<P> In addition to general commodities, Han historians list the goods of specific regions . Common trade items from the region of modern Shanxi included bamboo, timber, grain, and gemstones; Shandong had fish, salt, liquor, and silk; Jiangnan had camphor, catalpa, ginger, cinnamon, gold, tin, lead, cinnabar, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shell, pearls, ivory, and leather . Ebrey lists items found in a 2nd - century AD tomb in Wuwei, Gansu (along the Hexi Corridor fortified by the Great Wall of China), evidence that luxury items could be obtained even in remote frontiers . </P> <P>... fourteen pieces of pottery; wooden objects such as a horse, pig, ox, chicken, chicken coop, and a single - horned animal; seventy copper cash; a crossbow mechanism made of bronze; a writing brush; a lacquer - encased inkstone; a lacquer tray and bowl; a wooden comb; a jade ornament; a pair of hemp shoes; a straw bag; the remains of an inscribed banner; a bamboo hairpin; two straw satchels; and a stone lamp . </P> <P> In the early Eastern Han, Emperor Ming passed laws which prohibited those involved in agriculture from simultaneously engaging in mercantile trade . These laws were largely ineffective, since wealthy landowners and landlords made significant profits from the trading of goods produced on their estates . Cui Shi (催 寔) (d . 170 AD), a local commandery administrator who later served as an official in the central government's secretariat, started a winery business in his home to pay for his father's funeral . His fellow gentry criticized him, claiming the practice was immoral, but not illegal . </P> <P> Cui Shi's book Simin yueling (四 民 月 令) is the only significant surviving work on agriculture from the Eastern Han period, though about 3,000 written characters of the Fan Shengzhi shu (氾 勝之 書), dated to the reign of Emperor Cheng of Han (33--7 BC), still survive . Cui Shi's book provides descriptions of rituals for ancestor worship, festival and religious holiday celebrations, conduct for family and kinship relations, farmwork, and the schooling season for boys . Cui Shi's book also provides detailed instructions on which months were the most profitable times to buy and sell certain types of farm - produced goods . </P>

What type of economy did the han dynasty have