Chapter 21, the twenty-seven moments of Chongzhen's four years (21)

Moment 21: When an Australian meets an Australian

The "Australian" base camp in Lingao County, Hainan Island, the residence of the Senate, and Bairen City

According to the views of some European "international observers" in this time and space, among the 500 "Australian veterans" in Lingao, a European-style "council" system was practiced. Formally, all the senators enjoyed the same political status, forming an institution called the "Senate". Theoretically, all major policies should be decided by a vote of the Senate. But in fact, since it is impossible for the 500 senators to convene a plenary session every day, there are 10 "executive members" at the highest level who actually hold all the powers, forming a circle of supreme power similar to that of the ruling cabinet.

And at the top of this circle is naturally the Ten Elders of the Executive Committee, the ever-glorious, great, and correct Chairman of the Executive Committee

However, this ever-glorious, great, and correct Chairman Wen Deji stood in the office of the chairman of his executive committee at this time, with a sad face.

On the wall in front of Chairman Wen Desi, there is a huge map, on which the small red flag indicates the growing territory of the Senate - up to now, after three years of conquest and expansion, Hainan Island, Taiwan Island, and half of Fujian Province have all become the actual territory of the Senate, and even if those "wild areas" that cannot be effectively controlled are deducted, the actual territory under its control has reached more than 40,000 square kilometers, which is similar to the Dutch Republic itself at this time. It can be said that there is already a foundation for hegemony in East Asia. In addition to this core territory, there are a series of important strongholds such as Hong Kong Island in Guangdong, Hongji Coal Mine in Vietnam, Ruoyu Island in the coastal areas of Fujian and Zhejiang, etc., forming a solid chain that firmly strangles the coastline of the Big 6 from North Vietnam to Jiangsu, and the northernmost tentacles on the Big 6 in China have extended to Huaguo Mountain in Haizhou at the junction of Sulu.

Outside of this island chain, the Ryukyu Kingdom had become de facto vassals of the Senate, with the Satsuma Domain defeated and subdued, and the Choshu Domain, the Senate's most important ally in Japan, which had become the undisputed maritime hegemon of all of East Asia since the defeat of Zheng Zhilong

-- I remember that when Britain was still the empire on which the sun never sets, Jevons, a famous British economist at that time, once boasted triumphantly: "...... The plains of North America and Russia are our cornfields, Canada and the Baltics are our lumberyards, Australia is our pastures, Peru is our silver mines, South Africa and Australia are our gold mines, India and China are our tea bases, the East Indies provide us with sugar cane, coffee and spices, and the southern United States is our cotton plantations......"

And today's Chairman Wen Desi can also proudly declare: "...... Siam (Thailand) and Annam (Vietnam) are our rice fields; Japan is our gold, silver, and copper mines, and a source of soldiers for cannon fodder samurai; The chieftains of Malacca and Sumatra provided us with slaves; The Dutch in Batavia are our contractors, and the primitive and wild Taiwan is our lumberyard; The densely populated cities of Guangzhou and Jiangnan bring us tea and silk, which are also our commodity dumping markets; And the principle of neutrality in the midst of disasters has given us a steady stream of people and labor......"

On the whole, the shape of the Lingao Senate seems to be very gratifying, but in the eyes of Chairman Wen Desi, there are also many threats and hidden dangers of all kinds - in fact, since the launch of the great cause of crossing, all strategic plans have been in a state of derailment of "plans cannot catch up with changes".

First of all, it is the early crossing and rise of Huangshi, a junior - it is really unthinkable that he would go wrong during the collective crossing and fall alone ten years ago. What's even more incredible is that this young man, who originally only wrote well in one big character, was reborn after several years of hardships in Liaodong and became a peerless general who moved the world and was powerful; Huang Gongbao and Huang Dashuai, who swept the invincible opponents in Liaodong and broke into the enemy camp alone to kill the slave chieftains

Not only does he have a hundred elite soldiers in his hands, but after being ordered to transfer to the south, he occupies a large territory in Fujian Province. Soon after the Fengcheng ship carrying 500 traversers arrived in Lingao, it ushered in the envoy and secret letter of Huangshi......

