Guide to traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty

Jiujiang, also known as Jiangzhou, Xunyang, and Chaisang.

After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the Jiangdong Road of the Northern Song Dynasty was abolished, and Jiangzhou was incorporated into Jiangxi Province and renamed Jiujiang Prefecture.

It was not a random change, and its place name originated from Jiujiang County in the Sui Dynasty.

The adjacent Nankang Army was changed to Nankang Prefecture, and the prefecture was in Xingzi County (Lushan City). It was not under the jurisdiction of Jiujiang Prefecture, but a provincial direct prefecture.

Hongzhou was upgraded to Nanchang Prefecture, and the capital of Jiangxi Province was located in Nanchang.

Jianchang Army and Nan'an Army were all transferred to provincial civilian prefectures, but there were still many troops stationed there. The former could dispatch troops to Fujian to quell the rebellion, and the latter could dispatch troops to Hunan and Guangdong to quell the rebellion. If the two advance against each other, they can also attack the rebels in Ganzhou.

Well, Qianzhou has been upgraded to Ganzhou Prefecture.

With the continuous splitting and merging, the jurisdiction of Jiangxi Province is basically the same as in later generations.

Zhu Guoxiang's fleet stopped at Jiujiang Prefecture City.

When the Ming Dynasty just recovered the south and established Jiangxi Province, Jiujiang Prefecture's population ranked third from the bottom in the province, only larger than the two poor places of Jianchang and Nan'an.

Zhong Xiang sent troops to attack Jiangzhou for several years, which was just one of the reasons.

Because as early as the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, Jiangzhou's population was the last!

All the living people were killed by the Song army, so that the court tried to appease the local area and return the land and products of Jiangzhou to the original owner, but could not find anyone. Cao Han, the Song general who ordered the massacre, dispatched a hundred giant ships to transport Jiangzhou's property back to his home.

After more than a hundred years of recovery, there were still foreign people moving in, and Jiangzhou's household registration was barely restored to the Southern Tang period.

Dong Yanghao, the prefect of Jiujiang, said to the emperor: "The imperial court has distributed the land tax and sorted out the household registration, and has rested with the people for 20 years. The population of Jiujiang Prefecture has increased from the third from the bottom to the sixth from the bottom and the seventh from the top in the province."

Zhu Guoxiang nodded in praise: "You have done a good job, keep up the good work."

Dong Yanghao continued to take credit, saying: "Although the population of Jiujiang Prefecture is not large for the time being, Jiujiang City is one of the best in the province. Both inside and outside the city are densely populated. I am planning to build more city walls and expand the docks."

Zhu Guoxiang understood at once that the urbanization rate of Jiujiang Prefecture was a bit high.

That is, the rural population is not large, but the population of the prefecture city is so large that it must be expanded. This is naturally due to its status as a water transportation hub. Jiujiang Prefecture's business far exceeds industry and agriculture.

There is also a Guangning Prison here, which was one of the four major mints in the Northern Song Dynasty and now has become one of the eight major mints in the Ming Dynasty.

The next day, Zhu Guoxiang went to inspect the mint.

Xie Qian, the chief supervisor, went to greet the emperor yesterday, and today he brought people to wait outside the mint.

After a round of greetings, Zhu Guoxiang was surrounded by people and went in, asking about the mint as he walked.

Xie Qian introduced: "Guangning Supervisor mainly casts copper coins and square copper coins with holes. At the beginning, square copper coins with holes were still cast using the traditional mold casting method. Fourteen years ago, the Ministry of Industry began to improve the technology, and now all steam engines are used for pressing."

"Jiujiang Prefecture has five counties under its jurisdiction, three of which produce copper, and it is very convenient to transport it to the prefecture by water. Coal comes from the mountainous area in the west of Ruichang, and is carried out of the mountains by people and animals, and then loaded on ships and transported by water."

The mint was built on the northern foot of Mount Lu, and black smoke could be seen faintly rising in Jiujiang City.

The big chimney was nearly fifty meters high.

Before entering the factory, Zhu Guoxiang had heard the roar of the machine.

