Judging from everyone's reactions, Wen Desi knew that the response to this proposal was not very enthusiastic. At this time, Mo Xiao'an spoke: "Mr. Wen, you are right, but the mirror is now our fist product, and it has left an image of luxury to the people." If we rush to make cheap products, I'm afraid it will be detrimental to the high-end product line-"

Wen Desi replied to him: "Look, how many mirrors do you think the people of the Ming Dynasty can buy?" ”

Mo Xiaoan said: "A few days ago, the Guangzhou liaison station sent a message, and a batch of mirrors have been sent to the capital for sale after the year. It is said that even the shop was crushed and several people were injured. The Gao family is urging the delivery, saying how much to have. ”

"How much silver does a mirror sell for now?"

"Guangzhou market: the retail price of ink jade mirrors is between 80 and 120 taels, and the other colors are between 100 and 200 taels."

"Crocodile, how much income can the middle class earn in a place like Guangzhou?"

Yu Eshui said: "This range is very large, and the average shopkeeper is about one or two taels a month. The big shopkeeper hired by the Guangzhou dispatch station used to be two hundred and forty taels a year, which was considered a high-paid class in the Ming Dynasty. ”

"A small citizen with a monthly income of one or two taels will definitely buy it. No, even Daming's 'senior white-collar workers' have to grit their teeth to buy our mirrors. How many rich people are left who can spend a few hundred taels casually? I guess a few thousand at most. So, in the number of mirrors we shipped last month, there are more than 1,200 mirrors. Sooner or later, the market will be saturated. ”

"Some rich people don't just have a mirror or two. Son. The little wives of the rich are all ten or eight, and they must not be one of them, otherwise the woman will be jealous and pay back. There are many wives and children. Don't daughters and daughters-in-law have to buy points? ”

Listening to Mo Xiao'an's words, everyone laughed.

"There are also rich families around Guangzhou, all of whom have come to buy." Mo Xiao'an said, "Including those in Fujian, I heard that there are also businessmen in Jiangnan who have come to contact Gao Ju and ask for purchases." Once they start to buy, it's a thousand noodles at a time, right? You don't always have to go in just a few mirrors. ”

"The overall situation is indeed very good, but the product line needs to be long-term. considerations. Wen Desi thought to himself that Mo Xiao'an's business sense is very ordinary, and he will have to be replaced next time, but unfortunately the two professional sales are in Guangzhou...... "The cost of the mirror is negligible for us, and there is no harm in expanding the user base for us." As for high-end products, this is left to the Guangzhou dispatch station to consider, they feed so many jewelers, it is easy to toss the mirror blank more luxurious. My idea is also to make mirrors accessible to as many people as possible. ”

"Can't we just think about selling mirrors somewhere else? Compare. Such as Southeast Asia? ”

"Yes, yes, that's why we have to do the work of Macau, the work of Liu Xiang and the work of Zhucai." "Needless to say, Macau is a window in its own right, and both have a fairly extensive overseas trade network through which they can dump these products into Southeast Asia," Boon explained. ”

"We've experienced it ourselves, and Weishenme wants to make a fortune for them?" Li Haiping was puzzled by this question, and in his opinion, the Executive Committee really overestimated the liliang of these pirate leaders.

"Again, we shouldn't have more enemies at this stage. This is not the era of free trade, and you still have to have some skills when you are a maritime business. Wen Desi said.

It can be said that Chinese maritime in 1629 was a high-risk, high-reward industry. They are faced with a dangerous but lucrative space.

Zheng Zhilong, who was a combination of officials and businessmen, basically controlled the route from Fujian to Japan, and the trade ships passing through this area had to pay money to buy the road, otherwise they would inevitably be robbed. Moreover, the Japanese shogunate only opened a small number of cities for foreign trade, and there were very few foreign trade objects, and the ports of the daimyo in some places could also conduct trade, but each ship was also charged a trade fee of 1,000 taels of silver.

The Portuguese/British/Dutch merchant fleet also traded and stolen, and if it encountered a hard one, it had to pay taxes, and if it encountered a soft one, it would rob it.

Spain was obsessed with colonization and the slave trade in Southeast Asia, and basically controlled the Philippines and the Malay Archipelago. Although they relied heavily on Chinese maritime merchants to provide the colonies with supplies and manpower, they were unable to join the trade with China, so they had to keep bringing silver from the American colonies to lure Chinese maritime merchants to trade. Due to their over-reliance on Chinese businessmen, the Spaniards developed a pathological fear of the Chinese, and spared no effort to suppress and control the Chinese, and the Chinese businessmen were much more restricted.

The Netherlands has the most formidable naval fleet in the China Sea, but as a latecomer, there is no haode foothold. In order to seek a new colony, he tried in vain to control Taiwan and Penghu. Fought a decades-long war with the Zheng family. It was not until 1661 that Zheng Chenggong recovered Taiwan, and the Netherlands were also defeated in the Anglo-Dutch War, and finally fell into decline.

