It was August 14th in the third year of Ankang in the Ming Dynasty, and it was almost August 15th. The solar term had just passed ten days after the autumnal equinox.
However, this autumnal equinox is calculated according to the solar terms of the northern hemisphere.
The corresponding actual effect in the southern hemisphere is the Spring Equinox, and Qingming occurs fifteen days after the Spring Equinox.
Therefore, Xintianfu on August 15th is actually the Qingming Festival in spring.
This is the time of year when the climate is the most comfortable, and it is the most suitable time to go out for a walk, visit the garden, and do some small activities.
Zhu Jingyuan's two concubines, Liu Muyun and Yu Muxue, have been raising their second child for another two months, and now they can go out for activities again.
Zhu Jingyuan went to see Aoxue outside the palace. When he came back, Liu Muyun thought he was going horseback riding, so he agreed with Zhu Jingyuan that they would go horseback riding together after she gave birth to the child.
But when it comes time to actually take action, the object of riding has been replaced by a bicycle.
Zhu Jingyuan feels that bicycles are safer and more convenient than horses and will not disturb pedestrians on the road.
Yu Muxue originally didn't like to go out, but because of the ritual of the family's spring outing, she was pulled out together.
It's August 15th now. According to Emperor Shizu's regulations, schools and officials have three days off.
Wang Ya and Li Shuangni can also come out of school and go out to play with Zhu Jingyuan.
Among Zhu Jingyuan's maids, Chunxiang and Qiuyue are already very pregnant, and Xia He and Dongmei are also pregnant. They are not suitable for going out for activities now.
On the other hand, Xiaona, Xiaofu, Irene, and Feiya, the four Orchids, are still childless and light, so they can travel together.
Finally, there were sixteen accompanying escorts.
Zhu Jingyuan and the girls in his harem rode bicycles out of the east gate of Xintianfu Inner City together, and then walked slowly eastward along the wide road.
Although it is said that we are going out for a spring outing, the place east of Xintianfu City is not a place for outdoor spring outings.
According to the nine-square grid division of Xintianfu, this area will be a purely industrial area from now on.
Now there are construction sites on both sides of the main road out of the east gate, with factory workshops under construction everywhere.
In fact, these busy industrial zones and factories under construction are what Zhu Jingyuan cares about most.
In this era, uninhabited wild natural scenery is everywhere, but it is hard to find bustling industrial areas.
Farms in other areas of Xintianfu Outer City are gradually using tractors during the farming season before winter.
According to Zhu Jingyuan's plan, as long as a farm receives a tractor, five out of ten households will join the factory as workers.
As for the eastern part of the inner city, the farms closest to the inner city have all been converted into workers.
The farm land and village where they are located have been designated as factory construction land, and will be used to build the planned factory buildings.
During the adjustment experiments in the past few months, relevant personnel found no problems.
Turning yeoman farmers into workers is no small matter.
But the land in Xintianfu was originally owned by Huangzhuang, and the farmers in Xintianfu were not homesteaders who owned their own land.
All land is not distributed to each household, but is farmed collectively on farms.
After farmers' children get married, unless they are serving in the army, they are assigned to a new farm instead of staying to work on their parents' farm.
So these farmers are not so much farmers as they are agricultural production workers.
From the land to the factory, it was just a job change.
They have long been accustomed to working and receiving dividends, and the money they receive will increase after entering the factory.
Farmers whose land had been expropriated before the new factory was fully completed and started working are now busy on the construction site.
The environment of this kind of place is originally suitable for riding bicycles and riding horses for running in the wild.
Cycling is quite fashionable in this era.
Everyone from the nobility to the middle class likes it, and most ordinary workers can also participate.
This incident reduced the barriers between nobles and ordinary people.
In the original history, cycling was once used by Thai and Western women as a way to fight for freedom.
Initially women could only ride specialized tricycles.
Thai and Western women cannot wear pants and can only wear long skirts. Even if they go to the fields to collect wheat, they must wear skirts that reach their feet.
This kind of long skirt is easy to get caught in the bicycle chain.
In the early days, there were bicycles with large horizontal bars. The large bars would lift up the skirt, which would expose the legs that cannot be leaked.
Later, they designed pants that looked like skirts for riding normal bicycles.
