To be fair, Yu Ergongzi's mother loved her son very much, and the property she distributed to Yu Zongyuan was also carefully selected.
This bookstore is located in Tongyifang, the most prosperous area in Nanping County. The shops around it are of high quality. In modern terms, it is a golden business district and the county's top-notch shops.
Su Ze has always been short of money since time travel and has no time to visit bookstores. This is the first time he has seen a bookstore in the Ming Dynasty.
Since it is a business for scholars, the bookstore has a large plaque with the three characters "Jixian Hall" written on it.
In addition to the plaque, the bookstore also has a large sign with the words "Collection of Poems by Ancient and Modern Celebrities", followed by another sign with "New Books Arrival".
In the Ming Dynasty, opening a bookstore was a first-class good business. One of the reasons was that selling books was tax-free in the Ming Dynasty.
This is the rule set by Zhu Yuanzhang, "Except for books and field utensils tax, civil servants are exempt from tax."
Naturally, everyone wants to do this tax-free business, but it is not something that ordinary businesses can do. The Yu family can own a bookstore, which is enough to know their status in Nanping County. And Mrs. Yu gave the bookstore to her youngest son, which is also good.
You can see how much she loves her young son.
After seeing Yu Zongyuan, the clerk in the bookstore immediately informed the shopkeeper at the back, and Su Ze picked up the book in front of the bookstore and started reading.
During the Ming Dynasty, there were mainly three types of books sold in bookstores across the country: imperial examination teaching aids, agricultural technical books and novels.
Su Ze picked up a copy of "Selected Journals of Shi Wen", which is the latest imperial examination guidance book. It publishes the latest excellent eight-legged essays, which is similar to modern Chinese composition collections.
In the Zhili region in the north and south where the imperial examination was prosperous, there were booksellers who invited Hanlin Academy scholars to write eight-legged essays, and then compiled this kind of "Selected Journals of Current Affairs". Ordinary scholars could imitate and learn from these excellent essays to improve their level of eight-legged essays.
Sure enough, the first article was Wang Shizhen's imperial examination article. Now Wang Shizhen is the Wen Zong of the world, the most popular young scholar in the capital, and he has just won the Jinshi.
His articles are naturally the most useful reference for today's imperial examinations. You can't read the imperial examination articles of Jinshi in the previous dynasty.
However, judging from the printing quality of this book and the number of typos in the book, it seems that this is not a genuine book. Sure enough, I turned it over and saw that it was published by Jianyang Yinfang.
The Ming Dynasty was also aware of copyright, but although it had copyright, it was not easy to protect the rights.
In particular, Fujian has the largest book printing base in the country and is also a piracy base in Jianyang. All books published in Jianyang are likely to be pirated.
For example, this "Selected Journal of Shiwen" should have been produced by a powerful publisher in the capital who paid people like Wang Shizhen to write articles, and then edited them into a collection and published them.
The pirated booksellers lurking in the capital quickly purchased "Selected Issues of Shi Wen" and returned to Jianyang. Then they immediately summoned craftsmen to engrave and print the copies, and then delivered them to bookstores in various places.
In some remote places, pirated books are even sold wholesale to bookstores earlier than genuine books.
The official documents of the Ming Dynasty could not be delivered as fast as these pirated booksellers!
After looking at the price, which was two taels of silver, Su Ze put down the book decisively.
Well, no wonder these pirated booksellers work so hard, they are indeed making huge profits!
Su Ze thought about whether he should also print pirated books in Changning Wei in the future. This thing was simply robbery.
Su Ze looked around again, and found that apart from this selection of contemporary literature, the only ones left were enlightenment books and various rhyme books.
However, the prices are also astonishingly high. A thin enlightenment book costs one or two silver, but the binding is much more exquisite and there are almost no typos.
This kind of enlightening book usually costs a lot of money to make engravings. Anyway, it can be printed repeatedly. This kind of book must not have too many typos, otherwise it will mislead readers.
So although it is a pirated book, the quality is very good.
Of course, there is no "Complete Collection of Four Books and Five Classics". It is a government-printed book and is not allowed to be sold in private bookstores, and the imperial court does not allow it to be printed.
Going further inside, there are various reference books.
The first one to bear the brunt is the Ming Dynasty's number one reference book "Duo Neng Shishi". This book is said to be written by Liu Bowen, the founding prime minister of the Ming Dynasty. It is a book that covers many aspects of production skills such as diet, clothing, hundreds of medicines, farming, and animal husbandry.
Reference book.
