Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 329 Bus Line and Smoky Monkey

After the first steam locomotive began to run successfully outside Yongdingmen, Xu Jie, the prefect of Shuntian Prefecture, prepared to purchase a batch of steam locomotives to replace the original carriage and horse-drawn company.

This will not only improve the capital's traffic, but also save transportation costs for the people.

For the lower-class people in the capital, in the past a horse-drawn carriage could carry fewer people, so the cost per person was higher. But now, if Shuntian Prefecture changes its public transportation to steam locomotives, a large steam locomotive can carry more than ten or even dozens of people, so the cost per person will be lower.

In this way, many civilians who could not afford to ride in a carriage no longer have to walk, especially when heavy snow covers the capital city in winter. Allowing people to travel by carriage instead of walking can greatly facilitate their lives.

“My dear colleagues, promoting steam locomotives will not only allow more people to travel by car, improve the chaotic and arbitrary carriage and horse traffic, but also improve the sanitation of the capital;
The main streets of the capital city are covered with horse manure every day because of the large number of carriages and horses passing by. When it rains or snows, the city is filthy and it is difficult to walk. Last year, there was even a plague because of this. Fortunately, under the guidance, it was brought under control in time through the sprinkling of lime and strengthening of sanitation management.

However, this still caused the death of 16 people and the financial loss reached 560,000 silver dollars. Now, just to clean up the horse manure, Shuntian Prefecture has to spend nearly one million silver dollars every year! If we promote steam locomotives, we can avoid urban pollution caused by horse manure, reduce the cost of cleaning streets, and effectively prevent more plagues from happening. "

Xu Jie strongly advocated the promotion of steam locomotives at his meeting in Shuntian Prefecture, and formally prepared to order a batch of steam locomotives for use in public transportation.

When Zhu Houzhao heard about it, he supported Xu Jie's behavior of keeping up with the times. He also invested 300,000 silver dollars from the Royal Tax Bureau, or the treasury, to support Xu Jie in purchasing a steam locomotive to establish the Shuntianfu Public Transportation Company.

As soon as the emperor invested, other chaebols followed suit, as if they all regarded the emperor as the Warren Buffett of the Ming Dynasty. But it was also because of this that Xu Jie's Shuntianfu Public Transport Company received an initial investment of no less than one million yuan, and also formally purchased a batch of steam locomotives through the Royal Industrial Company. It also hired a group of drivers trained by the Royal Industrial Company.

this day.

The first batch of steam locomotives in Shuntian Prefecture were officially put into operation. Although many people came to observe the steam locomotives again, they were still timid and did not dare to get on.

After entering the city, worker Liu Fu wanted to find a coach company to take a bus to Deshengmen, but he unexpectedly found that the sign of the bus stop above his head read "Yongdingmen" and he became curious for a moment.

As soon as Liu Fu stepped onto the platform, he glanced at the painting of a lady bathing on the platform. At that time, he didn't know that it was an advertisement. He only saw that the maid was holding a soap in her hand, and next to it was written an advertising slogan such as "Thirty-seven precious medicinal ingredients to drive away crow's feet".

This was not yet the Internet age. When he was about to go to Deshengmen as soon as possible to visit Miss Xiaoli in Liuyue Pavilion, he heard a clang, and then he saw a steam locomotive appear in front of him.

The door of the steam locomotive suddenly opened, and a young woman wearing a blue cloth jumpsuit and ebony hairpins pushed the door open and asked Liu Fu and the group of workers behind him, "Is anyone getting on board?"

Liu Fu looked at the steam locomotive that was all black and shining with metallic luster, just like he saw his wife undressing on the wedding night. He couldn't help but reach out his hand, but he pulled it back suddenly. Now, hearing the young woman's question, he asked curiously: "Sister, can I get on?"

Liu Fu said this with a simple smile and pointed at the car.

This young woman was naturally a ticket seller. Starting from the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, as the status of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism was gradually challenged, the idea of ​​gender differences was gradually relaxed. Except for some traditional literati who still insisted that women should not leave the house, the court had allowed women to go to school and work, and even established special schools for women. In addition, some positions were also opened to women.

Now, this young woman is obviously an educated woman in the new era. Although she is currently just a ticket seller, her appearance really surprised the people outside the car. Even Liu Fu felt a little ashamed in front of her.

The young woman nodded and said, "You can all get on. The fare is 2 cents per person, no matter how far the destination is."

The young woman looked at the mechanical clock on the bus and shouted, "The bus will leave in half an hour. Anyone want to get on?"

