North and South groceries

At this time, the railroad tracks were being laid outside Chang'an City. Because of this, the people inside and outside the city were also lively for a while.

But the excitement is over, and in this city of Chang'an, you will see some new things from time to time, and the more you hear and see, the more and more people gradually calm down.

The issue that everyone is most concerned about now is the legendary sweet potato. Some people say that the imperial court will distribute sweet potato seedlings to every household in Chang'an City in the spring of next year.

Some people also said that there is no such thing. The sweet potato seeds of the first year will be supplied to some drought-prone places in the east and north of the Guannei. The people of Chang'an may not be able to do it for a while. Only those well-connected families can get some for their own cultivation. .

There are different opinions in this city, everyone can say what they say, and they don’t know who to believe, but everyone is still looking forward to getting a few sweet potato seedlings next year.

As for how people in the capital can grow sweet potatoes at home, this is indeed impossible in the 21st century, but it was very common in the seventh century AD.

At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the Chang'an City where everyone lived was built by the Sui Dynasty earlier, and it was called Daxing City at that time.

The Sui Dynasty was a short-lived dynasty. Coupled with the change of dynasties, the population of Chang'an was also damaged. During the Zhenguan period, the population of Chang'an City was not very large. With a width of hundreds of meters, a family is usually as large as a few acres of land. It is common to grow some vegetables and food in one's own yard.

Right now it is the Zhenguan period, and it has only been twenty years since the previous war-torn era. Many people in Chang'an survived the war, so they have a sense of crisis.

Since there is a place to grow vegetables and food at home, it must be planted. It may become a living ration at critical times, and those street streets are often planted with vegetable crops by the roadside.

In the past, this situation was more serious. In the past few years, all the streets and streets in Chang'an City have been paved with concrete roads, and the situation is relatively better.

I heard that sweet potatoes, when you put a small seedling in the ground in spring, a nest can grow in autumn, and a nest can produce ten or twenty catties, and one mu of land can sow about three thousand plants, which is at least three or four. Ten loads of output.

If planting millet and wheat, even if it is carefully tended, the yield per mu is only three or four dan. If the land is poor and difficult to irrigate, it is not bad to be able to produce one or two dan. In a disaster year, there will be no harvest.

In comparison, this sweet potato is simply a godsend, and even those Kunlun people with black skin and curly hair have become very popular in Chang'an City for a while.

There are also some gentry men who stand up and say that although sweet potatoes are prolific, they are not as good as five grains containing the essence of heaven and earth. They advise the people to eat more five grains and not to overeat sweet potatoes because they are fat and sweet.

The common people also know that five grains support people, so the grain yield is not low. In recent years, with the increasing population in Chang'an City, the price of grain has also risen steadily. The grain produced in Guanzhong can no longer support the population of Chang'an. The lower reaches of the plains transported grain, and the grain transported from other places, among other things, cost a lot of money just by foot.

Besides, the common people in Chang'an City have never even seen sweet potatoes, and they don't know when they will be able to plant them, so how can they eat them at this time?

Thinking about it, those gentry officials should have eaten sweet potatoes, and I don't know how much they ate, but they ate a lot of that precious grain as a meal or a pastime?

There are also people who say that in Changle County in the west of Longxi, the people in that county have planted sweet potatoes this year, and this year they planted them in Baochang's house first, and in the coming year, every household will be able to plant them .

Many merchants who came from the west said the same thing. Many people envied them when they heard it. I went down, why, not because of that Lishi Luo Sanlang, speaking of it, the Kunlun people who donated grain seeds this time, I heard that they are also Na Luo Sanlang's disciples...

The Luo family also heard such words from time to time. Lin Wulang was a little worried when he heard people say this in the workshop one day. It is not good for Luo Yong.

Aunt Luo is also worried, and she doesn't know where the evil wind is blowing from. Is there any villain playing tricks behind her back? This is clearly to push Luo Yong to the forefront.

Fortunately, not long after, a caravan transporting white drape arrived in Chang'an City and sold it in the east city of Chang'an City. This time they brought in a lot of white drape, and the price was lower than last year, so the people in the city They went to buy one after another.

After that, many caravans transporting white drape came into Chang'an City one after another, and the price of white drape dropped again and again. Everyone in the streets and alleys began to talk about how much the price of white drape dropped today. Thinking about when is the right time to start buying cloth, I am afraid that after the current period of time, the price of the white folded cloth will rise again.

