Chapter 6718: All for free

Chapter 6718: All for free
"It's so rare that Empress Xian is willing to give me a couple of bites of food." Chen Xi smiled when he heard Si Niang's words. It was very rare that Si Niang was willing to feed others. Most of the time, Si Niang was waiting for others to feed her.

However, having said that, Chen Xi did not hesitate to reach out and took out a piece of duck leg from the food box that Si Niang was holding. There was no need to dip it in water, and it tasted quite good. It must be said that the imperial chef in the kitchen has made many classic things after broadening his horizons.

"Not bad, right? When I was traveling outside before, I found some roast meat for sale, so I bought a batch. Then the chefs in the kitchen did some research and made even more delicious roast meat." Si Niang said proudly, not taking the fact that concubines could not leave the palace at will seriously at all.

"How much does this thing cost? It tastes really good." Liu Bei also tasted two bites and thought it tasted very good, so he pinched two more pieces.

After Chen Xi developed the roast meat, Liu Bei went to try it on purpose. The taste was okay, but it was far inferior to the real food that Si Niang was eating now. Before, Liu Bei thought that the bacon made by Chen Xi was just a supplementary means when the logistics industry was not developed enough and fresh meat could not be delivered to the people on time.

But what Si Niang has prepared now is another classic flavor of meat, which is just like freshly cooked meat.

In this way, Liu Bei no longer felt that Chen Xi's way of roasting meat was a waste of meat. The previous promotion of roast meat was somewhat a pity for Liu Bei. After all, in Liu Bei's view, it was taking a good piece of meat and making it not so delicious. If it was not for the purpose of allowing people from far away to eat it, it would be a pure waste.

"Price?" Si Niang thought about it. To be honest, she really had no idea about it. It was not a question of money. As a concubine, she had to perform sacrifices on behalf of the queen during large-scale sacrifices. Her treatment was the same as that of the three highest officials. She had no shortage of money.

It's just that the palace's expenses are paid by the Shaofu, and the Shaofu was completely annexed by Chen Xi as early as the second year of Yuanfeng. After that, the palace's expenses were allocated by Chen Xi, so Si Niang really didn't know the exact price. It might be very expensive or very cheap, depending on what Chen Xi thought. After all, money is meaningless to Chen Xi.

"It's not expensive." Chen Xi shook his head and said, "But ordinary people can't make it to this level. This is a problem of cooking skills, not the ingredients."

From Chen Xi's perspective, the price of this sliced ​​cured duck leg, not counting the labor, is only about ten cents for the ingredients. But if you take the labor and the skills of the imperial chef into account, this thing is really expensive.

"This is just an ordinary duck leg, but the one they chose is a bit bigger." Chen Xi glanced at Si Niang who was eating on the spot and said, "As for the ingredients and spices, for us who now occupy all of Southeast Asia, it's actually just the cost price. This kind of thing that can be produced by ourselves can be given a controllable low price. The only problem is the cook."

Southeast Asia belongs to Jiangdong? What a joke. If you don't sell your output to the Han Dynasty, what do you think you are going to do by producing and selling it yourself? What is a suzerain state? To put it bluntly, it means you need to pay tribute!

"Wait, if it's an ordinary duck leg, why does it cost ten cents?" Liu Bei looked at Chen Xi with a strange expression. If it was an ordinary duck leg, the price of ten cents would be really too much.

"Is ten cents very expensive?" Si Niang asked while eating the duck legs. After finishing the remaining slices in a few bites, she opened a food box, which contained slices of roast duck. The small dish for the sauce was also in the drawer of the food box, and there were even small rolls. However, Si Niang had no intention of eating the rolls. She just picked up the slices of roast duck, dipped them in the prepared sauce, and started to eat.

"How should I put it? It can't be said to be very expensive, but it's not cheap either. The price of chicken and duck used to be around 40 wen. After Zichuan stabilized the prices, the prices of chicken and duck dropped a bit. In this case, how could a duck leg be sold for ten wen?" Liu Bei frowned and looked at Chen Xi and asked.

"Because duck meat is cheap." Chen Xi didn't need Si Niang to let him do that. He reached out and took two slices of the still hot roast duck from the food box, dipped them in the sauce and started eating.

"There is another logic involved here." Chen Xi said slowly after swallowing the delicious roast duck, "We raise ducks and grey geese on a large scale, and the main purpose is not to make roast meat, duck legs, roast goose and the like."

"These are essentially by-products." Chen Xi thought for a moment and said, "After the disease problem is solved, the cost of large-scale breeding is much lower than the cost of each household raising a few for food."

The Han Dynasty's "Shihuo Zhi" records the price of chickens, which was roughly 360 wen. This price was quite high at the time. The monthly income of a county clerk was only wen, which means that the income of a county-level clerk was only enough to buy ten chickens.

