My life skills in Daming Liver

Guangzhou Port.

Lorenzo disembarked from a Portuguese merchant ship with the goods and looked at the bustling dock area. The young businessman was full of expectations for this new port in the Far East.

Like Lorenzo, most of the passengers on this ship were small businessmen like him who "joined the boat."

These merchants did not have the ability to buy or lease an entire ocean-going cargo ship. They could only rent a space on the merchant ship and personally escort the goods across the ocean to Guangzhou.

Businessmen like Lorenzo are called "casual traders" in Portugal, and the cabins rented to them are also the lowest cabins.

Lorenzo mortgaged all his wealth, including the gemstone ring that his wife Jessica had given him from his father-in-law when they eloped with him.

The goods Lorenzo brought to this far-flung eastern country were the specialty of his hometown of Venice - glass.

Lorenzo was a Venetian businessman who fled the Ottoman Empire and went to the Ming Dynasty for a last ditch effort after his business went bankrupt in the Safavid dynasty.

Lorenzo was originally from Venice. He fell in love with Jessica, the daughter of the Jewish businessman Shylock. Although Jessica converted to Christianity after the elopement, her Jewish identity was still discriminated against.

The irony is that the current Ottoman Empire has the most relaxed religious atmosphere in the entire Asia and Europe.

The Ottoman Empire only levied more taxes on citizens of additional faiths, and it would not discriminate against the original faith as long as they converted, and it was even more tolerant of ethnic origin issues.

Lorenzo couldn't get along in Venice, so he had to take his wife to the Ottomans.

After arriving in Ottoman, Lorenzo found that business was not that easy.

The Ottomans expanded rapidly, and with the capture of Cairo in 1517, the Ottomans completely controlled the entire Red Sea route, which was the throat of trade in the eastern Mediterranean.

The expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean was also one of the driving forces behind the rise of the Age of Discovery in Europe.

It is precisely because the Red Sea route in the eastern Mediterranean is completely controlled by the Ottomans that European countries urgently need a new route to continue to obtain goods from the East.

This was the beginning of the movement by the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch to open up Atlantic routes.

As the Atlantic routes prospered, it was not the Ottomans who were hurt the most, but the Venetians.

The rise of the Venetians was due to the Byzantine Empire entrusting them with Mediterranean trade, and they started by being "traitors" in the East and the West.

However, with the fall of the Byzantine Empire, Venetian merchants could still do business from the Ottoman Empire relying on their flexible "faith" bottom line, but they had lost the tax benefits they had enjoyed during the Byzantine Empire.

The Ottomans imposed heavy taxes on Venetian merchants, making the once lucrative Mediterranean routes to the East less profitable.

The opening of the Atlantic route and the emergence of new competitors, such as the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, made the Venetian situation even worse.

There were many Venetian businessmen like Lorenzo who went to Ottoman to do business, but after arriving in Ottoman with his wife, Lorenzo found that life here was not easy either.

Ottoman is not a paradise. The business environment here is more complicated than that of Venice. Lorenzo, a newcomer with no connections or capital, is not qualified to participate in Mediterranean trade.

When Lorenzo eloped with his wife, he promised her a better life, but now he might as well be in Venice.

Due to helplessness, Lorenzo could only change the track and engage in differentiated competition.

He chose to do business with the Safavids further east in the Ottoman Empire.

The Safavid Dynasty and the Ottoman Empire were competitors in the Middle East. Although the two countries were mortal enemies, they were also powerful empires.

The Safavid Empire was very important, blocking the throat of East-West trade, and was located between Europe, Central Asia and India, which were developing at the time.

The carpets, silks and textiles of the Safavid dynasty were very popular in the Ottomans and Europe. Therefore, although the two countries were at odds, many Ottoman merchants still traded between the two countries.

Lorenzo went to the Safavid dynasty to give it a try, but suffered heavy losses again.

This time it has something to do with Su Ze.

Indian homespun cloth was once a best-selling commodity in the Ottoman Empire, and it was these homespun cloths that Lorenzo purchased.

But when he brought the Indian homespun cloth back to Constantinople, he found that the price of Indian homespun cloth on the market had plummeted. The nobles and wealthy people of Constantinople began to pursue new cloth from the far east.

