The grand welcome banquet was held in the newly completed apartment complex.
Dozens of long tables were filled with buffets.
French foie gras, scallops, crispy onion soup, fried flatfish, steak tartare, etc., Viennese pork chop, Mongolian boiled whole lamb, Mongolian roasted suckling lamb, Spanish potato omelette, Iberian ham and blood
Sausages, Dutch waffles, croquettes and fried meatballs, Belgian cheese, ham and radicchio, Caspian caviar from the Bear, and so on, there is a dazzling variety of food.
Hot coffee and rum brought from Cuba are served open.
Chamberlain and Homanet Fanti are available in limited quantities and are replenished by the waiter at your request, only one-fifth of a cup at a time.
The huge ice cubes fished out from the cellar were cut into small ice cubes.
In ancient Rome, women who drank alcohol were fined for frivolity or prostitution.
In Europe, for thousands of years, women have never drank pure wine.
For married women in Europe, they can only drink water mixed with wine. And for virgins, they can only drink absinthe.
Everyone else was fine, but Xuewei was very distressed. She had a glass of absinthe in her hand.
She was so greedy that she hid in the house, enjoyed a glass of rum, and then came out to help Alice entertain the guests.
As the trade volume between China and Britain increased exponentially, Cabinet Secretary Lord Hamilton, appointed by the British Whig government, also arrived at Dagukou with the ship.
As we all know, during the First Opium War, the scope of responsibilities of the commercial supervisor Yi Lu sent by the British was almost exactly the same as that of the consul in China.
The British Cabinet Secretary in the 18th century was the highest-ranking official in the United Kingdom. In the administrative hierarchy of the British government, his actual power and status were far above those of commercial supervisors or consuls.
In other words, Lord Hamilton is equivalent to a slightly junior Secretary of State.
This shows that the British attach great importance to trade with China.
However, Yuzhu was too lazy to pay attention to Hamilton. He simply said hello and left him to Alice to receive him.
British people who have spent time at Dagukou Pier all know one fact: Mrs. Alice is Yuzhu’s spokesperson for foreign trade, and what she says represents Yuzhu’s will.
After Alice became Yuzhu's woman, she always wanted to return to England at first. Later, as the overseas trade at Dagukou Pier was fully launched, Alice's power over foreign trade also increased.
Power fascinates men, and it fascinates women as well.
As a result, Alice was reluctant to leave.
Every British craftsman and engineer is accompanied by a beautiful young French or Dutch woman.
These women were all brought back from Europe through Alice's arrangements.
Yuzhu knew very well how coquettish the British were.
To be honest, British women's overall beauty is several notches behind that of French women due to genetic issues.
As far as Yuzhu could see with the naked eye, except for Alice, a rare beauty, the rest of the British women were generally unattractive.
Delicious food and drinks were served, beauties accompanied us affectionately, and the apartment we lived in was also in British style.
Well, the pain of homesickness should be alleviated a lot, right?
Human nature determines that in addition to making profits, craftsmen from the UK also have physical and psychological needs.
To be honest, most of the British craftsmen who came here are at the third-rate level in the UK, a few are at the second-rate level, and none are at the first-rate level.
However, developing industry is definitely the right direction and must be persevered.
This has just begun, why are you anxious?
Third-rate craftsmen have received such generous treatment, why are they afraid that top-rate engineers will not come?
Yuzhu was holding a glass of Latour wine in his hand and chatting animatedly with the mining surveyor (miner) from England.
In France today, Latour wine is about nine times more expensive than ordinary Bordeaux wine, making it a luxury drink.
According to British standard procedures, steelmaking plants must be located in coal and iron ore-rich areas, preferably with a river nearby.
In other words, areas with both iron ore and coal mines are suitable locations for building steelmaking plants.
Modern steelmaking and modern steelmaking are completely different in terms of equipment, technology and production processes, and they are completely different.
However, it is undoubtedly the right approach to build steel plants near coal mines and iron mines.
The largest coal mine and iron ore producing area around Tianjin, no need to ask, it must be Tangshan!
Small steel mills in Hebei once flourished everywhere and were repeatedly banned. How could Yuzhu not know about it?
"Mr. Howard, I heard that there are a large number of coal mines near Luanzhou, where Yongping Prefecture belongs. In addition, there are also large open-pit iron mines around Qian'an. I suggest you go and take a look first." Yuzhu pretended to understand.
Confused, I said that on purpose.
Who in the steel industry doesn’t know about Kaiping Coal Mine and Malanzhuang Open-pit Iron Mine?
In addition, there are the famous Hanyeping Company and Maanshan Iron and Steel Company. However, these two locations are too far apart and cannot be considered for the time being.
Hanyang Iron Works was actually a joke at first.
Zhang Zhidong and Zhang Xiangshuai, who claim to dare not forget the eight-table management strategy, are actually laymen in modern industry.
Zhang Zhidong slapped his head and made a decision, violating scientific and economic common sense, and forcibly built the iron factory in Hanyang.
