| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 人類學研究所 === 91 === My thesis focuses on how landscape is indispensable mediating Heshun's “Confucianism and Merchant Culture”.
My problematic is why Heshun businessman always identity themselves with “Rushang”(Confucian-Merchant). They not only identity themselves as Han people but furthermore as “cultivated” Han People. In history of that region we find that in the eighth century, there were many traders going forth and back from Sichun to India via Tonchong; merchant culture developed very early. In the fifteenth century Tonchong sat right on the western border of Ming Dynasty in the latter’s attempt to defend against the Minority invasion. Tonchong people as a result have to be Han people; they should behave “culturally” like Han people while their true ethnic origin is not the concern of Ming Dynasty, as long as Tonchong can be represented culturally as inside the boundary of the dynasty. So merchant culture, which developed autonomously from the local society, and Confucianism, which stands for Imperial Power, are both integral to Heshun.
My argument is that landscape plays an active role in this phenomenon. Landscape (or landscaping) in Heshun is the means by which wealth worship is turned into culture worship. From the perspective of super nature, businessmen build Fenshui landscape to appropriate and maneuver nation-state supernature power, which they believe, lies the key to economic success. On the other hand, ‘talk’, in other words, discussion and interpretation, is the signification process of landscape that businessmen appropriate as the frame of reference for Confucianism, and internalize as standards of competition. Landscape is textualized as local people attempt to standardize the interoperation of landscape. In this process of landscape textualization, Confucianism was acculturated into the local life. As a result, the Confucianism culture gains its prominence as the local merchant culture prospers, and the Confucianism practice in turn stimulates the development of local commercial culture.
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