Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

This, after all, is the true secret of abundant crops. The land, in the South of China at least, is mostly of a poor and indifferent character. Along the courses of rivers and in the alluvial valleys it is rich enough, and produces splendid crops year after year. But when you get beyond these, and come into the hilly regions, you touch upon territories that are exceedingly reluctant, excepting when they are liberally supplied with manures, to produce crops that are worth the gathering.

The Chinese farmer has no scientific knowledge as to how he should best develop his farm, but he knows by experience that unless the land is coaxed and petted with an ample supply of manures, no acquaintance with the art of farming will avail to cover it with the harvests that will keep his family from hunger, and that will still leave a margin to be sold in the market to bring enough to meet the incidental expenses of the home.

The list of fertilizers in China is a very brief one, and bones and beancake are two important ones in it, but the one that stands the first and foremost in the estimation of the farmers throughout the country is nightsoil. This is the one that is universally used because it is the cheapest, and also because it is the only really available one. The system by which that important manure is collected and distributed is a thoroughly perfect one, and ages of practice has made the managers of this intricate business so well up in it that there is never any hitch in it. The towns and cities, and any place indeed where a considerable population has collected, are so relieved of their accumulations that the Government is never called upon to interfere, nor are sanitary inspectors ever appointed to see to their cleanliness or to prevent the people from suffering from insanitary conditions.

A regular trade is carried on between the towns and the farms that lie in all directions around them in this particular manure, and the farmers’ wives, who are the principal carriers of it, will come into town in the early morning and carry it miles away to their houses in all directions throughout the country places. On one occasion I had started out from a large city of at least a hundred thousand people and had got a few miles from it, when I overtook twenty or thirty young farmers’ wives carrying their purchases in buckets slung on bamboo poles resting on their shoulders, and a merrier set of women it would have been difficult to have met with.

They seemed quite unconcerned at the heavy loads they had to carry or the miles that still lay between them and their homes, nor did they appear to consider that there was any disgrace in having to perform the duties they were doing. They seemed, indeed, to forget all about the toil they had to endure, for they laughed and chatted and joked with each other till the road echoed with the sound of their merry voices. The exercise, which was severe, did not seem to fatigue them, for their eyes twinkled with humour and their brown faces were covered with smiles, and they looked so good humoured and full of pleasant thoughts that it was really a treat to look upon them. Every day these women would come into the city until they had carried enough to their little holdings to suffice for the crop they were going to put in, and then they would have a respite until that had been gathered and it was time to make preparations for the next one.

In the South of China there are two great crops in the year, that absorb the greater part of the energies of the farmers whilst they are in the fields. These consist of the rice which is the staple food for all classes of society, and which occupies the place in the social economy of the Chinese that wheat does in that of the English. The first is gathered in July and the second in November, and from the time that the first crop is put in during the month of April, until the second one is garnered, it may be positively asserted that there is a continued tension on the mind of the farmer.

CHINESE FARMERS.

The planting of the rice is not the simple thing that the cultivation of wheat is. This latter is sown in land that has been carefully prepared for it, and after that it is left very much to nature to do the rest. The rain falls, and the sun shines and the dews lay their diamond drops on the growing grain, and the farmer looks at the miracles of changes that are wrought upon it, until golden-hued he puts the sickle in and gathers it into his barns. With the rice there is no such luxurious rest or waiting.

He first of all sows his seed in a plot of land that is full of water, and they fall into the soft oozy mud at the bottom and take root. As the little spires pierce above the surface, they have the most exquisite light-green that the eye has ever been pleased to look upon. They grow up rapidly with an airy look about them as though they were conscious that the farmer is depending upon them for the whole of his rice crop during this season. They do indeed constitute the stock from which he draws the materials to fill his empty fields waiting to be planted with rice plants.