After Prices Plummeted, I Fled the Famine With a Fortune in My Pocket

Su Wan, a finance PhD, wakes up as a peasant girl in Wanfu Village in the Great Liang Dynasty, only to discover that prices have fallen by a factor of ten thousand. When she goes to buy a pound of salt, the villagers pay with scraps of silver so tiny they are practically dust: units like hao, li, and fen, currencies she has only ever encountered in ancient books. The one tael of silver the original owner hid beneath her pillow turns out to be worth 3.5 million yuan! She is loaded! The village chief arrives with a matchmaker in the middle of the night, but he is really just after her money. Su Wan draws a sharp breath. In the village, this silver is a death sentence. Take it to the capital, though, and it is a golden ticket. The border is in crisis, and bandits are roaming everywhere. Wanfu Village is right in their path. Without hesitation, she melts her one tael of silver into small change and joins a refugee caravan, pretending to be poor. In prefectures where grain is cheap, she can pinch out a little silver dust and trade it for several cartloads of grain. When she reaches places where grain prices have soared, she trades the grain for land deeds. If the landowners ask too much, she simply tosses silver flakes onto the table, and the deeds are immediately offered to her with both hands. Best of all, she has the refugees invest their labor, gives each person a tiny pinch of silver as a deposit, and prints meal tickets to cover their wages. The refugees tremble as they hold the silver dust in their hands. This tiny bit can buy half a pig. Who would dare not work their hardest? By the time they reach the capital, Su Wan has introduced redeemable banknotes. Holding up a handful of silver dust, she demonstrates in public: in the south of the city, it can buy a mansion; in the north, it can rent an entire silk shop. With silver worth this much, who could doubt her banknotes? The silver deposited with her piles up like a mountain. She lends it to merchants, sets up short-term loans, and helps businesses finance one another. She even finds all kinds of ways to play the grain futures market. The whole capital is abuzz with the story: the Su family's richest woman made her fortune with that one tael of silver.