In the mid-1750s, the East India Company realized that the fees and prices were both better at Ningbo; it was also nearer the main centres of Chinese tea production and silk manufacture. The impact of their shift on Guangzhou's tax receipts and a fear of a second Macao being created prompted attempts to force Ningbo to make itself less attractive. When that failed, the Qianlong Emperor issued a 1757 edict closing all ports but Guangzhou's to most Westerners. In order to keep the traders in the factory area and out of the rest of the western suburbs, the 17 Chinese merchants of the port were obliged to establish the guild known to foreigners as the "Cohong" in 1760, each paying an entrance fee of around 10,000 Spanish dollars (74,000 tls.) and submitting to a levy of about 3% on their future business. Ten of the merchants did so, the fees establishing the Consoo Fund and Hall, walkways, and a new street to which small-scale merchants were obliged to move in order to continue selling to the foreign traders. Since the new street was particularly full of porcelain dealers, it came to be known as China Street. The Hong merchants included Howqua (Wu Bingjian), Puankhequa, Mowqua, Goqua, Fatqua, Kingqua, Sunshing, Mingqua, Saoqua, and Punboqua. Despite the existence of Sinophones and the linguists usually accompanying each ship, foreigners were notionally banned by imperial decree from learning the Chinese language, there being officially appointed translators for that purpose. The foreign traders—despite most working for government monopolies themselves—protested strongly at the Cohong's control over prices, advances, and exchange rates and predicted the death of trade with China. In fact, the Cohong helped ensure Chinese production met the traders' needs—some ships had previously been obliged to wait as much as a year to be fully stocked—and by 1769, the area was being expanded to make up for an extreme shortness of apartments. In 1748, there had only been eight factories, but there were seventeen by 1770, a number kept up until the great fire of 1822.