On the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, this day is a rare good weather. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

On the morning of the seventh day of Tianjin Weichu, although the sky is still cold, but the steep north wind that has been blowing for several days has disappeared without a trace unconsciously, early in the morning, a round of fiery red sunrise will sprinkle the warm and bright sunshine all over the streets and alleys of Tianjin Wei, and some of the snow that has not had time to be swept is shining with a dazzling luster under the sun. The streets and alleys are sprinkled with colorful and green firecracker confetti, and there seems to be a faint smell of gunpowder smoke in the air.

New Year, a traditional Chinese festival, is not just Chinese New Year's Eve, but from Chinese New Year's Eve to the fifteenth day of the first month, in this half a month, in principle, it is considered the New Year.

As the saying goes, if you don't reach the fifteenth, you won't finish the New Year.

In this half month, whether it is a dignitary who is entangled in official duties, a farmer who works all day long, or even a hawker who walks the streets and alleys all day on weekdays, in addition to necessary entertainment, will stay at home lazily and relax to the fullest.

In these days, not only the dignitaries, but also the wealthy businessmen and gentlemen or the well-off families, even the poor families will do their best to take out all the good things that they are reluctant to eat and drink on weekdays, and the family will enjoy them to the fullest.

It's just that such a lazy and leisurely time has nothing to do with Qin Chuan, the richest person in Tianjin Wei now.

Qin Chuan, who was dressed in a black leather coat and wearing high-waisted riding boots with a shiny black luster on his feet, was standing in the clean courtyard in front of his small western-style building, looking up at the blue sky with his eyes squinted. Standing quietly behind him a dozen paces away were Gao Ying, who was fully armed, leading six saddled horses, and four guards, as well as the workers who were hurrying around the courtyard and busy working, and their surprised eyes swept over him.

During the Chinese New Year, others will enjoy family reunions and the fun of leisure and relaxation, but this Spring Festival has made Qin Chuan tired enough.

This is not because of the matter of the salt group, although most of these young men in the salt group are not locals, it is impossible to go home for the New Year. Even the salt regiment did not have a holiday during the Spring Festival, like the Beiyang departments, many people could go home for the New Year, and those who stayed in the barracks could also drink and gamble to their heart's content.

The New Year of the officers and men of the Yan Regiment has never been experienced by these simple rural boys who are about 20 years old, and it is full of novelty and fun.

Since the beginning of the Lunar New Year, Qin Chuan has ordered all officers and soldiers to exercise only in the morning, and officers to conduct military studies in the afternoon and evening, and other times, soldiers can move freely in the barracks. All soldiers can go out on a day off, and soldiers who do not have their turn to leave the barracks on that day can also participate in various recreational activities in the barracks in addition to gambling. For example, there are quizzes, fun throwing and shooting, and even local opera performances arranged by the officers and soldiers themselves.

What these young people like the most is football, basketball and volleyball.

The two sports activities of football and basketball in the barracks are mainly because Qin Chuan wants these young men to have more entertainment activities in addition to training and studying.

At the beginning, Qin Chuan still wanted to teach football in person, but to Qin Chuan's surprise, football, a modern sport invented by the British, appeared in Tianjin as early as 1860, and in 1864, Tianjin Wei even appeared a folk football team called "Braided Team". It was at this time that there were often private people in Tianjin Wei who spontaneously formed a football team to play with foreigners in the Grand Concession, and Detrilin even opened several bets for this.

In such a city with such a football background behind him, it would be even easier to do it in his military camp, Qin Chuan directly found more than a dozen people who understood football from Tianjin City to be coaches.

And basketball, a sport that became popular in the United States only two years ago, has also been promoted in the military camp after Qin Chuan's improvement.

As for volleyball, it is Qin Chuan's first precedent, because volleyball in later generations did not appear in the United States until two years later.

As soon as these three sports appeared in the barracks, they immediately aroused the great interest of these energetic young men, and now, each company of the salt regiment now has basketball teams, football teams, and volleyball teams.

Basketball and volleyball are well said, and the venue is located in the basement of the Salt Regiment Headquarters building. But football is not easy to do, even in this winter, you can only play outside. Still, as soon as they had free time, the lads scrambled to kick the pitch, sweating in the northerly wind.

On the third day of the Lunar New Year, Qin Chuan even asked Gao Lin to come forward and contact the foreigners in the concession, and the team selected by Zhou Dajing with the salt group went to the concession to play a "friendly match", and it also attracted many old and young masters of Tianjin Wei to watch.

Therefore, in the past few days of the Chinese New Year, Qin Chuan didn't have to worry about the matter of salt balls.

What has made Qin Chuan not idle these days is because of the affairs of the Aurora Group that he arranged on Chinese New Year's Eve.

First of all, the matter of the board of trustees of Aurora University, Qin Chuan originally planned to push it out, but on the first day of the Lunar New Year, Li Mingfang and Tang Guoan jointly came to Qin Chuan, and said that Li Mingfang would not do anything about Li Mingfang's appointment as chairman of the school board, and insisted on only agreeing to be the executive chairman, and Qin Chuan would take the position of chairman.

In fact, Qin Chuan didn't want to be the chairman of the board of directors of China's first university, but in that case, the assets of this university would still belong to Qin Chuan, which was definitely against Qin Chuan's original intention. It's just that what Qin Chuan thinks in his heart can't be too straightforward with these two people. In the end, Qin Chuan had no choice but to compromise and agreed to serve as the honorary chairman of the school board, which reluctantly appeased Li Mingfang.

