Chapter 32 postscript

After writing the last chapter, I feel relieved and a little bit disappointed.Writing this long volume was more tiring than expected, but also more fascinating than expected.For more than two years, I have been immersed in this silver valley with all my heart, and I hardly know that the outside world is crossing a century.Unless it is unavoidable, I have to write two to three thousand words every day. I feel tired from time to time, but I often have the pleasure of writing freely.Writing for such a long period of time, the tiredness is always accompanied by pleasure. This kind of experience has not been many before, and I am afraid that there will not be many in the future.

Today is the off-season for novels, and the reason for writing such a long scroll for a long time is actually very simple: I want to work hard to write a good-looking novel. The Xibang merchants in the Ming and Qing Dynasties are unrevealed business legends.In particular, their original ticket number was a financial legend in the Qing Dynasty.Hu Xueyan achieved his personal legendary life by imitating the ticket number, and the ticket number was successful, and the ticket number was also lost.In Qi Taiping, the stronghold of the Western Gang, wealthy businessmen and rich men like Hu Xueyan are a group.But this novel of mine is not about a wealthy businessman group, nor about a regional legend, but takes a wide-angle perspective: I write about the bank account as a legendary financial system and commercial system.

The bank is a native financial business in China, and it regards the Eastern and Western Banks of the same period as different.But it is heterogeneous in the society in which it lives.The orthodoxy of the imperial court has always been light on merchants, and the order of respect for scholars, farmers, workers, and merchants has never been easy through the ages.As for Xibang himself, because his business has become bigger and his influence has been extended, he actually turned the sacred Confucian values ​​into an official if he is good at learning, and turned into a businessman if he is good at learning: first-class and handsome children compete for ticket sales; seek employment.This is a terrible disintegration of feudal orthodoxy.But it hides its front, and in the feudal and centralized society like the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it actually achieved a national cause.

Xibang is known for being erudite, shameless, and long-legged. It is famous for being able to afford compensation. It turns wisdom and virtue into its greatest business capital. In the financial industry that needs credit most, it has been the leader of the country for more than a hundred years.It disintegrates the orthodoxy and ethics of that society, but promotes the economic development of that society.This should be a legend. However, what I am doing is a novel, and I am not trying to explain the above reasons.Novels must be good-looking first.To make historical novels good-looking, it mainly depends on the charm of history and the charm of historical facts, not just relying on the jokes of today.This is the rule of historical fiction.In fact, without enough historical facts as a basis, it is difficult for people today to tell the legend of the West Gang.

When I was collecting relevant materials, I found a copy of "Shanxi Ticket Shops", which was first published in the 26th year of the Republic of China.The author, Mr. Chen Qitian, was a professor of sociology at Yenching University at that time.In order to write this "Kao Lue", he visited the surviving banknotes in Beiping and did field research in Qitaiping.I also used my visit to Japan to collect relevant documents from various economic research institutes in that country.But at the end of "Kao Lue", he wrote a few words: The poverty of Shanxi ticket shop materials has reached the extreme.The strangest thing is that "Shanxi Provincial Chronicles", the local chronicles of Taiyuan, Qixian, Pingyao and Taigu, do not mention Piaozhuang at all.The materials he obtained from interviewing the elders of the ticket shop are only fragmentary rumors and fragments of memory.I don't earn much in Japan.

The official history of the official revision does not accept the word "piaozhuang", which shows that the official's neglect of business has also reached the extreme.In order to hide wealth and power, and to keep business secrets, the bank itself does not easily preserve writing.Therefore, the history of ticket numbers has really become a secret history.Regarding the origin of the ticket number, there is a widely circulated legend, which is full of secret history.According to this legend, when Li Zicheng fled from Beijing at the end of the Ming Dynasty, he fled through Shanxi with a huge amount of gold and silver looted, and lost it all the way.Shanxi people get their capital to set up ticket numbers.The ticket number rules are extremely strict, and it was established by two famous people, Gu Yanwu and Fu Shan, so it can last forever.It is even said that the ticket office also has the secret mission of gathering wealth for the anti-Qing and Ming Dynasty.According to the discrimination and falsification of Mr. Chen Qitian and other scholars, this kind of legends are just folk legends and romances.

However, the legendary and secret history of Xibang Bank is very suitable for novels.It is too tempting for novel writers to unearth the hidden secret history and reproduce its once legendary truth.But this is also a bit like an archaeological excavation, which requires care, patience, and a long period of time.Unlike jokes and romances, which are made of antique products, you don't have to follow too many rules. Before I was 20 years old, I lived in Taigu County in Qitaiping. Both my grandfather and my father did business there, and of course they were only small businessmen.In 1986, I decided to abandon agriculture and go into business. After writing from rural subjects to Shanxi merchants, I first went to Qi County in Qitaiping for three years.Since then, he began to pay attention to all historical materials and documents related to Xibang merchants and ticket numbers.During this period, Shanxi's academic circles, financial circles, historians and other cultural and historical workers also conducted in-depth research on Shanxi merchants and bank accounts, with fruitful results.This has benefited me a lot, greatly enriched the creative materials, and broadened my thinking.

After 15 years of careful and patient excavation and accumulation, we finally stripped away some of the obscurations that obscured the Xibang merchants and their bank accounts, and touched some of their bones.That seems to be enough for fiction.Giving flesh and blood, and even soul, to these muscles and bones is the work of novels.What I want to say is that the material for this novel is not easy to come by, so I dare not be sloppy when I enter the writing. Fiction is supposed to be engaging.The legend of the ticket number also provides many scenic spots and places, so I have to pay attention to how to attract them well.Neither can it be like riding an electric cableway to make the scenic spot come too easily; nor can the journey be too boring because of the scenic spot ahead.There must be a story with a hard-to-see ending, and characters who make people worry about it to the end.The language has also been purified as much as possible, borrowing old vernacular, adding modern spoken language, and filtering out traces of Europeanization.In short, try to make the novel easy to read.

From today's perspective, the Xibang Bank a hundred years ago is of course a very backward and decadent financial system.But its understanding of business, its reverence for business; the use of our own cultural resources in China to nourish business; in such a social environment discriminated against by mainstream culture, it seems that it is worthwhile to push business to a mature level today. People look back.In 1986, when I started to pay attention to the merchants in the West, merchants seemed to be at the bottom of all trades; today, no one talks about merchants.When I was writing this novel, I often fancied: If our commodity economy today is at the height reached by the Western merchants a hundred years ago, if we advance forward, how can we compete for one of the world's top 500 merchants, or sweep away the counterfeit goods in the market? Shoddy, maybe it won't be as difficult as it is now.

In short, I hope that this novel will firstly be good-looking, and secondly, it will be beneficial after reading it.that is it. It is for remembering. author Early March 2001