Guangzhou has always had a tradition of heavy commerce, and merchants have gathered for thousands of years.
Looking back at Guangzhou's commercial splendor, there is one place that cannot be ignored, that is, the thirteen lines.
In modern history, many historical terms we read are related to it, "closed to the country", "one mouth for trade", Guangzhou is the earliest open foreign trade port in modern China, from 1727 to 1840, it was China's only foreign trade port.
The thirteen lines are one of the most important ones, and the activities of foreign businessmen at that time were basically in the thirteen lines.
Some people say that the history of the Thirteen Elements is the most brilliant page in guangzhou's history of more than two thousand years.
Qing Dynasty Tongcao Painting: Thirteen Elements of Grandeur
■ History
Old Thirteen Lines: The rich have produced several enemies of the country
The Thirteen Lines were established in May of the 25th year of the establishment of the Guangdong Customs, in the area from the present-day Guangzhou Cultural Park to Haizhu South Road.
The heyday of the Thirteen Elements was during the Qianlong to Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, and there were dozens of commercial houses at the peak of the Thirteen Elements, of which the four great rich ——— Pan Shaoguang, Lu Guanheng, Wu Bingjian, Ye Shanglin founded the Tongwenxing, Guanglixing, Jardine and Yichengxing, etc.
At that time, inside and outside the thirteen lines, there were many trees, colorful flags flying, crowds of people, and bags of silk, tea, and porcelain piled up.
The thirteen elements traded in Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Brazil, Russia, Portugal, Spain and dozens of countries in Southeast Asia, and the thirteen lines also gained a lot of wealth, making the Xiguan area at that time the political, economic and cultural center of Guangzhou, and also the core area of the foreign economic trade of the Qing Empire.
Qing Dynasty Tongcao Painting: The Thirteen Lines of Trading Houses
The Pan and Wu families are the most prominent
Among the thirteen lines of Hangzhou merchants in Guangzhou in the Qing Dynasty, there were two of the most prominent families, the Pan family and the Wu family.
The founder of the Pan family is Pan Shaoguang, the Pan family for three generations to deal with silk, tea- and powerful, for decades, the Pan family was supported by Chinese merchants and gentlemen, successively elected as the leader of the thirteen lines, the Pan family has a mansion on the south bank of the Pearl River, golden and brilliant, antiques, pearls and greenery, the Pan family often arranges feasts in the house, and there is a performance theater that can accommodate hundreds of people.
Pan Shaoguang's grandson Pan Zhengwei was also a very accomplished businessman, known as the "three brilliant talents" who could write poetry and painting, and in 1842, a magazine in Paris, France, reported that Pan Zhengwei's total wealth exceeded 100 million francs.
In that year, the British army extorted the Guangzhou authorities to pay the ransom fee, Pan Zhengwei donated 640,000 taels of silver, during the Opium War, when the British army was about to enter Guangzhou, facing the emergency moment of the destruction of the city and the death of the country, Pan Zhengwei led the donation of 280,000 taels of silver to unite with the thirteen rich merchants and buy a battleship for maritime defense.
The Wu family originated a little later than the Pan family, but then the giant businessman, the founder Wu Bingjian in the thirteen lines of the business jardine, Wu Bingjian is not only the richest merchant in Guangzhou, but also one of the few rich people in the world, in 1834, Wu Bingjian had assets of 26 million silver dollars, and the Qing government's national treasury at that time was only 7 million silver dollars, the American "Wall Street Times" called him "the world's largest commercial assets, the world's richest man."
Portrait of Wu Bingjian
Wu Bingjian enjoyed a high reputation in the Western business community at that time. At that time, Europe was very picky about the quality of tea, and all the tea stamped with the Wujia stamp after packing the box could be sold at a high price in the international market.
In terms of industrial management, Wu Bingjian not only owns real estate, real estate, tea gardens, shops, etc. in China, but also boldly conducts railway investment, securities trading in the United States on the other side of the ocean, and gets involved in insurance business and other fields, making Jardine Matheson a veritable multinational consortium.
