Sibao today is a cluster of impoverished villages in the mountains of western Fujian. Yet from the late seventeenth through the early twentieth century, it was home to a flourishing publishing industry. Through itinerant booksellers and branch bookshops managed by Sibao natives, this industry supplied much of south China with cheap educational texts, household guides, medical handbooks, and fortune-telling manuals.

It is precisely the ordinariness of Sibao imprints that make them valuable for the study of commercial publishing, the text-production process, and the geographical and social expansion of book culture in Chinese society. In a study with important implications for cultural and economic history, Cynthia Brokaw describes rural, lower-level publishing and bookselling operations at the end of the imperial period. Commerce in Culture traces how the poverty and isolation of Sibao necessitated a bare-bones approach to publishing and bookselling and how the Hakka identity of the Sibao publishers shaped the configuration of their distribution networks and even the nature of their publications.

Sibao's industry reveals two major trends in print culture: the geographical extension of commercial woodblock publishing to hinterlands previously untouched by commercial book culture and the related social penetration of texts to lower-status levels of the population.

Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tables, Maps, and Figures xv
 Notes to the Reader xxi
1 Introduction: The Sibao Book Trade and
Qing Society 1
 The Expansion of Commercial Publishing
 in the Qing 8/
 Sources for the Study of Sibao
 Publishing-Bookselling 20
 
 Part I
 The Business of Book Publishing and
 Bookselling in Sibao
2 The Setting: Minxi and Sibao 35
 Minxi 35/ Sibao and the Zou and Ma
 Lineages 57
3 The Origins of Publishing and the
 Production of Books
 in Sibao 79
 The Beginnings of Publishing in Wuge
 and Mawu 79/ The
 History of the Zou and Ma Publishing
 houses: An Overview 84/ Producing Books
 in Sibao 93/ Conclusion 124
4 The Structure of the Sibao Publishing
Industry 126
 Publishing Houses as Household
 Industries Within the Zou
 and Ma Lineages 127/ The Income from
 Publishing-
 Bookselling 145/ The Use of
 Earnings 149
5 "We are all brothers": Household
 Division, the Proliferation
 of Publishing Houses, and the
 Management of Competition 159
 Family Division and the Development of
 New Publishing
 Houses 161/ Managing Intra-Lineage
 Competition Among
 Publishing Households: Customary Rules
 and Practices 177/
 Managing Interlineage Competition 186
6 Sibao Bookselling Routes 189
 The Book Market in
 Sibao 190/ Bookselling Networks
 Outside Sibao 192/ The Pattern of Sibao
 Bookselling:
 Why They Went Where They
 Went 206/ Conclusion 230
7 Sojourning Bookselling and the
 Operation of the
 Branch Shops 235
 Life on the Road: Itinerant
 Bookselling 236/ Branch
 Bookstores 252
8 Sibao's "Confucian Merchants" in Minxi
 Society and the Late Imperial Economy26
 8
 "Confucian Merchants": The Image of the
 Sibao Publisher-
 Booksellers 269/ The Zou and Ma
 Publishing Families as
 Local Gentry 276/ The Sibao Publisher-
 Booksellers in the
 Late Imperial Economy 288
 
 Part II
 Sibao Imprints
9 The Nature and Sources of Sibao
Imprints 305
 Overview of Sibao's Output 306/ The
 Sources of Sibao
 Texts 309
10 Educational Works 321
 Primers and Glossaries for Beginning
 Students 326/ Beyond
 "Primer Literacy": Supplemental Texts
 for Elementary
 Education 349/ Textbooks for
 Composition 358/ Poetry
 Anthologies and Manuals 367/ The Heart
 of the Curriculum:
 The Classics 374/ Beyond the Four Books
 and Five Classics 396/ Conclusion 402
11 Guides to Good Manners, Good Health,
and Good Fortune 410
 Household Encyclopedias and Guides to
 the Rituals of Daily
 Life 411/ Medical and Pharmaceutical
 Manuals 428/ Guides
 to Good Fortune: Almanacs, Fengshui and
 Divination Manuals,
 and Morality Books 449/ Conclusion 470
12 Fiction and Belles-Lettres 476
 Fiction 478/ Drama and
 Songbooks 499/ The Elite Arts:
 Poetry Collections and Calligraphy and
 Painting Albums 506/
 Conclusion 510
13 Sibao's Customers and Popular Textual
Culture in the Qing 513
 Audience and the Prices of Sibao
 Imprints 513/ The Production
 Quality of Sibao Imprints 519 Sibao and
 Popular Textual
 Culture 523/ The Stability of Sibao's
 Popular Canon 529
14 The Diffusion of Print Culture in Qing
China 535
 Sibao in Context: Other Commercial
 Publishing Sites of the
 Qing 536/ The Circulation of Texts in
 the Qing 548/ The
 Book Cultures of the Qing 553/
 Literacy, Social Status, and
 Political Power 559
 Appendixes
A Transport Routes Within the Min-Gan-Yue
 Region 573
B Value of Woodblocks from the Juxian
 tang and Dawen
 tang, 1897 577
C Genealogical Charts 578
D Sibao Publishing Houses and Publisher-
 Booksellers*
E Sites of Sibao Bookselling and the Zou
 and Ma Booksellers*
F Sites of Zou and Ma Migration in the
 Qing*
G List of Sibao Imprints*
 Reference Matter
 Works Cited 603
 Index 637