When Luo Zhixue entered the Hunjiang Hotel, he carefully looked at the decoration inside the hotel.
This is a completely different decorative style from traditional Chinese-style buildings. The lobby on the first floor is very high and wide. Just by looking at the spaciousness and tallness, and the fact that the top is not arched, you can tell that this building is built with reinforced concrete. .
It would be difficult to build such a huge and spacious hall without using reinforced concrete as the main structure, and without using traditional arch structures or wooden beam structures.
From this aspect, it can also be said that the emergence of reinforced concrete has greatly improved the construction technology of the Chu Empire, and can better explore the art of architecture, allowing architectural designers to better utilize their talents and combine art and Advanced technology and practicality are better integrated.
In Luo Zhixue's opinion, the entire hall on the first floor already has the flavor of later modern architecture, but the interior decoration still has a strong traditional Chinese style.
But traces of modern industry can still be seen everywhere in the rich Chinese style!
For example, the floor in the lobby on the first floor of Hunjiang Hotel is made of large smooth, mirror-like ceramic tiles!
As a traditional porcelain country, China has naturally had ceramic tiles for laying floors for a long time. However, in the era of manual production, ceramic tiles were basically handmade works of art. The price was high and the area was not large. There was no large scale at all. When it enters the construction industry on a large scale, it is only used in a very small number of special buildings.
[In view of the general environment,
However, as industrialization continued to progress and various mechanical processing equipment, especially steam engines, entered all walks of life, the traditional porcelain industry also began to use mechanical equipment on a large scale and began industrial mass production.
The output of some large professional porcelain factories is very large.
At the same time, the production and R&D process of porcelain began to be more scientific and reasonable, and the porcelain produced was diverse and had better performance.
The only drawback is that the porcelain produced by modern porcelain factories is basically the same... tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pieces of the same porcelain are produced, all of which are exactly the same... no matter how good the design is, there is no artistry!
Art, originally, is about personalization. When personalization is gone, there is no art at all.
However, the porcelain developed and produced in the factory using modern technology has good quality, highly uniform size, high precision, standard coloring, no color difference, etc.
Therefore, the porcelain in the Dachu Empire today, regardless of whether it is for the domestic consumer market or for export, is all factory porcelain, with a very low cost... and a low selling price.
After the Chu Empire began to industrialize, porcelain, a traditional craft with artistic characteristics, was turned into a mass-produced cheap industrial product.
Moreover, in this process, in order to further develop the market, and at the same time, the domestic construction industry also has a strong demand for flooring materials, those porcelain manufacturers have also specially developed ceramic tiles for laying the floor.
Nowadays, these ceramic tiles have been used in various buildings, especially in some high-priced buildings.
This is the case in the Hunjiang Hotel, which uses large areas of polished tiles so that they look as smooth as a mirror, and they even reflect light...
At first glance, what the contemporary Chu people see is not art, but high-tech attributes!
Without sufficiently sophisticated technology, it would be impossible to create such large-area, smooth ceramic tiles that are also strong and wear-resistant.
After all, you want it to be smooth, and glass is smooth enough, but it is not strong or wear-resistant.
The smooth, mirror-like tile floor alone is enough to leave a deep impression on this hotel.
Many other aspects of the lobby on the first floor of Hunjiang Hotel also reveal the attributes of a combination of tradition, luxury and high technology.
For example, Luo Zhixue saw one of their bank-plated gift carts.
There is nothing special about the gift cart, but the smooth and polished silver-plated layer is worth mentioning.
said.
Don't think that silver plating is simple. In fact, this thing did not exist before. It was a chemical silver plating process that was developed by chemists from the Chu Empire in the 16th year of Chengshun.
From this, silver-plated products began to appear in large numbers, mainly used for decoration and tableware, but also for tools and luxury utensils.
Why don't you use pure silver or silver alloy? On the one hand, it is a price issue. On the other hand, the material properties of pure silver or silver alloy are not very good.
Silver-plated products are different. The interior is made of other materials such as steel, and there is only a layer of silver on the surface.
