Zhou Fu is a native of Anhui Province. The pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info was diligent in studying in his childhood, his father died when he was young, the state affairs were difficult, and the family business was cold, so he taught in the countryside, and soon wandered the rivers and lakes, writing and selling paintings. In the last years of Xianfeng, he avoided the war and moved to the provincial capital of Anqing. In the spring of the first year of Tongzhi, Li Hongzhang formed the Huai Army. Zhou Fu applied for the recruitment and won Li Hongzhang's appreciation, that is, "recruited to do copywriting". Since then, he has followed Li Hongzhang to run foreign affairs for more than 30 years, and many praise paintings have been deeply relied on by Li Hongzhang.

When Li Hongzhang was infamous as a traitor because of the defeat of the First Sino-Japanese War and the signing of the "Treaty of Shimonoseki", and his subordinates such as Luo Fenglu and Sheng Xuanhuai changed their doors one after another, Zhou Fu never gave up, and always followed Li Hongzhang until the last breath of Li Hongzhang's life!

Li Hongzhang's death made Zhou Fu very sad. Looking back on more than 30 years of companionship, many foreign pragmatic industries rely on their help, and they are convinced. This unswerving feeling of empathy made him feel in his heart, once he knew it forever, how could he forget it! He once wrote a poem to commemorate it:

"Spit on the rest of the wind for a long time, what does it mean to be pitied, biased by three thousand people, wind and rain for forty years. Serving the country and hating has no effect, the tears are still hanging on the deathbed, Hou Ba Lao after the pain of the mountain sun, and he is looking forward to the future sages! ”

Out of respect for Zhou Fu, Lin Yizhe also made up his mind in his heart that he would never let Zhou Fu write this poem one day!

Kunyu laughed! In the past, the Fujian factory received the ship, to solve the great difficulty of the China Merchants Bureau, and did not dare to forget, but in the future, there will be an ironclad ship, and the work of "Weiyuan" is also unforgettable! Li Hongzhang said.

"Brother Shaoquan, I have some suggestions for the future development of the Shanghai factory, and I want to say that I know with Brother Shaoquan, I don't know if Brother Shaoquan is willing to listen to it." Lin Yizhe knew that the two should not meet and talk for too long, so he turned the topic to the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau in a timely manner.

At present, China's shipbuilding industry, in addition to the Fujian Shipbuilding Bureau, is the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, and now the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau is busy with Zuo Zongtang's guns and ammunition and can't take care of shipbuilding, Lin Yizhe thinks that this is very inappropriate, because he has been trying to find a way to help the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau out of the predicament.

"Kunyu, but it doesn't hurt to say it." Li Hongzhang heard the cautious meaning in Lin Yizhe's words, and said, "As long as it is feasible, I will do it for my brother." ”

"At present, the shipbuilding of Shanghai factory has a foundation, and it is not suitable to be abolished. And the arms of the Western Expedition cannot be left untouched. For the sake of both, it is better to separate the shipping affairs of the Shanghai factory and have a special department. Lin Yizhe saw that Li Hongzhang and Zhou Fu were listening to him carefully, so he said his own way.

Lin Yizhe's method of "separating shipping affairs" was to separate the shipyard from the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and set up a special shipyard.

"Lord Lin, what you said about this Chen, I and Lord Taiwan have also thought about it before, but the Shanghai factory is now specializing in making guns, and the shipbuilding funds are not much, even if the shipping business is separated, and the Fujian factory is built like this, I am afraid that it is not enough!" Zhou Fu said.

"If you can't build a big ship, you can build a small steamer for civilian use first, or sell it to a sand boat ship, or get it for use by China Merchants, which can not only solve the difficulties of businessmen and people, but also enable the shipyard to have a ship to build, which is really a two-way plan." Lin Yizhe said.

Hearing Lin Yizhe say about the "sand boat", Li Hongzhang's eyes lit up.

"How did Kunyu come up with this sand boat?"

"When the ship returned from the West and returned to Shanghai for supplies, I saw with my own eyes that the difficulties of the sand ships were solved by thinking day and night, and I finally got something." Lin Yizhe remembered the current decline of China's traditional inland river sand boat transportation industry, and couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

Li Hongzhang remembered the past and was also emotional.

The sand boat transportation industry was once unprecedentedly prosperous during the Daoguang period of Xianfeng. Transporting soybeans from north to south, transporting grain from south to north, making a round trip for more than a month, a sand ship can go back and forth seven or eight times a year, and making a lot of profits. At the peak of the Shanghai port, there were 5,000 sand ships and more than 100,000 sailors.

However, after the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 and the Treaty of Peking in 1860, many of China's ports were opened to the outside world, and the influx of Western steamers quickly pushed China's traditional sand ship passenger and cargo transportation industry to the point of collapse. Because whether it is speed, load, safety or price, traditional sand ships are not the opponent of Western freighters. However, in the past four or five years, the number of sand boats in Shanghai Port has dropped sharply to four or five hundred, and thousands of wooden boats have been stranded on the Huangpu beach, allowing them to rot naturally in the wind and sun. Even the fleet of Wang Yongsheng, the king of sand boats, has been declining all the way down without exception. The other shipowners were just as desperate as Wang. Because the hardware and software could not compete with foreign businessmen, they had to wait for the government to negotiate. The shipowners got together to discuss, and the result was that Wang Yongsheng was unanimously elected to take the lead in submitting a letter to the government, begging the government to negotiate with the foreigners, and the business of soybeans and grains should be assigned to the monopoly of Chinese sand boats, and foreign businessmen were not allowed to interfere.

