Chapter Sixty-Six: The Glass Mirror

The Emperor burst into laughter. “Not bad. The Court Minister has even learned to use idioms now. You and I are sovereign and subject; so long as you do not fail me, I shall never fail you.”

The eunuch kowtowed repeatedly. “If I harbor even the slightest disloyal thought toward Your Majesty, may I be struck dead by heaven’s five thunderbolts and left without a whole corpse.”

“Rise,” said the Emperor. “I hope the bond between sovereign and subject will begin well and end well. How goes the matter of cement?”

“Li Zhen has made great progress. He can now produce the cement Your Majesty described. They are now finding ways to increase output.”

“Go to Sun Yuanhua. The machines he uses there only need slight alteration; they should be fit for cement production as well. Build a cement works near the glass factory too, but do not fire it there, lest it pollute the environment. Ah—by ‘pollute the environment’ I mean dirty the water, dirty the air—well, the air. I’ll explain that another time. Once the cement is made, have them lay a road first, linking the firing and grinding sites. Oh, and make a few handsome mirrors first and send them to me.”

When he had finished his orders, he took the mirrors and went to the Palace of Earthly Tranquility, where Zhang Yan and the others were embroidering. The Emperor laughed. “You must all be tired today. Let us rest a while and play a few rounds of mahjong.”

The three women had little interest in such a simple-minded game and paid no heed to his suggestion. The Emperor drew out a mirror and flashed it before them. “There’s a prize this time—one of the new mirrors.”

The reflected gleam at once drew the three women’s eyes. They sprang to their feet, with Duan Ying leading the charge. The Emperor extended his hand and placed the mirror in hers. Looking at her own clear face in the glass, Duan Ying fell momentarily speechless. Zhang Yan and Wang Wan came up behind her, wearing the same expression.

The Emperor smiled in triumph. “Well? Whoever wins gets the mirror. How about it?” Soon the Palace of Earthly Tranquility was ringing with the sound of mahjong tiles.

A few days later, on the busiest street in the capital, beside the Great Ming Royal Bank, a new shop opened. Its name was plain enough: the Capital Branch of the Great Ming’s Number One Mirror Shop. Two women stood at the door, and whenever someone entered, they bowed and said, “Welcome!”

As the name promised, the shop sold only one thing: mirrors. Mirrors of every size and shape. The moment a female customer stepped inside, her eyes would go wide, and she would point and say, “I’ll take this one.” Immediately a saleswoman would appear and say, “That will be six hundred and thirty coins. Thank you.”

“Ah? Ah! I didn’t bring that much money today.”

“That is all right. We can deliver to your door and collect payment afterward. There is only a ten-coin delivery fee.”

“My house is only one street away, and you want ten coins for delivery?”

“I’m sorry. Mirrors are fragile goods, so those ten coins also cover the cost of ensuring it will not be broken in transit.”

“All right, send it to…”

Such exchanges continued without pause. By noon, all the mirrors had been sold. The attendants politely asked the customers to leave, then closed the shop and hung up a sign: Sold Out Today. Please Come Early Tomorrow.

Inside, the palace maids were busily settling the accounts. Before long, one of them said to the manager, trembling, “Aunt Chunmei, the total comes to seventy-five thousand six hundred coins.” She could hardly believe it herself and hurried to verify the figures again on paper.

Chunmei smiled. “No mistake. I worked it out yesterday when we took delivery. If we sold everything, that is exactly the amount. Chunfang, go to the bank in a bit and have them carry the money over, then bring back the receipt and make the accounts properly. Ahua, go tell the glass factory to increase tomorrow’s shipment by ten percent on this order, and send a full-length mirror as well.”

She clapped her hands, and everyone fell silent. Then she went on, “His Majesty is benevolent to let us abandoned palace maids manage this shop. You have all worked hard today, and I thank you here and now. Please also remember the Emperor’s grace.” With that, she bowed to everyone.

They all bowed in return. “May the Emperor be blessed and at peace. We are not tired. Aunt Chunmei is the one who has worked hard.”

Most of them were old palace women who could not find their families or whose families refused to take them back. Their fate had once seemed miserably bleak. But now the Emperor had made them shop attendants here, with freedom to come and go as they pleased. They received a monthly stipend, and at year’s end they would also be given a bonus amounting to one ten-thousandth of the sales. Judging by this first day alone, each of the twenty women could earn more than a hundred coins a year. Days like these made even hard work feel light.

To spend more than six hundred coins on a small mirror was, of course, beyond the means of any ordinary household. But there were simply too many wealthy people in the capital, and the mirrors were indeed clear and convenient, so they swiftly became fashionable among the city’s elite. The introduction of the large full-length mirror pushed women’s love of beauty to its peak: they could see their entire bodies clearly and tell at a glance which clothes looked best together. Although one full-length mirror cost as much as nine thousand coins, the daily quota had already been booked three months in advance. Naturally, there were even richer patrons who paid an extra thousand coins to skip the wait and proudly hauled a full-length mirror home with noses in the air.

The Nanjing branch of the Great Ming’s Number One Mirror Shop soon opened as well. This branch was larger than the one in the capital and had a greater supply of goods. The quota for full-length mirrors, for instance, was set at three a day, yet bookings had already filled into the following year. Even after the express fee was raised to two thousand coins, many women still paid without hesitation, perhaps simply to receive theirs ten days earlier.

When Zhu Youxiao obtained the ten-day sales figures from the two branches, he could only stare in stunned disbelief. The capital branch had taken in one million coins in ten days, while Nanjing had brought in one and a half million, and both places still had a vast backlog of full-length mirror orders. At the current sales pace, it would take at least five more months to clear them.

He took out a brush and did the math. If sales like this could be sustained for just two months, that would amount to fifteen million coins, or seven and a half million taels of silver—more than the entire annual revenue of the imperial court. Heaven above, the common people were far richer than he had imagined. If this continued for a full year, his own fortune would swell to more than forty million taels of silver. Of course, he also understood that luxury goods like mirrors could never maintain such astronomical sales indefinitely. Those who could afford them would buy within a few months; those who could not would never buy at all. Still, if he could obtain one million taels of silver in a year, he was already more than satisfied. At the very least, he would no longer need to worry about funding schools or military reform for three years.

He instructed the eunuch Wei Zhongxian as follows: first, tighten financial oversight, settle accounts and inventory daily, and prevent corruption; second, open branches in larger cities such as Suzhou, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, Songjiang, and other southern centers, as well as northern Linqing; third, set aside some mirrors for Zhang Qianfang and have him try to sell them in Japan, or test trade with the Portuguese. In addition, accelerate the research and manufacture of clocks and pocket watches, which could also be sold alongside mirrors as luxury goods.