"Boss, this black tea is really hard to sell."
Manager Zhou sat across from Su Ze and said with a sigh.
Su Ze waited until the kettle was bubbling, then poured the boiling water into the tea bowl. The red tea soup quickly precipitated. Su Ze divided the tea soup into two tea cups and handed one to Manager Zhou.
These are lapsang souchong roasted in the tea garden. Judging from his current Level 1 "tea ceremony" skills, there is almost no difference in taste from the black tea of later generations.
Manager Zhou took a sip lightly. He saw that although the black tea was not as fragrant as green tea, it still had a strong aroma. Why couldn't it be sold?
This made Manager Zhou extremely anxious. Tongmu Town couldn't sell it, so he asked people to bring it to Nanping City to sell it, but the result was that it still couldn't be sold.
"Master, I asked someone to inquire. Official Zhang from the government office said that our black tea is a tea for villains, not for gentlemen. Those big customers who were ready to try it have all canceled their orders."
Manager Zhou had a sad look on his face. The government official was a big shot he looked up to. I heard that this official Zhang was a demoted Jinshi master.
With his comment as "tea for villains", it will be difficult for black tea to stand up.
This year was his first year playing for Su Ze, and he wanted to make some achievements, but he didn't expect to get off to a bad start.
"Tea for villains?"
Su Ze smiled. He was so confused by the debate between the great Ming scholar, the great man, the gentleman and the villain that he even wanted to divide the tea leaves between the gentleman and the villain.
However, it is true that black tea was not suitable for the tea-drinking habits of the upper class of the Ming Dynasty, but Su Ze was not originally planning to sell black tea to Nanping County. His target was the foreigners who collected tea leaves in China.
It will be a holiday for the county school in a few days, and Su Ze is going to Yuegang to sell this batch of black tea.
However, as soon as my future father-in-law leaves, this recommendation officer will say "tea for villains". It seems that my father-in-law is very accurate in judging people.
Su Ze didn't care about Zhang's comments, but how to sell black tea that people in the Ming Dynasty didn't drink at a high price?
Su Ze said to Manager Zhou:
"Go to the painter in the city and order a batch of exquisite tea boxes. You can spend any amount of money, but remember they must be exquisite!"
Manager Zhou looked confused. Do you have to spend more money to package the tea that cannot be sold? Does the owner really know how to do business?
Su Ze asked again: "How many tea gardens in Wuyi Mountain follow our lead in making black tea?"
Manager Zhou replied honestly: "There are seven or eight families making black tea with us, the largest of which is the Xiong family's tea garden."
Su Ze also didn't expect that Mother Xiong was such a courageous person. He said to Manager Zhou:
"You go back to them and sign a contract with them, and we will purchase black tea from them at the normal market price of Wuyi Mountain tea."
Manager Zhou was shocked. He had lost everything he had speculated, and he was going to buy other people's homes?
Isn't this new owner a money-splitting boy?
Su Ze ignored Manager Zhou's surprise and continued, "In addition, if you sign a contract with them, any black tea they copy will be sold to us first."
Manager Zhou could only take the order and return to Wuyi Mountain.
After finishing his work in the tea garden, Su Ze went to the printing shop again.
Yao Chun is now in charge of the printing shop. Five printing shop masters from Jianyang followed him to learn movable type printing. He also brought four apprentices from local newsboys.
Yao Chun no longer needs to do the typesetting of each issue of "Surprise" now. It is left to his apprentices, and Yao Chun only needs to do the final proofreading.
Although he is Su Ze's domestic slave, Su Ze treats his family well and never treats them as slaves.
Yao Chun felt grateful and secretly vowed to do a good job in the printing shop.
When Su Ze came, Yao Chun was engraving. Su Ze walked over and saw that Yao Chun was carving words on a round lead cylinder.
Su Ze did not disturb Yao Chun who was concentrating on his work. After he finished making it, Su Ze asked, "What is this?"
There is a log in the middle of this cylinder, and a circle of lead cylinders on the outer layer of the log. Yao Chun carved characters one by one on the lead cylinders.
This is different from movable type typesetting and woodblock printing.
You say it's movable type printing, where the characters are fixed on lead cylinders. You say it's woodblock printing, which is not carved on a straight wooden board.
When Yao Chun saw Su Ze, he was about to kneel down. Su Ze pulled him up. Yao Chun said, "Master, this is the printing cylinder I invented."
"Ink cylinder?"
Yao Chun ordered two apprentices to lift the cylinder full of characters to a machine. This machine had a large handrail. Another apprentice came over to apply ink on the cylinder, and loaded the paper into the machine. , Yao Chun began to shake the armrest.
