Research On Huizhou Merchants’ Family Style In Ming And Qing Dynasties

Huizhou Merchants formed a renowned business faction,with their fame well known through the entire China during Ming and Qing Dynasties.With their birthplace at the home-town of Zhuxi,a significantly important inheritor of Confucius,they featured a merging of businessman-ship and Confucian merits,which has been passing from one generation to another.For over 6 hundreds of years,their glorious achievements and splendid commercial practice have never ceased,steeped thoroughly in the roots of the demonstrated family styles.Family plays a key role in their business practice.The tradition and customs of their families have been nurturing and fostering generations and generations of Huizhou merchants,shaping their characters and lighting their roads.They are incarnations of the family teachings,mainly consisting of Filial Piety and Fraternal Duties,Ancestors Worship,Doing Respectable Business,Harmony between Faction Members,Diligence,Virtues and Merits,Obedience to Laws,Love of Poetry and Sage Instructions,Integrity,Good Conducts,Making Friends by Quality and so forth.Ancient sages’ teachings like Zhu Zi’s Family Rites,National regulations and codes,original domestic disciplines and rules are the embedded roots of their good family practices.The uniqueness of the family spirits and culture embodied by Huizhou merchants has a lot to do with the cultural bonanza reserved and enriched in Huizhou region.Influenced by the dominating zeitgeist of Confucianism,the deep humanistic cultivation of camel-like forbearing attitudes and cherishing of educations as well as the ingrained and inveterate patriarchal belongingness,they take to doing business while keeping Confucian kindness,valuing enlightening educations and positively participating in imperial examinations for fortunes.All these sinuous nurturing and cultivation generated the nascence and the sources of their spirits,Huizhou characteristics,the faction features and the social harmonies all together.However,every coin has two sides,and there is no exception to this rule.Their reclusive inclination and pessimistic disposition must also be taken into account when we study the Huizhou family models,combined with a critical manner for inheriting and learning from the past,which may help answer the social questions we all face nowadays.