Meilin was worried about not being able to make it in time and delaying his trip to Nanjing. He was anxious every day.
There were blisters on his mouth, and Zhou Dongtian was so frightened that he did not dare to mention the words "going to Nanjing" again, so he had to hang out in Zhao's house every day. Fortunately, this meeting became so powerful that the printing equipment and equipment brought by the inspection team also arrived one after another. Zhou Dongtian Then we started the work of installing and debugging equipment. 【Read the latest chapter】
The printing office is located in a small courtyard in the abandoned garden of Zhao's house. At present, the ink and paper used in the printing press are still shipped from Lingao, and Zhao Yingong plans to deal with them locally in the future. The medicine needed for lithographic sealing is difficult to obtain locally, so it is better to purchase it from Lingao.
Hangzhou can easily purchase various kinds of native paper, although its smoothness and whiteness are not as good as Lingao's writing and printing paper.
As for ink, the locals could only deal with water-based ink such as pine smoke ink, so Zhao Yingong had to find his own way to deal with oil-based ink. His solution was to grow flax at Phoenix Villa. Linen is ready to be harvested for weaving, and linseed oil is a suitable oil base.
When Zhou Dongtian was assembling and debugging the equipment, he specially selected two local young people who had recently been admitted into the mansion, were mature, reliable and literate to serve as apprentices. The literacy rate in Jiangsu and Zhejiang was quite high in the late Ming Dynasty. In order to minimize literacy work, Zhao Yingong also paid attention to the basic educational level of the applicants when recruiting slaves.
Although some people think that printing workers should be recruited from Lingao, Zhou Dongtian disagrees: First of all, using a manual printing press is not an advanced technology and it is easy to maintain. It would be enough for him to teach by words and deeds for a month or two. Secondly, relying too much on personnel selected from Lingao could easily cause local personnel to become disengaged.
Zhou Dongtian taught them how to operate the machine step by step, including simple maintenance work. Because the type is too heavy and difficult to transport, the Hangzhou Printing Office is currently not equipped with typefaces and only uses the typefaces of shipped books for printing. Lithograph printing is used when independent plate making and printing is required.
The two young men were originally in awe of these iron objects full of strange objects: at first they were afraid that these things would "bite" people. Later, when Zhou Dongtian started the machine, he showed them its powerful printing capabilities. When it comes to ability, it turns into sincere admiration.
Young people accept new things easily, and after accepting, they often try their best to maintain the new things they identify with. Therefore, Zhou Dongtian did not want to recruit people from the many unemployed old engraving masters outside to start the machine. They still needed new people to use them when faced with new things.
"Both of these are printing presses from Guangli. It is said that they are from overseas." Zhou Dongtian said vaguely, "Except for Guangzhou, I can't find any other ones in the entire Ming Dynasty...
The two young people were very excited. Everyone understood what it meant to learn a skill. Few people understood the technology. What's even more valuable is that Mr. Zhou doesn't hide his secrets. He teaches everything he has to teach, and he tries his best to explain anything he doesn't understand. Compared to this time and space where skills are strictly kept secret, apprentices almost have to work as slaves for the master's family for several years before they can learn some superficial skills. They are simply saints. This careless old-time practice made the native workers cry in any enterprise under the control of the Senate.
Zhou Dongtian was not worried that they would suddenly escape and establish their own business or spread their technology. The technology of industrial society must have a sufficient material foundation. Without equipment and raw materials, they cannot replicate the production capacity of Hangzhou Printing House. It is not unheard of in Lingao that workers try to learn a certain technology or product secretly, especially Those naturalized migrant workers who were small handicraftsmen before coming to Lingao. But all their attempts failed without exception. Lingao's production model cannot be copied by small producers. Even if it could be replicated, the cost would be unimaginably high.
When Zhou Dongtian was training printing workers, Mei Lin basically instilled his architectural intentions and construction methods into the carpenter of the wooden cabinet, and he could safely leave the next project to the wooden cabinet.
In the city of Nanjing, hundreds of miles away from Hangzhou, two sedans carried by two people were passing by the main road next to Zhengyang Gate. The sedan stopped at a place not far from Chengtian Gate, but not yet considered a restricted area. The curtain of the sedan was slightly opened. Two men were looking at the majestic Forbidden City in Nanjing from the sedan window.
Sitting on the sedan chair were none other than Zhou Dongtian and Mei Lin. They were escorted by Sun Wangcai to Nanjing the day before. Temporarily resting on the outer cabinet opened by Qiwei outside Nanjing. I came to the city today specifically to inspect the local business conditions. When entering the city, Merlin specifically asked to take a look around the Forbidden City. As a member of the construction party, he had a strong interest in the Ming Forbidden City, which had only a few ruins left in the old time, and wanted to see it with his own eyes.
The Forbidden City in Nanjing is a complex of buildings with yellow glazed tile roofs surrounded by high walls that are five miles long from north to south and four miles wide from east to west. The vermilion palace walls of Chengtianmen have been stained and appear mottled. There are small trees and weeds on the roof of the city tower, which have obviously not been cleaned for a long time. As usual, there were a few eunuchs and guards at the entrance of the palace, but they were all listless.
