In the history of China, salt merchants are a legendary group. Since the Sui and Tang dynasties gradually lifted the salt ban and introduced merchants to participate in the salt industry, legends about the huge wealth of salt merchants have been circulated in all dynasties. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the wealth scale of salt merchants reached its peak, and during this period, the word "salt merchant" was definitely a gold signboard.
How rich were the salt merchants in the Ming and Qing dynasties? We can get a glimpse from the side of the Ming Dynasty's first strange book", "The Words of the Plum in the Golden Bottle": Ximen Qing took Cai Jing's door and got the business of 30,000 Huai salt, and his follower, Count Ying, was overjoyed and said: "Brother, congratulations!" There will be a big interest when you come back!" What is this so-called "big interest"? According to scholars' research, the cost of this business is only about 10,000 taels, and the profit is about 30,000 taels of silver, which is definitely a huge profit.
Although this book is written about the song dynasty, it reflects the social situation of the Ming Dynasty, and from this plot, we can see how huge the salt merchants were operating at that time.
How does a small grain of salt bring them these mountains of wealth? And what legends did these rich salt merchants create?
From official sales to official businessmen
Salt is inconspicuous, but it is a long journey to find its history.
The current verifiable natural salt plants in China date back to the Shanxi region before 6,000 BC. In ancient times, salt as a strategic resource, various clans have fought countless battles around it, it is said that the Yan Emperor and the Yellow Emperor launched the Battle of Hanquan, one of the factors is to compete for the pool salt resources in Shanxi.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, the qi state name XiangGuan Zhong proposed a monopoly on the salt industry. Since then, although the management of the salt industry has been different in successive dynasties, in general, the management right of the salt industry is still in the hands of the government most of the time, and it has become one of the important financial sources of the government.
From the Tang Dynasty onwards, Yangzhou Salt and Iron made Liu Yan change the original model of uniformly purchasing, transporting, and selling salt by the government to reselling it to merchants after government acquisition, and they transported and sold it, and since then, the group of "salt merchants" has officially appeared in history.
Beginning with the Ming Dynasty, in order to change the difficult situation of grain transportation for the northern border defense troops, from the third year of Hongwu, the Ming Dynasty implemented the "Kaizhong system": merchants transported grain and grass to the north, and after the grain and grass arrived, the government issued vouchers to merchants according to a certain proportion, and merchants used this voucher to go to salt farms in various places to withdraw salt.
This kind of proof is the "salt introduction" that we got from Ximen Qing mentioned above.
During the Ming Dynasty, in order to solve the problem of indiscriminate salt and backlog, the Ming Government implemented the "Gangyun System", requiring the merchants who had previously operated independently to form a "Shang Gang" and register it, and merchants who were not within the scope of the "Shang Gang" registration were not allowed to engage in the salt industry.
From this time on, in the sales of salt, a hereditary monopoly system of merchants under the control of the government was formed, which lasted until the Daoguang years of the Qing Dynasty, and in the inheritance of hundreds of years, the salt merchant family began to form. With the continuous increase of the population in the Ming and Qing dynasties, these salt merchant families grabbed more and more benefits from this small grain of salt, and the legend of salt merchants began to spread in the market.
Second, cities built on salt
Among the major salt farms in history, Yangzhou is undoubtedly the largest and most famous one. Yangzhou is not only an important production area of Huai salt, but also close to the Yangtze River, the Huai River, and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal this waterway, this unique condition, so that Yangzhou since the Sui and Tang Dynasties has become a major commercial town in Jiangnan, the Sui Emperor once established a palace here, happy and unforgettable, during the Tang Dynasty Yangzhou became an overseas trade town, a large number of Arab and other places of merchants here to carry out commercial trade, flourished for a while.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Yangzhou became the leading city of the national salt industry, according to relevant historical records, by the Ming Dynasty, yangzhou alone, salt production accounted for more than 30% of the country's total output, because of this, salt merchants gathered in Yangzhou, making Yangzhou truly a "city built on salt".
Although in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Yangzhou was involved in war, and the massacre of the "Ten Days of Yangzhou" made the city almost a ruin, but under the management of salt merchants, in just a few decades, Yangzhou not only regained prosperity, but even better.
Different from the impression, in the Qing Dynasty, the group that initially operated the salt industry in Yangzhou was not the "Huishang" that we are familiar with, but the Qin merchants and Jin merchants who were mainly from Shaanxi and Shanxi, and the Huishang became the mainstream much later than these two groups.
But why is the mention of Yangzhou salt merchants now reminiscent of Huishang instinctively?
First, huishang heavy local feelings, one person engaged in business, often the entire clan came to Yangzhou; On the other hand, although Jinshang and other groups have money, they are too "cut", even if there is a golden mountain and silver mountain at home, they are also reluctant to eat and wear, almost all of them are "Grand Terrace" and "Iron Rooster", compared with the Huishang who love life and pleasure, the traces they leave in Yangzhou are naturally far worse.
