Currently, the workshops’ largest operations were the lime kilns, brick kilns, and the coal fields developed deep in Baohua Mountain, thirteen or fourteen li behind the rear mountain. The lime firing and brick making now basically all used relatively inexpensive coal, replacing the firewood that had previously stripped the surrounding mountains bare, as well as the even more expensive charcoal.
Because of this, the Tunying Military Prefecture only needed to provide 1,200 dan of polished rice each month to obtain 200,000 to 300,000 large and small blue bricks, 2,000 dan of lime, and 600 carts of coal from the workshops.
However, there were still many areas where the workshops could improve.
Han Qian hadn’t done this before mainly because he didn’t have the energy to attend to this side. Particularly during the four months he was away from Jinling, he could only require Fan Dahei to first lead the various site foremen to build up the scale.
Today, with Third Imperial Prince Yang Yuanpu coming over, Han Qian led him on a tour of the workshops while teaching him the study of investigating things, talking eloquently throughout, seemingly completely unaffected by yesterday’s events.
The term “investigating things” came from “The Great Learning,” the first of Confucianism’s Four Books. Its opening passage stated: “The ancients who wished to illuminate illustrious virtue throughout the realm first ordered their own states. Wishing to order their own states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first made their thoughts sincere. The making of thoughts sincere lies in investigating things…”
In terms of Confucian learning, the opening made clear that “investigating things” was the most fundamental prerequisite for achieving knowledge and rectifying the heart, cultivating the person, and regulating the family.
However, over thousands of years, Confucian scholars interpreting the term “investigating things” had placed emphasis on exhaustively pursuing principles. Combined with the suppression of craftsmanship and social contempt for its practitioners since the pre-Qin period, this caused the study of investigating things to evolve into metaphysics and the study of the mind, rather than truly standing upon the fundamental interpretation of “distinguishing the nature of things” and “understanding objective laws.” As a result, even thousands of years later, no truly systematic science had developed.
This was also the greatest insight Han Qian had gained over the past year integrating Zhai Xinping’s knowledge and dream knowledge.
To better distinguish the nature of things and understand objective laws, an even more important prerequisite was that everything required practice.
Handling the workshops’ heavy and complicated affairs was, for Han Qian, actually also a process of organizing and integrating dream knowledge.
This knowledge—even if Han Qian only taught the most basic study of investigating things and everything in the workshops—still held tremendous attraction for Yang Yuanpu.
The accompanying personnel like Chai Jian and Li Chong exchanged bewildered glances, not knowing where Han Qian found the leisure interest, or perhaps wondering if these words had ulterior motives.
Although since the late previous dynasty, with regional military governors holding power and military men in command, the civil service examinations had effectively been abolished and the status of Confucian scholars was not prominent—and the previous frontier commissioners, regional military governors controlling territories, and even the current monarchs of the Liang, Jin, and Chu kingdoms all favored pragmatism more—legally, they had not yet overturned the “exclusive veneration of Confucianism” that Dong Zhongshu had promoted over a thousand years ago.
Although Chai Jian and Li Chong were military men, they had studied diligently since childhood and could be said to be deeply influenced by traditional Confucian learning. Even Chen De, who was a pure military man, felt that what Han Qian spoke was completely different from what he usually heard.
Of course, Chen De, Chai Jian, and Li Chong didn’t necessarily agree with Han Qian’s views, but with their academic foundation, they were far from qualified to stand up and refute Han Qian. At the same time, they were shocked by the breadth and diversity of Han Qian’s knowledge and learning.
However, what Chai Jian and Li Chong found even harder to tolerate was that within the workshops, whenever any foreman or master craftsman had some special skill, Han Qian would summon them before Third Imperial Prince Yang Yuanpu for an introduction, having them personally explain their crafts to the Third Imperial Prince. They guessed that Han Qian was using the Third Imperial Prince to diminish the authority of the military prefecture officials in the eyes of the workshop foremen, but with the Third Imperial Prince looking so approachable and amiable, they were helpless.
And with the Third Imperial Prince addressing Han Qian as “Master Han” at every turn, Chai Jian and Li Chong were even more frustrated.
After touring the workshops and having a simple lunch there, that afternoon Han Qian led the enthusiastic Third Imperial Prince, who didn’t feel the slightest fatigue, deep into the rear mountain to inspect the coal fields.
Seeing that going down from the coal fields, following a stream northward, large quantities of stone materials were piled at the stream mouth, and over a hundred robust men in ragged clothes were excavating a deep channel on the side of the stream mouth, Yang Yuanpu curiously asked Han Qian, “Master Han, what are you undertaking on such a large scale here?”
“Building a stone dam to store water!” Han Qian said. “This is also the first thing I wanted to do upon returning to the manor. I’ve already instructed the craftsmen to prepare for a long time.”
Going down from the coal fields, the stream on the west side connected with the stream flowing through the Qiuhu Mountain Villa. Then at the workshops’ location, because the terrain flattened out, the riverbed also broadened further, forming Peach Stream River over twenty paces wide, which curved around the military prefecture’s earthen city before flowing into Chishan Lake.
Han Qian’s plan to build a stone dam at the stream mouth northwest of the coal fields was to raise the water level of the northern stream ravine by three to four meters. This way, extending northward from the stream mouth into the five or six li long valley deep in Baohua Mountain could be transformed into a small mountain lake reservoir.
On one hand, more grain fields could be reclaimed around the reservoir’s perimeter for irrigation. On the other hand, and this was the more important reason, at the coal field’s edge below the stream mouth, two water-powered coal crushers had already been built and put into use, requiring stable water flow.
