Great time travel

Chapter 1. When will the singing and dancing in Jinling stop? (Four)
Compared with the amount of total social funds, the total number of commodities on the market is always in short supply.

This iron law was particularly evident when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. With the disintegration of allied countries and the collapse of social order, the huge wealth accumulated by the former Soviet Union in decades of hard work disappeared overnight.Because when the crisis came, the Soviet people instinctively put all their money into the retail market to sweep goods and hoard them. It is impossible for any country’s retail market to bear such a huge and dense instantaneous capital flow. The only result is that the basic Prices of necessities have soared, and goods irrelevant to daily life have lost value on a large scale.

Even if it was changed to the United States, it would not be able to bear such a drastic change. Even if the US dollar was still the world currency at that time, if tens of trillions of US dollars poured out of the "currency reservoirs" such as the stock market, funds, and banks, it would be overwhelming. If we rush to the retail market, the world market order of the entire planet will collapse in an instant: because all countries in the world combined cannot provide daily commodities worth so many currencies in a short period of time!
Under such circumstances, whether or not those in power frantically start printing money, hyperinflation is inevitable.

Just the huge amount of cash that panic forces out of various "currency reservoirs" such as the stock market, funds, and banks, is enough to kill the market!

In the same way, a similar situation occurred in China at the end of Ming Dynasty, which dealt a fatal blow to the crumbling Ming Empire.

——When Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, in order to achieve the goal of family business lasting forever, he implemented a national strategy dominated by agriculture.Not only did he symbolically open up farmland in the palace, he also took the prince to inspect the countryside many times, telling them that this was the foundation of the entire Ming Empire.

Around the operation of agriculture, Zhu Yuanzhang designed a series of systems, turning the whole of China into a super large rural area.

The entire civil service system of the Ming Dynasty revolved around agriculture.They cleared the household registration, measured the land, and formed a huge data network as the basis for collecting agricultural taxes.In rural areas, every certain number of household registrations will elect grain chiefs, and their task is to collect grain.After collecting the grain, each local warehouse has a special ambassador (custodian).The task of transporting grain to the capital and the border was also accomplished by specialized water transport soldiers and designated farmers.Governments at all levels have household registration data files.People on the land have corresponding household registrations according to their respective occupations, and military registration and civilian registration should not be confused.Farmers can only stay at their household registration address and cannot move at will. Everything is strictly regulated.

In order to deal with the nomads in the north, the early Ming Dynasty retained a huge army of one million people, but the extremely weak state finances at that time could not afford to support such a large army.Zhu Yuanzhang still adopted a very rural approach to solve the problem—the farming system stipulates that each guard (military region) has its own land, and [-]% of the soldiers are used to defend the city and fight, and [-]% of the manpower is used to farm. Tian, ​​to support himself.

The Ming court directly distributed rice and cloth to officials.Because ordinary people pay taxes on agricultural products such as rice and cotton.Regarding local infrastructure construction, Zhu Yuanzhang also has a set of methods-in addition to paying taxes on rice and cotton, the common people of the Ming Dynasty also have to contribute to the government free of charge.In the so-called tax and service system, tax refers to taxes, and service refers to corvee service, which means freeing up a period of time for the government to do labor for free, such as road construction, water conservancy and so on.In short, farmers farmed and paid taxes when they were busy, and made infrastructure for the government when they were free. The government collected grain and handed it over to the public.Regardless of taxation or wages, the distribution is rice and cloth.Politically and economically, there is no internal need for any change to develop.Such a super-stable static system is almost like a mummy, and it can theoretically survive for thousands of years.Zhu Yuanzhang is obviously proud of his ability to keep his face.People who are familiar with history may have a feeling of deja vu.Yes, this is the economic system of the Han Dynasty.

But don't forget that the system of the Han Dynasty was tailor-made for China in BC, and it has been 500 years since the Ming Dynasty.Twenty or 30 years ago, if you held a mobile phone, you were a fashionable rich man that everyone envied; now you are still showing off with a mobile phone, it is an old antique that everyone laughs at.

