Text/Kingdom Building
There are such people, the father is the richest man in China, the old man is the prime minister of the Republic of China, the Diaoyu Islands are the private property of their family, and the name is given by Empress Dowager Cixi. He inherited a huge family business, drunkenly dreamed of death for decades, and after the founding of New China, he could not even afford to buy tickets to play in the park, and died in his ancestral hall in poverty. He is the most famous loser in Chinese history, Sheng Enyi.
Sheng Enyi, a native of Wujin, Jiangsu, was the fourth son of Sheng Xuanhuai, a bureaucratic capitalist in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty, and was known as "Sheng Lao Si" by the Jianghu people. When he was born, Sheng Xuanhuai served as Shangshu of the Ministry of Posts and Communications, and was a big red person around Empress Dowager Cixi (Empress Dowager Cixi gave the Diaoyu Island to Sheng Xuanhuai to collect medicine, and the holy will was brought to the United States by the descendants of the Sheng family), Cixi heard that the Sheng family had a son and gave him the name Enyi.
Sheng Enyi's first three brothers all died prematurely, so he was sheng Xuanhuai's only heir. He inherited the Sheng family's huge industry and became the richest man in China in the early days of the Republic of China.
It is reasonable to say that Sheng Enyi's starting point in life is quite high, his father and the old brothers who have ruled in Beiyang are all dead (Yuan Shikai, Duan Qirui, Xu Shichang and others, all came out from Li Hongzhang's door), the old man is the prime minister of the Republic of China Sun Baoqi, and he himself studied at the University of London in the United Kingdom and Columbia University in the United States, which was also a high-end talent at that time. However, from a young age, he was spoiled and cultivated, and he mastered the wealth of the rich and the country at a young age, and it was difficult for Sheng Enyi not to learn bad.
Sheng Enyi started out swinging wide, and he bought the first Mercedes-Benz sedan in Shanghai. He had 5 aunts and wives, each with a car and a team of servants. He likes that people call him "Fourth Master", and take pictures of the car to make it "4444", and Shanghainese only need to see four '4" cars to know that the fourth master is coming. Then at that time, foreigners engaged in horse racing gambling in Shanghai, and Sheng Enyi gambled well, and he raised 75 horses alone.
Good bet is the label of Sheng Enyi. Today's gambling movies can't move tens of millions of bets, which is fictional, and it is true that people spend thousands of dollars. Sheng Enyi's record in the casino is a lane with more than 100 houses in the Area of Huanghe Road on Beijing Road, and the whole is lost to Lu Xiaojia, the son of Lu Yongxiang, the governor of Zhejiang, if the current value is equivalent, it will not be less than 1 billion yuan, which shows the wealth of the Sheng family and the arrogance of Sheng Enyi. His gamblers all knew the rules of his life: Sheng Lao Si slept heavily during the day and did not get up until four or five o'clock in the afternoon. When you wake up, you see that you have to use money, and the cash at home is not enough, what should you do? Go to the bank, the bank on the street has closed, then you have to come up with the old method of the Sheng family, anyway, there are antique things in the house, just take one to the pawnshop to be used, exchange for money, until the next day the bank opens, and then send someone to withdraw money, to the pawnshop to redeem the antiques. The pawnshop has almost become his second bank, which is a big joke of the Sheng Lao four families. Before the victory of the War of Resistance, Sheng Enyi's family business was basically lost.
Sheng Enyi likes to smoke a lot, and when he was the general manager of Han Yeping, it was impossible for the office to find him in person. Because he had to gamble at night, he couldn't survive without smoking the ocean, and his son wrote in his memoirs: "Daddy is hiding on a smoke floor, smoking a big cigarette while approving documents." "In his way of doing things, the undefeated family is strange."
In order to prevent the decline of the family, Sheng Xuanhuai established the Sheng Yizhuang. Sheng's Yizhuang already had millions of taels of silver savings during Sheng Xuanhuai's lifetime, and when Sheng Enyi's mother, Lady Zhuang, died, he was included in more than one million taels of silver in Yizhuang, and if these funds were used properly, the descendants of the Sheng clan would not have to worry about their livelihood for ten lifetimes. However, after Sheng Enyi had lost most of his property, he actually started the idea of public funds for Yizhuang. On November 26, 1927, Sheng Enyi, together with several other descendants of the Sheng clan, applied to the court to divide the public property of Yizhuang, which triggered the first lawsuit of daughter succession in Chinese history. Finally, with the support of Song Meiling and others, the unmarried Miss Seven and Miss Eight of the Sheng family received a huge amount of property according to the principle of equality between men and women. Sheng Enyi took the lead in dividing up Yizhuang's huge sums of money, and soon squandered it.
After the liberation of Shanghai in 1949, Sheng Enyi stayed in Shanghai. After more than 30 years of perseverance, China's richest man in the past could only live by collecting rent for a few old houses. He and Li Hongzhang's grandson, Li Houfu, often wandered the streets. Once, when I arrived at the gate of Xiangyang Park, both of them wanted to go in and sit down, but you looked at me, I looked at you, and no one could come up with the money to buy tickets.
Sheng Enyi helped the Japanese sell cigarettes when the Japanese occupied Shanghai, and after the matter was reported by the masses, the government confiscated several of his properties in Shanghai, so his life was even more difficult. Fortunately, the Sheng Ancestral Hall in Suzhou Lingering Garden was not confiscated by the local government, and Sheng Enyi has been living in his ancestral hall in his later years.
In 1958, Sheng Enyi fell into poverty and died in the gatehouse of the Lingering Garden. This loser, who went from being The richest man in China to being penniless, finally completed his ups and downs in his life.