At the beginning of the crossing, the newcomer Lingaozhong was able to have such an influential and powerful faction join, which was certainly a tiger with wings, but the problem of power redistribution that led to it caught Chairman Wen Desi, who was originally strategizing, off guard for a while...... In the end, the executive committee, which was the de facto supreme organ of power, had to take over the seats, and various factional disputes immediately arose within the Senate -- as one of the five hundred traversers, the commander of Huangshi also had many friends to help. And with the shaking of Chairman Wen Desi's supreme authority, small groups formed by various gangs and factions within the traverser have also surfaced one after another, eager to compete for various discourse rights, which has caused the chairman a headache.

-- No matter what kind of deification propaganda was carried out among the natives and "naturalized people" of the Ming Dynasty, among the 500 traversers who were really crucial, Wen Desi was very unfortunate to have no absolute prestige and power from the beginning, and his prestige and real power were only equivalent to those of ordinary company CEOs. Although Chairman Wen Desi never considered himself a cold-blooded strongman like Hitler or Stalin, nor did he have any intention of wearing a yellow robe and becoming a king, let alone raising a butcher's knife and wantonly purging his fellow traversers to centralize power, he was still uncomfortable with such a situation.

Fortunately, although Wen Desi can't turn the executive committee into his own hall, there is basically no kind of brain-dead comic among the "executive committee", and under the banner of conquering the world, basically no one wants to turn the Senate into the legislative yuan of Taiwan in the future, so there is no chaos in strategic and tactical decision-making, at least for a long time, there should be no need to worry about the internal unity of the Lingao traverser

Secondly, these traversers are not alone in this world -- Huangshi in Fujian, who had already returned to the army in advance, and Zhang Wei in Taiwan, who had taken the initiative to surrender to Macao, did not mention for the time being, and soon after the intelligence forces of the Lingao Senate infiltrated Macao, they were stunned to see that the Portuguese in Macao were actually helping the two "Oriental immigration countries" in the Americas to recruit Ming Dynasty refugees. It turns out that there are two other groups of traversers who have already arrived in this world

Fortunately, limited to the poor transportation capacity of the Grape People at this time and the long sea journey from East Asia to the east coast of the Americas, such a long-distance population business can transport more than 1,000 people at most every year, so it has not affected the recruitment of displaced people by the Lingao Senate for the time being. And also due to the long geographical distance, the two Chinese traverser countries in the Americas do not seem to be able to get involved in the changes in the situation of the East Asian Big 6 and do not pose any threat.

However, although the American traverser group on the other side of the world can be ignored for the time being, the other traversers who can appear in the territory of the Ming Dynasty cannot be treated with caution. For example, the town of Dengzhou, which is entrenched in the Shandong Peninsula, has already competed with Lingao Crossing in the cigarette business in Jiangnan. As for how to deal with this force, the Senate is still divided and inconclusive, but everyone is basically clear: if the traversers who formed Dengzhou Town can also be pulled into the Senate, it will definitely be able to provide a huge boost to the Senate's northern strategy. But if it turns its face into the enemy, then this warlord power, which is quite good at fighting, will also become a rather headache on the journey of the Senate.

As for the other sporadic "suspected" traversers, there are even more, but due to the distortion and distortion in the process of information circulation, it turned out that almost all of them were false positives and miscalculations - the chaotic times of the late Ming Dynasty linked to the Age of Global Exploration were originally an era of mavericks and Western learning, and the court officials all converted to God and became Christians, and the people were filled with countless non-mainstream people with strange behaviors. What's worse is that because Huangshi's ten-year travel career has greatly changed history, even if you find a situation that does not match the history books, it may not mean that there is a problem.

In this regard, the Lingao Traveler Senate has no good way, so it can only take one step at a time, and then talk about it when it comes to the moves.

