Chapter 1 China’s Time-honored Agricultural Civilization
Section 1 The Origin and Creation of Chinese Agriculture
1. China’s agricultural civilization and the map of world civilizations
Mankind has millions of years of history that can be studied. Two and a half million years ago, when human beings were just coming down from the trees and walking on the ground, they subsisted mainly as hunter gatherers. It was not until ten thousand years ago that agriculture emerged to become an important revolutionary power that pushed forward human society. Without any doubt, agriculture is mankind’s most important invention to date.
In the logic of history’s course, general trends are more important than details, and tendencies more weighty than specific events. As regards crucial factors influencing the origin of agriculture, besides the evolution of human cognitive ability, one can point to changes in the general climatic environment, the specificity of particular species such as wheat, rice, and tamable animals growing in particular places, and even the possible beliefs of our ancestors as playing important roles in the emergence of agriculture, environmental changes probably being the most direct factor. It is generally accepted that, because the most recent glacier recession occurred between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, man’s primitive agriculture emerged during the Neolithic Age of that period (about 5,000 to 10,000 years ago). The most important symbol of the Neolithic Age is the cultivation of crops, and the development of agricultural production facilitated division of labor in human society, which in turn enabled the rise of city civilization some 5,000 years after that.
In human history, the sparks of ancient civilization appeared in quite a few places, yet they died out or were extinguished one by one over the passage of time. Countries in the valleys of the Nile and of the Tigris-Euphrates that first entered the civilization era around 4000 BC followed each other into decline in 6th and 4th century BC respectively under the impact of foreign invasions. The Dravidian people established the splendid Harappa culture in the Indus Valley around 2500 BC, but had vanished by 1750 BC. After the Aryan invasions of 1000 BC, the India region entered a long period of division. Civilizations in the Americas had glorious achievements but later became mired in stagnation.
China is one of the handful of places where the world’s agricultural civilization originated and developed without interruption, which must be counted a miracle in the development of human society. According to the latest archaeological findings, China’s history of agriculture can be dated as far back as 10,000 BC, basically around the same historical period as the emergence of agriculture in West Asia. By around 7000-8000 BC it had developed quite prosperously.
Some archaeological findings have even challenged the perceived wisdom regarding China’s agricultural history. For example, it was assumed that wheat was not produced in China originally but introduced to China from the Western Regions. However, that assumption was overturned with the wheat unearthed at Diaoyutai Village, Haoxian County, Anhui Province, which can be dated back to the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC). The later discovery of 5,000-year-old wheat and barley grains at Donghuishan, Minle County, Gansu Province, gave an even earlier date for China’s wheat growing history.
At present the world accepts that the ancient Chinese people first cultivated rice and millet. For example, rice relics dating back 7,000 and 8,000 years were found at the Hemudu Site, Yuyao City, Zhejiang Province, and at Pengtoushan Site, Lixian County, Hunan Province, respectively. In recent years, 9,000-year-old charred rice was discovered at Huxi Site, Yongkang City, Zhejiang Province, and the finding of ancient cultivated rice at Yuchanyan Cave, Hunan Province, meant that the history of rice cultivation could be pushed back to 10,000 years ago. The charred millet and cabbage seeds from 6000 BC found at the Banpo Site, Xi’an Province are the world’s earliest specimen of these crops. Large quantities of millet ashes excavated at Cishan Site, Wu’an City, Hebei Province date China’s history of millet-growing to 8,000 years ago. Even today, the taste buds of people in the north of China favor the taste of millet porridge, which illustrates a long-term memory for this type of food.
According to Records of the Grand Historian, soy was planted as early as 5,000 years ago, at a time when the Yellow Emperor(1)ruled.
Very early on, the ancient Chinese people tamed six types of domestic animals – the pig, ox, sheep, horse, dog, and chicken. The Chinese character for “home” (家) is composed of elements showing a pig underneath a roof. This suggests that in ancient China, farmers already understood that “home is where the pig is.” In China’s rural areas, pigs could be seen in every household just one or two decades ago, and in villages remote from cities and towns it is still common to keep pigs in every household. In farmer communities, pork from a home-raised fatty pig is the most eagerly anticipated element at the Spring Festival feast.
