1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 431

The secret post arranged by Nanzhen Fusi in the city introduced the general situation of the Haihan people to Li Qingyang and others. In the past two years, the business of the Haihan people in Guangzhou has grown bigger and bigger. It is not difficult for the intelligence agencies to collect some relevant information.It's nothing more than a large business scale for the Haihan people. After all, there are as many wealthy businessmen and dignitaries in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and it's not a big deal to know how to do business. The army is still strong, and it is equipped with amazingly powerful guns, so it immediately put away the contempt it had when it was put away.

Li Qingyang has seen the drills of the official army's firearms camp, and he knows the power of the firecrackers and artillery. If you want to say that this clumsy Yazhou folk hides a private armed force that is better than the official army, of course he is Be skeptical of this claim.However, the two major operations of the Haihan militia in Guangdong last year have long been known to the public. One time they defeated several gangsters who were besieging the local area in Lijiazhuang, and killed Liao Dabi and other gangster leaders wanted by the government and more than a thousand of their subordinates. Later, it was awarded by Wang Zunde, Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, which must not be fake.

Another action was at the end of the year at the mouth of the Pearl River and the Liuxiang pirate gang fought a battle at sea. In this naval battle, some Ming maritime merchants were fortunate enough to witness the battle process in Wanshan Port. It is said that the warships of the Haihan people overwhelmingly fought The advantage defeated Liu Xiang's fleet, and the number of pirate ships sunk in Wanshan Port alone reached double digits.After this battle, the always arrogant Liu Xiang pirate gang completely withdrew from the Guangdong waters and gave up the Pearl River Estuary, which seems to have become strong evidence for this statement.Although Daming also had a naval camp in Xin'an County at the mouth of the Pearl River, he had always ignored the existence of Liu Xiang's gang—or to put it bluntly, he was unwilling to take the initiative to cause this trouble. After all, the armed strength of this gang of pirates was relatively The Navy isn't much worse either.Comparing these two, it seems that it is not difficult to draw the conclusion that the Haihan people's surface troops are also stronger than the Daming navy.

The Daming navy stationed in Xin'an County also rationally maintained restraint after the war, and did not take hostile actions against another water armed force that appeared in its jurisdiction.The Haihan people are also knowledgeable and interesting. After defeating the pirates, they did not try to expand their territory. They still guarded their own Wanshan Port, so the two sides tacitly maintained peace and harmony.

From Li Qingyang's point of view, the Guangdong Navy's actions are incompetent. How can the presence of another armed force be tolerated within the Daming Sea?As for why Liu Xiang's pirate gang was allowed to exist before, Li Qingyang believed that it was a matter of ability, not attitude.It is normal for those pirates to haunt the sea, live in no fixed place, and can't be caught. The Haihan people's armed forces are stationed on a small island outside the Pearl River Estuary, but the navy still ignores them. Isn't this negligence?
Li Qingyang didn't believe in the fallacy that Hai Han was stronger than Daming. He thought that the Hai Han people just lived in a corner of Yazhou, and Yazhou had always been a place where prisoners were exiled. How much battle can help the Haihan people toss?In his opinion, the biggest possibility is that the Haihan people used money to buy some derelict military personnel, making them turn a blind eye to the existence of Wanshan Port.After all, the Haihan people are good at doing business, presumably a little money is not a problem for them, and Li Qingyang, who is a Jin Yiwei, also knows a thing or two about the corruption of the frontier army in recent years. Not surprised.

In fact, the Fusi of Nanzhen will take action against the Haihan people in Yazhou, because in the past year or so, there have been too few descriptions of the Haihan people in the reports from Qiongzhou. The general banner stationed in Yazhou even claimed in the report that the People are just "three to five hundred people who make a living by fishing and farming". However, there have been a lot of Haihan products on the market in Nanjing last year. Could it be that the mirrors with tens of hundreds of taels of silver and all kinds of crystal clear Could the clear glassware be made by a group of fishermen?

After all, Jinyiwei is the leading intelligence agency in the Far East in this era. If you really want to investigate something with peace of mind, you can't get away with just relying on some deceptive means.Soon Nanzhen Fusi learned that the Haihan people not only had a huge glassware business in Guangdong and Guangxi, but also covered daily necessities, private salt, transportation, etc., and even had a certain scale of firearms manufacturing capabilities. Local private armed forces in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions sold many standard firecrackers, and their performance is said to be no less than that of the weapons equipped by the Daming official army's firearms battalion.

