Wang Yuanmao

Hong Mai’s (1123-1202) Yijian zhi recounts the tale of Wang Yuanmao, an otherwise unknown merchant who lived in the 12th century:

Wang Yuanmao was a man of Quanzhou who as a youth was a servant in a Buddhist monastery (diyi sengsi). His master had a collection of books from the lands of the southern barbarians with which Yuanmao became completely familiar. Once he traveled by sea to Champa. The king was thrilled by his ability to read both Chinese and foreign books. He appointed Wang to office, and gave his daughter to Wang to be his wife. Wang stayed for ten years before returning . His wife’s dowry was worth 1 million strings of cash, and Wang had developed a taste for profit. Thus he managed trading vessels. As his wealth was not ill-gotten, both grand councilor Liu and vice-director Zhuge made marriage alliances with him.

To Hong Mai what made this tale interesting was that Wang ultimately came to a bad end, corrupted by his avarice, and thereby provided a moral lesson. Ironically, despite Hong Mai’s didactic indictment of Wang, he was not done in by his own avarice but rather by that of one of his crew who sought to cheat him out of half of his profits following a ten-year voyage to the South Seas. One member of the crew objected, and the conspirators murdered him. When this was ultimately discovered, Wang was forced to bear responsibility. What is important is the change in Wang’s social fortunes that Hong Mai recounts before his troubles arose. As a youth he had been a servant in a monastery, a novice in training to become a monk, a position commonly held by the cast-off children of the poor. As a young man he left the monastic life and became a mariner, travelling to Champa. There he became a favourite of the king, who made him his son-in-law and provided him with a huge dowry. Wang apparently used the dowry as capital to fund merchant ventures, for he had “developed a taste for profit”. On returning to Quanzhou, he continued to use his wife’s huge dowry to finance overseas trading ventures. He was now a rich man who no longer had to travel himself, as he had to Champa when a young man. Instead, he could hire crews to undertake the dangerous voyages to distant places on his behalf. Finally, he had so transformed himself from his rude beginnings that he was able to ingratiate himself into elite society in Quanzhou and strike up marriage alliances with two of the prefecture’s leading citizens

Wang Yuanmao is, therefore, a prime example of the link between the expanding role of overseas trade in the economy of southern Fujian and a social transformation that dramatically altered the composition of regional elite society.