Yu Garden, the largest garden in Shanghai County, close to the City God Temple, was built in the Ming Dynasty, is a private residence, during the Qianlong period was purchased by the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, it took more than 20 years to complete, specially received the important members of the imperial court, the local people called it the Daguan Garden.

Yu Garden should have been destroyed by the British, French and American forces during the rebellion of the Little Knife Society, but due to the butterfly effect brought by Li Weiguo, the armies of the great powers did not have the opportunity to send troops to Shanghai, so that the Yu Garden was completely preserved.

Now the members of the Chamber of Commerce who hold the title deed of Yu Garden heard that the Taiping Army was coming, and learned that Li Weiguo intended to buy Yu Garden as a private residence, so they half sold and half gave away to curry favor with Li Weiguo.

This Yu Garden is equivalent to the imperial palace in Shanghai, Li Weiguo has long taken a fancy to it, and when he saw that the Chamber of Commerce was very acquainted, he smiled and accepted it as the new residence of the Li Mansion.

This Yu Garden can be much larger than the old house of the Li family in Jinling, also more luxurious, covers an area of more than 70 acres, there are Xiangxue Hall, Dianchun Hall, Osmanthus Hall, Deyue Tower, Flower God Pavilion, Lotus Hall, etc., there is no mountain in Shanghai County, but there is a rockery in Yu Garden, ascend to a glance the scenery of Shanghai County, artificial lake waterfall, pavilions and pavilions, precious flowers and trees, corner towers and pavilions have everything, there are both the natural beauty of Suzhou garden, and there are palace buildings specially designed to receive the court officials, worthy of the name of the small palace in the south of the Yangtze River.

Living in Yu Garden is equivalent to living in the palace, which shows that Li Weiguo's ambitions are expanding rapidly.

Yu, on behalf of peace and harmony, Li's father and mother like this name very much, Fu Shanxiang has liked lotus since he was a child, meaning noble, learned that the lotus hall of Yu Garden is full of lotus, so he couldn't wait to move into Yu Garden, the lotus hall was rebuilt into a lotus building, on the one hand, as the living place of her and Li Weiguo, but also to take care of her full lake lotus.

Fu Shanxiang, as the hostess, personally takes care of Yu Garden and takes care of his parents, which also makes Li Weiguo a lot easier, he doesn't have to worry about family affairs, and he can devote himself to the great cause of "stealing the country and rebelling".

At the moment, the most important thing for Li Weiguo is that the British Hong Kong military agreed to sell a full set of arsenal equipment to Li Weiguo.

Previously, the British Hong Kong military had always refused to sell British-made muskets, artillery technology, and military factory production equipment to Li Weiguo, because they only wanted to sell finished muskets and artillery, so that they could earn more money from Li Weiguo.

However, things have changed over time.

On July 3, 1853, Tsarist Russia sent 80,000 troops to suddenly occupy the Ottoman possessions of the Danube Principalities - Moldova and Wallachia, and rejected the Sultan's request for withdrawal. In October, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, marking the outbreak of the Crimean War and the ninth large-scale war between Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

This time it was not just a war for territory between Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire, because the Ottoman Empire had formed alliances with Britain and France, so that in the face of a large-scale military invasion by Tsarist Russia, Britain, France and other countries that were in hostile relations with Tsarist Russia could not sit idly by.

With the Ottoman Empire declaring war on Tsarist Russia, the British and French governments had agreed in principle to intervene in the Russo-Turkish war, and both countries began to mobilize on a large scale at home, and on the other hand, they began to suspend their expansionist actions in the global direction to avoid military conflicts with other countries, and to ensure that Britain and France could concentrate on the Crimean War.

The news spread to Asia, and the British Command in Hong Kong, which was preparing for military intervention in the Chinese civil war, had to terminate its military plan, and at the same time the British base camp transferred all military supplies to the Crimean battlefield, at this time the British army was reloading muskets on a large scale, replacing the existing Enfield P1842 muskets with two new muskets, Enfield P1851 and Enfield P1853, but due to the lack of British production capacity, only 20,000 to 30,000 of this type of muskets could be produced every year, which was not enough to fully reequip the army. In addition, the loss during the war would be very huge, so the P1851 and P1853 two new muskets were seriously lacking, so the British base camp stopped supplying to Asia, causing the British Hong Kong army to stop redressing, and even the new muskets that had been in service before had to be transferred to the Crimean battlefield.

In this way, it was impossible for the British Hong Kong military to sell the muskets and artillery in their hands to Li Weiguo. However, they took a large amount of arms orders and deposits from Li Weiguo, and they were reluctant to return the money to Li Weiguo, and at the same time wanted to earn more silver in Li Weiguo's hands, so in the end they decided to sell the equipment of the arsenal to Li Weiguo and transfer the technology for the production of muskets and artillery.

Li Weiguo was naturally happy to keep his mouth shut after knowing this, you must know that although the technological blockade was not popular in these years, and countries did not prohibit the export of their own advanced science and technology, but there were special cases, that is, military industry and technology would generally not be exported, and even if they were exported, they would only be exported to trustworthy or friendly countries, and Li Weiguo was able to obtain British arsenals and related military technology, more because Li Weiguo controlled the entire Jiangdong, and the British concession was under Li Weiguo's nose, and it was possible for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to attack Shanghai. The British military considered that it was inconvenient for them to send troops to intervene in the Chinese civil war, so they would help Li Weiguo and sell him arsenal and armament technology.

