Genius remembers in a second [Aishang Novel Network biquge.info] to provide you with wonderful novels to read.

Saturday, July 22, 1628.

In the southern hemisphere, there are only a few ships in the bay of Nanshan Harbor, and the port area, which has been greatly expanded for a year, looks empty, and a navy patrol ship is alone at the mouth of the bay, looking listless.

The large transport ship Gray Whale, which folded its sails and spit out a faint soot and painted in navy black and white camouflage, slowly drove away in the color of pink dusk, and sounded its whistle when it entered the bay.

On the dockside of the Nanshan Port Naval Base, the light cruiser Opal and the frigate Dandelion were docked side by side, and several officers stood quietly by the dock, looking at the transport ships that were gradually approaching in the distance. A small number of officers and men on duty were curiously lying on the side of the ship, expressing puzzlement at the fact that the officers and leaders of the Nanshan Naval Base had appeared on the dockside in unison.

When the transport ship entered the harbor and docked, more than a dozen base sailors greeted it, took the cable, and lowered the ship's planks. Major Wen Tuo, commander of the Nanshan Naval Base and captain of the light cruiser Opal, looked at the table below and nodded slightly. The Gray Whale transport ship made a very smooth trip, almost on the theoretical sailing time, and arrived on time.

A group of Gray Whale officers, led by the European captain Captain Adair, stepped off the deck and expressed their flattery that Major Wentuo had actually come to greet him "personally". Adale is of Scottish descent and was once an ordinary sailor on a whaling ship, and was one of the first crew members recruited by China and the United States in Europe. Since the establishment of the U.S. Navy in China, Adair has been a subordinate of Wen Tuo, having served as first mate and chief sailor of the USS Delaware sail frigate with the rank of second lieutenant in the Battle of Bermuda four years ago.

"Sir, arrive on time, no accidents." Captain Adair, who was only a year younger than Wen Tuo, looked respectfully at his old boss, and then moved his body away. The two officers accompanying the ship behind him were revealed.

In addition to Captain Adair, the other two officers on the Gray Whale were all women, Lieutenant Tang Hannah, the first mate and navigator, and Second Lieutenant Yan Xianping, the transportation management officer.

"Everyone, rest well, and arrange the unloading tomorrow. Second Lieutenant Yan Xianping stayed for a while. Wen Tuo glanced at the fellow travelers around him, and turned his gaze to the petite female officer with a shy expression, revealing a strange expression.

"Yes, sir!" Yan Xianping didn't expect that the supreme commander of the Nanshan Naval Base would be the first to "name" him, and hurriedly took half a step. A standard military salute was performed.

Tang Hannah narrowed her eyes, as if she saw a hint of bad omens from the expression of this "Uncle Wen", so she secretly gave the captain of the ship Adair next to her, and the two of them led the sailors who got off the ship to walk away. The departure of his companion suddenly made Yan Xianping feel a little empty-hearted. Standing in front of Wen Tuo, he didn't take his saluting hand away from the brim of his hat for a while.

"Second Lieutenant, the Navy Command sent a message a few days ago, asking me to hand it over to you personally, it is the news of Daming, Mr. Luo Da has already seen it in the capital." Wen Tuo coughed slightly, and the adjutant beside him quickly took out a folded letter from his briefcase. It was handed to Wen Tuo's hand.

"Da Ming? It's my daddy?! Yan Xianping was radiant when he heard it, and he seemed very happy, but he felt strange, if it was a letter to himself. How could you let Luo Da see it first?

Looking at each other with the adjutant, Wen Tuo smiled bitterly and shook his head slightly.

Yan Xianping slowly unfolded the letter paper, looked at it line by line with a happy smile, and then his expression froze after more than ten seconds.

One drop. Two drops ...... Fingers trembled slightly, tears hit the letterhead. Instantly moistened a large piece.

"Second Lieutenant, we are all sorry......" Wen Tuo waved his hand lightly, and the officers next to him retreated one after another, then walked a few steps and stood closer to Yan Xianping.

"My daddy...... My father ...... him" Yan Xianping raised his head and looked at the Navy Lieutenant who had taken care of him a lot over the past year, tears flowed down his face, and he had an irrepressible cry in his words.

