Chapter 10: Making Pottery

After finishing the work in the fish pond, Jiang Xuan started digging clay and making pottery.

That day, he took a rattan basket and a bone hoe and walked to the stream.

He first used a bone hoe to shovel away the soil with more impurities on the surface, revealing the fine grayish-white clay underneath.

He dug a whole basket of clay, then took it to a flat ground beside the stream, found a relatively flat stone slab, put a lump of clay on it, and kept beating and kneading it.

“Pah pah pah…”

Clay is sticky, just like dough. The more you beat it, the stickier it becomes and the smoother its surface becomes.

Afterwards, Jiang Xuan used a piece of bamboo to cut the beaten clay into pieces, rolled it into strips, and then pinched a round cake-shaped base for a pottery jar with his bare hands.

Then he began to make pottery.

He first put some water on the base and began to stick the mud strips to the base, then stacked them up one by one and molded them into the shape of a pottery jar.

Before long, a rough clay pot with a diameter of about 20 centimeters and a height of about 30 centimeters was formed.

After the rough blank was formed, it was not very round. Jiang Xuan sprinkled a little water on the surface and tried to make it more round.

Finally, he made a lid to match the pot, and pinched a handle into the lid.

Chi Shao had been watching from the side. When Jiang Xuan finished making the lid, she asked curiously, "Can it be fired into a pottery jar now?"

In fact, she wanted to say, "Isn't this too easy?" But she didn't say it.

Uncaria rhynchophylla, stone loach and Arisaema confusa also looked at Jiang Xuan, because the process of making pottery jars was so simple that it gave people a feeling that they could do it too.

Jiang Xuan said: "This is just the initial formation. After that, it needs to be placed in a cool place for seven or eight days to let it dry naturally. Then, an earthen kiln needs to be built and the dried pottery blanks need to be placed in the kiln and fired for a whole day. After cooling, those that are not cracked can be considered real pottery."

Chishao and the three young men felt confused and impressed. They did not understand the words "dry in the shade", "earth kiln" and "cooling".

The three young men who just thought I could do it immediately put away their contemptuous attitude.

Chishao was not surprised. If pottery was so easy to make, pottery from the Deer Tribe would not have been so rare in the past.

In fact, Chishao didn't know that the Lu tribe, including many other tribes, considered pottery precious because the soil they used to make pottery was random. They did not specifically look for clay, nor did they go through the process of drying it in the shade.

They did not build special earthen kilns, and there was no standard for the temperature and time when firing pottery. They could only rely on their own exploration. As a result, the yield rate of fired pottery was extremely low, making it naturally precious.

On the other hand, Jiang Xuan's memories from his previous life were the crystallization of wisdom that had been continuously improved and recorded by countless generations of people. Naturally, the success rate of making pottery using this method would be much higher.

In the end, Jiang Xuan made two heavy rough blanks of pottery jars, two rough blanks of pottery basins, and ten rough blanks of pottery bowls, and placed them all in the corner of the bamboo house to dry.

The reason why it is placed in the bamboo house is that it is best not to have wind or strong light when drying in the shade, so that it can naturally release moisture and dry naturally, so that the pottery will not easily deform.

This step is very important. If the pottery is not dry enough, the water vapor contained in the clay will expand during firing, causing the pottery to crack.

By the time these pottery blanks were finished, most of the day had passed.

Chishao and the three boys watched for a while and then went hunting, fishing and digging plant tubers. As winter was approaching, storing food was even more important.

Jiang Xuan ate a little fish and roasted two pieces of Polygonatum.

Polygonatum sibiricum is also one of the herbs used by the tribesmen and is widely distributed in the mountains of the southern wilderness.

Unlike wild ginger, which has a pungent taste, Polygonatum sibiricum becomes slightly sweet after being roasted and can be used to satisfy hunger. Tribal people often dig it up and eat it as food.

After eating the Polygonatum, Jiang Xuan opened a bamboo tube, which contained a jar of solidified animal blood. He added some water to the bamboo tube, stirred it with a bamboo stick, and then roasted the bamboo tube on the charcoal fire.

The green bamboo tube was burned black, and the animal blood mixed with water inside was boiled.

Jiang Xuan opened the bamboo tube and ate the animal blood inside bit by bit.

Due to the lack of salt, eating large amounts of mammalian meat and blood became an important way to supplement salt.

