In April 2002, Xi Jinping, then governor of Fujian Province, wrote the preface to the book Fuzhou Ancient House. In recent years, Fuzhou has attached great importance to the protection of ancient homes, and in July 2021, the 44th World Heritage Conference was held in Fuzhou. Fujian News Broadcasting plans to produce a hundred episodes of the series "DongDong Nana Says Ancient Houses", combing through hundreds of Fuzhou ancient houses, taking you to uncover the imprint of time and feel the charm of Mindu for thousands of years.
Founder of Hou's alkali method
Hou Debang, a native of Fuzhou, a pioneer in China's heavy chemical industry and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, founded Chinese his own alkali making process - Hou's alkali making method. He was the vice minister of the Ministry of Chemical Industry and the vice chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology.
Hou Debang was born in 1890 in a peasant family in Minhou, from an early age diligent and studious, standing on the water wheel to drive water, both elbows lie on the horizontal wood, free hands to read, sometimes hang the book on the horizontal wood of the water wheel to read aloud, leaving the good name of "trailer reading".
At the age of 20, he was admitted to the predecessor of Tsinghua University, the Beijing Tsinghua Preparatory School for Studying in the United States. Three years later, with a total score of 1,000 points in ten courses, he studied in the United States at public expense, and received a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master's degree and a doctorate degree from Columbia University.
In 1909, at the Minwan Railway School in Shanghai, Hou Debang (second from the right) took a group photo with his classmates
China's alkali chemical industry has entered the world stage
At the beginning of the last century, all the soda ash needed in China depended on imports. In 1921, Hou Debang resolutely returned to serve the motherland. Under his technical guidance, the establishment of Asia's largest alkali plant - Tianjin Tanggu alkali plant, originally, Hou Debang can rely on patents to obtain high remuneration, but unexpectedly, he wrote the world's first alkali monograph "soda ash manufacturing", the mystery of alkali technology was made public.
In 1943, he took the lead in completing the joint alkali production process of continuous production of soda ash and ammonia chloride in the laboratory, that is, the Hou's alkali production method, and China's alkali chemical industry jumped on the world stage.
Hou Debang's contribution does not stop there. In 1957, Hou Debang proposed the idea of taking ammonium bicarbonate by carbonization method. The process is simple and the investment is small, so China's small fertilizer factories bloom everywhere, making China the only country that produces ammonium bicarbonate fertilizer in large quantities. Before oil production increased in the 1970s and the introduction of large fertilizer processes, these small fertilizer plants supported China's fertilizer industry and allowed grain production to catch up with population growth.
Qing Dynasty bucket-style wooden structure ancient houses
Hou Debang Former Residence is located in Debang Road, Taijiang District, which is an ancient wooden structure ancient house of the Qing Dynasty, with a construction area of 260 square meters, five rooms wide and five columns deep. Hou Debang was born and lived here as a teenager and is a provincial-level cultural relics protection unit.
After the renovation of Hou Debang's former residence, he was draped in a phi
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