"Xiao Yan, people can't be resurrected after death. The news was sent by an elder of the Yan family on a Portuguese ship, who became seriously ill on the ship and is now hospitalized in Nanshan Hospital. The command of the Navy approved you to take a month off and have a good rest. Looking at the heartbroken look of this simple girl, Wen Tuo felt inexplicably painful in his heart, and quickly tilted his head, hiding his expression affected by the fluctuations of the other party's feelings.

"It's Grandpa Seven." Yan Xianping lowered his head and couldn't stop crying, one hand constantly wiping his cheek.

With a long sigh, Wen Tuo raised his hands and gently placed them on Yan Xianping's shoulders. At this time, in a high-end apartment in Mancheng, the distant capital of China, a group of children of the Yan family in the United States had already arranged a mourning hall early, and the henchmen and family members of the Yan family, including Luo Da and Qigu, had already cried into tears.

……

The old man, who was called "Uncle Yan Qi" by Yan Xiaosong, accepted Yan Sihai's entrustment and arrived at Nanshan Port with a group of Portuguese envoys who broke through the naval blockade of the Dutch and went to Lisbon to report the news, which also brought news of the great changes in the Far East. When Uncle Yan Qi got off the ship, he was already seriously ill, and he could barely speak, so he forwarded a secret letter to the Huamei Navy in Nanshan Port.

The political turmoil of the Ming Dynasty and the changes in the situation in the Far East, the source of the migration routes that the guide had worked so hard to maintain for many years was cut off, and this news immediately triggered a big explosion in the Chinese government and Congress. Beginning on July 16, there were several days of continuous meetings between Congress and the government, and a large number of routine government work or legislative deliberations in Congress were postponed indefinitely.

If the goods of China and the United States are unsalable, they are not afraid, and some of them are the market space for circulation and sale; The important raw material import trade channels of China and the United States in Europe are abnormal, and it is not irretrievable, the shipping incentive bill has been implemented and promoted, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce have organized domestic capitalists to carry out investment in the raw material industry in Central and South America, and the proportion of raw material imports in Europe will gradually decrease. But the immigration channel from Daming was cut off, which was equivalent to kicking on the hearts of the traversers!

Good guys, isn't this forcing a country with a population of less than 70,000 to stretch out a 15,000-nautical-mile arm from North America to play multinational mahjong in East Asia? Ming Empire, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, England, Ryukyu, Zheng Zhilong, Yan Jia...... How many fingers does it take to hold the cards?

Over the past few years, a considerable proportion of members of the National Assembly have been raising their political consciousness and have gradually looked down on the crossing of national complexes, and in addition, they have experienced the country's bumpy development along the way, and their attitude towards "interfering in East Asia" at this stage has become more and more cautious. But now, in the far East, there is no room for strangulation. It has to make people jump like thunder as if they have been dug up ancestral graves.

Foreign Minister Su Zining remained silent this time with a "no comment" attitude, and Vice Minister Yan Xiaosong first summed up the great changes in the East on behalf of the government. In the final analysis, the problem is set on "the lack of long-term stable and effective coastal influence of the Ming Dynasty", and it is hoped that this incident will allow the country to truly incorporate the Far East strategy into the current national core foreign policy, and change the "east and west" to "both east and west".

As soon as Yan Xiaosong's opinion came out, the Congress was boiling again. There is no market for elegance and poise at this time, the conservatives have chosen to remain silent, and Congress is filled with all sorts of subtle attitudes that appear to be "hysterical" on the surface, and red-eyed young lawmakers bang on the table. The government must deal with this state of affairs correctly.

What does it mean to "get it right"? At least Premier Qi Jianjun can't turn back time, and cabinet ministers can't dig a tunnel from North America to Asia in an instant.

Sending troops, these two words are almost not spoken by anyone in the Congress, but all kinds of words that are obvious enough to be understood by a European immigrant who has just arrived in North America have long been overwhelming in Congress.

Morality is precious. The national price is higher, and if it is an immigrant, both can be thrown. This is the "consensus" that has been reached "a long time ago" by the people in Congress in the midst of the meaningless clamor in the past few days.

