It was very tiring to juggle between the smell of liquor and tobacco, the various faces of pretending to be Sven, the hypocritical compliments on each other, and the spinning steps and writhing waists.

After a successful day's work, he returned to his home on Piccadilly Street to rest. This is not a particularly large mansion, but a small three-story building with only a dozen rooms, the first floor is the reception hall, the second floor is the bedroom, and the third floor is the study.

It's usually full of guests, but as a Chinese prince's residence, it's a bit shabby. But this is a famous rich area of London, next to Buckingham Palace, not to mention the high price of land, the key is that it is difficult to buy a large piece of land. In the past, it served as the Chinese Consulate in London, and after the establishment of the European company, it handled the affairs of China and Europe, and it became the asset of the European company.

But the European company is also a commercial company, so this property has become Zhou Chenggong's residence, which is convenient for him to socialize with the nearby magnates. The European company's headquarters moved to the Financial City, where the same amount of land was used as the headquarters for the company's settlement with partners. The company also has a large shopping mall on the bustling Oxford Street, which was built on the advice of the emperor at a cost of £1 million, and is the largest building on Oxford Street, known locally as the China Palace.

The architectural style of the Chinese Palace, which is basically built according to the Chinese architectural model, is a single-storey building, which is very exquisite and complex. Zhou Chenggong felt that the company used this palace very cheaply, and many of the furnishings were a large number of Qing palace treasures given by the emperor, which were of high grade. But the company treats it like a bazaar and allows people to visit it. I heard that it was also the emperor's intention.

After Zhou Chenggong became the head of London, he immediately changed this practice and closed the China Palace. The exhibits are still abundant, and in addition to the real Qing court treasures, there are also a large number of exquisite handicrafts. But the only people who can appreciate these beautiful works of art are those who have been invited by the company. Zhou Chenggong often holds various drinking parties and dance parties there. Sometimes it was lent to aristocratic friends in England and even other parts of Europe to entertain guests.

Zhou Chenggong knew that the emperor meant to expand trade through exhibitions, which Zhou Chenggong did not dare to change, so China Palace still accepts orders from customers, and any product they fancie, as long as they want it, can be customized from China through the company. Whether it is a large vase with a height of one person, or a bonsai of gold and jade coral made of various jewels with coral as a stem, gold as a branch, white jade carving, and gemstones as stamens, it can be customized. And can be customized according to the requirements of customers, vases can be designed into ancient Rome, ancient Greece, can also be in accordance with Chinese painting techniques, as long as the customer has requirements, the company has a professional designer responsible for the design, and finally sent back to the country for processing. These French luxury models, which integrate design and production, have been widely promoted in the Chinese handicraft industry.

Those who can order goods from the China Palace are by no means ordinary people, and ordinary people cannot afford to spend thousands of pounds on luxury goods. Therefore, after Zhou's successful reforms, not only did not affect business, but expanded trade. But the emperor still sent a letter to make the exhibition public, and the emperor meant to promote Chinese culture to Europe.

Zhou Chenggong disagreed with this very much, thinking that this was no different from Zheng He's trip to the West, and felt that it was the emperor's personal plot. Zheng He spent tens of millions of dollars of silver on his voyage to the West, neither established a colony, nor established a commercial base, nor even had the significance of opening up shipping routes, but took traditional commercial routes, and finally gained nothing with the end of his voyage to the West.

But Zhou Chenggong did not dare to disobey the emperor's wishes, and he decided to only exhibit on Wednesdays in the Americas, and this day was his day off.

Today is Wednesday, and after finishing a batch of new fan exhibitions, Zhou Chenggong feels very tired.

When he returned to his bedroom, he didn't even have the strength to undress, kicked off his shoes, lay on his back on the bed, and looked at the ceiling in a daze, where was his way out!

The treatment of the crown prince, he said that it was fake not to envy. He doesn't want to have the same preferential treatment as the crown prince, but he doesn't even have the power to control a county, even if he is allowed to be a county magistrate and govern the place. But let alone governing the locality, he is not even qualified to stay in the country.

He didn't blame his father, people in their position were more helpless than ordinary people. He knew why he was sent to England, not because a large number of people wanted him to stand up against the crown prince. The power of the crown prince is too strong, so there are many opposing forces. Behind the crown prince stood a large number of relatives, and those orthodox imperial examination officials who were suppressed could not be reconciled, and after Wang Fuqian's death, they needed a leader. The crown prince could not be their leader, so they chose him as the eldest son of the emperor.

Zhou Chenggong knew that it was impossible for that group of civil servants to fight against the relatives who controlled the army, and they couldn't fight with the imperial election officials who were relatives, so could An help him seize the throne?

