Li Hongzhang, who was already a little curious about this, quietly looked at this Suqian City, and the street seemed to be similar to before, and there was no obvious change.

There were a lot of pedestrians on the street, and none of them were all shaved or inch-headed as Li Hongzhang imagined, on the contrary, there were still many people with braided hair and wearing the same robes as before.

Seeing this, Li Hongzhang was slightly puzzled, didn't he say that wherever the Chinese army went, both officials and civilians had to shave their hair and change their clothes?

Li Hongzhang continued to pay attention with doubts, it didn't take long for him to finally see the same people as those Chinese soldiers with their heads, that were a few poor people wearing black uniforms, Li Hongzhang was not a complacent person, he had also been to the Shanghai Business Zone a few times, and there were also people wearing this kind of black uniform in the Shanghai Business Zone, which was called 'patrol police', and it should be the direct promotion and application of the business acquisition by the counter-army.

These patrolmen in black uniforms also shaved their heads, uniforms and inches, making them look out of place with the surrounding crowd, and the people on the street bypassed these patrolmen from a distance and did not dare to approach.

In addition to these patrol officers in black uniforms, Li Hongzhang also saw several people wearing Chinese uniforms, although they were a little far away, but they could still see that those people were dressed differently from ordinary people, patrol police and soldiers.

Li Hongzhang also knows a little about the so-called Chinese costume, and knows that this kind of costume was only popularized by the rebel army in the south this year, and it is said that all the officials and gentry in the Chinese rebel army are wearing Chinese uniforms.

However, only listening to other people's dictation and reading the description of the text is not as intuitive as seeing it with your own eyes!

These Chinese costumes are somewhat similar to military uniforms, with a blouse and trousers, and they are also single-breasted and straight-legged. But it doesn't have the same long swing as the tail like those foreigners. At first glance, it's a little weird, but after a few more glances, it's pleasing to the eye.

At the beginning, I met a few people in Chinese costumes, who were still wearing black cloth shoes. But when Li Hongzhang was brought into a building where many officials and soldiers came and went, the soldiers here did not say anything, they were naturally wearing military uniforms, while the others were all Chinese clothes, and some people also wore leather shoes.

When he went to the business zone a few times ago, Li Hongzhang naturally saw the prosperity of the business zone and the completely different lifestyles in other parts of the country.

On the streets of the business district, there are foreigners wearing Western costumes shining by. And even if it is a foreigner, the foreigners in different countries are also dressed differently.

At first, these foreign leather shoes were naturally only worn by foreigners, but soon Chinese people who had more contact with foreigners began to wear them, and basically this leather shoes were worn with foreigners.

But Li Hongzhang obviously didn't know that since the Chinese Empire promoted Chinese clothing, the style of this Chinese clothing is basically the style of modern clothing, and this kind of clothing is naturally more appropriate to accompany leather shoes.

But for now. In fact, Chinese costumes and leather shoes are rarely worn by ordinary people, and under various influences, the people who wear Chinese costumes and leather shoes are mainly officials of the civil service system and a small number of merchants and gentry, and ordinary people wear very little.

In addition to the problem of habit. It is also related to the price, the Chinese costume of this year is not a casual dress, but a kind of dress. To a certain extent, the current Chinese costume is the official robe of the Chinese Empire without explicit regulations.

This gown or official robe. The requirements for fabrics are naturally relatively high, and the materials used are high-grade wool. Cutting and production also have high requirements for craftsmanship.

As a result, the price of Chinese clothing in the early stage is relatively high, in fact, whether it is contemporary or later. Formal wear at any time is not cheap, and any set of formal wear in the future will cost tens of thousands.

However, there are also some civil servants who are ashamed to get involved, which squeezes out a lot of money to order one or two sets of high-grade woolen Chinese clothes is not easy, how can you wear it every day, it is definitely not worn when it is not necessary, and the daily wear is made of cotton Chinese clothes, which is cheap and convenient.

Through the promotion of administrative orders, China has occupied a large part of the provinces south of the Yangtze River in less than a year!

After Li Hongzhang entered the building, he was dressed up and was a little conspicuous among the crowd, and after the gendarmes in front of him said something to the people in front, Li Hongzhang could see that a few people turned around to look at him, but there was still no one to speak.

He waited for a few minutes before two gendarmes returned, and then led himself out of the crowd and into a side room.

Li Hongzhang also had no intention of speculating about what these Chinese army members were going to do, anyway, they were going to escort themselves to Nanjing, and there was no need to think about it and do more on the way, because then nothing would change.

After resting for one night, Li Hongzhang finished breakfast the next day, and another gendarme came to take him out, but Li Hongzhang thought that he should go out of the city gate today, and then continue south, but he did not expect that the escort gendarmes escorted him to the dock of the canal.

Looks like I'm going south by boat!

Li Hongzhang didn't ask anything, just looked at a huge ship moored on the dock in front of him, wearing the hard sails of no common Chinese-style inland river boats, no soft sails of foreigner ships, not even the paddle wheels of steam steamers, in the middle of the hull, only a chimney was towering, and the front end of the chimney was a protrusion similar to a slipway, and in front of the slipway was a squatting cannon.

