Historical Geography Historical Geography entrepreneurs,often from the rich and locally influential households,con- in order to accelerate sedimentation.When silt accumulated to the level of tracted with original claimants to the land to undertake the work.The the stone base,more stones were added.The process was repeated until reclamation projects resulted in enclosed compounds ().a com years or even decades later marshland emerged during low tide.These mon sight on were areas where "fish could swim,storks could stand."Workers then the frontier landscape.There were temporary settlements consisting of straw huts for workmen and migrant farmers,a granary.a transported hardened soil from more elevated areas to build a series of house for the overseers,a watchtower,and often a small crop-watching dikes on top of the stone bases.Sedimentation took place within the dikes as the high tide continued to submerge the land.Reeds were grown for a as(sand guards).The grower-entrepren urs received handsome fees as well as guaranteed long-term tenure from their patrons. Instead of farming the vast estates themselves with the aid of hired la- ant rice.From the beginning of the operations. according to borers,they more often than not parcelled out the land to their own tenant Nishikawa,close supervision of an organized work force and heavy invest- farmers in return for a share of the crops. ment were needed.However,the expenses of reclamation were offset by Second.along the open tax exemptions lasting nommally upto three years After that.the govem frontier"the fear ofencroachment on land and ment expected the sands to be registered for taxation.The delta was a harvest necessitated some degree of coordinated crop-watching.In fact. small sums,known as the shagu (skeletal levy)were claimed from tenants productive source of income,and successive governments looked upon it by the owners of the estates for such pur and the sums became as a widening base of revenue.However,after the reign of Qianlong,the symbolic of the lanc rd's claim on the land.Because of the vast areas Qing government attempted with little success to register and classify the different grades ofsands for taxation.Theinability ofthe goverments to involved,even a small sum per mu became a lucrative source of income and was fiercely fought for.It was not unusual for entire communities to collect taxes meant that the wealth of the sands was largely retained by feud over the right of collecting the skeletallevy.Thedispuu local elites. over Donghai landlo the county capitals of Xiangshan and yeeheplanted oneop ofc for three Shunde are typical episodes of this kind.15 Decades later,the feud between fallow for another three(Qu 1700,vol.2,no. the Zhao lineage in the township of Sanjiang and an alliance of descent 57).For the more matured sands,as in the Huancheng area,local farmers practiced a crude double-cropping of rice known as zhenggao.14 Twenty Jiuzisha involved nearly two days after transplanting the first crop,peasants planted a second one be village guards and om negotiations with tween the rows county and provincial officials. sof the first.They harvested the e first crop in early summer A third important source of wealth were the harvests.By the late Qing and then treaded down the roots as fertilizer for the second crop,which was harvested in mid-autumn.This method saved peasants the labor of managers of the estates in town were exac ting cash rents from clients who contracted tenure for up to twenty years.Such tenures were publicly o over the soll.By planting the seond crop carly,damage auctioned and required large deposits on future rents.These arrangements in the late summer was reduced.However.hengg depleted the were known as baodian(tenant-contracting)and were made by resource. soil quickly.The peasant households were in a bind:They needed an extensive area of cultivation to meet consumption needs,but at the same ful grower-entrepreneurs,who cou very well be loca bankers.grain brokers,and wholes time such an extenslon aggravated the shortage oflabor.making it difficul sale merchants.Areas rented were large,some com- prising a diked holding of several hectares.Rent deposits amounting to a to increase yields by a more refined method of cultivation.They supple- year's rent were common.The value of a year's rent was the cash equlv mented their income by catching river shrimp,shellfish,and harvest grubs alent of the agreed amount of grain,based on its market price at the timeo in the frequently flooded fields. auction.A l g-term trend of rising grain prices could benefit these con- tractors more than the owners of the estates.From the 1870s to the early Accumulating Wealth from the Sands 1930s,grain prices in Guangdong did enjoy a long-term rise(Faure 1985) Receiving substantial quantities Wealth was accumulated in several ways.As the process of reclaiming the of grain r own tenant farmers. sands became capitalized over the last two centuries,a stratum of grower arge contractors conducted an active trade with brokers in the market towns and the county capitals.1?
