Makers
Merchant / Entrepreneur
Merchants who traded, ran trading houses and founded enterprises
17people
On a river quay, loaded camels rest before a warehouse of stacked bales, with a balance scale and abacus on a table and green ceramic jars in front; porters carry bundles toward a large sailing ship on the right, and blank banners hang at the warehouse.
Merchants are people who ran trade and set up commercial or industrial enterprises, such as great traders, owners of trading houses and modern industrialists. Their deeds appear in histories, notebooks and business records; the trading deeds of very early figures come mostly from later tradition and are marked as such. They differ from master craftsmen in being remembered mainly for commerce, even when they also made the goods they sold.
People in this role
- Wang HaiDates unknown; a pre-dynastic Shang ancestor
- Fan LiDates unknown; late Spring and Autumn period
- Zi Gongc. 520 BCE–c. 456 BCE
- Lu Buweic. 292 BCE–235 BCE
- Zhuo WangsunDates unknown; active late in Emperor Jing's reign and early in Emperor Wu's
- Pu Shougeng1205 CE–1290 CE
- Fang Yuluc. 1541–c. 1608
- Cheng Dayue1541 CE–c. 1616 CE
- Hu Zhengyanc. 1584–c. 1674
- Cao Sugong1615 CE–1689 CE
- Wang Jie'anDates unknown; mid-Qing, active c. Qianlong and Jiaqing reigns
- Lu KuishengDates unknown; active in the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns (1796–1850)
- Hu Xueyan1823 CE–1885 CE
- Zhang Jian1853 CE–1926 CE
- Du BaolinDates unknown; selling pear-syrup candy with sung stories in Hangzhou from 1905
- Rong Zongjing1873 CE–1938 CE
- Fan Xudong1883–1945
No people in this role for that dynasty.