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Businessmen are necessary for a country, because the circulation of businessmen is large enough to effectively drive the circulation of goods in a country, and small enough to effectively balance the livelihood of the people in a region. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

And for Zhang Jiashi, who came from later generations, although his own understanding of the business model of later generations is more than some superficial understanding, it is undeniable that businessmen are a key to a rich country and a strong army.

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As can be seen from one circumstance, the abilities of the ancient merchants, in fact, had a great influence on many aspects of the country.

That was the emergence of the Silk Road.

Strictly speaking, the Silk Road is the embodiment of a famous trade route that has a great reputation in history.

Because in history, it was not the countries of the past dynasties that maintained the operation of the Silk Road, but the groups of merchants who went forward and succeeded.

The "Silk Road" refers to the ancient commercial trade routes that began in ancient China and connected Asia, Africa and Europe. The Silk Road in the narrow sense generally refers to the overland Silk Road. Broadly speaking, it is divided into the land Silk Road and the maritime Silk Road.

The "Overland Silk Road" was an overland commercial trade route connecting the hinterland of China and Europe, formed between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD, and remained in use until the 16th century, and was a major economic, political and cultural exchange route between the East and the West. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent Zhang Qian as an envoy to the Western Regions to form its basic arterial roads. It takes Chang'an in the Western Han Dynasty (Luoyang in the Eastern Han Dynasty) and goes to Dunhuang through the Hexi Corridor. From Dunhuang, it is divided into two roads: the south road from Dunhuang through Loulan, Khotan, Shache, through the green ridge to the present Pamir to the big moon and rest, to the west to Tiaozhi and Daqin; the north road from Dunhuang to Jiaohe, Qiuci, Shule, through the green ridge to Dawan, to the west through the rest to Daqin. Its original role was to transport silk produced in ancient China.

The "Maritime Silk Road" is a sea passage for transportation, trade and cultural exchanges between ancient China and foreign countries, and the road is mainly centered on the South China Sea, so it is also known as the South China Sea Silk Road. The Maritime Silk Road was formed in the Qin and Han dynasties, developed from the Three Kingdoms to the Sui Dynasty, flourished in the Tang and Song dynasties, and changed in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and is the oldest known sea route.

Before the opening of the Silk Road, there were close cultural exchanges between the Central Plains and the Eurasian steppe. Central Plains bronzes, vehicles, and weapons often appear in the tombs of the grassland peoples in northern China. During the Warring States Period, silk, lacquerware, bronze mirrors, etc. from the Central Plains spread to Xinjiang, the Altai region of Kazakhstan and more distant Greece through the steppe peoples, and the popular animal patterns of the Eurasian steppe were introduced to northern China from west to east, and were borrowed and innovated by Chinese craftsmen, including the craftsmen of the Qin State, to form a new pattern of mythical beasts with a strong grassland style. This kind of mythical animal pattern was favored by the Central Plains countries, and was used to decorate horse harnesses, lacquerware, waist ornaments decorated with shell belts, etc., and even formed an aristocratic fashion popular in the Western Han Dynasty in the early Western Han Dynasty. At the same time, Western glassware, gold and silver wares were also introduced to China through the grassland areas [5]. The "Silk Road" of the Han Dynasty was developed on a "jade road" in ancient times.

In the pre-Qin period, a channel connecting the East and West of China already existed. Jade has an unparalleled significance in Chinese culture, and the beauty of Chinese jade comes from the Western Regions. At least 12,000 years ago, the ancestors discovered the outstanding jade in ordinary stones, and transported the jade to the east through exchange, extending the jade road for 10,000 years, which is the predecessor of the Desert Silk Road.