However, the iron ore required for steelmaking is found in Daye, 120 kilometers away.
At that time, there were two methods of steelmaking in the world, one was the acidic method and the other was the alkaline method. The acidic method could only make iron ore with low phosphorus content, while the alkaline method could remove the phosphorus content in the iron ore.
.Obviously, different iron ores require different steelmaking furnaces.
When the British asked about the properties of ore and coke in order to choose which steel-making furnace to use, Zhang Zhidong said arrogantly: "China is so big that there are no types of ore and coke, so why bother asking?".
Therefore, the British provided Zhang Zhidong with the most advanced acid steelmaking furnace in the UK.
However, after the Hanyang Iron Works was built, it was discovered that the iron ore in Daye, Hubei, contained relatively high phosphorus. As a result, the steel produced by the steel plant had excessive phosphorus content and could not be used for railway construction.
As a result, the coal used in the Hanyang Iron Works was purchased from the Kaiping Coal Mine and even high-priced coke from Germany and Japan. The price of coal at the iron plant alone was more than three times that of foreign iron plants, not counting the transportation costs of the iron ore.
As a result, the steel products of Hanyang Iron Works completely lost their cost advantage.
The much-vaunted so-called Hanyang Iron Works had no other role than to whitewash Zhang Zhidong's political achievements.
Yuzhu was originally the vice president of the Iron and Steel Group, so he must know his stuff.
Therefore, Yuzhu only suggested that Howard go prospecting near Tangshan and had no other intervention.
Of course, modern Tangshan City, at this point in time, is under the jurisdiction of Shuntian Prefecture, Yongping Prefecture, and Zunhua Prefecture.
Howard asked Yuzhu a little strangely: "Mr. Yu, your blast furnace only weighs more than 1,100 pounds. Is it necessary to explore for large coal and iron ores?"
Yuzhu laughed and said with a smile: "To tell you the truth, Mr. Howard, I, the Queen Mother of the Qing Dynasty, like to do big things most. I regard bigness as beauty, and the bigger the better. As long as the scale is bigger, I will also do it.
What a brilliant political achievement." He is full of lies and deceives the British.
Alas, Empress Dowager Cixi, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to have to pull you out to show you.
Howard was just a miner, so he knew that Yuzhu's plan was to gradually expand the scale of steelmaking, starting with a half-ton blast furnace and upgrading to a 100-ton converter in the future.
After Yuzhu walked around among the technicians, Alice took the initiative to find him.
"Darling, Lord Hamilton said..." Alice relayed the request made by a senior British official.
The British hoped to establish new diplomatic relations with the Qing Dynasty and reached the following agreement:
The United Kingdom hopes to send an ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the capital. If China is willing to send an ambassador to London, the British royal family will treat it with the highest courtesy.
The British were allowed to trade in Zhoushan and Ningbo, and followed the precedent of Macau and designated a small island near Zhoushan for merchants to live and store goods.
British merchants stationed in Macau were allowed to reside in Guangzhou.
When British goods are transported on China's inland waterways, we strive for tax exemptions or tax reductions. At the same time, we hope that China will have fixed and open customs tax collection standards.
These conditions are actually roughly the same as the requirements put forward by the Macartney delegation when they visited China.
In the eyes of modern people, these trade conditions do not imply any discrimination or inequality.
There is a precedent in Macau for storing goods in Zhoushan.
As early as the pre-Ming Dynasty, the Portuguese bribed local officials in Guangdong to obtain the right to dock ships and conduct trade at the Macau pier.
After the Qing army entered the customs, they followed the Ming system and acquiesced to the fact that the Portuguese were permanently stationed in Macau.
Yuzhu took a sip of wine, smiled slightly, and said: "Based on reciprocal trade standards, it is perfectly fine for Zhoushan to give them a small island. However, we should also be given a small island near London to store goods. Others
It doesn’t matter, I can agree to everything.”
"But, we can negotiate with Hamilton, and the British will send an honest and honest Lord to help us establish the customs system." Yuzhu admired Mr. Hurd, the General Taxation Department of the Customs, for his fruitful work and efforts.
Hurd, the General Customs and Taxation Department, worked in China for decades. As a result, the entire taxation department became one of the most honest departments in the Qing Dynasty at that time.
Ever since the New Army's logistics system had a big rat like Liu Zishan, Yuzhu had almost lost confidence in the old anti-corruption system.
It is impossible to solve the problem by massacre.
As we all know, fertile soil will inevitably breed rats.
Especially for a department like the tax bureau, which is prone to corruption, rather than trusting that its old subordinates are not corrupt, they will be forced to kill people on a large scale in the future.
It is better to simply ask the British to help establish a complete customs system.
As for the issue of competing with the British for hegemony, alas, the largest warships of the Great Qing Dynasty Navy are only over 300 tons, and their artillery only weighs a few pounds.
How would such a weak navy fight against the 4,000-ton sailing battleships of the British Navy?
There is no way to fight for the time being, so we can only become allies with Britain first!