The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Chapter 120 Badly printed express book
At this time, the Society of Jesus had very strict restrictions on believers who could join the religion. It stipulated that every believer must be followed by a Jesuit missionary. The apparent reason was that it could facilitate the guidance of believers in the Ming Dynasty to worship, but in fact it was a form of thought control. The way.

Even if Xu Guangqi became the elder in the original history, there were always several European missionaries in the shogunate. They regularly reported Xu Guangqi's current situation to the Macau Jesuits. The Jesuits knew only more about Xu Guangqi's ideological trends than Emperor Chongzhen. Also be clear.

At that time, Xu Guangqi was still enjoying it, and he only felt that the organization sent "brothers" to help him improve.

But in this time and space, Xu Guangqi already has a basic impression of Christianity in his mind, and he is not stupid. Without brainwashing, when he saw this trick of the Jesuits, he still didn't know what they wanted to do?

Therefore, in response to Xu Guangqi's tactful refusal when Matteo Ricci asked him if he wanted to join the religion, Ricci just cast a wide net to catch more fish and persuaded people to join the religion.

Matteo Ricci was busy with his affairs. Since Xu Guangqi did not want to join the religion, he had no intention of answering Xu Guangqi's doubts. Xu Guangqi saw this and had no chance to ask many questions hidden in his heart.

The two missed each other before they could talk in depth, and Xu Guangqi no longer had any intention of going to the Catholic Church. However, in order to visit friends in Nanjing, he had already given two months of leave to the students in Songjiang, and he had nothing to do when he returned.

He really wanted to learn European science and technology, but he had also seen that these missionaries only taught in a limited way. If he did not join their Catholicism, he might not be able to teach anything real.

Xu Guangqi was quite depressed, and then he thought of Wang Wenlong.

So he simply hired a boat to go south and came to Wang Wenlong specifically to ask for Western knowledge.

The boat passed the Chaoguan Pass and entered the Fuzhou River. Xu Guangqi swayed along with the passenger ship and finally arrived at the city dock.

Xu Guangqi practiced frugality so much that even though he was a civil servant, he still went on a night boat with merchants and did not take any servants with him on the way.

He carried his luggage and got off the boat. He went to the boatman on the pier and asked in Mandarin: "May I ask the Chief Envoy Si Yamen where to go?"

Seeing that Xu Guangqi was simply dressed, the boatman only knew that he was a gentleman from Fuzhou Yingguan. Seeing that Xu Guangqi was polite, he pointed out the direction.

Xu Guangqi found that it was still a long way to go, so he paid for a slider on the dock.

After sitting on the sliding pole, Xu Guangqi asked the two porters carrying the sliding pole about Wang Wenlong's situation.

He originally thought that Wang Wenlong was a famous person, but it was still a bit far away for ordinary people. When asking about Wang Wenlong in Fuzhou City, these coolie people may not know him.

But he didn't expect that the two porters carrying the sliding pole would become interested as soon as he mentioned Wang Jianyang's name.

The porter behind him smiled and said: "Mr. Wang? That's a good man."

The porter in front of him pointed to the lucky food bag he was carrying: "When we go out to work, we eat potatoes introduced by Mr. Wang for lunch. There was a drought in Fujian last year. Without Mr. Wang's method of replacing vegetables with vegetables, many people would have starved to death. "

Xu Guangqi looked at the boiled potatoes in his pocket and asked about it before he understood. He was quite surprised that Wang Wenlong was so loved by the people in Fuzhou, and was even called "Wang Xiangong" by the people.

He was talking to two porters when he heard a bookman carrying a book box next to him shouting: "Wang Jianyang's Quick Arithmetic Method and "Rhythm Enlightenment", new mimeographed books are on sale!"

Xu Guangqi became even more interested, waving directly and said: "How to sell Wang Jianyang's books?"

When the porter saw that he wanted to buy something, he got off the sedan chair to rest.

The calligrapher ran over and opened the book box, pointed to three thin booklets of "Rhythm Enlightenment", "Logarithmic Calculation" and "European Regular Script 92 Method" and said: "New quick-printed small volumes, each with forty texts. , no two prices.”

Xu Guangqi was shocked: It's so cheap!

Although these three books are only about the thickness of pamphlets, they are still real books with bindings, not simple leaflets. If they were placed in Nanjing or Songjiang, they would cost at least eighty yuan.

He directly took out a bunch of small coins and said, "Do you want to take the Nanjing small coins?"

In this era, the price comparison of copper coins in different regions was different, and even the number of coins in a string was uncertain. For example, a string of small coins in Nanjing was used as a hundred coins but actually only had 97 coins. In some places in Fujian, ninety coins were regarded as a string.

Copper coins are also generally equivalent, and they also follow the relationship of supply and demand. The more copper coins there are in a place, the lower the price of copper coins, and the closer a string of coins is to one hundred coins. If the supply of copper coins exceeds demand in remote areas, then a string of coins in this era will only cost more than 80 or even [-] yuan. There are cases of more than [-] articles.

In addition, the quality of copper coins in different regions is also different, and the price will also fluctuate. The price of a sand shell wide piece mixed with a large amount of inferior metal and dropped in half and a thick coin with enough copper will naturally be different.

Therefore, when doing business across regions in this era, unless it is a large-scale business that can use silver coins, just collecting money is very complicated.

The bookseller took Xu Guangqi's copper coin string, inspected it, and said, "This money is rich, so you can use it well."

