I want to be emperor

As a new type of industrial city, Xuzhou's urban area is different from many cities, and there are no old and new buildings mixed together.

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 main railways, the Central Plains Railway and the Longhai Railway, did not directly pass through the urban area.

At the same time, for the convenience of transportation, the newly invested factories were built near the Li railway station and the canal. Around these factories, many living buildings were built, and these buildings used a large number of bricks, tiles and even reinforced concrete structures.

In the end, a brand new city was gradually formed here. In the 27th year of Chengshun, the magistrate's yamen of Xuzhou Prefecture and a large number of other government agencies also simply moved to the new city.

Therefore, when 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, and among these traditional buildings, some new-style buildings are mixed.

But Xuzhou, as far as the eye can see, is all new-style buildings.

When the imperial carriage passed by, Luo Zhixue saw that the street was very wide, and there were tracks on the street, which were the tracks of public carriages.

On both sides of the road, there are various new-style buildings.

These so-called new-style buildings are actually buildings built using bricks and cement on a large scale, which is very different from traditional buildings that use a lot of wood materials.

Most of the roofs of civil buildings still use tiles, but there are also some buildings, especially the roofs of large official or commercial buildings, which use steel concrete slabs.

These so-called new buildings are a natural evolution of red bricks, blue bricks, cement and steel bars.

It wasn't the result of Luo Zhixue's forced interference.

Speaking of these so-called new building materials, some of them are actually not new!
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 tiles.

Brick and tile houses are nothing new in ancient times.

However, the productivity in ancient times was too low, and the cost of building a brick house was too high, and ordinary people simply could not afford it.

But in the Great Chu Empire, it has now entered the middle and late stage of the first industrial revolution, especially the large-scale application of high-pressure steam engines has further promoted productivity.

In ancient times, the cost of firing bricks and tiles was high and the output was low.

However, in the Great Chu Empire, there are specialized brick and tile factories all over the country, factories for firing red bricks or blue bricks, but they directly use a large number of mechanical equipment to excavate materials and carry out mechanical processing and production.

Low cost, huge output!
In addition, there are steam ships or trains as the means of transportation in the middle.

All of these have greatly reduced the cost of bricks and tiles, allowing folks to use bricks and tiles in large quantities.

The cement industry has developed for nearly 20 years.

From the beginning, the output was low and the cost was high, so that in the first few years when cement was first invented and produced, cement was basically only used in a few specific fields, such as military buildings, imperial palaces, high-level government buildings, and large-scale flood control. engineering etc.

Later, as the cost gradually decreased, cement materials began to be used in some commercial buildings. About 15 years ago in Chengshun, a large number of commercial companies used cement materials in building their headquarters and factories.

20 years after entering Chengshun, cement began to be used in the field of ordinary residential buildings.

Today, in the 29th year of Chengshun, cement has become widely used in the construction industry of the Great Chu Empire, and even an indispensable material used 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, blue bricks are not affordable for everyone, but will be replaced by other building materials.

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 flooding.

But in the city, among the newly built houses, brick and tile cement houses have become the mainstream.

Due to the extensive use of new materials, especially the application of reinforced concrete, the architectural form can have greater design space, so the architectural form has gradually changed.

Especially for various official and large-scale institutional buildings, in order to facilitate the office, the architectural form is more inclined to be tall, large, and wide, and multi-storey concrete buildings have begun to appear.

These also influenced the architectural style of folk houses.

This has gradually led to some houses built by the Great Chu Empire in recent years, which are somewhat different from the traditional Chinese architectural style.

It's not that people have changed, it's that productivity has changed.

Buildings that were not dared to design in the past have been designed and can be built, and finally formed a trend.

After all, people like to live in spacious and strong houses with light and ventilation.

Even ordinary families have such demands.

As an emerging industrial city, Xuzhou developed late and was distinguished from the original old city from the very beginning, which makes the new urban area of ​​Xuzhou basically all buildings with new architectural styles.

At the same time, because it is a purely newly built new urban area, the government has planned a complete urban plan from the very beginning.