A passage in the submission touched Li Hongzhang. The submission said that if the sand shipbuilding industry went bankrupt, it would not only be a problem of more than 100,000 shipwrights losing their jobs, but also might provoke a popular uprising, and the imperial court's grain transportation line might also be destroyed. Li Hongzhang forwarded the submission to the Prime Minister Yamen, and tried his best to promote the matter, but he hit a nail in the nail at the British Minister Wei Tuma, who refused on the spot, claiming that all the consequences caused by this should be the responsibility of the Qing government.

As a "pacification", the Qing court reduced the sand boat by 30% of the "subsidy silver" and 30% of the "stolen silver", but after all, it was a drop in the bucket, and it was already inadequate to maintain the entire sand ship industry by relying only on the grain freight of the imperial court. In 1869, the Suez Canal was opened, and two years later, the Far Eastern section of the Eurasian submarine cable was laid in Shanghai, and more Western merchant ships poured into China, making the situation of China's sand ship transportation industry even worse.

During this period, the Qing government did not ignore the sand boat transportation industry. Prime Minister Yamen also ordered the Minister of Military Aircraft of the Cabinet and the Minister of Trade of the South and North Seas to jointly discuss the resolution of the Cao Yun crisis. As a result, three recommendations were obtained. The first is to repair the canal and restore river transportation; the second is to repair all abandoned sand ships and continue to maintain maritime transportation; Third, the imperial court increased the freight of the sand boat transportation industry in order to save the sand ship transportation industry that was on the verge of bankruptcy.

However, all three suggestions were refuted by Li Hongzhang. Li Hongzhang believes that for more than 800 years, the canal has made every effort, and the transportation capacity is only 100,000 stones per year, which is not helpful to the overall situation of Caoyun; Obviously there are convenient conditions for shipping, but it is not crazy to have to spend a lot of money to build a canal; And to repair the sand boat, it needs at least 30 million taels of silver, and more than 400 warehouses with a capacity of more than 10,000 stones need to be built, where does the imperial court have so much money? Increasing the freight of sand boats can save a while, but it is not a long-term solution.

At that time, Zeng Guofan was also caught in deep contradictions. As early as 1867, Yung Hong suggested that he adopt the method of "investment pooling" to buy foreign ships and form Chinese own steamship companies to save Caoyun. But at that time, Zeng Guofan was worried that the Taiping Rebellion had just subsided, and the people's hearts were not solid, so he "carried grain...... Once the imperial court develops steamships, more than 100,000 sand boat owners and shipwrights and sailors will lose their vitality, which will lead to large-scale civil uprisings and riots.

But in any case, China's traditional sand boat transportation industry has finally reached the end of the road. In March 1872, Premier Yamen sent another letter to Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, asking about the use of steamships to undertake the transportation of water, hoping that they would come up with a practical plan. A month later, Zeng Guofan died of illness, and the matter fell entirely on Li Hongzhang. Li Hongzhang's solution was to expand the China Merchants Bureau. The operation policy of China Merchants has also been changed from the previous official policy of "carrying grain and collecting passengers and goods" to "carrying grain as the first meaning and transporting cao as the second meaning", and the main business of China Merchants Group is to carry passengers and freight.

At the beginning of the establishment of China Merchants, like the sand shipping industry, there was fierce competition with foreign steamship companies. However, due to the strong support of the shipping administration, the British Swire and Jardine Steamship Company, and the American Qichang Steamship Company were defeated many times in business wars against China Merchants, and with the full cooperation of a group of "comprador shareholders" who were familiar with the laws of modern Western business operations, Qichang Company went bankrupt, and Swire and Jardine Matheson were forced to sign "parity contracts" with China Merchants three times. The policy support of the imperial court and the full cooperation between experienced private managers made China Merchants quickly open up the situation and become one of the largest steamship companies in China and abroad. With the continuous expansion of China Merchants' business, it has not only absorbed a lot of sailors and laborers in the sand ship industry, but also brought a glimmer of hope to the sand ship owners.

The owners of the sand boats had hoped that the imperial court would give them the necessary protection in the harsh commercial environment, but after all, they belonged to the "representatives of backward productive forces", and if they did not change, they could only accept the fate of being eliminated by the times together with their heavy and stupid sand boats. The success of China Merchants has given great inspiration to the owners of sand boats. They began to raise funds to buy small steamers to replace the old sand boats, in the hope of getting out of the predicament and regaining their vitality. However, there are not many shipyards in China that can produce steamships, and the existing shipyards are all foreign shipyards, except for the Fujian Shipbuilding Bureau and the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, and most of these shipyards are only interested in the production of large ships, and are not willing to build small steamers that can be used for inland shipping.

At this time, Lin Yizhe's proposal to "separate shipping affairs" and "build small steamers for civilian use" put forward by the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau is undoubtedly quite pertinent and operable.

For the construction of ships of more than 3,000 tons, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, which has built "90-day gunboats", is not sure, but it is more than enough to build small steamers for transporting goods!

"It's a good idea." Li Hongzhang stroked his palms and said, "If this can be done, not only will the Shanghai factory get rid of the big difficulties, but the private shipping will also be prosperous. ”

Many years later, Li Hongzhang still regarded the establishment of the China Merchants Steamship Bureau and the Jiangnan Shipyard as the most brilliant success in his career, and he said: "The China Merchants Bureau and the small steamer are actually the most successful words in the 40 years since the establishment of foreign affairs. ”