Chapter 154: East is Bright, West is Also Bright

Next to the Purple Pearl Pavilion was the Zicheng Company. Its main product at the moment was only the Guoshi Wushuang liquor. The person in charge, Zhang Xin, found that he had far more liquor than glass bottles, so he had to store it in large wine jars and wait for more bottles from Lingao. However, the winemakers didn’t stop for a moment, processing the local spirits purchased from various places every day. As a result, the price of local spirits in Guangzhou had begun to rise slowly.

When Guo Yi discovered that the Zicheng Company’s white liquor inventory had exceeded 2.5 tons, he was shocked and asked Zhang Xin: “We don’t have that many glass bottles right now. What’s the use of making so much wine?”

“To sell, of course.” Zhang Xin’s plan was simple. Since the glass-bottled wine was a luxury item, he would use simple porcelain bottles for packaging and sell it to the foreigners in Macau.

“You must be joking,” Guo Yi said. “How many people are there in Macau? How much can they consume? Besides, Europeans also make fruit brandy. Will they like this grain spirit?”

“Chief Manager Guo, you don’t understand.” Zhang Xin chuckled. “Foreigners also have grain spirits. Isn’t vodka one? And gin. Vodka is just pure alcohol mixed with water, not difficult to make at all. And juniper berries are not rare; they are everywhere in the northern hemisphere. We can get some and distill them.”

“But the market is too small! The population of Macau—”

“That’s the mystery,” Zhang Xin said with confidence. “Foreigners have glass, and when it’s transported thousands of miles to China, it becomes a rarity. Our Chinese porcelain, when it reaches Europe, becomes a rarity—”

“I understand,” Guo Yi had a sudden realization. “So you’re saying we should use porcelain wine bottles!”

“The local spirits from the Guangzhou countryside, when put in glass bottles, become ‘Guoshi Wushuang.’ If we put them in porcelain wine bottles, won’t they become ‘Louis XIII’? Mysterious porcelain from the mysterious East, containing mysterious fine wine… What a great commercial gimmick.”

Among the goods confiscated from the Gou family, porcelain was the largest category. At the time of inventory, it was estimated that there were tens of thousands of pieces. Such a large quantity of porcelain obviously could not find a market in the Great Ming. The only solution was to continue selling it to the original buyers—the Europeans. The Dengyingzhou had recently transported many samples of porcelain, originally intended to be sent to Macau to see if there was any demand. Zhang Xin had chanced upon the idea of using porcelain vases to bottle wine. He chose a vase with a capacity of about 600-700ml as the packaging bottle. There were at least ten thousand such bottles in the inventory.

With the wine bottles, there were other development projects. The transmigrators did not yet have activated carbon, so making vodka was obviously out of the question. But they could make distilled spirits with added flavorings, the so-called liqueurs. Theoretically, this type of liquor could be made with fruits, spices, flowers, and even various plants with special aromas. As there were too many options to choose from, Zhang Xin was hesitant and telegraphed the professionals in Lingao for advice.

“What aromatic plants should be used for export liquor?” This topic was quickly sent to Fa Shilu’s desk. The botanist was currently engrossed in making specimens of local plants with a few students who had shown an initial interest in botany.

When he heard this question, a look of “I’ve finally been waiting for this” appeared behind Fa Shilu’s glasses.

“Well, that’s simple. Use rhubarb.”

“Are you kidding?” Zhang Xin, upon receiving the reply, thought he had gone mad. What was rhubarb? A laxative that caused diarrhea. To make a distilled liquor with this, even as a prank, would anyone fall for it a second time after being tricked once?

“Not kidding,” Fa Shilu explained in detail in his reply:

Rhubarb is a commonly used medicine in traditional Chinese medicine. It originated in the northwest and southwest regions of China. The use of rhubarb as a medicine may have been the experience of the peoples of the Western Regions, which later spread to the interior. It has a history as a medicine of at least two to three thousand years.

Ever since Zhang Qian opened up the Western Regions and the land trade between China and Europe established the Silk Road, rhubarb was transported by caravans via the Silk Road to West Asia and the European continent. Camel caravans transported dried rhubarb from China, crossing high mountains to reach Bukhara in Central Asia, and then through the Black Sea to Europe. Because it reached Europe via Asia Minor, it later became known as Turkish rhubarb. Rhubarb was once a very important commodity in the Silk Road trade.

In the following years, Central Asian merchants operated this prosperous rhubarb trade route through Persia and other Middle Eastern regions. By the Ming Dynasty, two rhubarb trade routes had formed from China: one by sea via India, and the other through the Gobi Desert and Siberia to Moscow. Rhubarb also accounted for a significant proportion of the re-export trade goods operated by the Portuguese in Macau.

Rhubarb was an early favorite of Persian and Arab doctors. For over a thousand years, the rhubarb trade flourished on the Silk Road. Rhubarb can strengthen the stomach and detoxify. For peoples whose diet was mainly meat and milk, before they knew about tea, they relied entirely on Chinese rhubarb, regarding it as a panacea. Therefore, for over a thousand years, rhubarb was one of the most sought-after commodities in Central Asia, West Asia, and even Europe. Due to the influence of the Arabs, rhubarb was widely used in European medicine. By mastering the dosage and method of use, it could be used as a laxative for constipation, an astringent for dysentery and diarrhea, and a medicine for burns, boils, and carbuncles.

