In the history of the late Qing Dynasty, Hu Xueyan can be described as a legendary figure, he is also an official and a businessman, in the tide of the foreign affairs movement, relying on the background of the official government, once earned a lot of money, known as the "red top businessman"; but life often does not follow people's wishes,
The Clouds of the Ancients: Blessings and Misfortunes Depend on Misfortunes and Blessings Lie
Hu Xueyan was beautiful for a while, and finally devoted himself to creating a foundation that became the cloud of the past.
The only thing left is the Hu Qingyutang National Medicine, which he founded, which still stands on the streets of Hangzhou today.
Hu Xueyan and his people
Hu Xueyan Daoguang was born in Jixi, Anhui Province in the third year (1823); although Hu Xueyan later became rich, his family was not well off when he was young, and Hu Xueyan's father was a local reader, and his family had several acres of thin land, barely enough to eat.
However, Hu Xueyan is not short-sighted, and has shown the character of integrity since childhood.
One day, Hu Xueyan accidentally picked up a bag on the way to herd cattle, and after opening it, he found that it was all silver; but although Hu Xueyan was poor, he did not take it for himself, but picked up the bag and sat on the side of the road waiting for the lost owner, and after several hours of waiting, he finally returned the bag to the lost owner, and this lost owner was a rich man in Hangzhou at that time.
Hu Xueyan's move also "attracted" the god of luck; soon, this rich businessman came to Jixi again, and in order to express his gratitude, after obtaining the consent of Hu Xueyan himself and his family, he took Hu Xueyan to Hangzhou and followed him to learn to do business, which also laid the foundation for becoming a "red top businessman" in the future.
Hu Xueyan began to work at the bottom of this rich businessman, he was industrious and hard-working, and his mind was bright, and after three years of leaving school, he officially became a guy in Qianzhuang; it was also during this period that the god of luck came to Hu Xueyan again, and he met a big nobleman.
Hu Xueyan's nobleman Wang Youling
Wang Youling, a native of Fujian, spent money to donate a Zhejiang "salt ambassador", but because he was not satisfied with this official, he planned to continue to "inject capital" north, hoping to find a more satisfactory errand; but due to the shortage of funds, even the travel expenses for the north could not be made up, sitting in a tea house in Hangzhou sighing.
This scene happened to let Hu Xueyan bump into him; at this time, Hu Xueyan was also a person who "read countless people", and after asking about the situation,
Hu Xueyan thought that this person would be able to become a great instrument, so he took out hundreds of taels of silver on the spot and gave it to Wang Youling, asking him to quickly enter Beijing.
Sure enough, after Wang Youling entered Beijing, he found a grain and taiwan general office under the Zhejiang Inspectorate and began to develop gradually; and Wang Youling was not an ungrateful person, he also saw Hu Xueyan's talent in business, so he funded him to open a money house, that is, Fukang Qianzhuang; Hu Xueyan also officially began to develop from then on.
With the continuous promotion of Wang Youling, Hu Xueyan also followed the light; under Hu Xueyan's dedicated management, the business became bigger and bigger, and many industries in Hangzhou had Hu Xueyan's business.
After the outbreak of the Second Opium War in 1856, Hu Xueyan once again saw the opportunity to cooperate with the top level of the army, and a large amount of temporarily unused military funds were stored in Hu Xueyan's money bank, and Hu Xueyan used these funds to expand his business and made a lot of money from it.
Hu Xueyan summed up the experience of Huishang for hundreds of years, and through "venture capital", found Wang Youling, the patron, making him a fish in the mall, and the input and output were higher than the odds.
Another patron, Zuo Zongtang
In addition to Wang Youling, Hu Xueyan's other patron was Zuo Zongtang.
In 1861, just after the Second Opium War, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom soldiers approached the city of Hangzhou, the situation was very critical, and Wang Youling, who was also in charge of military affairs in Taihu Lake, Jiangsu, entrusted Hu Xueyan to shanghai to buy arms and supplies; during this period, Hu Xueyan became acquainted with Zuo Zongtang.
Soon after, the city of Hangzhou was breached by the Taiping Army, and Wang Youling, who was the governor of Zhejiang, was martyred and was succeeded by Zuo Zongtang.
After learning that Zuo Zongtang had been owed money by the imperial court for several months, he quickly seized this opportunity and made great dedication, and in the war-torn environment, he had to raise 100,000 stones of grain in just a few days, which made Zuo Zongtang look at Hu Xueyan with admiration and gain trust.
Soon after, Hu Xueyan was appointed by Zuo Zongtang as the grain director of Zhejiang, which was a veritable fat shortage, and Hu Xueyan, who was also an official and businessman, was under the big tree of Zuo Zongtang, and his assets rapidly expanded.
Because of Hu Xueyan's good reputation, many officials of all sizes were willing to deposit money and wealth in Hu Xueyan, and Hu Xueyan used these as capital to set up businesses in various places.
Hu Xueyan was not only a businessman, but also one of the pioneers of the Western affairs movement.
He assisted Zuo Zongtang in founding the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau and introduced advanced Western technology to build warships to strengthen coastal defense construction; he also assisted Zuo Zongtang in developing the Great Northwest region and creating the Lanzhou Weaving General Bureau, becoming the first government-run light industry enterprise in modern China.
Hu Xueyan and Zuo Zongtang cooperated with each other, and Zuo Zongtang's success in his later years was inseparable from Hu Xueyan's help.
