Yang Fan was not short of money, so he naturally wanted to live in a better place. Even though he was on the front line of Jiuyuan City, he still asked his family's transportation team to ship a set of wooden prefabricated houses.
This kind of house is a three-story building that is first laid on the ground with a cement and stone platform. Then the wooden components are made and finally assembled.
The design drawings are based on modern North American and Canadian style wooden villas.
The thermal insulation rate of wood is higher than that of masonry structures, making it warm in winter and cool in summer.
It’s just that in modern society, wood is too expensive and ordinary people cannot afford it.
There was plenty of wood in this era. According to the drawings, Xincheng used woodworking machines driven by steam engines to process the components. Then they were transported by water to Jishuitan and transferred to Zhangjiakou. Finally, they were transported by caravan to the Yellow River, and then transported by steam tugboats.
Jiuyuan City.
Mongolian horsemen are now everywhere outside Jiuyuan City, and land transportation has been cut off. The last section of supplies to Jiuyuan City can only be transported by water.
The Desert Mongolia is not the Monan Mongolia that has gone into decline. They have been fighting with various ethnic groups in the turbulent land of the Western Regions for hundreds of years. Their combat experience, command ability and combat effectiveness cannot be underestimated.
The commander of the Desert Mongolian Alliance who came to Hecheng first, and the Taijis of the Heshuote Division, have already begun to intercept the battlefield of Jiuyuan City. Battlefield interception refers to the temporary "shielding" of the target battlefield through elite cavalry units.
Block the connection between the battlefield and the surrounding combat areas, block external support, and cut off the enemy's logistics transportation and supplies. Place the target area in a relatively isolated environment.
This will provide better battlefield conditions and help our side achieve its combat objectives in the area.
From the moment the Heshuote cavalry appeared outside the city, Yang Fan felt deeply that before the war, the atmosphere was full of storms and storms.
This morning, Yang Fan got up from his comfortable bed, opened the floor-to-ceiling glass grille door, and walked to the balcony. While brushing his teeth with a toothbrush, he looked at the busy Yellow River dock in the south.
Although it was not long before dawn, there was a huge crowd of people there, and a large number of coolies were unloading the goods. The steamboat was replenishing coal and water. There were also breakfast stalls on the street that came in the middle of the night, selling various snacks.
Yang Fan looked happy with the new life, this is what a city should be like.
This modernly designed all-wooden villa is very comfortable to live in.
Yang Fan built the villa between the south of the city and the dock of the Yellow River. Before, when covering the city wall with stones, he extended the walls on the east and west sides southward into the Yellow River. This is equivalent to covering the part from the south of the city to the river.
Jiuyuan City has continued to expand by 50% to the south. Because this new urban area is relatively safe, it is mainly provided for residence by non-military personnel.
Yang Fan and his regiment of servants, material warehouses, field hospitals, as well as civil servants, factory guards, eunuchs sent by Chongzhen, and the remaining 60,000 civilians were stationed here.
The 45,000 people and 20,000 regiments in the Beijing camp, as well as the more than 10,000 people who stayed here in the early stage of the operation, are all stationed in the restored Jiuyuan City.
Although this is an ancient city from the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the Han people have long abandoned it. The ethnic minorities do not know how to build and maintain it, so most of the buildings in the city have collapsed.
Only some nomadic people set up tents and the like to live in the city. The rammed earth city walls were also full of collapsed gaps.
Yang Fan estimated that the confrontation between him and Mongolia would not be too short, and the outcome of this war to determine Mongolia's fate would not be decided soon.
He simply built Jiuyuan City well. It relies on the Yellow River and has convenient water transportation. In the future, the railway will be built here, and it can be used as an important support base in the northwest region.
Yang Fan arranged for the garrison in Beijing to carry out extensive construction. The main tasks were to clean up all the remaining building remains in the city, re-plan the streets and functional areas, build sewers, build public toilets, and dig wells in the city to provide clean drinking water.
Because this is a grassland, there are no trees to build houses. Just like using stones to build city walls, a large number of stones and cement are used to build houses.
Because there is no shortage of coal here, Yang Fan also built many new brick kilns in Nancheng. Coal is used to bake solid clay bricks. Most of the buildings in the city use stone as their foundations and bricks and tiles to build their houses. The construction speed is very fast.
In the past six months, not only has the city wall been completed, but most of the houses in the city have also been capped.
The North City became a garrison city, while the South City, although small, became a civilian city.
Gradually, various weapon repair workshops, restaurants, grocery stores, and various service businesses that serve the military have sprung up here.
