Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1508 New Trends in Japan (Part [-])
Gao Wushi's conspiracy against the theocracy in southern Xinjiang had just been roughly designed, and Menzi reported a new news: Cheng Guogong Zhu Yingzhen, who had left for half an hour before, came again, and this time he even changed into casual clothes. Wearing a cloak.

Gao Wushi, who had not been out of the conference room, was a little surprised. Neither Zhu Yingzhen nor himself had the slightest idea of ​​a coup d'etat. What does it mean that he visited himself in such a mysterious way?
Gao Wushi got up and said, "Uncle Mo, go and tell me, prepare some supper. Miss Liu, you and I will meet him in the study."

Gao Mo responded first, while Liu Xin accompanied Gao Wushi to the study to wait for Zhu Yingzhen to arrive.

Zhu Yingzhen came very quickly, just as Menzi informed him, he changed into a blue suit and wore a cloak with thick eaves, which he took off only after seeing Gao Yushi.

Gao Wushi got up to greet him, and said with a smile: "Master Guo's outfit, if not for the lack of an embroidered spring knife hanging from his waist, he would be like a Jinyi Wei Tiqi in casual clothes."

Zhu Yingzhen took off his outfit and said, "Rixin, don't make fun of me. I'm here because I'm not sure about something. I need you to help me analyze it and come up with an idea."

Gao Wushi asked him to sit down. Zhu Yingzhen was about to speak when he suddenly found Liu Xin who was standing next to Gao Wushi, and was taken aback for a moment.

"Miss Liu is my staff." Gao Wushi said frankly, "Anything you can say to me, you can say to Miss Liu."

Zhu Yingzhen immediately recovered his demeanor, and said with a smile: "The news in the fleet said that people in southern Xinjiang all called Mrs. Zun and Miss Liu "peerless twins". There is a deeper meaning to this.”

If his words ended here, it would be a bit frivolous for a prince of the state, so Zhu Yingzhen continued: "But what I admire most is Rixin, your eyes—how did you find out that such two women He is a hero, and can he not be afraid of people's words and entrust him with important tasks?"

It is actually not easy to answer these high-level questions, but Liu Xin took the initiative to take the words and said: "The Duke of the country has praised you absurdly. Only Huang Dutong can be called a heroine in southern Xinjiang. I just want to be a hero." As a foil, it’s really not worth mentioning.”

Zhu Yingzhen chuckled, but looked at Gao Yushi. Seeing that Gao Yushi didn't mean to "blame" Liu Xin's words, he couldn't help but thought, "It seems that this girl has a lot of status in front of Rixin, but this man and woman have Don't... Could it be that the rumors are true, there really are other relationships between them?
But at this time, Gao Wushi had already turned the conversation to the serious matter, and asked: "Duke is here, could it be that he still has some doubts about the things in Luzon?"

Zhu Yingzhen immediately put aside other thoughts, shook his head and said: "That's not true, you have already explained the matter of Luzon very clearly. Since I agree, how can I go back on my word? I came back to see you to tell you something about Japan. latest situation."

Gao Wushi was taken aback when he heard the words, and then asked, "About Satsuma?"

"The first is about the Satsuma clan." Zhu Yingzhen emphasized: "The other one is about the Japanese court, but that will be discussed later. Let me talk about the Satsuma clan first?"

"Okay." Gao Wushi nodded immediately: "Master, please speak."

"You entrusted me to handle the boarding of the Lhasamo clan the day before yesterday. I am very concerned about this matter and have been urging the subordinates to speed up the progress." Zhu Yingzhen gave himself a credit first, and then continued: " Things are generally going smoothly, and the work of the sulfur and camphor monopoly is progressing very quickly.

I guess the Satsuma clan is also afraid of poverty. I heard that this system can make a lot of money. Our people persuaded them with little effort, and then the new system was introduced soon.

At the beginning of the monopoly, because we cooperated to increase the purchase volume, they added a lot of manpower, one for expanding production, and the other for supervising the flow.This caused them to spend a lot of money, so Jinghua Bank lent him a sum of money. I wonder if you have received any news from here? "

Gao Wushi nodded and said, "I have received the news, but the money is not much, only 7000 taels."

"Ha, Nisshin, you are a full man who doesn't know how hungry a man is. 7000 taels is not 'not much' for the Satsuma clan, it is a lot. Although the price of food in Japan is almost double that of our capital, But one tael of silver can buy seventy or eighty catties of rice. What does 7000 taels mean?
I calculated it, which is equivalent to more than 6 stones for them!Nisshin, do you know that the Satsuma domain was cut to 60 shi high before, but the output in their area was very low. The 60 shi high actually produced only about 30 shi of grain last year.

