老屋张忠代表作品——

安庆，打开中国机器时代的

大门（报告文学/8200字）

作者：老屋张忠

The representative works of Zhang Zhong from the Old House.

Anqing, Opening the Door to China's Machine Age (Reportage/8,200 words)
Author: Zhang Zhong, Lao Wu

Introduction: The "Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot" - the administrative office of the ordnance depot was near the waterway section of Yanjiang Road at the East Gate of Anqing City (near Anqing Customs). Inside the depot, a machine bureau, a gunpowder bureau, a settlement bureau, a grain and rice bureau, and a department store tax bureau were established. Besides the above-mentioned bureaus, the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot also had three handicraft workshops (factories). One was at the West Gate of Anqing City, the old dyeing and weaving factory on Dekuan Road, and its name at that time was "Steamship Factory"; one was at the East Gate, the construction site between the First Primary School of Renmin Road and the office building of Yingjiang District Government which had just been demolished, and its name at that time was "Gunpowder Factory"; the other was at the North Gate, Nanzhuangling, and its name at that time was "Cannon Field".

Why is it said that "Anqing is the city that opened the door to China's modern industry"? My main view comes from an academic work - "Cities along the Yangtze River and China's Modernization" (edited by Zhang Zhongli, Xiong Yuezhi and Shen Zuwnei). By extracting the essence of this book, you can understand that cities along the Yangtze River were the pioneering areas of China's modernization (page 38), and Anqing was China's earliest scientific research institution (page 710). Note: the word "earliest" here does not carry the conjunction "one of". The earliest is the earliest, so the object expressed by the phrase "Anqing earliest..." is unique! During the process of "Cities along the Yangtze River and China's Modernization" as a key scientific research project, more than 100 well-known domestic scholars participated. In addition, those who participated in its academic discussions or provided materials included someone from the East Asia Institute of the University of California, Berkeley, someone from the History Department of the University of California, someone from the History Department of Cornell University, someone from the Fairbank East Asia Institute of Harvard University, someone from the University of Louisville, someone from the Western University of the United States, someone from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, someone from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, someone from the University of Tokyo in Japan, someone from the University of Niigata, someone from the French Academy of Social Sciences, an Australian professor, someone from the Institute of Modern History of Taiwan, someone from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and some scholars who studied in the United States and Japan. In this academic work, a large number of modern historical facts of Anqing were discussed, such as Anqing's industrial scientific research, treaty ports, guild halls and commercial shops, Anhui University (Anqing), etc. The modern scientific research figures Hua Hengfang and Xu Shou mentioned in my article were described on pages 671, 682 and other pages of this book.

In addition, this article also refers to another large-scale work "The Development History of Chinese Capitalism" (edited by Xu Dixin and Wu Chengming); Volume I: "The Germination of Chinese Capitalism"; Volume II: "Chinese Capitalism during the Old Democratic Revolution Period"; "The first Westernization military industry, that is, the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot in 1861" on pages 30 and 339; Hua Hengfang and Xu Shou... on pages 340 to 342 and so on. To sum up, my view is not groundless. It is reasonable and well-founded! Just as the sentence at the beginning: Friends, I hope you can understand modern Anqing and get to know Anqing a hundred years ago.

1.1. The Hunan Army Entered Anhui and Zeng Guofan Founded the Ordnance Depot
"Oh my god! Zeng Guofan is here! It's amazing! It's incredible!" The older generation of Anqing citizens said so in the authentic Anqing dialect. It was really amazing! On September 11, 1861, on the 6th day after the Hunan Army captured Anqing City, Zeng Guofan led his group of people and drifted mightily from the Dongliujiangmen Camp to Anqing, the provincial capital of Anhui. But see "flags covering the sun, thousands of sails standing in solemn silence", along the Salt River (Wanhekou) outside the West Gate of Anqing until the Changfeng Port 20 miles away, meandering down - there were boats everywhere, big and small! Even the ten-mile Yanchah on the opposite bank was full of masts: this was the Hunan Navy, known as the 10th Battalion in modern history. Such a vast number of people, looking around, there was not a single iron ship of their own (of course, the ironclads of the foreigners were not counted); listening carefully, there was not a sound of a machine motor... Although the war was won, Zeng Guofan was worried. After landing, he settled in the former Taiping Army yamen on Daobashi Street in Anqing. "The magpie's nest is occupied by the dove, this is the law of nature." This elegant big shot changed this mansion into the governor's office and lived there contentedly.

