Zhang Bishi, a well-known overseas Chinese merchant at home and abroad in the Qing Dynasty, once engaged in business and lived in the Ancient Yuexiu area. He opened the Zhang Yu'an Tang Trading House on Jinghai Road, and built the "Zhang Xiaoyou Hall" on Chaotian Road, the name of the hall contains the meaning of inheriting and carrying forward the ancestors of "filial piety as a line", and this hall still exists, and the nearby streets are named Xiaoyou West and Xiaoyou East Street.
Zhang Bishi
For many people, Zhang Bishi is a strange and distant name, but the one thing born because of this person has entered our daily life and become part of our memory, which is Zhangyu wine. In the half-century before the founding of the People's Republic of China, ZhangYu was the only Chinese wine brand; more importantly, he had one of the few sweet memories of China's troubled era — at the PanamaNian Commodities Exhibition in 1915, Zhangyu won four medals in one fell swoop, which is rare in the entire modern history of China.
Zhang Bishi, a wealthy overseas Chinese businessman who founded Zhangyu Winemaking Company and is known as the "Father of Chinese Wine" and is known by Americans as "China's Rockefeller", is not only praised for wine. He worked as a helper, opened a trading house, mined tin ore, and became the leading super-rich among overseas Chinese at that time; he successively served as the consul of the Qing court in Penang and the consul general of Singapore, and became a red-crowned overseas Chinese businessman who was also a businessman and an official, and had a high status in China's modern history and was a historical figure with great influence. The first stop for Zhang Bishi to return to China to invest is Guangzhou.
Honest entrepreneurship overseas origins
Zhang Bishi (1841-1916), formerly known as Zhao Xie, alias Zhenxun. He was born in Huangtang Township, Dapu County, Guangdong Province. In the eighth year of Xianfeng (1858), his hometown suffered a serious famine, and many people left their hometowns to make a living. Zhang Also followed his countrymen across the sea to Batavia, the Dutch East Indies (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia) to make a living. At first, I worked as a handyman in a rice shop, and then I worked as a helper in a paper shop. He is diligent and serious, intelligent, and loyal and honest, and deeply trusted by his boss.
One thing changed Zhang's life. A seafarer from Europe, carrying a box of valuables, found Zhang Bishi's residence and asked him to accept it. Zhang Bishi was very strange and said to the seaman: "I have no relatives in Europe, this thing is not mine." The seafarer looked embarrassed: "You see, the address and name are not wrong, how do I explain it when I return?" Although the consignee on the consignment note is obviously himself, Zhang Bishi resolutely does not accept it. In the end, the seafarer had to take a compromise approach, temporarily sending the box here and waiting for the check to be clear before disposing of it. Before leaving, he also said: "If after a year, no one has taken it, this box is yours." A year passed quickly, the box was still not picked up, Zhang Bishi still hadn't opened it, and he was still patiently waiting for the owner of the box. Word spread locally, and people praised the bowman for his honesty. The owner of the paper shop admired his honesty and morality, entrusted the store to him, and later, gave him his only daughter. This virtuous wife later became Zhang Bishi's successful assistant in his career.
A few years later, his father-in-law died of illness, and Zhang Bishi inherited the inheritance and began to show his excellent management ability. He first set aside some of the money to open a liquor trading house in various countries, and to undertake the local liquor tax and Singapore pawn donations. Subsequently, opium and tobacco taxes were contracted on some islands in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), and assets were soon greatly expanded. Then he set his sights on reclamation. At that time, in order to develop and plunder the resources of the island beyond the reach of the Dutch East Indies, the colonists of the Dutch East Indies had let go of the overseas Chinese to organize the reclamation company, and Zhang Bishi seized this opportunity to withdraw most of his assets to invest in this cause. In the fifth year of Tongzhi (1866), he founded the Yuwa Reclamation Company in the Dutch port of Groba, which reclaimed wasteland on a large scale, specializing in the cultivation of tropical cash crops such as coconuts, coffee, rubber, pepper, tea, etc., and planted miscellaneous grains in the reclamation area, which obtained great economic benefits. In the first year of Guangxu (1875), he founded a new reclamation company in Azi, Sumatra. Later, the Yuye Reclamation Company he founded in Yili, the Netherlands, and the Kasawang Reclamation Company founded in Java Rili had 8 rubber plantations and employed nearly 10,000 workers. While operating the reclamation and development, he actively seized the opportunity to establish various types of industries, and achieved very good results: he opened the Dongxing Company in Wendongbu, Pahang, British Malaya, mined tin mines, and made a lot of money; he opened a rili bank in Rili, which specialized in handling overseas Chinese deposits and exchanges and overseas Chinese remittances, which was welcomed and relied upon by the vast number of overseas Chinese, and his business was greatly developed; he vigorously developed real estate business in Medan and Penang, and built a large number of Chinese and Western residences; and organized a wholesale network of medicinal materials connecting home and abroad. Most of the domestic precious medicinal materials are approved for sale overseas by Zhang's pharmaceutical stores, and overseas precious medicinal materials and Western medicines are also approved and sold back to China by Zhang's pharmaceutical stores, communicating with the domestic and foreign medicinal materials markets.
