Social Cells 37 CHAPTER 3 Social Cells: the reach of enrepreneurial interestsin the villagers in Tianma and Tianlu Xiang.which were founded on reclaimed land at the Community and Kin southern tip of Huancheng,insist that the polders in their communities Ministe xiang.whose estate,the He Wenyi ancestral trust,still owned over 6,000 mu of sands at Jiuzisha,bordering the Huancheng area,at the time of the At the tum of the century,the varied agricultural environment of the Huancheng area and its surrounding region supported a complex social lineage of the "south gate"of Huicheng.which owned vast estates at the structure.From the fringes of the sands inhabited by boat people (Dan), time of the land reform.Representatives of the ancestral trusts were influ- aborigines(Yao),and migrant farmers who acted as bandits.hired hands ential in gentry institutions in Huicheng and Jiangmen such as the Xi'nan in the reclamation of the sands,tenant farmers.members of the crop- Academy ()and the Xinhui Academy.as well as in the local militia watching corps,and functionaries of landed estates,to the grower-en- body,organized during the 1850s in the northeastern part of the county trepreneurs who contracted with ancestral and other estates:the whole and known as Dongbei Public Bureau (gongiu).all of which held extensive sale merchants who were members of trade associations and at time estates in the sands,◆ and the estate ma anagers and literati who The reclamation of the sands in Xinhui contributed to the formation of 、om风6g8Soo2 te academnub"Hewc regional systems in the delta,in which territorial communities,estates,and ranks were connected to each other not only through economic interests. their managerial elites rose and fell.Drawing from historical documents but also through kinship and community affiliations.religious alliances Matsuda Yoshiro(1981)notes that local elites affiliated with the govern and political patronage ment in the older parts of the delta had claimed vast areas of sands in the Easy but unequal access to the productive alluvial plains had enabled late Ming and early Qing.Nishikawa Kikuko (1985)further argues that local elites to build an array of social institutions in order to communicate since the mid-Qing,the reclamation process involved elaborate financial with imperial officials.In fact they took over many of the functions that town-based clite their functiona aries.In- the state normally performe s and creased flooding in the upper reaches of the river had prompted the court provision of large-scale irrigation and transport facilities,education,main- in 1772 to forbid reclamation,but grain shortages made the court relax the tenance of public security,and community defense.These institutions restrictions.From 1785 to 1835.more than 300,000 mu of new sands were were built upon affiliations of community and kin,class differentiations registered(Nishikawa 1985). market networks and practical politics and its ritual guises They were Substantial wealth was accumulated because agriculture on the sands woven together to form the moral and cultural fabric of the world of was profitable and because tax evasion was common and easy.Katayama peasants and their educated elites.At times human perceptions and social (1982),Matsuda (1981),Liu (n.d.),and Ye and Tan (1985b)have all interactions provided a protective shell,room to maneuver,and an aren pointed out that during the Ming and Qing dynastie resistance:at others,they demanded compliance and in- duced commitment2 but were unable to decipher and- tionships embodied in tax accounts ()and to confront "the locally rich and powerful"(haomen)who accumulated vast fortunes by sheltering their clients and ting the 0 erment over the boundaries of land The Political Economy of the Sands and their taxability.One outstanding example of delinquency on the sands,albeit from neighboring Dongguan County.was described by The maturing of the sands in the Ming and the Qing dynasties corre. Zhang Zhidong,governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi from 1884 sponded with the rise of territorial communities.By the ate nineteenth to 1889.He the Mingluntang in 1889 for being difficult re 36
