However, most of the businessmen's children have not yet come back to their taste, they are curious about new things, marveling at the world that is different from them, but they are not the same as the Japanese mission a few years later, the Japanese have already made up their minds to peek into the secret of the strength of Westerners before going abroad, they have already set the right mentality before going abroad, they have long been shocked that these foreigners have defeated the Asian sun China twice, and even China has been defeated, they have long accepted the fact that foreigners are stronger than Japan, Therefore, when they go to the West, they can immediately devote themselves to learning, and when they visit Western scholars, they can lower their posture and ask for advice. Pen fun and pavilion www.biquge.info

However, most of these most flexible businessmen's children are still only amazed at the skills of foreigners, and they have not yet become interested in Western scholars and knowledge, but even the most conservative of them have actually suffered a great impact on their thinking.

I am afraid that there is only one person who is really unmoved, Wu Chongyao, the deputy envoy of the mission, who was half-forced by Zhu Jinglun, and the reason why he was half-forced is because the other half, he also wants to come to the United States to see what the United States is like before his father Wu Bingjian died.

But when he came, he was different from everyone, including Chen Zhiting, the envoy of the mission, who could not help but sigh on the one hand, but he couldn't, he had to care about business in China, and he had to care about business in the United States, not only did he care about their family's business in the United States, but he also carried a big business handed over to him by Zhu Jinglun at this time!

Since the last time he resold a bill of exchange of the East India Company with Zhu Jinglun, Wu Chongyao has admired Zhu Jinglun's ability to do business.

Creating a market for bills of exchange and then making super-profits from it is difficult for a classical businessman like Wu Chongyao to live within his means.

But Wu Chongyao felt that he did a very good job that time, he didn't earn as much as Zhu Jinglun, because his courage was not as big as Zhu Jinglun's at that time, he only invested hundreds of thousands of taels in Guangzhou, and finally earned 300,000 taels.

But this is already the most successful business he has done over the years, to be honest, he is not a good material for doing business, because Wu Bingjian did not train him as a successor at all, the Wu family as a successor cultivated Wu Yuanhua, Wu Chongyao's fourth brother, Wu Yuanhua is the most suitable successor, since he was a child, he has followed Wu Bingjian to do business, Wu Bingjian handed over his own capital to this son, but this son has a bad life, the new local governor and other officials hate businessmen, and hold the filial piety of businessmen in one hand, He also had to change the law to clean up these businessmen, and when a foreigner woman visited in a sedan chair, he took off his clothes and whipped Wu Yuanhua, an official businessman wearing a three-grade crown, because he built a dock for foreigners, and he was even arrested and beaten in prison, resulting in Wu Yuanhua dying early at the age of 33.

In the end, Wu Bingjian had no choice but to push the twenty-three-year-old Wu Chongyao to the position of heir, Wu Chongyao's business knowledge at that time was almost zero, he was trained as a scholar since he was a child, and he couldn't even read the account book, and he relied on feelings to do business, so his father Wu Bingjian could only continue to be in charge of the business, and ten years later, Wu Chongyao was really in charge of the Wu family's business after Wu Bingjian's death, but his talent was really not good, and the foreign company's own privileges were canceled, but the responsibility for being blackmailed by officials was not less, His family's business even lost money for a long time.

Wu Chongyao knew that in his hands, the Wu family's family business had barely made an inch, and even shrunk by most of it, and the donations to the imperial court, the filial piety to officials, and the payment of war reparations to the imperial court made him feel extremely worried about the future of the Wu family.

Until the method provided by Zhu Jinglun made him happily win a beautiful battle, changing the profits of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, this feeling was like the demeanor of his grandfather and his father when they were doing business, which made him very happy.

This time, Zhu Jinglun found him again, told him that he was going to make a similar deal, and asked Wu Chongyao if he was willing to do it, Wu Chongyao was of course willing to do it, and then Zhu Jinglun asked him to come to the United States.

Zhu Jinglun borrowed another million taels of silver from the Wu family this time, hoping that Wu Chongyao would help him operate.

Only Wu Chongyao can operate it, because Wu Chongyao has someone in the United States, John Forbes, a cutting-edge businessman in the United States.

Forbes went to China in 1829 as an apprentice to the tea shop, and later he recognized Wu Bingjian as his father-in-law and founded Qichang Foreign Company, and when he returned to China 8 years later, he brought a huge asset of 500,000 Mexican silver dollars!

It was with this money that Forbes began to operate another business in the United States, the railroad, and by this time he was already a railroad tycoon, worth more than a million dollars, and was an agent in the United States for the British Baring Brothers Bank.

