Huiguan Business and the Huiguan Oligarchy

On most days in late-nineteenth-century Shanghai the large huiguan buildings which architecturally symbolized community were nearly empty. Periodically a small and exclusive group, calling themselves "elders" (weng ), or "directors" (dongshi ), met together in a central room in the huiguan complex to discuss matters which came before them—social, political, religious and economic.

Surviving records from the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo suggest the nature and rhythms of affairs within the huiguan oligarchy. In 1872, in an atmosphere of regained wealth and respectability, twenty-four directors contributed to the reconstruction of the building. All were prominent Guangdong merchants, compradors or officials in Shanghai. Records from this year show that the directors met several times each week in the early evenings after business hours, arriving casually between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M. A small group of active directors, ranging from as few as three or four to as many as ten or fifteen, normally attended. Shanghai officials, if Cantonese, often attended huiguan meetings.^[2]

[2] After the 1853 uprising, Guangdong merchants worked to restore the "face" of their community. In the late 1860s Xu Run and Tang Jingxing were leading figures in Shanghai charitable enterprises. During this period, though there was no huiguan , the merchants did nor lack organization but met informally. It seems likely that the reconstruction of the building became convenient in 1872 because of the appointment of a Guangdong official, Ye Tingjuan, as Shanghai magistrate (Xu Run, Nianpu , 14-15). Records from the 1870s show attendance by several officials who are also identified as dongshi , including Feng Junguang (Daotai), Ye Tingjuan and Zheng Caoru (Jiangnan Arsenal Director); records for the last decade of the Qing show the attendance of Daotai Liang Ruhao. The discussion here and in the paragraphs below, unless otherwise noted, is based on GZGYB covering the years I872 and 1891-1911. See also Lai Chi-kong, "Cantonese Business Networks in Late Nineteenth Century Shanghai: The Case of the Kwang-Chao Kung-So," in Essays in Economic and Business History , ed. Edwin J. Perkins (Los Angeles, 1994), vol. 12, 145-54.

Through the last years of the Qing, a very small group controlled huiguan business. An 1897 discussion of protocols for use of the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo seal reveals this dearly. The seal was locked in an iron safe with two doors. Three keys fit the outer door, each kept by one director. The single fourth key, which opened the inner door, was held by a fourth director. Without the seal, of course, no documents could be signed and no financial transactions could take place.

It is sometimes assumed on the basis of collective decision making practices or fraternal rhetoric that nineteenth-century huiguan were sites of indigenous democratic practices.^[3] Such a view should be tempered by recognition of the hierarchy embedded in huiguan practice. Huiguan rules stressed that individual sojourners did not have the right of access to the huiguan . Individuals who needed help were to go first to the leader of their regional subgroup. Without a letter of introduction from this intermediate authority, the gongsuo would not respond to an appeal. Individuals of good reputation who became implicated in lawsuits were instructed to attain a note of guarantee from a native-place shop.^[4]

Even within the sojourning elite, the rhetoric of collective decision making that informed huiguan rules and record keeping concealed a practice of quietly coerced consensus, in which the most powerful members of the oligarchy determined the outcome of any decision. Year after year the same individuals appear in leadership roles. In the records, all decisions are unanimous. Discussion and dissent simply do not appear.^[5]

In their meetings, the ciders/directors discussed a wide range of busi-

[3] Some historians have been more persuaded than have I by the quasi-democratic language of these institutions. In "The Gentry Democracy in Chinese Shanghai" (pp. 41-61), for example, Mark Elvin suggests that huiguan provided models of democratic management. A stela dated 1912 written by the leader of a Ningbo worker organization within the Siming Gongsuo complains of the high-handed arrogance of huiguan leaders and reveals oligarchic practices in the Ningbo community corresponding to those apparent from the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo records (SBZX, 429-32).

[4] "Guang-Zhao huiguan guitiao" (Guang-Zhao Huiguan rules), hand-copied document, courtesy of Du Li, Shanghai Museum. Elderly Shanghai residents who remembered huiguan from the early twentieth century stressed that huiguan were not open to all, only to prominent tongxiang and those with letters of introduction. Others were turned away by the gatekeepers.

