national surname chiming

Chapter 505
The words are divided into two parts.

The timeline goes back more than a year, that is, in the late summer and early autumn of 1667.

The capital of England, [-] miles away by sea, is London.

The Daming ocean-going trade fleet, consisting of more than a dozen large clipper merchant ships, set sail in the autumn of 1666. After nine months of sailing, it finally arrived in the coastal waters of England.

One day at the end of June, the fleet made some supplies in Plymouth, but did not stay or ship any goods, and then sailed eastward without stopping, sailed into the Thames and headed straight for London.

The Great London Plague in history lasted for two and a half years, erupting in the spring of 1665 and continuing until the late autumn of 1667.

So in fact, even if Ming's ocean-going trade fleet did not arrive, according to the original process of history, the British would have to wait for the last two or three months until the plague gradually subsided naturally.

But who made Daming catch up with luck? Just in the last two months before the end of the plague, he rushed to London and picked up a favor for nothing.

It is also destined to leave a thick and colorful myth, so that Westerners in this era will pay more respect and worship to the biochemical technology and medical skills from the mysterious East.

Of course, this will all happen gradually.

When the Daming ocean-going trading fleet first arrived, they would only appear as a wealthy businessman who came from afar, and they would only carry out other activities after making a name for themselves.Therefore, it was not the British royal family who first noticed these visitors from the East, but people from the business and academic circles.

……

In the early morning of the sixth day of July, when we arrived in London and had the last two days of our voyage, the fleet first stopped at Dover outside the Thames Estuary.

In order to spread the word as soon as possible and create an impact, the fleet chose to ship some tea, silk, and porcelain first.

After all, this is a fleet of twelve large clipper ships, and the amount of medicines and disinfectants shipped from Daming is not enough to support the capacity of the entire merchant fleet.

Daming also had to consider risk issues, such as whether the British believed in the curative effect of the chemicals brought by Daming at the beginning, whether they were willing to buy them openly, and recognized the high price offered by Daming.

Therefore, it is a safer way to carry [-]% of the chemical products and [-]% of the silk tea porcelain.

First, we can use mature products that are destined to sell well to open up sales, build goodwill, and create influence and traffic.

Secondly, Daming also asked a Dutch businessman to do the calculations. As long as [-]% of the capacity of silk tea porcelain is sold at the normal price, the profit can cover all expenses of the entire fleet for a trip to Daming and Europe, including risk costs and costs. Time cost, and there is also a small profit.

Even if the remaining [-]% of the items could not be sold at all, and if they were brought back for nothing, Da Ming would not lose money.This is also what Zhu Shuren cares about, because he knows that there are too many pedantic arguments in the history of Ming Dynasty that "the imperial court's voyages waste people's money".

So even if Zhu Shuren is going to foreign lands to show off his reputation and engage in diplomacy, he must ensure that he has a guaranteed net profit and prove it to the court sergeants and officials, letting them know that going overseas to engage in foreign trade will never lose money.

As the fleet approached the port to prepare for shipment, the three main officers in charge of the fleet also went to the bow deck to take a breath and look at the unfamiliar English scenery.

Among these three people, the one with the highest official position in name and the highest status is a doctor from the Ministry of Rites, named Wang Fuzhi.

That's right, it is Wang Fuzhi, the three great philosophers at the turn of the Ming and Qing Dynasties who are as famous as Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi in Parallel Time and Space.In this life, Gu Yanwu got in touch with Zhu Shuren and became Zhu Shuren's staff. After more than [-] years of prosperity, he is now the minister of the Ministry of Rites.Wang Fuzhi didn't have those opportunities, so he was naturally lowered by two ranks, and he is still only a doctor.

However, if this task is completed well, if you accumulate some other credits in the future, it is not impossible to gain the position of servant.

In addition to Wang Fuzhi, there were two other independent roles in the fleet, one was sent by the Shen family to be responsible for specific business and trade work, and the other was sent by the Zheng family to be in charge of sailing and sailing.

Because the members of the Shen family were originally used to shipping in the Yellow Sea in the north, and they didn't know much about ocean sailing. For safety's sake, they asked the Zheng family to send a veteran oceangoer to sail with a Dutch consultant.As for commercial trade and audit work, the Shen family can handle it by themselves.

The person sent by the Shen family is called Shen Xiang, who was born as a servant of Zhu Shuren. He used to help Shen Tingyang as the shopkeeper of several commercial firms. Now that the Shen family has turned the family into a country, naturally all the servants and shopkeepers in his family have also entered Daming. Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ming Dynasty is on the same level as the Ministry of Household Affairs, and there are more than a dozen departments and institutes under it.The chief of the department is also at the same level as the heads of the departments of the Ministry of household affairs, and is a doctor.It's just that there are no more Yuanwailang below Langzhong, and they are directly the principal, the entrusted principal (acting principal) and so on.

Shen Xiang, as Zhu Shuren's servant in the early years, is now a head of the Department of Shipbuilding of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and he is a sixth grade.And it is the highest ranking among the principals in this division, second only to the doctor.If he completes the mission well this time, he will be promoted to a doctor when he returns home.

