Section 66 Trini's Observations

If I could get a supply of so many sweets in Italy, it would probably be my fortune to open a shop dedicated to the nobles. But in this area, the price of candy is very cheap. Out of curiosity, Mr. González bought a large bag full of sweets for a rial. The candy is beautifully presented in a small waxed paper pocket. The store gave us a straw pocket for sweets. This bag alone is a work of art.

The most exotic pastime is their tobacco - which, as you know, is currently popular all over Shijie. People have invented all sorts of different ways to use it. But there is a new way to get tobacco in Lingao. They sell tobacco in long rolls of paper. The white paper is rolled into a delicate paper tube, as thick as a pen, and the inside is evenly filled with tobacco. They call it "cigarette rolls". Most smokers use a hollow bamboo, wood or cardboard tube attached to the cigarette roll to smoke, so as not to burn their lips when the cigarette is about to burn out.

Cigarette rolls of 10 or 20 are sold in paper packets or cartons of various colors and patterns. Although the pattern of each cigarette roll seems similar to us, the price also varies greatly depending on the color and pattern of the packaging on the outside. The most expensive box can roughly buy ten boxes of the cheapest cigarette rolls. Neither I nor Mr. González can provide a reasonable explanation for this. In our opinion, there seems to be no noticeable difference between the two other than the packaging.

This is a type of banknote called a negotiable note. Marco Polo once said: The Tatars used paper money in China. I've always been very skeptical of this - because there is no one on this shijie who loves silver more than the Chinese - except for a very small number of goods, the Chinese always expect the company to pay for silver. But in Lingao, they do use paper money. The banknotes are beautifully printed, with intricate patterns on them, especially on the bottom plate of the pattern, which is very delicately outlined with lines to create an extremely fine shading pattern. Even as an artist, I don't think I'm able to do so much. As for the method they used to print the pattern on paper in layers, it is a puzzle. Obviously, they have very good copperplate engravers.

All the shops here accept banknotes, and of course, the shopkeepers are happy to charge our riyals, but when looking for money, they can only give banknotes. For this we had to buy something for one rial every time. lest you get a bunch of worthless banknotes out of here. This way of shopping makes us finally come home with a full load.

We linger in every store. Each one of them was an eye-opener for us. I can understand why the company is so anxious to send a salesman here, Lingao is also a treasure trove of trade, with so many novelties that we have never seen or heard of.

There's even a shop that specialises in ready-to-wear – it's amazing how they can make clothes that fit without tailoring? Although the Australian costume is very shabby by our standards. Their clothing was not woollen, silk or leather, but cheap Indian or Chinese cotton and linen. The style of the clothes was so simple that it was only slightly better than that of the natives of Batavia. At a reception to celebrate the trade deal, the Australian elders in attendance wore almost all of them in this crude and rudimentary garment – a custom that is incomprehensible.

Ready-to-wear stores sell clothing in no style, which is said to be the standard clothing of Australians and their subjects. Except for some details, they are almost identical, and even the colors are only a handful of colors: black, gray, blue, and brown.

With regard to the Australians and their subjects, this is according to my observations.

Australians had a clear requirement for their subjects, and that was to dress in the same way as them: men shaved their hair short, while women wore it short. Both men and women wear "Australian" clothing, which is what I said earlier - the simple clothing that Australians, regardless of whether they are high or low, they call it "uniform".

Whether it is the Aboriginal army recruited and trained by the Australians, or the workers they hire, the farmers, businessmen and others who worked for them, they all wore the same style of clothing. Certain groups of people, such as the military, wear special clothing. Others are distinguished by ornaments, markings, and special equipment - similar to our coats of arms.

Just as we see on the streets at night there are special police officers on duty, and their clothes are exactly the same as those sold in ready-to-wear stores. The hat, the white leggings, the small piece of cloth at the neckline, and the cloth on his chest set him apart from the others, and of course he had a short wooden stick as a weapon.

I think the only benefit of this approach is that it is good for mass manufacturing. Clearly, Australians felt obliged to provide clothing for all their subjects. To provide clothing for tens of thousands of people, it is necessary to simplify the style of clothing as much as possible to facilitate manufacturing.

