Using the late nineteenth century Lugang Xu Family guild merchants as a case study, this article explores how Quan Guild merchants in Lugang expanded from the rice trade into general import and export activities, as well as the mechanisms involved in their junk trade. This article focuses on the following issues: First, what role did land acquisition play in the Taiwanese guild merchants' business strategies? Second, how and why did the mechanisms of the junk trade between Lugang and Quanzhou during the Qing dynasty develop from a captain-led enterprise into a cooperative commissioning system?--and how did the new system promote the creation of cooperative trade blocks? Third, given Taiwan's prosperous external trade during the Qing, why did remittance banks and native banks not become as popular in Taiwan as they were on the mainland? And finally, did mainland merchants continuously monopolize cross-straight junk trade during the Qing?