Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 449 Reconstruction
After Xie Fei's main force and Lu Mo's main force with 4 people converged, they immediately attacked from inside and outside to defeat Shang Kexi's troops, and then immediately attacked in the direction of Nanjing. Army defeated, but Kong and Geng fled from the south.

Xie and Lu immediately pursued them, but the infantry never caught up with the cavalry. Kong and Geng entered Yanzhou from Ningguo Mansion, and then fled to Jiangxi through Hengzhou.

Zhao Kang hadn't rushed back yet, even if he did, he would be invincible.

While continuing military operations, stabilize the situation in Nanjing City.

After this catastrophe, Nanjing, the imperial capital, was burned down by a third, and as much as [-]% of the imperial palace was burned down.

There is no way that the brick-wood structure, or even more than half of the wood-structure buildings, are so fragile under the lick of Vulcan.

Even the Jinchai Tower was burnt down, and Kang Xiaobao sat on the rubble and cried all night.

Compared with the loss of property, Yang Chao's heart is more distressed by people. Nanjing, a city of millions, after this catastrophe, hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Almost every family wears mourning, and everyone mourns.

Yang Chao invited the wealthy households who survived the disaster in the whole city, especially in the south of the city. Because Yang Chao counterattacked early, many wealthy households kept their wealth.

Tell these people that I hope they can give generously, but instead of asking them to donate money, I hope that he can lend the money to the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion with a monthly interest of three cents.

This is the first time that Yang Chao has abandoned the imperial court and acted in the name of the Metropolitan Government. Yang Chao has printed a large amount of bonds, with denominations ranging from 1 taels to [-] taels. Lend money to the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion to rebuild Nanjing, and the words "rebuild home" are printed on the bond.

I don't know whether it was the common desire to rebuild their homes that touched these rich households, or whether they were relieved of the credit of the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion, so they generously donated money and sold out the printed 300 million taels of bonds within a day.

The money was used to rebuild bridges in Nanjing, dredge pipes, and rebuild streets.

As for the money for ordinary people to rebuild their houses, Yang Chao plans to use the funds of Jiangnan Bank to lend money. Banks naturally have to lend money. Otherwise, how to make money, the money lent to ordinary people will also be three-point interest. Interest rate, which is impossible, because the credit of individuals can never be as hard as the government.

Having already had experience in rebuilding Yangzhou and Huai'an, Yang Chao's clerks operated very smoothly this time.

But this time Yang Chao didn't just want to rebuild.

After more than 200 years of development in Nanjing, the entire urban area is extremely crowded, and the layout of streets and lanes is chaotic.

This is definitely not how it was planned in the early Ming Dynasty. Don't underestimate the ancients. When the ancients built the city, they also had detailed plans. Otherwise, such a huge capital city would not have been able to operate well for more than 200 years. will crash.

If he hadn't studied architecture, Yang Chao would not have known that ancient China had the same drainage system as the West, just like ordinary people, thinking that his country was far behind the West in terms of urban construction in ancient times.

But the actual situation is just the opposite. As the largest country with the largest population and number of cities in the ancient world, how could it be possible that it did not have the richest urban construction experience? experience of.

The ancient drainage system is called Guangou. It is usually located on both sides of the street. Deep trenches are dug and bricks are used to build round arches. The uppermost layer is covered with stone slabs with copper coin-shaped drainage holes.

The strange thing is that the people of later generations only know to praise the western city-building technology. In that famous heavy rain event, almost all the big cities in the country were submerged by stagnant water. Even the imperial capital was deeply immersed in the rain, and was scolded by the people all over the country. .

And at this time, everyone moved out a city as an example, Qingdao, saying that Qingdao is a drainage system left by the Germans, so Qingdao was not flooded, and even those without brains insisted that the sewers in Qingdao were left by Germans more than 100 years ago. accessories.

But for the same example, major media newspapers selectively ignored Ganzhou, a small city in Jiangxi Province.

In this heavy rain, the city of Ganzhou remained intact.

It was only after researching that it turned out that what worked was the drainage system built by Liu Yi, a water conservancy expert in Ganzhou City 900 years ago. Liu Yi was a magistrate in Ganzhou, and found that the geographical location of Ganzhou City was not good. If you don't go out, the Gan River will pour into the city.

Through research, Liu Yi planned the water conservancy system of Ganzhou City. It was to build a large number of official ditches, and the construction was extremely reasonable. The method is to make the city's rainwater and sewage naturally discharge into the river.

At the same time, hundreds of ponds of different sizes in the city were connected, and the regulation function of the ponds was used to filter the sundries in the urban sewage, and the sludge was used to grow lotus roots and vegetables.

In order to prevent the river water from backfilling, movable water windows are added at the outlet. When the river water is too high and higher than the drain outlet, the water window will be automatically washed to the drain outlet by the river water to seal the drain outlet. The water pressure can flush the water window, and the official ditch will open the drainage function.

