How good were the merchants in Shu during the Western Han Dynasty?

A few words left in the history books are enough to shock the world.

"Huayang Guozhi" once recorded: "Chengdu County is governed by Chili Street, and Guangfu House is established, salt and iron are purchased, and the city officials are both chiefs. !”

In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, the emperor was unable to carry a harem, and the generals and ministers would ride in ox-carts, leaving the people without cover.

However, merchants in Shu "sometimes stole merchants and took their horses, boys, and cattle to make Shu rich."

By the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, Luo Pei, a big businessman and loan shark from Chengdu, had a fortune of tens of thousands!

When Luo Li goes to the capital, he has to take tens of millions of dollars with him!

And within a few years of traveling between Bashu and Shu, he made more than tens of millions of dollars!

Luo Fei even put loans on the heads of princes and princes. No one dared to deceive the county and state on credit!

The top nobles who own feudal states and fiefdoms are less wealthy than him, so they all come to him for loan sharking at usury!

From the Zhuo family and the Cheng Zheng family in the early Western Han Dynasty to the Luo family in the middle and late Western Han Dynasty, they are all famous businessmen recorded in "Historical Records: Biography of Southwest Yi"!

Even during the Eastern Han Dynasty, the wealthy Zhexiang family in Guanghan had "a fortune of 200 million and a family of 800 children!"

By the end of the Han Dynasty, wealthy merchants in Sichuan were selling a wide variety of goods on a large scale, and they once dominated the domestic market.

In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, the great merchants in Sichuan mainly engaged in the profits of salt and iron and the profits of mining copper and casting coins.

After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty unified the salt and iron industry and unified the minting of coins, merchants in Sichuan quickly transformed and began to move towards a large and extensive route.

Wine industry, soy sauce garden industry, slaughtering industry, grain industry, firewood industry, shipbuilding industry, bamboo and wood industry, car manufacturing industry, paint industry, copperware industry, ironware industry, livestock industry, loan sharking, vegetable and fruit industry...

According to historical records and later statistics.

At that time, the commercial fields operated by merchants in Shu almost covered the basic necessities of life for the people of the Western Han Dynasty!

From the expense of the nobles to the livelihood of the common people, there is nothing you can do but follow!

Rich merchants from Bashu travel all over the world, and they can trade everything!

The "Shu cloth, Shu knife, wolfberry paste, and citrus" of Shu are four famous specialties at home and abroad!

Their products are even sold abroad!

The exquisite lacquerware and buckleware made by Gongguan of Shu County and Guanghan County were mostly sold to Lelang County in what is now North Korea, and were loved by the Huns aristocrats in the northern grasslands.

Private merchants, on the other hand, often took desperate risks and often conducted border trade along the Southern Silk Road.

Shu cloth, silk, Qiong bamboo sticks and other "Sichuan objects" were trafficked by them to Yunnan and Yue (today's Assam in East India) and Shendu (today's India).

When Zhang Qian was on a mission to the Western Regions, he saw with his own eyes Shu cloth, Qiong bamboo sticks and other Shu commodities in Daxia Kingdom (now Afghanistan and Central Asia).

After questioning the locals in Daxia, he learned that these Shu products entered Daxia through body poison.

This shows how developed the industry and commerce in Shu was during the Western Han Dynasty!

Don't just sell!

At the same time, merchants in Shu would also purchase Western pearls, amber, coral and other treasures from South Asian countries and sell them in the domestic market, earning several times the price difference.

The central Sichuan area has now become the hub of domestic and foreign trade in southwest China, and its industry and commerce are extremely developed!

Moreover, the merchants in Shu not only independently developed the Southern Silk Road, but also brought civilization to the entire Southeast Asia region.

Today's Southeast Asian countries can become part of the Confucian cultural circle, and this group of businessmen from Shu has contributed the most!

When reading historical documents in this area, Chen Han was amazed by the prosperous industry and commerce of Shuzhong merchants during the Han Dynasty.

However, lacking some practical feelings, he still could not clearly feel the commercial prosperity of that era.

The history book is so big that it contains 5,000 years of Chinese history.

Turning over a page in a history book and scratching the contents with a pen is a magnificent era.

Standing on the long river of time, overlooking the pale and dry words in history books, it is difficult for people to empathize with it, and they can only act as a spectator.

However, when Chen Han stood next to Jingzhou in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, he personally touched these lacquerware from Shu County.

See with your own eyes the traces of time that have settled on them, and feel the bone-chilling coldness coming from the body.

This sense of reality gave him the feeling of feeling the pulse of the times.

The prosperous Shu County handicraft industry two thousand years ago seemed to have traveled through time and space and was imprinted in front of his eyes.

Groups of craftsmen from the Western Han Dynasty wearing coarse linen clothes and sweat towels tied on their heads.

In each small workshop, pieces of wood embryos were methodically manufactured, and after many processes, exquisite wooden lacquerware that was black on the outside and red on the inside was finally made.

These exquisite utensils, which can be regarded as the pinnacle of lacquer craftsmanship in the Western Han Dynasty, traveled all over the world through the prosperous trade routes in Sichuan, reaching the grasslands in the north and reaching Shendu in the south.

Among them, there was a batch of exquisite lacquerware that sailed down the Yangtze River on merchant ships and arrived in Jingzhou, where they were bought by the owner of Tomb No. 168.

This batch of exquisite lacquerware must have been very loved by the owner of the tomb and accompanied him throughout his life.

Even after death, they must be taken underground and continued to be used.

Although it is unclear what the tomb owner's living conditions were like underground, the lacquerware he brought underground together still maintains the appearance of when it was first made after being buried for two thousand years.

Still exquisite, still gorgeous, still eye-catching.

It was so far away from us before, but now it is so close.

Two thousand years ago, their beauty belonged exclusively to the owner of the tomb and was regarded as a treasure by him.

Two thousand years later, they are still beautiful and are still regarded as treasures by people today, but they will no longer belong to anyone alone, but will openly show their beauty to the world.

When your eyes pass by them quietly, you can clearly see the flow of history and the long river of Chinese culture from them.

No matter how detailed the introduction and description in the book is, it cannot compare to seeing it with your own eyes.

Perhaps in a few years, they will appear in an independent exhibition hall of the JZ City Museum, telling their stories to people two thousand years from now.

Let people of this era witness with their own eyes the beauty of the art of the Western Han Dynasty two thousand years ago.

Holding a lacquered wooden box in his hand, Chen Han was filled with emotion.

It was created, then traveled thousands of kilometers to Jingzhou, and then was buried underground for a hundred, a thousand, or two thousand years.

Chen Han was amazed by its exquisiteness and beauty, and was intoxicated by the story full of historical significance.

For no reason, a strange idea suddenly came to his mind.

The lacquerware he was holding in his hands and looking at at this moment was, to him, a beautiful work of art that carried time.

But for this lacquerware, Chen Han, the viewer at this time, may also be a piece of art that is locked in time?

Thousands of years later, these lacquerwares can still lie quietly in the museum, waiting to be sent to them.

The people who have handled it and seen it have changed one after another.

It is both young and ancient, constantly witnessing the changes in the human world.

But at that time, Chen Han no longer existed in this world.
Chapter completed!