parentshiftbook Chapter 459: There Has Been A Serious Shortage Of Salt In All Dynasties In The Past [Please Subscrib
Chapter 459: There Has Been A Serious Shortage Of Salt In All Dynasties In The Past [Please Subscrib
"Okay, later you can send us the new weights and measures, and we can try them out."
"If there is no problem, use your new set of weights and measures to check and verify the number of acres of land in the world, and by the way, promote it to the whole world!!!"
After Zhu Yuanzhang thought for a while, he agreed.
For him, the re-determination of weights and measures mentioned by Yan Changqing was actually not a big deal.
At least not as important as the emergence of peanut oil and the reduction of big fights in and small fights around the world.
However, since it was Yan Changqing who took the initiative to redefine weights and measures, and the existing conversion between baht, liang, catty, jun, and stone for "weighing" was indeed very troublesome, so Zhu Yuanzhang directly agreed.
Yan Changqing, who received Zhu Yuanzhang's agreed answer, also nodded slightly.
So the redetermination of weights and measures, a matter that involved all aspects of the world, was passed simply.
As for the opinions of the civil and military officials in the court on the re-determination of weights and measures?!!
Sorry, when Zhu Yuanzhang made a decision, there was never any room for questioning by civil and military officials.
There is only room for a group of civil and military officials to supplement and improve the things decided by Zhu Yuanzhang.
This is Zhu Yuanzhang’s tyranny!!!
On the podium, Yan Changqing leaned sideways on the blank space on the blackboard behind him and wrote a big word salt. He turned his head and looked at Zhu Yuanzhang, as well as Prince Zhu Biao, Zhu Di, and Zhu Fan.
Zhu Di and other princes said:
"After talking about oil, let's talk about salt!!!"
This simple sentence immediately made Zhu Yuanzhang, as well as the princes Zhu Biao, Zhu Di, Zhu Fan, Zhu Di and other 060 princes look excited.
Prince Zhu Biao couldn't help but asked first:
"Mr. Yan, has a way to make salt?!"
"I mean, Mr. Yan has a way to make more salt?!!"
The eyes of Zhu Yuanzhang, as well as Zhu Di, Zhu Fan, Zhu Di and other princes were all focused on Yan Changqing.
Salt, like oil, is a rigid requirement for people's daily life!!!
Even more important than oil, salt is much more important!!!
This can be seen from the fact that salt has always been monopolized by the imperial court, while oil is allowed to be freely produced and sold by private merchants and people.
Before Ming Dynasty's commercial tax reform, Ming Dynasty's annual fiscal revenue mainly consisted of three parts.
The first part is the tax on land and acres of land in the world. This part of the tax revenue accounts for almost half of the entire year's revenue!!!
The second part is the government's income from selling salt. This part of the sales income accounts for almost half of the remaining half of the annual income!!!
Even if it develops to its peak in the later stage, the income from salt alone can account for an entire year's income of the original imperial court!!!
The third part is the annual income added up from all kinds of other messy taxes.
This shows the huge profits from selling salt!!!
However, behind the huge profits from selling salt, it actually reflects the serious shortage of salt for the people of the Ming Dynasty!!!
The reason why salt is in serious short supply is, in the final analysis, the simplest point is that the technology for producing salt is backward!!!
The salt produced during the Hongwu period of the early Ming Dynasty mainly came from salt produced by kitchen households.
The main way these kitchen households produced salt was that the imperial court issued salt-frying pan iron and other materials, and then they were responsible for boiling it into salt.
A jiao plate of iron can be fried into about 600 kilograms of salt in one day and night.
In the early Ming Dynasty, the amount of pan iron was set at 2,715 cents. In other words, when the materials were sufficient.
The maximum amount of salt that can be fried in one day and night is only 1,629,000 kilograms.
And during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, how much was needed per year?!!
According to Volume 32 of "Ming Huidian", the total annual quota of salt lessons for all Yunsi Zao households in the Ming Dynasty is 1,149,868 dayin (four hundred kilograms is one yin), that is, Two hundred and ninety-nine thousand seven hundred and thirty-six xiaoyin (two hundred kilograms is a xiaoyin).
