Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 791 Jiangnan is just raw rice in a pot
Not long after, Shopkeeper Chang listened to Yuan Tong's story. He tapped the table with his fingers, pondered for a moment, and asked, "Mr. Yuan, has anyone come and go in the house recently?"

Yuan Tong did not answer directly, but asked: "Mr. Chang has never been to Jiangning before, has he?"

Shopkeeper Chang said: "Chang came here two months ago and has been in Beidi before."

Yuan Tong nodded and said, "That's no wonder. I'm afraid Mr. Chang doesn't know something. Guests visit Suiyuan every day. Some of these people are my father's friends, and some are brought by acquaintances. Some people, not to mention Yuan, Even my father is not familiar with it."

Shopkeeper Chang said in surprise: "Does the house allow people to come and go at will?"

Yuan Tongtong: "My father is an open-minded man. As long as they don't enter the inner house, ordinary people can enter the garden to enjoy it."

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, large private gardens in the south of the Yangtze River were basically open to the public. Officials and literati, as well as traffickers and commoners, could enter and play in them. Some gardens even offer take-out tickets for visiting.

The reason why there is an endless stream of guests in Suiyuan every day is not only because of Yuan Mei's fame, but also because he is greedy for enjoyment. The burning of the buns is so shocking that many people come here to see the strange things.

Give me a chestnut. Before the emergence of flat glass in Beihai Town, the market price of a piece of 2.77-meter-long and 1.7-meter-wide flat glass imported from Guangdong Customs was more than 620 taels of silver. It was so expensive that even the Qing palace did not dare to use it arbitrarily.

And in the main hall of Suiyuan Xiaocangshanfang, there is actually a huge glass screen two meters long and two meters high! Such large flat glass is difficult to produce even in Europe today, let alone transport it across the ocean to the East.

There is also a place called the "Glass World" on the south side of Xiaomianzhai. From the door to the windows, the house is all made of small pieces of five-color glass. When the sun shines, it becomes strange and strange. Everyone is dazzled. Think of the five-colored glass windows in Western churches, that’s the tone!
In addition, the window glass of "Shashan Hongxue" is all red, the window glass of "Lvjingxuan" is all green; the window glass of "Azure Sky" is all blue; and the window glass of "Shui Jingyu" is all white. of.

These luxuriously decorated rooms are filled with calligraphy and paintings by famous people. The furniture is either red sandalwood or huanghuali, or it is made of plum wood, mother-of-pearl inlay and carved lacquer. The rare golden nan and mahogany are of the lowest quality.

This is true for furniture, not to mention dining utensils, which are either Ming blue and white official kilns or Kangyong porcelain. When hosting a banquet to entertain guests, the wine cups must be replaced four or five times for each meal, and every time they are replaced, everyone present will marvel.

Yuan Mei's behavior of burning buns doesn't stop there. Suiyuan has several days every year where lanterns and fireworks are set off. He doesn't just enjoy it at home, but displays it overwhelmingly.

Because Suiyuan has no walls, going to the garden to view lanterns and glass has become a scene in Shangyuan County, Jiangning Prefecture. It doesn’t matter if you can’t enter the inner room. After passing the gatehouse, you can enter the garden on the south side along the fence. Qunyu Mountain Top, Shuixi Pavilion, Shuanghu Lake, Peach Blossom Embankment, and Yuanyang Pavilion are all good places to watch lanterns. Not only the brothel girls in Qinhuai River were vying for the first place, but also the ordinary people were crowded with spectators. As the saying goes, "The glazed light moves like a sea of ​​lanterns, and wandering girls rush to see Ogura."

Shopkeeper Chang used to live in the north, and his time in Jiangning was short. He hadn't had time to experience the luxury of Suiyuan. Now he couldn't help but frown after hearing Yuan Tong's explanation, thinking that this was just a big colander! Not to mention the deployment of one action team, even if two were deployed, they would not be able to defend it at all.

