June, Guangzhou.

At this time, it was the time of the tribute trade of the Ming Dynasty, and the port of Guangzhou was full of large and small ships, crowded with people.

What is different from the past is that not only are there fully armed sailor soldiers in the port, but there are also sailor ships patrolling on the water, responsible for maintaining order on the scene.

Since the Department of Customs has replaced the Department of Shipping, the Department of Customs is responsible for the entry and exit of the port of Guangzhou, and the officials of the Department of Customs register the ships and goods leaving and entering the port in an orderly manner, and then collect the corresponding taxes.

The tributary trade is different from the overseas trade of the Ming Dynasty, which is a kind of grace given by the Ming Emperor to the overseas vassal countries, so it does not matter the cost at all, as long as it arrives in the Ming Dynasty, then all the expenses in the Ming Dynasty are responsible for the city.

This made overseas vassal states rush to come to the Ming Dynasty to conduct tributary trade in order to make huge profits, and there were even many people who pretended to be tributary missions.

With the decline of the Ming Dynasty's national power and the rise of piracy, the tributary trade of the Nanyang vassal states became increasingly depressed, and the Nanyang countries, which could not get the expected return from the Ming Dynasty, gradually gave up coming to the Ming Dynasty to pay tribute after considering the risks at sea.

However, when the Westerners arrived in the South Seas on a three-masted galleon and began their colonial rule, the tributary trade became active again.

Because it was impossible to trade with the Ming Dynasty, those Westerners carried out tributary trade in the name of the Nanyang vassal states, and took the opportunity to transport a large number of goods to the Ming Dynasty to trade with local merchants.

The people in the city are well aware of this phenomenon, but they have received a lot of benefits from it, and naturally they are too lazy to take care of this kind of thing, and they make a lot of money one by one, and the local government is naturally blind to the vested interests, which makes the smuggling business in Guangzhou bigger and bigger, and the market is becoming more and more prosperous.

The establishment of the Customs Department greatly exceeded the expectations of the smugglers in Guangzhou, and in addition to the establishment of the Sailor Division, the business circles in Guangzhou were in a storm for a while, for fear that the Customs Department and the Sailor would join forces to cut off their financial routes.

Considering that the background of the Customs Department and the Sailor was too deep, and its helmsman was a celebrity in front of the emperor and a scholar of Zuo Chunfang, the merchants of Guangzhou gave up the psychology of confrontation and turned to seek cooperation, and did not hesitate to bribe the Customs Department and the Sailor with a lot of money.

To the disappointment of the merchants in Canton, however, the officials of the Customs Department and the Sailors were different from what they had encountered before, and although they took their money, they immediately handed it over to their superiors, but told them that the status quo of the Canton business community would be maintained until the Ming Dynasty's overseas trade began.

In other words, the Customs Department and the Navy Division will not investigate smuggling at this stage, but once Daming's overseas trade opens, then if they want to smuggle again, they will have to take into account the huge risks, and Li Hongyu gave them a buffer and time to prepare.

On the morning of that day, a seagoing ship slowly sailed into the port of Guangzhou, and Li Hongyu stood on the deck of the ship and stared intently at the bustling scene of ships coming and going in front of him.

"Sir, Guangzhou City is so big!" At this moment, a handsome boy came out of the cabin and stood beside Li Hongyu and looked in amazement at a huge city standing behind the harbor.

Immediately after, two more white and delicate young men walked out of the cabin and looked at the big city in the distance with great interest, which was the city of Guangzhou that Li Hongyu and his party were going to enter.

The handsome boy is naturally Sakurako under the mountain, and the two delicate young men are Youlan and Yang Li'er, and the three of them disguise themselves as men for convenience.

However, in Li Hongyu's opinion, instead of women dressing up as men, it is better for the three of them to show people directly in women's clothes, after all, the men's clothes of the three are too conspicuous.

As the saying goes, three women in one play, Li Hongyu's ears have never been quiet along the way, and Youlan, Yang Li'er and Yamashita Sakurako don't know where they came from so many words, and they chatter all day long.

This also has the advantage that he doesn't have to bother to do it

"Guangzhou is an ancient city with a long history, and it will one day become a shining pearl in the South China Sea." Li Hongyu smiled and said to Sakurako Yamashita who was looking at Guangzhou City in surprise in the distance.

Guangzhou was known as Renhuan City, Nanhai County, Chuting and Panyu in ancient times, and is located at the confluence of the three rivers of Dongjiang, Xijiang and Beijiang, in the north of the Pearl River Delta, bordering the South China Sea.

Since the Qin Dynasty, Guangzhou has always been a county, state or government, occupying the position of the political, military, economic, cultural and scientific and educational center of South China for more than 2,000 years, and is one of the sources and flourishing places of Cantonese culture, a branch of Lingnan culture.

The well-known "Nanyue" refers to the Guangzhou area, which began in the Shang Dynasty and was called "Baiyue" and "Nanhai" in the Zhou Dynasty, and "Baiyue" and "Nanhai" are still well known to people today.

In fact, Guangzhou and Huguang have a lot of origins, and the Nanyue ethnic group in the Guangzhou area during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period had contacts with the people of Chu in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and belonged to the Chu State and was classified as Southern Chu.

According to the records of Guangzhou's government and cultural relics, "Chu Ting" was established in Guangzhou, belonging to the Chu State, there is a stone memorial arch built in the Qing Dynasty on Yuexiu Mountain, and "Chu Ting" is written on the square, so Guangzhou is called "Chu Ting" before the Qin Dynasty.

