Although China has a tradition of emphasizing literature and light business since ancient times, the tradition of Chinese people being good at business has been passed down for thousands of years, and in human history, Chinese commerce has been in the first position in the world most of the time, and has played a great role in the progress of the Chinese nation, economic prosperity, and cultural construction. Shanxi's commercial capital started very early. In the pre-Qin period, there were commercial transactions in the area of southern Jin. When Jin Wen was the hegemon, Yuci and Anyi had become famous commercial market towns. During the Qin and Han dynasties, Taiyuan, Pinglu, Pingyao, Fenyang and other places have become important commodity distribution markets. The Tang Dynasty designated Taiyuan as Beijing, making Taiyuan City a famous city with prosperous commerce, and Han Yu described Taiyuan at that time as "Lang Lang smells the street drums, and the morning seems to be the morning hour". Despite this, Shanxi merchants in this period did not have a certain organization and prominent position. In the Song Dynasty, Shanxi merchants and Huizhou merchants became the backbone of Chinese commerce at that time. Most of the war horses needed by the Northern Song Dynasty relied on the Liao in the north for supply, and the Liao was also in urgent need of Song handicraft products. According to historical documents, during the Qingli period of the Song Dynasty (1041-1048 AD), the Song Dynasty produced more than 2,000 pieces of silk to buy horses in Shanxi Qilan, and more than 30,000 horses of silk to buy horses in the state capitals of Shanxi, and unofficial private trade was even more frequent. "Marco Polo's Travels" wrote: "Merchants from Taiyuan to Pingyang (Linfen) traveled all over the country and made huge profits."

From the Ming Dynasty to the early years of the Qing Dynasty, the power of Shanxi merchants was further developed. In the Ming Dynasty, there were 33 large commercial cities in the country, and there were three in Shanxi: Taiyuan, Pingyang and Puzhou (Yongji). At this time, the capital accumulation of Shanxi merchants was already considerable: "Pingyang, Ze, and Lu are rich in the world, and they are not rich unless they are hundreds of thousands." At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Shanxi merchants had entered the northeast region, and when Nurhachi occupied Fushun in 1618, he wrote "Seven Great Hatreds" to the big merchants in Shanxi and other places in Fushun, ordering them to return to Shanhaiguan, which shows that Shanxi merchants had been trading with Houjin at that time. After the Qing soldiers entered the customs, the Mongolian region was under the rule of the Qing Dynasty, and the commerce of Guidaicheng began to flourish. In the middle age of Kangxi, Shanxi merchants entered the Outer Mongolian steppe trade. Since then, the Songliao Plain in the northeast and the grasslands of Inner and Outer Mongolia have become a new market for Shanxi merchants to trade in trafficking. At that time, the Mongol-Han trade had to pass through Zhangjiakou and Kill Hukou (later changed to Naturalized City), commonly known as East and West Kou. Zhangjiakou's eight famous businessmen are all from Shanxi, and the largest enterprise is the "Xinglongkui" opened by the Fan family of Qixian County, this commercial enterprise has about 1,000 employees, and is the second largest enterprise in China's trade with Mongolia and Russia in the Qing Dynasty. In the western port of the trade with Mongolia, Shanxi merchants often traded in the Daqingshan and Xiying areas, and received special care from the Qing government and obtained high profits. These guilds will speak Mongolian and are called "Tongshixing", the largest of which is the "Da Shengkui" founded by Shanxi people, employing 6 or 7,000 people, and people have described that the property of "Da Shengkui" can pave a road from Kulun to Beijing with 50 taels of silver ingots. In Ningxia, most of the famous big businesses were opened by Shanxi businessmen in Wanrong, Pingyao, Yuci and Linyi, and half of Ningxia's famous medicinal materials wolfberry were in the hands of "Qingtaiheng" opened by Shanxi people. In Qinghai, Shanxi merchants used Xining as a base to operate in various prefectures and counties. In Beijing, most of the grain and rice noodle shops are run by people from Qi County; Most of the oil and salt hotels are operated by Xiangling people; paper shops, mostly run by Linfen and Xiangling people; The cloth is mostly operated by Yicheng people, and there is a cloth lane to the west of Xianyukou, all of which are Yicheng people; At the beginning of the 21st century in Beijing, there were still big business names such as "Duyi", "Liubiju" and "Lerentang", which were all initiated and operated by Shanxi businessmen such as Fushan and Linfen. In addition, Shanxi merchants also went to Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Guangdong and other places to trade and do business. Most of the houses on Haopan Street in Guangzhou were built by Shanxi merchants. "Guangshengyuan", "Guangmaoxing", "Guangyiyi" and so on are actually enterprises set up by Shanxi people in Guangzhou. Tea exported by sea, such as tea destined for Indonesia, was purchased by Shanxi people from the production area, shipped to Guangzhou, and purchased by Chaobang merchants from Shanxi merchants and then transshipped to Nanyang. As for the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the salt merchants of Yangzhou, the tea merchants of Jiangxi and Fujian, and the trade with Japan from the mouth of the Yangtze River were also the most active in Shanxi. In addition to domestic trade, Shanxi merchants also opened up foreign markets, China's trade with Russia by land is the earliest and most Shanxi people, in Moscow, Petersburg and other more than 10 Russian cities, there have been Shanxi people to open a business or branch. In Korea and Japan, Shanxi merchants were also active in trade, and the Yuji family exported summer cloth from China and ginseng from Korea, and was called "ginseng rich man"; The Jiexiu Fan family almost monopolized the import of raw copper and the export of department stores to Japan. During the reign of the Qing Dynasty, the most famous commercial families that could prosper for more than 200 years were: the Chang family and Nie family in Yuci, the Cao family in Taigu, the Qiao family and the Qu family in Qixian, the Li family in Pingyao, the Hou family and the Ji family in Jiexiu, the Kang family in Linfen, the Pan family in Wanrong, the Yang family in Yangcheng and so on. They were both big merchants, big usurers, and big landowners, and they all had extremely strong capital.

