The departing foreigners halted in their tracks one after another and turned around in surprise.
One middle-aged man wearing a white turban and sporting a thick, curly beard stood out conspicuously among them. He was clad in a finely woven embroidered robe, with a gem-encrusted dagger resting at his waist, clearly marking him as their leader.
His sharp, azure eyes locked onto Shao Shuyi. Stunned disbelief crossed his face first, quickly giving way to intense curiosity.
"As-salamu alaykum?" the foreign leader greeted him tentatively, using the fuller Arabic phrase.
As he spoke, his gaze swept over Shao Shuyi's green robe—not top quality, but respectable enough—then flicked to the guard-like figure trotting over toward him nearby, Wang Huadu, before settling back onto Shao Shuyi's eager face.
He knew that look all too well. A young speculator hungry for wealth and status!
Shao Shuyi's heart raced, but he maintained a calm composure on the surface.
Taking a few steps forward, he responded in Arabic once more, "Wa alaykumu s-salam."
Having uttered that sentence, the meager Arabic vocabulary he had picked up in Yiwu in his previous life was completely exhausted.
Left with no other choice, he switched back to the Wu dialect and said, "Welcome to Liujiagang, guests from afar. May the Heavenly Consort watch over your voyage as well."
The leader looked at him with a faint, knowing smirk.
The foreigners behind him burst into laughter, evidently realizing that this young fellow only knew those two phrases.
"Your greeting was spoken quite well, and I accept it, young man." The leader switched into the local Taicang dialect as well. "You may call me Ali, just as the others do. I hail from Basra. And you are... a merchant here?"
Basra! Shao Shuyi felt a jolt of excitement. That was a crucial hub along the Maritime Silk Road!
Arab merchants brought Chinese goods ashore at Basra, then moved them northwest either by river transport or camel caravans to sell them in Europe. Western Asia did not actually have that large a market; more than half of the goods ultimately had to be sold to the European city-states. The Arabs served as both consumers and middlemen.
Shao Shuyi understood this clearly, so he briefly introduced himself: "Honored friend, I am Shao Shuyi, a steward-accountant at the local Zheng Firm. While I am not a prominent merchant engaged solely in trade, I am indeed tied to overseas commerce."
"The Zheng Firm?" Ali repeated, glancing at an attendant beside him. "Have you heard of it?"
The attendant murmured a few words in Arabic.
Ali nodded, and when he looked back at Shao Shuyi, a sly glint crept into his eyes. "Never heard of it."
Shao Shuyi did not care in the slightest whether he had heard of it or not. All he knew was that he had to seize this opening right now and tear a rift in the iron curtain woven by the brokerages. Why should the middlemen get to sit back and reap all the rewards? He refused to accept it!
He immediately spoke up: "I would have your Excellency know that the Zheng Firm specializes in Longquan celadon. We operate numerous kilns in the interior and can fire any porcelain you desire."
"Is that so? Tell me more," Ali said offhandedly.
"If your Excellency is willing to visit our shop to discuss it—"
"You must convince me first." The leader shook his head, already preparing to leave.
"We can fire porcelain inscribed with Quranic passages, praises of the Prophet, or auspicious verses." Shao Shuyi took a deep breath and continued, "If you are willing to provide design sketches, we can also produce porcelain bearing illustrations in the styles you favor, or featuring the noble coats of arms of the Rum and the Franks.
"Beyond that, whatever shapes of everyday utensils you use, as long as you name them, we can craft them all."
As Ali listened, his feet seemed to take root, unable to take another step.
"You know what we use?" he asked.
"Inkwells, for instance." Shao Shuyi mimed the motion of writing with a quill. "Nobles care for a bit of elegance. As far as I know, no one in the Great Yuan has ever fired an inkwell.
"Candlesticks, as another example," Shao Shuyi pressed on. "Your candlesticks are different from ours. I am aware of this, and they can be fired as well. The same goes for water cups and bottles—they differ considerably. If someone wishes to celebrate the deeds of their ancestors, we can hire artists to paint them and render them upon the porcelain..."
Shao Shuyi spoke at length with eloquent fluency. Ali listened intently the entire time, and even his attendants wiped the playful smirks from their faces, turning grave and attentive.
None of them were fools; they knew full well what this implied. If nothing else, porcelain bearing family crests would surely command immense sales—though naturally, that required prior arrangements with the buyers.
"I will wait for you here for three days." Ali looked up at Shao Shuyi. "Bring your master and come find me aboard the *Frankincense Route*. I will give you only three days, including today."
With that, he stepped forward to embrace Shao Shuyi, then turned and walked away.
Shao Shuyi stood quietly in place, his heart racing for a long time.
For reasons unknown, his thoughts drifted back to the initiative he had taken back at the Changping Charity Granary, when he had hoped to use his mathematical prowess to catch the eye of a Semu official and extricate himself from hardship—only to end in failure.
