On November 11, 1843, not long after Bafur and others settled in Yao's house, Zhao Dagui decided to go to Yao's house and visit Bafu and others.

Having said that, Zhao Dagui found that he had made a lot of mistakes, originally he thought that the British Consulate would inevitably fall in the Gu family compound in Yao's alley, but he didn't expect a Yao master to appear in the middle, cut off his beard in the middle, and brought Bafur and others to his home.

Zhao Dagui looked through a lot of information, only to find that he did not look carefully at the historical materials, the British Consulate was indeed set up in Yao's house at the earliest, and a few months later, around February 1844, he would move to Gu's house.

If he had realized this, Zhao Dagui would not have rented a house next to the Gu family's compound, but went directly to the Yao family, but unfortunately regretted it a little late now.

Fortunately, the county seat of Modu is not big, and the Yao family and the Gu family are not very far away, which does not prevent Zhao Dagui from getting close to the British consul.

For this visit, Zhao Dagui also made preparations in advance.

The first thing to do is to find a shaver and shave your head.

In our Qing Dynasty, it was important to shave the head without shaving the hair, and every adult man had to keep an extremely long whip on the back of his head, but women were freer.

In addition to this long braid hairstyle, the only thing that can be accepted is to shave your head, as long as you tell people that you have a head disease and can't keep long hair, you can pass this level.

Zhao Dagui shaved all his hair and wore a melon skin hat on it, feeling that this image was ridiculous, but it was much better than having long braids.

Then, naturally, I found a ready-to-wear shop, bought a better set of clothes, a robe made of silk, decent cloth shoes, a jade pendant around my waist, a wrench on my hand, and the clothes and pants inside should also be exquisite, and it actually cost a hundred taels of silver.

In the Qing Dynasty, prices were not expensive, and if you just wore them on weekdays, you could buy a suitable set of clothes for two or three taels of silver, but if you want to do big business and give people a feeling of money, decency, and integrity, you have to have such a set of formal clothes.

Zhao Dagui sold the secret recipe for refining sugar to get five hundred taels of silver, of which two hundred taels were sacrificed to his own library, a deposit of one hundred taels for renting a house, thirty taels for house rent, fifty taels for the three brothers' bedding, clothes, iron pots, and hired cooks, plus one hundred taels for this set of business suits, four hundred and eighty taels before and after, and less than twenty taels of silver were left on hand, which made Lord Zhao roar in his heart for a while, this money is really unspent.

Zhao Xiaohu and Zhao Xiaomei are young, and they never ask about the family's money, as long as they cook three times, if they change anyone's family, Zhao Dagui will be scolded to death.

However, Zhao Dagui's plan was very big, he got up early on the morning of November 11, spent five taels of silver to buy four-color pastries and rare melons and fruits, and went straight to Yao's house.

At this time, the county seat of Modu was only a small county town, well, even in a few decades, it was only a small county town during the Republic of China, and the real development was the concession area outside the city.

In 1832, the British armed merchant ship Amsterdam visited the Magic Capital, which made this place enter the British field of vision for the first time;

Then, during the Opium War, the magic capital was ravaged by war, and the Battle of Wusong was still a famous battle written in history textbooks.

It was the middle of November 1843, and the year before, in June 1842, when the Opium War was in full swing, the British sent more than 30 warships to the Wusong Fort at the mouth of the Huangpu River.

At that time, there were two steam warships, one of which was the "Nemesis" and the other was the "Madusa", which was the Western steamship that Bafur took to the magic capital and was moored outside the city.

Here again, the Medosa itself is a warship, but after the war, it was found that it was seriously damaged and aged, and could no longer be used as a warship, and was later decommissioned and sold directly to a British trading house as a merchant ship, so the identity of the Medosaa is now a merchant ship, not a warship.

The Battle of Wusong was fought quite hard, the Qing army fought hard in the lower reaches of the Huangpu River outside the city of Modu County, and the British suffered dozens of soldiers (one said hundreds), and later commented that this battle was the fiercest resistance of the Qing army during the entire war.