The emergence and development of agriculture promoted human reproduction, enabled people to settle down in communities, and shaped the formation of villages. According to archaeological findings, there were more than 30,000 Neolithic Age villages and settlements along both sides of the Weihe River in Shaanxi Province. Today there are still 600,000 villages and 3,000,000 village settlements scattered across China. The residential form of villages not only laid the foundation for the development of the Chinese civilization, but also exerted a profound influence on the Chinese culture.
Beautiful Legends About Agriculture in Ancient Times
1. Shennong tasted a hundred herbs and planted the five grains
All places and nations had their own agriculture deities:Egypt had the goddess Isis, Greece and Rome had the goddesses Demeter and Ceres respectively, Mexico had the god Quetzalcoatl, and Peru the god Viracocha.
Today, on the lawn of the West Campus of China Agricultural University in Beijing, there stands a statue of Shennong, the Divine Farmer. One line of the plinth inscription reads: “Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, planted the five grains, fashioned plows, and tested water and springs; he benefited generations of people by teaching them how to cultivate land and helping them in all kinds of ways.” The statue, portraying a kindly-faced old farmer carrying spikes of rice in his hands, who seems to have just finished laborious plowing, is a representation of Yandi (Shennong), the common ancestor of 1.3 billion Chinese people, an embodiment of the Chinese nation’s earliest ancestor.
Shennong is an important figure in China’s earliest legends about agriculture. Before him, people had been eating “grubs, beasts, fruits from the trees, and snails.” Later, due to increasing population growth, there was a lack of food and an urgent need to find new and stable sources of food. After innumerable hardships and tasting hundreds of herbs, Shennong finally selected edible grains for the people. Besides, he also taught them how to grow the five grains, how to judge the soil productivity, and how to cultivate based on how moist and fertile the land was.
Not only did Shennong invent agriculture, he also created farm tools, medicines, pottery, musical instruments, and spinning and weaving tools. In order to treat diseases, he even tasted all kinds of wild plants himself in order to find herbal remedies. In the process he often got poisoned, but his dedicated spirit was praised highly by later generations, earning him the popular name of “Medicine King.”
2. Houji taught people to cultivate and reap
Houji is among the earliest figures of legend to make an appearance in China’s ancient documents; he was the first agriculture god of the Western Zhou Dynasty recorded in Chinese documents, as seen in The Book of Songs: Eulogies of Zhou. It is said that in ancient times a woman named Jiang Yuan saw a footprint of a giant when enjoying herself in the mountains. In a mixture of curiosity and excitement, she couldn’t resist stepping on the footprint. When she stepped onto the imprint of the big toe, she felt a tremor pass through her body, and when she went back home she was pregnant. Later, she gave birth to a son, but since people thought the baby was a bringer of bad luck because of how it had been conceived, she discarded him in a small alley. But, strange to relate, cattle, horses, and other beasts all avoided hurting the baby as they passed, and they even suckled him with their own milk. Later, people threw him by the side of a river, by which time it was already winter. Nevertheless, birds came to keep him warm and protected him from freezing to death. The mother felt this baby was something special, and decided to retrieve and raise him. Due to the fact that he was almost abandoned, he was named “Qi” (a Chinese word meaning “to abandon”).
As a child, Qi knew how to be self-sufficient, how to weed, how to grow soy beans, barley, wheat, melon, and various grains, vegetables, and fruits. Moreover, he grew them well, to full productivity and plumpness. He also understood that he should prepare food from the harvested crops and put them into special utensils to worship the ancestors, heaven, and earth. After he grew up, Qi was recommended as the tribe leader. He led people in agricultural production, growing all kinds of crops and bringing wealth and stability to the tribe. When Yao, the leader of the tribal union, later heard about Qi’s capability, especially in agriculture, he asked Qi to take charge of agricultural production of the union, with the official title of “Houji,” which later became another name for Qi. Gradually this tribe prospered and became the predecessor of the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC). People revered Houji as the God of Crops, and worshiped him alongside the God of Land (represented by the Chinese character “She”). Together the two became “She Ji.” In China this is an alternative term for country or society. For ancient people, there were but two things of utmost significance in a country, namely land and food.
3. The legend of the Silkworm Goddess
According to legend, the inventor of sericulture was Lei Zu, wife of Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor.
