If you talk about the entire western Guangdong region, which city is the most prestigious, it is undoubtedly Dianbai City.

Dianbai is named after the many thunderbolts in the local area. It began in Gaoliang County of the Southern Dynasty and was changed to Dianbai County in the ninth year of Emperor Kaihuang of the Sui Dynasty. During the Ming Dynasty, the old county seat was destroyed by the cloud furnace and the Dagui Mountain Kou, and the county administration moved from the old city to the Shendian Acropolis.

Here we have to mention the Shendian Acropolis, which was built in the 24th year of Hongwu, and was originally an earth city, and then rebuilt a brick and stone city. It is one of the 24 coastal defense fortresses in the Ming Dynasty, and it is also a large-scale coastal defense fortress on the coast of western Guangdong.

In that year, Zhu Yuanzhang allocated 6,110 flag soldiers to settle here, and established the Shendian Guard, which was responsible for the coastal defense of western Guangdong. Today, Shendianwei is a huge coastal defense military force, commanding five guards in Gaozhou, Wuchuan, Yangjiang, Xinyi, Yangchun, etc., and is subordinate to the former military capital of Guangdong.

During the Zhengde period, Guangzhou Bosi moved to Dianbai Port, and Dianbai became one of the four major shipbuilding centers in Guangdong. In the fourteenth year of Jiajing, Guangzhou Bosi moved to Xiangshan.

It is precisely in this way that Dianbai County is well known in the whole Guangdong region, which is not an ordinary county seat, but a new port city integrating military and foreign trade.

In March of this year, a young scholar came to this coastal city crying.

I just wanted to save some travel expenses and take a ride home, but I thought that it was the opposite way, from the westernmost part of Gaozhou Mansion to the easternmost side, which took two full days.

Take things as they come!

This is an extremely helpless choice, I thought that I would return to my hometown to enjoy the worship of the villagers, but I didn't know that I was in this completely unfamiliar city. Jiang Ronghua's goods were very unreliable, so he arranged him in the inn and left, refusing to even help pay the house price.

From time to time, there are falling flowers, far away with the fragrance of water, this is March.

Lin Haoran was standing under a begonia tree at this time, his mood had gradually calmed down, and he looked up at this bustling street, which was really like a car.

Boxes of goods were sent to the docks, and boxes of goods were transported from the docks, so that pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages on the streets were almost crowded together, and there was even a traffic accident in which a horse-drawn carriage crushed a pedestrian.

Oyster fried, a crispy and tasty snack.

He happily ate the fried oysters in his hand, and after he had eliminated the delicious snack, he continued to wander the streets. It's not exactly loitering, but he actually has a little purpose, like "market research" that is often mentioned in later generations.

There is a wide variety of goods here, including a variety of local products from western Guangdong, exquisite handicrafts, all kinds of exquisite ceramics, seafood, textiles, and even minerals for sale.

What surprised him the most was that he saw people of other colors, people from Southeast Asia, blacks in Africa, and white-skinned Westerners.

However, foreigners are a minority after all, and the pedestrians on the street seem to have become accustomed to these people for a long time, and there is no unusual reaction.

The Ming Dynasty had a maritime ban policy, but it was strict in the rich Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the port of Tianjin, which guarded the gate of the Son of Heaven, which greatly weakened the binding force on Guangdong, and the means of production in Guangdong itself were scarce, so that the imperial court did not pay enough attention to it.

According to historical records, the Portuguese bribed Huang Qiong, the commander of Guangdong, to anchor ships and trade along the coast of Macao.

This "good at the top, but very bad at the bottom", the Cantonese commanders were all captured by the sugar-coated shells of the Portuguese merchants, so don't expect this little Shendian guard to be as clean as water.

It is precisely because of this that when Zheng Xiao, the secretary of the Nanjing Criminal Department of the DPRK, went to Guangdong to inspect it, he expressed such feelings: "People chase the benefits of mountains and seas and mines to control the boats, but do not work on farmland. ”

Dianbai has a natural port advantage, as an important part of Guangdong's foreign trade, there is no reason why foreign merchants cannot use sugar-coated shells to open it here.

It's just that behind Dianbai is the poor western Guangdong region, and then the Guangxi region is the exiled people, so there is less heritage here, which is also an important reason why Guangzhou Bosi moved to Xiangshan.

When he walked to the front of a large-scale store, Lin Haoran couldn't help but pause and look inside, this turned out to be a real department store, divided into a special product area, cloth area, porcelain, wood carving, etc., everything.

Graphite?

When Lin Haoran walked to the ore area, there were various iron ores, copper ores, and some metal ores piled up on the ground, and he found a palm-sized graphite in it.

Graphite is not produced in Guangdong Province, so it must have come from other places, but it is not known whether it is from the graphite mining areas in the north or imported from abroad.

"How much does this piece of smoke cost?" Lin Haoran picked up the black graphite stone and asked Xiao Er who came over.

Xiao Er glanced at it, but he didn't know whether he despised Lin Haoran's ignorance or despised this graphite stone for being lowly, so he quoted directly: "This is not ink, if you want it, give it a hundred wen, and if you don't want it, throw it back!" ”

Lin Haoran pretended to think about it, so he took out the money to pay the bill, put the things away, and wrapped the graphite in a handkerchief and put it on his chest.

Hey?

This scene was seen by Xiao Er, and he immediately regretted it. Because this man is not afraid of soiling the handkerchief, it proves that he must have taken a fancy to this thing, and he could have knocked him hard, instead of selling it at the lowest price.

"Liu Qi, come here!"

At this moment, a rough voice came from the cloth area.

A shopkeeper with a gangster spirit looked solemn at this time, chewing the betel nut vigorously in his mouth, his eyes were full of energy, and his body was medium, but very strong.

Standing in front of the shopkeeper were two blond Westerners, a tall and proud young man, and a stocky man who looked like Mr. Pea, who seemed to be haggling with the shopkeeper.

"What is this talking about 'Biao De Buddha'?" The shopkeeper pointed to the real customer, Mr. Pea, and asked Liu Qi in a lower voice.

Mr. Pea thought that the shopkeeper was going to ask him, so he spoke stiff Chinese, nodded his head seriously and shook his head: "There can be a lot of 'Biao De Buddha', but not 'Biao De Buddha'!" ”

"Shopkeeper Shen, you heard it too! Your price, Mr. Robert, is not satisfied, and can only give you three dollars! The tall man who accompanied Mr. Pea in the purchase looked at the shopkeeper and said with a smile.

"Master, do you want us to give him another Buddha statue?" After some deep thought, Liu Qi thought that he was a foreign language genius in the store, and he spoke the most eloquently, but he couldn't figure out which Buddha this "Biaode Buddha" was.

When Liu Liujin heard this, he immediately scolded angrily: "Lao Tzu lost money when he sold him a horse for five dollars, and if he wants to give him a Buddha, then I will simply close the door." ”

"We Mr. Robert don't need a Buddha statue, the request is very simple, you only need to pay the price of five yuan, and you can make a deal!" The tall Western man exchanged a few words with Mr. Pea, and then looked at them arrogantly.

This......

Chen Liujin was weighing it in his heart, this price was not completely unacceptable, but he faintly felt that there were still some mysteries here, which made him very unwilling to just make hard-earned money.

"That's not what your friend meant, right?"

But at this moment, a young man's voice came, with a faint smile on his face.