When Qin Kai returned to Mawei Port in Fuzhou, he had been traveling with the ship for almost a month, but Sun Fu brought him a good news, Ding Richang's strong recommendation, and the artillery provided to Lord Li Zhongtang before the end of the year and the printing and dyeing process of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau.

To Qin Kai is still very puzzled by this position, Sun Fu patiently explained to him the meaning of this political secretary to participate in politics, the political envoy is from the second grade, and is already at the same level as the governor, so now Fujian only has the governor and no political envoy, all the officials who are named in the political envoy are actually the adjutant of Lord Ding, like him Sun Fu, and the official position of the political envoy before Qin Kai is like this.

It turned out that after a long time, Qin Kai went from the local to the provincial capital again, but now he is a provincial and department-level official, the first deputy under the governor, for his achievements in the past year, this soaring official position, even he has always been modest, he is a little complacent.

He told Sun Fu the key points of his trip to Vietnam again, of course, he chose to skip the shelling and the river juniper and the Xiǎo matter of Xian'an, which was not deliberately hiding anything, but could not be put on the surface at all.

Sun Fu immediately understood that this was a hot potato, but he didn't know why Qin Kai wanted to take over something that might burn his hands, and the imperial court was obviously unwilling to invest too much in these vassal states now, in fact, the bigger reason was that he was not able to invest. His ideas are basically the same as those of Qin Kai. Naturally, the letter of state of the king of Vietnam was signed by Ding Richang and was first sent to Li Zhongtang, the minister of Beiyang, and then forwarded to the Military Aircraft Department in Beijing.

And the letter of Liu Kunyi, the minister of Nanyang, was naturally delivered by Ding Richang, who had a deep affection for Comrade Lao Ding and Liu Kunyi, a cadre of the Hunan army, and he was also the minister of the Mawei Shipping Department, so it was most appropriate for him to propose to inspect the South China Sea.

Ding Richang also attaches great importance to the news brought back by Qin Kai, the French invasion of the vassal country of Vietnam, and the situation is so critical, the southern region of Vietnam has been completely occupied, and the Vietnamese army is completely powerless to resist, this is a clear invasion of the Qing forces, thinking of Japan's occupation of the Ryukyu vassal state of the Qing Dynasty a few years ago, and finally the leader zhì is now completely losing the Ryukyu vassal state, Lao Ding immediately made a decision, he wanted to take the matter to the court, and asked the court to send troops to stabilize the situation in Vietnam.

As for Liu Kunyi, the minister of Nanyang, he immediately repaired a letter and sent it together with the letter of the king of Vietnam, here he is full of confidence, with his face, he will definitely be able to move Liu Kunyi, this Vietnam has an accident, Liu Kunyi, the minister of Nanyang, is responsible.

In the nearly month that Qin Kai slipped out, Zhang Jian can be said to have gone all out to promote this education plan, and after Chōu transferred the first batch of 30 Mawei School students, he recruited more than 60 Xiucai and Tongsheng in various counties of Fuzhou, so that the system of teaching new learning with Mawei School teachers and teaching Mengxue with Xiucai and Tongsheng was established.

Now 3 Mongolian schools and a primary school have been established in Fuzhou City, and nearly 20 Mongolian schools and 3 primary schools have been established in the surrounding villages and towns, and the only higher education school has started next to the Mawei Ship Master School! The textbooks used this time, including the enlightenment textbooks of the Confucian classics and many new textbooks of Western studies, are all natural science contents.

Zhang Peilun had also seen these textbooks beforehand, as the cadres of Qingliu, they have always criticized the Westernists' abandonment of traditional Chinese practices, and for natural science and Western technology, as a scholar of science, he can naturally distinguish the key to this, and Qin Kai's current approach obviously caters to his ideas from certain angles, which makes him pay more attention to this capable person of Mawei Shipbuilding.

The article is divided into three parts, one is the current situation of Vietnam's territory, of course, the traditional Vietnamese territories and the Vietnamese territories occupied by Laos are included, which shows that Vietnam is currently occupied by the French more than forty percent of the land, and it is the richest plain.