Defense Minister Zheng Quan finally couldn't stand this kind of afterthought-like assembly, and with the attitude of "I don't go to hell, I will go to hell," bypassed Premier Qi Jianjun and submitted a proposal to "form an Eastern Expeditionary Fleet" to the National Assembly. There was an uproar in Congress. After some pretense of exposition, several literary and artistic youths began to "question" Zheng Quan from many aspects from national sentiment to historical emotion, but Zheng Quan only explained in one sentence each time.

"In order to restart the Ming Dynasty immigration channel, we can only send troops. Backed by the military. Using diplomacy as a breakthrough, the Ming Dynasty's immigration strategy was redeployed. ”

Zheng Quan's decisive demeanor can be seen at a glance, and it is loud and deafening. The 17th-century version of the "Opium Wars" is about to emerge.

Okay, send troops! The House of Representatives of Congress voted quickly. 5 abstained, which is considered a tongguò. The Senate reviewed, and it is said that the president of the Senate, Liu Lao, drank alone at home for most of the night that night, and announced the proposal the next day.

The next day, a temporary supplement to the Manchester City Weekly was published, and Radio Manchester began to broadcast the news, and the finger was all pointed at ...... Dutch.

"The Dutch East India Company, contrary to the principles of freedom of navigation and the impartiality of free trade, has brazenly squeezed out our goods and related trade agents in the Far East! Even Portuguese merchant ships carrying our goods were robbed by targeted armed forces from the other side in the Indian Ocean. ”

"According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, since the summer of 1626, due to the malicious tariffs of the Dutch East India Company, the share of China's exports to Asia has been declining, and as of the summer of this year, the total trade loss has been as high as 1 million US dollars, and the indirect loss is more than 3 million US dollars!"

"The humanitarian-based resettlement of the Ming Empire was blocked by the Far East pirate group led by the Dutch East India Company, and a large number of innocent immigrants were abducted and even slaughtered. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of our Government has sent a note to the Dutch Government asking the Amsterdam side to give a final explanation for this act of undermining relations between the two countries! ”

"The Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Spain and Portugal, for their part, also strongly protest against the misdeeds of the Dutch East India Company in the Far East, and our Government is urgently consulting with them in the Azores to find a common understanding of the solution."

Such unreliable nonsense filled every media channel, and the Dutch East India Company, an accomplice who followed Zheng Zhilong in the Daming Sea to pick up bargains, instantly became a terrorist and culprit in the eyes of the Chinese American Republic. In line with this, several influential large domestic enterprises have also expressed their views, saying that if these problems are not solved, the relevant benefits of enterprise employees will have to be adjusted in the second half of this year due to the pressure of foreign trade operations. Under the chain reaction, some small enterprises that are legal persons without knowing it are ordinary citizens are also considering whether to lower the level of free lunch meals in order to deal with the possible impact of large enterprises' turbulent operations.

What, the annual benefit is drastically reduced? Bonus may be halved? And to reduce production, to lay off redundant workers? In the bar, the men snorted alcohol and cursed everything related to the Netherlands. The women hugged their children worriedly. Start thinking ahead about cutting back on household spending that has been arranged long ago.

Unlike the indignant feelings of the Europeans, the Chinese people trembled and sighed with the newspaper in their hands, deeply heartbroken for those compatriots who were plagued by the "Dutch red hair", and secretly glad that they arrived in Huamei earlier than others.

In any case, the domestic public opinion momentum rose in an instant, and because of the overhype, the fake drama was really done, and there were many ripples that should not have appeared, such as the "anti-load" situation in China, where a Dutch immigrant who couldn't bear the pressure said something in a bar one night that shouldn't have been said. As a result, he was violently beaten by a group of German-American men and was directly seriously injured and admitted to the hospital.

As a direct consequence of this violence, the capital Manchester, Long Island, West Quarter, has imposed martial law for the first time since the founding of the country, with a significant increase in the number of police on the streets and a requirement for bars to close by 9 p.m. In order to prevent the occurrence of "group ** cases", immigrant families of Dutch descent have also been told to stay at home and not go out lightly. At the same time, the Manchester City Weekly also published an article explaining that the editor-in-chief Zhang Ruohan directly dissociated Dutch immigrants from the Dutch East India Company, claiming that "the ruthlessness and greed of the Dutch East India Company are the main reasons for the destruction and displacement of these hard-working and kind innocent civilians."

