Chapter 406 - The New Ziminglou

Mo Xiao'an had no choice but to roughly explain the concepts of water supply and drainage, the siphon principle of flush toilets, and how water seals blocked odors. Although the scientific principles sounded like heavenly scriptures to the kiln workers, they grasped the general idea and couldn't help but express their sincere admiration, declaring the Australians truly the most ingenious craftsmen in the world.

After the flush toilet was successfully molded, the team began making other sanitary ware, including bathtubs. Manufacturing bathtubs proved much more difficult. Modern bathtubs were mostly made of enamel, with base materials stamped or cast from metal, then glazed and fired. To make them purely of porcelain while ensuring structural strength was a considerable challenge.

After repeated trial production, a single-person bathtub was finally produced a few weeks later. Water tests confirmed the product was fully qualified, complete with an overflow drain.

Having mastered bathtubs, smaller items like washbasins were even less of a problem. Finally came the tiles. These were no longer heavy porcelain bricks, but ceramic tiles just like in modern times.

Mo Xiao'an thought that with this, they could create a truly modern bathroom. Placing this in the Ming Dynasty would be an ultra-luxury innovation. High officials and nobles living in opulence would surely demand a set or two to display their status.

"Here—don't forget to add patterns to these things. Yes, that's right, decorative patterns."

This was easy for the kiln workers. Among the recruited artisans were those who specialized in decoration. After arriving in Lingao, they had found their skills useless—the Australians' porcelain and pottery were all plain wares with nothing added. Now hearing that patterns were required, they immediately brought out their full repertoire. Soon, Mo Xiao'an was looking at a beautiful blue-and-white porcelain flush toilet and an underglaze red washbasin.

"How precious must the butt sitting on this be!" Mo Xiao'an clicked his tongue. However, seeing the colorful flowers, plants, and birds painted stroke by stroke on every small tile, he found himself lost for words—it was simply too extravagant.

"Hmm, don't forget to write a trademark in seal script on it..."

"Trademark?"

"It's the brand name," Mo Xiao'an said. "Only we can make this stuff, so we have to let everyone know."

He added casually: "Just call it 'Pierre Cardin'."

"Preserved Egg (Pi Dan)?" The kiln workers were puzzled. Why call such a beautiful toilet "Preserved Egg"?

"Inappropriate, inappropriate," Mo Xiao'an rested his chin in his hand and muttered. "How about we call it 'Heaven on Earth'!"

For a moment, Mo Xiao'an felt his idea was brilliant. Heaven on Earth—the life enjoyment products from the future that they were putting into production were worthy of this name. He decided that all luxury consumer goods manufactured by the Light Industry Department in the future would bear this brand.

Mo Xiao'an quickly found someone to draw the logo, then had the kiln workers paint the pattern onto the products.

The ceramic factory itself had a heavy workload supporting industry, so sanitary ware production remained small-batch. However, plain white tiles were immediately put into large-scale manufacturing. The machinery plant even specially built an automatic brick-making machine for the ceramic factory to mass-produce tile blanks. Tiles were easy to clean and were the best building material for maintaining environmental hygiene. The hospital, pharmaceutical factory, food factory, and cafeterias all placed large orders to improve their working environments.

As for the first batch of sanitary ware samples, approved by the Executive Committee, they were used to renovate the luxury suites in the Commerce Hall. To accommodate these items, the Commerce Hall installed a small experimental water supply and drainage system, including a small experimental water-tube boiler for heating water, specialized cast iron supply and drainage pipes, and faucets and showerheads made of bronze. Metal hoses were out of the question, so the showerhead was fixed directly to the wall, just like in a public bathhouse. The walls were covered with colorful flower-and-bird tiles.

The hardest part to handle was the leather cup seal in the toilet tank, which was replaced with a cork stopper. As for the float ball system for automatically shutting off the water, it was still difficult given the transmigrators' mechanical processing and materials, so it wasn't adopted at all. The toilet tank was filled directly by a faucet, which had to be turned off manually when full. It was troublesome, but absolutely reliable. Ancient labor costs were cheap; households that could afford toilets presumably had no problem dedicating a servant solely to waiting in the bathroom to fill the water.