It is very uneconomical to use food and cloth as the standard currency in peacetime—the food will go moldy, and it will be lost a lot every year when it is stored.Moreover, it is also very heavy to transport large quantities of grain, and the cost of transferring it from one place in the country to another is staggering.What's more terrible is that during the Hongwu period, the grain revenue of the imperial court was 940 million shi, in the Hongzhi period it was more than 800 million shi, and in the Wanli period it was more than 30 million shi.In the 200 years of reform and opening up in modern China, the national fiscal revenue has increased by [-] times, and the fiscal and taxation of the Ming Dynasty has remained unchanged for [-] years.Zhu Yuanzhang's mummy is really immortal for thousands of years.With the total income unchanged, various expenses such as royal family salaries and official corruption gradually increased, and eventually the finances fell into bankruptcy.

Therefore, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, this antique financial system, which was somewhat similar to the Soviet wartime economy, became more and more overwhelmed, and finally collapsed.In this regard, people of insight in the Ming Dynasty turned their attention to silver: if the tax was changed to silver, it would be convenient for farmers to pay and transport.Hoarding silver will neither rot nor be eaten by insects, so there is no loss, and silver is much more convenient to transport than rice.

Thus, there was Zhang Juzheng's whipping method, that is, the major reform of the silverization of the Ming Dynasty's finances.His basic idea is to merge all the original taxation and corvee.In the past, farmers had to produce rice and labor.After the introduction of a whip method, farmers don't have to worry about everything as long as they pay silver.The government took the money to hire people to build houses and do water conservancy... At this point, silver replaced food and became the blood to maintain the operation of the Ming Empire.

But the problem is that the rulers of the Ming Dynasty lacked modern financial knowledge. They just regarded silver as a very convenient management tool. They did not realize that silver and grain are different-it is not a consumer product, but just a currency that represents purchasing power It's changing all the time!

——Whether in Jiangnan or Saibei, a stone of grain can feed a person for at least three months.But if it is exchanged for one tael of silver, the amount of goods that can be bought in Jiangnan and Saibei is completely different!

For example, after the reform of financial silverization, the peasants changed from transporting ten shi rice to the border to the army, and instead handed over the corresponding price of silver, and the government took the silver to buy rice for the border guards.On the surface, the front and back seem to be the same thing, but in fact there are many articles in it.

According to the procedures, farmers in Henan, Shandong and other places pay taxes at the local price of one stone of rice and five renminbi of silver.The silver was then sent to the border by the imperial court.However, there is not so much grain on the border market, and the price of rice is bound to rise.Five renminbi of silver will definitely not buy a stone of rice, and the interests of the military will be virtually lost.What's more serious is that the former frontline troops hoarded food. After the silverization reform, everyone believed that with money, you can buy anything, and there is no need to hoard food.When there is a war on the frontier, the army must temporarily purchase a large amount of food if it wants to attack, causing the price of food to soar.The grain that usually costs five or six dollars a stone will rise to three taels of silver per stone at this time!As a result, military expenditures have invisibly increased sixfold.Paying salaries to court officials was even more troublesome. Every time the court officials paid salaries in Beijing, the prices of daily necessities such as food and vegetables rose sharply.In the end, the imperial court had to promulgate special regulations, and some people were not allowed to buy vegetables in the urban area after receiving their salaries, and had to go to the suburbs to buy them.

The above-mentioned situations are only short-term price fluctuations.As for the long-term price change trend, it is even more worrying-since the age of great navigation, because of foreigners' thirst for Chinese porcelain, silk and other specialties, the gold and silver unearthed by Europeans from the Americas, and the excavations on Japanese islands The silver mines that have been exported are continuously flowing into China, and the total amount is at least several hundred million taels, which is equivalent to a huge round of quantitative easing.

