From Robinson Crusoe

Storing graphite crucibles is a headache for Chen Zhou.

Such an important thing is not used at the moment, but we must ensure that it will not go wrong when it is needed in the future.

Combined with the terrible environment of the isolated island, Chen Zhou felt like it was a place where strategic nuclear weapons were stored.

At this moment, he missed very much the 200g of desiccant that was "given away" with the bag of dried fruits when he bought them on Bing Xixi.

Unfortunately, none of the previous rewards, whether canned food, edible soil, garlic or autumn white apricots, required desiccant, so he could only find a way himself.

After wrapping the graphite crucible, Chen Zhou placed it next to the stove and baked it for a while.

In the process, he remembered the charcoal sticks he often used.

As we all know, the porous structure of charcoal or activated carbon can effectively absorb moisture and remove odors from the air.

If he placed the wrapped graphite crucible in a relatively closed environment and sprinkled a pile of crushed charcoal into it, perhaps he could prevent the crucible from getting damp.

After figuring out a reliable method, Chen Zhou immediately emptied the gift box, then took out some charcoal sticks that had been cut into sticks, broke them into pieces and placed them at the bottom of the box, and finally carefully put them into the graphite crucible.

Worried that there were not enough charcoal sticks, he took out a few pieces of chopped wood that produced less smoke and placed them next to the stove for use.

When the fire in the furnace weakens, put these pieces of wood in and seal the stove mouth. Tomorrow morning you will be able to harvest a batch of high-quality charcoal blocks.

Strictly speaking, most of the charcoal he had burned before was not qualified charcoal.

Because charcoal that is truly suitable for use and storage is not burned using open flames, but requires a charcoal kiln.

The key to burning charcoal in a charcoal kiln is to control the placement of the wood to ensure that they are heated evenly and to facilitate smoke discharge.

Under this premise, ignite the wood, control the temperature, make the charcoal burn in an oxygen-deficient environment, heat and distill, and take it out after cooling to make the charcoal.

This type of charcoal has a firm texture, does not shed much, and comes in larger pieces, making it suitable for jobs that require larger quantities.

The charcoal made by Chen Zhou is all wood that is not completely burned in the stove. It can be used as firewood on rainy days, or cut into small strips to make paintbrushes. It is not so useful to use it to filter water or absorb moisture and odors.

……

While busy, put the precious soy sauce, soap and salt in places where cats can't easily touch them.

He packed up the lighter and hand saw, oiled the hacksaw blade, wrapped it in fur and placed it in the carpenter's tool box.

Before going to bed, Chen Zhou finally had time to read "An Overview of Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Complete Book of Bamboo Weaving, Rattan Weaving and Straw Weaving" to make up for his shortcomings in weaving skills.

Under the bright light, he sat upright on a wooden chair, quietly flipping through a book.

Among the three major items, rattan weaving is the most valuable, followed by the additional palm weaving, and straw weaving is third.

The usefulness of bamboo weaving can be said to be the smallest, because there is no bamboo on the island at all. In the absence of raw materials, bamboo weaving is undoubtedly a castle in the air.

He turned to the correct page according to the catalog and began to absorb knowledge bit by bit, starting with the preparation of materials.

You don't know until you read the book. After reading the book, Chen Zhou realized how ridiculous his previous idea and process of trying to weave rattan baskets on his own were.

In the introduction to the process of intangible cultural heritage rattan weaving, there are more than a dozen steps in total.

From the most basic rattan beating (cutting off the knots on the vines), to picking vines, washing vines, drying vines, bending vines, pulling vines, cutting vines, to bleaching, dyeing, weaving, painting and other processes, it is complicated and takes a long time.

There are also a lot of tools that need to be used.

There are commonly used scissors, daggers, ropes, hammers, shovels, as well as saws, awls, pliers, watering cans, brushes and other tools. Without their help, some more complex rattan products would be very difficult to make.

Fortunately, the book displays the sizes and shapes of these tools in relatively complete detail. Even if Chen Zhou does not have them now, he will be able to make them slowly in the future.

After the detailed process, there are some basic weaving techniques, simple design ideas and methods of making rattan handicraft frames.

For example, the flat weaving method is suitable for making baskets and mats;
It is suitable for making twisted braids with three-dimensionality and texture, and can weave complex patterns and structures;
There is also the crocheting method, which requires using a crochet needle to weave rattan into various shapes, and the winding method, which requires wrapping rattan around other objects to form various unique shapes.

Hundreds of pages have passed in a hurry. After the introductory tutorials on weaving techniques, design ideas, etc., it is time to start practicing.

According to the book, rattan weaving is a profound and extensive craft. In theory, experienced old rattan craftsmen can weave all traditional furniture with rattan.

