Ming Dynasty: Traveling through the harem, Zhu Yuanzhang was dumbfounded

Chapter 226 Don’t Become Bookish
Zhenjiang Prefecture.

Comprehensive office building location.

Two short-haired guards were standing at the door, and a constant stream of chatter could be heard from inside.

"Your Excellency, our Zhenjiang Iron and Steel Plant is now able to produce 10,000 tons per year. In the past half month, the output has been increasing. We have discovered a huge iron ore near Lake Baikal. The quality of the ore is much better than the ore we found in Daming.

If the ironworks can be expanded, I believe that Ming will have enough iron raw materials to make rail carriages in the future."

Yang Chen, who was sitting in the middle of the conference room, was holding a pencil in his hand and looking at the report in his hand with a solemn expression on his face.

He ignored the recent events at the ironworks and asked about other things.

"Recently, I heard that there seemed to be some kind of accident on the railway carriage heading to the capital. The detailed investigation report should have been delivered to me yesterday. Why is there still no news? What on earth are you doing in the railway department?
Zhenjiang Prefecture gives you more than one million taels of silver every year. Is it to support you and let you eat for free?

Who is the person in charge of the transportation department? Come out!"

As his angry voice was released through the loudspeaker, the relevant departments below broke out in cold sweats, and soon three people stood up.

They are Zhang Shouyi, Minister of Transportation of Zhenjiang Prefecture, Zhou Guangqi, Director of Safety of the Department, and Cao Yuanwai, General Manager of the Department.

The official system currently implemented in Zhenjiang Prefecture is completely different from that of the Ming Dynasty court.

Ever since Zhu Yuanzhang saw the convenience brought by Zhenjiang Prefecture, he discussed it with Zhu Biao and Empress Ma.

Should Zhenjiang Prefecture be given greater power?
Let them concentrate as much energy as possible on accomplishing major tasks, make things run rationally, and then give back to the entire Ming Dynasty?

It was Zhu Biao who first proposed this idea to Zhu Yuanzhang, because there was an government office under the jurisdiction of the imperial court here. As Yang Chen's reform measures became more and more large-scale, the county magistrate had to find ways to report to Zhu Yuanzhang every day.

After all this, Zhu Yuanzhang also felt very troubled.

So he planned to send two guards into Zhenjiang Prefecture, led by Ma Bin, the former commander of Zhenjiang Prefecture.

These troops only obey the imperial court. Without the imperial court's order, no one is allowed to order these troops to attack other people around them.

Even though Yang Chen had great power in Zhenjiang Prefecture and had a token granted by Zhu Yuanzhang, he could only let these soldiers help with hard labor.

Of course, Yang Chen never gave any command from beginning to end, because Zhenjiang Prefecture itself had many refugees and rabble who were working in exchange for relief.

The number reaches hundreds of thousands.

All of them are being built around Zhenjiang Prefecture.

So under Zhu Yuanzhang's "surveillance", he gave Yang Chen greater power, and the entire Zhenjiang Prefecture was under the unified command of Yang Chen, and the government was withdrawn.

At the same time, departments that were split from the government were re-established as departments that did not interfere with each other.

The top leaders of all departments are called ministers, the team members under them are called directors, and under the directors are the people who do the work.

In fact, as early as half a year ago, Yang Chen had trained a smart woman in his mansion to be his secretary.

At the same time, it stimulated everyone in Zhenjiang Prefecture to enter a virtuous cycle of internal circulation.

As for Zhu Chong, it's funny to say that his secretary left Zhu Chong's original wife Guanyin Nu under the intervention of Empress Ma and Zhu Yuanzhang.

It turned out that Yang Chen had made a set of examination papers and asked all the smart children in Zhenjiang Prefecture to take the exam. At that time, Guanyin Nu left Zhu Chong and became one of Empress Ma's personal maids, and Empress Ma also asked them all to take the exam.

In the end, Guanyin Nu was taken out of the anonymous test paper by Yang Chen with a score that surpassed everyone else's.

The moment Zhu Chong learned that his secretary was a slave of Guanyin, he felt that fate had played a trick on him.

