Yang Peng and the head of the Cai family couldn't make sense, so they got up and left. When he walked outside the Cai family, Yang Peng saw the son who had been kicked out of the house by the head of the Cai family kneeling outside the door. Yang Peng thought that the head of the Cai family had taught his son how to make porcelain, and secretly thought that this man was also a talent. It might be possible to hire him, so he asked: "Young man, what are you kneeling there for?"
The young man glanced at Yang Peng, lowered his head and said, "Master, I have been kicked out of my house. I can only kneel here and beg my father to forgive me. Otherwise, I will have no career outside and will starve to death sooner or later." Yang Peng asked: "Are you willing to marry the Han family's daughter?" The young man shook his head and gritted his teeth and said, "I only have Cui'er as my wife in this life!"
Yang Peng laughed when he heard this and said threateningly: "If you want to marry Cui'er, how can your father let you go home? I'm afraid that even if you kneel to death here, your father will not change his mind!" The young man Hearing Yang Peng's words, his face was full of panic, and he asked in a panic: "Master, what do you think I should do?"
Yang Peng blinked and said with a smile, "Why don't you elope with Cui'er?" The young man thought that Li Zhi was going to help him with some idea, but he didn't expect that he would elope. He immediately lost his energy and murmured: "With this chaos of war, where should I run with Cui'er? Sooner or later, I will starve to death in a foreign land!"
Yang Peng clapped his hands, walked to the young man, and said slowly: "I heard that your father has taught you this skill for ten years. Do you know how to build a kiln?" The young man looked at Yang Peng and said, "I Yes! I know everything from building a kiln to choosing a crucible to molding embryos and firing the kiln. I am no worse than my father." After thinking about it, he added: "But building a porcelain kiln requires buying various materials, and the cost is several hundred taels of silver. I can’t build it with my bare hands.”
"Do you really know how to build a kiln?" "I really do. I have even improved my porcelain kiln!" Yang Peng became more energetic after hearing this and said loudly: "Then I will show you a clear path. ! Come to Tianjing New City to build a kiln for me!" The young man looked at Yang Peng's official robe, thought for a while, lowered his head and said, "No, even if I starve to death, I can't reveal the family's porcelain-making skills. !”
Yang Peng scolded: "What are you leaking? I don't want you to make porcelain, as long as you build a high-temperature cave to make glass!" The young man on the ground was stunned, looked up at Yang Peng, his eyes were shining brightly, and asked : "Burning glass?" Yang Peng nodded and said: "Yes, burning glass! You build a kiln according to my instructions. You don't need to use your family's secret knowledge of porcelain burning. You just need to build a high-temperature kiln. You help me work. I’ll give you four or two months’ worth of money, and I’ll also give you a villa to live in at a cheap price, which is enough for you and Tweety to live in!”
The young man on the ground finally reacted and looked at Yang Peng in surprise: "As long as an old porcelain worker can build a kiln, why did the official choose me?" Yang Peng said: "It is said that your Cai family has the most solid craftsmanship. Do you want to do it?" ?" The young man quickly replied: "I'll do it! I'll do it! This job won't reveal my family's ancestral skills at all, I'll do it, Lord!" Yang Peng nodded with a smile and asked: "What's your name?" "My nickname is Cai Huaishui."
Yang Peng reached out and took out twelve taels of silver from his pocket and said, "Cai Huaishui, I believe you can build a kiln. I will give you three months' monthly payment first. You take the money and go and make a call with Cui'er." Say hello, send ten taels of silver to the girl’s family, and we’ll treat it as an engagement. You and I will go to Tianjing New City to build a kiln, and save dozens of taels of silver in a few months to come back and marry Cui’er!”
"Of course, the premise is that you can help me build a glass kiln. If you can't build a kiln in a few months, you can go home and marry a girl from the Han family." The young man was overjoyed and pleasantly surprised to see Yang Peng thinking so thoughtfully. I couldn't help but shed tears. He wiped away his tears, got up from the ground, took the money, nodded and said, "Master, I will definitely build a glass kiln for you!"
Yang Peng nodded and asked Cai Huaishui to go to Cui'er's house to say hello. Yang Peng took the opportunity to buy a horse in the county town, and when Cai Huaishui came back, he gave the horse to him. "How did you talk to Cui'er's family?" "I told his father that I got a job worth four or two months, and his father happily accepted my money!" After a pause, Cai Huaishui said with a smile: "Tui'er is very happy. Here!" Yang Peng smiled and said, "That's it, get on your horse and follow me to Tianjing New City."