But the strange thing is that despite the influx of hundreds of millions of taels of silver into China, which caused the amount of currency to surge upwards, the commodity prices in the Ming Dynasty were still running at a low level all year round, and did not cause very serious inflation. During the period of Zhu Yuanzhang, a stone in the south The price of rice is two cents and five cents of silver, which is equivalent to 250 cents of copper coins. It was only raised to five cents of silver in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. This price was maintained for about 100 years until the end of Wanli. The price of rice has never exceeded a tael per shi.And the prices of other foods are not too expensive: chicken for four or five yuan per catty, pork for seven or eight yuan per catty, and sesame oil for ten yuan per liter.One tael of silver can make a family run a running banquet.

It is also one tael of silver, but under the rule of Emperor Wanli and Emperor Kangxi, its actual purchasing power is more than ten times worse!

It can be seen that despite the influx of silver into China in the late Ming Dynasty, the currency circulation and the quantity of commodities in the Ming Dynasty remained coordinated all year round-obviously, without the industrial revolution and overseas colonization, the social productivity of the Ming Dynasty Did not get an explosive boost. ,

Therefore, if prices can still remain stable, there is only one reasonable explanation: most of the silver has not been circulated in the market, but has been sealed up—although the nobles, officials and rich men in Ming Dynasty all knew that silver could be used as currency It is used, but due to the nature of Chinese people who like to save money, they are more likely to be stored.Gentlemen and wealthy households, if you have surplus income every year, you will either use it to buy land, or turn it into silver ingots and hide it, and you are not willing to spend it.For example, Jin merchants in Shanxi used to cast silver into large silver nuggets weighing hundreds of catties, and store them in cellars, known as "ghosts see sorrow" (thieves can't steal it even if they touch it).Even if it is an ordinary family, most of the money they have is hidden for later use.

As a result, the astronomical amount of silver just slept in the mansions of officials and nobles, landlords and gentry, and acted as a central bank to regulate currency invisibly, making the amount of currency circulating in the market always limited, maintaining the stability of prices in Ming Dynasty, and maintaining The strength of the silver price ratio.

But this false stable price situation is only temporary. In the year of the apocalypse, prices that have remained unchanged for a hundred years finally began to rise rapidly.

——Since the Saarhu War that the Jurchens rose in the last years of Wanli, the world has become chaotic.The natural disasters of the Little Ice Age at the end of the Ming Dynasty followed, which greatly reduced grain output, but the amount of money did not decrease, so grain prices began to rise.In the first month of the first year of Tianqi, the palace posted a notice to choose a concubine, which caused panic among the people. In order to prevent their daughters from being snatched into the Forbidden City by eunuchs, a wave of urgent marriages swept across Beijing.If you want to get married, you need to buy things, and the wine, water and fish for banquets immediately become a shortage of goods.Only one month later, the long-hidden price inflation broke out, and the prices of daily necessities skyrocketed. From then on, one tael of silver in Beijing could no longer buy a stone of rice.

Since the amount of silver on the market at this time has far exceeded the amount of goods, a small fuse detonated the entire imperial economic system.This excessive market reaction quickly caused widespread panic, and all goods on the market, from grain to cloth, from land to houses, began to rise in price across the board.And this further stimulated those who had silver in their hands-silver is worthless!what to do?Of course, they quickly sold off their hands and hoarded consumer goods such as food and cloth. The result was a further vicious circle, causing the price of silver to drop even further!

During the Apocalypse Year, since the imperial government was still barely functioning, hyperinflation had begun, but the rate of price increase was not too fast.

During the reign of Chongzhen, which was full of wars and droughts, the rogues and natural disasters raging in the interior further destroyed agricultural production, and the chaos of social order forced people to start hoarding supplies. A large amount of silver that had been sleeping in the cellar flowed into the market. Participating in the transaction, the result is that the commodity gap in the market is getting bigger and bigger, and the prices of various commodities naturally rise rapidly like a rocket, and it is common for a stone of rice to sell for five taels of silver.

