Dominate the Country

Just when the Chen Han army in South America had already kicked off the counterattack, and when Chen Ming was meeting with the British and French envoys in the palace, a paddle steamer from Nagasaki, Japan, slowly docked at the port of Shanghai. Zuo Guanlan, the 37-year-old former Chen Han ambassador to Japan, walked down the ship, and Hu Dayuan, who had been waiting at the dock, hurried to greet him.

"Brother Zhiyun, you have had a hard time along the way!"

Hu Dayuan is one year younger than Zuo Guanlan. The Zuo and Hu families have been close friends for many years, and they were both successful candidates in the political science department of the Chen Han Dynasty. Three years ago, when Zuo Guanlan was the first ambassador to Japan, Hu Dayuan was the embassy counselor. The latter was not at the top of the list of candidates at the time, and was ranked after the top five. The reason why he could become the embassy counselor was inseparable from Zuo Guanlan's strong recommendation.

Of course, the reason why Hu Dayuan was able to succeed, and even the reason why Zuo Guanlan was able to sit on the ambassador to Japan at the age of 34, was inseparable from Tao Shu's influence.

The ancestors of the Zuo and Hu families, Tao Shu's grandfather Tao Xiaoxin, and Zeng's grandfather Zeng Yansheng, were all friends in need.

At that time, Chen Han rose up against the Qing Dynasty. Zuo Fengsheng of the Zuo family, that is, Zuo Guanlan's grandfather, followed Gong Zhaolin, the Minister of Hunan Tuanlian, to aid Hubei. As a result, he and Zeng Yansheng, a fellow villager from Changsha Prefecture, as well as Tao Xiaoxin, Hu Duoji and many others, were captured by the Fu Han Army in Wuchang City. At that time, the Fu Han Army still recruited "virtuous people". Zuo Fengsheng, Zeng Yansheng, Tao Xiaoxin and Hu Duoji had meritorious service [scholars] and were all wooed by the Fu Han Army. But at that time, Zeng, Zuo, Tao, Hu and others were very strong-willed and sternly argued, and then the four of them were thrown into the Funiu Mountain Mine.

Zeng, Zuo, Hu and Tao worked in the mine for two years, and then they were thrown to Nanyang to build roads, and then came to Shanghai to build artillery forts. Because they were all literate, they were promoted to clerks in the labor camps during their years of labor reform. When they were released, they were recommended for jobs because of their honest performance. Among them, Zuo Fengsheng and Hu Duoji were recommended to work as clerks in Jiangnan Shipyard.

With formal jobs, not low salaries, and cheap houses to buy, Zuo and Hu brought their wives and children to Shanghai and quietly took root in this strange city.

Zeng Yansheng of the Zeng family returned to his hometown in southern Hunan, and Tao Xiaoxin had the best luck and went to the old capital Lushan.

Of course, the reason for this is more because the Tao family rose the earliest. Tao Shu of the Tao family is two years younger than Zuo Guanlan, but his status is much higher than Zuo Guanlan, the ambassador to Japan. He serves beside the prince. He is a minister who the emperor found for his son to support the country. He is one of the brightest stars in Chen Han’s political arena.

It can be said that Zuo Guanlan and Hu Dayuan have benefited from Tao Shu. Even the Zeng family, who is far away in Xiangyin, Tao Shu did not forget to help. It's just that Zeng Zhuting of the Zeng family is not a great man. Whether the Zeng family can rise depends on the next generation.

Hu Dayuan's outstanding performance in Japan in the two years after he became the counselor of the Japanese embassy was also the biggest reason why he could become the deputy director of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at a young age. Therefore, Zuo Guanlan and Hu Dayuan have a deep relationship. In a sense, they and Tao Shu are a small political group.

The ancestors of the three people are all from Xiangnan, and they are all friends in need. What a good emotional foundation.

That night, in a small courtyard in Shanghai, Hu Dayuan welcomed Zuo Guanlan. This is Hu Dayuan's private residence in Shanghai. There are not many dishes on the banquet, but they are all exquisite, and they are all authentic Hunan dishes.

Although the two families have left Xiangnan for many years, their taste for food has not changed much, because when they were young, the older generation was still there.

Zuo Guanlan had been away from China for three years. The chef he brought to Japan was also found in Beijing. He was an expert in light Huaiyang cuisine, but not Hunan cuisine. Now he tasted the taste of his hometown, and he had a very pleasant meal.

After dinner, tea and fruit were served, and two singing girls invited by Hu Dayuan accompanied them to sing songs and drink. Zuo Guanlan suddenly realized that he had really returned to China.

He often drank and gathered with the dignitaries of the shogunate in Japan, but the white-faced and black-toothed makeup of the Japanese singing girls could scare him to death.

