Why was Zhou Ying enshrined as a female merchant saint

The large-scale TV series "That Year the Flowers Bloomed and the Moon Was Round" is based on Zhou Ying as the character archetype, which is based on the historical facts of the Wu family in AnWuBao, Jingyang County, Shaanxi Province, and tells the inspirational legendary life of Zhou Ying, the richest woman in Shaanxi who was born in the late Qing Dynasty. Historically, Zhou Ying is indeed a person.

Zhou Ying was born in Sanyuan County, Shaanxi Province, it is rumored that she was talented, entered the Wu family of wubao in Jingyang' an, and married the young master of the Wu family, Wu Ping, and then her husband Wu Ping and her father-in-law died for some reason, and the Wu family gradually fell into the middle of the family, she went through ups and downs to establish the "business empire" of the Wu clan in Shaanxi, and also became the only successful businesswoman who made the business rich and invincible. Zhou Ying never remarried in her life, and her whole life has been in the business game, leaving many legendary stories. Her righteous deeds and visionary business ideas for the people are still widely spread by the local people.

Zhou Ying married at the age of 17 in AnwuBao, Anwu Town, Jingyang County, and only one year after the marriage, her father-in-law was killed and her husband died of illness. She was ordered to take charge of the family in the face of the embezzlement of assets by the treasurers and the open and secret struggle within the family, and she successfully resolved the family business crisis with extraordinary wisdom, built a commercial building that was about to collapse into a business empire, and created a "Qin Shang" myth.

In the face of danger, he was appointed to take charge of the family business

Qin shang, also known as Shaanxi shang, is considered to be the earliest shang gang in China according to regional kinship, in history, "Silk Road", "tea horse zhandao", "take the west entrance" these well-known words are because of Qin shang, it can be said that Qin shang is a "living fossil" of traditional Chinese commercial culture.

Zhou Ying is a legendary woman in a generation of Qin merchants. She was born in 1869, the ninth year of Tongzhi, and after two Opium Wars, the Qing Dynasty government has revealed the ruin and desolation of the last days. The turmoil of the times has also brought about a change of thinking, and the previous tradition of "heavy agriculture and suppression of business" has been challenged, and businessmen have become an active group in society.

Zhou Ying's father's name is Zhou Haichao, and when the Zhou family was also a rich merchant's family in the local area, when she was 17 years old, Zhou Ying married Wu Ping, the only son of Wu Weiwen, the richest man in Jingyang County. Wu Weiwen was both an official in the dynasty and a famous salt merchant, who undertook the salt monopoly in Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi and other provinces, and was a red-top merchant of the same generation as Hu Xueyan.

Marrying into the Wu family was the envy of thousands of people, but Zhou Ying did not know that her husband was seriously ill. Wu Weiwen deliberately concealed his son's illness and wanted to disperse the "White Tiger Fierce Star" through the wedding celebration "Red Warbler Follows His Destiny".

On the day of the big wedding, Wu Ping confessed his illness to her: "I have lived in the world for 18 years, drunk bitter soup for 18 years, I know that I am stepping on thin ice and stepping on duckweed, if Miss Wu is not willing to marry Qin Jin, I am willing to open the back garden door to send Miss back to Mengdian Village to escape marriage." ”

Although Zhou Ying was both shocked and angry, years of family upbringing made her quickly calm down: "I have entered the cave room with XiangGong today, and I Zhou Ying is your wife wu ping." Today's great joy, I hope that Xianggong can guard against apes and horses with the words of wanli, and pull the cart of fate with me Zhou Ying..."

Who knows that fate likes to tease people, and the happiness after marriage is soon broken. Soon after, the father-in-law was killed, the husband suffered a blow and died of illness, and the Wu family gradually fell into the middle of the family. Because the Wu family had no male heirs, the Wu Zhou clan became the only heir of the Wu family.

