It is said that "where there is a tide, there are tide people, and where there are tide people, there are tide merchants", when it comes to tide merchants, people will naturally think of Lin Baixin, Zhuang Shiping, Xie Guomin, Ma Huateng and other business giants.
They leave a very clear impression on everyone: shrewdness, integrity, politeness, decisiveness, risk-taking, etc. Similarly, it also leaves everyone with a personal experience that can be called a legend, so that many people have explored their success secrets.
There is a commercial proverb in Chaoshan that is called
"Physiology in man"
Each Chaoshan businessman has his own "business classic", with different business methods, and many of them are even more amazing.
A very important part of the business wisdom of tide merchants is integrity. In the Chaoshan proverb, there is a lot of content about "integrity".
There are many such proverbs, which can be called the "bitter mouth" of the Chaoshan ancestors who penetrated history, afraid that future generations would "fall without grains of oil and hemp", or:
"Two blocks, two blocks"
"Honest and honest"
"The price is undiminished, called no flash"
These Chaoshan proverbs are all requiring merchants to operate in good faith and clearly value the real price.
And today I want to talk to you about the story of "Scale Star".
The proverb story of the hipster merchants
There is a proverb in the Chaoshan dialect, called:
"If you have money to buy a chai scale star"
The scale star refers to the two scales on the scale, which means that customers come to shop, it is to spend money, and every store should be able to achieve the full scale of the goods and fair trade.
"The firewood scale for selling fish" was once the market talk of Shantou Port.
The fish seller was a small trader in the old Shantou Port Yanchengtou, and he had several keys on him, which were handed over to him by several old customers.
Every day, the fish seller delivers to the door according to the requirements of these customers, and if there is no one in the customer's home, the fish seller opens the door himself and puts the goods needed by the customer into the "hanging basket". Buyers and sellers trust each other.
The "17 two scales" used by The Fish Seller are specially customized. In the past, 1 pound was 16 taels, while the firewood rod used by the fisherman was 17 taels per catty.
Customers buy a pound of things with the fish seller, which is actually a pound or two.
That is to say, the fish seller would rather suffer losses himself than ensure his credibility.
Due to the conscience of the "selling fish" scale, the small number of bad merchants in the market of The Port Salt Chengtou cannot be mixed. For this reason, the "fish seller" was also retaliated against, and his wood scale was broken.
The fish seller is just a peddler, and does not argue with people, and then pays for another custom firewood scale, which is "17 two scales", insisting on his conscience and original intention.
And this phenomenon of taking the initiative to let the mall gentleman phenomenon is not isolated in the Chaoshan area, such as the cemetery of Quxi Commune in Jieyang County in the 1970s, buying things is only more than two pounds, and it will never be short of two pounds.
The son of the fish seller began to work as a hawker in Shantou port from the age of 7, and used this as a profession all his life, only learning to make firewood scales as an apprentice in a chai scale shop as a teenager.
One afternoon in 1957, the young man made a scale for his unit at home and asked his children to lay hands on him.
There is an important process in the production of wood scales - nail scale stars.
He told the child about the origin of the 16 stars on the scale pole: "Human beings cannot do without the sun, moon and stars, so the stars on the scale pole represent the sun, moon and stars to supervise human beings to do business fairly, the big star (one pound) is the sun, the middle star (half a pound) is the moon, the remaining 14 small stars 7 grains are the Big Dipper, 6 grains are the South Star, and 1 grain is the conscience of the people." Life is alive, doing things without conscience, or human? ”
The grandson of the fisherman may not continue to engage in business, but the insistence of the chao merchants on honesty and fairness has been carved into the inheritance of the bloodline.
"Before being a businessman, be a good person who talks about integrity."
The tide merchants inherit and adhere to the inheritance of "benevolence, righteousness and integrity", and naturally gain tenacious vitality and adaptability. Where in the world can't go? Where there is naturally a tide, there is a tide merchant.
I hope that we can carry forward the positive and upward tide business culture and spirit together, and inherit the tide culture together.
Finally, i also ordered a "Song of The Tide Merchants", and everyone listened to the songs together while feeling the culture of the Tide Merchants.