by Ying-shih Yü
by other serious writings of the period. Wang Daokun
(1525–1593), argu-
ably the best- known biographer of merchants of Huizhou, also off ers this ob-
servation: “In Xiuning and She (i.e., two counties of Huizhou), people prefer
merchants to scholars and thereby substitute the Nine Chapters [of Arithmetic]
for the Six Classics.”56 This is simply a diff er ent expression of the idea of qiru
jiugu. I may add that a similar social custom also developed in Shanxi, another
province famous for having produced large numbers of merchants during the
Ming- Qing Period. In a memorial submitted to the throne in 1724, Liu Yuyi,
the director of education ( xuezheng
) of Shanxi, reported: “The age- old es-
tablished custom in Shanxi is that wealth is valued far above fame. Talented
young men are mostly encouraged to join the trading profession; the less tal-
ented ones would rather choose to serve as yamen clerks (who have better op-
portunities to earn money by irregular means). Only those with below- average
intelligence are made to study for the examinations.”57 Needless to say, this
“age- old custom” of Shanxi can be easily traced to Ming times, for, like Huizhou
during the same period, a similarly widespread “scholar- turned merchant”
movement also took place in Shanxi.
Against this historical background, I shall try to relate Wang Yangming’s
revised Confucian proj ect and the popu lar movement led by the Taizhou school
to the new wave of business culture. To begin with, allow me to quote, in part,
an epitaph Wang Yangming wrote in 1525, in honor of a merchant named Fang
Lin
:
r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t 293
There was a gentleman from the Kunshan County of Suzhou Prefecture
called Fang Lin . . . who started off as a scholar, studying for the civil ser-
vice examinations. But he left off after a short while and went to live with
his wife’s family, the Zhus, who had been merchants for a long time. A
friend said to him: “So now you have left the world of scholarship for
commerce?” Fang smiled and replied: “How do you know that a scholar
dose not engage in commerce, and that a merchant cannot be a scholar?”
The Hanlin scholar Gu Jiuhe (Gu Dingchen
, 1473–1540) said to
me: “I once read Fang’s letter to his two sons. His words of advice were all
earnest exhortations to loyalty, fi lial piety, integrity and righ teousness;
they were above popu lar vulgar talk rather like those of a man of ancient
times who knew the Way ( Dao).”
I replied: “In olden times, the four categories of people were engaged in
diff er ent occupations but followed the same Way; they are at one in giving
full realization to their minds. Scholars maintained government ser vices,
farmers provided for subsistence needs, artisans prepared tools and im-
plements, and merchants facilitated commodity fl ow. Each person chose
his vocation according to the inclination of his talent and the level of his
capacity, seeking to give full realization to his mind. . . . But with the
Kingly Way extinguished and learning gone astray, people lost their origi-
nal minds and craved for gains, vying to surpass one another. It was then
that people began to think highly of scholars, look down on farmers, to
honor offi
cialdom and despise being artisans and merchants. . . . Looking
into Mr. Fang’s statement on the occupations of scholars and merchants,
I am reminded of our classical theory of division of labor among the four
categories of people once prevalent in ancient times.58
The importance of this epitaph as a historical document refl ecting societal
change in sixteenth- century China cannot be overestimated. In the fi rst place,
never before did a major Confucian phi los o pher honor a merchant with an
epitaph, let alone one of Wang Yangming’s stature. In fact, of all the famous
Ming writers, Wang Yangming was among the earliest to write epitaphs for
merchants. As a result of an intensive and extensive search, I have come to the
tentative determination that the extension of such literary genres as “epitaph”
and “birthday- celebrating essay” to the merchant class prob ably began in the
second half of the fi fteenth century but reached a peak in the sixteenth, with
such famous prose writers as Wang Shizhen
(1526–1590), Wang Daokun,
and Li Weizhen
(1547–1626). From then on, we can hardly go through
the collected work of a Ming or Qing author of note without encountering some
literary pieces paying tribute to the social functions of individual merchants. In
the pres ent context, the following testimony by Tang Shunzhi
(1507–1560),
a philosophical follower of Wang Yangming, is suffi
cient to bear my point out.
In his letter to a friend, dated 1550, he wrote:
294 r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t
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 surely
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. Fortu-
nately, these so- called epitaphs . . . no sooner appear than they perish.
