by Ying-shih Yü
in provincial examinations ( juren
), a scholar in his twenties would give up
his studies and choose to pursue the career of a merchant. Of course individual
cases of this type occurred much earlier. We have already seen a Northern Song
case in the story of Huang Andao mentioned above. During the Ming Period, it
became noticeable as early as the fi fteenth century.
Judging by the date of Wang Yangming’s tomb inscription (1525), Fang Lin’s
shift of career must have happened in the second half of the previous century.
According to Sang Yue
(1447–1530), his father, Sang Lin
(1423–1497),
also married into a merchant family and then abandoned his studies for the
juren examinations to take charge of a large shop, exactly as Fang Lin did.109
The same trend also continued well into later centuries. For example, in the
single county of Wuyuan (in Xin-an) no less than fi fty such cases can be found
in the local gazetteer for the Qing Period alone,110 but the largest concentration
of scholar- turned- merchant cases, as far as can be confi rmed by the sources, was
between 1500 and 1700. This phenomenon requires an explanation.
Tentatively, I would like to suggest that the ever- increasing competitiveness
of the examination system on the one hand and the prosperity of the market
economy on the other seemed equally responsible for it. A rough estimate indi-
cates that China’s population prob ably rose from some 65 million in the late
fourteenth century to the neighborhood of 150 million by 1600.111 But the quo-
tas of the jinshi and juren degrees remained basically stationary throughout the
Ming- Qing Period. As Wen Zhengming
(1470–1559) pointed out in 1515,
in the eight counties of Suzhou Prefecture, there were altogether no less than
fi fteen hundred shengyuan
in the local schools. Out of this large number,
however, only twenty gongsheng
and thirty juren were produced in every
three- year period, so he proposed a liberal increase of the gongsheng quotas as a
solution.112 At about the same time, Han Bangqi
(1479–1556) also re-
marked that both the jinshi juren quotas ought to be greatly expanded to cope
with the situation that the gongsheng generally had little opportunities for offi
-
cial appointment.113 By contrast, the chances of success in the sixteenth- century
business world were extremely good. It was believed that “while one out of ten
scholars will attain success in examinations, nine out of ten merchants will in
business.”114 A man named Huang Chongde
(1469–1537) was persuaded
by his father to give up his preparations for examinations and went to coastal
252 busine s s c ul t ur e a nd c h ine s e t r adi t ions
Shandong for the salt trade. A year’s work brought him a 10 percent profi t, which
soon rose to doubling his capital.115 Thus, we see that the “push” of the examina-
tion system and “pull” of the market jointly created the fi rst and long- lasting
“commercial wave,” which threw numerous “intellectuals” into the “ocean of busi-
ness,” to borrow the language now very much in vogue in China.116
Second, when Wang Yangming, endorsing and elaborating Fang Lin’s view,
said that scholars of his day were more profi t- minded than merchants, while
among merchants there were individuals who lived up to the ideals of the Sagely
Way of antiquity, he was making essentially the same criticism of the same so-
cial real ity that Shen Yao did three centuries later. The main diff erence was a
linguistic one. Wang spoke a language of philosophical idealism, whereas Shen
spoke that of historical realism. Many writers between them also made similar
observations but expressed in diff er ent ways. The most common of them were “a
scholar in occupation but a merchant in conduct” and “a merchant in occupation
but a scholar in conduct,” or, in a morally neutral sense, “the scholar- merchant”
or “the merchant- scholar,” which are too numerous to require documentation.
What really happened, however, was that by the sixteenth century, it was hardly
pos si ble to draw a clear social line between the scholar and the merchant; more
often than not, both lived under the same roof. Shen Yao’s point about “the four
categories of people being undiff erentiated in later times” had already been
common knowledge in Wang Yangming’s time. Gui Youguang
(1507–1571)
also said that nowadays “scholar,” “farmer,” and “merchant” were often “mixed”
in the same person,117 and this observation of his was only to be reconfi rmed by
his great- grand son, Gui Zhuang
(1613–1673), a century later.118 This new
development is indeed noteworthy but should occasion no surprise given our
knowledge of the earlier interpenetration between elite culture and business cul-
ture in Song times. Nor is it unique to Chinese history. In fi fteenth- century
Eng land, there was also a movement toward a “fusion” between merchants and
gentry to the extent that “the gentleman merchant” even emerged as a legal term
that is certainly comparable to “the scholar- merchant” ( shi er shang
), a so-
cial term in the Chinese case. According to Sylvia Thrupp, in medieval Eng land,
“The movement from the merchant class into the landed gentry exceeded the
reverse movement.”119 In Ming- Qing China, however, I suspect it was prob ably
the other way around.