When they arrived at Tianjing New City, after Yang Peng emphasized the probability of keeping it secret, he showed Cai Huaishui the drawings of the glass kiln he designed. In addition to the main furnace and heat storage room, Yang Peng also designed an annealing channel. The so-called annealing is to control temperature changes to gradually cool down high-temperature materials at an appropriate speed to eliminate residual stress inside the material. If the residual stress is not eliminated, the glass will crack on its own.
Yang Peng and Cai Huaishui explained: The purpose of this kiln is to heat the glass raw material in the crucible to a temperature slightly higher than that of porcelain, so that the material can be completely melted into a glass liquid, saltpeter is added to remove the color, and then it is annealed in the annealing channel. Finally, it is clarified and defoamed with salt, poured into a molding machine, and molded. Following this idea, Li Zhi asked Cai Huaishui to design the glass kiln.
Cai Huaiguo is indeed an old porcelain worker. He is familiar with all the techniques Yang Peng mentioned for later generations, and he is confident that he can make this kiln. Yang Peng gave Cai Huaishui a thousand taels of silver to purchase various materials. Yang Peng also allocated a piece of land in the southeast of Tianjing City for Cai Huaishui to build a factory, and hired five handymen to work as helpers and apprentices for Cai Huaishui, and asked them to follow Cai Huaishui to build a glass kiln. The glass kiln is under construction here, and the six-pound cannon Yang Peng wants has been completed over there.
On April 10, Yang Peng's glass kiln was ready. There are six crucibles arranged in the glass cellar - all of them were fired by Cai Huaishui using the best porcelain clay from a specialized crucible craftsman. After the glass kiln was ignited, the crucible burned in the kiln for two days. It burned white hot before Yang Peng put the raw materials into the crucible.
Yang Peng used the first furnace as a test, placing slightly different raw materials in different crucibles: some crucibles only contained soda ash, limestone and quartz, some crucibles had different ratios of these three main raw materials, and some crucibles added A little borax, some with a little feldspar - see which recipe produces the best glass in the end.
Thanks to Cai Huaishui, Yang Peng knew where to buy ingredients such as borax and feldspar. Speaking of which, firing glass is quite troublesome: saltpeter must be added to the hot glass water to remove the color - the glass is green because it contains trace amounts of iron, especially divalent iron, which is green, while ferric iron is not obvious. green. After Li Zhi added saltpeter, the saltpeter oxidized the ferrous iron to ferric iron, and the glass became colorless and transparent.
Not only that, the glass needs to be clarified after it is fired - a clarifier, such as salt, must be added to the hot glass liquid. When the clarifier evaporates when heated, it will form large bubbles. When these large bubbles rise, they bring out small bubbles, which can reduce the bubbles in the glass and thus clarify it. Yang Peng's furnace design was very successful. It took one day to burn all six pots of raw materials into hot glass liquid. After the glass liquids entered the annealing channels for annealing, Yang Peng checked the color of the glass test products and found that the glass with borax in the third crucible had the best transparency, and he found the optimal formula. In the second furnace of glass, Yang Peng fine-tuned the optimal formula found in the first furnace. Only when he found a more perfect formula did he give up and start making the finished product.
In the third furnace of glass, Yang Peng began to use a molding machine to mold glass supplies. Yang Peng used pig iron to make the molding machine, and applied a layer of charcoal powder mixed with tung oil on the molding machine to prevent the mold from adhering to the glass. After the glass liquid in a crucible is poured into the annealing channel to cool down, some of the glass liquid is poured into the casting mold. The craftsmen press the mold press to force the glass liquid to form in the molding press. After the glass in the molding machine has cooled, a round glass is produced.
The transparent glass is made and looks very beautiful when placed on the table, exuding a crystal-like bright luster. Cai Huaishui exclaimed the miracle and followed Yang Peng excitedly, looking left and right. "City Lord, it's done! It's done! Now I can marry Cui'er!" The five craftsmen who helped her were also full of surprises, and looked at Yang Peng with admiration in their eyes.