However, historians believe that Liu Bowen would not have written this kind of book. It is probably that signing Liu Bowen was just a gimmick to sell books.
In addition to "Duo Neng Shi Shi", there are also various miscellaneous books such as recipes and tea books. Su Ze also saw a chess book. The types of books in the Ming Dynasty were still very rich.
But Su Ze soon saw more books that left him speechless.
"New chapter on many capable despicable things", "New chapter on many capable despicable things", "New chapter on many capable despicable things", "Secret chapter on many capable despicable things".
These various books occupy half of the bookcase. Needless to say, this is also a hassle done by pirated booksellers.
This kind of reference books often require constant iterative upgrades, but these books are basically pirated junk books written to make up for the word count.
For example, the book Su Ze opened, "Secrets of Many-Neng's Bad Things", claimed to contain secret chapters that had not been published back then, and contained many secret recipes that were not passed down.
Even judging from Su Ze's Level 1 cooking skills, these recipes are all made up and have no operability at all.
There are also some methods for making pastries, which are completely nonsense. The pastries made by this method will definitely not be sold.
Putting down this money-stealing junk book, Su Ze looked through the novel section at the back of the bookstore.
The prosperity of citizen literature was also a characteristic of the Ming Dynasty.
There are not many literate people in rural health clinics like Changning Guard, but in places like Nanping County, there are still many literate ordinary people.
In the Jiangnan area, where literary style flourished, the literacy rate of the county residents even exceeded 10%. This large literate population naturally brought about the prosperity of citizen literature.
However, the Jiajing era was still a period of development of citizen literature, which gave Su Ze a lot of space for literary copywriting.
"Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" are old faces.
"Water Margin" and "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" are also the work of pirated booksellers.
"Youyang Zazu", a ghost story from the Tang Dynasty.
"The Fairy Tale"? Su Ze flipped through it and quickly put it down. It's an ancient pornographic book.
There are also poetry books such as "Collection of Quyi" and "Selected Poems of Tang Dynasty", but the most numerous ones are novels.
However, the price of these books is much cheaper than the previous books. For example, a copy of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is divided into ten volumes and can be purchased separately. The price of each volume is only half a tael of silver, which is barely affordable for ordinary people.
Just when Su Ze was thinking about what works he could copy to make money, the shopkeeper from the back room finally came out.
This was a short, fat man in his forties. He looked very smooth and sophisticated at first glance. He immediately saluted after seeing Yu Zongyuan and mouthed his boss's boss's food, which made Yu Zongyuan's energy that he had been holding in to clean up the shop go.
A few points.
Seeing that Yu Zongyuan was called boss twice and then left, Su Ze could only lament that this man was indeed taken advantage of.
Strictly speaking, the shopkeeper named Yu is not a servant of the Yu family, but a distant relative of Yu Zongyuan.
The shopkeeper's name is Yu Dong. He took over this bookstore with great difficulty ten years ago. He can pay thirty or forty taels of silver to the Yu family every year, which is considered good among the many shops in Yu's house.
But how much Yu Dong took away from it depends on the dozens of acres of land he purchased in the past ten years.
Of course Yu Zongyuan's father knew there was something wrong with the accounts, but he didn't know how to check the accounts, and the shopkeepers were all old men in the Yu family, so they couldn't do anything easily.
But now that the shop has been transferred to Yu Zongyuan, in theory, it can be regarded as a new owner. How Yu Zongyuan cleans it up is his business.
So Yu Dong was a little nervous these days, but today when he saw Yu Zongyuan coming in alone with Su Ze, the nervousness in his heart disappeared.
If we really wanted to check the books, there would be no way to figure out the bookstore's books without more than a dozen people.
Yu Zongyuan only brought Su Ze, a young scholar, who might not even be able to read the account books!
So Yu Zongyuan was not here to check the accounts. Shopkeeper Yu felt relieved and asked the waiter to serve the latest popular sour plum soup in the city. It seemed that Mr. Yu was just inspecting his own property and should be easily dismissed.
Su Ze took a sip of the sour plum soup. Because it was made from cheap Jiaozhi brown sugar, the sour plum soup had a slight bitter taste. However, after the journey, he was sweating all over his body. Drinking the sour plum soup really quenched his thirst.
Yu Zongyuan finally did not forget the purpose of his visit, and said with a straight face: "Shopkeeper Yu, close the shop and take out the account books. I want to check the accounts!"
If it were anyone else, he would still have to be pretentious, but Mr. Yu's character is so messy and unstinting, he would go straight to the point and tell the purpose.
