Of course, this invitation list was actually secretly listed by Pimont to Sun Lao, in addition to businessmen from Britain, France and Italy, mainly powerful Chinese businessmen.

What's more, these people actually didn't leave the dock at all, they kept mixing in the crowd of onlookers to watch the excitement.

It is a big deal for Australians to trade here, and many foreign merchants in the city certainly don't want to miss the opportunity, but whether this opportunity can be obtained or not is up to fate.

After all, the port of Macau is the world of the Portuguese, and these opportunities will definitely be given priority to Portuguese merchants, of course, according to past experience, it is not without hope, especially when the trade volume is relatively large, or when Portuguese merchants are not interested in certain goods, they foreign merchants may really be able to get a piece of the pie.

The answer came surprisingly quickly, and the first to be invited were the four major Chinese businessmen in Macau.

The first to receive the invitation was the Ao family, a Chinese businessman from Macau.

This family is a local family, and its ancestors first started by shipbuilding.

According to Pimont's introduction, its ancestors can be traced back to the time when the Three Treasure Eunuchs went to the West, and the Ao family once followed the Three Treasure Eunuchs to sail to Manchurian and Nanyang countries, so the children and grandchildren inherited their father's business, with ocean transportation as the main business, in that year, when the Portuguese just came to Macao, the Ao family had cooperation with the Portuguese, belonging to the seafaring family rooted in Macao for a hundred years.

Today, the Ao family now has 16 large and small ships, with routes to Holo in Sulu in the south, southern Fujian in the north, and Annam in the west to Champong, and they have a wide range of contacts in Macao, including deep contacts with the governor of Bugano and the city councilors, and are among the top two Chinese businessmen in the city of Macao.

The second to be invited was the Zhong family, according to Pimont's special introduction to Sun Lao, the Zhong family was his direct sponsor of the cause of recovering Timor, of course, behind it, there were three other Chinese businessmen, because these four Chinese businessmen were all married and were a community.

On the surface, the Zhong family is mainly engaged in the sale of medicinal materials and guanxiang, and now there are crude medicine shops in Macao, Xiangshan, Huizhou, Xin'an and Suicheng, etc., it is said that the Zhong family's medicinal materials are very large.

After listening to Pimont's introduction, Sun Lao was keenly aware of something, and he immediately asked Pimont, this Zhong family is just a medicinal herb merchant, what is the relationship with Dili, which is thousands of miles away? Why should I sponsor you?

So Pimont secretly reported to Sun Lao that it was because the Zhong family had a deep relationship with the Ming court, especially the local forces in Liangguang, and now the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty are fighting endlessly, and the local forces are making friends with foreign countries to prepare for the back road is the proper meaning, the Zhong family is the agent of these local forces, it is said that the Zhong family seems to have the identity of the imperial businessman, and once broke the family for the country and donated several large ships of medicinal materials to Emperor Shaowu.

Later, the Yongli Emperor of Guangxi also relied on the Zhong family, and there was a rumor that in the early years, the Yongli Emperor and the empress mother, the princess and princess were baptized and converted to Christianity, and there was a shadow of the Zhong family behind the matchmaking.

And Li Chengdong, who rebelled against the Qing Dynasty a while ago, waved his army south, and the medicinal materials of the army were also supplied by the Zhong family, but in the past two years, Yongli has declined into Yunnan, and the Zhong family was almost wiped out by the Qing court because of the suspicion of rebellion.

Therefore, today's Zhong family has been in a dormant state, and the business on the surface is only to open a few crude medicine shops in the mainland and Macao, and survive in a low-key manner, but in fact, the secret business in the Zhong family's mainland and overseas is very large and miscellaneous.

In fact, the Zhong family also has a money village business and a sea and land trade business, with tentacles all over the South Seas, inland caravans as far west as Yunnan Annan, sea trade fleets as far south as Manila, and even inland mines, farming, etc., in short, all kinds of businesses are involved.

There is no doubt that the Zhong family is a big family dormant in Macao, and when Pimont first turned into the Zhong family, the head of the Zhong family gave him a lot of real help......

In short, Pimont is repaying the favor.

The third Chinese businessman is the Qiao family, which is also a big family, although it is a newcomer to Macao for more than ten years, but the head of the Qiao family has a lot of roots in Macau.

It turned out that the Qiao family was originally a rice merchant in Beijing, and his father and the head of the Zhou family of the Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty and Empress Zhou were the brothers and business partners.

