Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 748 Scorching Economy ([-])

On March 1648, 3, Qingdao Port, the southeast wind was four.

The warm and humid air blowing from the Atlantic stopped here, and then poured the contained water vapor mercilessly onto the vast expanse of land.However, as a brand new city that has just been built, Qingdao County has used a lot of new technologies in urban facilities, and the investment is also very large, so the city's sewer network is very complete.The rainwater pouring down from the sky is diverted to both sides of the road by the sloping and slightly curved road surface, then flows into the diversion culvert, and finally flows into Qingdao Bay through the complex underground pipe network.

Perfect urban drainage facilities, coupled with strict city appearance management (the fines for littering and splashing dirty water are very high), rainy weather, which can be called a disaster for the cleanliness of cities in the old mainland, is in Qingdao Port at the moment. There are no negative effects at all.There is no overflowing sewage on the street, no manure from mules and horses (even if there is, it is cleaned up by the owner or quickly picked up by the manure picker), there is no rotten vegetable leaves or garbage, and there is no shivering in the corner of the wall. Homeless people (if there were any, they were taken in and sent to the road construction site), everything looked so neat and orderly.

These are the impressions of Captain Couette.He had just arrived from Amsterdam and went to the coast of Senegal in West Africa on his way. After loading a large number of black slaves, he was sent across the ocean to the port of Recife.After completing the transportation mission of the West India Company, Captain Couette loaded the ship with Brazilian somat planks that had been dried in the shade for several years (all processed according to the size requirements of the people on the east coast), and directly pulled them to Qingdao Port for sale to the east coast. People from the coast - the East Coast Navy purchases this kind of excellent naval ship materials all the year round.

The West Lake beer in the pier tavern has always been Captain Couette’s favorite, so after a brisk walk on the gravel-paved harbor road in an oilskin raincoat, he quickly stepped into a room with a A tavern with a "wine" flag.

Across the road from the tavern is the newly built vegetable market in Qingdao Port.It was the evening after get off work, and there were many local residents in the vegetable market buying ingredients.Qingdao Port is a large-scale commercial port built by the Executive Committee. There are still a lot of citizens (as opposed to farmers) living in the urban area, and most of them are employees and managers of banks, bond exchanges, foreign exchange exchanges, shops, and wholesale markets. Therefore, the county government built such a vegetable market near the wharf (to facilitate sewage discharge), and then let nearby farmers or vegetable vendors come to set up stalls for sale, which is convenient for the daily life of these urban residents.

Captain Couette noticed that there were far more women vendors than men in the vegetable market—a natural phenomenon, because men usually do heavy physical work.Most of these female vendors are from Italy or Greece. They look extremely vulgar and have a very high voice, introducing their products to customers with a strange accent mixed with awkward Chinese and hometown slang.

After a rough observation for a while, Captain Couette had to admit that these female vendors were exactly the same as the female vendors in the central vegetable market in Paris, and they were almost the dirtiest group of people in the whole city.Sitting in a vegetable market with piles of melon rinds and shells, sewage flowing, and rotten fish everywhere, they cursed each other in rude words, such as "shameless", "stinky bitch", "you owe a whip", " Obscenities such as "dirty bastards" and "double sluts who seduce Bingtuanbao students" almost brought the habits of the old continent to the vibrant city of Qingdao Port.

There are many shops on both sides of the vegetable market, selling all kinds of East Coast goods, among which clothes, leather goods, hardware products and furniture are the most.These commodities looked exquisite, but Captain Couette did not dare to rush forward to inquire or purchase them.Because he was not sure whether the goods were the same as those he had encountered in Amsterdam and London, the shop owners were proficient at refurbishing old ones, and some Jewish shops often deceived customers.

For example, you can't stand their repeated solicitation and the temptation of pretty-looking goods, and you go to their darkly lit shops to buy a black cloak, but when you go under the sun, you find this expensive The color of the clothes suddenly turned green, purple and even mixed with many ugly spots, in short, it was terrible.Captain Couette, who has suffered this kind of loss, really doesn't want to rush to buy expensive clothes such as cloaks in shops he doesn't know very well. The Jewish businessmen who are annoying to people, the quality should still be guaranteed, so maybe I can go shopping after drinking, and it will be autumn on the east coast soon, so I should buy a decent autumn coat.

The tavern was full of guests, and Captain Couette got a seat after greeting a familiar waiter. He ordered a fresh trout from the local inland river of Qingdao Port, and asked the boss to fry it for him; he then I also ordered a plate of five-spice whale meat, a plate of East Coast specialty tomato scrambled eggs, and two glasses of beer.