Despite however many perished, what has survived is still enough to fi ll
several houses.59
I take this to be the best simple piece of evidence showing beyond doubt that
the mass production of epitaphs in honor of merchants and the social move-
ment of qiru jiugu ran exactly in parallel. With the scholar and the merchant
class becoming less and less socially distinguishable, even a Confucian phi los-
o pher as eminent as Wang Yangming felt fully justifi ed to openly praise a scholar-
turned- merchant such as Fang Lin. Although Tang Shunzhi spoke disapprov-
ingly of the new literary fashion, ironically, he couldn’t help but contribute to its
continuing growth by composing several biographies for merchants at the re-
quest of their families.
In the second place, Fang Lin, the hero of Wang Yangming’s epitaph, hap-
pens to provide us with one of the earliest examples of the scholars- turned-
merchants. Wang’s epitaph does not give his dates, but we can safely assume
that Fang Lin must have been active during the second half of the fi fteenth
century. A very similar case may be found in the person of Sang Lin
(1423–1497), a native of Changshu (in Jiangsu) and father of the noted writer
Sang Yue
(1447–1503). At fi rst, Sang Lin studied for provincial examina-
tions. However, poverty compelled him to enter into a matrilocal relationship
with a merchant family named Zhou. From then on, he abandoned his studies
and took charge of a large shop for the Zhous.60 This is the earliest case of qiru
jiugu I have discovered so far in fi fteenth- century China, earlier than that of
Fang Lin by about two de cades or
so. It is in ter est ing to note that both also hap-
pen to be among the earliest cases of intermarriage between scholar families
and merchant families, a social phenomenon quite common from the sixteenth
century on.
“Scholar- turned- merchant” was by no means a local phenomenon in the
Lower Yangzi region; it occurred elsewhere in the same period as well. The fol-
lowing two examples from Shaanxi Province will suffi
ce for illustration. Kang
Luan
(1446–1507), the fourth uncle of the prose master Kang Hai
(1475–1540) had for years specialized in the study of the Liji (Classic of Rites)
with the intention to pass the provincial examinations. However, he later chose
business as his occupation and earned a good reputation for his entrepreneur-
ship. Toward the end of his life, he became considerably wealthy and made gen-
erous cash contributions to the court for border defense for which he was
r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t 295
awarded imperial recognition.61 The second example is a man named Zhang
Tong
(1458–1523) who was a prodigy and at fi fteen already understood the
general meanings of the Daxue ( Great Learning) all by himself. Greatly im-
pressed, his father sent him to study in school, but a downturn of family for-
tune eventually forced him to engage in trade. Within the short span of a few
years, he traveled all over the empire and made a great success of his business.
He became the role model of businessmen in the entire region.62
With examples like these from the southeast to the northwest, it seems safe
to assume that “scholar- turned- merchant” as a social phenomenon had become
highly vis i ble by the end of the fi fteenth century, to which Wang Yangming’s
1525 epitaph for Fang Lin was a sensitive early response. This leads to my fi nal
point about the epitaph.
Last but not least, we must take most seriously Wang Yangming’s statement
that “the four categories of people were engaged in diff er ent occupations but
followed the same Way ( simin yiye er tongdao
); they were at one
in giving full realization to their minds.” As far as I know, this is the fi rst time
in the history of Confucianism that the merchant class as a social group was
formally as well as openly recognized as being equally entitled to its share of
the sacred Dao. Now the question is whether this was a mere rhetorical expres-
sion or did he really mean what he said? On the following grounds, I fi nd it
diffi
cult to doubt the sincerity and seriousness of Wang Yangming’s words.
First of all, the statement basically agrees with his views of merchants and com-
mercial activities. In reply to a student’s question about whether, when driven
by poverty, a scholar ought to engage in commercial pursuit to make a living,
he said: “If you can manage to keep the equilibrium of your mind undisturbed,
then not even engagement in business transactions all day long will stand in
your way of becoming a sage or worthy.” 63 If a merchant could also become a
sage, then what he does must of necessity lie within the realm of Dao. Second,
this statement is also in full accord with the revised Confucian proj ect devel-
oped in his 1525 essay “Pulling Up the Root and Stopping Up the Source.” As
already shown in the previous section, he was convinced that scholars, farmers,
artisans, and merchants could all become active agents of the proj ect on equal
footing once their “innate knowledge” was awakened. The phrase “giving full
realization to one’s mind” ( jinxin
) in the epitaph is actually a reference to
“innate knowledge.” As he explic itly stated in another essay written in the very
same years, “The learning of mind is nothing but learning to give full realiza-
tion to one’s mind.” 64 Third, two years earlier, in 1523, Li Mengyang
(ca. 1473– ca. 1529), leading prose master of the day and friend of Wang Yangming,
composed a well- known epitaph for a scholar- turned- merchant from Shanxi
named Wang Xian
, courtesy name Wenxian
, (1469–1523) in which the
merchant is quoted as having given his sons the following instruction: “Mer-
chants and scholars pursue diff er ent occupations but share the same mind.