This installed system was shocking—not only to the local indigenous people, but even the transmigrators felt it was impressive. Even if you had a Pierre Cardin toilet back home, it probably wasn't made of blue-and-white porcelain.

Mo Xiao'an expressed basic satisfaction after testing it. After communicating with the Guangzhou Station, an order for five sets was issued. Each set included a flush toilet, bathtub, and washbasin, plus matching hardware, tiles, and floor tiles.

The patterns for each set were different—blue-and-white, underglaze red, and a pure white Japanese style with small flowers. In short, it was the height of luxury.

Even the hardware had different requirements; some required gilding, others silver plating. The final creative idea was to request that the showerhead, exposed pipes, and faucets all be made of glass—Mo Xiao'an finally understood what it meant to rack one's brains for luxury.

Why not just make a set of sanitary ware out of glass? A fully transparent flush toilet isn't necessary, but a fully transparent bathtub... Mo Xiao'an felt his blood pumping just thinking about it and rushed to the glass factory. The answer he received was that theoretically there was no problem, but currently the glass manufactured by the factory couldn't meet the strength requirements.

"Making a big fish tank is possible—at most, we make it thicker and sacrifice some transparency—but a bathtub won't work." The person in charge of the glass factory rejected it flatly.

Subsequent orders were much larger: dozens of toilets, washbasins, matching hardware and pipes, and finally hundreds of boxes of colored tiles. Originally they wanted patterned ones, but relying on artisans to paint them stroke by stroke would take forever, and there was no time to test mold printing, so they simply switched to plain colored tiles.

Finally, a sixth set order came. The general requirements were similar to the previous ones, but it requested a double-person massage bathtub.

Mo Xiao'an found a shell-shaped pattern from the materials and handed it to the ceramic factory for trial production. This super-large bathtub made the kiln workers very nervous—the size was on par with the dragon jars that were hardest to fire. Such super-large porcelain pieces could no longer be fired even in Jingdezhen. Although the Australians had taught them the new method of using molds for body detachment, no one was certain of success.

In the end, the bathtub was fired, but testing immediately revealed a problem: this bathtub couldn't massage.

Relying solely on water pressure from a high-hanging tank couldn't produce the jet effect for massage—unless Ziminglou intended to build a water tank three or four stories high. Of course, Ziminglou could do that, but the Guangzhou Station lacked the equipment to lift water to such a height, and installing a steam engine in Ziminglou seemed a bit too shocking.

"I have a simple method," Wang Luobin said after inspecting it. "Use manual pressurization."

The so-called manual pressurization meant adding a crank pressurizer to the water pipe. Manually turning the crank would enhance the jet force of the water flow.

"The person bathing might feel very awkward," Mo Xiao'an said. "Imagine you're hugging a girl in the bathtub, and you have to ask someone outside to crank a handle. It kills the mood."

"What else can we do?" Wang Luobin couldn't think of a better way either.

"It doesn't matter. Ancient people think differently from modern people." Yu E'shui, who also came to observe the bathtub, said, "Having a maid serve during intercourse is nothing in this timeline, so cranking a handle outside the wall counts for even less."

"Ancient people were so happy." Mo Xiao'an lamented.

Thus, the hand-cranked pressurized massage bathtub was finalized. The whole set was packed and shipped to Guangzhou for installation.

Guo Yi used this set of bathtubs with water jets to create a model room.

The new Ziminglou, redesigned and built by Zhang Xingpei in Guangzhou, maintained the form of traditional Chinese architecture in appearance but completely changed course in structure—though this didn't mean switching to reinforced concrete. Zhang Xingpei was very familiar with wood-structure houses; most of the houses he had supervised in the United States were wood structures.