If it is in a modern society, in the face of such a dire situation, the government will use the strategic material reserve to stabilize prices.The problem is that the official storehouses of the imperial court in the late Ming Dynasty have been embezzled, and Emperor Chongzhen did not have such material reserves at all.So in the palace, he only felt that the more money he got, the more money he was short of.Faced with this situation, no matter how much money he has in his hand, he will still feel terrified, not to mention how little money he actually has in his hand?

As a result, Emperor Chongzhen continued to urge more silver to be collected, and repeatedly blamed the local government for its ineffectiveness in urging payment.However, he who lives in Jiuzhong doesn't know that in the case of rapid decline in agricultural productivity and continuous decline in food production, the more silver is allocated, the more prices will skyrocket, and the more silver will appear to be scarce. The speed at which the court distributes money It will never catch up with the speed of the market price increase - this is the same as Chairman Jiang's printing of gold coupons to distribute military pay.In the first year of Chongzhen, the materials bought for 300 million taels of silver each year may be able to maintain a continuous battle of 10,000+ troops in Liaodong. Wan Guanning's army died.

Don't think that silver will not depreciate. In fact, in the late Ming Dynasty, the purchasing power of silver was not as strong as that of RMB in the 21st century!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And under the reign of Emperor Yonghe in Nanjing in this time and space, the supply and demand of materials in the Jiangnan market is also deteriorating rapidly.

There is no way, although Jiangnan is not currently in disaster, whether it is the flames of war spreading in Jiangbei or the situation in the world where the two emperors are confronting each other, in the minds of the people, it means the collapse of social order and the imminent war.And with the flames of war igniting in all directions, the Jiangnan water town has become the last safe haven and lifeboat in people's minds. I don't know how many people are rushing into this last pure land, without considering whether this small land can bear the burden. Liveable—a large number of refugees who fled from Jiangbei created prosperity before the end of the city for the city.

——Although these refugees left their hometowns, most of them carried some money with them.After arriving in Nanjing, they needed food to satisfy their hunger, houses to live in, and medicines when they were sick.And all these most basic necessities have to be exchanged for the goods they carry.If the money runs out, they can sell their labor at the cheapest price, or go to smuggling, just like the illegal immigrants of later generations.

As a result, with the influx of a large number of people from other places, Nanjing's market is now showing a kind of deformed prosperity-the public order is rapidly collapsing, the market transactions are booming, and the prices of daily consumer goods are rising steadily.And the sharply accelerated inflation, in turn, caused panic among the people in the south of the Yangtze River. In the past, they wished to save a few mouthfuls of silver on their beds every day, but now it is extremely hot. Everyone is eager to turn the accumulated silver into cloth, Grain, salt, and any daily consumer goods... As a result, hundreds of millions of taels of Tibetan silver among the people in the south of the Yangtze River also spewed out.

——Just like when the Soviet Union disintegrated, the raging wars in the Jianghuai region and the Nanjing court's support for a new emperor were like a big hand squeezing a sponge, releasing a huge amount of private deposits.And as a place of wealth since ancient times, Jiangnan has always had the most millionaires in the world, not to mention that there are so many Yangzhou salt merchants who moved south with their money and their families... thus forming an unprecedented currency frenzy in the market !

In this way, Pandora's box was completely opened.The silver that has been sleeping for many years has awakened one after another, rushing to the market like a volcanic eruption, and turned into a white horror that created a hyperinflation... Since last month, the price of rice in Nanjing city has risen explosively. I paid ten taels of silver for one stone, and now it seems to have increased by a bit.The unit of measurement for food prices has also changed from stones to liters.The price of pork has also risen to 360 yuan per catty, which is equivalent to fifty times that of the Wanli period!The inflation in this era of metal currency can be compared with Germany after World War I, Japan after the defeat of World War II, and the Kuomintang-controlled areas in the later period of the War of Liberation!The money in the hands of many people has unknowingly become waste!