Because the older generation of the head of the Qiao family and Matteo Ricci who came to Beijing to preach, they knew some Portuguese gentlemen in Macau, Matteo Ricci was very popular in Macau, so the Qiao family moved south for several years, and finally arrived at Macau on the coast of the South China Sea to buy a house, and also married the eldest lady of the Zhong family, and now the head of the Qiao family is nominally the second son of the Qiao family, but in fact, the actual head of the Qiao family is the widowed Mrs. Qiao, who is the eldest lady of the Zhong family who married the old lady Qiao before her death.

At present, the Qiao family is still doing the rice sugar business, mainly transporting silk and brown sugar from Guangdong to the ports of Annam, and then transporting the rice from Annam back to Macao.

Moreover, because of Matteo Ricci's relationship, the Qiao family is one of the Chinese families with the best relationship with the Portuguese in Macau, and they are also rising stars in Macau, and they are even sponsors of some members of the city council.

The fourth is the Liang family, the Liang family is mainly a pawnbroking business, belongs to the richest Chinese family in Macau, the Liang family has a lot of pawnshops, it is said that the north to the Huguang area under the control of the Qing Dynasty, the east to the Jinxia under the control of the Zheng family, as well as Suicheng and Shaoguan in Lingnan, and even in Manila City on Luzon Island, there are Liang family's industries, of course, Macao is the home of the Liang family, in addition to the pawnshop, here is also the Liang family's ancestral hall.

According to Pimont, in fact, the Liang family has a real secret identity---- Chen Shangchuan, the commander of the Qinzhou Navy under the command of Emperor Yongli, and Chen Shangchuan's business and intelligence in Macau and Nanyang.

Sun Lao couldn't help but secretly sigh when he heard this, he knew that this Chen Shangchuan, according to Zhu Beiguo's research, was still a figure who left a name in history, and was currently active on the ground and nearby islands in Gaozhou, Leizhou, and Lianzhou in western Guangdong, and also maintained close ties with the Zheng family and Li Dingguo in Yunnan......

In the history of the old world, after the death of Yongli, he still refused to surrender to the Qing, a few years later, he will lead his fleet south to Annam, and took refuge in the Nguyen lord of Annam, and was later given a title by the lord of Nguyen and placed near the Mekong Delta, becoming a barrier against foreign invasion on the southern border of Annam, and his descendants have been living in Annam......

Regarding the situation of the Liang family, it is now an open secret in the upper echelons of Macau, the eldest lady of the Liang family is the young grandmother of the Ao Mansion, and the Liang family is also married to the girl of the Ao family......

Sun Lao and Gu Jin, who have been mixed in society for half their lives, all know a truth very well, behind all the people who are successful in society, there must be their unknown background and secrets.

A person like Pimont, a gentleman who has lived in the upper class of Macau for a long time, must have some understanding of the background of these wealthy Chinese businessmen, and since they are on his recommended list, then these families must have something special.

Especially in this world, the big family that does business to this extent, the so-called self-made and the like does not exist, and whoever believes it is too naïve.

You must know that an ordinary person, who has struggled for a lifetime, can start from scratch to achieve prosperity, not only requires extremely rare opportunities and extremely high intelligence, but also needs a relatively relaxed and fair social competition environment.

Only when the legal and humanistic environment of a society is quite harmonious, and the degree of freedom and openness reaches a certain height, can a person with the status of a commoner have the opportunity to realize the dream of turning over through legal means, so as to start at the bottom and gradually reach the peak of life.

And even in this relatively ideal social environment, such examples are rare, because successful people must have opportunity, courage, diligence and superior intelligence at the same time.

However, there is no doubt that all these conditions must be in place in one person for the so-called self-made situation to appear.

Obviously, from a probabilistic point of view alone, this is a small probability event.

However, there is also a special period that can make ordinary people's salted fish dream a little closer to reality, that is: troubled times, if you are willing to let it go.

In a word, the so-called successful life is definitely not as simple as those who preach the so-called success theory.

That's how real this world is......

Sun Lao and Gu Jin both know very well that obviously in this era in front of them, it is not a free, loose and fair society, then, from this backward deduction, we can know that these families must have their own innate advantages and characteristics, and must have some kind of strength and background to support, of course, it is obvious that the strength and background behind them must have a significant impact on our trade expansion or help.