I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 172 Impact of Industrial Products
"We have already thought of this situation! Don't worry." Zhou Erwa laughed out loud.

He brought the Zhoujia Village team to the beach, only to see a bunch of brown things that had appeared on the beach at some point in time.

These bundles of brown things were piled up into several low walls, extending into the distance. Laborers kept coming in with carts pushing bundles of brown things and placing them on the low walls.

"What is this?" Zhou Laosan asked blankly.

"Sacks!" Zhou Erwa said as he picked up a bunch of sacks.

"Sacks?" Zhou Laosan said in shock, "How many sacks does it take?"

"This bundle consists of ten sacks. I heard from above that more than 1.5 million bundles were shipped this time! A total of more than 15 million sacks, and more sacks will be shipped later." Zhou Erwa said lightly.

More than 1.5 million bundles! More than 15 million sacks!

The people in Zhoujia Village just felt that this was the biggest number they had ever heard in their lives.

Sacks were extremely common items in the Ming Dynasty, but it was still shocking that more than 15 million sacks could be produced at once.

"What are you going to do with so many sacks?" someone suddenly asked.

"It's used to hold soil! After filling it with soil, use a needle to sew the mouth, and then use this bag of soil to repair the dam! This way the dam will not be collapsed by sea water." Zhou Erwa explained. To be honest, he felt it was incredible when he first heard about doing this.

The people in Zhoujia Village opened their mouths in shock and lost the ability to think for a moment.
"But. But then won't these sacks be buried in the dam? There are more than 15 million sacks! Just...just...throw them away?" Zhou Abao said with great difficulty.

"Yes! Let's just give it up. As long as we can repair this dam, all this will be worth it!" Zhou Erwa said firmly.

The textile industry was the first industry to develop in Qizhou, so the city has a deep accumulation of experience in this area and mastered the technology of water-powered spinning of hemp early on. Besides, the technical content and requirements of hemp bags are not high.

Ever since Zhu Yuanzhang began to encourage people to grow cotton, every household in the Ming Dynasty has been growing cotton. A large amount of cotton has been made into cotton cloth. Cotton cloth is soft and warm. In comparison, the shortcomings of linen are obvious, so linen was quickly eliminated. Now only a few people still wear linen.

So various hemp fibers were made into sacks.

Although few people grow ramie now, there are still a lot of wild ramie growing in the wild in the south of the Ming Dynasty, and it only takes some manpower to collect and process this ramie.

Although the raw materials are almost free, the factory price of a sack in Qizhou is ten cents, because it is a textile product after all, even if it can be processed a little roughly, it still has to go through all the steps of textile production.

The textile factories in Qizhou produce a lot of sacks every year, which are very popular. The production capacity in this area is not low. This is also the reason why Zhu Houxuan dared to build a dam on the seashore without using concrete.

What's wrong with 15 million sacks? I only need 150,000 taels of silver, and I can produce more sacks.

This is the power of industry.

The men in Zhoujia Village remained silent for a long time. In their opinion, the sack was really a good thing, but such a good thing was buried in the embankment in vain. They felt it was a great pity.

"This is just the beginning! I was doing corvée labor to build a city, and we put sticky rice in the mortar used to build the city." Zhoujia Village's head said. "Yes, don't waste these sacks, each person takes a bunch, our task today is to fill the sacks in the hands with soil, and then start to build the embankment, everyone should start quickly, otherwise the tide will come in soon," Zhou Erwa introduced.

Everyone fell silent. Each of them carried a bunch of sacks and walked towards the work place. They had all learned how to queue up in the past few days. They followed Zhou Erwa closely, who was carrying a large flag.

There were many teams like this. They carried various colorful flags and led by their leaders, they flooded onto the beach like a tide.

Zhou Abao was walking in the team. In front, behind, and on both sides of him were teams wearing the same style of clothes. He felt that he had become one with this huge team. Such a warm atmosphere filled his heart with infinite pride and a strong sense of belonging.

The 2-li embankment was divided into 2000 sections, each miles long. A large flag was planted on each section. A -person construction team was responsible for the construction. More than people were working on the -li embankment at the same time.

It sounds like a lot, but when it's all spread out it's actually still sparse.

More than 30,000 laborers began to level the land and clear various large rocks on the beach, as the salt fields did not need them.

The remaining 5,000 laborers were put into logistical work, with one laborer corresponding to twenty laborers.

They have to carry two buckets of water to the dam every hour. The weather has started to get hot, and doing heavy physical labor in such weather requires timely replenishment of water.

Zhou Abao picked up the bamboo tube hanging in front of his chest, scooped a cup of water from the bucket, and then drank it all in one gulp. The treatment for this project was so good that none of the men in Zhoujia Village dared to spare their efforts or be lazy, so they were all thirsty.

As soon as the water entered his mouth, Zhou Abao felt something was wrong. He tasted it carefully and exclaimed in surprise: "There is salt in this water."

Zhou Laosan also scooped up a cup and sneered, "This is the seaside, what's wrong with adding some salt to the water? The salt here is cheap!"

"Dad, the salt here is different." Zhou Abao shook his head and said.

"Different? What's the difference? You look like you haven't seen the world." After Zhou Laosan said this, he drank it all in one gulp.

After drinking it, he smacked his lips. It really felt very different. After a little thought, he understood the difference. "No bitterness. Is this refined salt?"

At this time, neither drying salt nor boiling salt can remove impurities in the seawater. Such salt is called coarse salt. Coarse salt generally tastes bitter and long-term consumption will be harmful to the body.

The dignitaries would never eat this kind of salt. They would eat pond salt and well salt which had fewer impurities and lower yields.

Only common people eat this kind of salt, and there is no other way but to eat it.

After all, in the feudal era, for ordinary people, there were many things that were more bitter than the bitterness of coarse salt and more harmful to the body than long-term intake of coarse salt.

So the people didn't care about this anymore, and the salt water they drank today didn't have the familiar bitter taste?
They couldn't help but be surprised.

Zhu Houxuan really did put refined salt into the water. The problem of removing impurities from crude salt is taught in high school chemistry. He has mastered this knowledge point.
(End of this chapter)