Guozhuang Trading Houses and Tibetan Middlemen in Dartsedo, the “Shanghai of Tibet”

ABSTRACT

Within the field of Sino-Tibetan frontier studies, there is very little indepth scholarly discussion about commerce, trade, and the people who facilitated these activities across the Sino-Tibetan border; studies in English are particularly sparse. This article aims to contribute to a wider and deeper understanding of the nature of trade on the Sino-Tibetan frontier and the role of women as facilitators by looking at some of the actual “dealmakers.” In the border town of Dartsedo—the “Shanghai of Tibet”—guozhuang (trading houses, Tib. achak khapa) not only evolved into convenient spaces for travelers to come to rest, but also were spaces of flux. It was in these trading houses that traditional notions of gender, class, and hierarchy were called into question and played out in unexpected ways. Women came to dominate the guozhuang because the work was likened to managing a household and therefore viewed as a lower-status occupation. This notion was reinforced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Chinese values and customs were introduced into the local society through frequent intermarriages between Han and Tibetan inhabitants in Dartsedo.

In the late seventeenth century, the Sino-Tibetan frontier town of Dartsedo (Ch. Ta-chien-lu or Kangding)—the “Shanghai of Tibet”¹—became a major center for Sino-Tibetan commerce, where Han Chinese, Tibetan, and Hui (Chinese Muslim) traders gathered to engage in vibrant trade. A unique setup emerged, known in Tibetan as kortso (literally meaning “circle” and denoting a tribe or assembly) (Ch. guozhuang).² Kortso was originally a political institution established by the Chakla “king” (Ch. Mingzheng tusi), the indigenous ruler of the region (Qian Zhongkang 2012).³ Initially, the main functions of most aristocratic families in charge of guozhuang under the king were to draft official documents and to receive Chinese and Tibetan officials traveling through the town; some performed duties such as guarding the town and managing the land, livestock, tea, clothes, and other affairs for the king.

The convergence of traders in Dartsedo provided an opportunity for guozhuang owners (Tib. achak khapa) to be actively involved in facilitating trade and to become brokers for Han Chinese and Tibetan traders. As trade and commerce in the town became increasingly vigorous, guozhuang transformed from primarily bureaucratic organizations into commercial organizations. Guozhuang served as warehouses and packing establishments; their owners acted as intermediaries, innkeepers, and guarantors of loans. Nevertheless, aristocratic families in charge of guozhuang were still obliged to perform the aforementioned duties for the Chakla king.

Sino-Tibetan history is not just a history of confrontations and struggles for hegemony over Kham, although scholarly works tend to focus mostly on military conflict and contention over control of the region. Another side of the story concerns the role of trade and mutual accommodation. This article aims to fill a lacuna in the field of Sino-Tibetan frontier studies, as there is still very little in-depth scholarly discussion about commerce and trade across the Sino-Tibetan frontier, particularly in English.⁴ Given the paucity of archival sources and Tibetan sources, the study of guozhuang and their owners is arduous, and has to rely on mostly Chinese and oral sources. During the early twentieth century, a number of Chinese scholars made initial forays into the subject, and there has recently been an increase in scholarly interest in the cultural aspects, economic functions, and business dealings of guozhuang.⁵ This article supplements those efforts and provides new insights into guozhuang. Exceptionally, Thubten Püntsok’s article (2010) in Tibetan provides a complete list of names of these trading houses based on his interviews. The interviews I conducted during the period from 2010 to 2014 further support his findings. My discussion of the politics of gender in the economy of guozhuang in this article sets it apart from earlier studies of guozhuang.

This article examines and portrays guozhuang as “places of deal making.” In her study of traders in Montpellier in medieval France, Kathryn Reyerson similarly describes the innkeepers as deal makers who “cultivated their contacts, kept their ears to the ground, and watched the trends of supply and demand” (2001, 8). While innkeepers in Reyerson’s work were of ill repute and low status and were considered crafty, the heads of guozhuang were nobles. Looking at the historical background and the emergence of trading houses as middlemen and brokers in Sino-Tibetan trade in Dartsedo sheds light on the role their owners played in brokering deals and acting as key trading facilitators. I will address the following questions: How did guozhuang, originally political agencies, later become mainly economic organizations? What were the environmental conditions and motivations behind this transformation? In particular, I will look into the politics of gender in the economy of guozhuang. Though it is generally assumed that trade is a male-dominated activity, some well-known and prominent guozhuang owners were women; this was especially the case during the Republican period (1912–1949). I will show that we cannot argue that traditional Tibetan society exhibited total gender equality. Rather, women began to dominate the guozhuang sector because it was likened to managing a household and therefore viewed as lower-status work. Furthermore, this idea of guozhuang involving domestic work was later reinforced by the acculturation of the region when Chinese values and customs were introduced into the local society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

THE “SHANGHAI OF TIBET”: THE FRONTIER TOWN OF DARTSEDO

To understand why guozhuang appeared in large numbers only in the frontier town of Dartsedo, we need to trace back to their origin and recall the commercial topography of Dartsedo itself. As Dartsedo rose to become the entrepôt and distribution center for Sino-Tibetan trade in the early eighteenth century, there was a need for a commercial infrastructure to facilitate trade. Dartsedo is synonymous with the Sino-Tibetan frontier; its history goes back to the early and mid-fourteenth century (Zhang T. 1974, 8591; Zhang Y. 1985, 69). Being situated in a valley with a good water supply, protection on the lee side of the mountains, and grassy fields gave Dartsedo an exceptional position that evolved into the junction of the ancient tea-horse trade route connecting Tibetan regions in the west with inland Chinese regions in the east. Because it was built at an altitude of 2,800 meters (9,000 feet), it was found suitable not only by Tibetan caravans⁶ but also by traders and tea porters from inland China, who generally could not bear the climate and lack of oxygen on the plateau.⁷ Lin Hsiao-ting notes Dartsedo’s strategic importance with regard to trade, transport, and politics and describes it as “an important contact zone for all ethnic groups in the region” (2006, 58–59). Numerous trading routes converged here from Yunnan, Liangshan, Batang, Tibet, Kardzé, Ngawa, and Sichuan.⁸

