The Tang Dynasty started from saving Empress Changsun

Chapter 201 Poor Niuniu
On the third day, Qin Qiong entered the palace with gifts, met the emperor and empress, and formally proposed marriage for Zixiaoguan.

After a symbolic exchange, I got the name taboo and birth date of Princess Jinyang.

Qin Qiong returned to the temple and gave Sun Simiao the post recording Princess Jinyang's name and birth date.

Then Sun Simiao asked for divination to determine whether the names and birth dates of Chen Jingke and Xiao Sizi were suitable.

He himself is a master of Taoism, but he has little research on divination.Besides, he is the man's parent, so it's not appropriate to do it himself.

So Li Chunfeng took the job, and after some divination, it was naturally a match made in heaven.

Qin Qiong, the matchmaker, was dispatched again, and entered the palace with comments and dowries to meet the empress. After some etiquette, the two parties exchanged marriage certificates.

The engagement ceremony is thus complete.

Princess Jinyang, as the princess, had a special edict besides the marriage letter for the engagement ceremony, which would be recorded in Zongzheng Temple.

At this point, no one can regret the marriage unless the emperor makes an order.

As for the wedding date, no one mentioned it.Xiao Sizi was still too young to talk about the marriage date, so there was no need to even make an appointment.

If there are no special circumstances, marry at the age of eleven or twelve. If there are special circumstances, it depends on the actual situation.

In a word, it is more convenient to operate because there is no agreed date of marriage.Li Shimin's interest has come, and it's not surprising that he will marry a girl tomorrow.

This marriage, which has been talked about since the Chinese New Year, is finally settled. There are mixed reactions from outside, but generally speaking, most people congratulate.

The powerful and bureaucrats in Beijing sent congratulatory gifts one after another, and officials working in other places would also send a gift as long as they had the conditions.

Needless to say, each sect of Taoism also sent their blessings.Even many tyrants of the gentry sent a congratulatory ceremony to congratulate Sun Zhenren's disciple on his engagement.

Chen Jingke himself was even more cheerful, and the progress bar of marrying Xiao Si was directly pulled to 90.00% nine, and he was only short of the last shiver.

On the second day of the engagement, he went to the palace to play with her for a whole day.If it wasn't inconvenient, he would have taken her out of the palace to play.

Even so, Xiao Si is not happy, brother is always the best.

But from the third day, Chen Jingke became busy, and he still clearly distinguished between playing and business.

……

The first thing to do is to fire the glass, Li Shimin and Changsun Wugou are very important.It took only three days to build the workshop and prepare the required materials.

Chen Jingke moved to a palace located in the deep palace, which is a temporary glass workshop.He will live here for many days until he develops a mature glassmaking technique.

He first learned that the artisans here are all slaves belonging to the Li family for generations. After Li Tang was established, they became royal... house slaves.

Although they are all house slaves, their status and treatment are different from ordinary house slaves—in short, they are all confidantes of the Li family.

Having a basic understanding of the people here, he checked all the utensils and materials one by one.

Very complete, basically prepared according to the drawings he gave.

In a dark, dank warehouse, he saw hundreds of bladders filled with air.

Liu Dahe, the master craftsman in charge of the glass workshop, said respectfully: "My lord, this is the gas obtained from the rumen of the cow according to the method you taught. In order to collect this gas, I heard that all the cattle in Huangzhuang have suffered."

Chen Jingke took a few steps back subconsciously, and said, "Not bad, not bad, remember that it must be dark and humid here, especially keep away from open flames."

Liu Dahe replied: "Don't worry, I also heard that this thing can be lit, so be careful."

After a round of inspection, some missing equipment was added, and the firing started.

At the beginning, he didn't make it too complicated. First, he used quartz sand to burn directly, so that everyone could have an intuitive understanding of glass burning.

There are many problems with this firing method, for example, the temperature cannot reach the material and the material cannot be completely dissolved.

For example, the proportion of calcite added is not well grasped, and transparent glass cannot be neutralized, etc., but glass crystals are obtained after all.

Seeing that the sand turned into colored glaze after being burned for a while, all the craftsmen's eyeballs almost popped out.

The expensive colored glaze was originally burned out of this thing?This completely overturned their cognition.

After that, Chen Jingke started a magical operation to make soda ash.

What he used was not the Hou Debang soda production method. This method had too high requirements on the basic industry and was not applicable in ancient times.

On the contrary, it is the older Solvay method. Although it is seriously polluted, it can be used in ancient times.

First dissolve table salt into water to make saturated brine, then pass ammonia gas into the brine to make ammonia brine.

Here is a difficult problem that was unsolvable for the ancients, that is how to obtain ammonia gas, even the traversers can hardly do it when they have nothing.

Fortunately, many chemical raw materials can be solved by local methods.

Ammonia can be obtained from the urine of mammals, but this method has an unpleasant smell and is too demanding on the production process to be easy to operate.

Chen Jingke adopted another simpler and more direct method to obtain ammonia from the rumen of cows.