In other words, your loan is equivalent to [-]% of their total output last year, and if you compare the part they can really charge, your loan is equivalent to half of their annual income!
What's more, you also know the financial situation of the Satsuma clan. They are basically unable to make ends meet. Where do they get the income to pay you back?Just like this, you still said it was a small sum of money? "

Gao Wushi smiled, waved his hand and said, "Forget my slip of the tongue, the Duke will continue."

"Where did I say just now? Oh, yes, speaking of the successful implementation of the sulfur and camphor monopoly, but the Satsuma clan owes Jinghua a considerable amount of money."

Zhu Yingzhen organized his language, and said: "Almost half a year has passed since the monopoly of sulfur and camphor, and the initial period was regarded as the preparation period, let's not count it for now, just say that in the past three months, the Satsuma Domain Hall has made significant profits. It has improved a lot compared to before, and even started to repay the debt—not yours, but what they owed to the warriors of this feudal clan."

Gao Wushi frowned slightly: "With just two monopoly, their finances will be in surplus?"

"That's not true, it's just that some of the debts have been in arrears for too long before, and I'm afraid it will be troublesome if you don't pay them back. Now that the Shimadzu family has two money on hand, they can consider paying back some of the old debts first, so that it will be easy to talk about if they are in arrears in the future ——Scary, isn’t it just tearing down the east wall to make up for the west wall, what kind of surplus is there.”

Gao Wushi said in relief: "I see. Is there anything else going on with the Shimadzu family?"

"Yes, of course." Zhu Yingzhen said: "Liuli... Oh, you call that thing glass, so let's use glass. The first batch of glass from Jinghua has been sent to Satsuma for a while. It is a batch of window glass. There are a few of them. Some of them have been carved in China, and most of the rest are ordinary glass windows, similar to those used in Rixin Building.

Since you said before that Jinghua only provides ordinary glass, and the task of grinding flowers will be entrusted to the Satsuma clan, and this crystal glass is sold at a very high price, so the Shimadzu family is also very concerned about this matter, and they are all thinking about it. This earns a lot of money.

But as far as the current situation is concerned, the progress of this matter is not smooth.The Shimadzu family searched for craftsmen with ingenuity everywhere, but the sources of those people were very complicated. Some were wood carvings, some were stone carvings, and some were root carvings and bamboo carvings. But no one had done this kind of crystal glass grinding. The work has already wasted a lot of valuable crystal glass. "

Gao Wushi nodded, not surprised.In fact, he had expected this situation a long time ago, because the difficulty of glass grinding is really quite high.

This problem should even be explained from the history of the development of things like glass.Glass was first invented by the ancient Egyptians 3500 BC, who used it to make jewelry and knead it into exceptionally small glass bottles.By 1000 BC, the ancient Egyptians had mastered the craft of glass blowing and could blow glass products of various shapes.

After the ancient Rome defeated ancient Egypt, the ancient Egyptian prisoners of war were placed on the island of Venice to make glass. From this, the glass making technology was passed to Italy, and then the famous Venetian glass heyday came into being.

Around the middle of this century (16th century), Italian craftsmen began to excavate and utilize natural crystals. However, due to the high hardness and low reserves of natural crystals, it was difficult to make them into utensils.

Therefore, in the original history, it was not until the second half of the 17th century that Italian glassmakers invented "artificial crystal", also known as crystal glass, by adding a certain proportion of lead to the quartz sand solution.

Artificial crystal not only overcomes the above-mentioned shortcomings of natural crystal, but also has high transparency, good refraction performance, thick, cut-resistant, and easy to carve. Therefore, it has become an important milestone in the history of glass development and ushered in the heyday of Italian glass.

And there is no doubt that the crystal glass that Jinghua shipped to the Satsuma domain as a material was precisely the crystal glass made with this technology.

But here is another example, which is the famous "Bohemian crystal" in later generations.As early as the beginning of AD, the Bohemians learned glassmaking techniques from the Romans. Later, the smart Bohemians relied on the two unique Bohemian forest resources to create the world-renowned Bohemian glass. Sub "forest glass".

Which two kinds of unique forest resources?One is the high-quality quartz placer belt, and the other is rich oak tree resources.The former need not be explained, but the latter is worth mentioning.

