Battle of the Third Reich Chapter 344: Chinatown (middle)
"Chinatown is a very magical place. I promise you will not find anything like this in Europe. How should I put it" Clay raised his head and opened the skylight on the top of the cab.
"Do you want to talk about the gathering place?" Welbe dusted his cigarettes in the ashtray.
"Well, you can describe it like this, sir, but it's not very precise. The actual situation is much more complicated than recorded in the data." Clay pressed the cigarette lighter under the dashboard and took it from the car cigarette case. Take out a cigarette.
"According to the information we have, these Chinese people are in a terrible situation right now. They are eager to get help from the outside world." Welby frowned and looked at the documents on his knees.
"Help from outside?" Clay laughed, he drew the cigarette lightly on the leather-clad steering wheel, and then pulled out the popped cigarette lighter.
"I wrote the most recent report, Mr. Welbert." Clay lowered his head and lit the cigarette: "It is obvious that the gentlemen squatting in the office have confused some of the most basic concepts. But. This is completely understandable. This is the biggest difference between them and us. We use our brains to think about problems."
It seems that the agent is quite dissatisfied with his superiors, but given his previous experience, Welby feels that he can understand this feeling. In other words, he is in that kind of predicament, and maybe he will be more bitter than Clay. A hundred times mean.
The General Administration of Intelligence did make mistakes. This latent plan was a bit hasty since its inception. Many details were not considered. After all, these agents have received very comprehensive training and their psychological endurance is very high. If you change Those people trained by the General Security Bureau in the early days have probably already made big mistakes.
"Do you mean that there is a problem with these materials?" Welbey asked, shaking the file in his hand.
"No, there is no problem with the information, but it depends on how you interpret it, sir." Clay tilted his head after speaking, and rolled down the window on the driver's side.
"Hey, officer! What is going on in front of you!" the driver shouted to a patrolman standing in the middle of the road with his hips akimbo.
"Don't stop, go ahead, sir." The patrol did not answer Cray's question, he just kept drawing circles with the baton.
"Stupid note, he doesn't seem to know what's going on." Clay took a puff of cigarette, then changed the cigarette to his left hand.
"At this speed, almost all of us will be late." Welby glanced at the patrolman through the car window.
Appears to be in his thirties, wearing a crisp navy blue uniform, a seven-pointed star emblem pinned to his left chest, wearing a full set of armed belts, and a huge M1917 revolver in the holster.
"Why don't we turn right." Welbey suggested.
"You must go through the first two intersections to find a way to detour. The whole street on the right is lined with tramway. Look at the cars in front. We are not the only smart people here, sir." He took another cigarette out of the cigarette case and held it in his mouth. Holding the remaining half of the cigarette **** in his right hand, he continued to burn, and then pressed the cigarette **** into the ashtray under the dashboard.
"Well, it's up to you." Welbey smiled cheerfully. A character with a subordinate, this is not a bad thing.
"You haven't finished talking about it, Cray, about Chinatown." Welbey turned back.
"Oh, those Chinese, when I first arrived in San Francisco, I didn't deal with them less." After crossing the intersection, the speed of the traffic increased a bit, and Clay changed gears neatly.
In the 1940s, San Francisco Chinatown far exceeded the Chinese communities in other parts of the world in terms of area and population. The world’s largest Chinatown was not an advertisement for attracting tourists at the time, but a reality. The honor of the name.
Modern Chinese going to the world is not an inspirational story full of positive energy. It is full of dark, **** and dirty transactions.
In the mid-nineteenth century, there was a wave of abolitionism around the world, which was regarded as a great victory for human rights and moral reform organizations and the church. Of course, the achievements of those who are morally high should not be wiped out, but we should also see the wave of abolition. What is hidden behind the scenes is the huge substantive interests in politics and economy.
For example, the abolition of slavery in the United States is the game between industrial capital and agricultural capital, reformists, conservatives, new aristocrats and old aristocrats, new immigrants and old immigrants, which finally triggered the Civil War. This civil war determined the United States. The redistribution of politics and interests will directly affect the development direction of the United States in the next century.
Although the abolitionist movement was successful, it also brought a lot of sequelae. Although politicians benefited greatly in politics, fame and fortune because of their abolitionist stance, for colonial capitalists, this was basically shooting themselves in the foot, and it was a disaster.
Because whether it is in the Americas, Central and South America, or as far away as Australia and New Zealand, a large amount of cheap labor must be obtained to fill the gap created by the release of black slaves.
