Page 279 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 7 Porcelain Dealers and their Role in Trade

Huiguan were housed local-origin associations. They were usually set up by a

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community often specialising in certain goods and services. From the point of view

of trade, these Huiguan created an institutional environment in which buying and

selling was made into predictable and routine activities. Day to day normality and

predictability was socially manufactured through the operation of trading networks.

The huiguan provided a meeting ground, lodging, financial assistance, and storage

facilities. For merchants, the Huiguan also provided a mechanism for regulating trade.

This also helped maintain such monopolies by preventing competition from within

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the trade and by negotiating on behalf of the group with other merchants.
Like other merchant groups, Canton porcelain merchants set up their huiguan in

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Jingdezhen in the mid-eighteenth century. The name of the huiguan was Guangzhao
广 肇 , indicating this huiguan was in charge of merchants from Guangzhou and

Zhaoqing. Zhaoqing is located 110 km northwest of Guangzhou, in the west Pearl

River Delta. (Map 6) It lies on the northern shores of the Xi River, which flows from

west to east. Zhaoqing was an important administrative centre when the Jesuits arrived

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in China in the sixteenth century. It was also famous for the production of copper

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ware in the Qing dynasty.

50 For a general history of Huiguan, see He Bingdi, History of Huiguan (Taipei, 1966). For a
general analysis of Qing period guilds, see Christine Moll-Murata, ‘Chinese Guilds from the
Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries: An Overview’, International Review of Social History,
53 (12:2008), pp.213-247; William T. Rowe, ‘Ming-Qing guilds’, Ming Qing yanjiu [Journal of
Ming Qing studies] (Rome 1992), pp.47-60.
51 Wu Hui, ‘Analysis of huiguan, gongsuo, hanghui: the network of Qing merchants.’ Zhongguo
jingjishi yanjiu [Journal of Chinese Economic History], 3(1999), pp.111-131.
52 Liang Miaotai, Ming Qing Jingdezhen chengshi jingji yanjiu [Study of Jingdezhen’s urban
economy during the Ming and Qing dynasties] (Nanchang: 2004), p.322.
53 Louis J. Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matteo Ricci (New York:
Random House,1953)
54 Chen Hua, Qingdai quyu shehui jingji yanjiu [The regional economy and society in Qing China],
(Beijing: 1996), p.11.
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