Zheng Guanying, Merchant Reformer of Late Qing China and his Infl ...

Between Confucianism and Mercantilism

Zheng Guanying was born on July 24, 1842, in the Yongmo Village of Xiangshan County in Guangdong Province. Xiangshan, or “fragrant hill,” is so named because of its abundant flowers, and Zheng's home village was located to the north of Macao.¹ The county became famous years later as the birthplace of Sun Yat-sen [Sun Zhongshan] and was renamed Zhongshan in 1925 after Sun's death. As early as 1152, the Southern Song government established Xiangshan County, formerly a town of the nearby Dongguan County, at the mouth of the Pearl River, and its territory includes today's Macao. Xiangshan was not just an administrative unit but also a booming commercial region in ancient times. The arrival of the Portuguese at Macao in the mid-sixteenth century further prompted the development of the area's commerce and trade. After the Treaty of Nanjing of 1842 and the cession of Hong Kong, both international and domestic trade in the Xiangshan area prospered. Three subcounty locations, Shiqi, Xiaolan, and Qianshan in the territory of Xiangshan, became busy market towns. According to the groupings of G. William Skinner, Xiangshan belongs to the Lingnan micro-region, which is centered on Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province and the only foreign trade city in China prior to the Opium War.² Located adjacent to the ocean and exposed to commercial activities, the people of Xiangshan embraced the tradition of migration. On the one hand, immigrants from inland China migrated to Xiangshan in large numbers; the three dialects spoken in Xiangshan—Cantonese, Hakka, and the southern Fujian dialect—reflected the villagers’ diverse origins. On the other hand, people living in Xiangshan kept moving overseas and up north to other Chinese cities to make a living.

Because of long experience with foreign trade and Western culture, the Cantonese became experts in foreign affairs in China. After Shanghai's opening as a treaty port, British merchants naturally chose Cantonese merchants to accompany them to Shanghai as translators and business agents, and the Cantonese thus almost dominated the occupation of foreign comprador in this period.³ Other Cantonese also flocked to