46 Social Cells Social Cells 47 ancestral trust awarded him a scholarship that he used to buy more than carrying for the the far end of the village werewo 10 mu of land.As a rich farmer with an education,he was active in settlements of a few hundred residents,known respectively as Yuanjiacun community affairs.for example,in the promotion of the baolianghui,a and Shierfeng,both inhabited by people bearing the Yuan surname.An village association initiated by the Qing government after the distur origin myth tied the Yuan and Liang surname groups in a peculiar way.It bances of the Red Turbans from 1854 to 1856.24 Liang's father inherited was claimed by the Llang lineage that the focal ancestor of the Yuan 6mu of land.He farmed and studied,but never succeeded in passing the surname group,who was a female referred to by the Yuan as the bopo. examinations.After his son Qichao received the juren degree by passing married an ancestor of the Liang.Her brother came with her from Kaiping the provincial examinations,the father gained informal status as a mem- but when he died the Liang surname residents would not allow him to be ber of the village gentry.It was wever.at the hill behind Chakeng,a violent auseethnrecovered thebody.Interpretins teach and was relied upon to arbitrate disputes in the village.Relatively sign from the heavens,the Liang surname group accepted the Yuan sur. well off and fairly well educated scholar-cultivators such as Liang name residents into the community.even though the two grou s could not Qichao'sgrandfather were typical of the eaders who represented then not have an ancestral hall until the twen eage and imperial were relied pon by state agents to collect various levies,arbitrate disputes,organize defense empress of heaven,in July 1987.I saw paper flags placed in the front altar. and pron moral education.Their cconomic interests in fact reinforced the same types offlags that Dan fishermen put at small altarsin the prowsof their social obliga ions and their boats.The myth illu minated community-building process in Chakeng whereby Dan migrant laborers were eventally accepted as a shrewdly recognized by the imperial authorities,as illustrated in a case stratum in the community. involving Liang Qichao.After the abortive Hundred Days Reforms,impe- Other social affiliations were maintained through attendance at markets rial wrath against him brought havoc to Chakeng.Qing troops were or and temples.The three elderly villagers with whomIdis ssed local histo ry insisted that there had never been a periodic market in Chakeng as long in the halls that symbolized the influence of the Liang lineage. as they could remember.Instead a daily market was attended by itinerant The two thousand or so residents of the Liang surname in Chakeng traders from neighboring villages.Usually,the Liang lineage made it a populous li neage con unity in the eyes of the residents of went to the market at jiang. where they maintained ties with their afte Zhaoina They also sied thek Shuangshui to communities in various ways.On the eighth day of every new year,repre the southwest and Lile to the northeast.However,they seldom went to entatives of lineage segme ents attended ancestral rites in Tianlu,where Huicheng in the northwest,because,as it was claimed,only the educated descendants of the younger bi other of Chake members ngle so cially in the cities built an ancestral hall and created an estate in honor of their father father Next to the focal ancestral hall in Chakeng were two major temples,the Though the Liang at Chakeng belonged to the senior segment,villagers Beidi and the Kangwang.Annual celebrations at the two temples were ackn wledged that the Liang lineage of Tianlu had supplied the funds to held after the harvest of the late crop.around the eleventh month of th build the Tianlu hall. On the outskins of Chakeng were three other com lunar year.Thes vere atten ded exclusively by the Liang lineage unie coseliedoh Liangineae.The residen ofodn V members,except for a few families of the Yuan surname.The Beidi Tem- lage consisted of a small branch of the Liang mixed with a few households ple,which was also the political headquarters of the village,managed a bearing the Tan and Chen surnames.The latter were referred to by the vast area of marshes in the northeast that belonged to the r Liang as shamin (residents of the sands)and xia h (m can households) village of Xijia.When asked how the temple came to manage the lands and Living"out in the sands"on boats and in straw huts,they did not inter collect the rent,villagers recounted that landlords at xijia had contracted marry with members of the Liang surname.They were referred to as Dan the land to the Liang but were not able to collect rents.The temple,repre- ishermen.ho were hired by the Liang lineage the sands and senting the interests of the Liang,was responsible for parce g out the who later settled in the area to engage in "menial occupations" such as land for cultivation:it collected rent,gave a percentage to the crop-
