If you use the two tones of red and black to depict the most prominent red-top official Shang Shengxuanhuai in the late Qing Dynasty, how many points should red be accounted for, and how many points should black be accounted for?
This is a question of benevolence and wisdom, and Brother Hei is willing to use five or five points, half red, half black, half good and half bad to depict Sheng Xuanhuai.
Sheng Xuanhuai's redness lies in the fact that he can do great things and achieve great causes in the turbulent and chaotic world of all kinds of difficulties, which requires great wisdom, and even more requires considerable tenacity and responsibility, but at the same time of doing big things, Sheng Xuanhuai always makes people feel that his body is covered with a dark cloak of darkness and snobbery, and the Cambridge History of the Late Qing Dynasty once evaluated him like this -- Sheng Xuanhuai was a heavy official and light businessman, and the establishment of industrial enterprises was secondary, and his main concern was to soar in the official arena; at that time, some people on the beach ridiculed him, saying that he fished for sixteen night pearls with one hand Using officials to deceive businessmen, using businessmen to raise officials, seeking profits like tigers, calculating like wolves, and the people who have harmed are far more than Hu Xueyan.
Many century-old legends are like this, through the red, what you see is often black, let's talk about this side of Sheng Xuanhuai today -
Sheng Xuanhuai entered the shogunate of Li Hongzhang in 1870. At first, Li Hongzhang did not attach great importance to him, and only let him serve as a copywriter in the camp and concurrently served as the meeting office of the camp affairs office, and later transferred him to the office of the Huai Military Camp Office of The Shaanxi-Gansu-Hou Road.
Handling these small errands, Sheng Xuanhuai soon showed the potential to do big things. In the middle of summer and heat, he often travels for dozens of miles a day, not to complain about suffering or tiredness, and even more rarely, to do errands to draft manuscripts, he can often say everything he says, and what he says is very insightful.
Because he had both the spirit of hard work and the talent of hard work, Li Hongzhang gradually looked at him with admiration.
Sheng Xuanhuai was very sensitive to the current situation, and in 1872, when he learned that Li Hongzhang had the idea of establishing his own steamship bureau in Beiyang, he quickly submitted a very forward-looking report to Li Hongzhang on how to set up and operate the steamship bureau, which is the famous "Ship Charter".
In this report, Sheng Xuanhuai carefully and meticulously drafted six charters, and emphasized the ideas of "emphasizing business conditions" and "business and business offices."At that time, Li Hongzhang believed that his ideas were too radical and did not conform to the imperial court's idea of "official offices and official offices", so they were not adopted.
However, under the guidance of the government's ideas, the fledgling Steamship Bureau only operated for a few months, and then fell into a stagnant predicament.
At this time, Sheng Xuanhuai began to shine, and his previous ideas were valued by Li Hongzhang, but he himself did not become the leader of this cause, for the simple reason that Sheng Xuanhuai at this time did not have enough strength.
After the Steamship Bureau switched to the idea of commercial office, Li Hongzhang handed over the post of general office to Tang Tingshu, a famous comprador merchant in Shanghai Beach at that time, and the post of Huiban office to Xu Run, who was also a famous comprador businessman in Shanghai Beach, while the 29-year-old Sheng Xuanhuai could only be subordinated to the two and was responsible for the liaison and coordination between officials and businessmen.
Although Sheng Xuanhuai was lost, the loss did not affect him to be as enterprising as ever.
In 1876, Sheng Xuanhuai once again made great contributions to the Steamship Bureau.
At that time, Qichang, Swire and Jardine Matheson monopolized the freight business along China's coastal and Yangtze River rivers, especially Qichang, which had the longest history and the strongest strength, and once cut the water foot cost in half in order to suppress the Steamship Bureau.
After three years of fierce fighting, the steamship bureau was suppressed very badly, and Qichang also suffered serious losses, and in the face of the dilemma of losing both, the newly appointed boss of Qichang had the idea of selling his ship assets.
Upon learning of this news, Tang Tingshu and Xu Run thought that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but the reality of difficult funds made it difficult for them to choose.
However, Sheng Xuanhuai took the initiative to face the difficulties, and he first went north to consult with Li Hongzhang, but Li Hongzhang rejected this snake-swallowing plan on the grounds that the current disaster relief in North China was a top priority and it was difficult to raise funds, but Sheng Xuanhuai did not give up, and then he went south to find Shen Baozhen, who was the governor of the two prefectures and ministers of Nanyang at the time.
