Spy Wars: I have space, but I choose to work alone

"Great! Do you need any assistance from me?"

At this moment, Guo Xiaoan wished he could worship Ma Liang.

"No need, you just need to provide a transaction method." Ma Liang didn't dare to ask anyone for help to find the secret of space, so he had to do it himself.

After the two men agreed on the transaction method, Ma Liang came out of Chunlai Hall, of course, holding four packets of Chinese medicine in his hands.

Disguise must be perfect. As an ace agent, Ma Liang will naturally not make this mistake.

As soon as I entered Shanghai, I had to leave the city. Fortunately, I had a car, so it wasn't too tiring.

At night, Ma Liang drove alone to the tungsten mine storage address and successfully found the 20 tons of tungsten ore.

Fortunately, tungsten ore has a similar density to gold, and it has been refined using traditional methods.

It's said to be 20 tons, which sounds like a lot, but it actually doesn't take up much space.

If the wooden box used as outer packaging is removed, the actual area occupied is only 1.5 cubic meters.

However, in actual transportation, it is impossible to pack all the tungsten ore together to form a large iron ball.

In the absence of a crane, in order to facilitate manual unloading and loading, the goods can only be packed in wooden boxes weighing about 100 kilograms.

Twenty tons is 400 boxes. Even if the underground party has its own secret transportation channel, it is impossible to smuggle so many boxes into the city in a short time. It can only be transported by truck.

But this era is not the era of later generations where any heavy-duty truck can easily tow dozens of tons, or even run with an overload of hundreds of tons.

The load capacity of military trucks at this time was only 1.5-3 tons. Even if they were usually overloaded, considering the poor road conditions at the time, they could only carry a maximum of three to five tons.

These twenty tons of tungsten ore would require at least five trucks to transport. It would be basically impossible to conceal such a large-scale transportation from the Japanese inspection.

But for Ma Liang it was an easy matter. As long as it was of the right size and could be moved and there was enough space to hold it, even if the entire tungsten mine was turned into a 20-ton iron ball, he could easily transport it into the city.

After loading the tungsten ore, Ma Liang rushed back to Shanghai without stopping.

Fortunately, the Japanese army also wanted to use Shanghai, the pearl of the Far East, to suck the blood of the entire occupied area. After all, they relied entirely on looting, but they could not steal much.

So even though it was wartime, Shanghai was still bustling with traffic at night and there was no curfew, so Ma Liang returned to the city smoothly.

Then, according to the location provided by Guo Xiaoan, Ma Liang secretly placed 15 yuan at the designated location.

As for the Hans people they knew, they could trade with him, but they were just trying to deceive Guo Xiaoan and the others.

To be honest, tungsten ore is not difficult to sell, but in such a short time, no matter how strong Ma Liang is, he can't sell it all, so he can only use his own money to pay for it.

After taking control of the tungsten mine, Ma Liang began to set up safe houses and settlements according to his own habits.

Ma Liang spent ten large yellow croakers to buy a three-story townhouse in a residential area in the Japanese-occupied area as a settlement.

As for why not buy a house in the safer concession, it would be more convenient to do everything that way.

It’s not that Ma Liang couldn’t think of it, but that he couldn’t afford it.

This brings us to the housing prices in Shanghai. Housing prices in Shanghai are not so expensive just now, but have always been so expensive.

In the 1930s, food and clothing were relatively cheap in Shanghai, but housing prices continued to lead the country.

The monthly rent for a two-story building is 30-60 yuan, not including water, electricity and other expenses. The monthly rent for a shared partitioned room is 8-10 yuan.

At that time, the income of a senior factory technician was only 40 yuan.

The popular TV series "Storm Chasers" has a relatively realistic description of this. The protagonist Wei Ruolai can earn extra money and lives in the cheapest "pavilion" on the top floor of a shared shantytown, the kind that is cold in winter and hot in summer.

As for his brother, Awen, who pulled a rickshaw, he could only live in a room with more than a dozen people in a "dormitory" with bunk beds, and his clothes were tattered.

Unlike other Republican dramas, the main and supporting characters, regardless of their status, all live in single rooms or small buildings, and they all wear bright and beautiful clothes.

The housing prices in Shanghai have reached an outrageous level, even celebrities cannot afford to buy a house.

In 1927, Lu Xun, a successful man who had bought two large houses in Peking, moved to Shanghai with his girlfriend Xu Guangping.

The old Shikumen house in Jingyunli where the two of them rented would cost 5 oceans to buy in full. With Lu Xun's monthly income of around to oceans at the time, it would take him more than ten years to buy it without eating or drinking.

From the time he lived in Shanghai until his death, despite moving several times, the great writer had to rent a house to make ends meet, acting as a high-level Shanghai drifter. In the end, he could only sigh:

"The rent in Shanghai is very expensive and the air is very bad, but there is nowhere else to live, so I have no choice but to stay here for a while."

This price was before the Anti-Japanese War. With the outbreak of the war, a large number of people poured in and housing prices rose further.

If Ma Liang wanted to buy the house near the Shikumen like he did before the war, he would not have been able to do so without spending 60,000 or 70,000 yuan.

But this is nothing compared to the rental housing prices, which are already high.

In addition, when the war broke out, the Japanese army did not dare to offend Western countries such as Britain and the United States, so they did not enter the concession and maintained the independent status of the concession.

The war caused great damage to the coastal economy, and bosses moved their factories, workers and funds to the safe concessions.

Instead of experiencing an economic recession, the entire Shanghai city experienced an abnormal and distorted prosperity due to the existence of the concessions.

At the same time, a large number of refugees had to eat and survive in the concessions, and they worked at extremely low prices, so the labor force was abundant and cheap.

By the end of 37, there were only more than 400 factories allowed to operate in the International Settlement. By the end of 38, the number had reached 4709, an increase of more than 10 times in one year.

The number of import and export companies increased from 37 in 213 to 41 in 613, and the vast majority of the country's light industrial products were exported from Shanghai ports.

The total number of commercial households, turnover and profits have also increased exponentially, and the financial industry, real estate industry, transportation industry and construction industry have all developed rapidly.

In addition, a large number of refugees, especially wealthy people from the Celestial Empire, fled to the concessions for refuge, which also led to the rapid development of the entertainment and retail industries in the concessions.

The current housing prices in the concession have increased 30 times compared to before the war. The price of an ordinary small building is at least over 20 US dollars, which is about 100 million oceans.

Even the rent in the concession has risen to a terrifying level where a cubicle costs fifty or sixty dollars a month, and even at this price there is still a shortage of supply.

As soon as a rental information is posted, it will be snatched up immediately by the wealthy people in the refugee concession.

It can be said that the two hundred large yellow croakers that Ma Liang had left were not enough to buy even a toilet in the concession, so he could only temporarily rent a few single rooms in the concession as emergency safe houses.

However, if one wants to fight alone in Shanghai, for the sake of safety and convenience, it is best to have a safe and hidden permanent residence and identity in the concession that people dare not enter openly in their daily lives.

Now making money has become the first problem Ma Liang faces in his battles and life in Shanghai.