Last but not least, our greatest attention must be drawn to Wang Yangming’s
statement that “the four categories of people were engaged in diff er ent occupa-
tions but followed the same Way ( simin yi ye er tong Dao
).” For
the fi rst time in the history of Confucian thought, a phi los o pher of Wang Yang-
ming’s eminence openly acknowledged that the merchants are equally entitled
to their share of the sacred Way. That Wang Yangming really meant what he
said can be corroborated by a remark he made in a wholly diff er ent context that
“Engagement in trade all day long will not stand in one’s way of becoming a
sage or worthy.”120 From the sociohistorical point of view, a distinction must be
busine s s c ul t ur e a nd c h ine s e t r adi t ions 253
made between the general proposition that “every one can become a sage” and
the specifi c one saying that “a merchant can become a sage or worthy,” even
though logically, the latter is implied in the former, for the general proposition,
long worn out with the passing of time, could sometimes become a cliché devoid
of existential meaning. It was rather unlikely that a member of the Confucian
elite would spontaneously associate this general idea with a merchant, or even
with a farmer or artisan for that matter. Here, I believe, lies the central signifi -
cance of Wang Yangming’s redefi nition of the four categories of people in
terms of Dao.
I must hasten to add, however, that it may not be completely fair to credit the
originality of this idea to Wang Yangming. Two years before Wang wrote the
tomb inscription for Fang Lin, his literary friend Li Mengyang<
br />
(1473–
1529) had composed an epitaph for a Shanxi merchant named Wang Xian
(1469–1523) in which the merchant is quoted as having said to his sons that
“scholars and merchants pursue diff er ent occupations but share the same
mind.”121 Wang Yangming could have had access to this widely circulated epi-
taph of Li’s and for him, “mind” and Dao were interchangeable in meaning. If
Wang Xian’s remark had inspired the phi los o pher in some way, then it was the
merchant who fi rst made his claim to an equal share of the sacred Way. As a
matter of fact, merchants from the sixteenth century on appeared to take an
active interest in Neo- Confucian philosophy and Zhu Xi
, Lu Xianshan
, Zhan Ruoshui
(1466–1560), and Wang Yangming all had their
admirers among them. It goes without saying that Xian-an merchants gener-
ally worshipped Zhu Xi as a great moral teacher from their own locality.122 An
early seventeenth- century merchant from Zhejiang named Zhuo Yu
was
also a true believer in Wang Yangming’s theory of “the unity of knowledge and
action.”123 The case of Zhan Ruoshui is even more in ter est ing. In the 1530s
when he was appointed minister of rites in Nanjing, many salt merchants of
Yangzhou came to him for philosophical instructions.124 Also around this time,
the widow of a rich merchant sent one of her sons to study with Zhan Ruoshui
to learn how to “embody the Heavenly Princi ple.” When Zhan Ruoshui was
short of funds for building his Ganquan Acad emy in Yangzhou, she made a
contribution of several hundred silver taels.125 Huang Chongde, mentioned ear-
lier, turned from scholar to merchant because he was convinced by his father’s
argument that “the learning of Lu Xiangshan takes the securing of a livelihood
as its fi rst priority.”126 Confronted with evidence like this, the conclusion seems
inevitable that merchants not only actively sought to take part in the Dao but
also reinterpreted it in their own way. In this light, Wang Yangming’s new for-
mulation may well be taken more as a response to a changing social real ity
than as an original idea created purely from the mind of a philosophical genius,
which he undoubtedly was.
