"This is the port of Guangzhou?"

With the help of the monsoon at the turn of spring and summer, the sailing ship began to approach the port of Guangzhou.

This is a big cannibal sailing ship, at this time of year, there are always big food, Persians, sailing thousands of miles, with the products of Dashi, Tianzhu and Nanyang and other places, come to Datang, in exchange for gorgeous silk, porcelain, white copper, in recent years, there are strong and durable ironware, crystal glass, soft sweat-absorbing cotton.

"I heard that in the past six months, the Tang people have not been friendly to us." The shipowner, Laziz, said worriedly.

"Inevitably, what you did last year ......," Abdulre, a scholar who came with the ship, shook his head, unimpressed by Laziz's claims.

"At this time, in fact, it is not a good time to come to the Tang Kingdom, last year, they changed the emperor, the new empress and her husband, they are not as good as the emperors of the Tang Kingdom in the past, we have to pay heavy taxes when we do business in the Tang Kingdom!" Laziz is not ashamed of his own robbery and plundering of Canton last year: "As for last year's incident, didn't the sage say that it is just to take away the property of those unbelievers, kill them, and take their wives and daughters into slavery. But you, a scholar, what are you doing in Datang at this time? ”

"Study, the sage said, even if knowledge is far away in China, you should go and seek it." Abdureh said.

While he was talking, a small boat approached, and several sailors in military uniforms, one of whom had a compass in his hand, shouted at a distance and ordered them to stop the ship.

"This is a pilot, all ships entering the port of Guangzhou, must be navigated by their pilots, if they are not guided, landing at the port without permission, the people have the right to arrest." Laziz whispered, "Don't mention last year's incident." ”

Abdullre nodded, watching the pilot climb onto the boat with a few soldiers, and then asked a few questions, Abdullre only knew a little Tang language, but he couldn't understand the pilot's words with a strong local accent, so he didn't know what they were talking about.

He only saw Laziz cautiously saying something to those Tang people, with a flattering look, but the Tang man just sneered, and after a while the Tang man spoke, as if asking the identity of the people on the Laziz ship, Laziz's face changed, and he replied a few words, and the man slowly took out a pamphlet and registered them one by one.

After a series of preambles had been completed, they were allowed to approach the port of Canton, and as the ship slowly approached the harbor, Abdure, noticing that on the high ground on the shore, there were several places where the Tang people were busy, as if some kind of fortifications were being built, and he opened his mouth to ask Laziz, who shook his head, which he had not seen before.

"I'll ask the pilot for you." Laziz said.

After talking to the pilot for a while, Laziz looked strange: "That's what the Tang people used to guard against pirates, and they said it was called a 'fort', probably putting trebuchets and heavy crossbows on it, right?" ”

Last year, Da Shi and the Persians captured Canton, which was an act of piracy, and Laziz also had a part in it, so he looked a little strange when he talked about this. Abdure's expression was a little stern, as a scholar of food, he had a close relationship with the Abbasid royal family, this time to the east, in addition to his own hearing that the Tang Dynasty mathematics and medicine were very developed, in addition to coming here to study, he was also responsible for the Abbasid Dynasty to peep into the reality of the Tang Dynasty. Now that the rule of al-Mansur of the Abbasids was firmly established, and the last male of the Umayyad dynasty had been driven to Iberia, the war with the Byzantine Empire was still stalemate, but the empire was able to spare some of its strength to look eastward. The theory of the wealth of the East, which had been circulating in the Great Eclipse before, naturally aroused the interest of this greedy civilization.

"If Datang is really as rich as you say, then it really needs to guard against all kinds of robbers."

"May the true God give us this land." Laziz barely hides his greed.

After docking, officials first came on board, and in two batches, verified the goods on board, and then asked Laziz to register and pay taxes. Datang's tax revenue on foreign trade was set at 15 percent after the Ding Revolution last year, but at the same time, it also created a sub-book, and the tax rate on agricultural and mineral products and some other products that Datang did not have was reduced to 5 percent, while the tax rate on some pure luxury goods and hobby goods may rise to 20 or even 30 percent. After the accounting, the shipowner can choose whether to pay the tax directly with the goods or pay the coins.

