Hu Xueyan was born in 1823. After his father died, he went out to make a living as a teenager. Later, I worked as an apprentice in a bank in Hangzhou, taking care of many things in the bank. During this period, I met Wang Youling, the son of a down-and-out bureaucratic family. Hu Xueyan felt that this man had made a difference, so he appropriated the money from the bank to Wang Youling and made him famous. Later, this person really became the governor of Zhejiang, and naturally appreciated Hu Xueyan's assistance. Hu Xueyan took this opportunity to open a bank of his own, because he has a business mind, and Wang Youling used his position to provide him with a wide range of opportunities, so Hu Xueyan soon accumulated a certain economic foundation.

Later, Wang Youling died because of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, but it was also because the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom brought another noble person to Hu Xueyan-Zuo. After the Taiping Army conquered Hangzhou, at the beginning of 1862, the Qing court officially appointed Zuo as the governor of Zhejiang to supervise military affairs and prepare to recover Hangzhou. At this time, Hu Xueyan showed his business acumen and bought a lot of guns and ammunition for Zuo. 1863 After the recovery of Hangzhou, Zuo was promoted to the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, and the two men combined business and politics, and Hu Xueyan got another chance to snowball. 1873 raised military expenses for the recovery of Xinjiang by the left western expedition, and was awarded the yellow coat by Cixi. Since then, his business empire has been quite huge. ?

This also made Li Hongzhang, who was different from Zuo, notice this, but it was not easy to break for a while. 1882, Li Hongzhang's opportunity came. At that time, in order to monopolize the operation of raw silk in China, Hu Xueyan launched a price war with foreigners, but the harvest of raw silk in Europe was met with the outbreak of the Sino-French war, so the price of raw silk plummeted. What if that's all? Natural disasters? , Hu Xueyan also carry to live, but have long wanted to get rid of, so hurriedly to li hongzhang. He used his power to clamp down the factory production in Hu Xueyan, and instigated foreigners to collect loans from Hu Xueyan, and then reported to Cixi to freeze Hu Xueyan's property. What's more, it used its reputation to spread the news that Hu Xueyan was about to go bankrupt, causing businessmen everywhere to compete for money and prompting Hu Xueyan to declare bankruptcy.

So it can be said that the collapse of Hu Xueyan's business empire was caused by Li Hongzhang, so it is not surprising that Hu Xueyan bears a grudge against Li Hongzhang and even warns future generations not to marry Li.