12dz Chapter 242 Ancient Books
Chapter 242 Ancient Books
Wen Qing took out a dagger, found the nails, pried them out one by one, and discovered a clue when she took down a piece of wood. There was another layer of wood on top of this layer, and that layer of wood was made of oak.
After removing the rough layer of wood, it is easy to find the entrance. This must have been a secret room when the house was built. The later owner saw that this place was somewhat obvious, so he added another layer of wood to cover the entrance.
Wen Qing opened the board at the entrance to let it ventilate first, then she went upstairs to put all the furniture into the space. She didn't plan to ask others to do the cleaning. Although the furniture in the house was very old, because of the secret room, she wanted to participate in the decoration herself and do the key parts herself.
After cleaning, Wen Qing went down to the basement, turned on the flashlight, and stuck her head into the ceiling. The space on the ceiling was only half a meter high, and there were eight wooden boxes wrapped in oilcloth on it. She put all the boxes into the space, closed the wooden board at the entrance again, and stapled the outer layer of wooden boards piece by piece to restore it to its original appearance. Maybe this basement can be used again in the future.
After restoring the cabinet on the third floor to its original state, there is no need to renovate the cloakroom on the third floor anymore.
She went to the street to buy a broom, dustpan, rag and bucket. After cleaning the three floors by herself, it was already evening. Wen Qing drove to the Changxia Winery store in Hongkou. The store has three floors. The downstairs is the store, and the upstairs are offices, warehouses and temporary duty dormitories for employees. Wen Qing would not live there, but just went to say hello to them and learn about their business situation.
The person in charge of the store is Tang Jingyi, a very capable young woman. Wen Qing reported the performance of the Songjiang store to her. She thought it was quite good. The store had sales of over 100 million yuan per month and more than 1000 million yuan a year. Changxia Special Brew and Changxia Jingyun were the best-selling products.
Wen Qing asked about the sales of the silver medal commemorative wine. Manager Tang said, "The wines in gift boxes sell better than those in bottles. People who want to buy wine at a low price usually buy wine in grocery stores, while those who come to specialty stores generally prefer the wines in fancy gift boxes."
The next day, Manager Tang took her to visit several important store managers. Wen Qing hosted a banquet for these distributors and once again demonstrated how to drink Changxia Chunniang's cocktail.
"Summer Breeze" and "Peach Blossom Charm" complement each other with the soft and mellow flavor of fruit juice, soda water and light-fragrance liquor. The taste of the liquor is a little lighter, but the fruity aroma is added, which makes the flavor of the liquor more layered and especially suitable for a relaxed atmosphere. Tang Jingyi said that this way of drinking is very fashionable.
There are already quite a few bars in Songjiang, but the base liquor used in bars for cocktails is mainly imported liquor, which is relatively expensive, making ordinary students and workers stay away from it. If it is changed to domestic liquor, it will provide fashion-conscious Chinese people with more choices. If ordinary families are willing to prepare the ingredients, they can also make a delicious cocktail by themselves, adding a variety of wine options for family gatherings.
Wen Qing gave her a copy of the cocktail recipe manual. The next day, Tang Jingyi gave training to her employees and bought cocktail shakers to distribute to everyone. The young employees who liked novelty soon figured out more cocktail recipes. Later, Tang Jingyi sponsored a bartender in the name of Changxia Wine Industry to participate in the bar bartender competition, and he won the runner-up. The champion was a Western European.
There were also young people who went to bars and fell in love with the refreshing flavor of Changxia Chunniang. They pursued the stimulation of liquor and bought it to drink alone. For a time, many bars in Songjiang listed Changxia Chunniang as a must-have variety.
When Wen Qing left the store, she told Tang Jingyi that Liu Honggang was going to live in the store for a while, and asked her to vacate a temporary dormitory for Xiao Liu. Tang Jingyi said that it was no problem, they had four employee dormitories on duty, and usually people stayed there when they were on duty at night, so there were always empty rooms all year round.
When Liu Honggang first came, Wen Qing had already sorted out the affairs of the specialty store. Wen Qing arranged for him to work on decorating two houses, and Liu Honggang was responsible for contacting the decoration company and purchasing building materials.
Tang Jingyi recommended a decoration company. Wen Qing asked her to ask the person in charge to come over for a talk. The decoration company sent a deputy manager whose surname was Ding. Wen Qing took Liu Honggang and Manager Ding to the three-bedroom, two-living-room house at No. 110 Heqing Road, introduced her decoration requirements, and then took them to the small Western-style building at No. 73 Wuling Road.
Manager Ding's expression became much more serious. Although Tang Jingyi had introduced Wen Qing's background to them in advance, that she was the director of Pingjing Changxia Winery, he did not take her seriously as an outsider. Now that he saw that she could actually afford a small Western-style house, he began to take her seriously. Those who could afford a small Western-style house either had a good background or were rich.
Wen Qing's requirements for the decoration of the small villa were very simple. The exterior needed to be restored to its original appearance, and the interior needed to replace the damaged floor and repaint it. The lamps, electrical wires, and bathroom sewers in all the rooms of the building needed to be replaced, and all the interior walls needed to be repainted. Finally, the yard needed to be tidied, the hardened areas needed to be hardened, and a small amount of land needed to be left for planting flowers and trees.
Wen Qing specifically proposed that she would also join in the decoration, mainly because she also liked DIY and wanted to help the craftsmen. Manager Ding thought this was the willfulness of rich people and readily agreed, "This is your house, as long as you are happy."
Liu Hong had just participated in the renovation of the Dongcheng Lijing Building and had some knowledge of decoration. She carefully wrote down Wen Qing's request and said to Wen Qing, "Director Wen, I will first discuss the decoration details of the two houses with Manager Ding, and then report to you after I get the decoration plan and material list."
Wen Qing nodded, but told him to hurry up. Manager Ding said that the plan would be ready in three days at the latest.
Wen Qing found a hotel near Wuling Road and checked into it, then entered the space and cleaned up the things she had found.
Eight boxes were found in the basement, which mainly contained calligraphy and paintings, as well as ancient books. Most of the calligraphy and paintings were from the Ming and Qing dynasties, and there were also some works from the Republic of China period. The ancient books were packed in five boxes. After Wen Qing counted them, he found a total of 210 sets of books. Each set of books was packed in a box. Although they were wrapped in oilcloth, they had not seen the sun for decades and some of them were moldy and infested with insects. Wen Qing saw that these books included the Book of Changes, its annotations, the Four Books and annotations by many great writers, as well as some Buddhist scriptures, Taoist scriptures, some vernacular novels, travel notes and poems.
In the other three alleys, two wooden boxes were filled with calligraphy and paintings. She counted them and found there were about 76 scrolls, all tightly wrapped with oil paper. One wooden box was filled with the four treasures of the study, including good rice paper, an inkstone, a set of ancient ink, several porcelain brush washers, and several Hu brushes. It seemed that the previous owner of this house was a literati.
She didn't look through the items carefully. She just took them out, brushed off the dust and bugs, and hung them out to dry in the yard of the small bamboo house.
Wen Qing thought, probably because these books and paintings are heavy and not very valuable, they were not taken away at the time, and later they didn't know why they were not taken away? However, these ancient books can be donated to the University of Technology in the future.