Chapter 194: The Nanbao Layout

But for the local people of Nanbao, the circulation coupons held little attraction.

Indeed, now throughout Lincheng, and even in the neighboring counties of Danzhou, Chengmai, and even Qiongshan, it was known that these circulation coupons were creditworthy. But for the people here, how could this thing be as real as silver and copper coins? In a place where there was hardly any commodity circulation, paper money simply wouldn’t work.

Originally, Ye Yuming had planned to pay the local workers’ wages in silver, but this was firmly opposed by Cheng Dong and Yan Ming. The reason was that such differential treatment for employees would seriously undermine the confidence of the mine workers in the circulation coupons.

To ensure it could be accepted by the locals, it had to be “useful” and fully demonstrate its purchasing power.

As the project progressed, the two main cadres of the Foreign Trade Committee, Dongmen Chuiyu and Li Mei, came to Nanbao. Their activity was to replicate the successful experience of Dongmen Market. Of course, there were not many consumers in Nanbao itself; the main target was the miners.

Dongmen Chuiyu first built a stone road outside the residential area. After laying the drainage ditches, he began to build the shop buildings. This type of brick-and-concrete structure was no longer a big deal for Mei Lin and his construction team. There were plenty of stones in Nanbao, which saved a lot of bricks. In less than a week, the first building was completed. It was a long, two-story building, divided into individual rooms. Because it used external load-bearing walls and a truss structure, the internal partition walls were all made of so-called lightweight materials to save clay bricks. This type of house had poor sound insulation, but the space was easy to divide and suitable for multiple uses.

The limewater on the walls was not yet dry when the sign for the Nanbao branch of the Women’s Cooperative was already hung up. It occupied five storefronts on the ground floor. Ox-carts brought shelves, counters, well-trained female clerks, and a lot of goods. The cooperative sold all sorts of daily necessities and small food items, such as cloth, silk, needles and thread, towels, wine and vinegar, betel nuts, salt, and brown sugar. Li Mei had originally wanted to import small miscellaneous goods like rouge and powder from Guangdong and Macau, but the Finance and Economics Committee refused to issue her a silver use certificate, so this proposal was dropped. She could only hope for the Ministry of Light Industry under Mo Xiao’an to produce them. In addition, Li Mei also negotiated with the Heaven and Earth Society, intending to act as an agent for their agricultural supply store, selling their seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and farm tools. To get Ye Yuming to agree, the condition she offered was to waive all agency fees and sell at zero profit.

“Then what will you earn?” Ye Yuming, who was walking with her on the construction site of Nanbao Town, was puzzled.

“Agricultural supplies will bring me customers. The cooperative doesn’t plan to make money on agricultural supplies; it’s just to ‘bring in business’.”

When more farmers come to buy agricultural supplies, they will also buy some other goods on the side, and the profit will come from that. It’s just like how large supermarkets sell eggs at a loss to attract customers.

“You really know how to do business—”

“Not at all. I still need the help of all you leaders,” Li Mei smiled like a flower. “When your business trip is over, I’ll treat the people from the Heaven and Earth Society to a meal to reward them! A few of your young comrades have worked hard providing technical guidance in the countryside. It’s not easy.”

The purpose of opening this grocery store was to withdraw circulation coupons and make the locals feel that the coupons were useful and easy to use. Therefore, the cooperative did not accept copper coins or silver.

The Planning Committee also required the cooperative to be responsible for purchasing local products, including homespun cloth, kapok, red and white rattan, chickens and ducks, and livestock. The Planning Committee was not actually short of these things. The main purpose of purchasing local products was to expand the use of circulation coupons. Another purpose was to expand trade with the Li areas—Nanbao Town was on the edge of the Li areas. With a base like Nanbao Town, the transmigrator group’s connection with the Li areas was greatly strengthened. For this reason, Mu Min specially sent Fang Jinghan here to serve as the local Li affairs officer.

