The conspiracy against the Southern Xinjiang theocracy in Gao Pangshi's house had just been roughly planned, and the disciples reported a new news: Duke Chengguo Zhu Yingzhen, 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 of Guo 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 There is a deeper meaning to this statement.”
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?" A hero, and one who is not afraid of others' words and entrusts him with important responsibilities?"
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 that Gao Pragmatic had no intention of "taking responsibility", Liu Xin couldn't help but thought, secretly thinking: It seems that this girl has a great 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 Pragmatic 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 already 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'll talk about that later. Let me talk about the Satsuma Domain first?"
"Okay." Gao Pingshi 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 exclusive sale, because we jointly increased the purchase volume, they added a lot of manpower, one for expanding production and the other for monitoring the flow. This caused them to spend a lot of money, so Jinghua Bank loaned 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, Nisshin, you are a well-fed man but a hungry man is hungry. Seventeen thousand taels is not 'not much' for the Satsuma clan, it is a lot. Although the price of food in Japan is almost twice as high as that in 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 60,000 stones for them! Nisshin, do you know that the Satsuma Domain was previously reduced to 600,000 koku, but the output in their area was very low. The 600,000 koku actually only produced about 300,000 koku in food last year.
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 also 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? Just this, you actually said it was a small amount of money? "
Gao pragmatic smiled, waved his hand and said, "Forgive me for making a mistake. Duke, please continue speaking."
"Where did I just talk? Oh, yes, the sulfur and camphor monopoly was implemented smoothly, but the Satsuma clan owes Jinghua 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 was considered the preparation period. Let's not forget it for now. It will only be said that in the past three months, the Satsuma Domain Hall has made obvious profits. It has improved a lot compared to before, and even started to repay the debt - not Nisshin and your debt, but the debt 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 true. It's just that some of the arrears have been for too long. If you don't pay them back, I'm afraid there will be some trouble. 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.”
Gao Pingshi said with relief: "That's it. Is there anything else going on with the Shimazu 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, 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 searched for skilled craftsmen everywhere, but the sources of those people were very complicated. Some were wood carvers, some were stone carvers, and some were root carvers and bamboo carvers, but no one had ever done this crystal glass grinding. In this work, a lot of valuable crystal glass has been wasted. "
Gao pragmatically nodded, not surprised. In fact, he had anticipated this situation because polishing glass was really difficult.
This issue even needs to be explained from the development history of glass. Glass was first invented by the ancient Egyptians 3500 BC. They used it to make jewelry and knead it into particularly small glass bottles. By 1000 BC, the ancient Egyptians had mastered the craft of glass blowing 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. From this, the 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 it into vessels.
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 clever Bohemians relied on the two unique Bohemian forest resources to create the world-famous Bohemian glass. Sub "forest glass".
What two types of unique forest resources are there? One is the high-quality quartz placer 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, Bohemians burned oak wood to smelt quartz sand, extracted high-quality potassium carbonate from oak ashes, and dissolved it in 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. With the introduction of colored glass, Bohemian crystal surpassed Venetian glass and became the best crystal glass in the world.
By 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, copper lithium oxide and other non-ferrous metal elements into the glass solution, and fired crystal glass of different colors such as red, yellow, blue, green and purple, also known as crystal glass.
These new technical means made the crystal glass change into colorful colors. Since then, the reputation of "Czech crystal - transparent gold" has 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 practical operation 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, resistance to cutting, 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 Beijing Huawei's supply to it. Once Jinghua cuts off the supply, 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 burning oak), but trona - hydrated sodium bicarbonate. This makes it impossible for the Satsuma clan to imitate without Kyoka, because the two major powers in East Asia One of the trona mines in Henan is directly controlled by Gao Shishi, and the other in Tumut is indirectly controlled by Gao Shishi. [See Chapter 175 of this volume: Sugar-Coated Poison]
Of course, sooner or later, the manufacturing method of Bohemian crystal is highly pragmatic and will be left to Jinghua, but he plans to place the production area in southern Xinjiang - the forest resources in southern Xinjiang are more abundant. Since colored glass is also made on this basis, it will also be produced in southern Xinjiang.
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 through 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 carving technology at all.
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 is, it can be dazzling. .
The price of later generations of ground glass products is much more expensive than that of embossed glass - everyone knows that handicrafts equal art. Of course, because there are no carved patterns and the prices are low-end, the price of polished patterns may be higher. It is estimated that in the future, it will be reserved for nobles and rich people, and it will be 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 intend to get involved in it for the time being, but it is best for the Duke to make a three-part agreement with them: no matter what kind of technology, it must be recorded in the record. Jinghua keeps records, which is also the prerequisite for Jinghua to provide so many precious raw materials."
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