NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 1071CHAPTER 7. Land Reform: Compromises with the Well-Field Model
I. PGSR 1:la-b.- Ibid. 1 :2b-3a.
- Yu Hyongwon cited a host of classical sources and later commentaries on the nature
of the well-field system (ching-t'ien in Chinese, kylJngj6n in Korean). I have decided to
use the model described in the Mencius, for which see James Legge, The Chinese Clas-
sics, copyright reissue in 5 vols. (Hong Kong University Press, 1960), pt. 3, bk. I, sec.
3, 19, and PGSR, S:lsa, 16a-b. For Yu's treatment of Mencius with several commen-
taries, see pp. 100-103 of the Kojon kanhaenghoe edition of the PGSR. For the Han-
shih account by Pan Ku, which varies in certain respects from the Mencius, see ibid.
S:7a. Mencius's account indicates the absence of private ownership since land was dis-
tributed to people at the age of fifteen and taken back at the age of sixty. Several poems
in the Shih-ching (Book of Poetry) suggest that the peasants distinguished between their
own "private" (sa) fields and the "public" (kong) fields oftheir lords. PGSR s:6a, 11b--I2a,
and the Shan Man-shan ode of the Shih-ching, Legge, pp. 373-74, pt. 2, bk. 6, ode 6,
sec. I; the Ta-t'ien ode, Legge, p. 38 I, pt. 2, bk. 6, ode 8, sec. 3; and the E ho ode, Legge,
p. 584, pt. 4, bk. 1 (ii), ode 2. Yet "private" fields obviously refers only to a right of cul-
tivation, not ownership in the modern, Western sense. - According to the Shih-chi, in the third year of Ch' in Hsiao-kung, Duke Hsiao adopted
the reforms of Yang of Wei. In the twelfth year the well fields were abolished and the
ch 'ien and mo (ch an and maek in Korean pronunciation) were "opened up." See Shih-
chi, Chung-hua shu-chii (Peking 1962) 1 :203, for the adoption of Wei Yang's reforms
and 7:223°, for a description of the system of mutual surveillance that was established;
7:2232, for the "opening up" of the ch'ien and mo. The Harvard Index to the Shih-chi
also refers to the Wu-chou t'ung-wen shu-chu ed., pp. 647a, IS2Sb, and 68sa, the last
referring to the Lieh-chiian biography of Lord Shang.
See also Tzu-chih t'ung-chien, compiled by Ssu-ma Kuang, Shang-mu yin-shu-kuan
ed., 33:6a-b, and the Tzu-chih t'ung-chien kang-mu, compiled by Chu Hsi, 7:S3a-b, 1701
edition of a commentary by Ch'en len-hsi (158 1 -1636). See also the remarks of Su Hsiin
in Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan and Burton Watson eds., Sources of Chinese
Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964) 1:406.
For a discussion ofthe origins of private ownership and its practice in the Han dynasty,
see William Gordon Crowell, "Government Land Policies and Systems in Early Imper-
ial China" (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1979), pp. 42, 92-110. - PGSR S:24a-b.
- Yu Hyongwon's discussion of the relationship of private property to the feasibility
of the well-field system in Chinese thought begins with Chu Hsi's commentary on Lord
Shang's abolition of the well fields and his "opening up of the eh'ien and mo [ch on,
maek]." Chu Hsi argued that the eh 'ien and mo referred to the system of waterways already
mentioned in the Chou-Ii that was used in areas other than where the well-field system
had been adopted. The Ch'in found that the system of dikes and pathways was using too
much land that otherwise could be culti vated, and to increase production, destroyed these
as well as the well fields. Yu's text states: