The richest person in Quang Ninh City is none other than Fan Sihai.

How rich is Fan Sihai? To put it simply, his family's house is the most luxurious and largest in the entire Guangning City and even in Liaodong. If nothing else, let's just say how many houses there are in his family's house, and it is not clear how many people there are.

Because the courtyard he has at home has seven entrances just to the depth. It took about half an hour to walk from the gate of the first courtyard to the back garden, which shows how big his yard is.

Fan Sihai once drank and chatted with people, saying that his house was less than the house in the Forbidden City in the capital of Daming, and he still had some regrets in and out of his words.

It is said that the total number of maids and servants in Fan Sihai's family is nearly 500. And he married a total of nineteen rooms just to his aunt's wife.

Some people say that half of the shops in Quang Ninh City are the property of the Fan family, such as grain shops, rice shops, silk shops, garment shops, pawnshops, restaurants, teahouses, brothels, etc., which can be said to be everything from all walks of life.

Moreover, it is said that the Fan family's industry is not only in Guangning City, but also in Liaoyang, Gaizhou, and even Shengjing City. And some people say that these industries in Liaodong are still only small heads, and the big ones are still in the Guannei, especially in Beijing and Suzhou, Hangzhou, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, which is where the Fan family is really valuable.

The courtyard of Guangning City is at most an annex of the Fan family.

If someone wants to ask why a businessman of the Fan family is so rich, then those who have good deeds will point to the words "Fan Mansion" hanging high on the gate of the Fan family's mansion to show you.

People who don't know why naturally can't see anything famous, and good deeds will tell you carefully and mysteriously: "These two words are not ordinary." ”

What's out of the ordinary? It's not that these two words are written beautifully, but the identity of the person who wrote these two words is not ordinary.

So who is the person who wrote these two words? It is the emperor of the Manchu state, Huang Taiji.

As soon as he said this, people with flexible minds understood: if this businessman of the Fan family can have a plaque inscribed by the Manchu emperor in person, there can only be one identity, that is, an imperial businessman.

If you think about it again, it reminds people of Fan Yongdou, a famous businessman in Shanxi. Fan Yongdou is said to be Fan Sihai's own uncle.

Who is Fan Yongdou? This is the leader of the world's famous Jin merchants, his business is so big that it is all over the world, and all kinds of businesses are done, and the number of people who have many industries is as unclear as Fan Sihai's house.

The most famous industry run by Fan Yongdou is Qianzhuang. The Yongchang Money Village he runs is said to have semicolons in all the big cities in the world, and it has an extremely good reputation and extremely strong strength.

In any big city's Yongchang money bank branch, no matter how big the denomination silver ticket you hold to exchange for cash, you can exchange all of it within one day, this is the strength of Yongchang.

This alone allowed half of the merchants of the Ming Dynasty to walk the world with the silver tickets issued by Yongchang Qianzhuang.

And it is said that many dignitaries and nobles in the Ming Dynasty, even the palm print eunuch of the celebrant and several eunuchs like to deposit money in Yongchang Qianzhuang, not for anything else, just to save trouble and rest assured.

The plaque on Fan Yongdou's house in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province is said to be inscribed by the current emperor's Lao Tzu, that is, the previous emperor, Ji Zhengde of the temple name Sejong.

If nothing else, the annual taxes and silver paid by the Fan family to the imperial court are about three or four million taels. Not to mention that the Fan family often lent money to the court interest-free when there was a shortage of money in the imperial court.

Just this is enough for Emperor Ming to treat the Fan family with courtesy.

Although the emperor's courtesies are all false, that is, he inscribed the Fan family's mansion and gave Fan Yongdou a false title of six products, and the errand was hosted by the Jiangnan Weaving Bureau.

Of course, this errand has no actual authority, but for a super businessman like Fan Yongdou, it is a great talisman.

This made his business even more prosperous.

I don't know when the Fan family took the Manchu line. Fan Yongdou's nephew Fan Sihai relied on helping the Manchus do business, especially secretly transporting some strategic materials such as salt and pig iron that were strictly prohibited by the Ming court to Liaodong.

These things played a very important role in the rapid rise of the Manchu Qing in Liaodong. Moreover, with Fan Sihai taking the lead, many businessmen in Shanxi secretly started business with the Manchus, so that all kinds of material resources needed by the Manchu State continued to flow from inside the customs to outside the customs.

In the eyes of these merchants, the ban of the Ming court was like a fictitious thing, and it became a piece of waste paper.

