I have never dreamed of Huizhou in my life.
Huizhou is located in the mountainous area of southern Anhui, surrounded by mountains, with overlapping mountains and rivers and beautiful scenery. For a long time, it has been in a relatively closed geographical environment, and gradually formed an independent folk unit, forming its own unique customs. However, there is very little arable land here, and it is known as "seven mountains, half water and half fields, and two roads of manor". Even cultivated land, the soil quality is poor and too rigid to cultivate. Moreover, in the rainy season, flash floods occur, cultivated land is flooded, and crops are swept away by floods; In the season of scarce rain, cultivated land will dry up and crack due to lack of water. As long as it doesn't rain for ten days, the mountain people will cry to the sky and pray for rain. There was so little arable land, but in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the population here increased rapidly, which greatly exceeded the carrying capacity of limited arable land, resulting in a serious contradiction between less land and more people.
It is in this situation that the land is small and the population is large, and the farming environment is harsh that batches of "Huimin camels" and "Jixi cattle" have been created. The "Huizhou Camel" and "Jixi Cattle" here refer to Huizhou merchants who went out of their hometown to do business in various places. The description of camels and cows, on the one hand, shows the hardships of Huizhou merchants' entrepreneurship, on the other hand, it also means that Huizhou merchants have the spirit of humiliation and perseverance. This spirit is one of the important factors for the success of Huizhou merchants' entrepreneurship.
Camels and cows are two famous mammals. Camels are the main animal power in arid and water-deficient sand desert areas. Cattle are people's right-hand man in rural buildings and farming areas with spring ploughing and autumn ploughing. Over time, in people's eyes, camels and cows symbolize diligence and hard work, and embody excellent qualities such as dedication, persistence, hard work, enterprising, friendship and harmony.
Since Ming and Qing Dynasties, after observing, understanding and studying Huizhou merchants, many people compared Huizhou merchants to "Huizhou merchants' camels", which summarized the image of Huizhou merchants and reflected their overall quality.
However, among the six counties in Huizhou, the rise of Huizhou merchants in Jixi was later than other counties. So when the merchants in other counties in Huizhou declined, the Huizhou merchants in Jixi were in the ascendant. This up-and-coming star, Hui Hui, a Huizhou merchant who is competing for supremacy in troubled times, has also attracted people's attention. The spirit of "Jixi Niu" reflected in Huizhou merchants in Jixi has also become the object of exploration, inquiry and research by Chinese and foreign scholars. Nowadays, people are not limited to Jixi businessmen, but describe all the rising stars of Huizhou merchants equally.
Whether it is "Huizhou Camel" or "Jixi Cattle", it is an image summary of the spirit of Huizhou merchants. Under the condition of building a socialist market economy, the superiority of business environment is far from comparable in Ming and Qing dynasties. However, as an entrepreneurial spirit, the spirit of Huizhou merchants is still worth exploring, learning and learning from. To sum up, the spirit of Huizhou merchants has the following points:
First, the patriotic spirit of defending the country. From the early Huizhou merchants painstakingly transporting grain to the border, to actively participating in the anti-Japanese struggle in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and even to the modern Huizhou merchants actively donating money and materials to resist the invasion of foreign enemies, their patriotic feelings have always been reflected. Because they know very well that without the stability and unity of the country, there will be no prosperity of personal career. "Every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the world", which is the patriotic tradition of businessmen in China history.
Second, indomitable enterprising spirit. The harsh living environment forced Huizhou merchants to go out of their homes. They usually start with small money and make a living in business. The sea of commerce is rough and dangerous, and it will run aground or even sink if you are not careful. However, the value of Huizhou merchants is that they did not collapse and disappeared from the scene after setbacks. On the contrary, they never hesitate, persevere and never give up until they succeed. Many Huizhou merchants have experienced numerous failures and finally succeeded in getting rich. Attitude is everything.
Third, the competitive spirit of keeping pace with the times. The market is unpredictable. Huizhou merchants who are active in the market must always carefully predict the market, observe the market trend, analyze the market situation, assess the situation, subdivide the target market according to the surplus and shortage of market commodities and the supply and demand situation, select the commodities to be sold, and flexibly grasp the operation time and place with the changes of supply and demand. They are engaged in five major industries: salt, grain, wood, tea and pawn, all of which are randomly operated according to changes in market conditions. It is precisely because they can observe the market at any time and assess the situation according to market changes, so when facing the competition in the same industry, they can always walk in front of the same industry and win by surprise.
