Rewind the clock to the day when the cabinet held a meeting of the kings.

The black-blue waters tumble and fall, and the salty winds blow across the water, bringing a large area of gloom and silence on the winter beach.

Due to the relationship between latitude and temperature, transparent seawater is rarely seen on the surface of the sea in East Asia. The kind of beaches where you can see fish swimming underwater are usually only found in the tropics and the Mediterranean, which is warm all year round.

Therefore, when the Han people living on the mainland stand on the seashore in the dusk yellow, black and blue, and the waves crashing on the shore, there will be no poetry and lazy thoughts from the tropics, instead, there are all kinds of dignified and far-reaching, all kinds of great ambitions, Cao Cao can stand on the stone and shout the famous sentence "cut to Yongzhi", but he must not have the consciousness of opening a resort hotel by the sea.

This mindset nurtured by the environment is hard to change—unless the ancient man standing by the sea is a time-traveler.

Xiong Dao, dressed in a leather robe, was standing on the reef at the moment, looking at the dark and heavy clouds in the distance, but he was thinking about many easy questions. For example, it's time to start a scene, raise some sisters, and get back the salaries of these migrant workers.

Just behind Bear Road is an expanding industrial area of the port.

The six-meter-wide cement port boulevard, with a white line in the middle, runs parallel to the coast, and connects the industrial area, the wharf area, the storage area and the commercial area at the left and right ends, which are the core buildings of the Shanghai Port.

The dock area consists of two stone piers and two wooden piers. Two long stone piers were intended for large-tonnage sea vessels, for which the port department did not hesitate to spend a great price. This includes not only half a year's time and a large number of rocks, cement, and steel meshes, but also the working hours of thousands of workers.

The dock area is laid on small railroad tracks on the ground, and from time to time horse-drawn carts or small cargo hoppers propelled by human power glide past. The route of the railroad crosses the port boulevard to reach the storage area, which is separated by a wall and a gate.

Several rows of large warehouses painted with white ash and covered with red bricks stand neatly in the freight yard. These flat-topped, rectangular warehouses with neat geometric lines are a bit strange in the eyes of the Ming people. In fact, in order to prevent fire, the warehouse complex is structurally not made of any wood. In addition to the red bricks, the long-span roof is paved with reinforced concrete.

Guards wearing blue cloth training uniforms and short-brimmed hats and carrying rifles patrol the warehouse area. These people, along with the lookout post on the roof of the warehouse, as well as two "domestic" lever fire trucks, form the theft alarm system in the storage area.

Crossing the storage area, along the half-narrow cement road to the west, about a mile later, in the original Zhangsutan weedy field, is the commercial area.

Since the time and focus are not in this area, the construction of the business district is currently the lagging and sloppy. There is no paved ground here, but some ordinary buildings familiar to the Ming people have been built on the lime-mixed Sanhe land, such as wine shops and large carts, mules and horse shops.

However, a business district is a business district. From the moment the construction began, the noise never stopped. A large number of people of all colors brought infinite vitality and abundant information, and merchants from all over the world gathered on this barren beach in carts and boats. No one cares about the quality of the accommodation, people only see business opportunities.

So around Zhangsutan, some people soon built shacks and thatched huts without permission, providing shelter for some small merchants and their men who could not live in inns. Don't underestimate these shacks, just like the capsule apartments in Tokyo in later generations, the poor can't afford to live in. A large number of migrant workers who came to the port to carry work are still crowded in Zuojia Village, which is farther away.

The construction of the port of Shanghai has attracted the surrounding business activities in an instant. Like the Tangzhuang River Wharf in Hangzhou, which was about to be blown up before, it was liberated overnight.

Whenever a fleet of ships coming from the south docked at a dock in Shanghai, it caused a wave in the business district. The spot and futures prices of various industrial products fluctuate in an instant, and merchants and brokers begin to move one after another, and a large number of overt and covert transactions begin to appear.

About a kilometre off the coast to the south of the docklands and business districts, there is always a puff of white smoke.

The place where the white smoke rises is the boiler room, the core building of the industrial zone.

The boiler not only provides clean hot water to the surrounding industrial area, but also heat, which makes it possible to process certain industrial semi-finished products.

Speaking of white smoke from chimneys, this kind of 17th-century environmental protection measures really don't want to see through the crowd - it takes some environmental protection dust removal equipment to add some environmental protection dust removal equipment before the boiler chimney emits white smoke, which undoubtedly increases the construction cost.

However, considering the struggling appearance of the Shanghai Port now, in the end, the port authority still installed dust removal equipment on this small boiler, which is terrifying, and the big house that emits billowing black smoke every day may be burning some ominous things such as bones and dead babies inside?

While burning the boiler, it is necessary to take into account the local public opinion environment, which in itself reflects the weakness of Xiong Dao here. There is no need to think about the white smoke and black smoke in the boiler room of the kiln area.

