Chapter 1282
Changhua County
Chapter 1282 Changhua County
Liu Shang continued to fall asleep after lunch. When he woke up, it was already in the afternoon. He got up and walked to the porthole to look out. He could vaguely see the shadow of the land. Judging from the route he traveled today, it should be Hainan. the west coast of the island.However, at this time the ship was still several miles away from the coastline, and it seemed that the ship would not be docked for a while.
Liu Shang doesn't have much experience in sailing, but he couldn't use natural references such as the sun and ocean currents to judge his position on the sea, so he asked other people right away, only to learn that he was about half a hour away from his destination. The voyage of time.
Liu Shang said casually: "I hope today will not be like the day before yesterday, when I was blocked outside the port and couldn't get in."
Someone next to him responded, "That's hard to say. Changhua Port is also notoriously congested. There are many small boats in the port, so maybe they are blocked outside. You can see the place where black smoke rises from the shore in the distance. It's Changhua County."
Sure enough, when the ship they took arrived at Changhua Port, they found that the situation here was exactly the same as when they entered Yinggehai Port the day before yesterday. A large number of cargo ships were parked outside the port waiting to pass.But these ships were not loaded with white salt, but black coal.The puffs of black smoke rising in the air not far away are all showing the uniqueness of this place.
A few years ago, Changhua was just a small county with a small population on the west coast of Qiongzhou Island in the Ming Dynasty. Even if it was only within the scope of this island, it had no reputation, but now it is called the city of steel in Haihan. In just a few years The magnitude of the change is astounding.However, Liu Shang does not know the past history of Changhua. He only knows that the Haihan people discovered an iron mine somewhere in the inland of this place, and then established a large-scale smelting workshop in Changhua, which is now the most important steel in Haihan. origin.And the cargo loaded on these cargo ships waiting to enter the port by the sea is the fuel shipped from the Annan Black Soil Port for the local smelting industry.
Changhua Port was originally just a small port in a fishing village at the mouth of Changjiang River.Although several freight terminals have been expanded on the banks of the Changjiang River in the past two years, due to the serious sedimentation at the mouth of the Changjiang River, deep-draft seagoing ships still need to be careful when entering and leaving Changhua Port. The navigation capacity of the port is still far behind the large ports such as Shengli Port, Sanya Port, and Danzhou Port, which have deep water and wide ports.
With Haihan's current engineering capabilities, it is still not enough to complete the project of dredging the channel of the river into the sea. Therefore, although the construction scale and supporting facilities of Changhua Port have not kept up with the actual needs of use, at this stage it is still only I can make do with it temporarily.However, the Ministry of Construction has put the expansion of Changhua Port on the agenda, but the specific implementation time and construction scale have yet to be decided after discussion by the Executive Committee.
Looking at the cargo ships full of coal on the shore, Liu Shang secretly admired Haihan's generosity. He even established a transnational shipping line for this purpose to provide coal for the smelting industry here.Thinking that An Nanguo on the other side of the sea can bear it, just like this, Haihan forcibly took over a large coal mine, and can still pretend that nothing happened all these years, and continue to make friends with Haihan.
But Liu Shang thought about it again, why is this not the case with the local governments in the southeast of Ming Dynasty? This Qiongzhou Island has been separated by the Haihan armed forces for several years. How could the Guangdong and Guangxi governments ever try to regain the sovereignty here?In the final analysis, it depends on who has the strongest fists. The armed forces that are against Hai Han have suffered more or less. After seeing Hai Han's terrifying military strength, it is indeed difficult for people to regenerate the heart of resistance.
What Liu Shang didn't know was that Haihan's overseas mining operations have long been far beyond this black soil port. The Miaoli Chusulkeng Oil Field in Taiwan Island, the Jinguashi Gold Mine in Jilonggang, the Fushan Copper Mine in Dengzhou, Shandong, and the South China Sea The tin mines in Bangka-Belitung Island, a large number of overseas mines are currently being mined, and after the local rough processing is completed, they will be transported back to Hainan for refining and purification.Most of the coal transported back to Changhua from Heitu Port will also be made into coke locally, which will then be used for smelting.