The person in charge of the navigation sent by the Zheng family was named Xiao Gongchen, a general under Zheng Hongkui's command, and an old man who had been at sea for nearly 30 years. He is now an official lieutenant general.

In addition, the people sent by the Zheng family and the Shen family, because they are often exposed to Western trade, can also speak some foreign languages, and they can directly help Wang Fuzhi translate when necessary.But Wang Fuzhi himself, after all, a traditional literati in his forties, can't learn foreign languages.

It was the first time for these three people to come to England. Seeing the pure white limestone cliffs of Dover stretching for ten miles, the three of them also felt that it was magnificent.

"The world is so big that it is so big. I have sailed more than [-] miles away from Daming, and I can still see this magnificent view. It's a pity that I have little talent. If Layman Qinglian has a half or two of poetic talent, I won't be able to see the ten miles of snow." Ya couldn't hold back a few words."

Wang Fuzhi stayed on the deck to watch the scenery for a long while, but saw that Shen Xiang had returned to the ship after going to the Dover Merchant House, and brought a few English businessmen with him.

Those blond and blue-eyed merchants were all very excited, apparently it was the first time they saw a sea merchant from Daming come to sell them on their own initiative.After boarding the ship, Shen Xiang ordered his assistants and men to show the samples to those foreigners.

Naturally, Wang Fuzhi and Xiao Gongchen were also watching the fun with great interest. Recently, they have fallen in love with admiring the fuss and fuss of foreigners who have never seen the world.

Sure enough, the English businessmen let out endless exclamations when they saw the samples that Shen Xiang took out.

"Oh my God, how come there is such a huge porcelain. Didn't porcelain be used as tableware or flower arrangement in your Ming Dynasty? How can it be so big and still have such exquisite decorations?"

Seeing this, Shen Xiang couldn't help being speechless—he had long thought that foreigners were ignorant, but he still didn't expect them to be so ignorant.

It turned out that Shen Xiang took out a bunch of precious porcelain just now.But what those British businessmen valued the most were some ordinary blue and white porcelains that were not very valuable in Ming Dynasty, but were relatively large in size.However, there is a lack of appreciation for those expensive items that were used by the royal family in the Ming Dynasty.

What's even more bizarre is that the huge porcelain vats and porcelain altars that Shen Xiang took out were not even deliberately brought by him for trade, but were just containers for chemicals such as concentrated sulfuric acid and carbolic acid.

As we all know, chemicals such as concentrated sulfuric acid will seriously corrode metal utensils and wooden barrels, so they can only be shipped in ceramic or glass containers.

In Daming, although the technology of firing glass is popularized nowadays, and the glass is not very valuable, but when Shen Xiang loaded the goods in Hangzhou, he considered that the glassware was even less valuable when shipped back to Europe. Then after the medicine is sold, the utensil can still be sold at a good price, which is not a waste of transport capacity.

In order for the porcelain jar to hold the liquid by sea, so as not to be broken due to the vibration and inertia, Daming also did a lot of experiments, such as ensuring that the liquid was filled a little bit more, and reducing the sloshing of the liquid in the jar. There is no need to repeat these technical details.

Anyway, physical inertia and other scientific considerations have been fully considered, and the flying shear ship has better sailing stability and wave resistance than the Galen ship. With the blessing of various elements, it is possible to ship chemicals for tens of thousands of miles. Anyway, such a thing Today's Dutch and British maritime merchants are still unable to do so.

Of course, not all the porcelains brought by the Ming Dynasty caravan were containers for carrying chemicals, and some were purely ballast cargo for the purpose of adjusting the center of gravity——

In the ancient sea trade sailing from East Asia, the reason why every ship must carry porcelain is that an important consideration is that for the stability of the voyage, the lower deck of the cabin must be ballasted with heavy cargo that is not afraid of moisture.

So even if you don't ship porcelain, you still have to ship some stone ballast, so it's better to ship porcelain.If the center of gravity of the lower layer is also loaded with tea and silk, the density of those goods will be too fluctuating, and the ship will be unstable.In addition, tea leaves are particularly susceptible to moisture and mildew, so they can only be placed in the upper ventilated cabin.

That's why we see the three-pronged trade combination of silk, tea and porcelain. In fact, the profit margin of these three things is the highest, and the sales are also the fastest. If you don't consider shipping and only consider mathematical calculations, you should maximize profits. All luck tea.However, the transportation conditions for tea are also the most stringent, so we have to sort out the other inferior cabins and stuff them with goods that don’t care about the environment.

……

At this moment, the "ignorance" of these British businessmen has repeatedly refreshed Shen Xiang's cognition, allowing him to feel the pulse of the market and the true aesthetics of foreigners.

A huge porcelain jar can be sold for dozens of pounds, or even hundreds of pounds.Unfortunately, he still has a lot of chemicals to ship, so he can't sell too many containers at once.

So I talked to the British businessman, saying that the first ten large porcelain jars accepted barter, and asked the British to exchange a thousand large dark brown glass bottles for a large blue and white porcelain jar.As a result, some merchants who happen to have a glass workshop at home, or have a relationship with the owner of the workshop, made the order, and sent a large number of dark brown huge glass bottles to the ship on the same day.

