Chapter 330

As Su Chunjun sat in the car, he thought, “Yan Yan’s heart is very soft and kind, she is the most suitable other half for him, when he is desperate, her thoughts will always bring him hope”.

Yes, compared to worrying about the Japanese guns, how the people eat is also something to worry about.

He said to Zhao Shuli: “Our next step is to talk to the Japanese about resuming railroad transportation.”

Zhao Shuli nodded, “This is indeed very important. Right now the railroads are all held by the Japanese, and our own people have to be searched by them when they ride the trains.” He followed up with, “However, it’s not that simple to get the Japanese to let go.”

Su Chunjun: “I’m inexperienced in this sort of thing, so Brother Zhao can give me some ideas.”

Zhao Shuli: “This …… is a good idea to ask Mr. Zhang. Let Mr. Zhang step in and talk to the Japanese.” He said meaningfully, “As far as I know, the railroad on the Zhang family’s territory was repaired by the Japanese. After the Japanese repaired the railroad, they got the right to operate the railroad and openly stationed troops on the railroad. It was also the reason that led to the assassination of Mr. Zhang’s own father. Of course, afterward the Japanese refused to admit that the assassins were arranged by them, and put the blame on the Eighth Route Army. Of course, Duke Zhang didn’t believe it,and later hardened himself to take back the power on the railroad.”

Su Chunjun’s eyes widened, “Then Mr. Zhang is truly remarkable.”

Zhao Shuli shook his head, “This is just the beginning. Later, when the Japanese grew in power, Mr. Zhang negotiated with the Japanese and handed back half of it. Now he and the Japanese each have half of the railroad jurisdiction.”

Su Chunjun thought about it and shook his head, “I can’t do that, there is no way for me to compare with Mr. Zhang, Mr. Zhang has soldiers and people in his hands, I have nothing.”

Zhao Shuli: “Mr. Zhang and the Japanese are now at each other’s throats. Mr. Zhang has no way to fight with the Japanese, but the Japanese can’t destroy him in one breath, so they can only hold him up in turn. Therefore, in this matter, you can’t go to the Japanese, you have to let Mr. Zhang intervene.”

Su Chunjun thought for a moment and said to Xiao Chen who was driving, “Go to Zhang Gongguan. We will go to find Mr. Zhang now.”

Su Chunjun and Zhao Shuli arrived early, and Zhang Gongzi had just finished shooting and had not yet gone to smoke and sleep. The two were led directly to Mr. Zhang.

Mr. Zhang was standing in the range, rinsing his mouth with a cup of tea, his eyes as bloodshot as if he had been up all night. He spat the tea onto the ground, took a towel from the hand of the adjutant beside him and wiped his face and hands, threw the towel back, turned to Su Chunjun and Zhao Shuli and nodded, saying, “Let’s go.”

Mr. Zhang walked straight to the house, and Su Chunjun and Zhao Shuli could only follow behind. When the three of them returned to the house, breakfast was already set on the dining table.

The subordinate was at the table and said, “Miss Zhao made it for you herself.”

Duke Zhang sat down with a hmm and oddly enough, Miss Zhao was not there.

He said to Su Chunjun and Zhao Shuli, “Sit.”

Breakfast was simple, with meat buns, fried dough sticks, fried sugar cakes, tofu brains, egg cakes, leek cakes, tea eggs, and pickled melons.

Duke Zhang only drank a small half bowl of corn porridge, ate one fried sugar cake and stopped eating, for a man, such an amount of food was too little.

When Mr. Zhang put down his chopsticks, the subordinates took away all the breakfast and didn’t persuade him to eat two more bites.

Duke Zhang took out his cigarettes but didn’t smoke them, yawning a big yawn, and asked Su Chunjun and Zhao Shuli, “There must be something you guys came over here for, so tell me, I’ll listen to it.”

Su Chunjun has come to see Mr. Zhang twice, not to say that he understands him very well, but he understands one of Mr. Zhang’s characteristics, that is, he gives you very little time, if you want to tell him something, you’d better say it quickly, and don’t say ten sentences when you can finish a sentence, otherwise he won’t have the patience to listen to it. This is not because Mr. Zhang is arrogant, but he has been smoking cigarettes for too long and is addicted to cigarettes, and as time goes by, he is going to smoke, so naturally he has no time to listen to your nonsense.

