The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 28 The last piece of the puzzle

"Dad, did we give too much to this kid from the Mo family?
Among the two hundred elite soldiers, there are nearly a hundred members of the Luo family, and you only made him swear an oath, but you didn't specify that if Pattani is conquered, our Luo family must have at least one city."

Not long after Ou Zibu left, Grandpa Luo's eldest son began to nag with a look of pain on his face.

"Did you hear what I said just now?" Grandpa Luo asked softly, hinting at something.

"I did hear it, but I still think it's a bit too easy for him to swear in front of Zhang Wenlie. The Mou family is from Leizhou, not Dongguan. What if he swears..."

"That's enough!" Grandpa Luo slammed his cane on the ground. "I've been walking the streets for decades, and I'm still not as knowledgeable as you?"

Seeing his father was angry, Grandpa Luo's eldest son hurried downstairs.

But Grandpa Luo did not leave the ancestral hall. He leaned on his crutches, looked up at the tablets of his father, grandfather and Zhang Jiayu, and sighed deeply for a long time.

"After death, I know that all things are empty, yet I am sad that I cannot see the whole country united. When the king's army conquers the Central Plains in the north, do not forget to inform your father during the family sacrifice.

Alas! My descendants are incompetent. I, the father, expressed my true feelings, but my son thought I was just pretending.

To them, national hatred and family feuds are as light as a feather, to the point where they are unwilling and unwilling to even think about them.

After sighing, Grandpa Luo looked at the direction where his eldest son was going away. His eldest son was actually a good person. He was a righteous man and was good at managing business. When Ngoc Tzu Bu first came to Hoi An, he insisted on accepting him.

But when it comes to national hatred and family feuds, he is completely indifferent.

"I have the Juque Sword, which can behead demons. I only lament that my descendants are unable to wield it, so I am now giving it to my neighbor. I hope that the world will reopen, and the Milky Way will once again illuminate my way home!"

. . . .

Hoi An, south of the city.

Crossing the Japanese-style Laiyuan Bridge, we arrived at the Japanese settlement area in Hoi An.

However, there are still significant differences in the clothing and living habits of the Japanese here and the people in Japan.

The clothing of the Japanese here is mostly a kind of Portuguese-style floral robe.

The Yuedai hairstyle is also rare. Most of them have short hair like the Yue people, and a few have Mediterranean-style hair with the top of their heads shaved.

Their beliefs are also different from those of the Japanese in mainland Japan. Not many people believe in Shintoism. Most of them believe in a strange kind of Catholicism that combines Japanese characteristics.

Because in Hoi An and even among the Japanese who settled overseas at that time, except for a small number of Western Army Ronin who had lost their lords, most of them were Christian samurai who were forced to flee from their homeland, that is, samurai who converted to Catholicism.

Apart from the familiar red bean paste private Marseille posture and the short townhouses under the castle, it is really difficult for Ou Zibu to regard this place as a Japanese settlement.

When talking about these Japanese in Southeast Asia, we have to mention a famous figure, Yamada Nagamasa, who was praised by later generations of Japanese as an unparalleled overseas daimyo.

This man fled to Siam in the early seventeenth century and quickly gathered a large number of Japanese samurai who had fled for various reasons like him.

Subsequently, a castle town was established in Ayutthaya, the capital of the Ayutthaya Dynasty, and it is said that it once grew to a population of several thousand.

At that time, the Ayutthaya Dynasty used these Christian warriors who were skilled in using muskets as mercenaries to balance the power of Portuguese mercenaries in the country.

Initially, the effect was remarkable, but later, the Japanese's true nature kicked in. They coveted the Chinese privileges of exemption from military service and corvee labor, as well as the tax farming system, in the Ayutthaya Dynasty. They planned to directly control the new king during the succession of the old and new kings of the Ayutthaya Dynasty, so that the Japanese could also become a privileged class in Siam.

This immediately brought them into extreme danger.

Because in the early Ayutthaya Dynasty, the Portuguese and Japanese both served as mercenaries.

