Liu Mingchuan on the battlefield and at the negotiation table have been greatly frustrated and said that his spirit, this is a rare victory in the history of Chinese diplomacy, the Empress Dowager Cixi was happy, named Li Hongzhang as "Su Yibo", rewarded a yellow coat, this is a very high glory of the Qing Dynasty, the ministers of the DPRK and China took the opportunity to pat Li Hongzhang's ass, after tea and dinner, they all clapped their hands and praised Li Hongzhang's wisdom and knowledge, Song Xiaofei soon became Li Hongzhang's proud protégé.

Strike while the iron is hot, Song Xiaofei suggested to Li Hongzhang that the Qing Dynasty garrison Korea and the Ryukyus, and transform Taiwan into a province, Liu Mingchuan as the governor of Taiwan, and the inland to form a four-cornered trend, even if it does not destroy the book, it will make it difficult to move an inch, Li Hongzhang played the imperial court, but the old man of Weng Tonggong jumped out of opposition, saying that he was defeated twice, and he would definitely not dare to fight the idea of Taiwan again, Prince Gong also thought that the conditions for developing Taiwan were not ripe now, and this kind of small country was not the main opponent of the Qing Dynasty, and now it was necessary to concentrate military forces to deal with Tsarist Russia in the northwest, It is not necessary to garrison Korea and the Ryukyus.

In addition, the United States and Britain maneuvered in the middle, in order to calm the situation, the prime minister Yamen actually sent the minister Chonghou to sign a peace agreement with Yue himself, Chonghou was completely a pig-like teammate in foreign affairs, and the bastard was added to the third level, and even agreed to set up an embassy in Korea, and he was also vague on the principle that Ryukyu was a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty.

When Song Xiaofei heard about it, he was worried and said to Li Hongzhang: "After the defeat of this naval battle, Yuben will inevitably buy a large number of warships, and the Ryukyus are too close to Yuben, and the non-garrison troops will soon be occupied by Yuben by force." After the establishment of an embassy in North Korea, he will inevitably interfere in the internal affairs of North Korea, and the teacher should fight with the Queen Mother of the Two Palaces again, and must not let the Queen Mother set up an embassy in North Korea, otherwise those Huai troops who died in the war in Korea and the Ryukyus will die in vain. ”

Li Hongzhang sighed and said, "Chonghou is just a signatory of the treaty, this may be what Prince Gong meant." Since the death of Emperor Tongzhi, the Empress Dowager Ci'an has rarely been in charge of political affairs, and now the opinions of Prince Gong and Empress Dowager Cixi are becoming more and more inconsistent, and many things are difficult to say and even more difficult to do. ”

Li Hongzhang's sigh made Song Xiaofei suddenly realize: Even a prawn like Li Hongzhang, who is an official residence, is in a bureaucratic system that is rotten to the roots, and everything is done with shackles, which makes him fall into contradictions, on the one hand, he wants to make contributions within this system, on the other hand, he wants this old system to collapse quickly, he does not have much time left for the Chinese, he thought for a long time, felt that the previous road may take a shorter time, so he suggested that Li Hongzhang speed up the progress of purchasing large warships, Li Hongzhang also thinks" It was said that there would be a war in the middle of 20 years", so he found Hurd and ordered four ironclad giant ships with a displacement of more than 7,000 tons, which was the most advanced warship in the world at that time.

But what Song Xiaofei is most worried about is not these hardware, because the warship himself will also buy it, and what he is worried about is talent. He suggested that Li Hongzhang should send people to study at the German military academy as soon as possible while purchasing warships.

Li Hongzhang nodded, saying that it was best for this student to be sent from the Huai army, he asked Song Xiaofei in the Korean naval battle, did he find anyone worthy of training, Song Xiaofei recommended Liu Buyun and Deng Shichang, after saving them in the battle of Ganghwa Island, the three of them became friends of life and death.

