Daming kill

Chapter 216 Crazy Plants

On the pier, I watched most of the coarse salt on the five boats being quickly unloaded by bags with some strange rotating wooden arms, and then loaded into strange four-wheeled carriages.

Xu Keran clutched the right side of his abdomen and lost his mind for a long time.

Whether it is an artifact of wharf loading or unloading, or a four-wheeled carriage with a large load that can be turned very flexibly, as a businessman, Xu Keran can be sure that they are unprecedented and have great advantages.

Looking at the patches of black smoke in the distance to the south, Xu Keran seemed a little dazed after biting his lips.

Xu Keran's right abdominal pain has been dull for more than half a day, and now it seems to be more painful. Just now, seeing that Li Ping has been holding back by force, he is not ashamed to show it.

Now, he still doesn't care about it.

Finally, he couldn't help but pull Song Baolai, who had personally supervised the installation of all kinds of plants and their seeds and was about to leave, to the side and confirmed again with flickering eyes:

"Brother Song Xian, if you can eat so much salt, you can't be fooled by me! I used my family's credit to make a guarantee to those three families. If you come back from Qizhou and you take out the unpromised amount of fine salt, then you will be fined." I'm screwed."

"Mr. Xu, don't worry about that! No matter how valuable these rough salts are, how much are they worth? We won't do such a stupid thing as ruining our reputation for this little product and then excluding ourselves from all merchants." Song Baolai said helplessly. .

Song Baolai knew that he had another big job.

Although their salt processing technology is relatively mature, it has always been small-scale.For such a large-scale and urgent project, he can only do it himself and light the lamp to boil the oil.

But he could also understand Li Ping's current state of urgency.

The war changes too fast, and the business routes are extremely unstable. Big merchants like Xu Keran are very rare for them.

No one knows how long they can stay in Fuchi and the Yangtze River, no one knows whether there will be merchant ships who dare to come to trade, and no one knows how many times Xu Keran's fleet can go back and forth.

Reducing transaction time, increasing the number of transactions, and maximizing the size of transactions is the most realistic option to ensure they get more supplies.

As for the hidden dangers of confidentiality, we can only wait in the back row now.

For this reason, Li Ping made an order to Xu Keran with a wide variety and a huge demand. The main exchange was fine salt, and there were also a small amount of perfume, lipstick and fine steel.

Fine steel began to appear on their foreign exchange list for the first time, and it was also an easily reminiscent material.

However, the soap was not there.

Due to Zuo Menggeng's poor confidentiality management, coupled with the war and the continuous transfer of more than 1000 miles.Zuo Menggeng's soap making craftsmen fled a lot, and the secret recipe has already been leaked.

At present, many soap-making workshops have sprung up in the vicinity of Nanjing, which not only makes soap no longer rare.

Moreover, because Nanjing has gathered a large number of skilled craftsmen and has abundant raw materials, the soap produced in Nanjing area has quickly achieved unprecedented innovation and over-the-top craftsmanship.

Soap can no longer be used by Li Ping for profit.

"My dear brother, do you have a way to turn a large amount of coarse salt into fine salt?" Xu Keran finally asked after swallowing.

As for fine steel, he didn't dare to ask.

Purification of coarse salt into fine salt can actually be done in the Ming Dynasty.But the cost is huge, the quality is very poor and very unstable, and the output is very scarce.

Li Ping ate a large amount of coarse salt that far exceeded his own consumption, and then sold him fine salt, and also demanded the normalization of a large amount of coarse salt supply, which is really suspicious.

But if it is true, it also means that he has leaned on a cornucopia.

Song Baolai glanced at Xu Keran, who was a little nervous, and played with his taste: "For members of Xu, it's the rule not to ask where you come from. You just need to know that we can guarantee you a stable and sufficient supply of goods. And I also hope that you can keep your mouth shut. You shouldn't Don’t say anything outside.”

Xu Keran was overjoyed at Song Baolai's ambiguous answer, neither admitting nor denying it. He gritted his teeth again and said quickly, "Please rest assured about this, I know it well, and I will definitely not cut off my fortune."

Song Baolai had long noticed that Xu Keran's hand had been covering his right abdomen since he came out of Li Ping's place, and now his face twitched several times just when he was talking.

He asked with some concern: "Do you have a stomachache? Is it important?"

"It's okay, it may be that I didn't eat well last night, and I caught a cold while sleeping on the boat. At first, my stomach hurt a little, and then it spread to my abdomen. I'll go back and drink more water, and it should be fine soon. Brother Song Xian, please worry about it."

"Oh! That's fine, take care, I won't be with you if I have something else to do. I'll treat you to dinner in the evening." Song Baolai nodded without paying attention and decided to leave.

Song Baolai's current thoughts are all on those crops.

He needs to take them back for processing as soon as possible, and many of them need to be replanted to ensure the survival rate of these precious and rare crops.

Be it peppers, corn, peanuts, potatoes, tomatoes or sunflowers, Song Baolai's heart is always trembling when he sees these crops for the first time after arriving in this era.

It is difficult to change from extravagance to frugality. The Ming Dynasty, including the past, is definitely an era that can drive modern people who are accustomed to rich ingredients crazy. The kind of suffering can only be experienced by being in it.

This is an era when even scrambled eggs with tomatoes did not exist.

Fortunately, both Song Baolai and Zhao Lanyue were born in the countryside, and they are very familiar with various common crops. Zhao Lanyue, who is rich in art, also has certain painting skills, allowing them to draw relatively accurate appearances of these crops in each growth period.

Then it was handed over to Xu Keran for him to look for it based on the picture.

Otherwise, it will be very difficult and time-consuming to find these crops with mostly different names, very rare crops, and even many crops that have not yet become edibles just by word of mouth.

