Chapter 8: Going broke (1/2)
Chapter 8: Going broke
Translated by me, edited by Kai.
The pictures of the court girls on the bridge were simply flawless. From the flow of their moves to their gentle curves, they are all flawless. But these flawlessness opened a window of opportunity for Ye Qing.
The statues on Caiyi bridge originated from the drawings of a great artist during the Ming dynasty.
This person is called Qiu Ying, a complete art fanatic, whose expertise is in drawing all kinds of women.
The old style buildings underneath the bridge were the infamous red-light district from the olden days.
The red-light district naturally needed attractions, so Qiu Ying, being an expert in this ‘cough cough’ field, drew a piece that subconsciously drew in the higher ups of the district.
In 07, Caiyi bridge was classified as a provincial cultural heritage site. Hence, when Zhongyun invested large amounts into its restoration, someone anonymously contributed several Qiu Ying’s pieces into the restoration.
This matter caused quite a stir at the time. Under the ecstasy of Zhongyun’s officials, they picked out several clothed pictures and asked for replicas of them. Later, they were placed on the bridge for all to see.
Now the bridge has a total of 24 of these pictures. The city of Zhongyun only created 4 of them, while the rest were all part of the publicly available pictures by Qiu Ying.
Caiyi bridge is one of Zhongyun’s cultural jewels. It also has a high of reputation around the country. So of course the inspection team will need to make an inspection around here.
What if……
What if the whole road, the whole road’s curbs, were all replaced by carvings of beautiful court girls, or similar pictures?
This idea would get rejected by just about everyone.
These stone sculptures naturally need to come from sculpting machines. For complex work like the carvings of the court girls, they must require the use of small carving blades and it also needed at least an hour to finish.
Just carving words on a stone tablet would cost several hundred, but now you say you want acarving of a complex picture of court girls on a piece of marble, how much do you think it would cost?
30 minutes later, Ye Qing finally arrived in the industrial park.
The park is extremely large, one of China’s top 500 corporation sites. At the same time it is also home to Zhongyun’s leading manufacturing company [Huaxing Heavy Works].
Ye Qing clearly remembered that Huaxing heavy works is located at the third stage of the park. There are definitely piles of marble there.
The third stage construction of the park is already underway. As far as the eye can see, there are numerous heavy cranes around.
Ye Qing parked the van in front of a building that is currently under renovation. After finding who looked like the foreman of the site, he offered a cigarette and asked if there are any left over marbles lying around.
The foreman lit the cig, took a deep breath and straightforwardly pointed at a nearby pile of marble. Telling Ye Qing that he can take as much as he wanted.
Ye Qing picked out 7 scrap pieces that are roughly the same size as curb stones. Having returned to his factory, he closed the door and summoned out Hulk One, Hulk Two, and that rare rapid metal engraving machine.
There are a bunch of human picture CAD designs online, but it is rare to find one meeting Ye Qing’s requirements.
The curb stone will be rectangular after being installed horizontally into the ground, but all the pictures of the court ladies were vertical.
Due to wrong proportions of the character, the resulting carving will definitely be lacking in beauty.
Luckily our country is short on everything, but people and history. There are many classical scroll drawings that survived the testament of time. And many of them were drawn horizontally.
A horizontal drawing of a bewitching dancing court girl was found by Ye Qing through the magical use of the internet.
This CAD drawing possesses outstanding detail and large dimensions. Wanting to carve this one onto stone naturally required some minor adjustments, but this is just some trivial work for Ye Qing.
In under half an hour, a 25 kilo piece of marble was carried by Hulk One, like grabbing a chicken by the neck, onto the workbench of the metal engraver. Having secured the marble, the engraving blades started to carve out the drawing with unimaginable speeds.
After the chaotic debris calmed, there appeared a breathtaking ancient beauty.
Perfection!
Ye Qing excitedly slapped both of his cheeks. Total automation. This speed. These cuts. They are impossible for regular metal engravers.
While carving stone for long periods of time, there is the need for a water jet to cool down the working blades. Ye Qing connected a hose to the jet and pulled out his cell phone for the stopwatch app to check out the working speed of the machine.
Having ordered Hulk Two to process the rest of the marble, Ye Qing found that with Hulk One and Hulk Two’s abilities, it only took a little over 2 minutes to carve out a piece.
Ye Qing pulled out a calculator and did some simple math. If they work 24 hours non-stop then they can process more than 120,000 pieces of granite.
………………
The next day, Ye Qing brought some steamed buns and congee to the hospital.
Ye Jiangning is lying on bed with oxygen support. Whereas Xu Lan was sitting in nursing chair yawning non-stop.
Ye Qing placed the breakfast, and pulled out 12 already prepared stack of bills.
“The CNC mill sold at 180,000. I left 60,000 in factory as liquid assets.” Ye Qing opened the containers, and handed it over to his mom after cooling it off for a bit: “120,000 is probably enough for Lu Xiaozhen and Qian Dongdong’s medical fees. During this period I’ll try to find ways to get more orders.”
“Didn’t the rest of the workers resign?” Xu Lan asked with heavy eyes: “If it’s not possible go ahead and outsource the rest of the order. It’s not necessary to earn anything, it’s fine as long as we don’t lose too much.”
“The order has been cancelled. Jiangshan masonry’s boss after finding out about the worker accident and the others resigning, cancelled the whole order.”