In 1751, the Qianlong Emperor embarked on his first southern tour along the Grand Canal. It is naturally a good thing for the emperor to go out of the Forbidden City to the south to inspect the people's feelings, but the emperor often travels with his family, officials, retinues, etc., and there are more than 2,000 people at every turn, and the cost can be imagined.
The "Qianlong Southern Tour" is now in the National Museum of China and depicts the scene of the Qianlong Emperor's first southern tour along the Grand Canal. On the thirteenth day of the first lunar month of that year, the Qianlong Emperor, with the empress dowager, empress dowager, and other entourage totaling more than 2,000 people and more than 6,000 horses, went out of the Zhengyang Gate through xuanwu gate and swept out of the city of Beijing.
From the picture, it can be seen that although the north at this time has passed the Spring Festival, it is still a dead branch and depressed, a winter scene. However, the emperor had to walk for more than a month to reach Jiangnan, and by that time Jiangnan was already a willow wave warbler.
On the border of Dezhou, Shandong, the Qianlong Emperor boarded the special An Fu Bao and began his own tour of the Grand Canal. Here the river is wide and lined with sails. Historical records record that the total number of ships used in this southern patrol is more than 400. For a time, the southern cruise ships on the Grand Canal covered the river, and the scene was extremely spectacular.
The silver spent by such a huge southern patrol team is not a small amount. It was impossible for all of this silver to be spent from the treasury, and some of the special expenses of the emperor's southern tour had another source. After Qianlong's southern tour to the south, especially in yangzhou, of course, relied on two Huai salt merchants.
After more than 30 days of travel, on the day of February 14 of the lunar calendar, the Qianlong Emperor, who sailed along the Grand Canal, looked up and saw the Wenfeng Pagoda standing on the banks of the Ancient Canal and knew that he had come to the boundary of Yangzhou. Wenfeng Pagoda was built in the Ming Dynasty during the Wanli Dynasty, is the logo of entering and leaving Yangzhou, climbing to the top can look south to the Yangtze River, and can also see the entire Yangzhou City.
At this time, Yangzhou was already peach red and willow green, a scene full of vitality. After enjoying the spring, the Qianlong Emperor was in a good mood, and what made him even more down-to-earth was that he had come to the boundary of the two Huai salt merchants. The Office of the Two Huai Salt Transport Envoys is located in Yangzhou City, and the eight major salt merchants in the Lianghuai area also live here.
Before the southern tour, the Qianlong Emperor had received a report that the two Huai salt merchants had donated more than one million taels of silver for the southern tour. In addition, the salt merchants have prepared a series of surprises to welcome the holy car. The Qianlong Emperor was full of interest and changed his boat at the Gaoqiao Wharf in Yangzhou, and arrived from the inland river to the Jingwenfeng Temple of Tianning Temple to stay in the Gaomin Temple Palace.
This is where his grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor, once lived during his southern tour. The Qianlong Emperor remembered his grandfather and visited the relics left by his grandfather with reverence.
One year, the Kangxi Emperor was very interested, and he also climbed the Tianzhong Pagoda in the temple step by step. When he climbed the tower and looked at it from afar, he felt that the tower was high in the sky, so he named the temple Gaomin Temple. On the west side of Gaomin Temple is a palace built by two Huai salt merchants for the Kangxi Emperor's southern tour. Today, it has become a lotus pond, and Gaomin Temple is no longer what it was.
With the "Map of the Palace of Gaomin Temple" in the Southern Tour Festival, we can understand the situation of the temple and palace in the Qianlong period. From the picture, it can be seen that the size of the palace is several times larger than that of Gaomin Temple, and its architecture includes the court room where the minister is on duty, the front hall, the middle hall and the rear hall where the emperor lives, and the stage for the emperor to watch the play.
For the emperor's southern tour, the two Huai salt merchants not only donated silver to practice the palace, but also built gardens, raised opera classes, and presented food, and zhang luo all the affairs of the emperor in Yangzhou.
Because of the huge financial resources of the salt merchants, the folk also spread the story that the salt merchants built a white pagoda for the emperor overnight. It is said that one year the Qianlong Emperor was visiting the Slender West Lake in Yangzhou, and when the boat arrived at the Wuting Bridge, he said to the staff around him that it was more like the Beihai in Beijing, but unfortunately there was a white tower. The next morning, the Qianlong Emperor came here again to find that there was a white pagoda out of thin air. Legend has it that this white pagoda was made by salt merchants overnight with salt from white flowers. We will not investigate the truth or falsity of the story, the legend is enough to show the wealth of the salt merchants.
