Chapter 459: Forty-seven Years of Tiangong
On the 17th day of the first lunar month in the 37th year of Tiangong, the day of Zhu Jianxuan’s 60th birthday, the grand audience ceremony was officially held.

After the routine worship ceremony, Zhu Jianxuan did not announce the appointment of a crown prince, but he also issued several orders that were unexpected to everyone.

All the princes are over 40 years old and have completed the complete local administration training. The industries they are in charge of developing are also on the right track.

Now all of them are granted the title of prince, and the fifteen oldest princes who are responsible for the construction of the American Development Company are all granted the title.

Then a special order was issued to allow the monarchs and their families of overseas vassal states to reside permanently in Shuntian Prefecture.

It was not surprising to confer the title of prince on the princes, but it was puzzling to let the monarchs of vassal states live in the Ming Dynasty.

Some people even worried whether this was compulsory and that the monarchs of the vassal states would be restricted and controlled in Shuntian Prefecture.

However, after reading the imperial edict, Zhu Jianxuan specifically told them that this order was only a permission, not a requirement.

It was because a vassal king wanted to live in Shuntian Prefecture, but in the past vassal kings were not allowed to enter Beijing without the emperor’s edict, so they went to ask Zhu Jianxuan for permission.

Zhu Jianxuan also made such a rule, and the monarchs of vassal states who wanted to live in Beijing had to apply separately and obtain special approval from the emperor.

After Zhu Jianxuan’s explanation, the monarchs of the vassal states finally felt relieved and began to consider whether to come and live permanently.

The Hajj ceremony was held normally and ended normally.

The monarchs of vassal states who plan to stay in Beijing can apply now, and those who do not want to stay can leave now.

Before and after the Grand Audience, various official and unofficial entertainment and commercial activities of the Ming Dynasty began to unfold in Shuntian City and surrounding areas in the summer of the 36th year of Tiangong.

It lasted until the spring of the 37th year of Tiangong, when delegations from vassal states around the world left Shuntian Prefecture one after another, and the movement gradually subsided.

By the time Shuntian Prefecture had basically returned to normal, it was already the summer of the 37th year of Tiangong.

The scale and duration of all the activities surrounding the Hajj are unmatched by any other activities in the world.

However, after the beginning of the 37th year of Tiangong, when Zhu Jianxuan’s birthday celebration and the grand pilgrimage were over, his attention shifted.

Zhu Jianxuan regularly pays attention to the development status of the cultural and art industries and regularly visits several state-run film and television crews.

Regularly inspect the arts and literature majors in government-run schools to demonstrate the importance we attach to these matters and simultaneously raise the social status of these industries and personnel.

According to the construction plan formulated earlier, choose the right time to improve the independence of literary and artistic education.

When new students enrolled in Tiangong in the 37th year, the majors related to artistic performance were integrated to become a semi-independent secondary college under the university.

At the same time, keep an eye on changes in story creation and magazine-related markets, and continue to provide occasional guidance and supervision.

However, Zhu Jianxuan’s main energy has shifted away from arts-related industries and returned to scientific research.

First, implement the Internet and wireless communication related technologies, and try to cover Shuntian Prefecture and surrounding areas, and then gradually expand to the Bohai Rim area and even the Ming Dynasty mainland.

Continue to research and upgrade optical communication technology, photolithography machines and semiconductor process technology, and continue to improve network communication speed and computer performance.

We began to explore and develop global satellite positioning technology, nuclear power plants and nuclear-powered ship power systems, etc.

At the same time, he arranged practical training tasks for his sons according to the time nodes he planned, and assigned main business industries to his sons who had basically completed the training.

In the second half of the 37th year of Tiangong, the third batch of fifteen princes, who had been busy in Africa for two years, were recalled to Shuntian Prefecture by Zhu Jianxuan.

Arrange for them to establish an African energy company, starting with the Congo River Integrated Water Conservancy Project in Africa, to control and develop water conservancy project construction, electric power and electrolytic aluminum industry.

Just like the treatment of the previous two batches of thirty brothers, in the future they will be able to invest and operate related industries globally and have the opportunity to obtain one-third of the equity.

Then came the fourth batch of fifteen princes, who were first arranged by Zhu Jianxuan to go to Johor Province to be in charge of the management of the Malay Peninsula and the Strait of Malacca.

After two years of training in gateway operations in the South China Sea, he was transferred to Tunisia to take charge of affairs around the West Sea (Mediterranean Sea). Two years later, they were authorized to establish the West Sea Shipping Group.

