Chapter 62: Extending an Invitation

  Extension and recruitment

  Yao Feng pulled out a large stack of silver notes from his sleeve, each with a face value of 10,000 taels, ten in total, and respectfully placed them on the table beside Ding Baozhen. He stepped back and bowed deeply, saying: "Yao Feng begs Your Excellency to spare my life!"

  Yao Fan's words confused Ding Baozhen.

  Before meeting Yao Fan, Ding Baozhen had thought that Yao Fan would bribe him, send gifts, pull strings and ask for favors, but he never expected that Yao Fan would come to him for help in a life-or-death situation.

  Ding Baozhen tapped his fingers on the table, seemingly deep in thought, and said: "Get up, sit down properly, now tell me who wants to harm you?"

  After speaking, he calmly picked up the silver ticket and counted it openly. He was also surprised in his heart. Good fellow, a full 100,000 taels! Nowadays, donating a county magistrate's actual vacancy is only worth 10,000 taels. This kind of generosity from Yao Fang can be seen as a great person!

  Yao Fanzhen thought to herself, she might as well start by pretending to cry a little, so she covered her face with her sleeve and gently rubbed her eyes, letting out two soft wails.

  Ding Baozhen couldn't help but laugh, and casually stuffed the silver ticket into his sleeve, saying: "In front of me, just tell the truth, what's the use of pretending? I see that you're tall and healthy, and your family is wealthy, who would dare to harm you?"

  "Sir, when I first arrived in Qingdao as a merchant, I coincidentally saved a poor girl and unexpectedly offended the son of Guo Weizhong, the Jiangxi inspector, Guo Jixiu. He hated me for ruining his good deed and somehow gathered a group of bandits to block my way with torches and knives, wanting to kill me! Now I'm so scared that I don't dare stay in Qingdao, so I brought my apprentices to Jinan Prefecture to seek your protection."

  Ding Baozhen was used to seeing the storms of human society, so why would he be bewildered by Yao Fang's two sentences?

  He frowned and said: "Speak slowly, tell me everything from start to finish."

  Yao Cong seized the opportunity and quickly told the story from beginning to end, naturally putting all the blame on Guo Jixiu's head. In it, he also emphasized the tragic life of Su Sanjie, saying that he had already entrusted He Wannian to do business together, and was searching everywhere for Su Sanjie's sister, wanting to reunite the sisters.

  Yao Fan spoke while observing Ding Baozhen's expression, seeing that he was also moved after hearing about San Jie's life experience, with a somewhat worried and sorrowful look, thinking to himself that the effect was still okay.

  Keduo Baoren listened to the story of Yao Fan being beaten and shook his head, saying: "The Guo family is a big clan in Jimo, if they wanted to kill you, how could you have escaped? I think he just wanted to scare you."

  Yao Fan was furious, and suddenly cursed, "Damn it, isn't this old man miserable enough? His ears were even broken! Don't you have any sympathy? Where did the universal values of the ruling class go?"...

  Ding Baozhen thought for a moment about what Yao Feng had said, and said lightly: "Young man, since you have the opportunity to seek me out, then you must listen to me. It's better to resolve grievances than to create them. I'll investigate this matter and mediate it for you. In any case, I'll teach that Guo Jixiu a lesson."

  Yao Feng reluctantly stood up and bowed, saying: "The younger generation thanks the adults for their kindness." But in his heart, he was resentful and regretted that the 100,000 taels of silver had been spent in vain, failing to knock Ding Baozhen unconscious or trap Guo Jixiu.

  Ding Baozhen raised his hand and gently pressed down, indicating that Yao Fan should sit down. He asked: "You must know, I'm not helping you just because I received your silver."

  Yao Fangxin said: "You're helping me out, aren't you? If only you had flown into a rage just now and agreed to get rid of Guo Jixiu for me, that would have been more like it."

  Ding Baozhen didn't care what Yao Fang was thinking, and continued: "Before you came, I read the book compiled by your respected father in the study. Although the format is all Western-style, it doesn't prevent me from taking a glimpse of the whole leopard."

  "It's said that your respected father's book is indeed meticulous, explaining the British people from the very beginning. Although I haven't finished reading it yet, I also think that your respected father is a great talent of the world."

  Yao Feng hurriedly wanted to use Ding Baozhen, and could only perfunctorily say: "Sir, as a person of your stature praises my father so highly, he will certainly be delighted when he finds out. There's a saying that goes like this: 'A bosom friend afar brings a distant land near', Father will surely feel as if he has met a kindred spirit."

  Ding Baozhen smiled slightly and said, "I am planning to set up the Shandong Machinery Bureau here. Downstairs, a coal mine and factory are under construction. At the beginning of next year, I plan to send Xu Jianyin, the general manager of the machinery bureau, to Shanghai to negotiate with the British trading company, Pu'en Company, to purchase machines for manufacturing foreign explosives and Mauser rifles. You have returned from the West, so you should understand something about this business. I ask you, are you familiar with this matter?"

  As soon as Yao Fangyi heard Ding Baozhen's words, he immediately came up with a plan and smiled: "Sir, this matter is easy to handle, why bother finding the Providence Machinery Company? Ah, that Pu'en company, those foreigners are always arrogant and overpriced! If you want to buy machinery, my family has a ready-made connection. You just need to let Mr. Xu open up the list of machines, I'll communicate with Mr. Xu based on the list, clarify the model, as long as you pay half of the deposit, I'll deliver the goods for you."

  Yao Fan had read the relevant materials long ago and remembered that in history, this Shandong Machinery Bureau spent more than 180,000 taels of silver, with more than half used to buy machinery. The equipment purchased was very simple, and from a 21st-century perspective, it was extremely simple.

