"A lifetime of struggle is only for money, wealth is full of temperament." There is an idiom in China called "rich can be enemy of the country", describing a person's money is enough to match the money of the national treasury, but this idiom is mostly exaggerated, because there are many rich businessmen from ancient times to the present, but there are not many people whose money can compete with the country, but the Ming Dynasty really has a person who is worthy of the name of rich and invincible, he is the richest man in the Ming Dynasty, Shen Wansan.
Shen Wansan, a native of Wuxing Nanxun, but his date of birth is quite controversial, some say he was born in 1286, others say he was born in 1330, but it is certain that he was born at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. Shen Wansan was born a rich young master, but unfortunately, within a few years of his birth, there was a flood in Wuxing, at this time his mother died of the plague, and his father took their brothers to Zhouzhuang Town.
After they settled down in Zhouzhuang, the family's livelihood depended entirely on a low-lying land, which at first produced only thatch, but because they were diligent in farming, the grain production of the land increased. The Shen family was originally a merchant family, so they were very good at doing business, they came to Zhouzhuang to start with agriculture, slowly added land and mansions, and the wealth in the family accumulated more and more.
Shen Wansan was famous in the local area because of his business talent, there was a rich businessman named Lu Deyuan who admired Shen Wansan's talent very much, he felt that he was old and unable to manage the assets in his hands, if he did not find someone to help take care of it, these properties would soon disappear, so he found Shen Wansan, and then transferred all the assets to him, and he became a Taoist himself.
After Shen Wansan got this asset, the business in his hands became bigger and bigger, and even started an overseas trade business, selling China's silk, tea, grain, etc. overseas, and then shipping foreign spices, jewelry and other things back to China for sale, the profits of overseas trade business were extremely large, and Shen Wansan quickly became the richest man in Jiangnan.
How rich was Shen Wansan at that time? Let's look at it through three short stories. Folk rumors say that Shen Wansan has a cornucopia, no matter what you put in it, it will become jewelry, and if you put in silver or gold, you can get a whole pot of gold and silver. This story is the speculation of the people, but it also shows that Shen Wansan is indeed very rich.
After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty in 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to expand Yingtiancheng, but after years of conquest, the imperial court had no money, so he forced Shen Wansan to participate in the expansion project together. Shen Wansan supervised the construction of a part, Zhu Yuanzhang supervised the construction of a part, the result of Shen Wanshan's side of the project was completed three days earlier than Zhu Yuanzhang, and the quality is better, although this is the embodiment of his ability, but also let Zhu Yuanzhang lose face, and this is also the first time Zhu Yuanzhang really saw his financial resources.
Later, Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to reward the army, Shen Wansan once again stood up, saying that he was willing to pay money for the royal reward of soldiers, Zhu Yuanzhang was immediately angry, the generals are royal soldiers, what qualifications does he have for a foreign surname businessman to act on behalf of Tianzi, this is not an ultra vires is what? So he had the idea of killing him, and finally changed it to exile at the advice of Empress Ma.
In the end, Zhu Yuanzhang raided Shen Wansan's home and found a total of 2 billion taels of silver, including antiques and calligraphy and paintings in the home. At that time, one or two pieces of silver were equivalent to 600-800 yuan today, so Shen Wansan's total assets were about 1.2-1.6 trillion yuan, while all the assets of the richest man in the world today were only 777.3 billion yuan, which was incomparable with Shen Wansan's assets.