Merlin was worried that the construction period would be too late to delay his trip to Nanjing, and he was anxious every day.

There was a bubble on his mouth, so frightened that Zhou Dongtian didn't dare to mention the words "go to Nanjing" again, so he had to wander around Zhao's house every day, fortunately, this would be a sign that the printing equipment and equipment brought by the delegation were also transported one after another, and Zhou Dongtian first started the work of installing and debugging the equipment.

The printing office is located in a small courtyard in the abandoned garden of the Zhao Mansion. At present, the ink and paper used in the printing press are still shipped from Lingao, and Zhao Yinggong plans to solve them locally in the future. It is difficult to solve the local problem of the chemicals required for slate printing, and it is still purchased from Lingao.

Hangzhou can easily purchase a variety of earthen paper, although in the finish and whiteness is not as good as Lingao's writing and printing paper.

As for the ink, the local area can only solve the water animal ink such as pine smoke ink, and Zhao Yinggong has to try to solve the oil xìng ink by himself. His solution was to grow flax at Phoenix Hills. The flax weaving cloth can be harvested, and the flaxseed oil is the appropriate oil base.

When Zhou Dongtian was assembling and debugging the equipment, he specially selected two local young people who had just recently been contained in the mansion, who were old and reliable and literate as apprentices. In order to minimize literacy work, Zhao Yingong also paid attention to the basic education level of the recruits when recruiting slave men.

Although some people think that the printers should be transferred from Lingao, Zhou Dongtian disagrees: first of all, using a manual printing machine is not a high-level jishu, and maintenance is easy. He himself can teach by word and deed for a month or two: secondly, relying too much on the personnel selected and transferred from Lingao is likely to cause centrifugal tendencies among local personnel.

Zhou Dongtian taught them how to operate the machine, including simple maintenance work. Because the lead characters are too heavy and inconvenient to transport, the Hangzhou Printing Office is not equipped with the script at present, and only uses the imported book script for printing. When you need to make your own plate printing, lithographic printing is used.

The two young men were originally full of awe of these iron guys full of strange objects: at first, they were afraid that this thing would "bite", and then when Zhou Dongtian started the machine to show them the powerful printing power of the machine, it turned into sincere admiration.

Young people are receptive to new things, and after accepting them, it is often easy to try to defend the new things with which they agree. So Zhou Dongtian didn't want to recruit people from many unemployed old engraving masters outside to start the machine, and they still wanted new people to use them in the face of new things.

"Both of these are printing presses from Guangli, and it is said that they are overseas." Zhou Dongtian said vaguely, "In addition to Guangzhou, Quan Daming can't find any other ......

The two young people felt very excited, and few people understood what jishu meant, and everyone understood what jishu meant. What's even more commendable is that this old man Zhou doesn't hide his sī, and when he teaches, he tries his best to explain what he doesn't understand. This is a saint in the time and space where the skill is strictly kept secret, and the apprentice has to be a slave to the master's family for several years before he can learn a little fur. This casual practice of old time and space in any enterprise under the control of the Senate made the indigenous workers feel guilty.

Zhou Dongtian was not worried that they would sī escape from the portal or spread jishu. The jishu of the industrial society must have a sufficient material foundation, without equipment and raw materials, they are unable to replicate the production capacity of the Hangzhou printing house, and it is not that there have been no cases of workers trying to steal a certain jishu or a certain product, especially those naturalized migrant workers who were small handicraftsmen before coming to Lingao. But without exception, their attempts failed, and the production model of Lingao could not be replicated by small producers. Even if it could be replicated, the cost would be unimaginably high.

When Zhou Dongtian trained the printers, Merlin basically instilled his architectural intentions and construction methods into the carpenter head of the wooden cabinet, and he could probably rest assured that the next project would be handed over to the wooden cabinet.

In Nanjing, hundreds of miles away from Hangzhou, a sedan chair carried by two people is passing by the avenue next to Zhengyang Gate. The sedan chair stopped not far from Chengtianmen, but it was not a forbidden area, and the sedan curtain opened slightly. Two men are looking out of the car window towards the majestic Forbidden City in Nanjing.

Sitting on the flat sedan chair were Zhou Dongtian and Mei Lin. They had arrived in Nanjing the day before with Sun Wangcai's escort. Temporarily resting on the outer cabinet opened by Qiwei outside Nanjing. Today, I went to the city to inspect the local business situation. When entering the city, Merlin specially asked to take a look around the Forbidden City, and as a member of the construction party, he had a strong interest in the Ming Imperial Palace, where there were only a few ruins left in the old time and space, and he wanted to see it with his own eyes.

Nanjing's Forbidden City is a complex of buildings with yellow glazed tile roofs surrounded by high walls that are five miles long from north to south and four miles wide from east to west. The vermilion palace wall of Chengtianmen has been recorded many times, which appear mottled. There were small trees and weeds on the roof of the tower, which had obviously not been cleared for a long time. At the gate of the palace, there were a few eunuchs and guards as usual, but all of them were listless.

