On April 27, 1916, Sheng Xuanhuai, a prominent businessman and politician in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, died of illness in Shanghai.
After Sheng Xuanhuai's death, his third wife, Zhuang Qiyu, spent 300,000 taels of silver to hold a grand funeral for him. On the same day, the funeral procession was massively lined up from Wujiang Road to the Bund. In order to maintain order, the concession even carried out traffic control in the surrounding area.
Sheng Xuanhuai
Sheng Xuanhuai left a family property worth more than 11.6 million taels of silver to future generations. This family property is worth at least billions of yuan or even tens of billions of yuan now. Sheng Xuanhuai understands the principle of "three generations of wealth" very well, and has used some brains on how to distribute the inheritance. He knew that if he gave all this large amount of family property to his descendants, he would surely produce a batch of stupid children, and it would not be long before they would sit on the mountain and eat the sky. Therefore, Sheng Xuanhuai adopted the common practice of foreign rich people, distributing half of the family property to his descendants in his will, and the other half set up "Yuzhai Yizhuang" to relieve the poor families of the Sheng clan and support social charity.
In order to ensure that the execution of the will was in place, Sheng Xuanhuai designated Li Jingfang, the eldest son of his benefactor Li Hongzhang, as the executive supervisor. Under the supervision of Li Jingfang, Sheng Xuanhuai's will was executed, and about half of the more than 11.6 million taels of silver was injected into the "Yuzhai Yizhuang". Among them, 40% are used as charitable funds, 40% are used as Sheng's provident fund, and 20% are used as Sheng family public funds. The other half was divided equally between the five houses of the Sheng family, and each house received an inheritance of 1.16 million taels of silver.
Li Jingfang
"Yuzhai Yizhuang" became the first charitable trust institution in modern China.
Objectively speaking, Sheng Xuanhuai's will distribution plan is more well considered, not only safeguarding the interests of the Sheng family, but also supporting social charity, so it is widely praised. In 1921, the Beiyang government also issued a commendation order to the Sheng family.
However, during the Republic of China period, none of the Criminal Law, Civil Law, and Commercial Law were formulated, let alone the Charity Law, trust law, and other laws and regulations to escort charities, and the "Yuzhai Yizhuang" was doomed to not go further.
In the 1920s, with the death of Zhuang Qiyu, the Kuomintang Nanjing government, which had long set its sights on "Yuzhai Yizhuang," took advantage of the fire and robbery to propose that about 2.3 million taels of silver, 40 percent of the total assets of "Yuzhai Yizhuang, be taken out for "funds for the suppression of bandits." When Sheng Xuanhuai's children saw this scene, they immediately proposed to simply divide the "Yuzhai Yizhuang". In the end, the five houses of the Sheng family sun divided the remaining 3.5 million taels of silver as Sheng Xuanhuai's inheritance for the second time.
Prior to this, in the Sheng family, only men were eligible to distribute the inheritance, and women did not have the right to distribute the inheritance. However, in 1927 the National Government passed the Women's Movement Resolution, which provided for unmarried women to participate in the distribution of inheritance. As a result, Sheng Xuanhuai's daughters were encouraged to join the ranks of distributing the inheritance. In 1928, after Miss Seven Sheng Aiyi sued her 3 brothers and 2 nephews in court, she received 500,000 taels of silver.
Love yi
Encouraged by Sheng Aiyi, her sister Sheng Fangyi and the women of the Sheng family have gone to war, and the men have gone to court to divide up Sheng Xuanhuai's inheritance cleanly.
Carnegie once said, "Leaving his son the almighty gold dollar is tantamount to leaving him with a curse." After Sheng Xuanhuai's children and grandchildren received a huge amount of family property, they lived a life of drunkenness, luxury, and profligacy.
Sheng Enyi
Sheng Enyi, who is very familiar to everyone, is the fourth son of Sheng Xuanhuai. Among his descendants, he was the first to propose the distribution of "Yuzhai Yizhuang". Sheng Enyi is also a famous "loser", eating, drinking, gambling, and everything. He was so addicted to gambling that he once lost more than 100 houses to Lu Xiaojia, the son of Lu Yongxiang, the governor of Zhejiang, overnight in a casino, without blinking an eye.
Men are like this, and women are not lost.
The aforementioned Miss Sheng Aiyi once fell in love with a secretary of the Shanghai office of Hanyeping Company. However, their marriage was rejected by Zhuang Qiyu. Sheng Aiyi did not want to elope with the secretary and gave him a large handful of gold leaves. Later, when this secretary became a high official, Sheng Aiyi said: "He is a high-ranking official, Houlu, and the spring breeze is proud, so why should I bother him?" But then again, his golden leaf hasn't been returned to me yet. ”
Sheng Aiyi is a rich woman who knows nothing about investment and business. After receiving Sheng Xuanhuai's inheritance, she opened a luxurious dance hall in Shanghai. But at that time, Shanghainese were not accustomed to this kind of luxurious dance hall, the business was very light, and it did not take long to close its doors.
The "losers" never had good results. How could Sheng Xuanhuai's descendants be an exception?
Sheng Xuanhuai's fourth son, Sheng Enyi, lost his share of the inheritance and died in 1958 in the former family's lingering garden. Sheng Xuanhuai's fifth son, Sheng Chongyi, died of illness in 1960 after selling his last house to Rong Hongsan before 1949.
Before 1949, Sheng Xuanhuai's descendants had completely destroyed this hundred million family property, "it was like eating all the birds and throwing themselves into the forest, and the land was really clean."