Chen Guangyuan was a warlord in Jiangxi during the Republic of China period, he was relatively poor as a child, he worked as a porcelain shop apprentice and sold grain, and also worked as a soldier, and later because of his some culture, he entered the Tianjin Wubei Academy, and hugged Yuan Shikai's thigh, all the way from the governor to the Jiangxi overseer. Chen Guangyuan, who has been an overseer, has never been scolded by soldiers for withholding military salaries, of course, this does not mean that he does not earn money and does not covet military salaries, but like him, a veteran soldier who climbs up from the lower level, he is more adept at calculating and being more subtle and hidden.
Chen Guangyuan's promotion path
Chen Guangyuan, Zi Xiufeng, Hebei Wuqing Cui Huangkou people. Born on October 8, 1873 (August 17, 1873 of the twelfth year of Qing Tongzhi), he was an apprentice in a jade shop in Beijing at an early age, and was dismissed because of discord with the treasurer. Later, in order to live, he went to the army, and did not enter the Beiyang Martial Arts Academy until he was almost 20 years old, and after graduation, he just happened to encounter the shortage of people in Yuan Shikai's new army, so he was assigned to Yuan Shikai's training station as a new army supervisor, and later because of his large physique, loud voice, and good at complimenting and greeting, he was quite appreciated by Yuan Shikai. Beginning to be promoted step by step, the assistant of the Nanyang Ziqiang Military Camp, the general office of the General Affairs Office of the Military and Political Department of the Beiyang Standing Army, and the Seventh Association of the Fourth Town, by 1904, it had already sat in the position of the commander of the Fourth Association of the Second Town.
Yuan Shikai
Later, when the Xinhai Revolution broke out, Chen Guangyuan accompanied Feng Guozhang and the revolutionary army to fight in Huangpi, Hubei Province, fighting bravely, once capturing Hankou, Hanyang and other regions, and won the Qing Dynasty's pint and title of viceroy. After the Xinhai Revolution, he was dismissed by Duan Qirui for provoking a mutiny in Guangshui to execute his subordinates, and later yuan shikai mediated among them, so he was transferred to the commander of the Rehe Patrol Battalion and the defender of Chifeng Town.
With yuan shikai's support, Chen Guangyuan also became the commander of the 12th Army Division in 1916 and was awarded the rank of general of the army by the Beijing government. The following year, he and his younger brother Chen Guangkui went to Jiangxi to succeed Li Chun as the overseer of Jiangxi. Later, Xu Shichang became president, and Chen Guangyuan personally went to Beijing to meet Xu Shichang and maintain good relations with him, which made him no longer waver in his position as the overseer of Jiangxi and began to secretly collect wealth for himself.
The road to wealth
Although Chen Guangyuan was serving as the overseer of Jiangxi at that time, the salaries of the troops were still supplied by the National War Department, and because there was a perennial shortage of government funds at that time, the military salaries could not be paid in time, So Chen Guangyuan often ran to the Jiangxi Department of Finance in the name of raising military salaries and asked them to send 150,000 yuan to the account they designated. After the War Department issued the salary, he would symbolically return tens of thousands to the Department of Finance, and the rest would all fall into his own pocket. He could also earn millions of gray incomes all year round, and during his tenure as the overseer of Jiangxi, he quietly earned about 7 million yuan by relying on this method alone.
Chen Guangyuan was still relatively jealous of making public money at that time, but in other respects it was quite unreasonable. Once, the jiujiang history museum internal maintenance, need to move out the treasures first, Chen Guangyuan said to the person in charge of the museum:
"These cultural relics are too precious to be lost",
He dismissed several places where cultural relics were placed selected by the person in charge, believing that these places were unsafe. Picking and choosing is not where he thinks it is appropriate, he said to the person in charge:
"I can't put these things in my Overseer's Mansion, in order to protect the cultural relics, I would rather vacate my feng shui treasure land, and it doesn't matter if I live in a bad spot."
So his Overseer's Mansion was filled with rare treasures.
When the museum is renovated, the cultural relics are also sent back one after another. However, once the museum staff took stock, they found that more than 100 pieces of Qing Dynasty official kiln porcelain were missing, and the catty staff naturally knew it, but because they were afraid of Chen Guangyuan's military might, they could only get rid of it. Afterwards, all these porcelains were sold by Chen Guangyuan in exchange for a large amount of money. After Chen Guang left office, the local government kept circulating a sentence
"Poor Jiangxi Province, rich Guangyuan family." ”
At that time, Chen Guangyuan was not only crazy to accumulate wealth, but also knew that if he wanted to make his wealth stable, he needed the protection of a powerful network. Later, he took great pains to marry all 8 of his children to the magnates, and The Prime Minister Pan Fu, the giant Jia Li Songchen, and the warlord Sun Chuanfang all became his relatives, and at that time he was very powerful.
Obsessed with making money, he became a gold trader
In 1922, Chen Guangyuan was deposed by Cao Kun from his post as the overseer of Jiangxi because of his defeat in the war, at which time Chen Guangyuan felt that it was too dangerous to join the army in this chaotic world, and simply lived in Tianjin to do business. Moreover, relying on his children's network of connections, he quickly accumulated a large amount of wealth, and also pocketed enterprises such as Qixin Yang Gray Company, Kailuan Coal Mine, and Industrial Bank of China.
Cao Kun
And during this period, he also liked to "speculate in stocks", to be precise, to speculate in gold, he studied the rise and fall of gold every day, and based on experience, he formulated a price that he thought was the lowest and highest price of gold. Whenever the price of gold falls to the low price he thinks, he buys a lot of money, it is said that he buys 500 taels at a time, and sells them all when he thinks it is high.
Because there were not so many human interventions in these markets at that time, Chen Guangyuan became a gold trader with this set of methods he explored by himself, and earned a lot of profits. At that time, even some rich businessmen and politicians in the Republic of China hoped that he could help him "manage money" and speculate in gold, and he also served one by one, making his status at that time, although not very high, but extremely stable, the three realms were all eaten, and no one dared to shake it.
On August 16, 1939, Chen Guangyuan died of illness in the British Concession of Tianjin. At the time of his death, he bought countless real estate, land, and pawnshops in Tianjin and other places, and he occupied more than 10,000 mu of land in his hometown of Wuqing alone, and there were hundreds of rental properties near Beijing Tianqiao. It is also one of the few good deaths among warlords.
Chen Guangyuan's former residence