The Great Arcanist Who Traveled Through the World of American Variety Shows.

Chapter 425: The people of Luoyang want to make progress

Richard sent people to Luoyang and first checked the canal conditions around Luoyang. In order to rebuild Luoyang, in addition to manpower, the transportation of various materials was needed, so the first step in rebuilding Luoyang City was to dredge the canal.

Emperor Yang of Sui Dynasty dug the Grand Canal with Luoyang as the core, connecting the north and south as well as Guanzhong. The northern route is the Yongji Canal, which enters the Yellow River from Luoyang and goes north to Zhuojun in Youzhou. The southern route is the Tongji Canal, which starts from Luoyang, passes through Bianliang Kaifeng, Songzhou, Suzhou, Yangzhou and finally reaches Hangzhou.

There is also the Guangtong Canal, which connects Luoyang to Chang'an.

Due to the wars in the late Tang Dynasty, the military governors of various places rarely repaired the canal, resulting in many parts of the Grand Canal being silted up and unusable.

The best preserved is the Tongji Canal. This line from Jiangnan to Tokyo Bianliang was repaired almost every year, and a large amount of Jiangnan wealth was transported to Kaifeng Bianliang.

The canals in the north were seriously silted up, but now that the north was unified, the canal repair work was on the agenda. The canals around Luoyang were also seriously silted up.

The officials sent by Richard began to survey the terrain near Luoyang in preparation for repairing the canal.

Although repairing the canal is easier than digging a new one, it still requires a lot of manpower. At this time, the Zhou Dynasty was in a state of recovery, and many places needed manpower, so it could not allocate too many people to dredge the canal and rebuild Luoyang.

It would take at least 200,000 people one to two years to build Luoyang City. In order to build Luoyang City and the canal as quickly as possible, Richard personally designed some engineering machinery to reduce manpower, and then allocated food and money to recruit people to go to Luoyang to dig the canal.

In order to increase manpower, Richard even sent some captured soldiers from Ganzhou Huihe, Dangxiang, and Khitan here, and told them that as long as they served five years of labor here, they would be released without charge.

In this way, 2 militiamen were recruited, and after adding laborers conscripted from other places to a total of people, he began to order the repair of the canal and Luoyang city.

At this time, Zhou was expanding the Western Regions while waging war against the Northern Han. In addition, the construction of Luoyang City consumed a lot of manpower. Therefore, it took Richard three to four years to repair Luoyang City and the canal.

But after the construction of Luoyang City really started, the progress of the construction surprised Richard. It was not that the construction of Luoyang was slow, on the contrary, the construction speed was faster than he imagined.

When Richard saw how fast the construction of Luoyang was going, he immediately became worried. Did the officials responsible for building Luoyang City squeeze the civilians and captives to build Luoyang City in order to please the emperor? Or did they cut corners to meet deadlines?

Richard didn't want to see either of these two situations, so he went to Luoyang City to check it out. After arriving here, Richard found that the main reason why Luoyang City was built so quickly was that a large number of people took the initiative to help.

The people of Luoyang were eager to make progress, and when they heard that the emperor wanted to move the capital to Luoyang, they immediately came to participate in the construction.

The people of Luoyang knew all too well the benefits of having Luoyang as the imperial capital, so after Guo Rong decided to build Luoyang, the local aristocratic families showed great enthusiasm.

As a result, the wealthy and powerful families, officials, and noble families near Luoyang contributed money and labor, and brought food and craftsmen to help build Luoyang City. Not only the nobles near Luoyang, but also the nobles from Hanoi, Henan, and Shandong came to Luoyang to rebuild their foundations.

These people brought a large number of craftsmen, population, food and even their own building materials, and participated in the construction of Luoyang City.

It originally took 100,000 people to build Luoyang City, but now the population has easily exceeded 200,000. The speed of building Luoyang City is amazing.

The Luoyang City planned by Richard could accommodate one million people. In addition to the imperial city, there were also government offices. The government offices were close to the imperial city, and on the other side were the places where the nobles lived. However, these places were only planned, and no construction was done.

In addition, there are markets, Luoyang Ling’s office, East and West markets, Chang’an City’s water and drainage facilities, and even a special garbage disposal area.

In Richard's plan, the circumference of Luoyang City reached 40 kilometers, and the area exceeded 80 square kilometers. It was twice as large as Luoyang City during the Sui and Tang Dynasties. The Yi River and the Luo River surrounded Luoyang. The water sources of the two rivers provided Luoyang with sufficient water and water transportation, allowing materials from all over the world to be quickly transported to Luoyang.

After Richard took control of the court and implemented the reform, the efficiency of the court's operation has improved a lot during this period, and many local tyrants and officials have been dealt with. Next, Richard plans to increase the salaries of officials and rectify their salaries.