At that time, Bohemians smelted quartz sand by burning oak, and extracted high-quality potassium carbonate from oak ashes, and dissolved it in glass solution. This is how Bohemian "forest glass" was born.

Later, the Bohemians not only learned the white (or colorless) crystal glass manufacturing technique of the Italians, but also introduced colored glass with Bohemian characteristics.The introduction of stained glass made Bohemian crystal surpass Venetian glass in one fell swoop and become the best crystal glass in the world.

In the nineteenth century, Czech (Bohemia) master craftsmen introduced the latest chemical formulas based on the physical and chemical properties of different elements.They added different non-ferrous metal elements such as gold, silver, calcium, cobalt, uranium, and copper oxide into the glass solution, and fired crystal glass of different colors such as red, yellow, blue, green, and purple, also known as crystal glass.

These new technical means make the crystal glass change into colorful colors. Since then, the reputation of "Czech crystal-transparent gold" has spread all over the world.

Jinghua has not yet mastered the colored crystal glass technology. Gao Yushi only knows the theory, but does not understand the practice at all.So he can only give some guidance, but unfortunately so far no results.

As mentioned just now, compared with ordinary glass, the main advantages of crystal glass are "high transparency, good refraction, thick, cut-resistant, and easy to carve."

Gao Yushi previously decided to let Jinghua be responsible for the production of glass (including ordinary glass and crystal glass), and hand over the finishing of crystal glass to the Satsuma domain for two purposes: first, to ensure that the work of the Satsuma domain has high added value, But at the same time, the market size is limited; second, to ensure that the supply of raw materials is in the hands of Jinghua, if Satsuma leaves the support of Jinghua, the industry will only collapse.

It can be said that crystal glass finishing is a sugar-coated poison thrown by Gao Pragmatism to Satsuma.

High value-added products can ensure that Satsuma can get huge profits with relatively small efforts after mastering the technology, but the high value-added products themselves are expensive and cannot be popularized to ordinary households, so the market size is limited. It is impossible for Satsuma to obtain too huge economic benefits, and in turn have the capital to fight against Jinghua.

At the same time, Gao Wushi has second-hand preparations to put a dog leash on Satsuma Fan: Satsuma Fan only masters crystal glass grinding and other processing technologies, and all its achievements are based on the supply from Jinghua.Once Jinghua cuts off the supply, the Satsuma clan will only stare blankly, and the entire industry will collapse directly.

However, Jinghua's crystal glass does not use Bohemian crystal (potassium carbonate extracted after burning oak), but trona-sodium bicarbonate hydrate, which makes it impossible for Satsuma to imitate without Jinghua, because the two major East Asian One of the trona mines is directly controlled by Gao Yushi in Henan, and the other is indirectly controlled by Gao Yushi in Tumed. [See Chapter 175 of this volume, sugar-coated poison]
Of course, Bohemian crystals are produced in a highly pragmatic way, and sooner or later Jinghua will be allowed to make them, but he intends to place the production in southern Xinjiang—the forest resources in southern Xinjiang are more abundant.And since stained glass is also manufactured on this basis, it will also be produced in southern Xinjiang at that time.

Although crystal glass has the above-mentioned advantages, it is obviously not possible to find out the grinding technology at once.Glass processing in later generations generally has two techniques: engraving and grinding. Among them, engraved glass is made by embossing, that is, it is made by grinding with molds and machines.

The patterns made by the machine have few lines, simple structure, well-proportioned patterns, and the cost is naturally cheap.However, how can there be such precision processing machinery now?Therefore, there are no conditions for the emergence of carving techniques.

The other kind is so-called ground glass, which is made by hand through multiple processes. Its characteristic is that the pattern is uneven, but very complicated, and the work is delicate and smooth. No matter what shape the glass product is, it can be brilliant .

The price of ground glass products of later generations is much more expensive than that of patterned glass products-handwork is equal to art, and everyone knows it.Of course, because there is no carving to go to the low end, the price of grinding flowers may be higher. It is estimated that in the future it will be used only by nobles and rich people, and the price is full.

So Gao Pragmatism didn't get entangled, nodded and said: "It's okay, send them another batch of crystal glass. Before this technology is developed, Jinghua will ensure a steady stream of crystal glass."

He paused, and then added: "I know it's not easy to train skilled craftsmen, and Jinghua doesn't plan to get involved in it for the time being, but it's best for the Duke to make three chapters with them: no matter what kind of technology, it must be recorded in the record. Jinghua keeps files, which is also the prerequisite for Jinghua to provide so many valuable raw materials."
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(End of this chapter)