As the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ning Qi's English level is still quite good, even slightly better than Van Dimen from Europe, so the communication between the two sides does not need to be conveyed by a translator in the middle, and can be communicated directly. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 After briefing Van Dimen on the distribution and function of the ship's cabins, Ning Qi gave the order to set off. The sailors untied the sails as fast as possible under the captain's command, and their well-trained performance also amazed Van Diemen.

Seeing that Ning Qi didn't seem to have arranged other ships to accompany him, Fan Dimen took the initiative to ask, "Mr. Ning, is this the only boat to participate in our voyage around the island?"

"Are you worried about security? Please rest assured that our ship is very safe and will not have any hostile armed activities in the coastal waters of Hainan Island. Ning Qi replied proudly: "The route we sailed in the next few days is probably the safest sea area in the entire South China Sea. And armed boats will be arranged to escort them along the way, so there will be no security problems. ”

At first, Fan Dimen didn't quite understand what Ning Qi meant when he called the ship "very safe", but when the "Speed" sailed out of the dock, he understood where Ning Qi's confidence came from. Because the speed of this ship was so fast, at least more than double that of ordinary multi-masted galleons, it seemed that there was no match for the speed of this ship that Van Dijmen had ever seen. Moreover, this high speed did not bring violent turbulence, and the wide and flat hull effectively enhanced the ship's seaworthiness, and when the "Feisu" sailed out of Yulin Point at a speed of more than ten knots, the glass on the table did not even appear to shake significantly.

With such a terrifying speed, where is there any need to worry about the risk of being intercepted by the enemy during the sea voyage, Van Dimen believes that even Haihan's own armed sailing ship will find it difficult to keep up with the "Feisu" moving at full speed. Although the ship was not equipped with heavy weapons such as artillery, Van Dimen couldn't help but link the ship's performance to military use, and if it was used as a fast ship for reconnaissance and information transmission, its good seaworthiness and high speed should come in handy.

In fact, when the Haihan mission visited Zhangzhou in 1631, there was another catamaran "Lightning" in the fleet, and it did serve as a reconnaissance ship in the attack on Nanri Island, but the Dutch had not yet participated in the war at that time, so they did not know that there was such a thing. However, after the navy had special light reconnaissance ships, the two catamarans rarely took on military tasks, but a group led by the North American gang sailed a little more when they sailed to sea on vacation.

However, it would be a big mistake to think that these two ships were not equipped with heavy weapons and did not have high combat effectiveness. During the combat mission, the ship's bottom weapons compartment not only has the M249 squad machine gun, but also sometimes carries light mortars and RPGs, plus a variety of advanced weapons of the North American gang, its combat effectiveness can even be equal to that of a small half of the fleet. Although there is now a traverser on the ship, and his team is not equipped with any heavy weapons, there are still more than a dozen breech-loading rifles in the weapons compartment, and the sailors can transform into combat squads at any time according to the needs of the situation. If there is an emergency at sea, the radio station equipped on the ship can also contact the garrison troops on the coast of Hainan Island at any time, so as to obtain support in the shortest possible time.

After the "Feisu" sailed out of Yulin Bay, sure enough, two expedition-class sailing ships were moving in the same direction on the sea in the distance. However, the "Speedy" had to slow down a little before the two ships could catch up.

Fan Dimen saw that the ship had already sailed around Yulinjiao in the direction of Luhuitou Peninsula, and he had done some homework beforehand, so he took the initiative to ask, "Are we going to Yacheng?"

"That's right, Your Excellency the Governor can take a look at the prison city that was used by the Ming Kingdom to exile prisoners in the past, and what it looks like today. The ships have already gone to sea, and Ning Qi has no need to hide the destination of the first stop, and calmly informed: "In fact, on the administrative map of the Ming Dynasty, the entire Sanya also belongs to the jurisdiction of Yacheng. ”

"But that's in the past, isn't it? I think the local government should be under your executive committee now, not the court of the Ming Kingdom. Of course, Fan Dimen can think of the situation in Yacheng, after all, the entire Hainan Island is under the control of Haihan, and it is not difficult to judge who these areas that nominally belong to the Ming Dynasty for the time being are actually under the orders of whom.