Seated at a table behind him were two Armenian businessmen—as could be seen from their attire—to Captain Couette's surprise.Armenian businessmen are not uncommon in Europe at all, but in the New World at this time, their arrival is very conspicuous. Have they also started business on the east coast?

In fact, these Armenian businessmen did come to the east bank to do business.These two Armenians from the Hornician family opened a warehouse in the port of Tsingtao, specializing in goods from the Middle East and the Near East—such as raw silk, donkey hides, horses (Turkmen, Arabian, Raschek) ), camels, dates, raisins, spices and other specialty commodities, the business is quite good.

I have to admit that the Armenian businessmen of this era were extremely aggressive.Armenian merchants living in Zurfa, a suburb of Isfahan, almost monopolized the business of the entire Persia. They came to the Indus River, the Ganges River and the Bay of Bengal via Persia, to Portuguese Goa, and even crossed the Himalayas to Lhasa.They also went to the Spanish Philippine Islands at the same time, but their roots were always in the vast Ottoman Empire and its adjacent areas (Moscow, Persia, Morocco, etc.). Most of the so-called "Dutch" businessmen were in fact strong competitors of Jewish and Italian businessmen who had naturalized in the Netherlands.

It is precisely because of the great energy of the Armenian merchant group that the East Coast talents invited them to open a business shop on the East Bank by virtue of their years of good cooperation with the Hornician family. At the same time, they tried their best to persuade them to use their business network to bring Persia Raw silk from China, Punjab, and Kashmir was sold to the east bank.The people on the east coast even promised that if they didn't have enough ships, the east coast republic would send transport ships and warships to transport them.

Now, as the capital of the Italian silk weaving industry represented by Genoa gradually began to transfer production capacity to the New World, the European silk weaving industry began to decline gradually, and the sales of raw silk also gradually declined.Historically, in 1649, Armenian merchants sold raw silk to Marseilles in large quantities (at that time, a French fleet intercepted a British ship in the waters near Malta. belonged to 64 Armenian businessmen on board the ship).But in this time and space, Armenian merchants began to gradually shift their sales to the East Coast Republic, which currently has the most advanced silk weaving technology in the world.They traded with the east coast merchant fleet at the port of Smyrna, and even with the encouragement of the east coast people, they planned to hire Arab merchant ships to transport raw silk from Persia and northwest India to the Xinhua port area for trading.This kind of large-scale business has been done, so what's the point of opening a business station on the east bank!

In addition to the two Armenian merchants in the tavern, there were also a large number of merchants from other countries: Portuguese, Dutch, English, Italians, North Germans, Danes, Swedes and even Spaniards (these brave merchants were obviously on a ship from another country).With the successful holding of the first Qingdao Autumn Commodities Fair last year, more foreign merchants who have heard the news began to gather in Qingdao Port this year, gearing up for the second Commodities Fair that will open in May.

It is said that people from the East Coast will accept large-scale orders from customers for medicines (mainly aspirin), bean cakes, knitted lace textiles, machine-made refined white flour, steel bars of new specifications, soap, etc. Good products open for export, so this year attracted a large number of European businessmen to participate in this business event.

The influx of a large number of foreign businessmen has also brought a large amount of goods to the east bank (the cabins of merchant ships coming here must not be empty) and money. The cash and bills of Bank of Towers and Qingdao Commercial Clearing Bank (the bills issued by a coalition of five banks including the Commercial Clearing Bank, referred to as "UnionPay" bills) have exceeded 70 yuan, not to mention the money they brought. A large amount of goods that are gradually being realized.This year's Qingdao Autumn Commodity Trade Fair will inevitably refresh some more scorching and dazzling economic data on the basis of previous years!

Captain Couette quickly wolfed down his supper, and spent the night at the Quay Hotel.Early the next morning, he went to Qingdao Commercial Clearing Bank and bought 1 yuan of 6.5-year bonds of the Southern Railway Company sold by them, with a coupon rate of 1%.This is a gift he prepared for his youngest son. He plans to retire in the next two years, and then his eldest son will inherit his main property and career. This [-] yuan bond is prepared for his beloved youngest son. the only property left.

According to the latest promotion method launched by the Southern Railway Company, after the bond expires, the creditor can choose to carry out a debt-to-equity swap at the current stock price (the total share capital of the Southern Railway Company is 20 shares, and each share is worth 50 yuan), that is, Kuet The youngest son of the captain can choose to transfer the 1 yuan into a 0.1% stake in the Southern Railway Company—provided it is approved by the East Coast government.

After finishing all this, Captain Couette returned to the ship, and then quietly waited for the opening of the Qingdao Autumn Commodities Fair on May 5.

(End of this chapter)