One day, Lei Zu was among some wild mulberry trees drinking water when some wild silkworm cocoons dropped into her water bowl. She used a branch to hook out the cocoon but pulled out a thread of natural silk, which stretched out without stopping, in an ever longer strand. Lei Zu used the thread to spin yarn and weave cloth, and started to domesticate wild silkworms. She was worshiped as the Xiancan (Silkworm Mother) by later generations, and empresses and imperial concubines of succeeding dynasties all had rites of worship for her. Today, inside the Summer Palace in Beijing, we can visit the “Tilling and Weaving” scenic spot built by Qing Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799), which demonstrates the great importance attached to agriculture. Within the spot is the Silkworm Goddess Temple where we can still see the style and features of that time.
The Xiancan Temple, built in 1827 that stands in Shengze Town, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, is China’s only ancestral temple dedicated to the worship of sericulture. It demonstrates that the custom of worshiping the Xiancan Ancestral Temple persisted until the late Qing Dynasty as least. Until modern times Xiancan, i.e. Lei Zu, was still enshrined in similar temples of sericulture in many places.
In Xiangfusi Alley of Suzhou City there is a Lei Zu Temple reputed to have been a place where the Yellow Emperor once lived. According to Suzhou folklore, unlike the more popular version elsewhere, Lei Zu was the youngest of his three daughters, and was affectionately called Third Miss. Legend says that Huangdi invented the loom with the help of the twelve heavenly beasts. Inspired by the double-edged fine-toothed comb of Third Miss, he further invented koumie (a special component of the loom) that prevented the warp thread from being cut in the weaving process.
There is another legend in In Search of the Sacred (Sou Shen Ji) about the origin of sericulture, a very touching one. According to this legend, in ancient times, a father and daughter lived together in what is now Sichuan Province. One day the father went away to work, leaving his daughter at home to take care of their horse. As more and more time went by, the daughter missed her father so much that she joked to the horse that she’d marry it should it be able to bring her father home. At this, the horse broke free and ran off. After negotiating rocky roads and many obstacles, the horse found the father, and started whinnying plaintively in the direction of their house. The father, amazed, understood that something must have happened back home, and mounted the horse right away. After returning home, the horse refused to eat and would stamp the ground whenever it saw the daughter. Curious, the father asked his daughter what had happened and was told the truth. The father considered this a disgrace to the family, so he shot the horse with an arrow and spread the horsehide in the yard. The tale went about the area. One day, the daughter and her neighbor girlfriend came in front of the horsehide and teased: “Why did a beast like you want to marry a human woman? Why get yourself killed for that?” The words had hardly escaped their lips when the horsehide suddenly flew off from the ground and swept the daughter away. The father looked for her everywhere. Several days later he found that both his daughter and the horsehide had become silkworms growing on a tree as large and thick cocoons. The neighbor girl took some silkworms from the tree and raised them; with this, sericulture began.
2. Source places of China’s agriculture
Looked at globally, primitive agriculture originated most early alongside mountainous regions, hills, and highlands, and not on the alluvial plains flanking rivers with which people are familiar. China’s primitive agriculture started first in the Yellow River basin, then in the Yangtze River basin, South China, the northwest and southeast coasts, and Northeast China, with farming emerging from highlands and spreading to low ground, from mountain forests to flatland, and from dry land to paddy field. China covers a vast territory, and exhibits hugely disparate climates, eco-environments, products, and lifestyles. Illustrating this, the idiom“each place supports its own inhabitants in its own particular way” has existed since ancient times.
(1)The Yellow River basin. The provinces of Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hebei in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, and the extensive land in eastern Gansu Province are important cradlelands of the Chinese nation’s ancient civilization. In today’s Nanzhuangtou Village, Xushui County, Hebei Province, there have been findings of early Neolithic Age remains of agriculture-related objects dating back to 10,500-9,700 years ago, among them gramineous pollen, pig and dog bones, pottery, millstones and stone grinding sticks. The discoveries exhibit the transition from Paleolithic Age to the Neolithic Age and the originating stage of agriculture.
Northern Chinese love to eat millet, a grain domesticated from gramineous dogtail grass. At the Peiligang Site in central Henan Province and the Cishan Cultural Site in south central Hebei Province dating back 7,000-8,000 years, there were discoveries of large quantities of dry land crop seed remains, including millet. At the Cishan Site, people also found many osseous remains of pig, dog, and domestic fowls, and pig bones and pottery pig head sculptures were found at the Peiligang Site. These point to rather advanced agricultural development in both places at that time. Besides, lots of stone axes, shovels, and sickles from the same period demonstrated that the Yellow River basin was already in the phase of using hoes and other instruments to till and plant their land.
