page_title: Economy of the Han dynasty
section_title: Estate management and trade
hierarchical_section_title: Economy of the Han dynasty / Domestic trade / Estate management and trade
caption_attribution_description: English: Pictorial brick depicting a courtyard scene Eastern Han Dynasty (A.D. 25 - 220) Excavated at Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 1954 This brick, from the chamber wall of a rich and powerful family's tomb, depicts the home of a wealthy, influential Han official; it features a walled courtyard, house, bedrooms, halls, kitchen, well, and a watchtower. The host and his guest sit and drink in the inner courtyard, while two roosters fight and two cranes dance.
context_page_description: The economy of the Han dynasty of ancient China experienced upward and downward movements in its economic cycle, periods of economic prosperity and decline. It is normally divided into three periods: Western Han, the Xin dynasty, and Eastern Han. The Xin regime, established by the former regent Wang Mang, formed a brief interregnum between lengthy periods of Han rule. Following the fall of Wang Mang, the Han capital was moved eastward from Chang'an to Luoyang. In consequence, historians have named the succeeding eras Western Han and Eastern Han respectively.
  The Han economy was defined by significant population growth, increasing urbanization, unprecedented growth of industry and trade, and government experimentation with nationalization. Another large component of the government is that it was run by influential families who had the most money. In this era, the levels of minting and circulation of coin currency grew significantly, forming the foundation of a stable monetary system. The Silk Road facilitated the establishment of trade and tributary exchanges with foreign countries across Eurasia, many of which were previously unknown to the people of ancient China.
context_section_description: In the early Eastern Han, Emperor Ming passed laws which prohibited those involved in agriculture from simultaneously engaging in mercantile trade. These laws were largely ineffective, since wealthy landowners and landlords made significant profits from the trading of goods produced on their estates. Cui Shi (催寔) (d. 170 AD), a local commandery administrator who later served as an official in the central government's secretariat, started a winery business in his home to pay for his father's funeral. His fellow gentry criticized him, claiming the practice was immoral, but not illegal.
  Cui Shi's book Sìmín yuèlìng (四民月令) is the only significant surviving work on agriculture from the Eastern Han period, though about 3,000 written characters of the Fan Shengzhi shu, dated to the reign of Emperor Cheng of Han (33–7 BC), still survive. Cui Shi's book provides descriptions of rituals for ancestor worship, festival and religious holiday celebrations, conduct for family and kinship relations, farmwork, and the schooling season for boys. Cui Shi's book also provides detailed instructions on which months were the most profitable times to buy and sell certain types of farm-produced goods.
  The following table is modelled on Ebrey's "Estate and Family Management in the Later Han as Seen in the Monthly Instructions for the Four Classes of People" (1974). Ebrey writes: "... the same item was often bought and sold at different times of the year. The rationale for this is very clearly financial: items were bought when the price was low and sold when it was high." The specific amounts for each commodity traded are not listed, yet the timing of sale and purchase during the year is the most valuable information for historians. Missing from Cui Shi's list are important items which his family certainly bought and sold at specific times of the year, such as salt, iron farm tools and kitchen utensils, paper and ink (the papermaking process was invented by Cai Lun in 105 AD), as well as luxury items of silk and exotic foods.
  There was mass unemployment among landless peasants during the Eastern Han period. However, archaeological and literary evidence shows that those managing wealthy agricultural estates enjoyed great prosperity and lived comfortably. In addition to Cui's work, the inventor, mathematician, and court astronomer Zhang Heng (78–139 AD) wrote a rhapsody describing the rich countryside of Nanyang and its irrigated rice paddies. He mentions grain fields, ponds filled with fish, and estate gardens and orchards filled with bamboo shoots, autumn leeks, winter rape-turnips, perilla, evodia, and purple ginger.
  Bricks lining the walls of the tombs of wealthy Han were adorned with carved or molded reliefs and painted murals; these often showed scenes of the tomb occupant's estate, halls, wells, carriage sheds, pens for cattle, sheep, chickens, and pigs, stables for horses, and employed workers picking mulberry leaves, plowing crop fields, and hoeing vegetable patches.
  Small and medium-sized estates were managed by single families. The father acted as the head manager, the sons as field workers. Wives and daughters worked with female servants to weave cloth and produce silk. Very wealthy landowners who had a large peasant following often used a sharecropping system to similar to the government's system for state-owned lands. Under this system, peasants would receive land, tools, oxen, and a house in exchange for a third or a half of their crop yield.
caption: This incised Eastern-Han brick, from the chamber wall of a rich and powerful family's tomb in Chengdu, depicts the home of a wealthy, influential Han official; it features a walled courtyard, house, bedrooms, halls, kitchen, well, and a watchtower. The host and his guest sit and drink in the inner courtyard, while two roosters fight and two cranes dance.
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