Sweep the leaf to the right to exit the tip. Li Luo was thinking with his tongue. In Dengzhou, he kept a thousand kilograms of red ginseng and several hundred kilograms of deer root from Xinyi, which were worth more than ten thousand taels of silver. With Yang Run's strength, it would not be a problem to eat them all. It's just that so many red ginsengs are on the market in Foshan at once, I'm afraid it will cause trouble.
Suddenly he remembered something and pulled out a key from his waist. The lock on a cabinet door was opened. Find an "account book" from inside. Come on. The wool blue cloth cover of this account book only says "Foshan Town." Three characters, below is the year number: revised in the first year of Chongzhen.
This is a "favor account" that lists in detail all the public and private figures in Foshan town who need to be socialized. Including details such as family members, addresses, personal preferences, etc. For some particularly important people, even the death anniversaries of their deceased elders are clearly recorded. There is also a record of every gift given in the past. He turned to the entry for "Lin Ming". Lin Ming's whole family was listed one by one on it, and everyone's birthday was written below. Mrs. Lin's birthday is just three days later.
Lin Baihu, the local Jinyiwei Baihu Institute, is very talkative. There are also contacts on weekdays. As long as he pretends not to know, no one in Foshan will say anything about it.
"It's time for Li Luoyou to nod his head and close the ledger.
The relationship between Lin Ming and him could not be said to be very familiar. In addition to the usual three gifts, the sudden gift of a large gift was too revealing.
Mrs. Lin's birthday is a good opportunity to give extra gifts.
The gift must be valuable and please Mrs. Lin. Otherwise, just send a few hundred taels of silver and leave. Although money is good, it means nothing to Mrs. Lin. Once a woman feels that she is not valued, blowing pillows on the bed is also very powerful. What's more, Mrs. Lin is said to be extremely favored and more lethal. So Ran said that giving gifts is a complicated matter.
He opened the hidden lock on a large cupboard in the study room. Inside, there were layers upon layers of various boxes: brocade, velvet, and red. They were all filled with valuable gifts, specially used for social occasions. It's important. It's a goose egg mirror.
He went to Zizhenzhai once and was startled by the entire giant glass mirror inside as soon as he entered the door. Li Luoyou had seen glass mirrors long ago in Macau. But even the Portuguese in Macau were amazed when they saw such a huge and smooth mirror, saying that it was impossible to make such a huge glass.
Not only mirrors, the items sold by Zizhenzhai are novel. Many of them have never been seen in the local area. For someone like Li Luoyou, who often travels to Macau and is quite familiar with the red-haired people, The businessman has not seen it either.
For the convenience of giving gifts, Li Luoyou purchased many novel gadgets in Zizhenzhai and stored them in several places for easy access at any time.
At that moment, I picked up a goose egg mirror from Zizhenzhai; a box of distilled herbal perfume in twelve-color glass bottles; a box of lipstick sticks with silver holders; and finally a box of pearls. This was not Zizhenzhai’s stuff, but It is the real "Eastern Pearl". Liaodong's pearls are famous for their large size and roundness, far better than the nearly exhausted "Hepu Pearls" in Guangdong. They are also the goods he often traffics;
The preparation for Lin Baihu was much simpler. Although it was newly issued, he prepared a 200-tael bill of exchange on sight from Delong Bank. This thing is really convenient to use. At least you don’t have to carry the box openly when giving gifts or bribes.
Of course Li Luoyou knew that this was not Delong's invention. There was "flying money" in the Tang Dynasty. He had also seen Brahmin businessmen and Portuguese businessmen in Macau using money orders. This kind of money order was simply a money order. But he never thought of introducing this system into Ming Dynasty. Unexpectedly, Delong actually brought it in and made it happen in this area. Of course, this is inseparable from the strong support of Guo Yi, the big boss of Zizhenzhai, and the Gao family in Guangzhou - he very much doubts that the so-called Delong is the boss behind these two companies.
After dinner, Li Luoyou invited two foreigners to a secret meeting in the study.
"Come, let's have a drink and talk while we drink." He took out three wine glasses and a black wine bottle from the cabinet. This is wine shipped all the way from Europe. Li Luoyou didn't like the sour taste of the wine very much, and he didn't like drinking it so dry without appetizers. It was purely for decoration when entertaining foreign guests.
"Thank you, you always have unexpected good things here." Quark smiled happily. This British businessman was poor and rich at times, and when he was down and out, he often had meals at Luoyou Li's mansion in Macau.
"Thank you Ma Yangchun, his eyes lit up when he saw the wine. He has been in Macau for more than three years, and he can already speak Mandarin very well, and he is also familiar with Li Luoyou. But he was a respected figure among the Jesuits in Macau at the beginning. His body always smelled like a beast, and even his colleagues couldn't stand it. It was said that the German was extremely reluctant to take a bath and drank without restraint. It was a headache for him.