38 Social Cells Social Cells 9 garding taxes on 13,400 mu of the sands under its name.He accusedit cesses of technical organization and capital accumulation characteristic of leaders of tax evasion by falsifying a claim of 100,000 taels of silver as the sands from the mid-nineteenth century on. erepenses,because,as he alleged,it was comonknedn Quoting Zhang Zhidong on the diking of Da'nansha in Xiangshan ce that many groups who had claimed marshes from the gov County to the east of Xinhui County.Nishikawa (1985.18-19)described ernment then farmed them out to contractors. .who took care of the recla the experience of a large contractor in the late nineteenth century that mation Moreover.the sands in question had been claimed for over thirty illustrates the complications and the scale of investm vears,and Zhang was indignant that tax exemptions had continued for so reclamation.Da'nansha was made ved in land up of over 30,000 mu of marshes.of long (Nishikawa 1985,14). which 7.000 mu were owned by 289 landlords.In 1887.one Huang For our purpose,the document is significant because it mentions the Yushu,graduate of the imperial examinations at the provincial level,con- expenses involved and the contractors who supposedly bore the costs.If tracted with these landlords to reclaim their marshes.The landlords had estate managers in county capltals were not financing the expensive opera- agreed to pay Huang reclamatic ion fees s of 2.65 taels of silver per mu,and 6 nt tenant farmers and low-status farmhands percent of the land was conceded to him as an area to be taken up by dikes could hardly be the likely alternative.In fact,earlier historical do and canals.A dispute erupted between Huang and two of the landlords repeatedly point to a stratum of socially ambiguous middlemen.The 1674 who had literati backing over the terms of distribution of the reclaimed edition of the Xiangshan county gazetteer.for example,claimed that dur- ing the early Ming.mars land.The landlords organized a boatload of Dan fishermen. who de eized by powerful families of Shunde scended upon the dikes and threatened their destruction.Subsequent Xinhui,and Panyu counties,who could accumu "over ten thousand fights and lawsuits revealed not only the power relationships among land- shi of grain"(Nongyezhi 2:19-20).Qu Dajun (1630-96)also wrote about lords and large contractors,but also the large sums involved.Hua 14,000 taels of silver on ang spent the zonadian (chieftenants)who reaped handsome profits by parceling out the land th project but he would have received 20.000 hey had acquired from subsoil owners to migrant farmers.7 Not only did they control their own tenants in order to secure part of the of around 6,000 taels.According to Nishikawa,this kind of diking enter- harvest,but they also cheated the original claimants.Coercion and out- prise was common in the late nineteenth century,and she lists four neigh ight pillage were not uncommon,a subject on which Qu quoted an official boring polders construct ted by similar types of local strongmen. observer at the end of Ming as saying. My own investigations in the sands bordering Xinhui and Xiangshan Coastal land in Guangdong emerged continuously,over a few years or dec- counties convince me that,in sharp contrast to the towns in which the ades.Powerful local bosses used the excuse of registering land for taxation to managers of the estates were located,as long as the sands were recognized ach upon matured sands belonging to others.This was known as as newly reclaimed land,the landlords restricted the rights of their tenants .As harvests approached,they gathered shiploads of olowers and to establish permanent settlement.In the town of Xiaolan,situated in the descended upon the disputed areas,brandishing weapons and nags.Casu- heart of the sands,there were 393 ancestral halls established by fifty-six alties were common.This was known as qiangge.(Qu 1700.vol.2.no.57) surnames (among them three major surnames,each boasting hosts of literati members),and 139 temples and monasteries,among them two Dealing with the more recently formed marshes farther southeast Chenghuang temples that only county capitals were expected to build.But Nishikawa (1985,13)lists documents from the nineteenth century tha on the sands beyond Xiaolan,there was hardly a house of brick or stone focus on a stratum of local strongmen similarly categorized in the official Great disparity existed between the towns and the sands. historiography as haomin or tuhao.However,she argues that these were contractors who had ecured long-term tenancy over large areas from the numerous original claimants of the land and had then organized their own Repeated Processes of Social Mobility reclamation.They were not mere secondary landlords who rented out the land in small parcels and lived off the difference between rent paid to them A process of social mobility characterized the evolution of a settlement on in kind and the cash rent they pald to original owners.Instead,the opera- s into a township.On the fringes of land reclamation,the focus tions of these local strongmen reflected the increasingly sophisticated pro of social organization and management was the enclosed compound