Li Mei also came up with an original idea of providing “housekeeping intermediary services” in the cooperative. She found many local women who wanted to earn some extra money to do cleaning and laundry for the single miners. This service soon led to scandals between the long-celibate miners and the nubile young women. This matter was easy to handle: the mining office paid the bride price on behalf of the miner, and the miner married the girl, which became a good story. As for the bride price, it was deducted from the wages in installments.

But then, a few more affairs between miners and local married women caused the local villagers to become furious—no one likes to be cuckolded.

At first, they were angry but dared not speak out. Later, the village elders, seeing that this was “corrupting the morals,” jointly went to the mining office to complain, which finally curbed this trend. Ye Yuming stipulated that from then on, laundry services could only be handled through the Women’s Cooperative, with the wages paid by the cooperative, and the two parties were not allowed to meet. As for cleaning, it could only be done after the miners had gone to work.

Next to the cooperative was an office of the Delong Grain Company. This was opened in consideration of the large amount of circulation coupons that would be circulating locally, to ensure creditworthiness and that coupon holders could exchange them for grain at any time as promised by Delong. Delong had allocated two thousand kilograms of brown rice to the local area as a reserve for redemption. Storing a large amount of grain would not cause a backlog or waste—the miners had to eat anyway.

Another task for Delong was to collect the “reasonable burden” locally. This way, the villages in the Nanbao area only needed to transport their public grain to Nanbao Town to complete their tax payments, saving them the long and arduous journey to Bairen City. It was a measure for the convenience of the people.

Dongmen Chuiyu opened a miners’ service center here, mainly to provide three meals a day for the miners—most of them were single and had no one to cook for them at home. The second floor was the service center’s cafeteria. Besides selling various simple meals, it also sold alcohol and cigarettes. Cigarettes had been included in the Planning Committee’s monopoly list and were currently only sold in 100% “state-owned enterprises,” so Li Mei’s cooperative did not sell them.

The miners’ service center was actually the general logistics manager of the mine. All the logistical needs of the mine were handled by the service center, and it even managed the prostitutes. Most of the miners were bachelors, physically fit, and had strong sexual desires. If there was no outlet for them to vent, they would inevitably cause trouble in the surrounding villages. Dongmen Chuiyu simply implemented the same “yellow ticket” system here as in Dongmen Market—he didn’t even need to mobilize the prostitutes from Dongmen Market to come to Nanbao. Because word had spread that the prostitution business in Lincheng was good, and as long as you got a yellow ticket, you could do business peacefully without being exploited, many prostitutes from other places had already come to Dongmen Market, some even from the mainland. If they all did business in Dongmen Market, it would be an eyesore. It was better to divert some of them to Nanbao.

Because it was stipulated that all prostitutes applying for a yellow ticket had to undergo a physical examination, and those with sexually transmitted diseases had to be treated, the Bairen General Hospital had to set up a special venereal disease treatment clinic in a remote place. This caused the people in the Ministry of Health to complain endlessly—without qualified antibiotics, treating sexually transmitted diseases was very difficult. The pharmaceutical factory had now produced some sample antibiotic drugs for clinical trials, but their efficacy was still quite questionable. For this reason, they had the Guangzhou station kidnap several venereal disease doctors from around Guangzhou to combine Chinese and Western medicine for treatment.

“Having prostitutes can alleviate this problem, but it cannot solve it. In the long run, it is even harmful,” Wu De instructed Ye Yuming. “Not to mention the transmission of venereal diseases—the regular check-ups and treatment by the Ministry of Health are not a panacea.”

“So we still need to find them wives as soon as possible, right?”

“That’s right. One is to encourage the prostitutes to reform. The other is to have some joint activities with the nearby villages. Treat them to good food and drink, hold a market, and show a few movies. When they fall in love, one thing will lead to another.”

“Will the miners be willing to marry prostitutes?”

“When the prostitutes were reformed back then, many of them married workers. This approach should be feasible,” Wu De said. “Of course, we can also give some material encouragement, such as sending some silk and cloth.”

“In this time and space, isn’t chastity highly valued—” Ye Yuming still felt this was unreliable.

