After arriving at the market, the four of us divided the work.
Wen Rourou and Old Zhang were responsible for setting up a street stall, selling small commodities used by modern people.
Old Lin was responsible for purchasing, buying various small Ming Dynasty items for fans.
At seven in the morning, I started the live stream.
My camera first focused on Wen Rourou’s stall, where she mainly sold women’s products. Her stall had small round mirrors, lipsticks, underwear, sanitary napkins, and other small commodities.
The items on Old Zhang’s stall were mainly targeted at the elderly and children: reading glasses, children’s electric toys, portable handheld game consoles, batteries, and so on.
Old Lin followed me as I strolled around the market.
In the market, there were vendors selling firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, and wine; others selling fruits, vegetables, live fish, dried goods, cinnabar, sinew and horn, leather, and livestock; and still others selling lacquerware, woodenware, bronzeware, cloth, silk, fur, and blankets – an endless variety.
While my live stream camera was pointed at the goods sold by the small vendors on both sides of the street, I began to interact with my fans.
“Dear friends, except for live animals, we can purchase other small items for you,” I began a round of warm-up.
After Old Lin and I walked around the market, Old Lin began to introduce the wines sold in the market to the fans with great interest.
“This shop sells fruit wine, which is produced in Maotai Town in Guizhou, called Goujiang wine. It is brewed from the fruit of the paper mulberry tree. I just tasted a sip of it, and it has a delicious and fragrant taste. Don’t underestimate this fruit wine; it is actually the predecessor of Maotai wine,” Old Lin traced the origin with solid evidence.
After Old Lin’s introduction, fans immediately began placing orders to purchase Goujiang wine.
“This gentleman wants us to purchase two bottles of Goujiang wine for him, but there were no glass bottles in the Ming Dynasty. They use jars or urns to store wine here. I just asked the shopkeeper, and the Goujiang wine in small urns comes in two sizes: three jin and five jin,” I explained to a fan.
Old Lin and I stopped in front of another wine shop.
“This shop sells mixed grain wine produced by Wen Defeng Winery. It is brewed from five grains: sorghum, rice, glutinous rice, wheat, and corn. This wine is sweet but not greasy, slightly spicy but not stinging to the tongue. It also has a very elegant name, Yao Zixue Qu. Don’t underestimate this mixed grain wine either; it is actually the predecessor of Wuliangye wine,” Old Lin took a cup of Yao Zixue Qu handed over by the shop owner and slowly savored it.
“In the late Qing Dynasty, Wen Defeng Winery was renamed Lichuan Yong Winery. Once, the winery owner Deng Zijun brought wine to a local celebrity banquet. During the banquet, scholar Yang Huiquan tasted it and said that such a fine wine, called mixed grain wine, seemed too ordinary. Although the name Yao Zixue Qu is elegant, it is not enough to reflect its flavor. Since this wine is made from the essence of five grains, why not rename it Wuliangye? After he said this, everyone applauded. Deng Zijun happily adopted the name. From then on, Wuliangye was officially named,” Old Lin knew wine, understood wine, and loved wine. He could talk about the interesting history of wine at his fingertips.
While Old Lin was tasting Yao Zixue Qu, more than a dozen fans had already started placing orders to purchase it.
There was another wine shop in front, and I signaled Old Lin to go with me to that shop to take a look.
“This shop sells Daqu wine produced by Shujuyuan Winery. This Daqu wine is actually the predecessor of our modern Guojiao 1573 wine. The fermentation pits of this winery were built in the first year of the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty (1573), and the Luzhou Laojiao Winery is still using these fermentation pits today. These fermentation pits are now listed as key national cultural relics,” Old Lin narrated in detail.
While Old Lin was introducing this wine, I asked the shop owner to pour us a cup to taste.
After Old Lin tasted it, he praised, “This wine has a sweet, mellow, and full taste.”
I looked at the live stream purchase orders displayed on my phone screen. All of them were orders for these three types of wine.
As of this moment, more than one hundred fans had ordered more than four hundred urns of wine, and the orders were still increasing.
“It seems that we will be busy enough today just purchasing wine,” I thought to myself with delight.
Old Lin and I came to Old Zhang and Wen Rourou’s stall, only to see that there were very few items left on their stalls. It seemed that these small commodities that we brought to the Ming Dynasty to sell were very popular among the Ming people.
In fact, any small object from the Ming Dynasty is a valuable cultural relic when viewed in modern times.
For example, just a wine urn from the Ming Dynasty can be sold for at least a thousand yuan now, not to mention the four-hundred-year-old wine inside the urn.
The coins received by Wen Rourou and Old Zhang from their street stall included both paper money and Taichang Tongbao copper coins. Selling these coins now would increase their value many times over, and we could make another fortune.
The thousand urns of wine were transported to the Royal Palace by three horse-drawn carts hired by each of the three shops, making more than thirty trips back and forth to deliver them all.
When the wine was delivered to the entrance of Tiger Cave, Zhu Youxiao’s small train had already been built, and the track bridge above the underground cave had also been built.
Zhu Youxiao built three small trains: one in Tiger Cave, one in the narrow passage, and one in the passage connecting the nine underground caves. These small trains had locomotives at both ends for easy round trips.
However, all three of these small trains had to be powered by manpower.
Zhu Youxiao designed a labor-saving drive device. The four of us sat on the locomotive and stepped on the drive device with a little force, and the small train filled with goods could slowly move forward.
In order to facilitate the transportation of bridge-building wood in the passage by the small train, Zhu Youxiao also sawed the wood into short pieces.
Zhu Youxiao said that the small train and track bridge he built did not use a single nail and were all made with mortise and tenon structures.
“What is a mortise and tenon structure?” Wen Rourou asked, asking questions whenever she didn’t understand.
“The mortise and tenon structure is made by cutting and processing high-quality wood. The protruding part of the component is called the tenon, and the recessed part is called the mortise. Two different types of wood components are connected by a concave-convex joint. Without nails or glue, the building components can have a seamless appearance, a firm connection, and reasonable mechanics. They can also be repeatedly disassembled and assembled,” Old Lin patiently explained to Wen Rourou.
Zhu Youxiao also invented a commodity transfer slide to facilitate the transfer of goods from outside the cave to inside the cave, the transfer of goods from this small train to another small train, and the transfer of goods from inside the cave to outside the cave.
In our first live stream purchase, we mainly recommended three types of Ming Dynasty liquor to our fans. We purchased one thousand two hundred and seventy-one urns of liquor, and we earned more than two million yuan.
And we sold a total of one thousand two hundred and fifty-one small commodities at our street stall, making a profit of more than one million yuan, including the income we received from selling the Ming Dynasty coins we received to collectors.
Of course, with the experience of our first street stall and live stream purchase, our business became more and more prosperous, and making millions became a matter of minutes.