Salt can be divided into supervision salt and final salt. The monitoring salt is made by drying seawater in the sun, and the final salt is fried salt, that is, "boiling seawater as salt", that is, pouring seawater into a pot container, burning it with firewood below, and evaporating water to obtain salt, also known as boiled salt, fried salt and boiled salt. Before the Qing Dynasty, Taoluochang produced final salt, which gradually changed from boiling to drying in the early Qing Dynasty, but it was still used for frying and drying in the middle Qing Dynasty. "Sunny days are listening to the people's beach, and rainy days are frying in the pot." During the Daoguang period, the salt in the peach snail farm was made entirely from ponds. In ancient times, the place where salt was cooked was the kitchen. The person who cooked salt was called the chef, the person who cooked salt was called the chef, and the person in charge was called the chef. This "mode of production" can be seen from the village names of coastal villages north of Taoluo. Near Jiantou Salt Field and Hongqi Salt Field, there are East and West Zaozi Village, he cheng Village, Zhang Cun Village, Yin Village and Gao Village, who have been cooking, frying, boiling and drying salt for generations. Needless to say, the word "jujube" in Dongzaozi Village and Xizaozi Village, this string of "boil" in Shantou Village may be because it is close to the warehouse where salt was stored at that time, or because it was once set up to cook salt.
The rise of pottery refining also experienced a process from "salt" to "transportation" and then to "commerce", because all previous dynasties kept salt under control. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, a strict system of "civil servants controlling commercial transportation and marketing" was implemented. The difference between "official salt" and "private salt" is too big, and smuggling salt is profiteering. On the one hand, it induces local chefs to take risks and sell illicit salt; On the other hand, wealthy salt merchants come and go in the streets of Taoluo, living in shops, hiring employees, eating and drinking ... imperceptibly, it has an impact on one party's economic structure and the local people's view of treating people. In the 22nd year of Qing Emperor Kangxi, shipping was gradually opened. From Taoluokou to Zhangzixinkou (the old Zhangluokou), "customers (merchants) gathered and cargo ships gathered", merchants from all walks of life came in droves, set up shop names and opened pawn shops, which gradually developed Taoluokou into a commercial center in southern Rizhao. In the fifty years of Qing Qianlong (1786), Shanxi merchants, who were named as "the richest man on the sea" by Gong Zizhen, extended their tentacles to Taoluo, built three wooden buildings with 36 original juices on two floors, and opened a pawnshop in the courtyard of the supply and marketing cooperative of this town. In the 14th year of Qing Daoguang (1834), Bird, a Shanxi merchant, started the same business in the northwest corner of Taoluo Cross Street under the name of "An Deyu".
During the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty, local Ding Kaixuan set up a "Guangji" firm, which mainly bought local native products, such as peanuts, crude oil and pigskin, and shipped them to Shanghai, and then shipped them back to rice, sugar, tea and various foreign goods. At that time, "Guangji" owned four wind boats and 2,500 mu of land, and was the largest firm and landlord in Taoluo. At the same time, Yuyuan Garden, a famous brand product of Yuyuan Garden, which was opened in the sixth year of Qing Xianfeng (1856), sells well in Beijing, Shanghai and Southeast Asia, and the annual sales volume in Shanghai alone exceeds 500 altars (80kg per altar). During the reign of Tongzhi and Guangxu in Qing Dynasty, Xieji, Tongsheng and Yichang rose again, exporting native products and importing daily necessities such as cloth, rice, noodles and sugar.
In the early years of the Republic of China, Taoluo had grown to 12 stores, such as airline operations, banks, local products, department stores, Chinese and western pharmacies and so on. Among them, "Henderson" is the largest with a capital of 600,000 silver dollars.
In the ninth year of the Republic of China, Ding founded Huichang Bank, the first private bank in Rizhao County, with 60 partners and a share capital of 15000 silver dollars. Huitong Bank and HSBC Bank were established in Linyi County and West Gate of Jufeng Town, and tickets were issued. The ticket names are Huichang Bank and Huitong Bank respectively. Huitong ticket is very hard, and people call it "official ticket". In addition to the distribution in Linyi, Huichang also set up a special person to exchange ocean and copper plates for "official tickets" in Linyi and transport them back to Rizhao for circulation.
Around 20 years of the Republic of China, Taoluo's business reached its peak and its reputation surpassed that of the county seat. There are many merchants in the street, 72 of them are hung with plaques, and there are more than 300 merchants and vendors, who keep selling in the morning and evening. The top ten businesses are the most prosperous. Guangji, Xieji, Yongji and Hengji, only known as the "Four Records", have a total capital of 265,438+million silver dollars, monopolizing Linyi, Feixian, Yishui and Juxian in the west, Boli in the north and Qingkou in the south (now Ganyu County, Jiangsu Province). Every year, it exports 32,000 tons (per ton 100 kg), 8,000 tons of crude oil and 2,000 tons of pigskin/kloc-0, and imports 4,800 tons of Chongming cloth, 270 tons of cotton yarn, 2,800 tons of sugar, 65,438 tons of rice, 3,200 tons of white flour and flowers. The prosperity of Taoluo lasted for hundreds of years, but its decline seemed to be instantaneous and indeed accidental, but it was inevitable in this accident.
On the one hand, the decline of Taolian's "business spirit" has profound and grand social and historical reasons. From the perspective of economic geography, the prosperity of Taoluo business is based on the trafficking of "official salt" and its accompanying profiteering "private salt". In the externalization of "business", the trafficking of primary agricultural products is the main body; In the realization of "commerce", wooden sailboat transportation is the basic condition. And all this gradually drifted away in modern China, and finally vanished ―― the decline in the share of "salt tax" in the macro-financial sector, the arrival of the steamship era driven by steam engines, the fatal impact of "foreign goods" (it can be seen that Mr. Ye Shengtao's "overcharging three to five fights"), combined with foreign invasion and government corruption, in the troubled and ups and downs history,
On the other hand, after becoming rich, Taoluo merchants did not turn from commercial capital to industrial capital in time, nor from traditional commercial capital to modern commercial capital, but regressed and began a snowball wave of land merger. It must be pointed out that this kind of land concentration is not the expansion and concentration of production capital, but the land possession of Taoluo merchants is increasing. It has not changed or expanded the production scale, nor improved or updated the production tools and methods. On the contrary, it just keeps annexing more land to increase simple wealth accumulation.