Li Hongzhang nodded in agreement, and said: "In this naval battle, their courage is commendable, especially Deng Shichang, who sank the 'Intrepid', and my Great Qing Kingdom needs such loyal and brave people." By the way, there is one more thing for you to do, Rong Chunfu wants to hold a sorority, and the Queen Mother attaches great importance to it. I've been busy arguing with the British Minister Wittoma lately over the 'Margaret case,' so you can take a look at it for me. ”

Rong Chunfu is Rong Hong, who was already the vice minister to the United States at that time, and with the dream of "building a strong country through education", he selected 30 Chinese young children to study in the United States every year. In the late Qing Dynasty China, scholars respected the imperial examination, and read to "Zhihu Ye" as orthodoxy, three thousand years of empty talk and poison penetrated deep into the bone marrow, and the students who went to the United States mainly learned railways, ships, telegraphs and other technologies, and these were just regarded as craftsmen's silver skills in China, plus most of the people were brainwashed by the Celestial Empire, and they always thought that the United States was a "barbarian state", and the common people were living in dire straits, and the international students who signed up every year were children from poor families. In 1876, Rong Hong hoped to make a breakthrough among the children of the official eunuchs and expand the influence of studying abroad, plus the first batch of young children went abroad in 1872, it has been three or four years, he also wanted to show the Chinese people the "learning achievements" of international students, so he posted a post to invite the ministers of the DPRK and China to engage in "friendship", especially invited Baylor, young masters and young officials to participate, the Empress Dowager Cixi and Prince Gong supported this matter, and sent Princess Rongshou as a representative to participate in the association, so there were more ministers in the court who went to participate in the "friendship", Including their children, there were about three or four hundred.

Rongfu in the west courtyard of the Prime Minister's Yamen, is also a three-in, three-out quadrangle, gray blue bricks, red lacquer gates, two solemn stone lions outside the door, now in Dongtangzi Hutong, Dongcheng District, at that time, a number of "diplomatic apartments" were specially built in the west of here, and were allocated to the ministers of various countries. It was said that the weather was fine, and a hundred-year-old locust tree in the courtyard of Rongfu had sprouts, and the golden young leaves showed vitality.

Song Xiao flew into the courtyard, where several rows of square tables had been set up, full of friends, and fried cakes, candy, lychees, bananas, tea, and Cuban coffee were placed on the table.

Song Xiaofei walked through the surging crowd and met two teenagers in suits and long braids, one tall and one short. Rong Rong wore a white dress, stood next to them, and when she saw Song Xiaofei, she greeted her happily, saying "Long time no see", and enthusiastically introduced the two teenagers to Song Xiaofei, the tall one is Tang Shaoyi, and the short one is Zhan Tianyou. Both of them are from Guangdong, with dark skin, and they are "Nong Hao" when they open their mouths, with a strong Cantonese accent. The two of them came from poor families, but they studied hard in the United States and had excellent grades, so Rong Hong brought them back as representatives to tell the people in China what they had seen and heard in the United States.

Song Xiaofei had heard of their names in the history books, but they were only about fifteen years old in 1876, which was inconspicuous. Song Xiaofei greeted them and introduced himself as Li Hongzhang's student, and Tang Shaoyi and Zhan Tianyou were very envious.

The people were almost there, many people were chatting while eating, the voice was noisy, Rong Hong, who was wearing a jacket and suit, stood in the middle of the courtyard and shouted: "Everyone be quiet, and now I invite Zhan Tianyou to come to the stage to talk about what he has seen." ”

Fifteen-year-old Zhan Tianyou had never seen so many Qing officials before, and he walked timidly in front of Rong Hong, his body trembled, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he talked about American railways, trains, ships, and printing houses, and he said confidently: "I am studying hard now, and when I return to China, I will definitely build China's own trains and ships." ”

Wu Zideng, the superintendent of the imperial history, had never seen a train, and asked Zhan Tianyou: "What is a train, can it run past a carriage?" ”

