Guo Rong was not as eager as Feng Liao, and those who drank tea and chatted were still charming people from Yangtai and other places.

He was poor since he was a child, so he went to Guangling to serve in the Imperial Palace, where he studied and became literate. Later, he married into the Yang family with Empress Xu. He can be said to be a direct henchman of the Anning Palace. He followed the third prince in his early years.

When he left the palace and returned to his residence, he also monitored her on behalf of Empress Xu.

Guo Rong's parents died young, but his two elder brothers are still alive.

Although Guo Rong has served in the palace for many years and has not returned to his old residence in Yangzhou for more than ten years, the correspondence with his brother's family has not been interrupted.

It was a pity that the two elder brothers' heirs were all useless, but they both wanted to adopt one of their sons to him as a court official, but Guo Rong did not agree, and the relationship became somewhat estranged later on.

The current situation in the past three or four years was turbulent. For a period of time, Guo Rong himself was in danger and he completely lost contact.

Guo Rong's old home is located in a village northeast of Shaobo Lake. This area is also the most flood-stricken place in northern Yangzhou since the beginning of summer. Guo Rong does not know what the situation at home is like for his two brothers.

Although he followed Han Qian in Jianghuai during this period, and even lived less than a hundred miles away from his old home for a while, he never had a chance to contact him. He thought that maybe he would drag his family with him and live in Yangzhou City and become a disaster victim.

"When I return to Yangzhou, I will find Mr. Guo's two elder brothers' homes and send them to Tangyi to reunite with Mr. Guo," Wang Jun said.

At present, Huaidong controls the large-scale entry of refugees into Tangyi. This is definitely not something that Wang Jun can object to. However, when Guo Rong's two elder brothers and their children were sent to Tangyi, Huaidong and Tangyi did not break up with each other.

, no one will deliberately make things difficult.

Guo Rong was naturally extremely grateful.

When the night got cooler and the heat became less difficult to sleep, Guo Rong, Feng Liao, and Feng Yi said goodbye and left.

There was no sudden incident that disturbed everyone tonight, and the night was considered peaceful and relaxing.

Xi Rong sent the maid to bring hot water for Wang Jun's master and servant to wash themselves.

When he woke up in the early morning, it was raining outside the window, and the maid Xiangyun was still sleeping soundly. Wang Jun heard that the yard was still quiet, and he didn't know if Han Qian and the others had gotten up, so he didn't rush out of the house, washed and pushed.

Opening the back window, you can see the rain curtain hanging from the back eaves and falling on the bricks and stones in the back alley. No one is passing by, making you feel like you are living in an empty city.

After thinking about it, Wang Jun smiled in his heart again and secretly thought that this was Han Qian's residence. The guards around it must be tight. How could there be such a large flow of people?

After a while, Wang Jun heard a noise in the wing next door. Wang Jun opened the door and tiptoed to the corridor. He looked through the window and saw that there was a library next door. He didn't know when Han Qian had gotten up and was standing in it.

What are you reading.

Han Qian heard the noise in front of the corridor and saw that it was Wang Jun who was wearing a long robe, with his raven-colored hair hanging down, making his face as white and translucent as the first snow, with long eyebrows on his temples, and his eyes looking like clear deep springs.

He came over and asked with a smile: "Why, did I wake you up?"

"I just woke up and heard a sound here. How long has it been raining?" Wang Jun asked.

Han Qian looked at the rain curtain outside the corridor and said, "It has been raining for more than an hour. It seems that the rain is neither urgent nor slow. It will probably last all day."

Seeing Han Qian coming over to help her open the door, Wang Jun jumped in on tiptoe. Seeing Han Qian holding a large book of drawings in his hand, he tilted his head and leaned over, and asked in surprise: "This is it?"

Picture of the newly built hydraulic spinning wheel in Xuzhou?"

"..." Han Qian handed the album to Wang Jun and told her, "I thought of one thing that could be improved at night, and I didn't sleep well after that. Now I hurriedly got up and came over to look through the album, but

There may be no use in pondering my nightly thoughts..."

"Can I see all of these?" Wang Jun asked.

She stood for a while and then felt a little tired. She leaned against the bookshelf behind her. On the row of bookshelves against the east wall, there were almost all books on weaving methods. There were as many as forty or fifty volumes.

.

In comparison, the "Weaving Chapter" she obtained from Han Qian more than two years ago seemed very thick, but it was still streamlined.