Zhang Bishi's success attracted the attention of the Qing government. In the eighteenth year of Guangxu (1892), Gong Zhaoyi, the minister of the Qing government to Britain, was ordered to investigate the way of rich countries in Europe and the United States, and when passing through Singapore, he asked Zhang Bishi about the art of getting rich, and Zhang replied: "If I am in the Netherlands, then Fa Li Ke, do my best to make the land profit; I am in the British, then Fa Bai Gui, optimistic about the incident." Therefore, people abandon me and take, people take me and me, enlist the nobles and sell cheaply, manipulate the odds to win, practice diligently, and when they choose people to take office, they can send and receive. Also like Lü Shang's plot, Sun Wu's use of soldiers, Shang Martin's practice of the law, if the wisdom is not enough to change, the courage is not enough to decide, the benevolence can not be given, the strong can not be defended, and ultimately not enough to learn the art. I obeyed Si's words, and this was my business, so I went to Raoyu, and there was no new law of different techniques. A high argument made Gong Shi greatly impressed.
In the more than 30 years from the 1860s, Zhang Bishi, with his ingenuity and hard-working, finally established his own business kingdom, with a maximum asset of 70 to 80 million yuan, becoming the richest man among the overseas Chinese in Nanyang at that time. At that time, the Qing government's annual revenue was only like this, which was really "rich and invincible"! Zhang Bishi became a pivotal figure in the overseas Chinese circles in Nanyang, and the local Dutch colonists did not dare to underestimate him. The Dutch colonial authorities knighted him several times, but he refused one by one, saying: "I was born to be a Chinese, and I should serve the Chinese nation."
Step into the official arena red-top gentleman businessman
Zhang Bishi had close relations with Xue Fucheng, the pioneer of the Restoration Faction, Xue Fucheng, who was then the British consul and also managed the diplomacy around Singapore in Nanyang, Huang Zunxian of the Restoration Faction, Sheng Xuanhuai, minister of commerce in charge of the Qing Court, zuo Binglong, the Qing Dynasty consul in Singapore, and others. In the fifteenth year of Guangxu (1889), under the call of Zuo Binglong, the qing dynasty consul in Singapore, Zhang Bishi donated a huge amount of money to relieve the floods in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong in China, and was awarded the title of tongzhi official, which was the first step for Zhang Bishi to enter the official field of the late Qing Dynasty. In the seventeenth year of Guangxu (1891), at the invitation of Sheng Xuanhuai, a prominent commercial official of the Qing court, Zhang Bishi returned to China to plan railway affairs. In the nineteenth year of Guangxu (1893), Huang Zunxian, the Qing Consul General in Singapore, recommended Zhang Bishi as the deputy consul stationed in Penang. During his consulship, Zhang Bishi worked hard to promote the unity of overseas Chinese in Guangzhou, Chao, Ke, Qiong, and Fujian, develop the economic strength of the Chinese, and donated 80,000 yuan to establish the first overseas Chinese school in Malaya, the Zhonghua Primary and Secondary School; on the other hand, he actively joined Huang Zunxian in submitting a petition to Xue Fucheng, who managed the diplomacy in the Singapore area of Nanyang, to lift the sea ban and protect the returning overseas Chinese. Accordingly, Xue Fucheng played "Please Remove the Sea Ban and Invite The Chinese People to Evacuate" to the imperial court, which was implemented, so that overseas Chinese could have a legal guarantee for returning to the motherland. In the twentieth year of Guangxu (1894), Zhang Bishi was again awarded the title of candidate for prefect. In July of that year, Huang Zunxian was ordered to return to China, and Zhang Bishi took over as consul general in Singapore. During his consul generalship, Zhang Bishi was also awarded the rank of Taoist. In the twenty-ninth year of Guangxu (1903), Zhang Bishi generously donated 200,000 yuan to establish a road mine and a school, and was awarded the alternate Sanpinjingtang. At the same time, at the invitation of Sheng Xuanhuai, he held important positions in the railway and the Qing Bank supervised by Sheng Xuanhuai, so that Zhang Bishi appeared on the economic stage of the late Qing Dynasty as an official and businessman.