There are many records of jade in the Western Regions. During the Western Jin Dynasty, a number of ancient slips were unearthed in the Warring States Tomb in Ji County, among which a "Biography of Mu Tianzi" was sorted out, which recorded that King Mu of Zhou drove eight horses and carriages to the west to hunt nearly 3,000 years ago. King Mu of Zhou set out from the Central Plains, passing through Gansu, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, and finally arrived at the western foot of Kunlun Mountain. At that time, the tribal leader who was still a matriarchal society, the Queen Mother of the West, not only entertained King Zhou Mu, but also gave him eight carts of gems, leaving a good story. On the way back, King Mu of Zhou obtained a lot of jade from some tribes that mined jade and carved jade, and returned with a full load.

The ancient ancestors extended from Kunlun Mountain and Hotan to the east and west wings from near and far, and transported Hetian jade to distant places. It passes through Gansu, Ningxia and Shanxi in the east and Henan, and in the west through Uzbekistan and the Eurasian countries along the Mediterranean coast. This is the earliest "jade road". King Zhou Mu's western tour route is the eastern route of this ancient road. Although this account is not entirely credible, it is known that people in the pre-epoch began to communicate through a passage connecting East and West.

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The Maritime Silk Road runs from the southeast coast of China, passes through the Indochina Peninsula and the South China Sea countries, crosses the Indian Ocean, enters the Red Sea, and reaches East Africa and Europe. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, China's shipbuilding and navigation technology were greatly improved, as well as the navigation application of the compass, which comprehensively improved the ability of merchant ships to sail long distances. During this period, China had direct "Maritime Silk Road" trade with more than 60 countries in the world, triggering a boom in the Western world to get a glimpse of the Age of Discovery.

The Maritime Silk Road in China is mainly composed of three main ports: Guangzhou, Quanzhou and Ningbo and other feeder ports. From the 30s of the 3rd century, Guangzhou has become the main port of the Maritime Silk Road. During the Tang and Song dynasties, Guangzhou became the largest port in China, and in the early Ming and Qing dynasties, Guangzhou was in the situation of "one port of trade" for a long time, and was the only port in the history of the world's maritime traffic that lasted for more than 2,000 years In the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Ningbo area has had exchanges with Japan, and in the Tang Dynasty, it became one of China's big ports, and during the two Song Dynasty, the foreign trade port in the north was occupied by Liao and Jin, or affected by the war, and a large number of foreign trade was transferred to Ningbo.

The rudiments of the Maritime Silk Road existed in the Qin and Han dynasties, and the earliest known history of Sino-foreign maritime exchanges comes from the Hanshu Geographical Chronicles, when China came into contact with the countries of the South China Sea, and the physical excavations of relics suggest that Sino-foreign exchanges may have predated the Han Dynasty.

Before the middle of the Tang Dynasty, China's main channel to the outside world was the land Silk Road, and then due to wars and the shift of economic gravity, the Maritime Silk Road replaced the land route as the main channel for Sino-foreign trade exchanges, and in the Song and Yuan dynasties, it was an important carrier of human historical activities covering most of the world and cultural and economic exchanges between the East and the West. The main bulk goods transported by the sea passage in the Sui and Tang dynasties were still silk, so later generations called this sea route connecting the East and the West the Maritime Silk Road. In the Song and Yuan dynasties, porcelain exports gradually became the main commodity, so it was also called the "Maritime Ceramics Road". At the same time, since a large part of the exported goods are spices, it is also called the "Maritime Spice Road". The Maritime Silk Road is a common term.

During the middle and late Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Maritime Silk Road really took shape and began to develop. During the Western Han Dynasty, the sea route between the southern Guangdong Kingdom and the Indian Peninsula had been opened. After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty destroyed the Nanyue Kingdom, he broadened the scale of maritime trade by sea routes, and the "Maritime Silk Road" arose at this time. According to the Hanshu Geographical Chronicles, the route was as follows: starting from Xuwen (in present-day Xuwen County, Guangdong) and Hepu (in present-day Hepu County, Guangxi), entering the Malay Peninsula, the Gulf of Siam, and the Bay of Bengal through the South China Sea, and reaching the Huangzhi Kingdom and the Chengbu Kingdom (present-day Sri Lanka) in the southern part of the Indian Peninsula. This is the earliest known written record of the Maritime Silk Road.

