PS. Present today's update, by the way, pull a vote for the "starting point" 515 fan festival, everyone has 8 votes, and the vote will also give the starting point coin, kneel and beg everyone to support and appreciate!

"It doesn't matter, those Diao people are not monolithic, I bought a maritime merchant in the Straits Company with a lot of money as early as last year, and promised him that as long as he can take us to the port of Kalamba, he will find a position for his son in Quanzhou City. If he has an official position, is he still willing to do anything about maritime business? I want to see how these people fight the court! As long as we bring the goods back this time, they don't have to obediently worship you and me, there will be no strait company in the future, and the matter of sea trade should be you and my brother and the prime minister and Lord Zhao have the final say! Hahahaha...... "As soon as he talked about this, Shi Hong couldn't help but feel proud in his heart, he and Shi Songzhi had been designing for a long time, and on the issue of how to break the monopoly of the strait company on the route, they finally adopted a very old trick, that is, to find loopholes from within the enemy, this trick has been tried and tested many times in history.

And Shi Hong also has this certainty, in this era, there is no need to think about being an official and a businessman, most people will choose the former, even if it is a small sesame official, it is more expensive than the wealth of the Wanguan family. In China, whether ancient or modern, it is not difficult to have money, but it is not necessarily possible to have power. Most of the time, if you only have money and don't have the corresponding rights to protect yourself, the end result is often that the money is gone, and your life is gone. Even if you have enough power on the list, you are still a vassal of others, and if you don't know when you will be used, they will kick you away, and the end will be just as miserable.

"Brother Shi is clever...... I just don't know where this person is. After listening to Shi Hong's words, Zhao An was completely relieved.

"No hurry, no hurry. Wait until the fleet is recharged. Let's set sail and go to Thang Long Mansion in Da Viet first. Then continue south. Shi Hong felt a little strategizing at this time, if he could get the fleet to reach the port of Kalamba smoothly and return safely, even if he lost half of the ships on the sea, he would be a great achievement.

However, the port of Quanzhou was already in a depression at this time, and there was not even a single porter on the wharf, so if such a large fleet wanted to replenish, it would definitely not be possible to lack manpower. In desperation, Shi Hong had no choice but to send someone to find the Quanzhou official. To coordinate enough men to serve, plus the fleet's own sailors, it was almost enough, but the voyage would be delayed for a few days.

Just two days before Shi Hong's fleet arrived at Quanzhou Port, a 100-ton green eyebrow ship also quietly sailed into the port of Thang Long Fu, with a copper coin flag hanging on the ship, and a flag of the ship's owner, on which a big character was written. If the maritime merchants in the strait company saw this ship, they would immediately recognize that this was the merchant ship of the He family of the Fuzhou maritime merchants. The shipowner's surname is Ho. There are six fathers and sons, and they have not been in the strait company for a long time. Specializing in the trafficking of white sugar to Southeast Asian countries, including Da Viet.

At this time, the white-haired old man who got off the boat was He Jinrong, the head of the He family, and his ancestral home was not Fuzhou, but the Han people who moved from the north when the imperial court crossed to the south. Since his father's generation, the He family has been helping people unload goods on the docks in Fuzhou for a living, and there are more than a dozen Han people who also moved from the north under their hands.

Later, it is said that He Jinrong took the lead in finding the bank of the Strait Company in Guangzhou, and used seven or eight of his families as collateral, borrowed a sum of money from the bank, bought an old ship, and followed the Strait Company to start ocean-going trade. As a result, within two years, the He family bought a new type of big ship, specializing in the sugar business, and the business became bigger and bigger, and became one of the largest maritime merchants in Fuzhou. The family also built a large yard, and the youngest two of the five sons also attended the training course of the navigation school, and in two years, the He family will have its own young captain.

In fact, He Jinrong's behavior is still very risky, driving the old ship to the ocean, once it encounters strong winds and waves, it may disappear in the vast Indian Ocean. However, it is also a good opportunity for those who have no source of funds and no mature sales channels to make a fortune. Since the establishment of the bank of the Straits Company, there are not a few residents of coastal cities like He Jinrong who have become rich after returning from a trip to the ocean.

Of course, there are not a few people who never return, and there are still some people who lose money because of their poor vision or too little business experience, even if the people and ships barely come back, the goods are soaked in the sea water or the sales are not right. But it doesn't matter, if you lose money and can't repay the loan, the Straits Bank will not force people to go bankrupt. As long as there are people, there is still a chance to turn over, and it is a big deal to sign a five-year or ten-year deed of sale with the Straits Bank, and go overseas to work as a laborer for the Straits Company. Not only is it safe and secure, the work is not too tiring, and the salary is quite high. Even if you are old and infirm after you come back, you can earn a considerable income for your children, and if you want to do business, you will have capital, and if you want to live a down-to-earth life, you can buy a house and land.

