Feng Yunshan was surprised, and Sang Chunrong, the political envoy of Yunan, continued: "Holy King, Yunan's tea is also a large source of finance and taxes. Pen & Fun & Ge www.biquge.info six major tea producing areas mainly in Pu'er Province, and hundreds of thousands of tea farmers in western Yunnan, central Yunnan and southern Yunnan make a living from this. During the Kangxi period of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Yunnan tea created tea to Tibet and Myanmar, making tea profitable, and after Yongzheng listed Pu'er tea as tribute tea, the value and output of Pu'er tea soared, promoting the large-scale development of the tea industry in Yunnan. ”

"Shengwang, according to the statistics of the political secretary, in the past few years, the tea garden area of Yunan Province has reached more than 400,000 mu, with an annual output of 130,000 quintals of tea, of which 70,000 quintals of Pu'er tea are sold, more than half of which are sold outside the province, and the output value of 2 million taels of silver can be obtained a year."

"So much?" Feng Yunshan exclaimed. In this way, compared with Guangxi, Yunan is indeed more rich.

"Excellent! The information you have presented is very useful to this king! Feng Yunshan looked at everyone and said with a deep meaning: "Yunnan is rich in minerals, copper ore is the first in the country, tea is also attractive, and well salt and grain can be self-sufficient, relying on these things, it can develop very well." The only problem is the lack of transportation! Do you have any good advice on this? ”

Wu Zhenqi and others looked at each other, they all shook their heads and said nothing, no one knows that Yunan is mountainous, and the transportation has been inconvenient since ancient times, and it is futile to dig mountain roads with manpower.

Feng Yunshan couldn't help but sigh, this traffic problem in Yunnan is indeed difficult to solve. Not to mention this era, even in later generations, it is only after entering the 21st century that the railway will be high-speed in all directions. In Yunnan, it is more practical to build a road than to give up that place and move to another place.

Wang Chenglu, a member of the Yunnan Salt Law Daoist, looked at Feng Yunshan and said cautiously: "Holy King, the Manchu Imperial Court has actually thought about changing the road traffic in Yunnan, but it is not ideal. In the early years of Qianlong, he allocated millions of taels of silver to survey the waterways of the Jinsha River, and organized tens of thousands of people to dig and dredge the river, but after eight years of excavation, the beach was still dangerous and difficult, and the copper shipwreck capsized, and it was ultimately useless, and only the withered cattle boat with a load of 400 quintals could be navigated from the Jinsha River to the Siqi Xuzhou Prefecture. ”

"Oh? And such a thing? Feng Yunshan finally has something unclear, he has never understood it from the history of his previous life, the Manchu Qing Dynasty actually spent so much effort to dig the Jinsha River, and wanted to make the Yunan to Yibin section navigable, although it failed overall, but it can still be navigated by a small boat of less than 20 tons, which is also a huge achievement.

You must know that until the era when Feng Yunshan crossed over, there were excavators and other large operating machinery, which could not dig the Jinsha River to dredge the waterway, and finally had to build hydropower stations to devastatingly develop water resources, and it is estimated that it was really helpless.

It seems that in terms of water shipping, I still don't have to think about it.

Let's start to improve the transportation of Yunan by land, so much copper, Feng Yunshan remembers that Yunnan also has the output of lead, zinc, tin and other non-ferrous metals, all of which rank first in the country, and will definitely be developed on a large scale in their own hands in the future, and the key is how to transport it out.

Feng Yunshan didn't want to see the mined treasure appear in his hand, but he couldn't transport it out and pile it up in the Kunming warehouse.

"Since it can be transported to Xuzhou Mansion through the Jinsha River, even if it is a dry cattle boat of less than 400 quintals, it is equivalent to a transportation team of 200 horses, why is there a huge deposit of 3.6 million catties of copper coinage, because it cannot be transported away and stranded in Kunming?" Feng Yunshan asked puzzled.

Wang Chenglu smiled bitterly: "Holy King, it's still because it's not cost-effective. The Jinsha River is navigable, only the section from Qiaojia Hall of Dongchuan Mansion to Xuzhou Mansion, from Kunming to Qiaojia Hall, there are more than 500 miles, and they are all lofty mountains and mountains, rugged and difficult to travel, and can only rely on Yunnan horses and camel goods, and the freight is expensive. And these caravans are all profit-seeking, therefore, only tea merchants, salt merchants, etc. can afford to hire caravans to transport goods, and the government's copper can only be piggybacked by when the caravans have no business. ”

Feng Yunshan suddenly realized. However, when it comes to the caravan, I think of the famous ancient tea horse road in Yunnan, and I can't help asking: "Lord Wang, where does this ancient tea horse road lead to?" ”