Social Cells Social Cells watching forces,and kept the rest.Though the landlords at Xijia nominally ownership wherever the grain washed up on shore.To me,the story had the height to these marshes,in fact they became the property of the age who re conveyed the villagers'perception of imperial representatives as distant vated them but arbitrarily powerful figures. In essence,the temple served the function of the contractor for the Liang lineage in Chakeng and pocketed the surplus.27 How the land became cultivable involved a long process.Initially, marshes were claimed by ancestral trusts in Huicheng.Laborers were The community's third temple,the Sanbao Miao,had a more inclusive sometimes hired to stack stones along the banks to accelerate sedimenta- following.Butlt during the reign of Tongzhi (1862-74),it staged an an nual jiao ceremony of communal exorcism during the seventh lunar tion.When a sutantial area of soll had accumulated,the marsheswer contracted out to local strongmen who,it was said, “maintained good month.The procession of the gods reached as far as Xiaodong,the Yuan settlements,and the neighboring community of Dadong,inhabited by a connections with estate managers and functionaries in town."When a group suramed Yu.who according to the local people were descendant large polder was ready for cultivation,the large contractors called the villagers together and parcelled out the land in public auctions.Tianlu of the original settlers in the area.The procession of the gods mapped out esidents paid rent in kind tothese local strongmen.With a large amount of the social space of Shenhuan Xiang with its multi-surname membership. grain at their disposal for trading with grain merchants in Huicheng.the local strongmen quickly accumulated resources and acquired their own Tianlu Xiang marshes for reclamation.When some of the polders were converted to the growing of cash crops such as s gar citrus,and fan palm,the strong- men established trading ties with wholesale merchants in town and often Known locally as Shuni.the township of Tianlu was described by the had their conflicts arbitrated in trade guilds. county gazettee of 1840 as an isl The largest sumame,Ye.had seven ancestral halls by the first quartero kilometers southwest from Huicheng.As in Chakeng.centuries of recla- added after the 1930s mation had turned the shallow marshes into productive polders.The land- Ofthe eight villages,the Yummsoccupid four.The focal ancestral hallof the Ye. mass within Tianlu's boundary encompassed eight villages situated closely together.Though five surname groups made up the bulk of the population Zuluntang,was located in the village of Dongan.The second most powerful surname group,the Liang,resided in the village of Xining and had built a (Ye,Liang.Huang.Zhang,and Feng),the existence of at least fifteen other hall for the fathe of the riginal founder of the village.2s Two other hall sumnames suggested that the township had been an open frontier,attract- ng migrants from a wide area.As in Chakeng.some of these other sur were added only at the turn of the century.The Huang lineage of xian Village and the Yu lineage of Xihua Village each had an ancestral hall.The names were referred to by elderly villagers asxi(mean households) Su lineage,whose elite members had moved into Huicheng,also main- However,in Tianlu Xiang,this group did not consist of the shamin (settlers tained one.In comparison with the large polders owned by ancestral trusts in the sands)who migrated southwards from Jiangmen along the tributary in Huicheng,estates owned by local segments were relatively small.aver- aging less than 100 mu each.The estates were auctioned out for cultivation the Shuangshui area in the southwest who had no claim to village land and and the income was used for ancestral rituals. who had attached themselves as hereditary bond servants.Known locally All the sumame groups in Tianlu participated in rituals at what they as dizi (junior sons),they lived in houses built by their patrons,were given claimed were ancestral graves in the hills north of Huicheng.together with land to cultivate, and were even given ceremonial pork after lineage remote kinsmen in Huicheng.It was said that Shushan,the only hill in Tianlu,did not have favorable geomancy for burial,so the and As mentioned earlier in the chapter,villagers in Tianlu today readily buried near Huicheng.It was als point out that most of the land in the township belonged to descendants of venient,according to elderly vil He the Minister and Mo the Eunuh.Unce Yeand Liang the two lagers of the Ye surname,because the rituals meant that "there was pork octogenarian descibed how land was ac- for distribution.Lineage elites went for political purposes.A fifty-five- year-oid villager of the Ye surname alleged that hisg ndfather,a rather quired "in the days of the dynasties."Officials supposedly obtained the wealthy man,went notonly y to higher-order ancestral halls and academies land in the sands by sprinkling grain into the rivers and claiming in Huicheng where the soul tablets of some of their ancestors were depos-
