Chapter 606: Crawley's Fantastical Journey (IX)

Over the three-year construction span, the original Zengcheng Cement Plant — now the "Model Cement Plant" project — was beset with twists and turns.

Actually, at the very start, the Zengcheng Cement Plant was nothing outstanding in a certain grand "Greater Guangzhou Area Overall Industrial Layout Master Plan" red-header document; it was just a basic construction materials factory.

However, with the rapid development of New District construction in the year 161 and the large-scale relocation of industrial and commercial enterprises from Tainan to Guangzhou, the decision-makers suddenly discovered one thing: the previous planning had taken too small a step in infrastructure, and the production speed of construction materials had not kept pace with social progress, causing the red-hot development situation to hit a bottleneck.

After discovering the problem, the Cabinet made emergency adjustments to the previous industrial layout, changed the direction of investment for one part of the resources, and a group of construction material production factories were urgently approved and launched.

In this process, the already half-built Zengcheng Cement Plant, since its preliminary work was already complete and it was suitable for expansion, rode the wind from an ordinary construction materials enterprise into a key enterprise receiving key support from the Ministry of Industry.

Now the grass chicken had turned into a rooster.

The originally designed vertical kiln cement production line of the Zengcheng Cement Plant was changed into an advanced wet rotary kiln production line.

The originally planned annual output was also raised from the 5,000 tons of a later-generations village-run cement plant to the 10,000-ton level of a county one.

With the main production line changed, the supporting ancillary equipment was certain to change too. With this, the overall scale of the entire factory, whether in terms of land area, equipment, or investment amount, increased greatly. Then, due to the increase in total investment, the Ministry of Commerce introduced some native shareholders to join this project.

In the end, even the name of the upgraded Zengcheng Cement Plant was changed by someone; the large black-lacquered red-wood factory sign at the main gate became "Zengcheng Model Cement Plant."

Construction began in the second half of the year 160, and the plan was to start production in the second half of 161. But in between, it underwent the ordeal of having its tendons changed and bones reforged, and the time cost shot up all at once.

Ultimately, by the time the Model Cement Plant's expansion was complete, the machinery and equipment fully debugged, and the trial production test passed, time had been forcefully dragged to the beginning of the year 162, spanning a full three calendar years.

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Dressed in a well-fitting beige suit, Old Master Bai Shenming leaned on a civilization cane, wore a thin gauze summer hat on his head, and leather sandals on his feet — the full attire of an enlightened gentry.

At this moment, Provincial Graduate Bai, his face glowing and laughter continuous, was bustling about with the other shareholders, receiving people from the Three Mountains and Five Peaks who had come to attend the commencement ceremony.

Without a doubt, today was the only great day in Old Master Bai's first half of life that could be mentioned in the same breath as passing the provincial examination back then.

Once again calming a group of merchants — this time foreign merchants — who had been somewhat discomposed by the appearance of the cement plant, Old Master Bai smiled and ushered the guests to a specially erected ceremonial canopy, then called out in rapid succession for the servants brought from home to help, telling them to serve the guests some soothing good tea and not to slight these red-haired, green-eyed Westerners.

As an enlightened gentry, Old Master Bai had some understanding of the foreign merchants' background.

As early as when he went to Guangzhou to take the examinations in his youth, he had seen Franciscans. After this, as Old Master Bai expanded his commercial channels, every few years, whenever the season coincided, he would always encounter Franciscans in Guangzhou.

Later on, after Old Master Bai surrendered to the court of Grand Commandant Cao, his information channels became even broader and more comprehensive. Old Master Bai now had a considerable understanding of the term "Europe"; he was one of the few Ming people of this era who could clearly explain the relationship between Portugal and Spain, including both their geographical and political relations.

Granting followers some refined advanced information was, in itself, the unique wealth of the Crossing Faction. Moreover, for people of Old Master Bai's class, the value of important information far exceeded that bit of silver.

And so, ultimately, Crawley and his group were settled in the mat shed in the cement plant's courtyard.

Old Master Bai, who had toiled for half the day, finally turned around, straightened his back, took out a large, pure-cotton, machine-woven checkered handkerchief, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and then drank a mouthful of his favorite pan-fired green tea.

As he gently sipped his tea, Old Master Bai stared at the steel mountains and iron mounds of the cement plant, and once again sighed from the bottom of his heart: "What truly grand style!"

Today, Old Master Bai of Zengcheng would not despise those discomposed "country bumpkins," whether the bumpkins came from Guangzhou or from foreign lands. Because even he, who had personally watched the cement plant built from nothing, still felt his heart surge with emotion every time he came here.

The sun climbed fiercely overhead. By this time, the ordinary guests had long since arrived; it was time for the bigwigs to make their appearance.

Sure enough, not long after, the Transmigrators, led by New District Chief Ding Liqiu, walked through the factory gate surrounded by a large contingent of guards.

Since the Zengcheng Model Cement Plant was now a key enterprise, quite a few Transmigrators came today. Not only from government departments, but also people from industry, urban construction, and other departments came.

Responsible for welcoming the various bigwigs was the acting plant manager, the Transmigrator Hou Jun.