By the mid-thirteenth century, Dartsedo had become an unofficial market for Tibetan traders to exchange tea and other goods (Ren N. [1934] 2000, 428–431).⁹ In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, after the Ming court stipulated that “all tributes from Ü-Tsang (Central Tibet) and Dokham must travel via the Sichuan Road” (Cao 2003b, 336), the number of traders and merchants traveling through Dartsedo increased considerably. In the mid-seventeenth century, as a consequence of the Qing government relaxing its monopoly (Cao 2003a, 271–272), the private tea trade moved to Dartsedo, which led to its emergence as the new center for Sino-Tibetan trade.¹⁰ Its position as the center of Sino-Tibetan trade and commerce was consolidated in 1696. At that time, Dartsedo was formally set up as a trading site by the Qing court, and a commissioner (garpön, Ch. yingguan) was dispatched to supervise trade and administration there (Gu, Wang, and Qiong 1982, 109–111; Dorjé Tseten 1995, 239–243).¹¹ By 1699, 800,000 packs of tea (8 million kilograms) were sold each year in Dartsedo (Gu, Wang, and Qiong 1982, 170).¹² In 1702, to promote trade, the Qing court dispatched two officials to set up the Dartsedo customs office (Dajianlu chaguan) to supervise trade (Gu, Wang, and Qiong 1982, 177–178). They also built the Chakzamkha Bridge (Luding qiao) over Gyarong Gyelmo Ngülchu River (Ch. Dadu he) in 1706 (Gu, Wang, and Qiong 1982, 183) and established a direct route to Dartsedo via Wesegap Gorge (Ch. Wasigou) (Feng 1994, 1:8). The transformation of Dartsedo into a major distribution center for both Chinese and Tibetan goods is evidenced by this description by a Chinese officer in the early eighteenth century: “At present there were [sic] soldiers garrisoning [in Dajianlu], where Han Chinese and Tibetans gathered to engage in business. It can indeed be called a busy trade center^” (Jiao [1716–1721] 1985, 15).

In 1729 the Qing court set up Dajianlu (Dartsedo) Sub-prefecture in Dartsedo.¹³ The town had become the most important political and economic center on the Sichuan-Kham borderland and the most important town on the Sichuan-Tibet trading route. Qing civil and military institutions cohabited with the indigenous institutions of the Chakla king. By 1730, Dartsedo had become the theater for vibrant and burgeoning interactions among the Tibetan, Chinese, and Hui traders who converged there.¹⁴

During the mid-seventeenth century, the social structure of the town gradually transformed. Predominated by traders, the population included the Chakla king, the king’s headmen and Tibetan subjects, Tibetan monks, Qing officials and soldiers, Chinese porters, and Hui civilians (Sichuan sheng 1995, 417).¹⁵ A gradual influx of foreign residents augmented this mix. As early as 1860, French missionaries started to build a Catholic church and an abbey in Dartsedo (Wu J. 1994, 31; Sichuan sheng 1995, 452–453). In the 1900s British and American missionaries established a presence in the town (Sichuan sheng 1995, 454). During this period, Dartsedo expanded its reach to include international trade networks (Coales 1919, 242–247). The circulation of foreign currencies confirms the international scope of trade and commerce there. As Scott Relyea examines in his contribution to this issue, in the 1880s Indian rupees were plentiful and were a recognized currency in Dartsedo, and Russian rubles were also found in increasing numbers (Pratt 1892, 141; Wang C. 1985, 70).

The goods transported to Dartsedo by Chinese merchants included tea and other daily necessities, silk, satin, and non-staple foodstuffs; tea and silk made up the bulk of imports. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Western travelers noted that firearms and Japanese matches were among goods brought to Dartsedo by Chinese (Grenard 1904, 295). Local products brought to Dartsedo by Tibetan traders consisted mainly of musk (Tib. latsi), skins, and various medicinal herbs. In addition, traders from Dergé, Chamdo, and Central Tibet also brought gold and silver from India (Ren H. [1936] 1990, 259; Yang G. [1988] 2009, 4).¹⁶ As the British consul in Dartsedo, Oliver Coales, pointed out, musk was the main product for export (1919, 242–247).¹⁷ The prosperity of trade and commerce in Dartsedo in the 1930s seems to justify the British naturalist Paul Huston Stevenson’s (1932, 599) description of Dartsedo as the “Shanghai of Tibet.”

THE EMERGENCE, DEVELOPMENT, AND DECLINE OF GUOZHUANG IN DARTSEDO

Dartsedo’s high economic status and volume of trade led to the emergence of guozhuang as facilitators of business deals. The guozhuang also controlled and oversaw the practicalities of day-to-day commerce in the town. As Patrick Booz rightly points out, guozhuang were much more than mere “hinges” to transfer goods; they stood at the heart of Khampa society as loci of economic, religious, and political activities (2011, 265). The Chinese term guozhuang first appeared in an entry concerning the submission of the Chakla king to the Qing court in 1666 in Dajianlu zhilüe, compiled during the reign of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735–1796): “The Chakla king Tendzin Drakpa led the chiefs of the thirteen guozhuang originally subordinating to him to submit [to the Qing court]” (Dajianlu zhilüe 2003, 19). Here the term seems to refer to a political organization or institution under the Chakla king. The prominent Chinese scholar Guo Changping has speculated that this organization was probably similar to a company, platoon, or squad of the present-day Chinese army (2006, 74–76). Yazhou fuzhi, compiled in 1735, recounts that “there were thirteen guozhuang, with thirteen headmen and with a total of 465 households under the jurisdiction of the Mingzheng tusi (the Chakla king)” (Cao 2003a, 271). Guozhuang were initially the residences of noble headmen under the authority of the Chakla king. After the Chakla king moved to Dartsedo in the mid-seventeenth century, the king built four houses to make it convenient for his subordinate headmen to have an audience with the king, provide corvée labor and services, and pay tribute. When the king had his four chamberlains (Tib. nyerchen zhi, Ch. sida guanjia) moved to Dartsedo, continuing to use the old appellation, the houses were still called kortso (Ch. guozhuang). These four are understood as the four earliest guozhuang in Dartsedo. Following the example of these chamberlains, various original kortso built similar houses in Dartsedo. Eventually, all thirteen headmen moved to Dartsedo and built thirteen guozhuang. To summarize, initially an administrative organization, guozhuang evolved into trading houses in Dartsedo (Guo 2006, 74–76).

Often a single house with its own entrance and courtyard, these homes had two floors: residents lived upstairs and kept their belongings downstairs. The houses featured spacious courtyards and had exteriors paved with flagstones. Their capacious backyards included areas for horses and for storing firewood and fodder. Smaller guozhuang had only a single courtyard; major ones had two or three courtyards. Due to a paucity of records, it is impossible to trace the development of these houses over time. We can gain some insight into the complexity of running such enterprises based on available information about the Wesekyap trading house, the largest and wealthiest among the forty-eight trading houses still operating in 1939.

The Wesekyap trading house occupied an area of 4,000 square meters and had a floor space of over 2,000 square meters. It had as many as eighty rooms and three courtyards for traders’ horses and yaks (Liu S. 1988, 20; interview with the Butruk Rinpoché, August 2, 2013).¹⁸ Another major trading house, Gyarongsé (Mujia guozhuang), had two courtyards, one storehouse, two two-story guest houses in the front, and one main building for the family, with a garden and a shrine in the back (interview with Pema of Gyarongsé achak khapa, June 25, 2014).¹⁹ Smaller trading houses like Yakdruptsang (Yangjia guozhuang) and Janyer Tokma (Wangjia guozhuang) had only about ten rooms (Yang G. [1988] 2009, 3). It was against this backdrop that guozhuang owners emerged as facilitators of business deals by acting as middlemen between Hui or Han traders and Tibetan traders.