How prosperous was Yangzhou during the Qing Dynasty? According to historical records, during the Qianlong period alone, Yangzhou built 30 to 40 new gardens from Slender West Lake to Pingshantang, most of which were built by salt merchants.
Although most of the "literati gardens" in Suzhou are now respected when it comes to gardens, during the Qianlong and Jiaqing years of the Qing Dynasty, the Yangzhou gardens were more loved by people at that time.
Until now, the garden masterpieces such as the Garden, the Zhen Garden, and the Wang's Garden built by the salt merchants are still receiving guests from all over the world and are praised by many tourists.
It is said that during the Ming and Qing dynasties, Yangzhou had "four more": many officials, many merchants, many literati, and many idle people. "Many officials" and "many merchants" are well understood, and "many literati" are also corroborated by the well-known Yangzhou Eight Monsters and other literati inkers.
And what does "idle people" mean? It is because the salt merchants are rich and wealthy, if there are one or two people in ordinary families who are working as errands in the salt merchants, the income is enough to feed the whole family, and it is so easy to make a living, and there will naturally be more idle people.
It can be seen that if Yangzhou is a city built on salt, then many salt merchants are the most solid foundations, and it is precisely because of them that Yangzhou has hundreds of years of extravagance and literary style.
Third, unimaginable luxury
In the last year of Qianlong, a strange book appeared on the market in Yangzhou, called "Yangzhou Painting Record", although the author Li Dou was a cloth cloth, but proficient in literary history, good at poetry, opera, music, often in and out of the private residences of major salt merchants. The "Yangzhou Painting Record" written by him, which records many stories of the luxurious life of salt merchants, can be called a collection of gossip news.
The so-called "painting boat" originally referred to a small boat with rich decorations and used to play in the mountains and rivers. But in the hands of the Salt Merchants of Yangzhou, these paintings were renovated: some were several floors high, and some were decorated with glass that was extremely rare at that time... On weekdays, these salt merchants are accompanied by famous prostitutes and beautiful women in the painting boat, and they enjoy tasting fine wine and delicacies.
For a time, the rivers in Yangzhou City were full of paintings, creating a grand scene of "Little Qinhuai".
In the "Yangzhou Painting Record", Li Dou recorded in detail the extravagant style of Yangzhou salt merchants at that time and many strange hobbies, which can be called profligate and jaw-dropping.
According to records, among the salt merchants at that time, there was a ranking similar to the "Forbes list", and the merchants on the list were at least ten million and two worth, and those with millions of dollars were called "small businessmen" and could not be on the table at all.
In the "Yangzhou Painting Record", it is recorded that a certain salt merchant is "big", no matter the house, furniture and other kinds of items should be bigger and better, and even specially created a copper night pot as high as five or six feet, every night when the night rises, they have to climb up and down, extremely hard, but still enjoy it.
There is also a certain salt merchant, invented the "tour dish" eating method, each meal to prepare dozens, hundreds of dishes, once the dishes are not satisfied, immediately remove and replace the new dish, the degree of extravagance and waste is staggering.
The salt merchants in Yangzhou not only want to be poor and extravagant in life, but also very much love to "show off their wealth": at that time, the tumblers made in Suzhou were very exquisite and valuable, and a rich merchant in Yangzhou once spent 3,000 taels of silver to buy the tumblers in Suzhou, and all of them poured into the river for fun, which once led to the blockage of the river.
There is also a rich businessman who wants to experience the feeling of "throwing ten thousand gold", so he sent someone to buy gold leaf with ten thousand taels of silver, and then climbed the tall building, threw the gold leaf with the wind, and watched the people downstairs rob the gold leaf, but the rich businessman laughed upstairs, which can be called absurd.
Although this kind of behavior full of strong "local tycoons" often occurs in the salt merchant group, in general, it is precisely because of the strong economic strength of the salt merchants that literati and inkers from all over the world gather in Yangzhou, making Yangzhou's culture flourish and becoming a temporary leader.
With the financial support of salt merchants, calligraphy and paintings such as "Yangzhou Eight Monsters" are famous throughout the country; "Huiban" became the predecessor of the future Peking Opera; The "Qianjia School" such as the Examination Ofe Science also became popular in the Yangzhou area, laying a solid foundation for the study of ancient documents today.
However, Yangzhou prospered because of salt and eventually declined because of salt. During the Daoguang years, Tao Shu, the governor of Liangjiang, carried out the salt reform, changing the hereditary "gangyun system" to the "ticket salt law", liberalizing the monopoly of the salt industry, coupled with the rise of other salt farms, so that the competitiveness of the high-cost Yangzhou Huai salt continued to decline, the scenery of salt merchants was no longer there, and the prosperous city of Yangzhou for hundreds of years gradually declined.
Today, the salt merchants who made their fortunes by monopolizing their business have long disappeared into the smoke clouds of history. Today, we can only find and experience the old scenery of those legendary salt merchants in the Yangzhou gardens that have been left behind.