I am Emperor Wanli

Chapter 812: The Ming Dynasty is full of etiquette!

Hu Yinglin stepped forward and bowed, "Junior greets Master Shu."

Wang Shisong also stepped forward and saluted upon hearing the voice: "I greet Master Shu."

Shu Youliang grinned, revealing his yellow teeth, and said in a reserved manner: "You're welcome, you're welcome. You should also form a group to visit the factory."

"Yes, come and learn."

After hearing the introduction, Gu Yangqian, Xiao Lin, Wang Jiaping and others also came forward to say hello.

Shu Youliang saw Shen Mingchen in the crowd and immediately understood. He straightened his expression, straightened his clothes and appearance, and bowed solemnly to the eight people.

"Master Shu, what are you doing?"

"I may be a crude old man, but I respect those who sacrifice their lives for the Ming Dynasty the most."

"Mr. Shu is too polite. I am just waiting."

"It's too noisy here!" Shu Youliang suddenly interrupted Shen Mingchen and pulled the eight people aside, some distance away from Marcelo and Leon.

Shu Youliang turned his head and smiled at Marcelo and Leon from a distance, then turned back and spoke softly.

"Those two Portuguese barbarians can understand Mandarin and are very cunning. They are Portugal, and the one you are going to fight in Genzhou is Spain.

They both have teeth, so they might be cousins. We can’t let them hear the news.”

Shen Mingchen and others suddenly realized, "So that's how it is. Master Shu is really cautious."

"Haha, I've also learned the confidentiality regulations, okay?"

Looking at the eight people who were full of vigor and vitality, Shu Youliang sighed, "You are traveling far to Genzhou. The journey is thousands of miles long and extremely dangerous. Life and death are unpredictable. You are the vanguard sent by the Ming Dynasty to Genzhou. You deserve a respect from those of us who are just sitting back and enjoying the fruits of our labor."

After saying this, he crossed his arms and bowed to the eight people, performing a solemn salute.

Gu Yangqian, Xiao Lin and eight other people looked solemn, crossed their arms and responded solemnly.

Seeing them saluting each other so solemnly, Marcelo and Leon in the distance looked at each other and felt very strange.

The Ming Dynasty is good in every way except that it has too many etiquettes.

"Okay, you guys go on the tour. I still have to accompany Lao Ma and Lao Lai around."

Hu Yinglin and Wang Shisong were moved and said in unison: "Master Shu, I will go with you."

"What are you doing with an old man like me? It's so boring."

Hu Yinglin and Wang Shisong nodded, "Master Shu, we want to spend more time with Marcelo and Leon to understand their temperaments and their ideas for dealing with problems.

When I was in school, my professor said that different nations have different cultures and therefore have different ways of dealing with problems. "

"Yes, Master Shu, their country, Portugal, is right next to Spain, and both believe in Jesus. They share the same ancestry and culture, so they should be very similar. This time we go east, we are mainly dealing with the Spanish.

Only by knowing yourself and your enemy can you win every battle."

After hearing what Hu Yinglin and Wang Shisong said, the others were also tempted. However, they were not familiar with Shu Youliang and were too embarrassed to say it out loud.

"Okay! Let's go together." Shu Youliang responded happily.

Gu Yangqian, the oldest and most senior official, said maturely, "Then I'll have to trouble Master Shu.

I also ask Yuanrui and Zhongshu to take the trouble to help us understand the temperaments of these two Portuguese people. When they come back, they can teach us a thing or two, so that we can also understand the temperaments of the Western barbarians. "

"You're welcome, Brother Gu."

The two groups bowed and separated. Shu Youliang walked back with Hu Yinglin and Wang Shisong and said to Marcelo and Leon, "My two juniors, come with us for the tour."

"It doesn't matter. We can herd one sheep or a flock of sheep." Marcelo said with his tongue rolled. "Are you two officials?"

Sir?

What the hell!
You mean the officials?
"We have just entered the government."

"Enter the government? Oh, yes, that means to be an official. Which government office do you work for?"

"We are still in the internship stage, and this time we are here to learn with the class."

Hu Yinglin replied with a smile.

"Oh," Marcelo smiled and said nothing more.