A vivid account by the British naturalist A. E. Pratt captures the actual physical layout and daily life of a guozhuang (which functioned as an inn):

The inn in which I had my quarters was fairly comfortable. In front was a yard and stabling for a few horses, and a pole was erected in it from which strings of paper prayers [hung] fluttering in the wind. Round the walls also bits of stick were inserted here and there and similarly ornamented. The roof of the kitchen was flat, and on it there was a small dome-shaped erection of clay, in which every day, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, the branches of a sort of coniferous plant were burnt with religious ceremony. . . . Caravans used to stop here, and on their arrival the beasts of burden were unloaded in the yard and then driven along a passage running through the house to an enclosure at the back, where they were left for the night.

(1892, 136–137)

THE ORIGIN AND ETYMOLOGY OF THE TERM GUOZHUANG IN CHINESE

These trading houses came to be known more commonly by the Chinese term guozhuang. Each guozhuang had its own Tibetan name, which all the Tibetan traders and local residents used. Collectively, the trading houses were known in Tibetan as achak khapa (meaning “the eloquent, respectable host”).²⁰ According to oral tradition, there were forty-eight achak khapas.²¹ By 1942–1943, when the famous Chinese historian Tan Yinghua did his fieldwork in Dartsedo, he found that only thirty-two original guozhuang still survived. According to him, eight out of those thirty-two guozhuang had females as their heads, and nine out of the thirty-two were jointly managed by daughters of guozhuang and their Han or half-Chinese and half-Tibetan husbands, with the latter serving as heads (Tan [1942–1943] 2003, 646, 649). Achak khapa is not a common term in the Kham dialect; in the Lhasa dialect, it refers primarily to hostesses of these guozhuang. Achak is an honorific term used by Central Tibetans to respectfully refer to any women older than themselves, and khapa literally means “the eloquent one.” After the mid-eighteenth century, the guozhuang business in Dartsedo entered a period of great prosperity; at this time, the clients of these guozhuang were mostly from Central Tibet. It would have been natural for them to use this honorific term to refer to hostesses of guozhuang, who were capable and renowned for their diplomacy. Later, the term achak khapa became the collective name both for guozhuang—meaning “the place where the eloquent one lives”—and for hosts and hostesses of guozhuang (interview with Dorjé, July 2014; Zeng and Yang 1989, 14).²²

There are various explanations for the possible etymology of the term guozhuang in Chinese. Some trace it to Tibetan terms such as kutsap (representative or envoy), kudra (noble), gosa/gora (courtyard), dokyi (courtyard paved with slate), or gordro (circle dance) (Zeng and Yang 1989, 14–15; Thubten Püntsok (2010, 12). Others argue that guozhuang was originally a Chinese term meaning “pot posts” (referring to a temporary stove) because houses were built where Tibetan traders set up tents and made “pot posts” to provide lodging for traders; houses built on such sites continued to be called guozhuang (Liu S. 1988, 5; Gao and Lai 1985, 131).

THE EMERGENCE OF GUOZHUANG IN DARTSEDO

Clearly, guozhuang in Dartsedo emerged among the nobility under the Chakla king. The heads of guozhuang, who performed the function of innkeeper, served as subordinates and ministers for the Chakla king; originally a bureaucratic and political class, guozhuang evolved into a commercial organization. What were the reasons for this transformation?

During the Qing period, the Chakla king ruled over the Kham region as one of the four tusi (Ch. si da tusi).²³ As shown above, when the Chakla court moved to Dartsedo in the mid-seventeenth century, guozhuang moved to Dartsedo as a political agency under the king. Guozhuang played a limited role in commercial activities because Sino-Tibetan trade had yet to flourish.

In addition to the local administrative system of the Chakla king,²⁴ there was a guozhuang system made up of officials of different ranks who were selected from among the heads of local aristocratic families. In other words, the heads of guozhuang also had court duties and obligations to the Chakla king. A popular saying in Dartsedo attests to the fact that the Chakla king was the supreme ruler of Dartsedo, the Wesekyap achak khapa was in charge of the civil administration, and Dorjedrak Monastery was in charge of religious affairs: “The master is the Chakla Gyelpo (king), the official administering people is Wesekyap (Ch. Wasidiao), and the lama is Dorjedrak Monastery (Ch. Jingang si)” (Anzhu 1991, 103; Gao and Lai 1985, 131). According to oral tradition, there were five achak khapas: Wesekyap, Zhabpetsang, Gyarongsé, Gonjowa, and Saké Gangpa (see appendix), who were popularly known as the five trustworthy aides (Tib. nangmi nga). The first four were families who served as the king’s four chamberlains; the fifth was considered the “inner minister,” the king’s close follower. According to tradition, the four original guozhuang provided corvée labor and services to the Chakla king. As the Chakla king’s authority and prestige grew, especially after he had taken on the responsibility of supervising various chieftains beyond Dartsedo and urging them to pay taxes and tribute to the Qing court, tribute-paying missions undertaken by these chieftains dramatically increased the demand for transportation corvée (Tib. ulak). The king ordered the establishment of eight more guozhuang to meet the additional demands. In 1666, the Chakla king’s guozhuang system was still rather small, comprising only thirteen trading houses (Dajianlu zhilüe 2003, 19). In 1696, the Qing Colonial Affairs Office (lifanyuan) issued a directive to establish Dartsedo as a trading market (Gu, Wang, and Qiong 1982, 144; Dorjé Tseten 1997, 239–243). Consequently, the primary function of guozhuang became the reception of Tibetan traders who stayed in Dartsedo to engage in trade. Importantly, this practice set in motion the process of transforming guozhuang into an organization that combined political and economic functions. Also around this time, the term guozhuang was used to refer to residences of aristocrats under the Chakla king.

With the expansion of the king’s territory and the trade boom in the mid-seventeenth century, the number of guozhuang increased even more. By the eighteenth century, there were forty-eight guozhuang, located mainly at the northern and southern gates of Dartsedo. Among them, there were four chamberlains, four junior ministers (Tib. nyerchung zhi; Ch. Sixiao nieba), four treasurers (Tib. chakdzö zhi; Ch. si guanjia), and four secretaries (Tib. drungyik zhi; Ch. si zhongyi) (Anzhu 1991, 104), who were from sixteen aristocratic families, known as guozhuang owners, that made up the first rank of officials in the Chakla court (see Appendix). The first rank of officials also included those from the family of the “Inner Minister” (Tib. nanglön) and of Saké Gangpa. These individuals enjoyed power and status equal to the high-ranking ministers. The second rank of officials, holding miscellaneous positions, came from the remaining aristocratic families; they were respectively in charge of livestock, hides and furs, corvée labor and taxes, music and dance, and so on (Kangding minzu 1994, 59).