However, in this battle, the Qing garrison Chen Huacheng and his 88 subordinates all died heroically, the Wusong Fort was destroyed, and the county town of Modu was also occupied by the British army.

Then, the British army attacked the county seat of Modu in two ways, and the Qing army defending the city fled, so that the British army easily occupied the county seat of Modu on June 19, occupied the Yamen of Susong Taidao Daotai and the Yamen of Zhixian County, and finally set up a headquarters in the City God Temple.

After that, the British army plundered the local area and extorted 500,000 yuan from the local gentry for ransom, and then left the magic capital on June 23, 1842, and went straight to Nanjing, and finally forced the Qing government to sign the "Treaty of Nanjing" on August 29.

Because he knew this history and knew the bad relationship between the magic capital and the British, Zhao Dagui later couldn't understand how the people of the magic capital could be so curious after Bafour and other British arrived in the magic capital, and even gave birth to the idea of spending money to see foreigners, this nerve was coarse to a certain extent.

After the British established themselves in the Magic Capital, many foreigners who lived here said that the Magic City people were quite friendly to foreigners, and they rarely bullied outsiders in business.

In Guangdong and Fujian, the people may not be so easy to speak, and many civil armed forces and gangs are hostile to foreigners, so that during this period, Westerners described the people in these two provinces with many comments that "the people are fierce and often gang up to make trouble for profit", and only the comments on the people of the Modu include comments such as "the people of the Modu are docile and modest, and they are friendly to foreigners".

All in all, it's a bad debt.

All the way to the Yao family compound, at the door was stopped by the gatekeeper guarding the gate, and when I asked the surname Wang, it turned out to be the legendary old Wang.

Lao Wang pulled the well-dressed Lao Zhao and talked for a long time, saying that he had to pay 200 yuan before he could go in to see the foreigners.

The British consulate just moved over, and Zhao Dagui didn't know that there was money to see the foreigners' business here, and felt that it was a little inexplicable for a huge British consulate to hire Chinese to collect money from visitors, but he didn't bargain, and directly took out twenty copper plates and handed them to Lao Wang.

Lao Wang accepted the money before letting him in, and told him all the way: "Master Zhao, it's okay for you to go in and see the foreigners, don't make any loud noise, alarm the foreigners, and don't touch the foreigners."

Just yesterday, there was an old man Zhang who couldn't enjoy it, and he reached out to touch the knee of the foreigner leader, which made the foreigner very unhappy, and he almost fought on the spot.

The two of them can remember, they only look and don't speak, and they can't touch people. ”

Ah, there is also this new thing, Zhao Dagui finally understood something, and couldn't help twitching the corners of his mouth, saying in his heart Do you know that this Bafur was originally an artillery captain, and he is quite capable of fighting, and he didn't pull out his gun on the spot.

At this time, there was nothing to say, so I could only follow Lao Wang all the way.

The courtyard of the Yao family is actually quite large, but the Yao family itself lives here, and then rents half of it to the British, which makes it seem that this place is cramped and inconvenient, so it is not difficult to understand why the British finally moved out of this place and went to Yao's alley in the west of Dadongmen to find a separate courtyard to live in.

Taking advantage of the gap in this road, Zhao Dagui also sorted out the stories before and after the opening of the magic capital in his heart, and at the same time organized the remarks after meeting the British consul.

Generally speaking, the British knew something about the magic capital through the report of the Amsterd, which came to China in 1832.

In 1832, the British merchant ship Amsterd disobeyed the instructions of the Qing court officials and forced its way into the magic capital for investigation.

“... The benefits of free trade in this region for foreigners, especially the British, are incalculable... It's strange that [this place] hasn't attracted much attention in the past... The special superiority of this region in terms of foreign trade..."

According to the report of the British officials of the Amsterd, when they entered the magic capital to meet with Qing officials, the Qing officials said that the local residents might be hostile to the British and feared that they would do something to the British, so they asked the British not to walk around the streets for their own safety.