This new fabric is woven very finely, is warmer and more comfortable to wear, and has a dye that is stronger and less likely to fade.

It is said that this is an imitation produced by a separatist force within the distant Ming Dynasty, called "Southeast" by Ottoman merchants.

Lorenzo could only sell the Indian homespun cloth he finally transported back at a low price, and once again lost a lot of money.

This time his wife mortgaged the gemstone ring she had stolen from her father-in-law when they eloped. After Lorrazzo heard about the wealthy "Southeast", he took the glassware from his hometown of Venice and embarked on a voyage to the Far East.

Lorenzo also inquired about it, and found that glass was a rare thing in the East. The Venetian glassware he carried were all good goods. This time, he was confident that he would be able to sell them at a high price in the East.

As long as the goods can be sold, Lorenzo can buy cloth, silk, tea and other goods from the southeast and return to the castle. These can all be sold at a large price.

In order to transport these delicate glassware to the Far East intact, Lorenzo slept in the cabin and watched his goods carefully.

Just as Lorenzo confidently unloaded his goods, he arrived at the market dedicated to foreign trade transactions at Guangzhou Port.

The Shibosi Market at Guangzhou Port is open all year round. Businessmen from the southeast and foreign countries can set up stalls here to sell their goods.

Goods must be registered when they enter the market, and taxes can be paid when the goods are sold and leave the market. Whether they are foreign merchants or domestic merchants, the tax collectors of the Shipping Department treat them equally.

When registering to enter the market, the clerk from the Shipping Department looked at the goods brought by Lorenzo and showed a subtle expression.

Lorenzo had never seen such a huge market. He took the sign given to him by the market clerk and found his stall.

When Lorenzo put his goods on display, he looked at the exquisite Venetian glassware with confidence. He would definitely make money this time!

But from sunrise to sunset, no one paid attention to Lorenzo's goods. Those merchants from the southeast just shook their heads and left after seeing the goods on his stall.

At night, the market officials began to drive away the merchants, and Lorenzo frustratedly put his goods back into the baskets.

There is a commercial building specifically for businessmen to live in the dock area, but Lorenzo definitely doesn't have the money to live in a commercial building.

He could only take the goods back to the cabin and spend the night crowded in the narrow and dark cabin.

Early the next morning, Lorenzo entered the market again with his goods. This time he came early and grabbed a good stall.

But the result was the same as yesterday. Occasionally, people passed by his stall, but no one stopped at all.

No one, whether they were businessmen from the southeast or foreign countries, asked Lorenzo for a price.

At this time, Lorenzo also realized that something was wrong. After closing the stall, he didn't sleep all night. On the third day, he did not leave the stall. Instead, he entered the market with dark circles under his eyes and began to stroll around the market.

The market is really big, Lorenzo sighed once again. Compared with the market in Guangzhou, the market in Venice or Castelo is like a rural fair.

Lorenzo discovered that each stall was arranged in a different location depending on the goods being sold.

Who can imagine that Guangzhou Port is just a newly opened port among many ports in the southeast. According to the information Lorenzo got from the crew, there are several larger port cities in the southeast coastal area, and the markets there are larger than those in Guangzhou. The market is several times bigger!

It was hard for Lorenzo to imagine how the officials in the southeast managed such a huge market in such an orderly manner.

Lorenzo walked in the market, looking at the dazzling array of goods, and only regretted that he had no money in his pocket.

Exquisite silk, these are not ordinary goods in Persia, this is the hometown of silk. The silk in the southeast is as thin as cicada wings and as silky as a girl's hair. These are the highest-grade goods shipped back to the castle!

There were all kinds of cotton cloths. Lorenzo was surprised by the large quantity and high quality of these cotton cloths. He really couldn't imagine how the craftsmen here weaved so many cotton cloths.

What surprised Lorenzo even more was the low price of these cotton cloths. He finally knew why his Indian homespun cloths could not be sold.

Including the cost of shipping, the cost of transporting these southeastern cloths back to King's Castle is more than twice as much as the cost of Indian cloth!

With such a low cost and such good quality, Lolazzo had only one thought in his mind: the Indian homespun cloth was finished.

The colorful cloth market is like a rainbow city falling from the sky. Foreign businessmen are frantically buying cloth and silk from the southeast.

