Chapter 1198, the long whip that beats the western world
"Woo~"
The train was running on the straight rails, and a whine of the whistle woke up Avalo from Spain.
He is the Spanish Minister to the Ming Dynasty and has been in the Ming Dynasty for two years.
When he first came to the Ming Dynasty, he brought Marco Polo's travel journal with him. During the journey across the ocean, he had already read the book by heart.
In his mind, that distant Eastern Empire was gold, porcelain and silk, rich and heavenly, and synonymous with power.
However, after actually coming outside the Ming Dynasty and staying here for two years, he gained a new understanding of the Ming Dynasty.
Just like the rumors say, this place is indeed very rich.
This is a magical country. The people here are well-dressed and well-fed. More importantly, they are as proud as the Spaniards. There is pride and confidence in their eyes, which once made Avaro feel very uncomfortable.
Because in the eyes of the Ming people, he seemed to be an uncivilized barbarian from a barbaric land, but Avaro had always been proud of being a member of the great Spanish Empire.
Avaro was deeply impressed by Ming's wealth.
"The Ming Dynasty's latest five-year railway plan, they can easily raise 500 million taels of silver to build a railway, 500 million taels of silver!"
"This huge wealth can probably be used to cover the entire Lesotho."
Avaro couldn't help but take out his notebook and wrote this on it.
The people of Ming Dynasty were really very rich.
He once went to the dock of Tianjin Port to look at the ships returning from overseas. A ship was loaded with gold and silver jewelry from all over the world. Boxes of gold and silver. When the jewelry was opened, it seemed that the whole world was filled with nothing but gold and silver.
Those charming colors and lights.
"There is gold everywhere here. This is not an exaggeration."
"In the Beijing-Tianjin area of the Ming Empire, a house here costs more than a thousand taels of silver. Such a huge wealth is enough to buy a nice manor in Spain."
"The rich people here can spend thousands of taels of silver just for a casual meal in a restaurant. They are more luxurious than our king."
"But that's not what shocked me the most."
"What really shocked me was the wisdom of the Ming people!"
"They can actually build such a huge and incredible train. This kind of machine that relies on steam to provide power can transport two thousand people or more than two hundred thousand kilograms of goods at a time, and it can travel at eighty miles per hour.
Advance at a fast pace.”
"Oh, God!"
"I swear, such a machine must be made by a god."
Avaro looked at the rapidly regressing scenery outside the window and kept writing in his diary.
"I can say with certainty that if this news reaches Europe, no one will believe me."
"No one can imagine how I feel at this moment, nor can I imagine that I wrote such words on a high-speed train."
"The train is so smooth that even a glass of water won't turn over. It only takes less than two hours to travel to Tianjin, which is more than a hundred miles away."
"God, if I hadn't been there myself, I wouldn't be able to believe this."
"But this is the fact. As you can see in front of you, the Ming Dynasty villages are all very neat, clean and beautiful, dotted on this beautiful land."
"It can be clearly seen that the Ming people living here are very wealthy, carefree, cleanly dressed and rosy-faced."
"In contrast, I still clearly remember the Spanish countryside I visited, which was dirty, chaotic, poor, poor, backward, and ignorant."
"In the Ming Empire, there are schools everywhere. According to their newspaper, they will strive to have every Ming child go to school and be literate in the future."
"What an incredible thing!"
"They are so rich that they want everyone to read and become literate, but we Spanish children are working in the fields and herding cattle and sheep."
"In fact, the literacy rate of Ming Dynasty people is very high. In the Beijing-Tianjin area, newspaper sales are very good, and almost everyone loves to read newspapers."
Avaro put down the pen in his hand, looked at the Ming people in the carriage, and continued writing.
"When we in the Western world basically relied on walking to get out, the Ming Dynasty people had already invented the train. As soon as the train appeared, their government organized and managed it very strongly, and soon proposed a five-year railway plan."
"We will spend five years building several major railway lines across the vast territory of the Ming Dynasty to quickly connect every territory of this huge empire."
"They are extremely wealthy and can easily raise hundreds of millions of taels of silver to build railways."
"One of the railways that will be started next year is called the Jinghe Railway. It will build a railway from the capital of the Ming Empire all the way to the Hezhong area in the west. And this is just the beginning. They originally planned to build it to the Caucasus region east of the Black Sea."