Although this overseas mining model is relatively inefficient and highly dependent on sea transportation capacity, it is the only way for Haihan to develop.Hainan Island has certain geographical advantages in the early stages of crossing, but there is an obvious disadvantage that the types of mineral resources are relatively limited, and local production alone cannot meet the needs of the Executive Committee for industrialization, and this kind of seizure of overseas mineral resources for development For Haihan, the method is more practical.
As for the demand for transport capacity, the Executive Committee believes that it is a double-edged sword. While these mineral routes occupy a large amount of maritime transport capacity, they have also played a huge role in stimulating Haihan's shipbuilding and shipping industries.Almost half of the [-]-ton cargo ships launched by various shipyards last year were allocated to these mineral routes as transport vehicles.Like Heitu Port, an energy output port that provides most of the coal for the entire Haihan Kingdom, it is equipped with a full fleet of four heavy-duty cargo ships, which are constantly transported back and forth between Heitu Port and Hainan Island. Now Liu Shang sees The coal cargo ship that arrived was one of them.
And the congestion this time seemed to be more serious than the day before yesterday in Yinggehai. When dusk fell, there was still no sign of the fleet in front of them moving.Although Yu Xiaobao had a special status, it was not easy to use his privileges directly, so he asked Zhang Qianzhi to come forward, launch a small boat into the water, and a few sailors rowed the small boat into the port to see if there was any accommodation.
It wasn't until the lanterns were lit on the boat that Zhang Qianzhi finally came back, followed by several other small boats.After returning to the ship, Zhang Qianzhi informed everyone that the coal carrier that was docking in front had not finished unloading, and there were currently no vacant berths in the port, so he could only park the big ship on the coast, and then take a small boat to land in the port.If you want to wait for the big ship to enter the port, you have to wait at least until dawn tomorrow morning.
When everyone heard that, they had no choice but to go back to the cabin and took their belongings, then went down the gangway to the boat, and slowly headed towards the mouth of the sea.
When they arrived in the harbor, it was almost dark, and the small boats that everyone was on docked at a corner of the pier under the guidance of the lights of the staff on the shore.After Liu Shang went ashore, he found that he was stepping on soft ground, which didn't seem to be stone. Looking at the light of the lantern next to him, he found that the ground was actually full of coal.Looking to the side, I saw a mountain of coal piles on the pier, stretching to the end of the field of vision, and I don't know how many tens of millions of catties.Only then did Liu Shang realize that the place where they landed was a cargo wharf for unloading coal.
Liu Shang has no idea how many ships it takes to transport so much coal to this place, and how much it is worth. Anyway, in the past 30 years of his life, the coal he has seen is not as much as here.The coal wharf here can be said to be a symbol of Haihan's national strength. For Liu Shang, the visual and psychological impact is really not small.
Liu Shang followed the team in front, walked around the coal pile for a while, and finally came to the town outside the port.The town here is obviously not as lively as the Yacheng and Yinggehai I have been to before. At this time, there are almost no pedestrians on the street, and there are not many shops facing the street that are still open.
This scene is also related to the local social environment. Since the main industries in Changhua County are mining and smelting, and the products are basically digested by Haihan’s industrial system, there are not many floating population here, and the main areas of activity are concentrated near the port.As for foreign merchants, there are even fewer. Most of the goods coming in and out here are managed by the government, and there is not much cash flow. Naturally, the market is not as prosperous as the trading port.In addition, the air here is very heavy with coal dust. Many people don't like to come to Changhua for trade or settlement, so there are not many local shops.
The commercial area is replaced by a huge smelting workshop and steel workers' residential area. In terms of industrialization, this place is second only to Sanya Tiandu Industrial Zone in the Haihan territory, and the proportion of workers specializing in industrial manufacturing is also the highest in the country. .It is a little exaggerated to say that Changhua County can be said to have entered a quasi-industrialized society.
Although the county seat next to Changhua Port is not prosperous, it has been developed and constructed for several years, and the facilities and institutions that should be provided are also complete. After everyone came to the government-run guest house, Liu Shang found that the living conditions here are not as good as Other places are poor, but it may be due to the special local social environment that there are not so many rooms for receiving guests, only double rooms and four-person rooms are available.However, Liu Shang didn't care about these details. After having dinner with everyone in the guest house, he went back to his room on the third floor to rest.
