Huizhou merchants rose in Chenghua and Hongzhi in Ming Dynasty, and after more than 300 years of glory, they became the miracle of China business circles. In the mid-Ming Dynasty, the social economy developed greatly, and many important trading towns appeared in the southeast. In addition to selling local products such as bamboo, wood, porcelain clay, raw lacquer and tea, Huizhou merchants also promoted the development of trade with products such as inkstone, Hui ink, Tang paper and Wang Boli pen. At that time, the output of salt was not high and it became the most scarce commodity. There are more and more people engaged in salt industry in Huizhou merchants, until the Shanxi-Shaanxi merchant group, which has been focusing on salt industry, was defeated. At that time, Huizhou salt merchants in Yangzhou were either market merchants (buying salt from kitchen households) or transporters, each with its own way of making money. Wang Fuguang, a native of Xiuning, sells salt between Jianghuai and owns thousands of ships. At this time, Huguang is the best-selling port of Huai salt, and the salt sold accounts for more than half of Huai salt.
The wealth of Huizhou merchants in Ming and Qing Dynasties can be called "as rich as an enemy". During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the total capital of Huizhou salt merchants alone was equivalent to the total income of the whole country in one year. The capital of Huizhou merchants engaged in salt industry in Yangzhou was 40 million to 50 million taels of silver, while the treasury in the heyday of the Qing Dynasty was only 70 million taels. At the end of Qianlong period, China had a huge foreign trade surplus, with an annual tariff surplus of 852,000 yuan, among which the tea exclusively sold by Huizhou merchants ranked first. Due to the prosperity of salt markets in Yizheng and Huai 'an in northern Jiangsu, there was a saying that "there is no town without emblem". Huizhou merchants completed the primitive accumulation of capital through salt merchants, and their activities ranged from Huainan in the east to Yunnan, Guizhou and Guanlong in the west, Youyan and Liaodong in the north and Fujian and Guangdong in the south. Huizhou merchants have traveled as far as Japan, Siam, Southeast Asian countries, Portugal and other places, ranking first among all merchant groups in China in terms of the number of employees, business scale and capital scale.
Pawnshops have existed since ancient times. Compared with other industries, the risk is small and the profit is stable. Therefore, Huizhou merchants entered the pawnbroking industry in a big way after the salt industry. According to historical records, there are 500 pawn shops in Jinling, most of which are owned by Huizhou merchants. Later, they set up pawn shops in rural towns, and since then, the proverb "no code, no emblem" has spread in society. Even the shopkeepers of pawn shops are called "Chao Feng", which also comes from the saying of Huizhou merchants. Huizhou dialect has become a common jargon of pawn shops, and the relevant contents reflected in novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties such as Ancient and Modern Novels and Surprised Anger are mostly drawn from Huizhou merchants.
With the further commercialization of cotton cloth in the south of the Yangtze River, Huizhou cloth merchants soon spread all over the towns and cities producing cotton cloth in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the fabric woven by Madame Ting in Qianmentang, Jiading County was very good. A Huizhou merchant rented a house in the hutong where she lived, bought this kind of cloth and sold it all over the country. So towns like Waigang, which are close to Qianmen Pond, followed Madame Ting's weaving method one after another, and the woven cloth was called Qianmen Pond Cloth, which became a best seller in the hands of Huizhou merchants. In Qing Dynasty, Huizhou merchants generally concentrated on setting up cloth villages near Suzhou towns. In those places where cotton is not produced and the cotton textile industry is very developed, Huizhou merchants also set up tooth shops to exchange cotton for cotton cloth, which is called "flower cloth shop". In order to build their own brands, they all mark their own names on the colored cloth heads they process. During the reign of Emperor Kangxi, the "shop" opened by the king of Hui merchants in Suzhou became famous and sold one million pieces of cloth in one year. In the next 200 years, Yimei Sebu was regarded as a famous brand. Huizhou merchants are also the most active cotton cloth dealers. During the reign of Kangxi, the business of Richengxiang cloth shop opened by Huizhou merchants outside Qianmen in Beijing was very prosperous.
