Chapter 943 939 [There are tens of thousands of Chinese in Mexico? 】
Chapter 943 939 [How many thousands of Han people are there in Mexico? 】
Let's go back in time for a moment. When Charles II was still in Chittagong, Li Quan had already made his second ocean voyage to America.
Let’s read a poem first:
it's here,
Spain and China unite,
Italy and Japan come together, and finally
Trade and order around the world are also integrated.
Here, we enjoy the first-class treasures of the West;
Here we get the essence of all the glory created by the East.
This poem is called "The Greatness of Mexico". The author is the Spanish poet Balbuena. It was written in 1604 AD, which is the 32nd year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty.
It describes Mexico City. Due to the insufficient Spanish colonial population, Chinese, Japanese, and Italians came to Mexico one after another to integrate into the colonial system.
As early as the Chongzhen period, the number of Asian immigrants in Mexico has exceeded 100,000. This is the official statistics of Spain. They are mainly Fujianese, overseas Chinese in the Philippines, indigenous Filipinos and Japanese. But when they arrived in Mexico, they were collectively called Chinese
(chinos).
The "Chinese" basically lived in the port of Acapulco, and later gradually spread to Mexico City.
The Filipino natives mainly worked as slaves and were the lackeys of the Spanish colonists.
The Japanese were responsible for protecting the trade route, that is, the land route from the port of Acapulco to Mexico City. They were allowed to wear weapons and were employed by officials or caravans. To put it bluntly, they were a group of bodyguards.
Chinese people have a wide variety of occupations, such as tailors, shoemakers, butchers, musicians, secretaries, embroidery workers... and some people became rich and gradually started doing business. There were even Chinese goldsmiths, which was an industry dominated by Europeans.
Caused concern to the Governor of Mexico.
In the early years of Chongzhen, a Dominican missionary lamented: "The Chinese became Christians and continued to pour into (Mexico) every year. They completely defeated the Spanish in that industry."
This phenomenon became increasingly rare after Zhao Han regained Fujian.
After the Datong Army occupied Luzon Island, no more Chinese immigrated to the Americas because they no longer had to travel thousands of miles to make a living.
Puerto Banderas (Vallarta).
Li Quan's fleet arrived again, immediately causing a sensation in the town.
Many well-informed businessmen have been waiting here a month in advance. Those who got wind of this include Mexican colonial officials and... the Mexican fleet!
Before entering the harbor, the Mexican fleet surrounded him.
The other party sent an envoy to Li Quan's boat in a small boat and said aggressively: "Leave here immediately. No ships from any country are allowed to dock without the king's order!"
Li Quan sneered: "I can leave, but after I leave, not a single Philippine sailing ship can come to Mexico from Asia. Luzon Island, Taiwan Island, and the Ryukyu Islands are all Chinese territory, and there is also a sailing ship trade there.
The Kuroshio belt. The Chinese navy controls the Kuroshio waters, and no ship can pass through!"
As he spoke, Li Quan deliberately used Spanish and ordered his deputy: "Turn south and go back to Luzon. No one will do business in the future!"
Seeing the Chinese fleet turning collectively, the Spanish envoy was dumbfounded.
In fact, Mexico has received a letter from the Governor of the Philippines. The Governor of the Philippines told the Governor of Mexico that if the Chinese merchant ships were refused, the galleon trade would be over. He could not make the decision and asked the Governor of Mexico to consider it as appropriate.
The governor of Mexico did not report the matter to the king, but called colonial officials for discussion, and everyone agreed not to interfere for the time being.
As for the navy envoy in front of him, he was here simply to rip off his money. He wanted to use force to intimidate Li Quan into paying more for traveling, but he didn't know that Li Quan was about to leave without saying a word.
"Everyone, please wait a moment." The messenger quickly called out.
The man rowed the boat back to resume his duties, and the fleet commander immediately went ashore to discuss countermeasures with colonial officials.
Soon, Li Quan was asked to disembark.
After repeated bargaining, the two parties finally decided as follows: Officials from the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico, Central America), officials from the New Spain Fleet and Li Quan’s fleet will form a cargo auction committee. After the Chinese merchant ships docked, the auction will be conducted intensively.
10% of the price as customs duty (bribery).
As for these bribes, the Spaniards will distribute them themselves, and they will definitely not go into the king's pocket anyway.
In addition, a port entry and berthing tax will be charged to the Chinese fleet, which is calculated based on the size of the vessel and the berthing time.
Smuggling was "legalized" in this way, and everyone benefited, except the King of Spain.
The mayor of Banderas guest-hosted the auction, and Li Quan submitted a list of goods.
There were crowds of people inside and outside the town.
There are even many small businessmen who cannot afford to buy large quantities of goods, so they temporarily organize group bidding and distribute the goods after buying them.
Li Quan was chatting with Mexican officials when suddenly two Asians came over and spoke in Hokkien.
Li Quan was very surprised. He had never expected that there would be Chinese merchants in the Americas. He quickly interrupted: "I don't know much about southern Fujian. I either speak Mandarin or Spanish."
So, three Chinese people communicated in Spanish in America.
"I am Wu Chunlin, whose ancestral home is Quanzhou. He went to Luzon to make a living in his early years. He has been in Mexico for more than 20 years."
