Did Rice Farming Shape Chinese Culture?

Rice Farming vs Wheat Farming in China

Introduction

This post discusses how rice and wheat farming would produce different outcomes on the culture and psychology in of the Chinese people. For most of Chinese history, the majority of people lived in a rural agrarian society. Today, over 300 million of a total of 1.4 billion Chinese are still farmers and agriculture remains a large influence on the lives of many people. Professor Thomas Talhelm from the University of Chicago and his associates produced a paper in 2014 arguing that rice and wheat farming produced difference outcomes in culture, psychology, and eventually determined political institutions. Their research was conducted in China as the country has a convenient north-south split between its rice and wheat producing regions. Their results found that rice-growing southern China is more interdependent and holistic-thinking than the wheat-growing north.

Agricultural History of China

To understand how rice and wheat farming could impact Chinese society, we first require a rough understanding of agricultural development in China. Primitive agriculture began in the Loess Plateau of the Yellow River Basin. Primitive agriculture is what the name suggests, where farmers practice subsistence farming on small patches of land with the utilisation of simple tools like a hoe and scythe, it encouraged a people to be sedentary as it removed their need to constantly travel to find food. As generations pass, populations increase, settlements grow, and agricultural practices improve such as the saving of cropland and water resource management. A cumulative effect on societal and subsequent agricultural development occurred and primitive agriculture evolved into traditional agriculture.

Traditional agriculture is characterised by the use of fertiliser and intensive cultivation. Crop yields per unit of land area is continuously improved with the recycling of nutrients and the maintenance of soil fertility. Methods such as crop rotation are used, where farmers keep certain fields fallow to restore its nutrients. Traditional agriculture in China stands out for prompting the construction of many large-scale irrigation and water conservation projects. Famous ones being the Du Jiang Yan Dam 都江堰 (256 BCE) in modern Sichuan province, the Karezin 井渠 (Jingqu) system in modern day Xinjiang province, where underground water is brought out to turn an area of desert into oasis, and the Grand Canal, an inland waterway stretching past eight provinces of China. The Grand Canal provided irrigation by adjusting water distribution and a highway for the transport of goods. Farmers also made intensive use of cast iron tools and beasts of burden to pull ploughs.

Until the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), Chinese agricultural production centred on the Yellow River Basin. However, incessant warfare in the north and the spread of irrigation works down south shifted the agricultural centre of China southwards. By the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE), the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River became the new agricultural centre of China.

Rice and Wheat Farming

Although China is the largest agricultural producer in the world today, only 10% of its land area can be cultivated. Limited space for farming has always been a persistent problem in Chinese history. It is also the cause of chronic food shortages and famine. As agriculture becomes more constrained, society must optimise its grain planting structure by ensuring that the right regions produce the right crop for maximum output. Therefore, throughout Chinese history the two most produced crop in China are rice and wheat, grains that are both solid source of staple foods and grow from relatively high output crops.

Rice Farming

Rice is China's most important crop and raised on 25% of its cultivated land today. It is extremely labour intensive. Rice farming can be broken down into three stages: land preparation, planting, and harvesting. Firstly, the land must be prepared by flooding a field with water from pre-constructed irrigation channels. Next, farmers will plough the land to remove the previous harvest and weeds. Lastly, they will till the field to smooth it out. Next they will level it using a water buffalo to make sure the field is flat and water evenly distributed.

When the field is ready, the farmers either seed the field or transplant seedlings from a nursery. Before this process, the farmers would have grown rice seedlings in a nursery. These seedlings are grown to around three weeks old in 2-3cm of water and uprooted to be arranged in neat rows in rice fields. The growing process starts here and this is also the stage where rice fields resemble its picturesque quality. Lastly, farmers will spread fertiliser and regularly weed the fields. At the same time, some fields will be left to fallow for their nutrients to be restored.

Once rice crops have a golden yellow colour, farmers will drain the water and harvest the crop using sickles and stack them up in an open field. Then they will thresh the rice by knocking it against a slanted wooden board to separate the husk from the grain. These grains are then collected from the ground and are ready for cooking. It is important to note that water management is crucial at all stages of the rice farming process. These irrigation networks cover the entire network of rice fields. Its construction, management, and maintenance will take the effort of an entire village. Individual peasant efforts to plant rice for his family will be too inefficient and lead to starvation.

Wheat Farming

Wheat farming, while labour intensive, is still relatively easy and less intensive when compared to rice farming. It is the second most-prevalent grain crop in China and the process of wheat farming is slightly more straightforward than rice. Firstly, land preparation involves ploughing and tilling the soil and removing any weeds in the field. The land at this stage is dry compared to rice fields that are usually under centimetres of water. Then seeds are sown in the wheat field and the farmer must regularly weed and water the crop. In dry areas, an irrigation system is necessary to provide water to the crop. In monsoon areas, rain-fed wheat farming is possible. Despite requiring water like rice, it typically takes around 70% more water to produce 1 kilogram of rice compared to 1 kilogram of wheat, when all other factors are kept constant. Wheat is then harvest in late spring or summer and farmers will cut the wheat crop with a long scythe. Lastly, the crop is threshed and winnowed to separate the seed from straw. The seeds are then collected and ready to be made into flour and other products.

Agricultural Regions of China

The Agricultural Regions in China help us understand factors that encourage either rice or wheat farming. First split China into East and West to find out how water levels, geography, and temperature is much more suitable in the East for agriculture. West China is a dry mountainous zone unsuitable for farming but good for rearing animals like sheep and horses. East China has more areas in temperate, sub-tropical, and tropical zones with higher precipitation. It also has a higher prevalence of level terrain and fertile soil. Lastly, temperature in East China is more moderate and suitable for farming. In East China, agricultural areas can typically be split into three regions, the Northeast Plain, the North China Plain, and the Yangtze River region.

Next, we split East China into North and South to understand the split between rice and wheat. Scholars label this line the Qinling-Huaihe Line (秦岭淮河线). Rice is predominantly grown in the South of China because of two main reasons: abundant water and warmer temperatures. Growing rice requires a high amount of water and a hot climate. Southernmost provinces such as Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, and Fujian have ideal conditions where farmers can engage in double cropping of rice, where rice is harvested twice with the same piece of land in a calendar year. Southern Chinese eat a lot of rice as part of their diet, as well as other rice derived foods such as rice vinegar, rice flour, rice noodles, and rice wine.

