Wang Shilu walked through the Tixiang Gate calmly.
He found that the city gate tower had actually been completed. Not only the Tixiang Gate, but also the Xinglin Gate in the north - there were two gates on the east side of Shangyang Palace City, the Tixiang Gate in the south and the Xinglin Gate in the north.
They are all elements related to stars, which is consistent with the overall architectural concept of Luoyang.
The city wall between the two gates has been completed, and a lot of bricks have been piled up in the city. The servants are wrapping the wall with bricks under the guidance of the craftsmen.
Brick wrapping has been around since ancient times, but it only became popular in the past ten or twenty years, and is limited to some prefectural cities or important prefectural cities and military towns.
Brick and tile wheel kilns were erected one after another around Luoyang, and the output of bricks and tiles was huge. King Xia was a picky person, so it was normal for the walls of Luoyang to be covered with bricks. Anyway, he was not in a hurry, and would rather work slowly and carefully.
Even some houses in the city have changed from the traditional style of being built entirely of wood. Bricks and stones have been used in large quantities, so many wheel kilns have been built. Nowadays, it is still hard to find a brick in Luoyang.
The public reason given by the King of Xia was that wood was not fireproof, and logging the wood would also make the surrounding mountains and forests bare, which would easily cause flooding, destroy farmland, accumulate sediment, and block the canals.
After all, he is a martial artist, and whatever he says is what he says. If he is unreasonable, what else can you do?
After passing through the Tixiang Gate, what you can see is still a bit messy, with a lot of building materials piled up. The scenery on the grass is very disorderly, but some big trees have been transplanted, and it looks like it is being gradually transformed.
Walking straight to the west, there is another brick wall with a door called "Guanfeng Gate".
There were already many sergeants on duty inside and outside Guanfeng Gate. Wang Shilu knew that the origins of these palace guards were very complicated.
Those who can speak Mandarin are usually the children of officials and generals.
Those who are not good in Mandarin, but can speak local dialects and are older, are usually old soldiers who have retired from the Xia army.
Those who can only speak nonsense and have a weird Mandarin accent - this type of people are the most common - are usually members of the former bodyguards and pro-army, and they are all young men in the slave tribe of the King of Xia on the grassland.
After careful interrogation, the guard officer let Wang Shilu in.
Wang Shilu looked left and right, and saw that there were two floors standing between the doors. The south was called "Yu Ri Tower" and the north was called "Qibao Pavilion".
Standing on it, you can climb high and look far away, overlooking the whole city, and enjoy the scenery far and near, which makes you feel relaxed and happy, and you will feel proud.
Or Tianjia will enjoy it.
After entering the Guanfeng Gate, you will reach the boundary of the Guanfeng Hall.
Li Chuntai, Yaozhang Pavilion and Jiuzhou Pavilion guard the Guanfeng Hall in an orderly manner.
These three places are independent small courtyards. They have all been completed, the debris has been cleared, and the landscape has begun to be restored.
Especially Jiuzhou Pavilion, there are many bamboos and trees in the courtyard. I don’t know whether they were left over from the original or transplanted nearby. Wang Shilu felt that during the hot summer, the king of Xia could enjoy the cool in the pavilion, listen to the waves of bamboo, and watch the green pines.
Bai, it is really one of the joys in life.
Soon he felt a little envious.
Just one Jiuzhou Pavilion is already a grand scene in the courtyard of a wealthy family. And Jiuzhou Pavilion is only a small part of the Guanfeng Palace. There are many palaces in the entire Shangyang Palace, not to mention the larger Ziwei City.
No wonder everyone wants to be rich and noble. Being rich is good and enjoyable. And the person who is extremely wealthy is the emperor.
If you don't see the emperor's residence strong, you will know that the emperor is respected. Such a sincere statement!
Guanfeng Hall arrived soon. After waiting outside the hall for a while, Wang Shilu was called over.
"See Your Highness." After the salute, Wang Shilu took a sneak peek. Fortunately, King Xia was not sitting on the dragon chair. Instead, he was sitting opposite Zhao Guangfeng and Xie Tong, drinking tea and chatting.
"How is your brother doing in Chang'an?" Shao Shude asked casually.
"Everything is fine." Wang Shilu replied.
