Chapter 906 – The Swimsuit Magazine

Even Zhang Dai, who had seen his share of grand displays, found it stunning. Standing before the bay window, the sensation of being sheltered from wind and rain yet seemingly outdoors was something they had never experienced.

Beyond the crystalline glass panels—so clear they seemed not to exist—were living flowers as vivid as if within arm's reach. Butterflies danced among them; sunlight filtered through the wisteria arbor in dappled patterns. He stretched out his hand involuntarily toward the flower beds outside, only for his fingertips to meet the glass barrier. Zhang Dai stood transfixed. After a long moment, he heaved a sigh.

Zhao Yingong had expected as much. A full-glass bay window like this—practically a sun parlor—had never been built in either Lingao or Guangzhou. Even in the twenty-first century, it wasn't ubiquitous. Transmigrators seeing it would find it remarkable; how much more so the natives, who rarely encountered large panes of glass.

The guests settled into Victorian upholstered armchairs by rank. A young maidservant with her hair in simple coils approached, carrying a carved vermilion lacquer tray, and served tea. Zhang Dai had always fancied "beautiful maids"—he thought to himself that with such grandeur, this Master Zhao must surely keep household maidservants of uncommon beauty. And Guangdong, after all, was known for the customs of "keeping maids" and "bonded maids." But when he saw her, he was greatly disappointed: this young woman was thoroughly unremarkable, perfectly ordinary. From her gait, she even had natural feet. He found this quite strange.

Fenghua served the tea. Everyone expected something like the "Australian water" from earlier, but this time it was proper tea. A rich, distinctive fragrance wafted through the air—entirely unlike the Dragon Well or Pearl Dew teas they usually drank; the aroma was far more intense.

The tea leaves were in a tiny glass teapot, nearly filled to the brim. Beside it were four ox-eye cups, also of glass, already filled with tea. And the tea wasn't the usual pale jade color but a deeper, richer amber.

"Come, please drink. This tea is best enjoyed hot," said Zhao Yingong.

Wu Zhixiang prided himself on having experienced every kind of "Australian indulgence" at Ziming Pavilion, yet this almost-black tea was a first. One sniff revealed an intense fragrance, piercing to the soul. He lifted the cup and took a small sip: the tea was mellow, smooth, and subtly sweet, with a faint orchid-like note.

After sampling it, everyone marveled. Zhang Dai laughed. "I've always fancied myself the greatest gourmand under heaven, having tasted all the world's delicacies. I never imagined such tea existed!"

Zhang Dai's love of fine food—and his skill at it—was famous among Jiangnan's literati. He was particularly devoted to "tasting all the flavors of the realm," tirelessly collecting regional specialties and delicacies.

Zhao Yingong had read his Dream Memories of Tao'an and seen his long, lavish menus. So what he brought out for guests were all things impossible to find locally.

This tea was a new harvest Wu Nanhai had commissioned the Trade Department to purchase from Fujian. He'd recruited a dozen tea workers and, using modern tea-processing techniques, produced oolong tea. Red tea was made at the same time.

Oolong is a semi-fermented tea; its flavor is milder than fully fermented red tea and more suited to Chinese palates. Wu Nanhai had sent several jin specifically for Zhao Yingong to promote locally. Once it caught on, they planned to sell "Hainan Oolong Tea" through Wanyou on a large scale.

Zhao Yingong smiled. "This tea is called oolong tea. It comes from the very summit of Limu Mountain in Qiongzhou."

Hainan's climate isn't actually suitable for growing tea, and the leaves actually came from Fujian—Lingao only processed them. But Wu Nanhai, Skard, and Li Mei all knew that tea required a certain geographic mystique. Fujian tea was nothing compared to the exotic romance of "Limu Mountain on Hainan Island."

"Oh?" Sure enough, Zhang Dai was intrigued to hear the tea came from such a wild and remote place. "Qiongzhou is a backwater frontier—I've heard it's all Li barbarians. How could there be tea? Do the Li also cultivate tea?"

Zhao Yingong had a whole advertising script prepared in his head—not written by him, but by the Grand Library's copywriters. First, he described Limu Mountain in misty, mystical terms, painting it as a fairyland hidden in the wilds. Then came the tale: deep in the mountain's heavily forested heights stood an isolated crag with sheer cliffs on all sides, upon which grew five hundred wild tea bushes. Year-round, the mountain was shrouded in clouds and miasma. Only twice a year—for a few days in spring and a few in autumn—did the mists clear, allowing tea to be picked. Agile Li tribesmen would scale the rocks to pluck the tender leaves.

"...But the window is brief. As soon as the Li see the mountain mists rising again, no matter how much or how little they've gathered, they must immediately descend on their ropes and flee the valley. The slightest delay means inhaling the miasma—and certain death."