Wheat is grown predominantly in the Northern areas. Wheat is prevalent as it is an environmentally resistant plant. Based on the planting season, wheat can be divided into two types: winter wheat and spring wheat. Winter wheat is wheat sown in the fall, that grows through winter, and harvested in the summer and accounts for 90% of all wheat grown. While spring wheat is being sown in the spring and harvested in the fall. Winter wheat is mainly distributed in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain （黄淮海平原）in Henan, Anhui, Hubei, and Jiangsu provinces. Spring wheat is grown in areas that have cold winter temperatures such as Inner Mongolia, the Guanzhong Plain （关中平原） in Shanxi province, the Hexi Corridor（河西走廊）of Gansu province, and several oases in Xinjiang province.

The agricultural splits in China makes it a fitting test case for researching differences between rice and wheat. Furthermore, China is more ethnically, politically, and more culturally unified than Europe or Africa. The same regions have had the same agricultural crop and political institutions for thousands of years. Therefore, it is convenient for researchers to investigate whether agricultural crops have a significant impact on culture.

The Rice Theory

The Rice Theory is an extension of Subsistence Style Theory. The Subsistence Style Theory is that certain forms of subsistence such as farming require higher functional interdependence than other forms such as herding. For example, rice paddy fields require significant amount of water and societies must cooperate intensively to properly manage water resources. Over time, these societies become more interdependent. On the other hand, societies that do not have to cooperate as intensively become more individualistic.

The Rice Theory separates rice from other crops covered in the Subsistence Style Theory and argues that rice leads to a different cultural outcome. As mentioned before, rice farming requires high amounts of cooperation between families to manage water irrigation and the construction of these irrigation systems. Farming rice also requires at least twice the number of hours as wheat. A Chinese farming guide in the 1600s advised people that "If one is short of labour power, it is best to grow wheat" (Elvin, 1982) Individuals would be unlikely to be able to farm a large enough plot of rice to support a family by themselves, and self-reliance would mean starvation.

The massive labour requirements meant that farmers have to form cooperative labour exchanges. Farmers must also coordinate their planting dates so different families harvest at different times, allowing them to help in each other's fields. These labour exchanges occurred during transplanting and harvesting, which needed to be done in a short window of time. In economic terms, rice paddies make cooperation more valuable for farmers. This encourages rice farmers to form tight relationships based on reciprocity and avoid behaviours that create conflict.

The Rice Theory can explain East Asia's persistent culture of interdependence. China has a rice-wheat split, but Japan and South Korea are complete rice cultures. Japan and Korea's rice legacies could explain why they are still much less individualistic than China and other similarly wealthy countries.

Wheat in comparison, is much easier to grow. It does not always require irrigation as farmers can rely on rainfall for sufficient watering. Hence less coordination is required with their neighbours. Planting and harvesting wheat also takes only half as much time as rice. This results in farmers being able to look after their own plots without relying on their neighbours.

Rice vs Wheat Outcomes on Chinese Culture

Professor Thomas Talhelm and his associates propose that a history of farming rice makes cultures more interdependent, whereas farming wheat makes cultures more independent, and these agricultural legacies continue to affect people in the modern world.

They tested 1,162 Han Chinese participants in six locations and found that rice-growing southern China is more interdependent and holistic-thinking than the wheat-growing north. China’s rice regions have several markers of East Asian culture: more holistic thought, more interdependent self-construal’s, and lower divorce rates. However, the wheat-growing north looked more culturally like the West, with more analytic thought, individualism, and higher divorce rates.

To Compare with Western Societies

There is research evidence that people in the West tend to be psychologically unusual when compared to the majority of other societies. These people are generally Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic, or WEIRD, in short. They are also highly individualistic, analytically minded, and generally see themselves as more independent from others and more self-sufficient. These traits encourage them to invest in new relationships outside their tribal or religious groups in contrast to most societies around the world. They also avoid embedding themselves in dense networks of kin and family which they depend for cooperation, security, and personal identity.

For those who come from a more collectivistic society, it is challenging to understand the worldview of a person from an individualistic society. When approaching problems, individualistic societies favour the use of analytical reasoning to break things into their constituent parts into rule-based categories. While collectivistic societies favour holistic approaches by focusing on relationships and interactions between objects and people. Evidence suggests that individualistic societies exercise higher rates of innovation, novelty, and creativity. A view that is pretty consistent with the state of the world today.

Talhelm also provided evidence that less dependence on rice is associated with more successful patents for new inventions. This is consistent with the idea that rice farming societies are less innovative then wheat farming societies.

Problems with The Rice Theory

However, why would a European society for example, have greater individualism and more analytical thinking when China also engages in Wheat farming? An explanation exists that Han Chinese were swarmed with northern invasions by nomadic people and were drove to southern rice paddy regions, where state-level political and legal institutions developed in accordance with the needs of governing a rice farming society.

There are also unresolved questions with the rice theory. For example, future rice studies can test whether water irrigation is central to the cultural effects of rice by comparing paddy rice with dryland rice, which grows rice without water irrigation.

Admittedly, agriculture is only part of the story of cultural evolution. Culture arises from a rich and complex interplay of ecology, institutions, and psychology. However, it could play an important role because long after ecological causes have become irrelevant, these cultural psychologies and institutions would continue to influence the formation of new institutions and rates of innovation. Wheat farming could explain the origins of a WEIRD society but perhaps only in combination of other factors.

The Rice Culture in the Future

The modernization hypothesis argues that, as societies become wealthier, more educated, and capitalistic, they become more individualistic and analytical. But this theory has difficulty explaining why Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong are persistently collectivistic despite per-capita GDPs higher than that of the European Union. There is also the question of how long rice culture will persist after the majority of people stop farming rice. There is evidence that US regions settled by Scottish and Irish herders have higher rates of violence, even though most locals stopped herding long ago. This is one example of how subsistence style can shape culture long after people have stopped relying on that subsistence style. In the case of China, only time will tell.

