Just when Chen Hanjun in South America had already kicked off a major counterattack, and when Chen Ming was receiving the British and French envoys in the palace, a paddle steamer from Nagasaki, Japan, slowly docked at the port of Shanghai. Zuo Guanlan, a 37-year-old former Chen Han minister to Japan, strolled off the boat, and Hu Dayuan, who was already waiting at the pier, hurriedly greeted him.

"Brother Zhiyun, it's been hard all the way!"

Hu Dayuan is one year old when Zuo Guanlan is young, Zuo Hu and the two families are close friends for many years, and they have been in high school together Chen Han Dynasty Political Science and Technology Scholar, three years ago when Zuo Guanlan was the first minister to Japan, Hu Dayuan was the then embassy counselor. The latter was not at the top of the list of candidates at the time, and that was the role behind the top five. The reason why he can become a counselor of the embassy is inseparable from Zuo Guanlan's strong recommendation.

Of course, the reason why Hu Dayuan was able to succeed, and even why Zuo Guanlan was able to sit as minister to Japan at the age of 34, is also inseparable from Tao Shu's influence.

The ancestors of the Zuohu family, as well as Tao Shu's grandfather Tao Xiaoxin, and the old lady of the Zeng family, Zeng Yansheng, were all friends in distress at the beginning.

At that time, Chen Han raised troops against the Qing Dynasty, and Zuo Fengsheng of the Zuo family, that is, Zuo Guanlan's grandfather, followed Gong Zhaolin, the minister of Hunan regimental training, to aid Hubei, and as a result, he and Zeng Yansheng, a fellow villager of Changsha Mansion, as well as Tao Xiaoxin, Hu Duoji and many others, were prisoners of the Fu Han army in Wuchang City. At that time, the Fu Han army still recruited 'virtuous people', Zuo Fengsheng, Zeng Yansheng, Tao Xiaoxin and Hu Duoji and others were famous [Xiucai], and they were all won over by the Fu Han army. But at that time, Zeng Zuo, Taohu and others were very backbone, and they were strict with their words, and then all four of them were thrown to the Funiu Mountain mine.

Zeng Zuo and Hu Tao worked in the mine for two years, after which they were thrown to Nanyang to build roads, and then came to Shanghai to repair forts. Because several people are literate and hyphenated, they have been promoted to be clerks in the labor camp during their years of labor camp, and when they were released, several people had job recommendations because of their honest performance, among which Zuo Fengsheng and Hu Duoji were recommended to work as clerks in Jiangnan Shipyard.

With a formal job, a salary that is not low, and a cheap house to buy, Zuo Hu and his children brought their wives and children to Shanghai, and silently took root in this strange city.

And Zeng Yansheng of the Zeng family returned to his hometown in southern Hunan, and Tao Xiaoxin had the best luck to go to the old capital Lushan.

Of course, the reason why I say this is more because the Tao family was the earliest. Tao Shu of the Tao family is two years younger than Zuo Guanlan, but his status is much higher than Zuo Guanlan, the minister in Japan, who is working beside the crown prince, who is the assistant minister that the emperor Lao Tzu found for his son, and is one of the brightest stars in the Chen Han political arena.

It can be said that Zuo Guanlan and Hu Dayuan have both benefited from Tao Shu, and even the Zeng family, which is far away in Xiangyin's hometown, Tao Shu has not forgotten to pull it. It's just that Zeng Zhuting of the Zeng family's generation is really not a big person, and whether the Zeng family can get up depends on the next generation.

Hu Dayuan's outstanding performance in Japan in the two years after he became the counselor of the Japanese Legation is also the biggest reason why he became the deputy director of the Department of Boundary and Maritime Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at a young age. Therefore, Zuo Guanlan and Hu Dayuan are deeply involved, and they and Tao Shu are a small political group in a sense.

The ancestors of the three of them are all southerners, and they are all friends in trouble, what a good emotional foundation.

That night, in a small courtyard in Shanghai, Hu Dayuan washed the dust for Zuo Guanlan. This is Hu Dayuan's private residence in Shanghai. There are not many dishes at the banquet, but they are all exquisite, and they are all pure Hunan dishes.

Although the two families have been away from Shonan for many years, the taste of eating has not changed much, because when they were young, the older generation is still there.

Zuo Guanlan has been away from China for three years, and the chef he brought to Japan with him is also looking for him in the capital, and he is very good at making light Huaiyang cuisine, but Hunan cuisine is not good. Now that he has tasted the taste of his hometown, he has a very pleasant meal.

After dinner, tea and fruit were served, and two Kabuki invited by Hu Dayuan accompanied them and sang songs. Zuo Guanlan suddenly realized that he had really returned to China.

In Japan, he often drank and party with the powerful of the shogunate, but the white face and black teeth of the Japanese singer could scare him to death.

