The prosperity of the grass market gave birth to the "licorice king" outside Serbia
One
Hekou Town, Tocto County, on the bank of the Yellow River
This is a late-rising industry, and is located in Hekou Town, Toketo County, a hundred miles southwest of Guisuicheng, and it is only more than forty years ago, but it has played a great role in promoting the commercial development of Guisui, especially in the case of a large decrease in tea turnover, the commerce of Naturalized City was becoming increasingly dying, and the rise of Hekou Town Grass Market invisibly injected a "booster" into Guisui's commerce, promoting decades of economic prosperity in Guisui, especially the formation of the "Naturalized City Tertiary Industry" for more than two hundred years "If there is not enough market to "feed", it will surely disappear in a very short time, which is extremely detrimental to the future development of the naturalized city, although Hekou Town is located in the southwest of the naturalized city, after all, it is not far away, and it is not small to have a lot of commercial pull for the naturalized city. Therefore, the reason why the "service industry" formed in Naturalized City for hundreds of years can continue is indispensable with the opening of the licorice market in Hekou Town that year.
1. Grass shop
At first, the licorice trade was carried out only on the banks of the Yellow River in Hekou Town, Tuo County, and it was carried over by boats carrying alkali to Naturalized City and grain, oil, and red willows from Sanhu Bay, and only sold by the river to local medicine shops and herb dealers from Naturalized City, and later, due to the increasing number of people coming to buy grass in Naturalized City and Datong Province in Shanxi, even many merchants in the mouth also flocked to the house, and the more boatmen carried.
People and sheepskin boats waiting to unload on the banks of the Yellow River at the mouth of the river
By the First World War, there was a war in Turkey's licorice source, and the world monopoly of licorice, the American businessman Mellon & Co., Ltd. cut off the source of goods in the Middle East, and turned to the western region of China to buy licorice, which virtually increased the demand for licorice in Hekou Town, and for a time the licorice of Hekou was exported to Guangdong, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Shanghai, Ningbo, Anhui, Hunan, Jiangxi, Hebei, Henan, Tianjin; In the Jiaqing year, the Ma family in Baode Prefecture, Shanxi was the first to see the business opportunity, and opened the first "grass shop" in Hekou Town, receiving customers for business and peddling trading, and then more than 40 years until the early years of Guangxu, Hekou Town successively opened countless grass shops, during which there were closures halfway, and there were also those who continued to open, but the upper scale has always maintained Qinghecheng, Xincheng, Risheng Gongyichang, Qingji, Yulong, and Jiyichang, with capital between 1,000 and 3,000 taels of silver.
Straw shops generally have spacious warehouses for storing licorice and guest rooms for receiving buyers, as well as skilled chefs and corresponding prostitutes, and other service facilities, because the customers of the straw shop are very generous, and it is common to invite guests to stay in prostitution. Every morning after drinking tea in the tea house, each grass shop takes samples to the guest rooms of each grass shop to report the market to the customers, and promotes the transaction, and the two parties to the transaction need to pay two cents of commission to the store for every two silver business, the commission is the actual profit of the grass shop, and all the expenses of the grass shop are within these two commissions
Camels waiting for their cargo in front of the straw shop
Although the estuary is a large grass market in the north, the most important turnover goods - licorice are all transported by the Yellow River, and all these transactions can only be completed before the Yellow River is frozen and frozen, once this season, licorice can not be transported, the transaction naturally stops, the grass market is closed, all rely on the "grass" to eat the industry, what catering entertainment, daily groceries, sugar, alcohol, tobacco and tea are all depressed, until the opening of the river next year, can be prosperous again.
2. Pasture
The prosperity of the grass market has made many shrewd businessmen in the mainland see business opportunities, and they have flocked to the three sides of northern Shaanxi, Ike Zhaomeng, Alxa, and even Ningxia, Gansu and other places to "pay tribute" and "pack grass" to the prince's mansion of various banners. At that time, Wang Ye's mansion was generally sealed on the nineteenth day of the first month of the following year, and it was not opened until the nineteenth day of the first month of the following year, and a ceremony was held before the opening of the seal, and the merchants always came to the Wang Ye mansion before the opening of the seal, and came to pay homage to Wang Ye for the New Year, of course, it was inevitable to give a thick gift to Wang Ye and the officials, and once the Wang Ye Mansion agreed, it would never be wrapped to his family again, this was the rule of that year, and the Dalat banner was excluded, they were forever owned by the Baotou "Xitan Royal Family".
