Time flies quickly, in a blink of an eye it is the end of April, at this time the climate of Tianjin Wei is the most pleasant, although Tianjin is located by the sea, but the climate is still an inland climate, there is little rain in spring, the sun is shining all day long, and the temperature is only around 20 degrees. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Although the city of Tianjin is not early, it also has a history of several hundred years, the bluestone brick city is tall and wide, and the arrow tower of the city gate is towering and towering, showing the momentum of the famous city in the north.

Because the Governor of Zhili and the Minister of Beiyang Trade Yamen was stationed in Tianjin, and this Tianjin Wei was the gateway to Gyeonggi and the key place of the river and sea, the officials performed their duties and the domestic and foreign trade and traffic passed through here, and there were many merchants and officials who came and went, and the trade was very prosperous.

Although the governor of Zhili and the minister of trade of Beiyang are located outside the north gate, there are still many more relevant large and small yamen in the city, the yamen in the city is numerous, the shops are adjacent, and the officials and merchants are endless, although it is only more than nine o'clock in the morning, but all kinds of pedestrians outside the city think that they are bustling and shouting one after another.

In the south gate, surrounded by clusters of dense and fresh new green willow leaves and willows, Qin Chuan and Li Mingfang, accompanied by a middle-aged man in his thirties, wearing a sauce-colored satin dough and horse coat, with white skin, talked affectionately while going out of the gate and stood on the stone steps to stop.

Today, Qin Chuan still has his shiny white leather shoes on his feet, wearing a dark blue suit, lined with a snow-white shirt and a black satin vest, but he has no tie, his face is ruddy, and his complexion is excellent, but the braid on his head is still sparse and short, but the color is much darker.

Qin Chuan arched his hand to the middle-aged man and said with a smile: "Brother Shaonong stays, and the younger brother will leave, and I will ask Brother Shaonong to take care of business matters in the future." ”

The white middle-aged man known as Brother Shaonong hurriedly replied with a smile on his face: "Brother Minghong is polite, since we are doing business together in Tianjin Wei, it is natural to take care of each other. However, Brother Minghong is young and promising, and he can come up with such a clever method, which is really admired by his brother, and our Yang family will rely more on Brother Minghong to take care of him in the future, and then have a good business in the future, Brother Minghong must not forget our Yang family. ”

Using the word Minghong as his own word, this is Qin Chuan's own doing. In this era, some identities or scholars have to have words, Qin Chuan thought about it for a few days, and then took these two words as his own words.

"Brother Shaonong praises falsely, and the younger brother is also a whim, compared with Brother Shaonong, it is really trivial, nothing. As for the business matter, Brother Shaonong can be relieved, as long as this matter is done, how dare the younger brother forget Brother Shaonong. ”

After the two finished speaking, they couldn't help laughing at the same time.

It can be seen that today Qin Chuan and this person who is called Brother Shaonong by Qin Chuan are very happy, judging from the situation of the two calling each other brothers, the two must have had a good conversation.

Qin Chuan and Li Mingfang, who were also very happy, did not call a taxi, and after saying goodbye to the master, they called Chu Yunfei, who was waiting outside the door, and walked along the street towards the north gate on foot.

Qin Chuan stayed in the dyeing factory for thirteen days, and today was the first time he walked out of his Aurora dyeing factory after coming out of the concession.

In the past thirteen days, Qin Chuan was busy in the dark, and he couldn't go to Li Mingfang at all, because Li Mingfang was also very busy.

Li Mingfang not only had to meet the needs of the dyeing factory's grey cloth and other materials, but also had to visit Qinchuan to circle the people who needed to contact for the construction of the new factory, and for the sake of the cigarette factory, he also had to contact how to purchase tobacco leaves, and he was almost busy with his feet hitting the back of his head.

Qin Chuan could only stare at the workshop with Chu Yuntao in shifts, as long as the machine didn't stop, they couldn't stop.

Qin Chuan not only had to keep an eye on dyeing cloth in the workshop, but he also did not stop the training of the factory protection team, and he also accompanied the training of the factory protection team, which has now expanded to more than 100 people, every day. In addition, Qin Chuan has been thinking about how to expand the factory protection team, and in the future, he will find an opportunity to slowly turn this factory protection team from an amateur paramilitary force into a military organization close to specialization. In order to do so, his factory guards needed to have barracks, and it was best if the barracks were in the backyard of his dyeing factory.

Qin Chuan measured the backyard of his dyeing factory, which was eighty-eight meters wide, and he didn't know what the original Nanyang businessman thought, so he chose such an auspicious number. According to Qin Chuan's plan, he wanted to tear off the backyard courtyard wall, so he used the courtyard wall as the baseline to build a four-story barracks, with one floor underground, which should be enough to accommodate 1,500 people.

In order to save some money, Qin Chuan did not find someone to dig the foundation, but led the young men of the more than 100 factory protection teams every day to start along the underground layer outside the courtyard wall.

