Chapter 613: Private Visit on Secret Service (Part 2)

The carriage stopped in Xiling Lane close to Xicheng City, and Li Qing'an entered Rehaiju. Soon, a middle-aged Hu man brought two young Hu Ji out of the back door on the other side of Rehaiju. The middle-aged Hu Ji was naturally dressed up by Li Qing. There were several Hu Ji in Rehaiju who were very skilled makeup artists. They put beards on Li Qing'an, their eyebrows were thick, and their eyes had a green color, and even their skin color changed. No one knew him anymore.

Mingzhu also put on makeup and became a beard, and she changed a lot. Her hair turned chestnut color, her eyelashes became longer, and her nose was slightly raised. She kept taking out the small bronze mirror to look at her face, frowned and laughed secretly, and she turned into another person.

Another Hu Ji was also a Han Chinese. Her name was Li Rong. She was affiliated with the Anxi Army Nei Guard Intelligence Hall. She was very skilled in martial arts and was the leader of the 27 female bodyguards in the Zhao Palace. Today she pretended to be Li Qing'an's mistress and was his personal bodyguard.

Not only that, eighteen bodyguards followed not far away, watching the surrounding situation vigilantly.

The house structure of Rehaiju is extremely special. Xiling Lane is a dead end. It only takes more than a hundred steps to pass through Rehaiju from the front door to the back door. However, if you come out of the alley and go around the back door of Rehaiju, it will take at least half an hour to walk. It is this special house structure that can ensure that when Rehaiju encounters a crisis, the people inside can evacuate quickly, and today it can also ensure that Li Qing'an will not be tracked and discovered.

Li Qing'an took two beautiful girls and Hu Ji slowly walked in the western city. There were many Hu merchants in the western city, accounting for at least 30%. It was not surprising that Li Qing'an, a Hu merchant. However, the two concubines around him accidentally attracted people's attention.

"Delise, let's go to Mixing first!"

Li Qing'an spoke Turkic, and Li Rong's pseudonym Delis, who translated Mingzhu, "Mingzhu, the master said to go to the rice shop first."

Mingzhu smiled like a flower. She held Li Qing'an's arm intimately, with sweetness on her face, but she felt so angry that she felt annoyed. Obviously, so many Hu merchants speak Chinese, but he was a fake Hu man and even talked nonsense. Mingzhu quietly pinched Li Qing'an's arm and whispered: "My brother, can't you speak Chinese?"

Li Qingan turned around and blinked and smiled, "Little Madam, what are you talking about? I don't understand."

It was still Turkic, Mingzhu was angry. Seeing Li Qing'an's ambiguous smile, she was embarrassed to ask Li Rong, so she had to turn her head and ignore him.

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The western market mainly focuses on people's livelihood goods, including tea, rice, oil, salt, cloth, ordinary silk, cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, pens, ink, paper and ink, etc. There are hundreds of kinds, mainly wholesale, and the entry volume is very large. There are thousands of stores, and a few stores are privately purchased industries, and most of them are rented. The rent in the east and west markets alone is a large amount of income from the imperial court.

Birds of a feather flock together, and shops of certain goods will be concentrated in one place, called shops, such as rice shops, silk shops, cloth shops, oil shops, tea shops, pig iron shops, etc., and some commodities are also subdivided. Rice shops alone have four industries, including five-ripe shops, white rice shops, rice shops, and japonica rice shops, which are located in the middle of the West Market.

Since ancient times, grain has been the focus of attention of various imperial courts. Its price increase is even related to the rise and fall of a dynasty. In the middle of Kaiyuan, the most prosperous period of the Tang Dynasty, the price of rice was only ten pieces of rice. Therefore, Du Fu wrote in his poem "Remembering the Past": On the day of Kaiyuan's prosperity, there were still thousands of families in small towns. Rice flowed and corn was white, and both public and private granaries were abundant.

However, since the Tianbao Year, Guanzhong's water conservancy has gradually become deserted, disasters have occurred frequently, land annexation, and rice prices have also begun to rise step by step. When the hungry people in Hedong poured into Guanzhong, the rice prices even rose to 3,000 yuan when the rice prices were at its highest. Later, it rose and fell repeatedly, and it has never been stable.

There are more than 100 rice shops in the West City, all of which are large shops with sunrise of more than 1,000 stones. They basically monopolize the supply of grain and rice in Chang'an. Rice shops in various markets come here to wholesale. Of course, there are more than a dozen official shops in Changping Store, but they are generally not sold. Only when the grain price must be stabilized in the year of disaster, will the official shop open to sell grain at a low price.

Rice shops usually pay money to buy rice in the front and pick up goods at the back. There is also a small river behind them. Many people use boats to transport rice, and they mainly use boats to purchase goods. Therefore, from the gate, the scale of the rice shop is not very obvious, and they are all small doors and deep courtyards.

Li Qingan walked through several stores in a row, and finally he found a clean rice shop. The plaque read "Huhang Old Store". The plaque was a bit old and had a history of at least fifty years.

"Let's go and see this one!"

This time, Li Qing'an spoke it in Chinese, and Turkic language was just a cover-up. When the guard told him that no one was following him and there was no abnormal situation, he did not want to say Turkic language with his tongue rolled up.

Mingzhu was overjoyed. She finally understood and quickly smiled and said, "Okay! Let's take a look."

Li Rong walked in front. As soon as they entered the gate, a friend came to greet him enthusiastically, but when he saw clearly that he was a Hu person, his enthusiasm immediately decreased by 70% or 80%. The lazy spirit asked in a spirit of no spirit, "How many meters do you want to buy?"

"I want to take a look first!"

When the guy heard him speak fluent Chinese, he immediately became enthusiastic again, "I'll take you to see."

