On December 24, Zhao Dongyun led a large number of military and political dignitaries from the three eastern provinces to board a special train, and the train was opened to Shenyang Railway Station through the Jingfeng Railway, which had just been opened to traffic.

When he walked out of the train station, he saw a large crowd of people who had come to greet him, and in front of him were many military and political dignitaries from the three eastern provinces.

There are many familiar Cao Kun, the commander of the Fifth Mixed Brigade, Yang Debiao, the first secretary of the secretariat who came to the front station one step ago, and Zhou Ziqi, the former general office of the General Administration of Salt Affairs, who is now the mayor of Shenyang City, and others, in addition to Zhu Jiabao, the current governor of Jilin Province.

Yuan Shikai called the first Gyeonggi follower, after the Guangzong civil change is promoted to the prefect of Baoding, during the Baoding period and Zhao Dongyun had a lot of contacts, some time ago went to Japan to inspect government affairs, after returning to China was promoted to Shengjing General Zhao Dongyun recruited, first served as the prefect of Jinzhou, and then briefly served as the general office of the Industrial and Commercial Bureau, when Zhao Dongyun was promoted to the governor of the three eastern provinces, he appointed Zhu Jiabao as the first governor of Jilin.

Now that the republic is republic, Zhu Jiabao, like Cheng Dequan, has been reappointed as the governor of Jilin.

At the same time, there are several people that Zhao Dongyun is not familiar with, including the former Heilongjiang general, the governor of Heilongjiang, Cheng Dequan, who was appointed by Zhao Dongyun as the governor of Heilongjiang after the republic, and several other unfamiliar faces.

It is worth mentioning that although the three governors of the three eastern provinces are called governors, they are different from Zhang Huaizhi, Wang Ruxian, and such governors, Zhang Huaizhi and others are veritable heads of a province, and when the cabinet appoints them, it is clear about their military power.

Due to the new creation of the republic, many administrative habits of the northern republican government were inevitably influenced by the former Qing era, which was embodied in the appointment of senior military and political officials, that is, the appointment of the governor of a province was largely imitated by the former Qing Dynasty, and the official appointment of the governor of a province was 'military and civilian governor of a certain province', and the governor in people's mouth was just an abbreviation.

However, the appointment of Cheng Dequan and Zhu Jiabao and others is 'the civil governor of a certain province', which lacks the word 'military', that is, in fact, this kind of appointment is similar to the governor who did not concurrently serve as the governor of the military supervision in the pre-Qing Dynasty, only administrative power, but no military power.

At this time, Zhao E, who had just been appointed by Zhao Dongyun as the governor of Fengtian, walked over: "Commander, you are here!" ”

Zhao Dongyun looked at Zhao E and the others, and he also smiled: "During this time, everyone has worked hard!" ”

Then they shook hands one by one, and then said a few words of greeting, and then went to the embassy with a large number of military and political dignitaries to inspect the three eastern provinces.

The Patrol Embassy of the Three Eastern Provinces was set up in the Treasury Hutong, which was the original Shengjing General's Mansion!

Originally, many people who came to the front station one step ahead of Zhao Dongyun wanted to set up the patrol embassy in the Shengjing Palace, that is, the Shenyang Forbidden City in the future, but Zhao Dongyun was afraid that he would have a bad impression, and now he is a republic and still lives in the palace.

Besides, although the Shenyang Forbidden City is said to be the imperial palace, it has not lived in it for hundreds of years, and it has been repaired occasionally, but it is not known how long it will be renovated from the residence, so it is better to live directly in the Shengjing General's Mansion.

However, the layout of the former Shengjing General's Mansion is a little smaller, and it is still a traditional old-fashioned courtyard, which makes Fang Ruolian, who is used to living in Western-style houses, frown lightly.

Holding her husband's hand, Fang Ruolian showed an obvious look of dissatisfaction: "I don't like this place!" ”

As he spoke, he looked at the snowflakes on the ground, and then added: "It's too cold!" ”

Zhao Dongyun knew that she had always been afraid of the cold, she was cold when she was in Baoding, and then she couldn't stand it when she arrived in Jinzhou with him, almost every winter she would go south to Shanghai, nominally to visit her parents, but another main purpose was also to avoid the cold, and now she came to Shenyang, and it was a big winter, so don't expect her to be able to Shenyang any good face.

Compared with Fang Ruolian's dissatisfaction, Li Wan on the side was looking forward to it, she was originally a local from the Northeast, so naturally she would not be as afraid of cold as Fang Ruolian, a native of Xiangzhou, Guangdong.

Although the general's mansion in front of her looked slightly dilapidated, and it was far less gorgeous than her own mansion, Li Wan didn't care about this, what she was thinking about now was that she would live here with Zhao Dongyun in the future.

The relationship between Li Wan and Zhao Dongyun has long been no secret, Fang Ruolian still has opinions in the first two years, but with the fact that she has not been pregnant after several years of marriage, this has caused Fang Ruolian to suffer great pressure from the Zhao family, last year the old lady of the Zhao family came to Jinzhou to visit her eunuch who had not returned home for many years, the old lady was in Jinzhou for a month, and she never gave Fang Ruolian any good look, so she almost scolded her directly to cut off the incense of her old Zhao family.

Although Fang Ruolian has always adhered to the bottom line of not allowing Zhao Dongyun to take a concubine, on the one hand, she is distressed that she has been infertile for many years, and on the other hand, Li Wan was pregnant this spring, so in desperation, she slowly accepted the fact that Li Wan was Zhao Dongyun's lover, but she still did not allow Zhao Dongyun to officially accept Li Wan as his wife.

So now, although Li Wan is still nameless and has no place to follow Zhao Dongyun, she can stay together publicly, and in the eyes of outsiders, she is Zhao Dongyun's aunt and wife.

