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A painting of a gentry scholar with two courtesans, by Tang Yin, c. 1500. The four occupations (simplified Chinese: 士农工商; traditional Chinese: 士農工商; pinyin: Shì nóng gōng shāng), or "four categories of the people" (Chinese: 四民; pinyin: sì mín), [1] [2] was an occupation classification used in ancient China by either Confucian or Legalist scholars as far back as the ...
The social structure of China has an expansive history which begins from the feudal society of Imperial China to the contemporary era. [1] There was a Chinese nobility, beginning with the Zhou dynasty. However, after the Song dynasty, the powerful government offices were not hereditary.
Additionally, because of the low social status of merchants within traditional Confucian social hierarchy - the Ancient Chinese culture derided merchants as cunning, and sly, while it celebrated peasantry culture for its worth ethic, the Confucianist elite ministers for their great learning and the Emperor for his divine wisdom, the Cohong ...
The four occupations were the shì (士) the class of "knightly" scholars, mostly from lower aristocratic orders, the gōng (工) who were the artisans and craftsmen of the kingdom and who, like the farmers, produced essential goods needed by themselves and the rest of society, the nóng (農) who were the peasant farmers who cultivated the land which provided the essential food for the people ...
Even before this, the state must have halted its employment of former merchants in the government salt and iron agencies, since an edict of 7 BCE restated the ban on merchants entering the bureaucracy. [72] However, the usurper Wang Mang (r. 9–23 CE) did employ some merchants as low-level officials with a salary-rank of 600 bushels. [72]
Shanxi merchants were among the earliest Chinese businessmen and their history could be traced back to the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period.Southern Shanxi first came into commercial prominence due to its proximity to the political and cultural centers of ancient China.
With wars dominating in Northern China, there were mass southward migrations of population, which further enhanced the southward shift of cultural and economic centers in China. The era ended with the coup of Later Zhou general Zhao Kuangyin , and the establishment of the Song dynasty in 960, which eventually annihilated the remains of the "Ten ...
This category represents Chinese merchants and traders of the pre-modern and early modern periods (up to 1911). For people involved in modern business, see the parent category, Chinese businesspeople .