Fortunately, the number of real Dutch immigrants in the whole country is only one or two thousand, and most of them are low-level workers doing ordinary and menial work. Coupled with the experience of immigrants whose "tragic fates are mostly similar", the hatred of the Dutch people, led by Europeans, was calmed down, but the big talk of "punishing the bed bugs of the Dutch East India Company" appeared in the streets again.

For ordinary citizens, it doesn't matter what the situation is. I don't know how much exaggeration is behind this, but at least when I learned that "the government will ensure that the lives of the people in the country will not be affected by this incident," I was shocked by this attitude towards the government, so I went back to my home in excitement. Find your own mother.

Life still has to go on, doesn't it? As long as the days don't get bad, how about the Dutch East India Company. That's what the good men have to worry about......

……

The meeting with the representatives of England, Spain, and Portugal in the American concession in Anglismo de Villasmo was still going on with great fanfare, and the interests of the three countries in the Far East were not necessarily smaller than those of China and the United States.

However, these are only words, and the overly aggressive trade expansion of China and the United States in the North Atlantic in recent years is not necessarily more upright than the Dutch. Even though it was doing some of the resale trade, the irreversible trade deficit has always been a thorn in the heart of England, which pursued mercantilism and was severely suppressed by its overseas colonies.

The Kingdom of Spain, on the other hand, had a brief period of unhappiness with China and the United States because of the French occupation of Haiti in late 1625. At that time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the United States refused to fulfill its obligations as a military alliance on the grounds that "Hispaniola (Haiti) is not the object of the offensive and defensive alliance under the US-West Seville Mutual Assistance Treaty." This made the Kingdom of Spain, which regarded the Caribbean Sea as a treasure of its heart, sad for a while.

To sum up, with the exception of Portugal, which resolutely supported the position of China and the United States because of the direct threat of the Dutch East India Company on the precarious Asian colonies in Asia, the attitude of the other two companies was at most a kind of verbal foil, and they even wished that the United States and the Netherlands would tear their faces and profit from this matter.

The Dutch diplomats stationed in the American concession of Anmarísmo in the Azores were innocent, because the Dutch East India Company itself was an armed trading group of Dutch bankers and risky businessmen, and in the Far East, the Dutch government had no jurisdiction over even the slightest part of the affairs of the East India Company. The implication is that the Dutch government in Europe is not aware of and has no responsibility for what the Dutch East India Company did, and all the information has yet to be verified, while the board of directors of the East India Company, which is in the Netherlands, refuses to take a stand.

In order to encourage the Dutch with abundant maritime capacity to strengthen the investment in the Atlantic route, China and the United States even contracted more than half of the export goods transportation contracts from the entire Azores to European countries since 1626, and Amsterdam became the largest trading and wholesale center for Chinese and American goods in Europe. Under the influence of such a fat meat, coupled with the fact that the war between the Netherlands and Spain on the European continent has reached a fever pitch, almost half of the arms imported from China and the United States have entered the country through the East India Company, so it is difficult for the Dutch government to choose a higher posture to deal with the "condemnation" of China and the United States. After all, England has been actively seeking in-depth cooperation with China and the United States, making London a European wholesale market for Chinese goods. At this time, tearing the skin is equivalent to cheapening the English.

Well, since everyone has no opinion, I'm going to really beat it up?

On July 26, 1628, Congress announced that the Dutch East India Company would send a team of investigators to the Far East, and that the Dutch government would also send an investigative team to the Far East, which would be composed of the Chinese and American Ministries of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The ball was eventually kicked to the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then the two commanders of the army and navy walked into the cabinet room with a stern expression.

Vice Admiral Wang Tiehammer, commander of the Navy, was a "staunch bystander". It is conservative to send a fleet to Asia at this stage.

