Only ten days had passed since these more than ten people from the Nine Ministers and Six Departments set out for Weihaiwei and took the train back to Beijing.
In other words, it took them at least six days to rush to Tianjin Port and then take a boat to Weihaiwei.
But they took the train day and night and returned to the capital from Weihaiwei in less than three days.
If this is transporting military supplies...
hiss!
Everyone suddenly gasped.
Even if it is only transported half the distance, the time can be greatly reduced.
At this moment, everyone looked at the steel behemoth in front of them, and their eyes changed.
Kangxi was no exception.
As he got older, he was indeed not as ambitious as he was when he was young, and he was only concerned about protecting his current piece of land.
But he did not want to expand outward, not just because he lacked ambition, but because it is easy to conquer the world but difficult to keep it.
There is a saying that goes, "Food and supplies must be sent before troops move."
In the past, when fighting a war, the preliminary preparations alone sometimes took several months or even half a year.
Otherwise, once the army runs out of food, defeat is basically a foregone conclusion.
Moreover, in the past, spreading news had to rely on manpower. Take Weihaiwei as an example. If a rebellion broke out there, it would take at least four or five days for him in the capital to receive the news.
This is already the maximum speed.
But with the train in front of us, the speed of transmitting information has doubled.
The speed of allocating troops and supplies was even more than ten times faster.
Even if the territory of the Qing Dynasty were to double today, it would not be too difficult to govern with the railways.
Kangxi couldn't help but take a few steps forward and touch the iron sheet of the locomotive.
The cold touch passed from his palm to Kangxi's heart, and he couldn't help but take a deep breath.
He knew that with just this one thing, Yinreng's future achievements would not be lower than his.
It would be a lie to say that he has no regrets about what he has done now.
If he had been able to live up to the ambition he made when he first heard Yinreng's inner voice, and had always trusted Yinreng and not been suspicious, perhaps this achievement would have been credited to him.
Kangxi couldn't help but look back at Yinreng.
He found that the latter was also looking at him.
Yinreng had a warm smile on his face, but he could clearly feel that there was no kindness in that smile.
Some were just mocking him.
Kangxi's heart sank to the bottom and he no longer had any interest in visiting the train.
"Your Majesty, we brought some seafood with us. We caught them two days ago. We used a lot of ice, so they should still be fresh. Take a look..."
Xu Chao's eyes sparkled when he mentioned the supplies brought to the capital in the car.
He was of Manchu descent, and was unwilling to be chosen to go to Weihaiwei. However, more than ten years later, he had settled down in Weihaiwei.
Now that he is back in Beijing, he actually feels like returning home in glory.
After the emperor has finished touring the train, he will definitely have to take his things and go sit with his childhood playmates.
I don’t know how they are doing now.
She shouldn't still be working for Hesheli's family, right?
Yinreng didn't know what Xu Chao was thinking. When he heard that they brought seafood, his interest suddenly rose.
"Go and move it down quickly, let me take a look!"
The train conductor helped Xu Chao and others move all the seafood down. When a few wooden boxes were opened, colorful fish, lobsters, and various scallops and oysters came into view.
As Beijing officials, even though these people claimed to be knowledgeable, they had basically never seen so many kinds of seafood, let alone eaten them.
There are seafood in Tianjin, but not much is sent to the capital every year, and most of it is dried because winter fishing is too difficult now.
If seafood caught in summer is not dried in time, it will soon rot and stink.
Now when they saw this fresh seafood, their eyes widened a little.
Yinreng bent down and picked up a lobster that was bigger than his head.
"Wow, you've caught lobsters this big! Great! Send them all to the palace. I'm going to host a banquet for you all at noon today!"
Afterwards, Yinreng called the guards to send away all the seafood, and then took all the officials on the train for a tour.
He also ordered the train to start and carry everyone for more than a mile.
What surprised all the officials was that although there was a loud "clang clang" sound outside the train, they could hardly feel the bumps when sitting on it.
This is much more comfortable than riding in a carriage.
Now, when everyone looked at the craftsmen surrounding Yinreng, there was only admiration in their eyes.
In this era, the class divisions among scholars, farmers, merchants and artisans were still very serious, and officials basically looked down on other classes.
Of course, this does not include those who can bring them benefits.
After seeing the convenience of trains, officials in the court stopped crying poor all day long and were unwilling to spend money on laying railways.
Yinreng asked the Ministry of Works to cooperate with Weihaiwei to train railway engineers, starting from Jingcheng Station and laying railways to Tianjin first.
Railways in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong are also under planning.
As for Mongolia, Xinjiang and other places, those places are vast and sparsely populated, so Yinreng plans to put them at the lower priority for the time being.
The most important thing now is to layout the coastal areas, vigorously develop maritime trade, absorb funds from all over the world, and speed up the process of developing new weapons.
The Japanese invaders were just the first step. As recorded in history books, Yinreng did not intend to let go of any of the countries that had invaded China. He also intended to let those countries experience everything that China had suffered.
Otherwise, it will be difficult to get rid of the hatred in his heart!
Time quickly came to the seventh year of Xiangyi.
During these three years, business in the Qing Dynasty flourished and the lives of the people became better and better.
Under the guidance of Yinreng, Hongsheng successfully established the first primary school in the capital, requiring all six-year-old children from common people in the capital to go to school and learn to write.
Primary schools only teach Chinese characters, arithmetic, and ideology and morality. After six years of study, students take the unified high school entrance examination.
The admission rate for secondary schools is one in ten.
If Yinreng wanted to select people who were extremely talented in both mathematics and literature, the elimination rate could not be too low.
Otherwise, the cost of running his school would be too high. With the current income and expenditure of the imperial court, it simply cannot afford to let too many people study for free.
At first, the upright officials in the court strongly opposed this matter.
After all, they are able to study thanks to the accumulation of several generations of ancestors and the opportunities passed down. Why should those who come from humble backgrounds have the same starting point as them?
It seemed as if the upright civil servants in the court united overnight, clamoring against Prince Cheng's plan to open a primary school.
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