Now stars or company managers have agents. Was there a role of broker in ancient times?

We can often see a large group of people following artists, including agents, assistants and bodyguards. The agent is the most important. It can be said that the quality of the agent largely determines the future of a star. A broker is equivalent to an intermediary. Generally speaking, he is mainly responsible for star reception, activities and fashion resources, interviews and personal affairs, and is accompanied by artists almost 24 hours a day. So when did brokers exist?

In the Qin and Han Dynasties, there were middlemen engaged in cattle and horses trading, which were called "stubborn". In the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the words "broker" and "toothman" appeared formally. In the Yuan Dynasty, agencies engaged in brokers and intermediaries were called "tooth shops", which have been in use ever since. The peak of the "dental shop" industry was in the Ming Dynasty, because handicrafts and industry and commerce were more and more developed, and market trade was more and more prosperous, and there would be some contradictions between buyers and sellers. The function of "dental shop" was to solve these contradictions.

In ancient times, the speed of receiving messages was very slow. It is impossible to shop around for things like Taobao now. They don't know where the best things are, and they don't know where the price is more affordable. Sometimes they are cheated by profiteers. Because of this, in the Ming Dynasty, there were more and more "tooth shops", which developed very rapidly, involving everything from daily necessities to jewelry and silk.

Their main function is to entertain guests to buy goods and entertain guests to ship goods. In the later period, there were more and more "tooth shops". In order to win the favor of merchants, many large-scale "tooth shops" began to integrate accommodation, trading, warehousing and lending.

Generally speaking, due to the rapid economic development in Yuan Dynasty, the dental appliance trade played a very positive role in economic transactions.