by Ling Zhang
1 To follow James C. Scott (1976)'s argument.
2 Harvest records are collected from XCB, XCBSB, SS, and SHY.
3 XCB, 169: 4065.
4 XCB, 165: 3974 and 3968.
5 XCB, 165: 3974 and 171: 4119.
6 XCB, 170: 4104. Of course, we should not take this number as its literal meaning. “One million” simply means numerous.
7 XCB, 179: 4327.
8 XCB, 182: 4424.
9 XCBSB, 3xia: 125.
10 XCBSB, 9: 381.
11 Ren Boyu, “Shang Huizong lun yueyun wei Maobi,” in SMCZY, 45: 3a–8b.
12 Li Xin, “Shang Huangdi wanyan shu [A ten-thousand-word memorial to the Emperor],” Kuaao ji, 19: 6b–7a. For a general study on the price increase in the late Song (not specifically for the Hebei area due to the shortage of historical sources), see Ch'uan Han-sheng (1944: 337–394).
13 Unfortunately existing historical sources do not supply harvest records about Hebei during the first quarter of the twelfth century.
14 QSW, 1787: 258.
15 Liang (1980: 290).
16 Han Maoli (1993: 47–52) argues that although the Hebei Plain covered an immense area, the actual acreage of arable land during the Song time was very small.
17 “Lun Hebei caichan shang shixiang shu,” OYXQJ, 118: 1825–1828.
18 Cheng (1998: 106–109) and (2004: 267–285; 357–361; and 404). Liang Gengyao (1994: 107–132) has convincingly argued against Cheng's judgment and briefly brought attention to the mounting environmental situation in north China.
19 “Lun Hebei caichan shang shixiang shu,” OYXQJ, 118: 1825–1828.
20 For the fiscal system and the financial history of the Song Dynasty, see Wang Shengduo (1995), Bao (2001), and Golas in Chaffee and Twitchett (2015: 139–213).
21 Much research has been done in English, Chinese, and Japanese to propose and testify to the “medieval economic revolution” thesis. To grasp the contour of this gigantic amount of scholarship, see Elvin (1973) and Shiba (1970). In Chaffee and Twitchett (2015: 344), McDermott and Shiba critique this overly positive assessment of Song economy by claiming that “any talk of a ‘Sung agricultural revolution’ is premature.”
22 Ho (1956). Also McDermott and Shiba's discussion on south China's “conquest by rice” in Chaffee and Twitchett (2015: 361–364).
23 Tang xinxiu bencao, 487.
24 Wenxian tongkao, 7: 75.
25 Amano (1962: 907), Nishijima (1966: 249–252), Ōsawa (1996: 92–93), and Wang Lihua (1995: 14–17).
26 Following James Roumasset's “safety first” principle in “Risk and Choice of Technique for Peasant Agriculture,” James C. Scott (1976: 22) maintains that, when the “subsistence orientation” structures economic decisions, “[q]uestions of profitability of investment, yield per unit of land, the productivity of labor are in themselves of secondary concern.”
27 Millet is low maintenance and drought resistant in comparison not only with winter wheat but also with other major grain crops. See Zhongguo nongye baike quanshu bianji weiyuanhui (1991: 524).
28 Qimin yaosu, 2: 127. Sishi zuanyao jiaoshi, 4: 194. Wang Zheng Nongshu, 83.
29 Zhongguo nongye baike quanshu bianji weiyuanhui (1991: 635).
30 Jingwen ji, 28: 11b–12b. XCB, 179: 4327 and 454: 10878.
31 Although many scholars argue about when the three-crops-in-two-year rotation system first appeared in the Chinese agricultural history, they in general agree with Amano and Nishijima that millet and winter wheat began to rotate with each other in the same field in the mid-Tang period.
32 Sishi zuanyao jiaoshi, 4: 194. In the eighth lunar month of 1009, Emperor Zhenzong said: “If the stagnant water is drained soon, there will still be some hope for winter wheat [to be sown in time]. But if the water expands without an end or starts to be drained from the ninth month, the fields cannot bear [the plants of wheat] even if a great deal of seeds are sown.” Emperor Zhenzong was referring to the situation in Henan. The frost descended earlier in Hebei than in Henan, the land south of Hebei, so the sowing of seed should be completed before the ninth month. See XCB, 72: 1630.