After arriving in Guangzhou, Zhang Xingpei changed his outfit, surveyed the terrain of Ziminglou on the spot, and experienced the "flow" of the entire restaurant under Shen Fan's guidance. He found that Ziminglou's land area was relatively limited, so the original owner had built a three-story structure to increase usage area. Overall, Ziminglou had several shortcomings. First, the main gate along the street was too lively, lacking a discreet passage for high officials and nobles to enter and exit quietly. Second, land utilization was poor; they painstakingly built high-rises in the front but left a large piece of land in the back for traditional courtyard-style buildings. This not only wasted area, but every move in the courtyard could be seen from the rear building's windows, offering no privacy at all. Also, cooking fumes from the side shed were heavy, often letting guests in the ground floor hall smell the food. Third, the structure was unreasonable; there was only one staircase, which easily congested when passenger flow was high. Sometimes it inevitably led to people bumping into others they didn't want to meet. The last problem was that Ziminglou lacked parking spaces—that is, a place for sedan chairs to wait. Although there was an open space in front of the screen wall opposite where sedan chairs, carts, and horses could be parked, waiting in the open air made the sedan bearers and servants miserable. In scorching sun or heavy rain, the sedan chairs themselves would become hot and damp.

In terms of practicality, Ziminglou had three floors but only one toilet. Zhang Xingpei thought the most terrifying thing here was the toilet. In such a luxurious restaurant, the toilet was actually located in a small tiled house next to the fume-filled kitchen. In terms of condition, it was ten times better than the latrines Zhang Xingpei saw in Lingao County seat—but the two big manure vats and a row of urine jars with mosquitoes and flies dancing around made him run out immediately after the first glance.

"You can actually use this toilet?" Zhang Xingpei asked Guo Yi.

"I don't use it anyway," Guo Yi said. There was a toilet more in line with modern standards behind Pei Lixiu's boudoir in the courtyard.

"Ziminglou must be demolished and rebuilt." Zhang Xingpei proposed his plan a few days later.

"Okay." Guo Yi nodded. "What do you plan to do?"

The new design plan eliminated the large but useless backyard. Drawing inspiration from the "Fan Building" of the Northern Song Dynasty, Zhang Xingpei prepared to build a multi-building complex. There were three buildings in total, front and back, ranging from three to four stories, arranged in a staggered and orderly manner. The buildings were connected by two-story corridors. From a plan view, it looked largely like the character "田" (field). Each building was equipped with multiple staircases, and separate dedicated staircases and passages were set up for internal personnel like waiters.

The first building was a restaurant structure with three bright floors and a fourth "dark" floor. Zhang Xingpei introduced the modern hotel's porte-cochère design here. Guests would disembark from their sedan chairs in front of the main gate and enter the hall, while the sedan chairs would be carried to the semi-underground dark first floor. This was Ziminglou's "parking lot." It also provided hitching rings and drinking troughs for customers riding horses or carriages. There was a water well, and dedicated personnel took care of grooms and sedan bearers, supplying tea and snacks. The bright first floor was the lobby. Zhang Xingpei was ambitious in the design, using a full-height atrium. From the floor straight to the ceiling of the third floor, it was a gallery. A sixty-four-head glass chandelier produced by the glass factory hung high from the thick main beam at the top of the third floor with bronze chains and pulleys.

The lobby was open front and back, with large wood-carved glass windows installed on the walls, making it appear tall and bright. The floor was paved with Lumu Chengjiang bricks ordered from Suzhou—commonly known as "Gold Bricks." Although Gold Bricks weren't made of gold, their preciousness was hardly inferior; they were imperial items for the Forbidden City in both the Ming and Qing dynasties. What Guo Yi could buy were seconds rejected from tribute goods, which already cost a fortune.

However, the fact that such high-priced floor tiles from thousands of li away could be shipped to Guangzhou for sale showed how high the consumption power and how rampant the extravagance of this city were. The transmigrators' plan to use Ziminglou to promote life enjoyment products was feasible.

An indoor pool was set up in the center of the lobby, paved with pebbles to raise goldfish. A rockery taller than a man stood in the pool, with bamboo pipes guiding water to create a waterfall.