The second section, on the situation of the Chinese in Vietnam, provides an in-depth description of the plight of the Chinese in French-ruled areas, in which Qin Kai cites the example of the dying Republic of Lan Fang, a Chinese state that paid tribute to China nearly a hundred years ago, but is now completely controlled by the Netherlands, and the Chinese there have been reduced to second-class citizens of the Dutch colonies. ,

In the third part, Qin Kai analyzed the combat power of China and France, and he did not mean to scare Zhang Peilun in this regard, but the facts are in front of him, now the Nanyang Naval Division, the Fujian Naval Division, and the Guangzhou Naval Division are all wooden-hulled ships, and the Nanyang Naval Division, as a new fleet, is much ahead in artillery, and it is also steam-powered, while the old-fashioned sailing ships of the Fujian and Guangzhou Naval Divisions plus Xiǎo caliber smoothbore guns are almost no combat power.

Compared with the French Navy, which ranks second in the world, with this strength, only the total tonnage of the French Navy of 550,000 is listed, and there is no need to mention the more than 30 ironclad ships of the French army, which makes Governor Zhang stunned, you must know that the entire Nanyang Navy Division together is not more than 10,000 tons......

This article Chen obviously Zhang Peilun looked very carefully, and the details were drawn by him one by one and asked Qin Kai individually, Lao Zhang belonged to the type of literary and brilliant in the Qingliu faction, but for this military, he also had self-knowledge, he left the article Chen to prepare for careful study, thought about it and asked: "Gale Wind, if I send troops to Vietnam, will this war affect Fuzhou?" ”

He did not hesitate to assert, "My lord, if you send troops to Vietnam, a vassal country, you must be prepared for a full-scale war with France, and a naval battle is inevitable!" ”

"However, with such a huge disparity between us and foe, how can we win in battle?"

"My lord, this art of war is often said, only by using our strengths and avoiding weaknesses and strengthening our army's heart can we defeat the enemy and win!" Qin Kai started Tai Chi, this thing is just a platform, the little people in his hands are still not right, even if I have a strategy to control the enemy, let these Qing Dynasty soldiers carry it out, Zhuge Rebirth is estimated to be no fun!

Zhang Peilun frowned, his words were ambiguous, which meant that he didn't say anything, "Gale Wind, what you said is a big truth, is there any inconvenience, it is inconvenient to say it clearly?" ”

"My lord, the war between countries is really not something I can predict, what the bigwigs in the court think, is the key factor that determines the victory, so the lower officials think that the first task of Fuzhou is to build a fort fortress in Mawei Port, the ships of the Nanyang Naval Division are not as good as the French, but we can rely on shore artillery for defense, the French came from afar, what they want is a quick victory, and we are weak and strong, all we have to do is to procrastinate!"

The method that Qin Kai can get is actually this, he has already calculated it, the wooden warship of the Nanyang Naval Division, don't look at the speed of running and transporting 10 knots and 12 knots now, it is quite noisy, and it is really a fight, these are rare for the sailors trained by Cào to exert some combat power, and it is a big problem.

Moreover, the guns of the Nanyang Naval Division are also old, most of the breech guns, and because the ship is not big, this caliber is not big, most of them are about 150 guns, and the French artillery of this era is too far behind, and there is no threat to medium-armored warships. The only way was to let Zhang Peilun stick to the port and build more forts, using them to restrain the French Navy's maritime superiority.

The premise, of course, is to put an end to the most implausible mistakes of the Battle of Mawei and allow the French navy, which was already fighting Jiāo, to enter the port! And what he repeatedly emphasized to Zhang Peilun was the inevitability of the Sino-French war to prevent this big man from making such a low-level mistake again.

Zhang Peilun also agreed with Qin Kai's method, picked up a strip of Chen and shook it, and said with a smile: "Gale Wind, your method is good, I will report this French behavior in Vietnam to the imperial court, this is evidence of interference in the affairs of our dynasty!" ”

"My lord, in fact, I have another idea, I want to ask the adult to judge!" After that, Qin Kai handed over another note, "Do you know the "Declaration" run by the British in Shanghai? ”

Zhang Peilun took the strip Chen and looked at it, but it was Qin Kaiti who founded a newspaper to serve as the mouthpiece of Zhejiang and Fujian, and the "Declaration" was already famous in this era, but the Chinese people did not notice the huge influence of this newspaper at all.

"Gale, how much does this cost? If no one buys it, won't it be a loss of money and a poor drink? Lao Zhang is obviously not very enthusiastic about this.

