From the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, with the gradual eastward wind of the west, the agrarian society over the past thousands of years faced major changes, so many influential figures with the mark of the times emerged, and the famous industrialist and educator Zhang Xiao was one of them.
Zhang Jian was born in the third year of Qing Xianfeng (1853) in Changle Town, Haimen County, Jiangsu Province When Zhang Jian was born, his family was well-off, and his father Zhang Pengnian ran a porcelain shop. Due to the prominence of early wisdom, his father invited a famous teacher for him to teach early, and Zhang Xiao lived up to the expectations of the public, and at the age of 15, he was admitted to the xiucai.
Portrait of Zhang Xiao
According to the regulations of the Qing Dynasty, those who did not have meritorious names in the three generations of ancestors belonged to the "cold nationality" and were not allowed to participate in the imperial examination. Zhang Jian had to impersonate the descendants of a certain scholar from Rugao and take the imperial examination (similar to the college entrance examination immigrants).
This "impostor" storm brought endless troubles to Zhang Xiao and almost buried the great future of this talented teenager. Fortunately, peng Jiuyu, then the governor of Jiangsu Province, and Sun Yunjin, the southern governor of Jiangsu, helped to mediate between them, and with the approval of the Ministry of Ming Households, Zhang Xiao was able to get rid of the situation of "impostor".
Sun Yunjin was the first nobleman in Zhang Xiao's life. For the next two years, Zhang Jian served as Sun Yunjin's aide, and later recommended him to the famous Huai army general Wu Changqing to serve as a confidential clerk for eight years.
Zhang Xiao accompanied the "Qingzi Battalion" to oversee Zhejiang and Shandong, and was invited to Korea to deal with the "Noonday Mutiny". This experience of accompanying the army increased his military and political ability, and also because of his sharp writing, it attracted the attention of Zhang Zhidong, Li Hongzhang, and other senior officials, especially the friendship between him and Yuan Shikai's teachers and students in the "Qingzi Camp," which laid the foundation for the smooth establishment of industry in the future.
Late Qing dynasty general Wu Changqing
After Wu Changqing's military curtain retired, Zhang Jianwan refused the invitation of Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Liangguang, to enter the curtain and return to the examination hall again Coinciding with the time when Sun Yunjin was in charge of Jiangning (Nanjing), Zhang Xiao, as a protégé, could only avoid suspicion and rush to the Beijing Division to take the exam, and won the first place in the Guozi Supervision Examination. Then, in the Shuntianfu Examination, he won the qualification for the first place in the Southern Scholars
His special experience and outstanding talent made Zhang Xiao a young talent with a small reputation, and he was appreciated by Li Hongzao, a scholar and official of the co-founding university, and Weng Tonggong, the minister of the Ministry of Works, the minister of military aircraft, and the minister of state affairs
In 1894, with the strong reward and support of the "Qing School", Zhang Xiao participated in the Enke Examination for Empress Dowager Cixi's 60th birthday and won the honor of being a first-class and one-time grand leader.
Victory
When meeting Tianzi, his master Weng Tonggong quoted Zhang Xiao as "Zhang Xiao is a famous scholar in Jiangnan and a filial piety", which the Guangxu Emperor gladly hand-picked, and Empress Dowager Cixi also admired Zhang Xiao's calm, dignified, earnest and old-fashioned manners.
In 1895, the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War broke out Seeing that the country was poor and weak, and the people were poor, Zhang Jian did not continue to stay in the Hanlin Academy to wait for the promotion of officials and knights, but chose a completely different path from the traditional Confucian scholars, that is, the path he later called "villageism"---- the establishment of industries, the establishment of schools, and the opening of charities in an attempt to strengthen the country and prosper the country.
Zhang Jian and his family
The first step in "villageism" was to set up industry. In 1895, Zhang Xiao was dispatched by Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Liangjiang and minister of Nanyang, to take advantage of the opportunity of the general office's Tonghai regiment training to return to his hometown of Nantong and begin to set up a dasheng yarn factory mainly engaged in cotton yarn production, in order to save the country and make the township prosperous.
