Chapter 265 It's all luck
"Lin Sicheng, let's go to the capital!"
Wu Hui spoke earnestly and sincerely, saying, "There is a bigger stage and a wider world there!"
Lin Sicheng paused slightly: "Director Wu, what could I do if I went?"
"Research? Restoration? What can't we do?"
"They can even set up such a large restoration center?"
Wu Hui paused for a moment: It can be done, but compared to this place, it really can't compare.
Going to Beijing means renting a venue, buying equipment, and hiring employees—all of which cost money.
But here, the building was provided free of charge by the school, and the staff are basically recruited from within the school, including management personnel, support staff, key researchers, and even people like Shang Yan and Wang Qizhi.
The school pays the salary, but Lin Sicheng only gives out subsidies and bonuses depending on his mood.
How much money is this?
Even if you calculate it less, you can save at least several million a year.
Wu Hui thought for a long time: "What I mean is, you can join the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. With your abilities, you can be in charge of projects independently! After all, there is a difference between local areas and the capital."
"There is indeed a gap, but Director Wu, can you really be completely independent?"
Lin Sicheng smiled and said, "Do I have complete authority to build the team? Can I recruit from whomever I want? Can I divide it into several groups, recruit a certain number of researchers, or even decide who to recruit, or even not recruit experts and use more master's students and interns? Will no one question that?"
"Can I decide how to spend the money in the account? What equipment to use, what materials to purchase, and which manufacturer's reagents to choose? Will the finance and purchasing departments interfere? Will the subsidiaries have any objections?"
"Furthermore, can I decide how to conduct the experiment, what should be done, what shouldn't be done, whether to do ten groups or thousands of groups, or even not do any group and just fill in the data... and so on, with just my word?"
Wu Hui was stunned and didn't know how to refute it.
At first glance: Lin Sicheng, do you think this is your home?
Have you read the newspapers? How many lab directors have been arrested each year for misappropriating research funds?
There's an equipment department and a purchasing department. You can just focus on your research. Why bother with so many other things?
Team building should certainly be based on your suggestions, but with so many research departments and experts in the bureau, why would we need to recruit people from outside?
You're not hiring experts, only master's and undergraduate students... You're running a laboratory, not a training course.
Let alone Lin Sicheng, even Wang Qizhi wouldn't have been able to do it. No matter how good your background is, you can still feel powerless when facing the entire group.
Otherwise, why would Wang Qizhi leave his well-established ministry and come to Shaanxi?
So if the occasion were different, or if the person were different, Wu Hui would probably burst out laughing.
But when he looked at Lin Sicheng, he couldn't utter a single word: because this is exactly what Lin Sicheng did here.
Wang Qizhi has said more than once: apart from holding meetings and taking leaders from outside the school on visits, school leaders never come to visit normally.
The Municipal Bureau of Culture and the Bureau of Cultural Relics do have people stationed there, but those two section chiefs are basically mouthpieces and also serve as clerks: now, if the center has any documents to send or any reports to approve, Wang Qizhi and Lin Changqing don't need to do it themselves; those two are eager to do it.
Let alone core researchers, the center couldn't even recruit a single extra intern without Lin Sicheng's approval. As for equipment and materials, whatever Lin Sicheng said to use, that's what they used. At most, the school and the cultural bureau would request a list afterward for their records.
Speaking of laboratories: whether it's this place or the key laboratory that Wang Qizhi is nominally affiliated with, isn't it exactly what Lin Sicheng said: "We don't recruit experts, we mainly recruit master's degree holders"?
All the experimental plans were like Lin Sicheng had written out the formulas and listed the solution steps. The experimental group only needed to fill in the numbers and then verify the calculations.
Whether you're a team leader or a researcher, I'll tell you how to do it, and you just need to follow my instructions.
If it were an expert: "Go to hell! I'm here to do academic research, not to be a clay figure for you to mold however you want."
But it's definitely not feasible to conduct research this way. So how did Lin Sicheng achieve his BTA results?
Of course, there are gains and losses. Xijing has great limitations, relatively scarce research resources, and far fewer opportunities, which is an indisputable fact.
Take Lin Sicheng's current research on BTA, for example. If it were in Beijing, even if it didn't qualify for a key project, it would at least be a National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) grant. The research funding would be at least in the tens of millions of yuan.
However, after careful calculation, Lin Sicheng felt that the cost-effectiveness was actually not high.
“My teacher advised me last year, and I said at the time that I would definitely go to Beijing, but only when I could make the decisions on my own and shut up all the doubters!”
Lin Sicheng smiled. "Director Wu, please don't take offense at what I'm saying: many times, ability is secondary. You may do a lot, but the rewards aren't necessarily greater, just like this time in Shanxi..."
Wu Hui was speechless.
In Shanxi, Lin Sicheng was capable enough and performed outstandingly, but what was the result?
The main idea is to fatten up the pigs before slaughtering them.
If you go to the capital, the result might be worse than in Shanxi. It's very likely that they won't even give you a chance to get fat.
