Infrastructure Throne

Since the beast tide, the Pearl City, which is known as the strongest in the Northland, also suffered a big defeat in Yuanliu City. No matter how the Pearl City whitewashes it, this amazing news still spreads wildly in the Northland as if it had grown wings.

It used to be an unknown fringe town, but with the repeated expansion of the trade network, the name of Abyss City, like the Abyss Manufacturing that swept through the Northland, began to be known by people.

Under the joint intervention of the nobles of Pearl City, Yuanliu Ginza was still shut out.

Glassware, matches, silk, pottery, sugar and other commodities produced in Yuanliu City, not only did not disappear in Pearl City, but became the most in-demand commodities on the black market, and the supply was in short supply every day.

There are even resellers who specially buy goods from other places and travel all the way to Mingzhu City to sell them.

Those big merchants who travel far and wide cannot buy Yuanliu City's products in Mingzhu City. Instead, they would rather bypass it and rush directly to Yuanliu City's trading area to buy in large quantities.

The Red Wall Lane, where the first commodity fair was held, has now become a gathering place for businessmen from all over the world.

There were once more merchants from major cities in the North than the local residents of Red Wall Lane.They live in high-end hotels here, eat at the food street, and walk for 5 minutes to enter the trading area directly.

The wide concrete road separates vehicles, horses, and pedestrians from left to right, so that both incoming and outgoing goods are unimpeded, and neither collisions with pedestrians nor frequent blockages occur.

Most importantly, businessmen can always find surprises here.

When most cities in the Northland were still using candlelight, Yuanliu City had taken the lead in popularizing kerosene lamps, which greatly reduced the probability of fire, and the light was long and bright.

The second is matches. Regardless of this small box of simple wooden sticks, it has become a must-have item for every household in Yuanliu City. It is needed everywhere for lighting, lighting, and cooking.

And every day at an astonishing speed, it eats up every city it has sold. The demand is so great that the match factory is now the second largest factory in Yuanliu City Industrial Zone after the smelter.

Finally, there is a simple wind-up clock with twelve scales on the hour hand, which allows civilians to manage time accurately for the first time.No more relying on clock towers tolling once an hour.

Kerosene lamps, matches, and wind-up clocks have become standard daily necessities for the residents of Yuanliu City.

Compared with silk and porcelain, which are expensive luxuries exclusive to nobles, and cheap commoner goods, the market demand is larger and more stable, and profits are increasing steadily.

These things that the people of Yuanliu City are accustomed to can arouse the amazement of newcomers every time.

The biggest feature of Yuanliu City's trading area is the concept commodity exhibition held once every three months.

The so-called conceptual goods, that is, only show samples and uses, have not yet been put into mass production, and will not be sold.

In the first concept exhibition, the bicycle that Shen Qingze personally tried riding once it was exhibited immediately caught everyone's attention!

Any discerning businessman can see the epoch-making significance of this bicycle, but what annoys them is that Yuanliu City is not open for purchase!

The concept fair is held on the first day of each quarter, and it has become a day that business people either love or hate.

Since then, almost every day, there are merchants eagerly looking forward to whether there are any new products in Yuanliu City today?

Gradually, no one regarded Yuanliu City as the former small country city, but instead, they were full of envy and longing.

Every day, there are foreigners who can't live in their hometown, and come to Yuanliu City from thousands of miles to find a new life.

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The balance of gold coins in the main city system became more and more abundant, and Shen Qingze invested a lot of gold coins in the main city system to upgrade various infrastructures in the city. The first to light up were high-level schools and medical centers.

Due to the scarcity of education and medical resources, Yuanliu City City Lord's Mansion has introduced a number of preferential policies for these two types of talents.

Teaching craftsman and doctor, these two occupations with low social status, are now decent jobs that everyone in Yuanliu City envies.

At the beginning of the sunny summer, the spring semester ended for the oldest students of the two elementary schools in Yuanliu City, as well as the first batch of students of the newly built junior high school.

Different from Shen Qingze's previous life, the age of this group of students is usually between 25 and [-] years old, the age span is huge, it is the age when they are hungry for knowledge.

Most of them are children of ordinary families with a certain foundation, able to read and write, but in the past, due to expensive books and paper, knowledge was monopolized by the nobles, and they could not get better education, so they stopped here.

In Shen Qingze's previous life, these students were only at junior high school or even elementary school level, but now, they are real "high-level intellectuals", who belong to Yuanliu City's scarce talents.

After Shen Qingze upgrades the school and medical center in the main city system, the talents who graduate from here will have a different level of bonus to the five-dimensional attributes. As the level of the school and medical center increases, the bonus will also increase.

On this day, a new message was released on the bulletin board of the City Lord's Mansion—Yuanliu City will soon hold a unified official examination to select outstanding talents, enrich the City Lord's Mansion, and assist officials in managing the city.