We know that in the 1850s, Zeng Guofan led the Hunan Army down the river and fought a fierce battle with the Taiping Army at the mouth of Poyang Lake, repeatedly seesawing and almost in a stalemate, and the Hunan Army pointed directly at Xiaogushan, the mainstay of the Anqing River. Hukou is the dividing line between the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. At that time, Anqing was not only the capital and the first important town of Anhui, but also the primary military barrier of the 800-li Wanjiang River; more importantly, it was at the entrance of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and was the natural gateway of major cities and a series of important towns such as Nanjing and Shanghai in the lower reaches. The so-called "Anqing is safe, then Anhui is safe; Anhui is safe, then Nanjing is safe; Nanjing is safe, then the world is safe". Based on this strategic thought, Zeng Guofan first chose Anqing in China as the earliest military-industrial scientific research base, and the first consideration was military needs.

After settling down, Zeng Guofan began to consider and start to prepare for the establishment of the machine bureau. In Anqing, the general headquarters of the Hunan Army, Zeng Guofan drew up four plans: continue to organize the militia, build machine ships, make guns and guns, and make gunpowder. Soon, he ordered his subordinates in the "Two Rivers" (governor) to seek for clever and capable people. Soon, Xue Huan, the governor of Jiangsu, found Xu Shou and Hua Hengfang from Jinkui, Changzhou (now Wuxi, Jiangsu) and sent them to the governor's office in Anqing Wangfu in November. At first, they worked in the preparatory bureau as Zeng Guofan's aides, and soon, they were officially appointed Ding Zhongwen (Ding Jie), a probationary official, as the commissioner in charge of casting gunpowder bureau's foreign-made bombs, and Cai Guoxiang, the admiral of the Hunan Navy's patrol lake battalion, as the commissioner in charge of building steamships. The main goal and task of the preparatory bureau and the factory was to produce gunpowder, bombs, mountain-splitting guns, bullets and small steamships.

In January 1862, Zeng Guofan officially named the bureau prepared last year as "Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot", and the administrative office of the ordnance depot was 15 meters north of the waterway section of Yanjiang Road at the East Gate of Anqing City. Inside the depot, a machine bureau, a gunpowder bureau, a settlement bureau, a grain and rice bureau, and a department store tax bureau were established. The first few bureaus were specially for the production and logistics services of the Inner Ordnance Depot, and the latter "Department Store Tax Bureau" was set up to raise funds for the establishment of the depot. It extracted a certain proportion of taxes from the merchants and citizens in the provincial capital and the passing merchant ships on the Yangtze River. The supervisors of the bureau were successively Peng Yulin and Li Xuyi, Zeng Guofan's fellow villagers in Hunan and the "top leaders" of Anhui at that time. Three months later, in the early spring of 1862, China's first steam engine was successfully developed in the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot!

The successful trial production of the machine was like installing a pacemaker for the disordered heart. Looking at the sails all over the river and the wooden boats pulled by the boat trackers, Zeng Guofan seemed to feel that the river was still, and the boats, big and small, were as slow as snails. Were they moving forward? Were they moving backward? Why were they so slow? What were they lacking? Right, power! What they lacked was exactly the power of the "reciprocating steam engine" just developed! The boats, big and small, all over the river were saved, and China's slow-moving big ship had hope! After all, it was the first steam engine designed and manufactured by the Chinese themselves! Next, Xu Shou and Hua Hengfang appeared again. With the full support of Zeng Guofan, they led hundreds of Chinese experts and skilled craftsmen in mathematics, machinery, astronomy, law, economy, chemical engineering and other fields in the shogunate and began the next round of tackling the problem of trial production of steamships. It can be said that in Anqing City, where the smoke of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom battlefield had not yet dissipated, China's machine age had arrived!

