In the tenth year of Xuanping, in the golden autumn of October, Chen Lifu returned to the city for the first time after leaving Jinling City and returning to his hometown last month.

Still in his almost iconic extravagant four-wheeled carriage, two tall horses dragged the four-wheeled carriage through the cinder road outside the city.

Then follow this expressway into Dongcheng District!

Dongcheng District is different from the old city, there is no wall around it, it can be said that there is no obvious boundary in the entire Dongcheng District, only a wide cinder road connects the whole Dongcheng District and the suburbs.

In addition to the absence of city walls, the entire urban layout of Dongcheng District is also different from the old city, the old city is the layout of the traditional Chinese city, except for a few main roads, the other streets are not well planned, many streets are curved and narrow, although in recent years, the Chengtian prefect Yamen has been the old city to carry out continuous transformation of the cityscape.

For example, the demolition of the street area encroached by merchants in the pre-Ming Dynasty, or the renovation of dirty and messy neighborhoods, or the dredging and transformation of the entire drainage facilities.

At the same time, in order to better govern the urban area, it also imitates some traditional urban management methods and some current grassroots management methods, divides the urban area, and then sets up a number of sub-districts to manage every corner of the city.

After many years of renovation of the old town of Jinling City, all aspects of the cityscape can be said to be different from the past, whoever walks into Jinling City, will be clean and tidy streets, wide cinder road orderly traffic carriages, crowds are impressive.

But even so, there is a huge gap between the old city of Jinling City and the new Dongcheng District.

Jinling New Dongcheng District can be said to be the first and only large-scale modern city with perfect planning when it was established in the Tang Dynasty for so many years.

This new Dongcheng District, which has a total area much larger than the old city, has been personally involved in the planning from the beginning of the planning, and the most obvious sign can be said to be the layout of various infrastructures.

The transportation network extending in all directions is the core infrastructure of the new Dongcheng District, with several major main roads, plus many branch roads, and these main roads are straight and wide.

These main roads are all paved with cinders or concrete!

It is worth mentioning the cement road, this cement road is actually Yanjiang East Road!

The large-scale use of cinder paving in domestic cities is nothing new, and with the large use of coal as a fuel for production and heating, cooking, etc., a large number of cinders are produced, and the final use of these cinders is to be used to pave roads.

However, cinder roads also have some defects, especially the aesthetic problems are difficult to solve.

Therefore, in some important places, it is still not necessary to pave the road with cinder, and in the early days, it was a huge cost to directly use the bluestone pavement, such as the road directly in front of the royal annex, which is the stone pavement.

Later, Jinling City, which is under great pressure on the city's appearance, began to use wooden planks to pave the road!

Yes, paving with wooden planks may sound like a luxury, but paving with wooden planks is much cheaper than paving with stone slabs.

However, boardwalks are very difficult to maintain, and plank paving is still very expensive, and only sidewalks in some important commercial streets will do so little.

When cement was invented, in fact, the first application was not used to build houses, the Hanlin Courtyard in the royal courtyard was not the first place to use cement, the first place to use cement was actually Yanjiang East Road.

Along Jiangdong Road, a large number of companies are concentrated around, a typical place where wealth is concentrated, in order to alleviate local finances, of course, it is more important to be for their own dignity, the companies working along Jiangdong Road, at first raised their own funds to lay stone roads and boardwalks, but this road is too busy, and close to the wharf, there are often load-loaded carriages through, whether it is stone or wood, it is often damaged.

At that time, after the invention of cement, the cement company also cooperated with the district yamen of Dongcheng District for the purpose of testing, and provided cement for laying along the East Yangtze Road at almost cost price.

At the same time, in order to solve the problem of paving materials, especially in order to make cement better used for construction purposes, the cement company specially commissioned other units to design a stone crusher, which uses a steam engine as a power to effectively crush stones, so as to obtain uniform small gravel.

Cement and anytime combined, this is the emergence of standard cement hardened pavement!

In this way, it is the only cement road in the country.

It's not long, only four kilometers before and after, but the cost is extremely high!

There is no way, today's cement is still very expensive, and the cost of cement paving is not ordinarily high, and other places still can't afford it for a while.

On the other hand, the military procured most of the cement production and transported it to important areas to build fortifications such as forts.

For example, the Wusong Fort is an important plan of the military's cement fortress plan!

