Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 358

The next day Yang Chao went to see Xiashuiying Wharf.

The Xinjiangkou area became more and more prosperous.

At this time, there are ships coming in and out of the docks, loading and unloading, and the workers are extremely busy.

In order to facilitate dock operations, Yang Chao had someone make a batch of rotatable wooden frames with pulleys at the end. First, the goods are hoisted, and then the wooden frames are rotated. The goods can be hoisted directly to the dock platform through the central rotating shaft, saving workers. Hard work moving up and down.

It can be said that Yang Chao's facilities are much better than the government's Longjiangguan Wharf. The excellent berth conditions, plus the convenience of loading and unloading, and the opening of three shipping escorts across the river, the canal, and Songjiang, Yang Chao The wharf naturally attracted more and more businessmen, and now the wharf of Longjiangguan is deserted. The officials of Chaoguan have sued Yang Chao more than once, either to make Yang Chao close the wharf, or let them enter Suying Wharf to collect taxes.

But Yang Chao vetoed it. Let these people come to collect taxes on his own dock. It is estimated that the taxes handed over to the court will not be much. Chao directly gave the imperial court 2 taels of silver every year, which was regarded as buying out the tax revenue of Longjiang Pass.

This made the bureaucrats of the banknote pass grit their teeth with hatred. This group of moths depended on this for a living, but now they obviously couldn't afford to offend Yang Chao, so they could only secretly hate and find other places to make a living. Longjiangguan Wharf is considered Abandoned.

The more prosperous the wharf, the more merchants it attracts, but there is not much open space on the wharf. The embankment built by Yang Chao is only ten feet away from the river surface, and that is the amount of land available, and Yang Chao I am not too happy to give it up to merchants, but use it as a dock for my own use.

Then it is bound to expand to the land behind the dike, and the land behind the dike actually belongs to Huang Chong's family.

This piece of land is about a thousand acres, and it has been opened by the royal family for two years, and it has begun to grow food.

Who would have thought that the agricultural land would be occupied by businesses as soon as it was developed.

Of course, Yang Chao would not go for it. He approached Huang Chong to discuss and expressed his willingness to pay for the purchase without letting Huang Chong suffer a loss. He was willing to buy it at the market price of good land, or replace it with other wasteland, such as the lions on the east side of Daying. The [-] mu of wasteland at the foot of the mountain was exchanged for the [-] mu of Huang's family.

After thinking about it for a few days and visiting the Lion Rock, Huang Chong decided to trade land for land.

Yang Chao’s embankment was built from the Xinjiangkou to the foot of the Lion Mountain, so there is no need to worry about being flooded. In fact, it is not a complete wasteland. Grass has been planted on it for a year. After seeing it, Huang Chong thinks that it can basically grow grain directly. , although the yield will not be high, but having [-] mu is definitely much more than my own yield of [-] mu.

Even if the grass is sold to Yang Chao, one mu of land can still earn one or two taels of silver. It is not a problem to earn a few thousand taels a year for three thousand mu of land, so Huang Chong is not too reluctant to give up the land in Jiangkou. What's more, Yang Chao promised that the land under the Lion Mountain will give him a title deed, but the land in Xinjiangkou has no title deed, and without a title deed, it is not safe. Yang Chao can plant here. If Yang Chao is no longer here, it will not work out will be snatched away.

So Huang Chong is actually very happy to change the land.

After the land of Huang Chong's family was surrendered, Yang Chao was the first to surrender one mu of land to shopkeeper Mao, and asked him to build a warehouse here.

Mao's warehouse has been built long ago, the location is very good, not to mention close to the wharf, the area is large enough, and with the recovery of Yang Chao's shipping, he also made a fortune.

At this time, there are other buildings under construction next to the shopkeeper of the Mao family. In addition to the warehouses built by other merchants, there is also Yang Chao's property.

Yang Chao didn't want to build a warehouse. His warehouses were all in the best positions on the pier. They didn't need to be built behind the embankment. What he wanted to build was an exchange.

After seeing the Wuliang Hall in Linggu Temple, Yang Chao planned to build a stone building by himself. It is not required to be like a western cathedral. , Yang Chao intends to use stone arch structure.

Stone structures are safer than wooden structures. There are many more stone monuments than wooden monuments in later generations, which proves that it is not that stone buildings are stronger than wood. Not a problem. The main reason why wooden buildings are difficult to preserve is the poor fire prevention effect. Palaces have been destroyed by fire in all dynasties, let alone ordinary houses.

Therefore, Yang Chao intends to introduce stone buildings into Daming, so that future generations will not see a few intact historical relics after hundreds of years.

In fact, it is not that difficult. Although the structure of the Infinity Hall is not as complicated as that of Western cathedrals, the basic form is already in place.

