Expanding Possibilities 387
between the island and Jiangmen or Canton allowed the junks to make
several voyages annually.^144
The development of Shanghai escalated after 1843, when it was
declared one of the βive Treaty Ports after the Opium War. The Min-Yue
merchants became even keener to establish themselves in this boom
town. Among the keenest of all were the Fujianese merchants who had
long set up their operations for the coastal and foreign shipping there.
The Fujianese numbered between 50 to 60 thousand and could be
“generally classiβied into four classes, namely, ofβicials, gentry, merchants
and laborers, the last of whom were made up of hired hands and seamen
on board the ships”.^145 Those arriving from Guangdong were even more
numerous. One source suggests a βigure of 80 thousand.^146 Among the
different merchant groups in Shanghai, the Fujianese were the most
βinancially solid, thanks to their ability to provide effective linkages
between the two major networks of the north- and the south-bound
coastal trade, not to mention the Nanyang trade.^147
In his investigation Rutherford Alcock, the British Consul in
Shanghai, supported the observation that the junk trade in Shanghai in
the early 1850s remained robust. There were more than 3,000 vessels
of between 25 to 100 tons to be found in the harbor. Some 1,300 had
arrived from the northern ports. They conducted two return trips each
year and their cargoes were worth 1,330,000 dollars in total. Around a
thousand junks were making two to three trips between the south and
Shanghai, carrying sugar and some 12,000 tons of rice. The majority
were from Fujian. Taking both the coastal and foreign junk trade into
consideration, the imports of the native junk trade in Shanghai for the
year 1851 amounted to 9,680,000, while the βigure for exports was
4,053,499 dollars, the import being two to three times more than the
export trade.^148
No fewer than 1,500 trading junks of different tonnage were involved
in the busy shipping routes between Shanghai and Shandong. The
- FO 228/136, no. 151, Harry Parkes in John Bowring to the Earl of Malmesbury,
Encl. 10, pp. 73b‒74b. - Gao Hongxia 高红霞, Shanghai Fujian ren yanjiu (1843‒1953) 上海福建人研
究 (1843‒1953) [A study of the Fujianese in Shanghai, 1843‒1953] (Shanghai
renmin chubanshe, 2008) , pp. 50‒1, 59; and Song Zuanyou, Guangdong ren zai
Shanghai, pp. 37, 43, 47. - Gao Hongxia, Shanghai Fujian ren yanjiu, p. 47; and Song Zuanyou, Guangdong
ren zai Shanghai, p. 30. - Gao Hongxia, Shanghai Fujian ren yanjiu, p. 108.
- FO 228/136, no. 151, Rutherford Alcock in John Bowring to the Earl of
Malmesbury, Encl. 5, p. 19a, and Encl. 6, p. 31.