28 Historical Geography Historical Geography 29 A description of the grain trade conducted by merchants in Huicheng at accumulated through an elaborate organization that spanned the rural- the turn of the century reveals its capitalized and competitive nature as urban nexus. well as the multiple checks and balances the town enterprises maintained with the large growers in the rural hinterland (see Huang Fa et al.1983, 29-40).At the time,there were about 120 grain-trading enterprises.The The Growing of Citrus largest four,Meihe,Yihe,Sanhe,and Dechang,were conveniently situated on the southern bank of the city for the purpose of transporting the large If grain production in the sands was commercialized,the cash crops in the volumes of graln that came under their management.Toeether they han ded 40.000 shis of grain a day.a third of the total trade in the city periurban areas were even more so.Citrus growing in the vicinity of Business was competitive.Securing a large and constant supply of grain Huicheng had along history.The Chen lineage of Waihai(near Jiangmen) for exa was crucial,because the larger the supply,the more easily the merchants ple,noted that as early as the Yuan dynasty.a rent payment was could maneuver with price fluctuations.Favorable terms were therefore recorded as 10 shi of mandarin oranges (Nongyezhi 6:64-69).Orchards contracted with corporate estates and local strongmen in the townships replaced many rice fields by the early Qing dynasty.The honey orange of who had large amounts ofrents in kind at their disposal.The large contrac- Dongjia Xiang in Huancheng was among the citrus fruits sought other provinces.A document of 1840 asserted that tors of Tianma Xiang,for example,exclusively patronized the grain mills at Dechang and Wanfeng.They opened storage accounts with the merchants in Guangdong is a fine product of Lingnan.Its skin is thin and tight,the and converted their grain to cash when prices were good.Meanwhile,the merchants used the stored grain to conduct their own trade with the retail 8agnnwoanCg shops. opening up of south Chin after the Opium War and peaked during the The grain merchants obtained shares in local banks in order to secure first quarter of the twentieth century.In 1935 a record of more than 60,000 credit. mu of citrus orchards was distributed among eighty-five settlements in the y also spr ead their investments into four mills,wine-mak eastern and southern part of Xinhui County.In the Huanche shops,duck and pig farms.and restaurants.Together with the grain mills, ng area,citrus was grown in the the grain merchants in town organized a Mihang Gonghui (association of of Yuanqing (which included Dongjia). Chengnan,Nantan,Tianlu,and Shenhuan (Nongyezhi 6:74-75).The fruit ed a was not only sold in local market towns but also shipped through Jiang- ormation They c all percen tage of their sales to the asso ciation as insurance against accidents,fire,and robbery.The association men to cities such as Foshan,Guangzhou,Wuzhou,Shanghai,Macao maintained a management staff to make connections with various power Hong Kong. and to Southeast Asia. onoow's Citrus production reflected shrewd calculations of market prices and investment return on the part of growers. festivals of temple s an rural hinterland. In sum,by the turn of the century,even the most extensive cultivation of The price for citrus in the Pearl River delta continued to rise as its market grain in a vast frontier was by no means an isolated and self-sufficient expanded.In 1929,mandarin orange was sold for 10 yuan per picul,tan. operation.From the very beginning,complex technical,financial,and gerine for 4 yuan per picul,and orange for 21 yuan per picul.In 1930.the political maneuvers were required,shaping the fluid market forces and price of mandarino ge rose to 12 yuan per picul.tangerine to 7 yuan,and power relationships that extended well beyond village horizons.Though prange to 40 yuan.High prices yielded handsome profits.Take the case of migrant farmers lived in straw huts strung out on the dikes,their immedi- Xinhul.Around 1922,the best rice fields ylelded an income of 6 taels of silver ate concerns of tenure and harvests were set in the context of large-scale per mu,compared to three times that much for citrus.After the sixth yearo and recla grain-price manipulations,and the escorted transport cultivation,each mu of orange orchard could yield an income of 540 taels of commodities to the cities,aspects that preoccupied the world of corpo- ninety times that of rice.A breakdown of the economics of citrus growing rate estates and merchants.The exploitation of the sands in the delta shows the following:The first year of an orchard needed a rather large invest supported the development of the regton,where tremendous wealth was ment because one had to build dikes.to level the fields,to construct irrigatior
