"No, Chinese people are very timid," Weiss sipped slowly from the wine glass. This party made him feel extremely awkward. Fortunately, there was still refreshing and delicious sherry that had been simmered in well water. "And if I give half a piastr to the innkeeper, he will send his two sons to guard the door of my room all day long with spears on their backs."
"The lord of Kelantan hired a Chinese honor guard with half a Piast—" The speaker sat at the far end of the table. He looked about fifty years old, with a hooked nose and a pair of vicious eyes above his high cheekbones. His eyes, and the few locks of hair on his convex head were neatly shiny with oil, and his head gave off a stench of spoiled butter. The mayor glared at him with some annoyance, but found that the count was still sipping sherry calmly, as if he had not heard the rude words at all.
"Your Excellency, you may be too generous to the Chinese," the person who spoke this time was Sebastian Andrade, the colonial finance officer. "Half a Piastre is enough for a Tagalog with a family." Days of expenses.”
He began to recount how the Chinese in the Philippines were rich, but when the governor wanted to charge them a special residence fee in exchange for the right to live outside Parian, they kept delaying and crying about poverty. The sins of the Chinese also include using the bad habit of gambling to seduce the devout indigenous people. The Governor of Salamanca actually agreed to the Chinese building cockfighting casinos in Tondo and Binondo, although these two casinos paid 80,000 pesos to the colonial government every year. Gambling tax, but God knows how much money has flowed into the hands of the Chinese.
Andrade rattled off a lot of figures, pointing out that more and more Chinese merchant ships sailed into Manila Port every year, but with the joint efforts of Chinese brokers and port tax collectors, the Royal Colony's treasury could not increase much. Income - because the number on the report submitted is still the same. The rest of the ships, although they were all anchored in the harbor, disappeared from the reports.
Everyone is talking about how much the Governor and his cronies benefited from this blatant fraud to turn a blind eye to such a disparity. Of course, this kind of discussion can only be whispered behind the scenes and among close friends.
Obviously, the Governor has other things to worry about. He lived in constant fear of the imaginary threat that the Dutch army, together with pirates from all over the East Indies, would invade Manila. He had already spent three hundred thousand pesos on expanding fortifications and recruiting troops, and was preparing to spend more. Much money. Reports to His Majesty and the Privy Council were always full of desperate appeals. It was as if he was struggling to survive in a besieged fortress.
Now Australians were added to his frightening fantasies. The Spaniards learned from Macau that the Australians had concluded a trade agreement with the abominable lowland bandits. Not only that, they also launched abominable piracy operations. Last year (1632), two galenic ships carrying royal subsidies from New Spain were robbed by nasty Australian pirates not far from Manila.
This news immediately caused a small earthquake in Manila. The kidnapping of San Luis and San Raimundo was not just a matter of the governor losing his royal subsidy of 230,000 pesos. The ship also carried a large amount of cargo and cash from New Spain: both legal and illegal. Almost all the dignitaries in Manila were involved. So much so that after the two ships were taken away, it has always been a mystery how much damage was caused.
Shortly after the definite news that the two ships had been hijacked came out, several big businessmen in Manila declared bankruptcy, followed by a large number of small and medium-sized businessmen. Money in Manila and even the entire Philippines was once much tighter, interest rates rose accordingly, and the discount rate for bills of exchange was unbearably high. As a result, the Chinese loan sharks in the stream made a small fortune.
"The Australians used to be very peaceful. They were doing profitable business with the Portuguese and selling many wonderful goods -" Andrade seemed to feel regretful. "It is said that there are many followers of the Lord among them. Jesus They will be very popular with them. What a pity that they have become so mean after hanging out with the lowland bandits! Fortunately they are still buying abaca!"
Andrade ran a large abaca export business in Manila, earning tens of thousands of pesos a year from the business. Australians are the biggest buyers.
"They are all a group of atheists who deserve to be burned on the stake!" Someone's religious fanaticism began to show up after drinking a lot of alcohol.
…
Weiss drank her sherry slowly without interrupting. He wrote down these valuable information and figures, and was thinking about how to write the first report sent back to Lingao. The servants brought desserts and cigars.
"Here, Your Excellency, Count." Andrade approached the candlestick, lit a cigar, and continued: "What is before you is the most worthy investment enterprise in the entire Philippine colony. The tobacco here is by no means second to Cuba and Mexico. The best produce from the plantations. But now there is no hope of private profit from it.”
