When you walk into Wazi, a noisy and lively atmosphere hits your face.
People were coming and going in Wazi, shouting and hawking. Many of them were traveling together as a family, spending dozens of pennies to find a small restaurant to have a good meal.
The average salary in Jingzhao City is about a hundred cents a day. The more capable clerks in restaurants and the smart maids of wealthy families all earn this salary.
A family of three can buy food and cook at home, which only costs about 20 or 30 cents. When going out to eat, no matter how cheap a small restaurant is, it will cost 50 or 60 cents. But it doesn't matter if you come for a meal by chance. You can enjoy the atmosphere of the restaurant and your children will also enjoy it.
happy.
Of course Chen Qing likes this situation where the market is lively and prosperous and the people live and work in peace and contentment. Any ruler likes it. No ruler wants to see the people under his rule have no life and sell their children.
There are two most basic ways to understand people's livelihood, one is observation and the other is talking. Stores will not do loss-making business, they just make more and less. Stores only look at the flow of customers. If there are more customers and business is good, the store owner will be happy.
The lowest and cheapest stores are not doing well, which means the problem is serious and people have no money.
The current situation seems to be pretty good, with huge crowds and almost every store doing good business.
"Sir, come and have a bowl of soup cake!"
When Chen Qing turned around, he realized that he was a mobile vendor. This was a vendor without a small shop, and he could be regarded as the lowest level shop owner.
When Chen Qing saw that there was no one at the stall, he sat down with a smile and asked, "What kind of soup cakes do you have?"
"There are minced meat whistles, sauced mutton, large pieces of meat, and dried vegetable pancakes. The shop's best specialty is the minced meat whistle soup cakes. I guarantee that you will want to eat it again."
It’s a small shop! Chen Qing said with a smile: “Then let’s have a bowl of minced meat whistle soup cake!”
Soup cakes are noodles, cut with a knife. The vendor quickly cooked the noodles in a pot. Chen Qing smiled and asked, "There are still so many people in Wazi. I thought there would be no one in Wazi after the luxury restriction order was introduced."
"The guest officer is joking, what does tiles have to do with luxury?"
"It really has no impact?"
The hawker thought for a while and said, "You have no influence! In fact, it does have an influence."
"How do you say this?"
"One of my regular customers is my neighbor. He is a clerk at a restaurant in the north of the city. He comes to my place every day to eat a bowl of soup cakes and take care of my business. But he has not come for several days in a row. I met him this morning.
He just found out that he was fired from the restaurant and is now looking for something to do."
"Why were you fired?" Chen Qingxiao asked.
"Isn't it the luxury restriction order you mentioned? There were originally thirteen waiters and cooks in their restaurant in the north of the city. When the restriction order came, the proprietor said he couldn't make any money, so only seven of them were left, and the other six people made a living on their own. I
My neighbor was fired, and my shop lost one customer. Alas! The rich spend less money, but we ordinary people are the unlucky ones!"
Another vendor next to him also sighed: "You said that we don't have any special skills. We are all shopkeepers, errand runners, and waiters. Don't we just rely on the rich to leak two dollars? Then you make my money, and I make yours."
Rich people don’t spend money anymore, so where does our money come from?”
At this time, Chen Qing saw that the bowl of the stall was still stained with unwashed vegetable leaves, which should have been left by the previous customer. He couldn't help feeling sick, grabbed a handful of money and threw it on the table, "Shopkeeper, I have something to do."
, will come back another day to eat!”
"Ouch! I'm so sorry, let's give it half price!"
"No!"
Chen Qing walked away. He took a few steps and looked back. He saw the hawker inviting a family of three to sit down and eat soup cakes. He gave the soup cakes he made to the man. The man ate the noodles without paying any attention to them.
vegetable leaves.
Chen Qing shook his head. Although not washing the dishes cleanly was a way of being grounded, it was a pity that he was no longer used to it.
"Selling cloth! The wood cotton cloth that just arrived, and the cotton tires for winter clothes!"
Chen Qing's eyes lit up and he quickly followed the shout. There was a shop diagonally across the street with a big signboard with a big word "cloth" on it.
