Chapter 265 Returning to Zijing Pass

Chapter 265 Returning to Zijing Pass

After holding and comforting her daughter for about fifteen minutes, the little girl closed her eyes and fell asleep against Xie Wanniang.

Seeing that she was sleeping soundly, Xie Wanniang simply lay down with her and also took a nice afternoon nap.

When the mother and daughter woke up again, Xie Wanniang did not rush to write down the techniques she had mastered or the action plan she had already drafted.

Carrying the child out of the house, Xie Wanniang rang the bell to call Haitang over and asked her to pass on a message to everyone: "Tell everyone to pack their luggage. We will set off for Zijing Pass early the day after tomorrow."

As for Lady Wang and Lady Jiang, after consulting with them, Xie Wanniang decided to let them remain in the county magistrate's mansion.

However, before leaving, Xie Wanniang arranged other tasks for them besides guarding the house.

Now that the bookstore is closed, Xie Wanniang and Jiang Yuan can use their savings to buy a normal-sized shop or a small estate that is quite nice in all aspects.

What Xie Wanniang instructed Wang and the other officials to do was to find two shops in the prefectural city that met her requirements and an estate in Qingyuan County that met her requirements.

Xie Wanniang had already said that she would entrust these newly acquired properties to these people for management. Therefore, Wang, the female official, and others were even more proactive and cautious than Xie Wanniang, the head of the household, in handling this matter.

They are proactive because they want to find a suitable property as soon as possible to end their boring days of guarding the mansion. They are cautious because although they are eager to take up a job and show their personal abilities to their new master, they do not want to step into a pit because of their eagerness.

In order to ensure that the subsequent matters could proceed relatively smoothly, they were extremely careful when selecting shops and estates.

Of course, that's a story for another time.

Upon returning to Zijing Pass, the first thing Xie Wanniang did was to develop woodblock printing and movable type printing techniques. Since no one around her was skilled in woodworking, Xie Wanniang specially brought back a young man who, although only eighteen years old, was extremely talented in construction and artifact manufacturing.

The farm tools she had asked the other party to make were all quite well made, but since they hadn't been used in practice yet, Xie Wanniang wasn't in a hurry to reward the other party.

However, after the start of spring this year, those things will be fully tested on Xie Wanniang's estate. Once the results of the trials are reported by the estate manager, Xie Wanniang can improve or promote those things based on the actual experience of the old farmers.

At that time, the carpenter in front of him will naturally benefit as well.

After explaining the principles of movable type printing and woodblock printing, Xie Wanniang asked him to try carving out a copy of the "Three Character Classic" and a copy of the "Hundred Family Surnames".

This was the first time the boy had come into contact with these two books, and naturally, it was also his first time encountering woodblock printing and movable type printing.

He spent a lot of time studying diligently until he could accurately carve every single word in the book. Only then did he begin to work on movable type and woodblock printing.

As for Xie Wanniang, while the young man was busy researching these two printing techniques, Xie Wanniang herself was not idle either. She racked her brains and came up with many ways to reduce the cost of writing brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones.

The core cost of a calligraphy brush lies in the material of the brush head (animal hair) and the craftsmanship of the brush handle. Improvements should focus on "replacing scarce materials" and "extending the service life".

Regarding the brush tip, readily available hairs could be used instead of rare animal hairs.

According to Xie Wanniang, high-quality writing brushes of that era were mostly made of purple rabbit hair (from the back of wild rabbits) and wolf hair (from the tail of weasels), which were scarce and expensive.

While relatively inexpensive sheep hair brushes are easier to obtain, they have the drawback of being prone to softening and collapsing.

Xie Wanniang preferred to improve the brush by replacing purple and wolf hair with mixed hairs, that is, by mixing inexpensive sheep hair with a small amount of readily available stiff hairs (such as pig bristles and rat whiskers) to make a "mixed hair brush".

"Mixed hair brushes" retain the "strength" of stiff hair (making it easier to control the brush) while reducing the reliance on rare animal hair in brush making, with a cost of only one-fifth to one-third of that of pure purple hair brushes.

Moreover, this is not a method that Xie Wanniang came up with in her imagination and has not been verified, but a practical method that has already been invented and promoted by her predecessors in her previous life.

In the time and space she once lived in, the "mixed-hair brush" had already become the mainstream type of brush after the Northern Song Dynasty due to its perfect balance between cost and practicality.

Besides the "mixed-hair brush," there is another way to reduce the cost of brush making—the reuse of "second-grade hairs."

The so-called reuse of "second-grade hair" refers to collecting short and broken hairs discarded by brush-making workshops, and then making these short and broken hairs into "loose brushes" with no brush head and directly binding the broken hairs together.

Although the "Sanzhuo pen" is not very durable, it is very suitable for children from average families to use for daily calligraphy practice because of its extremely low price.

As for the pen handle, expensive writing brushes are often made of hardwoods such as rosewood and sandalwood, and are even inlaid with gold and silver, which ordinary scholars simply cannot afford.

To reduce pen manufacturing costs, one could consider simplifying the production process and using local, inexpensive woods such as poplar, willow, or bamboo to make the pen barrels.

Lightweight materials readily available locally, such as poplar, willow, and bamboo, can be used as penholders with only simple polishing (no carving required), thus reducing the cost of penholders to about one-tenth of the original cost.

Of course, it is a widely accepted fact that making pens from bamboo is more cost-effective.

Because bamboo grows quickly, is easy to process, and is inexpensive, bamboo pens have already been widely available on the market.

Besides simplifying the process and using inexpensive wood, there is another way to reduce the cost of pen barrels: "reusing pen barrels".

When the brush tip wears down due to long-term use, you can choose to reattach a new brush tip to the intact brush handle. This can extend the life of the brush handle and reduce the cost of purchasing or manufacturing brushes for students.

Of course, this is contingent on students learning how to make pen tips, or merchants being willing to sell pen tips separately, sacrificing some of their existing profits.

Getting merchants to sell at a loss is certainly not easy, but it doesn't matter. Xie Wanniang can persuade the emperor to reveal the method of making the brush tip.

Although she didn't know how to make it, she believed that with the emperor's skill and ability, he would surely be able to obtain the artisans' pen-making techniques.

The core idea behind all of the above is nothing more than material substitution, process simplification, and tool reuse. This applies to pens, ink, inkstones, and paper as well.

The general direction remains unchanged; what changes are the specific measures that need to be formulated based on the actual situation when implementing price reductions for different items.