So Su Chunjun didn’t say a word of nonsense and spoke directly, “Duke Zhang, the Japanese hold the railroads into the city, we can’t even transport our grain in, the people don’t have any food to eat, I want to negotiate with the Japanese to let them open up the railroad transportation, at least half of it.”

Zhang Gongzi smiled when he heard it, he lit the rolled cigarette in his hand, this cigarette is not a big cigarette, it is just ordinary tobacco with a little bit of marijuana leaf, it may be too much to be strong enough, so Zhang Gongzi does not smoke it, he just lit it to smell the flavor.

He said, “You have a big mouth. You have nothing, a bare pole, why let the Japanese spit half of the railroad transportation to you? Do you think the Japanese are a living god?” He yawned, not letting Su Chunjun speak again, and said directly, “You’ll have to give the Japanese some favors to make it work. The Japanese want to come in anyway, so why don’t you give up half of your power first in exchange for the Japanese opening up the railroad to let the grain in. They’re going to come in sooner or later, and you’ll starve a few less people to death if you bring it up earlier.”

After saying that, he didn’t wait for Su Chunjun to say anything, he already stood up to leave.

Su Chunjun and Zhao Shuli stood up immediately after him, but Mr. Zhang had already left, waving his hand as if to say goodbye, but also as if to tell the two not to follow him.

Su Chunjun and Zhao Shuli stood still and watched Mr. Zhang’s back leave, and could only sigh.

There was no point in the two staying longer, so they got into the car and left.

In the automobile, both of them did not speak and remained silent.

It could be said that the result they got from going to find Mr. Zhang this time was both disappointing to them, but when they thought about it, it made sense.

Mr. Zhang was not a hero in a novel or a playbook, who would help them as soon as they begged him. Although he intended to resist the Japanese, he was obviously not interested in sacrificing himself and his own forces.

The “clear path” he pointed out to them seemed cold and heartless, but on second thought, there was no better way.

However, both Su Chunjun and Zhao Shuli could not agree.

Su Chunjun was motivated by national feelings and self-esteem. He didn’t even think much of Mayor Feng, so how could he surrender to the Japanese as soon as he came to power?

Zhao Shuli’s mission was to prevent Su Chunjun from being bullied by the Japanese and losing face with the KMT, so he could not possibly “suggest” that Su Chunjun surrender to the Japanese.

He could not suggest that Su Chunjun surrender to the Japanese, even if it was only half of the surrender.

So Zhao Shuli did not say anything, let Su Chunjun to think to weigh, after all, if Su Chunjun decided to surrender, then it has nothing to do with him. After all, if Su Chunjun decides to surrender, it will be none of his business. At most, Su Chunjun will be shot and die as a traitor, so what does it have to do with him?

The two of them returned to the office and went about their business. The opening of the banknote printing is only a temporary relief, the next work is still a lot.

All walks of life in the city need to be stabilized, and now it’s time for school to start, but the big and small schools in the city don’t know if they should start, if it’s safe now, and if they can start.

Su Chunjun decided to hold a press conference to call on all the schools in the city to try to open under the premise of ensuring the safety of the students, and not to open blindly.

Zhao Shuli recorded it and asked, “Should we let the girls’ school hold off on opening then?”

Su Chunjun: “How many girls’ schools are there in the city?”

Zhao Shuli: “A dozen or so at any rate?”

Su Chunjun never knew about this and was shocked to hear, “So many!”

Zhao Shuli read the information some time ago, rolled his eyes and showed him the document, saying, “What did you expect. There are eleven or twelve church girls’ high schools, and there are seven or eight women’s high schools and women’s universities in Japan. Although there are only one or two hundred, three or four hundred students in one, it adds up to a lot.”

Mixed-sex schools are still a rarity.

Su Chunjun read through the documents submitted by the Education Bureau, and his head hurt again.

Elementary school are all boys’ schools, not fewer female students, but almost none, which is probably also related to the fact that women are not talented.

The Church Girls’ High School at that time admitted female students to teach women to love the world, love kindness, love goodness and other virtues, of course, the Bible to teach, to put it bluntly, this is not a school to learn knowledge, but to learn how to be a good woman’s school, which attracted a lot of families to send their girls to school.

The courses that were taught after enrollment, including English, religion, writing, literature, music, art, painting, and dance, also ensured that the students had a high level of knowledge.

