The rise of salt industry
During the reign of Emperor Kangxi in Qing Dynasty, Qu, a native of Wutai County, Shanxi Province, moved to the west street of Guyangyang Street, and worked as a farmer and businessman successively, and settled down. His grandson is very clever, proficient in curing mare's disease and going to sea for business. The mare is the lifeblood of a businessman. The Zhonghe firm founded by Qu has low fees, gained their support, and its business is booming. Qu family became a well-off family.
"Qu's Genealogy" says, "I moved to Xuezhuang, Wuhuali, Mengyang North." Qu Jia, who settled in Xuezhuang, still runs Zhonghe Commercial Bank in Mengyang Street, with Qu Zi and his children and grandchildren as the head. He advised his children and grandchildren: "If you leave money for your children and grandchildren, you may not be able to keep it." If you leave fields for your children and grandchildren, you may not be able to plow. The concept of "keeping books is good" has successfully transformed the Qu family into a Confucian businessman.
After Qu, Qu Keng, Qu Gengyang, Qu Pengyang, Qu Duiyang, Qu Xiguan and Qu became famous one after another. After Qu Gengyang's entrance examination in Xianfeng's last years, he paid homage to the director of punishments. Later, he married the daughter of Ding Hao, the capital of Gyeonggi, and his younger brother Qu Jingyang married the daughter of the Guangzhou magistrate. The Qu family became a bureaucratic family.
In the early Qing Dynasty, salt trade was divided into official salt and private salt. Official salt paid a high salt tax, and the price was high when it flowed to the market. Smuggling salt is to evade the salt tax levied by the government, and it has made considerable profits after listing. In the early years, Zhonghe Commercial Bank occasionally trafficked smuggled salt and made huge profits. When Qu Keng (the father of Qu Gengyang) was the head of the firm, relying on the umbrella of North Korea, officials engaged in smuggling salt on a large scale and banned smuggling. In the face of Qu Gengyang and Ding Hao, two big officials in charge of life and death, they indulged and fawned on Zhonghe's firm blindly, so that Qu Keng quickly became a famous big salt merchant.
In the third year of the Qing Dynasty (1823), facing the increasingly serious loss of salt tax, Emperor Daoguang promulgated the Law on Salt for Travelling Tickets. After the promulgation of this law, the private salt trade of Zhonghe commercial banks has been curbed to some extent. However, the price of salt is restricted by the contradiction between output, transportation and supply and demand, and the price fluctuates. Qukeng uses abundant financial resources to open semicolons in Nanyang, Luoyang, Yuncheng and other places to keep abreast of market conditions, earn regional price differences and make a fortune every day.
/kloc-in the spring of 0/853, the Taiping Rebellion broke out in Guangxi, and the Taiping Army went all the way north, and soon occupied Nanjing, Hunan and Hubei. The sea salt road was cut off, and the price of salt rose from 100 kg of rice to 3 kg of salt before the war to the sky-high price of 120 kg of salt, which made Zeng Guofan very headache when he returned to his hometown, because his Xiang army was self-raised by the local government and could not bear such a high price of salt. He found out that his good friend Zhang Xun was the father-in-law of Qu Dunyang, a salt merchant in Mengyang. He wrote many books and contacted him. Finally, he agreed with Zhonghetang that Qu Duiyang would guarantee the salt supply of Xiang Army, and Zeng Guofan supported Zhonghetang to hold salt trade in Hunan and Hubei provinces.
Zhonghe Commercial Bank purchased salt from Haizhou, Shandong and Yuncheng, Shanxi, and provided it to Hunan Army in Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi for free. At the same time, it has been strongly supported by Xiang Jun Group, which has monopolized the salt market in Wuchang, Huangpu, Jingmen and Yueyang, and made huge profits by giving away regional price differences. According to Qu and Qu Jianmin, the compilers of Qu Family Tree, "Qu family members are involved in dozens of pawn shops, teahouses, pharmacies, grain shops and salt shops, with semicolons all over Wuchang, Huangpu, Nanyang, Luoyang and other large and medium-sized cities, with more than 100,000 mu of land and millions of banks and money houses. According to the traditional custom, after a family has made a fortune, it is necessary to build a decent house and pass it on to future generations. However, when natural disasters came, Qu Jia adopted the way of "giving relief by work" and won the reputation of "Kunde Gu Xi".