And then there was the sudden arrival of the "real Australians" -- when they received the wireless telegram from Australia by chance at the end of last year, they really frightened the 500 people who crossed the heights: the modern all-metal 10,000-ton galleon that crossed Australia, the unfortunate Australian crossing career, and the round-the-world voyage of the "East Coast Republic of China" in South America...... And the Polish expedition that tried to colonize Australia? That's a little bit more informative

While it is strange to wonder why the Poles came to play the Great Voyage - just as the mention of Russia conjures up and down the Tska, Siberia and the Arctic Ocean, the mention of Poland conjures up only the hussars with bird feathers and the flamboyant temperament of the dead are absolutely not associated with such things as seafaring colonization. But after all, he was born in another isolated wilderness thousands of miles away6, so in addition to continuing to maintain radio contact with the Australian side and the expeditionary fleet of the East Coast Country that arrived in Australia, the "pseudo-Australians" in the Lingao Senate did not pay much attention to it.

After all, there are still a lot of troubles and chaos around them, so worrying about these things that are far away all day long doesn't have to worry about anything else.

But now, the "pseudo-Australians" of the Senate of Lingao can no longer put this trouble aside.

-- According to the information exchanged in the wireless telegram, as Australia entered the rainy season and the tide rose again, the "real Australians" and their large ship would soon be able to get out of the shallows of the lagoon. The round-the-world expedition of the East Coast nation, after returning to what would become the capital of Uruguay, caused a great sensation in the country, and quickly assembled a second, even larger expeditionary fleet, which had just arrived in Australia a few days earlier...... After the renovation of the 10,000-ton ship COSCO Star, the two sides will travel north to Batavia to establish trade relations with the Dutch colonists there, and if possible, the combined fleet may go further north to recruit displaced people and purchase supplies along the Chinese coast.

This earth-shattering news made Lingao Deng a big mess - the "crossing seniors" who were originally far away in the sky were actually going to come to their own realm with a warship? Hey, this chess game of the Ming Empire has been messed up enough, why do you still want to intervene?

What's worse is that if those "real-Australians" came to Batavia with their 10,000-ton giant ship, talked about their origins with the local Dutch and Chinese businessmen, and did not make a good confession to Lingao's side in advance, then the identity of the "Australian visitor" fabricated by Lingao before crossing the crowd would have to be tried, or at least the bull's head on both sides would not be on the horse's mouth, and finally caused a big joke. However, the Lingao Senate could not stop the "Australians" and the East Coast Fleet from leaving, and it could not say: "The name of Australians has been used by us, and you will be in trouble if you appear in front of the Dutch again, so please continue to play kangaroos and watch the stars in the Australian wilderness as modern primitives, and never come into contact with the Eastern and Western civilizations"?

――If you say something so brazen, even if you don't have the cheekiness to say it, the Australian side will definitely not listen to it

“…… Alas, I really regret that I shouldn't have slapped my head at the beginning, and casually claimed to be Australian, but now I don't know how to face people from Australia, why didn't I think that I could claim to be from Antarctica? At least emperor penguins don't chew their tongues with others......"

Chairman Boon Duc Si unbuttoned his shirt with some irritation, got up and went to open the window, and the fresh sea breeze blew in through the window of the seaside, which also had a slight cooling effect. But in the green belt bushes outside the window, it is estimated that there are cicadas or insects similar to cicadas, anyway, the noise is so noisy that people almost subconsciously ignore it has not stopped. When the window opened, the noisy insect sound became louder.

The noisy sound of insects made Chairman Wen Deji cover his ears, and it also made the people staying indoors to discuss countermeasures feel more and more irritated.

“…… Why don't you publicize it to the outside world and say, 'Ao Song, encountered a natural disaster, and we were forced to move the whole country, and we didn't want our homeland to be stolen by pirates, how about it?' ”

The one who spoke was Dai Yi, the deputy of the Taoist Council of the Lingao Senate, and one of the five hundred traverser elders. When Daoist Thief Quanzi was not there, he was fully responsible for the educational activities of the Lingao Taoist Council. These include health campaigns, literacy classes and a call to allegiance to the Senate. Recently, a missionary booklet about the new Taoist classic "Dongyuan Shen Mantra" was printed, which excerpted the myth of "500 immortals descending to earth on a big iron boat to save the last days" (the "Australian Catholic Church" said that 500 angels descended to earth, which made believers very confused by the contradictory statements between the two sides).

