by Ying-shih Yü
by the local government with a stone stele because he had single- handedly taken
care of the vast expenses for the construction, near his hometown, of a huge
stone bridge and a long road dotted with pavilions for travelers’ rest. Greatly
excited by the grandeur and glory this gigantic proj ect had brought to their
town, local residents remarked: “It is quite enough to be a merchant. Why
should anyone care to be a scholar?” From a diff er ent perspective, his son- in-
law, a scholar himself, also commented, “A well- groomed scholar can indeed
discourse a great deal on abstract princi ples, but he could do little to help other
people. My father- in- law has done enormously for others. What’s the point for
him to become a scholar?”141 As these two cases clearly show, what Shen Yao
called “the philanthropic spirit of the merchants” had, over time, brought them
broader and more lasting recognition from both state and society. From this
time on, the entire social atmosphere seemed to be changing slowly but steadily
in the merchants’ favor. It was by no means unrealistic to say that a late Ming
merchant could feel that a life wholly devoted to business was a life worth living.
With merchants and scholars being increasingly undiff erentiated, they not only
came to share more of the old values but also developed new values together. As
I have shown elsewhere, interpenetration between business culture and elite
culture was not a one- way traffi
c with the merchant always imitating the scholar.
It worked in reverse as well.142
Before closing, I wish to take a quick look at the business culture of the
Ming- Qing Period and its relations to Chinese traditions. Due to space limita-
tions, I can do no more than make a few brief comments.
First, the new business culture. A term that we often encounter in the bio-
graphical lit er a ture on merchants of this period is gudao
(“merchant way” or
“way of business”). Its meaning seems to vary from one context to another. How-
ever, in one par tic u lar sense, it is clearly a reference to certain market laws that
one must follow to make his business a success. I shall discuss the term only in
this technical sense. Kang Hai
(1475–1541), a famous writer from Shaanxi,
reported a criticism his deceased uncle made of a merchant who waited for
prices to go up before selling his commodities. It runs as follows: “He does not
understand the way of business ( gudao). To wait for a fi xed price before selling is
the way of the mediocre trader who seeks to avoid loss, but who can pass a whole
year without making a single transaction. Those who do as I do can eff ect more
than ten transactions a year, and so can make more than ten times the profi t the
mediocre merchant can manage.”143 What is particularly in ter est ing in this pas-
sage is that the critic seems to have rediscovered the princi ple fi rst enunciated
by Jiran in the fi fth century b.c.e. that “one should not risk a merchandise for
busine s s c ul t ur e a nd c h ine s e t r adi t ions 257
high prices to come,” as quoted earlier. Throughout the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, scholars’ writings on the merchants are pervasively infi ltrated
with the language of Sima Qian’s
chapter on “Money- Makers.” This was
obviously the inevitable result of the literary fashion of the day, which looked up
to the Grand Historian of Han as the model prose writer. So what I just referred
to as “rediscovery” of the pre- unifi cation ideas about the market may well have
been a linguistic illusion. There is another possibility, however: it was the extra-
linguistic real ity that invited the use of the specifi c language in question. What
the merchants of the day did and said prob ably reminded these writers of the
pre- unifi cation “money- makers.” What ever the case may be, it is impor tant to
point out that Ming- Qing merchants developed market rationality to a much
higher level than their pre- Qin pre de ces sors.
I shall mention only two features in the Ming- Qing “way of business,”
namely, the application of arithmetic to commerce and the emergence of “the
princi ple of low prices and large turnover.” Both features happen to be taken by
Max Weber as illustrative examples of “the pro cess of rationalization” in the
rise of Western capitalism.144 I am not suggesting that Ming- Qing China devel-
oped anything even remotely resembling “capitalism,” however. I agree with
Weber that capitalism is a peculiar Western system. All I am saying is simply
that these two features, central to the Chinese “way of business” in the Ming-
Qing Period, fi t in well with Weber’s defi nition of rationality. There is no rea-
son to assume that rationality, even market rationality, must of necessity lead to
capitalism of the Western type.
