Xu Zixian pointed to the beach under his feet and smiled at Wei Yi and said, "This is the salt field, well, our salt field."

Wei Yi no longer had any trouble in this regard. Near the end of the month, his rest day was two days, and with the simplicity of government affairs, to be precise, there was no government affairs in a hurry to handle. Penghu was only a few dozen miles away from the Dongfan side. Wei Yi asked for a small whistle boat, with a single-fa sail, floating across the sea. In less than two hours, he arrived at the Dongfan from the Penghu County Government.

Wei Yi immediately knew that Xu Zixian was on patrol. After he caught up with the patrol team, Lin Shaozong brought him to Xu Zixian.

There is a barren area in front of me, but there are rows of houses on the beach and on the shore, as well as large stoves, and dry firewood piled up in mountains.

Wei Yi shook his head vigorously and held back his smile, "Last month, Mingda, you wrote me a letter. Didn't you say you wanted to sanitize the sea and dry salt? I read your letter and laughed for half an hour before stopping. Later, I remembered that you did everything, and I regretted it again. I laughed for half an hour. Then I asked the servant to grind the ink, wrote a letter to Brother Zhang, and then laughed wildly while writing. This matter is so coquettish. Now show me this salt farm for salt cooking, your joke is too big."

When Wei Yi spoke, Xu Zixian laughed constantly and looked overjoyed.

Chen Zuocai, Lin Shaozong and others all smiled.

The authority of Nan'an Hou is gradually increasing, not only has a lofty prestige on the island, but also has increasingly high prestige.

Except for a few people, most of them call Xu Zixian the Lord and Marquis, and fewer and fewer people can call him the word "大天".

Even Chen Duzhong, although he cooperated very well in all matters before his transfer, as his authority was cut off, all his power disappeared. Originally, Xu Zixian called him Jiu Shu, and Chen Duzhong called Xu Zixian's name, but now he met, just called him "June and Marquis".

The higher the people go, the fewer friends there are. This is helpless.

The friends of young people are different. Xu Zixian and Wei Yi and Xu Xingwei's friends came from a twelve or thirteen-year-old boy. At that time, there was no impurity for friendship. Even if they were from the royal family or the nobles and gentry family, they still had less concerns with each other, just pure friendship.

Xu Zixian had a younger sister and Xiu Niang as his companion. The inner house was a place for him to rest and relax, but outside, there were no more than a palm that could make him feel pure friendship.

"Did you see that beach?" Xu Zixian pointed to the large beach surrounded by bricks and stones and said, "That is a brine pool, a water diversion pool, and a crystal-making pool. We keep bringing sea water in, pointing brine, then drying, dipping water, stirring, drying, and finally salt. You are here just in time, and you can almost produce salt in the past two days."

Wei Yi followed Xu Zixian's finger and found that several miles by the sea were surrounded by brick and stone structures.

The salt pond has high and low levels, and there are obvious white marks in the low places. According to Xu Zixian's introduction, there is the semi-crystalized sea water.

"What is important is the sun's refraction, wind, water, and constant stirring. It is actually very simple, but no one thought of it before." Xu Zixian had a look of pride on his face. At this time, there must be no salt drying method. The salt drying method was used on a small scale in the late Southern Song Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, and was promoted until the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

However, the salt drying method has limitations, and it was only slightly promoted during the Wanli period. The court and government did not intend to promote it later, and the same was true for the Qing Dynasty afterwards.

In modern times, using salt drying at the beach has become the mainstream salt extraction method, which is really a pity.

The difference between the salt decoction method and the salt drying method is too far.

According to the types, in the Ming Dynasty, there were six types of salt, including sea salt, well salt, pond salt, nitr salt, river salt, and rock salt, among which sea salt yield was the highest among all salts. In the Ming Dynasty, there were mainly sea salt production areas such as Changlu, Shandong, Liangzhe, Lianghuai, Fujian, and Guangdong. The production methods of sea salt in the Ming Dynasty were two types: salt decoction and salt drying.

