Liu Yong's stories and legends

Xiaolianzhuang, the most scenic spot in Nanxun, was originally the home temple and garden of Liu Yong, the doctor of Qingguang Road, the head of the Four Elephants. According to legend, it was named after the owner admired Yuan Dynasty painter Zhao Mengfu and built Lotus Village in Huzhou. It is estimated that Liu Yong's family property reached 20 million taels of silver in the 1990s of 19. What is this concept? At that time, the annual income of the Qing government was 72 million taels of silver. 1885, 59-year-old Duke Liu Yong of Tongfeng began to build a private manor "Xiaolianzhuang". He is going to build a lotus pond with an area of 10 mu in the manor, and build several pavilions beside the pond, so that when the weather is fine, he can enjoy the lotus, fish and enjoy his old age. At this time, Liu Yong is the first of the "four elephants" in Nanxun. Perhaps, he hopes that when he is still facing the lotus pond, he can recall his life. Perhaps, he will think, nothing is impossible in this life, as long as your heart is big enough. At this time, Liu Yong is no longer a small apprentice in Miansibu Village. That year, he 15 years old. Because of his poor family, Liu Yong worked as a helper in Buzhuang. He gets up early and is greedy for the dark, doing everything from the kitchen to the bathhouse, but he only gets ten pence for a hard day. Even as his owner and a store clerk, his salary is only one hundred cents (a thousand pence is an ounce).

For Liu Yong, who has been looking for entrepreneurial opportunities, ten pence a day is far from enough. He began to consider developing the silk industry. Nanxun, relying on heaven to win the mountain, holds the show of Tiaoxi Lake in Taihu Lake. All the gas fields are condensed into wisps, soft and elastic, crystal clear and famous. At that time, it was "European countries opened commercial ports in Shanghai, bought a large number of silk, exported 80,000 or 90,000 packages a year, and the silk makers won too much". All this was seen by Liu Yong and could not help but be moved. If you want to start your own business, it is a shortcut to start from diaosi. So, in 1842, 16-year-old liuyong "jumped ship" to talk about Dechang silk business. The wages in silk shops are much higher than those in cotton silk shops. Not only is it "ten dollars a year", but at the end of the year, the boss talked about "paying foreign silver six dollars" because of Liu Yong's diligence and ability. Years have changed, the world has experienced many vicissitudes, and the ten-acre lotus pond has experienced a hundred years of turmoil. Today, when we wander around the shore and admire its beauty and the wealth of its owner, few people can think that Liu Yong was just such a humble poor boy before becoming a tycoon, which shows how big people are. )

Liuyong has long planned to start his own business in the future. Because he is smart and studious, in a short period of four years, he was "studious, but he saw the crux", fully understood the mystery of silk industry management and mastered the law of doing business. 1846, in the first month of the Spring Festival, every household is busy saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new. Liu Yong's heart is also full of the idea of starting a new life. He thinks the time is ripe to start his own business. So he bid farewell to Dechang Silk Company, took out all his savings and started a vegetarian tour called "Liu Hengshun". Nanxun's richest "elephant" began its initial germination here. Follow the winding waterway, go north, roll on the paddle for three days and three nights, walk through one stone bridge after another, and reach Shanghai Shiliupu. This is the first time that Liu Yong went to Shanghai to inquire about the price of silk. Previously, his suhang bought silk every day and sold it to Guangdong businessman Daguangzhuang immediately after the close to earn a little difference.

Life is also comfortable, but this spring, spring silk was smoked very, very well. Guangzhuang and several large silk companies deliberately lowered the price of the series of Hu silk, and their business was about to lose money. Is it possible to sell silk directly to Shanghai by rocking the boat? Liu Yong suddenly came up with such an idea, and then suppressed the sentence-no money, no big ship, so reckless, can you do it?