In the turbulent society of the late Qing Dynasty, it takes a lot of courage for women to show their faces and stand in the mall. But she resolutely assumed this responsibility. At that time, the Wu family still had many businesses, shops and capital. With the support of primitive capital, she is surrounded by dozens of capable people plotting things, especially Luo Tianzeng, the governor of Yangzhou, Yang Maoting, Wang Zixu, Wang Younong and others, who are resourceful and judgmental and have good management.

After she took charge of the family, in order to maintain the operation of the Wu family's business name, shop, land, real estate and other commercial capital, she showed amazing business talent, her bold reform can be described as unprecedented, and many business laws still have great inspiration for us.

Become the leader of Qin shang

She was only 18 years old when she became the head. After taking over Wu's business, she first began to tour her own business territory across the country.

At that time, the director of the Chengdu Mountain Goods Medicinal Materials Store "Chuanhua General Number" and the Yangzhou "Yulong Quan" Salt General Director wanted to take advantage of the death of the old owner to take advantage of the death of the old owner to take advantage of the death of the old owner to take advantage of the business name, she secretly launched an investigation into this, and had a large amount of evidence, in the process of confrontation with the two directors, such as the iron evidence of The Mountain and the righteous words of Benevolence and Righteousness Zhixin, the two supervisors were defeated.

In the struggle with Li Hongtu, the director of Chengdu's "Chuanhua General", Zhou Ying demonstrated her public relations ability to deal with the crisis. First of all, she broke the rumor that Li Hongtu "Wu Weiwen gave him the general title of Chuanhua"; second, she dotted on the relevant officials of Chengdu Prefecture in Sichuan Province; she completely defeated Li Hongtu from a moral and legal standpoint, causing him to lose the hearts of the people. Subsequently, the honest and trustworthy guy was promoted by her to the management of the firm.

Liu Qiangdong once said that the core of company management is to manage people, and the core of managing people is how to select people, how to employ people, how to retain people, how to prevent "big enterprise diseases", ensure the smooth flow of information, and reduce the ridicule of departments.

The same is true of ancient business management, and Zhou Ying is well versed in the methods of managing people. In order to stabilize people's hearts, she implemented the "yang and yin violation", increased the salary of the guy by 20%, and increased the year-end bonus. When the salary of all the staff of "Yulong Quan" increased by 20%, their salary was 30% higher than the minimum annual salary of Yangzhou business, plus the annual dividend, the salary of "Yulong Quan" employee Dai was superior among its peers in Jiangnan.

The decision linked employee receipts to store interests, and most businesses now distribute their own income similarly. This kind of equity incentive system in the operation of modern enterprises has greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of the clerks, so that the business of "Yulongquan" has not been damaged by the change of manager, but has flourished.

Zhou Ying's personality is heavy on love and righteousness, so there are many capable people around her who are willing to follow her, which is also the premise for her to brainstorm and quickly grasp the operation of the market. She regarded them as brothers and sisters, the stewards as brothers and sisters, and the children who followed her throughout were grateful, not only for them to start a family, but also to educate their children.

Nowadays, many enterprises attach importance to employee relations, and Zhou Ying is undoubtedly the forerunner of building employee relations.

The land issue has always been the key to China's "three rural" problems and the core of the rural economy. After zhou Ying deeply realized the importance of land to farmers, she began a drastic reform: returning the land to the tenants, reducing rent, and assuming its own profits and losses, unchanged for 20 years. She gave the land she managed to the sharecroppers and cultivated it almost free of charge, because the agricultural economy at that time could only support her family, and the more promising was the commercial economy, and she won the support of the villagers.

The secret to making her truly the "richest man" is the application of the laws of the market economy. Before the idea of a market economy appeared in China, she knew to play her cards according to the laws of the market. At that time, the Wu family's industry involved cotton, oil mills, shochu shops, grain stores, rice shops, cloth... The price of many products fluctuates according to the laws of the market, and cotton is harvested in the autumn of the year. However, the cotton shop in Guanzhong wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to bargain, which caused dissatisfaction among cotton farmers, and some cotton farmers simply did not sell.

