Chapter 29 Going to Japan(2/2)
His luck was really not that good this time. He spent a full eight days on the road. Although he made a big circle, he avoided the range of Japan's combined fleet patrolling at this time and could absolutely ensure safety.
However, Fang Linyan can travel on this road, but it is difficult for large quantities of imported foreign goods to travel. Tianjin Port has been completely blocked. Foreign goods can only be transported to Shanghai, and then taken overland to Tianjin, BJ.
During this period, it was troublesome enough to travel almost two thousand miles by land. Not to mention the freight costs, the key point was that it was a drop in the bucket. At that time, the cargo throughput of a merchant ship could reach more than a thousand tons. The cargo of this ship reached Tianjin
/The capital requires two thousand carriages to load it, which is really incomparable with shipping by sea.
As for the famous water transport, it has long since declined. As early as 1848, almost fifty years ago, because the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was in disrepair, the Qing government had already begun to transport grain by sea, hoping that foreign goods would be delivered by water ship.
It is even more impossible to go to Beijing, so the prices of foreign goods are still strong.
Needless to say, there was no need to describe the ups and downs along the way. When Fang Linyan set foot on Japanese soil, he received several pieces of news that shook him to the core.
The first news is that the Indochina Steamship Company, the owner of the sunken British merchant ship, actually filed a lawsuit against the Qing government!!
After seeing this news, Fang Linyan really felt that this was really nonsense! It was the Japanese who sank the Gaosheng. Why the hell are you suing China? China is also a victim.
Fang Linyan looked more carefully and found that the other party actually made a lot of nonsense, and he also made it sound:
It is believed that the Huai Army failed to clearly inform the Gaosheng about the risks of transporting cargo, which resulted in the Gaosheng being engaged in transporting ground combat troops that was hostile (to Japan).
Therefore, China should clearly know that this will result in being intercepted by the Japanese army and captured as trophies.
Therefore, the Qing government should bear responsibility for this and compensate for the corresponding losses, with a total price of 33,411 pounds.
What's even more outrageous is that a secret message from the Qing Dynasty was leaked, saying that it was Lafayette's edict that as long as the foreigners could make her worry less, she would just pay compensation, and it wouldn't be much money, so she could avoid disaster and lose money.
Such remarks really caused the whole country to be in an uproar.
The second news is that all the Qing Dynasty's troops in Korea were destroyed. Only less than 800 of the 6,000 Huai army escaped. And these 800 people suddenly mutinied at the beginning of the war, betrayed the flanks of the friendly forces and fled directly.
of.
The person who led these eight hundred people away was Ye Zhichao, the most powerful person in North Korea in the Qing Dynasty...
The third news is that many Oxford and bridge scholars published newspapers to defend Japan's attack on the Gao Sheng.
Chapter completed!