Chapter 349 - The Foshan Journey (Part 2)

This approach proved extremely attractive to merchant houses with substantial capital flows, particularly those procuring goods in Guangzhou. It eliminated the danger of sending personnel carrying large amounts of silver while traveling.

Liu San had the fortune to become the first user of Delong Bank drafts within the transmigrator group.

Early the next morning, Liu San met up with the Industry Committee representative Huang Tianyu at Bopu. He too wore Ming-style clothing, complete with a false hair bun and gauze headscarf—all of it looking rather awkward and unnatural.

The servants assigned to attend them were two boys of thirteen or fourteen. It was hard to imagine these youngsters were future intelligence operatives. One of them was Gao Di.

Gao Di had organized an intelligence network in Guangzhou centered on the children of servants in the Gao household. As the situation in Guangzhou grew larger, this network became increasingly obsolete. His advantages—familiarity with the Gao household servants and knowledge of the Haopan Street environment—were gradually losing their utility. Gao Di's activities had become too conspicuous, making Gao Ju and others wary of him, which reduced the network's effectiveness.

Meanwhile, Guo Yi's own intelligence system was gradually taking shape. From an intelligence perspective, Gao Di's value had diminished significantly. Guo Yi felt that while Gao Di was clever and reasonably reliable, he had never received the transmigrator group's ideological education and his professional skills were low. Someone like him—native-born with a gang of younger followers—could become unpredictable if allowed to continue operating freely in Guangzhou.

Add to that his perpetually unreliable father, and Guo Yi simply reported to the Executive Committee: relocate the entire family to Lingao. The couple was settled into Bairen Commune to work, Gao Lujie was assigned to Wang Luobin as a "secretary," and after completing his literacy education, Gao Di joined the intelligence training class as a student.

Yang Shixiang had also brought two servants. Liu San introduced Huang Tianyu as a friend—a ceramics merchant who was also going to Foshan and wanted to travel together for company. He pointed out that having more people on the road would be both livelier and safer. Yang Shixiang readily agreed.

The party boarded the Guangding. The Gaoguang Shipping Company's vessels were all cargo ships with no passenger cabins to speak of. Traveling passengers simply laid out bedding on the floor of the cargo hold below deck. The air was both foul and stuffy, and they had to mind the cargo bundles around them. Yang Shixiang was accustomed to traveling and didn't find this hardship. Liu San and Huang Tianyu, on the other hand, found it somewhat difficult to bear.

With nothing eventful happening during the journey, Yang Shixiang discussed the intricacies of the pharmaceutical trade with Liu San.

The Chinese medicine business had always been extremely profitable. Though medicinal ingredients numbered many varieties, apart from a few rare herbs, most were rough goods purchased by the jin. After processing at the apothecary, they were sold by the liang or hao. The gross profit margin was enormous. For common decocted herbs, the margin was never below sixty percent. For ginseng, deer antler, and other tonics, the more expensive the product, the more money one made—margins exceeded two hundred percent. Unless poorly managed, a pharmacy could easily grow rich.

However, running an apothecary required substantial capital—what they called a capital-intensive trade. A typical apothecary stocked between eight hundred and a thousand types of herbs, selected primarily according to the Compendium of Materia Medica, which was already quite popular in this era. Even the smallest apothecary needed at least three hundred common medicines in stock.

After procurement, herbs had to undergo various preparations according to requirements, consuming considerable labor. Some herbs couldn't be used in the year of purchase and had to be stored for periods ranging from months to years. Unlike other businesses, an apothecary couldn't afford to be short on items—completeness of inventory was paramount. So substantial apothecaries would go directly to the drug markets to procure supplies, purchasing one to two years' worth of several hundred common varieties at once. Larger establishments maintained enormous warehouses specifically to stockpile various herbs, sometimes storing years' worth of supplies. Such large herbal inventories tied up tremendous capital, which meant that even opening a small apothecary required at least two or three hundred taels to get started.

"So opening an apothecary isn't easy after all."

"Show me an easy trade. If your ancestors built a solid foundation, as long as you run things conscientiously and avoid natural disasters or man-made calamities, you can't help but make money." Yang Shixiang sighed. "This Runshitang of mine may look modest and quiet, with barely a ghost coming through the door, but if sea pirates hadn't seized a whole boatload of our medicine years ago and devastated our capital, things wouldn't have gotten so bad that I need to consult others just to compound a bit of musk and borneol."

Seeing he had opened up, Liu San took the opportunity to ask about "Liaodong goods."

Yang Shixiang explained: the Liaodong goods handled by apothecaries generally fell into five categories—pine nuts, ginseng, deer antler, amber, and honey.