Businessmen are the most adventurous people in the world. As long as they have enough profits, they dare to take all risks.
There are so many Beijing-based officers and soldiers stationed here in Jiuyuan City, and their military pay is sufficient, and they have also repaid their arrears for more than ten years. All of them are quite wealthy.
They have spending power, so a large number of merchants came here to open shops to serve the officers and soldiers of the Beijing camp. While it was convenient for the officers and soldiers, they also made a lot of money.
Especially after Yang Fan held the Dongsheng City auction, the merchants of the Ming Dynasty were completely enlightened.
They discovered that there were so many business opportunities on the grassland. War was not just about losing money. Didn't Uncle Dingyuan turn war into a good business to make money?
After they made a huge profit at Dongsheng's auction, they sent family members one after another to open shops here and purchase furs, medicinal materials, and livestock. In particular, the army sold captured horses and cattle.
As a result, Nancheng became increasingly prosperous. Various bathhouses, restaurants, pharmacies, and even brothels popped up one after another. Supplying the city with dry cow dung, firewood, coal and other fuels, vegetables, grains and non-staple food became a big business.
Yang Fan wanted to stockpile enough supplies for the winter before the Yellow River froze. Whether it was shipped by the court or merchants, he would buy it at a reasonable price.
Under Yang Fan's management, this ancient city, which had been abandoned for hundreds of years, became more and more popular, and it actually had the appearance of being blocked in the south of the Yangtze River.
The winter outside the Great Wall is very cold. Yang Fan doesn't know how long the war will last, so he must plan in advance.
Only by building a city well can the army survive the winter safely. Building a city requires a lot of materials. This also gives these businessmen countless business opportunities.
After the construction of Jiuyuan City, Yang Fan was actually in an invincible position.
As long as he doesn't wander around, he has basically no fear of the Mongols attacking Jiuyuan City.
With so many soldiers and civilians, plus such a large and strong stone wall, it would have been very difficult to break through in this era.
What's more, there is also the support of water transportation on the Yellow River. The railway has now reached Zhangjiakou. It is not impossible to build it here before the end of the year.
Now, several new quarries have been built along the Yanshan Railway, and gravel equipment driven by steam engines has been installed. Every day, the mountains can be opened with explosives and crushed by crushers, providing a huge amount of gravel.
The materials needed for railway construction can be transported quickly and in large quantities through the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway.
The efficiency now is much better than that of horse-drawn carriages and ox-carts before.
At this time, the advantages of the narrow-gauge railway being easy to build, low investment, and fast progress of the project are reflected. The train pulls sleepers, rails, and gravel. After repairing a section, it continues to move forward. Then it lays another section. This cycle continues towards Guihua City.
Advance.
Steam engines and road rollers with bulldozers are in front to level the land. After the ground of the roadbed is repaired, ballast ladders are laid, and then a vibrating machine driven by the steam engine is used to vibrate the roadbed to make the ballast gravel more compact.
Finally, workers unloaded the sleepers and rails from the train and completed laying.
There are no decent rivers on the grassland, so the track laying speed is very fast.
Originally, Yang Fan planned to put the civil servants, factory guards, and father-in-law in Guihua City. After all, the rear area was relatively safe. However, the series of previous victories had already made these people red-eyed.
In today's Ming Dynasty, military exploits are not easy to achieve. Especially the military exploits against the Tatars and Donglu. Seeing the overwhelming military exploits coming from Yang Fan's side, they were like flies seeing blood, and their throats were about to stretch out in anxiety.
The claws are out.
In ordinary times, attacking the Tatars and beheading more than a hundred people would be regarded as a great victory. Unlike Yang Fan's place, it is common to annihilate thousands of enemies in one battle. In decisive battles, the number of enemies killed is often calculated by tens of thousands.
They cried and shouted that they wanted to live and die with the army. They claimed that the emperor sent them here to fight, not to hide behind and enjoy. They must not chill the hearts of the soldiers of the three armies.
Yang Fan was helpless. Seeing how persistent they were, he could only let them follow them to Jiuyuan City.
Now, more than 100,000 people from Mongolia in the desert have gathered on the Houtao Grassland, more than 300 miles away from here. There are millions of cattle and sheep that have been driven there. There are also 100,000 herdsmen grazing for them.
This is the advantage of nomadic people. Wherever they go, they take their cattle, sheep, livestock, old, young, women and children with them.
The fertile land in Houtao is close to the Yellow River, with a humid climate and lush pastures. It is more than enough to support two to three hundred thousand herdsmen.