Accompanying them into the city was a group of real old Voldemort residents recruited by Qi Weirui. Seeing how interested they were in the Forbidden City, they told them about the situation inside.
Within the palace city, Chengtian Gate is the boundary, and to the north of the gate is the Forbidden City. Walking through Duanmen and Meridian Gate, you will see three main halls: "Fengtian", "Jinshen" and "Huagai". There are also "Wenhua Hall", "Wuying Hall" and "Wuying Hall" on the east and west sides respectively. "Wenlou" and "Wulou".
This is the place where the emperor received homage from officials and held grand ceremonies.
To the north of the "Three Main Halls", all the way to the Houzai Gate, it belongs to the scope of the "Houting". There are many palaces with different names and an imperial flower garden. The emperor's daily life was there.
In addition to this part of the Forbidden City, a wide imperial road in the south of the palace stretches straight from the Wulong Bridge outside Chengtian Gate to the main entrance of the palace, Hongwu Gate.
On the east side of the imperial road, there are five ministries including officials, households, rituals, soldiers, and workers besides the Ministry of punishment, as well as the Zongren Mansion, Honglu Temple, Qintian Prison, Imperial Hospital, etc.; to the west of the imperial road is the highest It is the seat of the military establishment, the Fifth Military Governor's Office, as well as the Jinyiwei, General Affairs Office, Taichang Temple and other yamen.
"You know a lot. Have you ever been in there?" Zhou Dongtian suddenly became suspicious.
"How can a villain get in? But there are many husbands in Nanjing city. I heard them talk about many things in Nanjing Palace in the teahouse. So I know a little bit about it." Everyone nodded and bowed.
This large and magnificent palace city has been idle for more than 200 years since Emperor Chengzu moved the capital to Beijing. Now it has become depressed and dilapidated, and it is no longer what it used to be. The Emperor of the Ming Dynasty rarely left Beijing to visit the capital in the south. As a result, most of the palaces in the Forbidden City were in disrepair. Even those yamen where officials were always stationed had only a few people who came to the ministry to look after things. The so-called looking after things was nothing more than doing something. Because of this routine, the entrance halls are still neat and tidy, but most of the walls are in ruins and no one cares about them. A sect in dire straits. Merlin felt a little regretful;
Said: "Let's go".
The sedan traveled along the main road, and after passing Conggongyuan, the market became lively and prosperous.
it's clear. The warm spring sunshine slants down from the clear blue sky, casting the shadows of the row of houses on the left onto the wide road paved with bluestone slabs and onto the pedestrians. This main road in Nanjing was originally very wide, even though it could accommodate nine tracks. Since the Wanli Year, the population has grown rapidly and business has flourished. Residential houses and shops on both sides have encroached on the official road, and gradually the road has become Not as wide. Coupled with the large number of pedestrians on the streets, the roads are becoming increasingly crowded.
The shops on both sides are next to each other. Densely packed. Most of the shops have low eaves and wide facades: the black signboards at the front of the store read "Old silk and velvet shop", "Net towel Fake", "Hangzhou famous fragrance official soap...", "Sichuan-Guang groceries", "Northwest There are words such as "Full range of goods from East and West", "Inner corridor Lexian Hall's famous books are issued", "Shunchang No. Commerce Bank" and other words on the small leather goods sales, some of which are inlaid with gold powder. On the streets, people riding sedan chairs, riding donkeys,
People on foot come and go.
Merchants from all over gathered in the official gallery and in front of the ruined house, selling and displaying goods, and bargaining with customers. The wealthy gentry and Confucian scholars from all over the country talked loudly in the teahouse with lanterns hung in front of the door and various fresh flowers raised. The teahouse was packed and business was booming: the restaurant was bustling with people, music and music filled our ears, the wind carried the smiles and the delicious aroma of wine and food...
The accents on the streets and in shops are no longer exclusively Nanjing Mandarin, which is spoken in both the north and the south, but are filled with accents from the south and the north. In addition to the ordinary people from Huizhou, Jiangbei, Shandong and other places who come to this prosperous place to make a living, there are also many well-dressed wealthy gentry people among the people with accents from various places. The social turmoil and war in the late Ming Dynasty, the defeat in Liaodong, the chaos in Guizhou's She'an, and the endless "civil uprisings" in various places caused the local gentry to come to Jiangnan, where social order was stable, and come to this gentle rural gold-selling cave. Avoid the noise. Most of them brought with them a large family of servants and numerous gold and silver treasures, bought houses and land outside Nanjing, and lived a life of luxury and luxury.
The two elders sitting in the sedan chair were in different moods at the moment. Zhou Dongtian was quite surprised by the prosperity of Nanjing. In his opinion, it was not inferior to Hangzhou. It seems that the "capital effect" is still quite significant in this capital of the Ming Dynasty. Such a prosperous market obviously does not rely solely on Nanjing's local consumption power. @.
