Most people do not know that China's silk is divided into north and south silk, the south is the silk made of mulberry silk in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, and the north is the tulip silk made of tulip silk in the Jiaodong area.
The development of tulip silk in the north was relatively late, starting from the end of the Ming Dynasty, flourishing in the Xianfeng and Guangxu years of the Qing Dynasty, and the Republic of China fell around 20 years ago, and has been in a slump.
Northern silk is centered on liuyan town in Changyi City, Shandong Province, and develops to the surrounding areas. Why is it Liu Yan, rather than Places like Qingdao, Yantai, which is convenient on the east coast of Jiaodong?
There's a story here.
In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen (1642), the Qing army invaded Henan, Shandong and other places for the second time, and Changyi fell, which is known in history as "Xiǎn". During this war, 23-year-old Jiang Shizhen was taken captive by the Qing army. At the beginning of the next year, Li Shizhen, a qing army division, came to Liaodong with the army, and was considered a righteous son by Li Xiquan, the leader of the Zhengbai Banner, so he changed his surname from Jiang to Li Shizhen.
Li Shizhen was the uncle of Cao Xueqin's grandmother, who served as a political envoy in Zhejiang, the inspector of Jiangxi, and the inspector of Guangdong, and his son Li Xu accompanied Kangxi to study since childhood, and took up the post of weaving in Suzhou in his twenties, and supervised salt affairs. Subsequently, Li Shizhen's brother Li Yuegui's daughter Li Shi married Cao Yin (then Jiangning Weaving, Cao Xueqin's grandfather), because the two of them held important weaving positions, and at the same time supervised salt affairs, coupled with the relationship between the two families, resulting in a loss between the Li and Cao families, and both prosperity and prosperity. Especially in the last years of the Kangxi Dynasty, after the accumulation of Li Xu and Cao Yin in the official field and economy, the two families became famous and nobles, but also because of the relatives and grudges between the two families and the Qing royal family, they were later exiled and went into ruin. Witnessing the family's journey from prosperity to ruined Cao Xueqin, he used his own story experience to write a huge work of ancient and modern times, "Dream of the Red Chamber".
Sorry, that's a long way off. Let's go back to Liu Yan anyway.
Early textile machines
Because Li Xu and his family often returned to Changyi, saw that there were people in his hometown who raised tulip silkworms, he brought back the southern textile process, and used tulip cocoons for weaving, although the silk cloth woven was not as light as the silk in Zhejiang, but it was thick and durable, and what was more valuable was that tulip silk was worn on the body, sweating without sticking, not sticking to the body like southern silk.
During the Kangxi Dynasty, the area around Liu yan was initially developed because it was all saline and alkali land, which was suitable for planting tulip trees. After more than a hundred years of development, in the Xianfeng years, there were more than a dozen workshops on Liuyan Street, as well as shops specializing in buying and selling silk cloth. Some shrewd Liu Yan people carried silk cloth to nanyang, break into the Kanto region, and walk through Guanzhong with their bags. In the Guangxu period, the silk trade of Shandong Liuxuan reached its peak, and the footprints of Liuxuan's merchants reached European and American countries, Mediterranean countries, Africa, and Oceania lamp places. Businessmen who were doing business abroad at that time could send it home accurately as long as they wrote "Chinese Willow" on the envelope.
At the end of the 19th century, the export of a large amount of tulip silk was exchanged for a steady stream of silver, which made the silver market prosperous, trading prosperous, and silver merchants from near and far were endless.
The silver trumpets on Liu Yan Street once reached twenty or thirty, and at that time there was no wide circulation of silver coins, and the use of silver two also had to distinguish between real silver or virtual silver, real silver is indeed its thing, and virtual silver is the value symbol of real silver. There are many types of solid silver, such as color and weight, and the standard of weight is "flat", and the standard varies throughout the country.
