, let's not go. It's smelly, dirty and crowded inside..." Boss Niu looked embarrassed.

However, Zhao Hao walked straight towards the small door.

"Ah..." Boss Niu glanced at Ambassador Hou and couldn't help but whispered, "Why does this young man that the lord brought here have such strange hobbies?"

"How should I know?" Ambassador Hou was almost exhausted. He even regretted following Zhao Hao into the mountains.

Boss Niu had no choice but to ask someone to open the heavy iron gate.

I saw more than a hundred black and extremely dirty miners squatting in the yard. Each of them held a coarse porcelain bowl with a few oil spots floating in the bowl of cabbage stalk soup. The miners held two or three equally black steamed breads in their black hands and devoured them.

When the miners heard the door open, they raised their eyelids, but when they saw it was not their foreman, they ignored it. Instead, the head of the team that was in charge of the pot came over to greet Mr. Niu, one of the bosses.

By asking the team leader, Zhao Hao learned that there were more than 800 miners in the mine, including those working in and outside the mine. The supply capacity of the team was limited, so they had to take turns to come back for meals.

In fact, even if the supply could be met, the coal bosses would only let the miners have one hot meal a day in order to save time, and then give each person three steamed breads to carry with them into the mine. When they were hungry while working, they would eat a few bites of the steamed bread, and when they were thirsty, they would drink the accumulated water in the mine directly.

Zhao Shizhen asked what to do if someone got sick. The dozens of people lying on the big bunk bed in the room were all injured and sick due to various reasons. The cooks in the kitchen were also doctors. If anyone got sick, they would just give them some herbs. If they got cured, it was luck. If they didn't, it was normal. And although seeing a doctor was free, the medicine was much more expensive than in town...

Later, these words were not heard from the team leader. Instead, Zhao Hao asked Gao Wu to take out a bag of copper coins that he had exchanged in the town and directly distributed them to the workers present. Those indifferent miners finally responded, they could smile, say thanks, and speak eloquently.

After chatting with them, Zhao Hao learned that these miners had to work in the mine until the beginning of summer next year before they could be paid and go home. Before that, they had to eat and live in the mine, and even during the Chinese New Year, they only had one day off, but were not allowed to leave the mine. The coal bosses were very self-aware and knew that with their abuse of the miners, most of them would never come back once they were released.

But the coal boss also told Zhao Hao that turning the Guohuo into a prison was not their intention but a requirement of the imperial court.

Because Xishan was too close to the capital, and the coal mines recruited a large number of refugees, the court was naturally very wary of the gathering of refugees, fearing that riots would endanger the capital.

But the people inside and outside the capital could not bear this hardship, and the coal mines were reluctant to give up these cheap laborers, so the two sides reached a compromise, the coal bosses restricted the freedom of the miners, and if the miners caused trouble, the coal bosses would be jointly liable.

In order to avoid an uncontrollable number of people, the coal bosses could only take the initiative to reduce the number of workers they recruited, so the scale of production was greatly restricted. I heard several coal bosses bragging that if the court did not restrict refugees, they could expand the scale of production tenfold and let the whole of Zhili burn coal from the Western Hills.

Although I don't know how true their words are, combined with what Wu Kangyuan said at the beginning, it seems that the court does have a negative attitude towards refugees.

However, the tigers in the east mountain eat people, and the tigers in the west mountain will not be vegetarians either. These coal bosses will not be more merciful than the British capitalists in the 17th century.

When leaving here, Zhao Hao suddenly realized that he was actually a member of the capitalists...

ps. The third update is here, please give me monthly votes and recommendation votes~~~~