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"City, the place of buying and selling" is a place for the purchase and sale of goods, and the fang is the general name of the streets and alleys in the city. "Tang Liudian" records that "the two capitals and the state and county of Guo are divided into fangs, and the suburbs are villages." ”
Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jie Zi" interprets "fang" as "defense", which can be seen that the early fang had the function of defense and maintenance of urban security.
The appearance of the name "Fang" was later than the city, before the Northern Wei Dynasty, it was mostly called "Li", "Lu", or "Luli", and it was gradually called Fang in the Sui Dynasty.
As early as the Shang Dynasty, "city" appeared, and "Zhouli, Diguan, Sishi" has a record of "the big city is a day and a day, a city is a city from time to time, and a city is a city at night and a city at night".
During this period, the city square system began to sprout; During the Western Zhou Dynasty, the camp system appeared in urban construction, and the mode of zoning planning began to be used to manage the city. In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the Shifang system gradually formed a more complete institutional system.
If there are requirements for the geographical location of the city, "the craftsman camps the country, Fang Jiuli, the side three gates, the nine longitudes and nine latitudes in the country, the nine tracks of the warp Tu, the left ancestor and the right society, facing the back of the city".
In the shape of the city, the Qin and Han dynasties compared with the previous generation, the content is richer, the scale is also larger, Chang'an City "looks at the system of its city, then open three gates next to it, three Tu Yi Ting, 12 square tracks, the streets pass through each other, the palace is straight, and the Yongyu is level. ...... Er Nai opened nine cities, through the circle with the pavilion, the flag pavilion five-fold, overlooking the hundred tunnels, the Zhou system of Daxu, now also only the captain. ”
In the Han Dynasty, after the construction of Emperor Hui of the Han Dynasty, the scale of Chang'an City began to take shape, and the layout showed the characteristics of "three gates next to it" and "facing the back market";
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the market had a stricter management system. There were clear boundaries in the living area, hierarchical differences were emphasized, the layout of the market was integrated into the concept of class, and the three walls were built with higher and stronger walls, and the closed nature of the lifang was greatly enhanced.
So, how prosperous was the market in the ancient Tang Dynasty? What commercial shops were there in the so-called East and West markets, and how was its commercial management system regulated in the Tang Dynasty?
1. The development of the city square system in the Tang Dynasty
1. The establishment of Chang'an City
After the founding of the Tang Dynasty, the Sui Daxing City was still regarded as the capital and renamed Chang'an, which means "long-term stability". According to modern archaeological excavations, it is estimated to be about 83 square kilometers in size, which is eight times the size of the city of Xi'an built during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Tang Chang'an City is composed of three parts: Waiguo City, Palace City, and Imperial City. Waiguo City is rectangular in shape and serves as a residential and commercial area for officials and ordinary people. Miyagi was located in the northern part of the city and served as the emperor's residence and office.
The imperial city is located in the south of the inner city, accounting for about half of the area of the inner city, with the north-south Chengtianmen Street as the axis of symmetry, and there are central government offices, Taimiao and Taishe on the left and right, as the government office and the place of the Zongmiao Society.
According to Song Minqiu's "Chronicles of Chang'an", Xu Song's "Examination of the Liangjing City Fang" in the Tang Dynasty, and Wei Shu's "New Records of the Two Beijings", it can also be inferred that there are 11 north-south streets and 14 east-west streets in Chang'an Waiguo City, which divides the entire Outer Guocheng into 110 squares and east and west cities. There are official houses, houses, temples, gardens, hotels, small shops, handicraft workshops and other places in the workshop.
The two cities of Chang'an, in the southeast and southwest of the imperial city, each cover an area of about one square kilometer and are square.
Compared with the Sui Dynasty, Chang'an City in the Tang Dynasty was more comprehensive in terms of planning concept, more rigorous in regional layout, and more obvious in functional zoning, reaching the peak of the city-square system in ancient China.
The municipal system is not just implemented on a small scale, it has also become the basic system of local urban management. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, Changsha built a city and included "Xinzhi" in the city, and the urban area increased by about 3 times, with a total of 6 gates.
The fang city system is no different from Chang'an. There is also a saying in the "Water Jing Note" that "Linxiang Xinzhi, the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, were originally outside the city, and were included in the city in the Sui and Tang dynasties".
2. Management of the market
The city system is not only a management system for the urban population, because it divides the population of different industries geographically, which not only facilitates government management, but also plays a role in "protecting the people and preventing thieves".