Nantong was an important cotton production base in East China at that time, and cotton yarn was the most important civilian biological resource for the people Zhang Xiao derived from the Zhou Yi "Great Virtue of Heaven and Earth" and named the factory "Dasheng Spinning Factory"
Daisei Spinning Mill
Although it was difficult to set up the factory at the beginning, after two years of hard work, the spinning machine was finally successfully started, and the factory quickly won the market and obtained huge profits. From tens of thousands of vehicles at the time of operation, the cumulative profit reached 5.4 million units.
Since then, taking Dasheng as his mother, Zhang Jian has successively built a number of branches in Chongming Waisha (present-day Qidong), Nanwan of Changle Town, Nantong Jiangjiaqiao, and other places, and opened more than 60 industrial and commercial entities, such as Guangsheng Oil Factory, Fuxing Noodle Factory, Dada Motor Rice Milling Company, and Dada Inland River Steamship Company, gradually forming a huge commercial group that runs through the upstream and downstream industrial chains.
The former site of the Daisei Spinning Mill
In order to obtain a reliable cotton-producing base, Zhang Jian declared the establishment of China's first agricultural company "Tonghai Reclamation and Animal Husbandry Company" established by way of a IPO and fund-raising. Inspired by the ideal of industrial salvation of the country, Zhang Xiao led the team to overcome all kinds of difficulties in the natural environment and, for ten years, turned the sea into a mulberry field, and enabled tens of thousands of peasants in central And northern Jiangsu to have a place to live.
The second step in "villageism" is the establishment of education. Zhang Xiao invested a lot of the profits made by the Dasheng Spinning Factory into the cause of education Starting with the establishment of the Tongzhou Normal School in 1902, Zhang Jian successively founded more than 370 schools of various types in Nantong, including female teachers, kindergartens, primary schools, and middle schools, covering all ages from young children to adults, covering agriculture, textiles, medicine, commerce, and other fields, forming a complete education system that runs through ordinary education and vocational education.
At the invitation of Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Jian also organized sanjiang normal school and Nanjing higher normal school (the predecessor of Nanjing University, Southeast University and other universities) in Nanjing. In Shanghai, he organized wusong fisheries school (the predecessor of Shanghai University), Wusong merchant marine school (the predecessor of Shanghai Maritime University), and participated in the establishment of Fudan University, Shanghai Commercial University and other universities.
Zhang Xiao wrote the school motto for Tongzhou Shihua
Nantong education has aroused widespread concern from all walks of life Liang Qichao praised "Nantong is recognized as the first advanced city".
The third step in "villageism" is the building of charities In 1905, Zhang Jian prepared the first public welfare organization "Nantong Museum", and used this as a base to promote scientific knowledge to the public. Today, the "Nantong Museum" has become a national key cultural relics protection unit announced by the State Council, and Nantong has thus become the birthplace of China's museum industry.
In 1912, Zhang Jian rebuilt the Dongyue Temple in the south of the city and established it as a Nantong Library, with a collection of 130,000 books, of which Zhang Jian personally donated more than 80,000 volumes Zhang Xiao and his brother also founded the Han Molin Printing And Book Bureau, opened current affairs newspapers such as Nantong Daily and Wushan Daily, and printed the works of local literati and scholars.
Zhang Jian was bent on promoting local autonomy with "villageism". In the 16 years from 1906 to 1922, he spent more than 2.57 million yuan on the salary earned by the industry, all of which was used in education and charity, and founded 16 charitable undertakings such as Nantong Hospital, Old Nursing Home, Nursery, Meteorological Observatory, Linggong Society, Civilian Workshop, and More Vulgar Theater, benefiting hundreds of thousands of Nantong people.