Li Hongzhang, who has been training the New Army for many years, can judge just by looking at this thickness that this should be a 12-pounder artillery gun, but the barrel is longer than that of a land cannon, and it should be a naval gun for naval divisions.

At the back of the chimney and on one side, Li Hongzhang also saw two other small cannons, and if there were them in the rear and on the left and right, there should be three such small cannons.

The ship in Li Hongzhang's eyes is one of the gunboats of the First Gunboat Detachment of the Imperial Chinese Army, which is the Xingquan, the ninth ship of the Xingwu class, which has been carrying out escort missions in the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, that is, in the Suqian area, and has been on duty for three consecutive months, and is about to leave northern Jiangsu, and then return to the Yangtze River along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and then return to Nanjing. Carry out basic maintenance at the Navy's newly established ship repair shop in Nanjing.

Although Li Hongzhang did not know what this kind of ship was called, let alone the name of the ship. But it's not the first time I've seen this kind of ship, in the first battle of Yangzhou. He had seen this kind of gunboat gather in groups and then shell it with naval guns, and he had seen this kind of gunboat on the bank of the Yangtze River many times before, that is, before the Chinese army did not cross the river and Beishan.

After all, this kind of steam dark wheel gunboat appeared for the first time in China, and the lack of wind automatically gave them more vanity, and even many people who did not eat the ancients said that the steam warships of the Royal Navy of the Chinese Empire were monsters.

Li Hongzhang naturally paid attention to these and had seen them many times, but he looked at this kind of warship in a stationary state so closely. But it's the first time.

The battleship in front of me is about 12 zhang and 5 feet long, and the width should be 2 zhang and 2 feet, and the draft is naturally invisible, but this kind of battleship can be unimpeded in large and small inland rivers, so you can know that the draft of this kind of battleship is only more than two feet at most, and it will not exceed three feet.

The deck is very close to the water, and in technical terms, the side of the ship is very low, which is very different from the high side of ordinary ocean-going vessels, but the low side of the ship has a very high structure. The two-storey building makes it top-heavy, as if it could be overturned by a random gust of wind and waves.

Li Hongzhang took a closer look at the battleship in front of him, but he didn't show any exclamation like Tu Baozi!

He Li Hongzhang has also seen the world and has had a lot of contact with foreigners. At the beginning, the foreigners in the trade area had seen all the large ships of several thousand tons, but now they only see small gunboats of less than 100 tons, so naturally they will not make a fuss.

Not more than a moment. He was escorted onto the ship by the military police, and the Chinese soldiers on the ship were dressed in a similar style to the Chinese troops on land. But the colors are very different, and most of the Chinese sailors on these ships wear navy blue military uniforms. There were also a few people who looked like officers wearing white uniforms.

As a prisoner of war, although Li Hongzhang was treated well along the way, it was obviously impossible for him to be a guest of honor for the naval officers on the ship, and a captain with the rank of major came to see him a few times before leaving, and did not specifically order to entertain this Master Li well.

As soon as Li Hongzhang boarded the ship, he was sent into a cabin, and it was not until noon that after eating the food that was brought over, the accompanying military police asked if he wanted to go to the deck to breathe!

Li Hongzhang looked at this gendarmerie captain who had been eating and living with him for many days, and although he didn't speak, he still nodded!

Li Hongzhang's first feeling about this military police captain who escorted him along the way was that he was young, and this young man was estimated to be about 20 years old, and he knew from the conversations he occasionally heard that this person's surname was Chen, a native of Songjiang Prefecture, Jiangsu, and the Chinese Army that he joined the year before last, and it has only been a year since he graduated from the Suiying Academy last year, but he has been promoted from second lieutenant to captain.

This young Captain Chen did not embarrass Li Hongzhang along the way, and of course he will not treat Li Hongzhang as a parent!

On the deck, listening to the rumble of the steam engine on the ship, the oncoming river breeze made Li Hongzhang's spirit a lot better, at this time there were many ships on the canal, of course, almost all of them were Chinese-style hard-sail river boats, except for the gunboat under his feet, the second steam ship could not be seen.

Along the way, the gunboat stopped and stopped along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and headed south, occasionally encountering a steamship that was also the Royal Navy, and they would whistle each other and stagger.

After staying on the ship for a few days, Li Hongzhang and the others went all the way through Huai'an, Yangzhou and then entered the Yangtze River waterway.

After entering the Yangtze River, more ships were seen along the way, and the prosperity of the Yangtze River waterway did not seem to be affected by Lin Zhe's rebellion, but became busier.

The ships you see are not all small boats, you can occasionally see one or two large ships of the kind of hundreds of tons, most of the ships are still sails, but some are steam paddle ships, as for the steam dark ships, except for a few Royal Army gunboats are rare.

Although steam engines and propeller propulsion have begun to be used in recent years, most of them are still concentrated on naval vessels, and ordinary cargo ships are still sails even if they are ocean-going cargo ships, at most they are hybrid steam and sails.

Pure steam dark ships are even rarer!

Wobbly all the way along the Yangtze River to the west, it didn't take a day to arrive at the dock in Nanjing!

Seeing two obviously higher-ranking officers walking in front of him, Li Hongzhang knew that his final fate was about to be decided in the city of Nanjing! (To be continued......)