As soon as I got out of the north gate of Shanghai, after crossing the moat, the place where Lin Zhe stood was the scope of the business zone, this large area until the pidgin, was the scope of the French Concession planned in the original time and space, of course, now the French Concession is gone, not only the French Concession is gone, but even the British Concession and the American Concession are gone.

In its place was the 'Trade Zone'.

The vast area where it stands today is still desolate, and there are large buildings north of the Pidgin River in the distance, which is the former British Concession.

After the pidgin, after entering the original British Concession, the eye is a large area of Western-style buildings, although the British Concession was established for not many years, but the development is quite rapid, now along the Huangpu River this piece has been towering many Western-style buildings, these buildings are towering foreign merchants, warehouses, the wharf by the Huangpu River, is to stay in many ships, a sign of busy green.

Just standing on this piece of land, Lin Zhe can feel that this place is very different from the county town of Shanghai and the rest of China.

It's full of noise, it's full of energy, and English, French, Dutch, Spanish and other Chinese languages are constantly coming to your ears.

This place will be your own from now on!

Although he only manages more than 2,000 acres of land in a small area, and although this area is currently sparsely populated except for merchants from various countries, it does not prevent Lin Zhe from being full of hope here.

Full of hope for the future, Lin Zhe continued to stay and went to the Jiangbei Customs Yamen, where he was going to use it as his temporary official office.

But when he looked at the dilapidated Jianghai Beiguan Yamen left, Lin Zhe was depressed, this place was too dilapidated, and almost half of the buildings here were destroyed before the Little Knife Society.

These damn knives will, why did they destroy this Jianghai Beiguan Yamen, now he doesn't even have an office yamen.

At this time, Wu Jianzhang, who accompanied Lin Zhe, said: "I'm afraid it will take a long time to repair this place, why don't you set up the official office in the county seat first?" ”

Lin Zhe shook his head, what are you kidding, the supervisor of his business district is working in Shanghai County, what kind of system is that!

At this time, Bi Yutong next to him walked over with a red face, and then said in a low voice: "Why don't I requisition the nearby houses first, and then come over after the repair of this Beiguan Yamen is completed!" ”

Lin Zhe still shook his head: "It can't be requisitioned directly, the impact is not good!" ”

As he spoke, he glanced back at the soldiers of Yu Shengjun who were wearing military uniforms and came with him, and immediately said in a slightly low voice: "The business zone is an area that attracts attention from China and abroad, and all gentlemen must always remember their duties and don't do things that are not in line with their military identity!" ”

Expropriation? If it is in other places, Lin Zhe has no opinion, but in this trade zone can not do this, he took a lot of words to reach an agreement with these foreigners, which can be regarded as taking back the administrative management of the concession, if he or his subordinates mess around in the trade zone, for example, this requisition, here are all those foreign merchants' buildings, you requisitioned people will immediately go to the consuls of various countries to complain, and then it will inevitably cause all kinds of unnecessary diplomatic trouble.

I can't have a diplomatic dispute with a foreigner on the first day of taking office!

At this time, Pan Lixuan, the chief shopkeeper of the Shanghai branch of the Lin Commercial Bank, quietly walked over: "It's better for the young master to work in our Lin Commercial Bank first, although the place of our commercial bank is a little simpler, but the place is big enough, and it shouldn't be a problem to place a yamen in the business zone!" ”

Lin Zhe nodded, that's fine, anyway, the Lin family business house is its own industry, and if you go to live first, you have nothing to say to others, as for this Jianghai North Pass Yamen, even if it is repaired, this is also the office location of the customs, if you occupy it, those customs people will have to find another place.

Now it is important to find an office place by yourself, but it is more important to let Jianghai Beiguan resume office in time and collect taxes, you must know that he promised Xu Naizhao that after paying 60,000 taels of customs duties every month, the extra can be used as Yu Shengjun's defense expenses, and one day later will be less tax, and one day less tax will be a great loss for himself.

Immediately, he said: "Then let's go to the Lin Firm's side to put up the shelves first, and let the customs continue to use the Jianghaibei Yamen!" ”

It didn't take long for Pan Lixuan to take Lin Zhe and others to appear in front of a Western-style building by the Huangpu River, this building is a three-story stone building, a standard Western-style Western-style building structure, but the area itself is not large, Pan Lixuan said that the area is large because behind this western-style building, there is a large area of simple buildings, which used to be of little use, just occasionally used as a warehouse.

This building was not built by the Lin firm itself, it was rented and built by Xinde at first, and later the original building was too small, and the building was a little farther away from the wharf on the Huangpu River, so it was not very convenient to transport goods.

Therefore, this building was transferred to the Lin Commercial Bank, and Xinde Foreign Company set up another larger building as the location of the foreign firm.

Now Pan Lixuan saw that Lin Zhe did not have an office location, so he took the initiative to say it, anyway, Lin's firm is engaged in export trade, and the main role of this branch is to talk about business, and you can talk about business there, as for the storage of goods, it is also convenient to find a few warehouses to store goods.

So, Lin Zhe took dozens of his soldiers and two companies of soldiers to settle here temporarily.

And hang a new signboard at the entrance of the building: "Shanghai Business District Yamen"

There is another signboard next to it, which is "Yu Shengjun Headquarters".

In the conference room on the second floor, Lin Zhe convened a brief but very important meeting of his old subordinates, according to the 'Shanghai Business Zone Charter', the Shanghai Business Zone Yamen was responsible for the administration of the business zone, and because of the large number of foreigners in the business zone, this management model certainly could not be the same as the traditional Chinese administrative model.