Xu Zi first considered this matter, and finally felt that it was to use a large pot of hundreds of kilograms to cook salt and fry salt. The government easily controlled the official salt and eliminated private salt. If the salt drying method was popularized, the people on the beach could get salt at will. How could the government control the output and marketing?

"Cooking salt and frying salt is the following methods. You can get 30 kilograms of each dip every day and night," Xu Zixian continued: "Salt and iron are sold specially. Later, the iron is released, but the salt has not been released. I have examined the method of drying salt. It was a small-scale implementation before, but later they have given up one after another. The court knew that this method of saving manpower, iron materials and firewood could be used, but it refused to promote it. Yanke, what do you think?"

Wei Yi smiled and said, "Iron plate weighs more than 10,000 kilograms, and the iron pot weighs more than 100 kilograms. The court has strict orders. Any iron farm, mine, private cast iron plate, and iron pots are skewed. Under this strict order, who dares to act arbitrarily? In recent decades, private salt has been rampant, and the main reason is that the imperial authority of the court has gradually lost, and the people have paid tribute to miscellaneous taxes to squeeze out the minor people, so that the people are living in dire straits. The people can't survive anymore, so naturally they would rather take risks with their heads. Even twenty years ago, the salt law was quite successful. The court's annual income of more than 100 million yuan was at least 10 million yuan per year in the salt law, even if private salt is rampant now."

"That was caused by the court's increase of the price of salt." Xu Zixian said: "During the reign of Emperor Wenzong, the price of salt was still between one pound and four to six pounds, and during the reign of Emperor Chengzong, it rose to more than ten pounds. Now fine salt has reached forty pounds per pound, and black salt cakes are worth twenty pounds per pound. The cost of private salt is three or four pounds per pound, because iron tools have to be purchased at a higher price and have to be hidden. Even so, selling private salt for twenty pounds per pound is a huge profit. The court has to cut at least a few hundred salt dealers' heads a year, but it still has to be repeatedly

If you can't stop, why? The profit is too much, so it cannot be banned. Now that the salt price is high, most people cannot afford fine salt. Most of them use black salt, with gravel in it, which is too coarse and poor. Even so, just put a little into the pot. When I was on Fujian Road, those women from extremely poor families had thick calves as thick as their waists. Just pressing it was a pit. What's the reason? It's the lack of salt? The black salt cannot be used as salt at all, let alone not dare to put enough."

Wei Yi nodded silently and said, "Fortunately, the Penghu people are not short of salt. Just grab a few sea fish and cook them and then make up for the salt."

"But not everyone has such an opportunity." Xu Zixian said: "Everyone thinks that Fujian Road is near the sea, so there is enough salt? That's a joke. I asked someone to fry salt here and compare it with the salt pond to know the advantages and disadvantages. In order to make money, the imperial court did not need to dry salt for more than 200 years, which is a sin!"

Xu Zixian was a little angry, no, he was actually very angry.

There are many ways to fry salt and cook salt, but the yield is not high.

A family keeps going day and night, and only produces dozens of kilograms of salt a day.

How much firewood and firewood will be wasted, polluting the environment and atmosphere, and a large amount of pig iron is needed to support the salt-frying utensils.

Manpower, material resources and financial resources are extremely expensive and the production is very small. This approach is not because there is no better way, but to meet the needs of the rulers.

Since humans began to help each other, tall and strong possessed the right to speak, and it was relatively fair at that time because tall and powerful men gained more prey, and they could become chiefs and gain control over the tribe.

People distribute prey and fruits, and the chiefs get the best portion.

People traded, hunting tribes took out their prey and exchanged fruits with tribes that were good at picking. Tribes on the beach used fish to exchange meat, and those with meat could be used for food.

This is also fair.

