Chapter 1372 - Semi-Mechanized Filature
With the security force arrangements settled, Master Zhao found himself at ease in body and mind. The Star-Stepping Squad's reliability couldn't match armies trained directly by the Council of Elders, but he was now master and provider to these men. They had no choice but to risk their lives for him. Besides, he had given Zhao Tong explicit instructions: "The authority of Master Zhao must be greatly established and promoted."
Just as he was savoring this satisfaction, someone came to report: "Miss Li has arrived."
Li Yao'er had spent recent days shuttling between the silkworm seed farm and the filature, leading a group of students from the "Sericulture Training Class" through both raising silkworms and reeling silk. In truth, her own knowledge of these subjects was limited—everything had been absorbed through crash courses in Hainan. Leading students while learning herself proved exhausting. The genes she'd complained about for years—This lady is just the type that gains weight easily; even drinking water makes me fat—seemed to have suddenly vanished. Her face had thinned noticeably, and the troublesome excess flesh on her thighs that had always ruined the look of skirts had also disappeared. She was startled to discover during evening baths that her body had become firm and toned.
The servants watched Li Yao'er's haggard face and observed her running up and down the mountain every day, feet never touching the ground, and whispered among themselves. Master Zhao certainly had sharp eyes for picking people—even his concubine could work this hard.
"When will the boiler workers arrive?" This was Li Yao'er's first question upon entering.
Phoenix Mountain Villa already had a boiler, but it was dedicated to operating the villa's water pump. Currently, the water supply had already squeezed out every drop of capacity from that equipment. Making it additionally supply steam and water to the filature was simply overwhelming.
For this purpose, the Mechanical Division had shipped two new boilers—one to supply hot water and steam, the other to drive the water pump serving the filature. This meant new equipment operators and maintenance workers had to be assigned.
"The telegram said they'd arrive on this ship. Either tonight or early tomorrow morning." Zhao Yingong studied this nominal "concubine" of his. She still wore her usual outfit: narrow-sleeved jacket with a vest outside. Only her double-bun hairstyle was slightly askew, looking somewhat disheveled. Her face was puffy, her eyes webbed with red veins—unmistakably overworked.
"Without firing up the boiler room, we simply can't conduct trial reeling. Cocoons don't wait."
The silkworm cocoons Phoenix Mountain Villa had obtained through small loans and purchases were all piled in the warehouse at the foot of the mountain. Fresh cocoons couldn't be stored long. According to standard procedure, cocoons first had to be dried to kill the pupae before they could be preserved for any length of time. A centralized drying room had been built in the filature, but it required boiler-generated heat. The filature itself also needed enormous quantities of hot water.
"Once the workers arrive, have them start immediately," Zhao Yingong said. "How is the training of the silk-reeling workers coming along?"
"They can start work." Li Yao'er nodded. "Most of them already know how to reel silk the traditional way. The method is essentially the same—except that hand-cranking is now changed to foot-pedaling." She hesitated. "This set of equipment, to be honest, worries me. It's another revived product. Can it actually be put to use? This is the first time it's been manufactured..."
"No, this isn't the first time." Zhao Yingong shook his head. "The Mechanical Division built a prototype and tested it experimentally in Lingao. They wouldn't hand us an experimental product to use directly without confirming it worked."
"I hope so." Li Yao'er lacked Zhao Yingong's confidence. The boiler and equipment had been technically debugged and certified operational by the Elder responsible for installation. Barring accidents, once workers arrived tomorrow, the system could be officially fired up. But whether this brand-new filature could actually produce normally under her half-baked "technical guidance"—that terrified her.
Originally, she'd only wanted to grow herbs, do some gardening, and perhaps cultivate ginseng. Gradually, that had transformed into the potato cultivation project on Jeju Island, and then she'd arrived in Hangzhou and become a sericulture technician. Now, she realized, she had somehow become the manager of an entire filature. The transformation was dizzying.
"Let's go to the filature and have a look." Zhao Yingong seemed to be trying to dispel her unease. He added with a touch of humor, "See the great power of industry."
For convenience of water use and drainage, the Cihui Hall Filature was located at the foot of Phoenix Mountain Villa, near the Fuchun River. The Cihui Hall refugee camp dormitory stood next door, eliminating the need to specially construct worker dormitories and canteens. The red brick chimney, ten meters high, stood alone by the river—very conspicuous.
In the boiler room beneath the chimney, a Lancashire boiler had been installed specifically to supply hot water and steam, alongside a power fire-tube boiler to drive the water pump.
A wall separated the filature from its surroundings. Inside, rows of buildings looked somewhat incongruous against the local scenery.
Household servants under Zhao Tong's command stood guard at the factory gate. They recognized Zhao Yingong and Li Yao'er and admitted them without question.
Though the factory had completed construction and equipment installation and stood ready to begin production at any moment, it was empty inside. Apart from a few servants on duty in the factory warehouse who hurried out to pay respects upon seeing them, all the workshops were deserted.
