The conspiracy against the Southern Xinjiang theocracy in Gao Pangshi's house had just been roughly planned, and the disciples reported a new news: Zhu Yingzhen, the Duke of Chengguo, who had left for half an hour before, was here again, and this time he even changed into casual clothes and wore a
Wearing a cloak.
Gao Pragmatic, who had not left the conference room, was a little surprised. Neither Zhu Yingzhen nor himself had the slightest idea of staging a coup. What did he mean by being so mysterious when he visited him?
Gao pragmatic stood up and said: "Uncle Mo, go and explain and prepare some midnight snacks. Miss Liu, you and I go to the study to meet him."
Gao Mo responded first, while Liu Xin accompanied Gao Pangshi to the study room to wait for Zhu Yingzhen's arrival.
Zhu Yingzhen arrived very quickly. Just as the door announced, he changed into a green suit and wore a cloak with thick eaves. He took it off only when he saw Gao Pragmatic.
Gao pragmatic stood up to greet him, and said with a smile: "The way the Duke is dressed, if it weren't for the embroidered spring knife hanging on his waist, he would look like a royal guard wearing casual clothes."
Zhu Yingzhen said while taking off his clothes: "Rixin, don't make fun of me. I'm not sure about some things here. I need you to help me analyze and come up with an idea."
Gao pragmatic asked him to sit down. Just as Zhu Yingzhen was about to speak, he suddenly found Liu Xin standing next to Gao pragmatic and was stunned for a moment.
"Miss Liu is my staff." Gao Pingshi said calmly: "If you can talk to me, you can talk to Miss Liu."
Zhu Yingzhen immediately regained his composure and said with a smile: "The news in the fleet said that people in southern Xinjiang call Madam Zun and Miss Liu the 'peerless twins'. I originally thought it was referring to the two of them who had great military exploits, but now I know
These words have a deeper meaning."
If he stopped here, it would be a bit frivolous for a prince, so Zhu Yingzhen continued: "But what I admire most is your discerning eyes, Rixin - how did you discover such two heroines?"
He is a hero, and can be entrusted with important responsibilities without fear of others?"
These pragmatic words were actually not easy to answer, but Liu Xin took the initiative to take the words and said: "The Duke of the country is ridiculous. The only person in southern Xinjiang who can truly be called a heroine is Huang Dutong. The slave family is just a
It’s really not worth mentioning as a foil.”
Zhu Yingzhen laughed, but looked at Gao Pragmatic. Seeing Gao Pragmatic, he had no intention of "taking responsibility". Liu Xin couldn't help but thought, secretly: 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 and there really is another relationship between them?
But at this time, Gao Pangshi had already turned his attention to business matters and asked: "Is it possible that the Duke is here because he still has some doubts about things in Luzon?"
Zhu Yingzhen immediately put aside other thoughts and shook his head: "That's not true. You have made it very clear about Luzon. Since I have expressed my agreement, how can I go back on my words? I rushed back to see you to tell you something about Japan.
latest situation."
Gao Pragmatic was stunned when he heard this, and then asked: "About Satsuma Domain?"
"The first is about the Satsuma Domain." Zhu Yingzhen emphasized: "The other one is about the Japanese imperial court, but we will talk about that later. Let me talk about the Satsuma Domain first?"
"Okay." Gao Pragmatic nodded immediately: "My lord, please speak."
"The matter of the Lhasa Mofan boarding the ship was left to me the day before yesterday. I am very concerned about this matter and have been urging the subordinates to speed up the progress." Zhu Yingzhen first expressed his gratitude to himself, and then continued: "
On the whole, things went smoothly, and the work on selling sulfur and camphor was progressing very quickly.
I guess the Satsuma clan themselves were also scared of poverty. They heard that this system could make a lot of money, so our people convinced them with little effort, and the new system was quickly launched.
At the beginning of the monopoly, because we worked together 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
The bank lent him a sum of money, I wonder if you have received any news here?"
Gao pragmatic nodded and said: "I received the news, but the money is not much, only seventeen thousand taels."
"Ha, Nissin, you are a well-fed man and don't know how hungry a man is. Seventeen thousand 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 kilograms of rice. What does seventeen thousand taels mean?
I calculated it, which is equivalent to more than 600,000 shi for them! Nisshin, did you know that the Satsuma domain was previously reduced to 600,000 shi, but the output in their place was very low. The 600,000 shi is actually
Last year, we only produced about 300,000 shi of grain.