Ng is also known overseas for his generosity. It is said that there was once a Boston businessman in the United States who cooperated with Wu Bingjian to run a business, and due to poor management, he owed Wu Bingjian a debt of $72,000, but he was unable to repay the arrears, so he could not return to the United States.
When Wu Bingjian heard about it, he immediately asked someone to take out the IOU, tear it up in front of the Boston merchants, and announce that the accounts were settled. Since then, Wu Bingjian's name has been well-known in the United States and has been spread for half a century.
More than a century later, Wu Bingjian is one of the 50 richest people in the world in the past 1,000 years, of which 8 Chinese have been selected.
Near the thirteen lines of Xiguan Antique Street
The decline of the thirteen lines
However, because of the closed-mindedness of modern China, for a huge country, only one treaty port in Guangzhou is far from enough, and the political, economic and cultural stagnation led to the weakening of China's national strength at that time, and the external and internal troubles came one after another, which made the bud of China's capital management suffer a collapsive blow, and the thirteen elements were not spared.
The decline of the Thirteen Lines began in the first year of the Qing Dynasty (1821), the British bourgeoisie in order to reverse the Sino-British trade deficit, scoop up more profits, dump opium on China, the Qing government had to order the ban on opium, requiring the merchants of the Thirteen Lines to pay tribute to hundreds of thousands or even millions of taels of silver every year, as for the successive years of reinforcement money, disaster relief money is countless, forcing them to continue to donate.
In the sixth year of Daoguang, the Qing government once drew 800,000 taels of silver from the thirteen lines for "military aid". In 1842, in order to repay the debt of 3 million taels of silver stipulated in the Treaty of Nanking, Wu Bingjian paid 1.1 million taels. Wu Bingjian was already a world-class rich man at that time, and he often had to be caught in the middle of the government and foreign businessmen. Moreover, because the customs directly ruled the thirteen lines, the extortion of customs officials was also numerous, and if merchants wanted to join or withdraw from the thirteen lines, they had to bribe the customs officials with huge sums of money to be allowed.
The thirteen lines declined rapidly, Daoguang twenty years, the merchants alone owed millions of taels of silver to foreign merchants, no matter whether some of the merchants were in trouble, some of them were struggling to get on the line of bankruptcy and death, even the property of the old family was also stripped out, and the merchant himself was either imprisoned or distributed to the frontier, but the money owed still had to be repaid by the rest of the merchants.
In 1840, the First Opium War broke out, British gunboats blasted open the closed door of the Qing Dynasty, the defeated Qing government was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing with britain, and the monopoly privileges of Guangzhou and the thirteen lines were abolished.
In 1856, in the billowing smoke of the Second Opium War, angry guangzhou people burned the Yiguan where foreign merchants lived, and the thirteen elements were also reduced to ashes in this fire, which is said to have burned for two days and two nights, and the silver that was burned until it melted flowed all over the north bank of the Pearl River.
Thirteen lines today
Thirteen rows of alleys
■ Present
New Thirteen Elements: The commercial atmosphere is still strong
After the fire of the last century, the geographical remnants of the Thirteen Elements may only be left with the small street called the "Thirteen Lines Road", but the glorious commercial atmosphere of the Thirteen Elements period has been preserved all the way. By the 1990s, the area around The Thirteen Lines Had been replaced by a wholesale clothing market.
The original location of the trading house is a crowded clothing wholesale market, the original site of the foreigner's Yiguan, the current cultural park was built, the park has open and quiet land, and the outside world is separated by a wall, it is said that the new "Seoul" in the cultural park in recent years is the former site of the American garden.
At the entrance of the ThirteenTh Line Street stands a group of statues, one of which shows the scene of foreigners negotiating with Chinese merchants, foreigners holding pipes in their right hands, three fingers in their left hands, and another Chinese businessman in a broad robe and coat strokes his long beard, and an abacus is placed on the table, reproducing the scene of that year.