"This is the new coin of the Tang people?" Seeing Laziz take out a piece of beautifully printed paper and hand it to the officials, Abdul Re said in surprise: "I heard that the Tang people use a special thing as a coin...... It's the first time I've seen them, and they don't use gold? ”

"They also used gold, silver, and copper coins, but because gold and silver were scarce and expensive, and copper coins were heavy and not easy to carry, they used flying money as precious metals as currency. In the early days, flying money was just a kind of voucher, which could be exchanged for precious metal currency at any time at the bank, but later it was troublesome to fly money, so this kind of ...... was printed uniformly."

The new currency is a major event presided over by the Datang Household Department, and it began to be issued this year, that is, at the beginning of the first month of the second year of the Datang Dynasty. Speaking of the era name, "Qianyuan" is taken from the sentence "Dazai Qianyuan" in the Book of Changes, but it is the same as the era name of Li Heng in the original history, and Ye Chang has no taboo about it. The number of new currencies issued in this new currency, known as the Qianyuan banknotes, was not too large, because at this time, gold dollars, silver dollars, and copper dollars were also issued, and the two were parallel, but the old copper coins were required to be exchanged for new coins and gradually withdrew from circulation...... Because of the flying money of the Anton Bank, paper money is easy to implement in places where the commodity economy is more developed, while it takes some time for those remote places to accept this new thing.

"I really don't know how to come...... Datang's papermaking skills are also one of the goals I came to learn, but unfortunately, I actually captured a group of Datang craftsmen, but they were rescued again......" Abdure sighed a few times.

The big cannibals act as merchants who communicate between the East and the West, and know best the convenience of this token, which is easy to carry and hide, and as long as you pay attention to anti-counterfeiting, then these banknotes are better than precious metals and gemstones.

After all the procedures were completed, they were taken to a room where a man in a white robe gave them a pulse, touched their foreheads, and measured their heartbeats and temperatures to see if they were carrying infectious diseases. At the end of this procedure, they passed through an iron gate on the dock and finally entered the mainland of Datang.

But as soon as they went out, they froze.

There was a small square outside, but in the middle of this small square, a sill cage was set up, and there were a few pigs and a group of people in the cage.

"Ahh Laziz initially looked at the men curiously, but when he noticed that two of them he knew, he immediately changed color and tried to cover his face with a turban. But just then, one of the two shouted: "Found one, Laziz, who was also involved in last year's events!" ”

Laziz had stopped in Southeast Asia before, and before he came, he exchanged for Datang banknotes from other merchants, but he didn't expect that the magistrates of Datang would play a new trick in revenge for Dashi and the Persians for their looting of Guangzhou last year. They found some of the people involved in last year's incident, and some of them were charged with lesser crimes, and they were put in cages, forcing them to renounce their belief in the evil gods of predation, and live with pigs. All they had to do every day was to keep their eyes open, and if they could identify other people involved in the looting, they could reduce their sentences by one month for each one they reported.

As for committing a serious crime, he will either be executed and his head hung in front of the gate of Guangzhou, or he will be sent into slavery and survive in some dark mine.

Radziz heard this acquaintance call himself, and he was so frightened that he turned around and wanted to flee, but after last year, the imperial court abolished the original Lingnan Jiedu envoy, transferred elite soldiers from the north, and strengthened the defense of Guangzhou.

Abdure's face was pale, and his fingers were crossed together: "These barbarians, these barbarians! ”

His gaze was still on the people in the cages, who were actually locked up with pigs, and they were all followers of the true God!

It was only when the spear was pointed at his neck that he realized what had happened, and he finally calmed down under the threat of the weapon.

The group was all arrested and interrogated, and it took 10 days for them to be screened before Abdurej was released after a warning because it was the first time he had come to China and had not committed any crimes.

But after coming out, he quickly realized that without Laziz, a guide who was familiar with the Tang Dynasty, everything he did would be extremely difficult. For this reason, he made up his mind to stop in Guangzhou first, where he learned the language and writing of the Tang people, and then head north to the capital of the Tang Dynasty, the heavenly city of great food and Persian legend.

