Valley Emperor

People who have never been to the Guangzhou business district, even if they have read more descriptions about the business district, or heard many people say that this place is prosperous, already have a certain understanding and imagination of the prosperity of the business district, but when When he saw it with his own eyes, he was still shocked.

The same is true for Qin Zhifu. He has read a lot of descriptions about the business district, but when he saw it with his own eyes, he was still shocked!

Before getting close to the wharf, you can see many ships in the port crowded together from a distance, small boats shuttle among them, and among the many small boats, there are also a few large sea ships, most of which are traditional sea ships in Southeast Asian waters. There are blessing boats, wide boats, sand boats and other types of boats, among which there are also a small number of Western Galen boats and Clark boats with soft sails.

These large ships, even if they are small, have two or three hundred tons, while the larger ones are five or six hundred tons or even seven or eight hundred tons.

Qin Zhifu, as the former commander-in-chief of Nan'ao Island in Ming Dynasty, had been in contact with many ships, but it was the first time he had seen so many ships. Of course, what shocked him even more was a huge building on a small mountain near the port. group.

Even though it was a little far away, he still saw it at a glance. This was a large-scale fort group, and the faintly exposed muzzle made people feel a little inexplicable.

Although he can't see the scene on the shore at this time, but the crowded boats on the dock alone can tell the prosperity of this place!

After the boat docked, Qin Zhifu boarded the pier. All kinds of people came and went as far as the eye could see. Quite a few of these people were foreigners with strange clothes, strange appearances, red hair, and ugly ghosts. Not a lot.

Being in it is like entering a strange world.

Rao is the well-informed Qin Zhifu who was shocked when he saw this scene.

Perhaps seeing Qin Zhifu's surprise, the captain of the navy who accompanied him said in a proud tone: "My Datang Guangzhou Business District has only been established for two years. In just two years, it has become the largest port in East Asia. There are as few as ten or dozens of sea-going ships going to and from the business zone every month. Because of the large number of ships, the wharfs built in the early days were overwhelmed, and three large wharves were built in succession.”

As he spoke, he pointed to the endless wharf and said, "After a long period of construction, the port in the commercial zone now has a total of four large wharves, capable of berthing more than fifty ships of more than 100 tons at the same time, of which fifteen A deep-water berth can berth a giant ship with a draft of more than 1,000 tons and a draft of ten meters!"

"In order to solve the problem of cargo loading and unloading, the terminal is equipped with various types of machinery and equipment. It is rumored that steam engine lifting equipment will be introduced in the near future. At that time, even overweight and large cargo can be directly hoisted and transported!"

"Two months ago, in order to solve the problem of serious accumulation of goods at the terminal and difficult transportation, we even laid a number of special railways from the berth to the port warehouse area. Through the special rail carriage, the goods can be moved quickly and effortlessly!"

When the person was talking, he also pointed to a large carriage pulled by two horses in front: "This is the rail carriage specially developed by our Datang Royal Institute of Technology for the port area!"

When Qin Zhifu first saw this carriage, he didn't see anything strange. The only special thing was that this carriage was not a common two-wheeled carriage, but a four-wheeled carriage. In addition, the carriage was a bit big, and the top It also loaded a lot of goods, and it was very heavy at first glance, but there were only two horses pulling the carriage, which made Qin Zhifu a little puzzled, how could these two horses pull such a large carriage!

But if you look closely, you will find that the carriage's trajectory is always limited to those two rails, and the wheels are different from ordinary wheels, not wooden, but iron.

This can be heard from a distance, the sound of the iron wheels and the rails colliding!

Just looking at the carriage, the rails, and the various unremarkable mechanical equipment on the wharf made Qin Zhifu feel an eye-opener!

In fact, not only Qin Zhifu, in fact, when many outsiders first came to the Guangzhou Business District, they were full of curiosity and even puzzled about the many special things in the business district.

Not to mention outsiders, even the insiders of the Tang Dynasty were curious and even surprised at the beginning of this port, which was different from other ports.

The reason why Guangzhou Business District is so unique is naturally inseparable from the efforts of Li Xuan and the Royal Institute of Technology and Zhaoqing Machinery Branch, which were independent from the infantry barracks.

As a modern person, Li Xuan put forward many construction suggestions when planning the business district, including the installation of various types of loading and unloading machinery and railway systems.

