Guangdong Bang in Shanghai: A Case Study

Sojourners from the southeast province of Guangdong were the first to exploit the new frontierlike atmosphere of Shanghai, and they were key players in the upheavals which followed. Guangdong people developed expertise in foreign trade when trade with western countries was restricted to the port of Guangzhou (Canton), and this advantage facilitated their rise to wealth and power. Guangdong power in Shanghai reached both its height and its comeuppance in the Small Sword Uprising of 1853-55, when the city was occupied for seventeen months by Guangdong and Fujian rebels. When lackluster imperial forces finally crushed the internally disintegrating rebellion, the Guang-dong people were defeated and disgraced. Although they made a strong comeback, the brief era of Guangdong primacy gave way before the renewed vigor of their Ningbo competitors.

Before recounting the vicissitudes of Guangdong fortunes in Shanghai, it is useful to sketch the origins and the development of the Guangdong community in Shanghai. This discussion also serves to illustrate the dynamics of native-place organization, fission, fusion and extinction, continuous processes defining and altering associational life.

What non-Guangdong natives frequently referred to as the Guangdong bang was not a unified group. Instead, we see a loosely connected series of subgroups, capable of combination but normally divided by native place as well as by occupational ties. Each subgroup understood itself to constitute a separate bang . Sojourners created at least five different Guangdong huiguan in Shanghai before the Opium War.

The separate organizations reflected significant ethnic and linguistic

differences as well as trade specializations. Three major ethnic and linguistic areas divide Guangdong province, distinguished by the Guangzhou, Chaozhou and Hakka dialects, all mutually unintelligible. The Guang'an Huiguan represented the first linguistic group; the Jiaying Huiguan represented the Hakka group; and the Chaozhou, Jie-Pu-Feng and Chao-Hui huiguan corresponded to subdivisions within Chaozhou prefecture.^[11] Although no records from the Jiaying Huiguan survived its demise in the aftermath of the Small Sword Uprising, it is possible to sketch the history of the Chaozhou and Guangzhou communities.

Chaozhou Prefecture and Chaozhou Associations in Shanghai . Chaozhou prefecture is located on the eastern edge of Guangdong province, in the lower Han River basin which extends across the provincial border into southern Fujian province. In important respects, Chao-zhou people had more in common with the southern Fujianese than with their fellow Guangdong provincials, and they therefore could only be grouped together with them into a "Guangdong bang " in the context of Shanghai, where their differences with Jiangnan and northern Chinese overshadowed their internal differences. The Chaozhou dialect is closer to the southern Fujian (Minnan) dialect than to the dialects of central and western Guangdong. In the nineteenth century Chaozhou and Fujian merchants shared similar trade interests. Both regions exported sugar. Both also shipped foreign sundries from Guangzhou to northern ports. Like the Fujianese, Chaozhou people were stereotyped as poor, clannish and violent. Nineteenth-century Chinese records as well as foreign records in Shanghai often failed to distinguish Chaozhou people from Fujianese.^[12]

In Shanghai, though there were separate huiguan , Fujian and Chao-

zhou people lived near each other in the area of the east gates of the walled city. Both groups had shops on Foreign Trade (Yanghang) Lane, also the location of the Chaozhou Huiguan (see Map 2).^[13] The strong Chaozhou-Fujian presence in this area, and the foreignness of their dialects to the Shanghai people, arc expressed in an old Shanghai poem:

Hundreds of foreign goods overflowing by the market gate and wall
Bring merchants from distant places, filling Shanghai.
Those planning to go to Foreign Trade Lane
All study the barbarian tongues of Quan-Zhang.^[14]

The founding of Chaozhou native-place associations in Jiangsu followed the economic vicissitudes of the province. Chaozhou merchants first established a huiguan in Nanjing during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The huiguan moved to Suzhou along with the rice market at the beginning of the Qing dynasty, reflecting the rise of Suzhou. The later establishment of a huiguan in Shanghai similarly reflects the rise of Shanghai.^[15] The Shanghai Chaozhou Huiguan, originally given the auspicious name Wan Shi Feng (Ten Thousand Generations of Abundance), dates from 1759. On this date, rice merchants from eight counties of Chaozhou prefecture purchased land in Shanghai to worship Tianhou.^[16]

After the initial purchase of land in Shanghai in 1759, the community prospered and huiguan property increased regularly over the next half-century. Twenty-seven deeds for huiguan property holdings are preserved in a stela of 1811. Chaozhou merchant prosperity depended on the community's adaptability to shifts in the Shanghai market. By the nineteenth century Chaozhou merchants had diversified their trade interests and were primarily involved in the sugar, opium and tobacco trades.^[17]

