Chapter 35 Caution
This is the method of purifying refined salt that Su Ze learned from his mentor at the Zigong Ancient Salt Field.
The principle is actually very simple. The bitter taste of coarse salt is actually the impurities of magnesium and calcium ions in seawater, which is brine.
Brine is toxic, and the main process of refining refined salt is to remove the brine from the brine.
Although brine is poisonous, our ancestors have long begun to use brine to make a delicacy, that is - tofu.
Adding brine to soy milk can solidify the protein in the soy milk and finally turn it into a solid food like tofu.
When purifying refined salt, the Zigong Ancient Saltworks used this principle in reverse, adding soy milk to the salt water, using the characteristics of the reaction between soy milk and brine to turn the brine into solid scum, and then skimming out the scum. Refined salt without brine impurities was obtained.
Su Ze had to admire the wisdom of these salt workers. These kitchen households who may not even know the words could sum up such chemical purification methods in their daily life. Maybe this is the wisdom of life.
Su Ze then filled the bamboo tubes made with his own carpentry skills with refined salt. Eight pounds of refined salt was divided into eight bamboo tubes.
[Make salt bamboo tubes, carpentry experience +8, Lv2, 2/200]
I have to say that carpentry was a practical skill in ancient times. After reaching level 2, Su Ze felt that his hand on the carpenter's knife was more stable.
Looking at the eight bamboo tubes of refined salt, Su Ze was filled with a sense of accomplishment.
According to the price inquired at the ghost market that day, a pound of refined salt cost one hundred and fifty cents. Su Ze was ready to sell it as soon as possible. Even if he sold it at a low price of one hundred cents per catty, those eight catties would cost eight hundred cents.
The copper coins in Fujian are of fairly good quality. One tael of silver is equivalent to about 1,500 yuan. That is, the income from salt production in a day is close to half a tael!
The cost of making refined salt is soy milk and fuel. If you want to increase production, you only need to carve a stone plate on the seaside rocks.
The salt-drying method is indeed a magical tool!
Through this salt-drying process, Su Ze finally understood why the salt-drying method is better than boiling salt. The salt-drying method saves fuel!
In fact, from the perspective of preparing coarse salt, the efficiency of the two is almost the same. Sun-drying salt requires many processes. Salt cannot be made by drying seawater.
If you just bask in the sea water and a large number of impurities in the sea water are not removed, you will get only bitter brine. The cost of soy milk used for purification will increase, and the cost of preparing refined salt will be too high.
The salt-drying method requires space and a tidal flat that can store seawater. If the beach in Changningwei happened to be a tidal flat instead of a beach, it would not be easy to dry salt-drying.
The sun-salting method saves fuel, which is the reason why the sun-salting method later replaced the boiled salt method.
Take Changningwei as an example. What can be burned every year is the dried straw of rice and wheat, withered reeds from the reed fields, and small branches from nearby mountains.
Big trees cannot be cut down. The Ming Dynasty government has a catalog of old and big trees in the mountains and forests of various places. Whenever the emperor or the Ministry of Industry needs to build construction, various places have to apportion tribute timber. Fujian itself is mountainous and woody, so it is also apportioned. of the hardest hit areas.
In recent years, Daojun emperors have been building Taoist temples, and everyone in Fujian has been trembling with fear. They have repeatedly reiterated the ban on logging. In some places, people are even prohibited from going up the mountain. They are afraid that the next time the court allocates timber, the government will not be able to find enough mature timber.
Even small branches are difficult to find. After thousands of years of development, the Fuguang area is now a densely populated area.
The gentle slopes have been turned into terraced fields, and mulberry or tea trees have been planted in places not suitable for farming at Zhu Yuanzhang's call.
Mulberry trees and tea trees are both cash crops, and they cannot be cut down casually.
The only good thing is that the winter in Fujian is not too cold, so there is no need for much additional heating costs.
