Picturing a world where you don't have to worry about smallpox and malaria, where you don't have a plan to leave the city if there's an epidemic, where you don't have a plan to avoid going to the southwest at all costs, is strange. "Wow. Good thing I came here when there was someone looking to be helpful."

"Back in my world I'm a chemical engineer-- I have no idea what that translates as--"

"I'm getting 'alchemist who builds things.'"

"Eh. Close enough. Except I assume alchemists in your world mysteriously never succeed at turning lead into gold."

"They still make themselves useful. Gunpowder, medicines, that sort of thing. Still working on immortality though."

"Man, so are we! --What do you do?"

"I work for the Three Judicial Offices-- I'm not sure if that translates for you."

"'Three Judicial Offices' and I have no idea what that is."

"We're in charge of investigating crimes, or at least the ones big enough to be worth our attention."

"So on one hand I'm like 'yay, cool, you're powerful' and on the other hand this doesn't seem obviously like it would lead to you being able to get people to adopt the Haber-Bosch process."

"I couldn't get a memorial in front of the Emperor directly, but I could get the idea on front of someone who could. --if I know what that process is and can convince people it's worth spending political capital on."

"Memorial?"

"The Haber-Bosch process allows you to make fertilizer much more cheaply, which lets you grow like four times as many crops on the same amount of land. It's the reason that the world population is almost eight billion people."

"A formal message to the Emperor." It feels odd being so blunt, but this man definitely does not have the context, so blunt it is! "His majesty knows everything he needs to know, so you can't tell him. But he does on occasion need reminding." 

It takes a second for the number to hit. "How many?" He's dealt with numbers that big before, but not of people. He tries to picture it in units of Chang'ans and that does not help that much.

"His Majesty can't possibly know what the Haber-Bosch process is! It's from like five centuries in the future!"

This future foreigner is very cute even if he does not get how this works. "We'd still just have to remind him about it."

"If His Majesty knew how it worked all along His Majesty really should have told someone!"

Oh goodness, he really is very naive. "People who work with him-- everyone knows the difference between a reminder and a reminder, it's just... Etiquette."

"Okay, see, in my country we sell candy called National Embarrassmints-- that's a pun in my language-- and whenever the leader changes the people who make them just put a new picture on it and keep selling them."

The pun does not translate perfectly, but well enough to get the jist. "Well, I don't see any reason to do that for His Majesty; , he's quite competent." (The fact he would super die if he tried is so far down the list behind 'but why would I want to.')

"I believe the general consensus in our system is that all of our leaders suck but no one can agree on why so they get replaced with ones that suck differently."

That's a whole mood, not that he'd admit it. "Hopefully without too much regularity." Otherwise you'd run out of potential heirs, let alone competent ones.

"Oh, we're a democracy. Anyone can become the ruler-- the president-- as long as half of the citizens think they should."

"That's an interesting system."

"We generally think it works better than monarchy."