On October 25, 1904, King Rama V of Siam arrived in Beijing, and the next day, King Rama V paid a visit to Emperor Guangxing, and on the 27th, the King met with Liu Yun, the Prime Minister of the Empire.

Long before the Nanyang Shipping Company's luxury cruise ship "Nanxing" sailed into Dagu New Port on which King Rama V was aboard, Liu Yun had already learned more about the background of the foreign king from Wen Yi.

King Julalongkorn of King Rama V was the son of King Menggu of King Rama IV. His father, who ascended the throne in 1851, had studied English with American missionaries and was the only English-speaking monarch in Asia at the time. In view of the lessons of the Sino-British Opium War, King Rama IV believed that the only way to save the country was to eliminate hostility with foreign countries and go all out to modernize, so he immediately hired European advisers for various government ministries, and emulated Europe in political and military systems, and sent the first diplomatic mission to Europe in 1857. In addition, King Rama IV sent the prince to study abroad, and hired the Englishman Anna•Lyonovin as an English teacher for the young children in the country. Anna later wrote her famous "The King and I" about what she saw and heard at the Siamese court, which was later adapted into a revue and film, which has been screened for a long time.

Chulalongkorn studied English with Anna at an early age, and learned a lot of modern knowledge from her, and his horizons were greatly broadened, and the fact that the British easily defeated the Qing Empire, which was much more powerful than Siam, and the Burmese Kingdom, which had captured Ayuttoya, the capital of the ancient Siamese Kingdom, especially touched the young prince, and from an early age made up his mind to learn from the West and implement the reform and reform of the law.

In 1868, at the age of 15, Chulalongkorn ascended the throne as King Rama V, and three years later, Rama V visited Singapore, Java, and India to learn the way the Western powers ruled over Asian countries. Following the policies of his predecessors, King Rama V began to further promote the reform of Siam, and after returning from his visit, he ordered the court to change to Western-style dresses, dispensed with the traditional prostration ceremony, abolished court corporal punishment and the traditional "government head" (a funny hairstyle in which adult men only have a short circle of hair on the top of their head and the rest is completely shaved), and replaced it with Western court etiquette and long Western hair. In 1874, Siam abolished the six-century-old slavery system introduced by the Khmer, stipulating that all sons of slaves born after 1868 would become freemen, and domestic slaves born before 1868 would be freed after the age of 21, and debt slavery would be abolished. In 1881, King Rama V founded the University of the Court Guard, the forerunner of the later famous "Chulalongkorn University", and opened Siam's first library in the same year, after which new schools and public libraries sprung up in Siam. In 1887, King Rama V followed the example of Europe and the United States, set up a special Ministry of Education, and fully implemented Western-style education, and in the same year, King Rama V founded the Army Military Academy in the Salalong Palace to train modern military command talents, and then founded the Army Non-commissioned Officer School and the Naval School.

According to the Second Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1855 and the Franco-Siamese Treaty of 1856, Britain and France enjoyed consular jurisdiction in Siam, the tariff on goods of the two countries should not exceed 3%, citizens of the two countries could freely enter Siam, and warships could freely sail into the Mekong River to reach the Siamese capital Bangkok. Although the United States, Germany, and Russia also signed similar treaties with Siam one after another, they were not as close to Britain and France as the two countries, and after Rama V came to power, the oppression of Britain and France, especially France, gradually increased. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, France intensified its expansion on the so-called "Golden Peninsula" (Indochina), gradually seizing suzerainty over Annam (present-day Vietnam), Laos, and the Khmer (present-day Cambodia) from the Qing Dynasty and Siam. In 1883, France turned Annam into a protectorate through the Treaty of Hue, and made territorial claims to Annam's three vassal states, Vientiane, Luang Pra and Champasak, and in the same year, Britain deposed the Burmese royal family and turned the former vassal Burmese kingdom of the Qing Empire into a province of British India, so that the British and French territories in Southeast Asia encompassed Siam from the west and the east, but both Britain and France wanted Siam to be a sovereign and independent state as a buffer state between British and French territories. King Rama V skillfully exploited the contradictions between Britain and France, hiring British advisers and granting British merchants some mineral rights in exchange for British sovereignty over Siam, and then, in sporadic conflicts with France, Siam brought down an agreement between Britain and France to maintain the status quo in Siamese territory at a relatively small cost.

During the reign of King Rama V, Siam's economy developed rapidly, and the fiscal revenue became more and more abundant, in real history, by 1909, Siam's fiscal revenue had reached 60 million baht (about 4.8 million pounds, equivalent to 39% of the Qing government's fiscal revenue at that time, and 17.3 times that of the Qing Dynasty in per capita terms), and the population of Siam increased from more than 5 million to more than 9 million.