When Liu Fu heard what the young woman said, he hurriedly got into the car by holding onto the door, but he kept touching the railing on the door and refused to let go. He was giggling, as if he was happy touching his wife's hand.

In the eyes of common people like Liu Fu, this kind of iron cart could obviously only be ridden by officials, but they did not expect that now common people like themselves could also ride it, so they were all very excited.

Some people refuse to get off the bus even though they have clearly reached their stop. They are not willing to get off until they reach the terminal. They seem to think that this is the only way they will not lose out, and would rather walk back from a distance.

Because of this, the first batch of steam locomotives used as public transportation were packed with people when they arrived at the terminal. Although the riding experience was not good, the passengers were very satisfied and began to talk about it.

Therefore, after the news spread among the people, more people came to ride the steam locomotive the next day, and even some overcrowding accidents occurred. It was not until several days later that people began to ride the locomotive normally and in an orderly manner, getting off where they were supposed to.

In any case, the operation of steam locomotives was very successful, and the people quickly accepted this new thing. The transportation and sanitation of the capital city did change a lot because of it. Every day, steam locomotives could be seen running on the major trunk roads in the capital city and the main roads in the suburbs, and each station became a new landmark.

As a result, the carriage and horse business was gradually eliminated, but all industries in the capital were very developed, and the elimination of one industry did not cause too much of a stir.

At this time, officials in the capital also began to use steam locomotives, a new means of transportation, to go to court.

Because Zhu Houzhao specially approved the opening of a steam locomotive bus line between the Wumen Gate and the Daming Gate in the capital, which was specifically responsible for picking up and dropping off court officials to go to court in the morning, it became much more convenient for court officials to go to court, especially for some lower-ranking officials who used to have to get up late at night to rush to the imperial city and basically had no good sleep all night.

Now, with this special bus line, even if these low-ranking officials cannot take a nap in a sedan chair like the important officials in the court, they can now take a nap in a steam locomotive, and they don’t have to get up so early, which is undoubtedly much more convenient.

Therefore, when the Forbidden City bus line was opened, many officials were in favor of it.

However, there were also more conservative officials who could not accept the running of steam locomotives in the inner city, saying that it was undermining the solemnity. Yu Xuan, the Minister of Rites, even said that it was inappropriate and would rather continue walking than take a steam locomotive, in order to express his anger at the Forbidden City bus line.

However, it happened that this period of time coincided with the ceremony of conferring the title of the crown prince to the eldest son Zhu Zailei, so there were many court meetings about etiquette, so Yu Xuan was miserable. At this time, Xu Jie, the chancellor of Shuntian Prefecture, was sitting in the steam locomotive, enjoying the special tea and snacks, holding the heater, and talking with several colleagues from Shuntian Prefecture about the public security and firefighting work during the Spring Festival. He looked out the window from time to time, and when he saw Yu Xuan, the chief of the Ministry of Rites, coughing in the wind and snow, he couldn't help but smile.

"Yu Geishi is truly courageous! He would rather freeze to death than accept even a single cent of the emperor's favor!"

Immediately, Xu Jie took advantage of Yu Xuan passing by and said something loudly. After hearing this, Yu Xuan might have figured something out, or he might have been unable to endure the severe winter cold, so he ran after the steam locomotive. When the steam locomotive stopped at the next station, he hurriedly stood up and said, "I dare not refuse the emperor's grace!"

All the officials smiled coldly and said nothing more.

Zhu Houzhao also learned about this matter in the morning, and because of this, he couldn't help but sigh that some people are too stubborn and are not willing to accept new things until everyone else has accepted it and they themselves have no choice but to accept it.

But no matter what, in the face of the general trend, stubborn people cannot stop the changes of the empire.

Moreover, the Forbidden City bus line also improved the political efficiency of the empire, significantly reducing the lateness rate for imperial court meetings.

The emergence of steam locomotives meant that the emergence of steam trains was no longer a problem.

In fact, a steam train is also a steam locomotive.

After the court meeting ended, Xu Jie was retained by the cabinet to participate in the court discussion. Also attending were officials from the Ministry of Works, the Academy of Engineering, and the Infrastructure Bureau. The topic of discussion was naturally the construction of the first railway in the Ming Dynasty.

Steam locomotives had already appeared, so there was naturally no problem in manufacturing steam locomotive power systems.

As for the laying of railroad tracks, construction and management of projects, there was no problem because Daming had implemented higher education for more than 30 years and had accumulated a lot of experience. The Daming Academy of Engineering also had experience in laying railroad tracks, so there was no problem.

