Most of the craftsmen who smelted and cast gun barrels at the Zhenghai Zhusongjiang Firearms Factory, including those hired by Zheng Zhilong from the Frankie Gun Factory in Macau, were illiterate, let alone drawing drawings.
Sun Yuanhua and Li Zhizao certainly welcome Gu Shouqian to join.
Mr. Gu knew "boundary painting" and could draw the perspective of pavilions and pavilions. He could also accurately draw the side and top views of guns and artillery. After marking the names and sizes of each part, it was used as precious information for the artillery factory. Retain.
Gu Shouqian was also a scholar. Sun and Li, who had achieved great success, talked about learning from Western techniques to strengthen the army. On the surface, they appeared to be in harmony with the illiterate craftsmen. In their hearts, they were like the private entrepreneurs of later generations. I am quite optimistic about the concentration of scholars in the team.
Gu Shouqian was in a good mood, thinking that he, like his wife Han Ximeng, started to be busy every day, not only traveling around the mountains and rivers, singing about the wind and the moon.
After a fulfilling little half month, Gu Shouqian estimated that it was almost time for Han Ximeng to return to Songjiang.
He was thinking about how to show off the embroidery he had carefully drawn with a cheerful face when he saw his wife and children. Unexpectedly, the only person waiting to come back was Dong Erya.
"Master, my mistress ordered me to go to Mr. Han's weaving workshop and take two spinners to Chongming." Dong Erya said carelessly.
Gu Shouqian looked suspicious: "The Chongming people are well-known for their spinning and weaving skills in South Zhili. Why do we, the Songjiang people, need to teach them?"
"Returning to the young master, Mrs. Zheng found a novel spinning machine in Chongming. One spinner can spin many cotton threads at the same time. But the machine is missing arms and legs. The young mistress and the madam have been thinking about it for several days and still can't figure it out. , I just want to invite some capable ladies from my master’s side to take a look.”
Gu Shouqian frowned as he listened.
He is a rich man who knows nothing about spinning and has no interest in it.
The expectation that his wife would return home suddenly came to nothing, which made the husband's manic-depressive mood faintly rise.
"Erya, you are rambling on and on. It's really confusing. Have they figured it out or not? If Zheng Haizhu didn't figure out the cleverness of the machine herself, how could she know how to make it work? One person can spin several balls of cotton yarn at the same time? Does she think that the two smart heads of herself and the young mistress are not enough, and she needs to add a few more to make it happen? "
Dong Erya is simple and honest, but not stupid.
She recognized the sarcasm in the male master's words, and stood frozen in fear for a moment, not knowing how to reply.
Gu's mother, Mrs. Lu, always had a soft heart, so she calmly said to Dong Erya: "Go to the Han Mansion to invite people. By the way, when you arrive in Chongming this time, tell the young mistress that the Waking of Insects has passed, and the island The number of insects must have increased. Just leave the craftsmen to ponder over there, and the young mistress should take the young master back to Songjiang as soon as possible."
Dong Erya grunted, went to the back house to pack up two summer dresses from Han Ximeng, and a few stuffed toys from young master Gu Zuoyou, and left the Wenzhe Garden like a rabbit.
…
In mid-spring, cotton seeds have been sown in dry fields, but the season for rice transplanting in paddy fields has not yet come.
Chongming Island, at the mouth of the Yangtze River, had a short period of leisure time for farming.
Zhengjiazhuang, with nearly 200 people, is much busier than the surrounding native villages.
Mao Chengbei's maritime trade dividends sent from Hangzhou Haoming Trading Co., Ltd., the matchlock gun payment paid by Yu Zigao of Fujian Province, plus the shipping insurance premium for the Zhenjiang to Songjiang section of the canal, excluding the various expenses of its industries, as well as the emergency payment for debts. After preparing the funds, Zheng Haizhu transferred a small amount of 500 taels of silver and asked the rice bank run by relatives in Yue Zhixian County to buy three months' worth of grain. The remaining money was enough to buy a lot of tiles.
"Dear fellow villagers, the rainy season is coming soon in the south of the Yangtze River. The musty smell and the smell of drowned chicken will not be pleasant. Let's take advantage of the leisure time to replace the thatch on our heads with tiles. By the end of the year, there will be cotton in the fields. After the harvest and salt cloth are exchanged for money, we will replace the mud walls of the house with brick walls and build fortifications outside the village."
