The Li family's father and son are both smart people, and when they heard Zhao Dongyun directly change the topic, they knew that they might have done something wrong or said something wrong, but for a while, they still didn't expect Zhao Dongyun to be disgusted with the four words young and promising.

After all, according to the concept of normal people, praising others for being young and promising is a compliment, praise and the like, and not everyone can worry about being promoted because of their young age like Zhao Dongyun.

In the past two years, the promotion of the main officers in Beiyang can be said to be rapid, in the case of Duan Qirui, although he was reused by Yuan Shikai before the year of Gengzi, but his grade and official position in the entire Qing State were not on the stage, and it was not until after the Boxer Rebellion that Duan Qirui was promoted to the alternate prefect and added three ranks.

In the Guangzong Civil Revolution, Duan Qirui and Zhao Dongyun took the credit together, which earned him the official title of second-grade Dao.

In other words, Duan Qirui's official position has only soared rapidly in the past two years, and this is not a special case of Duan Qirui's personal case, almost Feng Guozhang, Wang Shizhen, Wang Yingkai and others are like this.

As a member of Beiyang, Zhao Dongyun is naturally not exempt from vulgarity, and he also took advantage of the Guangzong civil change to be promoted to a candidate prefect, plus a third rank.

However, this official rank may be very high for ordinary people, and the speed of promotion is fast enough, but it is still too slow for Zhao Dongyun.

He is now the commander of a new army mixed association, if you want to continue to climb up, it is a town command, and to be a commander, you need the title of chief soldier or second-grade Taoist, but it is not said that the third-grade prefect or deputy general and staff general can sit in this position.

Although the official positions in the late Qing Dynasty were chaotic, the Beiyang New Army was also very chaotic in terms of positions and ranks, such as the same position with the standard band, there were many official positions qualified for this position, and the military attache had the first or supplementary garrison, capital division, guerrilla, staff general, and deputy general. In the civil service system, there are candidates for governors and candidates, and the grades range from six to two.

With such a chaotic mix of official ranks and positions, there will not only be a matter of a garrison and a deputy general serving as a unified rank, but also a matter of a low-level official serving as the boss of a high-ranking official.

For example, there will be a guerrilla from the third rank to serve as the commander of the first association, but the deputy general of the second grade can only serve as the commander of the first standard, and this deputy general has to respectfully shout "Lord Commander!" when he sees the guerrillas, he has to respectfully shout "Lord Commander!" ”

Zhao Dongyun and Meng Enyuan are in this relationship, Zhao Dongyun is a candidate for the third rank of prefect and Zheng, and Meng Enyuan is a supplementary deputy general, from the second rank, in terms of official rank, it is higher than Zhao Dongyun, but Meng Enyuan is Zhao Dongyun's subordinate.

This situation generally appears below the level of the association, among which the position of the standard commander is the most chaotic, but the level of the association has become very strict, and those who can serve as the commander of the association are also a guerrilla at the most, and the civil officer rank is generally a candidate prefect.

And when it comes to the position of wing commander \ commander of a town, the general military attache rank is also a general soldier at the very least, and the deputy commander is the permanent match, and the capital commander is the high match. As for the civil official rank, they are usually candidates for the second rank.

Zhao Dongyun and Duan Qirui, like Duan Qirui, both took the route of civilian ranks, from the candidate governor to the candidate prefect and then to the candidate Taoist, which is different from most of the senior officers in the Beiyang New Army, but this distinction has nothing to do with the Beiyang New Army, because everyone looks at your position and rarely pays attention to what other people's official titles are.

With Zhao Dongyun's current title of third-grade prefect, it is impossible to hold the position of a town's commander, but if the imperial court wants to promote him to a second-grade Taoist, it will be very difficult.

Now is not a special period of war, it is not easy to obtain the official title of second-grade Taoist without military exploits in peacetime, and Zhao Dongyun's age has also become a great obstacle for him!

A twenty-five-year-old second-grade Taoist is impossible to appear according to the normal way, no matter who sees it, he will have an idea, that is, to press Zhao Dongyun again, sharpen it for a few years before lifting it up and reusing it.

In this case, Zhao Dongyun will be so sensitive to his age!

Of course, it's just sensitive, Zhao Dongyun hasn't reached the point where others say that he will turn his face with others at his age, he just changed the topic slightly.

Although the Li father and son couldn't guess for a while, they also changed the topic according to Zhao Dongyun's words: "Lord Zhao's words, if you can contribute a meager force to the Heavenly Army, it is the Rong Xin of my Li." And Lord Zhao can not dislike the humble house and deign to stay, which is also a blessing for us! ”

Zhao Dongyun didn't care about the humility revealed in Li Yijian's words, don't look at the Li family's father and son's wealth, but in China, which is the official standard, this Li family is just a rich man in the countryside, but it is far from being comparable to those official eunuch families, and any strong official can trample them under his feet, and it is normal for Zhao Dongyun, who has an army of 7,000, to remain humble.

Otherwise, at this banquet, Zhao Dongyun would not have sat directly in the first place.

This is another compliment between you and me, after pushing the cup and changing the lamp, these people gradually let go, and Lin Yongquan, who came with Zhao Dongyun, was even more drunk, and he was a little confused when he spoke.

"Brother Li, when it comes to the ability to fight, you are naturally not as good as me, but we are far inferior to you in this ability to make money, look at your yard, there are more than ten small courtyards in the three major courtyards, there are more than 100 houses, covering an area of dozens of acres, not to mention, but also in this land of Liaodong to attract living water, erect rockeries, and plant strange flowers and plants, which is not much compared with the Jiangnan mansion!"

