Wen Tong set his foothold on Xu Wen. () Qiwei had already received a note from Guo Dongzhu. I want to entertain this "Wen shopkeeper". Because I heard that the shopkeeper Wen didn't like the noisy city, the Leizhou branch of Qiwei set up a new house in the sugarcane village outside Xuwen County, and cleaned up the inside and out, and even the furniture was newly made. Originally, I planned to find a few servants to serve, but Guangzhou had already prepared for it, and they were all sent by mule carts. It's very ridiculous to make a lot of trouble with the main thing - the style of these big shopkeepers is really extravagant.

Wen Tong took people to live in this sugar cane farm, which is just a more elegant farmhouse courtyard. In addition to the house, there is a large yard dedicated to stacking the harvested sugar cane. Tutangliao is just outside the village wall: another building with several cows.

After a night's rest, Wen Tong inspected the property. Originally, Wen Tong thought that such a Zhuangzi should have characters such as stewards and craftsmen, but when he asked, there was no one. This Zhuangzi even the sugar liao is the private property of a certain farmer, and the planting, juice squeezing, and sugar making are all handled by this family, and after buying it, naturally no one will handle it.

Wen Tong felt a little troubled, there were no locals, and he was blind to the local situation, and besides, the sugarcane industry was typically labor-intensive, and the harvest season required a lot of manpower. Another time and space is easy, the cane farmers deliver the goods to their own doors, and the sugar mills only need to buy them through the scales. Now he still has his own land, and the sugar cane has not yet been harvested. It is necessary to find short-term workers to organize harvesting, cleaning, and bundling. You have to find a professional landlord or a long-term foreman to deal with this matter, and he is just a sugar factory director, how to deal with it?

Looking at the few people around him, they are all wide-eyed, obviously laymen. Chang Shide looked at him with a sad face and asked, "Is it difficult to do?" ”

"Without the help of the locals, my eyes are black." Wen Tong sighed and called Zhou Shizhai's little apprentice Li Biao, who had already learned fluent Mandarin in Lingao.

"Go to Zhuangzi and ask around, are there any sugarcane farmers nearby who have sent sugarcane over for processing? If you want to, please go to Zhuangzi, I have something to ask. ”

"Okay, let's go."

Looking through the land deed, the sugarcane field owned by the entire Zhuangzi is only 100 acres in modern terms, which can be said to be pitifully small.

Wen Tong visited the soil sugar liao on the Leizhou Peninsula in the past, and knew that the sugar making process here was "cow pulling stone roller to squeeze cane, pot stove boiling sugar, pottery to divide mi", although it was very backward according to the current standard, it was also a relatively advanced technology at that time.

The whole squattery covers a large area for storing sugar cane and bagasse to be processed, and the main buildings are a conical shed and a large grass hut. The whole structure can be said to be shabby, not to mention bricks and tiles, not even much wood. It is the so-called "grass watts wall".

The thatched hut is about 50 feet at the bottom and 30 feet high, and the interior is supported by hemp bamboo, and the roof is covered with thatch, straw, or sugar cane leaves. It is a place where sugar cane is pressed. The boiling sugar house is lined up with Kong Mingding, which is the place where the sugar is boiled. There are all kinds of equipment listed in it, nothing more than wooden wheels, cauldrons, stoves, clay pots, etc.,

Because it had not been used for months, it was full of dust, the ground was muddy, there were all kinds of cane leaves, cane skins, cow dung, firewood and grass and other garbage, the house was leaking everywhere, and rat droppings could be seen everywhere, even in the pot where sugar was boiled.

Wen Tong knew that even in a modern sugar factory, the environment could not be said to be clean, but the current appearance was too bleak. It seems that it is really difficult to start a business.

Seeing that Shopkeeper Wen frowned, the people accompanying him knew that he was dissatisfied, but they were puzzled: the sugar liao in the counties of Leizhou Mansion is much the same, what is it that makes him unhappy?

Walking out of the sugar room, I found a clean stone outside the courtyard and just wanted to sit down, only to see a young man in a green coat and a small hat rushing out next to him, holding a chair, quickly opening it and stuffing it under his buttocks:

"Sir, please take a seat." The young man lowered his head and said softly.

Wen Tong was taken aback, there are few locals who can speak Mandarin: "Who are you?" ”

Liao Dahua, the semicolon shopkeeper of Qiwei here, hurriedly came over to report: "This is specially sent by the proprietor of Guangzhou Guo to serve the shopkeeper." It's called Wenxiu. ”

"Wenxiu? Such a sissy name. Wen Tong commented casually.