The primary responsibility of the guozhuang initially included managing all of the king’s internal and external affairs. In return for their services at the Chakla court, guozhuang were granted land in perpetuity; revenue from taxes on this land constituted their main source of wealth. Even during the Republican period, all of the old guozhuang still owned a certain amount of land (Liu S. 1988, 3).²⁵ The limited income from land rent might have contributed to the evolution of guozhuang owners as actively involved in commercial activities. However, in the 1880s, W. W. Rockhill interpreted guozhuang obligations as primarily military in character: officers (Tib. dingpön, zhelngo) looked after small units of soldiers for security reasons and in order to carry out the king’s orders (1891, 220).

Guozhuang supported the Chakla king’s obligation to provide logistical support to Qing troops and to receive officials traveling through Dartsedo: they supplied provisions, dispatched men to engage in fighting, and provided corvée labor to carry provisions for the troops (Liu S. 1988, 3). At this time, there were forty-eight guozhuang. The amount of corvée labor each guozhuang was required to provide had decreased; consequently, guozhuang owners could afford to receive itinerant traders and solicit business for them (Li Y. 1941, 350).

In addition to serving as officials at the Chakla court, from the eighteenth century onward, guozhuang owners began to be actively involved in trade in Dartsedo. Their status as ministers or minor officials under the Chakla king gave them an eminent social position, a large social network, and strong political influence. Taking advantage of their status, guozhuang owners served as brokers between Tibetan traders and other traders, mainly Han and Hui. The increased involvement of guozhuang owners in trade coincided with the gradual decline of the Chakla king’s position and authority in the eighteenth century. From 1699 until 1745, a crisis over the absence of a legitimate heir for nearly fifty years was a major factor in the decline of the Chakla ruling family (Sichuan sheng 1995, 418–419). As pointed out above, the stronger Chinese presence in Dartsedo forced the Chakla king to reckon with the power and authority of the Qing (Tsomu 2009, 73). While the Dajianlu subprefect was in charge of Han subjects in the region, the Chakla king continued to rule the indigenous population. In Dartsedo, the coexistence of dual administrative structures—the civil and military institutions of the Qing as well as the indigenous institutions under the Chakla king—had considerable impact not only on the scale of Han immigration but also on the cultural, social, and economic lives of Dartsedo inhabitants (Tsomu 2009, 82). The sizable number of Han immigrants in Dartsedo resulted in a mixed community with Han and Tibetan inhabitants. Hence, to a certain degree, the significant influx of Han immigrants in Dartsedo diluted the power and authority of the Chakla king.

By 1911 the Chakla king was stripped of his official title; his office was abolished during the reform known as gaitu guiliu (the reform of replacing indigenous leaders with government-appointed officials). Although guozhuang were no longer an administrative system under the Chakla king, their former position gave them a commercial advantage in engaging in economic activities (Yang J. 1993, 94). As the economic status of the guozhuang grew, a new relationship formed with the Chakla royal family, and a new status was acquired through marriage alliances. Kinship ties between the guozhuang were close (Liu S. 1988, 27). As shown in the chart below, many guozhuang trading families were related to the Chakla king’s family via direct or indirect marriage alliances. There were also marriage alliances between guozhuang trading families.

In the Tibetan borderlands of Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, there were institutions similar to the guozhuang. Gansu and Qinghai had xiejia (house of repose; hostel; innkeeper) and yangke (itinerant sheep traders).²⁶ However, owners of hostels were mostly Hui, sometimes Han, who were fluent in Tibetan and Mongolian. In addition, the xiejia system in the Tibetan borderlands of Gansu and Qinghai was viewed as a special type within the xiejia system. The xiejia system initially emerged in inland Chinese regions during the Ming and Qing periods and facilitated trade, collecting taxes, handling lawsuits, and dealing with affairs concerning Mongols and Tibetans on behalf of the local government (Yang H. 2015, 108–110).²⁷ The guozhuang in Dartsedo were not charged with the duties of collecting taxes or dealing with Tibetans on behalf of the local Qing government.

Yet another regional example is similar to guozhuang. These are the functions of what Yang Hongwei refers to as zhurenjia (the host), who served as a middleman between Han and Hui traders and Tibetans in nomadic regions in Amdo. While the owners of the guozhuang hosted Tibetan traders and formed long-term relationships with the latter in Dartsedo, zhurenjia received Han or Hui traders (Yang H. 2015, 109; Wang S. 1988, 182–183). Another similarity is that the majority of zhurenjia were also indigenous officials.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND PROSPERITY OF GUOZHUANG IN DARTSEDO

As discussed above, the transformation of guozhuang into institutions that promoted trade was closely linked to the evolution of Dartsedo as the main center of Sino-Tibetan trade; more importantly, this transformation was closely linked to Qing identification of the town as an administrative and military center. The cohabitation of Qing administrative and military institutions with the indigenous institutions of the Chakla king made these changes possible. The influx of traders from various regions resulted in a high demand for local products; with burgeoning trade, the town grew and became a vibrant commercial center. Guozhuang served as brokers for Han, Hui, and Tibetan traders who gathered in Dartsedo. As the guozhuang prospered, they engaged a special group of men and women called jadruwa (Ch. fengchagong)—or “tea stitchers”—to perform the task of repackaging packs of tea delivered to Dartsedo on the backs of Han tea porters (Ch. beifu) into units suitable for transport by animals to Tibetan areas. Since the early nineteenth century, jadruwa had been closely linked to Dartsedo’s burgeoning skin and tanning industry (Ch. pifangye) (Wu J. 1994, 33–35; Booz 2011, 292–295).

The increase in the Qing dynasty’s power over the Sino-Tibetan frontier marked the decline of the Chakla king’s rule. Furthermore, from the mid-seventeenth century until the Republican period, the Chakla king’s family had been in close contact with local Chinese officials in Dartsedo and had been praised as being “loyal and obedient” to the Qing court and to Republican authorities (Sichuan sheng 995, 418–419; Tsomu 2014, 51).