Now it is just the transition from experiment to actual operation.

According to the final result of the court discussion, a railway track would be laid between the capital and Tongzhou for trial operation as an attempt to build the first railway in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao approved this proposal. Now the main transportation in Ming Dynasty includes sea transportation, canal transportation and land transportation. No matter which mode of transportation is used, it needs to gather in Tongzhou. Therefore, if a railway is built between Tongzhou and the capital, it will undoubtedly be beneficial to improve the transportation efficiency of this busiest transportation line in Ming Dynasty.

Because there have been too many projects in the Ming Dynasty in recent years, the supply of human resources has been slightly insufficient, and the captives captured from Jiaozhi just make up for this shortcoming.

At this time, Xu Jie, the Chancellor of Shuntian Prefecture, purchased 20,000 Jiaozhi natives from Yan Song, the Governor of Jiaozhi. These Jiaozhi natives were transported to Tongzhou via the canal. Except for more than 400 people who died on the way for various reasons, most of the strong laborers of the Jiaozhi natives were transported to Beijing.

"Assign them the most tiring work. They need to work for more than six hours a day. The project is tight right now, so we can't let them sit idle!"

After Xu Jie gave orders to this group of Jiaozhi natives introduced from Jiaozhi, the supervisors under him began to lead these Jiaozhi natives to collect work clothes and food. The so-called food was naturally nothing more than steamed buns and sweet potatoes.

Basically, after eating, these Jiaozhi natives were whipped by the supervisors and entered the construction site to start working, such as carrying rails and steel, and transporting sand and gravel, while the Han workers were responsible for installing screws and specific technical work, or mixing cement.

……

After the empire's southern corps had begun to basically occupy the entire territory of the Nguyen family in southern Jiaozhi, Gui E finally could not find any reason to continue delaying with the envoys sent by Mo Dengyong, and finally threw out his bottom line, which was to require Mo to retire in the capital of the Ming Dynasty and become an idle official. Therefore, the officials were reappointed by the Ming Dynasty's Ministry of Personnel, which actually made Mo and his ruling group lose the power to rule northern Jiaozhi.

Mo Dengyong naturally rejected the Ming Dynasty's intention to actually occupy the northern part of Jiaozhi, and also realized the Ming Dynasty's real strategy, so he began to take the initiative to contact the Nguyen family, expressing his willingness to abolish his throne and return to being a vassal of Le Trang Tong.

But it was too late, the Ming Dynasty's southern corps had already surrounded Nguyen's troops.

At this time, Ruan also took out his last elite troops - the elephant soldiers.

Yu Dayou and others who had been serving as the vanguard were indeed shocked when they saw the monkey soldiers riding huge elephants rushing towards them. However, thanks to the emergence of newspapers, they were no strangers to elephants. In addition, they had already known through the intelligence provided by the Jinyiwei that the Jiaozhi Kingdom had elephant soldiers. Therefore, although the Ming army was shocked, they were not afraid. Instead, they took advantage of the fact that the weather was getting warmer and they had already entered the rainforest area, and directly began to fire incendiary bombs, burning the entire rainforest.

The Ming Dynasty's artillery now has rifling, which means a higher range and accuracy. In addition, the emergence of guncotton has greatly improved the propellant, so this kind of mountain mortar can also be operated. In fact, the Ming Dynasty itself also had a device similar to a mortar in the later period, and now it is just closer. The characteristic of Ming Dynasty's weapons research and development is multi-directional development. Although it is not professional and proficient, it is small but complete.

The incendiary bombs fired from the Ming Dynasty's simple mortar bypassed the jungle and fired into the elephant herd, igniting the dead branches and leaves in the forest. Suddenly, the entire rainforest turned into a world of smoke and fire.

Yu Dayou and other Ming soldiers just watched through telescopes as the elephants on which the monkey soldiers sat could not stand the smoke or fire and ran away.

As a result, many monkey soldiers fell down and were either crushed into pieces by the elephants, roasted, or smoked into bacon.

The Ming army simply retreated a distance, and when some monkey soldiers who were almost roasted or smoked ran out, they were immediately captured and taken to concentration camps to be used as coolies or serfs.

Thanks to my book friend Tianma Feixiang for the 100 starting coins reward. Thank you to my book friend Ai Xigua and Coke for the 100 starting coins reward. Thank you to my book friend Mijia Store Manager for the 100 starting coins reward.

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(End of this chapter)