Lieutenant General Chen Liwen, commander of the army, was a "sincere counterattack on the mainland." A group of people in the army command have been crookedly engaged in military operations in the Far East for many years, and there are at least 10 or more plans. But these are all based on the fact that the country's overall economic and military strength is several times greater than it is now, and the time was even more after 1640. If the army wants to come up with a "homecoming regiment" with good strength now, it is simply their lives.

After several years of aggressive military expansion. Today, the main force of the Navy has 1 Constitution-class sail light cruiser, 6 Republic-class sail light cruisers, 8 Jewel-class sail light cruisers, 3 enterprise-class sail frigates (the Enterprise became a training ship), and the latest Flower-class sail frigate 3.

On the surface, the strength of the troops is "considerable," but there is a great shortage of skilled sailors and junior officers, and at least one-third of the main warships are not fully staffed, and the main warships that can maintain the state of ocean-going combat are at best only half of the warships in active service. According to the preliminary plan of the Department of Defense, the size of the Eastern Expeditionary Force's naval fleet should not be less than six, and this kind of troop transfer is equivalent to reducing the overall strength of the Chinese and US navies in the Atlantic by half.

What's even more terrifying. Almost the entire U.S. Navy in China has not walked through the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian routes of this era, and every one of them is like a blank sheet of paper.

The commander of the army, Lieutenant General Chen Liwen, felt even worse, because by June 1628. The total strength of the U.S. Defense Army in China is only more than 2,100 people, and in view of the increasingly restless appearance of the Iroquois Alliance since the beginning of last spring, half of the main force is now concentrated in the city of Porter in the north. The Foreign Legion was fully staffed last year, but it was only about 1,400 people. And it is currently scattered in the Butterfly Island and Nanshan Governor's Territory. Defense Minister Zheng Quan's opinion was that there was a possibility of an unspecified military conflict with the Ming Dynasty and the Dutch colonies. Therefore, the army's dispatch this time should not be less than three infantry battalions.

In this way, the entire Eastern Expeditionary Fleet will be organized into a brigade-sized combined naval and land force, not counting logistical support, and the total strength will exceed 2,200 people!

Standing and talking don't hurt your back! Before Wang Tiezhu and Chen Liwen could first stand up and complain, Wei Zhen, the female minister of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, whispered a hint at the impracticality of the plan. Wei Zhen, a former university female village official who has led civil affairs work for several years, almost instantly calculated the amount of logistics support for such an Eastern Expeditionary Force. Finance Minister Liu Xin directly criticized Zheng Quan's plan as "naïve" as if he had died of his son.

Liu Xin can't be blamed, the financial situation has finally improved a little in the past two years, and the treasury has a little surplus, but this is an oriental expedition that is even crazier than the original "Atlantic checkers", and the scale of logistics burden and expenditure can be imagined.

Zheng Quan, who will turn 50 years old in a few years, could not bear this kind of attitude, and seeing that a dispute was about to occur, in the end, Premier Qi Jianjun stood up at the right time and asked the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Army and Navy to list all the specific details of the expedition, and even the follow-up plan should be formulated and introduced in advance, and then analyzed and adjusted to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

At the end of the meeting, Qi Jianjun deliberately asked Su Zining and Yan Xiaosong to stay and have a more special discussion behind closed doors alone. As the two direct-stirring characters in the original Ming Dynasty's immigration plan, now that the country is facing the "autumn of life and death", they can still sit in a daze in their positions, which makes Qi Jianjun frown.

Qi Jianjun, who knew the temper of the two young people, knew that they must have thought of some plans a long time ago, but it was only based on the "disgusted" attitude of a considerable part of the domestic crossing public towards the two. The two of them are very "restrained" most of the time, and if they don't take the initiative to poke a few times, it is estimated that they will not put forward their own opinions.

……

At night, Su Zining rarely cooks at home, while his wife Yuan Xinyi takes care of the three children in the living room.

The eldest daughter Su Fangqi is about to be 5 years old, and she has left the kindergarten ahead of schedule, and Yuan Xinyi will personally carry out preschool education at home, and the second son Su Fangwei is not yet 4 years old and continues to "further study" in the kindergarten. The third daughter, Su Fanglin, was born last year, and today is her first birthday.

