Until the wheat harvest in various places was finished, Cao Fengji had not made any big move, and he did not even directly contact Concubine Tian, the prince and the princess.
Moreover, he really started doing business, selling woolen textiles shipped from the north.
Authentic northwest goods are quite popular in Jiangnan.
Shaanxi and Gansu are the centers of the woolen textile industry, and now both belong to Li Zicheng. It seems that Li Zicheng is also encouraging business development, otherwise goods from Shaanxi and Gansu cannot be easily transported to Nanjing.
There are mainly four types of wool textiles from Shaanxi and Gansu: silk, brown, felt and silk.
The one who keeps his mouth shut is like a woolen rope.
As for wool brown and wool sweaters, they are both sweaters. The former is rough in workmanship and is only worn by the lower classes; the latter can be understood as a wool coat, which is slightly more high-end.
In addition, Shanxi belongs to the silk weaving center in the north: Songjiang in the south, Lu'an in the north, and Yitianxia.
The "Lu'an" in this sentence refers specifically to the Changzhi area of Shanxi Province, where the raw materials for textile silk come from Langzhong, Sichuan.
Li Zicheng had a very hard time this year. He wanted to rule normally but could not continue to rob. The refugees in some prefectures and counties were resettled and cultivated last winter. They had enough food to eat, but they had to rely on commercial taxes to pay the officials.
Wool textiles from Shaanxi and Gansu, silk fabrics from Lu'an, and salt taxes from Shanshan Salt Ponds, Li Zicheng relied on these to maintain his rule.
Zhao Han had some bad taste and actually summoned Cao Fengji for questioning.
Cao Fengji was frightened when he saw the official, and he felt that nothing was exposed, so he was taken away. Unexpectedly, he was taken to see the emperor, and he immediately became excited. It was not only convenient for espionage activities, but also for doing business in Nanjing in the future.
In Cao Fengji's vision, it would be best to wipe out the Manchus within three to five years, so that his family would be safe. It would be helpless to die in the rebellion.
However, he can no longer be controlled, marry a wife, have children, do business in Nanjing, and live a peaceful and wealthy life.
"The common people bow to your majesty!"
Cao Fengji peeked at the emperor and knelt down to kowtow with great respect.
Zhao Han smiled and said: "Get up and give me a seat."
"Thank you, Your Majesty." Cao Fengji kowtowed again to express his gratitude.
Zhao Han asked the female officer to bring woolen textiles: "Are these your goods?"
Cao Fengji was worried again and carefully answered: "Exactly. There are many woolen cloths in the northwest, and cotton cloths in the south of the Yangtze River. The common people sell the woolen cloths to the south, and the cotton cloths to the northwest, and earn some small profits from them."
Zhao Han pointed at Mao Brown and said: "This kind of sweater is too rough and can't be put on the neck. It will be rubbed out with red marks in a quarter of an hour."
Cao Fengji said: "Your Majesty, the brown woolen clothes worn by the poor are rough, uncomfortable and heavy, but they are very warm in winter."
Zhao Han pointed at Mao Xi again and said, "This kind of sweater is acceptable."
Cao Fengji took the opportunity to say: "If Your Majesty likes it, the common people will have people select the wool materials and make a gorgeous and warm fur cloak for Your Majesty."
"I will not take advantage of merchants," Zhao Han said. "If you sell more of this woolen cloth, I plan to design a windbreaker myself and give it to civil servants and generals as a means of keeping out the cold."
What is a windbreaker?
Although Cao Fengji didn't understand what he heard, he still said excitedly: "The common people must live up to their trust!"
Zhao Han played with the woolen silk again and said, "Can the woolen rope be spun thinner? Use selected woolen materials and spin it into woolen yarn. The thinner the better."
Cao Fengji still didn't understand, so he nodded and replied: "If it can be refined, it can definitely be refined."
Zhao Han ordered: "It's so thin that it's only two or three minutes as thin as this wool rope. If you can spin such fine wool, I will let the government purchase as much as you can bring."