Every time he exhibits to civilians, he will be very tired, but today he is particularly tired, not because of the trouble of those civilians, but because he is in a bad mood today, he suddenly feels that he himself is not an exhibit, an exhibit of a Chinese commercial company, through the exhibition of him, let the company get benefits.

Is he going to be an exhibit for the rest of his life?

He was not reconciled.

He doesn't want to return to China, because he doesn't want to be a prince of peace, and I'm afraid it won't be peaceful to return to China, as long as he returns to China, he will inevitably become a kind of banner, a kind of anti-crown prince banner, and be involved in a whirlpool that he can't bear. So he can only stay in Europe, and if he stays in Europe, he has to be an exhibit for European companies, which is too shameful, and he can't see the future.

He is a prince, but he finds that he has no capital other than this identity. And the more he cherishes this identity, he must not sell himself easily.

He is strict with himself, strives to learn various European cultures, etiquette, behaves appropriately on any occasion, and shows a noble temperament in front of anyone.

He did intend to marry a European aristocratic woman, because then he would be free, he would not have to get involved in China's political whirlpool, and he would have a real place to live.

But he definitely doesn't look down on ordinary women, even if it is a princess of a big country like Britain and Russia, if it can't bring him a political future, he will definitely not accept it. He is not very demanding, and he does not want to get a big country, he only hopes to get a space to display his talents. So he has been looking for a princess from a small European country with the right to inherit, even if it is just a principality, a country smaller than the Chinese prefectures, he is willing to accept. But there are not many opportunities for those princesses who have the right to inherit, which one is not a sought-after target for European royal families.

Zhou Chenggong is also willing to accept the princess of a big country, he does not ask to inherit the throne, but he hopes to get the promise of the other party, so that he can go to the local governance. In his opinion, the management of European countries is too chaotic. There are countries that are efficient, such as Prussia, but the efficiency is based on militarized management, and the authority of the army is too heavy. There are also chaotic countries such as Spain, where the church, the imperial power, the liberal aristocracy, the republican revolutionaries, ghosts, snakes, and gods are rampant.

He felt that by letting him go to this kind of country, he could greatly exert his abilities and establish a meritorious career. He had recently found a target, Louise Marie, daughter of the Duke of Orleans in France.

Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was a special French aristocrat whose family had great influence in France. But oddly enough, they were on the side of the revolutionaries. After the French Revolution, Louis Philippe even joined the Jacobins, and he even joined the army to fight for the revolutionary government, rising to the rank of major general. Unfortunately, the revolutionaries could not tolerate the nobility, his father was executed by the Jacobins, and he inherited the title and went into exile. Later, he lived in England for a long time, and only returned to France after the restoration of Louis XVIII. He became an important politician of the French constitutionalists and still had a strong influence in France.

Zhou Chenggong hoped that through the relationship of the Duke of Orleans, after marrying him, he could serve in France. Even if it was to go to the French colony, he was willing. Now that Europe is paying attention to China, the management of the Chinese crown prince in the Americas has been rumored to be a laughing stock, and he feels that he can do a hundred times better than the crown prince.

But Zhou Chenggong was still hesitating, he had already established a relationship with the daughter of the Duke of Orleans, and had maintained correspondence for a long time, and the Orleans family was also interested in marrying him and gaining Chinese support through him. But the Orleans family could not guarantee the power that Zhou Chenggong demanded, so Zhou Chenggong was reluctant to propose. Louise Marie had already expressed his heart to him in the letter, and he was also satisfied with the French girl who was not yet eighteen years old, but he knew too well the power of his mother's family, and his mother was only a servant girl, and he could not even tell where his mother's family was, which made him so embarrassed now, and if Mary's family did not support Mary enough, he would never marry her.

He also has several alternatives, all of them are aristocratic girls from some small countries, and the political changes in Europe have been too great in recent years, and revolutions have broken out in Naples, Piedmont and Spain, Portugal, and even Russia in Italy (the Decembrists), and there is no chance for a big country like Russia and Spain, but there is still a great chance of gaining power in a small Italian state.

After the fall of Napoleon in France, the greatest influence on Italy was the Austrian Empire, so Zhou Chenggong also had long-term contact with the Austrian princess Maria Anna. He did not even mind marrying Maria Louisa, Marie Louisa, the empress of Napoleon, because after Napoleon's exile, at the insistence of his father, Emperor Franz I of Austria, he was given several Italian possessions at the Vienna Peace Conference, and she had the titles of Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastara, and was later deprived of some of them, but she still kept Parma.

In order to change his fate, Zhou Chenggong will do whatever it takes.