Making firearms privately is absolutely prohibited in Ming Dynasty, so Nanzhen Fusi has another reason to investigate Haihan.However, considering that some personnel from the Jinyiwei branch in Guangdong might have been bought by Haihan, Nanzhen Fusi decided to bypass the Jinyiwei organization in Guangdong and Guangxi, and directly sent people into Qiong to inquire first-hand news.Moreover, the number of personnel sent should not be too many, because large-scale personnel transfers are easy to leak. The officials in charge of the Nanzhen Fusi are still very clear about this truth.However, what they didn't expect was that under the erroneous rule, Nanzhen Fusi's plan to investigate Haihan was still known by interested people, and he sold it to Haihan's Guangzhou Office at a high price, so Li Qingyang and others did not When they arrived in Guangzhou, they had already been listed as targets for their investigation.

When Li Qingyang and the others arrived outside Guangzhou, they strictly followed the plan beforehand, and did not rashly get in touch with the Jinyiwei Yamen in Guangzhou. After lurking outside the city for a day, they entered the city and went to the stronghold directly under Nanzhen Fusi.It's just that they didn't expect that the opponent had guessed this move in advance, and had already set up a surveillance circle around the wine shop.No matter how cautious Li Qingyang and the others were, it would be difficult for them to escape Hai Han's calculations.

Li Qingyang got action instructions from the local person in charge in the wine shop. If they want to cover up their tracks and go to the Sanya area controlled by the Haihan people on Qiongzhou Island, there are only three ways. The second is to pretend to be an immigrant who defected to Haihan, and the Haihan people organize a boat to go to the place; the third is to join the boat and go to the place as an ordinary crew and sailor.

The first method has the lowest risk, but it is also the most difficult. Not only do they have to purchase ships and goods by themselves, prepare the money needed for the transaction, but also hire a group of sailors who are familiar with the waterway from the Pearl River Estuary to Sanya.After such a toss, no matter how smooth it is, it will take ten days and half a month, and the time limit Li Qingyang got is not enough for them to finish these preparations slowly in Guangzhou.Moreover, there were too many relationships involved in doing these things, and the possibility of revealing his identity would increase accordingly. Li Qingyang didn't want to be discovered before leaving Guangzhou, so he took the lead in denying this method.

The second method is undoubtedly the simplest and easiest to do, just go directly to the immigrant recruitment points set up by the Haihan people in and around Guangzhou.But the problem is that the Haihan people will conduct strict physical inspections on the immigrants they recruit, and their luggage is no exception, and they carry silver taels, gold leaves, identity badges, wound medicines, special weapons, etc. It's not something that a poor immigrant should have, and being searched for any of them will reveal his identity, so this road probably won't work either.

In the end, the only thing left is to be a sailor and crew member. Due to the increasingly frequent business activities between Guangzhou and Sanya, there are chambers of commerce, shipping companies and other organizations all year round to recruit crew members near the Pearl River Wharf. There are many opportunities to go to Sanya.Fortunately, Li Qingyang and the others grew up in the Jianghuai area, and their water skills are not a problem. Even if they don't know how to drive a boat, they still have some strength. Leave the local area in the most reasonable way to avoid arousing the suspicion of the Haihan people.So after inquiring about several ways to enter Sanya, Li Qingyang decisively chose the last one.

Afterwards, Li Qingyang and others also saw the Haihan recruitment site that the local person in charge said in Guangzhou City. With such a big fanfare, they set up street stalls to attract immigrants.

Li Qingyang and others also went to several different booths to inquire about immigration-related information, and compared it with the situation provided by the local person in charge. As expected, it was basically true. However, such a scale of solicitation also made Li Qingyang conclude that in the report of Yazhou Jinyiwei It must have been mixed with too much water—according to what I have seen, Haihan people recruit more than a thousand immigrants in Guangdong every month, and it is far more than the three to five hundred people mentioned in the report.Li Qingyang didn't really believe that so many people were being recruited from the mainland every month to go to Sanya to do what they called land reclamation work.He very much suspected that these so-called Haihan people were actually human traffickers, and the immigrants they recruited would be sold as piglets to the areas controlled by Westerners such as Manila, Batavia, and Malaca as slave labor. Not uncommon.