Hence, those who are truly good at commerce can cultivate lofty conduct while
296 r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t
amidst the arena of money and trade. As a result, they make profi t without be-
ing corrupted.” 65 I suspect that Wang Yangming’s statement may well have
been infl uenced by Li Mengyang’s epitaph in some way. At any rate, the idea
that “merchants and scholars pursue diff er ent occupations but share the same
mind” ( shang yu shi yishu er tongxin
) not only gained wide
currency in the sixteenth century but was also espoused by merchants them-
selves. Seen in this light, the idea was not exactly original with Wang Yang-
ming. Instead, he apparently took it over from the rising business culture of the
time and reformulated it to suit the needs of his revised Confucian proj ect, al-
ready explained above. I may also add that de cades later, this very idea became
so deeply rooted in the Chinese mind that scholars and merchants alike ac-
cepted it as self- evidently true. Thus, Zhang Siwei
(1526–1585), a scholar
from a salt merchant family of Shanxi, in a “Farewell” essay for his merchant
friend Zhan Yuquan
who was to leave the commercial world and join
government ser
vice, justifi ed the latter’s shift of
career on the following
grounds:
To serve in the government does not involve a Dao diff erently from work-
ing in the market ( shi gu wu yi Dao
). It all depends on how one
does one’s job. To work in the market is to seek self- interest. However, as
long as the seeking of self- interest does not impair one’s moral conduct in
any way, such as demonstrated by the Zhan family for generations, one
would be even more respected by others. On the other hand, to serve in
the government is supposedly to advance the interests of people other
than one’s own. However, should the governmental position a man holds
gives rise to profi t- mindedness, then already he is not too far away from
the way of the market!66
In language as much as in logic, Zhang’s argument reminds us immediately of
the two epitaphs by Wang Yangming and Li Mengyang, particularly the latter.
Li’s epitaph, it may be noted, has proven to be more widely read by later biogra-
phers of merchants. In a sixteenth- century genealogical work, for instance, a
writer of Xin-an specifi cally quoted it to praise a local merchant named Wang
Hong
.67
It is clear from the vari ous types of evidence presented above that the rise of
the merchant class to unpre ce dented social and cultural prominence was the
single most impor tant change in sixteenth- century China without which the
emergence of Wang Yangming’s revised Confucian proj ect would have been
&nbs
p; hardly conceivable. To say this, however, is not to suggest that Wang Yangming
or his disciples, including especially the Taizhou school, developed Confucian-
ism in such a way as to link it specifi cally to the market and the merchant class,
even though the re orientation of Confucian social thought, as will be shown
below, did bear the mark of business culture of the time. The point I wish to
r e or i e n tat ion of c on f uc i a n so c i a l t hou gh t 297
emphasize here consists of two closely related aspects of societal change.
First, the sustained “scholar- turned- merchant” movement of the fi fteenth
and sixteenth centuries gradually loosened the hold of the hierarchical order
known as the Four Categories of People ( simin
) and bridged considerably
the social gap between shi (scholars) of the fi rst category on the one hand and
people of the next three categories on the other. As a result, not only did the
everyday interactions between the educated elite ( shi) and the common people
become ever- increasingly closer and deeper, but the common people, especially
merchants, also began to develop a public- spiritedness that heretofore could
have been expected only from the educated elite. As most succinctly stated by
Shen Yao
(1798–1840) when he tried in earnest to portray the social and
moral character of merchants of the Ming- Qing Period:
While it is often diffi
cult these days to witness an amicable and philan-
thropic spirit in a member of the educated elite ( Shidafu
, or “scholar-
offi
cial”), one sees it instead in merchants. Why is this so? Because the
empire’s center of gravity has tilted toward commerce, and consequently
heroes ( haojie
) and men of intelligence come mostly from the mer-
chant class; by profession they are merchants, in character they are he-
roes. And being the heroes they are, they understand perfectly the aff airs
and things of the world; and so they can manage to accomplish what
others cannot, but cannot bear to see [ human suff erings] to which others
are indiff erent.68
I must add that to pay homage to merchants in terms of “heroes” ( haojie, literally,
“an outstanding man of power and generosity”) already began in the late Ming: Li
Weizhen used exactly the same term to describe a Huizhou merchant.69