As a new industrial city, Xuzhou's urban area is different from many cities in that there is no mixture of old and new buildings.
Instead, the old city and the new city are separated and separated by a certain distance.
This is because at the beginning, the railway lines of the two trunk railways, the Central Plains Railway and the Longhai Railway, did not pass directly through the urban area.
At the same time, the newly invested and constructed factories were built near the railway station and the canal to facilitate transportation. Around these factories, many residential buildings were built, and these buildings used a large number of bricks and even reinforced concrete structures.
In the end, a brand new city gradually formed here. In the 27th year of Chengshun, the prefecture's Yamen of Xuzhou Prefecture and a large number of other government agencies simply moved to the new city.
Therefore, after Luo Zhixue arrived in Xuzhou, the city he saw was different from other traditional cities.
How should I put it? Other cities, even Jinling City, have a large number of traditional buildings. Among these traditional buildings, there are some new-style buildings mixed in.
But in Xuzhou, all you see are new-style buildings.
When the royal carriage passed by, Luo Zhixue saw that the street was very wide and there were tracks on the street. This was the track for the public carriage.
On both sides of the road, there are buildings of various new styles.
These so-called new-style buildings are actually buildings built using bricks and cement on a large scale. They are very different from traditional buildings that use a large amount of wood materials.
The roofs of most civil buildings still use tiles, but some buildings, especially the roofs of large official or commercial buildings, use steel cement panels.
These so-called new buildings evolved naturally from the extensive use of red bricks, blue bricks, cement, and steel bars.
It's not the result of Luo Zhixue's forced interference.
Speaking of these so-called new building materials, in fact some of them are not new at all!
Especially things like blue bricks and red bricks are nothing new. Fired bricks have been used to build houses thousands of years ago.
Not to mention the tiles.
Brick houses were nothing new in ancient times.
However, productivity in ancient times was too low, and the cost of building a brick house was too high. Ordinary families simply could not afford to build it.
However, in the Dachu Empire, it has now entered the middle and late stages of the first industrial revolution, especially the large-scale application of high-pressure steam engines, which has further promoted productivity.
In ancient times, the cost of firing bricks was high and the output was small.
However, in the Dachu Empire, there were specialized brick and tile factories everywhere, factories that fired red bricks or blue bricks, but they directly used a large amount of machinery and equipment to excavate materials and carry out mechanical processing and production.
Low cost and huge output!
In addition, there are steamships or trains as means of transportation on the way.
These have greatly reduced the cost of bricks and tiles, allowing the public to use bricks in large quantities.
The cement industry has been developing for nearly 20 years now.
From the beginning, the output was low and the cost was high. In the first few years after cement was invented and produced, cement was basically only used in a few specific fields, such as military buildings, royal palaces, high-level government buildings, and large-scale flood control. Engineering etc.
Later, as costs gradually decreased, cement materials began to be used in some commercial buildings. Around the 15th year of Chengshun, a large number of commercial companies began to use cement materials in building corporate headquarters and factories.
Twenty years after entering Chengshun, cement began to be used in ordinary residential buildings.
Today, in the 29th year of Chengshun, cement has become a widely used material in the construction industry of the Chu Empire, and even an indispensable material in some important buildings.
Of course, some low-end buildings in rural areas or urban areas still use a large amount of lime as the main building gel material. In addition, not all households can afford blue bricks, and other building materials will be used instead.
For example, in some hilly and mountainous areas in the south, low-cost mud bricks are still widely used in areas where there is no threat of floods.
However, in cities, among newly built houses, brick and cement houses have become the mainstream.
Because of the extensive use of new materials, especially the application of reinforced concrete, the architectural form has a larger design space, so the architectural form has gradually changed.
In particular, the buildings of various official and large-scale institutions, in order to facilitate office work, tend to be taller, larger, and wider in architectural form, and multi-story cement buildings have begun to appear.
These also influenced the architectural style of folk houses.
This has gradually led to the fact that some of the houses built by the Chu Empire in recent years are somewhat different from the traditional Chinese architectural style.
It’s not that people have changed, it’s that productivity has changed.
Buildings that had not been dared to be designed in the past were designed and built, and eventually a trend was formed.
After all, people like to live in spacious and sturdy houses with good lighting and ventilation.
Even ordinary families have such demands.
As an emerging industrial city, Xuzhou developed late and was differentiated from the original old city from the beginning. This resulted in the new urban areas of Xuzhou being basically all new-style buildings.
At the same time, because it is a purely newly built new urban area, the government has planned a complete urban plan from the beginning.