After a long journey, Zuo Guanlan got up late the next day, and when he got up, Hu Dayuan had already gone to the city government. Hu Dayuan is a Beijing official, and the reason why he is in Shanghai is because he is now negotiating with Vientiane, Siam and other countries in Shanghai, first, to completely finalize the demarcation line between Chen Han and other countries; Second, it is necessary to thoroughly finalize the territorial demarcation line between the countries of China and South Africa.

There is no need for the power of the East to be consumed in infighting, and it is better to go to India and East Africa to 'forage for food', and Siam is a staunch supporter of Chen Han's view.

Zuo Guanlan didn't get up until near noon. After lunch, I told the steward who came to serve that I wanted to go around the city of Shanghai, and by the way, I would go to the concession to visit the old people who lived in Shanghai. After stepping down from the post of minister to Japan, he had a month to deal with chores, as long as he went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to report and roll call within the time limit, it was OK.

The steward was busy calling for someone to prepare the car.

The standard of this carriage is not worse than that of the legation, and because it is going to be summer, Shanghai at this time is already wearing single clothes, and the interior of the carriage is mostly cool and smooth bamboo, rattan and yarn.

The windows are inlaid with glass and covered with green screen frames, and there are thin bamboo curtains for shading. In addition to the two rows of chairs sitting opposite each other, there is also a coffee table that can be stretched and folded. And there are a number of dark cabinets on the wall of the car, which put a variety of drinks such as tea, fruits, coffee, cocoa, etc., as well as kettles and curling stones, one cold and one hot. Although they can't keep warm for a long time.

The carriage went out of the gate of the Hu family and went straight onto the road. The road is open and flat. The flow of people and vehicles drives on the right, and the wide official road is also divided into sidewalks and roadways.

Today's weather is very good, although the scorching sun is scorching, but the workers, merchants, workers, or people who carry the burden on foot and carts come and go, and there is an endless stream. Shanghai's city is even more lively than it was three years ago. Although Japan's Edo is known as 'Little Shanghai', in fact, its level can be called Shanghai Grandpa at most.

The car traveled all the way to the Nanping training base in Shanghai, where people have money and a larger territory than Nanjing, and since the notice of military training for young and strong people was issued, Shanghai has built three large training bases on its own.

This Nanping training base is specially used by students.

Zuo Guanlan rode a carriage directly into the base, just in time to see a bunch of students slumped on the lawn, and almost at the same time as him drove into the base on another carriage, the front of the flag rubbing, the word 'containment' was waving in the wind.

Zuo Guanlan watched the six students walk down from the carriage with their heads down, and then a soldier loudly reprimanded the students in this class, they should all be high school students.

After a stern reprimand, the instructor announced the punishment, and the lunch break for the students in this class was canceled today.

After all the people have dinner on the playground, they immediately enter the punishment phase and accept the punishment.

The lawn seems to be very spacious, and now the lawn is full of students from Xuhui No. 1 High School, some sitting, some lying, some kneeling, but not standing. When the logistics truck came to the lawn with buckets of rice, side dishes, and seaweed soup, these students stood up one by one as if they were braving the rain of bullets. Their bones will fall apart.

But when a few logistics cooks wearing white aprons served the students a good meal, these student babies whose bones had fallen apart didn't even have time to say thank you, and took the plate and bowed their heads and chewed. Seeing them gobbling up like this, Zuo Guanlan on the side couldn't help but swallow his saliva.

"My lord, this is a student from Xuhui No. 1 High School, and he just ran a twenty-mile run before." The whole army training is called 20-mile cross-country, but it is more difficult to carry out 20-mile cross-country in Shanghai. And a 20-mile run is already terrible for a group of students.

"Go get me a meal."

Zuo Guanlan waved his hand and asked his entourage to go to get food, as far as he knew, the clothing, food, housing and transportation during this military training were all provided by the government. Zuo Guanlan didn't know how Chen Han's military training food was, although his brain told him that it would never be worse than Japan's, but he also wanted to see it with his own eyes.

The Japanese military training meal consisted of rice, miso soup, natto, fish nuggets, and green vegetables, and the lower classes were generally satisfied. And what about Chen Han's?

You must know that the Japanese have not eaten meat for hundreds of years [except for fish], and a piece of fish and meat is already very rich in the eyes of many Japanese, but the food culture of China is extraordinarily vast. The special historical background has created a strange food culture of the Japanese people, so that the Tokugawa government of Japan can win the recognition of the whole of Japan with a small cost. But what about China at this stage? The living conditions have been good in recent years, and many Chinese are meatless guys, especially these students.

The consumption of meat and poultry in China is huge, not to mention beef, sheep and pork, and even whale meat, which is often in short supply.

Therefore, if this military training meal is bad, it will make many parents dissatisfied, not to mention that this military training meal is provided by the government, if the military training meal is not good, is it because the government is 'powerless' to support it?