50 Social Cells Social Cells 51 ited,but also to an apical ancestral hall in Guangzhou during a time of lineage feuds in order to seek possible alliances. shui,but those of Tianma sided with the Japanese occupying Huicheng. Social cleavages in Tianlu shifted among the different surnames.By the Because of some alleged rapes,villagers in Tianlu descended upon a group early twentieth century.the Ye and Liang surnames had become the major of soldiers supposedly serving the collaborators.The Japanese military competitors for the township's best polders.The Liang were envied fo retaliated by bombing the township.In the wake of the bombing.loca their wealth,but no "outsider"would venture to live in Xining Village. strongmen in Tianma and their followers sacked Tianlu,razed the houses which they occupied.In the 1930s a strongman of the Ye surname chal- to the ground,dismantled buildings and bridges,and carted the spoils back lenged that exclusiveness.Ye Yi came from humble origins but was able to to Tianma.Lin Qing.the present party secretary of Tianlu,remembered gather a folld wing of village toughs during a decade of political chaos Testing the limits,he burnt some crops and boats belonging to the Liang. houses in the township:the men went for cover,while women and chil- The Liang were outraged.Feeling outnumbered,they sought help from dren hid in their houses.Then he saw "an army of uniformed men' Liang surname groups in the neighboring townships of Nantan in the (dajunr)and village toughs from Tianma coming down the main road.He north and Qianmu at the southern tip of Xinhui County.A show of force men and a women of the defended was finally averted through mediation by community elders and notables themselves with bamboo poles against the invaders under the big tree at The social boundaries of the eight villages were made explicit by com- the village entrance,while the wounded lay moaning by the roadside.He munal participation in popular rituals.Each village in the township had an fled with his family to Shuangshui,a district farther southwest across the earth shrine (se).Each polder(w)outside the residential area also had river.Some of the villagers never retumed.For a decade residents of the an earth shrine.During the celebration of the earth god's birthday,each two townships did not intermarry or attend each other's markets. household under the spiritual jurisdiction of these shrines would contrib- ute money and grain.2 The township also had four temples:the Wenwu Temple in the village ofxian,the Huaguang Temple,the Chen Kao Templ Tianma Xiang in the village of Beian,and the Dawang Temple in Dongan.Known also as rang,the Dawang Temple was also the site of the council Tianma was a township composed of seven villages clustered at the foot of ownship.o It was situated by the marketplace and was quite ob- the Changni,Fengshan,and Mani hills.Numbering over five thousand, viously the center of activities.Access to the township's common lands the residents of Tianma were :co nsidered by neigh rs to be exclusive. such as dikes,riverways,marshes on the edge of the polders where peas- uncultured,and belligerent.In fact,neighbors called them Dan fishermen. ants raised ducks or collected harvest grubs,was auctioned by the council a designation that a majority of those with the Chen surname who lived in office.The income was used to hire watchmen for the dikes and crops as five of the villages would reject.Instead,they distinguished themselves well as for temple festivals Apart from the annual celebration of the deity's from those in the remaining two vilageswith mixed suames (sucha birthday during the second lunar month,the temple staged a jiao ceremony Deng,Mai,He,Huang).Concentrated at Changni Hill and cultivating the every three years after the harvest of the late crop.As in other temple most recent sands,the residents of these two villages were known to wear festivals,the deity was paraded in a prescribed sequence around the com- black cloth (known locally as Danjia br),to live in boats and straw huts munal shrines of the entire township so that the residents of each village and to engage in fishing during the slack seasons.They were considered could perform the ritual known as zuasheng (seating the deity). ndand the Chensuame residens in the other villages did Apart from sharing common rituals.residents of Tianlu often mobilized not intermarry with them. for practical politica the Chen suame grou of Tanma The efforts of the Chen lineage members to distance themselves from Xiang.Both townships were situated in the e mo ecently med sands Dan associations ronically revealed the contrary.In the preface of the Residents frequently bickered over land boundaries and diking.Rent on Chen genealogy (1923).where the usual myth of migration from Nan- land bordering the two townships was cheap because,as I was told.no- xiong was described,the author attached another story,which related that body could be sure of who would get the harvest.As we will see in the next fear of persecution in Nanxiong scattered their original ancestors to chapter,the two townshipshad ashowdownin1939 9.Several local strong- Guangzhou,Shunde.Xinhui,Nanjing.Kaifeng,and Fujian Province