"My lord, how can no one buy it? This can introduce our achievements in Fujian, the suffering of the people, you don't know a lot of celebrities! It is not appropriate to ask them to write articles and discuss national affairs in vain, so you can ask them to discuss the affairs of overseas countries! As for the cost, I have already asked people to calculate, the initial stage can be a page, the cost is only 10 texts, printing thousands of copies is not much money, if the response is good, we are increasing the amount of printing! Qin Kai kindly reminded this person on the side, this is a speech position of your Qingliu! ,

The celebrities Zhang Peilun knows are not those characters in Qingliu, the merits and demerits of these people are difficult to sort out even in later generations, but these people have become an independent force in the court, which naturally has the meaning of imperial power, but these people are the smartest group of big mouths in this era, Qin Kai has found a position for them, but they are not worried that they will not stand on the battlefield!

Now Qingliu's two major cadres Zhang Zhi Dòng and Zhang Peilun have become feudal officials, and after Zhang Zhidòng arrived, he deviated a little from the direction of Qingliu in action, and recently engaged in foreign affairs in Hubei, and last month also put forward the idea of "middle school as the body, Western learning as the use", and suddenly became the target of the Qingliu colleagues in the past.

In this regard, Zhang Peilun was also deeply touched after his arrival, and he didn't pick the governor to scold these colleagues in the capital before, but he didn't expect that when he arrived in the position of governor, he also came up with the idea of engaging in foreign affairs and rejuvenating Western studies! thought that if he followed in the footsteps of Zhang Xiaoda, this bombardment of himself would probably have to be piled up again......

And Qin Kai's idea is not bad, let these Qingliu big mouths come to the newspaper he runs to talk about things, and it only takes a while to do it, and this can become Qingliu's mouthpiece...... When you have done something great, you can put your own principles and ideas in the newspapers for the scholars of the whole country to comment, what an honor it is!

Zhang Peilun patted the table and said with a smile: "Gale Wind, it's really good to think about!" I'm okay with this, the name of this newspaper ...... "Fujian New News", how about it? ”

The Governor nodded, the rest of the things are easy to do, the content of the newspaper is handled by Master Zeng and Qin Kai of the Governor's Mansion, Lao Zhang is the director, and the content is accurate after he sees it, as the first issue, it will naturally be a hit.

As a result, Qin Kai inexplicably became the main writer, he sent Zhang Peilun the booklet "The Rise of the Empire", Lao Zhang personally ordered a few, and commented on it freely, and personally wrote the opening speech of "Fujian New Newspaper", the situation in Vietnam, Qin Kai also excerpted part of the above, of course, the opening of dozens of Mongolian schools in Fuzhou was also published on it as the achievements of Governor Zhang!

Qin Kai, as the actual organizer of the newspaper, took a few students to work for a few days, and finally the first "Fujian New Newspaper" was published, with an initial printing of 6,000 copies, and Governor Zhang personally delivered a large bundle of newspapers to Zhang Zhidòng in Hubei Province, the six gentlemen and ten talented men of Qingliu in the capital, and entrusted them to distribute them on the spot, and then every Qingliu celebrity received an invitation!

Right! Manuscript appointment, this is also the idea of the active-minded Qin Daoist, the readers of this era are simple, and they don't need to pay for manuscripts, which makes Qin Kai greatly appreciated! There were even a few "celebrities" who were not too familiar with Zhang Peilun, because they were not very familiar, so naturally they did not receive a letter about the manuscript, and even sent a telegram, first theorizing with Zhang Peilun for some knowledge, and then taking the initiative to ask for submission, which made Governor Zhang a little puzzled!

A few days later, news came from Beijing, and the "Fujian Xinbao" reported that caused a shock, because a day earlier, the governor of Zhili and the minister of Beiyang, Li Zhongtang, had transferred the letter of state of Vietnam, and the French had secretly invaded the vassal states of the Qing Dynasty.

At this moment, the government and the opposition were in an uproar, and now what can fully express the worries of these senior officials about the country and the people's feelings is undoubtedly this "Fujian New Daily" founded by Zhang Peilun, a cadre of the Qingliu cadres, so that this newspaper that appeared at the right time is about to gather the speeches of the senior members of all strata and parties in the DPRK and China, and Zhang Peilun is busy and happily selecting these contents...... Expand the version!

With the full efforts of the Governor, Qin Kai finally got out of it, and the specific newspaper arrangement and printing tasks, he gave He Xing's cousin Chen Ping and two students who had run a school magazine in Mawei School, and he still had a plan to do it himself.

In the southwest control area of the Mawei shipyard, a huge steel keel has been laid in the dock originally used for repairing and refitting the 501 ship, and some parts are even being installed on the entire steel plate, which is the first all-steel battleship to be built entirely by the Mawei ship, the tonnage is exactly the same as the 501 ship, and the maximum displacement is 3700 tons of ironclad battleship!