2.2. The Historical Origin of the Inventors and Manufacturers
Everything has its origin. Just as the surging river water flows through Anqing and flows to Nanjing and Shanghai. Zeng Guofan became the source of the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot as the founder, and Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang became the source of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau (now Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard) as the co-founders. Zeng found the technical experts Xu Shou and Hua Hengfang in Anqing for the first time, and found Rong Hong, the first Chinese student studying abroad, in Anqing for the second time. The scientific research achievements of Xu Shou and Hua Hengfang were the invention and manufacture of China's first steam engine and the first wooden-hulled steamship in Anqing; Rong Hong's pioneering achievement was to persuade the court and personally send the first batch of Chinese students studying abroad and purchase the first batch of imported machines for the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau through Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Ding Richang, and Li Hongzhang mobilized the first batch of domestic facilities for the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau.

Earlier, Xu, Hua and Rong met in the intellectual circles of Shanghai. Later, the three of them worked together in the expert group of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau. Rong Hong spread the new trend overseas to Anqing, and Xu and Hua brought the Anhui style and water of Anqing to Shanghai. The Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot and the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau formed a relationship of "invention" and "manufacture" that was interlinked, interactive and causal. Following the footsteps of Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, along the long river of history, we began to sort out the origin relationship between them.

Let's look at the historical records: On January 13, 1859, Li Hongzhang was recruited into the shogunate by Zeng Guofan with the title of judicial commissioner. On November 20, 1861, the Qing court ordered Zeng Guofan to command the military affairs of Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces, and all the civil and military officials below the governors and admirals were subject to his control. The following year, he was appointed as the assistant grand secretary. In December, Zeng Guofan recruited the militia in northern Anhui based on the local militia of Li Hongzhang in Huaibei and appointed Zhang Shusheng and Pan Dingxin, the deputy magistrates, Wu Changqing, the garrison commander, and Liu Mingchuan, the thousand-man commander, to lead the "Shu", "Ding", "Qing" and "Ming" battalions.

From February 22 to March 4, 1862, Li Hongzhang formally established the organizational system of the Huai Army in Anqing City on this basis, and Zeng Guofan formulated the battalion system for the Huai Army, completely imitating the regulations of the Hunan Army.

On April 6, 1862, Li Hongzhang led the Huai Army and a part of the Hunan Army and set off from Anqing and went to Shanghai by steamship to support.

On August 13, 1863, Rong Hong, a graduate student studying in the United States, was invited by Zeng Guofan to Anqing and was appointed as the overseas commissioner and was awarded the fifth-class military merit title.

In the early spring of 1864, Rong Hong arrived in the United States and purchased more than 100 kinds of machines for the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau; in October, Rong Hong was awarded the fifth-class probationary magistrate title by the Qing government and served as the translator in the office of the Jiangsu Provincial Administration Commissioner.

On July 27, 1864, the Qing court rewarded Zeng Guofan with the title of Grand Guardian of the Crown Prince and bestowed the first-class marquis title in the name of the Hunan Army capturing the capital Nanjing of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

On December 12, 1866, the Qing court ordered Zeng Guofan to return to his original post as the governor of the Two Rivers and Li Hongzhang to act as the imperial envoy.

On August 27, 1868, the Qing court bestowed the title of Grand Guardian of the Crown Prince on Li Hongzhang and ordered him to hold the post of governor of Huguang and assistant grand secretary. In the same year, Rong Hong's proposal to establish a mechanical school attached to the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau was approved.

On September 6, 1868, the Qing court transferred Zeng Guofan to be the governor of Zhili and the Beiyang Minister.

On September 30, 1970, Zeng Guofan returned to his post as the governor of the Two Rivers again and Li Hongzhang as the governor of Zhili.

On March 12, 1872, Zeng Guofan died of illness in the office of the governor of the Two Rivers.

