Master Yuan, start!

This sudden action made Tang Shaoyi look up and look at him in confusion.

Yuan Xiangcheng waved his hand, indicating that he was fine, then leaned forward and said in a low voice, "Bring the military reporters, as well as cameras, especially film. Be sure to bring several sets, the more the better!"

Although his tone was relaxed, his eyes gleamed with cunning and success, as if this matter was more important than sending the army itself.

Tang Shaoyi was stunned for a moment, not understanding the key point. He nodded habitually, then asked in a low voice: "Camera? What is this for, Chief Instructor?"

Yuan Xiangcheng smiled, leaned back in his chair, and cast his eyes on the street scene passing by outside the window. At this moment, the carriage passed through a bustling street. He looked at the scenery in front of him and said leisurely:

"Comrade Shaochuan, this deployment to South Africa is not just a military cooperation; it is also related to the future status of our Republic of China. I must ensure that every step is taken steadily.

It is important to win on a bloody battlefield, but the public opinion field is also a real battlefield. Sometimes articles and pictures are more lethal than guns and cannons!

Times are changing, the world is changing, we can no longer just passively respond, but we must take the initiative. [9”

However, when attacking, you also need some amulets to guard against unexpected attacks."

After the "amulet" speech was finished, the carriage fell silent for a moment, and only the regular sound of wheels rolling over the cobblestone road could be heard.

Tang Shaoyi lowered his head and opened his notebook again, carefully writing down this detail, while Yuan Xiangcheng closed his eyes and began to conceive of a more ambitious plan in his mind.

Above the London sky, clouds rolled in again, and the air was filled with a moist scent, foreshadowing that a new storm was about to sweep the world.

Chapter 517: Big and Small Nanyang

In the Jianghuai region, the main roads of cities across the country are filled with the sounds of newspaper boys hawking their wares.

"Selling newspapers, selling newspapers, Africa is hiring, 1 positions available in Shandong."

"Is it true that they are recruiting 1 workers at once?" Passersby were a little surprised.

"Give me one."

"It's true! Just three days later, people from Shandong, like Shandong, will gather 1 people and transport them to Yantai, where they will take a ship south to Guangzhou. After meeting up with recruitment ships from other provinces, they will go directly to South Africa!" A curious person answered.

"South Africa, what kind of place is that?" others were puzzled.

"There's gold everywhere!"

"Have you heard of New San Francisco in Australia and San Francisco in the United States?" The gossipy person raised his head and showed off.

"I've heard of it, it's quite famous!"

"These two gold mountains combined!" The gossiper gestured, put his hands together, and then extended a little finger with an exaggerated expression: "There's not even a finger of the South African gold mine. Don't you think there's gold everywhere?"

"Such a good thing, is it our turn?"

"It's a good thing, of course it's a good thing, but good things have always been hard to come by since ancient times."

"Tell me, what's the inside story?"

"There's no inside story. The recruiter explained it clearly and distinctly: the natives in that area were fighting the British, and it was a raging war.

The British, young and old, whether they were sailors or boatmen, all took up arms and went to fight. There was no one left to do the six daily chores, so they recruited us laborers."

"Isn't that a narrow escape?"

"Not really, not really," the man waved his hand. "I didn't ask you to fill in the gaps, so why are you so close to death?"

“It’s just that South Africa is thousands of miles away, and it takes a month or so to get there by boat. The climate and soil are not as nourishing as those in China.

Foreign doctors don’t understand Chinese either. If you have a headache or fever, you can only endure it. If you can’t bear it, then…” The man didn’t finish his words, but everyone understood what he meant.

"No wonder all the applicants are barbarians with Huaibei accents. It turns out they're doing this because they can't survive."

"Let's break up, let's break up. We have the life to earn money but not the life to spend it!"

...

After Yuan Shikai and Britain reached an agreement on "labor + army in exchange for loans", the country officially started to move forward with the vigorous "Going to Southeast Asia" campaign.

However, this time, in addition to the traditional Southeast Asia, the destination of Nanyang also includes South Africa.

In this time and space, the people call the former "Little Nanyang" and the latter "Big Nanyang".

