Hongwu Survival Guide

Chapter 123
After receiving Lao Zhu's reply, Lao Zhu agreed to most of Zhu Yuan's requests and opinions except that a certain bad move was not accepted.

On the Mingzhou side, the Naval Governor's Mansion and the Yinghai Division became even busier because of this.

Furthermore, in order to facilitate the communication between Jinling and Mingzhou, Lao Zhu also asked Wen Zao to organize three teams to ensure that letters could reach the two places every day as long as there was demand.

Entering mid-May, the third batch of grain transport fleets also began to go to various places to load grain, as well as another planned 10 tons of fish.

It is expected to choose a suitable time to go to sea in late May.

On May 13th, news came from Shandong that the second batch of grain transport fleets finally arrived. Compared with the first batch, it took 22 days. The second batch of grain transport fleets departed from April 45th to May [-]st. It took [-] days to arrive. Although it took a little longer, it was still a fairly smooth task compared to the longest [-]-day period estimated by Yinghai Division.

However, due to the long time and the wind and waves encountered on the road, the loss was a little more than the first time. There were nearly 12000 shi of grain in the whole journey or left the team to berth at the port, or sank for some reason, and the loss ratio reached 6%.

Among them, 3700 stones were directly sunk.

In any case, it is still far within the acceptable range.

In the season of frequent rain and rain, the sea fishing of large yellow croakers in summer has been smooth. From the beginning of May to the end of this month, there were no strong winds and waves that prevented them from going out to sea. The sea fishing fleet followed the large yellow croakers all the way to the north. Huang Dayang turned to Daiqu Yang, and then to Dayang Yang in the north.

Compared with Huang Dayang and Daiqu Yang, which are near the main island of Zhoushan, in this era, the Daji Yang in the north was a dangerous place that fishermen would not easily set foot in.

This time is different.

Not only did the Yinghai Division and the Naval Governor's Mansion send a large number of nearby support teams, but the two major yamen also built in advance on Dajishan Island, Xiaojishan Island, and nearby Dajishan Island, Xiaoyangshan Island, and Shengsi Islands. Navigate lighthouses and ports of call.

Moreover, Dajishan Island is only less than [-] miles away from Songjiang Mansion in the east. Under the operation of Yinghai Division, Songjiang Mansion also set up a lighthouse and repaired the berthing port.

Therefore, the Dajishan fishing ground with Dajishan as the center has no way except the north. There are lighthouses and ports within [-] miles in the east, west and south.If the weather is fine, the naked eye can see the smoke pillars or lights in the distance.

Not to mention Dajishan Island itself.

Because of the special location, the Naval Governor's Mansion specially set up a [-]-household office on this [-]-acre island, and planned to transform the entire Dajishan Island into an emergency stop and a temporary transfer station.

In addition to calling at the port, a number of barracks and fortifications that are strong enough to withstand hurricanes will also be built on the island.

This is also preparation for the future.

Starting next spring, the sea fishing team will continue to go north to catch small yellow croakers in the Sheshan Ocean in the northern part of the Great Bay Ocean, which was not easy for fishermen to set foot in.

The Sheshan Ocean, which has a radius of a hundred miles, wants to stop in case of emergency. In addition to the Sheshan Island named after Sheshan Ocean, which is located in the sea outside Chongming, there is also Dajishan Island.

May twenty-sixth.

Compared with the interval of more than a month between the first batch of grain transportation fleet and the second batch of grain transportation fleet, this time, after all aspects became more and more perfect, the third batch of grain transportation fleet arrived in Shandong after the second batch Five days later, taking advantage of a good southwest wind, we set off again.

This time, Zhang Cundao, the counselor of the Navy's Governor's Mansion, led the team. Hua Gao's nephew Hua Yue was the deputy. The leader was still 1, and the number of civilians was increased to [-]. In addition, other officials of the battalion and sea division who accompanied the ship, the total was [-]. Yu people.

According to the arrangement, the Navy Governor's Mansion has issued an order to Shandong. After the food is handed over, the commander of the battalion and sea guards, Tongzhi Changduan, only needs to send out [-] soldiers to return with the civilians. The ship bypassed the Shandong Peninsula and docked in Laizhou, waiting for follow-up.

