In Ming Dynasty, the commodity economy was developed, and the trade of shops in cities and towns was very active. As the center of the national book industry, the capital Beijing is full of bookstores. With the rapid development of book engraving as a political, economic and cultural center, book sales in fixed shops are also very active after Yongle established Beijing as its capital. Especially Zhengyangmen and Xuanwumen Liulichang, there are many bookstores.
The book industry in Nanjing is also very developed. The famous writer Kong's Peach Blossom Fan has a record about Nanjing Bookstore, which illustrates this point. Cai Yi, the owner of Youer Pavilion in Sanshan Street, Jinling, proudly said: There are no more books in the world, no more bookstores in Jinling, and no more booksellers in Sanshan Street than Cai Yi ... My shop is the workshop leader, and I want to invite several famous people to choose new products.
Fair trade is a supplementary form of selling books in urban shops in Ming Dynasty, which is generally held regularly. For example, there were temple fairs and lantern fairs in Beijing at that time.
The temple fair is the most famous in Chenghuang Temple, which opens on the first, fifteenth and twenty-fifth day of each month. Lantern Festival is around dengshikou today. During the Lantern Festival, daily commodities including books are listed on both sides of the street.
Jianyang has 6 episodes every Monday and Saturday, with heavy traffic and noisy streets. Jianyang appeared the earliest wholesale book market in the history of ancient book industry.
Selling books on the move means selling books everywhere, that is, booksellers sell books along the way by trafficking or driving book boats across cities and villages. For example, in Suzhou, Wuxi, Changshu and Huzhou, some booksellers took advantage of the water towns in the south of the Yangtze River and traveled all over the country in a boat, which was not limited by time and space to open up the book market. These booksellers are very popular with book collectors and readers, or treat them as guests.
Ming dynasty books