Entering October, the first snow fell in Beihai Town. As every family lit a stove, the "Cat Winter" was about to begin again.
Coal has been produced in Ezo, but the quantity is not large. Chen Qingsong heard from Katsu Kaishu that the coal currently transported to Pingyuan Town is only a few thousand kilograms. This amount of coal is not enough for Beihai Town for one day.
As for the dosage, it’s useless to pull it back.
From the time Wang Yuanfang and the others came back to now, the Thor has been dispatched three times in total. The first time was to transport prisoners to dig for gold, and the second time was to bring the two companies of Liji and Pan Xiucheng to Ezo, replacing Katsu Kaishu and Torogyoshi;
The third time was when he went south to the Sendai Domain. In addition to delivering silk and sugar to the owner of Katsuyama Denzo and the village house, he also brought back more than 5,000 refugees.
After going to sea again and again, most of the more than fifty sailors on the Thor are now proficient in Mandarin. Deng Fei and Liu Sheng began to conduct ordinary crew training courses for them.
It is said that in modern time and space, if you want to become a seafarer, you need to pass exams in four subjects: driving, engineering, radio, and electronics. However, the driving subject alone includes navigation, ship maneuvering and collision avoidance, and shipbuilding.
Four theoretical courses: management, ship structure and freight, plus of course maritime English and sailor's business.
Deng Fei has been very tired from going to sea for more than half a year. He said that he is even more tired than being a sailor before. Every time he goes to sea, he has to participate. In addition to being in charge of driving, he also has to be in charge of the engine. If Liu Sheng is here, the two of them can share the burden.
, but Liu Sheng has been very busy recently, and he doesn't always follow the boat.
The two discussed privately and decided to take a month's rest and focus on training crew members. After Zhao Xin heard about it, he brought in twenty more refugee girls and asked them to learn radio operation and Morse code together.
Katsuyama Denzo and the Murataya boss, according to what Zhao Xin told them before, selected ten people from Ezochi's men and returned with Katsu Kaishu. Zhao Xin sent all ten people away with a stroke of his pen.
Enter the military camp and experience the feeling of being ravaged.
Zhao Xin himself has recently been busy inspecting match production equipment manufacturers in another time and space, and has not shown up in Beihai Town for several days. However, when this guy came back, in addition to bringing back a batch of chemical raw materials for match production,
I didn’t buy any other equipment.
"Hey, I made this matter complicated." Zhao Xin explained to Chen Qingsong who was having lunch.
"What should I say?" Chen Qingsong didn't even raise his head, concentrating on 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, secondly there must be a match head, and then there must be a friction surface."
"What you said is the same as what you didn't say." 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 making customized matches and cannot measure the quantity.
Big. When I see the results, I’ll go, this is too simple, why should I buy any equipment? Do you listen to what I say?”
"You keep talking, 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, the most indispensable thing we lack now is ordinary labor, right? Just ask the carpenter to take the apprentice to process the matchsticks. After the matchsticks are finished, make a few large sieves to sift them through, and the miscellaneous wood chips will be removed, and then let the matchsticks be processed
.Hey, I haven’t eaten yet!”
As soon as Zhao Xing started talking, he realized that there were only two pieces of braised pork left on his plate. He didn't care anymore and stopped the chopsticks that Chen Qingsong stretched out with one hand, picked up the chopsticks with the other hand, and quickly cut the last two pieces of meat into pieces.
Put it in your mouth.
"Hmm~~ It tastes 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 Shino, Miss Qinghe made this."
Zhao Xin puffed out his cheeks, chewed the meat, and took two mouthfuls of rice before asking: "Who is Qing He?"
"What's your memory? You just kidnapped me from Yangzhou and forgot about it."
"Brother, there are more than thirty, how can I remember them?"
"That's right, you remember Teacher Xiao Shen."
"Hey, you have to speak with your conscience. I came directly to talk to you when I came back." Zhao Xin rolled his eyes, approached Chen Qingsong in a sly manner, and asked in a low voice: "By the way, the three people I brought back this time
Among the dozen or so, are there any you like?"
Chen Qingsong glanced at him and said angrily: "I was simply deceived by some movie and TV show. A group of little girls are younger than my son. And, as soon as I saw their three-inch golden lotus, I would
Reminds me of my grandma."
Zhao Xin was stunned for a moment, and then he understood what Chen Qingsong meant. He smiled and continued to ask: "How about, like Wu Siyu, I also help you find a famous prostitute who has never accepted a client to redeem yourself?"
"Please forgive me. Looking at their age, I can be their father. I just thought about it at the beginning, but now that I have met the real person, I have no intention of it anymore."
"That won't work. You are now the head of the internal affairs of Beihai Town. Caring for the masses is our consistent purpose."
