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Clauswell stayed in Nanjing for nearly two months, and to be honest, he really didn't want to leave.
He has traveled all over the world, but no city has ever shocked him as much as Nanjing.
To describe this huge city as a garden is an insult to it.
It is so huge and so clean and tidy. Every street that Clauswell walked on was paved with bluestone slabs. What is even more memorable is the asphalt road that is said to be paved with asphalt. It is so flat that there is no mud on rainy days. If there is no one, the carriage will not feel any bumps even if it is driving fast.
Everywhere in this city is so clean and tidy that even if you look carefully, it is difficult to find a single bit of garbage.
I heard that there was a major plague in the capital of the Ming Dynasty, so the current Emperor of Qin ordered the implementation of the three guarantees of sanitation in front of the door. Anyone who litters will be fined.
There are gutters on both sides of the street as sewers, and the sewage flows away from the gutters covered with slabs of stone. Unlike London, the streets are full of sewage, human and horse feces, and the stench is so bad that you have to cover your nose with a handkerchief when walking.
There are also shops along the street. Each shop door is equipped with flower stands and tassels. Not only are they magnificent, but the fragrance of flowers continues all year round, filling the entire street and making people intoxicated.
Although the people here all have long hair tied into a bun, they are very particular about hygiene. They use the residue left after extracting oil from tea seeds to wash their hair, making their buns look shiny black.
They even invented something called soap, which would leave an intoxicating scent on the body after taking a bath, and Croswell bought a hundred of it;
Although it was a bit expensive, with one dragon coin required to buy a piece of soap, Klauswell believed that if these soaps were brought to Europe, they would definitely cause the upper class nobles to scream loudly. He could definitely make tens or even hundreds of times the profit.
What Clauswell remembers most vividly is that he once went to the home of a nobleman who was a minister. The dishes at the banquet were the most delicious food he had ever eaten in his life, but this was not the part that left a deep impression on him.
In the middle of the banquet, he needed to relieve himself, and the servant of the nobleman took him to a gorgeous little room. The room was filled with a faint fragrance, which was more fragrant than their king's bedroom.
Clauswell thought that the owner had misunderstood him and that he needed to go to the bathroom. He didn't know why he was brought to such a clean little room.
The servant leading the way didn't understand what he said. He had to hold back his urge to urinate and run back to the banquet to repeat his request to the noble, hoping that the noble would ask the servant to take him to the toilet quickly.
The nobleman laughed and personally took him back to the small room filled with fragrance. He pointed to a large white porcelain and told him: "This is the latest flush toilet in my Great Qin."
As he spoke, the noble opened the lid of the porcelain and taught him how to use it.
Listening to his master's explanation, Clauswell was stunned and could not believe that he was in the human world.
With the master's patient help, he finally figured it out, but when the master left, he stood in front of the clean and white toilet and couldn't urinate.
Because it was so clean, he felt like he was defecating heaven by urinating and defecating in this small room filled with fragrance.
He will never forget this incident in his life.
What's more, the nobleman who was the minister finally gave him a flush toilet.
After experiencing all kinds of embarrassment and shock, Clauswell envied the people living in this paradise-like city.
The biggest shock was yet to come, on the day he left Nanjing. He took a boat from Qinhuai River into the Yangtze River, and when he passed outside Dinghuai Gate, he glanced in the direction of Longjiang Shipyard. No one expected that this one glance would change his life, the relationship between England and Qin, and the fate of England.
Clauswell swore that he shuddered when he saw that, a kind of admiring fear made him feel cold all over in the April sunshine.
The Sea Majesty was designed by Pater in 1636, built at the Woolwich Shipyard in England, and launched in 1637 at a total cost of over 40,000 pounds.
The Sea King has a keel length of 39 meters, a total length of 51 meters, a width of 14.7 meters, a depth of 23.17 meters, a draft of 6.8 meters, a weight of 1,683 tons, and 4 decks. It has 3 masts, with crown sails on the main mast and foremast. It is equipped with 102-104 guns.
When this battleship appeared, the whole of Europe was shocked and it was called the giant of the sea.
