In contrast, Shanxi has always been short of grain, and Shanxi businessmen want to enjoy the policy of "opening up salt to China", and only push a wheelbarrow to Shandong to buy grain, and then traffic it to the border gates, which is a painstaking "purchase of grain for introduction", and Huizhou is far away from the border block, the mountains are high and the road is far away, and Huizhou businessmen are even more unable to participate in it. This is also an important reason why the Shaanxi merchants started earlier than the Jin merchants and Hui merchants in the early years of the Ming Dynasty.

However, the "special zone" policy, which was exclusive to Shaanxi merchants, changed in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. In the fifth year of the reign of Ming Hongzhi (1492), soon after Ye Qi, the head of the household department in charge of finance and taxation, took office, he changed the "open middle method" of grain exchange to the "color folding method" of silver exchange, that is, merchants no longer had to send grain to the border gates, but directly took out silver to buy salt, that is, they could obtain permission to sell salt. Ye Qi was a native of Shanyang (present-day Huai'an, Jiangsu), and this move obviously broke the inherent advantages of "border merchants" such as Shaanxi and Shanxi, and gave a good opportunity for "domestic merchants" who were geographically closer to Lianghuai and mainly Huizhou merchants to enter the lucrative salt industry.

Since then, it has lost its economic significance to stay in the northwest to grow grain, and Shaanxi merchants and Shanxi merchants have come to Yangzhou, a salt transshipment hub along the canal, to become professional salt merchants. According to records, there were no less than 500 Shaanxi businessmen who gathered in Yangzhou that year, and the famous ones were "the Liang of the Three Plains, the Zhang and Guo of Jingyang, the Shen of Xi'an, and the Zhang of Tongguan, they both belonged to their homeland, and they all lived in Yang", which marked the beginning of a Shaanxi merchant gang that broke out of Tongguan and went to the whole country.

It was in Yangzhou that they met the long-standing and ambitious Huizhou salt merchants. The Ming Dynasty's "Yangzhou Bamboo Branches" sang: "Salt customers have huge wealth, and they are hidden under the Zhumen River." The local pronunciation of Qin language and the language of She, do not ask the name of the person but ask the flag. "Qin language" is Shaanxi dialect, and "She language" is Huizhou dialect (She County is one of the six counties of Huizhou). It can be seen that Shaanxi merchants and Huizhou merchants are the main forces of Yangzhou's prosperous business. According to records, at that time, among the eight chief salt merchants (that is, the leaders of the salt industry association). Western merchants and Hui merchants, each accounting for four.

Song Yingxing, the author of the Ming Dynasty science and technology masterpiece "Tiangong Kaiwu", once wrote: (Yangzhou) merchants have the foundation, most of them belong to the Qin, Jin and Hui counties. In the Ming Dynasty, as a salt merchant, the strength of Shaanxi merchants once surpassed that of Shanxi merchants, and their hometowns were Sanyuan County, Jingyang County, Suide Prefecture and other places.

Shaanxi salt merchants gathered in Yangzhou. In order to protect their own common interests, they funded the construction of the Shaanxi Guild Hall, and later in order to deal with the competition of Huizhou merchants, they jointly built the Shanxi Guild Hall with Shanxi salt merchants. At that time, the strength of the Shanshan merchants was still strong, and the Hui merchants had to buy salt from them from time to time. The Shanxi Guild Hall was built alone in Dongguan Old Street, Dadongmen, near the canal, while the merchant gang guilds in Huizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Lingnan were clustered in the area of Xiaodongmen in the emerging market, reflecting the historical trajectory of the rise of merchant gangs.

Shaanxi merchants who lived in Yangzhou did not only deal in Huai salt. It also expanded its business to pawn, cloth, leather goods, tobacco and alcohol industries. However, the Hui merchants, who were both advantageous and popular, were suddenly aggressive and aggressive, and because of their tradition of "Confucianism on the left and on the right", their cultural level was generally high, and they liked to initiate lawsuits at every turn, and they repeatedly had commercial conflicts with Shanxi merchants. According to historical records, in the litigation cases of "Nanren" (i.e., Hui merchants) and border merchants (i.e., Shanxi merchants), the former often received favorable official judgments. Get the upper hand in the fight.

