On the shore of Dongting Lake, the palace people shuttled and arranged banquets.

The saint did not escape the heat and personally held a banquet to entertain the messengers who returned from the voyage. No one dared to ignore it.

Well, it wasn't actually a banquet, because lunch had passed long ago, but there was still some time before dinner. To be precise, the saint invited them to sit down and drink tea, eat some fruit and snacks, and the dinner was prepared separately.

Tea is a local specialty of Yuezhou. It was famous in the Tang Dynasty and once presented to the palace as a tribute. It was named "Yōng Lake Decoction" - Weihu Lake, which is now Yueyang Nanhu.

This tea is quite delicious.

When Shao Shude first came into contact, he obtained it from the palace. At that time, the Tang court's prestige was greatly reduced and its control was also greatly reduced. Du Hong, the governor of Eyue Jiedu, sent a batch of Yuhu ointment into the palace, which was very popular with the saints.

After Emperor Tang went to Luoyang in the east, Shao Shude stayed in the dragon bed overnight, so of course he could drink this kind of tea. However, he prefers Yixing Yangxian tea, and the ointment in the lake was made and disappeared from the palace. In the past, it was a chore to hand over tribute, but tea was really not, because the saints would praise the tea he liked to drink in public, so they were more motivated in the local area.

When he came to Yuezhou today, Shao Shude recalled the past years and did not mind endorsing Yuezhou local tea, so he asked the palace people to put away all the other teas and only drink the Huhu ointment.

By the way, he walked around Jiangnan and drank different teas from each place. Everyone said it was OK, and it was amazing to accept the tea merchants' contributions after they were done.

After he left, the tea merchants immediately made a big publicity: The saints said they were OK after drinking it. They said they wanted to buy it quickly. The problem is that tea with a little more famous is so popular that it makes people feel at a loss. Those who are smart will guess how much money did the saints charge?

Of course, Shao Shude could think of this layer, but so what? Hunan tea merchants jointly contributed 150,000 yuan in money and 200,000 pieces of silk, and he didn't mind helping them, so that the tea sold in the north increased significantly on the basis of more than 200,000 kilograms. Anyway, the northern tea industry is declining, and both production and quality are declining. The southern tea dealer is the general trend and unstoppable.

"Ome with tea--" Shao Shude closed his eyes after taking a sip, as if he was aftertaste. After a while, he opened his eyes and gave an evaluation: "The sweet fragrance does not diminish Gu Zhu."

Han Zhaoyin was thinking about the draft again, how to extend an article around this sentence?

He knew that Guzhu purple bamboo tea was a famous product that has been offered to the palace all year round. Although the saint did not go to Huzhou this time, Huzhou tea merchants also paid for it, which was tens of thousands more than Hunan tea merchants.

The saint obviously has a book in his heart, so this comment is very interesting. It not only praises the tea with paste, but also vaguely carries purple bamboo tea. When writing articles, it must be in line with this central idea.

He was also a little moved at this time.

The money and silk donations from Huzhou are worth Hunan provinces. Huzhou tea is too powerful. He dare not think about how much benefit it will be. Anyway, as far as Hunan is concerned, Yuezhou has a four famous ingredient, yellow feather, Hengshan, Hengzhou, Langzhou bud tea, and more than a dozen small categories of teas, which only sells more than 200,000 kilograms a year. With just such sales volume, it is worth contributing so much money. So how many teas in Huzhou represented by Guzhu purple bamboo shoots should be sold in a year?

In addition, tea merchants from all over the country are also very interesting. They use guilds as an organization to promote one or two local famous products. After becoming famous, they will drive other first-class tea sales. This idea is quite good. After all, many tea drinkers do not necessarily know the name of the tea, but only know about a certain real estate, and the effect is still very good.

Zhang Yong and Wang Heizi sat opposite Shao Shude, and at his signal, they also picked up the tea bowl and sipped.

"How?" Shao Shude asked.

"The fragrance is fragrant, and the aftertaste is endless. The effort of drinking is gone, and the spirit is full of energy. It is a famous tea product." Zhang Yong said.

Shao Shude turned his attention to Wang Heizi again.

"No... not bad, very good." Wang Heizi said with a red face.

Shao Shude laughed, and no one else could feel it.

"Does the big eater drink tea?" Shao Shude asked again.

"I have been in Dashi for several years, but I have not found any tea shops. Dashi and Persia buy tea mostly in pharmacies, and are very expensive." Zhang Yong said: "I sent people to ask, and each has its own opinions. The most common usage is to drink it for those who are about to return to the truth, which is said to be able to relieve the pain."

"Nonsense." Shao Shude smiled.

Zhang Yong nodded and said yes.

"Your Majesty, before I left Basra, the local nobleman Izmir has opened a tea shop, which may be the first teahouse in Dashi." Wang Heizi suddenly said.

"Oh?" Shao Shude looked at Zhang Yong with inquiring eyes.

"This... I don't know. Izmir did exchange ten slaves for a batch of tea. I thought he was just drinking it himself." Zhang Yong said ashamed.

"Zhang Qing is not as broad as Wang Qing's friendship." Shao Shude commented.

When Wang Heizi heard this, he looked happy.

Zhang Yong glanced at him without a trace, feeling unhappy.

"If the big catkins can buy more tea, the more money the country has to make, the life of the garden households will be much better." Shao Shude said after saying that.