The western Henan where Mengyang is located has four distinct seasons and abundant rainfall in summer rainy season. During the farming period in Qing dynasty, the ability to resist natural disasters was very poor, so natural disasters had a great impact on society.
18 13, perennial drought, autumn harvest of crops and poor harvest of wheat. People eat bark and grass roots. Qu Shande, the leader of Zhonghe, organized vehicles to transport salt. Either the young people fled, or the people killed horses to satisfy their hunger, and it was impossible to organize a salt convoy. Unexpectedly, in the early spring of the following year, there was another drought, and the wheat harvest failed, and the disaster was more serious. Qu Shande was moved by compassion and announced four things: Qu's family demolished civilian houses, expanded the yard, and provided food for those who could lift bricks and tiles. Thousands of hungry people helped the elderly and took part in the construction. Three years later, when the disaster was alleviated, more than 100 houses had been built in Quzhai, and people finally saw Qu Shande's purpose of building houses for disaster relief. In order to thank him for his efforts to live and work in peace and contentment, he named this complex "Anjutang".
When Anjutang was built, a large number of young and middle-aged laborers gathered. Qu Shande organized them and delivered a large number of commodities, which ensured the normal operation of Zhonghe Commercial Bank. His righteous act has been fully affirmed by all walks of life. The official of Baofeng County gave him a gold-plated plaque of "Young Talents", which was hung in front of Anjutang until the 1960s.
In the fifth year of Tongzhi in Qing Dynasty (1866), the disaster in Mengyang area resumed. Liu, the wife of Qu Duo, who was nearly old, opened a porridge factory to help the victims, but it backfired, and few people came to drink porridge. Liu checked the reason. It turns out that people generally think that coming to drink porridge is a kind of charity, and many people refuse to come because of face. How to make people swallow this full meal with dignity? This has become a difficult problem in front of Liu. She sent people to investigate and found that people in Shiqiaoying, Xuwa, Shanghe and other villages along the mountain in the north of Xuezhuang mostly make a living by quarrying, while people in Wuwan, Xiaohewan and Wuzhai in the south make a living by burning bricks. There is also a huge group of masons in Xuezhuang and its surrounding areas. In order to feed them, Liu decided to build a crooked homestead and find them a way to eat.
After the construction of Quzhai, Liu used wheat to pay for those who sent bricks and stones and wood to the construction, and tens of thousands of people came to the construction crowd of Quzhai to earn wheat to support their families.
The next spring, the disaster situation continued to deteriorate, resulting in a serious shortage of food. The grain price rose from 30 grains per barrel (100 kg) in good years to 560 grains. Accidents will happen. When Liu's sons, Zhen Yang and Peng Yang, died one after another, which greatly increased the cost of building a house, Liu Ying suffered the pain of losing his son. Many people thought that Qu Zhai would stop working. Unexpectedly, Liu led his young grandchildren Jia San, Rong San and junior to continue organizing the construction. Four years later, the project was completed, and more than 300 houses and a stone village cost hundreds of thousands. Although the project cost a lot of money, it won her high honor. People in 24 surrounding villages spontaneously presented her with a plaque and wrote "Kunde Gu Xi" to show their respect for him. After the completion of the Qujia Courtyard, * * * consists of two parts: outside the village and inside the village. The outer part is located in the north of the village. * * * has over 400 houses with a total area of 3,800 square meters, including Xiaoyi School, Tongren Academy, Anjutang, Yuhoutang and Rong Gui Hall.
