open sea

Chapter 1045 Asphalt
"You came back late, Wang An."

In the military room of Qianqing Palace, a few days after San Niangzi returned, the eunuch Wang An, who was sent by Wanli to patrol the city and secretly investigate the customs, quietly entered the Forbidden City.

"I reckoned that you should have come back last month, but you went to Beiyang, are you crazy?"

The cross-legged emperor had a displeased face, and his heart was filled with envy, so he said a few words with a serious face, then slapped his thigh and winked and asked: "What fun things did you see when you went out this time, come on!" Report them all to me!"

"Going back to the emperor's grandfather, the slaves don't dare. I went to Beiyang to see if their wooden carriages are really so magical." Wang An was not panicked. He walked up to the emperor and presented a simple hand-painted frontier map: The locations and distances of large and small cities recorded by the servants have been countless in recent years, and there are as many as 63 places in one trip by the servants."

"These 63 places are divided into large and small markets for the 47 ministries including Mongolia to trade with us. The big markets are expensive. They open once a year and once expires in one month. They are for the leaders of the ministries to barter; It will be open for two or three days, and the opening months of the market vary from place to place, but there will be one opening every month in the land of a mouthful, and the owner of the small city is humble, so that the herdsmen of all tribes can communicate with me."

"There are so many markets, and they are only used once a year. The servants thought that if Beiyang's wooden-tracked carriages were exaggerated, they would not need to spend money on building roads and laying tracks, so they went to see them."

Wanli nodded slowly, and praised: "You did a good job, so what's the result, what's the result?"

Wang An nodded vigorously as he spoke, and said: "The four parallel tracks in Beiyang are about twelve miles long each, with two horse-drawn carts, and the load is the second. The main thing is...stable, safe and worry-free!"

"Four tracks run in parallel, two to the east and two to the west. The twelve-mile road is divided into three sections, each section is four miles, and the carriages are loaded with goods and run all the way without stopping. At the end of a section, the horses are tired, so change horses and continue on. .”

"The servant girl also asked and understood the reason. In the past, heavy vehicles were used to walk slowly, and a single carriage weighed more than 200 kilograms. When it was loaded with goods, the wheels were stuck in the dirt when walking on dirt roads, and it was impossible to move away. Now the hardwood is framed on the softwood. On the pillow, the iron wheels are embedded in the hardwood rails, and the rain and snow can go fast, but the cost is high."

Wang Anlian said to Wanli with gestures: "But we have no shortage of wood. Jincheng County in Dadongyang can transport hundreds of boats of wood every year. Those wooden squares can't be made into large materials, but they are very good for making these utensils, let alone Dongyang. There is no need to consider the cost of the tribute converted from the income of the military government."

Wanli nodded slowly. He had a general impression of Beiyang's wooden carriages, and asked casually, "Then why are they longer?"

"It won't last long. Even if it is used for a few miles in Koushi, Ye Gong in Beiyang is very worried. He is afraid that the soldiers and civilians will unload the sleepers and hardwoods and sell them off when no one is around." Wang An spread his hands. : "The officers and soldiers can't do nothing, just keep an eye on that road along the way, can't they?"

Wanli fell into deep distress. He looked back at the blueprint on the table, on which a clear route was drawn, leading from each port city to the surrounding large tribes.The most conspicuous of these is the 'Qingcheng' Guihua City, which is connected by roads extending in all directions and has become a material distribution center for the Ming army to go out to explore unknown terrain.

For him and even the entire Ming Empire, An Dao's serious illness was the best time for the Ming army to leave the fortress. After passing this village, there is no such shop.

Once the next generation of heirs is stable, he wants to make such a move again, even if war is only his last resort, both Ming and Mongolia will push all this to the brink of war.

Unless he does nothing.

But don't do anything... that won't kill me!

If it is said that the wooden rails will be stolen when building this kind of road in the hinterland of Daming, then going out of the fortress to repair it will be even more lost. Wanli raised his hands and shook his big sleeves down in boredom, as if holding something, and finally curled his lips and said: "I thought I had a great thing, but I didn't expect it to be stolen. Alas...then it's better to build a dirt road."

The advantages of wooden tracks are obvious. They are stable and conducive to large-scale transportation. If you want to pull less goods quickly, you can slow down overall if you want to pull more goods. The carriage is not easy to break down on the road.

The most important thing is that the speed is controllable, the time to send the goods out at the starting point, and how long it will take to reach the next position to change horses can be accurately calculated.

Wanli likes this very much.

"Your Majesty, maybe we can not build dirt roads in the future." Looking at Wanli's disappointed expression, Wang An thought about it and said, "Beiyang also built asphalt roads and cement roads. The former is extremely smooth, the latter is hard but not afraid of the sun, and the cost Low; servants have heard that the best road is to use cement as the base and asphalt as a pad, but the high cost is prohibitive.”

"Asphalt road, cement road?"

Wanli raised his hand and scratched the small pimple on his chin, frowned and thought: He is familiar with cement, and several fortifications in the Forbidden City were repaired with that thing; he is also familiar with asphalt, which is what is wrapped around the wires.

But these two things don't sound like they are used to build roads.

"The cost is high, how high is it?"

Emperor Wanli rolled his eyes and said: "In the 12th year of Emperor Chengzu's Yongle reign, I expelled the Yuan bandits from the north and returned to the dynasty. , The eunuch of the Three Treasures went to the West, is it possible that I am poorer than then?"

"Da Ming has never been richer than it is today. What's the cost?" The emperor raised his chin, looked at Wang An with disdainful eyes, cleared his throat with a teacup, and said, "Let me listen, Xiu Road, how expensive is it?"

Wang An waited cautiously for the emperor to drink and swallow the tea, looking as if he was afraid that the emperor would spray the tea all over his body, and then said slowly: "Asphalt is mixed with gravel to pave the road. Beiyang built a two-way road two feet wide and three miles long. Two thousand and 470 taels of silver is strange."

"Asphalt, the market price is twenty-five cents per hundred catties. It's cheap to buy from Beiyang, but it's roughly the same price when you count the money." Wang An said very seriously: "Your Majesty, Daming is indeed richer than ever, but any time Daming I have never built such an expensive road before."

Wanli pursed his mouth and quickly calculated his net worth and road cost in his little head, and took a long time to take a breath: "Hey, I bought the goods at the lamp market the year before last, and spent the money that can repair eight hundred miles of roads?"

As soon as Wang An heard this, he knew it was broken. The emperor's grandfather really planned to build such a road.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have thought about it!
Sure enough, Wanli asked in the next sentence: "Is the asphalt road worth the price?"

"It's hard to say." Wang An didn't say what Wanli wanted to hear. He said, "Dirt roads need to be built on both sides of the road to make horse tracks. Horses tend to hurt their hooves after running on hard roads for a long time, but it is convenient for infantry and donkey mule carts." , walk slowly, the road is flat, Beiyang built the two roads not to allow troops to pass quickly - they just wanted to make a normal road, slightly higher in the middle and lower on both sides, the edges were blocked by cement boards, and cement pipes were buried underneath The made sewer leads to the river."

"What's the use of this kind of thing?"

Wanli was very puzzled: "The horse can't run, just let the cart go, and it can't get up quickly. No matter how flat and beautiful it is, what's the use of it?"

"A horse can't run for a long time on it, but your majesty, a bicycle and Huodexing Lord can run!"
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The price of asphalt comes from the price in the 37th year of Wanli in the "Instructions to the Factory Warehouse of the Ministry of Industry", and the actual price may be slightly different.

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)