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Chapter 44 Tutangliao 1
Wen Tong set his foothold in Xuwen. Qiwei had already received a letter from Dongzhu Guo, asking him to entertain this "shopkeeper Wen" well. Because I heard that Shopkeeper Wen didn't like the noisy city, the powerful Leizhou branch built a new house in a sugar cane farm outside Xuwen County. It was tidied up inside and out, and even the furniture was newly made. Originally, I planned to find a few servants to serve them, but Guangzhou had already made preparations and sent them all by mule cart. The person in charge who made the score was very tongue-in-cheek - the behavior of these big shopkeepers is really extravagant.
Wen Tong took people to live in this sugar cane farm, which was just a more elegant farmhouse courtyard. In addition to the house, there is also a huge yard dedicated to stacking harvested sugar cane. Tutangliao is just outside the village wall: it is another building that houses several cows.
After a night's rest, Wen Tong inspected the property. Originally, Wen Tong thought that Zhuangzi like this should have stewards, craftsmen and the like, but when he asked, there was no one there. This village and the sugar house are the private property of a certain farmer. The planting, juice extraction, and sugar making are all handled by this family. After buying it, no one will take care of it.
Wen Tong felt a little troubled. Without local people, he had no idea about the local situation. Besides, the sugarcane industry is typically labor-intensive and requires a lot of manpower input during the harvest season. In another time and space, it was easier. The sugarcane farmers delivered the goods themselves, and the sugar factory only had to weigh the goods and purchase them. Now he still has his own land, and the sugar cane has not been harvested yet, so he needs to find day laborers to organize the harvesting, cleaning, and bundling. You need to find a professional landowner or long-term foreman to handle this matter. I am just a sugar factory director, how should I deal with it?
Looking at the few people from Qiwei Escort Agency around me, they all looked at each other with big eyes and small eyes. It was obvious that they were all amateurs. Chang Shide looked at him with a troubled look on his face and asked, "It's difficult to do something."
"Without local help, everything is dark." Wen Tong sighed and called over Zhou Shizhai's young apprentice Li Biao. This boy had already learned fluent Mandarin in Lingao.
"Go to Zhuangzi and ask around. Are there any sugarcane farmers nearby who send sugar cane for processing? If so, please come to Zhuangzi. I have something to ask."
"Okay, let's go."
Looking through the land deed, it was found that the entire sugarcane field owned by Zhuangzi was equivalent to only one hundred acres in modern times. This scale could be said to be pitifully small. Wen Tong went to see the Tangliao again.
Wen Tong had visited the local sugar house in Leizhou Peninsula in the past and knew that the sugar production process here was "pulling sugar cane with ox-pulled stone rollers, boiling sugar in pots and stoves, and dividing honey in earthenware vessels." Although it was very backward by today's standards, it was still very backward at that time. Relatively advanced technology.
The entire sugar house occupies a large area and is used to store sugar cane and bagasse to be processed. The main buildings are a conical shed and a large thatched house. The entire structure can be said to be shabby, with few materials, not to mention bricks and tiles, and even wood. It is the so-called "Grass Watts Wall".
The base of the thatched house is about fifty feet and the height is about thirty feet. The interior is supported by Ma bamboo, and the roof is made of thatch, straw, or sugar cane leaves. It is the place where sugar cane is pressed. There are Kongming tripods in the sugar boiling house, which are the places where sugar is boiled. There are various types of equipment listed inside, including wooden reels, cauldrons, stoves, earthen jars, etc.
Because it has not been used for several months, it is full of dust, the ground is mud, and there are all kinds of cane leaves, cane peels, cow dung, firewood and other garbage everywhere. The house is leaking everywhere, and rat droppings can be seen everywhere. There is even a pot for boiling sugar.
Wen Tong knew that even in a modern sugar factory, the environment could not be said to be clean, but the current scene was too bleak. It seems that starting a business is really difficult.
Seeing Shopkeeper Wen's brows furrowing, everyone accompanying him knew that he was dissatisfied, but they were puzzled: all the sugar houses in Leizhou Prefecture were similar, so what was it that made him unhappy?
After walking out of the sugar-pressing room, I found a clean stone outside the courtyard and was about to sit down when a young man in green clothes and a small hat came out next to me. He took a chair and quickly opened it and stuffed it under his butt:
"Master, please sit down." The young man lowered his head and said softly.
Wen Tong was shocked. There were not many locals who could speak Mandarin: "Who are you?"
Liao Dahua, the powerful semicolon shopkeeper here, hurried over and reported: "This is a gift specially sent by Guo Dongzhu from Guangzhou to serve the shopkeeper. His name is Wenxiu."