"I will send my men back to the north immediately!" Cao Fengji was overjoyed. He felt that he was going to make a fortune.
Zhao Han doesn't care about this. He is a craftsman. In addition to engaging in counter-intuitive schemes and following the clues to arrest other craftsmen, he can also use this person to develop the wool textile industry in the north. Let him send people to deliver the message to stimulate the development of wool textile in advance, so that the north can be unified in the future.
Now you can pick fruits, and you can win over Mongolian herders through woolen textiles.
In the Ming Dynasty, the northwest wool textile industry developed greatly, but due to the quality of wool, it was basically difficult to reach the upper class, so cashmere could still be accepted by the rich.
However, cashmere production is too low, and goats are rarely raised in the northwest and grasslands!
Zhao Han decided to vigorously guide and promote it, and the worst ones were made into felts, the better ones were made into carpets, the better ones were made into brown cloth, and the better ones were made into windbreakers and woolen yarns.
Although Zhao Han doesn’t know how to knit a sweater, he has already made the yarn. What’s the difficulty in knitting a sweater?
This is not a trivial matter and is deeply involved in politics.
As long as the wool textile industry can flourish, the northwest economy can be developed, the northwest more stable, and many grassland herdsmen can be bound together.
Zhao Han must take action himself, otherwise it will be difficult to promote windbreakers.
And if the emperor wears a trench coat and appears in public several times, it is guaranteed that dignitaries will imitate him! If the queen wears a knitted sweater, meets officials' wives several times, and personally teaches those officials' wives to knit sweaters, it will become popular in Nanjing within a year or two at most.
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Then, it gradually spread throughout the country.
Zhu Yuanzhang did many such things. He set an example and single-handedly changed China's hundreds of years of tea-tasting habits. He stopped setting up royal tea gardens, banned group tea tributes, replaced tributes with cheap loose tea, and changed boiled tea to brewed tea.
As a result, China's tea-making industry flourished, and tea spread from wealthy families to the common people.
Cao Fengji said goodbye to the emperor and came back to the street, feeling like he was in a dream.
His meticulous work in the Qing Dynasty was actually appreciated by the emperor, who even placed an order for him personally, saying that he could eat any amount of goods shipped.
Royal merchant!
Cao Fengji suddenly had an impulse and wanted to go back and turn himself in and become a real imperial merchant. But he was afraid that the emperor would be angry and snap his head off, and he was also afraid that the ghost of Manqing Xizuo would linger and kill him quietly in the middle of the night.
Damn those Tatars for delaying their own future!
Seeing a great opportunity but failing to seize it, Cao Fengji hated the Manchus deeply. As for his family members who stayed in Liaodong, he deliberately ignored them. Anyway, he was still very young and would definitely have another son and a half daughters.
Cao Fengji sat in a sedan chair home, thinking of ideas all the way.
He wanted to find out all the details hidden in Nanjing, and then surrender to the emperor to arrest them. This would not only make him safer, but also make great contributions to the Nanjing court.
It was not easy to operate. Although he was a craftsman himself, he only knew two other craftsmen. One was his clerk, and the other was a Shanxi merchant from Yangzhou. He usually asked his clerk to go to Yangzhou to spread the news.
Alas, take your time, don't rush.
This is not a spy from the Second World War. It is so far away from Liaodong. Even the transmission of important information is measured in months, let alone more complicated operations.
Back at his residence, Cao Fengji recorded the content, which was nothing more than the supplies that Emperor Datong wanted to purchase.
This information must be sent out, including food prices in Nanjing and various large-scale material mobilizations. In addition, information and public opinions must also be passed on, ranging from academic trends in Nanjing to trivial family affairs of Nanjing's important ministers, through cultural conferences, from
The scholars learned it from their mouths.
The espionage technology is very crude. It only knows how to keep a running account, but does not know how to summarize and refine it. Moreover, the intelligence system is also extremely rudimentary.
To be honest, as long as Cao Fengji's boss is arrested and tortured, a lot of them can be uncovered.
