Lu Ming

Human and livestock manure contains more nitrogen, and crop straw contains more carbon, so generally speaking, about 40% of straw should be added to each ton of manure.

After the various straws pass through the crushing and soaking process, they can start to be layered with the manure.In order to preserve nutrients, sprinkle some finely ground garbage soil into each layer.The material is piled up and sprinkled with water until it forms a 2.5-meter cone, which is considered complete.

The next step is the key "dumping" link.

After the compost heap is piled up, the internal temperature can reach 5°C to 10°C within 60 to 70 days.

This is where the time-travel artifact comes into play: the temperature measuring rod.

A few specially trained literate refugees, under the key protection and monitoring, their daily task is to insert the temperature measuring rod on the cone.

Once the temperature in the dung heap is qualified and kept for 10 hours, immediately overturn the dung heap, break up the large pieces, mix the dung and grass, add water, and then pile it up as it is.

After about 10 days, the pile temperature rises to about 60°C again, and the pile is overturned once more, and the pile is completed.

Under the guidance of the time-traveling artifact, every 20 days or so in Wei Tuo Farm, a batch of farmyard manure with qualified quality and stable fertilizer efficiency will be produced.Rows of neat dung piles are like a forest, and hundreds of refugees who are full of food and drink are busy here.

The fertilizer effect of the new variety was soon reflected in the rapeseed fields outside the city. A large number of vegetable farmers in the outskirts of the city began to spontaneously row boats to Wei Tuochang to buy fertilizer. It didn’t take long. Even farther away, Haining and Huzhou had dung boats rowing over , Do the business of exchanging manure for fertilizer.

The new type of fertilizer industry, in the city of Hangzhou alone, employs thousands of manure diggers and boatmen, and there are no less than 500 public toilet construction teams... These people are also responsible for cleaning up the accumulated garbage dumps in the city bit by bit, Clear out the sewer sludge everywhere.In short, everything that can become fertilizer will not be let go.

The vigorous transformation of the urban environment has made Liu Mengqian, the prefect of Hangzhou, who was originally only recited poems and painted paintings, but was satirized by Zhang Dai's essays, and became a "capable member" overnight, and was praised by all the gentry.

And Zhou Tong, the leader of Zhou Tong, who started out as a pupa, is now able to swagger into the government offices of prefectures and counties in broad daylight—not only officials, but all the big gentry in Hangzhou who are concerned about this matter are figuring out what Zhou Tong's fertilizer industry is. After a virtuous circle, everyone is amazed.

Of course, Chief Zhou never took off the "soft hedgehog armor" he was wearing next to his body when he went out and embraced him.There is no way, there are too many enemies, and Lao Zhou will save his life until the day he becomes a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

……

As the head of the Hangzhou station, Lu Cheng was also very busy during this time.

Not only do they have to stand behind the beggar gang to point out the situation, but they also have to take care of the overall work of the Hangzhou station and maintain contact with all parties. In addition, they also need to help some people wipe their butts...

A certain person who posted a small selfie video that caused serious discomfort to the viewers has already run away, and the half-finished projects left by this guy need to be taken care of by Lu Cheng.

The first is the field.

After Mr. Huang won the election, there should not be too many small landlords and rich peasants who came to "donate" their fields.This is essentially affiliation: the land is still owned by others, and everyone uses the tax-free quota of Juren as a partnership to benefit.

However, the time travelers do not need this kind of support. What the time travelers need is their own land that is completely under their own control, without tenants, and where refugees can be placed as temporary workers.

This kind of land is difficult to buy in the Jiangnan area: there are too many gentry and wealthy households, and the fields have been scattered into countless private fields after hundreds of years of changes. The land is difficult to ascend to the sky.

Of course, if Huang Juren mixed up to the point where Xu Jie and Xu Ge were old, they could also wantonly enclose land-Xu Di Wang went from the first assistant to the squire, and his fields had been embezzled year after year, with as many as 24 mu and tens of thousands of tenants.

Therefore, it is basically impossible for a small person like Huang Ping to buy a large piece of fertile land in the Jiangnan area.

But now there is an opportunity.

Perhaps it is God's will in the dark. Although the Little Ice Age lasted through the end of the Ming Dynasty, since the first year of Chongzhen, the natural disasters in the Jiangnan area have suddenly entered a climax stage: various large-scale disasters represented by drought, flood, and locusts. , the end of the Chongzhen Dynasty, year after year, there are many reasons for the demise of the Ming Empire, but the endless natural disasters are the thickest coffin nail.

