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The First Rise of Qin Merchants
Shaanxi is one of the important birthplaces of Chinese nation and Chinese culture. Historically, Shaanxi has long been the political, economic and cultural center of China. It is said in Zi and Jian that "fertile land in Guanzhong is the residence of emperors". It is understood that thirteen dynasties, including the prosperous period of Han and Tang dynasties, once built their capitals here.
In fact, the glory of Shaanxi is not only here, but also in business. According to experts, during the 500 years of Ming and Qing Dynasties in China, Shaanxi's advanced political civilization and superior natural and geographical environment once created generations of famous businessmen, and finally formed a long-standing business gang-Shaanxi business gang, also known as Qin business.
In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, in order to consolidate the frontier defense, the central government at that time implemented a series of special economic policies in Shaanxi and other places, such as "opening salt", "exchanging tea and horses", "purchasing cotton cloth" and "trading cloth", which created opportunities for the rise of Shaanxi businessmen. At that time, Shaanxi merchants seized this historical opportunity, gave full play to their geographical and product advantages, and formed Jingyang and Sanyuan as the center and Northwest China. For 500 years, he was honored as "dajia of Western Qin Dynasty" or "Merchant of Qin Dynasty", and once ranked among the top ten business gangs in China in Ming and Qing Dynasties, just like Shanxi merchants and Huizhou merchants. Even Song, a scientist in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, had to sigh with emotion that "businessmen have their roots and generally belong to three counties of Qin, Jin and Huizhou", which shows the influence of Shaanxi merchants at that time.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, merchants in southern China mainly sold local handicrafts to other places in exchange for raw materials to earn processing profits, while merchants in Shaanxi were different. Because they are located in the junction of regional economic structure and the exchange center of agricultural and livestock products in the central and western regions, they have long formed a historical tradition of selling trade, which enables them to follow the trend, give full play to their advantages and carry out business. At that time, many famous Qin merchants had a tradition of doing business. Moreover, many Shaanxi businessmen engaged in border trade during the Ming and Qing Dynasties were gentry who abandoned Confucianism to do business. A large number of scholars participated in business activities, and applied traditional Confucian cultural knowledge to business process, winning by wisdom. Gu Zeng, a famous scholar in Ming Dynasty, concluded that "there are many heroes in Guanzhong, and the merchants born by them are the masters of power, generally respecting filial piety and saving money, and have the demeanor of ancient gentlemen". It can be explained that during the Qing Dynasty, the rise of a business group in Shaanxi, which gathered scholars, farmers, workers and businessmen from all walks of life in the business field in western China, was the inevitable product of Shaanxi's commercial economy and its commercial culture and historical accumulation for thousands of years.
It is reported that during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shaanxi's giant merchants sprang up suddenly, and most of the most famous merchants came from generations of well-tested merchant families. They are distributed in Weinan, Dali, Hancheng and other counties around Xi. Weinan is a star area that has attracted much attention during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Zhao, Yan, Liu and Zhan in Weinan were the "richest people in Guanzhong" and "the richest people in the province" at that time. Around their numerous business families, they are jagged scales of dragons.
At that time, there were proverbs in Weinan, filial piety and mosquitoes in Chishui. It is about the prosperity of Xiaoyi Town, where merchants gather and are rich all over the world. The song "Song of the Year of Drought" was widely circulated in Shaanxi in the late Qing Dynasty. "Xiaoyi Town was originally controlled by Weinan, and Zhao Laowu was also considered a rich man in Guanzhong." In desperation, people who are hungry and cold have pinned their hopes for survival on the Zhao family, the largest rich family in Weinan-because the money and food of the Zhao family are unimaginable to ordinary people. "Wealth does not exceed three generations" seems to be an iron law. A family's wealth can span the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and it must have its self-reliance and anti-corruption power. The Zhao family in Weinan is extremely rich, and even one descendant won the first prize in scientific research, thus evolving into a "political family". It is said that the opening of the novel "Officialdom in the Sky" in the late Qing Dynasty was written by the first scholar among Zhao's descendants, or it was fictional. However, the author regards the Zhao family as a "typical" former dynasty, which shows that it was rich and expensive.
According to reports, in its heyday, Shaanxi merchants built more than 200 Shaanxi guildhalls all over the country, and there are still many architectural relics of "Shaanxi Guildhall", "Guanzhong Guildhall" and "Xiqin Guildhall" all over the country. The earliest guild halls built by Shaanxi businessmen in different places were Guanzhong Guild Hall in Beijing and Shanshan Guild Hall in Shangcai, Henan. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Huizhou merchants flourished rapidly and seized many sites of Qin merchants, but Qin merchants still took the second place. After entering the Qing Dynasty, although Shanxi merchants developed by leaps and bounds by virtue of their special relationship with the Qing court and the strong financial resources of the banks, Qin merchants were still an important business gang.
