That gold brick was the occasion for the discovery of the largest gold vein on Earth. When the news broke, gold diggers from all over the world flooded in, setting off a gold rush craze.

Diamonds are more valuable than gold, and Johannesburg is also known as the "City of Diamonds" in the world.

In 1870, a local farmer named Adrian Van Wick found his children playing with a few diamonds on a farm near the Kimberley in the Northern Cape. He was pleasantly surprised, and he didn't know what to do for a while. The search for and mining diamonds soon took off, and Johannesburg gained a new source of wealth and development.

Visiting a diamond shop is an indispensable item for tourists to South Africa, and when Liu Mengxun and Nie Zhen arrived in South Africa, they both visited a diamond wholesale and distribution store, and gained a lot of knowledge. The clerk gave them a brief introduction to diamond formation, identifying the good and bad diamonds, and more. During the time of volcanic activity in geological history, intense high temperatures crystallized a carbon substance into an incomparably hard stone, diamond, and the highest-quality diamond was diamond. The reserves of natural diamonds on the earth are very small, only South Africa, India, and Russia produce them, among which South Africa diamonds are of the best quality.

According to the clerk, the quality of a diamond is judged according to the four internationally accepted standards (four Cs), namely cut, color, clarity and carat. The world's largest diamond was discovered in 1905 in the Premir diamond mine in South Africa, weighing 3,106 carats, the size of a fist, colorless and transparent, without any flaws, known as the "Star of Africa". It was named after Cullinan, the mine's general manager.

The diamond was later purchased by the British for $750,000 and presented to King Edward VII as a birthday gift in 1907. The British asked the Dutch to cut and cut it into 9 large diamonds and 96 small diamonds, the largest of which was 530 carats, set in the scepter of the British king, and the other 8 large ones set in the crown and other objects. So far. No diamonds have been found that surpass the "Star of Africa". In order to show the image of the diamond, the clerk took a transparent object and explained it to Liu Mengxun, and finally he said that this piece was not a real diamond, but a glass imitation.

South Africa, with Johannesburg as the center, is not only the world's largest producer of gold and diamonds, but also the world's largest reserves of platinum, chromium, fluorite and andalusite. Other metallic and non-metallic minerals are also abundant, and it is also the only place in Africa where coal is produced. Johannesburg is a veritable cornucopia, the backbone of South Africa's ranking among the world's top five mining nations.

Listen to the introduction of Nie Zhen, who is very good at bragging. Today's metropolis of 5 million people is crisscrossed by tunnels, but because of the hard, ancient geological formations in the area, there is no risk of subsidence, and South Africa has advanced technology that can mine more than 3,000 metres underground.

South Africa is world-famous as a gold mine and diamond powerhouse, and Zhang Tianyuan's knowledge of South Africa comes from Sidney Shelton's novel "Diamond Dynasty on the Spilled Blood (Master Strategist)", which was broadcast in the late 80s and tells the story of Jamie, a young Scottish man who is unwilling to live a life of poverty and comes to South Africa in search of diamonds. endured being deceived and deprived of beatings, and died nine times for life. staged a revenge of the Count of Monte Cristo, and finally established a diamond dynasty of his own.

In addition to being the capital of gold and diamonds, there is another city that has a bad reputation, and that is the city of terror!

Johannesburg is also the horror capital with the highest crime rate in the world. South Africa has an unemployment rate of 40 percent, and the vast majority of the unemployed are unskilled and poorly educated blacks. The deterioration of law and order has led to more robberies and the relocation of the upper middle class or the big capital companies representing South Africa to the northern suburbs. Urban functions are constantly moving to the suburbs.

In addition, risk-fearing foreign capital has also migrated outward, causing restaurants, clubs, and nightclubs in urban areas to close one after another.

In fact, the holding of the diamond summit is, in a sense, a move by the South African government to change the status quo. No one wants Johannesburg to degenerate like this and become a real capital of terror, and if it does, it will become a ruined city.

Zhang Tianyuan has no acquaintances in South Africa, but because he has the face of Old Man Nie, there is a major of the peacekeeping force to accompany them here, and the car they are sitting in at this time is a car similar to a military vehicle driven by this major.

It is said that it is similar to a military vehicle, it is because it is not a military vehicle, but it is all equipped with bulletproof glass, and it can even be explosion-proof, which is very important, and of course it is much safer.

"This major, we are not very familiar with Johannesburg, but I heard that there is a standard bank here, right, I want to visit it, I wonder if I can help contact it?" Although Zhang Tianyuan knows that the security here is not good, he can't do nothing, he heard Nie Zhen brag before that there is a bank here that is very awesome, and he must visit it when he comes, and even gave him a business card, asking him to find a South African named GoodJohnson, saying that if there is a person to introduce him, he can definitely go to the Standard Bank of South Africa to visit.

