national surname chiming

Chapter 520
Continuous disasters forced Daming to choose to deal with all non-essential challenges conservatively in the 78 years of Xiaokang.

After 18 years of entering a well-off society, that is, after 1680, the imperial court continued to cut taxes because of the catastrophe in the previous two years.It's just that it's not a nationwide tax cut. It's only for the provinces that were hit hard by the disaster in the past two years, and the exemption will continue for one year.The provinces that were not so severely affected by the disaster have already had to pay food this year.

However, this did not refill the imperial treasury, and the food collected was only enough to maintain the expenditure of official food, service food and military food.

It can only be said that after two consecutive years of nationwide disasters, at least two years of recuperation will be needed after the disaster to barely recover.

In 1681, the 19th year of a well-off society, the country finally fully restored normal taxation, and began to re-increase the inventory of Changping warehouses that had been reduced by more than half in previous years, but they could not return to the level before the catastrophe for two consecutive years. There is not enough rations to launch an expedition of thousands of miles.

In 1682, 20 years of a well-off life, finally encountered a fairly smooth year.Taking advantage of the rare tendency of "cheap grain hurting farmers", the imperial court stepped up efforts to buy surplus grain, and finally restored the Changping warehouse to normal levels in one go.

But the price is that the imperial court spent a lot of gold, silver and copper money. The balance of gold and silver robbed from the Spaniards when Manila was captured 11 years ago was basically spent in the reconstruction of grain reserves after this wave of national disasters.

Of course, such a measure of benefiting the people and benevolent government is very beneficial to win the hearts of the people, win the centripetal force of the people towards Daming, and strengthen the support for the reform from top to bottom.

Although Zhu Shuren spent money, his progress in various legislation and reforms has been greatly accelerated. The "Monopoly Law" legislation that was supposed to take five years was finally completed within three years.But now in the fifth year, the main body of "Daming Civil Law" has been almost completed, three or four years earlier than the original plan.

The support of the people all over the world for the Ming army has also increased a lot.The sense of honor in the army is also increasing day by day. Originally, it has been many years since the end of the large-scale war, and the new generation of young soldiers who have grown up do not have the morale, military discipline, and courage of the bloody veterans in the war against the Qing Dynasty.

But now, courage is difficult to practice in a peaceful state, but morale and military discipline can at least return to the high state of the war against the Qing Dynasty——

Without this morale bonus, subsequent conflicts with Galdan would be very difficult to resist.Now the Ming Dynasty is the party that "has been peaceful for a long time, and the soldiers do not know how to fight", while the Junggar tribe is "conquering east and west every year, and for the rest of their lives, they have tempered an elite and powerful army in the world."

After figuring out these situations, as the 20 years of Xiaokang were about to pass, the high-level officials of the Ming Dynasty finally made up their minds to launch military revenge against the Junggar tribe's treachery and wanton embezzlement of the Ming Dynasty's vassal state.

What was originally planned to be done very early, was finally delayed for many years due to various reasons. In the end, there were two consecutive years of national disasters, which added up to another four or five years.

……

However, although it was interrupted by successive catastrophes and delayed for another four or five years, the preparation period of these four or five years was not in vain for Da Ming.

In terms of economic construction, although the past four or five years have been stagnant and fluctuated repeatedly, the total economic GDP, population, and total grain have not improved much.

However, there has been a lot of improvement in terms of industrial technology and business coordination capabilities.

On the one hand, the continuous famine caused some of the newly added overflow agricultural population to change their status as workers when they could not grow food, and came to the city to find industrial and commercial jobs to make a living.

On the other hand, the repeated opening of large-scale permanent warehouses for disaster relief, grain collection and inventory recovery also brought about huge commercial logistics.In famine years, although no food can be grown, the government will find ways to "relief with work" for farmers who are idle.

At this time, due to the pressure of domestic transportation and the need for large-scale remote allocation of food, it has become a good way to vent the idleness of the country's transportation infrastructure projects by letting farmers who provide food for work, together with the traditional corvee population, take charge of the country's transportation infrastructure construction mouth of the hungry labor force.

In the end, hundreds of thousands of farmers who were about to starve to death directly joined the imperial court and became corvee workers. They became migrant workers who built bridges and roads, and repaired many shipping and transportation facilities in Daming.

One of the most famous projects is the "Han-North Connection" canal plan that failed in the Song Dynasty and succeeded in the South-to-North Water Diversion in modern times.

In the area of ​​Fangcheng Pass in Nanyang, an area of ​​the remaining veins of Tongbai Mountain was dug through to connect the Baihe River, a tributary of the Han River, with a tributary of Ruying in the north passing through Ye County.In this way, a part of the tributary of the Han River, which is a tributary of the Yangtze River, can flow north into the Ruying River System instead of going south, so as to alleviate the water shortage in Henan a little bit.

More importantly, an inland waterway has been opened up, allowing Huguang's materials to go northward to Henan by direct waterway.Allowing the materials from Huguang and Sichuan to go north to the east can save more than 1000 miles of waterways. In the long run, it will definitely save huge costs for the country's large-scale material dispatch and transportation.

