However, Zhu Jinglun underestimated the desire of the two local gentry for official positions. When Zhu Jinglun’s heavy corps, Zhang Qian Shan’s army, fought a battle, the two local gentry all moved their minds and secretly sent troops around the frontal battlefield from the rear to Shaozhou.
Shaozhou is a mountainous country with many state capitals, and there are many cottages that are difficult for local people to annoy. Most of these cottages are made of rocks, and water sources are easy to defend but difficult to attack. The famous cottages include Wumazhai Touma, which is called Dazhai, Ermaji Gongzhai, Sanmabi Gongzhai, Simian Village and Wumadong Shanzhai, which are connected with Simao Village, Hechun Village, Tonggu Village, Qiaoshan Village, Beizhai Village, Fishing Gongzhai, Jinzhu Village, Mudzhai Village, Liuzhou Beizhai Village and Niuzhai.
These cottages must be bypassed, even if the regular army is right, it is difficult to deal with them. Both Hakka families are interested in entanglement with these cottages. In the end, Hakka people are good at crossing mountains and mountains. When they appear near Shaozhou from Luokeng, the natives are still entangled near Niulan Village.
When Zhang Qian Shan found out that there were a large and small number of local squads behind him, it immediately affected the morale of the army. He wanted to transfer troops to help, but it directly affected the army in the tense battlefield, causing his main force to be directly defeated by the Guangzhou Army. The Guangzhou Army and the local Yong Ying main force broke through Zhang Qianshan’s defense from the front and defeated its main force.
Fogang’s defeat soon affected the Qingyuan war, but Zhang Qian Shan’s intention to withdraw from Qingyuan turned into a rout. Zhang Qianshan’s strength was unfavorable, and he made the old mistake of fleeing with cavalry to the old site, and the rest of Lianshan’s miscellaneous troops were annihilated and captured.
As soon as Zhang Qian Shan arrived in Lianzhou, he heard the news that the defenders of Shaozhou had surrendered and Hakka Tuan Yong had captured Shaozhou. In recent years, he had to feed his army and scrape land in Shaozhou, which had long caused widespread indignation and discontent. The squire of Shaozhou did not help him, so he directly said that the defenders of Shaozhou had surrendered.
The double whammy never rains but it pours. Zhang Qian Shan has received the main force of the scout army before he can catch his breath from the bad news. He has pursued Lianzhou like a tarsal maggot.
At this time, he threw those miscellaneous brands and was thrown by the army to the Tuke Yong ying main force. He didn’t stay at all and was finally chasing him. At this time, Zhang Qian Shan knew that he was as good as his son-in-law in terms of terminating.
After thinking about it, he decided to send a letter to his son-in-law saying that the bandits were serious. Now he can control Shaozhou and Nanxiong in addition to Lianzhou, and he handed them over to his son-in-law to quell the chaos. Obviously, he wanted to keep Lianzhou’s lair, but Zhu Jinglun wrote back to him saying that he heard that bandits had run into Guangxi and hoped that Yuezhang would help chase his son-in-law. Obviously, he was unwilling to accept the reply from his father-in-law to stay in Guangdong and drive him to Guangxi.
Zhang Qianshan gritted his teeth and found that he couldn’t beat his son-in-law, so let’s go. He decided to lead troops into Guangxi and took Hexian directly while Guangxi was unguarded. But at this time, his son-in-law also marched into Guangxi and attacked from Guangning to Huaihai. He also wrote to tell Zhang Qianshan that he heard that bandits had fled to Pingle and hoped that his father-in-law would help quell the chaos.
Zhang Qian Shan understood that his son-in-law wanted his help to break Jiang Yili’s back road. Pingle is located in Wuzhou and Guilin, which controls the Gui Jiang waterway. He either fought Jiang Yili or his son-in-law. Zhang Qian Shan thought about it. He thought it would be more cost-effective to fight Jiang Yili. Because there was an official road from Shaohe County to Pingle, he had to climb mountains all the way back to Guangdong. He really didn’t want to walk the mountain road again, especially when the mountains were full of Yao people.
Take a few days off
John, an American botanist, followed Zhu Jinglun’s army to visit Heshan, Xinning, Gaoyao and other tea areas. He collected a large number of plots and plotted the distribution map of local tea areas.
During the inspection, he communicated with Zhu Jinglun many times.
He told Zhu Jinglun that tea, an economic plant, is most suitable for large plantation management and modern factory processing.
John didn’t mean to say these things.
