I want to be emperor

Chapter 709 The Prince's Wedding
May 25, [-]th year of Chengshun, at Hukou Railway Station in Jiujiang, Jiangxi.

The railway station, which has just been completed for less than a month, looks a bit out of place with other buildings in the surrounding area.

Because this is a cement brick building with a large number of steel beam structures, from a contemporary perspective, it is full of modern technology everywhere.

Many of the surrounding buildings are traditional brick and wood buildings.

Hukou Railway Station, like other railway stations in the Great Chu Empire, uses cement bricks and stones as the main material. The overall architectural design is more inclined to modern technology, and it is the product of two completely different systems from traditional buildings.

In particular, the waiting hall on the first floor of the main building is not only very spacious, but also very high. It can be seen at a glance that it cannot be made by traditional construction techniques.

In fact, this kind of building has only begun to appear one after another in the last three to five years, and it has appeared on a large scale and across the country. With the use of this type of building in railway stations around the country, it is still very popular among the people for the time being. rare.

The newly opened Hukou Railway Station is also the last railway station completed and opened to traffic in the Jiangnan Main Line Railway. Prior to this, Ningbo Railway Station had already been put into use in April.

Until today, with a train entering Hukou Railway Station, it also announced that Hukou Railway Station was officially put into use.

It also announced that the entire line of the Jiangnan Main Line Railway is open to traffic!

The Jiangnan Main Line Railway from Ningbo in the east to Hukou in the west has a total length of 21 kilometers. Construction began in Chengshun in [-], and it was finally opened to traffic after five years of construction.

For the Great Chu Empire, this is good news worthy of national celebration!

However, the impact of this good news within the empire is not as sensational as the prince's upcoming wedding!
Ordinary people actually don't pay much attention to the seemingly important strategic planning of railway construction. On the contrary, they are more concerned about some news from the royal family.

Especially the prince's wedding!

At the end of last year, the second son of the emperor, who is also the eldest son, the crown prince Luo Ji of the Great Chu Empire, had already been selected as the concubine, and the traditional marriage procedure began.

The Crown Princess is not the kind expected by the outside world, she is a candidate for the first daughter of a powerful family. Although the Queen originally wanted to find a Crown Princess from a powerful family, she couldn't find a suitable one after going back and forth. , After finally expanding the scope, several more suitable candidates were selected, and among them, the daughter of Suzhou Li was selected as the crown princess.

The Li family in Suzhou is not the family of the rich and powerful in the empire, but a traditional scholarly family, a famous family!

For hundreds of years, there have been people who have become officials. Although they are not high-ranking officials, they are not the same concept as ordinary people. If you have to say it, they are probably poor.

The girl of the Li family herself is very happy, probably because she wants to become a princess, or even a queen in the future... A girl, she has had this kind of dream more or less, and now she has the hope that her dream will come true.

But her father, her grandfather and the Li family are not happy!

Daughter marrying into the royal family, this seems to be a good marriage at first glance, but in fact, for most scholarly families, especially some famous families, this is not a good marriage!

Those famous families in the Great Chu Empire, one family counts as a family, and they all reject marriages with the royal family... Whether it is marrying a princess or a daughter, they are all unhappy. This is not aimed at the Luo Dynasty of the Great Chu. They also did the same in the Ming Dynasty .

Because relatives will be greatly restricted in their careers!

Although the head of the Li family is only a fourth-rank official, not even a high-ranking official in the imperial officialdom...but he is still not happy!

Their Li family is neither poor in money nor in social status. It is a famous family with hundreds of members, and they are all famous families.

This famous family is not talking about the newly rising dignitaries of the empire, but the traditional famous families like them... As for the newly rising dignitaries of the empire, to put it bluntly, the traditional scholarly families of the Li family are fighting against each other. In his heart, he looked down on the so-called dignitaries who had risen up in the empire.

As for the royal family... so what if you are a royal family, people treat you respectfully on the surface, but they may say "the queen of the bandits" behind their backs.

And they themselves are even more disdainful and unwilling to become relatives.

Being a foreign relative is not only extremely restrictive in official career, but also becoming a relative of the emperor is equivalent to being involved in the vortex of the high-level struggle of the empire. If something happens to this, the Li family may have to become history.

What are you talking about?

