Part III Wave Riders of Commerce and Trade in Shanghai

Shanghai boasts a large number of shops and firms run by an equally large number of Ningbo businessmen. Even the depressing 1941 accounted for 2,230 Ningbo firms in Shanghai. Ningbo merchants scattered in almost all traditional and new trades in modern China, leaving their footprints in every part of China, South East Asia, Europe and America. In the most prosperous commercial area of Shanghai, Ningbonese engaged in the trades they were most adept at and set up a large number of time-honored firms dealing with what was most essential to people’s livelihood, like foodstuff, local specialties, gold and silver, Chinese and western medicine, western cloth and clothing. 

1. Fish, Salt, Rice and Sugar Trade
The Ningbo merchants who arrived in Shanghai in the early days found great business opportunities in a number of products, such as the rice and homespun cloth in Songjiang, sugar in Nanbo, and sea food in Ningbo. Each city could supply what the other needed and the market was simply huge. In the Jiaqing Period (1796-1820), Fang Hengning opened “Fung Tai Ho” sugar firm and in 1821, Fang Jietang set up another “Fung Yi Ho” sugar firm in Nanshi. The business of sugar and food helped the Fang’s to get their “first bucket of gold”.

2. Southern and Northern Specialty Trade
Ningbo was a distributing center for southern and northern specialties, a major business of Ningbo natives. In the 1930’s, there were over 300 such specialty firms in Shanghai, with “Shao Wan Sheng, San Yan, Tian Fu, Ye Da Chang and Da Tong” as the “Big Five”, all run by Ningbo merchants. Of the similar Ningbo shops in other cities, the most famous was “Sun Chun Yang Southern Specialty Store” in Suzhou. Food and catering trade also prospered and there emerged some time-honored companies like Tai Kang Foodstuff and Lao Zheng Xing Restaurant.

Sun Chun Yang Southern Specialty Store: In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Ningbo merchants mainly dealt in specialties and sea food. Sun Chun Yang Southern Specialty Store, with a history of over 200 years, was well-known in the south of the Yangtze River and was recorded as follows: “No store can compare with it for the strict shop rules and well-chosen materials.” The store developed its own running mode and had six sections: local specialties, seafood, bacon and sausage, sauce and pickles, preserved fruits, and candles, and the buyer paid at the counter to get a ticket for their goods in the respective section.

3. Gold and Silver Trade
“Ningbo gold and silver businessmen are mainly from Cixi and Zhenhai and they are everywhere in China.” Most of the famous gold and silver shops in modern Shanghai, Tianjin and Hankou were Ningbo businesses, of which the best known were Lao Feng Xiang, Fang Jiu Xia, and Yang Qing He. Their jewelries set the fashion of the then Chinese society, thanks to their high quality, new style and good workmanship. 

Lao Feng Xiang Established by a Ningbo merchant, it is a century-old brand in Chinese jewelry industry, finding its origin in “Vong Ziang Jewelry Store” set up in 1848. With a history of over 150 years, the jewelry store has branches in many cities in China and its well-known “Danfeng” brand has enjoyed a good reputation and popularity at home and abroad. 

4． Chinese and Western Medicine
Active in traditional Chinese medicine, Ningbo Bang established, in addition to Tong Ren Tang, a number of well-known traditional Chinese pharmacies such as Da Ren Tang, Jing Xiu Tang, and Tong Han Chun. Meanwhile, they also invested in western medicine and among the dispensaries they set up, the Sino-British, the Anglo-Chinese, the Great Eastern, and the International are the best in the trade, and the “Phostose” and “Chi Lai Blood Tonic” they made were once rather popular. 

5．Machine-woven Cloth and Western Suit
The fashion-setting Ningbo Bang had dealt in machine-woven cloth and woolen fabric ahead of others. Ho Pao-Lin, a native of Ningbo, started Ching Fong Co., Ltd, the first woolen firm run by Chinese in China; Chen Xianben developed the first series of worsted camel hair cloth; “San Tai Ziang” enjoyed great popularity in the general merchandise trade. In terms of western suits, Ningbo Bang, known as Hong Bang tailors, not only started the first western-style suit store in China, “Ho Chiang”, but monopolized the western-style suit trade in Shanghai through “the Six Giants on the Nanjing Road.”