After listening to Zheng Haizhu's mobilization, the villagers saw that the warehouses were filled with the grain bought by Manager Wu, and the tiles had arrived by the truckload, and their bodies were suddenly filled with chicken blood in the hope of improving their quality of life.
Even a young girl like Hua Er, who is not yet in her early teens, has the spirit to lead by example, and her efficiency in picking grass and laying tiles is not inferior to that of men.
When the hut got a new look, the two instructors selected by Wu Bondang from Zhenjiang Qi Jin, plus several canal trackers who had become soldiers of Zheng Haizhu and Han Ximeng, all came to Chongming Island to prepare for more than a month before the busy farming season. Here, led by General Xu Yilong of the Zheng Jiajun, they began to train the young people of Liao.
Zheng Haizhu fully believed in Qi Jiajun's training methods for the Yuanyang Formation infantry and Xu Yilong's training methods for the Jie Xian Tiao Gang navy.
As for the specific training, Zheng Haizhu did not ask about it. He only watched the Songjiang Firearms Factory send some machine guns so that the grassroots soldiers, whether on land or on ships, should get used to using firearms.
In terms of personnel organization, Zheng Haizhu divided the young and strong men into two echelons from the beginning.
The first echelon is composed of the most capable hundreds of people named by the instructors. They have the status of battalion soldiers and are divided into ten teams for training.
During the training period, the camp soldiers were given rations as usual, and each of them also received copper coins equivalent to half a tael of silver.
Wu Bond told them that Mrs. Zheng was not a real guerrilla general like the male military attachés. The court gave them quota but no salary, so every copper they got was like every mouthful of rice that the villagers ate this year. The lady took it out from her pocket. Looking at the Ming Dynasty, there is no commander of the second battalion who can be so righteous. Look at the arrogant Yao Qianhu in Beidao. He has been exploiting and humiliating the military households as tenants. After eating the flesh and blood of the military households, he can't wait to fatten the bones.
The first batch of battalion soldiers were moved when they heard this, but Zheng Haizhu didn't really claim to be so great and outstanding.
Her current situation as a soldier is actually similar to that of Mao Wenlong a few years later in real history. In the early years of Chongzhen, didn't Mao Wenlong also fail to get military pay from the court in Dongjiang Town, but he still led his soldiers to defend the country hungry? Even after Mao Shuai was forced to do nothing and wrote in black and white that Emperor Chongzhen requested to do border trade in exchange for rations, he was accused by Yuan Chonghuan of "trafficking for personal gain" and was put on the list of crimes that could be executed.
Is it painful or not, is it tiring? Think about the sins Mao Shuai suffered.
Zheng Haizhu then faced the grateful faces of the camp soldiers and said solemnly: "Steward Wu said that I am a Bodhisattva, but in fact I am a Vajra. You are all at an age where you can kill a tiger. If you don't train well... …”
Speaking of this, Zheng Haizhu stopped and glanced at the other thirty or forty young Liao citizens watching outside the school grounds.
That was the second echelon she named "Zhengjiazhuang Farmers and Soldiers", similar to the Xiangyong Reserves. The physical fitness of the members of the Agricultural and Military Corps is not bad, but when they were selected by the instructors, their reactions were relatively slow, or their strength was slightly lower, and they were not selected for the battalion.
Zheng Haizhu pointed at the male peasant soldiers and said to the camp soldiers: "If you do not train diligently, disobey the instructor, cheat, violate military discipline, or fail the instructor's performance evaluation after one month, you will have to be demoted to the peasant army." , replace the peasant soldiers with training, become my camp soldiers, and get my salary!"
】
Everyone responded one after another, showing high morale and unwillingness to be outdone.
The instructors formed the battalion soldiers and determined different types of arms such as spearmen, broadswordmen, shieldmen, and cane shieldmen in a small formation of twelve according to their own characteristics, and then started basic training by exercising their eyesight and reciting formulas.
Zheng Haizhu got on the mule cart driven by the girl Hua Er and returned to Po Tang's ancestral home in the county town to see the restoration progress of the Ming Dynasty version of the "Jenny Spinning Machine".
