Section 84 Cultural Bookstore

Seeing the newly recruited domestic servants, Zhao Yinggong had already calculated in his heart - judging from the resources he currently had, it was not possible to directly intervene in the circulation of raw silk and silkworm cocoons. His capital is limited, Delong did not have a firm foothold in the local area at the beginning, and he must not be able to mobilize too much capital, and the capitalists in the south of the Yangtze River must be much more difficult to deal with than those in Leizhou, not only are the capital abundant, but there are probably many rich and powerful gentry and bureaucrats behind him. The situation is much more difficult than that of Leizhou and Guangzhou, and the interests of the local powerful cannot be directly touched, lest they be met with a strong backlash and fall short.

After thinking about it, the most suitable thing at the moment is to intervene in the production of raw silk. The most advantageous thing for a traverser is, of course, to use Lingao's scientific and technological capabilities to open a modern semi-mechanized silk reeling factory to produce high-quality raw silk. Judging from Wang Siniang's description, the local method of silk reeling not only has low production efficiency, but also poor quality. If the existing market is hit by cheap and high-quality products produced on a large scale of industrialization. From quantitative change to qualitative change is a quick thing.

Zhao Yingong has no doubt that once the silk reeling factory is put into operation, the impact will cause thousands of silkworm farmers to go bankrupt, lose their land and property, and live on the streets. And he is the one who started it all.

However, such a situation is favorable for the Crossing Group. The Senate's consistent policy towards agriculture was to destroy small production, and a large and stable class of small yeoman farmers, whether owning land or tenants, did not want to see it - the Senate needed a large number of free and employable labour.

In addition to silk reeling, intensive sericulture cultivation is also promising. Zhao Yinggong has seen the productivity explosion brought about by the agricultural improvement and agricultural technology promotion of the Committee of Agriculture in Lingao, and if similar practices are introduced in Hangzhou, the yield and quality of mulberry leaves and silkworm cocoons will definitely be greatly improved.

However, both of these links rely on Lingao's jishu and material support. Zhao Yinggong himself knows nothing about silk reeling machines or sericulture. Zhao Yinggong decided that it was still the old way, and he would go to the field to investigate first.

He had already made up his mind to open a silk reeling factory, but to open a silk reeling factory, he had to solve a series of problems such as land, plant, equipment, workers and raw material sources.

The jishu content of the silk reeling factory is limited, so it is not much difficult for the machine factory to imitate a set of silk reeling equipment in the late 19th century, and the silk reeling factory does not need much power equipment, it does not have to be a steam engine, and it is enough to use water to rotate. When Zhao Yingong first designed the "Crossing the Textile Industry", he considered water turbines.

If you want to build a factory, and you need to be powered by water turbines, you have to have land. The land had to be large enough and there had to be a river nearby – neither growing mulberry nor running a silk reeling factory needed a lot of water. To meet these conditions, Hangzhou is obviously not suitable. You'll have to look out of the city.

Zhao Yingong had already planned for this piece of land - he had long been interested in Phoenix Mountain outside the Fengshan Gate. This is the original location of the Southern Song Dynasty, which was in the city during the Song and Yuan dynasties. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, when Zhang Shicheng built a new city wall in Hangzhou, he stopped Phoenix Mountain outside the city. The Southern Song Dynasty on Phoenix Mountain suffered a fire in the fourteenth year of the Yuan Dynasty and burned most of it. Ten years later, Yang Lian Zhenjia asked the Yuan court to build five Buddhist temples on Phoenix Mountain using the building base, remnants of buildings and building materials in the Southern Song Dynasty. These five temples were also annihilated in the Yuan Dynasty, and Zuihou was completely destroyed in the war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, Phoenix Mountain had completely become a deserted land. Zhao Yingong had already inquired - although this place was close to the city, it was a very deserted place, and there were almost no people except for a few small villages.

But for Zhao Yinggong, this place is very suitable, the land price of the barren land will not be high, to meet his current limited economic conditions, since he can build a palace, it can be seen that the local terrain will not be rugged, it must be a relatively flat slope. In addition to building houses, mulberry trees can be planted in large quantities on the slopes to provide mulberry leaves for sericulture. Moreover, Phoenix Mountain is close to the Middle River on one side and the Qiantang River on the other, so it is more convenient to divert water as a power source or for production and domestic water. If you want to open more factories in the future, you can get water and drain water nearby.

In the future, Hangzhou Station will also have to handle the transfer of population - it is very inappropriate for the purification camp to be set up in one's own mansion, first, there is no such a big place, and second, this is a high-end residential area in the city, and a large number of poor people entering and leaving Zhao's house are too eye-catching. Phoenix Mountain is a place that is very close to the city and does not attract people's attention.

