Abstract:
At the turn between the Ming and the Qing Dynasty, there appeared a class of novels about “urban businessmen/lovely ladies”, whose rapid rise marked the urban businessmen class’s challenge to the discourse monopoly of “talented scholars/lovely ladies” and contention for the realm of “merry and beautiful stories”. The separation of power in love discourse revealed the businessmen’s tendency to surmount the “barriers” between scholars and businessmen and to break through the identity of social hierarchy. A commercial ethics and businessman spirit derived from this will certainly benefit the current attempt to construct a market ethics.
