Yuhuatai.

"The choice of this execution ground is not good, and the common people have to walk several miles to see the beheading."

Zheng Zhilong said dissatisfied.

"It's not good to set up the execution ground in the city again!"

Yang Qing said.

He moved the execution ground out of the city, and it was not in line with his aesthetics to cut off people's heads in the downtown area, and those traitors and the like were all in Xiaoling, after all, this was also a sacrifice of prisoners, and in the future, all like this will be executed in Xiaoling. But the ordinary executions are changed to Yuhuatai, which is facing the Jubao Gate, and there are not a few steps out of the city, it was originally a cemetery, and even the eunuchs who died and had no relatives to ask for were buried here, and it was close to the city, which could be used as an execution ground.

Of course, even then the people were dissatisfied.

After all, they still have to go to the city.

"Marquis Zhongyong, what should Yingyi do?"

Zheng Zhilong looked at Chen Jinshi and the other five people who were being escorted to the execution ground and said.

The British East India Company's armed merchant ship Hinde arrived in Fuzhou, and this was its second trade trip to the Ming Dynasty, the last time was three years ago, but only in Macao.

It is estimated that few people know that Britain had already clashed with the Ming Dynasty ten years ago, and a captain named Weddell arrived in Macao after a year-long voyage with six sailing ships on the orders of the British government, originally intending to trade with the Portuguese and China. However, it was clear that the Portuguese did not want to share the monopoly of trade, and although the Portuguese government agreed, the Portuguese governor of Macau instead sowed a wedge between them and the local officials, and a skirmish broke out. Du Chongzhen has been sixteen years, needless to say, how the coastal defense of the Ming Dynasty is erosive, even pirates can break through the Tiger Gate, and finally the British occupied a small fort along the coast, snatched dozens of small iron cannons, each of which weighed about three or four hundred pounds, and it was estimated that it was something like a Fran machine or a tiger squat cannon, and robbed dozens of pigs......

It is estimated that he starved at sea.

However, when sailing to the Pearl River, they were blocked by Ming warships, and the British had to retreat, and then attacked and robbed a sailing ship again. In the end, the Portuguese made peace, and they wrote a letter of apology, signed a guarantee, and paid an additional two thousand eight hundred taels of silver.

The second time was the Hinder.

This time it was because the Portuguese were forced to pay more than twice as much tariff to Ming officials in Macau as they did, and they didn't buy enough goods.

But now the five-port trade has helped them.

When the Hinder, who was trading in the South Seas, heard the news, it immediately turned north to the Ming Dynasty, and crossed Macao, no longer passing through the Portuguese as a malicious intermediary, and went directly to Fuzhou, which had been opened, where they encountered the Ming navy in training in the Taiwan Strait and were taken to Fuzhou.

"Normal trade is fine!"

Yang Qing said.

"They want to be like the Portuguese, and get a place to live on the coast."

Zheng Zhilong said.

"Nope."

Yang Qing said: "Trade is allowed, but the place of residence is certainly not, and their activities in the Ming Dynasty are not allowed beyond the port where trade is carried out, but they can be allowed to pay silver, and the Fuzhou magistrate will build them a few houses within the demarcated area outside Fuzhou." It is best to be a small island in the Min River, such as Zhongzhou or Sanxian Continent, etc., they will rest there in the future, but they are not allowed to live for a long time, and they must all leave when they set sail, and they must abide by the laws of the Ming Dynasty, otherwise they will be dealt with according to the law. However, outside of this range, they are not allowed to enter without the permission of the government and the accompanying personnel sent by special personnel, and in addition, it is strictly forbidden to go to places such as porcelain kilns and tea houses, and every batch of goods they load on the ship must be strictly inspected. I will send Jinyi Wei alone to be responsible for the inspection of the customs, if they bring tea seeds and behead them directly once they are found, they also dare to spy on the processing process of porcelain and tea and behead them directly once they are discovered. ”

"I have to guard against it!"

Zheng Zhilong nodded approvingly.

The secret theft of Chinese porcelain was made during the Kang Mazi era, when Mazi appointed the missionary Yin Hongxu to an official position, and the latter was able to freely enter and leave the porcelain factory in Jingdezhen. He kept a complete record of the process and raw materials used to make Chinese porcelain, and then sent this record back to Europe, including some of the raw materials, and he continued to observe it for a whole decade.

As for the time of the outflow of tea, it is impossible to determine.

And it wasn't done by Europeans, as early as the early nineteenth century, after the British annexation of Assam, the Bruce brothers discovered tea trees from the Jingpo chiefs in Assam. After all, tea is easy to take away, and tea plantations are everywhere, even if you really want to prevent it, it is not so easy, but the Bruce brothers then recruited Chinese from Nanyang to plant in the past, and used the tea grown by real Chinese tea farmers as a gimmick, and the Assam tea sold in Europe was not popular.

It's too bad to drink.

Those Nanyang Chinese don't know how to make tea.

They're just packaged up by the Bruce brothers.