So, how is licorice pulled out? Grass is divided into spring and autumn seasons, spring Qingming to Lixia, autumn to frost, depending on the season, the quality of grass is different. After a winter of underground nourishment, the spring has not yet sprouted and spit out leaves, and the grass taken out is of the best quality, the texture is firm, the powder is more and less tendon, and the amount is taken out; In autumn, the climate is getting colder, the stems and leaves of licorice are drying up day by day, the grass heart is also full, and the texture taken out is okay, but it is not as good as that taken out in spring, and the amount is not as much as in spring. In some places, grass is also taken out in summer, but the quality is the second, the texture is loose, and the tendons are more and less powder. Because the semen of the roots is completely out, the branches and leaves are grown.
Most of the people who dig out the grass are the poor, there are many Han people, and few Mongolians. The shovel used is also different from usual, it is narrow and long, and the field prepares special grass and lends it to the diggers. There are also local people who take advantage of the agricultural leisure time to dig out, and there are also those who specialize in digging grass, not in other businesses, and find that four or five grass seedlings grow together, most of which are thick strips of licorice, so as not to shovel the roots and hurt the root bark, a labor force can take out thirty or fifty pounds of wet grass every day, and there are also those who can take out one hundred and eighty pounds, that is, the difference between amateur and professional. At that time, the largest grassland outside the border wall was the "West Mill House" of Dalat Banner, which was opened by the Baotou Xitan Wang family.
Wang Rui, the ancestor of the Wang family, came from Baode Prefecture in Shanxi during the Qianlong period, suffered in Dalat Banner Huang and Shuo Zhao, was honest and diligent, and had talent, won the trust of Zhao Li, rented the thorny land of the summoning to Puqibu in the east, Honghai Zhula in the west, Shaliang in the south, and the Yellow River in the north, and recruited tenants to cultivate and cultivate, and ten years later, it became a field of ointment. After that, Wang Rui's son Wang Tianshen rented the land of Trahai Reed from Meiligen, the western gongqi of the Urat Banner, so he connected the Dalat Banner in the south and the Yellow River in the north, and opened canals to cultivate it. Eighteen li southwest of the Zhaojun tomb on the south bank of the Yellow River, southwest of Baotou, a gang house was set up, and the name of the milling house was built: West Milling House.
After the autumn, the raw grain was milled into rice and hired by ship to transport it back to Baode, so that the "Zhuanghu Trading" became bigger and bigger, and the "West Milling House" became the name of the village. Hekou Town, Jiaqing Niantuo County, set up a grass market, and the Wang family farmed the land on the one hand, and on the other hand, the land was encompassed to the outside of the beam, and the licorice was collected, so there were many branches, including Zhonghe West, West Wancheng, Wanxing West, Zai Cheng West, Quancheng West, etc., monopolizing the licorice purchase of the entire Dalat Banner, and his family alone collected more than 2.5 million jin of grass every year, so there was a saying that 'the Wang family did not reach the estuary, and the price of grass did not open'.
In other places, Hangjinqi is Zhang Liuxiang from Dingxiang, Shanxi, and later Guangshengheng from Baode Zhangjiakai, Desheng Heng from Lijiakai in Taigu, and Yonghexi from Zhangkai in Xinzhou all have the same equipment as the "West Milling House"; The Otok Banner is the three grasslands of Xiangtaikui, Xiangtaihe, and Jingsheng Kui opened by Dong Fuxiang as the "three major numbers of Dongfu", the upper wangye land is Yichengyuan joint venture between the Baotou Ma family and the Baode Yang family, and the lower wangye land is opened by the Zhangjia in Xinzhou "Guangqing Tai", all of which are planted while harvesting grass and grazing livestock, and a large amount of licorice pours into the estuary from the waterway every year, waiting for the transit here. To some extent, the formation of the licorice industry in Hekou Town has invisibly continued the economic prosperity of Naturalized City for decades.
Outside the north gate of the naturalized city