Ginseng, deer antler, and amber went without saying. Liaodong sea pine nuts—what modern people call red pine nuts—were excellent tonic ingredients in Chinese medicine. Honey was used in apothecaries for honey-coating medicine pills, and Liaodong honey was known for its pure, rich flavor. Previously, the pine nuts and honey used by drug merchants mostly came from Liaodong, with some from Korea. Since the Guangning evacuation, not only had Liaodong supplies been cut off, but even Korean goods had become scarce.

"With war raging beyond the passes now and the court having halted the border trade, merchants can't get out and the Tartars' medicinal goods can't get in. What remains is used up bit by bit. At the Qizhou drug market, I hear there hasn't been Liaodong ginseng for quite some time."

Worth its weight in gold—that was intriguing. Even Huang Tianyu, who had nothing to do with trade, blinked at this. If they were to do business with the Jianzhou Jurchens, wouldn't there be substantial profits? And they could exploit Korea along the way.

The party chatted and played cards to pass the time. After four or five days, they arrived at Guangzhou.

The ship docked at the Gaoguang Shipping Company pier—also a Qiwei property. This escort agency had become quite renowned in Guangzhou and its surroundings. Beyond escort services, their business tentacles had extended broadly into the "four great trades" of carts, boats, lodging, and porterage. In ancient times, traveling for business was an extremely difficult affair—not just the exhaustion of boat and carriage travel and the inconvenience of food and lodging, but the merchants and service providers one dealt with were notorious for extortion, swindling, and defrauding travelers. As the saying went: "Cart men, boatmen, innkeepers, porters, and brokers—even the innocent deserve death." Qiwei addressed this directly, reforming old practices, eliminating corrupt customs, and adopting many modern business methods. Travelers universally praised the convenience.

The transmigrators' influence was everywhere in this. The Guangzhou Station provided substantial financial support and had directly intervened in operations. To deal with interference from the various local bullies originally dominating these trades, the Guangzhou Station had for the first time made extensive use of the gentry connections cultivated through jewelry trading and deposit-taking, leveraging scholars' influence to provide protection. At the same time, they had discreetly made a few of the most troublesome opponents disappear without a trace. The name "Qiwei" had become legendary in Guangzhou.

Though the pier was noisy and crowded, everything was orderly. Passengers, handcarts, porters, and livestock formed their own lines without interfering with each other. Previously, each inn would send clerks to the pier to solicit customers, swarming passengers as they disembarked, fighting over them, sometimes even grabbing travelers' luggage by force. Now these inn solicitors had all been concentrated in a row of shops along the street. Signs with their establishment names hung at each door. At the counters, young clerks in clean blue cotton jackets greeted everyone with smiles.

Liu San led his group over to browse, shop by shop. He would naturally be staying at a Qiwei inn—supporting the family business, after all. Next to the inn service desk was the porterage agency. A group of porters sat or stood waiting for customers, all wearing uniforms in a standardized style with a white-on-black "Porter" character on the chest and a large Chinese numeral on the back. A dedicated accountant handled porterage arrangements—customers paid and received a chit at the counter; after the porters completed delivery and returned the chit, they settled accounts at the counter. Everything was orderly and systematic.

Across from the shop fronts was a large open space with warehouses, piled with various goods. This was the cargo consignment office, handling shipping to all parts of Guangdong Province. Large signs hung at the office entrance, densely listing destinations, delivery times, and pricing methods—all clear at a glance.

Various other service facilities were comprehensively available; even the latrines were large and well-built, with prominent signage marking them. Throughout the pier, burly fellows with truncheons at their waists patrolled to maintain order. Not only was Yang Shixiang fascinated by the novelty, but even Liu San and Huang Tianyu found this Ming-era clone quite interesting.

Liu San went directly to the Qiwei Inn desk to book rooms.

"You are truly discerning, sir! Choosing our Qiwei Inn, you'll have no regrets," the welcoming clerk said with a beaming smile. "May I ask, gentlemen, would you prefer to stay in the city or outside?"

"What—your inn has branch locations?" Yang Shixiang asked.

"Yes, we have eight inns total, in and outside the city," the clerk said proudly. "Whatever area you prefer, we can arrange it!"

Liu San thought: since his objective was Foshan, it didn't matter whether they entered the city or not. So he said, "No need to go into the city. We're setting off for Foshan early tomorrow morning. Do you have anywhere convenient along the route?"

"Certainly!" The clerk took a bound ledger from the shelf and flipped through it. "The Tongji South Bridge location would be perfect. Six of you including servants—how would you like your rooms arranged?"

"Three upper rooms," Liu San said.

The clerk wrote out a slip and tore it off, then immediately called over a waiting junior attendant: "Find three sedan chairs and take these gentlemen to the Tongji Bridge Inn. Also arrange for a porter to help with their luggage!"

The Qiwei Inn's Tongji Bridge location was not far from the pier and close to the main road to Foshan. Upon entering, everyone felt this place was quite different—completely unlike the traditional inn layout centered on courtyards. It resembled a modern hotel instead.