The servant blushed and fell silent.

"It's a pseudo-mother." Chang Shide took a look, this man looked sixteen or seventeen years old, with white skin, red lips and white teeth, beautiful eyebrows, and a bit of a woman. But seeing that the hat on his head was rather peculiar, like a small melon skin hat, but the size was much larger--could it be that the fashion of Jianyu had spread here?

"What kind of hat are you?"

"It's a six-in-one cap." Liao Dahua hurriedly explained, "It's the pro-system of the Taizu of this dynasty-"

"What? The melon skin hat was invented by Zhu Yuanzhang? Chang Shide muttered, this was too unexpected for him, he always thought that this kind of costume that matched the pig's tail was my creation in the Qing Dynasty.

Seeing that he openly called Taizu's name, Liao Dahua and Wenxiu, who could understand Mandarin, were disgraced, Liao Dahua hurriedly said: "Master Chang, be cautious!" Be cautious, this is the name of the ancestor of this dynasty, and it should not be pronounced like this-"

"It is said that yes, I don't know the details, Yu Eshui said it." Wen Tong said, and suddenly found something, "Why don't you move a chair for Master Chang?" ”

In order to facilitate the title outside, Chang Shide's name is Wentong's master. lest the mind be too big and confuse the natives.

"Master Chang's chair, Wen Qing went to move. I'm going to take a look. Wen Xiu was originally a little lazy to pay attention to this flat-headed black man with a black face and slight beard - in his opinion, this big black man is about the same as the long foreman brought by Wen Tong, in this time and space, black skin is often regarded as an inferior person, Chang Shide has been taught many times in Lingao.

After a while, I saw Wenxiu and another teenager coming out, except for moving a pier. He also brought a tray with two cups of tea on it.

Chang Shide sat down comfortably, took a sip of tea comfortably, and suddenly said to Wen Tong: "It seems that it is better to come out, this corrupt energy!" I don't know if there are maids? "He looked around.

"Back to the master, there are no maids, only two servants are invited to cook and wash." Wen Qing replied respectfully.

"Xiao Guo really can't do things, how can he do without a maid-" As he was talking, he suddenly noticed that the two servants were covering their mouths and snickering, realizing that they were not careful enough to speak, and their image was greatly damaged.

Wen Tong didn't have such a mind as he did, he took care of Liao Dahua, and asked him to send someone out to find someone who used to work in this sugar house, and if he was willing to come back and continue to work, he could come back - the wage was preferential. Liao Dahua agreed and ordered someone to go out to look for it.

The two groups of people went out, during which Wen Tong and Chang Shide sat face to face under the clear sky of the 17th century, smelling the smell of rotting cow dung, sugar cane and sugar sent by the majestic wind, drinking tea, surrounded by more than a dozen people, one by one standing with bated breath. The two of them were a little uncomfortable, and finally persuaded Liao Dahua to sit down, but the others were still standing.

"I was supposed to be on a business trip. I'm still a little scared. Chang Shide's eyes shone brightly, "I want to always stay in Lingao Security, but I didn't expect that after I came out, I would be a big landlord, and I knew that I should have applied to be an intelligence officer or something." Guo Yi's kid, probably the little wife is all pleased, and there are at least four or five girls who have sex with him! ”

"You can ask for one too." Wen Tong is not interested in this topic: he is worried about his burden.

An hour later, two groups of people arrived. Three workers from the sugar house came, and Wen Tong learned through the translator that none of these three were jishu workers, and according to them, the workers used in the entire sugar house were five people. Sugar cooks, cane squeezers, cattle management, fire burners, handymen. Originally, the farmers who planted cane boiled sugar and squeezed cane by their own families.

"If the owner wants to make sugar, he has to ask a good sugar cooker to take the lead." The person in charge of the fire reported, "Otherwise, the heat is not easy to master, and you can't eat the amount of ash you add, and the amount of sugar you produce is very different." ”

Wen Tong nodded and asked them what the whole production process was like? Can you give a live demonstration below? The fire-burning people said that they could perform under the show, but they were not sugar cooks, and the sugar produced might not be usable.

"Just tell them to just do it," Wen Tong translated as a care, "don't worry about the quality of boiling sugar." ”

After muttering a little, the three of them started to take action, and invited two more dart masters to bring a cow from the cowshed and bring a few bundles of sugar cane. Liao Dahua knew that the shopkeeper Wen thought that the soil sugar liao was not clean, so he quickly led his subordinates to clean the entire soil sugar liao and clean the utensils. That's when we started making sugar.

