Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 725

Relying on this, Sister Xiaojuan also expanded the scale of production, reluctantly cut off many products such as stinky tofu, sweet and sour garlic, and focused on the development of pickled mustard, sauerkraut, dried radish, and the other three products whose profits can beat these three. - Beef spicy sauce, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar.

The latter three have become the flagship products of Xianshi Soy Sauce Garden. In order to expand the business, Zhou Zhi gave Xiao Juan'er a ruthless strategy to poach people with high salaries. Relying on the connections of Xiaoliujie, she recruited them from the sales department of Laojiao Winery. A vice president, and his sales team.

This manager has an extremely wide network of contacts in the food industry across the country, and he really deserves the high salary of 1 yuan a month. He quickly sold spicy sauce, soy sauce, and vinegar to all parts of Sichuan, and even formed a network in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Influence.

With these few major events on the table, Zhou Zhi's small fights are not worth mentioning.

The so-called small fights are the steady rise of Microsoft's stock price and the historic bottoming out of IBM.

Zhou Zhi only used 700 million US dollars to become the major shareholder of Microsoft's tradable shares, and the remaining 300 million US dollars, under Jack Lee's routine operation, completed the establishment of a position in IBM.

It took as long as a year to build a position, and the cost was forty dollars per share. Up to now, both stocks have begun to realize profits, which made Jack Lee look at Zhou Zhi with admiration again.

With the remaining 500 million US dollars, Zhou Zhi began to try to invest in Lin Wanqiu's Haitong Auction House, which was used for short-term loans to purchase overseas cultural relics.

However, these investments can't see any profit at all, because Lin Wanqiu will always offer a bait that Zhou Zhi can't refuse, and exchange Zhou Zhi's due profits into cultural relics to offset the debt.

It's like Zhou Zhi lent her money to get her performance, and in the end Lin Wanqiu exchanged Zhou Zhi's due profit for cultural relics and threw it to him, so as to get another wave of performance.

But Zhou Zhi couldn't refuse at all, because in his opinion, many things were completely floor prices.

For example, Lin Wanqiu helped Zhou Zhi receive two revolving bottles from the Qianlong Dynasty.

The rotating bottle is a special type of porcelain, just like the Jiaotai bottle and the rotating neck bottle. It is similar to a nesting doll, and a certain part of the porcelain can be rotated.

The three kinds of bottles are actually somewhat similar. The outer bottle, the inner bottle, or the neck of the bottle can be rotated, and you can see the different images of the two-layer bottle body.

Rotating bottles are divided into two forms: rotating center and rotating body. The inner bottle that can rotate is called a rotating center bottle, and the outer bottle that can rotate is called a rotating body bottle.

The swivel bottle is the most expensive among them.

Inside a perforated outer bottle, a rotatable inner bottle is set, with various patterns painted on it, including scenery of the four seasons, landscape figures, flowers, birds, insects and fish, etc. For a bottle, the inner bottle, outer bottle and base are fired separately first. , and then combine them.

The upper part of the inner bottle is an exposed bottle mouth, and the body of the bottle is like a cylinder. When the inner bottle is rotated, different pictures can be seen through the holes of the outer bottle, just like a revolving lantern.

Xu Zhiheng recorded in his famous work "Yinliuzhai Talking about Porcelain", "The belly of the bottle is exquisite and clear, and there is another bottle inside the bottle that can also rotate. If it is, it is called 'turning heart', and it is a special treasure in the inner court."

How difficult is it to make?It can be known from the process flow.

The inner bottle part needs to be made first; then the outer bottle needs to be made, and the outer bottle needs to be fired in two parts, one for the neck and the other for the shoulder and belly.

Afterwards, the rotating mandrel should be processed, and the bottom of the outer bottle should be made into a raised heart-shaped button, and the bottom center of the inner bottle should also be made into a heart-shaped groove matching each other, and the button and the groove must be absolutely consistent.

Then the inner bottle and the outer bottle are set together, the shoulders of the outer bottle and the inner bottle are glued first, and then the outer belly and the inner bottom are glued together, and finally the inner bottle and the outer bottle are combined together, and fired again.

In the process of combined firing, it is necessary not only to correctly grasp the drying rate of the outer bottle and the inner bottle, but also to grasp the shrinkage rate after firing. A slight mistake will cause the heart button and the heart groove to be inconsistent, or the glaze will flow and stick together. , resulting in wasted efforts.