"Wenxiu has such a sissy name." Wen Tong commented casually.
The boy servant immediately blushed and lowered his hands in silence.
"This is a transvestite." Chang Shide took a look and saw that this man looked about sixteen or seventeen years old, with fair skin, red lips, white teeth, delicate eyebrows, and a somewhat feminine appearance. But I saw that the hat on his head was quite strange, like a small melon-skin hat, but much larger in size-could it be that the custom of Jianlu had spread here?
"What kind of hat are you wearing?"
"This is a unified hat." Liao Dahua quickly explained, "It is made by the Taizu of this dynasty——"
"Zhu Yuanzhang invented the melon-skin cap," Chang Shide muttered. This was a surprise to him. He had always thought that this kind of costume that perfectly matched the pig tail was a pioneering work of the Qing Dynasty.
Seeing him openly calling Taizu's name, Liao Dahua and Wenxiu, who could understand Mandarin, were eclipsed. Liao Dahua quickly said: "Master Chang, be careful with your words. This is the name of Taizu of this dynasty. You shouldn't pronounce it like this - ―”
"It is said to be so. I don't know the details. I told you about it in Eshui." Wen Tong said, and suddenly discovered something, "Why don't you move a chair for Master Chang?"
For the convenience of calling him outside, Chang Shide's name is Wen Tong's master. In order to avoid being too big-headed and confusing the natives.
"Wen Qing has moved Mr. Chang's chair. I'm going to take a look." Wenxiu was a little too lazy to pay attention to this big black guy with a black face and a slight beard - in his opinion, this big black guy was probably Wen Tong's leader. People like the chief foreman who came here, in this time and space, people with dark skin are often regarded as inferior people. Chang Shide had learned this many times in Lingao.
After a while, Wenxiu and another boy came out. In addition to carrying a pile, they also brought a tray with two cups of tea on it.
Chang Shide sat down comfortably, took another sip of tea, and suddenly said to Wen Tong, "It seems like it would be best to come out. I wonder if there are any maids here." He looked around.
"Master, I have no maids. I only hired two servants to cook and wash clothes." Wen Qing replied respectfully.
"Xiao Guo really doesn't know how to do things. How can I do it without a maid?" As he was talking, he suddenly noticed that the two servants were covering their mouths and laughing. He realized that his words were not careful enough and his image was greatly damaged.
Wen Tong did not have this idea, and asked Liao Dahua to send people out to find people who used to work in this sugarhouse. If they are willing to come back and continue working, they can come back - the wages will be favorable. Liao Dahua agreed and ordered people to go out and search.
Two groups of people went out. During this period, Wen Tong and Chang Shide sat face to face under the clear sky of the 17th century, smelling the smell of rotten cow dung, sugar cane and sugar brought by the power, drinking tea, and surrounded by more than ten people. , one by one stood breathlessly. The fuss made the two of them a little uncomfortable, but they finally persuaded Liao Dahua to sit down too, while the others still stood.
"I was originally asked to go on a business trip, but I was a little scared." Chang Shide's eyes were shining, "I wanted to always stay in Lingao and be safe, but I didn't expect that after I came out, I would behave like a big landlord. If I had known better, I should have applied to become a Intelligence agent or something. Guo Yi, that guy, probably has his little wife to please him, and he has at least four or five girls who are intercourse with him."
"You just have to complain." Wen Tong was not interested in this topic: he was worried about his own burden.
An hour later, both groups of people arrived. Three workers came to the sugar factory, and Wen Tong found out through a translator that these three were not skilled workers. According to them, the entire sugar factory was staffed by five people: a sugar cook, a cane crusher, and a cow caretaker. , fire, handyman. The farmers who originally grew sugarcane had to do all the cooking and pressing of sugarcane themselves.
"If the boss wants to make sugar, he needs to hire a good sugar cook to take the lead." The person in charge of lighting the fire reported, "Otherwise, the heat will be difficult to control, and the amount of ash added will make a big difference."
Wen Tong nodded and asked them if they could give a live demonstration of the entire production process to see how to make a fire. However, since they were not sugar cooks, the sugar they produced might not be usable.
"Just tell them to just do it," Wen Tong told the translator, "Don't worry about whether the candy is good or bad."
The three people murmured for a while, then took action. They invited two more bodyguards to help, and brought a cow from the cowshed and transported several bundles of sugar cane. Liao Dahua knew that shopkeeper Wen thought Tutang Lao was unclean, so he quickly led his men to clean the entire Tutang Lao and clean the utensils. Only then did I start making sugar.