"There is no need to worry about price increases."

"Do you know how many white jasmines are planted in the land on the west of the river?"

"It's in pieces, all over the mountains and plains."

"You can't see the side at all."

"The land on the west of Hexi is suitable for planting white fringe flowers, and there will be more farmers planting this plant in the next year or two."

"The yield of grain grown in their area is very low, and some fields can't even be planted at all. If they don't plant white flowers, they can only be left unused."

"This white folded cloth is not worse than linen cloth."

"I heard that there is another kind of cloth, which is a blend of white velvet and hemp thread."

"And the floral cloth is also very pretty, but the price is a bit high."

"How can the price not be high? After all, it was transported from Longxi all the way, and it can't compare with our local linen."

"..."

Even if the price of this white folded cloth has dropped a lot compared to previous years, it is still a bit more expensive than the linen cloth produced in the pass.

It’s just that there is an expensive market for the expensive. Nowadays, most of the men and women in Chang’an City are wearing white folded cloth. If anyone doesn’t have one or two white folded clothes, it’s obvious that they can’t keep up with the trend.

There are also some quick-witted merchants who stuff white velvet into the interlayer of their clothes to make jackets, which are a little cheaper than the silk jackets, and they are also soft and warm, just right for winter wear.

There are several clothing stores in the East City, and they hire skilled women to make clothes in the courtyard behind the store. Recently, the store has sold white daisy flowers from the merchants from the west, which are specially used to sew this kind of coat. Son, during this period of time, people came in and out of those shops every day, and the business was booming.

It has been more than a month since the white cloth from the Dunhuang area has been transported to Chang'an City. The people in Chang'an have already spent a round of what they should consume. There is no way, the place is too far away. , can't catch up.

There are also some merchants who buy goods, especially those merchants from other places who come from the lower reaches of the Yellow River, but the price is also quite low. The more ordinary white cloth is, the harder it is to make money, but those high-quality floral cloths can still be sold. Relatively good price, relatively large profit margins.

Nanbei Grocery does not sell white folded cloth this year, nor does it sell patterned and white cloth. They sell a kind of scarf, which is long, about one foot wide and two feet long, and square, about one foot wide and one foot long.

The towel was spun with various patterns, but it was a bit like the pattern of the peony cushions earlier, they were not all the same, most of them had been modified, the colors were different, and there were some new patterns that had not been seen before.

There is nothing unusual about these, but the strange thing is that these towels are all made of looped brocade, each piece of towel is woven fluffy and soft, neatly folded, and placed on the shelf.

At the beginning, some people thought it was a new type of sweat towel, but after asking the young men who sold the goods, they found out that it was actually a face towel, which was specially used for cleansing.

Everyone was surprised when they heard this. In the past, most of the cleansing towels were cut out by each household. Good people used good fabrics, and poor families used rags to make up for it. Start the business of this scarf.

Although it is unheard of, but there are many rich people in Chang'an City, such a soft and beautiful scarf only costs more than ten pennies, so you can buy it as you like.

Once you buy it and use it, you will know the difference. The softness and water absorption are incomparable to other fabrics. No matter how expensive and gorgeous those cloth towels are, they are just superficial and not suitable for use.

Use such a face towel, dip it in some hot water, wring it until it is half dry, and then rub it with a little refined suet soap, tsk tsk...

In the next two days, many families sent their family members to Nanbei Grocery to buy face towels.

It stands to reason that Luo Erniang and the others sent a lot of goods this time, enough to sell for some time, the bad thing is that women in this era like to hoard dowries, and they buy some good things and put them away. , Packed in exquisite or simple wooden boxes, handed down from mother to daughter to grandchildren, from generation to generation.

These women in Chang'an often bought dozens or hundreds of towels, and within two days they emptied the inventory of North and South groceries.

Luo Siniang was crowded at the North-South grocery store that day, her hair was all loose, and she was chased by many people asking when the second batch of goods would be delivered, and whether there were any more this winter, which made her annoyed. big.

It was so easy to get out and return to the White Mansion with a whole body of exhaustion, but as soon as he got off the carriage, he saw Bai Yimao directing a few servants to get down from his car, bundles of towels, let alone There are also hundreds.

"Why did you buy a face towel?" Si Niang laughed and said, "As a dowry?"