Just in July this year, there was a severe drought in the south of the Yangtze River, and then continuous rainstorms. On the 7rd, a hurricane broke out, and the sea tide broke through the dams on both sides of Qiantang. All the coastal areas of Hangjiahu and the three prefectures were affected. The number of deaths reached 23, and the number of deaths in Shangyu, Kuaiji and other places was not much higher.

The flood was followed by the plague, and then a large number of landless farmers were produced. After that, the fields would become salinized due to being flooded by the tide.

... Well, a mass of lost fields, a mass of bankrupt yeomen and sharecroppers, these will come after July.Recently, Lu Cheng frequently traveled to several coastal counties to the east of Hangzhou, just to investigate and count the field data of various places.

According to the original plan, all these tasks should be done by Mr. Huang, but the plan could not keep up with the changes. Now Lu Cheng can only hastily set up a "rental store", and under the guise of helping Huang Juren to manage and purchase farmland, he went around and investigated. .

In order to cope with the tidal disaster that will come in a few months, Lu Cheng not only has to expedite the removal of a large number of "existing" refugees, but also investigates in advance, plans the disaster fields, and also applies to the senior officials for a full-time farmer. People come to Hangzhou with the seeds of certain crops—in places where floods and droughts occur frequently, rice is not a concern, and root crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes are king.

……

Even in this busy schedule, Lu Cheng still had to find time to attend some entertainment, for example, the opening ceremony of Huang Ju's family's bank.

As a Juren, it is normal to open one or two money shops and teahouses.Before Huang Zhicheng set off for Fujian, he had already completed the membership procedures in the Money Industry Association, and bought a bank at the entrance of Mishi Lane.

This bank, which specializes in exchanging money, is nominally owned by Mr. Huang's family, but in fact it is still presided over by Lu Cheng. Its main function is to provide industrial metals for the officials: gold, copper, lead, tin, etc.

Needless to say about gold, the gold-silver ratio between the Ming Dynasty and Japan was about 1:8, while in Europe it was more than 1:12 at the same time, so the colonists had been buying gold from the Ming Dynasty and Japan.Now the cross-travelers have also joined in - after this village, there will be no such shop, and in a few years, the price of gold will be evened out.

As for other copper, lead and tin, these are industrial metals that are in short supply, especially copper.The most important task of Huangji Bank is to exchange silver for all kinds of copper coins: even if it falls on the ground and becomes eight petals of bad money, Huangji will also exchange it with vain silver. Of course, in this case, 1 tael is exchanged. Don't even think about 1 pass, 3 passes will not work.

In essence, this is actually crossing the crowd to exchange freshwater cultured pearls for high-grade copper-lead-tin metal mines. No one can tell who wins and who loses.

……

Some time ago, the first ship of industrial products from Dayuan arrived at the port. Tangzhuang, a freight distribution station in the 17th century, finally ended the embarrassing operation of only buying but not selling, and began to get on the right track.

Industrialization has a standard feature: cheap.No matter what kind of commodity it is, from sewing needles to oil lamps, paints, guns, jeans and cars, as long as the production line is activated, these commodities can hit the market across agricultural countries even if they travel across oceans.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the country of steam, which was regarded as extremely simple by later generations, relied on the whistling steam production line to transport goods across the seven seas, dominate the five continents, make the country rich and the people strong, blast away the markets of countless ancient empires, sign countless colonial treaties, matchmaking , foreign cigarettes, foreign oil, foreign cloth...

And in the era of crossing the crowd, with the first ship being industrialized and dried, and the cut commercial timber transported to Tangzhuang, an epoch-making process in this plane began——global trade entered the buyer's market 300 years earlier than history.

Even though it may take decades for the people of the world to feel what it means to buy one get one free, the arrival of this ship of timber is just like Watt’s steam engine. They blew the industrial revolution The clarion call represents the advent of a new trade pattern.

……

Nowadays, the variety of goods transported to Tangzhuang by the sand fleet has gradually begun to increase, and the exquisite industrial products have quickly opened up sales in Hangzhou.

"Master Gou, Mr. Gou, you are always a regular customer in the cabinet. Can you still trust the craftsmanship of my Zhao Da? There are [-] clay makers in and around Hangzhou. I, Zhao Da, say that I am the second, which one dares to be the first?" ?”

