Although Li Qi had been handling government affairs in the northern capital of Jinyang, Luoyang had always been nominally the capital of the Tang Empire.

Before the official return of the capital to Luoyang, the imperial court carried out another major personnel adjustment, and a number of old ministers such as Ren Yuan, Yuan Xingqin and Xia Luqi entered the newly established Advisory Yuan. Lu Yan took over as prime minister, Zhang Jingda as the privy envoy, and Song Tinghao as the Tuntian order.

In Jiangnan, the imperial court forced Wu and Yue to cede Tongzhou and Songjiang in Suzhou, believing that the newly formed and Jiangnan naval division was equivalent to controlling the waterway at the mouth of the Yangtze River. The other is to canonize Li Sheng as the king of Jiangning, deliberately separating his power from Yang Pu, the king of Southern Wu in Guangling Mansion in Jiangbei.

Now the Tang Dynasty still has the Huainan Wu King, Jiangning King, Wu Yue King and Nanping King Everywhere to divide the land, this Wu State and Wu Yue have basically been controlled, and the withdrawal of the feudal domain is only in the thought of the imperial court. Only the power of Liu Yi, the king of Nanping, is still strong, and the imperial court is not able to intervene in it for the time being.

In this era, the Songjiang River was directly connected to Taihu Lake, and the Chongming Island of later generations was still three desolate sandbanks in the center of the Yangtze River estuary, and the river surface of the Yangtze River estuary was far wider than that of later generations.

The imperial court set up two naval battalions in Tongzhou and Songjiang, and built shipyards and military cantonments, which actually announced that Wu and Yue had given up resistance and chose to surrender completely. It's useless, how can the side of the couch allow others to sleep soundly, and move the three kings of Wu, Yue, Jiangning, Yang, Qian and Li to settle in Luoyang, which is a matter of time.

After inspecting the shipping affairs from Quanzhou, the Minister of Shipping, Liu Jiang, rushed to the Songjiang camp on a naval warship.

The ship Liu Jiang was riding on was not small, with a displacement of more than 450 tons, and it was one of the largest ships equipped by the Tang Dynasty Navy Division.

At this time, the weather on the Yangtze River is sunny and sunny, and such weather is extremely rare in the south of the Yangtze River.

Liu Jiang walked out of the cabin and went up to the two-story cockpit.

The water surface of the Songjiang estuary in front is wide, and the river surface is more than two kilometers.

The Songjiang Naval Division Battalion and Shipyard are located in the triangle between Jiangbei and Dajiang.

The top of the Empire had approved the report of the sailors on the construction of large ocean-going ships, and instructed the Privy Council and the Harbour Master's Office to form a special joint body to guide the development of the shipbuilding industry in the country and the preparations for the formation of an ocean-going navy.

The geographical location of Songjiang is the most economically developed area in the south of the Yangtze River, and it is also the most suitable location for the development of shipping and shipbuilding industries. Therefore, the Shipbuilding Department has designated the two naval shipyards of Tongzhou Camp and Songjiang Camp as key construction projects.

At present, the shipyard will gradually change from the traditional method of making the main keel from giant wood to riveted keel with steel plates, so as to save wood and build larger ships. At present, the large ships built by the shipyards in the Tang Dynasty are also less than 500 tons, and the Son of Heaven and the imperial court mean that they are preparing to build large offshore ships of more than 1,000 tons.

Therefore, the construction plans of the two shipyards in Songjiang and Tongzhou have also undergone large-scale readjustment to meet the latest requirements of the imperial court.

The large-scale renovation and expansion of the shipyard will promote Datang Shipbuilding to achieve a new technological leap, from hundreds of tons to 1,000 tons, surpassing the shipbuilding technology level of countries such as Dashi and Persia in one fell swoop. Prior to this, most of the shipyards in China could only build inland waterway vessels with a tonnage of about 200 tons, but in Quanzhou and Guangzhou, they were able to build ships that were twice as large as that, and those that came across the ocean or the ocean-going ships owned by Persian merchants were at least more than tonnage. With this large-scale renovation and expansion, several major naval shipyards were required to have the capacity to build ocean-going ships of more than 1,000 tons.

Relatively speaking, at present, only the three naval shipyards in Bohai and the Jingzhou and Jiangxia naval shipyards have accumulated a certain amount of experience in the construction of steam ships.

Fortunately, the imperial court, the Privy Council, and the Ministry of Industry still have a relatively clear understanding that the development of the ocean-going navy and shipbuilding industry is a long-term goal, but they only require the newly established Shipping Administration to complete the reconstruction and expansion of the shipyard and the development of 1,000-ton ships within five years.

South of the Yangtze River, the riverside north of the Songjiang River has now become a construction site, and the shoreline and area are not small compared to the Hudong Shipyard in another time and space. The rattling of the steam crane as it rotates and lifts, and the screeching of the whistle from time to time reminds the workers to pay attention to safety.

The Songjiang shipyard is larger than most of the industrial projects currently underway in China, and is being built into a sizable new shipbuilding base, with large areas of reed ponds along the Yangtze River being filled in and compacted, and large swaths of riverside land being included in the new shipyard.

The shipyard needs to build two new thousand-ton reinforced concrete dry docks, four large-scale concrete pouring permanent slipways, large steam cranes, and a series of workshops such as wrought iron, sawmills, and power. At present, the main material used in the construction of hulls is wood, and some warships will be covered with an iron jacket as protection, but there are not many such warships.

The construction site of the shipyard is in full swing, and there are several huge slogans: Go big and fast, and strive to complete and put the shipyard into operation in three years!

This seems to have been the work of the missionaries sent by the imperial court......

……

The world's first railway is finally ready for operation.

The 63-kilometer narrow-gauge railway line from Jinyang north to Gujiao, coupled with a large amount of manpower and material investment, took only four months to complete the whole line. Prior to the official opening ceremony, the freight train had been in trial operation for some time. To really calculate, before the official opening of this railway, the iron works of Gujiao, Wuzhou, Cizhou and Xingzhou have all laid short-distance railway lines to transport ore raw materials and personnel, and have been operating for some time.

When the monster-like train locomotive emitted black smoke, sprayed white water vapor on both sides of the wheels, and made a rhythmic sound, slowly drove into the railway station located in the north of Jinyang City. The people who watched the bustle along the railway couldn't help but be dumbfounded, and some of the people who worked or did business in the Gujiao Iron Works boasted to the people around them about how powerful the train was. Without mules and horses, it can pull more than a dozen "eight-wheeled carriages" at a time.

Today's Jinyang North Railway Station is particularly lively.

Li Qi led a group of court officials to cut the ribbon for the official opening ceremony of the railway.

During the trial operation of the railway, these ministers had already taken advantage of their privileges to take the train to Gujiao several times, especially Cao Xin, the secretary of the Ministry of Industry, who actually made 10 trips to the Gujiao Iron Works last month, which was called "inspecting the progress of the renovation project of the iron works." Today, this guy sat in the carriage of this special train with only four passenger cars, and led a group of officials from the Ministry of Industry, Shaofu Temple, and the railway construction and research team led by He Quan and Wang Yuan to carry out formal acceptance.

Woo......

As the locomotive sounded the whistle three times, the red train began to move slowly, smoothly out of Jinyang North Railway Station, and then faster and faster, speeding towards Yangqu County, but also announcing the arrival of a new era......

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