Dominate the Country

In the twelfth month of the fourth year of Chen Hanchengtian, Chen Ming's imperial carriage appeared in Baoji, Fengxiang Prefecture, the westernmost part of Guanzhong.

Baoji today is far from the infinite scenery of Baoji City in the previous life. At this time, it is just an ordinary county, not the third major cross hub on the Eurasian Continental Bridge in China. The Longhai Railway, Baocheng Railway, and Baozhong Railway do not intersect here. But even so, on the Guanzhong Plain, this originally ordinary county has become more and more important in the past two years.

Because of a series of infrastructure construction, as a focus, its status has naturally risen. This place is connected to Guanzhong in the east, Hanzhong in the south, and adjacent to the solemn Tianshui and Pingliang in the northwest. The Qinling Mountains are in the south, the Wei River flows in the middle, the Guanlong Mountains are blocked in the west and the Wei River is in the north, and the Weibei fertile plain.

It is located in the center of Xi'an, Chengdu, and Lanzhou.

It can be said that it is a transportation hub that cannot be bypassed in the development of the entire west, connecting the Northwest, the Northwest, and the Southwest.

The second railway has been laid for some time, and Baoji Station is a very important point in this period. The railway goes north from here to Weiyang, along the Weishui River to Zhangjiachuan in Longyou, and then turns south to find Tianshui.

The narrow road of the Weishui River that leads directly from Baoji to Tianshui has been surveyed many times, and the final result is always tragic. The geographical environment is too complex and changeable to make long-distance construction impossible. Even though the two have passed through the passage of time, the people have long been scattered on both sides of the Weishui River, and have "walked" out a road connecting Tianshui and Baoji, but this small road that can transport military rations and pass the army is completely different from the railway defined in the new era. So this line is the same as the positioning from Hanzhong to Baoji-the railway is not a road, and land transportation is guaranteed.

So Baoji is not only related to this only two railways in the country, but also a key point of the land transportation line in Guanzhong-the national highway. This is enough to illustrate the importance of Baoji.

Chen Ming came here to inspect the progress of the railway project on the Guanzhong side and to check the land transportation in Baoji.

If the entire Guanzhong line transportation progresses smoothly, Baoji will truly become a land transportation point in two years. Not only will the railway be opened, but the land transportation line will also become an important convenience that is not inferior to the railway.

It is connected to Xi'an in the east, Longyou Tianshui in the west, Hanzhong in the south, and Yinzhou in the north. A large traffic cross has been laid out, so how can the status here be unimportant?

Since the construction started at the end of the third year of Chengtian.

With the continuous infusion of funds, materials and manpower from the government, the construction of railway projects and national highways has swallowed up a full 350 million yuan of transportation projects that have been started at the same time.

More than 10,000 local people were employed in Baoji County alone, not only male laborers, but also some strong female laborers. Construction has been carried out day and night for a year.

The construction difficulty of this project is undoubtedly quite high considering the level of technology at that time.

Let alone the railway construction, just the construction of the national highway in the narrow path of Weishui River, I don’t know how many high mountains and steep ridges we have to cross, how many times we have to turn back along the direction of the river, build bridges, and connect the two sides.

But this is what Chen Ming is determined to do, to tie Xinjiang to China’s chariot forever, and to go a step further and imagine that Central Asia is firmly tied to China’s chariot. The first step should be to connect Longyou and Guanzhong more closely.

If Xinjiang is the logistics base of Central Asia, then Gusu is the logistics base of Xinjiang, and Shaanxi is the logistics base of Gusu.

Tianshui can represent Longyou, and Baoji represents Guanzhong, because along the Longshan Mountains, I don’t know how many joys and sorrows have happened on both sides for thousands of years. Looking at the history of China, since the middle Tang Dynasty, Gusu was occupied by Tubo, waiting for the two Song dynasties. If there was no Xihe opening up and taking in Hehuang, Zhao Song would really be a shame for China.

Longshan, like a ridge across the western part of the Guanzhong Plain, separates Gaosu and Shanyu. Chen Ming has no way to build a railway directly from Baoji to Tianshui, but the addition of a national highway between the two sides has greatly strengthened the bilateral relationship. This is not a Longshan, but two areas are officially connected.

Don't look at the national highway from Baoji to Tianshui, which is only 170 miles long, only half the length of Baoji to Hanzhong. Excluding the easy construction section, the real test is only half, but the technical difficulty of the former is much higher than the latter. The terrain is extremely complex, not only there are many rivers, steep mountains, and the mountains are also high and low. Basically, after the construction of this project, China's architectural engineering level can be greatly improved.