In the 20th year of Guangxu (1894), as the coordinating organ for the revitalization of industry in the Qing Dynasty, the Ministry of Commerce was established, and Zhang Bishi was hired as the first-class consultant of the Ministry of Commerce. During his tenure as a consultant, Zhang Bishi drew on the Western management model and actively assisted Dai Zhen, the Minister of Commerce, in implementing a series of legal policies conducive to China's economic development: the Ministry of Commerce promulgated the "General Regulations for Businessmen", which made some specific provisions for the operation of commerce; then promulgated the "Articles of Association of the Ministry of Commerce", and soon promulgated the "Bankruptcy Law", which provided "maintenance and protection" to those who were helpless to "lose and fail". In the winter of the twenty-ninth year of Guangxu (1903), the Qing government approved the "Concise Regulations on Railways" drawn up by the Ministry of Commerce, stipulating that "regardless of the chinese and foreign officials and merchants", they "may ask for the establishment of railways" and encourage The Chinese merchants to set up shares; after that, the Ministry of Commerce also approved the "Provisional Regulations on Mining Affairs" to encourage "pooling shares and opening mines"; in the "Charter of Trial Banks", it also welcomed the collection of funds to open up.
During this period, the Qing government began to systematically persuade overseas Chinese to invest in The country to help the domestic shortage of domestic goods, and successively awarded Zhang Bishi the Shaoqing of the Taibu Temple, the Zhengqing of the Taibu Temple, and the top of the head, and in 1905 sent Zhang Bishi to be the Minister of Commerce of the Ministry of Commerce to inspect the foreign ports, and also to supervise the affairs of Fujian and Guangdong industry, commerce, and road mines, and to persuade overseas Chinese to return to China to invest. Zhang Bishi's visit, as the first high-level envoy sent by the Qing court to overseas Chinatowns, had a great impact on the Chinese ports in Nanyang. When Zhang Bishi arrived in Singapore, "the shops along the street were hung with lights, dragon flags were hung high, pedestrians blocked the way, horse-drawn carriages bombarded, and spectators were blocked. "Received the effect of expanding the influence of the Qing court in the Chinese society. At this time, Zhang Bishi had already ranked among the high-ranking officials of the Qing Dynasty and became the first overseas red-top gentleman merchant of the Qing Dynasty. And he himself began to transfer a large amount of funds into China from the 1890s, investing in industry and practicing his ideal of saving the country through industry.
Industry saves the country guangzhou started
Zhang Bishi's first stop in overseas return to China to develop his industry was selected in Guangzhou. Although Guangzhou at that time was a treaty port in South China, adjacent to Hong Kong and Macao, with developed commerce and trade; it was also the provincial capital of his hometown, which made Zhang Bishi feel nostalgic. He founded Zhang Yu'antang Pharmacy in Jinghaimen (now Jinghai Road) in Guangzhou, which specializes in the approval of domestic precious medicinal materials overseas through the pharmaceutical store, and the overseas precious medicinal materials and Western medicines are also approved and sold back to China through the pharmaceutical store, communicating with the domestic and foreign medicinal materials market. He also opened more than ten enterprises in Guangzhou, including Guangzhou Zhenyi Company, Axiata (Weaving) Company, and Guangdong Jinghaimen Agriculture, Industry, Commerce and Mining Bureau. There were also real estates such as Zhangyu Antang on Jinghai Road and Wuzhitang in Xin'anli, Henan (present-day Haizhu District), Guangzhou. There is also a xiaoyou hall on Chaotian Road, and today's xiaoyou west and east streets are also named after Zhang Xiaoyou hall.
Zhang Bishi's investment in China has been quite successful, but the most praised by the world is the establishment of "Zhangyu Grape Wine Company", which has established a brand of Chinese wine that shocks the world and makes the Chinese people proud.
The opportunity of history and the strong patriotism have made this the first person in China to make wine.
