Some people fell in love with chili peppers, some people had to chew a few cloves of raw garlic when eating noodles, some people adored the unique aroma of fennel, and others liked mint...

From Chen Zhou, they learned the techniques of wood and stone construction and applied them to their own dwellings.

...

The once barren hillside has now been cleared and leveled.

On the pale yellow surface, only a few sprouting grasses could be found; looking from east to west, it was a stretch of flat land.

Inside the tall rain shelter, heaps of building materials lay virtually untouched, quietly waiting for the day when they would be needed.

Not far from the rain shelter, there were some materials stored outdoors in less favorable conditions—

logs, planks, stone bricks, and white clay.

...

To transport these materials, especially the white clay, Chen Zhou and the natives put in a lot of effort.

The natives were responsible for road construction, widening, leveling, and filling gaps in the path from the pile of rocks to the mountain camp.

Chen Zhou was responsible for making more carts.

The wood bending technique came in handy at this time; combined with his decent carpentry and forging skills, they produced handcarts with round wheels and sturdy axles, making them easy to push and very practical.

With labor being insufficient, Chen Zhou even considered using animal power for transportation.

For this, he made several models of animal-drawn carts.

Including ox carts and sheep carts.

But the Simmental Cattle were not castrated and had never done farm work from a young age, and were stubborn, not listening to commands.

When harnessed to the ox cart, they would walk a few steps if in a good mood or stand still if in a bad mood, not moving no matter how much they were scolded.

If provoked, although they wouldn't attack people, they'd turn and leave, taking the cart with them, potentially running off to who knows where.

Compared to them, the dairy cows had a much better temperament, more suitable as draft animals.

However, since the cow was pregnant, worrying that this "seed of animal husbandry" might miscarry or worse, die with the calf, Chen Zhou had to give up using cows to pull carts.

...

As for using sheep to pull carts, the initial attempts were successful.

The three neutered rams, having had their horns sawed off, got along well with the herding natives and had good temperaments, following commands when pulling carts without running off.

However, sheep are far less powerful than cows; the three rams could pull two people of Chen Zhou's size at most.

For the smaller-sized natives, they could pull at most four, so their carrying capacity was limited.

Moreover, these sheep had a fatal flaw—they only recognized the herding natives.

If someone else drove the cart, the three sheep would easily have conflicts, with some veering left, some right, some forward, and others backward, and they might wander off to the roadside to graze while traveling.

...

The herding native managed the flock; ever since Chen Zhou and the other natives moved to the hillside factory site, he single-handedly took care of all the cattle and sheep.

In addition, he had to oversee whether the crops, sugarcane fields, and grapes in the sunroom up in the mountains had any pests or diseases, and any abnormalities on the sandy beach in the northeast corner of Shandong.

Chen Zhou thought it would be too much to ask him to lay down his burdens to drive the sheep cart just for transporting two to three hundred pounds of white clay.

After careful consideration, he eventually decided to temporarily abandon the idea of using animals for transportation and parked the ox cart next to the gallows.

If he ever needed to use the cart again, it might have to wait until the calf was born.

If it was a bull, training it from young might make for a good beast of burden.

But a cow's pregnancy lasts a full 280 days, nearly a year, and it would take another year for the calf to grow up.

Chen Zhou felt that rather than pinning hopes on the cattle, it would be more reliable to supervise the natives to work overtime diligently and push a few more carts of white clay.

...

Beneath the wooden planks and white clay lay the living quarters of Chen Zhou and the natives.

The area had once grown several large trees, but now the trees had been cut down, even the roots dug up and tossed aside.

The largest house in the living area belonged to Chen Zhou.

The house covered over 120 square meters and was styled in typical European fashion—

Not that Chen Zhou didn't like Chinese architecture, but the Chinese mortise and tenon techniques were too complicated, far from the simplicity of a European-style villa.

Moreover, building antique-style structures was too time-consuming, and given his tight schedule, he didn't want unnecessary delays.

...

Chen Zhou lived in the big house with Sunday and Saturday.

Apart from their bedrooms, the house had a kitchen and a bathroom, and a spacious living room, which was not used for entertaining guests but served as a classroom for the natives.

Every evening after work, the natives would receive education from Saturday in the living room.

Sunday sometimes sat in with the natives to listen, and sometimes went alone to the cave to bring back recent observations from the herding native.

If there was a drought affecting the crops, or too many weeds in the fields, or if there were birds or beasts damaging the seedlings, the natives had to rise early the next day to tend to the fields before coming back for other work.

... 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Beneath the big house were the natives' residences.

Since moving here and learning construction skills, their living quarters have evolved from four-person rooms to two-person rooms.

The houses were larger than before, no longer leaked wind or rain, and even included several pieces of wooden furniture, making them very comfortable to live in.

...

To minimize errors in building the factory, Chen Zhou extended the preparation work by more than two months.

It wasn't until after New Year's Eve had passed and the New Year celebrated that he announced the official commencement of work in 1663.

...

Perhaps subsequent actions lost the initial fervor, and the purpose was not displayed clearly enough.