I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 184 Salt Production
The bodies of the salt workers were steamed and roasted by the fire. At the beginning, their skin might still be white, but slowly it would turn red; after a long time, it would finally turn black.

The skin of those salt workers who have been making a living in the salt fields for a long time is the color of iron, and the flesh on their bodies is like jerky.

There are very few trees where the salt workers boil salt.

In the hot summer, when the salt workers were boiling salt in the big stoves in the salt field, they were oppressed by the heat in the stoves. In order to temporarily relieve the heat, they would jump out from between the stoves and then stand in the hot sun to cool off.

Yes, away from the scorching sun of the big stove, it is a cool place for the salt workers.

The morning dew is still scarce, and we go out hungry, scraping mud and drawing water from the sea, hunched over like pigs. This is the bitterness of being soaked in brine.

The summer sun is like a golden stream, the sea is like boiling water, boiling and burning, and the dirty face is deformed. This is the pain of boiling.

The hardest part of the saltwork is to pour the bittern and boil the salt. After pouring the bittern and boiling it into salt, the saltworker has long lost his human form.

The salt workers who boiled the seawater for a living, the husbands did not farm and the wives did not weave, what did they eat and wear? They boiled salt and sold it to the government. Every spring and summer, when the tide receded, they scraped the mud soaked in seawater into piles, and after being exposed to the wind and sun, they used seawater to make brine.

When the salt workers had no time to spare, they had to risk being devoured by wolves and tigers, and go out early in the morning and come back late at night to chop wood in the mountains. They would bring the firewood back on boats and shoulders, and without even taking a breath, they would light the stove and start boiling salt. The salt workers' wives and children were also forced to chop wood and boil salt, and the whole family was black and skinny and looked like a human.

The money earned through such hard work is just enough to barely support life.

Every salt merchant who came to the salt field to sell salt made a profit without any loss, and lived a rich and luxurious life, while those who worked the hardest lived in poverty all day long.
Zou Hai had been angry and complained before, but these emotions were worn away by the hardships of life, leaving only numbness.

Just when he thought he would have to live his life like this, a team from the Ming Royal Group came to their salt field and announced that their salt field had been taken over by the Salt Industry Department of the Ming Royal Group.

Officials from the Changlu Inspection Office who were accompanying the team also confirmed the authenticity of the news to them.

Zou Hai and other salt workers just watched the team arrive silently. They understood what the team meant, which was that their salt field had changed from being government-run to being directly operated by the royal family.

Although they can't quite tell the difference between the two, they probably just think that before they were managed by civil officials, and now they are managed by eunuchs. Anyway, they are all officials and none of them are good people.

But no matter how things change, the masters always need them, the salt workers, to boil salt. It is impossible for the masters to produce sea salt themselves. They only hope that the new masters will not exploit them too harshly and leave them a way to survive.

Zou Hai and the salt workers did not expect that this team of people would bring about earth-shaking changes in their lives. After they became employees of the Salt Ministry, their salaries went up and they received benefits. Although there were more assessments, for hard-working people like them, these assessments were not a problem.

Their lives suddenly became better, and to this day he still suspects that this life was a dream.

"Open the gate! Open the gate!" Zou Hai suddenly heard a shout. He suddenly came back to his senses and saw someone on horseback on the dam delivering the order.

He hurriedly worked with hundreds of salt workers to turn four large capstans. The gates under their feet slowly rose, and sea water suddenly rushed into the salt fields behind the dam.

He knew that this was the biggest tide in half a month, and that this tide could flood all the salt fields.

To be honest, he was completely impressed when he saw the dam. As an old salt worker, he had long known the method and benefits of drying salt. He had also thought about enclosing a piece of land in the sea to dry salt, but the money required to invest even a small piece of land was beyond his ability to afford.

Even if they pooled their money together with the salt workers, they still couldn't afford it. They could barely fill their stomachs, so how could they have extra money to buy land in the sea?

Even if they could enclose a piece of land, they probably wouldn’t be able to keep it in the end.

And the salt merchants who come to buy salt never care about how the salt is produced.

The government that manages the salt fields will not spend so much money to invest in the salt fields. Anyway, there are many salt workers like Zou Hai who are as cheap as dirt. After one batch is used up, there will be another batch.
Today, this dam has completely realized Zou Hai's previous idea, and it is even more grand than his previous idea, directly enclosing more than 20 acres of land in the sea.
At this moment, he was in awe of the person who made this decision.
The tide gradually receded, and the mudflats that had just been submerged by the sea water reappeared, turning into neatly arranged ponds, each of which was a salt pan.
"Although we have repaired the dam, only about 100,000 acres of salt fields within the dam have been leveled. Now we are preparing to put these 100,000 acres of salt fields into production first, and then use the time between salt drying to level the other salt fields," Wu Liangshan introduced as he followed Zhu Houquan.

Zhu Houxuan held a monocular telescope in his hand and stood on a high place looking at the salt fields below and the dam in the distance. Although it sounds like a dam that is 62 miles long, three meters high and eight meters wide at the bottom should be a huge thing, at least it should have the momentum of the Great Wall, but the actual situation is that this dam is not very noticeable against the backdrop of the vast ocean around it.

"The dog days of summer have passed, and the hottest time has passed. However, this wave of sea water should crystallize in about 20 days, and then we can harvest the first batch of sea salt," Wu Liangshan continued.

Zhu Houxuan nodded. "Now is the busy farming season. After this period of time, we will gather some laborers to level the salt fields. We will strive to level more than 200,000 acres of salt fields before the peak salt production season next summer. In addition, the exploration of the terrain around the Bohai Sea must be carried out as soon as possible. We need to build more salt fields."

The entourage behind Zhu Houxuan hurriedly wrote down Zhu Houxuan's words.

Zhu Houxuan looked at the salt fields again. According to later experience, one acre of salt field can produce 1.5 to 2 tons of sea salt a year. Although there is no large-scale machinery in Nanbu Salt Field now, with a large number of cheap labor, the output is estimated to not be much lower.

If one acre of salt field can produce 1.5 tons of sea salt a year, more than 30 acres of salt fields can produce at least 30 tons of sea salt. The annual output of tons of sea salt is only a fraction of the Changlu Salt Field in later generations, but it was extremely terrifying for the Ming Dynasty at that time.

Three hundred thousand tons is 6 million jin, which is equal to the official data of Ming Dynasty's annual salt production.
After dealing with the affairs at the salt field, Zhu Houxuan set out on the road back to Beijing.
On the other side, the men of Zhoujia Village finally returned to Zhoujia Village, and they dispersed at the entrance of the village.

Zhou Laosan and Zhou Abao walked towards their home. From afar, they saw a thin figure struggling to hold a long bamboo pole with a worn sickle tied to one end. He was trying to cut the flowers from a locust tree. However, all the flowers on the tree that were easy to cut had been cut away, leaving only the flowers on the top of the tree that were difficult to cut. As a result, the man spent a long time trying but failed to cut many bunches of flowers.
"Big sister!" Zhou Abao recognized who that person was at a glance and couldn't help but shout.

I was ill and confused yesterday, so I went to bed early. I didn't have time to write during the day, so I posted it now. Sorry for keeping you waiting. I will try to update the next two chapters at normal times.

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(End of this chapter)