Shanxi merchants
Another plausible explanation for the position that Shanxi merchants had is based on defecting 1640s Ming soldiers reappearing in the Shanxi province acting as private security to the region's merchants, this gave the merchants from this province a distinct edge under waning rule of law during the transition from Ming to Qing. A similar hypothesis proposes that hiding 1640s Ming soldiers were redirecting their talents to commerce. While locals from Shanxi were oddly absent from the top rank imperial exam records during the Qing dynasty, the dynasty's 19th-century enthusiasm for the services of the "piaohao" asperses this hypothesis somewhat.