Zhang Cundao's troops who set off this time, after arriving in Shandong, also only need to send out 5000 soldiers to follow the civilian husbands back, and at the same time leave [-] soldiers and civilian husbands.

This is not ten thousand, but four thousand.

Lao Zhu is asking for [-] elite soldiers, and the remaining [-] soldiers will either follow the fourth batch of grain transport fleets in the next two decades, or sail northward by themselves. Before that, a large number of sea-going ships and civilian husbands were all assembled in Laizhou.

The first day of June.

Off the coast of Mingzhou, navigation lighthouses lit up three fireworks again.

According to the judgment of the meteorological team, the Yinghai Division issued another hurricane warning in the first year of Hongwu the day before yesterday, requiring all ships at sea to dock as soon as possible, and reminding coastal residents to prepare for hurricanes.

Southwest of Dinghai, south bank of Yongjiang River.

Zhu Yuan got up in the morning, went to Haiwei Camp as usual to "serge training" for half an hour, and then set off here to check the construction of the resettlement houses for refugees in Shandong.

At the northern foot of Chenshan Mountain, in just over a month, more than 5000 yards of the same size have been built on the thousand acres of land allocated at the beginning. Although it is a mud thatched house, it can be called a small house in this era. Engineering marvel.

Zhu Yuan was not surprised.

As long as the productivity of this nation is stimulated, it only takes more than ten days to build a skyscraper several hundred meters high.What's more, with the concerted efforts of more than 2 people, only mud houses are being built.

After completing the construction of their own houses, the group of laborers from Shandong has already begun to dig soil and kilns on another piece of land marked out nearby, preparing to build another batch of brick and tile houses for naval soldiers.

Because of the hurricane warning, there are only a few more people here today. Under the guidance of the craftsmen sent by the Yinghai Division, they used various wood and stone materials to compact and reinforce the thatched roof to prevent the thatched hut from being damaged by the hurricane in the future.

Seeing that all kinds of people, old and young, old and young, who were still dressed in rough and shabby clothes were busy in all kinds of ways in summer, and occasionally people came to kowtow to him, Zhu Yuan wanted to leave.

Can't bear to watch.

After walking around for a while, feeling a little exhausted, Zhu Yuan got into the sedan chair.

When the bearers got up and started to move forward, Zhu Yuan lifted the curtain and said to Liu Lian who was accompanying him all the time: "Take time to plan, the thatched roof is too weak, when the gust of wind passes, the tiles will start to burn, at least all the houses All roofs are replaced with tiles."

Liu Lian didn't object at all to benefiting the common people, and nodded immediately: "Hanlin, I'll remember it."

Zhu Yuan asked again: "Also, have you set aside half of the house that was temporarily allocated to accommodate other soldiers and civilians?"

"It's drawn out," Liu Lian pointed in one direction, "to the east."

"Let's go and see."

This is also something that was explained after the hurricane warning was issued the day before yesterday.

Because of the hurricane, the community here has to temporarily allocate half of the yard to accommodate many soldiers and civilians who still live in tents or cabins.

no way.

Like last time, the house is still not enough.

Zhu Yuan's original idea was to accept several people per household. The subordinate officials reminded that the refugees in Shandong were all accompanied by their families, men, women, old and young.

So it was changed to vacate half of the yard.

After checking it again, the time came to noon.

I rushed to the bakery workshop to have a simple lunch, and inspected the warehouse of the workshop and the dock near the river. I didn't cross the river back to the city until the first quarter of the unitary hour, that is, at five o'clock in the afternoon.

Summer days are long.

When Zhu Yuan returned to Yinghai Envoy's mansion, the setting sun had just set on the eaves of the wall.

Dai Sanchun led Cui Shen, the head of the Taiyuan Hospital's Instrument Bureau who had been staying in Mingzhou, and had been waiting for a long time. Cui Shen brought a newly built mound machine over.

The mound is also crushed on the stone wheel.

The mound machine, similar to the small lathe used to polish keys or turn beads, is mainly used for cutting and polishing jade.

Things have to start from a few days ago.

Xieyi added a group of little girls to the inner house, Zhu Yuan named them, and casually ordered to cut some colored crystals to make identity plates.

