Lu Ming

Chapter 167 Timber and Cement

The "Two Two" fleet in the early days of the crossing force has now expanded to the "Three and Four" fleet: a total of three groups of sand fleets, each with four ships, each group of Tangzhuang and the seniors are resting, and there is always one group sailing on the road middle.

The current situation has reached the limit that Tangzhuang can accommodate.The handling and reorganization of 4 sandships were completed within the time limit, which took up all the reception capacity of Tangzhuang: this is the suburb of Hangzhou, and Sany's crane arm cannot be installed.

Unless we continue to wantonly expand the wharf, widen the deep-dug pond, and build other supporting facilities, otherwise, this will be the end.However, it is not cost-effective to use the above-mentioned projects in the Tanghe River: it does not have the geographical conditions of a medium-sized port, not to mention the shallow water, and there is no natural harbor.

Therefore, finding land to rebuild a port completely under the control of the crossing public has become the key task of the next Hangzhou station.

In the creek at the gate of Tangzhuang, a row of four large sand ships were unloading.Coolies with bare upper body and only a pad on their shoulders are bending over like shrimps, carrying bags of red bricks and some large wooden boxes from the boat.

The largest volume of wood has been unloaded in advance and is being piled there waiting for the owner to pull it away.

And the deputy manager of Tangzhuang Freight Station, the former bandit and the third head of Pingfeng Village, Comrade Chu Maosheng, is standing under the long bamboo shed beside the neat wooden stacks, coughing and arguing with others.

"Chu San, I heard that you were also a good man who made promises, why did you change your career to cheat as soon as you came down from the mountain?" With a pair of triangular eyes, he mocked Mr. Chu with a look of disdain.

"Diao Xingshou's words are reasonable!"

"To the point!"

"You must not teach this generation to keep your promises!"

After the old man finished speaking, several accomplices beside him also nodded one after another, and everyone stared at Chu Maosheng with contempt, as if someone had just come here to ask for a son with a lot of money.

Comrade Chu Maosheng, who has been in a lot of shape since he came down the mountain, is now leaning against the wooden pile, rolling his eyes, and explaining to the old man with a wry smile: "Master Diao, the shipment that was agreed that day is calculated on the basis of three ships. The fourth cargo should be sold by Tangzhuang itself, so why cheat?"

"Good talking skills!" The old man's eyes widened with anger at this moment, and his beard and hair suddenly rose: "Where did you ever set the number of boats back then? It's absurd!"

It all starts with the first ship of timber.

Inside Tangzhuang is a group of maritime merchants from outside, and this local merchant knows it all.So Xiong Dao and the others wanted to do business in Hangzhou, but they couldn't do business in certain industries, such as banks -- what Huang Juren could do, Xiong Dao couldn't do.

The same is true for grain, cloth and silk businesses.Xiong Dao can spend money to buy it, everyone is good friends, but if he wants to intervene to do it himself, then the supersaturation blow will come soon, Xiong Dao can't suddenly kill all the shopkeepers and yamen servants.

So all along, Tangzhuang spent a lot of money to buy food and groceries. In the eyes of many businessmen in Hangzhou City, Xiong Dao maintained a good image: a rich and reputable maritime merchant.

When the first ship's timber arrived at the port, Xiong Dao cleverly wholesaled all the goods to the wood merchants headed by Mr. Diao.

If Xiongdao sold the wood at the gate of Tangzhuang at that time, the local wood merchants would definitely be hit.Again, it is impossible for Xiong Dao to kill all the merchants in Muhang. This is business, not a gangster grabbing territory.

Mr. Diao is the head of the wood company. At that time, he learned that there were several ships of wood in Tangzhuang, and that Xiong Dao was willing to wholesale them to him at the internal price of the industry, so he naturally accepted the goods with a smile. .

After that, Mr. Xiong, who is "reasonable and understands the rules of the trade", joined the wood trade logically.

Things got out of hand after that.

The first is precious.

Taiwan is the place with the largest production of camphor and camphor in the world, and the title of "Kingdom of Camphor" is not called for nothing. In the 17th century, Taiwan was full of thousand-year-old trees. More than half of the first batch of wood in the cross-travel crowd included strong-smelling camphor wood girders, as well as introverted, thick-textured Xiao Nan girders, hard Qinggang wood girders, and ebony girders.
In short, these precious woods that should have been cut up and made into furniture were brutally cut into girders by a certain force.

Since the late Ming Dynasty, the large wood resources in various places have been exhausted. Most of the wood used in the Jiangnan area is Shan, Nan, Tong, and Pine from the Qingshui River Basin in Guizhou, and Shancypress produced in Yan, Ting, Shao, and Jiansi Prefectures of Fujian.

Like these unique "luxury" girders brought by the crossover, some wood merchants who have just entered the industry have never even seen them.

Furthermore, these woods are dried.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were two routes for timber transportation: in the provinces of Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei, the rivers, lakes and Yangtze Rivers were all the way through the wooden rafts, and then went north to the capital through the Yangzhou Canal.

The provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Fujian are transported by river and sea. The wooden rafts will eventually be assembled in Fujian, and then transported offshore by Fuchuan to Ningbo for sale.