However, under the careful training of the Italians, this rude German priest has become much more civilized. At least he knows how to bathe and change clothes frequently. He originally had a big beard, but in order to facilitate his preaching, he had shaved it off, making him look much younger.
"Li, here is Princess Tang." ? "
"No. This is Zichengji's export product. I don't have it here." Li Luoyou smiled. Princess Futang couldn't bear the bitter smell of rhubarb.
"Come on, let's have a drink first."
The three of them drank the wine in the glasses. Li Luoyou poured it for them again. This is where we get to the point.
This time he brought two foreigners to Foshan for two things. The first was to see if it was possible to establish a missionary base in Foshan. Li Luoyou was a Catholic today and was baptized when his father went to Macau for business in his early years. Li Luoyou lived with his father in Xiangshan Ao until he became an adult. When he was a boy, he studied with the priest in the church. He was not very interested in things like doctrine, but he was quite interested in European natural sciences and mathematics, algebra, planes and so on. He is good at both mathematics and solid geometry. He is one of the very few people in this time and space who has mastered Western mathematics.
As one of the few Catholics in the Ming Dynasty, Li Luoyong had the unshirkable responsibility to spread the gospel. He traveled between Macau and Guangzhou many times, picking up missionaries entering and leaving the country, transporting religious books, and spreading believers among his own servants many times. Of course, his active activities were not all motivated by religious fervor. The Jesuits also played a vital role in his business.
Secondly, they are preparing to open a foundry in Foshan to manufacture Western cannons and muskets. After the victory of Ningjin, the court's interest in Western firearms surged. In the first month of this year, the imperial court accepted Xu Guangqi's suggestion and ordered Li Fengjie, the governor of Guangdong, and Wang Zunde, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, to ask Portuguese merchants to purchase Western cannons. The Portuguese immediately donated ten cannons and a number of matchlocks. Several gunners led by Portuguese officers and a missionary accompanied the cannon. This was the second large-scale purchase and transportation of Western artillery to Beijing after Zhang Bo and Sun Xueshi transported artillery to Beijing during the Tianqi period.
Li Luoyou read Xu Guangqi's memorial from his residence. He and Xu Guangqi did not know each other, but they were both Catholics and had a strong interest in Western military science and technology. He proposed to imitate Western cannons in his memorial to Xu Xian. The policy of "training elite soldiers to make sharp weapons" simply supports Li Luoyou, who has been doing business in Liaodong for many years, and who saw the withdrawal of Guangning town with his own eyes. He has a clear understanding of the state of the imperial court's "frontier troops" who rely on the Great Wall.
This kind of weakness and lack of practice. The army with low morale was no match for the Hou Jin soldiers.
The imperial court's demand for Western firearms increased, which was a huge business opportunity for Li Luoyou. In addition to business opportunities, he also held the idea of loyalty to the emperor and serving the country by refreshing weapons for the imperial army and improving combat effectiveness. Nowadays, many people in the officialdom regard gunpowder firearms as a stepping stone to their official career. Articles, articles, and memorials on various gunpowder formulas, firearms, and artillery skills are flying all over the sky. For Li Luoyu, who didn't know much about firearms but knew a little bit about Western technology, the number of errors in it made him heartbroken.
This is going to harm the country. He decided: Rather than letting inexperienced people randomly use firearms as their promotion talisman, he decided to handle it himself.
Li Luoyou estimated that the imperial court would not purchase too many cannons from Macau and would soon enter the imitation stage. He knew very well: the Portuguese foundries in Macau had limited production capacity and a serious shortage of skilled foundry craftsmen. He also knew that the Macau City Council had passed a resolution requesting that Chinese foundry craftsmen be lured as much as possible to Macau to work in casting iron cannons. The thirty so-called Hongyi cannons purchased during Tianqi's reign were basically naval cannons dismantled from the British East India Company ships in Palm Springs. The fact that the court was confused did not mean that Li Luoyou was confused.
From a cost point of view, it is naturally cheaper to make it domestically, and the court also feels that it is more reliable to leave this "military weapon" to the people of the court than to those foreigners with high noses and deep intentions.
There are many factories in Foshan that cast cannons for the imperial court. But no one understands the main gun technology of Western cannons. Li Luoyu didn't understand either, but he had the support of the Jesuits, so it wouldn't be a problem to recruit specialized craftsmen from Macau or even Goa. Furthermore, he also had the Englishman Quark at his disposal, and he could let him find the East India Company as a channel if necessary.
"Of course I agree with the proposal to open a foundry in Foshan." Ma Yangchun said. The German was wearing Ming Dynasty clothes and a turban. "The president has told me that firearms are the Ming Dynasty's greatest concern. As long as this If the needs of the emperor and officials are met, our spread of the gospel will become more successful."
"Father is right," Li Luoyou said, "This is how Father Lu and Father Tang got into the capital."! ~!