Social Cells Social Cells 41 (weign).It consisted of straw huts strung out along the dikesand accom tion"of the delta involved sophisticated reclamation of the marshland,a modating a large number of farmhands.There were houses for overseers,a substantial accumulation of wealth,and a fluid,multitiered granary or two,watchtowers,afleet ofboats for grain transportation,and a wer struc ture among the migrant farmers,the local functionaries,and their gentry crop-watch ing and rent-collection force. patrons in the towns.A nexus of power based on differential access to the During the early Ming.Xiaolan seems to have been just a remote out wealth of the sands connected the wide-open frontier to entrenched in- post similar to the weiguan described,the home of migrant farmers and terests in the reglonal core.The process of social mobility was reenacted by the functionaries of the estates.However,by the late nineteenth century its residents had accumulated independent resources through their direct management of land reclamation and through their r control The county capital of Huicheng did not grow from a weiguan.It has rents and levies.Local strongmen consolidated their power in the out- posts,which theyuednsuof wealth In the process of been a seat of government in this area since the eighth centu The offi clals stationed at Huicheng granted the recognition for the claimants of becoming respectable,they manip ulated cultural symbols.such as organ izing within ancestral halls to create lineage and community alliancesan the sands in the southeastern part of the county in retumn for some accep tance of the obligation to pay tax.The more successful among the settlers to differentiate themselves from more recent migrants,and acquired aca- on the sands rose to elite status by establishing connections to institution demic degrees and offlclal connections.At the same time,these nouveaux in the city (more on this in riches of the aggressively challenged their former patrons in the ext chapter).It is within this context of regional systems formation that we need to analyze community-and lin- county capitals. eage-building in the Huancheng area.The area was rapidly settled during The history of xiaolan and the cases described by Nishikawa and Mat- suda are relevant because they provide a profile of the generations of local the late Ming and early Qing when estatesin Huicheng accelerated thei land reclamation effo ts in the southeastern part of the county.The pro functionaries who were dir ctly involved in the complex operations of jects attracted large numbers of migrant laborers and Dan fishermen from marshland reclamation and who were able to eventually claim a share of all directions,who in time turned these outposts with their concentrated wealth and power in the maturing sands.This point clarifles an apparent difference between Matsuda and Nishikawa concerning local elites and resources into large villages of a unique social and cultural configuration By the turn of the Matsuda c nects the consolidation of the power of entieth century.many local strongmen and former functionaries had joined ranks with the elites in Huicheng and Jiangmen gentry elites to their functions in land reclamation Nishikawa,on the and established their own estates,conducting new reclamation proiects other hand,focuses on the usurpation of their power by a stratum of farther southeast and challengine their former patrons.Residents of ter functionaries.However,if one sees the role of the middlemen in Its proper is.paralleling the growth of the delta and within itorial communities. nany thern associated with a single sumame -tha might appear exclusively cellular in their claims to cultivation rights by the successive reclamation patterns-the way in which they were trans tracing their descent from founding ancestors,yet they were intimately formed from functionaries into respectable elites becomes clearer.The tied to the strategies of estates and literati connections in town,and to the localsnmenof the mid-to-ate Mingreaped windfall profis(u. mobilit ity that the latter exemplified.Subcounty political vol.2.no.57)in the northw n part of the delta(for example,Xihai irestd spccifically on these connetions beveno Shibasha)and Joined ranks with the gentry elites in county capitals countryside. Nanhai,Shunde,Xinhui.and Dongguan by the early Qing.Through offl- cial connections,they claimed vast areas in the southeastern part of the delta(Donghai Shiliusha)and engaged a new generation of local strong- Community-Building men in the capitalized reclamation projects.By the mid-to-late nineteenth century,the residents of the former outposts,now thriving market towns in Xiar ghanPanyu,hadthe het oter Freedman's lineage paradigm of southeastern China ()has shaped the collaborated with their own functionaries for the continued exploitationof course of Chinese anthropology for decades.Later research cautions us that a preoccupation with the principles of patrilineal descent the sands farther southeast (Wanqingsha).The step-by-step "coloniza and with the functlonalist aspects of ancestral trusts for the realization of