In other words, your loan is equivalent to the value of 20% of their total output last year, and if you compare it with what their feudal office can actually collect, your loan is equivalent to half of their annual income!
What's more, you know the financial situation of the Satsuma Domain. They are basically unable to make ends meet. Where do they get the income to pay you back? For this, you actually call it a small amount of money?"
Gao pragmatic smiled, waved his hand and said, "Forgive me for saying something wrong. Duke, please continue speaking."
"Where did I just talk? Oh, yes, speaking of sulfur, the camphor monopoly has been implemented smoothly, but the Satsuma clan owes Kyoka a considerable amount of money."
Zhu Yingzhen organized his speech and said: "Almost half a year has passed since the sulfur and camphor monopoly. The initial period is considered the preparation period. Let's not forget it for the time being. In the past three months, the Satsuma Domain Hall has made obvious profits.
It has improved a lot compared to before, and has even begun to repay debts - not Nisshin's debt, but what they originally owed to the samurai of this domain."
Gao Pragmatic frowned slightly: "With just two franchises, their finances can be in surplus?"
"That's not the case, it's just that some of the arrears have been in arrears for too long, and I'm afraid there will be some trouble if we don't pay them back. Now that the Shimazu family has two money on hand, they can consider paying off some of the old debts first, so that they can deal with any arrears in the future.
——Scare, isn’t it just tearing down the east wall to make up for the west wall? There is no surplus.”
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Gao Pragmatic said with relief: "I see. Is there anything else going on with the Shimadzu family?"
"Yes, of course there is." Zhu Yingzhen said: "Liu Li... Oh, if you call that thing glass, then glass. The first batch of glass from Jinghua has been sent to Satsuma Domain for some time. It is a batch of window glass, and 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 Kyoka only provides ordinary glass and leaves the grinding task to the Satsuma clan, and this kind of crystal glass is very expensive to sell, the Shimadzu family is also very concerned about this matter and thinks about it wholeheartedly.
You can make a lot of money from this.
But judging from the current situation, the matter is not progressing smoothly. The Shimadzu family is looking for skilled craftsmen everywhere, but the sources of those people are very complicated. Some are wood carvers, some are stone carvers, and some are engaged in root carving and bamboo carving.
Yes, but no one has ever done the work of polishing crystal glass, and a lot of valuable crystal glass has been wasted."
Gao Pragmatic nodded, not surprised. In fact, he had expected this situation because polishing glass was really difficult.
This problem even needs to be explained from the development history of glass. Before 3500 BC, the ancient Egyptians first invented glass. They used it to make jewelry and knead it into particularly small glass bottles. By BC
In 1000, the ancient Egyptians mastered the glass blowing process and could blow glass products in various shapes.
After ancient Rome defeated ancient Egypt, it placed ancient Egyptian prisoners of war on the island of Venice to specialize in glass making. As a result, glass making technology was spread to Italy, which led to the heyday of the famous Venetian glass.
Around the middle of this century (the 16th century), Italian craftsmen began to mine and utilize natural crystal. However, due to the high hardness and small reserves of natural crystal, it was difficult to make utensils from it.
Therefore, in the original history, it was not until the second half of the 17th century that Italian glass manufacturers 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 refractive properties, thickness, resistance to cutting, and easy carving. Therefore, it has become an important milestone in the history of glass development and ushered in the heyday of Italian glass.
There is no doubt that the crystal glass that Kyoka shipped to the Satsuma Domain as a material was made using this technology.
But here is another example, which is the famous "Bohemian crystal" in later generations. As early as the beginning of the Christian era, the Bohemians learned the art of glassmaking from the Romans. Later, the smart Bohemians
Relying on the two unique Bohemian forest resources, the world-famous Bohemian "forest glass" is produced.
What are the two unique forest resources? One is the high-quality quartz sand mineral belt, and the other is the rich oak tree resources. The former does not need to be explained, but the latter is worth mentioning.
At that time, the Bohemians burned oak wood to smelt quartz sand, extracted high-quality potassium carbonate from the oak ashes, and dissolved it in the glass solution. This is how Bohemian "forest glass" was born.
