"Hi Mr. Lee, it's been a nice day."

Li Boan subconsciously looked up at the sky, looking at the sky that was still as gloomy as yesterday, he had to admit that talking about the weather had become a unique way for the Englishman to greet him.

"Well, the weather is as good today as it was yesterday. Mr. Andrew, have you eaten it? Li Boan lowered his head, immediately put on a smiling face, and responded to Andre.

Although he has been acquainted with Li Bo'an for almost 3 months, Andre still can't accept it, and every time the Chinese captain meets him, he has to ask himself if he has eaten.

It was a very troublesome question for him, and he always didn't know how he should choose the answer. According to European habits, when the other party asks if they have eaten, the underlying meaning is to invite themselves to dinner.

But for the Chinese, sometimes he asks this question to invite you to dinner, and sometimes it is just a polite remark, just like they British like to use what the weather is like today to cause or change the topic.

After many lessons, Andrei finally became wiser. He paused the topic for a moment and thought about it, now that the lunch time was almost 2 hours over, it seemed that it was still early to leave for dinner, so he concluded that what Li Bo'an said just now was just a polite remark.

"I'm not hungry yet, but I don't mind having afternoon tea." Andrei answered Li Boan in broken Chinese, which made him think for a long time before he understood what Andre meant.

In fact, Andre's language ability is still good, but the problem is that Li Bo'an is a Hokkien native, and Andre actually asked to learn Beijing's official dialect from him. Li Bo'an, who was not familiar with Beijing's official dialect, naturally taught an apprentice who was difficult for even him to understand.

Hearing that Andre began to speak to himself again, Li Boan subconsciously rolled his eyes, but he still had to endure it. After sighing, he said to Andrei: "I think, Andrei, before you are proficient in official language, you better not talk to other Chinese in official language." ”

"Why? Didn't you praise me for learning very well? Andrei looked at him in amazement and said.

Li Bo'an scratched his head, and after a while, he said in a hurry: "You are indeed a fast learner, but if the same Chinese sentence is broken in the wrong place, then the meaning will be completely different."

You are not familiar with the situation in Daming now, if you say the wrong thing and offend people, it is estimated that there is no one in the capital to help you out of the siege. Do you want to let yourself run to the capital for nothing? ”

Seeing Andre fall into deep thought, Li Boan quickly diverted the topic and said, "Andre, didn't you just say that you wanted to drink tea?" Then go to the teahouse in front of the Siyi Pavilion, and I'll invite you to tea..."

Although he was not accustomed to Chinese wooden teahouses, André was always worried that if the teahouse caught fire, he would have to jump out into the street from a second-floor window.

However, for this kind of social place for Chinese, Andrei is quite appreciative. Compared with the taverns dotted around London, at least these Chinese socializing in tea houses are sober and polite in public. And in the taverns of London, you won't see any sane gentlemen except drunken drunkards.

As for the streets of London, the most famous specialty is the drunken and unconscious drunks and their vomit. Of course, this is also a helpless thing, the current Europeans have not yet learned to drink hot water, in their daily life, the only thing they can drink is milk, water and wine.

Unboiled water is the source of all kinds of diseases and bacteria in Europe. After many lessons, although Europeans did not realize that raw water contained too many bacteria and made people easily infected, the nobles who drank wine as water had fewer chances of contracting the epidemic than the low-level commoners, but it was recognized by Europeans.

As a result, the cheap and inferior liquor sold in the taverns everywhere in Britain became the preferred health drink for British civilians. And with alcoholism comes high crime rates and domestic violence in British cities.

As an Englishman, he was somewhat envious of these Chinese. He felt that these Chinese must be God's favored people, who not only occupied a fertile and rich continent, but also had the best things that existed in this known world.

For example, how can he not be envious of the finest drinks, tea, porcelain, silk, and so on, all the fine things that have made the European continent so coveted, miraculously appearing in the same region.

But he didn't have time to sigh about this today, he pondered for half a month, and finally found a plan that would allow him to steal the secret of building the railway. In fact, he wanted to take this opportunity to see how the Chinese smelted iron and how they smelted such a large amount of iron.

Li Bo'an had just picked up the Gongxi tea sent by his man, and before he could take a sip, he heard a proposal that surprised him a little. He stopped delivering tea, looked up at Andre and asked suspiciously, "You want to build a railway?" Do you know how far it is from here to Europe? ”

Andrei stretched out his hand and removed the teacup in front of him, only then did he take out a drawing from his arms, carefully unfold it in front of him, and then pointed to a place on the drawing and said: "Not in England, but here." ”

Li Bo'an subconsciously looked at the drawing, this is a hand-drawn map, it can be seen that the person who drew the map is quite careful, the proportion is reasonable, and the coastline is also clearly outlined.