The combination of many things made Luo Zhixue see a new type of city that is different from other cities.

How should I put it, at first glance, Luo Zhixue thought he had traveled through time and space, to the original time and space of the [-]th century.

Sitting in the royal carriage all the way, we soon arrived at a new-style villa manor near the canal in the center of the new city.

The manor is the manor of the local wealthy Liu family. After hearing that Yu Jia is going to Xuzhou for inspection, and the government is trying to solve the problem of the palace, he offered to lend his manor to the government for a period of time as a temporary palace.

The Xuzhou government originally planned to directly build a new temporary palace, but because Luo Zhixue had issued documents several times in advance, requiring all localities 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 brought this matter up on his own initiative, the government took advantage of the situation to requisition and carried out certain transformations.

After staying in Liu's Manor, Luo Zhixue summoned local officials as usual, mainly including the governor of Jiangbei Province who rushed over from Huai'an and a group of provincial officials and local officials of Xuzhou Prefecture.

At the meeting, Luo Zhixue listened to the reports from the governor of Jiangbei Province and the prefect of Xuzhou Prefecture and other local officials.

When he heard that the industrial output value of Xuzhou prefecture had increased by 28% in the 27th year of Chengshun, compared with the 60.00th year of Chengshun, and it still maintained a high-speed growth in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 40.00% compared with the first quarter of last year.

He expressed his satisfaction at the speed of local industrial development in Xuzhou.

The growth rate of Xuzhou's industrial economy in the past four or five years has been very exaggerated. It can even be said that five years ago, Xuzhou had no industry. village...

In Shanghai County, 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 in the village.

Its industrial output value can beat a large number of state capitals in the Mainland.

However, with the opening of two main railway lines one after another, after Xuzhou's strategic position as a transportation hub took shape, its transportation advantages were immediately brought into play.

So far, the Ministry of Industry has directly invested in three enterprises 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 various enterprises under the Ministry of Industry. For example, Huai'an Mining Company invested in a mining equipment production base here, and Jiangbei Chemical invested in a chemical production base here.

At the same time, many civilian companies have also invested here. The leader of private enterprises, Li's Iron and Steel, has invested and built a civilian hardware production factory here, and plans to use Xuzhou as the main production base for the group's civilian Wujin business. .

Suqin Textile Company invested in an advanced steam engine textile factory here, which mainly produces cloth and various finished textile products.

Whether it is official capital or private capital, they all value the importance of Xuzhou as a transportation hub, just as they valued the importance of Zhengzhou as a transportation hub before.

Around this important transportation hub, many large enterprises will invest in layout, optimize their own logistics system, reduce logistics costs, and buy goods to more places through a better transportation environment.

Xuzhou is also one of them.

The next morning, Luo Zhixue started a formal inspection.

The inspection on the first day mainly inspected several large enterprises in Xuzhou.

The first stop came to Xuzhou Iron and Steel Company. Looking at the huge area in front of Xuzhou Iron and Steel Company with many huge buildings, Luo Zhixue, who had seen many large iron and steel factories, was still deeply moved.

Who would have thought that such a modern steel factory full of industrial power would appear in the Huaxia region in the seventeenth century.

Luo Zhixue himself sighed, not to mention the others. Several older middle-aged and elderly people even whispered: If someone told me 30 years ago, 30 years later, there will be such a large-scale , a steel plant with such a huge output, the old man will definitely think he is crazy.

This is true!

Thirty years ago, no matter how powerful the imagination was, it was impossible for people to imagine that China would undergo such a huge change 30 years later!
In the pre-Ming period 30 years ago, the word industry did not even exist, let alone the iron and steel industry.

At that time, Foshan’s iron-making and steel industry was the most famous. However, Foshan’s iron-making industry was still in the production mode of traditional small manual workshops. It seemed that there were a large number of employees, but the actual output was the same, and basically only iron-making was possible, and the steel output was extremely high. few.

Back then, the output of the famous Foshan Iron Smelting was still measured in catties...but now the Great Chu Empire uses [-] tons as the unit to count pig iron production.