Nowadays, walking in thirteen rows, everywhere, at any time, you can see that bags of clothing are transported in and out of trucks of all sizes, and their busyness is even greater than in the past. With 13 Xing Road as the center, the logistics business circle surrounded by the garment markets of Guyi Street, DoulanShang Street, Heping East Road, Dashi Street, Shimao Street, Changle Street and Xinglong North Street has become the longest clothing wholesale distribution center in Guangzhou.
Open the stall at six o'clock in the morning, start to close the stall at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, here every day in and out of the goods thousands of tons, the flow of people up to more than 100,000 people, commercial radiation to the world, thirteen lines still do a lot of foreigners business, in the trolley and surging crowds of difficult to pass through, from time to time there are white, black faces, speaking a variety of languages.
Those once glamorous foreign arcades are now somewhat lonely, and there are few homes in them, most of which have become warehouses for nearby shops. Because it is too crowded, the thirteen-way road has also specially opened a hand-pulled car passage, but pedestrians, hand-pulled cars, and trucks often block the streets, seriously affecting the surrounding traffic and environment.
The name of the thirteen lines is too loud, and there are often friends from other places or even abroad who come to Guangzhou to ask to visit the thirteen lines, and the scene of the wholesale market makes people excited and a little disappointed.
Some people once suggested that the wholesale market of the Thirteen Elements Road be moved out and converted into a tourist commercial street, but the difficulty can be imagined, and there have also been historical researchers who have called for the construction of the Thirteen Elements Museum to preserve the once glorious remains, which may be easier to achieve.
Geographic coordinates
Thirteen Lines is located in the southeast of Liwan District, along the border with Yuexiu District along Renmin Road. The regional scope of the old Thirteen Lines, north to the Thirteen Lines Street, that is, the current Thirteen Lines Road; south to the Pearl River, in front of the current Cultural Park; east to Xihao, now the area around Renji Road; west to Lianxing Street, a section of Shanmulan Road, in this small area, the merchants have created wealth that is invincible to the country, and they have long had the commercial glory of Guangzhou.
The range of the thirteen lines now referred to, including the eastern section of the Thirteen Lines Road and Shanmulan Road, as well as the perpendicular intersection of Guyi Street, Doulanshang Street, Heping East Road, Dashi Street, Hat Street, Changle Street, Xinglong North Street, and Paddle Rail Road, with a total length of about 1785 meters, is crowded with various clothing wholesale stalls, and is the longest clothing trade distribution center in Guangzhou.
Historical coordinates
Thirteen Elements was once a foreign company built near the water, and it is said that it arose in the late Ming Dynasty and mainly gathered in the area of Thirteen Lines Street to operate foreign trade. In the 17th century, China was the most powerful empire in the world at that time, complacency and arrogance made the Qing Dynasty at that time strictly implement a closed country policy, stipulating that only one port in Guangzhou was allowed to carry out foreign trade, and foreign merchants were not allowed to have direct buying and selling relations with other Chinese merchants. The traders controlled the transactions at that time. At that time, the thirteen lines of business were very developed, and they enjoyed the privilege of foreign trade, through which all imported and exported goods had to be bought and sold. Chinese tea, porcelain, silk, etc., were sent through them to all parts of the world, and imported foreign goods must also pass through their hands before they can be transported into the country. The Thirteen Elements carried almost all the commercial splendor of Guangzhou in the late Qing Dynasty, when the Thirteen Elements were known as "Jinshan Zhuhai, Tianzi Nanku". In the early years of Qianlong, the foreign trade tariffs it paid every year, in addition to paying military salaries and military service rates, had to pay more than 500,000 yuan to the imperial court. Foreign trade has created rich merchants, and it is said that the four major families at that time, "Pan, Lu, Wu, and Ye", were already rich and enemy countries.
■ Stories related to the thirteen lines
Sand Noodles: From thirteen lines to thirteen lines
To the west of the site of the Thirteen Lines is Shamian.