Xu Guangqi then took out a bunch of money and put out twenty essays, and bought all three books in one go. The bookseller said: "Thank you, sir."

The bookseller took the money and went happily.

After getting up from the sedan chair, Xu Guangqi leaned on the sliding pole and read a book. He frowned after turning two pages.

"Hiss... your book is too well printed..." He quickly turned around, only to see that the bookseller had disappeared.

Xu Guangqi sighed and laughed at himself, finally knowing that he had been deceived.The so-called quick version is a reduced version of the wax block mimeograph, and the printing quality is sloppy.

The first book Xu Guangqi opened was "European Regular Script 92".

Yu Xiangdou's Santai Pavilion printed "European Regular Script 92 Method" at a cost of fifty words. However, the price of this quick-printed small book was not even the cost price of Santai Pavilion. The printing quality can be imagined.

After Xu Guangqi opened the page, he saw that the words on the page were all crowded together, and there were even typos. The example characters given by Wang Wenlong were directly reduced to the size of a fingernail. If you buy it for someone who is learning to write, It is difficult to follow the imitation.

If Xu Guangqi had bought a book engraving authorized by Wang Wenlong, this phenomenon would never have occurred. To put it bluntly, these three books were all reprinted by himself after Wang Wenlong's works came out. However, there is no concept of copyright these days. Wang Wenlong wants I can't even protect my rights.

This is also a new problem with the emergence of new technologies. Fuzhou's book copying shops have gradually popularized wax printing. The cost of using wax printing to reprint books is too low, and the living space of pirated books has expanded instantly.

There are also advantages: many people who were too poor in the past to read books now have the opportunity to read books after the popularization of printing.

At this time, the low-quality Four Books and Five Classics printed on wax plates on the market in Fuzhou have been priced at a low price of twenty or thirty texts each. They are still Zhu Xi's annotated editions, and middle-class people can basically afford them.

One can imagine how involved Fuzhou's imperial examination will be in a few years.

Xu Guangqi glanced at the "European Regular Script 92" and threw it aside. It was not that he wanted to waste money, but the printing size of the book was too small, and the slider was wobbly. He felt dizzy after reading two pages. How is it possible to meditate on calligraphy?

It was the second book "Logarithmic Calculation" that Xu Guangqi quickly read.

What Wang Wenlong copied was actually Briggs' table of commonly used logarithms. It only had 32 pages in total. The calculation accuracy was also very limited, but it was still enough for daily four- to five-digit calculations.

As long as the thickness of the logarithm table is increased by one digit, it must be multiplied by ten, and the calculation amount is ten times that of the previous one. Wang Wenlong has not seen the thicker logarithm table, and there is no place to copy it if he wants to.

As for calculating by yourself... The Briggs logarithm table has historically taken about two years to calculate. If there is an additional one-digit logarithm table, the calculation time is directly multiplied by ten, which takes about 20 years.Wang Wenlong was almost 50 years old when he finished the calculation. This great achievement should be left to the more enthusiastic mathematicians at this time.

After understanding the concept of logarithms, Xu Guangqi couldn't help but be excited.

From his exchanges with missionaries, he had understood the concept that mathematics is the mother of natural philosophy, and all astronomical and navigational knowledge is inseparable from mathematics.

Xu Guangqi thought: "Wang Jianyang is indeed very proficient in calendar calculation. It seems that he came to Fuzhou at the right time this time!"

When he arrived at the mimeograph workshop, Xu Guangqi asked the workers in the workshop at the door: "Is Wang Jianyang at home?"

Seeing him dressed as a scholar, the worker nodded: "Master Wang is inside."

Wang Wenlong was about to go out when he suddenly received a message from Xu Guangqi. When he opened it, he read "Xu Guangqi, whose character is Zi first." Wang Wenlong couldn't help but be curious.

This is the future Daming Pavilion elder, but I don’t know how he will find Fuzhou at this time.

Wang Wenlong hurriedly came out to greet him: "Nice to meet you, I am Wang Wenlong."

Xu Guangqi looked at his appearance and asked curiously: "Jianyang is going out to do some work at this time? If you bother me, I'll come back tomorrow."

Wang Wenlong smiled and said: "Go out to find a businessman to discuss something."

"merchant?"

"Recently, Fujian is promoting sweet potatoes for famine relief. Farmers have difficulty paying taxes after harvesting sweet potatoes, so I want to contact businessmen to see if I can open up channels for selling sweet potato powder."

Xu Guangqi liked this kind of thing that was actually beneficial to people's livelihood. He was quite curious when he heard this, so he took the initiative to go out with Wang Wenlong.

Wang Wenlong first took Xu Guangqi to the Chief Envoy Si Yamen and introduced Xu Guangqi's identity to everyone.

I heard that Xu Guangqi was a good scholar, so everyone naturally thought that he was Wang Wenlong's friend.

Xu Guangqi felt very kind to Wang Wenlong's enthusiastic attitude.

Then Wang Wenlong assigned tasks to everyone: "Today Jinglun and Jingnan, you go to contact the big literati, while I go to find the businessmen to see if anyone is willing to do the sweet potato powder business."

"Even if it's a small business, we can let them try it. Don't underestimate it."

Chen Jinglun and Deng Zhimo both nodded to express their understanding.

After discussing the division of labor, Wang Wenlong and Wang Pingbao walked out of the Yamen. Xu Guangqi followed behind and asked strangely: "Jianyang, can it be effective to promote new things like you do?"

(End of this chapter)