Chishao and the others could drink the raw blood of the prey without changing their expressions, but Jiang Xuan found it a little difficult to accept, so he used a bamboo tube and water to cook the blood before eating it, which was a little easier to accept.

After eating, Jiang Xuan went to dig clay again, this time to build an earth kiln.

In fact, ordinary mud can be used to build an earth kiln, but ordinary mud is prone to cracking when firing the kiln. If Jiang Xuan wants to use the earth kiln for a long time, it would be better to use clay.

There are several ways to build an earthen kiln. Jiang Xuan chose a horizontal flame kiln that is simple to build and can fire multiple pieces of pottery at a time.

In front of the horizontal flame kiln is the stove door, in the middle is the furnace, and at the rear end there is a cylindrical vent standing at a 90-degree angle.

When the stove starts to burn, the heated air flows upward, passes through the long furnace, and is discharged from the cylindrical vent. It is similar to the principle of the earthen stove in the countryside, except that its lower part is long and strip-shaped.

Jiang Xuan chose a relatively flat place in the open space next to the bamboo house. After cleaning the ground, he went to the stream and dug a lot of clay. He put it in a rattan basket and carried it over.

Then, he piled the clay into a pile, poured some water into the middle with a bamboo tube, and then continued to step on the clay with his feet. After stepping on it, the clay's viscosity and toughness would be greatly improved.

After tamping the clay evenly, he began to build the kiln.

The process of building a kiln is very simple. First, build a "U"-shaped mud wall, about half a meter high, and then put dense wooden sticks on the mud wall, and then seal the top with clay.

Leave a gap at the end of the "U"-shaped mud wall, and then build a cylindrical vent. The end of the vent is about twice as high as the main body of the earthen kiln.

After it is built, it will look something like this: “▄▍”.

Finally, because the furnace of the earthen kiln is relatively long, it is inconvenient to place the pottery blanks and take out the finished pottery, so it is necessary to cut a semicircular notch on the side of the earthen kiln.

This gap will be re-blocked after the pottery is placed in it, sealed with mud, and opened again after the pottery is fired.

When the earthen kiln was completed, the sun was about to set. Jiang Xuan washed his hands, looked at the horizontal flame kiln he had built, and felt that there was no problem. He returned to the bamboo house with satisfaction.

Red peony root, Uncaria rhynchophylla, stone loach and Arisaema confusa have returned. They caught some fish today, caught a few bamboo partridges, and dug up a lot of edible taro, polygonatum, and mountain yam.

In the next seven days, Jiang Xuan, Chishao and others went hunting, fishing, and digging plant tubers every day to store food for the winter.

During this period, they would occasionally catch some larger prey. The meat of these prey could be eaten or hung over the fire to be smoked dry. The fur would be peeled off, spread out to dry, and used to make warm animal skin clothes and animal skin mattresses.

After seven days, the pottery has been dried in the shade, and the earthen kiln has been almost dry after being exposed to wind and sun.

Jiang Xuan immediately opened the kiln and fired pottery!

He carried half of the pottery to the side of the earthen kiln, turned the pottery upside down, and put it into the furnace of the earthen kiln one by one from the side opening. Then he blocked the gap on the side of the earthen kiln and sealed it with mud.

He also found a large amount of dead bamboo and dry firewood, piled them next to the earthen kiln, took fire from the fire pit in the bamboo house, and started to burn the kiln.

“Crackle, crackle…”

In the earthen kiln, the flames quickly started burning with great intensity.

“Huff, huff, huff…”

At the cylindrical vent, the flame tail was sometimes high and sometimes low, as if there was a blower underneath.

Next is to wait patiently.

Jiang Xuan was guarding the fire here, and Chi Shao and others would come over to take a look out of curiosity from time to time.

He stayed there from day till night, until the moon was high in the sky, then he stopped burning the fire and went back to sleep.

The temperature inside the earthen kiln is still very high and it takes an entire night for it to slowly drop.

That night, Jiang Xuan had a beautiful dream. He dreamed that he had created a large tribe with a population of over 100,000 people, abundant resources, and a happy life...

The next morning, Jiang Xuan couldn't wait to come to the earthen kiln and touched it. The wall of the kiln was still warm.

"Open the kiln!"

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Jiang Xuan rubbed his hands excitedly, and Chishao and others also ran over, waiting for Jiang Xuan to open the kiln.

Jiang Xuan used a sharp wooden stick to reopen the gap on the side of the earthen kiln, and one piece of brick-red pottery after another was revealed.

