A Tale of Two Cities in Dajiaoji

In the 23rd year of Guangxu's reign, the snow fell in Juye. Lin Demao, the owner of Jinan's Demao Bank, died of illness. Eighteen-year-old Lin Huaiyuan was ordered to do so at the critical moment. He received a copper abacus with missing beads and a legacy: Every bead in the Lin family's silver is clean. At that time, the Germans occupied Jiao'ao and built the Jiao-Ji Railway. Foreign business capital swept through Shandong. Comprador Sun Zhonghe relied on foreigners to monopolize trade and pressed harder. On one side is the crushing of foreign banks and the life-and-death test of bank runs; on the other is the frenzy of foreign goods after the opening of the railway and the blood and tears of the people at the bottom to survive. Lin Huaiyuan took the bank account as his foundation, refused to collude with foreigners, fought hard against business, united local merchants, and transformed the traditional bank account into China's own railway commercial bank; he met Sun Yanqiu, the daughter of Sun Zhonghe, and got to know each other. One kept the bottom line of abacus, and the other broke the shackles of the family. In troubled times, he fought against power with integrity and protected his country with industry. A copper abacus can calculate all the money and accounts, and it can also calculate the hearts of Taoists in the world; A Jiaoji Railway carries foreign guns and foreign goods, and it also carries the backbone of the nation. In the troubled times of business, we do not make dirty money, we do not kneel to the powerful, we are just Chinese people who stand upright. This is the growth epic of a generation of national financiers, and also the passion and perseverance of the Chinese people to save the country through business in the troubled times of the late Qing Dynasty.