Therefore, when making it, superb craftsmanship is required, and at the same time, it also requires a huge cost, and this cost is often "one in a hundred".

In addition to this one, there is another kind of swivel bottle, which is even more ingenious.

There is a vertical shaft between the outer bottle and the inner bottle of this bottle. There are switches and conduits in the neck of the outer bottle. The vertical shaft is connected to the inner bottle, and there are copper paddles underneath.

Fill the neck of the bottle with clean water, turn on the switch, and the water droplets will drip onto the paddle through the conduit, thereby driving the inner bottle to rotate.

There are holes in the bottom of the bottle, the water will be collected by the base and will not flow everywhere.

No matter what kind of revolving bottle, its exquisite design and high difficulty of firing can be called the pinnacle of porcelain.

Qianlong's "Made Office Archives of the House of Internal Affairs" records: "On May 18, 19...a decree was delivered...Jiangxi made a dragon boat and a rotating bottle with a lamp touching people...delivered on the fourth day of the [-]th day of the year."

It took more than half a year to burn a revolving bottle, which shows how difficult it is.

Moreover, behind its complicated craftsmanship, a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources were consumed. Even the "local tyrant" Qianlong felt that the financial resources were too much, and he replied in the memorial: "It is not necessary to burn as much as usual porcelain." Just burn a few during the holidays.

Now Lin Wanqiu got two of them.

One was found in a small unknown auction house in Europe. The auction house kept it a secret to protect the identity of the owner, but it was known that it came from a British family. 70 years on top of a bookshelf in a dusty attic.

Zhou Zhi and Lin Wanqiu speculated that this thing was looted to the West during the Boxer Rebellion.

This bottle is very "Qianlong-style", with a height of [-] cm, a well-proportioned body, and a full and rich color.

Four carps are engraved on the body of the bottle, which is lifelike. With the design of hollowed out water ripples, it looks grand and rich, which just reflects the auspicious meaning contained in the red "auspicious" character on the neck of the bottle.

The outer bottle is made of foreign color, enamel color and pastel color, with enamel color as the main glaze, and various techniques such as gold painting, hollowing out, heart turning, embossing, shallow engraving, etc., are extremely luxurious and amazing.

The inner bottle is decorated with blue and white flowers, and the bottom of the bottle can be rotated through the hole, just like a revolving lantern, which is very interesting.

This bottle was called the "Qianlong Enamel Colored Auspicious Heart Turning Bottle". Before the small auction house was about to put it up for auction, it was discovered by Lin Wanqiu. After negotiation, they spent 20 pounds to help Zhou Zhi win it.

The other one also came from overseas, and it was specially made by Emperor Qianlong for his mother's [-]th birthday.

With a height of [-] centimeters, this bottle is currently the largest in the world, larger than all known swivel bottles.

The outer wall of the neck bottle and the bottom bottle are decorated with carmine ground rolling and foreign color painting, and plastic dragon ears are pasted on both sides.

The upper part of the outer wall of the belly bottle is engraved with the scene of auspicious clouds and mountains, and the lower part is engraved with mountains, rocks, plants and trees.

The overall picture is a beautiful mountain stream, verdant flowers and trees, a colorful phoenix flying above the white clouds, and the theme is "There is a phoenix coming";
The picture is complicated but not messy, revealing the majesty of the royal family everywhere, exquisite workmanship, and extremely glamorous.

Gently turn the neck of the bottle, and the inner tank will rotate accordingly. Quails, reed geese, golden pheasants, eagles, peacocks, mandarin ducks and other birds can be seen in the hollowed out place. Unfolding, it seems to hear a hundred birds singing together, and the sounds of nature are in your ears.

All birds have their own auspicious meanings. For example, quail is a homonym for "an", which means peace; golden pheasant symbolizes wealth and honor;

As the bottle turns, all the birds seem to be coming towards the phoenix. If there is a pilgrimage procession, the overall implication is "a hundred birds facing the phoenix", filled with the fragrance of flowers and the singing of birds.

Throughout the Qianlong dynasty, the one who enjoyed the status of a hundred birds and phoenixes was none other than Qianlong's biological mother, the Empress Dowager of Chongqing.

(End of this chapter)