Two years ago, the TV series "That Year the Flowers Bloomed and the Moon Was Round" starring Sun Li quickly became popular after it was broadcast. People have seen the legendary life of this businesswoman in the late Qing Dynasty in the TV series, although Zhou Ying was widowed all her life, she hid the great love of the country in her heart, and also became a representative of the Qin merchant style.
In the real history, there is indeed such a person as Zhou Ying, who was widowed for her husband when she was young, and was recognized by Cixi as a righteous daughter, but after her death, she could not enter the family cemetery, and even had no money.
Stills from "That Year the Flowers Bloomed and the Moon Was Round"
In 1869 in Sanyuan, Shaanxi, Zhou Ying was born, but she was not as fatherless and motherless as she was in the TV series, but was born in a local family of wealthy merchants. Although the business family is not a scholar, but it attaches great importance to the education of children, and Zhou Ying was extremely intelligent at a very young age, so she read poetry books at an early age, especially for mathematics-related courses, which is one of the reasons why she was able to achieve great success in business later. When she was 17 years old, she was introduced by a matchmaker and married Wu Ping, the only son of the Wu family in Jingyang County at that time.
Zhou Ying's husband Wu Ping
The Wu family was a very powerful salt merchant at that time, and such an identity was indeed the opposite of Zhou Ying. Unfortunately, the Wu family concealed the news that her son was suffering from an incurable disease, so a year after Zhou Ying passed the door, first her father-in-law Wu Weiwen died unexpectedly on the way to a business trip, and then Wu Ping, who could not bear the blow, because of the death of his father, his illness worsened and soon died. At this time, Zhou Ying did not add children to the Wu family, so she was a widow, and in the absence of a male in the family, she had to support the entire Wu family.
After taking over the Wu family property, she not only did not become depressed, but through a series of reforms, she revitalized the great family business. First of all, she personally went to the business under her name to do a patrol and research, and even to find out the details of some competitors; secondly, she is very good at using talents, she has selected some loyal and talented people in these businesses, and she also attaches great importance to these old people of the Wu family, increases their salaries, and even mobilizes the enthusiasm of these employees through the means of dividends, and will also widely solicit employees' opinions when dealing with major problems in the shop.
Wu Ping died of illness
In this way, she not only established her prestige in the Wu family, but also once again enlarged the Wu family's property, and the accumulated property even reached the level of being rich and invincible. In 1900, because of the Eight-Power Alliance's war of aggression against China, Cixi and others fled to Xi'an, and at this time, Zhou Ying, with the national righteousness in her heart, donated 100,000 taels of silver to relieve the national crisis.
Later, Cixi made an exception and adopted this Han woman as a righteous daughter and gave her a plaque of "Lady Protector of the Country". In addition, she also has a good reputation in the countryside, whenever there is a natural disaster or man-made disaster, she will open the Wu family's warehouse to help the people, and at the same time set up a school, she did a lot of good deeds in the township in the second half of her life.
Zhou Ying stills
Zhou Ying was only 42 years old when she died, but she did not give birth to an heir for the Wu family, so she was not eligible to enter the Wu family's ancestral tomb after death, and finally people found a wasteland to bury her. Before her death, she donated all her assets, part of which was donated to the Qing Dynasty government to save the country, and the other part to the subordinates and villagers at that time, so she died penniless.
But when she was buried, the people of ten miles and eight townships came to pay her a funeral, which was enough to see her position in people's hearts. Her life was unfortunate, but she relied on her own efforts and love to live out the luck that no one else had.