The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 496 Textile Industry

On the snow-capped mountain, the mother and her two children were still busy at work.

Below the snow-capped mountains, the temperature is not so pleasant.

Especially in the Gobi Desert, the high temperatures are suffocating.

However, tens of thousands of people, earning a high daily wage of four hundred coins, paved asphalt roads during the two hottest months of the year.

Three years have passed, and the road connecting the last garrison will be completed by the end of this month.

Several officials from the Ministry of Works' Construction and Maintenance Department arrived three years ago and have not yet left.

They all need to learn about the asphalt paving process, its performance in extreme weather, and various remedial measures.

Most importantly, asphalt must be refined and cooled into blocks before it can be easily transported.

You're having them transport crude oil?

The risk is just too great!
Fuel produced by distilling petroleum is now the main raw material for incendiary bombs.

The incendiary bomb was naturally developed in the laboratory of the Kansai First Military Academy.

It is currently under the control of the Ordnance Bureau, which is under the Ministry of Works.

The Kansai First Military Academy also became the focus of the imperial court because of the invention of this powerful weapon.

After three years of rigorous training, the military academy students have undergone a remarkable transformation compared to three years ago. Anyone who sees them would exclaim: "They've been reborn!"

Who would believe that?

Three years ago, I thought I had created a miracle by marching a thousand miles in ten days.

Three years later, the average speed has increased to 1,000 li in six days.

At this speed, the instructors would curse at him.

"The last 100 people in this training exercise are slower than pigs! At this rate, you won't even catch a hot meal before you're eating shit!"

When it comes to food, the instructors are quite disappointed.

"Do you think you're doing justice to the pound of beef and pound of milk you consume every day? Even His Majesty in the palace doesn't eat as well as you!"

"At a fixed target of fifty paces, almost half of you still can't get a score of ninety! You're just wasting bullets and money!"

"."

Such insults would come before every major and minor exam.

The students stood with their hands crossed behind their backs in a horse stance, motionless, and dared not wipe the spittle the instructors sprayed on their faces.

Becoming a sharpshooter is no easy feat.

So far.

Of the three thousand students, only about one hundred could be musketeers who could hit the target 100% of the time in any environment, hitting exactly where they pointed.

The gunners had an advantage, as the cannons were much larger targets than the muskets.

Last autumn, three thousand students were taken to the northern foothills of the snow-capped mountains for a military exercise.

They used both muskets and cannons, and even incendiary bombs.

Inadvertently, they blasted several hilltops flat and burned nearly a hundred miles of withered grass on the northern slope of the snow-capped mountains.

This terrified dozens of nomadic tribes on the northern slopes of the snow-capped mountains.

The tribal leaders rushed over to express their willingness to submit to the Celestial Dynasty and become subjects of the Yongtai Dynasty, just like the Yili River Valley.

At this point, the area from the northern foothills of the snow-capped mountains to the Altai Mountains was all incorporated into the territory of the Yongtai Dynasty.

Don't assume that just because the chaotic previous dynasty has been replaced and a new ruling order has been established, God will treat you differently.

Winters have been arriving earlier and getting colder each year for the past few years.

If it weren't for the nationwide promotion of high-yield grain varieties...

If it weren't for the fact that the imperial court had reduced the land tax collection from a complete exemption for the first three years to only 20% now, it would be a different story.

More than 60% of the people during the Yongtai reign still cannot imagine having enough to eat.

Others might not know what such extreme weather was like. But Gan Minglan, who came after, did!
According to the trajectory of history, the Yongtai Dynasty was founded around the same time as the Qing Dynasty in her previous life.

The Little Ice Age at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty lasted for five centuries!

She's run into all of this, what else can she do?

The only option is to vigorously develop the textile industry.

Fortunately, she ended up in the Western Regions by chance, which later became known as Xinjiang.

Besides hoarding land for grain cultivation, the scale of cotton cultivation in the Kansai region has been increasing year by year.

With her, a wood-type ability user, in place, the cotton production in Kansai could rival that of later generations.

In order to reclaim wasteland and plant cotton, Kansai not only continued to promote the policy of introducing new immigrants to old immigrants, which was criticized by countless censors, but also developed some herders into farmers.

The cotton textile processing industry is now one of the important pillar industries in the Kansai region.

There is a peculiar phenomenon in the Kansai region.

Apart from soldiers, artisans had the highest social status.

Any craftsman or artisan who makes a breakthrough in a particular production tool or product technique can receive a major contribution award from the government.

The kind that gives you money, a mansion, or land—the kind that can make you financially free.

The production tools used in Kansai cotton mills are therefore improved every six months.

The cotton weaving and dyeing technology has reached the highest existing production level.

Whether for domestic sales or export, it is a top-selling product.

In addition, wool and silk weaving workshops in Kansai are also vying for the mid-to-high-end market.

As these workshops operated at full capacity, producing year-round without rest, the tax revenue from textiles in Kansai paid to the imperial court increased year by year.

As a result, Zuo Wenkang, the Governor of the Guanzhong Textile Bureau, was exceptionally promoted from a fifth-rank official to a fourth-rank official.

The textile industry in Kansai was most affected by the development of the textile industry in Jiangnan.

In the hundreds of years since the previous dynasty, Jiangnan, which was known as the source of all the clothing in the world, has now encountered a formidable enemy.

There are fertile fields and land in the Jiangnan region, but the amount is limited.

Whether it's growing cotton or raising silkworms, nothing can compete with the vast, sparsely populated Kansai region, where all plants are highly productive.

While farming is the same activity, farmers in the Kansai region earn the highest income in the country.

Similarly, among weavers working in the Guanzhong region, those who produce silk fabrics earn no less than a hundred taels of silver a year.

Even in the most unskilled cotton and wool textile workshops, ordinary female workers on the production line could earn three to five taels of silver per month.

The recruitment conditions in Kansai would often spread to Jiangnan as merchants saw and heard about them.

Ever since.

Nowadays, every textile workshop in Jiangnan is facing a labor shortage.

There aren't enough workers, so where do we find the energy to develop new technologies and innovations?

The Maritime Silk Road of the Nanyue Kingdom was flourishing at this time.

The weaving industry in the Nanyue Kingdom was not well-developed; 90% of the silk products they exported overseas came from the Jiangnan region.

Over the years, textiles from Jiangnan have become inferior to those from Kansai in terms of material, style, and price.

The border trade city of Guansai connects the land Silk Road west of the Western Regions, ending in Rome, Europe.

The maritime trade of the Southern Yue Kingdom even reached as far as Europe.

Then the problem is coming.

How can there be such a big difference between silk products from the same ancient Eastern country?

Once European upper-class ladies have seen the Shu brocade woven from the colorful silkworms of Kansai and used silk quilts wrapped in fine Kansai cotton cloth, they no longer care about the old styles of Jiangnan.

then.

The land-based Silk Road, which had already declined and was thought to be gradually phased out by maritime trade, has seen a resurgence this year with hundreds of times more foreign merchants than in previous years.