There were fewer schools in Japan because they were a step behind the church, but girls’ high schools and colleges were also said to be teaching more educated women. Of course Japanese was taught here, but there were also English classes, but there were no special religious classes, and Japanese education was given instead, in order to make the Chinese students who attended the schools fall in love with Japan.

The New Wave advocated equality between men and women and education for women, but in fact there were no girls’ schools or schools for women run by the Chinese themselves, only girls’ schools run by foreigners. It is only in recent years that co-educational schools have appeared, but the newspapers have followed this up with a denunciation of the moral degradation that co-educational schools bring.

What foreigners can do, Chinese cannot. Those people only dare to scold their own countrymen, but they dare not even lift a finger against foreign countries.

Considering the current law and order situation and environmental pressures, Su Chunjun believes that girls’ schools should not be allowed to open.

Zhao Shuli: “Then you have to be careful, if you really do it, someone will immediately scold you.”

Su Chunjun also imagined what kind of opposition there would be, but forcing the school to open was already a hopeless situation. If he hadn’t been worried about causing □□ and panic, he would have wanted to shout out an appeal in the newspaper for the people to run and leave the city, preferably leaving an empty city to the Japanese. But he knew very well that no matter how many people fled, there were bound to be people who stayed.

There were people who stayed, and he had no choice but to stay.

For the sake of these people who stayed behind, he would have to restore normal order in the city, or else the city would have been destroyed without waiting for the Japanese to fight their way in.

Su Chunjun thought for a moment and said, “Wait a moment first. Let’s think about running a factory.”

Zhao Shuli then put down this document in his hand, picked up another, and said, “You mean those merchants who came with Mr. Zhang?”

There were merchants who fled, and naturally, there were merchants who were not afraid of death. They saw the business opportunities in this city and flocked in, just in time to take over the factories and countless workers who lost their jobs left behind by the last batch of businessmen who fled.

Su Chunjun nodded, “Right.”

If the factories were allowed to open first, the factories would go on recruiting, which would result in a large number of young people entering the factories, and in turn, the number of people in the schools would become correspondingly smaller. It wasn’t that factories were safer than schools, but at least working in a factory could earn a little money to buy food.

Zhao Shuli smiled and said, ”Then you should throw a banquet. In my experience, any news that comes out at a banquet is quicker and more people will believe it than if you have a meeting and inform down the line.”

This is an odd phenomenon. When the government meets to officially issue a notice, people from all walks of life will resist and disobey, desperately trying to find loopholes in the government’s notice and refusing to obediently follow it.

But if it is at a banquet, when they are drunk, they will take the information they learn from government officials as their own, and they will do it without any compromise and double the amount of work.

So if you want to do the right thing, go to a banquet.

Su Chunjun sighed, it’s so sad that the people don’t have any trust in the government and only believe in gossip.

He dragged Zhao Shuli, “Brother Zhao, I’ll leave this matter to you, Yan Yan is still too young, and I don’t feel comfortable leaving this big event to her.” In fact, he was not willing to let Yan Yan keep rolling around in the official drinking scene, she had her career to do.

Zhao Shuli was stunned, and his face turned bad: “You know how to feel sorry for Mrs. Su, but you don’t know how to feel sorry for your big brother Zhao?”

Su Chunjun: “Brother Zhao can do more.”

Zhao Shuli refused, “I think Yan Yan is very capable, and this kind of thing is only believable when it comes from the mouth of the person on your pillow. If you feel sorry for Yan Yan, let your lover do it for better results.”

Su Chunjun was really strange, where on earth did the rumor about him having a lover come from.

He cried out, “Where do I have any lover!”

Zhao Shuli said perfunctorily, “Uh-huh.”

Su Chunjun stood up and said with a serious face, “Brother Zhao, I’m going to give you a task.”

Zhao Shuli was stunned: “Tell me.”

Su Chunjun: “I’m giving you special permission to marry an aunt as soon as possible for the sake of your work.”

Zhao Shuli was so angry that he laughed: “Good wow, good you Su Chunjun.”

Su Chunjun was serious: “Brother Zhao, I’ll give you a week at most. Within a week, you marry an aunt and hurry up to finish the banquet, so that the merchants can hurry up to open factories and recruit workers, before the Japanese do.”

Zhao Shuli threw the document onto the table, “Hmph.”