Accompanying them into the city was a group of real old residents of the Forbidden City, who had been recruited by Qi Wei in the Nose Place, and seeing that they were so interested in the Forbidden City, he told them about the situation inside.

Within the palace city, it is bounded by the Chengtian Gate, and to the north of the gate is the Forbidden City. Walking through the end gate and the noon gate, there are "Fengtian", "Jinshen", and "Huacani" standing in turn...... Three halls. The east and west sides are also built with "Wenhua Palace" and "Wuying Palace" and "Wenlou" and "Wulou" respectively.

This is the place where the emperor receives the pilgrimage of hundreds of officials and holds a grand ceremony.

North of the "three major halls", all the way to the Houzai Gate, belongs to the "Houting" range. There are many other palaces with different names, as well as an imperial huā garden. The emperor's daily life was there.

In addition to this part of the Forbidden City, a wide imperial road stretches out from the Wulong Bridge outside the Chengtian Gate to the main gate of the palace ~ Hongwu Gate.

On the east side of the Imperial Road, there are five ministries in addition to the Criminal Department, including officials, households, rites, soldiers, and workers, as well as the Zongren Mansion, Honglu Temple, Qintianjian, and Tai Hospital.

"You know a lot. Have you been there? Zhou Dongtian suddenly became suspicious.

"Where can the villain get in. However, there are many husbands and children in Nanjing, and I have heard them talk about many things in the Nanjing Palace in the teahouse. So I know a little bit about it. Everyone nodded and said.

Since Emperor Chengzu moved the capital to Beijing, this huge and magnificent palace city has experienced more than 200 years of idle years, and now it has long been depressed and dilapidated, and it has completely lost the atmosphere of the past. Emperor Ming rarely left Beijing to visit the southern capital, causing most of the palaces in the Forbidden City to be in disrepair, even those who have been stationed in the yamen, except for a few people who go to the ministry to see things, the so-called things are nothing more than to do some routine business for this ~ The door hall is quite neat, most of the walls are collapsed, and no one cares. A decaying mō-like. Merlin felt a little regretful,

He said, "Let's go."

The sedan chair traveled along the main road, and after passing through the Gongyuan Temple, the market became lively and prosperous.

The weather was sunny. The warm spring sun shone obliquely from the clear blue sky, casting the shadows of the row of houses on the left on the wide, bluestone-paved pavement and on the pedestrians. The main road in the city of Nanjing was originally very wide, "although the nine tracks can be accommodated", since the Wanli years, the population has grown rapidly, the trade is thriving, and the houses and shops on both sides have encroached on the official road, and gradually the road has become less wide. In addition, the streets are crowded with pedestrians, making the roads more and more congested.

The shops on both sides are next to each other. Densely packed. Most of the shops are not high, and the façade is wide: the black lacquer signboard at the front of the store reads "Old Silk Shop", "Net Towel Distributor", "Hangzhou Fan Famous Xiangguan Soap...... "Sichuan and Guangzhou Groceries", "Northwest Two Leather Goods for Sale", "East and West and Ocean Goods", "Inner Corridor Lexian Hall Famous Book Redemption", "Shunchang No. Commerce Silver Shop" and other words, some are still inlaid with gold powder. In the streets, those who ride in sedan chairs, those who ride donkeys,

People on foot, bustling with people.

Merchants from all over the world gathered in the official corridor and in front of the collapsed houses, selling and displaying their goods and bargaining with customers. The gentry from all over the country, Confucian scholars, talked in the tea house with lanterns hanging in front of the door and raising all kinds of fresh huā flowers. The café is full of seats, and business is booming: the restaurant is full of people, sheng songs, and the wind is wafting with the laughter and the strong fragrance of wine and food......

The accent on the street and in the shops is no longer the official dialect of Nanjing, which is spoken from north to south, and the accent of the southern accent to the north is full of it. In addition to the small people from Huizhou, Jiangbei, Shandong and other places who come to this prosperous place to beg for a living, there are many brightly dressed gentry among the people who speak with accents from all over the world. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the social turmoil and war, the defeat of Liaodong, the rebellion of Guizhou Lu'an, and the endless "popular uprisings" in various places made the local gentry come to the south of the Yangtze River, where the social order was stable, to escape the hustle and bustle in this gentle rural sales grotto. Most of them carried a large family of family slaves and a lot of gold and silver treasures, bought houses and land in and out of Nanjing, and lived a life of drunkenness and gold.

The two elders sitting in the sedan chair are in different moods at the moment. Zhou Dongtian was quite surprised by the prosperity of Nanjing, and in his opinion, it was not inferior to Hangzhou. It seems that the "capital effect" is still quite significant in the Ming Dynasty. Such a prosperous market obviously does not rely solely on Nanjing's local spending power. @。