Ministers from various countries formed a joint diplomatic delegation to discuss disaster relief matters with the Manchu Prime Minister Yamen. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

In order to prove that they really had the ability and determination to provide disaster relief, the Manchu Qing Dynasty even urgently transferred Li Hongzhang back from the front line, and let Li Hongzhang have full authority to deal with negotiations with foreigners and disaster relief matters.

In the eyes of the Manchu court, it may be that the joint actions of the ministers of Britain, France, the United States and Russia in Beijing at this time were more threatening than the Taiping offensive in northern Jiangsu.

While negotiating with foreigners, Li Hongzhang promoted a group of newcomers exceptionally, saying that they were newcomers, not that their identities were new, but that their ideas were new, and these people were all figures who had followed Li Hongzhang to carry out the Westernization Movement in Beijing and Tianjin in recent years.

There were Shen Baojing, a Taoist who presided over the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, and Sheng Xuanhuai, who helped Li Hongzhang to establish the China Merchants Steamship Bureau in Yantai, an alternative official who was born as a presiding enterprise, and recommended Shen Baozhen as the ambassador for disaster relief.

Historically, Li Hongzhang was in charge of disaster relief, and he also boldly used these newcomers of the Westernization faction, using the scientific management methods learned by these people in the process of presiding over the enterprise, strictly supervising disaster relief matters, checking and filling in gaps, and the efficiency was higher than that of procrastination magistrates.

However, Li Hongzhang can't go to the disaster area by himself, Shen Baozhen is more ruthless than Li Hongzhang, because Li Hongzhang is more or less a normal official in this era, Li Hongzhang does things and earns money, but Shen Baozhen is a person who only knows how to do things and doesn't know how to be greedy for money.

Shen Baozhen, like Li Hongzhang, only started to make a career after being recommended by Zeng Guofan, but after he was recommended by Zeng Guofan to serve as governor of Jiangxi, he cut off Jiangxi's military salary for the Hunan army, and was scolded as ungrateful, but he was not greedy for any of this money, and all of it was used to restore Jiangxi.

Therefore, this is a rare iron-faced and selfless honest official in the late Qing Dynasty.

Shen Baozhen couldn't rub the sand in his eyes, so he killed more people, and everywhere he went, there were chickens and dogs, and there was even a situation where a magistrate committed suicide by hanging a beam before he arrived.

With an uncompromising official like Shen Baozhen and the scientific management of Western-style officials, the effect of disaster relief has indeed been greatly improved, and there are far more materials that can be sent to the victims than in the past, and naturally more people will be saved.

But it is still a drop in the bucket, because the Qing court can use too few resources for disaster relief, the Qing court, which has lost Shanghai and Jiangnan's wealth, has deteriorated sharply.

Therefore, the Qing court's disaster relief efforts were not recognized by the foreigners, and everyone unanimously agreed that the Qing court itself did not have the ability to deal with the disaster at all, and hoped that the Qing court would allow the foreigner disaster relief group to enter the disaster area.

On the contrary, Daming suddenly found Li Hongzhang at this time, recognized Li Hongzhang's efforts in disaster relief, and said that he was willing to lend the Qing court a huge sum of 30 million taels for disaster relief, and there was only one requirement, that is, it must be earmarked, and not a penny could be diverted for other purposes, and Daming would send an accountant to audit.

Li Hongzhang has no reason to refuse, the imperial court can't come up with money at all, and even Jiangnan's military expenses now have to be raised by themselves, and a lot of arrears are owed, where else can they get money to help the disaster. Now the imperial court has begun to sell official positions on a large scale, Henan and other disaster areas, one time allowed to sell 3,000 official titles below the alternate Taoist, Shanxi Jin merchants, some even bought official titles for the upper and lower five generations, the milk baby in the mother's womb is the prefect, the strange phenomenon of the county is not uncommon, it is really a bad etiquette, at this time the Ming Dynasty came to send money, why not?

In fact, the money lent to Li Hongzhang was also made by Daming when he saw that he could make reasonable use of it, but this money could not solve the big problem, because the money entered the disaster area, and the local government and squires could only purchase food, and then give porridge to the hungry people a bite to eat.

The biggest problem is that even if there is money, there is no way to buy grain, but because the local harvest is poor, grain from other places cannot be transported, and neighboring provinces do not want to let their own grain loss, causing turmoil in their own province.

Therefore, when this money entered the disaster area, it was nothing more than prying some grain from the hands of some big landlords, powerful and even gentry who had hoarded and lived in strange places at a high price. The fundamental problem is that we still have to buy food from outside and deliver it to the disaster area.

Therefore, the Ming Dynasty lent money to Li Hongzhang on the one hand, and on the other hand, he seized the time to repair the railway, in this case, it was obvious that the railway could not be built in a formal way, but adopted an emergency construction method similar to the military railway in later generations, in most places, just simply leveled the land, and then assumed sleepers, laying rails. Bridges across the river are generally made of wood.

Such a railway would certainly not be commonly used, and the carrying capacity was not high enough, but it was built quickly.

Under the unpaid labor of a large number of unlimited, hungry people who were willing to work for only one meal, the labor force was greatly abundant, and the railway was advancing at an average speed of more than a kilometer per day.

