The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 562 I Have More Than Just a Brother
Seeing that everyone's eyes were intentionally or unintentionally looking at the young lieutenant officer sitting upright behind Wu Peifu, even the chiefs of staff of those troops, including Hu Dianjia and Cao Futian, were the same, Teng Yuzhao couldn't help but sigh secretly.

Looking at the people sitting on the side close to Zhou Fu, they were all civil servants, and they were all like this.

On the civil servant side, right next to Zhou Fu was Yang Shiqi, the governor of Zhili, and then there was Xu Shichang, who was wearing a military uniform with the rank of major general.

Xu Shichang just rushed back from the capital last night. There are a lot of things to do in the preparatory office. Duan Qirui went to the Baoding Military Academy as director. I don’t know whether he was dissatisfied with Yuan Shikai or he was very interested in managing the military academy, anyway, he seldom returned to the capital to the preparatory office.

Even when he occasionally went back, Duan Qirui never asked about the affairs of the preparatory office. He just showed up and sometimes even refused to see Tie Liang.

Tieliang was extremely disgusted with this unruly military man who even refused to kneel to welcome the emperor. Duan Qirui's failure to go to the preparatory office was exactly what Tieliang wanted.

Moreover, Tie Liang was busy organizing a new army in Shuntian Prefecture during this period. Every morning he would just come to the preparatory office for a tour, then ask Xu Shichang about the situation and then run to the new army camp outside Fuchengmen.

The White Tiger is in charge of conquest and is regarded as a mythical beast transformed from the seven western stars. It is one of the four spirits and four symbols.

Its direction is west. Shaohao is the god of the west together with the seven western stars. In the Eight Trigrams, he is Qian and Dui, and in the Five Elements, he represents gold.

I don't know whose advice it was, but Tie Liang set up the camp of this new army near a small village more than 20 miles west of Fuchengmen in the capital. It was ten miles away from the railway from the capital to Baoding, and it was very tiring to ride on horseback every day.

Fortunately, Tieliang is in good health and in his prime, so he doesn't care about these hardships.

The Preparatory Office of the Ministry of the Army, although not yet the Ministry of the Army and even only in name, did not seem to have much to do.

But in fact, when the Preparatory Office was first established, it was just a small and streamlined Army Department without a sign, but it had all the necessary facilities.

The reason why it was only called the Preparatory Office was that the imperial court had no choice but to do so in order to prevent Xu Shichang from taking power.

Now almost all the affairs of the Preparatory Office fell on Xu Shichang. Fortunately, Teng Yuzhao was very supportive of the Preparatory Office. He transferred more than a dozen young officers from the Beiyang Military Academy and the Camp School from the General Staff Office and the subordinate troops to the Preparatory Office to serve as the backbone of various departments. This allowed Xu Shichang to worry less.

Even so, since Tieliang was rarely at the organizing office during the day, Xu Shichang did not dare to leave easily. It was not until he got off duty last night that Xu Shichang hurried back by train.

Except for Xu Shichang, all non-military generals, including Zhou Fu and Yang Shixiang, wore casual clothes and no one wore the official uniform of the court.

We will not wear official uniforms to the meeting today. This is Teng Yuzhao's special request.

In name, it was because of the hot weather, but in reality, Teng Yuzao was very reluctant to see officials working in official uniforms in Tianjin, where he was vigorously promoting new policies.

Teng Yuzao even forced all non-ranking officials to wear Chinese-style long gowns, Tang suits, or the newly introduced jacket standard uniforms. Even Western suits were allowed to go on duty, otherwise they would be stripped of their positions.

All departments involved in foreign affairs, as well as employees of factories belonging to companies with the word "Aurora" in their names, such as "Aurora Industrial Development Company", must follow suit.

As for officials of higher ranks, although Teng Yuzao did not make any request, some of them had already been on duty wearing Chinese robes.

Now, most officials in Tianjin understand Teng Yuzhao's thoughts, but no one dares to say it out loud, let alone dare to question it.

In the name of promoting the New Deal, Teng Yuzao made a lot of moves in Zhili. Not only did he abolish many redundant offices, he also expelled some officials with a bad reputation for corruption and abuse of power, and replaced them with a large number of new people.

Naturally, none of these newcomers would offend Teng Yuzao, and those officials who are still in office are even more worried. They are so busy cheering up and working hard that no one would even think of angering Teng Yuzao.

Therefore, now in Tianjin city, you can hardly see officials wearing official uniforms.

The person sitting next to Xu Shichang was Zhili Provincial Surveillance Commissioner Shen Jiaben. Next to Shen Jiaben was a middle-aged man in his forties. Upon closer inspection, this man looked somewhat like Xu Shichang. This man was Xu Shichang's younger brother Xu Shiguang.

Xu Shiguang was originally the prefect of Jinan. He was quite talented, but not very honest. After Zhou Fu became the governor of Shandong, he insisted on taking down Xu Shiguang and reported this to Teng Yuzhao several times.

