Cultural tradition of Huizhou merchants

Sishang: not seeking profit, but seeking sincerity;

Ye Si: Do not value wealth, value peace;

Smay: not at the price of price reduction, but at the price of balance;

Sell: don't win by earning, win by faith;

Commodities: commodities based on demand rather than imports;

Chase: don't collect money for wealth, all for wealth;

Si Nuo: Don't answer with an answer, answer with facts. patriotism

Huizhou merchants took pains to transport grain to the border in the early days, actively participated in the anti-Japanese struggle in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and even actively donated money and materials to resist foreign invasion in modern times, which always reflected their patriotism. Because they know that without the stability and unity of the country, there will be no prosperity and development 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.

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.

sense of competition

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.

Diligence spirit

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.

spirit of dedication

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.

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.

team spirit

Huizhou merchants are commercial groups formed by blood and geography. The establishment of Huizhou guild halls and trading houses in various places highlights this spirit, thus greatly strengthening the internal cohesion of Huizhou business gangs and improving their market competitiveness.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Persistent spirit

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 until she is old. Children and grandchildren are strangers since childhood and ask where the old man came from.

The above 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. As a result of family business, Huizhou has formed some famous merchant families, such as Wang, Jiang, Bao in Shexian, Wu in Xiuning and Zhu in Wuyuan. 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.

spiritual civilization

Judging from the fact that we advocate the simultaneous construction of material civilization and spiritual civilization, most Huizhou merchants in the Ming and Qing Dynasties can be said to have done this consciously. Of course, the material civilization and spiritual civilization of Huizhou merchants are essentially different from the socialist material civilization and spiritual civilization we advocate.

Huizhou region has a strong interest in human history, coupled with Huizhou people's ingenuity and attention to education (there is a saying that "ten households in one village do not waste their studies"), they can generally have a cultural complex that cannot be solved. "The granary knows etiquette, and food and clothing know honor and disgrace." Huizhou merchants who become rich in business naturally pursue their own cultural and spiritual life.

Because Huizhou merchants generally have a certain cultural foundation, after doing business, some borrow books to express their feelings, some recite poems, some immerse themselves in the melody, and some are vivid, elegant and interesting. Among the masters of Huizhou merchants, there are almost everywhere who can write poems and articles.

Take Yangzhou, where Huizhou merchants are most concentrated, as an example. Chen Qubing, a scholar in Qing Dynasty, said:

The prosperity of Yangzhou actually appeared under the impetus of Huizhou merchants, and Yangzhou can be described as a colony of Huizhou merchants. ..... and the Yangzhou school with Huizhou as the main body has also flourished.

This clearly shows the relationship between Yangzhou School and Huizhou merchants in Yangzhou: Huizhou merchants not only promoted the development of commerce, but also participated in and promoted the construction and development of academic culture, thus achieving a double harvest of material civilization and spiritual civilization.

Not only Yangzhou, but also other places. Here, take Bai Chengan, a Huizhou merchant doing business in Suzhou, as an example to briefly explain.

The Cheng family is a big family in Huizhou. Since their ancestor Liang Zhongzhuang, the satrap of the Jin Dynasty, moved to Huizhou, several generations of descendants have multiplied and scattered in Shexian, yi county, Xiuning and other places, with a population of several thousand. Because Shexian, yi county and Xiuning are located in mountainous areas, only a very limited amount of farmland is not enough to meet the growing population, so most of them go out to do business to make a living.

However, his leadership style lies not only in his commercial success, but also in his Confucianism or the cultural spirit he pursues. Doing business in Suzhou, he went from industrialist to bureaucrat. Because he behaves like a Confucian, Suzhou literati also like to make friends with him. Mr. Du Taifu of Suzhou loves its simplicity, so his inscription is "Baian" and he is affectionately called "Baian Weng".

So how did Cheng Baian pursue his own cultural life? How to embody his Confucianism in the management of shopping malls? Let's look at it through an example. At that time, there was a great writer named Gui Youguang who was a household name in China. However, such a well-known scholar in China has an extraordinary friendship with Cheng Baian. On Bai Chengan's eightieth birthday, he ordered Gui Youguang to write a birthday speech for him. Gui Youguang not only wrote a birthday preface for him, but also warmly praised Cheng Baian's "being a scholar for business" and "being a businessman for a scholar" in the birthday preface. Gui Youguang said in Preface to Longevity: "The descendants of Cheng are scattered in Xiuning, yi county and Shexian, Huizhou, with thousands of registered households. In this big family, they like reading and often reward each other with poems. From this perspective, born in such a big family that attaches great importance to poetry and calligraphy etiquette, isn't Cheng Baian a "scholar businessman"? However, although Mr. Wang is in business, he is cautious in words and deeds, good at communicating with people, and likes to communicate with literati and scholars with poems and songs. Isn't this the so-called' merchant'? "

It is not easy for an ordinary businessman to be praised by a generation of writers. If you don't have a profound cultural background, you will inevitably become the object of ridicule, let alone win the favor of literati, even if you stand between them. However, Cheng Baian not only won the favor of literati (and in Suzhou, where the style of writing is prevalent and talented people come forth in large numbers), but also won the enthusiastic praise of literati leaders. Can this be done by ordinary businessmen who don't know how to write?

Looking through Huizhou local chronicles and related documents, there are countless Huizhou merchants who are "good at Confucianism" like Cheng Baian. The interaction between "Confucianism" and "family scholar" of Huizhou merchants fully illustrates the interactive relationship between economy and culture. Realizing that cultural quality is closely related to business operation, Huizhou merchants pay attention to absorbing knowledge of literature, art, geography, maps, transportation, meteorology, products, accounting, folk customs and history, and promote their investment in cultural construction. At the same time, the commercial practice of Huizhou merchants derived a unique commercial culture, which spread around with the commercial activities of Huizhou merchants, and promoted the development of practical learning in Ming and Qing Dynasties to a certain extent, thus enriching the content of traditional culture. In addition, Huizhou merchants, as businessmen, spread their own cultural patterns to all parts of the country, and at the same time absorbed cultural nutrition from all parts of the country, which promoted cultural exchanges and integration to some extent.

In a word, Huizhou merchants not only engaged in commercial operations and contributed to material civilization, but also actively participated in various cultural activities and contributed to the cultural development of feudal times.