In fact, in the business model of Shaanxi business gang, it also encountered a very similar historical environment to today. In ancient Shaanxi, merchants "made money by sitting at home for thousands of miles", mainly adopting the partnership business model of financial contribution and shopkeeper management, and then sharing profits. This partnership management system is somewhat similar to our current state-owned enterprise reform.
The Historical Contribution of Qin Merchants
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shaanxi merchants and Shanxi merchants monopolized the trade in the central and western regions of China for 500 years, creating the myth of commodity economy in western China, which made today's Shaanxi people feel ashamed.
At that time, in order to meet the needs of Huizhou merchants and other merchants, Shanxi and Shaanxi merchants often used the advantages of neighboring provinces to combine with each other. People usually call them "merchants of the western regions" or "merchants of Shaanxi and Qin". Western businessmen had a great influence in the early Ming Dynasty, and they made a lot of profits from salt industry management. Unfortunately, their internal division began because of interests. Shaanxi salt merchants parted ways with Shanxi salt merchants, and finally Shaanxi salt merchants developed by leaps and bounds, laying the foundation for the final formation of Shaanxi business gangs.
According to reports, Shaanxi businessmen, as a western commercial capital group mainly engaged in border trade, played a great historical role in promoting the initial economic development of western China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. For more than 200 years in the Ming Dynasty, the trade of edge tea, edge cloth, edge salt, medicinal materials and leather goods in Lanzhou and Xining was basically monopolized by Qin merchants. In the Ming Dynasty, the tea trade along Sichuan South Road was also controlled by Qin merchants. Because of their activities, Kangding changed from a small mountain village into a commercial center of "Fan Yi confluence", and Shaanxi Street, where Shaanxi businessmen lived, was the busiest commercial street in Kangding at that time. After the Qing Dynasty, Qin merchants marched into the hinterland of Sichuan, almost mastered the financial lifeline of Sichuan in the early Qing Dynasty, and then monopolized more than 80% of the total capital of Sichuan well salt production. Later, with the operation of Sichuan Salt in Guizhou, they expanded their sphere of influence to Yunnan and Guizhou. On the northern border of Han and Mongolia, Shaanxi merchants infiltrated the trade tentacles into the flags of Yikezhao League and Mongolia through "horse merchants" and gradually became "the actual controllers of the flag economy". Relying on this dominant position, they cultivated the northern Shaanxi economy characterized by fur trade in Ming and Qing Dynasties.
In the Qing Dynasty, the business scope and economic strength of Shaanxi commercial gangs developed greatly. Compared with the Ming Dynasty, they developed vigorously in salt, tea, cloth, tobacco, wood, medicine, leather, miscellaneous, finance and many other industries. Their business areas were as far north as Urumqi and Ili, and as far south as Foshan and Shanghai. They got rid of the passive situation that the demand of the Ming government was subordinate and really put their own development on a solid foundation to conform to the development of commodity economy.
With the continuous success of Shaanxi businessmen, a large amount of monetary capital returned to Shaanxi, which directly promoted the development of local commodity economy in Shaanxi. The rapid rise of Shaanxi cloth industry in Qing Dynasty is a remarkable example. Moreover, due to the productive investment of Shaanxi businessmen in Qinba Mountain area, the mining, logging, papermaking and other industries there developed rapidly, making Qinba Mountain area one of the areas where endogenous capitalism sprouted earlier in China. It is for these reasons that Shaanxi became one of the economically developed regions in China during the five hundred years of Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Nowadays, in addition to the "Shaanxi Guild Hall" or "Shanshan Guild Hall" left all over the country, the historical relics that can best witness the prosperity of Shaanxi business gangs in those days are probably Maza piles scattered in Chengcheng, Baishui and Hancheng in Weibei. It is said that these horse pegs, which historians call "Terracotta Warriors and Horses on the Ground", were symbols of wealth in the heyday of Qin and Shang Dynasties.
Qin Merchants' Concept of Honor and Disgrace and Entrepreneurship
From the "old rules" (shop rules) and "old sayings" of Shaanxi businessmen, it can be seen that the concept of honor and disgrace of Shaanxi businessmen conforms to the temperament of Shaanxi people and the needs of industrial and commercial activities.
It rained and fell, and I fell and crawled by myself. This sentence is widely circulated in rural areas of Shaanxi and has been used for a long time. "Be diligent in doing business, don't be lazy, be lazy and waste everything; Spend money frugally, not luxuriously, luxury will exhaust your money. " Laoshan businessmen have raised the spirit and tradition of hard work, hard work, thrift, hard work and simplicity, and opposition to extravagance and waste to a height that matters. This spirit and tradition is one of the fine traditions of the Chinese nation and one of the outstanding characteristics of Shaanxi people.