The forage that cattle eat contains a lot of ammonia, which will be fermented into ammonia in the rumen.

Of course, the gas composition in the cow's rumen is more complex, not only containing ammonia.But he doesn't need pure ammonia, as long as the content is high enough.

The ammonia content in the cow's rumen can fully meet his production needs.

The bladder he saw in the dark and damp warehouse earlier, filled with cow rumen gas, was prepared for this.

The gas collected in the rumen of the cow was passed into saturated brine, and ammonia brine was obtained without accident.

Limestone is then calcined, and the carbon dioxide produced is passed into ammonia brine to generate sodium bicarbonate.

Then filter and calcine to get soda ash.

The filtered mother liquor contains ammonium chloride, which can be recovered by distillation with milk of lime.

Soda ash can be obtained all the time by recycling it in this way.

This method of making soda ash can be used even in ancient times.

Although a lot of gas was wasted due to poor airtightness of the equipment, Chen Jingke still obtained enough soda ash after some operations regardless of the cost.

As a member of the three-acid and two-alkali family, the importance of soda ash cannot be overstated. Anyway, it is an essential raw material for many of Chen Jingke's plans.

It is also the wings of the glass industry, with which glass making can take off.

Sure enough, after adding a certain amount of soda ash, materials such as quartz sand were completely melted.By adding a certain proportion of calcite, glass with better quality and higher transparency is obtained.

Looking at the lightly variegated glass in front of them, the craftsmen screamed and jumped excitedly.

Liu Dahe even repeated over and over again: "The real man is created, created..."

Chen Jingke was filled with a sense of accomplishment. Although he had only retreaded the path his predecessors had traveled, it was also a result of his hard work when he was poor and poor.

At least in this world, he is ahead of everyone.

As far as the glass in front of me is concerned, it can be sold as gemstones if taken out, and no one will care about the variegated color.

Even the variegated colors in Chen Jingke's eyes are the colors that gemstones should have in the eyes of others.

Next, Chen Jingke made persistent efforts, tried different addition ratios, and finally created light green glass with a single color.

This kind of glass can already meet most needs, so he sent someone to notify the empress.

After receiving the news, Li Shimin and his grandson Wugou rushed to the workshop.

Seeing the lump of pure light green transparent glass, Li Shimin said excitedly, regardless of the emperor's image and majesty:
"Okay, okay, it's really great. Jing Ke, your dowry is good, I'm very satisfied."

Changsun Wugou stretched out his hand to touch it cautiously, and said, "It's colored glaze, better than the best colored glaze, with this thing..."

Speaking of this, she stopped suddenly. After all, it was the queen who restrained her excitement in time, and said to the craftsmen around:

"You have done a good job. The saint will never forget your contributions. All of you will be rewarded."

"Thank you saint, thank you lady." Now it was the craftsmen's turn to get excited.

Li Shimin also quickly returned to normal. Looking at the pile of glass, he asked, "Didn't you say that glass can be made into various utensils? Why is it like this?"

Chen Jingke explained: "Glass shaping is relatively simple, but how to make high-quality glass is difficult. It is still in the experimental stage, so there is no shaping."

Li Shimin said in surprise: "Isn't this one enough?"

Chen Jingke shook his head and said: "Not enough, glass can be made colorless and transparent, just like real crystal, then it can be called top grade."

"This..." Li Shimin didn't know what to say.

The eldest grandson Wugou then said: "It is right to strive for perfection, but sometimes it is not worth the loss if you demand too much of yourself."

"We don't necessarily have to make colorless glass. For the world, glass of this quality is beautiful enough."

Hearing this, Chen Jingke slapped his forehead and said, "Oh, look, I'm confused. We built this thing first to sell it, as long as it can be sold, there is no need to pursue theoretical perfection."

Scientists will pursue perfection, and businessmen only need mature products that can be mass-produced.He was too absorbed in studying glass, and he fell into the scientist's thinking without knowing it.

The eldest grandson Wugou smiled and said, "It's good that you understand. But we still need to study the colorless transparent glass you mentioned, and it can be sold more expensive when it is produced."

Chen Jingke nodded again and again, and said: "That's true. Colorless and transparent glass is so useful that it must be made. But as you said, don't rush, just explore slowly."

Li Shimin interjected from the side: "Let's put aside the study of glass for now, show me how glass is fired, and then shape one for me to see."

Chen Jingke immediately directed the craftsmen to fire, and the empress was right in front of him, and the craftsmen were very excited and showed their skills.

When they saw a pile of sand turn into a fiery red glass solution, the emperor and empress were both excited and miraculous.

A craftsman then took a copper pipe and blew the blob of glass into a bold bottle.It's just that the shaping and trimming process in the later stage was not in place, and the appearance of this bottle is not very correct.

But even so, it was enough for Li Shimin and Changsun Wugou.

This process let them know that there is no problem in turning glass into utensils, and the next thing to consider is how to sell them.

(End of this chapter)