Therefore, it has the hardness and toughness of the inner steel material product, while the outer layer of silver is suitable for polishing and has very good chemical stability.
It is cheaper than gold plating and has a wider range of applications.
From a technical and application perspective, silver plating technology is much more important than gold plating technology.
Speaking of gold plating and silver plating, scientists from the Dachu Empire have developed an electroplating process in the laboratory in the past two years. In addition to gold plating, copper plating, etc., they are also exploring how to electroplat other metals to explore better ones. material properties, but there is still a long way to go before large-scale application, because this thing requires the use of electricity, and the electricity in the Dachu Empire currently only exists in a few top laboratories, using They also use chemical batteries to obtain electricity.
The five-story reinforced concrete in the Hunjiang Hotel, the ceramic tiles used to lay the floor, and the bank-plated luggage carts all look simple on the surface, and seem to be even less worth mentioning in the eyes of future generations, but everything inside Behind the same thing are the thirty years of industrialization efforts of the Chu Empire!
Without the industrialization efforts of the Chu Empire over the past thirty years, the Hunjiang Hotel would not have been built!
Let alone an entire hotel, we can't even get a small luggage trolley.
Let’s not talk about the silver plating process, just talk about the simplest but also the most core wheel structure in the gift cart.
This wheel uses a solid rubber tire. Although the source of rubber is still natural rubber, the rubber production industry is not that simple. This involves the rubber vulcanization process.
There are bearings inside the tires!
Bearings are even more difficult to deal with. The rolling bearings inside the small wheels used in small luggage carts may seem small, but they actually represent the top metallurgy and processing technology of the Da Chu Empire.
Because the bearings are made of high-hardness and wear-resistant manganese steel!
Not to mention the machinery and equipment used to process manganese steel.
Bearings produced with such high-performance materials and processing technology can produce wheels with strong load-bearing capacity and low friction coefficient, so that hotel staff can be very light when pushing the luggage trolley.
Otherwise, it would be better to just carry the luggage by hand...
And even such a small luggage cart cannot be built in those indigenous countries, let alone indigenous countries. Even if the Dachu Empire ten years ago wanted to build a luggage cart with the same performance level, That's also impossible.
This thing seems simple, but in fact it is a combination of various industrial fields such as metallurgy, finishing, and rubber chemicals in the Dachu Empire.
And similar situations can be found in every angle of the Hunjiang Hotel... not just in the Hunjiang Hotel, but even in every corner of the Da Chu Empire!
Even in remote rural areas, you can see the changes brought about by the rapid industrial development of the Chu Empire!
For example, although most of the clothes worn by farmers are still sewn by themselves, a considerable number of farmers no longer weave cloth themselves, but purchase cloth.
This is true for weaving, and even less people are engaged in spinning.
Because it’s not worthwhile.
Those damn textile factories are so inward-rolled that they keep the price of cloth extremely low. Personal hand-spinning and weaving of cloth is simply not comparable to these factories in terms of cost.
If you have this time, you can work part-time, or simply cultivate more grain or non-staple food, cash crops, or even go to the mountains to cut firewood and sell it to make more money.
Of course, if you have no other source of income, even
You don’t have to do odd jobs, and there’s no spare mountain wasteland for you to cultivate. If you insist on growing your own cotton, spinning and weaving all at once, without spending a dime, then no one can blame you...
For example, the dishes used by farmers... are basically porcelain produced on a large scale by the porcelain industry. After all, you can't let farmers buy hand-produced porcelain handicrafts, because they are so expensive!
In the past, if a child in a peasant family accidentally dropped a bowl, his parents would sigh and even fight him or her.
But now, if you drop it, it will drop... A porcelain bowl mass-produced in a porcelain factory is not worth much!
Many couples in ordinary families are willing to smash all kinds of exquisite vases and dishes when they quarrel... In the past, many people got so angry when they quarreled that they would not be able to do anything even if they had the exquisite dishes in their hands. It was too much. expensive!
The iron pot shovels used by farmers are basically cheap and easy-to-use iron pot shovels produced by machine factories using modern technology.
This is especially true for the various types of knives, farm tools and other iron products used by farmers.
