Crossing the famine, I am a poor fish, and my descendants have to work hard

The meal ended with hypocritical responses and conversations.

Basically, Lan Ying was the one who took care of everything, and she was responsible for eating.

I have to say, the food in this restaurant is quite good. I will bring my children and grandchildren here for a meal someday.

After eating, he went to the kitchen to ask for some food for Lan Ying and Zhang Qingyan.

After they all finished eating, they said goodbye and went home.

"Huh, socializing is really tiring."

Zhang Qingyan sighed in the carriage.

Although she had attended all the courses with Grandma Kong, she was essentially still a village woman who had never seen the world. Suddenly, she became nervous when facing so many wives and daughters of dignitaries.

Fortunately, Lan Ying is smart, otherwise Zhao Yuanzhen would have to deal with it on her own.

On the third day after the storytelling shop opened, Zhao Yuanzhen did not go to the shop.

She is going to start training masters of engraving and printing.

Compared with current machine printing, movable type printing is a very troublesome technology, but it is one of the four great inventions that amazed the world, and it has extraordinary honor in this era.

Zhao Yuanzhen has already customized the engravings for more than 20 books and comic books.

It is an iron engraving.

Moreover, the texts of these 21 books basically cover all the fonts that can be used.

So in the future, you can just print the movable type templates on these engravings.

The movable type printing uses yellow mud, which is similar to the mud used to make bricks. The mud is mixed with water and then stomped evenly.

Finally, it is wrapped and aged for 3 months. This process is called aging, and it is to prevent it from cracking during the later firing.

She didn't have any stale yellow mud, and the weather was cold now, so it was not suitable for making clay, and she hadn't prepared it in advance.

I spent 1 point and bought a ton of aged yellow mud in the mall.

Use wooden sticks to make squares with a side length of 1 cm, and roll the yellow mud into small mud balls with a diameter of about 1 cm.

Take out the engraving plate, place the square wooden frame on the iron engraving plate, position it properly, and press the yellow mud ball on it.

Then use a wooden block the same size as the inner side of the square and press it in hard, so that when it is poured out, you will have small squares with words on them.

Repeat this step for all the characters, and let each small clay block dry in the shade. It is worth noting that it should not be dried too dry.

Just get rid of some of the moisture.

Then find curved tiles and put the small clay blocks with engravings in a kiln to burn. You can use a charcoal kiln, which must be sealed to prevent the entry of oxygen. Use small branches and firewood, and the temperature only needs to reach about 800 degrees.

After slowly firing for half a day, the small piece of clay with the inscription becomes a pottery block, which looks a bit like coarse pottery and a bit like a small brick.

Put the fired pottery blocks into a large vat or basin and soak them in water.

It is worth noting that if your engraving is a concave negative text, then the small clay blocks you have copied will need to be copied and engraved again with clay blocks before they can become raised positive text.

It is the difference between negative and positive writing.

Fortunately, what Zhao Yuanzhen customized was a raised positive engraving plate, so she only needed to replicate it with a small piece of clay.

Soak the small clay blocks for engraving, put them into a large pot, add millet and angelica, and use them to fill the gaps in the clay blocks to make the printed characters smooth.

Finally, clean the pottery blocks, polish them flat on all sides, and then sort and place them.

This makes it easier to pick up characters when printing and plate making.

Use a wooden frame to make a book-sized plate, and arrange the engraved pottery blocks according to the content of the book.

Put rosin, beeswax and paper ash in a small pot, heat them and melt them, then pour them on the plate to fix the type blocks for easier printing.

After typesetting and fixing the characters, press them flat with a thick wooden board and start applying ink with a coarse-bristled brush.

After applying ink, lay the paper neatly on the plate, use a flat object to carefully press and print, print the fonts, take the paper down one by one, and hang them up to dry.

The last step is cutting and binding. After binding, it becomes a book.

Zhao Yuanzhen gathered together her family members and the nine masters who wanted to learn engraving.

After explaining the technique of movable type printing, they were then asked to start making various molds.

Qian Xiaohui and other female relatives don't need to do it themselves, they just need to know how to make it.

Lan Ying also studied very hard.

The three sons had to learn together, because it was their own business that they must learn.

Zhao Yuanzhen watched and directed from the side.

Correct any mistakes in a timely manner.

"Mom, it turns out that books are so easy to obtain. I thought it was very difficult!"

Zhang Xinbai sighed.

Zhao Yuanzhen: We may have a misunderstanding about simplicity and trouble.

On the first day, I started to copy the characters from small clay blocks, and then dried them in the shade for half a day.

Start drying it in the kiln.

After drying, boil millet and angelica root again to fill the seams. Finally, start typesetting.

Zhao Yuanzhen asked them to start typeset according to the book content, and then nine people checked it one by one to ensure that there were no errors to the greatest extent possible.

After checking that there are no errors, you can add liquids such as paper ash to fix the plate and then apply ink for printing.

Because these are to be printed repeatedly.

All the wooden blocks that have been arranged should be carefully put away after use, photographed and numbered. When printing later, you can just take them out and use them directly.

On the third day, the printed paper was dry.

Start collecting and arranging the pages according to the content. Several people take turns checking again. After there are no problems, start binding them into a book.

Looking at the books they had printed themselves, everyone couldn't hide the pride on their faces.

I never thought that I could print books.

The servants dared not spread the family's skills to others or discuss them in private.

After Zhao Yuanzhen helped to draft one, the rest was handed over to Zhang Xinbai.

Zhang Xinnian was in charge of charcoal burning, and Zhang Xinbai was in charge of printing. Of course, this was only temporary, as they were both slowly training management talents. In the future, these would be gradually handed over to the servants for management.

