The Order of Places: Translocal Practices of the Huizhou Merchants in Late Imperial China

278 Pages·2015·2.217 MB·English

by  Yongtao Du

i
The Order of Places
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004288409_001
ii
Sinica Leidensia
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Maghiel van Crevel
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VOLUME 119
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iii
The Order of Places
Translocal Practices of the Huizhou Merchants
in Late Imperial China
By
Yongtao Du
LEIDEN | BOSTON
iv
Cover illustration: Routes from Nanjing to the 13 provinces and the frontier. Map in Huang Bian’s Yitong
lucheng tuji [From Huang Bian, Yitong lucheng tuji, Reprinted in Siku qianshu cunmu congshu, shibu, juan
166, Jinan: Qilu shushe, 1996].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Du, Yongtao, 1970-
The order of places : translocal practices of the Huizhou merchants in late imperial China / by Yongtao
Du.
pages cm. -- (Sinica Leidensia, ISSN 0169-9563; volume 119)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-28838-6 (hardback : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-28840-9 (e-book) 1. Human
geography--China--History. 2. Residential mobility--China--History. 3. Merchants--China--Huizhou
Diqu--Social conditions. 4. Home--Social aspects--China--Huizhou Diqu--History. 5. Spatial behavior--
Social aspects--China--Huizhou Diqu--History. 6. Huizhou Diqu (China)--Social conditions. 7. Huizhou
Diqu (China)--Commerce. 8. China--History--Ming dynasty, 1368-1644. 9. China--History--Qing dynasty,
1644-1912. 10. China--Geography. I. Title.
GF656.D8 2015
304.2’309510903--dc23
2014047000
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ContentsContents v
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Map, Tables and Figures viii
Introduction 1
“All-under-Heaven is a Collection of Prefectures and Counties” 6
Translocality as a Historically Specific Process 17
Translocal Practices and the Re-ordering of Places 21
1 The Identity of Huizhou and the Reach of Its Merchants 28
Huizhou in the Literati Imagination: Locality as a Microcosm of the
Realm 29
Merchants from Huizhou: Trade and Geographical Reach 50
2 Sojourning in Translocal Perspective: Local Encounters and Place-Based
Identity 58
Place-Name Transfer and Local Encounter 61
Managing Local Difference: Home and Host Places in the Context of
Sojourning 73
Public Participation and Place-based Identity 87
Conclusion 94
3 “The Public” for Sojourners: Xiangyi and the Translocal Network of
Public Participation 96
The Geographical Dimension of Public Participation 98
A Granary for the Home Place 102
Restoring the Ziyang Academy: An Old Institution in a New
Context 110
Xiangyi Obligations beyond the Native Place 116
Conclusion 125
4 Translocal Lineage and the Romance of Homeland Attachment 128
Studies of Chinese Lineage: Local and Translocal 129
The Evolvement of Translocal Lineage Practice: The Pans of
Suzhou 134
Demarcation and Inclusion: The Magic of Distance in the Genealogy of
1854 138
Obligation and Opportunity: A Tale of Two Places 142
vi Contents
The Romance of Home Place Attachments and Contested Native-place
Identity 149
Other Cases of Translocal Lineage Practice 157
Conclusion 159
5 The Emergence of Multi-Place Household Registration: Translocality,
the State, and Local Communities 161
The Early Ming Household Registration System and Human-Place
Relations 165
State and Society in Late Ming Household Registration Reforms 171
The Early Qing Completion of the Reforms 182
Household Registration and Local Community in the Qing 194
Conclusion 198
6 Routes and Places: Spatial Order in Merchant Geographies 201
Statist Perspective and Private Participation in Geographical Writ-
ing 204
Merchant Route Books as Publications 213
The Empire and the Local Places in Merchant Geography 221
Conclusion 236
Conclusion 238
Works Cited 245
Index 266
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AcknowleAdcgkemnoenwtlsedgments vii
Acknowledgements
The research for and writing of this book has taken over ten years. In the pro-
cess I accumulated too much debt to teachers, friends, colleagues, and family
members. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, professor Kai-
wing Chow tended to its earliest growth as a doctoral dissertation. His continu-
ous concern, guidance, and encouragement after my graduation in 2006 have
provided critical support that helped me through the challenges I encoun-
tered. Professor Robert Hegel of Washington University, St. Louis has always
been an inspiring teacher, both in scholarship and in life. Many friends in the
Chinese history and literature fields have witnessed the growth of the book,
and generously lent their support in various forms. I particularly thank Jing
Jing Chang, Lane Harris, Larry Israel, Li Xiaorong, Jeff Kyong-McClain, Steven
Miles, Mei Chun, Sarah Schneewind, Ellen Cong Zhang, Yang Bin, Zhang Jing,
and Zhang Ying, who read either part of or the entire manuscript at different
stages and gave me constructive comments. Back in China, He Zhaohui, Li