"Okay, stop being so talkative. Go find your Shen Xuan." Chen Qingsong raised his chin and signaled. As soon as Zhao Xin turned his head, he saw that Shen Xuan was also in the cafeteria, looking at him. So he stood up and left in embarrassment.
He got into a single room and came across from Shen Xuan who was eating.
"Why are you eating?"
Shen Xuan glared at Zhao Xin, swallowed her food, took a sip of water, and then said, "It's all your fault."
"Ah! What does it have to do with me?"
"You said it was none of your business. After I finished teaching my children today, I was stopped by Teacher Sun. He said that in the arithmetic homework I did yesterday, many of the answers were wrong. He pulled me back and returned
He taught me a lesson in the classroom for a long time. As a result, lunch was delayed."
It is said that after the Nine-member Group arrived, Zhao Xin asked these teachers to take time every day to give math classes to Shen Xuan and Tang Xiao. As a result, except for a few girls who had learned accounting in the "Shou Ma Training Class"
Besides, the math level of other girls is terrible! This includes Miss Shen.
When Shen Xuan lived in seclusion at Shen Jingdan's house, apart from reading the Four Books on Women and some Ming Dynasty novels every day, she was learning to be a female celebrity; she had never studied mathematics.
Zhao Xin chuckled and said, "That's called mathematics, not magic. It sounds like learning fortune-telling."
"Yes, everything you said, Mr. Zhao, is correct."
Seeing that Shen Xuan ignored him, he continued to ask: "Is your Aunt Di okay?"
"fine."
"Your father will probably be here next month."
"real?"
"Of course it's true. Your Shen family is going to have a son. Can he, the father, come?"
After 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 respectively. Since then, her attitude towards Zhao Xin has become closer and closer.
Quite a bit. Shen Xuan, who used to blush when talking to the opposite sex, can now make some silly remarks with Zhao Xin and make her bored.
"Hey, why don't you wear the bracelet I brought you back from Yangzhou?"
"You're just talking nonsense. I go to class every day and wear that thing to get in the way. What if it gets damaged?"
It is said that Zhao Xin bought her a pair of mutton-fat jade bracelets from Yangzhou, and Shen Xuan liked them very much. However, because their relationship was not confirmed yet, Shen Xuan was embarrassed to wear them.
Zhao Xin accompanied Shen Xuan after lunch, then sent her back to her residence, and then went to the workshop on the east bank of the Xila River. The current workshop has three parts: a cigarette factory, a military workshop, and a mint. Also add a match factory.
The reinforced concrete factory building that Chen Qingsong promised to build has been completed. After simple decoration, the three factories have moved in. Fang Hua has been configuring black powder and considering safety issues, it has not moved. Since Teacher Fang joined After the military workshop, the production of black powder jumped to a new level. The production of saltpetre that had troubled Zhao Liang and Zhang Fang for a long time was finally no longer a problem, but the output was still unsatisfactory.
After Zhao Xin learned about this situation, he asked Andrew to help buy a lot of potassium nitrate in another time and space in the name of buying fertilizer for farming. In addition to being used to configure mine gunpowder and fuse, this thing can also be used to make Cigarette paper, and as a catalyst and beneficiation agent.
Twenty Colt 1851 naval revolvers produced by the military workshop have been produced. The Army has no use for these revolvers, and most of them are currently distributed to security police. Zhao Liang has also begun to train apprentices. Twenty half-year-old children with quick hands and feet were selected 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 had to learn was how to use various measuring tools and help them. When Zhao Liang was processing parts, he stood by and watched how he operated.
Zhao Xin inspected the area before going to the workshop's warehouse. After putting the purchased raw materials for making matches into the warehouse, he returned to the west bank of the river.
He has to leave tomorrow. The container ship that he had previously asked the ship brokerage company to handle has already been identified. The ship was built in 2013 and is currently docked at a port in West Africa. According to the information sent, the ship has a carrying capacity of more than 60,000 tons and a length of 250 meters. meters, draft 14 meters.
After the purchase procedures of the ship were completed, it had to be sent back to the domestic shipyard for modification. Modifying such a large cargo ship was a big project. Because Deng Fei and Liu Sheng were busy training seamen, they wrote a list of ship modifications. The box guide pillars on the deck need to be removed, the pod side thrusters must be faked, the main deck needs to be reinforced and modified, etc. In addition, he and Andrew also need to purchase a batch of munitions 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 no longer enough just for these expenditures.
The gold mines in Solenji Island have begun to be mined. The gold sand deposits here are mainly contained in the surface soil. The hardness of the deposits is low and it is relatively easy to mine.
The most critical thing is that 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 other types of metal minerals by adjusting the settings. With this set of equipment, the gold mining team A lot of ineffective mining work will be avoided there.
The official boat now travels between Beihai Town and Soulengji Island every three days. In addition to transporting supplies, it also transports the mined ore back to Beihai Town for refining. Based on the comparison of the weight of the ore and the gold extracted, Soulengji Island has The gold content of the ore reaches 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 production of ore is only that much. Solenji Island is not big, and the gold mines can only accommodate a few hundred people at most, so there is no point in sending more manpower.
