jdhmnovel Chapter 212: Reforming Bad Habits; Tea-Horse Trade
Chapter 212: Reforming Bad Habits; Tea-Horse Trade
Ortai also carried out activities to eradicate bad habits in the Gailiu area, where vendettas and armed fights were serious, slavery was common, and inbreeding was widespread.
After changing his ways, he strictly prohibited vendettas and severely punished those who provoked fights.
Ortai implemented Yongzheng's policy of "transforming the lowly into the good" and liberated the slaves.
The "bone race custom" in Yunnan and Guizhou is that the daughter of the aunt must marry the son of the uncle, which is a typical case of inbreeding.
Ortai realized the harm of this bad habit and asked them to change it.
Yunnan is the hometown of tea, but for a long time before the Qing Dynasty, Yunnan Pu'er tea was mainly exported to Tibet and traded across the border. It was mainly used by the Ming Dynasty as one of the main trade commodities to control nomadic peoples in border areas and neighboring countries, and was unknown to the inland areas.
During the period when Ortai was transferred to serve as the Governor-General of Yunnan and Guizhou, he established a tea bureau in Yunnan to manage the tea trade in Yunnan.
Ortai ordered the state to purchase the top-quality Pu'er tea from all the tea gardens in Yunnan, and personally supervised the process. He printed "Ortai" on the tea cakes and used horse caravans to transport the tea as tribute to the imperial court.
Yunnan's model of using horse caravans to carry tea to Tibet, sell it at the border, and then carry the tea to the capital is called the Tea-Horse Trade, and the road that the horse caravans once traveled is called the Ancient Tea-Horse Road today.
Pu'er tea was officially included in the "Tribute Tea Book" of the Qing Palace in the tenth year of Yongzheng's reign.
All the Yunnan tea stored in the underground palace of the Forbidden City have Ortai's seal, proving that it was Ortai who personally supervised the tribute to the capital, thus highlighting Ortai's loyalty to Emperor Yongzheng.
Only tea houses are allowed to label other grades of tea with their own trademarks and enter the mass consumer market.
The Tea Bureau established by Ortai continued to play an active role in promoting the development of Yunnan's tea trade after Ortai was transferred to another position.
In the following decades, Yunnan's tea trade gradually flourished, and a large number of people from other places moved into the tea mountains, creating a prosperous scene where every household had tea trees and every village had tea mountains.
The grand spectacle of horse caravans carrying tea to Beijing every year has stimulated the interest of people along the route from Yunnan to Beijing in Yunnan.
Ortai had experience in flood control.
Before becoming the governor of Yunnan, he had long paid attention to water conservancy.
In the first year of Yongzheng's reign, Ortai was appointed governor of Jiangsu Province. At that time, he "inspected Taihu Lake and planned to dredge Wusong and Baimao in the lower reaches."
In the second year of Yongzheng's reign, Ortai developed water conservancy projects in Jiangnan, such as "all the roads in Liuhe, Zhenjiang and Danyang were repaired."
Less than two years later, he left office and went to the southwest, leaving behind many regrets in water conservancy in Jiangnan.
However, he did not forget the people of Jiangnan, and before leaving, he donated the remaining silver he was supposed to have earned during his term to buy more than 33,400 dan of grain, which he stored in Suzhou, Songjiang, and Changzhou prefectures for relief.
This reflects his concern and care for water conservancy in the south of the Yangtze River - water conservancy is the guarantee of agriculture. Once water conservancy is not properly managed and floods or droughts occur, the people will have no livelihood.
Until the fifth year of Yongzheng's reign, Ortai, who was far away in Yunnan, was still obsessed with water conservancy in the south of the Yangtze River.
At that time, the "reform of the native system" in the southwestern ethnic minority areas was in full swing and the war was still urgent. However, Ortai, the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, did not forget to report on the water conservancy in the south of the Yangtze River to the court.
This further demonstrates that they fully recognize the importance of water conservancy to the country, especially an agricultural country like China.
In the ninth year of Yongzheng's reign, Ortai, the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, established a special fund for water conservancy projects, stating that "the development of water conservancy projects in various regions can be a lasting benefit for generations to come, and they must be repaired every year to prevent them from being damaged."
The money is collected from the people in the areas where water control is needed, generally in the form of land price increase transaction tax and salt tax, and generally does not increase the burden on ordinary people.
The funds were handed over to honest officials for management, reimbursed annually, and "stored in a record for permanent construction."
In this way, water conservancy funds can be budgeted every year and integrated with local finances.