America 1869: A Doppelganger Every Day

Chapter 158 Changes in One Month

The second page of the newspaper explained the principles of electricity in detail, using an analogy that ordinary people could understand: "Electric current is like an invisible river; power plants are the source, power lines are the riverbed, and appliances like light bulbs and irons are the waterwheels on the banks—they don't need coal, they don't produce smoke, and they can operate solely on this invisible river." The accompanying illustration showed a river made of lightning bolt symbols flowing through the city, connecting power plants to countless homes, with a red caption stating: "This river will flow through New York, London, Paris, and Shanghai—"

In London, the European edition of the *Chinese Weekly* was delivered to the reading room at Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria's private secretary opened the newspaper and saw a detailed description of yesterday's New York launch on page three: "Thirteen electrical products, like thirteen new stars, illuminate the future of life—electric kettles boil water in just three minutes, electric blankets make winter nights as warm as spring, and vacuum cleaners can suck up dust deep from carpets—" An illustration showed several ladies in corseted dresses marveling at an electric iron, with the accompanying text reading: "By this time next year, London housewives will say goodbye to the cumbersome charcoal iron."

In a Berlin café, businessmen and scholars passed around the German-language edition of the *Chinese American Daily*. Upon seeing the declaration that "the Second Industrial Revolution has officially arrived," someone slammed the newspaper on the table: "This isn't a prophecy, it's a declaration of war!" The data listed in the newspaper alarmed them: Li Changsheng's team had already built three power plants in the Americas, and site selection for Europe was about to begin; the patent list was two pages long, encompassing everything from plugs to generators. One engineer wrote in the margin: "They've skipped the bottleneck of the steam engine and gone directly into the age of electricity."

When the English edition of the *Chinese Weekly* was delivered to the magistrates of the foreign trading companies on the Bund in Shanghai, the Chinese translation had already been sent to Suzhou and Hangzhou by horse-drawn carriage. The newspaper devoted half a page to introducing "electrical products suitable for Eastern families": compact table fans, adjustable-brightness oil lamp-style electric lights, and electric kettles that could quickly heat tea. An illustration showed electric lights hanging under the eaves of a traditional Chinese courtyard, and a gentleman in a mandarin jacket making juice with an electric juicer. The accompanying text read: "Shanghai's power station will begin construction within six months, and merchants on Nanjing Road will be the first to use electric lights."

The most striking part was the last page of the newspaper. It featured a folded world map, with the future marked in yellow lines.

A five-year global electrification network plan: The Americas' power lines will extend from New York to Los Angeles, and the European backbone will connect London...

Paris and Berlin—Asia's first railway line will connect Shanghai to Tianjin. Below the map, Li Changsheng's signed declaration, printed in five languages, reads: "The First Industrial Revolution liberated human labor with steam; the Second Industrial Revolution will reshape the world with electricity. This is not a transformation of a single country, but an advancement for all humankind."

In the editorial office of The New York Times, the editor-in-chief pinned the Chinese American Daily News to the blackboard and roared at the reporters, "What have we missed? This man has accomplished a global manifesto with a single newspaper!" Outside the window, newsboys' cries rose and fell: "Read the newspaper! Read the newspaper! Electricity is changing the world! We'll have electric lights next year!"

On the Paris Stock Exchange, stocks related to coal and steam engines began to fall, and someone wrote a new entry for "electrical stocks" on a blackboard. A broker calculated, looking at the patent list in the Chinese Weekly, "The patent fees for electric lights alone are enough to buy half of the factories in Paris."

On Fuzhou Road in Shanghai, booksellers disassembled the Chinese translation of the *Huamei Daily*, reformulated it into a pamphlet, and changed the title to *The Miraculous Power of Electricity*. Storytellers in teahouses, holding the pamphlet, began to weave new tales: "There's a Western object that heats up when plugged in; you can iron clothes without burning charcoal, and brew tea without lighting a fire—" The audience gasped in amazement.

As the sun sets, the Chinese American Daily and the Chinese American Weekly have sold over half a million copies worldwide. In Hyde Park, London, people argue while holding up the newspapers; in the slums of New York, children pass around illustrations of electric lights; at the docks of Shanghai, coolies listen to literate people read stories about "power plants."

