CHINESE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY NEWSLETTER
Issue 3:1, May 1996
This newsletter may be freely photocopied; however, authors’ rights must be respected.
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of the newsletter. Daniels, who reports on the experience
From the Editorof a Lahu hill-dwelling community, depicts the nature
reserve as depriving minority villages of access to resources
The newsletter, alive and well in its third year, proudly
crucial to their way of life. Grinspoon, by contrast, did her
presents three articles, while a first contribution to thefieldwork among the Dai, who are the largest of the minority
prospective “Teaching Ideas and Experience” section has
been held over to the next issue. Submissions for the next
two issues, whether brief research reports, abstracts of────────────────────────────────────────
papers presented, or longer mini-articles, are eagerly
encouraged.
Contributions by graduate students areespecially welcome. The word-limit for mini-articles has
Chinese Environmental History
been raised to an absolute maximum of 4,000 words.
Newsletter 3:1, May 1996
The first two articles in this issue both raise theContents
unpleasant topic of disease. Carol Benedict establishes
disease history firmly within the scope of environmental
Pagehistory by showing how the history of plague in late
Noticeboard
imperial China cannot be understood without pinpointing(professional associations; calls for papers;
when, where, how, and why Han Chinese intruded into theother conference and workshop information
wilderness areas where plague is enzootic. Benedict argues(including paper abstract); publications;that, given the difficulties of “diagnosing” past disease
fellowships; Internet — WWW and discussion
outbreaks on the basis of descriptions of the symptoms,
group — addresses)
2
historians must take recent research on the ecology of plaguein China into account when trying to establish that a
Epidemiology and History: An Ecologicalparticular past epidemic was or was not plague. Her article
Approach to the History of Plague
has important implications for historians seeking to identify
in Qing China by Carol Benedict
6
plague epidemics in earlier periods of Chinese history, andchallenges them first to determine what differences there
The Making of the Pearl River Delta by
were (if any) in the distribution of plague “reservoirs” inRobert B. Marks10earlier times — no easy task.
Malaria is not the central focus of Robert Marks’s
The Political Ecology of Forest
article, but it plays an important part in the story that he tells.
Conservation in Xishuangbanna (I) The
Marks is interested in the formation of the Pearl River Delta,
View from a Dai Village by Elisabethin the far south of China. He argues that the delta was
Grinspoon
man-made in two senses; first, indirectly, through the15
deposition of topsoil dislodged by Chinese farmers from thehills of northern Guangdong and Guangxi, carried south by
Update to Directory of Subscribers
18
rivers, and channelled into the Pearl River Estuary as a resultof flood control works in the Song; and second through theSubmission and Subscription
direct labours of farmers migrating south after the Mongol
Information
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riverborne sediment into fertile fields. Malaria helps
explain the time-lag between the first arrival of Chinese
settlers in the north part of the region, and their later activity
peoples in an autonomous prefecture bearing the Dai name.
in reshaping the south for agriculture. It took time for Han
This may account for the happier experience of theChinese to overcome fear of malaria in the lowland southcommunities she visited in dealing with the reserve
sufficiently to grapple with the environmental conditions
management bureaucracy. In this instalment, she tells usthat gave rise to it.
part of what she saw. Her closing paragraphs suggest an
Our third contribution, by Elisabeth Grinspoon, is theanalysis converging at one point with that of Daniels, but
first instalment of a two-part article revisiting theexamining the problem in a new and different framework.
Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve and its effect upon the lives
She will take up that analysis in Part II.
of local minority peoples. Grinspoon tells a story very
different from that told by Christian Daniels in the last issue

SUBSCRIPTION REMINDER (for hard-copy subscribers
outside the PRC). Subscriptions for 1996 are now due.
The standard rate has been reduced, and now stands at
US$8.00 plus a voluntary $2.00-donation to help cover thecost of mailing to the PRC. Other details will be found at
the end of the newsletter.

EnglandE-mail: gina.barnes@durham.ac.uk
Fax: 44-191-374-3242
Copy deadlines are mid-January, mid-May, andmid-September.
See also under “Internet addresses” for listserver
discussion group.

Noticeboard

Calls for Papers

Professional Associations

Biennial Meeting of the American Society for the Historyof the Environment, Baltimore, March 5th-9th, 1997
Paper and panel proposals are invited for the above meeting.
Especially encouraged are proposals addressing the role ofgovernment and/or science in environmental affairs,
although proposals on all aspects of human interaction withthe environment over time are welcome. There is special
eagerness for interdisciplinary, comparative, andinternational perspectives. Preference will be given to
proposals for complete panels, although individual paper
proposals will be accepted.
A proposal consists of six copies of each of thefollowing:
1. A cover sheet with the full name and affiliation of eachpanel participant and the session and paper titles;
2. An abstract of up to 100 words setting out the purposeof the session;
3. An abstract of each paper (up to 250 words per paper).
4. A C.V. of up to two pages for each participant,including address and telephone number(s).
Postmark deadline for submission is August 1st 1996.
Proposals should be sent to Jeffrey Stine, from whom further
information may be sought. His address is:
National Museum of American History
MRC 629
Smithsonian Institution
Washington D.C. 20560
U.S.A.
Any CEHN subscriber looking for partners for a panel
proposal is invited to make use of CEHN’s e-maildistribution network after June 14th. The editor will
forward suitably worded announcements including
prospective panel title, the prospective convener’s contact
information (i.e. address, etc.), and a statement (any length
within reason) of the rationale for the proposal.

New Association for the Study of Asian Environmental
History
A new association for the study of Asian environmental
history was founded at the 1996 meeting of the Association
for Asian Studies in Hawaii. Those interested in joining
should contact:
Peter C. Perdue
History Faculty, E51-210
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge MA 02139
U.S.A.
E-mail: pcperdue@MIT.EDU

East Asian Archaeology Network
The East Asian Archaeology Network headquarters have
moved. Enquiries about membership and subscription
rates should be addressed to the Treasurer:
Prof. Sarah M. Nelson
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Denver
2130 South Race Street
Denver CO 80208
U.S.A.
E-mail: snelson@mercury.cair.du.edu
Fax: 1-303-871-2201
There are separate treasurers for China, Japan, andKorea. The address of the China Treasurer is:
Yang Jianjun
Liaoning Provincial Archaeological ResearchInstitute
Liaoning Provincial Museum
Shenyang
Liaoning
China
Informationforthe
network
newsletter,
EAANnouncements, should be sent to the editor (andnetwork President):
Prof. G. L. Barnes
East Asian Studies
University of Durham
Durham DH1 3TH

Conference on Economic Development and Environmental Protection in China and Europe, Aachen,
Autumn 1997
This conference will be convened by the China ResearchGroup, Department of Sociology, Aachen University ofTechnology. The central focus will be on the relationshipbetween economic development and problems connectedwith the destruction of the environment, with their social,economic and political consequences. There will be four2panels:
Panel One. The attitudes of people in China and Europe toenvironmental questions, focussing especially on thequestion of whether awareness of the environment isdeveloping in China, and if so on what basis.
Panel Two. The problems of pollution arising from
China’s present rapid economic growth, focussing
especially on how long the environment will be able tosuffer such pollution, and related questions ofsustainability.
Panel Three. Such problems as the rapid development ofChinese cities and the resulting pressures on water supply
and waste management, the social effects of migration, andthe use of scarce agricultural land for industrial purposes.
Panel Four. The extent of commitment to implementing
existing legislation on environmental protection in China;
the global implications of China’s environmental problems;
the applicability of European experience in learning tograpple with environmental problems; and assessment of
the experience gained through German-Chinese
cooperation on environmental matters and its significancefor future European-Chinese cooperation.
The final session will be a panel discussion involving
scholars, politicians, and representatives of business and of
the European Union. Representatives from Chinese stateorganizations will also be present.
Potential participants, including advanced graduate
students, are invited to submit a one-page paper-proposal
before the end of July 1996. The organizers will selecttwenty-five papers whose authors will receive an allowancefor travel, room and board. Papers may also be offered ona non-attending basis; some of those submitted by
non-attending participants will be chosen for publication.
Papers must be submitted by August 31st, 1997.
For further information and to submit proposals, pleasecontact Manfred F. Romich, Institute of Sociology, China
Research Group, Aachen University of Technology,
Rochusstr. 2-14, D-52056 Aachen, Germany (e-mailmfrch@aol.com or romich@rwth-aachen.de).

Contact:
The Institute of Social Sciences, Siberian Branch
Russian Academy of Sciences
Ulitsa Sakhyanova 6
Ulan-Ude 670042
RussiaTel.: 301-22-372-16 or 330-42
Fax: 301-22-632-44, Box 057
Wetland Archaeology Conference, Copenhagen, September 13th-18th, 1996
Contact: Mogens Schou Jørgensen
RAS
National Museum of Denmark
Frederiksholms Kanal 12
DK-1220 Copenhagen K
Denmark
Fax: 45-33-93-26-71
Economic History Seminar Series, Brisbane, August to
October, 1996
A seminar series on Chinese Business History will be held at
the University of Queensland, with a distinguishedinternational array of guest speakers.
For further
information, contact Lai Chi-Kong, Department of History,
University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia(e-mail: C.Lai@mailbox.uq.oz.au).
Abstract of Paper Presented at East Asian Archaeology
Network Conference, Honolulu, April 8th-9th, 1996
(The papers at this conference were organized into two
sessions, “Centers and Peripheries in East and Southeast
Asia”, and “Archaeology and History in East Asia.” Thepaper summarized here was presented in the first session).
Agriculture on the Periphery and the Southward
Expansion of the Chinese Empire
Magnus Fiskesjö, University of Chicago
How was South China incorporated into China? This
problem is here explored from the perspective of agriculturaltransformations. The paper emphasizes the Chinese state’suse, from Han times on, of agricultural colonies (tuntian)and the promotion of, above all, irrigated rice cultivation to
expand the base of the taxation system that it built whilecolonizing and assimilating the southern peripheries. It issuggested that the traditional distinction between “raw” and“cooked” southern “barbarians” can be understood in termsof such a process, wherein the “raw” (often indigenous
agriculturalists, notably those relying on various forms ofswidden agriculture) are incorporated (“cooked”) into theChinese economy. Drawing on records and historicalstudies that reveal the mechanics of enforced assimilation ofsouthern “Miao” peoples mainly in Qing times, the paper
considers the implications for archaeology regarding boththe late imperial period and the period of autochthonous
state formation in late prehistory and the Bronze Age. The
paper makes suggestions for an archaeology of southern

Fifth Asian Urbanization Conference, London, August
26th-30th, 1997.
For information about submitting paper proposals, contact
Graham Chapman or Ms S. Waring, Department ofGeography, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YB,
England (fax: 01524-847099; e-mail either g.chapman@lancaster.ac.uk or s.waring@lancaster.ac.uk).

Other Conference and Workshop Information
Xiongnu Archaeology Session of the World Archaeology
Congress, Buryatia, August 12th-16th, 1996
Conference themes include not only “History and culture of
the Xiongnu”, but also “Regional patterns of nomadism”,“Ecological problems of nomadism”, and “The nomadic
mode of life — adapting to the natural environment”, etc.
3

agroecosystems, including the transformation of settlement
patterns, animal use, plant remains, and tool complexes, etc.,
as related to the processes of Sinicization and state
formation.