In other words, those kitchen households need to fry a total of 459,947,200 kilograms of salt a year!!!
459,947,200 kilograms of salt, divided by 1,629,000 kilograms, equals approximately 282!!!
In other words, if we want to meet the demand for frying 459,947,200 kilograms of salt.
So these kitchen households need to spend at least 282 days in ten years on these fried salts.
In the remaining dozens of days, the reason why there was no frying of salt was because there was not enough salt and sand brine for frying the salt, so we did not continue to fry the salt.
Because the salt and sand brine for fried salt comes from two aspects, one is scraping the soil and drenching the brine, and the other is the plant ash drenching the brine.
Among them, scraping the soil and soaking it with brine means that a layer of salt frost forms on the beach near the beach when the weather is sunny. It is scraped off with shovels and other equipment and gathered into piles.
Then pour water on the top of the pile, and the water and the salt of the salty soil will merge into brine and pour out from the bottom of the pile, which will be stored for frying salt.
The plant ash brine is to store the fried and salted plant ash in a pit and soak it in sea water in the eleventh month of the lunar calendar.
In the spring of the following year, when the weather is sunny and warm, the ashes are taken out to dry in the pavilion until white light appears, and then they are put away and soaked in brine.
Whether it is scraping soil (bhdb) to drizzle brine, or plant ash to drench brine, all need to pay attention to the right time and location, so it is destined that it is difficult to ensure an adequate supply of salt and sand brine raw materials for frying salt.
This also leads to the fact that the amount of salt cooked by those kitchen households is far from enough!
Although 459,947,200 kilograms of salt sounds like a lot, if we exclude the Ming Dynasty's population of 60 million, the average amount of salt that one person can receive in a year is about 7.6 About kilograms.
One pound is equal to 500 grams, and six pounds of Tiandian is equal to 3,800 grams.
Thirty-eight hundred grams divided by 365 days a year equals approximately 10.4 grams.
If we look at the daily salt intake of about five grams per person, then 10.4 grams of salt per person per day seems to be more than enough.
However, the above are only theoretical values of salt that can be distributed per person on average.
In reality, it includes members of the royal family, civil and military officials, noble marquises, local officials, subordinates, gentry, wealthy households, landlords and other groups of people.
They have three meals a day, and each meal may have as few as six to eight dishes, as many as a dozen dishes, or even thousands of dishes.
And cooking these dishes definitely requires salt for seasoning. It may require tens of grams of salt at least, hundreds of grams of salt at most, or even hundreds of grams of salt!!!
In other words, one of them took up the salt share of dozens or hundreds of common people!!!
The total number of members of the royal family, civil and military officials, noble marquises, local officials and subordinates, gentry, wealthy households, and landlords can be said to be in the millions!!!
At the same time, there are various servants and attendants who are attached to them. The cook must not be so stingy that he does not even add salt to the food cooked for them.
The greater the number of servants and attendants, the greater the number of dishes and the more salt needed for seasoning, which in turn accounts for more of the people's salt share.
In addition, there are merchants and restaurants who cook and cook every day, as well as those in the pickling industry such as salted fish, etc., which are also large consumers of salt.
After excluding members of the royal family, civil and military officials, noble marquises, local officials and subordinates, gentry, wealthy households, landlords and other groups of people, as well as the catering industry such as restaurants and pickling industries, the share of salt after.
The remaining tens of millions of Ming people, the amount of salt they were finally able to purchase.
On average, one person can eat one gram of salt a day, which is considered good.
But in reality, they may not even be able to eat one gram of salt a day. It is more likely that they will only be able to eat ten grams of salt in a few days!!!
However, can a gram of salt a day, or even a gram of salt for several days, meet the normal needs of the human body?!!
Absolutely not possible!!!
In addition, the number of common people will increase!
The greater the population, the greater the Ming people's demand for salt!!
The greater the demand for salt among the people of Ming Dynasty, the shortage of salt supply will become even worse!!!
Of course, it was not just the people of the Ming Dynasty who were in short supply of salt. In fact, there was a huge gap in salt in all previous dynasties.
So if Yan Changqing can find a way to produce more salt, then this will be a much more profitable industry than peanut oil!!!
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