Following common practice, Chaozhou merchants protected their huiguan through official sanction and recognition, using tics to local officials whenever possible. The rule of avoidance (which prevented officials from serving in their native areas), ensured that magistrates serving in Shanghai were all outsiders. The regular turnover of Shanghai officials increased the probability of a fellow-provincial serving in the local yamen . When this happened, sojourning merchants were quick to make use of native-place ties. The magistrate Chen Jianye, for example, was a major patron of the Chaozhou Huiguan at the beginning of the nineteenth century. His fellow-countrymen availed themselves of Chen's term to register their property and carve a stela bearing the magistrate's endorsement of their rules. In a similar appropriation of the mantle of Confucian legitimacy, huiguan merchant-directors also purchased official titles.^[18]

Although the association bore the name of Chaozhou prefecture, in practice it represented only portions of the prefecture, with internal subdivisions. The original huiguan included merchants from eight counties: Chaoyang, Huilai, Haiyang, Chenghai, Raoping, Jieyang, Puning and Fengshun (coastal and central districts, excluding Dapu county, in the northeast, and Jiexi and Jiening counties in the west). Although the

eight counties appear united in early records, divisions developed by the early nineteenth century, marking discrete regional groupings (bang ): "The people of the three bang are very numerous. According to huiguan regulations, if there are misfortunes on the boats, and the goods get too wet or dry, those closest to each other must help each other. Our Chao-yang and Huilai are close and together are called the Chao-Hui bang . Haiyang, Chenghai and Raoping are dose and make one bang …. . Jie-Pu-Feng [Jieyang, Puning, Fengshun] is one bang . Thus they are called the three bang ."^[19]

Chaozhou population increase and prosperity permitted the different bang to separate. Around 1822, the Jie-Pu-Feng bang levied a tax on its members and formed the Jie-Pu-Feng Huiguan. In 1839, the Chao-Hui bang established its own huiguan .^[20]

These divisions reflected trade specialization as well as geography. In a cryptic and defensive account of its reasons for separating from the Chaozhou Huiguan, the Chao-Hui bang asserted that in the period preceding the division it had derived its wealth from sugar and tobacco trading. Nonetheless, after the banning of opium by the government in 1839, tensions developed with the other bang over suspicions of Chao-Hui opium trading (a suggestion the Chao-Hui people deny in their stela). Because of this friction, the Chao-Hui bang chose independence. Despite Chao-Hui assertions that opium was not a primary business until after 1860 (when opium trade restraints were relaxed), the coincidence of the huiguan establishment and the date of opium prohibition suggest that Chao-Hui opium trading engendered the division.^[21]

The opium connection is a likely explanation for Chao-Hui opulence. The building constructed by the Chao-Hui bang in 1866 (the Chao-Hui Huiguan had burned twice since 1839) was on approximately two acres (nearly ten mu) of prime city property. The land, together with the building, cost more than eighty thousand taels. Two ornate temples graced the compound, one dedicated to Tianhou, the other to Guandi (originally Guanyu, the apotheosized hero-general of the Three Kingdoms period). Other gods inducting Caishen (God of Wealth) were worshipped in adjoining areas. The building served the joint functions of worship and business and was, accordingly, constructed with

religious and meeting areas and with a stage for theatrical performances.^[22]

People from Guangzhou and Zhaoqing Prefectures in Shanghai . In the period between the Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion, people from the adjacent central Guangdong prefectures of Guangzhou and Zhaoqing were at least as powerful in Shanghai as were people from Chaozhou. Little is known about their prewar huiguan because records were destroyed together with the building in 1855. Nonetheless, the Guang-Zhao community survived to rebuild a huiguan shortly afterward. The wealth of this later Guang-Zhao Huiguan in Shanghai and the fame of merchants from the two prefectures have ensured the preservation of its history.

Guangzhou and Zhaoqing prefectures in central Guangdong (the Pearl River delta and West River valley) were the richest and most densely settled parts of the province. The historical prominence of the provincial capital, Guangzhou, renders a long introduction to the Pearl River delta unnecessary. People from these areas prided themselves on their wealth and cultural achievements, reflected in success in the civil-service examinations and the many officials they contributed to the empire.

In Shanghai, natives of the two prefectures joined together in one huiguan , which became an important node in a highly developed national network of Guang-Zhao traders. Guangdong province as a whole had huiguan in forty-five cities, spread over seventeen provinces. A number of these were Chaozhou huiguan , but the large proportion were dominated by people from central Guangdong.

