Author: sole red

That external tour of Shanxi Province officially came to an end on the 15th day of the twelfth lunar month. On the way back, the two encountered a small group of bandits in the remaining mountains of the Taihang Mountains near Lingqiu.

Fortunately, the group of bandits knew that the visitors were the prince and princess of the Jin Palace, so they did not dare to disturb them, and moved out of the way to let Song Qingyue and Li Zhao go.

Li Zhao's face was expressionless, as if he knew the bandits would let them go, but Song Qingyue was frightened.

"It's so good, why are there so many bandits?" Song Qingyue hugged little Li Kun tightly, frowning deeply.

Li Zhaodao: "I'm afraid there was a severe drought last year, and maybe someone misplaced the relief supplies."

"Didn't the grain security officer disapprove of me back then? How could someone dare to touch someone's legs?!"

Li Zhaodao: "He is responsible for escorting the grain to the prefectural city, from the prefectural city to the prefecture and county, and then from the prefecture and county east to each village, but supervises the affairs of the magistrates and magistrates at all levels."

"How come there are people who don't care about money but life!" Song Qingyue said bitterly.

Li Zhao sighed: "No, some people are afraid of death."

Fortunately, in the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court already had a set of standardized methods for checking the distribution of disaster relief grains, that is, sampling visits in Dongxiang, directly asking farmers how much grain they got in their legs, and initially making estimates based on statistical methods.

It is not difficult to find out how much officials at all levels drew from it.

First of all, if you check the grain stores that have connections with officials at all levels, you can basically convict.

Lingqiu is a county seat under the eastern jurisdiction of Datong Prefecture, and it is more or less related to Dai Wangfu.

Those people probably never imagined that less than a year after King Jin came to Shanxi, the New Year's gift package for everyone was already ready!

Song Qingyue couldn't figure out the twists and turns in the officialdom and didn't bother to pay attention to them.

All she could think about now was the promotion of literacy throughout Shanxi.

Especially through the issue of offering sacrifices to the river, she even felt that literacy and anti-superstition could be done together.

That matter can be found in the textbook.

The whole New Year went by very smoothly. Officials from nearby Taiyuan took advantage of the New Year's holiday and came to the palace to ask for a hug from Li Zhao's thigh.

Song Qingyue's wife's diplomacy was naturally not something that could be done.

It just so happened that she could take this opportunity to find out the situation in the prefectures and counties near Taiyuan, and the literacy work could also start in the Taiyuan area.

At that time, Song Qingyue planned to give up her obsession with coeducational schools and open boys' and girls' schools separately. The appearance of the professors was the same as that in the capital. In addition to literacy, arithmetic, and hygiene, Song Qingyue planned to add a few geography and science courses.

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For example, what does the world look like, how big was the Zhou Dynasty, where was Shanxi located in the Zhou Dynasty, why did the Yellow River flood, and so on.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand. There are some things that I would like you to listen to and understand a bit or two in a vague way. It will serve as an enlightenment.

The so-called enlightenment means that people can open their eyes, open their minds, and no longer be easily deceived.

I heard that Princess Jin wanted to build more schools in the Taiyuan area, but the officials and wives were not as enthusiastic as when Song Qingyue and Li Zhao paid a private visit in disguise.

Everyone felt that the princess acted very strangely, and was even suspected of cheating money and forcing them to give evidence to the Jin Palace. However, everyone was talking nicely and praising Song Qingyue's kindness and compassion, but no actual actions were seen.

By the end of the Lantern Festival, Song Qingyue had raised less than 1,500 taels of funds from the official wives, not counting the ring jewelry donated by the official wives.

Moreover, after the Lantern Festival, there were rumors in the Taiyuan area that Princess Jin was a greedy person who forced officials and wives to bribe her.

Song Qingyue didn't care at all what they thought of her. What she did was indeed out of tune with the times. Fortunately, the Central Plains had always worshiped literate people. The law had never prohibited anyone from reading or reading, let alone women from reading. Instead, literati and poets were

We admire talented women very much.

It's not that when Aunt Hong heard such rumors, she was so angry that she couldn't sleep. She told Song Qingyue that she must find the person who spread the rumors and teach him a lesson.

Song Qingyue shook her head and laughed at her: "It's okay, just let them go. Could you help him think about building a trading company?"