Thinking of this, he said to Yuan Tongtong: "Mr. Yuan, I will report this matter as soon as possible. According to my estimation, your Majesty will definitely send someone to protect everyone in your house. I just hope that you can go back and make it clear to the layman of Cangshan that you should try your best to leave if you can. Let’s go. As the saying goes, if you leave the mountains behind, you may be able to come back in a few days.”

"Okay, Yuan will try to persuade me when I go back." Yuan Tong looked bitter, stood up and said with his hands in his hands: "If my father insists on not leaving, the lives of more than thirty people in my Yuan family will be entrusted to King Zhao and Shopkeeper Chang!"

After saying that, he lifted up his robe and knelt on the ground.

"You can't do it! You can't do it!" Shopkeeper Chang hurriedly stepped forward to help him.

Late that night, a telegram sent from Sanshan Street passed through the North Korean Navy's relay stations in Rongcheng, Shandong and Anping Port on Jeju Island, and finally arrived at the Intelligence Bureau's headquarters on the east bank of the Falin River.

Because the telegram started with three "ticks", which meant "urgent and top secret," the deputy section chief of the telecommunications room on duty immediately called the home of his immediate boss, Wang Changsheng.

More than 30 minutes later, Wang Changsheng, who was wrapped like a bear, pushed open the door against the heavy snow and walked in, followed by two guards with guns. His home is in a small courtyard south of the Intelligence Bureau. If the snow and the roads are not slippery, it can be reached in 10 minutes.

Wang Changsheng frowned and read the contents of the telegraph newspaper. After he signed the bottom of the telegram and handed it back to the deputy section chief for filing, he ordered: "Send this telegram to Kinmen immediately, word for word, for His Highness to receive it personally."

"Yes!"

"Is the phone still on at Sanshan Street?"

"It's open, waiting for our reply."

"Call them back and contact Fang Jingzhai of the governor's Yamen as soon as possible tomorrow. Be sure to find out the time of attack on Yuan Mei. Then notify the Zhenjiang Action Group and order all members to bring all the equipment and enough ammunition to arrive at Jinwangdu at noon tomorrow for investigation. Go around the garden to see if there are any spies from the Qing court, and be sure not to alert the enemy. Also, keep the radio station at Jinwangdu on day and night."

The Fang Jingzhai he mentioned was the master of Ma Huiyu, the prefect of Yangzhou a few years ago, and he was the one who was ordered to investigate the Jiao Xuna case from the beginning. After Zhao Xin and Wang Yuanfang caused a sensational prison robbery in Yangzhou, Ma Huiyu was dismissed and questioned, and Master Fang also lost his job and returned to his hometown in Suzhou. Later, he was recommended by others, and a year ago he became a staff member in the Jiangsu Governor's Yamen, responsible for criminal charges.

Today, Fang Jingzhai has been successfully instigated to rebel, and the Intelligence Bureau's spying on the Qing court's Jiangsu officialdom is mainly accomplished through him.

While listening, the deputy section chief of the telecommunications office wrote down the contents of the telegram dictated by Wang Changsheng on the telegram draft, and then let him read it. After reading it, Wang Changsheng made a few modifications, signed it, and handed it back. Just as he was about to go out, he stopped again and said, "Send a copy of the telegram from Sanshan Street to the Alin Base Command. The recipient of the telegram is Wu Lieutenant General."

The deputy section chief said in surprise: "Alin Base?"

Wang Changsheng explained: "Yes! Lieutenant General Wu is inspecting over there. His Highness is not here. He is responsible for the daily affairs of the staff department."

The so-called "Lieutenant General Wu" is naturally Wu Siyu. The "Five King Kongs" of the Northern Navy - Liu Sheng, Wang Yuanfang, Deng Fei, Wu Siyu, and Ding Guofeng now all have the rank of lieutenant general, while Fan Tong and Sheng Haizhou have the rank of major general.

