Yu stayed in Fuzhou until the end of the Lunar New Year before returning to Chaoshan. During this period, he has been in contact with many parties, trying to lobby a certain bigwig in the government.

However, the reality is harsh. The rapid decline of the strategic position has made the influence of Liu Xiang Group much less than before, so no bigwig is willing to jump out of troubled waters. And after all the money that Yu Xianke brought was eventually consumed in the rotten bureaucratic system, he had no choice but to go home.

After going back and seeing the exchange of information with the big shopkeeper, both of them shook their heads again and again. Although the situation is clearer now than before, it is useless: Liu Xiang cannot do the interview request proposed by the two northern families, at least not for now.

"Well, I had to go south." Liu Xiang said dejectedly.

Yu Xianke could only nod his head in agreement at this time: "The matter has come to this point, and it is unknown to go south to Guangzhou to raise some money."

Liu Xiang sighed: "Alas, it's not easy to talk about."

Although the news from Guangdong sounds good: Guangzhou officialdom is still interested in recruiting Liu Xiang. But as I said before, Liu Xiang knows that he has a hard time - he does not have the territory and business channels needed for transformation.

Macao and Xiamen have already blocked the trade routes between the north and the south, and even if Liu Xiang changes shape like Zheng Zhilong, his merchant fleet will be seized if it can't reach Fujian, and there will be no trade to do.

In this way, even if Guangzhou officialdom recruits him, Liu Xiang, who has no business and territory, will sooner or later embark on the old road of looting. After that, he turned against the Guangdong officialdom, his reputation became negative, and then the government began to make up its mind to exterminate him......

The foreseeable future worries Liu Xiang, but there is something even worse that happens: on the fifth day of Yu Xianke's return, two streamlined sailing ships, each armed with four guns, exchanged fire with a pirate patrol north of Nan'ao Island, killing and wounding several pirates before leaving.

Nanao Island is located at the boundary between Fujian and Guangdong, and it is the most important area.

As early as Wanli 1575, the Ming court divided Nanao Island into two provinces, with Xiongzhenguan as the boundary, and established the only island general military government in the country: "Fujian, Guangdong and Nanao General Town Government". At the same time, the imperial court set up a "deputy commander-in-chief of the South Australia army stationed in Zhangchao and other places", which consisted of one battalion of each of the Fujian and Guangdong armies, which was the deputy commander-in-chief of South Australia that Zheng Zhilong had been involved in history.

In the Qing Dynasty, the specifications of the deputy commander-in-chief here were raised to the specifications of the commander-in-chief, and the position became more and more important.

Now that the gunboats have come to Nanao Island to stir up trouble, there is no doubt that the next step is to go south.

Although this is a bit of a provocation to the South Australian Deputy General Defense Zone, Liu Xiang does not dare to pin his hopes on the official master.

So on March 5, 1629, Liu Xiang's gang, which had been resting for a few months, began to pour out of the Chaoshan area in large numbers, heading straight for the sea route that the bandits were most familiar with and the richest in the south: the mouth of the Pearl River.

The strong neighbor in the north who got the news didn't do anything, but just coldly watched the opponent go away.

What Liu Xiang didn't know was that after leaving this time, he would never be able to return to the Chaoshan area where he started, and Nanguo would be the last stage for all Chinese pirates, and the script would be staged as scheduled.

......

After temporarily retracting his gaze from the warm southern country, the giant in a remote corner turned his gaze to the cold and damp Jiangnan.

"The waves run, the waves flow, the waves in the waves and the rivers never stop......"

The homespun shirt, dressed as a fisherman, and wearing a hat paddled the boat, while listening to the small tunes floating from the boat floor. Although he couldn't understand this strange foreign tune, he still felt a little melancholy from the singing.

It's Xiong Dao who sings.

The boat departed from Hangzhou and went down the Qiantang River, and when it reached Jinshanwei, it could turn north and enter the boundary of Songjiang Prefecture. Traveling through the dense water system of the Yangtze River Delta, only thirty or fifty miles of waterway, the boat can go to Songjiang Fucheng, and then thirty or fifty miles to the north, is the pearl of later generations, and now the small Shanghai County.