In April 1897, Rama V became the second pan-East Asian monarch to visit Europe after the Guangxing Emperor of the Chinese Empire, and visited France, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Sweden and Belgium and other eight countries, and also met with the royal families of Denmark and Luxembourg. Rama V was unable to play to this forte.

"It's an honor to meet Your Majesty." Liu Yun didn't bend his waist, and stretched out his hand solemnly.

King Rama V, now fifty-one, did not mind the pride of the foreign prime minister of his age, or rather, could not reveal his mind.

Handshakes, group photos, glare of the flashes of magnesium lights.

Among those who participated in the meeting, the Siamese side included the Minister of National Defense, the Minister of Industry, the Minister of Commerce, the Minister of Education, the Chief of Staff of the Navy, and other military and political dignitaries.

After a brief polite pleasantry, the conversation quickly turned to substance.

King Rama V: "Your country's defeat of Russia, a powerful European country, is really the power of the Yellow Race of Asia, and everyone in Siam is thrilled. ”

Liu Yun: "This is all thanks to the unity of the monarchs and ministers of the empire and the unity of all the people." ”

Rama V: "It is rumored that your country was allied with Britain before the war, but is this happening?" ”

Liu Yun: "This is a rumor, the only current ally of the empire is Japan. ”

Rama V: "Since I ascended the throne, the British and French oppression has become more and more severe, although it is a coincidence to deal with it, Siam is after all a small country and a widow, the former vassal Khmer, Laos, Vientiane, Luang Pra, and Champasak were all occupied by France, and eleven years ago the legal person cut off the east bank of the Chao Phraya River, and now the British territory surrounds me to the west and south, and the French territory is close to the east and north of me, always showing the ambition of embezzlement, I think about it all day long, so that I can't sleep at night. ”

Liu Yun: "Burma and Annam were originally part of my state, and Britain and France forcibly seized them, abolished the royal family, and set up a governor, but because of bad luck, they failed to raise the royal division and follow the royal road at that time, which is very regrettable." ”

King Rama V: "Nine years ago, your country was restored to the Ryukyus, and you have demonstrated your royal doctrine, and eight years ago you signed an equal and friendly Sino-Siamese treaty of commerce and navigation with our country, which is very different from the hegemony of the European powers. ”

Liu Yun: "All the countries in our East Asian Alliance respect Confucius and Mencius and true Confucianism, take benevolence as the purpose in everything, follow the principles of heaven, and follow the royal road. The war against Russia this time was all due to Russia's increasing persecution, constant provocation, cruel torture and killing of our nationals, unreasonable attacks on our garrison, and massacre of indigenous people in Hokkaido, Japan, seizing land and exterminating ethnic groups, and committing many evil acts. ”

Rama V: "My country has believed in Buddhism for generations, and I wonder if the principles of Buddhism can be compatible with what you call kingship?" ”

Liu Yun: "Since ancient times, the royal road has been the same, whether it is Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam, benevolence and righteousness are the royal road, and vice versa is hegemony. ”

Rama V: "Yesterday I talked to Your Majesty the Emperor about the hegemony of the great powers, and His Majesty said that in addition to the cunning of a weak country to protect itself, it must become a fully armed hedgehog in order to have vitality. ”

Liu Yun: "Your country is caught between Britain and France, and at this time you can take advantage of the gap between the two countries to sow discord in order to protect yourself, but it is not a long-term solution, once Britain and France conspire to divide up, unless you plan to surrender without a fight, you must go all out to strengthen its armaments to form a sufficient deterrent, and it is impossible to ...... it."

Rama V: "In this battle between Asia and Russia, the elite of your country's navy and army, and the sophisticated and cutting-edge combat weapons, have attracted the attention of the world. After all, Britain and Germany are both hegemonic powers, and the consultants are each for their own country's sake, and the expenses sent to Europe to study abroad are huge and easy to adapt, and European weapons are both expensive and not suitable for the use of our Orientals. In the spirit of mutual assistance and cooperation, we will get the necessary help from your country for the self-preservation of Siam. ”

Liu Yun: "Since the Restoration, China has invaded the Japanese archipelago without greedy for its territory, and restored its orthodox royal family by taking over the Ryukyu islands. Your Majesty's request can be put forward to this minister, who has always attached importance to Sino-Siamese friendship, mutual assistance, and cooperation, and this minister will certainly satisfy His Majesty's wishes as much as possible within the scope of his authority......"

……

At the end of the meeting, Liu Qianhua, one of Liu Yun's secretaries, had been holding a shriveled black leather bag filled with a large stack of documents handed over by the Siamese side, and the dense numbers on it were the condensation of many wishes of King Rama V.

The Buddha couldn't help at all when it came to enriching the country and strengthening the army.