That's not all, as soon as he has time, Qin Chuan is busy drawing the design sketches of the salt factory and the cigarette factory.

In order to build the salt factory that Qin Chuan envisioned, the key is to have equipment that can achieve the purpose he envisioned, and the equipment he designed must also be able to do it with the technical ability of this era.

There are basically five preparation methods of refined salt, namely crushing and washing method, pot boiling method, vacuum tank evaporation method, electrolysis method and flash evaporation method. Although the process principles of these are different, the general steps are almost the same, basically through crushing and rinsing, clarification, adding sodium hydroxide, barium chloride, sodium carbonate to remove sodium sulfate, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride in the salt, and then adding hydrochloric acid to remove excess sodium carbonate and sodium hydroxide, and then distillation at high temperature, and then through the process of dehydration, drying, crushing, and screening.

Although he has made the process of refining salt simpler and simpler, he still racked his brains because he was restricted by the equipment manufacturing level of this era. For example, a reactor cost Qin Chuan a lot of brains, which in the later generations, there is no need for such trouble, if it is not a special need, ready-made equipment can be bought. Also, Qin Chuan is not engaged in craftsmanship after all, he is just familiar with the principle of production, and the related technological process is a work that makes him extremely troublesome and laborious.

Even so, Qin Chuan was halfway through the design, and found that he still thought about the matter of running a factory too simply.

The salt factory is not only equipped with the equipment he designed, but also needs to have power energy in addition to raw materials. The problem of electricity is easy to solve, and there are power plants in the concessions, and now the electricity of the dyeing factories is supplied by the power plants in the concessions. The problem is that the refined salt in his refined salt plant needs to be distilled at high temperature, and this high temperature cannot be too high, and the temperature needs to be accurately controlled. In general, superheated steam can reach 540 degrees Celsius even without pressurization.

And if you use steam heating distillation, you need to use coal, and the coal quality must be good, which also needs to contact the coal source.

What's more, when designing the refined salt factory, Qin Chuan had a whim, since he had set up a salt factory, why not set up a soap factory at the same time. The use of salt to make caustic soda can not only greatly reduce the cost of soap making and increase financial resources, but also hide the chemical raw materials needed to make refined salt to remove impurities.

Qin Chuan knows very well that his refined salt method is not a complex and advanced principle and process level, it will not take long for Europe and the United States to master it, what he needs to do now is to delay this time as much as possible, as long as there are two or three years, his refined salt can occupy a sufficient share in the domestic market, and then he is not afraid of Europe and the United States to grab business.

Moreover, Qin Chuan also had ideas on the issue of soap factories, he not only wanted to produce ordinary soap, but also whitening soap and high-end soap. The crux of the matter is that under the existing conditions in the country, his soap must be cheap enough for ordinary people to afford. To reduce the cost of soap, the key is to reduce the cost of alkali production, the current caustic soda method or electrolytic salt method, diaphragm electrolyzer method should not have appeared, but in Qin Chuan's memory, this diaphragm electrolyzer method should also appear soon. He had to hurry, or he would lose a huge source of money.

In fact, Qin Chuan has mastered the alkali production method, the mercury electrolyzer method, the separator electrolyzer method using metal anodes, and the more advanced ion exchange membrane method.

It's just that now Qinchuan alkali is just to reduce its soap cost, and there is no need to take out his most advanced technology at all.

With these ideas, Qin Chuan forgot to sleep and eat even more, and stayed up all night for a few nights to design and complete the alkali making, soap making equipment, and hydrochloric acid making equipment that will be used often, and the patent documents on the diaphragm electrolyzer alkali production method were also completed.

According to Qin Chuan's idea, he wants to apply for a patent for the alkali production method of the diaphragm electrolyzer, and then let foreign manufacturers make three sets for him according to his patented technology. In this way, his alkali production technology is not only more advanced, but the lye will also be purer and the cost will be lower.

The cost of the salt factory and the cigarette factory, he also has to have a number in his heart, this series of problems and so on, all need Qin Chuan to think about it alone, which makes Qin Chuan suffer a lot these days.

However, all this has passed, in the past thirteen days, Qin Chuan not only dyed the colored cloth that Li Yundong, the golden shopkeeper and the shopkeepers of Tianjin Weibu Shop asked for as scheduled, but also completed the design work of his salt factory, soap factory, and cigarette factory, and the sources of raw materials and fuels related to the new factory were basically raised under Li Mingfang's campaign.

During this period, there was another good news that made Qin Chuan very excited.

When Li Mingfang went to Dadeheng Tianjin Branch to discuss loans, he happened to meet Li Yundong, Li Yundong has been running inside and outside the mouth all the year round, and the money is handled by Dadeheng, and he is a customer of Dadeheng, and he is a native of Shanxi, and Jin Lisan, the shopkeeper of Dadeheng Tianjin Branch, is very familiar. Knowing that Qin Chuan was going to set up a salt factory, the shrewd Li Yundong immediately smelled the opportunity, not only guaranteed Qin Chuan to get a loan of 200,000 yuan from the Tianjin branch of Dadeheng, but also ran to the dyeing factory to find Qin Chuan, just to buy shares in the salt factory.

