May of the sixteenth year of Wanli. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

As soon as the morning dawned, the old man Guan walked to the newly built workshop at the end of the village, which was a habit that the old man had recently developed.

When I arrived at the place, what appeared in front of me was not the small wall and small courtyard and small workshop that were common in later generations, but a thick wooden wall, with towers at the four corners, and archers patrolling and watching on the towers. And at the gate of the wall, there are two guards wearing brand-new mandarin duck jackets and long knives at their waists! There's a big dog on a leash next to the guard!

On the way, I grabbed a random person and asked him to tell him what kind of place it was, and no one would say that it was a workshop, but it was more appropriate to have a fortress, a prison, etc.

Seeing that Old Man Guan had arrived, the two guards hurriedly stepped forward to greet him.

"Hundred households are here."

"I'll open the door for you."

Old Man Guan smiled and nodded.

"Was it okay last night?"

"Rest assured, the brothers are in good spirits, and not a single fly can fly in!"

"Okay, it's okay, let's change shifts and rest later, thank you for your hard work."

"Alas, where is this for a hundred households, stand guard at night and give more silver, the brothers can't earn it, where will it be hard. Go back and fall asleep, and go to school tomorrow! ”

"Okay."

Old Man Guan greeted the guards and walked slowly into the workshop, although it was a faint light, but there were already workers busy inside.

A few workers sweated and unloaded a truckload of bone char and piled it together, while the other workers scooped a handful of bone char powder and slowly sprinkled it into a large wooden bucket on the table, and a worker next to the bucket held a wooden stick and kept stirring.

If you count carefully, there are two rows of such large wooden barrels in the courtyard, and there are actually as many as twelve!

The workers were busy with their own work, and no one noticed the arrival of Mr. Guan, until the bone char was unloaded and a worker was about to pull the ox cart away, and then he saw the old man Guan in front.

"Ahh Hundreds of households are here, what is going on with the people outside, and they don't say anything about us to greet them. ”

As soon as the other workers heard that Mr. Guan was coming, they hurriedly put down their work and said hello.

Old Man Guan squinted and smiled.

"What do you welcome, I come every day, are you tired every time? I'm just going to take a look, walk around and go. But you came early enough today, it looks like you did it before dawn, right? ”

"Hey, I didn't come early, I didn't leave at all!"

"Didn't leave?"

"Well, yesterday we finished our work and finished eating, so we squinted in the house for a while, got up at night, lit torches, and continued to work."

Old Man Guan frowned and said, "What are you doing in such a hurry?" So tired, so tired! You don't have shift workers, what should you do if you are tired of doing this? ”

As soon as they heard Mr. Guan's words, the workers all laughed.

"We are strong men, how can we be tired of such a little thing? What's more, there is a chef in charge of the workshop, every day is either fish or meat, and the white rice is enough, if you don't move your muscles and bones well, or you won't be fatter than the Zhou landlord in the former village for a month? ”

"Yes, Baihu treats us sincerely, we can't eat for nothing and don't work, right, won't we be a white-eyed wolf who can't be fed?"

"Taking advantage of the fact that there is little work in the fields just planted in the past few days, we want to hurry up and get more out, isn't this Young Master Sun going to marry a daughter-in-law? The sugar on the flowing water mat has to be our own, what if we still use the sugar outside? ”

Everyone nodded yes.

That's right, this workshop is a sugar workshop. According to the method tested by Guan Kunyu, the bone char was used to decolorize the raw sugar, and the refined white sugar was sold again.

In fact, the Ming Dynasty itself had a method of decolorizing raw sugar, but the most used filter was yellow mud, the efficiency of decolorization was really not good, and the quality of the product after decolorization was not very satisfactory.

Guan Kunyu's method is to use bone char for decolorization, although bone charcoal is specially fired, the cost is much higher than yellow mud, but you get what you pay for, the decolorization effect of bone char is indeed very good, far purer than that made of local sugar.

In addition to using bone char to decolorize, the sugar boiled by Guan Kunyu's method is also larger and more beautiful in crystal form than that made by the local method.

The reason is that Guan Kunyu took out his physics book and flipped through it, and added a general introduction to the popular science books on agriculture, and the sugar boiling process he explored was more advanced and reasonable.

At the very least, he knew that when the concentration of sugar water reached a certain level, he needed to put powdered sugar paste into it as a crystal nucleus - just like the sky does not rain when there is water vapor alone, and it also needs to condense the nucleus, if you want the sugar to crystallize quickly and beautifully, you have to manually add crystal nuclei to it.

Of course, just this step is still not enough, after crystallization, it is necessary to repeatedly dilute and concentrate the sugar water, and constantly strengthen the crystallization, so that the white sugar particles can be crystal clear and full and huge. Other workshops that are also boiling sugar usually just crystallize it directly, and there are very few who have really mastered the technology of artificial crystal nucleus, which can be said to be a secret that is not passed on, and the gap between the two sides is obvious.

Unfortunately, there is still one step in the modern sugar making process, but Guan Kunyu does not have a suitable crystal cultivation material at hand, and he has no research on this, so he can only give up.

But even so, as long as the sugar made by the two methods is compared together, anyone will think that Guanjia sugar should be sold at a high price!

Although Guan Kunyu's workshop seems to have a higher production cost than other workshops, and it has to cook sugar many times, but in fact, because the effect of bone char is too good, the production efficiency is even slightly higher than that of other workshops.

As for the workers in the workshop, according to Mr. Guan's idea, the operation of the workshop is no different from other places, and they will be sent away with some money, of course, their own family members must be more generous. However, Kwan Kunyu is well aware of the positive impact of good incentive mechanisms on workers' motivation.

Especially in the Ming Dynasty, when hired workers had almost no human rights, Guan Kunyu's slightly flexible management methods that were born in later generations were even more prominent.

In fact, if Guan Kunyu himself is asked, in fact, he did not do anything, but only provided a hearty breakfast and a lunch to replenish his strength, which is not free, but has a food subsidy, which allows the workers to eat meat at a low price.

Then there is the so-called year-end bonus, Guan Kunyu's year-end bonus is directly linked to the performance of workers and the profitability of the workshop. In the Ming Dynasty, this kind of reward mechanism is not nothing, but if you want to enjoy this kind of treatment, you must be the absolute backbone of the owner for many years! Unlike Guan Kunyu, as long as it is a person, he can receive his own reward, the difference is only how much.