I want to be emperor

Chapter 849 Defense Between Men and Women
At the afternoon of the New Year's Eve, many places in the city are already relatively deserted, and most people are already busy preparing the New Year's Eve dinner at home to accompany their families.

But at this time, Ximen Street was busier than usual.

When Sun Xu and Ms. Meng went to Ximen Street together, they saw lights and festoons everywhere, hanging red lanterns and couplets, and businesses with various blessings on them. Just come to these people hanging out.

Sun Xu was the same as them, with a smile involuntarily on the corner of his mouth.

This was the first time he felt the New Year's atmosphere in Songjiang City, a strange city.

Before this, whether it was a few days ago, or even today's New Year's Eve... Although many people also said that it was Chinese New Year, in fact, Sun Xu didn't have much actual feelings, and more on the contrary. Aroused homesickness.

Because many people, like Sun Dawei, took advantage of the long Spring Festival and went home to celebrate the New Year, but he, Sun Xu, couldn't go back because of work...

In the past few days, especially after taking the night bus back after working overtime at night, Sun Xu always had a different thought.

I miss my family more and more!

Moreover, it hasn't been long since Sun Xu came to Songjiang City. Apart from communicating with a few colleagues in Anhua Textile Company, he doesn't even know many people outside, let alone friends.

There was a little boy Sun Dawei before, but after Sun Dawei returned home during the Chinese New Year, he was full of plans... The only person he knew outside the company was Miss Meng...

Well, in fact, he and Ms. Meng are not familiar... So far, he doesn't even know Ms. Meng's specific name, and he doesn't know much about her work, except that she works in a department store.

After all, they didn't have serious chats between them a few times. Most of the time, they met when they were going in and out of the house. Usually, they just said hello, and rarely said a few words that were not nutritious.

That is to say, I invited Ms. Meng out to buy new year's goods today, and the two of them were on the road for [-] minutes... We couldn't just say nothing along the way, and Sun Xu wanted to chat, so the two of them talked a lot ...but the topic is still limited to some superficial things.

Is this a friend?

Sun Xu himself is very clear...not counting, at least not for now.

In the huge city of Songjiang, Sun Xu, who can't find anyone to talk to after work, actually can't feel the happy atmosphere of the Spring Festival... So when he arrived at Ximen Street, Sun Xu even had a A sudden feeling: Yes, it’s Chinese New Year!
"It's really lively, it looks like you're here at the right time!" Sun Xu said with a smile, and at the same time slightly turned his head to look at Miss Meng next to him.

Ms. Meng's expression was much calmer, and she didn't look too surprised. After hearing Sun Xu's words, Ms. Meng also turned her head and echoed: "Yes, it's quite lively, even more lively than the department store where I work. It's lively."

"The department store should have been very busy years ago, otherwise, Ms. Meng, you wouldn't have had the annual holiday until today!"

Ms. Meng said: "It's okay, our department store usually doesn't have many customers. Although there were more customers a year ago, it's far less lively than here."

Sun Xu said: "That's true. The things you sell in your department store are all luxury accessories, and it's normal that there are not many customers!"

On the way here just now, although the two of them didn't have a deep conversation, even some superficial polite words were enough for the two to get to know each other better.

Ms. Meng herself said that she works in Huidong Department Store on Huidong Road, and works in the jewelry store in the department store.

Although Sun Xu has never been to Huidong Department Store, he has also heard that it is a very high-end shopping place... In fact, the department stores that have just appeared in recent years are basically high-end shopping places. Even if the goods in the market are some daily necessities, they are very expensive, and more are all kinds of luxury accessories.

How should I put it, based on Sun Xu's annual income, he can become a customer of these department stores by adding a zero after it, and he can only consume some luxury accessories in the traditional sense, such as clothes, jewelry and so on.

As for daily necessities... Just like the later generations, who the hell can afford the top luxury tissues if they are not rich!

It's normal for an ordinary salaryman to grit his teeth and buy an LV bag. There are a lot of girls like this in the subways and even buses in big cities!
But you asked them to buy LV tissues...not so stupid, or not so rich.

