I want to be emperor

Chapter 562
The palace construction plan finalized by Chengshun in four years is a very large building complex construction plan, not only the reconstruction of the Nanjing Imperial Palace in the pre-Ming Dynasty, but also the imperial garden outside the palace. The scope of this imperial garden is extremely wide.

It also includes a large number of administrative buildings, that is, office buildings for the various departments.

Today, the office locations of many Gyeonggi institutions in the Great Chu Empire are very scattered, and this overly scattered office locations has also led to a reduction in office efficiency.

Considering the improvement of office efficiency and the convenience of security work, while the palace is being built, a number of office buildings will be densely built in the surrounding area of ​​the palace for the offices of various ministries in Gyeonggi Province.

Once the construction of the entire imperial palace and ancillary office buildings is completed, the entire Jinling City will be divided into three parts, and its eastern area will become the imperial palace, the office areas of major institutions, the guard camp, and a small number of living facilities. It is mainly a collective dormitory specially used for the office staff of the nearby yamen.

This area will extend from the Tongjimen area to the north, that is, along Taiping Street to Xuanwu Lake, and the east, north and south will directly extend to the city wall of Jinling City.

That is, to Taipingmen in the north, Chaoyangmen in the east, Zhengyangmen in the south, and Taiping Street in the west.

This place was expanded from the imperial city during the Ming Dynasty, and the area was greatly increased. A new city wall was built on Taiping Street. This city wall was not used to resist any foreign enemies, but purely for It is divided from the living area in the western area, because the thickness is average, but it is relatively high.

The western area of ​​Jinling’s inner city, all the way to the Yangtze River, exists as an ordinary living area and commercial area, and will be re-planned in the future to ensure that the roads are wide and straight, and a large number of old illegal buildings will be demolished.

Outside the inner city is the outer city. This area is very large, and it is also a living area and a commercial area, as well as some industrial areas.

The planning of the entire Jinling City, Luo Zhixue is based on some views of later generations, and also combines some of the current actual conditions of Jinling City. The main starting point is to ensure the smooth operation of all major institutions in Gyeonggi.

After all, there are many officials and guards in Gyeonggi-ri, plus their family members and servants, the total number has exceeded 20, which is quite a huge number.

The entire Jinling City is actually serving these officials, soldiers, and their families in Gyeonggi.

As for other commercial things, they are all incidental... Well, although the business in Jinling City is very developed.

Because Jinling City is the political center of the Great Chu Empire, the rule of the millions of territories actually controlled by the entire empire, as well as numerous military decisions, need to be made and issued here.

In this way, the planning of the entire Jinling City is more about how to improve office efficiency and provide these personnel with convenient living conditions.

In the entire planning of Jinling City, the planning of the eastern office area, including the imperial palace, is the top priority.

Many buildings in this area have been completed in the past few years. For example, most of the office buildings of an organization have been completed. Many buildings in the palace, such as the main halls, have entered the final stage. stage, and the place where the royal family really lives, that is, the harem, covers a larger area and extends to the north to expand a large area. Drains, flowers and plants, cobblestone roads and so on.

On the whole, the palace departments and the office buildings of the main yamen have almost been repaired. The reason why they can be repaired so quickly is that the Great Chu Empire has money and can search for various building materials across the country, and then use them again. A large number of prisoners of war carried out construction.

And the most important thing is that when Luo Zhixue built the palace, he had a lot of ready-made building materials...

The construction of traditional halls, especially the halls in various palaces with strong political significance, is very difficult, or the requirements for building materials are particularly high, such as white marble and precious wood.

The load-bearing wooden pillars used in the main hall are very difficult to obtain. They all have to be felled from the deep mountains and old forests in the southwest provinces and transported out, and then it takes a long time to dry and process...

The reason why large buildings in ancient times were repaired slowly was that most of the time was actually spent on the transportation and processing of building materials.

Especially when the precious wood and stone materials have gone up, there is not much time to actually repair the house.

In order to solve the problem of building materials, the Great Chu Empire started the demolition mode. The precious building materials in some vassal palaces in various places, and even the former Ming Forbidden City Palace in Youzhou City, were all demolished...

Some curios or decorations were packed and transported directly to Jinling City.

All kinds of precious wood and building materials such as white marble are also packaged in ships. Although demolition is troublesome and costly, it is easier than going to remote areas for felling and processing.

Therefore, while the Jinling Imperial Palace continued to take shape, many of the former Ming vassal palaces in various places were also demolished to pieces, and the Forbidden City was no exception...

This Forbidden City is too special to be used as the residence of any official government. As for the residence of some feudal prince, Luo Zhixue has only two sons at the moment, and the oldest is only over three years old. Go to various parts of the Central Plains.