Social Cells Social Cells 53 (which were areas where one found Dan settlements).Furthermore,they added to the unorthodox flavor of their social and cultural background. vowed to"reside by the sand and waters to commemorate their common If the Chen of Tianma were of Dan origin,their presence on the sands origins." since the Ming suggests that they started as hired hands in the reclama- How the Chens came to settle in Tianma was the subject of another tion projects.32 The initial settlements would have taken the form of the legend.It was claimed that during the mid-Ming,a woman had married weiguan.After the sands were reclaimed.these laborers became hired into a Chen family in Shitou of Tangxia Xiang,north of Jiangmen.When guards carrying out the duties of crop-watching and dike repair,later her husband was drowned in the xi River by enemie she fled to her acquiring settlement rights by driving out less numerous competitors such birthplace near Jiangmen,another place where Dan fisherman congre- as the Lin and the Feng.The open sands provided ample opportunities for gated,bringing with her a four-year-old son born in the seventh year of the nulating resourc s.The Ch me groups bec ame respectably Han after a few generations and even built their own ancestral halls and sought the help of a compiled a genealogy.33 Changni. Elderly villagers insisted that,as in Tlanlu,land in the township was At the time,the nelghboring village of Mani was inhabited by people predominantly owned by ancestral trusts in Huicheng bearing the He sur bearing the Feng surame.It happened that one of them was involved ina killing and had fied the area.The Chen widow was able to buy his house. name.These trusts contracted extensive marshes to local strongmen,who in turn parcelled them out to villagers for reclamation and cultivation. She settled down to raise her son.He eventually married and had three Though Tianma's focal ancestral hall,Wubentang,did not have much land sons,twelve grandsons,and thirty-five great-grandsons.According to the ofits own,its coun s and managers,who were supposedly eicct the Chen sumame group competed with the Feng forx the village.Elderly vilagers claimed that arich memberof ed every three years,took care of matters relating to community property such as rights to use riverways,markets,dikes,and wasteland.Rights were the Feng lineage made a Chen man carry him across the river but was auctioned off annually to lineage members,and the sums collected wer drowned.A lawsuit was brought by the Fengs against the alleged mur- derer.The thy-five great-grandsons responded used for for charity.The rules of the halll listed generous sums to be contributed to the village elderly as well as to those who had acquired Observing their unity,the magistrate urged academic degrees and officlal honors.They also took it upon themselves to the Feng villagers to leave the area,advice they took.The Chens registered maintain public order in the community.threatening with "expulsion their households with the authorities,paid the taxes,and claimed settle- from the lineage' those mem abers who nmitted offenses such as tres- ment rights in the area.A member of the seventh generation born in 1650 and official passing ancestral graves,committing adultery and gambling.using com- acquired acade honors and then moved to munity boats for piracy and opium smuggling,and,in the case of managers Huicheng.An ancestral hall was built in his name in Huicheng in 1810. of local estates,delinquency in tax payments.They declared that they Another for his son was built in 1861.Their ancestral trusts maintained would act as guara ntors in legal matters ar nd in arbitrat and represented land in Tianma and the surrounding sands.In Tianma Xiang.two ancestral community members faced with official accusations.34 In addition.the halls were bult:a focal ancestral hall Wubentang.built for the founderof ancestral hall may have served as the contractor for corporate estates in the the lineage and housing the soul tablets for his father and grandfather,and town,because older villagers insisted that they paid rents to the Wuben- a Zhigongtang built for one of his grandsons. The origin myth reveals the Chensfisherman origins as well as their ang. "which took care of anda The community rituals of the Chens were no different from those of their struggle with the original inhabitants for the right to setle in the area.It ehbors.Each e hadearth shrine (asdid every polder of was not surprising to find that there were Dan fishermen around.Several more than a few hundred mu.Apart from the Chen Kao Temple,which hundred years ago,the Tianma area was just an island at the confluence of Xi and Tan rivers and probably served as a shelter for coastal fish was regarded more or less as a religious center for the Chens,the township had three other major temples:the Beidi,Guandi and the Tianhou.35 The ermen.The fact that the Chen surname groups continued to visit the communal jiao ceremonies took place at the Beidi Temple once every two grave of "Fisherman Guo"at the New Year and that they worshipped the mother of the original founder as bopo in a temple for Chen Kao only
