What kind of disaster was Handelman's first time seeing an earthquake: tilted buildings, "scarred" roads, lifeless farmland and "fish ponds" everywhere. Maybe these places were not fish ponds originally.

He also saw many cracks on the ground, some of which had been filled a lot, and some were still very deep, looking like a hideous scar on Mother Earth's body, which was very scary. In fact, this is pretty good, because the ground is close to the sea, and sea water gushed out of some cracks outside Jiaozhou City, which caused great obstacles to future agricultural work. Because the land was "polluted", it took time to purify.

The walls of Jiaozhou Fortress still look so majestic. The specific time of construction ten or twenty years ago, Handelman couldn't remember the large-scale fortress city. It withstood the test of this earthquake disaster. Except for the cracks in the walls of a few buildings in the city, the main body of this brick and stone building with rough and heavy style was not damaged, and most of the soldiers and residents living inside it were safe and sound, which shows its solidity.

Similar to this is the turret. The Jiaozhou Fortress equipped with more than 40 heavy fortress cannons also suffered minor losses in the earthquake. In addition to a few unlucky guys, hundreds of turret guards were all jumping around on the night of the 25th and in more than 20 aftershocks, and are still sticking in the turret, protecting the safety of the huge Jiaozhou City.

There are now many temporary shacks outside the city walls, which are filled with ragged residents and Eastern Hostels with vegetables. In Handelman's opinion, these people are not like local residents of Jiaozhou, because their clothes are neither beautiful nor their bodies look strong enough (which means they are not nutritious enough), and their expressions on their faces are even more timid. Hendelman has been to Jiaozhou several times. The expressions on the faces of local residents are generally more confident than these people. Of course, the most important thing is that these people are still dragging a braid behind their heads. This is a typical feature of the Qing people!

It seems that the Qing refugees who fled to Jiaozhou due to earthquake disasters were like every time a war broke out in Germany and ran into Union Province to seek asylum with their elderly and young people, they were all pitiful people. For these people, even Handelman, who had worked in the Far East for many years and had a hard heart, ordered his servants to donate two barrels of black bread on the ship. After all, these people are subjects of the East Coast Republic and civilized people, and civilized people should have the power to be respected.

It has been two or three days since Handelman arrived in Jiaozhou City. There were four ships with him, four ships loaded with Nanyang rice. The four ships were also the only ships that sold from Nanyang to sell this year. The prosperous grain trade in previous years plummeted due to the lack of funds for the East Coast people and the easing of the food crisis. If it weren't for the four-year supply contract signed in the past (this year is also the last year), the four ships would not have transported grain to Jiaozhou this year.

However, after coming to Jiaozhou, Handelman keenly discovered that the food trade seemed to have turned around again, because the East Coast people accepted a large number of refugees again, which was always puzzling. From the perspective of merchants, Handelman did not understand why the East Coast people were desperately pursuing population in the Far East. You must know that it will probably take many years for anyone to regain money from these refugees.

Then the question is, is this investment really profitable?

Well, even if you can really recover the cost many years later, how do you calculate the time cost of this investment? I have such a large amount of money and have long been able to come up with more than ten different investment methods, and the income from keeping any investment is greater than that of transporters from the Far East. So, Handelman is convinced that the East Coast people are making a very bad investment, and they have wasted more than ten million rupiahs a year for this, and it has been wasting so many years. It is really ridiculous that their trade managers should all be hung on the mast because they are amazingly stupid!

But then again, without the stupidity of these East Coast people, how could their East India Company make huge profits through grain trade, financial lending, and specialty transactions such as raw silk, tea? Last year, the East India Company's dividend reached an unprecedented 2.4 million rupiah, and at least one third of them were contributed by East Coast people, which greatly alleviated the questioning of the company's board of directors by small and medium shareholders in the Amsterdam market. You should know that in the meantime, the company usually only distributed more than one million rupiah a year, and sometimes only a few hundred thousand rupiahs or even used aged spices as dividends to pay the debt, which aroused dissatisfaction among many people. But now, with the East Coast people, the sucker, providing profits, the East India Company's financial statements have become much better, so the anger of the shareholders has also dropped a lot. It's so perfect!