Unless you're strong enough to shut everyone up.
Wu Hui sighed.
He was so eager to nurture Lin Sicheng that he thought Lin would have more opportunities and achieve greater success if he went to Beijing. He didn't consider whether Lin could hold onto his achievements.
So, we still need to let things settle down and reflect.
When Lin Sicheng has accumulated enough honors and wielded enough influence that no one dares to harbor any wicked thoughts.
And doing research is nothing more than getting more projects, producing more results, and publishing more papers...
He thought for a long time, "You still need to make a plan for your BTA corrosion inhibition research as soon as possible, and you should still publish the paper. If you encounter any obstacles or difficulties, have your teacher call me anytime!"
"Thank you, Director Wu!"
Lin Sicheng thanked him and then exchanged a glance with Wang Qizhi.
Without publishing a single paper or even submitting a research report, why did Wang Qizhi dare to directly show Wu Hui the core data and materials?
Because of my understanding of Director Wu and my trust in his character.
Wang Qizhi was even certain that once Wu Hui saw the report, he would never allow those results to lie dormant on Lin Sicheng's computer.
Sure enough...
"And what about Shanxi? What are your plans?" Wu Hui sighed. "You can't really be planning to have me work for us for free, like Lao Sun said?"
This isn't a waste of talent; it's a squandering of talent...
"I'll definitely have to work, but I certainly won't be able to do it for long!"
Lin Sicheng jokingly pushed open the door to the materials room, "Director Wu, please have a look around!"
Wu Hui paused for a moment before remembering: What were he and Sun Jiamu doing in Xijing?
Looking at the egg white jade specimen...
He stood up: "Your teacher tricked and fooled you, dragging things out for half a month with me and Lao Sun, until you finally managed to scrape together enough money?"
Lin Sicheng nodded: "It's alright, at least it's enough!"
The two joked as they entered the supplies room, with Wang Qizhi following closely behind.
The place was quite large, with neatly arranged shelves filled with discarded items.
There are complete pieces, but only a few.
There were boxes all around, more than a dozen in total. There were white-glazed pillows, tricolor pillows, as well as bowls, plates, cups, goblets, and vases.
Most of them are white-glazed, including both coarse and fine porcelain.
At first, Wu Hui didn't pay attention and walked over, but then he realized something was wrong and turned back.
A tall, stemmed cup with a black pattern, its glaze a white with a hint of yellow, revealing a bright ivory color. Crucially, the porcelain body is extremely thin.
The bowl walls should be slightly thicker, but the lip of the bowl is less than one millimeter thick.
It is extremely light when you hold it in your hand, and upon closer inspection, the glaze color is very similar to Ding ware white.
After tilting the light slightly, Wu Hui shook his head again: This is corundum mullite crystal phase, with α-AlO as the main crystal phase structure. The characteristics of the porcelain clay are high aluminum and low calcium.
However, Ding kiln porcelain clay is high in alumina and calcium, and the glaze is a calcium glaze system, which forms a glassy glaze after firing.
If it's not Ding ware, then what kind of kiln is it?
Thinking it over, Wu Hui looked at the base of the foot, then at the patina, and then suddenly froze.
Judging from the era, it's either the Jin or Yuan dynasty, and it's more likely to be from the Yuan dynasty.
But when was such thin white porcelain ever fired in the Yuan Dynasty?
After looking at it over and over again, Wu Hui became increasingly confused: It seems to be from the Yuan Dynasty?
Just as he was secretly wondering about it and preparing to ask Lin Sicheng, he froze again as soon as he turned around.
There were a few other items on the shelf next to me. Although they were damaged, they looked exactly the same as the one in my hand.
Identical body, identical glaze.
The key pieces are the two at the back: one is carved with purple patterns, and the other is carved with ochre-red patterns.
Although the patterns were incomplete, Wu Hui wasn't blind. How could he not recognize the half-purple phoenix wing and the two crimson dragon claws?
And it even has a five-clawed dragon pattern?
He casually put down the stemmed cup and picked up two pieces of porcelain.
It is made of corundum, with a high-alumina base, and all four pieces are the same, making it no different from that stemmed bowl.
The longer Wu Hui looked at it and the more he learned, the more confused he became: it was not only white porcelain from the Yuan Dynasty, but also tribute porcelain.
He put down the porcelain shard, glanced to the left and right, and his eyelids twitched involuntarily.
I didn't notice it before, but now that I look closely: two shelves, five or six boxes, all filled with this kind of product.
Corundum phase, high alumina body, fine white porcelain...
However, it is generally agreed that there was no white porcelain from the Yuan Dynasty. There is no written record of this, nor have any artifacts been unearthed.
At that time, including the Jingdezhen official kiln, Dehua kiln, and Longquan kiln, only white porcelain with carved or painted designs was produced.
Why have so many suddenly appeared here?
But that's only one aspect.
Secondly, after the Song Dynasty, all porcelain with five claws was considered imperial ware, and imperial porcelain was inevitably produced by official kilns. During the Yuan Dynasty, there was only one official kiln: Jingdezhen.