Because of this, in the more than ten years that Huang Taiji was in power, Fan Sihai jumped from a partial house of the Fan family to the most powerful, most status, and most wealthy businessman in Liaodong.

Therefore, he dared to live in the large courtyard of Qijin, which obviously violated the regulations, and also won the honor of the plaque inscribed by Huang Taiji.

Some people see it thoroughly, juxtaposing the Fan family with Fan Li, Lu Buwei and others back then. Other businessmen are investment businesses, but the Fan family and the above two are dedicated to investing in the emperor.

People say that the Fan family is looking at the Daming tree is about to fall, so they laid out in advance and let their nephew go to the line of Huang Taiji. At that time, whether it is the Ming Dynasty that stabilizes the world, or the Manchu Qing Dynasty that dominates the world, his Fan family is still the Fan family.

When Guangning City was breached, Fan Sihai happened to be in the city.

At the beginning, after he heard that the Jiang family's army had broken the city, he was really worried for a while, for fear that the rumored domineering Wu Anhou would impulsively raid his house.

But later, seeing that Wu Anhou had not moved, and he was also serious about military discipline, sending people to patrol the streets, and not harassing the people, he wondered if this Wu Anhou was also afraid of his identity, after all, he was still the Wu Anhou of the Ming Dynasty, and he was also a member of the Fan family, so he couldn't help but give this face, so this hanging heart slowly let go.

Later, when he heard that the Qing Dynasty Auxiliary King Dolgon had come to counterattack with a large army, Fan Sihai was excited and anxious that a group of wives and concubines held a banquet in the mansion to celebrate, hoping that the Qing Heavenly Soldiers would quickly drive this Wu'an Marquis away.

But I didn't think that the 60,000 army of the Qing Dynasty was defeated, and it was a mess, and even the auxiliary king Dolgon didn't know whether he was alive or dead.

Fan Sihai panicked again, closed the door tightly, and hid in the house without going out.

Later, after seeing that the Marquis of Wu Anhou issued a notice asking the wealthy businessmen to pledge money and grain, Fan Sihai's heart was alive again, and after sending someone to find a few big businessmen to sum it up, he sent a housekeeper to symbolically go to the yamen to donate money and grain according to the amount of 5,000 taels of silver and 1,000 stones of grain and grass for a family.

This is not only a statement, but also a temptation, so he wants to test some to see if this Wu'an Hou dares to touch his Fan family.

I have to say that after so many years of doing business with the royal family, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty and the Manchu Qing Dynasty looked down on their Fan family, which made Fan Sihai's courage become sky-high.

"Put aside your worries. Our Fan family's business is so big, no matter who is in charge in this world, it can't be separated from our Fan family. With this old man in charge, don't say anything about Wu'anhou, even if the Ming Emperor is here, he has to give our Fan family this face. Go, call me the troupe that I bought back from Jiangnan for 170,000 taels of silver last month, and Master Ben is going to listen to "Huanxi Sha" today to see how Fan Li and Xi Shi died in Wu back then. ”

In the tall and spacious colorful stone pavilion in the back garden of Fan's house, Fan Sihai sat in a circle of wives and concubines of Yingying Yanyan, wearing a thin shirt of Hangzhou's high-grade silk, playing with a jade Ruyi in his hand, and confidently cheering up a group of wives and concubines who looked worried.

The butler waiting next to him listened to his instructions and hurriedly went to find the troupe.

The dozens of maids and servants around knew that the master was going to listen to the play, so they hurriedly brought up all kinds of exquisite melons and fruits and snacks, and in an instant filled the wide stone table in the stone pavilion.

On the opposite side of the stone pavilion is a specially built stage, and a group of subordinates are busy arranging the stage.

At the intersection of the street where Fan's Mansion was located, a group of black-clothed and black-armored soldiers rumbled over, and the leader of the team was Li Qian, a military commander under the command of Wu'an Hou Jiangchuan of the Ming Dynasty.

Dressed in armor and pressing his hand on the hilt of the sword at his waist, he looked up at the tall courtyard wall of the Fan family in front of him, turned his head to a centurion and said, "This is our first target." You take a team to guard the back door. If someone runs out, they will be arrested. Those who dare to do it will be killed. I'll go meet this Fan Sihai. ”

"The last general obeys!" The centurion shouted his order, waved his hand, and a group of men and horses came out of the crowd and followed him towards the back door of Fan's mansion.

Li Jian left a group of people to block the entrance of the street on both sides, and then led the rest of the people towards the gate of Fan's mansion.