A Man of Science and Engineering in Troubled Times Wandering in the Late Qing Dynasty

Chapter 111 Bloody Gold

With the approval of Tsar Nicholas II, the following procedures went quickly. The Russian embassy in the Qing Dynasty received a telegram from Moscow and immediately completed the procedures for Li Yu.

They went to the Zongli Yamen to hand it over to Yikuang. For a while, Yikuang felt that Li Yu was more like a diplomatic visit this time, "Didn't he go to Sweden? Why did Russia also send a telegram?"

Although Sweden has never made a move against the Qing court, the Qing court has been terrified by Tsarist Russia in the north over the years. The Boxer indemnity accounted for the largest proportion of Russia, and one family accounted for nearly [-]% of the total indemnity.

So even if Nicholas II didn't send the telegram himself, the letter from the Russian embassy made Yikuang extremely respectful, even better than the one sent by the King of Sweden himself.

When Yikuang learned that Li Yu was going to Russia on the way, he directly increased Li Yu's reserve funds by 2000 silver dollars. If it wasn't too late, he even wanted to upgrade him to the top.

Li Yu also didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and quickly said that he was a student of the Imperial University, and he was still studying, so he was not suitable to be appointed as an official.

In fact, Li Yu was mainly afraid of trouble. Once he had an official rank, various entertainments would be unavoidable given the official environment in the late Qing Dynasty.

Li Yu on Guangxu's side had to attend classes three or four times a week. After Guangxu knew that Li Yu was going to Russia and Sweden again, he felt mixed feelings in his heart and couldn't help lamenting: "Now I have to sit in a well and watch the sky, this piece of sky that will never change. ...Li Jiaoxi, if possible, I hope you can bring me back some fresh items from the West, anything is fine."

Guangxu's last tone was even a bit pleading. Li Yu couldn't bear to refuse, so he agreed: "I will bring as many new Western products as possible."

Guangxu thought for a while and said: "It is best to have a delicate pocket watch. I have seen that every foreign envoy has one."

"No problem, I made a note."

Now for Guangxu himself, the most meaningful thing is time; but Li Yu knows in his heart that time is also the most meaningless thing for him.

Zhang Deyi was a little later than expected, and he didn't come to ask Li Yu to set off until a week later.

Zhang Deyi said: "I'm really sorry. I'm afraid I won't be able to come back for a few years after going abroad. It took too long to arrange the affairs of the DPRK and China and the trivial matters at home."

Of course Li Yu understood his feelings. After all, it was still the late Qing Dynasty, and people’s hometown plot was much stronger than that of the 21st century. Moreover, the traffic was slow. It usually took several years to go abroad once and return.

Li Yu smiled and said, "Ambassador Zhang, don't worry, why didn't you see your luggage?"

Zhang Deyi said: "There are too many. I ordered my servants to hire more carriages. I will be wandering on the boat for more than a month. I plan to go to the bookstore to buy more books to relieve boredom on the way."

"I'm afraid we don't need to buy a lot," Li Yuliang showed the documents from the Russian embassy. "We can take the train this time."

"Train?" Zhang Deyi was very surprised, "Brother Li, are you joking? Running a train by sea?"

Li Yu laughed loudly: "Of course you can't run trains on the sea. What we need to take is the Trans-Siberian Railway, which passes through Russia to St. Petersburg, and then takes a boat from St. Petersburg across the Baltic Sea to Sweden and the UK."

Zhang Deyi has seen the world map, but he still doesn't believe it: "I'm afraid this journey will take tens of thousands of miles. How can there be such a long railway?"

"It's not just tens of thousands of miles. If you calculate it from the beginning, it's almost [-] miles." Li Yu said, "Anyway, no matter whether you believe it or not, you will know after just one ride."

"If you can really take the railway, wouldn't it only take half a month?" Zhang Deyi was hooked, and then he realized: "You have the authorization letter from the Russian embassy in your hand? How did you do it?" ?”

Li Yu said, "Is this one? It was applied with the help of several great scientists from St. Petersburg."

Li Yu was also very happy when he received a telegram from Markov from the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg a few days ago, because he really didn't want to drift at sea for so long, it was too time-consuming.

Anyway, this time it was a big favor from Markov and the others.

Zhang Deyi really admired Li Yu in capital letters. Since when did science have such abilities?If he applied to Russia, there must be no door at all. "This time the lord asked you to go with me. Unexpectedly, you were of great help."

Even if they take the train, they have to go to Tianjin first, and then take the ferry to Dalian.

