dhibooks Chapter 217 My Dream.
Chapter 217 My Dream.
"Your...dream?" Wantong was very puzzled: "This is it?"
"Of course!" Wu Youwei clenched his fists: "My dream is to let the Great Ming rule the world!"
"Pull it down!" Wantong wanted to pry his head open to see what he was thinking: "The emperor has already ruled the world."
"That's just Daming's world." Wu Youwei shook his head: "I'm talking about the world, the whole world!"
"Isn't this the whole world?" Wantong didn't quite understand Wu Youwei's "world".
"I want Ming to become the hegemon of the world!" Wu Youwei changed his words: "Do you think that the current vassal states really surrender to Ming?"
Wantong wanted to nod, but he couldn't go against his will.
How many vassal states of Ming Dynasty are there now?
At the time of Chengzu, there were thirty or forty envoys who came and went in groups every year.
But now?
There are only a few of them throughout the year. Every time they come to worship and pay tribute, they are all local specialties. For example, if they give two boxes of gold sand and one box of gold beads, it is considered a tribute.
On the other hand, Da Ming gave the other party two to three times the reward for the sake of the suzerain's reputation.
There are silk and satin, silk brocade, tea, porcelain, and so on.
They are all high-quality goods, making those people want to eat them alive every time they see them!
It is not so much that they came to see the court, it is better to say that they came to do business, and each time the benefits are several times, and when they come to them, these things will probably be multiplied by a hundred times!
Although shipping has withered, the huge profits are still there.
"What I want is to make Daming like the prosperous Tang Dynasty." Wu Youwei is ambitious: "Occupy the land, occupy the land, occupy the land!"
Wantong...! ! "
"When the time comes, where the bright moon shines, it will be our country!" Wu Youwei suddenly thought of such a slogan.
This was originally a Hong Kong and Taiwan costume drama in which the protagonist was flattering the emperor, but it is very suitable here.
After evacuating his feelings, Wu Youwei was in a good mood.
But Wantong hit him: "You talk so much, why don't you want money?
Wu Youwei: "Huh?"
"To expand the territory, you have to expand the army. Do you know how much the army consumes in a year?" Wantong didn't want to hit him, but he didn't want to let him daydream: "Without money, how can we support those troops?"
Daming is short of money, very short of money.
"Then I have to think of a way to make money!" Wu Youwei touched his chin: "Salt is not acceptable, that is something controlled by the imperial court; tea is not acceptable, that is also something controlled by the imperial court; gold and silver are not acceptable, iron is more No, metal seems to have no chance.
"Then you want to get something to make money?" Wantong teased him: "How about some seafood?"
Because overseas crops have already made a name for the emperor, strawberries are even more profitable. If there are more things like strawberries, they can make a lot of money.
"Strawberries are fruits." Wu Youwei rolled his eyes unceremoniously: "How can overseas crops make money? It's all about people's livelihood."
He didn't expect to make money from those things, and Shang Ming was able to fool the royal family and relatives into buying seeds. Once these things became more and more, they would be worthless.
And when they find out that strawberries can be grown year-round, it'll be... flooding.
"Then what did you think of?" Wantong was curious, wondering if he could come up with a good way to increase military spending?
You must know that the imperial household department does not have much money now.
Wu Youwei knew that Daming actually had money, but he just hid it among the people.
Especially the big families in the south of the Yangtze River, all of them are fat and oily!
When the Qing army entered the customs, why did they choose Jiading and Yangzhou Tucheng in the south of the Yangtze River?
Is it really because the defenders there are stubborn?
After the massacre, what about those people's property?
"Think of something that can be used, is inseparable, and can make money!" Wu Youwei said: "The common people are nothing more than seven things to open the door, such as firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and tea; what about rich people? They pay attention to piano and chess. Calligraphy, painting, poetry and hops."
"You want to make wine?" Wantong thought for a while: "That's really possible.
If nothing else, the wine was good.
