Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2053 Porcelain and Culture

"Sir, tea." In a temporary shelter from the wind beside the second-class national road from Nanding Port to Shuanghu Township, an attendant held a steaming porcelain cup and put it on the low table in front of Mo Xingye.

After all, Mo Xingye was a son of a bitch. After staying in the factory in Nanding Port for more than half a month, he gave himself a vacation and took his entourage to play nearby.They had just returned from hunting in the wild, and the harvest was not bad. Young Master Mo felt a little tired, so he rested on the side of the road.

Because of drinking a little wine, Mo Xingye's face flushed a little.The wine is brewed from high-quality grapes produced in Hecheng Oasis in the Ludang River Basin, with excellent quality and craftsmanship.Especially in the past two years, some Huguenots from France pointed out that the quality of wine produced in the Ludang River Basin has improved rapidly, and the domestic market share has also continued to expand, which puts great pressure on old-fashioned products such as Xiangshan dry red wine and Xianghe wine. big.

After drinking the wine, according to the custom of the people on the east coast, it is tea.Especially in places such as the eastern prairie, Pampa Plain, Southern Cone, and Chile, where the climate is cooler, drinking tea after drinking is an indispensable part of people's daily life, and it has almost become a symbol of cultural symbols.

Of course, the east coast has a vast territory, the country spans a great distance from north to south, and the climate varies from place to place, so the customs are not all the same.For example, in places such as the Duck Lake Basin and the Brazilian plateau where the climate is relatively warmer, the amount of alcohol people drink cannot be compared with that in the colder south, and most of the tea they drink after drinking is clear tea, which tastes light and elegant.

However, in the southern region headed by the prairie on the east coast, due to the relatively cold weather, people drink a lot of alcohol, and the entire winemaking industry is so large that the government has issued a special tobacco and alcohol tax for collection. It can be seen.And the locals also drink tea after drinking, but the variety is more complicated. Of course, there are green teas, but black tea, maté tea, and milk tea can be seen everywhere, so they cannot be generalized.

And when you cross the Rio de la Plata and come to the Pampa Plain and the Southern Cone region, because the local animal husbandry is extremely developed and the meat and milk production is amazing, people generally like to drink milk tea after drinking.Of course, it can be subdivided in milk tea. For example, the milk tea drunk by the people in the Pampa Plain is mainly sweetened with sugar.Because there were many captives from Shandan, Mongols, and Manchus among the early immigrants in the Southern Cone area, salt was mainly added to the milk tea (may also be due to the fact that Southern Cone is the main salt producing area on the east coast), and the taste was salty. .

The tea that Mo Xingye can drink now is milk tea, which is cooked on the spot by his followers. It tastes fragrant and mouth-watering.However, this kind of milk tea is different from the two types of milk tea that are currently popular in the south. In addition to normal milk, black tea, and refined sugar, this kind of milk tea also adds coconut powder, a special product of Xinhua Island, with a very unique taste. It's a very trendy thing, and it's expensive.You must know that coconut trees are native to Southeast Asia. They have not yet become popular all over the world in this era. They are rare in Africa and the Americas—it can even be said that most places do not have them at all. Coconut trees appear in many movies describing Pirates of the Caribbean in later generations. , that's unscientific—even if it spread more widely after the Age of Discovery, it is far from reaching the level of popularization all over the world, so the output is not as large as people imagined.Otherwise, why do you think that the British East India Company buys a large amount of coconut products from India every year, and the Dutch East India Company buys a large amount of coconut products from the East Indies to Europe?

Therefore, the so-called coconut-flavored milk tea that Mo Xingye drinks now is really high-end. It contains milk, sugar, and coconut powder. , Aiming at the high-end market.

Another thing worth mentioning is that their tea drinking utensils are not expensive and high-end products made in China, but ceramics made in the east coast.In the Patagonia region, kaolin resources are very rich, and the distribution area is also very light. At present, after many years of development, dozens of kilns have been formed. The three main production kilns are Haian, Houtu and Nanding. In the center, all kinds of white porcelain, rough porcelain, three-color glazed porcelain, and some large green glazed and black glazed porcelains are produced.

The styles of porcelain were all Chinese at the beginning, but with the prevalence of overseas trade and the exchange of Chinese and Western cultures, the styles of these porcelains are becoming more and more diversified. There are many differences in shapes and murals, reflecting the unique culture of the East Coast. background.As the manufacturing center of the east coast ceramic industry, there is an institution specializing in ceramic technology in Hai'an Port, named Hai'an Ceramics Higher Technical School. There are currently more than 100 teachers and students in the school, specializing in scientific research on ceramic production.

Don't underestimate the word scientific research!Ceramics have been developed so far, whether in China, Persia or Europe, the level of technology is different, but generally speaking, they are all the same, that is, there is no stable production process in the entire manufacturing process, and there is no quantitative index. Master's experience.But people on the east coast are now studying differently!They are currently mainly researching three topics, one is the properties of ceramic raw materials, the other is the way to control the quality of ceramics in the manufacturing process, and the third is the research of scientific instruments required to achieve the above two purposes.