Wang Yangming was one of the earlier writers who honored merchants with
biographical accounts. From this time on, we can hardly go through the collected
254 busine s s c ul t ur e a nd c h ine s e t r adi t ions
work of a Ming- Qing author of note without encountering some positive state-
ments about the social functions of merchants, which usually took the forms of
epitaph, biography, and birthday essay. This is defi nitely a new development in
Ming- Qing business culture, for we have yet to discover even a single merchant
biography in the works of pre- Ming writers. In the sixteenth century, some
writers may be justifi ably called spokesmen for the merchant class, notably
Wang Daokun and Li Weizhen
(1546–1626). Wang not only came from
a merchant family but also married the daughter of a rich merchant.127 It must
be emphatically pointed out that intermarriage between scholar families and
merchant families was extremely common during the Ming-
Qing Period,
which also accounted for the rich biographical information about the merchants
in the literary productions. For example, Qian Daxin
(1728–1804), a most
respected scholar of the Qianlong era, wrote an epitaph for a wealthy merchant
named Qu Lianbi
(1716–1786) because his daughter was married to the
latter’s grand son.128 Li Weizhen was especially famous for his ser vice to rich
merchants in this regard, for which he was paid handsomely.129 In both Wang
Daokun’s and Li Weizhen’s collected writings alone, hundreds of merchant bi-
ographies can be found. This new trend was by no means confi ned only to the
circles of rich and power ful merchants, however. By the sixteenth century, even
the commonest of the market people were equally determined to honor their
fathers and grand fathers in this way. In his letter to a friend, dated 1550, Tang
Shunzhi
(1506–1560) wrote:
During my leisure, I often refl ect on one or two things in our world to
which we have long been accustomed but which are nonetheless abso-
lutely ridicu lous. One is that a man of lowly social standing such as a
butcher or restaurateur, as long as he is able to earn a living, would be sure
to have an epitaph in his honor after death. . . . This is something that was
unheard of not only in high antiquity but even before Han or Tang.130
This is a piece of evidence of vital importance for our understanding of the
merchant mentality in Ming China. It is further corroborated by a writer fi fty
years later who commented that what Tang said was indeed “a true fact.”131
Moreover, Zhang Han must also have had the merchants in mind when he
complained about too many “epitaphs” being produced in his own day. In an-
cient times, he said, “only those who had great accomplishments in moral virtue
and deeds deserved such epitaphs.”132
How are we going to interpret this new social phenomenon in the sixteenth
century? Traditionally, it has been generally assumed that the merchants, being
envious of the intellectual elite, made every eff ort to imitate the lifestyle of the
scholar- offi
cial. The standard expression is fuyong fengya
, lit. “para-
sitic on [the scholar’s] cultural elegance.” Even modern historians rarely ques-
tion this interpretation, which undeniably, does contain a grain of truth. It is
busine s s c ul t ur e a nd c h ine s e t r adi t ions 255
also obvious, however, that the very assumption itself was part and parcel of
the millennia- long and deep- seated prejudice against the merchant class. From
the merchant’s point of view, however, it seems more sensible to say that their
newly gained self- confi dence led them to think that they were equally entitled
to the recognition and honor that had long been the mono poly of the scholars.
This is simply Wang Yangming’s “diff er ent occupations but the same Way”
interpreted in its most worldly sense.
There is considerable evidence showing that not all merchants aspired to
become scholar- offi
cials. According to a late Ming short story, the social custom
in Huizhou took commerce and trade as the occupation of primary importance
and considered success in examinations to be secondary.133 Wang Daokun also
told us that people in this region “prefer merchant to scholar and substitute
the Nine Chapters [of Arithmetic] for the Six Classics.”134 Still another testimony
is provided by the great ancient- style prose master Wang Shizhen
(1526–
1590), who said, “The custom of Huizhou has been such that the social worth
of a man is often mea sured by his wealth.”135
Taking all three general characterizations together, it seems safe to assume
that among Huizhou merchants of the Ming Period, there must have been
many who were wholeheartedly devoted to business as their calling. Space here
doe
s not allow me to substantiate this conclusion with individual cases, but I
shall touch on this point again later.136 It is in ter est ing to see that this custom of
Huizhou was paralleled by that of Shanxi, another province famous for provid-
ing China with countless enterprising merchants since the Ming dynasty. In
1724, the provincial governor memorialized to the throne, pointing out that it
was the established custom in Shanxi that “the majority of the talented and
outstanding young men join the trading profession. . . . Only those whose talents
are below average are made to study for the examinations.” In response, the
Yongzheng Emperor said that he had long been aware of this “extremely ridicu-
lous custom.”137 Moreover, even if a merchant sent a son to government ser vice
or the Imperial Acad emy as a “gradu ate student” ( jiansheng
), his motiva-
tion could be other than “envy” or power for its own sake. A sixteenth- century
rich merchant of Hebei, for instance, was greatly relieved when his son was
transferred from the Censorate to the Board of Revenue, for the former was too
close to the center of power. He was absolutely delighted when his son was fi -
nally made an offi
cial in charge of customs duties in the Suzhou area. As the
father saw it, his son was now in a position to keep the merchants from being
harshly treated by the customs offi
ce.138 In the case of the jiansheng, it was a
status that would give its holder direct access to scholar- offi
cials in general and
government authorities in par tic u lar.139 It is not diffi
cult to see that “envy” or
“imitation” is too simple to be adequate to the task of historical explanation.
By the sixteenth century, merchants were often honored by the government
for their generous monetary contributions to emergency needs or philanthropic
deeds. For example, in the late sixteenth century, a shrine was built, with the
256 busine s s c ul t ur e a nd c h ine s e t r adi t ions
emperor’s blessing, in memory of a public- spirited merchant named Huang
Zongzhou in Jiangyin on account of the enormous funds he had provided in the
1550s for the defense of the city against the wokou pirates, as well as for the relief
of the poor.140 A Huizhou merchant Jiang Keshu
(1520–1581) was honored