If the landlords and rich peasants held less than was usual, the middle peasants held much more. They made up 40 percent of the population, held 45 percent of the land and 66 percent of the draft animals. Even so, they were not the largest group in the village. The poor peasants outnumbered all others with 47 percent of the population. They held only 24 percent of the land. Six percent of the people were hired laborers. The two most exploited groups thus made up more than half of the population, owned less than a quarter of the land, and only five percent of the draft animals.
Very interesting and significant was the factor of family size. The landlords and the rich peasants averaged more than five persons per household, the middle peasants fewer than five, the poor peasants between three and three and a half, and the hired laborers about three. There was thus a direct correlation between the size of the family and its basic economic security measured in terms of productive property. Although the birth rate in all established families was approximately the same, those with land, tools, and stock were able to maintain larger families and prosper. Those without land or with very small holdings were often unable even to marry. If they did marry they were unable to hold their families together, lost more children to disease and famine, had to sell children, or even sell wives, and thus had households about half the size.
If the land holdings of the prerevolutionary period were calculated on the basis of the number of families, rather than per capita, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the landlords and rich peasants was more marked. On that basis—a very realistic one for China, where the traditional emphasis has always been on the family rather than on the individual—the landlords and rich peasants, with only five percent of the families, controlled 31 percent of the land; the middle peasants, with less than a third of the families, held 45 percent of the land; and the poor peasants and hired laborers together, with 62 percent of the families, held only 24 percent of the land. Even on this basis the concentration of land ownership in Long Bow was not high; the landlords and rich peasants were relatively poor; and the middle peasant group was unusually large, a factor which was to have considerable influence on the whole future of the community.
One reason for the comparative dispersion of land ownership was the poor quality of the land. Whereas in many parts of China it took only half an acre or less to support one person, in the southern districts of Lucheng County it took about one acre. Irrigation easily could have doubled yields, but without large-scale engineering projects no general irrigation was possible, even on the flat that surrounded the village. In addition, a good part of the land—at least one third—was on the hill and therefore impossible to irrigate. The whole region, located at the very end of Shansi’s fertile central valley only a few miles from high, often rocky mountains, was extremely high and cold and hence a peripheral area agriculturally. In general, in every country in the world the highest concentration of landholding is to be found in the richest, most fertile valleys, and the lowest concentration in the poorest mountain regions where the surplus possible from one man’s labor is least, and hence the rate of exploitation is the lowest. The mountainous regions of Southeastern Shansi were no exception to this rule.
The land held by the landlords and rich peasants, while ample, was not enough in itself to make them the dominant group in the village. It served primarily as a solid foundation for other forms of open and concealed exploitation which taken together raised a handful of families far above the rest of the inhabitants economically and hence politically and socially as well. Usurious interest rates on loans, profits from commercial and industrial ventures, the spoils of public office, and graft or commissions from the management of temple, church, and clan affairs—when added to the revenues from land ownership and land management—gave these families an influence in gross disproportion to their numbers or to the acreage which they held.
Long Bow’s richest family, the seven-member household of the landlord Sheng Ching-ho tapped every one of these income sources. Sheng Ching-ho was a healthy, able-bodied man, but he never engaged in any form of manual labor. He did not have to. His income was many times that of the most prosperous middle-peasant family. He cultivated long fingernails, wore a long gown that made manual work impossible and considered it beneath his dignity even to lift his bag onto his cart when he went on a trip.
The heart of Ching-ho’s “empire” consisted of 23 acres of fertile land—the largest holding in the village if one excludes the land of the “Carry-On Society” of the Catholic Church.* To work these acres he hired two year-round laborers plus extra hands at harvest time. In livestock, the second most important category of rural wealth, he owned two draft animals, a flock of sheep, and several hogs. He employed two boys full time to look after the sheep. His industrial enterprise was a small distillery where paikar was made from kaoliang grain. The wine cost about 20 cents a catty to make and sold for about 30 cents a catty. * When in full production this distillery turned out over 100 catties a day. In this plant Ching-ho employed two men for about seven months every year. The distiller’s grains left over from the process were fed to fattening hogs.
The income from these enterprises was fairly large and since the family lived very frugally, Sheng Ching-ho had a yearly surplus. Some of this surplus he converted into silver coin which he buried in the back part of his courtyard. Another part he invested in a distillery owned by another landlord, Fan Pu-tzu. The rest he loaned out to peasants in desperate need and, by charging exorbitant interest rates (up to 50 percent a month), often doubled or tripled his principal in one season. Those who were unable to pay lost their land to him. If they had no land, they lost their livestock, their carts, their implements. This loan business was actually run by his wife, a woman with a very sharp business head who kept careful track of every copper coin.