Of course, there are small shops selling daily necessities in Wazili, which are low-grade and cheap. However, the cloth shop in Wazili also started selling wooden cotton cloth, which really surprised Chen Qing.
Chen Qing walked over quickly, and the waiter who was shouting quickly came up to him with a smile, "Winter is coming, sir, please buy some cloth for your family to make winter clothes!"
"How much does a piece of wood cotton cloth cost?" Chen Qing asked.
"Three pieces of money for one horse!"
The price is not cheap! Chen Qing asked again: "Where is the fine linen?"
"Fine linen costs four hundred coins, and extra fine linen costs six hundred coins a piece."
The difference between extra fine linen and wood cotton cloth was five times. When Chen Qing walked into the shop, there were three or four customers inside, probably all nearby residents, choosing fabrics.
There are many types of fabrics on rolls on the counter, but there are only three major categories: fine linen, extra fine linen and wood cotton. The specific varieties only differ in color.
A few of the guests were holding fine linen cloths. It is probably a matter of spending power and consumption habits. Everyone is not used to using wood cotton cloth.
After several customers paid and left, Chen Qing was the only one left in the store. Seeing Chen Qing looking at the wooden cotton cloth, the shopkeeper walked up and introduced: "This is the first time that the shop sells wooden cotton cloth. The price is cheap now."
Last year, it cost ten guan for a piece of cloth, but this year it dropped to three guan. In the past, only rich people could wear it, but now ordinary people can also buy a piece of cloth to make clothes."
Of course Chen Qing knows why prices have plummeted this year. The key is that Lingzhou and Hexi produce large amounts of cotton, which can be blended with kapok. The quantity of kapok is sufficient. In the past, it could only be used for cotton clothes and bedding.
For filling materials, starting this year, several major textile workshops in Xianyang County began to weave a large amount of fabrics, and the price dropped accordingly.
Moreover, the price of kapok cloth will decrease in the future, mainly because linen is hand-woven by families, while kapok cloth is woven in large factories, and the cost difference is huge.
However, the quality of the kapok cloth was average. Chen Qing touched the cloth and found that it was loose and completely different from the cotton cloth that his wife bought last year.
"Yes, there are some, but very few. The main reason is that I'm not used to them, and the price is a bit expensive. The store doesn't sell many of them. I only bought twenty horses in total and stopped buying them when they were sold out. However, the winter coats and cotton tires are selling well.
"
The shopkeeper took out a winter coat, and Chen Qing couldn't help but laugh. Isn't it just a cotton-padded jacket? It is made of white fine linen as the base material, and densely packed needles and threads sew kapok flowers inside. There are robes and short coats.
Depending on your own needs, you can wear inner tubes directly at home, but I guess most people won’t wear them directly because they are difficult to remove and wash if they get dirty, so you must wear a piece of clothing outside.
"How much does this cotton tire cost?"
"The short one requires two strings, and the long one requires four strings!"
Chen Qing was surprised, "So expensive?"
"Expensive? This is still very cheap. A short cotton tire costs at least two kilograms of kapok. One kilogram of kapok only costs one pound. In the past, kapok was sold by two. During the Xuanhe period, I sold one, one two kilogram.
The money is sixteen times cheaper, and wearing a cotton afterbirth will keep you warm all winter."
"How much does it cost you to purchase goods?" Chen Qing asked.
The shopkeeper looked at Chen Qing strangely. This is the secret of the shop. How could it be leaked casually? He shook his head, "I'm sorry, this is the secret of the shop. I won't tell you!"
Chen Qing actually knows the cost. They bought it in Quanzhou at fifty cents per catty, then removed the seeds to get the cotton, and then transported it to Jingzhao. The cost was only a hundred cents per catty at most, but now they actually sold it for the usual one cent.
Jin, a huge profit of ten times. Of course, fine linen must be used as the base material, and sewing must be done, as well as the merchant's profit, but it will not cost a hundred coppers. In the end, let's sell it!
Now Chen Qing especially wants to know how much the government sells it to the public for wholesale per kilogram.