Prior to the Opium War, Guangzhou and Zhaoqing merchants in Shanghai dealt in foreign goods and sundries. After the Opium War, people from these areas continued in these trades, but also exported their expertise in dealing with foreigners, as house-servants, clerks, cooks, compradors and linguists. They also used their foreign connections to develop their own trade interests in tea, silk and beans.^[23]

The Rise of Guangdong Compradors and Officials. As foreigners moved into Shanghai, they brought with them their Cantonese employees. During the period of restricted trading through Canton, westerners had grown accustomed to the people, cuisine, and pidgin of Canton. For the sake of these tastes and ties, western merchants brought to Shanghai Cantonese compradors to organize their offices, Cantonese cooks to staff their kitchens and Cantonese shipworkers to repair their boats. British trade in Shanghai was initiated with the help of a Guang-dong merchant referred to by foreigners as Alum. Because of his connections with the tea and silk trade he was able to persuade tea and silk growers to consign products to Shanghai.^[24]

The organization of Chinese business through native-place groups and the system of personal financial guarantees reinforced the foreigners' initial preference for Guangzhou employees. The Hong Kong comprador for Augustine, Heard and Company naturally recommended and guaranteed a fellow Guangzhou native for the new Shanghai office. The Shanghai comprador for Russell and Company was chosen through a similar process. In the case of Jardine, Matheson and Company, the Guangzhou compradors moved north together with the company they served. The result was a near monopoly of Guangzhou compradors in Shanghai.^[25]

Many of these individuals came from the single county of Xiangshan. Living on a peninsula at the mouth of the Pearl River, close to both Guangzhou and Hong Kong and harboring at its southern tip the early international trading center of Macao (Aomen), Xiangshan residents became expert in maritime trade and trade with foreigners. The first Xiangshan compradors recommended their relatives and fellow-countrymen to succeed them. The wealthy and famous Shanghai Guangdong compradors of the 1860s and 1870s, the brothers Xu Bao-ting and Xu Rongcun, Xu Baoting's son Xu Run and nephew Xu Yun-xuan, Lin Qin (Acum), Zheng Guanying and the brothers Tang Jing-xing (Tang Tingshu) and Tang Maozhi all hailed from Xiangshan.

While sojourning in Shanghai, these men reinvested in their native place. Xu Run and his relatives performed gentrylike functions in Xiangshan, not only remitting funds but also supervising the building and repair of dikes, canals and bridges. In times of disaster they organized relief activities from Shanghai. Zheng Guanying was mentioned for similar contributions in the local Xiangshan gazetteer.^[26]

This group played a major role in constructing and leading their native-place community in Shanghai. The compradors Tang Jingxing, Tang Maozhi, Xu Run, Xu Rongcun, and Chen Geliang were all important figures in the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo, the institutional assertion of their native-place identity in Shanghai. Like the directors of other huiguan , they enhanced their position and the prestige of their native-place group by purchasing fides as expectant officials. Xu Baoting and Tang Jingxing both held the fide of expectant Daotai. Tang Jingxing entertained in official robes and enjoyed being referred to as guancha (Daotai), in documents. Xu Run was not only "Daotai" but also, with a further purchase, "Honorary Deputy Director of the Board of War."^[27]

While Guangdong merchants blurred former distinctions and became officials, Chinese officials serving in Shanghai played an important role in advancing the Guangzhou merchant group. Gong Mujiu, the Shandong official who served as the first Shanghai Daotai (Suzhou-Songjiang-Taicang Circuit Intendant) after the opening of the treaty port, was unprepared to face the complex foreign trade and foreign relations issues presented by his new post. He relied heavily on his functionary Wu Jianzhang, a member of the famous Samqua merchant family from Xiangshan. Wu had purchased the tide of expectant Daotai and had come to Shanghai for business.^[28]

Because of Guangdong merchants' facility in dealing with foreigners, Lingui, who served as Daotai from 1848 to 1851, sent a memorial to Beijing recommending that all treaty-port administrations be staffed by people from Guangzhou. Although the memorial was not adopted as policy, by the early 1850s Guangzhou predominance in Shanghai was nonetheless complete. In 1851 Wu Jianzhang rose to power as Shanghai

Daotai and presided over a process Fairbank aptly described as "the Cantonization of Shanghai." Wu immediately surrounded himself with fallow-provincials at all levels to conduct his official and private business. During Wu's administration, nearly all yamen clerks, guards and runners were fellow Guangdong provincials. Wu also commanded a personal bodyguard of several hundred toughs, all recruited directly from Guangdong. Wu was a close friend and associate of the Guangzhou comprador group, including Xu Baoting, and the Jiaying Huiguan director, Li Shaoqing.^[29]