Shen Wansan, the richest man in the Ming Dynasty, is still revered as the god of living wealth in today's Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas, and some legends and stories have enriched his image, as a businessman in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, he witnessed the economic prosperity of the Yuan Dynasty and experienced the economic decline of the early Ming Dynasty, but this still cannot hide his aura as a richest man. The record of Shen Wansan only appears in the "History of Ming", but it is also a few words, including Shen Wansan's proposal to build the Nanjing City Wall, which caused Zhu Yuanzhang's anger, and soon exiled Shen Wansan, from the construction of the Nanjing City Wall, it can be seen that Shen Wansan was already rich and invincible at that time, so how rich was Shen Wansan?
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, he made a fortune
There are many versions of how Shen Wansan became rich in the end, and there are no records of Shen Wansan's fortune in the history, but rather reflect his wealth through some deliberate descriptions. However, it is certain that Shen Wansan, like the warlord Zhang Shicheng at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, belonged to merchants who made a fortune by war. At that time, Zhang Shicheng was a private salt merchant, and in the last years of the Yuan Dynasty, he was once a four-way party, hoping to seek political status in the official field of the Yuan Dynasty, but unfortunately, because Zhang Shicheng was too straightforward and was ruthlessly rejected, Zhang Shicheng was finally disappointed in the Yuan Dynasty, and soon carried out an armed uprising.
Although Shen Wansan funded Zhang Shicheng in the later wars, it is not known that as early as the last year of the Yuan Dynasty, Shen Wansan was once Zhang Shicheng's opponent in the mall. Shen Wansan went all the way from buying and selling crops such as rice, and finally involved various industries, occupying a large number of shops and shopping malls in the city. This made Shen Wansan's wealth increase sharply, and at the same time, the warlords in the last years of the Yuan Dynasty were in a scuffle, and all parties needed military salaries, and Shen Wansan continued to accumulate wealth by bribing various warlords to obtain a stable commercial area. Seizing the dividends of the era of turmoil at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the hundred wastes to be revived after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Shen Wansan accumulated a huge wealth, which was also respected by later generations as the god of living wealth.
Inadvertently provokes the Son of Heaven
Shen Wansan bribed various warlords in the chaotic world, and even after the defeat of Zhang Shicheng's army, Shen Wansan's industry continued to operate as usual. It should be known that during the warlord battle, Shen Wansan also paid for Zhang Shicheng, but after Zhu Yuanzhang's army entered Zhang Shicheng's old lair, he did not commit any crime against Shen Wansan's industry, reflecting the generosity of a heavenly son. However, Shen Wansan did not think so, after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the capital was set in Nanjing, and at the same time, Zhu Yuanzhang also began to judge some corrupt officials and merchants left behind by the Yuan Dynasty, and even some Yuan Dynasty nobles, so Shen Wansan vaguely felt that the next target might be himself, so Shen Wansan decided to take out huge funds to help the Ming Dynasty build Nanjing City, so the outer wall of Nanjing City was smoothly built under Shen Wansan's command.
Being able to get the project to build the outer city wall of Nanjing shows that Shen Wansan still has a person with use value in Zhu Yuanzhang's mind, but one of his actions has completely buried himself. In the process of building the outer city wall, Shen Wansan actually rewarded the team of these construction projects privately, so he was convicted of committing a holy crime.
Originally, Shen Wansan, a criminal who had committed a crime, belonged to the kind of criminal who was about to be executed immediately, but fortunately, Empress Bigfoot interceded and let Shen Wansan change from immediate execution to exile, but in the early Ming Dynasty, exile was no different from the death penalty, so on the way to exile, Shen Wansan died of overwork soon after, ending his legendary life. At the same time, after Shen Wansan was arrested, the wealth found from his home was converted into about 600 billion yuan in cash, which is only cash, if today, Shen Wansan can still easily become the world's richest man, which shows how huge his wealth is.
brief summary:
Shen Wansan, as a legendary richest man in the Ming Dynasty, gained a lot of dividends from the war of the peasant revolt at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, so Shen Wansan took advantage of the opportunity of the times to become the founding richest man of the Ming Dynasty. However, although Shen Wansan is very rich, he is far superior to Zhu Yuanzhang in terms of planning, and several gifts not only did not get Zhu Yuanzhang's affirmation, but angered Zhu Yuanzhang, so that Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to punish him in the form of exile, which shows that a person keeps up with the changes of the times in the change of the times, and if he is stereotyped, he can only regret the curtain of life in the end.