The daily necessities in those high-end department stores in the contemporary Great Chu Empire are almost similar concepts... High income in the conventional sense cannot afford it...

Well, among the kitchen utensils in the house, the porcelain bowls are produced by the Jingdezhen Imperial Porcelain Factory used by the royal family... This porcelain factory, just by the name, knows that it is high-end enough... In an imperial country like the Great Chu Empire, and the country As well as those linked to the royal family, terms such as empire and imperial use are not something that can be used casually.

The Jingdezhen Imperial Porcelain Factory is one of the special cases. After the establishment of the Great Chu Empire, it also took over the Jingdezhen Imperial Porcelain Factory that produced porcelain for the Yuan and Ming royal families. However, it did not carry out direct official management and operation, but carried out commercialization , under the management of the Royal Assets Section.

In addition to providing the royal family with imperial porcelain in a timely manner, they also produce and sell porcelain to the outside world. However, in order to maintain the royal style, they never set foot in ordinary porcelain, and take the top-level route...Let’s not talk about technology, let’s talk about porcelain anyway. They dare not say the best, but they are definitely top-notch. They are good at blue and white, red in glaze, multicolored and so on. In recent years, they have started to work on enamel.

This thing is integrated with traditional calligraphy and painting, with various and exquisite patterns. At first glance, it looks like a pair of exquisite paintings or calligraphy, and its artistic value is quite high.

Of course... These so-called porcelain technologies are actually just like that... A few decades ago, porcelain technology might have been considered a relatively high-end thing, but today, with the continuous advancement of the wave of industrialization, various technologies continue to develop. The porcelain industry in Shanghai has already completed industrialization, and all kinds of porcelain produced with modern technology far surpass traditional porcelain in terms of quality and color... It’s a pity, when industrial porcelain was doing well, Jingdezhen Imperial Porcelain Factory I started to talk about art with you again...

Not to mention Jingdezhen imperial porcelain, technology, art, etc., but the price is definitely the most expensive in the world!

A set of broken bowls for eating costs hundreds of Chu Yuan, plus dishes, soup bowls, soup bowls, and spoons...it can cost hundreds of Chu Yuan...Let’s not talk about ordinary high-income groups. It was Wang Liqing, the boss of Anhua Textile Company. He was reluctant to buy such expensive junk...so his wife bought all the daily necessities in their house!

And other daily necessities in Huidong Department Store are also extremely expensive. The chopsticks are made of top materials such as top sandalwood or ivory, and then they are handcrafted by a so-called top craftsman... Nima, ivory is okay, But using wood to make chopsticks, you tell me about handwork... Is there a difference between the chopsticks you make by hand with various woodworking tools, and the chopsticks that are directly cut, sharpened, and ground by a machine?

Even the iron pot used for his mother's cooking... It is also a personal signature model of a well-known and highly skilled master blacksmith in Foshan... This thing really needs to be used for quality inspection, and it has not yet been measured by Hantian Machinery Co., Ltd. The iron pot produced is good!
But...the luxury jewelry industry has never paid attention to the so-called technology or quality, only pay attention to whether the quality is high enough!

Do not pursue the best, but seek the most expensive!
That's why Jingdezhen Royal Porcelain Factory, with negligible shipments, can earn millions of Chu Yuan in revenue every year, and its profits are super high.

So don't look at this as a porcelain factory that stays in the stage of manual production (well, it's only in name, but actually still uses a lot of modern machinery and equipment), and its actual profitability is much stronger than many large companies in the Royal Assets Division.

The main reason is that the profit is too high. In the revenue of several million, the net profit can reach [-] to [-]%.

Enterprises earning several million a year are actually not many in the entire empire... Such enterprises are also top-notch cash cows in the royal property department, and they are highly valued by the higher authorities.

Otherwise... why do you think that the royal family of the Great Chu Empire has been steadfast for more than [-] years, only using the porcelain from the factory, not only for their own use, but sometimes rewarding the courtiers by excuses... two days and two days Just spread the word!