The whole area is north-south, and the pattern varies from one entrance to four entrances. The guest rooms, courtyards and principal rooms on the central axis are the main buildings, and there are five ridges and six beasts behind the house, and the heads of the animals seem to fly, setting off the whole building complex. The roof is carved with large flower screens and grass patterns, in which birds jump, adding wings around the central axis of infinite machines to the whole building complex, which are symmetrical with each other and set off the momentum of the main building with its low building bottom.
During the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty, a poet named He Zhanen founded the Xiang Ying Poetry Society in Anjutang, where literati and gentlemen sat together to express their feelings and speak freely for decades. Among them, Zhang's Life in the Rain and Spring is the most famous. During the Republic of China, the inscription "Liu Bowen is unknown" unearthed in Nanjing was difficult for many scholars to decipher, but Chen Chenggong, a scholar of poetry society, deciphered the poem to the effect that the China * * * production party would definitely defeat the influential Chiang family dynasty at that time.
In the early years of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty, Ye Gengyao, a juren, founded Luyang Poetry Society in Yuhoutang, and created a large number of poems, which were treasured in garden bookshelves. During the period of 1938, Xu Yunuo, a great writer, studied copying poems here several times, staying up late for more than forty days, and was warmly received by the owner. When he left, he wrote couplets for the Garden Bookstore, such as "Qi Ming in the East, Vision in the West, Beidou in the Antarctic", "Hibiscus in Spring, Begonia in Summer, Chrysanthemum in Autumn, and Winter Plum", and approved "Abundant and Thick".
Qujia Courtyard consists of Zhongshutang, Zhonghetang, martial arts school and fence. It covers an area of 2400 square meters and has more than 300 houses. Most of the three hospitals are buildings, commonly known as "North Building Courtyard" and "South Building Courtyard".
The courtyard on the third floor sits west to east, all in a four-in-one pattern. According to this, the north and south buildings are anteroom, court, hall building and annex building. The main room and wing of the middle building are two-story buildings, and the rooms are unobstructed, which is also called "transfer building" by the people. The courtyard in the middle building is set off by two buildings in the north and south, which is magnificent.
The rafters are inlaid with five ridges and six beasts, and the beards are hung on the heads of the beasts. It is a typical official residence. The back is inlaid with exquisite ceramic tile carving patterns. The images of flowers, birds and children in the picture are full, the lines are smooth and vivid, showing the elegance of the house.
It is said that one year a magistrate in Ruzhou passed by Xuezhuang, and when he saw this magnificent house in front of him, he thought that there must be oil and water to fish for, so he came in and ripped it off. Qu Gengyang heard that the magistrate came to imitate, changed into a royal suit, and went to accompany the guests. The county magistrate was impatient waiting in the front hall and issued a rocking chair to call names. At the sight of Qu Gengyang entering the door, wearing a four-needle royal suit, he ran away like a drowned rat, and he dared not expect anything anymore.
How many military and political dignitaries this house has received are thousands of miles away. During the Republic of China, the Qu family counted, and Zhang Fang, Han Fuju, Herry Liu and four governors visited. Military leaders include: Fan Zhongxiu, commander-in-chief of Henan Army after the founding of the People's Republic of China; 17 army commander Tian Zhennan; Ji Hongchang, commander-in-chief of the 22nd Route Army; Li Wanlin, the 76th division commander; Yan et al., commander of the 12th Army of Henan Security Army. Facing the luxurious Qufu, Herry Liu wrote "Don't study, hope for fame and fortune, move mountains and cross seas", "Like wandering, want to get rich, seek fish from the edge of trees" and criticized "conformity", thus expressing his awe and profound understanding of Qufu Courtyard, which is alarming. Fuxi captured white turtles in Baigui Mountain (Mengyang, Pingdingshan City, Henan Province). He carefully observed the distribution of tortoise shells, deeply studied the internal relationship between river map and Luo Shu, realized the principle of Tai Chi and opened Tai Chi map.
