Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 171 The Great Use of Xu Dayong

Entering October, the first snow fell in Beihai Town.With the stoves being lit in every family, the "cat winter" is about to begin again.

Coal has already been produced in Ezo, but the amount is not large.Chen Qingsong heard the report from Sheng Haizhou that the coal transported to Pingyuan Town is only a few thousand catties.This amount of coal is not enough for Beihai Town to use for a day, and it is useless to pull it back.

Since Wang Yuanfang and the others came back to the present, the Thunder God has been dispatched three times.The first time was to transport captives to dig for gold; the second time was to bring the two companies of Liji and Pan Xiucheng to Ezo, replacing Sheng Haizhou and Huji; the third time was to go south to the Sendai Domain. The owner of Murata House brought back more than 5000 refugees in addition to silk and sugar.

With going to sea again and again, most of the more than 50 sailors on the Thor are now proficient in Mandarin.Deng Fei and Liu Sheng began to conduct training courses for ordinary crew members.

It is said that in modern time and space, if you want to become a seafarer, you need to pass the examinations of four subjects: driving, engineering, radio, and electronics.However, in the subject of driving alone, it includes four theoretical courses of nautical science, ship handling and collision avoidance, ship management, ship structure and freight, and of course, nautical English and sailor's business.

Deng Fei was exhausted from going to sea for more than half a year, saying that he was even more tired than being a seaman before.Every time he goes to sea, he has to participate. In addition to driving, he also has to manage the turbine.If Liu Sheng was here, the two of them could still share the burden, but Liu Sheng has been very busy recently, and he didn't go with the boat every time.

The two discussed in private and decided to take a temporary rest for a month and focus on training the crew.After Zhao Xin heard about it, he stuffed in another twenty refugee girls and asked them to learn radio operation and Morse code together.

According to what Zhao Xin told them before, Katsuyama Densan and the boss of Murataya selected ten people from Ezodi's subordinates to come back with Sheng Haizhou.With a swipe of his pen, Zhao Xin sent all ten people to the military camp to experience the feeling of being ravaged.

Zhao Xin himself has been busy investigating match production equipment manufacturers in another time and space recently, and has not shown up in Beihai Town for several days.But when this guy came back, except for bringing back a batch of chemical raw materials for the production of matches, he didn't buy any other equipment.

"Hey, I've overcomplicated this matter." Zhao Xin explained to Chen Qingsong who was having lunch.

"How do you say it?" Chen Qingsong didn't raise his head, and concentrated on dealing with the braised pork in front of him.

"What does it take to make a box of matches?"

Chen Qingsong thought for a while and said: "First, there must be a matchstick, then there must be a match head, and then there must be a friction surface."

"It's the same as if you didn't say it." Zhao Xin rolled his eyes and continued: "After I visited two equipment factories, I went to a small factory that produces matches. They specialize in custom-made matches. Big. When I saw it there, I went, it was too simple, what equipment did I buy! Did you listen to me?"

"Go on, I'm listening." Chen Qingsong stuffed the last piece of braised pork on the plate into his mouth, and looked at Zhao Xin's plate again.

"Well, what we need most now is ordinary labor, right? Let the carpenter bring his apprentices to process the matchsticks. After the matchsticks are finished, make a few large sieves to remove the miscellaneous sawdust, and then let the matchsticks .Hey, I haven't eaten yet!"

As soon as Zhao Xin said the beginning, he found that there were only two pieces of braised pork left on his plate.He didn't care about talking anymore, he stopped the chopsticks that Chen Qingsong stretched out with one hand, picked up the chopsticks with the other hand, and quickly put the last two pieces of meat into his mouth.

"Hmm~~ The taste is really good, Shino is good at cooking!"

Chen Qingsong couldn't steal the meat anymore, so he put down his chopsticks and said with a smile: "What Zhi Nai, this is made by Qinghe girl."