However, Liu Yong's wife Shen Shi has another view: "It doesn't matter if we don't have capital. Start small and accumulate slowly. There is no big silk boat, even if you rent a farm boat or boat, you must try. " Yes, we must try. Instead of waiting for death, why not give it a try? Didn't apprentices come like this when they were young? It was fine then. Why not now? Liu Yong rowed the boat day and night, along the winding waterway, and arrived at Shanghai Shiliupu. The sixteenth store in Shanghai is full of all kinds of big ships, some from Europe and some from America. Liu Yong's boat is particularly pitiful and has a heavy heart.

Liu Yong shook the boat, and after many twists and turns in the gap between the big ships, he finally landed. I couldn't wait to inquire about the price of silk as soon as I landed. "The price of this series of silks is 2 taels per tael of silver." The quotation of Four-Star Man is loud and clear. "two? Really? " Liu Yong was shocked. You know, Li Si collects 1 at seven points every two months, and the price of this silk shop newspaper is three times the purchase price. Liu Yong was overjoyed and sold all the bright silk he brought in for the same bright silver. In the spring of this year, Liu Yong relied on his own silk boat and his business was particularly prosperous. When other silk firms saw that Liu Hengshun's business was so good, they all came to inquire. Liu Yong, on the other hand, is a generous man who tells his peers in detail how to get rich. Everyone followed suit, and soon, the winding waterway leading to Shanghai was full of silk boats. Snow-white lake silk is transported out, and snow-white Shanghai Yinyang is transported in. Perhaps it was from that time that Nanxun gradually became a richer and more prosperous treasure than Shanghai. (Now, standing on the stone bridge engraved with the traces of time, you can see the long water and the long road, and it seems that you can still hear the rushing sound in your ear.

The rushing sound has penetrated the dust of history and soaked it for a hundred years, which has continued to this day. Today, when lake merchants are doing business in Europe, America and the whole world, they should still be shaking that paddle. ) Along the 10-acre lotus pond in Xiaolianzhuang, through the cloister, through the pavilions, turned around and looked up, and two tall and solemn archways suddenly came into view. Two gray archways, 10 meters high, can't see the top as far as the eye can see, and one of them says "charity" in four characters. As the old people in Nanxun Town know, this memorial archway was built in 1893, which was specially approved by the Qing emperor in recognition of the Liu family's tradition of "being charitable".

Yes 1863. Through his own efforts and intelligence, Liu Yong has started from silk industry to salt industry, and his family background is very strong. At the turn of summer and autumn that year, it was the "autumn tiger" and the weather was very hot. Liu Yong went to Yanzhou to run salt tea business. On the way, he saw people being ravaged by bandits and thieves, and their houses and fields being destroyed. So I decided to use the commercial capital of this trip to "help people, give medicine, bury them, adopt them into exile and redeem orphans and widows." He walked dozens of miles a day, running for relief, and was seriously ill despite the stench gas fumigation in the hot summer. During his illness, he still did not forget to tell his friends to continue disaster relief, but he almost died. That was 1889. There was a flood in Zhejiang, especially in Huzhou, with thousands of victims. When Liu Yong saw this, he took out tens of thousands of taels of silver and bought rice and mangoku from Wuhu, Anhui Province to help the people.

A once-in-a-century disaster was finally resolved with Liu Yong's generous funding. In order to promote good deeds and help the countryside for a long time, Liu Yong also took out tens of thousands of silver dollars and borrowed money to earn interest. He buys rice at interest every year for disaster relief and is called "Amy". Liu Yong is generous to others, but his life is simple and indifferent. He often said that a rich family is like a person with full skin. People with full skin look healthy, but if the yang is too strong, it will hurt the viscera. He knows that too much wealth is easy to enslave people's temperament and make people suffer greatly, so he compares disaster relief to treating himself:

"When I was young, I spent thousands of dollars with people, not to seek happiness, but to cure diseases. The way of heaven and earth, positive will be vented, and I will vent before waiting to punish it. People who are skinny and skinny know their illness, and early medicine is also available. " Liu Yong, who made a fortune and never forgot his roots, won the love of his neighbors. When Liu Yong died, people near and far knew about it. He mourned and cried.