Suzhou: Where the Goods of All the Provinces Converge 9781503616929

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Suzhou

Suzhou where the goods of all the prov inces converge

Michael Marmé

s ta n f o r d u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s s ta n f o r d , c a l i f o r n i a

2005

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marmé , Michael Suzhou : where the goods of all the provinces converge / Michael Marmé. p. cm. Revision of the author’s thesis (Ph.D.—University of California, Berkeley). Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8047-3112-8 (alk. paper) 1. Suzhou (Jiangsu Sheng, China)—Economic conditions. 2. Suzhou (Jiangsu Sheng, China)—Social conditions. 3. Suzhou (Jiangsu Sheng, China)—History. 4. China—Economic conditions. 5. China—History— Ming dynasty, 1368–1644. I. Title. hc428.s8m37 2005 951’.136—dc22 2004013214 This book is printed on acid-free, archival quality paper. Original printing 2005 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 Typeset in 10/13 Minion

To s c m , my fellow adventurer in humanity Quique amavit cras amet

Contents

Acknowledgments Conventions Introduction

ix xi 1

1 Heaven in a Very Small Space: Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

19

2 “A Great Deal of Extravagance and a Modicum of Frugality”: Suzhou to 1367

40

3 A Conquered Province: Suzhou under Hongwu

60

4 Co-option and Near Collapse—Suzhou, 1398–1430

90

5 Reform, 1430–1484: Suzhou from Zhou Chen to Wang Shu

108

6 “Like Another Place”: Economy and Society in Fifteenth-Century Suzhou

127

7 “Those Occupying Places above the Common People”: Suzhou’s Elite and the Rise of Wu School Culture

154

8 “Neglecting the Roots, Pursuing the Branches”: Suzhou, 1506–1550

187

Epilogue: “Actually Full of Want and Distress”? Suzhou from the Wokou Crisis to the Fall of the Ming

221

Conclusion

231

Appendix A: Population Appendix B: Examination Graduates Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Glossary Index

249 254 255 257 327 353 359

Tables, Figures, and Maps

Tables 1. Claims to Land of Various Types of Household in Changzhou’s Township 21 Xia, Ward 8

25

2. Temple-Building in the City of Suzhou

52

3. Population Growth in the Lower Yangzi Macroregion, Early Yuan to Early Ming

57

4. Land in Suzhou Prefecture in the Late Fourteenth Century

80

5. Population and Agricultural Production in Late FourteenthCentury Suzhou

84

6. Commerce in Nonagricultural Commodities in Late FourteenthCentury Suzhou

85

7. Relative Success of Surname Groups in Song and Ming Times

101

8. “Discussing the Tax and Adding Wastage” versus “Discussing the Acreage and Adding Wastage”

120

A1. Estimated Populations, 1370–1820

250

B1. Examination Graduates

254

Figures 1. Distribution of Extraurban Population in Ming Suzhou

133

A1. Estimated Population of Wu and Changzhou, 1368–1820

251

Maps 1. The Lower Yangzi Macroregion and Its Component Regions

xiii

2. Suzhou Prefecture and Its Environs in Mid-Ming

xiv

3. Ming Wu and Changzhou Districts

22

4. The City of Suzhou and Its Immediate Environs in the Ming

30

Acknowledgments

One of the great pleasures of completing a project such as this is the opportunity to acknowledge, and in some small measure to repay, the numerous debts accumulated while researching, writing, and rewriting a manuscript. These debts are both general and personal. Were it not for generations of scholars on three continents, this work would not exist.If I have seen any farther, it is because I have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants. I have occasionally used the work of my predecessors and contemporaries in ways they would find problematic. I have done so cautiously, after reflection, and in service of our common goal: a less imperfect approximation of the truth. If I have not always succeeded, and later correction of my errors and omissions advances the cause, I will at least have the satisfaction of having contributed to the dialogue. I have been remarkably fortunate—in my family, my teachers, and my colleagues. The latter, both in graduate school and at the various places I have taught, have given generously of their time, their interest, and (often just as valuable) their skepticism in discussing a subject at the margins of their interest and expertise. For their unfailing interest and unstinting support, I owe a far more personal debt to my parents, Joyce Ann and G. William Marmé; for initially stimulating my interest in history, and for helping discipline my prose style, to my uncle Robert Williams. I also benefited from a remarkable run of gifted and sympathetic teachers, among them Gene Brucker, James Cahill, Laurence Cederoth, Natalie Zemon Davis, Julian Dent, Jan de Vries, Jack Gerson, Gene Hammel, Robert M. Hartwell, David Keightley, Janet Salaff, Thomas C. Smith, and Tu Wei-ming. I learned many valuable lessons from colleagues in the Demography Workshop at UC Berkeley, the Ming Workshop at Princeton (particularly its organizers and guiding geniuses, Denis C. Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote), the Asilomar Conference on Family and Kinship in Traditional China, participants in the Association for Asian Studies panel I organized in Washington in 1989, and members of the Traditional China Seminar at Columbia. Timothy Brook, Jerry Dennerline, Joanna HandlinSmith, John Meskill, and Murray Rubinstein read the entire manuscript at cru-

x

Acknowledgments

cial stages of its gestation, offering numerous constructive comments. These substantially improved the final product. To all of you, my thanks. Two men were particularly instrumental in shaping me as a historian and a scholar. G. William Skinner’s close readings and constructive criticisms unfailingly zeroed in on critical lapses of evidence or argument. Frederic Wakeman, through his generous counsel, astute comments, and unfailing support, nurtured this project from seminar paper to completed monograph. I have benefited immeasurably from their tutelage and their example. I hope they will find that this work lives up to the high standards they have set, for themselves and for the profession. Finally, this work would never have been completed were it not for the love and the support of my wife, Susan. A comparative literature major who had the good sense to go into business, she has served as sounding board, critic, and proofreader far longer and with far better grace than anyone could reasonably ask. Moreover, by adding “years to the writing, and joy to the years,” she kept me grounded in reality, even when my head may have been in a fifteenth-century city half a world away. Accordingly, I dedicate this book to her. Michael Marmé Prospect Heights, Brooklyn June 1999 I wish to thank the editors and staff at Stanford University Press for their interest and support throughout a process that proved much more protracted than either they or I could have anticipated at the outset. Whatever frustrations encountered along the way, I remain mindful of the debt I, and the field, owe to Stanford for its continuing support of that endangered species, the scholarly monograph. The editors and production staff did their utmost to make this a more attractive, and more useful, book. Any remaining imperfections—of fact, interpretation, or style—are of course the responsibility of the author. MM Prospect Heights, Brooklyn 2004 This book incorporates material contained in my article “Heaven and Earth: The Rise of Suzhou, 1127–1550,” in Cities in Jiangnan in Late Imperial China, edited by Linda Cooke Johnson (Albany: SUNY, 1993). It appears here by permission of the State University Press of New York.

Conventions

Some of the individuals mentioned in this study were figures of empirewide political and cultural eminence; others were important only in their own time and place. Recognizing that even the former are not household names for the nonspecialist, I thought it helpful to adopt the following conventions: If an individual mentioned in the text is one of the 600+ who have a biography in the Dictionary of Ming Biography or the 800+ who have biographies in Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, that fact is noted by appending DMB or ECCP to his name the first time it appears in a chapter. Where it might be helpful, degrees received and rank attained (in the eighteen-step Ming system, from 9b at the bottom to 1a at the top) are also cited (jr = juren, or provincial graduate; js = jinshi, or metropolitan graduate). Those who held the lowest (prefectural) degree are referred to as shengyuan or xiucai. In Ming times, an alternate route into the scholar-official elite was to become a student in the Imperial Academy. By making contributions in times of emergency, from 1451 one could attain such a berth by purchase; figures from nineteen years in the mid-sixteenth century indicate that, by that time, 42.6 percent of those enrolled held their status as result of their family’s contributions to the state coffers. In addition, a few students who had passed at the prefectural level were selected for further training at the Imperial Academy, then given appointment to low-level office. Quotas for such Tribute Students were supplemented from 1568 on by imperial decrees augmenting the quota for Tribute Students on an ad hoc basis; those obtaining these places were called Tribute Students by Grace (see Ho, Ladder of Success, 27–33; Hagman; Lin Liyue). At the local level, this structure was supplemented in Ming times by systems designed to “use good people to rule good people.” In the late fourteenth century, the empire was organized into ten household groups (jia or tithings); eleven tithings constituted a “hundred” (or li), a group roughly corresponding to a village community. In a ten-year rotation, households served as tithing heads (jiashou) and hundred captains (lizhang). Between this village-level

xii

Conventions

structure and the bureaucratically appointed local magistrate, members of wealthy households were appointed tax captain (liangzhang), a post charged with collection and delivery of the land tax. This entire structure was held together by the flow of paper, decrees or edicts moving from top down, memorials from the bottom up. The following Chinese measures appear with some frequency: li mu qing picul (shi) hu dou catty (jin) ounce (liang) string

One-third of an English mile One-sixth of an acre 100 mu A measure of grain, equal to 133.3 pounds A measure of capacity, from the 1430s set at half of a picul A measure of capacity, generally equal to one-fifth of a hu l.33 pounds avoirdupois Tael; 50 grams or 1.33 ounces avoirdupois 1,000 copper cash

Gr

an

XUZHOU

d

Ca

na

l

HUAI’AN

Gaoyou District YANGZHOU PREFECTURE CHUZHOU PREFECTURE

(Wu District and Changzhou District) Lou River Liu River

ZHENJIANG PREFECTURE YINGTIAN PREFECTURE (Nanjing)

LUZHOU PREFECTURE

HEZHOU PREFECTURE

SUZHOU PREFECTURE

GUAZHOU

TAIPING PREFECTURE

Jiangyin District Wuxi District

CHANGZHOU PREFECTURE

(Wujin District)

(Wuhu District)

Liyang District

Liu Family Harbor

LAKE TAI

Wu Son g Riv e

CHIZHOU PREFECTURE ANQING PREFECTURE NINGGUO PREFECTURE

.

HUIZHOU PREFECTURE

("- ......

z Yan g

i iR

,, ..'

JIAXING PREFECTURE

HANGZHOU PREFECTURE

.......

'

SHAOXING PREFECTURE

/".

/

NINGBO PREFECTURE

YANZHOU •PREFECTURE

•PREFECTURE QUZHOU

\ _j

(Huating District)

HUZHOU PREFECTURE

(Xin’an District) ve r

Shanghai District Da Huangpu River

SONGJIANG PREFECTURE

•

GUANGDE PREFECTURE

r

JINHUA PREFECTURE

Qo

;~

""

Map 1. The Lower Yangzi Macroregion and Its Component Regions

Wuxi District

West Dongting

LAKE TAI

East Dongting

Wujiang District

Chongming District Liu Family Harbor

Zhapu

JIAXING PREFECTURE

a Da Hu

er

Zhelin

ng p u

Taozhai

Shanghai District

Ri v

Jiading District River

SONGJIANG PREFECTURE (Huating District)

Wu So ng

Taicang er Kunshan District Riv District Bao Shan Li u

Bai Mao Harbor

iver Lou R

Changshu District

SUZHOU PREFECTURE (Wu District/Changzhou District)

HUZHOU PREFECTURE

Yixing

Map 2. Suzhou Prefecture and Its Environs in Mid-Ming

Liyang

Gr an dC an al

Yangzi Rive r

Introduction

“Where the Goods of All the Provinces Converge”: Suzhou as a World City Suzhou was one of the preindustrial world’s great cities. From the thirteenth-century Venetian Marco Polo to the nineteenth-century Frenchman Isidore Hedde, the city dazzled Europeans familiar with the most sophisticated forms of urban life in the West. The Italian merchant spoke of “a large and magnificent city. . . . the number of [whose] inhabitants is so great as to be a subject of astonishment.”1 His distant successor, a commercial attaché, “went to Suzhou in Chinese dress and traversed the city and its suburbs in various directions without being recognized or troubled” in 1845. He described a bustling center of manufacture and commerce, set in an intensively exploited and exceptionally generous landscape. Hedde was told that “the city contains a ‘million of inhabitants,’ and that there are other millions in its vicinity.” Although it was not (as many alleged) “the most populous city of the empire,”2 outside the Middle Kingdom only London, Paris, and Tokyo were then comparable in size.3 Hedde’s informants did not mislead him concerning the population of the city or of the surrounding countryside. Suzhou prefecture averaged 1,064.6 people per square kilometer in the early nineteenth century, 1,788.9 in the immediate vicinity of the prefectural seat.4 Although the Lower Yangzi macroregion had a modest urbanization rate,5 city dwellers were concentrated in Suzhou and its adjacent regions.6 Suzhou was an intensely urban corner of a vast agrarian empire. This made it atypical. It did not make it insignificant. The Middle Kingdom was densely populated. It does not follow that it should have had a considerable number of large cities. As moralists East and West understood, so long as human needs remained precariously balanced against the means to satisfy them, great cities were a costly luxury. Insofar as they produced wealth rather than merely consuming it, cities specialized in nonessentials. Food, fiber, and fuel had to be extracted from the countryside. In return, cities performed services—usually at great cost, and commonly in ways that appeared to benefit urbanites more than society as a whole. Cities were often dens of iniquity, crime, and appalling poverty, their promise of

2

Introduction

greater economic opportunities redeemed in the currency of malnutrition and disease, under-employment, and chronic insecurity. Indeed, so many city dwellers lived so badly that cities of any size were dependent on constant infusions of immigrants simply to maintain a given population.7 Great cities were thus deliberate human creations, not the spontaneous outgrowth of a numerous population. A society without considerable surpluses— and the social and political institutions that generated surpluses by extracting them8—would have a very limited urban sector. The larger the city, the greater and more importunate the demands it made on the region surrounding it. Those of considerable size (say, 100,000 or more) could survive only by reordering the world about them so that activity centered on the metropole. The urban core influenced every aspect of human existence, from transportation networks, economic exchanges, and population flows to cultural values and popular expectations. In the process of creating conditions that enabled it to survive and thrive, the preindustrial city shaped—and had the potential to transform—its hinterland.9 All of these circumstances would apply to any large city. There are, however, compelling reasons to focus on Suzhou in the Ming. A city had existed on the spot since 514 B.C.E.; Suzhou is almost as old as Rome. Yet before the Ming, that city had been of only local or regional importance. Low-lying plains and marshy lowlands made up the bulk of the prefecture. Only in mid-Song did official initiative and local entrepreneurship transform that landscape, finally applying water-control techniques perfected in northern Zhejiang to the city’s hinterland.10 Suzhou’s population expanded dramatically, and the adage “When Suzhou and Huzhou ripen, the empire has enough” became a stock phrase. Both landlord and tenant produced for the market, laying the foundations of a thoroughly commercialized economy. Yet this remained the marketing of surpluses rather than trade in commodities: when Suzhou did not ripen (as the adage implies occasionally happened), it withdrew its supplies from the market. To grasp the full significance of what happened in Ming, we must recognize how late and how limited these pre-1368 developments were. The Ming founder imposed extraordinary burdens on this area. These could be sustained only given an already commercialized local economy and an efficient network of water transport. Both deliberately and inadvertently, the state maintained and fostered these elements. Such action was necessary but not sufficient. Forced to rely on exchange rather than command to tap surpluses produced elsewhere, Suzhou could avoid collapse and immiseration only by moving from the marketing of surpluses (which might or might not materialize) to the marketing of commodities—goods produced for sale at a profit. Labor and raw materials in its immediate vicinity had to be systemati-

Introduction

3

cally mobilized were Suzhou to generate exports in the necessary volume. The land tax thus led to creation of a more tightly integrated marketing system in Suzhou’s immediate vicinity. This hierarchical set of central places organized the production and aggregated the collection of commodities for export, distributing imported food—and, increasingly, raw materials—in return. As Skinner has shown, the maintenance of rivers and canals in this area led to the atrophy of standard markets. By mid-Ming, Suzhou’s peasants were not only regularly involved in commercial transactions. They were also directly tied to intermediate- or higher-level market towns.11 Suzhou’s dense population was at once market and labor force. Its natural resources were abundant, and it had ready access to additional raw materials. The diversity and range of its output as well as the highly developed skills of its populace were the equal of anyplace “under heaven.” Moreover, the excellence of the transport networks in Suzhou’s immediate vicinity made optimal use of land, labor, and capital possible. Suzhou not only had more; it could do more with what it had.12 This process could not stop at the local or regional level. Ming Suzhou was vitally dependent on Jiangxi rice, on Guangdong iron, on Fujian lumber, on north China cotton, and on precious metals from abroad.13 Suzhou exchanged its own luxuries and manufactures for exports from other macroregions. The drawing of administrative boundaries through macroregional cores was a policy designed to neutralize centrifugal forces.14 In contrast, interregional exchanges of a long list of key commodities suggest that trade across macroregions (however marginal its significance in global economic terms) was an important centripetal force. These exchanges served to integrate key commercial centers into, and to neutralize their disaffection from, the empire as a whole. Long-distance commerce may have been “the condition for, not the result of the emergence of more regional economies.”15 Suzhou must be seen as hegemon or “leader” in the creation of a Ming Chinese world system and of the macroregions into which (for many purposes) it may be disaggregated. A hegemonic center was not merely the regional metropolis that integrated (and dominated) its macroregion; it was also the focus of a loosely coupled urban system that transcended the boundaries of such regions in significant ways.16 Such a system can be equated with Braudel’s “world cities” or Wallerstein’s world systems17—hierarchically structured systems of exchange centered on the world city at its core. Breadth of contacts, intensity of exchanges, and volume of trade were all greatest at the center. The center also tended to import raw materials and semifinished goods while exporting finished ones.18 Conditioned as they ultimately were by geography, macroregions and their component regions appear to have developed from the center out and the top

4

Introduction

down in the first two centuries of the Ming. By the mid-sixteenth century, increasingly commoditized regional economies covered much of the empire. The cores that formed the nodes of such commerce could only shift from subsistence and the marketing of surpluses to reliance on trade in commodities if mechanisms to aggregate and market items produced for sale (often to distant consumers), distributing gains in cash or kind, were in place.19 Interregional trade encouraged the rise of fairly sophisticated, if still localized, hierarchies of central places in the immediate vicinity of key nodes. Such trade would be facilitated by a concentration of population (in the first instance, itself dependent on reliable and abundant food supplies) and cheap and efficient transport (either as result of a command economy’s desire to tap those surpluses; of the dual-use capacity of facilities created to promote agriculture; or of surplus-takers underwriting investments needed to bring to market what they could not themselves consume). As the volume of commerce expanded, local centers would become more tightly integrated and more distant nodes would elaborate their systems. Areas closest to and most intensively involved in trade with Suzhou were affected most and most quickly by the city’s stimulus and example.21 Throughout the late imperial era, the region centered on Suzhou was as populous as that centered on Hangzhou; it was more populous than that centered on Nanjing. Its central location in the macroregion permitted Suzhou to tap the Nanjing and Hangzhou regions more easily than they could tap each other. It enjoyed similar advantages vis-à-vis other macroregions and was well placed to benefit from foreign trade. By permitting areas to specialize in activities for which they were best suited, Suzhou was able to maximize its output of goods and services. Throughout the macroregion, energies and resources were deployed more efficiently than relatively autarkic subsistence economies would permit. And, since urban life remained an expensive luxury in the preindustrial world, the more efficient the system the fewer city dwellers it required. If urbanization rates in the Lower Yangzi region fell between Song and Qing,21 this was largely due to its reorientation around Suzhou rather than to socioeconomic retroregression. This reorientation permitted areas like Xin’an (whose sons engaged in trade) and Tongcheng (which marketed its rice) to maintain relatively stable and essentially agrarian orders at home while participating fully in the area’s late imperial development.22 As hegemon, Suzhou remained a leader that might be emulated, not a capital that could institutionalize its preeminence. Yet, as the place that shifted first and most thoroughly from the marketing of surpluses to the marketing of commodities, Suzhou and its immediate hinterland benefited disproportion-

Introduction

5

ately from such asymmetrical systems of exchange. Things happened earlier there, permitting the area not only to satisfy the state’s demands but also to slip the demographic moorings that tethered preindustrial urban centers to the carrying capacity of their hinterlands.23 It also fostered attitudes toward commerce that seem to have been significantly less conflicted than those prevalent elsewhere.24 Outlanders regarded that ethos, and the city in which it developed, either as the epitome of sophistication or as the nadir of decadence. With envy or with admiration, all recognized it as the place “where the goods of all the provinces converge.” Those “goods” were not limited to material commodities. They included favorable climate, a generous ecosystem, remarkably efficient transport and communications, the most sophisticated techniques of one of the world’s great civilizations, conscientious administrators, learned scholars, brilliant artists, industrious peasants, dextrous craftsmen, and skilled merchants. Under these circumstances, to study Suzhou purely as an economic entity would illumine neither Suzhou nor its trade. Accordingly, after providing as concrete a sketch of Suzhou and its immediate hinterland in the Ming as our sources allow (in Chapter 1), and providing an overview of the area’s pre-1368 development (in Chapter 2), the body of this work traces interactions between state and local elites over the first two centuries of Ming. Repeatedly, locals proved adept at evading the inconveniences and exploiting the opportunities afforded by official initiatives. Their ingenuity created new realities both on the ground and in the relation of Suzhou to the rest of the empire, realities to which the state responded with further reforms. By the time that process reached an impasse in the mid-sixteenth century, it had transformed Suzhou and created a Suzhou-centered world system. For the first time in Chinese history, that system was centered on a commercial and manufacturing center, not a political capital. A new, and profoundly different, world had been born.

State and Society: The Paradox of Prosperity amid Adversity Firmly grounded in the particulars of a specific locality though it is, this study thus claims to be far more than an addition to the pitifully small number of monographs on pre-nineteenth century Chinese local history. Yet such studies remain vital in their own right. They “provide an important check to generalizations on national trends, not only in economic history but in studies of Chinese kinship and social organization.”25 Equally important, by bringing independent lines of inquiry to bear on the same body of material, local history can significantly qualify and redefine otherwise separate problematiques.26

6

Introduction

Perhaps the most fundamental of these is the relation of state and society.27 Throughout the late imperial age, Suzhou prefecture was treated as a conquered province, forced to provide one-tenth of the empire’s taxes year in and year out. In the early seventeenth century, Suzhou was locus of a series of antigovernment riots that are among the most famous incidents in late Ming history.28 Yet Suzhou not only prospered in these centuries, producing classic exemplars of the amateur ideal along the way; it was also exceptionally successful at securing upper degrees in the fiercely competitive official examinations.29 On their face, these pieces do not seem parts of a coherent whole. Moreover, one of the most robust axioms about the preindustrial city is that cities that were not immediate and direct beneficiaries of the political system were severely limited in size.30 Either received wisdom is very misleading indeed or Suzhou’s prominence was even more astounding than its size, wealth, position, and staying power would suggest. Indeed, it was these obvious paradoxes that first drew me to the subject. Were the taxes real—and really burdensome? The sources leave little doubt that they were both. Yet they also show that early Ming policies were neither irrational nor unworkable: Suzhou had suffered less in the transition from Yuan to Ming than had most of the empire, it was relatively close to the capital, and its transportation network was excellent. Genuine attempts were made to allocate burdens to those best able to bear them. When crops failed, taxes were remitted and taxpayers were permitted to substitute cloth for grain. The level of taxation should not in any case be considered in isolation. It is no less necessary to consider the uses to which taxes were put and the broader relationship between state and society of which they were a part. The perceived quality of local administration, the attention paid to water control (a key public good critical to the area’s commercial as well as its agrarian prosperity), and the relationship between natural disasters and tax relief provide especially useful evidence of this relationship. To such purely local phenomena, we must add maintenance of peace and stability within the realm, creation of ground rules for long-distance trade, the upkeep of roads and canals, the stimulus government-generated demand for luxuries (at court and in the bureaucracy) and necessities (the military) afforded the local economy. All these were important public goods provided by the state. So were a modicum of social control and a sense of the legitimacy of the social order.31 Clearly, the role the state and its agents played in Suzhou’s development was major—and often positive. The notion that Suzhou was in any simple sense the victim of a despotic Ming dynasty cannot be sustained. That state was, however, neither static nor entirely unified in its attitudes and interests. Further,

Introduction

7

many of the developments that most critically affected Suzhou, for good and ill, were undertaken without particular reference to the locality. The relationship of state and society is accordingly one that evolved, and must be traced, over time. It remained true that the city’s integration into an autocratic universal empire was a central, inescapable reality. It shaped everything from local landuse patterns to career decisions for one’s offspring. It did not necessarily shape events in ways the state intended. The imposition of institutions designed to preserve dynastic power over a subcontinental empire on the quite different realities of Suzhou often had unforeseen consequences. This was especially true when the state overreached (as it did in the early fifteenth century). In the medium to long term, subjects—at least the more affluent and better-connected among them—were able to take evasive action. Since the Ming system allocated specific sources of income to particular ends, such evasion quickly threatened to plunge key parts of the imperial system into chaos.32 Yet enduring imperatives of transparency and standardization conspired with the bureaucracy’s respect for precedent to limit the range of politically viable reforms. The resulting compromises lowered the costs of compliance. Given that taxes on agriculture were still much higher than those on trade or handicrafts, incentives to shift from the ”roots” to the ”branches” remained. This led to erosion rather than to outright collapse of the fiscal system—erosion that prompted renewed reform in the mid-sixteenth century. Burdens were finally spread evenly over a district’s fields. Nothing was done to spread the burden more evenly between sectors. (Indeed there is evidence that commerce and urban property were more lightly taxed in the sixteenth than in the fifteenth century.33) Hence the flight to commerce and handicrafts, from rural to urban, continued.

Suzhou’s Local Elites: Toward a Dynamic Explanation of Sociocultural Stability These forces did not act of themselves; they operated on and through individuals. As we shall see, in the short term, matters were far less smooth, costs and benefits far less clear-cut than the preceding summary might suggest—and for historical actors, it is the short term that counts. Process is fundamental to an understanding of how and why options once open were later foreclosed, and certain choices once unlikely came to be preferred. It is as much because I believe that men “make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and

8

Introduction

inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted” as to avoid images of imperial China as a land of eternal standstill that the body of this work is organized in a broadly chronological fashion.34 Important as context and long-range historical trends are to our understanding of the past, all history is lived “crossing the stream feeling for rocks.” We do a disservice, both to the past and to ourselves, if we adopt such a high level of generalization that these existential realities (which are no less a part of the past than climate, geography, relations of production, or mentalités) disappear. And no less than the state and its agents, local elites played an active role in the making of Ming Suzhou. Such elites must be broadly defined. As our focus has shifted from the empire as a whole to the way society operated at particular times and in particular places, moving from the study of eminent and atomized individuals to an examination of their embeddedness in networks and institutions, we have moved away from defining local elites primarily in terms of degrees held.35 Reality was more complex, above all in a place like Suzhou. The claims of old lines had to be balanced against those of illustrious immigrants, those of locals against sojourners, of eremites against examination graduates, of the learned against the wealthy, of rentiers against merchants, of returnees against arrivistes. Weighing such claims was made more complex by the openness of Ming society. With minor exceptions, everyone came from a commoner household. In theory, and to some degree in practice, all males had an opportunity to master the classical curriculum, excel in the examination halls, and enter the scholar-official elite. Land was privately owned, markets were well developed, money-lending and handicrafts were open to those with the necessary skills and capital. Demographic expansion, secular change, and intense competition for key resources (social and cultural as well as material) posed additional challenges. Opportunities for upward (and downward) mobility were thus abundant. Western models are of limited utility in analyzing such a society. Clearly, attempts to define such an elite purely in terms of their relationships to the means of production are doomed to failure. Although wealth, status, and power were key variables, their meaning and relationships were quite different from those typical of liberal capitalist society. And, unlike an aristocratic order, elite standing was not an innate characteristic. Each line, in each generation, had to validate anew its claim to membership in the upper tier of this twotiered society.36 The analysis presented here accordingly builds on the model Esherick, Rankin, and their collaborators developed to analyze Chinese elites and their patterns of dominance. Although, at least in Ming Suzhou, involvement in trade did not carry any

Introduction

9

taint, wealth in and of itself was not enough to qualify as a member of the elite. Virtue; cultural attainment; and degrees, titles, or offices played central roles in shaping the self-definition of local elites and in ratifying their standing in the eyes of the larger community. The state, through its powers of accreditation and appointment, provided crucial resources for achieving and validating such recognition. It also helped to uphold, and thus stabilize, widely shared definitions of virtue and culture by rewarding certain qualities.37 Suzhou’s residents were not isolated individuals; nor did they view the world purely in terms of short-term profit maximization. Synchronically, they were members of households, households for whom economic realities, although never trivial, could not be severed from social, cultural, and demographic considerations.38 Diachronically, they were members of patrilines, those chains of fathers and sons linking past, present, and future. If we are to fathom the ways in which elites responded to the perils and opportunities before them, we must accordingly see them as family members in both senses. This means that we must reconstruct their plight at particular moments and over time in as much detail as possible. Limiting our focus to the prominent and the articulate is problematic: excellence is always exceptional, and even the most successful families could not maintain such standing for very long. Given the need to understand the experience of a more broadly defined elite, and particularly to comprehend mercantile as well as scholarly success, I have sought to cast my net broadly enough to incorporate the experience of the entire upper tier. Evidence related to those who achieved empirewide prominence, meriting entries in the Dictionary of Ming Biography, is certainly relevant. Yet if our goal is to understand the ways in which families succeeded and replicated their successes (or failed to do so) over time, the experiences of those far more numerous figures who were important only locally and in their own day are as, if not more, crucial. The material for reconstructing these elites is abundant. Not only does this area boast unusually large numbers of local gazetteers and lineage genealogies; it is also rich in collected writings (wenji) that preserve the “social biographies” members of the elite regularly wrote for and about their peers: “Tomb Record and Inscription” (muzhiming), “Grave Declaration” (mubiao), “Spirit-Path Tombstone Inscription” (shendaobei), “Inscription for a Tomb Prepared in the Owner’s Lifetime” (kuangcangming), “Record of Conduct” (xingzhuang), and the like. Valuable as they are, these sources also present problems. They were produced either by one’s friends or on commission for ritual purposes. They were designed both to edify posterity and to enhance the family’s reputation. To accomplish these ends effectively, the unruly stuff of lived experience was

10

Introduction

transmuted into moral fable. To give these fables the requisite dramatic tension, the chroniclers routinely portrayed their subjects as heroic paragons locked in struggle with an imperfect, often amoral world. Funerary inscriptions are thus more authorized biographies than unvarnished primary sources. Like the biographies in dynastic histories and local gazetteers (for which they were often a source), they were intended to ensure that the good virtuous men did in their lives would live after them. The dynastic historian was of course obliged to include less-flattering information—but, so as not to blunt his didactic point, that information was usually inserted elsewhere. Moreover, the historian also taught by negative example. With rare exceptions, the eulogist was content to let the evil men did be interred with their bones. Occasionally, by reading the texts on one individual one can qualify the hyperbole and correct the omissions in another. For the most part, however, these sources provide only flattering portraits. Social biographies were also a form of literary composition. Many of those that have come down to us (especially, one suspects, many of those that deal with relatively obscure individuals) were preserved because the author had manipulated the stylistic conventions of the form with particular brio. It would be naive indeed to approach them as if they afforded unvarnished access to the Truth. Yet were these documents to be persuasive to peers and posterity, they had to be plausible. As the texts are at pains to emphasize, the author usually knew the deceased (or his family) intimately. Even texts interred with the body circulated as drafts among the living. Authorship was a public act. The incidents of an individual life must often have been shaped and interpreted to maximize their purchase as moral and spiritual capital. But neither the writer nor the deceased’s family would benefit from blatant fabrication— particularly of mundane events, often the most interesting aspects for a social historian. In sum, these texts pose in more obvious terms a challenge common to all historical documents. None were crafted to serve our purposes, and none can be assumed to speak for themselves. We must interrogate them with these realities constantly in mind. At least for those not yet persuaded that it is impossible to mine texts for traces of a reality that lay behind them, they remain an invaluable source.39 Indexes of Ming social biographies do exist, but they were compiled to advance the study of high culture and imperial politics. Combing through the available wenji, one discovers many, many more relevant texts than the most exhaustive available indices identify—so many that reading them all would indefinitely postpone completion of a project such as this. Sampling this universe seemed an appealing solution. Unfortunately, the texts in question are

Introduction

11

less pieces of a puzzle than tiles in a mosaic. Any pattern that emerged from analysis of a random selection could all too easily prove a mere figment of the historian’s imagination. Narrowing the temporal focus might seem a reasonable alternative. Yet this would have made it impossible to grasp changes over time. It would also ignore a key reality: full understanding of any one text often depends on reading accounts of wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sons, accounts that might well fall outside any temporal boundaries chosen. The solution I adopted was to focus on a few surnames, systematically reading everything I could find either in the extant indices or in my own survey of available wenji from Ming Wu and Changzhou. The sources themselves impose a structure, minimizing the dangers of arbitrary selection and interpretation. In consequence, significant connections are less likely to be missed (or invented). The question then became which surnames. Chen seemed a natural choice, since in Ming this was the surname borne by the area’s largest single group of upper-degree-holders.40 Deliberately seeking a contrast, I chose to focus on the Tang surname. Marginal in terms of the gazetteer rosters of degrees received and offices held, members of this urban merchant family are described in a remarkable number of available social biographies. In some meaningful sense unquestionably part of mid-Ming Suzhou’s local elite, their resemblances to and contrasts with the Chens permit us to examine the range of elite experience and to tease out the commonalities that its most disparate elements shared. Finally, even in Ming times, the “four surnames of Wu”— families whose local prominence can be traced back to the Han and the Three Kingdoms (206 B.C.–A.D. 280)—accounted for one in seven recipients of an upper degree. Accordingly, I also examined genealogical data on the most successful of the “four surnames,” the Lu. Together, Chen, Lu, and Tang accounted for 92 of the 795 upper degrees awarded natives of Wu district in the Ming, as well as 75 of the 742 listed for Changzhou.41 They thus provide a sample of more than 10 percent of the examination graduates of both districts. There is good reason to believe that this is an ample basis for describing the local elite as a whole. As we have already emphasized, elite status was a matter of achievement rather than ascription in Ming China—patents of nobility were rarely granted those not related to the imperial house, and use of the protection privilege had been severely curtailed. Those who passed the exams had undergone an education that, among many other things, served as a protracted and intense process of socialization. Granted, many members of the local elite never passed the provincial or metropolitan exams. Yet this arguably made adherence to conventions governing elite behavior more, not less, important. Non-degree-holders gained access to

12

Introduction

elite society, and thus ratified their elite standing, only if they were perceived to act like members of the elite. It would be rash, without good evidence and good arguments, to generalize blithely from the part to the whole, assuming unanimity of either interest or opinion among the elites. The internal dynamics of elite society nonetheless argue for widely shared norms and general conformity to common expectations. Entries in the Dictionary of Ming Biography provide an additional check. Data on the most prominent members of Suzhou’s elite, broadly speaking, replicate trends one finds in sampling by surname. Although the inclusion of additional surnames, or the choice of different ones, would provide different details, conceivably shifting the timing of developments a decade or two in one direction or another, it seems unlikely that they would produce a radically different picture of local developments. Our family histories thus not only serve to ground our account of general trends in concrete experience. They also claim to describe the experience of the elite as a whole. As such, they are central to our argument that elites had neither means, motive, nor opportunity to transcend the imperial order.

The Reality—and Limits—of Smithean Growth A focus on local elites accordingly should help us grapple with the issue Evelyn Rawski identified as the most urgent in late imperial socioeconomic history—“to place this dynamic growth within a larger historical context. . . . [and to provide a] reassessment that links the new findings to [the] old question [of why the Chinese economy did not industrialize by itself].”42 Addressing an analogous problem, Francesca Bray has recently argued that technology (very broadly defined) “is not interesting or successful only when it produces social or epistemological ruptures; though the energy generated by changes in technology is by nature disruptive, it may be successfully contained and channeled. No less energy goes into continuity and cohesion than into revolution, and no less careful explanation is required.”43 Invoking Foucault, Bourdieu, and Elias, she sought to understand the ways in which female roles were simultaneously reshaped and reproduced during the late imperial era. The market, like technology, is by nature disruptive. If market forces were successfully contained and channeled, we need a framework that will explain continuities as well as ruptures. Recent work has amply confirmed the reality and the pervasiveness of market forces in Ming Jiangnan. An emerging consensus with respect to the timing, amplitude, and distribution of population growth implies expansion that

Introduction

13

was more robust and earlier than we had thought.44 Conversely, it is increasingly evident that diffusion of the best techniques and optimal combination of the best practices were much more gradual processes than we once believed. As a result, developments long thought complete by the end of Song now appear to have continued into the Qing, even in agriculture, even in Jiangnan.45 They coincided with the expansion of proto-industrialism, fueling Smithean growth within a Suzhou-centered world system throughout the Ming and Qing.46 Such growth kept wages down and costs low at the same time that it allocated resources (given prevailing tastes, technology, and resources) to their most productive ends. Smithean growth in Ming China differed from the Scottish philosopher’s model in at least one important respect: economic actors pursuing their rational self-interest were not atomized individuals but households, their decisions made by household heads with an eye to the long-term interests of the group as well as its immediate advantage. Since the household was a unit of production and consumption, an idle family member lowered output per capita. As long as employment augmented the net income of the family firm, any contribution to the family coffers increased average returns per worker. In such a system, distinctions between involutionary growth without development and “real” growth were neither obvious nor meaningful.47 However modest the contribution of each individual decision, steady growth in the numbers of those producing for the market expanded the fund of goods and services available to society at large even as it enhanced the living standards of individuals. How then explain imperial China’s ability to absorb the massive qualitative and quantitative change such growth implies? Even as scholars have confirmed the expanding reach of the market, their work has called into question many of the static structural factors once invoked in this regard. In place of an all-powerful state capable of blocking change, we now have a state that remained the same size—and thus withered away as the population quintupled—between 1368 and 1850.48 Although practice often departed from theory, blanket charges of oppressive taxation of commerce no longer seem tenable.49 Recent studies have emphasized that China’s civil law was more adequate than we used to think—and Western advances far more recent.50 The notion that Confucianism was in any simple or monolithic way hostile to commerce should be equally obsolete;51 it certainly does not apply to Ming Suzhou. Powerful kinship groups, feudal guilds, lack of “true” cities, antagonistic merchant/scholar-official relations—none of these purported barriers obtained.52 Further, whatever critics’ unease with the borders of his macroregions, G. William Skinner’s main point has been widely accepted: few scholars now view

14

Introduction

the Middle Kingdom as an undifferentiated unit whose parts trace a common trajectory.53 Yet if, for many important purposes, China should be thought of as eight or nine macroregions, each with its own history, those who would cite China’s lack of external trade or its maintenance of equilibrium (albeit at a high level) as decisive factors face a far more demanding task. Since an industrial revolution starts as a breakthrough in one or two highly localized sectors, spreading slowly and irregularly to other places and other parts of an economy,54 a high level equilibrium trap would seem to require that every industry in every area at every point in the Ming and Qing was too close to equilibrium to breach the system. However plausible such a high-level equilibrium might seem for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in the fourteenth and fifteenth population was not pressing so hard on resources as to discourage innovation.55 In the sixteenth century, population growth (hence global demand) slowed while the areas oriented to a proto-industrial market economy continued to expand. Suzhou faced increasing competition, yet there is no evidence of entrepreneurs seizing control of and rationalizing the production process in the hope of maximizing profits. Nor were there signs that significant numbers retreated from the market, preferring the lower but more secure returns investment in land would provide. This is where a focus on local elites proves instructive. For among the local population it was the elites—and the elites alone—who had the ability to allocate human and material resources in ways that would transform or reproduce the system.56 A market so efficient, and so fragmented, provided little reason to expect that greater control would bring higher returns. In agriculture, high land taxes reinforced a logic inherent in the nature of irrigated riziculture. For those who did not shun agriculture altogether, renting one’s fields out provided a higher return with less bother than managerial landlordism would have.57 And there is ample evidence that, however dysfunctional this order may have been for the Ming state or for the population as a whole, the status quo served the interests of Suzhou’s elites rather well. Hence those who might have changed the system lacked incentives to do so.

Late Imperial, Early Modern—or Ming? Finally, why is the working definition of Ming the dynasty’s first two hundred years? And is that Ming best characterized as “late imperial” or as “early modern”? The first question is the less complicated one. In common with a large

Introduction

15

number of recent studies,58 I regard the long seventeenth century (a period that starts around 1570) as a discrete era in which a different set of issues comes to the fore. Those issues are interesting and important, and I plan to examine them systematically in a subsequent work. I do believe, however, that attempts to synthesize evidence from these separate eras have been premature and have distorted our understanding of both. I also hold (1) that it is as important to study China’s history in periods of order and prosperity as it is to examine phases of anomie, confusion, and decline; and (2) that it is only in light of the former that we can begin to understand the true nature and significance of the latter. Although I am conscious of the parallels one can draw between Ming-Qing China and the same period in Western Europe, I must number myself among those who regard China between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries as late imperial, not early modern. As Richard von Glahn recently observed, there has been a widespread readiness to assume that a vigorous market economy and widespread commoditization are inherently liberating forces.59 Having found ample evidence of money and markets in China throughout the past thousand years, many scholars have moved on to explore the cultural implications of nascent capitalism. Perhaps the most daring practitioner of this approach has been William T. Rowe. In his seminal two-volume work on Hankou and in a series of influential and provocative essays, Rowe has argued that China’s cities were both truly urban and genuinely early modern.60 Reversing the hoary tradition that saw an overly powerful state as an insuperable barrier to the further development of Chinese society, Rowe has argued that, at least from the sixteenth century on, Chinese capitalism flourished, giving rise to something closely and meaningfully analogous to Habermas’s civil society.61 It was the state’s failure to develop, providing the institutional arrangements and public investments essential for industrialization, that ultimately limited the scope of these forces. In a striking passage, Rowe asked rhetorically, “Do the vigorously private, urban-commercial worlds of the Southern Song, the late Ming and the late Qing perhaps represent Chinese society operating on its ‘normal’ track, and the despotic command economies of the Yuan and early Ming and the exceptionally able bureaucratic management of the high Qing no more than short-term deviations?” His affirmative answer comes as little surprise.62 Stimulating as such iconoclasm is, this approach—and the research priorities it implies—has its dangers. Not only does the early-modern thesis foster systematic neglect of periods and places in which the state was strong, but in so doing it hinders our understanding of the nature and limitations of Chinese

16

Introduction

development when and where it was not. Rowe’s critics have charged him with slighting the role of the state, a charge made more serious (and more cogent) by von Glahn’s lucid discussion of monetary policy. Building on recent Japanese scholarship, the latter has shown that in China money was first and foremost a fiscal instrument, not a medium of exchange or a store of value.63 Rather than the market springing up independently of the yamen, in China it began as the yamen’s protégé. Only gradually and through an as yet largely unexplored process did it gain some autonomy. The retreat of the state, its remarkably self-denying character,64 must then be understood as part of the same process that led to the expanding reach of the market. It is one of the key theses of this book that the evolution of state/local relations in Ming Suzhou was a crucial phase of this process. As Hymes and Schirokauer have stressed, the early and mid-Ming constitute an especially crucial gap in our understanding of China’s development. Decisions made in the Song had to be reaffirmed, in ways too little understood until now, in a dramatically different Ming context were they to endure.65 It is precisely this process (which, as Paul Smith has argued, turns decisively on the nature of post-Song elites)66 that I describe below. Yet it is no easier to reenter the same stream a second time in China than elsewhere. Hence the character of those decisions can be grasped only by studying the process in Ming. Rather than dismissing large chunks of imperial history as deviations from a “normal” track, I would argue for a dynastic spiral, each period of order emerging when and as a new regime devises methods of successfully coping with tensions unleashed in the preceding period. That period of order in turn incubated the forces and the context out of which Rowe’s next progressive phase emerged. One of the great and in its own terms insuperable limitations of the “early-modern” account—its inability to make sense of China’s stubborn refusal to develop parallel to the West—can be overcome (relatively easily) if we see the liminal experiences of the periods Rowe emphasizes as outgrowths of, and hence conditioned by, the eras of order and prosperity neglected heretofore. At some level, all history is comparative. One cannot think, much less write, without using the concepts and vocabulary of one’s own time and place; however firmly based in the sources, our inquiry is inevitably structured by contemporary concerns. Prematurely invoking the early-modern model as an allencompassing paradigm nonetheless risks obscuring more than it clarifies. I am convinced that, using less-global paradigms, we can make better sense of the Chinese historical record. The ultimate test of an approach is its ability to provide a more satisfying and satisfactory interpretation of the data.

Introduction

17

Accordingly, after tracing Suzhou’s experience in the Ming, the “Conclusion” deploys that evidence to address two central issues. First, how were market forces successfully integrated into the Ming order—as they appear never to have been in Song?67 And, second, how did that integration shape the development of those forces in the late imperial era? With such large ends in view, let us then engage in local history.68

1

Heaven in a Very Small Space Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

In the heart of a fertile and well-watered plain, some forty-five miles northwest of Shanghai, sits the ancient city of Suzhou. Although only fragments of the city wall (once the third longest in the empire) now stand, a visitor touring the famed pagodas and gardens, or pausing on a bridge over one of the city’s canals, might well feel that the prospect before him had changed little since the Son of Heaven last faced south. Anyone who had prepared himself by reading some of the better scholarship on China would have encountered the pairing of the 1945 aerial reconnaissance photo and the stone-engraved map of the city (1229).1 He would probably not realize that the district’s population in the first decades of the twentieth century was almost precisely that recorded for the same area in the fourteenth.2 These bits of information would merely serve to confirm his suspicions, however: the “land of eternal standstill” lay stretched out before him.3 He would of course be mistaken. The “unspoiled” character of contemporary Suzhou is largely the result of modern changes that shifted its wholesale grain trade to Wuxi and its commercial and industrial functions to Shanghai, undermined many of the advantages its location offered before the age of rail, and virtually eliminated its role as a political and cultural center.4 In the early nineteenth century the district’s population was three to four times that of the early twentieth; the city proper was then home (according to one estimate) to 700,000 or (according to another) to 1 million people.5 Suzhou was thus not only one of the world’s leading commercial and industrial centers, a regional metropolis integrating (and dominating) the empire’s wealthiest and most densely populated macroregion between 1500 and 1850.6 It was also the largest noncapital city on the face of the earth throughout this period. It thus has multiple claims to our attention.

Late Imperial Observers The enterprise is not entirely without precedent. The Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci, who spent a decade in one of the most modern cities of the European

20

Heaven in a Very Small Space

sixteenth century,7 left an account of Suzhou circa 1600: This is one of the two towns which the Chinese have put into the proverb: “What in heaven is called the seat of the blessed, on earth is Suzhou and Hangzhou.” It is one of the most important cities of this region and is known for its splendor and wealth, for its numerous population and for about everything else that makes a city grand. It is situated on a calm river of fresh water, or one might more aptly say on a lake, swept by gentle winds. People move about here on land and on water, as they do in Venice, but the water here is fresh and clear, unlike that in Venice, which is salty and brackish. Both the streets and the bridges rest upon wooden piles of pine, sunk deep into the river, after the European fashion. A great part of the merchandise from Portugal, by way of Macao, and from other foreign countries, passes through this river port. The merchants here carry on a heavy trade throughout the whole year with the other trading centers of the kingdom, with the result that there is scarcely anything that one cannot purchase at this mart. There is only one entrance to the city by land but various entrances by water. The city is all bridges, very old but beautifully built, and those over the narrow canal are constructed as single arches. Nowhere in China can one find more butter and milk products, nor better rice wine, which is exported to Beijing and to the realm in general. This center is about two days’ journey from the sea, heavily fortified, and is the principal of the eight cities in the district.8

Although this description is not without its confusions, the details—down to and including the rather surprising reference to milk products—can be confirmed in contemporaneous Chinese sources.9 In tone, indigenous accounts are apt to be less impartial, no doubt because they could perceive subtleties lost on the most perceptive of foreigners. Its towering pagodas apart, the city’s architecture rang changes on the theme of courtyard surrounded on three (or four) sides by rectangular rooms. Extravagance in the construction of eaves, to the native a sure method of distinguishing the opulence of buildings and the status of their owners,10 may not have seemed quite so impressive to one whose tastes were shaped by the cathedrals and palaces of the Italian peninsula. According to the poet and painter Tang Yin (1470–1524; DMB),11 however, the second of his arts could not adequately portray the city of his birth: On earth the happy land is Wu. In its midst there is the Chang Gate; it also is daring and brave. There kingfisher sleeves [of beautiful women] number three thousand; there are towers above and below. There is yellow gold in the hundred myriads and water to east and west. Through five watches the markets go on—how could one add to the utmost? If one compares it with the four quarters of the world, invariably they are not its equal. If an artist copied it to make a picture he would say painting was difficult work.12

Others painted a less rosy picture: Tang Yin’s teacher and contemporary, Zhou Chen (d. ca. 1535; DMB), produced his famous series of sketches of the dispossessed in 1516.13 The debate over the quality of life in the city—and the conditions that provoked it—would persist throughout the late imperial era,

Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

21

Gu Yanwu (1613–82; ECCP) contributing a particularly scathing analysis that linked the misery of most commoners to the elite’s pursuit of the inessential.14 Yet critics had neither power nor program to rectify this state of affairs. Although few seem to have been as sanguine as the eighteenth-century writer who argued that the extravagance of the few provided the livelihood of the many,15 there was a growing realization that sudden reform might harm those least able to bear additional burdens.16 However abortive the policies of moralists and social critics, their strictures serve as a useful reminder that fertile fields, a dense population, and busy markets in which “the goods of the fourteen provinces converge” had not made the majority noncombatants in the struggle for survival.17 That apparent collective wealth was accompanied by grinding individual poverty will scarcely surprise students of the premodern city: from their advent, urban systems were less spontaneous outgrowths of favored hinterlands than mechanisms that created a society’s surplus by expropriating it.18 Nonetheless, cities the size of late imperial Suzhou were quite unusual before the Industrial Revolution. Capitals of states, bending the resources of the political system to the breaking point (and sometimes beyond), occasionally attained these dimensions. But Suzhou was neither a capital nor a recipient of the state’s largesse; indeed, its wealth and labor power were systematically tapped to fill the imperial coffers. How did Suzhou manage to survive, and even—in some respects at least—thrive, under such conditions?

The Agricultural Base One key factor was Suzhou’s location, at the core of the Lower Yangzi macroregion. However necessary, this remained far from sufficient—Suzhou had, after all, occupied that spot for the two millennia preceding its emergence as a dominant center. Many other elements, within and without, had their part to play. Among the most important was Suzhou’s agricultural base. Even this was as much the product of generations of human effort as it was a result of the area’s natural endowment. No enumeration of local products is definitive, but the early sixteenth-century gazetteer of Suzhou prefecture referred to seventeen varieties of nonglutinous and twelve varieties of glutinous rice, six strains of wheat and six types of beans.19 It listed nine kinds of fruit in addition to eleven different tangerines and twelve varieties of plums. There were thirteen varieties of peony, thirty-six of chrysanthemum, and nineteen of assorted flowers. The roster went on: six kinds of trees and seven of bamboo, thirteen types of vegetables and six of melon, five “water fruits” and four “stream vegetables,” twenty-four medicinal

Ca l

Hushu (Xushi) zhen

Wangting

na

Likou

Huangdai shi

Wuta

Nanqiao/Beiqiao

Lake Yangcheng

Xiangcheng shi

Yuanhe tang

Kunshan District

East Dongting

Lutou

Shexia zhen

(Hengjing) zhen Wujiang District

Map 3. Ming Wu and Changzhou Districts

West Dongting

Zhouzhuang

Lake Dianshan

Li u

Zhanglian tang

Lake Mao

Shanghai District

Baoshan

Liu Family Harbor

Chongming

SONGJIANG PREFECTURE (Huating District)

g River

Jiading District

er Riv

Wu S on

Taicang Subprefecture

Lou River Weiting Tiger Lumu zhen (Zhihe tang) Lujingba Lake Sha Hill Yuecheng shi Dashi (SUZHOU PREFECTURE) Guangfu zhen Tangpu Luzhi (Fuli) zhen Xietang Hengtang zhen Wangmu shi Mudu zhen Xinguo zhen Precious Belt Bridge Mount Yinshan Lake Xiang Mount LAKE TAI shi Xukou Chen Heng Chenmu zhen Hengjin

Gr an d

Changshu District

Baimao

Da Huang pu

Wuxi District

G r a n d C a na l

Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

23

plants, plus thirteen miscellaneous varieties of flora which fit none of these categories. In addition, the catalog included twenty-one scaly fish and six with shells, four species of bird, eight types of stone, seven varieties of silk and eight of cloth, ten types of utensils, and twenty-two delicacies. Finally, it listed eleven occupations: embroiderers, mounters of paintings, silversmiths, lacquer workers, makers of needles, iron workers, tinsmiths, workers in copper, carpenters, plasterers, and kiln workers.20 The last part of this inventory was especially selective: many of the more humble callings (makers of hemp sandals and weavers of sails) went unmentioned, while the most common occupations— farmer, fisherman, textile worker—were implicit in the list of products. Of course neither skills nor raw materials were uniformly distributed over an undifferentiated plane. The sandy soils of the districts bordering the Yangzi, ill-suited to riziculture, were excellent for cotton; the areas adjacent to Lake Tai were the true land of rice and fish.21 Even within the narrow compass of the two districts that divided the prefectural seat and formed its immediate hinterland—the referent of Suzhou in this study unless otherwise qualified—one discovers striking variations (see Map 3). The famed Tiger Hill apart, Changzhou was a level plain broken only by lakes, rivers, and canals. Such terrain was ideally suited to paddy culture—once the necessary investment in water control had been made. Between late Tang (618–906) and Ming (1368–1644) times, the low-lying areas had been brought into production. To do so, it was necessary to construct polders—fields surrounded by dikes. Given the demands of rice culture, these were not internally undifferentiated. To maintain (and even enhance) the fertility of the soil, the rice plot must be plowed until the surface is a “liquid layer of puddled mud . . . leaving an impervious layer of hardpan beneath to prevent leaching.” The surface must be as level as possible, for yields depend on crops receiving precise amounts of water at the right time. Stagnant water is particularly dangerous, for “rice is highly sensitive to water temperature, and suffers especially if the water becomes too hot in the summer months.” The optimum size of a rice field is accordingly one-sixth of an acre (not coincidentally, the dimensions of one mu). Polders were thus not huge fields surrounded by dikes but an intricate mosaic of plots divided by ditches and internal channels: The levels of the plots must . . . be graded like a dish, and to prevent the formation of a pool in the middle, the bunds between the plots have to be constructed parallel to the margin. In order to raise water from the stream outside into the outer plots, square-pallet chain-pumps are fixed at selected spots on the bank and the water is pumped into small irrigation channels that also serve as drainage ditches, conducting the water from plot to plot and eventually into a deep trench dug in the lowest part of the [poldered fields], from which the used irrigation water is pumped back into the stream outside.22

24

Heaven in a Very Small Space

As the gazetteer emphasized, these fields were productive only with an unceasing investment of human labor. When there was too much water, the threatened dikes had to be reinforced. In years of drought, these same dikes became barriers that had to be surmounted if what water there was were to reach the crops.23 Moreover, the need for fertilizer—be it night soil, river mud scooped out of the channels and spread on the fields in spring, or (from late Ming) soybean cakes added in late summer—was recognized, adding further to the peasants’ labors.24 In all these respects, the land nearest to the polder wall was best placed. Not surprisingly, these fields were held by the wealthy. The poorest had to make do with those in the interior of the polder. These were the last to receive irrigation water in times of drought, the last to be drained in times of flood, the fields with least access to the fertilizing mud from the channels, and accordingly the fields with the lowest yields. Although double-cropping of rice never displaced a single planting of the more highly prized late-ripening (geng) varieties,25 wheat was normally grown on the drained paddy fields in winter.26 Eighteenth-century editions of the local gazetteer assert that the district’s peasants had no skills besides husbandry. Although cotton was never a significant crop around Lake Tai and cultivation of the mulberry spread quite slowly from areas south and west,27 such statements clearly exaggerated the pristine character of the local economy.28 Nonetheless, the sources do suggest—arteries of trade and fragments of internal frontier apart—an intensively exploited corner of a thoroughly agrarian realm.29

A Hinterland Undergoing Development Changzhou’s villages must have been exceptionally populous, averaging three thousand or more souls in the late fourteenth century.30 But such summary figures reduce variations—which must have been far more significant for social life—to a bland mean. Moreover, twentieth-century descriptions of this area suggest that these were named points of relatively dense settlement surrounded by unnamed (or at least unlisted) satellite hamlets rather than strictly nucleated villages. Houses were often built on polder dikes.31 These communities were internally stratified, albeit not quite so sharply as Gu Yanwu’s dictum that 10 percent of the population owned the land worked by the other 90 percent would imply.32 While there are ample reasons for caution in ascribing late seventeenth-century conditions to the early sixteenth century,33 the 1675 cadastral surveys offer a fineness of detail otherwise unobtainable (see Table 1). They describe the rights in land of 514 households in one of the 741 “hundreds” or “wards” (li/tu/bi) into which late imperial Changzhou was divided for pur-

Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

25

t abl e 1 Claims to Land of Various Types of Household in Changzhou’s Township 21 Xia, Ward 8 (Area held [less than xmu]; numbers in cells = households in 1675, unless otherwise noted)

Status

Rentier Landlord/ Cultivator Landlord/ Cultivator/ Tenant Landlord/ Tenant Owner/ Cultivator Owner/ Cultivator/ Tenant Tenant

2.5

5.0

10.0

20.0

50.0

100.0

300.0

43 1

48 2

29 3

31 6

14 1

3

1 3

1

2

7

6

1

1 29 4

Total

Percent of households

169 16

32.9 3.1

17

3.3

1

2

0.4

12

7

48

9.3

1

8

52

10.1

23

16

58

61

35

36

18

2

Total

135

126

85

103

55

6

4

210

Percentage

26.6

24.5

16.5

20.0

10.7

1.2

0.8

514

40.9 100

100

Source: Tsurumi Naohiro, “Ko ki Ju gonen jo ryo , Soshu fu Cho shu ken gyorin zusaki no dento to keiteki ko satsu,” Kimura Masao sensei taikan kinen Toyoshu ronshu, 324–25 (table 7). Township (du) 21 xia, ward (tu) 8 is marked on Map 3.

poses of tax administration.34 As such, it omits the landless (agricultural laborers, peddlers, and the like). Furthermore, space defined by the hundred (li) clearly did not coincide with the boundaries of economic activity for all 514 households it does list.35 Two-thirds of the latter (and all of the owner-cultivators) held less than ten mu—the acre and a half generally accepted as the amount of land needed to support a family—and just over half held less than the five mu seventeenth-century experts deemed essential to support a family using the best techniques available. This is probably less significant than the fact that nearly equal percentages of landlords and tenants held more than these amounts.36 Subsistence deficits must have been covered by some combination of holdings in adjacent tracts, handicraft production, and hired labor for others.37 The proportion attributable to agriculture could be estimated if data were available for a block of contiguous hundreds, but it is already evident that conditions varied significantly from one corner of the district to another.38 Nonetheless, further studies are unlikely to modify the most striking impression provided by Table 1, that of a minutely stratified society of smallholders. Much of the terrain west and southwest of the prefectural seat was hilly, hence less ideally suited to the cultivation of grain; “and yet it produced an

26

Heaven in a Very Small Space

abundance of local products. The mountains had pines and grasses, the forests had fruits, the vegetable gardens melons. They cultivated mulberry trees and raised silkworms. In the fourth and fifth months the rural villages became markets.”39 Nonetheless, according to Cao Zishou (Wu district magistrate, 1559–63), the common habit of referring to Wu and Changzhou in the same breath was seriously misleading. In reality, Wu was not half the level of Changzhou. The areas immediately south and west of the city wall—which seem on modern maps a topographic extension of Changzhou—actually had fertile soil, though the inhabitants benefited little from it thanks to the importunate demands of the imperial fisc. The balance of the district was blocked by mountains or covered by water, forcing the people to rely on the fish of the lakes and the fuel of the hillsides to provide a living: “The two mountains [East and West Dongting] are best off; the Mudu region is next to them. The Hengjin area is next in turn. As to the rest, it is not worth discussing.”40 Wu’s villages were smaller on average than those of Changzhou.41 And part of the district’s population—the fishermen of Lake Tai—lived on their boats the year round, their stooped posture betraying their calling when they came ashore to market their catch.42 Yet the pattern Magistrate Cao describes was not one handed down from time immemorial. In the early fifteenth century the Lake Tai region—East and West Dongting—was still considered a backwater. Indeed, it was so backward that “when officials came to solicit students to study in the district school, all the young men went into hiding. The only one who volunteered . . . [was] not regarded as overly bright.”43 Other peripheral areas had turned an unfavorable land-man ratio and a sought-after local product or two to good account.44 By mid-Ming, East and West Dongting had joined their ranks. The people cultivated fruit trees—particularly the tangerine and the pomelo—and the silkworm mulberry: “The third and fourth months of the lunar calendar are called silkworm months—every family shuts its doors and stays at home [to tend the silkworms].” The area’s surplus mulberry leaves were sold in Huzhou, the prefecture immediately south of Lake Tai famed for producing the highest quality raw silk. In addition to selling their own silk thread in front of Suzhou’s citygod temple, Dongting merchants also supplied the prefectural seat with flowers and fresh fruit.45 From such modest local beginnings, the area spawned one of the empire’s most important groups of interregional merchants: [Dongting natives] take to commerce to make their living, for the soil is narrow and the people are numerous. Men reaching the age of seventeen or eighteen clasp their capital under their arm and go out to trade in Chu, Wei, Qi, and Lu [the Middle Yangzi and North China macroregions]. They scatter far and do not arrive [at a final destination];

Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

27

there are those who do not return to their home for years at a time. They have skill in the use of boats and oars: traversing rivers and lakes and traveling about they must use boats, hence young and old are all adept at handling them. They are also able to swim.46

Although they never specialized in a particular branch of commerce, natives of East Dongting were most active on the northern route, exchanging the raw cotton (an estimated 30 percent of the raw material used by Jiangnan weavers) of Henan and Shandong and the dyestuffs of Jiangxi and Huguang for finished cloth and other luxuries produced in Jiangnan. The key arteries for this trade were the Grand Canal route (with Linqing as a critical base) and the Yangzi route (in which Wuhu played a central role), yet the interests of individual merchants periodically drew them as far south as Fujian and Guangdong.47 The Yangzi route proper was West Dongting’s sphere of activity. In the sixteenth century, they established a native-place association (huiguan) at Changsha—until the emergence of Hankou, their key base in central China. Wuhu played an important, but secondary, role. This trade centered on the exchange of Jiangnan cloth for Huguang rice. Dongting merchants appear to have dominated Suzhou’s grain trade. Exchanging food for cloth, they could reap profits at both ends of their journey without having to rely on price fluctuations. As Suzhou locals, they were able to minimize their reliance on brokers; this permitted them to sell grain more cheaply, and buy Suzhou manufactures at more reasonable prices, than their competitors. In addition, their prominent role in Huguang enabled them, by the seventeenth century, to achieve a virtual monopoly in the trade in local Hunanese cotton cloth.48 Dongting men also played a key role in supplying Suzhou with wood, bamboo, jade, hides, copper, and iron. They were active in western Sichuan, in Yunnan, and in the overseas trade.49 Avoiding pawnbroking and government monopolies, Dongting merchants may never have amassed the greatest fortunes of their day. In compensation, they were far less likely to suffer sudden ruin.50 Although the fortunes of individual families waxed and waned, collectively Dongting merchants were one of the most durable of late imperial China’s regionally based merchant cliques. Between 1842 and 1949, they were second only to the Ning-Shao group at Shanghai.51 Success abroad enabled them to maintain a stable order at home. Although the prosperous lived in solidly built houses of brick and stone, with tile roofs, they are said to have remained diligent and frugal, shunning lewdness and gambling. This was in part due to the fact that brothers lived near one another even after dividing their inheritance. Lanes and whole villages were composed of agnates, their wives, and their children. Wives often came from neighboring villages—a marriage strategy that, among other things, ensured that they had been trained since childhood to raise silkworms and to reel thread.

