Chapter 46 Prince Yu Buys Land
Chapter 46 Prince Yu Buys Land
After more than half a month of hot sales, Yiran Sugar had brought Zhu Zaigui a profit of more than 10,000 taels of silver. When the money appeared in the palace's account office, Zhu Zaigui's smile almost reached the corners of his mouth.
The people of Beijing are really too enthusiastic and too rich.
Now even major restaurants have begun to rush to buy Yiran Tang’s Yiran candy as their signature dish to attract customers. This shows that Yiran candy has become a comprehensive hit product in a short period of time.
"Your Majesty, you are truly amazing. I admire you so much!"
Meng Chong never dreamed that one day there would be more than 10,000 taels of income on the palace's account, and this number was gradually increasing as time went by.
"Your Majesty has so much money that our palace will never be able to spend it all."
Meng Chong excitedly said this to Zhu Zaigui again.
Zhu Zaigui, who was looking at the account book, showed a disdainful expression on his face after hearing what Meng Chong said. He snorted, "Look at your lack of ability? What's this little money? Don't you see that I don't even have a decent manor under my name? I want to buy land!"
Meng Chong was stunned when he heard this, "Why does the prince want to buy land?"
Zhu Zaigui said, "The purpose of buying land is definitely to expand production capacity and produce more products. Although our small workshop in the palace can temporarily meet the needs of some high-end customers, high-end customers are not stupid. Once the novelty wears off, if we haven't innovated and come up with new products in time, how long do you think our Yiran candy can be popular?"
Zhu Zaigui's theory made Meng Chong confused. Isn't Yiran Sugar a mature product yet?
It is obvious that Meng Chong lacks awareness of product series and the importance of product iteration.
If a good product wants to continue to have fresh vitality, it must keep changing.
For example, as Zhu Zaigui knew, the beverage king of later generations, Coca-Cola, the taste of their cola is not static. There will be corresponding fine-tuning every once in a while, and even the packaging and promotional slogans will always change.
This change will also make people subconsciously feel that Coca-Cola is a fashionable and vibrant product, and they will not cause aesthetic fatigue with the passage of time.
That’s why their product lines will become more and more abundant and their sales will become higher and higher.
Therefore, Zhu Zaigui will never let Yiran Sugar remain unchanged. He will invest more manpower and material resources to iterate and expand Yiran Sugar's products, as well as fine-tune and change its product packaging.
This allows it to last for a long time and people of all ages can have a sense of freshness in it that makes it always new.
"Go find a large, secluded piece of land near the capital. I want to build a large production center near the capital! Let them see what standardized and process-based production means."
Zhu Zaigui's plan was to give the people of the Ming Dynasty a little shock.
It was exactly a small shock to the people of Beijing.
It has long been a trend in the Jiangnan region to employ a large number of workers to carry out manual workshop production, especially in Wuxi, Suzhou and other places where various production models are booming.
This phenomenon was also described by later generations as the "germination of capitalism" for a period of time, but with the development of later ideology, this statement was gradually abandoned.
However, this did not prevent the Ming Dynasty from showing an industrialization trend.
Because one of the most significant features of industrialization is the large-scale, assembly-line production of standard products.
Although there are such workshops in the capital now, they still seem a bit crude compared to the large workshops in Jiangnan that employ hundreds or thousands of people.
Although the capital is now the best place in the Ming Dynasty, the capital still depends on the south of the Yangtze River for all its food, clothing and daily necessities.
The Ming Dynasty could actually "turn a blind eye" to such a serious problem for three hundred years, and never thought about actively developing industrial upgrades centered on the capital. Is it because the capital is too far to the north, and all forces must be concentrated on defending against nomadic peoples in the north, so that industrial planning and progress have been neglected?
But this does not seem to be the case in Zhu Zaigui's opinion.
As one of the two capitals of the Ming Dynasty since the Yongle period, the capital also had a great population agglomeration effect.
Although the current permanent population of the capital has not been carefully counted, it is at least 700,000 to 800,000.
If we add the population of the dozen or so counties under Shuntian Prefecture, the population of the capital could easily reach several million.
With such a huge population, what kind of industry can’t be developed?
After all, the foundation of industrial development is population. Wasting so many people just standing there doing nothing is simply a waste of resources!
You should know that the capital's food supply has never been self-sufficient, but has relied on the grain transported from the canal connecting the north and the south.
So Zhu Zaigui was very puzzled as to what these more than one million people were doing?
They are said to be all farming, but in fact the bulk of the capital's grain supply comes from Jiangnan.
Although they were working, there were not many large projects in the capital to support them. The only project that could be considered a large project was probably the repair of the Great Wall in the north of the capital and the construction of the imperial tombs.
And this doesn't look like a huge project that could employ more than a million people.
Therefore, Zhu Zaigui really couldn't understand how the capital city could support so many people.
Perhaps this is also an unsolved mystery in history.
After receiving Zhu Zaigui's instructions, Meng Chong asked again, "How much land do you plan to buy, Your Majesty?"
Zhu Zaigui said generously: "Buy as many as you can. It's best if you buy them in whole pieces, not piece by piece."
When Meng Chong heard what Zhu Zaigui said, he couldn't help but take a breath. Buy as many as you can. How much is this exactly?
Land prices in the Ming Dynasty also had great regional differences. For example, in the Jiangnan region where there were many people and little land, when land prices were high, an acre of land could be sold for around thirty taels.
In other places, due to various reasons, land prices may fluctuate around ten taels.
Therefore, if Zhu Zaigui really wanted to buy a large amount of land near the capital, he might have to be mentally prepared for a price of ten to twelve or thirteen taels.
After all, what Zhu Zaigui wanted to buy was a large piece of land, and the price of a large piece of land naturally cannot be viewed as a single piece of land price.
This would easily lead to people raising the price, so even Zhu Zaigui had to be prepared to be ripped off.
Otherwise, even if he was the biological son of Emperor Jiajing, even if he was a prince of the Ming Dynasty, he would not have been able to buy the land at a low price for no reason.
This is because those who can sell large tracts of land must be the nobles and wealthy families in the capital. How can they expect to buy and annex the land of ordinary people bit by bit? How can they ever achieve that?
Moreover, no matter how much you pay for ordinary people's land, it is still not a good look.
In the eyes of people all over the world, this may be the annexation and encroachment of people's land.
Therefore, the only lands Zhu Zaigui could buy now were those owned by the nobles and wealthy families in the capital, allowing these wealthy families to happily earn tens of thousands of taels of silver from Zhu Zaigui.
(End of this chapter)