But Liu Shang slept on the boat for a day, but at night he didn’t feel sleepy anymore. He still couldn’t fall asleep after his companion fell asleep. He only felt hot and humid all over, so he simply got up and went to the terrace, intending to enjoy the sea breeze before going into the house to sleep.However, when he came to the terrace, he unexpectedly found that there were many places in the distance glowing red light, which was very obvious in the night.Liu Shang looked around for a while before he came to his senses. Since this place is famous for smelting steel, there must be large and small furnaces. The red light in the distance should be those furnaces that are not extinguished day and night.
Looking at the distance, Liu Shang thought to himself that with the amount of steel needed to build railways and steam engines in Haihan, the steel production here must be astonishing, but he doesn't know how high or low it is compared with Foshan, Guangdong, which is known as the "Southern Iron Capital".
Foshan's two pillar industries, pottery and iron smelting, have a long history. Since the Song Dynasty, ironware has been exported overseas. By the Ming Dynasty, nearly [-]% of the local people were engaged in the iron smelting industry. Foshan has also become Guangdong. one of the business centers.
Liu Shang believes that there are tens of thousands of people engaged in the iron smelting industry in Foshan, and it is probably impossible for Changhua County to have such a large number of employees, and it may be possible to compete.But this kind of cognition is also because he has no idea that Haihan's smelting method is more advanced than Ming's existing technology, and the production scale is not the same. If he knows something about Changhua's smelting industry, he will probably I won't compare the two together.
In fact, almost half of the workers who live in Changhua and are engaged in the smelting industry are from Foshan, Guangdong. This is naturally one of the achievements of the civil affairs department.Since the start of the Shilu project in 1629, Haihan has simultaneously recruited craftsmen proficient in smelting in Foshan, and with the gradual formation of the Shilu-Changhua coal-iron composite system, the number of smelting craftsmen immigrants from Foshan has also increased year by year.It is not in vain that Haihan made great efforts to introduce skilled workers. The arrival of these craftsmen has indeed provided a great boost to Changhua's smelting industry. Old craftsmen with varying experience.Of course, the labor remuneration they received from Haihan after immigrating naturally also greatly exceeded the previous income level in Foshan.
The iron and steel output of Changhua County also surpassed the total iron and steel output of Guangdong, including Foshan, as early as three years ago.Now the production cost of Changhua Iron and Steel is much lower than that of Foshan, but Haihan’s domestic demand for steel is too large, so steel products are rarely exported, otherwise Foshan’s smelting industry will probably be like the salt industry. He was beaten up by Haihan's cheap industrial products.
Early the next morning, Qiao Zhiya, the chief official of Changhua County, also came to the guest house to meet Yu Xiaobao and his party.
Among the group of time travelers who had joined the army, Qiao Zhiya was one of the few who jumped from the military to the administration.Among the North American Gang who were often entrusted with important tasks in the early days of time travel, Qiao Zhiya was originally considered a backbone and had a bright future in the army, but now, apart from the surgeon Johnson who stayed in Sanya due to family reasons, only Qiao Zhiya is still there. Engaged in work that has little direct relationship with the military.The other several people have their own achievements. Wang Tom is now the commander of the navy, Roger is in Xingdao in the South China Sea, Shi Diwen is in charge of Zhoushan in Zhenjiang, Morgan has gone to Dengzhou in Shandong, and all of them have become generals in the army.
It's not that Qiao Zhiya doesn't have great ambitions, but he has been a chief officer in Changhua for a few years, and he seems to have gradually adapted to this relatively stable life, and he doesn't want to go out so much.Now that he is married and has a family, he has also married two concubines. With a son and a daughter at home, he doesn't even want to leave home to fight on the battlefield thousands of miles away.
For him personally, joining the army or politics has the opportunity to go to a higher place. Staying on Hainan Island as a magistrate actually has a lot of benefits. In addition to the convenience of life, it is also easier to keep close to Sanya Contact, maintain contacts and news channels.What's more, Changhua's smelting industry is an important condition for Haihan to enter the industrialized society. If he can make steady achievements in this position, there is really no need to go overseas to suffer.