"Dear mentor, this is really a tragedy, the language of the Tang people is easy to learn, but their writing is so difficult that I still can't understand it, for what Chinese characters have no letters in them, it took me four whole months, and I only learned 500 words. Despite all the inconveniences in my life, I was still very surprised by the changes in the city of Guangzhou. I heard that the Empress of the Tang Dynasty and her husband, the great sage known for his wisdom, wisdom and bravery, intended to build the city of Guangzhou into a capital city in the southern part of the Tang Dynasty, so during these four months, I saw with my own eyes that buildings rose from the ground, and the streets were leveled and paved with a building material called cement, and then solidified into stone slabs. On both sides of the street, various trees have been transplanted from the mountains, and even in the middle of summer, I don't feel too hot...... The only thing I regret is that there is no temple here, and they do not allow the believers of the true God to build a house of worship here, but they allow all kinds of pagans to build their own evil temples here. ”

"Guangzhou is indeed a city worth having, I have seen in the market here goods from all over the world, from spices, dyes, silk, tea and other special products, to cotton, iron, glassware and other industrial products, it is very annoying, in the past, glassware was an important commodity that we exchanged for silk and porcelain from the Tang Kingdom, but now the Tang Kingdom has been able to produce a large number of glassware that is better than ours, and we have to exchange precious stones, incense and all kinds of rare treasures for their glassware. The people of the Tang Kingdom are very proud to say that their virtuous ministers want to turn the Tang Kingdom into a 'workshop of the world', all handicrafts, as long as the raw materials are owned by the Tang State, then they must be able to produce, if they do not have the raw materials, then they will import this raw materials. The Tang merchant who told me about this matter was very firm at that time, he believed that this would become true, the true God was above, and I hoped that the wisdom of the ancestors could enlighten me, because I had a terrible idea, if the Tang people could really produce everything in the world, then we still had to exist as a big cannibal, and we could no longer sell any goods to the Tang Kingdom, and without the income of the trade routes, we only relied on the oasis in the desert and the water in the Gobi, do we still have a way out? ”

"My worries may not be superfluous, these days, I specifically counted the ships going to sea in the port, in three days, a total of 38 ships went to sea, of which 28 are Tang State's own internal merchant ships and passenger ships, to go from Guangzhou to Quanzhou, Huating, Dengzhou and Lushun, I heard that these ports are at least as prosperous as Guangzhou, and Lushun, Dengzhou is even more prosperous than Guangzhou. The other ten ships will go south by the monsoon, most of these ships belonged to us in the past, but now only four of them belong to us, and the remaining six are from the Tang Kingdom. The navigation skills of the Tang people are very advanced, and the compass and astrometer they use can help them locate more accurately at sea, and I am afraid that it will not be long before the sea ships of the Tang people will go deep into the Persian Gulf, and our people can only be sailors for them on the ship. ”

"I'm going to stay here for another two months, on the one hand, my speaking needs to be further honed, and on the other hand, I can't wait to go to Chang'an City to study. I heard that they had opened a national university there, known as Kokuzijian, which admits international students from neighboring countries, so I might be able to try my luck there, even if I can't get into it. Although Guangzhou is a very prosperous port, the academic atmosphere here is too light, maybe it will be better in a few years, I heard that Tang Guo is planning to build a university here. Perhaps only a country as rich and powerful as the Tang Kingdom could have established universities in all important cities. ”

After reading the letter to the guru again, Abdureh sealed it, called a carriage outside, and took him to the port. Today, a new acquaintance of a big food merchant is about to leave for China, and Abdul Raj is asking him to bring this letter back to China.

However, when he arrived at the port, he saw countless people gathered together, as if they were watching something.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"The fort is going to test the cannon, you don't know what to do?" Someone asked with a smile when he saw his beard and robe.

"Test guns?" Abdul Reh remembered the fortifications he saw when he first arrived in Canton, and when Raziz said that he was firing the crossbow arrows, this is not the case.

He also looked over there, and after waiting for a long time, he suddenly heard an earth-shattering sound, and then the rising white smoke covered the direction of the fort.

On the open sea, several huge water columns appeared, and Abduzhe visually measured the distance between the water columns and the fort, and a few were two or three miles!