Chinese architect Pei (YÙ) Ming
Since the history of thousands of years in China, there are countless famous and prestigious families that have continued endlessly, the most famous of which is the Kong family where Confucius belonged, and some family families that have been handed down for thousands of years have also left a strong pen and ink in history, such as wang Xizhi's Langya Wang clan, Xie Lingyun's Chen County Xie clan and so on.
In Suzhou, where people are brilliant, there is also a family of Pei, since the ancestors of the Bei family settled in Suzhou in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, to the present more than 500 years, it has been passed down for more than 20 generations, and it has been rich and noble in Shanghai with thousands of properties. In the history of 500 years, the Pei family has been full of talents, some of the clan have become pharmaceutical tycoons, some are patriotic industrialists, and the most well-known to the public should be the famous architect I.M. Pei.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the origin of Suzhou Beishi, which made its fortune in the herbal medicine business</h1>
In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, there were four rich families in Suzhou, namely Bi, Mao, Ge, and Bei, and the Bei family here is the Bei family, or more precisely, the Bei family under the leadership of Bemutin. Bemutin is the seventh generation of the family, and the beim family's property is also carried forward in his hands and become a local rich, but bemutin's success is based on the hardships of generations of predecessors.
Suzhou Bei clan genealogy part
Today, the ancestor of Suzhou Beishi is a man named Beilantang, who came to Wu County, Jiangsu Province, from Lanxi, Zhejiang province in the early years of Jiajing to do business in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, and Wu County is now Suzhou.
Bei Lan Tang is a doctor, also engaged in some herbal business, at first he set up a stall selling medicine in the South Trench Street outside the Gate, and often practiced medicine around, and gradually accumulated a little family property, he used this as a start-up capital to start a specialty in the medicinal materials business, which is also the basis for the Later Development of the Bei family.
When Sun Bei and Yu, the cousins of Bei lan, took charge of the Bei family, after two generations of management, the Bei family's herbal business had begun to take shape and had a good reputation in the local area. Later, after decades of operation by Bei Heyu, the Bei family is already a small asset family, and an incident that happened during the Bei heyu period made the family's reputation greatly improved.
Suzhou Beishi Ancestral Hall
The Bei family naturally had contacts with many merchants in business, and a merchant surnamed Pan put his lotus root in Bei heyu and asked him to help sell it, and the money obtained was temporarily deposited in the Bei family. Late that night, their warehouse was stolen, and Bei and Yu's first thought was not their own herbal property, but boss Pan's payment.
When he transferred the money, the robbers had already looted the valuables in the warehouse, and Bei heyu's selfless act of giving up his life was praised by the local people, and the reputation of the Bei family medicine store became louder and louder.
During the Qianlong period of Yongzheng, after Bei Muting took charge of the family, the Bei family truly became a suzhou magnate. On the basis of its predecessors, Bemutin integrated the family business and expanded the scale, so that the Bei family medicine store resounded throughout Suzhou. In addition to business, Bemutin was a philanthropist who sold his family's grain stocks at very low prices during droughts and famines to help the victims.
As a rich man, it is inevitable that someone will ask him to borrow money, and for a long time, Bemutin has accumulated a lot of IOUs, and on his 60th birthday, he will burn all the piles of IOUs in public, eliminating the debts of tens of thousands of taels of silver, and later taking out money to "pay welfare" to the domestic servants and long-term workers. If the previous Bei family was only a huge wealth in business, then in the Pei heyu period, the Bei family was a real giant.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > representatives of the descendants of the Late Qing Dynasty And early Ming Dynasty - Belitai and Pei Runsheng</h1>
The time came to the end of the Qing Dynasty, after hundreds of years of reproduction and development, it has been passed down to the 13th generation. Among this generation, the most famous are Pei's grandfather Belitai and Pei Runsheng, known as the "King of Pigments".
In his early years, Belitai once participated in the imperial examination and won the Xiucai, and later became a gongsheng of Suzhou Fuxue, who could have embarked on the road of becoming an official, but later when the Qing court collapsed, he returned to his hometown to take care of the family property, and was really "forced to go home to inherit the family property".
I.M. Pei (first from left) Family portrait
In 1915, With the savings in his hands, Bellitas invested in the Shanghai Commercial Savings Bank, officially entered the financial industry, and later served as a director and manager of the Suzhou branch. Bellitas is also the founder of China's first emerging travel agency and has an important position in the financial world.
Pei Runsheng came to Shanghai Ruikang Pigment Company as an apprentice at the age of 16, and after the owner died 12 years later, he took over the position of manager. After the outbreak of World War I, Pei Runsheng made a lot of money by selling German paints, and then began to invest everywhere, and now the Jinling Building on South Sichuan Road in Shanghai was built by him.
Pei Runsheng's contribution to society is that his pigment factory provides a large number of jobs and drives the development of the pigment industry, and for the Bei family, his greatest contribution is to build a lion forest for the Bei family.