The workers first cut the sugar cane and bundled it into a load next to the wooden rollers, which are made of lychee wood and are extremely hard. One person puts the cane into the roller, and one person drives the ox to drive the roller to rotate, pulling the first roller first, and driving the second roller through the wooden teeth. The wooden reels squeezed each other, and it took three consecutive times to squeeze out the cane juice.

For the third extrusion, the worker also has to adjust the roller inward and clamp it tighter to make the bagasse squeeze more dry. The pressed cane juice flows down the groove of the base along the reel and flows into the large clay tank through the bamboo tube for precipitation.

Wen Tong looked very carefully, the squeezing power of this wooden reel seemed to be very large, but it was actually not as good as the Qing Dynasty reel he saw later, at least it was also a stone, and it was much higher in hardness. He twisted the bagasse with his hands—there was still quite a lot of juice left in the bagasse after three presses.

After about forty minutes of pressing, the buffalo used to pull the rollers was already sweating and slowing down. It seems that the labor consumption is very large, the workers began to change the cattle, Wen Tong asked, each time the cane is pressed four bundles. It takes 30 to 35 times a day to change cattle. No wonder there are as many as four or five cows in this sugar house.

He asked people to weigh each bundle of sugar cane, and silently calculated in his heart. This kind of processing method, non-stop processing around the clock, only processing nearly 2000 kilograms. Moreover, according to the workers, sometimes the wooden reels are often damaged and have to be stopped for repairs. That's a lot of time lost.

"Do you have stones to make a wheel?" Wen Tong asked.

The workers said that they had never seen it, and that there were not 50 but 30 local sugar houses, and they had never heard of making them of stone.

Wen Tong nodded, it seems that this jishu improvement appeared in the Qing Dynasty, and if the stone press wheel is used, it can process 2500 kilograms per day and night, and the efficiency improvement is much greater.

Squeezed out of the sugarcane juice, after the initial precipitation, hastily skimmed off the above fragments of grass stems and the like, and then poured into a large iron pot to boil, three cauldrons arranged in a zigzag shape, Wen Tong did not see that this arrangement has any positive significance for the production process or efficiency, the only thing that comes to mind is that this method can concentrate heat?

When the sugar cane juice was boiled to the slurry, and when it was not boiling, the worker, who had been burning the fire, began to talk about the foam and debris on it with a large spoon, and then he wrapped some lime from the sugar cane leaves from the lime bag and sprinkled it in.

"Lime?" Chang Shide was quite surprised.

"It's used to clarify the sugar solution." Wen Tong explained that in order to remove the mixture in cane juice and obtain cleaner crystals, an important process is to add a fining agent after filtration to remove intolerant substances, and lime is commonly used in modern sugar factories, and it is naturally the same in ancient times, lime is much easier to obtain than other clarifying agents such as sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and superphosphate. In some places, plant ash will be used to make soil sugar, and the effect is similar.

"But doesn't this lime dissolve into the sugar water? So white sugar contains lime? ”

"No, it's actually neutralized and decomposed with all kinds of impurities in the sugar cane juice—" Wen Tong took the trouble to explain, "whether it's white sugar or brown sugar, there's not a single bit of lime in it." ”

"I'm relieved."

At this time, the sugarcane juice has taken on a yellow color, and several workers work together to pour the sugarcane liquid in the pot into the second pot, slowly evaporating the water in it, and repeating the process in the first pot at the same time.

Wait until you get there, then move the sugary cane juice into the third pot and add some oil. Wen Tong asked, "What are you adding?" ”

The worker hurriedly replied: "It's peanut oil." ”

"Peanut oil?" Wen Tong wondered, he remembered that the sugar industry books said that the first color drag treatment was to add milk, and the method used by the Chinese was the egg white of chicken and duck eggs, and the principle of action was to use protein to remove the impurities inside, is oil considered protein?

Wondering and boring, he decided to continue to read, the cane liquid was boiled into a thin paste and then taken out and injected into the "tile slip", this thing was the same as the Qing Dynasty in kind, and now it seems almost exactly the same: conical shape, large at the top and small at the bottom, about 1 foot high, with a small hole at the bottom tip, plugged with grass, put on a large tile jar, let it slowly crystallize. The sugar solution, which contains a large amount of impurities, will slowly flow out of the small holes below along the thatch, and zuihou will only be left with pure crystalline sugar in the "tile". Wen Tong asked for a while and knew that a tile slip could produce 10 kilograms of red sugar.