A public garden that combines natural landscape features, a prosperous commercial district with quality and connotation, a complete transportation system
Emperor Kangxi only put forward a conceptual overall idea, but he excited the officials of the Ministry of Works and the Department of Construction. Such a huge project idea was almost to rebuild a prosperous town outside the Forbidden City.
The emperor¡¯s casual suggestion of building a public garden, selling tickets, monthly passes, and annual passes, conducting regular gatherings and garden activities, and attracting tourists to maintain profitability were far beyond the comprehension of the ancients at that time. But as long as the purpose is to make money legitimately, it is a consensus that everyone will have.
In the commercial district planned near the park, all shops are leased and operated through bidding, and the general scope of business operations is designated by the Ministry of Industry in advance, such as a street for ready-made silk and satin, a street for calligraphy and painting, a street for snacks and restaurants etc.
In order to communicate the intercity exchanges between the old city and the newly built park business district, a flat and wide auxiliary road was planned accordingly, and a city sightseeing carriage was specially set up to pick up and drop off idle guests and merchants at fixed points according to the stop signs.
Things are not afraid of novelty. As long as someone initiates it, there will naturally be businessmen who are good at profiteering and get involved. Wang Yongling, the young and handsome secretary-general of the General Chamber of Commerce, was almost dizzy with work. The small building was crowded with people all day long, and no less than a hundred bidding meetings of various sizes were held.
And Hanlin Minister Zhang Yushu was even more busy, with all kinds of tenders and pledges passing through his hands like snowflakes, passed on to the managers of the Accounting Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs designated by the emperor. Emperor Kangxi did not treat his subordinates badly and allowed Zhang Yushu to hold a concurrent position in the General Chamber of Commerce. The Imperial Chamber of Commerce could receive double salary, which was considered a generous job.
However, a very eye-catching business recently was the construction business that Emperor Kangxi unintentionally created, building roads. Because Kangxi felt that bluestone paving was beautiful and thick, but the source of the stone slabs was rare. Fortunately, he once thought about the ancient papermaking process. Kangxi vaguely remembered that lime had long existed in ancient times, so he asked the Ministry of Works and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to test the proportion of lime, yellow sand and water, and spread it on gravel. Smooth it out and dry it on the pavement. This pavement is also very useful.
But ten days later, some clever craftsmen produced the most primitive cement rough embryo, which was much cheaper than glutinous rice pulp and ash juice to build walls. Suddenly, overnight, going to the Yellow River to wash and transport sand became extremely profitable. business. Kangxi reacted unexpectedly and quickly ordered the Ministry of Industry to write a letter to Jin Fu and Chen Huang, reminding them to be more careful and not to allow others to dig out all the sand on the dam.
However, like bamboo shoots after a rain in the capital, many private construction companies have sprung up out of thin air, specializing in paving roads for people's residences. Emperor Kangxi was extremely depressed when he heard about this. What is a road? As more people walk on it, it becomes a road. When no one is walking around, green grass and vines naturally grow to cover it. However, once the place with cement pavement falls into disrepair, unless it is renovated, it will become a patchy block of land, and weeds will not grow for thirty to fifty years.
In a deserted place, it would be a wonder to have a cactus. Kangxi was troubled for a while when he thought that if there was no longer a bluestone floor with a heavy texture, or if the deep and simple forest paths with intertwined blue bricks and gravel disappeared.
Fortunately, new things cannot be popularized easily without catching up with the trend. There is a family of scholar-bureaucrats who understand taste and elegance. Whenever they think of the charm of those poems: "One or two pieces of bluestone, three or four branches of white lotus, the plain sand is empty and colorless, and the bluestone undercurrents have a sound.", they are reluctant to live in the mansion. In the garden, everything has become the same cement road, and only the homes of some wealthy merchants who do not know the style are smoothed out like public post roads.
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Thank you to those who were buried
I started to go to work again, as if I had a grudge against myself
My writing hasn¡¯t been very good these past two days, so I¡¯m slowly adjusting my pace