Such a system can be said to have reached the limit of the technical conditions at that time. Liu Yi named Guangou Fushougou. Nearly a thousand years after the completion of Fushougou, Ganzhou has never been troubled by stagnant water. It is ridiculous that people in later generations only know about worship. For Westerners, the government also rushed to fill up many ponds used to regulate the Guangou in the city, and sold them to developers to build houses. That's it, Ganzhou still has no floods, which makes people dumbfounded.

Compared with the water conservancy system in Ganzhou in the Song Dynasty, Qingdao has only been in operation for how many years, and the rate of population increase, Ganzhou will never lose to Qingdao. Ganzhou’s underground passages do not have steel water pipes, and Liu Yi did not bury any spare parts in advance, but he It is still on par with Qingdao in later generations.

Ganzhou is just an example, which shows that the drainage system of the ancients was not bad at all. When the emperors of later generations were flooded, the Forbidden City was intact. There is only one reason, that is, because the Forbidden City is a key cultural relic, the drainage system in it was well maintained. In other cities, because of the quick success and quick benefits of urban construction, not to mention the destruction of the ancient drainage system, but also the failure to build a modern drainage system, it is no wonder that they are not flooded.

The drainage system of Nanjing City is more than 500 years later than that of Ganzhou. There is no reason why it is worse than Ganzhou. However, the ancient Chinese government has a rule. In the prosperous age, the organization ability is strong, the government operates well, and public facilities can be maintained. But in the end of the age, it begins to deteriorate. When it begins to decay, organizational capabilities regress, and public facilities become slack.

The same is true of the official ditch in Nanjing. Not only the government is not maintaining it, but the officials and dignitaries take the lead in destroying it. During the Zhu Yuanzhang era, those nobles lived with trepidation and built houses carefully. After the two powerful emperors, Zhu Di and Zhu Di, officials and dignitaries began to be presumptuous.

Gardens such as Xu Da's Zhongshan Palace and other gardens wantonly encircle residential houses, and even dare to occupy streets, which are called "invasion streets". The water stinks in the summer.

In addition to destroying public facilities such as Guangou, the encirclement of nobles also made the originally relatively regular streets tortuous and extremely narrow. Some alleys could only allow one person to pass through. This is obviously not a The pattern that the ambitious emperor would like to see.

So this time, Yang Chao will not only restore Guangou, but also re-plan the block and expand the main street, not only to restore the width of the early Ming Dynasty, but also to greatly widen it. Anyway, Nanjing City was almost destroyed, the most prosperous place However, the tallest houses were built, and the burning was more miserable, because this was not only the key target of the Qing army to set fire, but also the building that was most likely to burn.

"Large streets like Chengnan Street, West Chang'an Street, Xi'anmenwai Street, and Hongwu Street are all widened to [-] feet wide, and second-class streets like Fudong Street and Zhuque Street are at least [-] feet wide. As for the width of small alleys , and must not be lower than three feet!"

Yang Chao divided the city of Nanjing into three classes and handed it over to Bai Jiangtou, who contracted the government project.

"But there are quite a few dukes' mansions on this street!"

"Demolish! Whether it's the gardens of princes or relatives, or the houses of rich families, even if the government office crosses the line, I will demolish it."

Yang Chao's attitude is very firm. Although many of the garden villas, if the petty bourgeoisie of later generations see them, they will regret and want to die, thinking that these are cultural relics, but the winding streets are definitely not what a city with sustainable development should have. Those literary youths will feel that the straight streets are too boring, and they appreciate the winding alleys that can't be seen a hundred meters behind at a glance.

Although Yang Chao is also a bit artistic and has a strong literary spirit, he can see clearly on this issue, and will not affect the lives of the vast majority of people and the development of the city because of the unique taste of a small number of people.

Although there is a little regret in my heart, isn't what I built now hundreds of years later also an antiquity, and if my own construction is more reasonable, it will save the trouble of demolition and reconstruction in the future, and more of them will be preserved.

So under Yang Chao's strong insistence, the reconstruction and expansion of public works began, the straight and curved streets were widened, the Guangou was dredged and repaired, and even the Qinhuai River was completely dredged once, the silt was dug out, the river bottom was dug deep, and the embankment was thickened. All the wharves that occupied the river bank were demolished, including the wharf of Nobile House, and two streets along the river were planned on the river bank.

As for the buildings of ordinary people, although they are looser, some requirements are still made, such as using as little wood as possible. As for the support structure, can arches be used? The stone arch structure is a bit wasteful and the price is higher, but it is safe, and if the stone is too expensive, the advanced bricks of the Ming Dynasty can fully meet the requirements. Isn’t the vault of the Beamless Hall of Linggu Temple just made of bricks? Well, hundreds of years of fire, enemy lines, and wars have not destroyed it.

Although it is not cheap to use bricks, it is also not cheap to transport a large amount of building timber from outside, especially when the timber in the Huguang area cannot be transported.

However, this restriction is not strict, and encouragement is more than orders, but people who want to borrow money from banks must abide by this rule, otherwise they will not get loans.

(End of this chapter)