“The so-called value of chastity depends on the social class,” Wu De said. “The miners of this time and space are from the poorest class, and they are in constant danger of losing their lives. To be able to settle down and marry a wife, to have a woman to take care of them, is something they would be very satisfied with. How can they care about so many other things! Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t afford the three matchmakers and six rituals, the bride price, and the wedding banquet.”

“So poor people have no right to marry virgins!”

“Haha, Little Ye, to use a not-so-appropriate analogy: in another time and space, if you were worth tens of millions, you could certainly be picky when looking for a girlfriend, look at her appearance, appreciate her figure, and even care about her education—no one with a junior college degree, at least a bachelor’s, and a master’s would be even better. If you were just an ordinary office worker, you wouldn’t have so many requirements—isn’t that so?”

“That sounds really disheartening—” Ye Yuming muttered. “If we hold joint activities, won’t the young men in the nearby villages have objections? The miners will steal all the good girls.”

“It’s not as easy as you say. There won’t be many such cases for now—in Lincheng, the working class has not yet become an enviable class. At least for the girls’ parents, having a miner as a son-in-law has no attraction.”

A rural clinic, jointly run by the Ministry of Health and Runshitang, also came to this building, occupying two storefronts on the ground floor and three rooms on the second floor. Amidst the traditional sounds of gongs and drums and firecrackers, the Nanbao branch of Runshitang, which also served as a clinic, opened for business. Liu San sent two pharmacy clerks to be stationed here, dispensing common Chinese medicinal herbs and patent medicines. There would also be a weekly visit from the medical staff of the Ministry of Health for巡诊. Although this clinic was simple and primitive, it was the first time the Nanbao area had a health service institution.

The miners’ recreational life was also considered: the miners’ service center set up a rugby field. This sport, which required the least equipment, was now a sports item promoted everywhere by the transmigrator group. The rugby field was usually for playing ball, and when the mobile movie screening team came, they would show movies here. Xi Yazhou was very enthusiastic about this plan. Of course, he did not forget that Nanbao was a key facility that needed to be defended. He specifically conducted military training for the miners and issued them standardized long spears and sabers made by the machine factory. With the addition of rattan safety helmets, this miner militia was not only capable of self-protection but could also suppress riots if necessary.

Finally, He Ying also came here, mysteriously inspected a certain plot of land, and then enclosed it—this was the future church.

The smooth mining of the Nanbao mine relieved the transmigrator group’s mineral supply. From Nanbao, four-wheeled heavy-duty ox-carts continuously transported lignite, peat, as well as gypsum, kaolin, and limonite. Even the temporarily unusable coal gangue and various miscellaneous stones could be used in construction and road building.

With the mining of kaolin, it meant they could make their own porcelain. In the past, some special-shaped porcelain needed for industry and daily use by the transmigrator group had been fired by export porcelain kilns along the coast of Fujian. Although it could generally meet the demand, transportation was very troublesome.

Huang Tianyu’s great harvest from his trip to Foshan with Liu San was the recruitment of many ceramic craftsmen. Although many of the craftsmen were old and weak, they were very experienced in making and firing porcelain. With this group of people, the production efficiency of Xiao Bailang’s ceramic kiln improved by leaps and bounds. Many special-shaped and oversized pieces that were previously difficult to make could now be fired. But these were still just glazed earthenware. Without kaolin, they could not make the glaze for porcelain.

The kaolin mined from Nanbao was crushed and washed before being transported to the ceramic factory. Xiao Bailang gave the drawings of the flush toilet to a few of his old kiln workers.

The few of them looked at it for a long time without saying a word. After a long while, the oldest kiln worker, named Li Jinquan, spoke:

“Chief, we’ve never made this before. We can make large pieces, but there are some holes inside. I’m afraid we can’t make it in one go.”

“How long will it take to make it?”

The few kiln workers put their heads together and discussed for a while, saying it would take two or three weeks.

