Columbus's fleet had already set out to find Panama, but Marin understood that Panama was just a springboard, a springboard to control North and South America, as well as to China and the Japanese kingdom. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The reason why I chose to take the Pacific route was because of the tailwind. To go from the Indian Ocean to China, you have to make a detour to the east and west coasts of Africa, and then pass through the Strait of Malacca and through the South China Sea to reach China.

The biggest problem with this road is that the wind direction is changeable, and it has to pass through several wind belts. In the age of sailing, boating is not about taking the shortest route, but about finding a route that can make the most of the wind.

If you take the African coastal route into the Indian Ocean, you will first enter the windless belt from 30 degrees north latitude to 30 degrees north latitude, and then enter the northeast trade wind belt from 30 degrees north latitude to the equator. After that, it enters the southeast trade wind belt from the equator to 30 degrees south latitude. In the southernmost part of Africa, the waters of South Africa, the prevailing westerly wind belt has entered......

Once you get to the east coast of Africa, it's the other way around......

In short, although the total distance of this road is not longer than that of taking the Pacific route, or even shorter, the wind belt changes too much, and the sailboat is very unsmooth for a while.

Marin remembers that in the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company brought back silk and porcelain purchased from Taiwan, using advanced Galen ships, which also required a 10-month voyage.

However, the other route, the "Manila Galleon Trade" route of the Spaniards, and the Pacific route, took much shorter.

This is because the Spaniards made full use of the trade winds in the Pacific Ocean. For example, when they set out from the Americas to the Philippine colonies in Asia, the Spanish sailed in the northeast trade wind belt between 30 degrees north latitude and the equator. Moreover, in the Pacific Ocean at this latitude, there is also an ocean current from east to west - the North Equatorial Warm Current......

The sailboat takes this route, which is equivalent to a tailwind and water, and the speed is very fast. Even the Spanish galleon, which was a little worse than the Anglo-Dutch Galen, traveled from the west coast of the Americas to the Philippines in just 3 months.

The voyage from Europe to Panama takes only one or two months with a Galen ship. That is to say, if you marry the southeast coast of China from Europe and take the "smooth sailing" route of the Pacific Ocean, the total time will only be 5 months, which is half the time of the Dutch.

As for the return trip, it's pretty much the same. Manila galleons generally depart from Manila and sail northeast along the Kuroshio. After reaching the sea near Japan north of 30 degrees north latitude, it follows the prevailing westerly winds in this area and the warm North Pacific Current in a northerly direction. Once in California on the west coast of the Americas, follow the southward California Snap south to the west coast of Mexico, or simply Panama......

However, although this route is also downwind, because it is very detouring, first to the north and then to the south, the total time of the whole voyage reached 6 months, which is twice the time from east to west. This is the difference between tailwinds and downwinds in the sailing era.

Returning to Europe from Panama is also a bit unpleasant, and it is estimated that it will take up to 3 months. In this way, the total time will also reach about 9 months, which is not much longer than the Dutch African coastal route.

That, of course, was the time it would take to use a normal Galen ship. If you change to a clipper......

A terrifying piece of data suddenly appeared in Marin's mind - the "Cutty Sark" (also known as the Short Shirt), the clipper ship used by the British to transport tea, departed from Guangzhou, detoured the Cape of Good Hope, and returned to London, the whole journey took only 100 days!

And how long is 100 days? 3 months and 10 days, a third of the 10-month voyage time of the Dutch......

It is certain that if you use a clipper to take the Pacific route, it will only take more than a month to go from Panama to southeast China, from east to west. Even if the return trip is not so smooth, more than two months will be about the same......

Marin's consideration was that he could boldly use clippers in the Pacific Ocean when other countries were attracted to the African coastal routes and did not set foot in the Pacific. In this way, the sailing time can be greatly saved.

And if other countries had not set foot in the Pacific Ocean, they would not have discovered the mystery of the clipper. Then, they went all the way to the east and west coasts of Africa and the Indian Ocean, using old Galen boats (it seems that they don't even have Galen now), and they took three times as long as clippers......

