The "22" fleet in the early days of the crossing force has now expanded to the "34" fleet: a total of three groups of sand fleets, each group of four, Tangzhuang and the big members of each group to rest in one group, and there is always one group in the voyage on the way.

At present, this situation has reached the limit of Tangzhuang's accommodation. Within the time limit, the throughput and rest of the four sand boats were completed, which occupied all the reception capacity of Tangzhuang: this is the suburb of Hangzhou, and the crane arm of Sany Heavy Industry cannot be installed.

Unless we continue to expand the wharf, widen and dig deep into the Tang River, and build the rest of the supporting facilities, this will be the top. The above projects are not cost-effective to use in the Tanghe River: it does not have the geographical conditions of a medium-sized port, not to mention the shallow water, and there is no natural harbor.

Therefore, finding a place to rebuild a port that is completely under the control of the crossing has become the key task of the next Hangzhou station.

......

In the small river bay at the entrance of Tangzhuang, a row of four large sand boats are unloading. The coolies, shirtless and with only a cloth on their shoulders, were bending over like shrimp, carrying a bag of red bricks and some large wooden boxes from the ship.

The largest timber has been unloaded and is being stacked there waiting to be pulled away.

And the deputy director of Tangzhuang Freight Station, the former thief, Comrade Chu Maosheng, the third master of the screen village, is standing next to the neat wooden stacks under the long bamboo shed at the moment, cough... Quarrel with people.

"Chu San, the old man heard that you were also a good man back then, why, after going down the mountain, as soon as you entered Hangzhou City, you changed your career to cheat?" A thin old man wearing ingots silk and hanging emerald was glancing at a pair of triangular eyes, mocking Chu Sanye with disdain.

"Diao Xing's first words are reasonable!"

"To the point!"

"You can't teach this generation to be untrustworthy!"

After the old man finished speaking, several accomplices next to him also nodded, and everyone was staring at Chu Maosheng with a look of contempt, as if someone had just come to ask for a son.

Comrade Chu Maosheng, who has been in a lot of wealth since he came down the mountain, turned his back against the wooden stack, rolled his eyes, and explained to the old man with a wry smile: "Master Diao, the goods that were talked about that day were calculated according to three ships, and now the fourth ship of goods should be sold by Tangzhuang, so how can you deceive?" ”

"Good mouth!" The old man's eyes widened angrily at this moment, and his hair suddenly rose: "How could the number of ships be set that day... Big fallacy... Ridiculous......"

......

It all started with the first ship of timber.

Inside Tangzhuang is a group of maritime merchants from outside, and this local merchant knows it. Therefore, Xiong Dao wants to do business in Hangzhou, and some industries cannot be touched, such as Qianzhuang - Huang Juren does it, Xiong Dao can't do it.

The same is true of the business of grain, cloth, and silk. Xiong Dao can buy it for silver, everyone is a good friend, but if he wants to interfere with his own business, then the supersaturation blow will come soon, and Xiong Dao will not be able to break out all the gentry shopkeepers and officials.

So for a long time, Tangzhuang has been taking out the silver to buy grain and groceries, and Xiong Dao has maintained a good image in the eyes of many businessmen in Hangzhou: a rich and credible maritime merchant.

When the first ship of timber arrived at the port, Xiong Dao was very clever to wholesale all the goods to the wood merchants led by Master Diao.

If Xiong Dao had put the timber at the gate of Tangzhuang and started selling it at that time, then the blow of the local wood merchants would definitely come. is still the same sentence, Xiong Dao can't kill all the merchants of Muxing, this is business, not the underworld grabbing territory.

Master Diao was the head of the wood shop, and after learning that Tangzhuang had several boatloads of timber and Xiong Dao was willing to sell it to him at the industry's internal price, he naturally accepted this batch of goods with a smile - a little distribution within the guild could be easily handled.

After that, Master Xiong, who was "sensible and knowledgeable", naturally joined the wooden line.

Things have been out of control ever since.

The first is precious.

Taiwan is the place with the largest production of camphor trees and camphor in the world, and the title of "camphor kingdom" in later generations is not called in vain. In the 17th century, Taiwan was full of thousand-year-old trees, and more than half of the first batch of wood that passed through the crowd were camphor wood beams with strong smell, as well as Xiao Nan beams with introverted aroma and thick texture, hard green oka wood beams, and ebony beams......

In short, these precious woods, which should have been cut down and made into furniture, were brutally cut into beams by a certain force.

Since the late Ming Dynasty, the large wood resources in various places have been exhausted, and most of the timber used in the Jiangnan area is the shirt, nan, tong, pine in the Qingshui River basin of Guizhou, and the cypress produced in Yan, Ting, Shao and Jian in Fujian.

Like these unique varieties of "luxury" beams pulled by the public, some wood merchants who have been in the industry for a shallow year have never even seen them.

