March 30, 1648, Qingdao Port, southeast wind level 4.

The warm, moist air currents blowing from the Atlantic Ocean stop here, and then pour the water vapor into the vast expanse of land mercilessly. However, as a brand new city that has just been built for a short time, Qingdao County has applied a lot of new technologies in town facilities, and the investment is also very large, so the city's sewer network is very complete. The rainwater pouring from the sky is diverted to the sides of the road by a sloping and slightly curved pavement, then into the diversion culvert and finally into the complex underground pipe network of Guò, all of which is poured into Qingdao Bay.

With perfect urban drainage facilities and a strict system of city appearance management (the fines for littering and spilling dirty water are very high), the rainy weather, which can be called a disaster for the cleaning process of the old mainland cities, does not have any negative impact on Qingdao Port at this moment. There was no overflowing sewage on the streets, no mule and horse droppings (and even if there were, they were cleaned up by their owners or quickly picked up by the dung pickers), no rotting leaves or garbage, and no homeless people shivering from the cold in the corners of the walls (even if they were taken to the road construction site), they all looked so neat and orderly.

These are the impressions of Captain Coot. He had just arrived from Amsterdam and made a trip to the Senegalese coast of West Africa, where he loaded a large number of black slaves and sailed across the ocean to the port of Recife. After completing the West India Company's mission, Captain Kuayt loaded the ship with Brazilian sumacia planks that had been dried for several years (all processed according to the size requirements of the East Coasters), and pulled them directly to the port of Qingdao to sell them to the East Coast people, who had been purchasing this fine naval material for many years.

The Westlake beer in the Wharf Tavern has always been a favorite of Captain Coot, therefore. Wearing an oilcloth raincoat, I walked briskly on the gravel road. He soon dodged into a tavern with a "wine" banner on it.

Across the road from the tavern is the newly built vegetable market in Qingdao Port. It was the evening after work. There are many locals shopping for ingredients in the wet market. As a large-scale commercial port built by the Executive Committee, Qingdao Port still has a large number of citizens (as opposed to farmers) living in the urban area, and most of them are employees and managers of banks, bond exchanges, foreign exchange exchanges, shops, and wholesale markets.

Captain Kuayt noticed that there were far more women than men in the market—a natural phenomenon because men usually had to do heavy work. Most of these women traders are from Italy or Greece. They look vulgar and have very high voices, introducing their wares to guests in a strange accent mixed with awkward Chinese and native slang.

After a cursory observation, Captain Couay had to admit that these women were exactly the same as the women traders of the central market in Paris, and that they were almost the dirtiest mouths in the city. They sat in the vegetable market with piles of melon peels and husks, sewage and rotten fish, and cursed each other in rude language, such as "shameless", "stinky bitch", "unworthy whip", "nasty embryo", and "double slut who seduces the students of the Corps Fort", almost bringing the habits of the Old World to the vibrant city of Qingdao Port.

The market is flanked by numerous shops selling a wide variety of East Coast goods. Among them, clothing, leather goods, hardware products and furniture are the most. The goods looked beautiful, but Captain Kuayt didn't dare to rush forward to inquire or buy them. Because he wasn't sure if the goods were the same as those he had encountered in Amsterdam and London. The owners of those shops were well-versed in the art of renovating old ones, and some Jewish-run shops often deceived customers.

For example, you can't resist their repeated solicitations and the temptation of looking good-looking goods, so you go to their dimly lit shops and buy a black coat, but when you get out into the sun, you find that the color of the expensive dress suddenly turns green, purple and even mixed with many ugly spots, in short, it is terrible. Captain Kuat, who has suffered this kind of loss, really doesn't want to rush to buy expensive clothes like Dayu in a store pù that he doesn't know very well, of course, the shop pù of the people on the east coast has always been very formal, and there are no boring Jewish merchants running around the world, the quality should still be guaranteed, so maybe you can go shopping after drinking, it will be autumn on the east coast soon, and you should buy a decent autumn coat.

The tavern was full of friends, and Captain Kuayt had a seat after greeting a familiar waiter, and he ordered a fresh trout from the local inland river of Qingdao Harbor, and asked the boss to fry it for him; He then ordered a plate of spiced whale meat, a plate of scrambled eggs with tomato and two large beers.

Sitting at the table behind him were two Armenian merchants, as could be seen by their attire, much to the surprise of Captain Kuat. Armenian merchants were not uncommon in Europe, but at this time in the New World, their arrival was very eye-catching, could it be that they also did business on the east coast?