However, any good things will end. Since many grain purchase contracts expired last year (1667) and were not renewed, Batavia realized that the lucrative grain trade might be gone forever. They were a little disappointed with this, but did not give up. Therefore, when the last four ships of grain were sent to Jiaozhou Port for delivery, Handelman was sent to serve as the messenger of the Governor to see if there was any possibility of further cooperation with the East Coast people. If Handelman was full of doubts about whether his mission could be completed smoothly when he set out, then after arriving at Jiaozhou Port for two or three days and understanding many things through his eyes and ears, he was already full of confidence in his mission: the East Coast people encountered a food crisis again, and they would once again sign a food purchase agreement with the East India Company.

In fact, what Handelman guessed was correct. As of today (September 6), the counties under the jurisdiction of the Denglai Development Team have successively received more than 40,000 victims from the four prefectures of Shanxi, West, and Shanxi. This has not been considered to have directly swallowed up the burden of more than 100,000 Qing people in Changyi, Gaomi and Lingshan counties. Moreover, although the Denglai area is still a little far from the Tancheng area of ​​the epicenter, and the disasters suffered are not that severe, the damage caused by the combined earthquake and the heavy rainstorm on agricultural production should not be underestimated, especially in the severe disaster situation and the river water system is more important than

In the more developed Laizhou Prefecture, agricultural production has been greatly affected. Although the people of the East Coast have taken action to rectify farmland, repair water conservancy, and replenish seedlings, it is inevitable that large-scale grain production will be reduced this year. The entire Laizhou Prefecture will face a serious food crisis. Considering that Dengzhou Prefecture has never been a grain-producing place, the surplus grain that can be used to support Laizhou is relatively limited, so this year the Denglai Development Team faces a serious grain shortage again, and purchasing from outside is inevitable, and the Dutch East India Company is naturally within the scope of consideration.

"The envoy of the Dutch East India Company has been here for more than two days." Just as Handelman was thinking about how many grain procurement contracts the East Coast people would sign with them, Liang Xiangjian, who had just returned from the nearby Jimo County, was listening to the reports of his subordinates: "He may have seen the inside story of our need to purchase grain. These guys have a very sensitive sense of smell in the business journey. This time I guess I'm going to talk to us about business again."

"Haha, the Dutch have always had this kind of virtue, and there is nothing strange about it. They want to sell food, and we want to buy food. Isn't that right? There is nothing special about this. Just talk to them about the price and payment methods. If it really doesn't work, it's okay to continue to raise funds from them. Anyway, the most important thing is to get enough food at a smaller price, which is the key." Liang Xiangjian yawned and sat tiredly on his tiger-skin chair. He was old and was so tired that he would go out for a while. It seems that it's time to return to China to enjoy a peaceful life. People don't accept old age.

The following officials understand Liang Xiangjian's words. At present, the people of the East Coast want to make food, but there are only a few places, Ningbo, North Korea, South Ocean and the southern princes of the Ming Dynasty. Shunguo had to raise too many soldiers, the place was small, and they were also facing military pressure from the Qing Dynasty. In addition, a large amount of grain had been bought by the East Coast people in the past few years, so there was still a stage of re-enriching the combat preparation warehouse. There should be no surplus grain for sale, so there is no need to worry about it. As for the Fujian of Zheng, Li Chengdong, Guangdong, and Lu Kings in southern Zhejiang, they have never been a place for grain production, and they may even need to import grain from other places, so there is no need to consider it. They can't get any food from them. The time of Ningbo in the past two years is not very good, and the self-sufficiency of grain is a bit bare, let alone exporting grain to Denglai, which is almost impossible.