Glass is an absolute luxury in this era. None of the craftsmen have seen such a large transparent glass. If you put it on the market, you will definitely get a good price. However, Yang Peng picked up the glass and took a closer look, and found a shortcoming - there were some bubbles in the wall of the glass. Not only are these bubbles unsightly, they can also make the glass fragile and prone to breakage.
Yang Peng thought for a while and felt that the clarification work was not done thoroughly. Yang Peng was determined to get rid of these bubbles, so he added more salt to the new pot of glass hot liquid. After adding more salt, the bubbles were reduced, but the entire glass liquid was emulsified. The resulting glass became no longer transparent and became like the frosted glass of later generations, which disappointed Yang Peng.
Yang Peng thought for a long time and decided to maintain the original amount of salt and increase the mixing process! He asked blacksmiths to make dozens of iron rods, and asked the craftsmen to continuously stir the hot glass liquid in the crucible before the glass liquid cooled, and stir the foam in the hot glass liquid as much as possible before adding salt as a clarifier. After adding the stirring process, Yang Peng directed the craftsmen to pour out the pot of glass and mold it. After the new glass was made, Yang Peng was pleasantly surprised to find that the bubbles were almost gone. He got a crystal clear round bottom glass.
Looking at this completely transparent and almost colorless glass, Yang Peng felt that the silver was waving to him.
However, Yang Peng is not worried about the leakage of glass formula. In order to prevent the leakage of the glass formula, Yang Peng has already designed the production process step by step: from the beginning, he subdivided the kiln and feeding process of burning glass into six steps. , each step is handled by different people. Moreover, Yang Peng did not tell the worker who was feeding the materials what materials he was working with. He only told him to put the materials into the crucible according to their weight when they arrived. The raw material purchasing personnel only know what materials they buy, but do not know how to use these raw materials.
Even Cai Huaishui, who helped Yang Peng build the glass cellar, only knew the structure of the glass cellar and did not know the formulas and proportions of Yang Peng's various materials. If you want to get Yang Peng's glass formula, you have to bribe all the glass workshop workers and all the raw material purchasers, which is extremely difficult. If the trend of technology from secrecy to diffusion is irreversible, Yang Peng hopes that this day of diffusion will come as late as possible.
By June, all 2,000 Yang Peng villas had been built.
One thousand of these villas were rented by Yang Peng to the families of employees in various industries, at a price of 70 cents per room. The rent level ensured that Yang Peng could recover the price of the villas in fifteen years. There are also a thousand villas rented by Yang Peng to various foreign business and service personnel in Tianjing New City. There are 2,000 high-consumption employee families in Tianjing New City, and there is demand from all walks of life. Therefore, within a few months, there has been an influx of 2,000 to 3,000 business and service workers in Tianjing New City. These people also want to live in a house and rent Yang Peng's villa. The rent that Yang Peng rents to these outsiders is a bit more expensive. It costs 105 cents per month to rent a room. This level of rent allows Li Zhi to recover the price of a villa in ten years.
After the house price is recovered, the rent is a net profit. The rent of two thousand villas can now earn Yang Peng more than 600 taels of silver per month. Of course, a small number of these villas are sold to employees and outsiders. Small villas were sold to working-class families for fifty-two units. At this price, each family was limited to purchasing one unit. The price sold to outsiders is 60 taels per unit - in fact, even the 60 taels per unit are still lower than the house prices in Cangzhou City. Tianjing New Town is in high demand from all walks of life. It is easy to make money doing business here, and the housing prices are not high.
After the villa construction stopped, Tianjing New City got rid of the status of a large construction site. There are no longer so many accumulated building materials, construction waste has also been reduced, and the whole city looks much neater. Two thousand villas have also begun to take shape in Fanjiazhuang. Standing on the city wall and looking over, the continuous villas with white walls and black tiles in the north of the city are very neat and beautiful.
Tianjing New City is a leader among cities in this era, both in terms of sanitation conditions and degree of prosperity.
The glass workshop is Yang Peng's third more profitable industry. Yang Peng asked Zhao Jinxi about it and found that the supply of glass wineware exceeded the demand. The glass workshop can produce 250 sets of glass wine sets and 50 sets of glass tea sets every month. The glass tea set is not bad, selling more than 30 sets every month. The colorless glass wine vessels are extremely popular and are sold out within a few days of being put on the market.