"It takes time to make wine." Wu Youwei shook his head: "It can be a side job, not the main job.
The two talked about this topic all night, but they couldn't come up with a good idea.
There is a small stove in Wu Youwei’s room. Charcoal is burned, and there is a kettle on it. There is no shortage of boiling water. Wantong wanted to make tea, but Wantong stopped him: “Don’t make tea. I sleep too much during the day. Make some tea to refresh yourself, can you still sleep?"
"I just don't want to sleep!" Wu Youwei looked very energetic.
Wantong's heart moved, and just about to speak, butler Lin Su came
"I saw that the lights in the house were on, and there was no Xiaoxiao here, so I came in to take a look." Lin Su's excuse was very good. There are few people in the house now, and he was afraid that he would not be attentive.
But he just stood there watching, resisting Wantong's cold eyes and not going out.
Just when Wantong couldn't help but want to show off his power, the people he brought also called him outside the door: "My lord? My lord! There is urgent news!"
Wu Youwei looked at Wantong innocently: He could have done something like that, but who would have encountered all kinds of...
Butler Lin Su is innocent too!
Wantong wiped his face and had no choice but to go out.
Butler Lin Su also left.
After a while Wantong sent someone to tell Wu Youwei that he was resting in the guest house.
It means let Wu Youwei wash and sleep!
Can Wu Youwei fall asleep?
Of course not.
He went to the study, and in the study, he lit a candle and picked up a pen to grind.
Think while grinding.
You can't touch food, and you can't touch metal, so you can only do something else.
After grinding the ink for a long time, he put it down when he was finished, worrying about getting something out.
With no work in hand, he reached out for a piece of candy.
Because it is Chinese New Year, the family bought a lot of candy, but it was all rice sugar and honey.
It is made into various animal shapes, and there are peanuts, walnuts, almonds and other things inside, with various patterns.
There is also toffee, but it is expensive. Wu Youwei asked Chef Fang to study it. He used tea leaves or almonds to remove the smell of milk, then added rice sugar and boiled it in a pot, and it became brown toffee.
Although it has a strong milky fragrance, it is not fishy, and it is wrapped with peanuts, walnuts and other things. When the housekeeper Lin Su gave a gift a year ago, he asked someone to pack a box, and each family gave a box.
The response was very good. He held the candy in his hand, but froze.
Although sugar, unlike salt, is necessary for human survival, it is a very important and expensive agricultural product in human dietary life.
In fact, even after the Industrial Revolution in modern times, the sugar industry has been a very profitable industry.
In the early Tang Dynasty, sugar was a tribute, and only the royal family could taste it. After the middle of Tang Dynasty, it gradually went to the common people.The industry and commerce in the Song Dynasty was quite prosperous. According to records, there were already "all kinds of sugar workshops" in the city. In the "Zhouqiao Night Market" in Volume [-] of "Tokyo Dreams Records", there were snacks such as "sugar granulated sugar, chicken head granulated sugar" and so on. According to the records of "Diet Fruit", there are desserts such as "Xichuan Lactose, Lion Candy".
However, even at this time in the Ming Dynasty, sugar or desserts were still very expensive.
Tang, undoubtedly one of the high-margin products.
Southeast Asia, especially Japan, does not produce sugar, and the price of sugar is skyrocketing.
Sugar was sold in Korea and Japan, and more importantly, there was no white sugar in the world at that time.
The current sugar production is still very rough, just follow the records in "Quannan Magazine": "Boil brown sugar with sugar cane juice and cook it into white. Chop duck eggs and stir them to make the dregs float."
To put it bluntly, the method is to put brown sugar in a pot, dissolve it in water, then boil the pot, roll the sugar water, and the froth rises, skim off the froth, break the salted duck eggs and put them in the sugar water to stir, and wrap many impurities in Inside, skim it off, and the impurities are reduced a bit.
Just cook like this, cook and skim again, until no froth rises.