Shu Youliang pointed at his back and whispered to Hu Yinglin and Wang Shisong, "See, he's very cunning.

He is a great nobleman of Portugal, a marquis. He is an army general and also has some experience in naval warfare. He has fought in both land and sea battles for more than 20 years.

“Rich in combat experience.”

Hu Yinglin and Wang Shisong were delighted.

Shu Youliang shook his head and said softly, "You two don't need to try to get him to tell you something. He'll probably figure it out. I've already gotten most of it. I'm almost done."

The two nodded quickly.

The five people continued walking forward along the platform, one in front and one behind.

Marcelo looked at the countless rails and long freight cars in front of him and exclaimed, "I never thought that trains would be so widely used in Ming country factories."

"Old Ma, you are sighing in the wrong place. It's obvious that more than half of the rails were built in the past two years."

"Has it been repaired in the past two years?"

"Yes. Our Daming factories, mines and ports have been using railroads for quite a long time, starting with Shanghai Wusong Port. But at that time, they used animal power."

"Yes," Leon recalled, "In Xiangjiang Port and Wusong Port, we saw railroad tracks and saw oxen and horses pulling carriages along the tracks.

But the carriages there are flat and much shorter than here.”

"How can a cow's horse's power compare to a steam locomotive? It must be shorter and smaller, and carry less cargo. Now we have steam locomotives, which can carry more cargo, run faster, and have a wider range of uses. Of course, we need to build more tracks.

But I heard that the spacing of the rails and other standards were determined long ago.

So the rails that were laid before can also be used by trains. But it seems that there are some differences between the two. What are the differences? Don’t ask me, Lao Ma, I don’t know either.”

Shu Youliang certainly didn't know that the rails in the port area and the factory and mining areas were all "old-style rails", weighing 32 kilograms per meter and with each section being eight meters long.

Also called "light rail", the spacing between the two tracks is the same, and various carriages can run on it, but the light rail cannot be overloaded, and the speed does not exceed 30 kilometers per hour.

As we were talking, a steam locomotive came rumbling over, pulling a dozen wagons loaded with coal and iron ore. It wasn't going very fast, but you could catch up with it if you ran as fast as you could.

However, as we all know, this steam locomotive is almost identical to the Qianjin 1 locomotive in appearance, but it is one-third smaller, and is the younger brother of the Qianjin 1. What's going on?

Shu Youliang stopped a passing maintenance worker and handed him a Luanhe cigarette.

The two men whispered a few words while smoking, and soon became familiar with each other, and then asked what was going on with this steam locomotive.

"This is the Qidian II, the earliest finalized experimental locomotive. It was upgraded to Qianjin I after the test run was successful."

"Test locomotive, why is it still in use?"

"What the railway lacks most now is locomotives. There seem to be less than 15 Qianjin-1 locomotives running back and forth on the Beijing-Luan and Beijing-Tianjin lines. The drivers are changed but the locomotives are not. They work harder than a donkey pulling a millstone.

In the past, it was only used to transport freight cars, but now passenger cars have been opened, and four or five locomotives have been assigned to it all at once, making the situation even more tense.

So these four Qidian II test locomotives were also pulled out and used to transport goods between several factories and mines in Luanzhou. There were also a variety of other test locomotives, as long as they could move, they were all pulled out for use.

These test locomotives may look small, but they can pull a lot of stuff.”

Shu Youliang nodded: "Hearing what you said, this locomotive is indeed tight. It is really not easy to build such a large locomotive."

Marcelo suddenly asked, "Where are the forward locomotives made?"

"Yanhe Locomotive Factory."

"Where is the Yanhe Locomotive Factory?"

"It's in Luanzhou!" The maintenance worker chuckled, took a few puffs of his cigarette, threw the cigarette butt on the ground, stomped on it, and waved to Shu Youliang, "Brother, I'm going to be busy."

"Okay, walk slowly."

The five people got off the platform and continued walking along the tracks.

After a while, I saw another steam locomotive that was slightly different from the Qidian Type 2 and smaller in size, puffing over with a train carriage.

"Look, there are people outside the locomotive."

The sharp-eyed Hu Yinglin pointed at the motorcycle and said.