Fourth, help the public in a spirit of cooperation. The harmonious spirit of Huizhou merchants is not only manifested in families, but also in individual business groups. Even within the whole Huizhou merchants group, we can help each other in the same boat, help others and help the public. The establishment of Huizhou guilds and trading houses in various places highlights this spirit, thus greatly strengthening the internal cohesion of Huizhou business gangs, improving market competitiveness and occupying a place in the market.
Fifth, the spirit of thrift. Most Huizhou merchants started from small capital, overcame all kinds of unfavorable factors without fear of difficulties, and finally established their own inheritance after some efforts and became wealthy businessmen. Most of them especially cherish hard-won wealth. Therefore, although they become rich, their daily life still maintains the style of hard work and plain living at home. Not only that, they also educate their children and grandchildren with the spirit of hard work and simplicity.
Sixth, the spirit of dedication to justice. This is manifested in the fact that after a large number of Huizhou merchants became rich, they made contributions to the society with various "righteous acts". Because Huizhou merchants are good at Confucianism, they pay more attention to humanistic spirit and rational pursuit in their business activities. Although they are rich, they still keep their promises and are thrifty. However, once they face difficulties such as domestic refugees or droughts and floods, they will give generously and dedicate their wealth to society.
Seventh, Jia's Confucian cultural spirit. "Jia is good at Confucianism" is a prominent feature of Huizhou merchants. Huizhou merchants love reading. Some do business during the day and study at night. I can't forget reading all the time on the road. The love of reading has brought three influences to Huizhou merchants: First, it has improved their cultural quality and taste. In this way, higher cultural quality has become the "adhesive" for them to communicate with bureaucrats and literati. At the same time, it also brings a lot of convenience to the commercial operation of Huizhou merchants; Second, because of reading, Huizhou merchants are good at drawing rich business experience and wisdom from history and promoting their own business development; Third, they have strengthened their rational understanding of doing business, that is, they can do business with the so-called "Confucianism and Taoism", thus forming good business ethics.
It is with their unique spirit of Huizhou merchants that they can grow from scratch, from small to large, and even develop into a big business gang that dominates the world. This spirit is rooted in the soil of China's traditional culture and carried forward by Huizhou merchants. The spirit of Huizhou merchants created by "Huizhou Camel" and "Jixi Cattle" is not only a great wealth of Huizhou merchants, but also a precious legacy left by Huizhou merchants to future generations.
Eighth, with the team spirit of helping the poor, Huizhou merchants are business groups formed by blood and geography. "Beauty is not beautiful, hometown water; Kiss or not, fellow villagers. " Huizhou merchants with the same blood relationship or geographical relationship have a strong sense of blood relationship and geographical identity. In a strange land, Huizhou merchants often get carried away with excitement when they meet their relatives or fellow villagers unexpectedly. This inherent concept of "nostalgia" and "clan consciousness" formed the tradition of helping others and supporting each other.
There is a family of Huizhou merchants with Wu surname. The elders in the family have made such a family rule: If some children in the family can't study, and there is no land to farm at home, they have to go out to do business because of life reasons, then the elders with business experience in the family will either support him or recommend him to other relatives and friends, so that he can have a stable job and make a living. Never let him fool around outside, it will lead to great disaster.
Fang Yongbin, a businessman in Huizhou, made friends from all walks of life, including government bureaucrats, literati, gentry and businessmen, etc. So how did Fang Yongbin, a little-known Confucian businessman, know so many people from different regions and social status? How did he establish such a wide communication network? You know, transportation and communication at that time were far less developed than today. The answer is that besides Fang Yongbin's personal love for making friends and his omnipotence in literature, painting and calligraphy, his relationship with fellow villagers also gives him many opportunities to meet different people.
The rural clan concept of Huizhou merchants contains conventional moral concepts and mandatory clan rules, which makes Huizhou merchants have a strong sense of hardship and * * *. This kind of consciousness objectively becomes the power source of information transmission between Huizhou merchants. A Jixi folk song goes like this:
If you have a business, you will stay. Go to Suzhou if you have no business. Running around to Shanghai, asking relatives and friends to find the dock. This fellow countryman is willing to cherish love and promised to take it in.