Although many people were puzzled at the beginning and there were not many people in Northeast China and near Vladivostok, immigrants were still being transported by ships and trainloads every day.

Why should we squeeze out the transport capacity and dispatch the already limited number of ships to send the people to the more distant Lesser Nanyang and Greater Nanyang?

However, as large numbers of disaster victims continued to emerge from North China, the Huanghuai and Yangtze River basins, and various disasters began to occur in many places, the voices of doubt gradually subsided.

There were floods in North China, droughts in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and rare low temperatures and freezing weather across the country at the beginning of the year, with snowfall and even ice in the Yangtze River basin.

In fact, in 1899, extreme weather occurred not only in East Asia, but also in Europe and North America.

At the beginning of the year, the Arctic vortex moved south, causing London, which is known for its warm and comfortable temperate maritime climate with temperatures above 0 degrees all year round, to experience the shock of the Thames freezing.

Florida, USA, also set a record for the first sub-zero temperature of 9-4°C in its 3 years of existence.

Blizzards in many parts of the United States exceeded 50 centimeters, and in some areas of New York State, the snow accumulation even exceeded 1 meter.

In early 1899, the freezing weather that affected the entire northern hemisphere, and the subsequent floods and droughts in East Asia, temporarily disrupted the immigration routes that the Republican government had long maintained.

Apart from anything else, the Northeast, especially the area north of Changchun, where people have to wear cotton clothes for six months a year, can only be busy saving themselves after experiencing such a cold front, and cannot temporarily spare time to accommodate more new immigrants.

The technology at the end of the steam age and the beginning of the internal combustion engine era was not enough to allow this bitterly cold land of Northeast China to bear the burden of millions of people in a short period of time.

More and more people are becoming impoverished due to disasters, and so many people have no choice but to find new places to live.

The current republican government and Yuan Shikai had no good solution for these fleeing citizens.

The only thing we can do is provide disaster relief while guiding people to run away.

All that can be done is to send troops to crack down on the roving people who gather in groups and maintain local peace.

Therefore, the people in Zhili, Shandong and Henan continued to follow the existing routes, going to Guandong or going to the west.

The victims in the Jianghuai region and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River boarded transoceanic ships and headed to the South Seas, namely Southeast Asia, where they were more adaptable to the climate.

Fast forward to the second half of 1899, after Yuan Shikai visited Britain, the whole country began to quietly emerge from the chaos caused by the three major disasters of ice, flood and drought.

Families that had already registered their immigration plans began to implement and left their homeland by means of horse-drawn carriages, railways, sea routes, and other means.

The local post-disaster reconstruction work is also progressing gradually. After the population decreases, the contradiction between people and land is no longer acute. As life begins to recover, smiles on the faces of the remaining people are gradually increasing.

...

At the Shanghai dock, Lin Sen casually bought a newspaper and stood on the deck of a ship heading south to the Philippines, his eyes fixed on the two people on the dock.

A young man with neat short hair and wheat-colored skin is saying goodbye to the woman next to him. Not far away, a group of his peers are looking over here, as if calling on the man to board the ship as soon as possible.

The boy's name was Chen Jiageng. He was born in Tong'an County, Quanzhou Prefecture, Fujian Province. He later changed his name to Chen * Geng in the original time and space.

In history, he was summoned by his father and went to Singapore three times. With the help of his relatives, he ran a rice and fruit business, and later opened a plantation, creating a huge asset. During the Republic of China and the Anti-Japanese War, he donated money and materials to the country, becoming a well-known patriotic overseas Chinese "Chen * Geng".

In this time and space, his father did not go to Singapore. Instead, after Li Hongzhang's South China Sea Fleet defeated the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, he took the money raised by the villagers and opened a trading company in the Sino-US Concession in Manila.

The Chen family of Tongan, Quanzhou, including Chen Jiageng, naturally had a connection with Manila.

Unlike Yuan Shikong, the elegant old man who was obsessed with education and devoted to raising funds to save the country, Chen Jiageng is now a 25-year-old young man. Although he is a little short, he has a handsome appearance and looks extremely capable.

Flylut qu. 966791 two

Originally, his father hoped that he would study hard, take over the family business, and live a normal life.