Considering Xu Shichang's face, Teng Yuzao finally persuaded Zhou Fu to change Xu Shiguang to the governor of Denglaiqingdao. This made the brothers Xu Shichang and Xu Shiguang extremely grateful to Teng Yuzao.

The rank of Taotai was half a level higher than that of a prefect, and although the prefect of Jinan was also slightly higher in rank than an ordinary prefect, Xu Shiguang was considered to have been transferred horizontally. However, under such a strong situation as Zhou Fu, Teng Yuzao still managed to keep his position. Xu Shiguang naturally knew that Teng Yuzao did so for the sake of his brother's face.

According to Zhou Fu, after Xu Shiguang took office, he worked very hard and no one ever heard of any bad deeds done by Xu Shiguang.

Teng Yuzhao guessed that this should be the result of Xu Shichang warning his younger brother Xu Shiguang.

Sitting below Xu Shiguang were Zhou Xuexi, Yang Shiqi, Ning Xingpu, Xi Ligong, and Huang Chujiu.

Below them were Cai Shaoji, Huang Kaijia, Liang Ruhao, Zhou Shoushen, Liang Dunyan, Zhan Tianyou, Kuang Rongguang, Wu Yangzeng, Cao Jiaxiang, Tang Guoan, Tang Yuanzhan, Wen Bingzhong and more than sixty people in their forties.

In addition to the fact that most of these people have obvious southern facial features, many of them do not have braids and they all wear western suits.

These people were the young children who studied in the United States back then. Through Zai Yi's operations, they were transferred from various provinces to Zhili.

This time, no matter what position these people held in Zhili, Teng Yuzhao invited them all to attend the meeting. Teng Yuzhao not only wanted these people to feel that he was eager to recruit talents, he also wanted everyone in the Beiyang faction to know that he attached great importance to these people who mastered advanced Western scientific and technological knowledge.

Sitting behind Teng Yuzhao was a handsome man in a white suit, with sharp eyes and full of energy. This man was Tang Shaoyi, who was recruited from Guangdong by Yang Shiqi after much effort.

Tang Shaoyi is currently serving as Teng Yuzao's chief copywriter with the title of Taotai, and is actually Teng Yuzao's foreign affairs secretary.

Due to the large number of people, the sofas on both sides of Teng Yuzhao and Zhou Fu were arranged in an arc shape, and most of those who were former students studying in the United States were arranged to sit opposite Teng Yuzhao and Zhou Fu, also in an arc shape, with five rows of seats to accommodate so many people.

This arrangement not only allows more people to sit in the conference room, but also allows most people to see each other because the people in the conference room sit together in a nearly elliptical shape.

Moreover, this seating arrangement will make the atmosphere of this joint military-political meeting appear more relaxed.

Not only is there a coffee table for every two people, but there is also tea to drink, but there are no seasonal fruits.

Seeing that these people were ready, Teng Yuzao smiled and said to the lieutenant sitting behind Wu Peifu.

"Xingfang, stand up." When the lieutenant heard Teng Yuzao suddenly call him to stand up, he was stunned at first, then stood up, saluted Teng Yuzao neatly, and then waited quietly for Teng Yuzao to speak.

Teng Yuzao turned to the crowd again and said with a smile.

"I noticed your expressions. I guess you all must be very surprised. You must be a little curious, thinking that this young man seems to look a bit like me!"

Everyone had just looked at the lieutenant called Xing Fang by Teng Yuzao with somewhat evasive eyes, but now after a closer look, they couldn't help but nod their heads repeatedly.

Looking closely, Teng Yuzao and this lieutenant are not just similar, but very similar.

Teng Yuzao shook his head helplessly and said, "I won't hide it from you. This lieutenant is my second brother, Teng Yubin, whose courtesy name is Xingfang."

Teng Yuzhao's words aroused a murmur of surprise in the meeting hall.

Many people had expressions of "as expected" on their faces.

Teng Yuzao continued, "I didn't want to say it at first, but you saw it, there's nothing I can do about it, we two brothers are just too alike."

In order to explain the situation and avoid people from having any undue speculation, Teng Yuzhao continued.

"Last year, when I was leading my troops to defend the capital, I received news that the foreigners couldn't do anything to me, so they wanted to take advantage of my family. I had no choice but to arrange for someone to send the two to Marshal Xiang."

"But my second brother insisted on joining the vanguard army, so I had no choice but to agree. After he graduated from the crash course at the camp school, Ziyu asked him to join him. He first served as a platoon leader in the army, but he only caught up with the battles of Langfang and Xianghe. The war was temporarily over. He is now Ziyu's communications staff officer."

Teng Yuzhao had already anticipated this situation. He knew that this matter would be known to others sooner or later, so he just admitted it openly and it was not a big deal.