The number of commodities handled by Shanxi merchants, the amount of capital invested, and the number of employees are second to none among all other merchants. The Jin merchants controlled several important industries, such as the financial industry, which was completely controlled by the Jin merchants, and some pigment industries were also controlled by the Jin merchants, and their status among the merchants at that time was very high. From Hong Kong and Kolkata in the south, to Irkutsk, Siberia, Moscow and Petersburg in the north, Osaka, Kobe, Nagasaki and Incheon in the east, and to Tarbagatai, Ili and Kashgar in the west, all left the footprints of Shanxi merchants. Some businessmen were even able to speak Mongolian, Kazakh, Uyghur, and Russian to the northern minorities and Russians. It can be said that from the camel caravans on the Mongolian grassland to the merchant ships that are going to sea in Wusongkou, there are Shanxi people who are calculating and accounting, from the vinegar smell of Hulunbuir to the aroma of wine in Kweichow Moutai, there are Shanxi people brewing and selling. No wonder some people say: "Wherever there are chickens and dogs, there are Shanxi people." The local ruins where Shanxi merchants have been active can still be seen everywhere in the 21st century: the old West Temple in Gansu, the ancient city tower in Xinjiang, the copper tripod in the Golden Temple in Kunming, the Kangyuan garden in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, and the flower opera building in Haozhou, Anhui, most of which were founded by Shanxi businessmen; The Shanxi Hall in Anhui Pheasant River Collection (Vortex Yang) was once the birthplace of the Twist Army Uprising; The famous Kweichow Moutai was first created in 1704 by Shanxi salt merchants who hired workers from Xinghua Village Fen Distillery and local brewing workers. The same is true of the city streets and alleys named after Shanxi merchants: Rishengchang Lane in Zhangjiakou, Fusheng West Lane in Baotou, Dashengkui Street in Kobdo in Outer Mongolia, Dingxiang Lane and Ningwu Lane in Hohhot, etc., no wonder in the northeast there is a proverb that "first there is Caojiahao, then there is Chaoyang County", in Inner Mongolia there is "first there is Fusheng West, then there is Baotou City", and in the northwest there is a proverb that "first there is Jin Yilao, then there is Xining City". The breadth of the area and the number of people in which Shanxi merchants do business are indeed quite considerable. The Jin merchants were able to call for wind and rain in the country, that is, they seized the formation of a unified national market in the Ming and Qing dynasties, such a historic opportunity, so that the footprints of the Jin merchants spread all over the country. Suzhou, the commercial city of the Ming and Qing dynasties, for a long time, was the richest region in China, and the most luxurious enjoyment and exquisite life imaginable can be found here. In the 80s of the 20th century, when the people of the city were preparing to build a museum of Chinese opera, they chose the site of a guild hall built by Shanxi merchants, and the reason for this choice was largely because of this exquisite stage. The guild hall is not the main place of activity for Shanxi businessmen, it is just a place for them to listen to operas, chat, and contact their hometown. When talking about this incident, the famous scholar Yu Qiuyu said: Suzhou is also rich and prosperous, but I didn't expect Shanxi people to easily build a guild hall and occupy the scenery, and they wanted to find the best stage for southern opera performances as a cultural relic to preserve it permanently. No matter how beautiful the guild hall was, it was just a place for Shanxi people to occasionally hang around and relax a little, what was the place where they lived at home?

