Chapter 120: The Use of Shells

The sky had just brightened, but the main road was already bustling with pedestrians and freight carts. Dai Dehou still remembered the first time he came to this main road. The lively scene of traffic and horses had truly astonished him; he couldn’t even close his eyes. Even the streets of the famous ancient cities described by storytellers probably couldn’t compare to this Bopu Road in Lingao.

He never expected that the Chiefs would not be satisfied with such a grand road and later built this railway. This was truly a road paved with iron! Iron bars, thicker than an arm, were laid on wooden planks. This sense of extravagance made Dai Dehou’s heart ache every time he looked at it—how much money must this have cost?

The main road and the railway were built adjacent to each other, not far from the Baojia River—the Chiefs had given it the elegant name of Wenlan River, but he was still used to the old name. Dai Dehou looked from a distance through the rows of camphor wood stakes. The rice paddies on the other side were divided into large squares. Further away, on the slopes of Exiang Ridge, now called Gaoshan Ridge, even larger irrigation canals brought water from the Zhaolai Reservoir. A row of bungalows was built next to it, where the Chiefs’ hired farm laborers lived.

During the busy autumn harvest a few days ago, Dai Dehou had worked as a seasonal short-term laborer and had been in the paddy fields of the farm. The fields were full of rice waiting to be harvested, the heavy golden ears looking auspicious.

The Chiefs were truly capable, even managing to grow such good rice.

Dai Dehou was exactly forty years old this year. His ancestors were originally from Lingao, but later the family divided, and his branch went to Danzhou to acquire land and make a living. Although they were not a wealthy family, they were considered well-off. He had a few acres of marginal land and a small shop in Danzhou city that sold dried fish, shrimp, and shellfish. Food and clothing were not a problem, but a few years ago, a typhoon hit Danzhou. Not only did his family suffer heavy losses, but he was also accidentally injured. He had to take out a loan, and for the past few years, life had been tight.

Later, when the Australians arrived in Lingao, everyone initially thought they were just powerful pirates who would leave after causing some trouble. Unexpectedly, in less than a year, the Australians’ road had reached Nanbao. At this time, Danzhou was also in a state of panic. His original lender moved his entire family away and insisted that he repay the loan immediately. He was forced to sell his property at a low price to pay off the debt. Then, the Danzhou market was suddenly flooded with cheap Lingao seafood, and his dried goods business plummeted, causing a huge loss. His family’s livelihood was suddenly gone.

Dai Dehou thought of his relatives in Lingao. Although they only visited during festivals, they could still help a little. He had also heard that the market in Lingao was very prosperous under the rule of the Australian Chiefs, with many business opportunities, so he thought of coming to Lingao to find a living.

Only after arriving did he realize that the seafood sold by the Chiefs here was so cheap that he couldn’t continue his old trade. He had also thought about joining the Chiefs’ enterprise, but these Australian Chiefs were not ordinary pirates. To work for them, one had to adopt their customs, which meant cutting one’s hair and changing one’s clothes.

Dai Dehou’s ancestor, Dai Dingshi, was a Juren of the Song Dynasty and one of the famous figures in the history of Lingao. Although the literary tradition had long since declined in their generation, Dai Dehou still had a bit of a scholarly air about him. Besides, his elderly parents were still alive, and he dared not subject them to such a disgrace.

Fortunately, there was no shortage of work here. Dai Dehou’s family rented a house from a relative. He worked odd jobs, and his parents and wife and children ran a small business. They had enough to eat and wear, but living under someone else’s roof was not a long-term solution.

Not far from a large construction site of half-finished buildings, the train began to slow down and stopped at the station. Then, the station announcement horn sounded.

“Attention passengers, attention passengers, we have arrived at Maniao New District Station. Maniao New District Station has arrived. Passengers getting off here, please line up to disembark! The next stop is Maniao Industrial Zone Station.”

Dai Dehou quickly got off the train. This construction site was where he worked odd jobs at night. It was a staff and family residential area with all apartment buildings. Only staff members were eligible to buy. It was a little over three li back from here, and another two li walk to the place where his whole family was temporarily staying.

At this moment, the day shift had already started. Thousands of workers in blue work clothes were working with great enthusiasm inside. Among them were many men and women in various miscellaneous clothes, either going back and forth between the train station and the construction site, carrying or shouldering building materials just unloaded by the crane at the train station under the direction of the foreman, or doing manual labor like carrying stones and pulling wheelbarrows. These were the odd-job workers like Dai Dehou.

“Group 35, all come over to sign in and prepare for work!” A foreman with a shaved head and wearing blue clothes ran over with a clipboard.

Dai Dehou hurried over. The so-called sign-in was to press a fingerprint on a piece of paper, and then they would receive their tools and start working.

The odd-job workers naturally did simple manual labor, paid on a piece-rate basis. Of course, the wages were not high, not to mention compared to the official staff.

Dai Dehou had been very envious of the treatment of the Chiefs’ official staff since he found out about it. Their income was several times his, and their whole family could afford to eat meat every day—of course, the meat was seafood. Fish was not expensive in Lingao, especially the fish balls, fish sausages, and other things from the seafood factory, which were very cheap. Even a family of odd-job workers like his could afford to buy them every few days since they moved here. The most important thing was that the Chiefs also provided housing for the staff. They only had to pay a small amount of circulation coupons each month, which was much better than his whole family being crammed into a side room of a relative’s house.

