Dominate the Country

In Zhangjiakou, in the heavy snow, a tram pulled by a group of draft horses drove into the station.

Tsebokdorji, wrapped in a bearskin coat, got off the carriage accompanied by a blond Russian.

Chen Han not only had a cabinet change, but also a military parade. The news was quickly reported to the governor of the Amur River by Muravyov, the Russian ambassador to Nanjing. Then Tsebokdorji became a Russian envoy, and the young man next to him was the deputy envoy, leading the team to Nanjing.

Chen Ming was very pleased to receive the news. Tsebokdorji was a representative. The fact that the Russians could use him as the chief envoy of the mission showed the current status of the Torghut people in Russia and the trust of St. Petersburg in the Torghut people.

They came here to watch Chen Han's military parade openly.

Soldiers are the most important weapons of a country. The military parade was grand and magnificent.

The scenery can be seen to judge the national conditions.

The Russians are unwilling to give up this opportunity.

…

After not seeing each other for a few years, Zhangjiakou has become more prosperous, with busy traffic and people. In Tsebokdorji's eyes, this Zhangjiakou city is definitely a big city in Russia. But in China, when it comes to cities, it seems that no one will put Zhangjiakou in the first place?

Tsebokdorji's face is gloomy, but he is happy in his heart.

The stronger China is, the more rewards the Torghut tribe will get in the future. Maybe they will really have an independent country one day.

Yevgeny Viktorovich Plushenko, the Russian deputy envoy, is an intelligence officer and is more meticulous in observation. He rode on a docile Mongolian horse and slowly walked out of the city management corridor facing south in Zhangjiakou.

From Zhangjiakou to Tongzhou, the Russian delegation of more than 50 people was escorted by a team of Wehrmacht cavalry and traveled fast all the way.

The Chinese did not look at them very strictly, because China and Russia had been trading for many years. During these years, Chinese people entered Moscow, and Russians also went to Jiangnan. There are a lot of Chinese materials in the office of the Governor's District along the Amur River.

However, as he rushed to Tongzhou, Yevgeny felt that the scene he saw was much more vivid than a simple text description.

On the flat land, there were dense villages and dense houses, and the density of the population made people palpitate. There were neat poplar trees on both sides of the road, and flat land. Looking at it, you can't see the end, but it's all farmland. This made him think of the Ukrainian plains.

When Yevgeny took a boat from Tongzhou, where prosperity faded, to Tianjin, which was booming, Yevgeny and Tsebekdorji saw the prosperity of Tianjin, but what attracted their attention more was the bustling south of Tianjin. Countless people holding various tools, braving the cold sea breeze, were busy in the bumpy puddles and swamps in the south of Tianjin, as if they were adding padding soil. At the same time, road construction and housing were also carried out.

The area of ​​the south of Tianjin is not small, but in addition to puddles and marshes, there were also rivers in the south of the city. The Chinese did not fill up all the low-lying areas, and some waterways and potholes are still being widened and excavated.

The temperature this year is not too cold.

The temperature in Zhangjiakou is obviously quite cold, but Tianjin, hundreds of miles away, is quite different.

Of course, the temperature in Tianjin has also dropped below zero, but the governance project in the south of Tianjin has already started at the turn of spring and summer this year. Now the workers here no longer need to jump into the water and mud to endure the cold and work hard.

All they need is to level the bottom of the potholes that have been filled and have a foundation, and then build roads, houses, and plan construction.

The entire governance project in the south of Tianjin has invested more than 10,000 workers, including five labor camps, and the rest are strong laborers recruited from near Tianjin. The entire project has cost more than 30 million yuan so far, and Tianjin has also invested tens of thousands of stones of grain, and a certain amount of fish, meat, vegetables and fruits.

There was no other way. Rapid urban development forced Tianjin to expand to the vast and desolate south of the city. The governance project in the south of the city was not only invested by the Tianjin government, but also by the northern Zhili provincial government and Tianjin merchants and people.

The latter paid money to raise funds, and in return, the Tianjin government gave merchants the right to purchase commercial land in the south of the city first, and gave people the preferential treatment to purchase farmland in the south of the city first.

Tianjin can grow rice. The south of the city has many waterways and sufficient water resources. If it can be developed well, not to mention commercial land, the farmland will definitely be first-class fertile land.

The whole plan is simply a classic example of "drawing empty cakes".

The Tianjin government drew the land in the south of the city into a map, attached the urban construction plan map, where is the commercial land, where is the residential land, where is the farmland and pond, and then let the merchants and people who paid money pre-purchase.

Even if their appetite is big? Want to become a big "landlord" in one fell swoop. Tianjin government doesn't care.

As long as you can pay, even a beggar has the "qualification".

