Lei Lvtai and his Rishengchang Rishengchang Bank were founded by Li Daquan and Lei Lvtai of Xidapu Village in Pingyao in the third year of Daoguang (AD 1823). Lei Lvtai is from Yao Xi Village, Pingyao, Shanxi. His parents died when he 16 years old. With the help of relatives at home, he went to Pingyao City as an apprentice to do business.
Lei Lvtai is naturally sensitive to numbers. At that time, he found a job as a cornucopia keeper in a casino at the corner of Pingyao North Gate. Ancient casinos were also called "gambling", so gambling was also called "treasure bureau". Watching the treasure pot means that people often watch movies and TV plays, and there are people who are responsible for throwing dice, and there are also people who are responsible for reporting the number of dice after gambling. The treasure pot is responsible for counting the dice.
Lei Lvtai never reported missing points when he was watching the cornucopia trick. Although it is only a simple addition of dice numbers, he should also be quick-witted, have a good eye and do mental arithmetic quickly. May be born sensitive to numbers, so later Lei Lvtai had the idea of opening a bank.
At that time, many businessmen in Pingyao often went to casinos to gamble. On this day, Li Daquan, the second young master of the Western Region City Dyehouse, took a fancy to Lei Lvtai while wandering around the casino. He thinks this young man is very powerful. As soon as the dice landed, they scored quickly and accurately, so he wanted to recruit Lei Lvtai as his buddy.
Lei Lvtai felt that there was no future in the casino. Doing business with the big shopkeeper was definitely better than in the casino, so he followed Li Daquan as an apprentice to the dyehouse.
It is said that the apprentice is doing business, but in fact it is half a servant, serving tea and pouring water and packing these groceries. Lei Lutai was very clever and had a unique vision. He was quickly appreciated by Li Daquan and was promoted to a formal apprentice.
During his apprenticeship, Lei Lvtai found that many merchants from south to north went to Shanxi to buy local codonopsis pilosula, which happened to be mainly purchased in the south, so he took Lei Lvtai with him.
Lei Lvtai thought it was an opportunity for many southerners to buy Codonopsis pilosula at a high price in Shanxi, so he bought a batch of Codonopsis pilosula at a low price with a little money he had saved and followed the shopkeeper to the south. At the end of the south, Lei Lvtai's codonopsis pilosula is very popular. This trip made Lei Lvtai earn eighteen taels of silver, which is equivalent to his salary for two years.
After returning to Pingyao, Lei Lvtai did not leave the eighteen taels of silver, but told the shopkeeper that the money was earned by doing business with the shopkeeper and would be given to the shopkeeper.
Later, the shopkeeper told the second boss Li Daquan about it. Hearing this, Li Daquan was even more impressed with Lei Lvtai. Later, he went to the south for a business trip. Li Daquan asked Lei Lvtai to buy 500 Jin of Codonopsis pilosula with public funds. When he arrived in the south, he gave Lei Lvtai 10% of the money he sold.
Lei Lvtai gradually became a dyehouse in the western regions. Later, Li Daquan appointed Lei Lvtai as the deacon of Hankou semicolon, and later transferred to the foreman of Kyoto semicolon.
In the process of doing business in Lei Lvtai, he found a big problem. When doing business, he often takes a lot of money with him. Transportation is very troublesome along the way, and safety is also a big problem.
Lei Lvtai once found something in the process of doing business. Second boss Li Daquan has a friend who is doing business in Tianjin. He wants to come to Beijing with money, but the traffic is too troublesome. So he told the shopkeeper that he wanted to deposit the money in Tianjin semicolon, where the western region became a city, and then the second landlord wrote a payment certificate, and then took the certificate to Beijing semicolon to withdraw money, because the money actually went into the account of the western region, and he also saved money transportation.
Li Daquan thinks it is ok to do so. He just helps his friends conveniently. Anyway, the money is in his own account, it's the same everywhere.
When Lei Lvtai learned about this, he thought it was a good thing for businessmen and a business opportunity to make money. If we can develop this business and let more business people exchange money with him, it will provide convenience for these people who do business in different places, and also earn some income and charge some handling fees.