What's good about being an idle official? He just spends the whole day traveling around.
"I came to see you today because it is about Ziqing." After Shao Shude finished speaking, he clapped his hands.
A strange eunuch immediately came over holding a model ship.
The boat seems to be a fishing boat, because there are a lot of fishing gear hanging on both sides. The hull structure seems to be different. Looking at the size ratio of the fishing rods to the hull, it should be quite large, much larger than ordinary fishing boats. The bottom of the boat has a pointed bottom structure, using soft
The sail, maneuverability and wind and wave resistance should be good.
Wang Shilu was born in Qingzhou and knew something about fishing boats.
The fishing boats of the Kuomintang were so small that when walking beside the cargo ships, they were almost insignificant, as if they could be overturned by a wind and wave.
There are very few fishermen fishing in Ziqing Town, and the tools they use are very simple, including hooks, harpoons, hanging baskets and hand-operated fishing nets.
The boats are small and have simple tools, so they can only move around offshore and islands, and their income is limited. Therefore, fish in the ocean rarely become a commodity commonly consumed by coastal residents.
Taking Denglai as an example, the locals mainly eat mutton, and marine fish are rarely seen because the output is extremely small, which is abnormal.
Of course, from an economic and political perspective, this phenomenon is normal.
Because at this time, there are indeed people going out to sea to fish, but not too many. The reason is that there are fewer people and more land. As long as they can make a living on land, there will definitely not be too many people going out to sea to fish.
Regardless of Chishanpo, there are often ships coming in and out of Barmapo, making it very busy. But how many tragedies of shipwrecks and fatalities were there on the way? Books will only record that so and so went to sea and where so and so landed. These are
There are very few records of those who survived and those who died in shipwrecks, and the number is often extremely large.
In addition, there are obstacles from the government.
As far as the Jiedu envoys are concerned, they are not very willing to rule the people out to sea for fishing. After all, who knows if you will run away as soon as you go to sea? It is difficult to manage and difficult to control.
Of course, as far as their management level is concerned, there is a high probability that they cannot control the fishermen going out to fish, so this is not the main reason. The core is that the risks are not proportional to the harvest.
In short, it is very dangerous to go fishing in small boats, platoons, and basket boats in offshore areas, let alone to places farther away.
The reason behind this is the lack of long-term investment in marine fisheries. It can even be said that no one invests.
Shao Shude has thought about it. No matter from which point of view, investing in marine fisheries is neither economical nor politically correct. The government has no motivation to do so, and small private households do not have so much capital. Therefore, they have created the same people who have been doing it for thousands of years.
Broken boats were engaged in very small-scale ocean fishing, and this was the case even until the late Qing Dynasty, with almost no changes.
But what about thinking about it from another perspective?
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Britain encouraged fishermen engaged in ocean fishing and registered each person's detailed information in alphabetical order. In the era of sailing warships, these fishermen were the reserve force of the navy. And war consumption has never been a big deal.
With such a small number, it is impossible to persist without sufficient sources of troops to replenish it.
"Your Highness, is this a fishing boat?" Wang Shilu asked.
"Exactly." Shao Shude said: "It hasn't been officially built yet, it's just a style based on my idea."
Having said this, he stood up, paced, and said: "The benefits of shipbuilding are not just business, in fact fishing is also a big gain."
"Your Highness, if there is a choice, the common people are not willing to go out to sea to fish." Wang Shilu said: "Once you go out to sea, life and death are unpredictable, who would be willing?"
"This is a worrying point." Shao Shude agreed with this view: "In the final analysis, it is still too dangerous to go to sea. But after the world is at peace, there will be more people and less land, and things will be different then."
"What His Highness said is absolutely true." Wang Shilu said: "However, there is no land in the Central Plains, aren't there other places?"
Shao Shude glanced at Wang Shilu in surprise.
These days, are there still people with such a global vision who know how to expand outward and alleviate the contradiction between man and land?
"Your Highness, the towns in the south of the Yangtze River are vast and sparsely populated." Wang Shilu explained.
Shao Shude suddenly realized that he thought he was talking about Liaodong.
