Li Mi, Zhang Tianlun and his party set out from Jiuquan, crossed the desert, and finally arrived in Guazhou.
Guazhou, as the "Longxing" place of King Jianning, Li Mi saw a different style from Hexi.
The thick smoke billowing from the Dashuixia Iron Works and the black smoke from the coal burned to make steel shrouded the entire Guazhou City in smoke.
The Dashuixia Iron Works and the nearby blacksmith workshops are controlled areas. Naturally, Zhang Tianlun and Li Mi cannot enter. They can only enter Guazhou City.
Because iron factories and blacksmith workshops require a large number of workers, and the pollution near the iron factories is too serious, a large number of people poured into Guazhou City.
Outside Guazhou City, the carriages commuting to various blacksmith workshops were filled with workers and then sent to the workshops to work.
When it's time to get off work, the station becomes even more lively, filled with workers from various workshops returning from get off work.
Nowadays, whether a workshop can recruit workers depends on whether the workshop has a carriage to and from get off work.
The welfare benefits of Dashuixia Iron Works are even better. Not only is there the latest horse-drawn carriage transportation, but there is also a special canteen of the iron work next to the station, which can provide breakfast and dinner services.
The original station outside Guazhou City, where horse-drawn carriages were temporarily gathered, has been renovated, with concrete floors, a sun-shading roof, and some benches for workers waiting to sit and rest.
Zhang Tianlun and Li Mi took a long-distance carriage from Jiuquan to Guazhou. This kind of luxury carriage was very comfortable. The shock-absorbing springs greatly reduced the bumpy feeling during the journey. Because the luxury carriage only had two people in one carriage, at night
You can also lay the back of the chair flat and sleep overnight.
The carriage arrived at Guazhou City in the morning, and Zhang Tianlun immediately took Li Mi into the city.
"The smoke and dust outside the city is really too big. It will be better if we go into the city."
Sure enough, as Zhang Tianlun entered the city, Li Mi also felt that his breathing became much easier.
At this time, as the saying goes, you can rely on the mountains to eat the mountains, and the sea to eat the sea. Relying on the Dashuixia Iron Factory and a large number of ironware workshops, Guazhou has become the ironware manufacturing center of Longyou.
Almost the entire population of Guazhou City is engaged in ironware-related work.
Except for a few food and daily necessities stores, almost all of the shops on the street are ironware-related shops.
Li Mi looked at the city curiously. The air in the city was filled with the smell of smoke and fire, but the city was still clean.
The cleaners hired by the yamen are cleaning the streets. A large amount of garbage is collected from the garbage points next to each house on donkey carts and transported to the centralized processing station outside the city.
Li Mi saw the iron pipes under the eaves of every house. The doors of every house were open, and the housewives were holding wooden buckets to collect water under these pipes.
Li Mi pointed at the official road curiously and asked, "What is this?"
Zhang Tianlun glanced at it and said, "Oh, this, tap water."
"Tap water?"
Zhang Tianlun said: "It's the water diversion pipe. Because the Dashui Gorge has stopped flowing, Guazhou Yamen dug a water diversion canal into the river. After the river water was sent to the water tower for disinfection, it was sent to people's homes through these pipes.
.”
Li Mi was surprised. He had seen similar facilities in Chang'an City.
However, only the royal family and the powerful are eligible to use the special water pipes, but in Guazhou they are laid directly on the streets so that every household can use them.
Seeing Li Mi's surprised look, Zhang Tianlun said: "What's this, isn't it just a water supply system? It's a pity that these pipes are not airtight, otherwise the heating pipes can be built. But I heard that Shazhou has already started
The heated ondol is in use, and Guazhou is also repairing the heated ondol in preparation for the winter."
Li Mi was too lazy to ask about the unintelligible words in Zhang Tianlun's words. He was just curious about how much money would be needed to invest in such a water supply system.
When I heard in Jiuquan that Longyou was rich, Li Mi didn't believe it at first.
But after seeing it with my own eyes, Guazhou is already so prosperous, and Shazhou will definitely become more prosperous.
Zhang Tianlun said: "The tickets to Shazhou have been sold out. Let's stay overnight in Guazhou today."
Li Mi naturally had no objection to this arrangement, and he was also very interested in the city of Guazhou.
Jin Zhangye and Yin Wuwei indicate that these two areas are very suitable for food cultivation and are agricultural areas that can feed a large population.
However, the construction of cities in Jiuquan and Guazhou was entirely due to military needs.
Jiuquan is the exit of the Hexi Corridor, and Guazhou, adjacent to Yumen Pass, is the entrance to Longyou.
These two states are both "lower states" on the imperial household register, which are sparsely populated state capitals.
But I didn't expect that when I actually arrived in Jiuquan and Guazhou, they would be even more prosperous than those big cities in Guanzhong.
Zhang Tianlun took Li Mi to find a clean hotel. After settling in, Li Mi called the waiter.
"Xiao Er, is there any local newspaper in Guazhou?"
The clever waiter immediately said: "Sir, there are several newspapers in Guazhou. Which newspaper do you want?"