When everyone looked carefully, they saw a man standing in the front of the locomotive that was slowly emerging from the white steam. He was wearing a dark blue railway uniform, holding the handrail with his left hand, leaning outward, and waving a red pennant with his right hand.

The car was driving very slowly, about the same speed as a person jogging.

Amid the sound of clattering, everyone counted and found that there were a total of six carriages, all of which were flatbed carriages, with large castings of various types placed on them.

Some carriages had one, others had two or three. They were all tied very firmly with steel cables, and each contact surface was padded with straw mats woven from wheat straw.

The last car was not a regular tail car in a railway freight train, but a carriage. An escort stood behind the carriage, holding the handrail, leaning out, with two small flags, one red and one green, stuck behind him.

After the train went away, the five people crossed the railroad tracks and bypassed a pile of coal that was thirty or forty meters high.

On the coal mountain side, a train car was parked nearby. More than 20 workers were standing on the coal piles in two carriages, shoveling coal onto the conveyor belt with shovels.

Each car has two conveyor belts.

The coal is transported to the top of the coal pile by a conveyor belt and then falls down.

Five people stood by and watched curiously. The conveyor belts were driven by a small steam engine in the distance. There were also operators operating the two conveyor belts, which also became lower as the coal pile in the carriage decreased and became shorter.

After more than ten minutes, more than twenty workers shoveled out a carload of coal, jumped off the car carrying shovels, and waited by the roadside.

Those who smoke smoke, those who drink water drink water, and those who chat chat.

A few quick whistles were sounded, and three conductors stood in position at the front, back and center, blowing their whistles and waving small flags.

Under their coordinated command, the steam locomotive started and pulled the train slowly forward, just moving forward to the position of two carriages. The two carriages full of coal were just under the conveyor belt.

The porters first threw the shovel into the coal pile on the car, then climbed into the carriage one after another, stood on the coal pile, and began to get busy.

The five men walked around the coal pile that was several hundred meters in radius and came to the other side, where they saw more than a dozen coal cars parked on the rails.

This coal car is about the same size as the coal car used to pull coal out of a coal mine.

Dozens of workers were shoveling coal into the coal cars.

Each train consists of five carriages. After being loaded, it is pulled by four oxen and slowly moves along the rails towards the factory.

The five people followed the coal truck into the factory area. When they reached a door, they were stopped by the security personnel and asked to show their IDs.

Shu Youliang took out his personal badge and the letter of introduction for the visit issued by the Luanzhou Government and handed them over.

Marcelo and Leon naturally took out their respective "entry papers".

Hu Yinglin and Wang Shisong showed their ivory cards and body stickers.

The security personnel of Lulong Iron and Steel Plant carefully checked the documents of the five people and handed them back after verification.

"Five of you, you must wear safety helmets when entering the factory." The leading officer of the Security Department handed over five round hats woven from bamboo and rattan and urged the five people to put them on.

Marcelo and León followed suit and put their hats on their heads.

The hat has a mesh and cotton lining so your head doesn't stick directly to the round hat. After putting it on, the hat is a little loose on your head and feels very stretchy.

There are straps on both sides of the hat, which can be tied at the chin to make the hat tight and you don't have to worry about it falling off.

Seeing that all five people were wearing helmets, the security officer continued, "Many places in the factory are very dangerous. You must walk on both sides, not in the middle.
We will arrange a security guard to take you in for a tour.

Before entering each workshop, the safety officer must communicate with the workshop manager, and they will arrange for you to visit. You must obey the instructions and arrangements, otherwise you will be kicked out immediately.

Five of you, did you hear that? "

"heard it."

The five people answered honestly.

The officer pointed at a man in his thirties with two scars on his face and said, "Lao Wan is your security officer. Follow his instructions and arrangements."

Lao Wan put on his helmet and politely extended his right hand: "Come in. Once you enter the factory, you must follow me closely and stay five meters away from me. Even if there is no safety officer to guide you, you will be severely punished if you are caught by the patrol team."

"understood."

Shu Youliang and the other four noticed that his right palm was covered with scars, his little finger was broken in half, and his ring finger was almost completely gone.

As they walked into the factory, the five of them couldn't help but shrink their necks and feel a little nervous.

(End of this chapter)