With his wife in command of the loans, Ching-ho himself had plenty of time for such equally lucrative operations as managing the affairs of the Pei Lao Shih or North Temple Society, a charitable organization set up to help support the village school, lend money to members in distress, give insurance-type benefits, and placate the gods. This was a Buddhist religious group to which many peasants contributed money and grain. The society owned about five acres of land which Ching-ho managed. He also ran the group’s annual fair and hired the traveling players who staged the opera without which no fair could be called a success. Since Ching-ho was in charge of all the funds, it was a simple matter for him to deduct a suitable commission. It was also a simple matter for him to arrange the accounts in such a way that the amount written down as the cost of the entertainment was always greatly in excess of the sum actually spent. He pocketed the difference. Once every 40 years the North Temple Society sponsored an especially grand fair. On such occasions much more money was spent and Ching-ho’s share, when this fete finally fell to him, was proportionately greater. He himself confessed that he made more than 500 silver dollars on this one big fair alone.**
As a fertility and good luck offering to the gods, each member of the North Temple Society had to pay annually a certain amount of grain per acre. All this grain went to Ching-ho’s home and eventually found its way to his distillery. No accounting for this wealth was ever made to the people.
Concerning the manager of a similar temple society in South China, the well-known sociologist, Fei Hsiao-tung, has this to say:
He is theoretically selected by common consent; in practice, the position is held in rotation by influential men of the village by their common consent. The invariable practice of ignoring the poor in questions of administration is justified by the statement that their poverty disqualified them, since they could not reimburse the public coffers were they to make mistakes. It is impossible to say how much profit accrues to the treasurer, for, since the only concern of the people is that the traditional functions be performed, there is no system of auditing or making public his accounts.*
By no means a man to place all his eggs in one basket, Ching-ho als
o headed the K’ung Tzu Tao (Confucian Association) of the whole Fifth District. The Confucians of 30 villages were under his leadership. In Long Bow the overwhelming majority of the people belonged to the Confucian Association. Periodically Ching-ho held a banquet for its members and collected contributions to pay for the food and the entertainment. The contributions were usually greater than the cost of the banquet, and Ching-ho kept the difference. Since the Confucians of the whole district contributed, the income was large.
This Association undertook another service to members from which the income was also considerable. This was spirit talking. For a sum of money or grain one could talk, with the aid of a medium, to a parent long dead. This was called yuan kuang—the distant view. For an equivalent sum one could talk to one who had just died. This was called hui yin—the return impression. Payments for both types of messages were paid to Ching-ho, who managed the whole procedure. The ability to arrange these conversations with the dead gave him awesome power over that wide cross section of the people who believed in this occult practice.
To round out his career Sheng Ching-ho was active in politics. He served for many years as village head under the administration of Shansi’s Governor, Yen Hsi-shan. This office carried with it no salary but it put the incumbent in a position to receive all kinds of emoluments—gifts and invitations to feasts on holidays, favors in return for the arbitration of disputes between families, graft in the collection of taxes and the assembling of materials for public works, commissions on the handling of public funds of all kinds. By far the largest source of Ching-ho’s administrative “take” came from the cut he took of all taxes. If the county magistrate demanded two bushels of grain per family, he demanded five and kept three. He accepted no excuse for failure to pay. People had to deliver their tax grains even if they had to sell their children to do it. In fairness to Ching-ho it must be added that of the three bushels he held back, only a portion went into his own granary. He had to split the taxes many ways with subordinate officials, soldiers, etc.
Since Long Bow was the district seat and a garrison town, in addition to the frequent tax collections, the population had to bear the burden of feeding soldiers and officers who walked in and demanded meals. If anyone offered them coarse food such as millet, they threw it in the privy. They wanted good things to eat. They often went to the village inn, ate their fill and made the people pay, but they never bothered Ching-ho in such petty ways. They depended on him for tax gathering, public administration, and the adjustment of community disputes. It was Ching-ho himself who invited officers to his home, entertained them lavishly, fed them wheat dumplings, and gave them the finest tobacco to smoke. He, of course, paid for all this with public funds.
As village head Sheng Ching-ho was also a member of the Kuomintang Party. Although, out of prudence, he resigned from village office just before the Japanese conquerors arrived, he kept up his Kuomintang membership throughout the occupation and the subsequent surrender in 1945.
The power which Ching-ho wielded by means of these various connections was enormous in terms of village life. He used it to acquire wealth and more wealth. He was especially vigorous in taking over other people’s land and houses. Han-sheng was an old man who owned half an acre of very good land just to the east of the village. In a crisis he once borrowed $13 from Sheng Ching-ho. Three years later the principal plus interest amounted to a very large sum. Though Han-sheng paid off some of it, he couldn’t pay it all. Ching-ho then seized the half acre and the summer harvest that had just been reaped on it. Because he did not want the millet he plowed it under and planted wheat in the fall. Han-sheng was left with nothing.
The middle peasant Shih Szu-har borrowed $125 from the North Temple Society managed by Ching-ho. Two years later, when Szu-har was unable to pay, he lost his land—all six acres, his eleven-section house, his donkey, and his cart.* The whole family, including several very young children, were driven outside to live in the open. Luckily Szu-har had both loyal friends and skill as a carpenter. He found shelter and work and was able to save his family from starvation.
