Li Zhi continued to walk forward with his personal guards and entered Hsinchu City through the West Gate. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

According to Li Zhi's order, Hsinchu City was built in imitation of Fanjiazhuang. After more than three years of development, Hsinchu City is now quite large-scale. The size of the city is about the same as that of Fanjiazhuang before the expansion, and the number of streets is the same as that of Fanjiazhuang.

The town is now a commercial center for 200,000 people, and all the goods brought from the mainland are distributed here, so the wholesale business in the city is very prosperous. Zheng Hui built a large wholesale market in the west of the city, where the goods brought by Lü Hu were sold to local retailers, who then sold them to the township.

Li Zhi's decision changed the fate of hundreds of thousands of people. The new farmers here in Hsinchu are very wealthy and have amazing spending power, so logistics in Hsinchu City are very active. At present, Taiwan's supply of goods mainly depends on Li Zhi's fleet. Gao Ligong organized the procurement of goods in Tianjin, and then Lu Hu shipped the goods to Taiwan. This Gao Ligong is also a talent, and the goods purchased are often urgently needed by Taiwan. Therefore, the goods shipped to Taiwan are selling very well.

The wholesale market in Hsinchu is called "Jinguo Gongda Market", and Li Zhi looked at the wholesale market and found that all the goods shipped last month had been sold, and there was no one in the market at this time. People were standing at the entrance to the market. Retailers in a hurry, dressed in clean and decent clothes, crowded in front of the wholesale market, anxiously awaiting the arrival of new goods from the docks.

Zheng Hui said: "Guogong, in the first half of the year, we mainly used cargo ships to transport farmers and materials for land reclamation, so the transportation of consumer goods was relatively tight. When the goods are transported to Hsinchu City, they are often sold short in less than three days. Every time a fleet of ships came into port with goods, it was a big deal for the merchants. ”

Li Zhi stood at the door of the wholesale market and watched for a while. Not long after, a carriage loaded with Li Jiajing's cloth drove into the wholesale market, and the merchants surrounded it like a raccoon cat that saw river fish, waving silver. The two little boys sitting in the carriage were very busy, desperately keeping accounts and collecting money among the silver stuffed by the merchants.

Before the carriage had even entered the textile section of the wholesale market, the fine cloth on the carriage was snapped up.

Not long after, a cart of Li Jiajing Iron drove over again, and another group of merchants rushed up to buy it. That scene was like buying a train ticket during the Spring Festival in later generations.

Li Zhi smiled and left the wholesale market to wander around the rest of the city.

Walking around the city, Li Zhi found that there was not only a wholesale business in Hsinchu City, but also a well-developed retail industry. There are three vertical and three horizontal streets in the city, among which the street named Phoenix Street by Li Zhi is full of large shops with gorgeous decorations. These shops tend to be two-storey tall and two or three rooms wide.

The shelves of the store are full of goods: silk, porcelain, mirrors, tea, wine, tobacco, etc., all high-end consumer goods that wealthy Hsinchu farmers can afford. The streets of Phoenix were bustling with people, and well-dressed peasants came and went from shops to shops, carrying large bags and small bags in their hands.

Zheng Kaicheng said: "Although there are retail stores in various townships, the variety is limited. To buy high-end goods, farmers would rather spend dozens of dollars more to go into the city to buy them, and there are more varieties to choose from. ”

Li Zhi nodded and walked north of the city again. Zhenbei Street in the north of the city is also named after Li Zhi, and now there are more than a dozen theater teahouses, and every house is overcrowded. From time to time, the crowded theater building resounded with earth-shattering cheers, and it was obvious that the wealthy peasants had a great demand for opera entertainment. Someone in the teahouse was reading the newspaper, the "Tianjin Daily" that came with the fleet. Although those newspapers were all ten days ago, the people in the teahouse still listened to them with relish.

However, Li Zhi walked around, but did not find a brothel in Qinglou. Li Zhi thought about it and knew that this was because most of the young couples he recruited when he recruited farmers to open up the wasteland, so there were no women who came out to make powder, and the Qinglou could not be opened.

Zheng Kaicheng and others followed behind Li Zhi, observing the prosperity of Hsinchu City all the way, and praised: "This Hsinchu City has such prosperity in just four years, which is really good." If it was snatched by Zheng Zhilong, it would be a pity. ”

Li Zhi said with a smile: "Zheng Zhilong not only can't rob us, but we also have to rob Zheng Zhilong." After two days of repairs in Hsinchu, we went to take Zheng Zhilong's Beigang. ”

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Two days later, Li Zhi's huge fleet sailed out of Hsinchu Harbor and attacked Zheng Zhilong's North Harbor.

Beigang was developed in Taiwan by the maritime merchant Li Dan in the early years, also known as Bengang, located in the western central part of Taiwan Island, on the right bank of the lower reaches of Beigang Creek. Today, this port is the Zheng family's stronghold on the island of Taiwan. Beigang was 400 miles from Hsinchu, and Li Zhi's fleet set out in the evening, drove for one night, and arrived at Beigang in the early morning of 15 April.

There are three Fu ships moored in the port of Beigang, which are probably the merchant ships that Zheng Zhilong used to communicate with the mainland. Li Zhi used a telescope to observe the port and found that there were not many defensive facilities in the port, only a few sunken forts were built by the small river near the port, and more than a dozen Hongyi cannons were erected.

There were hundreds of sailors in the port, and these sailors hurried to the dock when they saw Li Zhi's huge fleet of soldiers pressing the border. Li Zhi took a closer look and found that one-third of these Zheng family private soldiers were armed with arquebuses, while the others used spears.

The artillery in the harbor battery opened fire on Li Zhi's flotilla first. However, the distance was more than two miles, and the Zheng family's thirteen cannons lacked accuracy, and they did not hit the target in one round.

Li Zhi ordered to surround Beigang with ten merchant ships and ten ironclad ships in a semicircle and crush the fort.

Soon twenty steamers were in place, and two hundred and forty cannons were aimed at the batteries in the North Harbor. The gunners pulled the ignition rope, and the flowering shells rained down on the batteries in the harbor, exploding inside and outside the batteries. The design of the Zhengjia Fort is recessed into the ground, and it is difficult for the flowering shells to hit the target, but once they fall into it, it is a massacre. About a dozen of the 240 shells exploded inside the fort, blowing up the Zheng family's private soldiers who operated the artillery into a blur of flesh and blood.

With only one round of shooting, the gunners of the Zheng family couldn't stand it. Half of the gunners were killed, and the living half were splashed with the blood and minced flesh of the dead and wounded, and they also lost their fighting spirit and fled from the battery in a panic.

Li Zhi asked the artillerymen to change their target and began to bombard the more than 600 Zheng private soldiers guarding the dock.

However, the scene of more than 200 cannons bombarding the fort just now frightened these 600 private soldiers. If more than 200 cannons were fired at the 600 soldiers exposed in the harbor, how bloody would it be? Without waiting for Li Zhi's cannon to fire, the six hundred private soldiers collapsed with a bang. The soldiers threw away their weapons and fled in panic into the countryside outside the harbor.

Li Zhi smiled, waved his hand and said, "The ship is docked, and Beigang is also ours!" ”