"You have seen it all, so I have more excuses to detain you." Han Qian looked at Wang Jun's deep beautiful eyes covered by long eyelashes, and said with a smile as his heart seemed to ripple.

"That will have to wait until I can understand everything." Wang Jun raised his eyes slightly, glanced at Han Qian, and whispered.

At this time, a guard came from the front yard, but there was an urgent matter that required Han Qian to go to the front office immediately to deal with it. Han Qian said something to Wang Jun and left the house first.

Wang Jun has always been curious about how to make a water-powered spinning wheel, but it was difficult to hold a thick atlas in his hand. He looked at a book table in front of the window, so he tiptoed to move many books about weaving, and then sat down to read it carefully.

Spend time on rainy days.

Only then did she realize that these forty or fifty volumes of books could be said to record all aspects of Xuzhou's vigorous development of cotton weaving.

The history of weaving linen and silk fabrics can be traced back to two or three thousand years ago. The history of cotton weaving in southwestern Japan also goes back several hundred years. The hand-spinning cotton wheels and looms used in the early years were also based on the hemp spinning wheels, and the hemp looms were improved.

; Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, water drainage has been used in the Central Plains area, and the history of water dams has been recorded.

In theory, there is no problem in using water to drive axles and spin wheels or looms.

However, compared to water turbines, water drainage, and hydraulic spinning wheels, the components are much more complex and sophisticated.

Starting from the Qiu Hushan period, a water-powered spinning wheel can be said to be the culmination of Han Qian's development of craftsmanship in the past seven or eight years.

After Han Qian arrived in Xuzhou, he began to vigorously promote cotton cultivation and cotton weaving, and he wanted to build a water-powered spinning machine and water-powered weaving machine. However, it was not until last year that the Engineer School built the first machine that could reliably be driven by water flow.

A water-powered spinning wheel runs on an axle, while water-powered looms are not yet mature.

The spies in Huaidong failed to see the actual sample of the hydraulic spinning wheel. This was not because Han Qian deliberately asked for secrecy. In fact, it had been in the experimental stage for a long time. It was not until the end of last year that six large-scale hydraulic spinning wheels with a total capacity of nearly 500 yarns were built.

You can only try it out in a weaving factory directly under the Bureau of Industry and Manufacturing.

Wang Jun was shocked when he saw this.

She had great expectations for the water-powered spinning wheel, but she never thought that a water-powered spinning wheel could drive nearly a hundred yarns. This is equivalent to several people operating a water-powered spinning wheel, which can be worth a hundred home spinners.

yarn worker.

The components of the hydraulic spinning wheel were too complicated. Wang Jun glanced at it briefly, and then looked through other books and archived documents.

From many letters, it can be seen that Han Qian has already planned that as long as the water-powered spinning wheel can operate stably, he will not sell it to other private weaving workshops and workshops because of technical confidentiality.

Even without the memory of the dream world, Han Qian at this time had a much deeper understanding of cotton, salt and iron, three commodities that could form a primary industrial system under current conditions, than the current talents.

Salt is subject to a monopoly system. Currently, it is extremely difficult for Xuzhou to seize the opportunity to traffic salt through the Qianjiang River channel to central Guizhou, Nanzhao and other places. We cannot expect too much in a short time.

Although Xuzhou's iron-making skills are much higher than those of the past, the problem lies in the aristocratic clans that control the local area. Many families have their own iron-making workshops and basically monopolize the local smelting and casting industry.

At the same time, because the aristocratic clans can force extremely cheap and abundant slaves to work, Xuzhou cannot have an absolute advantage in terms of cost.

Only cotton has great performance advantages over linen and geyi. The cotton weaving industry is also an area where it is easiest to form a primary industrial system in Xuzhou. It is also something that Han Qian has spared no effort to promote in Xuzhou in recent years.

Xuzhou has a mild climate and mostly sloping terraces, which is more suitable for cotton and wheat rotation. Currently, before Liyang and Tangyi are reclaiming low-lying land on a large scale to expand rice fields that are easy to irrigate and are not afraid of waterlogging in summer, large areas of land are

The higher old fields are also recommended for planting cotton, beans and wheat crops in rotation, which is more suitable.

In addition to the methods of cotton planting and weaving, these books also contain discussions on the similarities and differences in the production organization methods of cotton planting and weaving, as well as the sales of cotton cloth in Jianghuai, Hunan, Jingxiang, Sichuan and Sichuan. Wang Jun recognized her in Jianyuan in the past two years.