And such a project, from 17 to 20 years of a well-off life, in four years, relying on hundreds of thousands of new people who want to be corvee population to eat public food, plus the original siege troops of the Ming Dynasty , It was cultivated by concentrating on it.During the period, they also overcame the geological problem of expansive soil at the Fangcheng Pass, dug a lot of earthwork abruptly, and finished the job.

There are far more than one examples like this, so in the past four years, the transportation scheduling and road conditions within the Ming Dynasty have indeed been upgraded to a new level like a fire, and the military rations for the follow-up to the northwest front line have been concentrated, reducing costs—— —

After all, under the original circumstances, if the food from Sichuan and Huguang was to be transported to Shaanxi, Gansu and used by the Northwest Army to fight, it had to go down the Han River and the Yangtze River to the east, and then it could be transferred to the Huai River in Hefei, and then transferred to the Yellow River by using the Grand Canal system. (Sichuan is impossible to cross the Qinling Mountains directly by land plank road. Zhuge Liang tried that road, and the loss is too great. The cost of traveling [-] miles by water is not as great as the cost of crossing the Qinling Mountains for hundreds of miles.)

But now, the food from Sichuan and Huguang can save more than 1000 miles of waterway from Xiangyang to Hefei, which is twice as long as going back and forth, and can save [-] miles of water transportation. This is all cost .

……

In addition to these improvements in transportation infrastructure, Daming has also made a lot of progress in other fields of science and education in the past five years.

The development of science and technology will not be delayed due to natural disasters. Scientific research has its own rhythm. As long as the basic funds are sufficient, scientists will always be idle and have to find something.

In the past five years, although Robert Hooke failed to improve the "Watt steam engine", it was still too far away.But other peripheral gadgets have been developed—of course, it is the result of the joint efforts of the Daming Academy of Sciences, various research institutes, and many scholars from Nantah University, not by Hooker alone.

Including the nautical clock, which was only invented by the British in 1735 in history, it was finally invented by Ming Dynasty 55 years in advance, and miniaturization experiments were carried out at the same time, and escapement devices made of standardized springs and standardized gears were used. , so that the "anti-turbulence nautical clock" can be miniaturized into a pocket watch in the next few years.

As soon as this thing appears, Ming's navigation business will definitely flourish further, because it will finally be possible to use the modernized "accurately determined longitude navigation method".

Before there was no nautical clock with accurate timekeeping and no speed caused by the turbulence of the waves, it was illegal for human navigation to accurately confirm the longitude of their location.This also leads to many navigations that can only use the latitude navigation method, sailing along a latitude due east and west, so as to avoid yaw.

Cooperating with the upper longitude navigation method, the sea-going ship can sail more precise routes directly to the destination at sea. On average, it can save [-] to [-]% of the mileage of the voyage, and it can also reduce the mileage by another [-] to [-]% on the original basis. sailing time and shipping costs.It is also more convenient for blowout geographic discovery and more accurate coastline mapping.

In addition to the nautical clock, Anthony Leeuwenhoek, as Hooker's assistant, also unsurprisingly invented the world's first microscope with the financial support of the Ming Dynasty's Ministry of Internal Affairs, and discovered the first observation Microorganisms such as bacteria——

There is nothing surprising about this, because Leeuwenhoek invented the world's first microscope.It's just that in the original history, when he was in the Netherlands, there were not many people supporting him. If he wanted to spend his own money on research, he would be slower.Now in Daming, all kinds of optical polishing consumables and optical glass base materials can be used at will, and the progress is naturally rapid.

The emergence of microscopes and the discovery of microorganisms, of course, will soon usher in a new wave of blowouts in the field of Daming biochemical ring materials.For example, some people have begun to conduct comparative research on the "pasteurization method" in history.

Anyway, now that there are microscopes, you can see the life and death of microorganisms clearly, so you can accurately observe the bactericidal effects of various drugs and hygiene methods, which is definitely a qualitative change.

Just the comparative research of various research institutes under the Daming Academy of Sciences over the past two or three years on various food and ration preservation technologies has brought the stability of Daming's expedition logistics support to a new level.

Some small measures and regulations that are beneficial but not costly, as well as pre-processing technical means, have significantly reduced the probability of the army's military rations going bad and eating bad stomachs.

In addition, small scientific discoveries and inventions that are lower than the nautical clock and microscope have accumulated at least a dozen more in the past five years.
Reflective telescopes, periscopes, [-]-spindle Xiaowan spinning machines, cotton smashing machines, improved hand-operated sewing machines, first-generation pedal sewing machines... Zhu Shuren can't count them all.

After seeing the hope of "rejuvenating the country through science and education", the Ming court also increased its support for Nanjing University and the Daming Academy of Sciences. At the same time, it also began to think about two other major events that will benefit the present and benefit the future.

That is to prepare to allow each province to raise its own funds and establish a science and engineering university in each province as appropriate, just like the way Nantah University runs schools.

