GBP Chapter 282: Food Price Rise
Chapter 282: Food Price Rise
With Tang Wenzheng as the head of the village, who was familiar with every detail of the county government, all the procedures were completed quickly. The nine clans, a total of 19 households, finally had their own household registration.
Li Quan was deeply touched because Shen Zhiqiu opened a separate household registration for Li Quan and registered Li Dahu and Li Erhu under Li Quan's name. From now on, Dahu and Li Erhu would be Li Quan's adopted grandsons.
Li Quan's identity was also written as the younger brother of Shen Zhiqiu's ancient father-in-law, but they had already discussed it before that when they built the house, Li Quan and his two companions would live with Shen Zhiqiu's family of four first.
Holding the freshly issued land deeds, it was impossible for everyone present not to be excited. From now on, they would no longer be homeless. As long as they reclaimed the land and built houses, they would have a home here.
Of course, when Shen Zhiqiu paid the money, everyone felt really sad. The government money was two thousand taels, and the two thousand six hundred taels left by his ancient father-in-law were also used to buy land, but it was recorded as Li Jingshu's dowry.
They were able to buy so much land at once, and not only the official who registered them, but even the head of the village was surprised.
The main reason is that Shen Zhiqiu and his family don’t look like the type of people who can come up with so much money.
But think about it, there are no truly poor refugees coming to Kyoto. They are probably just pretending to be poor.
After walking out of the yamen with the household registration documents, Shen Zhiqiu said that he still had to buy some food.
Tang Wenzheng nodded: "Then let's go together."
A group of people went straight to the grain shop. Although Shen Zhiqiu and his group were driving an ox cart in front, the men pushing carts behind were not much behind and did not slow down at all.
Mazi was driving the cart, Li Quan was sitting on the other side, Shen Zhiqiu and Gao Liehu were sitting inside with Tang Wenzheng.
It was almost nine o'clock in the morning and it was getting hotter and hotter. Shen Zhiqiu was thinking about buying food and going back quickly.
The ox cart was pushed forward like this, and behind it was an empty cart. People were asked to give way to the carts as they walked on the street, so as to avoid any bumps and collisions, and people would shout, "Oh my God!"
If for no other reason, this is the time when people in the city come out to buy meat and vegetables, and there are too many people on the streets.
Moreover, grain stores are usually located in downtown areas, so there is no need to ask for directions. Tang Wenzheng knew that
Although he didn't like outsiders coming to the village, and even more so didn't like so many people coming at once, after two days of contact, he found that these refugees were quite nice.
For the time being, no trace of the troublemaker was seen walking around the village.
In particular, they spent a total of 4,600 taels on buying the land, of which 2,300 taels would be distributed to the village by the government. Before the household registration was completed, the county magistrate had called him over alone to distribute it on the spot.
Shen Zhiqiu held the curtain with one hand and looked at the people and horse carts passing through the street. Although the road was not particularly wide, it was not bad. At least two carriages side by side could pass through without any problem.
But he still saw the traffic jam that he had only seen in his previous life. There was a queue in front of him, and no one knew what they were doing.
Shen Zhiqiu stuck his head out to see what was going on. Such a traffic jam was not a big deal and would waste too much time.
Li Quan came and reported, "Son-in-law, it seems that people in front are queuing up to buy food. They say that the price of food has increased again. If you don't buy now, the price will go up again."
After Shen Zhiqiu got off the bus and squeezed into the crowd after much difficulty, he gasped when he saw the grain prices posted at the door of the grain store.
He originally thought that if a pound of grain became a few cents more expensive, it would be considered good, but he didn't expect the price to double.
He rubbed his eyes several times to make sure that he was not mistaken. The price was twice as high as the price they paid for grain in Xinle County.
Brown rice costs two taels of silver per stone, and the price of white flour is about the same. Buckwheat flour has increased from four cents per catty to seven cents.
If you want unground buckwheat, it's five cents, and if you want unhusked buckwheat, it's four cents.
The prices of soybeans, sorghum, corn, and millet are all around seven or eight cents.
The price of millet is one dan and one and a half liang of silver. This is a doubling of the price.
When it was Shen Zhiqiu's turn, the waiter looked at their clothes and said directly, "Coarse grains, unpeeled, four cents a pound, how much do you want?"
Shen Zhiqiu wanted to ask about the price of mung beans. But the waiter said earnestly, "I advise you to buy soybeans. Mung beans are expensive. You can also buy corn, which is also cheaper. One stone is only 840 coins, and it can be used as dry food or porridge."
"It's okay. I want all of them. I want soybeans, corn, mung beans, five liang of buckwheat flour, ten liang of husked buckwheat, and one dan of fine flour."
The waiter asked, "You have a large family, so why don't you just buy coarse grains? Why do you have to buy fine noodles? We can't afford them."
The shopkeeper, who had just gone to the toilet, heard this and kicked the waiter on the butt: "What are you talking about? The customer can buy whatever food he wants, why are you making trouble?"
Shen Zhiqiu said: "Little Second Brother is kind-hearted, he doesn't mind."
However, the shopkeeper also explained: "Sir, I think what the waiter said is correct. With the influx of refugees from the south, the price of food here has been rising again and again. Now the new food has not arrived yet, so we have to stock up on the new food first."
Shen Zhiqiu: "Then can I buy more to get a discount?"
The shopkeeper looked like, "You don't understand what's going on?" "Look at all the people lining up. They all want to buy food. I have plenty of food and I can sell it. Why should I sell it at a lower price?"
Hurry up and buy it, there are so many people waiting in line behind you, don’t come and make trouble!”
The people behind also said, "What are you waiting for? The one in front! If you want to buy, buy it quickly. If you don't want to buy, please make way."
Shen Zhiqiu: "Okay, then I'll buy some more. The shopkeeper's corn will cost thirty taels of silver."
Shen Zhiqiu spent seventy or eighty taels just on buying food, plus the sesame oil, sesame paste, and other things that Shen Youyou wanted.
And window paper was also very expensive. Everything cost a lot of money. When it came down to it, Shen Zhiqiu had unknowingly spent over a hundred taels of silver, and that was without even buying any pig iron.
Finally, I went to the market and asked about the price of pig iron. It turned out that one tael of silver was worth one hundred jin.
Moreover, this is pig iron and cannot be used directly.
Pig iron becomes wrought iron after being hammered and forged. Each round of hammering is called a fire, which is almost a working day for the blacksmith.
In addition to consuming labor and fuel, the iron will also be continuously oxidized and lost during the forging process.
Each time of refining, the cost is about 0.03 taels per catty.
For general civilian wrought iron, one-third of it is removed during the hammering process, that is, seven pounds of wrought iron can be produced from ten pounds of pig iron.
If recycled scrap iron is used, ten kilograms of scrap iron can produce nine kilograms of wrought iron.
But this kind of wrought iron is not good enough to make weapons and armor.
But it is okay for making general farm tools.
That is equivalent to only getting 70 kilograms of iron for one tael of silver.
But they have to buy them, as they need farm tools to open up the wasteland, make sickles and new shovels.
Shen Zhiqiu bought ten taels of silver first.
Even if they waited until the autumn harvest and went to various villages to collect grain, the remaining money would not be enough to get through the winter, not to mention the purchase of winter supplies and other daily necessities.
It seems that she really relies on her daughter to make money. After all, men still have to focus on opening up wasteland first.
There was no way to reclaim all the wasteland and grow crops. In ancient times, buying food was equivalent to handing your life over to the grain merchants. Didn’t you see that the price of grain would rise during wars and during shortages? Only those who could grow crops by themselves could have the final say.