The Ankang decade is coming to an end, and so is Zhu Jingyuan's two-year term in Xi'an.
Zhu Jingyuan's reform work in the northwest provinces and vassal states can only be regarded as the beginning so far.
There are still various small problems, but the direction and solutions have been basically determined.
If we insist on statistics, we can see a lot of achievements now.
In the reports submitted by the Chief Secretaries, one can see the list of completed relocations, which is densely packed on many pages.
The first to migrate were remote settlements with only a few dozen or even a dozen families.
It might be in a valley at the foot of a mountain, in an oasis on the edge of a desert, or on a small grassland.
Going to such places to repair roads, pull wires, organize and build schools, go there regularly to register household registration, and handle certain disputes in grassroots administrative affairs are things that the real grassroots officials at the county and township levels in Ming Dynasty hate deeply.
Objectively speaking, it is basically impossible to fully realize it under the current level of technology and productivity.
Even in Zhu Jingyuan's previous life, the super-industrial country of the 21st century did not realize that all residential areas were connected to roads...
The vast majority of officials responsible for relevant matters have been in a de facto state of inaction for a long time.
There is a requirement above, but in reality it is not possible.
The settlements in this type of place are basically in a primitive state of autonomy.
Most grassroots officials only know that there is such a place and how many households there are.
That is to say, when I first took office, I might go there once for a tour, but then I would basically not go to the local area again.
I can’t say that I don’t know everything about the real-time situation, but I can only say that it is very limited.
Of course, this is already a huge improvement compared to any dynasty before the Renwu Dynasty.
Previous dynasties and regimes may not have even known about the existence of small settlements of similar levels.
Now, the Central Court of the Ming Dynasty, the Daming Royal Family Consortium, and the Daming Airlines jointly provide money. The Daming Royal Family Consortium and the Daming Airlines provide fairly good jobs at the same time, and provide a relatively reasonable resettlement plan.
Now local officials are required to take responsibility for relocating the population of such residential areas to designated big cities.
Of course this is hard work.
Ordinary officials at the grassroots level are not very happy to do this kind of work.
However, once this matter is completed, the long-standing potential crisis of "inadequate governance" can be eliminated.
In the past, the imperial censor wanted to investigate the neglect of the successor officials. As long as he visited the registered remote villages, he could easily find out what they were doing.
Coupled with the practical subsidies and the push back of assessment tasks, officials in various places have the motivation to solve this kind of work regardless of whether they are really willing to do it or not.
Specific to different regions, the place with the best migration effect is the snowy plateau.
Officials in other regions have to handle the original daily management affairs and establish and organize government-run manufacturers.
Plan future urban expansion plans for core cities, assess the rate of in-migration and arrange the construction of residential areas.
While handling these affairs, he is also responsible for relocation and arranging residents from remote places.
The tasks of the officials on the snowy plateau are relatively simple.
Except for big cities like Luoche City, the capital, all other affairs in other areas can be basically given up.
They just need to focus on migrating people outwards.
After residents send it outside, local officials are responsible for accepting and managing it.
The construction of corresponding target cities is of course also a matter for local officials.
The work arrangements for the relocated population are also a matter for local government-owned manufacturers, the royal consortium, and Daming Airlines.
As for the several government offices in Luoxue City, the capital of the Snowy Region, they have become the most leisurely departments in the past two years.
Since the Renwu Dynasty transformed the Snowy Plateau system, the Snowy Plateau has tended to spontaneously urbanize.
The capital, Luoche City, initially had less than 20,000 people. After more than a hundred years of continuous development, it now has 200,000 people.
At present, the population migration work plan for the entire northwest region is carried out in order from small to large.
The difference is that other areas migrated from remote settlements to local large cities.
The Snowy Plateau is mainly about moving from remote settlements to large cities in other places.
Luoche City does not need to accept the remote residents of the snowy plateau.
At the same time, since the residents of Luoxue City will gradually move out in the future, several major reforms do not need to be implemented.
The residents of the areas under Luozhe Mansion moved out, and the affairs of Luozhe's own yamen also decreased at the same time.
However, neither Zhu Jingyuan nor the corresponding departments in the imperial court could leave these bureaucrats idle.
Officials from Luoche Prefecture have been gradually transferred overseas in the past two years to guide and lead local residents to relocate elsewhere.
Only after all the dispersed population on the snowy plateau has moved out will they consider moving to big cities such as Luoche.
This is not a project that can be completed overnight.
It is impossible to see any news about progress changes before Zhu Jingyuan leaves office this time.
Overall, results have indeed been achieved, but it will take several years to truly achieve the expected final results.
At the end of the year, Zhu Jingyuan browsed various summary reports compiled by various yamen.