Yunquan, “A Research in the Origin of the Pre-Qin Culturein the Pearl River Delta Area with Reference to its
Economic Pattern” (pp. 57–70); Xiao Yiting, “The Sandbar
Sites in the Estuarine Area of the Pearl River Should Not be
for Seasonal Inhabitation Only” (pp. 111–17); and Zeng Qi,“Prehistoric Culture in the Estuarine Area of the Pearl
River” (pp. 285–94). The several other China-related
papers in the same volume include Pamela Rogers,“Subsistence Continuity in the Prehistory of South Coastal
China”; Xu Zhifan, “A Study of the Pre-Qin Culture in the
Ganjiang-Poyang Basin”; and a further article on sandbarsite archaeology by Xu Hengbin.

Publications(Thanks are due to the editor of EAANnouncements, from
whose “Running Bibliography” section several of the titles
entered here are drawn).
Christian Daniels and Nicholas K. Menzies, Science andCivilisation in China, Vol. 6, Biology and BiologicalTechnology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 750 pp.;
US$150.00. This (physical) volume of Joseph Needham’s
great series comprises first, by Daniels, a history of Chinese
sugar-cane technology; and second, by Menzies, a history offorestry in China, with a concluding comparative historicalanalysis of deforestation in China, Europe, and Japan.

Old Books and Reprints
The following are available from White Lotus Books, G.P.O.
Box 1141, Bangkok 10501, Thailand (fax. 662-311-4575).
Louis de Carné, Travels on the Mekong, Cambodia,
Laos and Yunnan (record of an expedition in the 1860s).
Francis Garnier, Voyage of Exploration in Indochina.
3 vols., published in 1873. Apparently deals with same
expedition as the previous.
E. Lefèvre, Travels in Laos, The Fate of the Sip Song
Pana and Muong Sing (1894-1896).
The following is available from Asian Rare Books, NewYork (tel. 212-316-5334; fax 212-316-3408).
A. M. Le Palud, The Yangtze Gorges in Pictures andProse. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, c. 1934. US$250
plus postage.

Zheng Binglin, “Tang Wudai Dunhuang zhongzhi linye
yanjiu” [A Study of Cultivated Forests in Dunhuang in theTang and Five Dynasties Periods]. Zhongguo shi yanjiu 67(1995, no. 3): 32–38. This article first uses literary sources
to point out that the famous Buddhist cave-shrines andmonasteries of Dunhuang, along with secular structures suchas bridges and sluice-gates, must have consumed a vast
amount of timber. It then asks where this timber could
have come from, given that the Dunhuang area had nonatural forests, that the limitations of available transporttechnology would have made it impractical to bring timberfrom the fairly nearby Qilian Mountains, and that, in any
case, the species used — poplar (yang), elm (yu), andwillow (liu) — were different from those growing in the
Qilian Mountains. The author’s answer is that the timbercame from woods deliberately planted in the Dunhuang area,around the network of irrigation channels.
This idea finds support in monastic accounts. These
include records of the issuing of grain, flour, oil, etc. for the
consumption of persons (including monks) engaged infelling and transporting timber. Many of these records
name the place where timber was being felled on thatoccasion, making it possible to confirm that the wood was oflocal origin. The author claims, also on the basis of entries
in monastic accounts, that most plantations were privately
owned, so that the monasteries had to buy the timber; indeed,tree ownership was a measure of wealth throughout theDunhuang area. However, monasteries also planted theirown woods, serving aesthetic purposes as well as practicalones. Other species grown in private orchards included
mulberry, plum, and apricot.

New Journal
Ethics and the Environment, published by Jai Press, Inc.
According to the editorial introduction, this refereed journal
is “an interdisciplinary forum for theoretical and practical
articles, discussions, reviews, comments, and book reviewsin the broad area encompassed by environmental ethics.”
Submissions should be sent, in duplicate, to the editor,
Victoria Davion, at Department of Philosophy, PeabodyHall, University of Georgia, Athens GA 30602-1627, U.S.A.
The subscription rate for individuals is US$75.00 for two
issues ($90.00 for overseas surface mail). Subscriptions
should be sent to Jai Press, Inc., Subscription Department,
55 Old Post Road, No. 2, P.O. Box 1678, Greenwich CT
06836-1678, U.S.A. In Europe, write to 118 PentonvilleRd., London, England N1 9JN.

Other Items of Interest
Pierre Brocheux, The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy,
and Revolution, 1860-1960. $45.00 (hard) or $19.95(paper). Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of
Wisconsin (4115 Helen C. White Hall, 600 North Park
Street, Madison WI 53706).

C. Yeung and W. Li, eds., Archaeology in Southeast Asia
(Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 1995) contains
three papers which may be of interest to readers of RobertMarks’s contribution to this issue of CEHN. These are: Gu

Chang Chin-ju, “If Taipei Had Been Designed in the Tang
Dynasty: Modern Problems, Ancient Strategies, City
Memories.” Sinorama 20 (1995): 6–28.
4

ewcbooks@ewc.bitnet; fax: 808-944-7376.
Chris Coggins, “Biodiversity and Environmental History:
Research in the Meihuashan Ecosystem of Fujian Province.”
China Exchange News: A Review of Education, Science, andAcademic Relations with the PRC 23, nos. 1–2 (1995):
23–28. Note: this issue of China Exchange News was aspecial number on “Collaboration in Preserving
Biodiversity.”

For progress reports and other materials of the
Sino-American Jiangxi (PRC) Origin of Rice Agriculture
Project (SAJOR), see Richard S. MacNeish and Jane Libby,
eds., Publications in Anthropology 13 (El Paso: Centennial
Museum, University of Texas at El Paso, 1995). The
papers in this volume include one on palynology andpalaeoclimate in the Dayuan basin by Wang Xianzheng,
Jiang Qianhua, and R. S. MacNeish.

Norman R. Eder, Poisoned Prosperity: Development,
Modernization, and the Environment in South Korea.
Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995. 224 pp. US$54.95($21.95 paper).

Kären Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery,
1750-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
358 pp.; US$42.50.

Jiang Zhaocheng, Ming Qing Hang Jia Hu shehui jingji shi
yanjiu [A Study of the Social and Economic History ofHangzhou, Jiaxing, and Huzhou during the Ming and Qing
Dynasties]. Reviewed in Zhongguo shehui jingji shi yanjiu
54 (1995, no. 4), pp. 86–87.

Volume 27.3 (March 1996) of the journal World
Archaeology, published by Routledge (Britain), is dedicatedto “Hunter-Gatherer Landuse” (ed. P. Rowley-Conwy).
For credit-card purchase, telephone 01264-342713(44-1264-342713 from overseas). Fax number is 01264342807.

William Johnston, The Modern Epidemic: A History ofTuberculosis in Japan.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University, Council on East Asian Studies, 1996. 432 pp.;
US$45.00. Distributed by Harvard University Press.

Yin Hongfu, ed., The Paleobiogeography of China.
Oxford Biogeography Series, no. 8. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994.

R. Kojima et al., eds., Development and the Environment:
The Experiences of Japan and Industrializing Asia.
$100.00. Tokyo: Maruzen, 1995. For information aboutordering, e-mail maruzen@aol.com.

Ka-che Yip, Health and National Reconstruction in
Nationalist China: The Development of Modern HealthServices, 1928–1937. 304 pp., US$34.00 plus postage.
No. 50 in the Association for Asian Studies (U.S.A.)
monograph series. Price for AAS members is $27.00.

James Lee and Cameron Campbell, Fate and Fortune in
Rural China: Social Stratification and Population Behavior
in Liaoning, 1774–1873. Cambridge Studies in Population,
Economy and Society in Past Time.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, forthcoming (autumn 1996).

Zheng Xiangmin, “New Summary Paper on the
Paleoenvironment of the Southern Yangtze Delta for theLast 20,000 Years.” The Quaternary Research 33 (1994):
379–84.

Todd T. Lewis and Theodore Riccardi, The Himalayas: A
Syllabus of the Region’s History, Anthropology, andReligion (teaching resource). US$25.00. Available fromthe Association for Asian Studies (U.S.A.), whose members
are eligible for a $5.00 discount.

Fellowships
The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the
University of Edinburgh has visiting research fellowships
available for periods of two to six months during 1997-99.
Although there are no restrictions on the area of research(within the Humanities), environmental ethics is one of threeareas in which applications are especially welcome. The
fellowships are essentially honorary, but do carry certain
privileges such as free medical care. The application
deadline is December 1st 1996. For information about theapplication procedure, write to The Institute for Advanced
Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, Hope
Park Square, Edinburgh EH8 9NW, Scotland. Fax:
0131-668-2252; e-mail: IASH@ed.ac.uk.

Sarah M. Nelson, ed., The Archaeology of Northeast China
Beyond the Great Wall. Text by Chinese archaeologists.
A recent publication by Routledge (Britain). 288 pp.
£40.00 plus postage if applicable. For credit card purchase,
telephone 01264-342923 (44-1264-342923 from overseas).
The book may also be ordered from Ms. Pam Hounsome,Routledge, Andover, Hants SP10 5BR, England.
A. Terry Rambo, Robert R. Reed, Le Trong Cuc, andMichael R. DiGregorio, eds., The Challenges of Highland
Development in Vietnam. Honolulu: East-West Center,1995.
240 pp.
$15.00.
May be ordered from
Publications Sales Office, East-West Center, 1777
East-West Road, Honolulu HI 96848, U.S.A. E-mail:5and Yuan periods, that is, from the twelfth to the fourteenth
century (Fan 1986: 162–63; Wu 1936: 47); and theseventeenth-century Ming-Qing transition, c. 1636–44(Dunstan 1975: 17–28; Fan 1986: 242–43; Lee T’ao 1958:
189–90).
Although historians have searched for plague in
China’s past, identification of the disease based on Chinesesources alone is very difficult. Classical Chinese medical
concepts of disease etiology and pathology are so different
from those of modern biomedicine that it is hard to identify
any particular disease in the Chinese record using
biomedical terminology. If, however, such information is
combined with what is known about plague ecology incontemporary China, a retrospective identification can bemade with much greater certainty.
In this article, I combine an ecological approach withhistorical analysis in order to describe two plague epidemics
that occurred along the Qing frontiers in the late eighteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Such an approach, which
examines both the social and the biological factors involvedin the spread of the disease, allows the historian to surmountsome of the evidentiary difficulties presented by Chinesesources relating to the history of disease generally, and ofplague in particular.

Internet Addresses(Note. Final full stops are not part of the addresses.)
East Asian Archaeology Network listserver discussion
group on early East Asian archaeology and history. To
subscribe, please send the following message to
LSTSRV@CCAT.SAS.UPENN.EDU:
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Japanese Historical Weather Database, 1700–1890. M.
Yoshimura (Yamanashi University) et al. have compiled asubstantial database of climatic records extracted from
Tokugawa and early Meiji diaries. Some of their findings
have been stored in the NGDC/World Data Center—A
Paleoenvironmental Data Sets, the Internet address forwhich is http://www.ngdc noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html. To
find the data, click on “IGBP PAGES”; then “PAGES Data
Archive at WDCA”; then “historical”; then “japan.” After
that, click first on “japanindices.readme” for legend for theother files.