Shamian was originally an ordinary sandbar in the Pearl River. In the Second Opium War, the Thirteen Elements and Yiguan were destroyed, and it was difficult to rebuild, the Western powers set their sights on this sandbar on the west side of the Thirteen Elements, and Qing Xianfeng forced the Qing government to agree to give the side of the sandbar river to the British and French to establish a concession, and the Qing government was responsible for laying the foundation and filling in the landfill, and the 280,000 taels of silver buried by the foundation were deducted from the "redemption fee" that attacked Guangzhou that year. Two years later, they signed the "Shamian Concession Agreement" to forcibly occupy Shamian, and the experience of the Anglo-French coalition in occupying Guangzhou made them dare not mix with the locals, so they drove away the Chinese who originally lived there. Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and other countries have successively built consulates, banks, foreign firms, and even public facilities such as churches, post offices, hospitals, hotels, clubs, bars, and stadiums, and a large number of foreigners live and live on the island.
In order to actually control the right to operate Guangzhou's import and export trade, the Western powers further expanded the old foreign firms and constantly opened new foreign firms. At that time, there were thirteen famous foreign firms in Shamian, including the British merchants Jardine and Taikoo, the Japanese merchants Mitsui, and the German merchants Reiwa, known as the "Thirteen Lines of the Ocean". The ruins of the old thirteen lines were preserved until the end of the Qing Dynasty before the houses were rebuilt and the streets were opened. But because of the rise of Shamian and the British occupation of Hong Kong to develop trade, the Thirteen Elements were eventually snubbed.
Today's Shamian can still faintly feel the scene of the old days from the well-preserved old buildings, which were built between 1861 and 1938. There are more than 150 European-style buildings on the island, of which 42 are neo-Baroque, pseudo-Gothic, ticket gallery, neoclassical and Chinese and Western style buildings, which are the most exotic European architectural complex in Guangzhou. The building at No. 2-6 Shamian Avenue, commonly known as the Red Building, was originally a customs foreigners' club, three-storey, red brick masonry, with a spire loft built on the south and north sides, imitating the 19th century British Romantic architectural style; the building at No. 54 Shamian Avenue, originally HSBC, imitating the Western Classical Revival architectural style, four stories high, the outer wall of the second floor is built with columns to the top of the three-story roof, and a pavilion with a vault roof is built on the roof of the southwest side; the building at No. 48 Shamian Avenue is the most representative ticket gallery building, three stories high, reinforced concrete structure, The surrounding corridors are arched and the facades are painted with stone rice, and the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes at 14 Shamian Avenue, although small in scale and simple in structure, is still in imitation Gothic at its entrance.
■ Travel Tips
Transportation: The thirteenth line road is close to the upper and lower nine, and it can be reached by turning from Zhujie Road and walking for a few hundred meters. You can also take Metro Line 1 Huangsha Station out, along Tiyun East Road, Shanmulan Road all the way to the east, is the 13th Line Road. Passing through Renmin South Road from the thirteenth line is Yide Road, or from the B2 exit of Haizhu Square Station of Metro Line 2. Turn from the thirteenth line road into Kangwang South Road, go south across the bridge, that is, sand noodles, you can also go directly from the Huangsha subway station, cross the road is.
Shopping: Thirteen Lines Road is close to Qingping Road, where you can find everything from dried seafood, to tonic herbs, to flowers, birds, fish and insects. Further north, the top of Zhujie Lane is the famous bargain distribution center Dazidi, a densely packed small shop, from clothes, accessories to daily necessities, although the grade is uneven, but carefully tao still has a lot of good things at a good price, many local mothers love to go there to find infant clothing, a few dollars have a deal.
Food: Nearby Shangxiajiu can eat almost all of Guangzhou's famous snacks, Ronghua Restaurant's Ma Xiang Crisp, Nanxin Dessert Expert's Nanxin Shuangpi Milk and Ginger Bump milk, Ou Chengji's noodle soup fresh shrimp wonton, Wu Zhanji's congee and the first porridge, Qingping Hotel's ginger milk tart, Lianxianglou's wife cake, Yinji's soy sauce beef intestines and Admiralty Pavilion's duck dumplings. There are also many restaurants and bars in Shamian, mostly Western food. In addition, the White Swan Hotel and victory hotel have old high-end restaurants, and Qiao Mei and New Lychee Bay are also famous.
Kobayashi's original work public number: inkcn020