Plymouth, a seaport in the southwest of England.

A few miles outside the harbour, a medium-sized fleet of two armed steam galleons and two large three-masted clippers approached the harbor along the sparkling sea.

On the deck of the armed steam sailing ship at the head, Xu Rongcun and Hu Xueyan stood side by side, looking at the port not far away, through a group of seagulls flying around, the dock with more than ten ships moored appeared in front of them.

"Outside the Western Ocean, in front of the clear water.

The tide is flat and the shore is wide, and the wind is hanging with three sails.

The sea is born in the night, and the autumn wind comes into a dream.

Where can I get my letter? The return to the wild goose is not on the edge. ”

"Good poetry, good poetry! Unexpectedly, in addition to doing business, Brother Xueyan is also talented! It's a pity that I couldn't study and enter the official career in my early years, otherwise I would ...... Ha, otherwise there would be no Xu Huji today. Xu Rongcun stroked his palm and praised: "Although Brother Xueyan's poem has a familiar feeling, it fits the artistic conception in front of you very well. Now we are going to England, it is indeed 'Klook outside the West', thousands of miles away, but it is very difficult to send a letter to the family, this is far to the ocean, even Hongyan can not find the edge, let alone return home. Haha, good! ”

"Brother Deqiong praised! This poem is just an adaptation of a Tang poem by the younger brother, where can the younger brother make it himself? If the younger brother was born in a wealthy family, and he was lucky enough to enter the official career and become a small official of the Manchu Dynasty, he is likely to be buried in a small county town somewhere, or he fled to the countryside to live incognito before the Holy Army came, how could he see such a scene! ”

"Yes! As the saying goes, the world is unpredictable, and fate makes people! Xu Rongcun sighed.

Hu Xueyan pointed to the port that was getting closer, and said, "Brother Deqiong, the port in front of you is the port of the British Rushing Toilet?" ”

"Hey.... Ha ha! Xu Rongcun couldn't help but laugh out loud at Hu Xueyan's words, and only stopped laughing halfway before correcting: "Brother Xueyan, this is Plymouth Harbor, not Maokou Harbor. However, I think the name that Brother Xueyan chose for it is very good, well, thatched toilet port, very good, in the future, we Xu Huji and even other Chinese compatriots will come here, let's call it thatched toilet port. Ouch, when it comes to the latrine, I'm really a little bit of a poop! When I enter the port, I really have to go into this toilet to relieve myself. Brother Xueyan, it's really a coincidence. I'm really attached to this latrine port! ”

Hu Xueyan suddenly felt funny, and asked curiously: "Haha, brother is really interesting, when did you have anything to do with this Western and British latrine port?" ”

"My brother has forgotten that he used to run Husi for his brother." Xu Rongcun explained: "It was 10 years ago, I happened to learn from a British merchant in the Shanghai Concession that the Queen of England was going to hold a World Exposition in London, and the Queen invited more than 10 countries to participate in the exhibition, and to evaluate the exhibits and handicrafts. At the beginning, those lake silk were not looked at because the packaging was too coarse, but later, because those lake silk was the boutique of raw silk, the quality was overwhelming, and finally stood out and won the gold and silver awards of the expo.

And the hometown of the British merchant is this latrine port. Later, I came to England with him once, and was a guest at his house. It's just that because of the war, he returned to England and lost contact, but now he doesn't know that he is still there. ”

After listening to Xu Rongcun's explanation of the origin of the matter, Hu Xueyan couldn't help but sigh: "My brother is really bold. not only won glory for the country, but also dared to come to this Western land thousands of miles away alone at that time, and the younger brother admired it very much. ”

"What brings glory to the country? Don't forget, brother, it was still the Xianfeng period of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. The light of this country is not disputed. We must fight, and we must also fight for the light of our Chinese empire today! However, today's Chinese Empire does not need us to wait for businessmen to compete for any glory. The country is strong and the people are rich, the country is strong and the people are not humiliated, and the people are strong and the country is not repentant, but this is the case! Xu Rongcun sighed.

Hu Xueyan was also deeply touched, this way to the Western Ocean, encountered several waves of pirates, but was frightened by the red background and yellow star Chinese imperial flag hoisted on the bow of the ship. Although it was the first time for him to go to the Western Ocean, he had also heard that when he encountered an island in the past, it was often a matter of nine deaths, how could he deal with it so easily. Presumably, those pirates have suffered the loss of the armed merchant ships of the Chinese Empire, so they will know the difficulty and retreat.

This is his first time in the West. Although it was not the first time to go to sea, the farthest I could have been to places like Nagasaki or Ryukyu on the island of Kyushu, and it was only a few days and a half a month to go back and forth. Moreover, today's Nagasaki or Ryukyu are no longer considered to be going abroad, but only domestic and provincial cross-provinces. This time, however, it was a journey of more than 50,000 miles, and if you count the round trip, it was more than 100,000 miles.

Not for anything else, as soon as he came, Hu Xueyan also made a try to come to the West to see the outside world. Second, it is an attempt to develop Western business for the newly established Xu Hu Kee Commercial Bank.