The Opium Trade of Qing China (1636-1912 CE)

Introduction

Opium has a complex history in China. As a physical substance, opium was the sap exuded from the head of ripe poppies that Indian and Chinese peasants collected and sold, it was also the tarry paste that merchants boiled up into marketable forms, it was also the commodity that businessmen used to capitalise commercial and industrial ventures, it was also the raw material that wholesalers refined to produce more intense narcotics like heroin and morphine, and it was also the toxins running in smokers’ veins. As a substance, opium was a palliative medicine, an item of recreational consumption, an addictive drug food, a way to store and accumulate wealth, a sign of national and ethnic degradation, and finally, a mechanism for transferring wealth and power between regions and nations.

Tobacco Smoking and Origins (before 1800)

The growth of Opium smoking followed closely the growth of Tobacco smoking in China. Tobacco arrived in East Asia in the 1500s, carried by European Ships sailing from the Americas. Unlike coffee or chocolate, tobacco smoking caught on quickly in China as smoke was associated with positive connotations in Chinese religion. It had medicinal qualities, the ability to transmit messages from the mortal to the spirit world, and it had an everyday utility in warding off odours and insects. Therefore, by the early 1600s, it became widely cultivated and consumed in China. Tobacco as a plant embedded itself in Chinese agriculture by becoming a crop that provided livelihoods for millions in China and provided a steady source of revenue for the state.

Tobacco was consumed both in public and private. Pipe tobacco was sometimes added to tea, alcohol, and snacks. Its utility blended well in Chinese culture as it became a convenient way for people to build connections or “guanxi” as Western scholars call it. It would set the precedent for Chinese material culture to adopt opium smoking.

Opium was first carried to China by Muslim traders from West Asia, but opium as an object of recreational consumption begins in Southeast Asia. Opium arrived in China at the southern coasts as part of the wider maritime trade in the South China Sea involving tea, rice, and cotton. It was first mixed with tobacco and consumed by Chinese in Southeast Asia. The Chinese diaspora who worked in Southeast Asia enjoyed eating and smoking opium and would reintroduce opium smoking to the Chinese scholar-elite back on the mainland.

Opium’s entry was smooth as the trade routes and consumer markets have already been established by tobacco and far-reaching maritime trade networks. Despite smoking being an unfamiliar recreation in China, tobacco acted as a gateway to smoking opium for the masses. Medicinal texts also praised opium for its qualities as an aphrodisiac, assisting its widespread adoption in the sex industry. By 1793 opium smoking accompanied by sex on pleasure boats was well established in Canton. Scholar-officials who frequent these brothels wrote extensively on the pleasures of opium and set consumption trends for the masses.

This period was also a time of leisure and commercialisation of the Qing economy and therefore opium fitted seamlessly with the existing patterns of Chinese relaxation and recreation. Up to the early 1800s, opium was still an expensive foreign commodity and largely confined to men in the Southern Coastal regions and the governing elite.

Opium – Trade, Business, & Economy

Opium trade was conducted by rural dealers from the coastal provinces. The Red Society, for example, connected inland consumers with coastal import markets. It created a hierarchical shareholding enterprise: where two founders at the top presided over a small group of investor-salesmen, who managed teams of transporters and retailers, who sold the opium and passed a portion of the profits up to the founders.

Despite opium being illegal, these dealers worked closely with government officials to secure safe conditions of distribution and sale. State bureaucrats often ignored the illegal import of opium as they relied on revenue from its sale. During times of turmoil such as the Taiping Rebellion, dealers found it impossible to supply opium to areas where imperial administration no longer existed as they could not acquire official approvals of sale from the rebels.

Opium’s Rapid Expansion

This status quo of opium smoking for the governing elite will soon change as trouble was brewing over in India. Before the British, maritime trade in Asia was largely dominated by the Dutch East India Company, the VOC. However, the VOC ceased to be profitable and was dissolved in 1800. This power vacuum was taken over by the British East India Company, who used opium shipments from India to finance tea purchases in Canton. The outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s also led to a British takeover of Dutch settlements in India, Malacca, Ceylon, South Africa, and temporarily in Indonesia.

During the 1820s and 30s, an emergent group of cultivators in Malwa and shippers in Bombay begun to challenge the British East India Company’s opium monopoly from Calcutta. The competition led to both sides undercutting and taking smaller margins. To maintain profitability, great effort was spent to massively increase opium production.

Hence, the volume of opium imports to China experienced a dramatic increase and “for a few coppers people could get a pipeful of opium, bringing its reach to both urban dwellers and the poor” (Jonathan Spence). Imports of opium rose from several thousand chests per year in the 1820s to 30,000 chests per year in 1830, and finally 40,000 chests per year in 1839 before the commencement of the First Opium War. Evidently, laws were constantly being violated and difference between legal and illegal, trade and smuggling, narco-actions and peaceful commerce were constantly blurred. Two infamous companies, Jardine Matheson and Dent & Company were the most prolific participants of this trade. Jardine Matheson is still present today in Hong Kong as a publicly listed company.

Prohibition & Opium Wars

The government’s response to opium was harsh. The Qing court perceived that consumption of opium spread from commoners to the elite, and from southerners to residents of the capital. Therefore, policies centred around prohibition and focused on merchants and smugglers, both English and Chinese, who have already been operating for at least four decades along the coasts. For example, the court employed Lin Zexu as imperial maritime commissioner in 1838 to stop the flow of opium into China. Lin approached the task with zest and instituted draconian laws and destroyed many chests of Opium. However, these efforts proved powerless against skyrocketing British supply and Chinese demand. In my opinion, the state should have instead legalised opium and diverted its trade into official channels. This way, it can gradually tighten its grip over all areas of the supply chain and reduce the total volume entering China.

That said, the Qing state had a weak control over the coastal provinces. Historically, the Manchu conquest of the South was slow and painful, pirate fleets dominated the coast and prominent merchant families built maritime trading empires in faraway places around Asia. Therefore internally, the Qing state had to engage in multiple tasks of policing, accounting, taxing, educating, and managing the flow of opium around China. Externally, it was drawn into a complex web of relations with individuals, businesses and states involving opium and pursued many futile negotiations on the volume and legality of the trade. Together with a lacklustre navy, the opium trade environment would prove impossible to control and regulate.