But although the sugar obtained is good, it is not the white granulated sugar commonly seen in later generations, it can only be ordinary good sugar.
Wu Youwei remembers the history, and it is recorded in the book that the technology of truly refining white sugar was not discovered by accident until the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty.
According to the description in "Tiangong Kaiwu" as follows: "Remove the grass in the hole, pour it with yellow muddy water, and the black dregs will go into the tank, and the inside will become hoarfrost. The top layer is about five inches thick, and it is extremely white. The name is western sugar, and the lower one is slightly yellowish brown.
The actual method is to take out the large, complete and relatively unclean particles in the brown sugar, put them into a funnel-shaped ceramic vat, and pour the yellow mud water over and over again to make the black slag flow out along the hole, and the sugar on the upper layer will naturally change. White, the whiter the upper layer is, it is white sugar.
So using this method, you can take out the white granulated sugar in the upper layer, the brown granulated sugar in the middle layer, and the brown granulated sugar in the lower layer. ).
As for the black residue that flows out, it is called molasses and can be used to brew wine.
After the brewed wine is filtered, it can be drunk or used as cooking wine by mixing it with rice wine brewed from rice.The ratio of rice wine to rice wine is about six for rice wine and four for molasses wine.
How could Wu Youwei do it?
That was when he went to play at a classmate's house, because there were a few black-hearted sugar factories that broke out in those years, and everyone didn't dare to eat candy anymore, so seeing his classmate's family making their own candy, it was very itchy at that time, followed Made several pots!A few classmates who also went with me got mixed up.
Then he got [-] catties of white sugar, he couldn't bring it back by himself, so he specially found a logistics company, spent the postage to mail it back, and then mailed it to his home, that's how he got sugar all those years...
The mud obtained from sugarcane juice and lime precipitation is called "filter mud", which contains a lot of organic matter and is quite high in nutrients, making it an excellent fertilizer.
Bagasse is the waste left over from the sugarcane crushing process. In order to save fuel costs, the family dried the bagasse and used it as firewood to boil sugar. Sugarcane branches, leaves and cane husks were also the main fuel sources.
Their family is from Fujian, and they are close to the mountains and the sea. They have sugar cane fields. Basically, from the beginning to the end, there is almost no extra cost, and they have enough for everything.
The classmates later told them that often because there is too much bagasse, they can’t use it at home. This place is not in the Northeast, and there is no need to burn kangs to prepare firewood. The excess bagasse can only be used as compost.
But these bagasses can actually be used to make pulp, and even made into bagasse boards, which are used as building material partitions.
It's just that machines are needed, and manpower is very expensive, so they don't make partitions here, they either use the bagasse for their own use, or sell it to the building material partition processing factory in the next village.
Moreover, there was no sugar removal equipment in ancient times, so it was easy to provoke termites, and a nest of these things could eat away many people's beams.
Wu Youwei did the math, now is the Ming Dynasty's Xianzong period, which is more than 60 years away from the Jiajing period!
Once he makes a shot of this white sugar, it will definitely shock the world!
After all, white sugar has never appeared in China, and the appearance of white sugar is very good!
Crystal clear as jade, white as cotton.
But white sugar is not good at all. If you eat too much, you will get angry and get nosebleeds....
But white sugar looks much better than brown sugar, rice sugar and honey, because it looks good!
Especially things made with white sugar.
The white sugar itself is crystal clear after melting, and has many uses. Even if it is washed with water, it can be colorless, leaving only the sweetness itself.
Wu Youwei picked up a pen and dipped it in ink, writing vigorously!
He not only wrote down the production process of white sugar, but also recalled the simple but very primitive sugar making utensils in the home of his old classmates.
Combined with my own understanding, I fumbled and painted twice before finalizing the draft.
When he finished painting, it was dawn and he was sleepy. He put away his things, blew out the candles, and floated to the bedroom like a wandering soul, and fell asleep on the kang.