After having a good idea of the local situation, the main focus turned to the next stage of practical training.
After the New Year holiday in the eleventh year of Ankang, Zhu Jingyuan received new appointments from his father and the court.
This is Zhu Jingyuan's last stage of local governance training.
After excluding the places where he had already served and supervised, and considering his current special status, Zhu Jingyuan had already made assumptions about his last local mission.
After the local governance training is over and before returning to the capital, there is only one place he can go.
Jianghuai, Jiangnan.
Finally, the news and appointments from his father and the court also verified Zhu Jingyuan’s guess:
"Chief envoy of Jianghuai Province, governor of military and political affairs in the southern region, and involved in foreign affairs."
The southern region referred to by the Ming Dynasty refers to the core native provinces including Jianghuai Province, most of which are located south of the Qinling Mountains and the Huaihe River and north of Jiaozhi.
Jianghuai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Huguang, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and Guangdong.
Among them are the most affluent places in the Ming Dynasty, as well as truly remote mountainous areas. The overall situation can be said to be very complex.
In terms of possible problems, there are problems in remote minority areas in the northwest, problems with people's livelihood, capital, and bureaucracy in highly developed areas, as well as problems with foreign trade and out-migration.
And, the clan forces prevalent in these areas are more powerful than those in the Northwest and Central Plains...
This is likely to be one of my priorities in the next two years.
After Zhu Jingyuan received the appointment letter, he said goodbye to officials from all over the northwest and took his family to the south again.
The family members traveling this time included Queen Charlotte of the United States.
During the Chinese New Year last year, Charlotte came to Xi'an to meet Zhu Jingyuan, and then Charlotte started pregnancy preparations.
I asked the doctor to do a physical examination, took good care of my body according to Dr. Daming's advice, and started to quit drinking.
Two months later, Zhu Jingyuan began working with Charlotte to have a baby.
After three months of trying, Charlotte was finally pregnant.
It was May of the tenth year of Ankang.
By the end of January of the 11th year of Ankang, the child in Charlotte's belly is already eight months old.
Eight months has reached its maximum, but now it’s time to go.
If he were to give birth in Xi'an, he would have to wait another two months for the delivery date, and then recuperate for a month or two before setting off.
After all this trouble, it may not be until June when Zhu Jingyuan takes office in Yingtian Mansion.
Zhu Jingyuan's other concubines also followed him with seven or eight months of pregnancy when he took office. Now it is impossible for him to stay alone to take care of Charlotte.
Zhu Jingyuan is both a king and a prince, and there will be no shortage of caring staff around him, as well as special trains and ships.
As long as it's not really the time of delivery, the fact that the wife and concubine are pregnant with the child will not affect the trip.
Charlotte, meanwhile, historically died in childbirth.
Although the child's father has changed, the child itself has also changed, and it may not be difficult to deliver this time.
But to be cautious, it is best to be prepared for a caesarean section when giving birth.
In this world, caesarean section is not a particularly common technique, and it relies more on the doctor's experience.
Compared with Xi'an, which is far inland, doctors in Yingtianfu, the most prosperous area of Ming Dynasty, have more experience.
The overall medical level here is also higher, and it is obviously safer to give birth in the Forbidden City in Nanjing.
Zhu Jingyuan could arrange for the imperial doctors from Yingtian Mansion and Shuntian Mansion to be dispatched, but it would obviously be safer to let the doctors work in places they are familiar with.
So Zhu Jingyuan had no reason to let Charlotte continue to stay in Xi'an.
Two years later, Zhu Jingyuan got on the same train again and returned to Jiangnan along the same route he took two years ago.
Zhu Jingyuan sat by the window again, admiring the scenery beside the railway outside the window, or in other words, observing the scenes on both sides.
As the train continued to move forward, Zhu Jingyuan slowly discovered that the surrounding rural and urban scenes had changed again compared to two years ago.
Zhu Jingyuan couldn't explain it at once, but after seeing more, he realized that there were more machines and fewer people.
Two years ago, on his way here, Zhu Jingyuan could often see villages that were still relatively crowded, many of which seemed to be home to dozens of families.
There are many people inside and outside the village, there are also conspicuous stables and cattle pens, and there are farmers riding horses.
That is the villages that have not yet replaced agricultural machinery on a large scale and still rely on manpower and horses for plowing.
At that time, many villages had begun to replace the latest agricultural machinery.
The stables in many villages are empty, and some have been converted into garages.
Some villages have built simple airstrips, and agricultural aircraft can be seen flying.
In all villages of this type, there are fewer people in and around the village, and there may be only a dozen families left, because there are no longer need for so many people to work in the village.