Over the years, the king’s family had studied Chinese culture in order to strengthen Dartsedo’s ties with the Qing and later with Republican China. With the growing Chinese population and the developing role and presence of Chinese traders, there was a shift in the cultural milieu in Dartsedo. To survive and prosper, guozhuang owners had to take good care of Tibetan traders; more importantly, they had to be alert to the performance and trading activities of Han and Hui traders and had to learn about their customs, habits, and taboos. The Republican-period historian Tan Yinghua ([1942–1943] 2003, 648–649) rightly points out that in the late Qing and Republican period guozhuang owners were mostly influenced by Chinese culture. He further claims that the strong influence of Chinese culture “reflects the trend of the present ethnic culture and the result of the expansion of the scope of intermarriage, and it has been induced to have the tendency to be Sinicized” (Tan [1942–1943] 2003, 649). The Chakla royal family manifested aspects of this acculturation trend. During the Republican period, the Chakla king’s family employed private Chinese tutors; they also sent their children to modern schools in Dartsedo and Chengdu. The royal family began to use the Chinese surname “Jia.” Similarly, guozhuang began to use Chinese surnames.²⁸

GROWTH OF THE GUOZHUANG CLIENTELE

When the guozhuang began their commercial activities, their clientele was mostly made up of traders from Central Tibet and other Tibetan areas. These traders were reluctant to venture into the Chinese lowlands, as they needed not only lodging but also cultural and commercial brokers who would provide the logistical support and resources required to help with commercial transactions in an alien environment. As I discuss below, bilingual guozhuang owners initially served as brokers between Tibetan and Chinese traders. Their role was similar to that of brokers or middlemen in markets in inland China, and their clientele included Tibetan and Han Chinese traders. Key Tibetan traders from the main monasteries, indigenous leaders, and headmen in Kham played prominent roles in Sino-Tibetan trade, and their business interests extended to all of the Tibetan regions and as far away as India. At the end of the Qing period and the beginning of the Republican period, key traders serving as agents for the main monasteries and high-ranking reincarnated lamas also brought trade goods from British India to Dartsedo (Gao 1985, 127).

Han Chinese traders represented another important group of clients for the guozhuang. Since the middle of the fourteenth century, a growing number of Shaanxi merchants had been trading at Dartsedo. At first they mainly relied on guozhuang owners to sell tea and other bulk goods to Tibetan traders. They gradually established their own branch shops in various places in Kham (Shi and Zou 2011, 5–11). During the Republican period, there were over eighty stores owned by Shaanxi traders along Shaanxi Street. Major stores had branches in Jyekhundo (Yushu), Kardzé (Ganzi), Shanghai, and Chongqing (Sichuan sheng 1995, 168).²⁹ As Kham came under Sichuan’s jurisdiction during the Qing period, traders from Sichuan followed the traders from Shaanxi. In the 1900s, when the Qing government carried out the “reform of replacing indigenous leaders with government appointed officials” (gaitu guiliu) in Kham, it implemented a policy of encouraging Han Chinese to migrate to Kham. At the beginning of the twentieth century, “no less than 200,000 Chinese traders visited Dartsedo” (Sichuan sheng dang’an guan 1990, 221). While Sichuan traders could be divided into several groups according to their place of origin, they could also be classified by the type of goods they traded—that is, cloth, tobacco, paper, china, tea from Ya’an, and so on. A small number of traders were from Yunnan and Beijing. A large number of Chinese and Tibetan traders gathered in Dartsedo, where their goods had to be distributed; they relied on owners of guozhuang to act as middlemen, thus providing a sufficient number of clients for the guozhuang.

By the late nineteenth century, increasing numbers of foreign missionaries, scholars, and naturalists became clients of guozhuang. For instance, British explorer William Gill, British representative at Chongqing Edward Colborne Baber;³⁰ American explorer and diplomat William Woodville Rockhill; British naturalist A. E. Pratt; and the great explorer Prince Henri of Orleans stayed at the guozhuang owned by a former Tibetan official under the Chakla king (Pratt 1892, 133, 134, 198). Pratt reports that the landlady of the guozhuang was a Tibetan who was very well off (Pratt 1892, 138). Annie Taylor, an English explorer and evangelical missionary to China, wrote about her stay at an inn run by a Tibetan woman whose husband was a businessman (Carey 1901, 285), and Francis H. Nichols (1905, 339–356) mentions that he took two rooms at a Tibetan inn. Along with the increase in the number of Chinese and Tibetan traders in Dartsedo, the scope of trade for guozhuang steadily expanded. The traditional “tea-horse trade” was gradually replaced by the “borderland tea” trade. As discussed above, the goods traded via guozhuang included imported goods and exported goods. Imported goods included goods from India via Central Tibet and goods from Central Asia via southern Xinjiang and Central Tibet. The expanding scope of trade greatly enhanced the economic power of the guozhuang. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, guozhuang in Dartsedo gradually began to decline. As links were forged between different ethnic groups from various regions, cultural and language barriers began to fall. The pivotal role of guozhuang as translators also petered out. Increasing numbers of Tibetans spoke Chinese, and Chinese traders began to make an effort to learn Tibetan through their daily contacts. There is no evidence that Hui served as intermediaries between Tibetan and Chinese traders, as did the Hui owners of xiejia (hostels) in other frontier regions, such as Qinghai and Gansu, mentioned above. Though the number of Hui inhabitants in Dartsedo reached as many as two thousand by the Republican period, most were poor and lacked the economic resources to serve as intermediaries. They mainly opened restaurants, engaged in petty business, or became butchers (Ma L. 2007, 484; Kangding minzu 1994, 261; Sichuan sheng 1995, 438). In addition, owners of Tibetan guozhuang had already filled the niche to serve as middlemen between Tibetan and Han traders in Dartsedo; Hui inhabitants in Dartsedo did not have abilities and skills to compete with guozhuang owners.

The decline of the original guozhuang is described by Ren Hanguang, who once served as the magistrate of Nyakchukha County (Yajiang xian), and the secretary of the Xikang Provincial Nationalist Party headquarters, as follows:

[In 1936,] no more than thirty-seven guozhuang out of the original forty-eight still existed. Since the Republican period, there were ten guozhuang, which were either bought by new owners or were built anew. Among them, only twenty-two still exclusively received Tibetan traders and could be said to have kept the traditions of the original guozhuang. While seven more had muleteers as their clients, the rest of them merely bore the name guozhuang but were no longer involved in business. Even among the twenty-two guozhuang that continued to receive only Tibetan traders, only ten had good business. One can clearly see the wretched economic conditions of guozhuang.

(Ren H. [1936] 1990, 259)

Since the number of traders staying at some of the smaller guozhuang was declining, the trading houses were forced to accommodate other guests, including muleteers and casual laborers (Yang G. [1988] 2009, 9). The perception by many that the guozhuang catered to lower-status clients did not enhance their reputation. Some found new uses for the buildings. For instance, Chu-nyi Barpa achak khapa (Ch. Qiujia guozhuang) rented half of his guozhuang to the Kuomingtang branch school in Dartsedo and the other half to government employees in Dartsedo (Yang G. [1988] 2009, 9) (see figure 1).³¹ The final blow came after the “Democratic Reform,” the anti-feudal land reform carried out by the Chinese government, was enforced in Dartsedo. In 1956, guozhuang in Dartsedo had completely died out.

