Restoring golden finance
When you walk into the Shanxi Merchants Museum in Beijing, the first thing you see is the huge relief of the ticket number. The draft number is a great invention of Shanxi merchants. In the following hundred years, Shanxi merchants dominated China's financial industry with the number of banks as the cardinal until the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China.
There is a "treasure of the town hall" which is a plaque to congratulate Joe in the fifty-seventh year of Qianlong (1792), and the four characters "Qingyun Road" are engraved on the bas-relief of white pine. Joe is the uncle of Qiao Zhiyong, the protagonist of the TV series Qiao Family Courtyard, and the leader of Shanxi merchants.
There are about 46,000 collections in the museum, which have devoted nearly 30 years of hard work and financial resources to the Zhao brothers and the museum curator. As investors in Shanxi Merchants Museum, Zhao brothers are Zhao Yuanchang, chairman of Yuanxin Group, a private enterprise in Yangquan City, Shanxi Province, and Zhao Xiaochang, general manager. These two peasant entrepreneurs started their business by producing ferroalloys, and their business was very successful. Their "non-commercial move" of investing more than 400 million yuan in Beijing to establish the Shanxi Merchants Museum surprised many people.
"In fact, collecting Shanxi merchants' cultural relics is almost my parents' conscious move. When I was very young, I put a lot of old photos, documents, plaques and so on. At home, I was told not to move. "Zhao said that he is the second generation of Zhao's enterprise,/kloc-0 was born in February, 983, and he is still a graduate student. After decades of collection and arrangement, Beijing Jinshang Museum now collects almost all the treasures of the existing movable cultural relics of Shanxi merchants, including account books, letters, manuscripts, tickets, seals, banknote plates, ticket boards, advertisements, packaging, plaques, coins, weighing instruments, measuring tools, calculators, means of transportation, ritual vessels of gods and buddhas, daily necessities and many other categories. " Be conceited, almost all the objects that can be found in the cultural relics of Shanxi merchants are here. "Zhao said. There are more than 1800 letters of Shanxi merchants in the museum, which convey all-round information about Shanxi merchants' business rules, foundation, ethics and culture.
Shanxi merchants have a history of hundreds of years. How easy is it to collect them systematically? How does the Shanxi Merchants Museum complete the integration without the guidance of ready-made teaching materials? Curator Yan Xue explained that this is a new way for collectors to jump out of their research and use empirical methods. They found that they could collect, sort out and restore the financial and commercial activities at that time according to the original commercial road map and descendants in the genealogy of Shanxi merchants. "For example, an old photo of a bank number, we can find photos of different avatars in different periods, which are very valuable to string together, as well as account books, corresponding to which there will be lists, money orders and stamps. We will look for it according to this idea. " Yan Xue said: "A company is called Deshun. We have collected two printed editions, the corner edition and nine stamps, just like our company's full set of business stamps now. In order to collect all nine stamps, we spent five years asking about the whereabouts of these stamps. It was hard to find that one of them had been sent to Hong Kong for collection reasons, and we immediately rushed to Hong Kong. After many twists and turns, the collector was finally found, but at first people refused to sell it anyway. We work hard, work hard. Finally, people were moved by our perseverance. Without increasing the price, this pawn was transferred to us at a market price of 30,000 yuan. "
Building Shanxi Merchants' Cultural Industry Chain
The 1980 s was the blue ocean of the collection market. "Nine times out of ten antiques and jades on the market are genuine." At that time, the owners of many private museums now laid the foundation, including the famous Ma Weidou.
In this case, there are not many people who can bear loneliness to collect some scattered photos and letters and sort them out systematically, and study locally at all costs. What makes the collectors of Shanxi Merchants Museum so persistent? Zhao said that sometimes looking at photos and letters of old Shanxi merchants, many of them are letters from home. Looking at them, you will have a feeling of traveling through time and space. You will walk into the life of Shanxi merchants a hundred years ago and be deeply moved by that kind of atmosphere and emotion. There is a letter and several lists from Yongyichang Pawnshop in Taigu County, Shenyang in the 28th year of the Republic of China (1939). It was mentioned in the letter that during the three years when the shopkeeper and the shopkeeper lost contact because of the war, the branch could still handle the number conscientiously. "If this is put into modern society, let alone three years, that is, the headquarters of the group company does not contact the branch for three months, and problems may arise." Zhao Yan Guo regrets.
It is the essence and charm of the spirit of Shanxi merchants to "cultivate one's health by virtue, cultivate one's heart by sincerity and control one's interests by righteousness". Through the collection and research of Shanxi merchants' cultural relics, the collectors of Shanxi Merchants Museum completely subverted the market view of "no rape, no business". "Taking righteousness as benefit" is the highest criterion for Shanxi businessmen to do business. However, having both ability and political integrity is the foundation of being invincible.
Although the culture of Shanxi merchants can be restored at any cost, the industrious and shrewd modern Shanxi merchants will not just regard the tens of thousands of cultural relics they have worked so hard to collect as "furnishings" for exhibitions. With the in-depth study of Shanxi merchants' culture, the idea of building Shanxi merchants' cultural industrial chain is becoming clearer and clearer.
Zhao said, we decided that the museum should take the road of socialization, build the brand of Shanxi merchants museum, form a cultural industry platform, and build a cultural industry chain of Shanxi merchants, including film and television, publishing and commerce. Then the operating income will be invested in the construction of museums, attracting other collectors with the same collection concept to build museums here and form a cluster. At present, there is a Buddhist museum.
"About the business model of the museum, we basically confirmed it before the museum was built. We spent a year or so studying the excellent, well-run and high-value museums at home and abroad, such as the American metropolis. In addition to the business model, we have also introduced some international practices. For example, an important source of foreign museums is donation. We are now setting up a foundation, and the special fund for Shanxi merchants is listed under the China Cultural Relics Protection Foundation. The museum will stay in society forever in the form of funds. " Zhao revealed that he is currently working with the director of Flying Tigers to invest160,000 yuan in cash as the largest shareholder to shoot the long series "Dashengkui" with the western merchants in Mengshan as the background. The whole TV series is 654.38+020 episodes, divided into three parts. "It is equivalent to a general history of Shanxi merchants. In addition to cash, we also provide a lot by using the museum.
As the largest business group in China, the success of Shanxi merchants is supported by spirit and culture. The cultural relics of Shanxi merchants, especially the various rules and regulations they formulated to regulate their commercial activities, should inspire and draw lessons from today's Chinese businessmen. The person in charge of the Shanxi Merchants Museum said that their purpose is to promote the culture and spirit of Shanxi merchants.