“Alright, you can start making it,” Xiao Bailang was not interested in making flush toilets and couldn’t be bothered to ask about it. He simply left it to the native workers to do. After all, when it came to the experience of firing large porcelain, the transmigrators were certainly not as rich as the native kiln workers of this time and space.

Mo Xiao’an, however, was full of interest in this thing. He came to see the progress almost every day and would occasionally offer suggestions. But he was a complete layman and was of no use except to encourage the kiln workers.

But after a few days of tinkering, the things they fired were not what they were supposed to be at all. Obviously, Xiao Bailang’s concept that a flush toilet was just a more complex large piece of porcelain was inaccurate. In the end, he had to consult the Great Library and look for information.

Upon checking, he found that the technology for sanitary ware was actually quite complex, especially the surface glazing, which had a very high technical content. Of course, the transmigrators did not need such high-grade surface glaze. It was enough if it could be kept clean and was easy to wash.

Taking the simplest manufacturing process of sanitary ware as an example, most sanitary ware is made by injection molding. The most technically difficult part for the transmigrator group was the preparation of the special molds. The quality of the sanitary ware’s molding mainly depended on the manufacturing level of the molds.

Xiao Bailang made several trips to the machine factory and had special molds for sanitary ware made there. After the molds were transported back to the ceramic factory, the gypsum was made into a slurry and poured into the fixed molds, allowing it to slowly solidify in the molds due to its gelling properties. After some of the water evaporated, the plaster model of the product was made.

The raw material was made into a slurry and then poured into the plaster model. Using the water absorption property of the plaster model, the water in the slurry close to the mold wall was absorbed to form a certain layer of mud. Then the remaining slurry was poured out from the model. The mud layer attached to the mold wall separated from the model due to dehydration and shrinkage, thus forming a green body, which was the semi-finished product.

The green body was slowly dehydrated and dried under certain conditions. In a modern factory, there is temperature-controlled drying equipment. In Lincheng, they could only use natural drying methods, letting the air and wind take away the moisture in a special sunshade.

After the green body was dried, the key process was glazing. Factories generally used the method of spraying glaze slurry. There were no such conditions here, so Xiao Bailang adopted the dipping method. The green body was placed on a special rack and repeatedly dipped in the glaze slurry until a layer of glaze was firmly attached to the surface. Not only the exterior of the sanitary ware was glazed, but also the interior. The interior glazing was not for aesthetics, but to facilitate the discharge of waste and prevent the adhesion and coagulation of dirt.

After glazing came the firing in the kiln. The first finished product was soon fired, but due to temperature control problems, the shape was somewhat deformed. After several improvements, they finally fired a product that was acceptable. Li Jinquan was very puzzled when he learned that the thing they had spent so much effort firing was actually just a toilet—he really couldn’t understand why a toilet had to be so complicated and made of white porcelain. When Mo Xiao’an came to see the finished product, he mustered the courage to ask.

“Because it can make money, and it’s clean and hygienic.”

Li Jinquan understood what “clean and hygienic” meant, but he couldn’t understand the concept of “making money”—how much could a toilet, no matter how well made, sell for?

“In Guangzhou, what’s the most luxurious toilet like?”

This question made the kiln workers look at each other. They were poor and mostly relieved themselves on the street or in the fields. It was already good enough to have a chamber pot at home.

Li Jinquan was the oldest and had seen more. He recalled seeing one in the sedan chair of a sea merchant who had come to the kiln to look at porcelain about ten years ago. It was red lacquered and gilded, with brass hoops polished to a shine.

“That’s it. The rich always have an endless pursuit of life’s pleasures. Since they can make red lacquered and gilded toilets, we can also make them out of white porcelain—in Australia, a good porcelain toilet is worth a lot of money!” At this point, he recalled his feeling of powerlessness in a famous foreign brand’s sanitary ware specialty store, where a toilet sold for twenty thousand—at that time, his annual salary was only twenty thousand.

“We understand. But—” a younger kiln worker raised a question. Since it’s a toilet, why isn’t the bottom sealed, but has a strange curved pipe? Wouldn’t the waste flow out like that? How would it be used?