Harry Potter’s Morning Light

   Chapter 2097 Flower War (5)

  Compared with the dazzling variety of commodities in the 20th century, the commodities exported by ancient China have long remained in a small number, namely silk, porcelain, tea and paper.

   Paper was exported for a short period of time and in small quantities. Tea only began to be exported in the Song Dynasty, and only after the British-dominated West began to drink tea, tea became a major export.

   After removing the paper and tea leaves, only porcelain and silk can be regarded as commodity exports. The status of these two materials on the Maritime Silk Road and the Land Silk Road is different. The main means of transportation in the Western Regions are camels and horses, so light silk is more popular than porcelain, and the weight requirements at sea are not strict, because in the Tang and Song Dynasties, large ships with four masts, large keels, and amazing drafts have been produced. .

  At the same time, ships need a certain amount of ballast at sea, and porcelain happens to meet the requirements of sales and durability, so porcelain has become the best product for maritime trade.

People in the Tang Dynasty did not have a good grasp of enamel, and in the Song Dynasty, there was a significant improvement. In the future, there were "official kiln" porcelains that sold sky-high prices at auctions in the future. They were produced by JDZ in Jiangxi, and happened to be the Admiral of the Guangzhou Navy." home".

   However, the porcelain shipped from JDZ to Guangzhou is often unfinished, and the aesthetics of China is very different from that of Westerners. Items used by newlyweds often have patterns such as butterflies, lotuses, and magpies in pairs, while Westerners like flowers, figures, and insects.

Guangdong has the habit of copying calligraphy and painting. Ceramic factories ship a large number of pure porcelain to Guangdong. European buyers can ask porcelain workers to color them according to their favorite styles. However, the plants painted by these potters are often anatomically incompatible. The proportions, and sometimes the stamens and pistils are mistaken, and the leaves are painted more and less, and the birds are not satisfactory, so some people came to Lin Gua to learn Western painting.

Lang Shining planned to set up an art academy in the capital, but neither the emperor nor the ministers agreed. Instead, Lin Gua, a studio that was not considered an "academy", accepted many students. The purpose of their learning of painting was not to innovate, but to copy as much as possible to suit the client. They were also indifferent to the changes in the studio, and within a few days the studio became messy again.

During this time, Nick was busy with "clearing the document". In the Ming Dynasty, Matteo Ricci was able to walk freely in Guangdong, Jiangxi, Nanjing and BJ. Except for the period in the early Qing Dynasty, the missionaries had almost no freedom of movement. None of them can move freely, let alone Nick.

Many people who learn painting know anatomy, just like the Academy of Fine Arts that Georgiana met in Rouen, next door is the medical school, in order to understand the structure of the human body, Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance painters dissected a lot of corpses, so Nick can Become the priest's assistant, but this identity still cannot be unimpeded in the land of China. Fortunately, Nick rescued the admiral's daughter, and the admiral is considered a powerful person among the Manchus. With his protection, Nick can get a "passport" to continue traveling. .

No matter whether the priest accepts the gift or not, the "ceremony" is still to come. The thirteen merchants who came to the hospital last time set up a banquet on the boat, not only Jinhua ham, but also Bordeaux red wine. big table.

Although Nick doesn't understand Chinese well, the people at the wine table push the glass to change the glass and say things that are repeated. For example, if you "offend" you need to answer "don't dare", if someone is too flattering, you need to answer "don't you dare, don't you dare?" I know which arrogant French writer said "Damn" is the French language background, anyway, Nick has learned what "comfort" is in a daze.

   Nick will stay in Guangzhou for a while before completing the formalities. He plans to take advantage of this time to find a boat to go to Xiamen, and take the opportunity to take a tour around Macau.

But before that he had to spend "tonight", because the boatmen moored their boat beside a gorgeous flower boat, and through the half-open porthole, they could see the banquet of another table in the banquet hall. Delicious food was also on display. The difference between them was that the people at the table were surrounded by seven or eight beautifully dressed women with roses and orange blossoms in their jet-black hair. Nick had also traveled all over the place, and he understood what they were doing, but their peeping still aroused the displeasure of the diners inside, and they let down the curtains.

Nick's boat quickly approached another flower boat, and the whole process went smoothly. The owner of the flower boat came over with several other women with heavy makeup, but they were not like those who had just seen through the porthole. Unfettered.

  Nick is very restrained. He knows that what those women are doing doesn't mean he has been to that kind of place. Anyway, his appearance will make the girls who accompany him laugh.

   Then he ran into Lin Gua by chance, he was having a "love affair" with a few other "talented" friends, and Nick took the opportunity to leave the occasion.

