With a copy of George III's letterhead, it was delivered all the way through the Qiongya Road Coast Guard to the Zhuming Mountain House in Guangdong and the Tianjin Information Administration Yuan.

Of course, the original of George III's credentials was personally carried by the Count of Macartney, who was ready to officially hand over the credentials when he met the "Emperor of China". It's etiquette, it has to be.

But the question is, who is considered the "emperor of China" -

As the supreme person in charge of the red bronze crown team at this point in time and space, Murong Parrot has already taken up the position of "Protector of the Country", and he is almost the head of state.

But Wei Ye, as the head of the Daohai Sect, is in charge of the sect, and according to the old system of the Daomen, he is on the "Shijun", and he is also an enemy of the "protector of the country". It looks like the ancient Roman system of two consuls, but it is a little different, more like a coalition of Daohai Zongyuan and the Red Bronze Crown Group to divide the spoils after the war.

In such a coalition regime, bumps and bumps and division of interests are always inevitable. Whether it was the occasion for submitting the credentials or the selection of the negotiator, there were countless quarrels in the meeting between Wei Ye and Murong Yu.

In the end, it became that the participants bowed their heads to play games, chatted with refreshments, and Wei Ye and Murong Parrot talked to each other on the side:

"Otherwise, when the credentials are handed over, let them be shoulder-to-shoulder! Let Macartney decide for himself who to give the credentials. ”

"Just sit with me? Is that a long couch, or two chairs? In the past few years, almost all the guys from the Manchu Dynasty have rushed back to their hometowns to eat old rice, and there are many old people who have traveled in the forest like this, and we sit side by side, what good words can these people have in their mouths. Wei could guess that these sourmen were going to say that we were imitating the 'Two Sages of the Dynasty' system in the Tang Dynasty! Although everyone is a man, it would not be good if there were any strange scandals because of this. ”

......

.........

As always, there was an atmosphere of unorthodoxy at the joint meeting, but the changes in East Asia as a whole were not yet over.

In the northeast, with the invasion of the Great Tomb of Nasalik, enough negative magic has been left behind, and from Nurhachi to Qianlong, more than two Jiazi have been killed, and millions of dead have been awakened from the ground one after another.

Speaking of which, in this continuous tide of undead creatures, there are not many zombies, but skeletons, ghosts, and resentful spirits account for the majority. Soon, these undead creatures "crossed the Yalu River with great vigor and high spirits", causing the disaster of the Lee family.

At this time, in the Lee family's Joseon, the two classes of nobles were still tirelessly playing party fighting. On the small peninsula, Xungui, Shilin, southerners, northerners, Eastern studies, and Western studies are everywhere for reasons for party disputes, and the so-called morale disaster occurs once every ten years. Since the previous Ming Dynasty, these sticks have been fighting until the Qianlong period behind closed doors, and the two larger countries around them have closed their doors to claim hegemony, and they have inadvertently made this peninsula the best Gu cultivation altar.

But in the hands of the current Korean king Yi Chong (祘, the same count), the party struggle is no longer important, and the large-scale invasion of undead creatures called "ghost tide" by Korean scholars is the real existential crisis.

With Lee's Joseon's always weak armaments, the border army was completely annihilated in the blink of an eye. Originally, the two classes of nobles who had always respected Confucianism alone, looking at the spreading sea of skeletons and the resentful spirits that were attacking everywhere at night, were directly scared to death.

By the time they remembered that they had recruited the few monks in Korea and planned to use Buddhism to fight the ghost tide, even Seoul had already been reduced to a ghost domain.

However, the ancestral thigh-hugging skills of the kings of the Li Dynasty have not been wasted, and Li Qi immediately sent people to ask Qianlong for help. It's a pity that Emperor Qianlong has become the Duke of Qianlong Anle, when the Korean envoy touched the right door and came to Murong Yu to "cry Qin Ting", in exchange for only one more refugee transfer agency on Jeju Island, a large number of salt boats of the Haisha Gang, happily brought back the Korean refugees one by one.

