Chapter 713 Reunion

For foreign businessmen, the Song court was quite responsible, not only ensuring their personal safety in the Song Dynasty, but also protecting their property.

Shipping departments in various places often sent troops to protect foreign merchants who entered the territory of the Song Dynasty, and specially set up escort officials for them to protect their belongings along the way to prevent them from being forcibly bought and sold along the way.

If foreign merchant ships encountered natural disasters at sea, the officers and soldiers of the Song Dynasty had the responsibility to provide humanitarian rescue;

If the owner of the ship disappears or drowns, the goods must be inventoried and kept in a safe place until relatives come to claim them and be strictly guarded against theft or false claims;

If the buyer and seller have differences during the trade process, they can report it to the official and get a fair ruling.

In the Song Dynasty, the increase in the number of coastal trade ports, the advanced management methods, and the types and values ​​of imported and exported commodities all reached the highest level in history.

Among them, Guangzhou, Quanzhou and Mingzhou are the most famous. They are the three major foreign trade ports and are undoubtedly world-class ports.

“There is an endless stream of clothes and hats from all nations.”

There are also special maritime regulations, which are policies governing domestic maritime trade and foreign businessmen coming to China.

For example, issuing public certificates and prohibiting private smuggling; formulating regulations for merchants to limit the return of ships; extracting and buying goods; establishing household registration of ship owners; setting up fanfang to manage foreign merchants in China; granting official positions to merchants with large trade scale; and having the government preside over the prayers.

Sea sacrifice activities, etc.

Shipping revenue has been included in fiscal revenue, and the scale of maritime trade can be summarized from the government's shipping revenue.

"The profits from commercial shipping are quite beneficial to the country's use" and "the profits are the biggest. If handled properly, the income can be in the millions."

The number of countries or regions with direct or indirect maritime trade exchanges with the Song Dynasty has increased from more than 30 in the Tang Dynasty to more than 60.

It is roughly divided into five regions.

One is the countries of Indochina, such as Jiaochin, Champa, Chenla and Siam;

The second is the countries in the Nanyang Islands, such as Moyi, Srivijaya, Bo Ni and other countries;

The third is the Indian peninsula and neighboring countries, such as Ceylon and other countries;

The fourth is the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula and the countries to the west, as far as the Mediterranean Sea and the East African coast, such as Majia, Layer and other countries;

The fifth is Korea and Japan in East Asia.

There are mainly two routes.

One starts from Quanzhou or Guangzhou and reaches the South Asian subcontinent and Southeast Asian countries, or passes through the Indian Ocean to Arab countries, or even as far away as Egypt, Somalia and Tanzania;

The other one starts from Dengzhou, Mizhou and Mingzhou and goes to Korea and Japan.

Of course, this was mainly during the Southern Song Dynasty. Today, Guangzhou is still often harassed by barbarians, and the country still has doubts about opening up the prosperous core area to the outside world for maritime trade.

Even the Shipping Department of Hangzhou City reluctantly got the agreement to start trade with Goryeo and Japan after Dasu fought for many times.

Along the southeastern coast, there are occasional cases where merchants from Bo Ni and other areas come ashore to engage in banditry.

Ships have now become quite developed. A large number of porcelain, ironware, gold and silverware, jade, coins, animal and plant remains, etc. were unearthed from the "Nanhai No. 1" that was salvaged in its entirety in later generations.

Among them, there are more than 19,000 sets of porcelain, 180 sets of gold wares, 183 sets of silver collars, 84 tons of iron wares, 170 sets of bronze wares, and 85 sets of lead and tin wares.

There are 13 pieces of bamboo wares, 46 pieces of wooden wares, 28 pieces of lacquer wares, 300 pieces of other items, and 17,000 copper coins.

It’s so rich in just one boat!

Today's Song Dynasty ships, even excluding the Hangzhou type built by Su You, are just common large-scale sea-going merchant ships, which can already carry 5,000 materials, that is, a load capacity of 300 tons.

"Nanhai No. 1" and the Song Dynasty ships in Houzhu Port, if we use the measurement habits of the Song people, they are about 3,600 materials and have a load capacity of about 200 tons. They are only medium-sized models among the Song Dynasty ships.

Even five thousand materials was not the maximum load capacity of a Song Dynasty ship.

Historically, during the Huizong period of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Song Dynasty ordered the shipyard to build two giant ships in order to send a delegation to visit Goryeo. One was named "Dingxinlishe Huaiyuan Kangji Shenzhou" and the other was named "Xunliu"

"Easy and Tongji Shenzhou".

At the same time, six "customer boats" from the supervisory departments of Fujian and Zhejiang were entrusted to accompany him.