On the river beach to the north of Tangzhuang, in the middle of rows of light red, knife-cut red bricks, a group of masons is surrounding a butler-like man to solicit business. Callous, the whole body is full of craftsman temperament.

"The queen mother will give you a fortune too! Let's see if you can do it!" Before Steward Gou could reply, the craftsman Guo had already started to speak up.The tall and ugly craftsman Guo glared and scolded, and in an instant he turned back into an Akita dog face: "Master Gou, I paid money to learn the skill of wiping cement in Tangzhuang. If you don't believe me, please read it... ..."

As soon as Mr. Guo spoke, he showed a gilt mounted flower, written in brush calligraphy, and stamped with two or three big red clay seals of "First-Class Cement Construction Certificate".

Chapter 167 Timber and Cement

The "Two Two" fleet in the early days of the crossing force has now expanded to the "Three and Four" fleet: a total of three groups of sand fleets, each with four ships, each group of Tangzhuang and the seniors are resting, and there is always one group sailing on the road middle.

The current situation has reached the limit that Tangzhuang can accommodate.The throughput and rest of the 4 sandships were handled within the time limit, which took up all the reception capacity of Tangzhuang: this is the suburb of Hangzhou, and Sany's crane arm cannot be installed.

Unless we continue to wantonly expand the wharf, widen the deep-dug pond, and build other supporting facilities, otherwise, this will be the end.However, the above-mentioned projects are not cost-effective to use in the Tanghe River: there is no geographical condition for a medium-sized port, not to mention the shallow water, and there is no natural harbor.

Therefore, looking for land to rebuild a port completely under the control of the crossing public has become the key task of the next Hangzhou station.

……

In the creek at the gate of Tangzhuang, a row of four large sand ships were unloading.Coolies with bare upper body and only a pad on their shoulders are bending over like shrimps, carrying bags of red bricks and some large wooden boxes from the boat.

The largest volume of wood has been unloaded in advance and is being piled there waiting for the owner to pull it away.

And the deputy manager of Tangzhuang Freight Station, the former bandit and the third head of Pingfengzhai, Comrade Chu Maosheng, is standing under the long bamboo shed beside the neat wooden stacks, coughing... arguing with someone.

"Chu San, the old man heard that you were a good man who made promises, why did you change your career and cheat as soon as you came down the mountain?" With a pair of triangular eyes, he mocked Mr. Chu with a look of disdain.

"Diao Xingshou's words are reasonable!"

"To the point!"

"You must not teach this generation to keep your promises!"

After the old man finished speaking, several accomplices beside him also nodded one after another, and everyone stared at Chu Maosheng with contempt, as if someone had just come here to ask for a son with a lot of money.

Comrade Chu Maosheng, who has been in a lot of shape since he came down the mountain, is now leaning against the wooden pile, rolling his eyes, and explaining to the old man with a wry smile: "Master Diao, the shipment that was agreed that day is calculated on the basis of three ships. The fourth cargo should be sold by Tangzhuang itself, so why cheat?"

"Good talking!" The old man's eyes widened with anger at the moment, and his beard rose suddenly: "Where did you ever set the number of boats back then... Absurd... Absurd..."

……

It all starts with the first ship of timber.

Inside Tangzhuang is a group of maritime merchants from outside, and this local merchant knows it all.So Xiong Dao and the others wanted to do business in Hangzhou, but they couldn't do business in certain industries, such as banks -- what Huang Juren could do, Xiong Dao couldn't do.

The same is true for grain, cloth and silk businesses.Xiong Dao can spend money to buy, we are all good friends, but if he wants to intervene to do it himself, then the supersaturation blow will come soon, Xiong Dao can't suddenly kill all the shopkeepers and yamen servants.

So all along, Tangzhuang spent a lot of money to buy food and groceries. In the eyes of many businessmen in Hangzhou City, Xiong Dao maintained a good image: a rich and reputable maritime merchant.

When the first ship's timber arrived at the port, Xiong Dao cleverly wholesaled all the goods to the wood merchants headed by Mr. Diao.

If Xiongdao sold the wood at the gate of Tangzhuang at that time, the local wood merchants would definitely be hit.Again, it is impossible for Xiong Dao to kill all the merchants in Muhang. This is business, not a gangster grabbing territory.