The legs were as fat as the skirt, and they suddenly tightened when they reached the ankles.
As for the Orientals, Zhu Jingyuan and his women all changed into short outer robes, paired directly with pants and boots.
The image is like a later generation wearing a short windbreaker, loose trousers and boots.
The only exception was the Ottoman princess Irene.
She wore a dark green arrow-sleeved coat and a horse-faced skirt cut to knee length.
The skirt underneath is not traditional loose pants, but a pair of opaque thick pantyhose, or leggings.
Apart from Aoxue, Irene is probably the most unrestrained among Zhu Jingyuan's women.
Not only did he master the secret techniques of the Ottoman court, but he also learned a lot of Chinese and Indian techniques from books.
After Irene realized that Zhu Jingyuan preferred this kind of dress, she often wore it publicly.
Among all Zhu Jingyuan's women, she also has the most obvious image of Hu Ji.
Hu Ji's unrestrained nature also echoed the Ming people's perception, so no one expressed any opinions on her image.
Zhu Jingyuan not only ignored it, but guided them in the room to dress like this and observed whether other maids would learn from it.
Zhu Jingyuan is not just for his own personal preferences...
So far, pantyhose are not sold in the Ming Dynasty or other vassal states.
According to Niu Jian, people in Ming Dynasty currently have little interest in this product.
The key reason was that it was originally sold too expensively. Even if it was not a top-notch luxury product, it could still be worth a few bolts of silk.
When the price is no longer so scary, and more and more people have spare money, sooner or later someone will try it.
Aoxue and Irene are typical examples.
There should be very few people like them who dare to go out directly.
But there may be a lot of people who are willing to wear them at home and in their rooms, as well as try them on various romantic occasions.
The main reason is that the population base of Ming Dynasty is too large.
Zhu Jingyuan, who has experienced later generations, knows the many uses of stockings.
Once certain uses are discovered and spread, it will be difficult for you to pretend that they don’t exist, and you can’t just sell them in Thailand and the West.
If they were only sold in the West, it would be really embarrassing if silk stockings were smuggled from the West to the Ming Dynasty in the future.
So sooner or later this thing will be sold in the Ming Dynasty and other vassal states.
but--
We can't let this thing get to the Ming Dynasty man...
This was Zhu Jingyuan's instinctive thought.
Therefore, we should actively promote it to women of the Ming Dynasty.
Once the understanding that silk stockings are women's clothing is formed within the Ming Dynasty, men in the Ming Dynasty will probably not look at them anymore.
Zhu Jingyuan's initial idea was to integrate pantyhose into the middle clothing system of Ming women in the form of leggings.
Inside the traditional Ming Dynasty outerwear, there is also a middle coat, a middle skirt, a middle trousers, and a middle single (upper and lower parts are integrated).
Leggings should be able to replace mid-pants to some extent.
At the same time, with the process of industrialization, it is a natural trend for daily clothing to become shorter in order to facilitate work.
The clothing of men and women in the Ming Dynasty should also gradually shorten.
Dresses for formal occasions can continue to be of the original style.
But skirts for everyday wear can be cut off.
As for the method of promotion, Zhu Jingyuan first thought of the maids around him.
If your maids dress like this, subordinate officials, high-level officials of the imperial palace, and wealthy families may also ask their maids to imitate it.
This kind of clothing would have a chance to spread among groups such as maids and concubines.
The special functions of stockings are also consistent with their identities and can meet the preferences of a large number of men.
Then it can be promoted to groups such as dancers, and the characteristics of the stockings also fit their identities.
In history, Li Yu's specific operation of binding the dancer's feet should be to wrap the dancer's feet with silk...
Silk itself has no elasticity, so it can only be wound up in circles and then tied.
It should have a similar effect to Western ballet, and it should be in a similar direction to later men's preference for silk feet.
Elastic stockings don’t require so much fuss.
Once stockings are bound to the identities of maids, concubines, and dancers, serious men will probably have no idea of trying them on.
Eventually, the symbol of Thai and Western aristocratic men's clothing became the typical clothing of the maids of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Jingyuan was thinking in his mind, and the family rode for three kilometers along the road out of the city without encountering any accidents.
