Chapter 266 — The Rustic Sugar Mill

Wen Tong established his base of operations in Xuwen. Qiwei had already received word from Manager Guo to take excellent care of this "Shopkeeper Wen." Hearing that Shopkeeper Wen disliked the bustle of the city, the Leizhou branch had built a new house on one of the sugarcane estates outside the county seat. It was tidied inside and out, the furniture freshly made. They had originally planned to hire local servants, but Guangzhou had already prepared everything and dispatched them by mule cart. The branch manager was astonished—these big shopkeepers truly lived in style.

Wen Tong and his entourage moved into this sugarcane estate, which was really just a somewhat refined farmyard. Besides the main house, there was a very large threshing yard for piling harvested cane. The rustic sugar mill stood just outside the estate wall—complete with several oxen kept on the premises.

After resting for the night, Wen Tong inspected the property. He had assumed such an estate would have a manager, craftsmen, and similar personnel. But upon inquiry, there was no one. This estate, sugar mill included, had been the private property of a single farming family. Planting, juicing, and sugar-making had all been handled by that household alone. After the sale, naturally, no staff remained.

Wen Tong felt somewhat at a loss. Without locals around, he was fumbling in the dark about the situation. Moreover, sugarcane was a quintessentially labor-intensive industry; harvest season demanded massive manpower. In another timeline, it would have been simple: cane farmers delivered their product directly to the factory gate, and the mill simply weighed and purchased. Now he owned land, and the sugarcane had not even been harvested yet. He needed to find day laborers, organize cutting, cleaning, bundling. That sort of thing required a professional landlord or a gang boss of long-term farm hands. He was merely a factory director—how was he supposed to manage?

He glanced at the Qiwei people beside him. They looked equally clueless—clearly outsiders all. Chang Shide, noticing his troubled expression, asked, "Difficult situation?"

"Without local help, I'm completely in the dark." Wen Tong sighed and called over Li Biao, Zhou Shizhai's young apprentice. The boy had already learned fluent Mandarin in Lingao.

"Walk around the estate and ask whether any cane farmers nearby bring their sugarcane here for processing. If there are, please invite them all over. I have some questions."

"Understood. I'll go at once."

Looking through the land deeds, the entire estate held no more than perhaps a hundred modern mu of cane fields. A pitifully small scale. Wen Tong then went to inspect the sugar mill.

He had visited rustic sugar mills on the Leizhou Peninsula before. He knew the local process: "ox-powered stone rollers for crushing, cooking stoves for boiling, and pottery vessels for separating molasses." Primitive by modern standards, but relatively advanced for the era.

The mill covered a substantial area—storage space was needed for raw cane and bagasse alike. The main structures were a conical thatched shed and a large grass-walled hut. The whole complex was crudely built. Never mind bricks and tiles—there was scarcely any wood. Everything was "thatch-roofed and grass-walled."

The thatched shed measured about fifty chi at the base and rose some thirty chi tall. The interior was supported by hemp bamboo, the roof thatched with cogon grass, rice straw, or sugarcane leaves. This was where the cane was crushed. The boiling hut contained rows of Kongming tripod stoves for cooking the syrup. Inside stood an assortment of equipment: wooden rollers, large iron pots, brick stoves, earthenware vats, and sundry implements.

Having lain unused for several months, everything was coated in dust. The floor was bare earth, littered with cane leaves, cane rinds, cow dung, kindling, and miscellaneous refuse. The structure was drafty. Rat droppings scattered everywhere—even in the sugar-cooking pots.

Wen Tong knew that even modern sugar factories could hardly be called hygienic. But the sight before him was truly pitiful. Starting a business from scratch was indeed arduous.

Seeing Shopkeeper Wen's deeply furrowed brow, the attendants knew he was displeased, though they could not fathom why—all the sugar mills in Leizhou Prefecture looked more or less the same. What exactly had offended him?

Stepping out of the crushing shed, Wen Tong found a clean stone in the yard and was about to sit when a young man in blue clothes and a small cap materialized beside him. Moving swiftly, the youth unfolded a portable chair and slid it beneath him.

"Please sit, Master." The young man spoke softly, head bowed.

Wen Tong started—locals who could speak Mandarin were rare. "Who are you?"

Liao Dahua, the Qiwei branch manager, hurried over to explain. "This is someone Manager Guo in Guangzhou sent expressly to attend to you, Shopkeeper. His name is Wen Xiu."

