In the tenth year of Xuanping, in the tenth month of the golden autumn, Chen Lifu returned to the city for the first time after leaving Jinling City and returning to his hometown last month.
Still sitting in his almost iconic and extremely luxurious four-wheel carriage, two tall horses dragged the four-wheel carriage quickly through the cinder road outside the city.
Then we entered Dongcheng District along this expressway!
Dongcheng District is different from the old city. There are no walls around it. It can be said that the entire Dongcheng District has no obvious boundaries. There are only wide cinder roads connecting various parts of Dongcheng District and the suburbs.
In addition to the lack of city walls, the entire urban layout of Dongcheng District is also different from the old city. The old city is the layout of a traditional Chinese city. Except for a few main roads, other streets are not well planned. Many streets
They are all crooked and narrow, although in recent years, the Chengtian Prefectural Government has been continuously renovating the city's appearance in the old city.
For example, it would be like demolishing the street area occupied by merchants in the pre-Ming Dynasty, renovating dirty and messy neighborhoods, or dredging and transforming the entire drainage facility.
At the same time, in order to better govern the urban area, we also imitated some traditional urban management methods and some current grassroots management methods, divided the urban area, and then established a number of divisions to manage every corner of the city...
After many years of renovation, the city appearance of the old town of Jinling City can be said to be different from the past. Anyone who walks into Jinling City will see clean and tidy streets and orderly carriages on the wide cinderblock roads.
, the crowd was impressed.
But even so, there is a huge gap between the old urban area and the new Dongcheng area of Jinling City.
Jinling Xindong City District can be said to be the first and only large-scale modern city built in the Tang Dynasty over the years, and it was built with complete planning.
Li Xuan has been personally involved in the planning of this new Dongcheng District, which has a much larger total area than the old city, from the beginning. The most obvious sign can be said to be the layout of various infrastructures.
The transportation network extending in all directions is the core infrastructure of Xindongcheng District. There are several main roads, plus numerous branch roads, and these main roads are straight and wide.
These main roads are all paved with cinder or cement!
It is worth mentioning the cement road. This cement road is actually Yanjiang East Road!
The large-scale use of cinder to pave roads in domestic cities is nothing new. With the large-scale use of coal as fuel for production, heating, and cooking, a large amount of cinder is produced. The final use of these cinders is to pave roads.
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However, cinder roads also have some shortcomings, especially aesthetic problems that are difficult to solve.
Therefore, in some important places, cinder paving is still not used. In the early days, bluestone paving was used directly at a huge cost. For example, the road directly in front of the Royal Courtyard was paved with stone pavement.
Later, Jinling City, which was under great pressure for its city appearance, began to use wooden planks to pave its roads!
Yes, paving the road with wooden planks may sound very luxurious, but paving the road with wooden planks is much cheaper than paving the road with stone slabs.
However, boardwalks are very difficult to maintain, and the cost of paving them is still very high. Only the sidewalks in some important commercial streets are done in such a small amount.
When cement was invented, it was not actually used to build houses first. The Hanlin Academy in the Royal Villa was not the first place to use cement. The first place to use cement was actually Yanjiang East Road.
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There are a large number of companies around Yanjiang East Road, which is a typical place where wealth is concentrated. In order to ease local finances, and more importantly, for the sake of their own dignity, the companies working on Yanjiang East Road initially raised their own funds to lay stone roads and wooden boards.
It is a road, but this road is too busy, and it is close to the dock. Loaded carriages often pass by. Whether it is stone slabs or wooden boards, they are often damaged.
After cement was invented at that time, the cement company also cooperated with the district government in Dongcheng District for experimental purposes to provide cement at almost cost price for the construction of Yanjiang East Road.
At the same time, in order to solve the problem of paving materials, especially to make cement better used for construction purposes, the cement company specially commissioned other units to design a stone crusher. This stone crusher is powered by a steam engine and can effectively crush
stones to obtain uniform small gravel.
Cement and cement are combined at any time, and a standard cement-hardened road surface appears!
This is what created the cement road that is currently the only one in the country.
It’s not long, only four kilometers from front to back, but the cost is extremely high!
There is no way, today's cement is still very expensive. The cost of paving with cement is not high, and other places still can't afford it for a while.
On the contrary, the military purchased most of the cement production and then transported it to important areas to build forts and other defenses.
For example, the Wusong Fort is an important part of the military's cement fortress plan!