Regardless of the above methods, after the wood finally reaches the ground, it will take at least a year for all large materials to air dry. In the humid southern regions, this time will be longer.

The wood produced by Tangzhuang is different.It is impossible for Tangzhuang’s sea-going ships to zigzag in the turbulent strait with a string of wooden rafts hanging on them, so these timbers are loaded into the cabin and transported, and they have been dried—you can use them when you carry them home.

The wood merchants soon discovered the secret: the goods bought in the morning can be sold at noon, which is equivalent to saving a lot of costs such as storage yards, yard protection, and fire protection maintenance.

The wood produced in the kiln base has another advantage: because part of the cabins need to be rebuilt to store wood, the wood produced in the kiln area is all cut rectangles or squares.

Most of the beams in the southern region of the Ming Dynasty were round in cross-section: saving labor and materials.This trend will not be reversed until the Qing Dynasty.Of course, the rich and powerful will not care about those few silver coins.

The industrial wood species are precious, high-quality, have been dried, and the geometric shape is more stable.In addition, these woods are all painted with creosote oil, which is anti-corrosion and moisture-proof, so the first batch of goods were sold out within a few days, and the Hangzhou government digested it without even going to Suzhou.

Afterwards, facing the swarms of wood merchants, big and small, Master Xiong naturally trembled.First deduct [-]% of the goods and sell them yourself, and then deduct [-]% for self-sale let go.

When the proportion of timber sold by Tangzhuang reached [-]%, under the leadership of Diao Xingshou, Muxing began to fight against the oppressive and kind Master Xiong.Yes, the situation has now been reversed, and the wood industry has become a disadvantaged group: the market has opened up, word of mouth has spread, Tangzhuang's fleet can unload wood to Ningbo in the future, and the customers here pay the money and then go to Ningbo to pick it up That's good, Hangzhou Wood Company has nothing to do.

This is the reason why Mr. Diao and his gang besieged Chu Maosheng in the opening scene: Although the clarion call of the buyer's market has already sounded, the industrial products produced by the cross-country crowd will not satisfy the market for at least ten or eight years, so those who have goods in their hands Man, still so awesome.

Mr. Diao and his group of wood merchants are no longer high-grade, they can only argue with Chu Maosheng, the deputy manager of Tangzhuang, to ask for goods-Master Xiong is very busy now, and has to deal with a lot of businessmen every day.

After the upper deck of the sandship was unloaded, the cement in the middle deck and the red bricks in the bilge would also be carried out by coolies one after another.

The cement will be moved into the large red brick warehouse built by Mr. Xiong by the Tanghe River. As for the red brick open-air yard, it is good to put it there, and it will be sold soon anyway.

At present, because there is no suitable packaging, the cement is first packed in straw bales, and then put into large camphor wood boxes and transported to Hangzhou in the 17th century. It is not a loss.

The camphor wooden boxes produced in the kiln area are half thicker than ordinary Ming Dynasty wooden boxes.These wooden boxes are all "plain ware", that is, semi-finished products that have not undergone a series of subsequent processes such as painting, carving and installing copper handles.

So right now in the goods yard in front of Tangzhuang Gate, there are still many owners of woodware shops: they only need to buy back the camphor wooden box, and let their own craftsmen decorate it beautifully. The wooden box will be turned into high-end furniture filled with silk brocade, and it will become a must-have utensil for the dowry of young ladies from rich families.

As for the cement in the wooden box, as soon as this thing appeared in Hangzhou, various local construction industry leaders noticed this magical commodity. Twenty centimeters above the ground, smooth as a mirror, behind the integrated path, people who shuffled in front of Liu’s house in the past few days rubbed their shoulders, and many people paved the concrete road at night
The cement burst into flames.

People from all walks of life in the construction industry swarmed here, which is why Mr. Xiong has to deal with many line heads, cabinet heads, and master craftsmen every day.

In order to maintain the reputation of its own products, Tangzhuang launched a cement construction training class in a timely manner. The training fee is 80 taels per person per person, and a certificate will be issued after graduation; and the future training classes for laying floor tiles and wooden floors (these cannot be produced now) , Students will also get a 95% discount based on the certificate.

No training is necessary: ​​if cement is to become qualified concrete, there are many intermediate procedures: the proportion of clear water and other aggregates must be reasonable, the mixing must be uniform, there are many things that need to be paid attention to during construction, and the maintenance of cement after construction Also important, these techniques must be learned through training and practice.

The tuition fee of 80 taels of silver did not frighten those cabinet heads and master craftsmen—the craftsmen in the middle ages learned skills, which were all obtained by being squeezed and beaten down by the master when they were young. Nowadays, you can learn a few groups by paying 80 taels of silver. Concrete formula and construction secrets, this is not a loss.

The newly built red brick warehouse in Tangzhuang was built by the students in this way.These students bring their own dry food and small workers, they work hard, and they have a good memory-many of them are illiterate, and the data of cement formulas are all memorized by rote.

Of course, Tangzhuang will not make their money in vain: housekeepers who come to Tangzhuang to buy cement will get a student roster, which lists the current list of craftsmen who are qualified to use cement to pave roads and build walls.

(End of this chapter)