In 1921, the Yangshao Cultural Site discovered in Yangshao Village, Mianchi County, Henan Province was representative of the agricultural heritage left from the mid-Neolithic Age. Yangshao Culture dates back 5,000-7,000 years, and developed for 2,000 years. During that period of time, people already started to plant rice, sorghum, mustard leaf, and cabbage; pigs, dogs, cattle, and sheep were quite common livestock; spinning and weaving were no rarity in the daily life of ordinary people; they led a stable life in fixed settlements, and farmers in the true sense of the word came into being. The Longshan Cultural Site of 4,000-5,000 years ago shows that period as a “hoe-farming” phase, and in some places there was even plow-farming of land. Discoveries of pig bones and ceramic drinking vessels from this period are notably more numerous, and point to the existence of more surplus food at that time.
(2) Middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The Yangtze River valley is the birthplace of China’s rice growing culture, a culture that developed from the middle reaches and extended to the lower reaches. One representative place is the Hemudu Site in Yuyao City, Zhejiang Province, some seven thousand years old. In the 400 sq m site area were found 20-50 cm stacked layers of rice, rice grass, and rice husks, the greatest thickness being over one meter and the total weight of rice exceeding 12 tons. One Hemudu Site discovery was a ceramic bowl inscribed with rice ears and pig images, vivid testimony to the importance of growing rice and raising pigs, and the close connection between them. Of the unearthed production tools, over 600 (more than 70 percent of the total number) were made of animal bones, demonstrating that bone tools were the most important implements of production. At that time, Hemudu’s economy mainly depended on rice cultivation, and also on animal husbandry, gathering, fishing, and hunting. It can be seen that the Liangzhu Culture was already rather developed in the rice-growing areas of the lower Yangtze. Another prominent feature of Liangzhu Culture is the large amounts of unearthed silk and hemp fragments, some of which are similar in terms of weaving quality with today’s plain-woven linen fabric. In addition, the culture had special textile production departments.
(3) South and northwest regions of China. Agriculture in the south of China started early but it developed unevenly and therefore was more diverse. Excavations of Neolithic sites in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian provinces showed that although local economy was chiefly based on hunting and gathering, primitive agriculture emerged and developed from planting root and tuberous crops. Findings from shell mound sites along rivers and coasts show that planting had already emerged by that time but that fishing, hunting and gathering remained dominant in the economy. In tableland on both sides of rivers, mixed economy dominated by planting gained development.
The southwest region also showed distinctive characteristics in its primitive agricultural civilization. Four thousand years ago, Chinese ancestors had already built dense concentrations of mud-wall houses at Baiyang Village, Binchuan County, Erhai area, in the west of Yunnan Province. They lived chiefly by primitive agriculture, and also by gathering, fishing, and hunting. To date, more than 50 Neolithic sites have been found in Tibet. Dozens of houses with different structures were found at the Karuo Site in Qamdo, the largest one having double rooms covering 70 sq m of area. Settled farming-based villages emerged.
(4) Northern region of China. On the vast lands of today’s Northeast China, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a pluralistic economy predominated by planting, fishing, hunting, and husbandry already existed in the Neolithic Age. In the 7,000-year-old Xinle Cultural Site in Shenyang and the 5,000-year-old Hongshan and Fuhe Cultural sites in the upper reaches of the Liaohe River, excavated discoveries include large quantities of cultivated millet and farm tools, among them stone axes, shovels, and mills. At the Xinkailiu Site, Mishan City, Heilongjiang Province, people found cellars dating back 6,000 years for storing fresh fish and large amounts of fishing tools and fish bones. This indicated that people at that time already lived a relatively stable settled life. On the Songnen Plain and the Hulun Buir Grassland that lie east and west respectively of the Greater Khingan Mountains, many microliths and polished stone implements were discovered. In addition to these, funerary objects dating back 3,800 years, including horns found at the Gumugou Site by the Peacock River in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, suggest that husbandry economy was developing rapidly at that time.