Chen Xi's original purpose of raising geese and ducks was to produce salted duck eggs, a storable and nutritious daily necessities. Later, he produced duck down, and then developed other ways to eat them. In the end, he found that the total price of the by-products was greater than the price of the ducks themselves.

In other words, even if the duck meat was sold for only one penny, Chen Xi would not lose money.

"The actual price of a duck itself is less than 30 cents. The labor cost after large-scale breeding is spread out, and the duck down and ducklings are sold separately. Some parts that look better are sold at a high price, and then the price of the roast duck meat can naturally be lowered." Chen Xi said casually.

After all, Chen Xi is not a capitalist and does not need to pursue the so-called maximum profit. After earning back the cost, he can just sell the rest at a low price.

This has led to duck, goose and mutton on the market being much cheaper than before.

"In other words, someone paid the bulk of the bill for them, so the duck meat became cheaper." Chen Xi said with a sneer.

The same logic applies to the cheapness of duck meat in later generations. A whole live duck can be sold for fifty or sixty yuan, and even a large duck can be sold for hundreds of yuan, but a roast duck roasted on the roadside only costs twenty yuan. The logic is that the least valuable part of a duck is duck meat.

Duck down, duck neck, duck intestines, duck feet, duck legs, etc., a whole duck is taken apart and sold, and what is left is the duck meat. If you think about it carefully, even the Beijing roast duck in a reputable big restaurant sometimes does not have duck legs.

It can be seen that selling ducks separately has become a common situation, and Chen Xi also followed this habit. The duck pieces were sold at a higher price than the whole duck, so Chen Xi turned this part of the profit into duck meat, so that duck meat has once again become the cheapest meat on the market. However, although it is cheap, purchase must be limited.

There was no other way. Even the duck factory run by Chen Xi could not satisfy the meat-eating desire of tens of millions of people in the Han Dynasty. Although duck meat was not as good as other meats in taste, it was still meat after all. Moreover, Chen Xi had invested money to have professional chefs research how to make it delicious. If there was no purchase limit, it would be unsustainable.

"Why is it more profitable to buy them separately rather than as a whole?" Si Niang asked Liu Bei's question, and then opened another food box, this time containing sliced ​​boiled mutton.

"It's not easy to explain it to you using ducks." Chen Xi reached out and pinched a piece of mutton, dipped it in the sauce and said, "Let's use sheep to explain it, because this is the most intuitive. The current price of a sheep is about 500 coins, and sheep can produce about 10 kilograms of wool a year, and 10 kilograms of wool can be made into 7 sets of winter sweaters after processing."

When talking about this data, Liu Bei's expression became much more solemn, while Si Niang continued to eat foolishly, and then she reacted while eating.

"The warmth retention of sweaters is much better than that of linen clothes. One piece of linen cloth costs about 400 coins and can make about eight pieces of linen clothes. So theoretically, after 10 kilograms of wool is processed and made into woolen cloth, the price can reach about 600 coins." Chen Xi's expression became unusually serious. "Even if the 600 coins need to deduct the wages for the weaver girl, the money for collecting the wool, and some other losses, the profit can still reach 500 coins if the scale is large enough and mechanization can be used."

It is such a huge profit gap. The reason why the industrial scissors gap is so terrifying is that even the most basic handicraft industry, as long as it forms a certain scale, is enough to cause overwhelming output to agriculture and animal husbandry. What's more, Chen Xi has also made certain optimizations internally, trying to make the industry closed-loop and form a system as much as possible. In this way, when the profit is reflected in a certain link, it will be very terrifying.

This is the so-called upper limit of agricultural society output. If you want to break through this limit, the only way at present is to develop industry. Although what Chen Xi has achieved is not much, it is indeed systematic and large-scale, and is developing upward on a complete foundation.

So when Chen Xi proposed the concept that a sheep could produce more than its total value in a year in terms of wool alone, Liu Bei was somewhat dazed. The price difference and profit really made Liu Bei feel a little outrageous. Taking wool into consideration, Liu Bei had to consider things like cheese.

"In fact, the current handicraft industry has not yet developed to its peak, otherwise the profit would be even greater." Chen Xi said with some reminiscence.

Even in later generations, the price of a sheep meat is only about one thousand yuan, but a sheep can basically produce ten kilograms of wool a year. After washing, drying, combing, twisting, and winding, it is finally made into wool yarn. Considering that these links can be put on the assembly line and mechanized, the scale is large enough and the cost can be very low. Ten kilograms of wool can be spun into three kilograms of fine wool yarn, or seven kilograms of coarse wool yarn.