It has been more than five years since she married Yuan Xinyi, and she has a third child, but the 34-year-old Su Zining still maintains the appearance of a little white face, and there is a tendency to continue to "reverse growth". It is said to be very popular with some female employees in government buildings. After the birth of her third child, Yuan Xinyi resigned from her job at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and taught full-time at the National University of Manchester City, living a fixed two-point and one-line home life.

In the living room, a big cake was placed on the table, the three girls sat in the cradle and muttered inexplicable children's sounds, and the son was still crawling in a pile of blocks. The eldest daughter, Su Fangqi, was dressed in a beautiful little floral dress, sitting on the sofa "atmosphericly", holding a drawing board and graffiti.

"What did you draw?" After Yuan Xinyi coaxed her little daughter, she came to the sofa. While planning to take over the drawing board in the eldest daughter's hand.

"I won't show you!" Su Fangqi hurriedly dodged her mother's hand, hid the drawing board behind her, and looked angry, "It's not finished yet!" ”

Look at the cute expression of the eldest daughter. Yuan Xinyi was so happy that she couldn't help but kiss the other party's blown little face. I have to say. Yuan Xinyi really put a lot of effort into Su Fangqi's early education, not only began to teach literacy early, but even trained the other party to play the harp and learn to paint.

However, Su Fangqi seems to have a lot of opinions about her mother's arrangement, in addition to being literate and a little patient, she is particularly disgusted with the harp, every time she learns the harp, she is either absent-minded, or sneaks into the garden to climb trees and drill grass, and her personality is very jumpy. It can be said that Su Fangqi's personality and parents are not compatible at all.

Yuan Xinyi reminded Su Zining many times to pay attention to the child's words and deeds, but Su Zining didn't care, but thought that it was better for children to be active and free.

"I think I can sue Guanyun and Ouyang Ling tomorrow, this chili sauce is definitely not for eating, it is weapon-grade!" Su Zining held two plates in both hands, and walked from the direction of the kitchen, while still clearing his throat vigorously, it seemed that he had been choked in the kitchen just now.

"Who wants you to suddenly remember to make something spicy today." Yuan Xinyi was disgusted, and hurriedly walked up to help her husband serve food, "I heard that the Congress has passed the Far East bill, it won't be you this time, right?" ”

"Do you think they're going to let someone who opposes the bill preside over the foreign affairs of the Far East?" Su Zining took the third daughter out of the cradle and kissed each other's faces with a smile, making the child laugh.

"That's not necessarily, everyone knows that it's not a good errand, and I'm afraid that this kind of thing will happen to you again." Looking at the warm and affectionate appearance of her husband and youngest daughter, Yuan Xinyi showed a trace of worry.

At this moment, a rattle rang from the gate of the front yard of the villa outside the living room.

"Don't be afraid, there will always be a moment when someone will steal the show. For example, now, someone is coming to eat. Su Zining smiled, hugged his little daughter and walked out.

"God bless and happy birthday, my little princess, you are so cute!"

The first person to enter the door was Caterina, who was pushing a stroller in her hand, and in the car was Yan Shuhong, the second son of her and Yan Xiaosong, who was only 1 year and 2 months old, and the eldest son Yan Shuming, who was 3 and a half years old, was held by her husband.

Maybe it's because she gets off work too late and doesn't have time to take care of herself, and Caterina is still wearing a military uniform at this time. As soon as she saw the "little birthday star" in Su Zining's arms, Katerina was overflowing with love, and directly "snatched the child" from the other party's hands, kissing her vigorously, which made the young daughter of the Su family cry.

It's no wonder that Caterina is so out of shape, because her two children are all sons, and Su Zining's family already has two girls and a man, so she has to be envious.

"The North American bamboo shoots produced in the mountains of Yingu Town are absolutely rare!" Yan Xiaosong raised the small package in his hand like a foodie, which was regarded as a gift to the door.

"You definitely peeked at my recipe, and you definitely won't suffer today." habitually teasing the other party, Su Zining led his friends into the house.

A simple family banquet with only two families participating was opened in this way, and Su Zining's cooking skills actually surprised Yan Xiaosong and his family. And Su Fangqi, the daughter of the Su family, and Yan Shuming, the son of the Yan family, had a "firefight" when they were grabbing the cherries on the cake, and the latter was directly defeated by Su Fangqi twice, crying.