名 Social Cells Social Cells such principles may easily blind us to other social affiliations that are just as majority of the thirty-five segment estates of the Chen lineage in the town. meangucurayand poiicaly n ruraltsWorkngin ship emerged only in the turbulent decades of the twentieth century the Pearl River delta and the New Territories of Hong Kong.David Faure Before I left,they led me to what they called a new-style ancestral hall built argues for the overriding importance ofterritorial boundaries as delineate during the Japanese riod.It turned out to b e an ancestral hal by settlement rights traced through descent from the original settlers. of the"study cha mbe type()which was more maintaining that"lineage was important for territorial control,and that domestic altar where rites for very close kin were performed.The short territorial control was at the heart of lineage politics"(,11).Taken history of the ancestral estates and halls is confirmed by my reading of the together with Emily Ahen's work on which shows Chen lineage genealogy (1923),compiled by a membe r of a lineage seg- how preoccupied the keepers of lineage records were with movements of ment whose founder ha moved to Hulcheng during the early Qing.As their members in and out of communities,Faure's assertion is a convincing expected,the genealogy emphasized its own segment history.However,in the descriptions of eight earlier generatlons in Tianma,two ancestral halls of the inheritance of settlement right a major co oncem of the villa 14 er were recorded as having been built:the hall built by the segments of the My own survey of the largest villages at the southern end of the second generation in Tianma,and one built by a segment in the third Huancheng area shows that genealogical and territorial principles inter- generation.There was no mention of other ancestral estates or halls. twined to produce a curious mixture of communities.I had expected to Searching for an explanation of the importance of the focal ancestral find highly differentiated and v well-c ndowed lin ge these halls.I looked into the histo ory of settlem communities.When communitics because they were situated in a "frontier 'area of rice the Huancheng area was being settled,thefrontier might have meant cultivation where large-scale irrigation and defense were important factors something different to its inhabitants.Ancestral trusts and other corporate that Freedman ould have attributed to such a dominant form of internal estates in Huicheng and Jiangmen reached down into the sands,em lineage organization.I would also have expec to find these localized ploying considerable capital and creat cture of con- lineages ritually linked to apical ancestral halls (da zongci).constructed tract tenancy.Formed under the overarching shadow of the town-based later in the county capitals and cities and dedicated to remote founding trusts,the functional role of large contractors,who could take the form of ancestors,which nified large memberships ofa single sumamespread out (1)individual local strongmen,(2)groups centered at community tem in a vast territory.Instead.I fou nd that referred to as focal vital in fo rmulating community and ancestral halls (zuci)were very common in these rural communities.The wn interests.The political economy of the sands produced peculiar forms halls were not well endowed with property.but they engendered unity of lineage and community affiliations and provided the basis for a repeated amonga large membe ership within a well-defined territory,based on loose process of social mobility through which local leaders fostered ties with the affiliations to a common legendary fo nder.I was intrigued.for example literati and the merchants in the towns.Data from the Huancheng area to find that the focal ancestral hall of the Chens in Tianma Xiang was illuminates these processes of community-building and shows how mi- established with only a little over 3 mu of polders.For this part of the grant outposts grew into single-surname communities that exerted a delta,in which the ere measured in units of qing(100 mu).its strong influence in the region. in Tianma was established.However,the Chen lineage gencalogy de- scribed it as containing the tablets of the father and grandfather of the Lineage Communities in and around the Huancheng Area original founder of the age in Tianma,who supposedly died during the reign of Zhengde (1506-21)in the Ming.The hal ne heless assumed a Local gazetteers and lineage genealogies trace a steady stream of migration dominant role in the political and economic affairs of the whole communi into the area during the Song dynasty.Claiming origin from the central ty.On a visit in the summer of 1987,I spent an afternoon with six elderly plains of China,the lineages held on to a common myth,that their an- en from the township,in their sixties to eighties,who were consideredto cestors first settled in Nanxiong subprefecture of north rn Guangdong be the best informed about local history.Two of them I had inter Fear of official wrath after a fellow resident sheltered a fugitive courtesan several years before.They made clear to me during our discussions that the prompted a group of ninety-seven with thirty-five different surnames to