Trying to plant three to five hundred acres of cotton fields at the foot of the mountain can only be regarded as playing house.

At that time, one acre of cotton field could produce about 80 kilograms of seed cotton in autumn, and about twenty pieces of coarse cotton could be woven.

At the beginning, the price of Jianghuai cotton was the same as silk, with each piece selling for thousands of yuan, which also meant that one acre of cotton field could produce an output value of up to 20,000 yuan. However, even after several suppressions, the price of Jianghuai cotton dropped to a level that ordinary people could barely afford.

Each piece of cotton received was four to five hundred yuan, and if one acre of cotton was planted and eventually woven into cotton cloth and sold, one could still earn ten thousand yuan.

Based on the current high grain prices in Jianghuai, even if every stone of japonica rice is as high as 2,000 yuan, the output of one acre of cotton field is enough to equal the output of two and a half acres of rice fields in Jianghuai; and based on the output of Hunan, Jiangxi and Sichuan,

In terms of grain prices, one acre of cotton field in Xuzhou is equivalent to the output of five acres of rice field.

The output here can be said to be quite amazing; if the price of Jianghuai rice goes down, there is still room for Qianyang cloth to significantly reduce its price.

However, the problem is that even with the new method implemented in the first two years after Han Qian arrived in Xuzhou - this is also the process and spinning wheel loom recorded in the "Weaving Chapter" that Han Qian gave to Wang Jun two years ago.

From growing cotton fields to spinning and weaving, the amount of labor invested is still too great.

According to the method recorded in "Weaving Chapter", three to four female weavers in a household, working day and night to operate one spinning wheel and one loom, can only weave thirty or forty pieces of cloth a year.

In other words, in addition to farming, a family weaver can only weave ten pieces of cloth per year; without continuous improvement of the spinning wheel and loom, it would be impossible for a family to plant an average of two or three acres of cotton fields.

In the past, the manpower in Xuzhou was barely enough. After all, the area of ​​cotton fields in Xuzhou and surrounding counties gradually increased from 6,000 to 7,000 acres in 67 years ago. Even on the eve of the Jinling Incident, Xuzhou and

The area of ​​cotton fields in surrounding states and counties has only exceeded 100,000 acres.

However, in the next two years, as Han Qian further deepened his control over Xuzhou, he began to reclaim sloping terraces suitable for growing cotton on a large scale, and the scale of cotton planting expanded by leaps and bounds, reaching its peak last year with more than 500,000 acres.

This year, because a large number of cotton seeds, agricultural tools, cotton farmers, and weavers came to support Tangyi, the cotton planting area in Xuzhou and surrounding counties did not continue to increase.

Even so, even if only half of the seed cotton harvested after autumn last year is woven into cotton cloth, it would require almost two to three hundred thousand family weavers to work around the clock and invest 70 to 80 thousand spinning wheels and looms to digest it.

Lose.

In fact, the total population of Xuzhou is less than 250,000. How could there be so many family weavers?

Since he wanted to establish a primary industrial system in Xuzhou, Han Qian even before the war to eliminate the feudal vassals - when the cotton planting area in Xuzhou was 20,000 to 30,000 acres - he strongly encouraged families with extra money outside the weaving courtyard to which the Han family belonged.

Large families with surplus grain recruited weavers to open weaving workshops or larger factories to absorb the growing cotton fields.

What Han Qian wants to do in Xuzhou is to continuously promote technological progress in order to form a large-scale cotton textile industry in the shortest possible time, rather than trying every means to keep it secret.

Xuzhou Industry and Manufacturing Bureau, whenever there are new improvements to spinning wheel looms, in addition to the directly-administered weaving workshops trying them out for a period of time, they will also put them out as quickly as possible for private weaving workshops and factories to purchase.

In addition to the four weaving workshops under the direct jurisdiction of the Industrial and Manufacturing Bureau, at the end of last year, there were currently more than 140 small and medium-sized weaving workshops in Fifty-nine Township, seven counties in Xuzhou, employing 17,800 weavers across the state.

Five times the number of weavers employed by the Xuzhou Industrial and Manufacturing Bureau.

The Industrial and Manufacturing Bureau and the weaving workshops throughout counties and villages in Xuzhou have generally adopted six- to eight-thread spinning wheels and larger looms. One weaver employed can almost equal the output of three to four family weavers.

The labor difference involved here is where the profits of the workshops and factories lie.

The annual income of a weaving workshop employing more than a hundred workers is no less than that of a small farm.
To be continued...