Then, after thinking about it, it is only North Korea and Nanyang. To be honest, the country of North Korea has been harsh in recent years, such as the large amount of grain "donated" by North Korea, such as the purchase of more than 600,000 yuan from the Den Lai Development Team, such as the North Korean troops owed North Korea more than 600,000 yuan in grain purchases, such as North Korea sending troops to help colonize the Yalu River right bank area, etc., and almost all bone oil was squeezed out. The North Korean high-level officials were dissatisfied with that. Even though the trade between the East Coast and North Korea has become more and more frequent over the years, making the North Korean market a little prosperous, but agricultural products have been exported to the country in such a large amount, domestic prices have soared, and the increasing hardship of the people in the lower classes of North Korea can be seen. Therefore, under such circumstances, exploding North Korea has become a craft that requires careful weighing and careful operation. This is destined to not be too strict with them for the time being, and eventually forcing others to survive.

"The main thing is to buy grain from the Dutch East India Company. You can also buy a batch of them in North Korea. This time, they don't donate it, so they don't be afraid. We will follow the agreed price (but this price is still much lower than the market price. North Koreans criticize this...) The purchase price is just a temporary delay. It cannot be paid in a short period of time. Let's drag it first, and pay with the previous debt of more than 600,000 yuan in the future." Liang Xiangjian leaned in a wide chair and said in a slightly hoarse voice: "Buying grain from the Dutch may also require financing. Alas, I have already owed one million and a half guarantors, so why not owe to some, anyway,

If there are too many lice, don’t be afraid of itching. Let’s continue to borrow. This time, you can continue to borrow 3 million rupiahs. The annual interest rate should not exceed 8%. You can also accept it. You can also give us 30,000 tons of grain, which can solve a lot of trouble. Well, 30,000 tons of grain may not be enough. Let Wei Boqiu be a villain again and continue to send people to the coast of Japan to see if he can get some cheaper. If this is not enough, then I have no choice but to continue to trade military funds and war horses with Shunguo. Li Laiheng is still very willing to exchange these strategic materials, but I don’t like them now, so I should just keep suppressing them..."

By the way, if we only count the victims of the Western Four Prefectures who flocked into Laizhou Prefecture, the size of the Denglai Development Team could probably be barely maintained. But the bad thing is that Lao Liang has too much appetite. This guy who is about to pat his butt and rise back to the local area is no longer rational enough in the eyes of many people, because he actually ordered soldiers to send ships to the Haizhou area to search for immigrants, because the place was close to the epicenter of Tancheng, and the losses in this earthquake were extremely heavy. It is not an exaggeration to have rubble. Moreover, due to the local geographical climate, it has been raining heavily after the earthquake disaster. The water levels of Hongze Lake, Luoma Lake, Shuoxiang Lake, Yellow River, Huaihe River, Guanhe River have soared across the board, flooding large areas of fertile fields, villages and towns, and creating countless victims. In fact, if it weren't for the people on the east coast who made a fuss in Huai'an Prefecture and moved away 500,000 people, after this earthquake, the situation in the northern part of Huai'an Prefecture near Shandong Province might have been even more terrible.

Liang Xiangjian felt that he had to save them and had "no responsibility", which made many officials in Denglai sigh, because it was obvious that Denglai had to empty their family and save people! However, Liang Xiangjian was the highest local official and the benefactor of many of them. His orders could not be disobeyed and must be implemented. Therefore, the Navy and the Army were busy going to Haizhou, and they were also transporting food and supplies everywhere, restoring production, and were busy. Now, I have to be silly with the Dutch red hair and borrow a lot of money to buy grain. How will I live in the future? The fur, gold, medicinal materials, whale products, Denglai's gold, Ningbo's raw silk, and tea probably have to be in the pockets of the Dutch people. Denglai will have to be suspended for several years due to indigestion. I don't know what kind of expression the newly appointed pioneer team captain will face such a mess next year? If you guess it is dark, you should slap the table and curse!
Chapter completed!