In Henan, there is such a manor, built in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, covering an area of 160,000 square meters, the size of 38 Qiao family compounds, known as the 17th and 18th centuries in the North China Loess Plateau feudal society bunker-style engineering architecture, has the reputation of "China's first manor". This is the Kang Million Manor located in Kangdian Town, Gongyi City, Henan Province.
"Kang Million" is the Ming Dynasty is the collective name of everyone to the Kang Yingkui family that has the "Chinese god of living wealth". The Kang family went to this manor for about 12 generations of daily life, beyond the three stages of the Ming, Qing and the Republic of China, a total of more than 400 years, and the manor was also built from the very beginning of the mountainside to the peak.
It is a typical bunker-style engineering building of feudal society from the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. The manor is backed by the Mountain, encountered Luoshui, so it has the reputation of "Golden Turtle Exploring the Water", and is one of the three major manors in the country (Kang Million Manor, Liu Wencai Manor, and Mou Erhei Manor).
Together with the Qiao Family Compound in Jinzhong, Shanxi, and the Ma Manor in Anyang, Henan, it is known as the "Three Officials' Residence of China", which is known as the spiritual world of Yushang and a model of Classical Chinese architecture. Local folklore widely spreads the words, "The head of the car rests on the head of Jingyang Xi'an City, and the foot steps on the City of Jinan, Linyi City; the horse runs thousands of miles and does not eat another grass, and the People's Bank of China is a Kangjiatian." ”
So how did such a wealthy Kang family come to be, and eventually it is now in decline? In the seventh year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, in order to restore the national social and economic development, forced the millions of people in Shanxi Province to migrate to other provinces and regions. In the crowd of migrants, a person who was all Kang Chengxin came to Gongyi, Henan province with his relatives, and this person was the ancestor of the Kang family.
The Kang family's fortune began with selling salt, and the sixth generation of the Kang family, Kang Shao, paid homage to the emissaries of Dongchang Province (present-day Liaocheng, Shandong), who used his position to sell edible salt, thus gradually making the Kang family rich.
Li Bo, the twelfth generation of the Kang family, took advantage of the Kangxi Emperor's great attention to the opportunity of Caoyun to expand the Kang family's business scope from China to the Lunan and Jianghuai regions. When they came to the fourth generation of the Kang family, the Kang family, which relied on caoyun, had already been able to make a lot of money, and the farmland exceeded 18 square kilometers, becoming a well-deserved rich family.
It is said that "the rich are not more than three generations", but the Kang family has been rich for twelve generations and more than 400 years from the sixth family Kang Shaojing to the eighteenth family Kang Tinglan, spanning the three historical periods of the Ming, Qing and the Republic of China.
In 1900, when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing by the late Qing government, Empress Dowager Cixi took Guangxu out of Beijing to go to Xi'an City the following year, and then returned to Beijing, passing through the town of Gongyi Kangdian, Kang Hongyou, the Kang family shopkeeper known as the "first person of Yu shang", added a million silver to the Qing court, and Empress Dowager Cixi said: "I did not think, there are millions of families in this valley."
Everyone knows, and named it "Kang Million", "Kang Million" has become the common name of the owner of this manor, "Kang Family", so the manor has become a corner of Kang Million.
Having the first time will have a second time, Empress Dowager Cixi pursues a perfect and luxurious daily life, and the Kang family basically does everything to please Empress Dowager Cixi, plus some of the Kang family's young masters throw thousands of dollars, which prompts the Kang family to slowly decline.
In the early Republic of China, the eighteenth generation of the Kang family inherited Kang Tinglan, in order to reconstruct the past glory of the Kang family, he began to do cotton wool and fabric business in Tianjin, Shanghai and other places.
What is not known is that after the outbreak of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in 1937, because the cotton wool line in Tianjin was burned, the cotton in downtown Shanghai was robbed, and the idealization of Kang Tinglan's restoration of the glory of the Kang family was finally destroyed.