However, with the advent of the "real-Australian", these false missionary myths are suddenly in danger of being completely punctured.

“…… What the? You just call people pirates? How could those fellow Australians say yes? Let's be realistic."

Ma Qianzhuo, the premier of the Central Government Council who was sitting on the sand drinking tea, and the online name "Supervisor", couldn't help but roll his eyes, and complained to Dai Yi, who took it for granted, "...... What's more, even we ourselves have not formulated a unified standard background information - your new Taoism has made a version of 500 immortals, the Catholic Church has made a version of 500 angels to save the world, and then there is a version of the children of the powerful children of the Australian and Song Dynasty who failed in the court struggle and went into exile, plus a version of the survivors of the doomsday catastrophe of the Australian and Song Empires who fled back to their homeland, there are so many I have heard in the Lingao market alone, and those expatriate comrades still don't know what nonsense they have to do with the Vietnamese, Ming Dynasty and Dutch? This is a problem that must be taken seriously immediately."

For Ma Qianzhu's above statement, the participants also nodded, but although they all looked serious on the surface, they didn't really care about the matter itself in their hearts: "Australian mythology" is such a thing as "Australian mythology" at this point, in fact, it doesn't matter whether it is a goof or not - the Lingao Travelers have already gained a firm foothold in the border corners of the Ming Empire, and the existence of the Australian country cannot shake the foundation of this traverser group, just like the rise and failure of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in the late Qing Dynasty. It has nothing to do with the Catholic Church in distant Europe.

However, for the current Executive Committee, or Chairman Wen Dehe, the bankruptcy of the "Australian Myth" is tantamount to giving the various factional forces within the Senate a target to attack, and it will inevitably lead to a further decline in the prestige of the Executive Committee in the Senate. As far as the work of the propaganda and education departments is concerned, it is really a big blow -- no one can say what kind of evil consequences will be brought about by the bankruptcy of ideology.

Fortunately, there is still a chance to remedy the situation - Chairman Wendesi finally decided to have people telegraph to the Australian side to explain the matter, hoping that the other side would help cover it up...... Soon after, a call back came, and the Australian side agreed to negotiate on this matter, but because there were too many issues involved, I am afraid that it would not be clear in the short message, so it was necessary to communicate face-to-face, and in addition to unified external publicity, it was also necessary to take into account the image of the Australian side......

“…… Isn't Ping Qiusheng's trading fleet still in Hongji? Let him not have to go to Thailand, and wait for the Australian fleet in Batavia in advance."

Chairman Boon Duc Si said of yì, "...... I invite you to vote by show of hands...... Very good, let's organize a diplomatic delegation now, take the fastest ship to Hongji to meet Ping Qiusheng's fleet, of course, before leaving, you have to inform the trade representative of the Dutch East India Company in Lingao to avoid misunderstandings. In addition, the navy also tried to gather a few warships to come out, so as to give the diplomatic delegation a strong momentum......"

“…… So what about the background of our own four versions? Which version to discuss with the Australian side? Premier Ma Qianzhu asked.

“…… It's too late, let the delegation discuss it slowly on the ship, anyway, it will take a lot of time to get from us to Batavia......"

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Hong Kat Fort, Vietnam (near Haiphong Port in the modern Republic of Vietnam, near the famous tourist attraction of Long Bay)

After a few years of construction by the future travelers, Hung Kat Fort, which was originally just a coal pit, has become a mining city and trading center under the protection of military fortresses, the scale of the coal mine has extended farther and farther, and the number of Vietnamese miners under its jurisdiction has also increased rapidly, and every day there are hungry Vietnamese poor people from afar to come to the city - the brutal civil war between the Trung and Nguyen warlords, and the heavy taxes that led to it, have made these ragged peasants almost despair, and they defected to Hung Kai to dig and earn food by digging hard. It is the last straw in their minds.