Social Cells Social Cells 55 estatesnma boreamajorarof hettheyIn on brute force,as gentry historiography has portrayed it to be.Successful fact,the focal Beidi Temp were physically linked by local strongmen ceased to be illegitimate and became members of the the Chen Kao Temple.They formed the center of social activities and gentry.38 Their sources of authority and power were embedded in long- political authority for the Chen lineage in Tianma.It was at this point that established social institutlons.At the younger sands,which town estates the merging of community and kin was most forcefully represented. many easy weath had allowed these local strongmen and their descendants to build their own estates acquire academic degrees,and become respectable by the criteria of the Power and Community Confucian state culture.They fostered tles with elites in town by participat- ing in the activities higher-order lineages;by contributing sum sto town The Huancheng area displayed a great variety of community composition based ancestral halls where they could place their ancestral tablets:by Despite their differences,local residents have consistently stressed their securing membership in trade guilds and academies as merchants and similarities as collective entities whose unity was symbolized by the pre- scholar-officials (more on this in chapter 4).For example,the Chen lineage eminence of focal ancestral halls and of major village temples.6 Underly howed that the tablets ing their histories of settement one may discem patter of community of members of several generations were deposited in an apical ancestral building taking place within an overarching system of land tenure that hall for the Chen surname in Huicheng.Some were placed in Xi'nan linked the town and communities on the rural fringes.These settlements Shuyuan,a powerful academy built in the mid-nineteenth century that seem to have emerged rapidly at the end of the Ming and in the early Qing included ge dynasties.Whethe or the original settlers were freeholders,the an in the sou thwestern part ol Xt nhui County.A directory of Xi'nan Shuyuan cestral trusts and merchant and gentry institutions based in town had compiled in 1922 showed that many members came originally from bought up most of the maturing sands in the county by the late Qing. Chakeng,Tianma,and Tianlu.The academies,as we will see,were institu- Reclamation projects brought a mixture of immigrants into the area.Set- tement rights were subseq tly fought out among them.the ers being pushed down to a lower social category.Focal ancestral halls dedicated to eventually drawn into town,they were still relied upon by their rural remote founders and major community temples were the dominant social associates,especially if they continued to maintain landed interests in the tionfor the villagers.These social and religous instioso rural comm ities.Hence the concerns of kin,combined with a broad often than not ed the role of large contracto membership sharing an apical ancestor,produced territorial communities trusts in town.To be able to trace genealogical ties to original settlers that defended themselves fiercely against outsiders but at the same time meant that one was able to settle in the community,to cultivate its con- actively sought linkages with metropolitan interests. tracted land,to be sheltered by the village notables against aggressive Thus the processo unity-building as described in the Huancheng neighbors and officials.an ive cha y from the funds of ancestra area adds a historical dimension to Freedman's treatment of lineage com- trusts and community temples.Villagers paid their rents,but tax payments munities.It traces how these micro-histories of community-building un- were the business of managers of estates and village notables. folded and how local residents within them became part of the cultural It is true that village life was dominated by local strongmen and rich cthos of the wider region.The local communities,beg ing as reclama householders. e o fthem might have been bully-like armed guards and tion settlements,developed within the framework of the lineage and pro- functionaries in the reclamation projects who pocketed the crop-watching duced successful leaders who climbed up the social ladder and related local fees,but many were the shrewd contractors and managers of ancestral customs to the official culture,drawing their own communities into the trusts and temples.They maintained good relations with patrons in town state s in the process and were the selves upwardly mobile.Hov vever,it was in the interestof It follows that if one looks at community-building within this wider the powerful who succeeded in entering elite society to adopt the elite structure of property and power relationships,one must also examine the lifestyle and to maintain the cultural traditions that provided a sense of town-based estates to appreciate their the ura unity to the entire region.The rise of local strongmen was not based solely hinterland.By the time the Huanc heng area was setied,Huicheng had