On the second day after the Little New Year, merchants who received small amounts of silver notes went to the Royal Silver Centre of the Ming Dynasty to exchange for cash silver.

But when they arrived at the gate of the silver gate, they found that there were long queues at the gate of the silver gate, all the soldiers were queuing. These merchants could not even get the queue numbers. They were told by the Jinyiwei at the door: "There is no number today, come again tomorrow."

Naturally, it is impossible to receive special reception. Even the madam in the room handles business. Even the largest brothel in Qinhuai River can only stand at the door and wait for the number to be collected. If you can't get the number, I'm sorry, please go back first.

Just as the merchants were about to return disappointed, two carriages came from outside the Silver Case. One in front was a passenger bus and the other in the back was a truck full of boxes.

When everyone saw the Kangshantang flag hanging on the truck, they recognized it as the car of the salt merchant Jiang Guomao's business. So the merchants surrounded Jiang Guomao's carriage.

Jiang Guomao got out of the car, and a group of merchants surrounded him, holding a small amount of silver notes in his hand and begged: "Shopkeeper Jiang, you are the Emperor of Ming Dynasty. You have a good relationship with the uncle Zhongyong and the emperor. Customer, I heard that you don't have to queue up. Can you do us a favor and exchange the silver notes in our hands for cash?"

"Everyone is acquaintance. If you don't help you, you won't be able to get over the affection. But after taking your banknotes in and redeem them, it will have to settle twice. This is very troublesome. Let's do this. I just come to deposit the bank today. Let's do this. Let's ask you first, can you deposit the bank with a small amount of banknotes? If possible, I'll just exchange it with you directly? Everyone doesn't have to go in and wait. I'll exchange it for you here with my own bank." Jiang Guomao said.

After saying that, Jiang Guomao walked in. After asking the staff inside, the person inside told him: "Of course it's OK. The small amount of silver notes on your hand, you are the money. Of course, you can deposit them in our bank account and exchange them for large amounts of silver notes."

"So that's it. There are so many people waiting in line outside, some of which are my old friends. I exchanged the cash bank for them and then came in to exchange the small banknotes for you into large banknotes." Jiang Guomao said.

"Of course there is no problem. Manager Jiang will go and change it with them." The staff said.

Jiang Guomao walked to the door and ordered the caravan's guard to open the box, which was full of silver.

"Shopkeeper Jiang, please help me, I have eight hundred taels here!"

"Shopkeeper Jiang, please help me, I have three hundred and fifty taels here."

People rushed up to surround Jiang Guomao, and tried their best to hand over the small amount of silver in their hands, and exchanged them for the white silver from Jiang Guomao. After a while, all the 50,000 taels of silver brought by Jiang Guomao were exchanged for stacks of silver in their hands.

There were still many businessmen who were unable to exchange for cash. Looking at Jiang Guomao's emptied carriage, they had no choice but to go home helplessly.

Jiang Guomao walked into the bank account. The customer did not need to queue up. In the room, he handed over the small amount of 50,000 taels of silver bills in his hand. After a while, the staff of the bank account filled out the 50,000 taels of silver bills for him.

"Two officials, can such small silver notes be collected directly from the Royal Farm?" Jiang Guomao asked.

"Of course, Manager Jiang, small amount of silver is money. As long as it is money, what can I buy?" the staff member replied.

"Okay, I'm going to purchase goods after the New Year. Then exchange some small silver notes on it. It's lightweight and much more convenient than carrying heavy silver." Jiang Guomao said.

In the next few days, many soldiers and Jinyiwei still had not exchanged for cash silver, and they used small silver notes to consume everywhere and purchased New Year's goods. The merchants who received small silver notes also began to use small silver notes to purchase and make changes. In this way, before they knew it, small silver notes began to circulate on the market.

At the same time, in Yangzhou, Xuzhou and other cities with the Royal Silver Crown of the Ming Dynasty in Jiangbei, all military pay was issued small silver notes instead of cash silver. In this way, small silver notes began to circulate in Jiangbei.

A few days later, before the Great Wall, the court also began to pay salaries. This year's salary is different from previous years. All the money given is small amount of silver notes, not cash.

Although the imperial officials prefer white cash silver instead of sheets of paper, the imperial court issued small amounts of silver notes, and no matter how they didn't like it, they could only pinch their noses and recognize it.

In fact, the salaries of the court officials did not receive silver and copper coins, but useless things. This has always been the case in the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty court liked the feeling of worshiping thousands of dynasties. The more foreign envoys came to the Ming Dynasty, the happier they were.

Foreign envoys came to the Ming Dynasty to pay tribute. Many of the tributes were useless to the Ming Dynasty court, such as sandalwood, pepper, spices, and even some valuable local specialties. The Ming Dynasty treasury was filled with these things that would be broken and could not be used for a while. So Emperor Hongzhi thought of a solution: treat these useless things to the treasury as salary and distributed them to the officials of the court.

As a result, Liu Jian, Li Dongyang and his family were filled with various spices, which could be said to be spices that they would never use for life. Even if they used spices as meals, they couldn't finish them.

Since there is such a precedent, the officials of the court received paper as their salary, and they could only accept it with their noses. What's more, these officials did not rely on their salary to live. If the officials of the Ming Dynasty only rely on their salary and had no other income, each official would starve to death. The most famous example is Hai Gangfeng, the official of the Ming Dynasty, who was poor for many years and could not even afford meat, so he could only grow vegetables and raise chickens at home. Once, Hai Rui's mother celebrated her birthday and bought two kilograms of meat, which alarmed the supervisor Hu Zongxian.

Hu Zongxian once joked with many bureaucrats during a meeting, saying, "I heard yesterday that Hailing was the mother's birthday, and the market was 2 pounds of meat."

It sounds like a fourth-rank prefect has an annual salary of 288 s of rice. According to the price of the Ming Dynasty at that time, it was more than 700 taels of silver. However, the yamen runners, masters, sedans, and coachmen of the Ming officials were all supported by the prefects themselves. They only had a little money to support the people in the yamen and to manage some of the people above. If they only had a salary and no extra income, they would know how difficult it would be.

Therefore, these Ming officials did not expect that these salaries could be used. They got the paper at hand. They also heard that the military pay was paid this year. The big-headed soldiers lined up to break the threshold of the silver, but they still couldn't exchange for cash. So they thought to themselves, just think, just think that it's just that they didn't get the salary this year, and the family doesn't have the money short of the money anyway.

But the salaries of these officials are hundreds of taels of silver after all, wouldn’t it be a pity to just abandon them like this? Especially in the Hanlin Academy of Qingshui Yamen, those Hanlin people have no gray income and rely on the salaries of the court to live all their lives. The salary is definitely not enough, so they rely on subsidies from their families.

The poor Hanlin people were reluctant to throw these pieces of paper into their homes as waste paper, but instead tried it out and went to the silver account to exchange cash for cash.

As a result, the officials in the front exchanged for white cash silver, while the officials in the back could not line up and could not exchange for cash silver. Later, they heard that these small pieces of paper could be purchased directly for New Year's goods, so they tried it and indeed exchanged for New Year's goods.

"It seems that these inconspicuous small pieces of paper can be used directly!" The Hanlins who bought the New Year's goods were crying with joy.

In fact, during this period, businessmen and bosses have long been used to these small pieces of paper. After all, it is very troublesome to exchange them every day, and they may not be ranked. These pieces of paper can be exchanged for real money and silver anyway, so they can also be used with confidence and boldness.
Chapter completed!