Zhu Yuanzhang in the cellar

Chapter 152: Ming Dynasty in full swing
Zhu Yunfeng said.

It’s really not easy to be a time traveler.

If you travel through time and space and become an emperor, you have to engage in intrigues with your ministers and work hard to build your empire.

If you travel back in time and become an official, you have to engage in intrigues with the emperor, fight with your colleagues, and do your job well, which is exhausting.

It would be even more miserable if you traveled through time and space and became a traitor.

He had to fight wars everywhere and fight for survival, and after working hard for most of his life, he finally became the emperor and had to govern the world well.

Reflect on yourself.

It’s also a time travel.

If we send some supplies to Ming Dynasty, we can get countless gold and silver in return.

In modern times, he bought a luxury house and a luxury car, had assets worth tens of billions, and lived a wealthy life.

His Royal Highness Prince Wu, who holds a high status in the Ming Dynasty, has countless young girls throwing flirtatious glances at him whenever he walks around.

Ugh.

What a pity for my good brother Zhao Jun.

If he were still here, wouldn't it be wonderful for him to enjoy wealth and glory with me?

Zhu Yunfeng couldn't help but shed tears when he recalled the little things he had done with his good brother. He ate a few more bites of chicken legs to remember his good brother.

And just when Zhu Yunfeng, Ji He and Zhu Di were living a carefree and happy life every day.

The Crown Prince Zhu Biao of the Ming Dynasty started his busy year.

Thanks to the improved seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and farmer's composting technology brought by Zhu Yunfeng from modern times, the grain output of the Ming Dynasty has been rising steadily, showing a leap-forward progress.

But having enough food does not mean being rich.

Food is the basic need for survival and will not cause starvation. However, more than 95% of the people in the country are living in poverty and there is no question of a good life.

Even so, it could be called a prosperous age in ancient times, even better than any other prosperous age in previous dynasties.

Because people in the Ming Dynasty really won’t starve to death now.

What does it mean that the grain output of the Ming Dynasty has doubled or tripled?
The food production that originally satisfied the needs of 100 million or 200 million people suddenly became able to meet the needs of 400 million or 500 million people.

The per capita food possession has increased several times, and this is not just the case this year, but every year, and the mountains of food will only increase.

To this end, the imperial court established many welfare mechanisms, such as distributing rice and flour to the poor and the elderly and children who are widowed or lonely, setting up orphanages and nursing homes, and purchasing large amounts of grain and placing them in warehouses across the country for disaster relief.

Even if the people want to starve to death, the government will force food into their mouths.

Therefore, compared with those prosperous times in previous dynasties where even when the country was strong, there were still cases of starvation, the Hongwu prosperous era of the Ming Dynasty was already very powerful and could be called the strongest prosperous era in ancient times.

However, given Zhu's ambition, he naturally could not stop there.

There are many policies currently being implemented, including replacing rice with mulberry, promoting cash crops such as mulberry, cotton, sesame, sugarcane, and sugar beets, and strengthening economic development.

In addition, envoys were sent to Southeast Asia to establish vassal relations, and at the same time, requests were made to open local commercial ports so that the two countries could exchange what they had.

Another thing is to establish steam engine manufacturing plants, build steam locomotives, steam ships, steam textile machines and sewing machines, and establish basic manufacturing industries.

In the invention of main power sources, the Ming Dynasty is actually developing electrification.

But steam engines are still indispensable. For example, ocean-going ships cannot simply rely on modern engines that burn diesel.

The combination of warship engines and diesel is retained to ensure endurance and power.

But the cost is too high. They have to import a large amount of diesel from Hyundai every time. It takes Zhu Yunfeng and Ji He a long time to move a barrel of diesel by forklift, which is time-consuming, labor-intensive and very troublesome.

Now, Zhu Yunfeng, Ji He and Zhu Di spend their days either playing or delivering gifts. They don't even have time to find girlfriends.

No matter how you think about it, this is all Lao Zhu's fault.

Therefore, the simultaneous development of steam engines and electric power is a hard truth.

On this basis, the Ming Dynasty actively developed agriculture, economy, industry and education internally.

Show your fist to the outside world, ensure the vassal system and foreign trade system, and open commercial ports in coastal areas such as Hangzhou, Quanzhou, Guangzhou, etc.

Domestic construction is in full swing.

But Lao Zhu doesn't care much about these things.

Because he had made an agreement with Zhu Biao.

As long as he helped him deal with Hu Weiyong, he would hand over the government affairs to Zhu Biao.

Zhu Yuanzhang himself focused mainly on military affairs and internal affairs.

Such as investigating corrupt officials, remotely commanding troops in various parts of the south, fighting against barbarians, and quelling rebellions in the southwest.

Now there are still many habitats for ethnic minorities in areas including Hunan, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hainan, etc.