So Lei Lvtai came up with the idea of the billing number and told Li Daquan, the second husband, his own idea. After listening to Lei Lvtai's idea, Li Daquan thought it was feasible, so he gave Lei Lvtai three hundred and two thousand pieces of silver as capital. After receiving three hundred and two thousand pieces of silver from Li Daquan, Lei Lvtai founded Rishengchang, the first foreign exchange bank in China, in the third year of Daoguang (AD 1823).
Strict system and the concept of good faith management After Lei Lvtai became the shopkeeper of Rishengchang, some problems were found in the process of management. The first is the problem of different silver qualities in different places. In ancient times, silver was smelted by the government, and the purity of silver smelting in different regions was high or low. Therefore, in order to exchange silver fairly, Lei Lvtai has formulated a conversion formula according to the different fineness of silver in different regions, which is somewhat similar to the exchange rate of currency conversion in various countries.
Secondly, the anti-counterfeiting technology of bills. If the bill is forged, the loss of bank number will be great. In modern times when anti-counterfeiting technology is very developed, many counterfeit money are very similar, not to mention in ancient times when technology was not so advanced. However, Rishengchang has never forged bills to withdraw money for more than 100 years from its establishment to the end of its operation, relying on unique anti-counterfeiting skills.
This unique anti-counterfeiting technology is to set a password. For example, the date on the bill was changed to "Beware of taking fake tickets and don't forget to read the chapters carefully", and the monthly figures were also changed to a corresponding word. Only people with this ticket number know the password. Rishengchang can operate for more than a hundred years, in addition to strict system, but also adhering to the business philosophy of honest management.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, one day a widow and old lady begging along the street in Pingyao City took a semicolon draft from Rishengchang Zhangjiakou and took 5,200 pieces of silver to Rishengchang headquarters to collect the money.
The shopkeeper saw that this banknote had been issued for more than 30 years. Only after asking did I know that the old lady's husband went to Zhangjiakou to do leather goods business in his early years and died of illness on his way home. When the body was transported home, his wife was very sad, and then the family began to go downhill. Later, the old lady picked up a coat left by her husband and pulled out a Rishengchang draft from the corner of her skirt, so she tried it and went to Rishengchang to get cash.
After inquiring about the origin of the draft, the shopkeeper carefully consulted the account books for decades and paid the cash in full.
In his later years, Lei Lvtai was in poor health, so Mao, the shopkeeper of Rishengchang II at that time, suggested to Li Daquan, the shopkeeper, that Lei Lvtai should decentralize and go home for illness.
Mao Yaohong took this opportunity to control Rishengchang's power, and when Lei Lvtai came back, he could no longer command. So in a fit of pique, Lei Lvtai sealed all the semicolons in Rishengchang, called all the shopkeepers of semicolons back, and said to Li Daquan, since you don't need me, I will take back all the people in the semicolons I have developed over the years.
In desperation, Li Daquan called Lei Lvtai back again. As a result, Mao thought that his ability was not below that of Lei Lvtai, so he resigned from Rishengchang and opened a Weitaihou Bank next door to Rishengchang.
Later, Rishengchang of Leilutai and Empress Wei of Mao Hongzhou fought with each other in business. This kind of business competition also made the bank develop and improve internally, and the business became bigger and bigger.
After the defeat of the Opium War (1842), China and Britain signed the treaty of nanking, the first unequal treaty in China's modern history. In the treaty, in addition to ceding Hong Kong Island, opening trading ports and negotiating tariffs, compensation of 21200,000 silver dollars was paid, equivalent to about14.7 million silver dollars.
At that time, it was not very difficult for the fiscal revenue of the Qing Dynasty to pay these reparations. The amount of compensation is distributed according to different regions, and then transported by each region to various trading ports in Shanghai.
However, how to transport silver to Shanghai has become a difficult problem after cashiers in various places, because the social environment in the Qing Dynasty was very unstable at that time, and it was unsafe to transport silver long distance. So many officials chose to deposit the money in the local Rishengchang Bank, and then remit it from Rishengchang to Shanghai. In the end, it took only a short time for the money to gather in Shanghai.
Daoguang knew that silver was safely transported to Shanghai from all over the country through Rishengchang's exchange business in a very short time, and lamented that Rishengchang could not only connect a place, but also connect the world. Since then, "Huitong Tianxia" has become a golden signboard of Rishengchang.