The days when I pretended to be a cat in the Forbidden City[Comprehensive]

Because the people who went to Shu County to investigate have not yet returned, Lu An is still on paid leave.After thoroughly revitalizing the hot spots of the trade fair in Shu County, Lu An had nothing to do at home.

But for Lu Xiaoan, it is very happy to have such a vacation opportunity!

It's a pity that the good times didn't last long. One morning, an acquaintance came to the door.

This person was the owner of the copper workshop who had dealt with Lu An before.Because of the advancement of iron smelting technology in Qin State, the blacksmith workshop has gradually replaced the copper smelting workshop. The copper smelting workshop that was in full swing in the past is now only left with minting coins and making large ritual vessels.

That's right, the development of Qin State, which was many steps behind others in the copper smelting industry, after entering the iron smelting age can be described as rapid development.

Relying on the astonishing reserves of coal, iron ore, and slag removal materials needed for iron smelting in the territory, as well as an efficient operation mechanism, Qin's large and small furnaces hardly go out during the year except for normal cooling.

The intention of Yiren to replace copper with iron is very obvious. On the one hand, iron has its superiority compared with copper. On the other hand, the lack of coins in Qin State forced them to find copper substitutes. Then speed up the pace and fully position copper on currency.Because of the achievements made in doing business with various countries during this period of time, Yiren is very clear about the significance of business to a country.

Although Yiren did not make any move to support the business, but the official did not suppress it, it is already a supportive attitude.The holding of the Shu County Product Festival proves this point even more. Isn’t it an official attitude to support commerce and trade when the governor of one place came to Xianyang to sell local products?

The most important benchmark for commerce is currency, and it is still a standard currency. However, the quality of Qin's currency is not good, and its weight does not match the currency value. Their status in the international market has always been inferior currency.

The currencies of Qi, Zhao, and Yan are the most popular among countries. They have copper mines, and there is no need to put other low-quality metals in the coins. The coins are worth more than the money.

When the currencies of these three countries are exchanged for the currencies of Qin and Chu, there will even be a slight premium. This shows how unpopular Qin's currency is.

There is no problem with Yiren's idea of ​​raising the status of domestic currency, but it is difficult to implement it.

After discussing with Lu Buwei, he intends to spread Qin coins on a large scale. As long as they have enough coins and make them fast enough, the five eastern countries can not catch up with them and they can achieve this goal!

But before achieving this goal, he must first "fight" to achieve a one-to-one exchange ratio when exchanging Qin's currency, so that there is room for follow-up maneuvers.

How to fight has nothing to do with Tongfang. The problem is that Qin Wang needs a lot of copper coins to pour into the market to achieve this goal. Qin does not have so many copper coins!

Lu An glanced at the workshop owner in surprise, and made it if he had no money. The old father planned to fight the economic war, and the money would not be used in the country of Qin, and there would be no inflation.

The problem lies in making this matter.

The owner of the shop gave a wry smile. Their minting speed could not keep up with King Qin’s request. The minting method used by the Qin State was to pour copper liquid into the pottery plate and then take it out. Of course, because the pottery clay needs time to cool and dry in the shade, the clever Qin craftsmen used it. Models of stone and copper making, making disposable utensils disposable, was already an innovation.

This innovation has been tested very well before, so Tongfang can also save one process. When the workload is required to complete, the little thief is lazy to live a leisurely life or something.

However, who knew that misfortune would come from heaven, this time the king of Qin suddenly needed a large amount of money, and Tongfang relaxed because they used stone and copper models, and they did not make pottery fans in large quantities like in the past!

Originally, such a large-scale demand only needs to take out the darkly stored Tao Fan, but now they don't have it, and after the Qin State's superior organization has issued a task, there is no room for recovery. If they fail to complete the task, they will have to suffer. punish.

This time it was really fatal.

After hearing the news, the owner of Tongfang rushed to work for a few days, and found that the gap was too big to fill, so he went to find a few friends to find a way. Later, the owner of Tiefang, who was in competition with them, asked him to come to Lu An to try it out. He came only after trying.