Seeing that he was like a chameleon, cold and hot, Li Qingan couldn't help but laugh and scolded: "If you guy, if you haven't woken up, just change someone else!"

The guy smiled bitterly and said, "The guest officials don't know that the court strictly prohibits rice from leaving the country. Once it is seized, the rice shop will suffer, so we generally do not dare to do business in Hu merchants."

"etc!"

Li Qingan interrupted him, "Isn't the Western Regions also the Tang Realm? I came from the Shi Kingdom, including the Shi Kingdom and the Nine Kingdoms of Hezhong. Now they are all the Tang Realm. I'm not illegal to sell rice!"

Li Qingan felt very strange. He only knew that he was not allowed to sell rice to An Lushan, and that he was strictly prohibited from selling rice to the country. He didn't know the rule. The man looked out the door, pointed to the north, and lowered his voice: "In fact, the court did not have this rule. It was the rule of the rice shop. It was mainly because he was afraid of selling rice to the Uighurs. Three months ago, Luoji rice shop sold thousands of stones of grain to a Hu merchant, but was seized in Juyanhai. The man was beheaded and the Luoji rice shop was fined 10,000 yuan. The property saved by decades of hard selling rice was lost overnight. The rice shop was also closed. Everyone was afraid, so they set the rules and regulations that were not allowed to sell rice to Hu merchants."

Li Qingan then suddenly realized that he had read Cui Qianyou's report about this matter. A Sogdian businessman wanted to secretly transport rice to the Uighurs, but was caught by the patrol border army. Unexpectedly, the court fined 10,000 yuan, which should have been done by Liu Yan, who also served as the Minister of Taifu Temple.

Li Qingan nodded and smiled, "Why are you enthusiastic now?"

The guy also smiled and said, "We have seen too many people. If merchants can speak fluent Chinese, they must have been in the Central Plains for a long time. I guess they were doing business in the Central Plains when buying rice, so there are also adjustments under the industry rules, except for the Tang Dynasty Hu merchants."

The so-called Tang people, Hu Shang, is a bit like today's "Chinese Americans", but on the other hand, it is called "Chinese Beauty". There are at least hundreds of thousands of Hu people in Chang'an who have been in the Tang Dynasty for a long time. Some of them envied the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty because of the war in their hometowns, and some were unwilling to go back. They stayed in the Tang Dynasty for a long time and obtained the Tang Dynasty household registration. Most of them could speak fluent Chinese.

"Okay! I'm going to buy rice to Henan. You can introduce the rice price to me first."

"Okay! Merchants please come with me."

The guy took them into the middle lobby. Li Qing'an saw the "Huhang Old Store" from outside in a deserted and deserted manner, but after entering the main hall, he realized that he was wrong. There were as many as a hundred people in the lobby, most of them were merchants who came to buy rice, and the others were shop assistants, with loud voices and quite lively.

The lobby is square, with a length of ten feet and a width of ten feet. It is surrounded by bamboo baskets with high bamboo strips inside. It is full of rice patterns. Li Qing'an took a look and found that the rice price is about 400 cents a week, which surprised him secretly.

At the beginning of the year, he read a report from the Ministry of Revenue. The rice price was eighty cents at that time. Why did the rice price rise four times in just ten months? Is it because of immigration or war?

Li Qing'an felt a little nervous. You should know that he, Li Qing'an, will definitely be scolded by the people for eight generations of ancestors. Pei Zunqing's report to him was full of Chang'an people sing praises to him. If it was really a sing praises to him, it would be possible to 40 months of Dou'an.

"The rice price is so expensive?" Li Qing'an frowned and asked the guy: "Isn't there a bumper harvest of food in Longyou this year?"

The guy smiled bitterly and said, "How big is Longyou? If Longyou harvests can solve the problem of Chang'an's grain, what else do you need to do in the grain transportation?"

It seems reasonable, but Li Qing'an knew that it was not completely right. In the past, Longyou's grain was mainly supplied to the Longyou Army and the Hexi Army, so it was basically not transferred to Chang'an. But now it is different. After Tubo was occupied by the Tang army, there were basically no soldiers in Longyou Hexi. The 20,000 Tang troops in Juyanhai were mainly supplied to the Guannei Road. Therefore, the food in Longyou Road was basically transferred to Guanzhong this year. Although Guanzhong has slightly reduced production compared to last year, the Datianzhuang that had annexed land has been wiped out. The remaining small small fields also paid rents and taxes normally. The official warehouse has sufficient grain reserves, and it is more than enough to deal with wars, and it will not affect the price of grain. If it rises to 400 people, the court should have put grain and close the warehouse, and there is no movement at all.

Li Qing'an was full of doubts. At this time, a businessman who bought rice next to him said, "It's not that the food price is high, but that the money is cheap."

Li Qingan was stunned. He seemed to understand a little. He quickly bowed and said, "Brother, why is it cheap and expensive?"

Seeing that he was quite polite, the merchant nodded and smiled, "Not only is the food expensive, but everything is actually expensive. The silk used to be 500 cents per piece, but now it has increased to three jin, and the meat used to be 80 cents per pound, but now it has increased to two hundred cents."

"That's it!" another businessman next to him said, "It turns out that drinking wine can bring you authentic Gaochang wine and four or five plates of good dishes. Now the same thing costs at least three cents of money, look!"

The merchant shook the cloth bag he carried with him and said, "These are silver dollars, two hundred silver dollars, worth two hundred guan. It used to be worth two hundred and forty guan. Now it's too much, so it's cheaper. In the past, two hundred guans have to weigh 1,200 jin, and I had to hire a ox cart to transport the money. Now it's good. It's convenient to carry it with you, but copper coins are not worth much."

"In addition to Anxi silver dollars, there are also Byzantine gold coins! I also have a lot of them."
Chapter completed!