Even Luo Zhixue was not exempt, and personally wrote the adverb to the factory: the best porcelain in the world.

On the one hand, it is their own property anyway, and the daily necessities of the royal family are basically provided directly by the enterprises and manors under the Royal Property Division, and basically do not purchase from outsiders.

On the other hand, this broken factory is really making money!

A net profit of several million a year is not a small amount, which is enough to support the Royal Assets Division to continue to invest in some large and important basic industries, and the project has been developed.

This is already worthy of the royal family personally acting as the spokesperson for the factory!

Of course, on the other hand, it is precisely because of the strong support of the royal family and acting as the spokesperson in person that Jingdezhen Royal Porcelain Factory can secure its reputation as the world's number one luxury porcelain brand, attracting the pursuit of countless rich and powerful businessmen.

What, many people would rather spend a lot of money to eat with the same type of porcelain as the emperor!
Of course, in fact, more people buy this top-level luxury porcelain and are not willing to use it, but use it as a decoration or collection or as a gift.

And Huidong Department Store sells these messy but extremely expensive things.

Naturally, there are not many customers for this kind of high-end product... Even if the traffic is slightly larger at the end of the year, it will not be full of people like Ximen Street.

Sun Xu and Ms. Meng merged into the crowd, and went in and out of different stores to buy some New Year's goods, but both of them were single... The so-called New Year's goods were not very popular.

The left and right are just buying some better ingredients, but the quantity is still not much... In addition, I bought some festive things for couplets.

There are not many things to buy, and it is not the point. The point is to go shopping and experience the atmosphere of the Chinese New Year.

For Sun Xu personally, neither of the above is actually important. Being able to walk around and chat with Ms. Meng already makes him very satisfied.

They walked around until the evening, and then they walked back with their things. Although there were not many things to buy, Sun Xu still took the initiative to take Ms. Meng's things and help her carry them.

Sun Xu thought to himself, I can't let a delicate young girl walk away with a big bag of things.

After Ms. Meng refused for a while, she didn't continue to refuse.

On the way back, there were fewer pedestrians and carriages in some commercial streets or main roads than when they came, so that the streets were empty.

But other places are not quiet!

Because when passing through the streets of some residential areas, you can see many children wearing new clothes running around having fun on the street and setting off firecrackers.

Although the weather is cold, it can't stop the children's enthusiasm for the New Year.

During Chinese New Year, children are always the happiest!
While chatting on the road, while walking back, Sun Xu talked about working overtime every day during this period, saying that the new equipment was complicated and delicate, and it was very troublesome to install and debug, and also talked about some interesting things about other colleagues.

And Ms. Meng was listening most of the time, and occasionally said a few things about her work, saying that the clients she came into contact with in her daily life were actually not the real rich and powerful women. Instead, most of them were women from ordinary high-income families. There are also many middle-class families with female dependents.

Among these women, there are all kinds of strange things!

But she has never seen a real wealthy family member.

As for male customers... This has nothing to do with her. Under the defense of men and women, top-level jewelry stores strictly guard against men and women. Male customers have reception occasions and male clerks to entertain them, while female customers have special reception places and female clerks. entertain.

Are you messing around?
You are shameless, but other customers are even more shameless!
After all, they are here to buy jewelry and various luxuries. What they pay attention to is taste and style, and by the way, they are close to the upper class... Well, at least they think so...

People in the upper class still pay attention to the defense of men and women, and women don’t show their faces in public. If you don’t play with men and women in a luxury jewelry store, you will stuff your customers with a beautiful woman or a handsome guy, and your customers will not be happy.

I think you look down on people with a dog's eyes... you think of your brother/sister as those low-level mud legs who don't understand the defense between men and women, right?
My brother/sister is a decent family with a monthly income of tens or hundreds of dollars, so who do I look down on?

Although Huidong Department Store is a top luxury jewelry store, but Ms. Meng sells jewelry, and the main customers of jewelry and jewelry are ordinary women from high-income families or even women from middle-class families with good income...