In fact, there are more than 5000 varieties of rattan weaving patterns inherited from the intangible cultural heritage alone, which are divided into four categories: rattan da, rattan mats, rattan woven items and rattan furniture.

Here, rattan weaving refers to a semi-finished product woven from rattan skin in a long piece like cloth. The pattern changes according to the weaving technique and it can be cut at will, which is equivalent to a special kind of cloth.

Rattan mats are divided into bed mats, square mats, pillow mats, sofa seat covers, etc.

Most rattan furniture is traditional Chinese furniture, including tables, chairs, benches, sofas, beds, cabinets, coffee tables, boxes and screens.

Among them, rattan chairs are the most popular, which can be further divided into many styles such as dragon and phoenix chairs, plum blossom chairs, and dining chairs.

The final rattan pieces take up the most tutorial space in the book, probably because they are most suitable for beginners to make or sell.

This type of handicrafts mainly include small daily utensils, toys and decorations, including hand baskets, cans, boxes, lamp holders, pen holders, flower pots and other utensils with high practical value, as well as rattan pandas, rattan frogs, rattan giraffes and other small toys that are popular among children.

Most traditional rattan furniture is mentioned in the practical tutorial.

But there are more than ten thousand types and styles of all rattan furniture added together, especially those large furniture that are hundreds of steps long. If you want to explain it completely from the beginning to the end, I am afraid that dozens of large books will not be enough.

Therefore, in addition to simple small utensils and rattan toys, the book only teaches several methods of weaving rattan chairs and boxes.

As for rattan mats and rattan mats, I briefly described and explained them in a few pages.

If Chen Zhou wants to develop rattan mats and baskets with complex and beautiful textures based on these things, he can basically only rely on his own experience and creation.

Turning to the end of the book on rattan weaving crafts, after the weaving techniques, it also introduces techniques such as coloring, bleaching, and painting to enrich the color of rattan weaving crafts. By the way, it also comes with a few pages of "extension knowledge" on waxing rattan crafts.

This little piece of knowledge also taught Chen Zhou how to melt paraffin, beeswax or soy wax for making candles.

Paraffin is a mixture of hydrocarbons extracted from petroleum, shale oil or other mineral oils and is certainly not found on the island.

There was no soy wax either, but Chen Zhou thought he might be able to find beeswax.

But when he thought about it carefully, he realized that he had been on the island for so long and had never paid much attention to whether there were any larger beehives in the forest, or even whether there were large populations of bees.

It is hard to say whether you can find a beehive to make candles with beeswax.

……

It took Chen Zhou more than an hour just to read from the beginning to the end of rattan weaving and simply read the general introduction and color pictures.

The large amount of knowledge that suddenly flooded into his mind made him dizzy, as if he had swallowed a steamed bun whole and could not digest it in a short time.

Rubbing his temples and looking at the faint smoke from the oil lamp beside him, Chen Zhou gently closed the book.

He decided to stop learning here today.

Starting tomorrow, he would slowly learn from the most basic knowledge, cut down more different vines in the forest, test the properties of the vines one by one, and soak and dry them according to the method taught in the book...

In the past, I learned things slowly on my own, and when I failed to accomplish anything, I could always find an excuse - it was normal that I couldn't figure out a technology that our ancestors spent thousands of years studying.

Now that he had the tutorial, he had no reason to slack off. Besides, rattan products were indeed the tools he needed urgently, and he could not ignore the knowledge in the book, whether it was to improve his quality of life or to enrich his knowledge and background.

……

On September 9, Chen Zhou climbed out of bed with a head full of rattan weaving techniques.

I was so busy bringing the "big gift package" home yesterday that the wooden and stone walls on the beach have not yet been tidied and built.

Now that he has "official permission", he no longer has to worry or hide when doing this.

Compared with the past, people are less willing to waste the “new benefit” that comes once every 15 days.

After getting up, he took care of all the "little ancestors" in the family. After eating, he immediately put on a leather raincoat, put on his hiking bag, and set off with his tools.

……

There are four days left until the first anniversary of landing on the island.

It happened that the "poison rat testing" plan was a great success, and the mice in the rat pen were about to turn one month old.

Chen Zhou feels that it is time to let them shine for their own "catering business".

Moreover, he was given a bottle of soy sauce as a reward last time. Although it was a cheap 1L bottle of soy sauce, it was the modern condiment he had been longing for.

Soy sauce has a shelf life and won’t last long.

It just so happened that, taking advantage of this "anniversary", he wanted to use soy sauce to prepare some seafood that he had not dared to eat before and make a few delicious dishes.

It has been more than three hundred and sixty days since the challenge began.

As a challenger living next to the sea, the only seafood he had ever eaten was kelp, which would be laughed at if others told them about it.

However, Chen Zhou felt that there was nothing wrong with his excessive caution.

