Training the Heavens

Chapter 253 Stocks
The pink industry near Simalu is very famous, but people can't hang out with female schoolmasters all day long. They also need to eat, drink tea and socialize, so the teahouses around here are also very famous. The Huifang Teahouse that Zhang Xingjiu sees now is one of them.

High-end teahouses now have another function. Zhang Xingjiu rushed into the teahouse for this purpose and asked the coachman to wait outside, saying that he would pay for the whole day. The coachman was very happy with this and found a place to squat down and chat with the other coaches around him who were also waiting for customers.

"Sir, please come in!" Seeing that Zhang Xingjiu had an extraordinary demeanor, Dr. Tea hurriedly and attentively welcomed him in, found a seat, wiped the floor with a rag, asked him to sit down, and asked if he needed anything.

"A pot of Longjing tea and a few of your specialty snacks!" Zhang Xingjiu ordered and casually threw over a tip.

"Please sit for a moment, I'll be there soon!" Dr. Cha took it quickly and went to make arrangements for Zhang Xingjiu.

There is no need to waste time talking to regular customers who come in later. There are also etiquettes for visiting teahouses in Shanghai. If you stretch out your index finger, it means green tea, if you bend your index finger, it means black tea, if you stretch out all five fingers and slightly bend them, it means chrysanthemum tea, if you stretch out your hand and make a fist, it means tortoiseshell tea, and if you extend your little finger, it means boiled water. The waiter will understand at a glance.

There is no need to make any arrangements for familiar guests. The waiters remember exactly what kind of tea they drink, what kind of snacks they eat, and where they sit. They can just make the arrangements when they arrive.

After a while, the waiter came over with tea and snacks. Zhang Xingjiu sipped tea and ate snacks while paying attention to the movements of the tea drinkers around him.

Nowadays, teahouses are not only places to drink tea, but also important social occasions. People from all walks of life in Shanghai use teahouses as venues to negotiate business and exchange information, and over time, some circles have been formed.

Construction companies mainly gathered at the nearby Qinglian Pavilion to hold tea parties, builders mostly gathered at Changle Tea Garden at No. 496 Fuzhou Road, some small contractors were active at Tianxiang Pavilion on Hubei Road and the nearby Yiletian Teahouse, the flower industry set up a trading table at Ade Teahouse at Wansheng Bridge outside the old west gate, Pinfanglou was a trading place for used cars and accessories, Simeixuan was one of the jewelry and jade markets, Luochun Pavilion on Zhejiang Road was a gathering place for the wood industry, and Yidongtian Teahouse became the "news gathering" center for various newspapers.

Huifang Teahouse mainly serves stock brokers and speculators. They gather here to exchange stock-related information and trade stocks. This is what Zheng Sanfazi did when he came to Shanghai earlier.

In addition to tea and snacks, the teahouse also gave Zhang Xingjiu a copy of today's "Shen Bao" for free. Looking at the tea drinkers around him, everyone also had a copy, because from February 1871, 2, the "Shanghai Stock Price Paper" listed by Changli Foreign Company was published regularly in the "Shanghai Xinbao".

A year later, the Shanghai Xinbao failed to compete with the Shenbao and went bankrupt. The stock quotes were then published by the Shenbao and later replaced by the stock quotes of the Pingjun Company.

Since Huifang Teahouse does business with stock customers, this kind of newspaper is definitely a must-have. By spending a little money to help customers save some trouble, customers will naturally be willing to come to them. This is also the business strategy of the teahouse owner.

After Shanghai was first opened as a port, foreign joint-stock companies were established in Shanghai one after another. The capital of foreign joint-stock companies mainly came from foreign investors, but Chinese citizens were allowed to hold shares. Where there were stocks, there was stock trading. Foreign joint-stock companies were established first, and stock trading also started with the trading of foreign companies' stocks.

Later, many Chinese businessmen followed suit. The earliest ones were joint-stock enterprises supervised by the government and run by merchants. The first one was the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, which was established at the end of the 1873th year of the Tongzhi reign (January 1).

China Merchants Group successively established China Merchants Insurance Group, Renhe Insurance Company and Jihe Insurance Company, all of which offered public shares.

In addition, the Kaiping Coal Mine was established in 1876, the Shanghai Machine Weaving Factory in , the Tianjin Telegraph Bureau in , and the Pingquan Mining Bureau in . Many privately-owned joint-stock companies also sprang up in China, though their quality varied. Following the emergence of Chinese joint-stock companies, a stock market for Chinese businessmen emerged in Shanghai.

At first, few people were interested, but gradually, people discovered the value of stocks and began investing in them in the hope of profit. The Shenbao even published a special article warning, "Westerners in Shanghai are buying and selling shares of various companies, and this is once common practice. However, they don't always buy and pay immediately. Some may set a deadline of one or two months, or even six months. This is probably because they hope to get a high price, which is not much different from gambling."

The meaning is similar to that of the media in later generations, both emphasizing that "the stock market is risky and you need to be cautious when entering the market." Unfortunately, the leeks from ancient times to the present are the same, only seeing the benefits of stocks and ignoring the risks.

More than ten years ago, Shanghai experienced its first stock market crash. Twenty of the 22 popular stocks at the time depreciated, stock prices plummeted, speculators lost more than one million, and countless people jumped into the Huangpu River.

The then famous red-top businessman Hu Xueyan also lost all his fortune in this stock market crash and never had a chance to recover. He passed away in depression two years later.

From then on, Shanghai residents were afraid to buy stocks. “When talking about company stocks, people were terrified.” The stock market entered a low ebb.

Zhang Xingjiu was observing the others, and some of them were also observing him. Perhaps seeing an opportunity, a rather imposing-looking man with a pocket watch hanging from his chest came over to say hello. "Sir, the furnace at Hanyang Iron Works was recently completed and started producing iron. If you buy Hanyeping stock now, the price will definitely go up in a few days."

"Haha, but I heard that these furnaces are not producing iron smoothly." Zhang Xing stopped at nine o'clock. Zhang Zhidong's purchase of the wrong equipment was too famous. It was probably a dream to expect to make money from Hanyeping's stocks.

"Oh? May I ask for your advice, sir?" The visitor was startled and asked in a low voice.

"It's just hearsay, don't take it seriously." Zhang Xingjiu didn't even know his name, so how could he tell such crucial news.

Seeing that he was young but had good conversation skills and was able to find out such important information, the visitor thought that he was the child of a wealthy businessman. Seeing that he had no intention of chatting, he did not dare to disturb him and left.

But he had already remembered Zhang Xingjiu's words in his heart and planned to find someone to inquire carefully. He had invested a lot of money in Hanyeping's stocks and didn't dare to lose it all.

After staying for a while and getting a little understanding of the situation, Zhang Xingjiu got up and left, and went to various lively places in Shanghai to take a look. It was not until it was getting dark that he asked the coachman to take him back to Xuhui Public School.

From then on, he would go to Huifang Teahouse every once in a while to learn about the latest stock market trends, but he never made any moves.

Time passed by unknowingly, and soon it was the end of 1894.

(End of this chapter)