Those relatively stand-alone agricultural regions in ancient China started as silent sparks in an as yet incompletely known history, and gradually connected up to become a blazing fire that swept right across China’s land. These gradually developing primitive agricultures finally brought about independent individual families and surplus food exceeding the producers’ own demands. The change of economic basis also produced profound changes in how people were connected and organized, and thereby laid the first cornerstone for the emergence of private ownership and the state. The ancient Chinese people would initiate a new chapter in civilization.
The Agricultural History of China as Reflected in Idioms
1. Abundant harvest of the five grains
Chinese people have been celebrating the Spring Festival for over 4,000 years, and the first thing to do at the start of the New Spring is to stick auspicious paired couplets on their door frames, expressing their new year wishes through these lucky words. Today, in China’s villages, people like to express their wishes for high yield next year by pasting on the door frame of rooms used for storing grains and food the words “abundant harvest of the five grains,” So, what specifically are these five grains?
At the very emergence of agriculture, ancient people usually mixed all kinds of crops together and called this “hundreds of crops and vegetables.” Later, they gradually selected crop varieties with high production and good quality, and these became the “five grains.” The term refers to grain crops generally, rather than just five specific grains, and encompasses glutinous millet, millet, rice, hemp, soy, wheat, etc.
From the Neolithic Age right down to the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, glutinous millet and millet were the main grain crops in the Yellow River valley and even in the whole country. Glutinous millet and millet were local fast-growing plants with strong drought-resilience. They could endure cold and heat alike, and were a natural fit with the climate of the Yellow River basin. Glutinous millet, in particular, could be best used as the pioneer crop when opening up new land. After the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) and the Warring States Period (475-221 BC), as the amount of newly cultivated land increased, glutinous millet gradually lost its dominant place among crops. Millet is not only nutritionally rich, but can also be stored for long periods, and unhusked millet can be stored in dry conditions for decades without deterioration. Therefore it was revered as “head of the five grains” since the Western Zhou Dynasty. Until now, millet porridge is still an indispensable part of the northern Chinese diet.
Rice originated in the Yangtze River valley, and was domesticated from wild rice by people of the Yue ethnic group. It was spread to the Huaihe River valley 7,000-8,000 years ago, and later to the Yellow River valley. After Yu the Great(2)harnessed the floods, the north of China also started to plant and produce rice. During the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods, the life enjoyed by kings, princes, and aristocrats was described as “eating rice and wearing silk.”
China is the homeland of the soybean, which originated in the northeast regions. The English word “soy” is a transliteration of the Chinese character “菽” (shu). Later the left lower part of this character became three dots, indicating that the ancient people noticed that soy had root nodules. Soy was not transported from the northeast to the Central Plains until the Shang (1600-1046 BC) and Zhou dynasties. Because of the rich plant proteins soy contains, it is called “vegetable meat,”
Wheat was also a main grain crop for people in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Judging from existing materials, the Qiang ethnic minority who lived in the west of China had the tradition of planting wheat, and there is evidence that people of the Xia Dynasty (2070-1600 BC) also did so. China’s earliest document The Book of Songs mentions wheat nine times. Even today, the Central Plains area, i.e. Henan Province, the original base of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, is still China’s largest wheat-producing region, whose land has been growing wheat for almost 4,000 years. After the Warring States Period, with the invention and popularization of stone grinding mills, it became easier to process wheat into prepared food, and this led to an ever increasing area being put to wheat cultivation.
Hemp is usually considered to be a fiber crop for the weaving of cloth, and not a food crop. Actually, hemp is a dioecious plant: the male plant is slender and soft and can be used as textile raw material; the seed of the female plant is edible, and was therefore counted as a crop in ancient times. From an archaeological perspective, North China is the birthplace of hemp. To date, both hemp seeds and cloth of late primitive society have been unearthed in the Yellow River valley. Hemp seed was indeed one of the grain crops of people living in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and hemp, the source of textile fibers.
2. The six domestic animals all thrive
The term “six domestic animals” started in the Spring and Autumn Period and was very precise in its meaning, namely horse, ox, sheep, pig, dog, and chicken. Unlike their present usage, all six were raised to be eaten, and only later came to be used for transportation, cultivation, house guarding and hunting.“Domestic animals” means that they were raised at home, and that they were domesticated by China’s ancient people. Therefore in China’s animal zodiac today, these six deservedly occupy six important positions.