At the same time, the goods in the Hongji Fort trade area are also dazzling, at present, in Lingao and Da 6 has overcapacity of goods such as salt, sugar, and medicines are dumping, in addition, like Lingao's traditional advantage products, glassware, crystal mirrors, bone china, and Vietnam's extremely scarce light industrial products - shoes, umbrellas, fans, hats, etc. are also available, making Hongji has become a big place on the Red River Estuary Delta, all kinds of businessmen's ships are docked in the outer port of Hongji Port, mainly Chinese businessmen, I was doing business along the coast of the Gulf of Tonkin in the first place.

With the booming trade and the influx of large numbers of displaced people, Hongkai's shipping lines and cargo warehouses were established, and a large number of small-tonnage ships traveled between Lingao and Hongkai every week, mainly engaged in the trade of light industrial products, and sometimes providing valuable capacity for Vietnamese rice. With the expansion of the supply chain, "Australian goods" completely occupied the market in the entire Red River basin almost overnight, and even in remote places near Laos, there were small traders of various nationalities who continued to bring potash mines needed by "Australians" from Nei6 to the market of Hongji Port for trade. The influx of cheap industrial goods into the market even began to have an impact on the economic structure of northern Vietnam.

Even Runshitang, which sells Chinese patent medicines in partnership with "Australians", opened a branch to the "castle town" of Hongji Fort half a year ago -- it is more convenient to transfer goods from here to Southeast Asian countries, and the banks of the Red River themselves are also a good market for the dumping of Chinese patent medicines.

In general, Hongji's shape is not a small good, but a big good, almost a thousand miles a day. In addition to the construction of urban hardware, the cultural construction as "soft power" has not been relaxed - the Lingao Senate reached a guiding opinion at the most recent conference, that is, both Koreans and Vietnamese have already been sinicized in this time and space, and this process will not be reversed without the influence of Western foreign civilization and the decline of China's national power, so when treating the people in these areas, they should be regarded as the direct population under the control of the Senate and the natives who can be taught.

Therefore, Hongji Fort should also set up basic cultural and educational facilities such as schools and hospitals, so as to lay a good foundation for the thorough "education" of the local people -- many of the poor Vietnamese who came to Hongji to work as miners were dragged with their families, and there was no shortage of children, and if the Senate could educate their children in a unified manner, then after these young children graduated from school, they would become the advance team members of the Senate in the future to advance into Southeast Asia. Although Hongji's new school has not yet been completed, and only one Chinese character literacy class has been held, some of the Vietnamese children who were previously selected to return to Lingao have returned from their studies.

Thirteen-year-old Nguyen Bi Thanh is a native of Hongji, his hometown, where his parents used to farm and fish for a living, but both became "naturalized people". A year ago, he and dozens of other Vietnamese children from Hongji were selected to be sent to the national school of Lingao.

Like most students in national schools, Ruan Bicheng, who came to Lingao, was suddenly overwhelmed by countless knowledge that he had never imagined, and during his year at the school, he sucked a qiē knowledge like a sponge, and even learned Mandarin and Chinese characters while also obtaining a second-class diploma - such an academic performance is even more difficult for many children of the Ming Dynasty. For a Vietnamese child, it is a miracle.

Such outstanding academic results made a patriarch in charge of education look at this Vietnamese child with such an impression that he specially gave him the official name Nguyen Bi Thanh -- originally intended to give him the name Ho Chi Minh, but was dissuaded by another patriarch and said that the name was too ostentatious, so he changed it to Nguyen Bi Thanh -- which made the thirteen-year-old child feel extremely excited and excited about it. This time, when the Trade Department of the Lingao Senate sent trade fleets to Southeast Asian countries, they brought him, a native of Southeast Asia, on board the ship in the name of an intern, so that Ruan Bicheng could go home to visit his relatives on the way.

However, walking on the streets of Hongji and looking at the bustling market, Ruan Bicheng now became a little unrecognizable:

“…… It's only been a year, and in the hands of the elders, Hongji's place has changed again."

