For direct children with potential in a big family, they can at best control the situation from behind, but it is impossible for them to come forward in person. They cannot afford to lose face.
The most typical one is the Zhili Textile Bank, which can be said to be the largest private bank and the largest private enterprise in China, with assets under management exceeding 50 million taels.
Most of the bank's shares are controlled by the major gentry families in Jiangnan through various methods, such as direct shareholding, or through companies, institutional shareholdings, etc. Well, they are basically similar to the Chen Lifu family.
A typical official family, famous gentry.
However, among the approximately twenty or so prestigious gentry families, none of the outstanding young people from each family worked in the Zhili Textile Company, and they would not hold even high-ranking official positions.
Because each of these outstanding members of the gentry family is now serving as an official!
Even if you don't become an official, you are still studying hard and desperately want to apply for Imperial College, Jinling University, or Jiangnan University, and then pass the examination to become an official.
Studying and becoming an official is their main job. Going into business is not doing their job properly.
Yang Cheng, of course, does not belong to the outstanding generation among these gentry families. His eldest brother Yang Lin is, and he, Yang Cheng, belongs to the abandoned one.
But even so, as a direct descendant of a gentry family, it is rare for him to go into business personally, because many other direct descendants of the gentry family who are unable to enter the business are still determined not to do business, and they cannot lose it.
Make that face!
But Yang Cheng didn't think it mattered. He had lost all his face in the past twenty years. When he applied for Nanchang Preparatory School, he only scored 8 points in mathematics.
It is widely circulated in the sub-circle.
After being defrauded of more than eight thousand taels of silver, Yang Cheng was very angry at first, but after the anger passed, he felt particularly helpless.
If this was in Jiujiang, the Yang family would immediately put pressure on the relevant yamen to solve the case as soon as possible. These swindlers dared to deceive Young Master Yang in Jiujiang. They were not seeking death!
But this is not Jiujiang, but Shanghai!
In Shanghai, let alone him, even if his father comes in person, he is no different from ordinary people.
In this place, making money is king. Who cares if you are a son of a gentry? Besides, you, Yang Cheng, are a son of a gentry, and it seems that everyone else is not the same.
These days, most of the people who can spend a lot of money to invest in companies and factories are from gentry families. How can a mud-legged person have the capital to engage in industry?
And Shanghai is currently the place with the most developed industry and commerce in the empire and the highest concentration of private enterprises. And these private enterprises are, to put it bluntly, enterprises run by gentry families.
Therefore, in this place, there is a lot of money and there are many gentry children with status. Yang Cheng's status cannot be shown off in Shanghai.
Helplessly coming out of the patrol station, Yang Cheng looked at the gloomy sky, sighed, and then thought about how to open a factory with less than two thousand taels of silver left on hand.
I can’t even afford the equipment…
The housekeeper on the side didn't know what to say when he saw his second young master looking like this. Although he was more than twenty years older than Yang Cheng, this was his first time in Shanghai, and he had seen the dangers of Shanghai when he first came.
So he could only say: "Don't worry, young master, the boat will straighten out when it reaches the bridge. There will always be a way!"
Yang Cheng frowned and said: "But the problem is, there are no ships now!"
"Why don't you send an urgent letter to your family and ask them to come over with the money? Otherwise, we won't be able to open the factory!"
Yang Cheng refused directly: "No, you can't tell your family about this, and you can't ask your family for money!"
There was still something he had not said in his mind. If he asked his family to get money, wouldn't he also tell him that he was deceived when he first came to Shanghai? In the past, his father often said that he was stupid and had not studied for more than ten years.
No farts.
If I tell my father about this now, he will probably regard himself as mentally retarded, and he might even say: In the more than two hundred years of my Yang family, there has never been anyone as stupid as you!
Therefore, you cannot talk about this matter, otherwise you will be humiliating yourself.
Since there is not much capital left, I am afraid that the glass window will not be able to continue, so we have to make other plans.
In fact, it's not like he hasn't thought about using his own private assets to fill it in, but it's not that easy.
His personal assets are more than tens of thousands of dollars, but most of them are not in cash, but more than half of them are the stocks of the family company, namely Jiujiang Glass Company, and the other is a small farm and two shops.
I don't really have much cash.
These stocks, as well as small farms and shops, were all given to him by his family when he came of age. The intention was not to let him sell these assets to repay the money, but to allow him to obtain the annual profits from these properties and then use them as personal property.
Living expenses and so on.
If he sells these assets, especially the shares of Jiujiang Glass Company, his father can break his legs!
