Chapter 1347 Foreigner's Impression

Overseas companions were multi-faceted, and they could freely switch between merchants, bandits, diplomats, missionaries, messengers, scholars, and generals of the Great Song Dynasty.

This time, Pu Shan was entrusted by the three kingdoms of Tianfang, Ma Lindi, and Lion Kingdom to present their credentials and ask the Great Song Dynasty to agree to their trade in Penang.

Heaven is Arabia, the homeland of Pushan.

Pu Shan went from a bankrupt man with a lot of debts, to a seafaring apprentice, and then to meet the governor of the East by chance, and was appointed by the Emperor of the East as the head of trade affairs at the port of the Strait, and the story of returning home has become a legend.

The local governor received him with the highest level of approval and asked Pu Shan to express his willingness to make his own contribution to the navigation of the Arab world.

Pu Shan now has a wide eye, saying that if we want to do it, we have to be big, and since the governor has this meaning, why not introduce me to the great Sultan? Isn't the next step for the Governor General to be the Imperial Chancellor?

Today's empire is ruled by the Seljuks, whose rulers call themselves "Sultans" and depose the real ruler of the caliphate.

Today's sultan, having just occupied Asia Minor and seized the main military territory of the Byzantine Empire, is still facing the threat of military power from all sides.

The constant wars and the cost of war were a headache for the Sultan and every governor of the city.

Overland trade was blocked by the Xia and Uighurs in the northwest of the Great Song Dynasty, and the volume and cost of camel caravans could not be compared with the advantages of sea trade, so when the governor said that Pu Shan had returned to his hometown, he was immediately received with the highest standard and recommended to the Sultan.

After accepting the Sultan's commission, Pu Shan sailed back, doing two businesses on the way, and having more credentials from the two countries in his hand.

Hemp woodland, in East Africa, is what will be later Kenya; And the country of lions is Sri Lanka.

But now the Ma Glade is a scattered black tribe, and Pu Shan heard the news that if he continued to sail south along the coastline, after passing through the Ma Glade, there would be a large river.

Up the river, past a large lake, leads to a wealthy empire with huge cities made of gray hard stone, whose greatest assets are precious metals, diamonds, and ivory.

That place is called Great Zimbabwe, and the local language translates to Megalith.

The people there have been doing business with the Arabs for more than 100 years, and Pu Shan was the keeper of the secret files of the former Caliphate Palace after returning to his hometown this time, and knew that Pu Shan still had the task of finding various documents and materials for the Eastern Empire, so he specially and quietly sold him a batch of important original palace archives.

After the vast Abbasid empire was conquered by the Seljuks, the caliphate became a puppet, ruling less than one-eighth of the area it had at its peak.

In troubled times, things like Chinese classics became worthless.

In the three-car file, Pu Shan only used three horses of oriental silk and a set of pastel porcelain to exchange them.

The reason for the addition of a set of pastel porcelain is that in this batch of archives, Pushan found the autograph of the former dynasty caliph Harun al-Rashid's "vizier", that is, the prime minister, Zafar.

Zafar was born into the Barmak family, and for several generations held positions such as vizier, emperor, and prince, and was finally eradicated by the caliph because he was too powerful and monopolized too much wealth in the empire.

All the family property seized from that raid amounted to 30,670,000 gold dinars in movable property alone.

So this time, Pu Shan also had the idea of convincing Sitong to invest in an overseas adventure, an expedition to the Great Western State with the goal of discovering the city of Zimbabwe.

……

Yunzhou Port in Jiaozhi County used to be the most beautiful and luxurious city in Alice's mind, but when it came to Hangzhou, the prosperity of this beautiful water town made Alice, a dancer, think that she had gone to heaven.

Sailing northwest along the canal, Alice grows in awe of the thousand-year-old Oriental power.

I heard that the thousands of kilometers of canal under the ship was excavated by this country over a thousand years!

The accents of the people on both sides of the canal are noticeably different, but amazingly, their words are the same.

The cities, villages and towns, and the smallest county towns along the way have three or four thousand households, one or two hundred thousand people.

Alice is a slave dancer who was sold to the Middle East by the Franco, and in her hometown, such a county seat, is already the concept of a royal capital.

