Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... THE PROVINCIAL CLUB The second form of Chinese gild is the Hwei-kwan, "Club - house," sometimes, but not often, called Kung-so, the name generally given to the craft gild. It may be compared, in many of its attributes, to such associations of foreign merchants as the Steelyard, the habitat in London of the merchants of the Teutonic hanse. The chief interest attaching to the Steelyard is not, however, in its internal organisation, but in the relations between it and the staple at which it was established, in the privileges granted to it and the restrictions imposed upon it by the authorities, national or municipal, of the trade area in which it did business; and comparison of the methods of the East and the West will better be deferred until we come to consider the European factories at Canton, and their relations to the government and the merchant gild of Canton. The prime characteristic of the provincial club is that its membership consists entirely of officials and merchants foreign to the province in which it is situated, and to which they have been called by their official duties or by their business. It must be noted that the Imperial officials in China never exercise their functions in their native province, and are always alien to the people under their jurisdiction; and that Chinese merchants reach out their trade tentacles in all directions, and, while settling freely in any of the provinces, never take root, but hold themselves in clannish seclusion apart from the natives of the place. It must also be noted that the provinces of China should be thought of as kingdoms of an empire, not as counties or circles of a kingdom; their relation to the empire resembles in one aspect or another that of Scotland to the United Kingdom, of...
