In the late Qing Dynasty, behind every successful official, there was often a successful businessman. For example, Sheng Xuanhuai behind Li Hongzhang, and Hu Xueyan behind Zuo Zongtang. Today, let's talk about the story of Zuo Zongtang and Hu Xueyan.
Hu Xueyan was a native of Anhui and an outstanding representative of the hui merchants of the late Qing Dynasty. Curiously, Hu Xueyan did not follow Li Hongzhang, who was also from Anhui, but followed Zuo Zongtang.
Hu Xueyan
For decades, Hu Xueyan had never abandoned Zuo Zongtang. Whether Zuo Zongtang was pacifying the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, attacking the Twist Army, or recovering Xinjiang, he was inseparable from Hu Xueyan's vigorous help. Even after Zuo Zongtang founded the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau, he also needed Hu Xueyan to help Shen Baozhen handle the specific affairs of the shipping administration. Therefore, when the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau was successful, Zuo Zongtang would write to him and compliment him, saying that "the merits of your excellency's initiative are great." After the recovery of Xinjiang, Zuo Zongtang publicly performed Hu Xueyan: "The merits of Xueyan are no different for a while. ”
Naturally, Hu Xueyan's development in business is also indispensable to Zuo Zongtang's feedback. With the protection of Zuo Zongtang, Hu Xueyan was more smooth in business in various places, and he also obtained the title of envoy, wore a yellow horse coat, and wore a two-pin top on the official hat, becoming a world-famous "red-top merchant". Hu Xueyan's mother also followed the light and sealed a lady of the Yipin Commandments. When the Zhejiang Inspector arrived at the door of Hu's house, he also had to get out of the car and walk.
Yellow coat
Unfortunately, in 1883, Hu Xueyan launched a battle with foreign merchants on the lake silk, which ended in a fiasco, and lost 10 million taels of silver overnight. Hu Xueyan has been in business for many years and has strong family property. The 10 million taels of silver was only half of his family property, which was not enough to make him ruin his family. However, in order to crack down on Zuo Zongtang, Li Hongzhang deliberately sent people to release news, claiming that Hu Xueyan had embezzled the deposits of Fukang Qianzhuang, resulting in a large-scale run. Fukang Qianzhuang was forced to declare bankruptcy, which triggered an avalanche reaction, causing Hu Xueyan to close down qianzhuang across the country.
As the saying goes, "The wall is pushed by everyone." When Hu Xueyan was struggling on the brink of bankruptcy, the Qing court made matters worse, dismissed him from his post, ordered people to go to Hangzhou to seal his pawnshops, businesses, etc., and gave him the final blow. Hu Xueyan, who had once been a beautiful place, finally went bankrupt.
Hu Xueyan's former residence
At the beginning, when Hu Xueyan helped Zuo Zongtang raise military salaries, the wealth was extremely prosperous, and high-ranking officials in various provinces across the country placed their private deposits in the money houses set up by Hu Xueyan. Now, since Hu Xueyan is bankrupt, they are scrambling to come and withdraw their deposits, some of them come in person, some of them entrust others to come, and they quarrel endlessly in Hu Xueyan's home.
At this time, Zuo Zongtang came.
What did Zuo Zongtang come to do? Two words: raid the house. It turned out that the Qing court was well aware of Zuo Zongtang's relationship with Hu Xueyan and sent him to handle the matter of raiding the family, and could also leave a way for Hu Xueyan to live. Otherwise, letting officials who are friendly with Li Hongzhang raid their homes is probably going to put Hu Xueyan's family in a situation of no return.
Tso
When Zuo Zongtang arrived at Hu Xueyan's house, the personnel in charge of managing the accounts had already fled, which made the accounts confused and difficult to trace. Therefore, Zuo Zongtang personally brought the account book and reconciled the accounts with the officials one by one. When the officials saw this situation, they all did not dare to face it directly, for fear that if they said too much, they would cause Zuo Zongtang to sternly question the origin of the arrears. Zuo Zongtang was very famous in the official arena, and ordinary people did not dare to provoke him at all.
What to do? They had no choice but to drastically reduce their number, and even some officials deposited more than 100,000 taels of silver, but they only dared to claim 1,000 or 2,000 taels of silver.
Zuo Zongtang will calculate the plan and raise the pen to make corrections. In this way, the original total of millions of silver deposits, only more than 300,000 taels of silver remain. With a big stroke of his pen, Zuo Zongtang helped Hu Xueyan save millions of taels of silver. High, really high!
Qingyu Hall opened by Hu Xueyan
At this time, Hu Xueyan still owed 700,000 taels of silver to Wen Yu, a co-founder and minister in charge of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Zuo Zongtang was a scholar of Dongge University, and he met Wen Yu during his tenure as minister of military aircraft in Beijing, and it was inconvenient for him to intervene, so he entrusted Dexin, an envoy of Zhejiang Province, to handle the tail sweeping work on his behalf.
I don't know how to do it, the news that "Wen Yu has 700,000 taels of silver deposits in Fukang Qianzhuang" leaked out and spread to the imperial court, attracting the attention of Deng Chengxiu in the incident. Deng Chengxiu was upright, not afraid of the powerful, dared to enter the advice, and was known as the "Iron Pen Imperial History". He immediately reported to the imperial court and questioned the origin of Wen Yu's 700,000 taels of silver. The imperial court ordered Wen Yu to understand the echo, and Wen Yu had no choice but to admit that he had accumulated 360,000 taels of silver when he was serving as the supervisor of Fujian Customs, the tax supervisor of Chongwenmen, and the general of Fuzhou, and was stored in Hu Xueyan Fukang Qianzhuang. The imperial court accepted his claim, but considered the amount too large and ordered him to donate 100,000 taels of silver.
When Dexin disposed of Hu Xueyan's remaining property, he sold more than 200,000 taels of silver with the Qingyutang house as collateral. After deducting Wen Yu's 100,000 taels of silver, there were still more than 100,000 taels of silver left. Dexin allowed Hu Xueyan to stay as a cost to support his family. It can be seen that Dexin is still very benevolent.