"Bip! Blop! Blop!"
An Austin Model 7 car honked its horn and drove quickly on Pujiang Road in Hudu.
Lu Xiaojia was sitting in the car, looking through the glass at the city of Shanghai on the other side, which was known as the "Ten Miles Foreign Market", "Oriental Night in Paris" and "The Magic City of the Far East".
Although it is still 1922, this city already seems to have the feeling of being drunk and partying every night.
But he understood that this was only the surface of the city. This was a rather chaotic era, and this place was no exception.
The prosperous Shili Foreign Market, row upon row of Shikumen, Paramount where singing and dancing flourish, and the big world of drunkenness and wealth.
That's for foreigners, bureaucrats, rich people, gang bosses, or people like him.
In places where the colorful lights cannot illuminate, there are rolling dragons covered in garbage and sewage. The division between rich and poor and class exists in any era.
For the people at the bottom who live there, they cannot feel the slightest prosperity. All they can feel is the suffering of the people at the bottom.
This is a place full of exploitation and oppression.
Through the car window, you can see people passing by on the road, but if you look closely, you can tell.
Many of them are skinny and stooped, and their linen clothes are covered with patches.
There are also many beggars begging along the road, with the elderly and children accounting for the majority.
In the Pujiang River in the distance, from time to time, a white corpse can be seen floating through the foam.
Hudu Richard Hotel, founded in 1846, is the first Western hotel in China. It is located on the bank of the Huangpu River in Hongkou, outside the famous landmark of Hudu.
In 1882, China's first electric light was turned on, in 1883, China's first running water was used, and in 1896, China's first gas - gas was used. In November 1922, Einstein stayed here for two nights.
At this moment, in a room on the fifth floor of the hotel, Lu Xiaojia, wearing a nightgown, put out the Hardman cigarette in her hand and stared at the map of China on the wall.
The Kingdom of China is an ancient empire with a history of nearly five thousand years! This empire once conquered from the Pacific Ocean to the Danube River in the West during the Yuan Dynasty! Let the entire West tremble under the iron heel of the Mengzu people!
But in modern times, it was the most humiliating and weakest period for China in the past five thousand years.
The weak and incompetent Xuan Dynasty signed various agreements with Western powers, such as the "Treaty of Jinling", "Treaty of Tianjin", "Treaty of Shimonoseki" and "Treaty of Xinchou", which included Xiangjiang Island, Baodao, Penghu Islands, Vladivostok, Sakhalin Island, Ili Hexi, Territories such as Liaodong and Majiao Island were ceded to the foreign powers.
As a result, the original territory of 13 million square kilometers is now only 11.41 million square kilometers.
With the demise of the Xuan Dynasty, I thought it would bring a moment of respite to this scarred country.
Unexpectedly, Yuan Changkai, the president of the Republic of China, dissolved Congress and attempted to restore the monarchy in 1915, hoping to drag this crumbling country into the quagmire again.
After the failure of imperial restoration, Yuan Changkai died of illness in Anyang, Henan Province on June 6, 1916.
From that moment on, his new Beiyang Army and the civilian armed forces in various parts of China were all in chaos.
The vast land of China fell into an era of warlord separatism, and wars raged within China, leading to a total economic collapse and an era of social unrest.
In order to compete for local power and occupy territory, various warlords competed to expand their power.
Many large and small warlords and power groups emerged among them. The large warlords had hundreds of thousands of troops and occupied several provinces. The small warlords occupied a county or even a town and established themselves as kings. Bandits and bandits were also rampant in the world.
Among these emerging warlords, the more powerful ones include the Zhili clique, the Anhui clique, the Feng clique, the Guangxi clique, the Shu warlords, the Yunnan clique, the Guizhou clique, the Guangdong clique, and the Shanxi clique...
Among these warlords, the three factions of Zhizhi, Anhui and Feng that were split from the six towns of Beiyang were the most dazzling.
Among them, Wu Peifa and Cao Kun control the Zhili clique, Duan Qirui controls the Anhui clique, and Zhang Yulin controls the Feng clique.
The Anhui clique's warlords separatized Anhui, Shandong, Fujian, Shaanxi, Long, Yu and other provinces.
Representative figures include Duan Qirui, Xu Shuzheng, Le Yunpeng, Fu Liangzuo, Wu Guangxin, Chen Shufan, Lu Yongxiang, Ni Sizhong, Zeng Zongjian and others.
The Zhili clique of warlords separatized Yi Province, Henan Province, Hubei Province, Hunan Province, Huai Province, Gan Province and other places.
Representative figures include Feng Guozhang, Wu Peifa, Cao Kun, Sun Chuanfang, Qi Xieyuan, Cai Chenxun, Wang Zhanyuan, Cao Yin, Xiao Yaolan and others.
The warlords of the Feng clan were separatists, Jehol, Liao Province, Ji Province, Heijiang Province and other places.
Representative figures include Zhang Yulin, Zhang Yuxiang, Wu Junsheng, Yang Yutong, Jiang Dengxuan, Sun Liecheng, Guo Songling, Tang Yulin, Li Jinling and others.
And his father, Lu Yongxiang, is one of the representatives of the Anhui warlords.
But now it is September 1922, the eleventh year of the Republic of China, and there is a very embarrassing problem.
The Zhili-Anhui alliance broke down on July 14, 1920. In order to compete with the Zhili clique warlords for the control of the Pingjing government, Duan Qirui led his father Lu Yongxiang and the Zhili clique warlords to start the Zhili-Anhui War in the Beijing-Tianjin area.