Later, Europeans also cultivated edible rhubarb, which could be used in various pastries and dishes, and even eaten as a fruit. However, to this day, medicinal rhubarb can still only be grown in China. The high status of rhubarb in the minds of Europeans is such that there are rhubarb festivals in many parts of the world. It is probably difficult to imagine in China, the place of origin of rhubarb, that this medicine is so popular abroad.

“My goodness, I thought it was just a laxative. I never expected foreigners to treat it as a treasure,” Zhang Xin said to Guo Yi after reading the telegram. “Quick, send someone to the market to buy rhubarb. This stuff can also be an export commodity.”

Guo Yi quickly sent someone to inquire about rhubarb in the market and found that there was already a specialized business engaged in its export. Rhubarb in China was mainly produced in Qinghai and Gansu, with Lixian as the distribution center. The business of exporting it to the Portuguese in Macau was monopolized by a warehouse called the “Quanshui Company,” operated by people from Lixian.

Although he was a bit disappointed to find that this path to wealth had been preempted, making rhubarb wine was definitely an unconventional idea. Zhang Xin had people secretly buy a large amount of rhubarb from various pharmacies and had it washed and dried overnight.

Traditional Chinese herbal wines are mostly made by steeping, but Zhang Xin decided to use the alcohol distillation method, just like with gin. The chopped rhubarb was placed on a distillation rack, and the vapor of the liquor was passed through the rack and then collected through a coiled condenser. The final product was a slightly yellowish liquid with a fragrant aroma. Finally, based on Xue Ziliang’s suggestion, a small amount of melted white sugar was added to the liquor, making the taste slightly sweet—now it was unequivocally a rhubarb liqueur.

As for the rhubarb residue after distillation, Zhang Xin had it all dried and sealed for storage. He planned to use it as the raw material for rhubarb tea bags. Since black tea dust could be made into the “fashionable” black tea bags that Chinese petty bourgeoisie loved, rhubarb tea of the same nature could also make Europeans flock to it.

Paper labels didn’t look good on the porcelain wine bottles. After some discussion among the dispatch station staff, Yan Maoda designed a batch of antique-style small ivory tags to be custom-made at an ivory carving shop. They were strung with colorful silk cords and hung on the bottles. The ivory tags had traditional patterns, and the brand name was “Great Tang Princess.” This tacky name earned Zhang Xin the unanimous contempt of everyone. Zhang Xin said:

“If you want something elegant, like ‘Goddess of the Luo River’ or something, would foreigners understand it? Look at the famous French wines, they’re all Napoleon or Louis XIII. Isn’t that even tackier? I haven’t even called it Kangxi, Yongzheng, or Qianlong yet.”

“Please, stick with your ‘Great Tang Princess’,” Guo Yi said with a laugh. “As long as it’s not something like ‘Noble Lady Lan’.”

“‘Noble Lady Lan’? That’s not a bad idea either. But foreigners don’t understand the Chinese system of wife ranks, so they wouldn’t get the flavor. Maybe we can use it for a domestic brand later, and even have a series.”

While the “Great Tang Princess” and “Guoshi Wushuang” liquors were being intensively processed, the craftsmen recruited by Shen Fan had also arrived. When Baohengxiang closed down, although the owner had paid their wages, the craftsmen’s pay was meager, and they had little savings. Just as they were worrying about their future after the New Year, Shen Fan’s timely recruitment was like a timely rain. They were all very grateful to this new employer. Yan Maoda also comforted everyone, promising good treatment and that they could continue to work with peace of mind. He then gave each person two hundred copper coins as a New Year’s gift. Then he took out his album of jewelry designs and asked the craftsmen for their opinions.

To his surprise, the craftsmen objected to most of the modern jewelry designs drawn by Yan Maoda. They thought the designs were beautiful, but the pieces were too light and thin, and the lack of weight would probably not please the customers. Yan Maoda spent a long time trying to persuade them, but to no avail. It seemed that their concepts still needed some time to merge.

Although the craftsmen did not agree with Manager Yan’s designs, he was the boss, and it was the boss’s right to do as he pleased. Everyone just had to follow. Originally, some craftsmen were worried that the owner’s tinkering would sooner or later lead to the shop’s closure. But after seeing the samples at the Purple Pearl Pavilion, the consensus among the craftsmen was: with such good secret formula glassware, Manager Yan could tinker as much as he wanted.

Some people also made some additional processing suggestions for the glassware. For example, a jeweler named Zhu Shengyi proposed that the handles and rims of some of the glass cups could be inlaid with gold and silver, and some small floral decorations could be added to make them more gorgeous. Yan Maoda did not approve of this suggestion—in his view, it was a vulgar act that destroyed the beauty of the glassware. However, he still expressed his appreciation for it. Creativity should be encouraged, not stifled because it differed from one’s own views. Besides, their aesthetic sense should be more adapted to this era than his own.