...... Connect
On the 25th day of the first month of the nineteenth year of Daoguang (1839), Lin Zexu arrived in Guangzhou, and in order to facilitate his work, he lived at the Yuehua Academy on the back street of the envoy Sihou Street.
For Lin Zexu, his most important task at present is to figure out his opponents. Chairman Mao and his old man once said who is the real enemy? Who are the real friends? This is the first question of the revolution.
That's right! This is also the primary problem of Lin Zexu's smoking ban. Uniting true friends and winning the support of the majority of the people to deal with real enemies is what Lin Zexu has to do.
He must first win the support of the local government, the first being Tang Tingzhen, the governor of Liangguang. Deng Tingzhen took over as governor of Liangguang two years ago, and he also came with a smoking ban at that time. However, two years have passed, and things have not improved at all.
Deng Tingzhen
It was not because Governor Deng was ineffective in handling things, but mainly because the emperor had not made up his mind, and Lord Deng had not dared to make a cruel move. Because he was afraid that one day the emperor would change his mind and take him as a wine dish. Now that the Emperor had sent Chincha here, he no longer needed to worry about it.
Let it go and let those drug dealers go to hell!
The second was Guan Tianpei, the admiral of Guangdong, who was born in Wu Xiucai.
Guan Tianpei
When Tao Shu was engaged in shipping, Guan Tianpei successfully escorted thousands of grain ships to Tianjin. After escorting the grain, he also stopped by to the capital for a vacation.
One day he was wandering the streets of the capital, passing by a Taoist temple, and the fortune teller at the door pulled him aside and said to him: "Gongsheng should rise to the sea, and die as a blood food qianqiu (thousands of generations of worshippers)", Guan Tianpei said with a bitter smile: "Alas! I'm forty years old, and I don't dare to have that luxury anymore."
However, he did not know that more than a decade later, he would realize this admonition in the most magnificent way.
Guan Tianpei! Lin Zexu's most loyal comrade-in-arms, the great national hero!
After forming his own leadership team, the second thing Lin Zexu had to do was to understand his opponents.
Although he has been working in the front line of the fight against drug trafficking for a long time in the past, it is only to catch some small donkeys in the mainland. And what he now has to face is the real drug den, the vicious transnational drug cartel. So he has to first understand his opponents, who are they? Where did they come from? Even their habits he had to understand.
At that time, the people who knew these things best were the merchants of the Thirteen Lines. The so-called Thirteen Elements are the merchants specially arranged by the imperial court to do business with foreigners, which is one of the corruption base camps we mentioned earlier. However, in Lin Zexu's view, it is not realistic to let these people who rely on foreigners to eat tell the truth, so he cannot believe them at present.
However, unfortunately, Lin Zexu found that in the whole city of Guangzhou, except for these people, there was no one around him who could answer these simple questions clearly. Even Governor Deng was ignorant of these things.
Because at that time, there was no such thing as admiration and flattery, and even the people on the street called Hanako thought that the foreign devils were barbarians and were very resistant to getting along with them. To put it bluntly, no one wants to know them at all.
Suddenly, Lin Zexu remembered a person who was highly recommended by the military minister Wang Ding before he left Beijing, and he was Tian Pu, who had once been in Xiangshan Zhi County, Guangdong. This man is a very person of character.
At that time, Xiangshan was the hardest hit area of drug trafficking, and after he saw that many ordinary people had died because of the destruction of opium families, he was determined to crack down on opium. On one occasion, he seized more than 10,000 pounds of opium and sentenced all the drug dealers to heavy sentences. After his promotion, he continued to strictly prohibit opium, which resulted in severe criticism from his leadership. In a fit of rage, he resigned his post and went home to farm.
Now, after being invited by Lin Zexu, Tian Pu recommended Liang Tingnan for him. Liang Tingnan, a native of Shunde, Guangdong, who had helped the governor of Liangguang compile the Guangdong Haiphong Hui, was well versed in the opium trade. As soon as he took office, he proposed a three-pronged strategy to Lin Zexu: "Abstain from smoking, cure the prosperity of traffickers, and pull out the source of drugs." This coincides with Lin Zexu's idea.
Not done...