Not to mention the slander of the shopkeepers, Zhao Dagui invited everyone to the best restaurant in the magic capital that night, and gave out the bonus from some time ago, so that everyone took a full plate, and finally raised the morale of Dagui Commercial Bank again.

The next day, Zhao Dagui held another all-staff meeting to lay out the future development direction of Dagui Commercial Bank.

"From today onwards, the first task of our Dagui firm is to buy land, buy land, buy land, and other things can be put aside first.

From the north of the county to the pidgin, then to the Wusong River, and then to its north bank, the land in these places has to be purchased, and the land of the three rivers on this side, as well as the barren beach along the riverbank, is the most important place. ”

Zhao Dagui took out the map of Modu County made by the British during this time and explained it in detail to the shopkeepers.

The vast majority of people know that the British, French, and American concessions are not in the county seat, but in the suburbs of the Bund outside the county seat, but nothing more than that, and they do not know any specific details about where the earliest concessions were and how they developed.

In order to let book lovers better understand Zhao Dagui's layout, it is also necessary to briefly describe the location of the concession in the county seat of Modu.

Let's start with the most important geographical coordinates, the Huangpu River.

In general, the Huangpu River is a river from west to east, more precisely, from southwest to northeast, with a narrow area of more than 300 meters and a width of about 700 meters, which is not a small medium-sized river.

According to its direction, the Huangpu River runs from west to east in the upper reaches, then almost vertically from south to north in the middle reaches, and then changes to west to east in the lower reaches.

The county seat of Modu is in the middle reaches of the Huangpu River, which runs from the north to the south on the west side of the river, so the east wall of the county is almost parallel to the Huangpu River.

According to this layout, it can be understood that the county seat of Modu and the part to the north are on the west side of the Huangpu River, which is the so-called Puxi, and on the east side of the Huangpu River is a large amount of farmland, that is, Pudong, and the Sanlipu Village where Zhao Dagui's original owner is located is in Pudong.

At the north gate of Modu County, there is a small river in the east-west direction, which is almost parallel to the north wall of the county, and then flows into the Huangpu River, which is the famous pidgin in later generations.

However, the pidgin is only a small river more than ten meters wide (or smaller than that?), and after the founding of New China, it was found to be in the way, and it was filled with soil to build roads, so it is not visible on modern maps.

Hundreds of meters up after crossing the pidgin, there is an east-west river, almost parallel to the pidgin, with a visual width of tens of meters to 100 meters (know the complaint: can this be visually inspected?), much smaller than the Huangpu River, but the famous Wusong River.

Because you can go straight to Suzhou by boat from this river, foreigners like to call this Wusong River Suzhou Creek, and it has been used by people in later generations, but there are not many people who know about Wusongjiang.

To the north of the Wusong River and west of the Huangpu River, is a piece of farmland and barren beach, known as Hongkou, many people do not know where this location is, but they have heard of the word "Hongkou".

The first concession of Western countries in the magic capital is, of course, the British concession.

At the earliest, when Puding found out about the Jiangning (Nanjing) negotiations and signed the Jiangning Treaty, he proposed to set aside a part of the land from the five trade ports for the British to live in (note that, it was not rented), but did not specify which plots of land they wanted;

Later, he went from Jiangning to the magic capital for actual investigation, and fell in love with the Huangpu River, Wusong River and Pidgin River Loop surrounded by three rivers.

This place, surrounded by three rivers, has convenient transportation, is easy to make docks and warehouses, and is within the range of British warships and artillery on the Huangpu River, which is very suitable from the perspective of business and from the perspective of protecting the safety of overseas Chinese.

It's just that Pudingcha still has a lot of trivial matters, but after reading it, he secretly knew it, and he didn't mention anything about this land to the Chinese officials, but after returning to Hong Kong, he described it in the official documents of the British themselves.

Later, Bafur was assigned by Pudingcha to take up his post in the magic capital, and at first lived in the county town of Modu, but secretly had the important task of obtaining the land obtained by Pudingcha and establishing a special residence belonging to the British.

From 1843 to November 1845, after a series of negotiations with Su Songtai, Bafu and Su Songtai Beidao Gong Mujiu pointed out that according to the Jiangning Treaty, the Chinese government had already agreed to provide land for the British to live in, forcing Gong Mujiu to provide land.

According to the negotiations between the two sides, the easternmost part of this first piece of land is the Huangpu River, the southernmost is Pidgin, the northernmost is Lijiachang, which is very close to the Wusong River, and the westernmost is Jielu (modern Henan Middle Road), which is a boxy rectangular plot with an area of about 830 acres.

The governor of Liangjiang and the important ministers of the imperial court had long been mentally prepared for the land to be given to the British to live in, and after Gong Mujiu reported the matter, he quickly approved it, allowing both parties to act in accordance with the agreed "Shanghai Land Regulations".

Gong Mujiu was a rare honest and conscientious Qing Dynasty official in this era, knowing that the provision of land was an inevitable matter in accordance with the Jiangning Treaty, and he could not stop it, so he made a final struggle, that is, the land in this area was only allowed to be leased by the British, and direct ownership was not allowed.

In other words, the British could not buy land directly, but could only obtain the right to use the land for 25 to 30 years with the original Chinese landlords, which is equivalent to only contracting for 25 to 30 years (a bit familiar?).

Gong Mujiu's approach to land lease rights was the first of its kind even in the Qing Dynasty, and Bafur could have demanded the real right to use it, but in the end he somehow compromised and agreed to do so.

Moreover, the price of renting land was not low; at the beginning, there were landlords renting it at the price of one or two taels of silver per mu of land per year, and 30 taels of silver for 30 Chinese New Year's Eve; within a few months, it became a high price of 10 taels a year and 300 taels per mu of land.

Considering that the original land here, even the finest Ueda sold for about ten taels of silver, Nakata eight taels, and Shimoda six taels, and considering that the land rented by the British was originally a barren beach land that could not be used as farmland, it was a high price from the perspective of this era.

Of course, the price of land in the concession was as high as 10,000 taels per mu, and it would not be until twenty or thirty years later, after the end of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in the seventies and eighties.

The important ministers of the imperial court originally thought that this land must be sold, but Gong Mujiu's business was doing well, and he was actually just renting it, so he felt very happy, and he had a lot of appreciation for Gong Mujiu, and soon promoted Gong Mujiu to other places.

From this point of view, it is actually unfair to think that Gong Mujiu signed some kind of traitorous agreement that made China enter the era of concessions: first, the provision of land was decided by the Jiangning Treaty and had nothing to do with Gong Mujiu; third, if Gong Mujiu did not interfere, these lands would have been directly purchased by the British, not rented.