Friends who subscribe to the original version and hope to communicate with the author can join the group 378375510
(End of this chapter)
Liu Shang continued to fall asleep after lunch. When he woke up, it was already in the afternoon. He got up and walked to the porthole to look out. He could vaguely see the shadow of the land. Judging from the route he traveled today, it should be Hainan. the west coast of the island.However, at this time the ship was still several miles away from the coastline, and it seemed that the ship would not be docked for a while.
Liu Shang doesn't have much experience in sailing, but he couldn't use natural references such as the sun and ocean currents to judge his position on the sea, so he asked other people right away, only to learn that he was about half a hour away from his destination. The voyage of time.
Liu Shang said casually: "I hope today will not be like the day before yesterday, when I was blocked outside the port and couldn't get in."
Someone next to him responded, "That's hard to say. Changhua Port is also notoriously congested. There are many small boats in the port, so maybe they are blocked outside. You can see the place where black smoke rises from the shore in the distance. It's Changhua County."
Sure enough, when the ship they took arrived at Changhua Port, they found that the situation here was exactly the same as when they entered Yinggehai Port the day before yesterday. A large number of cargo ships were parked outside the port waiting to pass.But these ships were not loaded with white salt, but black coal.The puffs of black smoke rising in the air not far away are all showing the uniqueness of this place.
A few years ago, Changhua was just a small county with a small population on the west coast of Qiongzhou Island in the Ming Dynasty. Even if it was only within the scope of this island, it had no reputation, but now it is called the city of steel in Haihan. In just a few years The magnitude of the change is astounding.However, Liu Shang does not know the past history of Changhua. He only knows that the Haihan people discovered an iron mine somewhere in the inland of this place, and then established a large-scale smelting workshop in Changhua, which is now the most important steel in Haihan. origin.And the cargo loaded on these cargo ships waiting to enter the port by the sea is the fuel shipped from the Annan Black Soil Port for the local smelting industry.
Changhua Port was originally just a small port in a fishing village at the mouth of Changjiang River.Although several freight terminals have been expanded on the banks of the Changjiang River in the past two years, due to the serious sedimentation at the mouth of the Changjiang River, deep-draft seagoing ships still need to be careful when entering and leaving Changhua Port. The navigation capacity of the port is still far behind the large ports such as Shengli Port, Sanya Port, and Danzhou Port, which have deep water and wide ports.
With Haihan's current engineering capabilities, it is still not enough to complete the project of dredging the channel of the river into the sea. Therefore, although the construction scale and supporting facilities of Changhua Port have not kept up with the actual needs of use, at this stage it is still only I can make do with it temporarily.However, the Ministry of Construction has put the expansion of Changhua Port on the agenda, but the specific implementation time and construction scale have yet to be decided after discussion by the Executive Committee.
Looking at the cargo ships full of coal on the shore, Liu Shang secretly admired Haihan's generosity. He even established a transnational shipping line for this purpose to provide coal for the smelting industry here.Thinking that An Nanguo on the other side of the sea can bear it, just like this, Haihan forcibly took over a large coal mine, and can still pretend that nothing happened all these years, and continue to make friends with Haihan.
But Liu Shang thought about it again, why is this not the case with the local governments in the southeast of Ming Dynasty? This Qiongzhou Island has been separated by the Haihan armed forces for several years. How could the Guangdong and Guangxi governments ever try to regain the sovereignty here?In the final analysis, it depends on who has the strongest fists. The armed forces that are against Hai Han have suffered more or less. After seeing Hai Han's terrifying military strength, it is indeed difficult for people to regenerate the heart of resistance.
What Liu Shang didn't know was that Haihan's overseas mining operations have long been far beyond this black soil port. The Miaoli Chusulkeng Oil Field in Taiwan Island, the Jinguashi Gold Mine in Jilonggang, the Fushan Copper Mine in Dengzhou, Shandong, and the South China Sea The tin mines in Bangka-Belitung Island, a large number of overseas mines are currently being mined, and after the local rough processing is completed, they will be transported back to Hainan for refining and purification.Most of the coal transported back to Changhua from Heitu Port will also be made into coke locally, which will then be used for smelting.