He spoke of the governor's order to impose a tobacco monopoly throughout the colony and to establish exclusive cigarette factories. "This will increase the governor's income by at least forty thousand pesos a year," he said. "The governor will give a huge sum of money to that magical Japanese to build a cannon with a range of one league. And as long as one hit A cannonball that can blow up a ship. One of these amazing cannonballs costs five hundred pesos.”
The treasurer's remarks caused a commotion at the banquet. "This is pure nonsense!" a judge of the Royal Court of Public Prosecutions of the Philippines shouted: "Even if you grow a little tobacco in your yard for your own enjoyment, you have to pay a franchise tax. Doesn't Salamanca know that he has not added any new tobacco at all? The right to tax. Hasn’t this fool read the royal edict?”
"That's nonsense." After a full meal, the commander of Santiago Fortress was pouring glass after glass of wine into his mouth, and his words were slurred: "Everyone, have any of you heard of or seen with your own eyes a gun with a range of one league? Cannons? What a load of nonsense.”
"Too ignorant. My dear Echasu," said a shrewd-looking officer, the governor of the Cavite fortress. "In the time of Louis XI, the French fired a cannon at the Bastille, where the madman imprisoned the saint. The shells kept coming. I flew to Xia Langdong, the place where the madman is locked up by the Saint, and landed there. You should be familiar with that place, dear Echasu."
"Hey, Alfonso -" the angry old colonel let out a snort full of alcohol and stretched out a threatening finger to his colleague sitting across the table.
"Don't mention cannons and bombs," the mayor stood up to smooth things over. "Without cannons, the king's brave knights can still defeat pagans and Calvinists. God's grace and glory will always belong to the great Catholic king. !”
There was a crashing sound of porcelain and silver cups, accompanied by wild shouts of "Long live the king" and "Long live Manila". Fireworks began to be set off on the lawn, and the atmosphere of the party reached its climax.
Parian, this Chinese district outside Manila is dark and silent at night. The former mercenary jumped off his horse and asked Shlick to lead the horse back to the hotel's stables. The hotel was a two-story wooden building with a tile roof, and he walked up the creaking stairs. The two young sons of the shopkeeper lay their sharpened bamboo spears across their legs and slept soundly against the stairs until they were awakened by the sound of footsteps and stood up in a hurry. Weiss dismissed them both with a wave of her hand.
Weiss Lando reserved the entire second floor of the hotel, although he only occupied the largest guest room. He patted the door knocker: "Open the door, Mimi, it's His Excellency Count Vananova."
The bolt behind the door panel clicked a few times, and he opened the door and walked in. There were no lights in the room, and the moonlight coming from the window on the side of the porch could clearly illuminate the appearance of the person entering. Weiss knew that if he were a stranger standing at the door, he would most likely be greeted by a 9mm bullet immediately.
The half-dark coconut oil lamp was lit, and Mimi ran around the room to get him towels and wash his face. Lucia, or the maid as Weiss called Mimi, was thin and dark-skinned, and looked no different than an ordinary agent from the "Fifth Bureau" - which was Weiss' private name for the Political Security Bureau. Both. Weiss knew very well that the "center" transferred this woman and sent her to him as a personal maid to act as an assistant. An unspoken task was to monitor him. The weapon issued to her was a Zastava CZ99 automatic pistol, not Lingao's homemade black powder revolver. Thinking that one day he might be shot through the head by the weapon he brought into this world, Weiss could only shrug his shoulders.
"What's the news on the dock?" The fake earl pulled off the fancy clothes one by one. These clothes were soaked with sweat and gave off an unpleasant smell. Now he just wanted to take a nice bath. It's a pity that there are no bathroom facilities here. If you want to take a bath, you can only go to the courtyard of the inn and use a wooden bucket to fetch water from the well.
"Including those that entered the port today, there are a total of 21 Chinese ships and 1 Portuguese ship." Thanks to Salina and Miss Mendoza, Mimi's English is excellent and her Spanish is also good. "There are two Chinese ships in the Chinese ship." One ship will go to Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and the others will go to Fujian."
"Go to Hong Kong? That's great. Let's see if we can let it carry some goods back tomorrow. I really can't stand this will-o'-the-wisp, Mimi, go and light the candle. I have to finish the report to Jiang tonight. We have to An intelligence station cannot be established here without even a radio station.