It can be seen from these that the people on the East Coast are really seriously studying how to produce ceramics, and what is different from mainland China is that they directly point to the essence, explore and improve the production process through scientific analysis methods, in order to obtain stable quality .Otherwise, why would they go to great lengths to go to war? On the one hand, they would spend heavily on frogmen from mainland China;

At present, thanks to the powerful microscope products of Henan Glass Factory, the teachers and students of Haian Ceramics College have analyzed the changes in the shape and specific gravity of different types of silica after heating through painstaking research. valuable theoretical basis.

For example, the researchers of Haian Ceramics College proposed that it can be improved by increasing the content of quartz, finely grinding quartz and other components, calcining quartz, increasing the temperature of bisque firing, reducing the content of clay in the green body, replacing china clay with ball clay, and increasing non-plastic components. The proportion of the plastic component is used to control the crack tendency of the green body.Ceramic producers all over the world either don’t understand these methods or skills, or even if they understand, they can’t explain why. Compared with the conclusions drawn by people on the east coast through scientific analysis, they are indeed more than one step worse.

The lack of summarization of experience, lack of quantitative analysis and indicators, and lack of written technological process are the flaws of these medieval producers.With the continuous deepening of research in this area by the people on the east coast, the future prospects of these people are quite pessimistic. Maybe they can only compete with the ceramic industry on the east coast by selling their feelings.

In order to conduct more in-depth research on the manufacturing process of ceramics, the East Coast people have also developed many useful tools.Not to mention microscopes and precision balances. These are basic scientific instruments and are indispensable. The platinum resistance thermometer (originally used in the steel industry) specially developed by Dongan people in order to measure the furnace temperature is very important. It belongs to the black technology that crushes all old-fashioned handicraft producers.

The thermometer capable of measuring high temperatures was developed and manufactured by the Scientific Instruments Factory of East Coast Precision Instruments.They produced a total of two types, one is a nickel resistance thermometer and the other is a platinum resistance thermometer, both of which are used in industrial production.The latter is widely used to measure furnace temperature because of its large measurement range, and its sales volume is very large, and it is also an export control item.

This kind of thermometer uses the distance that the metal conductivity changes under the condition of temperature change. To put it bluntly, it is worthless, but in Europe and China, where there is no concept of electricity, it is impossible to produce this kind of measuring instrument. , let alone widely used in the industrial field.

Scientific research methods, coupled with scientific analysis and measuring instruments, doomed the ceramic crafts of the east bank to find a new way on the basis of the original Chinese traditional crafts and carry forward.Among the tableware in Mo Xingye’s house is a whole set of porcelain with beautiful flame-spotted turquoise blue, which was created by people from the east coast through research and analysis, continuous trial and error, and finally by controlling the gas in the furnace and using new coloring agents. The beautiful new porcelain made by the company is deeply loved by local and overseas porcelain merchants on the east coast, and almost every kiln is sold out.

Blue out of blue and better than blue, this is the result of the development of the east coast porcelain industry over the years.They absorbed the old craftsmanship of this treasure of Chinese civilization, then added modern technological elements, studied some of the secrets through scientific analysis methods, and finally formed their own style and beautiful new products.

This, in fact, is the epitome of the development of many industries on the east coast over the years, not only porcelain, but also music, clothing, food, painting, etc., showing the strong vitality of the culture of this brand new immigrant country.It is rooted in Chinese culture, and then absorbed some cultural elements from other regions, and finally formed its own unique culture.

"Platinum resistance thermometer, nickel resistance thermometer, alas, when will our factory develop these two things?" After slowly tasting the coconut milk tea in the cup, Mo Xingye looked at the unique Phnom Penh firing method on the east coast. The porcelain cup came out, but my thoughts flew out of the sky.

Platinum resistance thermometers and nickel resistance thermometers are one of the core products of the Scientific Instrument Factory, so naturally there is no possibility of sharing them with Haidiao Factory.At present, there is no anti-monopoly law on the east coast, and it will not force the scientific instrument factory to transfer the technology and patents of these two industrial thermometers to another company. Therefore, if the sea eagle factory wants to catch up, it still has to rely on its own continuous investment in research and development , although they probably do not have as strong technical talent pool as the scientific instrument factory.

"We still have to find another way. You can't beat others by being stubborn." After posting for a while, Mo Xingye gradually had an idea in his mind: "Now the research on electricity in Heishan Township in the south is getting more and more in-depth, and related products are also in the market. The veil of mystery has been unveiled in front of the public. In the next few decades, the electrical industry should have great development. I heard that Haian Ceramics College is still specializing in electrical ceramics, and believes that this is an important profit growth point for the ceramic industry in the future. Shouldn’t it be time for us, Haidiao Factory, to do more research on electrical instruments? The foundation is not as strong as that of Dong’an Precision Instrument Company, so we can only be one step ahead, otherwise we may not be able to survive.”

(End of this chapter)