Fang Xing was overjoyed and immediately kowtowed to express his gratitude.

Ye Yaming took Fang Xing to the main courtyard to inform Ye Chongming about her decision to promote Fang Xing to steward.

Ye Chongming had no objections, and because of the Zhou Xiang matter, his eyes were full of affection toward Ye Yaming. He would have agreed without hesitation not only to Ye Yaming promoting Fang Xing to steward but also if she had wanted Zhou Xiang, Meng Ji, or Li Fu to work under her.

Besides, Ye Yaming’s request was not excessive at all.

In the Ye family mansion, apart from Li Fu, the housekeeper, each courtyard had both internal and external stewards. The internal steward was naturally a matron who helped the mistress of each household manage their affairs. The external steward mainly accompanied the master when he went out and handled some business matters for him.

The First and Fourth Households both had external stewards, but the Second and Third Households did not.

The Third Household needed no explanation, but Ye Hongsheng of the Second Household felt that since he spent all day in the tea factory making tea, there weren’t many miscellaneous business matters that needed handling. Having someone by his side who earned wages higher than his attendant yet had little to do would be wasteful, wouldn’t it?

So he simply didn’t request an external steward.

Now that Ye Yaming was promoting Fang Xing to be the Second Household’s external steward, no one could say anything against it.

As for whether Fang Xing would work by Ye Yaming’s side or by Ye Hongsheng’s side, that was the Second Household’s own business. As long as Ye Hongsheng had no objections, there would be no problem at all.

“Yaming, can we start selling the chrysanthemum tea now?” Ye Chongming asked.

Ye Hongsheng had brought back the chrysanthemum tea just before the Mid-Autumn Festival. Now, more than a month had passed since Mid-Autumn, the osmanthus tea had already sold out, and the new tea sets would take some time as they waited for Master Zhineng to create buzz, produce design drawings, and then have the kiln fire the pottery.

According to Lu Guanyi’s plan, it would be best to sell the tea sets after the New Year. By then, Master Zhineng would have set up two or three tea gatherings, and this trend would have spread to the capital. Before the New Year, when he and Qi Ji went to the capital to further promote this trend, and the Ye family’s Jihang Tower announced that they had a large number of new tea sets, there would be no worry about the tea sets not selling.

The cooperation between Lu Guanyi, Qi Ji, and the Ye family was different from what Meng Chengwei had wanted with the Ye family. Lu Guanyi and Qi Ji’s status was such that even if they wanted to engage in commerce, they would have to put the business under someone else’s name, either having a trusted servant or guest handle it, or directly supporting a merchant family.

When discussing the cooperation initially, Ye Yaming had told Ye Chongming not to raise this issue. If Lu and Qi found someone to front the business, the Ye family would just take their share of the profits. Ye Yaming’s tea-making techniques were constantly evolving, so she wasn’t worried about the Ye family becoming a vassal in the partnership.

Fortunately, Lu and Qi had no other intentions and directly put the business under the Ye family name.

This was good for them. First, they could leverage the existing reputation of the Ye family tea business without starting from scratch. Finding suitable people to engage in commerce was not an easy task. Second, as long as they wanted to keep it confidential, their cooperation with the Ye family would be difficult for outsiders to discover, so no one would use this matter against them.

In the future, when Lu Guanyi entered the imperial court to serve, and Qi Ji participated in the imperial examinations, there would be no impact whatsoever.

As for the Ye family, apart from receiving more profits, their reputation would soar. With the support of these two men, especially if the Crown Prince was involved behind the scenes, the Ye family could even aspire to become imperial merchants.

This was extremely beneficial for both parties.

However, while the tea sets were a cooperative project, the chrysanthemum tea was not. The family’s funds were tight; they needed money for New Year’s gifts to Governor Qi and others who looked after the Ye family’s interests, red envelopes for managers and shop assistants, money for the household servants, and new purchases.