"What is there to visit in the bank?" asked Liu Ruohan puzzled.

"You know, I'm not looking at the bank, it's the vault underneath the bank. Zhang Tianyuan said disdainfully.

"Then I'm going too. ”

"Keep your mouth shut when you want to go. ”

The major officer was ordered by his superiors to take good care of Zhang Tianyuan, and since this was really Zhang Tianyuan's request, he did not refuse.

In his mind, Zhang Tianyuan estimated that he was the son of a big man's family, and if he wanted to visit the Standard Bank, he would definitely say hello in advance, and he didn't have to worry about it, so he would go.

When he arrived at the Standard Bank of South Africa, Zhang Tianyuan was taken aback, because GoodJohnson was ten strong men in the absolute sense, and he was afraid that his body was not inferior to the big shark O'Neill, but he was very modest, and after talking to Nie Zhen on the phone, he took Zhang Tianyuan and them to visit.

To be precise, they visited the headquarters of The Standard Bank of SouthAfrica, which has a history of 145 years in South Africa and is the largest commercial bank in Africa with 46,000 employees and 16 million customers worldwide. At the end of 2008, China XX Bank acquired a 20% stake in Standard Bank of South Africa and became the largest shareholder.

After the initial introduction, GoodJohnson took Zhang Tianyuan and them to visit the underground gold mine of Standard Bank, which is unbelievable, the headquarters building of Standard Bank is actually built on top of an early gold mine in South Africa, and when you take the elevator down to the ground floor, you can see a pit, which contains some ruins of early gold mines.

In the cabinet of the exhibition hall, there are some gold ores, which are not special from the outside, but can be refined to obtain gold.

It is said that because Standard Bank is built on a gold mine, after seeing this gold mine, China XX Bank even said that it has good feng shui, that is, it bought 20% of its shares.

Later, they visited the staff office of Standard Bank, and what impressed me the most was that the employees here were able to work while watching TV, which was playing ESPN's sports program, which was an incredible working environment in China.

Anyway, even a boss like Zhang Tianyuan thinks it's incredible, can you really work hard while watching TV like this?

It doesn't seem that everything is good abroad, and this kind of work efficiency must be very low.

After visiting South Africa's Standard Bank, GoodJohnson said that while the sky was still bright, he could take Zhang Tianyuan and them around, which was also Nie Zhen's explanation, telling GoodJohnson to let Zhang Tianyuan have enough fun.

Originally, Zhang Tianyuan was here to do business and didn't plan to play, but since he came, and GoodJohnson was so enthusiastic, he couldn't shirk it, so he got in the car and was driven by the major, and then GoodJohnson took Zhang Tianyuan to a place called Sun Valley.

Only then did Zhang Tianyuan know that the place was similar to Las Vegas in the United States.

South Africans know that the development of tourism cannot only rely on gold shops and diamond shops to attract tourists. So they borrowed from the experience of the United States in building a large casino in the desert area of southern Nevada, so that the original barren land became a bustling city of Las Vegas, and built a large casino and luxury leisure resort in a semi-desert area two and a half hours northwest of Johannesburg, near the border with Botswana.

So South African billionaire Sona Kosner decided to invest heavily in building an artificial attraction called "Sun City" based on a local myth and legend.

According to legend, before Western civilization, nomads from Central Africa created a beautiful and comfortable "paradise on earth" in a place called "Sun Valley", where people lived leisurely, working only two or three hours a day, and the rest of the time was eating, drinking and merrymaking. But a sudden earthquake buried everything beautiful in the "Sun Valley".

In 1978, Kosner began construction of the 340-room luxury hotel in order to recreate the beautiful environment of the "Sun Valley", and in 1990 he began to build a "Lost City" next to the "Sun City" in order to meet the needs of the growing number of tourists and make people feel the earthquake disaster. The two cities form a single unit, and the project is huge, and it is said to be the largest leisure and entertainment venue in the southern hemisphere.

The "Sun City" and the "Lost City" are extraordinary, each with a giant building that houses casinos, hotels, shops, restaurants, banks and a variety of entertainment venues. Because it was daytime, Zhang Tianyuan saw that there were not many people who gambled ~ Bo, but it is said that at night, people flocked to the casino and stayed all night, and the entire "Sun City" became a city that never sleeps.

From the "Lost City", they could see that there was a castle-like luxury building standing on the opposite hill, and Zhang Tianyuan and they didn't have time to get closer.

According to GoodJohnson, it is a six-star hotel called the "Palace Hotel", with many large reliefs with African animals and plants as the theme, full of African rugged and psychedelic style. In order to create a comfortable environment, investors spared no expense to transplant 1.2 million tropical trees from the outside to the "Sun City", and built an artificial lake and a large area of artificial turf. (To be continued.) )