Gao Yi's finger slid across the map. The telegraph buildings of the three telegraph companies of Dabei, Dadong and Pacific, and the Diners Club building of the American merchant Diners Club Steamship Company are now only the Quan'an stack on the pidgin bank and the Yuanfang stack house on Guangdong Road, with a total area of about 22 acres. The land of Yuanfang Stackhouse is about 30 meters square, located at the intersection of Guangdong Road and Sichuan Road, and the land price will be slightly more expensive, but 40,000 taels of silver can definitely be taken. The remaining 20 acres of land belonging to Quan'an Stack, next to Songjiang Road, a small road on the north bank of Pidgin, is not a good location, and it is estimated that it can be done at most half the price. In this way, the total price of these 22 acres of land will not exceed 500,000 taels of silver, and about 47 or 80,000 taels will be enough.

Gao Yi's fingertips moved along Guangdong Road in the direction of the Bund until they landed on a building at the intersection. Counting from the direction of pidgin, the building is located in the third building, and it is marked with the words "Tianxiang Foreign Company". The main business of this foreign company is import and export business and insurance, and the Tianxiang Wharf across the road is their home, because it is close to Guangdong Road, and Gao Yi usually gets on the boat at this wharf when he ferries to Pudong. The Bund No. 3 owned by Tianxiang is a three-story house, covering an area of a little more than four acres, even if it is 80,000 taels of silver, it should be able to be won for a maximum of 320,000 taels of silver.

That is to say, as long as it costs another 800,000 taels of silver, including No. 1 and No. 3 on the Bund, from the Bund to Sichuan Road from east to west, and from Guangdong Road to Pidgin from north to south, except for the Shanghai General Association, the entire block will completely belong to him!

In the past few weeks, with the rapid growth of the amount of silver in the account, Gao Yi's ideas have changed almost every few days, from the initial simple renovation of the old building, to the construction of his own building, and now he is already considering buying the entire block to build a building complex, when the Bund No. 1 is his club, No. 3 is his home, No. 2 Shanghai General Association will be his own meeting room, and then on the Bund, a private garden of dozens of acres of land will be built. This kind of life can be called a real luxury. As for the main mansion that was originally intended to be built on the land of the Gu family's homestead, it now seems that it can only be regarded as a villa at most.

When Gao Yi was still immersed in the reverie of a better life in the future, the phone rang.

"Mr. Gao, I have two friends who want to visit your car club, I wonder if it's convenient?" Li Yongfa's voice came from the phone, and his friend was naturally Chinese.

"Of course it's convenient, welcome!"

Gao Yi's club, in addition to being a club, is actually a 6S shop that sells cars. Open the door to do business, regardless of whether he is Chinese or foreigner, as long as he is rich, he can come in, the difference is only that for non-members, the service is provided by the for-profit 6S store, not the club, so it is paid.

Li Yongfa brought three friends, all of whom were well-known Shanghai Tang people, two of whom were from Ningbo in the French Concession, one was Yu Qiaqing from Zhenhai, the other was Zhu Baosan from Dinghai, and the remaining one was Li Pingshu, a native of Shanghai.

Yu Qiaqing, nicknamed the "Barefoot God of Wealth", went to Shanghai at the age of fifteen, first worked in a paint shop, and started as a comprador in a German bank after learning foreign languages. In 1898, during the second Siming Gongsu Incident, he became a well-known figure in Shanghai for instigating the leader of the laundry industry, Shen Hongcheng, to lead the city's laundry workers to refuse to serve the French.

Zhu Baosan is also about the same age in Shanghai, and he started as a partner in a "food hardware store". The so-called "food hardware" refers to imported canned food, because the shell of canned food is metal, so it was not a food store but a hardware store that initially operated canned food. Zhu Baosan worked as the general ledger in this food hardware store, and then opened his own hardware store. After accumulating a certain amount of wealth, he befriended the current Shanghai Daoist Yuan Shuxun, and recommended his general ledger office to Yuan Shuxun as an accountant and cashier.

At present, it is the initial stage of Gengzi's compensation repayment, which comes from the customs duties of various treaty ports, but the Shanghai Customs will temporarily keep the money from the Shanghai Treasury before it is delivered, and Zhu Baosan will put this huge amount of money into the Shanghai money bank to earn interest. The interest paid by Yuan Shuxun is calculated on the basis of general official interest, and the interest calculated according to the market is generally higher than the official interest, and the difference in the middle is attributed to Yuan Shixun, Zhu Baosan and Gu Qingchuan. What's more critical is that because he has a large amount of money on hand, Zhu Baosan has become a hot spot for many money banks in Shanghai to ask for demolition at this time, and has become the "leader" who has the right to dismantle each bank.

Compared with the two businessmen, Yu Qiaqing and Zhu Baosan, Li Pingshu, the later mayor of Shanghai, is completely an official figure. His original name was Li Anzeng, a native of Gaoqiao, Pudong, and his father was a Confucian student. Like his contemporaries, Li Pingshu wrote poems for the imperial examinations, hoping to become a high-ranking official. At the age of fifteen, he was admitted to Xiucai, and was enrolled in the Longmen Academy in Shanghai, where he studied Confucian classics with Liu Xizai. However, he spent the next nine whole years, and he did not pass the level of promotion, so he could only participate in the examination for the selection of low-level officials in the Qing court in the name of Yougongsheng - Xiucai can also be an official, but it is generally a low-level position such as teaching and teaching. Li Pingshu did well in the exam, but he did not take up a formal position, but returned to Shanghai to serve as the chief writer of the Zilin West Newspaper. After having a stable income, Li Pingshu once again devoted himself to the imperial examination, and finally his hard work paid off, and after another nine years, he finally successfully passed the examination.

After being selected for three years, Li Pingshu served as the magistrate of the county three times. During the third term, during the Sino-French War, Li Pingshu organized regimental training to repel the French invasion, but he was dismissed from his post. Fortunately, he was already quite famous at this time, so he was recruited into the scene by Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang at the time.

As soon as Liu Kun, the governor of Liangjiang, died in October last year, Zhang Zhidong temporarily assumed the post of governor of Liangjiang, and he took the opportunity to install his cronies in some important posts in Liangjiang. One of them was Li Pingshu, who was appointed to the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, and concurrently served as the general director of the China International Commercial Bank and the director of the China Merchants Steamship Bureau.

Gao Yi was more surprised by Li Pingshu's arrival, it is understandable that Yu Qiaqing and Zhu Baosan, two businessmen, wanted to buy a car back in a fashionable way, but Li Pingshu, as an official official of the Qing Dynasty, sent a car to him, was he brave enough to sit?

Gao Yi's doubts didn't last long, and after taking everyone around and sitting down again, Li Pingshu spoke:

"I wonder if Mr. Gao has ever thought about accepting Chinese into the club?"