Especially the railway system, Li Xuan is very attentive, he personally formulated the relevant design plan of the railway, and then let the polytechnic to improve it.

He knows that the technology of steam engines is not enough to make horse carriages, and the capital and manpower required to build railways are very large. The Tang Dynasty cannot build a real railway system driven by steam engines in a short period of time, but this does not prevent it. He'll test one or two first.

The commercial and trade areas and some mining areas, where the volume of logistics and transportation is very large, have become the best test points.

If the steam engine as power is not enough, then horses will be used to pull it first. If large-scale railways cannot be built, small railways of several kilometers will be built first.

Li Xuan proposed the general design plan. The students and teachers of the Polytechnic Institute who were born in the infantry barracks were responsible for the detailed design plan, and then the machinery branch of the Zhaoqing Arsenal was responsible for the specific manufacturing and construction.

The first test operation was carried out in an iron ore area, and the first test was to find that although the construction cost of the railway was relatively high, the transportation efficiency was greatly improved. Shipping saves at least five times the cost.

This discovery made the officials of the Ministry of Industry overjoyed, so they are preparing to build this kind of railway in several other mining areas.

Later, this kind of railway system was simply introduced in the business district.

But it is limited to this. The cost of building railways is too high, and special maintenance and special carriages are required. Moreover, the use of horses to haul vehicles is actually relatively small, so the operating costs are not low. Therefore, it is necessary to effectively reduce the transportation cost in places where the transportation volume is very large.

If it is in other ordinary places, the construction cost is difficult to recover.

And Li Xuan is also quite satisfied with this. The current railway is only an experimental railway. It is used on a small scale and continues to improve. In this way, when the steam engine technology is improved, especially after the high-pressure steam engine is developed, the steam train will be the core of the railway system. can be built on a large scale.

When many railways began to be constructed and put into use, it also announced that Datang had entered the era of industrial revolution.

And now, what Li Xuan has to do is to make all kinds of preparations before the arrival of the industrial revolution, so as to be ready to take off at any time!

Qin Zhifu naturally did not know the story behind this section of the railway and the profound meaning it represented. In fact, not only Qin Zhifu, but also most people could not see the huge role of the railway.

In the eyes of many people, this railway is just a novelty!

Coming out of the pier, Qin Zhifu continued to stroll around the business district accompanied by others. The area of ​​the business district is actually not large, but although the place is small, it is very crowded with people and there are many shops. These shops and the shops outside are different. The difference is that although they also sell retail, the main thing is to do bulk trade, and the guests they receive are mainly those from the sea.

This can be seen from the fact that the currency used in their transactions is not direct gold and silver, but the Royal Bank's silver notes.

Because of the frequent large-scale trade in the business zone, the transaction volume is not even hundreds of thousands of taels, but hundreds of thousands or even millions. It is very common for those sea merchants to purchase goods for tens of thousands of taels at a time. matter.

In order to implement the bank note system, it is more troublesome to directly collect cash due to the different weights and components of gold and silver currencies around the world. Therefore, the tax collection system adopted by the Datang Tax Department in the business zone does not charge cash, but It is only for the Royal Bank's bank check!

This also forced those merchants to ignore their willingness or not, but in order to pay taxes, they needed to take out a part of cash to exchange for bank notes at the Royal Bank. Circulating ~www.wuxiaspot.com~ In order to avoid all kinds of troubles, merchants are also more inclined to collect banknotes when making large transactions.

All these have led to the establishment of a super-large branch of Royal Bank in a small business district. The scale of this branch is also the largest of the many branches of Royal Bank.

Its exchange department is the largest department. Many service windows provide merchants from all over the world with gold and silver exchange bills, and silver bill exchange gold and silver services!

Of course, this kind of service of Royal Bank is not free. If it is to exchange various other messy gold and silver coins for silver bills, because the content of gold and silver needs to be identified, and then after the gold and silver are recovered, Royal Bank will also transfer these Gold and silver are smelted and recast into standard silver and gold coins, so they are exchanged for gold and silver, and they need to be charged for fire.

However, if you deposit money with standard silver and gold coins issued by Royal Bank, there is no service fee. Similarly, there is no charge for withdrawing cash with a silver ticket, but you can only get it from Royal Bank. The issued standard silver coins, gold coins, and other currencies are not provided. If you need pure gold and pure silver bars, then you need to pay a service fee.

The Royal Bank did this, of course, to promote bank notes and its own standard gold and silver coins!