Although this overseas mining model is relatively inefficient and highly dependent on sea transportation capacity, it is the only way for Haihan to develop.Hainan Island has certain geographical advantages in the early stages of crossing, but there is an obvious disadvantage that the types of mineral resources are relatively limited, and local production alone cannot meet the needs of the Executive Committee for industrialization, and this kind of seizure of overseas mineral resources for development For Haihan, the method is more practical.
As for the demand for transport capacity, the Executive Committee believes that it is a double-edged sword. While these mineral routes occupy a large amount of maritime transport capacity, they have also played a huge role in stimulating Haihan's shipbuilding and shipping industries.Almost half of the [-]-ton cargo ships launched by various shipyards last year were allocated to these mineral routes as transport vehicles.Like Heitu Port, an energy output port that provides most of the coal for the entire Haihan Kingdom, it is equipped with a full fleet of four heavy-duty cargo ships, which are constantly transported back and forth between Heitu Port and Hainan Island. Now Liu Shang sees The coal cargo ship that arrived was one of them.
And the congestion this time seemed to be more serious than the day before yesterday in Yinggehai. When dusk fell, there was still no sign of the fleet in front of them moving.Although Yu Xiaobao had a special status, it was not easy to use his privileges directly, so he asked Zhang Qianzhi to come forward, launch a small boat into the water, and a few sailors rowed the small boat into the port to see if there was any accommodation.
It wasn't until the lanterns were lit on the boat that Zhang Qianzhi finally came back, followed by several other small boats.After returning to the ship, Zhang Qianzhi informed everyone that the coal carrier that was docking in front had not finished unloading, and there were currently no vacant berths in the port, so he could only park the big ship on the coast, and then take a small boat to land in the port.If you want to wait for the big ship to enter the port, you have to wait at least until dawn tomorrow morning.
When everyone heard that, they had no choice but to go back to the cabin and took their belongings, then went down the gangway to the boat, and slowly headed towards the mouth of the sea.
When they arrived in the harbor, it was almost dark, and the small boats that everyone was on docked at a corner of the pier under the guidance of the lights of the staff on the shore.After Liu Shang went ashore, he found that he was stepping on soft ground, which didn't seem to be stone. Looking at the light of the lantern next to him, he found that the ground was actually full of coal.Looking to the side, I saw a mountain of coal piles on the pier, stretching to the end of the field of vision, and I don't know how many tens of millions of catties.Only then did Liu Shang realize that the place where they landed was a cargo wharf for unloading coal.
Liu Shang has no idea how many ships it takes to transport so much coal to this place, and how much it is worth. Anyway, in the past 30 years of his life, the coal he has seen is not as much as here.The coal wharf here can be said to be a symbol of Haihan's national strength. For Liu Shang, the visual and psychological impact is really not small.
Liu Shang followed the team in front, walked around the coal pile for a while, and finally came to the town outside the port.The town here is obviously not as lively as the Yacheng and Yinggehai I have been to before. At this time, there are almost no pedestrians on the street, and there are not many shops facing the street that are still open.
This scene is also related to the local social environment. Since the main industries in Changhua County are mining and smelting, and the products are basically digested by Haihan’s industrial system, there are not many floating population here, and the main areas of activity are concentrated near the port.As for foreign merchants, there are even fewer. Most of the goods coming in and out here are managed by the government, and there is not much cash flow. Naturally, the market is not as prosperous as the trading port.In addition, the air here is very heavy with coal dust. Many people don't like to come to Changhua for trade or settlement, so there are not many local shops.
The commercial area is replaced by a huge smelting workshop and steel workers' residential area. In terms of industrialization, this place is second only to Sanya Tiandu Industrial Zone in the Haihan territory, and the proportion of workers specializing in industrial manufacturing is also the highest in the country. .It is a little exaggerated to say that Changhua County can be said to have entered a quasi-industrialized society.
Although the county seat next to Changhua Port is not prosperous, it has been developed and constructed for several years, and the facilities and institutions that should be provided are also complete. After everyone came to the government-run guest house, Liu Shang found that the living conditions here are not as good as Other places are poor, but it may be due to the special local social environment that there are not so many rooms for receiving guests, only double rooms and four-person rooms are available.However, Liu Shang didn't care about these details. After having dinner with everyone in the guest house, he went back to his room on the third floor to rest.