One reason for their decline was the waning of the borderland tea trade and the supplantation of Sichuan tea by cheaper Yunnan tea in the 1930s and 1940s; at this time, Yunnan merchants and south Kham traders were

Figure 1.

Photograph of Chu-nyi Barpa achak khapa (Ch. Qiujia guozhuang) taken by Sun Mingjing, 1944.

Source: Kamba Media Network website.

bypassing Dartsedo altogether (Cheng 1941, 258; Booz 2011, 314). As clearly shown above, the fortunes of Dartsedo and its guozhuang flourished thanks to the borderland tea trade. By the Republican period, the trading routes were frequently blocked due to the unstable political situation and constant civil wars; consequently, trade and commerce in Dartsedo began to wane, intensifying the decline of the guozhuang. The influx of cheaper Yunnan tea also caused a sharp drop in demand for Sichuan tea, contributing to some original guozhuang in Dartsedo closing down and being sold (Sichuan sheng 1995, 164). Some Chinese scholars (Tan [1942–1943] 2003, 650–651; Yang [1988] 2009, 10) argue that the impact of the influx of tea from India and the drop in trade in the Indo-Tibetan border region was a factor in the decline of guozhuang. As Patrick Booz (2011, 159, 163, 174) correctly points out, the influx of tea from India never greatly affected the borderland tea trade in Kham.³² Although tea exports from Sichuan declined accordingly, there were other avenues of trade from which traders could profit. In the period from the 1930s to the early 1940, goods from India became the main commodity exchanged in Dartsedo, and once again it was traders from Central Tibet and large trading families, such as Pangdatsang and Sandutsang, who were the main importers of goods from India.³³ During this time, E. D. Sasson & Co. also engaged in entrepôt trade in Dartsedo, and its business dealings extended as far as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Calcutta (Fuxing Kangding 2014, 37–38). The importation of Indian goods was lucrative; Dartsedo once again became the main distribution center, which gave the town and guozhuang temporary renewed importance and prosperity (Sichuan sheng 1995, 164).

The improvement of roads and transportation facilities in the 1950s also contributed to the decline of guozhuang. As Dartsedo became the distribution center for the Sino-Tibetan trade, it suffered from bumpy and uneven road conditions and primitive transportation facilities. In 1954 the Sichuan-Tibet motor road was completed and, consequently, Dartsedo lost its role as an entrepôt and the guozhuang were subsequently destroyed by Communist social reforms.

THE POLITICS OF GENDER IN GUOZHUANG

The increasingly important role of guozhuang in the economic life of Dartsedo also led to another interesting shift: over the course of the early twentieth century, these institutions went from being managed by men to being managed mostly by and identified with women. Many Chinese and Western writers alike have noted the role played by local women in trade activities. The Sichuan Tongzhi reported:

In Ta-chien-lu (Dartsedo), Tibetan girls over the age of fifteen were hired by tea traders, who were called shabao [probably shag po in the Kham dialect, meaning “friend”]. Whenever tea merchants sold their goods, any interpreting and negotiation of the sale price were done by these girls. They were no different from brokers.

(Huang and Zhang [1733] 1984, 74–75, cited in Chun Y. 2008)

Another Chinese source, the Longshu Jiuwen, describes an interesting phenomenon regarding the role of women in borderland trade: “The customs of Ta-chien-lu . . . is that women do not marry into their husband’s families, and they have often had Han Chinese merchants marry into their families . . . They are in charge of all Chinese merchants’ business deals with barbarians [Ch. fanyi, referring to Tibetans]” (Wang S. [17th–18th c.] 1991, 167).

Figure 2.

“The Maid of Dartsedo” (Dajianlu shaonü). An oil painting of Chöying Drölma (Ch. Mu Qiuyun), the famous female head of Gyarongsé achak khapa by Wu Zuoren, 1944.

Source: China Artists Association website.

For Chinese merchants and traders raised in the Chinese Confucian tradition, in which gender divisions prevented women from playing a part in trade, this leading role occupied by local Tibetan women was totally new and unheard of.³⁴ The Chinese fascination with local women innkeepers is manifested in many forms—for example, in 1944 the well-known Chinese painter Wu Zuoren did a portrait of Chöying Drölma (Mu Qiuyun), the famous female head of Gyarongsé achak khapa (see figure 2).³⁵ In 2004 and 2005, these women and guozhuang became the subject of a popular television soap opera, The Ballad of Kangding (Kangding qingge), and were featured in a novel entitled Lovers of Kangding (Kangding qingren).

It is interesting to note how this transition came about and why women became prominent figures in running and managing guozhuang by the early twentieth century. In Tibetan society, especially in Kham, the status of women in households and local society had always been very different from their status in Chinese society. Thus, in many accounts written by Chinese officials and historians, Tibetan women are portrayed as having near-equal status to men. Wang Yehong, the head of the Xikang Provincial Police Station (Xikang sheng jingchaju juzhang) and commander-in-chief of Xikang Garrison Headquarters (Kangding jingbei silingbu siling), observed that

Chinese households are male-dominated. Men are the ones who run businesses or do hard labor, and it is rare that women alone can make a living for their family. But it is not the case for people from Kham. There, the family organization is purely dominated by women and the situation is, more or less, such that a family would not be a family if there were no women....

(1938, 26–27)

This account shows that Tibetan women at the time played a prominent role not only in family life but also in social and economic life, and were active in both domestic and outside affairs. Wang further reports that a family would surely go bankrupt without the help of a woman, since Tibetan men “usually spent most of their time wandering about except during periods of harvest” (1938, 127). Tibetan women perceived their roles at home and in society quite differently from Chinese women. Historically, the ideal pattern of labor division within a Han Chinese family was represented by the saying “the man plows and the woman spins and weaves”—that is to say, men took charge of external affairs, and women were responsible for household affairs. The Chinese noted that Tibetans, in particular Khampas, tended to do exactly the opposite: “Trade in Tibet was mainly conducted by women, but sewing and needlework was done by men alone” (Zhou [1804] 2006, 94). Chinese sources (Hu P. 2013, 756; Wu [18th c.] 2003, 84) often mention examples of Tibetan women being active participants in agricultural work and trade. The comparatively higher status of women in Tibetan society is noted by the famous Chinese historian Ren Naiqiang: “Tibetan (Ch. xifan) women manage property and are the heads of families. Women can inherit family property and official positions. [They] allow men to marry into their families. There are usually more women chieftains and indigenous leaders than men” ([1934] 2000, 341). The last statement seems to grossly exaggerate the reality in Kham; nevertheless, it still suggests that Tibetan women seemed to have played a prominent role in local politics, at least when compared with their counterparts in inland China.³⁶

Some Chinese writers (Zhang Q. 2005, 118; Zhou X. 2003, 47) tend to attribute the prominence of women in social and commercial activities to Tibetan men’s greater religious involvement; however, this has to be understood in terms of the perception of labor, not the absence of men. It cannot be said that traditional Tibetan society exhibited total gender equality. Women came to dominate the guozhuang sector because it was mostly likened to managing a household and therefore viewed as lower-status work. Since men as heads of guozhuang were originally seen as officials under the Chakla kings in the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when guozhuang functioned primarily as an administrative system, they mainly dealt with the affairs of the state and politics, including receiving tribute-bearing Tibetan dignitaries and Chinese officials.