Li Changsheng stood on the terrace of his New York office building, watching the crowd gathered in front of the newsstand across the street. He knew that the power of newspapers went far beyond simply disseminating information; these words and illustrations were reshaping people's perceptions, transforming "electricity" from a distant scientific term into a reality that was about to enter their lives.

When readers in more than a dozen countries around the world read the manifesto of the "Second Industrial Revolution" on the same day, an invisible consensus emerged.

A realization is forming: the wheels of time have turned, and that young man from the East is standing at the front of the train.

As night deepened, New York's first streetlamp lit up in a trial run. The moment its white light pierced the darkness, it seemed like a silent response to all the declarations in the newspapers. Li Changsheng's electrical empire needed not only factories and patents, but also this ideological revolution sparked by the newspapers. Only when the whole world began to look forward to electric lights and yearn for electricity could his business network truly become an unshakeable cornerstone of the era.

Li Changsheng understood perfectly well that from this day forward, his era had begun.

Over the past few years, he has been making global plans.

For the past few years, he has been planning to create a clone.

For the past few years, he had always thought about stepping back from the limelight and not standing in the spotlight, but now he feels that he should change.

So he introduced the electric light bulb, placing himself at the forefront of the Second Industrial Revolution.

The success of the Pacific Rim Alliance allowed Li Changsheng's clones to rise rapidly.

At the same time, due to the emergence of the Pacific Rim Alliance, the promotion of Mandarin Chinese and simplified Chinese characters began to spread rapidly throughout the world.

In other words, Li Changsheng's plan is already more than halfway complete.

From the very beginning, Li Changsheng's plan had only two aspects: one was to give his clone more say and control...

More resources.

Another goal is to promote Mandarin and simplified Chinese characters globally, thereby enhancing the global status of Chinese people.

These tasks are now mostly completed; all that remains is to proceed according to plan.

So for Li Changsheng, he can now let go and hand over other things to his clone, and he himself no longer has to think about so many things.

As long as one of his clones is alive, he won't die. So what is there for him to fear?

Before today, he had already had several clones act as his lawyers to draw up his will and pay for insurance. He had also considered everything that could be taken into account. In case of an accident, his money would be distributed among the clones, so there was nothing to worry about.

That's why he stepped forward, ready to stand at the forefront of this era.

June 1876.

New York mornings are no longer awakened by the sound of horse-drawn carriage bells. As the first rays of sunlight sweep across Manhattan, the thirty electric lights on Broadway turn off one by one—these glass domes, which have been lit all night, glow with a faint blue light in the dawn, like stars just awakening from a dream.

"Look! They went out by themselves!" The newsboys exclaimed in amazement, crowding around the lamppost. The electrician in charge of maintenance was inspecting the wiring on a ladder, a clipping from the *China American Daily* tucked in his pocket, bearing Li Changsheng's admonition: "An electric light is not a candle; its..."

"Light is in the hands of humankind." At this moment, the timer in his hand pointed to six o'clock. This was the "lights out at dawn" system set up by Li Changsheng's team, which not only saves electricity but also demonstrates to citizens the controllability of electrical energy.

This controllability is changing the rhythm of cities. In Chicago's slaughterhouses, kerosene lamps that used to be lit at 3 a.m. have been replaced by electric lights, allowing workers to cut beef under bright white light, increasing efficiency by 30%. Slaughterhouse owners have discovered that electric lights don't blacken meat like oil lamps, nor do they cause fires; "the insurance savings each month are enough to install ten more lights." In Boston's textile factories, night shift workers have seen fine hairs on cotton yarn for the first time, leading to a sharp drop in defective products. The clocks on the workshop walls have been replaced with electric chimes, emitting a crisp ring every hour to remind people of the precise time.

The widespread adoption of electric irons is reshaping the lives of the middle class. Department stores on Fifth Avenue in New York City have set up special "electrical equipment counters," where sales clerks in white gloves demonstrate how to adjust the temperature using knobs. One housewife, after buying an electric iron, deliberately asked her coachman to take a detour past a power station: "I want to show my neighbors that my iron doesn't need to burn charcoal anymore." This kind of conspicuous consumption has become a trend in Philadelphia, where housewives compete during afternoon tea to see whose iron soleplate is the shiniest and who can iron a man's shirt cuff in three minutes.