The guest boat "is more than ten feet long, three feet deep, two feet and five feet wide, and can carry two thousand dendrobium grains."

Two thousand dendrobium is equal to two thousand materials, which means the load capacity is about 120 tons.

As for the "Kangji" and "Tongji" Shenzhous, according to the "Korea Illustrated Book of Xuanhe Envoys", "the length, width and height of the Shenzhou, the equipment used, and the number of people are all three times that of the passenger boats."

In other words, the load capacity of a Shenzhou is at least three times that of the accompanying passenger boat! Six thousand materials! The load capacity is 360 tons, and the displacement can reach more than 1,000 tons, which is close to the limit that the entire keel wooden sailboat can reach.

It is no wonder that the article described the two divine ships as "as majestic as mountains, floating on the waves, with brocade sails and flying heads, subdued by dragons", and "on the day when the beauties welcomed the imperial edict, the whole country looked at them with cheers and praises."

But is this the end? Far from it, this kind of Shenzhou may not be the largest ship sailing from the port of Song Dynasty.

In his "Lingnan Daida", Zhou Qufei of the Southern Song Dynasty described a giant ship called the "Mulan Boat", which was a giant merchant ship that sailed from the Song Dynasty to the "Mulanpi Kingdom", the Kingdom of Murabit in western Africa.

"Floating to the south of the South China Sea, the boat is like a huge house, with sails like clouds hanging from the sky. It is several feet long. There are hundreds of people in the boat. There is a year's worth of grain in it, and the pigs are brewing wine in it."

There is also a larger model.

"The boat has been enlarged. One boat can accommodate a thousand people, and there is an opportunity on the boat to reach the market. If there is no wind, it will take several years to reach it. It is not a very big boat, and it cannot be reached. The so-called Mulan boat in this world may not be a big one.

also."

The huge ship can accommodate thousands of people. Not only can pigs be raised and wine brewed in the cabin, but it can also be equipped with "machines" and a "market".

"Hundreds of people in a boat, pigs and pigs brewing wine in it, risking life and death..."

Facing the vast sea, unlimited sailing period, fresh meat and fine wine have become one of the great pleasures of Song people's maritime life.

Therefore, Su You's taking office this time is the best place he has ever taken over in his life.

In his eyes, today's Shibo Division is just a small business, and its tax revenue is only a million dollars a year. However, in the Southern Song Dynasty alone, it was more than this amount, more than five times.

Having money, food, products, and markets, and allowing them to operate efficiently and orderly are Suyou's greatest strengths.

Of course, the prerequisite for everything is that the fundamentals must first be stabilized, that is, the people's stability and food and clothing problems must be solved first.

The happiest person was none other than Shen Kuo, who packed up the Sitong Company's 1 million yuan debt, some half-completed engineering projects, and the "Research on Farmland Water Conservancy in Two Zhejiang Provinces" and threw them to Jiangsu Province, happily

With the appointment of the imperial prince Zhongyun in mind, he went to promote Si Tianjian.

This appointment was recommended by Su You, so when Su You arrived in Suzhou, Shen Kuo came to visit.

Also visiting with Shen Kuo were Su Shi, who was leaving for Mizhou, Jiaoxi to take up a post, and local expert Jia Quan, who was in charge of farmland water conservancy development in Kunshan.

Su Shi has now experienced the "hell of wine and food" in Hangzhou. He has a shy belly and a beautiful beard. In the eyes of the people of the Song Dynasty, he is a first-class elegant man. When he saw Su You, he clapped his hands and joked: "Here comes the deputy!"

This is an allusion to Zhang Liang's Bolang Sha, who originally wanted to kill Qin Shihuang, but accidentally hit the passenger car. It is a metaphor that Zheng Xia originally wanted to attack Wang Anshi, but ended up being released along with Su You.

Su You pointed at him and laughed and scolded: "A mane with a beard can't cover up his sharp mouth, and his broadness and fatness are not suitable for a perverse person."

Everyone smiled, and Shen Kuo said with a smile: "There are many words like this in Da Su's poetry anthology."

Shen Kuo collected Da Su's poems and essays last year and sent them to Beijing. Many of the words in them lamented the current affairs.

The Song Dynasty did not sin with words. This incident was not as serious as later generations imagined at first, and even the two parties involved did not take it seriously.

When submitting his work, Shen Kuo just highlighted all the taboo words in Da Su's poems to show that he had censored them, and at most he had distanced himself from them.

After Dasu found out, he gave him all the rest of his new works.

The famous historian and Su Shi's good friend Liu Shu, who helped Sima Guang compile "Zi Zhi Tong Jian", learned about this and even wrote a letter to tease Su, saying that he was using this method to let the emperor know his literary name.
Chapter completed!