After receiving Wang Tu's invitation, Song Alin must pay attention to it regardless of whether he is willing to increase investment in Heyuan Prefecture.

Because the current Wang Tu is not the county magistrate of a remote small county with no foundation, but the magistrate of a province, and many people who are familiar with officialdom know that behind Wang Tu there is a Guangdong chief envoy.

Cheng Yongfeng.

If nothing unexpected happens to such a person, a mere fifth-grade magistrate will never be the end of his career, not even a magistrate. No one knows how far he can go in the future, but Song Alin knows that Wang Tu is now

It is no longer something he can offend.

Not only should we not offend, we should also deepen the relationship between the two parties if possible.

In fact...the businessmen who agreed to come over for inspection and the heads of government-run enterprises all basically have the same mentality.

You have to look again whether you want to invest or not. The investment environment is good and you can invest if it is profitable. If the environment does not allow it, then don’t invest.

】

However, it is necessary to visit Heyuan Prefecture in person or to send heavyweight responsible persons to inspect.

The former is business and the latter is human relations.

Even if we don't get closer, we still can't offend Wang Tu, a rising star in the officialdom. Who knows if he will become the head of a certain department in the governor's office in a few years, let alone when he will transfer the government where his company is located.

Become a fellow magistrate or even a magistrate.

After all, if the fifth-rank magistrate continues to be promoted, he will be promoted from the fourth-rank magistrate of various prefectures or the deputy director of each department of the governor's yamen. For rising stars in the officialdom with such huge connections, taking the deputy position is a transition.

It won't be long before he can be transferred to a full-time position.

Song Alin and many investors who had the same intention as him once again set foot on the land of Heyuan Prefecture.

However, unlike others who chose to take the train directly to Heyuan, Song Alin chose to take a boat to Heyuan Prefecture.

He personally likes to travel by boat, and at the same time he also wants to see with his own eyes the changes in the Dongjiang Channel in recent years, mainly to see whether the navigation capabilities of the shallow beaches have been improved.

After all, if you want to invest in Heyuan Prefecture, you must consider the transportation of goods.

Although Heyuan Prefecture has a train, the train freight is expensive... What Song Alin does is not a high-end business, just some ordinary food processing business. The gross profit is not high in the first place, so he must control every link.

Cost.

Therefore, it is necessary to take cheaper water transportation.

And water transportation relies on the conditions of waterways!

This is one of the reasons why Song Alin chose to take a boat to go north instead of taking the more convenient train directly...

Of course, more importantly, he personally prefers taking a boat to a train. After all, he grew up by the river and has a sense of intimacy and even security about the river and the boats themselves.

Because even if the boat sinks, he is not afraid, because he can just swim for a while, and crossing a few hundred meters across the river is nothing.

Different from the slow passenger and cargo steamer of Liuhe Shipping Company that I took last time, it was different that I had to walk upstream of the Dongjiang River for many days before arriving.

This time Song Alin is riding a fast passenger ship, which belongs to the Pearl River Shipping Company, and is expected to arrive in Heyuan Prefecture City soon.

Pearl River Shipping Company is also an old shipping company. Its predecessor was a part of the Navy's transport ships and retired personnel, plus sailors who surrendered to the pirates but were unwilling to join the army or continue to roam the sea.

Founded and wholly owned by the Guangdong Governor Yamen Industrial Department, it developed well in the early days of pure sailing. However, it did not have an absolute monopoly in the Pearl River Basin. At that time, various shipping companies in the Pearl River Basin

There are many, and many companies with large transportation volumes often have their own fleets.

After entering the steam age, Liuhe Shipping Company relied on its prior investment to lock in the production capacity of part of the civilian ship-based steam engines of Guangzhou Machinery Company, monopolizing the production capacity of civilian ship-based steam engines for a long period of time, and took the lead in launching steam engine ship transportation nationwide.

Business.