We have already quoted Wang Daokun that Huizhou people were more in-
terested in arithmetic than the Confucian classics. This general statement can
be amply substantiated. Cheng Dawei’s
(1533–1606) Suanfa tongzong
(General Compilation of Arithmetic), completed in 1593, was a fa-
mous textbook on arithmetic designed specifi cally to give solutions to prob lems
by means of the abacus. It was clearly intended to apply to business calculations
due to the author’s early background as a merchant.145 Another example from
Huizhou was Wang Tingbang
(1729–1803), who also turned from a mer-
chant to mathematician.146 Commercial arithmetic was so popu lar in Huizhou
that even a house wife learned it in order to help her husband’s business book-
keeping.147 But enthusiasm for commercial arithmetic was a nationwide phe-
nomenon, not confi ned to Huizhou. Some late Ming commercial handbooks also
devoted sections to it for the con ve nience of traveling merchants.148 While there
was admittedly no double- entry bookkeeping in China, the commercial arithme-
tic of the sixteenth century was nevertheless sophisticated enough to be compa-
rable to its con temporary counterpart in Eu rope.149 In this connection, I may also
mention that in merchant biographies of this period, the term “ mental calcula-
tion” ( xinji
) is often emphasized as a desirable quality. A typically “fi ne mer-
chant” is described as someone whose calculations are so precise that he will
258 busine s s c ul t ur e a nd c h ine s e t r adi t ions
neither make the slightest error nor miss a single opportunity.150 This is instru-
mental rationality idealized to its highest pos si ble degree without that term.
The princi ple of low prices and large turnover was also universally accepted
and widely practiced in the Ming- Qing market. As a matter of fact, it is already
implied in the above quoted remark of Kang Hai’s uncle about the “way of busi-
ness.” The following anecdote is more revealing, however. According to Gu
Xiancheng
(1550–1612), the radical thinker He Xinyin
(1517–1579)
was once asked for advice by a young man on his way to becoming a merchant.
He Xinyan gave him two formulas. The fi rst one was in six words: “buy one
bit; sell one bit.” The second one was in four words: “buy wholesale; sell retail.”
Following He’s advice, the young merchant made a fast fortune in the mar-
ket.151 The story cannot be verifi ed, but whoever said them had a profound un-
derstanding of the market economy, indeed. In eff ect, what the fi rst formula
meant is to sell quickly what one has bought, which is almost identical with
Weber’s princi ple. Now let me cite two examples to show that the princi ple
was continually practiced by merchants with good business sense through the
Ming- Qing Period. Jin Runai
(1596–1645), a merchant from the Suzhou
region, is described as follows: “While other merchants preferred to detain
market commodities and wait for prices to soar before releasing them, Jin al-
ways sold them at a lower price, passing on what he had bought in and discharg-
ing what he had stored up, his objective being that his commodities should not
be left unsold.”152 The other example was Tao Zhengxiang
(1732–1797), a
book dealer of Suzhou. According to Sun Xingyan
(1753–1818), Mr. Tao
once told a friend about his way of doing business thus: “Since I like profi t, I
shall also let the purchasers of my books get their share of profi t. After all, who
does not desire profi t as much as I do? If I try to monopolize the profi t so that
the goods remain stagnant rather than circulating, this means losing the
profi t altogether.” But Mr. Tao was not the only one who had a fi rm grasp of this
princi ple. Sun Xingyan also knew two other merchants in the capital, art dealer
Wang and antique dealer Gu, who held exactly the same view as Tao’s. All three
fl ourished at the time.153
Taking these two central features together, I think it is reasonable to suggest
that the Chinese business world also underwent a “pro cess of rationalization”
between 1500 and 1800. In the Chinese case, however, this pro cess was linked,
not to capitalism, but to a more advanced market economy, to follow the distinc-
tion made by Braudel.
Second, the “way of business,” discussed above, may be regarded as the
nucleus of Ming- Qing business culture. The concept of business culture is ex-
tremely broad, however. If understood as a way of life associated with the busi-
ness world, then we must say that business culture in the Ming- Qing times
was practically coextensive with Chinese culture itself, for it touched every part
of the Chinese tradition. A simple and easy way to explain this situation is to
use a commercial handbook as an illustration, for such works were all compiled
busine s s c ul t ur e a nd c h ine s e t r adi t ions 259
by merchants. Take the Shishang leiyao
(Classifi ed Essentials for
Scholars and Merchants), dated 1626, as an example. It consists of four chap-
ters ( juan
) . Chapter 1 is a travel guide including commercial routes. Chap-
ter 2 is really the core, for it tells the merchant every thing he needs to know
about the business world. More in ter est ing to note is that it contains popu lar-
ized versions of general princi ples about the “way of business,” such as a rhymed
prose on “trade” and an essay on “business management.” In the last two chap-
ters, however, we fi nd “essentials” of every impor tant aspect of the Chinese world,
past and pres ent. The topics range from history, cosmology, ethics, and religion
to social relations, medicine, and po liti cal institutions. As its title clearly indi-
cates, the handbook was designed to meet the needs of both traveling merchants
and examination candidates in their everyday life. This is a concrete example
showing how the social intermingling of merchants with scholars inevitably led
to the interpenetration of culture between them.
