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hostel was rebuilt. But up to 1805, one recurrent regulation specifically prohibited merchants from making use of its rooming and other facilities. It remained an exclusive clubhouse for the scholars and officials of Hsi-hsien. By 1814, this rule was apparently less strictly enforced, for the regulations re-issued in that year complained that the rule had been relaxed. The regulations reprinted in 1830 omitted this prohibition entirely.4
Outside of Peking, especially in the commercially active lower Yangtze Valley and in the Southwest, merchant sojourners borrowed the same institutional format. By the sixteenth century, they launched their own Landsmannschaften. The facilities of these merchant-run organisations were, however, opened to travelling officials and students who had come from their home areas.
5
This less exclusive type of hui-kuan allowed merchants from the different trades as well as officials to meet and share organisational duties among themselves. To take a hypothetical case, a tea merchant, a silk merchant and an expectant prefect became friends through common membership in the Kwangtung Landsmannschaft in Soochow. They had all come from the Canton area. The two merchants had done business in Soochow for a number of years and had become prominent in that city. As for the official, he had been assigned to the Kiangsu governor's private staff in Soochow while awaiting his next official assignment. Since his posting might never come, he prolonged his stay indefinitely. As established sojourners in Soochow, they sat on the same committee of the Kwangtung Landsmannschaft which provided local social services.
Social services and works of philanthropy blended in easily with an organisation like the Landsmannschaft which had begun as a mutual aid society for the protection of its own members of the various classes. They ranged from eminent officials and wealthy merchants to paupers who for one reason or another had become stranded in alien places. They quickly acquired the experience and the organisational know-how to provide relief and other social services, and ultimately extended them to the rest of the local communities.
Our hypothetical silk and tea merchants could also become go-betweens when differences arose between members of their respective local trade guilds. By this means, merchants from different
30
WELLINGTON K. K. CHAN
hostel was rebuilt. But up to 1805, one recurrent regulation speci- cally prohibited merchants from making use of its rooming and other facilities. It remained an exclusive clubhouse for the scholars and officials of Hsi-hsien, By 1814, this rule was apparently less strictly enforced, for the regulations re-issued in that year com- plained that the rule had been relaxed. The regulations reprinted in 1830 omitted this prohibition entirely.4
Outside of Peking, especially in the commercially active lower Yangtze Valley and in the Southwest, merchant sojourners borrow- ed the same institutional format. By the sixteenth century, they launched their own Landsmannschaften. The facilities of these merchant-run organisations were, however, opened to travelling officials and students who had come from their home areas.
5
This less exclusive type of hui-kuun allowed merchants from the different trades as well as officials to meet and share organisa- tional duties among themselves. To take a hypothetical case, a tea merchant, a silk merchant and an expectant prefect became friends through common membership in the Kwangtung Landsmannschaft in Soochow. They had all come from the Canton area. The two merchants had done business in Soochow for a number of years and had become prominent in that city. As for the official, he had been assigned to the Kiangsu governor's private staff in Soochow while awaiting his next official assignment. Since his posting might never come, he prolonged his stay indefinitely. As established sojourners in Soochow, they sat on the same committee of the Kwangtung Landsmannschaft which provided local social services.
Social services and works of philanthropy blended in easily with an organisation like the Landsmannschaft which had begun as a mutual aid society for the protection of its own members of the various classes. They ranged from eminent officials and wealthy merchants to paupers who for one reason or another had become stranded in alien places. They quickly acquired the experience and the organisational know-how to provide relief and other social services, and ultimately extended them to the rest of the local communities.
Our hypothetical silk and tea merchants could also become go- betweens when differences arose between members of their respec- tive local trade guilds. By this means, merchants from different
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