The combination of many kinds of things allowed Luo Zhixue to see a new type of city that was different from other cities.
How should I put it? At first glance, Luo Zhixue thought that he had traveled through time and space and gone to the twentieth century in the original time and space.
Riding on the royal carriage all the way, we soon arrived at a new-style villa manor in the center of the new city, near the canal.
The manor belonged to the local wealthy Liu family. After hearing that the emperor was going to Xuzhou for an inspection and that the government was trying to solve the palace problem, he offered to lend his manor to the government for a period of time to use as a temporary palace.
The Xuzhou government originally planned to build a temporary palace directly, but because Luo Zhixue had issued documents several times in advance, requiring all places not to be extravagant and wasteful, and not to build new palaces, they could only find existing buildings to requisition and renovate.
Since the head of the Liu family took the initiative to bring this matter up, the government took advantage of the situation and requisitioned it and made certain changes.
After staying at Liu's Manor, Luo Zhixue summoned local officials as usual, mainly including the governor of Jiangbei Province and other provincial officials who came from Huai'an, as well as local officials from Xuzhou Prefecture.
At the meeting, Luo Zhixue listened to reports from local officials such as the governor of Jiangbei Province and the prefect of Xuzhou Prefecture.
When he heard that the industrial output value of Xuzhou Prefecture had increased by 60% in the 28th year of Chengshun compared to the 27th year of Chengshun, and it still maintained rapid growth in the first quarter of this year, compared with the growth in the first quarter of last year Forty-five percent later.
He expressed pleasure at the speed of local industrial development in Xuzhou.
The growth rate of Xuzhou's industrial economy has been extremely exaggerated in the past four or five years. It can even be said that five years ago, there was no industry in Xuzhou. At most, there were only about a dozen small and medium-sized factories, and its industrial output value was not even as good as that of an ordinary factory in Shanghai County. Village...
In Shanghai County of Songjiang Prefecture, many villages have a large number of factories. Among them, Shanghe Village under Jiangbei Town has several large enterprises and dozens of medium-sized enterprises.
Its industrial output value can beat a large number of state capitals in the mainland.
However, with the opening of two main railway lines, Xuzhou's strategic position as a transportation hub has been established, and its transportation advantages have come into play instantly.
So far, the Ministry of Industry has directly invested in three companies in Xuzhou, namely Xuzhou Iron and Steel Company, Xuzhou Heavy Machinery Company, and Xuzhou Light Machinery Company. These are large enterprises directly invested by the Ministry of Industry.
At the same time, there are also investments made by enterprises affiliated to the Ministry of Industry. For example, Huaian Mining Company invested in a mining equipment production base here, and Jiangbei Chemical Industry invested in the construction of a chemical production base here.
At the same time, many civilian enterprises have also invested here. Li's Steel, the leading private enterprise, has invested in and built a civilian hardware production factory here, and plans to use Xuzhou as the main production base for the group's subsequent civilian five-pound business. .
Su Qin Textile Company invested in an advanced steam engine textile factory here, which mainly produces cloth and various types of finished textile products.
Whether official capital or private capital, they all value the importance of Xuzhou as a transportation hub, just as they previously valued the importance of Zhengzhou as a transportation hub.
Around this important transportation hub, many large companies will make investments to optimize their logistics systems, reduce logistics costs, and sell goods to more places through a better transportation environment.
Xuzhou is also one of them.
The next morning, Luo Zhixue began a formal inspection.
The first day of inspection mainly inspected several large enterprises in Xuzhou.
The first stop was Xuzhou Iron and Steel Company. Looking at Xuzhou Iron and Steel Company in front of it, which covers a huge area and has many huge buildings, Luo Zhixue, who has seen many large steel plants, was still filled with emotion.
Who would have thought that in the seventeenth century China, such a modern steel factory full of industrial power would appear.
Luo Zhixue himself sighed, not to mention others. Several older middle-aged and elderly people even whispered: If someone told me thirty years ago, there would be such a thing thirty years later. For a steel plant with such a large scale and output, I will definitely think he is crazy.
This is true!
Thirty years ago, no matter how powerful the imagination was, people could not have imagined that China would undergo such huge changes thirty years later!
Thirty years ago in the pre-Ming Dynasty, there was no word for industry, let alone a steel industry.
At that time, the most famous iron and steel industry in Foshan was the iron-making and steel industry in Foshan. However, the iron-making in Foshan was still in the traditional small manual workshop production mode. It seemed that there were a large number of employees, but the actual output was just that, and basically only iron could be smelted, and the steel output was extremely small. few.