"Wen Xiu? What a... delicate name." Wen Tong remarked offhandedly.

The young servant's face immediately flushed crimson. He stood silent, hands at his sides.

"Practically an androgynous beauty," Chang Shide observed, sizing him up. The youth appeared sixteen or seventeen, with fair skin, rosy lips, white teeth, and fine, almost feminine features. But his hat struck Chang as peculiar—resembling a melon-skin cap, yet larger. Had Manchu fashion already spread this far south?

"What kind of hat is that?"

"A Liuhe Yitong cap," Liao Dahua hastened to explain. "It was personally designed by the founding emperor of this dynasty—"

"What? The melon-skin cap was invented by Zhu Yuanzhang?" Chang Shide muttered in surprise. He had always assumed this style of headwear, so perfectly matched with the queue, was a Qing Dynasty innovation.

Hearing him baldly speak the founding emperor's taboo name, both Liao Dahua and Wen Xiu—who understood Mandarin—blanched. Liao Dahua said quickly, "Master Chang, please—be careful! That is the taboo name of our dynasty's founder. You oughtn't speak it so—"

"So I've heard. I don't know the details; Yu Eshui mentioned it." Wen Tong was speaking when he suddenly noticed something. "Why hasn't a chair been brought for Master Chang as well?"

For ease of address in public, Chang Shide's nominal title was Wen Tong's "counselor"—avoiding complications with the locals.

"Master Chang's chair—Wen Qing went to fetch it. I'll go check now." Wen Xiu had originally been somewhat disinclined to bother with this dark-faced, bearded, flat-topped, burly fellow—in his view, the big dark man was probably just a gang boss of laborers Wen Tong had brought along. In this era, dark skin was often read as a mark of the lower classes. Chang Shide had encountered this prejudice many times in Lingao.

After a while, Wen Xiu returned with another servant boy. Besides a stool, they carried a tray with two cups of tea.

Chang Shide settled in comfortably and took a sip, then suddenly said to Wen Tong, "So this is the life on assignment. What decadent luxury! I wonder if there are any maidservants?" He craned his neck and looked around.

"To answer the master, there are no maidservants," Wen Qing replied respectfully. "Only two maids were hired for cooking and laundry."

"Young Guo really doesn't know how to make arrangements. How can we do without maidservants—" He was still speaking when he noticed both servants covering their mouths to stifle laughter. He realized his words had been indiscreet and had damaged his image considerably.

Wen Tong, however, was not thinking along those lines. He instructed Liao Dahua to send people out to locate the former workers of this sugar mill. If they were willing to return to work at good wages, they were welcome back. Liao Dahua agreed and dispatched searchers immediately.

Two groups went out. In the meantime, Wen Tong and Chang Shide sat facing each other beneath the seventeenth-century sky, breathing the wind-borne scent of rotting cow dung, sugarcane, and sugar, drinking tea. More than a dozen attendants surrounded them, standing at attention in reverent silence. The two transmigrators felt rather awkward. Eventually, they coaxed Liao Dahua into sitting down as well; everyone else remained standing.

"When they told me to go on assignment, I was actually a bit scared," Chang Shide's eyes gleamed. "I thought staying in Lingao was safest. I didn't expect that once I went out, I'd be living like a big landlord. If I'd known, I would've applied to be an intelligence agent or something. That kid Guo Yi has probably taken a concubine by now—or at least has four or five bedwarmers!"

"So go take one yourself," Wen Tong said, uninterested in the topic. His mind was on his responsibilities.

An hour later, both groups returned. Three sugar mill workers came. Through the translator, Wen Tong learned that none were skilled craftsmen. According to them, the entire mill used five people: the sugar-boiling master, the cane-crusher, the ox-handler, the fire-tender, and the general laborer. The farming family that had originally grown the cane had provided their own men for the sugar-boiling and cane-crushing.

"If the master wants to make sugar, he'll need to hire a competent sugar-boiling master to supervise," the fire-tender reported. "Otherwise, the timing is hard to control, and the amount of lime to add won't be right. The difference in sugar yield is significant."

Wen Tong nodded and asked them to walk him through the entire production process. Could they demonstrate on-site? The fire-tender said a demonstration was possible, but since none of them were sugar-boiling masters, the resulting sugar might not be usable.

"Just have them proceed," Wen Tong told the interpreter. "Don't worry about whether the sugar turns out well."