Lorenzo quickened his pace. He just wanted to find out why his glassware could not be sold, and then get rid of these glassware as soon as possible and replace them with silk to take back.

Oh no, I can’t afford the silk Lorenzo, but I can make a lot of money by taking these new southeastern fabrics back!

Lorenzo left the cloth and silk area and once again came to the utensil area where he had set up a stall two days ago.

The exquisite porcelain made Lorenzo unable to move away. To his surprise, the porcelain sold in Guangzhou's porcelain market was not the oriental style porcelain.

To be honest, Lorenzo grew up in Venice, which was once a transit center for trade between the East and the West. He had seen many exquisite oriental porcelains.

But Westerners don't quite appreciate the beauty of Oriental porcelain. They always feel that Oriental porcelain is too plain.

But the Guangzhou porcelain that Lorenzo saw had gorgeous patterns.

What surprised Lorenzo even more was that he actually saw a picture of the Baptism of the Virgin Mary and a picture of the Holy Prophet preaching scriptures at the same stall.

Lorenzo was stunned. It was hard for him to imagine that such a stall could sell porcelain from two major religions at the same time.

High-end oriental porcelain, coupled with religious paintings that are like works of art, the porcelain is also specially made into a square shape according to Western aesthetics.

Whether these porcelains are shipped back to Castello or Venice, they will definitely sell well!

But seeing these exquisite porcelains, which were like religious sacred vessels, put in baskets and haggled over by Guangzhou merchants, Lorenzo, a Christian, always felt a little uncomfortable.

After selling his glassware, Lorenzo decided to take a set back with him.

But when he walked to the next stall, Lorenzo was completely stunned. He finally knew why his glassware couldn't be sold!

I only saw a Guangzhou businessman's stall, with exquisite transparent glassware placed casually on the stall.

These transparent and flawless glasses are also the most high-end products in Venice, but in the stalls of Guangzhou merchants, they are piled randomly in the corners of the stalls.

Lorenzo saw more colorful glass crafts at this stall.

From teapots to wine glasses, to wine containers, to various glass crafts.

Lorenzo also saw a portrait of the craftsmanship of firing mosaic glass, which was more transparent and gorgeous than the mosaic glass of the Holy See.

After seeing the price, Lorenzo almost fainted!

The price of these glassware is so cheap, half the cost of what he brought back from the West!

There is no competition for your own glassware!

Lorenzo quickly calculated the price, and he desperately discovered that he seemed to have made a mistake.

If he buys glass in Guangzhou, he can still make money by selling it in Venice!

Lorenzo's eyes darkened and he collapsed directly in front of the Guangzhou merchant's stall.

At the same time, Tan Lun was inspecting the glass workshop outside Guangzhou.

Workers are crushing the quartz in crucibles, and then these crucibles are transported to the next place. After the workers weigh them, they pour the saltpeter into the crucible and mix it with quartz sand.

Immediately afterwards, these crucibles will be filled with copper powder, iron filings, red lead and other metal objects as colorants according to the different colors of the glass needed to be fired, and then sent to the glass kiln for calcination.

Tan Lun came to the edge of the hot glass kiln and saw skilled glass craftsmen dragging the crucible that had been calcined for more than a whole day out of the glass kiln.

The craftsman put the iron rod in the crucible with a central control and began to rotate and blow air. A glass bottle gradually took shape in the hands of the craftsman.

Tan Lun went to the next workshop. The ground here was full of broken colored glass, and several craftsmen were splicing mosaic glass.

Several of the craftsmen have Western faces, and the patterns they spell out are based on religious stories from the West and the Middle East. These are products specially exported.

Tan Lun finally came to the last workshop. There were very few craftsmen in this workshop. The master craftsman who accompanied Tan Lun to visit took out an iron hat and said:

"Master Tan, please put on this safety helmet."

I only saw a red-hot glass crucible hanging on a hinge in this huge workshop, slowly moving to a heated cauldron.

The crucible is tilted and the glass solution is poured into the cauldron.

"It's leaking!"

The craftsman pulled the gate, and the molten tin and molten glass flowed out together and landed on the steel flat tray below.

The glass solution slowly spread out on the molten tin liquid. Tan Lun saw that at the end of this huge machine, a piece of cooled flat glass was slowly sent out through a mechanically driven roller.