The life of Maupassant
Editor丨The life of Maupassant
The opening of Shanghai in the twenty-third year of Daoguang (1843) was the starting point of modern Shanghai's urban development. Before the opening of the port, Shanghai attracted merchants from all over the country by virtue of its port location at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and there were many guild halls.
After the opening of Shanghai, many businessmen from all over the country came to Shanghai to make a living. At the same time, Shanghai has also attracted many international immigrants and gradually become a city of immigrants.
In the twenty-fifth year of Daoguang (1845), the British Consul in Shanghai signed the Shanghai Land Charter with Shanghai Dao, establishing the British Concession in Shanghai. Subsequently, the United States and France also established concessions in Shanghai.
In the late 19th century, Shanghai formed three areas in the urban structure: the county seat of Shanghai, the public concession and the French concession.
After the emergence of the Shanghai Concession, the number of Westerners increased dramatically. Foreigners from all over the country also rushed to enter the Shanghai concession, "mainly Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang."
The arrival of immigrants at home and abroad not only injects culture from all over the country into Shanghai society, but also makes Shanghai the forefront of economic and cultural collision and exchange between East and West.
In local politics, economic transformation, social change, and the accumulation of immigrants have created a complex and diverse society, and Shanghai's political and social structure has changed.
After the mid-19th century, Shanghai opened its port, and the rapid economic development and the demographic changes brought about by the influx of immigrants made Shanghai society heterogeneous.
Liang Yuansheng pointed out that in the pluralistic and complex society of Shanghai in the late Qing Dynasty, Shanghai's power structure was no longer a combination of official gentry in the context of traditional agricultural homogeneity.
In the late 19th century, after wars and disputes such as the Taiping Rebellion, Shanghai officials incorporated merchants and gentry into local power structures, both of whom were important assistants to the government.
The merchant group, as the "economic elite", together with the gentry group (the "guiding elite"), became a different "pressure group" in a heterogeneous society.
At the same time, when the Small Knife Society rebelled, many merchants from the Chinese community poured into the concession, and there was a situation of mixed Chinese and foreign residents, and the nature of the concession changed.
Later, the establishment of the Ministry of Works and the Bureau made the concession a "country within a state"-style concession, which was separated from the administrative scope of the Chinese government, and a situation of co-rule between China and the ocean appeared in Shanghai.
Zeng Zhu once briefly introduced his family background in his self-statement: the thief Han clan, which is from the Dufai Yanmoyan.
Li Tang Guangqi Dynasty, the deputy envoy of the regimental training, Yan Shigong, entered Fujian from Gwangju, and then became the originator of central Fujian, and later separated into the four counties of Ting, Fu, Quan, and Zhangzhou. So far, the second rank of the ancestor of Wen Ren has moved from Wenling to Shanghai, and he has been sent to Yan.
Tseng cast a Shanghai background
Zeng Zhu's ancestral home is Tong'an, Fujian, located in the southeast coastal area of Fujian, and the clan organization is extremely developed. Fujian is located on the southeast coast, with a unique natural environment, a tortuous coastline, many good ports, and the east ocean, which is convenient for merchant ships to enter and exit.
The ancestral home of the Zeng family where Zeng Zhu was located is located in Tong'an County, Fujian. The county seat of Tong'an is located in the southwest of Quanzhou Prefecture, which is where the East Stream and the West Stream meet and flow south into the sea.
Tong'an's unique natural environment and convenient waterway transportation are suitable for the development of commercial trade. In the Qing Dynasty, Fujian's foreign trade underwent major changes.
During the Jiaqing and Daoguang years, Fujian merchants' overseas trade was in decline, and there were few ships selling foreign countries, and the prosperity at the beginning of the Kangxi ban and the opening of the Yongzheng Nanyang trade was not restored.
After the Opium War, Xiamen rose rapidly as one of the five trade ports. However, the Qing government strictly controlled commercial development, heavy commercial taxes, corrupt officials, and foreign capitalist forces also invaded the Far East.
The overseas trade development of Fujian merchants in the Qing Dynasty was difficult. In the twenty-third year of Daoguang, after the opening of Shanghai, the national foreign trade center was moved from Guangzhou to Shanghai.
With its superior geographical location, Shanghai has become a distribution center and an important port for China's domestic and foreign trade, and has also become a transit point for commodity exchanges between many places.
Stores in Fujian and Guangdong and the Mainland have moved to Shanghai. With the development of Shanghai's foreign trade, there is competition between regional groups engaged in foreign trade.
