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On December 18, 1650, in the height of summer, the temperature in Southern Patagonia had climbed to nearly 30 degrees. Li Dayan took out a fan, fanned the hot air around him, and walked into a small three-story building in front of him. The building is tall and spacious, but also somewhat shady, making it a great place to visit on a hot summer day. Li Dayan turned his head to look around, and at this time there were more than a dozen people sitting in the room, sitting behind the table and chairs, holding some books and reading carefully.

Yes, that's right, this is a library - the "Southern Railway Popular Library" funded by the Southern Railway Corporation. This library has a vast area, with a collection of more than 23,000 volumes, including many valuable Chinese books, book series, and books on the prefectures and counties of Daming Shandong, Beizhili, Jiangbei, and Zhejiang, which are of great academic research value. For this reason, even some local enthusiasts will take a boat to the affiliated area of the Southern Railway from time to time to borrow some professional books in the library's collection.

It is worth mentioning that the Southern Railway Popular Library is a mobile book vault, as the name suggests, the library has a certain "scope of activities", which is currently limited to various stations, schools, and enterprises. Now the Southern Railway has recruited a large group of low-level readers from the Ming Kingdom, and began to transcribe, print, and bind all kinds of books. Only a few low membership fees are charged per person per year. to pay for the transcription and normal operation of the library. Furthermore. The Southern Railway Company also plans to set up a train library on direct trains for passengers to relieve their loneliness along the way - but considering that the majority of the Southern Railway affiliated areas are currently illiterate, it is also a question whether these books can be borrowed.

In addition to the Southern Railway Popular Library, there is actually a small library in Xingnan Port - "Southern Railway Transportation Library". This library is not open to the public, and most of the books in the library are published by the East Bank itself in the past 20 years, such as "Minutes of the First East-West War", "Report on the Expedition to Southern Patagonia", "Outline of the Exploration Results of the Western Wilderness", "Seasonal Distribution of Fishing Grounds in the South Atlantic", "Diary of a Staff Officer's Trip to Southern Chile in 1649", "Summary of the Economy of Peru", "Geological Survey of Railway Annexes" and other informational books. In principle, such books can only be read by those who meet the requirements (ID required), and can only be read in the classroom, and must be returned immediately after reading. It cannot be taken out of the library or copied at will.

The strange thing is that the traffic library not only collects a large number of professional and informational books, but also collects a considerable number of books from various European countries (transcribed versions), but this requires professionals who know foreign languages to be able to read.

In fact, the Southern Railway Company originally planned to choose a place to build a museum, and has already made plans - the museum is divided into three parts: an archaeological museum, a memorial hall and a resource museum, and intends to collect some locally found animal and plant fossils, specimens, minerals, works of art, and customs. In addition, there are handicrafts brought back from overseas (including goods plundered by privateer fleets, which no longer care whether they are exposed or not. Anyway, everyone knows it...... ), unique and historically significant cultural relics, ceramics, and even some intangible "cultural relics" (recorded) such as skills and academics, for later generations to carry out academic research.

It is a pity that this plan was resolutely opposed by the local Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education, and finally under the instruction of the Executive Committee, a large number of cultural relics and artworks (most of them came from the Ming Kingdom and were transported by the Pacific Route) that were originally intercepted by the Southern Railway Company in Xingnan Port were transported back to the capital Dongfang Port by ship and displayed in the People's Museum for the people of the capital to visit.

While recalling the history of the development of the Southern Railway Library introduced to him by others, Li Dayan walked to the newspaper column and flipped through some newspapers and periodicals displayed here. There are only three newspapers in total, and they are also the only three newspapers in the East Coast that are publicly distributed – Pravda, a comprehensive newspaper, Kommersant, a newspaper focusing on economic news, and the Southern Railway Weekly, which is published by the Southern Railway Company on its own.

Lai Tat-yan is a veteran of the press industry, and he is very familiar with these newspapers. Nowadays, with the gradual economic and cultural development of the Eastern Republic and the slow increase in the literacy rate of the people, the demand and circulation of newspapers have begun to increase day by day, which has led the Executive Committee to pay more and more attention to newspapers, which have a great effect on strengthening the propaganda of the rule.

"The bullshit newspaper run by those grandsons of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce." Li Dayan, a senior editor of Pravda, looked at Kommersant's prominently placed newspaper and muttered in a tone mixed with jealousy and disdain, as if he was quite jealous and tired of this formidable competitor.