33 Every few years, the millet field needed to lie fallow to restore fertility. This reality made the rotation index of the millet field lower than 100 percent.
34 SHY, “Shihuo,” 70: 157a.
35 XCB, 68: 1520; 258: 6292, and 280: 6850.
36 Zhongguo nongye baike quanshu bianji weiyuanhui (1991: 613). Also, see the commentary in a Song-period medical treatise, Chongxiu Zhenghe jingshi zhenglei beiyong bencao, 492.
37 XCB, 258: 6305. Another interpretation of this phrase is “households who respond to (the government's call) for spring wheat plantation.” This interpretation does not undermine my argument that spring wheat cultivation was quite common in this region in the eleventh century.
38 Bray (1984: 133).
39 Philip C. C. Huang (1985: 58)'s accounts on crop rotation systems in north China.
40 Hou (2001: 60). At the same time, the rotation index was 143.69 percent in Shandong and 154.2 percent in Henan, south of Hebei. This suggests great regional disparity in the crop rotation system.
41 For the popularity of wheat flour in the Tang-Song China, see Wang (2000: 73, 158, 210); and Nishijima (1966: 249).
42 The situation was similar in Shanxi, the region west to Hebei, where “kaoliang (sorghum) and millet were the circuit's most commonly grown grains, while the more productive grains like barley and wheat remained virtually unplanted in its northern half throughout the Northern Sung.” See Chaffee and Twitchett (2015: 357).
43 XCB, 77: 1751.
44 Cefu yuangui, 678.4a; 503.12a; 503.20a; and 497.8a; and Jiu Tangshu, 105.3221. For a historical survey of rice plantation in the Yellow River valley, see Zou (1985).
45 XCB, 34: 747.
46 Perhaps the same early-ripening variety examined in Ho (1956: 200–218).
47 XCB, 114: 2677.
48 SHY, “Shihuo,” 63: 42a.
49 SHY, “Shihuo,” 63: 42a and 63: 41a. Wenxian tongkao, 7: 76.
50 SHY, “Shihuo,” 63: 42a and 63: 44a.
51 XCB, 60: 6350.
52 XCB, 262: 6408; 260: 6350; 293: 7146; and 330: 7332.
53 “Dingwu jun shuitian ji,” Dingzhou zhi, 21: 35b–37a.
54 XCB, 254: 6206; 260: 6350; 280: 6852; and 501: 11935. SS, 95: 2371. SHY, “Shihuo,” 63: 44a.
55 XCB, 284: 6955.
56 Nagase (1983: 176–178).
57 For more information about Hebei's military colonization and its limited economic value, see Cheng (2012: 78–109).
58 SS, 176: 4266–4267.
59 XCB, 114: 2675.
60 XCB, 181: 4382.
61 SHY, “Shihuo,” 63: 44a.
62 SS, 176: 4266.
63 QSW, 3129: 248.
64 Wang Cun, “Qiba huihe jianshui zhiyi [Pleading to end the discussion about returning or dividing the river],” QSW, 1517: 16–19.
65 QSW, 1814: 695–697.
66 QSW, 2869: 109.
67 XCB, 104: 2408.
68 QSW, 1693: 366.
69 XCB, 165: 3968.
70 XCB, 171: 4119.
71 QSW, 2100: 592.
72 QSW, 2674: 75.
73 XCB, 181: 4382.
74 XCB, 154: 3748 and 201: 4883. SHY, “Shihuo,” 39: 15b.
75 QSW, 672: 335–336.
76 Liu (1959: 111). For the grain trade between the state and private merchants, see Jiang (2002: 220–283; 352–369).
77 QSW, 2056: 735.
78 QSW, 2241: 821.
79 Modern historians of Song China tend to challenge this view by emphasizing non-statist, societal achievements in the Song period, see Chaffee and Twitchett (2015: 2–3).
