Chapter 581 Records of the Ming Dynasty (First update, please subscribe)
industry!
That night, after learning that as many as 200,000 Japanese women came to the Ming Dynasty through various channels every year, everyone, including Ito Hirobumi, thought about something else: Would so many women leaving Japan affect Japan's fertility and population?
After all, in this era, what both China and Japan are worried about is too much population, not too little population.
“This is such an unexpected discovery!”
"Yes, if we can export female workers and bring them under the control of the state, the government can earn at least 1 million yen from the export of 200,000 female workers!"
"This is not the most important thing. The most important thing is the remittances from women. If they send half of their income to Japan, that would be tens of millions of yuan!"
"Yoshi!"
For a moment, everyone in the delegation cheered. Even though they clearly witnessed that those women's dream was to marry a Ming man and become a Ming man, so what?
For Japan, a country with a poor population and a barren country, being able to find an advantageous "export project" is simply a great blessing from God!
Even before returning to Japan, the delegation wrote a letter back home. Among the thousands of words in the letter, there was only one core point - "There is great potential for the export of Japanese women." As a result, no one expected that in the next thirty years, a characteristic industry would be formed in Japan - the export of Japanese women. In the past thirty years, tens of millions of Japanese women went to the Ming Dynasty to work. While working in factories, they successively married Ming people. Their contribution to the rise of the Ming Dynasty is difficult for outsiders to compare.
In contrast, millions of Japanese men who could not find wives went to the African continent to make a living, where they devoted all their energy to the Ming Dynasty's colonization of Africa. Instead of working hard on the plantations, they married local women.
While Japanese women were proud to marry Ming people, Japanese men also made contributions to Ming. Tens of millions of Japanese people were dyed brown physically and mentally...
1872 was a fateful year for Japan. Even the members of the Iwakura Mission did not realize that Japan's destiny had undergone a drastic change at this moment.
But what is certain is that they seemed to have seen the code of a powerful country here. In the next few days, the Japanese delegation conducted inspections in various places in Linhai. Their inspections were comprehensive, from factories to schools, from schools to farms. When the inspections were over and they left Shanxi, everyone seemed very excited.
"Japan's future lies in the Ming Dynasty!"
Almost everyone has made this judgment!
…
In the rattling carriage, accompanied by the blast of the train whistle, the passengers who had dozed off in their seats all night finally woke up from their sleep.
After sleeping in the sleeper car all night, Ito Hirobumi raised his head and looked out the window. He was immediately stunned by the scene in front of him.
It was different from the prairie we saw yesterday, but instead there were endless factories everywhere!
I don't know when the train has entered the South China Prairie, which is what Westerners call the "Pampas Prairie" where cattle and sheep can be seen through the grass blowing in the wind, and has entered a heavy industrial city full of the power of the industrial age.
Although they entered the Ming Dynasty from Linhai, it also gave Ito Hirobumi and others a deeper understanding of the Ming Empire!
The railway line they are taking from Linhai to is now also called the "Pacific Railway". Although its length is not as long as the Pacific Railway in the United States, it is the first "Pacific Railway" in the world.
This railway is the only one in the Ming Dynasty that connects the east and west coasts, and to some extent, it is also the only horizontal railway. It crosses the Andes Mountains with extremely complex terrain, and has built a large number of railway bridges and tunnels along the long distance. As for the "Devil's Nose" section, it is a world-famous thrilling route... It is no exaggeration to say that the fact that the Ming Empire was able to build such a railway already shows its strong national strength and industrialization capabilities.
What is more important is the economic and political value of this railway, which cannot be exaggerated. It is this railway that connects the east and west of the Ming Dynasty into a whole. Every year, hundreds of thousands of immigrants enter the South China Prairie by rail. In fact, a long section of the railway route runs on the grassland. Only occasionally can you see villages along the way, or to be more precise, farm stations. From a distance, the appearance of these villages can also imagine that the lives of these farm workers should be quite stable.
The train would stop at stations along the way to refuel with coal and water, and also allow them to take a direct look at these small towns. Although they did not look big, the people living here all seemed to have peaceful smiles... Looking at the Chinese who lived and worked here in peace and contentment, Ito Hirobumi and others' admiration for the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty became even stronger. They could imagine the scene more than ten years ago when the Emperor led more than a thousand people to this grassland. At that time, this was the territory of Westerners.
In order to survive, they could only work with swords in hand. Only a few years later, a powerful country rose on this grassland, and the former Westerners surrendered to it one after another.
Then, the Ming Dynasty! The lost Ming Dynasty rose up on this land!
Whenever the train passed through a town, Ito Hirobumi would get off the train to take a closer look. The buildings in the small towns seemed to be a combination of Chinese and Western styles, and two- and three-story buildings were common. Unlike the narrow streets in Japan, the streets in these towns were wide, with trees planted on both sides. Although the trees were not very thick, the green towns were still pleasing to the eye.
While the train was being refilled with water, Ito Hirobumi even went to the school near the train station to take a look from afar - as long as he saw the Sun and Moon Flag, which was the national flag of the Ming Dynasty, flying, he knew that it was a school, and there he could see students carrying schoolbags going to school - when in Linhai, Ito Hirobumi learned from Zhao Teng that the Ming Dynasty had begun to promote compulsory education before the founding of the country, when Nanhua was founded.
"Now all children in Ming Dynasty can receive compulsory education, and the literacy rate of adult Chinese immigrants is also 100%. After all, every Chinese immigrant must receive literacy education after arriving in Ming Dynasty!"
Looking at the school in the distance, Ito Hirobumi's expression was serious. He stared at the fluttering sun and moon flag, and a voice echoed repeatedly in his mind.
"Perhaps, this is the real secret of the rise of the Ming Dynasty!"
(End of this chapter)
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