——The "archaeological team" of the traversers who came to Nanjing for investigation, just caught up with this wave of price increases, which led to a sharp increase in expenses.

As for the outbreak of hyperinflation, the basic countermeasure of the Nanjing court is to ignore it, and even suspect it of contributing to the flames-this Communist Party adhering to the Donglin Party's "light corvee and low tax" policy, both received There is not much tax, and there is no reserve of food and materials, so it is impossible to stabilize prices.Not to mention that many court officials secretly instigated their family members to hoard food, further driving up food prices...in order to make huge profits.

"...It is still relatively short time before food prices start to skyrocket, but compared with last year, the price of food in Nanjing has risen by two or three times, and the price will definitely continue to rise in the future, which will drive the prices of all daily commodities Going up. If we take advantage of this opportunity to sell grain to the south of the Yangtze River, we will definitely make a lot of money! Do you want to try it?" The old professor of history who seems to have research on ancient economics said so provocatively.

Wang Qiu and Political Commissar Guo bowed their heads and thought for a moment about this tempting suggestion, but finally chose to refuse it.

"...Hey, I think it's better to forget it! Although this business sounds like a good profit, but if you really do it, I'm afraid it will be a lot of trouble."

Wang Qiu shook his head and replied, "...First of all, we don't have sales channels in this area, and we can't send warships directly to Yanziji, Nanjing - none of the previous traverser forces has dumped grain in Jiangnan. I don’t know how much work it will take. Secondly, since those unscrupulous grain merchants in the south of the Yangtze River are deliberately hoarding grain and rice, further raising the price, and wanting to grab a fortune from the people in the market, then us foreigners Wouldn't it ruin their good deeds if they rushed in a large amount of grain rashly? God knows what kind of revenge they will have!
Third, we sold millions of stone rice, wheat, corn, and potatoes in Tianjin before, and in return so many refugees need to be given rations for resettlement. The two republics in the Americas don’t have much leftover food.Especially rice, there is really not much to squeeze out for trafficking to the south of the Yangtze River.

Fourth, even if we successfully complete such a large grain transaction, what can we earn in the end?Tens of thousands of taels of silver? "

He said with some disdain, "...the current Huameng is sitting on a few continents of mineral deposits. There is no shortage of silver, land or any other resources at all. The only thing it lacks is population. And if we don't use force, There is no way to collect a large number of immigrants in Jiangnan..."

"...So, let's dismiss this idea of ​​no real benefit! And you don't have any extra time."

Commissar Guo added with a serious expression, "...the Allied forces' Jiangnan strategy has entered the countdown, and the landing battle will soon be launched. We are here this time to take you out of the enemy-occupied area... at the latest I have to leave tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, is there any other attractions you want to see?"

Yu Guozhen exchanged glances with several old professors, thought for a while, and finally replied: "...other attractions are fine, but there is also Baoen Temple Pagoda located outside Jubao Gate. I want to see it no matter what—" This thing was destroyed in the war of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and it no longer exists in the modern world!"

After a while, when night fell, standing on the balcony of a small two-story building in the courtyard, Commissar Guo and Wang Qiu squinted their eyes and looked to the south. Sure enough, there was a bright place, which was said to be the steeple of the Baoen Temple Pagoda. The temple pagoda is made of colored glaze. Under the light of the lights lit in the temple, the glazed glass on the top of the tower is dazzling and colorful, forming a sharp contrast with the dark city.Even from a long distance, it is amazing.

"...Is this the Pagoda of Bao'en Temple? Well, it's really interesting, but the gate of the city has been closed today, and going out of the city may be a little troublesome. Let's take advantage of the time to pack up tonight, and go out of the city to see Bao'en Temple tomorrow morning tower!"