30 Historical Geography Historical Geography ditches,and to buy seedlings.From the second year on,taking into account chants oforange peel clustered to the south of Huicheng.One ofthe larges land rent,maintenance [for young alluvial fields]and management fees,in- wholesale merchants was Lihe Enterprises,owned by a He lineage,which come from citrus and others crops yielded a profit three times that of invest- maintained business ties as far away as Shanghal and Chongqing.Disputes ment.(Nongyezhi 6:73) among lineage members involving the alleged mismanagement of funds or,the Liu Yiji Trading Orange Pee company in the eighteenth century.The managers of an ancestral trust set up by a lineage segment opened the first shop in Huicheng.The enterprise Huicheng and the surrounding rural area were known for the production expanded to Suzhou with a branch shop named Liu Caixing,and con ofanother valued commodity,the dried peel ofmandarin oranges(chenpi). ducted the trading of fan palm as well.By the turn of this century,it moved Herbal experts acknowledged that aged peel from the county was un- the Suzhou operation to Shanghai and opened more branches in Chong- matched by any other.One may roughly estimate from the county ga- qing.Guangzhou,and Hong Kong.After selling orange peel in the cities,its zetteer of Xinhui (1908)that by the turn of the century,300.000 picul of managers bought back herbs,cotton,and other odities to be sold in peel were produced annually for domestic and overseas markets.Consid ering that only 6 to 8 catties of peel were obtained from a picul of fruit, tion,the enterprise had a capital of 200,000 yuan of silver. mandarin oranges must have been widely grown.However,the orchards The fortunes of these large-scale enterprises fluctuated with the financial were not ve and political instabilities of Guangdong and China's other Many rice farmers produced a especially in the 1930s d1940s ajor cities an The market-sensitive trade suffered a During one of my trips to Huicheng,I was able to discuss the economic blow during a drastic drop in the prices of citrus in 1933.Peasants re- history of the region with He Zhuojian,a local historian whose family sponded by converting their orchards to grain fields.The area of citrus d to the cultivation dropped by 17.6 percent in the county.In Dongja Xiar and father had been in the wholesale trade in Huicheng.He ran the Wer the orchards shrank 22.6 percent by 1935(Nongyezi6:82).Political chaos ming Publication House in the county capital during the 1940s and early during the eight years of Japanese occupation between 1938 and 1945 1950s and was very familiar with local historical sources.He informed me exacerbated the problems.The Japanese troops controlled the major cities that the trade in nge peel was separated ino three spheres:a small- in the delta and blockaded the transport routes.Citrus growers shifted to scale,grassroots level of ollection:a stratum of broker s in the e county grain production in ordertosurvive.There was aggravated by Japa capital;and the highly capitalized enterprises for long-distance trading. nese soldiers who,for fear of guerrilla ambushes,forced growers to cut The complexity of their operations matched that of the grain trade.Dried down the trees.A county document produced after the war estimated that orange pe ngrowers vas collected by itinerant traders whose families the operated the business as a sideli ine.Numbering a hundred or so and resid- ing mostly in the township of Chengnan south of Huicheng,these traders fore the war the total annual production of peel reached one million visited markets in the rural hinterland of Huicheng and Jiangmen and catties.During the first three years of the Japanese occupation,it dropped ventured into neighboring counties for the commodity.1Within a few 30 percent.The lowest recorded figure was at the end of the war in 1945. days of collection.they sold the peel in Huicheng.A network of brokers when production was only 30 percent of the prewar level. received dried peel from these itinerant traders and fruit merchants.They then forwarded the collected supplies to the large wholesale merchants who conducted long-distance trade.The role of the brokers was by no The Production and Trading of Fan Palm means insignificant:One of the largest brokers,for exampl 200,000 catties of peel a year just before the Japanese occupation in 1938 Though fan palm in Xinhui was mentioned in historical records as early as (Hc1965,115-17). the third century A.D.,it did not become an important commodity for In the first quarter of the twentieth century,thirty or so wholesale mer- interregional trade until mid-Ming.Fan palm needs four to five years to