After the fall of the Former Tang Dynasty, the military governors of various places fought each other, and the salary system of officials changed greatly. The salaries of the military governors in various places were different, and the salaries of officials were not unified. At the same time, the way of distributing salaries was also inconsistent. Sometimes they distributed grain, sometimes they distributed copper coins, and sometimes they distributed cloth or other things.

Such a chaotic salary system was not conducive to the stability of the court. Richard and Guo Rong re-determined the salaries of officials based on the prices of the former Tang Dynasty and now, and set the salaries of officials of each rank.

The two did not limit the salaries of officials to a very low level. Doing so would certainly reduce the amount of money and grain paid by the court, but it would also have serious consequences.

Didn't Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, limit the salaries of officials to extremely low levels, and when they were issued, they were issued in the form of Ming Baochao. When Ming Baochao was first issued, it was still worth some money. However, with Zhu Yuanzhang's excessive issuance, the Ming Baochao eventually depreciated and became waste paper.

Can you give officials waste paper to help them? Impossible. They will only transfer their losses to ordinary people. And all the methods and systems are legal and compliant. You printed the treasure notes, one note is worth one tael, and then those officials use the face value of the treasure notes to buy various materials. Do you think the people are willing to sell them?

If they are willing to sell, it is equivalent to giving it away for free, and if they are unwilling to sell, it is a violation of the Ming Dynasty Law. Those officials do not need to use tricks or robbery to force countless ordinary people to lose their homes, and these operations are legal and compliant.

Even if Zhu Yuanzhang knew about this, would he say that the Baochao was not worth that much money?

If he says it is not worth money, does he need to make up the salaries of officials across the country? If he says it is worth money, are the officials' actions legal and compliant?

Of course, he could also take the third path and kill people, but in this way, the country's system would be completely ruined. When Zhu Yuanzhang was still alive, the Ming Dynasty's treasure notes depreciated to 500 to 1.

This seemingly cost-saving approach ultimately resulted in a serious loss of credibility for the Ming government, which was not worth the cost.

Richard would not make such a mistake, so the salaries were paid in real terms. The court's salaries were settled in rice, copper coins or cloth.

At the same time, the salary stipulated by Richard was also relatively high. Richard did not believe in the so-called high salary to maintain integrity. He set the salary of officials higher for the sake of those honest officials.

Officials are not born with the desire to take bribes. Just like the officials of the Ming Dynasty, because of the low salary, they often had to take bribes in order to survive. In the two hundred years of the Ming Dynasty, there was only one Hai Gangfeng.

But what kind of life did Hai Gangfeng live? For a fourth-rank official, eating one egg a day was considered a luxury. How many officials could endure such a life?

Richard gave officials high salaries, which allowed those honest and upright officials to stick to their posts.

When the new salary system was announced, many grassroots officials cheered. For those officials who came from aristocratic families, powerful families, and wealthy people, this amount of money was nothing. But for those officials who came from humble backgrounds, these salaries could allow them to live a decent life.

In order to cope with the new salary system, Richard ordered the minting of more copper coins, Zhou Yuan Tong Bao.

Although Guo Rong had confiscated a large number of bronze Buddha statues, bronze utensils and copper coins last time, after several major events such as the Northern Expedition, the Western Expedition and the construction of Luoyang, millions of copper coins had been consumed.

The problem of copper coin shortage in the Great Zhou still exists, so Richard is going to increase the minting of copper coins. At the same time, in order to alleviate the shortage of money, Richard is going to forge silver coins.

During this era, silver was not used as a circulating currency. It was only used to make various utensils for decoration or as rewards from the emperor to his ministers.

However, with the opening of the sea and the opening of the Silk Road in the future, silver will definitely flow into the Central Plains on a large scale, so Richard plans to use silver to make silver coins.

The technology for making coins from silver has basically matured.

In modern society, forging silver coins only requires forging, grinding and polishing to forge high-quality silver coins. However, the casting method was still used to make coins during this period.

Simply put, a master coin is made first, and then the master coin is used to make a mold, and then the copper material is heated and melted and poured into it. After the copper coin cools down, it is polished and carved, and a copper coin is made.

Overall, this method of casting copper coins is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the silver coins cast in this way will also have many pores and look very poor.

Richard plans to use the 'heat pressing' method.

The raw materials of coins are heated and melted, and then made into silver plates. Then the silver plates are pressed using a plate rolling machine. After multiple pressings, the silver plates are pressed into a suitable thickness, and then pressed again while the temperature of the silver plates is high and the texture is soft.

Then the silver coin is properly carved and polished, and a silver coin can be completed.

The face value of such a silver coin is one coin. In addition to silver, copper, zinc and other metals are also added to the silver coin. Silver accounts for 90%. When the amount is lower than this, the sound of the silver coin will change significantly when it is blown.

Its face value is also higher than the material of the silver dollar itself. Generally speaking, the profit of making a silver dollar is about 15%.

(End of this chapter)