Speaking of Yangzhou

"The author examines the city's place in the history of the late imperial era, exploring the paradoxes evident in conflicting meanings accruing to Yangzhou over time. She argues that a city famed as a social melting pot actually featured pronounced social divisions along native-place and occupational lines. These divisions were already evident in the early seventeenth century and were sustained until the early nineteenth, when the salt monopoly was in decline, the immigrant merchant community shrinking, and the city as a whole beginning a long, slow retreat into relative obscurity."--BOOK JACKET.