From now on, the official positions in Yuanliu City are no longer in the pockets of nobles and meritorious descendants.

Whoever wants to be a part of the city management must pass the exam.All officials must also be promoted from the grassroots officials, and the official examination will be customized and held regularly every year.

Those who passed the exam did not mean that they would have no worries for life. As an official, they still had to undergo a year-end assessment. Those who were capable were promoted and those who were inferior were eliminated.

Every resident of Yuanliu City and Nanji City who has a fixed house and can read and write, as long as they are under the age of 35, can sign up for the exam. There are no restrictions on birth, assets, or even gender!

As soon as this news came out, it immediately spread wildly in the city, and everyone could hardly believe their ears!

In the inherent concept of the common people, the officials in the city are all high-ranking figures, and only those of noble aristocratic origin can hold the position. As a commoner, they can only be ruled and controlled.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Shen Qingze, as the chief priest, was just a blacksmith on the outskirts of the city at first.

At first, there were very few people who went to the City Lord's Mansion to sign up, and a large number of people were screened out just because of the threshold of literacy.

After everyone found out that the City Lord's Mansion did not have any additional conditions, the number of applicants for the exam doubled every day, so that Jin Da, who was talking about this matter, came down from the office all day and had several burns in his mouth.

Those who once thought that going to school was of no use began to show off their foresight.

And the old nobles who were sent by Shen Qingze to be teachers in the literacy class, like wolves who smelled fishy, ​​started to move again.

They lost their wealth, rights and status, but they still retained their cultural knowledge and insights far beyond ordinary people.

The official examination can completely become a shortcut for them to make a comeback!

The test papers for the official examination were all written by Shen Qingze alone. After the block was engraved in the printing factory, they were quickly printed. The whole process was completely closed and managed by the printing factory, and the ban could not be lifted until the exam was over.

When it came to the day of the real exam, the nobles who got the exam papers were dumbfounded——

The test questions neither need to narrate the long history of Yuanliu City, nor need to write poems or sing praises.

The elite etiquette education received by the nobles since childhood is even more difficult to show.

The test papers are full of strange math problems, awkward logic problems, basic economic knowledge, natural science problems that the nobles have never been exposed to, and situational applications of legal cases.

Final dissertation—why the aristocratic tax privileges should be abolished.Seeing this title, their faces turned blue and then pale, as if they had been hit with a sap, as if Shen Qingze was laughing at them silently.

How do they answer this!

After a test, the advantage of the nobles is only that they can read more characters and read the questions quickly. The final answer sheet is not even as good as that of elementary school graduates.

After the test results were announced, the people were surprised to find that among those who passed, except for a few enlightened nobles who were brainwashed by Shen Qingze's policies, most of them were ordinary graduates from the school.

After the final round of simple interview screening, the first batch of people who passed the examination and obtained the qualifications of officials finally crossed the gap between civilians and officials and became a part of the management of Yuanliu City.

With a large number of officials to supplement, Nanji City, which had been empty for a long time, ended the embarrassment of no one managing the City Lord's Mansion, and the empty affairs hall began to play the role of administration and tax collection again.

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After taking full control of Nanji City, there are more and more people floating between the two cities, Shen Qingze ordered the City Lord's Mansion to formally implement the management of household registration and ID cards.

In the two cities, with streets and districts as units, every building was nailed to iron plates by officials, with street addresses and building numbers engraved on them.

Including villages in the outskirts, every resident must be registered in the local household registration, and after the registration is completed, they will receive their own identity certificates.

It was a thin copper card with a unique personal number engraved on it. With it, one could prove that one was a resident of Abyss City. Work, tax payment, education, and medical care were all inseparable from it.

Those outsiders who temporarily lived in the big tent outside the city all had the goal of getting a copper card as soon as possible.

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The city lord's mansion, the meeting hall.

Shen Qingze and Yan Zui sat on the left and right of the main seat, each with a brand new letter of advice in front of them.

After the territory becomes larger and the responsibilities increase, the original functional system can no longer meet the needs.

The finance and taxation department was divided by Shen Qingze into two parts, the taxation department and the business department, temporarily under the leadership of Luo Xin. Lu Sanshu and Lu Xin of Lu's firm both passed the selection of officials and officially became a part of the Ministry of Commerce.

This letter of advice is precisely the policy that Uncle Lu has painstakingly thought of based on his years of experience in business.

Shen Qingze browsed through the letter of advice carefully, with a delicate expression, he read softly: "In Yuanliu City and Nanji City, banks will be opened at the same time, and banknotes will be issued?"

With a surprised expression on Yan Zui's face, he took out a document from the table - it was Shen Qingze who got up from the bed in the middle of the night last night, stayed up all night, and wrote on the cover overnight: About the development with Beiji City Two or three things about the trade war.