Chapter 1930

Although it took a lot of trouble to find out this not very exciting inside information, it actually did not help Captain Xue's mission, because Qiao Zhiya had no intention of settling the Koreans in the county. Last night

After the reception banquet, they were all sent to the Daling Private Manor. However, being able to confirm the whereabouts of the North Koreans somewhat relieved Captain Xue's pressure. At least his previous judgment and arranged reconnaissance direction were correct, and the target was

It has not completely escaped the scope of its own monitoring.

Captain Xue is not very optimistic that the North Koreans will return to this polluted county town for activities. After all, even he does not want to stay in this environment for a long time, let alone those pampered dignitaries. But if the North Koreans are not in public places

If he showed up for an event, how could the rabble he led have a chance to take action?

Captain Xue couldn't help but think of the manor he visited in the morning, which was said to be Qiao Zhiya's private property. The high-walled compound was no different from a fortress, and he didn't know what the situation was like inside. With just the few men under his command, trying to rush in would be like seeking death.

.

Although when he received the order a few days ago, he expected that this trip would be extremely dangerous and that it would probably lead to a narrow escape from death. However, after the actual operation in the past few days, Captain Xue felt even more desperate. He was not afraid of death, but if he risked his life

It is difficult to get a chance to take action, so the chance of success of this mission is really very slim. Moreover, he cannot confirm now whether the failure of the operation he is responsible for here will affect the larger situation.

This responsibility cannot be repaid by giving up his life.

Captain Xue doesn't know what impact the changes in the relationship between North Korea and Haihan will have on the overall situation, but he knows that if North Korea gradually becomes a powerful country because of the support of Haihan, it will not be in line with the forces behind him.

interests. So no matter what the ultimate goal of this task is, he can only try his best to complete the goal without having the option of retreating or giving up.

All he can do now is to lead people to keep an eye on the manor and wait for the North Koreans to go out for activities. However, at this time, the Koreans are no longer in the manor, but have arrived at the manor, which is more than 80 miles east of Changhua.

Shilu mining area.

After more than two hours of travel, Li Bo and his entourage successfully arrived at Shilu Railway Station. This time, Li Bo's wish to take a good train ride was finally satisfied. After running for dozens of miles, he was considered

I have a more comprehensive experience of the real operating conditions of trains. I sat on a soft sofa chair, drank hot tea and ate fruit, looked at the constantly refreshing scenery outside the window, and talked about some things with Haihan officials.

The topic he was interested in moved to a place dozens of miles away without realizing it. This feeling was really new to Li Bo.

But this is actually thanks to Qiao Zhiya arranging a VIP carriage for him to sit in. If he had been squeezed into a stuffy car that was used for both passenger and cargo, wandering for dozens of miles, he would have experienced the daily commuting conditions of ordinary people on this railway.

, his feeling is probably not so relaxed and happy.

After Li Bo got off the train, he discovered that the platform of Shilu Railway Station was much larger than that of Changhua Railway Station. This was mainly because the platform was directly connected to the freight yard where the ore was stacked, and the other end of the freight yard was leading to the mining area.

Secondary railway, so the terrain is very open. The ore that has been initially screened and crushed in the mining area will be transported here by small freight locomotives, and then transferred to the train to Changhua.

Since the materials shipped out were basically ore, the amount of transshipment was quite large. After the train they took arrived at the station, the workers on the platform immediately began to unload the goods, and then used the belt conveyor to load the goods onto the train.

Enter ore.

The working hours of these workers are generally divided into two shifts. One starts when the train arrives here in the morning and ends when the evening train leaves the station in the afternoon. The other starts when the evening train from Changhua arrives here and ends in the morning.

Sailing to Changhua. During this period, the working hours are long and the labor intensity is quite high. It can be said that it is second only to those miners working on the front line. Most of the people engaged in this industry are immigrants or immigrants who have not yet obtained Haihan nationality.

They are Li and Miao people in inland mountainous areas. They need to accumulate enough labor points in this way before they can get the opportunity to apply for naturalization. After naturalization, they can get relatively easier and higher-paying jobs.

