From Robinson Crusoe

The natives could not comprehend the watermills that turned all day long, just as they could not comprehend the unpredictable power and terrifying range of firearms.

But for them, knowing too much is meaningless, and learning is not something that brings them joy.

All they needed to know was that this strange, constantly noisy machine could help them with their work, grinding barley, wheat, or cocoa beans into powder.

……

After the two ends of the "C"-shaped artificial waterway were dug out, the diverted river water flowed along the waterway day and night.

The natives learned how to use the watermill through instruction on Sundays and Saturdays—it was quite simple.

After the harvested and stored grain has dried, they can use watermills to process it.

Before this, the mill hadn't been idle either. The islanders had consumed a lot of chocolate, so Chen Zhou had the natives collect cocoa beans that filled a cart, dried them, and then put them into the mill for grinding.

In order to grind chocolate with a more delicate texture, Chen Zhou specially narrowed the gap between the upper and lower grinding stones and ordered the natives to process it three times, with each processing time not less than 24 hours.

This batch of "refined" chocolates will be Chen Zhou's private supply.

As for the indigenous people, chocolate ground using ordinary methods is sweet and pure enough for them; they may not be used to a more delicate texture.

……

The mass production of chocolate created a new problem: a shortage of sugar.

To solve this problem, Chen Zhou made a special trip to see the sugarcane fields on both sides of the mountain stream.

After more than a year of planting expansion, the sugarcane fields have been densely covered with the cleared forest land, and as far as the eye can see, it is all purplish-black.

The old sugarcane closest to the mountain stream has grown from the thickness of a wrist to the thickness of a bowl, tall and strong.

The newly planted sugarcane on the outskirts is also thriving.

Here, people take care of the plants, spreading fertilizer, and all the large trees that used to block the sunlight have been cut down. The growing environment is far more favorable than the river valley plains where they originally took root.

The outer shells of those old sugarcanes had become woody and too hard, and the internal fibers were also very coarse, making them unsuitable for sugar production.

The sugarcane growing slightly further out is the perfect size, with plenty of juice and a high sugar content, making it ideal for sugar extraction.

……

After making his rounds, Chen Zhou handed over his tasks to Saturday, who was standing beside him.

“All the particularly thick sugarcane in the middle should be cut down. The natives can eat it themselves, or if they don’t want to eat it, they can use it as feed for cattle and sheep, but they can’t feed it too much.”

Sugarcane is rich in fiber, but untreated sugarcane is not suitable as feed. Only a small amount should be given to cattle and sheep at a time, as eating too much can easily cause indigestion or gastroenteritis.

“All the mature sugarcane from the middle to the outermost edge was cut down and then sent to the cave dwelling courtyard.”

The outermost, immature sugarcane should be preserved.

After the sugarcane in the enclosure is harvested, sugarcane seedlings should be replanted as soon as possible to prevent a decrease in yield next year.

Sugar is not only a seasoning, but also has a wide range of applications in the food industry. It is indispensable in the manufacture of candied fruit, candy, juice, pastries, canned food and other foods.

Chen Zhou sincerely hopes that the area of ​​sugarcane fields can continue to expand so that he can achieve his goal of "brown sugar freedom" as soon as possible.

……

On March 2, all the cut sugarcane was delivered to Chen Zhou's small courtyard.

To house them, Chen Zhou specially built a huge rain shelter in the yard.

Subsequently, a large-scale sugar-making operation began.

……

Four meticulous indigenous people were granted special permission to enter the cave dwelling courtyard and begin pre-processing the sugarcane.

They carefully followed Saturday's instructions step by step, first peeling off the outer skin of the sugarcane, and then cutting the peeled sugarcane into small sections of about 10cm.

They would then wash the sugarcane segments with clean water and put them into a small stone mill to extract the juice.

The whole process was very tedious and lengthy, but not difficult.

The indigenous people responsible for grinding the sugarcane had the heaviest workload, as they not only had to constantly pick up sugarcane but also continuously push the stone mill and change the containers for collecting sugarcane juice.

Even the most resilient natives cannot withstand such torment.

Therefore, the indigenous people who push the millstone will take turns every hour and a half to ensure that all the indigenous people can extract sugarcane juice in a relatively strong state.

……

While the locals were busy peeling sugarcane and extracting juice, Chen Zhou was also busy.

He found the fine gauze fabric left over from when the wedding dress was removed, wrapped it around the edge of the circular metal ring, and made it into a filter.

The sugarcane juice, filled with earthenware jars, was filtered through a gauze screen to remove the residue, becoming clean and clear, before being poured into an iron pot.

The strong fire quickly brought the sugarcane juice to a boil.