Ahem...that's the royal family, where the power struggle has been the most intense since ancient times. Whether it's the emperor or the prince, it's a high-risk occupation.

Someone in later generations made a particularly boring statistic. The abnormal death rate of emperors in all dynasties was as high as 40.00%.

The profession of prince is also dangerous. It does not count premature death, and only counts the princes established by the emperor. Among the more than 100 princes who have been officially titled princes in history, the abnormal death rate reached 30.00% [-]!

Probably... one of the three princes was killed or disappeared or other abnormal death!
Whether it is the emperor or the prince in the history of China, these two professions are extremely risky!

And other members of the royal family surrounding the emperor and the prince, whether they are other princes or members of the harem, are actually very dangerous.

The royal relatives and relatives behind the harem concubines are also high-risk personnel.

The Li family's hundreds of well-known families are doing well, so there's no need to meddle in the royal family's messy affairs, and put their hundreds of-year-old family in extreme danger.

So after the royal family expressed their intention to marry, they politely refused...

This makes the royal family very depressed!
For this reason, Queen Wang even complained to Luo Zhixue... saying that it was because these famous families were unwilling to marry the royal family, and the marriages of dozens of children in the royal family were not easy to handle.

What about their Luo family, before the incident, it was also a scholarly family who had passed away, and Luo's father, who was posthumously named emperor, was a scholar, and Luo Zhixue's eldest brother, who also died on the way to escape, also had fame For several generations, although there have never been Jinshi or Juren, there have been as many as seven or eight scholars.

A serious heir to the farming and reading of the Eight Classics, a scholarly family!
Why do those sour and smelly literati look down on their Luo family and her son!
In addition, the crown prince Luo Zhi really took a fancy to the daughter of the Li family, and felt that the noble ladies from such traditional famous families were even rarer, and they were much better than the prostitutes brought up by those rich and powerful families... Zhixue seems to be a bitch!

If you really want to play, you can't play with any woman as a crown prince, and the daughter of a famous family can also play casually... You have to marry her back home!

In fact, Luo Zhixue also asked his son Luo Jian, saying that it is a matter of marrying a wife, and it is more or less about what you like and what you want, and there is no need to force it if people don't like it.

If you like the tone of a lady from a scholarly family, I will order you to collect dozens of daughters from famous families for you. As long as you don't marry them, you can play around...

But Luo Jian also has a temper: I like to see that they don't like it, but they still want to marry their daughter to Gu...

Gu, just want to marry her back in a serious manner, and give it to Gu to play casually, Gu is not uncommon!

Then Luo Zhixue ignored this son... This second son was somewhat out of his mind.

Those famous families are even more vile. They can send their prostitutes to the East Palace for the prince to play with. Even if you ask, they can even send your wife or even the old lady to bed for you... But the prince wants to be serious They are not happy to marry their prostitute daughter home as a princess!
Because the former is just offering a daughter for honor...while the latter is tantamount to binding her family and the prince together, and will become a relative who is subject to great restrictions!
It's okay to come secretly, but it's not okay to marry openly.

As far as Luo Zhixue is concerned, seeing these so-called famous families is also very uncomfortable... Damn, how many times has my wife given me to play, why are you pretending to be a literati!
So put a little pressure on it.

As for the scholarly family of the Li family, when there is nothing to do, their bones are harder than anyone else. If they really put a knife on their necks, their knees are softer than anyone else!
Ever since, even if 1 people don't want it in their hearts, they have to hold their noses and accept the marriage with the royal family!

Finally, the candidate for the crown princess was finalized, the daughter of the famous family in Suzhou, the Li family.

The other unsuccessful candidates would not say to leave directly, but would also enter the Prince's East Palace after the Prince's wedding, and be named Liangdi, Liangyuan, etc.

After finalizing the candidates, various procedures began to go through. After several months of procedures, everything was ready, so the prince's wedding ceremony was officially held in June.

This time the wedding was much larger than when Luo Zhixue's eldest son Luo Xun got married, and the procedure was even more strictly prohibited.

Although Luo Zhixue loves Luo Xun, the eldest son of the emperor who has been weak and sickly since he was a child, in terms of personal feelings, Luo Xun is only a prince after all, not a prince. Standard, the prince's wedding is another standard.