Starting from around the Mediterranean Sea, we developed channel dredging, port construction, shipbuilding industry, re-export trade, and ocean freight industry.

The fifth batch of princes completed their internship in the provincial government in Zhejiang, and then went to India to preside over the affairs of India and Persia, and then authorized them to form an Indian Materials Company.

Make use of the relatively abundant cheap labor resources in India to develop various labor-intensive industries and light industries that are the basis of people’s livelihood.

Including food, wine, sugar and tea, textiles, clothing, shoes and socks, accessories, tools, toys, etc.

The technological content of these industries is relatively low, so they are specifically authorized and required to devote additional energy to research and development in the petrochemical industry.

Using Persian Gulf oil as raw material, it produces mineral oils, various plastics, chemical fibers, packaging materials, etc.

Start organizing and building the organization in India, and then operate globally.

By the time the fifth batch of princes were sent out, it was already the forty-seventh year of Tiangong, and Zhu Jianxuan was seventy years old.

In the past ten years, construction tasks in all aspects of the Ming Dynasty have continued to proceed step by step.

The related projects of the Glacier River were finally completed. The rainwater in central and western Siberia no longer entered the Arctic Ocean, but gathered on the Siberian plains to form a huge and icy super artificial lake.

The total area of ​​this artificial lake is over 700,000 square kilometers, which is twice as large as the Caspian Sea, the largest lake on Earth, and slightly larger than the total area of ​​the four provinces of Shanhe.

However, the Western Siberia region was originally a huge plain. Although the surrounding area is surrounded by low mountains, the altitude difference is actually very small.

The deepest part of the lake is actually only more than 30 meters, and most places are only a dozen meters.

(Schematic diagram of the approximate route of the Glacier River Project, with the small picture showing lakes and rivers during the Ice Age.)
The large glacial lakes in West Siberia that existed during the Ice Age have basically recovered. When the lakes are full, they flow along the Turgay lowlands into the Central Asian steppes.

The river remains left over from ancient times also quickly recovered.

(Turgai lowlands, remains of ancient glacial rivers.)
The glacial river continued to flow southward along the ancient river channel, and when it approached the Aral Sea, it entered an artificial river channel.

The current Aral Sea is a saltwater lake. If the glacial rivers were allowed to flow into the Aral Sea, the salinity of the river water flowing out from the lower reaches of the Aral Sea would increase significantly and would no longer be able to be used directly for irrigation and animal husbandry.

Therefore, the course of the glacial river has to bypass the Aral Sea.

The Great River Project also blocked other rivers that flow into the Aral Sea, including the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, the most important in Central Asia. Now the water source of the Aral Sea has been completely cut off.

In the future, the water in the Aral Sea will evaporate rapidly or even dry up, eventually leaving behind a huge pickled basin.

The Ming Dynasty’s official industrial group and the Royal Industrial Group invested separately and built several large salt fields and refineries around the Aral Sea, and built salt fields near the lakeshore to dry salt.

After the salt fields have been in operation for a period of time and the salt left by the seawater has been extracted, fresh water will be introduced from the glaciers and rivers to form a reservoir with a certain salinity. In the future, the Aral Sea area will gradually become a salt field and aquaculture farms, and the scope of the aquaculture farms and salt fields will be determined by the salt content of the local land.

The glacial river continued to flow southward with the remaining water of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers and entered the ancient river channel on the Turan Plain.

In the central and western parts of the Turan Plain it turns southwest and then flows into the southeastern part of the Caspian Sea.

Government-owned and royal investment companies will dig irrigation canals on the Turan Plain near the Caspian Sea, using fresh water from glacial rivers to build cities, factories and farms.

Bring together the scattered nomadic tribes of the steppes and settle them in cities and farms around the great glacial rivers.

At the same time, the simple canal between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea was basically completed after more than ten years of construction, and the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea were finally connected.

Since the water level of the Caspian Sea is more than 20 meters lower than sea level, the water from the Black Sea began to flow into the Caspian Sea rapidly after the canal was opened.

The level of the Caspian Sea rose rapidly, and the simple canal was eroded and expanded by the huge water flow, becoming deeper and wider.

This backflow of seawater will not stop until the level of the Caspian Sea is the same as the sea level.

By then, the Caspian Sea will expand its area by tens of thousands of square kilometers again, submerging a large amount of desert sand and grassland in the north of the Caspian Sea.

The local residents have been relocated to the black and white north shore or the banks of the glacial river.