Take Shexian County and Xiuning County as examples. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, many people in the two counties went out to do business, and these people who went out to do business often took their relatives and friends with them. Therefore, it often happens that if a company succeeds, then the family will not enjoy it exclusively, and often everyone will share it. Large companies can even carry thousands of families, and small enterprises can also carry dozens of families to get rich together.
There is a Huizhou merchant named Xu, who has a strong sense of closeness. His business abroad is booming, so all his relatives and friends went to see him. He supported all those who came to take refuge and all his relatives and friends became rich. From here, we can see how the clans of Huizhou merchants unite with each other!
If a thousand people unite, there will be a thousand people's strength; If ten thousand people are disloyal, no one will use them.
Mutual support naturally forms a team spirit and creates a collective advantage in the competition of shopping malls. Hu Shi, a modern Huizhou native, has long recognized the advantages of Huizhou merchants' clan groups. When he heard that Jixi, his hometown, was going to compile a county chronicle, he said, "The county chronicle should pay attention to the distribution and history of the relocated business people in the county. County records should not only look at Xiaoji River, but also at Daji River, which is more important. Without that great fortune, little Jixi would not be a situation. " Hu Shi's "Dajixi" is actually a group of Jixi people who do business in various parts of the country with clan relations. The implicit compulsion of clan consciousness plays a key role here. For example, once some people don't care about their hometown, some elders will try their best to persuade them, saying, "Our hometown in Huizhou has always preserved thousands of years of ancestral graves, thousands of ancestral temples and thousands of villages. These are not available anywhere else. If you leave your hometown, even if your children and grandchildren can live a prosperous life for a long time, they will become single parents in other places. Suppose the family business goes down, they will be very helpless. You should think about this kind of thing that is easy to deviate from your hometown! " These preaching by public opinion, combined with the restriction of morality and clan laws and regulations, make the chain between clan and rural edge solid and firm, and also make the team spirit of Huizhou merchants carry forward more and more, and the team strength grows stronger and stronger. It is precisely because of the strong team spirit of Huizhou merchants that after defeating their competitors, they often rely on their own strength to turn general operations into monopoly operations and seek high profits. For example, the salt industry in Huaibei, the tea industry in Beijing and the cloth industry in Songjiang are almost monopolized by Huizhou merchants.
In addition, after all, merchants in Ming and Qing dynasties were in feudal times, and because of the narrow feudal consciousness, business operators often kept each other's experience and technology secret. However, this situation rarely exists in Huizhou merchants with the team spirit of "helping the public with the public". Although businessmen are well aware of the value of business experience and generally don't teach it easily, Huizhou merchants are business gangs established through blood and geographical relations, so it is logical to teach experience. Coupled with the clan and geographical characteristics of Huizhou merchants, the success or failure of business is directly related to local and local interests, so predecessors are willing to pass on their experience to future generations. This kind of relationship network, which is linked by the blood relationship of the township, gives Huizhou merchants an advantage in information exchange that other merchants did not have at the same time.
Don't make "fennel radish"
Specialty is a persistent belief and deep investment of practitioners in their own profession.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were many people engaged in commercial activities in Huizhou, accounting for almost half of the population of the whole region. Dou Peng Gossip, a note novel in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, said: Huizhou customs and habits, the average person 16 years old will go out to learn business. There is also a folk proverb in Huizhou that says: I was born in Huizhou without practicing in my previous life; Thirteen or fourteen. Throw it away. Ordinary people live in poverty, and children will go abroad to study and do business when they are fifteen or sixteen, and try to make a living. At first, most of them were apprentices in the shops of elders or relatives. Apprenticeships are usually three years, and three-year apprenticeships are quite hard. Suffering is a trivial matter. The key is to finish school smoothly, otherwise you will be laughed at. Being an apprentice abroad and doing business alone in the future is the most taboo to be called "fennel radish". Because "fennel" is homophonic with "returning to China" and "radish" is homophonic with "leaving home", which means that you have failed to study abroad or are poorly managed. Therefore, whether they are apprentices or travel alone in the future, Huizhou merchants will be conscientious and diligent. Once their business is unsuccessful, they would rather die in another country than go home easily.