Social Cells Social Cells 45 migratesouhereitionnhen17toealloweddo the rural landscape south of Huicheng.Their histories deserve some atten lations along the way and tion here.With minor differences they represent examples of how commu- nities and lineages evolved when the sands matured in the shadow of the A detailed analysis of the migration myth by Faure (n.d-2)shows the ancestral trusts and corporate estates based in the county capital. mechanisms of official registration and taxation to be characteristic of the Ming dynasty rather than the Song.His comparison of this myth with that of the Yao aborigines in Guangdong suggests that the local populations Chakeng and Shenhuan Xiang differentiated themselves into Han and Yao identities in response to the mpostions of taxes by the MingouEvidence ha Daee Chakeng was one of the three large villages that made up the township of along the coast became migrani rmers only complicates the cultural Shenhuan 10 kilometers southeast of Huicheng.From the supposed history of the region.Meanwhile the delta continued to be reclaimed in a founding of the village in the 1620s to the birth of the famous scholar southeasterly direction.In the initial stages of settlement,neither kin nor Liang Qichao in 1873.the residents of this single-sumame mmunity community solidarities were evident in the sands.Villages were small and county gazetteer compiled in 1690 scattered.Migrant farmers lived in straw huts.In time,outposts grewint spanncd fifeen generations.The describes the hill against which the village was built as an island at the established lineage communities whose members claimed exclusive rights confluence of the Xi and Tan rivers,but as early as the reign of wanli of settlement by virtue of descent from the original founders of the villages. (1573-1620)in the Ming,elites in Huicheng had erected a with expected exaggeration,the inkui xiangtzhi (1908.38)estimated purpos es of geomancy.Villagers alleged that that there was a total of"seven ndred villages populated by numerou nad aed ndandd poond the surname groups with several thousand members;a dozen or so contain ocal inhabitants.The pagoda was erected with the intention of suppress- memberships of over tens of thousands." ing mirant farmers reclaimed the marshes that Exclusive lineage com munitics could indeed be identified in and around with the landmas (n.d.-2)that the extending from the south of Huicheng.By the late the Huancheng district.Despite the argument by Faure Qing half of the village polders were devoted to grain.the rest being delta was mostly settled during the Ming.the claims of the Zhaos of san planted with palm and citrus. jiang that they had settled in the area since the end of the Song were not Numbering over two thousand at the tum of the century.the Liang residents claimed that their ancestors came from Kaiping County after a Bing and his urage en previous sojourn in Nanxiong subprefecture in northern Guangdong.Five camped at the Ya Men inlet farther south before they were overwhelmed ancestral halls stood at the center of the village.The focal ancestral hall. by the pursuing Mongol army.The Zhaos claimed rights to vast areas of Diecheng Tang,was endowed with 100 mu of land.Two other ancestral halls were built for members of the third generation,and another two for migrated from the Shuangshui area in the west during the Qing dynasty later generations.Judged by the standards of the sands,their estates of 100 and in time established the township of Longquan.By the turn of the mu or so were not large.Moreover,they were not managed by wealthy century,the Liu,Li,and Zhang surnames of Longquan had become arch- notables who emerged from the representatives of lineage segments.In stead,their agement and income rotated annually among the male the vicinity.Conflicts ofinterest culminated ina major feud in 1948.0vcr members of the component lineage segments,overseen by a council of thousand village men were involved.The ams accumulated for the feud elders. A brief description of Liang Qichao's family history will shed some ligh on the circumstances of an average farmer tumed member of the village show how community and kin interests,economic resources,and politica gentry.As a member of the Liang lineage,Liang's grandfather had the alliances in the sands coalesced in a quest for territorial domination well right to build a house in one of the four hamlets of the village.Even after beyond the boundaries of lineage or village.At the turn of the century,the he became its first student scholar(x)the grandfather continued t townships of Shenhuan,Tianma,and Tianlu were prominent features of farm several mu of land inherited from his immediate ancestors.Another