The former is about 200 yuan per pound, and the latter is 60 yuan per pound. The wool produced by a sheep in a year is worth 500 yuan after the spinning process. If this production system is extended and turned into cotton cloth or even ready-made clothes, the profit from wool will far exceed that from mutton.

In later generations, animal husbandry needed to consider profits, the textile industry needed to consider profits, and garment merchants also needed to consider profits. They needed to calculate three times, which is why there were those prices in later generations. However, Chen Xi only needed to calculate once and consider the comprehensive profit.

In this case, choosing national happiness and lowering meat prices, although it will damage the interests of some local breeding industries to a certain extent, is still meaningful from an overall perspective.

By the way, this was also the reason why when Chen Xi was on his eastern tour, he asked the people in Qingxu, Taishan, who were engaged in animal husbandry, to give up the industry and gave them partial subsidies from the government so that they could switch to other industries. Because at that time, Chen Xi was almost completing the industrial closed loop, and was just waiting for the end to befall the central part of the Han Dynasty. With Chen Xi's size, as soon as he came, the animal husbandry engaged in by others would basically be ruined.

It is true that due to certain quantity issues, some of the output of local animal husbandry can still be sold, but the official price is basically forcing others to die, so notifying these local animal husbandry personnel in advance to withdraw from this business is something Chen Xi must do.

If they don't notify you, the cheap mutton from the northern ranches will arrive there, and these people will not only lose money and food, but their reputation may even be in jeopardy.

Although Chen Xi's behavior was quite despicable at times, he would not harm his own people. After all, from a legal point of view, Qingxu and Taishan, as the places where Liu Bei started his career, are both his basic base. Even if he really wanted to cause trouble, he would not cause trouble to a place like Qingxu and Taishan.

Therefore, when Chen Xi made his eastern tour that year, he deliberately gathered local livestock merchants, made arrangements in advance, and gave them time to change careers and policy subsidies, in order to avoid accidentally crushing this group of people to death when he was about to leave.

The industrial scissors gap, once it becomes a system, will almost completely crush agriculture. To put it more exaggeratedly, as long as it is a systematic industry, it will break through the upper limit of the agricultural era.

The problem is that once anything is pushed to its upper limit, it means that it cannot be achieved normally. So when Chen Xi developed, he became extremely terrifying. Even if he had only established a foundation, his economy and output were already ten times that of the former Han Dynasty.

"Well, that's roughly it. If we take sheep as an example, it should be much easier to understand." Chen Xi looked at Liu Bei and Si Niang and said, "Ducks essentially follow the same logic. The various things under this logic no longer create profits from the original main body, but from the newly added things, especially things like wool..."

The added value crushes the main body, and this is the fact that Liu Bei and Si Niang are seeing now.

"So theoretically, if I only consider earning the profit from raising sheep, the price of mutton can be directly a few coins." Chen Xi said expressionlessly, "But some things don't follow this logic. In addition to the profit logic, there is another set of supply logic. The current output of the northern animal husbandry of the Han Dynasty is not enough to maintain the subsequent scale."

"I always feel it's incredible." Liu Bei said with a complicated expression.

"It's nothing incredible. It's just that conventional development does not only pursue the main output, but also diversified development." Chen Xi shook his head and said, "So technology is very important. Once a new technology is developed and put into the right place, the benefits it can bring will be amazing. The integrity and ability of bureaucrats are essentially just adjustments and allocations within the existing technology level. If you want to really break the upper limit, you can only rely on technical strength or external forces."

"In that case, why is the mutton I eat so expensive?" Si Niang asked with some doubt, "I found a lamb and cooked it in plain water. It cost me 8,000 coins just to buy the mutton?"

When saying this, Si Niang was very confused. According to what Chen Xi said, mutton should not be expensive. Why did she spend so much money last time when she suddenly bought a sheep for mutton?

When Liu Bei heard this, his eyelids naturally drooped. After all, Liu Bei was well aware of the fact that the palace food had become unpalatable last year. In the end, it was Si Niang who caught the purchasing and kitchen managers who were responsible for embezzling money. At that time, this group of people wanted to resist, but were killed by Si Niang with her amazing fighting power.

Yes, it was indeed an amazing fighting power. At that time, Si Niang showed a fighting power that was no less than that of an ordinary person with internal energy leaving the body. Although it seemed nothing in the eyes of a normal person with internal energy leaving the body, for Si Niang who could not even beat a horse, it was definitely an explosive state.

So when Si Niang said this, Liu Bei naturally thought that there was another bastard corrupt in the palace who even embezzled the imperial concubine's money. He was simply fed up with living.

Liu Bei had seen a lot of this kind of behavior while traveling around the local areas over the years. Some bureaucrats were really ignorant and were willing to sacrifice their lives just to make money.