The entire factory area was in the shape of a Chinese character "Hui".

Xie Qian pointed to several warehouses in front and said, "Those are storage rooms. In addition to copper ingots, there are also lead, tin, Japanese lead (zinc) and other materials... Over there are the batching room and the melting room..."

The batching room has a huge scale and several relatively small scales.

The large scale is used to weigh copper, and the small scale is used to weigh other materials.

The copper ingots transported here from the copper field contain impurities such as lead and tin. But those impurities are not enough, and some more must be added before coinage.

The proportion of ingredients has been different in different dynasties.

The proportion of copper coins in the Ming Dynasty has also changed. With the advancement of zinc smelting technology in recent years, the zinc content in copper coins has also been increasing.

This is an inevitable development trend.

In another time and space, the zinc content of copper coins during the Hongzhi period of the Ming Dynasty was negligible. Only a few decades later, due to the rapid development of zinc smelting technology, the zinc content in copper coins increased to 11%-21%.

It was even more fierce during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and the zinc content directly soared to 41.5%.

The current copper coins of the Ming Dynasty have a ratio of about 65% copper, 25% zinc, 9% tin, and 1% lead.

In actual operation, the ratio of various raw materials fluctuates slightly.

Lead is of course toxic, but 1% is not very harmful.

Hehe, in the 21st century, there are still a lot of lead pipes in the United States. And they will continue to use them until the day they break down, because they cannot be effectively replaced. Even the American government and water plants don’t know how many lead pipes there are.

After the news became a big deal, American medical institutions took the opportunity to make a fortune. Countless American people went to test their blood lead content, and the testing costs suddenly soared dozens or hundreds of times.

"That's the crucible furnace over there." Xie Qian led the emperor over.

The technology of copper smelting crucible furnaces in ancient China matured very early, and it was heated internally by blowers and charcoal.

Today, the Ministry of Industry is studying gas crucible furnaces.

The Northern Song Dynasty already had coking coal refining technology, and the Ming Dynasty naturally continued and improved it. The gas cannot be wasted in vain.

The roughly processed copper sheets are carried by workers to the sheet rolling machine, where they are rolled flatter and thinner under the huge force of steam.

Next is the finishing mill, which performs a second rolling on the copper sheets and cuts them into long strips.

Then there is the punching machine, which punches out embryo cakes on the copper strips.

The next step is the edge polishing machine, which can not only grind the edge of the copper coin smooth, but also make the edge convex with anti-counterfeiting function.

The last is the stamping machine, which presses out the handwriting and patterns of the copper coin.

The stamping machine that Zhu Guoxiang saw was pressing the copper coin with holes, which is more complicated than directly pressing the copper coin without holes.

Why do we insist on making copper coins with holes even if it is more complicated?

Wouldn’t it be better to change all to copper coins without holes?

Of course, it is for the consideration of the lower-class people.

Small copper coins are easy to lose, while the copper coins with holes can be strung together with ropes.

If one or two coins are lost, the poor will also feel very distressed.

Today’s Ming copper coins have three denominations of one, two, and five coins, which are copper coins with holes.

Fifty and one hundred coins are copper coins without holes, because this kind of copper coin is particularly large and is not easy to lose.

Previously, there were 10 and 20 coins, which have not been minted in recent years because the usage rate is not very high.

This series of coin-making machines were made one after another.

At first, there was only a press, followed by a sheeting machine, and then a polishing machine, a fine rolling machine... Each additional machine can make the coins more exquisite and greatly improve the efficiency of coin casting.

Xie Qian flattered with a sighing tone: "In the former Song Dynasty, Cai Jing minted ten-cent coins on a large scale, and the people were already complaining, and the ministers also denounced his excessive issuance of currency. Now the Ming copper coin has a face value of 100 Wen, but it can make officials and civilians happy, and there are not many counterfeit coins. Why? It is because His Majesty the Emperor is a scholar who mints coins with the power of coal steam. The coin casting technique is amazing! Not only is it exquisite, but it is also difficult to counterfeit. Even if there are treacherous people making counterfeit coins, they can be identified at a glance."

Zhu Guoxiang listened with a smile, but he always had a hidden worry.

