The Second Largest City

The “no sky” market area was the second largest city at that time. The population of Lukang was 40,000 to 60,000 so lots of people made their living on the street. Nevertheless, we can do some simple categorization according to the resource of population and their activities. What’s more special is that not all the people on Wufu Street settled there and they didn’t have close relationship with each other. This was very different from other regions, in which people had ties of blood or came from the similar places. The following is a brief introduction of the population resource and financial ability of residences in Wufu Street.

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Category of Resource of People

        Early immigrants of Lukang can be divided into two categories according to the population resource: one is the Hans and another is aborigines. The Hans mainly crossed the sea to Taiwan to reclaim wasteland because it was not easy to earn their living along the Min and Yue. One small part of them came to Taiwan because of the war during the later years of Ming dynasty and early years of Cing dynasty. They came to Taiwan to be away from the war or to do business. More of the Han immigrants came for the former reason than the later and we can see that the later type wasn’t of high percentage. Nevertheless, The Han business people mainly lived in Wufu Street and become the major resource of people. This category of people came mainly for business and didn’t live in Wufu Street for long. This had influenced the development of the street houses in Wufu street. (See street houses in Cing dynasty.) In addition to the Hans, Pingpu tribe, who had long lived in Lukang, might have been assimilated by the Hans and were active in Wufu Street. The categorization based on the resource of people is Figure I.

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  Categories of Financial Power

        Wufu Street at that time was the major commercial center of Lukang and all kinds of people were active there, including lots of floating population such as the garrison after the harbor was set, sailors of commercial ships, businessmen who came to do business, and vagrants, so the street was filled with people of various social status, from high to low, and was very chaotic. In addition to the floating population, some Lukang residences spent most of their time in Wufu street. This sort of residences can be divided into merchant and others. The commerce in Lukang was very prosperous. The rich businessmen were very rich and had lots of servants, labors, and long-term labors. In addition to those who were hired by rich business men, there were other kinds of people such as handy men, coolies (not hired), and farmers. Compared with the rich businessmen, these people lived in very simple and crude places and led poor lives. There were also lots of so called “inferior people” working in places taking care of rich businessmen’s needs, such as cat houses, tea houses and geisha houses. They also had to deal with groups of beggars. These so called “inferior people” out numbered businessmen by a large percentage and indicated the uneven distribution of wealth. The categorization is demonstrated in Figure II.

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Figure II: Categorization Figure of Residences in Wufu Street (according to financial ability)         

        There were all kinds of people active in Wufu Streets. This influenced the social order in Lugang. There were several riots and some fights with weapons. Furthermore, non-local people, especially so-called “Luohanjiao” (single men), had disturbed the social order very much. The situation led the residences of Wufu Street to the conclusion that the social disorder was very serious and the power of the government was too weak and thus they set up some organizations such as “8-Jiaos” (see commercial organization). Meanwhile, businessmen in Wufu Street established block gates to protect their own lives and properties. All these measures had something to do with the complexity of the social components.

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