The weight standard used in the Liuyan silver market is called "Changping". "Changping" 96.2 is equal to "Yanping" 100 two, "Yanping" 100 two is equal to "Shenping" 98 two. "Changping" is larger than the "regular level" in other places, and the silver price is also one or two hundred yuan lower than that of the surrounding areas, so it has won the favor of foreign silver merchants and enjoyed credibility throughout the country. The silver price of Liu Yan has also become the vane of the national silver price, and the silver market transactions in Yantai, Qingdao, Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing and other places have all heard of the price trend of Liu Yan silver.
The silk of Liu Yan is all traded in cash silver, and the color of the silver two is different from all over the place, when the Qing government allowed the provinces to mint silver dollars, Liu Yan "to the districts and towns, and there are eight furnace houses, and its importers can be known." Every third and eight liuxuan big collection, silver merchants flocked endlessly, Jinan "Yijulong" qianzhuang, Qingdao "Liyuan" silver trumpet, Yantai "Fushunde" qianzhuang, Weixian "DeshengChang" exchange village, all came to Liuxuan to handle domestic foreign exchange business, silver transactions, the number is quite considerable, the maximum daily turnover reached more than 100,000 taels.
At this time, the transactions in the liuxuan silver market are not simply silver, but also have financial transactions with India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, and North Korea. Mexico's "Eagle Ocean" and Mumbai's "Station People Ocean" also circulate in Liuyan's financial market.
Due to the different prices of silver in different places, the exchange ratio of copper coins and silver coins is different, so a number of silver money dealers have appeared, buying and selling. "The silver market is big. A large amount of silver from other places and local large-scale trades poured into Liu yan, and every silver market in five days took the idle silver to the market to sell.
The price of silk and silver is one market a day, in the hands of big silver trumpets and big merchants. In this case, a gambling trading method has been spawned, that is, "collision with silver", "collision with silver" is also called "collision of two exchanges", which is similar to the prediction of futures trading. Before the transaction has begun, the buyer and seller state the quantity, price and the date of the price, set up a voucher to the guarantor, then do not make currency transactions, to the specified date, look at the rise and fall of the silver price to determine who earns who loses, according to the voucher to find the difference.
This kind of futures-like transaction is easy to form opportunistic, or to make a fortune by making huge profits, or to lose money with profits, and it is easy to have disputes and even abnormal deaths.
Cocoon
For example, foreign silk merchant A set a thousand pieces of silk cloth to the local silk merchant B, and each horse of solid silver was eleven or two, at which time one or two feet of silver could be exchanged for copper coins of twelve hundred yuan. The delivery date is one month later. Unexpectedly, a month later, under the influence of the market, the silk cloth rose to eighteen or two, and one or two feet of silver could only be exchanged for copper coins for one thousand yuan. However, according to the agreement between the two parties, Party B must still be delivered according to eleven or two, one horse loses seven two, one thousand horses lose seven thousand two, but according to the exchange rate of copper coins, Party B's actual loss, more than ten thousand two, suddenly lost everything, desperate can only commit suicide.
In the past, although the market transaction used real silver, but in the end the silver two still had to be exchanged with copper coins, and the life of the people was not as luxurious as in the TV series, as in the TV series, eating a meal in a restaurant and throwing out one or two silver. The people's food, clothing, shelter and transportation are calculated in copper coins.
There are also silkworm cocoons that are bought and sold, and both parties agree on 10,000 kilograms of silkworm cocoons, and each kilogram of real silver is two or two or four dollars. When it comes to trading, the price of the cocoon falls to one, two, seven, and eight, so that those who sell the cocoon make a lot of money, and no matter how low the price of the market is, they must deliver the original price, otherwise the deposit will be gone, and the loss will be more. And it affects the reputation, and the future sale can not be done at all.
All those who "collide with each other" are big households, who have money in their hands, who do financial risk-taking speculative business, and think that they can control the situation, but often the situation is taken advantage of. Win, bump, make a lot of money; lose, stumble.
With the decline of willow silk, the gambling method of "hitting silver" gradually disappeared. However, this kind of predictive futures trading method was led to Shanghai Beach by outsiders, and on the exchange of foreigners, replaced by another vest, it was soon all the rage.