Xieyi asked He Xuan to order Cui Shen.

Cui Shen had no objection, but met Liu Lian by accident.

Liu Lian reprimanded He Xuan, found Zhu Yuan again, and continued to accuse himself of being a superior official, using public equipment for private use, harming public welfare, and not doing business properly. No, Zhu Yuan really shouldn't do this.

A selfless and honest official cannot be offended.

can afford to hide.

Zhu Yuan asked someone to find tools, and planned to let the girls cut and polish them by themselves.

Tools came quickly.

There are currently two methods for cutting crystals, wire cutting, which also uses a wire saw with jade sand, just like sawing wood, to cut the crystal bit by bit.

The efficiency of wire cutting is very low.

Not to mention large crystals, even ordinary crystal stones as thick as an arm would take a day or two of hard work to cut open.

There is another one, that is, the mound machine cutting.

However, due to the limitations of the grinding wheel, mound cutting is only suitable for smaller pieces of crystal.

Not only that, but the grinding wheel itself is troublesome to process in this era. Cutting and grinding are worn out, and they are also consumables.Therefore, craftsmen often use the most primitive and clumsy wire cutting for cutting, and the mound machine is mainly used for grinding.

Only then did Zhu Yuan understand why the Machinery Bureau was so slow in making telescopes, surveying instruments, microscopes and other equipment.

Take telescope lenses as an example. From cutting to grinding to final polishing, each process takes a few days, and a finished lens may take ten days to complete.Moreover, even if it is done well, it may not be suitable for use, so secondary processing is required. Once the secondary processing fails, if something goes wrong, it will be directly reduced to waste.

In the final analysis, the production efficiency is not high.

Zhu Yuan has always been very interested in improving productivity.

After roughly looking at the structure of the mound machine, which was so primitive that he couldn't bear to look directly at it, Zhu Yuan had a series of thoughts.

First up is the grinding wheel.

The grinding wheels of this era are carved and polished directly from stones of various materials, which is also time-consuming and labor-intensive.

This is the first thing to change.

Moreover, it doesn't take too much thought, I have seen all kinds of grinding wheels in my memory.

Zhu Yuan quickly proposed a plan, using Jieyu sand used for wire cutting, and manually making grinding wheels, which is the common grinding and slicing later.

A craftsman was called in as a staff member, and after many experiments, the finished product was released soon.

The materials are fine sand, isinglass and gauze.

Fine sand is the jade sand commonly used by jade craftsmen.

Jieyu sand is not a special kind of sandstone, but the fine sand used for "jieyu".

How do you say that sentence, stones from other mountains can be used to attack jade.

The material of jade sand is the stone that can be used to tap jade. There are mainly two types of jade in this era, garnet and corundum.

Then there is isinglass.

Take local materials.

Finally, the gauze acts as a support and fixation.

This is an opinion put forward by a craftsman in the Equipment Bureau.Interestingly enough, the inspiration came from the embryos of shoe soles that women paste on the wall when they make shoes. Zhu Yuan even looked for it on purpose, and then vaguely collected some related memories.

Probably when women made shoes, they used batter to paste rags on the wall, and the dried hard embryos were cut and used to hold shoe soles.

The originally soft fabric becomes very hard when it is made into a shoe sole embryo.

Besides, if the grinding wheel is made of fine sand and isinglass, it will be very brittle. Adding a layer of gauze in the middle is equivalent to adding a layer of bone.

The disadvantage is that this kind of grinding wheel cannot be fired in a kiln, but can only be baked at low temperature.

Therefore, it is more time-consuming, and the hardness is also worse.

Zhu Yuan is already asking the craftsmen to improve the process, and kiln to produce grinding wheel slices that are harder and have a certain degree of elasticity that will not break easily.

For the moment, make do for the time being.

Then there is the mound machine.

In the traditional mound machine, the rotation during grinding is to repeatedly pull the rotating shaft through the rope, so you can imagine how slow the rotation speed is.

Zhu Yuan's improvement method has only one core, adding bearings.

Another result of bearing labor saving is actually to maximize the utilization efficiency of manpower.