Thus followed the First Opium War (1839-1842) in response to tough measures against opium imports. British opinion on the war was not unified as many perceived it as China’s right to ban imports of opium to its own country. However, the artificially high revenues that opium brought clouded the moral judgements of many. Economically speaking, it was too attractive for Britain to resist the trade, as long as its negative impacts were restricted to the Chinese. Therefore, the deprivation of its most important source of capital swayed the English parliament to approve a military action. The war as we all know resulted in the catastrophic defeat of Chinese forces and the granting of concessions known as “treaty ports”. It also marked the beginning of China’s “century of humiliation”.

Although the British saw the war as a restoration of trade, the Chinese saw it as an attempt to corrupt the Qing state with opium. Huang Yue, Minister of Ceremony and later Finance during the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor, believed that opium was responsible for China’s defeat at the hands of the British.

The peace treaties forced China to legalise opium and maintain low tariffs. Opium smoking after the war experienced an increase in consumption and could even be found in remote villages. Commercial establishments for opium smoking and prostitution, called 花烟馆 or Flower-Smoke Shops, became more commonplace. During the inter-war years of 1842-1856, opium smuggling and cultivation also increased. Shanghai also came to replace Canton as the capital of opium commerce. However, it is not known how widespread opium was actually consumed in China, as historical records often lump smoking statistics together with opium statistics and many scholars suspect that the problem of opium addiction was overblown.

The Drug State

In any case, by the late nineteenth century, it is clear that the opium trade cannot be controlled. Opium tax revenue had become crucial to the economy of the late Qing state. A suitable term exists to describe this state of affairs called “Narco-capitalism” which describes a system of production, distribution, and profit accumulation where integrated organisations like opium guilds and the state maintain large-scale operations in the production, transport, wholesale, and distribution of opium and illegal narcotics.

Fujian province in particular experienced a steady expansion of opium poppy cultivation and production, often at the encouragement of local authorities. These locally produced opium competed with imported opium as a form of import substitution and was occasionally shipped abroad to compete in overseas markets. Up to the 1920s, Chinese diasporas in Manila, Batavia, Singapore, and Rangoon still maintained a constant and illicit flow of opium, often together with cocaine, morphine, and heroin, synthetic derivatives of opium.

Opium production is an extremely labour-intensive process. One ball of raw opium required 230 hours of labour. One hectare of land yielded only 13 kilograms and required 816 days of work. Despite this, income from opium is much higher than any other winter crop so in the winters of the 1920s, opium cultivation occupied two-thirds of farmland in Guizhou province.

The expansion of opium was replicated in other provinces and consumption spread to every strata of Chinese society. The recognisable image of “Chinese Opium Smokers”, men sprawled on an opium couch characterised the Western view of Chinese material culture during this time. Opium was also becoming an item of female consumption. Although women smoked less than men, they still smoke often either alone or in the company of other women.

Opium's Decline and Perspectives Today

One argument for opium’s limited impact on China was how post-imperial Chinese governments managed to eradicate the opium problem in such a short time. The Guomindang (KMT) government suppressed the opium through anti-opium propaganda campaigns and highlighted moral, personal, and health consequences of opium. This period also saw a concerted effort by Japan to increase opium import volumes into China, a history that is often overlooked.

The advent of the Communist government in 1949 allowed a strong, centralised Chinese state to finally suppress the production and consumption of opium. At the same time governments across the world enacted policies against the drug and views on opium gradually changed.

As the understanding of opium use changed, patterns of consumption altered, and supply and demand decreased. However, there are both Chinese and Europeans who took a benign view on opium, insisting that its moderate consumption was less of a social evil than alcohol abuse in the West.

Whatever the broader viewpoints on the opium trade are, it was neither part of a strategy to poison and demoralise the Chinese people nor a harmless recreational product. Today, it has often been caught up in a broader narrative of a conflict between an expansionist and capitalistic West and a tradition-bound China. The problem of opium often becomes secondary to the “clash of civilisations” that was occurring in this period.

Many Chinese today would claim that Western powers used opium to victimise the people or use it as a symbol of China’s inability to reform. This historical interpretation sits well with the aggrieved sense of nationalism among most Chinese and resonates with many of the Western and Japanese observers who accept guilt for the opium trade.

This interpretation also fits nicely with the political claim of the Communist party that it had succeeded in both eradicating the drug and resisting foreign aggression where previous regimes failed.

Conclusion

However, we should put aside moralistic arguments, as the history of opium involves vast complexities across an evolving interaction between commerce and the state. Opium was many things to many people, such that it eluded whatever controls that regimes, legislators, and moralists placed on it. A study of it warrants an understanding of political economy, material culture, and interactions between the state and businesses within China.

This was only a brief overview on the complex history of opium. Many items have been overlooked. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend beginning with reading the book Imperial Twilight, a dramatic recount of the opium wars through the eyes of significant individuals involved.

Piracy in Imperial China (Qing Dynasty 1636-1911 CE)

Here be Chinese Pirates!

The Qing Dynasty (1636-1911 CE) oversaw a significant rise in the maritime trade of China. But as licit trade grew, so did illicit trade. These illegal maritime activities were conducted by smugglers, raiders, rebels and all manners of dastardly men. In contrast to the swashbuckling buccaneers of the New World, Chinese pirates were no small-time amateurs. Infamous pirate chiefs at one time ruled over vast swaths of land and sea, commandeering hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men.

Infamous pirate chiefs commanded hundreds of ships, far outnumbering the imperial navy

Piracy mostly occurred in the waters of Southeast China (Vietnam, Hainan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, and Taiwan)

These eastern expropriators had criminal networks so vast that small armies of scribes had to be employed for the bureaucratic purposes of bookkeeping and writing blackmail letters. Our cabal of corsairs would generate profits from coastal market towns through an extensive formal protection racket based on extortion, bribery, and terrorism. Chinese merchant ships had to purchase passports from pirates to safely travel through their territory. Even the state-licensed salt trade fell victim to pirates. The imperial navy was powerless to resist, as they were underdeveloped and underfunded, saddled with outdated guns, untrained recruits, and corrupt officials. Very often, Chinese soldiers would deliberately avoid conflict with pirates altogether, but they recovered their lost dignity by fabricating triumphs over their fictitious foes, convincing the imperial court that their efforts in curbing the pirate menace had been a spectacular success.