80 XCB, 153: 3729–3730.
81 XSBGZY, 10: 1. XCB, 166: 3991–3995.
82 XCB, 171: 4090 and 174: 4194.
83 XCB, 181: 4370.
84 “Jingkang yuannian shangzhao fengshi [Presenting the memorial to discuss affairs in the f
irst year of Jingkang (1126)],” SSWJ, 2: 4a.
8
Land and Water
A Thousand Years of Environmental Trauma
Standing on the Yellow River delta at the turn of the twelfth century, one heard the roaring of water, the cry of hungry mouths, and the crash of buildings collapsing from afar. Homeless women and men gathered where levees rose and fell; corpses were half buried in the mud. Junks and carts careened about, bringing in famine relief and shipping out emigrants and their suffering. Officials wielded whips to extract minimal taxes that had to be squeezed from the already impoverished land. Time and time again, imperial edicts came down to initiate titanic hydraulic projects, only to call them off a few days later. Chained and bent down to the riverbanks, hundreds of thousands of laborers arranged mud and stones to block the surging waters. Much had happened during the eighty-year-long environmental drama, which had shaped the governance of the imperial state, regulated the usage of the empire's resources, and profoundly affected the lives of people across north China, along with their livelihoods.
Various non-human environmental entities that were indigenous to the Hebei Plain were shaken and destabilized by the dramatic changes. They, like the men and women of Hebei, had to deal with the reality that their homeland had become the Yellow River's delta and flooding ground. Not only did they have to reconfigure their positions and relations to each other in the newly formed Yellow River–Hebei environmental complex, but they also had to confront interventions from the activist state and allow the “hydraulic mode of consumption” to take heavy tolls from them. What did the earth see, when its body was carved apart by the river's violent flows? What did waters experience, given that they usually moved according to gravity and hydrological dynamics, but were now redirected and reshaped by overwhelming environmental upheavals? How about soil that was covered in water, unable to breathe air and losing its fertility? How about trees and bushes that had once grown wild and were now, under the state's instructions, chopped down to build levees?
The eighty years between 1048 and 1128 constituted a brief moment in the environmental and geological history of both the Hebei Plain and the Yellow River. Yet, the environmental drama and its repetitive episodes hit the land and water so intensely that they created tremendous physical trauma that affected the region for many years to come. The land and water kept their memories not through words, but by leaving marks on the surface and in the depth of the earth: some appeared and vanished quickly like flood waters, while some lasted over a thousand years, like drifting sand and denuded mountains.
8.1 Frantic Streams and the Scarred Earth
As the Yellow River crashed into Hebei in 1048, it encountered multiple local waters, such as the Zhang, the Hulu, the Hutuo, the Juma, and their tributaries, along with the Yuhe Canal and various lakes and ponds. The natural rivers all originated from the Taihang Mountains in western Hebei. Tending eastward or northeastward, they coursed through low-lying central Hebei and the marshy land around modern Tianjin in the northeast. At various points they intersected and converged with each other, before merging into the Juma River that served as the Song-Liao boundary river. There, all the waters gathered, including that of the Yuhe Canal, to discharge into the Bohai Gulf. For a millennium before 1048, these streams collected water resources and distributed them over the majority of the Hebei Plain. Sharing a similar movement pattern, and using a small section of the northeastern coast as their common estuary, they had long formed a giant Hai River system, as the indigenous river system, to dominate the waterscape of Hebei.1 Much of the Hebei Plain was the alluvial fan – the geological product – of this river system. For a millennium, this river system had not intersected with the 700-kilometer-long lower reaches of the Yellow River. Largely independent, its existence and functioning had not been affected by the Yellow River's flooding events and its hydrological forces.
In 1048, the Yellow River invaded. It took over some sections of the Yuhe Canal, cut through the Zhang and the Hulu, ran over the ponds and small local canals that connected with the Hutuo, intersected with their tributaries, and then poured into the Juma River.2 With its every movement, such as floods and course shifts in 1056, 1060, 1068, 1077–1078, 1081, 1099, and 1108, the Yellow River spread its watery body widely across Hebei and pushed farther toward western Hebei where the local rivers originated. Every step of the expansion of the Yellow's water regime involved a violent encounter with the indigenous environmental entities. During the eighty years, the continuous attacks of this gigantic river crushed the relatively weak indigenous water system, destabilizing and reshaping each of its local streams.