Evidentiary Problems in the Historical Identification of
PlagueIn contemporary biomedical usage, “plague” refers to a
specific disease which is caused by the bacillus Yersinia
pestis (Pollitzer and Meyer 1961: 433–501). Plague is an
enzootic disease that primarily affects rodents and otheranimals and only incidentally affects human beings. Bothanimals and humans contract the infection from the bites of
insects, usually rat fleas.
The disease is directly
communicable only if plague bacilli enter the lungs, causing
the victim to develop secondary pneumonia and cough up
blood or respiratory droplets containing Yersinia pestis.
This rare form of the disease, pneumonic plague, is highly
contagious and invariably fatal within one or two days if nottreated. In the more common bubonic form, bacilli attack
the lymphatic system, and highly visible “buboes” form in
the groin, armpits, or neck two or three days after infection.
Other symptoms include high fever, shivering, vomiting,headaches, giddiness, and delirium.
Treatment with
antibiotics in the early stages is now quite effective, but
untreated bubonic plague kills between 60 and 90 percent of
those infected within five days.
Disease historians rely upon two distinctive features ofthe bubonic form of plague — rat epizootics and buboes —to identify Yersinia pestis infections in the historical record.
The fact that human beings generally contract the disease
from the fleas of rodents means that descriptions of rat
epizootics in primary sources may signal an outbreak ofplague. The buboes that give the bubonic form its nameare unusual, and mention of such symptoms in written
records indicates that the disease may have been present.

Epidemiology and History: An
Ecological Approach to the History of
Plague in Qing China
Carol Benedict
Georgetown University[Note: Portions of this essay are adapted from Dr.
Benedict’s forthcoming book, Bubonic Plague in
Nineteenth-Century China, to be published by Stanford
University Press during 1996].
Plague, the disease reputed to have caused the Black Deathin fourteenth-century Europe, has long been the subject ofhistorical inquiry.1 While most studies have focused on thehistory of plague in Europe, a number of historians haveexamined epidemics of plague that have occurred in the
non-Western world (Arnold 1993; Dols 1977). Nor havehistorians of China overlooked this important topic. Indeed,
plague has been named as the cause of widespread
epidemics in at least three distinct epochs: the end of the Sui
and the first two centuries of the Tang dynasty, c. 600–800
A.D. (Twitchett 1979: 42, 52; Wu 1936: 11); the late Song6

While suggestive of plague, reports of such phenomena
cannot constitute a definitive retrospective diagnosis,
because the only sure way to determine whether plague is(or was) present in the human body is to conduct laboratory
tests (Cunningham 1992: 209–44).
Obviously, such rigid scientific criteria make it
extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to label any past
epidemic “plague.”2 This is true even in European history,
where there is some degree of linguistic continuity in the useof the term. The post-facto identification of plague using
Chinese sources is even more problematic. Plague, as a
distinct disease, did not exist in the Chinese medical lexicon
until the late nineteenth century, when the contemporary
name shuyi (literally “rat epidemic”) came into use.3
Instead, plague, along with other infectious diseases
manifested in epidemics, was folded into the broad categoryof yi. Yi tends to refer to any illness that came on suddenly
and affected a great number of people in a discrete
geographical area, and is generally translated as “epidemic.”
Serious methodological issues thus face any historian
who attempts to find “plague” in Chinese historical records.
These difficulties must be kept in mind when reading theexisting literature on the history of plague in pre-modern
China. Many historians link the widespread Chinese
epidemics in the Song-Yuan period to the fourteenth-century“Black Death” in Europe, arguing that the Black Deathoriginated in China (Wu 1936: 47; Ziegler 1969: 15).
William McNeill (1976: 143–46) argues that an epidemic ofbubonic plague which occurred in present-day Hebei
Province in 1331 was the likely source of plague in Europe.
Robert Gottfried is also persuaded that the Black Deathcame from China. He writes: “The first unimpeachablereferences appear in 1353, when chroniclers claim that
two-thirds of China’s population had died since 1331.
Whatever the precise dates and circumstances, by the
mid-fourteenth century, the Black Death had struck
China. . . .” (1983: 35).
As John Norris (1977: 3–6) points out, the assumptionthat the Black Death originated in China rests upon a few
European chronicles and the sketchy records of epidemics
found in the eighteenth-century Chinese imperial
encyclopedia, the Gujin tushu jicheng [Complete collectionof writings and illustrations, past and present]. A handfulof nearly contemporaneous European sources all refervaguely to disasters in “the East” that preceded the outbreakof plague in Europe. Sources included in the Gujin tushu
jicheng record a number of unspecified “epidemics” (yi)throughout the fourteenth century, yet there is nothing inthese accounts to suggest that these epidemics were linked to
the European Black Death.
Similarly, there is little evidence that plague was thecause of the many epidemics that accompanied theseventeenth-century Ming-Qing transition. Nonetheless,
Fan Xingzhun (1986: 242–43) and another Chinese medical
historian, Lee T’ao (1958: 189–90), argue that plague was
responsible for the many epidemics that occurred in

Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hubei, and Hunan in the1640s. They cite gazetteer accounts and medical texts thatthey believe describe the characteristic symptoms of bubonic
plague (spitting up of blood and enlarged lymphatic glands).
Fan mentions that the official Mingshi (standard history of
the Ming Dynasty) and the gazetteer of Dantu County in
Jiangsu describe “packs of rats” that crossed rivers in large
numbers prior to the outbreak of disease. He speculates
that these reports refer to the widespread death of rats
preceding an epidemic of plague.
In her pioneering study on the Ming-Qing epidemics,
Helen Dunstan (1975: 17–28) has carefully reviewed theavailable evidence regarding the seventeenth-century
epidemics. Like Lee and Fan, Dunstan found gazetteer
accounts of plague-like symptoms and also of the migrationof rats prior to epidemics. Yet she is far more skeptical
about whether these impressionistic descriptions ofsymptoms and rats refer to plague, concluding that while
plague may have been the causative organism, it is far more
likely that the epidemics were caused by a different disease(possibly typhoid) or a mixture of diseases (especiallytyphus and amoebic dysentery).
Dunstan stands out, among those who have studied thehistory of plague in China, for her effort to understand thecomplex epidemiology of the disease. Unfortunately,
information about plague ecology in China was unavailable
in 1975, and Dunstan was thus forced to rely on studies ofplague in Europe. This led her to assume, for example, that
plague can only occur in the summer (because this is when it
tended to occur in Europe), and she thus dismissed the manyrecords of epidemics that occurred in other seasons.
Similarly, she seems to have assumed that plague normallyoccurs only in the presence of rat vectors, especially theblack rats (Rattus rattus) of Europe. In fact, contemporary
epidemiological studies indicate that plague can and does
exist in many areas of China, that it appears in all four
seasons, and that it has many different animal vectors,
including, but not restricted to, the brown and black rats ofEuropean fame.
Plague Along the Qing Frontier
Plague currently persists among wild mammals living
in nine well-defined geographical areas of the People’s
Republic of China.
Designated as “natural plaguereservoirs,” these wilderness areas exist in seventeen of
China’s twenty-six provinces and autonomous regions,affect 194 counties, and altogether cover an area of about
500,000 square kilometers (Ji 1988: 64–66, 475). There
are more than fifty known plague-carrying mammals livingin these nine areas, some forty different insect vectors, andseventeen unique strains of Yersinia pestis (Ji: 479–80).
Only two of China’s natural plague reservoirs have
posed a significant risk to human life in the past two
centuries: the Manchurian Plain in northern China and theWestern Yunnan Transverse Valley in the southwest. In
contrast to the other seven reservoirs, all of which are still in7isolated areas, these are located in regions that experienced
significant frontier expansion over the course of the Qing
period. It is not coincidental that plague erupted in China
during a period of unprecedented population growth andeconomic expansion along the southern and northernborders. Indeed, it was precisely the incursion by settlers andtraders into areas that supported wild animal plague,
combined with new transport linkages between peripheries
and regional cores, that resulted in the spread of plague inboth northern and southern China in the late eighteenth andearly twentieth centuries.
The most famous plague epidemic in China occurredon the Manchurian Plain during 1910-11 (Nathan 1967; Wu
1936). The Manchurian pneumonic plague epidemic’s
origins lay in areas of Mongolia and Siberia where theSiberian marmot or tarbagan (Marmota sibirica) sustains anatural plague reservoir. Between 1907 and 1910, thevalue of marmot skins increased threefold becauseinternational furriers learned that marmot fur makes
excellent imitation sable (Wu 1936: 31). By 1910,
long-standing Qing bans on migration to Manchuria were nolonger in effect, and thousands of Chinese trappers moved
into the area, hoping to make their fortunes by selling theskins on the world fur market. Unlike Mongol trappers
who avoided sick animals, the new arrivals trapped any
animal they could find. Living together in crowded
railway hostels, often with the pelts stacked close by, these
neophytes unwittingly placed themselves at great risk.
On October 13, 1910, a migrant trapper in Manzhoulideveloped pneumonic plague. Unlike the bubonic form,
which relies on rodents and flea vectors for its transmission
to humans, the pneumonic form can be passed directly fromone person to another by coughing or sneezing. The
disease spread rapidly through the packed hostels andquickly killed some 600 men. Panicked trappers fled
southward, carrying the disease along the newly developed
Manchurian railway system to Harbin on October 27,
Changchun on December 31, and Fengtian (Shenyang) on
January 2, 1911. Ultimately, some 60,000 persons losttheir lives in this epidemic.
The primary cause of the 1910–11 pneumonic plague
epidemic was thus a complex mix of social and biologicalfactors. Until the early twentieth century, isolated pockets
of enzootic plague in Mongolia and Siberia remained largely
undisturbed. Railroad construction, the market demands ofthe international fur trade, and the loosening of controls overHan immigration to Manchuria stimulated the large-scale
movement of fur trappers into these wilderness areas.
After pneumonic plague broke out among migrants, thenewly-constructed Manchurian railway system allowed for
rapid plague diffusion throughout the entire northeast.
Once it arrived in the northeast, a new enzootic focus
formed on the Manchurian Plain because the disease iseasily transferred (via fleas) between the Daurian groundsquirrel (Citellus dauricus) and the brown rat (Rattus
norvegicus), the most common commensal rodent innorthern China (Ji 1988: 64–66, 475). Human contact witheither of these plague carriers poses the risk of humandisease. This particular ecology of enzootic plague innortheastern China is the reason human plague has occurred
frequently in Manchuria since at least the early twentiethcentury (Wu 1926, 1936).
In southwestern China, plague also appeared in humancommunities only after an expanding eighteenth-century
population intruded into the natural habitats ofplague-carrying animals. Between 1772 and 1830, Yunnan
province experienced a devastating series of epidemics
which began in the western part of the province and spread
slowly eastward. In historical records of these epidemics,
there are suggestive descriptions of rat epizootics andbuboes, the two distinctive features of the bubonic form ofplague. For example, an 1814 memorial by the Yunnan
provincial education commissioner Gu Chun describes thecharacteristic symptoms of the bubonic form of plague:
spitting up of blood, and buboes on the bodies of thevictims.4 Such specificity about symptoms is highly
unusual in a Qing official report, and suggests that Gu foundthe symptoms particularly noteworthy. He underscores theeastward progression of the disease, mentioning that the areaaround Lin’an (in southeast Yunnan) was not affected until
1810 or so, but that other parts of the province had been
experiencing the same disease, yangzi bing, for more thanten years. He mentions that doctors in the Lin’an area did
not recognize the disease: this is significant because it
suggests that plague was new to Lin’an. Finally, hedescribes a great number of deaths during the epidemic andsays that there was no known medicine for treating thoseafflicted.
When this and other historical evidence is combinedwith what is known about plague ecology in contemporary
Yunnan, little doubt remains as to whether plague waspresent in Yunnan in the late eighteenth century. Lijiang
Prefecture, situated in the Hengduan Mountains in the far
northwest of Yunnan, was the point of origin of theeighteenth-century Yunnan epidemics, and is now a known
reservoir of wild animal plague. The “Western Yunnan
Transverse Valley Plague Reservoir” covers some 230
square miles in the Hengduan Mountains, including Lijiang(Zhao 1982: 257–66; Zhao and Yang 1983: 108–9). Two
plague-resistant species of wild animals in this mountainous
region, the Oriental vole (Eothenomys miletus) and a kind offield mouse (Apodemus chevrieri) maintain ongoingenzootic infections. The area is also inhabited by theyellow-chested rat (Rattus flavipectus), a semi-wild rodent
that is highly susceptible to the particular strain of plaguepresent among the Eothenomys miletus and the Apodemus
chevrieri species. The yellow-chested rat is classified assemi-wild because it prefers to live in the upper storeys orroofs of houses, but it also lives in vegetable gardens, fields,or the bush. During the harvest season it lives outside andeats ripe grain; most of the rest of the year it is found in
human shelters.
8

