The Confusion of Indulgence: Business and Culture in the Ming Dynasty

Author: (Canada) Zhengming Bu
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Zhengming Bu skillfully combines woodcuts, local chronicles, quantitative data, and the complaints of literati about commerce to create a memorable social portrait of the empire's growth. The book vividly depicts the potters, merchants, officials, courtesans, weavers, booksellers, and bandits busy engaging in various trades to adapt to the increasingly dominant monetary relationships. It also outlines the fundamental problems and realities they encountered: bricks, bridges, markets, temples, mail, famine, fashion, printing, passion, and omens. It is an English work that offers a panoramic description of the boiling and complex life in the Ming Dynasty. Confucian Heretics is a gem of historical artistry. Using a series of rich yet little-known materials—notably anecdotes, observations, and complaints about social dissatisfaction—Bu Zhengming reconstructs the vibrant commercial society of Ming China, demonstrating the power of commerce in shaping both public and private cultural life. As he embarks on a vivid and lively journey as if living in the Ming Dynasty, Bu Zhengming shows that Ming China remained the center of the global economy, as he aptly puts it: "The tides of the Atlantic were swayed by the moon of China." Skillfully combining woodcuts, local chronicles, quantitative data, and the complaints of literati about commerce, he creates a memorable social portrait of the empire's growth. After reading this book, no one will overlook Ming China's enthusiasm for commercial profits and its massive consumption, as it vividly depicts the potters, merchants, officials, courtesans, weavers, booksellers, and bandits busy engaging in their respective trades to adapt to the growing monetary relationships. It is a delightful and lively of blending narrative, anecdotes, and rigorous analysis to portray the socioeconomic changes of early modern Chinese society.