Chapter 993 - 972: Flowers Expensive, Grain Cheap (Extra update for the reward from the book friend "Like Drinking Water")
Zhou Wulang brought a chest into the room, opened it to show Manbao, and exclaimed with delight, "Four hundred taels, how about that, impressive right?"
Manbao, touching a large ingot of silver, asked, "Fifth Brother, I’ve counted, and there’s a total of six hundred and twenty-five taels of silver in the house, which is more than I expected."
"Isn’t it what you said, to just aim for a high price and let them bargain it down?" Zhou Wulang said, "I negotiated back and forth with the steward of the prince’s mansion several times. That pot of chrysanthemums sold for two hundred and forty-five taels, and ’Chang’e Flying to the Moon’ went for three hundred and eighty taels. I told them that the flowers were very rare, the only one like it in the entire Great Jin."
"The ancient early roses I took out in the afternoon were golden, and their eyes lit up when they saw them. Seeing that, I aimed for an even higher price, and by the end, it was pushed down to four hundred taels."
Manbao clicked her tongue in amazement, "Three pots of flowers are worth more than what our family yields in a year’s worth of grain."
Bai Shan remarked, "It’s best not to let this kind of thing spread, or else if more people start growing flowers, fewer will farm the land. But if flowers become too common, they’ll lose their value."
Bai Erlang looked up from his pastry and muttered indistinctly, "Who would be so silly as to plant flowers instead of growing crops?"
Bai Shan glanced at him and said, "Money moves the heart. A pot of flowers can sell for four hundred taels, and with the current price of grain, that could buy forty thousand dou of grain. That is to say, one pot of flowers could be exchanged for forty thousand dou of grain. So do you think they’d prefer to grow flowers or crops?"
Bai Erlang replied, "How can that be the same? Not just any pot of flowers can sell for four hundred taels. Like that ancient early rose Manbao brought back, I’ve never heard or seen one like that before."
Bai Shan continued, "You know that, but the average person doesn’t. They just know someone sold a pot of flowers for four hundred taels."
Mr. Zhuang nodded in agreement, about to express his assent, when Manbao interrupted, "Oh, stop arguing. It’s not just now that rare flowers are selling at high prices, it has always been that way since ancient times."