Sheng Xuanhuai finally impressed Shen Baozhen with his generous statement that "this bureau is related to the national defense plan and JiangHai Liyuan", and Shen Baozhen promised to raise 500,000 taels of silver from his clan treasury, and then he and Li Hongzhang would join forces to ask the imperial court to allocate funds from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Hubei provinces to deposit a total of 1 million taels of official funds into the account of the Steamship Bureau as a loan.
After raising this key huge amount of money, under the vigorous promotion of Sheng Xuanhuai, from December 31, 1876 to January 2, 1877, the Steamship Merchants Bureau and the Qichang Steamship Company finally signed an acquisition contract, and the Steamship Merchants Bureau acquired all the properties of Qichang for a total price of 2.22 million silver, and the acquisition contract stipulated that the Steamship Merchants Bureau must pay a down payment of 1.2 million taels of silver to Qichang before March 1877, and the rest of the money was paid in installments over the next five years.
This was the first successful case of Chinese-funded enterprises merging with foreign-funded enterprises in China's modern history, which had a great impact at that time and promoted the ambition of the Chinese people.
However, Sheng Xuanhuai, who had made a great contribution, not only did not rise to the top in the steamship bureau, but on the contrary, he was impeached by the die-hard conservatives in the DPRK and China. Ten thousand arrows were fired, although Tang Tingshu, Xu Run and others stood up to support it, but because the evil words were too bad, in 1882, Sheng Xuanhuai still left the Steamship Bureau in disgrace.
Looking at the above Sheng Xuanhuai, he is undoubtedly red and admirable, but after only one year, the 40-year-old Sheng Xuanhuai has shown another side of red and black.
In 1883, a rare financial crisis swept across Shanghai Beach, the tide of vanity receded, and some of the rich and powerful people on Shanghai Beach revealed the original form of naked swimmers.
The second in command of the Steamship Bureau, Xu Run, is one of them.
Xu Run can probably be counted as the earliest real estate tycoon in China. More than twenty years ago, that is, in 1860, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom war brought a large number of capital-rich "refugees" to Shanghai Beach, and Xu Run, a young comprador of the British merchant Baoshun Foreign Firm, seized the opportunity of the chaotic world, and it only took more than two years, and by 1863, he already owned a large number of properties such as "Yuqingli" in the center of Shanghai Beach High Industry, "Nine Acres of Land" and "Erdu" in Ximen City. At this time, Xu Run was only 26 years old, and Hu Xueyan, who was 15 years older than him, was still struggling to start, and Sheng Xuanhuai had not really made his debut.
With the prestige of being rich and noble at a young age, Xu Run later used a model similar to today's "rolling development", first using the existing real estate as collateral, lending a sum of money from Qianzhuang for real estate development, and then taking the newly developed project as collateral to continue a new round of lending, enclosure and development.
By 1882, the 44-year-old Xu Run's real estate company "Dimu Real Estate", with a total asset market value of 3.5 million taels of silver, was like a real estate giant in Shanghai at that time.
However, with the financial crisis sweeping in, Xu Run's huge debt of 2.5 million taels of silver was suddenly exposed, and the major money banks that borrowed money from him came to the door to force debts in order to protect themselves.
Under the critical situation, Xu Run wanted to ask Sheng Xuanhuai to pull himself, and then what he did not expect was that Sheng Xuanhuai was not thinking of helping, but taking this opportunity to put him to death and expel him from the beach.
Sheng Xuanhuai grabbed one of Xu Run's handles, and he embezzled 160,000 taels of silver owed to the Steamship Bureau. Seeing that the handle was caught, Xu Run asked Sheng Xuanhuai to give him some grace time, and he would take the property deed in his name to ask his relatives and friends for a loan, and he would definitely settle it on schedule.
However, Sheng Xuanhuai did not say a trace of righteousness, immediately reported the results of the inspection to Li Hongzhang, and suggested that the imperial court give Xu Run the punishment of dismissal of xu run as a "fake public and private" and compensate him with the stocks and real estate mortgaged by his loan.
Under the pressure of Sheng Xuanhuai's conspiracy, Xu Run was not only expelled from the Steamship Bureau, but many properties under his name were forced to pay off to the Steamship Bureau at low prices.