28

Heaven in a Very Small Space

Although women were not confined to the home, when they went abroad they concealed their faces from men using circular fans made of paste paper. As this suggests, natives of Dongting were atypical men of Wu, adhering to ritual rather than viewing marriages and funerals as occasions for empty display: “Relatives, neighbors, and friends worshipped according to the rites and did not attend to empty ceremonies. They used their wealth to aid the bereaved family; hence the latter relied on it to cover the expenses.”52 Not everyone found Dongting men worthy of praise: Zheng Ruozeng (fl. 1505–80; DMB) wrote that “the commoners of the mountainous area stress protecting their families but slight obedience to orders [from without]”53 while Gu Yanwu, in a comment inserted in the long passage he quotes, noted that lewd conduct and gambling were gradually becoming common among residents of the eastern peak.54 Even if the amalgam of antique virtue and Peach Blossom Spring did not survive unscathed, by the mid-sixteenth century merchants from Dongting had become one of the most prominent commercial groupings in the empire.55 Their success led to the rapid closing of an internal frontier. The rise of a new and powerful group of merchants might lead one to anticipate increasing commercialization of their home base, commercialization reflected in an expanding number of market towns. Yet local gazetteers list the same sixteen markets—seven in Wu, nine in Changzhou—at the beginning of the sixteenth century that they do at its end.56 One of these, the Changzhou market inside the prefectural seat, was said to have been abandoned. This was clearly the result of a dispersal of its functions, not a decline in the volume of commercial activity.57 Had all these markets existed in 1371, their marketing areas would have averaged 9,045 households in Wu, 9,541 in Changzhou.58 This is substantially more than the average number of households per market in China during the first half of the twentieth century.59 Population increases over the Ming would have swelled these numbers. This is a relatively compact area; significant portions of these districts might thus have been oriented toward markets in neighboring jurisdictions. But as their geographic distribution reveals, such orientation was a relatively minor factor. Water transport in Suzhou and immediately adjacent areas was remarkably efficient—so efficient that standard markets did not exist in this area in the early twentieth century.60 It would appear that, by mid-Ming at the latest, agent boats tied individual peasant households (the vast majority of them sited on rivers or canals) directly to intermediate-level markets.61 A greater catchment area and larger populations per market town thus reflect the thoroughness with which commerce permeated the countryside rather than the autarkic character of its villages.

Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

29

Market Towns and Suburbs: Links between Town and Country Although Suzhou was the metropolis integrating (and dominating) the empire’s most populous and prosperous macroregion—and, as such, a major center of long-distance trade—it simultaneously filled the role of local city for its immediate hinterland. (In similar fashion, it was the greater city for surrounding local cities like Wujiang, Kunshan, Changshu, and Wuxi; the regional city for surrounding greater cities like Songjiang, Huzhou, and Changzhou; and the macroregional core to the other regional cities in the Lower Yangzi macroregion, Nanjing and Hangzhou.) Through it, their commoditized production was drawn into long-distance trade. Luxuries, semifinished goods, raw materials, and necessities of everyday life flowed to the villages in return. The crucial links between the city and its outlying villages were maintained through the market towns and suburbs of Wu and Changzhou. With the data available at present, it is impossible to estimate the size of the towns directly. The quite detailed account of such places in neighboring Wujiang implies a range of several hundred to two thousand families.62 Similarly, little is known of the internal organization of these markets during the Ming. We do know that each of the140-odd creeks around the Hushu customs station was “under the protection of an influential family and [was] controlled by a group of scoundrels who [gave] open protection to smugglers.” In normal times, the government simply ignored this.63 Based primarily on evidence from the cotton-growing region farther north, Fu Yiling has shown that the dominance of local elites was not limited to water routes. There, markets were established by local notables. They constructed the facilities, improved transport, attracted merchants—and then (by controlling access to the market, extending credit, and dominating the local coolies) milked the resulting commerce.64 Even in the smallest market towns, teahouses were remarkably numerous. These male haunts were not only a locus of entertainment and gambling; they were also the places one went to test the state of the market, to make connections with brokers and other middlemen, and to obtain mediation should a transaction go awry.65 Although direct evidence is lacking, conditions in the market towns of Ming Wu and Changzhou must have been similar. Each market town had its own specialties. Hengtang was famous for its willowwood boxes.66 Like Xinguo, it had shops that specialized in the pressing of vegetable oils. Together with the brewers of Hengjin, they produced the rice wines prized even in the southern capital, Nanjing. And it was in these places that pigs were butchered.67 Mudu lay on the principal route linking the prefectural seat to East and West Dongting68 and was also located near Xiangshan, a place famed for its carpenters and plasterers.69 In its own right, Mudu was

Grand

C anal

Feng

Ti

ger H

l anne ) Ch

i ll

Ch

an ne l

en m Xu

a Ch

nn

el

Xu Gate

Guanghua Monastery Bridge

Beisita

Pan Gate

Prefectural School

Changzhou District Yamen

Le Bridge

Flower Bridge

Feng Gate

Xuanmiao Daoist Temple

Lou Gate

(Former) Zicheng

Humble Administrator’s Garden

Qi Gate

Iron Bottle Lane Lianxi fang Wu District Yamen

Yuecheng

Suzhou Prefectural Yamen

Nan hao

Chang Gate

Bei hao

Map 4. The City of Suzhou and Its Immediate Environs in the Ming

Maple Bridge

Shang Tang

Xia Tang

le ( M ap

L o u Ri

v er (Zh

Huangdian dang

annel) ihe Ch

Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

31

noted as a metal-working center.70 Cow’s milk was a famous product of Guangfu; so was embroidery. It was also the primary market center for inhabitants of Wu’s mountainous northwest corner.71 Neither the functions nor the precise location of Shexia are clear: the 1689 subdistrict gazetteer for the Lake Tai area lists a Shexia li among the villages of East Dongting.72 The fact that it is not said to have a Police Office (xunjiansi) suggests that Shexia was not Dongshan (exact location also unknown; established 1481), which did have such an office. With a statutory complement of forty men each, Police Offices were also established at Hengjin, Mudu, and Lutou. It is not clear if overlapping systems of commerce and control were a result of geography alone or reflected official belief that trouble was particularly apt to arise in conjunction with trade. Information about Ming Changzhou is more fragmentary. Sometime between 1368 and 1506 the Police Office at Wuta moved to Likou, a point controlling important links to Changshu and Kunshan on the east, Wuxi on the west; thus it was Likou, not Huangdai shi, that was regarded as “the northern gate of the prefectural city.”73 (Although the latter was primarily a center of riziculture, “the women worked diligently at crafts, weaving mats, making shoes, and twisting hemp and ramie.”) Similarly, a police outpost once (when is not clear) existed at Tangpu and in the mid-sixteenth century Xietang was garrisoned; no mention is made, however, of fortifying nearby Wangmu shi.74 Changes may have been in train; if so, they were not reflected in the ossified roll of markets before 1644.75 Nor did any of these places figure in Gu Yanwu’s list of “assembly points in the suburbs”76 (jiaoju; indicated by stars on Map 3). Among the (presumably more important) centers Gu did mention, Yinshan shi linked the southeastern gate in the city wall to Wujiang and Lake Tai.77 Luzhi (Fuli) produced mats with a broad warp, but one suspects that its location near the Wu Song River (linking Suzhou with Kunshan and Shanghai) was rather more important than what it produced.78 Chenmu, site of a Police Office from 1385, was on a principal artery connecting the prefectural city to points south and east via Dianshan Lake and Lake Mao.79 Lumu zhen, noted for its kilns and the fan “bones” it produced, lay between Likou and the city’s northern gate.80 Xiangcheng shi was not listed by Gu, and its major trade links are unspecified. By the Kangxi era (1661–1722), it was noted for its cotton textiles— as were Yezhang, Weiting, Zhouzhuang, and Nan/Beiqiao. Although such fabrics were being produced by every district of the prefecture during the sixteenth century, Ming evidence does not allow us to state that Changzhou’s output was already centered in these areas.81 The most important commercial center stretched from Yuecheng shi to Hushu zhen (see Map 4). Indeed, by mid-Ming, it was already evident that this

32

Heaven in a Very Small Space

was “one of the two or three wealthiest and most fashionable quarters in the world of men.”82 The 1379 edition of the prefectural gazetteer listed no lanes (xiang) outside the ramparts, a result of the incorporation of pre-Ming suburbs into the city proper when the wall was rebuilt in late Yuan.83 By 1506, there were ten new lanes outside the Chang Gate; one of these, the Yize Lane, “although narrow was nonetheless the spot at which merchants collect.”84 Yuecheng shi was “the place where merchants from the two capitals and the various provinces assemble. Nan and Bei hao as well as Shang and Xia tang [nearby] had also become markets. [The area] was especially prosperous.”85 In the mid-seventeenth century, Wang Xinyi (jinshi, 1613) once went out of the Chang Gate. The scene before him resembled an intricate embroidery. Shoulders rubbing against one another and carriages bumping into each other, the rectangular boats of the Maple River followed one right after the other. The goods of Nanhao were piled up like a mountain. It is because of this that one refers to Suzhou as the first city of Jiangnan.86

A century earlier, between the Chang and Xu Gates and “extending to the west, cottages sat close together like the teeth of a comb. It was almost the same as the area within the city wall. Here sojourners dwelt in large numbers.”87 Gu Yanwu noted that, although Maple Bridge was the proper way to enter Suzhou, “there was also the Tiger Hill Channel that flowed straight through. Goods were also numerous there; it was the shortcut by which one entered Suzhou.”88 The key point outside the Chang Gate was, however, Hushu. A police station and relay post from the beginning of the Ming, it became one of the seven inland customs houses established in the mid-fifteenth century. The choice no doubt reflected the fact that it already was “the place where the goods of the fourteen provinces converge, and where merchant boats come and go, each day in their thousands.”89 Here “the common people dwell by the side of the water, peasants and traders living side by side. It is [circa 1506] a great market.”90 By the end of the Ming, it had apparently become the empire’s major wholesale grain market, a function that overshadowed its role as a center of handicraft production.91 The most famous local product had been its straw mats, but these had long been regarded as second-best when compared with those made at nearby Tiger Hill (Huqiu).92 The other suburbs developed more slowly, and on a less imposing scale. In 1506 the Feng Gate was the only other area in which settlement outside the city walls had been formally organized into lanes. With Tiger Hill and East and West Dongting, this area was a major source of the city’s fresh fruits and vegetables.93 A century later, all save the southern gate boasted lanes, yet their combined total was less than that of the lanes outside the “Golden” Chang Gate.94

Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

33

The Xu Gate, linked most directly to Lake Tai, was usually considered an extension of the complex to its north; thus a division of twenty-five Chang-Xu lanes and sixteen other lanes is more realistic than a distribution of twenty-two lanes outside the Chang Gate and nineteen elsewhere. In spite of having a recognized specialty (frames for raising silkworms),95 the environs of the Pan Gate seem to have been relatively deserted.96 The northern wall’s Qi Gate was known as a center for kiln workers and makers of rattan pillows by the early sixteenth century.97 A hundred years later, “brokers” or “middlemen” (yakuai) were said to converge “like spokes at the hub of a wheel” in these “humbler suburbs.”98 Of course, one cannot assume that every detail found in the more explicit eighteenth-century accounts mirrors realities two hundred years earlier, yet the fragments available suggest that the outlines were similar. By the middle of the Qing, and despite trade routes radiating from the Feng Gate and the growth of a dyeing industry near the Lou Gate, those who lived south and east of these entrances were said to be frugal, investing primarily in agriculture.99 Those residing near the Qi Gate pursued their callings diligently, specializing in brokerage. Although they dispensed with outward show, it was claimed that these families were quite wealthy and that their wealth—solidly based and carefully managed—was not squandered but passed from one generation to the next. The Pan Gate was still considered (relatively) poor and empty, the Chang-Xu area (oriented almost exclusively to trade) still bustling and splendid. Residents of the latter area had a taste for ease and extravagance, however, and much of their apparent bounty consisted of goods they handled for others. Very few of their fortunes lasted more than a generation.100 In Ming Suzhou’s crowded landscape, few spots were equally open to all comers. The major exceptions were the precincts of the area’s temples and monasteries. Suzhou had all the prefectural, city, and communal (tu/bi/li) shrines mandated by the first Ming ruler. In addition, the 1506 gazetteer provided an extensive (but probably not complete) list of shrines to deities recognized in the sacrificial statutes, temples to former worthies, sites for the private sacrifices of the local people, Buddhist monasteries, and Daoist temples.101 Although constructed and maintained as sacred places, these grounds were frequently available for secular use. To this day, the courtyard of the Xuanmiao Daoist Temple serves as an open-air market. In Ming times, the temple fair remained an important institution. At least twenty were prominent in the Wanli era (1573–1620): among them Songhua, Mengjiang, Guanwang, Guanyin, Wulongtang, Dongcang, Lou Gate, Feng Gate, Zhuanzhu Lane, Kangwang miao, Dingxiang Lane, Beiying, Xu Gate, Hudousi, Fengqiao (Maple Bridge), Bailian Bridge, Dongjingli, Huanglu an, and Nanhao. Concentrated in the fifth

34

Heaven in a Very Small Space

lunar month, these fairs brought friends and relatives together after the enforced seclusion of the silkworm months. They featured elaborate kites, traditional opera, acrobatics, and dance. While not exclusively economic events, they did give merchants the opportunity to transact a lot of business.102 They were thus important social and economic occasions. It is less clear that temples served as embryonic public spaces. Almost every temple had its periodic feast, complete with processions ritually tracing the boundaries of the god’s jurisdiction and plays mounted for the pleasure of the deity. Such activities were organized, and the temples maintained, by temple associations. Thus a shrine’s ongoing existence implied both a core group of activists and a broader population (sometimes defined by belief, sometimes by residence, sometimes by common origin) to whom the associations could appeal. If each temple implied a community, the aspects setting those communities apart from the parishes of medieval and early-modern Italy remain striking. All members of the Christian congregation were expected to attend mass regularly. Worship was collective and (insofar as possible) conveyed a consistent, unitary, and universally binding orthodoxy. Temples were open to individuals when and as they chose. Worship was almost always private. Even more scandalous in the eyes of Ricci and other early missionaries, the Chinese felt free to accept some, all, or none of these practices as numinous. Since the sacrality of a given site was very much in the eyes of the beholder, it is not surprising that temple courtyards had a much weaker claim to universal recognition as sacred space than did the piazzas of Venice and Florence.103

The Metropolis While suburbs grew and the village population was increasingly concentrated in the urban penumbra,104 the area within the walls remained surprisingly stable.105 In spite of a doubling of urban population between the midfourteenth and the late sixteenth centuries, the number of lanes on the eastern side of the city actually fell (from 147 to 112) in the course of the Ming, while the more “noisy and bustling” western half added a mere three to its original 103.106 In part this apparent immobility reflected physical constraints. The Ming wall was a formidable structure, not a palisade that could be shifted or enlarged at will. The network of rivers and canals forming an external moat and crisscrossing the city’s interior was even more intractable. Moreover, although the illusion that the “traditional Chinese city” was simply the yamen writ large has now been elegantly exploded,107 a substantial portion of any prefectural capital was given over to official and semiofficial buildings. In a place as important as Suzhou, this included the office-complex-cum-

Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

35

residence of two district magistrates as well as that of the prefect; schools and examination halls; granaries; military installations (some 4,480 soldiers were permanently stationed in the city); courier stations; temples devoted to the civic cult; and imperial workshops (the most famous of which, the imperial textile works, occupied 245 “bays” in its 1547 incarnation).108 Maintenance of the city wall and the canals, the good repair of the more than three hundred bridges within the city, the care of lanes whose mud threatened the shoes of passersby, the creation of paupers’ fields for the urban poor, even restoration of such semipublic entities as Buddhist temples and Daoist monasteries were—if only fitfully and in part—the objects of official solicitude.109 Much of the warp and weft of urban life was thus woven by local officials. They did so without conforming to pre-Confucian canons of urban planning.110 Far from being clustered at the center of the walled city, the most important official offices were concentrated in the city’s southwest quadrant. (The main hall of the prefectural Confucian Temple, rebuilt in 1506, now serves as the Suzhou Stele Museum.) Those inclined to stress the symbolic importance of urban morphology might be tempted to read this as evidence that the Confucian and imperial state was marginal to the life of this bustling commercial center.111 Perhaps. Yet the key decisions were made by scholar-officials in the service of the Confucian state, not by merchants or by locals. The fury unleashed against those who attempted to rebuild the prefectural yamen on its traditional, more central site in the early Ming may reflect the founding emperor’s unwillingness to see Suzhou approximate, however roughly, a pivot of the four quarters. The major cities of the Lower Yangzi macroregion—including Hangzhou and Nanjing, cities that actually served as imperial capitals—had, however, always deviated from that model.112 Closer to the Grand Canal and to the stations of the imperial post, the yamen’s westerly location may have been preferred simply because it was marginally more efficient for bureaucratic communication. Whatever the motivation, these choices helped mold the uses that others made of the remaining space. The area within the walls was after all a primary arena of political and cultural life, not merely for the districts of Wu and Changzhou but for the prefecture as a whole—and, once the grand coordinator (xunfu) for the region shifted his base of operations from Nanjing to Suzhou in the Wanli era (1573–1620), for adjacent prefectures as well. Most of the structures associated with the Song elite were located within, or just outside, the city. In spite of the fact that Wu produced far more members of the elite than did Changzhou, over half of these sites lay on the eastern side—then the locus of the prefectural yamen. In Ming times, the two districts produced roughly equal numbers of upper-degree-holders. Yet the preferred place of elite residence had become the west side of the city, especially the area within the

36

Heaven in a Very Small Space

Chang Gate.113 In the interim, the prefect’s offices had been shifted to the western half, a move that led to the concentration of yamen runners and servants inside the Pan and Xu Gates as well.114 Although the elite’s numbers were finite, their gardens—a conspicuous sign of consumption in so densely peopled a landscape, even when they had not been created by expropriating land that belonged to others—and their retinues of servants ensured that they would leave extensive traces on the cityscape.115 These traces were discreet ones. In addition to its massive walls, imposing gates, numerous official yamens, and many bridges, Suzhou boasted some of the most imposing pagodas in China: the Beisita, located in a temple complex in the northwest quadrant of the city, was alleged to be the tallest man-made structure south of the Yangzi in late imperial times. The city’s lanes were, however, lined by the white-washed, gray-tiled one- and two-story structures characteristic of the area’s domestic architecture. The typical form of Chinese commercial architecture, the two-story shophouse (its ground floor a combination workshop and retail outlet open to the street by day, its second story affording the proprietor and his family considerable privacy behind its dark wood shutters), shared the streets with the inward-looking mansions of the well-to-do. The gates that led into these compounds, their door screens as effective a barrier to the curious gaze of the passerby as to the evil spirits whose entry they were officially designed to prevent, provided minimal indication of the dramatically different worlds that might lie within.116 Fronting on the street, they opened onto the canals in the rear. Here contrasts were more obvious: ornate second-story bridges linked the residences of the well-to-do with their servants’ quarters on the opposite bank. It was within these walled worlds that the elite laid out their gardens and conducted their lives. Gardens were the private retreats of the elite, not public spaces for the community at large. The most famous extant garden dating to the Ming was created by the “retired official” Wang Xianchen, a Wu district jinshi of 1493, in the early sixteenth century. Laid out on the grounds of an abandoned Buddhist temple in the northeast quadrant of the city, the Humble Administrator’s Garden (Zhuozheng yuan) employed rocks, water, and trees, labyrinthine pathways, and seasonal flowers to create a serene, and quite artificial, wilderness. As one moved from pavilion to pavilion, stopping to rest on a bridge, one’s gaze framed by lattice windows, one experienced nature as a constantly changing series of living landscape paintings. Indeed, the balance of nature and artifice may be even more evident in the series of album leaves the great Wu school artist Wen Zhengming (DMB) produced in the mid-sixteenth century than it is in a visit to the site itself today.117 The blank whitewashed walls that surround it still succeed in shutting out the bustle of the city street just on the other side.

Suzhou and Its Hinterland in the Ming

37

The state no less than the elite sought to reorder the urban landscape. Both the ends it sought and the means it used were quite different. The city had almost as many elaborate arches (fang) as it had bridges. By 1506, thirty-two pre-Ming and eighty-two Ming arches commemorated the area’s eminent scholars and successful officials. Others marked the entrances to the city’s wards (also called fang). The Ming had followed the Yuan in restoring this system of organizing urban space: the western side (Wu district) was divided into thirty-three, the eastern (Changzhou) into thirty-nine such units.118 Just as in the countryside, urban households were to be registered in decimal-based organs for labor service and collective responsibility. A curfew was imposed in Ming cities, and urban households were required to serve in rotation as members of the night watch. Manning internal checkpoints, these watchmen (huofu) were charged with law enforcement as well as fire prevention. (Although originally one was required to serve in person, by the sixteenth century those with the means and inclination could hire a substitute.) Each household was also required to keep a lamp lit outside its gate. Not that everything was left to mobilizing “good people to govern good people.” Military units garrisoned in the city shared responsibility for maintaining public order. Businesses were required to register with local authorities and to agree to abide by the law before setting up shop. Official and private brokers had to be licensed. Officials regulated the timing and location of markets, imposed standardized weights and measures, and attempted to prevent fraud while stabilizing prices.119 They were also charged with aiding the poor and unfortunate, with keeping water channels clear, and with disposing safely of unburied corpses. At least on paper, the Ming urban landscape was thus subject to a comprehensive administrative and regulative system. The reality seems to have been rather different. We know far less about Suzhou than about Nanjing and Beijing; but the fact that, even in the dynasty’s capital cities, these schemes worked imperfectly when they worked at all leads one to suspect that this system never functioned as intended. If, as Tang Yin tells us, Suzhou’s markets went on through the five watches of the night, a curfew was not being rigorously enforced there in the early sixteenth century. Given the number of urban households with privileged status or with the connections that enabled them to secure an exemption, the duties of firefighting and crime prevention fell disproportionately on those least able to bear the burden. This triggered a sequence of developments all too familiar to students of imperial China. The post of watchman was converted to a salaried position, the money to pay for it being added to the taxes of urban households. The funds seem to have been subsequently diverted to other ends. In any case, the new system proved ineffective, a fact glaringly obvious in the wake of the 1601

38

Heaven in a Very Small Space

tax strike and the 1603 student riot. Officials responded by restoring the labor service obligation under another name. Since the privileged, well-connected, and unscrupulous—a group estimated at 70 to 80 percent of the urban population—continued to enjoy exemptions from the labor service, this chore fell exclusively on weavers and petty merchants. Such a regressive allocation of responsibilities triggered unrest. The military official dispatched to sort things out concluded not only that policing duties should be entrusted entirely to the garrison, but also that attempts to regulate comings and goings in a city like Suzhou were unworkable and counterproductive.120 By the late sixteenth century, shops lined all the streets within the city.121 Suzhou was also an important manufacturing center, famous for its lanterns and its embroidery, its sweets, and such rarities as spectacles for the far-sighted.122 Outside the capitals, it was the place to have one’s scrolls mounted.123 And it was renowned for its textiles. Although the caste-like system of the Yuan (1276–1367) and early Ming had largely collapsed—with a mere 680 workers attached to the imperial textile works when it was restored in the 1540s124—the myriad “loom households” were concentrated in the city’s northeast quadrant.125 They were subject to “assignment” (qianpai) to fulfill court-imposed textile quotas as well as to forced purchases at bureaucratically ordained prices, a burden common to all shopkeepers.126 The court thus reserved unto itself first claim on the high-quality silks, of various weights and measures, that Suzhou produced. Surplus production ended up on the market, where it found ready takers among the wealthy of the realm and avid consumers beyond the empire’s borders.127 Most “loom households” appear to have been modest family enterprises engaged in direct production. Many depended on advances from wealthier parties to carry them through seasonal and cyclical fluctuations. The silk market had built-in complexities. Silk was not just silk: each region had its own weave, color, and weight preferences. Thus interregional merchants relied on local brokers who were thoroughly familiar with the skills of the various loom households to procure precisely what they wanted. Producers were equally dependent on them: they were not only chronically short of working capital; they were also in need of an assured market. Despite the chronic tendency of brokers to cheat and embezzle, both buyer and seller found brokers indispensable. The ultimate source of advances was of course the interregional merchant. In Ming Suzhou, the most important of these were the Dongting and the Huizhou merchants. The latter sojourned in large numbers in the Suzhou area, purchasing Suzhou silks for sale in Nanjing, in Jiangxi, and in Sichuan. By the early sixteenth century they were also buying

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raw silk for sale in Suzhou.128 Moreover, they were said to be closely tied to the offshore merchants who (in the face of the mid-sixteenth-century crackdown on private trade with barbarians outside the kingdom) became “Japanese pirates” (wokou).129 By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the market for Suzhou silk was thus vast, and organization of its production sophisticated. “Loom workshops” hired male workers with specialized skills for both longand short-term work. Particular spots (which later became the site of guild halls) were recognized as the place to go if one sought those with a special skill: satin workers at Flower Bridge, those who specialized in thin silks at the Guanghua Monastery Bridge, spinners of silk at Lianxi fang.130 At each place, professional intermediaries (hangtou) matched prospective employer and employee; pay was calculated according to the number of days worked.131 When the workshops responded to a sudden increase in taxes by shutting their doors (in 1601), “several thousand” weavers and “several thousand” dye workers lost their jobs. In memorials submitted to explain the riots that followed, local officials noted that these “good people” were totally dependent on wages for their day-to-day sustenance.132 For those not summoned before the hour of morning congee,133 and for those lacking specialized skills, life was even more difficult. In addition to shopkeepers, skilled artisans, clerks, runners, soldiers, Buddhist monks, Daoist priests, and the servants of the well-to-do, the streets of Suzhou must have teemed with boatmen and coolies, peddlers and entertainers.134 The number of “famous officials” who are praised for trying to clean up the city suggests that many others sought a living in prostitution, gambling, and thuggery pure and simple.135 “Heaven” was thus a compound of hard work, sharp social distinctions, and antisocial behavior. By sixteenth-century standards, its accomplishments remained a notable achievement.136 If it were one handed down from time out of mind, this would be just as true: even in the most stable of societies, a “traditional” order had to be replicated by each succeeding generation, often in the face of quantitative and qualitative change. If Ming Suzhou had “merely” recovered levels attained under the Song, the Heraclitan dictum would still hold. The present case is, however, far more dramatic. Economically, culturally, and politically, the late imperial context was radically different from that of earlier periods.137 Thus, however great their contribution, the pre-Ming phases of Suzhou’s history do not make its late imperial achievements any less remarkable. But, if we would accurately assess those developments, the need to examine the area’s pre-Ming heritage is clear.

2

“A Great Deal of Extravagance and a Modicum of Frugality” Suzhou to 1367

On October 1, 1367, the armies of Zhu Yuanzhang (DMB) breached the walls and poured into the city. As his wife “drove all of the concubines and serving girls into a tower, had it set on fire, and then strangled herself,” Zhang Shicheng (DMB)—salt smuggler, rebel general, Mongol official, and prince of Wu— sought to hang himself.1 Cut down by the victors before he could expire, he was packed off to Nanjing. There he either managed to starve himself to death or was murdered by his victorious rival.2 Zhang’s capital city, like its soon-to-be-late sovereign, might well seem as worthy of ridicule as of pity. Like Zhang, the city had combined dreams of military glory with a taste for extravagance. Like Zhang, it had achieved neither victory nor a picturesque defeat. Much of Suzhou had been destroyed in the ten-month siege that preceded the conquest. But, if Zhang were denied a noble end, Suzhou was denied any end at all. Instead, its wealth was to fill the coffers of the house of Zhu, its recent defenders were sent north to help expel the Mongols, its ancient families were forced to populate the victor’s capital. The city itself would survive—but as a prefectural seat, not as the center of all under heaven. After two millennia, a prince of Wu was about to become emperor. It was, however, Nanjing’s prince of Wu, not Suzhou’s.

“A State Situated in the Remote Southeast”: Zhou through Han From the outset, the city’s history was intimately bound up with ambitious political schemes. In 560 B.C., Zhu Fan shifted the capital of Wu to Suzhou. (Zhu Fan was a twentieth-generation descendant of Taibo, the son of a Zhou ruler who fled to the Southeast with his brother Zhongyong; after “cutting his hair and painting his body,” he was accepted by the local barbarians as their ruler.)3 But the city he built, Wuzicheng, was extremely small. It was He Lu (who reigned from 515 to 496 B.C.) and his adviser Wu Zixu who were archi-

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tects both of a wall on something like the traditional scale and of plans to make a backward and rather isolated Yangzi delta state first among equals in the Central Plain.4 The two projects were intimately linked: One day [He Lu] sought Wu Zixu’s advice. “Our state is situated in the remote southeast,” he said. “Its terrain is harsh and its climate humid. The river often brings disaster to our region. Because there are no natural defenses, the people have no protection against invading armies. There are no warehouses and much of the land is left uncultivated. What should be done?” “If the country is to be well governed and turned into a powerful state,” Wu replied, “it is imperative to build a fortified city, establish a garrison armed with better weapons, and fill up the granaries. Only thus can we defend ourselves internally and meet an external attack.”5

Fu Chai (r. 495–473 B.C.) exploited the work of his father and his father’s adviser, in 482 B.C. making his remote and barbarous kingdom—in fact if not in name—the leading power in China. His combination of military swagger, bad judgment, and extravagant self-indulgence culminated in a ruin that prefigured Zhang Shicheng’s in much the way that Napoleon Bonaparte’s Eighteenth Brumaire did that of Louis Bonaparte.6 That Zhang was an outlander was no impediment to his finding a place in this tradition. Nearly all the great culture-heroes of Wu were aliens: Xia Yu, the legendary sage-king whom tradition credited with first providing Lake Tai with outlets to the sea; the brothers Taibo and Zhongyang; Shen Gong Wu Chen, mentor of the prince of Wu Shou-meng (r. 585–561 B.C.); Wu Zixu and his protégé, the great military strategist Sun Wu; the Warring States official Huang Xie, who devised a water-control system that spared the city proper from flood.7 To a man, these were bearers of advanced ideas, improved techniques, and more complex institutions. Local people provided the necessary brawn— for dredging a channel, building a wall, or fighting a war. Gao Qi’s (1336–74; DMB) fascination with martial pursuits and the military career of Han Yong (1422–78; DMB) provide ample proof that, even in Ming times, the men of Wu could still embody the spirit of Xiang Yu, the great leader of the rebellion to overthrow the Qin. In addition, the legendary swordsmith Gan Jiang (and his wife Mo Xie) did not want for late imperial descendants.8 Yet, by the mid-fourteenth century, roles had changed: it was the natives of Suzhou who were the bearers of cultural sophistication, the nonnatives who were muscle-bound and semicivilized. In part, the natives’ sophistication was tribute to the quality of the instruction a long list of educator-administrators had provided the men of Wu; in part, it was due to the shift of the Middle Kingdom’s demographic and economic center from North China’s Central Plain to the area south of the Yangzi (Jiangnan). The area’s temples commemorated the most illustrious of the for-

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“A Great Deal of Extravagance”

mer,9 the memory (if not always the contributions) of those worthy of honorable mention being preserved in the biographical sections of local gazetteers. In spite of this wealth of material, the process by which a backward frontier became one of the most advanced centers of the civilization cannot yet be described in detail. Rarely can we determine the method, message, or audience of a particular teacher. The impact of any given individual, the portions of his teaching appropriated by and incorporated into the local culture, are even more obscure. It is clear that the process was a long one, and that there was continuous interaction between indigenous and imported elements. It is also apparent that Buddhist monks as well as imperial officials played an important part.10 Equally evident is the central role of migration: the men of Wu had not only been well-schooled; they had also received wave upon wave of immigrants, immigrants who were themselves bearers of the high culture of Zhou, Han, and Tang. By the 1360s, the area’s cultural level owed as much to substitution as to assimilation. That migrants elected to settle in Suzhou in such numbers was tribute both to the potential natural advantages of the site and to the willingness of generations to reshape it as necessity or advantage dictated. Recent excavations have uncovered the remains of Neolithic farming villages that date back to the fourth millennium B.C.11 Fertile, clayey soils; mild temperatures (abetted by the breezes off the area’s numerous lakes); and fairly dependable rainfall concentrated in late spring and summer were ideally suited to agriculture.12 Considerable ingenuity was shown in efficiently exploiting these possibilities: by the second century B.C., cultivators sought to maintain the fertility of their fields by burning the stubble that remained after the harvest.13 Since people were relatively few and land abundant, early settlers could avoid areas whose exploitation required heavy investment in diking and drainage. Yet as the legend of Xia Yu—the sage-king who labored tirelessly for thirteen years to control the waters—implies, even in ancient times floods were a constant danger. Suzhou prefecture is the least elevated portion of Jiangnan.14 Much of it lies below the level of Lake Tai and the Yangzi River.15 Indeed, ten thousand years ago, the mountains south and west of the city were still islands surrounded by ocean. Gradually the great river deposited silt around them, producing a “long sandbar” (Changzhou) that jutted farther and farther out into the Pacific.16 Such land was as much an archipelago of minuscule islands in a saline marsh as a plain: in their natural state, these areas were impossible to farm. In spite of the Chinese cultural preference for lowlands, down to the eighth century settlement concentrated on more easily exploited upland terrain and the fan/slope complex west and southwest of the city.17

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Even with these limitations, by the end of Han, Suzhou had already become a place of some importance: The suburbs of the city lacked wasteland. In its customs there was a great deal of extravagance and a modicum of frugality. It possessed the abundance of the land and sea. Merchants also collected the fine and the delicate in food and drink, rare clothing, and elegant houses. At marriages and funerals, the marrying off of daughters and the taking of wives, inferiors reached to feasting and assembling: they attended to such matters luxuriously and with excessive ceremony in order to compete with one another. Women and craftsmen wove and fabricated [things], carved and engraved, painted and lacquered; they had to be skillful and energetic. The people believed in spirits and were fond of luxurious religious festivals.18

From Three Kingdoms to Tang: A “Half Chang’an”? To A.D. 211, the city was the base of Sun Quan, the man who would found the Three Kingdoms state of Wu (officially an independent kingdom A.D. 222– 280). Even after the seat of government was transferred to Nanjing, the area continued to enjoy the patronage of the ruling house: the ruler’s mother established Suzhou’s first Buddhist monastery.19 Supporters of Jiangnan’s great landlords, the house of Sun appointed scions of Wu’s four great surnames—especially members of the Gu and Lu lineages—to high office, a tradition of service that would continue to the end of the Tang.20 Welcoming refugees from the conflict in the North, the rulers of Wu improved transport and encouraged handicraft production (of linen textiles in particular), shipbuilding, and copper mining. This stimulated trade, the market for Wu products apparently including Japan.21 However limited their success in advancing the dynastic claims of the Sun family, the social and economic policies of this kingdom of Wu appear to have been far more benevolent than those of its Spring and Autumn period namesake. Suzhou’s fate under the Southern Dynasties is less clear. Some have portrayed the years following the shift of the Jin capital to Nanjing and preceding the victory at Fei River (A.D. 317–383) as an age of “lesser tranquillity” (xiao kang), with an influx of skilled and industrious refugees from the North triggering economic expansion in the still backward and underpopulated Southeast. However real these advances, the area was abruptly required to support both an imperial court and a much-expanded ruling caste. In 399, the desperate populace rose up, under Sun En at Hangzhou and Lu Gui at Suzhou. Although it was ultimately unsuccessful, this twelve-year revolt shook the Eastern Jin so severely that its successor, the Liu Song (A.D. 420–478), found it

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“A Great Deal of Extravagance”

expedient to curb exploitation and to encourage productive endeavor. This resulted in economic recovery.22 Such accounts may well be overdrawn: we now know that the battle of Fei River (383) bulked much larger in the minds of later generations than it did in those of contemporaries.23 In most respects (the influx of northerners, growth of population, dominance of the great landlords, expansion of Buddhist influence), the Southern Dynasties appear to have continued the trends and the policies of the Three Kingdoms era. The Jin rulers developed little affection for the men of Wu in the process of conquering them, however, an attitude that emperors of successor dynasties (and their irredentist officials) seem to have shared well into the sixth century.24 Suzhou could thus not count on imperial patronage of the sort it had enjoyed under the house of Sun. One final legacy of the kingdom of Wu, the selection of Nanjing as capital, proved more durable. This left Suzhou vying for second place among the cities of the Yangzi delta. Reunification and completion of the Grand Canal linking Jiangnan and the Central Plain settled the issue—in favor of Yangzhou. Indeed, the Sui (A.D. 589–617) decided that Suzhou had occupied the wrong spot for a millennium: in A.D. 591, the city was rebuilt just below Mount Heng.25 The Tang (A.D. 618–906) restored the city to its traditional site in A.D. 626. In all other respects, the change of dynasty seems to have had little impact. Only with the return of political fragmentation and armed conflict to the north (from A.D. 756 on) was Yangzhou’s dominant position in the region undermined. The Tang state, desperate for funds and in effective control of mere fragments of the empire, placed tremendous strains on Yangzhou’s economic base.26 These strains led ultimately to the eclipse of Yangzhou—and the rise of areas to its south. Thus it was Suzhou that benefited from the renewed influx of refugees.27 Relative to the Central Plain, ninth-century Suzhou was still backward and underpopulated. Relative to other areas south of the Yangzi, however, Suzhou was emerging as an increasingly important place. In 778 it was designated a xiong zhou, the only prefecture in Jiangnan given the second highest of the seven ranks in the Tang hierarchy. Application of the best northern agricultural techniques to Suzhou in this period dramatically increased the productivity of its soils. Although its population remained relatively sparse, it is possible to trace the labor-intensive wet-rice agriculture and multiple cropping so typical of this area in later dynasties to the Tang.28 Behind the Shanghai-Hangzhou sea wall built by Tang officials in the eighth century, Suzhou began to benefit from the application of new techniques of water control to the deltaic lowlands, using such innovations as embankments,

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channels (tang), and polders. The Yuanhe Channel (constructed in 808), a “man-made stream” second only to the Grand Canal (Da Yunhe) in antiquity, inaugurated systematic development of previously unexploited areas. It clearly foreshadowed a second great wave of water-control projects aimed at diking and draining low-lying areas, a process systematically begun under Wu-Yue.29 Also during this period Suzhou first became famous for its bridges; Prefect Wang Zhongshu built the famous Precious Belt (Baodai) Bridge in 810. Both classical learning and less orthodox cultural institutions flourished: a district school was established at Kunshan in 774 and the Buddhist monastic establishment expanded. Famous poets—notably Wei Yingwu (b. 737), Liu Yuxi (772–842), and Bai Juyi (772–846)—served as prefect, the latter referring to Suzhou as a “half Chang’an.”30

Wu-Yue and Northern Song: The Second City of Jiangnan The chaos of the late Tang brought this era of construction, settlement, and acculturation to an abrupt halt: in 875, rebels sacked the prefectural city. Yet the interruption proved only temporary. The succession state of Wu-Yue (A.D. 893–978) afforded the areas it controlled a century of relative peace and reasonably enlightened despotism. Centered at Hangzhou, the kingdom consisted of little more than modern Zhejiang and the southeastern corner of Jiangsu; Suzhou was the seat of its northernmost prefecture. Wu-Yue’s rulers devoted themselves to good administration and economic development with a zeal usually reserved for war. Under their sway, a combination of hard work and good fortune dramatically reduced the incidence of flooding in the Yangzi delta.31 While other princes, bent on filling their coffers and their arsenals, were taxing mulberries out of existence, the house of Qian successfully expanded sericulture.32 In A.D. 922, Suzhou’s city wall was rebuilt, with brick replacing rammed earth for the first time.33 And by surrendering to the Song (960–1276) at an opportune moment, the Hangzhou-based regime secured a niche for members of its ruling house and those of its high officials in the new order. If Suzhou had benefited from the policies of the Qian rulers of Wu-Yue, Hangzhou had done so to an even greater extent. Suzhou entered the Song empire as the second city of Jiangnan. In 1010, Suzhou prefecture’s five districts had a registered population of 66,139 households. Lin’an (Hangzhou) controlled eight districts with a combined population of 163,700 households.34 Suzhou ranked seventh among the empire’s commercial centers in 1077, the prefecture as a whole occupying the tenth rank: its quota was merely 77,076 strings of cash, modest even when compared with Hangzhou’s 170,813 strings.35

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“A Great Deal of Extravagance”

Although the area produced large quantities of silk, its quality was still regarded as distinctly inferior to the output of the Central Plain.36 The most famous of its products was rice: as an adage of the day put it, “If Suzhou and Huzhou ripen, the empire will have enough.”37 In the early Song, sturdier Champa strains, with their shorter growth cycle, had been diffused throughout Jiangnan.38 These made the double-cropping of rice possible. Yet Suzhou continued to produce a single crop of late-ripening (geng) rice. The decision to do so must have been made by market-oriented landlords rather than by peasants engaged in subsistence agriculture. With its larger kernels, longer storage life, and higher prestige, late-ripening varieties commanded a higher price in the market.39 Such a course was possible only if the prefecture had access to substantial quantities of less-expensive grain: faced with chronic insecurity, peasants in an autarkic subsistence economy could not otherwise forgo additional output—even at the insistence of their landlord. But peasants did not eat the rice. As the Suzhou poet Fan Chengda (1126–93) wrote, “Never once in their lives have they [the peasants] tasted / Rice clean and bright as the cloudstone.”40 But it was not just landlords who were oriented to the market. In part as a result of official efforts to promote the cultivation of wheat in Jiangnan,41 winter crops grown by the tenants were rent-free. Especially after 1127, an influx of wheat-eating northerners suddenly and dramatically expanded the demand for these crops. Wherever conditions permitted, market-oriented tenants responded. Yields of the traditional winter wheat crop were not high enough to compensate fully for a second crop of rice forgone. The decision to grow wheat is thus further evidence that Suzhou’s peasants were not engaged in subsistence agriculture.42 Song Suzhou remained an overwhelmingly agrarian society. It was also a highly commercialized one, at all levels.43 Such involvement with the market had different implications for different strata of society. Landlord households usually had surpluses, and no later than the twelfth and thirteenth centuries they routinely made decisions based on the state of the market. The contributions of the region’s peasant households remained individually negligible but had become collectively significant. Living at or near the subsistence level, these households often found that, to survive to the next harvest, they had to obtain additional grain in spring and summer, when prices were highest. To raise the needed funds, they might engage in market-oriented activities, acting as petty traders in the off-season, hiring themselves out, raising animals for sale, taking up handicrafts. The not uncommon alternative was to contract debt. Given an interest rate of 4 percent a month,44 the debtor had every incentive to settle with his creditor at the ear-

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liest opportunity. This would of course be at harvest time, the moment when a temporary glut drove prices down. Peasant households thus bought dear and sold cheap. Although poor households were able to eke out a living, the operation of the market tended over time to disproportionately benefit those who were already well-off.45 These circumstances may help explain both the conspicuous success of Suzhou’s scholar-official families and the unusually narrow universe from which successful candidates were drawn.46 For, if the social and political changes of the Tang-Song transition undermined the semiautomatic entree to the inner councils of government long enjoyed by the “four great surnames,” Suzhou’s leading families still proved singularly adept at functioning within the new system of selection and preferment. It was not an open system: In Suzhou [prefecture], sixty-three families provided ninety percent of all the successful candidates [in the imperial examinations] between 960 and 1279. There is not a single documented example . . . of a family demonstrating upward mobility solely because of success in the civil service examinations. Indeed, in every instance of upward mobility supported by literary evidence, passage of the tests followed intermarriage with one of the already established elite gentry lineages.47

Even so, the road did not always run smooth for such families. Measured by the number of degree-holders produced, the most successful of the sixty-three was the Fan lineage of Wu district. Yet, even given its famed charitable estate, the fortunes of the lineage fluctuated dramatically over the course of the dynasty.48 The eminence of the Fan was primarily due to the efforts of one man, Fan Zhongyan (989–1052). Fan achieved fame as a reformist official and a leader of the Confucian revival. Ironically, his relationship to Suzhou was hardly orthodox. Although Suzhou was his ancestral home, Fan had been orphaned as a child. When his mother remarried, Fan, her younger son, was adopted by his stepfather. Fan passed the jinshi examination as a northerner named Zhu Yue. He did not obtain the special imperial permission needed to resume his original name until 1017. In 1034, he was appointed prefect of Suzhou. Although he held the office for only a year, he was remembered fondly, both for his efforts to improve water control—he arrived in the midst of a flood that prevented the people from cultivating their fields—and for his attempts to promote education. It was Fan who first established a prefectural school at Suzhou, summoning Hu Yuan to head it. In 1049, his efforts to systematically reform the imperial system having been frustrated, Fan returned briefly to Suzhou, where he endowed the famed Fan charitable estate to foster cohesion and dedication to scholarship in future generations of the Fan. In spite of Fan Zhongyan’s reputation as a Confucian scholar-official, this institution owed as much to Bud-

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dhist as to classical models. Indeed, its creation has been interpreted as evidence of this experienced and able official’s ultimate frustration with the imperial system.49 The people of Suzhou had ample reason to share Fan’s ambivalence. On the one hand, Song officials continued, indeed redoubled, efforts in the crucial area of water control. Before 1050, they focused on Lake Tai. From the 1030s to 1125, they devoted considerable effort to taming the Wu Song. In addition, in the decade 1053–63, the Zhihe embankment was completed. These efforts were sparked by, and helped to fuel, a rapid increase in population—from 66,139 households in 1010 to 199,892 households in 1080.50 This rise was interrupted by unprecedented floods in both 1090 and 1091—in the former year alone, more than a half-million perished in Zhexi circuit, of which Suzhou was a part. In 1102, the prefectural population had dropped to 152,821 households. In response, reformist officials intensified their efforts. Throughout the 1093–1125 period, they sought to transform lake into polder, all the while dredging tanks and rivers in Changshu and Kunshan districts. As a result of their efforts, both the amount and the value of land under cultivation in Suzhou rose.51 Less welcome were the taxes imposed. By 1080, Suzhou prefecture’s autumn sprouts quota was more than 340,000 piculs (shi), far more than that assessed any other prefecture. Of this total, an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 piculs were exported. In addition, Suzhou was also subject to the government’s “harmonious purchase” program, the forced sale of quantities demanded at government-fixed prices. In 1080, these purchases totaled an additional 300,000 hu (at five decaliters per hu, another 150,000 piculs). After loss of the North, this burden increased dramatically. From 1148, the area was annually required to supply the capital with 200,000 piculs of “harmonious purchase” rice. In the thirteenth century, as the Song’s fiscal and military position deteriorated, the amounts demanded rose further, reaching 1,000,000 piculs in 1260.52 If taxes are the price of civilization, Suzhou merited its reputation as a cultivated area. High taxes were not the area’s only cause for complaint. Although at the end of the Northern Song Suzhou villagers still had to purchase raw silk from Huzhou and Hangzhou just to meet their summer tax quotas, an official textile works was established at Suzhou in 1102. Before Song, such establishments had been limited to the capital. This one was apparently not a success; it was abolished in 1121.53 Even more offensive were the activities of Zhu Chong and his son Mian, managers of the Su-Hang Provision Bureau (yingfeng ju) during the early twelfth century. The bureau extracted Taihu stones and other curiosities for the Huizong emperor (1101–25). Anything that might strike the imperial fancy was

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subject to confiscation without payment; and in the process of collecting these luxuries, agents cavalierly destroyed the properties on which these treasures were found. Moreover, the local populace had to assume the costs of transporting these things to the imperial palace at Kaifeng. The constant stream of exquisite loot pleased the emperor, further enhancing the position of the Zhus. They behaved arrogantly, taking full advantage of the court’s favor to extract wealth for themselves. At the height of their power, they are said to have accumulated an estate of 300,000 mu. Faced with the Jin invasion, Huizong was forced to abdicate. His successor, conscious of the need for public support, issued a decree that condemned Zhu Mian to death. When the news reached Suzhou, local people attacked the Zhu family holdings, destroying their prized garden south of the Pan Gate and dispersing their dependents.54

Southern Song: The Making of “A Large and Magnificent City” Satisfying as this may have been, it was not the dawn of a better day. In the 1120s, the Jurchen, a Tungusic tribe from Manchuria, broke through the Song’s northern defenses. In 1126, they sacked Kaifeng, capturing the emperor and three thousand members of his court. In disarray, what remained of the Song government fled from the Central Plain to Jiangnan—with Jurchen armies in hot pursuit.55 In 1129 the newly proclaimed emperor, Gaozong, halted in Suzhou, but only for a few days. This proved a wise decision: on the twentyfifth day of the second month of 1130, Jurchen units appeared at the southern gates of Suzhou. Breaking into the city, the barbarians “plundered government offices and private residences, [helping themselves to] sons and daughters, gold and silk, all that was stored in the granaries and storehouses. Then they committed arson and the fire spread. Smoke could be seen for 200 li (approximately 100 kilometers). In all, the fires burned for five days and nights.”56 When open hostilities settled into military stalemate and an uneasy truce in the 1140s, the emperor chose Hangzhou as his “temporary imperial residence” or xingzai. In addition to being more centrally located within the truncated realm than either Suzhou or Nanjing, and marginally more secure than the cities to its north, it was also a far more important place than early twelfth-century Suzhou. Yet Jin conquests isolated, and often destroyed, the northern centers that had relegated eleventh-century Suzhou and its handicrafts to a position of relative obscurity. They also triggered yet another wave of migration from north to south: the number of registered households in Suzhou prefecture tripled between the beginning of the twelfth and the end of the thirteenth century.57

50

“A Great Deal of Extravagance”

This sudden increase in population made water-control projects possible on an unprecedented scale. In spite of earlier accomplishments, the numbers available had been insufficient to complete, much less maintain, the network of dikes and channels required to transform the extensive lowland areas of Suzhou from marshland to paddyfield. Once in place, such a network required constant effort: a blocked channel miles away always threatened to breach an ill-maintained dike, suddenly returning cropland to lake. Too many polders would leave too few outlets for water in the rainy season, increasing pressure on dikes throughout the system. Too much rain, an accumulation of silt, or the diversion of more water into Lake Tai, either singly or in combination, could submerge or even reshape broad stretches of the delta plain. Only by devoting countless man-hours year after year, century after century, to dredging and diking—above all, of the Wu Song, Lou, and Dong Rivers—could Suzhou maintain its reputation as a “land of rice and fish.”58 Like the building of seawalls, dredging the delta’s principal river channels was too large an undertaking to be left to individuals or localities: local officials periodically undertook this massive effort using corvée labor.59 The smallerscale, but still extremely labor-intensive work crucial for reclaiming fields from the waters was usually left to private initiative. (Indeed, from late in the Zhaoxing reign (1131–61), local officials attempted—unsuccessfully—to restrain these efforts in the interest of flood control.) That the period in which polder construction transformed the Yangzi delta coincided with a doubling of the households registered in the prefecture (between the years 1184 and 1275) should thus come as no surprise.60 This process further consolidated the dominant position of large landowners rather than smallholders, and of production oriented to the market rather than to subsistence. Creation of polders on this scale required coordination and the ability to subsidize many hands while dikes were built, fields were drained, and a first harvest was brought in. Since the state was unable or unwilling to undertake this massive effort, expansion of the area under cultivation led inexorably to large estates and landlord dominance.61 This process was not always gentle. In the three decades before 1203–4 a wealthy commoner, Mr. Zhang, mobilized his kinsmen, using force to expand his holdings in the Guangfu area. The case seems unusual only in that officials eventually brought him to book.62 This expansion in the agricultural base was accompanied by an improved transport grid and a rise in the skill level of the population. Water control not only drained the marshes and carried flood waters out to sea. Carefully

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dredged rivers and intricate networks of canals also provided efficient channels for transporting bulky commodities cheaply and efficiently. In the 1930s, investigators measured “27.8 miles of canals and linear ponds” in a single square mile.63 These waterways enabled pleasure-seekers to explore the mountains by boat and also provided cheap and convenient transport for more prosaic ends.64 Above all, they facilitated the importation of coarse grains, which enabled delta peasants to continue to specialize in production of late-ripening rice for export, particularly to the Song emperor’s “temporary capital” at Hangzhou. Although rice continued to be the area’s most important product, the prefecture also produced tea, fruit, straw mats, paper, wine, elaborate paper lanterns, and many, many more processed and semiprocessed goods.65 Still more worthy of note, it was in the Southern Song that Suzhou embroidery and silk goods began to acquire an empirewide reputation.66 Change marked the city as well as its hinterland. Yet a sturdy framework to which all but the most powerful forces would have to adapt was already in place. Suzhou’s moat provides the most obvious example. A section of the Grand Canal that linked Hangzhou with North China’s Central Plain had for centuries formed part of the river system ringing the city. The area within these waters was crisscrossed by canals and surrounded by a brick-faced wall. Local legend credited Huang Xie, the Chu official enfeoffed at Suzhou in 263 B.C., for both the walls and the gridlike pattern of canals within them. From Tang times on, local lore held that the Jade Emperor had appointed Huang “god of the walls and moats”—as city gods were styled in Chinese—of his old fief. The choice may have owed more to his role as architect of a canal system that spared the city proper the ravages of flood than it did to his wall-building activities.67 Both walls and waterways constrained the subsequent use of urban space. The record of temple-building within the city provides a rough indicator of the rhythms of development within this urban frame (see Table 2). Although the data are incomplete, the picture that emerges is too strongly etched, and too much at odds with Chinese preferences for antique pedigree real or imagined, to gainsay.68 While the scenic northwestern quarter continued to have the greatest concentration, by the end of the Yuan, Buddhist temples and Daoist monasteries could be found in every corner of the city. Even more dramatic changes can be traced in the commercial sphere. Although a few specialized markets had already been established in other parts of the city, as late as 1008–16 the principal business district was still the East and West Markets at each end of the Le Bridge. These central markets continued the Tang system of organizing urban space by wards rather than streets, a sys-

52

“A Great Deal of Extravagance” table 2 Temple-Building in the City of Suzhou Period

Pre-Tang Tang (618–906) Five Dynasties N. Song (960–1127) S. Song (1127–1276) Yuan (1276–1368) Ming (1368–1506)

Length (number of years)

Number of temples

Rate (per year)

289 55 168 150 93 139

12 8 2 13 39 40 4

0.028 0.036 0.077 0.260 0.430 0.029

Source: GSZ, 29.

tem that made the market easy to control and regulate.69 By the end of Song, the commercial district had expanded in every direction, usurping broad stretches of the urban landscape. In this same period, secondary market districts had developed; the most notable were north of the Changzhou district yamen and beside the West River (Xihe). With trade came industry: in addition to textiles, Suzhou was a center for agricultural processing of rice and vegetable oils, the production of wine and vinegar, the manufacture of articles for daily use (ropes, bottles, stoves, shoes), boat-building, the making of rush sails, and the armaments industry. It was also a center for the building trades, for copper work, and for financial transactions. Many of these activities were carried out within the boundaries of the (much-expanded) market. Yet by the end of Song, its limits had become too constricting. The area inside the northeastern gates was given over to stables and pasture for travelers’ mounts; boat-building yards had taken over the area north of the Wu district yamen as well as several neighborhoods in the southern half of the city; the southeast corner had become a center of grain processing; and textiles were being produced north of the Changzhou district yamen as well as south of the prefect’s yamen.70 There are clear signs of guild organization, at least in some trades.71 As early as the Northern Song (960–1127), there was a Jisheng miao (Temple of the Loom Spirit) northeast of the Le Bridge. Although it had disappeared by Yuan times, a Wujun jiye gongsuo (Guild of the Wu Commandery Loom Industry) was then headquartered in the Yuanmiao Daoist Temple, also northeast of the Le Bridge.72 As the location of these organizations suggests, the link between temple-building and economic activity was intimate and complex. Economic growth generated funds that might be put to such pious uses as the building and repair of temples; temples, once built, might be used to organize economic activity.73 The character of these guilds is in any case unclear: recent work

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suggests that they should be viewed as instruments of government control, organized in the wake of the collapse of the official market system, rather than as autonomous structures controlled by and for their members.74 Indeed the state’s impact on the cityscape was still quite prominent. The prefect’s compound, in the eastern half of the city, was literally a city within the city. Its walled Zicheng occupied almost 5 percent of Suzhou’s total area. Separate compounds housed the district magistrates of Wu (governing the western half of the city and the areas south and west of the wall) and of Changzhou (in charge of the eastern half, plus the hinterland north and east). In addition, schools, examination halls, tax offices, granaries, arsenals, and the temples of the official cult were scattered throughout the city. There were even twenty-eight separate barracks in which units of the military were housed.75 The state’s imprint on urban space was even greater than this catalog suggests for, in addition to preempting broad portions of the landscape, state activities shaped the use others made of what remained. Most obviously perhaps, such a large official establishment required an even larger complement of subofficials, such as clerks and runners, were it to rule as well as reign. A substantial portion of the urban population was at any given time employed, directly or indirectly, by the public sector. More subtle were the ways in which official power shaped the residential patterns of the local elite. In Song times, the men of Wu were far more successful than those of other districts in achieving membership in the scholar-official elite. Yet the urban residences of these successful families were concentrated on the eastern (Changzhou) side of the city—farther from home, but closer to the prefectural yamen.76 The famed Map Stele of Pingjiang (Pingjiang tubei, 1229) shows almost the same wall; the same network of six principal north-south streets and fourteen main east-west avenues, each paralleled by a navigable canal; the same three hundred–odd bridges that an early twentieth-century visitor would have encountered.77 Southern Song Suzhou was thus already an impressive urban center. As Marco Polo’s account attests, few cities anywhere in the world could compare in size, beauty, or wealth. Yet as long as Hangzhou remained the capital, Suzhou would remain a mere satellite in a Hangzhou-centered universe.

Yuan: “Grain Transports and Merchant Ships Gather Like Clouds” On the eve of the Mongol conquest, Suzhou was thus no longer empty, inchoate, or backward. Yet if the stage had been completed, the play was far from over. The local history of prefecture after prefecture appears to justify received wisdom: for much of Jiangnan, Mongol rule was disastrous.

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“A Great Deal of Extravagance”

Hangzhou’s registered population was halved, that of Huzhou fell by 15 percent, the number of rural markets in Ningbo stagnated.78 Suzhou was a conspicuous exception: its population continued to grow under the Yuan, albeit at a reduced rate.79 Lack of examination lists and other standard indicators, sparse evidence,80 complex institutional arrangements, and the nationalistic prejudices of previous generations of historians make a synthesis of local developments during this era particularly difficult. What is known clearly indicates that this was neither a stagnant nor an insignificant period. The transition was relatively peaceful. The Mongols routinely offered those under attack an opportunity to surrender voluntarily. If they submitted, their lives and property were spared. If they refused, the Mongols showed no mercy. Chinese officials at Changzhou, the prefecture just north of Suzhou, chose defiance; they were defeated and massacred. To resist the Mongols—an effort at which the Southern Song Chinese succeeded longer than any other people save the Mamluks—the Southern Song mobilized all available resources. Yet this effort, which included Jia Sidao’s public field laws and the requisitioning of merchant vessels, undercut elite support for the dynasty.81 For many in Suzhou, the costs of loyalty and the risk of defeat outweighed the benefits of ethnic Chinese rule. In early 1276, Suzhou capitulated without a fight.82 The prefecture’s tax quota rose from some 340,000 piculs per year under the Song to 880,000 piculs by 1317.83 Much of the increase was due to the expansion of “official land” (guantian). Such land had become significant, and a significant source of disaffection, by the end of Song. When in the 1260s the Song decreed that all families with more than 100 mu in the six prefectures surrounding Lake Tai sell one-third of their land to the state, the government acquired 3,500,000 mu (583,333 acres or 233,334.5 hectares) of public fields. This was approximately the area of Lake Tai: “A glance at a map reveals that, if the amount of arable in these six prefectures in the hands of families with over 100 mu was equivalent to three times the area of Lake Tai, there could not have been much left over for anyone else.”84 The tiller of this soil became a tenant of the government, his tax obligation in fact rent. Hence, for most of the population, this change should have made little real difference. Yet since government compensation was tied to the rent levied, landlords had every incentive to overstate the amount they had been receiving from parcels they were forced to sell. This would of course saddle their erstwhile tenants with higher rents in perpetuity. Adding injury to insult, landlords were put in charge of the “official manors” (guanzhuang) established in each canton (xiang) to administer the expropriated land.85 They often exceeded the commission of two decaliters (dou) per picul they were legally

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authorized to deduct for their trouble. Government tenants were naturally expected to make good the shortfall. Eliminating harmonious purchase and stanching the issue of unbacked (and increasingly valueless) paper money were no doubt public goods. But those acts were scant consolation to those most directly affected, particularly since the change of dynasty did nothing to alter the system.86 When conditions made action necessary,87 the Yuan bureaucracy proved willing and able to undertake essential public works. Energetic and knowledgeable officials like Ren Renfu (1254–1327) mobilized the commoners of Suzhou for water-control projects that expanded the arable and opened the channels: in both 1303 and 1324 it was Ren who organized the dredging of the crucial Wu Song River.88 The government did not, however, provide its tenants with a line of credit in times of dearth; nor did it directly undertake maintenance of the innumerable small-scale dikes and channels crucial to successful farming in this region.89 To provide these services, an intermediate stratum of usurers and water-control managers arose. These quickly became de facto landlords, collecting a quasi-rent from peasants tilling “government” fields.90 It is now apparent that the havoc Mongol rule inflicted on handicrafts has been greatly exaggerated. The most obvious counterexample is the spread of cotton. This largely displaced hempen cloth in Songjiang and northern Suzhou prefectures during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Yet cotton did not become a commercially significant product until the Ming. Some products that were traded in Yuan times (notably porcelains) declined in quality, yet this decline should be considered in tandem with the expansion of output that accompanied it. The Jiangnan silk industry provides an even more positive example. Private manufacture of silk had occurred under previous dynasties; the Yuan was the first merely to restrict the use of certain designs, not to prohibit private manufacture as such. The Yuan levied a tax in raw silk, but not in silk fabric. While expansion in the number of mulberry trees continued (in part as a result of official encouragement), Suzhou’s silk tax fell from 981,332 ounces in Song to 358,400 ounces in Yuan.91 A weaving and dyeing bureau was established at Suzhou in 1280, one of approximately seventy workshops to which the 420,000 artisans (more than 100,000 of them silk weavers) registered in Zhexi were attached. Within such workshops, division of labor was far advanced and high standards were maintained. Although it is abundantly clear that the system did not always work as intended, modest production quotas per worker, and the limiting of compensation to a ration while on duty strongly suggest that craftsmen only served for fixed periods.92

56

“A Great Deal of Extravagance”

When off duty, weavers were allowed to produce for the private market. This concentrated economic power because, unlike production of raw silk and the reeling of silk thread, the looms required to weave the types of silk cloth demanded by consumers were far beyond the means of peasant producers.93 However limited the benefits of an expanding luxury sector for the general run of commoners, the quantity of silk cloth produced does appear to have increased while its quality improved. (These developments may have augmented the importance of mulberry-leaf usury,94 although ownership of mulberries does not appear to have played a major role in Mongol systems of fiscal classification.) There is evidence that the use of mills and other relatively capital-intensive methods of processing food increased, a development that would have further concentrated wealth in the hands of the few. In Suzhou, officially sponsored factories were established east of the prefect’s yamen. The area outside the southeast city gate (directly linked by the Wu Song River to the flourishing coastal and foreign trade) specialized in the building and repair of oceangoing ships. Simultaneously, the northwest (Chang) gate became a bustling economic center complete with shops, warehouses, and a grain-processing industry.95 In part as a result of increased production, commerce flourished. So important had merchants become that, when the city wall was rebuilt in the chaotic late Yuan, the most active faubourg was protected as well—an innovation that created the pronounced bulge in Suzhou’s northwest corner.96 Many traders were engaged in maritime as well as inland commerce. Among those famous for their wealth were Zhang Xuan (active circa 1290; from Jiading district in Suzhou prefecture); Zhu Qing (active circa 1290; from Chongming, a district of Suzhou from the early Ming); and Shen Wansan (or Shen Fu, active circa 1360; according to some sources a Suzhou native, according to others from Shanghai: DMB).97 The first two were one-time private merchants who entered the service of the Yuan: they were among the foremost advocates (and beneficiaries) of shipping tax grain from Jiangnan to the Mongol capital at Beijing by sea. They made Taicang (in Suzhou prefecture) the southern terminus of this route, a place where “grain transports and merchant ships gathered like clouds.”98 Linked to the Grand Canal, Lake Tai, and the prefectural seat by the Lou River (ships sailed up the latter to dock at Suzhou’s northeast gate), Taicang’s port, Liujiagang (Liu Family Harbor), was known as the “wharf of the six kingdoms.” Its economic importance long survived Zhang and Zhu, giving rise to numerous mercantile fortunes.99 By one estimate, the port city itself had a population of half a million people in the early fourteenth century.100 Even earlier, in 1287, the government had designated Suzhou as one of four Offices of Maritime Transportation.101

Suzhou to 1367

57 table 3

Population Growth in the Lower Yangzi Macroregion, Early Yuan to Early Ming (by region, in households)

Region

Hangzhou region Hangzhou prefecture Suzhou region Suzhou prefecture Nanjing region Nanjing prefecture

1290 population

1393 population

1,654,380 360,850 1,308,409.5 466,158 1,069,100.5 214,538

1,373,765.5 216,165 1,121,734 491,514 731,576.5 163,915

Percentage change

–17 –40 –14.3 5.4 –31.6 –23.6

Source: Yuan figures from Liang Fangzhong, Zhongguo lidai hukou, tiandi, tianfu tongji, 181–82 (table 49); Ming figures are from Da Ming Huidian, 19: 3b–6a, and from Zhejiang tongzhi, 72–74. Notes: Population totals for prefectures that straddle regions—Jiaxing (Hangzhou/Suzhou) and Zhenjiang, Yangzhou, and Gaoyou (Suzhou/Nanjing)—were allocated by assuming that half the population fell in each district. Note that Gaoyou and Jiangyin existed in 1290 but not in 1393, Chuzhou and Hezhou in 1393 but not in 1290; that the Yuan figures for Huzhou and Songjiang are from the 1330s; that the earliest available Ming data for Jiaxing are from the Xuande reign-period (1425–35); and that the Jinhua figure for Ming is 1472.

