Talk:Hu Xueyan

Harem

It's probably nonencyclopedic to go into the fantastic story about him having bought a Shanghainese girl from her family juuust to 'get her back' for having avoided his gaze and then having let her leave his household with all the wealth she could carry since he couldn't gaf, especially since the story's very likely just a fantasy, but it does seem puritan to entirely avoid mentioning that the guy's harem is literally legendary among Chinese foot fetishists to the point he shows up in chapter headings in Ko's books on footbinding (Ko, Dorothy Y. (2007), Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 91–93). — LlywelynII 21:56, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

More on pricing, ostentation, and severance after the bankruptcy:

• Hua Hsieh-bao (2014), Concubinage and Servitude in Late Imperial China, Lanham: Lexington Books, pp. 18–19.

 — LlywelynII 23:10, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Philanthropy

As possible, the article should be expanded to cover the guy's varied donations and projects. Inter alia, he apparently funded some of the restoration of Shanghai's Jing'an Temple in 1880. — LlywelynII 22:25, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Other legends

He seems to have picked up other the-rich-are-not-like-you-or-I legends in other fields, too, like this one about having supposedly spent 15 minutes each morning examining rolling precious gems as a form of TCM nourishment for his eyesight. He was also apparently revered / esteemed as a "living wealth god":

• Laing, Ellen Johnston (2013), "'Living Wealth Gods' in the Chinese Popular Print Tradition", Artibus Asiae, vol. 73, no. 2, Zurich: Museum Rietberg, pp. 343–363, JSTOR 24240817.

has some details, including a print of him surrounded by 8 female musicians, including a Manchu, a Japanese, and a European. — LlywelynII 16:50, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Bankruptcy

Not precisely a legend but the general story we repeat about his bankruptcy seems to be incomplete to the point of being misleading. Cf Chen's Brief History of Finance in China, which notes the importance of Italian silk production and ongoing stock market chaos/manipulation in undermining Hu's position. The current article also seems to underplay Hu's determined/patriotic efforts to disadvantage foreign business in China and Li Hongzhang's role in driving the stake through his heart. (Possibly unrelated, but Li's failed and seemingly disloyal attempts to get the Qing to abandon Xinjiang to the Russians was most emphatically rebuffed by Hu's pal General Zuo. Might be where some of the bad blood came from.) — LlywelynII 22:15, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

More on the general market and conditions here as well:

• Zhang Nanchen; et al. (2010), "The 'White Tiger'", The Zhangs from Nanxun: A One Hundred and Fifty Year Chronicle of a Chinese Family, Palo Alto: CF Press, pp. 32–37, ISBN 978-0-692-00845-4.

The material's largely accurate even if the authors got mixed up and made Hu "Kuangyung" and Hu Xueyan into two separate people and overestimated the financial importance of HXY's TCM work. Also:

• Wang Mengdi (2014), Mercantile-Political Relations of Britain and China in the Early Modern Age: A Comparative Case Study of East India Company and Chinese Merchant Xueyan Hu (PDF), Vienna: University of Vienna.

 — LlywelynII 16:02, 23 June 2025 (UTC)