In the afternoon of New Year's Eve, many places in the city are already relatively deserted. Most people are already busy preparing New Year's Eve dinner at home and spending time with their families.
But at this time, Ximen Street was busier than usual.
When Sun Xu and Miss Meng went to Ximen Street together, they saw lanterns and colorful decorations everywhere, red lanterns and couplets hanging, merchants with various blessing characters on them, and a large number of people on the street who came to buy new year's goods, or simply Just people coming to hang out.
Sun Xu was just like them, with a smile involuntarily spreading across his lips.
This was the first time he felt the New Year atmosphere in a strange city called Songjiang City.
Before that, whether it was a few days ago or even today on New Year's Eve... Although many people said that it was New Year's Eve, in fact Sun Xu didn't have much actual feelings. It evoked feelings of homesickness.
Because many people, like Sun Dawei, took advantage of the long Spring Festival to go home to celebrate the New Year, but Sun Xu could not go back because of work...
In the past few days, especially after taking the night bus back after working overtime at night, Sun Xu always had some other thoughts.
I miss my family even more!
Moreover, it had not been long since Sun Xu came to Songjiang City. In addition to communicating with a few colleagues at Anhua Textile Company, he didn't even know many people outside, let alone friends.
There was Sun Dawei before, but after Sun Dawei returned home during the Chinese New Year, he was very prepared... The only person he knew outside the company was Miss Meng...
Well, in fact, he and Miss Meng are not familiar... So far, he doesn't even know Miss Meng's specific name, and doesn't know much about her work. He just knows that she works in a department store.
After all, they had never had serious conversations with each other. Most of the time they met when they were going in and out. Usually they just said hello, and rarely said a few words that were not nutritious.
That is to say, Miss Meng was invited out to buy New Year's goods today, and the two of them were on the road for twenty minutes... They couldn't go without saying anything along the way, and Sun Xu was interested in chatting, so the two of them talked a lot. ...But the topic is still limited to superficial things.
Is this considered a friend?
Sun Xu himself knew very well...it didn't count, at least not for now.
In the huge Songjiang City, Sun Xu couldn't find anyone to talk to after get off work. In fact, he couldn't feel the happy atmosphere of the Spring Festival... So when he arrived at Ximen Street and saw the festive people on the street, Sun Xu even felt a little confused. A sudden feeling: Yes, it’s Chinese New Year!
"It's so lively. It looks like we've come to the right place!" Sun Xu spoke with a smile, while looking slightly sideways at Miss Meng next to him.
Miss Meng's expression was much calmer, and she didn't show too much surprise. After hearing Sun Xu's words, Miss Meng turned her head and echoed: "Yes, it's quite lively, even more so than in the department store where I work." It’s lively.”
"Department stores must have been very busy last year, otherwise, Miss Meng, you wouldn't have taken annual leave until today!"
Miss Meng said: "It's okay. Our department store usually doesn't have many customers. Although there were more customers a year ago, it was far less busy than here."
Sun Xu said: "That's true. The things sold in your department store are all luxury accessories. It's normal that there aren't many customers!"
Although the two of them didn't have a very in-depth conversation on the way here, even some superficial polite words were enough for the two of them to understand each other better.
Ms. Meng herself said that she works at Huidong Department Store on Huidong Road and works in a jewelry store in the department store.
Although Sun Xu has never been to Huidong Department Store, he has heard that it is a very high-end shopping place... In fact, department stores that have just appeared in these years are basically high-end shopping places. The goods in the market, even some daily necessities, are very expensive, and most of them are all kinds of luxury accessories.
How should I put it, with Sun Xu's annual income and a zero at the end, he can become a customer of these department stores, and he can only consume some traditional luxury goods, such as clothes, jewelry and so on.
As for daily necessities... Just like in later generations, who the hell can afford top-notch luxury tissues if they are not rich!
It’s normal for ordinary working people to grit their teeth and buy an LV bag. There are a lot of girls like this on subways and even buses in big cities!
