Shanxi Merchants Museum

Shanxi Merchants Museum

Beijing Jin Shang museum is located in the east of Sihui bridge in Chaoyang District. It is adjacent to Tonghui River in the south, CBD International Business District and international trade center in the west, and the main campus of Communication University of China in the East. Convenient transportation and superior location. The main building area is about 30000 square meters, with 10 basic exhibition halls. The total area of the building community is about 200000 square meters. The purpose of Shanxi Merchants museum is to carry forward the culture and spirit of Shanxi merchants.

The museum is one of more than 100 museums planned by Beijing, and is currently the largest and most abundant Shanxi business Museum in the world. There are more than 40000 pieces in the collection, including books, letters, manuscripts, tickets, seals, banknotes, tickets, advertisements, packaging, plaques, currencies, weighing instruments, measuring tools, counting tools, transportation tools, ritual vessels of gods and Buddhas, daily appliances and many other categories. These collections have invested nearly 30 years of hard work and financial resources of many senior collectors, and almost include most of the existing movable relics of Shanxi merchants.

Development history

Beijing Tonghui river was once a busy water transport terminal. Once upon a time, merchants gathered and shops were numerous. At that time, there were also famous "Shanxi Merchants" who were diligent and shrewd. They were also called "the three largest merchants in the world" together with Jewish merchants and Persian merchants.

After 500 years of time, a huge Chinese courtyard has been built on the former site of the water transport wharf on the Bank of Tonghui River, which has become the location of the "Beijing Shanxi Merchants Museum". The museum was built by Zhao Yuanchang's family, a Shanxi businessman, for six years at a cost of more than 400 million yuan. Their dream is to restore the splendid culture of Shanxi merchants.

As the most influential business group in the history of China, Shanxi businessmen once dominated many economic fields, such as finance, foreign trade, industry and so on. It has created the great cause of "connecting the world" and enjoys the high reputation of "the richest in the world". For the prosperity and revitalization of the Chinese economy, for the country's prosperity and social development, has made outstanding contributions. Adhering to the excellent essence of Chinese traditional culture, Shanxi Merchants stood at the forefront of the times, actively absorbed the advanced achievements of foreign civilization, held high the banner of righteousness for benefit, and gradually established the management system, operation system, organization system, system and education system with the core spirit of honesty and trustworthiness, hard work, unity and mutual assistance, helping each other in the same boat, innovation and progress, love the country and patriotism The culture of Shanxi Merchants is a mature and complete cultural system, which includes the system of culture, belief, morality and credit.

Shanxi business culture is an important part of Chinese traditional spiritual and cultural heritage, and an important practice mode of Chinese culture from tradition to modern. Therefore, Shanxi merchants became outstanding representatives of Chinese national businessmen. Many positive achievements of Shanxi business culture, especially its core spirit, are still shining today. For us to improve business ethics and business style, building a socialist moral system suitable for the market economy, building a harmonious society, has the enlightenment significance that can not be ignored.

Shanxi Merchants' activities are rarely recorded in literature. The relics of Shanxi Merchants scattered among the people are the most precious treasures for people to obtain the historical information of Shanxi merchants. For many years, the spirit of Shanxi merchants has been rescuing and protecting the relics of Shanxi Merchants in Beijing Museum of Shanxi merchants. Through rescuing and protecting the relics of Shanxi merchants, the spirit of Shanxi merchants has been learned and disseminated with remarkable achievements. He has cooperated with a number of authoritative academic institutions at home and abroad to carry out research work and strive to build an international academic center of Shanxi business studies.

After the completion of the museum, it will be a large-scale modern neutralizing building community integrating culture, tourism, business, entertainment and other functions. In addition to the main building of the museum, there are also affiliated units such as guild hall, business building and ancient style commercial street. In addition to ticket shops, there were also tea houses, pawnshops, cloth shops, grain shops, general stores and so on. Therefore, there were a large number of trademark advertisements, business cards, seals, genealogies, plaques, covers, dart boxes, cash cabinets and so on in the collection of Shanxi merchants. The collection of more than 400 photos of Shanxi Merchants is the most intuitive information for studying the history and culture of Shanxi merchants.

All the collections were collected by Xue Yan, his teacher and several young friends for three generations, which took about 30 years. "It's a pity that we don't collect and study this batch of data. If these things are lost, it is also irresponsible for history. " Xue Yan said.

Collection

If these 40000 pieces of cultural relics are displayed in three dimensions, they can restore a vivid Jin Dynasty.

Recovering Jin style Finance

Walking into the Museum of Shanxi Merchants in Beijing, the first thing you can see is the huge relief of ticket number. The draft shop was a great invention of Shanxi merchants. In the following hundred years, Shanxi Merchants dominated China's financial industry with the draft shop as the cardinal until the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China.

