Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan

by F. H. King

Throughout the hill-land section of this mighty river the most characteristic and persistent human features were the stacks of brush-wood and the piles of stove wood along the banks or loaded upon boats and barges for the market. The brush-wood was largely made from the boughs of pine, tied into bundles and stacked like grain. The stove wood was usually round, peeled and made from the limbs and trunks of trees two to five inches in diameter. All this fuel was coming to the river from the back country, sent down along steep slides which in the distance resemble paths leading over hills but too steep for travel. The fuel was loaded upon large barges, the boughs in the form of stacks to shed rain but with a tunnel leading into the house of the boat about which they were stacked, while the wood was similarly corded about the dwelling, as seen in Fig. 44. The wood was going to Canton and other delta cities while the pine boughs were taken to the lime and cement kilns, many of which were located along the river. Absolutely the whole tree, including the roots and the needles, is saved and burned; no waste is permitted.

The up-river cargo of the Nanning was chiefly matting rush, taken on at Canton, tied in bundles like sheaves of wheat. It is grown upon the lower, newer delta lands by methods of culture similar to those applied to rice, Fig. 45 showing a field as seen in Japan.

The rushes were being taken to one of the country villages on a tributary of the Sikiang and the steamer was met by a flotilla of junks from this village, some forty-five miles up the stream, where the families live who do the weaving. On the return trip the flotilla again met the steamer with a cargo of the woven matting. In keeping record of packages transferred the Chinese use a simple and unique method. Each carrier, with his two bundles, received a pair of tally sticks. At the gang-plank sat a man with a tally-case divided into twenty compartments, each of which could receive five, but no more, tallies. As the bundles left the steamer the tallies were placed in the tally-case until it contained one hundred, when it was exchanged for another.

Wuchow is a city of some 65,000 inhabitants, standing back on the higher ground, not readily visible from the steamer landing nor from the approach on the river. On the foreground, across which stretched the anchor chains of the dock, was living a floating population, many in shelters less substantial than Indian wigwams, but engaged in a great variety of work, and many water buffalo had been tied for the night along the anchor chains. Before July much of this area would lie beneath the flood waters of the Sikiang.

Here a ship builder was using his simple, effective bow-brace, boring holes for the dowel pins in the planking for his ship, and another was bending the plank to the proper curvature. The bow-brace consisted of a bamboo stalk carrying the bit at one end and a shoulder rest at the other. Pressing the bit to its work with the shoulder, it was driven with the string of a long bow wrapped once around the stalk by drawing the bow back and forth, thus rapidly and readily revolving the bit.

The bending of the long, heavy plank, four inches thick and eight inches wide, was more simple still, It was saturated with water and one end raised on a support four feet above the ground. A bundle of burning rice straw moved along the under side against the wet wood had the effect of steaming the wood and the weight of the plank caused it to gradually bend into the shape desired. Bamboo poles are commonly bent or straightened in this manner to suit any need and Fig. 46 shows a wooden fork shaped in the manner described from a small tree having three main branches. This fork is in the hands of my interpreter and was used by the woman standing at the right, in turning wheat.

When the old ship builder had finished shaping his plank he sat down on the ground for a smoke. His pipe was one joint of bamboo stem a foot long, nearly two inches in diameter and open at one end. In the closed end, at one side, a small hole was bored for draft. A charge of tobacco was placed in the bottom, the lips pressed into the open end and the pipe lighted by suction, holding a lighted match at the small opening. To enjoy his pipe the bowl rested on the ground between his legs. With his lips in the bowl and a long breath, he would completely fill his lungs, retaining the smoke for a time, then slowly expire and fill the lungs again, after an interval of natural breathing.

On returning to Canton we went by rail, with an interpreter, to Samshui, visiting fields along the way, and Fig. 47 is a view of one landscape. The woman was picking roses among tidy beds of garden vegetables. Beyond her and in front of the near building are two rows of waste receptacles. In the center background is a large "go-down", in function that of our cold storage warehouse and in part that of our grain elevator for rice. In them, too, the wealthy store their fur-lined winter garments for safe keeping. These are numerous in this portion of China and the rank of a city is indicated by their number. The conical hillock is a large near-by grave mound and many others serrate the sky line on the hill beyond.

In the next landscape, Fig. 48, a crop of winter peas, trained to canes, are growing on ridges among the stubble of the second crop of rice, In front is one canal, the double ridge behind is another and a third canal extends in front of the houses. Already preparations were being made for the first crop of rice, fields were being flooded and fertilized. One such is seen in Fig. 49, where a laborer was engaged at the time in bringing stable manure, wading into the water to empty the baskets.

Two crops of rice are commonly grown each year in southern China and during the winter and early spring, grain, cabbage, rape, peas, beans, leeks and ginger may occupy the fields as a third or even fourth crop, making the total year's product from the land very large; but the amount of thought, labor and fertilizers given to securing these is even greater and beyond anything Americans will endure. How great these efforts are will be appreciated from what is seen in Fig. 50, representing two fields thrown into high ridges, planted to ginger and covered with straw. All of this work is done by hand and when the time for rice planting comes every ridge will again be thrown down and the surface smoothed to a water level. Even when the ridges and beds are not thrown down for the crops of rice, the furrows and the beds will change places so that all the soil is worked over deeply and mainly through hand labor. The statement so often made, that these people only barely scratch the surface of their fields with the crudest of tools is very far from the truth, for their soils are worked deeply and often, notwithstanding the fact that their plowing, as such, may be shallow.