As for how things will develop in the future, we can only take it one step at a time.

After Teng Yuzhao finished his introduction, he motioned for Teng Yubin to sit back in his seat. Teng Yubin saluted everyone before sitting back in his seat.

Zhou Fu frowned and said, "Xingfu, your brother is not even 20 years old yet? Isn't it too hard for him down there?"

Teng Yuzao smiled bitterly and said, "Master Zhou, you don't know that he is still clamoring to go back to the army and be a sentry leader."

After saying this, Teng Yuzao couldn't help but smile bitterly and shook his head repeatedly.

Wei Jinghai also said, "To be honest with you, Lord Zhou, I wanted to arrange for him to be my advisor at first, but he refused. If Ziyu hadn't told him that if he wanted to leave the army, no town in the vanguard army would accept him, he would have given up."

Teng Yuzao smiled and continued, "I'll also tell you that in this conference room, not only are we two brothers here, but Lian Fu and Ju Ren's younger brother are also here."

After Teng Yuzao finished speaking, Yang Shiqi and Xu Shiguang hurriedly stood up, bowed to everyone, and then introduced themselves one by one.

Many people already knew that Yang Shiqi and Yang Shixiang were brothers, but most people were still not aware that Xu Shiguang and Xu Shichang were brothers. These two people again attracted a lot of admiration from the crowd.

The two brothers are both high-ranking officials and both work under Teng Yuzhao. This is really rare and it is normal to make people envious.

Teng Yuzao coughed lightly and said with a smile, "I know everyone is very busy, but I think it is necessary to invite you all here today."

Teng Yuzao lit a cigarette and continued, "Since the end of this war, over the past six months, Zhili has undergone tremendous changes due to a series of measures to promote Westernization. These changes are comprehensive, benefiting all aspects of military, economy, education, science and technology, and people's livelihood."

Although Teng Yuzao's voice was not loud, his voice could still be heard clearly by everyone in the spacious conference room. Everyone knew the reason. It was the thing called a microphone, just like the small drum in front of Teng Yuzao and them, that was causing trouble.

"Many of you have only arrived in Zhili within the past six months. Some of you were invited by me through all means, and some of you were transferred to Zhili through the Military Affairs Council."

Teng Yuzao smiled and said, "I know some of you were reluctant to come to Zhili at first, mainly because some of you are already satisfied with your comfortable life."

Teng Yuzao changed the subject and said, "But have you ever thought about why Zeng Wenzhenggong and Li Zhongtang sent you abroad under pressure?"

"What they want is for you to finish your studies and return to China as soon as possible to serve the nation, so that our nation will never be bullied by foreigners again and our nation will truly stand up in the world."

"Now, what I, Teng Yuzao, have done in Zhili and Shandong is for this purpose, to avoid the humiliation of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 and the shame of ceding territory and paying compensation! It is to make our nation stand tall in the east of the world from now on! It is to restore the glory of the Han and Tang dynasties!"

By the end of Teng Yuzao's speech, his voice had become very high-pitched.

"Wow!" As soon as Teng Yuzao finished speaking, a group of generals led by Wei Jinghai, as well as Yang Shixiang, Xu Shichang, Cai Shaoji, and Tang Shaoyi behind Teng Yuzao all took the lead in applauding enthusiastically with excited expressions.

Led by them, everyone in the venue gave warm applause to Teng Yuzao's speech.

When the applause died down a little, Teng Yuzao continued.

"I won't let you work blindly. I can still let you live a comfortable life. I can guarantee that as long as you work hard, your income will definitely not be less than your previous income. It will only be more, and it will be a lot. The lowest will exceed the income of the county magistrate."

"For example, if you become an engineer or university professor, your monthly salary can reach 200 to 500 silver dollars. Shutang is the president of Beiyang University, and Juancheng is the chief engineer. Their monthly salary is more than 600 yuan. If they achieve outstanding results, they will receive bonuses."

Shutang is the pen name of Cai Shaoji, and Juancheng is the pen name of Zhan Tianyou.

Beiyang University was originally Beiyang University Hall, and was only changed to Beiyang University at the beginning of the year.

Teng Yuzhao said this to the young Chinese students studying in the United States who were forced by the Grand Council to come to Zhili, and everyone understood.

Teng Yuzao really wanted these intellectuals to get high salaries. He believed that the monthly salary level of intellectuals during the Republic of China period was very good. Although there was still a gap compared to decades later, it at least reflected the value of intellectuals.

Teng Yuzhao's words immediately excited most of the former Chinese students who had studied in the United States. At that time, if the prefects were not corrupt, their annual salary, including their maintenance money, was only 3,700 taels. Cai Shaoji and Zhan Tianyou's annual income was at least 8,000 yuan.

Converted into silver, it would be about 7,000 taels, almost twice as much as a fourth-rank official like Shidaotai, which immediately excited these people.
(End of this chapter)