But if you ask them to buy LV tissues... they are not that stupid, or that they don't have the money.
The daily necessities in the high-end department stores in the contemporary Dachu Empire have almost a similar concept... even those with high incomes in the conventional sense cannot afford them...
Well, among the kitchen utensils in the house, the porcelain bowls are produced by the Jingdezhen Imperial Porcelain Factory for royal use... Just by the name of this porcelain factory, you can tell that it is high-end... In an imperial country like the Dachu Empire, and the country As well as words related to the royal family, words such as empire and imperial use are not something that can be used casually.
The Jingdezhen Imperial Porcelain Factory is one of the special cases. After the founding of the Chu Empire, it also took over the Jingdezhen Imperial Porcelain Factory, which specialized in producing porcelain for the Yuan and Ming royal families. However, it did not conduct direct official management and operation, but carried out corporate operations. , under the management of the Royal Assets Division.
In addition to providing the royal family with royal porcelain in a timely manner, they also produce and sell porcelain to the outside world. However, in order to maintain the royal style, they have never dabbled in ordinary porcelain and have taken the top line... Let’s not talk about technology or not, anyway, let’s talk about porcelain. Their technique, they dare not say it is the best, but it is definitely top-notch. They are good at blue and white, underglaze red, multicolored and so on. In recent years, they have started to engage in enamel painting.
This thing is a fusion of traditional calligraphy and painting, with various and exquisite patterns. At first glance, it looks like a beautiful painting or calligraphy, and its artistic value is quite high.
Of course... these so-called porcelain technologies are actually just like that... Porcelain technology may have been relatively high-end a few decades ago, but today, with the continuous advancement of the wave of industrialization, various technologies continue to develop. In fact, The porcelain industry has already completed industrialization. Various porcelains produced with modern techniques are far superior to traditional porcelain in terms of quality and color... It's a pity that when industrial porcelain was doing well, Jingdezhen Imperial Porcelain Factory I’m starting to talk about art with you again...
Let’s not talk about Jingdezhen imperial porcelain, technology, art, etc., but the price is definitely the most expensive in the world!
A set of broken bowls for eating costs hundreds of Chu Yuan, plus dishes, soup basins, soup bowls, spoons... it can cost hundreds of Chu Yuan... let alone ordinary high-income groups. It's Wang Liqing, the boss of Anhua Textile Company. He can't bear to buy such expensive junk... so his wife buys all the daily necessities in their home!
And other daily necessities in Huidong Department Store are also extremely expensive. The chopsticks are made of top-grade materials such as top-grade sandalwood or ivory, and are handmade by a so-called top-grade master craftsman... Damn, ivory is okay, But when you use wood to make chopsticks, you tell me handwork... What is the difference between the chopsticks you make by hand using various woodworking tools and the chopsticks that are directly cut, whittled and ground by a machine?
Even the iron pot used for cooking... it is also the personal signature of a very famous and highly skilled master blacksmith in Foshan... This thing really needs to be taken for quality inspection, and it has not been measured by Hantian Machinery Company. The iron pots produced are great!
But... the luxury jewelry industry has never paid attention to so-called technology or quality, only whether it is high-end or not!
Don’t chase the best, but seek the most expensive!
That's why Jingdezhen Royal Porcelain Factory can earn millions of dollars in revenue every year with a negligible shipment volume, and its profits are extremely high.
So despite the fact that this is just a porcelain factory stuck in the manual production stage (well, in name only, in fact it still uses a lot of modern machinery and equipment), its actual profitability is much stronger than many large enterprises in the royal family's core.
The main reason is that the profit is too high. From the revenue of several million, the net profit can reach 60 to 70%.
There are actually not many companies in the entire empire that make millions a year... Such companies are also considered first-class cash cows in the royal family's assets department, and are highly valued by the superiors.
Otherwise... why do you think the royal family of the Da Chu Empire has been consistent in using only the porcelain from this factory for more than thirty years? Not only for their own use, but sometimes they also use it to reward their ministers... every three days. Just spread the word!
