In March, the temperature in the south of the Yangtze River has already risen to summer.

Liu Jiang, Xia Chengting, and Ding Ning organized more than 40 merchant ships to set off from the state to transport spices, carpets, and handicrafts brought by Persian or large food merchants to the north.

The so-called spices refer to condiments such as cardamom, pepper, and cloves. Spices are one of the most important commodities in the Tang Dynasty trade, as early as the Qin Dynasty, the spice trade has appeared, and by the end of the Han Dynasty, this scale has expanded, thus introducing a lot of grains, oils, vegetables and melons and fruits.

It's a pity that the later ones appeared Wuhu Chaohua, and those peoples on horseback did not understand what was called maritime trade, so for a long time, this trade had a fault in the Central Plains.

By the Sui and Tang dynasties, this trade flourished again.

However, this kind of trade was originally mostly carried out by land, which is also the origin of the Silk Road.

Limited by navigation technology, although the Maritime Silk Road existed in the pre-Tang Dynasty, it did not play its own strengths at all. Why would a savvy merchant turn a blind eye to the fact that a ship can carry far more cargo than a caravan caravan, the cost of transportation is much lower, and the time spent on the road is much less?

The main reason is that the losses at sea are too alarming, and the merchant ships heading to Datang may have been directly swept between the islands in the South China Sea, lost their course, and finally disappeared from this world completely. However, under the continuous development of Hu merchants, this route has gradually become mature, and the number of merchants taking the sea route has increased, which has also led to the gradual elimination of the land Silk Road, which has been plagued by war, and slowly began to withdraw from the stage of history.

During these three years, Xia Chengting was ordered to send three expeditions to the South China Sea, and according to their reports, they found Luzon Island in the southern part of Yizhou, which had only been heard of, and there were still large archipelagos in the southern part of Luzon.

In addition, it is said that some of the spicy ingredients on the merchant ships of Dashi and Persian Hu came from the Nanyang Islands.

This report gave the Harbour Master and the sailors the idea of going to the South Seas to get spices.

After more than three years of exploration and investigation, the Harbour Master's Department and the sailors have accumulated a lot of oceanographic survey reports, and now the question is, how to turn this information into wealth?

Xia Chengting believed that all steamships built should be controlled by the Naval Master, while the Minister of Shipping, Liu Jiang, insisted that the Naval Master should only be in charge of the warships, and all transport ships should be under the control of the Harbour Master's Department. As a result, under the mediation of the imperial court, the final distribution plan was that seventy percent of the steam carriers would be returned to the Harbour Administration for the formation of the three major shipping companies, and the other thirty percent of the transport ships would be controlled by the sailors.

The Beiyang Shipping Company, the Nanyang Shipping Company and the Yangtze River Shipping Company are the names given by Liu Jiang for the three shipping companies he established. I don't know what happened, but the report was typed, but the Son of Heaven thought that the name of Beiyang was unlucky, and changed Beiyang and Nanyang to Beihai and South Sea, and changed shipping to shipping.

At present, the shipping profits are huge, and the sailors are naturally reluctant to let go, using the transport ships in their hands, and also forming the so-called East China Sea Shipping Company, which is also involved in the shipping business.

It is an exaggeration to say that spices are more expensive than gold in the interior, but there is no problem with a tael of spices in Luoyang or Jinyang to sell for more than one tael of silver. In addition, after the sorting of Sun Simiao, the king of medicine, many spices can be used in medicine to treat diseases, which increases the amount of many spices.

In China, there is a large market for these exotic spices. As early as the Qin and Han dynasties, there were records of spices and dyes being introduced, such as pepper, bean, cinnamon, cloves, agarwood, sandalwood, frankincense, Suhexiang, ambergris, etc., in addition to tulip, indigo and other dyes, in addition to some used for flavoring, most of them are used as incense or medicine.

Today's Datang is getting richer and richer, and people's demand for spices is greater.

It turned out that Li Qi had repeatedly told the students that the islands in the South Seas were full of spices, and these guys were skeptical after hearing this, and now, Liu Jiang is conspiring with Xia Chengting, and the Harbour Administration and the Navy Division will organize a business group to go to the South Seas for exploration.

Liu Jiang had returned with the fleet, and he was ready to go to the imperial court to approve their plan.

The convoy split into two parts at the mouth of the Yangtze River, one of which continued north to the dock in Tianjin for unloading. The other fleet entered the Yangtze River and sailed up the river until it reached Jiangxia Wharf.

The fleet turned into the mouth of the Yangtze River, and Liu Jiang sat on a high-legged chair in the cockpit, holding a telescope with great interest, looking at Chongming Island in the north of the Yangtze River.

He felt that a good shipbuilding base could be built on the three sandbanks in the middle of the river.

……

Li Qi is "touring" Shu to inspect local government affairs.

Since the Tang Dynasty resumed the management of Shu, although the people are still living a hard life, they have been much more stable. Among them, the military garrisons in various places have contributed a lot, at least the mountain bandits and thieves that were originally everywhere in the prefectures here have been reduced by half, and the chaotic state of the past is no longer restored.

Stabilizing the place is the main task of these garrisons, but when there is a real war, the imperial court rarely transfers these garrisons. This was an important part of the imperial court's control of the local system, and although the officers of the garrisons in various places held the posts of local state and county lieutenants, they were not subject to the control of the local officials.

For thousands of years, in the bureaucratic system with Confucianism at its core, the imperial court was only in charge of administration and justice at the county level, while local governance relied on clans and gentry to manage together, and the county government was generally only responsible for coordinating major conflicts or disputes. However, Huaxia relied on the garrison army to extend governance to the village level.

The officers sent by the local garrisons became the local representatives of the Chinese court by controlling the local "archers" and "public security joint defense teams" at the township level, thus restricting the power of the local clans and gentry. In this way, the entire country is built on a military system, and although the administrative efficiency is high, there are also many drawbacks and risks implied.

For the areas with a large number of ethnic minorities in the southwest, the Huaxia State adopted a softer strategy of slow infiltration, relying on the newly built military reclamation areas to gradually advance steadily into the mountainous areas to the south and consolidate its local rule, which was diametrically opposed to the military-led strategy in the northwest.

Due to the mining of coal and iron ore in the Qijiang River and the opening of iron and steel mills, coupled with the increasing prosperity of shipping on the Jialing River and the Yangtze River, Yuzhou gradually replaced Chengdu Prefecture and became the center of industrial and shipping transportation in the Sichuan Gorge Four Road. With the development of the city and the rapid increase in population, Yuzhou was also promoted from a state to a prefecture, but the name of the prefecture given by the imperial court was "Chongqing Mansion", which made many people puzzled.

The fourth road of Sichuan Gorge, surrounded by mountains and mountains, is extremely inconvenient for land transportation, and commerce and transportation mainly rely on waterways. With the advent of steamships, the ability to communicate with the outside world has been greatly enhanced. Even in later generations, waterway transportation still occupies a very important position in the transportation of people and goods, especially in the four routes of Sichuan Gorge.

During his inspection in Yuzhou, Li Qi approved the plan to build a "steamship shipyard" in Yuzhou......

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