In the management of the city, the Tang Dynasty followed the provisions of the traditional city system. "At noon, the city beats three hundred drums and the crowd gathers, and seven quarters before the sunrise, three hundred cymbals are struck and the crowd disperses. ”
Drumming and cymbals are used as symbols of the beginning and end of the market.
Fang City "does not open to the street", can not be built, renovated, demolished at will, "Zhufang City houses in the capital, can not be demolished" "Zhufang City street song, there are invasion of the street to hit the wall, eaves to build houses, etc.
Punish all the prohibitions first, and order the demolition. "If there is a real need to build, the government will step in and use financial funds to repair it. "Ordered two taxes and hired craftsmen to build." For the east and west cities of Chang'an City, it is stipulated that "those who have their own shops shall not be allowed to make partial shops in front of the shops", and those who disturb the market are shocked, then "those who disturb will be given eighty rods." ”
In market transactions, the government regulates trading behavior by issuing vouchers. "Whoever is bribed with currency shall enter and exit with the Seal. The seal of the seal festival is now sealed by the bucket inspection, so that people can hold it and trade with it. That is, a token such as a seal is used as a certificate of the government's consent to enter the market and trade.
In addition to the above-mentioned regulations, officials have also been set up to effectively manage the market.
At the beginning of the Sui Dynasty, the city order, the city Cheng, began to be under the jurisdiction of Si Nong, when Emperor Yang changed to Taifu, Tang Dynasty attacked, each city set up an order, from the six products, Cheng two, from the eight products, the management agency for the city bureau and the Ping Zhu Administration.
"Tang Liudian" contains "the affairs of the transactions of the various clans in the cities of Kyoto", and also includes the opening and closing of the city gates. "Cheng is also in charge of supervising the seal and checking it", that is, checking and checking. In addition, the recorder and the coinage supervisor are in charge of the documents and supervise the coinage.
In the "bank", there are autonomous organizations such as "head of the bank" or "head of the bank", which manage the administrative affairs of the bank, maintain stability and order in the industry, manage all the people of the bank internally, and represent the store to contact and negotiate various matters externally.
This series of measures has built a relatively complete institutional system, which not only involves daily management, but also puts forward highly targeted specific provisions for certain situations.
The economic laws and regulations of these regulations are of great benefit to the study of the management of modern markets and their historical origins.
2. Commercial changes in the Tang Dynasty under the Shifang system
The Tang Dynasty implemented the policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce, and there are many records in the literature that "the industrial and commercial families shall not be pre-emptive".
The establishment of the market allowed the ruling order to be maintained, which was conducive to the social and economic stability in the early days of the founding of the Tang Dynasty, and objectively also had a huge impact on the development of commerce.
1. Refinement of the division of labor in the industry
Under the city-square system, not only the division of the city and the square was carried out on a large scale, but also the lines and shops were set up within the city. The so-called line is divided into different cargo lines according to the type of goods and the type of goods sold.
According to Xu Song's "Tang Liangjing City Square" research "Nanshi, Sui said Feng City, the east and west two squares live in the land of two squares, one hundred and twenty lines, more than 3,000 shops, more than 400 shops on the four walls, and the mountain of bribery", the number of urban industries in the Tang Dynasty has increased a lot compared with the Sui, and in the Chang'an city system, the Tang Dynasty followed the Sui.
With the prosperity of commerce, many new industries were born in the Tang Dynasty. According to historical records, there are entered names of Chang'an Hang, such as Silk Shop, Meat Shop, Mill Shop, Medicine Shop, Pen Shop, etc.
The division of the market system and the industry further promoted the refinement of the division of labor in the industry, strengthened the exchanges between the industries, and was conducive to the distribution of products in the market, which reflected the prosperity and development of commerce in the Tang Dynasty.
2. Restrictions on commercial space
The division of the city square stipulates that the commercial trade space is within such a narrow range, and the government also uses administrative and legal means to restrict the expansion of the city, such as promulgating the provisions that "those who have a regular shop shall not build a partial shop in front of the shop" and "no pavilion shall be erected in the square city residence".
These regulations not only make commercial trade unable to meet the needs of people's daily life, but also do not help merchants expand their business scope. Tang Chang'an City has two cities, east and west, each occupying two squares, which are located in the southeast and southwest corners of the imperial city, and are symmetrically distributed.
In the middle of the two cities, there is a street in the shape of a "well", and its central part is the location of the city's administrative body, the Municipal Administration and the Leveling and Leveling Bureau.
According to archaeological surveys, the area of Chang'an City is about 83 square kilometers, while the eastern and western cities are 0. 924 km², 0. 956 square kilometers, only 2 of the area of Chang'an City. 2%, which can be said to be insignificant compared to the entire Chang'an City.