3.3. Historical Details: The Maiden Voyage of the Self-made Steam Engine
From 1861 to 1864, Zeng Guofan founded the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot in Anhui Province. It was not until 1865 that the Jiangnan Machine Manufacturing Bureau was established in Shanghai. The Hongkou Concession was its former site, and its co-founders were Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang. Its senior management institutions consisted of supervisors, general managers, assistant managers, chief supervisors and admirals, while its middle and lower levels were composed of commissioners, clerks, inspectors, supervisors and defense battalions. The former general managers included Ding Richang, Shen Baojing, Nie Jiguang, Gong Zhaoyuan and Liu Qixiang.
The Jiangnan Machine Manufacturing Bureau was the largest military factory among the 19 military industries established by the Westernization Movement in modern times. It had three production tasks at that time: guns and gunpowder, shipbuilding and machine parts. It was the ancestor of today's Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard and also a base for the development of modern industry. In Rong Hong's words, it was a "mother factory" for manufacturing various machines. And the development of industry cannot be separated from scientific and technological research and talent development. So, where was the earliest scientific research institution in modern times? Where did the modern industrial science and technology talents absorbed by the Westernization Movement first appear?
From the early 1860s to the end of the 1890s, the ministers of the Westernization Movement and the governors of various provinces founded numerous military-industrial enterprises in 30 years. With Anqing as the pioneer and the Hunan and Huai main forces as the starting point, they advanced like a surging torrent, flowing rapidly! Across the whole country, from north to south, it was really like pulling one river and moving the whole nation! Therefore, more than 140 years later (counting from 1861), the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences gathered the efforts of dozens of experts and scholars to explore modern great undertakings and completed the key project of the national "Ninth Five-Year" Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning: "Cities along the Yangtze River and China's Modernization". One of its research results was: "Cities along the Yangtze River were the pioneering areas of China's modernization, and Anqing was the location of China's earliest scientific research institution - the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot".
At that time, in addition to the above-mentioned bureaus, the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot also had three handicraft workshops (factories). One was at the West Gate of Anqing City, the old dyeing and weaving factory on Dekuan Road (Steamship Factory); one was at the East Gate, between the now-demolished No.1 Primary School of Renmin Road and the office building of Yingjiang District Government (Gunpowder Factory); and the other was at the North Gate, Nanzhuangling (Cannon Field). All the factories operated under the guidance of technical experts such as Hua Hengfang, Xu Shou, Wu Jialian, Gong Yuntang and Xu Jianyin. While trial-producing steamships, the "Zuo Pishan Cannon" (also known as the Western flowering cannon and the watermelon cannon) had been successfully developed. It could "fire flowering shells, or bombs, and explode in the air".
According to the research of Qian Gang, a scholar at Shanghai University, and Hu Jingcao, a director of CCTV and a visiting scholar at Harvard University, "the 'watermelon cannon' (made in Anqing) at that time was equivalent to today's missiles in terms of its role in national defense", which showed its great power. Huang Rutong, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also wrote that in the early Opium War, Lin Zexu and his gunsmith Ding Gongchen had manually made iron (copper) guns, but they were all solid bullets. Only the guns made by the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot were muzzle-loading guns, which could also be cast by manual sand casting, with the same power as before.
The guns were made, and ordinary guns and gunpowder were also available. What was Zeng Guofan, who was eager to deal with the Taiping Army in Nanjing, still lacking?