Relying on this, Liuhe Shipping Company quickly grew into one of the top large-scale shipping companies in the Chu Empire, spreading business across the country, and occupied the leading position in the steamship transportation market in the Pearl River Basin.<

/p>

Later, after more than a year of breakthroughs, the Pearl River Shipping Company obtained the production capacity of civilian shipboard steam engines, and reached a cooperation with Lee Shipyard to begin large-scale construction of steam engine passenger ships and put them into operation.

Taking advantage of their late-mover advantage, they designed, built and operated a number of fast inland river passengers due to the more advanced performance of their steam engines.

Taking rapid passenger transport as the breakthrough point, it focuses on the mid-to-high-end passenger transport market.

At the same time, a special offshore coal transport ship was launched, and cooperation was reached with Guangzhou Iron and Steel Company and many coal sales companies in Guangdong to transport high-quality anthracite coal produced in Guangning for them.

Relying on these two hands, the Pearl River Shipping Company seized the tail end of the steam age and survived in the offshore shipping market in the Pearl River and Guangdong areas.

Song Alin was riding this kind of fast passenger ship, a fast steam passenger ship Zhujiang No. 26 put into operation by the Pearl River Shipping Company last year.

The Zhujiang No. 26 steam passenger ship has a displacement of more than 150 tons. It is a standard shallow-water inland river passenger ship. It has a relatively wide hull, but the draft is very shallow, and the superstructure is relatively tall. It adopts technology

With more advanced propeller propulsion, the pure steam engine can reach a speed of six knots.

This ship is actually not big, but it is just right for sailing on the Dongjiang River. After all, the lower reaches of the Dongjiang River are fine, but the navigation capacity of the middle and upper reaches is not strong. Even a shallow water steam passenger ship of more than 100 tons has to navigate many waterways.

Be very careful. In addition, there are some shallow shoals that cannot be navigated by shallow water inland ships of hundreds of tons during the dry season in autumn and winter.

Generally speaking, the waterways in the middle and upper reaches of the Dongjiang River are mainly operated by small boats of tens of tons. In addition, barges have also become popular in recent years.

That is to say, a high-horsepower tugboat with a shallow draft is used to tow a number of small-tonnage, shallow-draft barges for navigation.

This can better solve the problem of poor navigation ability of shallow water channels.

Not only do they appear on some small rivers, but there are also many barges on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the former north-south artery.

On the contrary, large inland waterways such as the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River do not need these gadgets, because the navigability of the Yangtze River waterway is very good. The middle and lower reaches of the main channel from Hantianfu to Wusongkou can pass ships with a draft of 4.5 meters.
p>

As for the Yangtze River Basin, that is, the section from Jinling City to Wusongkou has even better conditions.

The excellent conditions of the Yangtze River waterway, coupled with the continuous progress of shipbuilding technology, iron-ribbed wooden hull ships have continued to reduce the cost of building large-tonnage ships, and steam engine technology has continued to develop. The power of ship-based steam engines has reached a new level every year.

In order to compete, the three major steam engines invested heavily in research and development in the field of high-pressure steam engines, which continuously improved the performance of the steam engines.

In the 21st year of Chengshun, the maximum actual steam pressure of steam engines was only 0.25 MPa, but now some special steam engines can achieve 0.4 or even 0.45 MPa. The steam pressure

The increase directly pushed up the increase in steam engine power.

At the same time, the three major steam engine manufacturers also have their own advantageous technologies, such as the multi-expansion steam engine of Tianjin Machinery Company, the new fire tube boiler of Guangzhou Machinery Company, etc.

The fierce competition between the three major steam engine companies led to the rapid development of high-pressure steam engines in the Dachu Empire, and the rapid development of steam engines fed back to the train and ship industries.

The horsepower of locomotives is getting bigger and bigger, and they can pull more and more goods at faster and faster speeds.

And ships can be built bigger and faster.

