Tang Baifu
"The sun on the head, Shaoyang in the eyes, Yiyang on the feet, Hanyang on the body, the Yangtze River on the tail swing of the huge waves, the hand paddle pile to swim in all directions", this is a song sung in Hankou. There is also a three-word saying in Wuhan "hit the dock", which is the same group of people as this ballad, that is, "Bao Gulao". With his hard-working, hard-working, and brutal character, Bao Gu Lao stubbornly carved out a world of his own in a foreign place, established Baoqing Wharf, and shocked the party. The Hui merchants, who were so rich that they did not dare to compete with them in their 150-year history.
Bao Gu Lao refers to the people of Shaoyang.
Shaoyang is rich in tea oil, tea, peanuts, charcoal and other daily necessities, and there are fir trees all over the mountains, which are the main materials for building and manufacturing furniture, but there is no dry road to go when it is shipped out, and the waterway has become the only choice. From the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty to the early days of liberation, the boats of Shaoyang (Baoqing at that time) were racing with thousands of sails, and the wooden rows flowed into the Zijiang River in groups from various rivers, causing heavy traffic and even congestion.
At that time, Tangtian City was an important post station on the waterway transportation fortress, and it was a starting point for the famous Baogu Guy to brave the world. Why do you say that, because from here to the west, is Xinning, and then to Guangxi is Guangxi. The Fuyi River passes through the cliffs and crosses the mountains from Guangxi, and comes in a long way, the water flow is slow, the riverbed is narrow, and there are many shallows and reefs everywhere. Only when we arrived in Tangtian City did the river widen and the water deepened. The goods of Xinning and even Guangxi basically rely on picking, carrying, and lifting, and come to Tangtian City through rugged mountain roads. The small goods are bundled and packed, and the bamboo and wood are nailed into bamboo rafts and rafts, and from here they are launched into the water and surged to Hankou and other places.
A large number of horse nails and ropes were needed to nail wooden rafts to tie goods, so the blacksmith shop and rope making shop in Tangtian City came into being. Especially in the blacksmith shop, the furnace has never been extinguished day and night, and it is really prosperous. Sometimes, the nails are bought before they have cooled. The rope shop is also non-stop, working overtime. The rope is generally brown rope, which makes the price of brown fur rise again and again. Derived restaurants, shops, grocery stores, and fruit stores are one after another. The quiet places of the past soon formed bazaars, streets.
There is no shortage of people in Baoqing who are good at doing business, and their wisdom in making money has impressed people all over the world, including the people of Tangtian City. Wuhan is a big city with a large population and a large demand for goods, but it is not easy to go from my hometown to Hankou on a long way. Someone designed a "woolen boat", this kind of ship is slightly trimmed with fir trees, so that it becomes a square wood, called out a lump in Tangtian City, and then nailed with horse nails to make a simple ship, which can carry more than ten tons of goods. After arriving in Hankow, the goods were sold, and the ships were dismantled into timber and sold.
The shrewd people of Tangtian City saw a business opportunity and bought a large number of fir trees. This kind of trees that are everywhere in the mountains can suddenly be replaced with copper plates and silver taels, and the surrounding people, who have no economic resources, go up the mountain in groups, and the sound of felling is everywhere for a while, and even in the middle of the night.
The demand for horse nails has increased dramatically. On the streets of Tangtian City, the blacksmith shops that beat horse nails needless to say that they worked all night to catch up with the goods, resulting in five of the ten shops striking iron, and three of them going out of the way. The mound is to process the original trees into square wood, which requires a large number of master carpenters, ink masters and sawmills. For a time, the craftsmen became very popular, and they gathered from ten miles and eight towns to the streets of Tangtian City, and lived a life of eating and drinking spicy food. Many ordinary people hate learning to strike iron for many years, and regret not learning carpenter at the beginning.
It is conceivable that the tintints of iron striking on a long street and the clatter of processing trees are such a lively scene. Needless to say during the day, at night the tung oil lamp is hung high, and it is still busy, who says that it is not a good thing. The common people have money to make, they are motivated, and they have a head.
The processed woolen boat was sold to Shaodong, the new Shao people, and the people of Tangtian City made a lot of money. Some ships were directly propped up to Hankou by the people of Tangtian City and became sought-after goods.
Boats departing from Tangtian City, bamboo rafts and other fellow travelers converge on the Zijiang River into Dongting, then along the Yangtze River to Hankou, where they dock at a migratory bay along the Yangtze River. As soon as the goods get off the ship, they are basically picked up by the buyer.