Ships! Troop transport ships with advanced machine power! Well, unable to wait any longer, Li Hongzhang couldn't wait to rent foreign ships and left Anqing for Shanghai first. Zeng and Li agreed to use the navies of the Hunan and Huai Armies to attack the Taiping Army in Nanjing from both sides. At this time, for both military sides, having a batch of fast ships with power was more important than anything else. Let's see how the first Chinese-made steamship was trial-sailed on the Anqing River. It was recorded in the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" stored in the Chinese Historical Archives, but it was difficult and obscure to read. So let's quote the creative and elegant writing of Qian Gang and Hu Jingcao: "One day in the early spring of 1864, Zeng Guofan boarded a ship on the cold bank of the Yangtze River in Anqing. This ship was about nine meters long, with large wheels installed on both sides. It was a 'paddle-wheel ship' developed by the experts under Zeng Guofan... With his support, the speed at which the Chinese learned from the West to manufacture 'strong ships and powerful guns' was astonishing: Just a year and a half ago, Zeng Guofan had just watched with great interest the test run of the self-made steam engine - the first steam engine developed by his experts was made of zinc alloy, with a cylinder diameter of 1.7 inches and the engine rotating 240 times per minute. Soon, this model steam engine was installed on a three-foot-long wooden boat. It was more like a model ship than a real ship. It took the experts only one year to go from the model ship to the real ship. In November 1863, a screw-propeller steamship was tested. Although it only traveled one kilometer before it stalled, this was the real maiden voyage of the Chinese self-made steamship" ( "The Chinese Educational Mission").
Earlier, when Xu Shou and Hua Hengfang were visiting and studying in Shanghai, they met Rong Hong, who had returned to China after studying in the United States for eight years and was temporarily staying in Shanghai. Later, when Xu and Hua were working for Zeng Guofan in Anqing, they became colleagues and close friends with a large number of scientific and technological elites such as Zhang Sigui and Li Shanlan. Soon, Rong Hong was introduced to Zeng Guofan by them. In June 1863, Rong Hong was busy with the tea business in the Jiujiang tea market, but he successively received five letters from Zhang Sigui and Li Shanlan, asking him to end the tea business as soon as possible and rush to Anqing to discuss with Mr. Xu, Mr. Hua and friends in the scientific and technological community the important matter of researching and manufacturing machines for China's modern industry. In September of that year, Zeng Guofan, who was eager to introduce talents, met this Yale University graduate in the Anqing office. Governor Zeng decided to accept the scholar's advice: to set up a Western-style machine factory. Because the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot was completely produced by hand, without mechanical power and without hiring foreigners, it was difficult to make breakthroughs in high-tech and was not suitable for the urgent military needs on the front line where the war was raging. A few days later, Governor Zeng met Rong Hong again. Rong Hong put forward a bold idea: In China, to build machines, we should first set up a "mother factory for manufacturing machines", which was not only for manufacturing guns, but also could be used to manufacture other mechanical things such as farm tools and clocks. After careful consideration, Zeng Guofan agreed to allocate 68,000 taels of silver in advance, gave Rong Hong full authority, and sent him to the United States to buy foreign machines. The war was still going on in the front, and the war situation was getting tighter day by day.
On March 2, 1864, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang joined forces to besiege Nanjing. On July 19, Nanjing fell, and the Huai and Hunan Armies poured into the city. On the 9th day after the city was captured, Zeng Guofan left Anqing by a foreign ship and came to Nanjing. Soon, the three handicraft factories of the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot (the gunpowder factory at the East Gate, the shipyard at the West Gate, and the cannon factory at Tong'anling outside the North Gate) were successively moved to Nanjing. The shipyard was moved to Xiaguan, Nanjing. Xu Shou and Hua Hengfang continued to enlarge and test-build on the ship model in Anqing. After nearly two years of repeated trial voyages, they achieved success again! Zeng Guofan named the ship "Huanghu". And that was in April 1866.

