Zhang Xueliang, a famous patriotic general, is full of legends in his life. The first half of his life was a general who scolded Fang Xuan, but the second half of his life was spent in drifting. However, the way in which his vast fortune was handled was unexpected.
He decided not to leave a penny to his children, nor to Taiwan or the mainland, but to donate it all to Columbia University in the United States. It was not until a year after Zhang Xueliang's death in October 2001 that the list of his assets was made public.
Zhang Xueliang has hundreds of millions of deposits and a large number of celebrity calligraphy, paintings, and buildings, which are of extraordinary value. What makes people wonder why he chose not to leave a penny of inheritance to his children? So, why did Zhang Xueliang donate this huge inheritance to the United States, and how did he get so much wealth overseas?
Let's find out the secrets.
Zhang Xueliang and Chiang Kai-shek's "Northeast King" family is well known, Zhang Xueliang's father Zhang Zuolin was famous for a lot of wealth, but his son Zhang Xueliang was not keen on wealth.
He once wrote a poem: "White hair urges people to grow old, and false names mislead people." The Lord is gracious to the heavens, and rich is like floating clouds. In the poem, "wealth is like floating clouds" expresses his outlook on life, and he has always adhered to this attitude throughout his life.
Zhang Zuolin's wealth** has always attracted much attention, and his son Zhang Xueliang is also famous for inheriting this huge wealth. It is rumored that Zhang Zuolin was a great warlord in the northeast, and his wealth was so great that he could even rival the state.
At present, there are three different theories about the amount of Zhang Zuolin's property. One of them believes that Zhang Zuolin's total wealth was 30 million, which was discovered by the Japanese when they disclosed their bank accounts after Zhang Zuolin's death.
However, this is only the property in Zhang Zuolin's personal name, and if you add the property of other people in his family, then this number may be amazing!
Zhang Xueliang once said that his Northeast family property is as high as 50 or 60 million, and this view stems from two **. The first is the research of **"Mintv**", which believes that among the Beiyang warlords, Zhang Zuolin's wealth is not outstanding.
The second is Zhang Xueliang's statement in his later years, in which he claimed that although his wealth could not be said to reach the scale of 100 million, he did have a family property of 50 or 60 million. These two ** make this idea widely circulated.
Zhang Xueliang once revealed that his father Zhang Zuolin's property exceeded 300 million yuan! After the 918 Incident, Zhang Xueliang led the army to evacuate the three eastern provinces, and then the Japanese raided the Zhang family's mansion and found 80,000 gold bars and 2.56 million taels**, which alone were worth 300 million yuan.
It can be seen that the wealth of Zhang Zuolin's family is huge! In addition to these ** and deposits, the Zhang family's industry in the Northeast covers almost all walks of life, in order to curry favor with Zhang Zuolin, rich businessmen and landlords have given high bribes, and some even use fertile land and real estate as collateral, and the wealth that these real estate can bring is even more amazing.
In his early years, Zhang Zuolin occupied the coal mine by force, and the coal mine called Badaohao once excavated dozens of tons of raw coal, which brought huge economic benefits to Zhang Zuolin's family.
In addition to coal mines, Zhang Zuolin's family also owns textile factories, banknote printing factories, iron ore factories, money banks, banks and other industries, which have brought Zhang Zuolin countless wealth.
However, despite the Zhang's many industries, huge amounts of financial support were still needed to maintain a strong Northeast Army.
In the heyday of Zhang Zuolin's Northeast Army, the size of the army reached more than 400,000 people, and such a huge demand for military salaries, grain and grass and equipment was undoubtedly a huge expenditure.
However, with the tragic death of Zhang Zuolin in the Huanggutun Incident in 1928, Zhang Xueliang took over his estate. Unlike Zhang Zuolin's blind pursuit of scraping, Zhang Xueliang pays more attention to the ratio of income and expenditure, and advocates the concept of opening up sources and reducing expenditure.
He voluntarily gave up a lot of the Zhang family's real estate and land, and had no intention of operating these properties. More importantly, because Zhang Zuolin died at the hands of the Japanese, he hated the Japanese industry.
