Chapter 50: If you don’t have it now, you will have it later.
Lu Wanjie blushed and ran to the corner. She looked back and saw no one was around, and then she breathed a sigh of relief.
Thinking of what Li Chengqian said just now, her face turned red to the root of her neck.
At this moment, her heart was beating wildly.
Li Chengqian came to me if the marriage proposal was not going well.
It's nothing more than saying that if someone uses my name to cause trouble for you again, I will help you explain.
But in Lu Wanjie's ears, it was almost like 'I will marry you when I grow up'.
…
Watch Lu Wanjie run away.
Li Chengqian looked at Cheng Hualiang and then at Changsun Chong.
At this time, the two people's faces were as suffocated as eggplants, extremely ugly.
Li Chengqian said with a dark face: "If you two want to laugh, just laugh!"
He has said this, who dares to laugh?
The two of them tried their best to suppress their laughter, not to mention how uncomfortable they were.
Li Chengqian rolled his eyes: "Don't say I didn't give you a chance to laugh, three two one, if anyone dares to laugh, I will have their legs broken."
This time, the two of them didn't dare to laugh at all.
After the wedding banquet, Li Chengqian returned to the hotel where he was temporarily staying.
When entering the hotel, Li Chengqian suddenly remembered something.
"By the way, Brother Chong, I forgot to ask these days. Are food prices in the south much lower than in the north?"
"yes."
"About how much lower?"
Changsun Chong thought for a while: "The price of grain in the north is now thirty yuan a dou, while in the south it is more than half that price."
"How much more?"
"The price of food in the south is at most ten cents per dou."
"So much difference?"
Li Chengqian was a little surprised.
This is not half the problem anymore, it is already a third.
The difference in food prices between the north and the south may be half of Li Chengqian's imagination.
But the difference is two-thirds, which is a huge gap.
"certainly."
Changsun Chong Someone on the side explained: "Although the land in the north is more fertile than in the south, the rice in the south is harvested twice a year, while in the north it is only harvested once."
"What if we want to transfer grain from the south to the north?"
Li Chengqian asked, rubbing his chin.
"This is unrealistic."
In today's era, after all, there are no highways, let alone cars and other fast transportation equipment. We can only rely on people pushing and horse-drawn vehicles.
But the pushing speed of cattle, horses and people was too slow. It would take at least two months to transport grain and grass from Suzhou to Chang'an.
During these two months, the food will definitely deteriorate and be damaged by rats.
Take ten kilograms of grain as an example. Excluding spoilage and damage by external forces such as rats, six kilograms of grain are left, which is pretty good.
Changsun Chong was very rational and said directly: "The south-to-north grain transfer has not happened before. It was done during the reign of Emperor Yang of the previous dynasty."
"But transporting food from the south to the north is very expensive in terms of travel expenses alone, not counting the losses on the road."
"What if we take the water route?"
Li Chengqian now wants to implement the south-to-north grain diversion, so he has been struggling with this issue.
But Changsun Chong shook his head.
"Your Highness, please don't forget what happened when we came here. Even if we are a royal ship, we will encounter water pirates, let alone those merchant ships carrying food."
"Once the waterway is opened, the waterway will inevitably be cleaned and checkpoints will be established along the canal."
"Although the waterway is fast, it is only ten days and a half months faster than the land route at most."
"If we only use these ten days and a half to measure it, the final outcome will only be an increase in the expenditure on the national treasury."
Although Chang Sun Chong said so, Li Chengqian still had no intention of giving up.
Li Chengqian continued to ask: "How about allowing merchant ships to travel five hundred miles a day and three hundred miles at night?"
"Impossible, absolutely impossible."
Changsun Chong shook his head and said: "For a boat on the water, even if there is good wind and good weather, traveling two hundred miles a day and fifty miles at night is the limit. Eight hundred miles is simply impossible."
"No!"
Li Chengqian raised his lips and said: "There is definitely a ship in this world that can travel eight hundred miles a day."
As a later generation, Li Chengqian had seen ships that could travel thousands of miles a day.
Traveling eight hundred miles a day is not too easy.
Moreover, he is currently developing propellers.
The combination of manpower and natural force, even if it cannot compare with the steam engines and diesel engines of later generations, is already very impressive in terms of kinetic energy.
"You don't need to think about it. You just need to tell me. Once there are ships that can travel eight hundred miles a day, will it not be so difficult to transfer grain from the south to the north?"
"this……"
"That's true."
"If there were ships that could travel eight hundred miles a day, it would not take more than a month to transport food from the south to the north."
Changsun Chong shook his head helplessly and said, "But is there really such a ship in this world?"
"some."
"Even if it doesn't happen now, it will definitely happen in the future."
Changsun Chong's words deepened Li Chengqian's idea of continuing to develop wind propellers.
It was also from this day that Li Chengqian began to devote himself to the development of wind propellers.
As a person from modern times, he is well aware of the importance of waterways.
Even in the era when he lived in later generations, water transportation was still the leader in the transportation industry.
Therefore, water transportation is very necessary and must be paid attention to.
…
Li Chengqian and others, after staying in Suzhou for half a month, officially set off back to Chang'an.
When we arrived, we were delayed for a long time because we had to send Gao Shilian overland.
Nowadays, there is almost no need to take the land route. You only need to take the water route, along the Yangtze River, into the canal and then into the Yellow River, and you can reach Chang'an directly. r> This is also thanks to the ‘faint emperor Yangdi’ of the previous dynasty. Without him, Li Chengqian would have suffered a lot.
Even so, it still takes thousands of miles to sail.
While on the ship, Li Chengqian concentrated on studying how to improve the ship. At the same time, he also used his painting talent to draw the map in his mind.
On top of this, he also drew the scenery he experienced along the way and left notes inside.
By the time we were about to arrive at our destination, those atlases had become relatively complete geographical atlases.
…
On this day, there was thunder and lightning and heavy rain in Chang'an City.
A thin girl ran home in the heavy rain, collected all the clothes hanging outside, and hurriedly carried them into the house.
Finally, I took a small wooden basin to catch the rainwater that leaked from the damaged part of the roof.
There were also poor people in the prosperous times, and the city of Chang'an under the emperor's feet was also rich in the east and noble in the west, and poor in the south and low in the north.
The poor in this era are completely different from those in later generations.
In future generations, no matter how poor they are, they will not starve to death. There will always be a way to survive.
But in such an era, what the poor think about every day is how to avoid starving to death and how to have a full meal.
It is never easy for children born in such a family to live.
In the morning, she went to help an elderly couple clean their yard two streets away and fill their water jars with water.
The couple's son is a peddler who travels far away from home. He comes home once every three to five days, and each time he pays her three to five copper coins.
Girls have no idea about wealth and poverty. They don’t think being rich is good, and they don’t think poverty is a sin.
For her, the biggest surprise in the world is that her mother can bring her back some leftover snacks to eat after she goes to help a wealthy family.
"ah!"
As if she remembered something, she got up and ran to the broken cabinet. After digging out a cloth bag, she ran into the rain.