In 1890, when Zhang Bishi was the commercial consul of Bacheng, he once participated in a banquet held by the French consul, during the banquet, people greatly appreciated the French three-star axe brandy wine he drank, and the French consul talked about the wine and said to Zhang Bishi: "This wine is made of grapes rich in the Bordeaux region of France, such as the grapes produced in Yantai, Shandong, China, and the wine is not inferior." ”
Zhang Bishi asked, "What do you mean by that?" ”
The French consul hesitated for a moment and then told him: "When the Eight-Power Alliance invaded China, I was also one of them, and when the French army was stationed near Tun tianjin, I went to Yantai with other soldiers to collect a large number of grapes to return to the camp, and brewed them with the small presses carried by the army. At that time, French officers and soldiers had discussed that when dividing up Chinese territory, France should strive for Shandong and set up a factory in Yantai to make wine. ”
Zhang Bishi was shocked after hearing this and took the matter to heart. In the seventeenth year of Guangxu (1891), Zhang Bishi was invited by Sheng Xuanhuai, the minister of railway supervision, to Yantai to discuss the construction of a railway. Zhang Bishi took this opportunity to conduct a comprehensive inspection of Yantai and learned that this place is close to the mountains and the sea, the climate is humid, the soil is fertile, and it is indeed a good place to grow grapes. It was immediately decided to invest in this factory and named it "Zhangyu Grape Wine Company". In 1892, Zhang Bishi invested 3 million taels of silver to open up two barren mountains covering thousands of acres in Yantai, planted more than 120 high-quality grape varieties imported from Germany, France, Italy and other countries, and established his own large vineyard; introduced advanced equipment for winemaking such as presses, distillers, fermenters, and white oak wine barrels, built well-known underground large wine cellars at home and abroad, hired european first-class winemakers with heavy money, and established the earliest large enterprise in the mainland that adopted modern science and technology to brew wine.
After years of hard work, accompanied by the test of failure and success, Zhangyu Grape Wine Company has finally achieved great success. The wine they brew is golden and transparent, the wine is mellow and fragrant, popular throughout the country, exported overseas, and has emerged in the world market. In 1915, at the Panama Pacific Commodities Exposition, Zhangyu Grape Wine Company presented the "Coya Brandy", "Red Quinco", "Riesling", "Qiongyao Pulp" (Freysse) (Freimis), which won the best prize and 4 gold medals in one fell swoop, which was the first time that Chinese goods won such an honor in the world, and "Coyaly" was also named "Gold Medal Brandy" and became a world-renowned brand. Since then, the history of wine, which belongs only to the West, has been forever rewritten, and Zhang Bishi founded China's first industrialized wine production "Zhangyu Grape Wine Company" in Yantai, Shandong Province, which became a banner of China's national industry at that time.
In 1912, Dr. Sun Yat-sen wrote an inscription for the Zhangyu Grape Wine Company "Pin Chong Li Quan" as a sign of encouragement; Kang Youwei also wrote a poem when he stayed at Zhangyu Winery:
Drink Zhangyu wine lightly and plant doutai peony flowers. More than that, Fahua wrote new sentences, and was glad that what he encountered was home.
Wind and rain and journey in the end do not regret, stay fragrant in the human world. In summing up Zhang Yu's entrepreneurial history, Zhang Bishi wrote: "Prepare for hardships and obstacles", "Throw countless money, spend immeasurable time, but can live up to the original ambition." ”
Koko Jojo Mitsuaki
In the early years of the Republic of China, Zhang Bishi was appointed as an adviser to the Presidential Office, a senior adviser to the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, a member of the Legislative Council, and the president of the National Federation of Chambers of Commerce. However, he saw the mutual inversion of the Beiyang warlord government very thoroughly, was not enthusiastic about participating in politics, and devoted his life's main energy to "industrial salvation."
Zhang Bishi lives overseas, discriminates against foreigners Chinese has a lot of pain, and whenever he encounters embarrassing things, he will shoot up.
In 1898, Zhang Bishi and a German family doctor prepared to take a German liner from Indonesia to Singapore for business. He instructed the steward to buy 4 first class official class tickets. The ticket was bought back, but there was only one official ticket and 3 unified tickets. Zhang Bishi was very strange and asked the steward why he only bought one official cabin ticket, and the steward said helplessly, "The German steamship stipulates that the Chinese are not allowed to buy official cabin tickets, and that official cabin ticket is still bought by German doctors." After hearing this, Zhang Bishi immediately became furious, tore the 4 tickets to pieces, and casually lifted the large blue vase of the imperial kiln rewarded by Empress Dowager Cixi and smashed it to the floor, beating a mess, and angrily shouted:
"Is there any reason for this, the Chinese cannot sit in the official cabin, what is the case?" It's so deceiving! The Chinese nation must not be insulted, and the Chinese must not be deceived! ”
He felt that the dignity of yanhuang's descendants had been seriously violated, and he could not calm down for a long time.
