Late Tang Dynasty Floating Life

Chapter 1722 Harvest
If he wanted to share his experience, Zhang Yong would naturally do his part.

Although Wang Heizi was eager to try, he was clumsy and didn't know what the sage cared about most, what to say and what not to say, so after hesitating for a while, he let Zhang Yong take the lead.

"Your Majesty, when I arrived in Baghdad, I sent people to a palace called 'Palace of Wisdom' to ask for books." Zhang Yong said.

"But it was rejected?" Shao Shude asked.

"Yes." Zhang Yong said: "Da Shi is arrogant and rude, ignorant of Da Xia's prestige, arrogant..."

"Okay, don't talk about this." Shao Shude interrupted him, and said: "Get to the point."

"Yes." Zhang Yong was shocked, and immediately saved those slobbery words, and said directly: "I asked to see the court officials later, but I didn't see anyone who meant what he said."

"Did you not consider using money?" Shao Shude asked.

Zhang Yong was a little surprised, as the son of the emperor, he is really pragmatic today, and he doesn't feel that spending money on bribes is disgraceful.

He said: "A lot of money was spent, but most of them were paid but not done."

Shao Shude laughed out loud.

Zhang Yong felt ashamed.Of the three ships on the mission, two were lost on the way, and the last one ran aground on the rocks before entering the port, and then sank. Although a large part of the supplies were recovered, the loss was still not small.That is to say, the funds they can use are actually very limited. If the porcelain, silk, handicrafts, and tea were not sold at a good price, it would be difficult to move forward.

"It's normal to be away from home." Shao Shude said: "The Great Food is also a big country, and it is normal for a wealthy party to have an arrogant attitude. In the early Tang Dynasty, there were Great Food envoys who entered Chang'an, although the history books like to say that they came to Chang'an. Tribute, but is that true? Not necessarily. Even Japan did not come to pay tribute. From their own point of view, it is completely an equal exchange. What happened to you in Baghdad is really ordinary, I know very well .”

Zhang Yong was deeply moved, how difficult it is to meet a reasonable emperor.

This mission really broadened his horizons, at least he knew what outsiders think of Daxia.Otherwise, when studying at home, all you read are things written by foreigners, and your cognition is a bit biased.It's very interesting to compare.

It turns out that Great Xia is not the only kingdom of heaven.

It turns out that there are so many countries and tribes in the world.

It turns out that there are so many wonderful things in the world, foreign countries also have ingenious craftsmen and immortal art.

It turns out that for the same thing, different people have different opinions. Thinking about it carefully, it is not unreasonable.

Stones from other hills, can learn.

When he read this sentence before, Zhang Yong thought he had a deep understanding.But after going out for five years, his understanding is deeper and has entered a very deep level.

Persisting in foreign exchanges is useful and of great use.

"Your Majesty, I have been looking for someone in Baghdad, and it finally reached the ears of Grand Vizier. He ordered the Palace of Wisdom to select [-] books and give them to us." Zhang Yong continued.

"Are these five hundred books transcribed? Are there any errors?" Shao Shude asked.

"It's not a copy." Zhang Yong explained: "There is a book printing office in the Wisdom Palace, which directly printed [-] books and handed them over to us."

Shao Shude nodded.

It seems that the printing industry in Baghdad should be very good.Come to think of it, Wisdom Palace was originally a place for translating and collecting books, and sometimes distributed books to various places in Dashi. It is impossible without a large-scale printing industry, and copying alone is exhausting.

Speaking of which, the gift of [-] books may be done casually, and even a certain town under Dashi’s jurisdiction—such as Saman Persia—asked for books and got more than [-] books.

Thinking of this, Shao Shude had to admit that Dashi is indeed very arrogant!
But if they do this, you can't fight, what can you do?What's more, maybe in the eyes of the rich and powerful in Baghdad, their country is also a kingdom of heaven, and it comes from all directions.

In short, people have no obligation to curry favor with you.

"Later, I found a lot of bookstores in Baghdad, searched around for books, and bought more than a thousand copies. I didn't quite understand them, so I bought them first, and I slowly found someone to translate them. The translation has not been completed yet," Zhang Yong said again. .

He knew that the sage cared most about books, so he chose this one first.

"[-] books, not bad, what are they about?" Shao Shude asked.

"Astronomy, geography, navigation, mathematics, architecture, music and dance are all inclusive. I even bought a dictionary of Dashi, Persian and Turkic." Zhang Yong said.

"Very good." Shao Shude praised.

Zhang Yong was overjoyed when he heard this.

The sage praised "good" first, and then praised "very good", and he knew that he had done the right thing this time, and at this moment he was already very happy.

"What does Wang Qing want to say?" Shao Shude looked at Wang Heizi and asked.

"Before I left, I asked someone to buy that dictionary." Wang Heizi felt that Zhang Yong had finished his sentence, and felt annoyed, so he said, "Before leaving Baghdad, I asked their people to take us to the observatory with money." Turn around."

Shao Shude laughed again.This guy's emotional intelligence fluctuates up and down, which makes people laugh.

"How about the observatory?" he asked.

"I don't quite understand." Wang Heizi said, "However, I think it is very useful and can be used for navigation. There is also a very big thing in the observatory. They are called 'quadrons'. It is too big to be loaded on the ship, so I asked someone to draw a picture again with money, and I can ask someone to make it when I come back.”

Speaking of this, he was slightly proud.

"Oh? Quadrant?" Shao Shude's eyes froze.