In this case, although he has a lot of assets in his name, his cash usually only amounts to a few thousand taels of silver. When he first arrived in Shanghai, he spent nearly a thousand taels of silver to buy a building with a comparable location.
Yes, but the price is quite expensive for a small house, and then you need to buy a two-wheeled carriage and a horse, hire a coachman, a cook, a maid, etc. The expenses are not small.
After all, he plans to do business in Shanghai and live permanently. It is not enough to always live in an inn. He must have a house, and he is a decent person. He cannot live in a poor house. He cannot live in a mansion, but at least he needs a small and exquisite house in a good location.
In addition, carriages for traveling are also indispensable, as are cooks and maids.
Otherwise, how can we gain a foothold in Shanghai in the future?
Therefore, now there is less than two thousand taels of silver left in his personal bank account. Although the money is not much, he does not have to worry about spending too much. He will have no money to spend in the future. The assets in his name are paid to him every day.
He makes money. His income of four to five thousand taels a year is enough for him to maintain a decent life in Shanghai.
It's just that although there is no shortage of living expenses, even if he doesn't eat in the future and uses all the money to make up for it, he still can't afford those mechanical equipment!
With distress, Yang Cheng left the patrol station and went back to the small house he just bought!
Relying on the existing assets, this glass branch factory may not be able to open. After all, the equipment cannot be afforded. However, Yang Cheng is not willing to accept it.
The biggest difficulty he faces now is that he cannot afford machinery and equipment. Although there are other problems, they are not too big. He has already contacted the factory and placed a deposit. The workers are not very technical.
Just recruit ordinary workers. As for the skilled craftsmen, they have already been brought from Jiujiang.
The only trouble now is the equipment!
Yang Cheng was lying on the lounge chair on the balcony on the second floor. He did not close his eyes, but looked at the road and street lights outside the balcony, as well as the boats on the Huangpu River that emitted faint lights.
The two-story building he purchased was not in the business district, but a small building along the river at the junction of the business district and the First Industrial Zone.
The area along the river in the business district is basically an extremely expensive office area. Only a small area is a residential area, and that is Huangpu Road.
This is a small protruding area of the Huangpu River. When the Shanghai Terminal Company developed this area in the past, because the terrain was not very good, it was not suitable for use as a terminal, so it simply built a large park here and surrounded the park.
On the periphery, that is, in the area along the river on three sides, more than fifty two- or three-story single-family houses were built. This Huangpu Road, which is only a few hundred meters short, is the most expensive residential area in the entire business district.
The residences there are all two- or three-story small buildings. The style is different from traditional buildings. They are new types of residences that combine Chinese and Western styles that have only appeared in recent years. There are only about fifty of these small buildings in total.
, each building has a sky-high price, and the owner of each building is either a new dignitary in the empire or an old and famous gentry. In short, they are all rich and powerful guys.
Naturally, those places were not something Yang Cheng could afford to buy or live in.
The successful development of Huangpu Road also gave the Shanghai Terminal Company a taste of the benefits, so it built a new park along the river at the junction of the commercial zone and the industrial zone, and then built residences for sale around the park.
Unfortunately, the price was too expensive, and at that time, in order to make more money, the Shanghai Terminal Company desperately wanted to build more houses on the limited land, so the houses they built were generally small, and the area of each house was no more than a few dollars.
It's only a hundred square meters, and the courtyards at the front and back are also very small. It's completely different from the buildings on Huangpu Road that each cover thousands of square meters.
However, this also leads to the fact that the real rich and powerful do not like it, and those who have no money cannot afford it. Therefore, most of the people who buy properties here belong to people like Yang Cheng, who are not considered rich, but
There is also some money, and at the same time, people who pursue all kinds of respectability.
On the recliner, although Yang Cheng was looking at the scenery outside, he didn't pay attention to the flickering street lights outside. Instead, he was thinking about how to solve the equipment problem.
The equipment must be purchased, otherwise, his glass branch factory will not be able to open!
But he didn't have the money. If he had, he would have bought it directly, so why bother thinking about it now.
After thinking hard all night and into the early hours of the morning, Yang Cheng suddenly remembered something. Then he went back to his room, picked up a wooden stick and started writing directly on the paper. The more he wrote, the more excited he became. During the writing process,
Occasionally I would stop and think deeply, then crumple up the paper I had written on, throw it away, and start writing again.
This writing took several hours. When he put down the pen, the sky was already white, but at this moment he was not sleepy at all. On the contrary, he was extremely excited and murmured: "
There is no perfect path, and I, Yang Cheng, will definitely succeed!"