Taken together, these factors suggest that neither population growth, nor the cultural florescence of the late Yuan,102 nor Zhang Shicheng’s choice of a capital should be regarded as a fluke. Under Mongol rule, if Hangzhou suffered a dramatic decline—and Ningbo (whose economic fate was closely linked to that of the Southern Song capital)103 stagnated—Suzhou’s position had been enhanced in absolute as well as in relative terms (see Table 3). The elimination of a competing cultural and economic center, its supremacy ensured by annual infusions of tax wealth, was helpful. So was the reorientation of trade routes. And though they provided neither the most orthodox nor the most effective rule in the annals of the Middle Kingdom, the Mongols had their strong points. They maintained the economy’s infrastructure while supporting—and in some cases enhancing—the economic and social position of existing elites. The Yuan regarded descendants of those who had held offices and obtained degrees under the Song as members of a Confucian priestly caste. They sought to preserve the social position of such patrilines by designating them “Confucian households” and according them legal and fiscal privileges.104 The care Mongol officials lavished on maintaining the Fan lineage charitable estate is of a piece with such efforts to support preexisting elites: once in control, the Mongols valued social stability.105 If there were few opportunities to exercise one’s talents for administration, and very few for upward social mobility, there is even less evidence of barbarian determination to extirpate the indigenous elite. Throughout the Yuan, Suzhou received substantial numbers of immigrants, many claiming descent from the first families of Song times.106 When the rebel-

58

“A Great Deal of Extravagance”

lions destined to topple the Yuan broke out, Suzhou remained peaceful. Not surprisingly, the wealthy and the prominent sought refuge there.107 Once it shed its populist trappings, the Zhang Shicheng regime could be viewed as an extension of the positive trends of the Yuan. Zhang also encouraged handicraft production, expanded trade, undertook water-control projects, reclaimed land, supported existing social arrangements, and courted the traditional cultural elites.108 If he raised taxes to a still higher level—to 1 million piculs109—his need for elite backing ensured that revenues would be raised in ways that did not unduly inconvenience the powerful. Moreover, how and where taxes are spent is at least as important as their amount or the way they are raised. Zhang’s autonomy was substantial, even when he was ostensibly a Yuan official; the areas under his control were relatively compact. The better part of the funds raised would thus be used in or near the areas in which they were acquired. To be sure, the public works he undertook were often unpopular, even when they were necessary and useful.110 Many were designed to enhance Zhang’s prestige or to improve his military position, not to further economic development or promote the general welfare. But until the last stages of his conflict with Zhu Yuanzhang, Suzhou was almost entirely spared the ravages of war.111 Although the final ten-month siege was a harrowing experience for all who lived through it,112 the victorious Ming troops were under strict orders to maintain discipline: In the eighth month of 1366, [Zhu Yuanzhang] was prompted to order [his generals] Xu Da, Chang Yuchun [on whom, see DMB] and the rest to admonish the troops: “Do not loot without restraint, do not kill and wound recklessly, do not produce mass graves, do not destroy farmsteads.” When they were about to enter the city, Xu Da again instructed his officers and men: “Those who plunder the people’s goods will die; those who destroy the people’s dwellings will die; those who are twenty li [10 kilometers] from camp will die.” When they entered, the men of Wu dwelt in contentment and undisturbed security as before.113

Thus most of the accomplishments of Suzhou’s already long history entered the Ming intact. By the end of 1367, Suzhou was a land of silk and tea as well as one of rice and fish. A wealthy (if highly stratified) society, it was second to none in the cultivation of its scholars and the skill of its workmen. Commercialization—of both handicrafts and grains—had reached impressive levels.114 So had the number of city dwellers: at least one in five people registered in the districts of Wu and Changzhou resided in the prefectural seat.115 Neither ancient origin nor evident prosperity should obscure the novelty of this order in the mid-fourteenth century. It was moreover a fragile order. The

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area depended on unceasing organized effort just to keep its head above water. If in some ultimate sense this late Yuan dispensation owed most to locational advantage, natural resources, and mouvement de longue durée, realization of its possibilities (in the short and medium run at any rate) depended on the policies pursued by the state and the activities of the area’s local elites. If one could credit traditional accounts, the unrelenting hostility of the state and the decimation of elites should have made Suzhou’s new-found eminence as ephemeral as Zhang Shicheng’s.

3

A Conquered Province Suzhou under Hongwu

Ms. Wu and Her Family: The Yuan/Ming Transition in Microcosm The Wu had long been a prominent family (mingmen) in Lujiang, Anhui. Specialists in the Book of Changes, they had produced officials generation after generation: Ms. Wu’s grandfather and uncle held office under the Mongols, and her younger brother became an investigating censor in the early Ming. Before and after the Jin (1127–1234), the family dwelt in undivided “filial piety and fraternal submission, harmony and friendship,” their property of four thousand–plus qing (more than 400,000 mu or 100 square miles) not only providing for the needs of a household numbering in the hundreds but also underwriting extensive charitable work (aiding the poor, the widowed, and refugees). As a child, Ms. Wu (1340–1420) imbibed the cardinal virtues—filiality and fraternal harmony, benevolence and reciprocity—studied the Classics and the Histories until she had “penetrated their hidden meanings,” and learned to compose both rhyme-prose (fu) and verse (shi). She was skilled at embroidery and at playing the Chinese lute, but her domestic accomplishments were rather specialized. Although she never insulted or mistreated her “several tens” of waiting-maids, “from childhood to the time her hair was pinned at the back of her head, she did not once enter a kitchen.”1 A great epidemic in which more than half the family died (and, one suspects, a desire to escape the raging civil war) prompted those who remained to flee to Suzhou. There “old families and renowned households” vied to obtain Ms. Wu as a daughter-in-law. Because Ms. Wu’s father had died young, her paternal aunt’s father-in-law, Pan Chunzi, was the one who recommended an alliance with another immigrant family, the Chens. He cited the family’s illustrious past, its present reputation for righteousness, and the current generation’s promise of future eminence. Many of the families that had taken refuge in Suzhou claimed to be descendants of illustrious lines from distant corners of the empire, but the pedigree of this group of Chens appeared genuine and genuinely distinguished. Originally from Sichuan, they traced their patriline back to an uncle of Chen Yaosou, honored by the Song as the Wenzhong duke. The uncle, Ye, moved to

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Nankang prefecture in Jiangxi. His seventh-generation descendant, Zhuan, was a jinshi of 1124; the next three generations held local offices under the Southern Song. By 1180 the family had established direct ties to Zhu Xi’s branch of the Neo-Confucian movement.2 Perhaps because Zhuan’s protection (yin) privilege had been exhausted,3 this record of service was interrupted in the midthirteenth century. Yet Zhuan’s fifth-generation descendant passed the preliminary examination for the jinshi during the 1265–74 reign-period. Conceivably, in a household with such impeccable connections to the NeoConfucian movement, such a man would have found it impossible to assume office under the succeeding dynasty. Such scruples did not bind his descendants. His son, Tong, was an “academician awaiting instructions” (rank 5a or 5b) under the Yuan. And his grandson, Zheng (1297–1348), was groomed for even greater things. He studied under the “premier classical scholar and NeoConfucian thinker during the Yuan period,” Wu Cheng (1249–1333) of Fuzhou prefecture, Jiangxi.4 Tong married his son to the granddaughter of the Song prime minister Jiang Wanli (d. 1275). Having completed his studies and become a “scholar of wide attainments,” Zheng went north for “at that time famous gentlemen and great officers all discussed the affairs of the empire.”5 Early in the 1341–67 reign-period, he was recommended for an official post by members of the bureaucracy. If one was ever offered, it was declined. Zheng returned south, settling in Wu.6 Zheng’s marriage had produced two sons and three daughters. Zheng died when they were still young, but both boys proved very intelligent. They devoted themselves to study. The elder, Ruzhi (1329–85), was known as a poet, painter, and essayist who drew on the ancients for inspiration. With friends he discussed “the virtues and wickedness of persons ancient and modern, the successes and failures of controlling the Way.” When the newly established Ming dynasty sought out men of ability, Ruzhi was summoned to the capital as a “talent” (rencai). About to be offered a substantive post, he withdrew, pleading the need to care for his aged mother. (Although his devotion to his mother predated this, his brother’s experience in public office may have dampened his enthusiasm for an official career. The timing of his summons, and thus the sequence of events, is however not clear.) He returned to a farming village in Wu, managing the family’s affairs so that his mother would be provided for in her old age. When he died, he left a son and four daughters—all still unmarried—in the care of his wife, Ms. Yuan. It was, however, not Chen Ruzhi but his flamboyant younger brother, Ruyan (ca. 1331–71; DMB), whom Pan Chunzi commended to the Wus. The prospective groom was nine years his future wife’s senior. He had spent much of the decade preceding his marriage in Suzhou’s most dazzling cultural and political

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circles, first as a protégé of the wealthy Kunshan literatus Gu Ying (1310–69), later attaching himself to one of Zhang Shicheng’s (DMB) chief lieutenants, Pan Yuanming (d. 1382). He already enjoyed a considerable reputation as a poet and painter. The worthy and eminent constantly filled his house. The precise date of the marriage is unclear; given the age of their eldest daughter at Ruyan’s death (9 sui), it was probably around 1362. After she wed, Ms. Wu took charge of the details that their constant entertaining involved. The Chens, like the Wus, were generous to the “poor and anxious, the weary and distressed”; Ms. Wu apparently controlled the dispersal of these funds as well. On a more mundane level, she had to adjust to Ms. Jiang, a woman very conscious of her own pedigree and of her contribution to the Chen family. The new bride penetrated the deep meaning of her mother-in-law’s somewhat cryptic axiom, “Our ancestors exerted themselves in study and then the Way was illumined; contenting their desires, then the heart-and-mind was darkened” (an exhortation to devote oneself to self-cultivation while avoiding selfindulgence), after hearing it only three times. She managed all things in a way that would suit the older woman. She attended to matters great and small (even the marriages of Ruyan’s three sisters) so that nothing would disturb her mother-in-law. Ultimately, she was put in charge of the family’s ritual activities. In a relationship notorious for generating animosity, Ms. Wu won praise: “The wife of my son is truly the daughter of an illustrious house.” Ruyan proved no less fortunate in his patron than in his wife. Shortly before the fall of Suzhou, Pan Yuanming surrendered Hangzhou to the Ming—a timely gesture that gave Pan another fifteen years of life and Ruyan a new career. He was “recommended and summoned” (jianbi) by the Ming,7 being given the post of registrar in Jinan prefecture, Shandong.8 Ms. Wu accompanied him to his post, even helping him discharge the burdens of office. According to the family, Ruyan did not commit a single unrighteous act during his service. By 1370, only one thing marred the family’s happiness: Ms. Wu had given birth to three daughters but no son. Ruyan, nearing forty, had begun to consider adopting an heir. One night, a “white-clothed spirit” appeared in a dream; the apparition was followed shortly by the birth of a son, Ji (originally given the more Buddhist-sounding name Shi) (1370–1434). Ten months later, Ruyan was dead. His widow, her infant son in her arms, returned to Suzhou, burying her husband on Wu district’s Mount Heng.9 Family sources describe the next years in dramatic terms. Ms. Wu had been left with four small children, an empty purse, Ruyan’s twenty-thousand-fascicle (juan) library, and twenty mu of vegetable land. She rejected all suggestions that she remarry. Although still young and beautiful, she stopped using cos-

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metics and ornaments, donned coarse clothes, and ate simple food. Ignoring heat and cold, she spent her days (and nights) reeling thread and wielding a hoe side by side with family servants in the vegetable plot. Although griefstricken by the loss of her husband, she resolved to emulate the chaste widows of antiquity: her son, Ji, compared her to Jingjiang, the widowed mother of a ruler of Lu praised by Confucius.10 She took care that the family’s reduced circumstances did not deprive Ms. Jiang of delicacies she had previously enjoyed. Some, seeing Ms. Wu labor so, urged her to marry one of her daughters (now of age) to a young man who would reside with the Chens and contribute to their support. As the sources make clear, such arrangements were common in eminently respectable families; nonetheless, Ms. Wu would not deviate from her stricter norms of propriety. In due course, her daughters contracted major marriages. The middle one died shortly after doing so; the name of her husband does not survive. Her elder sister wed a descendant of Fan Zhongyan, Fan Zhao;11 the youngest married a scholar from Changzhou, Liu Zheng. (In 1399 the latter passed the provincial-level examination; his marriage to Ms. Chen had certainly been contracted years before this.) Both women were widowed. But thanks to their mother’s training and example, they were able to maintain their chastity. When Ji was old enough, Ms. Wu taught him to read—the Classic of Filial Piety, Elementary Learning, the Analects and the Mencius, odes and biographies. She sought to instill in him a sense of righteousness as well as the techniques of composition. At age eleven, she sent Ji to study the Odes under the local scholars Li Shangde and Qin Shiyin, the Changes with Yu Zhenmu.12 His mother used wheat to make the dumplings that sustained Ji during the day. On his return, she would examine him on what he had learned. Mother and son would huddle by the lamp, suddenly realizing that half the night had already passed. Because the family’s material condition remained precarious well into Ji’s adulthood, he was known to hoe at dawn and read aloud at night. At age twenty, Ji married the daughter of former Suzhou prefect Jin Jiong (in office 1371).13 The family (from Jiaxing, Zhejiang) had produced officials generation after generation. Their daughters were apparently literate—and long-suffering. Ms. Wu prepared a handbook for her daughter-in-law, “several tens of extracts from the classics and biographies” to aid her in mastering her wifely duties. Ms. Jin (1372–1421) served her mother-in-law in the prescribed fashion and endured the privations of her early married life without complaint. She never tried to enhance her appearance, preferring to devote herself wholeheartedly to study. According to her husband, she sought to be another Jingjiang: her heart was sincere, her manner modest and grave, her actions fil-

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ial and benevolent. Once Ji married, he no longer needed to concern himself with mundane details of household management.14 Having survived her mother-in-law by only a year, Ms. Jin barely had an opportunity to savor the prerogatives of her station, “taking charge of the property and following the generational pattern, her sons obeying her commands and teachings, her sons’ wives completing their tasks and duties, [everyone] supporting one another, all taking pleasure in discharging their business.”15 Or so the authors of social biographies wish us to think. Anything written down has been written down for a purpose. In the process of shaping a biography, some details will inevitably have been emphasized, others minimized. Material that did not serve the author’s ends may simply have been omitted. Those ends were primarily moral ones: from The Spring and Autumn Annals forward, Chinese recorded their past as much to edify as to instruct. Since compilers of the extensive biographical sections in local gazetteers and dynastic histories consulted such texts, the prominent often commissioned social biographies in hopes of influencing the way they would be portrayed. Yet even in such cases the primary audience in view remained one’s posterity and one’s peers. Using a stylized version of the past to shape the future, successful examples dramatized abstract virtues through their accounts of an ancestor’s lived experience. Dependent as we are on examples included in anthologies of such works or in the collected works of noted authors, such shaping of the record to serve edifying ends is apt to be more rather than less true of our sources for Ming Suzhou. Not only are the subjects of these texts invariably presented as admirable people; they also triumph—morally if not always literally—over adversity. As hagiographers have long understood, framing a life in this way introduces a welcome element of conflict and transforms a static list of virtues into a compelling portrait of their concrete embodiment. If we wish to interrogate them as traces of an underlying reality, rather than simply as moments in a long classical Chinese conversation that sought simultaneously to define and to reproduce the good society, do we not risk mistaking stylistic convention for significant evidence? Such dangers are real, but they are hardly limited to social biographies. All our sources for Ming pose comparable problems, sometimes obviously, often less so. Unless we limit ourselves to the hermeneutically closed circle of intertextuality, we must read the stylized and moralizing texts bequeathed us for traces of the world in which they were produced. Convinced that even moralists find it useful to construct worlds their readers would find plausible depictions of the one they experienced, I believe it possible to do just that.

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Conventional though they may be in form and moral content, our sources do not after all simply reduce to stereotyped formulas. Details provided in one instance are absent or strikingly different in others. Consider the case of Ms. Wu and her family. There is little reason to take the size of the Wu estate in Lujiang or Chen Ruyan’s library literally, yet such pseudo-numbers were conventions whose meanings were familiar to readers of literary Chinese. That the Wu were a communal family of wealth and learning from Anhui who fled to the relative safety of Suzhou in late Yuan seems clear. Surprising though it may be given the date, the evidence that Ms. Wu (from Anhui) and Ms. Jin (from Zhejiang) were far more than functionally literate is anything but stereotypical.16 It seems beyond question that Ms. Wu made a brilliant marriage with another extremely prominent immigrant family; that the family suffered serious setbacks in the early Ming; and that both family traditions of learning and the existence of a modest holding were critical in enabling Ms. Wu to perpetuate the line, physically and socially, in spite of those setbacks. Whether Ms. Wu literally forswore all ornament, devoting herself to physical labor while ensuring that her mother-in-law continued to enjoy the luxuries to which she was accustomed is less significant than the family’s use of these topoi to underscore the heroic character of her sacrifices. Her role in her son’s education (complete with the making of dumplings and lesson reviews late into the night) strikes a far less common note, at least for early Ming.17 The descriptions of Ms. Wu and Ms. Jin as daughters-in-law seem on the other hand thoroughly conventional. They are indicative of the ways people were supposed to think and act, if perhaps not of the way all people thought and acted. The positive value accorded chaste widowhood—and claims that Chen Ji’s sisters were able to persevere in that difficult course thanks to Ms. Wu’s training and example—reflect Ming values and assumptions. Most modern readers would of course reject such standards today. Yet conventions and values are historical facts, just as tax quotas or rates of success in the civil service examinations are. We would lose much by dissolving them in the solvent of deconstruction. Even when the writer deployed cliches, he had to choose which formulas to use. We can learn much from the conventions invoked, the qualities emphasized, and the ways virtues are embodied in the details of a biography. Equally revealing are the gaps and omissions that separate one text from another. In the present instance, two are particularly striking. The family record carefully avoids mentioning that Chen Ruyan was executed for having committed some minor infraction while in office. He was in fact one of the most famous Suzhou victims of Zhu Yuanzhang’s ire. Moreover, if both Chen

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Ruzhi and Ms. Wu were devoting themselves to Ms. Jiang’s comfort after 1371, Ms. Wu’s struggle must have been far less lonely than it is made out to be. One can readily imagine the author of Ms. Wu’s funerary inscription—who was after all her son Ji—omitting this detail to heighten the effect. Yet Chen Ruzhi’s says nothing about assisting his sister-in-law or his orphaned nieces and nephew. This seems strong evidence that, however important kinship ties may have been in practice, the family as a ritual and social construct was narrowly conceived as the patriline. In the absence of institutional support or textual sanction, practice would quickly approximate theory. Read with care, such texts reveal much about the world they sought to transmit to posterity. The details of any particular family history are unique; yet the sampling technique employed here was designed to provide a body of data broadly representative of the experience and attitudes of the elite as a whole. Ms. Wu and her family seem to embody in microcosm the experience of Suzhou and its elites during the Yuan Ming transition. In the late Yuan, the affluent and educated flocked to Suzhou, Zhang Shicheng’s semilegitimate and largely peaceful state affording refuge to a remarkable proportion of the Middle Kingdom’s best and brightest. After 1368, these talented and cultivated men of Wu, old and new, were pressed into the service of the victorious Ming regime. Yet, in short order, their abilities and education triggered the suspicion of a peasant-emperor. The lucky were merely cashiered or sent into exile. The least fortunate, like Chen Ruyan, forfeited their lives for petty reasons, real or imagined. Despite such persecution, the survivors—often under difficult and depressing circumstances—endured, transmitting the best of the cultural tradition to the next generation. They did this in spite of a dramatic and sudden increase in the prefecture’s tax burden. Henceforth, Suzhou and the surrounding prefectures bore the highest levels of land tax in the empire. As the eminent author and calligrapher Zhu Yunming (DMB) wrote in his Unofficial History of the Nine Reigns (Jiuchao yeji, 1511): [Zhu Yuanzhang] was exasperated with the city. For a long time it did not submit. He resented the people’s support for the bandit [Zhang Shicheng]; moreover, he suffered difficulties from the mansions of the wealthy [for] they were defended to the end. For these reasons, he ordered his men to seize all the rent registers of the powerful families and to calculate what was handed over to them [in rents]. The civil officials obeyed, making the fixed tax equal this amount. Taxes were therefore plentiful and the levy especially heavy in order to punish the evil practices of one time.18

In extreme cases, fields bore a tax of two or three piculs (shi) per mu.19 In the eyes of generations of scholars, thus began an uneasy but central rela-

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tionship between the populace of Suzhou and its new masters, an uneasy relationship that would persist well into the seventeenth century.20 The sources leave little doubt that this version captures a part of the truth. Yet it is no less clear that Suzhou and its elites ultimately flourished under the Ming. Understanding how both could be true requires us to focus on the relationship between state and locality, a relationship that had to be repeatedly renegotiated between these two entities, each in constant flux.

The Early Ming System Any assessment must start by examining the work of the Ming founder. One of the most controversial rulers to occupy the Dragon Throne in all Chinese history, Zhu Yuanzhang (DMB) has been singled out as the most despotic of all emperors.21 He often appears at his worst in his dealings with Suzhou and its cultured, articulate elites. Yet Suzhou’s vexed and troubled connection with the Ming polity can only be understood as a variant of the system the first Ming emperor imposed on the entire realm. This system was both populist and profoundly conservative. Alone among dynastic founders, Zhu Yuanzhang had risen from the lowest ranks of the common people. He realized that, were the house of Zhu to endure for any length of time, the Ming order would have to prevent the rise of massive popular disaffection and of rival concentrations of power. His institutional arrangements, developed over a three-decade reign (1368–98), drew on the practices of non-Han as well as Han dynasties. When and where he found such practices lacking, he incorporated and generalized local procedures that struck him as promising. The order he established was intended to last through the ages. Having experienced the chaos of a major dynastic transition first-hand, Zhu assumed that any future change would be bad, for the dynasty and for its subjects. Rigidities that strike modern critics as arbitrary and irrational—such as tying specific sources of revenue to specific expenditures—were entirely consistent with the founding emperor’s desire to forestall change. There were technical as well political arguments for adopting such a strategy. Given the largely agrarian character of the realm, its huge size, and the very real limitations premodern command-and-control mechanisms imposed, Ming institutions had to be tailored to the realities of a subcontinental empire of peasant villages. And, for the Ming emperors to rule as well as to reign, those institutions had to comprise a relatively simple set of standardized procedures applicable to the realm as a whole.22 To avoid the widespread discontent that had undone the Yuan, Zhu

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Yuanzhang recognized that it was essential to secure the people’s livelihood. Thus the land tax on “common people’s land” (mintian)—the basic source of revenue for the new state—was deliberately set at a very low rate. Like all states, the Ming needed revenue. One way the potential conflict between these two equally necessary objectives was resolved was by designating certain lands “official fields” (guantian) held by government tenants rather than by taxpayers. Yet, possibly in a deliberate attempt to avoid the ills associated with SongYuan “official manors” (guanzhuang) and their landlord managers, “no agency was ever established to administer the confiscated estates and the rents on them were merged with regular land taxes.”23 Although in principle different rates were easily explained, those who held one type of land bore much heavier burdens than did those who held another. The Ming adopted the two-tax system, itself an innovation of late Tang. In summer, those on the government tax rolls had to deliver specified quantities of silk, barley, and wheat.24 The main tax—in Suzhou, assessed in rice—was, however, the “autumn levy” (qiu liang). In addition, some areas (Suzhou among them) were responsible for providing “white rice” (bailiang), the “highly polished ordinary and glutinous rice destined for palace consumption, part of which went to the emperor’s table and part to sacrificial services.”25 The taxpayer was personally responsible for delivering this rice to the capital. These taxes were supplemented by a large number of minor charges—on tea, salt, wine and vinegar, mulberry and indigo, marshes, forest products, commerce, and real estate transfers (fangdi linqian).26 Merchants were expected to supply government offices with goods at what the officials considered a reasonable price. Often the goods were simply requisitioned. Areas were responsible for the delivery of tribute goods, their quantity fixed by custom but expandable at will. In theory, trade in many commodities was restricted or prohibited. Merchants were required to obtain licenses to engage in commerce. Those trading more than a hundred li (fifty kilometers) from their place of registration had to obtain passes, and innkeepers were supposed to apprise authorities of the identity and activities of their lodgers. Markets were subject to a variety of official regulations, and merchants were not permitted to invest in land.27 Were then cities, commerce, and handicrafts subject to confiscatory taxation? The available evidence indicates that, in general, they were not. Although city dwellers may have had friends in high places, and may have been thought to be less docile than peasants,28 the technical problems posed by taxes on commerce and handicrafts were probably more crucial. Urban wealth and urban populations were much more mobile than the rural ones. Rates of return var-

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ied from time to time, and product to product, in a way that agricultural yields did not. Moreover, the composition, centers, and volume of commerce and industry were neither fixed nor predictable. Had officials not realized it, their merchant advisers would certainly have pointed out that a purely local increase in taxes on trade and manufactures of any consequence could not be imposed without damaging a city’s relative position. Quite apart from the unrest this might trigger, what was gained in higher rates might well be lost in reduced volume. These characteristics did not commend such taxes to those seeking to create a solid foundation for the state.29 In any case, the imperial fisc did not need these revenues. The government income that resulted from the new complex of taxes and duties was substantial, and it was supplemented by mobilizing the population to serve officially ordained ends. Cumulatively, these decisions were nothing less than a wholesale reorientation of the Middle Kingdom’s fiscal system, making the land tax the predominant source of government income for the first time since the midTang. By reducing the scope of government activity to an indispensable minimum, using labor service rather than tax wherever possible, then spreading the burden as widely and fairly as possible over the entire realm, Zhu Yuanzhang placed the government “on an extremely solid fiscal basis. A substantial surplus of revenues over expenditure came to be regarded as the norm, and this surplus could be used to finance tax remission and disaster relief . . . or to finance military campaigns and palace construction.”30 Following precedents established by earlier dynasties, the Ming did impose service levies on its subjects. These simplified accounting and reduced the amount of revenue the government required to carry out its functions. Soldiers and artisans were registered as separate castes. They and their descendants, in perpetuity, were obliged to fight or to function for the state. As under the Mongols, whenever they were not on call, craftsmen were free to ply their trade on their own account.31 The bulk of the population was organized in hundreds and tithings (lijia)—officially imposed on the entire realm from 1381 but in use, at least in the Jiangnan area, from 1368.32 Ideally, these were units of 110 households. The ten with the most wealth and the largest number of able-bodied males were appointed hundred captains (lizhang); the rest of the population was grouped into ten tithings (jia) of ten households each. Once every ten years, in rotation, the households in each tithing served as tithing heads. In that year, under the leadership of the hundred captain on duty, they assumed primary responsibility for providing “regular” labor service. The most important portion of this was tax collection. Yet the hundreds and tithings system was far more than a simple method for mobilizing the people to collect and deliver the

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land tax. Numerous essential but unbudgeted public expenses, from service as “doormen, guards, messengers and sedan-chair bearers” to the provision of “stationery, oil, charcoal, and candles,”33 were borne by this organization. Simultaneously, the hundreds and tithings were to function as a self-governing community, arbitrating local disputes, mobilizing local residents for watercontrol and other necessary efforts, and uplifting them through (officially prescribed) moral indoctrination. To facilitate the realization of these communal functions, each hundred had an officially designated hundred elder.34 Once every ten years, the population and landholdings of the hundreds and tithings were to be reassessed (and recorded in the Yellow Registers of population and Fish-Scale Maps and Books for land) and necessary modifications made. From the outset, hundreds tried to observe the boundaries of natural communities. Although large natural villages might be divided into two (or more) hundreds, and small natural villages combined, the system respected township (du) and district boundaries. Simultaneously, it tried to take socioeconomic realities into account. Under ordinary circumstances, tenants were not enrolled as independent households. Indeed, the poorest households—in Jiangnan, those with less than ten mu—or those without adult males were relegated to a category of “odds and ends” (jiling).35 If their wealth and numbers increased in the course of a decade, households on the supplementary list would be elevated to full membership in the hundreds and tithings when the registers were next compiled, replacing households in decline. Above this structure of self-administered communities but below the level of the official bureaucracy were “tax captains” (liangzhang). First instituted in 1371, and never appointed everywhere, the tax captain was a wealthy commoner responsible for the collection and transport of the tax quota from a tax sector (qu)—a region smaller than a district (xian) but larger than a hundred owing, on average, 10,000 piculs of grain tax. Originally appointed on a temporary basis, the tax captain was honored (among other things, by being admitted to group audiences with the emperor himself) and privileged (able, in case of need, to have a death sentence reduced to a beating or a fine for himself or members of his family).36 Within his sphere of influence, he enjoyed considerable autonomy: he was expected to organize water-control projects in the areas under his control and, in the event of natural disaster, was charged with assessing the damage and filing an application for tax relief.37 He was also personally responsible for making good any deficits that might occur. To enable him to carry out his tasks, each tax captain was assigned two assistants, an accountant, twenty measurers, and a thousand laborers.38 “Miscellaneous labor service” such as this was exacted above and beyond the duties required of

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commoners as members of their hundreds and tithings. In the early years of the dynasty, and in most areas, miscellaneous labor service was, however, regarded as a minor nuisance.39 To integrate these activities on a subcontinental scale, the Ming still required a bureaucracy. Entry into its ranks was secured by recommendation, by promotion from the Imperial Academy (or sometimes, the sub-bureaucracy), and by examination. In the first Ming reign, the third avenue was far less common than the first two.40 Members of this caste enjoyed certain privileges—notably exemption from labor service (but not from the land tax). The emperor nonetheless regarded over-mighty subjects as a serious threat to political stability in general and to the reigning dynasty in particular. Accordingly, while the range of those benefiting from tax exemptions and other privileges was expanded, the value of those exemptions was reduced.41 Even more important, the Ming broke with Yuan precedent by abandoning recruitment on the basis of “Confucian household” (ruhu) status. This change eliminated tax exemptions and restored the possibility of downward mobility for 104,000 of the empire’s elite households.42 The protection (yin) privilege— which permitted those who had attained high office under previous dynasties to pass their position on to succeeding generations—was also severely restricted. As a result, the privileged included many former commoners, elevated by the new dynasty on the basis of age, wealth, scholarly achievement, or demonstrated ability. They would retain their status so long as they merited it in the eyes of their imperial master. The military garrisons stationed in the administrative centers of the empire provided another, rival, set of elites.43 The entire empire was divided into 159 prefectures, which were subdivided into more than 1,400 districts. Bureaucrats were responsible for maintaining good order in the areas to which they were appointed. That responsibility included seeing that taxes were collected, records kept, and law cases adjudicated; that tax relief and food supplies were provided in time of need; that the educational and ritual tasks of the empire were duly carried out; that the “people were nourished” so that taxes might be paid; and that the mechanisms below them were not malfunctioning. The district magistrate might be assisted by a vice magistrate, a deputy magistrate, police commissioner, jail warden, and instructor in the local Confucian school.44 To begin to carry out his duties, he was, however, dependent on labor service and requisitions, on the aid of local notables, and on the clerks and runners who kept the records and performed routine functions in government offices throughout China. As the emperor himself complained, such yamen underlings were very numerous. In late fourteenth-century Suzhou, they numbered 1,521.45

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One of the cardinal principles underlying this new order—“using good people to govern good people”—has an almost Mencian flavor.46 But Zhu Yuanzhang did not believe in simply leaving commoners to find their own solutions to their own problems. The new dynasty’s arrangements left no “public” sphere between the official and the private—itself often equated with the selfish and the venal. Government embodied the benevolent but unchallengeable impulses of the sage-emperor. He remained the true “pivot of the four quarters.” Routine operations of the system were to reflect his will. Any changes, anything out of the ordinary, in principle had to be reported to, and approved by, the Son of Heaven himself. The fact that the empire’s population had declined over the fourteenth century, approximating the levels of Han and Tang—periods in which prior dynasties had successfully imposed comprehensive organization on the population as a whole—and that this population was concentrated in a relatively small area well served by communications and transport, made such centralized control a more attainable goal than it might otherwise have been.47 Since the emperor was as suspicious of his officials as of his other subjects— even forbidding them from leaving their district capitals to go out into the countryside under their jurisdiction48—this did not imply that the Ming hoped to have a centralized bureaucracy micromanage the entire population. Zhu Yuanzhang assumed that the more officials interacted with the populace, the more they would use that contact to line their own pockets and misuse their influence. The more taxes collected, the greater the opportunities for peculation and the higher the real burden on the population due to the multiplication of fees and surcharges. By regimenting the population in officially proscribed ways, the Ming system sought to reduce tax quotas to a minimum and restrict bureaucratic intervention at the village level. Taxes were to be collected, in kind, by the people themselves at fixed rates. Each source of revenue was tied to a specific public purpose, and taxes were not considered paid until the tax had been delivered to the specified place and checked off by a member of the bureaucracy.49 Although the Ming sought to penetrate the natural village to a degree few premodern governments, in China or elsewhere, ever have, there were limits to what Zhu Yuanzhang sought to do. Unlike the leaders of the Chinese Communist movement six centuries later, Zhu Yuanzhang did not seek to create a new order. A natural order existed. The civil government ideally functioned as a regulating mechanism, mediating between mankind and the cosmos. Its purpose was less to shape the society over which it presided on a day-to-day basis than to oversee its smooth functioning, intervening in a timely manner to

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restore the natural order and to maintain its proper course. To ensure that this balance wheel functioned as it should, great effort was devoted to appointing the proper sort of men to office, then keeping them under constant surveillance. The proper sort of men were those who had internalized the classical tradition, a tradition all Ming Chinese regarded as synonymous with civilization itself. Knowing the classics by heart was far more important than mere technocratic expertise. But, though necessary, such learning was far from sufficient. Educational posts apart, officials were barred from serving in or near their home districts, and the responsibilities of a given bureaucrat often overlapped with those of his fellows. Commoners could protest misrule by an official to his superiors, and every bureaucrat was subject to routine periodic review of his official performance. In addition, the Censorate, an organ of the central government empowered to investigate any and all irregularities, acted as a check on misrule by the rulers.50 Important as these mechanisms were, success ultimately turned on the vigor and the skill with which The One Man, the emperor himself, fulfilled his functions. If he were a true Son of Heaven, his will was one with the will of the cosmos. Imperial actions, pronouncements, and deportment—the ritualized and ritualistic part of the office—both demonstrated and reflected this. More prosaically, an emperor’s achievements reflected his energy, intelligence, and dedication as chief bureaucrat. This government was a creature of paper, reports constantly being forwarded to the center, directives from the center being transmitted to (and imposed on) society at large. The ceremonial and the executive functions were each in themselves more than full-time jobs: by one wellknown count, Zhu Yuanzhang personally dealt with 1,660 memorials discussing 3,391 issues in a single eight-day period.51 Neither the executive nor the priestly function could legitimately be delegated to others. Little wonder that such a system demanded simplification and standardization.

Incorporating a Commercial City into an Agrarian State Imposing such a system on Suzhou posed special difficulties. While most of the empire was rural, Suzhou had a substantial urban component. While most of the empire relied on subsistence agriculture, even Suzhou’s rural areas were heavily commercialized.52 While most of the empire had suffered under the Mongols, Suzhou had flourished. Perhaps for that reason few members of Suzhou’s social or cultural elite had acknowledged Zhu Yuanzhang as a true Son of Heaven before the city fell to his armies. Spared the worst of the lateYuan chaos until it was visited on the area by Zhu’s own armies, ordinary res-

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idents of the prefecture had less reason than most to view the new emperor as their deliverer. Given the urgent needs of the Ming military, the newly conquered area’s wealth, and the fact that, unlike most of the realm, Suzhou had passed through the previous two decades relatively unscathed, the temptation to impose a conspicuously heavy tax quota on the prefecture was irresistible. This did not make its incorporation any easier. Zhu Yuanzhang addressed Suzhou’s special problems with characteristic energy. One technique, repeatedly and vigorously employed, was to uproot local elites and disrupt their networks. In the period 1368–69, members of the poet Gao Qi’s (DMB) circle who had been closely associated with the Zhang Shicheng regime were exiled to Zhu Yuanzhang’s native prefecture.53 In 1374, 140,000 individuals were ordered to move from Jiangnan to the same area.54 In 1380–81, 45,000 additional households were resettled in Nanjing, the “adult males [being] assigned as laborers and craftsmen in various government work projects.” In 1391, 5,300, and in 1397, 14,000 “wealthy households” (fuhu) were reregistered at the capital. The last of these acts was explicitly designed to prevent local bullies (haoyou) from annexing land.55 Converting the 1374 figure at the (artificially low) rate of five people per household, more than 92,000 Jiangnan households were uprooted by these actions. Given the uncertain, and probably shifting, boundaries of the area from which they were drawn, it is impossible to express this as a percentage of the region’s population. Had they all come from Suzhou prefecture, one household in five would have been forced to migrate. The total exceeded the number of households registered in Zhenjiang prefecture in 1393.56 This policy was less harsh than has usually been suggested. Many of those exiled were soon permitted to return. Even while exiled, many managed to spend the winter at home.57 In 1386, 1,460 sons and younger brothers from “wealthy households” in the southern capital district (Nanzhili) were given office.58 And even when all members of a family were compelled to move, they apparently retained title to their property; in an essentially agrarian empire, “wealthy households” would have been wealthy no longer had these transfers stripped them of their land.59 No doubt as important in the eyes of the state, a less conciliatory policy would have disrupted the local economic base, eliminating those with the intimate knowledge of local ecology and sophisticated technique that efficient exploitation of Suzhou’s paddy fields demanded. These policies may have led Suzhou’s established families to resort to some mildly unorthodox expedients. Thus the ancestors of Wu Kuan (1436–1504; DMB) were sent into exile in the early Ming. At about that time (and for that reason?), they married their daughter uxorilocally to one Chen Zifu from the

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Lake Tai region of Wu. While Wu Kuan’s grandfather, father, and elder brother turned to commerce, the Chens maintained the ancestral property in Changzhou district. In Wu Kuan’s youth, his mother, “née Zhang. . . . enlarged the property. Clothes and food were always given out equally to the many hired bondservants.” The Chens had meanwhile proved such skilled husbandmen that they were appointed tax captains for the area. Wu Kuan continued to regard them as virtual members of the family.60 The experience of the Wus and the Chens thus suggests that, in uprooting the local elite, the Ming sought to “hollow out” local society, disrupting it and diversifying its elites so that the regime might mobilize the area’s wealth without seriously threatening the prosperous peasant economy or the power of the state.61 Other aspects of the new dynasty’s relationship with Suzhou are less easily explained away. By traditional standards, Suzhou was clearly well governed in the first two Ming reigns: “illustrious officials” served as prefect in nineteen of the thirty-four years from 1368 to 1402. Wu and Changzhou districts were almost as well served, “illustrious officials” occupying the post of magistrate in sixteen-plus and fifteen-plus years respectively.62 The new regime began almost immediately to repair the damage wrought by conquest, focusing in the first instance on such culturally crucial institutions as schools and temples.63 The government was in desperate need of able and talented individuals to staff its bureaucracy. It was no less eager to secure the tacit recognition of legitimacy that service by the classically educated implied. The dynasty was more than willing to confer the burdens of office (and the trappings of official privilege) on men from Suzhou—even men who, like Chen Ruyan, had been closely affiliated with a rival contender for the Dragon Throne. To leave it at that would be highly misleading. First, a number of the key local officials not listed among the “illustrious” were less fondly remembered: one Chen Ning, who served as prefect from 1370 to early 1371, earned a promotion and the nickname “Chen the Branding Iron.”64 The memory of the man appointed to the post in 1371, Jin Jiong, was honored: given the length of time he served, he must have memorialized immediately on taking office in favor of lowering taxes on official land. The minister of revenue, Teng Demao (from Wu district), by prearrangement supported his proposal. The emperor sent an envoy to investigate. The latter quickly discovered that Jin (whose family was from Jiaxing prefecture) held more official land than commoners’ land. In a rage, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered Jin executed for betraying his trust. Teng was charged with embezzling 100,000 piculs in military provisions. He was also executed. Henceforth, the emperor decreed, men from Suzhou and Songjiang prefecture were barred from serving as minister of revenue.65

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Jin Jiong’s replacement, a “flourishing talent” named Ding Shimei, was almost immediately arrested and sent to the capital for having “used extortion to obtain wealth from the common people.” When his successor—still in 1371—committed a less serious crime, he was transferred and demoted.66 Even illustrious men could trigger the imperial wrath. In 1372, Wei Guan was made prefect. Rapidly acting to restore order, he encouraged education, building schools and staffing them with noted local literary figures like Wang Xing, as well as holding a communal drinking ceremony (xiang yin jiu li) to honor local worthies. So popular was he that, when he was promoted to the post of assistant administrator for Sichuan (rank 3b) in 1373, the people of Suzhou demanded that he be retained in his current post (rank 4a). Returning to Suzhou, he began to reconstruct the prefectural yamen. Wei concluded that the traditional location was far more appropriate than the damp and narrow spot to which Zhang Shicheng moved it when he decided to make the Zicheng his palace. Reports soon reached court that Wei was rebuilding Zhang Shicheng’s palace. A censor confirmed that the palace was being restored, adding that the event was being celebrated in verse by people (such as Gao Qi) who had a long history of association with Zhang Shicheng’s cause. The emperor, fearing an incipient rebellion, ordered Wei Guan and Gao Qi summarily executed for high treason. Within the month, Zhu Yuanzhang publicly announced that, at least in Wei Guan’s case, the deceased had been innocent.67 Of the twenty-three men who served as Suzhou prefect between Wei Guan’s death and the end of the reign, the names of eight—including one listed among the “illustrious officials”—are followed by the terse notation “committed a crime” (zuo shi).68 In part because his subordinates were less than perfect, and in part because his lieutenants were not entirely convinced that Heaven’s choice was irrevocable, Zhu Yuanzhang was notorious for his violent rages. An estimated 100,000 members of the elite were executed during his reign.69 Given the cultural level of fourteenth-century Suzhou and the number of men recommended for service from there, one might well expect Suzhou residents to have suffered in disproportionate numbers. Yet we cannot be certain that this happened. The record of the first three Ming reigns is much less complete than that for later periods. There were other instances of Suzhou men receiving sudden (and perhaps undeserved) punishment—notably the writer Wang Xing, who was among the 15,000 associates of Lan Yu (DMB) executed after General Lan’s plot to overthrow the dynasty was discovered.70 Surprisingly, the local gazetteers for Wu and Changzhou districts add few less prominent names to these famous victims: one who died while in detention, a couple who were dismissed from office for cause, and one hapless individual who, having asked the

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emperor at the wrong moment for permission to withdraw from office owing to ill health, was exiled to the border after having his face tattooed. (Zhu Yuanzhang rescinded the order of banishment; the tattoo, like execution, was irreversible.)71 There may well have been many, many more victims, but a survey of available materials failed to reveal them. It is clear, in the wake of Ming conquest, that certain areas did decline and that Suzhou’s taxes did rise dramatically. When the properties of the proverbially wealthy Shen Fu (DMB) were confiscated, the market town of Zhouzhuang—in whose vicinity the family’s holdings were concentrated— went into eclipse. Only in the late seventeenth century was it again listed among Changzhou’s official markets.72 The tax increases posed a more general problem. Under Zhang Shicheng, the most important part of the tax burden, the autumn tax, had reached an unprecedented 1 million-plus piculs per year. In 1368 the new regime raised the tax quota to 2,146,600 piculs. This burden was not equally distributed, however. Of the 6,749,000 mu registered in Suzhou prefecture in 1368,73 2,990,607 mu was official land from the Song and Yuan; this continued to bear quotas fixed when the land was seized. A further 2,904,551 mu was commoners’ land (min tian); this in the main bore the relatively light tax characteristic of such land throughout the empire. Early Ming increases were concentrated on newly confiscated fields (chaomo). When one subtracts the quota for commoners’ land (153,174 piculs) from the total pre1368 quota (1 million piculs), one discovers that, while holders of commoners’ fields owed an average 0.05 piculs per mu, and those who had Song-Yuan official fields 0.28, assessments on newly confiscated land averaged 0.69 piculs per mu. These newly confiscated fields came from three sources: land left without an owner in the chaotic transition from Yuan to Ming; the land of Zhang Shicheng and his closest supporters; and the land of those who had been judged local bullies.74 While the average tax quota on newly confiscated fields was almost fourteen times that on commoners’ fields, this was rent on some of the most productive land in the empire. Although alienation was strictly forbidden, the fact that stringent penalties were established for “mortgage pawn” of more than fifty mu of official land indicates that not all of this official land was the property of smallholders directly renting from the state.75 In this area, rent was normally half the output of the principal crop. If the landlord supplied seed, tools, or oxen—as the state often did in the late fourteenth century76—his share of the harvest increased accordingly. In good years, the best land produced three piculs of rice per mu, plus a secondary crop of wheat (perhaps one picul per mu) against which the landlord had no claim.77 Thus a direct tenant of the gov-

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ernment cultivating the land himself would have garnered 2.5 to 3.5 piculs per mu. Were natural disasters to cut yields in half, he would still have had an aftertax income of 1 to 1.5 piculs per mu. Those who held too much official land to till themselves could either lease it to subtenants or employ bondservants and exploit it directly. Even in the former case, they would net 0.5 to 1.0 piculs per mu in a good year. In the event of natural disaster they would still earn enough to cover expenses. Moreover, since large holdings were more likely than small ones to be dispersed over a fairly large area, the danger that crops would simultaneously fail on every field held by a household was much more remote for the large holder than for the small. Dispersal also facilitated tax evasion.78 Finally, since those with large holdings were much more likely to hold subbureaucratic positions (liangzhang, lizhang), they were well positioned to redistribute the incidence of taxes in their own interest. When disaster did strike, they were more apt to secure tax remissions. Clearly, the new taxes did not eliminate the wealthy in Suzhou. In the second month of 1370, the emperor asked the Ministry of Revenue, “Who among the empire’s commoners are wealthy? Where is production excellent?” The Ministry of Revenue replied: Taking the land tax and comparing it, only in Zhexi [southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang] are there many wealthy households. In the single prefecture of Suzhou, among the commoners those who annually submit 100 to 400 piculs of grain total 490 households; those who submit 500 to 1,000 piculs total fifty-six households; there are six households that submit 1,000 to 2,000 piculs; and there are two households that submit 2,000 to 3,800 piculs. In all, these 554 households annually submit more than 150,000 piculs.79

If, as PRC scholars tend to assume, all or most of this was tax on commoners’ land,80 their households held 3 million mu—more than the total amount of commoners’ land registered in 1368—in estates that ranged from a mere 2,000 mu to 76,000 mu.81 Given these standards, the twenty mu of vegetable land Chen Ruyan left, or the hundred mu the poet Gao Qi held, were very small plots indeed.82 The fact that most of the taxes collected were no longer expended in or near Suzhou meant that in real terms the tax increase was even greater than the raw figures suggest. These demands were in part an emergency measure, essential to complete the conquest and consolidation of Ming rule. Further, the government was sensitive to the hardships imposed. In 1369 and again in 1389, Zhu Yuanzhang sponsored massive transfers of landless households from the overpopulated Suzhou region to areas where land was to be had for the taking. In the first of these programs, more than four thousand households from Suzhou

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and adjacent prefectures were moved; given land, seed, tools, oxen, and food; and assured of three years’ tax remission.83 In addition to such efforts, the record suggests that original tax quotas were rarely, if ever, paid in full. In fact, from the seventh month of 1368 on, the land tax was repeatedly remitted in whole or in part.84 Finally, in the third month of 1380, the emperor reduced the heaviest burdens on official land (0.75 to 0.44 piculs) by 20 percent; levies of 0.43 to 0.36 piculs were cut to 0.35 piculs. While doing so, Zhu Yuanzhang denounced his local officials. They had been so eager to report fulfilling their quotas that they had ignored the suffering this imposed on the common people of Suzhou and Songjiang: “This is to emphasize the tax and slight the people. . . . How can one take this to be nourishing the people [yang min]?” It was this year, with the consolidation of military control over the empire essentially completed, that the emperor remitted “autumn grain” collections for the entire country.85 After 1381 there were no more tax remissions for Suzhou as a whole. Thirteen eighty-one was the year that hundreds and tithings were imposed on the empire at large. It was also the year the emperor ordered a census and a cadastral survey conducted throughout the land. The results were to be updated every ten years. Knowledge implies enhanced ability to control, and there is good reason to believe that such an ability was not welcomed by Suzhou’s residents. Under the best of circumstances, imposing the system of 110-household units on the Suzhou countryside presented special challenges. The imperially mandated system had to be spread over a social and geographic landscape structured by polders, yet polders implied both a relatively diffuse settlement pattern and the constant necessity for cooperation in matters of irrigation, drainage, and maintenance. Polders might well straddle administrative boundaries, yet the Ming system demanded that administrative villages observe subdistrict as well as district boundaries. There was thus the risk that hundreds would subdivide organic, functioning communities, proving more hindrance than enhancement at the local level. Simultaneously, borders might be drawn and holdings reshuffled so that the well-to-do, their property dispersed among several hundreds, evaded their obligations in all of them. Whatever the role of technical difficulty and personal mendacity, the returns from Suzhou were obviously flawed—so much so that, in 1387, a furious Zhu Yuanzhang dispatched students from the Imperial Academy to Suzhou to ensure an accurate count.86 As a result, we have late fourteenth-century figures that bear some relationship to reality. The 1393 data, reflecting returns from 1391, show a substantial increase in taxable acreage—the result of some expansion in the land under

80

A Conquered Province table 4 Land in Suzhou Prefecture in the Late Fourteenth Century (hundreds of mu) District

Wu

Pre-Ming official land Confiscated land (to 1378) Commoners’ land (to 1378) Subtotal (1379) Post-1378 confiscation Post-1378 commoners’ land School land Polders (minimum/maximum)

2,274.4 640.7 1,468.3 4,383.4 717.9 2,001.7

Total (1503) District

Changzhou

Wujiang

Kunshan

4,509.7 1,437.1 5,307.0 11,253.8 2,772.2 –1,069.0

4.8/7.8

5,039.6 2,453.9 3,645.4 11,138.9 2,216.5 146.6 14 6.2/7.6

6,878.2 3,710.0 1,953.2 12,541.4 2,865.1 1,658.7 23.5 7.6/10.4

7,103

13,516

12,957

Jiading

Changshu

Chongming

3.3/3.8

Pre-Ming official land Confiscated land (to 1378) Commoners’ land (to 1378) Subtotal (1379) Post-1378 confiscation Post-1378 commoners’ land School land Polders (minimum/maximum)

6,380.9 3,950.1 3,855.7 14,186.7 1,463.9 832.0 8.9 10.6/17.4

3,629.4 4,390.0 3,605.6 11,725.0 2,466.4 5,212.8 13.6 12.9/15.0

1,193.8 56.7 1,010.1 2,260.6 997.5 5,694.8

Total (1503)

16,491.5

19,317.8

8,953

17,088.7

Source: Early Ming data from HWSZFZ, 10: 4a–8a. Notes: Acreage in 1503 (which sums to 95,367+ qing, not the 99,700+ qing stated) was used as proxy for the 1393 total of 98,506+ qing, since it closely approximates the 1393 total but is broken down by district and by official and commoner land in each district; see Hong, Ming Qing Suzhou nongcun jingji ziliao, 45. Since no preMing official land was created after 1379, it is clearly legitimate to subtract 1379 Song/Yuan official land and confiscated land (chaomo) totals from the 1503 total for official land; the remainder is land confiscated after 1378. Similarly, the difference between commoners’ field totals for 1379 and those for 1503 must reflect commoners’ fields registered after 1378. Minimum and maximum size of polders was calculated by dividing the1379 and 1503 totals by the number of polders (wei) in each district in the Yuan: GSZ, 15: 2b. (Comparable data for Chongming are not available.) One major problem remained. In 1497 Taicang zhou was carved out of portions of Kunshan, Changshu, and Jiading districts. To reconstruct the 1393 situation, it was necessary to assume (a) that the land in Taicang was proportional to the population transferred when the zhou was formed in 1497 and (b) that the proportions of various categories of land transferred were proportional as well. Thus, in 1497, the newly formed Taicang zhou had a population of 51,554 households. 26,354 (51.12 percent) were transferred from Kunshan, 15,270 (29.62 percent) from Changshu; Hong, Ming Qing Suzhou nongcun jingji ziliao, 27; GXSZFZ, 13: 6a. Accordingly, the remaining 9,030 households (19.26 percent) must have been transferred from Jiading. The first part of the assumption—that approximately 51.12 percent of Taicang’s land was transferred from Kunshan—seems plausible. The second part—that 51.12 percent of its official, its commoner, and its school land came from Kunshan—less so. Alas, no better one was available.

cultivation and a marked improvement in the government’s record keeping (see Table 4). The total registered in Suzhou prefecture had reached 9,850,600 mu.87 Of this, 6,009,400 mu were designated official land. Since the amount of Song-Yuan official land would not change, 3,018,793 mu was land expropriated since 1368. This increase (from 1,663,840 mu) suggests that turbulence at the

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center indeed affected landowners who had survived the transition from rule by Zhang to rule by Zhu unscathed. Yet the amount of commoners’ land had increased almost as quickly, from 2,094,551 mu in 1378 to 3,532,300 mu in 1393. Because much of the newly confiscated land had been held under unclear title, the rise in both may simply have been the result of better registration. The increase more than made up for the reductions in upper rates per mu carried out before 1381. In 1393, Suzhou’s autumn tax quota had reached 2,746,990 piculs. Although tax rates on newly expropriated land had been reduced (the bulk of it bearing assessments of 0.3 piculs or less per mu), a portion of it shared the 0.4 to 0.7 piculs borne by most of the Song-Yuan official fields. If one assumes that commoners’ fields were assessed 154,174 piculs, the rate on official land, old and new, averaged 0.43 piculs.88 The prefecture’s quota amounted to more than 300 million liters of grain, much of it earmarked for delivery to the capital or to distant military garrisons. What was the prefecture’s annual burden of labor services? If one assumes that Suzhou prefecture had a late fourteenth-century population of 3 million, fewer than 1 million would have been males age fifteen to fifty-nine. A quota of 2,800,000 piculs would imply a need for 280 tax captains, an equal number of accountants, 560 assistant tax captains, 5,600 measurers, and 280,000 laborers89—all in all, nearly one in three able-bodied males each year. In addition, Suzhou taxpayers had to deliver 10,107 piculs of white rice, transporting it themselves, then contending with hypercritical officials as well as making good the inevitable wastage.90 Many other tasks—from rebuilding the third longest city wall in the empire and dredging the Bai mao Pond and Liu jia River to more mundane service as runner, guard, watchman, coolie, or doorman for the local yamen—were also performed by mobilizing the population.91 Regulations stated that tenants on official fields were to be partially excused from “miscellaneous corvée.”92 Yet on the one hand this work was generally regarded as the less onerous part of labor service; on the other, the portion local governments could afford to remit was much lower where official fields were numerous and the quota to be transported large than where such fields were rare and the autumn levy small. Compounding Suzhou’s burdens, it was a major crossroads of the official transport and communication network; supplying services for and goods to the courier, postal, and transport systems was a major aspect of “miscellaneous corvée.”93 Although precise estimates are not possible, labor service was probably as onerous as the land tax itself. The state recognized that these were heavy burdens and at least sporadically attempted to ensure that they remained bearable ones. In 1384 it was decreed

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that Suzhou and its neighbors could use money—more easily transported and, in this highly commercialized area, readily come by—to pay all their taxes “in order to reduce the people’s labors.” In 1386, in response to a flood in Wujiang district, the taxes for that year were reduced.94 The same year the emperor (who had abolished the tax captain system in 1382, only to restore it in 1385) personally intervened in response to the situation in Changshu district. Originally tax captains were appointed from among the great households to take charge of the summer and autumn taxes paid by the village people in their own districts. Then the officials, seeing that the laws were regular and pure and that their opportunities for corruption were slim, initiated a scheme for the confusion of the system. The scheme worked as follows: the tax captains were forbidden to take charge of tax collection in the villages of their own districts, but were transferred to places 70, 80 or 100 li [35–50 kilometers] away to serve as captains. [The officials] have sought by all means to confuse the accounts to such an extent that they would be enabled to engage in malpractices. In view of this trouble and injury to the common people, We hereby abolish the thirty-odd tax captains who have previously been instituted. . . . The collection [of taxes] shall now be placed in charge of the 600-odd [hundred captains] (lizhang).95

Local administrators continued to struggle to make the system function as intended, resorting by turns to punishment and cajolery. Wang Guan, prefect of Suzhou from 1386 to 1391, had to contend with a “crafty yamen underling” named Qian Ying who had repeatedly brought false charges against his superiors. Prefect Wang had him beaten to death. The emperor, hearing of this, issued an imperial decree praising Wang. He also sent a gift of imperial wine. At that time, the harvest had failed and many commoners were fleeing to avoid payment of their taxes. Prefect Wang set out the wine, invited men of wealth, and exhorted them to make loans to the poor. Even if these loans were not repaid, Wang noted, such charitable acts would show that the donors were men of earnestness and sincerity. We are told that the wealthy felt moved and, as a result of their efforts, the tax flight ended. The court again commended Wang’s ability, posting notices throughout the empire to encourage others to emulate him. In Suzhou itself, he was honored as one of the five worthy prefects of the early Ming. A primary cause of repeated crop failures in Suzhou was the excessive amount of water flowing into Lake Tai from points north. This was not a problem that could be solved at the local level. In 1392 the Ministry of Revenue mobilized more than 359,000 men to dam and to channel the waters in Liyang district, the most southerly portion of Yingtian prefecture. The East Dams constructed at this time not only succeeded in regulating the water level of Lake Tai, thus minimizing the dangers of flood in Suzhou. It also, quite unintentionally, “provided Suzhou with a canal link to the Yangzi River port of Wuhu upriver from Nanjing. Even though boats taking this route had to be dragged

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over the lower dam and cargo had to be transshipped 6 kilometers farther west at the upper dam, this inland connection greatly improved Suzhou’s water access to markets throughout Jiangnan and assured its position as the central place in the regional economy.”96 As a result, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Wuhu became a “natural point of exit for the great Huizhou merchants” as well as a key center of operations for Suzhou’s own Dongting merchants.97 Important as such measures were, in the short term the caliber of local administration remained critical. In 1397, Yao Shan was appointed prefect. The gazetteer records that, “at first, Zhu Yuanzhang considered the habits of Wu to be wasteful and extravagant. He wanted to use heavy restraints in order to regulate them. But those who were clever supported one another. The good and the bad brought charges against one another. [Yao] Shan made administrative restraint his main principle. He did not rely on the severe and the exacting. As a result, litigation gradually came to a halt.”98 To transform the habits of younger members of the elite, he also made a point of honoring elder scholars. Thanks to his efforts, the reign ended on a kinder, gentler note.

Unavoidable Accommodations/Unintended Consequences In the short term, an emperor could impose his will in the face of opposition from any individual or group. If efforts were made to temper the impact of early Ming policies on Suzhou, these might best be seen as acts of imperial benevolence, acts designed as much to burnish the imperial image as to mollify aggrieved subjects. Yet even the most determined emperor was ultimately subject to constraints imposed by the realities of his time and place. Had more been demanded of Suzhou than it could provide? Thanks to Zhu Yuanzhang’s mania for record keeping, we can examine this question directly for the 1370s: we have district-by-district records of the numbers of registered households, the acreage on government books, and the amounts demanded in tax (see Table 5). Assuming an average household size of 5.48 and a per capita income of 4.8 piculs per year, households needed 26.3 piculs after taxes to make ends meet. In three of the seven districts, this was not a problem. In three others, after-tax income was 7 to 12 percent below the not especially generous level we have assumed. And, in Wu, households would have been left with just over half of what they required. Given year-to-year fluctuations in the harvest, demands placed on the second group were no more readily borne than those made of Wu. At least in part, these deficits must have been covered by land not yet on the government tax registers.

84

A Conquered Province table 5 Population and Agricultural Production in Late Fourteenth-Century Suzhou Wu

Changzhou

Wujiang Kunshan

Population (in HH)

61,857

86,178

81,572

99,760 100,737 62,211

15,198

Per Household Land (mu)
2.25 piculs/mu Autumn levy (piculs) Income (piculs)

7.1 15.97 2.33 13.64

12.9 29.02 4.64 24.38

13.8 31.05 4.38 26.67

12.6 28.35 5.15 23.2

14.9 33.52 9.84 23.68

Jiading Changshu

14.1 31.72 3.72 28

18.8 42.3 5.48 36.82

Chongming

Notes: Population figures are for 1376; the minimum acreage (for 1378) is drawn from HWSZFZ. (Although these figures understate the amount of land under cultivation, they do approximate the amount of prime arable land.) Minimum estimate of household income for each district was calculated by multiplying the land under cultivation per household by 2.25 piculs/mu, then subtracting the autumn levy per household. Assuming an average household size of 5.48 and a minimum subsistence requirement of 4.8 piculs per person per year (for which, see Appendix A), the average household required a minimum of 26.3 piculs per year for subsistence.