I only saw the cylinder rolling, and the paper began to feed as the cylinder rolled, and the words were printed on the paper.
As the cylinder rotates in circles, pages of text are continuously printed on the long paper scroll.
Su Ze looked at Yao Chun in surprise. Every printing task assigned to Yao Chun was completed very well. Su Ze had not had a printing shop for a long time.
Su Ze didn't expect that Yao Chun would figure out the printing cylinder printing technology by himself, and even achieve automatic paper feeding!
"Did you invent this?"
Yao Chun nodded quickly, and Su Ze asked again:
"Is Gu Wen Guan Zhi printed with a printing cylinder?"
Yao Chun shook his head first, then nodded, and said:
"At first, it was printed with movable type, but it was too troublesome to retype every page, so I came up with this method."
"My boss, when printing newspapers, your movable type printing skills are naturally good, but when printing books, every page must be retyped. In fact, movable type is not as convenient as engraving."
Su Ze nodded. In fact, woodblock printing was not as useless as later generations imagined. When printing books, engraving is obviously more convenient. You only need to carve the woodblocks and apply ink when printing books.
Movable type printing, on the other hand, requires that every page be retyped.
“Then I wondered if there was a way to combine the advantages of engraving and movable type printing.”
"When my boss wanted to print a book, I would engrave words on the lead cylinder according to the engraving method, and then apply ink on the lead cylinder for printing."
Su Ze asked: "What about the cost?"
Yao Chun said with some embarrassment: "If we talk about cost, the cost of movable type printing is naturally the lowest. It only requires typesetting to print. Even if the lead movable type is worn out, it can be recast."
"The cost of engraving is the highest. You have to be very careful when engraving words on wooden boards. You can't make any mistakes. Moreover, large pieces of wood are expensive. Once they are worn out, they cannot be printed again."
"This lead cylinder is between the two. The lead cylinder is not afraid of wrong words. If you make a mistake, just cover it with lead liquid. The lead cylinder can be printed repeatedly. As long as I make all the lead cylinders of Gu Wen Guan Zhi, there is no need Each page was reformatted like a movable type.”
"The lead cylinder is not disposable. If the handwriting becomes blurry in the future, you can re-melt the lead cylinder and then make it into a lead cylinder for engraving."
Sure enough, the working people are the creators of history. Su Ze did not expect that Yao Chun would improve movable type printing so quickly.
Su Ze also found that the apprentices folded the printed long paper, and then held the folded paper under a large rolling knife. The short apprentice jumped up, grabbed the rolling knife, and rolled the edge of the page with one knife. After both sides were rolled apart, pieces of paper were separated.
Su Ze pointed at the rolling knife and asked, "Whose invention is this?"
Yao Chun said: "This was invented by my newspaper boy apprentice. That boy was smart and sold the best newspapers on the street."
"Ma Dan'er! Come here and show me to my boss!"
Su Ze saw a half-year-old child with a face full of ink rushing over. He had some freckles on his face and wore pigtails. He was about the same age as Lin Liangjun.
He was still a little carrot head, but just now Su Ze had seen him instructing other apprentices to do things.
“Where did all this lead come from?”
Yao Chun said: "I discussed this idea with Xiong Wu last time. I heard that the lead from Eunuch Hu was not valuable, so Xiong Wu helped me pull it from the mine."
Su Ze nodded, and he immediately asked Yao Chun to summon all the printing craftsmen and apprentices, and then praised Yao Chun and Madan'er in public.
Su Ze directly rewarded Yao Chun with twenty taels of silver, and gave Ma Dan'er another ten taels of silver.
Su Ze also announced that he would invest fifty taels of silver in the printing shop and set it up as a special award to reward creative inventors who improve the printing process and increase production efficiency.
The printers and apprentices were even more excited. They dealt with movable type ink every day, and naturally they had many ideas for improving the process.
However, they all work with money and don’t have much enthusiasm for work.
Now that Su Ze was giving out money to encourage him, and he was so generous, there were a few printers with ideas who were just about to take action, and they all had to improve the process to increase printing efficiency.
Su Ze encouraged Yao Chun again and reminded him to pay attention to lead poisoning, and then left the printing shop.
At the same time, on the official road.
Wang Daokun asked someone to take away the guard of honor of the superintendent, and drove to Nanping County in a light and simple manner.
Along the way, they also met a caravan that came to Nanping County to buy books. Wang Daokun simply went to Nanping with the caravan.
The owner of the caravan saw that Wang Daokun had an extraordinary bearing and his entourage was also strong. He treated him as a noble son of a wealthy family who came out to enjoy the mountains and rivers. His attitude was very humble and he answered all Wang Daokun's questions.
"You went to Nanping to buy books? Are you buying "The Surprise"?"
The caravan boss took out a previous issue of "Surprise" and handed it to Wang Daokun.
The paper is rough raw material, and the ink on this kind of paper will easily melt into a ball, but the words on the newspaper are very clear.
The ink stains are fragrant, and it seems that special ink was used.
Wang Daokun's family is a wealthy businessman. He quickly estimated that the cost of this newspaper was indeed not high. It is no wonder that large-scale printing can be sold at a low price.
Opening the newspaper, the layout of "Surprise" has now been expanded to six pages, and the format and content have also been fixed.
The first page is local news. Major events from the imperial court to the Fujian government may be edited into news and published on it.
The content comes from the notices posted by the government and county governments, but the text is written in a more vernacular style, and some are even compiled into limericks and jingles to make it easier for the people to spread.
The second edition was a serialization of "The Peony Pavilion". Wang Daokun turned over it with disappointment. This issue was from a newspaper a month ago. He had already read this play in a pirated collection.
The third page contains two short stories, one of which is Liaozhai written by Su Ze, and the other is a work submitted by a scholar in Nanping County imitating Su Ze's writing style, which was also selected by Lin Qingcai and published.
Wang Daokun felt like his hair stood on end after reading it. Su Ze's story did not describe the ghosts in a positive way, but the ghosts seemed to be standing in front of him, which made Wang Daokun so happy.
The fourth edition is also a submission. This is an excerpt of a play, with The Peony Pavilion and Pearls and Jade in front. The play is indeed a bit dry, but the subject matter and content are very novel. In the opinion of Wang Daokun, it is also a good work, and he is also a Nanping scholar. Contribute.
The fifth edition contains some miscellaneous notes, jokes, travel notes, mythological stories and anecdotes about mountains and geography. They are all short stories of one or two hundred words, but the content is lively and interesting. After Wang Daokun read the anecdotes about Huajian Pavilion, he had a deep understanding of this famous site outside Nanping County. There was also an interest in playing.
The last page is filled with advertisements. In the view of Wang Daokun, who loves reading, these advertisements are also quite interesting.
He closed the newspaper, handed it to the caravan boss and said, "It is indeed a good newspaper! Shopkeepers, you came to Nanping just to buy newspapers?"
The caravan owner smiled and said: "Of course not. Now "The Surprise" has started to be sold simultaneously in nearby cities. The price is the same as in Nanping City. There is no profit in selling newspapers."
"We are going this time to purchase "Guwen Guanzhi" and "Young Learning Qionglin" at the request of the county's ministers."
Wang Daokun has read a lot of books. He has never heard of these two books and asked:
"Is this Nanping's new book?"
The boss nodded and said: "This "Young Learning Qionglin" is a new elementary school textbook compiled by Mr. Su. Everyone who has used it says it is good. "Guwen Guanzhi" and a collection of essays compiled by Mr. Su and Nanping County Hai Jiaoyu are said to have included Fifty masterpieces by famous writers, all of which are top-notch masterpieces. Mr. Su also provided annotations and comments, and they are all sold out in Yanping Prefecture."
Elementary education? A collection of essays?
Wang Daokun was even more surprised. Su Ze was just a scholar, but he could actually make up such a thing?
Even though the elementary school textbook looks simple, writing the elementary school textbook is quite difficult.
The knowledge must be made easy to understand, and a correct worldview must be established in children's minds.
This is the work of educating the world! No one but a great Confucian can do this!
The same is true for collections of essays. There are countless essays by famous writers since the pre-Qin Dynasty, but not many can be called famous.
To be able to select good articles from numerous volumes and make comments and comments is something that must be accomplished by a well-educated Confucian!
If it weren't for Su Ze's "The Peony Pavilion", Wang Daokun would have felt that Su Ze was lying.
"Shopkeeper, do you have these two books on hand?"
The shopkeeper shook his head and said: "These two books are hard to find outside of Nanping. We also want to try our luck in Nanping City this time."
Wang Daokun returned to his carriage and after watching "Surprise", his inner creative desire also skyrocketed.
People are like this. After reading a good story, they can't help but write and express the good story in their mind.
Driven by this desire for expression, Wang Daokun picked up his pen and wrote:
"The first time, Ximen Qingre and his ten brothers Wu Erlang met his brother and sister-in-law coldly."
(End of chapter)