In just one year, Hongji's cityscape has been very different, and Ruan Bicheng remembers very clearly that when he left, the miners gathered in Hongji were still a group of sloppy guys who were poorly dressed and skinny. But almost everyone I see now is dressed neatly. Even though some people are shirtless because of the hot weather, at least everyone has shoes, whether straw sandals or cloth shoes.

And the original dirty and dilapidated shantytown has also become a city - in general, the layout of the market street on the side of Hongji Fort is completely based on the copy of Lingao Dongmen Market, of course, the scale is much smaller. At present, Hongji Fort itself and the surrounding commercial and trade areas and light industrial zones have completed the basic ground hardening, and the street surface is cleaned and cleaned in a way that has greatly exceeded all the large and small towns in the territory of the Lê Dynasty in Vietnam.

In the shops along the street, all kinds of sugar, salt and Vietnam's most scarce daily necessities are all available - with the great exhibition of light industry construction, the current production capacity of daily necessities on Hainan Island has an explosive growth, a large number of bamboo, rattan and paper products not only meet the needs of Hainan Island, but also in a steady stream of transportation to the big 6, when the market research report of Hongji Fort reflects the lack of manufacturing capacity of daily necessities in Vietnam, the colonial trade department that immediately saw business opportunities immediately organized a large number of shoes, socks, clothes and hats and umbrellas and folding fans and other products to be exported to Hongji. It also includes a large number of rattan shell thermoses.

Originally, there was not much market for thermos flasks in Vietnam, and there was not much demand for boiled water except for tea. But when the market of Hongji Fort officially began to sell ice, the situation completely changed, and the ice cubes with thermos flasks immediately became the most decent enjoyment of the lords of the Li Dynasty in North Vietnam, and now even the emperor of the Li Dynasty has used such Australian goods - Vietnam due to its geographical location, there is no place to mine ice, let alone the ice cellar where the ice cubes are kept, and the fact that Hongji Fort sells ice cubes is a great news for the people and the lord here, and everyone wants to find out where the Australian ice cubes come from, especially since they not only have a lot of ice, but it also seems to be endless.

All in all, Hongji is a completely different place than it used to be......

Ruan Bicheng, who had returned from a long absence, found his father who had just become a naturalized citizen in the customs, and then sat together in an open-air restaurant on Hongji Street, and used the scholarship he had saved to invite his father to eat the store's new "summer Australian style set meal": chilled candied tomatoes, roasted corn and "cola chicken" cooked with high-yield white sugar instead of caramel, and at the same time recounted to each other all kinds of things since the parting this year.

In the interval between conversations, he couldn't help but look thoughtfully at the port in the distance, and there was a vague thought in his heart: these powerful "Australian governors" came all the way to the countryside of Hongji, not just to dig coal or help the poor here. Based on what he had learned in Lingao, Ruan Bicheng had vaguely realized that the world he had imagined in his hearts was beyond his reach...... However, before Ruan Bicheng could think of anything, he heard a whistle from the dock and an announcement from the loudspeaker on the street:

“…… Attention to the crew of the Nanyang trading fleet, please note that the crew of the Nanyang trading fleet is urgently assembled now, and the emergency assembly fleet is about to anchor and leave the port in advance, please return to the relevant personnel by fire, repeat, the fleet is about to anchor and leave the port in advance, please return to the team by fire......"

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It's still a tropical autumn with a lot of intensity. A large fleet of ships stationed at Hongji in Vietnam began to turn from lazy calm to noisy commotion. The people on and off the ship were constantly busy: soldiers were checking weapons, laborers were busy carrying supplies, and sailors were mending sails and changing cables...... The team leaders, squadron leaders, and group leaders of the labor team shuttled back and forth through the sweaty crowd, cheering everyone on and urging the laborers to speed up the transportation of materials. In any case, all the replenishment operations must be completed today, and the entire fleet will set sail early tomorrow morning.

