Chapter 482: Sooner or Later I'll Swindle You into Becoming a Minister

While Zhu Cilang and Zheng Zhilong were plotting how to swindle and deceive their way into colonial aggression, the Dutch colonial mission headed by Van Diemen and Bruce Van Diemen had already returned to the Shanghai trading port, which was still under construction.

Unlike their last hurried pass-through, this time the Van Diemen brothers had plenty of time and could make a proper inspection.

And the first target of their inspection was the Wusong Fort and Baoshan Fort batteries, located north of the Shanghai trading port!

These were two bastion-style batteries under construction, situated on either side of the mouth of the Wusong River — the Ming dynasty's Baoshan Fort lay east of the Huangpu River, in the area of the later Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone. Across the river from Baoshan Fort was Wusong Fort; both were vital coastal-defense points and already had old, outdated batteries.

But Zhu Cilang had no use for those shabby old batteries, so he had them torn down and rebuilt as two bastion batteries that would actually work. Nor were these simple bastions thrown up from sandbags — they were masonry bastions built mainly from Yangtze stone and red brick. Neither bastion was very large; each had only six projecting solid gun platforms. Each bastion had three gun platforms facing the Yangtze and the Wusong River, all built extremely solidly. On each river-facing gun platform, four emplacements had been reserved for thirty-six-pound great cannon!

If both bastion batteries were fully equipped, they would field twenty-four thirty-six-pound bronze cannon — enough to deal a fatal blow to any enemy attempting to approach the Shanghai trading port by water.

After viewing the two batteries, which were still under slow construction and would probably take a year or two to finish, the Dutchmen followed a broad flagstone road called "the Bund Long Street" into the Shanghai trading port for a tour.

The Shanghai trading port was divided into two towns, Pudong and Puxi. Puxi Town lay at a bend in the Wusong River — not in what would later become the very center of Shanghai, but in the Jiangwan, Wujiaochang, and Yangshupu area. To the east was a curve of the Wusong River; to the west ran a straight brick-and-stone city wall twenty-five li long, separating the trading port from Jiading County of Suzhou Prefecture. The area within the wall was not small either — about fifty square kilometers. Originally half of it had been military land belonging to Wusong Fort; of the remainder, half was government land under Shanghai County's jurisdiction, and the rest was privately owned farmland.

The military land and government land were both assigned to an office called the Shanghai Trade Bureau, while the private farmland was bought up at high prices through Wang Zhixin and placed under a firm called the Huangpu Trading Company — whose majority shareholder was, of course, Zhu Cilang himself.

At present, the great majority of Puxi Town was still farmland — fifty-odd square kilometers of it, all first-rate paddy fields. It could not all be developed at once, so of course the farming had to continue for now.

And the first "prime locations" to be developed were naturally the land belonging to the Huangpu Trading Company. This place would be the prime location of the future city of Shanghai!

The first-phase plan for the trading port was drawn up by Zhu Cilang personally: on the Huangpu Trading Company's land, eight great streets — four running east-west and four north-south — were to be built, along with one large passenger-and-cargo dock.

The large passenger-and-cargo dock was naturally built along the Wusong River. The dock was built very long, with sixteen berths in all, able to accommodate sixteen of the largest sailing ships of the age at the same time. Because it had sixteen berths, the dock was named the "Sixteen Berths" Dock.

The four "horizontal streets" all began at the Sixteen Berths in the east and ended at four gates in the trading port's city wall — to facilitate the movement of goods, eighteen gates had been opened in the wall, though only four were currently in use. The four great streets all ran east-west and, from north to south, were named "Beijing Street," "Ningbo Street," "Tianjin Street," and "Nanjing Street." The four vertical streets crossed the horizontal ones at right angles and all ran north-south; from east to west they were "Bund Street," "Sichuan Street," "Henan Street," and "Chengdu Street."

What fine names for the eight great streets! You could tell at once they were prime locations!