Rest areas were set up on both sides of the pool, equipped with screens, tables, and chairs, specifically for guests to wait and rest.

The second floor was the open dining area, while the third floor consisted entirely of private rooms. Zhang Xingpei didn't offer any new creative ideas for this part, handing it all over to local carpenters for decoration—even if he wanted a modern style, he didn't have the materials or tools. The only improvement was the addition of restrooms on both the second and third floors, paved with Lingao-produced colored tiles and equipped with blue-and-white porcelain flush toilets. Of course, in these restrooms, special personnel were responsible for flushing and turning off the water.

The main business project of Ziminglou's second building was the modern bathhouse. Because the transmigrators couldn't yet produce particularly effective preservatives and waterproofing agents, and the floor load-bearing capacity couldn't support dozens of cubic meters of water, Zhang Xingpei could only place the bathhouse on the first floor. A large oval bath pool was recessed underground, with wide steps set up for easy entry. To save on tile usage, Zhang Xingpei used ample cut stone slabs as the exterior facing of the cement pool. Animal head carvings were installed in the four corners, spitting water into the pool. Outside the bath pool, there were steam rooms and massage rooms. Of course, the massage rooms inevitably included content popular with the masses, like opposite-sex massage.

On the second floor, a lounge for guests was set up. The lounge design was distinctive, adopting a semi-circular amphitheater arrangement with a circular performance area in the middle—specifically for performing various "improved versions" of song and dance.

The third floor was the place to apply those six sets of brand-new bathroom equipment, including the manual pressurized massage bathtub. Considering that the load-bearing capacity of the wooden floor was limited, Zhang Xingpei specifically added several structural supports.

These six rooms equipped with modern bathroom equipment were naturally VIP rooms. Not only were they luxuriously decorated and comfortable, but they also had dedicated staircases and passages, completely unconnected to other levels.

A bathhouse meant large amounts of water usage. Water usage in Guangzhou city came from two sources—water carriers delivering water with carts and shoulder poles, mostly from the Pearl River basin; and private wells. Guangzhou was right on the banks of the Pearl River, and the groundwater level was high. For Ziminglou to run a bathhouse, it naturally couldn't rely on water carriers. For this reason, in addition to the original two wells, several more were dug, and mechanical hand pumps were installed to increase drawing speed.

The water pumped out by manual labor was injected through stone troughs into a newly built cement cistern. After a brief period of sedimentation and alum treatment, it could be used.

But this system had a big problem. If the supply of hot water could be solved by effective traditional techniques—such as heated brick beds (kang) and flues—then the tap water system extending throughout the building required a high-level water tank. Building a water tank was easy, but how to lift water from the ground to a height of three or four stories was a thorny problem.

Zhang Xingpei originally intended to install a boiler and steam engine, using mechanical power to lift water. But the technical overhead was too high. Without knowledgeable workers to maintain them constantly, the boiler was a ticking time bomb. Moreover, the vibration of the steam engine, the high-heat exhaust steam, and the dark thick smoke from burning coal would be enough to destroy the luxurious and elegant atmosphere Ziminglou attempted to create.

If they didn't use machinery, unless Ziminglou intended to hire people to lift water to the water tower manually, the workload seemed frighteningly large. So Wang Luobin stepped in—his task was to find a power source for the water lifting equipment that didn't require a steam engine.

Unable to use a steam engine, and with manpower being too inefficient, transmigrators generally turned to wind and water power. Water power wasn't feasible at Ziminglou—as for wind-powered water lifting equipment, Wang Luobin thought the feasibility was low. To effectively lift water to a water tower more than ten meters above the ground, they would have to build a behemoth with a height of over twelve meters and windmill blades spanning five meters. Such a giant standing in Guangzhou city would guarantee gossip for Ziminglou. After testing wind speeds and checking the Guangzhou Station's meteorological data, Wang Luobin also rejected this plan.

(Chapter End)