The Eastern Han Dynasty also recorded the first exchanges with the Roman Empire: the Eastern Han Dynasty ships had used sails, Chinese merchants arrived in Guangzhou by sea for trade, transported silk and porcelain to India through Malacca through Sumatra, and purchased spices and dyes to be shipped back to China, and Indian merchants then shipped silk and porcelain to Cairo Port in Egypt through the Red Sea or through the Persian Gulf into the two river basins to Antioch, and then Greek and Roman merchants from Alexandria, Gaza and other ports in Egypt to Greece by sea The large and small city-states of the two major empires of Rome.

This marks the formation of the real maritime Silk Road across Asia, Africa and Europe, starting from Panyu, Xuwen, Hepu and other ports in Guangdong, China, and sailing eastward from the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean coastal ports, meeting and docking in the Indian Ocean, Guangdong has become the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road. With the development of mulberry cultivation and silkworm cultivation and textile industry in the Han Dynasty, silk fabrics became the main output during this period.

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The Chao Shang, one of the three major merchant gangs in history, is a typical example of a large merchant gang driven by the Maritime Silk Road.

Chaoshang is the abbreviation of Chaoshan merchants, also known as "Chaozhou merchants", referring to the merchants in the Chaoshan area of Guangdong Province (Chaozhou, Jieyang, Shantou, Fengshun and parts of Shanwei), and is one of the Cantonese merchants in a broad sense.

Chaoshang is a cosmopolitan commercial community, and the cultural character of Chaoshang is a marine characteristic.

The Chaozhou merchant gang was formed in the late Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Chaoshang is the most influential and vital famous merchant gang in modern Chinese history after the Jin merchants and Hui merchants.

"Qing Barnyard Banknotes" agricultural and commercial hipsters in business contains: "Hipsters are good at business, the son of the hollow, going abroad alone, and there is nothing long except for the leather pillow and felt. After being employed for a few years, seeking a little independence, and then a few more years, almost all of them became overseas giants. Especially unattainable, the spirit of business adventure. It wins and enters, once it encounters the point of vision, it is easy to invest in it, in case of failure, it is especially self-reliant; once it wins, it will win, and the business is beneficial. "Chaozhou Mansion Chronicles" contains: "The Chaozhou people are mostly farmers, and the rest of the ocean is profitable, and the pine of Zhapu is like walking on the flat ground.... Its ships reach as far as the provinces, although they are not afraid of thieves. ”

Chaozhou Mansion, the gateway to eastern Guangdong, has a certain foundation for overseas transportation in the Sui Dynasty. In the fourth year of the Great Cause (608), Chen Ling and Zhang Zhen passed through Ryukyu and were based on Chaozhou. In the Tang Dynasty, Chaozhou had developed into a "Lingnan County" and was the largest city in eastern Guangdong. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, hundreds of thousands of Putian people from southern Fujian immigrated to the current Chaoshan area to escape the war. It has brought the rich business culture of southern Fujian. In the Tang Dynasty, Putian has become an important commercial center in Fujian, Putian merchants began in the Tang Dynasty, flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and then flourished after the reform and opening up. In the Song Dynasty, Chaozhou's foreign exchanges became more frequent, and the "History of the Song Dynasty" has a record of Chaozhou's "shore sea and Fujian, Botong Ouwu and Zhufan countries". At that time, Chaozhou Bijiashan kiln was a famous ceramic kiln, and the porcelain produced by it was sold to some countries in Southeast Asia, and it was one of the export bases of Chinese ceramics at that time. In the Yuan Dynasty, according to Jao Tsung-i's "Chaozhou Chronicles: Traffic Chronicles": "In the Yuan Dynasty, Srivijaya (now Palembang, Indonesia) had the footprints of Fujian and Cantonese people. ”