Longguo, and Liu Guanglin have been close friends that accompanied my in-
tellectual journey as a historian from the very beginning. My colleagues in the
history department at Washburn University and now at Oklahoma State Uni-
versity have been kind and gentle to me. It is because of my regular pleasant
and uplifting contacts with them that I have found myself no longer that much
of a stranger in America. Finally, I thank my wife, Min, who takes it as her per-
sonal responsibility that I become a good scholar. Her joy in my every step
forward is probably purer than my own.
As far as institutional support, I would like to thank the College of Arts and
Sciences at Oklahoma State University, whose travel and summer research
grants have funded several of my trips in the United States and to China.
A Visiting Research Fellowship granted by the Asian Research Institute (ARI) of
the National University of Singapore gave me precious opportunities to com-
municate with scholars from other parts of the world, and to revise the first
draft of the manuscript in a convenient and comfortable environment. Part of
Chapter 4 was previously published as an article in the journal Late Imperial
China. 27.1 (2006), 31–65. (Copyright © 2006 by the Society for Qing Studies and
the Johns Hopkins University Press.) I thank the Society for Qing Studies and
the Johns Hopkins University Press for granting permission to use it in the
book.
viii List of Map, Chart, TaLbislte Os,f aMnadp , FCihgaurrte, sTables, And Figures
List of Map, Tables and Figures
Map
1.1 Main routes out of Huizhou 53
Tables
2.1 Incomplete list of Huiguan founded by Huizhou sojourners 67
6.1 Editions of Late Ming and Qing comprehensive route books 222
6.2 Most frequently mentioned places in route book headlines 229
Figures
4.1 The genealogy of the Pans 135
6.1 Map in Huang Bian’s Yitong lucheng tuji 215
6.2 Merchant route book description of places 217
6.3 The upper and lower panels in Tao Chengqing’s Shangcheng yilan 218
IntroductIinotnroduction 1
Introduction
This book explores the relationship between people and place in the mobile
empire of Ming-Qing China. Its setting in time, the three hundred years be-
tween roughly 1550 and 1850, is often regarded as a cohesive whole for some
long-term socioeconomic trends that persisted throughout these centuries,
such as the substantial commercialization of the economy, the unprecedented
level of urbanization, and the marked expansion of literacy.1 This period’s high
level of spatial mobility, among many social groups, serving various purposes,
and involving both men and women, has been richly documented by recent
scholarship.2 This book’s subject, merchants from the prefecture of Huizhou
徽州 (in today’s Anhui province), collectively called huishang 徽商 (lit. Hui-
zhou merchants), were likely the most predominant merchant group of that
era. Despite the relative insularity of their home region, these men were highly
visible in commercial centers of all sizes throughout the empire, thus they ar-
guably epitomized the era’s spatial restlessness. Their conspicuous roles in a
wide variety of activities and developments that emerged amid the above-
mentioned trends – the expansion of commerce, the flourishing of print cul-
ture, the “convergence” of new mercantile elites with the old gentry elites, and
1 On the Ming-Qing continuity and the major socio-economic trends through the late Ming
and the Qing, see Jonathan Spence and John Wills, From Ming to Qing: Conquest, Region
and Continuity in Seventeenth Century China (Yale University Press, 1979), xvii; Frederick
Wakeman, “Introduction,” in idem., Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (University
of California Press, 1975); Evelyn Rawski, “Economic and Social Foundations of Late Impe-
rial Culture,” in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, eds. David Johnson, Andrew
Nathan, and Evelyn Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 3–33.
2 On a general picture of travel in the late Ming, see Timothy Brook, “Communications and
Commerce,” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 8, eds. Twitchett, Denis and Frederick
Mote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998): 579–707; and Confusion of Pleasure:
Commerce and Culture in Ming China (University of California Press, 1998), passim. On
conditions of transportation, see Hoshi Ayao 星斌夫, Min-shi jidai kotsu shi no kenkyu 明
清时代交通史の研究 (Tokyo: Yamakawa, 1971). Some works provide discussions on the
travel of particular social groups and individuals. On women travelers, see Dorothy Ko,
Teachers of the Inner Chamber: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China (Stan-
ford University Press, 1995), 219–224; on pilgrims, see Susan Naquin and Yu Chunfang,
Pilgrims and the Secret Sites in China (University of California Press, 1992); on the experi-
ence of the most famous literati traveler Xu Hongzu, see Juilan Ward, Xu Xiake (1587–1641):
The Art of Travel Writing (London: Routledge/Curzon, 2000).
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004288409_002