The catering industry operated by female merchants in the Tang Dynasty, generally small business is the main business, smaller scale, and lower profits, in addition to the hotel operated by Hu women with a certain scale of business, other catering industry operated by women in the Tang Dynasty with a certain scale of operation, and survived in the historical records only "Taiping Guangji" Volume 286, recorded that the Bianzhou have a The only historical record that exists is the record in Taiping Guangji Volume 286 that there was a female merchant named Banqiao Thirteen Niang in Bianzhou. She had several stores with considerable business scale. "Tang Bianzhou west of the board bridge store, store wa three maidens who ...... widowed, more than thirty years, no men and women, and no relatives, there are a few houses, to sell meals for the industry. However, the family is very rich, many donkeys and animals."
Other accounts of women running the catering industry are mostly small business, business varieties are also relatively single, mostly operating a kind of food and drink-related business. Such as simply operating the sale of tea, wine, cakes, which in turn, the operation of wine and tea as the main commercial content. According to the record in the Book of Order, the wife of the famous minister Ma Zhou was originally a cake-selling old woman. In Taiping Guangji, Volume 134, "Xie's", there was a woman, Xie's, who used to make her own small-liter wine containers to deal in wine during her lifetime in Yan Village, Wannian County, Yongzhou, Tang Dynasty.
Most of these small-scale business activities were concentrated in the bazaar and had a fixed place and fixed operating hours. Historical records are mostly concentrated in the "Taiping Guangji", such as volume 70 records of the Guangling Tea Lou, "every day, will be a tea sold in the city, the city people scramble to buy". Volume 106 recorded in the Jianghuai people Song Yan drowning rescued, had met a "lone Lou sold tea place", and there are "two thatched cottages". Volume 382 records the residence Yucai Li Luoyang Guo Daniang, "to shop for business. Volume 109 recorded in Fengqiu County, Jizhou, Tang, there is an old mother surnamed Li, seventy years old, childless and lonely, only two slaves and maids, "home (the original no 'home' word, according to the Dharma Garden Pearl Forest, "94 cited by the town of wine". The wine sold by Aba Qing in the West Market of Chang'an was a good wine that was famous throughout the country.
In the many catering business industry, the most characteristic is the Hu women opened the liquor store. "Hu ladies look like flowers, smiling in the shop", "Hu ladies beckon with their hands, and drunken customers extend their golden bottles". These wine shops took the smile of beautiful Hu ladies as their commercial signboards, attracting a large number of literary men and drinkers to enter the shops for consumption. "In the golden market of Wuling, a young man with a silver saddle and a white horse traveled in the spring breeze. Where did the fallen flowers go? Laughing into the Hu Ji liquor store". In these Hu female liquor store, selling alcohol is mostly young girls, and looks extraordinary. Tang Dynasty poets spared no effort to praise the beauty of the female wine sellers. "There are many beautiful women in Jinli, who sell wine in kiln" and "I am seeing a woman in kiln with red makeup for two to eight years". Diners in the restaurants could listen to songs and drink freely, such as He Chao's "Gift to Hu Ji in Hotel": "Hu Ji in spring hotel, strings and pipes clanging at night. A red, coarse serge spreads the new moon, and sable fur sits in thin frost. The jade plate is chopped up with carp, and the golden tripod is cooking sheep. The guests are not dispersed, but listen to the song and enjoy the world's maiden." Yang Juyuan's "Words of Hu Ji" is one of the famous pieces. Under the influence of the growing prosperity of Hu women's restaurants, Wu Ji and Yue women also followed the business style of Hu women's restaurants and opened a wide range of restaurants in rural intersections with developed transportation: "The wind blows the willow flowers to fill the store with fragrance, and Wu Ji presses the wine to call for customers to taste," in order to make commercial profits.
These unique Western-style liquor store mode and business characteristics, not only shows the beauty of the Hu women's bravado, but also highlights its unique business wisdom, and become the Tang Dynasty business operations in the Tang Dynasty, the most characteristic scene of the Tang style.
Two, weaving
The Tang Dynasty weaving industry women traders, mostly concentrated in the towns, and small workshops as the main mode of operation, the general income, only the basic food and clothing needs. Engaged in this kind of business women merchants, mostly widows and orphans, no male children at home. He Erniang of Guangzhou, recorded in Volume 21 of Taiping Guangji, was about twenty years old and lived with her mother, "weaving shoes for her business". Volume 196 records that the north gate of Shengyefang in Chang'an City was also inhabited by such an orphaned mother and widowed daughter, who "sewed needles for a living. Living room is very poor, and mother lying on the same couch, smoking and cooking do not move, often through the days." Life is very poor. Volume 242 records that a widow from Yuecheng County, Kangzhou, Wen, also to "performance of cloth for the industry". Volume 303 records an old woman from Dongdu who sells her shoes for a living.
The women who specialized in weaving cloth for the palace could only sell the cloth at a low price if it failed to meet the court's requirements. We can infer from Bao Sol's "Cai Ge Xing" "a horse of a thousand gold is not for sale, a limited period of time before the palace strange", these women workers are also engaged in economic activities of a commercial nature. In addition to weaving cloth for sale, there were also female traders who made garments for sale, and this kind of business was similar to the present-day tailor. In Chang'an during the Tianbao period, "there was a woman who sold clothes called Zhang Fifteen Niang". There were many women engaged in this kind of economic activity, which was also due to the gender requirements of manufacturing and the different division of labor between men and women.