At that time, Foshan Iron Smelting, which had an outstanding reputation, still used kilograms as the unit for its output... but now when the Da Chu Empire counts pig iron production, it uses 10,000 tons as the unit.
And if you pull out any medium-sized steel plant, its production capacity can exceed the total output of the iron-making industry in the pre-Ming Dynasty.
The steel production in the handicraft workshop era is incomparable with the steel production in the industrial age.
Neither is on the same level.
Even though only the first phase of the project has been completed and the second phase of the project is still under construction, Xuzhou Iron and Steel's pig iron production capacity alone has reached 120,000 tons.
This production capacity directly exceeds the global production capacity except for the Dachu Empire!
The current annual pig iron production capacity of all enterprises in the Dachu Empire has exceeded six million tons, which is a quite terrifying figure.
Because during the same period, the pig iron production capacity in the entire Europe was estimated to be only about 100,000 tons.
And this production capacity is still talking about pig iron, not steel production capacity.
Strictly speaking, pig iron production capacity and steel production capacity in steel production capacity need to be discussed separately, because the technical conditions contained in steel production capacity and pig iron production capacity are very different.
But at this time, if you want to compare the steel production capacity with the indigenous people, it would seem too bullying... because the indigenous people don't make much hand-made steel in total... using 10,000 tons as the unit... they can't even make one unit. .
It weighed several thousand tons, probably less than...
As for the Dachu Empire, in the twenty-eighth year of Chengshun, its crude steel production capacity reached 630,000 tons.
In terms of crude steel output, if we compare it with the Chu Empire, the indigenous people around the world will be even more desperate!
This is the charm and power of industry.
Of course, the reason why the Dachu Empire's steel production capacity has soared is also because the Dachu Empire has been booming in railway construction in the past eight or nine years, and it has a huge relationship with the large-scale construction of ships.
These two major industries are important reasons for the rapid development of the steel industry.
Without the huge demand from these two industries, steel companies would not be able to sell even if they produced a large amount of steel, and even if they could sell it, they would not be able to maintain profits.
After inspecting Xuzhou Iron and Steel Company, which is the cornerstone of industry, Luo Zhixue also went to Xuzhou Chemical Industry to inspect Xuzhou Chemical Company.
This company's products are considered a new industry. They mainly produce sulfuric acid, alkali and other by-products, such as hydrochloric acid, chlorine, bleaching powder, etc. The Ministry of Industry has attached great importance to it in recent years, and it is also the chemical factory with the largest investment.
At the same time, the factory is also the largest chemical factory in the area north of the Yangtze River. Since its construction, it has assumed the important task of providing various chemical industrial raw materials to the large area north of the Yangtze River.
After Luo Zhixue inspected the factory and encouraged the factory's management and employee representatives, he set off to visit several stores next door.
At the end of the day, some looked more carefully, while others took a quick look at seven factories. However, these seven factories were all in the same area and were not far apart, so they did not spend too much time.
In the evening, Luo Zhixue met with representatives of local workers, farmers and merchants at the district office of Xuzhou Industrial Development Zone, and after briefly encouraging them, he ended his day's trip.
The next day, Luo Zhixue went to the suburbs of Xuzhou to see a local new mechanized grain planting base, and in the afternoon went to a new vegetable planting base not far away.
He is rather interested in this vegetable planting base, because this vegetable planting base uses greenhouse cultivation.
Greenhouse cultivation is nothing new. Such a thing has been around since the Qin and Han Dynasties. However, the cost of greenhouse cultivation in ancient times was very high. Only high-ranking officials could afford to grow off-season vegetables.
In the Da Chu Empire, although the cost of greenhouse cultivation is still relatively high, it is not to the extent that only high-ranking officials can afford it. The ordinary middle class can grit their teeth and eat a few meals of fresh vegetables in the winter.
Because the greenhouse cultivation in the Da Chu Empire uses coal for heating... and the biggest cost of greenhouse cultivation is actually heating and insulation in the winter.
The ancients could only use charcoal. Even if coal could be used later, traditional manual mining of coal was expensive.
Unlike the Dachu Empire, the cost of large-scale industrial mining of coal is low.
The significant reduction in heating and insulation costs also allows off-season vegetables grown in greenhouses to enter the market and become high-end vegetables on the dining tables of decent families.
Over time, with the continuous advancement of technology, the cost of off-season vegetables continues to decrease, and sooner or later they will become daily food for ordinary people.
Technological progress can make people's lives better, which is why Luo Zhixue has spared no effort to promote various technological advances over the years.
If you want the country to be stronger and the people to live better, progress in science and technology is indispensable, even the most important.