Zuihou, Phoenix Mountain is close to the Qiantang River, and it is a commanding height of Fengshan Gate. When the Taiping army attacked Hangzhou, it was seized as an important siege base. Controlling this place is equivalent to preparing a suitable dock for the transfer of refugees and the reception of naval ships. As a self-proclaimed descendant of the Song Dynasty, Zhao Yinggong also has a special political meaning. He must take this commanding height.

Of course, the remnants of the entire Phoenix Mountain Palace Garden start from Tiaobroom Bay in the south, reach Wansongling in the north, follow the west bank of the south end of the Zhonghe River in the east, and reach the eastern foot of Phoenix Mountain in the west, with a circumference of nine miles. With such a large area, of course, Zhao Yinggong has neither the strength nor the need to buy it all - after all, he is here to run an industry, not to build a Southern Song Dynasty palace ruins park to show himself feelings. He immediately instructed Cai Shi and Sun Wangcai to go to the local area to inquire about the ownership of the land in the area of Phoenix Mountain and the approximate land price, and at the same time to survey "the place where the manor can be established".

He then drafted a telegram in which he reported his ideas and intentions to the Foreign Intelligence Service in their original form. This includes all the support he expects from him: funding, machinery and specialized jishu personnel.

While waiting for a reply, Zhao Yinggong looked around for other business opportunities - not only to make money, but also to find a way to open up his local circle.

He had considered setting up a printing shop - movable type printing and lithographic printing were the easiest technologies to make money in the time and space, not to mention that they also had a lot of resources available for "plagiarism". In particular, there are many manuscripts that have been carefully reviewed in the old plane, and these editions are reprinted in large quantities, and the quality of the content can surpass the ordinary books sold in the bookstore of this time and space, not to mention the printing quality of the books themselves.

The engraving printing industry in Jiangnan was famous at that time. This has a lot to do with the prosperity of Jiangnan's literary style. Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou all have large bookstores, which combine editing, publishing, printing and sales. A sizable industry has been formed. So there is absolutely no shortage of the market.

In a society where knowledge is monopolized by a small number of people, books not only have practical value, but also have cultural and psychological significance, so the bookshop owners who print, compile and sell books are relatively "elegant", and it is easy to be "looked upon" when dealing with literati.

But the printing house still needs equipment, jishu and personnel. These things are also currently only available in Lingao. As far as Zhao Yinggong knows, so far, the problem of engraving the type mold in movable type printing has not been solved. For this reason, the person in charge of the printing office before leaving the company also specially asked him to pay attention to whether he could find some master engraving craftsmen from Jiangnan to work in Lingao. So good that the engraving worker may also be able to do the work of engraving the lettering.

Thinking of this, Zhao Yinggong couldn't help but smile secretly - it seems that it is really not easy to do things alone. If you wear it alone, it is indeed very difficult.

However, the difficulty of opening a bookstore is much smaller after all, Zhao Yingong thought that even if there is no movable type printing, it is not impossible to directly use the engraving printing industry, which is ready-made in the local jishu, according to modern terms, the industrial chain is complete, whether it is the raw materials of engraving, the printed paper or the workers of engraving are ready-made, as long as they invest.

After all, simply opening a bookstore is still the work of a businessman. At best, the scribes were "looking up" and were not really treated equally. It's better to be more elegant. Zhao Yingong suddenly thought of some so-called "cultural bookstores" opened in the old time and space, all of which had tea houses or coffee houses, and people who bought books could read books at will, make a cup of tea and flip through the books...... Everyone still thinks that it is very elegant and artistic. I don't know how this idea was introduced into Daming?

Thinking about it a little more, this bookstore should have as many books as possible to create a library atmosphere. Not only should there be books such as the subset of classics and histories, but also some so-called "Australian books" printed in Lingao. These books are much better in terms of print quality, paper, and content than the books of the plane, and can be used as a kind of "rarity" to attract readers—any business must have a "selling point".

In addition to books, he thought he could also carry paper, stationery and other small items from Australia to sell. In this way, it is easy to distinguish it from ordinary bookstores and avoid robbing ordinary bookstores. It is also possible to set up a membership-based borrowing mechanism to allow readers to borrow books for free and read them at home without buying them. Then through the name of the registered members, the local knowledge relationship is surveyed. Of course, the biggest benefit is "fame". Ancient books are very rare things, not only the variety is small but also the price is high, the average poor literati, there are a few books and five classics and the necessary time collection for the exam, if you want to read more books, you have to look for people to borrow books, especially some tomes, rare books, you have to go to the home library to borrow it. Because books are rare, people who have books are generally reluctant to lend them easily, and they inevitably have to bother and ask for help during the period. In ancient China, countless topics, stories and legends were derived from book collection and borrowing. Roa。