And just pull out a medium-sized steel factory, and its production capacity can completely explode the total output of the iron-making industry in the Ming Dynasty.

The steel production in the workshop era cannot be compared with the steel production in the industrial age.

Neither are on the same level.

Even if only the first phase of the project has been completed now, the second phase of the project is still under construction Xuzhou Iron and Steel, the pig iron production capacity of the first phase of the project alone has reached 12 tons.

This production capacity directly surpassed the global production capacity except for the Great Chu Empire!
The current annual production capacity of pig iron in the Great Chu Empire has exceeded 600 million tons, which is a rather terrifying figure.

Because during the same period, the pig iron production capacity of the entire Europe is estimated to be only about [-] 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 taken out 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 aborigines, it would be too bullying... because the aboriginals don't make much steel by hand...Use [-] tons as the unit...they can't even make up a single unit .

Thousands of tons were exhausted, probably less than...

As for the Great Chu Empire, in the 28 years of Chengshun, its crude steel production capacity reached 63 tons.

In terms of crude steel output, if we want to compare it with the Great 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 steel production capacity of the Great Chu Empire has soared is also because the Great Chu Empire has been furious in railway construction in the past eight or nine years, and has a huge relationship with the large number of ships built.

These two industries are important reasons for the rapid development of the iron and steel industry.

Without the huge demand of these two industries, even if steel companies produce a large amount of steel, they will not be able to sell it, and even if they can sell it, they will not be able to maintain profits.

After inspecting Xuzhou Iron and Steel Company, which is the cornerstone of the industry, Luo Zhixue also went to Xuzhou Chemical Industry to inspect Xuzhou Chemical Company.

The products of this company can be regarded as a new type of industry. It mainly produces sulfuric acid, alkali and other by-products, such as hydrochloric acid, chlorine gas, bleaching powder, etc. It is a chemical factory that the Ministry of Industry has attached great importance to in recent years, and it is also the largest investment.

At the same time, the factory is also the largest chemical factory in the area north of the Yangtze River. From the beginning of construction, it has undertaken the important task of providing various chemical industrial raw materials for the large area north of the Yangtze River.

After Luo Zhixue inspected the factory and encouraged the management and employee representatives of the factory, he set off for several neighboring factories.

At the end of the day, some took a closer look, and some took a quick look at seven factories. However, these seven factories are all in the same area, and the distance is not too far, so it didn't take too much time.

In the evening, Luo Zhixue met with representatives of local industry, agriculture and businessmen in the district office of Xuzhou Industrial Development Zone, and after briefly motivating them, he ended his day's trip.

On the second day, Luo Zhixue went to the suburbs of Xuzhou to watch a local new mechanized grain planting base, and in the afternoon went to a new vegetable planting base not far away.

He is more interested in this vegetable planting base, because this vegetable planting base uses greenhouse planting.

Greenhouse planting is nothing new. There was such a thing in the Qin and Han Dynasties, but the cost of ancient greenhouse planting was very high, and only dignitaries could afford the out-of-season vegetables grown.

In the Great Chu Empire, although the cost of greenhouse planting is still relatively high, it is not to the extent that only dignitaries can afford it. The ordinary middle class gritted their teeth and could eat a few meals of fresh vegetables in winter.

Because the greenhouse planting of the Great Chu Empire uses coal for heating... and the biggest cost of greenhouse planting is actually heating and heat preservation in the winter.

The ancients could only use charcoal, even if they could use coal later, but the traditional hand-mined coal is also expensive.

Unlike the Great Chu Empire, the cost of large-scale industrial mining of coal is low.

The substantial reduction in heating and heat preservation costs also allows off-season vegetables grown in greenhouses to enter the market and become a high-end vegetable on the dining table of decent families.

Over time, with the continuous advancement of technology, the cost of off-season vegetables will continue to decrease, and sooner or later they will become the daily food of ordinary people.

The advancement of technology can make people's lives better, which is why Luo Zhixue has spared no effort to promote the advancement of various technologies over the years.

If you want a stronger country and a better life for the people, the advancement of science and technology is indispensable, even the most important.