In Shanxi Pingyao dwellings, such yards can be seen almost everywhere in many Shanxi counties, and the owners of these courtyards in the past are not famous even in the county, it is this kind of ordinariness that sets off a kind of bearing, when the towering roof, thick courtyard walls are densely packed together, such a scale converges into a more obvious symbol - wealth. While most of China's ordinary people still live in adobe houses, the people of Shanxi have raised their living conditions to a level that will be the envy of people for decades to come. In 1822, in order to alleviate the growing population pressure in the interior and stabilize the political situation in the frontier, Gong Zizai, the most famous cultural thinker in China at that time, suggested to the emperor that a large number of people from the interior should be relocated to the northwest region, but Gong Zizhi believed that this policy was not applicable to two places: first, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, because the inhabitants here were too weak to withstand the wind and sand in the northwest; The other place is Shanxi, because this place is so rich that no one wants to go to the northwest to suffer. When talking about the wealth of Shanxi, Gong used such a word - the richest in the sea. The symbol of the richest in China is reflected in the following aspects: first, fixed assets. In terms of fixed assets, it is strong, such as the famous Qiao family, the Qu family, the Wang family, the Ji family, etc., each have fixed assets of three or five million, six or seven million, or even tens of millions of taels of silver, which shows its wealth. Second, they have a lot of liquidity, and they each have tens of millions of taels of silver. Third, from the economic development of Shanxi's cities and towns, especially the development of a county town in the Jinzhong area, the city is prosperous and not lower than the south of the Yangtze River, as American scholars have said, Taigu is China's Wall Street, and there are many ticket numbers and business names, which is relatively rare in the past. In the third year of Xianfeng (1953), the supervision of Guangxi Province was called Zhang Siheng, and he said in the emperor's book that he played: Shanxi Taigu's grandson surname is about 20 million, Cao, Jia is four or five million each, Pingyao's Hou surname, Jiexiu's Zhang surname is three or four million each, Yuci's Xu surname, Wang's surname is gathered and lived, each family has a capital of 10 million, Jiexiu million homes are counted as ten, and Qi County's million homes are counted as dozens. Just a simple addition of the property of the Shanxi people mentioned in the above compromise, the amount is more than 100 million taels of silver, which is only a number seen by Qing Dynasty officials, and if you make a detailed count of all the family properties of the rich families in Shanxi, the figure obtained is almost unimaginable. This amount was even more than the silver in the national treasury at that time. The fact that so many wealthy people appear in one place for a period of time is a phenomenon that is rare in China's thousands of years of history. So how did the people of Shanxi accumulate such a huge and staggering amount of wealth?

This involves a very important problem, the northwest is a very distant place, the climate is also very cold, although the Qing Dynasty rulers are from the northeast, but the northwest is still very unfamiliar, the ecology is not the same, in this case, the logistics supply of the Qing army is very difficult, so they have a very smart policy, that is, all the use of those border soldiers through a certain way of business operation to solve, if you can solve it, our court to give you another promise, such as the promise to sell salt, in this caseShanxi is the first to bear the brunt, its geographical location plays a big role, in the center of our Central Plains rule, such as Beijing and other places all the way to the Northwest Frontier Passage, Shanxi is a very important gateway. Another reason is that the Shanxi ticket number has a relatively large close relationship with the Qing Dynasty government, it replaces the government to collect and release the silver and exchange, and it absorbs a lot of princes and nobles large deposits. The contribution to China's economic development is more significant in terms of ticket number and finance. Because the development of finance is a stage of the development of the commodity economy, it is precisely because of this that it has a credibility, with this kind of credit, the scale of commerce can be expanded, the scope of the business process can be broader, and this point began from the Jin merchants. These green shoots are plucked from the branches by a pair of light, nimble hands, and processed to become the world's most popular drink, tea, a plant that originated in China and changed the way many Westerners lived. Wuyishan is one of the most famous tea producing areas in China, and a large number of merchants gather here when new tea is picked, and more than 300 years ago, the vast majority of the merchants who came here spoke Shanxi accents. After the decline of the Silk Road, an international passage was formed on the Eurasian continent - the Tea Road. The big concept of the Tea Road is that tea was collected from Hangzhou, Wuyi Mountain (now Fujian), Yanglou Mountain near Hankou, and Chibi, mainly coarse tea and brick tea. This kind of tea has been transported by ship in the south of Hankou through the organization of Shanxi merchants, and when it reaches Hankou, it is transported to Guihua City with tall legs (camels, mules), which is later Zhangjiakou is a large distribution center, and from these two places it is reorganized and reorganized into a kind of camel team like an army, and transported to Kulun, Uriya Sutai and Kobdo in western Mongolia, and then goes north to Kyakhta, a border city of Tsarist Russia. In fact, there is a lot of trading on this road. In the sixties of the nineteenth century (the period of the Tongzhi Emperor), the route through Kyakhta did not include Hailar and Tarbagatai, and the transaction volume of this route accounted for 40% of Russia's export trade, accounting for 18% of China's total import and export trade, and 16% of China's total import and export trade respectively, and then entering the European market through the Kyakhta market.