Zhao Dongyun bowed his head and said to Li San at this time: "Third uncle, he is not familiar with life alone, and he is also old, you help him settle the ladies first, and then come to the front!" “

Li San said: "I know, I will definitely help Steward Xu arrange it properly!" ”

Zhao Dongyun naturally has no mood or time to deal with the moving things in the backyard, and those family matters are naturally handled by Steward Xu and Li San, and they will definitely not let Fang Ruolian and Li Wan be wronged.

Compared with the backyard still needs to be cleaned up, the front office has been prepared early, like all contemporary officials, the three eastern provinces patrol embassy is also the backyard as Zhao Dongyun's private residence, and the front yard is the office space, that is, the patrol embassy is located.

When Zhao Dongyun walked into the front yard, he saw that it was busy, and a large number of office workers were walking in and out, obviously entering the office state.

At this time, the first-class secretary Yang Debiao walked up in time: "Director Xiong, Mayor Zhou, and Director Deng are already waiting!" ”

Zhao Dongyun nodded: "Since everyone has arrived, let's start!" ”

Although Zhao Dongyun had just arrived in Shenyang today, he had a lot of affairs, and he didn't have time to rest for a few days, and the military defense of Jilin and Heilongjiang had just been arranged on the train, and within a few hours of getting off the train, the meeting on preparing for the Yingkou Industrial Zone was already waiting for him.

Walking into the conference room, there were already many civil officials under Zhao Dongyun, and among the people present, they were mainly people from the financial and industrial and commercial systems, including Xiong Xiling, the new director of the Finance Bureau, Deng Jiazhen, the director of the Bureau of Industry and Commerce, and Zhou Ziqi, the new mayor of Yingkou City.

As soon as everyone settled, Deng Jiazhen of the Industrial and Commercial Bureau said: "According to the warrant of the handsome month ago, we have now imitated the regulations of the Huludao Industrial Zone and planned to open an industrial zone in Yingkou. ”

Zhao Dongyun did not look at the plan that was more than a dozen pages, but took a cursory glance: "Yingkou has the advantages of running this industrial zone in all aspects, but how to solve the traffic problem?" If you still rely solely on inland waterway transportation in the past, I am afraid that it will not be able to compete with Dalian! ”

Dalian, although it was a new city established on the eve of the Gengzi year, but with the help of Port Arthur and the Middle East Railway, the development is very rapid, especially after Dalian and Lushun were jointly managed by many countries, the 'Lushun Concession Public Administration' officially became the highest administrative body of the Lushun Concession, and just established is to declare Dalian and Lushun to become a free port and free city, welcome businessmen from any country to invest in business, residence, and at the same time adopt a low tax or even tax exemption policy to develop Dalian and Lushun.

There is a great momentum to build the northern Shanghai!

In just a few months, Dalian has become the most dynamic emerging industrial city in Northeast China, and even Fuyuan Company has invested in Dalian to open a soybean processing plant. Although this Dalian was still nominally part of Chinese territory, it did not pay even a dime in taxes to Zhao Dongyun after it became a public concession, and Dalian also robbed a large number of investment opportunities that originally belonged to Yingkou, Huludao, and Shenyang.

On the one hand, the three Chinese directors under his control of the board of directors of the Lushun Concession Public Administration Bureau obstructed some policies in Lushun and Dalian, and at the same time, he increased the support policies for the Huludao Industrial Zone, and now, he is planning to build the Yingkou Industrial Zone in order to compete with Dalian.

"In terms of transportation, we plan to follow the example of Huludao Industrial Zone and build a railway branch line from Yingkou to Dashiqiao, and at the same time invest in dredging and expanding the construction of the port in Yingkou to further increase the capacity to berth ships. In addition, we have begun to rectify the multiple checkpoints of the Liaohe River to make the transportation of the Liaohe River more smooth! Zhou Ziqi, the new mayor of Yingkou City, is the direct person in charge of Yingkou Industrial Zone.

"To do this, how to solve the problem in terms of funding? How much can Yingkou solve? Does the Financial Services Bureau have budget support? Zhao Dongyun knows that these plans are reasonable, but to do this, whether it is a railway branch line, dredging inland rivers and expanding the construction of seaports, these require a lot of money, and if there are millions of taels of silver to smash down, it is estimated that even the splash will not be visible.

Xiong Xiling, director of the Finance Bureau, said with a sad face: "The Finance Bureau is already strict with its income, and it is impossible to come up with additional funds!" ”

In 1906, the financial situation of the three eastern provinces was extremely grim, and the fiscal revenue of the three eastern provinces mainly depended on Fengtian Province, while Heilongjiang and Jilin were financially weak provinces and could not contribute much fiscal revenue.

As the financial pillar of the three eastern provinces, Fengtian Province has a fiscal revenue of 20 million taels of silver at most this year, and the bulk of the 20 million taels of silver basically has to be used as military spending, and another important expenditure, 'administrative expenses', has to be squeezed out a lot, and the rest has to be given to education and other aspects, not to mention how much is left, and there will be a huge gap to be solved.

Since Xiong Xiling became the director of the Finance Bureau, it happened that Zhao Dongyun led the army into the customs to fight, and millions of dollars were spent on this operation, and then the expansion of the army that was revealed needed to be smashed by millions and millions of dollars, which has completely crushed the finances of the three eastern provinces.

In the past two months, in addition to trying his best to expand financial resources, Xiong Xiling has also demolished the west wall and repaired the west wall, which has barely supported until now, which can be seen from Xiong Xiling's haggard face, how great the financial pressure of the three eastern provinces is now, and how much pressure he Xiong Xiling has.

The Finance Bureau can't come up with the money, so the money needed to set up the Yingkou Industrial Zone has to rely on the Yingkou local government to raise it itself.