There were more and more people in Lingao now. There was a lot of work around Bairen City, and it was easy to make a living, but it was too difficult to buy a house. The Chiefs’ territory was large, and they were building more and more houses, but you had to join their enterprise to be eligible to buy. As for the houses of the local people, the selling price had been soaring since he came to Lingao a year ago. Now, even at a high price, few were willing to sell. If he didn’t get a house soon, he was afraid he would have no place to stand in the future. His family couldn’t live with relatives forever.

The Bopu Seafood Processing Plant began a new day amidst the steam.

The freshest soft-shelled mollusks, collected at dawn, had already been carefully shucked, washed several times with clean water, and sorted into different ceramic jars.

“En, this jar is all oysters. Fifteen percent is enough, that’s one and a half tenths!”

Hu Yicheng watched his apprentice record the numbers, making sure not to mistake the hydrochloric acid concentration. Then he wrote down the date and type, and pasted it on the lid of the ceramic jar before looking away.

Different types of shrimp, crabs, and shellfish, due to their different shell compositions, not only required different concentrations of hydrochloric acid to dissolve, but also different processing times and yields. Therefore, the purchase prices were naturally very different.

Along the wall were ceramic jars where the acid soaking had already begun. Hu Yicheng walked over, looked at the labels, opened one, and stirred the contents with a ceramic rod.

“Hmm, that’s right, no bubbles. This jar can be taken for washing. Wash it several more times!”

Seeing the workers’ clumsy movements, Hu Yicheng couldn’t help but get angry. The quality of the workers at the seafood processing plant was far worse than at the pharmaceutical factory. Only a few of the local managers had B-level diplomas, but they had their own responsibilities. These ordinary workers were mostly uneducated, careless, and unreliable. A few days ago, a worker even drank the hydrochloric acid out of curiosity to see if it was both salty and sour! This forced him to leave the pharmaceutical factory and come here to supervise in person.

The early shift workers dared not even breathe loudly. They began to wash the materials over and over again with clean water. Since there were no acid-base indicators like phenolphthalein or methyl red, they had to wash them several more times to ensure neutrality. The low efficiency and waste of water could not be helped.

Hu Yicheng then went outside, where there were two ceramic steamers, which were boiling the washed raw materials with a four percent sodium hydroxide solution twice.

Then came the most troublesome decolorization process. Due to the unstable supply of potassium permanganate and sodium bisulfite, they had to constantly experiment and improve the process, which had delayed the mass production schedule significantly.

Currently, they were using a four percent dilute hydrochloric acid solution for soaking, stirring continuously for two days, and then sun-drying for one day to obtain a semi-finished product of chitin.

After that, it could be sent to the pharmaceutical factory to be boiled with a forty percent strong alkali for six hours. After washing, dehydration, and drying, they could obtain the urgently needed product, chitosan.

This was a glassy, white, transparent colloidal solution. It was insoluble in water, dilute acids, and dilute alkalis. It had high viscosity, was resistant to sun, heat, and corrosion, did not deliquesce or effloresce, was not afraid of insects, and was wrinkle-proof and shrink-proof.

Due to these properties, it had a wide range of uses. In the textile industry, it could be used as a shaping agent to produce crisp, washable, and non-deformable shirt collars, or as a high-grade color-fixing agent for dyes and coatings. In the power industry, it could be used as a protective film for special wires or as an insulating material. In the paper industry, it was a raw material for high-grade papers such as capacitor paper, banknote paper, and coated paper.

In the food industry, it could be used as a thickener or as a clarifying agent for high-grade white sugar.

Of course, in Lingao, its most important use now was in medicine. Although many reagents were still lacking and it was impossible to produce surgical sutures, it was not difficult to produce hemostatic dressings with gelatin, glycerin, and chitosan. Whether it was the “Engine Operation” in the north, which was in full swing, or the construction sites all over Lingao, major bleeding and other external injuries were very common. These hemostatic dressings could save many lives.

Damn, another jar wasted, Hu Yicheng thought as he returned to the room. Seeing the worker’s panicked expression, he no longer had the energy to scold him.

“Scrap this jar,” Hu Yicheng said wearily, waving his hand.

Due to the lack of modern chemical reagents and primitive testing methods, the production of medicinal chitosan in Lingao was carried out according to the strictest standards. For example, the freshness of the raw materials was subject to extremely strict standards, so the shells could not be transported to the pharmaceutical factory in Bairen City for production. They could only be processed into semi-finished products at the seafood processing plant in the port area. If they did not meet the standards even slightly, they could only be scrapped and sent to the clothing factory or paper mill for waste utilization.

Medicinal use required the freshest shell materials. Iced, dead materials could not be used for the time being. The live shellfish caught by the Lingao Fishery Company in the high seas were usually only the most economically valuable ones, which was too wasteful for pharmaceutical use. Of course, as the process improved and fresher raw materials were no longer needed, the purchase price would naturally be lowered or even stopped.