Chapter 68 Poverty Alleviation and Prosperity

In the primeval forest 100 kilometers southwest of Hukou Town, a valley covering an area of 30 square kilometers has become a large-scale comprehensive smelting base and military factory, which is the location of an iron ore vein with reserves of more than one billion tons, and the mined iron ore can fully meet the construction needs of Huayang County.

After a five-day journey, the caravan from the provincial capital finally reached the first checkpoint in Huayang County, and Zhang Hu told the merchants that if the road was clear, they could travel back and forth between the county and the provincial capital in a day by truck. Outside the city wall of the checkpoint, dozens of carriages are neatly parked on both sides of the road, these are all carriages from neighboring counties, since the caravan came back from neighboring counties after the beginning of spring, so that businessmen from neighboring counties have come to inspect and visit. After Zhang Hu arranged the caravan at the guest house, the merchants of these provincial cities rushed to the material trading market impatiently.

The provincial representatives are more anxious than these merchants, because the trading market here is larger than the provincial capital, and it is more beautiful, the first thing that makes people excited is dozens of fresh and tender green vegetables, because it is more difficult to eat fresh vegetables in the early spring in the northwest of the Han Dynasty than to ascend to the sky, and it will be two months later at the earliest, and there are dozens of kinds here, and some can't even be named.

These vegetables are all grown in greenhouses, the use of plastic film can allow the people to eat summer vegetables in winter, white fungus, mushrooms and other royal tributes also appear in the trading market, those corn stalks, wheat stalks and other wastes are also processed into livestock feed, the use of chemical fiber products, so that the market becomes a sea of cloth.

The first reservoir on the Loess Plateau was completed before the start of spring, and several domestic fish in the reservoir are also on the market, and the aeration pump makes the fish swim more cheerfully. The lighting here says goodbye to candles, and the use of electricity makes Huayang County ahead of others. Because there are only a few cities in the Great Han Kingdom that have power generation equipment, not even in the imperial palace, but here it is in the homes of ordinary people.

Electricity, something that even the rich people in the provincial city have never seen, has become an ordinary thing here, making them depressed and eager to buy a piece of tofu and crash to death. When it comes to tofu, the bean products in this market are dazzling, and the use of small food machinery allows soybeans to play the greatest role, and a soy product factory established a year ago has monopolized the supply of soy products in two neighboring counties, and thirty horse-drawn wagons full of soy products depart from here every morning.

After visiting the trading market, Zhang Hu used a car and a truck to drag the businessmen on the provincial highway in Huayang County, and he told the provincial representatives and businessmen with facts that if the whole province built such a road, the distance from the provincial capital to the counties would be greatly shortened, and it was estimated that they could be reached within a day.

The merchants in the provincial capital placed orders with gold and silver, and Zhang Hu sent a thousand men and horses to escort them, mountain artillery, machine guns, and standard rifles, to show everyone the military strength of Huayang County and give a deterrent to the young people.

Xilan Province, where Huayang County is located, is the largest province in the Han Dynasty, and it is also a large resource province, more than ninety percent of the resources are in an undeveloped state, and the economy has always been the penultimate in the Han Dynasty, while the neighboring province is a large coal province, the province is rich in oil, the warlord predator Yan Laodiao controls the economy and military of the province, with 300,000 soldiers, including 100,000 cavalry, which is the ace force in the Han Army.

According to satellite detection, the coal reserves of the Han Kingdom are 200 billion tons, and there are about 50 billion tons in the province of Yan Laodiao, most of which are open-pit coal mines, which are easy to mine, while the coal reserves of Sealand Province are 110 billion tons.

Zhang Hu visited Governor Zhou Yan for the second time, sent some seafood for him to try, and took out a package of sea salt for him to compare with the well salt and rock salt produced here.

It's a pity that Zhang Hu's enthusiasm was hit, and Governor Zhou neither nodded nor refused, and sent the guests after accepting the gift, which made Zhang Hu depressed.

The culture of the Han Kingdom for more than 1,000 years has made these officials afraid to accept new things, and the remote location of Sealand Province has rarely brought in new ideas from outside, which takes time to influence.

It wasn't until a year later that Governor Zhou and his sons and daughters returned from studying in other provinces, and the situation began to change.