After the second railway is successfully opened to traffic, and the national highways in the northwest and southwest are built, China's modern engineering can already establish the entire framework and structure.

Once the entire project is completed, the transportation between the southwest, northwest and the Central Plains will become very convenient, which will be of great benefit in terms of economic development, military and politics.

This is also the fundamental reason why Chen Ming has insisted on road traffic construction in recent years.

Don't think that the current cost is high. After ten years, all the prisoners of war will either die or be released. At that time, the Chinese government's finances may be much more generous than now, but it is unknown how much more it will cost to build it.

In a word, for example, the problem of death in engineering construction, if all of them are contract workers, how much compensation will be paid for one death? But most of the people who died now are prisoners of war who have no life security guarantee?

Overall this is a huge project.

Once completed, the transportation throughout China will be able to reach a higher level. The theory of building roads first if you want to get rich still makes a lot of sense in this era. Of course, the road transportation construction across the country has also greatly boosted national demand in other aspects. The transportation construction in the north and south, the east and the west, the dredging of waterways, and seaports and terminals. How much cement, steel products and labor are needed?

The fastest growing industry for steam engines in the past two years is not the textile industry, but mines, docks and cement plants.

There are many more steam engines used for water pumping, crushing and conveying than there are in the textile industry. Taking seaports and river ports as an example, how to distinguish the first-class terminals stipulated by the state? That's how many steam engines there are on the docks.

Whether it is a steam engine crane or a steam conveyor, it will improve the operating speed of the port to a certain extent. The more prosperous the terminal, the more necessary it is. The most important thing is that these big guys operate with great momentum.

Chen Ming relied on building roads to drive the development of the entire society.

“How much money can these migrant workers earn in one year?”

Chen Ming looked at the construction along the Weishui River and asked the commander-in-chief of the engineering section next to him.

"There are many dangerous areas along the Weishui River Narrow Channel, and many areas require human lives to fill them. Whether they are labor camps or ordinary migrant workers, the food remuneration is the highest among several project sections. Migrant workers pay one yuan per worker, and two workers in the morning and afternoon It’s just two yuan. If you add some cannons or explore paths, there will be extra work points depending on the situation. The overall wage is 20% higher than that of Baozhong Line and Baoyin Line. “It’s rare to do anything like firing cannons and exploring paths. It was just a coincidence that migrant workers came to do it. Ninety-nine percent of such dangerous things are done by people in labor camps. Their efforts are rewarded with rest of varying lengths, monetary rewards, and material rewards in terms of food. Migrant workers can only get two yuan a day, which is seven to eight hundred yuan a year. The commander-in-chief of the project section does not think it is low at all. If converted into silver dollars, it would be seventy or eighty silver dollars, and if converted into silver dollars, it would be forty or fifty taels.

The ordinary migrant workers recruited here in Baoji are just ordinary old farmers. What can they do besides farming? As for farming, whether it’s gold or silver, can one person earn forty or fifty taels a year? Moreover, if you are injured, you will have medical expenses and lost wages, and if you are disabled or die, you will get higher benefits.

Of course Chen Ming would not know what the commander-in-chief of the engineering section was thinking. What he is more interested in now is that in two or three years, after the project construction here is completed, how many of these people will be willing to return to the countryside and continue digging in the soil with their backs to the sky and their faces facing the loess?

What will they do if they don't want to?

Are you going out to work?

If this can really be done, it will really benefit the country and the people.

Chen Mingke still remembers a report he read about Lin County in the Central Plains. A hundred thousand troops came out of Taihang, and a hundred thousand troops were rich in Taihang. Many people may not remember the name Lin County, but when it comes to the Hongqi Canal there, how many Chinese people don’t know about it?

After 10 years of hard work, the people of Lin County built the world-famous "Artificial Tianhe" Red Flag Canal in the Taihang Mountains, which solved the irrigation and drinking water problems of Lin County that had been in drought for nine years. Later, it was opened up, and a large number of skilled craftsmen trained in the process of building the canal left their homes and went out to work in the construction industry, initially forming the trend of "a hundred thousand troops leaving Taihang".

This has created a well-known brand in Linzhou Construction.

