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China: A Historical Geography of the Urban pp 91–114Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Tunxi: Urban Sectoral Agglomeration in a Regional Centre of Tea Trade

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Abstract

This chapter situates the socio-economic development of Tunxi since the mid-Ming Dynasty within a wider, global context of trade by examining its tea-making industry and the peripheral supporting sectors. The geographical advantages of Tunxi were converted into a business currency that had as much driven local urban expansion as had attracted a demographic influx of migrant workers from all over the country. In a nutshell, the core industry helped to conceive the urban embryo, which, when mature, would turn outwards to its suburbs for expansion and further development. The developed urban centre could not be sustained unless through the provision of a large number of consumption and financial services, with intensive land utilization due to the concentration of populations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The County of Wuyuan was transferred from under the jurisdiction of the Anhui Province to that of the Jiangxi Province—a process during which local residents from Wuyuan had a number of movements to “Return to Anhui” (huiwan), supported sympathetically by the other five counties from the original jurisdiction of Huizhou Fu. This was an interesting demonstration of the emotional attachment, as well as the psychological identification, of local residents to the traditional area of Huizhou .

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (No. 16BZS125).

The authors would like to thank Prof. Hsiu-Ling Kuo, Dr. Yannan Ding, Prof. Maurizio Marinelli, and other participants at the international workshop “Urban Historical Geography of China” for their constructive suggestions on a previous version of this paper. The authors also wish to thank “La Pour Société” (Weishe), an interdisciplinary scholarly forum for early-career social scientists at Fudan University, for the constructive remarks and suggestions made by the members thereof when this paper was presented in its draft forms.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Chinese Historical Geography, Shanghai, P. R. China

    Yi Zou

  2. Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (IAS), Fudan University, Shanghai, P. R. China

    Xi Lin

Authors
  1. Yi Zou
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  2. Xi Lin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Yannan Ding

  2. University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

    Maurizio Marinelli

  3. Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Xiaohong Zhang

Glossary

Glossary

Pinyin

Paraphrase

Chinese

baipixiang

White crude box

白坯箱

Daoguang ershiliunian bingwu jin Guang tengqing zhangce

Transcribed Ledger Book of Entering Guangzhou in the Twenty-Sixth Year of the Reign of the Daoguang Emperor (1846 AD)

道光二十六年丙午进广誊清账册

Guangzhou Shibosi

Canton Maritime Trade Supervisorate

广州市舶司

mielouzuo

Bamboo-crate workshops

蔑篓作

Picha

Hyson-skin

皮茶

qianzhuang

Money shop

钱庄

shachuan

Large junks

沙船

Taixia Xunjiansi

Taixia police office

太厦巡检司

Songluo

Sunglo tea

松萝茶

Wanli yuncheng

Ten thousand li Journey to Guangzhou

万里云程

wu hui bu cheng zhen

No Huizhou merchants, no town

无徽不成镇

xiangzhan

Box warehouse

箱栈

Xichun

Hyson

熙春茶

xizhan

Tin-can warehouse

锡栈

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Zou, Y., Lin, X. (2018). Tunxi: Urban Sectoral Agglomeration in a Regional Centre of Tea Trade. In: Ding, Y., Marinelli, M., Zhang, X. (eds) China: A Historical Geography of the Urban. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64042-6_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64042-6_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64041-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64042-6

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