As for their need to provide uniform clothing for their subjects, I did not consider this. We initially speculated that perhaps it was so that Australians could tell their subjects apart from the local Chinese at a glance - after all, they all had Chinese faces. However, this was rejected when Mr. Gonzalez had no difficulty in obtaining a garment of the same style at a clothing store, and it was clear that anyone could buy such an ugly and humble garment. And the people we saw in Dongmen City still wore traditional Chinese clothes and wore hair buns.

Aside from the reasons we don't understand, the obvious reason is that Australians like to be uniform. This is evident from the fact that they prescribed the attire of their subjects, and not only that. The various buildings we saw in Dongmen also revealed a sense of neatness. Although from the outside, these buildings next to each other appear to be scattered and of different heights. But in terms of detail, all the buildings were built in an almost identical pattern. In my opinion, all the buildings in Dongmen City are built in different forms with the same structure and size.

Australians use the exact same building materials on a large scale. Burnt bricks are their most commonly used building material. The main material of all buildings is burnt bricks. They are mostly red and also cyan. The texture is firm and delicate, apparently the result of high-temperature roasting. I took a closer look at a number of buildings on the lower street. They roughly use three different sizes of bricks. Each type of brick is used in different parts, but the same principles are followed in each building. The windows, doors, steps, and railings they use on buildings can all boil down to several completely consistent types based on my observations. Obviously, these architectural accessories are manufactured in batches in a workshop with a few fixed dimensions and geometries, rather than by a single craftsman on site. Adopting this approach should speed up the rate of building houses. It is only with this method that Australians have been able to build a thriving city here in just a few years.

Unlike the Chinese or European buildings I've seen, the houses in Dongmen are almost completely unadorned. Whether it's the roof, the eaves, or the walls, you won't see a single trace of carvings, statues, or frescoes. The walls are simply painted white or black, and some are directly exposed brick walls. I saw in Batavia and along the coast of China that the Chinese were fond of carving bas-reliefs or painting on the beams and columns of houses, but here the wooden structure was painted with only the simplest coat of lacquer.

There's a peculiar sense of uniformity here. After discovering the characteristics of the buildings, I suddenly realized that many things in Dongmen City are the same: street lights, garbage baskets, street signs...... Even the people walking down the street are very similar. It's a feeling I can't describe.

Our walk was very pleasant, no one bothered us on the street, and the owners of the shop were very friendly. We found a sacred church in Dongmen City - and we were overjoyed. You know, in Batavia, the fanatical Puritans forbade us to pray and forced us to hold their prayers. Now, under the rule of the Australians, there is actually a church of the Holy Church.

This church, from the outside, is both simple and elegant. What's more, it's relatively "non-standard". Its shape reminds me of the kind of chapel in my small town back home. The doors of the church are open, and there are bright lights in the doors and windows - this is the divine light that warms us. We immediately walked in.

……

Wu Shimang yawned a lot, but he still had to pretend to be serious. Because he's overseeing John? Dermot, a trainee friar from Ireland, paints frescoes on the walls. The Dongmen City Church has recently been renovated -- Daoist Daoist Thief Quanzi recently renovated an old temple in Lingao County, which has long been deserted, held a grand opening ceremony, and has become the official stronghold of the new Taoism. He felt competitive, so he had a tight grip on hardware and software construction. The Dongmen City Church has not been built for a long time, and of course it is impossible to demolish and rebuild it, but Dean Wu feels that the interior of the church is still too simple and lacks appeal. The arrival of Jin Lige and others gave him free renovation workers. Painting murals, installing stained glass and decorating interiors with tiles are on the agenda. Soon after the apprentices arrived at Lingao, they devoted themselves to the painting of the murals and the interior decoration of the entire seminary.

From morning till night, the two clergymen were busy painting frescoes, sculpting plaster statues, and even reluctantly participating in the creation of stained-glass windows - not only for religious purposes, of course, but also for the propaganda and architectural departments to serve their own new art forms.