On October 25, the second year of the restoration of the Ming Dynasty, the largest city of the Grand Duchy of Lanfang, just south of Pontianak, Kunjiang Port.

The flotilla led by the Daming third-class battleship, under the guidance of a water diversion steamship, slowly sailed into the port. The water here is similar to that of Basra Port, which is narrow and rugged, and it is also full of sailboats of all sizes.

The deck of the Daming was full of officers and sailors, all of whom came from England and France. He Bo is a British Navy Colonel and the principal of the Daming Whampoa Naval Officers School, which has been opened, and all the British and French naval officers on this ship are instructors of this military academy that trains talents for the Chinese Navy. They were now all standing neatly on the deck in uniform, each looking at the scene with curious eyes.

Luo Xiangmei, Maria. Clementina, Liu Peng, and Engels and his wife all stood on the tall back deck of the Daming, holding binoculars and watching all this in front of them.

The port of Pontianak was presented in front of them.

Crowded, dirty, cluttered...... There are also a few magnificent Western-style buildings standing in a large number of slums that look a little dilapidated. These Western-style buildings are the offices of foreign banks in Lan Fang, and the most magnificent of them is the building of the Lan Fang branch of HSBC. The huge European-style clock tower stands tall and is the commanding height of the whole of Pontianak, as if to tell everyone who is the master of the entire Borneo economy. Most of the dilapidated shacks are made of bamboo and wood, not much style, just a place to live, and the people who live in them are Chinese immigrants who have just arrived in Borneo for a few years.

In the four years since the founding of the Grand Duchy of Lan Fang, ships full of poor people dying in China have docked at the Pontianak docks almost every day, and as Zhu Jishi's career in Chinese mainland has flourished. The more poor people seem to come to Pontianak! At first, it was from Guangdong and Fujian. Then there were the landless peasants from Xianghu. Up to now, even the landless and professional farmers in the land of fish and rice in the two rivers have "sold themselves" to Borneo to survive.

Of course, the people of the Ming Dynasty are not happy! The so-called rise and fall are all the sufferings of the people, especially the current battle of "the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the rise of the Ming Dynasty" is, in essence, a national revolution led by the bourgeoisie and participated by the landlord class. The result of this revolution was the co-rule of the bourgeoisie and the landlord and gratification class, and although there were struggles and contradictions between the two, they were all the same on the question of the exploitation of the working people, even in Europe today, there is a lot of brutal exploitation. Even the British Empire, the richest and most powerful empire in the world, is full of sweatshops, and can you expect the capitalists and landlords of the Ming Dynasty to care about the lives of the working people with one foot on the threshold of capitalism?

In a corner of the "labor market" outside the port of Pontianak, hundreds of men in tattered clothes are sitting on the ground with numb expressions, waiting for the rich Borneo mine owners, farmers, factory owners or builders to "buy" them.

Several men in silk clothes, with Colt pistols stuck in their belts, and some hideous faces, paced in all directions, their eyes full of greed and ruthlessness.

"There are so many piglets here, can they be sold?"

"Xiaohu, it's the first time to run to Nanyang, right? Do you know how big Nanyang is? How many piglets are needed? Pontianak is the largest piglet market in Nanyang, and even Australian bosses in Nanyang will come here to buy piglets. There has never been a time when you can't sell it. ”

"But how can there be so many piglets? Now that the emperor is in power, Liangjiang has suffered from military disasters and disasters. If someone can't survive and wants to go to Nanyang, why are there so many people in Guangdong who can't survive? ”

"What's going on with the big tomorrow? It's just a matter of changing a group of people to be big masters and make a fortune, and the little people should not have to eat or not. Some people might as well go over, or you don't have to go to Hongmen to sell piglets......"

"Alas, I don't know when our little people's lives will be better......"