"Your Majesty is wise." Before Wang Heizi could speak, Zhang Yong said first: "I traveled to the cities of Dashi. I heard that they were all over the world and sold goods everywhere, and were extremely prosperous. Spending 100,000 kilograms of silver to buy tea a year is not worth mentioning to them."

"Their tea drinker..." Wang Heizi couldn't help but say.

Zhang Yong quietly glared at him.

Shao Shude didn't care and said, "Wang Qing is saying the truth. How much can tea be sold in a pharmacy? Even if it is expensive, the quantity is too small. Not to mention, this expensive is just for the big cannibals. The tea they buy in Daxia is not expensive, so choose the cheapest one to buy."

"Your Majesty said very much." Zhang Yong immediately responded.

"Your Majesty... is really wise." Wang Heizi's emotional intelligence recovered slightly and he also said.

Shao Shude glanced at him and couldn't help laughing.

I remember that during the last meeting, Wang Heizi spoke respectfully. At that time, he was a little emotional. A cruel man who made a great reputation on the sea and most likely killed people without blinking, was shocked to death when he entered the palace symbolizing the highest authority of the empire. He did not dare to say a word or make a mistake.

After returning from the five-year voyage, his mind and nature have changed again. It seems that the previous memorials are not exaggerated, and there are too many difficulties, obstacles and even desperate situations along the way. After so much, Wang Heizi's mind and nature have become very tenacious - of course, it may also be because he is not in the palace at this time and does not have the ubiquitous pressure.

"Eat some fruit." Shao Shude finished the topic of tea, waved his hand, and ordered.

The palace servant immediately brought the cut oranges and sugarcane over.

"Thank you for your reward." Zhang Yong and Wang Heizi said in unison.

Zhang Yong is from Ezhou and has some understanding of Hunan.

In fact, oranges are specialties in Hubei and Hunan. Back then, one of the local tributes presented by the Jingnan Jiedushi was oranges. At this time, Jingzhou oranges were far more famous than those in Hunan. When people in Luoyang mentioned oranges on Huguang Road, the first thing they thought of was "Jiangling oranges", which shows how famous they were.

Hunan is still catching up, and it is very fast. There was a village named after orange in the Tang Dynasty.

Zhang said in "There is a Joy in the First Entering Hunan": "I'll Excuse me for the journey of An and the boats will enter the Hunan River... Maples on both sides are shores, and several oranges are made into continents."

Du Fu's "Reward Guo Shiwu's Reward" also contains the sentence "The wind and waves in Qiaokou Juzhou are rushing".

At this time, there were more orchards like "Orange Island" in the Xiangshui River, Dongting Lake Basin, and developed very rapidly. Many fruit farmers made a fortune by relying on this, and their income was higher than growing grain. Of course, due to the population and economic scale of Hunan, there were not enough people of this type.

Compared with the long-standing oranges, sugarcane cultivation was a contribution to the Daxia Dynasty.

Sinong Temple set up a branch in Hengzhou to cultivate new varieties, while local governments introduced varieties from other places and expanded planting.

In history, the great development of sugarcane in Hunan should be in the middle and late period of Ma Chu. It is recorded that a soldier from Ma Chu Jigoufang was "good at seeds and mother cane, and had laws on irrigation, breeding and transmigration, so he became the leader of the nurse."

Since it was the planting champion, there must be a large-scale sugarcane garden at that time, which is undoubtedly.

The so-called "child-child-child-cane" is actually the "cane stem-cut and burying seed method" popular in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and the planting level is quite high.

Shao Shude has only paid attention to Hunan's booming sugarcane planting industry in the past two years.

To be honest, he was a little surprised. But after coming to Changsha and having an intuitive feeling of the humid and hot climate here, he completely believed it - it was too hot, comparable to those in later generations of Guangdong and Guangxi. Is this still a small ice river climate? It's much hotter than Hunan in the 21st century.

Currently, three varieties are mainly planted in Hunan: wax cane, reed cane, and red Kunlun cane. In the five years of Tongguang, Hunan white sugar had become a tribute. This may be a major promotion for Hunan's sugarcane planting and sugar-pressing industry, and it is also a major blow to the beet sugar industry in the north.

The reason is that Hunan sugar cane has a greater threat, much more than Lingnan, because Hunan white sugar can be transported through the Xiangshui-Dongting Lake-Yangtung River-Han River-Tangbai River system, then through the Xiangcheng Cao Canal, through the mountaintop canal, and then transported to Luoyang through the Ruzhou water system.

The overall transportation cost is just a little higher than Guanbei beet sugar - the latter transports through the Yellow River water, which has a shorter distance and lower cost - but it cannot withstand the large yield of sugar. Once the output is large, the production cost will be reduced and the competitiveness will be stronger.

At present, Luoyang Sugar City has seen some signs. When the development level in Hunan deepens in the future, the impact will be further increased, and the northern region will lose another source of wealth.

The southward movement of the economic center of gravity is actually built from such large or small commodities, and manpower seems to be completely irreversible.

Shao Shude picked up the sugarcane juice he had specially squeezed and took a nice sip.

Compared with the sugar cane juice in later generations, it is not sweet enough, and the gap is a bit far. He knows that this is the reason for the variety and the sugar content is too low.

He was not naive to think that the sugar content of ancient sugarcane could be the same as that of modern times, but it was a bit disappointing because of so much difference. Unfortunately, Tahiti is in the South Pacific, and it will never be possible to send anyone there to retrieve the Tahiti sugarcane, which is the most sugar content that is popular all over the world in his life.
Chapter completed!