The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 489 Recruiting is Difficult

Mentioning the laboratory.

In late last month, Gan Minglan arranged the entrance examination and preliminary teaching courses for the Guanxi First Military Academy.

They then targeted the oil industry.

After paving the thousand-mile road from Hepingguan to Hamiwei, the asphalt stones on dozens of small hills in Heiyoushan were also exhausted.

The results are quite remarkable.

The road is six meters wide, and the roadbed is about ten centimeters thick.

To level the roadbed, a heavy roller weighing several tons was used.

Such a flat, wide road, which was also quick to construct, was a great joy to the Kansai garrison, their families, and immigrants.

Even the wealthy merchants from Jiangnan who came to trade again before the New Year praised this asphalt road as unparalleled in the world.

"It would be even better if the more than two thousand miles of road connecting Hami to Yili Bagua City could also be paved!"

Thinking about it is pointless.

Asphalt needs to be stockpiled in preparation for construction next summer.

After all the asphalt in Black Oil Mountain was cleared and used up, dozens of oil-leaking cracks were exposed.

How much oil is produced?
It's the kind of thing that's constantly oozing oil!
The bricklayers that Gan Minglan found built oil tanks around the oil-leaking cracks.

Once the oil tank is full, the oil will flow through a pre-buried thick copper pipe into a specially made iron drum for storing oil.

In a day, it's enough to fill at least fifty barrels.

Each bucket weighs two hundred jin (approximately 100 kg).

Based on the extraction volume of oil fields in later generations, this output is not much.

But we are no longer in the industrial age, so there is no need to refine large quantities of fuels such as gasoline or diesel.

This is enough!

Oil refining is very dangerous, and the distillation room is still under construction.

Gan Minglan plans to try making soot ink using the petroleum that is currently being produced every day, following the method mentioned in "Dream Pool Essays".

Ever since.

In the dead of winter, recruitment notices were posted on the bulletin boards of various health stations.

Kansai Ink Workshop is recruiting one hundred ink makers.

Those with three years of ink-making experience will be given priority in recruitment, with a starting monthly salary of five taels of silver.

Ink makers with over eight years of experience earn more than ten taels of silver per month.
Upon hearing the news, the new immigrants could no longer stay cozy on their heated brick bed during the winter:
"What?! This ink maker is paid so much? Someone who's worked here for three years earns more than a bricklayer, stonemason, or carpenter who's worked on a construction site for over a decade!"

"The key is that working in the ink workshop is not like working on a regular job, where you only work for a year or two and then it's over. You can earn this much every month from now on!"

"I wonder if the garrison will accept my sixteen-year-old son as an apprentice at the ink workshop? My son can work for free without pay!"

"What are you saying? Who wouldn't want their son to go if there was such a good opportunity? Do you think the garrison is short of your apprentice wages? Didn't you see what they clearly said? They want experienced workers, experienced workers!"

"Who doesn't start as an apprentice and become a skilled craftsman? My eldest son can now recognize five hundred characters and learns everything quickly; this ink-making craft will definitely be no challenge for him."

It's no wonder immigrants are so enthusiastic about job postings.

The families of Guan Jun were very interested.

Everyone was asking around, wondering what kind of amazing business this newly opened ink mill was.
Fang Molin, the headmaster of Qingshan Academy, arrived with a head full of questions and requested an audience with General Gan:
“General, the ink makers of the previous dynasty were all concentrated in Huizhou in Jiangnan. We, we in Guanzhong, should have a hard time finding skilled ink makers. Do you really want inexperienced craftsmen to figure out how to make ink on their own?” Despite his doubts, Fang Molin’s anticipation for making ink himself could not be stopped.

Of the Four Treasures of the Study, paper and ink are the most expensive.

The Qingshan Academy now has more than 300 students, all of whom are carefully selected as promising candidates for the imperial examinations.

The academy is generous in providing its students with writing brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones.

The twenty-odd people who will participate in the imperial examination next year will consume a huge amount of paper and ink!

Gan Minglan took out a copy of "Dream Pool Essays," pointed to the page about the production of Yanchuan stone liquid, and asked:

"Headmaster, we have discovered oil hundreds of miles away from Weilumu. Do you think it is possible to make the Yanchuan stone liquid described in Shen Gongshu?"

Fang Molin was no longer the calm and collected man he once was; even the beard on his chin was trembling.

"I have read through 'Dream Pool Essays,' but my impression of petroleum is limited to written descriptions. I have never seen the actual product and have no way of verifying the feasibility of using it to make ink."

"General, this lampblack ink is definitely worth a try! If it fails, the loss will only be some wages, but if it succeeds, the schools in Kansai could save several hundred taels of silver a year just on ink alone!"

Gan Minglan went to great lengths to recruit people, not to save a pittance.

She said, "Whether lampblack ink is really better than pine soot ink is another matter. But in terms of production costs, the raw material for pine soot ink is pine resin, which is scarce and hard to come by. Lampblack ink, on the other hand, uses an unlimited amount of petroleum."

If the ink we produce is of lower quality than pine ink, we will use large quantities at low prices to penetrate the market.

If the quality is truly as good as Shen Gong says, we will present it to Your Majesty as a specialty of Kansai.

In this way, it will be only a matter of time before the monopoly of Huizhou ink in Jiangnan is broken by using lampblack ink.

In my opinion, while researching the production of lampblack ink, we might as well study the other two items of the Four Treasures of the Study at the same time!

Fang Molin was so surprised that he hiccuped several times: "The Four Treasures of the Study? Are all the craftsmen in Guanzhong this capable?"

It wasn't that he underestimated the craftsmen of Kansai; it involved many techniques that were not passed down to outsiders.

"Master, you see, when it comes to the Four Treasures of the Study, everyone only knows about Xuanzhou paper, Huizhou ink, Huzhou brush, and Duanzhou inkstone."

In reality, do other prefectures not have good writing materials?
Master Hongming, who studied papermaking in Xuanzhou for ten years, said that the paper made from mulberry bark in Guanzhong is no worse than Xuan paper!
And then there's the brush itself; the most important part of making a calligraphy brush is the bristles at the tip.

Rabbit fur, sheep wool, horse hair, wolf hair, chicken, duck and goose feathers—does our Northwest region really lack these furs?
As long as you are willing to put effort into the pen-making process, are these pens, which cost only a few coins, really that difficult to make?
An inkstone, to put it simply, is just a stone!

The Gobi Desert is rich in jade and mudstone of all colors; surely there are plenty of stones suitable for making inkstones among these?

After her analysis, Fang Molin's mind was buzzing.

A set of writing implements of medium quality would cost more than ten taels of silver, yet the craftsmanship of them was described as so simple by the General of the Western Garrison!
Don't say it.

Don't even say it.

It sounds like it's highly feasible!
Fang Molin said he couldn't help much in other ways, but he could bring along the teachers and students from the academy to help test the brushes, inkstones, and ink.

Gan Minglan: "."

She's still too stuck in conventional thinking when it comes to hiring people!
Look at this, what a great product experience officer!
The next day.

Several more job postings have been released.

Following the ink craftsmen, hundreds more brush makers, stonemasons, and inkstone carvers were recruited.

Offering hundreds of high-paying jobs in one go has really stirred up the frustration of hundreds of thousands of people in the dead of winter.

Seeing immigrants who can't get high salaries makes me furious.