Most Chinese people focused on business, culture, education and farming, and therefore produced many big businessmen, as well as justice ministers, finance ministers, and even court ministers. Since they had connections in the court, they naturally received the most preferential treatment.

This is also a kind of balance. The Chinese control certain political power and almost all trade rights, but do not interfere in military affairs. The Japanese focus on military affairs and do not involve other things.

When Yamada Nagamasa and others broke this rule, it soon caused strong backlash from the Chinese and the King of Siam.

The Japanese soldier Yamada Nagamasa was good at fighting, but he was a novice in politics and was soon killed. The Nakhon Si Thammarat, which he had conquered with great effort, became the general merchant of the King of Siam and the property of the Chaozhou royal family.

After Yamada Nagamasa's death, his descendants could only flee to Cambodia for refuge. Some of them then returned to Siam, while most of them wandered to Hoi An and the Philippines under Spanish control.

The Japanese in Hoi An City have retained the same characteristics as their ancestors. They can only make a living by engaging in trade. The biggest way out is to work as guards and sailors for various Chinese businessmen. They are also employed by all kinds of Qing merchants to help them "negotiate" with locals and even their peers.

However, what is very strange is that the leader of the Japanese in Hoi An was not a real Japanese, but Wei Yongxing, a native of Fuqing, Fujian, who had the title of Bingwei.

This man's great-grandfather was the very famous maritime merchant Wei Zhiyan. Wei Zhiyan should have been a minor official in the county government in the late Ming Dynasty. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, he went directly to sea to engage in maritime trade business.

He lived in Hoi An for many years. During his heyday, he controlled 40% of the trade volume from Nagasaki to Hoi An and was extremely prosperous.

When he was old, he submitted an application for settlement to the Nagasaki Bugyo, and was considered a Japanese among the Han people.

The descendants who stayed in Hoi An were born to his Vietnamese concubine Wu.

The two branches of the Wei family have continued to this day. Although they can no longer dominate the route from Nagasaki to Hoi An, they still have great control over the Japanese outside Hoi An by helping each other.

After finding him, Ou Zibu didn't say much. He just showed him the order from Grandpa Luo and asked Wei Yongxing to send him 200 Chiechintan warriors and five offshore warships of more than 50 tons.

Wei Yongxing could only smile bitterly. There were only about 10,000 to 20,000 Japanese in Hoi An, including a large number of local mixed-race descendants. It was no longer the time when they could spare 500 out of 800 people in Siam to fight.

But Master Luo's hand made him dare not disobey, and he could only smile bitterly and tell Ou Zibu that he knew the strengths and weaknesses of the Western Barbarians in Nancheng very well, and knew who had good marksmanship, who could drive the large soft-sailed Western Barbarian ships, who had been an officer and knew how to organize the army, and who had experience as a gunner, etc.

Ou Zibu agreed immediately because this was exactly the effect he wanted.

Although the Japanese warriors and ronin did have good fighting capabilities, who were they? They were real warriors who had studied Confucianism brought by Zhu Shunshui since childhood and practiced killing people since childhood. They were both smart and strong.

They are the essence of Japan. Although they are poor, there are no more than 300,000 people in Japan who are qualified to be so poor.

The Japanese people in Hoi'an are far away from their homeland, and their cultural inheritance is even more difficult than that of the Mingxiang people. What qualifications do they have to compare with the native Japanese warriors!
Their fighting power is only enough to help, but if they really want to kill people, they have to rely on the Chinese themselves.

Therefore, under Wei Yongxing's careful selection, Ou Zibu soon began to buy for free among the French, British and Portuguese in the south of the city.

Of course, this is not because these European mercenaries are not being paid, but because Ou Zibu has no money at all now, and everything is paid by Master Luo.

(The previous article mixed up the names of Ou Zibu's eldest and second uncles. The eldest uncle should be Chen Dading, who has long passed away. The one who is still alive is his second uncle, Chen Dasheng.)
(End of this chapter)