It is worth mentioning that during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Lingnan generally referred to the northern regions of present-day Guangdong, Guangxi and Vietnam, and the ethnic group living here at that time was called Nanyue.

Since Guangzhou has always been an important treaty port, so since the Yuan Dynasty in Guangzhou set up the city of the Department of Shipping, after Li Hongyu took over the matters of overseas trade, the Guangzhou City Department of Shipping was changed to Guangzhou Customs, is one of the three major customs under the jurisdiction of the Department of Customs.

After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Taizu originally only set up a city in Taicang for trade with overseas countries.

In the third year of Hongwu, the imperial court abolished the city of Taicang on the grounds that Taicang was approaching Nanjing, the capital of the Ming Dynasty at that time, and set up a city department in Guangzhou, Guangdong, Quanzhou, Fujian and Ningbo, Zhejiang.

It is worth mentioning that the city of Quanzhou later moved to Fuzhou.

Among them, the Guangdong City Ship Division was specially set up for the tribute of the Nanyang countries such as Champong, Siam, Manraka and Chenla, the Zhejiang City Ship Division was specially set up for the Japanese tributary, and the Fujian City Ship Division was specially set up for the Ryukyu tribute.

In the first year of Yongle, the imperial court set up Huaiyuan Post in Guangzhou City, set up a Yuanyi Station in Quanzhou City, and set up an Yuanyi Station in Ningbo City, and the City Department was in charge of receiving tribute envoys and their attachés from various countries.

With Zheng He's feat of going to the West, the Ming Dynasty also created a prosperous scene of "all countries coming to the dynasty", and its national prestige reached as far as Europe, and the Ming Empire with many vassal states was established under the tributary trade system.

Because it was responsible for the tributary trade with the Nanyang countries, the Huaiyuan Station in Guangdong was huge, with 20 large and small courtyards, all of which are now owned by the Customs Department.

This has also led to the prosperity of Guangzhou, so Li Hongyu feels that Guangzhou will become a bright pearl in the South China Sea.

As for the Guangzhou city seen by Li Hongyu and others, the history is also long and long, in the Tang Dynasty has formed the "threefold" pattern of Yacheng, Zicheng and Luocheng, and in the Southern Han Dynasty, the Guangzhou City of Xingwangfu was planned as a palace city, an imperial city and a Guo city, and the Song Dynasty expanded the east city and the west city.

After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Liangzu, the Marquis of Yongjia, built the city of Guangzhou and the three cities of the Song and Yuan dynasties as a city, and then further expanded the urban area, and renovated the old city, and expanded to the north and east, and added the outer city, so that the circumference of the city of Guangzhou was more than 20 miles of the big city, which had today's situation.

Before coming to Guangzhou, Li Hongyu had already settled the affairs of Jilong Port, and he could calm down to deal with overseas trade.

When the people of Chicken Coop Harbor were overjoyed when they learned that Scholar Lee had agreed to their appeasement conditions, they could finally live a life of fear.

In order to smoothly accept Jilong Port and Xiaoliuqiu Island, Li Hongyu dispatched a leading team of more than 100 people, composed of personnel from the Customs Department and the Navy Division, to Jilong Port to conduct an inventory of the situation in Jilong Port and Xiaoliuqiu, and to register the population and the number of fields in order to grasp the detailed information of Jilong Port and Xiaoliuqiu Island.

The officials of the Customs Department also brought a letter of appointment signed by Li Hongyu himself, appointing Liu Dahai, Shi Hu, and Onitsuka Saburo as the "village elders" of Jilong Port, and had the power to supervise the affairs of the Jilong Port Yamen.

As for the officials of Jilong Port, Scholar Li was ready to select young people from Jilong Port who met the requirements and send them to the Customs Department of Shanghai County for training, and before that, the affairs of Jilong Port were settled through consultation between Liu Dahai, Shi Hu and Onizuka Saburo to ensure a smooth transition of power in Jilong Port.

The reason why it's Onizuka Saburo instead of Onizuka Musashi is because Onizuka Saburo has to meet with Liu Dahai and Shi Hu from time to time to discuss things, and he can't always pretend to report to Onizuka Musashi on everything, which is a pure waste of time.

When it comes to the young people who meet the requirements, of course, the children of Liu Dahai, Shi Hu and Onizuka Saburo are the main ones, not only because the three families have the greatest influence in Jilong Port, but also because the children of the three families have the most literate young people.

Although the children of the three families were selected, Li Hongyu would certainly not allow the three families to hinder the operation of the yamen in the future, and the young people who had undergone the training would change their thinking, break the old concept of the township party, and regard the Customs Department as the object of allegiance.

Ports such as Jilong Port and Qingshui Port and villages and towns along the coast of Xiaoliuqiu are also within the scope of this inventory, and when the results are available, it will be convenient for Li Hongyu to plan Xiaoliuqiu.

At the same time, the pirates and armed maritime syndicates in Jilong Harbor are also being reorganized accordingly, and in the future, they will become the army allocated by the Customs Department to pay rations, and naturally they will be subject to the command and dispatch of the Customs Department.

However, at this stage, Li Hongyu has no intention of moving the military power of Jilong Port, and because of the recent recruitment, the people of Jilong Port must be wary of the government, so he is ready to take back the military power of Jilong Port for a long time.

Now, all Li Hongyu's energy and thoughts are focused on the upcoming overseas trade of the Ming Dynasty, which can only succeed for him, otherwise the money bag in his hand will be deflated, and it will be difficult to move an inch in the future.

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