To be honest, Chen Ming doesn't have this kind of arrogance to dare to fight against heaven and earth now that he is an emperor. The Hongqi Canal project was too huge, although he remembered that the entire canal construction process did not use modern tools and facilities. But faced with Lin County, a place that has been experiencing drought all year round, with 7.8 million acres of farmland and less than 10,000 acres of irrigated land, Chen Ming's approach was to immigrate rather than build an artificial Tianhe himself.

So he now has high hopes for places like Baoji. Perhaps when fate comes to decide, these farmers who are used to working on construction sites and being used to being paid will really take a step out of the fields.

Therefore, Chen Ming cannot attach too much importance to this place. They can serve as a seed and a leader.

Making farmers bankrupt in order to provide labor for industrial development is really walking a tightrope on a cliff.

China is not a small British mainland. With such a large population base, the farmers are really making a fuss, which is too destructive.

Accompanied by the commander-in-chief of the project section, Chen Ming climbed a mountain in Longshan and overlooked the entire national highway project that was far from being formed.

He just learned a situation from the hero list of the Engineering Command. Thirty-five people have sacrificed their lives in the construction of this project this year, including 27 people from labor camps, three soldiers, and five migrant workers. The oldest among them is forty-three years old, and the youngest is seventeen.

There are small carts all over the project, environmental restrictions, and relatively few cattle, horses, and livestock.

It was also limited by conditions. Iron weights, shovels, and carts were carried by people and pulled by people. These primitive labor tools were used throughout the project.

During the construction process, the construction team encountered many difficulties. The landforms from Baoji to Tianshui span the accumulation of river valley terraces and erosion of mountains. The geological environment is very complex, and landslides, collapses, and mudslides are not unfamiliar. The construction team used a stupid method, like ants moving houses, to transport cement, steel, and stones to the "front line" little by little, and built one arch bridge after another. It was impossible for China at that time to build a spectacular high-pier super-large bridge, so they could only use the stupidest method to pave a flat road in the complex river valley little by little. Not to mention the mountain rocks encountered, blasting the rocks one by one, expanding and hollowing out the rock walls little by little, all of which took countless sweat.

Whether it was the residence of migrant workers, the residence of engineering troops, or those labor camps, the conditions were equally difficult.

Under the cliffs and in the cracks of the rocks, some people built stone huts, some dug caves, and some slept in the open air, with a tarpaulin tent on top. If there were not so many beds, they would sleep on the stone slabs and use thatch as bedding, which was really a place to cover the ground and the sky.

Especially as the progress of the project progressed, there was no suitable place to find, and a few pieces of cloth were propped up to command the headquarters of thousands of troops.

While listening to the introduction of the general commander of the project section, Chen Ming was also secretly looking at the chief engineer in front of him. The national highway project connecting Baoji and Tianshui is more difficult to construct than the Baozhong section and Baoyin section, and it is also more difficult than the railway construction. Now there is no real test.

Chen Ming was very moved by the construction of the Weishui Narrow Road National Highway, but as an emperor, he was more willing to look forward to the wonderful scene after the project was completed on schedule. As for the many difficulties encountered by the construction team in this project, when tasting the joy of victory, they can all be transformed into dazzling medals of honor on their chests.

All the difficulties, hardships, efforts, sacrifices, risks, struggles, everything can be transformed into a spirit.

Let the ruler hold it in his hands to inspire the spirit of the whole society!

As the ruler of Chen Han, Chen Ming also longs for this. Instead of opening the door of convenience for this construction team in the process of sharpening and working hard, playing some help outside the system.

This is the heart of a superior.

The perspective of the superior and the perspective of the ruled class on the problem are really different.

The efforts of the entire construction team are very touching, but in the eyes of the emperor, this is obviously just a flower bud. Not to mention that the fruit is ripe, this flower is still far from the moment of blooming to the most colorful.

"Mencius said, 'When Heaven is about to give a man a great responsibility, it must first make his mind and will suffer, his muscles and bones tired, his body hungry, his heart empty, and his actions frustrated, so as to move his heart and endure his nature, and improve his ability. This is also appropriate to use in the present situation."

"Pass on my oral order, all those who are in the labor camp on the narrow road of Weishui will have their sentences reduced by three months; the civilian workers will be rewarded with ten yuan; the monthly salary of officers and soldiers will be doubled." This is the help allowed within the system.

Chen Ming looked at the general commander of the engineering section and said, "Do a good job. After the successful completion of the project, I will personally award you the medal."

"Your Majesty, the awarding of medals is about to begin." Liu Wu reported beside Chen Ming. This is for designers who have outstanding performance in engineering construction and model workers in the construction army, not for labor camp prisoners.