At the prefectural level, the situation in the 1390s was far more reassuring: households would have been left with an average of 39.5 piculs after taxes.99 But there is reason to believe that much of the land added to the registers between the 1370s and the 1390s was of marginal quality. Insofar as this was the case, our estimate of average yields needs to be revised downward. Due allowance made for such factors, Changzhou, Kunshan, and Chongming—the three districts in the second cluster in the 1370s—were apparently able to deliver their taxes and support their populations at the later date. Yet although the gap between subsistence and resources in Wu had been narrowed, it remained unbridged. Rents that tenants in other districts owed landlords registered in Wu would have closed part of the gap; fees for governmental and nongovernmental services the city performed for outlying districts would have brought in a bit more. Yet, had Suzhou been a pristine peasant economy, the polity would still have been making unsustainable demands. In reality, markets had been central to Suzhou’s economic life for centuries. Early Ming commercial taxes permit us to estimate the importance of this activity in the late fourteenth century. The 1379 Suzhou Prefectural Gazetteer (Suzhou fuzhi) preserves the quotas for Suzhou city and for each of the prefecture’s districts. All nonfoodstuffs were taxed, at one-thirtieth of their value, each time they passed a tax station. Payment was to be made, at a ratio of seventy:thirty, in a mixture of paper notes and copper cash (see Table 6).100 Like all tax figures, the relationship of these totals to reality is problematic. Those who could unquestionably evaded the tax. Moreover, a substantial portion of Suzhou’s trade was in foodstuffs. Both these factors suggest that simply multiplying the tax quota by thirty would understate the level of commercial

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85 table 6

Commerce in Nonagricultural Commodities in Late Fourteenth-Century Suzhou Location

Prefectural City Wu Changzhou Wujiang Kunshan Jiading Changshu Chongming

Nonagricultural trade (quota [ 30)

Quota a

39,787.658 strings 41,040.462 strings 17,713.458 strings b 30,724.877 strings 26,853.969 strings 39,531.842 strings 20,716.359 strings 6,021.621 strings

1,193,629.7 strings 1,231,213.8 strings 531,403.74 strings 921,746.31 strings 805,619.07 strings 1,185,955.2 strings 621,490.77 strings 180,648.63 strings

Source: HWSZFZ, 10:12a. a A string is one thousand copper cash. b Includes quota for Tongli zhen (8,842.431 strings)

activity. Setting the quota as low as possible also served the interests of local bureaucrats—the lower the quota, the more readily one could satisfy one’s superiors. Any excess could thus find its way into the collector’s pockets. But Suzhou officials also had ample reason to avoid anything the emperor might consider diversion of revenue from state coffers. The fact that taxes were collected each time they passed a tax station raises the issue of double-counting. And Ming paper notes, theoretically on a par with copper cash when first issued in 1375, depreciated rapidly. In the mid-1370s, a string of 1,000 cash in either medium would purchase a picul of husked rice. A decade later, those paying in scrip needed 2,500 to buy the same quantity of grain.101 On balance, these forces seem to have canceled one another out. Thus the quotas represent a reasonable estimate of Suzhou’s trade in nonagricultural commodities in a typical year of the late fourteenth century. Given the date of the gazetteer in which they are preserved, they can almost certainly be used without a substantial discount. Unfortunately, we have no way of determining what portion of that total represented local income. Nor, given our inability to allocate the figures for the prefectural city between Wu and Changzhou, can they be directly translated into income per capita on a district-by-district basis. Nonetheless, the figures imply substantial commercial activity, activity substantial enough to bridge the gap between demands made by the state and the ability of localities to satisfy those demands.102 From the first, Suzhou’s ability to pay taxes ten times the level imposed elsewhere depended as much on the vigor of its markets as it did on the fertility of its fields. The court was not simply aware that this area was one in which “people were numerous and the land was limited”—as its resettlement policies imply. It was also mindful that, as a result of the unfavorable ratio of land to men,

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“those who are engaged in agriculture are few, while those who pursue crafts and trade are many.”103 Far from attempting to suppress commerce and handicrafts, Zhu Yuanzhang actively encouraged the development of cotton cloth production in this area.104 As a Changzhou village elder recalled in 1432: There are low-lying fields in each district [of Suzhou prefecture] and the tax quota is great. In the Hongwu reign period [1368–98], the people expanded the cultivation of official land. [Since the capital was then at Nanjing,] there was no distant transport. Each year the crops ripened and the people paid their taxes. Every time they encountered days of hunger in the spring and summer, or poor harvests, they relied on wheat and barley to provide relief. The autumn tax was levied in kind, but every 1.2 piculs of summer wheat was converted to a bolt of cotton cloth. Thus the people were able to weave cloth to pay the officials and to retain the wheat to relieve their hunger.105

From the first, the Ming state consciously assumed that a flourishing handicraft sector would make the heavy burdens imposed on this area bearable. Taxpayers in other parts of Ming China responded quickly to differentials far more narrow than those separating commerce and agriculture in Suzhou.106 Heavy land taxes may have been sustainable thanks to the flourishing urban economy. Imposition of those taxes nonetheless encouraged those with wealth and talent to shun agriculture in favor of more lucrative investments.107 Over time, this would make Suzhou even more urban, more thoroughly commoditized, more atypical than it had been. The strategies adopted to incorporate Suzhou in the short term thus threatened to complicate the central administration’s tasks in the long run. Incorporating Suzhou ultimately required the cooperation of the area’s local elites no less than it did the existence of prosperous markets. This was not a smooth process, particularly for surviving members of the pre-1367 elite and their families. Anyone comparing the vibrant culture of late Yuan Suzhou with that of the 1380s and 1390s must concede that the new burdens were borne at considerable cost. Artistic and literary creativity was muted, in part as a result of the economic constraints the new order imposed. Perhaps even more significant, population transfers and occasional executions disrupted patronage networks and elective affinities. Nonetheless, traditions of scholarship, medicine, poetry, and painting continued to be passed on. In this respect, Ms. Wu’s family seems quite typical. Elite patrilines adapted to the new realities with energy and ingenuity. Some bright and ambitious young men—most notably Yao Guangxiao (1335–1418; DMB)—turned to Buddhism. Others continued to pursue more orthodox paths. In the first Ming reign, the state often resorted to ad hoc methods to recruit officials. But in spite of Zhu Yuanzhang’s ambivalent attitude toward

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staffing his government with examination graduates, beginning in 1384 provincial level tests were given every third year. In these, natives of Suzhou prefecture enjoyed considerable success.108 At a less exalted level, the new order afforded other opportunities for advancement, opportunities just as eagerly seized. The work of organizing, and of extracting wealth from, society was undertaken by the tax captains in conjunction with the hundred captains and tithing heads. The real power rested with the tax captains. Unlike the headmen of the hundreds and tithings, who were on duty one year out of ten, tax captains in the 1380s and 1390s served for life. When they retired, they passed their office on to their sons or nephews.109 Initially, their primary duty had been organizing the transport of taxes. They became involved in prompting payment and in overseeing collection. To facilitate the completion of their tasks, and in accord with their standing in the community, tax captains were also assigned responsibilities ranging from moral uplift to land reclamation and disaster relief. They were to assist in the cadastral survey and the compiling of an accurate census; to persuade their wealthy peers not to collude with officials to evade labor service or to cheat the poor; and to report tax evaders and unruly commoners to the government. Although they were only given the power to review decisions of hundred elders under their jurisdiction (who from 1394 were formally charged with hearing minor cases and petty litigation relating to marriage, inheritance, land, and assault and battery), tax captains rapidly expanded this to extralegal and wideranging control of justice in their bailiwicks. All this provided ample scope for manipulation by the incumbent, and descriptions from the 1380s make clear that some tax captains fully exploited such possibilities. These ran the gamut from preferential assignment of tasks and quotas to use of quasi-juridical powers to settle old scores. The tax captain’s ability to commute his sentence was a concession, designed to ensure that the work of tax collection and transport would not be interrupted. Nonetheless, malfeasance in the discharge of one’s duties as tax captain merited full punishment. And when a Wujiang tax captain and his deputy were shown to have falsely accused kinsmen, they were decapitated and their heads displayed on pales. Efficient tax collection was less crucial than the dynasty’s commitment to maintaining the three bonds.110 Occasional punishment of individuals, swift and dramatic as it might have been, was at most a loose check on the rule of the countryside by the tax captains. Self-interest in concert with sanctions ensured that most of the “good people” appointed tax captains remained good. For the few families in each district appointed to these offices (perhaps thirty in Changzhou and fourteen

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in Wu, out of total populations of 86,178 and 61,857 households respectively), the immediate gratifications of local power were no doubt as significant as the legal advantages, the annual audiences with the emperor, and the prospects of official appointment. Given the modest expectations of their time and place, many seem to have discharged their duties conscientiously. They had, after all, a vested interest in the long-term health of the communities over which they presided—if the fields were not productive or if those who held wealth and power at the village level did not cooperate in collecting taxes and mobilizing the population, the tax captain might be compelled to make up the difference himself. This was a powerful argument for developing the economy of the tax sector (qu) and maintaining harmonious relations with those below. Such enlightened self-interest was merely reinforced by Zhu Yuanzhang’s use of terror to ensure probity among officeholders high and low. Thus the system imposed on the area in the late fourteenth century was workable. If it did not usher in the millennium, it did ensure that Suzhou paid its taxes in all seventeen of the last seventeen years that Zhu Yuanzhang sat on the Dragon Throne (1382–98). Given the very real constraints both state and locality faced in the late fourteenth century, this was an impressive achievement. That it was popularly remembered as a period of relative prosperity and freedom from official interference is astounding.111 It was possible only given unflagging attention to the day-to-day workings of local institutions, a sense of the legitimacy of the state’s demands, a willingness on the part of the state not to increase the burden imposed on the local system, and a more or less equitable apportioning of that burden. None of these factors long survived the Ming founder. From the vantage of the capital, this may not at first have seemed all that significant. In official eyes, after all, taxes were levied on districts as a whole. As long as the revenue demanded was supplied, the occasional resort to expedient methods might be ignored. For individual actors at the local level, the precise way the burden was distributed remained critical. If there is a paradox at the core of Suzhou’s relation to the early Ming state, it is not that the city flourished while being taxed out of existence. The fiscal policies applied there were those suited to an agrarian empire. Given the area’s relative wealth, these were imposed even-handedly and administered fairly. Yet given the readily available alternatives, even under optimum conditions they would have encouraged ever more intense urbanization, ever greater commercialization. Moreover, if the state were to exert local control, extract material resources, and recruit human talent, it had ultimately to enlist the cooperation of local notables. However numerous the executions and uprootings, the Ming

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could not rule Suzhou without affording local elites—those with the requisite cultural, social, and material resources and the necessary strategic flexibility— ample opportunity to turn public imperatives to private account. In attempting to “punish the evil practices of one time,” the first Ming emperor inevitably reinforced the tendencies that made Suzhou atypical. By imposing such policies less even-handedly, and administering them less fairly, his successors accelerated the process.

4

Co-optation and Near Collapse Suzhou, 1398–1430

Zhu Yuanzhang’s treatment of Suzhou was better calibrated to existing realities than tradition would suggest. His policies were also more flexibly applied. Yet those policies imposed real burdens. Sustaining them demanded constant vigilance and imperial forbearance. Lacking the former, the powerful would shift their burdens to others. Everyone else would have a strong incentive to limit their involvement with heavily taxed (if morally privileged) agriculture in favor of the relative havens of commerce and handicrafts. A more stratified, more urban, more commercialized society would result, a society to which the norms of the Ming system were ever less readily applicable. More ambitious or extravagant imperial policies would increase already substantial demands, intensifying and quickening evasive moves by hard-pressed taxpayers. In tandem, these forces would undercut both the imperial control and the social equity the founding emperor had sought to enforce. Had another Zhu Yuanzhang—a frugal, calculating, and conscientious autocrat—inherited the throne, these pressures might have been contained for decades. In the event, the post fell to his idealistic grandson, Zhu Yunwen (DMB). Seeking to rule as a good Confucian monarch, the Jianwen emperor esteemed officials like Yao Shan (still the prefect of Suzhou), sponsored civil examinations, and encouraged the bureaucracy to devote itself to such constructive tasks as water control. An imperial decree of 1399 ordered the Ministry of Works to undertake projects needed in the localities. In Suzhou it was reported that “polders and riverbanks, dikes and dams had collapsed while dams and ponds, water courses and drains were obstructed.” Urgent repairs were undertaken, repairs that at least temporarily forestalled injury to the prefecture’s crops.1 Good government was not enough. The young emperor’s advisers persuaded him that, were the main house to exercise its authority, the power of his over-mighty uncles, who were enfeoffed along the borders of the empire and entrusted with substantial military forces, would have to be curbed. The attempt quickly plunged the empire into civil war. As the court waged battle

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after indecisive battle, the emperor received appeals stressing the inequity of the taxes imposed on Suzhou and its neighboring prefectures.2 In part to garner elite support for his cause, the Son of Heaven issued a decree conceding that high taxes were inherently unfair. Henceforth, the maximum rate was not to exceed 0.1 picul (shi) per mu.3 Two days later, the emperor met with the graduates of the 1400 jinshi examination.4 Although Suzhou prefecture had not done particularly well—it had only three graduates—its performance in the 1399 provincial examination promised better things in the future. Twenty-nine Suzhou men had passed the provincial exam in the eight times it was held under Zhu Yuanzhang; fourteen passed in 1399.5 An empire committed to orthodox rule seemed certain to provide scope for the talents of Wu. And even if the drastic change in tax rates was not immediately implemented, the emperor had made the practice of raising so much revenue from a few prefectures a legitimate topic of debate. Unhappily, Zhu Yuanzhang had been all too successful in eliminating seasoned military talent outside his own family. As the fighting dragged on, the greater experience and mobility of the most powerful of his uncles, the prince of Yan, repeatedly bested larger and fresher armies fielded by the center. Yao Shan remained a loyal servant of his legitimate sovereign. He urged the Jianwen emperor to reject demands that he cashier his closest advisers. At his post, he organized a local militia while overseeing imperial forces in Suzhou and the surrounding region. When Nanjing fell to the prince in 1402, the emperor perishing in a palace fire, Yao’s military preparations were not yet complete. Rejecting advice that he flee the city and continue the resistance, Yao committed suicide rather than submit.6 The city itself surrendered without a fight, emerging at least physically unscathed.7

The Yongle Reign-Period The usurping prince of Yan, who reigned as the Yongle emperor (1403–24), almost immediately canceled his nephew’s edicts reducing land taxes in the Suzhou region.8 He also executed most of those he denounced as fomenters of trouble between his nephew and himself. He ordered an unknown number of wealthy households to move from Suzhou to the “northern capital” (Beijing), the new designation for his old base in the north.9 A soldier rather than an administrator, he paid far less attention to day-to-day details of administration than his father had. The result, at least as measured by the canons of traditional historiography, was a dramatic deterioration in the quality of local governance. In only one year of the reign did an “illustrious official” serve as prefect

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in Suzhou. In the district magistrate’s yamen, things appear to have been almost as bad: the magistrates of Wu were as undistinguished as the prefect while the same post in Changzhou was held by an “illustrious official” in four of the twenty-one years in question.10 Although later generations have stressed the crises of the late fourteenth century, the early fifteenth thus seems the true nadir of Suzhou’s fortunes. Things were not quite as dismal as this suggests: the administrative void was partially filled by able and conscientious officials above and below the prefectural and district levels. Unfortunately, officials outranking the prefect served for short periods to achieve specific ends, while the authority of the subdistrict officials was limited.11 Had such administration been accompanied by adherence to Zhu Yuanzhang’s other policies, conditions might have deteriorated gradually. In practice, pursuit of an activist and expansionary program was joined to a policy of co-opting local elites. As a result, more was demanded while less attention was paid to how those demands were allocated. Within decades, this mixture brought the area to the verge of collapse. There were those like Liu Gan, the long-serving vice magistrate of Changzhou district, who traveled through the countryside, inquiring into the peasants’ problems and interceding for them in time of dearth.12 Most officials were fully occupied finding the resources needed to carry out the emperor’s ambitious projects. The decision to move the capital from Nanjing to Beijing was after all made in 1403, not 1421. Delivery of grain to the North entailed surcharges and additional transport costs. During this same period, supplies, grain, and labor were requisitioned to make the erstwhile seat of the prince of Yan worthy of a Son of Heaven. Simultaneously, the Yongle emperor repeatedly led huge armies into Central Asia while others, having conquered Annam, attempted to pacify it. The Grand Eunuch Zheng He (DMB) launched six of his seven expeditions in these decades. Each of these initiatives required massive additional quantities of men and grain. Finally, the long-disused Grand Canal was reopened, enabling the capital and the armies on the northern border to draw on the resources of the Yangzi delta with greater ease. Again, more men and more grain were required.13 The source of all this additional grain remains unclear.14 Under the frugal Zhu Yuanzhang, income had substantially exceeded outgo, but his son had launched a number of (very expensive) initiatives simultaneously. The fact that particular sources of revenue had been earmarked for particular ends made the new initiatives all the more disruptive.15 It is thus probable that not only the real costs to the taxpayer but also the surcharges and quotas assessed rose. Increased needs for manpower were met simply by fiat. Official debates explic-

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itly recognized that the demands being made on society and economy approached, and even exceeded, the limits of the possible. Numerous proposals were made to reduce the actual burden on taxpayers. But even when adopted, such reforms were regularly and abruptly abrogated.16 Thus, a vice minister in the Ministry of Works, Luo Rujing, calculated that the burden placed on Suzhou prefecture was beyond the area’s ability to pay. Rather than face continuing problems of flight, evasion, and remission of unpaid arrears, he advocated a 30 percent reduction. The court agreed to write off 700,000 piculs, but before long the Ministry of Revenue restored the old quota.17 Wastage included, Suzhou prefecture was now required to provide 4 million piculs per year.18 This did not include indirect costs, which were even higher: transporting grain to Beijing rather than to Nanjing could take an entire year. The absence of so many able-bodied males for so long a time led to substantial losses in production.19 As the discussion in Chapter 3 suggests, Suzhou was objectively wealthy enough to meet even these sharply increased demands. But it could do so only if the burdens were equitably apportioned. Occasionally, attempts were made to do this. The vice magistrate of Changzhou, Shao Xin, summoned the great families of the district to discuss profit and loss. “Floggings with whips were not employed and yet the annual quota was collected at the proper times.” The vice censor in chief charged with managing the taxes of Suzhou and environs circa 1423, Yu Qian (DMB), proposed that households with a large number of adult males and little land tax transport it to Beijing, those with the next smallest amount transport it to Xuzhou, those equally endowed with adult males and land tax undertake transport to Nanjing and Huai’an, and those with few adult males and a lot of land tax deliver it to official granaries within the district.20 Such policies were useful as far as they went—which was not, in truth, very far. Sliding scales were applied by and exhortations were addressed to the “good people” who served as tax captains. Any system that entrusted the allocation of tax and labor service burdens to the wealthiest members of the community had an inherent potential for abuse. In the first Ming decades, Zhu Yuanzhang’s personal vigilance, the very real possibility that success in the local sphere would bring promotion to a higher one, and genuine attempts to allocate burdens in accord with people’s ability to bear them, curbed those tendencies. But by the early fifteenth century, the post of tax captain was normally a hereditary one. Although fears that power corrupts led to occasional experiments with rotating tenure (as in Jiading under Yongle), these proved unworkable. The office combined the power to tax and to requisition labor with extensive, if

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extralegal, powers to serve as judge, jury, and chief prosecutor. As personal contact with the emperor was eliminated and the importance of the Imperial Academy and the examination system grew, conscientious performance of one’s duties became less and less a means of social promotion. At the same time, restrictions on the district magistrate remained in place. Left to themselves, with few checks on their power, few rewards for virtue, and drastically increased demands from the state—demands they were responsible for fulfilling themselves if their tax sector (qu) could not—the tax captain had means, motive, and opportunity to develop into petty tyrants who could “dupe the official yamen and persecute ordinary commoners.”21 The most constant complaint was that the great households refused to pay any surcharges. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although degreeholders and officials were exempted from corvée, their lands were subject to tax.22 They used their privileges and their power to pay the taxes owed on the land they held, and no more. In addition, for a fee that was often much less than the surcharges, they would protect the land of others from additional payments.23 Even the most conscientious tax captain was himself a man of wealth and some education, likely to count the privileged as his friends, peers, kinsmen, and affines. In a society in which personal connections counted for much, he was unlikely to press such people very hard. This left two alternatives: shoulder the burden oneself or find ways of collecting the difference from the rest of the population. The second was the less distasteful choice. Tax captains padded the fees and surcharges of the poor and poorly connected. They used a larger-than-standard measure when collecting taxes owed and a smaller-than-standard measure when paying them out. By personally controlling the storehouses where the tax grain for which they were responsible was stored, they were able to employ it as a personal slush fund. The tax captain often loaned money to hard-pressed peasants on government land, charging usurious rates to enable those households to meet their tax obligations or to survive the lean time between sowing and harvest. Often the government grain under their control seems to have been the source of these funds. In the worst years, they continued to collect. (Because it was never certain that taxes would not be demanded, the tax captain could not afford to assume a complete or partial remission.) References to flogging with whips suggest the gentle techniques ordinarily employed to encourage payment.24 When taxes were remitted or arrears written off, these acts of benevolence seem to have primarily benefited those who could delay payment rather than the average taxpayer. There was neither time nor energy, neither labor service nor funds to undertake the various other duties for which the tax captains and the hundred

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captains subordinate to them were theoretically responsible. Indeed, a 1425 investigation discovered that in Kunshan and other heavily taxed areas 193,000 mu of land that had been submerged under sea water in 1414 were still on the tax registers, their quota transferred to other taxpayers.25 Infrastructure was neglected, conceivably contributing to a string of disastrous harvests. This in turn made life more difficult for those who remained on the tax rolls and subject to labor service calls. Poverty-stricken peasants sold their wives and children, then committed suicide or fled burdens they could no longer bear. Much more often, the hard-pressed became chronic debtors or consigned their lands (and sometimes their persons) to those rich and well connected enough to shield them from the tax collector. If they decided to flee rather than seek protection, the wealthy and powerful—including the tax captains—seized abandoned land for themselves. With the connivance of yamen underlings, such land could be kept off the tax rolls for years while tenants or bondservants exploited it for their new owners. The tax burden would then be shifted to those who (through powerlessness or honesty) remained on the official rosters, prompting more hardship, tax evasion, and flight.26 Such pressure clearly placed Suzhou’s neighborhoods and communities under tremendous strain. There is, however, reason to believe that the component communities had remained largely intact. The tax captains operated in the localities under their sway through the hundred captains. In Wu district, for example, the tax quota implies a complement of fourteen tax captains; each would thus have had an average of thirty-four or thirty-five “hundred” captains beneath him. In Changzhou, the comparable figures would have been some forty tax captains and eighteen “hundred” captains. The hundred captains constituted a hinge group that might either cooperate in exploiting the community or seek to protect it from outside exploitation. The hundreds and tithings (lijia) were never egalitarian communities in which organic solidarity was the rule. They were administered by their richest members and included tenants on government land and part-tenant/part-owner households as well as freeholders and landlords. But the hundred captains were residents of those communities. They held power for one year out of ten—making them as subject to exploitation as their peers in the other nine—and were so numerous that, on average, their wealth could not have differentiated them sharply from the rest of the population.27 When reforming bureaucrats in the early 1430s sought accurate information on conditions in the area, they consulted hundred (li) elders.28 No attempt was made to eliminate or reform the hundreds and tithings structure during the fifteenth century, and no new cadastral and population surveys were undertaken. Indeed, there is evidence that village-level elites attempted to shield their

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communities. Consider the case of Chen Run. Originally merchants from Jiaxing, Zhejiang, at the end of the Yuan this Chen family had moved to Zhouzhuang in Changzhou to escape the chaos. Wu Kuan notes in the funerary inscription he wrote for Run that the migrant Bin was literate enough to “discuss the Book of Poetry and the Book of Documents. He was respected in the neighborhood, where people did not dare treat his disciples rudely. Many flocked to him to receive instruction in these two classics.” Run lost his father a year after he was born and his mother seven years after that; he was raised by his grandfather Bin. The grandson attempted the examinations but, being unsuccessful, returned home to live in retirement as a commoner. In the early Xuande era (1425–36), Li Zong was prefect: “The men of Suzhou were embittered by this covetous mad dog.”29 Seeking redress, one of Run’s connections by marriage—a Mr. Peng—used one of the Chen family servants to lay his complaint before Grand Coordinator Hu Gai.30 Unfortunately, Hu was in league with Prefect Li. The servant and Peng as well as Chen Run were arrested and sent to the capital. Although Run was ultimately permitted to return to Zhouzhuang, he now had powerful enemies. Li Zong wanted to be avenged, and Hu Gai, “taking advantage of [orders to] control the villainies of Wu”—presumably the 1429 enforcement campaign referred to below— brought charges against both Chen and Peng. Although his death sentence was ultimately commuted to service in a frontier garrison, Chen Run spent the last decade of his life in Liaodong. Only after his eldest son—who did not share his father’s exile—had passed the highest exam and become an official was the family able to recover Chen Run’s remains, secure an honorary official title, and return them to Suzhou for burial: “When mother and son entered the village together, family retainers [menzu] joined with family dependents [jiashi] to add to the brilliance and greatness of the occasion.”31 This episode suggests that prominent local men did occasionally try to protect their communities. It also suggests that the networks created by descent, affinity, proximity, and patronage were still intact—even if not automatically called into play. Judging by the continued tenure of many tax captains, and the admittedly less objective evidence of funerary inscriptions, the rot was limited even in that hard-pressed sector. Some 33,400 households had absconded by the early 1430s, abandoning 298,000 mu of official land.32 Although this shows that the problem was real, those who left constituted less than 7 percent of the households and abandoned only 3 percent of the arable. Some of the fugitives pretended to be craftsmen, disappearing into the relative anonymity of the two capitals. Others posed as merchants, “loading their entire families onto boats and leaving not a trace behind.” Most appear simply

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to have moved to a nearby canton (xiang), in some cases attaching themselves to military officers, leaguing with felons who had transformed a sentence to serve in the imperial post into a commercial opportunity, or eking out a living in one of the emerging transport hubs. The majority probably became private tenants or bondservants of powerful local families. The supply was great enough to encourage the well-to-do to rent official fields. Since tenants of such land were exempt from miscellaneous corvée, one could turn a profit either by subletting it to private tenants or by exploiting it directly with bondservant labor.33 At least some of the uprooted turned to crime. In the mid-1410s, the villainous commoner Tang Quan assembled a large group of men who, lacking other means of support, engaged in robbery throughout the Suzhou-Songjiang area. The army was unable to control the problem. Indeed, the police were themselves a major scourge. In alliance with powerful households, they seized land and harmed the people rather than “closely interrogating stool pigeons or searching for and arresting criminals.” Any who did not submit were charged with resisting arrest or with possession of illegal salt, taken into custody and intimidated into making a confession. If a suspect were transferred to the capital, en route they would cut off his food and water or kill him in other ways: “The common people feared them as much as ravenous beasts.”34 An investigating censor, Chen Xun, finally succeeded in apprehending more than a thousand members of Tang Quan’s gang.35 Although this was said to have restored tranquillity, nothing appears to have been done to curb official predations.

The Local Elite This was thus an increasingly polarized society. While the lower ranks struggled and the area was increasingly unable to meet its tax obligations, the tax captains and their ilk prospered. Certain Suzhou families even enjoyed success in the wider world. The Chen of Iron Bottle Lane (1) Consider the Chens of Iron Bottle Lane. Originally from Kaifeng, the “Chens of Suzhou city” followed the Song rulers to Jiangnan. Stopping first at Nanjing, around 1200 they settled in the southwest quadrant of Suzhou. Two generations later, part of the family moved again.36 Their destination, Tieping (Iron Bottle) Lane, was just north of Le Bridge on the western side of the city. Although no member of the group held office in the Southern Song or the Yuan, they are said to have enjoyed a local reputation for culture and virtue.

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They made their living as doctors, apparently a lucrative calling, even if those who followed it were “not quite gentlemen.”37 Chen Mingshan, a member of the fourth generation, was one of those who “lived on the right side of the village” (the place of wealth and power). As a result, in the early Ming he was ordered to move to Anhui. Mingshan’s younger brother, Tianrui, was given the post of assistant magistrate of Jianchang, Jiangxi (rank 9a). The appointment was conferred in recognition of his ability; it resulted, however, in official disgrace and banishment to the Guangdong-Jiangxi frontier. The elder brother of Mingshan and Tianrui died before his sons—Fan (1369–1430), Yu, and Cong—were of age. So did his wife. As the eldest son of the eldest son, care of his aged and ailing grandmother became Fan’s duty. This he discharged in so exemplary a fashion that the local people praised his filiality. Until they were uprooted, the uncles did everything they could for their orphaned nephews (or at least for Yu and Cong: Fan was apparently regarded as old enough to stand on his own). Yu was given a post without having had to pass an examination, ultimately serving in Yunnan, but the “honor” proved burdensome and thankless. Cong, though, was frail: “On the last night Fan’s eyes did not once close in sleep, and when his younger brother died, his grief was so intense that he could not control himself.”38 All this leads one to expect a group decimated, broken, and scattered, even transmission of ancestral medical lore disrupted by untimely death and imperial whim. In fact, we read that “among his relatives and neighbors, those who were unable to undertake weddings and funerals undertook them [thanks to Fan]. Those who were hungry and cold were fed and clothed. Widows and widowers were provided for, those poor and in want were aided. Fan continually feared he would not reach [them all].”39 Moreover, his grounding in medicine was exceptionally thorough. Indeed, his reputation was so great that, about 1403, he was summoned to serve as physician in the Imperial Academy of Medicine (rank 9b). The Yongle emperor once put the academy’s doctors to the test in imperial audience. Fan’s responses so pleased his sovereign that the Son of Heaven feasted him and bestowed gifts of paper money. In all, Fan spent a decade in the capital, effecting numberless cures through his skill in the use of drugs.40 He also associated with many worthies and great scholars at this time. Beginning to feel his years, he was permitted to resign (on condition that one of his sons take his place in the Imperial Academy) and to return to Suzhou. Amid flowers and bamboo, he built a new house and daily entertained guests. His joy was not unalloyed: his first wife, Ms. Gao, predeceased him by twenty-four years. Fan married again, but it was Ms. Gao who received credit for helping Fan instill righteousness and propriety in their sons

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and grandsons, earning the praise of those within and without.41 Yet in spite of this loss and the death of his fourth son, Fan had good cause for satisfaction— his career, his standing in the community, his numerous (and eminent) progeny. Fan’s fifth son, Qi (1399–1465), was chosen to act as Cong’s heir. He served Cong’s widow as if she were his own mother and regarded serving his uncle as a way of serving his father: “Thus the sacrifices to Cong’s spirit were not interrupted.” In spite of the family’s reputation and the honors it was accumulating, Qi maintained a modest air. He chose his words with reverence and care, preserving the manner of a humble scholar. In consequence, he was praised in his community for his conspicuous virtue. It was he who replaced Fan in the Imperial Academy of Medicine, proof both of his skill at the ancestral calling and of the enduring strength of the father-son bond despite Qi’s place in a separate line of descent. Indeed, when Fan died, Qi mourned him by observing the regulations for a parent. Qi fell ill and did not subsequently fill a post. He was buried in the ancestral plot near his biological parents.42 It was his biological younger brother Zhu who headed a delegation of Qi’s sons when they went to ask Wu Kuan (1436–1504; DMB) for a funerary inscription. In this case, blood proved thicker than ritual distinctions. The continuing salience of biological connectedness was in this case powerfully reinforced by self-interest. The third of Fan’s sons, Yi (1389–1456), had devoted himself to study of the classics from an early age. In 1411 he took the provincial degree, the following year passing the metropolitan examination. Except for the periods of ritually mandatory inactivity that followed the deaths of his stepmother and his father, Yi was in office throughout the next four decades. Holding a variety of censorial and frontier posts, he ordered border affairs, suppressed banditry, and urged reforms (in Shaanxi proposing that corvée obligations be reduced, debts remitted, and public granaries established). Yi was very popular with commoners in the areas in which he served and very influential at court, often receiving gifts of fine cloth, paper money, and silver. He also continued to receive advice from home: in his every letter, Fan reminded his son of the need to be loyal, diligent, frugal, and incorruptible. That Yi achieved such a good reputation is said (in Fan’s funerary inscription) to reflect Fan’s skill as a teacher. Yi was one of fifty-three successful candidates for the highest degree from Suzhou prefecture in this twenty-one-year reign.43 The results at the provincial level were even more encouraging: Wu district alone produced fifty-eight successful candidates while Changzhou produced forty-eight.44 The showings of Suzhou’s other districts, if more modest, were impressive in their own right.

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Ms. Wu’s Progeny (2) Information on “tribute students” and others enrolled in the Imperial Academy is fragmentary; that on recommendation is even more so. Both continued to be important avenues, leading to all but the very highest posts, throughout this period. Consider the case of Chen Ji (1370–1434), the son of Chen Ruyan (DMB) and Ms. Wu. His mastery of the classics, the histories, and the hundred authors had long since become famous throughout the Suzhou region: people called him Chen Wujing (Chen Five Classics). He continued to work in the family plot “to supply food for the sacrifices and to support his relatives.”45 Soon, however, students began to flock to him. He “stressed taking reverence as essential and regarded the illumination of principle as fundamental.”46 Although he had had notions of becoming an official in his youth, he gave them up when he saw that his mother was growing old. Local officials started to send up his name—he was “recommended and summoned” in 1409—but he repeatedly declined appointment, pleading a diseased eye and his mother’s age. By the time he completed his mourning for Ms. Wu, the family fortunes (though not his eyesight) had apparently recovered: he was able to aid the poor and to provide burial for those who died far from home. When the new emperor, at Yang Shiqi’s (DMB) urging,47 offered him a post in the just-established Hall for the Advancement of Literature, Ji accepted. In office from 1425 to 1432, he participated in the compilation of the “Veritable Records” of the Yongle (1403–24) and Hongxi (1425) reign-periods. He rose to be an “examining editor” (rank 7b), receiving gifts of gold and clothing from the emperor. Yet “although he held office at court his will remained quiet and tranquil.”48 Aged and in ill health, he left office and returned to Wu—accompanied by a crowd of disciples—in 1432. Students surrounded him to the end:49 his last moments were devoted to the reading and explication of Zhang Zai’s Western Inscription. At his death, his clansmen (zu) and connections by marriage, students, and old friends mourned. Local officials from the prefect on down came to offer sacrifice. Yang Shiqi (1365–1444) and Yang Rong (1371–1440; DMB)—of “Three Yangs” fame—composed funerary inscriptions, sacrifices were offered to his memory in the prefectural school, and his collected works (Yi’an ji) were preserved by his descendants. . . . And Their Peers Activist governments provided a seemingly insatiable demand for such men of learning and ability. The dual capital system, with its duplication of posts, expanded the number of offices to fill. Yongle launched a number of massive

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Relative Success of Surname Groups in Song and Ming Times Suzhou Rank

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

a

Song

Wu Ming

b

Zhu, 90 Zhang, 87 Wang, 85 Fan, 78 Zheng, 69 Chen, 66 Li, 64 Zhang*, 63 Lin, 55 Zhao, 53 Qian, 40 Huang, 40 Ye, 33 Hu, 32 Yang, 31 Zhou, 28

Chen, 84 Wang, 84 Lu, 71 Xu, 69 Gu, 63 Zhou, 60 Wu, 59 Shen, 57 Zhang, 56 Liu, 45 Zhu, 39 Li, 30 Ye, 28 Qian, 28 Huang 26 Yang 26

Song

Fan, 71 Zhang*, 56 Zhang, 54 Zheng, 50 Zhu, 37 Chen, 36 Teng, 26 Qian, 25 Huang 23 Lin, 23 Li, 22 Ye, 21 Wang, 16 Bian, 15 Zhou, 15 Meng, 14

Changzhou Ming

Song

Ming

Chen, 46 Wang, 42 Lu, 40 Zhou, 31 Gu, 31 Zhang, 29 Wu, 29 Xu, 27 Zhu 26 Shen, 25 Huang, 22 Yuan, 22 Ye, 19 Liu, 16 Fan, 15 Qian, 14

Wang, 24 Wei, 12 Zhu, 11 Ding, 11 Lin, 7 Hu, 6 Huang, 6 Yang, 6 Shi, 5 Ye, 4 Zhao, 3 Fang, 3 Xu, 3 Kong, 3 Liu, 3 Shen, 3

Wang, 42 Xu, 42 Chen, 38 Gu, 32 Shen, 32 Lu, 31 Wu, 30 Zhou, 29 Liu, 29 Zhang, 27 Jiang, 19 Li, 17 Jin, 15 Zhao, 14 Qian, 14 Yang, 14

Pearsons’s r: – 0.10597 – .20813 – 0.09861 Source: Song figures were generously supplied by the late Professor R. M. Hartwell who, in the course of his work on the Song bureaucracy, reconstituted the Suzhou elite as a control. Ming figures are based on MGWXZ, 9: 1b–2a, 3b, 6a, 8b–12a, 12b–13b; 10: 6b–29a; 12; 13: 23b–24a; 15: 23a–23b; 16. Note: The surnames Zhang and Zhang* have the same pronunciation but are written with different Chinese characters. a Suzhou here equals Wu plus Changzhou plus “Suzhou” in Song. b The number after each surname is the number of upper-degree-holders with that name.

scholarly projects—the Yongle Encyclopedia alone ran to 22,877 chapters with a sixty-chapter table of contents50—which provided a small army of scholars, editors, and scribes with gainful employment and prestigious titles for years. The fact that the emperor’s closest adviser, Yao Guangxiao (1335–1418; DMB)— Buddhist monk, classical scholar, member of Gao Qi’s circle, master of the arts of divination, fortune-telling, and physiognomy, head of the compilation project—was from Changzhou district did little to harm the career prospects of men from his native area.51 But even without this connection, many Suzhou families would have been equipped by education and breeding to occupy a disproportionate share of the openings these policies created. Given the tax and population transfer policies of early Ming rulers, the success of Suzhou may seem improbable. Yet in terms of those convenient if partial indicators, higher degrees received and posts filled, this was one of the empire’s most successful areas throughout the Ming.52 That the editors of the Dictionary of Ming Biography—allocating space on the basis of historical significance—accorded a prefecture with 4.6 percent of registered households 12.6

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percent of the entries suggests that this eminence was qualitative as well as quantitative.53 Like the Chens of Iron Bottle Lane, many of these families were newly prominent—or at least newly prominent in Suzhou. In a patrilineal society, surnames were a relatively stable group attribute over time. The degree to which the Suzhou elite of Ming times was composed of new men can be gauged by comparing the contribution particular surnames made to the ranks of Song and Ming upper-degree-holders (see Table 7). This experiment reveals little or no correlation between a group’s success in one period and its performance in another. One might therefore surmise that early Ming policies had had great impact, but one should be cautious in drawing such a conclusion. Imperial ire was not the only force at work. Quite apart from forced migration, the population was surprisingly mobile: elite families moved into (and out of) the region throughout the late imperial era, ceaselessly positioning themselves as advantageously as possible.54 In spite of plural marriage and the use of adoption, many lines failed to produce an heir. Suzhou’s economy and its position within the hierarchy of central places changed through the centuries. Together, such voluntary and involuntary factors may have contributed more than official policy did to the reshaping of the elite.

A Thriving Urban Sector Since many of the affluent maintained both urban and village residences, this elite was well positioned to make the most of any and all opportunities that might appear. Those in serious pursuit of official preferment resided in the district capital or prefectural seat, occupying places in the local school, for prolonged periods of time.55 Much of the area’s rural surplus appears to have been funneled to urban households as a result. As the distribution of wealth became even more unequal, the extravagance of the well-to-do appears to have grown. At least it grew more objectionable. As Prefect Kuang Zhong (DMB) complained in 1431, Wasteful customs are especially serious in the city. It is primarily the sons and younger brothers of the elite who have adopted decadent ways. It is bad enough to harm agriculture and threaten the behavior of women. These sons and younger brothers make no effort to secure their livelihood. They go to extremes day and night. They openly gamble. Shameless and degraded, they attend theaters and frequent brothels, indulge themselves in extravagant dress, go about in showy conveyances, and get drunk. They sport with hawks and fight sparrows. They draw their ilk and attract a crowd, stirring up young ruffians and engaging selfishly in evil deeds. . . . In many ways they act unlawfully and violate the basic standards of our state.56

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The prefecture’s gilded youth (and their families) were not the only source of increased demand. Although the Ming quickly concluded that Liu Family Harbor (Liujiagang) was too near the capital to serve as the empire’s principal foreign port, envoys bearing tribute were still permitted to enter the Middle Kingdom there, sailing up either the Lou or the Wu Song Rivers. Thus the harbor continued to merit its nickname, the “Wharf of the Six Kingdoms.” The Ming had moreover continued the Yuan practice of using the Liu Family Harbor as the southern terminus for shipments of grain by sea, establishing a Sea Transport Regional Commandery there in 1374. By the 1380s, 82,000 troops were assigned to transport 700,000 piculs annually to Ming forces in Liaodong. In 1393, a 919-bay storage depot was built at Liu Family Harbor to warehouse tax grain from Zhejiang and the Southern Capital District earmarked for transfer north. It is thus not surprising that, although Zheng He’s ships were built in Nanjing, his expeditions set out from (and returned to) Liujiagang. These armadas needed to be supplied with everything from rice through ships’ stores to cargo for export. Their huge demand for all manner of processed and semiprocessed goods, from the most exotic luxuries to the most mundane articles in daily use, afforded merchants and middlemen ample opportunities for profit. The lure of profit attracted not only foreigners but also merchants from Manchuria and Shanxi, the 1404 reiteration of the ban on unauthorized private overseas ventures making Liu Family Harbor the funnel through which all (legal) foreign trade was forced to go. Zheng He’s voyages thus provided major additional stimulus to Suzhou’s urban sector.57 In part as a result of this traffic, both commerce and the silk-weaving industry thrived. The exile of elite households, and the relocation of artisans required to serve ten days each month in government-run workshops in the capitals (zhuzuo renjiang), had affected the Suzhou area disproportionately. Unceremonious and unwelcome as such forced migration no doubt was, it provided natives of Suzhou with a network bound by ties of native place and/or blood in the empire’s most important, and affluent, centers—a network that cities less severely affected by early Ming policies would be hard-put to match. However great a hardship the obligation to transport huge quantities of grain to the capitals or to the frontiers imposed, the annual armada of grain barges carried some ten thousand tons (10 million kilograms) in authorized private cargo. These goods could be traded at Nanjing, Beijing, or points in between. It was an open secret that the amounts carried regularly exceeded statutory limits and that prohibitions against the use of government bottoms to ship northern goods south on the return journey were ignored.58 Although

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other centers participated in this trade, the burdens imposed on Suzhou’s peasants and landlords must have brought corresponding advantages to the local merchants. The Yongle emperor’s style was much less austere than his father’s had been. Both Zheng He’s voyages and the expansion of the tribute system that followed dramatically increased government gift-giving. In addition, beginning in 1405 the strategically crucial tea and horse trade with Central Asia became a silk-forhorse trade. Thus the quantities of silk cloth needed rapidly surpassed the old tribute quotas, forcing the government to seek additional quantities on the open market.59 All this was a powerful stimulus for Suzhou’s silk industry. Owing to the reputation of its weavers,60 Suzhou was one of the few places outside the capitals where important government workshops were maintained. Yet Zhu Yuanzhang had been careful to divide responsibilities between workshops in the capital and those in the provinces. The latter, manned by a modest number of craftsmen registered to serve in rotation, produced satin cloth for gifts and rewards, not the higher quality (and more ritually important) fabrics used by the court. In 1390 the emperor had even abolished local quotas for satin, ordaining that henceforth awards would consist of pongee. Under the new pressures of the early fifteenth century, the founder’s policy of demanding modest amounts of simple weave was abandoned. When the “weaving and dyeing bureau” was rebuilt in 1425, it was as a 300-bay complex with more than 1,700 artisans on call. Since Suzhou and Hangzhou were now required to produce fabrics used in the emperor’s Dragon Robes, the workshops were placed under eunuch supervision.61 Although these developments coincided with the flight of tax- and corvée-evading peasants from the countryside to the city,62 the weaving of silk remained an urban specialty. Not only the villages but even the capitals of the prefecture’s subordinate districts lacked the skilled male labor—unlike the weaving of coarse cloth or the reeling of silk thread, this was not an activity open to women—and the large looms needed to produce the types of silk the court now demanded.63 The eunuchs quickly discovered that simply meeting the original quota often required hiring extra hands or purchasing cloth on the open market. Production of Dragon Robes had priority; these were produced in the workshops while other functions were contracted out. One way of limiting reliance on such expedients was to enroll commoner “loom households” not previously registered in the artisan category. As jianghu (artisan households), they were subject to call for fixed periods. The process was organized by headmen appointed by the state—“hall chiefs” (tangzhang)—who were responsible for every stage of the process, from handling silk thread collected as part of the

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summer tax to delivery of finished cloth to the capital. These men were analogous to the tax captains in the rural areas. For them, government service could become a full-time (and lucrative) occupation. For the balance of the year, other artisan households remained free to ply their trade on their own account, disposing of their output to private customers.64 From the available evidence, it is not possible to estimate the amounts produced. Clearly these far exceeded the quotas established at the beginning of the dynasty. As the volume of traffic at Hushu zhen makes clear,65 this development cannot simply be attributed to the importunate demands of the court. A larger—and perhaps less scrupulous—stratum of officials and local notables throughout the realm seem to have felt increasingly free to indulge their craving for luxuries as well. Given the collapse of both the North China and Sichuan silk industries, Suzhou was one of the few centers poised to satisfy this demand.66 Three major constraints remained. Perhaps the least important, given Prefect Kuang’s complaints, were the sumptuary laws that restricted use of silks in the early Ming. More serious was a decline in the number of mulberry trees. During the Yuan-Ming transition, Suzhou lost almost half its inventory of 270,000. A mu of mulberry was three and a half times more profitable than the same area planted in grain. One might well have expected that in Ming as in Qing “mulberries [would be] devouring paddy fields.” Yet Suzhou had not quite recovered Yuan levels by 1503. The explanation—and the third constraint—seems to have been the even greater attractions of cotton, a crop that Ming sources emphasize was far more lucrative than the mulberry-silkwormsilk complex.67 Although our sources are even more fragmentary for cotton than for silk, it seems certain that production of and trade in cotton cloth expanded vigorously during these years.

Evidence of Strain in the Countryside Urban prosperity did nothing to alleviate conditions in the countryside. By the time the prince of Yan bested his nephew, the inadequacies of prior efforts to tame the waters of Jiangnan had become clear. Yao Shan’s replacement (the one well-remembered prefect of the reign) found upon taking up his post that Suzhou had suffered from flooding for several years in succession. People had fled and more than a million piculs in taxes had gone unpaid.68 Urging the wealthy to provide rice in place of the transport duties they were assessed, he alleviated the immediate crisis. He was, however, cashiered in 1403 for failing to take steps to prevent a recurrence.69 The emperor dispatched the minister of

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revenue, Xia Yuanji (DMB), to deal with the situation. Mobilizing more than a hundred thousand men, Xia began by dredging the Wu Song River. On foot and dressed like a commoner, he personally oversaw the work day and night: “He did not open an umbrella even in intense heat, saying: ‘The common people toil. How could I alone bear to be comfortable?’” Work was not completed until the ninth month of 1404. In the end, it required dredging the Bai mao Pond, the Liu Family River, the Lou River, and the Da Huangpu, an effort that extended from Changshu through Kunshan and Jiading to Shanghai districts.70 We are told that the agricultural land of Suzhou and Songjiang greatly benefited as a result. It did not, however, put an end to natural disasters in the area. In the fifth month of 1404, there was a great rain in Wu, submerging the fields and the rice plants. It was necessary to organize relief for the starving the following month; at the end of the year, taxes were remitted in Suzhou. In the sixth month of 1405, Xia Yuanji was once more dispatched to the area to organize relief. Three months later, the government wrote off 3,380,000 piculs on fields damaged by flood in Suzhou and surrounding areas. A year after that, the government was still aiding more than 122,900 refugee households from a sixprefecture area to return to their occupations.71 There was an ongoing dialectic of disaster and state-organized water-control efforts: beginning in the first month of 1407, men were mobilized to reinforce the dikes and banks of the Lou River in Wujiang, Changzhou, and Kunshan districts. Nonetheless, the following year, there was excessive water in Changzhou.72 In 1411, earth and stone ponds, bridges, and roads along a seventy li (thirty-five-kilometer) stretch from Changzhou to Jiaxing were repaired, improving drainage for 131 places.73 In the eleventh month of 1414, more than 479,000 piculs were remitted in flood-ravaged areas of Suzhou, Songjiang, Hangzhou, Jiaxing, and Huzhou. The next year, first drought, then prolonged summer rains injured the crops. Once more taxes were remitted and another major effort to improve drainage mounted. Lake Tai and the lower reaches of the streams and harbors connecting with it were dredged in Wuxi, Wu, Changzhou, and Kunshan. Even after this, in the summer of 1421, the government had to aid the starving in Wu district.74 All told, over the seven-year-period 1415–21, more than a million piculs of Suzhou and Songjiang’s taxes proved uncollectable and had to be written off. When Yongle’s successor came to the throne in the summer of 1424, committed to orthodox Confucian government and benevolent rule, he ordered an investigation of conditions in Suzhou and its surrounding prefectures. By the time Zhou Gan submitted his report, the Hongxi emperor had gone to his ancestors. The new emperor, Xuande, referred the report to his highest officials

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for further deliberation. For several years thereafter nothing was done.75 In the interim, conditions continued to deteriorate in Suzhou’s hinterland. Between 1422 and 1428, Suzhou and Songjiang’s total arrears once again reached a million piculs.76 The government’s first response, in 1429, was to jail large numbers of tax captains for failing to fulfill their responsibilities.77 But the problem was too massive to be solved by law enforcement. By 1430, Suzhou alone owed a reported 8 million piculs in back taxes.78 Since Songjiang’s total tax quota was 1,219,896 and Suzhou’s 2,810,490,79 arrears of a million over seven years was just 3.5 percent of the total owed. Even a shortfall of 7.9 million piculs, if accumulated between 1426 and 1432,80 would imply that almost 60 percent of Suzhou’s quota was being paid in. Since the government appears to have received only what was left after all expenses and customary fees had been met, this delinquency is better measured against the 4 million piculs demanded than the 2,810,490 owed. The amounts actually collected each year would have almost equaled the amount due under Zhu Yuanzhang. From the narrow perspective of the Ministry of Revenue it may indeed have been true that there was “ostensibly a heavy tax but in reality no taxes were levied.”81 In the Suzhou countryside, the tax seemed real enough.82 Moreover, there is little doubt that, however imperfectly the distribution of this burden had reflected people’s ability to pay in the late fourteenth century, a nearly perfect inverse relationship between burden and ability seemed to be developing in the 1410s and 1420s.83 In the longer term, there was even less cause for optimism. For, if local elites and the urban economy had found it possible to adapt, even thrive, in the post1403 environment, others had not. The problems were real—and not just for Suzhou. Not only was the agricultural economy being undermined and the structure of society being transformed. Missing households and embezzled funds led inevitably to the neglect of water-control efforts—a fact that endangered the area as a whole—and encouraged other taxpayers to abscond. Given the direct link that the Ming had established between specific sources of revenue and particular government activities, chronic failure to fulfill quotas on such a scale threatened to escalate, creating unmanageable chaos for the imperial fisc. Reform was thus essential, both for the center and for the locality. But attempts at reform would have to contend with the reality that the status quo, however dysfunctional it might be overall, had come to serve some particular (and important) interests rather well.

5

Reform, 1430–1484 Suzhou from Zhou Chen to Wang Shu

Any account of Suzhou in the mid-fifteenth century must have a dual focus: the yamen and the elements. However satisfactory the Yongle emperor’s policies might have seemed to local elites, they shifted burdens from the haves to the have-nots and bred local disaffection. More significantly, they encouraged those who could to take evasive action. As result, both the imperial treasury and local social order suffered. The examination system simultaneously (and quite impartially) elevated a disproportionate number of men from Suzhou and adjacent areas. If merit were allowed to operate unchecked, the conquered would soon be administering the conquest. In the best times, these forces would have challenged the existing dispensation. As students of climate have clearly established, the mid-fifteenth century was not the best of times. But nature does not affect human societies automatically and directly. If population is sparse and land is plentiful, a shorter growing season or the inundation of low-lying fields may scarcely merit notice. Conversely, if population is dense and there are multiple claims to a finite amount of tillable land, even the slightest departure from the optimum can have dramatic consequences. For populations living at or near subsistence, such “short-term” fluctuations are not trivial details; they are basic to any understanding of lived experience in that society. Only if relief is available to the displaced and deprived, alternative avenues of gainful employment are on offer, and robust systems of water control are in place could these effects be muted—by technology, social organization, and political development. The need for action was then clear. In the half-century after 1430, a succession of gifted scholar-officials grappled with the twin tasks of readjusting the relationship between state and society and of buffering a sensitive ecosystem from the forces of nature. Having won a major reduction in the tax quota, they sought to devise methods of imposing the substantial demands that remained, methods consistent with social equity and administrative control. The twists and turns of policy reflect in part latent tensions between those goals. Yet even had ways been found to minimize such tensions, their efforts were also constrained by realities above and below.

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Given the need for transparency, both to the center and to administrators transferred in and out in accordance with the law of avoidance, the methods employed in Suzhou could deviate from those in use elsewhere only to a limited extent. Yet the more urban and the more commercialized the area became, the more difficult it was to administer Suzhou using variations on techniques applicable to an agrarian empire. This process of urbanization and commercialization was one of the forces driving the emergence of numerous, wealthy, and increasingly well-connected elites—elites who had raised tax evasion to a high art. That evasive action tended, among other things, to make Suzhou more urban and more commercial. Since no one seriously contemplated scrapping the entire system and starting over, or advocated another diaspora of local elites, the reformers’ most ambitious schemes would have to accommodate existing administrative and social realities. This helped ensure that their accomplishments, though real, would be limited—and temporary.

Weather For all its complexity, Suzhou was still part of a world at the mercy of the elements. Vagaries of the weather not only determined the supply of raw materials and, through the price of food, the cost of labor. They also played a critical role in determining the level of effective demand. The mid-fifteenth century was the trough of the Sporer minimum, a worldwide cooling that shortened growing seasons and reduced crop yields.1 Suzhou’s resources were not yet being thoroughly exploited: even in the sixteenth century, the eastern portions of Changzhou district were noted for their backwardness and their brigands,2 and the Lake Tai area was still adding villages in the second half of the Ming dynasty.3 Yet there was clearly less slack in 1450 than there had been in 1410, or in 1370. Thus climatic fluctuations were more rather than less keenly felt than they might have been in earlier decades. Had the global nature of these conditions not been so well established, we might attribute the increase in natural disasters after 1430 to better records and an expanded definition of official responsibilities rather than to deteriorating conditions.4 In both 1431 and 1432, taxes were remitted in response to natural disasters.5 In 1433, rice from the newly established public granaries had to be used to relieve starving commoners in Suzhou. In the eighth month of 1438, Lake Tai suddenly overflowed, submerging the foothills of Dongting to a depth of four feet. In the seventh month of 1439, a great wind uprooted trees and destroyed grain standing in the fields; the following month, water drowned large numbers of men and women.6 In response to flood, in the eleventh month of 1440, taxes were remitted in Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou,

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Zhenjiang, Jiaxing, and Huzhou. In the seventh month of 1442, there again were severe rains in Suzhou. Grand Coordinator Zhou Chen reported that 100,000 to 200,000 piculs (shi) of grain on hand in the prefectural granaries and 500,000 to 600,000 piculs in those of the districts urgently needed to be diverted to relieve the suffering.7 In 1443 a great wind and rain injured the crops; there was famine the following spring. In the seventh month of 1444, the wind and rain returned. The waters of Lake Tai rose ten to twenty feet, submerging men and beasts, as well as cottages and houses by the edge of the lake, and uprooting huge trees in both East and West Dongting.8 It was necessary to remit taxes on Suzhou and thirteen other flood-ravaged prefectures in 1445. In 1447 autumn taxes once again had to be remitted on disaster areas in Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, and Zhenjiang and on the Suzhou and Zhenhai Guard. Two years later, excessive water was again followed by famine.9 The claim in Zhou Chen’s biography that the common people of Jiangnan did not know famine or scarcity during his twenty years in office is thus blatant hyperbole.10 The string of crisis years did not end with his term of office. There was a famine in 1451. The poor seized the grain and burned the homes of the rich and powerful, then put to sea to escape punishment. Officials condemned more than two hundred to death as rebels.11 In the first month of 1454, there was a lot of snow and a forty-day freeze. Those who died of hunger were said to be beyond count. The following summer, excessive rain submerged fields and cottages. At the beginning of autumn, this was followed by a drought that destroyed the crops on elevated ground. A great famine and a severe epidemic ensued: “Those who died used one another as pillows.” The dismantling of Zhou Chen’s social safety net had been all too complete, and “those who served as grand coordinator and great officials issued orders that were petty and overly detailed.” It was only thanks to the vigor of Censor Yang Gong that taxes were reduced and loans made to relieve those in distress.12 Ultimately, more than 2 million piculs of tax were remitted in Suzhou and surrounding prefectures in 1454. When the new grand coordinator, Zou Laixue, arrived at his post in spring 1455, he sold 300,000 piculs of rice (originally earmarked for transport to the capital) to the starving, promising to repay superiors in the autumn. But the crisis was not yet at an end: summer 1455 brought an earthquake and a drought. More than 1 million piculs of rice and wheat were diverted to relieve the starving of Suzhou and Songjiang in the ninth month of 1455.13 The harvest of 1460 was poor, and those who evaded their obligation to provide tribute goods were numerous. When Weng Shizi memorialized requesting a tax exemption for the area he was demoted for opposing the imperial will.14

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Grand Coordinator Liu Zi was nonetheless forced to remit the autumn taxes in Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, and Zhenjiang in 1461.15 Despite Xing You’s (Suzhou prefect, 1463–67) attention to water control, the mid-1460s again saw serious flooding. Since the commoners were starving, he diverted 200,000 hu (100,000 piculs) of grain to famine relief without waiting to memorialize.16 The district magistrate of Wu from 1470 to 1473 was Yong Tai. On arriving at his post, he found that the waters of Lake Tai had destroyed “a thousand qing (100,000 mu)” of fields. This seems to have been part of a widespread disaster: in 1470, the prior year’s autumn levy was remitted in Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Chizhou, and Ningguo prefectures.17 The late 1470s were even less hospitable. In the eighth month of 1475, just before the harvest, there was excessive rain. The following year, again in the eighth month, there was another deluge. In the twelfth month there was a lot of ice. Boats were not able to move, and for more than a month Lake Tai was obstructed by ice. In the fourth month of 1478, tigers were reported in the mountainous areas on the outskirts of the prefecture; in the fifth month, there was excessive water.18 In Changzhou, the new district magistrate was Liu Hui (in office 1478–87). In a famine year he asked that the Ministry of Justice waive the penalties for theft, arguing that commoners in the Zhanglian tang area were driven to such crimes by their desperate need for food.19 The only natural disaster on record for the 1480s was a 1482 outbreak of plague; 1483 was said to have brought a bumper harvest.20 The biographies of “illustrious officials” suggest that the roster is far from complete. Liu Kui, a censor stationed in the Suzhou area in 1481, found that incessant rain had destroyed the crops in the fields and caused tens of thousands to die of starvation. In spite of this, the local officials continued to levy taxes as if everything were normal. Censor Liu argued that, although everyone agreed that the people were the roots of wealth and taxes, the policies being pursued severed these roots to obtain a few branches in the present. This not only endangered future prosperity; more immediately it drove people to become thieves and robbers. Punishments would not solve the problem. At most, punitive measures would lead the people to flee. The court ordered a discussion of Liu’s ideas, but he was not able to persuade the rest of the bureaucracy to embrace his point of view.21 Grand Coordinator Wang Shu (DMB; in office 1480–84) is said to have responded to floods in the Suzhou area by obtaining permission to use more than 600,000 piculs of the autumn levy to make loans, saving the lives of more than 2 million people. It is unclear if this was a response to the 1481 crisis that exercised Liu or to a subsequent one that also went unrecorded. Although we cannot tie particular disasters to specific patrilines, the Chens

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of Wu district illustrate the impact sudden and widespread loss of life could have on a family’s fortunes. Although this particular patriline had not produced a degree-holder “from the time of the great-great-grandfather” of the generation born in 1420s and 1430s (if ever), they were nonetheless wealthy and respected—a respect that found concrete expression in the marriage market. At some unspecified point, the Zhu (a “notable family” of Pei in Anhui) had migrated to Wu. When Zhu Fuxian’s daughter reached the age at which women began to pin up their hair, Zhu Fuxian married her to Chen Jin (d. 1462). Ms. Zhu (1402–74) proved an admirable wife. She gave birth to two sons and three daughters—the youngest of whom married Wu Kuan (1436–1504; DMB: Changzhou jr 1468, js 1472) in 1455.22 She also remained on good terms with superiors and inferiors in a very large household, serving her husband’s elder and younger brothers and never pursuing her own narrow interests. The family estate was beside a great river.23 Once, seeing that those who pulled the official boats were cold, hungry, and unable to advance in the face of rain and snow, she prepared congee to feed them all. When strangers died in the area, Ms. Zhu also saw that they were provided with coffins and that the bodies were returned to their native places for burial. The first six decades of her life seem to have passed quite smoothly: her children survived childhood, married, and (at least in the crucial case, her sons) multiplied. The family’s affairs, which Jin early placed in the hands of their eldest son, Lun (1424–66), continued to prosper. Lun was fond of wine and company, the family’s affairs were complex, and its employees and servants were numerous. But Lun was good at making plans. He could also command obedience: he had only to exclaim sternly and the most habitually indolent hastened to do their duty. Thus even after Jin died the family estates were not diminished. Like his parents, Lun was eager to give practical expression to his righteousness. Each year he provided food for the hungry and coffins for the indigent. Once, during a great rainstorm, he came upon a woman by the water’s edge. Her husband explained that they were from Jinjiang in Quanzhou, Hebei. They had been returning home when his wife’s time came; the husband feared she would miscarry on the spot. Taking pity on them, Lun provided shelter, fuel, and rice gruel. Once the couple’s son was safely delivered and all three were ready to travel, Lun gave them money for the journey north. Such deeds both secured the gratitude of the beneficiaries and enhanced the family’s reputation for virtue throughout the region.24 Then, in 1461, tragedy struck: in a single month seven of Ms. Zhu’s eleven grandchildren, including all three of Lun’s sons, died. The following year Jin

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succumbed. Lun’s health also was more and more delicate. He consulted several doctors, but none could effect a cure. Although his condition was not yet critical, he was urged to see a Buddhist reputed to have skill in medicine. Lun was skeptical but, hoping to hasten his recovery, he sought out the monk. No sooner had he obtained the monk’s “miracle cure” and drunk it than he vomited a pint of blood and died.25 Having failed to produce a fourth son in the five years since the death of his first three, on his deathbed he left instructions that his younger brother’s son, Liu, become his successor. In 1470, Lun’s younger brother, Ji, followed his father, brother, and children to the grave.26 Ms. Zhu wept constantly over her many losses, her grief and pain making her last thirteen years cheerless ones. Her son-in-law, Wu Kuan, commented: Heaven is supposed to bless the good—if not in their own person then in their sons and grandsons. Yet Lun died young and left no descendants. How can one not believe the men of antiquity? And yet can the Heaven of the present day not be benevolent? If it is not [either of these], is it as Zhuang Zi [369–ca. 286 B.C.] said: are mankind’s superior men Heaven’s small men?27

The lived experience of this string of bad years, an experience shared by elites and commoners alike, was the backdrop against which the struggles of the day—over tax quotas and their methods of collection, labor services and water control, local administration, economic development, the numbers and activities of the local elite—were played out. Although nature had a role, nature for Ming Chinese was an expression of the will of Heaven rather than a random force. In any case, it acted on and through social, economic, demographic, political, and ecological conditions. These conditions were themselves the creations of man.