Xu Ying is also investigating Cao Fengji's online presence, and she already has a clue. She can just keep an eye on the guy who delivers the news.
There is no exciting spy plot, because spies in ancient times have not developed to that level. They just use various means to make friends with key figures, or bribe them, or instigate rebellion. If that doesn't work, they will simply inquire about the information.
Officials in ancient times had a very poor sense of confidentiality. They often drank and chatted, and they were able to get information while chatting.
Of course, ciphertext technology still exists, otherwise the identity will be easily exposed.
Cao Fengji wrote all the information into an encrypted letter, and handed it to his buddy along with the information from the first half month: "Take it to Yangzhou and hit the road with other guys."
It was normal to send workers north this time. The emperor placed an order, and Cao Fengji asked someone to prepare woolen textiles.
Yang Yiqin was the craftsman. He followed other normal workers and was targeted before he left Nanjing.
The guy got off the ship in Yangzhou, took the information to a large house, handed Cao Fengji a greeting card, and was put in very smoothly.
A middle-aged man followed him here and watched Yang Yiqin enter the house, so he stayed nearby and waited. When Yang Yiqin had not come out yet in the evening, the middle-aged man left silently.
The middle-aged man came to the inn, called the third shopkeeper into the room, and told the specific location of the house: "Focus on this house and see who they have contact with. It is best to send people to infiltrate their business."
The third shopkeeper was surprised and said: "The superiors sent people to strictly inspect the merchants, but I didn't expect that he turned out to be a salt merchant."
The middle-aged man said: "We should continue to investigate the business."
The three major business gangs in Yangzhou are: Shanshan Gang, Jiangxi Gang and Huizhou Gang.
Due to the success of Zhao Han's rebellion, both the Jiangxi and Huizhou gangs benefited from it, squeezing out Shanshan and Shaanxi merchants. Especially Shanshan and Shaanxi salt merchants, the monopoly share is very small, whether it is out of profit or hatred for Zhao Han,
It is perfectly normal for Shanxi salt merchants to serve as spies for the Tatars.
The Shanxi salt merchant who was targeted at this time was also related to the famous ministers Wang Chonggu and Zhang Siwei, and could be regarded as a collateral descendant of Wang and Zhang.
After Zhang Juzheng's death, Zhang Siwei succeeded him as the first assistant, and he didn't know what he was doing.
Zhang Siwei and Wang Chonggu were nephews and uncles. One was the chief minister of the cabinet and the other was a feudal official. Both of them came from families of salt merchants. Gao Yongchun, the imperial censor at that time, said after inspecting the salt affairs: "The bad salt law is due to the situation."
Playing wildly, the patent of Dashang." He just failed to report the ID numbers of Zhang Siwei and Wang Chonggu.
Even so, Gao Yongchun was forced to resign by Zhang Siwei.
After Emperor Hongzhi reformed the salt law, the Shanxi and Shaanxi salt merchants had begun to decline. It was Zhang Siwei and other Shanxi ministers who, under the banner of reforming the salt law, reshuffled the cards during the Wanli period and made the Shanxi and Shaanxi salt merchants become tyrannical again.
For the salt merchants from Shanxi and Shaanxi who have settled in Yangzhou for a long time, Zhao Han cut off their financial path, which is a sworn enemy!
A month later, Xu Ying reported the progress of the investigation: "The Shanxi merchants Wang, Zhang, and Fan in Yangzhou, as well as the Shaanxi merchant Li, these salt merchants all have problems. Either send news to the Tatars, or send news to Li Zicheng
.Here in Nanjing, there is a businessman named Ai who is very suspicious, but nothing has been caught yet. Your Majesty, do you want to arrest him for interrogation?"
Zhao Han also wanted to watch a gripping spy movie, but the investigation turned out to be surprisingly smooth.
The professional skills of ancient spies were too rough!
There is nothing to gain from luring the snake out of its hole. It is just a bunch of literati drinking and complaining. If you really make them join the Tatars, I'm afraid they will be scared half to death.