Even Western merchants were not spared from the arrogation of these abominable men. Despite believing British sailors breathed fire, they were unafraid to kidnap and ransom them for high sums of money. Many vivid accounts of life onboard Chinese pirate ships actually came from these Western captives such as John Turner and Richard Glasspoole.

English sailors according to the Chinese

Where did the pirates come from and how did they get so powerful? How did they do business? What was life like as a pirate? Let us take a look at the historical background: We will first begin with the origins of Chinese pirates in the Qing dynasty, then an overview of the conditions that allowed for their existence, how the pirate business was conducted, life as a Chinese pirate, pirate battles, and then conclude with a commentary of our historical sources.

Origins of Chinese Pirates

There were three main reasons why Chinese people became pirates: poverty, adventure, and escaping government oppression. Poverty is by far the biggest reason for most Chinese. The vast majority of the rank-and-file Chinese pirate came from the underclass of the labouring poor, mostly sailors and fisherfolk. They were typically young single men who lacked employment opportunities and constantly put themselves in debt. These people made up 70% of the pirate population in the early 1800s. Many Chinese were also lured by the call for adventure on the high seas, these individuals sought out new lives unperturbed by imperial laws. Finally, many Chinese also turned to piracy to escape the harassment of corrupt local officials and their soldiers.

One thing all of them had in common was that they came from small market towns off the coastal regions of China. These market towns had populations of between 2,000 and 10,000. Its inhabitants engaged in a variety of seasonal work and depended on the sea for their livelihoods. We shall see later that this includes piracy as well.

Conditions for Piracy during the Qing Dynasty

Contrary to popular belief, the Qing dynasty adopted a relaxed attitude towards domestic trade. The collapse of the previous dynasty, the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE), convinced Qing emperors that it is far better for individual actors to manage their own commercial activities instead of the government dictating every facet of the economy. Coastal maritime trade was allowed to be conducted freely by private enterprises. For the poor fishermen armed with not just steely determination but with Western guns, the rich cargo on these merchant ships was an opportunity they could not resist.

It is important at this point to differentiate Chinese pirates from our modern perception of piracy, which conjures up images of small boat parties raiding cargo ships to ransom their crews and goods. Piracy during the Qing dynasty was fundamentally an economic endeavour, and pirates participated in the economy just like any merchant. Since legitimate commerce could never keep up with consumer demands in China, many gaps presented themselves and were invariably filled by pirate activities.

There are two main factors to understanding Chinese pirates. Firstly, it is difficult to distinguish who really was a pirate at this time. Names for pirates also varied greatly, with Wokou 倭寇 referring to Japanese pirates (largely made up of Chinese sailors) during the Ming dynasty, Haifei 海匪 or Yangfei 洋匪 that translates to sea or ocean bandits, Yangdao 洋盗 that translated to sea robbers, or Ladrones by Westerners which came from ladrões, the Portuguese word for thieves. To the Qing government, any merchant who shipped illegal goods became a pirate. Sometimes merchants became pirates, and sometimes pirates became merchants.

Communities of Chinese who live entirely offshore still exist in China today (google Tanka People 疍家人 for more information)

The second factor for understanding Chinese pirates is through a more macro lens by examining the network of piracy. Pirates did not act alone, they were supported by fishermen, small-time entrepreneurs, secret societies, and wealthy coastal clans. These coastal Chinese were more than willing to break the law to do business with pirates. Piracy was so widespread that it was probable that pirate supporters did not even realise that they were breaking the law. A statue of the famous pirate Koxinga 国姓爷/郑成功 (Kok Seng Ia/Zheng Chenggong) was even built in his native Fujian province to commemorate the contributions he made to the people. Many coastal towns acted as port-of-calls for pirates, providing them places to offload their goods, spend their earnings, make ship repairs, and purchase weapons. When docking at these towns pirate ships will often find themselves swarmed by small boats commandeered by eager locals, offering their goods for barter and women for prostitution. In these friendly waters, pirates would pay the locals honourably.

Statue of famous pirate Koxinga / Zheng Chenggong in Fujian Province

How Pirates Conducted Business

Pirates would explore the sea, coasts, and rivers for opportunities to engage in extortion, kidnapping, and the trading of illicit goods. Many goods were traded, such as food, weapons, opium, alcohol, and tea. It is difficult to pinpoint the type of goods most commonly handled by pirates as we do not have any first-hand information from the pirates themselves. On the costs side, pirate chieftains had to pay contractual wages to their men, make weapons purchases, ship repairs, and other administrative functions like bookkeeping for their booty.

After their raids, pirates would typically keep food, weapons, and daily necessities while bartering away most of their other items at both black markets and legitimate ports. Profits consisted not of gold and silver, but mostly copper coins and items of daily life. Small part-time gangs will split up their loot after heists, while larger more organised gangs stashed their loot onshore to sell later.

Portuguese Macau - The Wickedest City in Asia

Pirates also had specialised ports where they conducted their shady enterprises. One such place was the Portuguese enclave of Macau. Labelled by Westerners as the "wickedest city in Asia" or the "Tripoli of the Orient". The island's jurisdiction was divided between the Portuguese and the Qing dynasty, hence the tenor of laws was often arbitrarily applied. Pirate chieftain Zhang Bao 张保 even made Macau his headquarters and set up a tax bureau there to improve his extortion capabilities.