However, since the arrival of the imperial court's fleet last year, many small maritime merchants who have just started are unlucky again. The price of goods is fluctuating, and the small maritime merchants who have little experience and lack the ability to resist market changes are the first victims. In just one year, there were many more bankrupts and losses, and there were many people selling ships, houses, and land, and many of them had to sign the deed of sale, and then bid farewell to their wives and children in tears, and got on the big ship of the Strait Company. If you want to see your family again, it will be at least five years later, and you have to be lucky, once you catch a local disease or plague, you will basically not be able to come back.

Although the He family does not belong to the category of being impacted, but life is not very easy, because the amount of sugar purchased by the imperial court fleet is too large, which also causes the price of sugar to rise, and his family's profits are far less than before, so it can only be said that it is not to lose money and go bankrupt.

However, maritime merchants are different from other merchants, they take great risks every time they sail, to put it bluntly, they use their lives to make money, if there is no more than ten times or dozens of times the profit, it is equivalent to a loss. Which crew member died outside, and you must not pay a lot of money to other people's families when you come back as a ship owner? If the weather is bad or there is an epidemic in the area, it would be good if 80 of the 100 sailors went out and came back, and the money had to be included in the cost. Not to mention the higher and higher wages of sailors, if there are fewer people, they will not care about you at all, and some of them are experienced sailors in the owner's fleet, and your salary is too low to go to another family, which is also desperate, why not find a high price.

Sai Weng knew that he was not blessed, He Jinrong was lucky, although the imperial fleet brought him losses, but also brought a godsend. Last year in the port of Malacca, a noble man in the imperial fleet found him, and then the two of them sped on for a whole night, the content was to make He Jinrong turn against the water, betray the strait company, and lead the way for the imperial fleet. And in addition to the money, what made He Jinrong most excited was the official position!

The He family has never had an official, not even the village chief, and now his son can suddenly become an official, the price is just that he needs to betray the maritime brothers who lived and died together before, He Jinrong only struggled in his heart for an hour, and then made a choice. Betray, and then give your children and grandchildren an official position, even if you are killed by the maritime merchants, you can laugh at your ancestors and ancestors when you go to Jiuquan.

"Ah Biao, tell your brother not to run around, after unloading the goods, all go to live on the ship, and no one is allowed to get off the ship." After the boat stopped on the dock, He Jinrong called his second son, who was about to get off the boat, over and told him very seriously. The betrayal of the Straits Company was unknown to no one but him and the nobleman, not even his sons. This matter is too big, and the Strait Company is not a good person, if the news leaks, maybe he will not be able to reach Dayue, and he will have to let those warships with rat head flags sink at sea.

"Father, I see that you are always unsettled these days, are you still worried about the strike? Didn't the chairman say it, as long as we unite and persevere to the end, the officials will have to bow to us, what are you afraid of! I heard the chairman say that in Jinhe Kingdom, what the emperor said doesn't count, and there has to be something...... Yes, it will be approved. That meeting, like the board of directors in our company, was elected by everyone, specifically to help everyone keep an eye on the emperor and prevent him from doing anything wrong to harm everyone. If the emperor's idea is good, everyone will vote for it, and if the emperor's idea is bad, everyone will not vote for him, and then the matter will not be done. ”

"You said that if the Great Song Dynasty was like this, if there was no trouble from the imperial court, our family would be able to buy a big ship next year. I heard Xingye say that the company is going to go further west to the big food country, and will soon organize a voyage fleet. You said that when we have two big ships together, how much cargo will we have to bring, maybe we can buy another boat when we come back in a year! He Jinrong's second son was born tall and big, he was the helmsman of the ship, and he could run short-haul routes near Southeast Asia without the company's navigator at all, which saved the He family a lot of wages.

Those navigators are all from Jinhe country, and their salaries are expensive, and every time they are hired on the ship, He Jinrong's heart hurts badly. In fact, it is not only the He family that does this, many maritime ships have their own navigators. After running on a route many times, and having studied in a navigation school for two years, as long as the young man with a good brain and not too stupid can rely on other ways to master the rules of the route. Of course, this requires a long period of exploration, and it is limited to short-haul routes that are often run. The question is who dares to be deceived on the sea, the price is too high, not the lives of one or two people, but a boatload of people!

[It's about to be 515, I hope to continue to hit the 515 red envelope list, and the red envelope rain will be able to give back to readers and promotional works on May 15. A piece is also love, and it must be better! (To be continued.) )