Zhao Xin chewed the meat with puffed cheeks, and after eating two mouthfuls of rice, he asked, "Who is Qing He?"

"I said, what kind of memory do you have? You just forgot when you kidnapped him from Yangzhou."

"Brother, there are more than 30, I can't remember."

"That's right, you remember Teacher Xiao Shen."

"Hey, you have to speak with your conscience. I just came back to talk to you directly." Zhao Xin rolled his eyes, and the thief Texixi approached Chen Qingsong, and asked in a low voice: "By the way, the three people I brought back this time More than a dozen miles, have you taken a fancy to it?"

Chen Qingsong glanced at him, and said angrily: "I was simply fooled by some f*cking film and television drama, a group of little girls who are younger than my son. And, when I see their three-inch golden lotus, I will Thinking of my grandma."

Zhao Xin was stunned for a moment, and immediately understood what Chen Qingsong meant.He smiled and continued to ask: "How about, like Wu Siyu, help you find a famous prostitute who hasn't received any customers to redeem yourself?"

"You can forgive me. Looking at their age, I can be their father. At the beginning, I just thought about it. Now that I have met the real person, I have lost all my thoughts."

"That can't be done. You are now the head of internal affairs in Beihai Town. Caring for the masses is our consistent purpose."

"Okay, stop being silly. Go find your Shen Xuan." Chen Qingsong raised his chin to signal, Zhao Xin turned his head, and saw Shen Xuan was also in the cafeteria, looking at him.So he got up embarrassingly and went out of the single room, and walked across to Shen Xuan who was eating.

"Why did you eat?"

Shen Xuan glared at Zhao Xin, swallowed her food, drank her saliva, and said, "It's all your fault."

"Ah! What does it matter to me?"

"It's none of your business. I was stopped by Mr. Sun after I taught my child today. He said that in the arithmetic homework I did yesterday, many of the answers were wrong. He dragged me back to In the classroom, he taught me for a long time. As a result, lunch was delayed."

It is said that after the group of nine came, Zhao Xin asked these teachers to find time every day to give Shen Xuan and Tang Xiao a group of girls math lessons.As a result, except for a few girls who had learned bookkeeping in the "Skinny Horse Training Class", the math level of the other girls was terrible!This includes Miss Shen.

When Shen Xuan lived in seclusion at Shen Jingdan's house, apart from reading the Four Books for Women and some novels by Ming people every day, she was learning to be a female celebrity; she never studied mathematics.

Zhao Xin laughed and said, "That's called mathematics, not magic numbers. It sounds like learning fortune-telling."

"Yes, what you Master Zhao said is correct."

Seeing that Shen Xuan ignored him, he continued to ask, "Is your Aunt Di okay?"

"pretty good."

"Your father is supposed to come next month."

"Really?"

"Of course it's true. Your Shen family is going to have a son, can he come as a father?"

Since Zhao Xin came back from Yangzhou, Shen Xuan heard the news that Cai Jiashu and his son had been killed, so she took the Xu brothers to pay homage to their relatives.Since then, her attitude towards Zhao Xin has become much closer.Shen Xuan, who used to blush when talking to the opposite sex, can now joke with Zhao Xin and amuse him.

"Hey, why don't you wear the bracelet I brought back from Yangzhou?"

"You are talking nonsense. I go to class every day, and I wear that thing to get in the way. What if it breaks?"

It is said that Zhao Xin bought her a pair of mutton fat jade bracelets from Yangzhou, and Shen Xuan liked it very much.However, because the relationship between the two has not been confirmed until now, Shen Xuan is also embarrassed to wear it.

After lunch with Shen Xuan, Zhao Xin sent her back to her residence, and then went to the workshop on the east bank of the Xila River.The current workshop has been divided into three parts: cigarette factory, military workshop, and mint, and a match factory will be added soon.