2 Historical Geography Historical Geography 33 mature but oneproduce eavesforner hundred years.They trading networks centered around native place associations and palm trade guilds,especially in the four major markets.24 By the turn of the polders (e)were well-drained areas encosed by dikes.Sometimes fan century,there were sixty to seventy long-distance traders with twenty. palms were grown on dikes or hillsides.The leaves were harvested three to seven bases of operation in other provinces.Moreover,the opening of four times a year and then dried,graded,and sold to fan-making work coastal trade routes at the end of the Qing boosted the trade and made shops in Huicheng and Jiangmen.Palm fields were particularly abundant Jiangmen an important center for export to Shanghai and Hong Kong.As highly capitalized as the orange peel merchants,the palm traders brought Huancheng area included the townships of Chengnan.Tianlu,and Nan- back industrial and local goods from other provinces for the local markets tan.22 Though a somewhat exaggerated account from the eighteenth cen (Guan1983.5-8) tury claimed that half of the county's population lived on palm production The production and trading of palm fan required large numbers of work Guan(1983,3)estimated that by the late nineteenth century,Xinhui ers.During the high season,most farming households in the vicinity of County had roughly 25,000 mu of palm fields.I suspect that fan-palm Huicheng would have at least a few members engaged in palm growing. harvesting.fan-proces It is reasonable to 5:48:He1965b assume that since the late Qing the production of fan palm had become an indispensable source of income for households in Huicheng and its rural Among numerous small growers who owned or rented their fields,there hinterland. At the fall of the Qi several do en growers jointly owned over 50 percent of the county's best palm fields,each grower having over 1,000mu A Volatile Regional Core to his name.Guan (1983,4)listed a He Lunyao who owned about 2,000 mu.a He Rui and Pan Xiting who owned 1,500mueach,and a Nie Yupai From the descriptions of the various forms of agriculture and associated who owned 1,000 mu in the vicinity of Jia ngmen and Huicheng.These commodity trade in the arca,one may conclude that the Huancheng area large growers thrived on related handicraft business.Guan documents that shared with the Pearl River delta characteristics of a regional core.25 The these growers,together with a dozen or so fan-processing enterprises, Huancheng area also shared a history of overseas emigration with three controlled 90 percent of the county's palm-drying business.23 other coun ties to its west.26 S th mid-seventeenth century.laborers Processed fans onal and overs eas markets.There were were recruited by a network of local and overseas contractors to work in about twenty me dium-size workshops,each producing over one million the mines and plantations of the Americas and Southeast Asia.Emigration fans a year for wholesale merchants.The largest seven produced between five to eight million fans,and conducted interregional trade as theirm he e ranks of male lab and】 cing households with women,chil business.Before the v with Japan in the 1930s,12 to 15 percent of the dren,and elderly people to virtual dependence on remittances.Laborers palm fans were sold in south China.Another 15 percent were exported to who made enough from their stints abroad often invested in their native Hong Kong via Jiangmen.The rest were distributed by long-distance communities,setting up ancestral estates,building houses,and contribut- traders.According to Guan,it was difficult to date the beginning of this ing to charity and u nity defense long-distance trade.The elders in his family had the mpression that mer- A specialized agriculture,dense populaton,and overseas connections chants from Hankou had sold goods to Foshan and then bought palm fans provided the necessary conditions for the development of local industries. from Xinhui for sale in the towns along the Yangzi valley.By the Ming At the turn of the centu ry there were grain mills,oil presses,small suga dynasty.merchants in Xinhui had started to trade directly with merchants refineries,pap in Hankou.The routes went up through northern Guangdong into Jiangxi king mills,and eand food-processing factories in Jiangmen and Huicheng.Some started as small family operations and by land,at which point the goods were transferred to boats for the Yangzi grew prosperous in a few generations.The Dayou fruit-processing enter- valley.By the mid-nineteenth century,Xinhui traders had set up various prise in Huicheng was one such business.27 In Huicheng.cor bases of operations in Chongqing.Hankou,Suzhou,and Shanghai.The enterprises predominated Jiangmen boasted light industries that pro
