In the third year of Qingli, Bianjing was visited in late spring. 985 History graduate student and engineering enthusiast Lin Yan accidentally traveled to the outskirts of Bianjing and became a cane-breaking prisoner after touching a fragment of movable type printing from the Qingli period. At that time, the New Deal was in its infancy, party strife was surging, and Xixia was peeking over the edge. Although the handicraft industry in the Northern Song Dynasty was beginning to take shape, it was trapped by the shackles of crude tools and low efficiency, and people's livelihood was in decline.
There is no systematic golden finger, only the "Tiangong Kaiwu" and "Mengxi Bi Tan" engraved in the mind and modern basic engineering thinking. Starting from the mud of the prison camp, he improved saw teeth, optimized mortise and tenon joints, and used a non-slip saw to get rid of hard labor; he used standardized jujube wood type + rosin fixing agent to increase printing efficiency by five times, solving the problem of dissemination of propaganda for New Deal pioneer Su Shunqin; he doubled the yield per acre with the improved curved shaft plow, winning recognition from farmers and the government.
Establishing his own "Moyuan Workshop", he broke through the situation with "efficiency, durability and affordability", improved textile machines and prefabricated building components, challenged the traditional guild monopoly, and outsmarted corrupt officials; he and Shen Kuo knew each other because of their "investigation of things to gain knowledge", and they jointly studied compasses and improved gunpowder; he met with Fan Zhongyan and presented the drawings of continuous crossbows and "three-stage attack" tactics to help the Song army reverse the decline on the border.
From a prisoner to an arms supervisor, from a workshop owner to the founder of a cross-regional handicraft industry network, he did not seek to subvert the dynasty, but only used technology to benefit people's livelihood: he built the Gewu Academy to break the barriers between scholars, farmers, industry and commerce, compiled the "Bianjing Gongzaolu" to preserve craftsmanship wisdom, and used keel improvements and hydraulic machinery to promote the development of overseas trade and farming.