Wu Tiaoqing, Ning Xingpu, and Yang Shaonong were all very happy to Qin Chuan's invitation to serve as trustees of Aurora University, and they all accepted it without any suspense. What surprised Qin Chuan was that Wang Kuizhang, the second-generation head of the Yide Wang family, one of the masters of Tianjin Weiba, learned from the "Oriental Times" that Aurora University was going to prepare for the school board of trustees, and took the initiative to donate 10,000 taels of silver and asked to enter the school board, and at the same time, he also donated 10,000 yuan on behalf of Yan Fansun, a native of Tianjin and now a student in Guizhou, and also brought his two grandsons and Yan Fansun's two grandsons to the school to study, which made Qin Chuan very excited.

In Qin Chuan's memory, this Yan Fansun and Wang Kuizhang's son Wang Yisun are the founders of Nankai University in the future.

In the remaining days, Qin Chuan stayed in his small western-style building all day long, and Li Mingfang, Jin Lisan, Pan Sichi and others, who were busy reporting to him about signing contracts with various foreign banks and purchasing several new factory equipment that he had "planned for a long time", discussed and summarized the situation; The preparations for the establishment of a stock exchange in the concession and the sale of stocks by various factories under Aurora have also been in full swing in the past few days.

In addition, there are also the construction of factories in Lingyuan, the purchase of land in Jinzhou, the opening of a warehouse in Jinzhou, the construction of the railway outside the Guanwai, the establishment of a cooperative relationship with Citibank, and the negotiation with HSBC of the East India Company's issuance of bonds in India, etc., such a large number of things, Qin Chuan often eats and discusses with these few people who come to report the situation, and he has no leisure for a moment.

After finishing all this, he had to be busy with the "tasks" arranged for him by Gao Miao in the evening.

It turned out that on the night of Chinese New Year's Eve, Qin Chuan returned from the shooting range of the repair institute, and the joint fan conference in the reception room was in full swing, but the Spring Festival of these factories and bank schools of the Aurora Group had not yet been written. After Qin Chuan asked, he learned that it was Xu Zichuan who insisted that these Spring Festival couplets could only be done by Qin Chuan, the "earthly star".

Qin Chuan only remembered a few interesting couplets, where would he write what Spring Festival couplets, and in the end, Gao Miao took the initiative to ask for help, but fortunately, Xu Zichuan actually promised Gao Miao to bring a pen for the first time, which allowed Qin Chuan to escape the catastrophe.

What Qin Chuan didn't expect was that this young and handsome Gao Miao was not only a beautiful thin gold body with a brush with a steel hook and iron stroke, but also extremely outstanding in talent, more than a dozen Spring Festival couplets were actually swept away, winning praise from everyone, Xu Zichuan, an old boy, needless to say, is Zhang Shiheng, who was born as a serious Jinshi, and also praised Gao Miao, and persuaded Gao Miao to participate in the big exam and fight for his background.

I don't know why, this talented Gao Miao didn't care about any scientific expedition, but pestered Qin Chuan to ask for a pen copy.

Gao Miao's reason is that not only a large number of fountain pens are now used in the Aurora Group to make correspondence and contracts, including bookkeeping, but also students in Aurora primary and secondary schools are also using fountain pens. And this important task can only be completed by Qin Chuan, a person who can be called the ancestor of fountain pen characters in Tianjin Wei.

For Gao Miao's request, Xu Zichuan, Li Mingfang, Xu Xifang, and Qin's, Fan's, and Liu's women were extremely supportive, forcing Qin Chuan to pinch his nose and agree.

These days, I have to write until midnight every day, and I have been busy for so long, so I can copy a thousand-character text with a pen and hand.

Before Qin Chuan crossed, he not only practiced hard pen calligraphy, but also had a lot of skills, and a thousand-character text made him write five fonts with a fountain pen. The only flaw is that in Qin Chuan's booklet, a large number of simplified words appear. This is also something that can't be helped, those traditional Chinese characters are not only obscure to read, but also more time-consuming and laborious to write, Qin Chuan is also thinking about promoting simplified characters, so let's start here.

It's just that what makes Qin Chuan feel very distressed is that for some reason, whenever he has leisure, he can't help but think of Gao Miao, which makes Qin Chuan very helpless. Qin Chuan even thought that although Gao Miao, a young man, was handsome, he was also a big man! Could it be that Lao Tzu doesn't like the opposite sex? Also......

In recent months, Gao Miao has often come to the dyeing factory, either to see Gao Ying, or to ask himself about chemistry and gewu, every time he is with Gao Miao, Qin Chuan has an indescribable pleasure, that kind of pleasure is faint, if there is nothing, people can't grasp the meaning.

Qin Chuan walked out of the sky alone, his mood was a lot easier, he looked back at Gao Ying and the others, and walked towards the gate of the dyeing factory. Wang Desheng, who has been busy building ships in the Tianjin Machinery Bureau these days, called last night that the new ship had been built and was ready for trial sailing today, and asked Qin Chuan to go over to observe.

In addition to the gate of the dyeing factory, the spacious and tidy bluestone street, there are already a lot of bustling people, because the number of buying and selling shops on East Street has gradually increased, and now East Street is the most prosperous place outside Tianjin City and the concession, and there are many people buying things and shopping every day. (To be continued.) )