The owner of the copper workshop looked remorseful, "I shouldn't be lazy, why am I so stupid! Lu Xiaolang, can you think of a way to find a way to mint coins in a short time like iron smelting? The fact is that I am alone My responsibility is that I didn't let them make Tao Fan when I saw other models."

"I also ask Lu Xiaolang to think of a way to help us Tongfang pass this test, and then I will go to apologize."

People are begging to go to the front of the house, what else can I do?

Lu An went around the copper workshop and observed their minting methods. While the owner of the workshop was looking for help, the workers in the workshop were still busy minting coins and making clay day and night.

It is very convenient to make a fan made of pottery. You only need to print coins on it back and forth and then add a pipe that can lead to copper liquid. It is more time-consuming to dry in the shade.

The clay must be completely dry before it can withstand the copper liquid, otherwise it is easy to crack, so the pottery fan basically takes more than a month from production to use.Therefore, after making copper and stone models, the workshop no longer uses pottery models.

The work in the workshop has a certain degree of flexibility. As long as the work quota is completed, the superiors will not care how you complete it.Usually, the various templates produced by the workshop are enough for the monthly tasks and there is a little surplus, but in the face of today's urgent tasks, there is insufficient energy. Although they are not one-off, these two templates need to be cooled. longer.

It wasn't that Shangfeng was in trouble, but Shangfeng also knew that the mint in the workshop would store pottery models, so he also gave them a quota according to the conventional data, and gave them a month's time.According to this data, it is nothing more than using up all the pottery fans stored in the workshop at one time. At most, it will be accumulated after hard work. Who would have thought that the copper workshop would not accumulate more pottery fans because of technological improvements?

"It's too late to make Tao Fan now." The owner of the workshop wiped his tears as soon as he saw the bustling scene in the workshop. Because of his wrong decision, all the craftsmen in the workshop will be punished accordingly. According to the Qin law, they All had to be punished by corporal punishment.

Once subjected to corporal punishment, it will be ruined forever.

But even so, his subordinates did not scold him, and comforted him that it was everyone's decision not to be Tao Fan. These days, they have been rushing to work day and night, thinking that they can do more while they can, and then do less. penalty point.

This scene made him feel uncomfortable.

Lu An lowered his eyes, and after pondering for a moment, he slowly said: "I have a way."

If you want to mint a large number of coins in a short period of time, you must solve the problem of the template manufacturing time, and Lu An just knows that there is a way to solve it.

That is using sand as a mold.

The thermal conductivity of sand is extremely poor, and it will not be melted by copper water. As long as it is compacted, its solid effect is also good, and it is basically no problem if it does not encounter bumps.The copper liquid cools down quickly after injection, and the raw materials can be used repeatedly.

Almost as soon as the wooden model was made, this method was tried and done, and the copper coins produced were basically the same as those made by other methods.The owner of the copper workshop was so excited that he burst into tears, and was persuaded by Lu An to go to the back room with all the craftsmen to rest overnight, and the work officially started the next day.

These craftsmen were all skilled workers, and they quickly mastered this technique, while Lu An saw them struggling to polish the coins, so he went to the carpenter next door and asked them to make a foot-operated grinding wheel for them to use.

In this way, the owner of the copper workshop finally caught up with the delivery date of the currency, and he also honestly surrendered to his superiors and admitted his mistakes.Only then did Shangfeng realize that he had almost made a mistake, so he hurriedly took the owner of the Tongfang workshop to find Xiangbang Lu Buwei to plead guilty.

Lu Buwei was also stunned, and even shook his head and laughed when he learned that his son had also got involved in it.As Xiangbang, he is the general manager of all projects in the country. To put it bluntly, he is responsible for any man-made mistakes in the country. Although this time it seems that something went wrong in the workshop, he has to be punished by the superiors. No good, the final result depends on whether the other person wants to protect him or not.

It seems that Lu An's move is helping Fangzhu, but in fact, is it helping him?

The only person in the state of Qin who can transcend the law is King Qin Yiren, and Lu Buwei brought this matter to the court for discussion.Lu Buwei's own impeachment made all the courtiers dumbfounded. Although they were shocked by this kind of magical operation, everyone still discussed the case seriously.