Since the early Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty put down the Geldan rebellion, trade with Russia and Europe through Inner and Outer Mongolia and Xinjiang has been further active, and Manchuria, Kyakhta, and Tarbagatai are all important markets. For example, in Kyakhta, there is a trade route from China to Europe through the Mongolian steppe, that is, the southern material passes through the Yangtze River and the canal to Zhoukou and Chengqi Town in Henan, and passes through Qinghua - Zezhou - Lu'an - Zihongkou - Jinzhong - Taiyuan - Yanmen Pass - Huanghuayan - Kill Hukou - Naturalization - Kulen (Kyakhta) - Irkutsk - Novosibirsk - Moscow - Petersburg. "The trade regulated by the treaties concluded during the reign of Catherine II in 1768 was centred on Kyakhta as the main, if not the only...... "about 40,000 crates of tea were imported from here on average until about 1845-1847, but in 1852 it amounted to 175,000 crates." In addition, there are "small quantities of sugar, cotton, raw silk and silk fabrics...... The Russians paid roughly equal quantities of cotton and woollen fabrics, plus small quantities of Russian leather, fine metalwork, furs, and opium. The total value of the goods bought and sold, which, according to the published accounts, were not very high, amounted to more than $15,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 As a result of this growth in trade, Kyakhta, located in Russia, developed from an ordinary fortress and market place into a fairly large city. It became the capital of the border region and was home to a military commander and a civil officer. At the same time, a direct, regular postal service has recently been established between Kyakhta and Beijing, about 900 miles from it, to deliver official documents" (Marx, "Russia's Trade with China", The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 12, People's Publishing House, 1962, p. 167). In 1723 (the early years of Yongzheng), the exchange volume of goods in the Kyakhta market was about 1 million rubles, around 1765 (the middle of Qianlong) increased to about 2 million rubles, in 1795 (the last year of Qianlong) reached more than 3 million rubles, in 1796-1920 (in the Jiaqing period) increased to more than 6 million rubles, and continued to increase during the Daoguang Xianfeng period, taking 1843 (the twenty-third year of Daoguang) as an example, through the hands of Shanxi merchants, the goods exported to Kyakhta, Tea alone amounted to 120,000 cases (100 pounds each). In this year, 1,230,000 pieces of fur of all kinds, 11,000 pieces of wool of all kinds, 1,170,000 pieces of velvet, 570,000 feet of linen, and 26,000 feet of feather yarn were imported from Russia. According to statistics, the Daoguang Dynasty was a prosperous period for the Kyakhta market. During this period, Russia's trade with China accounted for 40%-60% of its total foreign trade, and in the 40s of the 19th century, the trade volume sometimes exceeded 60%, according to the "Statistical Study of Sino-Russian Trade", in 1844, China's imports and exports of goods to Russia accounted for 16% and 19% of the country's total merchandise imports respectively. Trade with Russia is second only to the United Kingdom. From 1821 to 1850, Chinese exports to Russia amounted to about 8 million rubles per year. The difference in Russia's trade with China was paid for by a crude product of silver in the name of "handicrafts", because Russia was forbidden to export silver at that time. Most of this rough "handicraft" was imported from Russia from Hamburg or Frankfurt on the Rhine, called Hamburg silver, which was of high fineness, and after being absorbed by Shanxi, it was cast into ingots silver and put into the domestic financial market. It is estimated that in the two centuries before 1840 AD, China eventually received about 60,000 tons of silver from around the world.

Suzhou is a city on the side of the Grand Canal, and it is also an important wharf for Shanxi merchants to transfer tea from the waterway to the land route, in order to have a place to take a break, Shanxi merchants built this hall on the side of the canal, this casual move of Shanxi merchants left a most extensive area and the largest ancient guild hall building complex for later generations of China, it can be imagined that hundreds of years ago Shanxi merchants wearing robes and horse coats were sitting here calmly dispatching merchant ships on the canal and the Yangtze River from south to north. The profit and loss of buying and selling are carefully calculated. A lot of merchants go to a certain place to do business, and the trade volume in that place accounts for a large proportion, under such conditions the guild hall is produced, and the merchants will pay to build the guild hall, making the guild hall magnificent, very prestigious, representing a symbol of Shanxi merchants. In the first year of the Republic of China, the U.S. Consulate in Tianjin conducted a survey, which was sent to various guild halls, and the chief director of the Shanxi guild sent a report back to the U.S. consul, saying that because Shanxi merchants had too many businesses in the salt, pawn, money, pigment, and paper industries to be counted, they could not be counted. In the early twenties of the twentieth century, a sedan chair carried by sixteen peasants slowly walked into a county town in central Shanxi, the name of this county is Taigu, sitting in the sedan chair is the new wife of Kong Xiangxi, then chairman of Dahan Bank, her name is Song Ailing, this trip is the first time they returned to Kong Xiangxi's hometown after marriage, Song Ailing made a lot of determination when she set off from Shanghai, because she heard that life there is hard and primitive, but when the trip ended, The bride was amazed to discover a life she had never heard of before. In 1973, the American biographer Robbie Brown. In this language, Younson describes Soong's feelings at the time: At the end of this arduous trip, she discovered the most unheard of and luxurious life. Because some important bankers lived in Taigu, it is often referred to as China's Wall Street. In the 19th century, many consuls of Western countries in China mentioned the financial enterprises opened by Shanxi people in their business reports. The British consul in Hankow said that Hankow's merchants had more business dealings with foreign cities than the wealthy Shanxi ticket number, which played almost the same role as the British bank. The British consul in Shanghai used similar language to describe the Shanxi ticket number. They have a high degree of creditworthiness, and the exchange business with the inland provinces and the bills issued by the Chinese to the treaty port exchange all pass through the Shanxi ticket number. According to the historical data of later generations, the heyday of Shanxi ticket number was from 1900 to 1910, when the large ticket number deposit was seven or eight million taels, and the small one had two or three million taels, at this time they made a lot of profits, and it can also be said that Shanxi ticket number was in its heyday. In the 32nd year of Guangxu, according to the statistics of the 14 semicolons to which the country's largest ticket number Rishengchang belongs, the average annual exchange volume of each semicolon is 2.31 million, and there are more than 400 Rishengchang semicolons, more than 3.2 million a family, that is, more than 800 million taels. Combing the commercial bloodline that stretches for thousands of miles, dispatching hundreds of millions of taels of silver, what is needed is not only a little cleverness such as careful planning or thrift, but also relying on a kind of great wisdom that swallows thousands of miles and looks down on the world.