Mr. Diao is the head of the wood company. At that time, he learned that there were several ships of wood in Tangzhuang, and that Xiong Dao was willing to wholesale them to him at the internal price of the industry, so he naturally accepted the goods with a smile. .

After that, Mr. Xiong, who is "reasonable and understands the rules of the trade", joined the wood trade logically.

Things got out of hand after that.

The first is precious.

Taiwan is the place with the largest production of camphor and camphor in the world, and the title of "Kingdom of Camphor" is not called for nothing. In the 17th century, Taiwan was full of thousand-year-old trees. More than half of the first batch of wood in the cross-travel crowd included strong-smelling camphor wood girders, as well as introverted, thick-textured Xiao Nan girders, hard Qinggang wood girders, and ebony girders. ...

In short, these precious woods that should have been cut up and made into furniture were brutally cut into girders by a certain force.

Since the late Ming Dynasty, the large wood resources in various places have been exhausted. Most of the wood used in the Jiangnan area is Shan, Nan, Tong, and Pine from the Qingshui River Basin in Guizhou, and Shancypress produced in Yan, Ting, Shao, and Jiansi Prefectures of Fujian.

Like these unique "luxury" girders brought by the crossover, some wood merchants who have just entered the industry have never even seen them.

Furthermore, these woods are dried.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were two routes for timber transportation: in the provinces of Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei, the rivers, lakes and Yangtze Rivers were all the way through the wooden rafts, and then went north to the capital through the Yangzhou Canal.

The provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Fujian are transported by river and sea. The wooden rafts will eventually be assembled in Fujian, and then transported offshore by Fuchuan to Ningbo for sale.

Regardless of the above methods, after the wood finally reaches the ground, it will take at least a year for all large materials to air dry. In the humid southern regions, this time will be longer.

The wood produced by Tangzhuang is different.It is impossible for Tangzhuang’s sea-going ships to zigzag in the turbulent strait with a string of wooden rafts hanging on them, so these timbers are loaded into the cabin and transported, and they have been dried—you can use them when you carry them home.

The wood merchants soon discovered the secret: the goods bought in the morning can be sold at noon, which is equivalent to saving a lot of costs such as storage yards, yard protection, and fire protection maintenance.

The wood produced in the kiln base has another advantage: because part of the cabins need to be rebuilt to store wood, the wood produced in the kiln area is all cut rectangles or squares.

Most of the beams in the southern region of the Ming Dynasty were round in cross-section: saving labor and materials.This trend will not be reversed until the Qing Dynasty.Of course, the rich and powerful will not care about those few silver coins.

……

The industrial wood species are precious, high-quality, have been dried, and the geometric shape is more stable.In addition, these woods are all painted with creosote oil, which is anti-corrosion and moisture-proof, so the first batch of goods were sold out within a few days, and the Hangzhou government digested it without even going to Suzhou.

Afterwards, facing the swarms of wood merchants, big and small, Master Xiong naturally trembled.First deduct [-]% of the goods and sell them on your own, and then deduct [-]% and sell them on your own... There are always some old friends and housekeepers who can’t afford to mess with the gentry who come directly to Tangzhuang to get the goods. These are all relationships and resources. Of course, Mr. Xiong Will not let go.

When the proportion of timber sold by Tangzhuang reached [-]%, under the leadership of Diao Xingshou, Muxing began to fight against the oppressive and kind Master Xiong.Yes, the situation has now been reversed, and the wood industry has become a disadvantaged group: the market has opened up, word of mouth has spread, Tangzhuang's fleet can unload wood to Ningbo in the future, and the customers here pay the money and then go to Ningbo to pick it up That's good, Hangzhou Wood Company has nothing to do.

This is the reason why Mr. Diao and his gang besieged Chu Maosheng in the opening scene: Although the clarion call of the buyer's market has already sounded, the industrial products produced by the cross-country crowd will not satisfy the market for at least ten or eight years, so those who have goods in their hands Man, still so awesome.

Mr. Diao and his group of wood merchants are no longer high-grade, they can only argue with Chu Maosheng, the deputy manager of Tangzhuang, to ask for goods-Master Xiong is very busy now, and has to deal with a lot of businessmen every day.

After the upper deck of the sandship was unloaded, the cement in the middle deck and the red bricks in the bilge would also be carried out by coolies one after another.

