Chapter 125 The Charm of Shanxi Merchants: Understanding the "Spirit of Shanxi Merchants" in the New Era

At the "end section" of the thousand-year history of China's feudal monarchy, two dynasties emerged: Ming and Qing. These are two special periods. The dawn of the capital economy has dawned, but one end is still struggling in the quagmire of slash-and-burn farming. The reason why we pay attention to this special period is that in this turbulent era, a business legend that shocks the past and the present and shocks the world is born! It was as if a peak had suddenly risen in front of my eyes! It also rises from the horizon beneath our feet! Across the vast skyline of the sky, a group of business peaks wind their way!

This is a special business group. They are merchants all their lives, persistent and persevering. They weathered the wind and rain, overcame thorns and thorns. With sincerity and determination, they trek tenaciously through the rugged business roads of the millennium. They work on their own lives and pass on thousands of immortal business souls throughout their bodies. They hid their loneliness in the gaps in the dark clouds, and wrote their dreams in the blue sky grassland. With their unwavering faith, they convey the business spirit of a group that has been passed down from generation to generation.

With their persistent pursuit, they are carving a cultural totem passed down from generation to generation. They all have a common name: Jinshang! Today, with the power of the province, Shanxi is now struggling to turn around on the cusp of the energy economy. Under the background of the era of vigorously promoting the "Shanxi Coal Integration", we will travel through historical time and space, cross the barriers of time consciousness, and use a rational and scientific attitude. "Great solution" to the long-lost "Shanxi Merchants Spirit" that people love. Shanxi merchants refer to "Shanxi merchants".

Shanxi merchants used to gallop at home and abroad for hundreds of years during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and traveled all over the world. Today, this "practice belief" of Shanxi merchants is hailed as the "Spirit of Shanxi Merchants" by scholars at home and abroad.So, what is "Shanxi Merchants Spirit"? What is the core essence of "Shanxi Merchants Spirit"? We believe that one of the core essences of Shanxi merchant spirit is the unswerving enterprising spirit. Extremely strong enterprising spirit, extremely strong pioneering ambition. This is the basic "characteristic" of Shanxi merchants "doing business and starting a business".

"The hustle and bustle of the world is all for profit. The king of thousands of vehicles, the lord of thousands of families, and the lord of a hundred families are still suffering from poverty. The king is a businessman, and the common people who have households." This kind of professional spirit of "talking about business in business" is exactly the "nuclear power" of a generation of Shanxi merchants who have dominated the market for a hundred years and are powerful in Asia and Europe. From another perspective, the unswerving and enterprising spirit stems from the business philosophy of being a business.This is in line with their life principles of "taking business as the basis, taking business as the foundation, taking business as the business, emphasizing business and starting a business, and being open-minded".They believe that in business and business, for career and career, there is no shame and pretense of being inferior, second-class public (subjects) or "out-of-class subjects".

I remember a British economist's evaluation of Shanxi merchants was even more exciting: "The business wisdom of Chinese Shanxi merchants will make every Chinese God of Wealth tremble with fear!" The second core essence of the Shanxi Merchants Spirit is the dedication and perseverance. "The so-called respecter means respect; the so-called one means incompatibility (non-extroverted) means one." This is exactly the Confucian philosophy's ideological commentary on China's "respect culture".Confucianism advocates that people should always have a "respectful heart" throughout their lives, and requires us to be diligent and hardworking in behavior, and do our best for our careers.Here, "respect" refers to a state of mind that is single-minded and not distracted.The most obvious "career expression" in the life of Shanxi merchants is "talking about business in business".

"Business is about business" is resolved in specific "behavioral aspects", that is, thrift and self-discipline, hard work, self-improvement, perseverance, hard work and thrift, strict self-discipline, and lenient treatment of others. Here are some words in the rules and regulations of an ordinary Shanxi merchant's family training shop: "Qi's housework should be serious, and business affairs should be gentle." "The living room must be used for both purposes, and if you know what you have done, you must change it." Every word matters! Every sentence is like thunder!