The abundant sugar content causes the sugarcane juice to thicken from thin to thick. During this process, Chen Zhou must continuously stir the sugarcane juice in the pot to prevent it from burning.

Against the backdrop of the iron pot's dark background, one could only accurately observe the state of the syrup by carefully scooping up the sugarcane juice little by little with a long spoon.

When the syrup changes from its initial greenish-blue to brownish-red, and drips from a long spoon in long, sticky threads, the heat is just about to turn from high to medium.

At this point, the syrup can be considered a semi-finished brown sugar product.

According to the normal process of making brown sugar, the stove fire should be turned off at this time, and then the syrup should be stirred quickly until it forms sandy crystals.

But Chen Zhou's stove is made of wood, so it's impossible to put out the fire just like that.

Therefore, he could only pour all the thick syrup from the pot into a prepared earthenware basin and stir it vigorously.

This task is similar to stirring the sugar in the pot, but it is more difficult to stir because the syrup becomes thicker.

Moreover, the stirring speed cannot be slow this time. If it is too slow, the syrup will not be able to form sandy crystals before cooling, making this finishing work extremely physically demanding.

The iron spoon stirred the viscous syrup, creating a brownish-red vortex in the swirling ceramic bowl.

The original aroma of cane sugar, along with the heat of the still-warm syrup, wafted over Chen Zhou's face, allowing him to experience the sweetness of brown sugar even without tasting it.

After fiddling around for a while, Chen Zhou finally saw some tiny sand-like crystals in the basin. He immediately perked up and swung his arm holding the iron spoon even more vigorously.

As more and more sand-like crystals form, the resistance to stirring the syrup increases.

Knowing it was time, Chen Zhou stopped stirring and poured the syrup from the ceramic basin onto a large wooden board that had been prepared beforehand.

These wooden boards were recently cut using a time-space cutting technique, resulting in exceptionally smooth surfaces and a dried finish.

The syrup is poured onto a wooden board and will solidify into blocks of brown sugar after cooling naturally. When tapped, it will break down into coarser, granular brown sugar.

Aside from having the original aroma of sugarcane and a brownish-red color, its taste is not much different from white sugar.

If it is overcooked and cannot be stirred to form a sandy texture, it can be left to solidify into a whole block of hard candy.

This hard candy doesn't affect the taste at all; you can eat it directly in your mouth or crush it into sugar when cooking. As long as it's turned into sugar, it doesn't matter how you use it.

...Chen Zhou's familiarity with the sugar manufacturing process is also thanks to the modern and advanced internet.

Through various channels, one can always learn about some small parts of the manufacturing process, and by slightly extrapolating these processes, one can arrive at the complete method for manufacturing sugar.

Perhaps the indigenous people would spend their entire lives trying to figure out how to turn sugarcane into sugar.

But for Chen Zhou, who came from the modern world, the whole process was so simple that he succeeded on his first try.

……

Of course, although the sugar production was not a failure, Chen Zhou, who witnessed the entire manufacturing process, could still find many shortcomings.

Besides the fact that the indigenous people were not skilled enough and did not extract all the juice from the sugarcane when pressing it, resulting in a waste of resources, the sugar yield of the sugarcane was also a serious defect.

Chen Zhou didn't know what the sugar yield of modern sugarcane was like.

All he knew was that it took about 75 kilograms of wild sugarcane to produce 2 kilograms of brown sugar from the wild sugarcane grown on the island.

No matter how you look at it, this ratio is alarmingly low.

He once calculated that there were about 3 mu of usable mature sugarcane land on both sides of the mountain stream, and the total weight of sugarcane produced from these 3 mu would be about 21000 jin.

In other words, after more than a year of planting sugarcane, only 560 jin (280 catties) of brown sugar could be produced, at most no more than 600 jin (300 catties).

If this were in modern times, unless it were marketed as purely wild sugarcane, the 600 kilograms of sugar wouldn't even cover the cost of fertilizer and labor.

Even in the 17th century, Chen Zhou estimated that the sugar yield of his "sugarcane field" was far inferior to that of European farmers' professional sugarcane plantations.

The fundamental reason for such a low sugar yield lies in the sugarcane variety—

Wild sugarcane grows slowly, has a thick outer shell, a thin core, high fiber content, and low sugar content, making it unsuitable as a raw material for sugar production.

But at present, this is the only plant on the island suitable for sugar production.

Besides sugarcane, the only sugar-making material Chen Zhou could think of was malt, which could be made into malt syrup.

However, Chen Zhou did not know how malt syrup was made, and he was unwilling to waste precious grain crops to satisfy his appetite.