As for the female relatives in the real top rich families, although their spending power is amazing, the number is very small in general... After all, there are not many rich and powerful in the upper class.

Moreover, these high-class female family members occasionally go out to buy things, and the female store managers are the high-level female managers in department stores who have to take care of them specially, and there is nothing wrong with her, Ms. Meng, an ordinary clerk.

The social atmosphere in the Great Chu Empire these days is in a state of transition from a traditional feudal society to an industrial capitalist society. It is somewhat open, but not completely open...

Although the social atmosphere has become much more open compared to the previous dynasty, it still retains a strong traditional social atmosphere. The real top-class upper-class women will not show their faces easily...

Not to mention work and the like, even if you go shopping, there are very few people.

Even if you go, you will contact the store in advance and ask the store to close the store for special reception, and only female personnel will be used for reception.

This is why Huidong Department Store needs female staff like Ms. Meng. You can't use male staff to receive high-society female customers!

Those upper-class families are still very particular about the so-called incompatibility between men and women...

Women in the upper class still pay attention to not showing their faces. On the contrary, women in the lower society generally work... Even in the pre-Ming period, women at the bottom have always been the main labor group. You would never think that the majority of tenants, small Women in farmers' families don't need to farm...

But now, a large number of women at the bottom of society, including rural women and women at the bottom of the city, are working in factories in large numbers.

In a labor-intensive industry such as the textile industry, there are a large number of female workers... For example, Anhua Textile Company has more than 800 workers in their factory, and more than 400 of them are female workers... Low wages, obedient, hard-working, not causing trouble, etc. These are the advantages that they are favored by capitalists.

Therefore, women at the bottom of society, whether they farm or work in factories, or work in some service industries in the tertiary industry, such as salespersons, are very common in the contemporary Great Chu Empire.

Even in traditional feudal dynasties, this kind of thing is very common... For example, working women like tofu Xishi in literary creation have real social backgrounds.

Women at the bottom have always been working, and women at the top don't need to work... This has nothing to do with the social atmosphere, it's just that the family conditions are different.

The social atmosphere of women in the Great Chu Empire was gradually liberalized, which was mainly reflected in the women in middle-class families.

Some family conditions are not bad. For example, in Songjiang City, the family’s monthly income is [-] to [-] Chu Yuan, and the girls in the family are also in government-run girls’ schools, or some middle-class women who have received a certain degree of education in private girls’ schools. Because of family financial pressure, In other words, due to factors such as self-seeking, I have gradually started to work in the society, mainly engaged in some decent-looking jobs with good income.

For example, there are quite a lot of female tutors in the society, basically they are this kind of people, and in the department stores that have sprung up in recent years, the salesgirls who specialize in serving female customers are almost all this kind of people... For example, Ms. Meng.

But if you let them go to the factory and go straight to the assembly line, they will definitely not do it... Ms. Meng also went to a girls' school anyway.

When chatting just now, Sun Xu discovered that this Miss Meng went to a local government-run girls' school in her hometown of Fuzhou. Although she only went to a high school, it was not bad.

In contemporary times, there are not many women who can complete six years of elementary school. They are basically girls from middle-class families and above, and girls from lower-class families don't even count on...

The inclusive education in the Great Chu Empire focused on the three-year elementary school stage at the beginning... In the past ten years, efforts have been made to promote the high-primary stage, and strive to complete the six-year inclusive education.

As for the middle school stage, it has not been included in the scope of inclusive education for the time being.

As for women's education, it was even later. In the early days, there were few government-run girls' schools, and some of them were for the rich and powerful. For example, Jinling Girls' Middle School, the students in it are all girls from powerful families, and girls from ordinary wealthy families. Can't squeeze in.

It was not until around 35 years of Chengshun that the Great Chu Empire promoted government-run girls' schools on a large scale. The development was relatively late, and the overall scale was not too large.

In addition, there are still some traditional bad habits in the society that favor boys over girls, and women's lack of talent is virtue. Therefore, it is relatively rare for girls in ordinary families to receive a complete six-year elementary school education...

(End of this chapter)