Rice merchants are also an important branch of Huizhou merchants. After the mid-Ming Dynasty, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, known as the "Land of Fish and Rice", could not meet their own needs in food because of the increase of urban population. So the Hui people quickly expanded their business and became the main commercial group engaged in grain trade between Wu Chu. According to historical records, Wu Pengxiang and Huizhou Xiuning people trafficked Sichuan rice along the east of the Yangtze River during the Qianlong period, which happened to be a famine in Hanyang, Hubei. He sold tens of thousands of stones of Sichuan rice at once, which shows the scale of the sale.
Huizhou mountain area is rich in famous tea, especially Luosong tea produced in Xiuning and Shexian. Therefore, tea trade has gradually become one of the main industries operated by Huizhou merchants. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Huizhou people opened seven tea shops in Beijing, with a brand name of *** 166 and thousands of small tea shops. In Hankou, Jiujiang, Suzhou, Shanghai and other cities in the Yangtze River valley, there are activities of Huizhou tea merchants almost everywhere. In the heyday of the development of Huizhou merchants, the rise and fall of towns in the south of the Yangtze River depended entirely on the management of Huizhou merchants. Zhou Taibang, a businessman from Jixi, started a business in Zhouzhuang, Suzhou, which promoted the prosperity of the town. According to Wanli's "Jiading County Records", Luodian Town, Jiading County, "Huizhou merchants gather and trade is prosperous, counting south."
From Ma Yue? For Hu Xueyan.
The elegance of many Huizhou merchants is still interesting today. Ma Wei? As one of the representatives of Huizhou merchants in Yangzhou in the early Qing Dynasty, he was graceful and luxurious, and he loved writing poems, collecting books and making friends with literati all his life. During the Yongzheng period, he built the Xiaoling Mountain Pavilion in Yangzhou.
Flow. Famous scholars such as Quan, Li E and He are frequent visitors to Xiaoling Mountain Pavilion. Ma Wei? He used to be the leader of the League, and together with Li E and others, he formed the "Hanjiang Music Society", composed a poem and traveled around the mountains and rivers. Shen Deqian commented on his poems as "steep mountains are carved, and clear water is clear." It can be seen that the accomplishments are deep. Ma Wei? I love studying classics, so I set up a seal cutting workshop at home. For example, I spent a lot of money to engrave Zhu Yizun's Jing Yi Test. At that time, I called these books "Ma Edition". Xiaolongshan Museum is another name of Ma Library, with a collection of 10 million volumes. 1772 Ma Yue siku quanshu museum was established? His son Zhenbo donated 776 kinds of books, which is the highest in China's private collection, and Emperor Qianlong praised a book, The Integration of Ancient and Modern Books. Ma Wei? And his younger brother, Ma Yuelu, are also called "Two Horses in Yangzhou", and Ma Yue is listed in the Draft of Qing History and Biography of Wen Yuan. Pass is enough to prove that his name was really important at that time.
The two representatives of Huizhou merchants in modern times and Bao were both from Shexian. In his early years, Jiang Chun failed after having obtained the provincial examinations, dropped out of school to do business and lived in Yangzhou, a commercial center. He knows how to combine politics with business. He visited Jiangnan and Jiang Chun for six times, and personally donated 302,000 yuan. Gan Long was very fond of him, and wrote the plaque "Yixing Hall" for him, giving him the title of Minister of the Interior and Minister of Public Affairs. There is a three-story brick white tower in Slender West Lake in Yangzhou, which looks like Lama Tower in Beijing Beihai Park. It is said that this tower was built in Jiang Chun. Jiang Chun's "Shangbu Emperor" fully reflected the wealth of Huizhou salt merchants. Bao followed his father to manage salt industry in Yangzhou since childhood and had no experience in imperial examinations. He made many donations to help the court. 1805, Huanghuai flooded and Hongze Lake burst its banks. He donated 60,000 meters of stones and 40,000 wheat stones to help hundreds of thousands of victims. To change the Liutang River, it is necessary to open mountains and return to the sea. He gathered all the people and lost three million and two thousand pieces of silver. Bao made many donations and won the appreciation of Emperor Jiaqing. Emperor Qianlong personally wrote a couplet for Jiabao Ancestral Temple, "A Chinese Odyssey, the First Hometown in Jiangnan". Ziyang College was rebuilt by Bao, and it has been maintained to this day.
