The ceramic factories in Nanjing alone can produce millions of pieces of porcelain every year.

The above reasons combined are also the important reasons why chambers of commerce emerged in the Ming Dynasty.

It is precisely because of the above reasons that the Chamber of Commerce was able to emerge in the Ming Dynasty. At that time, it was not called a Chamber of Commerce, but a Merchant Gang, or a Merchant Gang, and was usually divided according to place of origin.

For example, the Huizhou Merchants' Guild, the Shanxi-Shaanxi Merchants' Guild, the Fujian Merchants' Guild, the Jiangxi Merchants' Guild, the Yangtze River Merchants' Guild, etc. These merchant guilds used "guild halls" as places of communication, supported each other, and grew bigger and bigger.

Among them, the Yangtze River Water Gang is very powerful because the Yangtze River, a major water transportation artery that runs across my country from east to west, has prospered because of the "Golden Waterway".

From a chronological perspective, the Yangtze River Gang truly rose to prominence during the Zhengde reign. Hankou was designated as the port for the exchange of grain, and later, an imperial decree required that all grain from Zhunheng, Yong, Jing, Yue, and Changsha be exchanged at Hankou. This made Hankou the center for the storage and transshipment of grain from Huguang.

Hankou, with its convenient water transportation, took advantage of this opportunity to see its commerce and re-export trade flourish.

By the Wanli period, Hankou Town (commercial center) had become one of the four famous towns in China, along with Jingdezhen (porcelain), Foshan Town (handicrafts), and Zhuxian Town (printmaking).

In Guangyang Miscellaneous Notes, there's a saying that "the world is divided into four parts." These are the capital in the north, Foshan in the south, Suzhou in the east, and Hankou in the west. The standard for division is based on commercial centers, and Hankou is one of them.

At that time, Hankou was a place with mountains of goods, densely populated population, and a large number of merchants. It became a national water and land transportation hub and the largest inland port in China. It was also the distribution center for rice and salt in the Ming Dynasty.

For this reason, there is a saying in commerce that "goods come alive when they arrive in Hankou", and the magnificent scenery is described as "ten miles of sails line the city, and thousands of houses are lit all night long". It also enjoys the reputation of "the most prosperous place in Chu".

The Yangtze River Water Gang relied on Hankou, a city connecting nine provinces and crowded with merchants, to transport and sell goods from Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, Henan, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Guangxi and other provinces. They formed groups and grew stronger, and were also known as the Yangtze River Merchant Gang.