After basically "confirming" another bad deed of the Haihan people, Li Qingyang still decided to apply for the crew, so the five of them found the jobs they wanted at the Pearl River Wharf in the south of Guangzhou.One of them is a shipping company, which specializes in freight business between Guangzhou and Sanya. There is a fleet of ships from Guangzhou to Sanya on the [-]th day of every month. It happens that the next day is April [-]th. After joining, you can leave immediately, so Three of them joined the shipping company in the name of recruiting sailors.

However, Li Qingyang and another companion invested in another firm just to be on the safe side.This firm is recruiting trade personnel who are resident in Sanya, ranging from shop assistants, warehouse managers, handymen, accountants, stewards, and some unknown positions called "business representatives", with different salaries.But even for the lowest-level handyman, the annual salary has reached as much as 30 taels, and it also includes food and lodging, which greatly exceeds the local labor compensation that Li Qingyang knows.As for the most senior "business representative", the basic salary alone is as high as 800 taels per year, plus various subsidies, bonuses, commissions, performance income, etc., it can easily exceed [-] taels, and there is no ceiling.

The master recruiter heard that Li Qingyang could read and write, and that he was well-proportioned, with a capable look on his brows, so he intended to let him apply for this high-ranking position, and even cited examples to persuade him: "The shopkeeper Li of our firm, A few years ago, I only worked in the Yacheng branch, and I could only make a sale of 5000 taels a year. Since the Haihan people came, the business in Yazhou has become prosperous, and the income of shopkeeper Li As the tide rises, the current one-month purchase of ** has been more than a year ago. It is said that last year the boss of the main cabinet gave him 2000 taels of red envelopes. He also bought a house built by Haihan people in the local area. He plans to retire next year and settle in Sanya. Yes. Brother, if you go there and work for a year or two, I'm afraid your achievements will be higher than Shopkeeper Li's in the future."

Although Li Qingyang had a mission, but after hearing the publicity, he couldn't help feeling a little bit moved.Their salaries and incomes from Jinyiwei are much higher than that of ordinary public servants, but their annual income can only be counted as a hundred taels, and the level of a thousand taels is at least available to officials with more than a thousand households.If we want to compare horizontally, Li Qingyang's position is the same as that of Luo Shengdong before he was promoted to general. He is a sixth-rank military officer, and his basic salary is also similar. Of course, the actual income cannot be compared. After all, Luo Shengdong's side job is indeed too easy to make money. , One month's income is about as if Li Qingyang had worked for a year.

Li Qingyang was also a relatively determined person, but after being slightly tempted, he quickly withdrew his wild thoughts.As an official of the imperial court, the emperor's favor should be the most important thing. How can he forget his mission because of gold, silver and silk?When the charges are verified in the future and the property of the Haihan people is taken over, then he will be promoted and make a fortune, and naturally he will not be without a share of the benefits he deserves.

In order not to attract too much attention, Li Qingyang only applied for a post as an accountant, and asked his companion to apply for a warehouse manager.Although the master in charge of recruiting felt a little pity, he still wrote the letter of appointment for them as usual.After the two signed and pledged, the master instructed: "The two of you should find a place to stay nearby today, and report here tomorrow morning. The boat of the merchant company will leave for Sanya tomorrow. If you miss this boat, you will have to wait for it." More than ten days, remember to remember!"

Li Qingyang thought it would be convenient, the other three will also set off tomorrow, and they will take different boats to Sanya, so they can take care of each other after sneaking into the place.Immediately, he and his companion found a hotel outside the city to stay. After nightfall, they quietly contacted the other three and agreed on how to contact them when they arrived at their destination.

The next day, the two boats on which the five members of Jin Yiwei were boarded departed from the Pearl River Wharf half an hour apart and headed south.The ship that Li Qingyang was on board was a little late due to loading of goods, but he was not in a hurry, as he could observe on the ship what kind of goods the Cantonese merchants were selling to Sanya.

(End of this chapter)