Therefore, even if he was dissatisfied with the sugar yield of sugarcane, he had no choice but to continue using sugarcane to produce sugar.

After all, there are only ten people on the island at present. An annual production of 600 catties of brown sugar is nothing in modern times, but here it is an astronomical figure.

……

After successfully completing the first sugar-making process and confirming that his approach and manufacturing procedures were sound, Chen Zhou immediately handed over the physically demanding task of stirring the syrup to the natives.

He had long heard that there were three hard jobs in ancient times: "rowing boats, blacksmithing, and grinding tofu".

He had experienced both jobs. Rowing a boat was indeed not easy, and blacksmithing consumed a lot of physical strength. Today, compared with stirring syrup, he found that making brown sugar by hand could definitely be listed as the fourth hardship.

Stirring syrup all day would be too much for even the strongest man.

As the "leader" of the island, Chen Zhou had no intention of going through all the trouble of making essential ingredients for the natives' chocolate.

His goal is to enjoy life, not to be tormented by it.

"Damn it, I did hard labor myself before capturing the natives. If I still have to do hard labor after capturing them, then what's the point of capturing them?

……

Since arriving on the island, the natives have helped Chen Zhou with many of the heavy physical tasks.

But among all these physically demanding tasks, stirring syrup still stands out as the job that no native wants to do.

Let alone stirring syrup all day long—no one can do that kind of work all day long.

Even working for two or three hours straight can leave you so tired that your arms ache unbearably and you can't lift them.

It's important to know that they're not stirring a small bowl of syrup, but a whole pot of syrup, and they can't stop stirring it while it's cooking.

Once the syrup thickened, stirring it was almost like stirring cement. After only a few days of work, the locals had bent several iron spoons.

……

Saturday, who was in charge of managing the work, quickly observed the low morale of the indigenous people.

He noticed that small groups had formed within the indigenous population, with Zebra leading the most powerful faction within these groups, especially Zebra himself.

This guy, relying on his good Chinese and his close relationship with "the gods," himself, and Sunday, actually shirked his work and always ordered other natives to do the work for him.

He, on the other hand, chose those easy jobs, which not only allowed him to finish early and go home, but also gave him the chance to secretly cook something delicious for himself when the other natives weren't around.

On Saturday, it was realized that Zebra's behavior was what was known as "corruption" or "abuse of power for personal gain."

In the lessons Chen Zhou privately taught him, this phenomenon often represented a power's decline from its peak, a dangerous sign.

……

On Saturday, I intended to report this serious matter to Chen Zhou immediately.

As soon as he stepped out of the house, he suddenly remembered what the "god" had told him—

The island's trivial matters cannot always be handled by one person. He and Sunday must grow up quickly to the point where they can stand on their own and handle these things independently. They need to have their own opinions in order to be good "left and right arms".

There may be many people on the island in the future, dozens or hundreds.

It was an astronomical figure that he could not even imagine, exceeding the total population of all the tribes in the archipelago combined.

By then, he will have to deal with not only more matters, but also more interests involved, making things ten or a hundred times more complicated. He can't possibly ask others for help again.

According to the "gods," every outstanding manager starts with a few people, gradually accumulating experience before being able to manage more people.

It's disappointing that he's already seeking help from "the gods" after something that only happened between seven natives today.

……

After much deliberation, I finally decided on Saturday to handle this matter myself first.

If he really couldn't come up with a suitable solution, he would report it to the "God" and let the "God" make the decision.

Upon closer analysis, it seems that Zebra's behavior on Saturday did not reach the point of affecting the stability of the entire force, and therefore, it should not be punished excessively.

After all, Zebra was the first to step forward and actively seek refuge with the natives. He was also very perceptive in his daily actions and had a fairly good relationship with the natives.

He did his best in the tasks assigned to him and completed them exceptionally well.

If he were severely punished for such a trivial matter, it would not only fail to appease the natives who were being ordered, but might also instill fear in them, making them feel that the leader was capricious and affecting their loyalty.

Thinking about it further, Saturday believed that the main reason why the indigenous people did not like to do the heavy work of stirring syrup was that everyone received the same reward, but stirring syrup required more physical strength, causing sore arms and general discomfort, which was too much of a drawback.

Obviously, no one would be willing to do such a thankless and arduous task.

Especially while other indigenous people were doing lighter tasks, he was busy stirring syrup.

This contrast inevitably made the indigenous people stirring the syrup feel resentful.

To solve this problem, the best approach is to increase the income of the native who stirs the syrup, ensuring his earnings are commensurate with his labor. Once he feels satisfied and is more willing to work, the problem will naturally resolve itself. (End of Chapter)