Luo Zhixue had already finalized the heir apparent system, and on such a major political issue, he would not let him become the prince just because he loved Luo Xun more personally.

Besides, with Luo Xun's body, he can't be the emperor... He has been a medicine jar since he was a child, and now he is bedridden for more than half a year all year round.

The imperial hospital is also helpless to deal with the condition of the eldest son of the emperor... Today, with limited medical technology, the imperial hospital can't even find out what disease the eldest son has!
In this regard, Luo Zhixue is also helpless...

Even to put it harshly, in fact, he has long been mentally prepared for his eldest son to die young. Under such circumstances, he would naturally not consider making this eldest son the crown prince.

This is also an important reason why Luo Zhixue finally finalized the eldest son inheritance system... Speaking of which, if the elder son's health was better, Luo Zhixue might have considered making the eldest son the crown prince.

After all... People are more or less selfish. He has so many children, but he loves his eldest son the most.

pity……

----

The scale of the prince's wedding is very large, and the level of etiquette is also very high. In addition to the traditions followed, the royal family of the Great Chu Empire also held a large-scale fireworks feast on the night of the wedding, allowing the people in the city to enjoy it together. !

This kind of fireworks made by combining modern industrial technology is bigger and more beautiful than traditional fireworks, so that night, both the officials and the people of Jinling City enjoyed it a lot!
And this large-scale fireworks also means that the Great Chu Empire has entered a new era to a certain extent!

A prosperous age!

In the early years of the empire, although the Great Chu Empire developed very well, the main theme of the previous ten years was still war!

From the battle of unification, to the battle of exterminating the captives in the east, a series of battles to pacify the southwest and the Qingkang area, it was basically ten years after Chengshun that the major large-scale wars in the Great Chu Empire ended.

During this period, although the industrial development of the Great Chu Empire has been steadily increasing, the living standards of the people are still in a relatively difficult period. After all, in the early days, it was mainly in the recovery of the people's livelihood and economy.

This period of time is not only the period of China's comprehensive unification war, but also the period of many places in the pass to cultivate their health and rest.

After ten years of Chengshun, strictly speaking, the living standards of the people have been greatly improved, but there are still limitations.

Cold knowledge, more than 100 years after the British Industrial Revolution, the standard of living of their ordinary people is still very low...

A strong country does not mean that the people are rich. In that era, child labor was common!

After the mid-nineteenth century, especially after the high-pressure steam engine entered all walks of life, productivity further developed, and the living standards of ordinary people in the UK began to improve significantly.

This point is similar in the Great Chu Empire. After all, the natural conditions of the Great Chu Empire are not very good. In the early days of the industrial revolution, especially in the period of water power, the improvement of productivity was still very limited.

Although the national defense is stronger, it does not mean that the per capita food production can also be greatly increased, and the people's lives can also be greatly increased.

It was not until the steam engine was put into use and entered the steam age that the living standards of ordinary people in the Great Chu Empire began to improve.

After the successful development of high-pressure steam engines and the large-scale use of trains and ships in recent years, the empire not only saw a rapid increase in the development of the industrial and commercial economy, but also made the people's living standards completely surpass the traditional agricultural society.

In other words, strictly speaking, the standard of living of ordinary people in the Great Chu Empire was greatly improved only after 21 years of Chengshun, and the per capita food only reached 23 kilograms in the [-]rd year of Chengshun.

And it increased again last year, reaching a per capita level of [-] kilograms.

Even though it only increased by ten kilograms, this increase is actually quite astonishing!

These increases are mainly due to the increase in food production brought about by the increase in productivity in the Great Chu Empire.

Especially after the large-scale use of railways and ships has made the transportation of personnel and materials more convenient, the cost of agricultural production has become lower, and the per capita food output has increased.

Coupled with the continuous large-scale external expansion, especially the large number of additional sources of food brought about by the expansion of Nanyang.

All of this finally made the food on the table of Dachu people more!

When the food per capita increases, the standard of living can be said to improve.

The current 25 years of Chengshun is an important turning point due to the rapid increase in food per capita and the rapid improvement of people's living standards.

According to the forecast of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the per capita grain level of the Great Chu Empire is expected to reach 320 kilograms this year!

This will be a data that creates history!

(End of this chapter)