When the Germans built the Jiaoji Railway, it took five years, and now the railway built by the Ming Dynasty only took five months from Qingdao to Jinan, so Zhu Jinglun still felt slow.

The situation of the famine was immediately improved in the places where the railway passed, especially through Qingzhou, the hardest hit area of the famine in Shandong, and the number of dead people was greatly reduced.

However, Zhu Jinglun understood that the most serious famine was not Shandong, but Henan and Shanxi, so the ultimate goal of the railway from Qingdao was Henan, and if it was even possible, it would extend all the way to Shaanxi. And the worst time of famine in Henan is next year, so time is running out.

The construction of the railway in Qinhuangdao, in order to get as close to the disaster victims as possible, did not build the Daqin Railway to the north like the later generations, but to build as far south as possible, after starting from Qinhuangdao, it went all the way to the south, through the densely populated Changli, Luan County, into Tangshan, from Tangshan to the west through Jixian, Huairou to Changping, almost from the north of the city bypass, and then through Huailai, Zhuolu, through Yangquan and then to Datong, into Shanxi.

Entering Shanxi is not over, this is a disaster relief railway, so it is also planned to go south from Datong, throughout Shanxi, and finally enter Henan, in Luoyang and Qingdao from the railway connection.

If you build a railway like this, you definitely don't plan for the long term, anyway, it is clear that this is a one-time temporary railway, so Zhu Jinglun does not need to pursue quality and pursue speed with all his might.

For this reason, he had to personally order Hu Dajian, who was in charge of the front-line construction, to speed up many times.

Hu Dajian is currently the first person of the Ming Railway, his family is a family of stonemasons, he is the first batch of civil engineering workers recruited by the arsenal, and it cannot even be said that it is the first batch of arsenals, he was recruited by Zhu Jinglun, even earlier than the opening of the arsenal, as early as when the Swedes were hired to repair the fort, he was a stonemason, and his father helped repair the fort, at that time he was an apprentice by the side of the foreigners, after the establishment of the arsenal, he was recruited into the arsenal, became the first batch of civil engineering apprentices.

Later, when he built the railway, he was already the backbone of civil engineering operations in the arsenal, so he was naturally transferred to the railway to learn railway construction.

Hu Dajian felt that he had built it very quickly, but the emperor's urging still made him feel a little remorseful, because the emperor said that before a day's delay, thousands of people were starving to death, and he felt that he was burdened with countless human life debts.

So he almost only sleeps two hours a day, most of the time is on the review of construction plans, routes, and even personally go to the front line to carry out exploration operations with the survey personnel, the technical force in his hands is still too weak, the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway and the Guangjiang Railway, the construction and operation of the two railways, have trained 3,000 technicians of various specialties, but once sprinkled on two railway lines of such a large scale, it immediately feels overstretched.

He was tired and tired, but when he saw the victims who kept flocking to the railway line, and saw them cry with joy after finally drinking a bowl of steaming thick porridge, as if they had regained their lives, he felt that everything was worth it.

Not only did the victims come to the railroad line to live here, but they were organized here, and they had to work.

By reuniting the families of the victims as much as possible, and letting the husband know that his wife is in a makeshift tent next to the railway, and that while he is carrying sleepers on the railway, his wife and a group of women from the same village are cooking lunch for them, so that the hearts of the victims will be reassured.

Just take care of the food, not the money, can satisfy these resurrected victims.

The victims were not only responsible for the actual work of building the railway, but they were also divided into different specialties, laying sleeper rails, which could only be used by a very small number of people, most of whom were scattered in various strongholds from the port to the front line, and the railways were not connected, so not only did the port need to load and unload goods, but also in places where they encountered large rivers, they also needed to unload the goods into small boats, send them to the other side and load them onto trains, and continue to transport them to the disaster area.

From Qingdao to Zhengzhou, more than 1,000 miles of road, can make millions of victims busy, busy is a sought-after job, because only to do the busiest work, it is possible to eat a full meal, ordinary people can only drink some gruel to hang their lives, now is to save lives, not to enjoy, the Ming government is not so idealistic, to treat the victims of what comfort should be paid attention to, food transportation is not easy, not only the grains are hard, the grains are life.

But even if there is work to eat, and there is no work to drink, but it is still not available, because the speed of the gathering of the victims is too fast, under the pressure of the Ming Dynasty, the county government has posted notices, pointing out the direction to the local victims, telling that the direction can go to the railway line, you can find food.

Daming also sent people, with the railway as the axis, along the official roads that intersect with the railway, set up a porridge shed every few miles, so that the hungry people passing by can eat a mouthful of hot porridge, and then continue to hurry, this string of porridge sheds, the crowd is strung into an endless river, flowing along the railway.

If the hungry people of Shandong and Henan converge on the railway line, this temporary railway will not be able to bear the food supply of so many people, and it will be necessary to evacuate people and send them to places where they can eat.

After listening to many suggestions, Zhu Jinglun decided to ignore the opposition of the Qing court and risk the possibility of turning against the Qing court during the famine period and immigrating to the northeast on a large scale!