This idea of guozhuang involving domestic work was later reinforced by the acculturation of the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it was during this period that women came to dominate the management of guozhuang. Through frequent intermarriages between Han and Tibetan inhabitants in Dartsedo,³⁷ Chinese values and customs were gradually introduced into the local society and started to take root in Tibetan families. Male family members would often engage in long-distance trade or concurrently serve as government officials during the Republican period; thus, the task of dealing with all the affairs associated with guozhuang fell to women.

In addition, the social capabilities of female guozhuang owners, such as their language proficiency and diplomacy in the highly interactive social setting of trade, probably equipped them to perform the many functions linked to the guozhuang. As reflected in the discussion above about the Tibetan name achkla khapa for guozhuang owners, women owners’ proficiency in various Tibetan dialects and Chinese provided them with the eloquence required to serve as brokers and to facilitate and successfully seal business deals by prevailing on buyers and sellers in business transactions. Because women owners were aristocratic, they were positioned to be well informed and sophisticated, to know the necessary etiquette, and to develop the ability to socialize and negotiate with ease. Their aristocratic backgrounds also offered them the possibility, at the turn of the twentieth century, of receiving an education in Chinese schools in addition to a traditional Tibetan schooling.

Women also came to dominate in the management of guozhuang because of the changing role and function of these institutions that ended up being managed like a household. And in local Tibetan practice, “when Tibetan men grew up, they were usually taught to keep accounts or a particular skill; but Tibetan women were taught to weigh . . . and to trade, or they were taught to weave” (Zhou 1804 [2006], 71).

GUOZHUANG OWNERS AS DEAL MAKERS

The Function of Guozhuang as Inns and Warehouses

Since guozhuang provided lodging and storage services for Tibetan traders, they served a dual purpose as inns and warehouses. However, guozhuang were different from regular inns, which offered only accommodation, in that they took approximately 2 to 4 percent in commission according to the volume of goods traded by the Tibetan clients staying at the guozhuang (Kangding guozhuang xianzhuang 1933, 740; Baobao 1988, 31). In addition, with regard to the clientele, regular inns were generally open to all guests, so they might never be the same from one week or month to the next. However, all guests in the guozhuang were Tibetan traders, and each guozhuang usually had a long tradition of putting up the same Tibetan traders, who were associated with particular regions or monasteries.

According to Popo Döndrup Rinchen (Bao Wenguang),³⁸ the owner of Wesekyap achak khapa, each guozhuang had a fixed clientele because the Chakla king assigned Tibetan traders from various regions to stay at certain guozhuang. These assignments were meant to avoid any rivalry and to minimize the risk of disputes. This eighteenth-century practice lasted until the Republican period (Liu S. 1988, 19). In addition, Tibetan traders came to rely on the owners of particular guozhuang to trade information and ensure business deals, and they formed special bonds with certain guozhuang. For instance, when the Gyarongsé achak khapa was completely destroyed by fire, probably during the Anti-Japanese War (1937–1945), the family could not afford to rebuild the guozhuang. Traders from Dargyé Monastery who regularly stayed at the guozhuang are said to have donated a great amount of money and to have rebuilt the entire guozhuang, without payment. The owner of Gyarongsé spontaneously exempted these traders from any commission for three years (interview with Pema, June 25, 2014).

The loyalty between guozhuang owners and Tibetan traders is also reflected in how traders behaved when innkeepers had to mortgage their guozhuang to take out personal loans. Under these circumstances, some long-term clients would temporarily stay at other guozhuang until the mortgage term had expired and the owners had recovered their guozhuang; these traders would then go back to live in the original guozhuang (Tan ([1942–1943] 2003, 640). Other traders would not look for a new guozhuang; instead they would stay in the same guozhuang with the old owner, but the new owner would secure business deals for them and any subsequent commission would be paid to the new owner (Yang G. [1988] 2009, 2). The strength of this relationship between guozhuang owners and Tibetan traders is also evidenced by a special mortgage practice: under exceptional circumstances, a guozhuang owner could mortgage Tibetan traders who regularly stayed at the guozhuang, just as they would mortgage property. Once the mortgage term had expired, the owner could reclaim the traders. The close relationship between guozhuang owners and the Tibetan traders who stayed at their guozhuang was clearly more complex than a standard business relationship and was founded on moral values and mutual solidarity.

Chinese traders also established stable business relations with various heads of guozhuang, and some even became related to them through marriage. For instance, the Gyarongsé achak khapa was once related by marriage to the Yu family, who owned the large wealthy Fuhe tea factory in Yingjing and the Fuhe tea shop in Dartsedo. Chöying Drölma (Ch. Mu Qiuyun), the female owner of Gyarongsé achak khapa, married Yu Mohou, the fifth son of the Yu family. Since Yu Mohou’s mother came from the Jiang family, who owned the famous Gongxing tea factory and was renowned among Tibetans for its best-quality tea brand called Rikdzin Dorjé (renzhen duoji), the Gyarongsé achak khapa was related to the Jiang family, too.³⁹

The Function of Guozhuang Owners as Brokers and Deal Makers

While guozhuang owners, as aristocrats and subordinates of the Chakla king, enjoyed great popularity and prestige among the people, they also frequently received tribute-bearing envoys dispatched by eminent lamas and indigenous leaders from Tibetan areas and important Qing officials traveling through Dartsedo. They were generally well informed and were familiar with the situation in both inland China and in Tibetan regions. For Tibetan traders, guozhuang owners were natural trading allies because of their common faith and language. But equally importantly, guozhuang were sources of business information and news. A language barrier prevented Chinese traders from dealing directly with Tibetan traders; both parties needed people who were fluent in various Tibetan dialects and Chinese, familiar with market conditions, well informed, and well connected, and who enjoyed a certain degree of popularity and prestige in local society to act as go-betweens in order to facilitate business deals. At the time, no one was worthy of such a role except aristocrats under the Chakla king. Though Shaanxi traders made great efforts to learn “pidgin” Tibetan while doing business in Dartsedo (Ren N. [1934] 2000, 418), owing to the strong influence of the old practice known as “Han Chinese not traveling to the ‘barbarian’ (referring to Tibetan) territory and barbarians not venturing into Han land” (Ch. han buru fan, fan buru han), trade in the early and mid-Qing period continued to be carried out mainly through the owners of guozhuang, who acted as brokers (Zhao and Qing 2003, 110). Indeed, there were mutual obligations and rights between innkeepers and Tibetan traders once they had established a stable business relationship; the key to such a relationship was a culture of honesty and credibility (Baobao 1988, 28–32).