Therefore, in the past three years, Daming has put a lot of effort in researching and warming up the preparations for science and education in various provinces to reserve talents.

It's a pity that because the absolute number of science and engineering talents is still not enough, it can only be postponed in the end and divided into several small steps.

The first step is to immediately carry out a new round of enrollment expansion of Nanjing University, which started in the 18th year of Xiaokang and the 11th year of the establishment of Nanjing University.Since then, the annual enrollment of NTU has further expanded from the original 600 per year to 1500 at one time.

However, after the expansion, there is also a reduction in salary, that is, in the future, graduates of Nantah University will no longer be selected and assigned officials according to the salary of candidates.

In other words, the treatment of "the opportunity to become an official after finishing Nantah University" will not be such a good thing until the tenth class of Nantah University students.

After the expansion of enrollment, the gold content of students will usher in the first decline, but more talents can be obtained, and they will come to the localities to carry out basic science education, making mathematics, physics and chemistry education a spark that can start a prairie fire.

Even half of the 600 students who have been expanded from 1500 to 900 have the lowest entrance scores, and they will die in the future. They will be directly trained as "normal students" and must be sent to the local area to teach.

Although it is not yet possible to establish universities in various provinces, it is at least possible to establish various middle school-level Xinxue schools first.

At present, the provincial capital of each province has a middle school of science and engineering, which teaches basic mathematics, physics and chemistry before entering university, and also teaches traditional literature and philosophy.

The final graduation teaching level is roughly equivalent to the mathematics and physics level of the second grade of junior high school in later generations, plus some general knowledge of chemistry and biology.

And this work, which started in the 18th year of Xiaokang, has been preliminarily completed by the 20th year of Xiaokang.This year, the provincial capitals of all provinces in Ming Dynasty have established at least one comprehensive middle school with an enrollment of several hundred students.

Among them, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanchang, and Wuchang are the fastest places to build middle schools in the country. By the time of the 20th year of Xiaokang, some of their students have already entered the third grade.

These provinces originally attached the most importance to culture and education. After the imperial court gave the policy, the local gentry responded frantically and actively in the first year, donating money to build the middle school.

Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Beijing, Kaifeng, Jinan, and Fuzhou are a little later. They are the first comprehensive middle schools built by Xiaokang in 19 years, and now they have second-grade students.

The rest of the relatively remote or poorer provincial capitals also rushed to establish middle schools in time for the 20-year court deadline for a well-off society.

Even if there is little money and no one to donate, first solve the problem of whether there is any, at worst, reduce the scale of enrollment first.If there are not enough teachers assigned, some courses will be reduced first.

During the final inspection by the Ministry of Education of the imperial court, it was also confirmed that the provinces already had middle schools teaching mathematics, physics and chemistry, and they were quite satisfied with the results.It’s just that during the inspection, it was also found that some poor provinces did not have enough hardware and teachers, so they reported this matter to the court.

After discussions with the officials of the Korean and Chinese Ministry, they also consulted the cabinet, and finally the cabinet made a decision, suggesting that the provinces build “libraries” based on prefectures and counties in addition to the first liberal arts middle school.

It is required that within one year, a library that can be used by students to read at home must be established in all provincial capitals.However, due to the technical management level of the times, it is definitely not allowed to borrow books. You can only come to the library to read them on the spot.

As for the full set of basic mathematics, physics and chemistry textbooks that must be provided in the library, the imperial court's Ministry of Education will distribute them to all provinces.Anyway, block printing and movable type printing are very mature now, and books printed by the imperial court are not expensive.It is no problem to print tens of thousands of copies at a time.

In the end, the imperial court will award books according to the standard of about [-] sets.The provincial capital library of each province is equipped with at least [-] sets of general-purpose mathematics, physics and chemistry textbooks. Of course, traditional textbooks such as the Four Books and Five Classics will also be distributed for free borrowing.

In the next three to five years, the Ministry of Culture and Culture will also order all provinces to have a public free library in each prefecture within three years, and the required books can be allocated part of the quota originally received by the provincial capital library.

Within five years, each county will have a public free library, and the source of books can also be distributed from the thousand sets in the province, and at the same time, local gentry can donate part of it themselves.All restaurants can be visited at home, but borrowing is not allowed.

The imperial court only provided the original textbooks, and the local gentry raised the funds for construction and daily operation, and the imperial court did not give a budget.But you can set up a monument of merit for those who donate money at the entrance of the library, and write everyone's contribution.If the contribution reaches a certain amount, the children can give priority to donate to the Imperial College in the future.

With more basic facilities such as middle schools and libraries, I believe that Daming's plan to build a university in every provincial capital should have hope in the next few years.

Although this kind of university is destined to be a simplified and abridged version compared to Nantah University, graduates cannot enjoy administrative-level treatment.But it's better than nothing, and it can also enrich Daming's scientific and educational talent team.

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PS: The new book has been opened. This book needs to be finished quickly. Today's second update is almost [-] words.There may be more updates in the afternoon, but not necessarily, please don't wait.

(End of this chapter)