Today's Lion Grove
In 1917, Pei Runsheng bought the land of the Lion Forest and its surrounding areas, which lasted for many years and invested nearly one million silver dollars to repair the Lion Forest, which is also the face of the Lion Forest we see today. In the lion forest, Pei Runsheng built the Pei Clan Ancestral Hall and also built the Pei Clan Yizhuang to help the Pei clan people. After the founding of new China, the Pei family donated the lion forest to the state, and this private garden was displayed in front of the public.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > I.M. Pei is also a descendant of the Pei family</h1>
The architect we know, I.M. Pei, is the 15th generation descendant of the family, and his father Pei Zuyi was the first person to break the monopoly of foreign exchange in China by foreigners, once served as a director of the Bank of China, later moved to the United States, and died in 1982.
Beijing Fragrant Hills Hotel
Pei's deeds are widely known, as one of the most famous architects in modern China, his works have spread all over the world: the Glass Pyramid of the Louvre in France, the Fragrant Hills Hotel in Beijing, China, the National Gallery of Art in the United States, the German History Museum, the Rookie Museum of Art in Japan, etc., and he has been called "the last master of modern architecture".
Today's Suzhou Pei family is estimated to have been passed down to more than 20 generations, and several of Pei's sons are also world-renowned architects. The eldest son, Bei Dingzhong, was an urban planner who died early, and the second son, Bei Jianzhong, received a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's degree in architecture from Harvard University in 1968 and 1972, respectively, and participated in the design of many projects such as the Suzhou Museum.
I.M. Pei and his third son, Pei Lizhong, and granddaughter
The third son, Bei Lizhong, is also a master of architecture from Harvard University, and together with his elder brother Jianzhong, he founded the "Bei's Architects", and now he is also an excellent architectural designer, and in 2017, he also cooperated with the Institute of Architecture of Tsinghua University on behalf of the firm.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the Bei family lasts for a hundred years, and paying attention to education is the foundation of the family</h1>
The Suzhou Bei family can last for a hundred years, and the reason for the emergence of talents is inseparable from their family style and ancestral training. But what is surprising is that The Pei's ancestral training is only a short 30 words: "It is better to leave off descendants with virtue than to leave offspring with virtue, and it is better to leave descendants with unique property than to leave descendants with public property." The meaning of this sentence is simple and clear, and it is not a very profound truth, but this is the ancestral motto of the Bei family.
In addition to the ancestral training, there is also a reason that the descendants of the Pei family will be extra cautious when choosing a spouse, in the biography of Pei, it has been mentioned that the former Pei clan people "do not marry without a famous door", and the famous door here does not all refer to the origin, but also contains the concept of education. For example, I.M. Pei's mother, Zhuang Lianjun, was the last son of the Qing Dynasty, who was proficient in piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, and gentle and virtuous.
Pei's fathers, Pei Zuyi and Jiang Shiyun
After Zhuang's death, Pei Zuyi married Jiang Shiyun, one of the "Four Beauties of Beijing" and from a diplomatic family. Pei's own wife, Lu Shuhua, graduated from Wesleyan College, where the Song sisters attended, and her father was an engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her grandfather, Zhang Yintang, was the last minister of the Qing Dynasty to the United States.
The benefits of such a "non-famous person and no marriage" are obvious, because a well-educated woman is a rare wealth for a family, and she has a profound impact on her husband and children, and even grandchildren, which is exactly how "one woman can influence three generations".
I.M. Pei and his wife, Shuhua Lu
But this is only a superficial reason, and the real reason for the longevity of the Bei family is because of the emphasis on the education of future generations. Money and wealth will eventually pass away, only the morality and culture have been passed down from generation to generation, paying attention to the moral character cultivation of future generations, which is why the family ancestral training, although concise and concise, can ensure that the Bei family has not faded for hundreds of years.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
Looking back at the history of the Bei family, it is not difficult for us to find that education is the factor that can really determine a person, but in the current model of test-taking education, how many parents believe that high scores and good universities are the biggest success. In order to send your children to famous schools, they will spend a lot of money to buy degree houses and enroll in teacher tutoring classes.
Although it is true that many students have come out of the test-taking education and achieved careers, this does not mean that we should ignore quality education, and those who have been hyped up by the media, if you study their growth trajectory, you can find that they are not only the product of test-taking education, but also the subtlety of family education and the environment.
Classrooms at Maotanchang Secondary School
It can be said that they take high scores, not because they can take high scores, but because of their excellent qualities, the additional attributes produced are not "I score high, so I am excellent", but "because I am excellent, so I have high scores".
Good education is all aspects, not just the mastery of knowledge, but strive to cultivate a complete, perfect, complete person, although the character is only a stroke, but to write him well, but it takes each individual to complete it with a lifetime.