A Research On Commercial Culture Of Changsha City In Modern Times

Commercial culture, an ancient social phenomenon, generates from commerce and develops with its growth. Urban commercial culture is a kind of cultural phenomenon with commercial attributes demonstrated in trades and the circulation of commodity in cities. It mainly includes a hierarchical structure of three parts, namely, commercial material culture, commercial organization system culture and commercial spiritual culture.Changsha was a powerful prefecture and an important commercial and trade centre in the areas south of the Yangtze River in the ancient time. It was the political, economic, military and educational centre in Huxiang region since the Qin and Han dynasties. It enjoyed great commercial prosperity in the Qing Dynasty. After Changsha opened its gates, businessmen from home and abroad all came in an endless stream, gradually making Changsha a metropolis in central China. During the years of the Republic of China, Changsha became a commercial and consumptive center with various kinds of firms, stores and numerous merchants. It also boasted many famous time-honored brands, among which four big industries, viz. the jewellery, finance, textile and paper industry and the special Huxiang food industry were renowned all over the country. Therefore Changsha can be called not only a famous historical commercial and trade city but also a well-known historical cultural city.For a long time researches on commercial culture in our country mainly focused on some commercial areas such as Shanxi, Shan'xi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang etc. and some hot commercial cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hankou, and so on. While a special research of such a kind on Changsha, to some extent, lacked strength . Nowadays although Huxiang culture has been widely spread in Hunan and become a sort of hot discipline, researches about Changsha were mostly based on its central status in Huxiang culture, and there were few scholars who performed their studies from the perspective of commerce and commercial culture of Changsha.The construction of the commercial culture in Changsha directly connect with the rise and fall of this city's economy. This thesis, based on former researches, mainly discusses the social and environmental factors about the formation and development of the commercial culture in Changshe in modern times. It profoundly reveals the connotation of the commercial culture from three aspects: commercial material culture, organization system culture and spiritual culture. It also clearly organizes the developing progress of the jwellery, financial,textile, paper and food industry. On those bases we strive to have a thorough understanding of the developing course and features of the commercial culture in the city of Changsha to gain more successful and effective findings, thus providing a reference for the construction of Changsha's commercial culture in modern times and truly promoting the commercial and economic prosperity in the city of Changsha.