However, these so-called villages are not actually the rural areas that Zhu Jingyuan was accustomed to in his previous life, but are gathering places for workers on large farms.
Usually one or two families were the farmers, while most of the other families were his servants.
Or they are all hired workers.
The land surrounding these villages is also usually owned by one or two families.
Or directly the land of Huangzhuang.
The villagers living in these villages are basically wage laborers.
Now two years later, there are almost no densely populated farms anymore, and the stables are almost empty.
On the contrary, garages and airstrips have become almost universal.
There were once again fewer active residents in and around the villages, and in most villages no one could be seen at all.
Only the surrounding cultivated and well-seeded land indicates that people are still producing here.
A village that originally had hundreds of people living there may now only have a few families left.
On a farm that originally had only a dozen or so families, there may even be only one family left, with the farmer himself being the only one left.
While Zhu Jingyuan sighed in his heart, he also subconsciously recalled the data he had read.
Daming's local mechanical production capacity is really very strong.
We designed our own mature diesel engines and agricultural machinery. After actual testing, they were spread very quickly in the local market.
Both private farmers and Huangzhuang farm operators quickly purchased these agricultural machinery.
In the Central Plains region of the Ming Dynasty, where the economy and industry were the most developed, the transition from animal power to mechanization was very fast, and it entered the final stage in just a few years.
At the same time, in the past few years, the size of built-up areas in major cities in Ming Dynasty has also expanded.
This is particularly evident in the great plains of the Central Plains.
But after entering Jianghuai Province, this trend slowed down slightly.
There are a lot of small towns here.
Zhu Jingyuan has long known that large-scale scattered small towns can only be built in relatively wealthy places.
This is because the local area needs to have enough money and resources to provide relatively high-quality basic living facilities and services to the small residential areas even though the population is relatively dispersed.
Formerly Nanzhili, now Jianghuai Province, its central and southern regions are the most economically and industrially developed regions in the world.
Traditional Ming people have a deep attachment to their land and hometown.
Even after entering the industrial age, while wealthy businessmen in the Jianghuai region are opening factories, many people will still retain or invest in traditional land and farms.
This has promoted the construction of small towns in the central and southern regions of Jianghuai Province. Many towns and villages have various large and small private factories.
When we reached the county level, various medium-sized factories sprouted everywhere.
When it reaches the prefectural level, many local industries in big prefectures have already taken the lead in the entire Ming Dynasty.
On the contrary, when it reaches the level of a provincial city, the size of the city does not have much advantage compared to its subordinate prefectural cities and inland provincial cities.
Yingtianfu is the capital, but its overall economic strength is on the same level as Suzhou and Songjiang.
For people in the Jianghuai area, they may regard the provincial capital as another prefectural city.
Your Yingtian Mansion is your mansion, and my Suzhou Mansion is also my mansion...
The characteristics of bulk Jiangsu may have existed since the Ming Dynasty and the Zhili era.
Southern Zhili was originally a group of prefectures directly under the Central Government, all of which were directly under the administration of Nanjing. There was no such province as Southern Zhili.
Now that the Ming Dynasty has established Jianghuai Province, this concept will be difficult to eliminate in the short term...
When the provincial capitals, prefectures, counties, and built-up areas of towns and villages in Jianghuai Province gradually became connected, the train Zhu Jingyuan took also entered the urban area of Yingtianfu.
Yingtianfu is one of the most developed cities in the Ming Dynasty, and also one of the most antique cities in terms of overall construction.
Because it is another capital of the Ming Dynasty, and even the real spiritual capital, there are a large number of official and royal buildings with political and cultural traditional attributes in the city.
These buildings have the strongest traditional style, and their existence has influenced the style of the houses of the local wealthy class.
Therefore, in residential areas in the city, you can often see traditional garden-style buildings with cornices and brackets, carved railings and painted buildings.
Zhu Jingyuan returned here again after two years of absence, and felt a little emotional when looking at these pictures.
This was Charlotte's first visit to the richest place in the Ming Dynasty, and her first visit to another nominal capital of the Ming Dynasty.
Extraordinarily novel and exciting, I leaned against the window and stared at the surrounding scene with my eyes wide open.
"This is Yingtian Mansion. We have finally arrived at Yingtian Mansion, the heart of the largest empire in the world!"
Two maids from the King's Palace and two royal maids from England were guarding Charlotte.
They are all very worried about Charlotte's belly. If something happens, they will not be able to escape responsibility.
Fortunately, this concern did not last long.
After the train entered the urban area of Nanjing, it shut down its engine and continued to slide forward on the rails.
Finally, it stopped at the platform dedicated to the royal family in the imperial city.
(End of chapter)