She proposed to "make up for the apology with abundance" and bought cotton at a higher price than the market, resulting in a monopoly on the cotton industry. The leading boss of Xi'an's cotton industry had to turn to Zhou Ying because he could not supply customers, and could only buy cotton from Zhou Ying at a high price. The next year, the cotton harvest failed, and because of the previous year's cotton inventory, Zhou Ying defeated the others. In 7 years, she went from going in and out of 3,000 tons of cotton a year to buying more than 110,000 tons of cotton a year, and changed from a small fight to a large cotton trader in Guanzhong.

She has too many advantages that businessmen do not have: integrity, good use of people, good at judging the situation, seeking innovation and change, and even transnational consciousness. She learned advanced science and technology, as well as purchased more advanced machinery and equipment with textile fabrics that were not available in the country. After that, it was also exported to Europe and the United States through cruise ships, and the Wu family's commercial territory extended overseas under her operation!

As a businesswoman in the late Qing Dynasty, being able to find business opportunities in the turbulent and chaotic situation was enough to make her a leader in Qin merchants!

Earn respect for businessmen

The most talked about in Zhou Ying's life was her relationship with Empress Dowager Cixi.

In 1900, when Cixi took refuge in Xi'an, Zhou Ying provided Cixi with 100,000 taels of silver, and Cixi personally inscribed a plaque of "Lady Protector of the Country" and accepted her as a righteous daughter. After the signing of the Treaty of Xinugi, she paid tribute to the Qing government with silver, went to the country to suffer, and was named "Lady of a Pint of Commandments". Cixi and she saw each other not only because she donated money, but also because they were both widows, but they also had a foothold in the circle of men's power.

Not only was she generous in times of national crisis, but she was also generous to the townships, and it was because of this that she won unparalleled popularity and fame among society, business and ordinary people.

The development of water conservancy, the running of education, the construction of the Temple of Literature, and the assistance of the army have made her a well-known "businesswoman" in the Guanzhong area. Due to wars and natural disasters, a wave of starvation has emerged in the Guanzhong area. Zhou Ying decided to open a warehouse to release grain and set up a porridge factory to sell and help the victims. She opened a porridge factory in the disaster-stricken areas of Guanzhong, and asked the rice stores in Jingyang, Chunhua, Sanyuan, Pucheng, and Fuping to open warehouses and release grain, and distribute the grain to the poor families in the surrounding areas. When the two counties of Jingyang and Sanyuan were repairing the county chronicle, they especially recorded her good deeds in the annals of history.

In fact, when the government at that time was handed over silver, there were different opinions in the family, but Zhou Ying's view of the family and the country was very simple: "This imperial court is gone, the country is gone, and the family will no longer exist."

Before she died, she divided up the property she had earned, and left some funds for the rebuilding of Zheng Baiqu in the future. However, after the long years of war and absurd political struggle, the rebuilding of the Zhengbai Canal became her unfulfilled wish, and the gold and silver treasures used to repair the canal also died with her death.

From the widow of 18 years old to the death of 42 years, In the short period of 24 spring and autumn periods, Zhou Ying successfully reversed the decline of the Wu family's business, won the respect of the world, and won herself a unique reputation in the world.

Because of the good deeds she did, such as building a temple of literature, running a righteous school, opening a warehouse to release grain, giving porridge to relieve disasters, donating silver to dig wells, diverting water to repair canals, and constantly doing good deeds, the people called her a "living bodhisattva".

When she completed her bumpy and legendary life, she could not help but make future generations awe-inspired.

"Honesty and deceitfulness, self-discipline and self-discipline." Take wisdom from the material, use the commercial country, make up for the apologies with abundance, and eat with the next person on the first and fifteenth day of the first month..." Each article is a great enlightenment for the company's managers.

"The vertebrae are buried, and the time is pitched, and the changes are general." Her success is not only to build a collapsed commercial building into a business empire, the business spread all over the country, but also in the traditional concept of businessmen seeking profits, she has won herself and the merchant community with her business wisdom and unparalleled respect for the merchant community.