To this end, Lin Zhe referred to some experiences of later generations and set up a number of institutions!

The Yamen of the Shanghai Business Zone consists of the General Affairs Office, the Patrol Police Office, the Finance Department, the Industry and Commerce Department, the Judicial Department and other institutions

As for the judicial affairs of foreigners, according to the Treaty of Nanjing, a multinational court was set up, including the British court, the French court, and the American court, and the criminal acts of merchants from other countries that did not have a treaty with China and did not have judicial autonomy in the trade zone were directly managed by the judicial department.

Strictly speaking, the establishment of these institutions is not a traditional official institution in China, he is only a private personal institution of Lin Zhe's supervision, and the imperial court only appoints a supervision, as for how Lin Zhe's supervision governs the trade area and how to deal with foreigners, it is Lin Zhe's business.

In addition, Lin Zhe's title does not mean the head of the business district, how many products or the like, but only a superintendent, just a temporary assignment, not a real position.

To put it simply, like many of his previous titles, they are temporary and do not have the nature of a traditional official.

But it also gave him a great deal of autonomy to deal with the affairs of the business zone.

For the heads of these newly established institutions, Lin Zhe couldn't find many qualified officials for a while, so he could only choose from the people around him, so Bi Yutong, the battalion officer of Yu Shengjun, had another hat, that is, the acting general affairs office of the business zone.

And Qi Xuanhao, the general office of Yu Shengjun's Food and Salary Bureau, was the acting general office of the finance department, and as for other places, Lin Zhe couldn't find too many suitable people for a while, so he let the personnel in Yu Shengjun's military department act temporarily.

However, Lin Zhe also knew that it was absolutely unreliable to let these officers of Yu Shengjun become civilian officials, and Yu Shengjun had a lot of things to do, and they couldn't keep busy, so Lin Zhe only planned to let them do it concurrently first, and even gave them an acting position.

However, Lin Zhe still underestimated the complexity of the affairs in the business zone, and he encountered many problems in just two days after opening the office.

Among them, the most common is naturally the merchants of various countries who apply to the yamen of the trade zone to lease land in the newly expanded area, and in the face of a group of foreigners who speak the language of birds from various countries, the officers of Yu Shengjun are all staring at each other.

More importantly, these officers of Yu Shengjun are not only ordinary Chinese, it is difficult to deal with foreigners, and they are not even ordinary civilian officials, which will naturally lead to a lot of trouble.

As a result, those foreigners complained a lot, and even the consuls of Britain, the United States and France said several times that the administrative efficiency of the yamen in the trade zone was too low, and it had seriously delayed the process of various affairs of merchants from various countries.

Lin Zhe is a little helpless in this regard, these foreigners are hypocritical: if you delay for a few days, you will feel troublesome, if you are asked to go to China in the future to do business, you will be given research and research every day, and you will have to stamp dozens of chapters for a random paper, and you must not vomit blood!

It's just that these things can only be thought about, in order to solve the slow office efficiency, Lin Zhe had to hire a large number of translators, at least so that the officials under his command and foreigners can communicate without barriers.

In the end, he began to recruit talents on a large scale, and the first criterion for talents: to be able to deal with foreigners!

There is no way, there are too many foreigners in the business area, and the main thing to deal with foreigners in the future is to deal with foreigners, although Chinese and foreign people have been allowed to live together, and some Chinese have poured into the business area, but there are actually not many Chinese in the business area at present, and most of them are still foreigners within the original British concession.

You have to deal with foreigners every day, and if you get an official who is extremely disdainful of foreigners or is extremely afraid of foreigners to take office, how can this be related to doing things?

Therefore, regardless of other talents, this talent must first be able to deal with foreigners.

As long as this is satisfied, everything else can be relaxed, and it does not require any fame or grade, nor does it require you to know what professional skills you have.

Therefore, when Lin Zhe recruited officials in the business zone on a large scale, it was not those traditional scholars and alternate officials who came to recruit or recommend themselves, but a large number of Chinese compradors in foreign firms or shopkeepers and employees in Chinese commercial firms!

Even Pan Lixuan politely recommended himself to Lin Zhe, saying that he had dealt with foreigners for many years and was proficient in finance, and if Lin Zhe needed it, he could try his best to help Lin Zhe deal with the corresponding affairs.

Lin Zhe was a little speechless about this, these compradors have a bad reputation in history, and the word traitor comprador was specially coined for them.

But what Lin Zhe didn't admit was that if he wanted to put up the administrative structure of the yamen in the business zone in a short period of time and put it on the right track, he really couldn't find so many suitable talents besides these people.

In this regard, Lin Zhe was standing in his office on the second floor, looking at the Huangpu River outside and sighing, this is an errand supervised by the Shanghai Business Zone, which is not easy to do!

Just when Lin Zhe was anxious about the affairs of the business zone, Songjiang Mansion also ushered in a crisis that did not exist in the original time and space!

Liu Lichuan stood outside the city of Songjiang Mansion, looked at the Qing soldiers who were already trembling in the distant city, and sneered, then turned back to his three thousand soldiers and shouted: "After the city is broken, the whole army will move freely for three days!" ”

As soon as he said this, the more than 3,000 soldiers of the Little Knife Society behind him cheered one by one, and then rushed towards Songjiang Mansion City with various slogans