It looks like just an ordinary hoe with an ordinary appearance, but its raw materials basically come from major steel plants, even some of the top domestic steel plants. The steel materials are produced using the latest production technology and then processed by various agricultural machinery factories. Come out after production.
This kind of modern industrially produced hoe is low-cost, and its performance far exceeds the traditional hand-produced iron hoe.
Even... some farms with mechanized production and horse plowing have begun to use steel farm tools in order to improve efficiency!
As for hardware tools, there are more steel products.
And where did a large amount of cheap steel come from? This is inseparable from decades of continuous research and progress in the steel smelting industry in the Da Chu Empire.
Therefore, despite the fact that some farmers in remote and backward areas still face the loess and turn their backs to the sky, which seems to have nothing to do with the rapid industrial development of the Chu Empire, in fact they are still actively or forced to integrate into the era of industrialization.
The wave of industrialization in the Chu Empire has been sweeping across the country for thirty years, and no one can stay out of it!
Because various industrialized products have penetrated into every corner of society, affecting all aspects of people's food, clothing, housing and transportation.
The industrialization of the Chu Empire was not just about trains and ships, it was about food, clothing, housing, transportation, and all aspects of life.
Trains and ships are just things with obvious features that people can easily notice. In fact, every corner of people's lives is filled with industrial products.
But people rarely notice them!
Even Luo Zhixue himself was the same. After entering the Hunjiang Hotel, what he paid attention to was not the details, but the decorative style. The last thing that attracted attention was the steam engine in the Hunjiang Hotel. of lifts.
When he saw this thing, Luo Zhixue thought for the first time that the elevator had been built, but after thinking about it carefully, he had never heard of any scientific research unit or enterprise under the empire building any elevators, let alone elevators, Da Chu A series of electromagnetic research in the empire are actually still in the theoretical and experimental stages.
Although DC generators had already appeared in the 23rd year of Chengshun, they were only laboratory products and were still far from practical applications.
Not to mention applying electricity to actual production and life.
There is not even a foundation for the application of electricity, so it is naturally impossible for elevators to appear.
After accompanying others to explain, I learned that this thing is not powered by electricity, but by a steam engine, and is lifted and lowered through a belt drive.
"Steam-powered elevators have been used frequently in the field of industrial transportation before, but due to safety concerns, they were generally used in cargo transportation. Passenger elevators only began to appear last year!"
"There is a private company in Songjiang that has invented a safety buckle for elevators. Even if the power suddenly disappears, the belt breaks, etc., the elevator will not suddenly fall, but will be directly locked, ensuring the lifting process. The security inside, with this kind of security
After it is fully buckled, the elevator begins to enter the field of mid- and high-rise buildings for passenger transportation! "
While Luo Zhixue was listening, he looked at the steam engine lift in front of him. From the appearance, it was similar to the modern elevators he had seen in some film and television dramas before. There were also people operating the lift inside.
Immediately, I walked in with several accompanying officials and experienced the passenger elevator... It actually felt pretty good. Ignoring the manual operation of the elevator operator, the experience of being a passenger was no different from riding the elevator in later generations... There is no need to press the elevator button yourself, just tell me which floor you want to go to.
After a group of people went directly to the fifth floor of the top floor, Luo Zhixue briefly freshened up and took a nap for an hour. Then he went to the conference room on the second floor to summon important officials from Liaodong Province and briefly listened to the local governor and other officials. our local development reports.
However, Luo Zhixue had known about these reports on economic figures before, and now they only have symbolic meaning.
But even so, Luo Zhixue listened more carefully and asked in detail about the local industrial development and food production.
Liaodong is the core province in the entire Northeast region. It has good population, industrial output and even food production. Luo Zhixue naturally needs to pay more attention to it.
After briefly listening to the report, Luo Zhixue visited and inspected several important factories in Shenyang City in the following days, and then headed towards a large government-run farm in the northern suburbs of Shenyang.
Luo Zhixue wants to go there to take a look at the mechanized farming model in the Northeast.
To be honest, in his two lifetimes, he has never seen a mechanized farming model powered by a steam engine.
