Chapter 677: Chen Ao’s visit here

The news that Chen Ao arrived in Quanzhou also caused a sensation. Local officials and the Nanyang Navy rushed over. Quanzhou prefect and Nanyang Navy commander Yang Guo met and settled down first. Before he could get along, Chen Ao suggested that he go to Quanzhou to have a casual visit.

The news about Quanzhou has not been revealed yet, so Chen Ao only regarded Quanzhou as his private property, while the rest of the people only regarded Chen Ao as his passion to see the changes in Quanzhou.

The changes in Quanzhou were indeed earth-shaking. Ma Yinglong was quite proud and led Chen Ao to take a team of lieutenants out.

The entire Quanzhou has more than doubled compared to one year ago. In fact, this is reasonable. All industries are booming and a large number of refugees are pouring in. As a result, the city has to continue to expand. In addition, the kilns, irons, shipyards, and silk shops have emerged like bamboo shoots after a rain, which has attracted foreign merchants to come.

The smooth waterways have greatly promoted sea trade. For example, the Quanzhou docks had only more than twenty two years ago, but now they have been several times. Now there are more people going out to sea now? There are ships everywhere! Some merchants have to pay the money in order to buy ships, so that the docks can only deliver all the goods in the next year.

The dock is expanding wildly and recruiting shipcrafters everywhere, but the shipcrafters are rare and it takes a lot of effort to cultivate them.

For this, Ma Yinglong had to go to Suhang to grab people, but Suhang to Hangzhou is also in short supply, so where can he be given? There are many boatmen in the official yard, but there are also some manpower there. The navy wants to build a ship, so where can he draw people?

Most of the craftsmen nowadays rely on ancestral craftsmanship, so the cultivation of craftsmen is very rare. I used to think that after all, being a craftsman is not a superior job, but now it is different. Now the owner of the dock has digging his mind every day to recruit ship craftsmen. The best way is of course to pull from competitors. On the one hand, the boat craftsmen must work in the dock wholeheartedly, and on the other hand, they must recruit other people's boat craftsmen. The only way is to just one word - money.

A skilled boatman is worth a lot of money. It is said that some people earn 500 trump cards a year. This price is placed in the fish and rice town of Jiangnan. A wealthy family with 100 acres of fertile land may not be able to make it. It can be seen how scarcity of this boatman is and how profitable the dock is.

Ma Yinglong took Chen Ao to a place where the dock was accumulated twenty miles away in Quanzhou. It happened to be a deep water bay. There were buildings similar to water villages along the coast. There were also open spaces not far away, all of which were drying wood. The scale was quite large and could only be regarded as the suburbs of Quanzhou. Its scale was almost the same as a small town. One mile from the dock, and there were rows of temporary wooden houses, forming a shanty town, which must be a place for craftsmen to live temporarily. The shanty town also had street wine flags, tea coils were flying in the wind, and there were seven or eight brothels next to each other, attracting customers along the way. These craftsmen were all people with spare money, and it was said that they were doing business here surprisingly well. So the dock was first built, and thousands of workers lived here, and then merchants flocked in. The merchants opened shops and needed a friend, so they recruited people from nearby.

Then some people with foundations lived here, and they had to build more spacious houses. After that, a large number of carpenters and craftsmen rushed over. As a result, more and more people were. In a year, a satellite city of 10,000 or 20,000 households appeared out of thin air, with a population of approximately 50,000 to 100,000.

This is just the beginning. Every inch of land in Quanzhou is valuable, so many outsiders don’t have wealth and like to gather here. It is common for the population to double several times in the future.

Ma Yinglong was very excited, and then took Chen Ao to the gathering place of the workshop. It was about ten miles away from Quanzhou and the population was even more dense. It was placed in an ordinary palace. Moreover, a road was built from the workshop area to Quanzhou. I don’t know what kind of mud was used to pave it, but it was almost the same as the cement roads in later generations.

Chen Ao stepped on this road and felt a little novel. He said it was cement, which was obviously a little different. The material seemed to be more detailed. In this era, the best road was paved with stone bricks. This kind of road was too expensive and there were also some bumps. However, seeing this road made Chen Ao a little more friendly.

Ma Yinglong refused to walk on this road, and stood with a smile on the side of the roadbed. Chen Ao waved to him. He shook for a moment, as if he was very caring about his official boots. He was a little angry when he saw that King Pingxi held down Shangfang's sword. Ma Yinglong's back chills, and he whispered: "Prince, this road is unlucky."

Chen Ao smiled slightly and said, "Why are you unlucky?"

Ma Yinglong whispered: "The things used in this way are for the dead."

Ma Yinglong explained it in a vague way. Chen Ao realized that the materials for building roads were muds that were sealed by wealthy people in ancient times. This mud was more delicate than cement and was easy to prepare. However, after all, it was something that sealed the coffin, and there were many people who avoided it. Chen Ao vaguely remembered that he did have records of this mud in an ancient book. (It really happened, but the tiger forgot. If you are interested, you can check it out.)