He had known for a long time that Guanyin Nu had become his mother's personal maid, so he had been deliberately avoiding the woman who felt guilty.

I didn't expect that the other person turned out to be my secretary.

After Yang Chen did this, the government machinery of Zhenjiang Prefecture started to operate rapidly after the running-in period.

Wherever a problem is found, the cause of the problem can be found quickly and accurately, so that it can be solved.

Today's meeting was urgently convened by Yang Chen.

The moment Minister Zhang Shouyi stood up, everyone's eyes were focused on him. After wiping off a lot of cold sweat, he spoke:
"Master Yang, the reason why the railway carriage to the capital had an accident was entirely due to weather reasons, which caused that section of the railway track to deform, causing it to twist and become unworkable.

But every time I had an accident, I sent someone to deal with it.”

Yang Chen looked at the department's security director Zhou Guangqi with extremely unfriendly eyes.

"What do you have to say?"

Zhou Guangqi was well aware of the severity of Lord Yang, so he quickly stepped forward to answer.

"Master Yang, this is not the fault of our Ministry of Transportation, it is entirely due to the problem of the railway tracks.

In fact, accidents have occurred frequently on this section of railway track since the beginning of this year.

The worst case was that there were several problems on the same day, so I suspect it was a problem with the rail material, not our fault. "

Upon hearing this, Yang Chen's first reaction was that these people were shirking their responsibilities, but the department manager Cao Yuanwai stood up at this time.

The department manager is the person who is specifically responsible for the communication between the rails and the ironworks. Mr. Cao was originally a businessman, but he wanted to renounce his businessman identity and go into politics, so Yang Chen gave him this opportunity.

His original iron selling business was naturally state-owned and under the jurisdiction of Zhenjiang Prefecture.

"Master Yang, the people at the ironworks have told me that the iron currently produced can be used to make weapons without breaking easily, but when it is made into rails, it is easy to cause various problems."

As soon as these words were spoken, many people in the huge conference room stood up to accuse him.

The general meaning is that he dares to refute Yang Chen?

Hearing this, Yang Chen slapped the table and angrily scolded the person who spoke for him:
"My colleague, please don't make the mistake of being a bookworm! Mr. Cao is right. What he said reminded me of something. Our railway tracks are completely outdated. Where is the president of the Academy of Sciences, Lao Tao? Please stand up and say something!"

Before appointing the Zhenjiang Prefecture Government, Yang Chen deliberately planned two ideas to alert everyone.

First, it is book worship.

The so-called book worship, also known as dogmatism, refers to blindly copying theories from books, instructions from superiors, experiences of others, etc. in ideological understanding and work practice, without combining them with the actual conditions of the region, department, or unit, the actual conditions of the masses, the realities of history and reality, and without linking or combining theory with practice.

This kind of doctrine is conservative, sticks to the old ways, copies and reposts things blindly, and takes things out of context, which results in the work not achieving the desired results, and even delays and hinders the development of the work.

He also warned these officials that they were selected from among many people who were dismissed.

Seeing that they were willing to accept the new facts, Yang Chen told them not to be too ambitious or to curry favor with their superiors.

We must not always respect others' opinions, but must dare to question and express our opinions.

In addition to book worship, he also pointed out the errors of empiricism.

Empiricism refers to some old masters with practical work experience. Its biggest characteristic is that it starts from experience and mistakes their local experience for universal truth.

Yang Chen opposes empiricism, believing that it is also a form of subjectivism that needs to be overcome.

The purpose is to worry that empiricism will affect some masters with old skills. Some time ago, Tao Chengdao made an empiricist mistake that caused an accidental explosion in the explosives laboratory, which brought glory to several young people.

After this lesson, Tao Chengdao never dared to be arrogant again. His current position is the president of the Zhenjiang Prefecture Academy of Sciences, which can actually be called the president of the Ming Academy of Sciences.

Throughout the Ming Dynasty, anyone who likes rare gold and exotic stones can come here to conduct research. Yang Chen has done his best to write down all the basic chemical knowledge he remembers in a book, and the rest of the content will be supplemented by everyone in the Academy of Sciences.