Xu Run later recalled that in this matter, Sheng Xuanhuai was pressing step by step, murderous, and using Mount Tai to press the egg, and his intentions were particularly incomprehensible.
After bankruptcy, Xu Run, who was more than half a hundred years old, had to leave Shanghai Beach, and since then he has borrowed many times to try to make a comeback, but the result is repeated defeats. Suffering from such a long ordeal, Xu Run's old mother and wife died of illness one after another, leaving only a pair of children who were only 8 years old and 6 years old in the former magnate.
After ZhengDa brightly destroyed Xu Run, Sheng Xuanhuai did not stop, and then he joined forces with Ma Jianzhong to squeeze Tang Tingshu away, and when he was finished, he turned his face and grabbed Ma Jianzhong's pigtails again, bringing the other party down.
After this purge of hands for clouds and rain, Sheng Xuanhuai finally got his wish and completely controlled the Steamship Bureau.
Some people say that the eldest husband is the most terrible at the age of 40, can be generous, can be cruel, and Sheng Xuanhuai is like this.
However, in 1883, the Hunting Steamship Bureau was not enough to describe Sheng Xuanhuai's vicious cruelty, and hunting Hu Xueyan was his classic.
There are many people who write this history, and the black brother has also written it, so I will not talk about it anymore here, but only talk about a few details that make people feel suffocated-
It is said that when Sheng Xuanhuai learned that Hu Xueyan had a loan of 800,000 taels of silver for the Western Expedition that was about to expire, he issued a strangling order to Shao Youlian of Shanghai Dao on behalf of Li Hongzhang, and used all means to delay the payment for 20 days.
Poor Hu Xueyan, who had just painstakingly paid the 800,000 taels of silver in advance, mastered the national telegraph system, and Sheng Xuanhuai, who knew the inside story well, launched a fatal blow.
This fatal blow, from the rush to the imperial court to raid the home, Sheng Xuanhuai's cruel figure has always been hidden in the dark curtain of the conspiracy, although he is a full 20 years younger than Hu Xueyan, but on the city government, he is more like an old ghost.
Speaking of this, if you are a little willful and add some emotional color, it can be said that Sheng Xuanhuai is a despicable villain.
Zhang Xiao, another well-known industrialist in the late Qing Dynasty, had such an evaluation of Sheng Xuanhuai.
On the day of the start of Zhang's Dasheng Spinning Factory, Zhang Jian deliberately hung four "factory plots" in the council chamber, namely "Hezhi Disguise", "GuiXing Hollow", "Water And Grass Hidden Poison" and "Young Salivation".
These four factory illustrations show the deception of the villain, the obstruction of the villain, the evil of the villain when Zhang Xiao first started the business, and the "apricot" in the second painting "Gui Xing Hollow" refers to Sheng Xuanhuai.
At the beginning of the founding of the Dasheng Spinning Factory, the support of the imperial court only stopped when Zhang Zhidong was blocked from setting up a factory, and a batch of looms were shelved on the Bund in Shanghai, which had originally been said to be fully invested in the operation of Dasheng, who knew that Sheng Xuanhuai had obstructed in the middle of the way, and had to take half of it from the hands of Liu Kun, the governor of Liangjiang at the time.
For this reason, Zhang Xiao sighed that this person hunted everything that could be hunted.
Despicablely, Sheng Xuanhuai promised to raise 250,000 taels of silver for Zhang Xiao for the looms, and also signed an agreement. However, after the loom arrived, Sheng Xuanhuai repeatedly dragged on and did not pay any money, and Zhang Xiao, who was short of money, fell into extreme difficulties, so that he wandered all night and was worried.
Sheng Xuanhuai was pregnant with the word Xingsun, so Zhang Jian said that he was a hollow man, a person who sought profit and no faith.
In June 1911, in order to save the stormy Qing Dynasty, Zhang Xiaofeng came to the capital to persuade those in power. When talking with Sheng Xuanhuai, he especially reminded the other party that when dealing with the problem of the aftermath of the railway, we must have the vision of a politician, do not stare at the small profits of the fly, let alone calculate the people, and let the people at the lowest level complain about the imperial court because of losses.
Unfortunately, Sheng Xuanhuai's pattern was not enough, his arrogance was very conceited, and he could not listen to it at all, and eventually the nationalization of the railway trunk line became the last straw that crushed the Qing Dynasty.
Big history talks about small intentions, and at the end of the article, I sighed, "The person who seeks profit is really a fatal person!"