The horse was originally an animal raised for meat. For example in The Tale of King Mu, Son of Heaven, when King Mu of Zhou (King of the Western Zhou Dynasty, reigning from 976 BC to 922 BC) travelled westward, tribes he encountered on the way all presented “food horses” as gifts, frequently hundreds of them. Later in the Central Plains region, there was a change of use as horses began being used in servitude. China was the first country to use horses to pull vehicles, and also the first to invent stirrups. In the Shang and Zhou dynasties, people used carriages in warfare, hunting, and traveling. After the Spring and Autumn Period, due to the dominance of chariot warfare and cavalry, horses were already vital in military affairs, and started to assume a prominent role among the six domestic animals. In the chariot wars of the Zhou Dynasty, each chariot needed four horses, and bullock carts were also necessary to carry army provisions. At the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period, a medium-sized vassal state possessed 200-300 chariots. Later the number of chariots of different states saw unbroken increase, and by the end of the Spring and Autumn Period and the beginning of the Warring States Period, it was quite common for a state to have thousands of chariots, tens of thousands even.
This is illustrated by discoveries excavated from the tomb of the monarch of Qi State of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770-256 BC) in the west of Heyatou Village, Linzi District, Zibo City, Shandong Province. There were some 600 horses buried in the specific horse pit, and another 150 chariots that could be equipped for war, which amounted to the total military strength of a small vassal state. The density of the horse arrangement was an average 2.7 horses per meter, a rarity in the whole world.
Horses were raised not just by the ordinary people but also by the government. China’s earliest policy on horses started in the Shang Dynasty, when all those who raised horses held government posts. For example, in China’s famous mythic fiction Journey to the West, when the Jade Emperor invites the Monkey King Sun Wukong to Heaven, he offers him the post of the Protector of Horses, which was just a petty official post caring for and herding horses.
Of all great matters of state, the offering of sacrifices stood paramount. Sacrificing to gods and ancestors was a very important official event, one in which oxen and sheep were crucial as the main sacrificial offerings. During major sacrificial events, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of the animals would be sacrificed. There was a steady rise in the importance of cattle; cattle raising appeared in the Xia Dynasty and, by the Shang Dynasty, it involved large numbers. During the Spring and Autumn Period, oxen started being used to pull the plow and till the land. The popularity of ox-plowing greatly improved the creature’s status among the six domestic animals.
The rearing of oxen prospered, the importance of the ox was no longer inferior to that of the horse. For example, among the animal bones discovered in the bone workshop site in Fufeng County, Shaanxi Province, there were 1,306 items of ox relics, which demonstrated the prevalence of ox rearing in the Western Zhou Dynasty. At the same time, bronze wares from the Shang and Zhou dynasties found in Hunan Province are often decoration with sheep images, which indicates that in the south of China sheep-rearing flourished. The Book of Songs: Lesser Court Hymns writes “Who said that you don’t have any sheep, you have a flock of 300.” Among the official positions in the Zhou Dynasty, “ox person” and “sheep person” were established specially to manage and feed the two animals.
China was the first country to raise pigs as livestock. Pork is the main meat for most ordinary Chinese families, so the pig holds an extremely important position, one that began in Neolithic times. The Chinese character for pig is actually an element in the character for home, and in ancient times, virtually every household raised these animals. In archaeological findings at different places, the most numerous relics are always pig-related.
The dog was the earliest domestic animal. It was domesticated during the hunting economy age and decreased in importance after the agricultural age. During the pre-Qin Dynasty period (8th century-3rd century BC), dogs were just as common as pigs and chicken in peasant households, and were kept chiefly for their meat. Today in some parts of China, the custom of eating dog meat persists.
Chicken is the only poultry animal of the six domestic animals, which signifies that in the Xia and Shang dynasties, chicken undoubtedly occupied an important position in animal husbandry. Chicken bones dating back 7,300 years were unearthed at the Cishan Site, Wu’an City, Hebei Province, and inspection reveals them to be very similar to those of modern domestic chickens. Besides chicken, ducks and geese were successfully domesticated in the Shang Dynasty.
The traditional structure of household-based animal husbandry took shape in the Xia and Shang dynasties and the Spring Autumn Period. As society evolved and changed, there was a division of labor among the six domestic animals. Larger livestock such as oxen and horses were used more as servants and as a source of power, while pigs, sheep, chickens, and dogs were raised mainly for their meat. Ancient Chinese people not only domesticated these six animals and domestic birds, but also embarked on the domestication of deer, elephants, and donkeys. However due to economic reasons and the changes in the environment and climate, deer and elephants did not enter the list of livestock as known in China today.
