Ming4 Summing up SUMMER

Cont.: Fashionable objects

Clothing etc.

Sartorial regulations were transgressed to an extent that social status was not clearly visible any longer in the streets. Not only was inappropriate dressing common but the volatility of fashion was created by a constant ‘re-writing’ of the rules of taste to distinguish between refinement and vulgarity. Rules of taste and distinction referred to

► clothes, shoes, hats, ornaments;

► furniture

► food

► works of art (paintings, antiques) and

► values and beliefs.

On the concrete level the production of fakes facilitated to keep up with the latest changes of fashion. On the abstract level philanthropy was cultivated and ‘goodness calibrated’ by creating a system that compared moral and monetary values. It was inspired by the Confucian ideal of self-cultivation and the Buddhist rules of compassion and benevolence.

Books

Among the publications that became fashionable in the mid-Ming were encyclopedias and almanacs that informed a larger public about sources of officially accepted as well as restricted knowledge. Manuals on fortune telling, erotica, novels etc. became widely available. (See ming3). Knowledge about the strange inhabitants of foreign countries and their habits was summarized in the richly illustrated three volume work Assembled Pictures of the Three Realms [i.e. heaven, earth, and man] (Sancai tuhui).

Brook mentions the manual The Exploitation of the Works of Nature (Tiangong kaiwu) as a work that although it undoubtedly was of great practical value disappeared from the market. This is probably less due to the “unappealing” content as he supposes. Song Yongxing (1587-1666?) was a highly critical observer of the Ming - Qing transition and Manchu politics. His works for this reason may not have been included in the imperial catalogue Complete Works of the Four Treasuries (Siku quanshu) of the Qing Dynasty produced by the famous literary inquisition and therefore found little support for reprints. It has survived in Japan where it was rediscovered several decades ago.

The Jesuit father Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) describes in detail the technique of Chinese book production. In return the Chinese official in the secondary capital of Nanjing Gu Qiyuan gives a description of Western books which he must have seen at the Jesuit mission in Nanjing. He is especially amazed by the leather binding, the perspective drawings used in illustrations, and the shading applied to make faces and figures appear three-dimensional.

Distribution of news

The Beijing gazette in which news for officials (promotions, demotions, disasters in the provinces etc.) were published, could not be distributed fast enough anymore. Instead of producing hand copied editions, the gazette became the first Chinese ‘newspaper’ published with movable types in 1638. Following the model of the Beijing gazette private ‘newspapers’ were produced that contained news copied from the gazette as well as local news of the urban centers in which they were published.

Route books and travel

Route books and prospects reveal that private travel became a favorite past time of the well-to-do. While

►official travel had been a necessity (in order to take up a new position or to inspect public works etc.) and were facilitated by the service stations of the postal network, and

►commercial travel had been common since the third emperor Yongle lifted the ban on travel that his father had propagated,

► private travel became popular only in the late Ming. With local gazetteers and route books available to prepare travel and maintain orientation on the way “travel had been absorbed into the gentry project of cultural refinement” (Brook, 181).

► Women went on pilgrimages, just like men. This was not always commented on favorably. Orthodox officials regarded traveling women as rather disturbing, yet temple fairs attracted men and women alike and the mobility of women increased remarkably.

Production for consumption

Grain and textiles

Grain was the ‘most traded consumption item’ (Brook, 190) since the preparedness granaries that had been setup under the rule of Emperor Hongwu were abandoned.

► The graineries were not maintained any longer when grain transportation was facilitated (by the Grand Canal and the system of other convenient waterways),

► when workers could no longer be recruited by the lijia communities which disintegrated due to the changes in the pattern of occupation that occurred since the early Ming, and

► when the irrigation system designed for rice paddies was destroyed in those centers in which paddies were transformed into cotton fields.

The production of grain and textiles – during the early stage of the dynasty described as ideally accomplished by labor division among genders (“men plough, women weave”) - could now be found in regionally different centers of the empire: Shandong and Henan produced silk, Huguang and Guangxi produced the rice to feed the weavers.

Textile production saw extensive labor division and job specialization:

►Silk:

1. cultivation of mulberry trees (to feed silkworms with leaves)

2. tending the silkworm eggs until they hatch

3. feeding the silkworms

4. tending the silkworms as they stop eating and begin to spin cocoons

5. reeling the cocoons

6. dressing the loom according to the pattern

7. weaving

__________________________________________________________

8. sale of fabric

► Cotton:

1. cultivation of cotton plants

2. picking cotton

3. ginning cotton (removing the seed from the cotton ball)

4. spinning

5. dressing the loom and weaving

__________________________________________________________

6. sale of fabric

In the late Ming merchants made the biggest profits by buying cheap raw material which they distributed among the weavers and selling the finished product for a high price. The merchants created a market economy by

► using the state communication system to link local economies

► organizing regional rural and urban (workshop) labor into a consecutive production process

► linking production and consumption

► involving the gentry society (and thus improving their own social status)

Women in the Commercial Economy

Women were consumers and producers of goods and services.

► As producers of commodities they were textile workers in their own households. They produced not only for the family, but worked for a surplus analogous to wage labor. Until the end of the Qing Dynasty they became marginalized in the textile production because the workforce of male weavers increased with growing diversity of occupations.

►As producers of services they worked as teachers in the inner chambers, peddlers, or prostitutes. Brothels were common institutions in Ming cities visited by male sojourners and migrant workers in the cities who were too poor to get married. Women could be sold to brothels by fathers or husbands, often they were bought by brothel owners as orphaned victims after famines.

► In the late Ming a “cult of romantic love” developed in which men searched for educated women as companions. What made courtesanship attractive for the men who could afford such a companion was that the relationship was neither based on a family arrangement (like a marriage) nor was there any dowry transfer to the family of the woman.

Instead men tried to meet female soulmates who were educated on the level of their male partners and trained in calligraphy, painting, poetry, musical performances, and were able to participate in sophisticated discussions. Brook mentions that the cult of romantic love was often used to cover up male “political insignificance and failed careers”. The romantic loyalty to a lover was equalized to the loyalty to the endangered and finally fallen dynasty.