Fan Yen-Fu

He was a merchant from the Lin-t’ang house who worked mostly in the Yang-chou and Huai-chou areas, specializing in the selling of fish glue and salt, was outstanding because he made close relations with important and influential scholar-officials. When Yen-fu left the Huai-yang area in order to retire, several scholar-officials, including the important statesman Liu Ta-hsia and the well known censor Tai Shan, as a parting gift composed some informal writings in his honor.

These gifts signal the close relationship that a man like Fan had to have with leading lights in the regional bureaucracy in order to pursue his business successfully.