In the late Qing Dynasty, there was a special group of people who could navigate the official arena with ease, and they could also call the wind and rain in the shopping mall, and became the heroes by virtue of the combination of officials and businessmen.
Among the two most famous people in this group, one is Hu Xueyan, who is supported by Zuo Zongtang, and the two people who cooperated to recover Xinjiang are worthy of our admiration. The other is Sheng Xuanhuai, who is supported by Li Hongzhang.
What is more helpless is that these two pairs are exactly sworn enemies.
Li Hongzhang had always wanted to strike at Zuo Zongtang but could not catch the handle, so he had to take Hu Xueyan to open the knife first, and Sheng Xuanhuai was the thug who charged forward for Li Hongzhang.
Sheng Xuanhuai wantonly dumped Hu Xueyan, destroyed Hu Xueyan's Fukang Qianzhuang through a centralized run, and designed to bankrupt Hu Xueyan's raw silk business, so Hu Xueyan was dismissed from his post and raided his home, and soon ended up depressed.
As soon as Hu Xueyan fell, he took over the title of "the richest man in the late Qing Dynasty" with his back to Li Hongzhang's Sheng Xuanhuai.
Sheng Xuanhuai was born in 1844 in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, into a family of eunuchs, his grandfather Sheng Long was a Qing Dynasty official who had been a Zhizhou, and his father Sheng Kang was a jinshi and a first, official to the government envoy. Growing up in such a family, Sheng Xuanhuai was very good at dealing with people, and solved government problems for his father when he was a teenager.
But the strange thing is that Sheng Xuanhuai seems to have a little less luck in reading, and he has failed many exams, which makes his father, who has won the top three in the country, very disappointed. Fortunately, his grandfather Sheng Long had some friendship with Li Hongzhang, and arranged Sheng Xuanhuai to become Li Hongzhang's staff, and thus began the road to soaring yellow tengda.
Sheng Xuanhuai was appreciated by Li Hongzhang because of his outstanding performance, and he was promoted to the level of the official government the following year, and after that, most of the iron ore, customs, investment promotion, armament, foreign affairs, and other things that Li Hongzhang handed over to Sheng Xuanhuai to handle, these are all industries that handle a lot of funds, and Sheng Xuanhuai also took the opportunity to develop his own business empire.
In his most brilliant years, Sheng Xuanhuai served as a waiter in the Ministry of Works, the minister of the Ministry of Posts and Communications and other senior positions, mastered the Great Qing Steamship, railway, mining, banking, postal, textile and other economic lifeline industries, while also vigorously developing the education industry.
Sheng Xuanhuai created 11 "China's firsts", won the reputation of "father of Chinese industry", "father of Chinese business", "father of Chinese higher education", his life is definitely a legend in capital letters, and what is more amazing is that the maids in his family have produced two celebrities!
In ancient times, there was no family planning, as long as the children were raised and born casually, the economy was certainly not a problem for the Sheng family, so they had been desperately giving birth.
Sheng Xuanhuai has eight sons and eight daughters, and the people are prosperous, so such a huge family naturally has to hire maids to take care of it. For the choice of maids, Sheng Xuanhuai is very stylish, basically all the girls who are selected to fall, with a dignified appearance, proficient in piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, which has become a unique scenery.
And Sheng Xuanhuai is very caring for the maids in the family, many high-ranking officials and nobles in the late Qing Dynasty will only allow them to marry when the maids are old and yellow, but Sheng Xuanhuai is different, generally at the right age, he will introduce the maids to the famous husbands, and if they get married, they will also send a dowry, just like their daughters.
Among these maids who had received his favor, one was named Lü Baozhen and one was named Ni Guizhen, and the two later families of these two were even more powerful than the Sheng family.
Lü Baozhen could only be a concubine because of her life, and she was extremely reluctant for a woman to make a concubine for Zhang Xueliang
Lu Baozhen worked as a maid in the Sheng family very early, she is beautiful, practical and does not like to talk much, this kind of duty makes Sheng Xuanhuai very appreciative. Therefore, when she reached the age of marriage, Sheng Xuanhuai promised her to his old subordinate Zhao Qinghua.
Zhao Qinghua was then the vice minister of the Ministry of Communications, and he was also a wealthy family, although he already had a main room, but in that era, Lü Baozhen, who was born as a maid, could be a concubine of a high official, and it was already a good home.