3. Reeling silk from cocoons
As with the four great inventions of China’s ancient civilization (papermaking, the compass, gunpowder, and printing)China’s silk also exerted world-class influence, as reflected in the world-famous Silk Road. Judging from archeological finds, the use and breeding of silkworm cocoons and the production of silk started as early as the Neolithic Age. In 1973, a cup-like carved utensil was unearthed at the Hemudu Neolithic Cultural Site, Yuyao City, Zhejiang Province, a site that dates back seven millennia. On this cultural relic are incised four motifs resembling silkworms. In 1984, at the Yangshao Cultural Site, Qingtai Village, Xingyang County, Henan Province, there were discoveries of silk fabrics dating back 5,000 years, the earliest silk found in the north of China to date. In 1958, a batch of silk thread, silk ribbons, and spun silk was unearthed at the Qianshanyang Site, Wuxing District, Zhejiang Province, which, after inspection and examination, was traced back 4,700 years, proving them the earliest silk products found in the south of China to date. Large quantities of ceramic and stone spinning wheels and spindles were also excavated in Neolithic sites in various locations.
In China’s legends of pre-history, the Yellow Emperor’s wife Lei Zu invented sericulture. For several millennia, sericulture and silk weaving had equal importance with food production, and these activities were a major focus of ancient politicians, being a part of the industrial economy and a source of tax. Crop planting and sericulture were two basic economic activities in China’s ancient villages, and silk weaving and embroidery were the most common family handicraft.
As long ago as in pre-Qin times in the 2nd century BC, the vast rural lands between the Yellow River and the Yangtze presented a picture full of mulberry leaves and silk clothes. From the Shang Dynasty to the Warring States Period, mulberry cultivation and sericulture coverage gradually expanded, and the production of silk gradually developed and prospered. Since the Zhou Dynasty, there was the ritual of the Empress taking imperial concubines to “feed the silkworms and reel silk from the cocoons,” With the symbolic rituals of the Emperor tilling the land and the Empress feeding the silkworms, performed every new year for millennia, the basic picture of Chinese society was an idyllic one – a life based on agriculture and sericulture. “Men tilling and women weaving” became the most fundamental internal structure of China’s agricultural economy, a concept that was passed down for more than 2,000 years.
3. Ancient Chinese agriculture – ahead of the world
China has the largest number of ancient books on agriculture in the world, with 400 written documents and books on the techniques and theories of agricultural science. Outstanding examples include The Xiaozheng Chinese Calendar, Book by Fan Shengzhi, Qimin Yaoshu (Essential Techniques for the Welfare of the People), A Complete Treaties on Agriculture, and Exploitation of the Works of Nature. Of these, The Xiaozheng Chinese Calendar is one of China’s earliest existing scientific documents, and also China’s earliest existing almanac on agriculture. It connected astronomical phenomena with phenological phenomena and agricultural activities, and shaped the ideological framework for traditional cyclic agricultural production. In ancient times, knowledge of the four seasons, 72 pentads, and 24 solar terms also emerged in the service of agricultural production.
The Twenty-four Solar Terms in Rhyme
In China, there is a quite famous rhyme summarizing the twenty-four solar terms. This folk rhyme sings about China’s 24 solar terms in every year, terms derived from the wise ancients’observation of nature and life and based on the sun’s ecliptic position. The solar terms are about 15 days apart and the rhyme came into being as an aide memoire.
Farmers needed to arrange their life and guide their agricultural production according to changes in the 24 solar terms. Agricultural production was not a process that farmers could manage as they pleased. They had to pay special attention to natural phenological phenomena as well as the changing of the seasons, the climate, and the position of the sun, moon, and stars. Agricultural production had to correspond with the farming seasons.
Farmers would usually use plain words to summarize the correlation between solar terms and production, which were passed on and became agricultural proverbs such as “no matter planting in spring or in summer, always seize the moment and never be late,” “after the Waking of Insects comes the incessant spring plowing,” “good harvest only comes after bright sunshine in the summer,” “the thicker the winter snow, the better the wheat harvest next year,” “freezing wind of the Cold Dew brings no harvest,” “plant corn and green beans for two good harvests,” and “grow sweet potato one year and rice the next for growing production.” These plain folk ditties and proverbs reflect deep-rooted agricultural patterns.
