In a building with a refined roof, a man is weighing bags of goods and dividing them into several baskets, which seems to be a procedure to sell them. On the Internet some people say that this is the salt trade. I tried to do some research into the trade of salt during the Song to see whether this is possible.
The salt in the Song dynasty was categorized into sea salt (regions near the Yellow Sea were one of the main production areas), lake salt (that produced in Jiezhou 解州 and Anyi 安邑 was the most famous), well salt (produced in Sichuan and Yunnan), earth salt, and cliff salt.
Take the trade of the lake salt as an example. The trade of the salt was mainly dominated by the government, but the wars on the northern border caused a large need of money and grains to support the army. Thus, the government adopted a system called “Jiao Yin” 交引, which could go in two ways: the first way is that the army buy grains from merchants with a draft called “Jiao Yin” 交引. The merchants can later go to the capital to exchange this draft for another draft, and go to the lake salt production areas to redeem the salt, and sell them in certain authorized regions. The second way is that merchants go to capital to exchange money and silk for the draft, and then they redeem lake salt in the production areas and sell them in certain authorized regions. This system had existed in the Five Dynasties but was adopted in a larger scale in the Song.
Whether individual merchants could sell the salt and how large area this free trade could exist were closely related to the fiscal problem caused by wars on the northern border. The trade of salt by merchants at first was only allowed in the twelve prefectures in the west of the capital. In 994, twenty-one prefectures in Shaanxi were also allowed. However, the “eastern circuit (including the capital, the western capital, and Nanjing) salt” was mostly dominated by the government. Because of this, and because there seems to be no official in charge in this building, and the building appears near one of the most prosperous areas of the capital, I think what the man is weighing and dividing into baskets may not be the salt, although I have no clue what it might be, since the trades of coal and alum were also dominated by the Northern Song government, and the bags do not look like bags of flour.
I think the building where the man works in might be a very small restaurant with a few tables and chairs laid out. Adjacent to it is a set of table and chairs under a shabby thatched roof. A man stands under the thatched roof but only a part of his back is viewable on the scroll. Outside the roof is a woman holding a baby on her shoulder, who might be the wife of the runner of this small restaurant. On her right, there are three donkeys with saddles but no goods on them. One possibility is that the donkeys are used to carry the baskets of goods the man in the building with refined roof are dividing. A second possibility is that they are to be rent to travelers. A Northern Song scholar Wang Dechen 王得臣 recorded in Chenshi 麈史 that “Donkeys are rent in the capital. People met on the way ride on donkeys.”
On the left side of the woman are seven pigs. The pigs might either be raised for the restaurant or for selling. The consumption of pork can also be seen near the Rainbow Bridge on the scroll, where a head of a pig is placed on a chopping board on the right side of a female (I guess) food vendor. The consumption of pork was only second to the consumption of mutton in the Song. The pigs on the scroll are raised beside the river. The Yuan writer Wang Zhen 王桢 also mentions feeding pigs with algae and plants near water in Nongshu 农书·养猪类.
This scene is adjacent to the Buddhist monastery, but is separated from the official’s house on the right by a narrow river, which might indicate that these businesses have nothing to do with either the official living there, or the Buddhist monastery (since Buddhists cannot eat meat), but instead is a private business run by commoners.
|