The military plans to use cement as the main material to rebuild the entire battery and increase its defensive capabilities, especially the ability to resist heavy artillery bombardment.

Along with the transportation network of Dongcheng District, there are perfect drainage facilities, and on both sides of each road, there are underground drainage ditches that have been constructed in advance, and then green trees and flowers are planted on both sides.

At the same time, the new urban area has also pioneered the laying of a water pipeline system, although the current tap water coverage is only a very small part of the urban area, but it is still a great improvement.

In addition to these infrastructures, each part of the city is planned in advance for its use, such as a commercial office area near the Yangtze River, a road along the east of the Yangtze River, but a few thousand meters in length, but there are more than 100 large enterprise headquarters or branches, thus forming an almost very distinctive regional style.

The people who work in this area are all dressed as the elite of society, and in order to transport them to and from work, the companies here have also teamed up to establish a bus and carriage company to connect the rest of the city and the old city to serve the employees of each family to commute to work.

It can also be seen here that in fact, many companies engaged in public utilities in Dongcheng District, such as water supply companies, carriage companies, etc., are funded and founded by many large enterprises along Jiangdong Road!

After all, these belong to the public service industry, if it were not for so many large enterprises to jointly set up, the Jinling City Yamen would not necessarily approve it, and ordinary private individuals want to get involved in these industries alone, the chance is not large.

Such a new Dongcheng District, Rao is Chen Lifu, a native of Jinling, couldn't help but be surprised when he saw it, in fact, he was even more surprised than outsiders.

If it is a foreigner, they may think that Jinling City has always been so prosperous, but Chen Lifu, as a native of Jinling, is very clear about what this place was like before the Tang Dynasty came to Jinling, and how much Jinling City has changed after the Tang Dynasty set the capital here.

The changes in Jinling City are a small microcosm of the changes in the entire Tang Dynasty!

The cement road on which his carriage travels today is almost a witness to many changes in the Tang Dynasty.

Chen Lifu firmly believes that he is in an era of great change!

And it is Li Xuan, the ancient sage, who leads the people of China to create this era of change!

The Holy Son of Heaven has already created this new era of change, and he, no matter what, if he keeps up with the pace of the Holy Son of Heaven, and finally leaves traces of himself in this prosperous era of Xuanping.

And today's new department, the Ministry of Finance, is the place where it has reached new heights.

The Ministry of Finance, this is an institution that has never appeared in the Tang Dynasty, or even in the thousands of years of Chinese history, not only the name, but even the functions have never appeared.

According to the few information he has learned, he can already analyze that the main function of the newly established Ministry of Finance is to manage money!

Its main institutions are the Budget Department and the Finance Department, which were spun off from the Ministry of Taxation.

Although it has not been announced to the public now, some well-informed people in Jinling City already know that just five days ago, at the cabinet meeting, the Holy Son of Heaven officially approved the reform plan of the Ministry of Taxation.

Several main agencies of the Ministry of Taxation will be separated, but at the same time, the customs will be re-integrated into the Ministry of Taxes, so the main organs of the Ministry of Taxation will be the Department of Grain Collection, the Department of Customs, etc., and their main functions will become pure tax collection agencies.

Many people actually want to take advantage of the reform of the Ministry of Taxation to abolish or split the tax inspection team, and no matter how bad it is, the tax inspection team will be separated from the Ministry of Taxation and placed under the direct jurisdiction of the Cabinet.

However, this plan was vetoed by the Son of Heaven, and in the end, as the largest non-military armed organization in the country, the tax inspection team with tens of thousands of employees nationwide was finally retained, and it still belonged to the Ministry of Taxation, but it was no longer attributed to the grain collection department as before, but a separate inspection department was set up for management.

The Ministry of Taxation, the Department of Budget and the Department of Finance, were formed as a new ministry, the Ministry of Finance.

This Ministry of Finance will fully manage the domestic economic order!

The institution where Chen Lifu works is the Department of Finance of the Ministry of Finance, and his specific position is the right deputy director of the Department of Finance.

The Financial Department is set up as a member of the director of the third product, a member of the left deputy director of the fourth product, and a member of the right deputy director of the fourth product, that is to say, Chen Lifu will be the third in command in the financial department.

At the same time, according to some traditions in imperial politics, the deputy usually helped the first person to take charge of some important affairs, so Chen Lifu also supervised the head of the securities division under the financial department.