The people here live peacefully and quietly, dress cleanly and neatly, and have a modest and courteous demeanor.

When the road meets, be sure to cross your hands first, and then chat quietly.

Officials wore green or red robes, and silk, including some scholars and merchants in the city, wore silk fabrics and fine porcelain.

By the canal is a wide avenue, on which there are two-wheeled or four-wheeled, beautiful horse-drawn carriages, every fifty miles, there is a wooden pillar and grass roof, or a pavilion with green tiles, a post station.

Along the way, there are a lot of big cities, the city wall is not stone, but a kind of blue-black, artificially fired bricks, above the city gate, there is also a magnificent building, the shape of the building, so that Alice, who loves to dance, can see the unique beauty of rhythm.

Along the way, the cities and market towns became more and more lively, with people buying and selling goods that Alice thought were extremely rich, and several magical pieces of paper printed with beautiful patterns were used as currency.

She knew that her husband was now a wealthy man, and they had also bought their own properties and villas in Yunzhou City, but the people here seemed to be different from those nouveau riche overseas who liked to show their wealth at all times, they were very introverted.

On several occasions, she had seen a few people who seemed to have status, catching a glimpse of the valuable gemstone ring on her husband's hand, revealing a playful and slightly disdainful, almost imperceptible smile.

Unlike today's Tianfang, the people here have a greater admiration for knowledge and culture, and the husband who can sit and drink coffee with Alifa and the Sultan is not as respected here as a scholar who can use a pen with a soft brush and sway wildly on paper as white as snow.

There are several beautiful fonts for this kind of script, and she knows that her godfather is the best of them, and the godfather says that the great majesty is also good at a kind of calligraphy called "flying white", and Engong, especially one of Engong's nephews, is the top calligrapher of the empire.

When the godfather talked about the calligraphy of his nephew, his eyes were shining...... Well, as if before he got pregnant, he looked ...... When you watch yourself dance......

Coming from the water town, you have to pass countless bridges, many of which are made of stone, a single-arch stone bridge that can span tens of meters of open water.

When the carriages carrying thousands of pounds of goods staggered across the bridge, Alice cried out in surprise, fearing that they would break the bridge.

Nothing happened, however, and the coachman simply took off his felt hat and nodded politely and curiously to her, and then hurried on.

There are also temples, towers, very tall towers in many cities, and those beautiful tavars are made of yellow and green in Alice's eyes.

When the husband heard this, he laughed and said that it was an oriental firing process, and the tiles were just glazed with porcelain.

It was a rich, restrained, quiet, and gentle country, and it took them four months to travel thousands of miles from Penang to what is now the largest capital of the empire.

As the ship passed through Chenzhou, the inhabitants of the city, unlike usual, suddenly cheered, waving a large piece of paper with small characters printed on it, shouting, crying and laughing, followed by a heart-wrenching crackling noise and gunsmoke.

The husband was also frightened, and sent an accompanying interpreter to disembark the ship to inquire, and then the interpreter came back happily to tell them that their benefactor, the well-mannered and generous scholar governor of the South China Sea, had once again laid down a territory of thousands of miles for the empire, and destroyed a country that had been fighting against the empire for a hundred years!

Alice could not imagine that any country could fight against such a powerful and rich empire for a hundred years, but she knew that her benefactor, the kind-looking and gentle-spoken young governor, had a magical and powerful power in her heart.

She had heard Pu Shan say that even the two old men of the Wisdom Palace had high regard for the Governor, and Pu Shan had told her that the wealth they had now was nothing more than a joke in the Governor's eyes.

However, the Governor always seems to have always scoffed at the material wealth of the world, but he attached great importance to the texts that carried the history, knowledge and wisdom of mankind.

Even if they are thousands of miles away, even if their words are very different, even if the knowledge they record, their level and height are no longer comparable to the current learning of the Great Song Dynasty.

Thousands of miles south, Alice observed all the way, and seemed to have some understanding of the governor's obsession.

Looking at the huge clock tower on the pier of the Zhou Bridge in Bianjing, Alice said to Pu Shan a little flatteringly: "My dear, you can always buy a piano here, right?" ”