The most bustling area was San Francisco's Chinatown. The small electric kettles specially designed by Li Changsheng for Asian families became hot commodities. Teahouse owners displayed them in their windows; when plugged in, the tea in the transparent glass kettles bubbled and boiled, attracting passersby to stop and watch. "Twice as fast as charcoal!" the owner shouted in Cantonese-accented English. Behind him hung the Chinese version of the *Chinese American Weekly*, with the slogan "Electricity Makes Life Easier."

The changes aren't limited to cities. Along the railroad line from New York to Philadelphia, utility poles have sprung up like rows of sentinels.

Workers responsible for installing the power lines noticed curious farmers gathered around each pole, touching the insulators and listening to the electrician explain how electricity travels along the wires. On a farm in Ohio, a boy named Tom used his savings from six months' work to buy a small light bulb, which he hung in the barn. This bulb allowed him to repair farm tools at night, and his father noticed that with the light, the number of rats in the barn decreased.

At the Chicago World's Fair at the end of the month, the electrical exhibit became the most popular spot. Li Changsheng's team built a "future cabin": upon entering, a light was switched on by pulling a cord; an electric heater next to the dining table emitted warmth; an electric fan in the corner spun slowly; and the indicator light on the electric oven in the kitchen flashed red. A plantation owner from the South stared at an electric iron and muttered to himself, "My black slaves have to iron thirty shirts a day. With this thing—" Before he could finish, the engineer next to him interrupted, "Sir, it not only saves effort, but it also keeps your shirts white—as the newspapers say, it's a symbol of civilization."

Controversy ensued. Boston's gas companies banded together and published a rant in the newspaper: "Electric lights? A fleeting magic trick! Gas is eternal light!" But when they sent men to vandalize the utility poles, they were caught by patrolling police—Li Changsheng had already reached an agreement with the New York Police Department to install ten streetlights for the department on the condition of "protecting electrical facilities." Even more damaging, the *Chinese American Daily* published data showing that the cost of an electric light was only one-third that of a gas lamp. "Eternal? Let's talk about the bill."

The signed agents were expanding at an alarming rate. The Morgan Group's United Trading Company established a dedicated electrical warehouse in the Port of New York, where 300 workers sorted irons, power strips, and wires day and night. Electric hoists were installed on the dock cranes, doubling unloading efficiency. The Carnegie family, meanwhile, included electrical products in the steel mills' supply lists, offering free electric heaters with purchases of a certain quantity of steel. "Use our steel to build utility poles, use our channels to light up America" ​​became their new slogan.

One evening in late June, a power plant in New York City suddenly tripped, plunging the downtown area into darkness. Just as residents were panicking, the Chinese American Daily News' extra edition was already on the streets: "Temporary maintenance, power restored in an hour. This is a small but progressive episode." Sure enough, an hour later, the lights came back on, brighter than ever before. Some people noticed that there were several line inspectors wearing "Global Electric" uniforms on the street corners, carrying toolboxes, like knights guarding the light.

Li Changsheng stood in the power plant's control room, watching the ammeter on the wall fluctuate. A month ago, this was just a small, experimental factory; now it had expanded into a hub capable of supplying electricity to 20,000 homes. Outside the window, the lights shone like a flowing sea of ​​stars, stretching along the street into the distance. He knew this was just the beginning—when Boston's second power plant broke ground in July, when the Philadelphia streetcar company signed the electric conversion contract, when Los Angeles businessmen came to negotiate agency rights, the entire United States...

Under the influence of electricity, Japan is quietly transforming.

"Sir, a telegram from Europe." The assistant handed over the translated telegram, which stated that the London agent had rented a warehouse on the banks of the Thames. Li Changsheng rubbed his temples, his fingertip tracing the date on the telegram: June 30th. Exactly one month since that world-changing press conference. In this month, America had undergone more dramatic changes than in the previous decade, and these changes were spreading across the wider world via cables and shipping routes.

The clock in the control room struck midnight; a new month was about to begin. Li Changsheng pressed a button, and all the navigation lights in New York Harbor suddenly flashed three times—a signal to his global distributors: the electrical empire's reach should extend further. And America beneath his feet had become the most solid foundation of this empire, ushering in a new era of electricity under the glow of electric lights.

"I imagine the changes I've made over the past month have drawn a lot of attention to me, haven't they?"