"But because there is only a small part of the land on the south bank of the Caspian Sea, it is easily affected by the Persian Empire, so it was temporarily built to the area in the middle of the river."
"But I think the Ming Empire will definitely not stop its pace of expansion. Next, it will either attack the Kazakh Khanate to the north or the Persian Empire to the south. It will not allow a small Caspian Sea to block its progress."
"You must know that the entire vast Pacific Ocean has now become the inland sea of the Ming Empire."
Avaro pulled out a world map, which is a map that can be purchased anywhere in the Ming Empire. Looking at the huge territory of the Ming Empire, Avaro fell into deep thought.
It is so big that even the Pacific Ocean became the inland sea of the Ming Empire. This is simply incredible.
Then he took out a pen and drew a line on the map, the route of the Jinghe Railway. Then his eyes widened slightly and he picked up the pen and wrote in his notebook.
"Oh, God!"
"Once the Jinghe Railway is completed, I dare to say that it will definitely become a whip that beats time in the West. Just like the Mongols back then, relying on this railway, the Ming Empire will beat the world hard!"
"Some people may think I'm being alarmist."
"That's because you can't imagine the powerful transportation capacity of the railway."
"It is tens of thousands of miles from the capital of the Ming Dynasty to the Hezhong area. In the past, even riding a horse would have taken two months. But if the railway is built, it will only take half a day to go from Beijing to the Hezhong area by train.
One month is enough."
“And one train can transport two thousand people at a time!”
"The Hezhong area is still a long way from Europe, but it is the bridgehead for the Ming Empire to continue its westward expansion. According to the latest information published in the Ming Empire newspapers."
"The Ming Empire cultivated a large amount of fertile farmland in the Hezhong area. This year's bumper harvest alone is enough to feed tens of millions of people for several years."
"There are more than a million horses grazing in the river area, enough for the soldiers of the Ming Empire to have a war horse, and there are more than 10 million cattle and sheep grazing."
"With such a foundation, if the Ming Empire wants to continue to expand westward, with its strong national power, it can easily mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops to sweep westward."
"At that time, no one can stop the progress of the Ming Empire, whether it is the Kazakh Khanate, the Crimean Tatars, or the Slavs."
"Their railway can be built all the way to the west. Wherever the railway goes, everything will belong to the people of Ming Dynasty!"
Thinking of this, Avaro put down the pen in his hand.
In the past few years in Daming, he has not been idle with nothing to do.
He worked hard to learn the language, writing, and history of the Ming Dynasty. He could say with certainty that the Ming Empire would continue to expand externally, although in the past few years, the Ming Empire had not carried out large-scale expansion or war.
But this huge dragon will not stop.
The painstaking efforts in the Western Region and the Hezhong area are all to lay a solid foundation and prepare for subsequent expansion.
"This is an empire more terrifying than the Mongols!"
"Although the Mongols were terrifying back then, their population was very sparse after all. What's more important is that the Mongols lacked cultural heritage and were barbarians. They only knew how to burn, kill, and loot, and they didn't understand business and management at all."
"But the people of the Ming Dynasty are different. They have a large population, hundreds of millions of people, and they are everywhere all over the world."
"They have their own long history and profound cultural heritage. Their civilization is so bright and dazzling. They can manage such a huge empire in an orderly and prosperous way."
"Once they continue to expand westward, no one can stop them in any aspect."
"In the past, due to geographical and transportation restrictions, even when ruling the Western Regions and the Hezhong area, the Ming Empire had to spend great efforts on large-scale immigration."
"But as long as this railway is built, everything will undergo earth-shaking changes. The natural chasm will become a road. No matter how far away the area is, as long as there is a railway, the Ming Empire can be firmly in its hands."
"Our great Spain will eventually become the leader of Europe, but I think we need to learn a lot from the Ming Empire."
"Not only should you learn the system of the Ming Empire, but you should also learn the advanced technology of the Ming Empire. Their emperor attached great importance to craftsmen, and craftsmen who made outstanding contributions could even receive noble titles."
"Maybe we should also build railways, build railways on a large scale, so that we can firmly connect every place in the empire and become stronger!"