The world is so big, there is no need to keep staring at the Central Plains!
The only future use of the Forbidden City is to act as a residence for Luo Zhixue when he goes north... But Luo Zhixue has nothing to do and won't go north, even if he goes to the north for inspections, he won't go to Youzhou, but Will and Tianjin, where the governor of Hebei is located.

In order to prevent the influence of the remnants of the previous Ming Dynasty, the Great Chu Empire did not set up any administrative or military centers in Youzhou City at all. The Great Chu Empire directly established Hebei Governor's Yamen, Hebei Garrison Command and other provincial institutions in Tianjin.

The development of Tianjin has been extremely rapid in recent years. The Great Chu Empire not only established various government agencies in Hebei Province, such as the Hebei Governor's Office and the Hebei Garrison Command, but also planned and built Tianjin Industrial Base.

Relying on local natural resources and human resources, and more convenient canals and shipping conditions, Tianjin has now established four large-scale defense supporting enterprises: Tianjin Iron and Steel Factory, Tianjin Machinery Factory, Tianjin Armory Factory, and Tianjin Shipyard.

Around these four large factories, the Ministry of Industry has also invested in the establishment of more than ten supporting factories.

So far, the Ministry of Industry has preliminarily built a relatively complete industrial base in Tianjin, and has also supported and encouraged private capital to invest.

Today, although Tianjin's industrial scale is far from being comparable to the large industrial bases of Dangtu, Daye, and Songjiang, it is actually not weaker than Guangzhou.

After all, Tianjin's geographical location is very special. It is located in the transportation center of northern China. It has canals and sea transportation to connect the north and the south. To the west is Liaodong, and to the north is Monan Mongolia. Its geographical location naturally determines that it can absorb the surrounding population resources and The influx of industrial raw materials and even agricultural products.

In addition, the above status can also provide sufficient market for many factories in Tianjin!

Not to mention the private market, even if it is related to the national defense industry, the large number of troops deployed by the Great Chu Empire in the northern region, and the large amount of weapons and equipment they need to consume, as well as ordinary military supplies such as clothing, have made the major defense-related enterprises in the Tianjin Industrial Zone Plenty of orders were obtained.

And behind these defense factories, there are many related enterprises.

A large number of military orders from the imperial military directly drove the development of the entire northern industrial system, well, it can also be directly said to be the development of Tianjin's industrial system.

Under such circumstances, Tianjin has replaced Youzhou as the political and economic center of the empire in the north.

In the future, the meaning of Youzhou City in the Great Chu Empire will be able to be used as a military fortress in the next few years. After all, the walls of Youzhou City are still quite tall and thick... However, this is due to the strong rise of foreign races in the north, which frequently threaten the Hebei area circumstances can be realized.

As the threat of Monan Mongolia gradually disappears, the military function of Youzhou City will also decline rapidly, and eventually, it will gradually evolve into an ordinary city.

Under such circumstances, Luo Zhixue would not be able to go to Youzhou, let alone live in the Forbidden City, even if he went north for inspection.

Even if he went to Youzhou for inspection, it was impossible for Luo Zhixue to let the imperial finances spend a huge amount of money to maintain this huge palace just for inspection and residence for a very small amount of time!

The daily maintenance cost of this kind of traditional brick and wood palace is very high. Why did the Ming Dynasty allow the Nanjing Imperial Palace to gradually decay and eventually become a ruin... It is not because the maintenance cost is too high.

For the empire, it is impossible to maintain a useless former palace, even if it is turned into a museum for a fee, it is impossible to talk about tourism in these days, it is too nonsense!

So after deliberation: demolition!

Dismantling can save a lot of maintenance costs, and can also produce a large amount of precious building materials to be transported to Jinling City, and then used for the construction of the new palace.

As for architectural relics, historical significance, etc., architectural relics are not needed, and historical significance cannot exist... If possible, the high-level officials of the empire would like to demolish the entire Youzhou City, so that the traces of the former Ming Dynasty will completely disappear. In the dust of history!

The alternation of old and new is always so cruel.

Among the remains of the Forbidden City and many other former Ming dynasty palaces, the Jinling Palace took shape in just a few years.

Now many of the main structures have been basically completed, and the rest is some finishing work and the peripheral imperial garden outside the palace.

This imperial garden is said to be an imperial garden, but it is actually a huge permanent fortification surrounding the palace, with a dense system of trenches and fortresses, and these fortifications are quite troublesome to repair.

After all, this is not an ordinary field fortification. It is not enough to just dig a ditch, make a blast hole, and put up a ring-shaped sandbag. These field fortifications will not look good in a few years...

As a permanent fortification, it is not only necessary to ensure the defense capability, but also to ensure that it is still intact after several years or even decades.

For example, there are so many trenches, the drainage facilities in them are not very troublesome, even more troublesome than the drainage of the palace.