The semi-wild nature of the yellow-chested rat helps to
explain the mode of transmission of plague in western
Yunnan. Plague is continually passed (via fleas) from wild
animals to this rat, which then carries the disease back tohuman settlements near the wilderness area. People livingin the Lijiang region are thus constantly in danger of coming
into contact with plague-carrying rats.
Until the Qing period, the natural habitats of the
Oriental vole, the Apodemus chevrieri field mouse, and theyellow-chested rat remained largely undisturbed. Lijiang
was a peripheral area in an undeveloped and relatively
unpopulated province. However, during the eighteenth
century, the Qing state sponsored massive Han immigration
into the province to upgrade and expand the southwestern
copper industry (J. Lee 1982: 299; J. Lee 1993). As aresult, Yunnan entered a demographic and economic boom
that continued into the first decades of the nineteenth
century. As Yunnan was transformed from an economic
backwater into a dynamic regional economy, it experienced
explosive population growth, rapid urban development, andexpanded intraregional and interregional trade (ibid.).
During this century of growth, Lijiang came to be an
important entrepôt for the Yunnan-Tibetan tea trade (R. Lee
1979: 50). As more and more traders passed through the
Lijiang region, they inadvertently traversed an area where
plague was enzootic, coming into contact withplague-infected rodents and their fleas. Settlers in the area
were also at risk of contracting plague. Indeed, deadly
outbreaks of the disease are recorded in Lijiang and thesurrounding areas from 1772 until about 1825 (Benedict
1996: 19). In Dengchuan Department, on the northern tipof Erhai Lake, more than “ten thousand” people supposedly
died in a 1787 epidemic (1901 Xu Yunnan tongzhi gao,
2:21a). In c. 1800, the village of Yangtangli in Dengchuan
Department experienced an epidemic so devastating that it
had not recovered fifty years later. Reportedly, “nine outof ten” houses were left empty by the disease (1853
Dengchuan zhouzhi, 3:11b).
As the remote areas of western Yunnan wereincreasingly linked to other parts of the province, plague
spread gradually from western to central and southeastern
Yunnan. Some thirty years after the initial appearance of
epidemics in the west, Kunming and its surrounding area
suffered a series of epidemics between 1803 and 1830
(Benedict 1996: 20). The 1810 Lin’an outbreak mentioned
above was the first of several reported for that region until
1827 (ibid.). Thus, between 1810 and 1830, plague waspresent in many settlements located along Yunnan’s majorcaravan trade routes.

in the early twentieth century and Yunnan in the lateeighteenth, it was the combination of human agency(development of the frontier, population growth, andchanges in transportation networks) and the interaction ofhumans with the natural environment (intrusions into thehabitats of rodents capable of carrying and transmitting
plague) that made possible the spread of plague. Outbreaksof plague were the undesirable side-effect of humanencroachments into frontier regions where plague wasenzootic, followed by the linkage of these remote regionswith more densely populated core areas. Given thecomplex ecology of Yersinia pestis infections and thesubstantial evidentiary problems presented by Chinesesources, historians must study not only the historical record,
but also the ecology of particular regions where past plague
outbreaks are suspected. Only such an ecological approach
can shed light on the etiology of a particular epidemic in the
past.

NOTES
1. See Ann Carmichael (1986: 172–75) for an excellent
bibliographical essay on the Black Death and the history ofplague in Europe.
2. These issues present themselves not only to diseasehistorians but also to epidemiologists working in the present.
The nature of the epidemic that broke out in India in the fallof 1994, widely reported to be pneumonic plague, remained
controversial even two months after the epidemic ended.
Some scientists disputed that the disease was in fact plague
because the plague bacillus had not yet been isolated in thelaboratory. Others argued that it must be plague because
the classic symptoms and pathology of the pneumonic formof plague were evident in those afflicted (New York Times,
15 November 1994: C3).
3. By the end of the nineteenth century, shuyi was being
used by Chinese physicians to describe the disease identified
by Western medicine as plague. See, for example, the1891 treatise Zhi shuyi fa [Methods for curing plague](Zheng 1936 [1901]: preface).
Some latenineteenth-century gazetteer compilers used the term shuyi
as well. See, e.g., 1899 [1876] Shanglin xianzhi, 1:10a.
4. For Gu’s memorial, see First Historical Archives(Beijing), Zhupi zouzhe, Wenjiao, Yiyao weisheng(Rescripted Palace Memorials, Culture and Education,
Medicine and Health), Group 4, Document 207/23 (Jiaqing
19/9/6).

Conclusion
When analyzing past epidemics of plague, it isnecessary to describe the dynamic relationship between
biological and social factors that were responsible for theappearance and spread of the disease. In both Manchuria
9(Festschrift für Herbert Franke) (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner
Verlag), pp. 35–68.
Wu Lien-teh. 1926. A Treatise on Pneumonic Plague.
Geneva: League of Nations.
———. 1936. Plague: A Manual for Medical andPublic Health Workers. Shanghai: National Quarantine
Service.
Xu Yunnan tongzhi gao [Revised comprehensive gazetteer
of Yunnan]. 1901.
Ziegler, Philip. 1969. The Black Death. London: Collins.
Zhao Yongling. 1982. “Jiashu shuyi” [Plague in commensal
rats]. Yunnan yiyao [Yunnan Medicine] 5: 257–66.
Zhao Yongling and Yang Xiaodong. 1983. “Yunnan
shuyi ziran yiyuandi fenbu de tantao” [An inquiry into the
distribution of the natural plague foci in Yunnan].
Yunnan yiyao [Yunnan medicine] 2: 108–9, 113.
Zheng Xiaoyan. 1936 [1901]. “Shuyi yuebian” [A brief
treatise on plague]. In Qiu Jisheng, ed., Zhenben yishu
jicheng [Collection of precious medical writings], Vol. 7.
Shanghai: Shijie shuju.

WORKS CITED
Arnold, David.
1993.
Colonizing the Body: State
Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century
India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Benedict, Carol. 1996. Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Carmichael, Ann. 1986. Plague and the Poor in
Renaissance Florence.
Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Cunningham, Andrew. 1992. “Transforming Plague:
The Laboratory and the Identity of Infectious Disease.”
In Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams, eds., The
Laboratory Revolution in Medicine (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press), pp. 209–44.
Dengchuan zhouzhi [Gazetteer of Dengchuan Department].
1853.
Dols, Michael W. 1977. The Black Death in the Middle
East. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dunstan, Helen. 1975. “The Late Ming Epidemics: A
Preliminary Survey.” Ch’ing-shih Wen-t’i 3, no. 3: 1–59.
Fan Xingzhun. 1986. Zhongguo yixue shilüe (A Brief
History of Chinese Medicine). Beijing: Zhongyi gujichubanshe.
Gottfried, Robert S. 1983. The Black Death. New York:Free Press.
Ji Shuli. 1988. Shuyi [Plague]. Beijing: Renmin
weisheng chubanshe.
Lee, James. 1982. “The Legacy of Immigration inSouthwest China, 1250–1850.” Annales de demographie
historique 1: 279–304.
———. 1993. “State and Economy in Southwest China,
1250–1850.” Unpublished manuscript.
Lee, Robert. 1979. “Frontier Politics in the Southwestern
Sino-Tibetan Borderlands During the Ch’ing Dynasty.”
In Joshua Fogel and William Rowe, eds., Perspectives on a
Changing China (Boulder: Westview Press), pp. 35–68.
Lee, T’ao. 1958. “Chinese Medicine During the Ming
Dynasty.”
Chinese Medical Journal 76: 178–98,
285–304.
McNeill, William. 1976. Plagues and Peoples. Garden
City: Anchor Press, Doubleday.
Nathan, Carl. 1967. Plague Prevention and Politics inManchuria, 1910–1931. Cambridge, Mass.: East Asian
Research Center, Harvard University.
Norris, John. 1977. “East or West? The Geographic
Origin of the Black Death.” Bulletin of the History ofMedicine 51, no. 1: 1–24.
Pollitzer, R., and Karl Meyer. 1961. “The Ecology of
Plague.” In Jacques May, ed., Studies in Disease Ecology(New York: Hafner), pp. 433–501.
Shanglin xianzhi [Gazetteer of Shanglin County]. 1899
[1876].
Twitchett, Denis. 1979. “Population and Pestilence in T’ang
China.” In Wolfgang Bauer, ed., Studia Sino-Mongolica

The Making of the Pearl River Delta
Robert B. Marks
Whittier College
The Pearl River Delta in Guangdong has long been known as
one of the most agriculturally productive and economicallydeveloped parts of China, ranking second only to the Yangzi
Delta in economic importance.1 When I first began thinking
about the historical processes by which the Pearl River Delta
became so central to the development of South China, I had
imagined first the natural processes by which the delta had
been created, and then the slow but sure reclamation of thedelta for agriculture. But I discovered that the story of thedelta is much more complex than that.
For the first millennium after Chinese people moved
into Lingnan (generally understood as Guangdong andGuangxi provinces) following the Qin conquest of thissouthern region (c. minus 220), what we now call the Pearl
River Delta was still open sea, albeit a fairly shallow bay, andresidents of Guangzhou, then called Nanhai (“the south sea”)
looked out onto a bay dotted with islands.2 To be sure, silt
carried downstream by the West, North, and East Rivers had
been settling in the bay, slowly creating the upper part of thedelta. But because the silt content of these rivers was
exceptionally low, the natural processes by which the delta
was being created worked extremely slowly. During the
centuries from the Han (minus 202 to plus 220) to the Tang
(618–907), the part of the Pearl River estuary that was later tobecome the delta barely changed, remaining mostly water.
By the Song dynasty (960–1279), however, enough of adelta had emerged south of Guangzhou to block the view of10the ocean, and by the Yuan (1271–1368) alluvial sand bars
had appeared off the coast in Dongguan County where theEast River emptied into the bay. Certainly, though, thelargest increases in the size of the delta occurred from theYuan on. Where virtually no change had occurred in thenine centuries after the founding of the Han, in the 300 years
from 1290 to 1582 so much land had been created that what
had been the island of Xiangshan became connected to themainland. Both the change in the shape of the delta overtime, and the rate of the change itself, are interesting andsignificant: what accounts for both?
In the title to this piece, I refer to the “making” of thedelta. I chose the word “making” specifically to refer to theaction of human beings, for more than anything else, people
made the Pearl River Delta. Involved in this story are, inchronological order, the early settlement patterns andagricultural technology of Chinese in-migrants in northern
Guangdong; the building of water control projects in thelower reaches of the West, North, and East Rivers from theSong on; the Mongol invasion of South China in the 1270s,
and consequent displacement of the Chinese population from
northern Guangdong to islands in the Pearl River estuary; andthe creation of new lands in the Pearl River estuary by the
refugees.