In this connection, let me also give a most amusing example to show that
when our merchant- author laid his hand on something in the elite culture, he
sometimes also changed it by way of reinterpretation. In a section on “Basic
Guidelines for the Traveling Merchant,” the author discussed price mechanism
in the market and quoted the Daodejing to support it. The quoted sentence says:
“One who desires dear [goods] must have cheap [goods] as his root; one who
desires high [prices] must take the opportunity when [prices] are low.”154 In the
original text of the Laozi, however, it reads, “the humble is the stem upon which
the mighty grows; the low is the foundation upon which the high is laid”
(chap. 39). What ever it means, it speaks to “princes” and “barons” about their
power base, having nothing to do with the market. Here our merchant- author
not only quoted it completely out of context but also distorted its meaning
through whimsical emendations, such as adding “one who desires” and changing
“foundation” ( ji
) to “opportunity,” which happens to be a homophone ( ji
).
This concrete case serves well as an illustration of the fact that by actively par-
ticipating in the culture of the scholar, the merchant also transformed it.
The imprint of business culture on the Chinese tradition was not spread
evenly everywhere, however. It was more deeply felt in some areas than others.
As we all know, its infl uences on the developments of popu lar religion and
popu lar lit er a ture in the late Ming were enormous. Merchants of this period
were generally very religious, and one of them, Cheng Yunzhang
(1602–
1651), even became the founder of a popu lar sect on the model of the Three-
Teachings- in- One of Lin Zhao-en
(1517–1598).155 There is also evidence
that the so- called morality books ( shanshu
), a type of semireligious tract that
gained widespread popularity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, made
special eff orts to encourage merchants to be generous with their money for
charities and public works.156 On the other hand, fi ction, drama, and oral lit er a-
ture not only created tremendous profi t for merchants in the book market157 but
also provided other merchants with their most favorite reading materials. As an
260 busine s s c ul t ur e a nd c h ine s e t r adi t ions
early nineteenth- century Huizhou merchant remarked, “Merchants invariably
turn to romances and novels as their pastimes,”158 but this reading habit had
already begun as early as the fi fteenth century.159 For the sixteenth century, I
can cite the remarkable example of Gu Xue
, the merchant- father of Gu
Xiancheng. In his early years, he was an avid reader of novels, especially the
Shuihu zhuan
( Water Margin), and late in life, he became an enthusias-
tic follower of Lin Zhao- en’s Three- Teachings- in- One sect.160 This example is
remarkable because it kills two birds with one stone, showing beyond dispute
the pivotal role of the merchant class in the promotion of popu lar lit er a ture and
popu lar religion in Ming- Qing China.
Fi nally, allow me to conclude by making an observation on the re orientation
of the Confucian tradition in the Ming- Qing Period. Generally speaking, it
seemed to exhibit a te
ndency toward relaxation of moral absolutism. Polarities
such as “princi ple versus desire,” “common good versus self- interest,” “righ-
teousness versus profi tableness,” “frugality versus luxury,” etc., had long been
understood as opposites with the fi rst part (“princi ple,” “common good,” “righ-
teousness,” and “frugality”) identifi ed as positive values and the second part (“de-
sire,” “self- interest,” “profi tableness,” and “luxury”) as negative ones. From the
sixteenth century on, however, many Confucian scholars and thinkers tended to
reinterpret them as mutually complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
What is more impor tant is that “desire,” “self- interest,” “profi tableness,” and “lux-
ury” were all given a positive revaluation to a greater or lesser extent. It is impos-
sible to trace the evolutionary pro cesses of these ideas here. Based on my previous
research, I shall summarize my fi ndings on three of them whose relationship to
business culture can be established on clear evidence.
Self- interest. In the postclassical Confucian tradition, it was a generally ac-
cepted princi ple that self- interest ( si
) must at all times be subordinate to
common good ( gong
), which was predicated on the more fundamental
princi ple of the priority of community to individual. Now suddenly, during the
Ming- Qing transition, this received view was being seriously questioned. Each
in his own way, Li Zhi
(1527–1602), Chen Que
(1604–1677), Huang
Zongxi
(1610–1695), Gu Yanwu
(1613–1682) and, later, Dai Zhen
(1724–1777) and Gong Zizhen
(1792–1841) all proposed revisions as
regards the relationship between gong and si. In the interest of simplicity, allow
me to take Gu Yanwu’s neat formulation as representative of this new line of
thinking. It runs as follows:
It is natu ral and normal for every one in the world to be concerned about
his own family and cherish his own children. The Son of Heaven may
care for his subjects, but he cannot possibly do better than they can for
themselves. This has been the case even before the Three Dynasties.
What the [ancient] sage [kings] did was to transform self- interest of every
individual person into a common good for all, with his own person serv-