After singing a song on the beach, Xiong Dao, who had finished expressing his enthusiasm, was blown by the cold river breeze, and his pride was suddenly gone. He tightened the bamboo rat skin robe on his body, glanced at the desolate cotton fields around the river, and suddenly felt cold, and hurriedly turned around and ran into the cabin.

Generally speaking, the cotton fields in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River can be sown in March and April, and the famous Songjiang cotton in the Ming Dynasty relied on a large number of cotton fields in the north and south of the Yangtze River to provide raw materials.

As a result of this situation, the Yangtze River Delta, which was originally the land of fish and rice, has become a pure commercial grain purchasing area at the end of the Ming Dynasty, grain farmers have become cotton farmers and mulberry farmers, and the crops in the entire Susongchang area have been transformed into cash crops.

However, in Songjiang Province in 1629, cotton was not easy to grow: although it was already spring and March, the cold climate during the Xiaoice River period led to the late sowing of cotton fields everywhere, so when Xiong Dao looked at the past just now, the land on both sides of the bank was still bleak, and even a farmer could not see the field.

After getting into the cabin, Xiong Dao suddenly felt a lot warmer: this damn clammy cold in the Jiangnan region was extremely unaccustomed to him from the north. Due to the relatively high humidity of the air and the current temperature of only 10 degrees above zero, no matter how thick the clothes are worn, the underwear always feels damp and chills.

After exhaling, Xiong Dao quickly sat down on the chair and began to stretch out his hand to bake the fire. As a wealthy businessman, he naturally can't travel simply: a luxury flat-bottomed double-decker ship is sailing in the river at the moment, the ship is finely made, the materials are exquisite, and the interior decoration is luxurious and extravagant, which fully matches his identity.

And what Xiong Dao used to roast his hands at the moment was a common iron-covered honeycomb coal stove in later generations.

Speaking of stoves, the Hangzhou station was originally tasked with starting to sell this kind of stove and honeycomb coal this year.

Who knew that after the year-end conference, the above policy changed: based on the local area, actively expand employment.

In this way, it is not practical to import finished stoves from Taiwan. Although the animal power machinery transported from the kiln area is a good thing processed by machine tools, animal power is animal power, and low production efficiency is inevitable.

Like the iron sheet used in the furnace, the original goods in Taiwan are the thin steel plates produced by the steel mill, but what about the local ones in Hangzhou? The thick iron sheet smashed out by the animal-powered forging hammer. In this regard, both in terms of appearance and durability, the original goods are completely copycats.

However, a policy is a policy and cannot be changed. So Xiong Dao could only open a workshop in Hangzhou, and hired a large number of workers to use animal-powered machinery to produce cottage stoves and honeycomb coal.

In this way, the original explosive model can only be changed to slowly advance.

Although it shows that people immediately discovered the advantages of this kind of stove to save materials, be convenient, and store fire, but because the production capacity cannot keep up, there is no hope for dumping, and can only support agents in various places to slowly distribute goods - this is also one of the purposes of Xiong Dao's trip.

What is now in front of Xiong Dao is an original stove. However, the furnace was not filled with honeycomb coal, but bamboo charcoal used by the wealthy class in the Ming Dynasty. This kind of bamboo charcoal is made by simmering bamboo, which has no smoke smell and is very expensive.

While roasting the fire, watching the bamboo charcoal in the hearth slowly burn with beeps, Xiong Dao fell into deep thought.

......

He came to Songjiang Mansion this time with an important mission.

With the increasing cargo throughput on the Tangzhuang side and the semi-open recruitment of displaced people, the already overwhelmed Tangzhuang Wharf is now completely unable to hold on.

You must know that the Qiantang River is not a suitable place for river-sea combined transportation. The estuary is not only shallow, but also often has various large and small tides, which greatly affects the entry and exit of sea vessels with a deep draft.

In this situation, Hangzhou Station naturally set its sights on Shanghai Tang in the north - there is no port location more suitable for "international trade" than Shanghai, which has been fully verified in later generations. I want to talk about "Luming" with more like-minded people, " ", talk about life, and find a confidant~