A persistent and persistent professionalism runs through it all the time. A kind of physical practice of inner square and outer circle runs through it all the time. Another scientific interpretation of professionalism is hard work and honest business. Diligent self-innovation and continuous progress provide a strong ideological guarantee for the spirit of Shanxi merchants to continue to deny themselves in the long river of history, pass on the torch from generation to generation, and continue for a hundred years. Not afraid of hardship and tiredness are also the good qualities of most Shanxi businessmen.

On the other hand, honesty is the "lifeline" for Shanxi merchants to settle down in the business world. There is truth in sincerity and success in sincerity. They know that honesty is the moral bottom line of being a human being, and they know that honesty is the bottom line of business conduct. Let's come back to credit. We know that credit is a special social relationship to maintain human business behavior.Marx said that people are the sum of social relations, and credit is a manifestation of social relations.In any society, credit is indispensable. That is to say, credit is the foundation of modern society and the platform for economic operation, and the performance of Shanxi merchants in this regard can be regarded as a model.

Someone once made such an evaluation of Shanxi Merchants: In today's market tide, they are actually "in the field of wealth and profit without pollution, trustworthy and hardworking, honest and faithful", and they were once regarded as "models" of "regarding righteousness without wealth, and doing business without market".They regard goodwill as the "lifeblood" of their business. In the business life of Shanxi merchants, they insist on reputation first, and must be down-to-earth when doing business, and never take risks. We believe that in today's society, it is not necessary to have much wisdom to do "Zen interpretation".

A word of "sincerity" is the "passport" to a successful career. In the long years of development, Shanxi merchants have continuously opened up new business territories by virtue of the word "sincerity". The "social genetic code" passed on from generation to generation. The third core essence of the Shanxi Merchants spirit is the group spirit of mutual assistance. "Xiangyu" is a word in Shanxi dialect, which originally meant "friends". For Shanxi businessmen, this word means "business partner". Of course, not every businessman can get the "treatment" of "friendship" from Shanxi merchants. Shanxi merchants must carefully examine the other party's character and reputation before making friends with them. Once they form a "friendship", they always try their best to maintain the relationship, and they will do their best to help each other when they encounter difficulties, and they will never break up the relationship even if they know that it is no longer profitable. Practice has proved that the concept of "phase and relationship" of Shanxi merchants plays a key role in their business activities. Through the common spiritual worship of "Guan Sheng", they maintain mutual communication and connection in the form of guild halls, and at the same time use the patriarchal society's The friendship in the village is united with each other to enhance mutual understanding. By emphasizing loyalty, "being with each other" and "helping and relying on", we can coordinate the interest relationship between firms, eliminate interpersonal disharmony, and form a harmonious and symbiotic business Help the group. In fact, in the turbulent business world, this kind of "business group" relationship spontaneously formed by the folk "business group grassroots" in their respective "commercial practices" plays a decisive role in maintaining the "overall interests" of Shanxi merchants. effect. Judging from the economic environment at that time, with the expansion of Shanxi merchants' activities and business scope, commercial competition became more and more fierce.In this context, the "formation of facts" of Shanxi merchants' "business groups" has promoted the gradual "evolution and formation" of Shanxi merchants from "family-oriented" operations to "enterprise group-oriented" operations.On the basis of the "formation of facts" of "business gang groups", modern new business management mechanisms such as "joint number system" and "shareholding system" have emerged, forming a new "business relationship" group organization. The so-called "joint number system" refers to a number of small firms derived from a large firm, similar to the relationship between parent and subsidiary companies in the West. These large and small firms play a group role in business activities through the "joint number system". The "shareholding system" they promoted was a very distinctive form of labor distribution organization created by Shanxi businessmen "for business" and "for time" in their business activities.The implementation of the joint-stock system, both labor and management can benefit, greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of all employees, and played an active role in the increasingly fierce business competition in the market.It is said that this advanced business management model is far earlier than Western countries. Today, when we are vigorously introducing advanced international business management technology, Shanxi merchants, a business group born and bred in China, compare the oriental wisdom created by their own business practice with the so-called "advanced management" in the context of worshiping foreign countries. They are similar in purpose and can even be "compared to". Isn't this worth pondering?