Yu Dong's expression remained unchanged. He had already prepared for the audit. He had prepared the account books for two years and immediately ordered the clerk to bring out the account books.
Yes, it was lifted out.
The accounting method of the Ming Dynasty was still the four-pillar accounting method, and the real double-entry accounting method of the gantry accounting method only appeared in the late Ming Dynasty.
The so-called four-pillar accounting method includes four parts: old account balances, new accounts, expenditures, and remainders.
The characteristic of bookstores is that they have a wide variety of items, because there are many types of books, and each type requires account pages. Yu Zongyuan's head was dizzy when he saw a box full of account books, and he looked at Su Ze with pleading eyes.
Su Ze picked up an account book, activated the "accounting room" skill, and soon discovered something fishy in it.
Shopkeeper Yu deliberately split the same books into different categories, which greatly increased the complexity of the account book. This is not a trick but a ghost.
It's normal to have tricks. For a bookstore in this location, two groups of customers came just after Su Ze came in. The profit of such a bookstore is only 40 to 50 taels a year? This is because the Yu family has a big business and there is no knowledgeable person in the family.
Scholars have been deceived by these people for so long.
Su Ze's "Accounting Room" skill is only Level 1. If we look at accounting alone, Su Ze is naturally far inferior to a master of fraud like Shopkeeper Yu.
But Su Ze has "mathematical" skills!
Su Ze simply abandoned the entry and exit of inventory in the ledger and began to look for mathematical problems.
This requires the use of a famous mathematical theorem - Benford's law.
This theorem of probability statistics is mainly used to check data falsification.
The principle is probably that as long as there are enough samples in the data, the frequency of numbers starting with 1 in the data is not 1/9, but 30.1%.
The frequency of occurrence of numbers starting with 2 is 17.6%, and the frequency of occurrence decreases successively, with 9 having the lowest frequency of occurrence, only 4.6%.
Accounting operations are such a data collection with enough samples. Su Ze did not look at other data, but only grabbed the balance data of each type of book and began to apply Ford's Law.
Su Ze wrote and calculated and quickly counted all the remaining books. Sure enough, after applying the rules, the appearance patterns of many numbers did not comply with Benford's rules.
Su Ze found the problematic category again, checked it out with a pen, and then said to the clerk:
"Bring these sets of books out."
The waiter took the paper, glanced at the shopkeeper, and his expression immediately changed.
Shopkeeper Yu also took the paper, and his expression became even more ugly.
No matter how stupid Yu Zongyuan was, he still saw the problem at this time.
"Why don't you take it out quickly! Can't you take it out?"
Shopkeeper Yu was breaking out in a cold sweat. Where did the scholar Yu Zongyuan come from? How did he discover that he had made false accounts so soon?
Shopkeeper Yu's method of making false accounts is also very low-level, that is, hiding profits in unsold books and falsely reporting inventory to siphon off profits.
The existence of books on these books that actually do not exist is the excess profit of the bookstore.
As for these "non-existent books", the shopkeeper Yu has made a complete purchase and sales account. If you look at the accounting alone, there is no problem at all.
There are also a lot of used books in a bookstore. He has made entries for so many books, and it is really difficult to count them. Even if the accounting experts come, they can't find the problem in a short time.
Once the audit begins, the shopkeeper only needs to put the books that need to be checked on the cover and temporarily make up, and he can get through it.
This set of methods has been used until modern times. It can be said to be an upright and simple method of false accounting, simple and practical.
But Su Ze only wrote and drew for half an hour before finding the problematic book. Yu Zongyuan also asked the clerk to take it out immediately. How could he take it out?
The waiter was trembling all over. The shopkeeper had falsified the accounts. Naturally, he, as a clerk, would get a share of the profits.
He has the courage to make false accounts, but he cannot afford the consequences of the false accounts being discovered.
The clerk is a son of the Yu family, and the household registration and deeds are all in the hands of Zong Yuan.
After all, Yu Zongyuan is his father.
If the son makes a mistake, and the real father beats his own son to death, the government will only scold him, let alone a domestic slave?
Of course, if someone really dies, the government will definitely intervene, but the Yu family is a military guard. How many servants disappear from the Yu family every year. It is too easy for these big families to regulate their servants.
Su Ze pointed at the waiter and said, "Tell me, which of the items on this list are true and which are false. Tell me and I will ask Young Master Yu to forgive you."
The man was still trembling, but Yu Zongyuan kicked him over and said, "If you don't say anything! I will kill your whole family!"
Mr. Yu's threats were simple and direct, and the guy responded with a whoop.