During the Ming Dynasty, the country was governed through a system of controlled administration, with chieftains established in the local area. It was not until the Qing Dynasty that the chieftain system was changed to officialdom.

But now that Zhu Yuanzhang has guns and cannons, he will not set up a chieftain for you.

Direct return.

A government office will be set up locally to manage the area, include people in the household register, and issue identity cards on the spot.

If you are not convinced.

That's easy too.

Beat until convinced.

Therefore, in this situation, all the internal political management work fell on Zhu Biao alone, keeping him very busy.

In March, Zhu Biao went to Suzhou, Hangzhou, Changzhou and other places to implement the policy of replacing rice with mulberry, actively develop cash crops and encourage people to cultivate more land.

In April, Zhu Biao visited factories in various places again, especially the Wu'an Iron and Steel Plant. After the machine problems were solved, the monthly steel production here could reach more than 100,000 tons, comparable to an ultra-small steel plant in later generations.

In May, Zhu Biao visited various maritime customs offices along the southeast coast to inspect the trade throughput of each port. He delivered a speech saying that he wanted to do more business with other countries and would also send fleet envoys to Western countries to communicate more with other countries.

In June, the first railway in the Ming Dynasty was opened.

From the time the project was decided at the beginning of last year to this year, the first railway was planned, constructed and opened in just one and a half years.

of course.

This railway is actually not far away. It is the railway from Nanjing to Zhenjiang, and the entire journey is only more than 70 kilometers.

But this marked the successful operation of the first railway built by the Ming Dynasty itself.

It also marked the Ming Dynasty's transition from adopting others' ideas to gradually becoming independent and having the ability to build its own steam engines and railway systems.

Crown Prince Zhu Biao attached great importance to the event and personally attended the train opening ceremony to cut the ribbon and give a speech.

He also took the train with officials at all levels of the newly established Ministry of Communications of the Ming Dynasty, and it took an hour to make a round trip from Zhenjiang.

Then in July, the Yongping Iron and Steel Plant was established, and he went to Peiping to attend the inauguration ceremony of the steel plant.

Yongping Iron and Steel Plant is actually the later Tangshan Qian'an Iron and Steel Plant, which belonged to Qian'an County, Yongping Road during the Ming Dynasty.

The imperial court built a thermal power station here to smelt iron in blast furnaces, and then used electric arc furnaces to turn iron into steel. With the establishment of Nanjing Iron and Steel Plant, Wu'an Iron and Steel Plant and Yongping Iron and Steel Plant, the annual steel production of Ming Dynasty also entered a leap-forward growth.

Steel production in the early Ming Dynasty was very low, less than 10,000 tons a year.

By the 14th year of Hongwu, the annual output of steel reached more than one million tons through blast furnace iron smelting and electric arc furnace steel smelting.

This is because the speed of blast furnace ironmaking was too slow last year. Zhu Yunfeng has obtained a lot of oxygen-producing equipment from Hyundai, but no matter how fully equipped the blast furnace is, it still takes five or six hours to produce one furnace.

Electric arc furnace steelmaking only takes two hours.

In addition, coke refineries, ironworks, and countless blast furnaces had to be built, which took a lot of time and effort.

Otherwise, with only the more than 16 small electric arc furnaces brought by Zhu Yunfeng, each of which can produce five to eight tons of steel every two hours, even if they only work for hours a day, it would be easy to produce four to five million tons a year.

However, as the output of coke and iron increases, the output of steel will also increase rapidly.

This year, the annual steel production is expected to be at least three million tons.

The imperial court established several more steel processing plants and purchased a large number of tools from Hyundai, including simple processing lathes, to manufacture farm tools and kitchen utensils, and established supply and marketing cooperatives across the country to sell them to farmers.

In addition, there are sugar factories, canning factories, food processing plants, glass products factories, etc. Basically relying on modern technology, the construction of the Ming Dynasty can reach the level before and after World War II.

of course.

Again.

Because it has not been fully rolled out.

Without our own basic industrial capabilities, we cannot manufacture equipment and can only purchase equipment from Hyundai.

The disadvantage of purchasing equipment from a modern manufacturer is that the quantity is small and the equipment has no ability to be repaired, so it is very troublesome once it breaks down.

Therefore, including sugar products, canned products, glass products, etc., there are only one or two factories with very low output, and they are only supplied to the powerful and the rich.

It has not yet been popularized among the people. If the economy is to truly develop and goods are to be circulated throughout the country, the Ming Dynasty must at least have the ability to produce its own machines, which will take time to build.

It can only be said that with the portal between the two worlds, the development speed of the Ming Dynasty is many times faster than that of a simple time traveler from the past.

A lot of knowledge and technological products can be used directly without having to start from the beginning of the technology tree. It is much more convenient.

But the same thing.

