安庆，打开中国机器时代的大门（英语版）
2025-01-02 17:01阅读：
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