"The imperial court is incapable of running merchant ships, I will handle it!" Zhang Bishi said to Zhang Yaoxuan, who came with him to found the Chaoshan Railway: "Remember, in the future, my merchant ships will not sell tickets to all Germans!" ”
Soon, Zhang Bishi invited Zhang Rongxuan and Zhang Yaoxuan Kunzhong to jointly plan ocean shipping in Sumatra and the seas of southern China, and founded the "Yuchang Ocean Shipping Company" and "Guangfu Ocean Shipping Company". Since then, the vast Pacific Ocean has begun to appear with the overseas Chinese long-distance ship flying the Chinese Great Qing Dragon Flag, and specially took the same route with the German steamship, which is half lower than the same official class fare in Germany, and reported one report after another, not selling tickets to the Germans, forcing the German ship to cancel the regulations on discrimination against the Chinese, and greatly increasing the prestige of the Chinese.
However, he understood that such an approach was only a temporary outrage and would have no effect in changing the fate of the country. He did everything in his power to give generous support to the poor and weak motherland and the struggling revolutionary cause.
At the beginning of the democratic revolution, Zhang Bishi encouraged his son Zhang Zhifu to join the League. When the revolutionaries were secretly operating overseas, Zhang Bishi instructed his Nanyang enterprises to secretly assist and secretly help Sun Yat-sen with 300,000 taels of silver through Hu Hanmin. After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, Zhang Bishi donated a huge amount of money to Sun Yat-sen.
Zhang Bishi was already concerned about public welfare undertakings in the Qing Dynasty, and in the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu (1900), the Yellow River broke into a disaster, Zhang Bishi witnessed the tragic situation in the disaster area, was deeply worried about the suffering of his compatriots, and rushed back to Nanyang to collect millions of silver to help the disaster, and the Qing government gave him a plaque of "Urgent Justice and Good Righteousness" and erected it in his hometown of Tai Po.
In Singapore and other places, he founded the Zhonghua School and the Ying Xinhua Wen School, and specially set up a welfare fund to supplement tuition fees for students going abroad. Under his leadership, 8 Chinese language schools have been established in Singapore and Malaysia. He set up a "Yushan Hall" in Shantou, purchased dozens of buildings and properties as a welfare fund for the five families of Jiaying, and subsidized tuition fees for students going abroad. In the thirty-first year of Guangxu (1905), he was awarded the plaque of "Sound Teaching Nanji" by the Guangxu Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. At the ceremony of receiving the plaque, Zhang Bishi made a generous statement:
"Because the country is poor and weak, all because there are no talents, all because the schools are not prosperous, I live in foreign ports, accumulate wealth, and see that the people of his western country have set up many western literature halls in the port, but they can teach me the children of Chinese businessmen, and our Chinese businessmen have their own wealth and children, so why not set up a Chinese school to teach their children?"
Liang Shaowen said in the "Nanyang Travels" that "the first person in Nanyang who is willing to sacrifice countless money to run a school should push Zhang Bishi as the first person." Zhang Bishi's fist and heart of a pure child and Yin Yin's desire to repay the country can be seen.
In September 1916, in order to celebrate the gold medal of "Keya brandy" wine and the success of his trip to the United States, Zhang Bishi set up a Mid-Autumn Festival banquet at Wuzhi Hall in Bacheng, Indonesia, to thank Chinese and foreign guests. At the meeting, he was extremely excited, frequently raised a toast, resulting in myocardial angina, and on the 12th, due to ineffective medical treatment, he died in the Royal Dutch Hospital at the age of 75. After Zhang Bishi's death, when he moved his coffin back to his hometown through Singapore and Hong Kong, the British and Dutch governments lowered their flags to half-mast to mourn, the Governor of Hong Kong bowed down and hung themselves, and the people set up sacrifices everywhere, which can be described as life and death. Zhang Binglin, a master of traditional Chinese studies, also sent a tribute to Bang Lian, "The southern people light the motherland, and the sky returns to the soul".
After Zhang Bishi's death, his descendants followed his last wishes and donated funds to Lingnan University in Guangzhou to build the "Zhang Bishi Memorial Hall" building. Although the Shouye he founded throughout Guangdong disappeared after repeated chaos, its patriotic spirit will always be revered.
Source: (Excerpt from Yuexiu District - "Yuexiu Business Celebrities")