……

The study room is lit with incandescent lights, and there are a few books on the shelves, more than half of which are the results of plagiarism by various "scientists" in China since the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Su Zining and Yan Xiaosong sat on the sofa in the study on the surface and flipped through the latest engineering textbook "Basic Mechanics and Structure" published by Zhou Yi, Minister of Construction and Transportation, without speaking to each other. And the wives and children of both of them are chatting and playing in the living room.

"I'll go to Nanshan Port in a few days, so I don't have anything to explain?" The atmosphere was dull for more than ten minutes, and Yan Xiaosong finally put down the book. Break the silence of the study.

"You've been thinking about it for seven years, what do I have to say......" Su Zining continued to turn the pages of the book, and said lightly, "I just want to say that Daming is a pool of muddy water." If you want to bleach, you can't do it, don't get yourself dirty. ”

"You're hinting at me?" Yan Xiaosong had long been familiar with this friend's speaking habits, so he quickly reached out and grabbed the other party's book, and handed over the cigarette with a smile, "Come, make an exception, and say goodbye to you." Smoke instead of tea. ’”

"I believe that you are a person who knows deeply, in a word: if you can let others do it, you will never do it yourself; We will not change the pattern, but only establish an order that conforms to our fundamental interests. That's the core idea of the surrogate program. Su Zining looked at the cigarette in front of him tangledly. I struggled painfully, and finally, the moment my fingers touched the cigarette, they retracted like an electric shock. "To maintain a minimum of one ship per month in the Far East, at least three ships are needed. To maintain one person in the Far East means that more people are needed to serve in the rear. Whether Congress will approve it or not depends on the fact that the final cost must be smaller than in the past. Once the cost exceeds the past, with the country as the foundation, it will be very defeated. ”

"How long will it last?" Yan Xiaosong looked at his friend's eyes, as if he wanted to know a "bottom limit".

"With the current financial situation, I estimate that it will be two to three years at most." Su Zining stretched out two fingers, "If you want to maintain the long-term influence of the Far East, you must establish a substantial territory. But the nearest Nanshan port will be more than 7,000 nautical miles, and the operation of the whole country will fall into a big hole because of the 'equal emphasis on east and west'. And, you should know that no one will really think about your feelings in this matter, but you have to consider everyone's feelings. Why, don't you think it's unfair? ”

"You're a 'national scum', you still don't have confidence in me, and you still don't have confidence in Daming." Leaving the sofa, Yan Xiaosong pushed open the window, leaned on the window and smoked fiercely, with a wry smile on his face.

"I like to eat peaches very much, and I have planted a few plants in my backyard, and I wait for them every day, and they will bloom and bear fruit next year. But I would never go to the backyard of Liu Yun's house next door to fertilize and water his peach trees to catch insects, because they were not my peaches. Su Zining didn't directly answer his friend's question, "And I don't think Liu Yun will like me to worry about his peach tree if I'm fine." ”

"There are some things I wrote about Da Ming on the bookshelf, and maybe most of them you know. But history has slowly become obscure, and I don't know how much reference value it can have. After Su Zining finished speaking, he left the study and prepared to go to the living room to play with the children.

The ashes of the cigarette butts accumulated and did not bounce off, so Yan Xiaosong leaned quietly against the window and looked at the night sky.

……

On the last day of July, the U.S. government cabinet issued the latest administrative notice to the Songzhou state government, which will adjust the construction plan of the Manchester Opera House and Manchester City Sports Center to save the central government's financial expenditure.

The opera house in Manchester's South End and the sprawling sports stadium in Long Island's West End are the most curious and eagerly awaited buildings in the capital since last year, and the largest buildings ever designed and built in the country. The two major projects, which were vigorously promoted by the Ministry of Culture and Education and started only last spring, have so far invested a total of 600,000 US dollars, and the progress of the project is less than 30%, according to the original plan, they will be completed in 1630, but at present, it will be after 1631 at the earliest.

This arrangement of the government's work is only an understatement of the "Manchester City Weekly", but it still makes many citizens feel regret and loss after seeing it. (To be continued)