Assist in the recovery of Xinjiang
In 1864, Russia and Britain forcibly cut off a large part of Xinjiang through an unequal treaty; at that time, there were two voices within the Qing court, one was the camp headed by Li Hongzhang, who believed that Xinjiang was sparsely populated and not worth paying a big price to recover; the other was the camp headed by Zuo Zongtang, who strongly advocated the recovery of Xinjiang.
The Qing court, after repeated deliberations, supported Zuo Zongtang's views and ordered him to lead an army to the west to reclaim Xinjiang.
"Soldiers and horses did not move grain and grass first", but at that time, the Qing court treasury was empty, and it was difficult to come up with enough money to support the western expedition in a short period of time, but the military situation was urgent...
In the end, Hu Xueyan took on this task.
Through various connections, Hu Xueyan has borrowed more than 18 million taels of silver from foreign banks
At the same time, he also purchased a lot of advanced Western weapons and equipment to send to Zuo Zongtang's army, and also sent all kinds of drugs developed by Hu Qingyutang Guoyao to the Great Northwest thousands of miles away to support Zuo Zongtang's actions.
Because Zuo Zongtang had Hu Xueyan behind him to raise funds for him, coupled with the fact that the equipment and combat effectiveness of the Left Army were far superior to those of Agubai forces, he quickly recovered a large piece of territory in Xinjiang, completely smashed the British-Russian conspiracy to divide China's territory, and safeguarded the territorial integrity of the country.
Afterwards, Zuo Zongtang spoke highly of Hu Xueyan in his recital to the imperial court, for which the Qing court specially awarded Hu Xueyan the title of envoy, and rewarded the yellow horse coat, which symbolized honor, as well as the erpin top wear, becoming a very distinctive "red-top merchant", and Hu Xueyan's reputation became more and more famous.
When he became famous, he died tragically
As a businessman, Hu Xueyan, "yellow coat plus body", wearing two products on the top of his head, and the shopping mall, in the long river of history, left his own "glorious" deeds, and he was willing to be charitable, opened a porridge factory, a righteous school, etc., and won the reputation of "Hu Dashanren", which can be described as fame and fortune, and his career has been successful.
But why is it that such a person,Whose family business, which he spent half his life creating, collapsed in a short period of time?
Hu Xueyan's final outcome was both a political factor between Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang at that time, as well as a personal factor.
After decades of development, Hu Xueyan was already a rich party, involving many fields at that time, plus there were Wang Youling, Zuo Zongtang and other imperial court officials as backers, and the road was basically smooth.
However, with the increase of wealth, Hu Xueyan's ambitions gradually became larger, and his career expanded rapidly; at that time, Hu Xueyan wanted to monopolize the raw silk business in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which angered foreign businessmen and dealt with him together, thus breaking out a "silk fighting business war" and testing the limits of both sides.
But just when it was time to divide the victory and defeat, the world situation suddenly changed, and the financial crisis broke out in the West.
At the same time, Western countries also passed on the crisis in the form of expanding exports, which eventually led to a decline in the exchange rate, a decline in China's export prices, and an increase in import prices; in this case, It was difficult for Hu Xueyan's goods to sell, and the liquidity was in trouble, which brought about the fact that the funds of the money bank were run by depositors, and so on, and there was a "domino effect", and it quickly went bankrupt in a short time.
Admonish future generations: Do not approach the white tiger
After Hu Xueyan went bankrupt, he gave each aunt a settlement fee to let them fend for themselves, while Hu Xueyan himself relied on Hu Qingyutang's income to survive.
In September 1885, Hu Xueyan's patron Zuo Zongtang died, and two months later, Hu Xueyan also died; before dying, he told his children:
Don't go near the White Tiger.
Hu Xueyan's "Don't Approach the White Tiger" has many meanings; the most important of them are two points, one is silver, and the other is officialdom.
Meaning one: silver
Hu Xueyan from the poverty of his youth to the later rich side, can be "also officials and businessmen", once became China's richest man, mainly silver played a role, if there is no original "venture capitalist" Wang Youling, to assist Zuo Zongtang, naturally there will only be "business", not "official"; after having a lot of money, the ambition gradually became huge, and eventually led to strategic mistakes and bankruptcy.
Therefore, success is also silver, and defeat is also silver.
Meaning one: officialdom
Hu Xueyan can have a prosperous business, smooth sailing, not only has his own business talent, but also has the support of Wang Youling and Zuo Zongtang, and both sides support each other; for example, when Hu Xueyan was looking for a foreign bank loan to Zuo Zongtang to do military expenses, he ate a lot of kickbacks in the middle.
But Hu Xueyan was a businessman after all, and although he was very clever in business and had close contacts with the officialdom, he was not familiar with official reasoning, and eventually became one of the victims of the struggle between Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang; when "fighting silk" with foreign merchants, foreign merchants also secretly joined forces with Hu Xueyan's opponents to suppress him.
Therefore, Hu Xueyan hoped that his descendants would not be too greedy for money, lose themselves, and stay away from the whirlpool of the officialdom; therefore, Hu Xueyan's descendants almost remembered the teachings of their ancestors, and almost rarely engaged in business or politics.
Resources:
"The Complete Biography of Hu Xueyan" Gao Yang
YANG Dongliang. Zuo Zongtang's Commentary changsha:Hunan People's Publishing House, 1985.
QIN Hancai. Zuo Wenxianggong in the Northwest .Changsha: Yuelu Book Club, 1984 .
LUO Zhengjun. Zuo Zongtang Chronology.Changsha:Yuelu Book Society, 1983.
Zuo Zongtang, Zuo Wenxiang Complete Works , ShuMu Hunan Academy of Social Sciences