The horse-drawn carriage rumbled along the Dange Road on Po Shan Street.

If there was anything that surprised Gao Yi the most after crossing, it was probably the road under his feet.

In his concept, the road surface is always associated with the main road, the road hardened with asphalt or cement is wide and smooth, the black asphalt road surface is soft to step on in summer, and when you walk on the road, you can always see the road roller with two big rollers from time to time, rumbling on the hot asphalt, exuding a pungent smell; The cement pavement, which is hard all year round, has a dark expansion joint after every section, shining like a bright mirror in the summer sun, as if it can reflect all the light and heat shining on it, walking on it, the soles of the feet will also be soft, but this time it is not the road surface but the soles of the shoes.

This impression of the road was cemented in his brain by his childhood experience of living in the city, and it has remained unchanged for decades. After the crossing, he made certain mental preparations for the possible changes in architecture, people, language, customs, and even the air, but the road under his feet would also become different, which he did not expect at all. So when he first came to the bustling area of Puxi from the cemetery in Pudong, he saw a dazzling gravel road and a bullet road, and the shock in his heart can be imagined.

Then he realized that this was a hundred years ago, not only in Shanghai, but also in the world, where asphalt and concrete hardened pavement did not exist, except for the direct use of gravel pavement without treatment, the bullet grid road was probably the only way to solidify the pavement in the world at this time.

However, unlike Shanghai, the streets of Dange Road in Europe and the United States are usually paved with ashlar stone with a polished surface, just like the Champs-Élysées Avenue in Paris, which still retains its original appearance. The bullet grid road of Baoshan Street is a classical Chinese bullet grid road, the roadbed is dirt, the road surface is randomly placed gravel blocks, and the unevenness is very unsuitable for the carriage with iron wheels.

Fortunately, this section of Dange Road is not very long, and Baoshan Street, where Yaxian is located, is actually only a part of Wuma Road, also known as Guangdong Road, located in a short section between Henan Road and Fujian Road.

At the end of the road is the Tianxiang Wharf where Gao Yi had set up a boat to cross the river yesterday, but before boarding the boat, he had to go to St. Andrew's Church to pick up Pastor Aldrich. So the carriage turned left onto the Bund Avenue and headed towards Hongkou.

Gao Yi's right-hand side is the open bank of the Huangpu River, without the wrapping of the towering embankments and observation decks in later generations, even if you sit in the carriage, you can see the masts on the river. A long line of wheelbarrows lined up on the embankment, and there was no end in sight. On a cold day, the drivers' ribs were exposed against their slearched yellow skin, and they habitually shouted hard to solicit business. There were also crowds of coolies with open minds, heavy burdens on their narrow shoulders, trotting briskly in the cold wind. A little farther away, a small steamer just off shore snorted and panted, stumbling through the small boats crowded with the river. As you look beyond the Suzhou Creek, the faintly visible chimneys of the Ferlun Road Power Plant are spewing smoke into the fresh morning air, and the air is filled with the smell of sulphur and soot.

It was six o'clock in the morning, and the Bund had fully woken up, or it could be said that she had never really slept, just took a nap.

Gao Yi noticed that there were more groups of small workers with small hammers and chisels on both sides of the road than usual today, which meant that the snow accumulated the day before yesterday was almost melting. In this era, whenever it rained heavily or snowmelted, the streets of the concession would always be damaged on a large scale, and at this time, these small stone-breaking workers would appear. After a while, they would first smash the gravel on the ground, then fill the gap between the stones with thin mud, and then immediately use ropes to enclose the pavement so that passers-by would not trample it, and when the soil was dry, they would pull up the stone and press the pavement smooth and smooth. The paved road is not bad on a sunny day, but when it rains and snows a little harder, the dirt between the crevices will inevitably be washed away, so it will have to be resurfaced.

In fact, when the carriage left the short Baoshan Street, it had already bid farewell to the classical Chinese Dange Road, and entered the more common concession in this era, the so-called Makadan Road system - according to the research of later generations of Du Niang, the word "horse" in the word "Ma Lu" originated from "Makadan".

However, the real Makadan Road does not use clay, but is made up of two layers of gravel, the lower layer of which is 20 centimeters thick and has a gravel size of no more than 7.5 centimeters, and the upper layer of the road that is 5 centimeters thick and no more than 2 centimeters in size – designed to carry the 10 centimeters wide wagon wheels.

As for why the concession authorities didn't use formal methods to build roads, Gao Yi could imagine that China's labor was very cheap and dirty, and that those contractors would reap a lot of benefits every time they built roads.

The horse-drawn carriage sped along the Bund, a mechanized road, and in less than five minutes, it drove onto the Waibaidu Bridge, and after crossing the bridge, turn right at the second intersection and turn right on Broadway Road. Go straight along Broadway, then cross the Hongkou River at the Waihongkou Bridge, and then walk two blocks to St. Andrew's Church.

When you reach Hongkou, the road becomes narrow, and on both sides of the street are a series of boat warehouses and warehouses, completely blocking the Huangpu River.

The carriage slowed down slightly, and it took about another five minutes to reach its destination. After the pastor got into the car, it took about half a year to complete the return trip, and when he arrived at the gate of Tianxiang Pier, it was already half past six, just in time for the appointment with Songmao Foreign Company.

The body of the old Gao Yi had been buried yesterday afternoon, but Yaxianju did not have the conditions for resettlement, so Gao Yi asked the people of Songmao Foreign Company to bring the coffin back, and this morning they directly loaded the car and met at the dock.

The people of Songmao Foreign Company came on time, and Gao Yi waited for less than two minutes, and then they saw a four-wheeled truck coming from the direction of the French Concession opposite the Pidgin Bridge, carrying a coffin and two small workers.

Gao Yi gave him the carriage he was riding, and the coachman Triangle Xiaoyang sent him back, and when the river passed, he and the priest squeezed it on the wagon of Songmao Yangxing. It's not that he's slamming the door, it's that the coal ship he hired can only fit a horse-drawn cart at most.

It took a lot of time to load the carriage onto the ship, but there was no way to do it, the Pudong cemetery did not build its own wharf, and had to go ashore from the wharf of the Yesong shipyard next door, and then make a detour to the cemetery, although the journey was not long, but the coffin could not be transported without the car.

Finally, by the time everything was ready, it was already nine o'clock.

Gao Yi stood on the bow of the boat, the river was full of dilapidated wooden boats, the swarthy gang seemed to have been scorched by the fire, the sloping masts and clumsy rocking oars made people wonder how they would face the baptism of wind and waves.

Although in terms of data, Shanghai's current terminal handling capacity ranks among the top six in the world's ocean-going cargo ports, and it seems to be among the world's first-class seaport cities, it is important to know that the vast majority of its cargo is not carried by ocean-going freighters, but still by traditional sailed wooden ships that sail between China's coasts, which can sail from Vladivostok to Singapore.

The coal carrier puffed black smoke and let out the rumbling roar of machinery, swayed through the shallow water on the shore soaked in old newspapers, dead birds, and dung, and swung its bloated body towards Lujiazui in the northeast.

Gao Yi looked back at the famous Bund behind him, the Bund in 1903 was not a high-rise building, it was all colonial-style brick and wood buildings with cloisters built decades ago, and from a modern point of view, it is probably worse than the rural towns.