[Thank you for the 500 yuan reward from the two friends of 'Shideng Wine and Tea' and 'Go to bed early and get up early and exercise more', thank you]

The mansion of Prince Lushan. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Wang Huizu took a thick stack of account books and walked into Chen Ming's study briskly. As soon as I entered the house, I was put into another world, the heat wave outside the house was completely isolated by a wall, the atmosphere in the study was cold, and the large ice basin placed in the four corners and the center constantly emitted cold air, completely driving the heat outside the room from the room.

"Your Highness, the profits of the military cooperatives in the first half of this year have been calculated." Wang Huizu was full of joy when he spoke, Chen Ming looked up at him, and his whole body was full of energy.

"What was the profit in the first half of the year?" It must have been a big profit, Chen Ming thought.

"Very good, a year-on-year increase of more than two percent. Your Highness. Cotton prices have risen sharply this year. The income of cotton alone is more than 70% of the income of the military cooperative in the first half of last year. Wang Huizu handed the first volume on the thick stack of ledgers to Chen Ming, and this was the general record.

As the entire southern country was seized by the Fu Han army, the scale of the military cooperatives also rushed out of Huguang and infiltrated into Jiangnan and southern Zhejiang, northern Fujian, and Guangdong further south. Naturally, there were differences between each other before. Although it has not yet reached any point of splitting, after all, the cooperative has just emerged for less than two years. But it's almost there.

The imbalance in the economic returns per unit area of the foundation on both sides will not be long before the 'military merit granges' in Jiangnan and southern Zhejiang and the 'military merit granges' in Jiangxi Province break with the two lakes and Jiangxi. This kind of dispute over individual interests cannot be stopped.

Chen Ming directly looked at the final data, and did not look at the total income, but looked at the average income per mu of land, which was 22 percentage points higher than last year.

The smile on his face was full, but he still revealed the main reason for this year's sharp increase in earnings: "The price of cotton this year is a little inflated. "And if it weren't for the more rain in June, the yield of this cotton would have been even higher.

Wang Huizu said: "The price of lint is particularly high. As far as he knew, one of the Crown Princess's cousins, in accordance with the ideas put forward by His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, changed the old-fashioned rolling mill into a leather roller ginning machine. This year, we bought seed cotton and sold lint, did not bully the market, and did not play the sign of the crown prince and princess to play scoundrels, and in the days after the cotton harvest, we made more than 3,000 silver dollars in a serious way. Now the family is in high spirits, and they have gathered a group of carpenters to build a 'sawtooth gin'.

This is also what His Royal Highness the Crown Prince said, in fact, Chen Ming's only impression of the flower machine is just one word.

Li Xiaomei's cousin's family not only made money from lint, but also made a lot of money from selling leather roller gins.

Chen Han opened the treaty port, and also introduced policies to reduce the cost and time of goods in the transportation process, the most important thing is that this transaction between the two sides no longer needs to go through the 'Thirteen Lines' such as foreign banks to change hands, it is directly a face-to-face conversation between buyers and sellers. It has stimulated the domestic economy, especially cloth production.

Last year, there was still a war in the south of the Yangtze River, and cotton planting gave way to the waterway, but the domestic demand for cotton increased greatly, and the supply exceeded the demand, and the price of cotton naturally rose. As Chen Ming said, the high price of cotton this year is a bit empty.

In fact, with the development of trade, it will not take a few years for the British to fill the Chinese market well with cotton shipped from India, but it will take time. Just as most of the Sino-foreign trade that is now in full swing is the seller's and buyer's direct meeting to negotiate the price, but it will not take a few years for entrepot trading companies such as the 'Thirteen Lines' to appear in China, but they no longer have the monopoly right to operate with the permission of the imperial court.

This year, there has been a lot of interest on both sides of the market, and few people are aware of it. This kind of direct transaction between the seller and the buyer on both sides seems to win the greatest benefit for both sides, but in fact it wastes valuable time and valuable experience.

The entry and exit of a Western merchant ship is a transaction volume of hundreds of thousands of silver dollars, and he only trades and sells with people with the ship's big class, and he has to shop around, look and look, and he is tired of not dying.

"Father, you see, this is the income statement of the military cooperative this year. This is the market survey conducted by the Commerce and Industry Department in the first half of the year. ”

That night, Chen Ming came to Chen Hui with two reports, and at the same time gave Chen Hui a comparison table.