Today, Wu Siyu is the head of the "Northern Navy Training and Doctrine Command". He is mainly responsible for formulating training subjects for new recruits and special operations units of the Northern Navy, compiling combat manuals, and assisting Zhao Xin in the newly established non-commissioned officer schools, junior military schools and officers. The training class carries out daily management, and every day is busy without touching the ground.

As for the "Alin Base" mentioned by Wang Changsheng, it is a new training base being built by the North Korean Navy in the north of Vladivostok.

It is said that when Zhao Xin and the others went to Bear Island ten years ago, Vladivostok was a small fishing village with only more than 20 households. Now that ten years have passed, there has been no development there, and as the fishermen have moved away one after another, it is almost deserted.

Different from the family-based small-scale peasant economy in the pass, Beihai Town engages in industrialized agricultural production. The population must be concentrated, that is, urban and rural areas are integrated, so small remote villages are bound to die out.

Speaking of which, there are so many places suitable for farming, fishing and hunting in the outer Northeast. The Sanjiang Plain and Songnen Plain alone have a combined area of ​​more than 20 square kilometers. Now, the Liaohe Plain of [-] square kilometers has been included. This land alone The civil affairs department is too busy, and other scattered areas cannot be taken care of at all.

In terms of port conditions, Whale Bay is a naturally ice-free port. In the coldest winter, a thin layer of ice forms, which has no impact on navigation. In Vladivostok, it doesn’t freeze inside the bay in winter, but it still freezes outside, making it impossible to walk on boats. Therefore, neither the civil affairs nor the military have ever regarded Vladivostok as a development focus.

When Beihai Town was founded, Zhao Xin and the others centered on the east and west banks of the Falin River estuary and expanded to the north, east and west; the west bank was the living area and the east bank was the industrial area.

The southernmost end of the east coast is the Dolphin Bay Military Port and Shipyard. At the foot of the mountain to the northeast of the military port is the thermal power plant. Directly north are a bunch of workshop-style factory areas such as early steel plants and arsenals. Further north is the training base. As the size of the Northern Navy has grown larger and larger over the years, and more and more new recruits have been trained, the "Faring River Base" has become increasingly cramped. Not to mention anything else, the staff department couldn't find a way to hold a regiment-level confrontation exercise. It had to find a separate place every time, which was very troublesome.

Last summer, with Zhao Xin's consent, Wu Siyu arranged for people to survey and select sites in various places, preparing to move to a larger and more spacious place. After much searching, the person responsible for site selection finally settled on the vast area between Badahezi in the north of Vladivostok and Beishuli.

It is located on the southern branch of the Sikhet Mountains and contains various terrains including hills, plains, dense forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, and seashores. It is very suitable for new recruits to fight and various tactical training. Because its area is more than 600 square kilometers, which is five times larger than the "Falin River Base", it can be used for exercises.

The surveyors also had an unexpected gain during the site selection process, which was the discovery of hundreds of hectares of oak forest in the north of the Vladivostok fishing village, almost all of which were over 200 years old. This made the navy very excited. They no longer had to go all the way to buy shipbuilding timber from Southeast Asia.

Due to the need for confidentiality, the new base was named "Northern Navy Alin Tactical Training Base" by Wu Siyu. Alin means "mountain" in Manchu. There are so many mountains in the outer northeast. If others just guessed based on the words, they would not be able to guess where they are.

Before walking out of the telecommunications room, Wang Changsheng looked up at the clock on the wall. There were still more than three hours before dawn. He was not sleepy at this moment and had no intention of going home, so he asked the two guards to go to the duty room to rest, and he went straight to the office next to the telecommunications office.

As soon as I walked in, a wave of heat hit my face, and the earth heater in the room was very hot. After Wang Changsheng entered the room, he first turned on the kerosene stove to boil a pot of water and made tea for himself. Then he sat back on a large chair, sipping tea and thinking about Yuan Mei.