Moreover, the wood is dried.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were two routes for timber transportation: Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei provinces, which were all the way through the wooden rafts to the rivers, lakes and Yangtze River waterways, and then through Yangzhou to the north to Beijing.

In Yunnan, Guizhou and Fujian provinces, it is a combined transportation of rivers and seas, and the wooden rows will eventually be assembled in Fujian, and then transported to Ningbo for sale by Fuchuan offshore.

In either way, after the wood finally arrives at the ground, it will take at least a year to dry the large material, and in the humid southern regions, this time will be longer.

The wood produced by Tangzhuang is different. It was impossible for the sea boats in Tangzhuang to hang a string of wooden rafts in a zigzag pattern in the rough strait, so the timber was loaded into the hold and dried—and it was ready to be used at home.

The carpenters soon discovered the secret: the goods bought in the morning can be sold at noon, which is equivalent to saving a large amount of storage yards, yards, and maintenance and fire prevention costs.

There is another advantage of the wood produced at the kiln base: because a part of the cabin is to be modified to pile wood, the wood produced in the kiln area is all cut rectangles or squares.

In the southern part of the Ming Dynasty, most of the cross-sections were round: labor and materials were saved. This trend will not slowly reverse until the Qing Dynasty. Of course, the wealthy don't care about those few pieces of silver.

......

Industrial timber is of a precious variety, in good condition, has been dried and has a more stable geometry. In addition, the wood is all coated with wood creosote oil, which is anti-corrosion and moisture-proof, so the first batch of goods was sold out within a few days, and even Suzhou was not visited, and Hangzhou itself digested it.

After that, in the face of the large and small wood merchants who flocked to him, Master Xiong naturally trembled. First, deduct one percent of the goods for self-sale, and then deduct two percent for self-sale...... There are always some old friends and gentry housekeepers who can't be messed with come directly to Tangzhuang to get the goods, these are all relationships, they are all resources, and Master Xiong will naturally not let go.

When the proportion of timber sold by Tangzhuang reached 30%, the wood shop, under the leadership of Diao Xingshou, began to fight against the bullying and good old man Xiong. Yes, now the situation has been reversed, the wood shop has become a vulnerable group: the market has been opened, the word of mouth has spread, Tangzhuang's fleet can unload the timber to Ningbo in the future, the customer here pays the money, and then go to Ningbo to pick up, Hangzhou wood shop has no way.

This is the reason for the opening scene, Master Diao and his group besieging Chu Maosheng: although the horn of the buyer's market has been blown, at least in ten or eight years, the industrial products produced by passing through all living beings cannot satisfy the market, so the people who have the goods in their hands are still so awesome.

Master Diao's group of carpenter merchants are no longer of enough grade now, and they can only bargain with Chu Maosheng, the deputy manager of Tangzhuang, to ask for goods - Master Xiong is very busy now, and he has to deal with many heads of business every day.

When the wood on the upper deck of the sand boat is unloaded, the cement in the middle layer and the red bricks in the bilge will also be carried out by the coolies.

The cement will be moved into the red brick warehouse built by the Tang River, and the red bricks will be ...... Just put it there in the open yard, and it will be sold soon anyway.

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

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

So at present, in the freight yard in front of Tangzhuang, there are still many owners of wood shops: as long as they buy back the camphor wood box, and then let their craftsmen decorate it beautifully, this kind of thick camphor wood box will become high-end furniture, which is filled with silk brocade, and has become a necessary utensil for the marriage of young ladies from large families.

......

As for the cement in the wooden box...... As soon as this thing appeared in Hangzhou, all the local construction industry leaders noticed this magical commodity, and waited until the Hui merchant Liu Yaozu Liu pry open the bluestone slab in front of his house, paved into a twenty centimeter high from the ground, smooth as a mirror, and a seamless path, those days ran to Liu's house in front of the door to drag the feet of the people rubbing shoulders, and there are a lot of paving on the cement road at night......

The cement caught fire.

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

In order to maintain the reputation of its own products, Tangzhuang launched a cement construction training course in a timely manner, charging a training fee of 80 taels of silver per person per capita, and issuing a certificate after graduation; And in the future training courses of paving floor tiles and wooden floors (which cannot be produced at the moment), the trainees will also get a 95% discount on the certificate.

No training is not possible: cement wants to become qualified concrete, there are many intermediate procedures: the ratio of water and other aggregates should be reasonable, the mixing should be uniform, there are many things that need to be paid attention to during construction, and the maintenance of cement construction is also very important, these technologies must be learned through training and practice.

The tuition fee of 80 taels of silver did not intimidate those cabinet heads and master craftsmen - the craftsmen of the Middle Ages learned technology, which were all squeezed and scolded by the master since childhood, and now they can learn several sets of concrete formulas and construction secrets by paying 80 taels of silver, which is not a loss.

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

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