What about this time? Once again he had taken the initiative, spurred entirely on a spur-of-the-moment whim. Would it succeed?
He did not know, but he felt it was worth a try.
"What was all that gibberish about?" Wang Huadu walked over and asked under his breath.
"We might just get rich." Shao Shuyi burst out laughing, slung an arm around Wang Huadu's shoulders, and walked off.
***
Shao Shuyi returned to the celadon shop that very day and reported everything to Zheng Fan. The two of them then headed together to the Zheng family's ancestral residence on Salt and Iron Creek, waiting until Zheng Guozhen came off duty from the branch of the Transport Office.
"Had I known this would happen, I wouldn't have bothered looking for Shen Rongfu and stirring up all that trouble." Zheng Fan looked at Shao Shuyi with exasperation. "How do you manage to drum up so much business out of nowhere?"
Shao Shuyi gave a 'sheepish' smile and said, "I was simply anxious, always looking to perform some new service for the Zheng family. When I caught sight of the foreign merchants, I ran after them on impulse. Who would have guessed that Ali actually had such ideas?"
Zheng Guozhen withdrew his gaze from Shao Shuyi, stood up, and paced a few steps. "Reckless though Xiaohu's move was, he struck gold by pure fluke."
Shao Shuyi was somewhat taken aback, not knowing what he meant by that.
Zheng Guozhen gave a soft chuckle. "There is really no reason to hide it. Why is Sun Chuan so famous in the celadon brokerage? Because foreign merchants love to have him act as guarantor and broker their deals. And among those foreign merchants, Ahmad is the largest, followed by Mansur, then Mahmud, and right after them comes this Ali.
"Ali's business is neither tiny nor massive. When he first arrived at Liujiagang nine years ago, he had only two vessels. After that, he came by every year or two, and now he has three ships. And that is supposedly after suffering a shipwreck that destroyed one of his vessels; otherwise his operation would be even larger, and he certainly wouldn't rank fourth.
"He did not speak with you at such length without reason. That foreigner's mind is exceptionally sharp."
At this point, Zheng Guozhen turned back to Shao Shuyi and asked, "Xiaohu, those porcelains you enticed him with—how do you plan to produce them?"
"That will be simple," Shao Shuyi replied with quiet confidence. "We only need the foreigners to write out the inscriptions and sketch the patterns, and we can commission kilns to produce trial batches. There is no shortage of kiln artisans across Jiangnan and Zhejiang, with countless masterful craftsmen among them. If no one here can make them, heading to Jingdezhen in Jiangxi to try would be no trouble at all. In fact..."
"Hmm?" Zheng Guozhen waved a hand. "Speak your mind."
"Yes." Shao Shuyi bowed politely. "In my humble view, we should engage multiple kilns to fire sample batches, then select the finest. At a time like this, there is no need to squeeze prices down; producing the goods is paramount. The profits of overseas trade are enormous—yielding a fraction of a percent or two on price hardly matters."
Zheng Guozhen grunted, his brows furrowing in thought.
Zheng Fan glanced quietly at Shao Shuyi and nodded slightly.
A moment later, Zheng Guozhen suddenly chuckled. "No wonder Wang Sheng took a tumble at your hands; you truly have a knack for this. That scoundrel Sun Chuan relies on Nasir al-Din's protection and treats my family as nothing. This time, we'll teach him a lesson. As for this matter—"
Zheng Guozhen pointed between Zheng Fan and Shao Shuyi. "The two of you started it, so the two of you shall see it through. If it succeeds, why would I ever be stingy with rewards? Yifang, what do you want?"
"Third Young Master, you know I've had my eye on that black steed of yours for ages," Zheng Fan replied with a cheeky grin.
"You rogue, Zheng Yifang! That horse cost me a small fortune. Still—" Zheng Guozhen laughed heartily. "As long as you get this done, what's a horse? Take it!"
"Splendid!" Zheng Fan beamed with delight.
Zheng Guozhen chuckled helplessly and turned to Shao Shuyi. "Xiaohu, what do you want?"
Suppressing his surging excitement, Shao Shuyi said in a low, earnest voice, "Third Young Master, I come from a boat household. If you could exempt me from miscellaneous corvée duties so that I no longer have to sail out to sea transporting grain, I would be entirely content."
Zheng Guozhen paused, startled. "That is all you ask for?"
"I beg Third Young Master to grant it," Shao Shuyi said sincerely.
"A trifling matter." Zheng Guozhen smiled. "The Transport Office has registered more than a thousand new boat households; sparing yours won't make a dent. But let me make one thing clear beforehand: you must see this matter through to success."
"Understood," Shao Shuyi answered.
Zheng Guozhen was in high spirits.
Sailing out for overseas trade offered enormous profits, to be sure, but the risks were truly formidable. If they could conduct overseas voyages while simultaneously opening up a market in Liujiagang to sell celadon directly to foreign merchants, nothing could be better.
Chapter 43