Yuliang Wharf: A Lost World of Business Prosperity

A visit to Huizhou, Anhui Province to the west of Zhejiang Province would be incomplete without a visit to the relics that symbolize the past glory of the Huizhou business people. One of these imwharfant relics is Yuliang Wharf.

The wharf is said to be about 1.5 kilometers south of the county seat of Xixian County. After a ten-minute ride, I reached Lianjiang River. It was late April, 2010. Sunshine cascaded after a long spell of rain. The river was swollen, waters rushing past the ancient Yuliang dike. Yuliang Town stands on the northern bank of the river just beside the dike. The town looked nice with arrays of houses of white wall and black-tiled roof. With all the trees on the other side of the river, the scenery was like a scroll of painting.

But where was the wharf itself? I wandered along the river. I asked an old woman washing cloths in the river. She pointed to a section of the bank not far from where I stood. I walked over and took a closer look. What I saw was a section of dike in very poor condition and a broken flight of stone steps reaching into the river. So this was the legendary wharf that flourished for hundreds of years and was the departure point of so many legends. Incredible. I took a still closer look at these stones.

I have done no research on the origin of the Yuliang Wharf, but its name is closely associated with all the glory of the Huizhou business, a phenomenon of incredible fortune and hard work. Huizhou, though scenic, did not have much farmland for its large population. As early as the dynasties of Tang (618-907) and the Song (960-1279), seventy percent of the local population are said to have worked away from home. Many set out from Yuliang Wharf and took a boat tour down the Xin’an River, the name for the upper reaches of the Qiantang River. They came to Hangzhou and then spread to the Yangtze River Delta, one of the wealthiest regions in the country.

From the mid Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Huizhou rose to the national fame. The local people finally found the country needed what they made at home and what they were good at. Yuliang Wharf was where local products such as tea, timber, rice paper and Huizhou ink were loaded and shipped out to destinations all over the country. Young people from Huizhou took boat tours down the river and set out to explore the outside world. Many of them became business tycoons.

The legend of Hu Xueyan (1823-1885) started from the wharf. He visited White Cloud Zen Temple by the wharf and prayed to Guanyin before leaving for the outside world. From a mere clerk at a private bank, he rose to national fame. His business was headquartered in Hangzhou with an asset of more than 20 million silver dollars. He ran banks, traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies and traded in tea and silk. He was not only a business man but also a high-ranking government official.

Other big names of Huizhou business people engaged in the business of salt, tea, real estate are also closely associated with the wharf. During the years of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, Huizhou business people in banking, salt and pawn businesses had aggregate assets of more than 45 million silver dollars, nearly equivalent to the annual national revenue.

The Yuliang Wharf is part of their legends because they or their forefathers all started from the wharf on the upper streams of the river. But the wharf is not all about glory and wealth of the Huizhou business people. It also stands for the hardships of ordinary Huizhou people who did not make it in the outside world. In fact, only a very small part of the migrant workers made it. Most remained ordinary. Some people made it and lost it and came back to Huizhou. The wharf was their destination. Bai Weizu was a successful businessman in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. His forefathers ran a salt business and became prosperous. The family built a large residence in Yuliang Town. The residence is still in the town now. Bai Weizu lost the family business. He became poor again. In his evening years, he made a living by selling seals and inscriptions. He died in Yangzhou in poverty. Hu Xueyan also died in poverty after losing his fortune and family.

Another symbol of the hardship the people in Huizhou suffered in these centuries is the memorial arches, a common sight in Huizhou. These memorial arches were all set up for women. As most boys left for work away from home, they needed to get married when they were only about 13 or 14. They needed to leave a son behind so that the family would extend no matter what would happen to the young father later. Some people didn’t come back for years. Some never came back. These women took care of the children and their parents-in-law. They were lucky if their husbands came back with money. If their husbands died, they remained widows. Bai Zhidao and Bao Sufang, father and son, served as a regional salt director in tandem for decades. The two glorified the family name, but the Bao family alone had 65 women recognized as women of chastity in the Annals of Xixian County.

On my way leaving Yuliang, I saw some workers working on the riverside. The guide said that the Xixian County Government decided to restore the Yuliang Wharf again as a milestone of the Huizhou business people. It was also a measure for tourism. It is hoped that the restored wharf will bring in visitors. But I want to see more than a wharf restored. How I wish the people in Huizhou become a national business phenomenon again.