As for the Atlantic route, from the mainland to Panama, for the sake of secrecy, Marin naturally used Galen ships. Moreover, this route, too, is not stable, and there will definitely be a lot of pirates in the future. Therefore, the Galen ship, which can install a lot of artillery, is the first choice for this route. As for the clippers, they are fast and fast, but they cannot install artillery and have no self-defense capabilities. Therefore, you can only take the remote route, so as not to let people find out......

Once a trade route to China in the Pacific Ocean was opened, Marin could predict that at that time, China's silk, porcelain, and tea would bring him all kinds of huge profits.

You must know that the Spaniard's Manila galleons cost between 1 million and 3 million pesos per year to purchase from China. This peso is the silver dollar, what later generations called the "ocean". 1,000,000 pesos is 1,000,000 oceans. Specifically, each silver dollar contains about 24 grams of silver. According to the current gold-silver exchange ratio of 1 to 12, it is 2 grams of gold. 1 million pesos is 2 million grams of gold, which is equivalent to 561,000 ducats......

And that's just the purchase price, shipping to Europe, the price is higher. Marin had read a statistic in his previous life. That is, the Dutch bought the smuggled raw silk in Taiwan for 4 guilders per pound. When shipped back to Europe, the selling price reached 16.6 guilders per pound, an increase of more than 4 times......

In other words, the goods worth 1 million pesos could be sold for more than 4 million pesos, which is equivalent to more than 2.3 million gold coins. The specific profit is probably also 1 million or hundreds of thousands of gold coins......

In the face of such huge profits, how can Marin not be moved? So, he decided to open up the trade routes of China within 5 years. To this end, what he needs to do now is to train a group of Chinese translators......

Yes, train a group of Chinese translators. After all, now in the whole of East Friesland, or in all of Europe, only Marin understands Chinese. There are also two Mongolian doctors, Mozhigen and Battle, who know a little bit of the Datong dialect.

However, if you send a fleet to Huaxia to trade, you can't let yourself or the two court doctors go in person, right? Therefore, it is still necessary to train a group of translators.

Marin has thought carefully about this. Dealing with Daming is very complicated. First of all, language is a big problem.

Among them, this is divided into two cases. One is dealing with the government, and the other is dealing with the people......

If you want to deal with the government, you need to know the "official language". There is a difference between the official dialect of the Ming Dynasty and the Mandarin of later generations. The Mandarin of later generations was actually formed after the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs and absorbed a lot of Manchu words. For example, "hutong" is one of the words introduced by the Manchurians.

The official dialect of the Ming Dynasty during this period was actually more based on the accent of Nanjing. Because, Nanjing is the capital of the Ming Dynasty. At the beginning of the founding of the country, it was also the "Yayin" with the accent of Nanjing as the national standard.

Of course, after the Ming Dynasty moved its capital to Beiping, the main residents of Beiping were a large number of officials and their families. In this national metropolis, the official "Yayin" naturally influenced the local language.

In other words, the Mandarin of later generations was actually a mixture of the official dialect of the Ming Dynasty, the local dialect of Beiping, and the local dialect of the Manchu people who later entered the customs.

Ma Lin later lived in Nanjing and found that there was no problem communicating with the locals in Mandarin. In other words, there is no problem in dealing with the Ming government in Mandarin.

As for dealing with the people, it will be troublesome. Because, most of the people engaged in maritime trade are Hu Jianren and Guangdong people. These maritime merchants who dared to engage in smuggling in violation of the law were not scholars, so naturally they did not know any official language, and they could only speak Min and Cantonese.

As for Min and Cantonese, Ma Lin doesn't know it, and at most he can sing a few Cantonese songs with a relatively high degree of popularity. However, if you want him to communicate with people in Cantonese, he will definitely be blind.

Therefore, Ma Lin's final plan was to communicate with the official Daming Dynasty and use Mandarin to communicate with the official Daming dialect.

To this end, Ma Lin ordered that in the school, select teenagers with better language talent and teach them Mandarin himself. A few years later, he was sent to Huaxia to act as a translator and engage in trade......

As for the number, Marin tentatively set it at 30 people. No matter how much I do, I don't have the energy to teach it myself. Moreover, if you want to teach this group of people, you have to write your own teaching materials. For example, Chinese pinyin or something, you also have to make it out. Then, a small dictionary similar to the "Xinhua Dictionary" was made so that the students could consult it for themselves. It's just that this is a lot of books...... Marin felt like he was going to be used as an animal......