But that’s right. In ancient times, the territory was very large, but it was not actually controlled. It may have been said that the map opened the territory, but the past dynasties in the south were really a bit like a colonial empire. Starting from scattered settlements one by one,
Slowly string together, transform the environment, actively or passively immigrate, and assimilate the natives.
This process lasted for more than a thousand years, and finally completely digested the vast south. Isn't this an alternative kind of colonial expansion? It's just that our ancestors were more civilized than Europeans, and the assimilated natives were regarded as Han people and slowly integrated.
.
"Developing the south of the Yangtze River is not much safer than going out to sea to fish." Shao Shude said with a wry smile: "Some people are demoted to a remote place to be an official, and they want to commit suicide. Are they still officials, not to mention the common people? The development of every hot and humid place will
It is made of piles of corpses."
He thought of the Dutch East India Company in history.
The mortality rate in the colonial East Indies (Indonesia) was extremely high. The mercenaries recruited from the German region died one by one, and the sailors recruited from the seven provinces of the Netherlands also died horrifyingly. In the end, they had to lie and kidnap people to go to sea -
-Recruit farmers from Scotland to cut grass in the Netherlands, pay them very high wages, deceive many people, and then directly kidnap them and serve as sailors on the ship, regardless of whether they are willing or not.
The East India Company tried every means to replenish manpower and went to the Far East. As a result, their European employees (including soldiers and sailors) in the East were only 11,000 at most, and the number never increased. An epidemic in Batavia, the capital, would kill half of the people.
, until the survivors adapt to the local environment.
Jiangnan may not be as scary as the tropics, but it is not easy to deal with either.
During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong, the captured Tibetan prisoners were uniformly exiled to Wuyue. Wuyue was the elite region of China in later generations, but it was still a place of exile a few decades ago. How do you think it can get better?
The prosperity of the South was built on the corpses of waves of immigrants from the Central Plains caused by the war in the North. History does not record the painful past of these ancestors who overcame all obstacles and transformed the environment. It only writes about the scene after the South became prosperous. This
Spring and Autumn writing techniques made future generations think that this process was easy.
"Deng, the islands between Liao and Liao are sparsely populated. I heard that only a few fishermen are hunting fur seals and sea lions?" Shao Shude asked.
Until the Qing Dynasty, there were still a large number of fur seals and sea lions living on the Changshan Islands. These were also the prey of fishermen.
In the Bohai Sea, whales were often seen until the late Qing Dynasty, but no one hunted them.
Fur seals and furs of sea lions, but it was a big business in the Age of Discovery. The Russian-American Company in Tsarist Russia suffered a huge loss in other businesses. They lost money in each place they colonized, all supported by highly profitable businesses such as hunting sea lions and fur seals. Otherwise,
It's already bankrupt.
"Yes." Wang Shilu replied, but he didn't understand what he meant.
"Ping Haijun has recruited more than 7,000 people. I plan to let them fish offshore first and support themselves." Shao Shude said.
Wang Shilu opened his mouth. Isn’t this bullying the Silla people’s honesty? What is the difference between the navy going out to sea to fish and the land army working in the fields?
Are there any warriors at this time who are willing to work in the fields? I dare not say that there is no such thing, but it is definitely rare.
"I have transferred more than 2,000 elite members of the Yellow River Navy into the Ping Navy, with a total of 10,000 troops." Shao Shude continued: "Let these 'landlubbers' adapt to the waves of the sea first, and then serve as the backbone of the Ping Navy.
"
Wang Shilu listened silently.
"The families of Silla sergeants scattered in various states have moved to Dengzhou. I would like to appoint you as the pacifier to comfort these Silla overseas residents." Shao Shude finally stated his purpose: "Go to the treasury and collect 30,000 horses.
Silk, 20,000 tons of grain, and some cattle and sheep will be distributed to the Dengrai Ranch so that these Silla people can support themselves. From now on, all the people will be under my rule."
Wang Shilu understood.
This was because they were worried that the Silla sergeants of the Ping Navy had escaped, so they gave them rewards and improved the treatment of their families. Although this was a reward, it also detained hostages and increased the cost of defection for the Silla people. It was indeed very thoughtful.
"As ordered." Wang Shilu responded.
He felt very emotional that King Xia, who was so "skinned", really didn't suffer at all and allowed the navy to "grow the land". He really didn't know what to say.