Later, the Bohemians not only learned the Italian white (or colorless) crystal glass manufacturing technique, but also introduced colored glass with Bohemian characteristics. The introduction of colored glass made Bohemian crystal
In one fell swoop, it surpassed Venetian glass and became the best crystal glass in the world.
In the 19th century, Czech (Bohemian) craftsmen introduced the latest chemical formulas based on the physical and chemical properties of different elements. They added gold, silver, calcium, cobalt, uranium, and copper lithium oxide to the glass solution
Using different non-ferrous metal elements, crystal glass of different colors such as red, yellow, blue, green, purple, etc. is fired, also known as crystal glass.
These new technical means made the crystal glass change into colorful colors. From then on, the reputation of "Czech crystal - transparent gold" spread all over the world.
Jinghua has not yet mastered the technology of colored crystal glass. Gao Pragmatic only knows the theory, but does not understand the practice at all. Therefore, he can only give some guidance, but unfortunately there has been no results so far.
As mentioned just now, the main advantages of crystal glass compared to ordinary glass are "high transparency, good refractive properties, thickness, cutting resistance, and easy carving".
Gao Pragmatic had previously decided to let Jinghua be responsible for the production of glass (including ordinary glass and crystal glass), and leave the finishing of crystal glass to Satsuma Domain for two purposes: first, to ensure that Satsuma Domain's work has high added value.
But at the same time, the market size is limited; secondly, ensuring the supply of raw materials is in the hands of Jinghua. If Satsuma leaves Jinghua's support, the industry will collapse.
It can be said that crystal glass finishing is a sugar-coated poison that Gao pragmatism threw to Satsuma.
High value-added products can ensure that after Satsuma masters the technology, it can make huge profits with relatively small efforts. However, such high value-added products themselves are very expensive and cannot be popularized in ordinary private households. Therefore, the market size is limited.
It is impossible for Satsuma to obtain too huge economic benefits from this, and in turn have the capital to fight against Jinghua.
At the same time, Gao Pragmatic has a second hand ready to put a dog leash on the Satsuma clan: the Satsuma clan only masters processing technologies such as crystal glass grinding, and all its achievements are based on the supply of goods from Beijing Huawei. Once
If Kyoka cuts off the supply, the Satsuma Domain will just stare blankly, and the entire industry will collapse directly.
However, Kyoka's crystal glass does not use Bohemian crystal (potassium carbonate refined after oak burning), but trona - hydrated sodium bicarbonate. This makes the Satsuma clan unable to imitate without Kyoka, because the two major powers in East Asia
One of the trona mines in Henan is directly controlled by Gao Pragmatic, and the other in Tumote is indirectly controlled by Gao Pragmatic. [See Chapter 175 of this volume: Sugar-coated Poison]
Of course, Bohemian crystal's manufacturing methods are pragmatic and will be left to Jinghua sooner or later, but he plans to place the production site in southern Xinjiang - the forest resources in southern Xinjiang are more abundant. And because stained glass is also made on this basis
, so it will also be produced in southern Xinjiang when the time comes.
Although crystal glass has the above-mentioned advantages, the grinding technology is obviously not something that can be figured out at once. Generally speaking, there are two techniques for glass processing in later generations: carving and grinding. Among them, carved glass is made by embossing, that is,
It is grinded and processed by molds and machines.
The patterns made by machines have fewer lines, simple structure, well-proportioned patterns, and are naturally cheap. However, where is the processing machinery with that kind of precision now? Therefore, there are no conditions for the emergence of engraving technology.
The other type is the so-called ground glass, which is ground by hand through multiple processes. It is characterized by uneven but complex patterns. The work is delicate and smooth. No matter what shape the glass product is, it can be dazzling.
.
The price of ground glass products in later generations is much more expensive than that of embossed glass - handwork is equal to art, everyone knows it. Of course, because there is no carving and it is low-end, the price of ground glass may be higher. It is estimated that in the future
It's just for the nobility and rich, and it's full of style.
Therefore, Gao Pragmatic did not hesitate and nodded: "No problem, send them another batch of crystal glass. Before this technology is developed, Jinghua will ensure a continuous supply of crystal glass."
He paused and then added: "I know it is not easy to train skilled craftsmen, and Jinghua does not plan to get involved for the time being, but the Duke of the country had better make a three-part agreement with them: no matter what kind of technology, it must be recorded in the records.
Jinghua keeps records, which is also the prerequisite for Jinghua to provide so many precious raw materials."
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