Hu Yongguang, namely Hu Xueyan, is the most famous businessman in Huizhou. Hu Xueyan was born in Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty for three years (A.D. 1823). As an apprentice in a bank, he was diligent and eloquent. Hu Xueyan's greatest success lies in his understanding of the general trend. At the age of twenty, he met a poor scholar named Wang Youling, who had no travelling expenses and no "capital" to be an official in Beijing. Although Hu Xueyan didn't know him very well, he immediately borrowed five hundred and twenty pieces of silver from the bank privately. Hu Xueyan lost his job, but Wang Youling, an official, felt his kindness and regarded it as a difference between life and death. Hu Xueyan, who was in power, took advantage of Wang Youling's development in officialdom, opened banks, pawn shops and pharmacies, engaged in silk and tea, and became rich quickly. Making friends with Wang Youling also enabled Hu Xueyan's banks to act as agents of Zhejiang's vassal treasury, thus making the country rich.
"A wanderer misses his loved ones for one yuan and seven cents" (a medicine mystery), and Bai Mudan, a daughter of Hangzhou, immediately uncovered the mystery, saying that "a wanderer misses his loved ones and should go home (fennel)". Obviously, the homonym of "fennel" is also "returning home", which is synonymous with unemployment in Huizhou. Huizhou people do everything, and there are only two things they are most afraid of: fennel and dried radish-"radish" because of its homophonic "falling into a trap".
Huizhou merchants have a strong clan concept. When they go out to do business, they always live together by blood and geography, often with their fathers, brothers and uncles. After Huizhou people went out to do business and settled in towns, the people in the clan immediately followed, and then the township party followed. This kind of clan group with blood relationship as the link participates in market competition, which has strong advantages in gathering financial resources, material resources, manpower and unified action. However, Huizhou merchants are not only concerned about human feelings. They pay attention to defining this human relationship by contract, so Huizhou left a lot of contract documents. When dealing with internal or external business problems, Huizhou merchants have a special organization called Huizhou Merchants Guild Hall. Guild halls were very popular in Qing dynasty, but there were also many Huizhou merchants' guilds. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Huizhou merchants' guilds spread all over the country, with several in Nanjing alone. On behalf of businessmen, the guild hall negotiates business with the government and holds public welfare undertakings for Muslims. Some clubs also invite teachers to teach the children of fellow villagers, and also deliver letters and official statements from fellow villagers on their behalf. The funds of the guild hall are provided by Huizhou merchants where the guild hall is located. The earliest hui merchants' guild hall was the Shexian guild hall in Beijing, which was built at 1560 and was initiated by Yang Zhong and Bowen, hui merchants living in Beijing. Xin 'an Guild Hall in Hankou, Hubei Province, has gradually formed a "Xin 'an Street" from property acquisition to road expansion and wharf development. Huining Club, shengze town, Wujiang County, Suzhou, has been built for more than 20 years. It has real estate, land and berths for loading and unloading goods.
At the end of Qianlong period, Yizheng Salt Ship caught fire, and 130 Salt Ship was destroyed, killing 1400 people. This seems to be an omen: Huizhou merchants who started from salt industry are heading for decline. Several important events in the late Qing Dynasty directly contributed to the downfall of Huizhou merchants. During the Daoguang period, in view of the extremely high salt price, the salt policy system in Huaibei changed. The Qing government abolished the franchise of salt merchants to sell salt in the past, and the transportation and marketing were separated. Since then, Huizhou merchants have lost the hereditary patent right to sell salt, so a large number of salt merchants in Huaibei area went bankrupt. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement mainly affected the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, which was the main area where Huizhou merchants operated, and their business was greatly affected. After the defeat of the Opium War, western powers opened the door to China, and the entry of foreign businessmen led to the emergence of national capitalist groups, which impacted Huizhou commercial gangs linked by patriarchal clan system and contributed to its disintegration.
From Li Ben's Looking for Huizhou Merchants, Guangming Daily Press, 2003.
Wen Wei Po, June 65438+1October 65438+August 2004