But when the time comes to collect the debts in the future, if you can't pay the money, this "qualification" will be invalid. At that time, the only way for merchants and people to recover their losses is to resell the "qualification" to others. Perhaps this is the intention of some small merchants and ordinary people to actively participate in such projects.

Just like the land bonds, some people compare the "fund-raising behavior" of Tianjin Prefecture to the land bonds. But after the matter was reported to Chen Ming, in his opinion as a time traveler, Tianjin Prefecture's actions were more like fundraising!

But no matter what, with the full support of Xiao Lou, the left councilor of the Northern Zhili Provincial Government, Tianjin Prefecture raised more than 40 million yuan in one fell swoop, which caused a huge sensation in the Chinese officialdom. The impact was so great that Chen Ming had to consider the harmfulness of this matter if it became rampant, and added a bit to this phenomenon. Because in the past life, there were too many unfinished projects after the local government of the rabbit messed up the fundraising. But no matter what, Tianjin Prefecture got a bite of peach, and cooperated with the five labor camps sent by the superiors to open the prelude to the transformation project of Tianjin South City.

It has been half a year now, and the entire project construction has begun to show results. Roads have been built on large tracts of land, and many businesses can't wait to build houses and buildings on the land they paid "advance payments".

There was no other way. In the ten years since Chen Han came to power, the population of Tianjin had doubled from more than 100,000 to more than 400,000. The crowded population needed a larger and more spacious urban living area, so Tianjin could only ask for land from the large puddles and low-lying areas in the south of the city.

When they learned that the labor force for the entire project had reached 10,000 people and the cost had reached more than 30 million yuan, Tsebokdorji and Yevgeny, as well as everyone in the entire Russian delegation, were all silent.

How to say it, their self-esteem was hurt. Such a huge project, a prosperous city in China could actually afford it "alone", and this abundant financial resources made people lose their fighting spirit.

If this were placed in Russia, more than 30 million yuan would be equivalent to a quarter of Russia's annual treasury income. The huge and poor Russia, after conversion, has an annual treasury income of less than 5 million pounds.

In order to make as much money as possible, the Russians even used rhubarb as much as possible instead of using it for themselves, and used it for export.

In the border trade in Kyakhta, the rhubarb exported from China is worth 20 rubles per pood [about 37 catties]. When the Russians transport it to Western Europe, they sell it at an average high price of 200 rubles. This is a tenfold profit.

And because of the medicinal properties and the growing environment, the best rhubarb is produced in the northwest and north. The pharmacists sent by the Russians are specifically responsible for checking the quality of rhubarb, thus ensuring the quality of rhubarb. Therefore, the Russian caravans departing from Kyakhta and other land ports not only take less time than the British and French ships departing from Guangzhou, but are also safer and the quality of the medicinal materials is better. The climate along the Russian land trade route is more conducive to the preservation of medicinal properties.

Last year, Russia consumed 680 poods itself, and re-exported as much as 1,055 poods. Because all rhubarb transactions are in the hands of the Russian government, this item alone earned 150,000 rubles for the Russian treasury.

The high economic benefits have directly raised the importance of rhubarb to a strategic level in Russia. The Russians are very eager and even unscrupulous to get rhubarb seeds. For this reason, they have offered a high price of one hundred pounds per pound. This also led to them being fooled by some illegal Chinese businessmen, and some even used mustard seeds to deceive Russians.

But rhubarb seeds eventually flowed into Europeans.

It’s just that the best rhubarb with the best medicinal quality has always been produced in northwest China, while rhubarb, which is obviously a medicinal material, was brought to the table by the British in Europe. The red petioles of rhubarb were cut into small pieces by the sweet-loving British and stewed with sugar until soft. Sometimes ginger or cinnamon was added. The stewed rhubarb can be mixed with other fruits to make sauce. The more common practice is to treat it directly as a fruit, use it in sweets such as pies and pastries, or eat it raw with toffee.

But this is all later.

At this time, Europeans have just got rhubarb.

The ruble of this era is still quite valuable. You know, the annual tariff for the whole of Russia is only 1.2 million rubles. Among these, the Sino-Russian trade, the land ports provided half of the income for the Russians. [In 1775, the Kyakhta trade paid a tariff of 453,000 rubles, accounting for 38.5% of the total Russian tariff. By 1800, the Kyakhta trade contributed 715,000 rubles of tariffs to Russia. Don't think it's exaggerated. ]

Russia's normal fiscal revenue and various privileged trades, such as fur, tea, etc., Russia's total annual fiscal revenue is less than 5 million pounds, which is about 150 million yuan in Chinese yuan if converted into Chinese yuan. A renovation project in the south of Tianjin has invested more than 30 million yuan, accounting for more than one-fifth of Russia's annual fiscal revenue.

