A sewage problem that has not been solved in Western cities is actually a small problem, and in most cities in China, it has not been a problem.

This is because most of China's cities, like those in the West, are located near rivers, not for water, but for the purpose of discharging sewage, which is different from the West. Because of the developed well culture, Chinese can live away from the river. But in ancient times, sewage could not leave the river.

Before asking for the repair of Nanjing Guangou, Lei Guangyuan had already participated in the restoration of water conservancy projects and the summary and compilation of engineering technologies in Beijing, Guangzhou and other major cities in the north and south, and had very rich theoretical and practical ability.

Beijing's drainage system is obviously the pinnacle of the north in this era, because the imperial city is rooted in cost, and technology can reach the highest height. Among them, the Imperial Palace is the highest peak. The drainage system of the Imperial Palace in Beijing is huge, with a length of more than 15 kilometers, of which the culvert is nearly 13 kilometers long. These drainage ditches all lead to the Neijinshui River, which in turn is connected to the 52-meter-wide moat on the outside of the palace wall, and is connected to the surrounding water systems such as the Waijinshui River and the Nanzhonghai. Most of the open and dark gutters in the palace are made of stone and are sturdy and durable. So it has been working fine for hundreds of years.

The situation in the south is different from that in the north, where it is rainy and often rains down, and with the drainage technology of the north, it is basically difficult to cope with the heavy rain in the south. However, the French engineering team found that even in cities in southern China, when it rains heavily, water accumulation rarely occurs. This was even less the case after the restoration of ancient drainage ditches, and according to their mathematical calculations, they thought that the local drainage system could not carry such a large amount of rainfall, and after a long period of research on ancient Chinese construction methods, as well as field investigations, they discovered a mystery, that is, a large number of ponds were generally built in southern cities.

At first, he thought that these ponds were similar to the fountains in European cities, and that they might be public facilities that provided water to nearby residents, but after studying the drainage systems, they found that they were at least not just water facilities, but an important part of the drainage system. A large number of rivers and lakes in the city contain rainwater that cannot be drained out on heavy rainy days, so that the cities and streets built on high places will not be flooded.

The method of city site selection for the Chinese, the French can no longer find it, because the Qing Dynasty people do not need to bother with the location of the city, the big cities of the Qing Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty all existed, and the Ming Dynasty people rarely bothered about this, because the cities of the Ming Dynasty basically existed during the Yuan Dynasty, and the cities of the Yuan Dynasty were formed during the Song Dynasty, and the Song Dynasty people also had the legacy left to them by the Tang Dynasty.

In short, the large-scale work of urban site selection has been cut off for thousands of years, and it is basically impossible to find the way of thinking of the city builders at that time, and later found that some experience has been passed on in the feng shui that belongs to the category of superstition, but the inheritance of feng shui is too superstitious, and it is mixed with too many confusing things, through research and sorting, it has been found that some of the ancients have found the method of site selection, neither too high, nor too low, it will be inconvenient to take water too high, and the well can not be drilled, and the sewage can not be discharged if it is too low.

These methods of urban construction have been written into a collection of papers entitled "Methods of Urban Construction in Ancient China" and published all over the world. Among them, there is a lot of knowledge contributed by traditional Chinese craftsmen.

These collections are still being thickened, and water supply and drainage are the most abundant of them.

Nanjing because it was not damaged, the previous water supply and drainage system can still work, so there is no problem of repair, dragged to ten years ago, repaired and found, there have been some damage, Lei Guangyuan reported to the emperor, at first because of the Ming Dynasty palace disrepair caused by the sewage problem, Zhou Lang summoned him to inquire carefully, only to find that the original city is too old, not only the palace, the whole city needs to be repaired.

Zhou Lang was fortunate to let the style Lei family be responsible, using their ideas of building the palace in the past, to carry out a plan for the whole city, and allowed them to borrow French experts from the Academy of Sciences to concentrate the wisdom of the best talents from abroad to create a model of a Chinese city. It's like taking the lead in building a railway in Nanjing.

After accepting this job, Shi Lei quickly surveyed the waterways of the city and found a large number of problems. Nanjing's drainage system is divided into open channels and culverts, the palace and other places that pay attention to the face are culverts, and the nullah is near the dwellings, and the nullah is connected with the rivers and ponds in the city and the moats outside the city, forming a dense network of waterways in the city. However, due to the long-term lack of maintenance and supervision, some official ditches and residents erect houses on them, and the waterways are flooded, and the culverts are seriously blocked, and the rot in them accumulates, and the smell is unbearable.

Obviously, Nanjing lacked a department to manage water supply and drainage, and at that time, the Qin Gong Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs had not yet been merged with the Ministry of Industry, so a waterway bureau was set up under the Qin Gong Office, which was later merged into the Water Department of the Ministry of Industry.

In ancient times, the management of the drainage system was very irregular, and although there was a system of regular maintenance, there was a lack of a long-term management organization. During the Tang Dynasty, even every time the official ditch was repaired, the army was used. In the late Qing Dynasty, the drainage system was not properly maintained, resulting in severe siltation and foul odor in drainage ditches such as Longxu Ditch.

It was rainy in the south, and the siltation was slightly better, but there was still a call-up. Zhou Lang's order to style Lei was to not only repair the old official ditch and restore the city's water supply and drainage system, but also to let them replan the system. It is not just the sewers of the palace that are culverts, the sewers of the whole city are changed to culverts, and the entrances and exits must be reserved for regular maintenance.