After studying for a while, Li Bo'an finally recognized that this was the peninsula to the west of the Strait of Malacca, although he did not know the whole picture of the peninsula, but he still knew several islands in the northeast of the strait.

The direction that Andre's finger pointed to was in the middle of the peninsula, and when Li Bo'an was still reading the map, Andrei had already explained to him: "In the northwest of Pattani, near the Gulf of Siam, there is a lake called Lake Songkla that leads to the sea. To the southwest of Pattani, on the opposite side of the peninsula, near the Andaman Sea, there is a place called Kedah Port.

The terrain between Kedah Port and Songkhla Lake is flat, and the distance between the two places is not far, according to the natives of Pattani, if you go from coast to coast, it is more than 100 miles. If you go from Kedah Port to Songkhla Lake, it is about 200-300 miles.

If a railway could be built between the port of Kedah and Lake Songkhla, it would not only bypass the Straits of Malacca, which was contested between the Portuguese and Acehnese. It also saves time for ships to detour through the Straits of Malacca.

To the south of Kedah Port is the Kingdom of Perak, which is home to some of the best tin mines in the entire peninsula. The area around Kedah Port is now very small because it is a swampy area, and this area nominally belongs to the Kingdom of Johor, but the King of Johor basically does not care about this barren place.

As long as His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty can make up his mind, I can cooperate with the Ming on behalf of the East India Company to occupy the port of Kedah and then lease the Songkhla area to the King of Siam. After the completion of this railway, I believe that the current city of Malacca will inevitably be replaced by the port of Kedah.

Both the East India Company and the Ming Dynasty will reap high returns from the railway, and you and I will also gain unimaginable wealth and status. ”

Although he was amazed by Andrei's whimsy, he actually watched the novelty of the horse-drawn railway in the capital for a few days, and wanted to spread this thing to Nanyang.

But Li Bo'an was only surprised, he didn't have much interest in Andre's plan, and he still had a headache about how to dispel his delusions, and now Daming himself was too busy to build the railway, where could he care about building the railway for the natives of Nanyang.

What's more, Andre applied to the imperial court several times to visit the Ming Dynasty's ironworks, wanting to see how the rails were made, but each time he was rejected without surprise. Li Bo'an naturally understood the meaning of the imperial court, and he didn't think that he would get any praise for sending Andre's delusional plan to it again.

But as he was thinking about how to refuse Andrei's request, he heard Andrei say that the plan would also bring him wealth and status, which made the rejection he was about to utter naturally change, "... What does this have to do with my wealth and status? ”

Andre carefully rolled up the drawings on the table, which took him two days of hard work, little by little, and he didn't want to accidentally destroy it on the tea table.

After collecting the drawings, Andre bluntly said to Li Bo'an: "Our British East India Company is not well-known in the South Seas and East Asia, and it is not comparable to the Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch who have come here a long time ago.

I've been here for almost a year now, and to be honest, with the exception of the Ming Emperor, the native princes of the rest of the world completely treated us English as vassals of the Dutch. There are even some people who simply can't tell the difference between us and the Dutch.

To the extent that we British people are not valued in Nanyang and East Asia, you actually accompanied me all the way to the capital from Nanyang, and I did not see you have any dealings with anyone in the capital during this period.

It can be seen that your position in Daming, like the position of our British East India Company here, is in a relatively unappreciated existence. If my estimate is not wrong, there should not be many people like you among the Chinese who can speak English, otherwise the people of Siyi Hall would not have to come every day, please compile a Chinese-English dictionary with me.

If we at the British East India Company want to increase our presence in the South Seas and East Asia, we must have a truly important trading port, and the construction of the Kedah-Songkhla Railway will create a new port in the South Sea and the Indian Ocean.

I am sure that with the success of this railway, our East India Company will be able to gain a real foothold in the South Seas. And as one of the few people in the Ming Dynasty who are fluent in English, and the friendship we have built up over the past few months, I really can't think of any reason why the Ming Emperor should not send you as a representative of the Ming Dynasty to manage the railway with the East India Company.

So the success of this railway will not only bring me benefits, but also an opportunity for you to get out of your current situation..."

Li Boan subconsciously sent the tea to his mouth, but he quickly lowered his head and spit out the tea, but he didn't expect that after listening to a few words from the Englishman, even the tea was cold.

After putting down the teacup, Li Bo'an said to Andre with a gloomy face: "Let me think about it first..."