Chen Hui looked at it carefully, and the smile on his face became more and more, "Okay, okay." The price of grain has plummeted, the price of iron has also plummeted, the price of cloth and livestock has risen sharply, and the livelihood of the common people has been restored. Chen Hui was very happy.

The price of grain and iron will never fall in troubled times, and only when the situation is stable will cloth and livestock become the sought-after goods of the urban and rural people whose livelihoods are recovering.

"The price of livestock has risen too high...... Chen Hui said with a slight frown after a while.

"So Erchen thinks that we can send a fleet to collect buffalo from the countries of the South Seas." Anyway, in the area under the current control of the Fu Han army, the proportion of buffalo used far exceeds that of scalper.

"Nanyang?" Chen Hui's eyes looked at the globe on the table. "Aren't those small countries in the south fighting fiercely?"

The son just said, 'Go to Nanyang to buy buffalo', but if Lao Tzu really thought that his son meant to collect buffalo, Chen Hui, the king of Han, would be too unskilled.

Chen Ming's meaning is clearly to take the opportunity to insert a foot in the South Seas!

In the current Nanyang, Annam was in a civil war between the north and the south, and Siam was invaded by Burma. These three countries are the traditional three powers of the Indochina Peninsula, and they are fighting each other. The remaining Nanzhang, Luang Prabang, Phnom Penh [Cambodia, Laos] and other countries have a weak sense of existence, so that Chen Hui can't remember. As for the Malay and Indonesian dynasties in later generations, there were still large and small sultans everywhere at this time. Of course, the Dutch and Spaniards are also indispensable.

The Dutch ruled the Indonesian archipelago, and after the war twenty years ago, the entire Dutch East Indies archipelago fell into a low tide of resistance against the Dutch indigenous forces.

And the Spaniards saw Luzon firmly and attacked Old Medan with a long army. Of course, the interior of Luzon under the Spaniards was not very stable either.

The British have not yet set foot in the South Seas!

"Father. Look at this place......" Chen Ming pointed to the location of Singapore in later generations on the globe.

"It is reported that the natural conditions of the place are excellent, the waters are spacious, the water is rarely affected by storms, the water depth is suitable, and the average tidal range is less than seven feet. It is a natural deep-water harbour. At the same time, the geography is extremely important. First of all, it is close to the Strait of Malacca, which chokes the east-west shipping artery; Secondly it's close to Borneo......"

There is no need to say much about Singapore's geographical location, as long as anyone has the heart to show their skills in the South Seas, Singapore's superior geographical location will be clear at a glance.

And does Chen Han have the determination to enter Nanyang? To be precise, apart from Chen Ming, does his father Chen Hui have the determination to enter Nanyang? Chen Hui really hesitated about this.

"This is Spain, this is the Netherland......s," Chen Hui's eyebrows were full of concerns.

He is not a 'turtle' like Qianlong, Rotony from Portugal has become Chen Hui's court adviser in the past six months, and Chen Hui has heard from Rotony a head full of European history. The Netherlands and Spain are in decline now, but they should not be underestimated.

Spain still has a large and rich colony in the Americas, and Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, is still the financial center of the whole of Europe. London had to pass the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War a decade later for Amsterdam to take its place. The British lost a war in North America and owed an astronomical amount of debt, and the majority of the creditors were the Dutch. John Bull then wiped his face and slammed into his trouser pocket, beating up the Dutch, a former close ally. 'Lai' got rid of the huge foreign debt owed to the Netherlands, and plundered the Dutch of the rich caravan supplies and colonies. Amsterdam, which had previously been the financial center of the Western world, was replaced by London after the war.

The whole of Holland is in complete decline.

"These two countries are full of our Chinese's blood, and this account will be settled sooner or later. But now ......," Chen Hui hesitated. They still have the Manchu Qing in the north and haven't solved it.

"Father, we're just getting in right now. He didn't think about fighting the Spaniards and the Dutch right away. ”

Chen Ming felt that the current Chen Han felt tricky for Spain and the Netherlands, so why didn't the Spaniards and the Dutch feel a headache for Chen Han? The Spaniards slaughtered the Chinese several times, and the blood stains of what the Dutch did thirty years ago have not dried up. The relationship between the three sides should be a hemp rod to beat the wolf - two are afraid.