gushing through the system, filling the flood plains withsilt-laden water. When the flood waters receded, the silt
was left behind. Clearly, the flood plains of the lower
reaches of these rivers, especially the area near the
confluence of the West and North Rivers, thereby acquired
fertile soils with great agricultural potential. But they had
two related problems: flooding and malaria. Before theupper reaches of the future Pearl River Delta could become
the densely populated, agriculturally rich center of the
Lingnan regional economy, the Chinese would have either tochange the swampy environment of the flood plains of theWest, North, and East Rivers, or else to adapt to thatenvironment, for the South China lowlands were nothospitable to northern Chinese people.
2. The role of malaria in slowing southward migration.
To Chinese from the north, all of Lingnan looked diseased.
In the words of the Tang-era observer Liu Xun, as translatedby Edward Schafer, “The mountains and rivers of Lingbiao[Lingnan] are twisted and jungly; the vapors concentrate andare not easily dispersed or diffused. Therefore there is much
mist and fog to cause pestilence.”5 Some areas were
thought to be particularly virulent, such as around Qingyuan
up the North River from Guangzhou. As Gu Yanwu put it,
referring to his reading of Song-era conditions “The country[in Lingnan] was wild and untamed. The climate (qi) was
barely tolerable, dripping with more than a little malaria.
The local people were not known to contract the disease, butpeople from the central plains were in danger as soon as they
arrived. After a few days they began to suffer from fevers
or chills.”6
But it was also apparent to Chinese observers thatmalaria was not found in all areas of Lingnan. Toward theend of the twelfth century, for instance, Zhou Qufei could
write: “Not all deep[ly forested] and wild (shen guang)places in Lingnan are necessarily malarious. For example,
Qiongzhou on Hainan [Island] and, on the north side of thesea [i.e. on the mainland across from Hainan], Lianzhou bWo
aQj, Leizhou, and Huazhou are described as shen guang, butthere is little malaria.” However, certain shen guang places
in present-day Guangxi — Hengzhou, Yulin, Qinzhou, andGuiping — were all infested.7 The area around Guilin
seems to have been free of malaria: according to Fan
Chengda (1120–93), “everywhere south of there is the homeof malaria.”8 Northern Guangdong, in particular Nanxiong,
Lianzhou a2r aQj, and Shaozhou prefectures, also wasmalaria-free. Local ecological factors, such as elevation,
played the critical role in accounting for the presence ofmalaria in one area and its absence in another, even if wecannot now be sure exactly what those ecological differenceswere.9The Chinese in-migrants to Lingnan understood neither
the causes of malaria, nor the environmental link to themosquito, but they did have enough knowledge of where thedisease was and was not to guide decisions about where tosettle and where to remain. Most came to Lingnan via either

Early Settlement Patterns and Agricultural Technology
1. Slash-and-burn agriculture and its impact in dislodging
silt. Slash-and-burn, the earliest and most rudimentary formof agriculture, was practiced in Lingnan until the techniquesof wet rice agriculture spread there in the eleventh century.
When Chinese migrated into Lingnan first in Han times, andlater in greater numbers in the fourth century, they settled in
the northern upland areas around Nanxiong and Guilin, rather
than in the river valleys further south (the reasons for this will
be discussed below). Burning off tracts of land, settlers
broadcast millet, barley and wheat (and maybe rice) seeds
onto the ash, and then harvested a crop for two or three years
until the fertility of the soil was depleted. Abandoning theburned-off ground, the settlers then moved on, and a new
tract was burned, the process starting over again.3
How much of the original forest the settlers burned off
is not at all clear, nor is it clear whether the forest was given
sufficient time to recover its composition of broadleaf
evergreens before being burned off again, or whether the
scrubby Mason’s pine (pinus massoniana) took the place ofthe broadleafs. What does seem quite certain, though, isthat the slash-and-burn agriculture practiced in the upper
reaches of the drainage system opened the hills to greater
erosion, and hence to a higher silt content flowing
downstream in the West, North, and East Rivers.4
Until the eleventh century, much of this silt did notreach the Pearl River Delta, but rather was deposited in theflood plains in the lower reaches of the West, North, and East
rivers. Much like the end of a garden hose under highpressure, the lower courses of these rivers flopped aroundfrom one outlet to another when monsoonal rains sent water
11

the Meiling Pass or the Lingqu Canal, and then settled innorthern Guangdong and Guangxi. This was in part
because those were the first regions “south of the mountains”
they encountered, and in part because those regions were freeof malaria. Once settled, they tended to remain, and theprimary reason given was fear of malaria in other parts ofLingnan. According to the genealogies of several lineages
that trace their roots to Nanxiong, during Song times fear ofmalaria kept them from migrating elsewhere in Lingnan,even in the face of mounting population pressure in northern
Guangdong.10 In the south part of Lingnan, significant Han
population densities were found not in the Guangzhou region,
but along the largely malaria-free southwestern littoral,
including the Leizhou Peninsula and the areas to its east andwest.
Malaria by itself might have proved sufficient to keep
Chinese settlers out of the lower reaches of the West, North,and East Rivers, but the fact was that these areas were
swampy and difficult to farm whether or not they weremalaria-infested. It is not that the region was unpopulated,for non-Chinese Tai peoples had inhabited it for millennia,
and had probably acquired immunity to malaria.11 Also, ofcourse, there was the Chinese city of Guangzhou, which,being set upon a hill overlooking the Pearl River estuary, wasprobably free of malaria, as may have been the area just northof the city walls. But Chinese settlement of the nearby
malarial valleys required levees to control flooding and drain
swamps, opening the flood plains to Chinese-style settled
agriculture.
Human beings were about to alter theenvironment to make it more hospitable to them, and most
likely inhospitable to the anopheles mosquito too; ecologicalchange cut both ways.

from Zhaoqing prevented the West River from following thesouthern of two branches to the confluence with the North
River, restricting the flow to the northern branch.12 The
levee not only opened a flood plain to agriculture, but also
sent all the silt-laden flood waters further downstream,
thereby increasing the pressure and flooding around Sanshui.
Controlling the flooding at the confluence of the West andNorth Rivers thus was among the first large-scale water
control projects to be tackled in Lingnan.
In c. 1100, work commenced on what came to be called
the Sang Yuan Wei (“mulberry garden enclosure”) dikealong the West River, forty kilometers southwest of
Guangzhou. When it was completed, it protected some
6,500 qing (about 100,000 acres) of land from flooding, andinaugurated a new era of agricultural development in that partof Lingnan.13 About the same time that the Sang Yuan Wei
was being built, sea walls along the coast in Leizhou
Prefecture and in western Dongguan County were also underconstruction. In Leizhou, nearly 25,000 zhang (about 48
miles) of sea wall were constructed during the Shaoxing era(1131–62), creating some 10,000 qing (about 160,000 acres)of arable land by providing protection from periodic
inundation by tides and typhoons, and no doubt eliminating
the mangrove forests there as well.14 In Dongguan, the12,806 zhang (about 24 miles) Xianchao (Salt-Tide) dike wasbuilt in 1089, making 21,028 qing (about 300,000 acres) ofland arable.15
According to statistics compiled by Ye Xian’en and Tan
Dihua, in Song times 28 earthenwork dikes or embankments
were built in the lower reaches of the West, North, and East
Rivers, totalling 66,024 zhang (about 125 miles) in length,
and protecting 24,322 qing of land (nearly 400,000 acres).
During the Yuan an additional 34 embankments were built,
adding 50,526 zhang (about 96 miles) to the length and 2,320
qing of land.16 In other words, the embankments extended
for about 200 miles (or about 100 miles of river if the dikes
were on both sides of a channel), and protected about 20
percent of the cultivated land in Yuan-era Guangdong.
These flood control levees had the effect of pinningeach river diked into a single course, so that rather thanmeandering and spilling into numerous courses during themonsoon season, rivers ran straight for the bay. The flood
plains, of course, were then opened for agricultural
production. But these waterworks begun in the Song hadother environmental consequences as well. Draining theswampy backwaters that had remained after the flood waters
receded altered the ecological conditions that had favored themalaria-carrying anopheles mosquito, rendering the areas so
opened less deadly to Chinese originally from the north.
Equally importantly, though, the flood control works
channeled the silt away from the former flood plains anddirected it further downstream to the headwaters of the Pearl
River estuary. As a consequence both of the slash-and-burn
agriculture in the hills and of the water control works, theamount of silt pouring into the Pearl River thus increased
significantly from the eleventh century on. The changes to

How Song Flood Control Projects Prepared the Way for
Settlement in the Yuan
Lingnan experienced two kinds of water control
problem: too much water resulting in flooding andwaterlogging, and too little or irregular supplies of water
during the growing season; the summer monsoon rainfall
pattern and the Lingnan drainage system accentuated both.
When the monsoons brought rain to Lingnan, most fell in thefour summer months, swelling the rivers. From the west, all
the rain gathered into the catchment basin that emptied into
the West River, and then spilled from Wuzhou down into
Guangdong. From the north, all the rain gathered into theNorth River. The West and the North Rivers joined at
Sanshui (“Three Rivers”), some twenty kilometers west of
Guangzhou, forming the headwaters of the Pearl River Delta.
From the east, the rain drained into the East River basin,pouring into the Pearl River to the east of Guangzhou.
The normal rainfall patterns thus poured huge amountsof water into the system in a very short period. Naturally,
the flood plain from Zhaoqing (on the West River) down toSanshui flooded every year, depositing ever greater amountsof silt eroded from the burned-off hills further upstream in
Guangxi. As early as 809, levees constructed downstream
12the Pearl River Delta that the increased amount of silt
precipitated are evident in maps of the delta. What is notevident, however, is that while more silt entered the upper
reaches of the delta, it might have continued to flow further
into the bay had it not been “captured” (as explained below)
by pioneers who fled to the rocky islands in the bay in theaftermath of the Mongol invasion of the 1270s.