This gentleman's specialty before crossing over was engineering automation, which was useless in the seventeenth century, so from the very start he was assigned to the Kiln District for re-employment, and together with a bunch of "wastrels" who worked on industrial robots and the like, formed the Kiln District Four, routinely responsible for "high-tech applications" like brick kilns and drying kilns.

Later, the Four even established the first political party within the Transmigrators: the Carefree Sect.

In the current age, Hou Jun, having long since unlocked the skills for various engineering kiln applications, had already become a technical big shot in the Ministry of Industry.

A technical big shot is naturally occupied with countless affairs. This time, Hou Jun serving as the Model Plant's Chief Engineer and temporary plant manager was also out of necessity; after all, such a large factory could not function without a Transmigrator at the helm, at least not in the early stage.

Seeing the inspection delegation enter the gate, Hou Jun, wearing a rattan-woven safety helmet on his head and dressed in ordinary work clothes, led a group of cement plant shareholders in their varied attire to greet the leadership inspection delegation. The moment both sides met, they shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, expressed mutual appreciation for their hard work — the scene was harmonious.

To be honest, Ming people quite liked this sort of tone, especially when they themselves were in a subordinate position — who wouldn't want their superiors to be approachable and amiable?

And the Transmigrators' innate concept of equality, along with the simple etiquette of later generations they brought, naturally made their followers feel as if bathed in a spring breeze in this seventeenth-century era where bending at the waist and kneeling to kowtow was the norm.

The subsequent proceedings, even a bystander like Crawley could guess: the leaders took turns going on stage to speak, while the audience smiled and clapped in unison.

By the time the several bigwigs finished their speeches, the time had just reached high noon. Hou Jun looked at the Tudor watch on his wrist, and when the minute and second hands converged, it arrived at the auspicious time of 18:18.

The next moment, Hou Jun formally announced: the trial production of the Zengcheng Model Cement Plant had begun.

The workers, who had been waiting at their stations for a long time, upon hearing the command coming through the workshop loudspeakers, began to start up the entire set of cement plant equipment according to the previously trained procedures.

The spectators, who had been invited to observe from beyond the safety line, soon felt unease and terror, because from the steel monsters ahead — which looked utterly sinister no matter how one looked at them — came rumbling roars.

Yet the group of Ming shareholder masters, dressed in suits, long robes, and straight-hemmed garments, at this moment all revealed expressions of excitement and longing — they had already learned what would happen next during the equipment debugging process.

The process of starting the production line was originally very lengthy, because the cement plant's power equipment was a steam engine unit that needed preheating.

Unlike vehicles and ships powered by ordinary coal gas generators, even a county-level cement plant required enormous power to run its entire set of equipment, something a few coal gas furnaces simply could not drive.

However, the reality was that the industrial system could not provide electrical energy, and could not even manufacture a decent transformer, so the Model Cement Plant's power had to adopt the most solid, heavy, and retro steam power.

The first part of the entire production line to start was the power plant. The unit making the huge noise was a combined power system composed of several reciprocating steam engines. These steam engine units, which had already been preheated and pressurized beforehand, now smoothly transmitted power to the Raw Material Workshop through bearings and connecting rods.

Cement production, in principle, is actually very simple: the mixed stone materials, primarily limestone, are first ground and then calcined, and the final clinker that comes out is the finished product.

Of course, the many technical details involved cannot be made clear in just a word or two.

After the power was transmitted, the various crushers and grinding mills in the Raw Material Workshop started operating. Workers wearing masks and helmets began to bustle about, constantly feeding the prepared raw materials into the machines.

Usually at this step, cement production branches into two paths: the dry method and the wet method.

As the names suggest, the dry method directly grinds the raw materials and then calcines them, while the wet method adds one more step: first, water is added to the raw materials to prepare them into a slurry state, which is then ground and calcined.

Anyone with a bit of common sense knows that using machines to grind raw materials in a slurry state will definitely yield better results than directly grinding dry stone. Additionally, wet method preparation has another benefit: regarding environmental pollution, dust pollution during the preparation process is greatly reduced.

Of course, with benefits come drawbacks. Preparing raw materials via the wet method not only consumes a large amount of water resources, but also consumes more energy during the calcination step, since the raw materials are in a moist state.

In later generations, the extremely resource-wasteful wet method cement production was a backward industry explicitly ordered shut down by the state.

Knowing the difference between the two routes, it becomes very clear which method the Model Cement Plant adopted to prepare raw materials: the wet method.

The Model Plant in the seventeenth century was surrounded by water resources everywhere. Moreover, the cement produced here had no worry of being sold and faced no competitive pressure at all, so the plant simply did not consider that bit of coal cost.

On the contrary, due to the incompleteness of the industrial chain, it was precisely various dust-removal and environmental protection equipment that was extremely lacking right now. If the dry method were used to prepare raw materials, not only would environmental pollution be severe, but it would also make workers more susceptible to various occupational diseases, such as pneumoconiosis.

Taking everything into account, in the seventeenth century, it was still more cost-effective to use the globally leading high-tech wet method cement production line.

After the proportioned raw material slurry had been ground, the next step that would shock the natives began: a Huang Long churned ceaselessly, spitting fire and belching smoke, filling the workshop with terrifying roars.

Several Ming masters, visiting from Guangzhou for the first time, upon seeing this scene, immediately knelt down to the Huang Long on the spot.