Soul echo

Chapter 716 The Fair Begins

A few days passed by, and soon it was the day when the fair started.

In the early morning of this day, the whole of Jingzhou entered into a lively atmosphere. People came out of their homes one after another and formed a team to leave the city.

In order to allow all vendors to display their products, Dai Lila delineated a site that was almost as large as Jingzhou, and built many booths there.

In addition to recruiting people from the city and surrounding villages, Delilah did not leave behind those refugees who fled from the plague.

These refugees have no jobs and no income. This is a very dangerous thing. No one knows whether they will take risks in order to make money.

The savings of the refugees have long been used up, and now almost all their food is supported by the government. Although this can make them feel guilty and feel grateful to the Jingzhou government, as time goes by, this feeling will sooner or later Will be worn down, so they desperately need a job.

And the development of the trade fair can just provide them with this job.

In addition to construction work, people are needed for security, logistics, cleaning and other work. The fair may last from seven days to half a month. During this period, there is no need to worry about the refugees who have no income and make trouble.

On this day, Zhong Ye woke up early as usual, before dawn.

After finishing the daily exercise, he took a group of officials to the exhibition venue, while Delilah stayed behind to arrange other affairs, such as fire prevention and anti-theft work.

When Zhong Ye came to the venue with a group of yawning officials, there were already many people in the venue.

As early as a few days ago, the chambers of commerce and sects who came from all over the Huguang Chief Secretary to participate in the fair brought their own goods into the venue, and the venue had knights hired by the Jingzhou government as security guards, patrolling day and night. Generally speaking, it was relatively safe .

Zhong Ye led the team here mainly to organize those chambers of commerce and sects. In addition, he also had to prepare for the coming common people so as to avoid disputes and conflicts when they set up booths.

The scale of this fair is far beyond Zhong Ye and Dai Lila's original idea. According to their original idea, there will be at most 4 to [-] people participating in the fair, and most of them are the people of Jingzhou Prefecture. Unexpectedly, except for In addition to the Chamber of Commerce and sect of Huguang Chief Secretary, there are actually other chambers of commerce and sects of Chief Secretary who want to join.

This also forced them to temporarily increase the venue of the fair and recruit more workers to build the venue.

This has led to the fact that the number of participants in the fair today may reach up to [-]—twice as many as they imagined.

The problem caused by doubling the number of participants is not just a simple 'doubling'. There are so many participants, whether it is security issues, conflicts and contradictions among participants, hygiene issues, and dietary issues, they all have to be doubled. More than three times.

Fortunately, before Zhong Ye went north, he visited other counties in Jingzhou Prefecture and shocked the local officials and aristocratic families. Otherwise, Zhong Ye and the others would feel uncomfortable if they came here at this time.

The first thing Zhong Ye did after returning to Jingzhou was to issue an order to recruit money, rations and even officials from the surrounding counties to help hold the fair. Taxes and participation fees collected at the fair.

Common people only collect taxes if they participate in trade fairs and sell goods, but the minimum tax amount is not low. As long as the money they get from selling goods does not reach that amount, they do not have to pay taxes.

But relatively speaking, they don't have a booth, and the fair only leaves an open space for them.

There are many simple tents made up of a few wooden roots and a piece of cloth on the open space. These tents are connected together and tied and connected with each other by ropes, forming the largest and most magnificent exhibition area in the entire venue.

To hold this fair, Jingzhou Mansion’s taxes for two years have been invested in it. In addition, many merchants have also invested money. Otherwise, this fair might not really be able to open, because the scale is far beyond that of Zhong Ye and the others. Budget.

Merchants don’t get anything back when they invest money, but what they fancy is the fair itself, thinking that this fair can bring them a lot of business opportunities, so they would rather lose some money and help the Jingzhou government to organize the fair stand up.

At the time of Chen, people came in from several gates of the meeting place one after another. They looked left and right, dazzled.

On the periphery of the venue are the booths of various chambers of commerce and sects. Those booths made of hardwood are like houses cut along the center line. Facing the center of the venue is a table, which is filled with special products of various chambers of commerce and sects. .

Walking further inside, you can see a series of food booths - at the beginning, only the chamber of commerce and sects received invitations, but after thinking about it, Dai Lila wrote many invitations by hand and sent them to the Chief Secretary of Huguang various restaurants.

Maybe it was to exchange culinary skills, maybe it was to exchange feelings, maybe it was to compete for fame and fortune, each restaurant more or less sent a few chefs to participate in this trade fair.

Under the temptation of 'enough ingredients, let them use', the vast majority of chefs are willing to lower the price so that most common people can taste the delicious food they make.

After all, most of the chefs who can be sent out are not the chefs of restaurants, and it is impossible for restaurants to allow them to consume ingredients arbitrarily for practice. Now the trade fair is willing to provide them with enough ingredients, but the price is to let them lower the price. Who wouldn't?
Just next to the food area is the exhibition area of ​​local shops from Jingzhou.

Going further inside, you will arrive at the common people's exhibition area. The products they sell may not be as interesting and diverse as those of the chamber of commerce or sect, but there are some merits.

In addition, there are public toilets everywhere in the venue. After all, there are too many people participating in the trade fair and the venue is very large, so it will be difficult to go out for a while.

Moreover, this move can also allow people to get used to it a little bit. After the fair is over, the Jingzhou government plans to build public toilets all over the city to prevent people from defecating indiscriminately.

As the sun rose, there were more and more people in the meeting place. Even if everyone's voice was not loud, tens of thousands of people talking at the same time, added up to be noisy enough.

Incomparably noisy and incomparably complicated, everyone who walked in was an eye-opener.

Even the heads of the chambers of commerce and sect leaders have never seen so many commodities and delicacies.

Seeing that the time was almost up, Zhong Ye arranged the task, and then stepped on the air by himself to climb high into the sky.

"Cough cough!"

He cleared his throat, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them suddenly and shouted, "Silence!"

The loud voice was like a tidal wave, instantly overwhelming everyone's heads, washing away their voices.

Everyone stopped their steps and hands, and looked up at the sky.

"Hi everyone, I'm Zhong Ye!"

Zhong Ye laughed and introduced himself loudly. Afterwards, a tsunami broke out in the venue, and people cheered endlessly, calling his name.

"I am very glad that you can come here today to participate in this fair organized by the Jingzhou government and people from all walks of life to help. I will not talk nonsense. I hope you can ensure the safety of yourself and your property. Parents, please pay attention to your children. If you lose something, please seek help from the staff wearing red armbands. If someone finds something lost, I hope you can also hand it over to the staff. Then, this fair will be It will last from seven days to half a month, depending on the participation enthusiasm of everyone present, and that is all I have to say, I wish you all a good time and have a good time!"

After saying that, Zhong Ye waved his hand towards the crowd below, and fell to the ground.

Afterwards, more enthusiastic applause and cheers rushed to the ground and spread to the entire venue.

After falling to the ground, Zhong Ye smiled at Dai Lila who was standing beside him.

The elf glanced at the opening speech in his hand, sighed, folded it and put it in his pocket.

Changing it might be able to be used as a closing speech, but according to Zhong Ye's performance just now, she really can't guarantee that he will honestly read the closing speech at the closing meeting.

"Mr. Zhong, I would like to ask for two days off."

Zhong Ye's smile faltered, he took a light breath, and scratched his hair in distress.

"...Forget it, you go!" He sighed, and finally agreed to Delilah's request.

Dai Lila smiled sweetly, raised her skirt to salute, and left in a hurry.

Without Dai Lila controlling the trade fair affairs, everything fell on Zhong Ye's shoulders... This time he is in big trouble!

(End of this chapter)