But for now these eight "golden avenues" all stood empty. On either side of the flagstone-paved streets there was little but rice paddies and vegetable gardens; only the stretch of the Bund Long Street near the Sixteen Berths Dock showed any signs of commerce.

Along the west side of the Bund Long Street, many Chinese- and Western-style buildings had already gone up, and quite a few construction sites were underway.

Among the completed buildings was a two-story hotel with a touch of Manueline style, called the Covro Hotel. It had been opened by a Western merchant who had moved from Macao, and since the Shanghai trading port had not yet truly taken off, business was mediocre. Van Diemen's mission simply rented the entire hotel as their base on Chinese soil.

Standing on the balcony of a large guest room facing the Wusong River, Van Diemen and his brother Bruce noticed the shipyards and ironworks on the far bank of the Wusong River.

Unlike the quiet here in Puxi Town, the industrial zone of Pudong Town, though limited in area — it enclosed only a bit of military land that had belonged to Baoshan Fort, a narrow strip along the Wusong River — already had two shipyards and two ironworks partially completed and in operation. From a distance, one could see the bustle there at a glance.

Van Diemen raised his telescope and observed for a while. In the two shipyards, several slipways had already been put to use, with great keels laid down and many workers busy at their tasks.

Clearly, what was under construction were large vessels capable of ocean voyages — possibly warships!

Moreover, Van Diemen noticed European figures on two of the slipways.

It seemed the shipyards across the river had introduced European shipbuilding techniques... This was indeed a worrying problem!

The East India Company currently possessed fewer than forty warships in all — after all, it was a commercial company and could not invest excessively in military matters... If the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty began investing heavily in a navy, it might not be long before it could build a fleet capable of confronting the East India Company's navy on the open ocean!

At this thought, Van Diemen's brow knotted into a frown.

"Your Excellency the Governor-General, the four factories you see belong respectively to Mr. Lopez and Mr. Shen..." The owner of the Covro Hotel, an aging, somewhat short and stout Portuguese merchant, had been invited into Van Diemen's large guest room and, in stiff French, was introducing the factories across the Wusong River.

"Alfonso Lopez of Macao?" Van Diemen asked.

Alfonso Lopez was something of a figure among Westerners in the East — a great arms merchant with an eye for money who would sell anything. Van Diemen not only knew him but knew him well. Yet the two were not on good terms, because Lopez was Portuguese, and Portugal and Holland had already come to blows several times in the Indian Ocean and the South Seas over the struggle for Eastern colonies!

"Yes." Covro likewise disliked this Governor-General of the Dutch East India Company standing before him, but for the sake of earning the sinful money in Van Diemen's pocket, he answered truthfully.

"Who is Mr. Shen?" Van Diemen asked again.

"He is China's Northern Seas Minister, and also a wealthy sea merchant... He is the owner of the Sea Sand Company."

"The Sea Sand Company?" Van Diemen did not understand. "Sellers of sand?"

His brother Bruce, more familiar with East Asian affairs than he, said with a smile: "Not sellers of sand, but merchants active on the routes between China and Joseon... His standing along the northern Chinese coast and the Joseon coast is comparable to Zheng Zhilong's."

"Oh." Van Diemen nodded, then gestured for Covro to leave his large guest room.

After the Portuguese merchant had gone, Van Diemen said to his brother: "Without this Mr. Shen's consent, can our people enter Joseon's ports?"

"Enter Joseon?" Bruce was taken aback. "That does not depend on Mr. Shen."

"Then who has the say?"

Bruce Van Diemen said: "It depends on the King of Joseon... That country, like the Great Ming and Japan, practices seclusion. Because Joseon was formerly a vassal of the Great Ming, it is open to Great Ming merchants."

"Formerly a vassal of the Great Ming? Not anymore?"

"Not anymore," Bruce said. "The Kingdom of Joseon now submits to the Tartars who occupy northern China."