After this planning meeting, the large-scale construction and development work in Taiwan finally began in full swing.

With generous treatment, Li Xiao recruited a large number of surplus laborers from the immigrants, up to more than 30,000 people. These more than 30,000 people were divided into two batches by Li Xiao, one group of 20,000 people to build a cement official road from Taipei to Kaohsiung; the other group of more than 10,000 people were sent to build and expand Kaohsiung City.

Because these two projects are the focus of Taiwan's current construction work, Li Xiao arranged that Ding You, the head of the Tuoqing regiment, was responsible for the construction of the official cement road, while Ma Huaxing, deputy leader, was responsible for the addition of Kaohsiung City.

Due to the large demand for materials, cement factories, brick factories, quarries, lime factories and other factories outside Changhua City are constantly expanding their factories and recruiting workers, and working overtime to produce construction materials day and night.

This official road, which is a landmark building in Taiwan, was named Mingguang Avenue by Li Xiao.

This name was inspired by Li Xiao's famous program in his previous life. Now it seems that this name is very appropriate.

According to Li Xiao's plan, the construction standards of this cement official road must have strict requirements.

First of all, you must first excavate the foundation, at least one and a half feet deep. You must remove the floating soil and soft soil on the foundation and build the roadbed on the hard rock layer below to ensure that after the Mingguang Avenue is repaired, it will not sink easily and can be used for a long time.

After digging the foundation, Li Xiao asked to lay the broken bluestone blocks transported from the quarry first, and lay a layer on the foundation first to reduce water seepage, enhance the bearing capacity of the road, and reduce the amount of bricks used. On both sides of the road, there are bluestone strips customized from the quarry to prevent the edges from being easily damaged.

After laying the bluestone slabs and green strips, the construction workers then lay the broken bluestone with concrete made of cement and river sand, then lay bricks on it, and the uppermost bricks are on the same level as the bluestone strips on both sides.

The final process is to lay a layer of thick concrete on the bricks and bluestone strips, and at the same time, wooden boards are used to separate the concrete layer every ten meters, so as to ensure that the road surface will not easily deform and crack due to thermal expansion and contraction.

In fact, Li Xiao's design plan is equivalent to meeting the standard of a second-class highway connecting urban and rural areas in modern China.

Li Xiao asked the final architectural effect of this cement official road to be wide and straight, easy to drain, and must not be uneven, and the average width must be more than three meters. Even if it is necessary to build a narrow road due to the terrain, the narrowest part must have a width of more than two meters to ensure that the four-wheeled carriage can be at least three rows side by side for transportation.

If you want to be rich, build roads first. Li Xiao believes that after the Mingguang Avenue that runs through the north and south of Taiwan can be repaired, the economic development of the entire Taiwan can truly embark on the fast lane of rapid advancement.

Li Xiao read some road construction information in his previous life, which recorded a 30-kilometer-long urban and rural secondary highway. If a construction team of 30 people is built, the repair time will be 6 months.

However, compared with modern construction, road construction in the Ming Dynasty, it has disadvantages and advantages.

One of the biggest advantages of Li Xiao is that he is the highest decision-maker and can allow his subordinates to quickly implement his decisions. Unlike later generations, from project establishment, approval, on-site assessment, to in-place funding, to bidding and construction, to various construction qualification review, to demolition of original buildings along the line, compensation and resettlement of residents, to preparation of various materials, etc., there are a series of items to be passed. Therefore, Li Xiao basically does not need to consider all these things. In this way, Li Xiao starts construction at least nearly two months earlier than modern times.

Another advantage is that Li Xiao now has rich manpower and a 20,000-person road construction team, which is the number one in the Ming Dynasty. This number has doubled the number of Chinese workers used to build a large railway across the eastern and western United States!

Of course, compared with modern times, Li Xiao’s biggest disadvantage is that he does not have modern construction equipment and can only rely on manpower and animal power. Therefore, his personal construction efficiency is far inferior to that of modern society.

Li Xiao calculated in his mind that after deducting those tedious preparations, in fact, the construction time of the 30-kilometer urban and rural secondary highway was only 4 months. The average monthly construction mileage of each person is 25 kilometers, which is 25 meters.

Then, in the Ming Dynasty, based on the efficiency of 4 people reaching a modern road construction worker, 20,000 people can repair 125 kilometers per month. According to the maximum distance from Taipei to Tainan (the length of the road from Modern Taipei to Tainan is 314 kilometers, but considering that the Ming Dynasty did not have the technology to build tunnels and had to take a detour in order to build as few bridges as possible, the route could only be lengthened), in this case, it would take nearly 3 months to repair it.

Of course, in addition to losing work due to the lack of time in the materials, it takes more time to build arch bridges, and the specific construction time may take another two months. Li Xiao calculated that the entire road could be completed within half a year at the latest.

Next, Li Xiao made requirements for the construction of Kaohsiung City. That is, the entire outer city of Kaohsiung City should be like Changhua City, with all kinds of moats, city wall defense measures, etc. It should be equipped with four city gates in the east, west, south and north. Each city gate should be built without any cost. It is designed to hide a thousand-pound drop. On the four walls, like a urn city, a city tower, a corner tower, a cannon position, a female wall, a stolen stool, etc., all must be fully constructed. The entire outer city must be dug around it, and the Zeng Wenxi River in the north is filled to make it pass by.

In addition, in order to ensure the solidity and defense strength of this No. 1 city in Southeast Asia, Li Xiao required that the inner rammed earth should be the same as the Dutch's method, and all the rammed earth should be pounded and glued with sugar water, glutinous rice, oyster shell, gray sand, so that the strength of the rammed earth will be greatly increased, and then the blue bricks will be wrapped outside, so that the outer city walls can resist any ordinary artillery bombardment.

Finally, Li Xiao made another requirement for the city walls of Kaohsiung City, that is, the four-sided city walls, which are twenty-four miles long, should be designed with a depth of nearly 1 meter in the wall, a height of 6 meter (20 meters) above the surface, and a horse road above the city wall is 2 meter (6 and a half meters) wide, thus greatly strengthening the solidity and actual defense of the city wall.

There is one very important reason why Li Xiao was not afraid of spending money and wanted to build such a costly and solid outer city, that is, he hoped that this built Kaohsiung city would be as the ancient Roman poet Dedecius said in his poem: "Oh, this Roman city on the Seven Hills is so high and majestic that when the Carthaginians saw its advance, they lost the courage to attack."

Li Xiao was convinced that having such a strong and vast city would not only fully demonstrate the demeanor and majesty of the Celestial Empire, but also make businessmen from all over the world more confident in Taiwan's future development and more willing to settle and trade for a long time.

Li Xiao calculated that, taking the Dengzhou City, which had a circumference of 16 miles, as a reference, now there are more than 10,000 construction workers and sufficient materials supply, it should be more than half a year to build the Kaohsiung City, which had a circumference of 24 miles.

As for the money spent on these two tasks, Li Xiao was not worried at all, because the tens of thousands of taels of gold and more than 13 million taels of silver seized from the Dutch, coupled with the huge profits previously obtained by Taiwan through trade, were enough to cover all kinds of expenses for these two major projects.

After listening to Li Xiao's plan and arrangements, Ding You and Ma Huaxing immediately began to implement the two most important and important engineering tasks in Taiwan, namely the paving of Mingguang Avenue and the addition of Kaohsiung Outer City.

When watching the entire Taiwan Island become a busy construction site, Li Xiao and the officials were very happy. Everyone could feel in their hearts that a new era that was completely different from the past and was vigorous and vigorous has been quietly kicked off by Lord Li, who is both resourceful and resourceful.
Chapter completed!