Tax Reform: The Age of Zhou Chen This string of natural disasters seems even more eloquent evidence that the policies of the Yongle era could not be sustained than does Suzhou’s chronic inability to meet its tax quotas. But the problems expansive policies and inattention to the details of domestic administration had created were not confined to Suzhou. The edict appointing Zhou Chen grand coordinator in the Su-Song area simultaneously appointed grand coordinators for Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Huguang, Shanxi, Beizhili, and Shandong.28 So desperate were the central authorities to reduce the burden on taxpayers that the Yongle emperor’s immediate successor decreed that the seat of imperial power should return to Nanjing.29 (He died before this decision could be implemented.) A less

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aggressive military strategy was adopted, large-scale naval expeditions were dispensed with, more caution was shown in launching massive public works, and more attention was paid to the details of administration. Even after the pressures an activist policy had created were relieved (largely by abandoning activism), the state’s ability to embrace massive reforms were severely limited, for the government depended on the delivery of specific taxes from place X to bureau C to accomplish function N.30 Thanks to the revival of agriculture in areas that had been depopulated and destroyed in the mid-fourteenth century, a modest reshuffling of the burden could take place. Still, there were limits to the amounts that could be transferred or written off. The problems of communication, control, and transport faced by a premodern empire attempting to operate on a subcontinental scale ensured this. The way in which taxes were administered was therefore a central concern of reformers in the Xuande (1426–35) and Zhengtong (1436–49) reign-periods. Suzhou occupied a prominent place in the empire’s accounts, and a large proportion of its taxes was earmarked for delivery to distant points. These realities ensured that it would receive a substantial share of any reduction, even if massive arrears (chronic by 1430) and recurrent natural disasters had not driven the claim home. In 1430, Zhou Chen and the newly appointed prefect of Suzhou, Kuang Zhong (DMB), proposed that rents on official fields be reduced—by 20 percent on fields assessed 0.1 to 0.4 piculs per mu, by 30 percent on those assessed 0.41 piculs or more.31 The Ministry of Finance approved this with respect to official fields of Ming date; it balked at extending such relief to lands that had been entered on the official rolls in Song and Yuan.32 The objection was apparently rooted in a belief that these fields, having demonstrated their ability to support such a burden by having done so for many years, had a dubious claim to the limited amount of relief available. Since their rents were often higher than rents on official land of Ming vintage, extending relief to them would also substantially increase the cost to the treasury. Nonetheless, in 1432 the emperor, siding with his local officials, overrode the ministry’s objections. When (in 1436) these reductions were extended to the small number of commoner fields taxed at a comparable rate, 720,000 piculs—or, according to other accounts, 800,000 piculs—of the prefecture’s late fourteenth-century quota of “autumn grain” had been eliminated.33 Approximately one-third of the reduced quota was then converted to silver (so-called Gold Floral Silver) at a rate of one ounce of silver to four piculs of grain. Given that the normal market price was 0.5 ounces per picul,34 this policy was extremely favorable to the taxpayer. Since the Gold Floral Silver (jinhuayin) represented grain that had previously been transported to the capital,

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the new policy brought significant tax relief. So did conversion of a portion of the tax to bolts of cotton cloth at equally generous rates.35 But which taxpayers were to benefit? Implementation of the “leveling grain” (pingmi) system settled the issue in favor of those who paid the highest taxes. Basic assessments were frozen at 1442 levels and a standard surcharge—originally 90 percent, to be reduced in subsequent years if a surplus remained—was added. Those with the heaviest assessments were then allowed to pay in the most favorable medium (Gold Floral Silver, cotton cloth, and the like). Only those with the lowest level of obligation, 0.4 picul per mu or less, were still required to settle in grain. The surcharge was intended primarily to cover delivery costs. Surpluses could be used to reduce the following year’s surcharges; to fund the repair of bridges and roads, schools, temples, and government offices; or to provide interest-free loans to the poor.36 It also sharply reduced the ability of clerks and tax captains to set surcharges and fees at any level they chose. Other measures were designed to reduce the opportunities for embezzlement and peculation. A network of secondary granaries in which tax grain was consolidated in lots of 60,000-plus piculs was created at the water’s edge. A government-issue iron hu (one-half picul) measure was made compulsory in all transactions.37 The police were restrained and yamen underlings disciplined: [When Kuang Zhong was appointed to office] Suzhou’s tax and corvée obligations were complex and heavy. Lawless characters tampered with the language of documents in order to make illicit profits. . . . On first reaching the prefecture and being installed in office, the yamen underlings crowded around [Kuang]. They immediately asked him to judge official documents. Kuang pretended not to understand, gazing [at them uncomprehendingly] and inquiring left and right. [He pretended that] only what the clerks desired would be done. The yamen underlings were greatly pleased and addressed him as Revered Protector [taishou]. They withdrew believing it would be easy to take advantage of him. On the third day, Kuang summoned and interrogated them saying: “Previously certain things ought to have been done and yet you stopped me. Certain things ought to have been stopped yet you forced me to put them into practice. All of you have tampered with the language of official documents for illicit purposes. It is a crime of long standing, meriting death.” He began to thrash them, killing several, and drove off all those who were covetous and tyrannical, stupid and cowardly. The whole prefecture was greatly excited. All served the law.38

The area’s relatively light summer tax was converted to rice and incorporated in the wastage rice assessed on autumn grain.39 In 1429 a supposedly temporary 1425 increase in the store franchise fees (mentan shui), quintupling the rate in Suzhou and thirty-two other leading commercial centers, was made permanent.40 Setting up new customs houses, at Hushu and six other points in the empire, the government was thus able to shift a bit more of the tax burden from the agrarian to the commercial sector.41 Corvée burdens were reduced (in

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part by making those who held official fields subject to miscellaneous corvée for the first time),42 the abuse of transport workers curbed, and extortion by officials in transit was limited. Responsibility for long-distance deliveries of taxes in kind (white rice—bailiang—excepted) was simultaneously transferred from the taxpayers to the military (the duijun jieyun system).43 Some long-submerged land was finally removed from the tax rolls. Those who had been sent north to tend horses at courier stations thirty years earlier were at last permitted to return home. Relief granaries were established and abandoned fields brought back into cultivation.44 Responsibility for water control was assigned to an assistant magistrate in each district, the tax captain henceforth being stripped of all duties in that sphere. Cumulatively, these measures brought the collection, accounting, and dispersal of tax funds more thoroughly under the control of local officials. As a result, tax captains and hundred captains ceased to enjoy the power and autonomy they had had in the dynasty’s early years. Under the new dispensation, magistrates, prefects, and grand coordinators administered where their predecessors had merely supervised. For the good of state and society, Zhu Yuanzhang had sought to forge an alliance of crown and local elite at the expense of the bureaucracy. In the interests of government revenue and social equity, bureaucrats now turned these “good people” into cogs of the tax collection apparatus.45 Viewed purely in terms of administrative rationalization, such measures were quite successful. Deficits vanished and, within two years, nearly 40,000 fugitive households had returned to the prefectural tax rolls.46 No comprehensive survey of land was undertaken. At this point, discussion of the need to amend the Fish-Scale Charts and Registers emphasized the havoc wrought by erosion and natural disaster rather than that due to the machinations of “local bullies” (tuhao) and yamen underlings.47 Obviously, the latter had not been idle—as Grand Coordinator Zhou Chen and Prefect Kuang Zhong clearly knew.48 Confronting such a situation, one could seek either to compel or to induce the powerful to cooperate. Kuang Zhong tried to shame the people into acting as they should. He ordered each community to establish two sets of registers: in one, good deeds would be recorded; in the other bad ones. On the basis of these records officials could exhort and chastise the people as their conduct might dictate.49 The primary thrust of the reforms was, however, more hard-headed. Centralizing power in the hands of local officials reduced the sphere within which yamen underlings and local bullies could operate unchecked and undetected. The policies adopted in the 1430s and 1440s then lowered the cost of participating in the tax and corvée system rather than raising that of evasion. The perma-

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nence of this system was ensured by diverting the Gold Floral Silver (once the capital guard had been paid) to the emperor’s personal use.50 Henceforth Suzhou not only provided one-tenth of the government’s income; the crown’s fortunes were hostage to the economic well-being and minimal cooperation of the prefecture’s most heavily taxed landholders as well. It was widely assumed, in the Ming and after, that the most heavily taxed land was in the hands of smallholders. While this was not entirely true even in the late fourteenth century,51 it may well have been true enough in the 1430s and 1440s for the reform policies to have provided substantial tax relief to those most in need of it. By limiting the powers of the tax captains to assess surcharges and assign labor service arbitrarily, the most flagrant abuses were curbed. The provision of interest-free loans to the peasants eliminated a lucrative source of profit for the wealthy. As a result, taxpayer flight and annexation of land by local bullies was slowed, though not reversed. These reforms assumed that local officials would retain the surplus generated by regularizing surcharges to use as they saw fit. From the first, however, these funds were coveted by local elites, by yamen underlings, and by the Ministry of Revenue. There was a strong ideological commitment to “preserving wealth among the people”52 and a skeptical attitude toward unaudited funds in the hands of local officials. Indeed, several illustrious officials made their mark by controlling embezzlement of the surpluses generated by the reforms and restraining the covetousness of clerks and runners.53 Thus the reforms associated with Grand Coordinator Zhou Chen and Prefect Kuang Zhong, extensive though they were, confronted forces that sought to undo or exploit them. By the 1430s, the Ming was a stable political order. As with all stable political orders, stability implied a substantial (and ever-increasing) degree of bureaucratization, standardization, and routinization. Just as significantly, stability was in no small measure the result of webs woven to accommodate—and thus to co-opt—various partial and local interests, webs that constrained the state’s ability to respond to new realities.54 In these circumstances, mid-fifteenth-century reformers were forced to manipulate the categories of the late fourteenth century. They did not create new ones corresponding to the social and economic realities of the mid-fifteenth. Given the evils about which Zhou and Kuang had complained—false consignment and the burden of debt, lack of correspondence between the obligation and the ability to pay one’s taxes, the growing concentration of population and of wealth in the city, increasing extravagance and declining honesty55—these changes could only retard ongoing processes in the countryside. They could not halt or reverse them.

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Land Taxes, 1450–1484: Contending Approaches In 1449 the Zhengtong emperor sought to emulate the martial accomplishments of his forebears. He led an immense army north of the Great Wall—and was promptly captured by the Mongols. This Tumu incident had repercussions in Suzhou as well as at court.56 Grand Coordinator Zhou Chen had long been under attack, his reforms viewed with distaste by tax captains whose power they had curbed, by great households whose opportunities for tax evasion (and the profits of usury) they had eliminated, by clerks whose opportunities for squeeze they had reduced, and by bureaucrats in the Ministry of Revenue who viewed the surpluses Zhou Chen’s wastage allowance generated with a suspicious (and covetous) eye. As early as 1434, a supervising secretary had impeached Zhou Chen for levying excessive amounts of wastage. The Xuande emperor had upheld the practice as one in the public interest, and Zhou Chen had used that decision as a blanket imprimatur in subsequent years. In 1444 the “wicked commoner” Yin Chongli had forced Zhou Chen to suspend collection of wastage. The old ills quickly reappeared. Zhou Chen skillfully used this fact to silence his critics and restore his policies. But once the Jingtai emperor was on the throne, committed to a restoration of orthodoxy and high standards, the old accusations were heard anew. Although Zhou Chen and his policies retained the support of the emperor and of many of his highest officials, it was evident that, so long as the “speaking path” remained open, criticism, investigations, and demands for Zhou’s demotion would continue. Under fire—and probably guilty of tolerating low-level peculation as a fact of life57—Zhou Chen pled advanced age and submitted his resignation. Even this did not mollify his critics (suggesting strongly that it was the policy, rather than Zhou Chen’s administration of it, that was the real target). A commoner again accused Zhou of levying excessive amounts of wastage rice and, at the Ministry of Revenue’s urging, a censor was sent to investigate. The emperor refused to inquire too closely into the case. He accepted Zhou Chen’s resignation and warned the new appointee against tampering with Zhou’s reforms.58 The Ministry of Revenue was less reverent. As soon as Zhou Chen was gone, the surpluses he had used to maintain the local infrastructure and provide interest-free loans to the poor were diverted to official coffers under central control.59 Over the next three decades, grand coordinators tried to ensure that the benefits of tax reform went primarily to those most deserving of relief. Initially, they attempted to do this by fiat, ordering that “families with limited means and without powerful connections” who held official fields reregister them as

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private while commoner fields in the possession of the wealthy be measured and reregistered as official ones.60 As the Ministry of Revenue had warned, this was an unworkable solution to an intractable problem, neither technically feasible nor politically sustainable. As a result, not much came of it.61 Thereafter, efforts to equalize burdens without forgoing additional revenue focused on allocating surcharges to cover wastage. Zhou Chen had relied primarily on the various forms in which the tax could be paid as a mechanism for redistributing costs. Under his system, the wastage allowance surcharge varied from year to year but it had been a fixed percentage per picul of tax. Chen Tai (in office 1456–57) replaced this method of “adding wastage according to acreage” with “adding wastage according to the land tax,” imposing a sliding scale of surcharges.62 This dramatically reduced the differential between land that bore a heavy quota and land assigned a light one; it also generated enough additional revenue to cover the summer tax assessment and to subsidize upkeep of the official postal and transport stations. Funding local functions of government was now a constant struggle. From 1458, customs duties collected at Hushu were diverted to provide resources for famine relief, a partial solution to one of the major problems caused by the elimination of Zhou Chen’s discretionary fund.63 Several years later, the practice of assigning responsibility for long-submerged or abandoned official fields to wealthy households, rather than simply eliminating that part of the quota, was terminated.64 Because these measures occurred in the wake of Zhu Qizhen’s restoration, it is tempting to see them as part of a return to the Zhengtong era, sweetened by some additional compromises with the well-todo and the powerful. Zhu Qizhen had of course occupied the throne during that period; Xu Youzhen (DMB), the leading Suzhou scholar-official of his day, played a prominent role in his restoration; and that restoration had a major impact on factional politics at court. Yet, in Suzhou as in the capital, the most striking feature of these years—in this as in other matters of policy—was continuity.65 The contradiction between equity and simplicity remained. An enforceable system had to be relatively simple—the greater the complexity and the larger the differentials, the greater both the opportunities and the motives to manipulate records. Yet any simple system imposed on so complex a reality was likely to treat individual cases inequitably. Moreover, lack of surpluses limited the ability of the state to intervene in a massive and timely fashion to provide such important collective goods as water control and famine relief. (It also, as Zhou Chen seems to have recognized, encouraged clerks and runners to prey on the public rather than to embezzle state funds.)

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“Discussing the Tax and Adding Wastage” versus “Discussing the Acreage and Adding Wastage”

Grand Coordinator

Zhou Chen (1430–50) Chen Tai (1456–57) Cui Gong (1458–60) Liu Zi (1461–6?) Bi Xiang (1474–76) Mou Feng (1477–79) Wang Shu (1480–84)

Method

Flat rate per picul tax Variable rate per picul tax Flat rate per picul tax Variable rate per picul tax Variable rate per picul tax Variable rate per picul tax Flat rate per mu

Rate a

Variable 0–1.5 picul/picul 0.5 picul/picul Four steps b Five steps Four steps 0.12 picul/mu

0.60 piculs/ mu land

0.96 0.60 0.90 0.66 NA 0.60 0.72

0.05 piculs/ mu land Difference

0.08 0.125 0.075 0.11 NA 0.105 0.17

0.88 0.475 0.825 0.55 NA 0.495 0.55

Source: Mori Masao, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 399–411. Notes: NA = not available. a Example assumes 0.6 piculs per picul of tax. b This was to eliminate an anomaly in the four-step method: those who held 0.4 picul land had a total obligation of 0.4065 piculs per mu; those who held land rated as 0.392 picul land had a total burden of 0.574 piculs per mu.

The reforms of the 1430s and 1440s had substantially increased the importance of the regular bureaucracy, reducing tax captains and hundred captains to cogs in an officially directed machine. Cogs they remained in the post-1450 order, yet the quality of those cogs became more critical in the absence of lubricating funds. For this relationship to function at all, Suzhou claimed— and received—an extraordinary proportion of the empire’s best administrative talent. Even so, the twists and turns of land tax policy suggest how difficult it was to find a workable middle way between the co-option of local elites in the Yongle period and the virtual autonomy accorded grand coordinator and prefect in the Zhengtong reign-period (see Table 8). A few examples will suffice. It was quickly noted that incorporation of summer tax and other miscellaneous charges in the wastage allowance surcharge was in fact regressive, shifting these obligations from lightly taxed commoner fields to already heavily burdened official fields. To remedy this, it was decreed that these charges—for silk thread, horse fodder, wheat, hemp, salt tax, and postal expenses—be separated out, that they be converted into rice, and that each household receive an itemized bill. Since a household typically owned several plots of land of varying size, each bearing a different status, this bill was a document of great complexity. To maximize equity, such measures sacrificed simplicity, thus opening the door to manipulation by the unscrupulous if the highest standards of probity were not enforced.66 As time went on, it became increasingly evident that Zhou Chen’s policy equating one ounce of silver with four piculs of tax was so favorable that tax captains and wealthy households—or, less gently, powerful bullies—had

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“encroached on it and sought to take advantage of it. As a result, those of modest means often did not obtain any benefit.” The equation of one ounce of silver with three piculs of rice would reduce the incentives for the wealthy and powerful to usurp land paying in Gold Floral Silver, and officials would be left with extra funds. (The amount of silver to be collected was fixed, so the government would collect more grain rather than suffer a loss of income.) The authorities could thus do away with some additional surcharges. Unfortunately, this system proved a hardship for poor peasants who still held heavily taxed land. The next grand coordinator restored the old rate, attempting to limit it by fiat to “poor commoners and those whose rice fields were injured [by natural disaster].” Soon the district magistrate of Wujiang memorialized, reporting that the powerful were unlawfully obtaining the right to use Gold Floral Silver by bribing yamen underlings. In response, it was decreed that henceforth everyone should pay their taxes in kind. The officials would convert it into silver. Needless to say, this process was extremely cumbersome. The new grand coordinator, Wang Shu (in office 1480–84), concluded that the only hope lay in radical simplification. Rather than adopt a fixed percentage per picul of tax as wastage allowance or devise a graduated schedule of surcharges to redress the unequal tax burden, Wang Shu decreed that every mu of land on the tax registers in Suzhou prefecture would henceforth pay a flat 0.12 picul wastage fee. While adopting the 3 piculs per ounce conversion rate, he revived the practice of using wastage to cover the summer tax and other miscellaneous charges. Complex formulas had invited abuse: “Even if the poor saw the tax document with their own eyes, how could they depend on it? . . . It is possible to make it understandable by simplifying and it is not troublesome to calculate.” Although some complained that this spread tax obligations that the well-to-do and their lightly taxed commoner land had originally borne over the population as a whole, the net result was a dramatic increase in the amounts assessed land taxed at the lowest rates. The new formula significantly narrowed the gap between one type of land and another. Given the relatively straightforward method adopted, it was also less susceptible to manipulation. It provided the basic framework for Suzhou’s land tax for the next fifty years.67 Thus, after much backing and filling, a method was in place that went beyond Zhou Chen. In a modest fashion, the new technique limited the potential opportunities for illicit gain that Zhou Chen’s system had offered “bullying commoners and unscrupulous clerks.”68 Yet “adding wastage according to acreage” clearly recognized that the demands for equity could not be satisfied given the limits of administration, that the state had in the last analysis to reach a compromise with local interests. Arcane as the details may appear, the con-

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tinual modifications themselves suggest how important (and controversial) this matter was. Far more than an administratively workable system of extracting revenue was at issue. Different systems affected different taxpayers differently. The whole exercise can be seen as an attempt to benefit the smallholder and the part-owner/part-tenant to the greatest feasible extent.69 Yet ecology and the varied status of land complicated efforts to make the fiscal system more progressive. Wastage as a flat fee on acreage favored those with heavily taxed land and those whose land was relatively fertile; wastage as flat fee per picul of land tax benefited those holding land with a light quota and those with less fertile fields.70 The following half-century was an era of fiscal administration rather than institutional change (or perhaps more accurately, erosion and attempts to retard it rather than conscious renegotiation). Figures cited in the gazetteer from the “registers of the actual levy” (shizhengce) suggest that a relatively small proportion of the arable eluded official notice.71 The amount of land on the books thus seems to have been relatively stable. Yet, for individual households, the tax levied on particular plots and the allocation of responsibility for payment of that tax were critical. The policies pursued between 1450 and 1480 were clearly intended to achieve greater equality and a higher degree of probity through more rigorous intervention. In the end, they may only have served to further confuse the land and population registers. However apportioned, the taxes were far from trivial, either for Suzhou’s taxpayers or for the Ming fisc. Even after the reductions of the 1430s and 1440s, the land tax burden was ten times that of the Song, six times that of the Yuan period.72 On average, three piculs of grain were needed to fulfill two piculs of tax quota; the actual cost of white rice was said to be five or six times the nominal assessment.73 It is scarcely surprising that malefactors of middling wealth exploited any opportunities, for evasion or for gain, inherent in the situation. District magistrates struggled to control local bullies and yamen underlings as well as to maintain reasonably accurate registers of property and population.

Corvée Reform and Water Control The problems mid-fifteenth century reformers confronted had never simply been a question of land taxes in any case. As the string of natural disasters suggested, too much of the labor mobilized by the state was being devoted to transporting tax grain and too little to maintaining the complex, delicate water-control network on which the area’s prosperity ultimately depended. In 1432, Kuang Zhong submitted a memorial which indicated that the dredging of

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the Wu Song River, the Liu Family Harbor, and the Bai mao Pond—last undertaken by Xia Yuanji—was urgently necessary. He was ordered to carry out this massive project in concert with Zhou Chen.74 These were not tasks that could be undertaken once a generation, then safely forgotten. Responding to the crises of the early 1440s, Zhou Chen again dredged the various coastal streams that drained Liu Family Harbor and Bai mao Pond.75 He also reported that polders, embankments, and raised paths between fields throughout the area had all been weakened by the rushing waters. In six months’ work, the channels were cleared and the dikes strengthened.76 But these measures soon proved inadequate. Faced with renewed disasters in 1444, officials destroyed dikes privately constructed by the common people throughout Suzhou and Songjiang.77 However useful dike destruction may have been in improving drainage, taxes on Suzhou and thirteen other floodravaged prefectures in 1445 still needed to be remitted. Among Zhou Chen’s immediate successors, Grand Coordinator Cui Gong (in office 1458–60) seems to have been particularly active in organizing water-control projects—dredging the Wu Song River in Kunshan, Shanghai, and Jiading, the Cao Family Harbor, and various other bodies of water during the Tianshun era.78 Although much of the activity took place outside Wu and Changzhou districts, their prosperity was at least as dependent on such efforts as was that of areas in which these large-scale regional efforts were mounted. The renewed emphasis on water control augmented the tax captains’ already onerous burden. In addition to being responsible for the collection and transport of tax grain, they were charged with supervising the annual dredging of channels and maintenance of dikes in their 10,000 picul tax sectors (qu). In theory, they were assisted by that year’s hundred captains, hundred elders, and tithing heads. In practice, from Zhu Yuanzhang’s time these tasks had been shouldered at the local level by special officials, the polder captains (yuzhang). Each tithing had its polder captain, chosen from families noted for their virtue and substance. Although the polder captain’s responsibilities were limited in time and place, he had to serve in person. Failure to do so was punishable by public exposure in the cangue. It was assumed that there would be approximately one polder per tithing. If there were more than ten in a “hundred,” a polder captain would assume responsibility for several of them; if fewer, polder captains would share responsibility for a large one. Actual dredging and repair was done by those whose fields abutted the banks of the tributaries and channels (the tiantou system), usually in the ninth month. Since these were the fields most easily irrigated in time of drought, most easily drained in time of flood, and most easily fertilized year in and year out, most of these fields

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belonged to the rich and powerful. (The fields of the poor were concentrated in the center of polders, where the opposite conditions applied.) By 1453 the authorities had concluded that oversight of these activities was too critical a task to be left to the tax captains. Henceforth they were relieved of their responsibilities in this sphere. In each 10,000 picul tax sector (qu), a new official (new at least in Jiangnan) was established: the dike captain (tangzhang). This office, held by one or two men, was regarded as a heavy burden in and of itself. The new system was open to abuse. Officials occasionally designated households unequal to the task or assigned dike captains to subdistricts far from their homes. Some dike captains used their office to extort fees from those under them. Nonetheless it proved more effective than the methods in use up to that time.79 In conjunction with assistant prefects and assistant magistrates (who were made responsible for water control), dike captains were encouraged to both maintain and subdivide the many large polders still to be found in Suzhou. This phase of “intensive development” has been described as the third major stage in man’s reshaping of the Jiangnan landscape. In Kuang Zhong’s time, large polders were 6,000–7,000 mu, small polders 3,000–4,000 mu. By the end of Ming, these had been divided and redivided to form polders of 200 or 300 mu. This was a genuine advance. An extensive internal frontier of waterlogged waste was reclaimed, dramatically expanding the area in which double-cropping of rice and wheat could be practiced. Smaller polders were easier to drain and easier to irrigate. They could also be more readily fertilized, either with nightsoil or with beancake. Since rice requires moving water and perfectly level fields no more than one-sixth of an acre in size, smaller polders greatly increased the area’s proportion of prime paddy fields. By drying out the fields, and alternating wet-field and dry-field crops, soil quality was actually enhanced. In addition, smaller polders implied smaller (hence, on the whole, more readily mobilized) communities.80 Such advantages were purchased at considerable cost. Subdividing polders required tremendous investment of time and effort both to create new channels and dikes and to regrade the fields within. To maintain the new system, even more energy had to be expended dredging these channels and reinforcing these dikes.81 Work on regional water-control projects was classified as miscellaneous corvée duty. Labor was mobilized for these tasks on an ad hoc basis from the population at large.82 The equally critical efforts at the local level were part of the regular labor service, organized through the hundreds and tithings and tax captain systems—the same mechanisms used to collect and deliver taxes. In addition, commoners were obliged to provide many other services, in labor

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and in kind, on demand. One of Zhou Chen’s first actions as grand coordinator was to introduce a mechanism for allocating burdens more equitably. How thoroughly this reform was implemented is unclear, however.83 The effect of other ad hoc changes is more firmly established. Beginning in 1430, the military (in return for an increase in the wastage surcharge) undertook delivery of tax grains beyond Guazhou (on the north bank of the Yangzi at the junction of the Grand Canal).84 At about the same time, in return for assuming the burden of delivering goods requisitioned by the emperor’s agents, the urban population was relieved of all responsibility for delivery of tax grain.85 In conjunction with reductions in the amount of grain collected in kind, such measures were indeed helpful. Systematic attempts to overhaul the corvée came, however, only after Cui Gong was appointed grand coordinator in 1458. Cui had served in Jiangxi, where the “equalized labor service system” apparently originated. It was he who introduced it to Suzhou and adjacent areas.86 Under this system, in addition to their regular tour of duty as part of the hundreds and tithings system, the population was mobilized for miscellaneous labor service once every ten years. Tasks were assigned on the basis of a household’s rank in the “equalized corvée registers.” These graded households on the basis of their tax assessment (or land holdings) and number of able-bodied males. Although this did not reduce the number of man-hours the state demanded of the general population, at least in theory the new system made these burdens more predictable. It also allocated them in ways that better reflected each individual household’s abilities to bear the burdens assigned.87 Thus in 1469 when Fan Jin dredged 3,850 zhang (12,820 meters) of the Nine Bend Harbor (Jiuqu gang), or three years later when Yong Tai built the Shi Hua Stone Embankment in Wu,88 as well as when even more massive regional projects were undertaken, local society should have found it easier to complete these tasks. After 1471, when the military assumed responsibility for the remaining long-distance delivery of grain—white rice still excepted—this should have been even more true.89 Given their expanded powers and enhanced control of resources, the character of local officials was even more crucial under the new dispensation than it had been under the old. The roster of “illustrious officials” was virtually unchanged from one edition of the local gazetteer to the next. Thus locals (or those who compiled local gazetteers) had a clear sense of the qualities that marked a good official. Given these standards, the Suzhou area was well served.90 Yet the most distinguished, able, and virtuous incumbents imaginable still faced immense problems with severely limited resources. On balance, the reforms had increased official responsibilities while trimming the means avail-

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able to fulfill them. Pursuit of the state’s interests at the expense of its subjects, clearing one’s docket and delivering taxes in full and on time, might merit a promotion. It was never enough to earn a biography in the local gazetteer. A few were honored for purely personal virtues. Most were remembered for more practical accomplishments. These accomplishments reflect the attempts of earnest and well-educated men to mediate between the demands of the polity and the needs of the locality. Prefects and local magistrates were theoretically responsible for everything that happened in the area over which they had jurisdiction. As a practical matter, their energies were finite. As outsiders (a consequence of the time-hallowed law of avoidance), their grasp of local realities was usually imperfect. It is thus no surprise to find that some focused on aspects their predecessors and their successors ignored. More telling is the fact that, even when an official is praised for his efforts in a particular sphere, his successors are soon shown locked in a struggle with the same forces. The problems with which these men grappled were perennial and hydra-headed. Temporary and partial victories were the most that could be managed. They were also the most that were expected. However able and well-intentioned, local officials were surrounded by groups with every incentive to subvert their efforts. The mid-fifteenth-century fiscal arrangements were as fair and effective a system as the inherent limits of the polity and the tensions of the society would allow. But the durability of that system was subject to erosion by the same forces. Although the struggle against clerks, runners, tax evaders, and local bullies was a perennial one, the incidence of tax remission clearly suggests that the system performed less and less satisfactorily over time. Between 1464 and 1487, taxes were remitted once; between 1506 and 1521, four times. When differences in the length of reign-periods are taken into account, this meant that remissions were granted six times as often in the early sixteenth century. Thus, important as they were, the mid-fifteenthcentury reforms did not solve the problems incorporation of Suzhou into the Ming polity posed for the imperial state or the local society. The ways in which renegotiation of that relationship modified incentives for all involved profoundly affected subsequent social, economic, and cultural development nonetheless.

6

“Like Another Place” Economy and Society in Fifteenth-Century Suzhou

By the late fifteenth century, Suzhou’s prosperity was striking. In general, Wu is [now] flourishing. When the celestial troops [of Zhu Yuanzhang] went down [to punish] the arrogance of Zhang [Shicheng], although there was no wholesale massacre, the people were forced to move. They were exiled to the three capitals and sent to guard the frontiers. Military registers were stationed in the pleasure quarters [jiaofang].1 Cities and villages were desolate and the number of those living there was much reduced. Those who passed through were greatly moved. In the Zhengtong and Tianshun eras [1436–64], I once entered the city. All said it had returned a little to its former self. Still, it was not yet flourishing. In the Chenghua reignperiod [1465–87], I went there every three or four years. It then appeared to be very different, like another place. Up to the present, it is increasingly thriving. Gates of villages and eaves of houses converge like spokes at the hub of a wheel; the myriad [roof] tiles resemble the scales of a fish. Hostels line the corners of the city wall and the sections of the moat. The whole area is built up. Sedan chairs and horses magnify and surpass [one another in splendor]. Pots and wine vessels, earthenware jars and small boxes are visible along the highways and the permanent lanes; bright and colorful, they dazzle the eye. “Roaming the mountain” boats and vessels carrying prostitutes form a procession where the green waves meet the vermilion chambers. The sound of musical instruments, of song and dance, mingle with the sounds of the marketplace. All the brocades and twilled silk cloth that are offered as tribute, the elegant equipment, flowers and fruit, rare delicacies and extraordinary things have something added to them [that is, they are not just plain and functional]. As for tapestries and lacquerwork, these arts had been abandoned since the Zhe-Song [1127–1276]; now they are all ingenious. Man’s nature is increasingly clever, and thus products are increasingly numerous. Coming to the human talents, these have appeared one after the other; still more do they excel. Those who write esteem the works of antiquity, while in calligraphy one must use the seal style or the clerical style. From the time of the Han [206 B.C.–A.D. 220] down to the Tang [618–906] and Song [960–1276], there has never been anything like this before. This is assuredly the result of good fortune, truly due to the kindness with which the court nourishes the people. Men born and seeing this indeed are able to rejoice.2

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Wang Qi (1432–99) was a native of Changzhou, member of a prominent family that had for generations devoted itself to agriculture. He is said to have loved learning. In addition to being familiar with history, he also “noted down what he saw and heard in daily life.”3 He provides the most extended contemporary summary of Suzhou’s development during the first half of the Ming.4 Although it is not nearly as detailed as we would wish, three points seem to be clear: that the Suzhou of Wang Qi’s youth was at best better off than it had been; that the Suzhou of Wang Qi’s adulthood was a place of great prosperity; and that contemporaries recognized that prosperity as unprecedented. Contemporaries often recognize what is not true, however. In all but the worst of times, Suzhou dazzled visitors and impressed natives. They employed the same evocative (if imprecise) phrases to describe a shifting reality.5 Thus it is necessary to test as well as to flesh out the portrait Wang provides. Given the additional burdens it bore, how had Suzhou managed to prosper? What was the nature and what were the dimensions of this prosperity? How much did these developments owe to “good fortune,” and to what extent were they a result of the “kindness with which the court nourishes the people”? To what degree did they represent recovery of earlier levels? In what respects were they something new? Can either recovery or innovation be meaningfully described as “real” growth? Finally, were these phenomena sustainable?

The Agricultural Sector The fifteenth-century reforms significantly reduced burdens on Suzhou’s rural sector, then distributed them more widely. They rationalized, if they did not reduce, the incidence of corvée. Considerable attention was paid to water control. Division of the polders substantially increased the percentage of prime fields. Unfortunately we do not know how quickly these measures were implemented, only that the last two centuries of the Ming saw a significant expansion in the area under cultivation. Internal frontiers were reclaimed. Improved drainage led to an expansion of the areas on which wet-land and dry-land crops alternated. This in turn improved soil quality, encouraging increased use (and enhancing the efficacy) of fertilizers.6 These gains, though substantial, required great and continuing effort. In compensation for the cultivators’ increased investment of time and labor, it appears that the “two lords to a field” system became the norm here. In modern times, routine operation and maintenance of water-control facilities in the Suzhou area required almost one-third of the man-hours devoted to agriculture each year.7 One could easily conceive of participation in such activity aug-

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menting claims to some form of ownership. By dividing ownership of the topsoil from that of the subsoil, this system afforded the tenant security against arbitrary eviction and abrupt rent increases. Noting that its appearance closely coincided with the movement of landlords into the cities, Fan Jinmin has argued that such arrangements gave the tenant an interest in staying and thus minimized the risk that tenants of absentee landlords would abscond.8 The relationship among absenteeism, permanent tenancy, and subdivision of polders must remain a matter for speculation. We can only say with confidence that the three occurred more or less simultaneously, their net effect being to tether households more firmly to the land. Yet Wang Qi—and other observers—emphasized the flourishing state of handicrafts, of commerce, and of learning. Indeed, there is much evidence that the well-to-do were becoming increasingly urbanized and that the countryside failed to share fully in the emerging prosperity. Shen Zhou’s (DMB) poetry frequently alludes to the plight of the peasants.9 Zhao Tonglu, a local scholar, described their situation in more prosaic terms when appealing for tax relief in 1481: Whenever one deals with envoys who enter Wu by the Chang Gate, when they see that goods and wealth are abundant and that men and affairs are busy, how will they not take this to be a plentiful and well-populated spot? Especially when they see all the famous merchants and great tradesmen they will not realize that it has become a collection point for men from north and south, east and west. Sojourning commoners who are scholars and writers, famous officials and members of great families, those engaged in commerce—most of these do not know the sufferings of agriculture or the affairs of the land tax. In the impoverished countryside and out-of-the-way villages, the places with decaying eaves and dilapidated houses, there are the sounds of the cold and the cries of the starving. All of us are commoners who farm in Suzhou. [We are aware that] fields along the outer walls [of polders] and close to official highways all have high fertility. If their crops of wheat and barley prosper and are luxuriant, how would [the casual observer] not take the soil to be fertile? Yet the divisions of polders near rivers and beside lakes have suffered from excessive water fathoms deep. [Those who hold such land] have not been able to reap for several years. Some sell their sons and rend asunder the families of the common people [xiaomin], others atone [for their inability to pay] by fleeing. Not everyone realizes the problems of our heavily burdened fields in Su.10

How widespread were such circumstances? How did those in the rural areas cope with them? Let us first consider the elite. Resident but untitled landlords of substance were still subject to call as hundred captain, tax captain, or polder captain. In early Ming, the state had granted prestige and power to men who held these posts, locally and in the empire at large. Especially able men might even be promoted into the scholar-official elite. By the mid-fifteenth century,

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all this had changed. The reforms had enlarged the sphere of bureaucratic rule. The “good people used to rule good people” found their official conduct increasingly subject to bureaucratic scrutiny and direction. Simultaneously, the link between service in these posts and official or social promotion was severed. In the village or at the capital, the legally available rewards of status and power were few while the burdens remained heavy.11 Those who could evaded appointment. Perhaps the easiest way to do this was to move to the city. For the well-to-do, wealth provided no more compelling motive to remain in the village. There were many reasons for this. Taxes on much of Suzhou’s land remained high, while regular imports dampened price fluctuations.12 Wu Kuan (DMB) recorded that his mother directly managed the family’s bondservant labor, yet even in the fifteenth century those with estates of any size only exploited a quarter of it directly. The balance was let to tenants.13 The amount of rice produced on a mu of irrigated land varies dramatically in response to the care and the labor invested in tending that field. Since bondservants and hands engaged for the busy season had less incentive to fully exert themselves, attempts to exploit these holdings managerially were apt to bring the landlord lower returns for more effort.14 The landholders’ challenge was not, however, simply how best to maximize gross output. Over the generations, successful families expanded in size. Those families had to increase their income proportionately if they were to maintain living standards and reproduce themselves socially as well as biologically. The ban on purchases of official land augmented the already severe imperfections—from the right of preemption to the almost universal custom of mortgage pawn rather than final sale—of the area’s land market. Restricting the land actually coming on the market should have put further upward pressure on land prices. But in the absence of dramatic increases in yield, there were limits on the rents tenants could pay. Thus, some fragmentary bits of internal frontier apart, most of those directly engaged in managerial landlordism operated on a very small scale.15 The countryside was left in the hands of smallholders, tenants, and part-tenants even though it was increasingly owned by those who lived in the cities. The elite relied more and more on commerce, money-lending, and rent. Ordinary peasant households faced the same limits and burdens. We often read of peasants deserting their fields in despair. Given the pressures they faced, the lower costs available elsewhere, and the ease with which Ming Chinese emigrated to other parts of the empire, the wonder is that so many stayed. Yet stay most of them did. Indeed, the population of Wu district— whose natural endowment for peasant agriculture was so much more meager

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than that of Changzhou—increased from 339,000 in the late fourteenth century to 1,734,000 in the early nineteenth. (The population of Changzhou also grew, but only from 472,000 to 757,000.)16 Initially surprising though this pattern is, it is consistent with patterns of growth we can trace in the Ming. These patterns are the key to understanding what was happening in the rural sector. In short, remaining on the land did not preclude heavy and increasing involvement with the market. As we have already seen, peasants in this area had not engaged in subsistence agriculture for centuries. No less than the landlords, they were oriented to the market, and markets in Suzhou’s immediate hinterland were quite sophisticated. By the late fifteenth century, individual peasant households in the city’s immediate hinterland were directly linked by agent boat to intermediate (or higher) market towns.17 These in turn were linked, either directly or at one remove, to Suzhou itself. Agent boats probably operated much as they did in the early twentieth century, offering “free daily service to purchase necessities from the town and deriv[ing] their income from acting as selling agents of the villagers.” Each boat, based in a particular village, had its own set of client-households. It provided free transportation to the market town for those who wished to go themselves. (Since it had to provide daily service, the speed of the boats limited the market town’s hinterland to a 6 to 7.5 kilometer—12 to 15 li—radius.) Given their connections with the shops in town, agents often drove a better bargain than individual peasants could obtain in person. Their knowledge of the market and their long-term connections with particular stores enabled them to secure optimum prices for the villagers’ produce. In return, agents obtained a share of the proceeds from the seller; at least in the twentieth century, this was a customary amount per unit of the commodity sold.18 Suzhou peasants could thus exchange their grain for coarse foodstuffs at canal-side. (Conceivably, they acquired raw materials for handicrafts and consigned finished goods to market in the same way.) The system enabled villagers to visit the town’s tea shops whenever they wished to sell their labor, to mortgage or rent a bit of land, or to find a pawnshop and raise a loan. In short, they could specialize in areas in which they enjoyed a comparative advantage, relying on markets to which they were directly and immediately linked as outlets for their produce as well as sources of the goods and services they did not make themselves. Such a market-mediated division of labor is quite similar to the preindustrial order Adam Smith advocated.19 As transaction costs fell and the area covered expanded, such a division of labor should have increased the real incomes of individual peasant households. These relationships did not liberate the

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peasant from exploitation. Yet by playing one claimant off against the other, peasants may well have “become more mobile, more autonomous, and even a bit stronger” than their ancestors.20 They may not have become men of the city while remaining in the village. But their ability to remain in the village increasingly depended on their ties to the city. If it did not solve all the villagers’ problems, at the very least it made it possible to make ends meet. The peasants are extremely industrious, and yet their lot does not allow them to relax. Their four limbs are scorched and fatigued, yet at the end of the harvest they do not rest. Whenever the product falls short they go out seeking gainful employment. Receiving their price, they undertake the business of the land tax. Restraining their feelings, they exert themselves to the fullest; one speaks of them as laborers engaged for the busy season. Again, if there is the least opportunity to catch shrimp or to fish, they go. They gather fuel and boundary clay; they undertake hired work. It is not fitting that a few selfishly while away the time in idleness. As for a bumper harvest, in addition to the public tax, [there is] private rent and the repayment of debts. Those who fear being reduced to extremities number eight or nine out of ten. They are, however, by nature resigned to submit to this life and do not think to blame it as an evil.21

Given the reliance of the local economy on the market, neither the rise of organized suburbs outside the Chang and Feng Gates nor the concentration of population in the immediate vicinity of the city is especially surprising (see Figure 1). The countryside’s close relationship to the city must have facilitated family formation and population expansion as proto-industrialism did elsewhere. That so many peasant households were able to survive on so little land was ultimately the result of a symbiotic relationship between the countryside and the city, mediated by the marketing network. In spite of the dense settlement pattern this implies, it was by no means an irrational use of available resources. Those who decided to forgo an ox or a water buffalo found that they were left with almost as much from five intensively cultivated mu as they had previously obtained from ten, for their costs of production were significantly lower.22 Simultaneously, the ability of the city to thrive depended in no small measure on the rents, the marketed surpluses, the handicrafts, and the cheap labor peasant households of the immediate hinterland provided.

Handicrafts: Metropolitan Proto-Industrialism The growth of Suzhou was thus in large measure a result of its ability to tap inexpensive and semiskilled labor in the countryside, satisfying both the substantial local demand for luxuries and an expanding export market. Given the relatively high costs of urban producers, only certain types of production would make sense there. Outwork, division of labor, manufacturing, access to prefinished materials, and constant downward pressure on real wages were as

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(A) Changzhou (1368) 47 29 24 13 14 73 Wu (1368) (B) Changzhou (1506) 41 27.7 31.3 17.5 18.5 64 Wu (1506) (C) Changzhou (1598) 41 27.7 31.3 15.8 16.7 67.5 Wu (1643)

Fig. 1. Distribution of Extraurban Population in Ming Suzhou, as Percentage of Extraurban Population. Source note : As Brook, “Spatial Structure,” 22–25, 30–33, suggests, the “hundreds” or “wards” (li/tu) originally reflected the distribution of population in rural areas even if such units did not precisely correspond to the theoretical 110 households per hundred. The MGWXZ, 21–23, gives almost the same number of hundreds/wards (734 of 741 for Changzhou, 460 of 511 for Wu) that the GSZ, 7: 5a–5b, lists for the Ming. The

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characteristic of Ming Suzhou as they were of an early nineteenth-century New York undergoing metropolitan industrialization. Yet, unlike Jacksonian New York City, Suzhou was not in the throes of transformation from a preindustrial to an industrial order.23 Suzhou was after all the core of a highly sophisticated preindustrial economy, not simply a peripheral node in a London-centered “modern world system” undergoing industrial revolution.24 To transform itself in that way, Suzhou would have had to have something approximating a bourgeoisie and a proletariat. In fact, it had neither. Let us begin by granting that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are ideal types to which concrete historical situations (including our own) correspond imperfectly. Let us also note that an industrial revolution is not an event but a process—and a protracted and uneven process at that. By certain measures, it Source note for Fig. 1—cont. number of such units inside the city walls (which can be checked directly) are identical, and the division of Changzhou into Changzhou and Yuanhe districts in the early eighteenth century bisected one of the townships, producing a numbering of wards which indicates that the earlier sequence was preserved; MGWXZ, 22 xia: 9a–12a; 23 shang: 2a–3b. Virtually all the differences between the 1643 data in the CZWXZ, 2, and that in the 1933 gazetteer are due to the latter’s obviously incomplete record for the Lake Tai area. Using the 501 late Ming wards to correct the Wu district data preserved in the Republican edition, we can then use the latter’s record of the distance of each ward from the prefectural city. By grouping these in three categories (0–15 li, 15–30 li, 30+ li), it is then possible to determine the percentage of the total number of hundreds in each district that fall into each category. This gives us a rough map of the distribution of rural population within each district at the time the system was established—in the event, early Ming. This is the distribution shown in Figure 1 (A). For 1506 and 1598/1643, only lists of villages—grouped by township (du) or township clusters—and market towns survive. See GSZ, 18: 1a–10a; WLCZXZ, 12; and CZWXZ, 2. It is possible to place all market towns listed within townships; they are here treated as the equivalent of a village, and all villages in a district are treated as though they were equal in size. Although it was not possible to locate all villages using twentieth-century maps—and therefore impossible to calculate their distance from the city directly—it was possible to use the distribution of hundreds/wards within the various categories, by township, to allocate the villages. Thus, seven of the eight hundreds/wards in Wu’s second township (du) were between fifteen and thirty li from the city; the remaining one was even farther away. Seven villages are listed in 1506 (and 1643) in this subdistrict. Hence, 6.125 (87.5 percent) were placed in the 15–30 li column, 0.875 (12.5 percent) in that for 30+ li. After this had been done for every case, the numbers were summed by category for each district and the results expressed as a percentage of the total number of extraurban central places recorded for that district in that year. Although crude, the procedure’s use of the early Ming distribution of population within subdistricts biases the result toward stasis. Omission of suburbs should understate the concentration of population near the city. These procedures form the basis for Figure 1 (B) and Figure 1 (C).

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would be possible to argue that Britain was a precapitalist society well into the nineteenth century.25 On the other hand, neither markets, nor rich merchants, nor hiring oneself out were Ming innovations; all were long-established aspects of Chinese civilization. The propensity to truck and barter had long found expression in Suzhou. But that innate propensity is expressed only under specific historical, cultural, and institutional conditions. The “free” market is an ideal type that actual markets, even in the most thoroughly capitalist societies, only approximate. Perfect competition; no transaction costs; complete, accurate, and instantaneous information; participants who pursue (and only pursue) their rational self-interest; the negligible cost of “free” goods (air, water); the identity of need and effective demand—the market model assumes much that actual societies can never provide. While “capitalism” has almost as many definitions as there are people who write about it, describing China’s highly commercialized late imperial economy as “capitalist” seems to confuse rather than to clarify issues. To move from a premodern to a modern economy, it is necessary that a group take control of the economic process and rationalize it in order to maximize profits. Their reinvestment of these profits leads to a continuous expansion of the society’s accumulated capital while (through competition) the society is continuously compelled to embrace innovations in the organization and the technology of production. To do this effectively, the group in control must be in a position to maximize the efficient use of scarce resources—impossible if human beings are not simply “labor,” nature is not just “land” (or raw materials), and wealth is not truly “capital.” Human beings and nature make complicated, highly individualized claims on those who would make use of them. “Labor” and “land” are commodities, their price (as wage or rent) set by the impersonal operation of supply and demand in the “free” market. Similarly, wealth can be used for conspicuous consumption, to subsidize culture and scholarship, to relieve the unfortunate, or to increase one’s wealth. “Capital” has only the latter function—it should and must go where it earns the highest reasonably secure return on investment.26 The group alluded to above is of course the bourgeoisie. By this definition, scarcely anyone will argue that Suzhou had a class that consciously and consistently attempted to take direct control of the economic process and rationalize it to maximize the return on their capital. Without a bourgeoisie, it is difficult to see how one can meaningfully speak of a proletariat: the term is a Marxist one, and for Marx, one of the defining attributes of the proletariat was that it was both able and forced to sell its commoditized labor power to the bourgeoisie as a class.27 Clearly, a significant number of people depended on the sale

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of their labor power to those who controlled access to the means of production (or at least had wealth that would enable the seller of labor power to survive) in Ming Suzhou. It is not clear that this was a new development. Moreover, there are other reasons to forgo the term when discussing Ming realities. Sophisticated as they were in the ways of their markets, the residents of Suzhou assumed that households rather than individuals were the basic units of society. For households, economic decisions were always also cultural and social decisions. Thus, although they were rational actors, their rational calculus was not and could not be either individualistic or narrowly economic. For many if not most, hiring oneself out was a way of supplementing household income, not the sole means of its support. Labor was not simply a commodity, its price set by the impersonal operation of supply and demand in the market. Those who sought to hire themselves out, even briefly, were entering into a relationship with their employer that was one between unequals—bondservant and master.28 Given the small size of most firms, it remained a highly particularized bond. Given the relatively low level of mechanization, it was also one in which labor power could rarely be considered an interchangeable commodity: textile workers, printers, et alia remained “makers of the work” rather than mere “hands” who “stood at their command.”29 Although this was less true of the numerous unskilled tasks that the functioning of a major city and a key market demanded (most goods had after all to be loaded and unloaded, most barges pulled by hand), the well-developed awareness of status differences would hinder any sense that the skilled and the unskilled constituted a class with shared interests. There is little reason to believe that subethnic divisions were any less important in the segmentation of the labor market or any less potent a barrier to group solidarity over the long term than they were in more recent times.30 Making the most of the opportunities actually afforded them, those who hired themselves out (or engaged in handicrafts, either on their own or on a putting-out basis) may have lowered the average return per worker even as they augmented household income—although calculations per hour or per day might well prove more favorable than calculations of output per year. They certainly lived better than they would have had they refused the very real goblet of Smithean growth for the (then unimaginable) grail of “genuine” development. If Suzhou’s fifteenth-century growth was “involutionary,”31 this may simply be another way of saying that the people of Suzhou continued to make their history in a world fundamentally different from our own.32

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Cotton The leading industry in this fundamentally different world was the textile industry, and Suzhou was most famous for its silks. Cotton seems nonetheless to have been as important a pillar of the area’s economy in Ming. Indeed, if Fan Jinmin’s estimates are remotely correct, the Ming should be seen as the age of cotton, the Qing as the age of silk.33 Cotton could be grown almost anywhere in Ming China. Indeed, the area around Lake Tai was one of the few places that it did not become the fiber crop of choice.34 Until the seventeenth century, however, it could be spun into serviceable yarn only in humid conditions like those of the Yangzi delta. The Lower Yangzi macroregion thus enjoyed a natural monopoly in the manufacture of what had, by mid-Ming, become the preferred fabric for daily use throughout the empire. An estimated 30 percent of the raw cotton used by Jiangnan weavers was imported from North China. Large quantities of finished cloth were re-exported in exchange.35 Although it never acquired the ritual significance of silk, cotton also attracted the attention of officialdom. In the 1430s, eunuch-commissioners were dispatched to Jiangnan to demand 800 bolts of “three weavers’ shuttle broadcloth” (sansuo kuobu) above and beyond the normal tribute. Zhejiang’s eleven prefectures were required to supply 100 bolts; the other 700 were provided by Suzhou.36 The pressure to transport these additional commodities promptly was great. Grand Coordinator Zhou Chen assigned this duty to urban dwellers, in return exempting them from delivery of tax grain. The latter was henceforth an exclusively rural responsibility.37 One of Kuang Zhong’s (DMB) accomplishments as prefect was his success in restraining the officers and soldiers of the Guards and Battalions (wei-suo). In their zeal to fulfill court requests for rare and exotic goods, these had bullied and mistreated commoners.38 In 1466, cotton cloth merchants from Jiading, Kunshan, and Suzhou jointly established a guild at Linqing, a key center on the Grand Canal in Shandong province.39 The first two districts fell within the cotton-growing zone. Neither Wu nor Changzhou produced the crop.40 Although it is possible that merchants from Suzhou were dealing in cloth manufactured elsewhere, mid-Ming gazetteers affirm that cotton weaving was firmly established in the districts surrounding the prefectural seat by the beginning of the sixteenth century.41 It is thus likely that cotton cloth was being produced in commercially significant quantities in these areas in the 1460s. (Indeed, given what we know of the diffusion of silk weaving, had the production of cotton cloth not been established by 1460, its introduction to these areas might have been long delayed.) It joined a time-honored inventory of by-employments—the weaving of hemp, ramie, yellow grass, and a fabric of ramie and silk that was “honored by the custom of

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Wu,”42 as well as the raising of silkworms and the spinning of silk thread—long practiced by the local population. Some cotton cloth was produced in the city, but comparatively inexpensive looms and the ease with which long-established techniques could be transferred to the new product encouraged peasants to take up the new calling. In the absence of locally grown cotton, this cottage industry depended from the first on merchants who imported the raw material from producing districts to sell—or to put out—to the peasants.43 As we have seen, by the late fourteenth century some cotton cloth was being produced in Changzhou. There is evidence of peasants in the Lake Tai area selling raw silk, then using the proceeds to buy raw cotton. When this had been spun or woven, they would sell the yarn or cloth in the market.44 From the first, most of the labor appears to have been female. Given chronic seasonal and gender-based underemployment, family “firms” were all too happy to realize something—anything—from women’s work. If irrational in an individualistic capitalist perspective, employment at extremely low rates made sense given the household’s fixed obligation to provide for its members. Anything such employment brought in would reduce the gap between expenses and income.45 Little is known about the structure of this trade in mid-Ming or about the finishing industries that were so prominent a part of the urban fabric during the Qing.46 Given the number and distribution of markets in 1506, it is likely that agent boats played a vital role linking merchants with spinners and weavers. The number of layers of merchants separating raw cotton from the agent boat, or cotton cloth (once the agent boat had collected it) from the ultimate consumer is unclear. So, too, is the extent to which landlords controlled traffic between agent boats and tenants or bondservants.47 Even if village bullies and local notables dominated this exchange in its first years, profit margins on individual transactions must have been modest, and unauthorized contact between peasants and agents almost impossible to prevent given the region’s labyrinthine network of rivers and canals. Silk Silk had become a specifically urban and male industry by the early Ming, registered silk weavers working on their own account when not serving their rotation in the government’s “weaving and dyeing bureau.” Dramatically expanded in size and function in the early fifteenth century, the bureau system rapidly proved unequal to the normal demands made of it: it took two looms eight months to produce a single imperial robe. The local bureau’s original functions had been limited to the manufacture of fine silks used as gifts. This

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was now contracted out, the bureau concentrating on production of Dragon Robes and other products for court use.48 Accordingly, when the bureau was rebuilt on a slightly smaller scale (246 bays housing 173 looms) in the mid-sixteenth century, only 667 artisans were attached to the official complex. The operation was divided into six offices, each under a “hall chief ” (tangzhang)— the well-to-do individual charged with overseeing production. In the fifteenth century, the raw silk used in the official workshop was usually that submitted to pay the summer tax. After 1538, hall chiefs were given tax silver to purchase the raw material. Overall supervision of the bureau was entrusted to eunuch textile superintendents, all of them reputedly corrupt and rapacious.49 Until 1628—when it was abolished in an attempt to curb eunuch power— the weaving and dyeing bureau thus coexisted with arrangements (controlled by local officials, not eunuchs) to procure goods the bureau was no longer able to produce. This hybrid system quickly led to abuses. As early as 1454, Lin Cong memorialized “denounc[ing] the impoverishment of poorer workers and the growing wealth of merchants and pawnbrokers” that resulted. Some were even said to have fled to Nanjing and Beijing, setting up their own shops outside the system.50 In 1460, eunuchs were dispatched to Jiangnan, demanding 7,000 bolts of silk above and beyond the quota. Added deliveries soon became the norm, with Suzhou shouldering 25–30 percent of the total burden. Simultaneously, districts that had submitted an inferior local product in the first decades of the Ming began sending agents to Suzhou and Nanjing. Their assignment was the purchase of stuffs worthy of a Son of Heaven. As a result, prices “skyrocketed” in the centers of production—a certain indication that demand had outstripped supply. Under these circumstances, the original expedient—forcing those on the official registers to produce additional amounts for token pay— could not be sustained.51 Increasingly, officials relied on purchases on the “open” market (often, one suspects, at prices determined by government fiat); on the spread of silk weaving—at this stage, with skilled labor imported from the prefectural seat—to the capitals of subordinate districts of Suzhou prefecture;52 and on the controllers of weaving (lingzhi). Over time, the last two became far more important than the first. In use at the latest by 1483, the controllers of weaving were constantly employed by the early sixteenth century. Like the hall chiefs (from whose ranks they seem originally to have been drawn), the controllers of weaving were middlemen. They might draw raw silk from government stores, being paid when the finished cloth was turned in; draw a cash advance in return for promising to deliver specified amounts and quality of silk; or contract to deliver silk, with

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payment due on delivery. In any case, they then engaged loom households, drawing on both officially registered weavers who were off-duty and on commoner loom households. They either agreed to pay weavers in cash for goods made to government specifications or purchased the raw material themselves, then advanced both the yarn and a salary to the weaver who worked it up. The middleman’s profit was the difference between the amount he received from the government and the amount he paid out. The price of cloth produced by the weaving controller system was generally high, enabling both unscrupulous clerks and loom households to benefit. Small producers were usually able to eke out a modest profit, while the wealthy could make a fortune. The yamen sought to insure itself against embezzlement by assigning tasks to middlemen only after it had been determined that the individual’s assets were sufficient to cover any losses that might result from mismanagement, malfeasance, or mischance. Drawn from the ranks of shopkeepers and brokers as well as weavers on the basis of wealth or of connections, the weaving controller’s ties to the yamen invested him with the trappings of a “feudal” headman. This enabled him to protect those who went along—and to punish those who did not. No doubt even more significant was his ability to aid his clients. Faced with fluctuating demand for their product and fluctuating prices of food and raw materials, loom households might well have viewed the middleman’s “feudal oppression” as a not unreasonable price to pay for a modicum of stability.53 By the late fifteenth century, sumptuary restrictions were widely ignored— at least in the capital. Yet the number of mulberry trees only slowly regained Yuan levels, constraining supplies of raw silk. Since Chinese silks also commanded premium prices in overseas markets, the production of silk cloth remained highly profitable.54 Periodically, the state attempted to rein in its contribution to this excess demand. In 1484 the Ministry of Works prohibited the purchase of tribute silk on the open market. One of the first acts of the Hongzhi era (1488–1505) was to reduce the extra-quota demands the previous monarch had made of the Southeast. The effect of these good intentions was short-lived: by 1494 the court was again making massive additional demands.55 In response, during the last third of the fifteenth century, silk weaving spread to the villages of Suzhou prefecture.56 The urban monopoly on silk weaving was broken. Even after peasants took up silk weaving, it remained primarily a male calling.57 Throughout most of China, it was considered axiomatic that “men plow; women weave.” In Ming Suzhou, this became “men weave, women spin.”58 Men’s participation further eroded the division of labor by sex. Indeed, the

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1506 Suzhou Gazetteer (Gu Su zhi)’s section on local customs states: [The local people] are diligent in planting and harvesting grain; hence women also devote themselves to planting, reaping, and the well-sweep. They do not simply feast and carry food to those who labor in the fields. Labor is collected and organized; hence men rely on [their skill as] specialized artisans, passing it on to the household and hiring themselves out. They do not stop at the point that would satisfy their own needs.59

Even in the early Ming, definitions of male and female occupations appear to have been less sharply drawn here than in many other parts of the empire. As the case of Ms. Wu demonstrates, women were known to work in the fields at the beginning of the dynasty. In that instance, it was clearly a matter of necessity—necessity that the prolonged absence of so many males for corvée duty must have made common in the early fifteenth century. Given that peasant agriculture required considerable expertise, the practice may well have predated this. It certainly persisted into the twentieth century, giving Suzhou women “comparative freedom” of movement and perhaps somewhat higher standing within the family.60 Even Francesca Bray, who has stressed the loss of status associated with the elimination of women’s role as direct taxpayers, concludes that “among poor people the late imperial trend toward commercialization and competition tended to highlight the importance of visible, material factors like work. . . . [W]here wives were still recognized as making significant contributions to the family income they might be described as the family’s ‘chief ministers.’”61 The extent to which males in rural areas came to be involved in weaving had fewer precedents, although related activities (notably the raising of silkworms) had long involved all members of a household.62 Throughout the late imperial era, most rural textiles were probably woven by women, most rice and wheat grown by men. Yet distinctions between work roles were here matters of degree, not of kind. This no doubt facilitated the diffusion of sex-linked skills throughout the entire population. Such diffusion in turn further undercut the distinctions. That these occupations were organized in a (at this point largely hypothetical) guild system seems improbable.63 The private sector no less than the command economy remained dependent on middlemen. Consider first the way the leaf markets operated. Given their voracious appetites, silkworms might well demand more leaves than a household’s own mulberry trees would provide; yet once picked, the leaves were highly perishable. Although both buyer and seller often felt themselves victimized, merchant-brokers assumed the considerable risks (and earned the profits) indispensable to providing the right quantities of leaves to the right places at the right times.64 Brokers were equally important in

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linking silk merchants and loom households. Silk was not one product, but many. Particular markets had marked preferences, preferences that some loom households (being particularly skilled in a given weave) could satisfy far better than others. Although by late Ming there is some evidence of emerging polarization, most firms remained small. They often lacked working capital. Quite understandably, they were reluctant to embody labor and raw materials in silks for which there was no—or perhaps even worse, no profitable—market. Merchants were equally unwilling to advance large sums to those whose skill (and honesty) might prove wanting. With his local knowledge and ongoing particularistic connections, the broker minimized risk for both parties.65 Other Suzhou produced a great many products and services besides cloth and rice. A recent work mentions embroidery, the mounting of pictures, pottery-making, copperwork, printing, lacquerwork, wine-making, the weaving of mats, rattan pillows, gauze caps, fine brushes, jade carving, food products—plus silver work, needles, iron work, tin work, wood work, tile-making, fine paper, lanterns, fan bones, gauze towels, willow chests, cattail-rush shoes, jewelry, antiques, and the copying of books and pictures.66 Individually, none of these was as important as cotton, silk, or rice. Collectively they made a vital contribution to the area’s prosperity. That prosperity should not be interpreted as a simple triumph of private virtue over public adversity. The state played a vital role in Suzhou’s rise. For most of the empire, the Ming was a prolonged period of peace. Peace and stability facilitated agricultural growth and demographic expansion. The high taxes and population transfers imposed on Suzhou made low taxes and agricultural redevelopment of the rest of the empire possible. Recent estimates suggest that China produced 30.93 percent more grain per capita in Ming than in Song.67 Whether the grain remained in the hands of peasant producers or was concentrated in the hands of landlords (most models would suggest that over time it was increasingly the latter), such an increase provided a potential market of unprecedented size and affluence. The court, its armies, and its overseas expeditions had been a major stimulus of Suzhou’s expansion. But the role of the private sector was no less important. Even when the state relied on its own workshops, the part-time character of the Ming artisan system ensured that the bulk (if not the best) of what was produced entered the market. The gradual conversion of most such services from corvée to a cash payment meant that this was increasingly true.68 There

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were even modest attempts—such as the establishment of a customs house at Hushu zhen69—to shift more of the fiscal burden onto an expanding commercial sector. Reform of the land tax in the 1430s and 1440s may also have furthered commoditization. In an area so long devoted to market-oriented agriculture, conversion of a portion of the land tax to silver may have been less a cause of expansion of the cash nexus than a reflection of its pervasiveness. Yet, if the lands that bore the heaviest tax burdens were primarily in the hands of the poor, the new policy meant that even the most modest government tenant had to orient himself to the market, selling part of what he produced to obtain the silver demanded by the tax collector. As a result, a growing proportion of the population would have become involved in commercial transactions a growing percentage of the time. Even if population and the silver supply remained constant, the velocity of circulation—hence the level of economic activity—would have increased.70 Possibly of even greater significance were the cutting of tax rates, the reduction of the volume of grain to be transported, and the substitution of soldiers for commoners in the delivery of most of the grain earmarked for distant points. The amounts demanded of the local economy fell—and thus so did the amounts collected from the peasantry, if not necessarily the quantities received by the state.71 Labor power that had been devoted to moving tax grain could consequently be channeled into more productive endeavors. By the Chenghua era (1465–87), the area’s prosperity was no longer based on the marketing of surpluses or (as Wu’s had arguably been in the late fourteenth century) on rural-urban exchange. The ability of so many people to live, much less live well, now hinged on the production of commodities—goods made to be sold, often in distant markets.72 The constant exchange of foodstuffs and raw materials for finished and semifinished goods that this required organized the economic landscape in Suzhou’s immediate vicinity into a fully articulated marketing system, tying the most isolated hamlet to the metropolitan economy. It did so so successfully that Suzhou slipped the demographic moorings that had heretofore limited population growth in the city and its immediate hinterland.73 By its example and influence, it inspired emulation. Thus if the Ming state and its policies had helped trigger Suzhou’s commoditization, the participation in the Suzhou-centered commercial system that resulted was a catalyst of commoditization (and of the accompanying articulation of marketing hierarchies) elsewhere. In short, by the late fifteenth century, Suzhou had achieved hegemony. As a result, even in what were apparent periods of official self-restraint, the