It turned out that he had also made a detailed investigation in India before he visited China, and inspected the plantations and tea factories set up by Assam Black Tea Company in India. He found that the British had designed several processing industry machines in India, which were not as good as the best tea in China because of the cultivation of tea varieties and the technical reasons of workers, but the quality guarantee of machine production had already appeared.
The root reason why John was able to come to China to investigate immediately after the negotiation was over was that he had already been hired. It was because he had been unable to get through the negotiation that he went to India to investigate. When he came back, John Eliott Ward only accelerated the negotiation and he had to start as quickly as possible.
John’s investigation in India inspired Zhu Jinglun to plant large plantations for factory processing. Isn’t that why India and Ceylon tea later surpassed China tea roots?
He has always been most worried about the future status of China tea. For practical reasons, Zhu Jinglun believes that tea exports must be the largest source of foreign exchange for China’s industrialization in the future. For emotional reasons, Zhu Jinglun finally feels that China’s loss of monopoly on porcelain, silk and tea is not only an economic loss, but also a shame.
Now porcelain and silk technology have spread in the world for a long time, and only one tea can maintain its monopoly position because of westerners’ late contact. If there is a way, Zhu Jinglun will spare no effort to continue this monopoly position.
Therefore, Zhu Jinglun was inspired and stimulated by John’s investigation and experience in India.
But John said this because he had his own purpose. At that time, he suggested that Zhu Jinglun should allow American businessmen to run tea gardens in China, because he found that there were still many barren hills in China that had not been cultivated. According to his investigation, the location, height, humidity, temperature and land conditions of those barren hills were no different from those of some local excellent tea gardens, so he thought that those barren hills could also be developed into tea gardens, but the locals did not have the financial resources to do so.
There are indeed many Hakkas in such barren hills in Heshan and other counties. It took more than 100 years to expand the tea garden area in Heshan mountainous area to 10,000 mu, but it is impossible to have 10,000 mu of mountainous area in a mountainous county with many mountains and few counties. Because a tea tree has no savings for three or four years from planting to producing tea, people can’t afford this opportunity. It took a hundred years for Hakkas to gradually accumulate tens of thousands of mu of tea gardens.
However, it is not a problem for the British to raise funds directly in the London stock market in the form of joint-stock companies. Therefore, they can develop tens of thousands of acres or even hundreds of thousands of acres of tea gardens in Indian mountains on a large scale. In the face of this modern operating speed, it is a problem if China people do not change and be surpassed. After 19 years of history, not only are they surpassed by India, but even Ceylon tea production is more than China.
At that time, Zhu Jinglun was a little moved. Isn’t this world an American besides the British?
However, Zhu Jinglun still has deep concerns about introducing American capital. Because of the land, a person who has experienced various movements in the middle of the Republic, his thoughts are actually not put aside. He still has a feeling of China unification for the land, and he is still very sad to hand over China land to the Americans for management, even though it is barren hills.
Therefore, knowing that the introduction of Americans will definitely increase the planting area of tea gardens in China, the planting efficiency is at least at the same starting line in the competition with the British, but he still refused.
What really made him change his mind was to quell the fighting between the local people and the Hakka people. At last, when Enping finally left 100,000 Hakkas hiding in Wukeng Mountain with their families, he went to make a contract and found that the vast majority of the 100,000 Hakkas were old, weak, women, children and young, but less than 20,000. Most of the young people were killed.
How do these people live?
This question immediately poked Zhu Jinglun’s heart very painful.
These Hakkas, who are seriously short of labor force, will find it hard to live in the mountainous areas because they have no money for tea plantation or reclamation. One of the big reasons why Hakkas are more desperate than Guangfu people in fighting is that Guangfu people can still visit their relatives and friends after being driven out of their land, but the Hakkas will be in a desperate situation. As far as Zhu Jinglun sees it, most of the casualties of Guangfu people in fighting are directly killed, while many of them are due to hunger after losing their land. After four or five years of fighting, the two sides don’t know how many such people have starved to death.
Zhu Jinglun experienced famine. He not only regarded famine as a tragedy, but also regarded it as a sin.
It is this evil that makes Zhu Jinglun change his original intention. For people who are starving to death, the most important issue is who can let them live, not what nonsense feelings are.
Therefore, he immediately decided to allow Americans to contract barren hills and hair plantations in the local area, but Americans must hire those Hakka women and children who are not good at foot binding and are generally stronger in physique. Usually, the main labor force hires these people to develop tea gardens without any problems, and most of them have mastered the technology of growing tea.