Introduction to the club

A guild hall was a feudal group composed of fellow villagers or peers in cities during the Ming and Qing dynasties in China. It was founded in the early Ming Dynasty. The earliest guild hall known so far is the Beijing Wuhu Guild Hall built in the Yongle period. It became more prosperous during the Jiajing and Wanli periods, and reached its peak in the mid-Qing Dynasty. Even in the late Qing Dynasty, there were still only a few industrial guilds that broke through geographical boundaries. Most of the supra-regional industry organizations that emerged at this time appeared in the form of industry guilds. The emergence of a large number of industrial and commercial guilds during the Ming and Qing Dynasties played a certain role in protecting the interests of industrial and commercial workers under certain conditions. However, the combination of guild halls with local concepts and feudal forces also hindered the expansion of commodity exchange and social and economic development. Guild halls in the Ming and Qing Dynasties can be roughly divided into three types: most of the guild halls in Beijing were mainly gathering places for local bureaucrats, gentry and imperial examination scholars, so they were also called test halls; a few guild halls in Beijing and Suzhou, Hankou, Shanghai Most guild halls in industrial and commercial cities such as China are hometown guild halls with industrialists, merchants and gangs as the main body; most guild halls in Sichuan were established by residents who moved from Shaanxi, Huguang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong and other provinces after the Qing Dynasty. Fellow Immigration Hall. Most of the early guild halls were located in Beijing. During this period, the Beijing Guild Hall was mainly based on regional relations. It was a hometown organization and had little relationship with industrial and commercial people. After the mid-Ming Dynasty, a large number of guild halls with industrial and commercial nature appeared, and the guild hall system began to develop from a simple hometown organization to an industrial and commercial organization. The later industrial and commercial guild halls may also have origins and relationships with the ancient Chinese gang movement system. In the late Ming Dynasty, although industrial and commercial guild halls accounted for a large proportion, these industrial and commercial guild halls still maintained a strong regional concept, and most of them were still gang guild halls for industrial and commercial people.