Hydrangeas and the Dragon Statues
One month of operations at the Seongdo flagship had proven beyond doubt that Caffe the One made money.
Hwiyeom now resolved to expand the franchise in earnest.
Unlike the earlier rollout of Baekga-jaengsik outlets, however, he attached strict conditions.
“Every site chosen for a Caffe the One franchise must first undergo thorough analysis of the surrounding commercial district, and only those locations with proven, sufficient demand may be selected.
We will pursue an uncompromising premium strategy.”
Although the coffee beans were grown in Yunnan and therefore not especially costly, the prices of the food and drink sold at Caffe the One were by no means cheap.
In a status-bound society, top-down marketing works far better than bottom-up. If the brand is ever stamped as “cheap,” we’re finished. It has to remain a high-end product that crossed the seas.
When one wishes to spread a product through society, the approach may be divided into bottom-up and top-down.
Bottom-up marketing can be illustrated by jeans or pizza. Jeans began as the trousers of poor laborers in the American West; pizza was a leftover-disposal dish of the common people, scraps baked atop dough. As more and more people wore and ate them, vast markets formed, and eventually luxury versions appeared, transforming “commoner culture” into something the upper classes also enjoyed. That is the classic bottom-up pattern—though in those cases no deliberate marketing campaign existed, the principle remains.
Top-down, by contrast, means first making something fashionable among celebrities, the wealthy, royalty, or nobility; the middle classes then imitate them, and the fashion gradually filters down to the common people.
Had Hwiyeom not used a form of influencer marketing—itself a species of top-down strategy—when he first spread cosmetics through Sichuan?
In the Gyeong Empire of this age, a “tea garden” was a place where scholars gathered to drink expensive tea and discourse on lofty academic and political matters. Tea itself, apart from the cheap white tea of the lower classes, had always been something of a luxury. No one, therefore, would criticize Caffe the One’s premium positioning. Even setting tea aside, the food sold there—sugar, white-rice cakes—was hardly inexpensive in this era.
“Besides… a café in which Michelangelo’s artworks are displayed with the cool nonchalance of mass-produced goods? In the modern world the entrance fee alone would be astronomical.”
Even the formidable Hwiyeom himself had struggled to close his mouth the first time he visited the flagship.
As part of that premium strategy, every city and every street corner chosen for a franchise was subjected to rigorous verification and analysis.
“Discontent among would-be franchisees is rising.”
“Existing tea-house and tea-garden operators who have been refused permission to convert are also lodging endless complaints.”
Whether they were aspiring founders or owners of existing tea gardens desperate to rebrand as Caffe the One, Hwiyeom remained unmoved.
“Tell them the family will provide capital so they can relocate. The sites they currently occupy will never draw customers for a Caffe the One.”
Trying to plant a Starbucks on the edge of a rice paddy, are they?
Hwiyeom cut off every reckless petition from merchants who still regarded Caffe the One as little more than a rural teahouse. Within Sichuan itself he authorized openings at only twelve meticulously chosen locations.
The next branch, interestingly, opened not in Sichuan but in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan.
Because Kunming was the meeting ground where merchants of the Silk Road traded with those of the Central Plains, vast sums of money changed hands there. A branch as large and splendid as the Seongdo flagship was therefore erected.
Hwiyeom summoned Yun Geum, the elder of the Sericulture Branch that produced Sichuan brocade—the same branch once dominated by Hong Ilgon—and said:
“Henceforth every transaction of Sichuan brocade conducted with the Western Regions or within Yunnan itself will take place exclusively at the Kunming branch of Caffe the One.”
“Understood.”
“Elder Jin Cheong, the same applies to all trade in Yunnan tea.”
“As you command.”
Of all the goods the Western Regions carried home from the Central Plains, silk was the most famous and tea the next. Holding both commodities as weapons, Hwiyeom had no reason not to wield them.
He was not even seeking outrageous profits; he simply redirected trade that had previously occurred in random restaurants or wine shops into a single fixed venue—Caffe the One. The merchants, therefore, raised no objection.
It was exactly like Lloyd’s Coffee House of late-seventeenth-century England: a place where long-distance traders gathered to conduct business.
And what is Lloyd’s Coffee House famous for? Insurance.
The very concept of insurance was born in that coffee house. Hwiyeom intended the Kunming branch of Caffe the One to become the birthplace of trade insurance linking the Western Regions and the Central Plains, just as Lloyd’s had been.
Since this is not maritime trade, it will be fire insurance rather than marine, but the principle is the same.
He summoned Jin Cheong, explained the concept of insurance, and ordered him to devise a commercial scheme.
“While I am away settling affairs in Beijing, sketch out a business plan. Our first client can be Ibn al-Nasir; once he is on board, the rest will follow naturally.”
“…Young Master, will this truly make money? Insurance seems rather like a mutual-aid club. Are we not simply holding other people’s money in trust?”
“If we merely locked the premiums in a vault, yes. But I have any number of ventures into which that capital can be reinvested and multiplied.”
Jin Cheong finally sighed.
“So Your Young Master insists on loading yet more work onto this old man’s shoulders.”
“Just draft the concept for now. I will refine the overall framework when I return.”
“As you wish…”
Jin Cheong nodded weakly.
Michelangelo completed the two chandeliers shaped as dragons that were to be presented to the Emperor.