Even Luo Zhixue was not exempt from vulgarity and personally wrote a subtitle for the factory: The best porcelain in the world.
On the one hand, it is our own business. Daily necessities for the royal family are basically provided directly by the companies and estates under the Royal Assets Department, and they are basically not purchased from outside parties.
On the other hand, this broken factory is really making money!
A net profit of several million a year is not a small amount. It is enough to support the Royal Assets Department to continue to invest in some large-scale and important basic industries and develop projects.
This is worthy of the royal family personally going into battle and becoming the spokesperson for the factory!
Of course, on the other hand, it is precisely because of the strong support of the royal family and personally acting as spokesperson that Jingdezhen Royal Porcelain Factory can secure its reputation as the world's number one luxury porcelain brand, attracting the pursuit of countless powerful and wealthy businessmen.
Well, many people would rather spend a lot of money to eat on the same porcelain as the emperor!
Of course, in fact, more people buy this kind of top-notch luxury porcelain and are not willing to use it. Instead, they use it as decoration or collection or as a gift.
Huidong Department Store sells these messy but extremely expensive things.
Naturally, there are not many customers for such high-end products... Even if the customer flow is slightly larger at the end of the year, it will not be as crowded as Ximen Street.
Sun Xu and Miss Meng merged into the crowd and went in and out of various stores to purchase some New Year's goods. However, both of them were single... so-called buying New Year's goods had nothing to sell.
I just bought some better ingredients, but the quantity is still not much... In addition, I bought some couplets and some festive things.
There are not many things to buy, and it is not the focus. The focus is to go shopping and experience the New Year atmosphere.
For Sun Xu personally, neither of the above is actually important. Just being able to walk around and talk with Miss Meng makes him very satisfied.
After shopping until the evening, the two of them walked back with their things. Although they didn't buy much, Sun Xu still took the initiative to take Miss Meng's things and help her carry them.
Sun Xu thought to himself, he couldn't let a delicate young girl walk away with a big bag of things.
After Ms. Meng declined for a moment, she did not continue to refuse.
On the way back, there were fewer pedestrians and carriages on some commercial streets or main roads than when we came, so that the streets were empty.
But it’s not quiet elsewhere!
Because when passing through some streets in residential areas, you can see many children wearing new clothes running around and having fun on the street, and setting off firecrackers.
Although the weather is cold, it cannot stop the children's enthusiasm for the New Year.
During the Chinese New Year, children are always the happiest!
While chatting on the road and walking back, Sun Xu talked about working overtime every day during this period. He said that the new equipment was complex and sophisticated, and it was very troublesome to install and debug. He also talked about some interesting things about other colleagues.
Ms. Meng listened most of the time, and occasionally talked about some things about her work, saying that the customers she interacted with in her daily life were actually not the real powerful women, but mostly women from ordinary high-income families, and even There are also many female dependents in middle-class families.
There are all kinds of weird things among these women!
But she has never seen a real rich woman.
As for male customers... this has nothing to do with her. Under the protection of men and women, stores such as top jewelry strictly adhere to the protection of men and women. Male customers have entertainment occasions and male clerks to entertain them, and female customers have special reception places and female clerks. entertain.
Are you here to mix it up?
You are shameless, but your customers are still shameless!
After all, they are here to buy jewelry and various luxury goods. What matters is taste and style, and by the way, moving closer to the upper class... Well, at least that's what they think...
The upper class society still pays attention to the protection between men and women, and women do not show up in public. If you don't play the role of protection between men and women in a luxury jewelry store, and give customers a delicate beauty or a handsome boy, their customers will not be happy.
I think you look down on others... and treat your brother/sister as those low-level fools who don't understand the differences between men and women, right?
After all, my brother/sister is from a respectable family with a monthly income of tens or hundreds of dollars. Who are you looking down on?
Although Huidong Department Store is a top luxury jewelry store, Ms. Meng sells jewelry, and the main customers of jewelry and jewelry are ordinary women from high-income families and even women from middle-class families with good incomes...
