There are many people burning charcoal fires in the capital, but this year's winter has come early and cold, and the amount of charcoal burning in the past years cannot be tolerated. If you want to keep warm, you must add more charcoal and firewood.
But if you add too much charcoal, the remaining charcoal may not survive the winter.
Coupled with the cold weather, the price of charcoal is rising higher and higher.
These days, power and wealth cannot be separated from land!
Anyone with a well-off family has land and a house at home, so they don't have to worry about food and drink. Not to mention the village and fields in the hands of this wealthy family. If there is land and village, it is not difficult to burn coal by yourself.
Just because of insufficient technology, the quality of the charcoal produced varies, so good charcoal is still lacking.
Before burning charcoal, Qiao Lan also asked someone to inquire about how many families in the capital burned kangs.
Surprisingly, there are very few households in the capital that burn kangs, and even ordinary people's homes mostly rely on firewood to make a living.
There are several reasons for this. First, the technology of kang making is not good. There are few craftsmen who know how to make kang in the capital. Each one of them cherishes their own skills and is unwilling to easily teach their skills to outsiders, so the price of kang is also high.
Expensive is only a secondary concern, but I'm afraid the kang will collapse while I'm sleeping on it if I'm not good at it.
While inquiring about these matters, Qiao Lan heard from her servants that there had been many lawsuits in the capital's yamen in the early years, all related to the collapse of the kang and injuring people.
If the kang made at great cost collapses, it would be better not to make it.
The second is the issue of face among nobles!
All of them are extremely elegant families, using ivory as chopsticks, gold as bowls, silk coverings, and jade as curtains.
For such a particular family, there was such a gray clod in the bedroom. It really ruined their golden nanmu floor and was really an eyesore.
In addition, they have various ways of keeping warm, so they are not rare for this kind of kang.
After conducting thorough market research, Qiao Lan started her own charcoal burning plan.
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Qiao Lan understands the principle of killing the first bird with a gun. His farm can burn thousands of kilograms of silver frost charcoal a day. If he tells it, he will definitely be jealous.
Therefore, those who collect and deliver charcoal mostly use the people sent by Mr. He.
Those strong men have received professional training and are strict with their mouths. They will not say such nonsense. Even if they were told to Mr. He, it would not be a big deal. Mr. He knew about it long ago.
There is a lot of activity in the Duan family chopping firewood. Many people in the capital are burning charcoal, not counting earthen houses. There are several stoves of silver frost charcoal mixed with ordinary charcoal.
This bad charcoal was sold directly through the Duan family's own shop.
As for the fine Yin Shuang Tan, it always takes some twists and turns, using other people's names and means to enter various mansions in the capital.
The quality of Yinshuang charcoal can be identified at a glance. There is no shortage of buyers for good charcoal. Buying one or two thousand kilograms at a time is not a problem for the powerful people in the capital.
No matter how good the quality of the charcoal fire is, the nobles will not go to the stove to study the charcoal. Their years of pampering and pampering have made them not care much about the little things in the inner house.
After all, I have never heard of a man who got so excited when eating eggs that he went to the chicken coop to inquire about the hens' growth.
But to be honest, there are still people like this. For example, Duan Mingjing, but outsiders don't know about this.
In this way, the silver frost charcoal produced by the Duan family was slowly imported into various mansions in the capital.
Even in the surrounding cities and prefectures, people came to buy them.
Some businessmen noticed something was wrong and felt that the sudden appearance of a large amount of silver frost charcoal was much larger than in previous years. There was obviously a lack of charcoal this year!
Even if there were some questions about the origin of the charcoal, the merchants would keep silent about it.
After all, who would doubt the origin of a profitable business?
The money you put in your pocket will always be yours.
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At the end of December, Qiao Lan counted the income from selling charcoal these days. It was really amazing. It was more than the accumulated money she had earned in the past few years since she came to the capital.
Gaomen's wool is really fat! It's so fat that it's beyond imagination!
Qiao Lan has some plans of her own for this unexpected fortune.
To be honest, the Duan family spent very little money on making charcoal. Qiao Lan gave a small part of the money as wages to the people who went into the mountains to cut trees. The price was higher than the price in Chunri, which made them burst into tears with gratitude.
, I even wanted to kneel down and thank you on the spot.
It is enough to show how hard the people are oppressed on daily basis.
As for the remaining money, it is obviously not wise to spend it at the current prices. Qiao Lan can only put it in the warehouse of the house. She will wait until spring to make plans. If she has to run away, she will just take it all.
Recharge points.
It's better than leaving it in the house and not being able to take it with you.
After Zhuangzi's charcoal selling business stabilized, the wind in the capital became a little colder.
After more than a month of hard work, the nobles who were delivering porridge and medicine outside the city could no longer withstand the cold wind and returned home with excuses to get sick. They stayed in their homes and refused to go out.
The food for the victims at the gate of the city has dropped down a level. From rice porridge at the beginning, to chestnut rice porridge later, and now it has directly changed to bean soup.
The soup made from aged beans is haphazardly cooked. Not to mention whether it is delicious or not, it is still unknown whether the beans are soft or not.
Even though the victims cried out in lamentation, the court really couldn't afford the rice and grain to feed so many idle people.
Not only do you need food, but you also need to keep warm.
With the tacit approval of his courtiers, the little emperor did things in his own way.
The first step is to clean up the homeless and beggars inside and outside the city.
There were not so many refugees in the capital originally, but now that there are so many, it is impossible to rely on the national treasury to support them.
If you can't survive the cold winter in the north, then go to the south! It's warm in the south! You won't die from the cold, and you won't die from hunger if you can just find some food in the mountains and forests.
After eating so much from the imperial court, it was impossible not to do something. The wealthy people were not taken advantage of, and they kept providing for them to eat and drink.
So the little emperor planned to send them south to reclaim wasteland and work for the treasury!
The north is getting colder year by year, but the south is much better in comparison. The climate in the north is not conducive to farming, so go to the south to plant more land, and then send the food back to the north!
It can not only solve the problem of the emptiness of the national treasury, but also solve the resettlement of these people. All the group of people have to consume is just food rations on the road.
These rations are not a big problem, they have paid for them in advance.
As soon as the notice came out, the hut outside the capital was immediately surrounded.
Either you need to produce household registration documents to prove that you are a good citizen, or you can only be sent to the south as a refugee.
Taking out the documents does not mean passing the customs. If you take them out, you will be driven back to your place of origin and cannot stay at the gate of the capital. If you cannot take them out, the fate will be even worse.
For a while, there were constant cries at the city gate.
They all begged the soldiers guarding the city to let them go and let them leave.
Unfortunately, it was too late.
When Qiao Lan heard the news, news also came from Zhuangzi.
It is said that a group of refugees got the news from somewhere and knew that the master of the Duan family was kind-hearted, so they went to Zhuangzi crying and begging to sell themselves into slavery.
So that they can escape the fate of being sent south or repatriated to their place of origin.
Qiao Lan rubbed her forehead and felt that life was too difficult.