"When the vertebra is buried, it will tilt with the passage of time, and the change is general." It is an old tradition of Shaanxi people to make money with wisdom and foresight. As advocated by military strategists, "those who do not seek the overall situation are not enough to seek a corner;" He who does not seek eternal life does not seek for a moment. "Laoshan businessmen have the great spirit of" closing the dragon ",and are good at studying the laws of market changes, focusing on the overall situation, seeking the overall situation and gaining strategic advantages first.
"Authentic products are good for business, but counterfeiting is hard to last." Shaanxi businessmen don't cheat or cheat, follow the market and price according to quality. Because of this, Shaanxi businessmen are called "three hard businessmen" with hard people, hard goods and hard temper. In the cloth store, the goods provided by Shaanxi merchants are of high quality, genuine, reputable, prosperous in purchase and sale, and smooth in commodity circulation, and are known as "higher prices in Guanzhong".
It is a valuable historical character of Shaanxi businessmen to seize the opportunity and keep pace with the times. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Shaanxi businessmen seized the policy opportunity of the vassal's laissez-faire policy on trade and quickly ushered in the first wave of development by doing business for money. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Shaanxi businessmen seized the policy opportunity of the government to implement enlightened politics and open to the outside world, and made full use of the convenient conditions of the Silk Road, forming the second great development wave; During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shaanxi merchants were able to seize the policy opportunity of the Ming and Qing governments to "open salt", "trade between tea and horses" and "trade with the army" in Shaanxi, and became the earliest merchant group in China history, monopolizing the trade between the east and the west of China for 500 years with the majestic momentum of "Shanxi merchants".
The pioneering spirit of traveling around the world is the secret of Shaanxi businessmen galloping around for hundreds of years. The mountains and rivers in the west are full of yellow dust and life is hard. Southern businessmen have long regarded it as a road of fear. The harsh natural environment can't stop Shaanxi businessmen from getting rich in business. They went up to Gansu and down to Sichuan, peddling cheap and expensive, and made a fortune for their hometown. During the Daoguang period, Zhao Xi went to Xinjiang, where he went to a spring on the Gobi Desert thousands of miles away. He only saw a tile-roofed house to entertain tourists and went into the store to ask the boss. He is from Sanyuan, Shaanxi. When he was young, he lived alone in the Gobi desert for more than 30 years, married a wife and became the only relative in the Gobi desert, so he was called "Yiquan". Thousands of miles of Gobi, where nothing grows and sand flies and stones walk, still have smoke from Shaanxi businessmen. What difficulties and obstacles can stop Shaanxi people from seeking wealth?
The tireless and enterprising spirit, the spirit of dedication and perseverance are the fundamental factors for the success of Shaanxi businessmen. The hardest thing in life is doing business, seeking money in different places and doing business in different places. The hardships are self-evident. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Shaanxi businessmen in Chengdu wanted to build a "Shaanxi Guild Hall", but they were blocked by local literati, saying that the Guild Hall could be built, but they were not allowed to use a handful of local loess to avoid the leakage of Feng Shui. Shaanxi businessmen resolutely returned to their hometown xi 'an and Tongzhou, passed through the ancient Bashu Road thousands of miles, simply carried a bag of loess from their hometown, and built a gorgeous Shaanxi guild hall in Sichuan. Sun Bao, a big businessman in Shaanxi in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, worked as a salt merchant in Yangzhou and became a daughter for three years. Later, he became a famous poet in Shaanxi during his studies. In the twenty-eighth year of Kangxi, he was called to take an examination of his erudition, and he was awarded the title of book in the cabinet. The leopard man said firmly, "I have lived in Guangling (Yangzhou) for decades, so that I can be an official in the capital and my family will not starve to death?" It is the embodiment of the professional spirit of Shaanxi businessmen to resign from their posts and return to business instead of being a good official.
Honest management, adhering to Jia Dao's spirit of seeking truth and honesty, embodies the long-term and steady business style of Shaanxi businessmen. Fuping, Shaanxi Province has had a town called "Governing Town" since the Han Dynasty. It is called "Governing Town" because it is trustworthy in business. When Liang Xuan, a businessman from Sanyuan, chose Jia Huaiyang as the rubber industry, he always kept the system of salt field and "talked about seniority". Those who have risky and cunning rules and interests will create a method called "super lottery", that is, take the lead in supporting salt by bribing people up and down and out of the original order, because their profits are usually doubled. "At one time, the villagers ran for the Super Lotto and invited the public to be salty. Good people are not profitable, and salt is different from its name. Although they are two friends, they are actually three feet. I'll keep it and see if Cao is defeated. A few days later, the first thing to do is to use the method of chaos, and the public is the first policy. "