208 Boundaries and Beyond
The discussion examines the changing socioeconomic conditions in
rural southern Fujian in late Ming times, how the changes affected the
life of the common agriculturists and in what ways the peasants were
responding to the challenges. It begins with the most frequently raised
issue of “population pressure” and scrutinizes the assumption that “the
hilly terrains and scarcity of arable lands” in southern Fujian contributed
to the poverty of the rural population.
Population
Quanzhou was βirst mentioned in Chinese history around AD 600. At that
time the Fujianese population was still sparsely distributed. In the mid-
eighth century, the Yangzi region and the areas farther south had only 40
to 50 per cent of the country’s population. The distribution had changed
by the end of the thirteenth century, when the population of southern
China rapidly rose to 85 to 90 per cent of the total. No fewer than 20
per cent of it lived in the valleys of Fujian and eastern Zhejiang along
the southeast coast.^1 In terms of the total number of hu (households),
Fujian’s βigure increased from two million in 1102 to 2.8 million in 1162.^2
The population βigures for the various prefectures of Fujian from the
Tang to the Ming periods are given below:^34
Prefecture Tang Song Yuan Ming
Fuzhou
福州34,084 hu
75,876 kou^4308,529 hu
595,946 kou199,694 hu
—94,514 hu
285,265 kou- E.A. Kracke, Jr., “Sung Society: Change Within Tradition”, Far Eastern Quarterly
14, 4 (Aug. 1955): 479–80. - Zhang Jiaju 張家駒, Liang Song jingji zhongxin de nanyi 兩宋經濟重心的南移
[The southward movement of the economic centre of gravity during the two
Song Dynasties] (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1957), p. 50. - Huang Zhongzhao 黄仲昭, Bamin tongzhi 八閩通志 [A gazetteer of the eight
prefectures of Fujian] (1490 ed.), 20: 2–6a. - In counting population, the Chinese census uses different units such as: (1) hu
户 (households), that was a customary Chinese extended family rather than a
“nuclear” family in the Western sense; (2) kou 口 (mouths), which was identical
to “head-count”. In the Confucian way of thinking, enough food was the most
essential prerequisite for daily life. Hence, the word kou became the numeral
coefβicient in population counting; (3) ding 丁, an adult male between 16 and
60 years old who paid the ding tax. One should be aware that such ofβicial
deβinitions are sometimes over-simpliβied.
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