The three huddled together for a brief discussion, then set to work. They enlisted two escort guards to assist. They led an ox from the barn and brought over several bundles of sugarcane. Liao Dahua, sensing that Shopkeeper Wen found the rustic mill too filthy, quickly had his people sweep and scrub the entire facility and wash all the equipment. Only then did production begin.

The workers first stripped the sugarcane clean and bundled it into loads beside the wooden rollers. These rollers were made of lychee wood—extremely hard. One man fed cane into the rollers while another drove the ox to turn the crushing mechanism. The first roller turned and, through wooden cogs, drove the second. The two rollers squeezed together; the cane was pressed three times to extract all the juice.

On the third pressing, the workers tightened the rollers further inward to wring the bagasse drier. The pressed juice ran down the base groove and through a bamboo tube into a large earthenware vat to settle.

Wen Tong observed closely. The crushing force of these wooden rollers appeared substantial, but in reality they were inferior to the stone rollers of the Qing Dynasty he had seen—stone was far harder. He picked up a piece of bagasse; after three pressings, the residual juice content remained quite high.

The crushing took about forty minutes. By then, the water buffalo was drenched in sweat, its pace slowing—clearly exhausted. The workers began swapping in a fresh ox. Wen Tong asked: for each crushing session, four bundles of cane were processed. The oxen had to be changed thirty to thirty-five times per twenty-four-hour cycle. No wonder this mill kept four or five animals.

He had the weight of each cane bundle measured and performed mental calculations. At this level of throughput, working around the clock produced just under 2,000 kilograms. Moreover, according to the workers, the wooden rollers frequently broke down, requiring repairs and causing considerable downtime.

"Are there stone rollers for crushing sugarcane?" Wen Tong asked.

The workers all said they had never seen or heard of such a thing. Among the thirty to fifty sugar mills in the area, none used stone rollers.

Wen Tong nodded. Evidently, that technological improvement had appeared in the Qing Dynasty. Stone rollers could process 2,500 kilograms per day—a significant gain in efficiency.

The crushed cane juice, after initial settling and a cursory skimming of debris and plant stems, was poured into large iron pots for boiling. Three pots were arranged in a triangular formation. Wen Tong could not see what benefit this configuration offered the production process. The only explanation he could conceive was that it might concentrate heat.

When the cane juice had boiled down to syrup, on the verge of boiling over, the fire-tender began skimming off foam and impurities with a large ladle. Then, using sugarcane leaves, he scooped lime from a sack and sprinkled it in.

"Lime?" Chang Shide was taken aback.

"It clarifies the sugar solution." Wen Tong explained. To remove suspended particles and obtain cleaner crystals, an important step was to filter out insoluble matter and then add a clarifying agent. Lime was one of the common agents used in modern sugar factories—and in ancient times as well. Lime was far easier to obtain than sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, or superphosphate. Some rustic sugar-makers used wood ash, which served a similar purpose.

"But doesn't the lime dissolve into the sugar water? So all white sugar contains lime?"

"No—it actually neutralizes and breaks down the impurities in the cane juice." Wen Tong explained patiently. "Neither white sugar nor brown sugar contains a trace of lime."

"Well, that's a relief."

By now the juice had turned yellow. Several workers poured the liquid from the first pot into the second to continue evaporating moisture, while the first pot repeated the earlier process.

When the higher-sugar-content syrup was transferred to the third pot, they added some oil. Wen Tong asked, "What are you adding?"

"Peanut oil," the worker replied quickly.

"Peanut oil?" Wen Tong was puzzled. He recalled reading in sugar industry texts that the earliest decolorizing treatment used milk; the Chinese method employed egg whites from chicken or duck eggs. The principle was to use protein to bind impurities. Did oil count as protein?

Though perplexed, he continued observing. After the syrup had been boiled down to a thin paste, it was removed and poured into wa liu molds. Wen Tong had seen Qing Dynasty examples—the design looked nearly identical: conical in shape, wider at top, narrower at bottom, roughly one chi tall. A small hole at the pointed base was plugged with rice straw; the mold was placed over a large earthenware vat to let the sugar slowly crystallize. Syrup laden with impurities would gradually drain through the straw and out the hole. Eventually, only pure crystallized sugar remained inside. Wen Tong asked and learned that one wa liu could produce about 10 kilograms of raw brown sugar.

(End of Chapter)