The North and South Koreas of Vietnam also need to pay 1,000 taels per year to carry out port trade. The Southern Dynasties opened a city exclusively for Chinese trade. The northern and southern dynasties of Vietnam called themselves Little China, but the north and the south each found foreigners as their backing: the Northern Dynasty was supported by the Dutch, and the Southern Dynasty was Portuguese.

The British, as a rising star, although they came late and did not find a foothold in this area, wanted to break into this market all the time.

Economic, political, religious, ethnic, these chaotic factors are intertwined, making the entire East Asian-Southeast Asian sea a Darwinian jungle.

Although the ships are strong and the ships are strong, but the number of people is scarce, especially the lack of ships and sailors, and the geographical environment is not favorable, they are not qualified to participate in this great carnival at sea for the time being. Tapping into the ready-made networks of those powerful maritime groups became the only option.

"Chinese goods are very popular in Southeast Asia, which is a way to make money, and many specialties from Southeast Asia are also what we need." Zhong Lishi said with regret, "Now we can't get the right to export silk, tea and porcelain, and it's not bad to sell mirrors." I remember that Chinese bronze mirrors used to be a traditional export commodity. ”

"Trade is so hotly discussed, imports and exports, but what about ships?" Li Haiping continued to question.

"It's not enough." Wen Desi sighed.

The current situation of the traverser is a bit like that of Japan, Lingao itself produces very few industrial and mining raw materials, and the goods sold by the traverser and important industrial raw materials rely on ships for import and export. Not only that, even the transportation of salt from Yanchang Village to Bairencheng - although the simple road between the two places was passed through Zhongjian, due to the lack of animal power and vehicles, large quantities of sea salt products were transported by boat to Bopu for transshipment.

This makes the traverser very dependent on ships. Since the Baitu Village Raider operation, the number of ships in the fleet of the crossing group has increased by leaps and bounds. At this time, there were already 3 70-ton brigs, namely "Dengyingzhou", "Fubo" and "Tongji", 2 40-ton sloops and more than a dozen small ships. Except for the "Fubo", which was equipped according to the battleship, the others were used as transport ships. Except for Fubo, who was not suitable to enter the port of Guangzhou because he was armed, all of the five large and medium-sized ships were specially routed to Guangzhou, and a large number of materials urgently needed by the industrial sector were transported. The problem is that the speed of delivery is still not keeping up with the demand of the industrial sector. The speed of the sailboat is slow, and the carrying capacity is on the small side. The Liliang Department of the Sea wanted to expand the size of the fleet, but the problem of sailors had always plagued them - the prospect of several major sea groups preparing to fight to the death made there a great shortage of sailors, whether it was Liu Xiang, Zheng Zhilong, Zhu Cailao, and even the magistrates of the Ming Dynasty, everywhere they were recruiting coastal fishermen and people with experience in going to sea. The crossing group is obviously not very favored by the people.

"We still want to be able to build big ships, preferably powered ships." Li Haiping said, "Not to mention a ship that is too big, at least it has to be a deadweight of two or three hundred, right?" If you have power, it will be much faster, and there will be a lot less need for sailors. Dengyingzhou is faster than several other ships, if it weren't for the fact that there is no diesel all the time—"

"Mr. Wen, isn't it true that the Planning Commission has approved the construction of a two-masted schooner? Such a ship should be 200 tons, right? There are only 10 sailors. ”

"Shipbuilding is not so simple. A lot of devices are gone. If you want to build a ship, you must first complete the equipment of the shipyard. Wendesi also had a headache about this: shipbuilding is not a shipbuilding model after all, and it took nearly ten years for the Swedes to copy the Gothenburg, and most of the time was based on the shipbuilding technology of the time. This is still on the premise that the Swedes are fully documented.

"We will hurry up this matter and complete the shipyard first. What do you need to open an order, we will have a separate meeting with the mechanical department to solve it later. ”

"As for the engine." Wang Luobin said, "I don't think it's a problem for our industrial capacity, whether it's a steam engine or a self-made single-cylinder diesel engine. In particular, the single-cylinder diesel engine can not only be used as a marine engine, but also can meet many aspects, such as the prime mover used to tow small agricultural machinery in agriculture, pumping water and even as a short-distance transportation vehicle. Fuel is also easy to solve. Even if you don't have diesel, you can make do with vegetable oil or gas first. ”

The manufacture of a single-cylinder diesel engine jishu is the simplest of the internal combustion engines. The earliest internal combustion engine was the diesel engine, and the early diesel engine burned not diesel but vegetable oil.

Wu Nanhai immediately supported: "This is good, I have a lot of small agricultural machinery here, but they can't be used without power machines." ”

Wang Luobin continued: "Although the single-cylinder diesel engine we manufacture ourselves cannot be compared with diesel for the time being, it is generally sufficient, and industrial equipment can also be driven by this if the power is insufficient. In the early days, factory equipment was powered by steam engines or other power engines. Considering the difficulty of producing the electric motor in-house, the factory of the future may need to be driven by a steam engine or diesel engine for a long time. ”