One of the "treasures of the town hall" is a plaque held in 1792 to celebrate Qiao Quanyi's success. It is made of white pine with four characters of "Qingyun Delu". Qiao Quanyi is the uncle of Qiao Zhiyong, the protagonist of the TV series "Qiao's courtyard", a leading Shanxi businessman of the generation.

There are more than 46000 pieces in the museum, which have invested nearly 30 years' hard work and financial resources of the two brothers of the Zhao family and the museum director Xue Yan. As the investors of Shanxi Merchants Museum, Zhao's two brothers are Zhao Yuanchang, chairman of Yuanxin group, a private enterprise in Yangquan City, Shanxi Province, and Zhao Xiaochang, general manager. The two farmer entrepreneurs started their business by producing ferroalloy, and their business was very successful. Their "non-commercial move" of investing more than 400 million yuan in Beijing to build a Shanxi Merchants museum was unexpected by many people.

"In fact, collecting Shanxi Merchants' cultural relics is almost a conscious act of my parents. I remember when I was very young, there were a lot of old photos, documents, plaques and so on in my home, and I was told not to move." Zhao Guoyan said that he is the second generation of Zhao's enterprise. He was born in December 1983 and is still a graduate student. After decades of collection and arrangement, the Museum of Shanxi Merchants in Beijing now contains almost most of the treasures of the existing movable relics of Shanxi merchants, including account books, letters, manuscripts, tickets, seals, banknote plates, ticket plates, advertisements, packaging, plaques, currencies, weighing instruments, measuring tools, calculators, means of transportation, god Buddha ritual vessels, daily utensils and many other categories. "To put it bluntly, almost all the authentic cultural relics of Shanxi merchants that can be found are here." Zhao Guoyan said. There are more than 1800 letters of Shanxi Merchants in the museum, which convey their operation rules, the foundation of their life, ethics, culture and other comprehensive information.

Shanxi merchants have a history of hundreds of years. It's not easy to collect them systematically? How does Shanxi Merchants Museum complete the integration without ready-made textbooks? Curator Xue Yan explained that this is a new way for collectors to jump out of their study and use empirical methods. They found that they can collect, sort out and restore the financial and commercial activities at that time according to the original business roadmap of Shanxi merchants and the descendants in their genealogy. "For example, we can find the group photos of different leaders in different periods from the old photos of a ticket number, which is very valuable There are also account books, corresponding to the list, remittance letter and stamp. We'll look for it in this way. " Xue Yan said, "a business name is Deshun. We have collected two money printing plates, Niujiao plate and nine seals. The nine seals are just like the full set of business seals of our enterprises. In order to collect all the nine seals, we spent five years searching for their whereabouts. It's hard to find out that one of them is a deposit stamp. Because of the collection, it has been exiled to Hong Kong, and we rush to Hong Kong immediately. After a lot of trouble, I finally found this collector, but at first they didn't sell it. We went to great lengths to do our work. At last, people were moved by our perseverance and transferred this deposit seal to us at the market price of 30000 yuan without increasing the price. "

Building the cultural industry chain of Shanxi Merchants

In the 1980s, there was a blue ocean in the collection market. Most of the antiques and jades on the market were genuine. Now many private museum owners laid the foundation at that time, including the famous maweidu.

In this case, few people can resist loneliness to collect some scattered photos and letters, and do systematic sorting and research at any cost and cost. What makes the collectors of Shanxi Merchants Museum persevere? Zhao Guoyan said that sometimes when you look at the photos and letters of the old Shanxi merchants, many of them are letters from home, you will feel like you are traveling through time and space. When you walk into the lives of the Shanxi merchants a hundred years ago, you will be deeply moved by the atmosphere and emotion. In 1939, the branch of yongyichang pawnshop in Taigu County in Shenyang sent a letter and several lists to the head office. The letter mentioned that during the three years when the shopkeeper and the owner lost contact due to the war, the branch still managed the business conscientiously. "In modern society, if the headquarters of a group company does not contact its branches for three months, it may cause problems." Zhao Guoyan sighed.

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 profit by righteousness". Through collecting and studying the cultural relics of Shanxi merchants, the collectors of Shanxi Merchants Museum completely overturned the view that "no fraud, no business" as the market said. "Taking righteousness as benefit" is the supreme principle of Shanxi businessmen in business. However, the essence of being invincible is to have both morality and ability.

Although we can spare no cost in order to restore the culture of Shanxi merchants, the diligent and shrewd Modern Shanxi merchants will not regard the tens of thousands of cultural relics collected by them as just for exhibition

Chinese PinYin : Jin Shang Bo Wu Guan