She had already thought about it. Anyway, she couldn't rely on the court for things like literacy. Even if Li Zhao could provide help, it would be very limited. If she relied on her alone, her family's wealth of two to three million taels would be a bit shaky.

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She currently has two plans.

First, whether to establish a trading company with Shanxi as its base. After going out for inspection, she planned to integrate the resources of the entire Shanxi and set up a trading company first to standardize the production of Shanxi's local specialty products, create a brand, and gain popularity.

It is sold all over the country and even overseas. The first batch of products selected by her include Shanxi mature vinegar, Taiyuan Fenjiu, Qinzhou small yellow rice, Jiaocheng Junzao and Jiangzhou Chengni inkstone.

Second, whether to build a commodity distribution center similar to Yiwu in Taiyuan, which can be called a department store, for people to trade with major merchants.

Third, whether to build aluminum smelting and cement manufacturing plants powered by steam engines.

Refining aluminum requires the search for bauxite deposits, and there are many outside Shanxi Province. On New Year's Day, Song Qingyue urged Li Zhao to send an exploration team to go out to look for ores.

Li Zhaojiantou did not have a ready-made exploration team, so he could post a reward list. Anyone who found a bauxite mine outside Shanxi would be rewarded with 300 gold.

Before finding the bauxite mine outside Shanxi, Song Qingyue built a steam-powered cement plant first.

In the first quarter of the fifth year of Tianqi, Song Qingyue was manufacturing and debugging a new steam-powered ball mill.

She recruited a group of experienced master craftsmen from local carpentry and blacksmith shops in Shanxi with high salaries. After signing a sales contract and a confidentiality agreement with them, she began to beg the masters to learn how to read and count.

Many masters only have leg skills but cannot read, which really hinders them from summarizing their thoughts and thoughts into paper documents in order to pass on their skills.

In addition to cultural restraint, she also begged the masters to learn mechanical-related knowledge and principles from her.

Acceleration gears, reduction gears, various crankshafts, screw mechanisms, belt transmission mechanisms, chain transmission mechanisms, etc. are all things that we have never learned before. Song Qingyue herself is a layman, she

She can teach a lot of things, but just the things she understands are enough to open people's eyes.

For example, in the steam-powered ball mill design, Song Qingyue used reduction gears and a belt transmission device with smoke rubber as a link. The efficiency can be much higher than that of gears!

The ball mill that used to be driven by water power and animal power has now been redesigned and tripled in size. Of course, since Song Qingyue is now unable to solve the synchronization problem of the steam engine, she can now keep the two steam engines synchronized through a crankshaft.

For this reason, the horsepower of the steam engine device is also limited, so the ball mill cannot be built too large like in later generations, otherwise it cannot be driven by the existing steam engine.

But even so, if machine losses are not included, the time and cost of making cement have been reduced to less than one-tenth of the original.

Li Zhao knew that there were abundant lime deposits outside Shanxi Province, but when he saw the truth, he was immediately dumbfounded.

Song Qingyue was not surprised at all, because that would deny the power of technological revolution.

"So, what are your plans now, madam?" Li Zhao even had a hint of caution in his tone.

Although he didn't know the word "dumping", he knew intuitively that once Song Qingyue really sold that batch of cement at a reduced price, the entire cement factory in Dazhou would be defeated by Shanxi's cement.

You can't win even if you include the shipping fee.

Song Qingyue put her legs on the table and tapped it. After thinking for a while, she said, "How to sell it, but there will always be problems with the machine. The output in the first year will definitely not be too big."

"How...how am I going to price this?"

"Let's lower the price by one-third first. Do the court's business first and save money for the court?"

"No, I'll do it step by step. I'll wait until the machine is stable before expanding production." Li Zhao breathed a sigh of relief.

Song Qingyue smiled brightly, and Li Zhao immediately wrote a note to his father.

There was originally a large-scale cement factory in Shouyang County, Taiyuan Prefecture, in which the emperor had a stake. Now that once Song Qingyue's cement factory is opened, the cement factory will definitely lose its competitiveness and will inevitably collapse.

And Song Qingyue gave the emperor 10% of the shares that time, and she seemed to be planning to bargain with the emperor for a good price. I don't know how much her father wanted to ask for.
Chapter completed!