The commercial wars in Shanghai in the mid-19th century were fought mainly between two regional groups: Guangdong and Fujian merchants on the one hand, and Ningbo merchants with the Ningbo Gang as the backbone on the other. Catalyzed by commercial competition, groups of businessmen began to seek political influence.
So much so that in Shanghai in the mid-to-late 19th century, the long-standing discord and hostility between Zhejiang merchants and Guangdong merchants turned into political struggles.
In the 50s of the 19th century, the Xiaodao Society uprising broke the relatively stable social order in Shanghai since the opening of the port.
After the Shanghai Small Knife Rebellion, the official crackdown not only weakened the power of Shanghai and Guangdong immigrants, but also the power of the Fujianese in Shanghai.
Most of the Shanghai Fujianese who participated in the Xiaodao Society uprising were middle and low-level groups such as unemployed sailors and shipboard employees, and Shanghai Fujian merchants were also involved.
After the Shanghai Xiaodao Uprising, the population of Fujianese in Shanghai dropped sharply due to the Qing government's severe sanctions against Fujian and Guangzhou.
First of all, the aftermath measures liquidated the areas where the Fujianese people in Shanghai gathered, "destroying the nest, cleaning up the unyielding, and eliminating the root plant." As a result, the Quanzhang Hall burned down.
Second, due to the participation of the Fujianese in the Xiaodao Uprising, the image of Fujian businessmen who had long done business in Shanghai was damaged, so that all Fujianese were forced to move outside the city.
The official believes that during the Shanghai Xiaodao Society uprising, "Fujian and Guangzhou merchants returned from the chaos, searched for everything, and fished the people, so that none of the Shanghai people were destroyed."
The image of all Shanghai, Fujian and Guangdong people was deeply affected, and the Shanghai gentry publicly discussed "forever forbidding Fujian and Cantonese people to live in the city to show public indignation."
After the failure of the Shanghai Small Knife Uprising, the position of the Shanghai Fujian merchants in the city's economic structure gradually retreated, and the commercial activities of the Shanghai and Fujian merchants were also greatly hit.
The dominance of the merchant groups in Guangdong and Fujian ended with the collapse of the Small Knife Society. After the opening of Shanghai, foreign trade developed rapidly. Zeng Zhu lived in Shanghai with his family.
His grandfather Zeng Shixin moved from Quanzhou, Fujian Province to Shanghai for commercial trade, and "moved to Shanghai from Wenling, and first lodged in Yan." My grandfather went from Quanzhou to Shanghai to trade, which may be related to the characteristics and situation of foreign trade at that time.
Zeng Zhu's father Zeng Chutai moved from Tong'an to Xiamen, "lived in the Qing Dynasty", and operated a foreign exchange business in the Hongbu. Zeng Zhu followed his father to "trade and moved to Shanghai, so he went to the family". Zeng Zhu honored his father as the ancestor of Qianhu in the ancestral hall sacrifice.
It can be seen from this that at least three generations have been in business since the great-grandfather. The generation of Zeng Zhu's family who eventually settled in Shanghai began with Zeng Zhu's father, Zeng Chutai.
Xiangyuan and Quanzhang Hall
Zeng Zhu's grandfather Zeng Shixin and father Zeng Chutai are both local people, who take care of rural friendship while running their own families and families.
Although Zeng Zhu left Fujian with his father to live in Shanghai when he was a child, the connection between Zeng and his son and their hometown of Fujian did not become estranged with the growth of their time in Shanghai.
Zeng Zhu's ancestral home is Tong'an, Fujian, so there is a close connection with the Zeng family is the Shanghai Quanzhang Hall.
Zeng Zhu's father attached great importance to rural friendship. Zeng Chutai ran the Quanzhang Guild Hall and enthusiastically helped his fellow villagers and was quite prestigious. Both the memories of descendants and the records of Fang Zhi emphasize its management of the Quanzhang Guild Hall.
Shanghai Quanzhang Guild Hall mainly gathers fellow villagers from Longxi, Tong'an and Haicheng in Fujian, and most of the members who donate funds for construction and management are business owners and merchant ship owners.
As early as the Qianlong period, there were businessmen from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou counties in Fujian who were doing business in Shanghai: "Donate funds to purchase the 25 Baoqitu Binpu housing base outside the Dadongmen of Shangyi, and build a Quanzhang Guild Hall to enshrine the Holy Mother in heaven... Juxtaposed to buy the twenty-five protection five pictures of the lamp land outside the north gate, and build a Quanzhang North Pavilion to enshrine the god seat of Guanyin Daishi to protect the ghost, and Zipuji."