[5] According to Guang-Zhao Gongsuo rules, individuals were to follow the decision of the group. If this was difficult and there were different opinions, then matters were to be decided by the majority. There is no mention of voting, but the rules state that "if six or seven people agree out of ten, the matter is determined." Meeting records rarely, if ever, refer to disagreements or actual votes prior to the twentieth century.

ness, including disputes over individual and business debts; family inheritance cases; price fluctuations for various goods; company shareholder arrangements; purchase and rental of huiguan property; insults and affronts to friends, associates and other Guangdong sojourners; injury to property (including wives and concubines); shop disputes; customs fees; disputes over purchased concubines; collections to develop factories; hiring and payment for huiguan employees (guards, construction workers, water carriers, janitors); bankruptcies; apprentices; charitable collections. This list is deliberately random; huiguan records and meeting practice did not separate diverse concerns into different categories, nor did a specialized organizational personnel deal with different problems; the "elders" addressed whatever business came before them.

Business was introduced by directors themselves; by individuals with sufficient connections to contact the elders/directors; and by businesses or trades within the Guangdong sojourning community.^[6] At times representatives from particular trades or shops attended the meetings to present cases, as in 1897, when directors of two subgroups in the oil trade came to the huiguan to resolve a dispute. At other times the directors used the huiguan as a court, dispatching investigators, summoning plaintiffs and accused before them and passing judgements. Such cases were resolved when the parties involved signed an agreement "in the gongsuo , in the presence of all." The meeting records spell out the terms of settlement in business and inheritance cases and are marked with signatures or fingerprints and crosses, the marks of the illiterate. Those sentenced to pay penalties or turn property over to business colleagues or family members affirmed their intent to pay "before the [huiguan ] god, with a pure heart" (zai shen qian qing xin ), the god's authority reinforcing that of the huiguan directors.^[7]

Although the rules of the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo refer to huiguan

[6] Records for 1872 mention timber, miscellaneous goods, tea export, Guangdong and overseas goods, pawnshops, iron, lacquer, Hongkou iron shops and other Hongkou businesses.

[7] Among those signing with fingerprints and crosses were women, in cases involving their portions of businesses or their personal property. A record from 1891 notes that meetings took place in front of the image of the god, Guandi; the terms zai shen qian qing xin appear in a judgment of 1895. See also MacGowan, "Chinese Guilds," 140. During my March 1984 interview Tan Xiaochuang (a native of Quanzhou, Fujian, and sometime resident of the Shanghai Quan-Zhang Huiguan) described how a huiguan could be more effective than a court in settling disputes, particularly in cases in which fault was difficult to determine (such as accidents at sea). In such cases, he explained, the truth could only be resolved by a process of divining before the huiguan goddess Tianhou. In this manner the huiguan temple was useful in deciding what no official could determine as convincingly.

business as gong shi (public or collective matters), private and public, personal and collective, were not clearly distinguished in practice during this period. Personal finances as well as business arrangements flowed through the mediating institution of the huiguan . Directors discussed their investments, invested together, and helped each other out in family and other business when one or another was out of Shanghai. Guangdong merchants and officials in other places contacted the Shanghai Guangdong merchants through the huiguan and asked them to handle various matters for them. Funds for private business transactions were often transferred through the huiguan . Payments for huiguan business, when large stuns were involved, would often combine the limited "common funds" with contributions and loans from individual directors.^[8]

The concerns of sojourning workers do not frequently appear in the huiguan ledgers, which are densely packed with the property concerns of the sojourning elite. Nonetheless, strikes or pay disputes did periodically intrude on the business of the directors. At such moments it becomes possible to glimpse in action the types of bonds, beliefs and power relations which structured class relations within the tongxiang community.

