Fang Zheng Travels Incognito (What Should I Do When I'm So Sleepy I Just Want to Sleep?)

"Wooooo—!"

Accompanied by a loud whistle, the steamship slowly set off along the canal. Fang Zheng stood at the bow, gazing at the beautiful scenery before him, and could not help feeling as if he had somehow traveled into another world with bizarre settings.

Under Fang Zheng's designs and after more than a century of effort, the Han Dynasty now possessed the foundations of an industrial society, including steamships, trains, and airships.

Airships in particular. China had never lacked clever people. In fact, someone really had come up with using airships to open up routes for transporting people and goods, and thus the world's first state-owned airline had come into being.

Of course, even though Fang Zheng had modified this world beyond recognition, some things remained deeply ingrained and unchanged. For example, the people of Great Han believed their nation was the Central Kingdom, the Heavenly Dynasty, the center of the world. Everywhere else was barbaric wilderness, and they had no desire whatsoever to explore beyond their borders.

Especially after Fang Zheng had industrialized the place, that desire had become even weaker. Just think about it. In the Central Plains, you could take a train from one city to another in no time, while those wild borderlands had nothing at all and required exhausting journeys by horse-drawn carriage... There were no proper schools or medical resources either... Who would want to go reclaim wasteland outside for no reason?

That left Fang Zheng utterly speechless.

Incidentally, while people in this world had also tried to invent automobiles, one major problem remained unsolved.

The wheels.

Refining rubber proved even more difficult than Fang Zheng had imagined. At least at the current level of Steam Technology, proper wheels could not be made. The wheels used by current "automobiles" consisted of thick Animal Skin