open sea

Chapter 878 Strong Water
The winter of the sixth year of Wanli is worth commemorating. During this winter, two major events took place inside and outside the Forbidden City.

One is that Emperor Wanli, the supreme ruler of the empire in name, drove Jinyiwei in the Forbidden City to hunt down eunuchs who accepted bribes, and personally opened the prison to try the case. This grand trial started with a corruption case involving a total of 470 taels, and finally ended in winter. At that time, Xu Jue, who was in charge of Nanzhen Fusi, lived up to the emperor's expectations. He handled [-] and three cases, and harvested more than ten thousand taels of stolen silver.

In the court at that time, this incident was mostly regarded as the young emperor playing for fun. Except for a few corrupt eunuchs who were executed for serious crimes and had no one to protect them, most of them were sent to Nanjing to become the clean army. .

The emperor allowed them to form the Dongyang Jing Army Battalion after two years of training, and follow the Beiyang Eighth Banner Army to go to sea at the same time to commit crimes and make meritorious deeds.

But in fact, this court trial had a great impact on the young Emperor Wanli's vision of the world.

The second incident happened outside the Forbidden City.

The cabinet in charge of the center of the empire submitted an official document called "Six Events of the Solid State" to the Supervisor of Rites for approval, and then officially issued it to the Ministry of Industry.

This official document determined the key points of the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Industry in enlisting soldiers to garrison and launching corvee construction in the next three years. Zhang Juzheng drew two lines on the vast territory of the empire.

The northern line crosses Jiulian City and North Korea, starting from Shuangchengwei, the former home of Nurgandusi, and heading east along the coast. More than ten guards, including Muyanghewei and Shiliwei, have been restarted, with a total length of more than [-] miles.

The southern line starts from Yao’an Mansion in Yunnan, passes through the high mountains and dense forests, follows the marching route of the Ping-Burmese campaign in previous years, passes through more than ten ancient battlefields, and extends all the way to the ancient city of Bai, where the Burmese right guard Chen Mu once fought.

These are two telegraph routes. Both the north and south lines are actually controlled by Daming, and in the future, troops will be added to build city walls to protect them. The power tentacles of the empire will also extend to every corner of the route along with the wires.

The ultimate goal of the imperial court is to extend the northern line to Wangxia State and the southern line to Goa Port, and establish the cabinet's timely feedback, assistance, restraint and control of the eastern and western military government.

Together with these two most important events, there are also the construction of ditches, the reclamation of farmland, and the recovery of the occupied military land and farmland in the early years after the use of Qingzhang acres.

The most important thing is to set up a government-run money and grain department under the Ministry of Household Cleaning Department of the two capitals and the thirteen provinces, which is dedicated to exchanging taxable silver for the people to pay taxes according to the average price of each province's annual grain production.

This organization is mainly to take care of the difficulty of paying taxes for peasant households in the northwest after the implementation of the one-whip law. At the same time, the grain exchanged is used to prepare the reserve warehouse, so as to prevent the farmers from being hurt by the cheap grain and the people hurt by the expensive grain.

It was also in this particularly cold winter that in Nanjing, Yangzhou, Guangzhou, and Tianjin, some young and middle-aged people who had received multiple educations took to the streets.

The fireworks on the banks of the Qinhuai River are still the same, but this year's leisurely and panic-stricken rich and noble sons have new interests.

Drinks were mixed in the boat, but people's eyes were focused on the shore. Someone held a wine glass and laughed softly: "I heard that a Nanyang Army ship is coming today."

"Hi! Your news is outdated. There was Xin'er at the mouth of the Yangtze River two days ago. The Beiyang Army's ship has been parked there for a long time. It is a real Liujia battleship. There are 32 artillery pieces lined up on both sides of the ship. The bannermen are all standing upright on the side of the ship, motionless, just waiting for the craftsmen to graduate."

Two years ago, many professional schools sprung up like mushrooms in various parts of Ming Dynasty, most of them have finished their courses this winter, and the artisan students have graduated and become many prosperous businesses. As far as we know, the upper and lower classes of Ming Dynasty have never been so consistent in paying attention to the same thing.

The so-called Craftsmanship refers to a series of academies established by an enlightened man with a long-term vision or a wide family background at the same time after Zhang Juzheng ordered the closure of all the academies. Folk schools, in order to avoid the accusation of the academy by the imperial decree, only teach skills without preaching, so they are called craftsmen.

But craftsmanship is all-encompassing, not only teaching craftsman skills, such as dancers, actors, storytellers, fortune-tellers, teaching farming, and weaving, it covers all walks of life and is inclusive.

The wealthy scholars on the painting boat chattered in one go, toasting to each other, and some sons of merchants chatted about running a business at home. Most of them had plans to hire craftsmen and students in their hearts. The children of craftsmen are interested.

The most famous artisan school on the Qinhuai River is the Yuanyang Academy, which has graduated a large number of outstanding actors and practitioners this year, attracting their attention the most.

Some people even think that craftsmanship is just a place to teach these things, so some people ask: "What does the graduation of craftsmanship have to do with them? They even sent a military ship to come. Could it be that the military ship is too lonely?"

This made everyone around the table laugh.

Only separated by the portholes of the two painting boats, the middle-aged man in blue robe with the window holding the window showed his face in the direction of the sound, raised his head and took a sip from the wine pot by the window, then turned his head and said: "Have you all heard this? You are extremely ignorant, you have a great future, don't take it to heart."

His name is Fang Xuejian, and this name means many things, for example, he is from Tongcheng, and he studied under Geng Dingxing, the censor of Nanjing Youdu, but his appearance at this time has nothing to do with these identities.

If one follows the normal trajectory of life, a scholar like him should become an official, and then retire to the countryside to give lectures and help students when his official career reaches a certain level, becoming a famous country gentleman for a while.

However, during his study tour, he learned Spanish in the Guangzhou Lecture Hall, and his later life trajectory deviated from the path that orthodox scholars should follow.

By coincidence, he translated "Complete Book of Mining and Metallurgy". Although he didn't know much about this technology, he still became the winner of the Wanli Five-Year Science and Technology Award.

After that, at the invitation of Li Shizhen, he stayed in the Beiyang Research Institute for a while, went to Zunhua to teach miners to identify veins, and returned to Nanning to stay in Nanjing to teach the miners and mountain masters of the three craftsmen.

He was the one who called Beiyang's warship that was parked at the mouth of the Yangtze River. At this time, there were seven craftsmen and students drinking with him.As an excellent lecturer of craftsmanship, Fang Xuejian took his students who had never seen the world to drink flowers and wine on the painting boat at his own expense.

"I have always told you to learn Spanish well, because I didn't understand many things about mining and metallurgy when I was translating "Complete Book of Mining and Metallurgy". It was you who translated the book back then, and maybe this book will be better than it is now.”

"Westerners' blast furnaces and blast furnaces are not worth mentioning, and their techniques for smelting gold, silver, copper and iron are not even as good as in ancient times. They only know that there is Japanese lead in the world, but they don't know how it came from; , records the color, softness, hardness, wealth and poverty of various ores, which is really refreshing for us."

"In addition to this, there is also the amalgamation method and the strong water method of separating gold and silver, which are unheard of in my dynasty. You have been recommended by me to enter the Beiyang Military Mansion. In the future, you will be allowed to contact more Western books. You must compile them as soon as possible. Publish a book that connects the universe, and then the country will have a real "Complete Book of Mining and Metallurgy", and you can also live up to me and pass on all the knowledge you have learned in your life!"

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)