Tang Dynasty good brother

Chapter 251
Asking Xu Jie to randomly pick a hundred or so people from the patrol battalion as guards, Qin Hao accompanied dozens of Qing Gang leaders and set off for the countryside shortly after eating.

"Young Master Liu, how far is it?"

"Hurry up, let's ride a horse, and we'll be there in half an hour."

Young Master Liu is naturally the young master of the Liu family. After reaching a consensus on cooperation with the Liu family in Luoyang, he brought Young Master Liu here on the grounds that he was not familiar with him in the south. Don't remember the temper of beating, it's not good to harass Xiaocui again.

The east family members of the Liu family live in Xiangyang. Although it is not close at all to Yangzhou for several hundred miles, they are also members of the southern family, at least they can be regarded as half local snakes. The field they are going to visit now is the original Liu family. of Yantian.

The art of making salt has a history of at least 5000 years, but the efficiency is low and there are too many impurities, and there is still some distance from the real ancient method of salt making. Therefore, the Liu family has a ready-made salt field, which is also saved by Qin Hao. For many things, he just needs to show the technology.

When they arrived at the place, the members of the Liu family had already been waiting there respectfully under the leadership of the Patriarch, and several large pots were boiling sea water.

Before the Ming Dynasty, the table salt was all made by boiling the sea. Simply put, the salt water was boiled in a large pot. The salt produced in this way has almost no possibility of separating impurities, and the taste is much more bitter than salty. Therefore, in the Tang Dynasty, sea salt was not the mainstream way to obtain table salt, and the control was not so strict. Most people still ate rock salt, lake salt, well salt, etc. Sea salt was only eaten by the poor in the south.

"Actually, my method of making salt is quite simple. The reason why I have not told you to keep it a secret is not because of any secret technical recipes, but because I don't want to increase the difficulty when enclosing the fields. Now that the autumn harvest is already here, the timing is almost the same. , but after meeting you today, you still have to keep your mouths in check, Patriarch Liu, the people on the field are all our own people, right?"

In fact, this is not difficult to understand. Enclosures and demolition are similar in purpose. It seems that if the local people know that the city government is going to move over, the difficulty and cost of demolition will naturally increase exponentially. Now it is so difficult. Qin Hao didn't want to make any more troubles.

"Don't worry, Chief Qin, they are all members of our Liu family. No matter what magical skills we see today, they will only rot in our stomachs. No one will go out and chew a word."

"Okay, then I'll offend you. There are so many people out there, so you'll be living near this salt field for a month."

"…………"

Mom sells batches, you never said before that you want to restrict our personal freedom.

Seeing Patriarch Liu's reluctance, Qin Hao glanced at him with a smile that was not a smile, and frowned slightly, as if to ask again: Do you have an opinion?
The situation is stronger than others, and the thicker the thigh, the more it is not for nothing. If you want to get a share of this feast, you will have to pay the price. Gritting your teeth, Patriarch Liu simply said: "It should be like this, it all depends on Chief Qin gave orders."

Qin Hao nodded with a smile, as if admiring the sensibleness of Patriarch Liu, then took off his shoes, limped to the edge of the salt field, broke off a handful of straw and threw it on it to test the brine concentration, took a few pokes and said: "Come on, let me demonstrate it to you."

After saying that, Qin Hao ordered the people of the Liu family to take out the brine and pour it into the mud for experimentation.

Some people say that all technical barriers in feudal society are a layer of window paper. This cannot be said to be completely correct, but at least it is true in the case of salt production.

Before the Ming Dynasty, people used water to extract salt, but they never thought that salt could actually be extracted from mud. This is also the biggest difference between the method of boiling sea salt and the ancient method of making salt. Keep turning the sun to increase the salt content in the soil, and eventually the soil will naturally turn into salt mud over time. The older the salt mud, the better the salt. Although there is only new mud and no old mud at the moment, But it is enough for experimentation.

The head of the Liu family sent a few strong men to keep stirring the land that had just been poured with salt water with rakes used to turn over the crops, and then asked, "And then?"

"Then? What then, oh, you prepared a banquet for us? How dare you, we've all eaten here."

When everyone heard what Qin Hao said, even the members of the Green Gang were dumbfounded. What do you mean?This is the end?What about your magic skills?Where's your salt?

"Looking at the sun today, I guess it will be noon tomorrow. As long as the guy who is stirring is not lazy, you can see the salt. By the way, buddy, if you feel that it is dry while stirring, you can pour some more brine until tomorrow. You can only stop when the sun rises in the morning, you know?"

The man's face turned bitter, but he didn't dare to say anything more, so he nodded aggrievedly. He was actually a direct descendant of the Liu family. It only took one night, tears were about to fall, and for a while, I forgot the stubble of being able to change people.

In fact, the real ancient method of sun-drying salt naturally doesn’t need to be stirred continuously for a moment. It’s just a matter of two more days of drying. To put it bluntly, stirring is exchanging labor for time. Not three days.

However, the real drying of salt is actually not much easier than this man, because the salt mud needs to be turned continuously under the scorching sun, so Qin Hao’s new method of drying salt is actually a hard work, especially when there is no rubber. Without boots, workers can only go into the fields with bare feet. After a few days of this work, both feet will be useless. When they get old, nine out of ten salt drying workers will become crippled.

Qin Hao naturally told everyone about this, but everyone didn't think there was anything wrong with it. They all lived in poverty. In their opinion, the most worthless thing is their strength. They sacrificed a pair of feet in exchange for a hundred stones Salt, in their view, is really the most cost-effective thing.

Alas, poor man, thinking of this, Qin Hao became more determined to build a big ship to go to Southeast Asia as soon as possible. As long as there is rubber, such a tragedy can be completely avoided.

But if you want to build a big ship, you have to have money, and if you want to have money, you need to have more salt fields, and more salt fields, you have to have more salt workers. This is really an unsolvable cycle.

That night, everyone took a rest after simply drinking some light wine. No one was in the mood to drink to their heart's content, and even few of them could really sleep the whole night. That's right, a group of bosses almost kept coming out for a walk every few minutes throughout the night to make sure they were really not lazy.

(End of this chapter)