In recent years, with the strong national strength of the Chinese Empire, the Fukang Bank and Hu's Foreign Bank he founded have continued to grow, and last year, Fukang Bank was merged into Hu's Foreign Bank, which developed Hu's Foreign Bank into one of the top ten foreign banks in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. It is said that it is a foreign company, not that it does not do domestic business, in fact, domestic business accounts for the majority. In the past two years, his Hu family has developed into a business giant with a net worth of nearly six or seven million holy yuan, and has gradually shifted its business from the domestic and overseas trade in the areas of Huguangjiang, Zhejiang, and Shandong.

This is not counted, because each trade is only to earn from the purchase of the place of origin to the collection of goods to Shanghai, Fuzhou, Guangzhou and other Oriental companies, Nanyang companies or foreigners to set up Guangyuan Foreign Company, Baofeng Foreign Company, etc., to sell to the other party, and then the other party to ship and sell overseas. In this way, the biggest profits were actually made by the Nanyang Company with the background of the Chinese Imperial Government or the foreign companies run by foreigners. And the Hu family, which he thought had grown and grown, was still reduced to a second-class dealer in the countryside.

Hu Xueyan was naturally unwilling. It just so happened that I met Xu Rongcun, the deputy head of Xu's Foreign Bank, who had cooperated many times before, and the two were of similar age, had the same personality, and had the same idea, so they hit it off and persuaded Xu Yuting, the head of Xu's Foreign Bank, to merge the two foreign firms to establish Xu Hu Kee Commercial Bank.

Hu's foreign bank was appraised at 7.2 million saint dollars, and Hu Xueyan borrowed another 2.8 million saint dollars from the Shanghai branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, all of which were integrated into Xu Hu Kee Commercial Bank as 10,000 shares; The appraised price of Xu's Foreign Bank was 8.5 million saint dollars, and Xu Yuting, Xu Rongcun, and Xu Run's three uncles and nephews of the Xu family also borrowed some, and contributed 500,000 saint dollars respectively to make up 1.5 million saint dollars, which were also all integrated into Xu Hu Kee Commercial Bank, which was also made for 10,000 shares.

In this way, with a total of 20,000 shares and a discount of 1,000 S$ per share, Xu Hu Kee Commercial Bank became a large private association with a capital of 20 million S. dollars. With the exception of the Nanyang, Dongyang, and Beiyang companies, which had official backgrounds, the Xu Hu Kee firm became one of the leading firms in the Chinese Empire.

The reason for this is naturally to improve the overall strength, compete for the profits of this trade route from the east to the west, and lay out the downstream layout of trade, rather than just collecting goods from raw materials and reselling them to other large foreign companies. One of the most important means of this was to set up a trading fleet of the comptoir's own.

Xu's foreign company originally established a Xu Guangbao shipyard in partnership with two British-funded foreign firms, Guangyuan and Baofeng foreign companies in Shanghai, and at this time it had developed to be able to manufacture medium and large merchant ships on its own, so it ordered cargo ships and purchased a batch of domestic steam engines from the Shanghai Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, so that the Western fleet of Xu Hu Kee and the firm was brought out. After several trips to Japan and Korea, this was the first time they had used their fleet to trade in the oceans.

The two armed steam sailing ships of the fleet are in front, each equipped with four medium-caliber rifled guns, Hu Xueyan They originally wanted to configure the Krupp cannon, but the Krupp cannon is strictly controlled, and the imperial court does not allow it, so it has to be purchased separately, fortunately, the artillery performance is also good, and the other two cargo ships are three-masted clipper ship construction, and the fastest sailing speed can reach 15.5 knots when there is wind.

After careful calculation, Hu Xueyan and Xu Rongcun could arrive in the UK in about 106 days from Shanghai, and today, it was already 104 days of departure, and the captain told them early in the morning that they had arrived in the southwest of the UK.

Their main destinations are not London, but several ports, such as Plymouth and Southampton, as well as Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Nantes in France, and when they stop at the port of Southampton, which is only 100 kilometres from London, they take a train to see what is now the largest city in the world.

This time, all four of their merchant ships were loaded with goods collected from Shanghai and Canton, ready to make a big profit: the two armed steam galleons carried only about 180 tons of cargo, but all of them were highly profitable tea; Two large iron-wood three-masted clippers are the main cargo ships, 63 meters long, 11 meters wide, 6.4 meters deep, displacement of 2,100 tons, and the registered tonnage of transshipment cargo is 1,018 tons, one is actually a special oil tanker, loaded with more than 900 tons of holy oil, that is, kerosene to be sold to foreigners for night lighting, but Hu Xueyan spent a lot of effort to get some approvals from the Chinese Imperial Holy Oil Corporation to buy a share of these wholesale prices; Handicrafts, some refined tobacco, medicines, etc., were all assembled to fill the whole ship.

The reason why Plymouth and Southampton were chosen to dock first instead of London was because Edward*, the British commercial steward invited by Hu Xueyan and Xu Yuting, told them that there were too many merchant ships calling at the port in London, and it would take several days or even half a month just to wait for the port to dock, and it would take several days to leave the port after purchasing the goods, which was too slow.

Coupled with the fact that Edward* had already made an appointment with British buyers in advance to hand over the oil and tea in Plymouth and Southampton, they decided to call directly here. In particular, Southampton and London are very close to each other, there is a direct arrival by railway, and it is very convenient to purchase goods, and most importantly, it also avoids extortion by the police and large gangsters in London.