Later, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, an official of the Russian Consulate in China, Bogoyavsky, referred to the merchants of Shanxi Province with the following words: Some trading houses controlled the trade of the whole province by recruiting all the merchants in a certain area to take shares, so there was already a mature model of American trust-like enterprises in China. At that time, another Westerner, Baron Richthofen, a famous German traveler, also put aside the seriousness and restraint of the Germanic tradition when talking about the merchants of Shanxi: the people of Shanxi have outstanding business talents and the spirit of big enterprise, have incomparable superior computing intelligence, and have developed numerical consciousness and financial talent. In 1912, the year of the Republic of China. At 6 p.m. on October 28, in an elegant restaurant in Beijing, a group of leading figures in Shanxi's business community were entertaining a special guest named Liang Qichao, one of the most influential figures in modern Chinese history. The reason why the Shanxi merchants hosted a banquet to welcome Liang Qichao was that they were hatching a very bold plan to organize the central bank of the Republic of China, and the Shanxi merchants hoped to use this famous figure to promote the implementation of this plan. Even from the perspective of later generations, the formation of a central bank by businessmen would have been too bold. Because the central bank is the financial center of the country, its every move will have a huge impact on the national economy and people's livelihood. But Liang Qichao did not find the idea of Shanxi merchants unrealistic, and not only that, but he also thought that the only people in China who could do this at that time were precisely Shanxi merchants. In his speech, he said: Contemptible people have been overseas for more than ten years, and they often have no excuse for outsiders to criticize our country's business capabilities.

The most famous form of money operating capital in Shanxi merchant capital is the ticket number. The ticket number, also known as the ticket bank or exchange bank, is a kind of financial institution specializing in foreign exchange business. Before the ticket number was generated, merchants went out to purchase and trade all to rely on cash to pay, and made money in other places to send to their hometowns also had to rely on a special dart bureau to transport the cash back, not only the cost was very large, time-consuming and misplaced, and often mistakes occurred. This forced Shanxi businessmen who went out to do business to find new methods. Legend has it that Pingyao County "Xiyucheng Pigment Village" in Beijing, Tianjin, Sichuan and other places have branches, and the general manager is called Lei Lutai. The Beijing branch of "Xi Yucheng" often handles cash transfers between Beijing and Pingyao, Sichuan or Tianjin for Shanxi compatriots in Beijing. For example, if a businessman in Pingyao handed over the cash to "Xi Yucheng" in Beijing, then the "Xi Yucheng" Beijing branch would write to the general number of "Xi Yucheng" in Pingyao and ask the remitter to pick up the cash in Pingyao. This kind of remote transfer is initially limited to friends and family, and there is no charge. Later, more and more people asked for transfer, and under the principle of mutual agreement, a certain fee can be paid. This manager Lei was very smart and found that this was a way to make money, so he changed to "Rishengchang" and concurrently engaged in foreign exchange business, and the business was very prosperous. Then, he gave up the pigment business and specialized in the exchange business, which was the first ticket number in Chinese history. Later, they investigated the places where Shanxi merchants traded, selected elite partners, and successively opened exchange branches in Tianjin, Zhangjiakou, Shenyang, Suzhou, Shanghai, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Guilin, Chongqing, Changsha and other places to solicit business. Because this kind of exchange is paid here, and money is used there, the procedures are simple and easy to use, so in addition to the remittance of Shanxi merchants and other local merchants, there are also governments and officials to handle exchange matters. With the increase of capital, the location of foreign exchange is getting bigger and bigger, and the profit is also increasing. Then he absorbed cash and issued loans, and the business of "Rishengchang" flourished. Seeing this scene, Shanxi businessmen have learned the experience of "Rishengchang" and invested in the ticket number, thus forming the famous Shanxi ticket number. By the eve of the Opium War, there were about eight ticket numbers in Shanxi. After the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing government's finances became more difficult, and the Shanxi ticket number also shifted from serving feudal merchants to the Qing government. In order to undertake international business such as the exchange of foreign activities of the Qing government, ticket businessmen set up branches abroad, He Hongru, general manager of Qixian Heshengyuan ticket number, opened branches in Kobe, Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka in Japan, and Yongtaiyu ticket number in Pingyao opened a branch in Kolkata, India. At this time, the Shanxi ticket number can really be said to be "prosperous business through the four seas, and the wealth is flourishing up to the three rivers".