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level of economic activity remained impressive. Consider the account of the Korean scholar-official Ch’oe Pu (DMB) regarding conditions in 1488. In the (still unincorporated) area from the Baodai Bridge to the Xu Gate “shops and markets one after another lined both river banks, and merchant junks were crowded together” while, outside the Chang Gate, “adjoining roofs and rows of masts were as thick as the teeth of a comb.”74 Summarizing his observations— the fruit of a single day’s impressions, intelligent questioning, and (no doubt) his stock of classical allusions—he wrote: In olden times, Suzhou was called Wukuai. It borders the sea in the east, commands three large rivers and five lakes, and has a thousand li of rich fields. Learned men and gentry abound there; and all the treasures of the land and sea, such as thin silks, gauzes, gold, silver, jewels, crafts, arts, and rich and great merchants, are there. It has been accepted in China from olden times that the land south of the Yangzi river is the beautiful and good land and that within that land Suzhou and Hangzhou are the first departments, especially Suzhou. Le Bridge is inside the wall and separates Wu and Changzhou counties. Market quarters are scattered like stars. Many rivers and lakes flow through [the region], refreshing and purifying it. The people live luxuriously. There are solid rows of towers and stands, and in such places as the space between the Chang Gate and Matou [the wharves?], merchantmen and junks from Henan, Hebei and Fujian gather like clouds. The lakes and mountains are fresh and stimulating, the scenic splendors innumerable.75

Commercial Prosperity Although Ch’oe Pu’s overall description dovetails nicely with that of Wang Qi, it places even greater emphasis on “rich and great merchants” engaged in long-distance trade. These men stood at the apex of a complex pyramid of brokers, wholesale merchants, suppliers, shopkeepers, agent boats, and peddlers, a pyramid held together by complex networks of connection and affinity. The number of intermediaries separating producers from long-distance merchants or long-distance merchants from consumers is unclear. Qing evidence suggests that these layers multiplied to the point that would provide a living for the greatest possible number of middlemen.76 On its own terms, such a system had much to recommend it: multiple layers reduced the risks run by any individual actor and maintained maximum flexibility (hence minimizing opportunity costs). Yet these strata insulated those operating on a large scale from both the production and the distribution process. Any attempt to control and rationalize those processes would have disrupted the web of connections that structured economic exchange in this highly commoditized economy. It was this embeddedness in a highly flexible and robust mercantile order, even more than their comfortable and lucrative role transmuting surpluses extracted by extra-

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economic means from one form to another,77 that blocked the development of this group into a proto-bourgeoisie. As Ray Huang has noted, returns on commercial investment must have exceeded 2 percent per month (the amount regarded as a normal return on loans) for those engaged in commerce to justify the added risk and bother.78 Returns on long-distance trade must have been substantially greater given the risks run and the demands made. Long-distance trade required substantial capital; timely and accurate information on routes, transportation, the supply of and demand for products, prices, currency, weights and measures, and local customs and conditions; skill in dealing with the bureaucracy; and an ability to protect oneself and one’s goods.79 In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, members of many of Suzhou’s most prominent families participated personally and directly in such trade. Not only did Suzhou men control access to the waterways, markets, inns, and warehouses of Suzhou; they also played major roles in long-distance trade with the North China Plain and the Middle Yangzi. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive index to materials on Suzhou merchants. In spite of the amount of research that has been devoted to finding capitalist shoots in Ming Suzhou, until recently only one brief study had followed Fu Yiling’s lead in examining the Dongting (Lake Tai) merchants. A recent survey of the available data has now provided us with names and capsule sketches of dozens of these merchants active during the Ming.80 In addition, the roster of prominent nonDongting merchants already includes Xie Jin, Dai Guan, Wu Kuan’s relatives, Shen Zi (1424–97), Yang Shun (1451–1521), Zheng Hao, Hu Yousong, and Gu Kai of Changzhou; Xu Youxian (1410–89; younger brother of Xu Youzhen, on whom see DMB), Li Ruiqi (d. 1483), and Hu Zizhi of Wu; Shen Wenyu (before 1479) and Fang Lin (d. 1525) of Kunshan, Xu Ne (1376–1449) of Changshu;81 and members of the Tang family examined in the next chapter. By disrupting established social networks in Suzhou and by forcing exiles to improvise, early Ming policies may have undermined social and ideological barriers to involvement with the market.82 Not having to address a stable— indeed conservative—audience at home, even in their funerary inscriptions Suzhou residents were surprisingly ready to embrace markets and merchants. At least in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the pleasures of prosperity brought far less confusion to Suzhou than they did elsewhere.83 Local men—merchants, brokers, shopkeepers, and prosperous heads of loom households—organized textile production on behalf of merchants as well as officials. The fifth-generation descendant of an early Ming holder of the highest degree, Qin Yunyan (1467–1506),

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superintended the capital of resident and traveling merchants, dispersing it to “shuttle and loom” households and gathering the [finished] bolts of cloth in order to return them to the merchants. Calculating profit and loss, rises and falls, he [regulated] the goings out and comings in. He briefly weighed pros and cons, this and that, in order to succeed. All believed in putting him in charge and submitted to him in these matters.84

Owing to the need for local contacts, and to the relatively small scale of their operations, most such men must have been locals:85 Qin was himself a native of Wu district. Many (though not all) of those whose capital they turned into cloth were sojourners. Given its central position (both geographically and as core of an emerging Lower Yangzi macroregion), its excellent transportation and communication facilities, and its importance as both market for and producer of commodities in demand elsewhere, Suzhou constantly attracted sojourning merchants. A recent article, spanning Ming and Qing, grouped references to such communities by region: Anhui (dealing in cotton cloth, wood, silk, foodstuffs, and pawnshops); Zhejiang; Fujian and Guangdong; Shanxi and Shaanxi; Shandong; Jiangxi; Huguang; and Jiangsu. All of these groups (in turn divided by prefecture and district) were active at Suzhou by the end of the Ming.86 So many merchants from so many places at the same spot lowered transaction costs, further enhancing the attractiveness of Suzhou. As consumers, they augmented the demand Suzhou’s urban residents provided. In addition to local merchants and shopkeepers, brokers and artisans, this population included local scholars studying in the district and prefectural schools, rentiers who preferred to spend their lives (and their rents) in the city (close to their peers and their amusements, conveniently far from the claims and responsibilities of their natal communities), and members of the official establishment, plus soldiers, clerks and runners, and servants.87 The need to satisfy this immense local market (much of it equipped with what an economist would describe as a high marginal propensity to consume) further increased the pull of Suzhou. Far the most famous contingent of sojourners in mid-Ming Suzhou was from Huizhou, a mountainous prefecture in modern Anhui.88 Huizhou merchants dealt in a multitude of local products—tea, wood, lacquer, ink, paper. They were also active in the salt monopoly, the interregional grain trade, textiles, porcelain, foreign goods, and pawnbroking. Already common in the cities of Jiangnan during the Song, they initially established their reputation as tea merchants. Their prominence in the late imperial economy may have owed more to their expertise in shipping grain, an expertise they developed provisioning their chronically grain-deficient natal prefecture. Suzhou’s dependence on imported grain in the late seventeenth century is

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firmly established.89 Both textual evidence90 and the realities of a market-oriented agriculture imply that the area’s reliance on imports long predated this. Suzhou’s peasants could sacrifice quantity for quality only if dependable, and reasonably priced, supplies of coarse grain were available.91 Although importation of foodstuffs from Hubei and Hunan in the Qing is well documented, reports of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service note that northern Anhui and Jiangxi were the most important sources of rice for Jiangnan.92 The timing of the development of these areas,93 the friction of distance, and the structure of trade—that from Anhui and Jiangxi being so constant and so entirely in private hands as to pass virtually without official comment—suggest that sources near at hand were tapped before those farther away. Given their experience, their willingness to seek profit wherever it was to be found, and the proximity of Huizhou to these sources of supply, it would be surprising if Xin’an merchants (to use their other name) were not involved. As accounts of grain riots in early seventeenth-century Suzhou make clear, they were.94 Collectively, however, Dongting merchants played an even greater role.95 In general outline, the contours of Suzhou’s trade seem reasonably clear. Importing grain from the areas drained by the Yangzi and raw cotton from North China, Suzhou exported finished goods and luxury products in all directions, particularly to Beijing and other areas of North China that could not (given the available technology) spin and weave their cotton into cloth. Precious metal drained from the North (and illicitly from abroad) covered tax payments and necessary purchases of raw materials and semifinished goods from other areas.96 While recent scholarship has stressed the importance of such long-distance trade,97 Suzhou was in the heart of the most densely populated portion of the empire. The cities of the Yangzi delta were not only large, they were also important centers of consumption—especially luxury consumption. To neglect Suzhou’s trade with (and influence on) Huzhou, Songjiang, and Jiaxing, Nanjing, Yangzhou, and Hangzhou would be to exclude both a vital facet of its trade and a major sphere of its influence. There seems no way to determine how great the volume of this commerce actually was, and certainly no way to break it down sector by sector.98 There are, however, some rough indicators. When the equal corvée registers of Wu district were “fixed in detail” (circa 1479), 33.9 percent of the amount charged to property was assessed “the townspeople of the city and its attached suburbs and the family property of the two peaks [i.e., East and West Dongting].”99 Wang Shu had just authorized use of “white registers” throughout the region. While they ritually submitted unchanging Yellow Registers to higher authorities, local officials used the more accurate white registers of property and population to

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facilitate collection of taxes. They were thus better able to distribute burdens realistically. Since changes were not reported to their superiors, risks that such information would be used as pretext to impose new obligations on them or on their subjects were minimized.100 Accordingly, these figures are apt to bear some relationship to reality. Unfortunately, the rate at which property was assessed is unclear. More speculatively, one can use the interpolated population of Wu and Changzhou in 1488 to calculate the global value of extralocal commerce. By these estimates, Wu had a population of 584,700; Changzhou’s was 592,700. At 4.8 piculs of rice per person per year, the city and its immediate hinterland would thus have required 5,651,520 piculs of rice—or its equivalent—each year. (Sojourners’ consumption is excluded from these estimates.) The maximum conceivable amount of local rice available for consumption was 3,293,400 piculs (if all taxes were remitted, this would rise to 3,842,100 piculs). Thus, if taxes were collected, 2,658,100 piculs of grain had to be imported to sustain the local population; this was almost exactly the amount of tax grain demanded of Suzhou prefecture in the early Ming. Since neither private charity nor government largess could be relied upon to cover these deficits, such imports had to be paid for by exports simply to sustain the resident population. Given that these calculations are based on a very generous estimate of average output (especially for Wu), a fairly low estimate of per capita consumption, and quite possibly too conservative an estimate of population growth, they almost certainly understate the area’s requirements.101 When we recall that a major part of Suzhou’s agricultural output continued to be exported, locals consuming less expensive grains that they imported in exchange, it is all the more evident that such an estimate minimizes the level of commercialization. Even so, at 0.5 ounces of silver per picul of rice, the value of Suzhou’s trade—the amount residents of Wu and Changzhou annually earned in profits, wages, and rents from participation in market exchange— must have exceeded 1 million ounces of silver per year.102 Gross turnover would of course have been a multiple of this.

The Limits of Smithean Growth Change, as Zhu Yuanzhang understood all too well, is disruptive whatever its ultimate direction. It is rare that change affects all portions of a society in the same way, to the same extent, at the same time. Thus signs of official concern with the maintenance of order in the 1480s are not necessarily evidence that the limits of Smithean growth had been reached. Still, such limits were real. Indeed, the incidence of natural disasters (beginning in 1492) suggests that

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the expansion of the Chenghua era could not be sustained. This was not the result of misrule. Indeed, not only were many of those who served “illustrious officials”; in addition, much of their effort was directed to tasks that would improve communications and mend the social fabric. Nonetheless, the domestic market for textiles was finite.103 Evidence suggests that by the late fifteenth century Suzhou had captured that for silk, aided by the collapse of the Sichuan and North China industries. Cotton prices—2 piculs of rice per bolt in 1400, 1.27 piculs in 1470, on their way to a mere 0.82 piculs in 1540—describe a similar trajectory. This was probably less evidence of decline in effective demand due to population pressure than of excessive supply: as hegemon, Suzhou’s successes inevitably attracted imitators. Future growth—for these and for other industries—was dependent on further expansion of population, on increasing concentration of income in the hands of elites in other parts of the empire, and on expansion of the export market.104 That market would be shared with increasing numbers of lower-cost competitors. Moreover, the liquidity-starved economy increasingly relied on debased or counterfeit coin. From the late 1400s, an illicit but lucrative foreign trade began funneling significant quantities of Japanese copper (later silver) into the empire.105 Efforts to stamp out piracy thus risked making the best the enemy of the good. This period was punctuated by two prolonged periods of natural disaster. In Suzhou, 1492 was a grim year. The spring brought excessive rain. By the beginning of the fifth month, there was water everywhere. Lake Tai had overflowed its banks, and grain on the stalks was completely submerged. Many people fled to higher ground. The flood was followed by a great plague. Tax remissions were granted in the second month and in the eleventh.106 Fourteen ninety-four was another year of excessive water. The next year brought famine. The string of natural disasters was punctuated by ominous, uncanny omens: on the seventeenth of the fifth month of 1494, the seal of the Suzhou prefect suddenly and for no apparent reason became as hot as fire. No one was able to touch it. This lasted for four days, then ceased.107 The government not only stopped the purchase of local goods throughout the Suzhou/Songjiang region and remitted taxes, but also authorized diversion of customs income to provide relief.108 Conditions seem to have improved in the late 1490s and first years of the sixteenth century. But in 1503, the fourth month brought rain and hail; during the fifth and sixth months there was a great drought. The grain withered on its stalks and the people were extremely hungry. To make matters worse, several granaries were destroyed over the course of the year. In the twelfth month, snow accumulated to a depth of four or five feet. On the mountains in the Dongting area, the Mandarin orange trees—source of one of the region’s major cash crops—were all destroyed.109

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While changes in precipitation, temperature, and the incidence of disease were no doubt real, their impact on society reflected land-man ratios, economic opportunities, and the ways in which social and political arrangements allocated pain. The effect of fluctuations in natural conditions was amplified by the ban on private overseas trade, the termination of government-sponsored voyages, the end of grain shipments north by sea, and the subsequent neglect of water control in eastern Changzhou. Although this area would emerge as the center of cotton weaving and spinning in Suzhou’s immediate hinterland during the Qing, in Ming times the region was poor, underpopulated, and lawless.110 Shen Zhou’s maternal grandfather, Zhang Hao, had struggled so vigorously against bandits in the vicinity of his native Weiting during the Chenghua and Hongzhi reign-periods (1465–1506) that the bandits’ saying—“Tian bupa, di bupa, zhi pa Yi Zhang Xiaoshe” (I don’t fear heaven, I don’t fear earth; I only fear Little Neighbor Zhang of Weiting)—passed into common usage.111 In these same years, Mr. Gu of Changzhou’s Lake Chen region posed as a guide to merchants plying the Yangzi and Huai in order to rob them of their goods. He was apprehended and executed by Changzhou district magistrate Liu Hui (in office 1478–87).112 In 1482 the regional military commissioner built a mile-long fort on the north shore of the Liu River as a defense against pirates.113 The assistant prefect who served in the late 1480s, Xia Quan, was remembered for his efforts to suppress piracy.114 When the “Japanese” pirates (wokou) appeared at the gates of Suzhou in the mid-sixteenth century, they came from the east115—apparently following routes long used by smugglers and brigands. The renewed attention to water control and local administration in the Hongzhi era seems to have been motivated as much by a need to restore order as by a need to order the waters. In 1488, Wu Xing dredged more than forty li (twenty kilometers) of the middle stage of the Wu Song River. The following year, the dikes on the Lou River were repaired.116 In the wake of the disastrous year 1492, efforts to improve transport and communications were intensified. Suzhou’s new assistant prefect for water control, Ying Neng, cleared the channels within the city wall in 1493. He also dredged Tiger Hill Channel and the ten li (five kilometers) of Feng Channel between Duseng Bridge and Maple Bridge.117 In 1494–95, a more focused and comprehensive program was launched. The left vice minister of the Ministry of Works, Xu Guan, was sent to take charge of water control in concert with Grand Coordinator He Jian and Prefect Shi Jian. Sixteen thousand men from Wujiang uprooted rushes and aquatic plants to facilitate drainage of water from Lake Tai. More than 100,000 men from Changzhou, Wu, Kunshan, Changshu, and Jiading districts were mobilized to

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dredge the Bai Mao harbor, providing the Wu Song River with access to the sea. This plus the dredging of other channels and the reinforcement of dikes and embankments required rations of more than 88,260 piculs of grain. More than eighty kilometers were opened in the larger project, while subsidiary ones opened ten-kilometer and five-kilometer stretches.118 He Jian’s successor, Grand Coordinator Zhu Xuan, is also said to have devoted himself to water control, reopening the lower reaches of the Three Rivers and dredging the area’s lakes. To facilitate the transport of grain, Zhu and Yao Wenhao (bureau secretary in the Ministry of Works) built the Lake Sha Stone Embankment, about thirty feet across and a bit less than a mile in length, between 1496 and 1498. Lake Sha was just south of the Lou River between Suzhou’s Lou Gate and Weiting. As Wu Kuan’s inscription made clear, the project was intended to protect ships (which, in bad weather, had previously been forced to put to shore where thieves and robbers preyed on them), as well as to safeguard the paddy fields north of the lake.119 Simultaneously (1497–98), Yao dredged the Zhihe Channel—another name for the Lou River—from the mouth of the Xinyang River to the Nine Li Bridge, a distance of more than fifteen kilometers. This effort, which created a channel one and a half times as deep and as wide as the one that had existed theretofore, required the labor of 96,500 adult males and a budget of 1,350,000 [piculs? ounces of silver?].120 Yet, by itself, improved water control could not extirpate the problems of lawlessness and economic retrogression. Seeking to tighten administrative control, on Grand Coordinator Zhu’s recommendation Taicang subprefecture was carved out of portions of Changshu, Kunshan, and Jiading in 1497 “to avoid its dangers.”121 Simultaneously, the Suzhou vice prefect surveyed the Chongming sandflats, eliminating a chronic source of tax evasion and fraud.122 Other administrators directly sought to improve local manners and morals. Thus Cao Feng (Suzhou prefect from 1497 to 1499) prohibited cremations, establishing charitable cemeteries for the poor. He also regulated marriage and burial rites. None were allowed to exceed the standards he set. On all social occasions he demanded that frugality and thrift be observed. When the prominent continued to violate these standards, he refused to socialize with them. He also destroyed licentious temples, expelled actors and singing girls, and prohibited gambling for money.123 The district magistrate of Changzhou at the time, Liu Ke (in office 1498–1501), aided Cao in many of these activities. He established three public cemeteries, destroyed ten licentious temples, and also prohibited gambling. He opened schools, reclaimed more than three thousand mu of commoners’ land, and built water-control projects in 110 places.124

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These activities coincided with the rebuilding of the city-god temple and the creation of a shrine to Xia Yuanji and Zhou Chen. (Separate shrines to “famous officials” and “former local worthies” had been established at the prefectural school in 1487.)125 Temples imply both a temple committee and a broader congregation; thus moves to suppress “licentious” temples should probably be understood as efforts to eliminate forms of auto-organization not sanctioned by the state.126 While both construction and destruction were responses to the perceived moral failures and social tensions of local society, these initiatives imply very different approaches to elites and to commoners. In dealing with the former, officials attempted to “Confucianize [a district]’s selfimage, knitting it more closely to the empire as a whole, while simultaneously strengthening the ties between local notables, sojourning officials, and the higher levels of the bureaucracy”127—in short, to co-opt and reorient elite culture to officially approved ends. For the population at large, local officials sought only to repress unauthorized forms of activity. Neither approach left much room for autonomous local initiative. Throughout, those who compiled rosters of “illustrious officials” emphasized personal virtues such as honesty, frugality, and compassion as well as cheap, honest, and efficient administration. Even in this area however, a close reading reveals tensions: consider the case of Assistant Prefect He Peng. He was remembered as incorruptible—so much so that he wore dirty, tattered, liceinfested robes. His family could not avoid hunger and cold. “He detested the covetousness and vileness of his fellow officials.”128 Although he was much hated by his colleagues, he was ultimately promoted. This suggests either that the praise meted out to some of his colleagues was exaggerated or that extremism in the pursuit of virtue could be regarded as a vice. It seems unlikely that the problems with which Cao Feng and Liu Ke grappled suddenly appeared in the last years of the fifteenth century. Similarly, if no more were said of attempts to restrain embezzlement by yamen underlings once Prefect Meng Jun left office, this is more apt to reflect the differing priorities of his successors than the success of his efforts. If his efforts were only 70 to 80 percent complete when he moved on,129 it seems very unlikely that they solved the problem for the balance of the reign-period. Thus, even under the best of circumstances—benevolent administration, a large and cultivated local elite, a prospering economy—Suzhou remained something less than paradise on earth for many of its residents. Nonetheless, by the standards of the day, it was a favored place. Not surprisingly then, when a new prefectural gazetteer was compiled at the end of the Hongzhi reign-period, the tone was no less celebratory than that struck by Wang Qi and Ch’oe Pu

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several decades before. The editorial board itself embodied the area’s accomplishments. It was headed by Wu Kuan (DMB) and included Wang Ao (DMB), Du Qi (jinshi 1474; son of Du Qiong—see DMB), Pu Yingxiang, Zhu Yunming (DMB), the Suzhou prefectural student Cai Yu (from Wu), the Changzhou district student Wen Zhengming (DMB), the local scholars Zhu Cunli (DMB) and Xing Can, and the Grader-scholar Chen Yi, the grandson of Chen Zuo of Wu.130 In their preface to the section on local customs, they wrote: Under the reigning dynasty, Suzhou has again risen to be a great commandery. In the past hundred odd years, propriety and righteousness have gradually stimulated one another. As a result, the fame and virtue of prior generations have often been embodied anew. In the beginning, this followed from the honesty and righteousness of Wu Ne [of Changshu, 1372–1457; DMB], the gentleness and kindness of Yang Xiyan, the purity and solemnity of Ye Sheng [of Kunshan, 1420–74; DMB], and the erudition and tranquillity of Wu Kuan [of Changzhou, 1436–1504; DMB]. All of these had quite an impact through their writings. Hence contemporaries were moved to pattern themselves on antiquity. Their works were antique [in spirit] and yet not manacled to the crude emulation of a particular classic. Honor and integrity were treasured. The opinions of the learned were sent down and reached the commoners. Gentlemen [shi] who wear leather belts [i.e., who have not passed the examinations or held office] were all able to transmit it and make it known. Being literate, [they were able to ensure that] the folk songs of the rural communities and of field laborers, although wildly sung, in fact achieved a certain rhythm. The area’s customs can be called beautiful. Only the taste for luxury has not yet been completely reformed. Of course only those who occupy positions exceeding those of the common people have the ability to transform and influence this.131

As the gazetteer itself suggested in quoting the passage with which we closed our discussion of Han, Suzhou’s taste for luxury had a very long history. Wang Qi’s descriptions of the city in the late fifteenth century gloried in its concrete embodiment, framing the argument in a way that made such success evidence of the dynasty’s benevolence and wisdom. Prefect Cao seems to have had little success in persuading the local elite to rein in their excesses. The fact that his efforts were singled out (and singular) and that the conspicuous austerity of Assistant Prefect He engendered contempt among his own peers suggest that those who administered Suzhou were more likely to succumb to the city’s allures than local elites were to feel uneasy about them. Extravagance, implying affluence, remained as much boast as reproach.132 All in all, “those who occupy positions exceeding those of the common people” seemed well satisfied with their society. At least for them, the already clichéd formula Shang you tiantang, xia you Su Hang (Above, there is Heaven; on earth, Suzhou and Hangzhou) must have rung true.

7

“Those Occupying Positions above the Common People” Suzhou’s Elite and the Rise of Wu School Culture

In recent times, scholars studying elites in late imperial China have moved beyond the gentry. In social terms, elites were defined much more broadly than this.1 Elites (or would-be elites) were engaged in an ongoing and dynamic process, one best conceptualized as the pursuit of strategies that would convert resources—social, cultural, and material—into structural dominance of local arenas.2 This seems a particularly promising approach to the study of “those occupying positions above the common people” in Ming Suzhou. The arenas within which they operated were anything but static, the resources available were many and varied, the social landscape was extremely crowded, and the definition of the local elite was clearly not limited to those who held official degrees. A broader, more flexible conception of the elite should bring us closer to Ming realities. But it will not simplify our task.

Delimiting the Arena At any given moment, the elite was composed of individuals. Yet, men being mortal, any attempt to study elites over time must take the family as the unit of analysis. In Ming, family referred to two cross-cutting realities: the jia, or household, and the patriline. The former was the group of biologically or legally related individuals who shared (or at one time had shared) a household and a budget. Mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters were very much part of the jia, a temporary alliance whose resources—material and human—were deployed to further the interests of patrilines. The patriline was a succession of males, from father to son to grandson unto the nth generation. In families with more than one son, each son defined a unique line, one in which his brothers played no part, although fathers figured equally in the line of each son. In seeking to perpetuate themselves biologically and socially, Ming Chinese focused on the

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patriline. Hence crucial decisions regarding education, career choice, and marriage were not left to individual whim. They were made by senior males in the interests of the line, not the household. Esherick and Rankin see successful elites as those who achieved structural dominance of the local arena. Although the studies in their volume focus on the district, their definitions leave ample room for elites above and below that level. Moreover, they see the marketplace, the examination hall, the yamen, and the village as separate but overlapping arenas. Dominance in one did not necessarily imply dominance in another—although the resources a patriline drew from one sphere might aid it in consolidating its position in another. This possibility hints at an issue that was particularly serious in a place like Suzhou: those who were obviously and indisputably members of an elite at one level were essentially indistinguishable from the rest of the commonality at another. Thus, in their villages, those appointed hundred captain (lizhang) in the early Ming were obviously an elite, the “cocks of the village.” In the eyes of the wider world, they were merely prosperous commoners. At best, such people had risen to the top of the bottom tier. This was a two-tier society.3 When we speak of Suzhou’s elite, we refer to members of the upper tier. In any simple sense, however, it is not clear what structural dominance would mean in a place like Suzhou. The resources available in an urban system the size and complexity of Suzhou were too numerous and too diverse to marshal in support of any one group—particularly one denied the opportunity to institutionalize its dominance. Suzhou was after all incorporated into an imperial structure which insisted that its component parts be administered by outsiders. In the absence of official invitation, natives were prohibited from commenting on local affairs. And, although the Ming was not able to suppress the auto-organization of society completely, it consistently attempted to harness approved forms of such organization for state purposes while periodically suppressing others. At least in places as sensitive as Suzhou, it was largely successful in keeping unapproved forms at very low levels during its first two hundred years. Dominance was in any case less an end in itself than a means to an end. For individual patrilines, the goal was to achieve (or retain) primacy—to be able to get what one needed, preferably with a minimum of effort. At any given moment, available resources were finite. Those who, by virtue of their official titles, affluence, artistic and literary accomplishment, and connections, prevented lesser accomplishments in an arena from gaining wider recognition constituted the elite. In a nonaristocratic society, these qualities were not directly inherited. Members of each generation had to achieve them, the local

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elite itself passing judgment on the validity of a given individual’s claim to elite standing. Given the changes in Suzhou’s position in the hierarchy of central places, the types and levels of economic activity, the impact of tax increases and population transfers, the shifting relationship between state and society, and the influx of immigrants, that elite was itself engaged in an ongoing collective process of self-definition. In broad terms, the factors weighed in the evaluative process were conventional enough. Yet the standards applied and the relative weight accorded each made Suzhou’s Ming elite a semi-autonomous entity. In what sense was it a local one? Indeed, what was the meaning of local in a major economic, administrative, and cultural center? Throughout the Ming, many of those with high office, great wealth, scholarly or artistic reputations, and powerful connections were sojourners. Some were from neighboring districts within Suzhou prefecture, prompted either by the amenities of city life or the demands of examination preparation to live in the prefectural city. To include Taicang’s Wang Shizhen (DMB) while excluding Huating’s He Liangjun (DMB), or to regard someone from Kunshan or Wujiang as local but someone from Wuxi as an outsider, seems arbitrary. Here, “local” is defined by registration—a solution that is the more defensible given the substantial degree of endogamy evident in those marriages we can trace.4 Local elites were men from Wu and Changzhou. (Together, those districts made up the city of Suzhou and its immediate hinterland in Ming times.) Outsiders played important roles in the local elite—but they remained outsiders. In Ming, they were also cast in supporting roles; the leads went to local men. It has been suggested “that, in any city of late imperial China, (1) a direct correlation would pertain between the socioeconomic status of any individual and the distance from that city of the individual’s native place; and (2) socioeconomic dominance by nonlocals would be greater the higher one rose in the hierarchy of central places, because of a greater orientation of the city to trade (or administration) of broader geographic scale.”5 This was not true of the metropole. Given Suzhou’s success in the examinations and the prominent positions attained by those who did pursue bureaucratic office, Suzhou’s scholar-officials were equals and intimates of the most powerful men in the realm. They outranked not only sojourning merchants but also most of those appointed to local office. In their own sphere, one can claim as much for Suzhou’s merchants. In addition to the usual preserves of local activity (warehousing, innkeeping, brokerage), natives held dominant positions in both the interregional grain and interregional cloth trades. Moreover, scholars and merchants were not unrelated groups. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, these elites were extensively and intimately entwined. Thus Suzhou’s local elites

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collectively enjoyed cultural, social, and economic preeminence at home. And, since home was the core of an emerging Lower Yangzi macroregion as well as the hegemonic center of a loosely coupled, empirewide urban system, they were in position to shape the culture of elites throughout the realm.

Pursuing Strategies All unhappy families were alike—they worked hard, lived in squalor, and died young. Each happy family was happy in its own way. What an outside observer may fairly describe as a family strategy was to those pursuing it an attempt to seize the opportunities that presented themselves. It is thus useful to sketch the trajectory of several of these families, using gazetteers, genealogies, and social biographies to present their achievements as they and their peers remembered them. On the surface, these accounts stress individual abilities and virtues. Yet, read collectively, they comment on one another, pointing to strains they do not directly discuss. When considered in concert with other evidence, they permit us to bring the nature and relative importance of the social, material, and symbolic resources deployed into sharper focus. What contemporaries experienced as the unique struggles of particular patrilines were thus part of the collective process of forging Suzhou’s mid-Ming elite. The Chen of Rural Changzhou (1) It was still possible to rise into this elite through husbandry, marriage, and education. Consider the descendants of Chen Zifu, the Taihu peasant who married uxorilocally into Wu Kuan’s family in the early Ming. Zifu’s son, Mengshan (1403–69), proved to be an industrious farmer; his wife, Ms. Qian, spun thread and wove cloth to help support the family. Indeed, the family was able to expand its holdings by purchasing more fields and houses. When the harvest was poor, the rich (fushi) lent commoners grain at interest, obtaining double what they gave in return. Mengshan distributed more than 800 hu (400 piculs) of grain to those in need.6 He refused to profit from the transaction, making the beneficiaries destroy their notes without demanding repayment. According to the prefectural regulations, those who contributed grain were to be rewarded with official appointments. Mengshan’s name was sent up without his permission. When messengers arrived with his patent of office, Mengshan refused to accept the honor, saying that “he had given grain but did not want to be an official.” Less easily declined was his commission as overseer for the tax sector (qu). Ultimately, Mengshan’s oldest son, Gui, was allowed to substitute for his father as tax captain.7

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Meanwhile, his younger son, Qiong (1440–1506), studied for the examinations. He passed those at the provincial level in 1468. He was returning from a first, and unsuccessful, attempt at the metropolitan exams when news of his father’s death reached him. “He cried bitterly and did not control himself. The same day he changed to a light boat and traveled by forced stages.” Wu Kuan “was on intimate terms with the family, regarding Gui and Qiong as his brothers and Mengshan as his father’s younger brother.” Wu had also sat (unsuccessfully) for the 1469 examination. Qiong appealed to Wu Kuan, asking that he write an inscription that would preserve the actions of the deceased, not just record the divination concerning where and when to bury him. Wu “pitied the sons and could not bear to refuse their request.”8 In 1478, Qiong passed the metropolitan examination. Over the next three decades, he served with distinction, coming into contact with all the great men of the day. He ultimately rose to be left vice censor-in-chief of the Nanjing Censorate (rank 3a). Yet when the Hongzhi emperor died and his successor threw open the “speaking path,” questions were raised about policies he had pursued. Pleading ill health, Qiong resigned and returned to Suzhou. There he found his descendants so numerous that he could not readily distinguish among them. He accordingly built a “hall for receiving grandsons [hansun zhi tang]; it was a grand affair of the elite [yiguan].”9 The following year, the emperor conferred robes appropriate to an official of the fifth rank on Qiong and gave him silver in recognition of his merit. Shortly thereafter, Qiong died at home. When news reached the court, the emperor dispatched officials to offer sacrifices and to manage the funeral. Simultaneously, Qiong’s eldest son, Zi, went to the capital. There he requested inscriptions from the Suzhou literatus Wang Ao (1450–1524; DMB) and from his father’s “writing friend” (and former examiner), Li Dongyang (1447–1516; DMB). A younger son, Yao (1464–1516), had associated with the sons and younger brothers of the capital elite in his youth. He had also studied for the examinations but, unable to endure all the rules and regulations, gave it up. When a bit older, he returned to Wu. There he set about improving the family fortunes, acquiring “fields and gardens, mansions and shops the length and breadth of the prefecture.”10 Subsequently, he was appointed principal of the Prefectural Geomancy School (unranked). Yao appears to have used this position to augment the family holdings still further. At this time, he entertained the powerful and the cultivated. People flocked to his house, for his hospitality was both lavish and refined. Nonetheless, his affluence seems to have embarrassed his friend and eulogist Wen Zhengming (1470–1559; DMB), if not Yao himself. Wen explained:

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The affairs of this life have their regulations and beginnings. These often surpass human expectations. Sowing newly opened land and rearing animals, one must [fully] exploit the advantages of the situation. Yet it is considered taking unfair profit [if one does so outside agriculture]. However, the special merit [of making the most of one’s opportunities] is being able, in good times and bad, to attend to others. If the amount [of one’s fortune] reaches into the thousands, it is a predestined hand that distributes it. Opening and closing by turns, spending freely, [such good fortune] almost cannot be reined in.11

Yao abruptly resigned his office and built a home on the Yaocheng River so that he might grow old where his ancestors had lived.12 He devoted himself to agriculture, culture, and wine, forswearing the city and the marketplace. In time, he began to suffer from headaches. He made a rare trip to the city to seek medical attention when his condition suddenly grew worse. He returned to his country estate at once, saying, “I was born there; assuredly I should die there.” He left a son by Ms. Lin,13 the painter Chen Daofu (DMB), who was already a prefectural student. (His career is discussed in Chapter 8.) In addition, his daughter (by a concubine) had married the Imperial Academy student Gu Jie. This family remained prominent well into the sixteenth century.14 Yet increasingly they did so by combining scholarship and commerce with agriculture. Their experience thus seems to confirm what Hamashima Atsutoshi, using data from nearby Jiangyin, has argued: given the mature character of Jiangnan agriculture, by the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries many elite families were compelled to engage in long-distance trade at least seasonally in order to maintain their living standards over time.15 The Chen of Iron Bottle Lane (2) The fact that Suzhou men continued to enter the scholar-official elite in substantial numbers afforded little solace to individual patrilines. Indeed, the successes of new men constantly threatened to obscure the accomplishments of their predecessors. For those who had achieved conspicuous success, there was an understandable desire to place this eminence on a firmer footing. Chen Yi provides us with a clear instance of this. By 1453 he had risen to the posts of left censor-in-chief (rank 2a), grand guardian of the heir apparent (rank 1a), and grand master for glorious happiness (a prestige title with rank 1b). Not only had he obtained honorary titles for his ancestors and his wives but, through the protection (yin) privilege, he had also secured appointments as judge in the Imperial Bodyguards (rank 5b) for three generations of his descendants.16 Pleading illness, he resigned to return to the family home in Tieping Lane. Marks of imperial favor continued in spite of this: Yi was permitted to use government post stations—the empirewide system maintained to transmit official correspondence to and from the capital—on the journey south, and

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doctors were sent to attend him. When news of his death three years later reached Beijing, the emperor sent a funerary ode to be burned at the grave, ordered an official to offer sacrifices at the funeral as his representative, and instructed the local authorities to build a tomb. Thirteen hundred ounces of silver were given and fifty-seven plus mu of land entered on Wu district’s Yellow Registers—presumably to endow sacrifices and to defray tax obligations as well as to provide a resting place for the family dead.17 The family had long been more than respectable. But the sources insist that with Yi (and his nephew Zun) the Chen surname truly became honorable and illustrious, for they now ranked with the most prominent office-holding families of Wu. And “only then did they gather together [cui] as one family.”18 Realizing this, but too busy to review the sources himself, Yi had repeatedly ordered his brothers to put the family records in order. Compilation of a genealogy was crucial to the formation of a common descent group, a widespread method of incorporating scholar-official status in the fifteenth century.19 When they had done so, the Chens asked Yuan Xuan to revise the work and add a preface. Completing his task on the fifteenth of the first lunar month 1452, Yuan observed: A family having a genealogy is similar to a state possessing a dynastic history. If a state has a history, it can examine the causes of its successes and failures, orderliness and unexpected developments. If a family has a genealogy, then the family is able to examine its branches and sections, origins and development.

After sketching the family’s history in broad strokes, he cautioned: Family records are tools for honoring the ancestors and reverencing one’s forefathers; filiality and reverence are the substance of honoring ancestors and reverencing forefathers. If a person’s knowledge emphasizes the family records and does not seek out the substance, then it is in fact merely a hollow tool. . . . Now and henceforth all those who advance and become prominent [like Yi and Zun] ought to take the mind of Yi and Zun to be their mind, esteeming their relatives and promoting peace among kinsmen. Practice filiality and reverence, loyalty and sincerity so that you do not disgrace the family reputation. Act with care and do not use rank and length of service in mutual boasting!20

The nominal head of the project was Chen Qi (because he alone of those living at Suzhou had held office?). Yet the youngest of the six brothers, Zhu (1402–74+), was even more crucial to the family’s chances of “gathering together” on a long-term basis. In part, this simply reflected demographic realities: Zhu survived his brothers and remained vigorous into his seventies. In part, it reflected his prestige as the brother of one jinshi and the father of another. Zhu was said to be exemplary in both character and conduct, in many respects

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closely resembling his eminent older brother. In his youth, he had had ambitions in his own right. When he was not selected, he resigned himself to his fate and sought to educate his sons. Zun’s success in the examinations as well as his conduct in office testified to Zhu’s skill as a teacher. Still, in spite of the family’s accumulation of honors,21 Zhu did not lord it over his neighbors: “Aweinspiring gates and walls perturb small men. Zhu dwelt within such gates yet appeared as if he did not. . . . Not only he himself but his sons and grandsons as well employed frugality to live extravagantly and used modesty to live honorably.”22 This is not to say that Zhu was unmindful of, or indifferent to, his family’s eminence. Intimations of mortality prompted him to write a set of “instructions from the deceased” (yixun). Five copies of these were prepared, the oldest living males of each patriline joining in a solemn signing ceremony. It was to be handed down from senior male to senior male in each of the five branches.23 Injunctions so carefully transmitted refer neither to day-to-day family life nor to conduct in the ancestral temple—Zhu apparently considered the principles so self-evident and Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals so explicit that no elaboration was required. Arrangement of the family burial plot was another matter. The welfare of descendants and the handing down of the family tradition depended on the maintenance of order in the graveyard. If the ancestors were not at peace because the honorable and the humble were jumbled up together, and gentry (jinshen) families followed “the customs of the marketplace,” things would not turn out well. Specific injunctions ranged from observing ritual precedence to not overcrowding the dead and not injuring geomantic currents. The aim throughout was clear and consistent, however: ritual visits to a wellkept and properly arrayed family plot were to stimulate filial piety and brotherliness in future generations even as they sharpened their awareness of status distinctions among members of the descent group.24 Zhu’s youngest son, Zun (1422–66), was the only member of his generation to devote himself wholeheartedly to study. Specializing in the Book of Changes, he achieved such a reputation that local officials wished to recommend him for official appointment. Zun insisted on pursuing the more prestigious examination route. In 1450 he placed fourteenth on the list of provincial graduates. His essay, regarded as a model, was transmitted to the four quarters. The next year he passed the metropolitan examination and embarked on what seemed certain to be a distinguished official career. Serving with integrity, by 1466 he had risen to be assistant surveillance commissioner for Sichuan (rank 5a). But returning from a regional conference in Guizhou, his boat ran onto the rocks. Zun drowned in the turbulent waters.25

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His widow, Zhou Miaoqing (1421–95), came from Kunshan; her father had served as investigating censor and as right administrator of a princely establishment (rank 5a).26 Eminent though her connections by birth and marriage were, Ms. Zhou did not put on airs. When Zun went out to serve, she remained in Suzhou, attending to household affairs and waiting on her husband’s aged parents. She hewed strictly to the proprieties, sequestering herself in the inner chambers so fanatically that she would not even allow a youth to cross the threshold. Ms. Zhou’s sole flaw as wife was her failure to produce an heir; Zun eventually adopted one of his older brother Yi’s sons. Subsequently Ms. Zhou gave birth to Bian, and Zun sired two more sons by concubines. Ms. Zhou is said to have treated them all alike, and Zun allegedly remained fond of his adoptive son even after he had biological offspring. Even-handedness had its limits, however: it was Bian who was encouraged to devote himself to study. He passed the provincial examination in 1483 but, wishing to remain at home with his aging mother, he repeatedly declined appointment to office. Even had one of her sons-in-law not been a 1477 provincial graduate from Wu district,27 there is little to suggest that Zun’s sudden death had seriously compromised the family’s reputation.28 In spite of this, when the genealogy was revised in 1504, Chen Lian added a “Preface to the Rituals of Sacrificing and Maintaining the Graves in Spring and Autumn.” Conceding that in general estimation the Chens ranked among the first families of Wu, Lian nonetheless insisted that the family had its defects.29 A family temple (jiamiao) existed, yet the rites honoring the ancestors were neglected. The family had a graveyard, but this had not fostered a sense of sorrow and respect. And although a family genealogy was maintained, members of the lineage were lax about recording the necessary information. His son Gao having brought the genealogy up to date, Lian urged remedies in the other two areas.30 By maintaining the graves, offering common sacrifices,31 and repairing the family temple, the tendency of each group to pay attention solely to its own immediate relations would be combated and the “mind of honoring forefathers and reverencing ancestors” fostered. Under such conditions, “why then [should we] be ashamed of our reputation as an illustrious family? [Let us] use it to encourage members of the clan.”32 In two generations (and three decades), the emphasis had clearly shifted from the need to see that rituals acted out differences in status to the need to ensure that rituals were acted out. It was less a question of drawing up the family in ordered ranks than of bringing the family together, period. Such common worship was clearly thought to advance higher moral ends, and 1504 was the first year of a sixty-year cycle. One might thus dismiss Lian’s preface as the

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work of a moralistic idealist. More cynically, one might suggest that the occasion demanded precisely this sort of summons to reform and rededication. But judging by the life of Chen Meng (1470–1529), the problems with which Lian grappled had some basis in fact. Descended from one of Chen Yi’s older brothers, Meng was designated adoptive son and successor of his father’s younger brother, Que.33 Orphaned while still young and faced with a dramatic decline in the family fortunes, Meng sought to reverse the deterioration from the time he was twenty. Being a member of an illustrious common descent group was apparently of little help to such a household. In the face of formidable obstacles, Meng succeeded in remedying the situation, but had to resort to methods that scandalized his neighbors: “The elders of the local community were startled and said, ‘This Chen family has a great roof beam; they already count their wealth in the tens of thousands.’ Meng laughed and replied, ‘My portion is simple and slight. How can I use this massive hoard to deal with misfortune?’”34 Meng nonetheless got the point. No longer taking the accumulation of wealth to be his aim, within he cultivated benevolence and deference while without he sought to establish connections with the right people. He built a shrine to Chen Yi and had his surviving works printed.35 He repaired the ancestral graves and used the wealth in his granaries to benefit his relatives. He oversaw the repair of the prefectural and district schools and took charge of rebuilding the shrine of Jinxiang hou; when materials ran out, he made good the shortfall out of his own pocket. Thanks to such activities (and the hardwon affluence that enabled him to maintain a country villa), he became involved in an unending exchange of visits and gifts with prefects and officials as well as with members of the local elite.36 A Merchant Family: The Tang of Jixiangli (1) In the same quarter of the city, “rich and great merchants” pursued the same goals—economic security and social standing—in significantly different ways. Since their associates and in-laws were drawn from the highest cultural and social levels of fifteenth-century Suzhou, we can use social biographies to describe one of the more successful of these, the Tang of Jixiangli, in some detail. Originally men of the Central Plain, this family had moved to the Jiangyin district of Changzhou prefecture during the Southern Song. To escape the fighting at the end of the Yuan they shifted their abode again, this time to Jixiangli (on the west side of Suzhou city). Although the family quickly acquired a local reputation for its wealth and good deeds, it was only in the

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grandson’s generation that “virtue was increasingly stored up and wealth increased.”37 The fourth generation comprised eight brothers and a sister. Wei, the fourth or fifth eldest, was by turns a student in the Imperial Academy, a magistrate of Daxing district (in modern Hebei province) (rank 7a), and the registrar in the Nanjing Court of the Imperial Clan. Because of his accomplishments, his parents were accorded honorary titles. This was only fitting given that the family’s continuing readiness to make up the difference between his salary and his expenses helped Wei establish a reputation as an upright official.38 Apparently living as a communal family, the other seven devoted themselves to their ancestral calling, interregional trade.39 First in order of birth, Bin (1413–88) journeyed north and south year after year from the time he reached adulthood. Already middle-aged when his younger brother became an official, neither he nor his brothers used the family’s new status as pretext to cease their travels on land and by water. Zhu Yunming (1461–1527; DMB) records that Bin and his brothers were cordial to friends and maintained harmony among themselves. The numerous sons and nephews waited on their uncles left and right; things were very orderly and tranquil. Bin was sincere, honest, and genial: “In the markets and villages all loved and revered him. . . . From the countryside and [other] states the Cultured Gentlemen [shidafu] all held him in high regard.”40 His wife, Ms. Yuan, is said to have been very worthy, but she did not bear him a son. Bin adopted a son of his wife’s younger brother, Gui, but as the eldest son he needed an heir who was also a blood relation. Accordingly, he established the son of his younger brother Han, Xi, as his successor. The second son, Jin (1414–81), also transported goods to distant places, venturing as far as the capital. Ultimately he assumed responsibility for managing the family business operations in Suzhou. He recognized the need for fairness and honesty in his dealings. His force of character was such that others took what he said on faith and would resolve their quarrels at a word from him. By this time the family had increased in wealth and size: Jin “managed family administration, overseeing the crowd and allocating duties, elevating the rites and regulating wealth. He controlled all troublesome affairs. It was almost like [being in charge of] a public office.”41 At this time most of those sent out by the family were bondservants (tongnu); by coordinating their efforts in various places the family obtained two- to fivefold returns. Jin not only saw to the household’s daily necessities and ceremonial expenses; in addition, in recognition of his ability, the authorities gave him a post in the “commoners’ association.”42

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In spite of all this, Jin continued to exercise restraint in his expenditures, an example that caused his sons and nephews as well as his brothers to hold pride and extravagance in check. The author of his funerary inscription, Wu Kuan (1436–1504; DMB)—himself the offspring of a family engaged in the textile business—lamented that the state did not make full use of so able a man. After citing references to commerce in the classics and histories, he wrote: “As for the state’s wealth and taxes, obtaining [good] men and [sound] principles are not enough of themselves. Employ [great merchants like Tang Jin] and it will yield the expected result. Moreover officials and commoners will know that the rites are purified and customs improved.” Wu may well have had his own ancestors as well as Tang Jin in mind when he wrote: “He devoted himself to making his family [jia] prosperous in order to hand it down to his sons and grandsons. What did he take to be useful? Only his righteousness [or integrity: yi]. What did he take to be fundamental? Only his human-heartedness [or benevolence: ren].”43 The youngest of the six sons born to Shan and Ms. Yang, Han (1428–1519), also devoted himself to interregional trade.44 He often went as far as Beijing. There he made the acquaintance of dukes, nobles, and high officials. When in Suzhou, he associated with the elders of the community. The “cultured gentlemen” (shidafu) were pleased to regard him as a friend. His abilities as manager were recognized even within the family, his brothers consulting him on difficult matters. Indeed the family relied on him to handle the complex details administering such a household entailed.45 Once (before 1492) the prefecture had experienced dearth several years in a row. Responding to official exhortations for the haves to share with the have-nots, Han provided grain to the needy by the hu (a half-picul measure).46 As a result, he was accorded the prestige title “gentleman for managing affairs” (rank 7a). This made him one of the prefecture’s grandees (dafu). Whenever officials sought to organize relief for the destitute, the local people (mindful that relief funds were often embezzled) demanded that Han be put in charge. When a “local drinking ceremony” was held by the prefect, Han was an honored guest.47 Even after receiving such marks of esteem, he remained modest and kindly: “In his old age he was increasingly honored, his ambitions increasingly realized, his business affairs increasingly prosperous. His descendants were swiftly registered among those qualified to hold office.”48 In the next generation, the Tang continued to pursue scholarship, commerce, and friendship with the prominent—some lines emphasizing one aspect, some another. As long as Han (who lived to age ninety-one) remained vigorous, a modicum of cohesion was maintained. Yet, by the first decades of

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the sixteenth century, these lines were clearly beginning to follow separate paths. In his youth, Jin’s offspring Xuan (1441–98) engaged in study so that he might requite his parents’ care. But he did not obtain a degree. Told that the Buddhists held that avoiding meat and other forbidden things could result in good fortune, Xuan abstained for three years. Before he reached the age at which men were capped (usually about fifteen), his grandmother fell ill. He cut off a piece of his own flesh—a conspicuously filial if somewhat suspect act— to make medicine. His grandmother did not respond to treatment, and the wound plus his great grief over her loss made Xuan ill. Soon after this his mother died, followed quickly by Jin’s secondary wives. Although he constantly observed mourning for these women, Xuan continued to serve his father. About this time Jin reluctantly concluded that Xuan had neither the luck nor the stamina one needed to obtain an official post or to become a true scholar. But Xuan was very unwilling to give up his ambitions. Although he spent his days managing accounts in the marketplace and learning to attend to “manly affairs” (nanshi), he continued to study in secret. Increasingly lean and exhausted, he contracted a major illness. This brought matters to a head: at twenty-four, his studies ended. When he had recovered (circa 1465), Xuan traveled several thousand li to wed Ms. Zhu, the local woman his grandfather had arranged for him to marry. Ms. Zhu’s father, Zhu Hao (jinshi 1439; Zhu Yunming’s grandfather), was then serving as an official in Shanxi. Zhu Hao’s son had married the daughter of Grand Secretary Xu Youzhen (DMB). In Chinese society, wife-givers were normally of equal or slightly lower status than wife-takers. Although the three families had been neighbors and intimates for a hundred years, this union demonstrates how close the Tang were to the pinnacle of fifteenth-century Suzhou society. Upon his return Xuan carried out his father’s orders. To augment the family wealth, he regularly led groups of traders from Beijing to Suzhou. He acquired a reputation for restraint and deliberation, acting with care in weighty matters and avoiding error. In the capital, he often associated with his officeholding countrymen. They came to know him well. When the emperor decreed that commoners who were literate and virtuous be given rank and employed as deputies to handle miscellaneous affairs, Xuan was made an usher in the Court of State Ceremonial (rank 9b). For more than three years he managed affairs in Jiangnan. Then his health again deteriorated; this time (in 1498) the illness was fatal.49 Meanwhile Bin’s elder—but, from the vantage of the Tang family, less cru-

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cial—adoptive son, Gui (1444–1520), was allowed to devote himself to study. He achieved a reputation as a cultivated man and a talented writer. In the Chenghua reign-period (1465–87), he was recommended for official appointment. Gui also held the post of usher in the Court of State Ceremonial, (rank 9b), but, invoking his (adoptive) parents’ advanced age, he resigned from office and returned home. After their deaths, he scrupulously observed the mourning rituals. Although still a relatively young man when these rituals were completed, he did not seek reappointment—apparently because he had not obtained the advancement he felt his abilities merited. He achieved a local reputation for magnanimity and filiality as well as for learning, however. The author of his funerary inscription, Wang Chong (1494–1533; DMB), saw in his life signs of the cultivation and good breeding that marked the Tangs generation after generation. Gui himself felt that he had “partaken of the virtue of the Tang. Old and on the point of death, he used his dying breath to warn his son and grandson never to forget the virtue of the Tang. Therefore, to the end of his life, his son did not dare to change the Tang surname.”50 Bin’s heir (and Han’s third son), Xi (1459–1524+), was also said to be a man of exceptional natural gifts. As a lad he studied the Book of Changes with a former prefect, resolving to become a jinshi: “From the classics and histories, philosophers and works of belles lettres down to legends, prognostications, and techniques there was nothing into which Xi did not inquire and then expound.”51 His learning extended to the pharmacopoeia and divination as well as the theories of Buddhists and Daoists. Contemporaries particularly admired his skill as a poet. But his accomplishments were not purely intellectual: he treated his adoptive parents as respectfully as he did his birth parents, observing the three years’ mourning for both, and served his biological mother, Concubine Chen, according to the rites. Zhu Yunming noted that the normal course for those who had amassed great wealth was to purchase rank and surround themselves with wives and concubines. Yet, in spite of the family’s affluence, Xi lived frugally. He was pleasant and harmonious with his brothers, being neither grasping nor stubborn. When Bin died (1488), the twenty-nine-year-old Xi was “eldest son by the legal wife of the great Tang clan:” “This generation numbered a hundred people; the junior generation approached a thousand.”52 The responsibility of managing this large group being suddenly thrust upon him, Xi put aside his studies and became a traveling merchant. He traveled extensively in the northeast quadrant of the empire, reaching the northern capital. Outwardly a man of commerce, he continued to associate with elders and scholars, storing up everything he observed or experienced. Finally,

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he returned to Wu, constructing a vegetable garden and laying out a park, setting out plants and fruit trees. He renounced trade, bought a house at the “gate of heaven” [Changhe] city gate, and collected his rent and interest [chanxi]. Calculating the number of mouths, they ate. Thus the family’s [jia] affairs were rather prosperous. Xi was then like a vessel at anchor. He resided virtuously in the countryside and dwelt with his family. He was on friendly terms with his relatives and neighbors, took pleasure in guests, resolved difficulties, and attended to [material] deficiencies.53

When disputes arose among his kinsmen, it was Xi who mediated. He also took an interest in the education of the younger generation, collecting books and engaging teachers. And he was no less highly regarded outside the family. When he constructed his own tomb, he persuaded three upper-degree-holders— including his longtime friend Zhu Yunming (with whom “in flower season and on moonlit nights, taking a jug and carrying a lute, he went to and fro, feasting and singing in order to amuse themselves”)—to compose honorific inscriptions.54 Xi’s only son,55 Chou, became an Imperial Academy student. The eldest daughter’s husband resided with his wife’s family. (Whether this arrangement enabled Xi to semi-retire and Chou to pursue his studies while the son-in-law managed the business, or was the result of more personal whims, is unclear.) Like commerce, this form of uxorilocal marriage does not seem to have carried much social taint in early sixteenth-century Suzhou. Xi’s younger daughters married well: one to an office attendant in the Court of Imperial Entertainment (rank 8b) and the other to the son of Lu Shangde, vice director of a bureau in the Ministry of Rites (rank 5b). The latter was himself a prefectural student. Xi’s biological younger brother, Liu (1461–1529), also devoted himself to the Book of Changes in his youth. He “ranked high among the students,” often receiving the praise of Xu Youzhen (1407–72; DMB) and Zhu Hao. Yet Liu was ashamed at merely humming over the sounds without penetrating their meaning. He abandoned his studies and went out, journeying through northeastern China to “take a sweeping look” (zongguan). In the imperial capital, one of his relatives asked him, “How are we Tang able to labor earnestly as scholars, docilely bowing the head as we sit in the district school and long for a degree?”56 Citing precedent, they made Liu an usher in the Court of State Ceremonial (rank 9b). There he daily associated with princes, nobles, and great men, his advice being relied on to resolve difficult matters.