This elaborate fiction was delivered so convincingly that his audience listened raptly, sighing with wonder. Zhao Yingong thought to himself: Such copy works in any era. He went on to spin a tale about how the tea had originally been impossible to transport out of the mountains, until somehow the Australians had found a way.

Wu Zhixiang listened with some skepticism—Pei Lixiu had never mentioned any "wild tea from the heart of Limu Mountain," and he'd never drunk any at Ziming Pavilion. If he weren't about eighty or ninety percent certain this Master Zhao was actually an "Australian," he'd almost suspect the man was just making things up under the guise of Australian provenance.

But the others listened with relish. Fenghua came over periodically to refill their cups. Zhang Dai noticed that though the maid's appearance was ordinary, her manner was refined; her every movement was graceful and measured. Her gaze was lively but not coquettish. She'd obviously been carefully trained.

Looking around the glass room, he saw many curios he'd never encountered before. The most striking, of course, was a mechanical clock on a side table: its case, made by Guangzhou's jewelers and goldsmiths, was encrusted with gold, silver, ivory, pearls, and gemstones; the movement was a complete mechanism from the twenty-first century. This joint production of two timelines was ticking away at that moment. Western pendulum clocks had already entered China in small numbers, so Wu Zhixiang had seen them, and Zhang Dai wasn't surprised.

But beyond the clock were many things they'd never seen: a model of the Victory, handmade by Wen Desi and Wang Luobin, under a glass dome, gun ports all open, black muzzles protruding—flying not the British ensign but the Senate's Morning Star flag and the Fuboian Navy's blue-and-white ensign. A lotus-shaped gramophone...

The group felt like Granny Liu in the Grand View Garden, eyes darting everywhere. Despite their best efforts at composure, expressions of astonishment and delight kept crossing their faces.

When the host set down his teacup and, smiling, extended an invitation, they immediately rose and each gravitated toward the object that interested them most, peppering Zhao Yingong with a stream of questions mingled with exclamations. He stood there, smiling, answering their questions with tireless patience.

In the midst of this flurry, there came a startled cry of "Aiya!" followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

Everyone turned. It was Wen Huai who had cried out. He stood with hands splayed, a look of alarm on his face. Zhao Yingong looked down and saw that what had fallen was a magazine—a Japanese "swimsuit" magazine. Lando's sunken ship had added several thousand such physical books to the Grand Library.

Zhang Dai picked it up and at once drew a sharp breath; he nearly dropped it himself. It wasn't that the three-point bikini on the cover girl was too revealing for him—rather, it was the terrifying realism. This wasn't a painting; it was as if a living person had been fixed onto the page!

The body of the woman on the page was so vivid—those long, tapered legs seemed about to step right off the paper. Yet his fingers touching it met only flat surface.

Zhang Dai had seen many figure paintings: Chinese artists' meticulous gongbi works, ink-wash figures—and he'd also seen the oil paintings the Western missionaries made. To him, the realism of Western oil paintings already verged on the supernatural. But compared to this Australian image, even those were miles away.

"This is... this is too astonishing!" His face went pale; for an instant, he half-believed it was some Australian sorcery.

"Gentlemen, don't be alarmed—it's just a kind of picture," Zhao Yingong soothed. "The Australians have a method of using glass mirrors to fix a person's likeness onto paper. I myself cannot fathom it."

"Horrifying, absolutely horrifying." Wen Huai clutched his chest and quickly sat down; he seemed badly shaken. "It has to be sorcery!"

But Sun Chun said, "This must be a secret Australian technique—it needn't be sorcery..."

"Being able to fix a human likeness on paper—if it isn't sorcery, how could it be done?" Wen Huai looked at the magazine as if it were a venomous snake or wild beast. "Please, burn it at once."

"There are many wondrous things in the world—how can we presume to know them all?" Sun Chun was also shocked, but he'd never believed in ghosts and spirits. He shook his head. "To say nothing of the Australians—even the Western methods of firearms, astronomy, geography, and mathematics—if Matteo Ricci and Johann Adam Schall von Bell hadn't journeyed across the seas to reach us, how could we have known of them?"

Zhang Dai was equally skeptical of the sorcery theory. He picked up the magazine and leafed through it. The women in the pages were tall and curvaceous, full-chested and wide-hipped, with the barest scraps of cloth covering the essentials—virtually no different from complete nudity. They struck all manner of provocative poses; some were positively shameless.

Each woman had a buxom figure and natural feet. By the aesthetic standards of the era, such bodies were hardly seductive—these men's households lacked neither beautiful concubines nor pretty maids. Yet a flicker of desire stirred somewhere within him, and he felt his cheeks grow warm.

Afraid of betraying himself, Zhang Dai steadied his nerves. With a shake of his head and a laugh, he said, "What sorcery is there in this picture book? I'd call it bedroom secrets, if anything."

The others laughed, and the tense atmosphere eased considerably.