Because it did not lead to the worst result in the end, this matter was ultimately dereliction of duty as the final result.

The owner of the workshop was dismissed from his post, he fought [-] times and fined three sets of armor, and one of them, Ying Shangfeng, was cut off as a warning because of insufficient supervision.

And because Lu Buwei came up with a brand-new coinage method (Lu Xiaoan gave him the credit), he was rewarded with the third class of the People's Lord. Combined with his original Lord's title, these penalties can just be offset.

In the end, the owner of the workshop was cut to nothing and paid a fine, but this was already the best ending he could not have imagined.He took his wife and children back to his hometown, relied on his own skills to become a bronze sculpture artist, and later carved a lot of bronze seals for Lu An, this is a later story.

The departure of the owner of a copper workshop did not cause much splash, because Qin Wang and other people began to make moves.

In the autumn of this year, the heads of the seven countries gathered for a meeting, and the stranger smiled and expressed to the other six countries the displeasure that Qin's currency was not respected.

The kings of the other six countries were all baffled and didn't understand what kind of tricks King Qin was playing, but in order not to anger King Qin, they still agreed that Qin coins could be exchanged with their own currencies one-to-one.

——Anyway, whether to change or not is up to our own people, and it’s okay to agree.

Unexpectedly, in the next few years, the people of the five countries suddenly discovered that the domestic Qin Banliang was sweeping the country, and that [-]% of the people walking in the streets and alleys used Qin Banliang.

This, this is impossible!Where did the people of Qin get so much money!

Of course, these coins were not made by the old Qin. In fact, they did not have so many copper coins. The people who minted the coins were basically people from the five eastern countries.

The reason is simple. With the same currency value, the copper content of Qin Banliang is low, and its actual value is lower than that of the five countries' own currencies, but their legal value is the same.

In other words, if the legal value of everyone's currency is one yuan, then the actual value of Qin Banliang is seven cents, and the actual value of the five countries' currencies is eight cents, and there is a difference of one cent.

Then naturally some people will focus on the price difference of dime, and they will buy and melt the national currencies of the five countries on a large scale to make Qin Banliang. A dime may not seem like much, but it is a copper coin. If the data goes up, among them The profits are naturally very considerable.

To put it bluntly, it is to drive out good money with bad money.

And Qin State did nothing in it, everything was the choice of the people in the Five Kingdoms.

The common people use currency to follow two principles, one is value preservation, and now the most valuable copper coins are the currencies of the three countries of Yan, Zhao and Qi. These three countries mainly use sword coins, but Yan and Zhao have been in war for a long time before, and their economic strength has been damaged. , the supply of its currency to the domestic market is not enough to make it difficult to circulate, and it is difficult for Qi to support it alone.

The other is easy availability. Simply put, this kind of currency is easier to obtain and carry in circulation, and its value is not so low, so people can naturally accept it.

Qin Banliang is the latter.

However, although the legal value of Qin Banliang is the same, its value is actually slightly discounted. In order to balance this relationship, the five eastern countries have unknowingly raised the price of the goods a little bit.

They began to have a slight inflation, and gradually, people from the five countries discovered that their goods seemed... not so easy to sell in other countries?

Just when everyone faintly felt that something was wrong, a person passed away.

That person is the Lord Xinling of Wei State, Wei Wuji.

The author has something to say:

Currency wars also exist in modern times, but modern currency wars also involve another function, that is, using currency as a kind of monitorable information.

For example, the U.S. dollar is the common currency in the world, and international trade is also customarily paid in U.S. dollars.

Therefore, when the United States says that I will impose economic sanctions on XXX country, and you are not allowed to do business with him, he can monitor the relevant US dollar flow. If there is an outflow of US dollars in XXX country to a certain country, he will know immediately, oh! !A certain country of yours did business with XXX country without listening to me.

This kind of monitoring is basically impossible to avoid, unless you trade in cash, but cash transactions are useless, because there is a currency number, it is difficult to check at best.

So

So now the RMB has become the settlement currency of many countries.