Treasure hunt begins in England

716 Angkor Wat

There is no doubt that Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville are the two cities with the best economy in Cambodia, and they are also the core of the country's financial industry. But for Liang En, his bank is obviously the only one in this Colosseum. To be eaten.

More importantly, these two cities are far from what Liang En and the others intended. After all, their loan targets are those who operate agriculture, and these two cities are obviously not mainly agricultural.

Therefore, according to their plan, their first batch of two banks in this country were set up in the provincial capitals of Kratie and Stung Treng provinces in order to maximize their effectiveness.

These two provinces are located along the northern Mekong River in Phnom Penh, and belong to the most important agricultural areas in Cambodia. Therefore, setting up the bank in this place can directly face future target customers.

At the same time, this place has an advantage, that is, compared with big cities, the mobility of people in this area is not large, so it will be much easier to do various investigations.

More importantly, what Liang En has done has left a lot of good relationships in the Buddhist circles in this area. At the same time, many villages in this area have monasteries at their core, so it will be easy to do credit investigations for lending money in the future. Not a lot.

Considering that Liang En's loan rate is not very high, these low-interest loans can even be regarded as charity in this area, so it is easy to get the support of the local monastery.

After making all the preparations, Elizabeth began to deploy professionals to conduct final inspection and analysis on the newly selected targets, while she started a week-long travel plan.

In fact, if you are not particularly interested in Buddhist culture or Southeast Asian culture, you can basically see all the key scenic spots in Cambodia in a week, and this mainly includes around Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat.

It may be because this is a Buddhist-dominated country, so most of the cultural attractions in Cambodia are related to Buddhism.Also because of this reason, they also have a choice when visiting, so naturally it will not consume a lot of time.

The focus of their trip was placed on Angkor Wat, as a symbol of Cambodia, the largest religious building in the world was selected by the United Nations in 1992 according to the cultural heritage selection criteria C(i)(ii)(iii)(iv) The UNESCO World Heritage Committee approved the inclusion of cultural heritage in the "World Heritage List".

Although only the monastery is preserved now, it is only a part of the capital of the Khmer Empire at that time. Sitting on a local tuk-tuk, it moves along the road.From a distance, you can see the huge Erawan Buddha statue on the city gate.

"It shouldn't have been easy to build this city back then." Seeing the majestic buildings, Joan sighed in a low voice, human beings have a kind of worship for giants, and Angkor Wat just happened to be such a giant.

"Of course, it took 30 years to build the largest temple alone, and the entire city was built with the efforts of generations of Khmer people over hundreds of years." Liang En explained in a low voice.

The city's history begins with the establishment of the Angkor Dynasty in the 9th century, when the first king, Jayavarman II, led the country away from Javanese rule and restored Cambodia's independence.

In 802 AD, he proclaimed himself king and established his capital in Mount Kulen.After the efforts of several generations of kings, by the beginning of the 12th century, the territory of the Angkor Dynasty expanded to most of the territory of Thailand today, and each generation of kings built their own national temples.

In the early 12th century, Yesuryavarman II killed his uncle Dharani Indravarman I won the throne of Chenla, and the new king moved his capital to Angkor.Because Suryavarman II gained the throne by unorthodox methods.

In order to consolidate his prestige, the king had to build a larger temple than the more than 700 temples built by all previous kings, as the national temple and his own grand temple for his future ascension to heaven.

Therefore, the Brahmin chief priest who crowned the king designed this temple for the king, dedicated to Vishnu, and named it "Vishnu Temple".It took 30 years to build.

Wang Dayuan, a navigator in the Yuan Dynasty, visited Angkor from 1330 to 1339. He called Angkor Wat "Sangxiang Buddha House", which indicates that Angkor Wat had been converted into a Buddhist temple in the middle of the fourteenth century.

Wang Dayuan also reported that Angkor Wat has "more than forty feet of gold-wrapped stone bridges", which are very gorgeous and have the words "wealthy Chenla".

It is a pity that there is no eternal dynasty. In 1431 AD, Siam, which is now Thailand, broke the capital of Chenla, Angkor, and Chenla moved its capital to Phnom Penh. The following year, Angkor Wat was abandoned by the Khmers, and the forest gradually covered the vast Uninhabited Angkor.

"Why did they abandon this city?" After Liang En briefly introduced the history of Angkor Wat, Joan of Arc frowned, "After all, the city is next to Tonle Sap Lake, and even if the foundation of the city is destroyed It's not hard to rebuild."

"But the problem is that with the rise of Siam, the city is too close to the border, and there is a plain around it that is not safe to defend." Liang En said, looking at the city hidden in the rainforest in front of him.

"So for the Chenla people at that time, this city was a target to attract enemies, so it was normal to abandon this city and go to the safer south."

Although putting the capital in a place not far from the border can be said to be the emperor guarding the country, which sounds very encouraging, but in fact it is not the case.

Especially in ancient times, when the capital was placed very close to the enemy, a large number of troops and corresponding supplies alone were enough for any country in the agricultural era to have a huge negative impact on a country's economy.

Some people may say that Zhu Di changed the capital during the Ming Dynasty in China, but in fact he moved the capital to the north at that time as the starting point and material supply center for the Northern Expedition.

So when the emperor moved the capital, the entire northern grassland belonged to the land of the Ming Dynasty. The new capital was not considered a border line, but later the emperor couldn’t do it. The border line was compressed to the front line of the Great Wall, and then passively became the gate of the emperor. .

However, the difference between Southeast Asian countries and China is that these countries do not have the historical burden caused by Confucianism, and also because of the traditional habits of tropical regions, so giving up the capital is not such a serious problem.

After realizing that the capital was completely exposed to the rising Thai soldiers, the Khmer talents at that time moved the capital to the safer south.

As for why the capital was moved away, the reason for choosing to abandon the city directly is also very simple, because the Southeast Asian tropical jungle area can be said to be a place with a large area and a sparse population, with a lot of land and a small population.

Therefore, with the loss of the capital function of Angkor Wat, a large number of people also migrated to the new capital. This situation naturally cannot maintain the operation of the original city.

The most famous example here is Constantinople. At the last moment of the Eastern Roman Empire, even though the city had one of the best city defense systems in Europe, it failed to defend the city because of insufficient guards.

But think about it, at least in the cold weapon defense battle, if the defenders can't even stand on the city wall, then there is really no need to think about the next thing.

Therefore, even if most of the infrastructure of the entire city remained intact after the war at Angkor Wat, the people of Chenla could only choose to abandon the entire city to avoid being the target of repeated looting.

(End of this chapter)