Chapter 84: Telecom

"Stop, stop!" Xia cut him off in time. "Just give me the volume — I can't follow the jargon."

"Alright, let me put it this way." Liang Yuhang thought for a moment, then said, "We'll need four cabinets the size of a home fridge, four more the size of a desktop tower, then eight flatter slim boxes, plus various equipment cables and wires — the wires aren't as wide as a fridge, but they're taller; we'll make the racks ourselves. Yeah, all in all, one transmission box will definitely hold it, and we can still stuff in some phones, photovoltaic panels, and spare parts."

"Oh, if it's just one box, that's acceptable. Can't you cut it down a little more? As for the photovoltaic panels, when Cao Zong came over he already dismantled a batch from Hangzhou — they're right in the storehouse." Xia Xianze rubbed his chin, hoping to subtract the one item he actually understood.

"Boss, this is the main equipment room — the gear count has to be a tiny bit higher. When we set up additional nodes later, we won't need nearly as much. Besides, our total equipment load is exploding right now: laptops, phones, walkie-talkies, night-vision devices — this little bit of photovoltaic panel is nowhere near enough."

"Sigh, just hold out a little longer. Once the kiln district is up and running, we'll have electricity."

"Boss, even once the kiln district is built, are we really willing to pull over three kilometers of cable here? Hauling storage batteries back and forth is worse than just using the photovoltaic panels — and this is greener, too."

"Alright, alright, hurry up and write out the equipment list. You two stay in this room and work on it — no leaving. I'm worried that bunch outside will figure out to come hassle you! Once it's done, slip it to me on the sly, and I'll go find Cao Zong." Xia Xianze spoke as he walked out, leaving the two excited chief and deputy chiefs of Sandbank Telecom to draft their order.

After stepping out and pretending nothing was up, Xia Xianze went to the official residence, ignored all the people heatedly bickering, and then openly and aboveboard called Wang Liguo, Cai Feiming, and the others over. The Three Chariots began discussing the Silver Yuan Note issue.

It was true that, ever since the Japanese merchants learned that White Slips could be exchanged for raw silk, they no longer cared whether they held White Slips or Silver Yuan Notes. But White Slips were not presentable in polite company; Silver Yuan Notes were a necessity. In the future, any territory within the cannon range of the Crossing Faction's warships would inevitably have to implement a high-denomination scrip system for bulk trade. So, while Cao Zong was still in Dayuan, they needed to settle the Silver Yuan Note specifications now.

"There's really no need to make it so complicated." Wang Liguo sat down and began, "High-denomination notes are still a bit hard to deploy at this stage. The Sea Merchants only use them a couple of times temporarily while they're in Dayuan — we don't have nodes anywhere else. Just keep the design simple. Later, once our commercial scale grows, we can specially design and print a proper batch."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking too." Cai Feiming nodded. "To put it bluntly, it's machine guns plus credit — the specs and design of the Silver Yuan Note aren't that important. If you ask me, just use the laser printer to run off some arbitrary background tint. On the front, 'One Thousand Taels' in uppercase; on the back, '1000.' No other patterns or text needed. That's perfectly okay — no power in this plane can counterfeit it. If we're feeling conscientious, use offset paper; A4 paper works too. High-denomination notes are all stored carefully anyway — they don't need to circulate constantly."

"And the quantity?" Seeing that the two were largely in agreement, Xia Xianze asked the core question.

"Two denominations, five thousand and one thousand, will be enough." Wang Liguo stretched out his thumb and index finger, making a "tiny bit" gesture. "A single seagoing vessel's cargo is worth tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand taels of silver. We use just this tiny bit to first swap over their precious metals and other urgently needed goods."

"But doing it this way has one prerequisite," Cai Feiming added. "We must have enough raw silk and porcelain anchoring the system. Otherwise, the Silver Yuan Notes won't fetch anything good, and people won't come back next time."

"Yeah, that's not a big problem." Xia Xianze said, "We have a base in Hangzhou — buying some raw silk isn't hard. Zheng Zhilong may swagger around, but doesn't the majority of his raw silk also come from Jiangnan? Once we catch our breath a little, heh heh, heh heh — we'll see about that."

In the end, the few of them discussed it further and decided to first import one box of Silver Yuan Notes to test the waters. While the Three Chariots were meeting, the various departmental spies listening in for news nearby discovered that these three had talked for ages only to settle on the volume of a single leather case. Finding it utterly dull, they scattered like birds and beasts.

Xia Xianze then went out for a stroll, quietly and without a trace obtained an equipment list from a certain room, and then with great fanfare, under the banner of visiting Cao Zong and reporting on the Silver Yuan Note matter, stayed in Cao Chuan's room for a full two hours before emerging.

Immediately afterward, Chairman Cao announced he was coming out of seclusion, looking dazed and saying he needed to go back and get an IV drip, and would return to Dayuan in a couple of days. Everyone hurriedly helped the Chairman to the storehouse. Inside the storehouse, the goods for Chief Executive Dong to take back to the later era were already prepared: a large wooden frame nailed together from camphor wood, 2.8 meters to a side, and inside the frame, neatly stacked, were white sandalwood heartwood pieces cut into rectangular blocks.

The majority of the remaining space was filled with the heartwood of some red sappanwood. This sappanwood was a top-grade material for furniture and musical instruments; the Dutch had shipped it over from South Asia, actually intending to use it as dye.

The very last bit of space in the frame was stuffed full with dried abalone from the Japanese merchants. The Transmigrators had no interest in traditional Japanese sundries like lacquerware, folding screens, or samurai swords. Only some dried abalone had been taken by the Transmigrators with White Slips for the Chairman to bring back to the later era and use as connection-building gifts.

Yes — dried abalone produced along the northern frigid coasts was also a traditional Japanese export sundry. What later generations called double-head abalone would never have been traded on a Red Seal Ship. Super single-head abalone, the size of a muskmelon and weighing over one catty, were Japan's standard stock. Note: this catty refers to the sima jin, 600 grams or more.

Cao Zong once again performed his unique, unrivalled technique — Sleeve Box — then tottered unsteadily back to his room, shut the door, and vanished from this plane.

Early the next morning, Cao Zong strode out of his room, hale and full of vigor. The comrades swarmed forward, showing the utmost concern for Cao Zong's… "Treasure Box."

For the first time, a transmission treasure box welded from steel plates appeared in the Dayuan warehouse. The earliest transmission boxes had all been refrigerated truck bodies custom-ordered by Cao Chuan; later on, they switched to steel plates — there were more and more places that needed steel plates.

After a flurry of hands opened the box door, the comrades were dumbfounded: what the hell was this pile of black equipment cabinets and chassis? And those beautiful photovoltaic panels gleaming with blue light. The quicker ones had already figured it out — no wonder someone had been nailing up racks on the fort at the southeast corner these past couple of days.

The next moment, two large boxes of Huawei Mate 10s were dragged out to the crowd's cheers. Without packaging boxes, the Mate RS phones, protected only by a single layer of film, were frantically snatched up until everyone had one in hand before things finally calmed down.

This box of telecom equipment earned praise from nearly everyone, except for a handful of true Fruit Fans. The fake Fruit Fans had long since joined the dark side. Everyone cheerfully helped Tao Zheng run cables and helped Liang Yuhang debug the equipment room.

What's that, it's just a big LAN and you can't browse Taobao? No problem — at least you can check Moments, right! Once the laptops are on, there's always a Crossing Forum to flame on, right? And the shut-ins can squad up and stomp those idiots from the Human Resources Department, right…