agricultural land.
The Creation of Shatan (Sand Flat) Fields
In what became the Pearl River Delta, settlers created
new fields from the sand bars that formed wherever thecurrent slowed sufficiently for the transported sediment tosettle, but mostly on the downstream side of islands, or on theoutward side of river bends. Called shatan (sand flats),these fields were truly new, having literally arisen from thewater. Unlike polders or enclosed fields which had been
reclaimed from swamps or coastal flats, the shatan “grew” inthe Pearl River, adding land where none had previously
existed.
The particular topographical and hydrologicalconditions of the Pearl River estuary and the modifications toboth caused by diking contributed to the creation of shatan.
Before the Sang Yuan Wei and other dikes were built at the
headwaters of the delta in the Song, the flood waters of theWest and North Rivers had spilled over the river banks,
depositing the transported sediment on the swamps bordering
the river channels. Some of the silt was carried further
down into what was then a bay, creating the delta. But
when the dikes were built to prevent flooding, the rivercourse was fixed, and the transported sediment did not settle
until further downstream. In Ming and Qing times, thisoccurred mostly in southern Panyu, northern Xiangshan,
Shunde, eastern Xinhui and western Dongguan counties, and
it is in these counties that shatan first emerged.
Certainly, some of the shatan emerged by naturalprocesses, but the majority were constructed. The methodof creating shatan was relatively simple, but did require years
before the land was usable. When a sandbar arose bynatural means close to the water level, rocks were thrownaround its perimeter not merely to fix the existing sand inplace, but also to capture additional sediment. After a more
substantial enclosure was built, the sediment was“transformed” by planting legumes (which fix nitrogen in thesoil). After three to five years, the shatan would be readyfor rice. According to the seventeenth-century writer Qu
Dajun, a three-year fallow period would be allowed after the
first three years of growing rice.22
Once one shatan was created, more silt would build up
on its downstream side. This silt could be captured by theprocess described above to create further shatan, and so on
until a whole series of shatan extended the cultivated landarea to several tens of thousand mu. These connectedshatan were called “mother and child” (mu zi) shatan,
rendering metaphorical the relationship between the original
shatan and those to which they had given birth. Continuing
the Chinese metaphor, one could say that over time wholefamilies or even lineages of shatan constituted the Pearl
River Delta. But more to the point, the delta had been
constructed by people working with natural processes, but inthe unusual conditions created by the Mongol invasion ofSouth China.
Curiously, the abandonment of northern Guangdong

Present at the Creation: The Delta Lineages from
Zhujigang
Many of the large, powerful families that came todominate the economic, social, and political life of the Pearl
River Delta by the Ming and Qing dynasties traced their
origins to the Nanxiong area in northern Guangdong, inparticular the town of Zhujigang.17 Nanxiong had been thefirst area settled by Chinese, and the population swelled after
the Jin invasion of North China in the 1120s sent refugees
fleeing south; many of those who took up residence inZhujigang, according to later chroniclers, were among themost wealthy and powerful from North China. Resources
and wealth were thus concentrated in Zhujigang, at least until
the 1270s and the Mongol invasion. Perhaps because thewealthy families of Zhujigang had settled there in the firstplace out of fear of northern invaders, when Khubilai’sarmies began moving south in the 1270s, many residents
decided to flee in 1273-74, a couple of years before theMongol armies pushed south to the Nanling mountains.18
When the Mongol armies crossed the Meiling Pass in 1276,
those remaining residents of Zhujigang who could flee did so;
those who failed to flee probably died in the battles thatdevastated much of northern Guangdong. According to the
traditions recorded in several genealogies, ninety-sevenfamilies (jia) with thirty-three different surnames (xing) fled
south into the area that would become the Pearl River Delta.19
Fearing the Mongols more than malaria or adversity,and perhaps hoping to find additional, maritime escape routes,
these families settled on the small islands that dotted the Pearl
River estuary; many of the large lineages in Xinhui county,
for instance, trace their origins to Zhujigang.20 Even today,
the relics of that settlement pattern can be seen in the towns
situated on what once were islands but now are hills in an
ocean of alluvial soil. Most expressive of this is the town of
Shawan, which hugs the southern slope of the island/hillwhere the town of Panyu too was built; to its west was amouth of the North River. Shawan means “bay of sand,”
which in 1276 no doubt it was.21
How much cultivable land was available to the settlersof places like Shawan in the fourteenth century is not known.
No doubt some alluvium had been deposited by naturalprocesses, perhaps accelerated somewhat by theslash-and-burn agriculture practiced in the hill regions aroundplaces like their former home of Zhujigang. As the waterfrom the West and North Rivers flowed into the bay andaround the islands, the current slowed on the “leeward” side,
allowing the silt to settle. But the new residents in the bay
were not content to wait for natural processes to create their
13

farms in the face of the Mongol armies may have hastened
the creation of shatan in the years or decades following. J.
R. McNeill has shown that the soil of farms abandoned in the
Mediterranean hill country after the fall of the Roman empire
was subject to rapid erosion, contributing both to thedegradation of the mountains and to the deposition of silt inthe lowlands at the mouths of rivers.23 A similar process
may have occurred in Lingnan following the Mongol
invasion, with increased erosion from abandoned northern
Guangdong farms sending silt down the North River to thePearl River estuary. But an important difference with theMediterranean experience should be noted. In the lowlandsof the Mediterranean, the silt was not captured and turned
into new land, but rather formed swamps and marshes,
creating the conditions for malaria and rendering thelowlands uninhabitable until swamp drainage projects in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries eliminated this disease.
In the Pearl River Delta, by contrast, the new settlers captured
the silt and turned it into shatan, perhaps preventing thecreation of conditions favoring malaria in the first place.

3. G. Fenzel, “On the Natural Conditions Affecting theIntroduction of Forestry as a Branch of Rural Economy in theProvince of Kwangtung, Especially in North Kwangtung”,
Lingnan Science Journal, 7 (1929):45.
4. This conclusion is reached by Chinese hydrologists in
Chen Binyin, chief ed., Zhongguo ziran dili [The PhysicalGeography of China] (Beijing: Xinhua shudian, 1982), Vol. 4,
Dibiao shui [Surface Water], p. 243.
5. Edward H. Schafer, The Vermilion Bird: T’ang Imagesof the South (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967),
p. 130.
6. Gu Yanwu, Tianxia junguo li bing shu [Strategic
Strengths and Weaknesses of Various Places in the World](preface dated 1662. Taibei: Siku shanben congshu guan,1959), 98:28a.
7. Zhou Qufei, Lingwai dai ta [Explanations of Things
Beyond the Passes] (12th century. Taibei: Shangwu
yinshuguan, 1975), 4:2b-3a. The (Song) Lianzhou- LeizhouHuazhou area apparently remained free of malaria until thenineteenth century. According to one report, “The earliest
Customs Records for Pakhoi [Beihai] (1889) state that there
was no malaria there and that there was not likely to be any
outbreak since the Pakhoi peninsula consisted of dry sandy
ground.” Four years later, however, in 1893, there was amalaria outbreak in this region. See Ernest Carrol Faust,“An Inquiry into the Prevalence of Malaria in China,” The
China Medical Journal XL, no. 10 (1926): 938–56.

Conclusion
The Pearl River Delta thus was not created by purely
natural processes, and had not been simply waiting for
Chinese to migrate from the north and reclaim it for
agriculture. Rather, the creation of the delta was the resultof a complex causal chain. Chinese immigrants into
Lingnan preferred to settle in the hills of northern Guangdong,
fearful of the diseases in the river valleys further to the south.
Their land clearing eventually increased the silt content of
the rivers flowing south, but most of that alluvium neverreached the bay, being deposited instead in the lower reachesof the North, East, and West river valleys. Only theconstruction of dikes and levees there in the Song directed
the silt-laden waters into the upper reaches of the Pearl Riverestuary. Even then, that silt might have continued to flow
further out into the bay had it not been captured by refugees
from the north who had fled from the Mongols to the islandsin the bay. The creation of the Pearl River Delta and its
emergence as the densely populated, agriculturally rich coreof Lingnan was thus a historically contingent rather than anaturally inevitable outcome.

8. Translated and quoted in Schafer, op. cit., p. 132.
9. J. R. McNeill has found that in the Mediterranean,malaria did not extend higher than 500 meters above sea level.
John R. McNeill, The Mountains of the Mediterranean
World: An Environmental History (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), p. 350. More research is needed todetermine the elevations in Lingnan above which malaria
ceased.
10. Chen Lesu, “Zhujigang shi shi” [The True History of
Zhujigang], [Guangdong] Xueshu yanjiu 1982, no. 6: 140.

NOTES
1. The Pearl River Delta can be conceived of as the region
bounded by an inverted triangle whose base is an east-to-westline running from the confluence of the West and North
Rivers near Sanshui through Guangzhou (Canton) to Shilong
on the East River in Dongguan County. The apex of thetriangle is south of the line at Macao.

11. On acquired immunity to malaria, see Dion R. Bell,Lecture Notes on Tropical Medicine (Oxford: Blackwell
Scientific Publications, 1990), p. 9, and Alfred R. D. Davies
and Brian Maegraith, Clinical Tropical Diseases (Oxford:
Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1989), pp. 204–5.
12. Zhongguo ziran dili, Vol. 4, Dibiao shui, p. 183.

2. For the sake of convenience, place names in this article
are generally given in their late imperial (Ming and Qing)
form, regardless of the period or dynasty under discussion.

13. Wang Ping, “Qing ji Zhujiang Sanjiaozhou de nongtian
shuili” [Agricultural Irrigation in the Pearl River Delta in
Qing Times], Jindai Zhongguo qugan shi yantao hui lunwen14ji [Proceedings of the Conference on Regional Studies ofModern China] (Taibei: Academia Sinica, Institute ofModern History, 1986), pp. 569–71.

The Political Ecology of Forest
Conservation in Xishuangbanna

14. 1864 Guangdong tongzhi [Gazetteer of Guangdong
Province], 118:1a–2b.

Elisabeth Grinspoon(I)

15. Wang Ping, op. cit., pp. 581-82.

The View from a Dai Village

Department of Environmental Science, Policy,
and Management
University of California at Berkeley

16. Ye Xian’en and Tan Dihua, “Ming Qing Zhujiang
Sanjiaozhou nongye shangyehua yu xushi de fazhan” [TheCommercialization of Agriculture and Market Developmentin the Pearl River Delta during the Ming and Qing],
Guangdong shehui kexue, 1984, no. 2:73.

[Note. Ms Grinspoon carried out the research described inthis article while an M.F. student at the Yale School ofForestry and Environmental Studies. The project was
funded by the Tropical Resources Institute, the Center forInternational and Area Studies, and the East Asian Studies
Department of Yale University. Ms Grinspoon will enter
the Ph.D. programme of the above department of the
University of California at Berkeley in August 1996. For
the full address and her interim e-mail address, see updateto the directory of subscribers.
“Mengguo” is not the real name of the village
discussed in this article.]

17. For a brief discussion, see Li Zhuanshi et al., eds.,
Lingnan wenhua [Lingnan Culture] (Shaoguan: Guangdong
Renmin chubanshe, 1993), pp. 183–92.
18. Xinhui xiang tuzhi [Gazetteer of Xinhui Township](Hong Kong: Guangzhou xuehui, 1970 reprint of late Qing
edition), pp. 84–85.
19. Chen Lesu, op. cit., pp. 144–49.