The Ye family was large and prosperous, earning a considerable amount of silver each year, but they also spent heavily. Not much was left as savings. If they earned more in a particular year, they would find another project to invest in or buy land and tea gardens. In short, they couldn’t keep much money on hand.

Wasn’t Ye Chongming now turning his attention to the chrysanthemum tea?

Ye Yaming nodded and smiled, “When we first released the osmanthus tea, it attracted covetous attention from all sides. At that time, the cooperation with Young Master Lu and Young Master Qi hadn’t been finalized. ‘A tall tree catches the wind,’ and our foundation wasn’t stable, so naturally we had to hold back on the chrysanthemum tea.”

“Now is the time to sell the chrysanthemum tea. Autumn is dry, making it the perfect time to drink chrysanthemum tea. However, before selling, you should first order a batch of packaging paper bags with the words ‘Hangbai Chrysanthemum’ written on them.”

Ye Chongming didn’t understand at first and frowned at Ye Yaming, but then his eyes lit up, and he slapped the armrest, “Great idea!”

Writing “Hangbai Chrysanthemum” would indicate that the chrysanthemums were produced in Lin’an, and everyone would naturally assume they came from the Ye family’s estate. If anyone wanted to investigate, they could only go to the Ye family’s estate.

Moreover, the Ye family owned more than one property. Ye Chongming could have the estate managers and farmers tell some nonsensical stories, throw up a smokescreen. This way, he could confuse them and make them dizzy, preventing them from thinking about Tongxiang.

It’s worth noting that the flower farmers in Tongxiang were free commoners. Even though Ye Hongsheng had signed contracts with them for next year’s chrysanthemums, if another buyer offered a higher price and was willing to bear all the costs and consequences of breaking the contract, those flower farmers might change their minds and sell the chrysanthemums to someone else.

By firmly drawing attention to the Ye family’s estate, they wouldn’t have to worry about others finding the source of the chrysanthemums.

“But this isn’t a permanent solution,” Ye Chongming said. “It would be better if these chrysanthemums were produced on our land.”

Ye Yaming fell silent for a moment.

This was the difference between merchants in a peasant society and those in modern society.

Merchants in a peasant society would spend large amounts of money to buy land, ensuring that what they sold came from their fields. This gave them a sense of security and peace of mind.

For instance, in the Ye family’s case, if not for the fact that all the tea gardens on the tea mountain had already been divided up, and those scattered garden owners could live comfortably each year from the income of their tea gardens and were unwilling to sell, making piecemeal purchases meaningless, Ye Chongming would have spent a large amount of money to buy more tea gardens.

With their tea gardens, they wouldn’t have to worry about being held hostage during the spring tea pre-orders or fear that someone might snatch away the garden owners.

But doing business this way could only be on a small scale. All the capital would be tied up in land, meaning that when doing business, there wouldn’t be enough funds, making it impossible to expand further. One reason for the decline of Hui merchants in the late Qing Dynasty, who failed to evolve into capitalists, was their peasant mentality.

But in a peasant society, policies that prioritized agriculture and suppressed commerce made the agricultural-centered ideology deeply rooted, something Ye Yaming couldn’t change.

She could only offer advice: “‘Oranges born south of the Huai River are oranges, those born north of it are trifoliate oranges.’ Different climates and soils produce chrysanthemums with different flavors. If we’re going to grow chrysanthemums, we might as well buy land in Tongxiang for cultivation. The land prices there are much cheaper than those around Lin’an city.”

Note: Hangbai Chrysanthemum was originally produced in Tongxiang. In the 1920s, Wang Zixin, the owner of the Wang Yutai Tea Shop, made significant profits by selling chrysanthemum tea to Southeast Asia. To prevent others from cutting in, he wrote “Hangbai Chrysanthemum” on the packaging, making people mistakenly believe it was produced in Hangzhou, thoroughly confusing his competitors. The name “Hangbai Chrysanthemum” came from this.