But these two pieces were clearly not fired in Jingdezhen.
Jingdezhen uses Macang clay, but these are high-alumina clays; Wu Hui was certain he wouldn't be wrong about that.
Thinking about it this way, did Lin Sicheng discover a second official kiln from the Yuan Dynasty?
The thought had barely crossed his mind when Wu Hui was startled: if that were the case, then the five kiln sites in Hejin wouldn't even amount to a peep.
What's most incredible is that, in terms of both the body and the craftsmanship, it is very similar to the fine white porcelain from the Hejin kiln that Wang Qizhi had shown him before.
That is, the egg white jade that Lin Sicheng talked about all the time.
There are differences between the two, but they are not significant: the egg white jade is fully sintered and has a hard body, but the ones in front of us are probably not hot enough in the kiln and the atmosphere transformation is incomplete, resulting in an extremely brittle body. They would probably break if you hit them.
Therefore, it can be inferred that these porcelain pieces are very likely made using the firing technique of egg white jade, but the technique was not fully inherited, resulting in defects in the finished products.
The more Wu Hui pondered it, the more likely it seemed, and consequently, a growing sense of unease crept into his mind:
Lin Sicheng lured him and Sun Jiamu to Xijing just so they could see the samples of the egg white jade.
However, he and Sun Jiamu did not believe it: This is ancient porcelain, not cabbage. You can't just pick it up like that, let alone by the ton.
But looking at all of this, it's more than just a ton.
He subconsciously looked up, his face once again displaying that expression of looking at an alien: "Where did you find this?"
"Huozhou!"
Wu Hui paused for a moment, then picked up the broken bowl.
"Essentials of Natural History" (by Gu Yingtai, late Ming Dynasty): The clay of Huo kiln is fine and white, and all the ware is smooth, but it lacks luster and is extremely brittle.
That's right, the bone is fine, the fetus is white, and it's extremely brittle.
However, it's too white, lacking a warm and gentle feel.
The problem is that it also records that Huo Kiln is Peng Kiln, named after Peng Junbao, a craftsman from the Yuan Dynasty who created it...
Wu Hui subconsciously turned his head: Where did these Jin Dynasty porcelain pillows and white-glazed bowls with identical body and craftsmanship come from?
Lin Sicheng explained: "It's possible that the ancients made a mistake, confusing the Peng kiln, which was founded in Huozhou by Peng Junbao in the Yuan Dynasty, with the Huo kiln, which was founded in the Jin Dynasty... I checked the local chronicles of Shanxi in the Jin Dynasty and speculated that Huozhou was established in the third year of Zhenyou (1215) in the Jin Dynasty, and then the Huoyi kiln was founded..."
That's easy to explain: even in modern archaeology, mistakes are made from time to time, let alone in ancient times.
Wu Hui's focus was not on that, but rather on whether Huozhou Kiln was an official kiln of the Yuan Dynasty.
Lin Sicheng shook his head: "It can't be considered an official kiln, but rather a tribute kiln. It's roughly similar to the official-private joint production system in the Ming Dynasty: the official designation of the shapes and patterns was determined by the government, and the private kilns fired the pieces. After firing, the best pieces were sent to the palace, the next best were sent to the Ministry of Works for official sale, and the next worst were sold to the private sector... From this, we can be certain that during the Jin and Yuan Dynasties, the Huozhou Kiln at least fired tribute porcelain."
"Secondly, through chemical composition analysis of the body and glaze, it was found that the Huozhou kiln and the Hejin kiln used the same type of clay and the same firing process. The only difference is that the Huozhou kiln did not produce coke and did not have advanced blower technology, so it could not reach a kiln temperature of 1,400 degrees Celsius, resulting in an extremely brittle body..."
Wu Hui remained silent.
The evidence was right there; even without looking at the analysis report, he could deduce some of the facts.
But he didn't understand: Lin Sicheng had just finished surveying the Hejin Kiln, and in just one week, he found the Huozhou Kiln?
It's unlikely he found it; it's more likely he knew about it beforehand.
It was obvious what he was thinking. Lin Sicheng blurted out, "It was a coincidence that when we were collecting cultural relics in Yuncheng, we collected some white porcelain from Huozhou."
Professor Huang then analyzed it and said that the porcelain body composition was exactly the same, and the craftsmanship was basically the same, but the kiln temperature was insufficient, resulting in the porcelain body being extremely brittle. At the time, I only thought that it was a product of the decline of the fine white porcelain craftsmanship of Hejin Kiln after the Song Dynasty..."
"But when we explored the ancient dugout and the Jin and Yuan kiln sites on the upper and lower eight acres, we did not find any similar remains. That's when I began to suspect that the kilns that produced this kind of porcelain might not be in Hejin..."
Afterwards, I checked historical records and local chronicles and came across information about the Huozhou Kiln. Thinking I had nothing better to do, I decided to take a look. It turned out to be a lucky accident! So, it was all pure luck!
Wu Hui scoffed: He didn't believe a single word!
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