In Britain in the 17th century, glass was already very worthless, and dark brown glass bottles, in the eyes of the world, were a representative of inferior quality, and they could not be used as windows, and their light transmission was too poor.As everyone knows, the storage of chemicals is to avoid sunlight, which is just suitable for Shen Xiang.

In the process of the transaction, Shen Xiang would inevitably give some benefits to these related parties in exchange for more information.Then he learned that in Europe, the Saxon king of the Shenluo Empire is the most obsessed with huge porcelain.

That guy claimed to have collected nearly two hundred huge blue and white porcelain jars from the Ming Dynasty in his lifetime, and his skills were extraordinary. On average, the price of one large porcelain jar was worth five complete sets of knight equipment.

That is, five sets of metal full-body plate armor, knight sword and shield, plus five qualified knight war horses and matching horse armor outfits, just to exchange for a huge blue and white porcelain vat.Nowadays, those fine metal swords and armors in Europe are not as valuable as before, but knights and horses are still very valuable, which shows how expensive these things are.

As for the other princes and kings in the Shenluo area, they are not as exaggerated as the King of Saxony, but it is still possible to resell a large blue and white porcelain jar to exchange for three or four sets of knight equipment, or exchange for a few cannons.

All in all, the aesthetics of the Europeans seems to be that the nobles in the German region in the future are the most stupid, big and black. When buying porcelain, first look at the size of the head.And these British profiteers are mainly second-hand dealers, distributing in the mainland of Europe, not because of their own aesthetics.

Shen Xiang successively dumped out those large porcelain jars that were not on the table, and replaced all the chemicals with dark brown glass bottles that are more suitable and easier to distribute. The cost of supplies for this voyage has already been recovered by half too much.

After dealing with the most urgent matters, he continued to sell a little tea, brocade, and Suzhou embroidery in Dover to open up the market and create momentum.

As for the high-quality silk fabrics and embroidery woven in Suzhou, those British businessmen were naturally dumbfounded again.After all, whether the silk patterns are exquisite or not can be distinguished at a glance.

But this is not the most shocking thing for the British, because they soon drank a new kind of tea from Ming Dynasty for the first time, which they had never seen before.

"Why does this kind of tea look so light in color? It seems not as dark as the one I bought before, and it doesn't have a strong taste and is not mellow and concentrated."

A few British businessmen who were accustomed to drinking black tea were the first to question this.And Shen Xiang's contempt for ignorant goods in his heart was no longer enough, so this time he didn't bother to explain, but just made an exception to try a drink for the few people who bought porcelain just now.

Don't be afraid of not knowing the goods, but be afraid of comparing goods.After a few sips of tea, those foreign dishes immediately felt the difference.

Only then did Shen Xiang proudly say: "You used to drink black tea (the English word for black tea is BLACK-TEA, and now there is no such word as black tea in Ming Dynasty, so I directly translated it back), but today's kind is called oolong tea. Oolong tea is not fermented. Dark tea is so thorough, but it can retain more fragrance of fresh tea leaves, and the taste is more complex.

If it weren't for my Ming's sea-going ship to increase its speed and sail to England in nine months, you wouldn't be able to drink this kind of good tea.Traditional Galen boats have been sailing for too long. Only by fully fermenting the tea leaves in advance can we avoid the bad luck of floating at sea for a year or two. "

Historically, Westerners' acceptance of tea began with black tea in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Later, in the [-]th century, with the popularization of flying clippers and the shortening of the shipping cycle, oolong tea gradually took a higher-end ecological niche than black tea, and drinking oolong tea seemed more compelling.

For example, John Hancock, the most famous leader in the Boston tea party before the independence of the United States (you can see the photo of the Declaration of Independence in the United States, the name with the largest signature in the middle is John Hancock), who was at the time The largest oolong tea dealer in North America, and the richest man in North America, was equivalent to "Zheng Chenggong of the United States" at that time.

Britain introduced tea tax in North America, which harmed the interests of John Hancock. He paid money to make troubles and dumped the tea imported from the official British channel, and provoked rebellion, which shows the energy of the oolong tea merchants at that time.

Therefore, green tea may not be acceptable to Westerners, but oolong tea is absolutely acceptable. As long as the sailing conditions improve and the sailing time is shortened, who can drink oolong tea.

Daming's action immediately lifted the standard of European luxury tea drinking, allowing those wealthy and idle people to find a new fashion pursuit point to flaunt their status.

Whether the taste is crushed or not is secondary. The key is that the scarcity can be used to pretend. Once you drink oolong tea, others will know that you bought the tea from the "Fast Fleet", not the slow-moving old Galen ship.

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ps: In fact, I finally saved my manuscript until June 6th, and started writing a new book today.

However, the new book will be released in early July, so the following book will be updated regularly for more than ten days until it is finished.

Everyone hopes that it will be better to post at a certain time every day in the future, so you can leave a message.I can usually update before going to work at 8 am, or update before lunch at 11 noon.Everyone choose one.

(End of this chapter)