I want to be emperor

Chapter 833 Songjiang ([-])

As the flow of people walked out of the train station, what Sun Xu saw was a huge square where people came and went.

There is an elderly gentry wearing brocade forging, wearing a round wide-brimmed hat, stepping on traditional thousand-layer cloth shoes, holding a cane, and wearing a pair of reading glasses. Behind the gentry is a young entourage wearing professional attire and carrying luggage. .

There is a middle-aged man wearing a new-style business suit, a yarmulke hat, leather shoes, a watch in his hand, a long and wide cashmere coat, and a black suitcase in his hand. Just know it's a decent business person.

There is also a husband in a padded jacket, carrying two big cloth bags for salute, followed by a young woman holding a little girl, wearing a Zanxin embroidered padded jacket, and the little girl with a knitted red hat seems a little afraid of the people around her There are many people in the crowd, but a pair of big eyes can't help but look here and there, and they will show small dimples when they see interesting things.

There are also many young people like Sun Xu, most of them are alone with their luggage, dressed in ordinary or even shabby clothes, they look out of place with this huge and prosperous city, and they can be seen from the countryside A country bumpkin from his hometown who came to a big city to find a better life.

Standing in the train square, Sun Xu looked at the crowds of people coming and going, and couldn't help feeling excited and looking forward to it.

Just here at the train station, he deeply felt the prosperity of Songjiang!

Only such a place can give young people with nothing like them ample opportunities!

With excitement and anticipation, Sun Xu put the cloth bag on his shoulder and walked out of the square with the flow of people.

After leaving the square, there is an extremely wide road ahead, which is wider than the widest road at the gate of the county government office in Sun Xu's hometown. It is at least tens of meters wide and can accommodate many people. The carriage passed at the same time.

The road is not paved with gravel roads or cinder roads that are common in many places, nor is it the cement roads that have emerged in recent years, but a cinder-mixed asphalt gravel road. The sides are low for easy drainage.

However, this kind of asphalt road is expensive, and it is not seen in many places at present. It can only be seen in some big cities, and the cities that use asphalt roads on a large scale are currently only Jinling City and Songjiang!

After all, there are not many natural asphalt reserves in the Great Chu Empire, and the mining cost is high. At present, the natural asphalt used in the empire's road construction is basically imported from America. Although the import price is not high, the cost of transoceanic transportation is high ah.

Because at present, the cost of asphalt roads in the Great Chu Empire is still relatively high, and only some places with relatively ample financial resources will build asphalt roads on a large scale.

The high-standard urban roads in most cities are often paved with waterways... After all, the raw materials of cement are easy to obtain, and the processing cost is not high. In the contemporary Great Chu Empire, cement is already a very mature and mass-produced building material.

In the early days, it was used in special buildings and defense industries, and later it was used in the construction of water conservancy facilities, civil buildings, bridge buildings, etc. For example, the piers of many bridges are basically poured with cement and steel bars.

Now that the output has been further increased and the cost has been further reduced, it is widely used in road construction.

Of course, even cement roads cannot be built on a large scale everywhere. The cost of this thing is lower than that of high-standard asphalt roads, but it is also quite expensive.

At present, most of the urban roads in the Great Chu Empire still use gravel roads or cinder roads.

Among them, because there is a large amount of coal for heating in the northern cities, the cinder production is huge and easy to obtain, so cinder roads are more mainstream, while gravel roads are more in the south.

This is still talking about urban roads. If it is a suburban or rural road, then the situation is even worse. Dirt roads are still the mainstream.

On the contrary, some important traffic roads, such as official roads with more business travelers and important to the economic development of a certain place, are relatively better, and they will be paved with cinders or gravel.

In the 35 years of Chengshun's Great Chu Empire, road construction is far from being comparable to that of later generations, but in a very small number of economically developed large cities, high-standard roads such as asphalt roads can already be seen.