But Liu Shang slept on the boat for a day, but at night he didn’t feel sleepy anymore. He still couldn’t fall asleep after his companion fell asleep. He only felt hot and humid all over, so he simply got up and went to the terrace, intending to enjoy the sea breeze before going into the house to sleep.However, when he came to the terrace, he unexpectedly found that there were many places in the distance glowing red light, which was very obvious in the night.Liu Shang looked around for a while before he came to his senses. Since this place is famous for smelting steel, there must be large and small furnaces. The red light in the distance should be those furnaces that are not extinguished day and night.
Looking at the distance, Liu Shang thought to himself that with the amount of steel needed to build railways and steam engines in Haihan, the steel production here must be astonishing, but he doesn't know how high or low it is compared with Foshan, Guangdong, which is known as the "Southern Iron Capital".
Foshan's two pillar industries, pottery and iron smelting, have a long history. Since the Song Dynasty, ironware has been exported overseas. By the Ming Dynasty, nearly [-]% of the local people were engaged in the iron smelting industry. Foshan has also become Guangdong. one of the business centers.
Liu Shang believes that there are tens of thousands of people engaged in the iron smelting industry in Foshan, and it is probably impossible for Changhua County to have such a large number of employees, and it may be possible to compete.But this kind of cognition is also because he has no idea that Haihan's smelting method is more advanced than Ming's existing technology, and the production scale is not the same. If he knows something about Changhua's smelting industry, he will probably I won't compare the two together.
In fact, almost half of the workers who live in Changhua and are engaged in the smelting industry are from Foshan, Guangdong. This is naturally one of the achievements of the civil affairs department.Since the start of the Shilu project in 1629, Haihan has simultaneously recruited craftsmen proficient in smelting in Foshan, and with the gradual formation of the Shilu-Changhua coal-iron composite system, the number of smelting craftsmen immigrants from Foshan has also increased year by year.It is not in vain that Haihan made great efforts to introduce skilled workers. The arrival of these craftsmen has indeed provided a great boost to Changhua's smelting industry. Old craftsmen with varying experience.Of course, the labor remuneration they received from Haihan after immigrating naturally also greatly exceeded the previous income level in Foshan.
The iron and steel output of Changhua County also surpassed the total iron and steel output of Guangdong, including Foshan, as early as three years ago.Now the production cost of Changhua Iron and Steel is much lower than that of Foshan, but Haihan’s domestic demand for steel is too large, so steel products are rarely exported, otherwise Foshan’s smelting industry will probably be like the salt industry. He was beaten up by Haihan's cheap industrial products.
Early the next morning, Qiao Zhiya, the chief official of Changhua County, also came to the guest house to meet Yu Xiaobao and his party.
Among the group of time travelers who had joined the army, Qiao Zhiya was one of the few who jumped from the military to the administration.Among the North American Gang who were often entrusted with important tasks in the early days of time travel, Qiao Zhiya was originally considered a backbone and had a bright future in the army, but now, apart from the surgeon Johnson who stayed in Sanya due to family reasons, only Qiao Zhiya is still there. Engaged in work that has little direct relationship with the military.The other several people have their own achievements. Wang Tom is now the commander of the navy, Roger is in Xingdao in the South China Sea, Shi Diwen is in charge of Zhoushan in Zhenjiang, Morgan has gone to Dengzhou in Shandong, and all of them have become generals in the army.
It's not that Qiao Zhiya doesn't have great ambitions, but he has been a chief officer in Changhua for a few years, and he seems to have gradually adapted to this relatively stable life, and he doesn't want to go out so much.Now that he is married and has a family, he has also married two concubines. With a son and a daughter at home, he doesn't even want to leave home to fight on the battlefield thousands of miles away.
For him personally, joining the army or politics has the opportunity to go to a higher place. Staying on Hainan Island as a magistrate actually has a lot of benefits. In addition to the convenience of life, it is also easier to keep close to Sanya Contact, maintain contacts and news channels.What's more, Changhua's smelting industry is an important condition for Haihan to enter the industrialized society. If he can make steady achievements in this position, there is really no need to go overseas to suffer.
Friends who subscribe to the original version and hope to communicate with the author can join the group 378375510
(End of this chapter)