In particular, most of these crops are quite different in appearance from the common varieties in later generations.

It is precisely because I dare not be 100% sure that although most of these crops have been cultivated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and Nanjing is still the place where various novel species can gather, Xu Keran mainly brought samples this time, and the quantity rare.

That's right, peppers, corn, peanuts, potatoes, tomatoes, and sunflowers are all foreign species, like the sweet potato, which Li Ping has begun to sow in large quantities, and they all entered China in the late Ming Dynasty.

Among them, peppers, tomatoes and sunflowers are still ornamental plants, and are mainly cultivated in a small amount in the homes of some wealthy people in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Tomatoes at this time are also called June persimmons.

The first document to record tomatoes can be found in "Plant" (1617) by Zhao Han of the Ming Dynasty. Zhao Han mentioned in the book that tomatoes were brought to China together with sunflowers by Western missionaries in the earlier Wanli period.

In 1621, Wang Xiangjin's "Qunfangpu" once again affirmed the source of tomato, and people in the future will believe it.

Because tomatoes are gorgeous and attractive, just like poisonous colorful mushrooms, people are afraid that they are poisonous, so they just appreciate their beauty and "dare not" to eat them.

And because the tomato originally grew in the forests of Peru, it is called "Wolf Peach".At that time, the Peruvians only ate tomato leaves, but the tomato leaves at that time contained toxins, which caused many people to be poisoned.

That is to say, it is not empty to say that tomatoes cannot be eaten.

Although the Europeans had proven that the fruit of the tomato was edible by this time, it was not until the end of the Qing Dynasty that it became a Chinese food.

Peanuts and corn have entered the diet of ordinary people at this time, but the scope and scale of planting are very limited, and people in many places have never seen it.

Peanuts are currently mainly grown in Fujian and Guangdong.

In the local chronicles of the Ming Dynasty in Zhejiang, there is a saying that "peanuts originally came from Fujian". Zhang Lu from the Qing Dynasty also said in "Ben Jing Feng Yuan" that "longevity fruits are produced in northern Fujian", which shows that Fujian is the earliest place to introduce peanuts.

At the end of Ming Dynasty, peanuts were grown in Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Xinghua, Shaowu, and Tingzhou in Fujian, Guangzhou, Chaozhou, Gaozhou, Leizhou, Lianzhou, and Qiongzhou in Guangdong, and then expanded to some counties in Guangxi.

Corn was planted in the widest range at this time. In the 30th year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1551), the earliest written record of corn in China appeared in "Xiangcheng County Chronicles" in Henan.

Four years later, in the 34th year of Jiajing (1555), the corn tributed by the chieftain of Yunnan at that time passed through Gong County, Henan Province on the way to Beijing, and was recorded in "Gong County Chronicle".

In the 39th year of Jiajing's "Pingliang Mansion Chronicle", corn was called "Fanmai" and "Xitianmai".

Li Shizhen, who traveled all over the world to write "Compendium of Materia Medica", also discovered the planting of corn in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River during his travels from 1552 to 1578. However, his description of corn at that time was "rarely planted".

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, corn had actually spread to ten provinces including Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Jiangsu, Anhui, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan.

As for potatoes, this thing is a different kind of tall thing at this time.

Potatoes have got their name.

Jiang Yikui, a Jinshi of the Wanli Dynasty, has recorded it as a delicacy in "Chang'an Kehua", and Xu Wei, another literati of the Wanli Dynasty, even has a five-character poem "Potatoes".

There is even a detailed record about it in Xu Guangqi's "Nongzheng Quanshu": "Soil taro, a potato, and a yellow dune...It can be cooked with ash juice or steamed...."

But potatoes are currently a royal delicacy, and they are only planted by the royal family and wealthy families. They have not been popularized on a large scale, and potato seeds and planting techniques have not been introduced to the people.

Regardless of the deliciousness, the significance of peppers in humid areas goes without saying. The strong adaptability, high yield and food tolerance of corn and potatoes to the environment are actually worse than sweet potatoes.

In fact, corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes were all key crops for China's population explosion in the Qing Dynasty, and the large-scale planting of corn in North China at the end of the Ming Dynasty played a great role in alleviating the food shortage.

Therefore, it is understandable that Li Ping marveled at the peppers planted in pots and Song Baolai's heart trembled.

Li Ping's quick decision to conduct comprehensive trade with Xu Keran also has a major relationship with this.

They need to be introduced in large numbers at once, with enough seeds or seedlings to differentiate to control variability, reduce pests and diseases, and increase yields.

When Song Baolai brought the rare crop seedlings and seeds brought by Xu Keran to Wujiaba, Gao Lei and Zhao Lanyue were immediately exclaimed.

No modern person does not want rich and bland tastes.

Zhao Lanyue even immediately dropped everything and went to work with Song Baolai to start farming. Their current cultivation experience in this area is definitely the strongest in this era.

But when Song Baolai returned to Fuchi Town after finishing his work, the planned reception dinner had to be cancelled.

Xu Keran's abdominal pain was so severe that he had to pay great attention to it, and he had already developed symptoms of fever and chills.

Intestinal carbuncle, and it is a serious vermicomposted carbuncle, this is the answer Song Baolai heard from a doctor hired by five merchant ships to accompany him.

But Xu Keran and the stewards of the other three boats that had gathered all looked disheartened.

This is a disease with a high mortality rate.

Song Baolai, who had had appendicitis removed, asked Gao Lei to come over immediately after questioning suspiciously in detail, and quickly confirmed that what Xu Keran had was acute appendicitis.

This is indeed a disease with a high mortality rate and is currently difficult to treat effectively.

Notes:

Vermis sudden carbuncle is the image definition of appendicitis in ancient China, and it is classified as a type of intestinal carbuncle.

(End of this chapter)