Nowadays, there are many steamships with thousands of tons in operation on the Yangtze River waterway. Among them is the Shunjiang of Liuhe Shipping Company. On the ships of a large number of shipping companies, the company name and number are generally used as the ship name.

Likewise, this inland river ship can be given a separate ship name, which means that this ship is different.

Its displacement reaches more than 1,200 tons. It uses a hybrid power of steam engine and sail. The steam engine is driven by a paddle wheel. The maximum speed reaches seven knots under pure steam engine power. It is a large inland river ship for both passengers and cargo. It travels between Han and Tianjin regularly.

-Songjiang route.

When fully loaded, its maximum number of passengers can reach one thousand.

Such superior performance also makes the cost of this ship reach 180,000 Chu Yuan. This is Chu Yuan under the gold standard, not 180,000 taels... If it is really priced according to the silver of more than ten years ago, according to the current price

The ratio of gold to silver is close to three hundred thousand taels.

Such a large investment also makes this passenger ship the largest river ship currently operated by Liuhe Shipping Company, and it is also the largest civilian river ship currently owned by major shipping companies in the Dachu Empire.

Well, those military ships don't count... The fleet under the Guards only commissioned an offshore shallow-water battleship with a displacement of more than 2,000 tons last year... It's much larger than the Shunjiang. Well, you heard it right, the same goes for the Guards.

There is a fleet, and it is a serious battle fleet, with a lot of battleships attached, not the so-called transport fleet of the army.

Not only the navy, but also the Guards and the Air Force. The only hot air balloon flying team in the Chu Empire belongs to the Guards.

Whether the Shunjiang or other shipping companies, the medium and large river ships they build with hundreds of tons or even thousands of tons can basically only sail on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River or other rivers with good navigation conditions.<

/p>

But it won’t work in Dongjiang!

The navigation capacity of the downstream channel of the Dongjiang River is good, and ships of several hundred tons can run there. However, the navigation capacity of the Dongjiang River section north of Guishan, Fucheng, Huizhou, has dropped sharply.

From here to Longchuan County in Heyuan Prefecture, there are many shallow rivers, large and small. Even if the local government has managed these shallow rivers, the scale is small and the results are not great...

After all, Heyuan Prefecture in the middle and upper reaches of the Dongjiang River is not an economically developed place. If you invest huge sums of money in dredging the waterway, it will not be worth the gain.

In addition, small boats of dozens of tons are not impossible to travel. If these small boats are combined with barges, they can actually initially meet the local transportation needs.

As for ships of more than 100 tons, they can only be seen during the current wet season in summer. During the dry season in winter, ships such as the Pearl River No. 27 want to pass through several shallow waters.

The beach will be very troublesome... When necessary, it is even necessary to manually dig sand and dredge the river to move forward.

Song Alin took the Pearl River No. 27 Riverboat all the way north, and it was smooth sailing along the way. He didn't encounter any water conditions, let alone any water bandits.

If there was something wrong, a few passengers on the boat were obviously not used to the bumps of this long-distance boat, so they vomited all the way.

And Song Alin is naturally not the one who gets seasick. He grew up by the river since he was a child. Over the years, he has been doing business all over the world, and he has mostly taken boats. He has never known what seasickness is since he was a child...

After successfully arriving in Heyuan Prefecture City, Song Alin looked at this small city surrounded by water on three sides, and for a moment he had the illusion of traveling through time and space... as if he had returned to more than 20 years ago.

The whole city is small, and it is basically full of old buildings.

The prefectural government of Heyuan Prefecture was the former county seat of Heyuan County. After the establishment of the prefecture, the county seat became a prefectural government.

The entire city is very small, surrounded by water on three sides, and only the south is land. This kind of terrain is very good in military terms, and it is a typical place that is easy to defend and difficult to attack.

But for industrial and commercial development, the limitations are relatively large. The surrounding plain area suitable for development is relatively small, and it is divided into three areas by the intersection of two rivers!
To be continued...