This labor force is relatively cheap for the government, so it has become a special labor system that has existed for a long time. Of course, there are actually more special laborers in the mining areas, that is, prisoners sentenced to hard labor and prisoners of war.

Currently, about 80% of people sentenced to hard labor on Hainan Island are sent to work in the Shilu Mining Area. This place is far away from populated areas and has only one railway leading to the civilized world. Over the years, many prisoners have tried to escape from here.

But the number of successful people is almost zero.

However, what Li Pu is interested in is not Haihan's operation and management of the hard labor camp, but the steam power equipment that can be seen everywhere here. The belt conveyor transporting dry bulk cargo such as ore on the platform, and the dump truck pulling a dump truck in the distance.

The small freight locomotives traveling on the iron ore, as well as the steam excavators, winches, stone crushers, etc. that were introduced by Qiao Zhiya and others on the train, all show that the mining methods of this mining area are similar to the traditional mines that Li Bo knew.

There is a big difference.

In Li Bo's view, the steam engine manufactured by the Haihan people is indeed a very advanced piece of equipment. However, the main reason for using this mechanical device in production sites is the lack of labor in Haihan. The only way to improve work efficiency is through these machines.

This provides higher returns than human power, animal power, wind power, water power, etc.

But Qiao Zhiya’s previous words on the train slightly shaken his idea: “The use of more advanced mechanical equipment is the direction of future productivity development. We can use machinery to complete many tasks that cannot be completed by manpower at present. Prince,

Manufacturing and using these steel devices is not only to save manpower, it is our future. In the next one hundred, two hundred, three hundred or even longer years, we will build more and more machines, and

Use them to change the world."

Although Qiao Zhiya did not cite any actual examples to prove his argument, Li Bo believed that the credibility of this theory was relatively high, because he remembered that the Haihan people came from a highly developed overseas country, and the steam engine was

Planting things should not be invented by the Haihan people who came to the South China Sea, but a technology they brought from their homeland, and the popularity of steam engines and other mechanical devices in that mysterious country is likely to be far greater than

He knew the current Haihan, so Qiao Zhiya had such a very certain prediction.

The Haihan people mined iron ore here day after day, transported it to the outside of the mountains to be smelted into steel, and then used the steel to make steam engines with extremely high working efficiency, and then sent them back to the mining area to mine more ore. In such a cycle

In the process, Haihan's steel output and productivity have been continuously improved - this is how Li Bo easily and intuitively understood Haihan's operations in the mining field.

However, if the mining method here is really as boasted by Haihan's senior officials, Li Bo feels that it will be difficult to replicate it in the mines that his country will cooperate with Haihan in the future. After all, steam engines are things like steam engines that Haihan has long stated that they will not be exported.

Family treasure. And when the time comes, the mining methods that North Korea can adopt will probably only be filled by cheap manpower.

But when he followed Qiao Zhiya to the mountains and overlooked the mining site here from a height, he found that he had actually overestimated the capabilities of the Haihan people. There were indeed many steam equipment emitting black smoke and roaring inside and outside the mine.

Li Bo couldn't tell the specific function of each piece of equipment for a while, but in this huge open-pit mine with a diameter of more than one mile, there were at least two to three thousand people working on the working surfaces layer by layer with various tools.

It was not steam equipment that did most of the mining work, as he thought.

Li Bo observed carefully for a while and saw that the steam equipment actually engaged in "mining" in the mine was actually only a huge bucket machine at the bottom of the pit. The shape of this excavator was very much like the front of a steam train.

A device consisting of a long steel arm, a bucket, a gear and a bucket was installed. A technician sat on the digging arm to operate it. Once the bucket went down, there was a lot of earth and rock. The efficiency was indeed higher than manual labor.

Much more. However, this thing is huge in size, and it is obviously very inconvenient to change its direction at the bottom of the pit. It also needs to continuously transport a large amount of coal and fresh water to the bottom of the pit for its consumption, so the cost of use is obviously not low.