Of course, it was inevitable that King Sejong would abolish the pane-like "Hangul" that King Sejong had pioneered, learn Chinese, and naturalize as a Han-Min. Oh, you don't need to change your Han surname, you are originally a descendant of Jizi, and everyone is a family.

It's just that in the later surname research, the surname Kim has two more branches, Kanto Kim and Goryeo Kim, which adds countless troubles to researchers.

King Li Qi, along with his whole family, has now been taken to Tianjin as a duke, and he happens to live opposite the door with Qianlong's ministers. As for "annihilating the ghosts and returning King Li to the dynasty", this problem is not in the plan of the Senior Administration Yuan for the time being.

The situation in East Asia is evolving rapidly, and those who are in the situation only feel that it is chaotic, and they only feel that it cannot be stopped for so many years. However, in the eyes of Macartney and his party, who had just set foot on this land, there was a sense of dizziness.

The mission convoy led by the Lion arrived on Hainan Island, where Qiongya Road was located.

Although the two Chinese priests who served as interpreters in the mission were not very good-looking, Count Macartney was pleased to arrange for the wounded soldiers to be treated in the maritime hospital under Lingao Yunguguan.

At this time, the British had long since separated the Anglican Church from the Catholic Church headed by the Vatican. The last threat of the Catholic Church in the eighteenth century was excommunication, but for the British, it was nothing short of painful. In the Xisha Coast Guard, there are several officers who can serve as translators, pass the primary examination of the general affairs department, and even obtain intermediate general affairs licenses.

To be honest, it is not certain that these two Chinese Catholic priests are still with them.

On the way back to their homeland, these two loyal Christians remembered the harsh criminal law during the Qianlong period, and desperately tanned themselves into a British military uniform, looking like a colonial native who joined the British army.

In the Xisha Coast Guard, Song Ning, the Taoist official in charge of registering the embassy, didn't bother to pay attention to the thoughts of the two priests who were preparing to become martyrs. With a stroke of his pen, he gave the two priests entry permits and temporary residence permits for the aboriginal soldiers of the British colonies.

As a seasoned diplomat, the Earl of Macartney, as George III's special envoy, had to be mindful of his identity and status, and his identity determined that he could not go to the people at will like the attachés to gather intelligence and information about the Eastern Empire.

However, compared to the unfortunate Dutch mission, the British were very satisfied with their courtesy. You know, the Dutch wanted to use the British fleet as bait to attract sharks, and this incident was remembered from Macartney to Staunton!

As soon as the Dutch mission arrived at Lingao, it was immediately informed that the Chinese imperial court was concerned about the Hongxi tragedy and organized a special inquiry meeting for this purpose. Mr. Isaac Tichinge and his deputy, Fan Bairan, will soon go to the inquiry to be investigated by the members of the inquiry meeting.

It's not so much a mission as a group of suspects awaiting trial.

The Saisha Coast Guard's fast sailing boats and well-trained naval officers and men make it clear that the new Chinese regime has some ideas about the Dutch's Asian colonies.

The only thing Macartney needs to consider is how the British colonial authorities will deal with this new empire that is trying to open up overseas colonies? You must know that in Dutch Batavia, the number of Chinese is much greater than that of European colonizers, and it is only a matter of time before Dutch Batavia becomes an overseas province of China!

Unlike the high-profile envoys, Staunton, as the deputy envoy, and Barrow, the general manager, had enough time to start their journey of gathering intelligence.

During the pre-Qing Dynasty, except for a few envoys, it was taboo for foreigners to set foot on Chinese soil.

Li Shiyao, the former governor of Shaanxi and Gansu in the Qing Dynasty, who now calls himself a "Qing Chan layman," strictly forbade foreign merchants to trade directly with the people when he was governor of Liangguang, and even foreign merchants learning Chinese was regarded by him as a heinous crime and banned together.