"Our relations with Spain and the Netherlands, no matter what the substance, are as long as we ensure that there is no conflict on the surface." Bilateral competitive hostility is competitive hostility, trade and go to trade. Europe's trade with China seems to have been losing money, but the money it 'lost' is definitely not their East India Company. They lost one silver dollar from China, and they would earn two silver dollars back if they brought it back to Europe.

Later, the British East India Company collapsed, not because they couldn't make money in China, but because they lost too much money elsewhere. And the opioid franchise expired.

Qianlong Lao'er regarded 'rhubarb and tea' as a sharp weapon for the Manchus to balance Russia, although it was a little naïve, but it cannot be denied that there are indeed three points of truth. As long as the scale of trade between China and Russia is increased by one or two times, the trade sanction will indeed have a three-point effect. Now Spain and the Netherlands are in much the same way, the Anglo-Dutch Fourth War has not yet broken out, and the Netherlands, which is in a booming economy, still has a strong demand for many goods from Asia. The Dutch and Spaniards would not easily cut off their trade with China.

China has taken the initiative in this regard, as long as the action is smaller, not too irritating the Dutch and Spaniards, and the counterattack of the West and the Netherlands should not cross the red line. At most, they support the Malay natives to make trouble?

……

On the blue sea, a Western-style sailing ship with full sails is sailing at full speed.

The snow-white sails were reflected against the red flags fluttering on the masts, making them even more red.

This is the Nanhai No. 1 training ship.

The sea area where it is now located is in the Bohai Bay. Taking advantage of the southeast monsoon, Nanhai No. 1, which has been circling in the South China Sea, sailed north.

Zhu Li stood in the tall mast, holding a telescope and looking around. According to the chart, they have entered the Bohai Bay. But so far they have not encountered a single boat, not even a fishing boat that has gone into the sea to fish.

Today's weather is very good, Zhu Li likes this kind of weather. When they were training in Nanyang, they encountered a typhoon, although it only wiped the corners of the typhoon, but he still has not forgotten the scene of the violent wind and stormy waves.

The thunder and lightning in the sky shuttled like silver, and the huge waves tossed the ship like a toy.

At that time, Zhu Lian really thought that the boat was going to capsize!

In that calamity there were three fewer crew members on board, two of them were sail runners, one was swept into the sea by a strong wave on the deck, and the other was swept out of the sea by a strong wind on the mast; There was also the gunner, who was led to the wall of the ship in a jolt, and the impact that did not seem to be too heavy cost his life.

After spending half a year on this Western-style sailing ship, Zhu Biao has fully felt the huge difference between Western-style sailing ships and Chinese-style sailing ships. The same is the operation, the former requires a lot more sailors. And the huge number of personnel naturally makes the living environment of sailors on the ship become bad. However, in the same windy and rough weather, sailors on Western-style sailing ships are much more dangerous than sailors on Chinese-style sailing ships. Because the soft sails and ropes of Western-style sailing boats are too cumbersome to maneuver. If necessary, the sailor will have to venture up the mast to cut the rope, just like the companion who was swept away by the wind on the mast, and he was doomed when he cut the rope.

But in all fairness, it is true that Western-style sailing ships can withstand the blows of wind and waves better than Chinese-style sailing boats, that is, they are more robust. In that typhoon, after everything was calm, there were only two small holes in the whole ship, which were easily repaired.

Of course, Western sailing ships do not have watertight compartments, which is a big flaw in Zhu Li's eyes. It would be absolutely excellent if the advantages of Chinese and Western ships could be neutralized.

Time passed little by little, and it was noon, and the sun in the sky was shining hotly in the mastboard. Although the sea breeze hit people, Zhu Li, who was always vigilantly watching the surrounding sea, still froze. The time has also come, and the shift changers have arrived.

The lookout is a very energy-intensive position. Especially in this area, it stands to reason that they should be able to meet the Qing warships at any time.

Zhu Ting was still holding a telescope and looking around. "Huh......" He seemed to see two masts. Zhu Lian, who was holding on to his spirit, was like knocking on a perfect pill, his spirit was greatly lifted, and he held a telescope to carefully search the left front - it was there that he had just seen the two masts.

"Bell......, bell," a rapid alarm sounded from the mast. The entire Nanhai No. 1 training ship was immediately busy.

