 A variety of occupations could be chosen or inherited from a father 's line of work . This would include – but was not limited to – <unk> , ironworkers and blacksmiths , tailors , cooks and noodle @-@ makers , retail merchants , tavern , teahouse , or <unk> managers , shoemakers , seal cutters , pawnshop owners , brothel heads , and merchant bankers engaging in a proto @-@ banking system involving notes of exchange . Virtually every town had a brothel where female and male prostitutes could be had . Male <unk> fetched a higher price than female concubines since pederasty with a teenage boy was seen as a mark of elite status , regardless of sodomy being repugnant to sexual norms . Public bathing became much more common than in earlier periods . Urban shops and retailers sold a variety of goods such as special paper money to burn at ancestral sacrifices , specialized luxury goods , headgear , fine cloth , teas , and others . Smaller communities and townships too poor or scattered to support shops and artisans obtained their goods from periodic market fairs and traveling peddlers . A small township also provided a place for simple schooling , news and gossip , matchmaking , religious festivals , traveling theater groups , tax collection , and bases of famine relief distribution . 