After blacks became wage workers, they severely reduced the net profit originally obtained by slavery capital. The former slave owners must find a substitute for black slaves as soon as possible, and work in their cornfields, sugarcane gardens, tobacco fields, coffee gardens, and cotton fields. At the same time, they shoulder the burden of building roads and mining industries without too much technology. Physical work.
The British colonists soon discovered an excellent candidate, that is, "I Daqing" who has almost unlimited human resources.
From the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, China's national power has been declining for about half a century. The old man Shiquan succeeded in defeating the savings left by his ancestors. Even if he left a Hezhongtang for his son to be slaughtered, the country's vitality has been damaged and its decline has already appeared. Jiaqing's ability is simply unable to turn the tide.
More importantly, with the decline of national power, people’s minds have begun to chaos. In this half a century, a series of natural and man-made disasters have occurred on the land of China. Water, drought, locusts and plague have appeared almost every year. The hungry people can only leave their homes and wander into areas where they think they can eat.
At the same time, instead of decreasing, China’s total population has experienced explosive growth. In just 50 years from the 60th year of Qianlong to the first year of Xianfeng, the nation’s population has grown from 310 million to 430 million. The population growth will encounter food harvest failures caused by disasters, and the result must be various Prices are rising rapidly.
At the same time, the opium trade has led to a large outflow of silver, but the country has instead used silver as an agricultural tax currency. In order to convert copper money into silver, most of the farmers' harvest in a year fell into the hands of landlords and grain merchants, and a large number of self-employed farmers lost their land. Becoming a tenant farmer, land mergers across the country intensified and even fell into a vicious circle.
The economic decline will inevitably lead to political turmoil. From the eight-year-old Bailian Rebellion in Chuan Chu area in the last years of Qianlong to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement that broke out in the first year of Xianfeng, the Manchu government gradually lost its support to the local area. Ability to control.
The previous Opium Wars thoroughly revealed the Manchu Qing government’s nature of being strong from outside to outside, before the whole world. When "I Daqing" can no longer hold up the bluffing frame, the day when it bows and steps down is not far away.
In the early days, Chinese coolies were recruited in Xiamen. At its peak, there were six intermediary banks in Xiamen, five of which were run by the British, and the owner of the other was the Dutch. The number of Chinese coolies exported from this place exceeds two thousand people every year, and the exclusive term "selling piglets" was born at this time.
At that time, because of language barriers, foreign intermediary banks usually subcontracted their recruitment share to local brokers in China. These people are called "customers" in Fujian dialect. Each coolie recruited can get a lot of commission. .
The residents of Fujian and Guangdong had the custom of going to sea to earn a living early on. After a large number of northern refugees poured into the coastal areas during the Qianlong and Jiaqing period, the lack of arable land became even more tense. A large number of landless farmers appeared in the countryside, and it became A helpless choice.
The residents of Fujian and Guangdong basically choose to go to Southeast Asia, such as Borneo, Vietnam and the Philippines, which is the route that Zheng He's fleet used to take.
These coastal people do not resist going overseas to earn a living, but the number of recruits by intermediary companies has been difficult to increase, because most people still do not want to leave the land where their ancestors lived.
At that time, every coolie recruited~IndoMTL.com~Chinese brokers could get a commission, which was almost equivalent to a month's salary of a local worker. In order to make more money, some people became ignorant of their conscience. They colluded with the local vibrant social group, which is the notorious "triad". These scumbags went together and worked together. Started a business that entrapped compatriots. He did not hesitate to resort to the methods of kidnapping, kidnapping, and even public looting, and sent all the Chinese people onto the coolies of Westerners.
In order to deceive coolie into boarding the ship, the brokers do everything they can. For example, they will deceive some ignorant Chinese people, saying that one hour in China is equal to two hours in foreign countries, so the contract signing time is actually It is only half of the Chinese New Year, and spending half the time to make twice as much money, this opportunity cannot be missed.
The triad’s best method is to set up a gambling game, and then pay a lot of money to make the participants owe a large gambling debt, the purpose is to force the other party to pay the debt. What's more, they directly adopted the method of kidnapping tickets to intercept innocent passers-by in the wild, put them in sacks and send them to the coolie boat.
These people who boarded the coolie boat are as ignorant as a newborn piglet. Many people still have the hope of returning home with wealth in their hearts. They don’t know what fate awaits them on the other side of the ocean. .
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