The ore excavated from each working face from the bottom of the pit to the pit mouth is transported by human or animal-powered trolleys to the track mine car laid on the slope of the pit, and then pulled up by the steam winch at the pit mouth, followed by screening and crushing.

The initially processed ore is then transported by freight locomotive to the train station at the foot of the mountain.

Seeing this, Li Bo actually had a rough understanding of why Haihan wanted to use a large number of steam machinery at any cost. This was not just a matter of saving manpower and improving mining efficiency. If such a mine did not have the blessing of steam engines, it would probably take more than 100 years to rely on manpower alone.

It would take several days of mining to fill a train going out of the mountain. In this case, the cost-effectiveness of building this special railway would be greatly reduced, and it would be difficult for Changhua on the seaside to become the steel smelting center of the Haihan Kingdom.

"Master Qiao, I would like to take the liberty to ask, without these steam engines, by how much would the mining efficiency of this mine be reduced?" Li Bo boldly asked Qiao Zhiya a very pointed question.

Qiao Zhiya didn't take it seriously. This was actually not the first time he had answered such a question. He said frankly: "Actually, the mining process is not bad, it will only drop by 30 to 40% at most. But if there is no steam equipment, the processing

The production and transportation of ore will be greatly affected, and overall production capacity is estimated to be reduced to one-fifth of the current level or even lower."

"This means that if we rely on manpower to maintain such a production scale, we may have to invest five times the labor force?" Li Bo continued to ask.

When Qiao Zhiya heard this question, he knew what Li Bo was planning, and responded with a smile: "This cannot be calculated simply by the number of laborers. Your Majesty, although this mine is not small, it cannot accommodate ten thousand miners."

Work at the same time. Moreover, manpower alone is not enough to invest in ore processing and transportation. It will definitely require a large number of livestock. This is a mountainous area, and there is not so much fodder to maintain the rations required by a large number of livestock, so fodder must be transported into the mountains.

, something like this will also cause a series of problems, but fortunately these problems are a thing of the past for us and will no longer cause major trouble."

Of course, when Haihan first started to organize mining, there were not so many steam equipment. It could only rely on manpower and animal power to complete all aspects from mining to ore processing to short-distance transportation. Later, it was gradually used in some key links based on actual conditions.

Steam equipment was used to improve work efficiency, and the current production level was gradually reached. However, the mining method that Li Bo had in mind was purely relying on manpower to supplement the work. Even with Haihan's engineering management capabilities, it would be difficult to achieve the ideal level.

Effect.

Li Bo is not stupid. When Qiao Zhiya explained this, he immediately realized that the method he thought of was biased. If he applied it to domestic mines, various problems that Qiao Zhiya mentioned would definitely occur in the future. The same is true now.

He was sincerely convinced and thought that after all, Qiao Zhiya had managed the mine here for many years, and this rich practical experience was indeed far beyond his wild imagination.

Li Bo only hopes that the Haihan people will not hide their secrets and can teach North Korea all the problems and solutions they encountered in the process of mining mines in the past. This may save his country from taking some detours in the operation of the mines.

After standing at the entrance of the pit and looking at it for about half an hour, Qiao Zhiya suggested that he go to eat first and then go see another open-pit mine in the afternoon. Li Bo actually didn’t feel hungry, but he had walked for a while from the foot of the mountain to the entrance of the pit.

Going uphill, I really wanted to find a shady place to sit down and take a rest.

Of course, Qiao Zhiya would not arrange for this group of people to eat in the messy and dirty miners' canteen. Instead, he took them to the garrison camp not far from the mine. Although the officers' canteen here is not big, the environment is not bad.

Yes, he has always been responsible for hosting important figures from all walks of life, and today is no exception.

Of course, the officers' mess was informed in advance and prepared, so the content of this lunch was much richer than Li Shu expected. Most of the ingredients were various delicacies and game produced in the local mountains and forests of Shilu.

A table full of pots and bowls was laid out.

As a landowner, Qiao Zhiya naturally had to pretend to be polite, saying that the local area was poor and poor, and there was nothing good to entertain everyone, so everyone would just make do with some food, and please forgive me for not taking good care of the place.
Chapter completed!