As for the women in the real top wealthy families, although their spending power is amazing, their number is generally very small... After all, there are really not many rich and powerful people in the upper class.
Moreover, these upper-class female relatives occasionally go out to buy things, and the female store managers, including senior female managers in department stores, have to take special care of them. She, like Miss Meng, an ordinary clerk, has nothing to do.
The social atmosphere in the Chu Empire these days is in a state of transformation from a traditional feudal society to an industrial capital society. It is somewhat open, but the openness is not complete...
Although the social atmosphere has been much more open than the previous dynasty, it still retains a strong traditional social atmosphere. The real top upper-class women will not show their faces easily...
Not talking about work and the like, even if you go to the mall, there are very few people there.
Even if you go, you have to contact the store in advance and ask the store to close the store for special reception, and only female personnel will be used to receive it.
This is why Huidong Department Store needs female staff like Ms. Meng. You can't use male employees to receive upper-class female customers!
Those upper-class families are still very particular about the so-called relationship between men and women...
Women in upper-class society are still particular about not showing up in public. On the contrary, women in lower-class society generally work... Even in the pre-Ming Dynasty, women at the lower class have always been the main labor force. You would never think that the majority of tenants, small farmers, etc. Women from farmers’ families don’t have to farm...
Nowadays, a large number of women from the lower class of society, including rural women and women from the lower class urban citizens, are working in factories in large numbers.
In labor-intensive industries like the textile industry, there are a large number of female workers... For example, Anhua Textile Company has more than 800 people in their factory, and more than 400 of them are female workers... Low wages, obedient, hard-working, and don't cause trouble These are all their advantages favored by capitalists.
Therefore, women at the bottom of society, whether they are farming or working in factories, or working in some service industries in the tertiary industry, such as salespersons, are very common in the contemporary Chu Empire.
Even in traditional feudal dynasties, this kind of thing is very common... For example, working women like Tofu Xishi in literary creation have real social backgrounds.
Women at the bottom have always worked, while women at the top don't need to work... This has nothing to do with social trends, it's just that family conditions are different.
The social atmosphere around women in the Chu Empire was gradually liberalized, which was mainly reflected in women in middle-class families.
Some family conditions are barely acceptable. For example, in Songjiang City, the monthly family income is twenty or thirty yuan. There are some middle-class women who have received some education in government-run girls' schools or private private girls' schools. Due to family financial pressure, In other words, due to factors such as self-pursuit, people have gradually begun to work in society, mainly engaged in jobs that look respectable and pay well.
For example, there are quite a few female tutors in society, who are basically this type of people, and in the department stores that have emerged in recent years, the saleswomen who specialize in receiving female customers are almost all this type of people...such as Miss Meng.
But if you ask them to enter the factory and go directly to the assembly line, they will definitely not do it... Miss Meng also attended a girls' school after all.
When they were chatting just now, Sun Xu discovered that Miss Meng went to a local government-run girls' school in her hometown of Fuzhou. Although she only went to a high school, she was not bad at all.
In today's world, there are actually not many women who can complete six years of primary school. They are basically girls from middle-class families and above. Don't even expect girls from the lower class...
The universal sex education in the Dachu Empire was initially concentrated in the three-year primary school stage... In the past ten years, it has made great efforts to promote the high school level and strive to complete six years of universal sex education.
As for the middle school level, it is not included in the scope of universal sex education for the time being.
As for female education, it’s even later. In the early days, there were few government-run girls’ schools, and some of them served the powerful, such as Jinling Girls’ High School. The students there were all girls from powerful families, as well as ordinary wealthy families. Can't even squeeze in.
It was not until around the 35th year of Chengshun that the Chu Empire promoted government-run girls' schools on a large scale. It developed relatively late, and overall the scale was not too large.
In addition, society generally still has some traditional bad habits that favor boys over girls, and it is a virtue for girls not to be talented. Therefore, it is actually relatively rare for girls in ordinary families to receive a complete six-year primary education...
(End of chapter)