Workers first cut the sugar cane, bundle it into a load and place it next to a wooden roller. This wooden roller is made of lychee wood and is extremely hard. One person puts the sugarcane into the pulley, and the other drives the cattle to drive the pressing pulley to rotate. The first pulley is pulled first, and the second pulley is driven through the wooden teeth. The wooden pulleys squeezed each other and squeezed out the cane juice three times in a row.
When squeezing for the third time, the workers have to adjust the reel inward and tighten it more to squeeze the bagasse more dryly. The squeezed sugarcane juice flows down the groove of the base along the pulley, flows through the bamboo tube into the large earthen vat and settles.
Wen Tong looked very carefully. The pressing force of this wooden pressing roller seemed to be very strong, but in fact it was not as good as the Qing Dynasty pressing roller he had seen later. At least that one was made of stone and was much higher in hardness. He twisted the bagasse with his hands - after three pressings, there was still quite a lot of cane juice left in the bagasse.
After pressing like this for almost forty minutes, the buffalo used to pull the pressing roller was already sweating all over and its pace was slow. It seemed that it was very labor-intensive. The workers began to change the oxen. Wen Tong asked about it. Each time he pressed, he had to press four bundles of sugarcane. It takes thirty to thirty-five times to change cattle a day and night. No wonder this sugar house has to raise four or five cows.
He asked someone to weigh the weight of each bundle of sugar cane, and then silently calculated in his mind that with this processing method, the processing method without stopping day and night would only process nearly 2,000 kilograms. Moreover, according to workers, sometimes the wooden press rollers are often damaged and have to be stopped for repairs. Quite a lot of time is wasted.
"Is there any stone to make a press?" Wen Tong asked.
The workers all said that they had never seen it before. There were not fifty but thirty sugar houses in the local area, and they had never heard of it being made of stone.
Wen Tong nodded. It seems that this technological improvement appeared in the Qing Dynasty. The stone pressing wheel can process 2,500 kilograms every day and night, and the efficiency improvement is much greater.
The squeezed sugarcane juice, after preliminary precipitation, was hastily skimmed off the fragments of grass stems and the like, and then poured into a large iron pot for cooking. Three large pots were arranged in a Z-shaped pattern. Wen Tong did not notice it. What positive significance does this arrangement have for the production process or efficiency? The only thing that comes to mind is that this method can concentrate the use of heat.
The sugarcane juice was boiled until it was slurry, and when it was still boiling, the worker who was originally lighting the fire began to use a large spoon to remove the foam and debris on it, and then wrapped some lime with sugarcane leaves from the lime bag. Come over and sprinkle it in.
"Lime" Chang Shide was quite surprised.
"It is used to clarify the sugar liquid." Wen Tong explained that in order to remove the mixture in the sugarcane juice and obtain cleaner crystals, an important process is to add a clarification agent after filtering to remove the incompatible materials, which is commonly used in modern sugar factories. Lime is included in the clarifier, and this was naturally the case in ancient times. Lime is much easier to obtain than other clarifiers such as sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and superphosphate. In some places, plant ash is used to make local sugar, which has a similar effect.
"But doesn't the lime dissolve into the sugar water? So all sugar contains lime?"
"No, it actually neutralizes and decomposes various impurities in the sugar cane juice -" Wen Tong explained patiently, "Whether it is white sugar or brown sugar, there is no trace of lime in it."
"I feel relieved now."
At this time, the sugarcane juice has turned yellow. Several workers worked together to pour the sugarcane liquid in the pot into the second pot, slowly evaporating the water in it, and at the same time repeating the process in the first pot.
Wait until then move the cane juice with higher sugar content into the third pot and add some oil. Wen Tong asked: "What did you add?"
The worker quickly replied: "It's peanut oil."
"Peanut oil" Wen Tong was puzzled. He remembered that it was said in sugar industry books that the earliest decolorization process was to add milk. The method used by the Chinese was to use egg whites from chicken and duck eggs. The principle of action is to use protein to remove impurities inside. Does oil count as protein?
Confused, he decided to continue reading. After the sugarcane liquid was boiled into a thin paste, it was taken out and poured into the "Wa Liu". The text was the same as the actual thing he had seen in the Qing Dynasty. Now it seems almost exactly the same: cone shape, big at the top and small at the bottom. , about 1 foot high, with a small hole at the bottom tip, plug it with grass, place it on a large earthen jar, and let it slowly crystallize. The sugar liquid containing a large amount of impurities will slowly flow out from the small holes below the thatch, and finally only pure crystal sugar will remain in the "Waliu". Wen Tong asked about it and found out that one tile can produce 10 kilograms of brown sugar. ,.