Zhang Xueliang, in the three years he was in charge of the Northeast, did not spend a penny. He even bought a western-style building in order to buy a house for his beloved woman Zhao Yidi. Compared with his father Zhang Zuolin, he can be said to be very thrifty.
Although his father had worked with the Japanese to develop a 4 million hectare plot of land that was said to bring great wealth, Zhang Xueliang immediately halted the project after he took office, winning high praise from people from all walks of life in Northeast China.
However, after the September 18 Incident in 1931, the Northeast Army left the Northeast, and the Zhang family's property was roughly divided into 3 pieces.
After the 918 Incident, the greed of the Japanese led to the robbery and embezzlement of countless rare antiques, jade, ** jewelry and bank deposits. Although Zhang Xueliang transferred part of his property to Guannai, due to house arrest, this part of his property was also frozen.
And Zhang Zuolin transferred his wealth overseas early on, using the strategy of "three holes of cunning rabbits" to ensure the safety of property. This considerable overseas wealth is also closely related to Zhang Xueliang's huge inheritance.
Although Zhang Xueliang did not love money, the Japanese had a close personal relationship with him and transported the Zhang family's property to Beijing in an attempt to return it to Zhang Xueliang.
Zhang Xueliang, a wealthy soldier, had his possessions filled with calligraphy, paintings, and jade in two train carriages. However, when he saw these belongings, he said to Honjo Shigeru, "You hurry up and transport these things back to Shenyang for me!"
Otherwise, I'll burn it all!" "Why is that? In the nineties, when Zhang Xueliang was in his old age, he finally gave an answer: "My identity is a soldier, the Japanese killed my father, invaded the land of the Chinese, and now they have brought back all my family's belongings, isn't this humiliating me?" ”
Therefore, he rejected Honjo's kindness. Five years later, the Xi'an Incident broke out, and the righteous actions of two generals, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, directly promoted the second cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and also promoted the pace of the national anti-Japanese war.
Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng were imprisoned for opposing Chiang Kai-shek and lived a life without freedom. In 1940, Zhang Xueliang was imprisoned in Xiuwenyangmyeongdong, Guizhou, and the harsh environment brought great physical torture to his wife Yu Fengzhi, and she was eventually forced to go to the United States**.
In the United States, Yu Fengzhi's physical condition has greatly improved, and he has also avoided the pain of continuing to be under house arrest in China. So, when she was dealing with Zhang Xueliang's property, she decided to invest ** herself.
Surprisingly, her ** investment went very smoothly and she quickly made millions of dollars in profits.
Yu Fengzhi's father was a wealthy businessman, and she may have inherited his father's business acumen. Subsequently, she used the money to invest in real estate in the United States, which paid off handsomely.
This wealth and investment in the industry also became part of Zhang Xueliang's legacy. Zhang Xueliang in China, in 1945, the Japanese announced their unconditional surrender and withdrew their troops from Chinese mainland.
During this time, the Zhang family's property was consumed a lot, but a lot of jade and money were left behind. As a close friend of Zhang Xueliang, Song Ziwen took the initiative to write to Chiang Kai-shek, hoping that he could return these Zhang family inheritances to Zhang Xueliang.
Your property, with the help of Song Ziwen, has been returned! We are all very happy for you! However, Zhang Xueliang did not react much to this, saying that he no longer cared about these material things, and the money was not of much use to him.
So, he immediately wrote a letter and decided to give all this remaining property to his sister in Xi'an.
Zhang Zuolin once expounded his concept of property in a letter to his sister. He said that these properties were acquired with the care and help of friends of Pingjin's predecessors. Although the amount and location of his possessions were not clear to him, his possessions were not for personal pleasure, but to help friends.
He doesn't want to get into a dispute with someone because of the amount of his possessions, and he doesn't want someone to squander them because he has them. At the end of the letter, Zhang Xueliang quoted ancient poems, emphasizing the truth that "harmony is precious".
He believes that if there is an endless dispute over a few feet of land, it will be like the Great Wall built during the Qin Shi Huang period, which has now disappeared into the long river of history. Therefore, no matter how much property we have, we should treat it rationally, not fight for money, and not harm for money.