The glacial river originating from the Mongolian Plateau will successively pass through the North Sea (Lake Baikal), Siberian Lakes, the Aral Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, and the Western Sea (Mediterranean Sea).

Theoretically, it eventually flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s just that the middle and lower reaches of the glacial river are all arid areas. Whether it is agricultural development or industrial and urban construction, they all rely on the water provided by this river.

There is still a lot of water flowing into the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, but it will definitely become less and less in the future.

In addition, the areas of the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and the Western Sea are large enough that the impact of the injection of water from glacial rivers is not obvious, and it is difficult to observe directly now and in the future.

The impact of the glaciers and rivers on the interior of the Shen’ou continent is unprecedented.

The waterway from the North Sea to the West Sea has been fully opened, and there is a super artery inside the Shen’ou Continent.

In the future, both sides of the canal will become natural gathering places for inland residents and will also become an important tool for the Ming Dynasty to control the inland.

If you want a better life, you have to live by the river and accept the jurisdiction of the Ming Dynasty.

At the same time, the Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project, the Congo River Water Conservancy Project, and several large-scale water conservancy projects in Linzhou have also been completed in recent years.

Several large reservoirs on the Three Gorges are sufficient to store the runoff from the upper reaches for more than half a year.

When there is too much rainfall in Hubei and the following areas, several dams of the Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project can directly close the gates and stop the water supply.

Let the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River focus on resolving local floods.

After the completion of the Three Gorges Project, the frequent floods and droughts that had plagued Hubei for thousands of years were basically eradicated.

The several dams on the Congo River have become the largest power supply base on the west coast of Africa, and various industrial industries have begun to converge in the middle and lower reaches of the Congo River.

The industrial and commercial center in the central west coast of Africa has basically taken shape.

In terms of cutting-edge technology, under the direct promotion of Zhu Jianxuan, the semiconductor industry has developed rapidly for another ten years.

Now it is close to the first generation Pentium 586 processor, has an independent dedicated display chip, and has a very mature mechanical hard drive.

The personal computers available to the wealthy class in the Ming Dynasty were very similar to those in the 1990s in Zhu Jianxuan’s previous life.

However, due to Zhu Jianxuan’s special arrangement, the processor of Ming Dynasty’s general-purpose computers has directly entered the 64-bit era.

At the same time, in order to match the size of the character table that stores most Chinese characters, the length of a byte in the Ming Dynasty is sixteen bits instead of eight bits in the previous life.

There are 65536 positions in a byte, and the minimum table range in various computer programs is also 65536.

Rather than the 255 positions that an octet computer would have.

In some of the most developed places in the world, including the Bohai Rim region, the border areas of Hebei, Shandong and Henan, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the Pearl River Delta region, civilian Internet communications have been basically popularized.

Similar to the GSM or 2G era mobile phone communication network, it now basically covers the core areas of the Ming Dynasty.

From the age of sixty, Zhu Jianxuan, although still fertile, no longer gave birth on a regular basis, and no longer took in new concubines into his harem.

Only when he was really in the mood would he interact with the concubines in the harem.

In the ten years from the age of 60 to 70, Zhu Jianxuan gave birth to a total of eight children, six of whom were born before the age of 65, and two after the age of 65.

Zhu Jianxuan now has a total of 163 sons, and a slightly fewer 136 daughters.

The total number of children is 299.

In fact, many years ago, when Zhu Jianxuan was in his middle age, ordinary people and even court officials were surprised that Zhu Jianxuan had so many children.

At the same time, many people felt that since Zhu Jianxuan had so many children, he must be particularly indulgent and must have visited his concubines every night.

It may even be necessary to have multiple children at once, otherwise it would be impossible to give birth to so many children.

After so many years of hard work, your body should have been ruined long ago.

But their guesses did not come true. Zhu Jianxuan is now seventy years old and is in good mental and physical condition.

The fact that she could still give birth to a child at the age of almost seventy made everyone numb with astonishment.

In fact, the real reason is that Zhu Jianxuan takes good care of his body. Not only does he maintain daily physical exercise, but he also has a very regular lifestyle and has almost never indulged in his desires.

Even when he was young, he only had sex with concubines four times a month, and after he turned fifty, the number dropped to twice.

After the age of 60, it is no longer regular, and may not occur once a month.

It’s just that before he was sixty years old, Zhu Jianxuan would only have sex with concubines who were in the pregnancy period, so the probability of concubines getting pregnant was much higher than that of just whim.

(End of this chapter)