Yepgeny was really scared.

Although he knew that this was a joint venture between the local government and the merchants, citizens, and farmers in the entire city of Tianjin, and that Tianjin was a famous big city in China, Yepgeny also wet his crotch.

He didn't know if the great Queen Catherine II could gather a fortune of more than one million pounds in one fell swoop if St. Peter played this kind of joint venture. This is really amazing.

Wealth is also a reflection of a country's strength.

Thinking of the intelligence that Muravyov sent to Nerchinsk together, if the Chinese fiscal tax this year can reach the expected level, tens of millions of pounds, what an unimaginable figure it will be.

If there is another war between China and Russia, China does not need to send troops at all, and can crush the entire Russia with money.

The reconstruction project of the southern part of Tianjin is a huge project for Russia, but for China, whose tax may be more than 20 Russians tied together, it is only one percent of theirs.

What does it matter if a prosperous city continues to run on the road of rapid development if it spends one percent of the country's annual fiscal budget?

And when they sailed south along the Grand Canal from Tianjin, the entire Russian delegation felt the power of China's rapid recovery.

This is really a golden waterway. The cities on both sides of the river dazzled everyone.

Tsebokdorji could swear to the Buddha he believed in that what he saw now was really different from what he saw when he went south.

At that time, both sides of the Grand Canal suffered heavy trauma from the war. Although they recovered in a short period of time, they could not completely remove the scars of the war.

And now, after all these years, the cities on both sides of the canal have a new look, and there are still the "scars" of the past.

At present, when there has been no revolutionary change in transportation, the Grand Canal is still an important lifeline for China to communicate between the north and the south. The prosperity and development of shipping may have taken away some of the functions of the Grand Canal, but the Grand Canal is inland, and its radiation area runs through Jiangnan, Huanghuai and North China.

A Grand Canal connects so many water systems flowing east and west. It is not just a line, but a big tree with luxuriant branches and leaves. Countless rivers are the branches and leaves of this big tree.

So the Grand Canal is still awesome.

Before trains and railways appeared and spread across the country, the Grand Canal would not be attached to the "altar".

In this era, whether it is a Chinese mission to Europe or a European mission to China, they can be regarded as "spies".

The same is true for Cebekdorji's trip.

They collect all the intelligence and details they see and hear along the way. Going back to organize and file is also one of Yepgeni's jobs.

Therefore, Yepgeni appeared very humble and did not hesitate to ask questions in the eyes of the accompanying personnel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the whole canal sailing, Yepgeni could often be seen holding the hands of Chen Han officials, pointing east and west, and constantly asking: "Excuse me, sir, what is your country doing?"

So there was no need for Cebekdorji to say hello, and Yepgeni's importance was seen by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The further south you go, the warmer the climate.

When the Russian delegation arrived in Yangzhou on the Yangtze River, I don't know how many people envied the Chinese land. Compared with Russia, where snow and wind blow for more than half of the days of the year, this place is heaven.

The news that the Chinese army is replacing its weapons is not kept secret, and it is impossible to keep it secret. If the weapons can be kept secret, it can only rely on the "blindness" of its opponents.

For example, in the 1866 Prussian-Austrian War in the original time and space, the old Minié rifle suffered a heavy defeat on the battlefield. In the infantry firepower confrontation, the Prussian army's breech-loading Dreyse rifle easily defeated the Austrian army's muzzle-loading Minié rifle, which was already old and decrepit, thus officially entering the era of breech-loading rifles in the European military.

If the Prussian general who was extremely hostile to breech-loading rifles really went to heaven, he would definitely think that his last words were ridiculous after seeing this scene - he would not rest in peace if he fired a burst of gunshots with a muzzle-loading smoothbore rifle on his grave.

Countless Prussian soldiers would be very grateful to him and say that it was fortunate that he died early, otherwise they would die with regret.

And the Swiss general who compared the breech-loading rifle to a musket would forever become a laughing stock.

Europeans already knew that China had a new type of musket, which could be fired in rainy days and had a higher ignition rate.

They even knew the term "percussion cap", but they just couldn't figure out how the percussion cap was made.

This kind of "percussion cap" was not only wanted by the Russians, but also by the British, French, and Swedes. But they didn't succeed yet.

According to the observations of Cebekdorji and Yepgeni, the muskets in the hands of the cavalry escorting them along the way were percussion cap guns, but the Chinese were very cautious about this new weapon.

At the end of the year, Gao Yanming finally returned to his motherland after many years away.

After eight or nine years away, the young man in his twenties at the time has now become a steady middle-aged man.

Gao Yanming brought back two treaties for Chen Ming. The Sino-Spanish "Madrid Treaty" was reached, and the Sino-Dutch "Paris Peace Treaty" was reached...