And China does not lack artisans for processing stone arch coupons. This is actually the technique used in stone arch bridges. The Zhaozhou Bridge was built 1000 years ago.

Yang Chao drew the blueprints himself, referring a lot to the design of the Hall of Infinity, but instead of using the super thick walls of the Hall of Infinity, he used flying buttresses to balance the thrust of the arches on the outer wall.

Give the blueprint to the head of the white craftsman, let him recruit a large number of stonemasons, and a few craftsmen who have built stone arch bridges, and let them explore the construction by themselves.

Bai Jiangtou is very worried because Yang Chao's requirements are too high. His building is divided into three floors. The first floor is ten feet high. Craftsmen can indeed build stone arches, but the arches of that stone arch bridge are ten feet high. ?
After a long discussion with the craftsmen, they said that they can try it, isn't it just to increase the arch of the stone arch bridge, and build the scaffolding higher.

So they started to build, and now the foundation has been built. They dug five feet deep, dug to the dense bottom layer, and then filled in a lot of stones, lime, etc. The foundation is very strong, and they have begun to use huge stones to build load-bearing walls.

Bai Jiangtou was very cautious. At Yang Chao's suggestion, he first made a clay model, but he felt uneasy, and then made a stone model by hand. It was a small one-person-high house, but every position was exactly the same as that of a person. It was the same as on the drawings, so Bai Jiangtou had confidence in his heart.

As for the construction, it is not difficult. The only difference from the arch bridge is whether it is built on the shore. First, two load-bearing walls are built, and then a round arched scaffold is built, and stones are installed on the scaffold, and finally a complete bridge is formed. After the arch is removed, the arch will not collapse, but the gravity will be turned into a downward and unexpected thrust under its own weight.

Bai Jiangtou spared no expense and hired more than 30 experienced masons and thousands of civilians. However, the construction speed is not very fast. Everyone is groping. According to Bai Jiangtou's estimation, by this time next year, The first floor that Yang Chao needs may not be able to be completed.

This is already very fast. Compared with Western churches, which often take a hundred years, Bai Jiangtou will not feel slow even if he builds it in three years, but Bai Jiangtou intends to finish it in two years. According to his budget, he will finish it in two years. If you can make money, in three years, if you fail, you will lose money.

After seeing the construction site of the exchange, Bai Jiangtou took Yang Chao to the edge of the Yangtze River, where some construction was also going on on both sides of the polder embankment on the edge of the Yangtze River.

About three feet away from the dike on the inside, there is already a huge circular foundation with a radius of ten feet.

What Yang Chao intends to build is a circular tower twenty feet high. The bottom ten feet is basically solid, leaving only a one-foot-diameter core in the middle, while the top ten feet is almost hollow, and the walls get thicker as you go up. Thin, forming an inverted pyramid-like space.

Well, in fact, this is a water tower with a volume of about [-] cubic feet, which is enough to supply the daily water for the military barracks and the dock area in the future, and a pool will be built in the nearby farmland so that irrigation water can also be guaranteed.

There are water towers, so there must be water lifting facilities.

On the other side of the dike, a large waterwheel is being built.

In fact, the reason why this water tower was built was because of the problem of wasteland development. A few days ago, Yang Chao saw some people using buckets of water in the Yangtze River, and then lifted a ten-foot-high embankment, and laboriously poured buckets of water into the paddy fields. On the contrary, this is the most industrious group of people who have opened up a few acres of paddy fields first, and they can't wait to grow food.

So Yang Chao wanted to build a batch of water conservancy facilities for them.

To lift water, you must either build irrigation canals or build water-lifting facilities. Needless to say, irrigation canals, the banks of the river are always higher than the river water. The Yangtze River is not the Yellow River. feasible.

The waterwheel is a very mature water-lifting facility. There are many small rivers in the south, but the problem is that those small rivers are fast and easy to transform. The big families in the countryside even build embankments to tighten the river and speed up the flow, so that the waterwheel can turn. .

Although the water of the Yangtze River is large, it is obvious that the flow rate cannot be too fast, otherwise the river bank will not be able to bear the rush. On the contrary, it is rare to see waterwheels on this kind of big river, because they cannot be carried at all.

If you want to drive the waterwheel with a slow flow rate, you must build a large enough scraper, and you must build a large enough waterwheel to build a large scraper.

Fortunately, Yang Chao has something to imitate. There are similar large waterwheels on the Yellow River. They are lined up in rows in the Lanzhou section. Later generations call them the Yellow River Waterwheel, or Lanzhou Waterwheel. Take advantage of the water of a larger river with a slower flow.

There is a Yellow River waterwheel on the Yellow River, and the Yangtze River waterwheel cannot be built on the Yangtze River, so Yang Chao invited craftsmen to build it.