The reinforced concrete factory building that Chen Qingsong promised to repair has been completed. After simple decoration, the three factories have all moved in.Because Fang Hua had been distributing black powder all the time, considering safety issues, he didn't move it.It is said that since Mr. Fang joined the military workshop, the production of black powder has jumped to a new level.The local nitrate production that has troubled Zhao Liang and Zhang Fang for a long time is finally no longer a problem, but the output is still not satisfactory.

After Zhao Xin knew this situation, he asked Andrew to help him buy a lot of potassium nitrate in another time and space in the name of buying chemical fertilizers for farming.In addition to configuring mine gunpowder and fuse, this thing can also be used to make cigarette paper, as well as a catalyst and mineral dressing agent.

The Colt 1851 Navy revolver produced by the military workshop has already produced [-] pieces.This thing is not used by the army, and most of it is currently distributed to the security police.Zhao Liang also started to take care of apprentices. He picked twenty dexterous half-grown children from the school. They had classes in the morning and went to the workshop as apprentices in the afternoon.However, the first thing these teenage children have to learn is how to use various measuring tools, and help them out. Zhao Liang stood by and watched him operate the parts when he was processing the parts.

Zhao Xin made a round of inspections before going to the warehouse of the workshop.After storing the purchased raw materials for making matches, they returned to the west bank of the river.

He has to go tomorrow.The container cargo ship that was previously handled by a ship brokerage company has already taken shape.The ship is from 2013 and is currently docked at a port in West Africa.According to the information sent, the ship has a load of more than 6 tons, a length of 250 meters, and a draft of 14 meters.

After the ship purchase procedures are completed, it will be driven back to the domestic shipyard for renovation.Renovating such a large cargo ship is a big project, because Deng Fei and Liu Sheng are busy training seamen and cannot leave their bodies, so the two of them wrote a list of ship remodeling.The box guide posts on the deck need to be removed to pretend to be pod side thrusters, the main deck needs to be reinforced and modified, etc.In addition, he has to buy a batch of munitions from Andrew to equip the new ship.

Zhao Xin sat at his desk and calculated for a long time, and found that the gold on hand was not enough for these expenses alone.

Gold mining on Solenji Island has started.The gold sand mineral layer here is mainly contained in the surface soil layer, the hardness of the mineral layer is small, and it is relatively easy to mine.

Most importantly, Zhao Xin equipped the gold mining team with a set of underground metal detectors.This set of equipment can not only detect gold, but also detect various other metal minerals by adjusting the settings.With this set of equipment, the gold mining team has avoided a lot of ineffective mining work.

The official boat now travels between Beihai Town and Solenji Island every three days. In addition to delivering supplies, it also transports the mined ore back to Beihai Town for refining.According to the comparison of the weight of the ore and the extracted gold, the gold content of the ore on Solenji Island has reached 900 grams per ton, which is already an ultra-high-grade placer gold mine.

However, no matter how high the gold content of the ore is, the daily output of ore is only so much.Solenji Island is not big, and the gold mines can only accommodate a few hundred people to work at most, so it doesn't make sense to send more people.

"It seems that before the end of the year, I have to go to Ezodi in person." Zhao Xin muttered to himself.

If you want to complete the material purchase with Andrew before the end of the year, you can only go to Tuka to help lead the way, and exchange gold with the Ainu on the "Urupu" island.By this time, Zhao Xin already knew that the "Urupu" island was Defu Island in another time and space.

"I just don't know if I will meet Mao Zi?" Zhao Xin really didn't understand this period of history, and he didn't have the time to read those materials.

After pondering for a long time, Zhao Xin thought of another matter that needs to be done immediately. He asked the guards outside the door to find Xu Dayong.More than an hour later, Xu Dayong, who was sweating profusely, stood in Zhao Xin's office.

"Dayong, how have you been training with the army these days?"