Zuo's next step in his tenure is likely to be to go to Europe, where he needs to learn as much as he can about the power of the Chinese government. In Japan, he had never heard of China's financial problems......

The meals in the base are really not bad, there are steamed buns and white rice, as well as radish and green vegetables, tofu and kelp, fried salted fish, fried meat with taro, as well as potatoes, chicken nuggets and dried fish, plus seaweed and egg soup, each person's staple food is optional, two meat, two vegetables and one soup, which is much better than Japan's military training meal. Zuo Guanlan didn't feel hungry, but he still ate his lunch cleanly without a drop left, not even a grain of rice left.

The food was better than what he had eaten when he was a child. You must know that his grandfather and father are both old employees of Jiangnan Shipyard, and the family income is good, but he didn't have this standard of living before he went to college and got the living allowance in the school.

But this is not the key to making the corners of Zuo Guanlan's mouth smile, the richness of the military training meal is more for him to see the stability of the domestic situation and the abundance of domestic materials from a certain aspect.

Japan is different. Japan's military training meals seem to be not bad, and they are indeed okay compared to the food of Japanese civilians, but in essence, this cost is very low, and the number of Japanese students only accounts for about 30% of school-age children, coupled with the population gap between China and Japan, Japan cannot compare with Chen Han at all in this regard.

Although there is news of material shortages from time to time on the battlefield in the Americas, at least the local materials are active and abundant.

Zuo Guanlan's position and the knowledge he had access to all told him a truth: when the domestic situation was stable, when the domestic commodity prices were stable, the wars that broke out abroad, whether they won or lost, were only scratching the surface for Chen Han himself.

Thinking about the Japanese investment in this war, they divided more than 10,000 naval and army into the American theater, and then divided more than 10,000 infantry cavalry into the Russian battlefield, although most of the army has not yet been functioned in place, but this is enough for the Japanese government Alexander.

So much so that countries such as Phnom Penh, Vientiane, and Siam began to share part of Japan's military expenses, but after that, part of the merits of the Japanese army on the battlefield will also become the credit of these two countries.

The time has come to April 1815, the Hague Conference of Europe has begun, and on April 2, the European Union was officially proclaimed. The British and French envoys to be entertained by Chen Han's Ministry of Foreign Affairs received the news as early as 20 March.

The EU clearly expects China to take the initiative to cease the war, and even to the extent that they can recognize China's existing line of control. Under the current situation, it is clear who takes advantage and who suffers, the Americans have already spit out all the territory they occupied before, and the focus of Chen Han's second American war was on North America from the beginning. Yes, South America has taken away a lot of land, but don't forget about Russia. What is it that a North Caucasus region does not get back to its original state? And the Volga River basin.

Now, if there is an armistice, with the Line of Actual Control of both sides as the boundary, the Europeans will suffer a lot.

But both London and Paris were willing to stop the war immediately, because they did not have the confidence to defeat China. This explosive counterattack is more to disrupt China's rhythm, but also to show its own strength, to let Nanjing know that O'Baro can't just clean it up.

But Chen Ming won't be willing. Teaching the throne to the next generation in the middle of the war is a big mistake if it is a stormy season, but Chen Han is politically stable and has a solid foundation of social rule, so the role of the war will have the intention of going in the opposite direction. This will make it easier for Chen Ding to unite with more domestic and more political forces.

At this time last year, the Europeans caught Chen Ming off guard. In a year, with his own strong strength, Chen Ming completely defused the surprise attack in Europe, how could it be possible to end the war immediately?

The Chen Han system has been fully mobilized, and the fist full of strength is about to swing out to beat people, at this time, if he says that he will not fight, it is strange that Chen Ming can be willing.

As for the 'mediation' proposed by Britain and France on behalf of the EU, Chen Ming scoffed. He doesn't believe in Chen Han's situation, and no one in Europe knows? He didn't believe how huge the force mobilized by Chen Han this time was, and London and Paris would not know.

This war is to knock out the hearts of the Europeans with a stick and make them understand that even if the whole of Europe is brought together, their strength is not comparable to that of one China.

Although this can only be short-lived, and Europeans will not really admit defeat to China, but after this war, Europe will gather the confidence to challenge China, and it should be the second industrial revolution.

It was a great leap forward for the global community, and it was one of the best opportunities for Europe. But the second industrial revolution took place in the middle of the 19th century, more precisely in the late 60s of the 19th century, and there are still 50 years to go.

Chen Ming also did not dare to guarantee that history would not change drastically, and that successive wars might play a stimulating role, allowing the development of earth science and technology to move forward at a faster pace. But no matter what, this is nothing to do with Chen Ming.

He knew to stand his last shift, and then go to the Great Northwest to wander around and step on the Europeans......

He has no regrets in this life.