The difference is that Yang Chao hopes to challenge the technical difficulty. The Yellow River waterwheel was built in the Ming Dynasty, and its diameter can reach ten feet. Yang Chao wants to build a waterwheel with a radius of ten feet.

No expense was spared for this reason. The spokes of the waterwheel are all made of high-quality wood for the mast. Ten-foot wood is very scarce, and a piece of wood costs hundreds of taels of silver. Obviously, such a large waterwheel needs more than one spoke. Two, the Lanzhou waterwheel needs sixteen pairs of spokes to support it. Yang Chao's waterwheel is even bigger, with 32 pairs and 64 spokes prepared. This batch of wood alone costs nearly ten thousand taels of silver, and this waterwheel In the end, it must be more than 1 taels when it is built.

This does not count the construction of water towers, and subsequent ditches and pools.

But the effect is obvious. A large water truck in Lanzhou can irrigate 1 to [-] mu of land. Yang Chao’s water truck is larger, and the water from the Yangtze River is more abundant. In addition, there are water towers and pools for mediation. According to estimates, this water truck can irrigate For [-] mu of land, the cost of [-] taels of silver is not too high.

Although the waterwheel is still being built in the process of exploration, it is much faster than the exchange. After all, wood processing is much easier than stone. It is expected that the waterwheel will be erected in the spring of next year, and the water tower will probably be completed.

After watching the construction site, Yang Chao went to the farmhouse on the wasteland.

Now this place is no longer the emperor. The green grass is like a prairie. Except for a few lands where food is planted, most of the places are still planted with grass. Every year, one mu of grass can be sold to Yang Chao for a tael of silver. , even if it grows grain, it is estimated that there will not be much output on this barren sandy land.

Since it is a grassland, it cannot be called a wasteland. Besides, eight villages have been established on it, large and small, from the same guard, or people from adjacent guards, or people who are related to each other. They gathered spontaneously.

In the past, shacks were built first, and then they went to enclose the land around them to occupy their share of the land. After more than a year of development, they have now built new houses one by one. The rows of brick and tile houses are very beautiful, similar to ordinary villages. The only difference is probably the severe lack of trees here.

Yang Chao brought more than a dozen soldiers to visit these people, they were all very happy, and they all wanted to keep Yang Chao to eat at their home.

Although there were more than a dozen people, the common people generously bought wine and meat to entertain them.

In fact, these people are not considered poor. Those who can move here are the family members of the group of soldiers who followed Yang Chaobei to Shanghai Prefecture. The lowest level of this group of soldiers is right now, even if they stay in many male elite barracks The soldiers in the army are all first-class soldiers who have seen blood, and their pay is exactly the same as that of the team. At least three taels of silver a month, and dozens of taels of silver a year are not worrying about spending.

Not to mention that they went to Haizhou with Yang Chao, and each of them brought home hundreds of taels of property.

It's just that their family members are farmers after all, and they are at ease when they see the land, so they moved here one by one from the guard, and they don't have to be bullied by the guard officers with Yang Chao's protection, so they are very grateful to Yang Chao.

Their good treatment also made the more than 100 soldiers who sneaked away quietly and regretted not going to Haizhou with Yang Chao, especially their family members complained about them very much, and regretted that they had fooled their son and escaped before the battle.

Yang Chao went to a military officer's family. The family's surname was Zhang, and their son was named Zhang Ergun.

Although the son's military salary is generous and the family is not short of food and clothing, but the Zhang family is very diligent, and they still want to see that they can get food on their land as soon as possible to be at ease.

Lao Zhang brought his other two sons, a daughter and his wife to open ten acres of paddy fields, and filled these paddy fields with water through wooden barrels. The paddy fields are growing very well, and they have already produced full ears of rice, and they are about to be harvested. up.

Yang Chao chose the Zhang family as a guest, which made the old Zhang family very happy. They asked their son to sell wine and meat, and asked their daughter to catch and kill ducks in the backyard.

Seeing the 12-year-old little girl with a ponytail throwing ducks around, Yang Chao felt full of life, but Lao Zhang kept apologizing for being rude.

At this time, the little girl drove an old duck out of the yard. Old Zhang's family was the outermost family in the village, and his family's paddy field was a few blocks away from the door.

Lao Zhang hurriedly chased after him and shouted: "Hurry up, Niuzi, don't let the ducks eat the ears of rice!"

Ducks eat rice?
Yang Chao's heart moved. He remembered that ducks could be raised in rice fields. It is said that ducks don't eat rice seedlings!

This can be said to the old Zhang's family, raising ducks in rice fields can enrich the field, loosen the soil, and get dozens of ducks for nothing.

(End of this chapter)