There is a proverb in our country: "If the son does not teach, the father is guilty." This is a well-established truth, after all, the father's words and deeds to his son are crucial. However, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, there was a celebrity who was known as the "father of Chinese businessmen" and "the father of higher education in China", and he seemed to be a little unsatisfactory in his son's education. Today, let's take a look at this pair of Sheng father and son, a story with a huge disparity in strength and a tragic ending.
Sheng Xuanhuai, born in the late Qing Dynasty, was born a talent. His legendary life was entrusted to Li Hongzhang, an important minister of the imperial court at that time, and gradually emerged from a small Li family staff member and became a business wizard. Li Hongzhang appreciated Sheng Xuanhuai very much and promoted him many times. Sheng Xuanhuai has made great achievements in foreign affairs with his business acumen and ingenuity, and has created many historical legends of "China's first", such as the China Merchants Steamship Bureau, the Telegraph Office, the Inland River Xiaohuo Division, the China International Commercial Bank, as well as the Jinghan Railway, Nanyang College, Library, etc.
However, with the founding of New China, Sheng Xuanhuai's fourth son, Sheng Enyi, became a figure in the family inheritance. Although he studied in France, Sheng Enyi's life has reached a low point. Although Sheng Xuanhuai's life's accumulation could have allowed future generations to live a prosperous life, Sheng Enyi chose to gamble and ended up losing nothing. He gambled with the son of the governor of Zhejiang for one night, and lost more than 100 storefronts and houses on Beijing Road and Huanghe Road. This was a jaw-dropping fortune for Shanghai at that time.
Over time, the Sheng family's wealth gradually dried up in Sheng Enyi's hands. Faced with the policy of paying taxes on private property in New China, he had no choice but to sell his family property to the state at a converted land price. And Sheng Xuanhuai left him the Suzhou Lingering Garden, and in the end, there were only a few ancestral halls left. In 1958, at the age of 66, Sheng Enyi's life came to an end. In the gatehouse of the Lingering Garden, he spent his last days.
Less than twenty years after Sheng Xuanhuai's death, the glory of the Sheng family has come to an end. Although he left behind a legacy that was enough to make his descendants live without worry, his most beloved son could only die in the gatehouse. Does this stark contrast between wealth and poverty make Sheng Xuanhuai regretful?