Wang Chenglu perked up and talked eloquently: "Ancient Tea Horse Road? Holy King, you are talking about the tea and horse passage in Yunnan, which has existed since the Tang and Song dynasties, and it can be regarded as an ancient road. However, the real prosperity was still during the Qianlong period of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. It is mainly centered on the tea-producing area of Pu'er, which is divided into four main trunks, two branches, and a total of four directions. ”

"The most commonly said tea horse passage is the Yunnan-Tibet tea horse channel, starting from Pu'er, passing through Dali, Lijiang, Deqin, to Tibet; The other is Pu'er, passing through Kunming, Qujing or Shaotong, leaving Yunnan into Sichuan or Guizhou, and then going to Beijing. These two trunk lines are the most important. The others are all going to Fanbang, two main trunks and two branch lines. The main one, one is Pu'er, passing through Chelisi (Jinghong) and Menghai, and going straight to Myanmar; The other is from Pu'er, passing through Jiangzhou, Mengla and other places, and going to Nanzhang and Siam. ”

"There are also two branches, one in the west, starting from the city of Dali, passing through Tengyue and then going out of Yunnan to Burma and India; The other branch is in the east, starting from Kunming and Pu'er, first to the city of Yuanjiang Prefecture, and then along the river valley, through Mengzi and the estuary, to the territory of Vietnam. ”

Hearing Wang Chenglu talk about this, Feng Yunshan couldn't help but think of the scene of the ancient people's horses helping camels to transport goods. However, this horse team can transport valuable tea, and it is really too expensive to transport grain and ironware!

Thinking of the Yunnan-Burma Railway and the Yunnan-Burma Highway built in later generations, the Yunnan-Burma Railway had to destroy most of the railways that had been built due to the war of the invasion of the army, and the achievements fell short; The Yunnan-Burma Highway, in which the vast majority of the elderly, women and children, was spent 8 months by 200,000 laborers, using the most primitive way of shoulder-to-shoulder, to build a simple highway of 1,000 kilometers that attracted worldwide attention.

Later, the successful construction of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, built for the French colonists, with a total length of more than 800 kilometers, cost 160 million francs, seven years before and after, recruited 230,000 laborers, and exhausted nearly 80,000 people to build this so-called 'world's third largest project'.

Feng Yunshan couldn't help but sigh. It is almost impossible to improve the traffic in Yunnan by yourself. The cost of building a railway is too great for the entire holy country to bear.

Unless you have oil, invent the internal combustion engine, have automobiles, and then build simple roads, you still rely on this ancient tea horse road.

Thinking of oil, Feng Yunshan also remembered that Myanmar has abundant onshore oil resources. As early as 1,000 years ago, the ancient Bagan Dynasty in Myanmar discovered and exploited oil in the Ringanqiang area, and even "Ringanqiang" means a stream of oil in Burmese.

Feng Yunshan is very familiar with oil. He knew that the Ringanqiang oil field, located in the middle reaches of the Nu River, was buried at a shallow depth, which was very suitable for today's primitive technology exploitation, and that at this time, it seemed that there were already people trying to extract and collect oil there.

Moreover, in addition to oil, Myanmar is also very rich in other mineral resources. Copper, lead, silver, gold, iron, precious stones, and jade are all in huge reserves.

This undoubtedly made Feng Yunshan salivate.

Moreover, at this time, Burma was still nominally a vassal state of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and if he defeated the Manchu Qing Dynasty, he could justifiably become the suzerainty of Burma. At this time, Britain had just launched the second war of aggression against Burma and had just annexed the entire Lower Burma south of Diyuemao. The Burmese royal family asked for help everywhere to avoid the fate of being annexed by the British, and it just so happened that they could take the opportunity to enter and open the door to Myanmar.

As the saying goes, the enemy of the enemy is the friend, and sooner or later there will be a war between himself and the British who want to invade China, and instead of passively waiting for the other side to attack him, it is better to take the initiative and seek a better way as soon as possible.

The most powerful thing in the British army is actually the navy, and those huge fleets are undoubtedly difficult for the Holy Kingdom to resist. The only way to close this gap is to find ways to do it in other areas.

By taking control of Burma, it is important to have a place to send troops by land. Moreover, Burma was very close to India, and it was very effective to control Burma first and then prevent British expansion into East Asia by instigating an Indian uprising. India was the most important British colony, and with a large area and a large population, the uprising against the British army never stopped. The British, especially the Army, had limited troops, and as long as India maintained large-scale resistance, the British would have to keep a large number of troops stationed in India, so that the British army would be effectively dragged in India, so that it would not have the extra forces to attack them in the Far East.

The most important thing is that Feng Yunshan knows that the cost and time required to develop the naval fleet is very huge, and it cannot be done in one or two years.

Really going to massively fight against the British Navy, which is the supremacy of the seas, he knows that it will be difficult to win. At present, it is urgent that once the Crimean War is over, the British will free up their hands and send two main fleets to the Far East at will, and it is likely that the same tragedy will occur as the second Opium War in history, so it is a good strategy to occupy Burma by land before their own naval division is developed.