Chapter 243: The Gold Mine

After Wang An returned home, he saw Liu Guilan fiddling with the sewing machine.

Perhaps she hadn't figured it out, so Liu Guilan's face was full of anxiety and frustration.

Mu Xueqing and Wang Dazhu were standing to the side, also full of question marks and anxious, unable to help at all because neither of them knew how to use the thing either.

Wang An looked at the three of them spinning in circles and almost laughed out loud.

Actually, this was normal; although the sewing machine looked simple, it was still a new thing in this era.

Besides, in the entire Kaoshan Village, Wang An's family's sewing machine was only the second one; if you wanted to talk about the first one, it was of course at the home of the former village head, Niu Qun.

So not only could Liu Guilan and the others not figure out the sewing machine, but most people in the whole country at this time couldn't figure it out either.

Seeing Wang An enter the house, Liu Guilan's eyes lit up instantly, and she shouted: "Eldest son, come over quickly. We three have been pondering for a long time, and this thing just won't work."

Wang An put away his smile and began to teach the three of them how to use the sewing machine. Fortunately, the sewing machine still had an instruction manual and diagrams.

Otherwise, although Wang An was extremely familiar with sewing machines, he really wouldn't have been able to name many of the parts.

The sewing machine is a very easy thing to learn, but it is worth noting that when threading the needle, you must use your left hand.

Because if you use your right hand, the thread goes in the opposite direction, which will cause the upper thread and the lower thread not to catch.

Wang An explained it very carefully and personally demonstrated how to use the sewing machine to make shoe uppers.

And although Wang Dazhu didn't do needlework, he was learning quite seriously.

Wang An felt that as long as one knew how to use a sewing machine to make shoe uppers, using it to make other things would be a small matter.

Cloth shoes in this era were all made of cloth layers, and layers is actually a cloth board formed by pasting multiple layers of cloth together with paste.

That layers is quite thick; the shoe upper is made of one layer of layers and two layers of shoe-face cloth sewn together.

And the sole, which is what people often call the "thousand-layer sole," is actually many layers of layers sewn together densely with fine hemp rope, stitch by stitch.

Making shoe soles is a job that rural women in this era could never stop doing; all year round, whenever they had free time, they had to make shoe soles.

However, even if they were making shoe soles all year round, it still couldn't keep up with the family's need for shoes, because cloth shoes are actually just many layers of cloth.

They are quite non-abrasion-resistant and quite flimsy, and cloth shoes like the thousand-layer sole are not comfortable to wear.

Although it's called a thousand-layer sole, it fears both water and snow. In winter, wearing these shoes on the ground, it would take less than a minute for the soles of your feet to feel ice-cold.

So in this era, if you want to keep your feet from freezing in the Northeast, you have to wear *wula* shoes made of leather and fur. If you wear cloth shoes, you have to make the shoe uppers higher and then line the shoes with insoles made of *wula* grass.

Ever since Wang An got blood on his cloth shoes while hunting with a knife, he now wears *wula* shoes made by Mu Xueqing. Although they are ugly, they are quite comfortable for mountain trekking.

After completely teaching his mother and wife how to use the sewing machine, Wang An became idle.

If a person is idle, they will find work for themselves.

So Wang An boiled some hot water and scalded the bear gallbladder that had swollen up again.

A bear gallbladder isn't something you can just scald once and be done with; it needs to be scalded multiple times.

Every time it is scalded, the skin of the gallbladder will shrink, and then after a few days, the skin will be swollen by the bile again; at this time, it must be scalded again.

Only when the bile in the bear gallbladder has completely dried into gallbladder powder can this bear gallbladder be sold, and only then will the supply and marketing cooperative purchase it. Of course, if you want to sell the bear gallbladder quickly, you can put it in a slightly warmer place to accelerate the bile turning into powder.

When scalding the gallbladder, Wang An discovered that the iron gallbladder from the big bear he fought with Mu Xueli, the three gallbladders from Jin, Tie, and Cao, and the gold gallbladder from the bear could now be sold.

Although Wang An wasn't short of money now, and Wang An also knew that the price of bear gallbladder would rise in a few years.

But it's better to sell bear gallbladder, because once it dries into powder, it becomes medicinal material.

And storing this thing is genuinely more than just ordinarily troublesome; it fears both insects and dampness leading to mold. If a good bear gallbladder became worthless, it would make people cry to death.

Besides, whether it's bear gallbladder or fur, while it's in your hands, it's always just an object, an object with no great use.

Only when it's sold and exchanged for money can you experience the joy of labor bearing fruit; it has nothing to do with whether you have money or not.

After fiddling with the bear gallbladder, Wang An took out the deer skin that had already been sewn into a large sheet again.

Just when Wang An was feeling sleepy and about to fall asleep, he suddenly discovered that the mountain range on this deer skin was actually just a guide, or rather, a location marker.

And the most important thing on this map was actually the river under the mountain range.

Wang An searched his memory carefully and vaguely remembered that this river was in YJ County, right next to JY County.

Before Wang An went into the "fence" (prison) in his past life, the newspaper said that in this very YJ County, a large placer gold mine had been discovered again.

Placer gold is gold dust; this kind of gold is generally mixed with sand in the river. Of course, under the river, there is a serious gold mine.

What people often call gold panning is actually using a winnowing basket in the river to wash the sand like washing rice; the bit of gold dust left at the bottom of the basket is gold sand!

This discovery made Wang An immediately not sleepy, and he instantly became extremely energetic.

A gold mine, what kind of concept is that?

The most important thing is that, right now, he might be the only one who knows the location of this gold mine, and it would be more than ten years before it was discovered by the state.

But what's equally shitty is, how can he maximize the benefits?

You have to know that when Wang An was in the south in his past life, he had truly witnessed the hardship of gold panners.

Barefoot, standing in the river all day, and also risking being beaten to death at any time.

Because gold is absolutely the thing that makes people lose their reason and makes people lose their humanity the most.

In fact, after Wang An went into the "fence," he was also "fortunate" enough to have personally done this gold panning work.

However, the method was much more efficient than those people in the south using winnowing baskets to pan for gold, and he did it for nearly two years.

Of course, he was forced to do it, and it was pure labor, the kind with basically no subsidies.

And no matter how much gold sand you washed out, they wouldn't reward you with an extra steamed bun.

If it weren't for a ruthless person who ran away while working, Wang An and his batch of people might have done this work until they died.

In the wilderness, as long as you are ruthless enough, you can definitely run out.

In fact, Wang An had also prepared everything at the time, but the shitty thing was, Wang An's plan was two days later than that ruthless person's, so he didn't manage to run.

Please keep reading, rewards are appreciated, thank you, thank you, I salute you.

(End of chapter)