  Ding Baozhen heard Yao Fengzhu knew about the Pu En company, and even pulled out a sentence in English, looking quite familiar with this company. He said happily: "Then I'll test you, tell me, which machines do we need to buy?"

  Yao Fan relied on his understanding of history and said: "Since the coal mine is open, there must be two small steam engines in the mine. One has 8 horsepower and the other has 6 horsepower. The 6-horsepower one is used to drive a steam reciprocating pump to extract water from the bottom of the mine. The 8-horsepower one is used to drive a chain, lifting raw coal from the vertical shaft to the ground. In addition, two iron rails need to be installed in the inclined tunnel of the coal mine. This is not for running trains, but for manual pushing of coal cars."

  As for the gunpowder factory, inside are just some small steam engine-driven iron rollers used for grinding sulfur, grinding nitre, and grinding carbon. There are also small boilers used to extract nitre, steam sulfur, and dry charcoal. The rest includes molds for pressing medicine and machine-made percussion caps. These are all used to make * and * fire hats, with a very simple structure.

  There's also the Martini-Henry rifle, which is actually a British-made rifle. I've fired it before, and although its design isn't as good as the Mauser 1871, its excellent rifling makes it more accurate than the Mauser. This gun was improved from the Peabody rifle, with a lever-action breech-loading mechanism that fires cartridges loaded with black powder after loading, then clears the residue in the breech before repeating the process. Early Martini-Henry rifles were prone to bursting if not cleared properly, and stuck cases when ejecting were common occurrences.

  The rifling of this gun is done by drilling a heptagon inside the barrel, which is a regular seven-sided polygon with one more angle and edge than a hexagonal bolt. The rifling twist is not large, and one barrel can be drilled in less than half a turn. However, even so, it was still extremely difficult to process at the mechanical processing level of that year.

  "This rifle is said to have an effective range of 550 meters, but in reality it can only penetrate a thin wooden board at that distance. In actuality, even the best marksmen would be lucky to hit their target at 250 meters on a windless and sunny day. But what battlefield has such good weather? As soon as the wind picks up, the tolerances of this rifle's barrel and bullet manufacturing will reduce its effective range. Furthermore, the recoil of this rifle is too great, with the buttstock slamming into one's chest or shoulder, it feels like being shot oneself. So generally speaking, for an average soldier to hit their target, they would need to be within 100 meters, which is already a very good achievement. Without a doubt, this rifle is far more advanced than the bird guns and muzzle-loaders currently in widespread use by the Qing army."

  After listening to Yao Fang's talk like pouring beans from a bamboo tube, Ding Baozhen had no doubt that he had picked up a treasure!

  "It's just what Xu Jianyin himself said, probably that's it! This person is indeed familiar with foreign affairs!" Ding Baozhen thought excitedly.

  Yao Feng saw Ding Baozhen looking at him, thinking he still wanted to continue speaking, so he didn't dare stop and continued: "Our Shandong Machinery Bureau manufactured this gun using a six-horsepower small steam engine that can burn both firewood and coal, driving a manual lathe. Each component was processed step by step by hand, and the inner barrel also relied on manual operation of the lathe to slowly turn it out. If we didn't have highly skilled machinists, the consequences would be..."

  Yao Fansheng recalled that Ding Baozhen had once boasted after producing 120 Martini-Henry rifles at the Shandong Machinery Bureau, saying his replicas "made a louder sound and hit the target with greater force, seemingly surpassing the original". Haha, this old fellow actually thought that making a louder noise than the original was an advantage!

  But in fact, the production of this gun's imitation stopped afterwards and was never produced again.

  Yao Fan certainly knew why, the reason is that the original Martini-Henry rifle was a particularly lousy thing, and the British had been continuously improving it for six years before finally coming out with the Mark II in 1877, which was then formally mass-produced.

  The Type 1's congenital deficiency, combined with the Qing dynasty's poor quality control! At that time, Li Hongzhang was eager to let the Huai Army practice with this gun, but it turned out that "the mechanism is not flexible, the bullets are not uniform, and the accuracy is not far-reaching, much inferior to those made in Britain". A basin of cold water poured on old Li, and the Shandong Machinery Bureau never imitated this lever-action rifle again. Those 120 imitation guns became a memento of this failure.

  Just as Yao Weng was deep in thought, Ding Baozhen suddenly spoke up: "Yao Weng, are you willing to stay and help me create this Henry-Martini rifle? If you can stay, I guarantee that we will be able to produce the rifle, bullets, and gunpowder! With such a powerful weapon, our great Qing Empire will no longer fear those foreigners!"

  "Nowadays, all the equipment used by our great Qing dynasty is purchased from foreigners, at a huge cost. I fear that in the future when we need them, we will not be able to buy gunpowder and bullets anywhere, and our guns and cannons will become useless. I often think that China knows how to use foreign guns but cannot manufacture them itself. If this continues, we will either be controlled by foreigners or cheated by foreign firms - neither of which is a good outcome!"

  Yao Fan knew he couldn't stay to help Ding Baozhen make guns and bullets. In order to rebel, the Qing army needed to be weaker, and according to history, Ding Baozhen would enter Beijing in September 1876 to report for duty, with a high-ranking official position, including the title of Grand Secretary of the Imperial Cabinet, and promotion to Governor of Sichuan. The new Shandong governor, Wen Ge, was corrupt and could guarantee that the Shandong Machinery Bureau had enough funds, which was already a favor to Ding Baozhen.

  "Junior is the eldest son of the family, and the family's vast business will depend on me in the future. I really don't dare to take this job, otherwise I'm afraid it will be difficult for the family business to continue!"