When King Wu defeated King Zhou and destroyed the Shang Dynasty, the Shang remnants were driven from their lands. With no choice but to make a living through trade and commerce to barely survive, the term “merchant” thus emerged throughout the realm.
From the very beginning, the term “merchant” carried the connotation of “lowly people.” Being ranked last in the social hierarchy of scholars, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants was bad enough, but consider the fate of history’s famous great merchants: Lu Buwei was executed by Emperor Qin Shihuang; Shen Wansan was exiled by the Ming Emperor; Shi Chong was exterminated with his clan because of the concubine Lüzhu; Xian Gao bankrupted himself to reward the army… By any calculation, throughout five thousand years of history, merchants who rose to prominence rarely met good ends.
As dynasties changed through bloody succession, merchants gradually learned the art of keeping a low profile. Some avoided political affairs, seeking only to live out their days with enormous wealth, like the Lianghuai salt merchants who built the white pagoda in Yangzhou overnight. Others formed groups to deal with endless government demands and competition from rivals, giving rise to the so-called “Ten Great Merchant Groups” known throughout the world. From these groups emerged many renowned merchants who made their names, such as Meng Luochuan of the Lu merchants, Hu Kaiwen of the Hui merchants, and Ye Chengzhong of the Ningshao group. All were outstanding figures unmatched in their respective merchant groups. Unfortunately, “what makes you also breaks you”—these people were precisely constrained by the interests of their own merchant groups. Though their businesses grew increasingly larger, they gradually discovered they could never become truly great businessmen.
By the late Qing Dynasty, foreign merchants entered China through treaty ports. Whenever trade disputes arose, foreign warships would intervene on behalf of their merchants to secure maximum benefits. This opened the eyes of Chinese merchants, who were accustomed to fending for themselves, though they couldn’t help feeling sorry for themselves. However, just as all merchant groups were fixated on foreign traders, unexpectedly, in the traditionally merchant-neglected region beyond the Great Wall, a quiet change was taking place that would soon deeply move the business tycoons.
Shanyang Fort in Fengtian was renowned alongside Ninguta in Heilongjiang as one of the two great exile and banishment locations of the Qing Dynasty beyond the Great Wall. A folk saying went: “Once entering Shanyang Fort, nine out of ten lives cannot be preserved; once entering Ninguta, one would prefer the earth to collapse and the sky to fall.” Yet in this place, feared even by tigers and wolves and not belonging to the territory of any of the Ten Great Merchant Groups, a business genius appeared: He assessed the situation with foresight and vision, setting his goal as becoming a merchant with the world in his heart—a goal he had to accomplish. Within a decade, he built his fortune on tea, established his enterprise with salt, relieved thousands with grain, and subdued foreign merchants with silk. He amassed wealth in the millions, dominated numerous industries while benefiting countless people, causing the powerful Jin merchants, Hu merchants, Beijing merchants, Dongting merchant group, Longyou merchant association, and the Thirteen Hongs of Guangzhou to bow in submission. Moreover, in times of national crisis, he risked his fortune and life to compete with foreign merchants, crushing the previously invincible Shanghai comprador group. His actions forced even the powerful current dynasty to acknowledge that merchants had saved face for the Great Qing. No wonder Zhao Zhiyu, in his “Record of Extraordinary Merchants of the Ming and Qing Dynasties” during the Republican era, ranked him above the “God of Wealth” Hu Xueyan, calling him the “Merchant King of a Generation.”
This man came from extremely humble origins—a criminal exiled to Shanyang Fort during the Xianfeng years, originally from She County in Huizhou.