Many Chinese depended on the coast and rivers for their livelihoods

It is not known yet how much pirates fought amongst themselves, but I like to think that Chinese pirates all had a kindred spirit and displayed gentlemanly conduct towards each other, but we cannot be sure. The Guangdong Pirate Pact of 1805, a pact between seven of the most powerful pirate leaders in Guangdong 广东 (Canton) formed a loose confederation of 50,000 pirates and several thousand ships. We might deduce from the pact that pirates knew not to fight each other, or on the other hand, it might tell us that pirates fought each other so much that something had to be done. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

The Guangdong Pirate Pact of 1805

Life onboard a Chinese Pirate Ship

Daily life on a Chinese pirate ship was a sorry existence. Pirate ships averaged around fifty men with some ships housing upwards of 100 men. Pirates lived in cramped, dirty bunks and spent all their leisure time gambling and smoking opium. Vessels were also swarmed with rats, which were encouraged by pirates to be bred and eaten as great delicacies. Richard Glasspoole, an English captive onboard a vessel of the Red Banner Fleet in 1809 noted that during his captivity they lived for three weeks on caterpillars boiled with rice.

How Englishmen John Turner and Richard Glasspoole's experiences on Chinese pirate ships ought to have looked like

China's water world was not easily defined by ethnic differences or national boundaries. Pirate ships had men, women, and children onboard, and sported a motley crew of various backgrounds including Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asians, and even Europeans, Americans, and Africans. After coastal raids by pirates, captured men were recruited into their ranks, children were brought up as servants, and women were kept on as wives if they were beautiful but left onshore if they were not. Pirates were also expected to be loyal to their wives and no adultery was tolerated amongst them. Women were allowed equal responsibility to men, a huge contrast to the male-dominated Confucian society on the mainland. The most famous female pirate was Zheng Yi Sao 郑一嫂, her name translating to Wife of Brother Zheng Yi. After her husband Zheng Yi's death, she took command of his Red Banner Fleet in 1807, Guangdong's 广东 (Canton) largest pirate fleet.

Zheng Yi Sao commanded the largest pirate fleet in 1807

Many Chinese pirates were seasonal workers. The Englishman John Turner noted that pirates come and go at such quick successions that the chief of the ship he was on refused any short-term contracts and accepted only long-term contracts of eight to nine months. Long-serving pirates of four years held higher positions of command.

Weapons of Chinese Pirates, late nineteenth century

Pirate Battles and Qing Government Responses

During battles with imperial soldiers, pirates utilised all kinds of weapons they could muster, ranging from traditional Chinese daggers to Western muskets. One time the Englishman Richard Glasspoole and his men were mustered by his pirate captors and told to fight imperial soldiers with their own muskets, which they did so with great devastation to the imperials, who mainly used bows and arrows. Imperial soldiers had matchlocks of their own but Glasspoole noted that they used them unskillfully. The weakness of the imperial army was no surprise because of two reasons: Firstly most of the army was tied up suppressing rebellions deeper in the mainland, such as the White Lotus rebellion. Second, the Qing dynasty thought little of Western weapons and neglected the development of military technology, during the Opium War in 1839-1842, British forces found that Chinese forts still wielded two-hundred-year-old cannons manufactured in the 1600s.

The Qing government was often just as, if not more cruel than the pirates

Pirates also raided villages with great fervour, slaughtering entire populations that did not comply. Glasspoole noted that during these massacres pirates were paid by the number of heads they produced, and he saw a pirate chase someone with two heads slung around his neck by the pigtails, and some more capable pirates even managing to acquire five or six heads for payment. Despite the cruelty, it is important to remember that this was normal for the time, and Qing government forces were just as, if not more cruel than the pirates. One example of how far the Qing dynasty was willing to go to eradicate piracy was the Great Clearance or Qianjieling 迁界令, a series of edicts between 1661-1679 that forcibly removed the entire coastal population of China from Shandong 山东 to Guangdong 广东 (Canton) and resettled them 5 kilometres inland. People were forced to depart their ancestral homelands and any who refused were executed. Many of these refugees from the coast wandered about inland looking for work and many died in ditches and burrows. Despite causing a huge humanitarian crisis, the edicts eventually starved out the pirates and were lifted in 1683.

From 1661-1679 CE, the Qing government forcibly resettled the entire coastal population from Shandong to Guangdong to 5 kilometres inland

Historical Accuracy and Conclusion

Today, pirate villages and shanties have been long replaced by high-rise condominiums, hotels, shopping malls, and casinos. Pirate legends still weakly persist in folklore and through the secondary sources of literature from their enemies. Because of the nature of piracy, pirates left behind little records of their own. Some pirates went to extreme measures to remain anonymous, murdering entire crews of ships they attacked to eliminate any witnesses.

However, the study of piracy is important, because it is the study of larger historical issues of social and economic dislocation and a crucial component of maritime commerce. By robbing official trade routes and diverting goods to where they were in demand elsewhere, piracy stimulated the development of new markets and ports all along the coast of Southeast China. As mentioned earlier, we still know surprisingly little about these pirates and more research has yet to be done.

This post was primarily sourced from Robert Antony’s The Golden Age of Piracy in China, it is a short read and may be available at your nearest University library. Supporting sources from the period came from Willard Peterson’s The Cambridge History of China: Volume 9, The Ch’ing Dynasty to 1800, Part 2. If you are interested in the period, I recommend you check these two books out for yourself.

If you have enjoyed reading this post or have any feedback, please do leave a comment. Do consider checking out my previous post on Cuju: Ancient Chinese Football for more interesting facts about Chinese history. Thank you kindly.

A History of Cuju (蹴鞠): Ancient Chinese Football

 Cuju: Ancient Chinese Football

A History of Cuju (蹴鞠)

Emperor Xuande spectating a game of Cuju

A New Era of Football in China?

In 2011, President Xi Jinping revealed his three dreams for Chinese Football: to qualify for the world cup, to host a world cup, and to win a world cup. In 2014, China set forth to create an 800 billion dollar sports industry by 2025. In 2020, China’s General Administration of Sport unveiled plans to have 18 critical cities dedicated to Football by 2025. Cities should aim to have two professional teams each, develop a grassroots culture in football and have one football pitch for every 10,000 people by 2025. The overall goal for the General Administration is to make China a strong sporting nation by 2035 and football is a critical factor in that goal. In addition, the country will build dozens of new football-specific stadiums in critical regions and expect to bid to host the 2030 or 2034 world cup.

As China’s influence on the global stage grows, Football leagues, teams, and sponsors are recognising the potential to engage with a large group of new fans. China is already one of the biggest spenders on foreign clubs, with Chinese investors buying minority stakes in Manchester City, Atletico Madrid, majority stakes in Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion, not to mention the entirety of AC Milan with an expected 250 million euros in additional merchandise sales from their 100 million Chinese fans.

