Although she didn’t understand business, she still had basic judgment. She completely trusted Ye Yaming’s explanation. This was much more brilliant than the old man’s stale ideas.

So it wasn’t surprising that the old man had changed like this.

However, Ye Chongming’s face quickly fell again.

He sighed deeply and said to Ye Yaming: “We don’t have much loose tea either. If we want to produce a large quantity of osmanthus tea, we need money to buy both osmanthus flowers and loose tea. Next year’s new tea must be pre-ordered after the Mid-Autumn Festival. Even if we sell our fields, land, and shops, we won’t make it in time.”

Ye Chongming paid attention to health preservation and usually took good care of himself. Even at sixty years old, his face showed few wrinkles or age spots.

But now, Ye Chongming’s face revealed what a man of his age should look like.

He said: “Yaming, I won’t hide it from you. Our family’s savings were all used to compensate for the trouble your Fourth Uncle caused, and we’ve even used some of the money that was meant for ordering next spring’s tea from the Tea Revenue Office after Mid-Autumn Festival.”

“If your eldest uncle can successfully bring back money in the next few days, we might barely get through this crisis by borrowing from here and there. But if not, then our family won’t have enough cash to pre-order next year’s spring tea. Right now, we truly don’t have the money to buy loose tea to make osmanthus tea.”

Although Osmanthus tea sold would bring higher profits and could make our Ye Family Tea brand famous, with many benefits, if we miss the tea pre-order time, even if we earn more money later, it would be meaningless. If we can’t buy next year’s spring tea, our tea factory, tea shop, and tea house will have no reason to exist. The Ye family business built over so many years would be destroyed in an instant.”

He raised his head and looked at Ye Yaming: “So, I must first secure next year’s spring tea. As for osmanthus tea, we can only wait until next autumn to produce it in large quantities.”

Although our family has fields and shops, selling them also takes time. Right now, we’re not only short of money but also short of time.”

Ye Yaming frowned.

The tea monopoly system of this era was truly frustrating. For the next year’s spring tea, merchants had to pay money to the Tea Revenue Office to pre-order it at the Mid-Autumn Festival of the previous year. Additionally, tea merchants had to pay tea taxes and obtain tea permits.

The Great Jin Dynasty’s tea permits served both as business licenses and were similar to “grain tickets” in modern times. How much tea you wanted to buy and how far you needed to transport it affected the tea tax you paid and the type of tea permit you received.

The tea production here wasn’t abundant, and not everyone who paid taxes and pre-order deposits could get tea permits; certain qualifications were required. For example, if the Tao family, who ran an inn, suddenly had the idea to go to the Tea Revenue Office to buy tea to sell elsewhere. Unless you had strong backing and government officials had spoken to the Tea Revenue Office, they wouldn’t issue you a tea permit.

Even after qualification certification, it wasn’t just a matter of paying money to the Tea Revenue Office. With so much raw tea passing through their hands, how could they know which was good and which wasn’t? To ensure tea quality, merchants had to connect directly with garden owners.

In other regions, besides the Tea Revenue Office, there were “mountain tops” to ensure that the tea was produced from that mountain. The quality distinction for tea there was simply between first pick, second pick, premium and mass-harvested varieties.

But here in Lin’an City, there was only the Tea Revenue Office, and they collected tea from different places. Some came from the foot of mountains, some from mountaintops, some from flatlands; some faced the sun, others were in shade. The acidity and fertility of the soil varied.

Raw tea produced in different places naturally had very different flavors.

Even if you paid off the Tea Revenue Office, they couldn’t guarantee you’d get raw tea from the places you wanted.

So tea merchants in the tea business still had to connect with garden owners and spend more money to pre-order tea from certain gardens. By giving them some money, they would fertilize and manage according to your requirements, harvest as requested, and process it into raw tea of guaranteed quality.

When it came time to deliver tea in spring, both parties would arrange a time to go to the Tea Revenue Office together, where garden owners delivered tea and merchants bought it simultaneously. Since neither party violated government regulations and the tea prices followed the Tea Revenue Office’s rates, as long as enough money was paid, the Tea Revenue Office naturally turned a blind eye to such transactions.

In other words, to obtain tea produced in the spring of the following year, tea merchants had to pay money to officials to get tea permits, pay the Tea Revenue Office to facilitate the transaction, pay more money to the Tea Revenue Office to pre-order raw tea and pay taxes, and give money to garden owners to get the tea they wanted.

The costs were passed on to consumers, and merchants would recover all their expenses when selling tea, even making a handsome profit. But every autumn, they had to advance large sums of money. If that year’s tea didn’t sell well and accumulated, causing cash flow problems, the business couldn’t continue.

The Ye family strictly controlled the quality of raw tea and had good tea-making skills, building a good reputation over the years, so selling wasn’t a concern. If problems hadn’t occurred in several places simultaneously, their cash flow wouldn’t have been an issue.

But now, the Ye family’s funding chain had problems, and they couldn’t continue investing in osmanthus tea.

Not producing osmanthus tea in large quantities wasn’t a problem; at most, the Ye family wouldn’t make money from this project.

But Ye Yaming had a bad feeling, suspecting that Ye Hongchang’s money might not safely return. If they couldn’t pre-order next year’s spring tea, the Ye family, as Ye Chongming had just said, would see decades of business destroyed in an instant.

The Ye family’s assets were primarily in tea, and when they had money, they preferred to buy tea gardens. So the Ye family didn’t own many fields or shops, and even if they sold them now, it probably wouldn’t fill the hole caused by the loss of those two sums of money.

Moreover, selling fields and shops in a hurry certainly wouldn’t fetch a good price, and people would spread rumors that the Ye family was going bankrupt. This was what business people feared most, as it meant that partners and customers would no longer trust you.

She began to think about how the Ye family should overcome this crisis if Ye Hongchang’s money couldn’t be recovered.

She asked: “Grandfather, do you have connections with bank owners?”

The topic was too abrupt, and Ye Chongming was puzzled.

However, he replied: “Yes. Don’t you remember? Your grandmother’s family runs a bank.”

Ye Yaming looked at Old Lady Ye in surprise.

Old Lady Ye nodded: “Yes. But now the person in charge is my cousin. He’s someone who only recognizes money. If we ask to borrow money from him, he probably won’t agree.”

Ye Yaming frowned.

She just remembered that in ancient times, banks initially mainly handled remittances, solving the problem of carrying precious metal currency being inconvenient and unsafe. They didn’t make loans but earned money through exchange fees. Historically, the lending business didn’t develop until the late Ming Dynasty. The Great Jin was equivalent to the late Song and early Ming, so the situation should be similar.