ann
(Ann)
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Qing Fields in Theory and Practice
In the summer of 1765 a swarm of locusts appeared in the lands of the
Pastoral Chakhar Mongol Plain Red Banner just north of the passes
and wasflitting southward toward the ripening grainfields of northern
Shanxi. Plain Red Superintendent Ciriktai’s job was to stop the swarm
before it crossed into China proper. This required mobilization of a
considerable number of his banner troops to conduct eradication oper-
ations intended to drive the locusts northward away from Shanxi and out
into the steppe. Ciriktai and his colleague in charge of the Bordered
Yellow Chakhar Banner, Nawang, were both quite explicit that the
swarms were no danger to Mongol pastures, but only to Hanfields of
the“interior”(Ma:dorgi ba). Unbeknown to Ciriktai, however, officials
in the Shanxi subprefecture of Ningyuan had rushed out several hundred
of their Han charges to conduct an unauthorized operation that suc-
ceeded in driving the swarm southward“quite near the cultivatedfields
of the Han.” The ineptitude of China proper’sofficials had to be
corrected by another operation by Ciriktai’s Mongols. In conjunction
with over six hundred other Pastoral Chakar troops, they successfully
redirected the swarm back northward, saving northern Shanxi’sfields
from devastation.^1
Inner Asians rescuing north China from steppe invasion would have
been a quite unusual occurrence in the vast majority of Chinese dynastic
cases. During the Qing, however, it was simply understood as part of
the job north of the passes. Ciriktai, for example, did not wait for any
directive from Beijing. He personally led his men to take on the swarm on
his own initiative, which accounts for the lack of coordination with Han
efforts to the south. Such cooperation, whatever its limits, distinguishes
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