Although the farms in the outer city area are being converted into factories, the overall zoning still maintains the nine-square grid pattern.
The area under construction in the east of the city is mainly concentrated in three three-kilometer squares near the city wall.
Zhu Jingyuan and his party came out of the inner city and crossed this area horizontally to the east.
Three kilometers away, you can see the green wheat fields.
After arriving here, Zhu Jingyuan and his family stopped by the wheat field, chatting and walking in the cool spring breeze.
Yu Muxue yawned from time to time while looking at the wheat field. Liu Muyun picked up a small wooden stick and was tumbling about on the roadside.
Zhu Jingyuan was speechless looking at them, so he moved to Wang Ya:
"Ya'er, what do you think if I change the formal clothes of the maids to the style of Irene?
"Will I leave any bad comments or even get a name for myself?"
Wang Ya had already looked at Irene a few times, and after hearing Zhu Jingyuan's words, she looked at her a few more times.
After Zhu Jingyuan's initial enlightenment and two months of close communication, Wang Ya already understood her man.
Knowing that His Highness has no airs at all and likes people to tell the truth makes Wang Ya feel very comfortable:
"If you let your maids dress like Irene, there will definitely be not entirely positive comments.
"If it was just Hu Ji wearing this, it shouldn't have any impact. Everyone knows that they are wild by nature.
"And... Your Highness, you don't think that your reputation among the people is perfect...
“This little thing doesn’t change anything at all…
“But if you ask Sister Yun and I to dress like this, the impact may be more significant.
"The Supreme Emperor probably won't be able to get through..."
Zhu Jingyuan suddenly realized:
"I understand, then tell me, what did your classmates say about me when you were in school?"
Wang Ya immediately pursed her lips and said with a smile:
"They say you particularly like to play with orchids, and you also particularly like tall girls, as well as girls who are easy to give birth to."
】
Not far away, Li Shuangni wanted to laugh when he heard the first two sentences, but felt a little embarrassed when he heard the last one.
Wang Ya continued:
“But these are just rumors after all, and most people don’t believe them at all.
"Because this kind of preference is very different from the preference of the traditional Ming Dynasty wealthy people...
“But I now know that most of this is true, and sooner or later these situations will become truly publicized.
"These types of girls should be more popular in the future, and they should be grateful to you.
"Maybe some old masters will gossip, but I think it's not a bad thing overall..."
Zhu Jingyuan nodded lightly after hearing this:
"Yes, I don't think this is a bad thing. I know that my choices will actually affect ordinary people.
"Actually... I don't have a particular preference, as long as it makes me feel comfortable.
“However, because of my identity, to avoid bad influences in the future, I will avoid choosing petite and thin types.
“If people pursue tallness and good fertility, it will not affect the health of ordinary children.
"If there is a trend of favoring young and thin people, it may have a very bad impact.
"Take the foot-binding problem for example. Emperor Shizu struggled for half his life before it was completely cured."
Wang Ya nodded repeatedly and then praised her sincerely:
"Your Highness is really kind-hearted..."
Zhu Jingyuan and his family stayed at the edge of the field for about ten minutes before riding off again.
Finally, we circled around the three-kilometer square area and returned to the palace again at noon.
The next day, Zhu Jingyuan took his whole family to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with his grandparents.
Although it is spring in Xintianfu, the Mid-Autumn Festival is still celebrated according to the time in my hometown.
In the following months, Zhu Jingyuan's life stabilized.
I usually chat with my grandpa, go out for shooting training together, and review various available technical information.
View and approve the latest construction plans, view and inquire about the progress of all aspects of work.
The news that can be seen every now and then is the news about the completion of various factory constructions and the trial production of various production lines.
Various industries that were relocated from the Ming Dynasty are gradually being implemented after more than half a year of preparation.
The tractor factory that was the first to start construction and expansion has entered mass production in the second half of the year.
However, the diesel engines currently used are mainly shipped from Daming, and the local engine factory's production capacity has not yet increased.
It is not expected that local production of major components will be possible until the end of next year.
If all parts and materials are produced locally, Zhu Jingyuan will not be able to see it before he leaves.
An industrial-based organization must have two five-year plans.
Zhu Jingyuan's role is to make plans, determine goals and directions, and lay the foundation for construction.