As a result, the sale of the arsenal with a total amount of one million taels of silver was successfully negotiated. The British military in Hong Kong helped Li Weiguo build an arsenal in Shanghai, which could produce a full set of parts and propellants for P1842, P1851 and P1853 muskets, as well as 12-pounder, 16-pounder, 24-pounder, and 32-pounder guns, as well as supporting equipment and technology for the production of flowering shells, and even the 64-pounder fortress cannon was also used by Li Weiguo on the grounds that Shanghai was flat and needed heavy fortress artillery to defend against the attack of the Taiping army. The British military in Hong Kong was forced to agree to provide equipment and transfer the production and processing technology of the 64-pounder gun barrel, as well as the equipment for the production of flowering shells.

Of a total of 372 sets of machinery and equipment, about 90 sets of equipment are provided by the Hong Kong Arsenal, and the rest are shipped directly from the Mumbai Arsenal, the largest arsenal in the British and Indian colonies, and can arrive in Shanghai in two months.

Li Weiguo arranged the address of the arsenal outside the south city of Shanghai County, which is a good location with open terrain and convenient transportation. This place should have been forcibly opened up by France as a new French concession after the Second Opium War, but now that Li Weiguo has occupied it first, it is naturally impossible to cede it to the French.

Of course, there is also Li Weiguo's careful thinking in choosing this vicinity, and he remembers that in the future, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang will establish the first modern military factory in Chinese history - Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau.

Li Weiguo knew that he would have to fight with these giants sooner or later, so from now on, he would take the lead in establishing the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, so that future generations would know that the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau was established by Li Weiguo.

This can be regarded as a little bad taste deliberately made by Li Weiguo!

As an arsenal, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau was responsible for providing military supplies such as guns and ammunition to Li Jiajun, and its importance is self-evident.

Now in the war-torn years, Li Weiguo hopes that the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau can be put into operation as soon as possible, so he allows foreign foreigners to serve as important positions and technical consultants, and at the same time spends a lot of money to hire a large number of Chinese skilled workers from Hong Kong and Macao who know foreign languages, so that they can be apprentices to foreigners, and after a few years, they can thoroughly understand the technology and experience of foreign technicians, and then Li Weiguo is gradually dismissing these foreigners.

As for why these foreigners were fired, the reason is simple. Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau is a military industry, it can be said that Li Weiguo's fundamental interests lie, if foreigners hold important positions, it is very dangerous, especially Li Weiguo knows that after the end of the Crimean War in a few years, the British and French forces will start a war with the Qing Dynasty and launch the second Opium War, obviously it is impossible for Li Weiguo not to participate at that time, he will eventually have a showdown with Britain and France to embark on the road of confrontation, so no foreigners are allowed in his Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, the key is to prevent foreigners from knowing the situation inside, and the war is arms and materials. If the Anglo-French forces knew how many guns and ammunition were in Li Weiguo's arsenal, they could judge how long Li Jiajun could hold out, which would be extremely unfavorable to Li Jiajun.

Li Weiguo considered the matter very comprehensively, so he hired a large number of Chinese technicians from Hong Kong and Macao who knew foreign languages, and strived to let them thoroughly understand all kinds of skills within three or four years, so as to replace foreign technicians and consultants, so as to ensure that the entire Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau was his own people before the outbreak of the Second Opium War, and reduce the risk of leakage.

Wu Yong and Fu Xuexian agreed with Li Weiguo's strategy after listening to it, and at the same time the two suggested that this can also be implemented in the Jiangwan Industrial Zone, because now the factories in the Jiangwan Industrial Zone are controlled by foreigners, and the local workers selected before do not understand foreign languages, basically follow foreigners while learning foreign languages, and the language barrier leads to slow learning speed, if Chinese technicians who understand foreign languages are also hired from Hong Kong, Macau and other places, let these technicians learn foreign skills first, and then teach other Chinese apprentices in Chinese, In this way, the overall progress is greatly accelerated.

Li Weiguo listened to the suggestions of Wu Yong and Fu Xuexian, and immediately sent people to Hong Kong and Macao to recruit talents and technicians who knew foreign languages; at the same time, Li Weiguo was also able to draw inferences from one another, and was not limited to Hong Kong and Macao, but also sent people to Nanyang to recruit overseas Chinese to return to China to British Singapore, the Spanish Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies.

In particular, Li Weiguo also sent people to inquire about the situation of local Chinese students studying abroad, especially those Chinese who graduated from famous foreign universities, and he wanted to do everything possible to get them back to China and use them for Li Weiguo's use.

To this end, Li Weiguo set up a special fund for overseas Chinese to return to China and contributed 5 million taels of silver to attract overseas Chinese talents to return to China.

The nature of this foundation is basically the same as the recruitment hall set up by Li Weiguo before, except that the recruitment hall is for domestic talents, and the foundation is for foreign Chinese talents.

Of course, Li Weiguo did not make strict rules that it has to be overseas Chinese, and if foreigners have talent, if they are willing to come to Shanghai to do things for Li Weiguo, it is also very welcome, but this hope is very slim, and Li Weiguo does not take it to heart.