Cutting over the end of the Ming Dynasty: a dog-leg knife at the beginning

Chapter 338

Playing with explosives is of course inseparable from nitric acid. Without nitric acid, yellow gunpowder would be impossible to talk about.The sad thing is that now the whole world does not have the ability to produce nitric acid in large quantities. The pitiful thing is all prepared in the laboratory, and the cost is ridiculously high. There is no way, the whole world still does not know what this thing is for. Well.Yang Menglong knew what it was used for and how to produce it. However, the production of nitric acid was not a little more difficult than sulfuric acid. The storage and transportation alone were enough for him to make one head and two big.At the same time, he didn't know what equipment to use to produce nitric acid—he couldn't learn from the ancient alchemists and make outrageously large alchemy furnaces, and then put sulfuric acid and pure nitrate into them for refining, right?That cost should not be scary!

Alas, the headache!

When Yang Menglong had a severe headache, everyone was busy.After the Chinese New Year, the weather is gradually getting warmer, the wheat fields spit out traces of greenery, and the bare branches of the trees on the mountain also sprout light yellow shoots. It's time to work.The military households began to divert water to irrigate the fields. At this time, the wheat was turning green and water was needed most, so they must not be neglected.The spring rains are late, and water is as expensive as oil, but the military households are not worried. They put down the waterwheel gate, and the waterwheel turns, bringing the sweet river water ashore, and happily moving along the cement ditch towards the river. The thirsty wheat fields rushed away.In places with higher terrain, the military households turned the handle of the suction tube to irrigate the well, and the well water gushed out from the mouth of the tube... In short, after two years of hard work, the military fields in Wuyang and Biyang counties have already Very complete irrigation system, not afraid of drought.The situation of the other thousand households is worse, the irrigation system is not so perfect, so the bamboo canals that were eliminated in Wuyang and Biyang appeared in those counties, criss-crossing the fields, the waterwheels rotated, the river water Rushing along the bamboo canal to the wheat field.

The salt field has also started working, and there are obviously a lot more workers... In the past year, many Zigong salt workers came here after hearing the news, wanting to make a living in Wuyang.They drilled more than 20 wells in one go on the salt fields. In the cold spring, a large group of strong men with shirtless shirts, chanting chant, stepped on the primitive drilling machine with difficulty, and drilled deep into the earth one after another.They dug for a whole year, but nothing was found, and Yang Menglong should give them a lot of food and clothing. This made these simple salt workers feel a little bit sorry, and they only wanted to get out the fontanel water as soon as possible, so that they would not be in vain all day long. Eat other people's meals.But it is not easy to drill a salt well, at least 1000 meters deep!If it is crooked, it must be corrected in time. How to clean up the deep mud and gravel is also a big problem. In short, this is a difficult project.

Yang Chen picked up a handful from a freshly cleared mound of soil, put it into his mouth, sucked it, tasted it for a long time, spit it out, and cursed angrily: "George, there must be a salt mine under here! Dig for me! Try to dig through the ground, I don't believe you can't dig it out!"

An experienced old salt worker also took a little soil into his mouth and came to the same conclusion.They have been doing this for generations, and they have learned from generation to generation and practiced it personally. They only need to taste the soil dug out from the deep underground to know where there is salt and where there is no salt.Now they have dug down more than 400 meters, and after drying the soil dug out of several wells, a small amount of salt crystal particles appeared, which shows that there is really salt underground, but it has not been dug yet.In order for the mother-in-law and the baby to live a good life, dig, dig to death, even if you dig the earth in half, you have to dig out the damn salt mine!

The miners also started working.Their team has been growing. The phosphate ore, iron ore, pyrite, and manganese ore in Wuyang Iron Mine, and the limestone, phosphate ore, soft manganese ore, and coal in Tongbai Mountain are continuously mined and sent to the factory.It is worth mentioning that in the process of mining, they are increasingly using granular gunpowder. They first drill holes in the mine, load a large amount of gunpowder, and then detonate. Often a big explosion will overturn half of the mountain. , the mining efficiency is doubled.Most of these miners have joined the military, and now their children are happily walking into school carrying beautiful schoolbags. This is worth their efforts, not to mention that the pay for this hard work is relatively high. It is not a problem for one person to go to the mines and feed his whole family.