4.4. From the "Huanghu" to Li Hongzhang's Preparation for the Establishment of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau
In the past two decades, experts and scholars across the country and in the local area have made in-depth progress in the research on the national industry. Questions like "Where exactly was the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot located in Anqing City?" and "Where was the 'Huanghu' launched?" have been discussed with great interest by scholars, and long debates have been triggered. They each cited classics and had their own views.
Regarding this, Yu Pei, the deputy director of the Institute of History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a doctoral supervisor at Beijing Normal University, once made a brilliant statement: "Nowadays, the era of excavating and accumulating historical materials has passed. What we should do now is to interpret, analyze and understand historical materials. The task of history is to constantly raise questions and answer them. Historical materials are just there, and they convey a kind of information. One hundred people may have one hundred understandings. If our knowledge structure is complete, our understanding will be absolutely different from that of a person with an incomplete knowledge structure."
More than 140 years ago, the "Huanghu" was launched in Nanjing, which had important practical significance.
We know that everything has its origin. Where does the Yangtze River water flowing through the Zhenfeng Pagoda in Anqing come from? It comes from the snow-capped plateau. It was precisely because of the first steamship model developed by the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot that there was the later "Huanghu", then the Jinling Manufacturing Bureau (Nanjing), and then the Jiangnan Shipyard (Shanghai), and then China's modern machine industry. This means that Anqing was the pioneer of modern industry and the first to open the door to China's modern machine age.
Based on this, the author believes that the "Huanghu" was the name of the first steamship made by the Chinese themselves. It was reported by the "North China Herald" at that time. From 1861 to 1866, it was invented and trial-produced by the modern scientific research elites of our country led by Zeng Guofan in the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot and was built and launched in Xiaguan, Nanjing. Its invention and construction marked the advent of a machine age for the Chinese nation. Although the "Huanghu" was important, what was more important was the "scientific research activities and achievements" of that year, that is, the inventions and creations of the Chinese nation. In the words of factory manufacturers, it (the "Huanghu") was just a finished product, and its inventors were the scientists of the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot, and its invention base was in the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot. Its predecessor was a three-foot-long "screw-propeller ship" in November 1863. After that, a nine-meter-long "paddle-wheel ship" was trial-produced in the early spring of 1864 - this was the first steam engine wooden-hulled ship in China (please note that one view is that it was a steamship with sails, and another view is that it was a steamship without sails). It was precisely because of the previous two screw-propeller and paddle-wheel ships in the stage of invention and creation (the author tends to the view that there were sails) that there was the later "Huanghu" (the author tends to the view that there were no sails) as a finished ship in April 1866, at Xiaguan, Nanjing... Later, it was the Shanghai Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau (Jiangnan Shipyard) prepared by Li Hongzhang.
Let's look back at Li Hongzhang. In 1862, after Li Hongzhang led the Huai Army to Shanghai, he began to buy munitions from foreign merchants. In 1864, Li Hongzhang spent 40,000 taels of silver to buy the Thos. Hunt & Co. Iron Works run by an American named Cole in Hongkou, and incorporated the two foreign gun bureaus under the supervision of Ding Richang, the Taotai of Suzhou, Songjiang and Taicang, and Han Dianjia, the deputy general. Together with the purchase of foreign machines, a total of 543,000 taels of silver was spent, and the Jiangnan Manufacturing General Bureau was established in 1865. Soon, more than 100 machines bought by Rong Hong from the United States were shipped to Shanghai and were also allocated to the General Bureau. Ding Richang served as the general manager concurrently, Han Dianjia served as the deputy manager, Feng Jun Guang served as the assistant manager, and the American Cole served as the chief supervisor. Many foreigners were hired as management and technical personnel for each branch factory with high salaries ranging from one hundred to several hundred silver dollars per month.
In 1867, Li Hongzhang moved the Shanghai Hongkou Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau to Gaochangmiao. The new factory covered an area of more than 70 mu and had a woodworking factory, a wrought iron factory, a cast iron factory, a machine factory, a steam boiler factory, a rocket factory, a foreign gun building and so on. In July 1868, the first wooden paddle-wheel steamship "Tianji" was built. On the day of the trial voyage, the ship flew the Yellow Dragon Flag and sailed outside Wusongkou. Zeng Guofan personally boarded the ship and sailed to the Caishiji in Ma'anshan. It could travel more than 70 li per hour upstream and 120 li per hour downstream. After testing, the ship was 56.39 meters long, 8.28 meters wide, with a draft of 2.44 meters, a displacement of 600 tons and a power of 392 horsepower.
In May 1869, the Jiangnan Shipyard also built the first screw-propeller steamship "Caojiang". In 1872, the Jiangnan Shipyard built the huge "Haiyan" warship at that time. It was 91.44 meters long, 12.8 meters wide, with a draft of 3.66 meters, a displacement of 3800 tons, a horsepower of 800, a speed of 12 knots, equipped with 26 guns and could carry 500 soldiers.