The persistence and persistence of Huizhou merchants in commerce can be said to be quite rare in the commercial history of China. Many people run away from home, leaving their wives behind and running around all the year round. Ming Wanli's "Xiuning County Records" said: People in Xiuning County often go out to do business to make a living. They generally pay attention to fairness in business, and often win with good quality and low price. They often don't stop doing business until they are old. During business, according to Huizhou custom, operators usually go home to visit relatives once a year, but those who are far away from home can only go home to reunite with their parents, wives and children once every three or four years. After the visit, I must go out to continue my business. Although they have worked outside for many years, they still have no regrets. Even some Huizhou merchants have gone out for decades and never returned.
"a healthy woman is a guest at home, and her head is black and old. When the children and grandchildren grow up and don't know each other, ask where the old man is from. " This first Xin 'an Zhi Zhu Ci is a true portrayal of Hui people's business. The child was still in infancy when he went out and had grown up when he came back. Their father is often just a concept. Now that their father is back, they naturally don't know each other. "Shexian County Records of the Republic of China" said: "Our county customs value business. Doing business is bound to be far from home. Every time I leave home, I often come back once every few years, and sometimes I don't even go home for several years. Just married, my husband left home to do business, it is everywhere, and they are used to it. "
There was a businessman named Zhan in Wuyuan County in the Qing Dynasty. He left home for business a few months after his son was born, and the result was 17. When his son grows up, he is determined to track down his father and get him back. So my son went deep into Sichuan, Yunnan and other mountainous areas, searched everywhere in Hubei and Chengdu, Sichuan, and finally found his father, and the father and son came back together. There is also a Shexian businessman, Cheng Shiduo, who went out to do business with his father at the age of six and didn't go home until he was 27. Therefore, some people say that Xin 'an businessmen "don't return 10, and if they return in twenty or thirty years, Sun will marry his wife and deny his father". Huizhou merchants devoted their lives to commercial management without any regrets, which fully reflected their professionalism. The professional spirit of Huizhou merchants is not only reflected in the unrepentant behavior of Huizhou merchants all their lives, but also in the persistence and pursuit of the merchant family for the commercial generation.
Huizhou residents have a great feature, that is, they live in groups, and often a village or even a township is a family. The so-called "thousands of people have never separated." They have a strong sense of clan, and the patriarchal clan system has become a link to maintain family relations. Similarly, in business, the patriarchal clan system also plays an important role in the clan relationship, and there is often a situation of "supporting the clan to do business", and the clan supports and takes care of each other. As a result, famous merchant families such as Wang, Jiang, Shexian Bao, Xiuning Wu and Wuyuan Zhu appeared in Huizhou. This kind of investment and business concentration of hundreds of people is rare in other business gangs in Ming and Qing Dynasties. Many of these families are from generation to generation, diligent and dedicated, and do business wholeheartedly. For example, Ni Guoshu, a businessman from Qimen, once went to Raohe to sell wood, but unfortunately drowned at the ferry. His son was still in infancy at that time. When he grew up, he decided to continue his father's ambition, study hard in business and not seek rich profits in business. He was always known for his justice, and eventually became a wealthy businessman. In the genealogy of Xu Shi in Huizhou, there is a more touching "family entrepreneurial history": there is a person named Xu Daoshan in the Xu Shi family. When he was young, he used to do business in Qingyuan. Because of his good business, he earned a lot of money and ranked among the local businessmen. Later, I went home halfway, my business was interrupted, and my family was gradually sleepy. Daoshan watched his sons grow up, so he decided to return to his old job. He ordered his son Yongjing to take charge of the family affairs and went to Linqing for business alone. Soon, due to riots, Daoshan ran out of funds and died in a foreign land. In order to revitalize his family business, his son Yongjing resolutely inherited his father's business, bid farewell to his mother, wife and children, and went out to operate in his father's footsteps. Unexpectedly, he walked for decades and finally died in a foreign land. When Yongjing's son grew up, his mother took out her own private money and ordered him to continue to go out to do business and complete the unfinished business of his grandfather and father. As a result, he Xu's family finally succeeded in business and the family business was revitalized. There are many such examples among Huizhou merchants.