Because the Beijing-Tianjin-Shenyang Jingfeng Railway has not yet opened to traffic, only more than 200 kilometers have been repaired outside the customs, and it will not be officially opened to traffic until 1907.

On the contrary, Russia, which really wants to occupy the Northeast, has built a "T"-shaped "Manchurian Branch Line" of the Siberian Railway in the three eastern provinces.

So when Li Yu and Zhang Deyi arrived in Dalian and took the train again, it would be a Russian train.

Li Yu had very little luggage, he only carried one suitcase, but Zhang Deyi carried a large bag and several entourages.

When the group arrived at Tianjin Tanggu Port, the pier Li Yu saw was completely different from the previous two times. After all, he was in the special mission at that time, and local officials cleared the port when they left and returned.

But what I saw this time was another scene, and it was a very unsightly scene.

In front of Li Yu's eyes were hundreds of poor people who were almost beggars in ragged clothes.

They lined up in several long lines. At first Li Yu thought it was someone offering porridge, but there was no cauldron under the tent in front of them, but there were a few white men standing there.

Several men in the team communicated:

"Look at this scene, the real tree has passed! I thought I was looking forward to coming to the capital, but I was so hungry that I secretly picked up rotten melon stems to eat every day."

"I came to the capital the year before last, and even went into the city with the elder brother."

"Then did you see that the emperor and I have a queen mother?"

"Good idea! I'll just stay in the outer city."

"Then why are you here at the pier? Why don't you continue to follow Senior Brother?"

"Hey, I don't know if Elder Brother is still alive! I was beaten so badly that year, I was scared and ran away."

The others mocked him for a while, and then said:

"If it's true, as they say, gold is everywhere, and I'll work for him for a few years!"

"Anyway, it's better than starving to death now!"

"Me too, I hope the white man can choose me."

"Now you are a white man again. I didn't hear you say that the year before last."

"Okay, don't talk about me, you're so hungry and you're here!"

Suddenly, someone in the tent at the front of the line started yelling loudly: "Listen up! The white master said, if you want to eat and earn money, you should have your fingerprints one by one in a while! Then take a ship to the golden paradise, Johannesburg!

"Don't say you don't understand the terms, I'll explain it to you. The wages are two shillings a day. You must stay in John, John, ah, Johannesburg for eight years!"

The two boys in the team were a little scared: "Brother, where is the place he said? Is it all the way away?"

"I don't know either, who cares, we have nowhere to go anyway, so what are you afraid of!"

The crowd began to rush forward crazily. The white people inside basically only looked at their physique, as long as they were a little bit stronger, they nodded directly, and then a few people guided them to board the rear ship.

Li Yu heard the yelling just now, and guessed a little bit, so he asked Zhang Deyi next to him: "Are these people going to South Africa to dig gold mines?"

Zhang Deyi said: "That's right, to dig gold mines for the British. Some time ago, the English Kingdom and the Transvaal Republic had just ceased war, and the Transvaal Republic fell apart. Britain has already obtained the gold mines in Johannesburg."

Li Yu remembered that what he was talking about was the Second Boer War in South Africa.

In the 17th century, it was the Dutch who first landed in South Africa and drove out the local aboriginal blacks. "Bool" is Dutch and means "farmer".Since he is Dutch, of course he is also white.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the British also landed on the Cape of Good Hope, and then began to confront the Boers, relying on a strong military force to force the Boers to move inward.

So the Boers established the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State in the interior.

But soon, in 1884, prospectors discovered the world's largest Witwatersrand gold mine (referred to as Rand Gold Mine, Rand).

It was on this gold mine that Johannesburg was subsequently founded.

Profits and taxes from the gold mines catapulted the economy of the Transvaal Republic, while increasing friction with Britain.

It's all the fault of interests!
Kaiser Wilhelm II took this opportunity to add fuel to the fire and sent a telegram to the Boers congratulating independence.Finally, the contradictions intensified completely in 1899.

Unexpectedly, at the beginning of the war, only a few 10 Boers resisted the British attack, and Britain was forced to mobilize more than 40 troops from various places to join the war.

Although Johannesburg was captured, the Boers developed guerrilla tactics and forced the British to set up thousands of outposts to protect supply lines.

The two sides launched a three-year continuous war for this, and finally Britain won a tragic victory at a huge cost of more than [-] casualties.

This is the final battle of the colonial expansion of the empire on which the sun never sets.

British politicians realized that due to the high cost of modernization wars, they stopped overseas colonial expansion and began to shrink their strategy, turning the strategic center back to Europe.