Under this guiding ideology, all the nullahs in Nanjing were converted into sewers, and the sewage channels led directly to the Yangtze River, and ordinary rainwater channels were designed to connect with the ponds and lakes in the city.

These waterways are all drawn into scientific engineering drawings, archived in the Ministry of Industry, and managed by the Capital Water Division.

That's why when Westerners come, they see a city like a garden, where the good things are kept outside and the dirty things are hidden in the sewers.

But Zhou Lang is still not very satisfied with these, the planning and construction of the style Lei family will continue, because the drainage problem has been solved, the water supply problem has not been solved, he asked them to find a way to send living water into thousands of households, which is very difficult, because the water pipeline involved is not calculated in more than ten kilometers, I am afraid it is thousands of kilometers, or even tens of thousands of kilometers of problems, which is basically difficult to do in the pre-industrial era, and the water supply system in ancient Rome is not something that ordinary people can use.

In this regard, the French can provide a lot of experience, the West has the technology to build fountains, Louis XIV in the Palace of Versailles pushed it to the peak, open the valve, there is living water, style Lei has gone to Versailles field trip.

The drainage problem is more important than the water supply problem, because the unimpeded sewage will not breed epidemics, and the Chinese do better than the Europeans in this regard, otherwise so many million-level large cities in ancient China are basically impossible, a health problem, it is estimated that it will cause plague every year.

There was an epidemic of the Black Death in Europe, but there was no such phenomenon recorded in China, where the plague was often after the catastrophe rather than in the cities. Therefore, except for smallpox, there are few records of plague outbreaks in peacetime in ancient China.

In addition to lamenting the clean environment, the diplomatic corps was also impressed by Nanjing's traffic, the Chinese have built four railways in Nanjing, forming an urban railway network, the railway from Xiaguan in the northeast to Yuhuatai in the southwest is the first, and in recent years, the east-west railway from Xuanwumen to Sancha River has been built, the north-south longitudinal railway from Andemen to Shogunate Mountain has been built, and there is a railway around Guocheng.

The construction of these railway networks has put on a modern coat of Nanjing, and has formed a convenient freight and passenger network with Nanjing's roads and waterways, and the routes continue to be dense.

However, the production in Nanjing was not modern, and the Western missions saw that a large number of workshops were still producing according to traditional techniques, and few workshops used modern machinery such as steam engines for production, and the largest users of steam power in the city were those railways. The largest industry in the city is the silk weaving industry, which still uses the traditional Jiangning weaving process to produce traditional high-end silk fabrics such as Yunjin.

And the largest workshops are those government-run workshops, and the Jiangning Weaving Mansion has resumed operation. The reason is that after the opening of commerce, due to the strong demand for high-end textiles in the domestic and foreign markets that were only for the official and even the palace in the past, a large number of Jiangning weaving craftsmen opened their own workshops at that time, and the silk weaving workers in Nanjing City were as high as 200,000 for a time, but the folk workshops in order to rush the work, resulting in uneven products, so that the Yunjin brand was damaged, so the emperor let the Ministry of Internal Affairs resume Jiangning weaving, opened a government-run workshop, and registered a unique commodity, sold under the "Shangyong" brand.

The ban on the use of "Shangyong" signboards in private workshops has reshaped the brand of royal goods in the past. In recent years, the policy began to change, after absorbing the experience of the French silk weaving industry, after the Ministry of Industry merged some agencies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, formulated detailed specifications and standards, began to grade products, and strictly managed the eight thousand workshops in the city, all products must be professionally evaluated, the best products are set as "use", the second best is set as "official", and again as "civil", and the most is directly scrapped, and the government directly acquires and destroys.

Every year, these three grades of Yunjin products are exhibited and sold at the Nanjing Trade Fair, and all products will basically be sold out at the meeting, and they are still in short supply. Even the "civil" rank, which only meets the passing standards, is said to be very sought-after among the nobles and the wealthy, and this industry alone can generate an income of 1 million taels of gold and feed 200,000 weavers every year.

In addition to the 200,000 silk weavers and their families, plus tens of thousands of Beijing officials and their families, as well as the population of various service industries, the population has basically reached one million, and there is basically no room for modern industry to survive.

A worker can earn 3,000 yuan a month in the silk weaving industry, which is several times higher than other industries, but it is still not easy, the capital has never been a cheap place to live, so only luxury goods such as Yunjin can find a living space.

In addition to the silk weaving industry, there is only one other industry that can survive, and that is the printing industry. There are a lot of literati in Nanjing, they not only have the need to consume all kinds of books, but also they are the producers of books, in recent years, all walks of life are publishing books, even the textile industry is constantly printing out a variety of new technology specifications, the creative passion of the literati is irrepressible, of course, they will write the great beauty of the Chinese chapter, printing and publishing, and then marketing the whole country.

The diplomatic corps came to the conclusion that it was a Paris-like city that made a living from the production of handmade luxury goods and cultural goods, but in a much better environment than Paris.

It's a pity that what they see is still only a corner of Nanjing, and they can't get an in-depth understanding of the bits and pieces of this Chinese capital, otherwise they will feel something deeper. It's just that time is running out, and they need to attend a conference about the shape of the world.