Introduction
Tucked away in the remote corner of southwest China aresome of the world’s least studied and most diverse tropicalrain forests. The Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve wasestablished to protect these rain forests, known as “the bright
pearl of the plant kingdom” in China, shortly after theCommunist government came to power in 1949. The
forests, however, continue to decline. The area covered bynatural flora in the region dropped from nearly 70 percent in1950 to only 20 percent in 1980, and this loss of naturalforests has not only led to widespread soil erosion andfloods, but also caused the near-extinction of some rare
plants (People’s Daily, 1986).
The Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture lies insouthern Yunnan and shares borders with Laos and Burma.
The climate is tropical, and rainfall is plentiful throughout
most of the year. Tributaries of the Mekong meander
throughout the area, which is covered by mountainous andhilly terrain. The largest ethnic group in the area is the Dai
minority, who constitute about one-third of the 750,000
inhabitants of the prefecture, and have their own dialect andwriting system. The Dai live in compact communities
mainly in the river valleys, but also in the mountains.
While conducting fieldwork in the Xishuangbanna Dai
Autonomous Prefecture during the summer of 1995, I lived
with Dai minority families for two months near the
perimeter of the Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve. This
experience allowed me to begin to know these local
communities and learn about daily life near the reserve. In
addition to my work at the village level, I conductedinterviews with government officials at the township-,county-, prefectural-, and state-level reserve management

20. Xinhui xiang tuzhi, pp. 85–87.
21. Liu Zhiwei, “Zongzu yu shatian kaifa — Panyu Shawan
He zu de ge’an yanjiu” [Lineages and the Opening of Shatian:
A Case Study of the He Lineage of Shawan Village, Panyu
County], Zhongguo nongshi [Chinese Agricultural History]
1992, no. 4:34–41. Professor Liu argues that the shatian of
the He lineage of Shawan can reliably be traced back only tothe late sixteenth century at the earliest, not the early
fourteenth as implied in the oral traditions of the lineage’s
origins. Certainly most of the shatian shatian were addedfrom the mid-Ming on, especially in the eighteenth century.
But that does not invalidate the point that shatian began tobe created after the Mongol invasion disrupted the previous
settlement pattern by which most of Lingnan’s Han
population resided in the northern hills. Some of Professor
Liu’s findings have just been published in English as“Lineage on the Sands: The Case of Shawan,” in David
Faure and Helen F. Siu, eds., Down to Earth: The
Territorial Bond in South China (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1995), pp. 21–43.
22. Qu Dajun, Guangdong xinyu [New Things Said about
Guangdong] (preface dated 1700. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1974) 2:57.
23. McNeill, op. cit., pp. 85, 191, 312, and 319–22.

15

units.
Using a political ecology approach in my research, I
examined the structures and processes leading to the declineof Xishuangbanna’s protected forests.
The political
ecology approach emphasizes the social relations within
which actors are embedded, and the means by which thesesocial relations affect resources use. It is assumed that thelarger social structures and the political-economic processes
will affect the actions of the local resource users (Blaikie,
1985; Peluso, 1992).
Before embarking on my fieldwork, I had
hypothesized that an autocratic regime, such as that of China
today, presumably would govern its nature reserves with aheavy hand.
Surprisingly, I found that negotiations
between village leaders and local reserve managers in
Xishuangbanna are more interactive than in many countries.
Through an examination of the process of negotiation
between village leaders and local reserve managers, I firstcharacterize these interactions in order to create a basis forunderstanding how the struggle over forest resources isplayed out at the village level in Xishuangbanna. Then, I
place these interactions in the broader political-economic
setting in which they are enmeshed. Although my initialconcern is to examine reserve management in one county,
this local example is intended to shed light on larger
questions concerning the ways in which the changing
state-society relations associated with the process of fiscal
decentralization are affecting forest conservation efforts inpost-Mao China.
As a strategy to build support for the reforms of the
post-Mao era, Chinese Communist Party leaders used afiscal decentralization policy popularly called “eating inseparate kitchens.” This policy was formulated to build
support for the reforms through revenue-sharing contracts
negotiated by the central government and provincial
governments (Shirk, 1993). A few years after the central
government initiated the reforms, most provinces adopted
comparable systems of revenue sharing by setting up
analogous contracts at the prefectural, county, and townshiplevels.
The changing structure of China’s fiscal system has
had great consequences for the distribution of publicfinancial resources both within and among local regions(Shirk, 1993). The reforms have led local governments tobecome increasingly self-reliant in meeting expenditure
responsibilities, and have unleashed the entrepreneurial
spirit of local officials. The new incentives for local
governments to stress revenue mobilization, however, haveplaced pressure on local governments to generate funds.
Local governments are, in turn, forcing work units,
including those that are part of the nature reserve
management bureaucracy, to show profits or at least become
self-sufficient (Park et al., 1995).

A Village Case-Study of the Fate of the Rainforest in the
Era of Market Reforms“Mengguo” (the pseudonym that I have chosen for thisvillage) is one lowland Dai community that borders the
Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve. It has a population ofnearly 450 people in less than 100 households. The village
covers some 4,000 mu of forested hillsides, less than 500 muof secondary forest, and about 40 mu of fuel wood forests.
The village was split in half in 1963 by a new north-south
paved highway running from Jinghong, Xishuangbanna’s
prefectural capital, to the Burmese border. The land near
the western side of the road is covered with traditional Dai
houses and slopes downward to a basin filled with ricepaddies. The gentle slopes on the far side of the basin arecommunal village land covered by secondary rain forests
and young rubber tree plantations. On the eastern side of
the highway, houses are built on the steep hillside marked bya grand old Ficus tree.
Majestic Ficus trees are left standing in Xishuangbanna
even as the villagers transform their forests into rubber tree
plantations and fruit tree orchards because the Dai people
still believe in the powerful spirit of these trees. The Ficus
trees that dot the landscape are a visible remnant of the Dai
people’s once strong belief in a polytheistic religion closely
linked to the natural world. After the introduction of
Hinayana Buddhism in about the tenth century A.D., the Dai
practiced a form of Hinayana Buddhism interwoven withelements of their former tradition (Pei Shengji, 1982).
For the villagers of Mengguo, the eastern side of the
highway and a stream running down the steep hillsidedelineate, respectively, the western and southern boundariesof the nature reserve. During the summer, deep-green ricepaddies line the main river valley that runs through thereserve. Over one-third of Mengguo’s village paddy landlies inside the reserve. The land was opened nearly acentury ago when the village was located on land that istoday part of the reserve. Although the village was moved
from this land many decades ago, the reserve management
officials still recognize the villagers’ historic claims tocultivate this land.
The reserve managers even turn a blind eye to thevillagers’ opening up a little more paddy land each year.
Today, the paddy land goes a couple of kilometers deeper
into the reserve, past the site of the old village. The reserve
managers have also permitted the villagers to plant maize on
land extending up to thirty meters from their paddies.
Moreover, because the villagers now spend so much time in
the reserve planting rice and harvesting maize, they havebuilt grass huts on their old land inside the reserve for use
during these busy seasons.
In 1989, Mengguo’s village leader received permission
from reserve managers to construct a road into the reserve inorder to give the villagers better access to their rice paddies.
The road cost 10,000 yuan to build; this money came fromthe sale of timber cut from the last remaining hardwood
stands on Mengguo’s communal village land. The road has
16

had a large impact on land-use in the reserve. Every day,when the villagers ride their tractors out of the reserve, theybring with them cloth bags and rattan baskets filled withmushrooms, edible fungus, wild vegetables, and dong (atype of leaf used daily for wrapping food).
Sometimes the tractors are filled with logs cut from“windblown” trees (that is, trees supposedly downed by thewind). Villagers pay a small sum of money to thetownship reserve management for this low-quality timber.
A large pile of these low-grade logs sat all summer below
the concrete sign bearing the village name. The village
treasurer explained to me, as he was chopping wood, that thelogs sold for 65 yuan per tractor load. Sales of fuel wood
are increasing dramatically. With the rise in tourism,
restaurants in the nearby township need more firewood tofuel cooking stoves.
Villages also purchase high-quality logs (also called“windblown trees”) from the township reserve management.
The village leaders must pay the township reserve
management officials several hundred yuan per cubic meterfor these larger “windblown” trees. The township reserve
management is allowed to sell “windblown” trees from thereserve, but it is doubtful whether all of these trees actuallydied from natural causes. The township officials are only
permitted by law to charge 150 yuan per cubic meter.
They must report any sales to the county-level management
office, with which they are required to share half of any
income. So, the township reserve management officials
directly pocket about an extra 100 yuan for every cubic
meter of wood they sell, which is a good incentive to allow
the villagers to cut both windblown and live trees. The
township reserve management office was given a stern
warning to stop selling windblown trees, and the practice
may have stopped by now.
From the time of the post-Mao land reform (early
1980s) until a couple of years ago, the Mengguo villagers
had built their homes using the hardwoods from the village’s
collective forest. Villagers were allowed to fell trees in thecollective forest for home building with the permission of
the village leader, which was easy to obtain. During the
1980s and early 1990s, villagers built spacious houses
similar in size and style to those of the lords who governed
Xishuangbanna before the Communist revolution. Prior to1949, by contrast, the villagers had built their houses using
bamboo and Cassia siamea, a type of tree that the Dai havecultivated and pollarded for fuel wood and building material
for centuries. In those days, the villagers were prohibitedfrom building houses out of hardwoods not because thesetrees were scarce, but because it would have been
considered an affront to the lords’ authority to build a homesimilar to theirs. The villagers say that they did not evenhave iron axes or other tools that would have made fellingsuch massive trees possible. It was not until the beginningof the post-Mao reform era that the villagers began to build
such large houses. Every family except one has built a newhouse out of hardwoods since the end of the 1970s. As

some families are becoming increasingly prosperous, they
are building more impressive houses because house size is asymbol of prestige. Some of the newest houses in thevillage are bigger than those of the former lords ever were.
During this frantic period of house building, thevillagers logged selectively, depleting the supply of timberon the collective village lands. However, the forests were
not clear-felled until a series of timber sales was conductedin order to pay for infrastructure projects. These projects
included construction of a water pipe to bring clean waterfrom the mountains inside the reserve down to the village,
the building of a road into the reserve, and, most recently,
installation of a satellite dish and cable television for thevillage. In years past, these infrastructure projects would
have been funded through the county- or township-levelgovernments, but with increasing pressure to become
self-sufficient, these local governments encouraged thevillage leaders to liquidate the standing capital in theirforests to finance modernization projects which bring the
local governments prestige.
The village’s collective forest is now denuded of
hardwoods. Entrepreneurial village cadres and the local
reserve management officials have quickly filled the void byinitiating the sale of “windblown” trees to supply thevillagers with timber. Now villagers buy timber worth
6,000 to 10,000 yuan from the village leaders to build one
house. Moreover, building a house was traditionally acommunal village effort that was accomplished in a day.
Now it has become an individual family enterprise that takes
weeks and can involve considerable debt.
Although no one is supposed to live in the reserve,
recently elderly villagers have begun to move back into thereserve, where they live in grass huts and raise chickens.
Their adult children bring them rice, but they gather the restof their food and fuel wood in the reserve. Living in thereserve, these old villagers often take care of grazing thecattle, as well as keeping an eye on their family’s paddy landand plots of the highly valued medicinal herb Amomum
villosum.
The resolution of conflicts over the villagers’ use ofreserve land for cultivating Amomum villosum exemplifies
the interactions between reserve managers and village
leaders. Amomum villosum (sharen in Chinese) is a close
relative of cardamon, and is native to the forests ofGuangdong. It has been used as a stomach remedy for 800
years in China and is a primary ingredient in over thirty
traditional Chinese medicines still used today.
In 1963, the Yunnan provincial government beganheavily promoting the cultivation of Amomum villosum toimprove Xishuangbanna’s economy and lift the local people
out of poverty. During the 1970s, villagers planted theherb on what was then designated as commune land. Afterthe end of the commune era, the land reforms of the 1980s
redefined property rights and designated some land on
which villagers had already planted Amomum villosum as
nature reserve. The villagers’ harvesting of Amomum17

