ng overseas trade, developed greatly from now on. Soon we
find in the coastal ports a special office which handled custom and
registration affairs, supplied interpreters for foreigners, received
them officially and gave good-bye dinners when they left. Down to the
thirteenth century, most of this overseas trade was still in the hands
of foreigners, mainly Indians. Entrepreneurs hired ships, if they were
not ship-owners, hired trained merchants who in turn hired sailors
mainly from the South-East Asian countries, and sold their own
merchandise as well as took goods on commission. Wealthy Chinese gentry
families invested money in such foreign enterprises and in some cases
even gave their daughters in marriage to foreigners in order to profit
from this business.

We also see an emergence of industry from the eleventh century on. We
find men who were running almost monopolistic enterprises, such as
preparing charcoal for iron production and producing iron and steel at
the same time; some of these men had several factories, operating under
hired and qualified managers with more than 500 labourers. We find
beginnings of a labour legislation and the first strikes (A.D. 782 the
first strike of merchants in the capital; 1601 first strike of textile
workers).

Some of these labourers were so-called "vagrants", farmers who had
secretly left their land or their landlord's land for various reasons,
and had shifted to other regions where they did not register and thus
did not pay taxes. Entrepreneurs liked to hire them for industries
outside the towns where supervision by the government was not so strong;
naturally, these "vagrants" were completely at the mercy of their
employers.

Since _c._ 780 the economy can again be called a money economy; more and
more taxes were imposed in form of money instead of in kind. This
pressure forced farmers out of the land and into the cities in order to
earn there the cash they needed for their tax payments. These men
provided the labour force for industries, and this in turn led to the
strong growth of the cities, especially in Central China where trade and
industries developed most.

Wealthy people not only invested in industrial enterprises, but also
began to make heavy investments in agriculture in the vicinity of
cities in order to increase production and thus income. We find men who
drained lakes in order to create fields below the water level for easy
irrigation; others made floating fi