"My dear, Chen Fusheng, is from Zhangzhou. He first made a living in Luzon and has been in Mexico for nearly twenty years."
Li Quan smiled and said, "You're doing well."
Chen Fusheng lamented: "Everything you earn is hard-earned money. If you can't survive, who would be willing to travel across the ocean? When I first came here, I worked as a tailor for several years. After I had some savings, I went to Mexico City to open a shop."
Wu Chunlin said: "I'm even worse off than Brother Chen. When I first came here, I spent two years digging wasteland. I worked with others to reclaim wasteland and specialized in growing sugar cane to make brown sugar. We didn't have slaves to work with, so we had to do everything ourselves.
It costs nothing to collect manure, and you can still make a fortune, and these ghosts don't even know how to use manure."
Chen Fusheng said with a smile: "Haha, Brother Wu is not only a landlord, but also a manure tyrant in Acapulco Port. Those red-haired landlords have also learned how to compost, and they want to compete with Brother Wu for manure. But, red
The furry ghosts can't steal the excrement, and the people responsible for collecting the excrement are all Han Chinese. With Brother Wu's order, the port of Acapulco will become a dung port in a few days."
Li Quan looked solemn and asked: "How many Chinese are there in Mexico?"
Wu Chunlin said: "It is estimated that there are 10,000 to 20,000 people in the port of Acapulco, and there may be 20,000 to 30,000 people in Mexico City. It is not very clear in other places. The Chinese who were the first to come to America can even have their grandchildren everywhere. My wife is a local
Native women, and also Spanish mestizo women.”
"Can I still speak Chinese?" Li Quan asked.
Chen Fusheng said: "Basically everyone speaks Fujian and Spanish. The Han people have their own settlement areas."
Not only are there areas inhabited by Han people, there is even a Chinatown in Mexico City, with a large area inhabited by Chinese people.
Li Quan asked again: "What religion do you believe in?"
Wu Chunlin stopped smiling: "If you want to make a living in Mexico, you must first convert to Christianity in the Philippines. All Chinese here are Christians. The first generation of immigrants can convert back to Buddhism and Taoism at any time. But the second and third generations
, some bastards have become so religious that they really think Jesus is some kind of savior."
Li Quan said: "If there are any Chinese who can't make it in Mexico, the two of us can contact each other privately and send them all here next year. I will take them to the north to cultivate land. It is all fertile land in the river valleys. If you grow food, you will not worry about going hungry. I will
We also provide them with supplies of cloth and salt every year.”
"That's no problem, I'll take care of it," Wu Chunlin slapped his chest, and then asked, "Mr. Li, can you get some goods and sell them directly to us without an auction?"
Li Quan said: "You are in the south, choose a place with convenient transportation. I will put a batch of cotton cloth and silk on the way."
The two of them were overjoyed immediately and bowed their hands, expressing their gratitude.
Chen Fusheng asked again: "Mr. Li, can you get some weapons next year?"
"Yes, we need weapons," Wu Chunlin said. "Neither the Chinese nor the Filipino natives are allowed to own weapons. Only the Japanese can carry swords. When I reclaimed the wasteland, I brought a group of brothers with wooden sticks and wooden sticks.
Fight with the natives with guns."
Li Quan thought about it carefully and said: "The fire guns are too annoying and may bring disaster to you. Next time I will ship a batch of iron gun heads and you will make the gun shafts yourself. When not in use, you will remove the gun heads and hide them wherever you like.
Anywhere will do. By the way, I will leave two more peasant soldiers to help you train the Han brothers."
"This is great!" The two of them laughed happily.
Li Quan inquired about the goods they could eat, but the quantity was not large, so he ordered his men to return to the ship.
Not long after, his subordinates came back and shouted: "Commander Li, a batch of silk and cotton has been soaked in water and has been soaked and cannot be sold."
"I know, you go down and check again."
Li Quan sighed and went to the Mexican officials to explain the situation of the goods being soaked, and then crossed out the goods from the auction list.
At the end of the auction, although 10% of the sales were used as bribes, Li Quan still made a lot of money. On the way south, he was also followed by the Spanish fleet and merchant ships. Li Quan made a ship pretend to be stranded, and then the whole ship
The team stopped.
After the other ships left, he had people row boats to transport the goods to the shore and sell them to Wu Chunlin and Chen Fusheng. This transaction was considered smuggling within smuggling.
I came to Hawaii on the way...well, Tanzhou, not much happened here, and there were more than a dozen mixed-race people.
Half of the people who stayed in Tanzhou were replaced, but the wives stayed here because they would come back next year. Those who had children simply stopped leaving and asked Li Quan to pick up their wives in China.
They think Tanzhou is very good, with a pleasant climate, fertile land, wives, concubines and children, and they can receive material supplies every year.
This time when passing through Tanzhou, Li Quan also transported some sandalwood, which he could sell at a high price back to China.
In another time and space, the sandalwood trees in Hawaii were directly cut down because they were popular in the Chinese market.
Of course, Li Quan's biggest gain from this trip is that he learned that there have been Chinese in America for a long time, and the number has reached tens of thousands. This is more convenient than immigrating from scratch!