And the demand for glass wine vessels seems to be growing. Not only the people in Cangzhou City knew the benefits of glass wine sets, but also various prefectures and counties in Gyeonggi Province came to buy them. Even wealthy businessmen and gentry from the south also sent people to buy goods. The set of wine sets sold by Yang Peng contains twenty colorless wine glasses, which can be used by two tables of people. For a set of thirty taels, a wine glass only costs one tael and five cents on average. Compared with the colorless glass wine glasses sold across the ocean by Western cargo ships, the colorless glass wine glasses in Tianjing New City are much cheaper. No wonder wealthy businessmen are rushing to buy them.
Although the glass workshop can now earn 6,000 to 7,000 taels of profit for Yang Peng every month, it is obvious that the profit potential of this product needs to be tapped urgently. Yang Peng immediately approached Cai Huaishui and asked him to start building a new kiln next to the original glass kiln to expand glass production capacity. Of course, Cai Huaishui couldn't do it alone, so Yang Peng hired six more workers as employees of the second glass kiln to build the glass kiln with Cai Huaishui.
Cai Huaishui built the second kiln with ease, and it took only more than 20 days to direct the workers to build the kiln. As soon as the second kiln was completed, Yang Peng asked the new kiln to fully produce glass wine vessels. The new kiln has one more crucible than the old kiln, expanding the total production capacity of glass wine vessels to 600 sets per month. The brand of glass wine vessels has been put out, and now the market is in short supply. Yang Peng has new ideas for the sales of wine vessels.
Yang Peng is going to hold an auction!
Selling glass wineware in the form of auction can maximize the price of each batch of glass wineware and achieve the greatest profit. The auction targets are, of course, wealthy businessmen in Cangzhou and Yingzhou. Cangzhou and Yingzhou are transfer stations for water transportation from north to south, and are places where merchants gather, where wealthy merchants gather. These wealthy businessmen bought Yang Peng's colorless glasses and resold them all over the country, making a higher profit than if Yang Peng sold them in his own store. If Yang Peng faces these wealthy merchants in auctioning glass wine sets, he will definitely be able to get a better price.
Moreover, selling goods to these merchants actually gives them an opportunity to make money and expand their network of contacts. After making up his mind, Yang Peng found Xu Mince and discussed holding an auction with him. Xu Mince was stunned when he heard the word auction, and asked: "What does auction mean?" "It just lets buyers bid, and the one with the highest price wins!" "That's it!"
Xu Mince had long heard about Yang Peng's newly developed colorless glass industry to make money. When he heard that Yang Peng was going to hold an auction to sell glass wine vessels, he said angrily: "Brother Xian's business is getting bigger and bigger, and all kinds of ideas are emerging one after another. Brother Fool is all confused." I can't keep up." Yang Peng knew that Xu Mince wanted a benefit, so he smiled and said: "This time I divided the 600 sets of wine sets per month into 12 shares, of which 10 shares were auctioned. I put the rest Two shares, that is, one hundred sets of wine vessels per month are supplied to Brother Xu at the price of thirty taels per set, and Brother Xu can be sold to the south to make money, how about that?"
Xu Mince was overjoyed when he heard this. These 100 sets of drinking utensils were estimated to be sold for 40 to 50 taels of silver a set by sellers in Jiangnan. After taking into account freight, banknotes and labor costs, these 100 sets would cost more than 1,000 taels per month. profit. Xu Mince secretly thought that Yang Peng was a sensible person and it was not wrong for him to introduce him to the Cangzhou County Magistrate.
However, Xu Mince thought again: This colorless glass wine vessel was sold in large quantities, and the price of fifty taels was the limit. At that time, he would definitely use his network of contacts in Jiangnan to promote it. The more than one thousand taels of silver would not be worth the soap business. So easy.
But making so much money is always a good thing. Yang Peng gave in to Xu Mince and had his own ideas. Xu Mince and the officials were actually one family. Xu Mince had a strong say in the governor's office. Giving profits to Xu Mince was actually a way to deepen the relationship with the governor.
Xu Mince got the benefit and said with a smile: "Don't worry, dear brother, I will send a message to all the big businessmen in Cangzhou and ask them to go to Zuixian Tower to participate in the auction!" After a pause, Xu Mince asked again: "What time is set? What’s the right time?”