Hearing that the name may have something to do with the sextant, a powerful navigational positioning tool, he became interested and immediately said: "Immediately present it to the Shaofu." "As ordered." Wang Heizi said loudly, and after a pause, he said: " Your Majesty, I also copied a star map."

"What is a star map?"

"It's a map of the distribution of stars in the sky." Wang Heizi said: "The observation results of the Wisdom Palace Observatory have been observed all year round. I don't know how it is different from the stars observed by Qin Tianjian, so I copied it down. Maybe we can learn from each other and confirm each other."

"Okay!" Shao Shude's voice raised a lot, and he smiled.

Star charts are essential for sailing.On the vast sea, one can only rely on the stars to distinguish the position, so the accuracy of this thing is very important.Arabs sail in most of the seas of the northern hemisphere and do business everywhere, whether it is Western Europe, East Africa, India, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and North Korea, they go there, and there are few problems.

It can be seen that their star maps are very accurate, which may be an important reason why they dare to sail across the ocean.

In contrast, in China, a merchant ship departing from Mingzhou to Japan was blown by a strong wind and went directly to North Korea. Shao Shude didn’t want to say anything. In the absence of a land reference, once entering the deep sea, the ability to reposition and adjust midway is too poor up.

Even if there are ships that can go to Dashi, they still sail along the offshore and locate by the coast, but the Arabs dare to cross the ocean directly, cross the entire deep sea, and take shortcuts.

The gap in this technical level is not generally large.

"Your Majesty." Wang Heizi said again: "Just having a star map is not enough. I bought some small devices from Dashi. They are still on the road at the moment, and they are all used to measure the stars."

Shao Shude nodded curiously, looking forward to it.

Sea positioning, before the appearance of the sextant, there was a quadrant or a quadrant.This object was invented by Arab navigators and later spread to Europe.Before the Age of Discovery, Europeans miniaturized it, and Columbus used it to locate on the sea at that time.

Before the quadrant, there were actually many measuring tools, which were slowly invented by Arab navigators and improved step by step over hundreds of years.

For example, the star board invented in the Ming Dynasty was already available in Arabia at this time and had been used for a long time. By comparing it with star charts and nautical charts, you can roughly locate it, but it is not accurate.

Later, the Arabs invented the celestial cross instrument, which was more accurate than the star-leading board and had a huge improvement. At this time, it had already taken shape, and it could be regarded as an upgraded version of the star-leading board.

Nautical instruments are not achieved overnight.They are all improved step by step over hundreds or even thousands of years, and iterative improvements need to be coordinated with the progress of astronomy, mathematics, geography and other disciplines, which is not easy.

If Wang Heizi can buy back these instruments, it will really help a lot.

He had had enough of captains who only sailed inshore.

The last time I saw Zhang Ergou, after leaving Sakhalin Island, he walked northeast along the island chain of the Thousand Islands. Because it was easy to locate, he did not dare to enter the rough and boundless deep sea.

In fact, it is easy to sail along the Thousand Islands and the Aleutian Islands. With the help of ocean currents, the positioning is also convenient and it is not easy to get lost, but that is not the core area of ​​the North Pacific Warm Current, and the speed cannot be increased.

If you dare to cross the deep sea, the combination of ocean currents and westerly winds can provide a stable speed of more than four knots, and six to eight knots is not impossible.

But Zhang Ergou didn't dare to do this after all, he was afraid of getting lost.

Shao Shude feels that now that he has worked hard to make up for his shortcomings in mathematics, he can train mathematical talents in batches in the future. At that time, some of them may be invested in navigation, and these instruments can be used.

Yes, real navigation requires professional knowledge, even with the assistance of various instruments, it also requires calculation.In the age of great voyages, even pirates always had one or two people on board who could use instruments like sextants to measure and then calculate on paper.

Experience is not reliable.

Measurement plus calculation, reliable.

When Shao Shude was inspecting Dengzhou, he summoned the naval officer Ping and asked him how to sail.

Of course, the Ping Navy also has small instruments such as stargazing. Although they are not as advanced as the Arabs, they can be barely used.As a result, people just observe in this way, and then rely on experience to judge.

Without any math...

There is a ghost if the error is not too big!
This is still Ping Haijun. If it is a private businessman with uneven levels, it will only be more horrible.

Mathematics is a subject that is seriously underestimated by all traversers.

Without mathematics, it is impossible to become a professional sailor, you can only rely on luck and experience.But how many people have experience?Can every ship be equipped with experienced "masters"?Obviously impossible.

Perhaps this is an important reason why the rate of ships going to Japan in the Tang Dynasty got lost and sank at an absurdly high rate - going from Mingzhou and Yangzhou to Japan obviously meant entering the deep sea and no longer sailing near the coast.

"The things that Wang Qing brought back are very precious." Shao Shude said: "These things are treasured by the big cannibals. If they didn't go to Basra, they might not be easy to get. Be careful."

"It all depends on His Majesty's great blessing." Wang Heizi said happily.

Zhang Yong couldn't help but glanced at him.

He never expected that Wang Heizi would steal the limelight in the second half of the conversation in which he firmly held the initiative.

"Your credit is your credit." Shao Shude said with a smile: "Drink tea."

The three of them drank tea silently, and fell silent for a while.

"After drinking this cup of tea, tell me about the inside story of Dashi. It is related to the Western Regions, and I am very interested." Shao Shude put down the tea bowl and said.

Zhang Yong was refreshed, this is what he is good at, and the initiative came back.

(End of this chapter)