However, at this moment, Staunton and Barrow, who were waiting for the Lion and Hindustan to be repaired, could walk out into the street on their own. Of course, the pacification envoy of Qiongya Road specially assigned them a general secretary and two guards, so that these guys would not run around and be kidnapped by Li Min in Hainan.

In the later memoirs of Staunton, a botanist, he did not write much about this short time in Qiongya Road, but the general affairs manager Barrow, a third-rate writer who later called himself a "China expert" and a "sinologist", wrote a big book in his "Sir Barrow's Travels in China":

Perhaps it is possible to establish an immutable law: the social status of women in a country can judge the level of civilization that a country has reached.

Women's habits and emotions have an important impact on the societies in which they live. A country that attaches great importance to women's morality and intelligence must have a civilized system and good customs. However, if a country has serious gender discrimination, it will inevitably bring darkness and suffering to its citizens.

On our happy island, only under Queen Elizabeth is given the respect they deserve. But in addition to Her Majesty's rule, women were also subjected to rough treatment. In Wales, women are bought and sold to men at will. In Scotland, women cannot testify in court. During the reign of Henry VIII, women and apprentices were forbidden to read the English version of the New Moon.

Among the cultivated Greeks, women were also not respected, and Homer belittled all the women who appeared in his pen. Herodotus praised the Babylonians in appreciating how they auctioned off talented slave girls.

In the era of Tatar rule, the Chinese learned the customs of the barbarians and insulted women more than the ancient Greeks or medieval Europeans. They wrapped women's feet in cloth to keep them from facing the society. It would be considered shameful for a woman to show her head.

In China, women are not allowed to be educated in schools, nor can they use their human nature to participate in commendable work. As a result, their emotions and talents can only be enclosed in a small space where time has stopped, and smoking, embroidery, and boring religious books have become all the pleasures of Chinese women.

This situation was extremely annoying to the officials of the new court, especially the vice of "foot binding", which deprived the country of almost half of its labor force.

Women who have broken their foot bones due to foot binding are unable to take on more work. And as far as we can see, in several southern provinces, there are adult women, with their deformed feet, working diligently.

Although the new court soon banned this barbaric custom, a deep-rooted idea arose among the people. They believe that in a decent, status-based family, if girls are not bound to their feet, it means that there is a lack of moral restraint in the family. It's as if their morality is completely pinned on women's feet.

In order to maintain their sense of moral superiority, there are still many families who secretly bind women's feet, many of them are squires and merchants, and even when they get married, whether the bride is wrapped in a pair of small feet is regarded as a symbol of honor and chastity.

However, the officials of the new court soon used a creative method to fight back more forcefully against these old gentlemen.

In the southern Chinese province of Guangzhou, the big men who created the new imperial court appointed a form of punishment with a great sense of humor. And as the new court continued to expand its territory, it gradually spread to the whole country.

As a religious leader, the great man ordered his clergy to patrol each parish and bring charges against those who dared to torture women in this way.

They would then face torture that had never been done on men.

During the few days that the mission stayed on Qiongya Road, I had the privilege of witnessing such a punishment once.

The prisoner was a respected squire of Lingao who had attained the degree of "Xiucai" in the Tatar court, a rare feat on the southern island. Because of this, he was regarded by the local population as a model of morality and learning.

As a result, the talented man had a strong sense of morality, not only calling the officials of the new court traitors from merchants and thieves, but also calling the clergy responsible for saving women from barbaric customs as immoral, merry-seeking bastards.

As a result, this loyal former court's citizen accepted a fair trial from the new court. In addition to defamation, he and the men in his family were the first to be dealt with in the crime of "foot binding".

They were taken out into the square, their boots off, and then the sophisticated woman took out long strips of white cloth, pressed their toes together, and then wrapped their whole feet and bent them vigorously into an arch.

This was the time of Tatar rule, which was used to restrain women's foot binding, and now this custom is being fed back to men who indulge in this unhealthy hobby. This is a punishment and a mockery, and it seems to mean that the old customs are about to be wiped out from the country, and it is not yet known whether new customs will come.