Chapter 484: Standing at the Current Situation

Mi Fang led Yuan Xi all the way in front, but Yuan Xi saw several ships docked at the pier to unload cargo. From time to time, people pushed cargo off the boats, and the waterline gradually rose above the water surface.

Yuan Xi saw a ship below the waterline with dense white spots, so he walked closer and took a closer look. Aren't these barnacles?

He went over and touched the rows of barnacles, and said with a smile, "This looks delicious."

Mi Fang listened and laughed, "Your Excellency really understands things at sea, but this thing has caused great damage to the ship's planks. If it is not dealt with, the planks will only become less solid. But even if it is cleaned up, the planks will be far less solid than before."

"After just one long voyage, the ship's planks have been damaged quite a bit. I'm afraid we'll only sail near the coast in the future."

Yuan Xi suddenly realized, "The Mi family caravan also has a long sea trade route?"

Mi Fang explained, "There are only one or two ships. I just had a sudden idea. I thought that the Zhen family caravan must have seen some great business opportunities when building ocean-going merchant ships. Why not let the Mi family give it a try?"

"I was reluctant at first. Ocean trade is not easy to make back the investment and is also very dangerous. But she insisted on her own opinion and even used her own money to supplement her private property. I really had no choice but to send two ships out to sea, one to Java and the other to Siam."

"I didn't take it seriously at first. After all, it takes nearly half a year to go back and forth to distant sea trade locations, and there are many storms. It is not uncommon for most of the ships that go south to never return."

"But we were lucky this time. The ships to Java and Siam returned one after another. The Siamese one just arrived yesterday."

After hearing this, Yuan Xi thought to himself that Siam must be Thailand. This place is rich in spices and is indeed the favorite of the Central Plains nobles today. As for other things, there might be tea and rare animals, right?

He said, "Can I see the specialties you brought back?"

Mi Fang guessed that Yuan Xi was very interested in overseas goods, otherwise he would not have sent Zhen's ships out to sea repeatedly, and immediately said, "I'll take the envoy to have a look."

They all arrived at the warehouse at the dock. Mi Fang asked someone to open the door. The floor was filled with goods. Yuan Xi discovered that most of the goods were very similar to those brought by the Zhen family's merchant ships. There were spices, tea, and even precious decorations such as corals and tortoise shells, but there were no agricultural products that he wanted.

Come to think of it, compared to the extremely profitable spices and accessories, who would want to plant crops that are difficult to preserve and cannot be sold at a high price?

Mi Fang saw Yuan Xi standing in front of the cargo box in silence, so he asked tentatively, "Your Excellency seems to be very interested in the ocean trade route?"

"Excuse me for being blunt, but overseas is a barbaric and uncivilized land, full of malaria. Although the goods are valuable, considering the time and loss, it doesn't seem to be very profitable."

Yuan Xi raised his head and sighed, "The governor has hit the nail on the head."

"Based on profit and loss alone, most of the ocean trade routes are losing money, and the losses are huge."

There is an extremely difficult fact to accept: before Europe discovered America, the profits from ocean shipping trade were not high, and losing money was the norm. The profits were far less stable than those from domestic production. Adventurers who went out to sea needed to find financial support to raise money for ocean voyages, but a considerable portion of this money was lost.

Because ocean trade takes a long time, involves great risks, has a high mortality rate for crew members, and the profits generated fluctuate greatly, Western navigators have not been able to find a way to make large-scale profits for a long time.

Europe discovered that for a long time in Africa, it was unable to develop the local commodity industry, and the slave trade became the most profitable option.

It was not until the Americas were discovered and a stable shipping route was established, from which precious metals such as gold and silver were obtained to exchange for goods from other places, that a stable and profitable black triangle trade was formed between Europe, Africa and America.

Europe loaded wine, salt, cloth and other items from their own country and traveled along the central route to Africa in exchange for black slaves. They then unloaded the slaves in America and exchanged them for gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, and then returned to Europe.

After this stable trade route was formed, Europe began to slowly accumulate a large amount of original capital and had more spare money to invest in the development of trade routes with China.

Before that, the trade route from Europe to China could only bring one-way profits, because they needed China's porcelain, tea and silk, but China did not need anything from them.

It was not until Europe used the silver obtained from America that it slowly opened the door to trade with China, but this was a long time later.

The ocean trade routes that Mi Fang referred to were the trade routes between Xuzhou and the areas south of Jiaozhi in Yangzhou. These trade routes had not yet formed fixed routes. Not only were they risky, but the two sides had not reached a fixed demand for commodity exchange habits, and the currency used for exchange could not be unified.

Faced with numerous obstacles, it may take several years, decades, or even hundreds of years of continuous investment before China can establish trade routes with Southeast Asian countries that have stable profits and cycles.

The more stable and prosperous the world is, the more luxury goods such as spices and accessories that are specialty products of the Nanyang countries can be sold, making more profits and forming a virtuous circle. However, this is still too advanced for the late Han Dynasty when the world was in chaos and people could not even get enough food. This was a long ice age when even the gentry would starve to death. In the face of famine, luxury goods were useless.

Yuan Xi had to admit that from today's perspective, Mi Fang's words were undoubtedly very correct.

If I did not have the experience and knowledge of later generations, I would not have spent huge amounts of money to send my fleet to sail to an unknown place to take risks.