In 2004, FIFA recognised Cuju (蹴鞠) as the oldest form of football. Cuju is a type of Chinese kickball game, with historical records dating to the Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE) in the 2^nd century BCE. With the backdrop of the modern growth in Chinese football, some wonder whether China has a more intimate connection to the sport as the original creators of Football, or Association Football if we were to use its official name. It certainly fits a larger narrative of football revival in China, but did China really invent football? I think the answer is no. But let us first explore the history and development of Cuju from the Han Dynasty up to the modern day.

Cuju: Mythical Legends and Han Dynasty Origins

According to legend, Cuju could be traced back to the mythological Yellow Emperor (黄帝) (2697-2596 BCE) using the heads of his defeated enemies, the Chiyou (蚩尤) Barbarians, as kicking objects to humiliate them. Another legend said that it was not their heads that were used but their stomachs instead. The Emperor would order the stomachs of his fallen enemies to be stuffed and then used as a kickball. It was only later that the activity would evolve into a form of exercise. Whether these stories were true is anyone’s guess, but considering the brutal nature of primitive societies, I reckon it did happen, although it probably had no direct involvement in the evolution of the formal game of Cuju later played in the Han dynasty. I also doubt that human organs make for durable footballs, there could only be so many heads of your enemies to go around.

Thousands of years later in the Han dynasty (汉朝) (202 BCE-220 CE), bravery and ritual in military practices gave way to the serious business of conquest and expansion. Chariot warfare declined and infantry warfare grew. The demands of military life led to the need for new activities to maintain the physical fitness of soldiers. This period was when Cuju first appeared in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (史记). The first Han emperor Gaozu (汉高祖) (202-195 BCE) and his father were avid fans of Cuju and were said to have played the game since their youths. After ascending the throne in a bloody civil war, Emperor Gaozu duly promoted Cuju in the country by establishing Cuju military exercises, and competition rules and building Cuju infrastructure. Nobles and wealthy citizens alike were said to have built their own private pitches. The Emperor had his very own football court, complete with a perimeter and grandstands, and when a match is underway it would have looked remarkably similar to modern Football matches today.

Cuju scene from the Movie Red Cliff II

The rules of Cuju in this period were the most similar to football today. Two teams play off with 12 players each, only one more player than in modern Association Football, referees were appointed, six holes in the ground were set up on each side as goals and victory goes to the team that can score the highest number of goals. This period also saw the supposed emergence of a specialised book on Cuju, called the “Twenty-five chapters of Cuju” written on Bamboo slips, although no records of it nor its contents have survived.

The Later Han period (Eastern Han, 东汉) (25-220 CE) also saw the rise in Buddhism and the transfer of Buddhist teachings from China to Japan. The subsequent religious exchange saw the introduction of Cuju into Japan, which gradually evolved into a similar sport called Kemari (蹴鞠), a favourite pastime of Japan’s warrior class, the Samurai.

Japanese Game of Kemari

Tang Dynasty Transition

The Tang dynasty (唐朝) (618-907 CE) was marked by a period of transition from the ancient to the medieval. During the Tang dynasty, the core of the army consisted of an aristocratic elite who loved horses. The influence of cavalry was substantial in the Tang dynasty, growing from 5,000 horses in 618 CE to seven hundred thousand horses by 750 CE. The strong influence of horsemanship was reflected in military exercises through the game of polo called Jiju, possibly imported from Iran. Tang armies used polo as a means of military training, much as the Han armies played Cuju.

Cuju experienced a dramatic change in this period. It had evolved into an activity played by people from all walks of life: court officials, scholars, women, and children. It was now played by one to nine players, whose purpose was to keep the ball in the air. Two kicks were allowed per player, after which the ball was passed. Further modifications saw the emergence of two goals, one at each end of the field, and the use of air-filled balls. Its final form only had one goal in the middle and played like volleyball.

A modern game of Cuju in China

In 877 CE, several scholars held a contest on a makeshift pitch and one scholar Liu Tan was awarded the title of Jinshi (进士), or advanced scholar, for displaying expert football skills to the amazement of military onlookers.

Song Dynasty Peak

The Song dynasty (宋朝) (960-1279 CE) was a time of growth, wealth, and the spread of education. An increase in leisure time provided a greater demand for more forms of entertainment.

Cuju in this time became less of a football match but more of a showcase of individual skill and technique. Players will perform various motions to keep the ball bouncing in the air. Cuju clubs were also formed, functioning as a sort of football league. Clubs will send their teams from around the country to compete in league tournaments.

Ming Dynasty Evolution

Ball games became wildly popular in the early Ming Dynasty (明朝) (1368-1644 CE). The painting series Pleasures of Emperor Xuande (宣德帝) (1399-1435 CE) depicts a game of Cuju played in the Emperor’s presence. The traditional Chinese painting of Beauties by Du Jin (杜堇), a famous Ming Dynasty painter, portrays Chinese court ladies enjoying a game of Cuju.

Cuju also made its way into the realm of the upper class, which had a big impact on its nature. The popularity of Cuju among the upper class caught the attention of brothel prostitutes, who began to play Cuju in erotic manners in front of their establishments, exactly how they did it I’ll leave that up to your imagination. This damaged the image of Cuju, which became to be gradually seen as a vulgar sport.

Emperor Hongwu (洪武帝) (1368-1398 CE), the first Emperor of the Ming dynasty, saw that his government officials were obsessed with Cuju, often abandoning their governing duties to play with their friends. In response, he enacted a complete prohibition on the sport, with anyone breaking the law suffering severe consequences. Despite this, Cuju remained very popular. Thirty years later, Emperor Xuande even castrated a soldier who was a good player so that he could play in court as a eunuch.

Qing Dynasty Decline

The Qing period (清朝) (1636-1912 CE) was when Cuju experienced a stark decline. Military drill, gymnastics, and sports were directly counter to the dominant Qing concept of culture, characterised by intellectual ideals. Men of culture wore long gowns with long sleeves to signify that they were not involved in physical labour. Sports were an activity for the lower classes. Qing dynasty pigtails, the dominant hairstyle for men, were also incompatible with professional sports. For women, the tradition of bound feet constituted an obstacle to sport participation, it was not until the late 1920s that Chinese women took part in sports in significant numbers.