Later, people discovered that shellfish could be collected as an equivalent cargo, and shellfish could be used to promote a larger range and more types of material transactions.

Then the chiefs will not abdicate after they are old and weak. They use currency to bribe the strong warriors, asking them to protect themselves, and at the same time pass on the chief's position to their descendants from generation to generation.

Then these people were called nobles. They passed their rights to their descendants and enjoyed them for life. They cooperated with the tribe's wizards to fabricate many myths to maintain this unreasonable system. Then they were given many good names, including Gong, Hou, Bo, and Wang, and eventually became emperors.

This is very unfair and unreasonable. There are peaceful and prosperous times under generations of dynasties, and it seems that everyone is living a good life, but the interests of the chiefs are always put first.

When the people cannot curb the greed of the upper class, it is simply unrealistic to expect the chiefs to transfer power and interests themselves.

In the current situation, for the senior officials of the Wei Dynasty, salt profit is the first priority, and the rest are false things. No matter how people's hearts or the interests of the people are, they can't match the profit of tens of millions of yuan a year.

Even if private salt is rampant now, hundreds or thousands of private salt dealers are executed a year, the court's income is still more than tens of millions of dollars.

As for whether the people are swollen and whether children have grown into big necks due to lack of salt, who will really care about these things? Who will really care about them?

Anger is useless. In fact, Xu Zixian had not paid much attention to these things before.

He was born in the Marquis' Mansion. Although the Marquis' Mansion in Nan'an was a famous desolate marquis, Xu Zixian had never lacked food and clothing since he was a child. He ate very well, and he had fish and meat for every meal. He also had brocade robes to wear. In fact, there were always a few robes and clothes to wear throughout the year.

No matter how poor the Nan'an Marquis Mansion is, its living standards are still far above ordinary people, let alone those extremely poor families.

Before, Xu Zixian would not consider himself from the perspective of the people, which is simply impossible.

Now Xu Zixian can. In addition to being angry, he also has a solution to the problem. The large salt pond in front of him is a clear proof.

It is not without capital to build salt fields in the sea. The salt fields in front of me have invested thousands of chunks, but they are only one of many salt fields. In the future, they may have to invest more than ten or twenty or even more.

"My salt husband, on average, can produce several hundred kilograms of salt a day, one is several hundred kilograms, ten thousand kilograms, hundreds of thousands kilograms, and hundreds of thousands of kilograms. I have a big enough beach, enough brine, and enough crystal pools. If hundreds of thousands of kilograms a day and million kilograms, how much is this?" Xu Zixian smiled and said to Wei Yi: "But I can't do it too much. The market for the Wei private salt is about four or five million kilograms, and at most no more than six million. I lower the price, use the best quality of official salt, and the price of selling private salt, private salt will be swept away without a land and lose profit space, which is harmless to the court. But if I sell tens of millions of salt a year, the one who grabs the official will be the official

The salt market, no, in fact, official salt will be greatly affected, but the impact cannot be too great, and it cannot exceed 2 million guan. So I will sell it to places like Jinghu, Yunnan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian. There are the most private salt here, and official salt is not sold very much. Those who buy official salt are nobles, officials, gentry, and merchants. They are not worth saving the few dozen cents of salt. An adult man, six grams of salt a day is enough, and a pound of salt is enough for one hundred people to eat for a day. I will sell salt a hundred cents a pound, which has no effect on these people. What I want to help and make money are the poorest people. They originally would not buy official salt salt. Well, that's it."

Wei Yi didn't say much. He just showed a gentle smile on his face and said to Xu Zixian: "I am anxious about the people's needs and think about what the people think. Mingda, you are such a person, so there is no need to say much."

"Well, I feel much more relaxed." Xu Zixian smiled and said, "I was too nervous before. Changes are always more than planned. We have to do the most things in the shortest time, which is really a bit stretched. If Yantian is done, it will really...it will really relieve me of too much pressure."
Chapter completed!