However, as the world's largest South African gold mine was controlled by the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom was able to control the lifeline of the global economy.Gold from South Africa made London quickly become the center of the global financial industry and gold trading.

Li Yu asked: "South Africa is backed by Africa, why did it travel all the way to China to recruit labor?"

Zhang Deyi is the ambassador to the UK, so he knows about these things. He said helplessly, "They have been recruiting here for decades, maybe they think it's easy to use. By the way, have you ever heard of the word coolie?"

"Can you say it again, I haven't heard it before." Li Yu said.

Zhang Deyi explained: "These Chinese who go abroad are called 'coolie' by foreigners, which is the transliteration of the word 'coolie'. This phenomenon started about 60 years ago."

Li Yu was stunned. This was a very discriminatory word.

Zhang Deyi continued: "Because of the impact of the three-year war, Johannesburg is very short of people. I estimate that they will recruit 5 to [-] people."

Zhang Deyi's estimate is still low. In fact, there are more than 6 Chinese workers who went to the gold mines in South Africa this time.

As early as 1845, the first ship full of Chinese coolies was shipped from Xiamen. At that time, the colonies around the world allocated special funds to set up recruiting offices at Chinese ports, or set up so-called "immigration companies" to carry out "immigration companies". Deception and robbery in the name of "recruitment".

At this time, the Chinese people's spirit of enduring hardships and standing hard work has become a better slave priority than blacks in the eyes of the great powers.

It coincided with the successive defeats of the Qing State on the battlefield, and the powers saw through the Qing State’s foreign power and internal power, so after the Second Opium War in 1860, Britain, France and other countries signed the "Beijing Treaty" with China, the fifth clause of which was to allow "the people to go abroad. Contractor".

In 1866, the "Continuation of the Recruitment Regulations Treaty" was signed, allowing the British and French colonists to recruit laborers in China at will.

Of course, this seemingly legal recruitment is actually a coolie trade.

Recruitment offices often employ a large number of thugs to buy kidnappers and human traffickers, go to the countryside to plunder coolies, and send them to "Balakeng" where coolies are concentrated in Xiamen, Shantou and other places, waiting to be shipped out.

They will mark the destination of the Chinese workers on their chests, and treat them basically as slaves with a shameful brand, and the treatment can be imagined.

It is estimated that from 1852 to 1858, Shantou alone transported 4 coolies, of which 8000 were tortured to death before sailing, and most of them were dumped on the beach.

Li Yu sighed, and he soon understood why although Guangdong and Fujian provinces have a long history of immigration, the laborers going to South Africa today mainly come from North China, especially Hebei, Shandong and Henan.

In the late period of the Boxer Movement, it was abandoned by the Qing court, and it was strangled by the foreigners.Many peasants who participated in the uprising fled everywhere. In order to avoid being pursued by the court, they had to go abroad to work as laborers.

Coupled with the invasion of China by the Eight-Power Allied Forces, the entire northern region was in chaos.

At the same time as man-made disasters, natural disasters occurred in North China. Floods, droughts, and insect plagues followed one after another. Thunderstorms, hailstorms, earthquakes and landslides continued to cause disasters, which in turn led to even more terrible and continuous famine.

At this time of natural disasters and man-made disasters, instead of "changing children and eating" in the countryside, it is better to simply go abroad to seek a way out.With this in mind, more than 6 Chinese workers embarked on the road of no return to the Cape of Good Hope.

In this situation, even if the saint is reborn, it is difficult to come up with a good solution.

Although Li Yu knew very well that the "two shillings" that the white man said would not be fully paid at all, and would basically shrink to a daily wage of only one shilling (calculated to be less than 200 Wen).

But if they stayed in the hands of the local "parents" of the Qing court, it might be better to go abroad to work as a laborer. At least they could eat and have some hope of living.

Although the Chinese laborers were treated inhumanely in South Africa, they worked up to 12 hours a day, and often worked in water all day long for several months, and died from tuberculosis and liver disease from time to time.

However, the Chinese workers still made great contributions and sacrifices to the gold mines in South Africa.

The 33 gold mining companies in Johannesburg developed from a loss in 1902 to a profit in 1905.

The output value of gold mines in South Africa has also jumped to the top of the world.

Even the British government admitted: "The Chinese laborers have contributed to the most difficult period of the mining industry in South Africa."

It's a pity that no miserable Chinese worker can own this gold, this blood-stained gold!
(End of this chapter)