Illustration 13. Hebei's Water Systems, 1048–1128
The most immediate effect of the Yellow River's arrival was the dramatic increase in the water volume of the local streams. We do not need much knowledge about hydrology to imagine the increase in the sheer amount of water over the land of Hebei. Wherever the Yellow River extended, its torrents injected into the local streams and caused them to surge. Unable to accommodate excessive water, those small streams saw their waters burst through banks to overflow the surrounding areas. Hence, many local streams ended their state of stability, and as a result, we find in historical records a substantial rise in the number of flood outbreaks all over Hebei.3
What made the situation worse was the redistribution of the massive amount of water. Hebei was unable to accommodate or process so much water. Much of it could not run off into the ocean, because the invasion of the Yellow River destroyed the waterways of many local streams, making their channels dysfunctional. Neither could the water drain off through underground water currents, because Hebei's ground was low and flat; its low gradient slowed down the movement of water. At five to fifteen meters above sea level from central Hebei to its eastern coastal area, and with the underground water table only a few meters underneath, the land surface saw the downward infiltration of surface water and the rapid rise of underground water. As the two water bodies became interconnected and exchanged with each other, neither was able to move around and drain off. Consequently, the land was sandwiched between these waters. This phenomenon was evident to human eyes in the eleventh century. Along the strip of land at the foot of the Taihang Mountains, where the highland met the lowland, a series of water catchments came into being. Water coming down from the mountainous area failed to keep flowing eastward or filter through the ground, but instead accumulated and stagnated in large volumes. It formed a swampy landscape in places like Shenzhou, Zhaozhou, Yingzhou, and Mozhou in western and central Hebei.4
Not only did the Yellow River introduce excessive water, it also turned Hebei's local streams into either displaced environmental refugees or its subordinate waterways. The reconfiguration of the hydrological relationship between the two river systems was chaotic and almost always led to the defeat of the indigenous one. Many local channels were destroyed by the Yellow River's floods or rapidly silted up by its sediments; losing channels, their waters were forced to surge in various directions. Other rivers were now occupied by the Yellow River's torrents and surrendered their riverbeds and channels as the Yellow's tributaries to carry the Yellow's muddy water. No longer their own entities, they became components of the Yellow's hydrological system. The local streams’ loss of hydrological independence, together with the loss of their hydraulic and navigational functions to serve human needs, became a serious concern to eleventh-century hydrocrats. One of the Water Conservancy's agendas was to release the local streams from the Yellow River's destructive dominance and help them restore their own waterways. But often, the hydrocrats had to accept the reality that the local streams could not cross the central plain of Hebei and travel eastward to reach the ocean without encountering the northward-flowing Yellow River and being overwhelmed by it. Given this geographical and hydrological reality, the hydrocrats had no choice but to create hydraulic works that directed the local streams to enter the Yellow River, and to be overtaken by the latter.5
Th
e Yellow's water system and much of Hebei's home river system had now merged into one system – not yet a configured, harmonious one, but instead a chaotic, unruly one that was destructive to both human society and environmental conditions. Many local streams acted as the tentacles and agents of the Yellow's ruthless flooding machine; through them, the Yellow's flooding disasters were magnified and carried down to the local level. People in western Hebei, who were not directly attacked by the Yellow River's torrents, suffered the disastrous impact indirectly through their turbulent local rivers. The Yuhe Canal, for instance, flowed through the walled city of Daming. Due to this spatial setting, when the Yellow River took over parts of the canal's channel, its floods surged straight into the city through the vein of the canal. In 1099, a Yellow-Yuhe joint flood nearly destroyed the city. The disaster prompted the government to block the Yuhe and move its channel outside the city – at the cost of giving up the canal's socio-economic functions – in order to cut the canal off from the Yellow River.6