During these three days, the business of the storytelling shop has been even better.

More and more books were sold. Compared with the old-fashioned storybooks that were popular on the market, these books were novel and well-written, and were highly popular.

The fastest-selling products are four-frame comics.

Because the four-frame comics needed to be painted, they were priced at 2 taels of silver per copy. But even so, only half of the printed copies were sold.

The initial investment was recovered, and more than 100 taels of silver were earned. In less than a year, the money for the shop could be earned back.

It was decided to launch two comic books a month, updating or publishing two new books each for Hong Xiu and Tian Xiang.

Six books a month.

The ones I selected before have not been updated yet, they can be updated slowly.

The engraving of the text is customized for the entire book and can continue to be used.

These templates cost about 800 points.

Zhao Yuanzhen has already started to let the printing master learn how to carve characters. According to the templates she gave, he began to carve fonts and cartoons.

In fact, most of the characters were already on the engraving plates she provided, and they just had to be reassembled, but comic books needed to be engraved one plate at a time.

New books are scheduled to be released on the 15th and 30th of every month.

During these months, before the master had fully mastered the techniques of engraving and painting, Zhao Yuanzhen had to be responsible for engraving these books.

We don't need a storybook, we need a four-frame comic strip.

I have been busy with the shop business for about eight or nine days.

Now I see, it’s already the 17th day of the twelfth lunar month.

The Chinese New Year is coming. It’s time to start preparing for the New Year!

With a wave of his hand, he decided to go shopping in Beijing tomorrow to buy New Year's goods.

Fearing that Qian Xiaohui and Li Zhijuan would be bumpy during their ride in the carriage, Zhang Qingyan prepared several cushions, covered the carriage with thick cushions, and also put a few pillows in it to ensure that they would not bump into anything.

Another four-horse carriage trip.

I went to the shop first to drop off the shopkeeper, and then replenished some of the books that had been sold.

Then we started shopping.

After discussing it, they decided to go to the cloth shop first.

Each servant needed to be given a set of clothes and a pair of shoes. Each person in their family needed two sets of inner clothes, two sets of outer clothes, and two pairs of shoes. This required a large amount of cloth.

Because it was the New Year, the servants also chose coarse cotton cloth.

The men all chose darker colors, while the women chose slightly lighter colors.

Then Zhao Yuanzhen and the others chose their own fabrics.

The inner clothes are all made of fine cotton and light-colored, and the outer clothes are chosen according to one's own preferences.

Zhao Yuanzhen handed over full authority to Zhang Qingyan, asking her to buy materials and design for him, and the others followed suit.

Zhang Qingyan had no choice but to think about the style and choose the fabric according to the color.

There is also a set of inner and outer clothes for Zhang Sandao and Sun Zhang from the old house.

Zhang Qingyan racked her brains to put together 15 sets of clothes based on what she had seen and the album given by her second sister-in-law, as well as each person's actual situation. She only made one set for herself.

One set of clothes for each person is eight feet, and each person has two sets of inner clothes. Together with the two sets in the old house and one set for Zhang Qingyan, there are a total of 17 sets, requiring 17X8 feet=136 feet.

One bolt of cloth is 100 feet, and I got two different colors of light-colored fine cotton cloth directly. This is used for lining.

The number of coats was the same, but several colors were chosen, and finally 8 pieces of muslin of different colors were purchased.

There are 32 servants now, one set for each person, so 32 sets are needed, 32X8=256 feet.

I bought three pieces of cheesecloth directly. I divided them into two colors, 2 pieces of dark color and 1 piece of light color. I can make some socks with the remaining scraps.

Because we buy a lot of each item, shoemakers can just choose from these, which is completely enough.

I asked for some more embroidery thread and sewing thread.

The final reckoning.

总计：浅色细棉布18X200+深色细棉布19X800+粗棉布10X300=+线200文=

When checking out, because it was a good deal, there was no discount, but some embroidery thread was given as a gift.

Qian Xiaohui also bought some cloth for her parents, planning to make them a new set of clothes for the New Year, and she paid for it herself.

Because we have to start cleaning the house on the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month.

Have to go to the grocery store to pick out some more tools.

A group of people went to the grocery store and selected some large brooms, dustpans, and wooden watering cans.

These cost more than two taels of silver.

Seeing that it was almost noon, Zhao Yuanzhen was afraid that Qian Xiaohui and Li Zhijuan would be tired, so she asked the servants to take the cloth back.

They are going to eat out today.

My family has been in Beijing for so long, but they haven’t been to a restaurant in Beijing to have a good meal.

Zhao Yuanzhen led everyone to the restaurant opened by the third prince.

There are seven people in the family plus Zhang Qingyan and Lan Ying, a total of 9 people.

Lan Ying is a clever and smart little girl, diligent and perceptive. Zhao Yuanzhen still likes to teach her.

The owner of the restaurant found a large private room for us.

Everyone started looking at the menu and ordering dishes.

Finally, the appetizers we ordered were: dripping crisps, honey fried kumquats, fried cherries, honey floating crisps,

The main course was: Dongpo tofu, fried meat, jade lung, golden chicken, Dongpo pork, sea bass stew, lotus fish buns, vegetarian steamed duck, snow lotus, ginger and black beans, grilled prawns, grilled lamb,

Staple food: Fungus porridge, plum blossom soup cake, single basket golden milk cake, Ru Rong cake

I ordered another big pot of black tea.

Chatting, drinking tea and eating food.

Slowly savor the delicious food and enjoy the wonderful leisure time.