But whether it was due to the influence of various thoughts in schools after the Republic, or for other reasons, after graduating from the school, this stubborn young man resolutely went north to apply for the Intelligence Department of Incheon Military Academy and became a military intelligence officer.

So this time, his public identity is that he has graduated and is going to Manila to find his father and prepare to "inherit the family business"

In secret, he was assigned by the Red Search Section to go to Manila to spy on the situation between the Chinese and foreigners there.

"Mom, don't worry, I'll be fine." Chen Jiageng smiled and looked at his mother in front of him. He suddenly thought of the Western etiquette in the book, then leaned over and kissed her on the face.

Then, before his mother could react, Chen Jiageng fled up the gangway like a flash. Under the gaze of his relatives and cousins, his face was full of shyness.

This kiss made Chen Jiageng's mother stunned, but she was calm and composed, and she didn't feel shy even in front of people coming and going on the dock.

Watching Chen Jiageng's receding figure, she hurriedly called out, "Jiageng, my son, be careful when you go to Luzon. If anything goes wrong, ask your father to intervene. If that doesn't work, go to the consulate. Don't force yourself to take charge!"

"Don't worry, mother!"

On the zero deck, Chen Jiageng put down his waving right hand, but a trace of guilt flashed across his brows.

4 He picked up his suitcase and walked towards the cruise ship. He looked back every few steps, as if he was reluctant to leave. But when he returned to his cousins, he seemed to have forgotten everything. He smiled and chattered like a swarm of bees, and set off on his journey.

Be a man, why be so fussy?

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This trip to Luzon is the right time to make great achievements!

It was like Chen Jiageng looking at the vast ocean in the south, his eyes full of longing for the future.

The reason why he went south can be traced back to the US attack on the Philippines.

The Spanish-American War had a similar outcome to the original time and space.

However, what Yuan Xiangcheng did not expect was that the mixed situation of the United States, the Philippines, China and the West that he had envisioned did not last long.

The Spaniards knelt too quickly, and the Filipinos were not that tough.

With the fall of Cuba, the Spaniards decisively abandoned the Philippines. After receiving $1000 million in "compensation" from the Americans, they sold the Philippines and Cuba to the Americans as a package.

After losing Spain, the Filipino natives who had thought they were saved faced an even more difficult situation. Under the attack of the US military and 3000 Chinese "civilian gunmen", some of the rebels had to retreat into the tropical forest and fight guerrilla warfare.

The big cities were partially occupied by surrendered indigenous people and Chinese, waiting for the arrival of American rule.

After gaining a huge advantage, while the Americans' focus was on Cuba, the Republican Chinese government actively implemented the agreement that Yuan Shikai had reached with a group of Filipino Chinese businessmen in Guangzhou.

Every year, 10 Chinese are sent to the island of Luzon.

But in just less than a year, as more and more Chinese landed in Manila, the US military, which had originally cooperated well with China, gradually became vigilant. Although they did not openly oppose Chinese immigration, they also relaxed their control over the indigenous people.

Seeing this situation, the Red Search Department decided to launch a major operation in the Philippines, giving guns to the rebellious indigenous people, on the one hand to help them regroup, and on the other hand to muddy the situation.

This led to Chen Jiageng and others heading south.

The superior who decided to send Chen Jiageng was his fellow townsman, Lin Sen.

During the "Battle of Huai River", Lin Sen "caught" Sheng Xuanhuai, the money bag of the Huai Army, causing it to temporarily cut off its financial support for Li Hongzhang, which led to the rapid collapse of the Huai Army Group after Li Hongzhang's death.

Thanks to this achievement, he jumped from the station chief of Xiamen Station to the head of intelligence in the southeast region.

After seeing his mother and daughter finish their farewells, Lin Sen rolled up the newspaper and walked behind Chen Jiageng: "Can't bear to leave?"

"There's nothing to be reluctant about. This is the path I chose myself. I hope everything goes well." Chen Jiageng was indeed reluctant to leave, but young people always refuse to admit defeat, so he did not admit it.

Amid the wailing whistle, the cruise ship slowly sailed out into the Huangpu River. Although Chen Jiageng said he was not worried, he waited until he could no longer see his mother on the dock before turning around and leaving the deck.