"Ah, eight thousand Wen? Let me think about it?" Chen Xi felt that the price was a bit déjà vu. "Did you buy the special tribute of the Shaofu? It's a product of a ranch in the northern border that specially provides this stuff to the Shaofu. It's said to have a special flavor or something?"

"Ah, yes, yes, yes." Si Niang nodded repeatedly. She wanted to eat mutton before, but the Shaofu said that she had eaten it for nine consecutive days. If she continued to eat it, Liu Tong, as a human, would get a sore throat and could not eat it anymore. He could cook a special meal for Si Niang, but the amount of mutton in the special meal should also be reduced.

Si Niang was furious, so she said that she would go get a sheep herself and ask the kitchen to prepare it for her. The concubines before did not have this ability, but I, Si Niang, did. I went straight out of the palace and went shopping myself, and bought a sheep on the street behind Shaofu for eight thousand coins.

At the time, Si Niang thought it was a bit expensive, but it was only 8,000 Wen. How could a noble concubine like me care? I just bought it. Go, go, go!
"So you didn't buy the wrong thing?" Si Niang said very seriously. She had just been touching her weapon, waiting for Chen Xi to say that he had been killed so that she could teleport over and arrest him directly. He dared to embezzle my Concubine Xian's money. You don't want to live anymore, right? You dare to mess with me. The Han government is right behind me!
"The official price is at this level." Chen Xi nodded and said, "And the so-called special flavor is also true. In fact, in addition to the large ranch, there is a small ranch next to each large ranch, which is used to domesticate these local specialties."

"Oh oh oh." Si Niang expressed her understanding, and Liu Bei has realized over the years how deceptive Chen Xi is, so after hearing this, he naturally glanced at Chen Xi. What do you mean the official price is at this level? Isn't the official price set by you, Chen Xi, on a whim to rip people off?

Perhaps sensing Liu Bei's contemptuous look, Chen Xi laughed dryly and said, "It's true that the price is a bit higher, but it's a special tribute from the Shaofu, and there's a quantity limit. And it does taste a lot better than normal meat of the same kind, so the higher price is understandable, right?"

"Is it delicious?" Si Niang scratched her head. As a true gourmet, she could tell the difference. But Chen Xi said that Shaofu Special Tribute was better in texture than other similar meats. Si Niang really didn't notice it. From the fact that she had eaten it so many times, when she recalled it, there seemed to be no difference.

"Be more careful, Empress Xian. What you ate before was the special tribute from the Shaofu!" Chen Xi said helplessly. In this respect, Chen Xi was not a cheater. If he sold the special tribute from the Shaofu and the royal family's selection, then Liu Tong and Si Niang would of course eat this kind of thing, not the so-called other set. In this respect, Chen Xi's integrity could still be guaranteed.

By the way, it is precisely because of this that some Chang'an people who can participate in court banquets are still very convinced of Shaofu Special Tribute and Royal Selection. Apart from being expensive, these things are exactly the same as those used in royal banquets. Therefore, when the wealthy people in Chang'an hold banquets and invite people to dinner, if they are willing to be a little ruthless, they will also order the so-called Shaofu Special Tribute products and Royal Selection.

After the wealthy people in Chang'an did this, the wealthy people in other places followed suit. After all, Chang'an was the best place to live, and it played a very important leading role.

As a result, the brands of Shaofu Special Contribution and Royal Selection were in short supply, and the price was forcibly raised from one thousand wen to eight thousand wen. Even so, Chen Xi felt that he should not be too cruel, so he kept the price down. Otherwise, with the current economic situation of the rich in Central Plains, the price of this thing could rise to tens of thousands of wen.

Just by selling this thing every year, it was no problem to supply the Three Rivers and Five Schools during the reign of Emperor Ling, and there was even surplus. There was no other way, people just believed in this thing.

However, if we really talk about the difference in quality, this kind of sheep, which is said to be under full-process monitoring and specially raised, is only about 10% better than ordinary sheep on large ranches, but is sold at more than ten times the price.

Therefore, Chen Xi did not charge any money for the palace's consumption of this "super expensive" thing. After all, the brand of this thing was all dependent on Si Niang's hard work. Without Si Niang's brand to support it, even with Chen Xi's marketing methods, it would be impossible to sell it at ten times the price with only a 10% improvement in quality and still sell it so smoothly and in short supply!
In short, Si Niang is a big name in promoting products. She is very important and the kind that needs to be promoted.

"Oh oh oh?" Si Niang's eyes lit up when she heard Chen Xi's answer, and she lowered her head to calculate how much she had gotten for free.

Happy National Day. I got up late this morning. Damn, the author has updated at least 20,000 words today. Hurry up and vote.