The first thing taken out was a thick pottery jar. There were no cracks in the jar, and the lid was also intact. It must have been fired very successfully.

“Dangdangdang…”

Jiang Xuan knocked on the side of the pottery jar with a wooden stick, and the jar made a crisp sound.

"It's well cooked. We can use this pot to make soup in the future!"

Jiang Xuan laughed. The biggest purpose of making pottery was to make soup, and now this goal has been achieved.

"show me."

Chishao took the pottery jar from Jiang Xuan. It felt very heavy in his hand. Although it was not particularly round, it was real pottery! "Xuan, you are amazing! You did it in one go!"

Chishao carefully placed the pottery jar on the ground and praised Jiang Xuan from the bottom of his heart.

Uncaria rhynchophylla, stone loach and Nanxing also cast admiring glances at Jiang Xuan.

Jiang Xuan took out a pottery basin and five pottery bowls from the furnace.

The pottery basins were also fired successfully, but as for the pottery bowls, two out of the five were cracked, and only three were intact.

Jiang Xuan handed three pottery bowls to the three boys and said, "The pottery pot is for cooking soup, the pottery basin is for serving vegetables, and each of you has one pottery bowl. I'll give these three to you first."

"Really?"

"Xuan, you are so nice!"

"Great, we have pottery!"

The three young men held the pottery bowl excitedly, their excitement beyond words, and they wanted to kiss Jiang Xuan.

Based on this firing experience, Jiang Xuan guessed that the thicker the pottery, the easier it might be to fire successfully because it is less likely to crack.

On the contrary, thinner pottery such as ceramic bowls are easy to crack during firing, so only three of the five bowls were successfully fired.

The success of the first batch of pottery gave Jiang Xuan great confidence. He moved the other half of the pottery out of the bamboo house, put it into the earthen kiln, sealed it, and then lit it again.

This time it went more smoothly. A day later, he got a clay jar, a clay basin, and four clay bowls, but only one of the bowls was cracked.

With pottery, Jiang Xuan finally doesn’t have to eat barbecue every day.

He cooked a pot of fish soup in a new clay pot. When he drank the steaming fish soup, he was almost in tears of excitement and felt a sense of happiness in his heart.

He had never thought before that a mouthful of hot soup could make people happy.

After firing the pottery, Jiang Xuan spent a few more days building two small bamboo houses, one of which was built near the stream on the left side of the bamboo house for bathing.

The other one was built on the right side of the bamboo house, a little further away from the house. He dug a pit inside and put a bamboo raft on it to make a dry toilet.

Taking a bath and going to the toilet are both very personal matters. Jiang Xuan's soul comes from the afterlife, so he cannot be as unrestrained as Gou Teng and the others.

Chishao was the first to accept the bathroom and toilet; she liked this independent space.

The three teenagers had no aversion to this. After these days of contact, they had developed an admiration for Jiang Xuan.

As long as Jiang Xuan built something, they subconsciously thought it was a good thing and were willing to try using it.

They even began to accept chopsticks slowly, because with the advent of ceramic bowls, they could use chopsticks to put hot dishes into their beloved ceramic bowls.

Jiang Xuan uses his own efforts to continuously improve his life in this world and influences the people around him.

…

Busy days always pass quickly. In the blink of an eye, autumn is gone, winter is here, and snowflakes are floating in the sky.

In autumn, they captured a lot of prey. Some of the prey had thick fur, which they peeled off, dried in the sun, and scraped off the fat to make animal skin clothes to keep warm.

Following Jiang Xuan's suggestion, they added a large amount of wood ash to the water, then put the dried animal skins in and soaked them for three days and three nights.

When the animal skins were washed and dried again, they were pleasantly surprised to find that the skins soaked in wood ash water were much softer than all the animal skin clothes they had worn before.

This discovery made them very happy, and they even soaked their old fur coats again, because if the fur coats were too hard, they would easily let in wind and would not be warm enough.

This winter, they had houses, fire pits, food, soft animal skins to wear, and even steaming hot broth to drink.

This was much better than their previous life in the Deer Tribe.

The snow fell heavier and heavier, and the ground soon became a vast expanse of white. Most animals hid in their caves to wait out the winter.

After the snow fell, Jiang Xuan and others spent most of their time in the bamboo house because it was too cold outside. They had sufficient food and firewood, so there was no need to go out and suffer.

(End of this chapter)