If you use mud to build roads, if you want to do other places, especially Bianjing, you may have been in trouble. Not to mention that they are valuable, and this thing is really a taboo. However, the merchants in Quanzhou are not afraid. In their opinion, if you have money, you will make more profits than anything else. Furthermore, when loading and unloading goods from the workshop area to the port, the travel expenses are expensive. I don’t know how many carriages to break, and the waste of manpower is also huge. But if you have a smoother road, you can save a lot of money. The road surface is good, and the carriage can often carry more goods, and the round trip time can be shortened a lot. So, after these merchants gathered together, they raised a sum of money to repair the road.

Ma Yinglong was going to take care of it, but it was too late. Besides, the merchants invited some squire to lobby for a while, but finally pinched their noses and recognized it.

In fact, only Quanzhou has the demand and financial resources to build this kind of road on a small scale. However, Chen Ao can predict that the demand for this kind of mud will gradually increase, and many raw materials will be mined. At that time, when such a special mud workshop appears, the price of this kind of road will drop sharply.

Chen Ao smiled and said, "This road is called a cement road in the future. I like this road."

He clanged out the Shangfang sword on his waist and shouted: "The bold monsters dare to be arrogant in front of me." After that, he used the sword to chop down heavily on the side of the roadbed, and then took the sword back, and said lightly: "Tomorrow, I will ask someone to set up a sword monument here, called Zhenlushi, and there will be no evil in the future. I am here, who dares to be arrogant!" Then he used the sword to carve a line of words beside the roadbed: "The Great Song Dynasty King Pingxi, the Great Song Dynasty King of Political Affairs, the Great Song Dynasty Prince of the Duke, the Great Song Dynasty Prince of the Temple Minister, and the Wubei Academy Si Ye Chen Ao came here to visit."

After walking around for a day, riding a horse back to the city, Chen Ao's itinerary quickly leaked out, especially the interesting news on the cement road was spread. On the second day, a real man took the craftsmen to build a sword monument, which caused a sensation.

In the eyes of Quanzhou people, Chen Ao is really a fierce existence. He praised him as Wenquxing, and secretly said that he was an evil star. However, whether it was Wenquxing or an evil star, he was still in the ranks of gods. In addition, a sword on his waist was even more granted by the emperor. He was immersed in the spirit of immortals. When he roared, those who believed that there was filth in the cement road were also bold at this time. He really thought that there was no need to avoid any hindrance when the sword monument was built there.

Returning to the headquarters with great enthusiasm, Chen Ao's mood improved a lot. Ma Yinglong accompanied him to spend supper and said with a smile: "The prince will take a break today. If you don't rush to go to Xinghua Army, the emperor will take the prince to see a good thing tomorrow."

Chen Ao smiled faintly and said, "What good thing? Let's talk about it."

Chen Ao was not in a hurry to do things about the Cai family. Now he was holding the cat and playing with the mouse. He hung them first and then cleaned them up together. However, Ma Yinglong was keeping him in hiding, which made Chen Ao feel itchy and uncomfortable.

Ma Yinglong laughed and said, "The prince will know tomorrow. The prince will rest first and say goodbye."

This guy actually kept his hands in a silence and raised Chen Ao's appetite. Chen Ao had no choice but to wave his hand and said, "Come to see me early tomorrow morning."

Even at night, Quanzhou City continues to be busy during the day. This port does not have the atmosphere of Bianjing, the elegance of Suzhou and Hangzhou, and the leisure of Xijing Chang'an, but it has endless vitality.

That night, countless famous stings were handed over. Han Shizhong, who accompanied him, held a large stack of famous stings and said to Chen Ao with a wry smile: "The prince, they were all sent by merchants, and they also brought a lot of gifts. They piled up seven or eight houses. In addition to gold and silver, there were also many pearls and jades, which were hundreds of thousands of coins."

Hundreds of thousands of coins? Chen Ao glanced at these famous thorns, which was as many as hundreds, and the gifts each person gave were about a few thousand coins. The merchants in Quanzhou were indeed very real, and there were really many wealthy families. Chen Ao made a rough estimate in his heart that if he received these gifts in a few days, he would probably earn millions of dollars. As expected, he was still an official.

However, Chen Ao also understood that he, the King of Pingxi, was equivalent to the guardian god of Quanzhou merchants. His own thoughts could influence their lives. These gifts were sent to curry favor with them, and they also hoped to tie Chen Ao's interests to them. Quanzhou is not as good as Suzhou and Hangzhou. How many Jinshi will be produced in Suzhou every year? It is really too many to count. If these people become officials in the future, they must care about the friendship between the countryside and fight for some benefits for Suzhou and Hangzhou. But this is different from Quanzhou. In the past, it was better to have officials and businessmen, but now all officials and businessmen have fallen. Quanzhou people in the court can count with one hand. If there is no one in the court, they will definitely suffer a loss.
Chapter completed!