Due to the fatigue of the journey, Zuo Guanlan got up very late the next day. When he got up, Hu Dayuan had already gone to the city government. Hu Dayuan was a Beijing official. The reason why he was in Shanghai was that he was now negotiating with Vientiane, Siam and other countries in Shanghai. One was to completely finalize the boundary between Chen Han and the countries; the other was to completely finalize the territorial boundary between the countries in Central and South China.

There is no need to consume the power of the East in internal strife. It is better to go to India and East Africa to "forage for food". Siam is a staunch supporter of Chen Han's view.

Zuo Guanlan got up near noon. After lunch, he told the steward who came to serve him that he wanted to go around Shanghai and visit his old friends living in the concession. After leaving the position of ambassador to Japan, he had a month to deal with miscellaneous affairs. As long as he reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the deadline, it would be ok.

The steward hurriedly asked someone to prepare a car.

The standard of this carriage is not worse than the embassy's car, and because it is summer, people in Shanghai are already wearing light clothes at this time. The interior of the car is mostly cool and smooth bamboo rattan and yarn.

The windows are inlaid with glass, covered with green screen frames, and there are thin bamboo curtains for sunshade. In addition to the two rows of chairs facing each other, there is also a foldable coffee table. There are also multiple hidden cabinets on the walls of the car, which contain tea, fruit juice, coffee, cocoa and other drinks, as well as kettles and ice pots, one cold and one hot. Although they cannot keep warm for a long time.

The carriage went out of the Hu family gate and went straight to the main road. The road is wide and flat. People and horses drive on the right, and the wide official road is divided into pedestrian and vehicle lanes.

The weather is very good today. Although the sun is scorching, workers, merchants, people going to work, or walking and pushing carts and carrying loads are coming and going in an endless stream. The bustle of Shanghai city is even better than three years ago. Although Edo in Japan is known as "Little Shanghai", in fact, its level can only be called Shanghai Grandpa at most.

The car drove all the way to the Nanping training base in Shanghai. Shanghai is rich and has more land space than Nanjing. Since the higher authorities issued a notice on military training for young and strong people, Shanghai has built three large training bases on its own.

This Nanping training base is specially for students.

Zuo Guanlan took a carriage and entered the base directly. He saw a group of students lying on the lawn. In another carriage that entered the base almost at the same time as him, the words "sheltered" were fluttering in the wind on the flag that the front of the carriage brushed against.

Zuo Guanlan watched six students get off the carriage dejectedly, and then a soldier loudly scolded the students in this class, who should all be high school students.

After a severe scolding, the instructor announced the punishment measures. The lunch break of the students in this class was cancelled today.

After everyone had dinner on the playground, they immediately entered the punishment stage and accepted the punishment.

The lawn seemed very spacious. Now the lawn was full of students from Xuhui No. 1 High School. Some were sitting, some were lying, some were kneeling, but no one was standing. When the logistics truck came to the lawn with barrels of rice, side dishes, and seaweed soup, these students stood up one by one with great difficulty, as if they were braving a hail of bullets. Their bones were about to fall apart.

But when several logistics cooks wearing white aprons served the students with rice, these students, whose bones were already falling apart, did not even have time to say thank you, and took the plates and lowered their heads to eat. Seeing them gobbling so voraciously, Zuo Guanlan on the side couldn't help swallowing his saliva.

"Sir, these are students from Xuhui No. 1 High School. They just did a 20-mile long-distance run." The whole military training is called 20-mile cross-country, but it is more difficult to do 20-mile cross-country in Shanghai. And 20-mile long-distance running is already very deadly for a group of students.

"Go get me a meal."

Zuo Guanlan waved his hand to let his entourage get the meal. As far as he knew, the food, clothing, housing and transportation during the military training were all provided by the government. Zuo Guanlan didn't know what Chen Han's military training meals were like. Although his brain told him that they would not be worse than those in Japan, he also wanted to see it with his own eyes.

The Japanese military training meals were rice, miso soup, natto, fish pieces and green vegetables, and the lower classes were generally satisfied. And what about Chen Han's?

You should know that the Japanese have not eaten meat for hundreds of years [except fish]. A meal with a piece of fish is already very rich in the eyes of many Japanese, but the food culture of China is extraordinary. The special historical background has forged the weird food culture of the Japanese, allowing the Tokugawa government of Japan to win the recognition of the whole of Japan with a not very high expenditure. But what about China at this stage? Living conditions have improved in recent years, and many Chinese people are meat lovers, especially these students.

The consumption of meat and poultry in China as a whole is extremely large. Not to mention beef, mutton and pork, even whale meat is often in short supply.