Under the conditions of the Ming Dynasty's maritime ban policy, Guangdong's foreign trade was mainly divided into two ways: the tribute trade directly controlled by the government and the market trade operated by private merchants. The tribute trade was a system in which the Ming Dynasty directly controlled overseas trade. It is inseparable from the maritime ban policy implemented in the early Ming Dynasty, because it forbade private individuals to go to the sea to do business and trade, forcing overseas countries to rely on the only channel of tributary trade. The market trade refers to the trade between private merchants and foreign merchants in Guangdong ports or seas. Private trade was considered illegal in the early and mid-Ming Dynasty. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, with the increasing decline of the tribute ship trade, "the people of Guangdong often carried big boats into the sea and Yi City", "the powerful ones secretly communicated with the Tibetan ships", and it has become a common phenomenon. There is no shortage of wealthy families who have stepped on here. Zhang Xie's "Tax Examination" said: "At the time of success and prosperity, there were people who traded overseas on giant ships among the wealthy families. If a person opens his sinus, he shall not receive his rights...... to Jiajing and the disadvantages are extreme".

From this description, it confirms the historical record of the gradual decline of the Chaoshang during the period of the sea ban and the fact that they had to transfer their development elsewhere:

Later generations believed that with the relationship between trade and forced immigration, starting from the Song and Yuan dynasties, a large number of Chao people flocked to Southeast Asian countries in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and also actively participated in the local economic construction and development. Vietnam's Teochew people have cultivated a large amount of wasteland to grow a variety of crops such as rice, vegetables, pineapples, coconuts, longans and grapes, and have passed on the planting techniques to the local population to promote the improvement of local production techniques. They are also active in machine milling, textile, chemical, paper, rice export, and import and export trade. In these industries, Chinese capital accounts for 60~80%, of which Chaoren capital accounts for more than a quarter of Chinese capital.

The influx of overseas hipsters into Thailand has injected a heterogeneous commercial culture into the Thai cultural system.

It is said that Teochew opera has been introduced to Thailand for more than 300 years. It has not only integrated into the mainstream of Thai society, but also into its upper class, and has entered the court of Suzhou in Thailand, and is favored by the royal family and nobles. It is said that Thailand's Muwang Ganchai Cang Palace has a stage for the royal family to watch Teochew opera ("Teochew People in Thailand") In Singapore, there are more places where Teochew opera is performed, such as Singapore Yiyuan Cinema, Zheyuan Cinema, Tung Lok Cinema and Yongle Cinema. These places have become places for the "sounds of the countryside" of the hipsters. Obviously, the affinity of Teochew opera has infiltrated into the theatrical culture of Southeast Asian countries and has played a complementary role in the local culture.

According to the data, there are as many as 40 Chinese-language newspapers run by Vietnamese Chinese, such as the "China Daily," "Times Daily," and "Nanya Daily," which were founded in Hanoi by Teochew Zheng Wu, and the "Tu Nan Daily," "Nanyang Junction Daily," and "Zhongxing Daily," which were founded in Singapore by Teochew overseas Chinese Zhang Yongfu and Min overseas Chinese Chen Chu Nan. These newspapers and periodicals not only contributed to the development of Singapore's newspaper industry, but also gave birth to Singapore's Chinese literature. For example, more than 20 kinds of Chinese literary newspapers and periodicals, such as "Desert Island", "Flood Waste" and "New Route", have appeared in Singapore, opening up an important garden of Chinese literature. The Chinese literary creations that the Teochews directly participated in in Singapore have directly contributed to the rise of the wave of Chinese literature, such as novels, new poems, essays, and literary criticism.

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From the history of several large merchant gangs of merchants, although Zhang Jiashi was very jealous, but from these histories, he found a way to develop foreign countries or establish colonies, that is, to use the commercial development characteristics of merchant gangs to let the Great Qin Empire enter a relatively peaceful road of "armed mission". (To be continued.) )

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