Limited by mining technology, the coal blocks dug from mine tunnels in this era were all quite large. If used directly for brick-making and lime firing, combustion was both slow and incomplete. This was also a key bottleneck preventing further cost reduction and increased capacity at the current brick kilns and lime kilns.
However, in reality, the brick kilns and lime kilns didn’t need expansion. Merely performing preliminary crushing of the coal blocks and removing the coal gangue with low coal content could improve efficiency by more than half.
Han Qian had merely provided guidance through letters, sending back to Jinling the diagrams of the continuous-trip tilt hammer left by the great general Du Yu from six or seven hundred years ago, having the workshops here replicate two continuous water-powered tilt hammers—crude versions of hydraulic coal crushers. Although they had only been in trial operation for half a month, their effectiveness was quite good.
The problem was that without building a reservoir to artificially control water flow, not only during the autumn and winter dry seasons would the existing two hydraulic coal crushers be difficult to operate, but even in summer and autumn when rainfall was abundant, with water flow sometimes fast and sometimes slow, the operation of the two hydraulic coal crushers would also be difficult to stabilize.
To establish a relatively complete production system, relying on the weather was actually the least efficient approach.
Currently, only by building a reservoir upstream could they ensure that more hydraulic machinery built and used downstream would have stable water flow. To ensure that coal from the coal fields could be transported out by shallow-bottomed boats even in autumn and winter, they needed to ensure the water flow didn’t run dry.
Before Han Qian went to Xuzhou, he had arranged for the workshops to quarry the stone materials needed for dam construction.
And before Han Qian returned to Jinling, Fan Dahei had already arranged for personnel to excavate the diversion channel on the west side of the stream mouth.
Although Fan Dahei had been kicked out of Jinling by Han Qian, various matters were still proceeding in an orderly manner and hadn’t been delayed under Han Qian’s personal supervision.
In a couple of days, once the diversion channel was dug through, they could first build an earthen embankment upstream of the stream mouth to divert the stream water into the diversion channel flowing downstream. Then they could officially construct the water-blocking stone dam at the stream mouth.
“The Jianghuai region has many storms. With mountain torrents surging, the water势 is fierce—how solid must this stone dam be built to be as stable as a mountain?” Yang Yuanpu asked with some concern.
“Your Highness, look—these stone blocks all have grooves cut into them. When building the dam, we’ll pour molten iron into the grooves to make the stone dam into one solid piece…” Han Qian explained briefly. As for more complex calculations, there was no need to explain them in detail to Yang Yuanpu.
“How much funds and grain will this require?” Yang Yuanpu asked. He still cared about this issue.
“Fortunately, digging down two or three zhang at the stream mouth reaches bedrock. The stone dam only needs to be built thirty paces long to block the stream water. It’s not as arduous as imagined—the workshops can barely manage it…” Han Qian said nonchalantly.
Although Han Qian was nonchalant, Chai Jian and Li Chong were secretly clicking their tongues.
Although the Tunying Military Prefecture’s major consumption wasn’t at the Left Bureau, the Left Bureau’s expenditures were already far beyond their imagination. Even without counting the Left Bureau’s newly added personnel this time, they didn’t know how Han Qian had managed to sustain it before.
Using the water-blocking stone dam construction as a starting point, Han Qian additionally explained to Yang Yuanpu many matters concerning flood discharge channels, irrigation channels, embankments and ponds, terraced field construction, as well as water-powered tilt hammers, water mills, hydraulic bellows, continuous-trip hammers, and other hydraulic machinery that had been invented hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
As for theoretically achievable water-powered spinning machines, water-powered looms, and hydraulic forging hammers, Han Qian wouldn’t discuss them—at least not in front of Chai Jian, Li Chong, and others.
The Tunying Military Prefecture, located at the southern foot of Baohua Mountain and extending nearly twenty li, had limited relatively flat arable land between mountain and lake, but there were many places in the mountains where streams and rivers could be utilized, and with sufficient elevation drops, water resources were abundant.
Han Qian suggested that Third Imperial Prince Yang Yuanpu obtain more tasks for the military prefecture’s Works Office from the Court of Imperial Treasury, the Palace Domestic Service, and even the Ministry of Works—this would be enough to support over ten thousand more people and reduce the Tunying Military Prefecture’s financial and grain pressure.
For example, when the court issued official salaries, it used polished rice refined grain after hulling rice, millet, and other grains. Hulling was done in early years with pestles, later with stone mills and treadle hammers. Water-powered hammers and even continuous-trip hammers, though invented seven or eight hundred years ago, weren’t used in Jinling city because it lacked streams and rivers with high elevation drops. They mainly used official slaves or animal power for hulling grain and milling rice.
Although using official slaves had extremely low costs, the problem was that even using official slaves required providing them food and drink to maintain their strength for servitude, and managing thousands upon thousands of official slaves also required enormous expenses.
If the military prefecture’s Works Office could utilize the streams and rivers at Baohua Mountain’s southern foot to build water mills, continuous-trip hammers, and similar equipment, as long as the cost of hulling rice could be lower than using official slaves, the Third Imperial Prince could undertake this task. His Majesty’s side wouldn’t refuse either.
Chai Jian and Li Chong could perceive that Han Qian discussing these matters extensively before the Third Imperial Prince was still creating difficulties for Works Office Consultant Zhou Yuan. They secretly felt that the events of these past days hadn’t ended just because Fan Dahei and Lin Haizheng had been kicked out of Jinling and Han Qian had gathered the Left Bureau descendants.
However, they also couldn’t say Han Qian’s suggestions lacked merit. After all, the Left Bureau workshops here were already undertaking this on a large scale. What basis did Zhou Yuan have to say he couldn’t do it or couldn’t succeed?