The development of Shanxi's merchants' capital not only enabled Shanxi merchants to gather a large amount of monetary assets and let silver flow back to their hometowns in a steady stream, but also promoted the development of Shanxi's handicraft industry, promoted the exchange of commodities and materials across the country, and accelerated the process of China's natural economy disintegration and commodity economic development. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Shanxi businessman Wang Tingyu invested in copper mining, and Liu Yonghe invested in the mining of Longmen coal mine, so that commercial capital was transformed into industrial capital. In the Ming Dynasty, the government released salt production, and requisitioned salt households to serve and work in the salt pond, which was called "salt ding". In fact, the workers and slaves of the feudal state lived in great misery, often resisted work and fled, and their production efficiency was extremely low, which showed that the backward relations of production could no longer meet the needs of the development of the productive forces. In 1648, the Qing government abolished the "salt ding" system, changed the salt production to private management, and handed it over to merchants to water and dry on their own. In the following year, the salt pond was divided into five hundred and thirteen numbers, and it was stipulated that one merchant household should operate the first number and register them one by one. This kind of "sitting businessman" who operates the production of salt is self-raised, hires people to fish for salt, and produces 100 taels of salt (240 yuan for one citation), of which 70 citations have to pay taxes, one citation is equivalent to three dollars and two cents of silver, and the other 30 citations do not pay taxes, and offset the labor cost of the merchants. Although the merchants do not have the ownership of the salt pond, they have the right to use it, and as long as they pay taxes to the government, they can obtain the No. 1 salt pond and operate production. The wages of the hired workers, determined by their skill and paid annually, have in fact constituted capitalist relations of production. The merchants were the early capitalists, and the salt workers were the predecessors of the modern salt pond industrial workers. At that time, there were more than 20,000 workers in the salt ponds, and the scale of production was huge, surpassing the level of the handicrafts of the early capitalist workshops in Europe. Judging from the Ming Dynasty's government-run office, when "salt workers" fled to business, and "residents enthusiastically went to work," this was a profound historical change, showing the positive role of the new production relations in adapting to and promoting the development of productive forces. Regardless of whether it is commodity management capital or monetary management capital, Shanxi merchant capital is generally not the owner of capital (i.e., commercial capitalists) directly engaged in business activities, and most of them are financed (commercial capitalists) who contribute a certain amount of silver and entrust a shrewd and capable person they trust to be the shopkeeper (equivalent to a manager) to engage in a certain business activity. Caidong handed over the right to use funds, the right to deploy personnel, and the right to operate the business to the treasurer, and engaged in business activities independently. Settle the accounts once on a regular basis, and the shopkeeper will report the operating results to Caidong. If Caidong is satisfied, he will continue to be appointed, and Caidong can be dismissed if he is not satisfied. This kind of separation of capital ownership and management rights, the implementation of the manager responsibility system, coupled with the subsequent implementation of the personal stock system, prompted the operators not to slack off in their work, combined the interests of the workers with the interests of the enterprise, promoted the emergence of management personnel, and improved the operating efficiency, which is of positive significance in the history of Chinese enterprises. As early as the Yuan Dynasty, there was a school for the children of salt merchants in Yuncheng Yanchi, called "Yuncheng Salt Transport Envoy Sixue". In the Qing Dynasty, in Baotou City, there were also schools run by Shanxi merchants. The well-known Chinese and foreign Mongolian businessman "Da Shengkui" firm, in Outer Mongolia Kobdo has its own training institution, from Jinzhong to recruit fifteen or sixteen-year-old young men, ride a camel through naturalization, Kulen to Kobdo to receive Mongolian, Russian, Kazakh, Uygur and business knowledge training, generally for half a year, and then assigned to each semicolon, follow the old workers to learn business. This method of attaching importance to improving the professional quality of staff and staff members is also very farsighted and sagacious even now. Shanxi businessmen were the first to create private exchange business, transfer and clearing centers, and the first to create interbank associations similar to the central bank, all of which showed the shrewdness, ability and creative ability of Shanxi businessmen. Shanxi businessmen were the first to enter the international financial market, showing their courage to open up new fields.