At the time when Ching-ho took possession of Szu-har’s land it had just been planted. The young millet shoots were pushing through the soil and they had been hoed once. Ching-ho put the land up for sale but the price he asked was so high that no one could afford to buy it. Though weeds smothered the young millet, Ching-ho would not allow Szu-har to go on the field and the crop was lost.
A poor peasant named Shen borrowed $4 from Ching-ho in order to buy medicine for his sick wife. As a guarantee for the loan he indentured his son Faliang to Ching-ho for seven years. At the end of seven years, because of illness, deductions for broken tools, and outright cheating on the part of Ching-ho, Fa-liang owed many times the original debt and had to tear down part of his house and sell the roof timbers to win his freedom.
The landless and the land poor were not the only victims of Sheng Ching-ho. A prosperous rich peasant, P’ei Ho-yi, owned 13 acres and a fine house of 20 sections. This house adjoined Ching-ho’s and the landlord wanted very much to add it to his own. In order to do so he first had to bankrupt Ho-yi. He encouraged Ho-yi to smoke opium, and when Ho-yi could no longer afford to buy opium, he loaned him the money with which to keep the supply coming. When Ho-yi’s debt had grown to alarming proportions, Ching-ho decided to form a revolving loan society by means of which, in the course of several years, Ho-yi could pay off his debt. Quite a few peasants were drawn into this scheme. Each contributed three or four silver dollars to a fund which each in turn could use interest free for a year. Ho-yi was made secretary of the society and got the first year’s pot. Since he was floating in an opium trance most of the time, Ho-yi easily lost track of the exact standing of the shares and, when Ching-ho suddenly announced that $50 was missing, he had no way to refute it. Ching-ho came forward with a solution. He took Ho-yi’s house and three acres of his land in return for paying off the other partners. To settle the rest of the debt to Ching-ho, Ho-yi had to sell what remained of his land. Completely bankrupt, he and his family were driven into the street and forced to leave Long Bow.
Next to Sheng Ching-ho the most important landlord in Long Bow Village was the Catholic, Fan Pu-tzu. He owned 14 acres of land, a flock of sheep, several hogs, a distillery—larger than the one run by Ching-ho—and a liquor store in Horse Square, one mile to the north. He employed two full-time laborers, two shepherds, three distillery workers, two clerks, and seasonal help when needed. His household was notorious for the bad treatment meted out to laborers and servants. He paid one youthful worker in the distillery $7 a year, called him off the straw in the cowshed at three o’clock in the morning and set him to grinding grain. At noon, when the whole family took a nap, this boy was not allowed to rest but had to carry water. In the afternoon the family ate an extra meal of noodles, but the laborers got only the two regular meals of coarse millet and corn dumplings.
Among the rich peasants—men who themselves labored on the land but earned more through exploitation than they did by their own labor—Kuo Fu-wang and his brother Ch’ung-wang were the best known. In fact, they were considered to be the meanest employers in the whole village. The brothers owned 22 acres that yielded each year close to eight tons of grain, two draft animals, and all such necessary farm tools and equipment as carts, plows, harrows, and seeders. Part of their land they worked themselves with the help of hired labor. The rest they rented out to tenants.
During the famine years of 1942-1943, Ch’ung-wang had no mercy on his tenants. The Miao brothers had been paying rent to him for many years, but in 1942 they did not harvest enough of a crop to live on. Ch’ung-wang insisted on payment in full. They offered him some of their own land. He refused it. In order to settle up with him they were then forced to borrow grain from others. After paying the rent they had nothing to eat. Both of them died of starvation before spring. P’ei Mang-wen’s mother, another of Ch’ung-wang’s debtors, also died after paying him back $1.50. A third peasant, H
o-p’ang, lost crop, clothes, and household furniture to Ch’ung-wang.
At the height of the famine, with the people dying of starvation on every side, Ch’ung-wang collected all the grain he could and held it for speculative prices in an underground vault that served as the family tomb. He held it so long that much of it rotted.
Kuo Ch’ung-wang also evaded taxes for more than 20 years on three acres of land that were not registered with the county. His official deeds called for three acres less than he actually owned and the evasion of taxes on this land threw an extra burden on the middle peasants who had to bear the brunt of all grain levies. This type of tax evasion was common among those gentry with wealth or influence enough to bribe or otherwise pressure the makers of deeds and the collectors of taxes.* The acres so held were called “black lands.”
The wealth accumulated by Kuo Ch’ung-wang, Fan Pu-tzu, Sheng Ching-ho and the other gentry through usury, land rent, and the exploitation of hired labor could not easily be converted into capital—that is, it could not easily be invested where it would yield a profit and reproduce itself with certainty.
The returns from money-lending were large, but the risks were also great. There was no limit to the number of poor peasants in desperate need of grain and funds, but few could offer anything by way of security. All the possessions of many a family could not realize $5 on the market. Children could be seized in lieu of property, but in a bad crop year teen-aged girls sold for less than a hundredweight of grain, and they had to be fed.
A profit could be turned by making liquor but there was a limit to the amount of grain available for mash and a very restricted market. People were willing enough to drink liquor, but they had nothing with which to pay for it.
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