"It seems that I have to go to Ezo in person before the end of the year." Zhao Xin murmured to himself.
If he wants to complete the material purchase with Andrew before the end of the year, he can only go to Tuka to help lead the way and exchange gold with the Ainu people on "Urupu" island. By now, Zhao Xin already knows about "Urupu" The island is Defu Island in another time and space.
"I just don't know if I will run into Mao Zi?" Zhao Xin really didn't understand this period of history, and he didn't have time to read the information.
After thinking about it for a long time, Zhao Xin thought of another thing that needed to be done immediately. He asked the guards outside the door to find Xu Dayong. More than an hour later, Xu Dayong, sweating profusely, stood in front of Zhao Xin. inside the office.
"Dayong, how have you been training with the army these days?"
"It's not bad, I can handle it." Xu Dayong has been crawling around in the military camp these days, practicing shooting. Wang Yuanfang knew that Zhao Xin had other plans for him, so the daily training was very intense, in addition to daily training In addition, he had to cook a small stove alone at night. For Xu Dayong, if it weren't for the poor food conditions of the army, he would have been unable to bear it long ago. This is not a military camp, it is hell every day when he opens his eyes!
Zhao Xin didn't have time to talk nonsense with Xu Da, so he went straight to the point. "I asked you to come because I have a mission."
"That's your order."
"Next month you go south with the ship, and I'm going to send you back to Daqing."
Xu Dayong was a little confused after hearing this. Going back? He only heard Zhao Xin continue: "When the time comes, you and Lu Shoushan will go together. Those brothers of yours in the past can choose a few people to go back with you."
Xu Dayong thought to himself, maybe you want me to go back and continue to be a pirate? So he quickly asked: "What do you want me to go back to do?"
"Selling salt. To be precise, selling private salt."
Xu Dayong was dumbfounded when he heard this, and said quickly: "Sir, 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 establish the relationship between various places first. My request is to open up the cargo transportation route from Henan to the Jiangsu coast by the spring of next year. It doesn't matter if you sell more salt or less, people You need to transport it out for me."
Xu Dayong heard Lu Shoushan say once before that there are too many islanders and too few Han people in Beihai Town. Next year, he plans to bring in refugees from Henan and other places to farm. Thinking of this, he said sheepishly: "I understand. , Selling private salt is just a cover, transporting talents is the real thing."
Zhao Xin nodded and said: "According to my estimation, a nationwide drought centered in Henan will break out in the Manchu Qing Dynasty next year, so we have to rescue people. Silver and salt will be prepared for you, so you don't have to worry about these. No matter you are Whether it’s bribing the government, hiring 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 mid-to-late Qianlong period, the problem of illicit salt in the Huaihe and Huaihe regions has become more and more serious. Not only are there more and more private salt traders and types of illicit salt, but the scale of smuggling has also become larger and larger. The main reason is that in addition to the corruption of officialdom, the Manchu and Qing dynasties In addition to the increase in the price of official salt due to the use of troops everywhere and large donations from salt merchants, another important reason is that the Manchu and Qing Dynasties inherited the "salt boundary system" from the Ming Dynasty.
The biggest feature of this system is that it is not based on administrative divisions, but on historical traditions, or geographical conditions (such as the distance between salt production areas and salt production areas) or even some special needs of the Manchus themselves.
The country is divided into eleven major salt regions.
Take the Lianghuai Salt District, which has the most taxes, as an example. Among the six provinces and districts under its jurisdiction, namely Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, and Henan, none of them fully markets Huaiyan salt; each province is covered by products from
The official salt produced in two or more salt areas is divided up.
The salt affairs yamen at all levels are directly under the Ministry of Household Affairs of the Qing Dynasty. They can bypass the local government and directly handle matters related to the salt industry. However, when dealing with, preventing and cracking down on illegal salt, they cannot do without the cooperation of the local government.
The government does not have the authority to independently manage salt affairs. The occurrence of this embarrassing situation provides an opportunity for private salt intrusions.
The delineation of salt land boundaries was a rigid and backward policy implemented from the perspective of imperial tax revenue rather than the interests of the people. The most direct consequence of this policy was to cut off the direct connection between common daily necessities, salt, and the market.
The activity of private salt cultivates the soil.
Zhao Xin's plan was to let Xu Dayong develop an underground trafficking network through private salt, bribe officials in various states and counties along the way, lure and win over salt trafficking groups in Lianghuai and Huaihe Rivers, and even use force to coerce the refugees from Henan to the coast of Jiangsu, and then to the economic prefectures and islands.
Transshipped to the North Sea.
As for the funding of the entire operation, we have to thank Mr. Wang’s family in Yangzhou for the hundreds of thousands of taels of silver.