There was loud sound of firecrackers from Nanyang Technical School. Groups of children, wearing uniforms and schoolbags, walked into the campus in groups, entered their classrooms, and started class—— Wuyangwei's health school has reopened, and it is a big deal when it makes a move.Wuyangwei has more than 1 military households, and it is still growing. Yang Menglong treats everyone equally, as long as they are enrolled in the military, their children can go to school. This is a big joke Nearly 1 children came, many of them were twelve or thirteen years old, obviously past the school age!Yang Menglong frowned greatly, wanting those children who had passed the school age to go back, but their longing eyes made him uneasy, finally sighed, waved his hand, go in, don't make an example!Fortunately, Cheng Ji also donated money to build a six-story teaching building last year, and recruited many more teachers, otherwise the classrooms will definitely not be enough now.

Those gentlemen hired with high salaries also walked into the school with smiles on their faces.They are very satisfied with Yang Menglong's remuneration, but they are very dissatisfied with Yang Menglong's request: try to teach children to learn simplified characters!Since ancient times, Chinese characters have been written in two sets of simplified and traditional, and the simplified and traditional are not static. Some characters have more and more strokes with the change of time, and some characters have fewer and fewer strokes. The strokes we use now Simplified characters are nothing more than a systematic reduction of complex and simplified characters on the basis of ancient simplified characters for the convenience of the public.Faced with the appallingly low education rate and the insanely high illiteracy rate, Yang Menglong really can't arouse the slightest interest in inheriting the so-called cultural essence. What he wants is a large number of young people who can read, write, write and count. People, the more the merrier, the sooner the better!
Another thing that makes the gentlemen very dissatisfied is that they have to work with the group of foreigners with red hair and green eyes!These foreigners mainly teach mathematics and geometry. The numbers and symbols they use are completely different from the traditional ones, which makes these old pedants very unhappy.However, non-mainstream people like Chen Suxue like these foreigners very much. They can learn a lot of new things from them and come into contact with many unheard of concepts.

By the way, it's not just young children who are enrolled in the school, but also many adults who have passed their [-]s and even have wrinkles on their faces.These are all troubled babies from Nanyang or even the surrounding states. Some of them love mathematics and geometry, some like astronomy and geography, some have spent their whole lives studying physics and chemical engineering, and some are obsessed with various machines. Mu Mu is a wife who can talk, move, cook and beat her back, and there are no less than three hundred in total.Now these old urchins, big boys, and little kids gathered in the playground, lined up in a neat queue, and began to worship Confucius and Mencius with solemn rituals and music.

Looking at this huge phalanx, Yang Menglong let out a long breath, and whispered to Xiao Yufang, "I have planted a handful of seeds, and it depends on whether these seeds can break through the ground and grow into towering trees. "

Xiao Yufang smiled slightly.

Cheng Qi said with a toothache: "I spend 3 taels of silver here every year... 3 taels, not 300 taels, not 3000 taels, a full 3 taels..."

Yang Menglong held his head high and turned his nostrils to the sky: "I spend the money I earn, and I feel refreshed physically and mentally!"

After the ceremony, the division of classes began.Of course, with so many people, they can’t all start from the first grade. How can there be so much funding?Children over the age of 12 are assigned to large classes and receive accelerated education. Once they can write and calculate, they are immediately transferred to interest classes to learn cooking, carpentry, carving and other crafts according to their own interests. To put it bluntly, they are Those who come to study can only enjoy four years of education.They must learn to write and arithmetic within four years, acquire a skill, and then leave school to make a living for themselves.However, those children who are only seven or eight years old receive education three or four times as long. They will receive a very systematic education in literature, mathematics, geometry, physics, chemistry, etc., with equal opportunities in the first seven years, and after seven years they will begin to take In the elimination system, there is a test every year. Those who fail will be eliminated, and those with excellent results will continue their studies. They will be eliminated layer by layer until finally, a small number of outstanding talents with high gold content will be left.This is undoubtedly very expensive, and the payback cycle is also very long, and it may not even be possible to get a return, but Yang Menglong still decided to go all out!

The opening of Nanyang Technical School was a big event, which caused a sensation in the entire Central Plains, even Emperor Chongzhen. Everyone knew that a school with a scale larger than the Tai Academy had opened, and tens of thousands of students were recruited in one go. They are the children of military households!As a side effect, the number of refugees who flocked to Nanyang to request military registration increased geometrically. Even Luoyang Wei, which Yang Menglong hadn't freed up to rectify, began to queue up for military registration...

(End of this chapter)