The two maids of the Sheng Xuanhuai family, one became miss Zhao Si's mother, and the other became Song Meiling's mother. Sheng Xuanhuai was the most outstanding red-top merchant in the late Qing Dynasty and the richest man in the late Qing Dynasty.
According to statistics, sheng Xuanhuai's legacy left to his children before his death was enough for them to buy 20,000 sets of courtyards in Beijing, which was converted into about 2 trillion yuan, and if his descendants did not die, it would be enough for them to eat for several lifetimes or even dozens of lifetimes.
Shanghai's first imported Mercedes-Benz sedan was bought by Sheng Xuanhuai's family, and in order to show his honor, his son also replaced the handlebars with silver ones, on which his name was engraved.
Not only that, Sheng Xuanhuai's son also equipped each aunt with a garden house and an imported car. The reason why he is so rich is because Sheng Xuan has great foresight and dares to be the first. He saw the opportunity and took advantage of the east wind of the foreign affairs movement to vigorously set up an industry.
Sheng Xuanhuai was a very progressive doer at that time, creating a number of firsts in China at that time. For example, the first civil joint-stock enterprise steamship China Merchants Bureau, the first bank China Commerce and Commerce Bank, the first higher normal school Nanyang Public School (today's Jiaotong University), the first modern university Beiyang University Hall, today's Tianjin University and the Red Cross Society of China.
As the richest man in China at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, Sheng Xuanhuai's three words were the symbols of wealth at that time. Sheng Xuan was pregnant with seven wives, eight sons, and eight daughters, and these children all centered on the Sheng family, and the magnates married and attached themselves to each other, forming a typical marriage politics from the imperial court to the jiangnan gentry.
However, even if the children of the Sheng family are noble, compared with a legendary woman who came out of the Sheng family, they are not the same. The key topic to be said today is the servants of the Sheng family, the number of servants of the Sheng family is as high as more than 270 people, and each child of the Sheng family is equipped with at least six servants, so the appearance and conduct of each servant of such a grand family can be carefully selected before they can work.
To say that the servants of the Sheng family were all the best of the best, it is not an exaggeration to say that they were outstanding figures at that time. Sheng Xuanhuai was very lenient to the maids in the family, and many high-ranking officials and nobles in the late Qing Dynasty would only allow them to marry when the maids were old and yellow, but Sheng Xuanhuai was different, generally at the right age, he would introduce the maids to the famous husbands, and if they got married, they would also send a dowry, just like their daughters.
After the Xi'an Incident, Miss Zhao Si was willing to give up everything and accompany Zhang Xueliang to spend most of her life in seclusion, which can also be regarded as a little comfort to the spiritual level of mankind in the war-torn 20th century.
And Miss Zhao Si's mother, Lu Baozhen, was one of the maids in Sheng Xuanhuai's mansion that year. Lü Baozhen worked as a maid in the Sheng family very early, because she was beautiful, did things seriously and steadily, and never participated in the shengfu's gossip about right and wrong, which made Sheng Xuanhuai very appreciative.
Therefore, when Lü Baozhen reached the age of marriage, Sheng Xuanhuai promised her to his old subordinate Zhao Qinghua. Zhao Qinghua was the deputy director of the Ministry of Communications at the time, and he was also a wealthy family, and even if Lü Baozhen, who was born as a servant, was no longer beautiful, in the face of the feudal etiquette at that time, he was not a lady of the main room.
After Lü Baozhen married Zhao Qinghua, she never cheated with others, did her job well, and had a good relationship with the main chamber and other concubines. After getting married, she gave birth to three daughters for Zhao Qinghua, the youngest daughter ranked fourth among all the daughters of Zhao Qinghua, and everyone called her Miss Zhao Si, that is, the famous Zhao Yidi.
Compared with Lü Baozhen, Ni Guizhen, another maid of the Sheng Xuanhuai family, is even more famous, and she once served as an adoptive mother in the Sheng family. This adoptive mother is not just a maid, but more like a governess.
Ni Guizhen was born in a family of scholars and graduated from Shanghai Girls' High School. Speaking English, good at mathematics, and also playing the piano well, a Western-educated woman like her was a rarity in China more than 100 years ago, so the Sheng family took a fancy to her and hired her as an adoptive mother.
Ni Guizhen as an intellectual woman is very assertive, Sheng Xuanhuai once wanted to introduce her to the dignitaries according to the custom, but none of them could get into Ni Guizhen's eyes.
Just as Ni Guizhen did not wrap her feet like women in the same period, her marriage affairs must also be decided by herself. At this time, Ni Guizhen's independent personality and courage to dare to be the first are already outstanding women in the new era who have broken through the shackles of the times.
Later, Ni Guizhen, an early Christian in China, chose to marry Song Yaoru, a Christian missionary who had nothing at the time. She also took out her dowry to support Song Yaoru in business. Song Yaoru successfully earned his first pot of money by printing Christian Bibles.
After that, the business became bigger and bigger, and Song Yaoru and Ni Guizhen were different from other businessmen. They could see clearly where the hope of saving China lay, and spared no effort to support Sun Yat-sen in his revolutionary cause.
Not only that, the six children raised by Ni Guizhen are also dragons and phoenixes among people. They were the eldest daughter Song Qiling, the second daughter Song Qingling and 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 Guizhen did not have the feudal idea of preferring sons to daughters, as long as the children themselves were willing, they would send them to study abroad.
Among Chinese women at that time. The first person to study abroad was song Ailing, the eldest daughter who sent her family. Later, several children of the Song family successively studied abroad, Song Meiling was proficient in the Six Chinese, Song Ziwen became a master's degree from Harvard University, and the Song family later became a family at the tip of the pyramid of the Republic of China.
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Sheng Xuanhuai, as a Manchu Qing courtier, was forced to flee to Japan in order to avoid the scourge of killing. In 1912, Sheng Xuanhuai was invited by Sun Yat-sen to return to China and continued to preside over the management of the Steamship Merchants Bureau.
In that turbulent era, Sheng Xuanhuai not only did not get killed, but kept his property. This is inextricably linked to Sheng Xuanhuai's usual style of accumulating good fortune and treating people with generosity.
When Sheng Xuanhuai died in 1916, the funeral procession was 2500 meters long, and there were 64 people carrying coffins, and the scale of the entire funeral ceremony was comparable to that of a state funeral, attracting Shanghai citizens to flock to the streets to witness the funeral of the century.