The basics he supplemented were not difficult content. They were basically rankings of some metal materials. For example, the top few hardest metals were chromium, osmium, tungsten, titanium, and iridium. The characteristics of each metal were described by Yang Chen one by one, so that collectors who owned these metals could understand what they had in their hands.

There is also a ranking of conductive metals, including silver, copper, gold, aluminum, etc.

As for those chemical formulas, there is no need to say more about hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium and boron.

Yang Chen simply moved all these things out.

It not only made the Ming Dynasty's chemical knowledge more advanced than the rest of the world, but also gave Zhu Yuanzhang an additional reference for how to name his son in the future.

Anyway, the Chinese names of these chemical symbols were originally found in the family tree he made before his death.

Tao Chengdao was personally called by Yang Chen, and he immediately stood up and said:

"Sir Yang, it's not that we don't want to find a way to solve these problems. It's because the smelted metals simply can't last through this winter. As you know, metals expand when heated and contract when cooled. Daming is in a very cold climate. We can't solve this weather problem with human power for the time being."

Hearing these words, Yang Chen fell silent. Just as Tao Chengdao said, he had been busy dealing with government operation issues and various other matters in the past year, and had forgotten that the Ming Dynasty was already very strong to have reached this point.

The fact that Daming is currently able to smelt metals is entirely the result of his own efforts and the wisdom of all parties working together.

The appearance of the railway carriage made Yang Chen feel confident, but in fact, the Ming Dynasty still had a long way to go before it could achieve technological civilization.

For example, regarding the issue of metal smelting, in fact, up to now, the Ming Dynasty does not have the ability to refine "steel".

Iron and steel are completely different things

To put it simply, iron is simply refined from its natural ore form to form pig iron. It contains a lot of impurities. Although it is hard, it lacks toughness and is easily broken.

This is why rails made of iron are not compatible with weather changes.

Even if Yang Chen enlarged the expansion joint of the rails, it would be useless.

Steel is different. It is harder and tougher than iron, but the added ratio is difficult to test.

At present, after layers of testing, the iron smelting plants in Daming have initially been able to produce some steel of good quality, but it is very difficult to obtain it on a large scale.

At present, Zhenjiang Prefecture has completed the research and development of the steam engine. It only needs to wait until the Ming Dynasty officially exterminates the Chen Dynasty in the Annan region and the future Thailand, now the Ayutthaya Kingdom.

If both of these places are harvested, then Ming Dynasty will have the ability to produce rubber, and naturally will be able to produce more airtight steam engines.

"Steel is indeed a problem. Let's put it this way, Lao Tao. I will find some time to go to the Academy of Sciences in person, and you ask Lao Mi and the others to wait." Yang Chen decided that this problem must be solved.

Although the appearance of steel in Chinese history can be traced back to the pre-Qin period, the steel produced was completely unusable.

For this reason, Yang Chen had to take action himself.

He now has ideas, but he overestimates those people in the Academy of Sciences.

The main reason is that there are too many materials in mixed steel. Historically, the discovery of manganese steel had to be pushed back to five hundred years later.

In 1882, the Englishman Robert Hadfield discovered that ordinary steel simply could not be produced perfectly for industrial use.

Therefore, based on the accumulation of the First Industrial Revolution, he began to experiment with steel using the electrical technology of the Second Industrial Revolution.

You must know that the physical and chemical technology at that time was already capable of perfectly training a truly modern scientist.

After two years of experimentation, Robert finally developed manganese steel from many types of steel.

Manganese steel is made by adding some manganese carbon to steel smelted from ordinary pig iron.

A certain proportion is required to make good steel. If the manganese content in steel is less than 10%, the steel will be very hard but not tough. When subjected to strong tensile tests and anti-tensile tests, the steel will collapse instantly.

Only when the manganese content reaches about 15% and after chemical treatment, the steel will become extremely excellent, with both hardness and toughness. It is almost immune to wind and rain, and rust will not penetrate too deeply, at most only the surface will rust.

For example, the railroad tracks we see today may appear to be covered in rust, but in fact, they do not affect the normal operation of trains and high-speed trains.

(End of this chapter)