The "Yangzhou Mansion Chronicles" compiled during the Wanli period in the middle and late Ming Dynasty recorded this subtle trend: "Yangzhou is all from all over the world. Xin'an (Huishang) is the most prosperous, followed by Guanshanxi, Shanxi, and Jiangyou (Jiangxi). ”

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Yangzhou's famous "merchant status dispute" was actually a big outbreak of grievances between Shanxi merchants and Huizhou merchants.

In Huai'an and Yangzhou, where salt merchants gathered, Shanxi merchants were specially approved by the imperial court to have "business status" because they settled in other provinces, and their children could be enrolled in schools in Huaiyang and Yang, and there were seven places every year that they did not need to return to their hometowns to participate in the imperial examination. The hometown of Huizhou merchants and Huaiyang belong to the same Nanzhili Province. According to the regulations, their children are not allowed to go to school in the local area.

Historically, in the fifth year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty (1632), the officials of the Hui merchants jointly signed the letter and inspected the two Huai salt administrations. The request for all the children of salt merchants to be enrolled in school on the spot was approved by the emperor. However, this virtually damaged the interests of the original Hui businessmen, causing everyone to make an uproar, and it happened that the then prefect of Yangzhou was also from Shanxi, and supported the protests of his fellow villagers, so this policy was slowed down. The old matter of Huizhou merchants was brought up again, and "the Westerners were in a big uproar and contentious", and finally it was over.

In fact, it also reflects the rise and fall of the three major merchant gangs of Shaanxi, Jin and Hui in Yangzhou during this period.

The final result of this battle was that in March 1644, Li Zicheng, a native of Mizhi, Shaanxi, led the Dashun army to attack Beijing, forcing Zhu Youzhen, the emperor of Chongzhen, a native of Fengyang, Anhui Province, to hang himself, but Wu Sangui, a Ming general guarding Liaodong, immediately led the Qing troops into Shanhaiguan and defeated the Dashun army. By the way, Wu Sangui, who was born in Liaodong, is also a native of Yangzhou.

The war to change the dynasty brought ruin to Yangzhou. In May 1645, the Qing general Dolgon led his army south to besiege Yangzhou City, and the Ming general Shi Kefa held the city for half a month, killing and wounding many Qing troops. After the city was broken, Shi Kefa was captured and righteous, and Dolgon killed in retaliation, resulting in the tragedy of "Yangzhou Ten Days", 800,000 people died, and Western merchants, Hui merchants and merchants from all over the country were not spared.

After entering the Qing Dynasty, to the early years of the Kangxi Dynasty, the whole country was in shape, and the emerging Qing Dynasty also wanted to restore the economy and people's livelihood to stabilize its rule, and the amount of salt tax was huge, and the revival of the salt industry in Lianghuai was naturally the top priority. Under the loose policy of the Qing court, the salt merchants who fled to avoid the war gathered in Yangzhou one after another, and the so-called "Kang Yongqian prosperous era" for more than 130 years (1661 ~ 1795), Yangzhou's salt industry reached another peak. At the peak of its prosperity, more than 1.6 million taels of salt were transported and sold through Yangzhou every year (200~400 catties of salt per induction), and the salt tax (i.e., salt tax) alone accounted for a quarter of the national fiscal revenue.

At that time, the salt was transferred from the seaside salt field to the provincial markets through Yangzhou, and the price could rise by more than 10 times. It is estimated that in the 37th year of Qianlong (1772), Yangzhou salt merchants earned more than 15 million taels of silver every year and paid more than 6 million taels of salt tax, accounting for about 60% of the national salt tax. In that year, China's economy was 32% of the world's, and the salt tax provided by Yangzhou salt merchants accounted for 8% of the world's total economy.

However, at this time, the Yangzhou salt industry was already the world of Huizhou merchants, and the Shaanxi merchants who had worked closely with each other were inseparable from each other, and the Shaanxi merchants declined rapidly in Yangzhou, leaving only about a dozen salt merchants.

……

[In ancient times, the imperial examination had to be a reference for returning to the hometown, in fact, this was the college entrance examination immigrants of later generations, and this thing existed hundreds of years ago. (To be continued......)