Some people may wonder that the price of salt is not high, how can salt merchants earn so much silver? To solve the mystery of the rich world of salt merchants, we must start from China's salt monopoly system.
Since the Han Dynasty, the government has stipulated that merchants must first obtain government permission to sell salt, which is the salt monopoly system. This system once allowed successive dynasties to obtain huge taxes, and in the Qing Dynasty, the salt monopoly system was continued. The salt introduction is the proof of the salt monopoly of the Qing Dynasty, and the salt introduction during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, which is now stored in the Yangzhou Museum, can let people see the appearance of the salt introduction. "Citation" is a unit of measurement, and salt must be uniformly used in the process of distribution and sales of officially issued pockets, and each bag is called a citation.
After the salt merchants obtained the salt, they had to go to the designated place to sell the salt. The business scope of the two Huai salt merchants includes Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi. However, most of the two Huai salt merchants are not From Yangzhou, and their business scope is not only in the Yangzhou area, they all gather in Yangzhou. The reason for this is not only because the throat of the Grand Canal in Yangzhou has unique transportation convenience, but also because yangzhou was the largest salt-producing area in China at that time.
The area south of the Huai River and north of the Huai River, centered on Yangzhou, were the two largest salt-producing areas during the Qing Dynasty. Because the Huai River runs through the salt field, the salt produced is called Huai salt.
Huai salt has a very long history, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period of The Wu Dynasty, the sea began to be boiled here for salt. During the Tang Dynasty, salt works began to be set up in the north and south of the Huai River. By the Song Dynasty, the process of boiling sea for salt was quite mature. During the Qing Dynasty, it became the largest salt-producing area in China, and there is a famous saying that "two Huai salts are salty under the heavens".
Guarding the cornucopia of the Huai salt production area and relying on the convenience of transportation on the Grand Canal, the two Huai salt merchants had the foundation to make a fortune. The price of salt purchased by salt merchants in the Lianghuai salt field is about 5 yuan per kilogram, which is equivalent to today's two yuan and 50 cents, and the price sold to consumers is 20 or 30 yuan per kilogram, which is equivalent to about 15 yuan now, and its profit is as high as 500%. In addition, the total annual sales volume of the two Huai salt merchants is as high as more than 30 million kilograms, according to the Qianlong period, the salt merchants sold the first place.
Huge total sales multiplied by high profits, the secret of the salt merchant Nijin Doujin is here. It is recorded that the actual profits of the two Huai salt merchants were as high as 7.5 million taels of silver per year, while the total annual financial income of the Qing government at that time was only 45 million taels of silver, that is to say, the income of the two Huai salt merchants was equivalent to one-sixth of the total income of the Qing government.
The Qianlong Emperor naturally knew the secret of how the two Huai salt merchants profited. He accepted the silver donated by the salt merchants frankly, and made clear instructions on the use of these silver, requiring special funds to be used exclusively. For example, the construction of roads, bridges, docks and other types of expenses use the local government's silver two. The expenses of the CCB Palace, scenic spots and interior furnishings were made of silver donated by the two Huai salt merchants, and the expenditures were registered separately.
In 1757, during the Qianlong Emperor's second southern tour, the ruins of the Tianning Temple Palace, which were donated by two Huai salt merchants to build for him, were in the West Garden of Yangzhou City. Today's Tianning Temple still has the Qianlong Emperor's Southern Tour Imperial Monument, and the inscription on the stele shows that the main purpose of the Qianlong Emperor's Southern Tour is to inspect water conservancy projects and prevent floods in the south. The Chongning Temple next to Tianning Temple was built by the Qianlong Emperor in 1784 to wish his mother a happy birthday.
Out of the Tianning Temple is the Royal Wharf, which was built by salt merchants to facilitate the Qianlong Emperor to board a boat from the Tianning Temple to swim in the lake. The royal pier is made of bluestone and is still intact after more than 200 years of wind and rain, reminiscent of the Grand View of the Qianlong Emperor's southern tour along the Grand Canal