It was in the mid-19th century that Chinese tea really suffered a fatal blow.

Fu Jun, a botanist appointed by the British government, entered China with the help of a crow's victory, changed into the clothes of our Qing Dynasty in Shanghai, shaved his head and kept braids, and arrived in the area of Huangshan under the leadership of a servant and a coolie. Because of the wind and sun on the sea, his complexion at this time can hardly be said to be a white man, and those people who have never seen Europeans think that this person looks strange at most, because of his generosity, he is unhindered in Chinese mainland. During this time, he freely visited the tea plantations, and the servant came forward to kowtow and beg in exchange for the consent of a tea plantation owner, showing him the whole process of making tea.

After that, he went to Wuyi Mountain, where he obtained the black tea making process in the same way, and even the influence of water quality was known through a monk.

In the end, he was not satisfied.

After all, that's not enough.

So before leaving, he simply recruited six tea planters and tea makers, two workers to make tea cans, and did not attract any attention. After all, at this time, the pig trade was prosperous, and the wisdom of our Qing officials was not enough to understand the lethality of a botanist, so he left China in a grand manner.

Then Assam black tea rose in one fell swoop.

Is China the world's largest producer of black tea in modern times?

Wrong.

China can't even get to the top three.

The first is India, the second is Sri Lanka, and the third is Kenya, and their combined tea production is close to the total production of various types of tea in China.

All of this stems from Fujun.

Before Fu Jun, Europeans didn't even know that black tea and green tea grew from the same tree, and after he sent back the news, the vast majority of Europeans didn't believe it and thought he was talking nonsense.

Yang Qing really wants to open the country.

This was necessary, but at the same time as the country was opened, secrecy had to be taken care of, and his control over the Portuguese missionaries was already tight, and all missionaries had to operate in the company of the Jinyi Guard. But for these new Europeans, they must also be strictly guarded, not only traditional things such as tea and porcelain, but also many new things he made in Daming.

However, at this time, the main commodities purchased by the British in Daming were not these.

They procure cane sugar.

The vast majority of the goods purchased by Weddell's fleet are cane sugar and rock sugar, and the other goods are not even a fraction of the sugar, I have to say that the Europeans at this time are actually quite bleak, even eating white sugar has to be regarded as traveling across the ocean, across tens of thousands of miles to transport it. And this was especially true of the British, after all, at this time the sugar plantations in Southeast Asia were in the hands of their enemies, the Dutch, and Cuba, the sugar base in the Caribbean, did not belong to them.

Lord Yang, who opened a jar of rock sugar pear, comfortably drank a sip of chilled sugar water.

"Master Hou, the offender has been verified!"

A brocade guard stepped forward and said.

"Then let's be executed! They are all readers, so why bother? A beautiful woman, why be a thief! Why don't you do it, you have to rebel! ”

Yang Qing said.

On the execution ground in front of him, Chen Jinshi, who was being pressed, struggled like crazy, but his hateful gaze was not at Yang Qing, but at Xie Xuelong with a bitter face in the distance. The official of the Criminal Department next to him was reading out his verdict with a jade seal, which clearly stated that they were convicted and beheaded on the basis of Xie Xuelong's recital.

As for Yang Qing......

Probably the drafting was omitted, anyway, it's not a big deal, it was originally signed by the two of them, Xie Xuelong is the secretary of the criminal department, and he is the real director of the criminal prison, so it is reasonable to only write his name.

Of course Chen Jinshi won't know this, Yang Qing said before that he wouldn't kill him after he confessed, everyone knows that Yang Qing is a person, although it can be said that he is full of evil, but there is a special character that even his enemies admire, that is, he will not break his word if he speaks. So in Chen Jinshi's view, this is Xie Xuelong, because of his confession, he turned to kill people and kill him......

"Jie Shifan, I won't let you go!"

He roared angrily.

However, because of the missing piece of his tongue, his shout was very indistinct, and it was difficult to make out the content without listening carefully, but this certainly did not include a young man not far from him. The man wore a blue cloth around his neck, one hanging from his chest and one on his back, and then he carried two large words of interview, while he was holding a charcoal pen in his hand and quickly writing on a stack of paper with wooden boards, and the content of the writing was Chen Jinshi's accusation against Xie Xuelong.

"Haha, surnamed Chen, you also have today!"

Wang Juren, who was beside Chen Jinshi, laughed happily.

The other three unlucky ones looked at Chen Jinshi through gritted teeth.

"Execution!"

The officer looked at them with a blank expression, and then gave the order for the execution.

The knives of the five executioners fell at the same time, and the five heads fell to the ground in the spray of blood, and the people around them cheered.

In the midst of this cheer, a scribe of about sixty silently looked at the five fallen corpses, and then let out a long sigh. And beside him, a young beautiful woman held his arm, a pair of beautiful eyes looked around because she didn't want to see the bloody scene, and suddenly seemed to have a heart like a soul, and the loyal and brave marquis more than ten feet away was looking at her with a smile......