From the first contact, Lin Gua is the kind of enthusiastic and polite painter. He has many friends, one of whom has heard the news that the Admiral's daughter's eyes have returned to health, and then chatted about who The most likely to become the Admiral's "fast son-in-law", they mentioned a name called Cao Xi, who is a Han Chinese and also works in the Navy.

   Later, Nick passed the night full of fat and powder completely carelessly, and began to prepare to leave Guangzhou the next day.

  He found a captain surnamed Yao at the dock. If conditions allowed, he planned to go to Xiamen next week. Nick asked him what the conditions were, and Captain Yao told him that Zheng and his people had gone to sea.

Zheng Yi is a famous pirate in Fujian. It is said that when Kangxi recaptured Taiwan, some of Zheng Chenggong's remnants flowed to the Pearl River Estuary as pirates. They were divided into six gangs: red, yellow, blue, white, black and purple. Zheng Yi was the leader of the Red Flag Gang. He has been committed to unifying the various branches of the Pearl River Estuary into a pirate alliance with him as the leader, and the Qing army has been encircling and suppressing them.

   The tenure of the Admiral of the Navy that Nick met before is about to expire, and the new Governor has not yet arrived. It was just when the blue and yellow were not accepted that Zheng Yicai planned to find this opportunity to make a big fight.

Nick and Captain Yao agreed on an approximate time and price, and then went to find an interpreter. In the evening, when he was walking alone in the bustling streets of Guangzhou, an Englishman suddenly found him, and the man handed the business card to him. Nick.

   He was an employee of the East India Company, he represented the British Admiralty, and he hoped that Nick would draw a map of the Chinese coast for him.

The maps used by Europeans at this time were all relied on by the British geographer Alexander Dowling. to the exact place name.

  Nick was not so worried that the British navy was plotting with this map, but rather that he was worried that the employee of the East India Company was a liar, and he did not immediately agree to the request of the passerby.

   After returning to the hospital, he asked the priest to help him. He needed an interpreter. About two days later, a northerner in his fifties and wearing torn clothes was brought to Nick's room by a servant. The man looked at Nick very critically for a long time, and then handed Nick a dirty old piece of paper.

   This thing is called "Bai Tie". If it can be newer and neater, it will have his name and ancestry written on it. This "juren" was originally from Fujian, and his father used to be a magistrate. He went to Beijing to take the exam three times, trying to get a jinshi, but he failed repeatedly. A fourth attempt was made, but he was penniless except for a few friends who promised to help.

   He was reluctant to work as a coolie, because no matter whether he was a recruiter or a scholar, he usually made a living by copying and writing for others on the street, but he fell ill some time ago, so he went to the priest's free hospital to see a doctor.

   He could speak English, but not as well as a translator, but Nick didn't have a better choice at that time. The old man thought for a while, and asked Nick for a decent summer dress that fit his identity. This request was not excessive. Nick gave him three Mexican eagles, then he walked out, and an hour later he came back, under his arm. With a package, it was the clothes he bought with three Yingyang. He spent 2.25 silver dollars for this suit. After speaking, Juren wanted to return the remaining money to Nick, but Nick asked him to keep it for himself.

  Since then, "Juren" has often come to the hospital, and Nick can get a lot of information from him for a few small coins, which many Chinese people don't know about, including the case of Soul Calling 30 years ago.

   He was preparing for the exam in Zhili at the time, but before he explained in detail, he had to talk to Nick about the customs of China. He vowed to reshape Nick and become a member of the "Scholar".

"Confucianists" don't believe in those weird and chaotic things. Laojuren has a critical spirit, and even denounced the absurd practices of some compatriots, "Could it be true that hanging wormwood and calamus in front of the door on Lunar New Year's Eve can really exorcise evil spirits? You can't move the broom on the first day of the new year, otherwise you will sweep away your luck?"

But this literati told Nick about "ghosts" in a serious tone. Ghosts are different from the "skills" boasted by warlocks and fortune-tellers, nor are they the bodhisattvas enshrined in temples, let alone the ones boasted by monks and Taoists. It is the tyrant and the woman who harmed the country and the people listed in the history books are the incarnations of ghosts.

   "Ghost", ghost, he didn't do anything wrong, and he didn't panic when he knocked on the door in the middle of the night. Not only was Lao Juren not afraid of ghosts knocking on the door, but he also lived in a house where a hanged ghost used to be, and for nothing else, the rent was cheap.

Nick thought that Lao Juren was like those who hunted witches in the Middle Ages, but Lao Juren was drinking tea with Nick and wrote two words on the table, "Witch" and "Gu", and then Lao Juren asked Nick, "You?" Have you heard of the Gu technique?"

   (end of this chapter)