In the same month that he traveled to this time and space, Haihan, who had not yet established himself, sent people to Yacheng and made contact with the local authorities. Yacheng is one of the earliest markets opened by Haihan, and the trade relations established with Guangdong merchants later were also reached through the merchants of Yacheng. The local officials in Yacheng are also the most thorough group of people in the officialdom of Hainan Island who have taken refuge in Haihan, since Luo Shengdong and Wei Ping began, Yacheng officialdom has no martial arts, from top to bottom, all of them have successively changed banners and become Haihan's "accomplices".

In the past seven years, the successor Zhizhou, Tongzhi, Tongju, General Counselor, etc., the first thing they did when they took office was to come to Shengli Harbor to worship the wharf, and only after getting the approval of the Haihan Executive Committee would they go to Yacheng to take office. For outgoing officials, Haihan will also give a "settling-in allowance" of varying amounts depending on their performance during their tenure, but the amount must be much more than the salary they received from the imperial court.

The local affairs of public security, household registration, land and property, taxation, and justice in Yacheng were taken over by the Yacheng Office as early as a few years ago, and the local yamen, like other local government offices on Hainan Island, was basically reduced to a symbolic totem and no longer had an actual operating mechanism and functions. According to the statistics completed by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Haihan last year, the proportion of naturalized people in the resident population of Yacheng has exceeded 80 percent, and the social structure and mass foundation are quite good.

Despite some anticipation of the situation in Cliff City, when they arrived, Van Diemen was taken aback by the reaction of the local people.

In the past, there were no people and ships in Yacheng Water Village a few years ago, and all of them were transferred to Haihan to run the sea, leaving only a establishment to hang under the Ming Army Department to eat empty salaries. The location of Yacheng Water Village, located in the harbor at the mouth of the Ningyuan River, has now become a local comprehensive passenger and cargo terminal. When the "Speed" arrived, the wharf was already crowded with people, all of whom had heard the news and had come to greet the chief of the Executive Committee, and at a cursory glance there were at least six or seven hundred people.

When Ninzaki stepped out of the cabin and appeared on the back deck, the crowd on the shore erupted into a commotion. Many of them have also heard the news that Haihan will be established next month, and the person who inspected Yacheng this time is the senior official of the executive committee, which is almost a senior position such as the six Shangshu and the palace scholar in Daming, and Haihan has no emperor, and being an official in the executive committee is basically the end, this kind of big man has rarely appeared in Yacheng in recent years, no wonder the people are so excited.

Although Fan Dimen could not understand the content of the shouts of the people on the shore, he could also think of what was going on when he saw these excited faces, and the prestige of the senior Haihan officials in the local area was also evident. After taking office, he also visited the area around Batavia, hoping to bring in more labor from the nearby indigenous tribes attached to the East India Company for the reconstruction of Batavia, but what he gained in the local area was more blank eyes and indifference, and those tribes who verbally submitted to the East India Company had no intention of helping, and he had never encountered such a scene of warm welcome from the local people.

There is no doubt that the same ethnic and cultural characteristics between the Haihan and the Ming Dynasty could indeed help them better realize their colonial rule in the Ming Dynasty, which was an advantage that the Dutch could never have in governing their colonies in the Far East.

After Ningqi landed on the shore, the staff of the local Ya Office and the current Zhizhou and other officials hurriedly stepped forward to see it. At the beginning, the Cliff Office, which was composed of elites from the Crossing Group, has been replaced by naturalized cadres due to the gradual decline in the importance of Yacheng. And the first in the cliff office of the Ma Ke, Qiu Yuan, He Xi, Mu Xiabai, Feng Anan and others, now have become the independent cadres of various departments, in Haihan's internal statement, the cliff office can be regarded as a feng shui treasure for career promotion.