In fact, these Armenian businessmen did come to the East Bank to do business. The two Armenians from the Khornisian family opened a warehouse in the port of Qingdao, specializing in goods from the Middle and Near East - such as raw silk, donkey skins, horses (Turkmen, Arabian, Rascek), camels, dates, raisins, spices and other specialties, and business was quite good.

I have to admit that Armenian businessmen in this era are extremely aggressive. The Armenian merchants living in Zulfa, a suburb of Isfahan, had a monopoly on almost all of Persian commerce, passing through Persia to the Indus, Ganges, and Bay of Bengal, to Portuguese Goa, and even across the Himalayas to Lhasa. They also visited the Spanish Philippine Islands, but their roots were always in the vast Ottoman Empire and its vicinity (Moscow, Persia, Morocco, etc.), and they were fierce competitors to Jewish and Italian merchants of the era (as for the so-called "Dutch" merchants active in the Amsterdam market, most of them were actually Dutch Jewish and Italian merchants).

It was precisely because of the great energy of the Armenian merchant community that the East Coast people, with the help of many years of good cooperation with the Khornisian family, invited them to open a merchant house on the East Bank, and at the same time tried to persuade them to use their own business network to sell raw silk from Persia, Punjab, and Kashmir to the East Bank. The people on the eastern coast even promised that if they did not have enough ships, the eastern republic would send transport ships and warships to transport them.

Now, as the capital of the Italian silk weaving industry represented by Genoa gradually began to transfer its production capacity to the New World, the silk weaving industry in Europe began to decline gradually, and the sales of raw silk gradually declined. Historically, in 1649, Armenian merchants also sold raw silk in large quantities to Marseille (when a French fleet intercepted an English ship in the waters off Malta that had sailed from Smyrna to Toulon with 400 bales of raw silk belonging to 64 Armenian merchants on board). But during this time, Armenian merchants began to gradually turn their sales to the Eastern Republic of China, which now has the world's most advanced silk weaving technology. They traded with the merchant fleets of the East Coast in the port of Smyrna, and even with the encouragement of the East Coasters, they prepared to hire Arab merchant ships to transport raw silk from Persia and northwestern India to the port of Xinhua through Guò. This kind of large-scale business has been done, so what is it to open a trading station on the east coast!

In addition to these two Armenian merchants, there were a large number of merchants from other countries: Portuguese, Dutch, English, Italians, North Germans, Danes, Swedes and even Spaniards (these brave merchants were apparently on ships of other countries). With the convening of the first Qingdao Autumn Commodity Expo last year, more foreign merchants who know the news began to gather at Qingdao Port this year, gearing up for the second Commodity Expo to open in May.

It is said that this year, the East Coasters will receive large orders from customers for medicines (mainly aspirin), bean cakes, knitted lace textiles, machine-made white flour, new steel bars, soaps and many other new goods - all good goods that have not been exported before, so this year a large number of European merchants have come to participate in this business event.

According to the gossip, in the first three months of this year, the cash and bills (bills issued by a consortium of five banks, including the Commercial Settlement Bank, referred to as "UnionPay" bills) from the outside world have exceeded 700,000 yuan, not to mention the massive amount of goods they have brought that are gradually being realized. This year's Qingdao Autumn Commodity Trade Fair will inevitably refresh a more scorching and dazzling economic figure on the basis of previous years!

Captain Couay quickly devoured his own dinner, and then spent the night at the Dock Hotel. Early the next morning, he went to the Qingdao Commercial Clearing Bank and bought a 10,000-yuan bond of the Southern Railway Company with a coupon rate of 6.5 percent. This is a gift he has prepared for his youngest son, he is going to retire in two years, and then his eldest son will inherit his main property and business, and this 10,000 yuan bond is the only property he has prepared for his beloved younger son.

According to the latest promotional measures launched by the Southern Railway Company, after the maturity of this bond, creditors can choose to convert the debt into equity at the current stock price (the total share capital of the Southern Railway Company is 200,000 shares, each worth 50 yuan), that is, the youngest son of Captain Kuaite can choose to convert the 10,000 yuan into a 0.1% stake in the Southern Railway Company - subject to the approval of the East Coast government.

After doing this, Captain Kuaite returned to the ship and waited quietly for the opening of the Qingdao Autumn Commodity Fair on May 1. (To be continued......)