After Qin Chuanwan refused to buy shares, he insisted on lending Qin Chuan money, and did not want any guarantee and interest. Qin Chuan knew Li Yundong's mind very well, and estimated that Li Yundong was afraid that he would fight his idea of salt, and he didn't want to take money from Li Yundong, but he couldn't stand Li Yundong's soft grinding and hard bubbles, and in the end, Qin Chuan had no choice but to take another 100,000 from Li Yundong. With these 300,000 yuan, it is enough for Qinchuan to buy machinery and equipment for the salt factory and the tobacco factory. It will take three months for these equipment to be transported from abroad to Tianjin at the earliest, and with these three months, the profit of Qinchuan's dyeing factory will be another three or four hundred thousand, which is enough for him to turn over, even if it is more than wrong to run a newspaper.

Originally, Qin Chuan didn't need to borrow any more money, but Li Mingfang had already contacted the comprador Wu Tiaoqing of the HSBC Bank according to his meaning, Wu Tiaoqing was hand-eyed in the concession, and his relationship with Li Hongzhang was very good, and Qin Chuan didn't want to offend him by going back on his word, so he had to let Li Mingfang book a time for the two to meet, because Wu Tiaoqing had something to do in the morning, so he set the meeting time at noon today, at the Li Shunde Hotel in the concession.

And the person Qin Chuan met just now was Yang Shaonong, a salt merchant in Tianjin Weida and the general manager of the Changlu Salt Gang Office, that is, Changyuan Yang among the eight families.

Yang Chunnong, the head of the Yang family, has already handed over the family property to this rather shrewd and capable son to take care of, and Yang Chunnong, who likes to collect rare books and ancient books, in addition to constantly going back and forth between Tianjin Wei and Beijing to find his rare books, and then locks himself in his study room to watch and study behind closed doors, and does not care about anything outside.

When Li Mingfang came to see Yang Shaonong a few days ago, he had already told Yang Shaonong the benefits to all parties in accordance with Qin Chuan's request, and Yang Shaonong had already agreed.

What Qin Chuan means is that Yang Shaonong is responsible for contacting Yan Fengsheng, the ambassador of the salt industry of the salt farm, and asking the salt factory in Qinchuan to put a name on him, that is to say, in the account books of the Changlu Salt Transport Embassy Office, the salt factory in Qinchuan belongs to the Tan owner of the Changlu Salt Farm, and the tax will be delivered to Yan Fengsheng according to the beach owner, and then Yan Fengsheng is responsible for supplying the collected grain salt to the salt factory in Qinchuan. The grain salt will be paid according to the price of salt purchased by the salt merchant, one penny per catty, and Qin Chuan will be responsible for the transportation fee. In addition, every time Yan Fengsheng brought a pound of salt to Qin Chuan, Qin Chuan would give Yan Fengsheng an extra article. These money are all cleared at one time, if he can send 500,000 catties a year, he can get almost 4,000 yuan more than Yingyang privately, and give more than that.

Every shore merchant who buys salt at the Qinchuan Salt Factory can pay the salt price set by Qin Chuan, and Qin Chuan will return ten wen per catty to them, if a shore merchant buys 200,000 jin a year, he will get more than 2,000 yuan, and the price of the salt he sells Qin Chuan does not care.

As for Yang Shaonong, who was in the middle of the contact, naturally there were no benefits, in addition to his own normal rental of salt, Qin Chuan gave him an additional 30,000 yuan of Yingyang every year, on the condition that Yang Shaonong would grow his own reed salt and transport the following joints to cover Qinchuan's salt factory.

Qin Chuan arranged it like this, whether it was the salt field or the shore merchants, not only did they not have any losses, but they also gained more money, even if the Changlu salt transportation made the yamen also collect more taxes, naturally they had nothing to say.

In Yang Shaonong's opinion, Qin Chuan, who was already at ease, actually sent him a huge amount of money, and wanted to take care of him everywhere by himself, this caution alone is not something that ordinary people can do, not to mention that Qin Chuan in front of him is just a hairy boy less than twenty, just with Qin Chuan's strength, Yang Shaonong secretly admires.

Yang Shaonong is a shrewd person, how can he not know that this matter only has many benefits and no risks, and he should use people's money to eliminate disasters for others, and he should run up and down for these tens of thousands of silver. At the moment, the two talked happily with each other, and there was a tendency to hate each other.

After Yang Shaonong was done, it stands to reason that Qin Chuan should go directly to Rui Ji Foreign Company to find Xiao William and discuss the matter of ordering equipment, but it is not good for Wu Tiaoqing not to see him, and the time is still early, Qin Chuan is also very helpless.

It just so happened that since he came to Tianjinwei, he had never been to other places except in the concession, so he just took this opportunity to take a stroll.

At that moment, let Li Mingfang lead him and wander around the city of Tianjin leisurely.