Both Li Yao'er and Zhao Yingong were standing in a real filature workshop for the first time. The Lingao-manufactured equipment was neatly arranged on bases, with various brackets, pipes, and valves intricately assembled. Zhao Yingong had originally expected this equipment to be utterly crude. But truly standing before these ostensibly crude machines, he realized how shallow his own understanding had been.
Without the manual in his hands, he simply couldn't have explained the principles and operating modes of equipment that was supposed to be "backward" and "simple."
A single person was truly insignificant before large-scale industry—the crystallization of wisdom accumulated from countless minds.
Workstations connected by countless pipes and brackets were arranged in rows, like a sleeping dragon. Once awakened, the fire and smoke it would spew would converge into terrifying productivity, burning the production methods of the old world to ashes. Making countless people perish together with them.
Zhao Yingong couldn't help but feel his emotions surge. "This is large-scale industry!"
Li Yao'er didn't feel it as profoundly as he did, but the factory and equipment before her stirred something in her nonetheless. However, thinking that this filature—and the female workers who would soon fill these workstations—were all under her management, a wave of panic washed over her. This was too terrifying. Could she really handle it?
She didn't dare voice these words. Right now, there were only two Elders at Hangzhou Station, and they needed to support each other, especially with mutual encouragement. It was better to say fewer discouraging things.
"Our filature looks quite high-end, grand, and classy..." Zhao Yingong said with a hint of playfulness, seeming to lighten the mood.
The equipment used by Cihui Hall Filature was a modified imitation produced by the Mechanical Division, based on the "Steam-Powered Great Device" of the Jichang Long Filature established by Chen Qiyuan in the nineteenth century. The technical level was very low—even by nineteenth-century standards, it qualified only as semi-mechanized production. But its advantage lay in its simplicity of operation and maintenance, perfectly suited to contemporary social conditions.
The filature the Council of Elders sought to establish in the seventeenth-century Ming Dynasty naturally had the nineteenth-century Jichang Long as its most obvious model. Therefore, not only was the equipment imitated, but the factory layout and management model were also referenced.
The greatest advance of Jichang Long's Steam-Powered Great Device was using steam to cook cocoons rather than the charcoal fires handed down through generations of hand reeling. This represented a major leap in production technology.
The cocoon itself consisted of silkworm-spun fibers bound together by sericin. Extracting the silk was like peeling apart stamps—water was required to dissolve the sericin. With traditional charcoal fire cooking, the temperature couldn't be held constant, affecting both silk yield and texture. The unified circulating water supply used by the Jichang Long factory ensured stable temperature and clean, fresh water quality for silk reeling. The resulting silk was even in thickness, clean in color, and lustrous—improvements determined entirely by advances in silk-reeling technology.
Although this equipment included a boiler, mechanical power was not used in actual silk reeling. Instead, foot-pedal-driven equipment was employed. Thus it still couldn't be considered a mechanized filature. Purely from the silk-reeling perspective, though the equipment speed of foot-pedal machines was more stable and uniform than traditional hand-cranking, it couldn't match a prime mover's effect, and the evenness of the silk produced was a level lower. Li Yao'er knew this kind of silk could only be called "improved silk." It was still considered good quality in the nineteenth century but became outdated after the early twentieth century and couldn't even be exported. The silk improvement work done by Suzhou Sericulture College at Kaixian Village had used similar human-powered "improved machines," but the raw silk produced still fell short of export standards. Compared to handmade raw silk, however, it was already tender and smooth, even and white.
But in this time and space, this minor flaw wasn't a flaw at all. Among the raw silk that Zheng Zhilong exported to Japan, so-called "yellow raw silk"—actually just yellowish stale silk from previous years—was worthless under ordinary circumstances, yet it could still be used for export. This demonstrated how urgent international market demand for raw silk was at that time. The silk reeled by the Cihui Hall Filature's Steam-Powered Great Device would inevitably surpass even the finest Huzhou silk.
The filature had a total of three hundred foot-pedal silk-reeling workstations, one cocoon baking room, and auxiliary rooms including the baking house, baking shed, and cocoon storage room. Each workstation was equipped with a round kettle, with steam pipes beneath to keep the water constantly at the required temperature for cooking and rinsing cocoons. Hot and cold water taps were also installed. Boiling water was used for rinsing cocoons. Cold water was used to regulate temperature and perform necessary washing, enabling rapid silk extraction and facilitating the quick drawing of silk ends onto the reel.
The Steam-Powered Great Device improved labor productivity dramatically. According to Chen Qiyuan's experience running Jichang Long, each female worker could match the output of more than ten people using traditional methods. Hand silk reeling allowed each worker to manage ten silk ends, while machine reeling could manage sixty. Those with exceptional skill could even handle over a hundred, improving labor productivity six to tenfold. Though Zhao Yingong had no factory experience, he knew the equipment manufactured by the Mechanical Division had been significantly improved over the Jichang Long prototype, so the efficiency gains should exceed this. Additionally, the Industrial Bureau was designing the filature's labor management system based on "Taylor's principles," further boosting worker efficiency.
(End of this chapter)