villosum fruits then became considered “stealing.”
Reserve managers never attempted to prevent thevillagers from “stealing” Amomum villosum fruits, but the
managers did prevent them from opening any new areas forcultivation of the herb. In 1992, reserve managers beganpulling up newly planted Amomum villosum on plots that thevillagers had newly opened. The villagers, knowing thatthey had no legal rights to land in the reserve, did notcomplain to any local officials, fearing that they would bepunished for their activities in the reserve.
One old man whose Amomum villosum plants were
pulled up asked his son, a county official in Mengla, to try todeal with the problem. This official applied pressure on thetownship government officials to make sure that the local
nature reserve management office did not interfere with thevillagers’ use of reserve land for planting the herb. Finally,
the local township-level reserve management agreed toallow the farmers to replant the Amomum vilosum inexchange for a small fee for renting the land. They thendiscovered that the small fee was not worth the effort
required to collect it.
Today the banks of almost every stream in the nature
reserve are cultivated with Amomum villosum plants whichhave grown to over one meter in height. As one walks
along these streams, the view is dominated by Amomum
villosum on the ground and the pillar-like trees that seem torise up to the sky. Rattan (Calamus) is wrapped like atightly knitted rope around these huge trees. The sunlightglares above the dense canopy, but beneath it the intensity oflight is low and, more importantly for the Amomum villosum
plants, the humidity is high. These are conditions underwhich Amomum villosum thrives.
The township reserve management officials can profit
greatly from the sale of medicinal herbs cultivated by thevillagers in the understory of the reserve’s rain forests.
Through use of their personal ties, cadres who held power inthe commune era now take advantage of the opportunities in
the new decentralized system. Village cadres in the
post-Mao era supervise many types of commercial
transaction and local enterprise. They are charged with the
responsibility of making sure that their village prospers in
the new market environment. Local cadres and village
governments are better equipped to deal with thecomplexities of the market because farmers do not haveaccess to information about market demand and prices (Oi,1989). Cadres and their friends have therefore taken on therole of middlemen selling the Amomum villosum and makemany times the profit that the villagers themselves receive.
The reserve managers wisely recognize that theycannot build a wall around the reserve, so they must firstmake sure that the villagers’ economic needs are satisfied
before they can protect the local flora. By allowing thevillagers to utilize the unique environment created by theold-growth forests, the reserve managers give the villagers
real economic incentives to protect the reserve’s trees.
Cultivating Amomum villosum in the reserve, however, may

not be an ideal solution to the problems of reserve
management in Xishuangbanna. Over the course of threeor four decades, cultivating Amomum villosum in the reserve
will have a negative impact on biodiversity as the herb
out-competes the young hardwood seedlings. When theolder hardwood trees begin to mature and die, no young
trees will be able to grow in their place. With fewer large
trees for shade, the environment will become lighter anddryer. In the long run, not only will biodiversity be lost,
but so will the environment suitable for Amomum villosum
and the villagers’ extra income.
[The second instalment of this article will be included in theNovember 1996 issue of CEHN]WORKS CITED
Blaikie, Piers. 1985. The Political Economy of Soil Erosionin Developing Countries. New York: John Wiley and
Sons.
Oi, Jean C. 1989. State and Peasant in Contemporary
China: The Political Economy of Village Government.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pei Shengji. 1985. “Some Effects of the Dai People’s
Cultural Beliefs and Practices upon the Plant Environmentof Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, Southwest China.”
In Cultural Values and Human Ecology. Michigan Papers
on South and Southeast Asia. Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan.
Peluso, Nancy.
1992.
“The Political Ecology ofExtraction and Extractive Reserves in East Kalimantan,
Indonesia.” Development and Change 4 (23): 49–74.
Shirk, Susan. 1993. The Political Logic of Economic
Reform in China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Up-date to
Directory of Subscribers
Further corrections, up-dates, and additions may be sent to
the editor for inclusion in subsequent issues of thenewsletter.

Changes of address/corrections
N.B. Only items in which there has been change areincluded here. For unchanged particulars, see original
directory.
H. Keith Florig
Department of Engineering and Public Policy
Frew Street, Baker Hall 129
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Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
U.S.A.
E-mail: Keith_Florig@andrew.cmu.edu
Tel: 412-268-3754
Fax: 412-268-3757
Environment, energy, and technology transfer issues in
China.
Elisabeth Grinspoon
From August 1996:
Department of Environmental Science,Management
Mulford Hall
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720
U.S.A.
E-mail address for summer 1996:
lis@edf.org

Policy,Wuyi-Daiyun Mountain Range of Western Fujian. Project
includes an analysis of wildlife habitat conditions, changing
patterns of land use and their impact on vegetation patterns,
the role of sacred forests in preserving biodiversity, and theimpact of hunting and historical subsistence patterns on
wildlife and habitat.

Susan Flader
Department of History
University of Missouri
Columbia MO 65211
U.S.A.
E-mail: HISTSF@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu
Tel: 573-882-8264
Comparative environmental history.

andClyde E. Goulden
Patrick Center for Environmental Research
Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Benj. Franklin Pkwy.
Philadelphia PA 19103
U.S.A.
E-mail: goulden@say.acnatsci.org
Is establishing a long-term ecological research station at
Lake Hovsgol, Mongolia, for environmental monitoring (inassociation with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences andthe National University of Mongolia). Interested in theestablishment of an environmental and biodiversity database for East Asia (including China) in Mongolia.

Paul W. HowardE-mail: phoward@sas.upenn.edu

New subscribers
Abe KenichiCenter for Southeast Asian Studies
Kyōto University
46 Shimoadachi-chō
YoshidaSakyō-ku
Kyōto 606
Japan
Tel: 075-753-7300
Fax: 075-753-7350

Leonard S. Greer
Pacific International Center for High Technology Research
2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 180
Honolulu HI 96822-1843
U.S.A
E-mail: lsgreer@ikaikala.pichtr htdc.org
Tel: 808-539-3852
Fax: 808-539-3899
Non-governmental organizations in the Asia-Pacific region,
especially those with an interest in energy, renewableenergy, or energy conservation technology.

Nicholas Banfield
200 Rue de la Loi (TRMF 4/42)
B –1049 Brussels
Belgium
E-mail: Nicholas.BANFIELD@DG11.CEC.BE
The environment in China: policy aspects.

Peter Ho
Center for Non-Western Studies
Leiden University
Nonnensteeg 1-3
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands
E-mail: ppsho@rullet.LeidenUniv nl
Tel: 00-31-71-272171 or 272983
Fax: 00-31-71-272939
Rangeland degradation in North-west China, pastoral
nomadism, and land tenure and property rights in forestsand grasslands.

Chris Coggins
Miss Hall’s School
492 Holmes Road
Pittsfield MA 01201
U.S.A.
E-mail: tkalischer@taconic net
Tel: 413-448-8439
Fax: 413-298-5500
Cultural ecology, landscape ecology, and biodiversity inand around nature reserves in the Southeast Uplands
Region of China. Has done one year’s field research in the19mini-articles are equally welcomed, and may be submitted in
English, Chinese, French, or Japanese.
Pinyinromanization is preferred.
Mini-articles should notnormally exceed 3,000 words; the absolute maximum length
is 4,000 words. Translations of scientific technical terms
should be provided if possible. Most standard citation
formats are acceptable, but exact page numbers should bestated where applicable. The newsletter respects authors’preferences as between British, Australian, and UnitedStates spelling and usage; however, it takes “data” as aplural form, and “élite” as a collective noun. Contributors
with an ideological objection to “B.C.” and “A.D.” arerequested to prefix B.C. dates with the word “minus.”
If possible, please send an electronic version of any
English-language contribution exceeding 750 words, or
containing many numbers. The preferred formats are
ASCII or WordPerfect 5.0 or 5.1 on a 3.5” diskette, or an
ASCII text file via e-mail. Hard copy should be provided
as well.

Simon Holledge
1-8 Takada
Toshima-ku
Tokyo 171
Japan
E-mail: Simon@Twics.com
Tel: 81-3-3985-6317
Fax: Same as telephone, if advance warning given
Archaeology of the Chinese Neolithic
Harold L. Kahn
History Department
Stanford University
Stanford CA 94305
U.S.A.
E-mail: wuwei@leland.stanford.edu
Qing social and political history.
Fred Strebeigh
Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
205 Prospect St., Sage Hall
New Haven CT 06511
U.S.A.
E-mail: fred.strebeigh@yale.edu
Tel: 203-432-0529
Fax: 203-432-5942

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2. Subscription information. E-mail subscriptions arefree (at least for the time being). To subscribe, please send
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Subscriptions in the People’s Republic of China are free forthe time being. Subscribers living in the U.S. or most othercountries should send their subscription, in U.S. currency,
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to Helen Dunstan at Dept. of History, Indiana State
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and money orders should be made payable to Chinese
Environmental History Newsletter.
Subscribers resident in Australia, Britain, France, orTaiwan may send their subscription in local currency (alongwith the subscription information) to their national
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1. Submission information. Contributions should besent to Helen Dunstan at Dept. of History, Indiana State
University, Terre Haute IN 47809, U.S.A. (e-mailHIDunsta@Ruby.indstate.edu). “Noticeboard” items and

AUSTRALIA:
Dr Carney Fisher
Centre for Asian Studies

Richard P. Tucker
School of Natural Resources and Environment
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1115
U.S.A.
E-mail: rptucker@umich.edu
Tel: 313-665-0870
Fax: 313-936-2195
South Asian and comparative colonial environmental
history, with focus on the Himalayan region. Has played amajor role in the activities of the Tropical Forest History
working group of the International Union of Forest
Research Organizations.
Yu Jangkeun
Department of History
Kyungnam University
Masan 631-701
Korea
Fax: 0551-43-9321
Social issues in nineteenth-century China

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University of Adelaide
P.O. Box 498
AdelaideSouth Australia 5061
Tel. (08) 303-5930
Subscription: A$10.00 p.a.

BRITAIN:Mr Kegang Wu
Department of Geography
University of Liverpool
Roxby Building
P.O. Box 147
Liverpool L69 3BX
Tel. 0151-794-2835
Subscription: £5.00 p.a.
Make cheque payable to K. Wu
FRANCE:
Frédéric Obringer
Route de Laval
77120 MauperthuisTel. (1) 64-03-07-20
Subscription: 50.00 FF p.a.
TAIWAN:Prof. Wang Hurng-Jyuhn
Institute of Natural Resources
National Dong Hwa University
HualienTaiwan R.O.C.
Tel. 038-662500, ext. 175
Subscription: NT$ 260 p.a.

Editorial disclaimer.

The Chinese Environmental
History Newsletter is edited by Helen Dunstan, Departmentof History, Indiana State University. The views expressedin the newsletter do not necessarily reflect those of theeditor.

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