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Assessing Resources The sources leave little doubt that, although the successful were predominantly from wealthy backgrounds, the system remained open to individuals of ability. The challenge was less to enter the elite as an individual than to ensconce one’s family in its ranks. All three of the families whose lives I have sketched herein had to confront, and in some sense succeeded in confronting, that challenge. How did they do this? Their official degrees and distinctions were of limited help. In Ming, these were individual rather than family achievements. Restriction of the protection privilege in scope and in frequency made such achievements more ephemeral than they had been in other eras. The sources are replete with terms for the elite: mingmen, mingzu, daxing, fushi, shijia, jushi, wenjia, zhuxing, rongshi, mingjia, jiazu, yiying zhi zu, and jianshen, among others.57 The length, variety, and ad hoc nature of this list suggest that the terms evoke a status as ill-defined as it was ardently desired. The classification of families reflected the accomplishments of the individuals belonging to it more than the classification of individuals reflected the status of the families from which they sprang. Under such a dispensation, a place in the elite could hardly be regarded as an innate quality of particular lines of descent. Still, this was certainly not an unstratified society. Nor is there much evidence that contemporaries had difficulty deciding who belonged where. Being a “man among men” involved sharing an understanding of social distinctions with one’s fellows. An aristocrat may claim membership in the elite independent of others’ opinions of his merit as an individual. In Ming China, patents of nobility were few and far between. Membership in the elite depended on intersubjective confirmation of that status by one’s peers. Although titles in the gift of the state were welcome, the Suzhou elite was in fact a moral and cultural community that maintained a fair degree of autonomy. In granting distinctions the polity recognized qualities also valued by the local elite, yet Suzhou natives frequently avoided or cut short official careers. Their doing so suggests that recognition of their qualities did not depend on imperial imprimatur. Family background was important, yet few seem to have attempted to embellish their pedigrees.58 In part, this no doubt reflects the fact that truly old Suzhou families were so old that they would have shared the distinction with thousands of their contemporaries.59 In part, it may reflect local awareness that everyone who was anyone had been carted off to a distant corner of the empire in early Ming, leaving only cadet branches behind. To a surprising degree, this was, however, a community of immigrants—a community in which one could

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(or could more safely) claim descent from illustrious families from every corner of the empire.60 The number who made relatively modest claims for their forebears gives one confidence in one’s sources—and makes one confident that such claims played a minor role in contemporary evaluations of status. The case studies presented above and other evidence suggest that five resources were critical to elite standing in Ming Suzhou: family, wealth, virtue, degree or position, and culture. 1. Family Although more distant connections might be invoked in cases of extreme need or obvious mutual advantage, for most practical (and evaluative) purposes, family meant those with whom one shared—or at one time had shared—a household. One’s connections by marriage were also significant, far more so than agnates on the outer fringes of one’s officially defined mourning group. As long as the father lived, the sons remained part of his household—juridically if not always physically. After division of an inheritance, the physical distance separating newly independent households was not likely to be great: often the cookstove was literally divided, brothers remaining near-neighbors even if they did not share the same courtyard. When a common descent group was organized, it might simply institutionalize such arrangements. Thus, when Chen Yi gathered his kinsmen, he limited his attention to his brothers and their descendants. That he had cousins, their descent not merely demonstrable but demonstrated in the newly compiled genealogy, living in the same quarter of the city (one of them also a degree-holder) did not mean that he felt compelled to include them.61 The practical advantages of belonging to such a group were in any case limited.62 There were those who aided their kinsmen as though they were members of the immediate family, even in the absence of an organized descent group.63 This was a meritorious act worthy of praise. It was also clearly above and beyond what one was obliged to do. Information about cooperation among branches is surprisingly difficult to obtain. Funerary inscriptions emphasize the patriline, often to the exclusion of more practical realities. Harmonious cooperation among brothers is frequently mentioned, but the extent to which this involved making the best of a difficult situation remains vague.64 Long-distance trade required the prolonged absence of many members; this undoubtedly kept day-to-day frictions among senior males to a minimum in such families.65 Instances of uncles coming to the aid of their orphaned nephews are elsewhere either mentioned in passing or actively suppressed.66

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Adoption provides the most objective evidence of cooperation between lines. It is, however, an extraordinary act and demands a symmetry of need and ability to satisfy that need. Although the adopted child was usually transferred between closely related branches, the timing of adoptions is usually unclear, making it difficult to determine if this was the fruit of brotherly cooperation or the result of obedience to a still-vigorous patriarch.67 Adoption did not in any case sever the child’s ties to his birth parents; close cooperation between branches may thus have been more effect than cause of the exchange. One instance in which cooperation was certainly not the result of patriarchal coercion is provided by the Lu of Hancun: the natural and adoptive fathers had a common great-grandfather a dozen generations back.68 More immediate candidates having been available, the adoption likely reflected friendship and residential proximity rather than the kinship system. It is in any case wildly atypical. Adoption could occur across surnames. The adoptee in such cases was often recruited from the wife’s natal family. Generations later, descendants of the adopted line might rebel and resume their patrilineal surname.69 Perhaps for this reason, some families regarded such children as less than satisfactory, at least for ritual purposes.70 Uxorilocal marriages were also common in this patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal society.71 Such marriages seldom involved a change of surname, although the children of those unions were not necessarily included in the husband’s genealogy. Eminently respectable families resorted to the practice, for it was often necessary to bring in a son-in-law to see a household through a period during which it lacked adult male labor power. References to giving husbands are more common than those to taking them, perhaps because families were reluctant to admit that links in their line of descent had been provided by males of another surname. In at least one instance, the practice afforded a family of doctors access to a separate tradition of pediatrics.72 The willingness of Suzhou families both to enter into and to record such arrangements suggests that they recognized the value of bonds created by marriage as well as those created by descent.73 For important ritual purposes—such as composing a funerary inscription or obtaining one from a third party— appeal was often made to one’s in-laws, not to one’s agnates.74 Marriage alliances gave local society a modicum of stability. Marriages were of course arranged, and it is claimed that parents took great care in choosing a daughter’s husband, a proposition that flattered both families.75 One might reasonably assume that the sources would provide data on the patrilines from which a household recruited its wives and mothers. In practice,

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they do not always do so.76 The most satisfactory evidence of elite endogamy is the information on daughters’ husbands provided in funerary inscriptions. Although there were exceptions (the author simply writing “Liu So-and-so” or “Wang Such-and-such”),77 these texts routinely provide full names and indications of status. The results far exceed a blindfold pairing. Members of the scholar-official elite only constituted half of 1 percent of the area’s adult male population, yet 24 percent of Chen daughters married men with such standing.78 This figure must be a significant understatement, though, because accounts reflect the husband’s status at the moment the document was penned, not his later accomplishments. They refer to members of a younger generation, in extreme (but not infrequent) cases to those who were betrothed but not yet married. In addition, if indications of the status of the deceased’s father-in-law might be omitted, it is entirely conceivable that information concerning his son-in-law might be as well. Upper-degree-holders from Wu and Changzhou or those who later achieved high rank can often be identified, but many of the men in question held lower degrees or miscellaneous distinctions. The Chens intermarried with prominent local families who did not hold office or obtain degrees, as well as with those who did.79 Yet, even in the most successful kinship groups, a majority of adult males could not claim official distinctions in their own right. Given that each titled personage had a finite number of close relatives, the exclusion of such marriages sacrifices social reality to spurious statistical rigor.80 Marriages were contracted between households, not descent groups. Being the distant relative of an illustrious scholar or high official was doubtless cause for pride, but in the absence of cohesive lineage organization, such connections were of little practical import.81 Marriages were contracted on the basis of the conditions of the households at the moment of betrothal. A poor but earnest scholar, his threadbare garb contrasting poignantly with the finery of his classmates, might ultimately triumph.82 But if he did not do so quickly, his chances of marrying a daughter of the elite were limited. Such men were not only denied social connections that were useful in the short term but were also deprived of an important means of consolidating their position. Even when they were incapable of tutoring their offspring in the classics and poetry, mothers of good family played a vital role in socializing the next generation in the folkways of the elite.83 Demography and the inheritance system also posed serious challenges. All societies have developed mechanisms to provide members of the next generation with means to make their way in the world.84 Given male life expectancy

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at age twenty of an additional 24.82 years, two men out of three would produce only one heir or none at all.85 Life expectancy among the elite, in China as in Europe, was however much greater than that of the general population.86 For those who reached adulthood, marriage was virtually universal, males in need of an heir had access to concubines and plural marriage, and adoptions were common. Although genealogies suggest an average of 1.296 sons per potential father, more than one-third produced two or more heirs.87 Unless the family controlled truly massive estates, the alternatives to downward mobility were a reorientation toward the upper tier or the ruthless exploitation of (much reduced) assets.88 What then of more extended types of kinship organization? As the case of the Chen of Iron Bottle Lane make clear, some families did attempt to “gather together as one family,” compiling a genealogy and maintaining—or attempting to maintain—some semblance of a common ritual life. At least in Suzhou, this seems to have been something one did after a family member achieved conspicuous success as a scholar-official. It was a way of both perpetuating that tradition and limiting it to a narrowly defined group of agnates.89 Corporate property was usually limited to a modest shrine and an (often badly kept) ancestral graveyard.90 This was not a society in which one needed such an organization simply to be reminded of one’s relatives. The practical benefits of belonging to such a group thus seem to have been limited—witness Chen Meng’s plight—and their ability to persist as functioning institutions over time (particularly in a place like Suzhou) problematic.91 We should probably see them as the work of activists drawn from the small number of patrilines producing degree-holders, a very weak form of extended kinship organization that was nonetheless characteristic of prosperous times and prospering places.92 Creating, much less maintaining, cohesive lineages in Ming Suzhou would have been an even more formidable task and was rarely undertaken. Anthropologists define the lineage as a “corporate group which celebrates ritual unity and is based on demonstrated descent from a common ancestor.”93 Some form of joint property is basic to lineage incorporation and, if the benefits of membership in such a corporation are not to be subdivided into nothingness, such estates must be periodically augmented. Although the prototypical “charitable estate” (yizhuang) was a Suzhou institution, it did not enjoy robust good health in these centuries.94 There were few local attempts to emulate the Fan charitable estate in Ming. Large amounts of wealth had to be accumulated rapidly, then invested with the blessing of local authorities, were such projects to succeed.95 It is possible that there was more such activity than the available record suggests. Yet funerary inscriptions constantly invoke the fami-

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ly virtues. Lineage activism was an expression, at once conspicuous, burdensome, and meritorious, of brotherliness and filiality. That writer after writer fails to mention such activity suggests that it rarely occurred. If we are correct in seeing strong lineage organization as an extreme response to harsh or deteriorating conditions,96 this is all the less surprising. 2. Wealth The region was as famous for its extravagance as for its erudition. Information on family finances is limited. Clearly, however, the notion of elite households unable to support themselves on income from a thousand mu did not strike contemporaries as bizarre.97 Depending on the assumptions one makes (regarding quality of land, method of exploitation, effective tax rate, and the like), the owner’s share of such an estate would have supported 200–250 people. Not all of these would have been members of the household: they would have included servants and purveyors of luxury goods, teachers, and guests as well. Chen Daofu, the painter son of the Chen of rural Changzhou, was clearly thought to face difficulties when his estates dwindled to “a few hundred mu of river field.”98 However affluent they might seem to the peasantry, a family with twenty mu of vegetable land, its members forced to work in the fields themselves, were clearly impoverished by elite standards.99 That even they had servants is less curious when one imagines the daily realities of life in the fifteenth century—hewers of wood and drawers of water were literally necessities of daily life. To the degree that such families depended on land (rather than on control of a local market or money-lending), their material basis was under constant threat. Land was expensive—even those with connections had to pay two ounces of silver per mu in 1630100—and the real estate market, with its right of preemption and preference for mortgage pawn over outright alienation of title, an obstacle to rapid accumulation. The tax burden—in the case of land that was rented out, a charge against landlord profits—made such estates less attractive than the available alternatives.101 Although there was still land to be reclaimed and improved, opportunities to do so must have been comparatively rare and costly in an area so long and so densely settled.102 Members of a society well schooled in privation, the elite did not romanticize poverty. If one needed to support one’s parents, or found it necessary to establish one’s patriline, abandoning study for trade was both natural and morally correct:103 as the Family Register of the Suzhou City Chens (Sucheng Chenshi jiapu) noted, “There are worse things than becoming a resident merchant in Changsha.”104 Chen Ji’s son Kuan (d. 1472), a noted teacher (his pupils

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included the young Shen Zhou), once remarked that “impoverished scholars are often enriched by engaging in commerce. Then, relying on the modest selfrespect thus attained, they do not need to seek the gates of the wealthy or look for grain by the pint and peck.”105 There were few efforts to conceal family involvement with trade. Yet once one had accumulated enough to live comfortably, retiring from such activities merited praise.106 And, whatever the source of one’s wealth, acts of charity—rent reductions, low interest loans, food for the hungry, coffins for the needy, subsidies for public construction projects—made its accumulation less awkward, at least in the view of those who wrote funerary inscriptions.107 In all, our sampling technique provides evidence on seven patrilines active in this period. In four of these, there are clear traces of a symbiotic relationship between the study and the marketplace. In each instance, elders (and it was they who made these crucial decisions) allocated the scarcest of their resources—their sons—in one sector or another as family need and individual abilities might dictate. Were these (relatively obscure) men typical of their time and place? It would seem so. Hamashima has turned up several additional examples.108 When the entries for Suzhou men in the Dictionary of Ming Biography—a reference that deals only with the political and cultural elite—are arranged by date of birth, twelve reached forty between 1465 and 1510 (that is, they were born between 1425 and 1470). Of these, Huai En (who became a eunuch) was actually from Shandong; Xu Lin was born and raised in Nanjing. Of the “genuine” Suzhou men, Zhu Cunli, Shen Zhou, and Du Mu appear to have come from the landed rural elite. Wen Zhengming was the offspring of a military officer household; like Zhu Yunming, he was the direct descendant of a jinshi. Although Shen Zhou clearly painted to order and Zhu Yunming’s family was linked by marriage to their neighbor-merchants the Tang (and the Xu), the backgrounds that count most in a patrilineal society were conventional enough. Wu Kuan’s family is a more ambiguous case; although landowners, they were also engaged in the textile business. Tang Yin’s father was a restaurateur. Although, according to the account in the Dictionary of Ming Biography, Wang Ao’s father was (literally) plucked from the paddy fields and enrolled in the district school, his great uncle and his father’s elder brother were prosperous merchants.109 His second wife, Ms. Zhang, gave birth to Ao’s eldest son, Yanzhe, whose choice of commerce rather then scholarship as a career thus reflected his paternal as well as his maternal background. Yang Xunji’s forebears (and descendants) were men of the marketplace. Zhou Chen was a “professional” painter whose origins are unclear.110

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Thus the pattern we see in our sample was not a mere fluke—it can be found in the activities of the most prominent households of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Suzhou. Not only did well-to-do merchants purchase offices and prepare their brighter sons for the exams; they also associated with the most illustrious scholars, officials, poets, and artists of their day. They intermarried with their families. Perhaps even more significant, the sons of scholar-officials went into trade. The marketplace and the study were thus not separate (and opposed) spheres; they formed part of a common local culture. 3. Virtue If this were true, did Suzhou represent a counterculture? After all, one of the most famous passages in the classics is the opening section of Mencius, in which the hapless King Hui of Liang dared suggest that the wandering scholar must have “something to profit my state”; Mencius roundly denounced him for his concern with such petty matters rather than with the truly important things, benevolence (or human-heartedness: ren) and righteousness (or integrity: yi). Ever after, it was possible to argue that “profit”—and those who sought it—was irreconcilable with virtue. Mencius only achieved his unchallenged position as “second sage” thanks to the Neo-Confucian (Daoxue) movement, an orthodoxy Suzhou men resisted in favor of a broader conception of “this culture of ours.” From quite early in the Ming, some of Suzhou’s most illustrious scholar-officials were quite willing to marshal evidence and arguments in defense of commerce. Consider the funerary inscription the Wu district scholar Shi Pan (1417–40; primatus in the 1439 jinshi examination) wrote for Wang Ao’s great uncle, the Dongting merchant Wang Weizhen. Explicitly addressing the scholar’s conventional contempt for money- making, Shi recalled that Guan Zi, Confucius’s disciple Zigong (Duanmu Si), and the Zhou Shu stressed the importance of economics. Arguing that understanding money and trade were essential tasks of the ruler, he asked rhetorically: “Now if we employ Wang’s methods and apply them at the household level, then the household will enjoy abundance; if we employ them in the state, how will it not have the same result?” Implicitly invoking the great Han historian Sima Qian’s sympathetic account of Spring and Autumn and Warring States merchants, he argued that such achievements were no less worth recording if they happened in one’s own time.111 Shi was hardly an unbiased commentator: his own father and nephew were themselves interregional merchants of note.112 Yet, given the social realities we have described, this scarcely made him unique. Wu Kuan was no less ready to deploy antiquarian erudition and utilitarian arguments in defense of com-

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merce. He was, however, willing and able to go much further. Recall his peroration for lifelong interregional merchant Tang Jin: “What did he take to be useful? Only his righteousness [or integrity: yi]. What did he take to be fundamental? Only his human-heartedness [or benevolence: ren].” That those were precisely the virtues Mencius contrasts with profit could hardly have been lost on Wu—primatus in the 1472 examination, Hanlin compiler, Left Chief Secretary of the Hongzhi emperor, Minister of Rites (rank 2a), and Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent (rank 1b). As the descendant, brother, in-law,113 and associate of merchants, Wu would no doubt have trouble with the notion that, when he invoked the “same” cardinal virtues in reference to merchants, he implied not identity but something different yet (not quite?) equal.114 At the highest levels of fifteenth-century Suzhou society, “they” were “us.” If Suzhou’s scholar-official elite were not to define a separate morality for merchants (a maneuver at odds with the moral universalism of the classical tradition), the righteousness and benevolence of their merchant relatives and friends must be the same righteousness and benevolence that Ming scholar-officials—and Confucius, Mencius, and the Duke of Zhou—sought to embody. One can of course present particular individuals as moral paragons without implying that everyone who follows the same profession is equally honorable. Social biographies show that, in the eyes of Suzhou’s cultural elite, it was possible for merchants to embody the cardinal virtues of civilization. They never leaped to the conclusion that merchants necessarily embodied virtue—but then, no one seems to have argued that fathers, scholars, officials, or landholders necessarily did so either. In his biography of Chen Mengshan, Wu emphasizes his industry, his honesty, his generosity, his disinterestedness—all things that have been singled out as evidence of unease with commerce.115 Yet Mengshan was a farmer, not a merchant. Similarly, Chen Yao’s (d. 1519) efforts to expand the family holdings clearly made Wen Zhengming uncomfortable. Most of this activity must, however, have occurred while Yao’s father, Chen Qiong (d. 1509), was serving as a high official. The acquisition of shops apart, his activities had little to do with trade, and Chen Yao was never a merchant. It was not commerce but the successful if unscrupulous exploitation of his father’s position that Wen found awkward. Thus acquisition of wealth troubled the writers of social biographies, including Wu Kuan. But acquiring that wealth in the marketplace was not seen as particularly problematic. It is possible to accept the legitimacy of profit and interest in principle yet condemn excessive gain as antisocial and exploitive; many societies have done so (including our own). That “unlimited profit taking was still unacceptable within this Confucian merchant ideology” is not

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especially unusual.116 It is merely inconsistent with a transition from merchant to capitalist. The particular ways in which universal values found expression were of course contingent on the circumstances in which one found oneself. The ways merchants might incarnate benevolence and righteousness in their public life differed from those open to scholars and officials. The latter could devote themselves more wholeheartedly to self-cultivation and embody the cardinal virtues more publicly. In office, the scholar-official had greater scope to exert a civilizing influence on others. Thus, arguments for the morality of merchants never implied that all callings were equally conducive to moral cultivation or equally useful to society. Its defenders could argue that commerce was indispensable to any complex society and that the classical texts had recognized this fact. It did not follow that one career was as good as another. The legitimacy of commerce thus constituted neither an alternative to the existing social hierarchy nor a fundamental challenge to its values. Indeed, if merchants were to be portrayed as good and valuable, they had to personify virtues everyone recognized as such. (The alternative would be to persuade others that those virtues were incomplete, misunderstood, or erroneous; this was clearly a much taller order.) Hence the virtues found in the social biographies of merchants were also found in those of scholars, officials, and landowners. All of them shared an emphasis on family life. Although they did so in a much less sophisticated manner, social biographies shared Wang Yangming’s (DMB) assumption that it was proper performance of one’s roles in the family that enabled one to embody the cardinal virtues.117 The ability to act properly, inside the family and out, both explained and justified a family’s position in society.118 Filiality and brotherliness usually received the most emphasis. The rhetorical demands of the occasion and the variety of human experience could produce some rather odd results—an only child in a nuclear household being praised for brotherliness, for example.119 Yet funerary inscriptions were not composed merely to flatter the deceased; they were meant to perpetuate his virtues (actual or imputed) in subsequent generations of his descendants. Their ultimate aim was to rationalize and legitimate the social order. Stated in this way, these attempts to embody the social order can all seem very safe and sanitized. The social order that had arisen in Suzhou was, however, exceptionally urban, exceptionally commercialized, exceptionally tolerant of merchants, markets, and luxury. In most of the empire, trade and traders remained objects of suspicion—a suspicion firmly and plausibly rooted in the classics. Thus the articulation of an alternative view in fifteenth-century

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Suzhou was evidence “not that this concern [over the contradiction between profit and righteousness] had been overturned but that, under the pressure of an expanding market, two ideologies were contending—and together formed the organic culture characteristic of late Ming China.”120 In this sphere as well, Suzhou played the role of hegemon (leader). 4. Degrees, Titles, Offices Reorientation toward the city and toward commerce coincided with changes in the “ladder of success” for those who aspired to scholar-official status.121 The post-1424 consolidation of the bureaucracy’s position in state and society made attaining this status even more desirable than it had been in the first years of the dynasty. Yet, precisely because it had become so central a determinant of access to power and privilege, the success of highly literate scions of Jiangnan typical of the Yongle era became intolerable, for it threatened to exclude those from less-favored regions from the upper reaches of the bureaucracy. Accordingly, quotas imposed in the mid-1420s restricted the proportion of jinshi that could come from any one geographic area.122 Although not as a direct result of this, the region’s success at lower levels also slowed. Wu district, which had produced fifty-eight juren between 1403 and 1424, produced only twenty-five between 1425 and 1449; Changzhou, which had produced forty-eight in the earlier period, produced twenty-eight in the later one.123 Suzhou’s elites had suffered as much for their economic and cultural accomplishments as for their association with the wrong pretender to the Dragon Throne in the late fourteenth century. Under Yongle, they seemed on the verge of accommodation with the new realities. The combination of restrictive quotas and falling success rates, reform policies designed to slow or reverse forces that were concentrating resources in the hands of the well-to-do and the unscrupulous, and natural disaster threatened to dissolve this promising rapprochement. Even after these more restrictive quotas were imposed, Ming Suzhou remained a society awash in titles and distinctions.124 Some of these titles (chaste widows, old men) clearly honored the virtue more than the individual; others (for example, a guest at the community drinking ceremony) were modest tokens of official esteem. Even if these minor distinctions are excluded, many more substantive modes of official preferment remained. Those with special skills might be appointed to minor offices without examination; imperial physician is the most obvious—and locally the most important—example of this. Wealth might bring a prestigious title in a number of ways. In addition to appointment as tax captain (liangzhang), the well-to-do might obtain hon-

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orary official standing by contributing grain in time of famine. Often this took the form of student status in the School for the Sons of the State (Guozi xue, otherwise known as Taixue, Imperial Academy or National University).125 Although eclipsed by the examination system in the course of the fifteenth century, graduates of this institution continued to staff the lower rungs of the bureaucracy. It remained an important channel of entry into the elite throughout the Ming. To these one must of course add the holders of the lowest degree. In theory, these individuals held very little: the status was a provisional one, the holder a student. Like all students, they were subject to periodic examination. Those who failed to do well enough on such tests could be demoted to commoner once again. Local society seems to have been less rigorous, in practice regarding those who passed the prefectural examination as having a permanent status.126 Indeed, the texts suggest that there was considerable blurring of official distinctions at the local level. Upper-degree-holders associated with lowerdegree-holders, both groups associated with holders of honorary or specialized titles, and all three groups with those who by virtue of their wealth, culture, and connections were regarded as peers despite the latter’s commoner status. This region had a keen appetite for degrees and titles; the zeal for office was less conspicuous. One in four upper-degree-holders from Wu and Changzhou never served, and one in five of those who did held only honored but lowly (and unremunerative) educational posts.127 The practical distinction between holders of upper and lower degrees may have become somewhat hazy as a result. Unhappily, the distinction remained firmly fixed in the minds of those who compiled local gazetteers. It is possible to estimate the number of lower degreeholders by using the data contained in genealogies and subdistrict gazetteers.128 The rates vary widely, but almost all sources129 suggest a ratio more modest than that which obtained in the (relatively restrictive) early nineteenth century.130 The available sources may well understate the numbers, genealogies omitting branches that failed to produce upper-degree-holders, subdistrict gazetteers reconstituting their rosters from literary sources. If we assume that there were four recipients of the lower degree alone for every resident of Wu and Changzhou who went on to greater things, there would have been a dynastic complement of 7,695 degree-holders.131 The average recipient of an upper degree passed the provincial examination or became a tribute student (gongsheng) at the age of 30.9; he died at the age of 65.7.132 The age at which the lowest degree was obtained varied widely;133 it is here arbitrarily put at 20. Given such an assumption, degree-holders would

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have contributed 0.33 percent of the person-years lived by adult males in Ming Suzhou. One in 590 adult males, or one in every 2,250 inhabitants, would have held a degree by virtue of their prowess in the examination halls.134 Had they been evenly distributed in time and space—which they of course were not— each of the 1,252 hundreds or wards (li/tu ) into which Wu and Changzhou were divided (units approximately half a square mile in size) would have had a degree-holder throughout the Ming period.135 Using the early nineteenth-century ratio of eight to one, and making generous allowance for miscellaneous distinctions, the titled elite could scarcely have accounted for more than one in every two hundred males. 5. Culture In an area renowned for cultural sophistication as well as examination success, we might assume that hyperliteracy and possession of an upper degree were required to stake claim to elite standing. (The scholar-bureaucrat’s contempt for “illiterate” eunuchs was based on the latter’s need to look up classical quotations: an educated man could not only read the canonical works, he had memorized them.)136 The ability to hold one’s own in the poetry-writing parties that bulked so large in elite social life was unquestionably an asset yet, in practice, a less rigorous standard seems to have been applied. At a minimum, “culture” involved acquaintance with—and commitment to—the classical tradition. Given the role the examination system played in defining a standard curriculum, and the continuing success of Suzhou men in the examination halls, one might assume that this local culture simply mirrored state-mandated orthodoxy. The reality was more complicated. By Ming times, China’s high culture comprised a huge and a diverse corpus of texts. Paper, printing, local traditions of education, and the peculiarly transtemporal nature of literary Chinese made the whole of this heritage immediately available to Suzhou’s elites. Tang Xi’s broad interests were not exceptional; one finds a similarly eclectic bent in Zhu Yunming and Tang Yin.137 Yet, however catholic their sympathies, some parts of this vast corpus received more emphasis than others; some predecessors were judged more worthy of emulation than their peers. The choices made by Suzhou’s leading figures (late Tang poets like Bai Juyi, Northern Song writers and painters, Yuan literati) coincided with key moments in Suzhou’s own past. Suzhou scholars, artists, and writers remained faithful to these even when they became unfashionable elsewhere.138 This suggests that Wu school culture was independent of and different from (if not necessarily opposed to) state-sponsored orthodoxy. This local tradition was shared by those who pursued careers

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as scholar-officials and by those who embodied the amateur ideal. Thus scholarship, aesthetics, and eclecticism combined to give this area a distinct intellectual cast. There has been a tendency to belittle Ming Suzhou’s intellectual elite. Suzhou men may have been clever, even erudite, but (in the eyes of their contemporaries and of many modern scholars) they were not quite serious. In spite of all those examination degrees, Suzhou men were for the most part uninvolved in the lively philosophical debates of the era.139 Suzhou was, to be sure, the home of major artists—the “Wu school” of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—and famous writers. Yet their achievements have often been discussed in terms of formalism, antiquarianism, and even escapism. Common themes in Wu school painting appear to bear this out: gentleman-scholars in idealized gardens, formal partings at the shore. The technique of the first master of the school, Shen Zhou, became more blunt, his approach more realistic during his long career. His successors—above all the most influential of them, Wen Zhengming—were practitioners of art-historical art, an elaborate game from which allusions, brushwork, formalism, and elliptical statements excluded the uninitiated. To those outside the group, members of the Wu school could seem more interested in solving elaborate formal problems of composition than in the substance of what they painted, more prone to depict idealized grottos or gardens than the turbulent realities many of them experienced firsthand.140 Still, Suzhou’s leading figures were articulate and extremely well educated men. They were active participants in a community buffeted by population growth, economic change, and political stress. Many were conspicuously successful veterans of the fiercely competitive examination hell. This was possible only because, in its fashion, Suzhou had remained a center of orthodox learning,141 its scholarly traditions carefully preserved in the turbulent and difficult years of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. But Suzhou’s orthodoxy owed more to the intellectual style of the early Song than it did to the Neo-Confucianism of Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi. Suzhou figures had refused to entirely forsake “the literary-historical perspective of the past for an ethicalphilosophical perspective.”141 Thus, it has proved easier to trace Zhu Yunming’s connections with pre-Song and Song thinkers than to situate his thought in the major debates of his own day.142 The Classics, Tang poetry, the fashionable prose models of the time, and the artistic traditions of Yuan and (later) the Northern Song Academy provided all educated men—and the much smaller number of educated women—with a common prism, a common vocabulary, a shared interpretive framework. Heirs

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to the Confucian revivalism of Fan Zhongyan rather than Zhu Xi, Suzhou writers and artists regarded Buddhist, Daoist, and other traditions as valued supplements to this learning, not as rival systems to be extirpated and denounced.144 Each represented partial and individually inadequate representations of a common truth. Grasping this truth was far more important than worrying about the sectarian language in which that truth was couched. Ming Suzhou’s culture has been described as humanistic. Taken literally, there is much to be said for this. But like that of their peers in Renaissance Italy, Suzhou’s humanism was profoundly elitist, not populist. In both cases, we find not an unqualified embrace of man in all his imperfect manifestations but a confident belief that superior men can and must embody the cultural achievements of the past in the present to be truly human. Comparing Zhu Yunming’s vision of human nature with that of his contemporary, the great NeoConfucian philosopher Wang Yangming (1472–1529), Christian Murck has written: Zhu Yunming’s theory of human nature completely lacks [the] element of moral dynamism [found in Wang’s thought], and rather than affirming the moral autonomy of the individual Zhu directs our attention to the tradition of Confucian learning. In the end, he deals with the concept of human nature not as one personally committed to a process of self-cultivation, but as a highly cultivated member of the cultural and social elite, confident of his own erudite command of the literature and impatient with those who insist on adding their own ideas to those of Confucius. Where Wang’s teachings encourage moral and social mobility, and are potentially disruptive in their impact, Zhu Yunming provides a justification for the existing social hierarchy.145

Although attempts to portray Suzhou’s leading thinkers as proponents of an iconoclastic “spirit of resistance” cannot be sustained,146 the iconoclasm was real. Zhu Yunming’s critique of Mencius, explicitly rejecting the view that human nature is inherently good, was unusual enough to shock his friends.147 But there were ample grounds for the orthodox to regard many Suzhou figures as men mired in the heterodox and the unconventional, not just the passé. To persist, a tradition must be reappropriated anew by each succeeding generation. This means both that each generation must internalize the classical heritage and that that heritage must be reinterpreted to address new concerns generated by new situations. Ming Chinese both could and did distinguish sharply between the copy and the re-creation, the forgery of an old master and the modern work reincarnating antiquity’s spirit while remaining unmistakably the fruit of its own time. It was the latter, not the former, that was admired.148 Thus art, poetry, and scholarship were not just accomplishments (although they were at their best these as well). They were the ways in which civilization continually reenacted itself. Painting a painting, writing a poem, or

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composing a commentary on the classics—performance—was a way of simultaneously achieving self-transcendence and embodying civilization. Shen Zhou’s 1492 Night Vigil inscription, broadly Confucian as its rhetoric is, can be understood as an almost mystical interpretation of the artistic process.149 But cultural activities operated simultaneously on several levels. Painting, poetry, calligraphy were accomplishments any gentleman was expected to have mastered. Their practice, and the exchange and appreciation of the works produced, helped to form and to reinforce the ties that bound elite society together. These were not mere ornaments: literally as well as symbolically, they embodied the core values of the society. One validated one’s claim to be part of the in-group by demonstrating mastery of its canons of taste and its intellectual commonplaces. Having internalized its canons of taste and its intellectual commonplaces made one both morally and intellectually worthy of inclusion in the elite. For fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Chinese, these were the traces, not of a tradition, but of civilization per se. Those who perpetuated the values of civilization (the “cultured gentlemen” or shi) were uniquely qualified to lead society. Their standards were broadly accepted by elites and would-be elites; hence the eagerness with which those not quite cultivated enough to participate actively sought (through hospitality, patronage, education of their offspring, and outright purchase) to do so indirectly or vicariously. The result was an elite, bound by the circulation of goods, messages, and women, that was neither static nor unstable. There were perennial Truths (contained, above all, in the Classics but also in the subsequent achievements of “This Culture of Ours”) that the true gentleman had internalized and that he made present here and now in his writings, his paintings, his family life, his social intercourse, and his community and public service. As Metzger has suggested, the transformative power of the true sage placed immense pressure on the individual to apprehend and apply this tradition correctly.150 Fan Zhongyan, the most famous thinker associated with Suzhou, had defined the obligations of the true gentleman in the most demanding terms: “Before the rest of the world starts worrying, the scholar worries; after the rest of the world rejoices, he rejoices.”151 Yet even those who could not aspire to sagehood might still become worthies, men able partially to embody and (just as important) to transmit the Truth. Wu Kuan had placed first in the 1472 metropolitan examinations; he is remembered as a distinguished author and calligrapher, a high-ranking official, and a good friend of Shen Zhou. He explained his choice of the pen name (hao) Pao’an by noting that a bottle gourd (pao) was on the one hand a useless

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thing, a mere ornament; on the other, one could use it to cross a river or to perform music (either at court or in the ancestral temple of the imperial family). While recognizing that he was useless, he aspired to usefulness—an ambition he fulfilled both through his long and successful official career and through his many acts of personal generosity.152 Wu Kuan personified Wu school culture at its most appealing by combining genuine erudition and literary grace, selfeffacing modesty and practical benevolence. The area’s artistic achievements were thus grounded in a distinctive, and quite sophisticated, local variant of the Great Tradition.

Conclusion In an ideal world, every member of the elite would have possessed each of the elements described here in full measure. In practice, many participants in this community lacked one or another of them. It was possible for individuals who possessed only two to be recognized as a member of the elite—but only marginally and as an individual. The next generation had to acquire a third attribute, gaining full membership, or the line would sink back into the ranks of the commoners. The third attribute need not be wealth or a degree. Yet the other permutations—the learned and virtuous who were not well connected, the virtuous and well-connected who were not learned, the cultivated and wellconnected who flouted convention—remained unstable in their absence. Possessing only one of these qualities (be it wealth in the case of a merchant or landlord, virtue in the case of a chaste widow) appears never to have been a sufficient basis for inclusion.153 Such a system has obvious affinities to the social network analyzed by Dennerline in nearby Jiading.154 It remained a network, not a patriciate. Individual patrilines sought to achieve (and retain) their place in that network—and not just for the honor of the thing. Recognition as a member of the elite enabled one to forge connections that lent a modicum of stability to a world in flux. These connections could make the impossible possible and the difficult easy. Marriage was critical not just to the biological and social but also to the cultural reproduction of the elite. Even if the mother could not (as she often did) preside over the initial stages of a son’s formal education, an alliance between two elite patrilines ensured that the offspring would from the first be socialized in the ways of the elite. A family without sons could often obtain an heir from affines rather than agnates. Connections were no less crucial in obtaining access to the best teachers, a matter not simply of the quality of instruction but also of the level of patronage the student might receive. When

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in need, the connected could count on friends to secure posts and commissions and to provide introductions and recommendations. Members of the elite attempted to protect the interests of their peers and, in the event of disaster, could play a crucial role in a line’s social survival.155 In contrast, those who passed the examinations too late to arrange an elite marriage for their offspring often failed to establish their line.156 Those whose ties were too vestigial faced lawsuits, corvée burdens, embezzlement by subordinates, and encroachment by neighbors; they might also be unable to obtain desirable daughters- or sons-in-law and (if needed) males to continue their line. Those who failed to stabilize their situation did not, of course, leave traces. We know only of those members of once-flourishing lines who confronted their challenges successfully. They are common enough to make clear the difficulties these lines faced in maintaining primacy, and the high costs of failing to do so.157 Such a thoroughly atomized struggle for social survival precluded collective efforts by these elites to mediate between state and society. On questions of immediate interest or practical concern, consultation with local officials was doubtless more extensive than the stray surviving references would suggest.158 More must have seemed unnecessary. The state had made Suzhou so central to its brittle fiscal system that local officials had little choice but to promote the area’s general interests.159 Given their levels of success in the examinations from the early fifteenth century on, native and nonnative elites were moreover so well connected that officials were well-advised to conciliate their private ones. In these years, there is more evidence of people evading the managerial tasks one associates with the nineteenth-century gentry160 than there is of individuals seeking to take command of them.161 Their failure to become active locally was fully in accord with the wishes of the state.162 As a collectivity, the local elite thus had neither a perceived need for a local program nor the legitimate social space within which to develop one. The dynasty’s willingness to provide titles and office in the empire at large while tolerating pursuit of interests at home must have powerfully reinforced the local elite’s willingness to accept this definition of their role. So must the area’s prosperity, a prosperity that increased the resources available to the elite as it muffled social tensions. If and when the pace of economic expansion flagged and the competition for degrees and titles intensified, would this remain true?

8

“Neglecting the Roots, Pursuing the Branches” Suzhou, 1506–1550

When the great painter Shen Zhou (DMB) died in 1509, many of the most illustrious members of Suzhou’s elite made the forty li (twenty-kilometer) trek to the market town of Xiangcheng, Shen’s ancestral home. There they found themselves in the midst of an ongoing disaster: the region, plagued by a severe drought earlier in the year, was now suffering from flood and famine. Wang Ao (DMB)—at that moment, the most eminent living representative of Suzhou— wrote a poem.1 Tang Yin (DMB), who had long enjoyed Wang’s patronage, contributed a poem of his own. Both were appended to a painting by Tang, Gazing in Sorrow at the Fields. Although the scroll no longer survives, the poems and the colophons do. A recent study of these materials argues that the fundamental purpose of the exercise was “social and political. . . . it was to function as an ‘aid to government.’” Wang’s poem was explicit: he blamed the disaster before him not on the elements or the people but on officials who continued to demand taxes without regard to the people’s sufferings. He wrote “[t]o inform the local authorities.” Shown to and commented on in elite circles, the painting and poems were clearly calculated to reach (and to move) “the only class that counted”—the ruling class.2 Were this an isolated response to a single event, one might well discount it. All societies encounter natural disaster, and in all societies the plight of those affected is heart-rending. Yet Gazing in Sorrow at the Fields was followed seven years later by a far more famous (and blatant) work of social protest, Zhou Chen’s (DMB) Beggars and Street Characters. These were sketches of the “appearances and manners of [those Zhou] often saw in the streets and markets.” They were explicitly painted “as a warning and admonition to the world.” As the colophons appended to the album attest, this work circulated throughout the sixteenth century at the highest levels of Suzhou society.3 Some of these commentaries sought to tie Zhou Chen’s work to specific events of the Zhengde era (1506–21) of Wuzong, particularly to the free rein given eunuchs in that period. Eunuchs had always evoked the animus of Ming

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Suzhou’s scholar-elite.4 When, at the beginning of Wuzong’s reign, the eunuch Liu Jin (d. 1510; DMB) gained power at court, Tang Liu (1461–1529)—a member of the prosperous and well-connected merchant family from Wu discussed above—simply resigned his post as usher in the Court of State Ceremonial (rank 9b). His resignation did not lead to ruin. Living in retirement in Wu, he rarely associated with officials or went near the public court: having been treated as an equal by dukes and high officials, he was disgusted by the servility of cultured gentlemen (shidafu) when they encountered prefects and magistrates. (In Liu’s eyes, they “acted like sedan-chair bearers.”)5 Tang Liu chose an honorable (and relatively safe) method of expressing his distaste: eremitism. The consequences of actively opposing eunuch power could be far more dramatic. While in office, the rectitude of Chen Ji (1465–1539, 1496 js) brought him into conflict with Liu Jin himself. Just as the latter’s power approached its greatest extent, Ji’s mother died. He therefore resigned his office and returned home to observe mourning. Unsatisfied, the eunuchs dispatched a censor to Wu district to gather evidence against Ji and his family. The censor either did (according to Wang Ao) or did not (according to Zhang Bangqi) find rival households eager to provide false and damning evidence. Both Ji and his father, Yu, are said to have maintained their composure throughout, and in 1511—the year after Liu’s execution—Ji was reappointed to office.6 The principled opposition of scholar-officials to members of the Inner Court may have been all the greater once the crucial role eunuchs played in permitting Sons of Heaven to rule as well as reign became clear. Equally objectionable was the role of eunuchs in the economic sphere—a role their competence made less rather than more welcome.7 Eunuchs were not only charged with acquiring tribute goods for their master. From the Yongle era on, they had also been responsible for managing the Imperial Textile Factories at Suzhou.8 Their activities led to frequent protests in the fifteenth century.9 In the early sixteenth century, they made demands of a population that had increasing reason to feel vulnerable. Suzhou’s studies and marketplaces thus shared a common enemy. The latent conflict exploded on the streets of Suzhou in 1521. In the early 1520s the director of the Imperial Silk Factory at Suzhou, Zhang Zhicong, was making unreasonable demands. The Changzhou district magistrate in 1521, Guo Bo, was (according to the district gazetteer) a man dedicated to benevolent administration. He sought to know whatever vexed the commoners, personally registering the powerful clans. Those who entered the yamen did not dare to act in a loose and abandoned way. Invoking regulations, he attempted to restrain the director’s exactions. Eunuch Zhang retaliated by falsely charging Magistrate Guo with hindering operation of the imperial fac-

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tory. The commander of the Changzhou Guard, Xiao Jingtian, tried to provide the eunuch with an escort. Despite this, Director Zhang lost his hat and was pelted with large numbers of flying tiles by city people, forcing him to stumble and bend. Returning to the capital, he brought charges against Guard Commander Xiao as well. Both were tried, flogging being used to elicit evidence. As result, Guo Bo was reduced five grades and Commander Xiao was transferred to another Guard.10

A Society in Crisis? Although these are only a few scattered incidents, they form a striking contrast to the portrait one finds in sources from the Chenghua and Hongzhi eras (1465–1506). Mou Zhao’s Suzhou Prose Poem (Suzhou fu), Wang Qi’s description (based on periodic visits over several decades), Ch’oe Pu’s (DMB) account, and above all perhaps the1506 Suzhou Gazetteer (Gu Su zhi) depict a bustling and brilliantly successful society. The worst these authors could say was that Suzhou people had a taste for extravagance.11 Past scholarship has neglected the fifteenth century while painting a dazzling picture of the sixteenth—occasionally marshalling fifteenth-century evidence to support this view. Yet a careful review of the sources suggests that Suzhou’s problems in the early sixteenth century were not limited to rapacious eunuchs. In six (possibly seven) of the sixteen years of the Zhengde reign-period there are indications of significant natural disasters. In addition, one reads of lawlessness and flight among the people, tax evasion by the elite, corruption among yamen underlings, profiteering by local officials, and arbitrary tax increases by the court.12 Even the gazetteer’s model officials prove to have been less than paragons of virtue: Guo Bo, in the course of his vendetta with the retired official Liu Ying (a 1478 jinshi from Wu), assigned seven members of the Liu family to serve simultaneously as Tax Captains. He bankrupted the family and hounded Liu Ying to his death.13 According to others, Guo also began the practice of auctioning off the post of Tax Captain. Those who paid bribes to secure the post collected at double the official rate and diverted government funds to their own ends. Guo’s superior, Prefect Xu, personally trusted clerks and underlings, enabling them to use their office to extort money from the well-to-do and become rich.14 Troubling as personal vice might be, there was clear evidence that the system itself lacked virtue. While the unscrupulous were willing to bribe local officials to become tax captains, many of those entitled to hold the post wished to avoid it. Toward the end of his life, Shen Zhou commented on remarks attrib-

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uted to a Mr. Sang of Changshu. During the Hongzhi era (1488–1506), the latter had mocked those who sought to accumulate land. Much land led to service as tax captain, and several years’ service as tax captain led to bankruptcy. Shen said that those with two or three hundred mu were being appointed tax captains, delivery agents, or chief grooms at military post stations. Those with about a hundred mu were given miscellaneous other duties. When they could not cover their expenses, they mortgaged their land. If they were unable to fulfill their obligations, they were jailed or exiled. As a result, land that used to be worth several ounces of silver per mu would command only two or three ounces; even then, men were unwilling to buy. No one was willing to accept low or marshy land, at any price. The demands of the court constantly rose; all had to be obtained from the common people. It had reached the point that the system was destroying lives and bankrupting families.15 The rich were divesting themselves of land, moving to the cities, concealing their ownership of land (by dividing their holdings, consigning them to others, or distorting the land registers), or conspiring with clerks to evade the labor service that came with it. Wu Yan (1476–1524; 1508 js from Wujiang) claimed that the clerks misallocated burdens so flagrantly that the wealthy were never called and the poor served constantly. These practices were leading to conflict in the rural villages.16 The 1521 revision of the schedule of exemptions for officials, for the first time in Ming permitting them to shield land as well as adult males subject to call for labor service (ding),17 would only make matters worse. Taxes still needed to be collected and delivered, water-control facilities maintained, miscellaneous tasks performed. Thus, in the Zhengde period, the “assistant appointment” (pengchong) system came into use. Under this regimen, the duties of tax captain were shared by two or more households. This took a number of forms: a tax sector (qu) could be divided into two parts (jiao) and a tax captain appointed for each. Or the households within a tax sector could be divided on the basis of their land holdings, number of adult males, and family property into upper and middle households. The upper would serve alone while several middle households would undertake the responsibilities jointly. Or a sector could be divided into ten parts, each tax captain being assigned responsibility for so many parts. Or some households would provide labor while others provided silver. By early in the next reign-period, ten or more people were being appointed to serve in a single tax sector.18 At the same time, the process of subdividing polders—inaugurated in the mid-fifteenth century—continued. It increased the number of favored fields and decreased the disadvantages of the least favored. Yet it did so by increasing just as dramatically the length of dikes that a community had to maintain.19 The traditional system for dealing with local water control placed the entire

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burden on those predominantly wealthy individuals who held the best fields, those next to the dikes. As legal and illegal evasion of these duties became general, this “field head” (tiantou) system unraveled. Calls—by Assistant Prefect Ying Neng of Suzhou as well as by Wu Yan—to adopt zhaotian paiyi were a response to this dilemma. Under this system, each household would contribute labor in proportion to its landholdings within a polder.20

Neglecting the Roots, Pursuing the Branches There is reason to believe that the climate was also becoming less favorable for agriculture: although not approaching the depths of the mid-fifteenth century, the mean temperature was falling. It now appears that the cooling trend, which (with checks and reverses) would culminate in the dramatic crisis of the mid-seventeenth century, began around 1490.21 Given the theory of portents, awareness of that fact would not have made the search for human causes irrelevant in Chinese eyes. In any case, the weather was beyond the instrumental reach of Ming Chinese. Their penchant for focusing on tax rates and upright officials rather than on meteorology is thus quite understandable. Effective action required a sound analysis of local conditions. Accordingly, Grand Coordinator Li invited Wang Ao to submit memoranda discussing the problem.22 Wang Ao began by invoking tradition: in ancient times, taxes were only 10 percent, and the commoners needed to labor for only three days a year to pay them. The result had been peace and harmony throughout the empire. Although it was not possible to return to this immediately, officials should imitate its general thrust by adopting methods that were more uniform and easier to maintain. Wang compared this ideal with the reality of Ming Suzhou. The tax on official land was five, six, even seven decaliters (dou)—plus the wastage allowance. At five liters (sheng) or more, the taxes on commoner fields seemed comparatively light, but the wastage allowance was even more of a burden for those who held such land. This system was bad enough for owner-cultivators, but in many cases there were multiple claims on the harvest. The fertility of land did not vary greatly, and yet within one hamlet one could find official fields and commoner fields just a few inches from one another. When petty commoners mortgaged or sold official fields, the price was low. That for commoner fields was high. Not surprisingly, the poor often falsely sold official land as commoner land. The wealthy profited from a light land tax; they willingly connived at the deception without questioning it. This sort of thing had been going on for a long time. As a result, most commoner

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fields were in the hands of the powerful (haoyou); most official fields were held by the poor. When the poor found themselves unable to fulfill their obligations, they scattered to the four quarters. The tax burden of those who absconded then became a charge on the hundreds and tithings (lijia). As a result, the poor were often uprooted and the hundreds and tithings were in difficulties. Commoners were only willing to take up land that had been under cultivation if they could reregister it illicitly as waste, thus evading the tax. In former times, there were approximately ten rates for official and commoner fields. By the early sixteenth century there were more than a thousand. As a result, both taxpayers and officials were at the mercy of those crafty and unscrupulous enough to exploit the chaotic situation. Some entrusted their tax payments to official households, a practice called guiji (commendation). Others divided their holdings and scattered them among several households; this was called feiji (a synonym for feisa). “The officials fold their hands on the breast to bow. They hear of these things and yet do not go out to remedy them. It is not that they do not want to act, it is that they are not able to do so effectively. The ills are a result of the rates being so numerous and complicated.”23 Onerous a burden as the land tax was, the people also had to perform heavy corvée duties. The so-called equal corvée was allocated on the basis of the amount of land one owned. If a household had many fields, it was rated an upper household and allotted a heavy quota of labor service. If fields were few, the corvée burden was light; if a household had no fields, again the burden was light. No attempt was made to determine a household’s real wealth or poverty. As a result of the perverse incentives built into the system, commoners no longer devoted themselves to labor in the fields. They preferred instead to pursue the “branches”—commerce and handicrafts—thus avoiding the most onerous labor service. One put oneself in harm’s way by owning fields. If one family undertook these labor services, then one family was ruined. If a hundred families undertook them, then a hundred families were ruined. The poor had responded by abandoning their fields and moving elsewhere. The rich were selling all their land in order to avoid corvée. As a result, circa 1520, the price of land in Wu was low and yet none were willing to buy it. In this densely populated area, there was still uncultivated land and yet none were willing to plow it. Wang Ao traced all of this to the unintended effects of the land tax and labor service system: “In antiquity, the rulers forced men to abandon inferior occupations and returned them to the fields. Now those who govern expel the peasants from agriculture and force them to pursue inferior occupations. If we cause all the common people to engage in the inferior occupations, then where will all the state’s taxes come from?”

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Wang Ao went on to emphasize that the reputation Suzhou had acquired as a land of plenty was misleading. Even if the year produced an abundant harvest, the petty commoners were barely left with enough to make ends meet. In time of excessive water or drought, the roads were filled with vagabonds suffering from extreme hunger. These pitiful beings were dependent on the court’s care and benevolence for their very survival. Yet too often officials saw such occasions as a means of turning a profit. Uncultivated land was turned over to the powerful and the petty commoners did not obtain any of the benefits the court intended. What should be done? After long reflection Wang Ao invoked Mencius: “Why not indeed return to the root?” If the tax on official fields did not exceed half, then: The various evils could be swept away with a single broom and the commoners would have a place to put down their burdens. But as for the tax on official fields, the state has fixed methods. None dare lightly discuss them. Formerly the Xuande Emperor [1426–35] decreed that its amount be reduced. Following this precedent, one should again reduce the number of minute and trivial charges, combining them into one or two rates—at most, four or five rates.

Reduction and simplification of the rates needed to be coupled with a resolute effort to curb the avarice of officials. If these things were not done, the three evils that beset Suzhou—“the commoners daily encountering difficulties, the fields daily encountering neglect, the state’s finances daily encountering increasing deficiencies”—would know no end. Under such circumstances, the future would be bleak indeed. Although Wang Ao attributed some of the most flagrant ills to individual peculation, his analysis suggested that such predatory behavior was largely a rational response to the perverse but real incentives built into that system. Change the system (and enforce higher standards of probity) and behavior would change. Unless one did so, there was only so much the able and conscientious men who had served as prefect or district magistrate, however dedicated, could accomplish.

Finessing a Society in Crisis: Early Jiajing Suzhou Wang Ao’s analysis might indeed be accurate; the failure of Grand Coordinator Li Chongsi and his successors to act on it should occasion little surprise. As Wang Ao himself noted, “As for the tax on official fields, the state has fixed methods. None dare lightly discuss them.” Although, in the first years of the Jiajing era (1522–66) an attempt was made to retard the forces making land taxes and labor services more regressive (and less easily levied), this

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attempt was based on quite different—and politically more expedient—premises. In the prevailing consensus, the latitude given yamen underlings was the crux of the matter. Only with their cooperation could the registers be altered in ways that confused and distorted the records of population and property. By controlling this group—which was limited in number and close at hand—one could rectify the situation.24 When combined with a careful reading of the registers, the results could be quite dramatic.25 In tandem with the empire’s then relatively sound fiscal position,26 such measures may have seemed equal to the task confronting local officials. They also skirted the delicate issues that restructuring the official field/commoner field system or questioning Suzhou’s exceptionally heavy tax burden were sure to raise. Not only did Li Chongsi not act on Wang Ao’s recommendations; he explicitly rejected Assistant Prefect Ying’s calls to reform the organization of smallscale water-control projects, arguing that “in autumn, the common people are poor and their wealth is exhausted. If one follows this proposal, the corvée burden will become increasingly heavy and complex.”27 Yet he was keenly aware that major water-control projects had been deferred for some time. In his new post as minister of works, he sought to remedy this situation.28 In 1521, Minister Li and Bureau Director Lin Wenpei mobilized peasants to dredge the ancient course of the Bai mao for a distance of thirty miles. They then turned to the problem of the Zhitang. Deciding after discussion to carve out a new path rather than following the old one, they created a channel almost eight miles in length. In addition, in four months of work, they dredged nineteen lakes and tributaries, including the Yangcheng. Director Lin personally led the commoners in carrying out these tasks. Even when exposed to wind and rain he did not speak of effort or exhaustion. As a result, it is said that those who were conscripted for corvée duty did not dare to work carelessly or to evade their responsibility. The following year Minister Li and Bureau Director Yan Ruhuan coordinated the efforts of officials in Suzhou, Songjiang, and Huzhou prefectures to dredge the Wu Song River and to improve circulation of waters in Lake Tai. In 1523, Director Lin mobilized the men of Wu district to open eleven miles of the Guangfu and Xukou Channels, draining Lake Tai’s waters into the Lou River. In 1525, the assistant surveillance commissioner for Su Song water control dredged channels (tang), river banks, rivers, and harbors in Wu and Changzhou districts.29 In spite of such effort, the Jiajing reign-period did not begin auspiciously. The spring of 1522 brought drought; then, from the third to the six month, there was too much rain. If this were not bad enough, on the twenty-fifth of the seventh month between nine and eleven in the morning:

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The heavens darkened. Wind and rain, thunder and lightning made day and night one. Tiles were blown off and houses shaken; large trees were completely uprooted. Throughout the entire area, there was water and howling. At the edge of the lake, houses and cottages, men and beasts floated and drowned. The young and energetic attached themselves to trees and, following the wind, they clung to the shore to preserve their lives. It was said that the rising and falling of the water made it appear that the whole lake was on fire.30

In the fifth month of 1523 there was a great drought; the people were not able to plant their crops. As a result, 200,000 ounces of silver and 900,000 piculs of rice as well as various retained taxes converted to silver were diverted to relieve the suffering in Suzhou, Songjiang, and adjacent areas. On the third day of the seventh month, a great wind plucked up trees; the lake overflowed, drowning people and submerging dwellings. In the eighth month, there was too much water. In the first month of 1524, there was an earthquake. The summer and fall of 1525 brought drought. Insects appeared and devoured nearly all the grain on the stalks; the twelfth month again brought an earthquake. The year 1528 saw a great drought in Changzhou. The whole tax burden on Suzhou and Songjiang was remitted and the Taicang Treasury issued 1 million ounces of silver to supplement money and grain locally available to relieve the distressed. In the sixth month of the following year locusts appeared in Wu. A month later, there were high winds and heavy rains for three days and nights; everything died. The year 1530 brought drought again.31 Throughout this dismal decade, Suzhou continued to be well served by “illustrious officials”—although the threshold for such an honor was not all that exalted. At least one individual, You Shixi, merited inclusion chiefly because he had not enriched himself illicitly during his year’s service as head of the Hushu Customs Post.32 In 1525, Censor Zhu Shicheng submitted a memorial proposing that the “shop and stall tax” (mentan shui) be fixed and that goods in transit not be taxed. The emperor adopted this proposal. It is said to have contributed significantly to the area’s commercial prosperity in subsequent decades.33 Suzhou does seem to have been administered by able and conscientious men, men eager to do what they could to foster the expansion of wealth among the people. Unfortunately, able and conscientious administration was not equal to the challenge.

Early Sixteenth-Century Suzhou: A Mature Economy? The climate should have made the 1520s a relatively favorable period.34 But Suzhou’s problems were not simply a result of changes in mean temperature; nor could they be finessed by benevolent management. At base, they reflected

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growing competition from areas outside Suzhou (areas that, virtually by definition, were lower-cost competitors),35 sluggish expansion in demand, and the absence of major new opportunities to exploit. At least this seems the only way to reconcile He Liangjun’s (1506–73; DMB) oft-quoted note sketching the shift from an overwhelmingly rural to a predominantly service- and market-oriented order during the sixteenth century with the timing of developments in Suzhou.36 He was from Huating’s Zhelin, and his notes seem an accurate (if hyperbolic) description of conditions there. There is, however, no need to assume that his observations reflect the timing or dimensions of these phenomena elsewhere. The weaving of silk cloth, a monopoly of the prefectural seat in the early Ming, spread to the district capitals of Suzhou prefecture in the early fifteenth century, and to the countryside in the late fifteenth. Given the openness of the Ming system and the advantages a successful imitator would enjoy, there is little reason to believe that this process of outward diffusion stopped at the prefectural borders.37 Further research should also show that another development which seems to encourage a focus on the sixteenth century, the apparent timing of the rise of the Huizhou merchants, reflects the degree to which the fortunes of these men (with their readiness to engage in such profitable but risky endeavors as pawnbroking and the salt trade) put the individually more modest accomplishments of Suzhou merchants in the shade. Clearly, Suzhou households continued to engage in trade. It remained a respectable alternative to poverty. Yet, for those who did not enjoy success on the scale of the Tangs, interregional commerce was neither a glamorous nor a particularly lucrative calling. The plight of the Tu family was doubtless far more typical. Mr. Tu traveled in Shandong and the area north of the Yangzi, his abode constantly shifting as he carried goods from place to place to sell. On at least one occasion, he met with brigands who seized his inventory and beat him within an inch of his life.38 The modest rewards, considerable discomfort, and real dangers traveling merchants faced had to be weighed against the genuine difficulties of rising into the ranks of the scholar-officials and the heavy burdens attendant on investment in land in Suzhou. Yet, in the absence of institutional arrangements to reinforce them, time and the return of the exiled undermined the personal networks so necessary for the conduct of long-distance commerce. Perhaps even more crucial, Suzhou’s networks were oriented to the North China Plain, an area that had experienced dramatic growth during the fifteenth century. But by 1500 the court was already living extravagantly. Its consumption clearly set the fashion for officials in the capital—and they for the scholar-official elite throughout the realm. As result, much of this elite became avid consumers of

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Suzhou’s luxurious silks and cottons during the fifteenth century. The wealth court and quality transferred to Suzhou in return was ultimately extracted from the peasantry, in taxes, fees and rents. There is good reason to believe that, after 1500, the rate of population growth slowed. This not only limited the surpluses state or local elite could demand of the peasantry without fear of provking resistance—pushed beyond a certain point, elite extraction deprived commoners of modest surpluses that might otherwise be used to purchase Suzhou’s less exalted wares. Yet, if the rate at which surpluses expanded had slowed, the rate at which new regions devoted their energies to handicraft production to supply that demand had not. Having enjoyed the fruits of innovation, Suzhou now confronted increasing competition and lagging domestic demand.39 In theory, Suzhou might have responded by diversifying its base, generating new industries that produced other goods in wide demand. But despite its long local tradition of metalwork, an iron and steel cycle was not to follow Suzhou’s textile cycle. In addition to the well-established efficiencies of the market, efficiencies that separated merchant and manufacturer,40 and the realities of elite life, Suzhou lacked the necessary supply of fuel and ferrous metals to develop an iron and steel industry.41 The one bright spot in the early Jiajing period appears to have been expansion of the lucrative, but illicit, foreign trade sector.42 Huizhou merchants were not only well positioned to tap into the rising economies of the central and upper Yangzi; they also seem to have been directly involved with overseas commerce. Although men of Wu had been going abroad to trade since the Yuan,43 the center of overseas commerce in the first half of Ming was Ningbo—the ubiquitous Xin’an merchants playing a central role.44 The ships of interested Japanese states, laden with tribute for the emperor and the bullion of their increasingly productive mines, had made a habit of arriving early off the Zhejiang coast. While waiting for clearance, they did a flourishing business with Chinese smugglers. Unfortunately, in 1523, two Japanese tribute missions arrived simultaneously. The fighting (and destruction) that ensued led the court to prohibit foreign trade in much stronger terms.45 A commerce so profitable was not to be ended by bureaucratic fiat; on the contrary, it expanded in volume as it shifted underground and elsewhere. Anhui merchants continued to play the crucial role of intermediary, for Huizhou was often the native place of both offshore and onshore merchants.46 Suzhou would have benefited from expanding markets outside the Middle Kingdom, and increasing stocks of specie within it, even in the absence of direct ties. Yet after 1523 the links were increasingly direct. Many of the prod-

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ucts most in demand abroad were produced on the hillsides and in the fields and workshops of Suzhou.47 One center of the contraband trade, Zhapu, was not merely due south of Changzhou’s township (du) 28—that curious prolongation of the district to the pirate-infested Lake Mao—but was so efficiently linked with the Suzhou area that it became one of its two principal outlets for transshipped grain in the eighteenth century.48 Suzhou continued to enjoy considerable advantages—of quality, reputation, experience, and location. Even its high cost of living was in some respects a plus: as population growth forced more and more villagers into the city, a disproportionate number gravitated to Suzhou, putting downward pressure on wages. Lower wages helped to preserve its ability to compete with rival centers. Suzhou would continue to thrive. But its dominance would not be as automatic, its profits as high, or the benefits as widely shared as they seemed to be in the late fifteenth century. Thus, although Suzhou’s traditional markets were saturated, its traditional specialties faced increasing competition, its merchant networks were decaying, and a hungrier, more agile group of competitors was better placed to exploit emerging opportunities, Suzhou’s markets remained fully stocked. Indeed, the volume of wares passing through it may well have surpassed all records. The industry of its populace was proverbial. In the 1529 Wu District Gazetteer (Wu yi zhi), Yang Xunji (DMB) wrote, “Suzhou is located at the western border of the prefecture. Vast streams cross and flow beneath the city wall. Myriad houses encircle it in the outer suburbs. Its fortified walls and battlements are high and lofty. Commodities amply accumulate there.”49 Not that everyone rejoiced in this. Social conservatives like Lu Can (1491–1551) described, and denounced, the growing exploitation of the many by the few.50 In a similar vein, one of Wang Yangming’s (DMB) few Suzhou disciples, Huang Xingzeng (1490–1540; DMB), wrote: From the time that the Liu and the Mao generated wealth by smelting metals and warehousing goods and the Wang engaged in usury and pawnbroking, in large villages and famous market towns they opened shops dealing in the hundred goods. By monopolizing and managing the profits, they caused those who carried burdens between towns and markets to be hard-pressed while they piled up gold in the hundred myriads. At present in Wu the gentry [jinshen shifu] often take increasing their wealth to be an urgent matter. For example, [there are] the shops of capital officials in the six suburbs, open for business in usury and pawnbroking and doing a brisk trade in salt and alcoholic beverages. Their methods doubly destroy the masses.51

The Local Elite There were ample grounds for such complaints. In the absence of new markets, new products, and new relations of production, the same social forces

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(false consignment, debt peonage, gouging by middlemen, tax evasion by the well-to-do) continued to operate. In time of contraction or stagnation, the wealthy and powerful were well placed to preserve—and extend—their property and prerogatives. While the fruits of growth were never evenly distributed, those of stasis were more bitter and more visible. They were less likely to discomfit the haves than the have-nots, however: growing populations intensified competition for access to work and to land. This competition pushed rents up and wages down (or, in less antiseptic terms, the elite’s ability to extract surplus rose while the real value of that surplus grew). As more and more men (and not a few women) were forced off the land and out of the villages, they gravitated to places where work seemed most plentiful and wages highest, places with a reputation for extravagance and luxury—the cores of a macroregion. Thus the workings of the preindustrial economy insulated elites from the effects of overpopulation or economic stagnation: in real terms, their standard of living went up as that of the general population declined.52 Eventually, this process would expand the global demand for luxuries throughout China. In the first half of the sixteenth century, only areas spared devastation in the fourteenth century (like Suzhou itself) seem to have reached the point at which population pressure redistributed real incomes from the many to the few. In a world where human labor was a much larger component of the cost of production of goods and services, in which many of the things for which we now use machines (from transportation and delivery to cooking, cleaning, and entertainment) were done by human beings, and in which a man’s status was determined by the size of his retinue or the number of his concubines, it is easy to see how the greater availability of servants and hirelings made life more pleasant for an elite. This was all the more true given the increased competition from other centers: Suzhou residents not directly involved in commerce or crafts benefited as others did when prices of textiles and other goods were pushed down. Those who commanded society’s surpluses, human and material, long lacked a burning incentive to critique these developments as well as a legitimate space within which to do so. There is no evidence that Suzhou’s elites lived less extravagantly in the sixteenth century than they had in the fifteenth. Indeed, certain types of conspicuous consumption were a by-product of the openness of the Chinese social system. In the absence of ascribed status, the clothes one wore, the objets d’art one owned, and the taste one displayed played a key role in validating claims to elite status.53 Such display was more, not less, necessary given changes in the structure and composition of the elite. It is generally accepted that more and more of the elite lived much or all of the time in the city rather than on their country estates, interacting daily with one another. The multiplication of those with

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titles and degrees went forward unchecked as the numbers of those enrolled as shengyuan expanded and as the opportunities for those with the wealth and the desire to purchase minor office or an Imperial Academy studentship increased.54 Given the advantages, few households who could have a degree-holder in the family would not have thought it worth their while to do so. In purely material terms, the returns on such investments of human and financial capital were growing: the 1531 revision of the schedule of privileges exempted a capital official of the first rank from twenty piculs of land tax and twenty adult males (ding) subject to corvée labor. (In 1545, this would be increased to thirty piculs and thirty adult males.)55 Yet, for those who had already arrived, the expanding number of claimants was a mixed blessing: the increase in the numbers of shengyuan, the greater ease of acquiring an Imperial Academy berth, and the decreased access to office for Imperial Academy students intensified competition for a juren degree. Even in the absence of such changes, with each succeeding generation the number of males from established families multiplied. This alone made competition more intense. The rising number of sojourners and the return of those exiled in the early Ming further augmented the ranks (and raised the standards) of those with pretensions to elite status.56 In fact, some Suzhou districts did see the numbers of those who passed at the provincial level decline. Others saw them rise (in Changzhou, almost doubling between Zhengde and the second half of Jiajing). The figures for the jinshi are less dramatic, but the stakes were even higher. Even districts whose rates were stagnant or falling would still rank with the most conspicuously successful areas in the empire. Degrees were family achievements, however, not corporate ones. A degree sought but unachieved was a tragedy for that particular household. That the district (or another branch of the family) succeeded was little comfort to the patriline that did not. Whatever the objective reality, the elites’ experience of the examination halls was contingent and atomized. Family by family, exam by exam, that subjective experience was one of chronic and increasing insecurity. The Chen of Iron Bottle Lane (3) Consider the Chen and the Tang, families from the same neighborhood in Suzhou’s northwest quadrant. Although both had been urban and socially prominent since the fifteenth century, in many respects they remained strikingly different. The Chens’ local reputation was originally based on the family’s medical skill. In the wake of the successes of Yi, Zun, and Bian, they had become one of Suzhou’s most prominent lines of scholar-officials. Through the compilation

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of a genealogy, the laying out of a family graveyard, and the acting out of common rituals, they sought to preserve and perpetuate this spiritual (and social) capital. As the complaints of Chen Lian and the experience of Chen Meng suggest, they had been less than completely successful in doing so. This was true of lines that had produced degree-holders as well as those that had failed to do so. Chen Zun’s great-grandson was Chen Zhifu.57 A member of the tenth generation, he was thus Meng’s distant (and much younger) cousin. Although Zhifu, like his father and grandfather, was said to have been worthy of advancement, he did not obtain it. The three previous generations were invested with titles only after Zhifu’s son Ye became a jinshi in 1577. Indeed, Zhifu’s early years were troubled ones. When just a few years old, he lost his mother. His mourned her so intensely that he almost perished. When he was a bit older, he began to study for the examinations. He also devoted himself morning and night to serving his father in a filial manner. When the latter died, men of the Chen lineage suffered maltreatment; corvée burdens were especially troublesome. Zhifu had to abandon his studies to support the household. “Thus the family (jia) gradually declined.” Yet by this time, Ye’s promise was already apparent. Accordingly, he was encouraged to study. Zhifu was very (even overly) conscious of the stakes: “Our Chen lineage is constantly honored among the scholar-officials [but] now it has fallen to me to make known its virtue and save its glory. The future resides in the child.”58 From this point on, Zhifu abandoned agriculture, turning instead to moneylending. The profits were used to provide gifts that would persuade famous men to come and transmit their learning to Ye. Although lodging and rations were a constant burden, various wealthy men came to feast and reside. The regrets of his father, and of earlier generations, were never far from Zhifu’s mind. He gave himself the nickname “long for credentials,” huaijie. To Ye he said, “In my father’s time, on the appropriate occasions our emotions fully corresponded to the ritual at hand. When presenting sacrificial offerings, the temple was sprinkled and swept. One must go to the family graveyard in person at the proper time and season. If one sees it is in disarray and does not put it in order, one knows men embrace their property [rather than righteousness].” Managing repairs, he did not trouble his older and younger brother, saying that he would rather do it himself. Maintaining proper appearances would ensure that even those of the lower class would not dare to commit outrages against the family. Ye passed the metropolitan examination in 1577. When he was first appointed a messenger (8a), Zhifu received an honorary appointment to the same office. After his son was promoted to Jin supervising secretary, Zhifu’s hon-

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orary rank was also increased. Zhifu was increasingly satisfied. He sent a letter to Ye reminding him of the gratitude the family owed the state and of the need to avoid the example of corrupt officials (“wood grubs”) who merely made a pretext of serving. Like Zhifu, Ye had received proper instruction. He should only be watchful of his reputation and seek genuine eminence. Family records claim that Zhifu’s wealth, righteously amassed, was benevolently (ren) dispersed—again seeking to transcend the Mencian contradiction between virtue and profit.59 He did not establish property to leave behind but used it to aid his kinsmen and happily gave it away. Old friends became anxious. Zhifu did not stand on ceremony; when men came to him and prefaced a request for help with references to prior connections, Zhifu would sigh and say: “My son is a blessing. To give is therefore virtuous. Forget the pretext. See the peddler’s son who takes a small and minute profit. On each sale of goods he calculates and raises the price. [I do not have to act like that].” Thereupon throughout the kingdom (his funerary inscription tells us) they praised Zhifu. At times he roamed the mountains and marshes in plain garb, followed by a single servant. When he arose each morning, he heated incense and intoned the classics. He also took pleasure in following famous Buddhist monks and discussing karma. When Zhifu reached the age of seventy (by Chinese count), his son sent a servant to wait on him. Zhifu dreamt of an immortal who spoke of the limit of his continuing transformations. Shortly thereafter he fell ill and died. He was buried close to his illustrious ancestors Yi and Zun. Zhifu’s career was thus a success, though by the heady standards of the fifteenth century, it was a limited and hard-won one. Like Meng, Zhifu had devoted himself to helping his relatives and took pride in his illustrious forefathers. Yet the account of Zhifu’s struggles, like that of Meng’s, indicates that individual patrilines could and did face poverty, insult, and labor service on their own. Their distant relatives either could not or did not feel obliged to succor them. Thus, despite the social capital of relationship to Chen Yi, the genealogy, and the family graveyard, for many practical purposes the boundaries of family were fairly narrow. The names of sons and grandsons suggest that the weakening of bonds Lian had denounced—and from which Meng had suffered in his youth—continued apace. All but one of Chen Yi’s descendants in the eleventh generation bore names with the fire radical (number 86); Meng’s son Ao wrote his name with the fish radical (number 195). And the disease was spreading: in generation twelve, Chen Yi’s descendants employed three separate systems (x-mo; Yuan-x; or radical 32); in generation thirteen, the pattern varied even within sets of siblings.60 Ye ultimately rose to be assistant surveillance commissioner in Huguang

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(rank 5a). In addition to winning a reputation for integrity in office, he embodied more personal virtues. When his mother died, he wept so bitterly that he lost sight in one eye. And when his younger sister was widowed and left in poverty at a tender age, he moved her back to his residence and provided for her support.61 On his deathbed, he told his sons: “Although in my official career I did not advance and did not have burdens [commensurate with my abilities?] in the state, in my sixty-three years I have not done anything, even in secret, of which I am ashamed.”61 Then he died, to be buried beside Yi and Zun. In spite of Ye’s success, when members of the eleventh generation revised the genealogy (1597–1600), the editors’ tone was even more shrill than it had been in 1504. In his preface to the family admonitions, Chen Jing (1571–1636) argued that both state law and family law were methods of teaching. Each supplemented the other, good order depending on the maintenance of both. The family had charge of “those who disregard the proper rules of conduct and transgress against righteousness,” a function it could fulfill only so long as it remained strong and cohesive. State law might change from ruler to ruler, but “family law is transmitted to the hundred generations.” Nonetheless, over time, “public morality gradually deteriorates and men’s hearts are not like the old ones”: a line of gentry ends in foppery, and once-eminent families “through waste and debauchery fall from virtue.”62 Thanks to the accumulated merit of their ancestors, the Chen had all dressed like scholars and followed learned callings since coming to Wu. Yet this depended on family members heeding the family admonitions. In the past, “fathers had transmitted them to their sons and older brothers had taught their younger brothers.” As a result, the family was harmonious and reverent within; without, it had figured among the capped cultured gentlemen (shidafu) of Wu. Reading over these admonitions and comparing the present with the past, Jing wrote that he felt the way a good scholar should when reading the first line of the Mencius: he “laid aside the book and sighed.” Putting the ancestors’ counsels in writing was intended both to make manifest the virtue of the Chen forebears and to admonish sons and younger brothers for their fecklessness. Indeed, in the degenerate present, Jing felt it necessary to remind his juniors not to act in ways that would bring disgrace upon their forefathers. As for actions that are stingy or those that give free rein to the passions, as to customs that are parsimonious or overbearing, I do not see anything to choose among them. [All these extremes are bad.] As to those who are base and sordid or who are willing to fill a humble position, they also are not worth discussing.