But compared with the huge ship that Clauswell saw at first glance, the Sea King was simply like the comparison between a child and a giant.
He saw this huge ship, which was at least 130 meters long, 50 meters wide, with four decks, nine masts and twelve sails. It was almost three times the size of the Sea King.
If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, Clauswell would never have believed that there was such a huge ship in the world.
At that moment, what he thought was, what would happen if the Sea King encountered such a giant ship
Extremely shocked, he suddenly understood why Huang Zhenlin, the Left Vice Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Great Qin Empire, dared to make such a huge demand at the beginning and demanded all the interests east of the Cape of Good Hope, but made major concessions in the end.
Perhaps, both the initial high demands and the subsequent major concessions were related to the battleship under construction.
The Qin State had just been established and they were ambitious and were working hard to build an amazing navy.
They have the ambition to swallow up the east of the Cape of Good Hope and even the entire world, but they still need time, so Huang Zhenlin's performance before and after is different.
After leaving Nanjing, Clauswell headed south and specifically inquired about Qin's shipbuilding industry. He heard that there were large shipyards in Ningbo, Quanzhou and Liaodong in the north that were working overtime day and night to build ships.
Clauswell also found out that the previous Ming Dynasty government banned private shipbuilding and imposed strict restrictions on the size of private ships.
But now the emperor of Qin State encourages merchants to go out to sea to trade. He has also opened up private shipyards and no longer restricts the size of private ships. Therefore, the demand for ships in Qin State is extremely strong.
Now all the shipyards of Qin State are operating at full capacity. At this rate, even if the whole of Europe is combined, it may not be able to defeat Qin State.
With this understanding, Clauswell deeply felt that cooperation with the Qin State was dancing with wolves and digging one's own grave.
Afterwards, he hurriedly left Daqin and rushed back to Malacca, and decided to go to Batavia to find the Dutch.
Although Britain had conflicts with the Netherlands and Portugal which arrived earlier in the process of advancing into the Indian Ocean, overall the relationship between Britain and the Netherlands was still good, and the royal families of the two countries often intermarried.
The Dutch also acquiesced to Britain's interests in India. With the favor of Mughal Emperor Jahangir, the British East India Company soon surpassed the Portuguese, who had bases in Goa and Mumbai, and established headquarters in Surat, Chennai and Kolkata.
By last year they had established 23 factories (i.e. bases) in India, with the main trading commodities being cotton, silk, indigo, sodium nitrate and tea.
Britain mainly coveted the Dutch monopoly on the spice trade through the Strait of Malacca. But now it seems that even if Britain joins forces with the Qin people to attack the Dutch, it will not be able to monopolize the Far East trade.
They were just used as guns by the Qin people to help them advance quickly into the Indian Ocean and even into Europe.
The Qin emperor and his ministers could not have anticipated that Clauswell's mind would suddenly change so drastically, and they were still actively preparing to destroy the Dutch influence in the Far East first.
That day, Qin Mu went to the Military Equipment Bureau in person to check the progress of the flintlock rifle development. After suddenly thinking of the hang glider, he drew a blueprint for the skilled craftsmen in the Military Equipment Bureau and asked them to develop the hang glider.
The Chinese have a very strong desire to fly. It is said that during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Lu Ban made a wooden bird that flew into the sky.
During the Yongle reign of the early Ming Dynasty, there was even a man named Wan Hu who tied 47 homemade rockets to a chair, sat on the chair, held two large kites in both hands, and asked someone to ignite and launch them, hoping to use the thrust of the rockets and the power of the kites to fly.
He did succeed in flying into the air, completing the first feat of human flight, but he also paid the price of his life for it.
Who says Chinese people lack the spirit of adventure
As soon as Qin Mu handed the drawings to the craftsmen, a heated discussion broke out in the Armory.
Qin Mu was daydreaming, whether it would be possible to launch a "carrier-based aircraft" on the huge treasure ship platform...
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ps: Please give me a monthly ticket! Please give me a monthly ticket!
.(To be continued..)
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