Historical Geography Historical Geography 35 duced rubber ware,matches,small machine tools,soap,kerosene,glass various social strata had to come to terms.Out of these economic activities and leathe er goods.28 As arose social affiliations for the average peasant and multiple bases of power and Huicheng attracted the aspiring subcounty elites and catered to their for the local elites.How they juggled these resources for survival and consumption needs.By the end of the Qing,the rural hinterland was also advancement shaped their relationships with one covered with small market towns.Known as the jizhen or xu (periodic as with the highly unstable power of successive regimes.This was the historical markets).the more prosperous ones had populations of four t o six thou baseline of the economy the inhabitants of the region took for granted.32 sand.They displayed an array of shops,teahouses,and a village council office,and some even had a small police force. Amajor focus of the following chapters is the step-bystepasforma tion of the local economy esocialist state.To Linked by easy water transport to Huicheng and Jiangmen,the sizable implement the changes,the party-state recruited and groomed several villages in the Huanche have periodic arkets.Instead generations of local cadres,who replaced the managers of estates in the communities such as Shenhuan,Tianma,and Tianlu Xiang supported reclamation of the marshes and in the work of flood prevention.Thou daily markets.A few shops and teahouses lined the main streets.The sands of peasants from different villages were mobilized by the commune center of social and political activities for these settlements was the mar- and county governments to embark on very ambitious projects. ketplace where the majo temple was situated.In a single surname com The bustling market activities of the prerevolutionary period were re munity such as Tianma,the village council office (known as the gongsuo in the Republican period)and temple merged with the Wubentang,the se- by the state'smpostion of compulsory sales of grain and of major cash s.33 A hic a nior ancestral hall for the Chens.9 -supervised marketing and supply a rapid transformation of the cooperatives took over most of the rural exchange.Tangerine and man The twentieth centu darin oranges,the pride of the area,virtually disappeared from the late my.When large towns and cities in the delta were paralyzed by the chaos 1950s on.The production and sale of fan palm were centralized by the of warlord politics and the Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 1940s. small market towns in the regional periphery prospered.The rise of local couny fan-palmcorpraio the department of commerce. strongmen in ier ma and Lil The consequences of state-imposed structures of production and mar- e during the Japanese occupation is a case in keting on the region's economy were obvious.During my field trips from point.In 1939 the Japanese armies had gained control of Guangzhou, the mld-1970s on.there was nothing that resembled th vibrant,bustling. Foshan,Shiqi,Jiangmen,and Huicheng and blockaded major transport though often precari economic ife that I had gleaned from the histor routes along the coast.The peasants in the area south of Huicheng and Jiangmen shifted to the pro ical texts or from the memories of elderiy villagers.There was little to sell in uction of grain and attended the markets the rural markets.Consumers in Huicheng complained about the already farther south to avoid areas of direct conflict.They sought the protection of limited items of food left unattended in transit.The rice erved in the local militarists who had consolidated their territorial bases.Among these rest urants was stale because it had been improperly stored for too long. local strongmen was a Zeng Huan of Lile Xiang,who rose to power Dried orange peel,which according to the elderly villagers was available in through war-profite ing and behind the Japanes abundance up to the 1950s,had become rare,expensive,and also of poor lines.He even printed his own money for circulation and taxed those who quality.Huicheng and its vicinity.the heart of what wasonce known as the attended his market.Because of its sudden change of fortune under Zeng. Lile earned the reputation of"Little Macao."The local strongmen in and of the fan-palm trees and orchards,seemed to have lost its lush green color. Tianma sided with the Japanese military in Huicheng,and its residents The transformation of the local economy of Huancheng involved one were regarded by neighbors as exclusive and predatory. form of encapsulation over another.It raises several In sum,during the first half of the twentieth century,the delta had a interesting so- ciological questions:How was the economy constructed and maintained varied economic landscape in which agricultural production was spe cialized and intensive.Economic operations wer in the prerevolutionary era,and what sociopolitical institutions did it sus- capitallzed I and com- tain?How were changes brought about during almost a century of up- plex:livelihoods were prosperous yet precarious.The fluid movement of heavals?How did the transfo capital,goods,and people,based on shrewd market calculations as well as ations after the Communist revolution political maneuvers,meant that the rural communities were very much affect the fortunes of the various social groups in the local area and shape their interaction with the larger polity?These are the questions to which I affected by a larger environment with whose political capriclousness the now turn