As for Tibetan traders, in addition to the traditional practice of staying at the same guozhuang, they were also obliged to limit their activities to within the space the owners allocated to them. In the guozhuang, each trader would be allotted his room, warehouse, place to keep livestock, and some space to sew the tea packs and to dry tea. No trader would be allowed to encroach on anybody else’s designated space. If a trader needed to use another person’s space on a temporary basis, he had to ask permission from the other party; otherwise, he would be punished (Baobao 1988, 31).

Guozhuang owners had to fulfill a few obligations in order to act as middlemen for traders. Owners had to provide not only free food and lodging for the traders but also storage space for their goods. They were required to tend to horses, yaks, and mules. The innkeepers also usually helped traders find workers to sew tea packages for them in the courtyard (Baobao 1988, 30–31). Innkeepers were responsible for selling the goods brought by the Tibetan traders and purchasing goods for their return journey. It would seem that Tibetan and Chinese traders first bartered for goods via the innkeepers. In doing so, the business procedure was much simpler than later on, when Tibetan traders had to first sell their goods and then purchase the things they needed with the money they had received. In other words, the use of currency seemed to influence the way trade (bartering) was conducted (Lin 2005, 10–14). In the latter situation, after the trader’s goods had arrived at the guozhuang, it was the innkeeper’s responsibility to look for buyers and negotiate prices. If the goods brought by a Tibetan trader were in great demand, the innkeeper would invite Chinese merchants to examine the goods and negotiate the price. However, if the goods were not in great demand, the innkeeper would have to accompany the trader to visit Chinese merchants to try to sell the goods (Baobao 1988, 31–32). Similarly, after the goods Tibetan traders brought had been sold, the innkeeper would accompany the trader to purchase tea from businesses managed by Chinese merchants. Since the asking price and the offer for each business deal would have differed enormously, a few rounds of negotiations were usually necessary before either of the two parties would make any concessions. Only then would it have been possible to conclude a deal. When they were engaged in repeated negotiations, the Tibetan traders and the innkeeper would decide the price either by using a code word or by feeling each other’s fingers through their sleeves. When neither party was willing to make any concessions, or when it seemed that the deal would fall through, the guozhuang owner would mediate between the two parties. The guozhuang owner had to play fair when dealing with traders; the deal would have to be satisfactory for Chinese and Tibetan merchants alike. In sum, no matter whether the guozhuang owner helped to sell or buy goods, they would oversee the whole process until the money was paid and the goods delivered.

The role of innkeepers as mediators and facilitators of trade was demonstrated most acutely during business negotiations. It was customary for all business transactions to be conducted in secret by three parties: the buyer, the seller, and the innkeeper, who acted as mediator. No other third party could be present during the negotiations. If negotiations for the business deal proved successful, the buyer did not need to give a down payment, as his purchase was guaranteed by the guozhuang; similarly, the seller could not renege on the sale. In fact, the guozhuang was a place for trading goods, and in this sense, it functioned like a marketplace.

The transactions were never simple, and traders did not usually have recourse to wholesale or retail practices. It was common for a Tibetan trader to distribute goods to various Chinese buyers for them to sell and to only receive money or goods after the sale. This could only take place when a guozhuang acted as guarantor for the Chinese buyers. Similarly, if a Tibetan trader required goods but was unable to pay for them, Chinese sellers would provide the goods on the basis that the guozhuang served as a guarantor (Baobao 1988, 28–32). Selling goods on credit was a long-standing practice between Tibetan and Chinese traders, and the guozhuang owner always had to shoulder certain risks by acting as a guarantor for them (Liu S. 1988, 22).⁴⁰

CONCLUSION

Guozhuang were a unique historical and cultural phenomenon in the border town of Dartsedo. Initially, guozhuang emerged as a political institution with a military function under the Chakla king. By the mid-seventeenth century, when the Chakla king moved to Dartsedo, they had evolved into a bureaucratic or administrative system. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, guozhuang functioned mainly as inns, warehouses, brokerage houses, guarantors, and arbitrators. They played a crucial role in Sino-Tibetan trade at the start of the seventeenth century. Their fortune rose and fell according to developments in trade—particularly in relation to the tea trade.

Three successive transformations in the nature and functions of guozhuang took place. During the period of Chakla kings’ hegemony, guozhuang emerged as houses of nobility and played a bureaucratic role in the Chakla kingdom. This was also a period of limited trade, before Dartsedo had become the main stopping place on the Sino-Tibetan trade route. The second transformation took place after the Chakla king moved to Dartsedo. With this move, Dartsedo became not only the center of power for the Chakla king but also the hub of Sino-Tibetan trade. As Dartsedo emerged as the distribution center and entrepôt for trade, the Chakla king’s power and authority slowly declined and Chakla nobility subsequently saw its role gradually dwindle. By the eighteenth century, the guozhuang nobility had to diversify its role in local society in Dartsedo in particular and in the Sino-Tibetan frontier more generally. Flourishing trade along the Dartsedo route provided guozhuang with new opportunities and transformed their role into one of brokerage houses, inns, warehouses, guarantors, and arbitrators in commercial transactions. The third transformation concerns the growing prominence of women; by the beginning of the twentieth century, guozhuang had become synonymous with women owners.

As the town of Dartsedo that Western travelers referred to as the “Shanghai of Tibet” developed, guozhuang owners became leading middlemen in every aspect of economic life in the frontier region. They served not only a commercial role as brokers for traders and officials but also a role as cultural brokers and translators between the Buddhist Tibetan world and the Confucian world of China.

As Bianca Horlemann (2013) rightly points out, Tibetans actively traded within their own society and also participated in long-distance trade with neighboring countries. Nevertheless, we repeatedly come across statements made by Westerners, Chinese, and even Tibetans themselves that Tibetans were—and still are—not very adept at professional trading; moreover, there is a sentiment that the general population resents—respectively resents—the trading profession for religious reasons (Grenard 1904, 284–285; Liu C. 2002, 94; Mian 2005, 236–237; Fischer 2008, 24). While it is beyond the scope of this article to explore cultural and religious aversions to commercial trading, trading and deal making proved to be—in places like Dartsedo—essential to economic and political dynamics, as well as important skills in themselves. There is ample evidence that Tibetans were actively engaged in trade and commerce, and the absence and presence of trading has much more to do with capital and resources than with cultural traits.