5.5. The Inscription on the First Milestone of China's Modern Machine Age: The "History of the Development of Chinese Capitalism" edited by the famous Chinese economist Xu Dixin listed the development sequence of various cities in China's modern machine age in a chronology. From it, we can see that the 36-year-long China's modern machine age (from 1861 to 1897, which is commonly known as the "Westernization Movement Military Industry Period" by historians) came. It covered 19 of the most developed regions and advanced cities in the country. And in the chronology of the "Modern Machine Age", "Anqing" was ranked first. That is to say, the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot took the lead in China's modern machine age as a pioneer. The birth of the "Huanghu" marked that the research results of Anqing scientists took root and spread in Nanjing, Shanghai and even the whole country. The regional culture of Anqing (that is, the Wanjiang culture) flowed along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River to the sea and spread throughout modern China. The historical naming of the "Huanghu" was an important historical milestone for the spread of both the Wanjiang regional culture and the Yangtze River industrial civilization in modern China.

Speaking of this, I think what readers are most concerned about are Rong Hong, who bought foreign machines and returned to China, and Xu Shou and Hua Hengfang who were still in Nanjing. What were their later whereabouts and fates? Here, I will briefly introduce what I know: The birth and death years of Rong Hong, Xu Shou and Hua Hengfang were 1828 - 1912, 1818 - 1884 and 1833 - 1902 respectively. At first, the three of them worked hard for Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang in setting up bureaus (institutes). Soon, there were new changes. In 1867, Rong Hong suggested to the Qing government through Ding Richang, the governor of Jiangsu, that a joint-venture steamship company should be organized and students should be sent to study in the United States. Borrowing the words of Xu Fei, a doctoral supervisor at the University of Science and Technology of China and a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Rong Hong was "the first Chinese student studying in the United States and became a successful student in modern Chinese history... In 1872, Rong Hong was appointed as the deputy supervisor of the 'Bureau for Selecting and Sending Young Children to Study Abroad' and was responsible for recruiting the first batch of 30 young children... This was the famous 'Chinese Educational Mission' in history - a historical miracle almost entirely created by Rong Hong's personal efforts."

Going back to 1868, when the Translation Library of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau was established, Xu Shou, Xu Jianyin (father and son) and Hua Hengfang, together with five British and American scientific and technological personnel, were hired as translators in the Translation Library. Forty years later, through the joint efforts of Chinese and foreign personnel such as Xu and Hua, a total of more than 160 Western books were translated. Some of the popular translated works had a great impact on later generations. The Translation Library of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau where Xu and Hua worked was the largest official translation institution in China in the late Qing Dynasty. Eventually, Xu and Hua became erudite and versatile translation scholars. Rong Hong, however, became a wanted criminal by the Qing government after returning to China because of his radical ideas and participation in the Reform Movement of 1898. He had to flee to the United States again at the age of 74 and died in the United States on April 21, 1912, at the age of 84. What a pity! Such a talented person was rejected by his country just because he was reform-minded and patriotic. Alas! A wanderer in a foreign land, his soul was lost on the other side of the ocean. Sadly, Empress Dowager Cixi held all the power, the old ministers were muddle-headed, the Qing Dynasty was declining rapidly, and the ruling class was becoming increasingly decadent. Rong Hong's tragic ending was the sorrow of the old era.

The development from the Anqing Inner Ordnance Depot to the Shanghai Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau was a turning point in the improvement of China's industrial productivity in modern times. The new machine factories under mechanized and semi-mechanized operations replaced the original heavy and clumsy handicraft workshops. The Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau erected the first milestone of China's machine age. Of course, the inscription was first carved in Anqing. Because the first steam engine in China was born in Anqing, and the original power of the machine came from the steam engine! Just as Professor Li Xi of Nankai University, a doctoral supervisor, said: "In military industries and civilian enterprises in those days, the most important engine was the steam engine, which was of decisive significance for the development of China's modern industry. Because the application of the steam engine marked the replacement of manual labor by machines, and the entire mechanized production was based on this." This led to the previous argument: Cities along the Yangtze River were the pioneering areas of China's modernization - Anqing was the pioneering city in this pioneering area - the people of Anqing in Zeng Guofan's era were the pioneers of this pioneering era! Truly, the trend of the world is mighty! The great river flows eastward, never ceasing! The source of China's modern machine power originated from Anqing!

*Originally published in "New Weekly" on November 24, 2004 (sponsored by Zhiyin Group / Domestic Unified Serial Number: CN42 - 0071 / Postal Distribution Code: 37 - 18)
Source: China Writers Network https://vip.chinawriter.com.cn/member/Lwzz13866099418/viewarchives_607351.html/2024.03.18

安庆，打开中国机器时代的大门（报告文学/8200字）

作者：老屋张忠