Workshop Director of the Great Ming

Zhao Tiezhu, a modern factory floor supervisor, transmigrates to Suzhou in the fourteenth year of the Zhengde era and takes over a run-down blacksmith shop on the verge of closing. And so the first morning meeting in the Ming Dynasty is held beside the anvil: standardize the hoes, measure output, let the numbers speak, and reward and punish fairly. Ironware, silk, porcelain, and sea transport are all converted into assembly lines, one industry at a time. Imperial merchant tenders, battles over trade bills, and disputes over military supplies: he takes them on, one after another. Even when Yan Song's faction cuts off his materials, blocks his routes, and audits his books, they still can't bring down his little workshop. After visiting his workshop, Wang Yangming says only four words: “Prove the Dao through tools.” Only later does Zhao Tiezhu discover that he isn't the only transmigrator in the Ming Dynasty. His sworn rival, Chen Tianhua, arrived three years before him, and the steam engine blueprints left in Malacca predate his by fifty years. In this life, the factory floor supervisor refuses to leave things to fate. Hammer blow by hammer blow, he will forge an era with his own hands.