You know, eating less seafood won’t kill you, as food resources are abundant on the island.

However, eating unfamiliar fish and crabs can have serious consequences, ranging from diarrhea to parasitic infections, to death.

There is a shortage of medical care and medicine, and he dare not gamble with his life.

……

In modern times, Chen Zhou was obsessed with sea-hunting videos for a while, and thus mastered some "useless theoretical knowledge".

He knew that the best time to go fishing was during high tide.

The first and fifteenth day of each lunar month are within the high tide season.

Having lived on the island for a year, I often looked up at the stars during the dry season and enjoyed the unpolluted night sky when the sky was clear.

During this process, the changes in the moon's phases can naturally be seen.

The lunar calendar is closely related to the moon, and the moon is basically invisible in the sky on the first day of the lunar year.

On the 14th, 15th and 16th, the moon is round. Therefore, there is a saying among the people that the moon is full on the 15th and full on the 16th.

The lunar date was vaguely determined based on the changes in the moon. Even if it was cloudy all day during the rainy season and the moon was not visible, Chen Zhou could still judge that September 9 should be around the 26th day of the lunar calendar.

The high tide has passed at this time, so it is not the best time to go fishing.

But the environment on the island is not like the modern seaside. Every day after the tide goes out, there will always be a group of people with shovels, buckets, racks and gloves swarming onto the beach like locusts to do a big sweep, leaving the ground in a mess when they leave.

The natural resources here are rich and unspoiled.

When strolling along the beach on weekdays, you can see small shrimps, crabs and shellfish lying on the sand. As long as you dare to eat them, there will definitely be no shortage of seafood even if there is no high tide.

……

It was still drizzling outside when I got up in the morning. By the time Chen Zhou and Lai Fu arrived at the beach, the heavy rain had turned into small drops of water.

The sky was not sunny like yesterday, and the beach still looked a little gloomy.

The tide had not yet receded, so Lai Fu was allowed to go out and play alone while Chen Zhou dealt with the wooden and stone walls first.

The wood and stone blocks have been cut more than a dozen times.

The seaside forests are like middle-aged programmers, with patches of baldness. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find trees of the right size, and you have to go further and further away.

The same goes for stones. The natural stones left over from the seaside are not enough.

However, Chen Zhou had anticipated this problem. During the dry season, he moved a lot of suitable stones from the cliff above the camp at the foot of the mountain to the beach, and they have not been used up yet.

Therefore, the most troublesome part in building a new wooden and stone wall is the wood.

……

He patiently moved the cut stones and wood, adjusted the positions of the steel plates and semi-finished millstones, and built new walls. During this time, Chen Zhou looked at the beach from time to time, waiting for the tide to recede.

Time flies, and before we know it, more than half of the wooden and stone walls have been built and the tide has receded.

The raindrops that dripped from time to time had not hit the wide-brimmed hat for a long time, and only the sea breeze with a fishy and moist smell was blowing.

On the beach just after the tide recedes, you can see large areas of kelp and brown-black agaragar that look like long hair.

Some shrimps and crabs exposed on land ran hurriedly, waving their claws or slender and powerful legs like excavators, digging up the sand around them and hiding in it.

The slower-moving shellfish, starfish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and conchs are not so flexible. Most of their bodies are exposed, and they cannot be buried in a short time.

Especially creatures like starfish and sea cucumbers, which lie on the beach and are too lazy to move.

Of course, their arrogance is understandable because they are not popular with seabirds at all.

There are so many delicious fish, shrimps, crabs and shellfish that we can’t even eat enough of them, so who would bother eating something hard, tough and not very nutritious?
He took off his wide-brimmed hat, picked up a stone to press it down, took down his backpack, and took out the equipment he had prepared for this trip to the beach.

There were plastic bags for the harvest, homemade clay pots, stainless steel tongs that came with the frying pan, and a long iron stick for digging - he didn't bring salt this time.

He took off his leather boots, held a plastic bag in one hand and a long iron rod in the other, and put the stainless steel clip in his belt.

After sending away Lai Fu who came to join in the fun, Chen Zhou stepped on the moist sea sand which was neither too hot nor too cold, crouched down, and stared with wide eyes in search of those "friendly-looking" marine creatures.

When it comes to seafood, apart from fish, the most popular ones are shrimps and crabs.

This time, Chen Zhou's main target of catching shrimps and crabs was also shrimps and crabs.

He had seen lobsters tied up tightly in supermarkets, as well as mantis shrimps, commonly known as shrimp crawlers.

But on this beach, at a glance, he couldn't find the few marine creatures he knew.

Even if there are shrimps, they are small, translucent, or large and weird shrimps with red and white lines. They either don't have much meat or don't taste good. (End of this chapter)