Since the Ming Dynasty had never carried out a literacy campaign and the literacy rate was too low, even new knowledge could only be piloted on a small scale.

Including education.

Zhu Biao established Nanjing School at the beginning of the 13th year of Hongwu.

While recruiting children to learn basic literacy knowledge, they also recruited some educated scholars to carry out new type of mathematics, physics and chemistry education.

Nearly three years have passed, and only a group of intellectuals with high school education have been trained.

Even so, it's not bad.

First of all, those who can come here are smart people with high IQ, and if you can't keep up with the learning progress, you will be eliminated.

Secondly, I watch videos of famous teachers and learn things very thoroughly.

By September of the 16th year of Hongwu, the first batch of students passed the examination and successfully graduated from Nanjing University.

These people were all geniuses who passed the imperial examinations at the age of fifteen or sixteen. Their IQ and learning abilities reached their peak at this age.

The exam content consists of a large number of high school examination papers and junior and high school teacher qualification examination papers that Zhu Yunfeng obtained from Modern University. Those who can pass the examination can graduate.

On the day of their graduation, Zhu Biao personally came to the school to attend the graduation ceremony, entrusted these people with important tasks, and announced that the first batch of graduating students would go to various counties to serve as instructors.

At the same time, the three departments allocated funds to the Ministry of Rites, which then paid for the construction of new schools in various counties, recruited students, and provided certain education in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

The most important thing is to open literacy classes and teach people to read and write for free.

Although there is not one person in every county, there are basically three to five people in each county.

This scene is like what later generations would say to a high school graduate who has just finished the college entrance examination: "You are already a mature high school graduate. A certain county is going to open a new school. You can be the principal."

It sounds funny, but there is nothing we can do about it.

Zhu Biao has launched a literacy campaign across the country, but the results are not ideal. There are few educated people, too many illiterate people, and the education system is not mature.

To this end, he could only make continuous changes and adjust educational resources. He first had to let some people learn to read, and then those who knew how to read first would lead those who knew how to read later, in order to promote a comprehensive literacy campaign and educational development.

This process may take ten, twenty, or even thirty to fifty years. Even with ready-made teaching materials and scientific knowledge, it is not possible to improve the cultural level of the whole nation in a short time.

But if we have money to open schools, and have ready-made teaching materials and scientific knowledge, this time will be greatly shortened. It will be much better than the 49 years of development of education in my country, which was not completed until after 2000 to achieve universal education.

In addition, the population of the Ming Dynasty was not as large as that of later generations, and the workload of universal literacy was not as large. It might not take 50 years, but about 30 years to complete modern education.

But all things are difficult at the beginning, and for now we can only take one step at a time.

In addition to caring about education, Zhu Biao also visited various factories many times to provide guidance, mainly focusing on training more skilled workers, strictly ensuring quality, etc.

Now the Ming Dynasty is on the right track and the difficult initial period has passed.

In the first three years, the imperial farm trained a group of skilled modern agricultural technicians, animal husbandry personnel, veterinarians, technical workers, and industrial workers, laying the foundation for the construction of the Ming Dynasty.

Now is the time to harvest.

Although there are still not many of these people, they are enough to grow and develop slowly. After a few years, it should not be difficult to establish a preliminary industrial scale and complete the first industrial revolution.

In September, the first batch of graduating students were sent to open new schools in various places.

In October, Zhu Biao went to the Suzhou East China Sea Naval Base to see the situation of the Ming Dynasty's first navy.

Today, the navy can be said to be at its peak. With the East China Sea Fleet wiping out Japan in one fell swoop, it has become very powerful in the country.

The South China Sea Fleet was formed like ironclad ships were dropped like dumplings.

Zhu Biao encouraged the East China Sea Fleet and went to Chizhou in November to inspect a small steel plant built there and the newly built railway.

It was not until the end of the 16th year of Hongwu that Zhu Biao stopped his busy life for a year and rushed back from Taiping Prefecture.

With the experience of building the first railway, the imperial court allocated funds to build the second and third railways.

Unlike later generations who directly built long railways, the Ming Dynasty’s approach to building railways was to first connect the southern prefectures, based on the principle of proximity.

Moreover, they are all short-distance railways, forming a southeast coastal railway network with Nanjing as the center.

There is no way around it.

Firstly, they did not have the technology to build a bridge across the Yangtze River to form a railway.

Secondly, the South is the economic and agricultural center, and the seaport is also in the South, so building railways in the South first is also to facilitate the transportation of raw materials.

For example, the south has replaced rice with mulberry trees and planted a variety of cash crops. Sugar beets and sugarcane can be quickly transported to the sugar factory in Nanjing and made into candy by machines.

Due to different national conditions, the direction and methods of development are naturally different.

But no matter what.

This year, Daming's development is in full swing and has entered a new stage.

The future is naturally bright.

(End of this chapter)