The bitter west wind whistled past and blew off the last wisp of leaves of the tung tree.

Tung trunks were all over the ground at the bottom of the tree.

This is a common and worthless thing, but it has attracted competition in recent days.

"Ten cents per pound, regardless of quality."

"What are the uses of tung seeds? If you cannot eat them, they will kill people. In the famine years, mice will not eat tung seeds even if they starve to death."

"I don't know, a shopkeeper in the city took the young man and pulled the cart at the gate of Sunzhuang, saying that he would come every day and buy enough."

"Dad, go to Sunzhuangkou to ask what the situation is."

"There are many tung vegetation in our village, and the official waiter doesn't want this thing. I picked up a little first and then went to the gate of Sunzhuang to try it. The road is not long, so Isn't it easy to carry a few kilograms of things?"

Anyway, it’s winter moon, and adults and children are idle at home.

Stay around without stopping; the Gu family will sort out the plows and rakes and repair the furniture.

The children ran around the room.

It is easy to be golden in spring, so you have to store grain in winter and eat two meals a day, so you can eat thinly.

The half-aged child was so hungry that his chest was pressed against his back. I heard that if he picked up tung seeds, he could exchange money. If he had money, he would have food. Regardless of whether it was true or not, he would go all the way.

There are countless tung seeds on the hillside.

At the beginning, many people didn’t hear the news; some were well-informed, but they didn’t believe it.

Until there was a family, the father and son carried ten kilograms of tung seeds and exchanged them for 100 cents, and the village was in full bloom.

"Look, the real money is not a bit fancy. He is a servant of the royal palace, and the prince wants these tung seeds."

"The guy who harvests tung trees is kind and said he will harvest as much as he wants this year. Next year, their prince will plant tung trees by himself, so he may not collect them."

The whole family was dispatched.

In this era, due to poor medical care, agriculture was not particularly developed, and industry was almost zero. Even if there was no man to control population growth, the population was not dense.

The Kyoto Xiayang Castle has only a population of one million.

There are few people, more land, and more mountains.

There are indeed many tung trees on the wild mountains. In winter, all the tung seeds fall to the ground, so just pick them up.

"Go to Nanzhuang, no one collects it there. They don't know that tung croakers can be exchanged for money. Let's go to the barren mountains there to pick it up." Some people are very enthusiastic and know that everyone is going to grab it. They will definitely pick it up less. It's better to walk ten miles and go to the distance.

Farmers rely on their abilities.

Prince Ancheng only set up five points, each in five directions, twenty miles away from Kyoto.

The first day, the effect was very little, and I almost didn't receive much. Instead, the guys who went there picked up dozens of kilograms and came back; the next day, there were a little more.

On the seventh day, this matter went crazy.

When the censors heard about it, they all talked: "Tung croaker is useless, everywhere, and no one wants to ferment. What is the purpose of the prince collecting them?"

"Where is the prince who collects things? This is clearly a gift of money, but it is a collector of people's hearts?"

The censors had a lot of imagination and wrote memorials overnight to sue Prince Ancheng.

This incident was sensational.

Not to mention outside the city, all the tung seeds in the city were also picked up.

The little prince was rich and powerful. He set up a farm five miles away from the south gate of the capital to specialize in oil refineries.

The farm hired nearby farmers to help peel out tung vegetation.

This is Xue Mei’s idea.

Prince Ancheng raised an objection: "Just collect the tung ziren directly. I took it all in full and asked someone to peel it. It was a small amount of money, mainly because of trouble and delaying things."

Xue Mei ignored him and just gave the person who stripped Tong Ziren and told them that Tong Ziren might be poisonous and should be careful.

This is also why Xue Mei did not allow Prince Ancheng to directly collect tung ziren - tung ziren is poisonous.

People don’t know how to pay attention. If they eat without washing their hands after peeling, they may get sick.

“…If you harvest the tung seeds you peeled, the farmers will peel them at home. If someone doesn’t believe in evil and has no food to eat, they can’t help but eat, they may lose their lives;

Besides, the child is greedy, and the adults peel the tung seeds, and he is stealing food beside him, so he can't be guarded against it." Xue Mei said, "If someone dies, we will be ruined."

When someone died, the Censorate was able to flood the little prince with spit.

"You think carefully." Prince Ancheng said.

Soon, they had enough Tongziren.

Oil pressing tools are bought directly because Chinese people could press oil in the Han Dynasty, and there were ready-made tools, masters who could press oil, etc.

However, the oil yield is relatively low and the procedures are very complicated.

The oil press of this era is "wooden press".

Xue Mei teaches Prince Ancheng how to operate it.

"You must be careful, and the operator brings a mask." Xue Mei said, "The smell of tung oil is also poisonous."

The tung oil was different from other oils, so Xue Mei told the Prince Ancheng about everything he paid attention to.

"I want to cook tung oil, so I have to fry the tung seed kernels and then press the oil." Xue Mei said.

Two days later, Xue Mei finally got three kilograms of tung oil.

The three pounds of tung oil cost twelve taels of silver for the little prince - a thousand pounds of tung seeds, and three hundred pounds of tung seed kernels were fried to produce three pounds of oil.

One thousand tung seeds cost ten taels of silver, peeling the tung seed kernels, and squeezing the oil master's wages, spending two taels of silver.

"The oil we use to light the lamp is thirty taels of silver per pound, but tung oil is only twelve taels of tung oil. We have made a profit." The little prince said.

Xue Mei looked at three kilograms of tung oil and was a little shocked.

Too wasteful.

If it were the oil pressing machine in later generations, 300 kilograms of tung seed kernels could even be fried out 100 kilograms of oil.

"The cost is a bit high, and it may be a waste to use it to brush other things. We should use it to make oil paper umbrellas before we have better oil pressing technology." Xue Mei said.

Prince Ancheng: "Mei'er, I wanted to ask you last time, what is an umbrella?"

Xue Mei: "..."

In this era, there were actually umbrellas, but they called them "Gui".

The cover is not opened and closed, and it is directly supported, covered with textiles such as silk cloth, which can only be used by princes and nobles. It is to shield the sun and not block the rain, but only symbolizes an identity.

On rainy days, you either don’t go out or wear a straw raincoat and a hat to shelter.

The legend of the umbrella was invented by Lu Ban's wife, and this is just a legend.

The earliest written record about umbrellas is in Feng Menglong's novel "White Snake Yongzhen Leifeng Pagoda", which was in the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, according to Xue Mei's inference, the real umbrella must have appeared relatively late.

After all, there is no tung oil yet.

Xue Mei had no choice but to tell Xiao Mingyu about how to make an umbrella.

"...We have to hire a good bamboo craftsman." Xue Mei said, "He will make the umbrella bones, and I will make the umbrella surface myself. Little Prince, can you draw?"

"You need me to draw?" Xiao Mingyu asked.

"The first umbrella will be remembered forever in the future. Are you sure you don't want to participate?" Xue Mei asked.

Xiao Mingyu was moved.

He nodded.

Xue Mei also wanted to say that she needed cotton paper, which is rough and thick paper.

Then she thought that papermaking in this era was still in its early stages of development, and it was not at a very mature level, and the paper made was similar to cotton paper.

Sure enough, the paper Xiao Mingyu gave her was of better quality and was very suitable for making umbrella surfaces for oil paper umbrellas.

"You draw first, I'll brush tung oil." Xue Mei said.
Chapter completed!