Charities
Because of his establishment of industry and education, the imperial court rewarded him with the title of three pins and made him a first-class advisory officer of the Ministry of Commerce. After the abdication of Emperor Sun, the Provisional Government of The Republic of China in Nanjing was established, and Zhang Jian became the director of the Ministry of Industry in 1921, and immediately resigned. In the following year, he became the director of agriculture, forestry, industry and commerce of the Beijing government and the president of the National Water Conservancy Bureau.
However, as the saying goes, "No one has a thousand days, and no flowers are red for a hundred days." In addition to taking advantage of its geographical advantages and improving management, the trick of the Dasheng Spinning Mill is mainly to exploit the peasants by means of collecting flowers at a low price and selling yarn at a higher price, as well as exploiting female and child laborers by means of lowering wages and extending working hours.
Zhang Xiao was born into a traditional Confucian scholar and did not even understand business management. As a joint-stock enterprise, Zhang Xiao invested little original share capital, but enjoyed supreme power, often disposing of factories as private property.
During the period of continuous profitability of Dasheng Spinning Mill, its strong profitability is enough to cover up all governance drawbacks, and once the conditions are abnormal, there will inevitably be a phenomenon of "difficult to turn around on the ship".
Tai Sang Pier
In 1922, due to the successive disasters of various salt reclamation companies, coupled with the warlord chaos and the intensification of imperialist economic oppression of China, the domestic people's livelihood was withered and declined. In addition, the investment of Dasheng Spinning Mill in education and charity has never returned, and it has to rely on loans to survive, and the highest loan of the spinning mill reached 9 million taels, resulting in heavy debt and sharp decline of the spinning mill.
Zhang Xiao later admitted himself: This small matter is big, and the rush to work is extensive, which has dragged down da sheng. Seeing that the Dasheng Spinning Factory was getting thinner and thinner, in order to maintain the operation of public welfare and charity, Zhang Xiao had to rely on selling words to raise charitable funds For the first time in the history of the imperial examination, Zhuangyuan sold words for public welfare undertakings.
But at this time, it was no longer able to reverse the decline of the Dasheng Spinning Factory. In 1925, four banks, including Shanghai and Jincheng, organized a delegation to Nantong to check the accounts, formally took over the Dasheng Spinning Factory and the companies with arrears, and the giant commercial aircraft carrier built by Zhang Xiao was destroyed in an instant.
In August 1926, Zhang Jian died of illness in Nantong. He left a joint sentence for his tombstone: That is, after this rough life, he will have to accompany the Five Spirit Mountain. Once sitting on tens of millions of assets, but in the end the industry withered, the end is inevitably regrettable.
After Zhang Xiao's death, Hu Shi described him as "a great hero of failure." Zhang Binglin (張炳麟) "Undertake the payment of the fire of the Pavilion, be able to write the article Yi Kedi, carry the instrument of the end of the wooden Hu Lian, and clear the name because of the loss of goods". The founding father once said of China's national industry: "When talking about light industry, we must not forget Zhang Xiao." When the writer Ye Zhaoyan visited Zhang Xiao's former residence, he called Zhang "the most prominent leader of the Qing Dynasty", which is very good!
As a literati, Zhang Jian was both good at poetry and calligraphy, and his poetry was late Tang Dynasty, and he also studied Su Shi, and wrote "Nine Records of Zhang Xiuzi", "Diary of Liuxi Caotang", "Zhang Jizi Poetry Collection", "Zhang Jian's Letter Manuscript", "Shi Weng's Self-determined Chronology" and so on.
Zhang Xiao and Mei Lanfang
Zhang Xiao is crowned as a Confucian with the honor of the Yuan, but he is not a "nerd" who only dies to read, and the cause he has done in his life is a people's livelihood industry that benefits the villagers, and the fields he is involved in and the economic achievements he has achieved are unmatched by his contemporaries.
Zhang Xiao has devoted his life to practicing "villageism" and trying to demonstrate the whole country with the "autonomy model" of Nantong, which is no less than the modern version of "rural revitalization", which is of far-reaching significance
2021.11.2Tonglu. Image source network, invasion and deletion.