Because of Wu Bingjian's relationship, Forbes received Wu Chongyao very warmly, introduced Wu Chongyao to his banker friends in New York, and told his friends that Wu Chongyao's wealth was 100 times that of him, and this rich man came to the United States this time to invest, and for a time Wu Chongyao became a star in New York, and was approached by a group of American businessmen with various purposes, including securities dealers who recommended stocks to him, entrepreneurs who sought his investment, and those who wanted to cooperate with him to jointly develop Sino-US trade.

Here Wu Chongyao enjoyed the dignity that a successful businessman should have, but he was deeply depressed, because he knew that these were not what he should enjoy, but what his father earned for him, compared to him was nothing, nothing.

The more he felt that he was worthless, the more Wu Chongyao wanted to make a difference, and he told Forbes that a British ship would soon dock in Richmond in the southern United States, and he needed Forbes to help him find a safe secret warehouse in Richmond and find a trustworthy British businessman to take care of him.

Forbes asked him what was on the ship, and some wondered if Wu Chongyao had smuggled some contraband into the United States, but Wu Chongyao did not hide it from him, telling him that he was a shipload of medical supplies worth millions of dollars, including alcohol, gauze, and crow tincture for analgesia.

Forbes is a big businessman with a banker background in New York, and he immediately knew that Wu Chongyao was hoarding goods, and this kind of thing was already being done, and a large group of people in New York were betting that the north and the south would fight, but none of them were as generous as Wu Chongyao, and they took out a million at once.

At this time, Americans were still relatively optimistic about the relationship between the North and the South, in fact, most people did not think that there would be a fight, including the Lincoln administration, which led to the sudden outbreak of war, and the North was caught off guard, at that time they had less than 20,000 troops in their hands, and they were still distributed throughout the country, and there was no way to concentrate at all.

Lincoln's external advocacy has always been to hope to solve the problem through negotiation, for which he has repeatedly assured the South that he will not force the South to liberate the slaves, whether to free the slaves or not, he always insists that the choice is in the southern states, but he did not expect that the South still attacked the North and launched a war.

Forbes happened to be such a businessman, he co-founded the Qichang Foreign Company, which was a business giant similar to the East India Company for Britain, with huge influence in the United States, and after him, the family continued to have great power in politics, and one of his descendants later became vice president of the United States.

So Forbes doesn't believe that war will break out, and even if war breaks out, it will definitely be a short-term war, and he believes that the one million taels of drugs that Wu Chongyao hoarded will eventually make him lose a lot, because this batch of goods is destined to take a long time to get rid of, and it is impossible for someone to consume so many drugs in a short period of time.

As Wu Chongyao's brother-in-law, Forbes still sincerely persuaded Wu Chongyao not to take such a risk, and persuaded him to transport the goods to the north to sell, so that he could lose less, but Wu Chongyao insisted on doing so, and Forbes had no choice but to agree to help find someone, it was too easy to find a businessman with a British background in the United States, but such a large fortune, but it was necessary to find a reliable person, and finally Forbes handed over this task to one of his relatives, and at the same time won a generous commission for this relative, brother to brother, Business is business, even with Wu Bingjian, Forbes also has to ask for money.

Forbes didn't know that in order to raise this batch of drugs, Wu Bingjian asked Jardine Matheson to help raise them in the UK a year in advance, and in this era, that is, the United Kingdom, if you want to come up with a million taels of drugs at once, it will also have a great impact on the market, so this batch of drugs was raised little by little, and it took a whole year to raise.

A month before Wu Chongyao's departure from China, he asked Jardine Matheson to send people to the United States to properly dispose of the medicines when Wu Chongyao came to the United States.

Shortly after they had unloaded all their cargo in a remote warehouse in Richmond, the Confederate Army attacked the Sumter Fortress in the north, and war broke out.

After receiving the news of the outbreak of the war, Wu Chongyao completely breathed a sigh of relief, in fact, he didn't have much confidence, because he didn't know much about the United States, and even Forbes thought that the war would either not break out, or it would only be a small-scale war, so why did Zhu Jinglun think that there would be a war between the north and the south, and now the war really broke out, Zhu Jinglun guessed the beginning, Wu Chongyao thought that Zhu Jinglun also guessed the end, but he couldn't see the end, because he still had to go to Europe to deal with the same affairs.

At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, three days after the Union artillery opened fire on the Sumter Fortress, Chen Zhiting led the Canton delegation out of the United States and rushed to England on a British merchant ship before the war spread to the north.

For Wu Chongyao, Britain was another speculative business field, and for Chen Zhiting, Britain was the real destination of the mission. (To be continued.) )