The cement will be moved into the large red brick warehouse that Mr. Xiong built next to the Tanghe River. As for the red bricks... just put them in the open-air yard, and they will be sold soon anyway.

At present, because there is no suitable packaging, the cement is first packed in straw bales, and then transported to Hangzhou in large camphor boxes... It was not a loss to transport it in the 17th century.

The camphor wooden boxes produced in the kiln area are half thicker than ordinary Ming Dynasty wooden boxes.These wooden boxes are all "plain ware", that is, semi-finished products that have not undergone a series of subsequent processes such as painting, carving and installing copper handles.

So right now in the goods yard in front of Tangzhuang Gate, there are still many owners of woodware shops: they only need to buy back the camphor wooden box, and let their own craftsmen decorate it beautifully. The wooden box will be turned into high-end furniture filled with silk brocade, and it will become a must-have utensil for the dowry of young ladies from rich families.

……

As for the cement in the wooden box... As soon as this stuff appeared in Hangzhou, local construction industry leaders from all walks of life noticed this magical commodity. After the pavement is [-] centimeters high from the ground, smooth as a mirror, and a seamless path, people who shuffled in front of Liu’s house in those days rubbed their shoulders, and many people paved the ground on the concrete road at night. of……

The cement burst into flames.

People from all walks of life in the construction industry swarmed here, which is why Mr. Xiong has to deal with many line heads, cabinet heads, and master craftsmen every day.

In order to maintain the reputation of its own products, Tangzhuang launched a cement construction training class in time, with a training fee of 80 taels per person per person, and a certificate after graduation; and future training classes for laying floor tiles and wooden floors (these cannot be produced at the moment) , Students will also get a 95% discount based on the certificate.

No training is necessary: ​​if cement is to become qualified concrete, there are many intermediate procedures: the proportion of clear water and other aggregates must be reasonable, the mixing must be uniform, there are many things that need to be paid attention to during construction, and the maintenance of cement after construction Also important, these techniques must be learned through training and practice.

The tuition fee of 80 taels of silver did not frighten those cabinet heads and master craftsmen—the craftsmen in the middle ages learned skills, which were all obtained by being squeezed and beaten down by the master when they were young. Nowadays, you can learn a few groups by paying 80 taels of silver. Concrete formula and construction secrets, this is not a loss.

The newly built red brick warehouse in Tangzhuang was built by the students in this way.These students bring their own dry food and small workers, they work hard, and they have a good memory-many of them are illiterate, and the data of cement formulas are all memorized by rote.

Of course, Tangzhuang will not make their money in vain: housekeepers who come to Tangzhuang to buy cement will get a student roster, which lists the current list of craftsmen who are qualified to use cement to pave roads and build walls.

Chapter 168

Commodities like red bricks were really born out of time in ancient China, and they lived awkwardly for thousands of years.

It stands to reason that red bricks are simpler and less costly than blue bricks, so they should be more popular. However, the emperors of all dynasties said here: NO.

The two colors of Zhenghuang (bright yellow) and Zhenghong (cinnabar) are exclusive colors for the royal family and relatives in the palace, just like the queen's black Rolls-Royce, which are exclusive to the royal family.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to the decline of the imperial court's control, the people of Fujian, where the emperor was far away from the mountains, once played a wave of folk building red brick buildings. During this period, the Dutch also went to Zhangzhou to buy a lot of red bricks to repair Zeelandia.

In addition, it was not until the end of the Qing Dynasty that the royal power collapsed and industrial products flooded in that the entire medieval society began to use red bricks in large quantities.

The time-traversing people also had twists and turns in terms of bricks.At the beginning, the red bricks shipped to Hangzhou were not very popular: not everyone dared to use them, and the walls and houses would take many years to build, which would be evidence of rebellion someday.

Next, according to the telegram sent back by Tangzhuang, the senior staff quickly adjusted the ingredient ratio of some 95 red bricks, making the product a light red color, so the sales of the 2.0 version of the red bricks improved.

Soon the 3.0 version of bricks produced by Dayuan will be on the market: With the strengthening of the kiln area base, the brick kiln specially used for firing green bricks for export will be launched. The industrial version of blue bricks will definitely become a hot item in the foreign market.You know, there is a word in ancient times called "grinding bricks to seam", which has clearly reflected the quality of original handicraft products.