The reason why his first reaction after reading the telegram was to report it to Zhao Xin was because he felt that the Qing government's desire to arrest Yuan Mei could no longer be handled by the Intelligence Bureau alone.

Although the action team in Zhenjiang can be called elite, they are only good at assassination and sabotage and are not regular combat troops. Even if twelve people brought long and short weapons, they could not stop the siege of thousands of Eight Banners soldiers in Jiangning City. Not to mention that Suiyuan is still a big colander without walls, and there is no insurance to rely on.

What Wang Changsheng is most worried about now is the fight with the Manchus in Jiangning, and what kind of impact the resulting chain reaction will have on the entire Jiangnan.

In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Jiangnan refers to the entire Jiangsu in a broad sense, that is, Southern Zhili in the Ming Dynasty; in a narrow sense, it refers to the eight prefectures and one prefecture including Suzhou, Songjiang, Taicang, Changzhou, Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Huzhou, Jiangning, and Zhenjiang. the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

As a close confidant of Zhao Xin, Wang Changsheng knew that his immediate boss had no plans for Jiangnan, nor did he want to seize the most economically prosperous region in Asia. The key is that Beihai Town's biggest difficulty in conquering Jiangnan is not only the military strength, but also the lack of reception personnel.

According to the census results conducted by the Qing government in the 45th year of Qianlong's reign, the total population of the Jiangnan region at that time was already more than 2000 million. Now 15 years have passed, and considering factors such as population migration caused by famine, 3000 million is definitely appropriate! However, it was not until Beihai Town conquered half of Shandong that its population exceeded 500 million.

With the force of the northern navy, it would be easy to conquer the south of the Yangtze River. Send two regiments to land at Wusongkou, and with the cooperation of the navy, fighting from east to west to Wuchang is as easy as squeezing toothpaste. However, after the injection, whether it can be digested and absorbed is the most important thing.

According to Beihai Town's practice, military control is usually implemented in newly occupied areas for six months to one year before the situation stabilizes. Even if one full battalion is placed in each county, there are 56 counties in eight prefectures and one prefecture, which is a small force of [-].

In addition, in accordance with the requirements of Beihai Town to "send political power to the countryside", in addition to the county magistrate, deputy county magistrate, and police chief, each county's administrative staff must have at least thirty other administrative staff responsible for agriculture, industry, commerce, education, medical care, etc. , and then select some from the previous officials, so that it is barely enough. This alone requires an administrative reception team of 2000 people.

Furthermore, the south of the Yangtze River is not the north. There is no large-scale land annexation. Ten acres of land per capita is the norm. The relationship between landlords and tenants is more of a contract than exploitation. In this case, what should the farmers' cooperative do?
Finally, it was the escape from the rule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the way out for hundreds of thousands or even millions of scholars. If the civil service examination and retraining system cannot keep up in time, the so-called "humanistic base" will become a source of turmoil.

Just thinking about such a big game of chess makes Wang Changsheng feel numb. Although his hometown is Chongming, and he is looking forward to returning home in fine clothes as soon as possible, he knows that Zhao Xin will never take action against Jiangnan before sufficient personnel preparations are completed, and would rather let the Manchu Qing take care of it for him first.

Isn't it just some grain and money? Beihai Town now has enough grain reserves to eat bowl after bowl, and its silver reserves are as high as tens of millions of taels. Who cares!

Wang Changsheng thought about it and fell asleep. At eight o'clock in the morning, there was a call from the Telecommunications Office, saying that Lieutenant General Wu had called and asked him to go to the "Alin Base" in person to discuss something.

Although it was still snowing heavily outside, Wang Changsheng did not dare to neglect the call from Prince Zhao's close comrades. He asked his adjutant to prepare some information, called the guards, and hurried to the Dolphin Bay Military Port, where he boarded a naval patrol vessel. boat.