The next day, after temporarily hiring an errand to send a farewell letter to Fang Yizhi, Yu Guozhen, Wang Qiu, a group of old professors, and Ma Tong, who was still suffering from a hangover, rushed to the university. Cars, carrying boxes and cages out of the city from Jubaomen, ready to visit Baoen Temple before leaving Nanjing... After walking out of Jubaomen, the tall glazed pagoda is as conspicuous as a landmark.In comparison, other temples in the temple seem ordinary.

The admirably beautiful glazed pagoda is located in the center of a wide square, surrounded by crowds of people who come to visit and worship.The whole pagoda has nine floors except the base, each floor has eight sides, and each side is pasted with white porcelain. The pagoda is inlaid with many five-color glazed bricks painted with Buddhist motifs such as lions, white elephants, and flying sheep. It is all made of glazed tiles, and then decorated with jewelry, gold and silver items, shining brightly in the sun.Strings of wind chimes are hung under the corner beams on each floor, making pleasant chimes in the breeze.

Although you have seen all kinds of magnificent skyscrapers in the modern world, and you have seen the night view of this glazed pagoda from a distance in Nanjing before, when all the travelers have gone through a long journey and really stood When this glazed pagoda came down, I was still deeply shocked by its momentum and exquisiteness-it is worthy of being a magical building listed among the seven wonders of the medieval world!The supreme treasure of human art and engineering in this era!

"...This pagoda is 78 meters high and the circumference of the base is 19 meters. It took 140 years to build and cost more than two million taels of silver. Since the pagoda was built in the Yongle period, the 1841 ever-burning lights on the pagoda have never been extinguished, so the lights are bright at night. , was particularly conspicuous, and was called the No. [-] tower in the world at that time, also known as the Light of China. Many overseas people must go to worship here. Until the end of the Opium War in [-], British warships went to Nanjing to sign the Nanjing Treaty with the Qing court. At that time, the first thing the British sailors did when they disembarked was still to visit the glazed pagoda of the Dabaoen Temple."

An old professor leaned beside Wang Qiu and explained with great interest, "... Zhang Dai, a famous writer in this era, also wrote an article for this pagoda, saying, 'China's great antiques, Yongle's big Kilnware, then the Repayment Pagoda is also'..."

Next, everyone visited the Buddha statues and murals in the glazed pagoda, and secretly took out their cameras to take pictures countless times in this exquisite art palace.The old professors have been watching and emulating for a long time, but they are still not satisfied-"...Hey, it really is a beautiful and immortal masterpiece! It's a pity that when the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was in conflict, Wei Changhui was afraid that Shi Dakai would observe the situation in the city from the tower, so he actually took this The glass pagoda was blown up, it's really abominable!"

An old professor caressed the murals on the wall and muttered reluctantly, "...I really want to see it for a few more days..."

"...Well, it is indeed a pity to let such an art treasure be destroyed in the flames of war. I am afraid that the city of Nanjing will not be peaceful for long."

Looking up at this ingenious and exquisite ancient building, Wang Qiu also nodded in agreement, "...how about... how about we take it back as a souvenir?"

As he said this, his eyes lit up with excitement, and at the same time he quietly took out the [shrinking light] from the package...

——In the middle of the night that day, an anecdote happened in Baoen Temple in Nanjing: the glazed pagoda in the temple, which had been erected since the Yongle period, was completely gone, leaving only a big hole in the ground... After the news spread, the whole of Nanjing was shocked. There was a great sensation, and there was an endless stream of idlers from the four townships and eight miles who came to Baoen Temple to investigate, making the monks in the temple want to cry without tears.And this unbelievable incident has naturally become a popular topic of conversation among Nanjing citizens.

However, after another half month, the news hotspot that the people in Nanjing are most concerned about was replaced by another piece of news that was also unexpected:

"... Urgent report! Urgent report! The Southern Kun bandits are coming from the sea to attack Hangzhou!!!"