The military plans to use cement as the main material to rebuild the entire fort to increase its defense capabilities, especially its ability to withstand heavy artillery bombardment.
Along with the transportation network in Dongcheng District, there are complete drainage facilities. On both sides of each road, there are pre-constructed underground drainage ditches, and green trees and flowers are planted on both sides.
At the same time, the new urban area also pioneered the laying of a tap water pipeline system. Although tap water currently covers only a very small part of the urban area, this is still a great improvement.
In addition to these infrastructures, every area in the city has its purpose planned in advance. For example, there is a commercial and office area near the Yangtze River. An east road along the river is only a few kilometers long, but there are more than a hundred businesses clustered together.
The headquarters or branches of large enterprises have thus formed an almost distinct regional style.
The people who work in this area all look like social elites and wear the most decent clothes to and from get off work. In order to take them to and from get off work, the companies here have jointly established a bus and carriage company to connect to Dongcheng District. Other places and the old city are used to serve employees of various companies commuting to and from work.
It can also be seen here that in fact, many companies engaged in public utilities in Dongcheng District, such as water companies, horse-drawn carriage companies, etc., were jointly funded and founded by many large companies along Jiangdong Road!
After all, these are public service industries. If so many big companies hadn't jointly funded them, the Jinling City Yamen might not have approved them. Ordinary private individuals who wanted to get involved in these industries alone would have little chance.
Even Chen Lifu, a native of Jinling, couldn't help but be surprised when he saw this Xindongcheng District. In fact, he was even more surprised than outsiders.
If they are outsiders, they may think that Jinling City has always been this prosperous, but Chen Lifu, as a native of Jinling, knows very well what Jinling was like before the Tang Dynasty came to Jinling.
After moving to this place, Jinling City has undergone tremendous changes.
The changes in Jinling City are a small microcosm of the changes in the entire Tang Dynasty!
The concrete road on which his carriage is now traveling has almost witnessed the many changes in the Tang Dynasty.
Chen Lifu firmly believes that he is in an era of great change!
And it is the eternal sage Li Xuan who leads the Chinese people to create this era of change!
The Holy Emperor has already ushered in this new era of change, and no matter what, if he follows closely in the footsteps of the Holy Emperor, he will finally leave his own traces in this prosperous age of prosperity.
And today's new department, the Ministry of Finance, is where we have reached new heights.
The Ministry of Finance is an institution that has never appeared in the Tang Dynasty or even in China's thousands of years of history. Not only the name, but even the functions have never appeared before.
Based on the few information he knew, he could already analyze that the main function of the newly established Ministry of Finance is to manage money!
Its main agencies are the Budget Department and the Finance Department, which were split from the Ministry of Taxation.
Although it has not been announced to the outside world, some well-informed people in Jinling City already know that just five days ago, at the cabinet meeting, Emperor Sheng officially approved the tax department reform plan.
Several main agencies of the tax department will be separated, but at the same time, the customs will be rejoined into the tax department. Therefore, the main agencies of the tax department are the Grain Collection Department, Customs Department, etc., and their main functions will become purely
tax collection agency.
The famous tax inspection team is still retained, which makes many people very disappointed. Many people actually want to take advantage of the reform of the tax department to abolish the tax inspection team, or split it up, but it doesn't work anymore.
The tax inspection team should also be separated from the tax department and placed under the direct jurisdiction of the cabinet.
However, this plan was rejected by the Holy Emperor. In the end, the Tax Inspection Team, as the largest non-military armed organization in the country with tens of thousands of employees nationwide, was finally retained and remained under the Ministry of Taxation.
However, it is no longer under the Grain Collection Department as in the past, but has been independently managed by the Audit Department.
Several major agencies separated from the Ministry of Taxation, namely the Budget Department and the Finance Department, were officially established as a new ministerial agency, the Ministry of Finance.
This Ministry of Finance will comprehensively manage the domestic economic order!
The institution where Chen Lifu works is the Financial Department of the Ministry of Finance, and his specific position is the right deputy director of the Financial Department.
The Finance Department will have one director of the third rank, one deputy director of the fourth rank, and one deputy director of the right rank. In other words, Chen Lifu will be the third-in-command in the Finance Department.
At the same time, according to some traditions in the imperial political arena, deputies usually assist the top leader in taking charge of some important affairs. Therefore, Chen Lifu also supervises the director of the Securities Division under the Financial Department.