The bad emperor of Tang Dynasty

Recently, Guo Nuan and Yan Zhuang were talking about the development of Leizhou. As soon as he arrived in Lingnan, he couldn't help but feel that the burden on him was extremely heavy.Most of the officials who had been relegated to the barren land were broken and broken, and they all followed the crowd and became mediocre officials. It was like being a monk and hitting the clock for a day. Daizong, his cheap father-in-law, remembered that he was a cheap son-in-law. For the sake of his pregnant daughter Shengping and the unborn grandson... he spared him and returned to Chang'an.

However, Guo Nuan is a master who likes to make troubles. He is not willing to be an official, even if he is in a poor and remote area, he will live a chaotic life in the yamen. I don't believe that Lingnan can't get rid of the name of a barren land. Lingnan is the bridgehead of the Chinese Maritime Silk Road. It has rich subtropical resources and excellent natural harbors. The coastline stretches for thousands of kilometers. In short, Guo Nuan feels that there is a lot to do. .

With the forward-looking perspective of future generations, Guo Nuan feels that the prosperity and development of the Maritime Silk Road can still be brought forward from the Song Dynasty more than 100 years later to the Dali period of the Tang Dynasty today.

The development of shipping needs the support of navigation technology. Yan Zhuang is not optimistic about Guo Nuan's idea of ​​developing Leizhou Beibu Gulf and Leizhou Harbor. Guo Nuan patted his chest and said proudly:

"Don't worry, the day before yesterday I invited a group of carpenters from Leizhou Bay Shipyard to discuss for a while. I believe that within half a year, a new type of watertight compartment ship will be born. Afterwards, I will sail the South China Sea, cruise to the Brahman Islands in Malacca, along the Xisha, From Zhongsha and Nansha, they head south to the Indian Ocean to Nanzhao, direct flights to Tianzhu, Buddha Lion, Dashi, and even to Persia and Daqin thousands of miles away. There is no problem in trading with such foreign countries. In the future, when the seaborne trade develops, there will be a lot of money."

In his previous life, Guo Nuan once went to a coastal city. During this time, he visited a large museum on the theme of the Maritime Silk Road. He also inspected the shipbuilding technology invented in the Song Dynasty. He saw the decayed wooden hull salvaged from the seabed in the museum. It was an ocean-going merchant ship engaged in ceramics trading in the Song Dynasty. It accidentally ran aground and capsized and was buried underwater for hundreds of years.

By the way, Guo Nuan watched the miniature models of ancient ships displayed in the museum, and also popularized some special effects films of the museum's 3D theaters. The film introduced the ancient shipbuilding technology after the Song Dynasty in detail.

Have you never eaten pork or seen pigs running? Guo Nuan has a general understanding of some advanced ancient shipbuilding techniques based on his knowledge of ancient shipbuilding techniques.

Regarding the issue of navigation and positioning, this is a major bottleneck restricting the maritime trade of the Tang Dynasty.At this time, the Tang Dynasty had already started frequent trade with Arab countries, but since the application of the compass for maritime navigation originated in the Song Dynasty, Sinan was recorded as early as the Warring States Period.

Nowadays, if the merchant ships doing business at sea are not guided by the sun, the moon and the stars, once the weather is not beautiful, the rain will be rainy, and the waves will be overwhelming, and the merchant ships will be blind flies. It is useless to kneel down and beg grandpa to tell grandma. In addition to the limitation of shipbuilding technology, the merchant ships sailing in the Tang Dynasty were prone to sinking when they hit the rocks, and there was no navigation guide.

The day before yesterday, Guo Nuan found a few pieces of magnetite from a nearby iron mine, and went to a blacksmith's shop to borrow some tools. He ground the magnetite into a diamond-shaped needle with two pointed ends, and drilled a hole in the middle of the needle.Then rest on a thin vertical needle.

"Hey, it's really a guide." Yan Zhuang looked at the magnet floating on the vertical iron needle, no matter how he turned the magnetic needle, it finally wobbled towards the south next door to Dayang, Yan Zhuang was very surprised.

The situation in Mobei has always been tense. Guo Nuan's father has been fighting the Turks for decades in Shuofang. The armies of the two regimes are facing each other, and no one can do anything to the other. They have been in a stalemate.

The military tension on the northern border of Mobei has affected the traffic problems of the Silk Road in the Western Regions along the Hexi Corridor. This is the lifeblood of the trade between the East and the West. If the supply of wonderful wines and spices and gemstones from the Western Regions is lost, the people of the Central Plains, let alone the Kingdom of Heaven, will be very anxious. Well, even the Persian merchants had no choice but to stomp their feet and scold their mothers. They still had to rely on camel caravans to transport goods and trade with the Tang Dynasty in China.