Especially in the northern area, close to Xuanwu Lake, and even many places were filled to level up Xuanwu Lake. The drainage is not good, it is easy to be flooded, and there are still a lot of trenches in the fortifications... In order to avoid these trenches from being buried When it rains, it will directly turn into a ditch, which requires complete defense facilities.

In the end, the flood control facilities in these places adopted the only reliable solution, which is to raise the...

Digging down is unreliable, it can only be raised!
Just like the palace!
The imperial palace of the Great Chu Empire did not directly repair the house in the ruins of the original site, but raised it first...

When it was built during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, it was raised a little bit, but it was not enough... When the Great Chu Empire built it, it was raised again.

Therefore, the entire palace of the Great Chu Empire is higher than the surrounding areas.

The fortifications of the Royal Garden also adopted the method of raising the height. Of course, it is impossible to raise the entire terrain, but to raise the main defense nodes... Otherwise, the amount of work will be too large.

According to estimates, if the funds are in place smoothly, then next year, the Jinling Imperial Palace and the surrounding imperial gardens/fortifications, as well as other office buildings of various government offices, and the west city wall will be completed one after another.

If everything goes well, next autumn, Luo Zhixue will be able to move into the new palace with a group of concubines and children, and at the same time, major institutions will also move into the office buildings of various institutions near the palace.

The political center of the entire empire will be fully moved to the east district of Jinling City.

Of course, the premise is that the construction funds can be guaranteed, and there is no need to worry too much about this. The financial background of the Great Chu Empire is still very rich.

Furthermore, according to the current financial theory of the Great Chu Empire, the collected taxes and various confiscated administrative revenues must be spent.

In terms of how to spend money, the Great Chu Empire may be different from the traditional dynasties. They seldom send out funds directly, but tend to stimulate employment and create consumer demand.

The most common example is 'work for relief'. The essence of the work-for-relief model is to stimulate employment, increase people's income, and enable people to have basic spending power.

In fact, other large-scale basic projects are almost the same routine, such as many flood control and drought relief water conservancy facilities, most of which are recruited from rural areas during the slack season for construction.

To some extent, the construction of these infrastructures can also be regarded as labor relief. The government spends a lot of money, which can directly create a large number of jobs and increase the income of the people.

For example, the construction of a section of flood protection requires a large number of workers directly on the construction site, and these are only the most superficial employment.

In fact, a lot of tools are needed to build a flood prevention lift. Well, hoes, shovels, baskets, wheelbarrows, carriages, etc. are also construction tools... Since they are tools, they need to be produced, so they can be used for some small and medium-sized machinery factories nearby. A large number of folk workshops bring orders.

In addition, stone materials are needed to build flood defenses, which can promote the development of local or nearby quarries. In order to meet a large number of stone orders, local quarries will hire more workers to quarry and process.

There are many similar ones. The construction of a section of flood control can directly and indirectly leverage a large number of jobs. The role it can play is far greater than directly distributing the funds for the construction of flood control to the local people.

This is also the reason why many countries in modern times like to spend their lives building infrastructure when the economy is not doing well. In the 30s, Britain, France and the United States were all like this, and the United States was even more typical. It is not about infrastructure construction itself, but for stimulating employment.

Of course, it is easy to lead yourself into the ditch when you play this game. Germany just played this game too much, and then whipped itself with a whip and forced itself into the battlefield.

Therefore, regardless of any policy, it cannot be too extreme, otherwise it will easily backfire.

As far as the Great Chu Empire is concerned, it is too early to talk about counterproductive effects. As far as the family background of the Great Chu Empire and the overall economic structure are concerned, it is impossible to talk about such a lofty topic as the economic crisis.

Furthermore, when the foundation is too weak, the advantages of proper infrastructure construction outweigh the disadvantages, especially the great Chu Empire is still engaged in a large number of water conservancy facilities.

These water conservancy facilities can drive agricultural development and increase food production.

On the contrary, the construction of the Dongcheng District of Jinling City is purely for employment, because it is a pile of dilapidated houses and cannot promote production.

Because the construction scale of Dongcheng District is relatively large, the employment it brings is also very large.

For example, the large number of carvings in the palace require a large number of craftsmen to do it. If it is a traditional dynasty, then a large number of craftsmen are directly recruited to serve as corvee.

But in the Great Chu Empire, this would not be done. The Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire directly set up a stone carving factory and a wood carving factory, and then hired people to work everywhere, adopting a temporary employment system.

Even piecework wages were adopted, which greatly stimulated the work enthusiasm of these stone carving or wood carving workers, and their work efficiency made other dynasties that engaged in corvée feel ashamed.

More importantly, the product cost expenditure under the piecework wage system has not increased but has decreased.