The day-to-day concerns of artisans and workers were handled by artisan or worker native-place associations (bang, dian , or hui ). It was only when matters could not be handled at this level that the merchant huiguan directors stepped in as a higher adjudicating, enforcing or mediating authority. An example of such an instance may be seen in an 1879 ease in which the carpenter Zeng Ajin and his brothers refused to pay the 20 percent of their earnings required by the Guangdong carpenters' Lu Ban Dian. Because the brothers worked for foreign employers, they also dodged penalties imposed by the carpenters' association. To force the unruly brothers to comply, the carpenters' association appealed to the huiguan . As reported in the North China Herald , "The carpenters' society is subordinate to the General Cantonese Guild, which ultimately took the matter in hand; and a few days ago a warrant was issued by the District Magistrate in the city... to compel payment." In this case we

[8] For the flavor of huiguan business in this period, see also surviving correspondence of the reformist scholar-official Zheng Guanying with the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo, in Xia Dongyuan, ed., Zheng Guanying ji (Collected works of Zheng Guanying) (Shanghai, 1988), vol. 2, 507-8, 617-18, 917, 1139-40, 1210. Because major expenditures were frequently funded outside the "common funds," the account-books of the gongsuo , which indicate gongsuo income and regular expenses from the common fund, do not properly reflect the extent of huiguan activity.

see not only the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo's readiness to enforce the rule that all Guangdong carpenters had to belong to their association, but also the positioning of the huiguan between the carpenters and the Chinese authorities (and the willingness of the latter to enforce huiguan decisions).^[9]

A carpenters' strike at Farnham, Boyd and Company in 1902 provided another occasion for huiguan intervention. Four Cantonese carpenters were arrested by foreign-settlement authorities for intimidating a Ningbo labor contractor who was responsible for employing Ningbo carpenters during the Cantonese carpenters' strike. In an effort to resolve the strike and investigate the case, the Mixed Court contacted the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo. According to the huiguan correspondence with the court, the directors summoned the carpenters' headmen to the huiguan to persuade them to return to work. The huiguan directors in return agreed to arrange for the release of the four arrested carpenters and provide strike-compensation funds to the workers. After investigating the situation, the directors contacted the foreign shipyard owners to secure the carpenters' release. When this initial attempt was unsuccessful, they enlisted the help of the Daotai, selected members of their community to act as guarantors to go to the court on the carpenters' behalf, and finally secured their release.^[10] This example highlights the mediating role of the huiguan , which fashioned a compromise to both mollify fellow-provincial carpenters and return them to work. It also represented them in court as a matter of course. Although business involving foreigners was not always smooth, the action of the Mixed Court in this case nonetheless makes clear that foreign authorities, like Chinese, recognized the need to work through the huiguan in order to resolve the labor dispute.

[9] NCH, January 10, 1879, 22-23. This case also demonstrates how foreign authorities in the city complicated huiguan adjudication of such matters. Because Zeng resided in the American Settlement area of Hongkou, the arrest warrant had to be signed by the U.S. Consul. Although in other cases settlement authorities often reinforced huiguan authority (in a 1911 case, for example, foreign-owned shipyards agreed to engage Guangdong rather than Ningbo carpenters), in this case Consul Bailey ultimately declined. See NCH, September 23, 1911, 851. See also discussions in Perry Shanghai on Strike , 33-34, 39.

[10] GZGYB, May-June, 1902; NCH, May 28, 1902, 1069-70. Gongsuo records indicate that the shipyard owners prevented the payment of strike compensation. The Mixed Court was established in 1868, providing for a western "assessor" to sit with the Chinese magistrate for the purpose of examining cases involving Chinese residents in the foreign settlements and cases involving both Chinese and foreigners. See Kotenev, Shanghai, Its Municipality and the Chinese , 274-75.

In Chinese matters, the huiguan leaders not only commanded the authority to resolve routine disputes but also were capable of quickly mustering considerable resources and participation on short notice. In 1898, for instance, when rice was scarce in Guangdong and prices were rocketing, the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo responded with alacrity to appeals from hospitals in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, using native-place connections to purchase and ship more than thirteen million pounds office from Hankou to Guangdong. The details of this massive endeavor are precisely recorded in the huiguan meeting notes. Twenty sojourning Guangdong firms took on the responsibility to purchase and transport the rice, accompanying it to Guangdong to ensure that none of it would be sold along the way.^[11]

In such large and smaller matters, huiguan authority "worked" because, in addition to serving their own interests, huiguan leaders understood that their long-term interest depended also on the cultivation of the larger sojourning community. For this they needed arenas which went beyond their interior meetings and courtroom dramas.