For safety reasons, Ning Qi's itinerary was only notified to the Cliff Office one day in advance, but this level of secrecy is obviously not enough, otherwise there would not be so many onlookers on the dock. However, the Cliff Office still has some preparations for such a situation, and several groups of militia have blocked the people from the periphery, leaving room for VIPs to land and change vehicles. There are about six or seven miles of land from here to Yacheng, so it is naturally more convenient to go there by horse-drawn carriage.

Although the current Yacheng still retains the original city defense facilities and fortifications, in fact, there is no armed force to guard the city walls and gates all year round. There were only two platoons of militia troops stationed in Yacheng City, and there was also a company of militia in the local area, in addition to about forty security policemen who were not equipped with firearms, which was all the defense force here.

The reason why the military did not deploy more troops here is also very simple, Yacheng is no longer the political and economic center of the southern tip of Hainan Island, and many locals have chosen to work in Sanya after naturalization, after all, the income level there is much higher. At this time, the people living in Yacheng were a considerable number of immigrants from other places, especially from Annam and Guangdong. These immigrants were arranged by the Ministry of Civil Affairs to form a migrant village and settle here, and their livelihood is the cash crop plantation that has blossomed all over Hainan Island in recent years.

"Ramie is planted on both sides of the road. On the carriage to Yacheng, Ning Qi introduced Fan Dimen to the planting projects along the way: "This plant can be used to weave cloth, make paper, make fodder, and act as a medicinal herb, and it is very versatile. ”

The entire ground part of ramie can be used to extract ethanol, and the hemp husk can be used to extract furfural, an extremely important refining solvent in the chemical industry, which is not something that can be bought with money in the market. It would take more than two centuries for Mendeleev to publish the periodic table, and at this time, only Haihan had mastered the technology of extracting chemicals directly from plants. Of course, even if these things were said to Fan Dimen, he couldn't understand the meaning at all, and Ning Qi didn't want to waste his saliva to explain to him.

Fan Dimen really didn't know this plant, and he couldn't imagine that the Haihan people actually came here after crossing over, and found this good thing when they visited Li Dong, and then slowly began to promote the cultivation. But he looked out through the glass window and saw that the fields on both sides of the road that stretched out far away were full of ramie fields, and he was also curious about this strange plant.

"The farmer grows such a large area of ramie, and who does he sell it to after harvesting?

Ning Qi responded: "The fields you see are privately run plantations, and we provide technical support for planting, and the ramie produced will be purchased by the Haihan Ministry of Commerce. In the vicinity of Yacheng alone, there are probably more than 10,000 acres of ramie plantations. ”

Fan Dimen thought that this thing should also have a huge profit to attract merchants to come here to invest in the plantation, listening to Ning Qi's tone, there is more than one area dedicated to growing ramie. The planting area is so large, Haihan should have a relatively large demand for it. However, the strange thing is that Fan Dimen recalled, but he didn't seem to remember any hemp fabrics in the list of Haihan's export goods, and it seemed that they had been digested internally.

When he was about to arrive at Yacheng, Fan Dimen saw another plantation through the car window, but the plants planted here did not need to be introduced by Ning Qi and he recognized it, it was the sugar cane that the Dutch also cultivated in their South Asian colonies.

Sanya Cuvée has always been one of the best-selling Haihan products in the market, and some of the varieties are rum made from sugar cane. Naturally, Van Diemen had tasted this kind of proud work of the Haihan, and he had to admit that its taste, packaging and sales operations far surpassed the sugar cane wine that the East India Company was also making. Regardless of the difference in raw materials, the gap between the two sides in terms of production technology is probably difficult to catch up.

However, what Fan Dimen did not know was that the Haihan people also used sugarcane far more than their competitors of the same era, and in addition to winemaking and sugar production, the remaining sugarcane bagasse would also be used for fertilizer and paper making, so that the value that a sugarcane field could create was naturally far above the average level of this era. (To be continued.) )