This is also the reason why the southern economy gradually overwhelms the northern economy after the Song Dynasty. As ancestors continued to cut down trees and open fields for heating, the heating costs in the north were rising day by day. After the food production in the south increased, the north declined even more.
Only then did Su Ze begin to sigh. The reason why the Industrial Revolution was called a revolution was not just because machines improved production efficiency. The most important thing is that machines have changed the way humans use energy! The
mining of coal and oil has replaced wood with efficient energy hidden underground, which has brought about the explosive development of productivity and made machines hundreds of times more efficient than manual labor. .
Back to the salt cooking method, the biggest consumption of salt cooking in the Ming Dynasty is fuel. This is why salt workers are called stove households, because their main job is to cook stoves.
From the time when Zhu Yuanzhang established a kitchen household, he "provided meadows for woodcutter," and then "reed fields for all uses." Some saltworks also allowed people to go up the mountain to cut wood for cooking stoves and boiling salt.
However, during the Jiajing period, many surrounding forest farms were "over-cut and no vegetation could grow." Some reed fields were also depleted and degraded by salinity and alkali.
At this time, the salt household even had to start distributing "stove donations" to surrounding areas in order to maintain the fuel demand for cooking salt and running stoves.
When preparing coarse salt by the sun salt method, there is no need to burn firewood for heating. The coarse salt can be produced directly by using solar energy, which greatly saves energy consumption and reduces the fuel input for salt production.
After filling in the salt, Su Ze thought of another drawback of the salt-drying method.
The southeastern coastal areas will soon enter the typhoon-prone rainy season. When the sun is gone, there will be no way to dry salt. I still have to seize the time to carve out the stone plate from the stone and make a fortune quickly.
I was busy like this for a few days. At the end of the 20th, Su Ze called over the little carrot head Lin Liangjun and said, "Will the
ghost market be open today?"
Lin Liangjun had seen Su Ze in the past few days. He was busy at the beach every morning and at the temple in the evening. He didn't know what Su Ze was doing for a pound of coarse salt, which cost ten cents.
After working hard these days, the total output of coarse salt is less than 80 kilograms, which is only 800 coins.
It's still far away from the thirty-two taels of silver fine for fighting with weapons that the guard station has.
Moreover, Fujian coarse salt is difficult to sell. The official coarse salt in the county only costs twelve cents per catty. Su Ze has made so much coarse salt that he may not be able to sell it at all.
The ghost market already sells official coarse salt, so why buy Su Ze’s?
However, seeing that Su Ze, a scholar, was so busy, he had no other way to make money, so Little Luobotou could only take the other children to work with Su Ze all day long.
Hearing that Su Ze was going to the ghost market again, Lin Liangjun yawned and said, "The ghost market is open today. Is Brother Aze going to sell salt?" "I'm going to try the market today
. Are there any rules for selling in the ghost market?" ? Is there anyone reliable in the health center that we can go with?"
Lin Liangjun said doubtfully: "To sell things in the ghost market, you only need to pay the tax to the owner of the ghost market. When the stall is closed, there will naturally be tax collectors. Let's If you just set up a stall in the market and pay a certain amount of tax, that's what Uncle Zong said."
"Reliable person? Can't we just sell it directly?"
Su Ze shook his head and said, "You are just a child and I have a figure. His appearance is too obvious, and he is not suitable for setting up a stall to sell things in the ghost market. Are there any ordinary people in the guardhouse? They should be low-key." Lin Liangjun didn't understand why
Su Ze was so cautious, but he still said:
"Uncle Zong's youngest son, Uncle Qing, is an honest man and is Lin Chun's uncle. How about asking him for help?"
Su Ze nodded and immediately went with Lin Liangjun to invite Lin Deqing and invited him to go to the ghost market with him. .
Now Su Ze's reputation in Changning Wei is at its peak. Everyone knows that he is a capable scholar, so Lin Deqing naturally agreed.
Su Ze carried five kilograms of refined salt on his back and walked towards the ghost market with Lin Deqing and Lin Liangjun.
(End of chapter)