Chapter 1152: Judgment

"Please stay here for the night, everyone. It is a humble abode, I hope you do not mind."

The station used by the Great Song to host foreign envoys is called the State Guest Station.

This newly built three-story building features a style that combines Great Song and modern architectural elements.

It can both embody the cultural characteristics of the Great Song and reflect the progress of Great Song civilization.

In addition to its exterior and structure, the decoration of the State Guest Station is also very fashionable.

The floor of the main hall is paved with exquisite ceramic tiles.

Ever since merchants learned from the Patent Office that besides firing porcelain, one could also fire ceramic tiles...

... ceramic tiles as a building decoration material have become popular throughout the Great Song.

The State Guest Station is no exception.

Suspended above the floor are crystal lamps.

However, these are not real crystal, but glass products; it is just that filaments have been installed inside the glass.

Such crystal lamps can provide illumination while also being very beautiful.

After they appeared on the market, many families in the Great Song with spare money replaced their incandescent lamps with crystal lamps.

"Vice Minister Su is too modest. If this is also a humble abode, then our Winter Palace in Petersburg would feel ashamed." Chester had to admit that the scene before him left him feeling quite stunned.

At this moment, he even felt a sense of inferiority, subconsciously feeling that their group was too rustic and out of place here.

Su Yuntang smiled, "In that case, you should rest early, and I will come by tomorrow."

Such decorations in the State Guest Station were by no means intended to cater to foreign envoys.

Because this is the architectural decoration style currently popular in the Great Song, which has emerged alongside the technological progress of the Great Song.

Many hotels in Yancheng are like this, and some old buildings are also undergoing similar renovations.

After Su Yuntang left, he left behind an official from the Foreign Affairs Department to continue guiding Chester and his party.

Chester had thought that the shocks brought to him today would end there.

But after being arranged into their respective rooms, they were dumbfounded once again.

The floors of their rooms were covered with soft carpets, there was snow-white bedding on the beds, and there was a dedicated washroom containing a faucet that could automatically run water and a ceramic toilet.

Of course, they had to ask the Foreign Affairs Department official to understand what the faucet and toilet were.

What shocked them even more was that they learned indirectly that the water inside these two things is called tap water.

It is supplied by the Great Song tap water pipes that were built not long ago.

With this, people no longer need to drink well water or go to the river to fetch water.

So many fresh sights and sounds made Chester feel like a fool.

That night, like the nobles of Ross, he stared at the outside world through the glass window of his room until midnight before finally falling asleep.

Some people also thought that this was the Great Song deliberately showing them its best side.

But this speculation was shattered the next day.

Just as Su Yuntang said,

he arrived on time the next day and continued to lead their group to tour Yancheng.

When they entered other hotels, they realized that the place they were staying in was truly just average.

"Vice Minister Su, may we visit your factories?" After wandering around for the whole morning, Chester finally asked his request with trepidation.

Whether it was the street lamps, bicycles, or the things they had never seen in the station, they were all just appearances.

What truly supported these things were the factories of the Great Song.

It was the factories that manufactured all of this.

"Certainly." Su Yuntang was well-prepared, as if he had been waiting for these words from Chester.

In fact, the Emperor Zhao Xu had given him this authorization.

Upon receiving the affirmative answer, Chester felt a surge of excitement in his heart.

Immediately, Su Yuntang led Chester and his party to take the light rail train directly to the Workshop District.

For the first stop, Su Yuntang chose to go to the Textile Factory.

What the Westerners are currently most proud of is their own textile industry.

Britain also relies on this industry to earn high profits from overseas.

Food, clothing, housing, and transportation—these four words are the basic needs of people, and naturally, they can generate a huge market.

In the spinning factory, Chester witnessed the true use of electricity.

Rows of spinning machines rotated under the power provided by electric motors, and cotton turned into cotton yarn at an extremely rapid speed.

They carefully observed these cotton yarns and discovered that these cotton yarns were much finer than those produced by Ross.

And the fineness of cotton yarn is precisely one of the standards for measuring the level of the Western textile industry.

Because fine yarn breaks easily, industrial production requires more continuous and stable power, which is something steam engines cannot provide.

This is the reason why the clothing material of the Song People is so soft and fine.

Thinking that most of their Ross people could only wear coarse cloth clothes, Chester's mood became a few degrees heavier again.

Clearly, the Song People had already crossed the Steam Power Age and entered a new era they could not yet understand, known as the Electric Age.

Next, he followed Su Yuntang to many other factories and saw many industrial products he had never seen before.

But he no longer had the heart to observe, because the textile industry alone was enough to explain a lot.

The others were merely torture to their fragile self-esteem.

For the entire day, the group shuttled between various factories.

In the following days, they also went with Su Yuntang to visit other counties and prefectures of the Great Song.

This visit left them without even the last shred of wishful thinking.

They had originally thought that only the Imperial Capital of Great Song had entered the Electric Age.

They did not expect that many key commandery cities already had Thermal Power Plants.

At the same time, they also learned that Great Song possessed something called a Wired Telegraph.

Su Yuntang used this very thing to directly request instructions from the Emperor of Great Song, who was in the Imperial Capital.

After returning from other Xingsheng, Chester saw something called a Telephone at the Foreign Affairs Department again.

This time, Su Yuntang spoke directly with the Emperor of Great Song in the Imperial Palace via the Telephone, which left him deeply shocked.

Having stayed in Yancheng for another six days, Chester could not wait to return.

He wanted to report everything about Great Song to Emperor Nikolai.

Su Yuntang let them come and go as they pleased and did not try to keep them.

However, for the sake of strategic success, before Chester left, he took Chester and his party to take many photographs all over Great Song.

After they were developed, he gave them to Chester for him to take back.

In the photographs, besides the people, scenes from all over the Capital City of Great Song were displayed, which would help Nikolai make a correct judgment.

Carrying these photographs close to his person, Chester, just as he had when he arrived, took a Steam Locomotive toward Jincheng.

Gazing at the scenery flashing past the window, Chester and the nobles were all silent.

This short journey had stirred up monstrous waves in their hearts.

Even now, this tide had not yet calmed down.

Most importantly, they had completely changed their view of Great Song.

It turned out that the conditions the Song People had raised to Nikolai were truly not meant to humiliate the Ross nation.

They were truly supported by strength.

After understanding the real Great Song, they could not imagine how to oppose Great Song in the Far East.

Choosing to go to war with Great Song for a vast, desolate snowfield was undoubtedly madness.

On the contrary, if they agreed to cooperate with Great Song, they might be able to obtain rich returns.

These returns would give the Ross nation enough capability to gain interests in the Western Lands, compensating for the losses in the Far East.

Thinking of this, Chester firmed up his own ideas.

He believed that the nobles had also made the same judgment as him at this moment.

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