What is the most important change brought about by the industrialization caused by the steam engine? It is the substantial improvement in production efficiency!
The Geng family spent a lot of money to customize the equipment used to produce porcelain, which brought about a huge improvement in production efficiency!
While employing the same workers, the amount of porcelain they produced increased by more than ten times!
Because in the past, every piece of porcelain required craftsmen to make it one by one, but now, most of the processes are driven by steam engines, and the machines can do it by themselves. Except for some special processes that require manual processing by craftsmen, most of the processes are
It can realize mechanical automatic production or auxiliary production.
Although the quality of the porcelain produced by the machine is not as good as that of the skilled craftsmen, it can even be said to be of low quality and the same. The porcelain of the same style is exactly the same and has no artistic sense at all.
However, production efficiency has been greatly improved and costs have been significantly reduced, which allows the Geng family to focus on the mid- to low-end market of porcelain.
When the Geng family's machine-made porcelain entered the market at less than one-third of the price of traditional porcelain, it instantly set off changes in the domestic porcelain industry. Although the quality of the Geng family's porcelain was not very good, it was as high as traditional hand-made porcelain.
Compared with the quality of porcelain, there is no comparison at all, but it is cheaper!
And cheapness represents competitiveness. After all, the requirements for porcelain used by ordinary people in daily life are not that high. The most important thing is that it is cheap!
After the eight years of Xuan Ping, the Geng family became another family that broke out by entering the industry after the rise of the empire.
At that time, Geng Youhua also started to take charge of the family business after failing the imperial examination twice in a row.
Anyway, the Geng family was not a century-old wealthy family with a scholarly family background. It used to be just an ordinary landowning family in Sanshui, Guangdong. It owned a lot of land, but definitely not a lot of land. It only owned a porcelain kiln, and counting.
For three generations, there was no official.
Geng Youhua himself was not a scholar. When he failed in the imperial examination, he, like his father and grandfather, began to accumulate family property and then trained his children to study. He had no psychological burden at all about giving up the imperial examination and taking over the family business and doing business.
He is different from Yang Cheng. The Yang family is in Jiujiang, but it is considered a first-class prestigious gentry family in the whole government. It has a scholarly family and has officials from generation to generation. His father is also an official in the former Ming Dynasty. Yang Cheng is Yang Cheng.
If a direct descendant of the family fails to pass the imperial examination, they will naturally be under great pressure, and criticism is unavoidable.
However, Geng Youhua would not be like this, because the Geng family had no reputation to speak of, and it was very different from the famous gentry and scholarly family.
Nowadays, his eldest son has good academic performance. In the Shanghai County Primary School, which gathers many gentry children and young geniuses, he can barely reach the middle level. This is actually very good for a child without much family background.
not easy.
A teacher from a primary school in a special county in Shanghai told him that as long as his boy continued to maintain this momentum, it would be very possible for him to be admitted to Songjiang Prefecture Middle School in the future.
This is Songjiang Prefecture Middle School. Even on a national scale, the competition is no less fierce than Chengtianfu Middle School, Jinling Middle School, and Suzhou Prefecture Middle School. They are among the top five in the country.
, there will also be opportunities to apply for Guangdong Preparatory School in the future.
If his son could read well in the future and enter the officialdom through the imperial examination, the Geng family would have barely escaped from the level of rural rich people or those who suddenly became rich in business.
After several generations, and there are relatively outstanding scholars from generation to generation, even if not every generation has people becoming officials, it can still be regarded as a gentry family. If there are people becoming officials from generation to generation, more middle-level officials, and this continues for a hundred years
If the above is said, a hundred years later, the Geng family will be able to become a scholarly family in the eyes of the world.
Just like the current Chen Lifu family of Songjiang Prefecture.
Although Chen Lifu's Chen family is now only the eldest son of Chen Lifu and his sons, and although Chen Lifu's reputation among the gentry and even the officialdom is not very good, no one can deny that the Chen family is a typical contemporary scholar.
Family status, official family, century-old wealthy family!
Speaking of Jinling Dongchen, who in the vast Jiangnan region doesn’t know about it. Anyone with some knowledge can know that this is a place where officials have been serving for generations for hundreds of years. In the past twenty years, there have even been four Jinshi scholars.
The wealthy family!
As for the current Geng family, it naturally has nothing to do with the famous gentry and scholarly family. If they give up the imperial examination and engage in business, there will be no pressure from public opinion.
Geng Youhua is full of hope for the future. He himself has an average talent for reading, but he has a son who is smart and studious!
The burden of improving social status can only be handed over to his son, but the burden of making money to make his family's life more prosperous and to give his sons a better path to study and even serve as officials in the future falls on him.
