From: lix@yangtze.bu.edu (Xiaowen Li)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china,talk.politics.china
Subject: Forward for Mr. Anonymous
Date: 28 Sep 92 14:14:44 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.china
Organization: Boston University

This is from Mr. Anonymous. No disclaimer needed this time:-)

            Subject: Millions of lives

Dear Lix,

I've just resumed reading scc (still infrequently) and caught you 
saying:

>Some one [brought] yam back in China, which saved millions of lives.

Not intending to join this discussion of "reforming" cultures, I just 
want to point out the often unpredictable long-term consequences of 
introducing a new element into a complex system.  (Again, I am far from 
being an "expert".  But a very close relative of mine has published a 
few papers on this topic. That's why I know a thing or two about this 
matter).

The introduction of sweet potato to China may have "saved millions of 
lives", but its long-term consequences are still debatable from a 
different point of view.

From most records, China's population had been rather stable, or at most
growing "linearly", with periodical sudden drops during the wars, over
a very long historical period.   But at some point in the Late Ming era 
the population started to grow, almost unabatedly even during disasters 
and wars, rapidly if not "exponentially". 

What's the explanation here?  No doubt there might have been many 
factors. But one can also notice that the rapid population growth 
somehow coincided with the introduction to China of at least two major 
crops: corn and sweet potato.  One might mention peanut as a third one. 

From the very beginning ours has been an agrarian civilization.  But the
country's landscape almost always lacked the great plains (until the Qing
regime brought us as her belated dowry the Great Northeast Plains after
perhaps the abolition of the "Willow Border").  The five traditional 
Chinese grain crops (Wu5Gu3) always appear to yield poorly (if they grow
at all) in the vast hilly lands, particularly in Southern China.  That's
why these areas had always been sparsely populated, seriously limiting 
the room for population growth.

Now the introduction of corn and sweet potato, particularly the latter,
changed the picture substantially if not completely.  Sweet potato can 
grow almost everywhere and produce fairly good yields in the mountainous
areas.  As a result, ever since the late Ming, we see phenomenal 
population growth in the hilly lands, as reflected by the establishment 
of numerous new counties(Xian4) in these areas, which also tend to be 
less susceptible than the towns in the plains to the destructions 
brought on by wars and other disasters.

Now, population growth is not necessarily a bad thing.  But most of us 
today seem to think otherwise, not even to mention deforestation and 
other equally undesirable things brought on by the development of the 
mountainous areas. It is only fair to add that opinions on population 
growth do vary over a wide range, from Malthus(1766-1834) to Mao(1893-
1976) to whom WW III with nukes was not only inevitable but also 
desirable for achieving the "worldwide success of communism".  Yours 
is by no means out of line.

Postscript.  Sweet potato may have saved millions of lives (and
we may owe it our very existence as some great-great-...-
grandparents of ours might have been among these "millions
saved"), and nowadays I often miss dearly those street stands selling 
baked yams.  But if you talk to a Fujianese from the hills you will 
learn that having it (mostly dried and shredded) 365 days a
year is not much fun, neither is it quite nutritious.
=====================================

Lix's notes: I personally owe it, because the famine of 1960-1963
in Sichuan finally ended by a good harvest of sweet potato in 1963 :-(
Before that farmers were simply too hungry to do anything well.
-- 
Xref: sparky soc.culture.china:26565 soc.culture.taiwan:14055