After Lü Baozhen married into the Zhao family, she was honest as always, never colluded with others, and was sincerely accepted by Zhao Qinghua and the Zhao family. She gave birth to four sons and three daughters for Zhao Qinghua, and the youngest daughter, Zhao Yidi, ranked fourth among all of Zhao Qinghua's daughters, so she was also known as "Miss Zhao Si".
Yes, it is the Miss Zhao Si who accompanied Zhang Xueliang for the second half of his life.
Zhao Yidi met Zhang Xueliang by chance, and the two soon fell in love, but Zhao Yidi's parents opposed it. There are many reasons, the most important one is that I don't want my daughter to be a concubine.
Zhang Xueliang was already originally matched with Fengzhi at that time, and the reputation of the playboy had long been spread, although Zhao Qinghua took a concubine himself, he did not want his daughter to be a concubine, and Lü Baozhen wanted his daughter to be a concubine because of his own experience.
However, her parents' opposition did not stop Zhao Yidi, and she sneaked out to elope with Zhang Xueliang, so angry that Zhao Qinghua published a statement that she had severed the father-daughter relationship with her daughter. At the same time, Zhao Qinghua also blamed Lu Baozhen for not looking after her daughter, so he gradually alienated her.
Zhao Yidi's love with Zhang Xueliang was vigorous, but she hurt her mother, she only went back to see her mother once since eloping, and Lu Baozhen could only follow her son for a long time in her later years.
When Lü Baozhen died in 1953, she did not see the young daughter she loved the most.
Ni Guizhen's three daughters and three sons-in-law are all modern celebrities
Lü Baozhen's son-in-law, Zhang Xueliang, is prominent enough, but Ni Guizhen is even better, and her three sons-in-law are Kong Xiangxi, Sun Yat-sen, and Chiang Kai-shek.
Ni Guizhen's father was a priest, and her family was not bad, but it was still inferior to Sheng Xuanhuai at that time, and she had also worked as an adoptive mother in the Sheng family.
This adoptive mother is not only a maid, more like a tutor, Ni Guizhen has received a very good new education since she was a child, can play the piano and speak English, which was extremely rare at that time, so the Sheng family took a fancy to her and briefly hired her as an adoptive mother.
In fact, it is not a strange thing to think about it carefully, now rich people to their children to ask for tutors to choose Tsinghua Peking University education, not to mention the richest man in the late Qing Dynasty, at that time Ni Guizhen herself could not imagine that her children would be so promising.
Ni Guizhen later married Song Jiashu, and the two had three sons and three daughters: the eldest daughter Song Xialing, the second daughter Song Qingling, the eldest son Song Ziwen, the third daughter Song Meiling, the second son Song Ziliang, and the youngest son Song Zi'an. Ni Guizhen put all her energy into raising children, and did not have the feudal idea of preferring sons to daughters, as long as the child himself or herself was willing to send him/her to study abroad.
The Song family later became a family between the pyramids of the Republic of China, and there was a saying at that time called "The Chen Family Party of the Jiang Family, the Song Family Sisters Kong Family Cai", except for the Party, the others are related to the Song Family.
The third daughter, Song Meiling, married Chiang Kai-shek and became the leader's wife, and from time to time she could blow a pillow wind, and the entire Kuomintang top brass wanted to seduce her; the eldest daughter, Song Xialing, married Kong Xiangxi, who had served as the minister of finance, handled more money and put more money into his pocket; before Kong Xiangxi, the eldest son, Song Ziwen, also served as finance minister and also had a private armed force.
The second daughter, Soong Ching Ling, was even more cattle, married Sun Yat-sen and became the mother of the country, both the Kuomintang and the Communists respected her, and after the founding of New China, she was still the honorary chairman.
Children can be so excellent, and Ni Guizhen's education is also inseparable.
Zhang Xueliang helped Chiang Kai-shek in the last moments of the Central Plains War, so Chiang Kai-shek later hosted Zhang Xueliang in Nanjing, and the two became brothers. Ni Guizhen also recognized Zhang Xueliang as a daughter of Fengzhi at the banquet.
Therefore, zhang Xueliang is both Ni Guizhen's dry son and Lü Baozhen's son-in-law.
Ni Guizhen later also intersected with Sheng Xuanhuai, who fled to Japan after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, and returned to China in 1912 at the invitation of Sun Yat-sen to continue to preside over the Steamship Merchants Bureau and the Hanyeping Company.
Later, after Sheng Xuanhuai's death, the Sheng family still received the care of the Song family.
Dare celebrities to play around, are all a circle ah?