"It's not bad, I can carry it." Xu Dayong has been walking around in the barracks these days, practicing shooting.Wang Yuanfang knew that Zhao Xin had other arrangements for him, so the daily training intensity was very high. In addition to daily training, he had to do small cooking sessions alone at night.For Xu Dayong, if it weren't for the fact that the army's food conditions were not good enough, he would have been unable to bear it.This is not a barracks, every day when you open your eyes is hell!

Zhao Xin didn't have time to talk nonsense with Xu Da, so he went straight to the point. "I called you here because I have a mission."

"It's what you ordered."

"Next month, you will go south with the boat, and I will send you back to Qing Dynasty."

Xu Dayong was a little dazed when he heard that, go back?I only heard Zhao Xin continue to say: "At that time, you and Lu Shoushan will go together. Those brothers of yours before can choose a few people to go back with you."

Xu Da thought with all his heart, why don't you let me go back and continue to be a pirate?So he quickly asked: "What do you want me to go back for?" "

"Selling salt. To be precise, selling private salt."

Xu Dayong was dumbfounded when he heard it, and quickly said: "My lord, I have never done this before!"

Zhao Xin said with a smile: "It doesn't matter if you haven't done it before. Let's start with the relationship between various places. My request is to open up the delivery route of goods from Henan to the coast of Jiangsu before the spring of next year. It doesn't matter if you sell more salt or less. Get it out for me."

Xu Dayong heard from Lu Shoushan once before, saying that there are too many island people in Beihai Town and too few Han people; next year, he plans to take refugees from Henan and other places to farm.Thinking of this, he said shyly, "I understand, selling private salt is just a pretense, and it's real to transport people."

Zhao Xin nodded and said: "According to my estimation, next year a nationwide drought will break out in the Manchu Qing Dynasty centered on Henan, so we have to rescue people. The money and salt will be prepared for you, so you don't have to worry about it. Whether you are It doesn’t matter if you bribe the government, seek private salt dealers, or even human traffickers, what I want is people, the more the better!”

Xu Dayong stood at attention and said, "Yes!"

Since the middle and late period of Qianlong, the problem of private salt in the Lianghuai area has become more and more serious.Not only are there more and more private salt dealers and types of private salt, but the scale of smuggling is also increasing.The main reason is that apart from the corruption of officials, the use of troops by the Manchus everywhere, and the large donations of salt merchants, which caused the price of official salt to rise, another important reason is that the Manchus inherited the "salt boundary system" of the Ming Dynasty.

The biggest feature of this system is that it is not based on administrative divisions, but on the basis of historical traditions, or geographical conditions (such as the distance between salt-producing areas and salt-producing areas) or even some special needs of the Qing Dynasty itself. The country is divided into eleven major salt areas.

Take the Lianghuai Salt District, which has the most taxes, as an example. Among the six provinces under its jurisdiction, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, and Henan, none of the provinces completely sell Huaiyan salt; The official salt produced by more than two salt areas is divided.

The salt affairs yamen at all levels are directly under the Qing government's household department, and they can bypass the local government and directly deal with the affairs of the salt industry; The government does not have the authority to independently manage salt affairs.The emergence of this embarrassing situation provides an opportunity for the invasion of private salt.

The delineation of the land boundary of Xingyan is a rigid and backward policy implemented from the perspective of court taxation rather than convenience for the people.The most direct consequence of this policy is to cut off the direct connection between the common daily necessities of salt and the market, and cultivate the soil for the activity of illegal salt.

Zhao Xin's plan is to allow Xu Dayong to develop an underground trafficking network through private salt, by bribing the officials of various states and counties along the way, luring and wooing various salt trafficking groups in the two Huaihe Rivers and Huaihe River, and even coercing them by force, to transport refugees from Henan to the coast of Jiangsu, and then to the economic state islands. Transshipment North Sea.

As for the funding for the entire operation, we have to thank the several 10 taels of silver in the basement of Master Wang's house in Yangzhou.

(End of this chapter)