Zhan Tianyou replied: "The train couldn't run the carriage at first, but now it's normal to travel thousands of miles. If the railroad tracks are laid, you can get there in one day from Guangzhou to Yanjing. ”

Just as the officials present were amazed by the speed of the train, a handsome young man wearing a bamboo cloth robe stood up and said in discord, "The people of my Celestial Empire live and work in peace and contentment, and if they are not forced to do so, who will leave their homeland?" Train breaks are of little use in China. ”

This young man was Zhang Peilun, the leader of the new generation of the Qing School at that time, who was a jinshi in the eleventh year of Tongzhi, he was in his twenties at the time, and he was beside Emperor Guangxu and preached, "Good generosity on the affairs of the world", belonging to himself who does not do things, and always thinks that the person who does the work is stupid, conceited and narcissistic. Fortunately, Zhang Peilun is also a long-legged Oba, handsome, and has countless fans, Princess Rongshou is his fan, so the young man is ambitious. It is said that he likes to wear bamboo cloth caftans, and more than 1,000 cloth shops in the capital can sell out. By the way, Zhang Peilun's granddaughter, who is the famous Zhang Ailing, said a famous sentence: "Be famous as soon as possible!" This sentence is estimated to have come from her grandfather, Zhang Peilun has been famous for scolding people for a long time, and the scolding is earth-shattering, and the scolded person must be notorious for thousands of miles.

Zhan Tianyou's wife taught him not to fight with others since he was a child, he ignored Zhang Peilun, and continued to introduce a newspaper printing factory he visited in New York, which printed 80,000 copies of newspapers every day.

Zhang Peilun immediately shot back loudly: Foreigners are really ruthless, and they don't know how to sympathize with the people. 80,000 newspapers, which in China had to hire 3,000 short-term laborers, and solve the problem of how many peasants could eat at once.

Zhan Tianyou also said that he had seen a lot of advanced machines in American factories, and Zhang Peilun said very contemptuously that machines are just skins, and they are still bad things for self-cultivation and family building.

Zhan Tianyou said that the West is engaged in industrial power and enriching the people, and Zhang Peilun immediately retorted, "People from all countries in Taixi are greedy for money, and Chinese people are courteous, righteous and honest; Tessie is rich for being rich, and China is rich for not being greedy; Taixi is strong and China is strong and not winning. Which is better or worse, I think everyone present can see it at a glance. ”

Zhang Peilun made a generous statement, clenched his fists from time to time, and said that Zhan Tianyou's face was red, and he suddenly felt that compared with the handsome guy in front of him, he was really moral, unbearable, and self-ashamed.

The "Qingliu" present felt that Zhang Peilun had spoken their hearts, and they all scolded so brilliantly, and applauded warmly.

Rong Hong saw that the situation was not right, and he was not sure that Zhan Tianyou would be criticized by the officials on the spot, so he hurriedly called the 14-year-old Tang Shaoyi to come forward to introduce the advanced American culture.

Tang Shaoyi's eloquence is obviously better than Zhan Tianyou's, and there is no stage fright, and he quickly introduced the customs and national system of the United States, saying that "the United States has no emperor, only a president, and it also pays attention to the equality of everyone, and there is no need to kneel when you see the president."

Zhang Peilun was even more indignant, shook the braid at the back of his head, the blue tendons on his face burst out, and said: "Everyone, the country can't be said to be without a king, without an emperor, then the world is not in chaos?" If you don't kneel down when you see the emperor, isn't there no monarch in your eyes? Paying attention to equality, isn't that a fatherless in sight? Without a king and a father, how is the difference between a man and a pig or a dog? ”

As soon as this "What is the difference between a person and a pig and a dog" came out, it was too ruthless, and Rong Hong's blood pressure increased in anger, and a mouthful of blood sprayed on Tang Shaoyi's confused face, and he fainted. Song Xiaofei saw this formation, and he couldn't get out of the horse, so he stood up on the ground, ready to "teach" Zhang Peilun, who didn't know the height of the sky.