.
You must know that the empire is very strict in the administration of officials now. In the eyes of the anti-corruption authorities, countless censors in the Supervisory Office are bent on catching corrupt officials and then getting promoted and making a fortune. Therefore, when they are officials in the empire, those who are corrupt and accept bribes
The risk is very high.
Moreover, Chen Lifu's rise can be said to have set a good example for many officials who have been promoted!
Chen Lifu was rich and did not care about the petty profits of corruption and bribery, so he could work solely for political achievements in the officialdom without any burden.
You can accuse Chen Lifu of other issues, but you cannot accuse him of corruption and bribery.
Although Geng Youhua despised Chen Lifu as a person and felt that this man was a cancer among the scholar community and the gentry class part-time, he still had to admire him because his job as an official was to make it impossible for others to catch him at all.
He hoped that his son would be like Chen Lifu when he became an official. He would not have to worry about money at all and could be an official without any burden and focus on gaining political achievements.
He also hopes that his son can say to those who accuse him of corruption and bribery: Our Geng family has plenty of money, so we don’t have to commit corruption!
Not to be an official for money, this is his expectation for his son!
So why do you become an official? Of course it’s for status!
Throughout thousands of years of history, China has had a very strong idea of officialdom, and the Tang Dynasty was no exception. In people's minds, those with the most dignity and the highest social status were always officials.
It is almost unimaginable for a gentry family to survive for less than a hundred years and continue to prosper without direct descendants becoming officials.
It is his son's business to gain social status for his family, and he himself wants to solve his son's worries!
And now it seems that Geng Youhua has actually achieved his goal initially!
Ever since a few years ago, as the eldest son of the family and the first member of the Geng family to be elected in a century, he had strived to move the family's porcelain business into the era of mechanical production, the Geng family's wealth has experienced explosive growth.
Although it is said that not long after the rise of the Geng family, other porcelain merchants quickly followed suit and also purchased machinery and equipment to establish new machine-made porcelain factories. However, relying on the first-mover advantage, the Geng family's porcelain business is still doing quite well.
Over the years, their Geng family's Geng's Porcelain Company has become the largest supplier of mid- to low-end porcelain in Guangdong and Guangxi. Of course, even if it is the largest supplier of mid- to low-end porcelain, its actual market share is not large.
, because there are so many porcelain manufacturers. There are hundreds of porcelain factories and workshops in the small city of Guangzhou.
Who made Guangzhou the most important trading port for the Tang Dynasty's trade with Southeast Asia and even Europe? The demand for porcelain in overseas markets was almost endless, so naturally there were many people engaged in the porcelain industry.
It is a pity that the machine-made porcelain produced by the Geng family is mainly concentrated in the middle and low-end, and the main focus is on the cheap low-end market. Even the competitiveness of the mid-range market is not very high, so the export trade has nothing to do with the Geng family porcelain.
The company has nothing to do with it.
Overseas trading companies spend a lot of money to organize goods and fleets to go overseas. Naturally, they need to bring highly competitive and high value-added goods. Even if it is not high-end porcelain, it must be mid-range porcelain at best. Otherwise,
If they cannot sell at super high prices, these overseas trading companies will suffer huge losses.
Last year, under the leadership of Geng Youhua, the Geng Family Porcelain Company was no longer satisfied with the Guangdong and Guangdong markets, and began to enter the porcelain market in other parts of the country, competing with many domestic porcelain companies and even traditional porcelain handicraft workshops. Unfortunately, what they mainly do
It is low-end porcelain. The previous factories were all in Guangzhou. After adding in transportation costs, it is still somewhat competitive in Guangdong and Guangxi and neighboring southern Jiangxi, southern Fujian and other regions.
But as the distance increases and transportation costs increase, the price cannot beat others.
After all, these few years have passed. Although the Geng family has eaten their first crab, no one is stupid. Other porcelain merchants have also quickly followed suit and adopted mechanical production.
Everyone’s production costs have been reduced. Although the Geng family’s technology is better, the Geng family has more experience, and the production cost is a little lower, but your transportation costs have increased, and the price is naturally no longer competitive.
That's why Geng Youhua came to Shanghai, not only to set up a branch, but also to set up a branch factory in Shanghai to offset the disadvantage of transportation costs, and then use the Geng family's rich experience accumulated in the mechanical production of porcelain over the years
, continue to lower prices and completely open up this super market in Jiangnan!
Geng Youhua came with ambitions, and to open branches and factories in Shanghai, which involved strategic investments of more than 200,000 taels, he was naturally very cautious, paying close attention to the business market in Shanghai, and also focused on the empire.