On November 30, 2016, China’s 24 solar terms were included into the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
In terms of arable farming, iron tillage implements and ox-plowing were already quite common in the Warring States Period, about 1,000 years earlier than in Europe. The Tang Dynasty saw improvement in plow structure with the appearance of the single-piece curved-plow; the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) saw the invention of the plowing frame, a man-powered device using wheels and ropes. This frame operated on the same mechanical principle as the modern electric plow, testament to the relatively high level reached by ancient Chinese agricultural machinery. The seeder/plow of the Han Dynasty was a device that combined furrowing and seeding functions. Even today, it is still used in some Chinese villages.
In terms of cultivation system, China had a tradition of intensive and meticulous farming from very early on. In the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 25) farmers began to till the fields in segmented ridges and furrows, moving from one segment to the next in rotation.
The Spring and Autumn Period saw the invention of a wooden irrigation tool for lifting water; the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) saw the invention of special carts for drawing off and irrigating water; and the Tang Dynasty saw the appearance of water wheels for lifting water. By the Yuan (1206-1368) and Ming dynasties, wind-powered water lifts had appeared.
People in the Shang Dynasty started to use spoked rather than solid wheels, and carriages pulled by four or two horses. During the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280), the “wooden ox” made by Zhuge Liang (181-234, minister and politician of the Shu Kingdom in the Three Kingdoms Period) was a kind of evolved wheelbarrow.
In terms of food processing machinery, the Han Dynasty already had wind- and water-driven machinery capable of pounding crops, which was 1,400 years in advance of Western Europe. Also, the hydraulic stone mill and water-driven eight-piece mill invented in the Jin Dynasty predated similar inventions in Western Europe by a thousand or more years. Processing machinery such as the water-driven nine-piece mill and the shipborne mill created in the Song Dynasty all came five centuries earlier than in Western Europe.
Successive dynasties and regimes in China all attached great importance to building infrastructure and public water conservancy projects. In the Xia Dynasty, China already used irrigation in agricultural production, and the Western Zhou Dynasty established a primary irrigation and water conservancy system, one that encompassed the retention, channeling, irrigating, and draining of water. In the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods, a series of world-renowned large water conservancy projects such as the Dujiangyan Weir and the Zhengguoqu Dyke were completed. Later, irrigation and water conservancy projects spread from the Central Plains out across the whole country. Development during the Western and Eastern Han concentrated in the north of China (for instance, the Liufuqu Ditches and the Baiqu Canal), but at the same time large irrigation projects had spread to the south of China, where they really took off. After the Wei (220-265) and Jin dynasties, water conservancy projects continued moving south of the Yangtze, and basically spread to the whole country by the time of the Tang Dynasty. During the Tang, Chinese people developed a complete set of river gate techniques, some 700 years earlier than the appearance of double gates on Dutch canals. The Song Dynasty saw an upsurge of water conservancy projects, and these continued to develop during the Yuan and Ming dynasties. Small local irrigation and water conservancy projects were ubiquitous.
The Dujiangyan Weir and the Lingqu Canal were typical water conservancy projects of ancient China. The Dujiangyan Weir is in Guanxian County west of Chengdu City, Sichuan Province. It was built under the leadership of Sheriff Li Bing of the Warring States Period, for purposes of flood prevention, irrigation, and shipping. In existence for more than 2,200 years, the system still irrigates the farmland of the Chengdu Plain even today. The essence of this system, “digging deep on the shore, and building the weir low” exerted an importance influence in China’s history on water conservancy. The Dujiangyan Weir brought fertility to thousands of hectares of land on the Chengdu Plain, and made it a famous land of plenty in China. This project was a great achievement in China’s history of water conservancy; it also serves as a world exemplar of how to use nature without damaging the environment.
The Lingqu Canal was built and put into operation in 214 BC. Located in Xing’an County in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, it is considered the “pearl in world’s ancient water conservancy structure.” It facilitated water transportation between north and south, and corresponds to the Great Wall in the north of China as another world wonder. The water level of the Lingqu Canal is higher than that of the Xiangjiang River, a fact that created extreme difficulty in excavation. It uses “flash-lock gates” to hold back the water and enable the passage of boats. The canal used the same principle as in the Panama Canal – but more than 2,000 years earlier.