This influence can be seen in the late Republican period of China (1912-1949 CE). When Chinese students first took up western sports at missionary schools, they wore long gowns and were resistant to the introduction of physical education into their curriculum. Ernest Hughes noted (1937, pg 176) “25 years ago, it was an effort for a [Chinese] schoolboy to shed his long gown to take part in a game of football.”

Did China Invent Football?

Looking back at the dynamic history of Cuju can we still say that football was invented in China? No, I personally don’t think so. And I say this because of two reasons.

Firstly, football is the most basic sport in human society, you either hit a ball, or you kick a ball. It is difficult to say that any single group invented the idea of kicking a ball. The Football of today, or to use its official name, association football, is a set of rules set in 1863 by The Football Association in England, which was further standardised by the IFAB, The International Football Association Board in Zurich, Switzerland. The UK doesn’t claim to have invented football, nor was it ever influenced by Cuju in China, but it did codify the set of rules that the entire world plays with today. To claim that China invented football would be to forget that the development of modern-day Association Football and its rules had no relation to Cuju.

Note the British love for football and competition

The second reason why football cannot be considered to be invented in China is the tumultuous development of Cuju itself. Cuju went from a game resembling modern-day Football in the Han Dynasty, into volleyball with feet in the Song Dynasty, and almost vanished in the Qing dynasty. Even the most ardent believers in China’s invention of football will struggle to find a continuous thread in the development of Cuju. Should we really say that football was invented in China by virtue of it showing up in our earliest known history?

Perhaps it is more important to look at why this answer is important. There are three main reasons to why it is advantageous for China to claim credit for the origins of football. External prestige, domestic benefits, and additional revenue.

External prestige is simple to understand, although in my opinion, not a very strong factor, being the founder of football gives China brownie points in legacy and legitimacy in the sport. In terms of domestic benefits, as per typical Neo-Confucian tradition of ancestor worship and filial piety, it is beneficial for Chinese people to feel a sense of connection to football if they know that their ancestors had played it in the past. Football is also a great way to improve the overall health of Chinese citizens, get kids to play outdoors instead of computer games, and foster societal unity through sports. Lastly, as the growth in football interest continues to rise in China, there is a lot of money to be made in Chinese football through broadcasting rights, ticket sales, and merchandise sales. This would translate into additional tax revenues for the nation.

Problems with Chinese Football

While making this video, another question has crept into my mind, and surely yours as well. How would we know that China’s investment in football pay off? In February of 2022, China suffered a 3-1 defeat against Vietnam, dashing any Chinese fan’s hopes of seeing their nation play in the World Cup, leaving them fuming on social media at the final whistle. Chinese Football today is still at a tragic state, with an over-reliance on foreign talent and an inability to cultivate homegrown talent.

Why is this so? Surely a population of 1.4 billion has at least 11 individuals skilled enough in football to play on the world stage? To try and understand why this is not so we would have to go back to school and look at the problems with modern physical education in China. Firstly, the Euro-American ideal of violent sport as an integral part of moral training and formation of character was quite alien to the traditional Chinese ethic. Parents do not encourage their children’s participation in sports and are even more against these sports' competitive natures. Education authorities, instead of promoting competitive sports, advocate for gymnastics and Chinese martial arts to inculcate diligence, obedience, endurance, morale, and national consciousness.

Cuju demonstration to Chinese schoolchildren

With such a deep-rooted cultural resistance toward football and other competitive sports, it is important for China to rebuild the country’s relationship with football from the ground up. Which, as mentioned at the start of this video, is exactly what the government is doing. Their efforts may bear fruit in 2035, or it may take many more years, nonetheless, I wish them all the best.

Closing

If you enjoyed this post, consider reading my previous post on Legendary Ancient Chinese Swords in the Spring and Autumn Period.

This post was primarily sourced from Sport and Physical Education in China by James Riordan and Robin Jones. Supporting sources came from Chinese websites, which might potentially suffer from a lack of supporting evidence by their contributors. Let me know in the comments if you have questions. Thank you for reading.

 

References

    (a)   Book

Hughes, Ernest Richard. The Invasion of China by the Western World. A. and C. Black, 1937.

Riordan, James, and Jones, Robin. Sport and Physical Education in China. Taylor & Francis, 1999.

    (b)  Websites

Nielsen. “Investing in Football Is at the Heart of China’s Sports Master Plan,” October 2, 2016. https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2016/investing-in-football-is-at-the-heart-of-chinas-sports-master-plan/.

Kidd, Robert. “Why China Is Curbing Club Spending And Building New Stadiums To Fulfill Its Soccer Dream.” Forbes, December 13, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertkidd/2020/12/13/why-china-is-curbing-club-spending-and-building-new-stadiums-to-fulfill-its-soccer-dream/?sh=68447c9173fb.

King, Tom. “China Eyes 18 Soccer Cities in Five Years as It Ramps up Sports Aspirations - SportsPro.” SportsPro Media, June 2, 2021. https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/china-football-cities-development-general-administration-of-sport/.

看鉴​已认证帐号. “蹴鞠真的是现代足球的祖先吗？.” 知乎专栏, 2019. https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/73136078.

    (c)   Images

CGTN. “Japanese Players Perform Ancient Ball Game Kemari in Kyoto,” January 8, 2019. https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d414f7a45444f31457a6333566d54/index.html.

Sina “中国古代的蹴鞠：世界足球之源,” August 29, 2012. http://collection.sina.com.cn/qtcp/20120829/141382137.shtml.

AFPBB News. “漢代では兵士の訓練だった 蹴鞠発祥の地でイベント 山東,” May 25, 2018. https://www.afpbb.com/articles/-/3175866?pid=20157471.

Tencent. “《蹴鞠-中国古代的足球》-中国古代的足球竟然如此厉害-今日头条,” March 19, 2022. https://view.inews.qq.com/k/20220319A04GY000?web_channel=wap&openApp=false.

written by Jeremy Ho, 24 September 2022