Although the sudden cancellation of the shore vacation and the urgent loading and sorting tasks have made everyone complain. But under the usual harsh military orders and the whip of the overseers, no one dared to go on strike - there was no rule against corporal punishment in those days, and those who were passive and sabotaged were beheaded

In order to boost morale, Fort Hung Kee served the crew a sumptuous lunch as much as possible. Everyone arrives at the wooden lunch box, which opens it to reveal snow-white rice, chopped vegetables mixed with the toppings, and served with whole grilled fish and oily fried eggs. In a steaming tin bucket, there is a miso soup made with soybean paste, and anyone can scoop a bowl of fish and sea vegetables...... The laborers and soldiers happily ate this unprecedentedly sumptuous working meal, and the mood that had been depressed by fatigue finally began to improve slightly.

However, the commander-in-chief of this Nanyang trading fleet, the veteran of the Senate Trade Department, Ping Qiusheng, still had a gloomy face and no appetite - according to the plan, he originally planned to enjoy a tropical holiday in Hongji that included important elements such as sun, sand, blue sea, coconut palms and Vietnamese chicks, but who knew that after a day of landing at Hongji, he had just slept in the guest house when he was put on such an unfortunate urgent task.

At this time, he was wearing a floral shirt and oversized shorts, holding a parasol, supervising the replenishment of the fleet, which had originally planned to go as far as Siam to sell rice, but now it was going to Batavia, on the island of Java, and the voyage was almost doubled.

However, since the fleet had only been out of Lingao for a short time, the cargo hold of each ship was still crammed with trading goods, and there was not much room to spare. The crew had no choice but to pile the extra coal on the deck, in the aisles, in the cabins, and even the VIP cabin where the veteran Ping Qiusheng lived was stuffed with a few bags of coal. The gun emplacements on the deck were piled with coal ladles on all sides, and once the guns were fired, it would become a dusty hell, and if they were shelled, it would be even more unthinkable - the patriarch of Ping Qiusheng commented that it was like the Russian Second Pacific Fleet that had circled half the world to its death during the Russo-Japanese War

Of course, this was strictly speaking, just angry words, because in front of the Senate fleet of Lingao, there was not a single combined Japanese fleet waiting to intercept it. And the voyage from Hung Kai in Vietnam to Batavia (Jakarta) on the island of Java is really not very far by the standards of the Age of Discovery...... In fact, the real trouble that made Ping Qiusheng scratch his head was what to do after arriving in Batavia?

-- With regard to this trip to Batavia, the Executive Committee of the Senate of Lingao did not know whether it was a convulsion in the brain, and actually assigned a series of simply whimsical tasks to the unprepared Comrade Ping Qiusheng: to reach rapprochement with the East Coast countries as much as possible, to find a way to collude with the Australians about their backgrounds, to try to fool the Dutch and Chinese businessmen in Batavia, and even to ask him to find a way to fool the "real-Australians" to Lingao

While the addition of more than 100 senators may cause problems in the division of finances and powers, the 10,000-ton all-metal modern sailing ship of the "True Australian" alone is worth the price of the ticket - a supreme overlord who was absolutely invincible on any sea in the world in the seventeenth century

The problem is that the ideal is plump, and the reality is skinny. It is not an easy task to deal with the relations with the East Coast countries -- if the East Coast countries dump their industrial products in Southeast Asia in large quantities after opening up the shipping lanes, they will inevitably crowd out the market for "Australian goods." And what if the Eastern Coast State proposed to recruit a large number of people from the Ming Dynasty's Great 6? The labor force under the Senate of Lingao itself still does not feel enough

And what made Ping Qiusheng feel most distressed was that now he had to go to Batavia to negotiate with the Australian and South American crossers, and the Lingao Senate didn't even concoct a standard "History of Exile in Australia and the Song Dynasty", looking at several veterans of the education department and the religious department, each took a very different draft of the outline, and quarreled in front of him, Ping Qiusheng, who had always been a gentleman, finally couldn't help but slap the table angrily:

“…… Quiet everyone, from Hongji to Batavia, the fastest is ten days, the slow is half a month, during this time, you have to give the manuscript no matter what, even five hundred monkeys can jump out of the stone, but you must not let me take four or five versions of the manuscript to negotiate."

-- And just when the old man of Pingqiusheng was like a fight, another group of strangers from the Americas also quietly knocked on the door of East Asia......

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