During the three-century-long commercial revolution since the Ming and Qing dynasties, China's economy was embroiled in a wave of internationalization. In this international trade, there is a net inflow of silver currency from China, which means a net export of goods from China. The relationship between China's commercial revolution and China's major merchant gangs in the Ming and Qing dynasties was close, and it was the major merchant gangs that promoted China's commercial revolution. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, China's commerce and handicraft industry developed rapidly, and the trade of trafficking in other places was very active, and many merchant gangs have been formed, such as Shanxi Gang, Huizhou Gang, Shaanxi Gang, Guangdong Gang, Shandong Gang, Dongting Gang, Jiangyou Gang, Ningbo Gang, Jinhua Gang, Shaoxing Gang, Fujian Gang, etc., among which Shanxi Gang has the largest stage of activity and the strongest capital. The development of Shanxi's commodity operating capital has separated out the monetary operating capital, and its main organizational forms are pawnshops, money banks, printing bureaus, account houses, ticket numbers and other financial enterprises, which are all over the country and even some countries in Asia and Europe. Foreigners refer to these financial institutions collectively as Shanxi Bank. China's financial revolution is closely related to the Shanxi ticket number, which is the Shanxi ticket number or Shanxi Bank to promote China's financial revolution and start the valve of China's economic internationalization. The commercial and financial revolutions of the Ming and Qing dynasties in China developed in parallel with the commercial and financial revolutions in Europe. Before 1500 AD, Europe, like China, was still an agrarian society, and even the level of agriculture was lower than that of China. After the commercial revolution and financial revolution from 1500 to 1750, the industrial revolution took place in European countries, entered the industrial society, and now entered the post-industrial economic era. In China's economic and social development, it has created the glory of the world agricultural economy era, and also created the great achievements of the commercial revolution and financial revolution in the transition period from agricultural society to industrial society. The reasons for this historical fact have been discussed for more than 100 years from the Wuxu Reform to the 21 st century, and there are two main points that everyone agrees on: First, there was a Renaissance movement in Europe, which was an ideological emancipation movement aimed at the backward agricultural society, a reckoning of theocracy, a propaganda of human rights, and a rejection of science, which in turn led to the emancipation of human nature and the progress, protection, and promotion of technology, plus the international exchanges, capital accumulation, and innovation of the enterprise organization system brought about by the commercial revolution and the financial revolution. Industrial progress cannot be stopped. However, China's feudal ethics based on an agrarian society and traditional Confucianism, which has not undergone impact and sublimation, have long occupied the mainstream society and dominant position, and if they are not liquidated, it will be difficult for natural people to emancipate and open up society, and the Celestial Empire will be condescending, and the merchant class will not be able to enter the mainstream society. Second, the innovation of the social and economic systems determined by the above-mentioned reasons has always been more difficult for China than for Europe, and it is obviously much easier for the small European countries with scattered and diverse countries to innovate the economic and social systems than for the economies and societies of large countries with a high degree of concentration of power. The late Qing Dynasty did not provide any conditions for the innovation of China's economic and social system. Without the emancipation of people and minds, there will be no innovation in the economic and social system, and without the innovation of the economic and social system, there will be no environment and conditions for the industrial revolution.

A few of the Jin merchants

Qiao's Family:

Qiao Guifa, the first generation of the Qiao family's founder, started from a small business, and grew from a small man outside the mouth to a big fortune that monopolized Baotou's business. The Qiao family's industry continued to flourish in the hands of the second-generation entrepreneur Qiao Zhiyong, reaching its peak, and the commercial bank and silver account were opened to Beijing, Tianjin, Northeast China, and the Yangtze River Basin. Xu Ke's "Qing Barnyard Banknotes" estimated that the Qiao family had a total of four or five million taels of assets, in fact, the Qiao family's various movable and immovable properties should add up to tens of millions of taels, which is equivalent to nearly 10 billion assets in modern times, which is an incredible astronomical amount under the level of development of productive forces and economic conditions at that time.

Qu Family:

The ancestors of the Qu family started as a "merchant picker" who walked between Changzhi and Qi County, and developed into one of the eight wealthy families in Jinzhong during the Qianjia period of the Qing Dynasty. The two major tea houses of Changyuanchuan and Changyuchuan opened by the Qu family procured black tea from the two lakes and sold them in various parts of the northwest and Mongolia and Russia. Xu Ke's "Qing Barnyard Banknotes" estimated that the Qu family had a total of three or four million taels of assets, in fact, far more than that, legend has it that only a silver kiln in the "prosperous and wealthy man" Qu Yuanzhen has three million taels of silver.

The TV series "Chang Jin Yuan Ticket Number", which won the "Five One Project Award", is based on the story of the Qu family, which reflects the operation of the Sanjin Yuan ticket number and the fierce conflict between Qu Yuanzhen and Qu Benqiao's father and son in terms of ideas and concepts. Qu Yuanzhen was a brilliant business genius but had an eccentric personality, which led his great-grandson Qu Chuan to title the novel "The Golden Devil". Qu Benqiao, who failed to resolve the conflict with his father all his life, insisted on his choice, took the road of the imperial examination and entered the official career, and became a famous patriotic businessman and educator.

The Qu family entered its heyday from the seventeenth generation of the Qu family, and the seventeenth generation of the Qu family had three famous rich people: Tian Xi Rich Lord, Wang Rich Lord, and Jin Rich Lord. They have built more than a dozen compounds and more than 1,000 houses in the eastern half of the ancient city of Qi County, covering an area of more than 30,000 square meters.