This is a very interesting phenomenon!

Piece-rate wages, more pay for more work, if there is another one who is eliminated at the bottom, KPI assessment... Tsk tsk, a proper reward!
Fortunately, the management personnel in many factories in the Great Chu Empire, that is, the officials of the Ministry of Industry, and even the factory owners run by gentry in the private sector, they have not engaged in any elimination of the bottom, KPI assessment... It's not that they don't want to do it , but they themselves haven't thought of this yet...

Moreover, under the current so-called piece-rate wages, the masons and carpenters hired temporarily do not even have a basic salary...

You don't work and still want to get money?It's beautiful!

Of course, putting aside these complaints and going back to the initial employment, the construction of Dongcheng District undoubtedly created a large number of jobs and provided a certain amount of extra income for related industries and the surrounding people.

It's just that the pulling effect is still not obvious, and those buildings can't produce any value in the future.

Therefore, Luo Zhixue has always invested heavily in the construction of Dongcheng District, but when it is used to invest in various water conservancy facilities, he is often very generous, and he will approve the funds if he finds a reasonable reason.

Among them, the largest investment is undoubtedly the Huaihe-Yellow River treatment project with the Hongze Lake Embankment as the core. This thing is the infrastructure for generations to come.

But this alone was not enough. After the people from the Ministry of Water Resources conducted an investigation along the Huaihe River and the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, they finally came to the conclusion that it is difficult to completely solve the problem of flooding in the Jiangbei area by relying on various flood control facilities.

For this reason, someone from the Ministry of Water Resources suggested that through planning and preparation in advance, it is possible to manually divert the route after the preparations are complete, so that the Yellow River can flow northward?

They also submitted a feasibility report. After reading it, Luo Zhixue felt that this matter is really feasible, and the sooner this thing can be done, the better.

Why, because there are fewer people in the north now, and there was a lot of chaos before, and the people's acceptance is better... It is not difficult to migrate the population around the potential river as a whole.

If it takes more than ten or twenty years, the population around the potential river course will definitely skyrocket, and after they have maintained a stable life for many years, it will be very difficult for them to leave their hometown and move to the resettlement area.

As for some feudal dynasties, they did not relocate the surrounding people, did not prepare new rivers, and directly diverted a large area into a vast ocean, drowning countless people... Luo Zhixue can't do this kind of thing. It's not a question of whether Luo Zhixue is good or not, but that if he really does this, it will definitely be infamous for thousands of years.

Luo Zhixue, as the founding emperor of the Great Chu Empire, unified more than half of China, and now he has been exiled in the east, and after recovering a large number of Mongolian tribes in the southern part of the country, his pursuit is not the same as that of traditional emperors.

Power... As the founding emperor, and thanks to the current political structure of the Great Chu Empire, Luo Zhixue's power is definitely at the peak level among all the emperors in the past.

In the Great Chu Empire, whether it was the imperial study system, the military affairs academy system, or the Imperial Academy system, plus the tax department was directly responsible for taxation, the ground could only share part of the tax revenue.

The military's local garrison headquarters, field armies, and the system of parallel armies and so on.

All institutions and systems have only one core purpose, and that is to centralize imperial power!
This means that in terms of power, Luo Zhixue has nothing to ask for... As for money, interests and even women's sex, you have to know that the entire empire belongs to him.

Qian, Quan, and sex are all floating clouds to the current Luo Zhixue... So what else can Luo Zhixue pursue?
Fame, becoming the greatest emperor in the history of China, his name will last forever and so on.

Then come Luo Zhixue's own hobbies, such as unifying the world...

Basically, there are only these two things left.

Luo Zhixue supports continuing to fight north, capturing the entire Northeast and even the northern grasslands and the subsequent Western Regions, which happens to be able to satisfy the above two at the same time!
But doing some messy things to toss and ruin one's reputation is unacceptable to Luo Zhixue.

Therefore, in the artificial diversion of the Yellow River, it is absolutely impossible to blow up the embankment and let the Yellow River flow northward, so that countless people along the way will be affected!
Conversely, if it can be done well, the people along the way can be properly resettled, and the Yellow River can be tamed by manual diversion, followed by planting trees in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River to fix sand, prevent desertification in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River and other greening projects, and then continue to build various flood control facilities , to ensure the safety of the Yellow River in the next few decades or even hundreds of years.

Luo Zhixue reckoned that if this was accomplished, it would not be impossible to rival Dayu in controlling the floods.

Coupled with other military and economic achievements, it is not a dream to surpass the Three Emperors and Five Emperors before his death!

Well, just do it!

With an idea in mind, Luo Zhixue immediately convened a meeting with officials from the Ministry of Water Resources to listen to the report on the artificial diversion project of the Yellow River!
(End of this chapter)