This is the first time for Sun Xu to see this kind of asphalt road... Just looking at the asphalt road that is so flat and wide, and can't see the end in the distance, he was inevitably shocked again!
Shocked, he followed the sign to the stage where the stagecoach waited. There were many faces on the platform, and there were boards engraved on it with information about the routes of the stagecoach.

Sun Xu is no stranger to public carriages. Although the small county in his hometown is remote and poor, there are still public carriages, but there are only a few public carriages in the whole county!

But here, he saw more than 30 routes of public carriages alone.

Songjiang North Railway Station, as the largest railway station in the entire empire, has a large number of passengers coming and going every day. If you want to smoothly collect and distribute the passing passengers, a huge public carriage is indispensable.

On the other side of the train station, Sun Xu saw a row of rented carriages waiting for customers. At a glance, there were at least a hundred of various four-wheeled or two-wheeled carriages queuing up to pick up passengers.

Sun Xu was a little envious when he saw the passengers getting into those carriages...but he would definitely be reluctant to sit in a carriage.

Sun Xu withdrew his gaze and continued to search in a large area of ​​public carriage routes.

Although Sun Xu's education is not high, he has attended junior high school anyway, so there is no problem with reading and literacy, and it is naturally no problem to check the information of public carriages.

Sun Xu dropped out of school when he was in the second year of junior high school. He dropped out not because he was stupid and couldn't get in, but because his family couldn't afford it!
In his second year of junior high school, his brother, who was one year younger than him, also went to junior high school, and although his academic performance was already very good at that time, he still failed to get a scholarship.

It is not easy for this family to provide for two junior high school students at their own expense. In the spring of that year, Sun Xu’s mother fell ill and spent a lot of money to see the doctor. In this way, even if Sun shoemaker was making shoes all day long, it would be difficult for him to provide for him. continued.

Although Sun Xu's own academic performance is considered good, it is far inferior to his younger brother. Therefore, as the older brother, Sun Xu dropped out of school in the second half of the second semester of junior high school.

He can't watch his father make shoes, grit his teeth until his hands are blistered and bleeding, and continue to work; he can't watch his seriously ill mother die because he can't look down on the doctor; The younger brother, who was expected to receive a scholarship, dropped out of school.

At that time, he was only 16 years old, but as the eldest son, he offered to drop out of school to work.

He remembered that his father didn't speak when he heard it, but just picked up his pipe and smoked on the stone pier at the door for a long time!
The mother, who was seriously ill and in poor health, murmured that it was all my fault and shed tears!
His younger brother clamored that he would not go to school and would go to a big city to work for his elder brother to go to school.

Sometimes when Sun Xu saw that his junior high school classmates had successfully graduated from junior high school and found decent office jobs. If I can continue to study, will my destiny be different or better?
However, he does not regret his choice back then!

That is what he should do as a son of man, as an elder brother!
Sun Xu, who is halfway through junior high school, has an adequate level of education, and in the years when he was an apprentice, he often read and studied... After all, when he was an apprentice, he studied repairing machinery.

Although experience is very important for repairing machinery, various theoretical knowledge is also indispensable, so I have read a lot of professional books on various science subjects.

Only in this way can he become a teacher within a few years and become a mechanical repairer. He can basically repair some common textile equipment, and he can also repair some other common mechanical equipment. There are also, but after all, the experience is less.

Of course, the lack of experience is also due to the fact that there are not many mechanical repair businesses in his hometown... Most of the time, those old masters are doing it, and he can only help out, at most, he is responsible for dealing with some common minor problems alone.

-

After checking the public carriage route information bulletin board for a long time, I finally decided on the route of the public carriage I want to take.

In fact, Fa Xiao had told him in advance which number of public carriages he would take, how many numbers of public carriages he would take, how many numbers of public carriages he would get off here, and how many numbers of public carriages he would take.

It's just that Sun Xu always needs to confirm the address by himself.

After finding the reserved public carriage, he went to the platform of No. [-] public carriage and waited.