"Just the afternoon after tomorrow!" In the Zuixian Building in the west of the city, it was as warm as spring and very clean and tidy. There are many copper heaters placed in the hall on the third floor to keep the entire hall at a comfortable temperature so that the wealthy businessmen from Cangzhou and various places gathered here will not feel the cold. The incense burner on the coffee table was burning spices, making the whole hall fragrant.
Yang Peng had previously asked the waiters in Zuixian Tower to arrange the chairs in the style of an auction in later generations. At this time, all the chairs were facing the stage to the west. Most of Cangzhou's wealthy businessmen came, sitting on chairs and chatting about today's auction.
Xu Mince had already written the rules of the auction on the invitation card before, and these big businessmen all knew today's rules.
"This auction is really a strange thing!" "The city lord has a lot of new ideas!" "I just came to see the strange things today!" "Don't say it, it's a good thing to be able to buy the city lord's goods. Look at Xu Mince, follow Yang Peng and make money How much money did you get?" "Tsk, tsk, no matter what, I want to buy a share of glass wine sets today! I'll sell them to Suzhou!"
Seeing Yang Peng entering the lobby on the third floor, the wealthy businessmen all stood up to greet Yang Peng.
"The master of the house is here!" "I've met you, sir!" "The master of the city is here and safe!"
Yang Peng took a look and found that six of the eight major businesses in Bianjing had sent people, and some even had their owners come in person. Together with Xu Mince beside him, all the other seven major businesses except the Gao family were gathered together. Yang Peng looked in the crowd and saw Dong Zhiyi, the Dong family who sold refined salt, and Xue Yuanwai, who sold alkaline noodles to him.
Yang Peng cupped his hands and said: "Everyone, sit down!" When he walked to the stage, Yang Peng said: "Everyone knows the rules of today's auction. There are 50 sets of drinking utensils per month as one group, a total of ten groups, and everyone bids to buy each group The goods will be awarded to the highest bidder. The merchant who successfully bids will pay me a deposit of 100 taels, and then select a date to deliver the goods!"
After a pause, Yang Peng added: "It's been half a year since the glass wine set was launched. Everyone has heard of this product and knows how many taels they can sell for their wine glasses. When bidding, please act according to your ability!" After Yang Peng said this Then, ask the servants to bring out several sets of glass wine sets, fill them with soju and distribute them to each merchant, so that they can take a closer look.
Everyone looked at the wine glass again, and many people exclaimed: "Colorless and transparent, crystal clear!" "Colored glass is common, but this completely transparent glass without bubbles is really rare!" "I have seen a Western vendor. I got a colorless glass, but it’s much more expensive than the city lord’s.”
"This glass is filled with soju, and it looks like a crystal cup." Yang Peng saw that everyone had glasses in their hands. They all appreciated it, and then asked Zheng Hui, the manager of the salt factory, to stand on the stage as the host and start the auction. . The glass wine vessels will be auctioned starting from the base price of thirty taels per set, with an additional price of five cents.
"Thirty-one taels!"
"Thirty-one-two-five cents!"
"I'll pay thirty-two taels!"
During the auction of the first set of glass wine vessels, the buyers sitting below were thinking that there would be more opportunities later, and they were very cautious. After adding thirty-five taels, no one added more, and let the Dong family, who sold cloth, pick it up. A bargain. Dong Zhiyi was very happy when he thought that if he sold this wine set to Shandong, he could sell a set of 40 to 50 taels.
For the second set, competition began, pushing the price to thirty-six taels, and finally Yuan Xingxing’s boss, Cha Yunke, snatched the second set of drinking utensils. Cha Yunke is engaged in general maritime trade. He knows the market of luxury goods best and has channels to sell luxury goods. He knew that the glass wine set purchased for thirty-six taels and five cents could earn a lot of money.
For the third and fourth groups, the prices went up little by little. By the eighth group, the price had risen to thirty-nine taels, and finally Cha Yunke won the eighth group.
The prices of the ninth and tenth groups were stable at thirty-nine taels.
After the last auction, Li Zhi received a deposit of 1,000 taels and sold 500 sets of glass wine sets at an average price of 37,50 taels. Based on the situation of this auction, Yang Peng did some calculations and found that the glass workshop's monthly profit increased to seventeen thousand taels. This profit is about the same as that of salt factories and soap workshops combined.
This is a large amount of wealth that allows Yang Peng to do many things.
If you want to know what happens next, let’s look at the breakdown in the next chapter.