But the benefits of navigation are not just to make profits, but to obtain advanced experience from other regions, promote cultural integration, be inclusive, and enhance the level of progress of Chinese civilization. This is the greatest significance of navigation.

Although Yuan Xi understood some knowledge from later generations, these systems were not perfect. For example, much knowledge of modern industries could not be applied at all in this era. Many things based on basic manufacturing industries, if they were only superficial, might not be as effective as the folk methods of this era.

For example, Yuan Xi tried to use concrete to build the city wall, but after careful calculations, he found that both the cost and manufacturing difficulty were far inferior to the glutinous rice mortar method that appeared in the late Han Dynasty and the Wei and Jin Dynasties.

The Tiangong Kaiwu records the composition, production method and properties of glutinous rice mortar in detail: "Add one part of ash to river sand and two parts of loess, mix well with glutinous rice and carambola vine juice, and it will be solid and will never deteriorate. It is called three-in-one soil."

This mortar with glutinous rice juice added is glutinous rice mortar, which has the advantages of high strength, good toughness and good anti-seepage performance. Its appearance has made a qualitative leap in the adhesion of building cementitious materials and represents the highest achievement of ancient Chinese lime-based adhesives.

In later generations, there is a Qing Dynasty stone pagoda in Baohe Town, Rongchang, Chongqing. It has a history of more than 300 years, is 10 meters high, and has a tilt of 45°, but it has not collapsed so far. The pagoda also uses glutinous rice mortar as the bonding material, which shows that the toughness of this material is not much worse than modern cement.

At least as early as the early Western Han Dynasty, the Chinese had already used a lime mixture similar to what was later called Sanhetu (lime, loess and sand), which is also the most economical and effective method used to build city walls today.

What Yuan Xi has to do now is to experiment and improve the glutinous rice mortar method on this basis to build a stronger city wall.

This idea is feasible because all the required prerequisite technologies are already available and the subsequent new technologies just need an opportunity.

In contrast, concrete lacks certain key links in the chain both in terms of economy and large-scale production, and this problem cannot be solved overnight.

Technological progress is gradual. Only by taking it step by step can the necessary upstream technologies be gradually illuminated. It is unrealistic to take a big step to cover a distance of more than ten or even dozens of steps.

Just like it is impossible to directly transform a wooden sailing ship into a steam-powered ironclad ship, such a thing can only exist in unrealistic fantasies.

Therefore, for Yuan Xi, the current long-distance voyages are still in the exploratory and experimental stage, and the purpose is not just to develop trade, but to promote the overall development of related industries.

Yuan Xi was also unable to explain to Mi Fang in detail that his current trip out to sea for trade was only to find a few crops that would be extremely useful to China, and these things would greatly enhance the country's ability to deal with the risks of natural disasters.

This process is long and arduous, and may take many years, or even until Yuan Xi's death, before any results can be achieved. However, Yuan Xi believed that since this had to be started sooner or later, the sooner the better. It would also be good for him to point out the direction for future generations.

He turned around, patted the dust off his hands, and said with a smile: "I heard that there are some crops in the Nanyang Islands that can withstand severe cold and can solve the current food shortage in the world. If the governor goes out to sea again, please let people pay attention."

"Of course, these things are not easy to find."

Mi Fang was skeptical, but didn't take it seriously and just dealt with it perfunctorily.

He led everyone to Mi's house, and the host and the guests sat opposite each other. Although Mi Fang was not good at politics, he had been doing business for many years and was good at livening up situations. With his ability to please everyone, the atmosphere on the scene gradually became relaxed.

While Mi Fang was urging people to drink, he was wondering in his heart whether it was time to let his younger sister come out to serve wine.

Ever since Liu Bei adopted Mi Zhen as his sister, he wrote a letter to Youzhou, expressing his intention to form an alliance. Youzhou also implicitly agreed, but the plan was delayed again because of the war between Youzhou and the Donglai waters.

Mi Fang didn't know whether Liu Bei was anxious or not, but he was very anxious.

Mi Zhen is not young anymore. The world has been changing more and more turbulently in recent years. Liu Bei's strength has not increased much, but Yuan Xi's strength has been greatly enhanced!

If Mi Zhen were to become Yuan Xi's wife three years ago, the Mi family would still have some ideas. But today, three years later, Mi Fang no longer dares to think about it.

Yuan Xi's power expanded too quickly. Who knew how far he would go if he continued like this? Even after he had two sons, there were rumors among the nobles that Yuan Xi's sons might very well be adopted back into Yuan Shao's branch!

This involves the issue of the Yuan family's heir. Although no one says it openly, everyone secretly thinks in their hearts, could it be that Yuan Xi will return to inherit the Yuan family in the future?

Although this idea is absurd, when Yuan Shao and Cao Cao were just running errands and were frustrated, who would have known that it was these two who inherited the Yuan and Cao families respectively?

What's more, considering Yuan Xi's recent performance, this possibility is even greater!

The Han Dynasty inherited the Qin system, with Confucianism on the outside and Legalism on the inside. Since Emperor Gaozu, there has been a tendency to appoint talented people as successors. The debate among the gentry on whether to appoint the most talented or the oldest successor has never stopped.

So Mi Fang was in a hurry to send Mi Zhen away. If the other party became the head of the Yuan family, he would probably no longer bother to have any relationship with the Mi family!