In the front left direction, a flotilla of six ships gradually jumped out of the sea, and Zhu Lian couldn't see the flag of the flotilla clearly, and he didn't know if there were other ships behind the six ships

……

Just when Nanhai No. 1 discovered the fleet in Bohai Bay, and when Chen Hui and Chen Ming's father and son were muttering how to get involved in the South China Sea so as not to cause a backlash from West and the Netherlands, two Chinese-style Cantonese ships slowly sailed into the Lingding Ocean.

With an anxious and somewhat smooth mixed mood, Abubeka looked at the scenery in the ocean.

"Mr. Su, here, here, isn't it, Wen Tianxiang ......, write, 'Life since ancient times, who has not died'......"

Abbeka, who is not fluent in Chinese, spoke to Su Yi beside him, speaking in stammering Cantonese Mandarin.

The latter is a native Chinese, and when Su Yi followed his father Su Qun to Batavia to trade more than ten years ago, he encountered a typhoon and the ship was blown to the Sulu Islands. Then the Su family and the Sulu country officially set up a relationship.

Both Abbekka and his father trusted the Su family very much.

The first time Abubekka dealt with Chen Han, he personally went to China, where Su Yi had a lot of influence. From another point of view, you can completely see Su Yi as the Sulu version of Rotony, or an absolutely strengthened version.

"Yes. This is Lingdingyang. The place where Prime Minister Wen wrote famous sentences for the ages. Su Yi replied. He knew that the country of Sulu was in a difficult situation right now, and he knew why Abbecca felt emotional about people like Wen Tianxiang, because there was a strong opposition force against Abubeka within Sulu, and the black hand behind it was the Spaniards on Luzon.

The state of Sulu is an absolutely small country, with a total population of less than 200,000 people. If it weren't for the complex terrain, the many islands, and the alliance with the Green Sultan in Mindanao, they would be green on both sides. In addition, the interior of Luzon is also unstable, although there is no major chaos, but there are frequent uprisings every year, and the natives of Mindanao have been playing mushrooms with the Spaniards - I will hide if you come, and I will come out again when you go, so that the Spaniards have not been able to spare enough strength, otherwise the situation of Sulu will be more dangerous, and it may even have been destroyed. Otherwise, you will be a fool of the King of Sulu, and you will take the initiative to naturalize China?

Abbekka sighed heavily. He is envious of loyal ministers like Wen Tianxiang, the Sulu State implements a hereditary aristocratic system, and there are now many nobles in the country who are co-opted by the Spaniards, which is an absolute threat to both Abubeka and Sulu. At that time, the king of Sulu Ma shouted that Wei An Rou Lu sent an envoy to pay tribute to the Qianlong Emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and paid tribute to a package of land, and asked to be compiled into the Chinese atlas with a household registration, that is, because the power of the royal family was almost overwhelmed.

After the end of the Seven Years' War in Europe, the Spanish power in Luzon was strengthened, and Sulu was pressured to cut off ties with China. There is no way, although China is absolutely friendly and generous to Sulu's envoys, China does not support Sulu. Then it's all in vain!

The two Cantonese ships sailed smoothly into the port of Huangpu, and when Abbeqa revealed his identity, the blood of the officials of the Guangzhou Customs was about to vomit out. They had no idea that something like this would happen. The king of a country actually came in person......

Xie Hu in the city was immediately alarmed. Lingnan left behind Chen Erbao in Nanning, Xie Hu hurriedly organized a guard of honor, solemnly and solemnly welcomed Abubeka to the shore, and the few manors that Chen Ming had kept before were themselves prepared for reception. Now it also comes in handy immediately.

"Mr. Su, you're right, you're right." Abubeka was treated with such grandeur that he was extremely excited when he entered the manor.

China's treatment of him with such solemnity and respect made him feel that he was being forced to improve. Everyone is face-saving, and Lulu is no exception.

In Abubeka's view, China's solemnity and solemnity not only gave him face, but also gave him the face of the Sulu country he represented. As a king of a small country who was often oppressed by the governor of the Spanish Philippines, this respect was more rare than money.

When Xie Hu returned to the official office, he immediately asked people to fly pigeons to pass the book to Lu Shan, and at the same time wrote a note and sent someone to report quickly.

When the news was sent to Lushan, Chen Ming had just received a message from the northern camp - on the Korean side, Jinju was broken by the Qing army, and the Korean king Li Chong was missing, and a group of Korean ministers, soldiers and civilians went to sea to Jeju Island. (To be continued.) )