Cao Family:

The ancestors of the Cao family originally lived in Taiyuan Jin Temple, and moved to Taigu during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty. The prosperity of the Cao family began in the late Ming Dynasty to the end of the Ming Dynasty in the Guandong Cao Sanxi, to the Daoguang, Xianfeng years, reached the peak, more than 640 shops all over the north and south of the river, more than 37,000 employees, assets as high as 12 million taels of silver. In terms of business performance, the Cao family is a more prominent one among the wealthy families of Jin merchants, and its business has been in Russia, Japan, and North Korea. The prosperity of the Cao family lasted for two or three hundred years, and the turbulent times of the early 20th century were in decline due to the crowding out of the national bank, the Russian Revolution, the Xinhai Revolution, the Mongolian Revolution, the Japanese invasion of China, and the drug abuse of their descendants.

Although the Cao family lives in the countryside, they live in great luxury and often lead the province. As early as 1920, the Cao family bought an American-made car, and at that time, even Yan Xishan, the overseer of Shanxi, did not have such treatment. Soon, the Cao family purchased a generator and installed electric lights and telephones, both of which were the first in the province. When the old lady of the Cao family "Xi Po'er" went out of the funeral, she spent 100,000 taels of silver and used * people to carry the coffin. At present, treasures such as the "Baishou Screen" and the "Golden Locomotive Clock" that are still preserved in the courtyard of the Cao family can make visitors feel the luxury of the Cao family in the past.

In order to protect the safety of family members and property, the Cao family has been employing local Xingyi boxing masters as bodyguards for many years, and then set up a courtyard arm, the number of people in the Guangxu period was as many as five hundred, to the early years of the Republic of China, the Cao family still has three hundred soldiers, well-armed, and equipped with uniform clothing, hire officer coaches, every three, six, nine days, but also into the city and the official army to practice together.

After the Japanese invaded Taigu, the Cao family fled, and the Japanese invaders used two trucks to loot the Cao family's treasures and property for more than 40 days, and some of the gold dust on the painted paintings was also scraped away.

Wang's Family:

Jingsheng Wang is a descendant of Taiyuan Wang, and settled in Jingsheng after two migrations during the Huangqing period of the Yuan Dynasty, and it has been nearly 700 years. The Jingsheng Wang clan started by cultivating and grinding black bean tofu, from farmers and merchants, from merchants to officials, and finally developed into one of the four major families of Lingshi in the middle of the Qing Dynasty.

When the Wang family passed to the 14th Wang Qianshou, Wang Qian and his brothers, the Qing court was in urgent need of military horses for the rebellion of Wu Sangui, and the Wang brothers, who had already begun to engage in livestock sales, offered 24 good horses, which not only made them praised by the Kangxi Emperor, but also ordered to raise military horses for the Qing army to obtain considerable economic returns. Wang Qianshou also participated in Emperor Kangxi's Qiansu banquet and gave him a dragon head crutch. Wang Qianshou later donated 2,000 taels of silver to his son Wang Mengjian a five-grade official, and the Wang family took the first step from business to official. Since then, the Wang family has been canonized to official positions through three ways: the right way to investigate, the different way to donate and the ancestral attack.

The Jingsheng royal family, like many big families, cannot escape the inevitable law of rise and fall after hard work and prosperity. The decline of the Wang family began in the Daoguang period, and some of the descendants of the Wang family became addicted to opium and became thieves and beggars. The first thing the Wang family was sold was part of the house in the Red Gate Fort, and after the owner with a different surname moved in, the four characters "Hebao Tongzong" on the plaque of the Fort Gate had to be changed to "Hebao Tongde". Since then, Gaojiaya has changed hands with 964 taels of silver, and Xiaoyi Temple has been sold cheaply for 2,000 copper coins. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Wang Yin, who was the only surviving member of the Wang family and still had strong assets, hurriedly sold his assets in various places and moved his family south. Since then, after more than 600 years of entrepreneurship and prosperity, this glorious and famous family has finally disappeared and only become a historical topic on one side of the land.

Chang Family:

Chang's ancestors moved from Taigu to the rim in the Ming Dynasty, and lived by shepherding sheep, and the eighth ancestor Chang Wei went to Zhangjiakou with a blanket on his back and embarked on the road of business. The ancestor's shepherd whip and Chang Wei's blanket were later enshrined in the Chang family's ancestral hall, and Chang Wanda's famous saying "depending on what is nothing, depending on the profit as if it is empty" has been respected by the descendants of the Chang family for 200 years. Chang Wei's sons Chang Wan (Wang Ji) and Chang Wanda became their father's right-hand man, and the two brothers successively founded 20 business names of "Ten Virtues" and "Ten Jades", and opened up tens of thousands of miles of international trade routes from Wuyi Mountain, Fujian Province to Russia, "Tea Road", and became the leading "foreign trade family" of Jin merchants. At the peak of the Chang family, it had more than 1,000 employees, tens of thousands of camels, and monopolized forty percent of the Sino-Russian tea trade, and was the richest businessman in the country during the Qianlong period.