Lin Yongquan's praise is not a lie, this Li manor is indeed good, the large scale is just one of them, and it is even more rare to build it like a Jiangnan garden, so that people can feel the tenderness of Jiangnan in the bitter cold land of Northeast China. To build such a large-scale garden, the amount of gold and silver required is not a small amount, which also proves that the Li family has a lot of financial resources from the other side!

Li Yijian also laughed when he heard this: "It's just a courtyard, and it's not worth a few dollars!" ”

Lin Yongquan said: "Mr. Li is bold enough, I have long heard that the Li family has 10,000 acres of land, and the warehouses are all over the three eastern provinces. ”

Li Yijian couldn't cry or laugh when he heard it, his words were just modest, but he didn't want to refute Lin Yongquan's words, because the Li family in Jinzhou was rich and everyone in the three eastern provinces knew it, and the land industry was only a part of it, and the main business was the export of soybeans in Northeast China and the sale of imported foreign goods.

Without a solid capital, how can you afford a large-scale manor like the Li Manor!

So I can't refute Lin Yongquan's words, it's also a disgusting thing for rich people to talk about their lack of money every day.

However, he looked at Zhao Dongyun, and then said in a tone of envy: "My Li family has also seen the past of the bean cake business, but it is not as grand as Lord Zhao, that Fuyuan Textile Factory is the largest textile factory in the northland provinces, and what makes my generation even more impressed is the Fuyuan Machinery Qì Factory, the factory has assets of one million, thousands of employees, and has received a large number of orders before it is fully completed, and my generation is beyond expectations!" ”

Zhao Dongyun smiled bitterly when he heard this, the scale of the Fuyuan machine factory is large, but the investment of millions is really so easy to recover, even if the construction is smooth, it will be able to reach the design output for large-scale production next year, and it will probably take many years to fully recover the cost.

However, the significance of this Fuyuan machine factory can not be used in ordinary business, although this company also makes money, but making money is not the first priority, its first priority is to supply Beiyang with full weapons and ammunition, and the second is to make money.

Speaking of making money, in fact, Fuyuan Yarn Factory, the parent company of Fuyuan Machinery Qì Factory, is making money!

Since 1901, Zhao Dongyun accepted the Fuyuan Yarn Factory, under the influence of the Qing Dynasty's New Deal, many domestic textile mills opened, and these textile mills need a large amount of cotton yarn to further stimulate the production capacity demand of the Fuyuan Yarn Factory, the monthly output of the Fuyuan Yarn Factory has been in short supply, in order to continue to expand production capacity, Zhao Dongyun used his own funds to expand in the early stage, but in 1902, the expansion of the Fuyuan Yarn Factory has been based on loans, Because the Zhao family itself is no longer able to provide expansion funds for the Fuyuan Yarn Factory, which has assets of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver.

After having funds to purchase machinery to expand production, the Fuyuan yarn factory even encountered a shortage of cotton supply, and the Fuyuan yarn factory collected cotton from all over the country on the one hand, and imported a large amount of high-quality cotton from India on the other hand.

Since 1901, the Fuyuan Yarn Factory has been seeking expansion funds, seeking to buy cotton, in a kind of expansive expansion, which can be seen from the increase in the number of employees in the Fuyuan Yarn Factory, at the beginning of 1901 Fuyuan Yarn Factory only a few hundred employees, in early 1902 has employed more than 1,000 people, and now it has reached the scale of nearly 3,000 people.

In the second quarter of 1903, the Fuyuan Yarn Factory already had 30,000 spindles, in addition to hundreds of looms, and was a large-scale textile enterprise with spinning as the main industry and weaving as a subsidiary industry, and the fixed assets of the yarn factory alone had exceeded 500,000, not to mention the intangible assets of the Fuyuan Yarn Factory.

In addition, Fuyuan Yarn Factory is not just a yarn factory, it is actually the majority shareholder of Fuyuan Machinery Factory, owning 43% of the shares of Fuyuan Factory, but these shares have nothing to do with the yarn factory itself, Zhao Dongyun is just using Fuyuan Yarn Factory to control Fuyuan Machinery Factory.

If you add up the shares of the yarn mill itself and the machinery factory it owns, then the market valuation of Fuyuan Yarn Mill should be about 1.5 million taels of silver, of course, this only calculates the visible fixed assets, not the invisible intangible assets.

Of course, this 1.5 million taels of silver does not mean that it is all the Zhao family's, in fact, a large part of it is debt, Fuyuan Yarn Factory in order to expand production to purchase machinery, but also in order to invest in Fuyuan Machinery Factory, borrowed many times before and after, the total amount of more than 400,000 taels of silver.

However, even after deducting these loans, Zhao Dongyun is still worth millions!

Although the Li family has more money than Zhao Dongyun, their money has been accumulated over hundreds of years, and it is not like Zhao Dongyun who doubled their assets in a few years.

Li's father and son didn't talk about Fuyuan Yarn Factory for no reason, and soon he turned the topic around: "Some time ago, I heard that the general office of your family Zhao said that he would expand a weaving factory and prepare to weave and market cloth in the three eastern provinces. Although Li is not talented, but in the three eastern provinces is also considered to be some way, there is no problem with consignment sales, in addition, my Li family also has some spare money, if you can invest in a new weaving factory, it will be better! ”

Zhao Dongyun smiled bitterly in his heart, Li Yijian's banquet today was really purposeful.