For ease of transport the dragons had been designed so that they could be disassembled into many sections and reassembled. The centerpiece—a wish-granting jewel in the form of a mirror ball—measured a full two meters in diameter.
“Glass of that size can support its own weight without shattering?”
Hwiyeom asked in astonishment. Michelangelo shrugged with proud nonchalance.
“I wrestled with that problem myself, until the hydrangea gave me the answer.”
“The hydrangea?”
Intrigued, Hwiyeom pressed him, and Michelangelo, delighted, recounted the entire journey that had produced the magnificent mirror ball.
At first he had simply intended to cast a huge crystal sphere of lead-and-soda glass—chosen for its clarity and brilliance—and then cut the facets. Marble, whose crystalline structure holds together as it is carved, had never prepared him for glass.
“This is harder than I thought.”
The slightest excess of force produced a crack; the larger the mass, the worse the tendency. A sculptor and architect of Michelangelo’s caliber quickly grasped the cause.
“The crystalline structure simply cannot bear its own weight…”
To prevent collapse he first formed a perfect sphere, then carved symmetrical fractal patterns so that the weight and stress acting from every direction would be distributed evenly toward the center. After many such experiments he succeeded in producing a one-meter mirror ball—the very “Moon” that now adorned the “Moon and Stars” chandelier in the Caffe the One flagship.
Yet even a one-meter ball would look small in the vast audience hall of the Geoncheong Palace. Baek Beon had remarked that officials seated at the rear might not see it properly. Michelangelo therefore wanted to double the diameter at the very least. Material strength, however, repeatedly defeated him. No amount of browbeating the glassmaster Niccolo could change the facts of physics.
“Damn it. I need to clear my head.”
He flung down his chisel and strode into the rear garden of the Sacheondang estate. The garden was beautifully tended—most of it poisonous herbs, of course—but the non-toxic flower beds were equally lovely. Access to the poison garden was restricted; Michelangelo therefore wandered into the ordinary flower garden and gave a bitter laugh.
“Idiot. What flowers are there in winter?”
The beds were empty. Smiling hollowly, he peered into the bare plots and happened upon a wooden stake labeled Hydrangea.
“Aqua Crisantemo—water chrysanthemum? A chrysanthemum that blooms in water? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Hydrangeas are native to East Asia; Michelangelo, newly arrived from Italy, had never seen one. Curiosity drove him to seek out a painting of the flower. The moment he beheld it, inspiration struck like lightning.
“Tiny florets clustered together form one great round blossom! That’s it!”
He raced back to the workshop. He cut crystal into pentagons of various sizes, linked them with brass rings into miniature flower shapes, then joined those flowers into a fist-sized sphere. When he lit a carbide lamp, a marvel occurred.
Unlike the earlier method, which forbade deep surface cuts lest the glass shatter, this new mirror ball—composed of hundreds of pentagonal facets—sent light ricocheting and overlapping across every face, scattering into a dazzling, scintillating cascade.
“Perfect!”
He immediately hunted down Niccolo.
“Niccolo! Those colored glasses you use for stained glass—give me every scrap you have!”
“You madman! It’s the Hour of the Ox! Why the hell are you waking people at this hour?!”
Having plundered the glass workshop of every colored pane, Michelangelo began combining hues with the crystal flowers, searching for the most beautiful effect.
“They revere the Five Colors that correspond to the Five Elements here in the Central Plains… I’ll use that as the base…”
Blue, red, yellow, white, black. He studied the five hues and shook his head.
“The others are fine, but black is meaningless—it only blocks light. Is there such a thing as black light?”
After a moment’s doubt he revised his plan.
“My patrons are the Sichuan Dang Family, whose color is green. I’ll drop black and insert green instead.”
Thus blue, red, yellow, white, and green were blended into the transparent glass flowers. The mirror ball constructed by this “swarm-flower” method—Il fiore dello stormo—reached two meters in diameter yet did not collapse.
“This is it! Hahahaha!!”
Michelangelo fitted the completed swarm-flower wish-jewel into the jaws of the finished dragon statues, laughed in pure satisfaction, then collapsed and slept for two solid days.
And now, at last, he was demonstrating the finished masterpieces to Hwiyeom.
“Overwhelming…”
Even without light the statues were the pinnacle of splendor. The two dragons, carved with the full genius of Michelangelo—one of the two or three greatest craftsmen in world history—seemed ready to leap into the heavens, every muscle coiled with living dynamism. Yet the finishing touch was the wish-jewel and the eyes.
“Since no one can see the top of the head from below, I opened vents there for air and fitted large carbide lamps inside the skulls. Naturally, once the eye sockets are pierced, light pours from the eyes as well. So I set crystals larger than a man’s fist into each eye. Watch.”
At Michelangelo’s signal, assistants climbed ladders and entered the dragons’ heads from the rear. When the carbide lamps flared to life—
“Ooooh…”
As though sleeping dragons had awakened, the eyes blazed with inner light while the wish-jewels in their jaws radiated five-colored divine radiance.
Even Hwiyeom felt a thrill; the shock that would strike the people of this age was beyond imagining.
Yet—
“Hmm.”
Satisfaction was never Hwiyeom’s style. He regarded the triumphant Michelangelo and smiled slyly.
“It is the masterpiece of the century… but shall we add just one more touch?”
“Eh?”
Michelangelo’s eyes narrowed in irritation—You have a complaint about my work?!—until he heard the whisper. Then he grinned.
“That sounds fun!”