Ming Jiajing: Starting from Immortality

Chapter 161 Human trafficking and barter trade!
Not to mention the shock that Zhang Juzheng’s cabinet felt.

Before the Hui merchants are destroyed and the officials with the shadow of Hui merchants in the court are cleared out, the dialogue between the emperor and his ministers in Yuxi Palace will not take place for the time being.

Fengzhou Beach.

As the two sides agreed on the negotiation matters.

The trade in Datong Town was opened, and the first batch of 40 million kilograms of rice was bought by the Tatars at a price of 4 million taels of silver.

The first batch of 100,000 pieces of silk was also bought by Tatar at the price of 1.5 million taels of silver.

Oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, everything sold in the Ming Dynasty that was not available on the grasslands was eaten by the Tatars.

In the first trade session, the Ming Dynasty sold goods worth tens of millions of taels of silver.

This even seemed extremely cheap to the Tatars, who were used to being extorted by Shanxi merchants.

If they had gone through the Shanxi merchants, 10 million taels of silver could have bought at most 40 million kilograms of grain, but now they could buy so many things. After cursing the Shanxi merchants for being black-hearted and deserving to be uprooted by the Ming court, the Tatars went back singing, dancing, and jumping high.

When Wang Chonggu, the governor of Xuanda in the Ming Dynasty, heard that the Tatars paid for the goods in cash, his eyes were full of coldness.

There are no silver mines on the grassland that produce silver. There is no doubt that all this silver was plundered by the Tatars from the Ming Dynasty.

Using the silver looted from the Ming Dynasty to buy the Ming Dynasty's grain, salt, tea, silk and other items, how could the national hatred and family feuds be forgotten?
The Ming Dynasty did not buy nothing in this trade. Just in terms of livestock, it bought nearly 200,000 heads, half of which were cattle and half were sheep. It spent 1.5 million taels of silver, which was exactly the price of 100,000 rolls of silk.

For the first time, the Tatars took out 20,000 horses from the Hetao area. There was not even a single poor horse. All of them were good horses that could be directly trained into war horses.

Of course, the price was also high. A good horse cost fifty taels of silver, which was actually not much different from extortion. But just like the Tatars consumed the high-priced grain and high-priced silk of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, which was extremely short of war horses, could only consume 20,000 good horses at the price of one million taels of silver.

It was exceptionally cold outside the Great Wall this year, and the Tatars did not sell large quantities of cowhide, sheepskin, and animal skins that could be used to make clothes. After all, they were not enough even for themselves.

The Ming Dynasty consumed 100,000 "skins" sporadically, spending less than one million taels of silver.

The biggest transaction in the entire trade was not food, tea, horses, silk, etc., but population.

The earliest record of Tatar was found in the 20th year of Kaiyuan in the Tang Dynasty, which has a history of more than 900 years. During these 900 years, it is impossible to calculate how many people the Tatar burned, killed and looted from the Central Plains.

The most accurate calculation for the Ming Dynasty was from the 20th to the 40th year of Jiajing. During these 20 years, the Tatars burned, killed, and looted about one million women and children from the Ming court.

During these twenty years, most of the women were killed or tortured to death after being abducted by the Tatar cavalry and taken to the grasslands, and most of the abducted children were also killed or cooked and eaten.

But there are still some women and children of the Ming Dynasty who were abused and are still alive.

This was a symbol of the Ming Dynasty's incompetence during those twenty years. The Ming Dynasty felt sorry for them, and there was an imperial decree to bring the people back home at all costs.

The Tatars did not refuse, but offered a "sky-high price". Every Ming person, regardless of old, weak, sick, disabled, woman or child, was sold to the Ming Dynasty for thirty taels of silver.

The Ming Dynasty accepted it. The Ming Dynasty did not know how many Ming people were still alive on the grassland, and even the Tatars did not know. In total, the Tatars returned 200,000 Ming people and took away 6 million taels of silver.

Many Chinese people chose to commit suicide when they returned to the land of the Ming Dynasty.

Several years, dozens of years, or even decades of humiliation by foreign races would have made people collapse long ago. Perhaps their only obsession was to die on the land of the Ming Dynasty and return to their homeland.

People live in this world by relying on their breath. When the breath is gone, the obsession is gone, and the person is gone too.

Wang Chonggu did not stop it because he knew that this was far from the end. Twenty years was enough time for a lot of things to happen. For these returning compatriots, their relatives might be gone long ago, and their memories might be vague, so they might even have forgotten where their hometown was.

Even if they find their hometown and relatives, how will their relatives and fellow villagers view them? Will they be able to reintegrate into the lives of the people of the Ming Dynasty?
This is a country of etiquette.

The church is the last straw that breaks the camel's back for many people here, and death will be the choice of some desperate people.

In order to prevent this from becoming the choice of most people, Wang Chonggu looked at the frightened eyes of the returning people and said loudly: "The emperor has issued an edict, granting you blessings and allowing you not to return home. The court has found a suitable place for you to live. If you don't want to look for your relatives and hometown, you can live there first for one year, two years, eight years, ten years. When you want to look for your relatives and hometown, the court will help you find them.

If you want, the court can erase all your past, give you new yellow books, ivory plates, and land, and make you a new citizen of the Ming Dynasty. "

The living habits of the grassland herdsmen were very different from those of the people of the Ming Dynasty. The emperor and the court gave the returning people a process of familiarization and adaptation.

The court would provide a place for the returnees to live and send people to teach them the habits they needed to restore. In short, the court would do everything possible to ensure that the returnees could become ordinary citizens of the Ming Dynasty without being discovered or discriminated against.

Wang Chonggu was close to the cabinet chief Zhang Juzheng, and learned about the court's investment in returning Chinese. Over the past ten years, he poured in 20 million taels of silver to help returning Chinese return to the lives of the people of the Ming Dynasty.

In the first year, the Ministry of Revenue prepared 6 million taels of silver for the returning citizens, which was distributed to more than 100,000 people. Each person received 30 taels of silver or more, which was enough for their living.

"Those who want to find their relatives and hometown immediately, please stand on the left side of the parade ground. Those who want to wait and start over, please stand on the right side of the parade ground." Wang Chonggu asked the returning compatriots to make a choice.

Almost all people under the age of 30 chose the right side of the parade ground. There was still a lot of time, and for them, a new life and a new beginning were more important.

Having endured all the hardships in Tartary, I don’t mind waiting a little longer to find my relatives.

As for those over thirty years old, due to the torture of the Tatars and the hardships of wind, frost, rain and snow on the frontier, most of them have white hair and are seriously ill. People would believe that they are a group of old men in their sixties or seventies.

No matter how well they are taken care of, they will not live for many more years. Before they die, they want to return to their hometown, see their relatives, and be buried in their hometown.

There is not much time left for them!
Wang Chonggu respected everyone's choice and asked the soldiers to register those who wanted to start over and lead them to other places for temporary resettlement.

Let the Ministry of Revenue send people to immediately check the people who are looking for their relatives, send them back to their hometowns as soon as possible, and help them find their relatives.

Before I knew it, it was dawn.

(End of this chapter)