Today's steam engines are mainly used in mining, smelting, coin casting, steam locomotives, and forging weapons and armor.

All of them are government actions.

If the use of steam engines is limited to these aspects, will future emperors restrict the civilian use of steam engines for national security?

This thing has to be gradually opened to the public.

After walking around the mint for half a day, Zhu Guoxiang praised the officials and workers here.

The next day, he took a boat south, first went to the White Deer Cave Academy, and then went to visit Mount Lu.

After leaving Mount Lu, he went to Nanchang to climb the Tengwang Pavilion, where he met with local gentry and celebrities. The clansmen of Queen Zhang Jinping also received the news and rushed over.

The Tengwang Pavilion at this time was rebuilt more than 40 years ago.

It is still quite new and not dilapidated.

After staying in Nanchang for more than ten days, Zhu Guoxiang went north again and returned to the Yangtze River, stopping all the way and heading straight to Hanyang (Wuhan).

To be precise, Hanyang City is in the Hanyang District of Wuhan in later generations, and governs the neighboring Jianghan District.

The Wuchang District on the other side of the Yangtze River is called Ezhou or Jiangxia.

Zhu Guoxiang looked at the busy Hanyang Wharf and mourned for two minutes in his heart. Once the railway from Nanyang to Pingdingshan is completed, the cargo throughput of Hanyang will not be halved, but it will be cut from the neck.

Next, go to Yuezhou, climb the Yueyang Tower, go boating on Dongting Lake, and then go to Changsha to visit Yuelu Academy.

Thanks to the Ming Dynasty's policy of encouraging immigration and reclamation, the population density of the Dongting Lake Plain has doubled compared to the heyday of the Northern Song Dynasty. The impact of Zhong Xiang's rebellion seems to have completely disappeared.

Take Changsha for example. During the entire Northern Song Dynasty, Changsha did not even have a city wall.

It was not until Zhong Xiang started his army that several castles were built in Changsha to prevent Zhu Ze from going south.

If Sun Jian knew about this, he would probably cry without tears, thinking, why did my Changsha go back to the past?

The next stop is Jiangling (Jingzhou).

It is extremely prosperous here, and it beats Yueyang, Hanyang and Jiujiang!

Zhu Guoxiang originally planned to go against the Yangtze River to Sichuan, but his entourage advised him against it.

It was not only because of the dangerous waters in the Three Gorges, but also because the Shu Road in northern Sichuan was difficult. The emperor was old, and he might get sick from going from Sichuan to Hanzhong.

Even if the emperor was in good health, the empress and the others could not stand the tossing.

When visiting Huangshan, Lushan and other places before, most of the way could be taken by boat, and only the mountain climbing required walking. No matter how difficult Huangshan is to climb, can it be compared with crossing the Shu Road in northern Sichuan?

Faced with repeated persuasion, Zhu Guoxiang looked at his old wife again, and finally gave up going to Sichuan.

He took a boat north along the Jingxiang Canal, played in Xiangyang for a few days, and then took a boat to Hanzhong on the Han River.

The autumn was clear and the scenery was pleasant.

The fleet passed the boundary of Shiquan County, and continued to move forward to Daming Town.

The former Daming Village, Daming Township, Shangbai Village and Xiabai Village are now all under the jurisdiction of Daming Town, and there is a deputy county-level official who governs the people there.

The reason for being able to receive such treatment is purely because of the dragon's rise.

Zhu Guoxiang stood on the deck outside the cabin and suddenly saw a small river merging into the Han River.

Memories from many years ago suddenly became clear.

He and his son walked along the small river in ragged clothes to the bank of the Han River and saw boats and people on the river.

The boat moved forward, and the scenery on both sides of the river went backward, as if time was also going back.

There were actually some people living in the places downstream of Daming Village. The barren slopes by the river, which were covered with thorns, became tea gardens and tung oil forests.

Zhu Guoxiang picked up the telescope and looked carefully. Next to a thatched house, he saw wooden stakes used to cultivate mushrooms.

He suddenly laughed happily. This was the technology he taught, and the people here have been using it.