Mengyang Street was once the capital of a small country in the Western Zhou Dynasty and the Spring and Autumn Period. It is also an important land and water terminal and cargo distribution center in the history of our province. "Rather dry Luoyang than accept Nanyang" is a brilliant portrayal of Mengyang Street in the past. After liberation, the mode of transportation gradually changed from cattle and horses to automobile transportation, and the road was diverted, and Mengyang Street began to decline. In 1950s and 1960s, with the construction of Baiguishan Reservoir, Mengyang Street was submerged in smoke and dust. ...
Mengyang Street is located about 3 kilometers south of Mengyang Town, Xinhua District, Pingdingshan City. It is a land and water transportation artery and a commercial center with profound cultural heritage, and it is one of the birthplaces of ancient civilization in China. It is said that the north-south width of Mengyang Street is 1.5km, the east-west length is 1.5km, and the perimeter is 13 steps. The city wall is made of bluestone, which is very strong. There are 8 vertical and horizontal streets in the city, inhabited by more than 20,000 people.
Mengyang Street has five gates: east, southeast, south, west and north. The east gate is called "Xu Ying" to welcome Xuchang, and the southeast gate is called "King of Chu" to see Ye County, the hometown of ancient Chu. The south gate is called "Lin Meng" and the west gate is called "Dai Ying" because water surrounds the city like a jade belt.
Taihua Bridge is located behind Shanshan Guild Hall, at the southeast gate150m. It is a typical architectural style of Ming Dynasty, with a length of12.3m and a width of 5.7m.. This is an arch bridge. There is a big arch in the middle, with two dragons playing with beads inlaid on both sides and small arches on both sides. On the village base on both sides of the west gate, there are two big carp carved with red stones. It is said that it is to stop the flood of the river. When it is going to rain on a cloudy day, the stone carp will rise again and even drip into the water.
In the west gate and south gate of Mengyang Street, east of Shizi Street South Road, there are three theaters: Night Temple, Donglulu Temple and Taishan Temple, and there are more than 20 teahouses of different sizes and grades in the city. When you are exhausted, when you have finished talking about business, or when you have a rest after a busy day, going to the go to the opera in the theater and drinking tea in the teahouse became the most important leisure way for people in Mengyang Street at that time. In the mid-1950s, the Baiguishan Reservoir Project started. The relocation time of Mengyang Street ends at 1958 and ends at 1964. At the beginning of May, 1964, it rained for 50 days, and the reservoir water soared. The highest water level rose to103.8m, exceeding the warning water level. Some buildings that have not been relocated in Meng Yang Street were flooded and collapsed. In order to protect people's lives, emergency evacuation was carried out, and many valuables were submerged in the water.
In the early 1980s, when digging fish ponds on the beach on the north bank of Baiguishan Reservoir where Mengyang Street is located, not only a lot of big bluestones were dug up, but also a lot of silver coins were dug up. At that time, everything could be washed out when land was reclaimed, canals were built or it rained heavily. According to He, a staff member of Mengyang Town Government, when he was young, a large number of purchased copper pots, copper cans and other utensils were piled up in the waste collection station under Mengyang Town Supply and Marketing Cooperative, and three walls were piled up. It is said that they were all bought from the relocated households in Mengyang Street.
Ximeng Village in Mengyang Town is a village after reservoir migration. At that time, there were more than 2,800 people living in the west near Shui Ying, mainly engaged in business, including cotton shops, cloth shops, drug shops, cigarette shops and teahouses. Workers 1000 people, so that when 1956 Ximeng Village was placed under the people's commune, there were only two animals in this village. So far, people in Xiqiao Village have embarked on the road of prosperity by raising fish. The same is true of Dongmeng and Beimeng villages.
After the reform and opening up, some Mengyang people who went to Taiwan Province Province moved to the United States and Southeast Asia. 1955, many people in Mengyang Street went to Shihezi City and Kuitun City in Xinjiang. It is said that people in these two cities13 are from Mengyang Street. When Guishan Reservoir immigrated, some Mengyang people went to Xi 'an to do business. It is said that Jiefang Road outside Xi 'an North Gate is also called Yang Xiaoyang Street, probably because there are many people doing business here in Mengyang.