So if the military training meals are bad, it will make many parents dissatisfied. Moreover, the military training meals are provided by the government. If the military training meals are not good, is it because the government is "incapable" of supporting them?

Zuo Guanlan's next post is most likely to be in Europe. Before that, he needs to truly understand the power of the Chinese government as much as possible. He has never heard of China's financial problems in Japan...

The food in the base is really good. There are steamed buns and white rice, as well as radish, green vegetables, tofu, kelp, fried salted fish, taro fried meat, as well as potatoes, chicken nuggets and dried fish, plus seaweed and egg soup. Each person can choose the staple food, two meat, two vegetables and one soup, which is much better than the military training meals in Japan. Zuo Guanlan did not feel hungry, but he still ate his lunch cleanly without leaving a single drop, not even a grain of rice.

Such food is better than what he ate when he was a child. You know, his grandfather and father are old employees of Jiangnan Shipyard, and the family income is good, but before he went to college and received the living allowance from the school, he did not have this standard of living.

But this is not the key to Zuo Guanlan's smile. The abundance of military training meals makes him see the stability of the domestic situation and the abundance of domestic materials from a certain perspective.

But Japan is different. Japan's military training meals seem to be good, and compared with the food of Japanese civilians, it is indeed OK, but in fact, this kind of consumption is very low, and the number of Japanese students only accounts for about 30% of the children of school age. In addition, there is a population gap between China and Japan. In this regard, Japan cannot compare with Chen Han.

Although there are news of material shortages on the battlefield in America from time to time, at least the materials in this country are positively abundant.

Zuo Guanlan's position and the knowledge he could access told him a truth. When the domestic situation was stable and the domestic commodity prices were stable, the wars abroad, whether they won or lost, were just superficial for Chen Han himself.

Think about the Japanese investment in this war. They sent more than 10,000 navy and army to the American battlefield, and then sent more than 10,000 infantry and cavalry to the Russian battlefield. Although most of the troops have not yet been fully operational, this is enough for the Japanese government to Alexander.

So much so that Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Siam and other countries began to share part of the military expenses for Japan, but later part of the merits gained by the Japanese army on the battlefield will also become the credit of these three countries.

The time has come to April 1815 in the Western calendar. The Hague Conference in Europe has been opened. On April 2, the European Union was officially established. The British and French envoys who were to be entertained by Chen Han's Ministry of Foreign Affairs received this news as early as March 20.

The European Union obviously hopes that China can take the initiative to cease fire, and they can even recognize China's existing control line. Under the current situation, it is clear who is taking advantage and who is losing. The Americans have already spit out all the territory they occupied before. Chen Han's focus on the American war was on North America from the beginning. Yes, they have taken a lot of land in South America, but don't forget Russia. Why not take back the original North Caucasus region? There is also the Volga River Basin.

If there is a ceasefire now, the Europeans will suffer a lot based on the actual control line of both sides.

But London and Paris are willing to cease fire immediately because they have no confidence in defeating China. This explosive counterattack is more to disrupt China's rhythm, and at the same time show their own strength, so that Nanjing knows that Obama can't be easily dealt with.

But Chen Ming would not be willing to do that. Passing the throne to the next generation during the war is a big mistake if it is a stormy season, but Chen Han is politically stable and has a solid foundation for social rule, so the role of the war will have the opposite intention. This will make it easier for Chen Ding to unite more domestic and more political forces.

At this time last year, the Europeans caught Chen Ming off guard. It took Chen Ming a year to completely resolve the European surprise attack with his own strong strength. How could he end the war immediately?

Chen Han's system has been fully mobilized, and his fists full of strength are about to swing out to hit people. It would be strange if Chen Ming was willing to stop fighting at this time.

As for the "mediation" proposed by Britain and France on behalf of the European Union, Chen Ming sneered. He didn't believe that no one in Europe knew about Chen Han's situation? He didn't believe that London and Paris would not know how huge the force Chen Han mobilized this time was.

This battle is to knock the Europeans' hearts and minds with one stick, so that they understand that even if the whole of Europe is gathered together, their strength is not as good as that of China.

Although this can only be short-term, Europeans will not really admit defeat to China, but after this battle, Europe will gather the confidence to challenge China again, which should be the second industrial revolution.

That was a leap forward in the development of the earth's society, and it was Europe's best opportunity. However, the second industrial revolution occurred in the mid-19th century, or more accurately in the late 1860s, and it is still fifty years from now.

Chen Ming didn't dare to guarantee that history wouldn't change drastically. Continuous wars might stimulate the development of the earth's science and technology at a faster pace. But no matter what, this would not happen to Chen Ming.

He knew that he would stand his last shift, then wander around the northwest and step on the Europeans...

He would have no regrets in his life.