It can be seen that the Tang Dynasty did not attach importance to the city and tended to divide the space.
3. The rise of street traders and local separatist forces
The setting of the east and west cities of Chang'an City cannot meet the needs of people's lives. According to scholars, the geographical space of business activities is not limited to the city.
Some itinerant hawkers sporadically existed in the neighborhood and began to emerge as a supplement to the city.
The scope of commercial activities under the market was very limited, and the original market shops had been demarcated, and the common people who were involved in the business of selling had to engage in this more flexible street trade, and finally hoped to obtain the shops in the city and engage in more stable trade activities.
Wandering merchants have been selling since ancient times, "the benefits of fish and salt from all over the world", and it was more prosperous in the Tang Dynasty. The poet Wang Jianyou is "a little woman by the bridge in Yangzhou, a merchant in Changgan City." There was no news for three years, and they each worshipped ghosts and asked God. Verses.
In the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the government became more and more corrupt, and many effective measures were also exposed, the contradictions between the government and the merchants were further deepened, and the local separatist forces also took the opportunity to win over the merchants and use the wealth of the merchants to strengthen the local economic strength, so that commercial capital became an important economic foundation for local separatism and secession in the late Tang Dynasty.
The government not only has limited space for business, but also adopted a policy of heavy taxation in the tax system. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the tax on merchants was "thirty taxes and one", and later it became "one-tenth of the tax to support the ordinary capital", and after Suzong ascended the throne, it was increased from one-tenth to one-fifth, which was called "rate loan", which was eight times higher than the "four tithes and one tax" of ordinary people.
In the second year of Zhide, Tang Suzong issued an edict saying: "His merchants are allowed to collect taxes where they are ordered", and the taxes levied on merchants have greatly increased. The commercial tax was stripped from the agricultural tax and became a separate tax item from the agricultural tax. Four types of taxes have been gradually formed, including asset tax, transaction tax, pass tax and monopoly tax for merchants, and the tax rate has been continuously raised.
In the late Tang Dynasty, the starting point of government taxation had changed from maintaining the stability of the country to filling the financial gap, and even arbitrarily confiscating the property of merchants for personal gain. In the third year of construction, "scraping the money of rich businessmen, and lending the rest to supply the army", "all the goods of the merchants in Chang'an are untrue, and they are beaten up, and people are unbearable, and there are hanged deaths".
The country's financial burden fell on the merchants, so that the rise of the peddlers, many foreign private businessmen appeared, "Tang Hui Yao" has many "now and tax tea merchants, most of them are smuggled by tea sellers." ".
Due to its inherent drawbacks, the city square system has not been strictly implemented at the local level, which reflects the profound contradiction between commercial development and the market square system. For example, the central government has stipulated: "Places that are not prefectures and counties shall not be allowed to be set up in cities."
However, this kind of regulation was completely broken in the secession areas after the Tang Dynasty, and local markets centered on the grass market were dotted around. Due to the sharp contradictions between the government and the merchants, the local warlords combined with the merchants, and the merchants became supporters of the secession of the feudal towns.
With the support of the secessionist regime, the political status of merchants was also greatly improved. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the merchant Dajia "hijacked capital to travel the world, and the state and town were the right guests, and the rich were proud of themselves." ”
It has also become more common for businessmen to join the ranks. They joined forces with the warlords and became a powerful rebel force against the central government, which also became one of the important reasons for the formation of the secession of feudal towns in the late Tang Dynasty.
Concluding remarks
The city square system is an important system of urban management and regional planning in ancient Chinese history, which has an important position in the construction and management of feudal cities, and objectively has a huge impact on commercial development and merchant groups.
On the one hand, the deliberate division of the industry promotes the refinement of the division of labor in the industry, which is conducive to the exchange within the industry and the prosperity of business; On the other hand, strict management systems limit business to a smaller scale. With the boom in commerce, such constraints gradually disappeared.
In Chang'an City, there were south and north markets outside the east and west cities, and grass markets appeared in the countryside, and with the prosperity of the grass market, many cities and towns quietly appeared, further expanding the scale of the city and promoting the ancient urbanization process.
In the mid-to-late Tang Dynasty, the rulers deepened their encroachment on commerce, which gave it a declining atmosphere, which was accompanied by the rise of merchants and the emergence of more flexible forms of trade in the cities.
Merchants took advantage of the characteristics of mobility to evade state taxes, and were driven by the trend of interests to flow to the separatist areas that implemented policies to protect the development of industry and commerce, thus becoming the economic basis of the warlord separatism, and promoting the formation of the warlord separatist situation in the late Tang Dynasty.