Facts have proved that the rebound in industrial construction in the base camp of the reactionary gentry in Jiangnan is still quite strong.

Since Xiong Dao was attacked by a sneak attack and requisitioned two contiguous pieces of land in Zhangsutan and Zuojia Village, Xiong Dao has not been able to buy a contiguous piece of land so far.

In fact, in May this year, not long after Xiong Dao retracted to engage in construction, the Jiading County Government sent a message - there was a "big threshold" people who were very dissatisfied with Xiong Dao's previous behavior, and at the same time they were also very angry at the county government for "acting for the tiger", "aiding and abusive", and "sitting back and watching profiteers embezzle people's property".

In addition, there is more than one gentleman who has made such a statement. So the county government first hid, the political pressure was too great, and the county lord's small shoulders couldn't bear it at all.

In this way, Master Yu Bende, who is really a tiger fighter, will not be able to move. He can no longer come forward or call on the power of the county government to help Xiong Dao buy land, because the Yu family has already received the words handed over and dares to do things indiscriminately, and the county office's secretary will be replaced!

Under a series of overt or covert pressures, Xiong Dao, who ran into walls everywhere, quickly figured out the reason, and many gentry were stimulated by his strange way of land acquisition. A businessman, even if there is a Rausch army general behind him, dares to act so rampantly in the land of culture and education in the south of the Yangtze River, and many gentry said that this is unbearable.

So Xiong Dao immediately put on a turtle flow posture.

Fortunately, the existing land acquisition is enough to start construction. However, due to the boycott, the construction direction of the port was immediately adjusted, and the wharf and storage area were fully constructed. As for the planned priority industrial zone, all the other factories in the plan have been suspended, except for a few small workshops that produce mahjong tiles by hand machinery.

After adjusting the process, the workers successively built some ports and warehouses after May, and then welcomed the merchant ships from the south.

From the moment the merchant ship arrived, Xiong Dao could be regarded as taking a breath, and the merchants and the agents behind them who were originally standing on the dry shore to watch the excitement would not watch the trade route being cut off.

So someone and a certain port, who stopped expanding externally, reached a dangerous balance with a group of gentlemen who were neither short of money nor accustomed to the ambition of villains, and they were all staring at each other coldly.

In this way, after more than half a year has passed, the original planned Shanghai Port is now relatively complete except for the construction of wharves and storage areas, and the planned commercial and industrial areas have not been rolled out at all, and they are hastily perfunctory - Xiong Dao does not want the industrial area with billowing black smoke to give some people an excuse, nor does he want to build the commercial area into a New York City where every inch of land is valuable, and usher in greedy eyes and actions.

Standing on the reef, facing the cold sea breeze in November, Xiong Dao, who was slightly fat, couldn't help but tighten the bamboo rat skin robe on his body, "Alas, look at Lao Tzu's aggrieved life, the power of the original capital is still too weak, and I don't know if my hometown is making a profit." ”

At the same time that Xiong Dao was lamenting to the sea, a figure wearing a training uniform but with a graceful figure ran over from a distance, waving a piece of paper in his raised hand, "Master, there is a telegram!" ”

"Huh?" When Xiong Dao heard the shout, he turned around from the reef, and then waited for his confidential concubine to jump on the stone, and then took the draft of the telegram she handed over - the telegram that Xiong Dao received was the one sent to him by the cabinet after the meeting of King Qin.

The next moment, when Xiong Dao read the telegram at a glance, he couldn't help but put his hands on his waist, and suddenly raised his head and laughed.

After laughing hard for a long time, Xiong Dao wiped away the tears that came out of laughter. At this moment, he can't help but be excited; I saw him standing on the reef, holding the concubine's waist with one hand, pointing inland with the other hand with a halberd, and singing a joke in his mouth, "Look ahead, the black hole must be the thief's lair!" Wait for me to catch up and kill him! ”

After finishing the frenzy, Master Xiong took his work and walked quickly back to the port authority building, the only two-story building in the port.

After returning home, Xiong Dao first went to the telegraph room and dictated several telegrams and sent them. After that, he successively summoned a group of managers from various operational groups, security teams, commercial departments, port departments, and so on.

After conveying his thoughts to these key personnel and holding a briefing, Xiong Dao stayed in the port authority building that day to receive and receive telegrams.

After making clear contact with all parties, he got on a fast boat the next day and went straight to Tangzhuang, outside Hangzhou.

Today, Tangzhuang has returned to its original deserted appearance, and all commercial activities have been moved to the port of Shanghai, which is only responsible for the dispatch of some migrant ships.

After arriving in Tangzhuang, Xiong Dao, the deputy stationmaster, immediately had a secret conversation with Lu Cheng, the stationmaster of Hangzhou Station. While the two were planning, they also sent telegrams to the officials from time to time to discuss with all parties, and it was not until everything was planned that Xiong Dao returned to Shanghai Port by boat.

At the same time, a name card was also handed into the door of a certain family's mansion.