Li Mi was a little surprised. Among the three towns in Hexi, Wuwei, Zhangye and Jiuquan each had only one local newspaper.
Except for Zhangye Daily, which is a daily, Jiuquan and Wuwei both publish every two days.
Although for Li Mi, it took two days to collect so many pages of news and articles, the editors of these newspapers were already incredibly efficient.
However, these daily newspapers were actually forwarded news from the "Longyou Daily". The copycat players of the "Longyou Daily" in Shazhou were very angry about the copycat behavior of the daily newspapers in various places. They even asked King Jianning to stop these local daily newspapers immediately.
kind of behavior in Chinese translation.
However, the lawsuit was brought to an end before King Jianning. However, the Longyou Dudu Mansion issued an order that all newspapers in the future must be published in the Dudu Mansion before they are publicly distributed.
Unexpectedly, there are several newspapers in Guazhou.
Li Bi became interested and asked: "What newspapers are there in Guazhou? Can you introduce them to me?"
The waiter in this shop is also a smart person. He smiled and said: "Then it depends on what kind of person the guest is?"
"Does it have anything to do with what kind of person I am and what newspaper I read?"
The waiter smiled and said: "Of course it does matter. Sir, please listen to me slowly."
"We have several newspapers in Guazhou. The first is Longyou Daily. This newspaper is for real officials."
"Guazhou Daily is for people who think they should be officials."
"The Daily Economic News is for people who are not government officials, but think that businessmen should manage Longyou."
"The Entertainment News is for the wives of government officials."
"Spring Weekly is for people who don't care who the official is, but only care about whether the stories and illustrations are attractive."
Li Mi was stunned for a moment, and then understood what the guy meant.
He laughed loudly and said, "Then buy a copy for me."
The waiter took the money and walked out of the hotel happily, and soon came back with a pile of newspapers.
Li Mi was concerned about major events in Longyou, so the first thing he picked up was naturally a first-class newspaper like Longyou Daily.
The first page contains the latest big news in Longyou, the most famous of which is the news of the start of construction of the railway between Zhangye and Jiuquan.
This railway uses rails and is designed to use steam engines. It is a large project jointly funded by Zhangye and Jiuquan.
Compared with the Jiu-Zhang Railway, another major project was the successful short-term operation test of the Jinshan Pass steam locomotive.
Although it is only ten kilometers away, people in Longyou seem to attach great importance to this steam engine and regard it as an important weapon of the country.
Li Mi has never seen a steam engine, and he doesn't know what it does. According to the article, this seems to be a waterwheel driven by steam?
But for Longyou Shangxia to pay so much attention to it, there must be something special about it.
In addition to these two current affairs news, another piece of news that attracted Li Mi's attention was a policy essay published on the second page.
This policy statement was written in semi-vernacular Chinese that was easier to understand than the ancient prose of the Pre-Qin Dynasty. Li Mi knew that the entire Longyou was promoting the "ancient prose movement", simplifying the writing style of documents between yamen, and trying to use more concise "ancient prose", while
It is not "Jinwen" which pays attention to the rhyme of four or six parallel prose.
In Li Mi's view, this ancient prose movement also had a positive effect on improving the efficiency of officialdom.
I just didn't expect that in newspapers, this classical prose movement would become even more radical, and such policies would begin to use semi-vernacular.
Although it was in semi-vernacular, Li Mi still shuddered when he saw the title.
"A Brief Discussion on the Historical Inevitability Behind the Anlushan Rebellion"
What’s so interesting about this title?
Inevitability?
Does this mean An Lushan will definitely rebel?
If this is the case, Li Mi doesn't think it's surprising.
When An Lushan first served as the military governor, Li Linfu, the treacherous prime minister at the time, said that An Lushan would rebel.
Li Linfu's prophecy was somewhat exaggerated, but during the Tianbao period, Anlushan had already shown his rebellion, and the emperor also summoned Anlushan's eldest son, Anqingzong, to Chang'an as a hostage.
But after reading this article, Li Mi was shocked.
This article is not an analysis of An Lushan’s inevitable rebellion, or even an analysis of An Lushan at all.
The article just listed the data. At the beginning of the founding of the Tang Dynasty, the world's population was less than 20 million.
However, during the Kaiyuan period, the population registered with the government had reached 50 million. This did not include the large number of monks, refugees and people living in seclusion who were not registered. The actual population had reached 80 million.
During the Kaiyuan period, the Tang Dynasty had reached the limit of its territorial control. The theory of the limits of imperial territory had made it impossible for the Tang Dynasty to expand its territory, and even the land it conquered could not form an effective rule.
With such heavy population pressure, the output of the land has not grown by leaps and bounds. It is already very difficult to feed the people on the land.
The wealth of the entire imperial court was concentrated in Chang'an, and the imperial court had long extracted wealth from Hebei, Hedong and Jiangnan, which exacerbated this crisis.
After Li Mi read the data, he felt that the views were inspiring. He seemed to have seen the invisible hand that controlled the cycle of chaos in the fog of history!
This article even gave this crisis a name, calling it "Jiang Lun's population trap."