Then, the inspiration of later generations of bicycles was taken, and a pedal transmission mode was made.Of course, not a chain drive, but a belt drive.Moreover, the bicycle has a small wheel with a large wheel, and the brand-new mound machine, of course, has a large wheel with a small wheel in order to speed up the speed to the greatest extent.

After initially completing the samples and putting them into use, what Cui Shen sent today is considered the second generation.

A fairly simple modification, from the first generation of single pedals to double pedals.

After seeing the prototype, Zhu Yuan asked someone to bring a crystal for testing on the spot.

Two craftsmen step on the pedals, and another craftsman operates, installs a grinding wheel that is only as thick as a few sheets of paper, and the craftsman steps on the pedals, and the mound machine starts to operate.

Crystal sent.

There is also an apprentice next to him, constantly pouring water on the crystal to cool it down.

In the crowd's onlookers, it was just a cup of tea, and a piece of crystal slightly thicker than a thumb was cut into two pieces. Zhu Yuan had seen the single-person mound machine before, and the speed was much faster in comparison.Moreover, compared with the previous original mound machine, the cutting efficiency has increased by more than ten times.

Things are simple.

For a single-person mounding machine, because only one person exerts force, the crystal will be delivered at a slightly faster speed, and it will be stuck, or the belt will slip or even break the slice directly.

The two-person mound machine, according to an explanation that Zhu Yuan was more familiar with later, is that the power has doubled.

Although an additional manpower was added, the previous problems did not reappear.Taken together, the efficiency is still greatly improved.

Zhu Yuan watched a demonstration, and after thinking about it, he asked someone to find an iron rod, and operated it again, but it was still cut into two sections quickly.

After watching the demonstration, Zhu Yuan confidently ignored Liu Lian next to him, and directly ordered Cui Shen to send him a brand new two-person mound machine tomorrow. Only then did he realize that Wu Zhen, the deputy commander of the navy, appeared here at some time, looking very interested .

After greeting, Zhu Yuan smiled and asked Wu Zhen: "Do you think I'm not doing my job properly?"

Wu Zhen smiled and shook his head.

However, there was some dissent in his expression.

Zhu Yuan personally walked over to inspect the two-person mound machine, and said to Wu Zhen: "I once told my ancestors a truth, the key to the reason why we are the primates of all things is that we can use tools. Since this is our advantage, we It’s time to work tirelessly to create more and better tools to achieve the goal of continuously improving productivity.”

In the first half, Wu Zhen and others who were listening did not know that Zhu Yuan had already talked to them about economic terms such as productivity.

have to agree.

Zhu Yuan continued: "At present, there is a severe drought in Huaidong, and my ancestors still asked me in a letter if there was any way, but I didn't. It's not that there is really no way, but that the productivity stimulated by the tools we can use now is not enough to deal with this matter. Think about it, if we can create a large number of large-scale water-drawing equipment to bring water from the Yangtze River or land wells to the fields, the severe drought will be solved. In fact, we have corresponding equipment, various waterwheels, the problem is, No one thought about making better waterwheels continuously, and the old-fashioned waterwheels, just like the inefficient mound machines before, were primitive and crude, so that we were still helpless against drought.”

After Wu Zhen listened, he paused, restrained his expression, and bowed his hands to Zhu Yuan: "Hanlin, the cadres are taught."

Liu Lian also bowed his hands: "Meng Zao is taught."

Seeing the two superiors saluting, the others bowed their hands one after another.

Zhu Yuan just waved his hand and left the room in the outer courtyard, intending to return to the inner house. When he went out, he found Wu Zhen following him.

look over.

Wu Zhen had a slightly embarrassed expression, hesitated a little and said: "Hanlin, can we talk?"

Zhu Yuan nodded: "Go to my office."

　PS1: Happy New Year to everyone, I wish you a safe and healthy new year.

　　PS2: Recently, I have been unable to describe it in one word, but I have recovered. Even this book...is difficult to describe in one word. I hope I can regain my status in the next year.

　　PS3: Did you watch the Spring Festival Gala?A few years ago, the Spring Festival Gala was not good-looking, but it was also gorgeous and lively. This year, for some reason, it gave people a rather shabby feeling, maybe it was my illusion.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)