Since then, Tangtian City has entered its heyday, with rows of shops and pedestrians. Vendors from near and far, with different accents, bargained, each taking what he needed. The already noisy street market will suddenly sound a burst of gongs and drums, and the deafening sound of firecrackers, which may be a cotton shop
It's opened, it's either a barrel shop, or a sake brewer's house. If there is a shout from behind the pedestrian, it is either to collect chicken feathers, or sharpen knives, or it may be to sell fried tofu. Most of the people who remind everyone to let go are probably people who are afraid of touching you with a car and holding a cow for fear of hurting you. In short, the once prosperous streets of Tangtian City are incomparable today.
The men who returned from Hankow had heavy copper plates in their pockets. If you have money, you will have enough confidence to speak. They were in groups of three or five, and they chose a restaurant with good conditions and relatively clean conditions to sit down, and the table was knocked loudly. "Boss, come five catties of wine and ten catties of steamed lean meat. "These people bring back not only enviable wealth, but also embarrassing stories.
They recounted the hardships along the way, saying that they put the pennies in their own hands, but their lives were in the hands of the king of Yama, and if they were not careful, they would be gone. It is not uncommon for rafts to fall into dangerous shoals, and in the blink of an eye, a living person sinks to the bottom and feeds the fish belly. Sometimes the water is too fast, and the bamboo raft is torn apart by the tremendous force, and the person falls into the water and struggles desperately, but the bamboo behind him will shoot at him like a javelin, and it may penetrate his body.
Knowing that there are tigers in the mountains, he prefers to go to the tiger mountains. These people who went north to Hankou were all poor. is so poor that there is only life left, so take your life to fight, how tragic and fearless it is. When I arrived in Hankou, I was already nine deaths, but this was not over, most of the people who went to Hankou were Baoqing people, who were looked down upon by outsiders and called Baogu Lao. Since it takes some time to go back and forth, when I went to Hankou again, the Anhui people, who had been doing business there for a long time, took possession of the Huishui Bay, which was originally a barren land, and did not allow them to dock. The people of Baoqing were furious, and without saying much, they picked up sticks and rushed forward, beating the gang of Hui merchants with countless casualties and fleeing in all directions.
How could the Hui merchants give up and report this matter to the government, not only relying on the high power of the Hui man Li Hongzhang in the court, but also bribing the government with 1,000 taels of silver. Of course, Bao Guyan was even more difficult to deceive, they took the bribe handle, and asked for help from Zeng Guofan, the leader of the Hunan army, and Zeng Guofan's younger brother Zeng Guoquan came to Wuhan in person. The government feels that no one can afford to offend, and does not judge who is right and who is wrong in the matter of fighting for territory. During the trial, a pair of red-hot iron boots were on display, saying that whoever could wear it barefoot and walk three steps would have the pier belong to him. The people of Anhui looked at each other, and no one dared to step forward. A small barber among the people of Baoqing immediately walked out of the crowd, put on iron shoes and walked five steps. The flesh on his feet was sizzling, and smoke was rising along his trouser legs, but he gritted his teeth and closed his lips.
The wharf was awarded to the Baoqing people and named it Baoqing Wharf, and since then the reputation of the Baoqing Guy has been greatly enhanced.
Although it is not Tangtian City who wears iron boots, there are Tangtian City people who are eager to try. They stood aside and shouted and cheered, causing a huge momentum and anger in the sky.
More and more people came to Tangtian City to do business, and the streets gradually extended, and the east and west ends approached the cliffs. The houses on the east side were simply added along the slope of the riverbank, forming a lower street on the high ground but in the lower reaches of the Fuyi River.
Whether it's on or off the street, the streetside storefronts have always done good business. The aroma of wine is not afraid of deep alleys, and in the lower street, many businessmen have made their business prosperous. The owner of a cotton shop surnamed Chen, the quilt is well made, and the surrounding towns and villages have known this shop for generations.
Tangtian Street, in the minds of the people around, has been a prosperous place for 100 years. Before going out on the street, rural people should at least change into clean and tidy clothes. I remember when I was a kid and my grandmother went out on the street, it was like this, solemnly. Today, the street is gradually silent, and when I walk into the old street again, I feel that it is too far from my memory, and even makes people suspect that the street has narrowed a lot, and I can no longer hear the long-term sound of selling when I was a child:
Liangfen, selling Liangfen one by one