Zheng He led him down the stairs at the corner of the city wall and into the city.
The street scene rushed into view.
The blue flagstone road was broad and level, with new stones filling the occasional chipped or broken patch. Two iron rails ran down its center, resting on wooden sleepers. A four-wheeled cart laden with fruit, vegetables, and grain traveled along them, though it was powered not by steam but purely by someone pedaling.
They even had rail carts.
As the empire's capital, the city was naturally bustling. Shops stood shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the street. Some still had wooden upper stories and upswept eaves, but wrought-iron signs had been nailed above their doors. Everywhere he looked, he saw steam engines of various sizes, boilers, and other machinery.
Half a step into the age of steam... Gao Jian assessed silently.
Dust particles filled the air. Compared with fogbound London, Beijing at this time was more like a city of smog. Young men in coarse tunics galloped down the road on horseback, coal dust clinging to their clothes, while women hurried past with baskets over their arms, their carefully washed clothing inevitably gathering dust too... This was a city thoroughly polluted by the Industrial Revolution.
Even the air was permeated by the heat and clamor of the Fire Wheel Engines.
But compared with the Industrial Revolution as Gao Jian remembered it, the Ming Dynasty's industrial development seemed somewhat warped. On the one hand, Fire Wheel Engines... that is, steam engines, were already widely used. They even had steam trains. On the other hand, the engines themselves were not very efficient.
After all, the United Kingdom's Industrial Revolution had begun with the spinning jenny. By the time steam trains appeared, steam engines had already gone through