After waiting for about two quarters of an hour, he finally saw a public carriage with a huge "seven" plate hanging in front of the carriage slowly approaching from a distance.

This is a public four-wheeled carriage pulled by two horses. It has two upper and lower floors. The overall frame is an iron frame.

In front of the carriage, sat a driver wearing a thick waterproof wide-brimmed hat, black leather gloves, a cotton jacket, long leather boots, and a waterproof cloak.

After Sun Xu confirmed the number plate of the public carriage again, he quickly took his luggage bag and walked forward quickly. Before getting on the carriage, he asked the driver: "Are you going to the Pacific Department Store?"

Pacific Department Store, that is a large department store in Songjiang City, it sells some high-end products, and even those guys wear good business attire...Of course, Sun Xu is not going to Pacific Department Store, Instead, they have to transfer at the public carriage platform of Pacific Department Store.

The public carriage at the train station can't directly reach the place where Fa Xiao lives, and needs to change cars halfway.

After getting confirmation from the driver of the public carriage, Sun Xu got into the carriage with the luggage cloth bag.

At this time, there were already passengers on the carriage who got on the carriage before him, and there were more people getting on the carriage behind him.

Sun Xu didn't squeeze in the lower carriage, there were too many people... Instead, he walked up the small wooden ladder to the second floor of the carriage.

The transportation pressure of public carriages in Songjiang City is very high. Because of the large number of passengers, many public carriages will be full, especially during rush hour... How to squeeze into a public carriage smoothly has become a compulsory course for many office workers!

In this crowded public carriage, the riding experience is naturally not good. In order to avoid crowding, many passengers simply sat directly on the top of the carriage!
In order to relieve the pressure of transportation, but also because some passengers like to sit on the top of the carriage...even in the winter.

The public carriage transportation company in Songjiang simply modified some of the public carriages on the busy route, reinforced the top of the carriage, added fences, and set up seats, directly turning the single-story public carriage into a double-decker carriage. .

This has greatly improved the carrying capacity, and it has also been well received by many passengers!
After Sun Xu got on the seat on the second floor, he sat down directly on the front seat.

At this time, there were not many people on the second floor of the carriage, and there were only two passengers in professional attire behind... But this situation didn't last long... Soon many people came up one after another, filling most of the seats .

After waiting for a little while, the driver at the front saw that all the passengers had boarded the car, so he lightly waved the reins in his hand, urging the two strong Toyoshu horses in front to move forward slowly.

Even though the public carriage itself is not light, and it carries at least 20 passengers, the whole carriage is extremely heavy, but the two Toyoshu horses in front can still pull it.

Naturally, this is not because the Toyosu horse is so strong... It is purely because this is a four-wheeled carriage, the weight of the vehicle itself and the passengers are all borne by the wheels, and at the same time, it is still walking on the flat asphalt road at that time.

Artillery requires a lot of horses to pull cannons. A 115mm smoothbore field gun requires more than 20 horses, and a cannon of more than one ton usually needs six horses to pull it.

But that's because the artillery marches daily, but there is no asphalt road, most of them are dirt roads or even in the wild.

At the same time, the artillery march is not just a short distance. In this day, you have to walk more than [-] kilometers. The horses need to be rotated and rested, let alone carry too much weight.

So even in theory, one or two horses can pull more than one ton of artillery on a flat road... But in reality, no army will do this, let alone one or two horses, even four are not enough. Six horses is the minimum requirement, while another six horses will be prepared for rotation!

Therefore, the artillery unit uses so many horses.

However, in daily life, you can’t see more than 20 horses used to pull more than one ton of goods. The most common four-wheeled carriage with a load of one ton usually only uses two horses for short distances, and no more than four horses for long distances. That's all.

The same is true for public carriages, there is no need to consider complex terrain, let alone long-distance transportation, because after running for a while, public carriages will change horses at their stations.

In this case, two horses are enough, and there are fewer horses to pull, so driving is more convenient and safer.

(End of this chapter)