This little brother of Hongmen, who seems to have a clear conscience, is named Hu Guangyong, and he also has a vassal Fengya who has given himself a word called Xueyan. However, at present, Hu Xueyan is going back to his heart, his old club Rende Bank went bankrupt in the Liangjiang financial turmoil at the end of last year, and was later taken over by HSBC, and merged with more than a dozen other money banks to form Lixin Bank, and Hu Xueyan was actually laid off by the overclass of Lixin Bank. After losing his job, he started to buy and sell grain, and bought grain from Huzhou and sold it to Liaodong, but he encountered the Ming Dynasty to implement grain export control and lost his old capital, so he had no choice but to follow a fellow villager in Anhui who participated in the "Red Gang" and partnered to start a pig trade that hurt nature and reason.

And those piglets who were sold to Borneo by their gang are from Liangjiang, most of them are unemployed Cao Gang boatmen, now Liangjiang is their most bitter, Cao Yun cut off there is no income, Cao Gang boss is better, ordinary boatmen only pawn to live, after selling to the most ruthless, only "sell" to Nanyang.

The so-called "selling oneself" does not actually mean selling oneself into slavery, but first borrowing usury to pay for the passage to Nanyang, and then working as a coolie to make money to pay off debts after arriving in Nanyang. However, the Hongmen Society, which lent money to these coolies, did not have the patience to collect the debts slowly, so as soon as they arrived in Nanyang, they concentrated these coolies in the "coolie market" and resold them. The next family is usually Nanyang miners, farmers, and factory owners, most of whom are Chinese—in fact, most of them themselves or their ancestors are "sold" to Nanyang in this way.

The land of the South Seas, although plagued and rampant, is very prosperous and rich. Pontianak is surrounded by rice fields, and Borneo's land is not fertile, but the climate is warm and humid, enough for rice to grow three times a year. Moreover, Borneo has a very large land and a small population, so there is absolutely no difficulty in having less land and more people. Now outside Pontianak Castle is a surging golden rice wave, and you can't see the end at a glance. Rubber plantations, palm plantations, spice gardens, and coffee plantations are even denser, and they are everywhere. A little further inland, there are numerous gold, diamond and oil mines. It can be seen that this place is prosperous and rich. The Ming Dynasty, which has a poor livelihood with the people, has formed a sharp contrast. What's more important is that there are too many opportunities to make a fortune here in Nanyang, and there is not too much feudal power to oppress, and the same effort can be reaped in Nanyang The rewards that can be reaped here are far greater than those in the mainland.

Just when Hu Xueyan, who wants to be rich in the South Seas in the future, is lamenting that life is not good. At the entrance of the Pontianak coolie market, more than a dozen men and women dressed in dresses came. Surrounded by everyone is a Chinese woman wearing a Western-style skirt, who looks dignified and beautiful, it is Luo Xiangmei, the queen of the Ming Dynasty. She was also followed by a "big ocean horse", her appearance was very charming, her clothes were even more exposed to the point of immorality, half of her snow-white breasts and entire shoulders were exposed, she was holding a parasol in one hand, and she was holding a carved ivory folding fan in the other. Clementina is up. The bearded Engels holds his live-in girlfriend Mary. Bai Enshi's arm walked behind Luo Xiangmei and Maria, and as he walked, he was discussing something in a low voice with Liu Peng on the other side.

"Mr. Liu, what is this place? Is it a slave market? Do you want to buy some slave girls from here again and give them to Jason? ”

"Mr. Engels, this is the biggest ...... in the South Seas The labor market, uh, those people are free people, and there are no women to buy, really, see for yourself. ”

Engels looked at Liu Peng's eyes a little unkindly. Because he knew that several Ottoman-style sailing ships brought by Liu Peng were full of slaves! And they're all beautiful slave girls! There are white-skinned and dark-skinned, mature and charming, and young loli, all of which are bought from the slave girl market in Istanbul.

What made Engels even more unacceptable was that Liu Peng's purchase of these female slaves was not given to Zhu Datianzi, whose life had always been corrupted, but to corrupt Hong Xiuquan, the revolutionary leader of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom! This intention is too sinister and too reactionary...... (To be continued......)