Xi Zhengfu

Xi Zhengfu (席正甫, Xí Zhèngfǔ) was the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank’s comprador in Shanghai from the mid-1870s, and the founder of a family that held the post for three generations. The account of his life rests on a modern encyclopedia page, so the details below are medium confidence.

From a family in Dongshan on Lake Tai near Suzhou, he came to Shanghai as a young man, learned banking in a money shop, and opened his own in 1860. In 1866 his uncle Shen Eryuan helped him into the bank as a comprador’s agent. The bank’s own history site names Wang Huaishan (王槐山) as its first local manager, who retired in 1875; Xi took over the comprador’s role after handling the 1874 Fujian-Taiwan Coastal Defence Loan.

The same page says most of the bank’s 17 loans to the Qing government in 1874-1890 went through him. His son Xi Ligong succeeded him. The bank’s 1923 Bund building, now the Pudong Development Bank, came long after his death.