The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The landed scholar-officials, also referred to as the gentry, lived in the provincial centers alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. A new group of wealthy commoners-the mercantile class-arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior. Many merchants were rich enough to visit and bribe princes and dukes. Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gaining wealth and prestige.

Once the canals were built, some merchants and craftsmen became rich. A really successful merchant might ride in a cart with a coachman, buy a title from an emperor, and built a mansion surrounded by pools and gardens. This absolutely infuriated officials and peasants. The merchants didn't till the soil. They weren't nobles. There ought to be a law, to stop them from doing this, and for a while, there was a law, forbidding them from riding in carts and chariots and also from wearing silk.

Huo Kuang sponsored a conference to inquire

Each individual's family was his chief source of economic sustenance, security, education, social contact and recreation and even his main religious focus, through ancestor-worship. Of the five well-known relationships by Confucianism (those between the ruler and the subjects, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger of the brothers and between friends), three were determined by kinship and family ties. Traditionally, China's whole ethical system tended to be family-centered not oriented toward God or the State.

Most non-farm enterprises, commercial or craft were similarly small businesses run by families. Ownership of businesses was either as sole traders or in partnerships diversification of business types were also found, typical examples are restaurants holes manufacturing, banking department stalls. The basic units were owned by families, which took a long-term view of their prospects and attempted to shift resources and family personnel from occupation to occupation to adapt to economic circumstances. In all cases, the long-term goal of the head of the family was to ensure the survival and prosperity of the family and to pass the estate along to the next generation. The most common family strategy was to diversify the family's economic activities. Such strategies lay behind the large number of small-scale enterprises that characterized traditional Chinese society. Farming and landowning were secure but not very profitable. Commerce and money lending brought in greater returns but also carried greater risks. A successful farm family might invest in a shop or a food-processing business, while a successful restaurant owner might buy farmland, worked by a sharecropping peasant family, as a secure investment. All well-to-do families invested in the education of sons, with the hope of getting at least one son into a government job. The consequence was that it was difficult to draw a class line dividing landlords, merchants, and government workers or officials.

This concept and practice of the superiority of educated men was clearly related to authoritarian family pattern of old China, which provided a basis for social order in political as well as domestic life. The role of the emperor and his officials was merely that of the father. Just as the emperor was the father of the whole nation, so a county magistrate was called "parent " of the people in that county. In feudalistic China only educated men could become officials through a special kind of examination; the Imperial Examination System. Even today many young people still hold an ideal of " study hard for officialdom ".

In late traditional times, when merchants were becoming more excepted in higher society, businessmen found it a common occurrence that they were not able to fully handle all their responsibilities. They would then commission someone to manage one particular business. The manager would assume all daily duties and be accountable to the owner. This system was popular, if certain members of the gentry did not want their entrepreneurial actions to be public knowledge, there were some cases where managers would attempt to blackmail owners into decisions, to prevent managers from disclosing details of store ownership. The factors of employment in to these businesses was usually due to kinship ties, not only due to the social attitudes of the time, but members of the same family or village, were considered trustworthy and honest. Th

Some common words found in the essay are:
Structure China, BC Technological, God Chinese, Asia China, China Song, Warring Periods, Confucianism Legalists, Huo Kuang, Autumn Period, Examination System, peasant families, traditional china, late traditional, civil service, government favor, peasant farmers, chinese society, social changes, social status, basic units,
Approximate Word count = 2325
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)