Historical Geography network of ferries and river crossings (in)Such impressions fit the general picture of the delta's cultural richness and econ vitality,as described in the colorful account of a foreign traveller up the Xi River in 1903.R.D.Thomas reported that on his boat trip up the river he passed numerous towns with fortifications and officials.and he saw rice"not by the acre but by the square mile."There were fruit trees,fish ponds,mulber ry shrubs"as far as the eye could see,"and silk-filatures.At a fourishing marketown,he spotted colorfu"rary poles"erected in front of an- cestral halls.On the poles were carved the names of members who had acquired academic degrees.There were also stone memorial arches and pagodas built by village communities for the purposes of geomancy and to glorify traditional vir e.Fortress-like pawnshops served as repositories of valuables and as local banks.Temples and pilgrimage centers were thronged with the faithful during festivals (Thomas 1903). In the Huancheng area,bounded by Huicheng to the north and Jiang- men to the northeast,a lan me of comm lities from the rural hin- Jiangmen handled the extensive interregional trade for the western part of south China,that moving up and down the xiRiver,that connecting to the Bei River and Dong River via Gua ngzhou,and that using Jangmen asa port for coastal and export trade to Southeast Asia (see figure 2.1). However,the network of territorial relationships was not limited to the economic realm.Village alliances centering on community festivals and temples revealed the aggressive politicking of their gentry and merchant patrons.Standing beside the Chaolian Hongsheng Temple,for example, were the headquarters of the township covenant (xiangyue)and the com- munity school.3 On the stone tablets embedded in the walls of the temple were carved the names ofpatrons who contributed to the temple's periodic temodelng from the cighteen toenchcc centuries.These pa- whether local gentry,town merchants,ancestral estates.privately owned river-crossings,trade guilds and craft assoclations,or.above them all officialsof the imperial bureaucracy-revealed the dynamic configura nsof powerand hidden Huancheng in the Context of the Pearl River Delta Thehistorical and cuturalfordesadinghe percep tions of several generations of peasants and their elites who were drawn
18 Historical Geography thegood oddays "or the 8羽 differ from those of their children,who were taught to treat historical and cultural legacies as ideological artifacts?To the peasants in the first half of ·ow the twentieth century,the Huancheng area was a rich,productive place where goods and peopewe moblle and politics volatile.Peasants and 于ne elites were bound by multiple affiliations that extended back in genealogi cal time and overlapped in social space.Life was by no means comfortable and peaceful:for the majority it was quite capriclous.But peasants and their elites habitually per ceived in this struct re of relationships oppor tunity The following is a description of how generations of Chinese peasants up to the late 1940s transformed an expanding delta into a finely worked but delicate economic system.Underlying this system were social and political institutions historical legacy continued to shape livelihoods and confirmed cultural assumptions.However,this local economy was the target of state policies,for the new regime saw economic transformation as the basis of socialism.Through a series of steps,the state imposed its priorities on the local economy rative boundaries and statusof Xinhui County fluctuated in history,but stabilized in the eighteenth century.By the mid-nineteenth century,the county consisted of three periurban districts (fang).twelve rural districts(du),and 491 villages (ji).The three periurban districts were directly administered b y the county magistrate,whereas the rura districts were under three subcounty divisions,each headed by a police intendant (xunjian si).7 In the Republican era the administrative bound- aries of the districts and villages changed often,reflecting the shifting oflocal strongmen.In 1949.the nty cons sted of eigh districts(market towns()6 large villages and townships (xiang),and 1,280 hamlets (bao).Seven of the nine townships in the First District and two townships in the Second District fell within the boundary of today's Huancheng area.s Figure 2.2 shows the area in relation to Hui cheng and Fig.2.2.Huicheng and Vicinity before 1949 The physical landscape of the Huancheng area was a varied one.At the tum of the century,if one looked south from Guifeng Mountain behind Huicheng (the county capital),one would have seen extensive rice fields ed with dike s where fan palm and fruit trees were grown.The land was bounded by a tributary of the Xi River on its east and the Tan River on its west.At the end of the area,less than ten kilometers away from the city,were two well-known landmarks.The first was a hill on the eastem edge topped with a seven-layer pagoda built by the elites of
20 Historical Geography 哈=卜女 Huicheng during the reign of Wanli(1573-1619).Another hill,known as Shuni,stood on the western edge,with a smaller pagoda built at its foot. Between the two hills were two mounds named Mani i and Changni.Be yond these hills was the confluence of the tworivers.After the rivers joined into one,they wound southward through a narrow river valley known as Yinzhouhu,before reaching the sea via the Ya Men inlet.Xinhui county gazetteers recorded the hills as islands that were eventually joined by narshes for 2.4).Situated at the foot of the hills were three of the district's largest townships,Shenhuan,Tianma,and Tianlu Xiang,each having several thousand residents.A dozen or so smaller communities dotted the alluvial plain between them and Huicheng.An elaborate network of winding watewaysinkedhevillagestondtoHuicennd men,the area's major commercial and administrative centers. Ifone looked farther southeast from the pagoda at Shenhuan Xiang.on a few sr iating from it To the east of Sanjiang were newly