In fact, it's pretty much the same. Pravda (sponsored by the Ministry of Education), as the first – and only – comprehensive newspaper published in China, had an incomparably huge advantage, both in terms of the number of employees and the number of copies in circulation, which was not comparable to that of Kommersant, which ranked second. However, with the increasing stability of the people's lives and the sustained development of the economy, Pravda, a newspaper with many political news and emphasizing political color, has been far less popular than that of Kommersant, which focuses on economic news. As for the "Southern Railway Weekly", which has only been published for more than two years, it is still a little brother and is not valued by the other two.

As the population of the East Coast Republic grows and the new generation with a certain level of education begins to come of age, the market prospects for newspaper impurities are gradually promising. At the National People's Congress at the beginning of this year, the delegates had just approved the merger of the originally somewhat messy "Guiding Opinions on Communications Agencies", "Regulations on the Establishment of Newspapers", "Guidelines for Journalists" and other government regulations into a new "Press Law", which came into force on January 1, 1651. The new Press Law does not allow private newspapers to be founded, and at the same time further confirms the censorship system previously implemented by the Executive Committee, which generally strengthens press control and facilitates unified propaganda brainwashing in the country.

In addition to the three newspapers, there are also several magazines published and distributed in the local area, namely the "East Coast Review" founded in 1645, the "Modern East Coast" founded in 1646, the "Supreme Court Precedents" founded in 1647, the "Xintiandi" founded and published in 1648 (mainly focusing on agricultural technology and market conditions), and the "Railway Machinery" just launched this year. At the same time, this magazine, which has been published for more than ten years, is also the most "old" magazine in the East Coast.

Of these six magazines, except for Modern East Coast, Supreme Court Precedents, and Railway Machinery, which are magazines under the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice, and the State Railway Administration, respectively, the remaining three are privately founded and operated, and their current sales are so-so. Relying on this will definitely not make a lot of money in the short term, so it is just an interest in playing tickets - running a newspaper and magazine on the east coast is really a high-investment, high-risk business, and the publication of Gaine is conditional, and it must be approved by the Ministry of Culture and the local government where the newspaper is located; Second, the founder needs the government to pay a huge amount of security deposit (tentatively set at 5,000 yuan) to ensure that there is no content prohibited by the government on the publication, otherwise the deposit will be confiscated and the newspaper will be subject to various penalties; Finally, the current tax rate on newspapers and other publications is extremely heavy, far exceeding that of the general industry. However, there is still an endless stream of units or individuals applying to establish newspapers and periodicals in the East Coast, which shows that the interests in this may not be in the economy at all, but in other places, such as public opinion advocating and building momentum, accusing and smearing groups with disagreeable political views, and so on.

Among the three magazines, the East Coast Review, which has a background as a civil service stalwart such as the "law department", is the most widely circulated, and it is also a semi-monthly magazine that insists on being published semi-monthly (the rest are monthly, quarterly, or irregular periodicals), which is very remarkable. The magazine is aimed at the backbone intellectuals, and comments on political and economic hotspots, with satirical, spicy, and humorous language, and a novel and lively layout, and has a high reputation among the intellectuals, mainly civil officials. Chen Tingmei, a former immigrant from the Wenzhou Prefecture of the Ming Dynasty and a middle-level official of the current Ministry of Education, often writes and publishes articles on it, and is his number one pen stick, advocating economic liberalization and privatization, implicitly hinting at various problems in state-owned enterprises, and building public opinion for the privatization and partition of state-owned enterprises.

Of course, as one of the main fronts for civilian officials, another thing that the "East Coast Review" enjoys is to smear, complain and satirize the army, and almost spare no effort to make the army bigwigs jump to their feet. In order to reverse this unfavorable situation, I heard that the army is also actively preparing to launch a journal next year to counter the civilian bureaucracy in order to regain the position of public opinion, which is gradually gaining the upper hand. Well, they even chose the name of the journal, which is called "Minsheng", which is a metaphor for those liberals who only care about making money for themselves, without considering the basic people's livelihood and the life and death of ordinary people.

Li Dayan flipped through the journals at random, and soon lost interest. Because the above content is all he has read before, the news transmission speed on the Southern Railway side is indeed a little slow, because even the newspapers and periodicals are expired in the local area, which is quite helpless. After lingering in the popular library of the Southern Railway for a while, Li Dayan walked out of the small building. The sun was still strong outside, and Lai turned over and mounted his mount, ready to go around the nearby countryside to see if there was anything worth documenting in the area. (A good event for pie in the sky, cool mobile phones are waiting for you!) Follow from ~ Dian/Chinese network public account (WeChat add friends - add public account - enter ddxiaoshuo), participate now! Everyone has a prize, now pay attention to ddxiaoshuo WeChat public account! (To be continued......)