Quanzhang Villa is dedicated to "Guanyin Daishi", "to protect ghosts, and Zipuji", which has both a hub and a righteous family. After the opening of Shanghai, businessmen from all over the country poured into Shanghai to seek livelihoods.
The increasing complexity of personnel in Shanghai makes it difficult for local government management to go down to the grassroots level, and Shanghai, as an emerging city, obviously lacks corresponding effective management. For businessmen and impoverished migrants, "hometown ties are one of the few means by which organization and asylum can be provided".
People from all over the world came to Shanghai and formed hometown organizations, including the early guild office and the later hometown association.
Due to the peculiarities of the composition of modern Shanghai's personnel, hometown organizations have to some extent become the "quasi-government" of immigrants from all over Shanghai, which is recognized not only by immigrants from all over the world, but also by the local government of Shanghai and the management agencies of the two concessions.
With the triple recognition of the authorities, the people, and the concession management body, the guild was entrusted with the dual responsibility of maintaining social order and rural friendship. Zeng Chutai is benevolent and benevolent, and he is willing to sponsor his fellow villagers in Shanghai, and is quite prestigious among his fellow villagers in Shanghai and is deeply respected by his fellow villagers. Everyone publicly elected him as the director of Quanzhang Villa (Quanzhang North Pavilion).
Zeng Zhu's children also recalled: "Today's Spring Zhang, the scale of the grand factory, the Xiawu canal, that is, the ancestors supervised the construction."
After the Xiaodao Society uprising, the Qing government restricted and suppressed Fujian merchants in Shanghai. Fujianese were forced to move out of the city, and the influence of the Quanzhang Guild Hall on the government declined.
In the early years of Tongzhi, because the location of the Quanzhang villa was classified as a French concession, the French suggested that the Qing government order it to be dispersed on the grounds of "fear of unhygiene" and "fear that the Fujian people in Shanghai would be strong and easy to cause trouble".
This suggestion was supported by Shanghai Dao, who ordered Quanzhang Villa to be moved out of the area. The Quanzhang Guild Hall fought vigorously, but in the end, to no avail, so it had to give up this "dozens of acres of land" and move to Rihui Bridge.
When the French Concession was first established, it was stipulated that the righteous families in the concession were exempt from paying taxes, and later, as the population in the concession increased and land prices rose, they sought excuses to expand the concession and moved away from the local guild halls and righteous families.
Siming was also asked to move from Yijia on the grounds of "hindering hygiene" during the expansion of the French Concession, but it was temporarily withdrawn due to the opposition of the Ningbo crowd.
Faced with the expansion of the concession and the struggle for tax power, the local government eventually forced Quanzhang Villa and the Yijia to move. The power of the Quanzhang Guild Hall and the Fujianese had begun to decline at this time.
Although the Hokkien people in Shanghai were suppressed and restricted after the Xiaodao Uprising, the Quanzhang Guild Hall is still the common spiritual home of the Hokkien people in Shanghai.
Zeng Chutai was the director of Quanzhang Villa, and he single-handedly worked for the "relocation of the villa" and resettlement. After the Quanzhang Villa was moved to the east of the Sunhui Bridge in Shanghai, in addition to building a new villa and a new Yijia, the operator also built a place for the Quanzhang people who died in Shanghai.
At the same time, the guild hall also built a building for children living in Shanghai's hometown, and Zeng Zhu and Zeng Zelin, the son of Zeng Zhu, studied here. After Zeng Chutai became the manager of Quanzhang Guild Hall, the connection between Shanghai Quanzhang Guild Hall and Zeng House became increasingly close.
Gude Man emphasized that the maintenance of the honor of the group by the clan directors is an important source of the authority of the clan association, and "only if the clan directors serve as a model of Confucian values, they will be regarded by the sojourners as well-deserved leaders of the group and even the entire city."
Zeng Zhu's father, Zeng Chutai, was benevolent and devoted to the righteous family and relocation of Quanzhang Villa, accumulating prestige among the villagers.
After Zeng Chutai and many subsequent Zeng sons and nephews, and the Su family's operation of Quanzhang Guild Hall and Jianting Guild Hall, Zeng Zhu inherited and accumulated many intangible assets.
bibliography
[1] The archives of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, holds the archives of the "Ministry of Foreign Affairs".
[2] Microfilm of the Archives of the Ministry of Works Bureau, Shanghai Municipal Archives.
[3] Zeng Zhu: "The Complete Case of Zeng's Ruizhi Yizhuang", engraved in the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1900).