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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 ...
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.
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 .
The "gentry", or "landed gentry" in China was the elite who held privileged status through passing the Imperial exams, which made them eligible to hold office. These literati, or scholar-officials , ( shenshi 紳士 or jinshen 縉紳), also called 士紳 shishen "scholar gentry" or 鄉紳 xiangshen "local gentry", held a virtual monopoly on ...
The 'four divisions of society' refers to the model of society in ancient China and was a meritocratic social class system in China and other subsequently influenced Confucian societies. The four castes—gentry, farmers, artisans and merchants—are combined to form the term Shìnónggōngshāng (士農工商).
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 ...
A merchant who owned property worth a thousand catties of gold—equivalent to ten million cash coins—was considered a great merchant. [77] Such a fortune was one hundred times larger than the average income of a middle class landowner-cultivator and dwarfed the annual 200,000 cash-coin income of a marquess who collected taxes from a thousand ...
A merchant is a person who trades in goods produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Merchants have been known for as long as humans have engaged in trade and commerce. Merchants and merchant networks operated in ancient Babylonia, Assyria, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, Phoenicia and Rome.