Water Mirrored Moon - 水鏡月

Part II - Cosmetics Goddess: 18. The Shop

In the end, renovations still had to be done and Cui Xi was now spending half her time living in the pleasure house and half in her new living quarters above the shop. Therefore, the mezzanine was turning into a convenient blessing.

With a bit of luck, she'd also been able to secure a contract with a winemaker for highly distilled baijiu* to use as disinfectant because the madam had a long-standing agreement with an old craftsman. There had been quite a bit of haggling and at first the craftsman had refused her request three times, but she'd solved the problem by designing a still for him. In fact, it was the man's son who had finally convinced his father after a few pointless discussions. Having a more mechanical mind than the old man, he had actually already been experimenting with still making on the sly, though he had still been focused on the traditional steaming method. When he'd seen her rough sketch and heard her explanation of what it did, his face had lit up immediately.

She didn't know very much about still design, but she had a rough idea, and the younger man took up her sketch with enthusiasm. Working together, they had had the still constructed within a week and then started to test. While the design had improved the shop's liquor production by quite a bit...the biggest problem was temperature control. Without a steady heating element and no thermometer, she'd actually spent three weeks in the shop monkeying with the damn thing after it had been constructed. In the end they'd hit on the right combination of factors to boil the ethanol, but not the water.

Her intense focus on the work had brought her a great deal of respect from the grumpy old man who'd grudgingly admitted that the still had improved on five generations of practical knowledge producing a very clean tasting product. Elated, the old man had presented her with a very fine jar of southern style nongxiang*. Xiao Hei's eyes had bugged out at the sight of the jar, promptly leading her to hide it under the floorboards of her new bedroom. Not a huge drinker of spirits herself, she kept it to use it as a bribe.

After securing the alcohol contract, the other contracts for items such as raw materials and manufactured items had followed more easily, no doubt because of the young winemaker's heartfelt recommendations, but very soon Cui Xi was able to set up her own workroom and start making products.

After that, she suddenly found herself stocking the shop's backroom shelves with hard and liquid soaps made of various natural ingredients, rose and lotus flower facial cleansers, toner, and moisturizers made with aloe and with precious essential oils from as far away as Persia. Her current favourite was a ginger, orange, and honey scented soap.

When summer arrived, there would be fruit and that meant a whole new set of products could be made. Once the facial cleaners started to sell, then she would turn her attention to the problem of cosmetics. Rouge and face powders were not unique items, so using the cleaning products as her foot in the door, she would break the market open with something different and exciting.

Making the products was only part of the work – negotiating and meeting with suppliers, scheduling, calculating required quantities of ingredients, coming up with labels, packaging, and deciding on a shop name that would uniquely reflect her products was another issue and in the end she had named the shop Xinyue or Crescent Moon for its romantic connotations. It had been a little bit skewed for her because of the erotic dancing, but there was no harm in using a bit of scandal to build hype around the products.

Besides, if women somehow thought they might be capturing even a tiny bit of that sinful, erotic feeling with which their sons, husbands, and lovers were now enamoured, perhaps it was all worthwhile. Marketing sex appeal...Hah! Nothing new there.