Three, metallurgy
Ancient metallurgy is a high technical content of the industry, the average person is not easy to get this technology. Therefore, in the history of the commercial nature of the smelting industry records are very few. The smelting industry to make a living as a businessman to Luoyang widow GaoWuNiang most famous, and is the husband industry wife successor. "Luoyang Gao Wu Niang, beauty in color, remarried Li Xianren. Li Xianren is the heavenly banishment also, since the friendship with Gao's, always living in Luoyang, to yellow and white self-employment. Gao was able to pass on his skills. After her husband's death, Gao Wuniang continued to "work with yellow". After mastering this smelting technology, Gao Wuniang became rich very quickly, incurring the jealousy of others, and was denounced. "After the sale of silver mostly, for the Square Division of the lawsuit".
Four, other industries
Tang Dynasty businesswomen engaged in other commercial transactions, basically also closely related to people's daily life consumer goods. There is to sell vegetables to make a living, "sell vegetables home crone", "sell vegetables to give the night"; there are to sell flowers to earn a small living expenses, the monk Minchu on the road, "met a woman selling flowers". There were also women selling pigments along the street. In Taiping Guangji, it was recorded that a man "traveled to the market and saw a beautiful woman selling hu powder". While running a catering business, Banqiao San Niang Zi also rented out animal power on a temporary basis, and "when the public and private carriages were not enough, they were cheaply valued to help them.
In the highly competitive commercial trade, the Tang Dynasty history books also recorded a number of businesswomen who became rich because of business. In addition to the above mentioned smelting of the yellow and white of the industry of Gao Wu Niang, "compilation of tombstones of the Tang Dynasty" mentioned in the Yang's is also a successful businesswoman with business acumen, people say that it will be "management of property, will be the method of the Tao Gong, solid water and drought without fear, good and bad fortune have the funds. Taiping Guangji Lu is also a businesswoman, book, "Tianbao, Qinghe Cui, home in Xingyang", his mother Lu "dry in the rule of life, the family is quite rich. Other unnamed business success of women, history books are not lacking in records: Tang Yu Gan County Kitchen Wang Li transfer, on the way to meet a widowed businesswoman, is "Jia's wife. Husband died ten years, within the flag pavilion, still have the old business. The day of the restaurant twilight home, the day win money three hundred, it can be carried out".
In addition to the fixed place for commercial activities of women traders, there are also some female traders selling goods around. Bei Meng Zuoyan" volume 8 records, the late Tang Dynasty scholar Zhao Zhongxing to chivalry, once, in a Zen garden in Suzhou and a widowed female merchants named Jing Thirteen Niang acquaintance, female merchants "because of admiration for Zhao, and then with the carrier back to Yangzhou". During the Yuanhe period, Xie Xiaoe was an "appraiser woman" who traveled with her father and husband to the rivers and lakes to carry out some kind of commercial trafficking activities. The righteous and generous businesswoman Jing Thirteen Niang did business in the Suzhou area. Among these businesswomen, there were also a number of unscrupulous female traders. They used second-rate goods and shorted catty in the commercial trading in order to obtain huge profits. Taiping Guangji, Volume 134, "Xie's", recorded that the female trader, Xie's, sold wine for lack of catty and was retributed after her death. "When I was born, I dealt in wine and made a small amount of liters, but I took too much of the price and measured the wine less, and now I am sitting for this crime, and I have been sold to a family in the northern mountains as a cow. Recently was sold with the Dharma Realm Temple Xiahou division, now will I to the south of the city to plow rice fields, very hard". Perhaps it is because their wealth incurred the envy of others and were slandered and compiled into stories to warn future generations. But there is no denying the presence of unscrupulous business practices among them as well.
As far as the female merchants of the Tang Dynasty themselves are concerned, they themselves have the following characteristics: first, in terms of their age, most of them are relatively old. For example, Gao Wu Niang in Luoyang married two husbands, the age should not be small; East of the old woman selling shoes is also the twilight of the people and so on. Secondly, from the point of view of their marital family, they are generally widows and orphans. For example, the widow Wen in Yuecheng County, Kangzhou, who was in the business of selling cloth. Furthermore, these businesswomen operated businesses with lower costs, smaller business scales, and more fixed business locations. Most of them were concentrated in the middle of relatively safe and stable urban cities and towns, and even though the commercial activities here were more frequent and convenient for trading, this may also have some relationship with the physiological and psychological characteristics unique to women.
In short, the compatible and open social atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty and the prosperity of commercial trade were the necessary conditions for the existence and prosperity of female merchants in the Tang Dynasty, which to some extent promoted the development of female business activities in the Tang Dynasty and provided a broad social background for the social and social activities of the female groups in the Tang Dynasty; on the other hand, the behavior of the Tang women's extensive and active participation in the social and commercial business activities also reflected the Tang Dynasty's social and cultural On the other hand, the extensive participation of Tang women in social and commercial business activities also reflects the openness of Tang society and culture. The Tang Dynasty was the most brilliant era for women's social and economic activities in ancient times, and laid the foundation for women's commercial activities in later generations. Although the female merchants of the Tang Dynasty did not form a certain scale, the scope of business, business content and male groups can not be compared, but its cultural connotation, the social significance of the role of women, the Tang Dynasty female businessmen have been given a certain deeper social significance.