Given that Dunhuang and the Yinshan Mountains were always harassed and plundered by Turks, and Yumen Pass and Yang Pass were both unsafe, the Tang army always wanted to kill this Turkic Tartar, so as to clear the obstacles to the land trade in the Western Regions.

However, analyzing the current situation, the people of the Tang Dynasty were a little helpless. Compared with before the Anshi Rebellion, the national power of the Tang Dynasty after the war was not as good as before. Tubo in the west sent troops to the plateau from time to time to make troubles, wondering when they could fill up Tubo's own cattle and sheep In the area of ​​Sichuan and Shu in Yunnan with abundant water and grass.

And adjacent to Sichuan and taking into account Yunnan, the Nanzhao Kingdom of Vietnam has recently begun to be dishonest. More than ten years ago, Ge Luofeng, the fifth king of Nanzhao, broke away from the Tang Dynasty completely after occupying the land in the Yunnan-Guizhou area in southwest Sichuan. Yes, I heard that Ge Luofeng, who is over fifty years old, recently had trouble with her Tibetan neighbors.

The boss of Tubo is too demanding on the Nanzhao Kingdom. Sometimes he wants cattle and sometimes sheep. The citizens of Nanzhao Kingdom still live in poor villages in the subtropical rain forest. The people of Nanzhao live a life of gathering, hunting and grazing. Backward and almost primitive, how can it be threatened by Tubo repeatedly, and the payment of protection fees over and over again is unbearable. This Nanzhao wall grass is swaying from side to side. It is really embarrassing for it to be mixed between the Tang Dynasty and the Tubo Dynasty. Ah, for the past ten years, I don't know which side to turn to for asylum.

During Xuanzong's Kaiyuan prosperity, Tang Dynasty was still very powerful, and Tubo did not dare to presumptuously. The king of Tubo was only looking forward to marrying a woman from the Tang royal family, so that he could make marriages and seek self-protection by building relationships, and Nanzhao also Very witty and willing to recognize him as the younger brother and the Tang Dynasty, the three countries have been in harmony for a period of time.

Recently, I heard that Ge Luofeng intends to reconcile with Datang. Leizhou is close to the Beibu Gulf of Guangxi, and part of Nanzhao's land is the land in the southwest of Vietnam, which borders Leizhou and Guangxi. It is very close. In case Nanzhao suddenly Teaming up with Tubo to send troops southward to take Lingnan, it is estimated that the first to suffer is the Leizhou area in the South China Sea.

The Turks in the north are also very arrogant, and they often come to the northwest corner of Datang, the neighbor's house, to rob. In short, the Silk Road in the Western Regions is not peaceful.

Since it is difficult to travel by land, Guo Nuan thought about the great potential of seaborne business.I heard that a lot of Persian merchant ships have come to the pier in the past one or two years. In the past, they used to travel by land in the Western Regions. They didn’t even go to the sea in Malacca. However, the probability of drowning by boat is quite high. For the sake of their own lives, the Persians who know how to do business are willing to travel thousands of miles from the Central Asian desert to Datang in a down-to-earth manner.But recently, the Mobei Turks are very fierce, and the Western Regions are not peaceful. It is very inconvenient for Central Asian merchants to travel by land. With a full batch of goods, they set off to visit China along the South China Sea route.

Guo Nuan saw a new mosque opened in Haikang County three days ago, and these foreign missionaries also landed from the coast. What he has to do now is to prepare the port infrastructure for sea trade.

I heard a report from a fisherman from Leizhou who went to the South China Sea to fish. A year ago, a fishing storm suddenly encountered an offshore fishing boat. The fishing boat drifted for seven or eight days. It was encountered by a [-]-foot-long pirate ship and then hijacked. The fishermen captured a certain coral island in Zhanghai and made them slaves for more than half a year.

According to the fishermen, there were no less than [-] thieves gathered on that coral island. Under the banner of Sun En, the ancestor of the pirates in the late Eastern Jin Dynasty, they have been robbing small island countries in Java, Borneo, Shitang Lampang and other waters in recent years. The thieves have The trend of gradual expansion.

Hearing the reports of these fishermen who had just escaped from the pirates' lair, Guo Nuan was a little worried. If the fishermen's reports were true, it is estimated that the pirates would go to the wealthy coastal areas of China to rob in the near future. Now Leizhou sees that the sea is calm and calm. But it's really dangerous to be close to the pirate's den in the South China Sea.

"What should we do? Should we train a group of navies, and then imitate Zheng He of the Ming Dynasty when he sailed to the West to sweep away the pirates in the Malacca Islands in the Indian Ocean?" Guo Nuan pondered, "Well, send someone to Ask Pei Dunfu for his opinion in Guangzhou, maybe you can borrow tens of thousands of marine sailors under his command..."