However, it needs to be dried before firing, and the best way to dry it is to air dry it in the shade, as this method is less likely to cause cracks.

But the old potter once told me that shrewd merchants come up with ideas from the eyes of others. As a veteran shrewd merchant, his ideas were full of experience.

When they first made pottery, they also used the method of air-drying it in the shade before firing it.

The biggest drawback of this method is that air drying takes a lot of time. If you receive a large order, you can only place it in advance, otherwise you can't rush to deliver the goods.

There was a year when everyone's business was not good, and several pottery factories were on the verge of bankruptcy due to lack of income.

This made the owner of the pottery factory where the old man worked so anxious that his already thinning hair almost fell out completely.

The boss is a good person. He is always very polite to his subordinates and gives them red envelopes during holidays.

People back then weren't as ruthless as people are now; even some bosses came from rural areas.

They know that the workers who come to work have it tough. If a worker has an emergency at home and urgently needs money, the boss will pay for it out of his own pocket first, and the worker can make up for it by working later.

The old man's family had received a lot of kindness from the boss when they were young, and he wanted to help the boss get through this crisis.

But he was a penniless nobody, with neither money nor power. Apart from over thirty years of experience in pottery making, he was nothing.

Just then, the pottery factory saw a turning point. A funeral client needed a large quantity of reasonably priced urns, but time was of the essence, so it was somewhat urgent.

Although pottery wasn't valuable back then, anything related to the dead would never be cheap, and people were generally reluctant to haggle over such items.

This client knew that time was tight, and in the end, the price offered by this major client was very tempting to all the business owners.

However, everyone is facing a major problem: this batch of goods is in a rush. Even if they work overtime every day to make all the clay bricks, the drying time will take up most of the time.

This also excludes some individual customers who have already paid deposits for their orders, and these orders also have delivery deadlines.

The most important thing in doing business is integrity. If you cancel all your previous small orders because of this batch of orders, how will you survive in the local market in the future?

However, this deal was a lifeline that everyone desperately needed. So, after discussing it together, the three ceramic pottery owners decided to take on this big order.

When the pottery factory owner returned to the factory, he was filled with mixed feelings of joy and worry. The old man noticed the factory owner's strange expression and asked him what was wrong.

The boss didn't hide anything and told the employee the whole story.

The old man had spent half his life working with pottery, so naturally no one knew the craft better than him. He also made some pottery on his own to sell and supplement his family's income.

Because his production capacity was limited, and sometimes when time was tight and he didn't want to lose orders, he explored a method based on his original pottery making experience.

One of the methods was to minimize the air-drying process time. Relying on this unscrupulous merchant technique, the old man and his family worked odd jobs in the factory and made some pottery to sell in their spare time to support themselves. They lived a pretty good life.

When the old man heard about the boss's troubles, he laughed heartily and told the boss to rest assured and take the order.

Since they agreed to allocate the number of orders based on the factory's idle labor, the old man initially said that all positions were vacant and anyone who could come would be accepted.

When the factory manager heard the old man say that, he was startled. Although his factory was not very successful, it had still received some orders, and he couldn't turn down other people's orders.

The old man laughed and said he could handle the matter with peace of mind. He would process the existing orders as usual and wouldn't delay the new ones.

Aside from decades of acquaintance, the boss knew the old man was an honest man who usually talked nonsense. Seeing his business on the verge of collapse, he finally gritted his teeth and decided to take a gamble and trust the old man.

At this point, the other two companies were not happy because of the order, because when they returned to the factory they found that even if they divided the order equally among the three companies, they could not produce so many pottery pieces even if they worked overnight.

The two families, who were just worrying about their jobs, were overjoyed to hear that the old man's pottery factory was completely vacant and they had nothing to do.

By distributing more orders, their delivery time will be just right to meet the delivery deadline.

The old man told me that in the end, they not only successfully secured the order, but also completed it before the other two ceramic factories.

To express their gratitude for the old man's contributions, the business owner gave him a large red envelope containing 2,000 yuan.

Two thousand was not a small amount back then, but the boss knew that what he was getting was more than just a helping hand; it was an opportunity for him to take off and far surpass his peers.

The old man's story really captivated me, so I went to his house for several days in a row and begged him to tell me how to make pottery, so that I could sell pottery when I grew up.

At that time, I was just a child of about ten years old. I didn't understand anything. I just thought the old man was amazing and that when I grew up, I would also make pottery and open a factory to be my own boss.

Finally, the old man couldn't persuade me otherwise, and seeing that I was just a child, he explained the pottery-making process to me in detail.

As he spoke, I rolled and lit his pipe for him. Seeing how helpful I was, the old man's smile widened, and he recounted some amusing anecdotes from his younger days.

He treated it as just telling a story to a child, but I wrote down all these valuable experiences.

I remember him telling me that the key to preventing pottery clay from cracking lies in temperature control. Air drying is a gentle way to dry the clay, but even this method still carries a certain chance of cracking.

When he was rushing to finish a project, his method was to first make a small haystack out of a pile of dry grass if the object was small, and then put the pottery to be fired inside the haystack.

Then, a thick layer of soil was spread on the mound, leaving an opening for placing objects.

However, the pottery is not fired directly here. If you put wet pottery directly into the fire, it will most likely crack.

This is just a container used to accelerate the air-drying process. Next, the dry grass inside needs to be burned to make the inside hollow and the mud on the outside to make it firm.

I put my memories of the experience into practice by following these steps, and now a haystack covered with mud is complete.

Under the scorching heat of the flames, a large amount of moisture and smoke mixed in the soil rose from the pre-reserved outlet above.

Soon the dry grass inside burned out, and the soil outside became much firmer. However, the soil wasn't completely dry; it had just hardened considerably.

The old man told me that the soil doesn't need to be too dry; a semi-dry, semi-wet state works better.