Although it was already freezing cold, the sea surface of Ussuri Bay was not yet frozen. The patrol boat sailed westward along the coast and arrived at Mayan Port in three hours.

This is the mouth of the Mayan River, a tributary of the Furjaha River. "Mayan" means "arm" in Manchu and also means branch.

In another time and space, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Han people who invaded Guandong took its homophonic name and called it "Ant Village", and the Mayan River became the Ant River. After the Russians invaded the outer northeast, this area eventually became the "Shkotovsky District" in the 70s.

Even though he was the number one figure in the intelligence bureau, Wang Changsheng and his party still went through strict inspection after landing. In addition to checking their IDs, they even had to check their fingerprints and irises.

After that, they boarded an off-road jeep. After more than an hour of bumpy terrain, they finally arrived at a place called "Erpaozi", where the headquarters of the "Alin Base" is located.

Entering the field tent, Wang Changsheng subconsciously tensed up his body, saluted a military salute, and said loudly: "Report to the chief! Wang Changsheng has been ordered to report! Please give instructions!"

Wu Siyu, who was lying on the map table, raised his head when he heard the voice, stood at attention and returned the salute, and said with a smile: "It came quite quickly, sit down."

The two exchanged greetings and waited for the orderly to bring water. Wu Siyu then said, "I came to see you because I want to hear your opinion on something. It's really inconvenient to send telegrams back and forth."

"Please speak."

"I received your telegram last night. I didn't sleep all night. I exchanged several telegrams with King Zhao. It was night here, and it was daytime there."

Wang Changsheng nodded quickly and said: "Understood, I've heard before that the difference is 16 hours."

Wu Siyu took out a cigarette from his jacket pocket, lit one, and pushed the cigarette case to Wang Changsheng, saying: "King Zhao's view is that with the strength of our intelligence bureau alone, Jiang Ning's matter may be It’s not easy to solve.”

Wang Changsheng took the cigarette case, smoked one and lit it, and explained: "Yes. We have an action team in Zhenjiang, but it only has 12 people."

"Yeah. This is a pot of raw rice. If we fight, we are not ready to accept it. If we don't fight, the Qing government will be like a mad dog. We cannot let the people who surrender to us feel cold."

"So King Zhao and I have the idea to secretly dispatch a company of special forces to Jiangning to help you guard Suiyuan. Since Jiaqing and the Ding Prince are going to cause trouble, then they should deal with him well. As a cooperation, the Navy Two frigates and a supply ship will be sent to Wusongkou as a deterrent. If necessary, the fleet will enter the Yangtze River and reach outside Jiangning City."

Wang Changsheng felt as if he had been hit by a pie in the sky, surprised and happy. Wusongkou, that's Chongming, his hometown!

　60. In later generations, people often say that the place names in the Northeast are magical, such as Lizi, Dingzi, Gouzi, Tuozi, Weizi, and Paozi, which make people feel like dirt when they hear them. In fact, these place names may seem tacky, but they actually hit the point, hit the nail on the head, and specialize in dealing with all kinds of romance. For example, "第子" refers to an isolated stone; "dingzi" refers to a mountain peak, and bald-headed child, as the name suggests, means that there are no trees on the top of the mountain; "gouzi" refers to a river in a valley. "Erya" says that "water flowing into a valley is called a ditch"; "It is a small island sandbank in the sea; "Weizi" refers to the place where there is a shelter on the bend of the sea; and the word "Paozi" comes from Mongolian, which means lake. For example, Hailanpao on the other side of Heilongjiang City is literally translated as "Elm Lake". The northern part of Vladivostok is a hilly basin area with a dense river network and low-lying terrain, thus forming lagoons and inland lakes of different sizes such as Wangbapaozi, Dapaozi, Erpaozi and Sanpaozi. [-]. Before the [-]s, many Manchu place names were retained in the outer Northeast. However, since the "Zhenbao Island Incident", the S government has changed all Manchu place names.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)