formed alluvial fields known as the sands (sha).stretching as far as the eye could see.In the north were Xinsha.Jiuzisha,and Baiqingsha. Around the market town of Muzhou to the south were Dasha and Shang- hengsha.These sands,at the edge of the Pearl River delta.con landscape in a regional context,what one saw was typical of the Pearl River delta.the largest alluvial plaln of south China,measuring 11,300 Sansute fgure 25).The delta is defined by threeoints: Shi ong in the east,and Ya Men in the southwest.It has grown at a tremendous speed in a southeastern direction,merging with islands and coastal ranges along its path.In the process,it attracted migrant farmers from Taishan and Kaiping counties in the west,from Nanhai and Shunde the northcast,and fishermen (the Dan) ahewhoseeoonicheshad shrunk with the c'sx sion.By the late imperial period,many elevated points in the delta had become sites of villages and towns. The growth of the mean that it continued to provide new land of 卡吃 rent types for rcultivation.The older part of the delta formed by aged 皆砖什叫 alluvial soils was free from flooding.Archacological evidence permits us to sketch out the shallow prehistoric seabed that extended from Shafu in the southwestem part of Xinhui County through Jia ngmen,Hetang,and the county capitas of Shunde (Daliang)Panyu (Shiqiao)and Dongguan ( ancheng)in the eastern part of the delta (Zhujiang sanjiaozhou nong- yezhi[1976]1:26-27;hereafter abbreviated as Nongyezhi).Alluvial plains
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24 Historical Geography Historical Geography 25 were formed north of that line owing to a process of sedimentation.The accelerated during the Ming.During the first half of the Ming dynasty, combined efforts of peasants,local elites,and government from the Tang to efforts were concentrated in the northern part of xianeshan cour The land was intensively worked by a dense population,and taxed by the (N-20).Militaryo were imperial government as cultivable land formed by natural sedimentatlon. and settlement.!After the middle of the Ming period,reclamation efforts This category of land was known as mintian. spread to marshes in the northeaster part of Xiangshan County,an area The part of the delta southeast of the line is composed of recently depos known as the Donghai Shiliusha,and southern Panyu.known as Wan ited silt.Settlers continued to reclaim it.but flo ling was co mmon,land qingsha.In the last fe centuries,families from the military outposts boundaries unclear,and harvests uncertain.Such an area has been re- migrant farmers from the older parts of the delta,and Dan fishermen ferred to as the sands (sha or shatian).The older part of the sands,termed formed village communities and towns in the expanding frontier.2 The laosha weitian,consisted of polders of rich silt that had matured over a long ownership of these newer sands,however.was in the hands of estates set period.Protected by a nety ork of dikes built throughout the Ming and up by higher-order lin es. acade trade guild and the like.The Qing dynasties,the area used the flow of river water and the tides for owners and managers of these estates had long resided in the market towns irrigation for up to twenty days a month (Nongyezhi 1:7).Blessed with and larger cities in the older part of the delta. virtually frost-free winters,peasants in the delta had used traditional tech- A record from 1937 shows a total of 4,000,000 mu of reclaimed land nology and accumulated wisdomto create a highly productive agricultural ead over six counties.As shown in table 2.1.the data vealed that system. and Xinhui counties consisted mostly of the matured A distinct pattern of cultivation emerged in the sands by the late imperial polders on which were grown two crops of rice and also cash crops period.There were the newly reclaimed marshes for extenslve rice produc- Zhongshan,Dongguan,and Panyu counties.situated in the younger part of tion.At the other end of the scale were peasants engaged in very intensive the delta,had a larger proportion of undiked sands. anduse kno was the elaborat The reclamation massive human effort and elaborate financial but delicate bala ang act of growing mulberry or fruit on enlarged dikes arrangements.Nishikawa(1985)maintains that this long and expensive built between fish ponds,and using the mulberry leaves in order to raise process became popular only during the reign of Qianlong(1736-95)and silkworms to produce silk for regional and world markets.A third type of reached its height in the mid-nineteenth century.during the reign of the land use also emerged in time.As the reclaimed marshes aged with diking 61).The complex and cultivation.peasants shifted from extensive rice production to growing two full crops of rice interspersed with fruit,palm,sugarcane,and vegeta- local elites who set up ancestral trusts,charity estates,and academies bles.10 A description of extensive rice cultivation in the sands and of cash petitioned county magistrates for areas of 1,000 mu or more at a time crops in the matured polders is relevant here because the Huancheng area (Nishikawa 1985.20)Reclamation was organized in several stages.Large saw both t ypes ofland use.At its castern and southern edges,sands such as Dongjia,Xijia.Shenhuan,Tianma,and Tianlu Xiang were at different stages of reclamation.The rest of the land south of Hulcheng consisted of Table 2.1.Sands in the Delta.1930s (In Hundreds of Mu) polders on which rice.cash crops,and vegetables were grown.They de- othey were ticd to the changine arkets and 50 Polders oRatiotDiked County a succession of local leaders. 252833 448 Reclaiming Tidal Marshes for Rice Cultivation Shunde 3970.80 627.56 434 64 1,1 Zhongshan 14.999.38 483.36 1.846.15 Beginning with the Song dynasty,successive waves of settlement stimu- Dongguan 3,053.24 0.89 583.99 Panyu 4.375,50 1.527.61 3:1 lated reclamation efforts along the valleys and in the coastal inlets where marshes had surfaced.For the younger part of the delta,land reclamation Bincun,(The sands of Guangdong).3-5