The concrete admonitions—to strengthen filiality and brotherliness; to stay on friendly terms with other members of the descent group; to offer sacrifices;

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to preserve one’s body; to maintain precedence and obedience within the family;63 to marry with families of equal station and good repute; to transmit virtue; in choosing a profession, to remain within the four classes and do nothing that might bring disgrace on the family;64 to observe the rites; and to avoid evil companions—are less remarkable than the vigor with which their twentynine-year-old author urged the linkage of virtue, order, and status. Given Ye’s recent success in the exams, downward mobility was less an immediate threat than a long-range certainty were the internal cohesion of the group not strengthened, the primacy of filiality and brotherliness not restored. In the preface he wrote three years earlier (in 1597), Ye65 noted that the growth of internal divisions threatened to turn kinsmen into men of Qin and Yue, states so distant that the ancients had made them a watchword for those who had no dealings with one another. A family’s ability to employ ritual and righteousness to lead the masses justified its reputation. Maintaining bonds and observing the rites perpetuated the tradition of virtue bequeathed by the ancestors even as it demonstrated its reality. It was thus both a question of fulfilling one’s obligations to one’s forebears and of maintaining one’s status in the eyes of one’s contemporaries. Given such an analysis of the family’s plight, the specific injunctions seem surprisingly modest. One should have reverence for the honorable, be kind to the humble, take pity on the needy. One ought not concentrate on taking advantage, ought not store up anger, ought not be quarrelsome. And one should not rely on one’s influence to act in an overbearing manner or become indifferent to distant kinsmen and thus place oneself apart from the group. If one did these things, embodied the cardinal virtues, and “honored the ancestors and reverenced one’s forefathers,” Ye believed that the superior could become good men (liangshi) while those of the next rank would not fail to be law-abiding subjects (liangmin). Thus: Men of our native place cannot but say, “This Chen family is worthy. Its descendants consider it proper to be able to maintain the rituals and to grasp righteousness. They are those who need not be ashamed to be compared with the powerful and distinguished families [mingfa].” Thus members of our descent group cannot but say, “Our line is worthy. Its descendants consider it right to be able to extend their relations and to maintain harmony among their kinsmen. We are those who do not turn our backs on our sources and roots.” Hence this register. . . . One raises filiality and reverence through this. The virtuous is continuously handed down through this. Making men’s minds pure and improving customs is made constant through this. Hence this register. Thus [the family] is able to prosper and [its virtue] is able to be transmitted.66

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The Tang of Jixiangli (2) The Tang achieved prominence by a very different route: they were successful interregional merchants. They were also associates of Xu Youzhen (1407–72; DMB) and Zhu Yunming (1461–1527; DMB), intermarrying with their families.67 Although the eight brothers born in the first half of the fifteenth century long maintained a “communal family,”68 they never seem to have organized the minimal corporate institutions their near-neighbors the Chens had. Thus it is not surprising to discover that, in the sixteenth century, each patriline sought to make its own way. Tang Gui had been born a Yuan; his aunt (wife of the eldest of the eight brothers) had adopted him. Unlike his father and his ritually senior brother Xi—both merchants—Gui was a scholar and poet; for a time, he served as usher in the Court of State Ceremonial (rank 9b).69 His only son, Ru (1475–1551), showed intellectual promise. Gui, feeling that his own career had reached an impasse, devoted his energies to the supervision of his son’s education “in order to raise up the family [jia].”70 Ru eventually rose to be a Wu district student; the local gazetteer records that he took pleasure in poetry. Yet he never passed the higher exams or held office. A sudden reversal in the family (again, jia) fortunes compelled Ru to support his parents by tutoring others in the classics. Enduring the bitter and eating the tasteless himself, he managed to provide his parents with delicacies while they lived and to mourn them with full ceremony and devotion after their death. These accomplishments were so satisfying (we are told) that they made him forget his poverty. When his son Pan passed the provincial examination (1531), Ru abandoned notions of seeking advancement himself. He turned instead to a life of scholarship for scholarship’s sake: “From the philosophers, historians, and hundred writers down to the study of medicine, divination, the ways of preserving life, and [the study of] rare graphs, tones, and finals, there was nothing he did not examine. He discussed these matters and made distinctions, gave evidence and adduced illustrations. . . . it reached his commenting on and contradicting authors ancient and modern.” He associated with Buddhist monks as well as with those entitled to dress like gentlemen (yiguan): “Dwelling with others in pleasure, ease, and mutual understanding, Ru did not resort to lewdness when entertaining. On this account, men admired him even more.” All this time Pan continued to make his triennial journey to the capital, unsuccessful in his attempts to pass the metropolitan examination. Realizing that his father was growing old, the son exerted himself to obtain an official post. He was made magistrate of Fuyang district, Zhejiang. Pan received his father there, for he wished to care for him properly. The old man enjoyed it

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all—the landscape, the respect accorded his son by subjects and superiors, the nearness of his family. But after a short while he bethought himself of his daughter. Returning to Suzhou to see her, he fell ill and died. Ru had married a Ms. Lu, close relative of the author of Ru’s funerary inscription, Lu Shidao (1511–74; jr 1531, js 1538). Lu and Pan had passed the provincial examination the same year and were thus “classmates.” Pan had married a Lu, as had his sister. Connections with that surname were extensive, but by the sixteenth century there were many Lus—almost all claiming descent from one of the most illustrious of the “four families of Wu.” At the end of the mourning period, Pan again assumed office, this time as district magistrate of Xin’an (rank 7a).71 He gained a reputation as one who strictly adhered to the regulations, refusing bribes and restraining the wicked. Still, he did not receive favorable evaluations by his superiors. Pan returned home, spending the last twenty of his eighty years intoning poems and enjoying himself. His collected works were listed in the bibliographic section of the 1933 edition of the district gazetteer. Pan’s son Zeng, a district student in Wu at the time of his grandfather’s death, became a tribute student by grace. Although he did not pass the higher exams, he was appointed district magistrate of Fu’an, Fujian (rank 7a). He ultimately rose to be assistant prefect of Nanning prefecture, Guangxi (rank 6a). Although Zeng resumed the Yuan surname (when is not clear), he is said to have been filial and fraternal by nature: “When his father was old and ill, Zeng personally waited on him. In ten years he was not in the least remiss. When his father died, he wore himself out with excessive grief as though he were a child.”72 Tang Chou (courtesy name Zizhong) (1499–1567) was Tang Xi’s son, thus Gui’s nephew and Ru’s close cousin. Although twenty-four years younger than Ru, Chou’s was the more exalted ritual position. Born into a prosperous merchant line, he was no less careful in observing the rites than the child of a scholar’s household. Losing his mother when he was four, Chou mourned her, stroking the coffin day and night and stamping his feet in grief. He was no less earnest in serving his foster mother with reverence and care. At five, he began to study with a teacher from outside the family. It is said that whenever he was given a new book, he would immediately commit it to memory. He specialized in the Book of Changes, preparing himself for the examinations. At the age of fourteen in 1513, he was tested by Huang Putian, who passed him and sent him to study under Wen Zhengming (DMB). Before he was twenty, Chou had advanced to be a salaried xiucai, yet he never succeeded in rising any farther. He so devoted himself to study that he became emaciated, careworn, and ill.

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His father regretted his son’s lack of success. Rather than fruitlessly continue to seek a degree in Suzhou, it was decided that he should become a tribute student by purchase in the Imperial Academy. Henceforth, he took the examination in the Northern Capital District—but even there he did not succeed. In the 1540 juren examinations, the Hanlin scholar Mr. Tong was chief examiner; he had intended to place Chou’s paper in the highest class. Then he discovered that the third essay was missing. In despair, Chou angrily recalled a dream he had had: “Formerly I dreamt that feathers sprouted in my armpits and I moved lightly about flying. Suddenly they broke off and I fell into trees and underbrush. It surely refers to this.” His son-in-law (and author of his funerary inscription) Zhao Yongxian (of Changshu, 1535–1596, js 1571; DMB) implies that his lack of success reflected an idealistic inability to bend with the fashions of the times.73 He also portrayed Chou as filial piety embodied. Despite his position as a scholar, Chou scrupulously fulfilled his obligations, attending to all of his father’s needs. Once, Xi—who was almost forty when Chou was born—fell ill, full of phlegm and running a fever. In the middle of the night, Chou offered prayers in the deserted ancestral hall asking that his father’s affliction be visited on him. His wish was granted, resulting in a disorder of the ears. On the advice of a friend, he sought treatment, and gradually his condition improved. When Xi died, although Chou himself was no longer young, he wore himself out with excessive grief, for he was still Xi’s child. Even in old age, Chou had a clear and tranquil countenance; he was not in the least uncertain. His bearing was elegant and attractive: down to the last, he maintained his composure without rumpled clothes or awkward movements. Even at feasts and in moments of pleasure he did not indulge in lewd or trivial chatter. In his intercourse with others he was dignified but self-deprecating. If someone slighted him, he suffered it quietly, never indulging himself in anxious thoughts about others. Saddened at the sight of sickness or pain, he did what he could to cure the afflicted. His brother’s child suffered from sores for a long time.74 The members of the family, fearing contagion, all fled. Chou treated him and this resulted in a gradual recovery. Again there was an elderly woman who suffered from chronic malaria; Chou had her treated. In order to promote such actions among sons and younger brothers, he invoked the example of Wu Kuan and Wang Ao. According to his son-in-law and biographer, only Chou and his contemporaries Wen Zhengming and Zhu Xizhou (1463–1546; MRZJZLSY 129) were able to preserve the traditions of Wu and Wang in mid-sixteenth-century Suzhou. Chou may have had an innate sense of propriety, but he was very frugal. He

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wore the same fur garment for thirty years without change. After wearing sandals for a full year, he gave them to his servants, who thus obtained whatever good was left in them. From his residence to utensils, books, and writing implements, all had to be orderly and clean. If they were, he was completely satisfied. He never threw off restraint or indulged in luxuries. Some of his kinsmen used their wealth to appear to be men of high standing. They surrounded themselves with rich and expensive things. Guests saw it and were impressed, but Chou was alarmed. He said: Fickle sons assuredly do not know the difficulties their ancestors endured in starting a business. I cannot bear to see it. In his early days, my father, Xi, went out and pursued the career of a merchant. His uncles esteemed his accomplishments at their true worth; accordingly, they dispensed with empty show. At that time, Xi’s only desire was to return the profits to his uncles. He emphatically did not endure all that to enable the Tang to be increasingly extravagant and wealthy.

Yet only Chou was frugal. In his middle age, he confronted increasingly troublesome corvée burdens. Under various pretexts, others encroached on his grave fields. His dependents resorted to ingenious stratagems, and the cunning took him to court. Although the Record of Conduct does not provide details, the case dragged on for years and expenses piled up. Originally Chou married a Ms. Lu; after two years of marriage, she died. He then wed Zhao’s distant maternal relative, Ms. Yuan. She came from a famous family (mingjia) of Wu,75 and had read with understanding the Classic of Filial Piety, the philosophers, and the historians. Their mutual devotion and affection lasted into old age; men said they were like lovebirds. They had two sons; both became students in the district school. There were five daughters: the eldest wed a government student, the second an Imperial Academy student, the third and fourth prefectural students. The fifth and youngest—who predeceased her father—married Zhao. That Zhao was asked to write Tang Chou’s Record of Conduct reflected both the deceased’s fondness for his unusually intelligent daughter and the fact that Zhao, at home to mourn his own parents, was available. Most important, he outranked all other members of the immediate family, having obtained the juren degree in 1558. The Chen of Rural Changzhou (2) Broadly speaking, the experiences of the Tang were not all that unlike those of the Chen. Other patrilines employed analogous strategies to deal with similar problems. The only truly famous personage among those in our sample is Chen Yao’s son Chun, better known as Chen Daofu (1483–1544; DMB). As a youth, Daofu showed great promise. His father as well as his grandfather,

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Qiong, doted on him, sending him to study classics and Old Phraseology (guwen) poetry as well as painting and calligraphy with Wen Zhengming. When Daofu was a district student, Magistrate Gao,76 who made a point of cultivating promising young men, made him a member of his circle. Shortly thereafter (1516), Yao died. Daofu was “worn out with excessive grief and surpassed the rites” in his mourning. Even when he was ritually permitted to resume a normal life, his “thoughts were still dark and reverent.” No longer concerned with the day-to-day affairs of human existence—or the details of managing a family—he devoted himself to reading books and burning incense. He spent his time drinking and writing in the company of “men of superior attainment and virtuous scholars.” 77 Finally “invoking regulations” (yuanli), Daofu went north to attend the Imperial Academy. He entrusted his family affairs to bondservant managers (jigang zhi pu). As a result, “externally [the household] was drawn into bureaucratic labor service [liyao]; internally it was devoured by bondservants [tongke].” The family holdings shrank and income decreased each year. Yet Daofu—preoccupied with poetry, painting, and wine—took no action. In spite of the urgent warnings of Prefect Hu78 and district magistrate Zheng,79 the family was collapsing. Grand Coordinator and Censor-in-Chief Chen80 invited Daofu to write out the Five Classics and the Rites of Zhou in his excellent seal characters. These were cut into blocks and printed, further increasing Daofu’s fame. It brought him to the attention of Yang Jianhe (1459–1529) and Lu Wan (of Changzhou; 1458–1526)—then high officials—who wished to recommend him for a post in the Imperial Archives. Upon mature reflection, Daofu concluded that he was not suited to the bureaucratic life, tacking with every shift of forces and fashion. He declined the appointment and returned home. By the time he reached Suzhou, the family’s urban mansion had fallen into such disrepair as to be unsuitable for human habitation. Leaving one of his sons to look after it, Daofu went to live in the countryside. The family’s holdings had been reduced to several hundred mu of river fields (jiangtian). Daofu now devoted part of his attention to the mundane details of household economy, ultimately building a country retreat surrounded by gardens and woodland. He abandoned all thought of a government post and, when the recommendations of his cousins Jin and Ying and his nephew Chun brought an appointment, Daofu refused to serve. He explained that he had come to “regard the clothes and cap [of officialdom] as fetters and handcuffs, and to dread the city as a cage.”81 He wanted to spend his old age drunk in the countryside. Although he dwelt in seclusion, men still vied to purchase his poems, calligraphy, paintings, and drawings. The unending stream of visitors included

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magistrates, prefects, and ministry officials. If he did have to go to the city, he could take his ease going up in a small boat, stay a couple of nights, and then return. How, Daofu asked rhetorically, could external achievement and empty advancement be compared to such felicity? Praised by his contemporaries—his eulogist, Zhang Huan, compared him to Shen Zhou—he lived out his life in the countryside, dying at home. Daofu’s wife, Ms. Zhang (1482–1539), was granddaughter of Zhang Zhu (jinshi 1457)—who rose to be Yunnan surveillance commissioner (rank 3a)—and daughter of Zhang Yue (jinshi 1490), director of the Bureau of Irrigation and Transportation in the Ministry of Works (rank 5a). She is said to have been worthy to be the wife of a superior man. These virtues were made manifest in her tolerance for Daofu’s liaisons with concubines and her willingness to treat their offspring as though they were her own children.82 One of Daofu’s sons, Mei, was a noted calligrapher; another, Gua, became a painter of note. Mei wed Ms. Shen, a woman of excellent (if complicated) Kunshan stock.83 Their son, Can, died young. Shortly thereafter Gua, Gua’s wife, and Shu—an otherwise unknown son of Daofu—also perished. Ms. Shen not only made the funeral arrangements but also (seeing that the remaining sons were poor and weak and mindful that Qiong’s “benefit”—ze—was waning) donated some of the land she had received as dowry. The income from these fields was used to endow the spring and autumn sacrifices and to pay taxes on the Chen family graveland.84 In consequence, the ancestral sacrifices of the Chen would long have a heroic (liezhangfu) air. When officials wished to honor Ms. Shen for her virtue and filiality,85 she insisted that it was her deceased in-laws who were truly worthy of such recognition. Drawing on her kinship network, she had her maternal uncle, Assistant Prefect (rank 6a) Zhao, convey Daofu’s Record of Conduct to the assistant prefect’s brother-in-law, Zhang Huan. Conscious that the Zhangs had been friends of Daofu’s family for several generations, and aware of the merit of the individuals in question, Zhang—a 1521 metropolitan graduate from Kunshan who rose to be assistant transmission commissioner in the Office of Transmission (rank 5a)—agreed.86 A Community of Tangs and Chens? A common set of experiences and strategies seems to emerge. Those who could prepared themselves for the examinations; those who lacked the requisite resources or abilities sought to educate their sons. Although many were tutored by Wen Zhengming and other luminaries, success came with difficulty if it came at all. (The only one to become a jinshi, Chen Ye, did so nineteen years after passing at the provincial level.) The number of wives and daughters who were connected to other degree-holding patrilines—lines often holding

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degrees as modest as those of the lines with which they married—implies substantial elite endogamy. There is as much evidence of tension and of distance between lines as there is of solidarity: just as in the case of the Iron Bottle Lane Chens, the Tang’s definition of family boundaries and of kinship obligations remained ambiguous. Tang Chou was not only critical of his kinsmen’s conspicuous consumption but was also victimized by their activities. Closely related as Ru and Chou were, there is not the slightest reference in the texts on one line to members of the other. Since both could claim elite status (and each could thus have used the additional glory of their relatives to enhance their own), such silence seems further confirmation that family was narrowly defined. We repeatedly read of financial difficulties (although these seem to have been relative: Chen Daofu’s family was reduced to “several hundred mu of river fields”),87 of victimization by bondservants and dependents, and of problems with labor service assignments. Several engaged in charitable works— albeit on an individual, ad hoc basis. None personally engaged in commerce, and none appear to have sent their sons into trade. How typical were these patrilines? One preliminary check is the experience of those prominent enough to be included in the Dictionary of Ming Biography. When we compare the elite cohort that reached forty between 1511 and 1540 (those born between 1471 and 1500) with their predecessors, we find decreasing evidence of direct involvement in commerce or industry. Of the eight, several are from modest backgrounds, but none had any clear connection with marketplace or workshop.88 Of the twelve in the comparable 1541–1570 group, Zheng Ruoceng’s father was a merchant (although prior generations of the family were scholars); Ju Jie’s family was connected to the Imperial Textile Factory; Xu Xuemo was a fifth-generation descendant of a family that had made its fortune as distillers; and Huangfu Fang’s second wife was the daughter of a prominent textile merchant.89 The picture is thus considerably less clear-cut here. Yet none of these individuals, much less sons or brothers, resorted to trade (unless one counts involvement in publishing and Zhang Fengyi’s pricelist for his calligraphy). Given other evidence, this suggests not that elites had abandoned commerce but that they were engaging in it less directly— either through bondservant-managers or by dividing labor between scholarly and mercantile patrilines.90 Equally striking are the long periods many of these individuals and their close kin spent in (often fruitless) pursuit of the jinshi or juren degrees. Family ties were clearly important, but the important ties were those to fathers, brothers, sons, affines (or, in the case of the Huangfu and the Huang as well as the Yuan, cousins) rather than those to more distant relatives. These men wrote for, painted for, and associated with one another. They lacked both the space and the authority to address the problems of their soci-

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ety. Whatever the coherence of its parts, Suzhou as a whole lacked structures to articulate a collective will. Some have suggested that the shift from countryside to city cut elites adrift from the communities within which obligation and responsibility could be recognized and defined. There seems some truth in this, given the limits of charity in sixteenth-century Suzhou. Yet this was as much a result of imperial design as of urban anomie: Zhu Yuanzhang’s vision of the world had left little room for a locally based public sphere between the selfish private interests of individual households and a general good championed by the dynasty and its officials. As a group, Suzhou’s elites were without doubt prime beneficiaries of the ways the Ming system evolved in its first two hundred years. But, if the fate of the collectivity seemed secure, that of individual patrilines was not. In each generation, families had to struggle—often, the sources assert, without success—to perpetuate themselves physically and socially. This left little time or energy for more general concerns.

Reform—and Its Limits The public weal thus remained the recognized responsibility of the state. Throughout the first third of the sixteenth century, two rival analyses had competed for official backing. The first placed more stress on men than measures, emphasizing the need for virtuous administration vigorously carried out. It was the strategy pursued in the 1520s—and found wanting. The alternative focused on remedying the perverse effects of the tax system, effects that had led rational actors to desert the “roots” and pursue the “branches.” The latter would now be tried. It would be tried in a promising context. Although the Jiajing emperor’s interest in routine administration later flagged, in the first years of his reign he paid considerable attention to such mundane questions. This interest was reinforced by imperial awareness of a real, if still largely hypothetical, threat to imperial finances. In 1523 a censor had memorialized, noting that the quotas set in the first years of the dynasty were no longer met, year in and year out. In the court discussion that followed, Imperial Adviser Gu Dingchen (from Kunshan, primatus in the 1505 examination) submitted a memorial discussing finances and fiscal administration.91 In 1527 the emperor commented on the decay of the Yellow Registers and on the prevalence of commendation and mortgage. Three years later, the Ministry of Revenue reported that the Yellow Registers were indeed a mess: labor service was being allocated on the basis of influence, not resources.92 The man appointed Suzhou prefect in 1533, Wang Yi, had been serving as

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grand coordinator in Henan. While in that post, he had exposed the crimes of a member of the ruling family enfeoffed in that area. The prince secretly brought false charges against Wang. These resulted in his being deprived of his rank as well as his post. The literati and commoners of Suzhou petitioned to have him reinstated, twice in the capital and a third time through Grand Coordinator Hou Wei. Hou transmitted their request and the emperor finally granted it. Wang had previously served as district magistrate of Jiading. Moreover the district magistrate of Changzhou from 1533 to 1535, He Fu, was said to have assisted Wang Yi in tidying up the land tax. This suggests that Wang’s reformist impulses were evident even during his initial brief stint in office.93 More important perhaps was the fact that Wang Yi was the disciple (menx94 ia) of Gu Dingchen (now minister of rites and grand secretary).95 Although Gu as a native of Suzhou was barred from holding financial posts, he enjoyed the emperor’s trust and had shown a lively interest in fiscal reform throughout his career. When Wang Yi arrived at the post a second time (1536–39), he reported that although 20 percent of the taxes on Suzhou had been remitted, the government was still not able to collect the reduced amount. (This presumably referred to a 1537 remission of land taxes in response to flooding in Suzhou and Songjiang.)96 This system was obviously not working. Accordingly, in 1537 when Gu Dingchen memorialized a third time requesting that the tax situation in Jiangnan be clarified, he obtained the emperor’s assent.97 Prefect Wang Yi and Grand Coordinator Ouyang Duo thus had imperial sanction to equalize the land tax throughout the region. Suzhou served as a precedent for reform in other prefectures.98 The measures they adopted can be seen as the first attempt to implement Single Whip reforms.99 Although he shared his peers’ suspicion of the local clerks, Wang Yi saw that it was the complexity and confusion of the tax system that afforded the clerks opportunities to make fools of officials and commoners—and profits for themselves.100 Yet when tinkering could no longer be deferred, the nature of the system circumscribed reform. Neither the court nor the state was willing to forgo a major portion of its present revenue. Certain sectors were clearly undertaxed, but shifting burdens from land and households to commerce and net worth presented formidable technical difficulties. Trade taxed might well become trade diverted (from the customs stations if not the markets). What, and even more, how to tax raised endless complexities. Was food to be included? Was the tax to be based on the “value” of the goods? On the return to the merchant? How would either be determined? Fluctuations in volume would lead either to unwelcome variations in income or to the sort of minimal quo-

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tas imposed at the beginning of the dynasty.101 The state’s ability to curb the machinations of local elites and local clerks was clearly limited, as was its capacity to inventory and assess the movable property of more than a half-million households. The desire to maintain central control, auditing, and oversight; the law of avoidance; and the relatively short terms incumbents served in a given post also limited enthusiasm for crafting unusual arrangements tailored to local conditions. To be effective, a reform would thus have to be a simplification. There were rival approaches—notably the “ten-section system” urged on Wang by Tang Shunzhi (1529 jinshi from Wujin).102 The reformers of 1537–39 chose instead the sorts of change Wang Ao’s diagnosis implied. Grand Coordinator Ouyang first had the land resurveyed, following embankments rather than surveying it household by household. He discovered that more than 440,000 mu in the districts and subdistricts of the southern capital region were uncultivated yet taxed. Prefect Wang carried out the re-survey of Suzhou prefecture. The new registers recorded 8,639,737 mu, including mountain and waste, owing an annual quota of 2,809,703 piculs of “level rice” (pingmi).103 This added 280,000 mu to the tax rolls. (This figure may seem impressive, but it actually was only 1.8 percent of the area recorded in 1502, 3.0 percent of the 1570 total.)104 Ouyang decreed that the phantom obligations that communities had previously borne be eliminated; he used the surplus from other areas to make up the difference. He succeeded in eliminating “commendation” (guiji) and reduced the burdens of the imperial postal service.105 In place of the existing welter of classes and grades of land, the taxable surface was treated as one category (save in Wu district, where the 209,881 mu of more lightly taxed “mountain and marsh” resulted in two).106 The district’s total land tax obligation—including the mandated wastage allowance—was then converted to “level rice” and divided by the number of mu registered. Conversions and wastage charges were used to equalize the amount collected from plots of the same size. In place of the baroque welter of conversion formulas used in the past, a standard (and more realistic)107 rate equating one ounce of silver to two piculs of grain was adopted.108 Henceforth each mu of arable in Wu district owed 0.344 piculs; the rate in Changzhou was 0.375 piculs per mu.109 Nonetheless, the yamen preserved distinctions that separated official and commoner fields, those that owed 0.6 piculs plus and those rated 0.1 piculs or less. Hence the government still maintained that since “confiscated fields had been given to the small commoners to tenant, in most cases in lots of 30 mu or less, . . . [t]hose who transformed it [into private land] and sold it were to be punished by officials.”110 Such an “equalization of the land tax” (junliang) removed most of the

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incentive to hold one type of land rather than another.111 It also eliminated some of the prime sources of clerkly power and profit, notably manipulation of the conversion rates112 and confusion of the land registers. It did not solve all problems. Each year prefectures and districts were notified as to the precise quantity and quality of items used in paying the land tax (rice, silk, cotton cloth, silver) the Ministry of Revenue required that year. This was accompanied by precise instructions concerning how much was to be delivered to which office. Even though the land tax had nominally been equalized, fluctuations in the amounts to be delivered, in the market value of these items, and in delivery costs provided ample opportunities for the confusion that permitted squeeze and favoritism to thrive. The zhengyi (unified levy) method was accordingly employed in tandem with “equalization of the land tax.” When the ministry’s instructions were received, local officials converted all of the items (including allowances for wastage and transport costs) to “level rice,” totaled them up, then divided by the number of registered mu. Each taxpayer was then instructed to deliver this amount, multiplied by the number of mu in his possession, using various media of payment in proportion to the share of each per picul of “level rice” or per average mu.113 In theory at least, ambiguities were thus eliminated and advantages bestowed equally on all taxpayers. Taxing fields rather than households, and treating all fields equally, greatly simplified the payment of taxes.114 In and of itself, it did nothing to lower the tax burden for the district as a whole: cases in which taxes were dramatically reduced were offset by those in which they were increased.115 Adopting the more realistic two piculs of grain per ounce of silver actually increased taxes, since the total quota due the state remained fixed. Remeasurement did not reveal enough unregistered land to affect average rates dramatically.116 In some cases, the amount of arable discovered was dwarfed by the quantity of deserted and submerged land removed from the books, leading to a net increase in the average tax burden.117 The land tax (and the other charges affixed to it) still claimed 20 percent of a normal year’s yield. That maximum rates had been substantially higher at some previous time did little to persuade landlords, either among the area’s property holders or in the bureaucracy, that current levels were reasonable and just.118 Nothing was done to ease the hardships of taxpayers forced to convert grain to silver at harvest time—when prices for their crops were lowest. The reformers’ aims had been a modicum of equity for the taxpayer and a full granary for the government, not a completely new system.119 If the subjects’ burdens were lighter, this was a result of the modest bar to extortion and squeeze simpler procedures might provide, not to revenues forgone. Indeed, the reduction of maximum rates arguably made application

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of late-Ming tax increases to this notoriously overtaxed region seem administratively feasible. Thus if, on the morrow of reform, the rich and powerful were once more conspiring with yamen underlings to avoid land tax and labor service,120 this was because there was still much to avoid—and many ways to avoid it. In spite of the fact that white rice (bailiang) was universally considered the most onerous of taxes in grain,121 the people of Suzhou remained personally responsible for transporting it to the capital. Labor service was more flagrantly inequitable in incidence and administration—and potentially far more ruinous an economic burden—than the land tax.122 Yet, in the century separating Yingzong’s death (1464) from the accession of Muzong (reigned 1567–72), attempts to grapple with this issue were limited to breathing new life into existing arrangements rather than attempting to replace old and defective methods with new ones.123 Wang Yi’s 1538 conversion of conscript to hired labor may seem an exception to this: henceforth payment was to be made in silver rather than service, a substantial portion of the obligation becoming a charge on land.124 Closer examination reveals that this apparent advance was in fact a retreat. The reform only dealt with miscellaneous labor service obligations. Moreover, the same figures mentioned in accounts of Wang Yi’s reform appear in the 1643 Wu District Gazetteer (Chongzhen Wu xian zhi)’s summary of the 1479 Jun yao ce (equalization of corvée service registers)—less the 3,500 ounces of silver assessed on the “family property of townsmen resident in the city and attached suburbs and of the two mountains” (i.e., the Dongting area) in the late fifteenth century.125 Whether the decision to forgo the latter (which was 23.9 percent of the total, and 33.9 percent of the amount borne by property rather than persons, in 1479) accompanied that to consider landed wealth alone when grading households is unclear. The change seems to have been permanent.126 The 1479 total of 14,680 ounces of silver was roughly equivalent to 29,360 piculs of grain, at the conventional rate enough to support 1,468 households. Even had this level of funding been sustained, it would not have provided anything like the labor force needed to collect and transport taxes, to perform routine administrative tasks, or to maintain the district’s infrastructure and public buildings.127 District yamens were chronically underfunded and overburdened:128 conscript labor (and raw material), like squeeze, afforded local governments the means to narrow this gap. Although Ming gazetteers contain what look to be salary schedules for corvée duties, these were not salaries paid by the yamen but amounts conscripts were required to pay if they wished to hire a substitute rather than perform the work themselves.129 Some posts did

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bear a modest stipend, but the amount budgeted never pretended to equal the true cost of fulfilling the duties prescribed. Those appointed were expected to find ways of covering their expenses as best they could. In practice, this meant that sums not collected from society in taxes were extorted as customary fees, manipulated weights and rates of exchange, multiple billing, and summary appropriation.130 Such a method might seem needlessly destructive of the social order. It did, however, relieve the magistrate of the burden of first raising, then disbursing, funds to cover administrative overhead. And it provided the yamen with a taxpayer of last resort—at least until he fled.131

Administering a “Reformed” Society Benevolent though their intentions might have been, the program of the local reformers thus had severe limitations. The link between equity and the long-term viability of the system was clearly grasped; but it was the latter that induced officials to pursue the former, not the reverse. Clearly, so long as the state depended on a single prefecture for a tenth of its income, that locality’s peace and prosperity were crucial to the state. Magistrates occasionally tried to encourage productive endeavor or to curb amorality and extravagance. Most found satisfying their superiors and placating their subjects demanding enough. The more ambitious discovered that attempts to set things right led to personal disgrace, not better government. There were powerful vested interests within the locality, interests said to have excellent connections in the capital.132 Yet their ability to frustrate the activist merely reinforced an orientation rooted in the press of routine duties, limited knowledge of local conditions, and careerism. The prudent bureaucrat collected the taxes, kept the peace, and moved on, bequeathing intractable problems and blatant injustices to time— and their successors. Thus, if the 1540s seem to have been little better than the 1520s or 1530s, this should not occasion much surprise. In 1541, taxes were remitted in Suzhou and surrounding prefectures in response to disaster; two years later, this had to be repeated for Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, and Zhenjiang.133 One response was a renewed effort to improve water control and communications. That year, the official in charge of the customs house at Hushu built a channel from the customs station to Maple Bridge, a distance of twenty li (ten kilometers).134 The next, Regional Inspecting Censor Lu Guangxun opened the various rivers of Suzhou and Songjiang prefectures.135 Lu contrasted the melancholy conditions before him with the situation “twenty or thirty years before” when dikes were maintained, fields were bountiful, food was ample, and worries were few.136

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Since major water-control efforts had not seemed an urgent matter, the “silver for men charged with channeling the waters” (daohefu yin) established in 1497 had long since been diverted to other purposes. To provide the manpower dredging key channels required, Lu had to rely on the hundreds and tithings (lijia), summoning two men from each tithing (jia) in Suzhou prefecture (a total of 77,520 men). This miscellaneous corvée took peasants away from agriculture—or, just as grave an inconvenience, from the handicrafts and casual labor they pursued during the off-season. Suzhou households had come to rely on such seasonal by-employment to make ends meet.137 Regional projects often involved service far from home, precisely the sort of labor service the powerful were eager to avoid. As result of collusion between the clerks and the powerful, those who labored were predominantly men who did not possess land, while the chief beneficiaries did not supply any of the labor.138 Such measures were not in any case a panacea. In 1545 there was a great drought, causing the waters of Lake Tai to contract. This was followed by famine and a great epidemic.139 Thus, broadly speaking, one could argue that little had changed in the wake of reform. The area continued to be buffeted by natural disasters as well as sudden, arbitrary increases in the state’s demands. The rich continued to use every available ruse to evade taxes and labor services, while the yamen underlings continued to exploit their strategic position as record-keepers to extort bribes. Time and again, Suzhou men proved adept at side-stepping obstacles in their path and at turning unpromising situations to their advantage. The impact of the reforms was conditioned by the context in which they occurred—a context that included changes in the way the empire recruited its officials, modification of the exemptions to which degree-holders and officials were entitled, the changing culture of Suzhou’s local elites, fluctuating economic opportunities, and climatic variations, as well as changes in taxes and their administration. The leveling of taxes on commoners’ land (mintian) and official land (guantian), in conjunction with the partial transformation of miscellaneous corvée into a charge on land, had been designed to stanch the flow of people from the roots to the branches. There is little evidence that it did so. Patrilines oriented to success in the examination halls seem to have participated less openly in interregional commerce than they had in the fifteenth century. Yet they did not return to the land as a result: one continues to read of Suzhou men shunning investments in farming.140 Although the subdivision of polders increased the number of prime fields, a growing population concentrated in the immediate vicinity of the prefectural seat remained dependent on byemployment, peddling, and service as hired hands to make ends meet. Whether by coincidence or as a result of the increase in the burden imposed on

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those fields whose taxes rose, the first reports of rent resistance in Ming Jiangnan date from the 1540s.141 If society’s problems seemed much the same as before, they also appeared as manageable (or at least as successfully managed) as they had ever been. As it had since 1367, Suzhou remained at peace. Its prosperity, however unevenly distributed, was genuine. Elite households might find that validating their claims to membership in the eyes of their peers and passing that status on to the next generation were becoming more and more difficult tasks. Yet for those who had arrived, it remained the “paradise on earth” Tang Yin described in his poem.142 The beginning of the New Year was naturally a time for reflection, and Wen Zhengming (1470–1559)—by 1551 the most celebrated living member of the Suzhou elite—had long made a habit of composing a poem on that occasion. In 1551 he wrote: I sit here with affection for the lingering year—useless emotion!— in the room at night, candles burning, waiting for the dawn. I am not so much saddened at being old, without my friends; I am only shamed by the brightness of younger people! As the New Year comes in, with a smile I watch the new calendar replace the old; sleepless, I grow weary of hearing short and long watchdrums. The incense burns out, the wine turns cold, the people fall asleep— suddenly, the first crow of the dawn rooster is heard.143

The dawn cries of the following decade would provide ample justification for regarding earlier decades as the good old days.

Epilogue “Actually Full of Want and Distress”? Suzhou in the Wokou Crisis and Its Aftermath

Piracy and Its Opponents: The Wokou Crisis The individual most responsible for turning Suzhou’s latent tensions into an immediate crisis was himself an offspring of the Suzhou elite—albeit the product of a spectacularly dysfunctional family. Zhu Wan’s father was a 1472 tribute student who briefly held a minor educational post; his mother was a concubine. His father’s official wife and Wan’s half-brothers took an instant dislike to him. They are said to have repeatedly conspired to kill him, starting three days after his birth and continuing until he was fifty-two. Zhu Wan (1494–1550; DMB) not only survived, he flourished, passing the jinshi examination in 1521 and serving the empire with distinction. Yet his biographer describes him as “remarkably narrow-minded and hot-tempered.”1 To Zhu, the law was the law, and those who connived to participate in the flourishing illicit trade were little more than “pirates in caps and gowns.”2 Assigned to suppress this illegal activity in 1547, he demonstrated genuine zeal, eliminating the pirate’s nest near Ningbo. Yet the result was not an end to piracy and a promotion for Zhu. Instead, his efforts escalated piracy and resulted in disgrace for Zhu himself.3 In the early 1550s, the pirates not only established their principal base in the Suzhou-Songjiang area but also mounted raids that demonstrated a thorough familiarity with the region’s commercial geography.4 Zheng Ruozeng (DMB), noting that nine-tenths of the pirates’ interest in Suzhou during the wokou crisis centered on the area outside the wall, wrote: From the Chang Gate to Maple Bridge is a distance of ten li [five kilometers]. On both the north and the south shore the residents are as close together as the teeth of a comb, especially on the south shore. In general, as for goods that are difficult to obtain in the four quarters [of the world], there are none that are not found here. Those who pass through are dazzled by its brilliance. Maple Bridge in particular is the spot where the seaworthy vessels of the merchants converge to go upriver. North of the river is the center of a great trade in beans and grain and in cotton. Guest [merchants] from north and south come and go, holding the oar and weighing anchor. They are all here.5

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This concentration of merchants and merchandise would repeatedly draw wokou armies to the gates of Suzhou. The damage done Suzhou by the pirates was, however, almost certainly less dire than that inflicted by the government’s pirate-suppression program. The commercial entanglements of Suzhou’s prominent families tended to more legitimate lines (trade with the Central Plain and the Yangzi valley, pawnbroking, shopkeeping, and service as a middlemen in both tax collection and cloth production).6 But, by reducing the amount of silver in circulation, official policy threatened to slow legitimate trade within the Middle Kingdom itself. For some sectors, the effects were even more direct. The prosperity of the city’s “myriad” loom households had come to depend in no small measure on the demand the smuggling trade provided—as the contraction of the 1550s and 1560s makes clear.7 Thus the 1550s were a major period of crisis—military and economic. The decade had begun badly: in response to natural disaster, taxes were remitted in 1551.8 The portents were only to grow more ominous. In the third month of 1554, there was a solar eclipse at sunrise, followed by an earthquake. On the twenty-third of the following month, at the second night watch, a great light more than ten zhang (roughly thirty-three meters) high appeared in the West. It fell to earth. This was followed by a great drought.9 In part because of these events, and in part because of the wokou disaster, the taxes of Suzhou, Songjiang, and adjacent areas were remitted that year. Half of the troops normally used to transport tax grain were diverted to meet the defense needs of the localities.10 Under these circumstances, funds to pay troops, as much as “a hundred million” above and beyond the regular quota, were urgently needed. Mou Yi, district magistrate of Changzhou from 1554 to 1555, won praise, and a promotion, for handling the financial crisis skillfully.11 Inevitably, however, military officials moved to center stage. Ren Huan had been the vice prefect of Suzhou since 1544. Because his superiors lacked military talent, he took charge of the defenses. In the intercalendary third month of 1552 there was a clash with “Japanese pirates” at Baoshan, the artificial hill Zheng He had built just outside the Liu Family Harbor. The officer in command was killed. Vice Prefect Ren took charge, engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the bandits. The battle raged for several days; finally, the bandits broke off the engagement and fled. Later, they invaded Taicang. The vice prefect immediately went to resist them. His forces were outnumbered, a situation that led Ren Huan to throw himself into the fight. He received three wounds and might have perished on the battlefield had a cook (Xu Pei of Changzhou district) not guarded him; the cook ultimately died of the blows he received. When the bandits finally drew back, the vice prefect commanded his forces

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to bind up their wounds, then put out to sea in pursuit. The seas were so rough that even veteran seamen felt ill. It was Ren Huan’s spirit that rallied the official forces. Ultimately they defeated the bandits, capturing and beheading more than one hundred. Ren fought battles at Yinsha, Baoshan, and Nansha—all victories. As result, he was advanced to the post of assistant surveillance commissioner and charged with putting the defenses of Suzhou and Songjiang in order. Popular support for the official cause was not limited to individuals like cook Xu. In the autumn of 1554, pirates from Ludujing escaped into the countryside south of Xumen Channel in Wu district. The local people destroyed the Qianma Bridge, preventing the brigands from crossing the stream. Hearing the alarm, official troops stationed at Wulin Temple gave pursuit, killing them all. Locally at least, this was remembered as a turning point in the struggle; hence, when the bridge was rebuilt, its name was changed to the Xuanma (“turn back horse”) Bridge.12 The Weng, East Dongting merchants long active in Linqing, contributed funds needed to raise a militia to protect their hometown.13 Their donations may have been less evidence of loyalty to the dynasty than hostility to outsiders: Zheng Ruozeng wrote that “the commoners of the mountainous area stress protecting their families but slight obedience to orders [from without].”14 Given the severity of the crisis, one might have expected village communities to shut themselves off, a pattern often found in other places and later times.15 In sixteenth-century Suzhou, this was not possible. The absence of standard markets and the pattern of population growth both evince the degree to which villagers depended on their ties to higher-level market towns and to the city. Although Changzhou villages could still theoretically have fed themselves from their own fields, doing so would have required the complete nonpayment of rent and taxes. The villages of Wu could not have survived even under such conditions.16 Further, the way social space was organized may have reinforced the patterns created by economic development and the imbalance between land and population. Standard marketing communities appear to have been the arena within which cohesive lineages were organized elsewhere. Their absence in Suzhou’s hinterland may have hindered the consolidation of agnates in strong lineages here.17 While the division of polders may have created smaller and somewhat more cohesive “pumping communities,” the dike administrators usurping “whatever authority remained over the local communities” after the decay of the hundreds and tithings (lijia) and tax captain system, the reforms that are said to have “strengthened the corporate existence of irrigation communities” were still fifty years in the future.18 In short, the spheres within which men acted in Suzhou’s immediate hinterland were either too broad or too narrow for society to rally effectively to its own defense.

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What of the local elites? Suzhou had a proud martial tradition, fondly invoked in the introduction to the section on local customs of the 1506 Suzhou Gazetteer (Gu Su zhi).19 Gao Qi (DMB) and Zhu Yunming (DMB) had both shown a keen interest in their military as well as their civil heritage.20 In the previous century, Han Yong (of Changzhou: 1422–78, js 1442; DMB) had won fame and high office as a military commander. Many of the leading families of midsixteenth-century Suzhou—including that of Wen Zhengming (DMB)—were listed in the military registers. Yet elite participation in the struggle against the marauders was limited to those in office. Although their father served with distinction at the front, Wang Shizhen (1526–90, js 1547) and his brother Wang Shimou (1536–88, js 1559) (on each, see DMB) responded to the crisis by writing poetry and pursuing their preparation for a civil career.21 Others published (Yuan Jiong: DMB) or wrote (Zheng Ruozeng, Gui Youguang: on each, see DMB) essays about coastal defenses and military organization. Many (Huang Jishui: DMB), deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, simply left the area for the duration. Most appear to have hired some sturdy lads to defend their persons and their property, then retired to cultivate their gardens.22 Actions like those of Tang Chou came closest to an active local response. When the wokou attacked, they destroyed everything in their path. Having saved five years’ income, the frugal Mr. Tang was not without resources. The residence he had inherited from his ancestors was near the Chang Gate; this area was largely destroyed in the fighting. Gloomy and desolate as the now-vacant quarter was, there were still men constantly coming and going. Tang Chou provided congee for the transients and used his surplus to aid the residents. This benefited the community; Chou managed it quietly over a long period. Those who knew of his efforts urged him to present himself for official appointment. Tang Chou laughingly replied: “This is not my ambition. The wild swan [a metaphor for soaring ambition] reaches the highest [Daoist] heaven while the tailor bird resides on a single branch. Each seeks its proper level, that’s all. Managing this one task certainly does not require outstanding ability. And then I am already an old man.” He declined and was not appointed.23 There were doubtless others who responded to the situation as Tang Chou did. The contrast with the actions of the Jiading loyalists a century later and with gentry militarization in the nineteenth century remains striking.24 It is tempting, but almost certainly incorrect, to attribute such general passivity either to antimilitary strains in Chinese culture or to Suzhou’s continuing hostility toward the dynasty and its pirate-suppression policies. Suzhou men appointed to offices charged with carrying out the anti-wokou campaigns (Zhu Wan; Wang Shizhen’s father, Wang Yu) prosecuted the war vigorously and ably.

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The inaction of those out of office was evidence of neither pacifism nor disloyalty but of the success with which the Ming state had discouraged local initiatives in this and other critical areas. The most intense year of the crisis was 1555. The wokou were then based at Songjiang’s Zhelin. In the fourth month of 1555 the bandits invaded Suzhou, as they had in the summer of 1554: “Smoke and flame hid the heavens, prostrate corpses filled the streets. When the bandits were at the Lou Gate, the commoners struggled west to the Chang Gate in order to enter the city. They trampled one another to death. At the gates and towers of the city wall, the skeletons of about three hundred persons accumulated, resembling a small hill.” The authorities had closed the city gates; outside them, residents of the countryside gathered weeping. Despite fears of other officials that lawless elements would be admitted in the scramble, Ren Huan ordered the Xu Gate opened. Women were permitted to enter first and told to stand on the right. Only then were the men allowed to come in. They were ordered to stand on the left. Each man led his own wife and children by the hand. In this way, more than twenty thousand refugees entered the city, yet none died in the crush.25 The bandits plundered Lujingba, defeating Commissioner-in-Chief Zhou Yude, and then withdrew. Owing to merit in the fighting, Ren Huan was promoted to the position of right administration vice commissioner. The bandits had not, of course, disappeared: one column had gone north to plunder the customs station at Hushu, the rest south to plunder Hengtang, then to sail Lake Tai—part of the regionwide attack mounted by the pirates. In the sixth month, the wokou again advanced en masse, launching a threepronged attack on Suzhou. When they reached Yiting (an alternate name for Weiting), thirty li (fifteen kilometers) from the city wall of Suzhou, Ren deployed his soldiers at Lujingba, outside the Lou Gate. He placed his crack troops (“the hooked-knife hands”) on the main road, aboriginal forces (Miao) and those from Shandong on the flanks. A massive column of bandits advanced, but they were not able to prevail. They assumed that the best forces must have been concentrated at the center and so the next day sought to advance through the weaker ranks stationed in the fields. During the night, however, Ren Huan had ordered the units to change places, leaving their flags and pennons unchanged. The vanguard of the wokou force was thus led into a trap and exterminated. Regrouping his forces and relying on a combination of deceit and persistence, Ren held the ground even in driving rain. More than three hundred wokou had advanced, bodies naked and swords glistening, to meet the government forces. At the end of the battle, more than a hundred severed heads lay in the water. Although Ren was unable to fully exploit this vic-

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tory, the bandits had been forced to flee before reaching the city. Thus the imperial forces were greeted as heroes by young and old, male and female. Many more bloody skirmishes followed. In recognition of his accomplishments, Ren was awarded a protection (yin) privilege for one son. When he received news of his mother’s death, Ren Huan petitioned to defer mourning until he had finished pacifying the rebels. At his death two years later, the court bestowed honorific rank and a second protection privilege. A temple honoring him was built in Suzhou. Sacrifices to his spirit were offered every spring and autumn.26 Despite the valor of Ren and of Regional Commander Yu Dayou (DMB), the bandits based at Zhelin continued periodically to advance, on one occasion occupying Taozhai, a market town in Huating district. Grand Coordinator Cao Bangfu ordered his subordinates to encircle them. Part of this force succeeded in eliminating the bandit forces in the Lake Tai area, but another unit suffered a defeat. The grand coordinator personally assumed command. Using “fire utensils,” the forces under him destroyed bandit ships, capturing and beheading more than six hundred wokou. Vice Minister Zhao Wenhua (DMB) wished to share the credit for this victory but was prevented by the rapidity with which the grand coordinator—who was said to be honest and uncompromising— reported the facts. When the bandits at Taozhai again routed an imperial force, Zhao blamed Grand Coordinator Cao. Although Zhao’s forces had in fact been the first to give ground, the emperor believed his vice minister. Cao was arrested and ultimately sent into exile.27 Even in moments of crisis, careerism and vindictiveness thus continued to divide Ming forces against themselves.

Aftermath Just as reform of the tax and corvée system seems to have been followed by ever more flight from the land, enforcing the ban on unauthorized foreign trade thus triggered ever more lawlessness. Even after what proved a locally decisive victory over the pirates in the fall of 1556, isolated units continued to come. In addition, the young toughs whom the rich had mobilized to protect themselves and their property during the height of the crisis became a permanent part of Suzhou society—the dahang or “beating societies.” Their services no longer required by the rich, they preyed upon the population as a whole, engaging in protection rackets and other forms of criminality.28 The district magistrate of Changzhou in 1556, Liu Dongbo, discovered that young men were swarming into the city from all sides and causing disturbances. At Liu’s suggestion, the patrolmen mounted a surprise attack and arrested them.29 In 1557,

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crowds of vagrants collected in the city, roaming the streets and looting. Grand Coordinator Zhou Kongjiao ordered members of the garrison to suppress them. When three men were arrested, bound, and flogged to death, the others scattered and fled.30 The atmosphere remained extremely tense. In the winter of 1555 there was mutual fear among the people; an evil fox spirit was said to be at large. In the tenth month of 1556, a “heavenly drum” was said to have emitted a sound like thunder. In the summer of 1557 rumors spread that a wizard who cut paper into the shape of a fox, then placed needles on it to provide claws, had appeared. At night the fox entered men’s homes, wounding people’s eyes and faces. A “wizard” was finally caught; they whipped him to death and the attacks ceased.31 While popular anxiety thus assumed outlandish forms, menace came in more prosaic guise: the same year the eunuchs who headed the Four Offices of the Ministry of Works demanded an additional 23,346 ounces of silver for materials.32 Given the opportunity, civil officials eagerly turned from pacification to reconstruction. The district magistrate of Wu from 1556 to 1558, An Qian, served during the final stages of the local wokou crisis. As soon as the military situation was under control, he began to repair the city wall and to rebuild bridges and roads damaged in the fighting. He also constructed lookout towers at Maple Bridge and at the market town of Mudu, making it easier to hold those strategic positions in the future. Order would not be so easily, or so quickly, restored. The summer of 1559 brought a severe drought; only in the seventh month was there any rain at all. Weng Dali, the grand coordinator in 1559, sought to deal with this as well as with the problems left by the wokou crisis. He calculated that extra soldiers could be sent to the interior, their remaining duties being combined with the commoners’ miscellaneous labor service. He constantly devoted himself to relieving famine. He asked the Ministry of Works to take charge of dredging the channels and maintaining the water-control system.33 But it was clear that, in times of dearth, Suzhou’s dense population was spawning more than the usual criminality: 1559 was a year of severe drought, and the harvest was severely influenced. In the city young hoodlums boasted of their skill with their fists and their military prowess. They united to form gangs. In sport, they attacked and wounded men; though they destroyed men’s bodies, none dared to gasp at it. Even though night had not fallen, they plundered and robbed without fear. If the affected areas offered resistance, the hoodlums smashed their wares and violated their women. If they came across a man in the street, they attacked him; seeing him take to his heels in fear made them laugh. It reached the point that the marketplaces were deserted, all [respectable people] shutting their doors and

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going into hiding. Those who came from afar were compelled to abandon what they had brought [without compensation] and did not pursue the matter. The leaders all were known by name and native place inside the city and out. Yamen underlings and the apprentices of butchers and shopkeepers were all in league with them. Even scions of good families were often involved.34

Grand Coordinator Weng sought to suppress such activity. When he arrived at Suzhou, the evildoers—fearful of Weng and unhappy that several tens of their leaders were being detained—drew blood and donned white kerchiefs. They then took up long knives and huge axes, using force to free prisoners held in the jails of Wu, Changzhou, and Suzhou. Having set fire to the yamens of Suzhou prefecture and Changzhou district, they marched on the temporary residence of the grand coordinator (actually the old tax intendant circuit office), splitting the door with their weapons and forcing Weng and his family to flee over a wall. The yamen was torched, the Grand Coordinator’s badge of office destroyed. Had the prefect, Wang Daoxing, not mobilized soldiers to repel them, these ruffians and the crowd they had collected would have gone on to loot the city. At dawn, those who could managed to break through the Feng Gate, seeking refuge in Lake Tai. While Prefect Wang and Wu District Magistrate Cao Zishou shut the city gates and conducted a house-to-house search for the stragglers, soldiers hunted down and beheaded more than twenty of the fugitives. Under torture, those arrested swiftly admitted their guilt and were summarily executed.35 Thus was a modicum of order and “harmony” maintained in the happy land (letu). Cao Zishou (served 1559–63) had just taken up his post when this incident occurred. He went on to compile an “illustrious” record. A man of great simplicity and unquestioned honesty, in his term of office he “did not procure a single garment and did not feast a single guest.” He had only one servant to wait on him, and while he held the post the yamen gate was not bolted and the bamboo chest was not locked. The underlings in Wu were adept at tampering with the wording of documents to secure illicit gain. Cao made it clear that those who did not reform would be dismissed. He sought to settle lawsuits without pursuing matters to the end. If there was a great offense, even if the powerful and eminent were involved, he resolved it successfully. In times of famine, he provided the starving with congee and medicines free of charge. Squarely facing both the problem of undisciplined soldiers and that of flooding, Cao devoted all his energies to improving the local situation.36 Flooding was a true crisis: in 1561, water submerged places high and low; it lasted into the second month of the following year. The city and suburbs as well as the public offices were half empty as a result. With the water came plague; the young were

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particularly affected.37 Zhou Rudou, the grand coordinator from 1562, joined with Regional Inspector Chen Ruili to ask that the entire tax obligation on flooded fields be remitted and that, if it had already been paid, the government return it to the people.38 As a result, taxes were remitted in Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, and Zhenjiang prefectures.39 In 1563, Magistrate Cao had to resign his office to observe mourning for a parent. He had won the respect and affection of Suzhou’s people during his tenure: not only did “officials and commoners cry out and fill the streets” when they heard that he was leaving office, but he was also given an honored place in the roster of illustrious local officials. A native of Chiping, an impoverished cotton-growing district some fifty kilometers southeast of the great Grand Canal port of Linqing, Cao came from an area that was thoroughly familiar with the less pleasant features of an emerging, Suzhou-centered market economy.40 He may well have assumed office as an ideological conservative with a jaundiced view of commerce.41 But he was a careful observer who had struggled with the area’s problems at a particularly difficult time. It thus seems unwise not to take his somber “View of the Wu District City Map” as seriously as the triumphalism of a Wang Qi or a Tang Yin: [In the city of Suzhou] public offices and official mansions, resident and traveling merchants collect in large numbers on the west side. Hence the land to the east is empty and that to the west is crowded. It is commonly said that the west side is more cultured than the east. But on the west side there are the important thoroughfares: imperial couriers arrive at the place every day. The boats of messengers resemble something woven; they rouse the waiting clerks to escort them and to welcome them by supplying a hundred thousand things. Those who govern the district in reality cause it to suffer. Therefore in Jin [265–419] and Tang [618–906], Wu was the happy land [but] by Song times [960–1276] taxes were already heavy. Now the people are numerous and yet the sources of profit are few. Presently the common people of Wu do not purchase arable land but live by [producing] goods and beckoning merchants. The area around the walled Chang market looks like an embroidered tapestry. [There] luxurious feasts and splendid clothes vie in extravagance. The people therefore compete for trifling amounts of profit. It does not offset the cost [of such display]. When taxes are levied, all [their wealth] goes out; a single stint of corvée duty breaks up families. Those who discuss the matter say that labor services weary the native people; the profits are possessed by the merchants. Will you not find it really so? Hence outside Suzhou has a reputation for riches and abundance, yet within it is actually full of want and distress.42

The usual forces continued to operate unchecked. While Xu Jie served as vice prefect (1559–64), he discovered that “village bullies and noted families annexed [the lands of] the poor and lowly” while yamen clerks committed crimes. Xu used the law to restrain them, cleared a clogged court calendar by

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deciding cases with a few words, and established school lands in order to supply the wants of promising scholars. Thus he tried to uproot long-established evil customs. He was promoted to prefect in 1564 but was almost immediately transferred to another post.43 One cannot help thinking that he should have felt relieved.

Conclusion

Political capitals apart, cities as rich and as populous as Suzhou lack close parallels in the urban histories of other pre-industrial societies. Economically and culturally, Ming Suzhou was a spectacular achievement. That achievement must be seen as a largely unintended outcome of actions taken by state and local elites, actions primarily intended to bring order out of chaos. It in turn had limitations, limitations that fueled crises and shaped their resolution over China’s long seventeenth century. The ways in which those crises were resolved defined the very different Suzhou of high Qing. It thus seems useful to conclude by considering how study of early and mid- Ming Suzhou can contribute to an understanding of China’s development as a whole.

The World Ordered: Ming Autocracy and Suzhou-Centered Smithean Growth The chaos fourteenth-century Chinese sought to overcome was not just a result of Mongol misrule. It was also the consequence of China’s incomplete medieval economic revolution—a revolution state action had done much to trigger but whose social, economic, and cultural effects neither the Song nor the Yuan state could successfully control.1 Reintegrating the economic and social as well as the political order, the Ming sparked the most rapid phase of sustained growth in China’s imperial history. Not only did population rise from 73 million in 1393 to 205 million in 1600; there is also ample reason to believe that Smithean growth within a Suzhou-centered economy significantly enhanced average standards of living.2 The Ming accomplished this by making a broad-based, but relatively light, complex of land taxes and labor services the foundation of its fiscal system. Scholars who have examined China’s imperial past from the vantage of contemporary experience have tended to see this as a retrogressive step. Had the state raised more, then spent it on the right things, it might have more closely paralleled the nation-states of early-modern Europe.3 Yet the Song-Yuan record suggests that such an outcome was at best unlikely, at worst a political and technical impossibility. Given discipline at the top, the amounts the state demanded of society substantially exceeded its normal expenses. For the first

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time since high Tang, an imperial state had the resources it needed to impose order within and defend against threats from without the Middle Kingdom.4 For this system to work, it was of course necessary to incorporate or to eliminate the mid-level “localist” organizations that had emerged in Southern Song and Yuan.5 Facing a depleted population, concentrated in a relatively small portion of the realm, and pursuing the task with remarkable tenacity, Zhu Yuanzhang sought to ban some of these while integrating others into his emerging state. It would be naive to suppose that the emperor succeeded in limiting supra-household organization to state-approved shrines and temples, hundreds and tithings (lijia), and the like. The Ming does, however, appear to have kept such auto-organization at a low level, minimizing openings for autonomous communal activism.6 This was particularly true in areas—like Suzhou—the dynasty regarded as crucial. The Ming was able to tax the empire in general lightly thanks to the much heavier burdens it imposed on Jiangnan in particular. As has long been stressed, this was in part a deliberate attempt to undermine the independent power of landed elites, the group from which scholar-officials were traditionally drawn. Although the peasant-emperor recognized his need to make use of such men, he was profoundly suspicious of them, particularly those from areas long loyal to his rivals. Tax quotas were not, however, just a device to keep overmighty subjects in their place. In part, the Jiangnan tax burden reflected technical considerations: these areas were relatively unscathed, reasonably close to the capital, with unusually efficient water-borne transport. The degree to which heavy taxes correlated with the presence of large cities, a commercialized economy, and widespread involvement in handicrafts has received less attention. Yet Zhu Yuanzhang was conscious of this, making use of it to afford tax relief when the need arose. Had the first Ming emperor wished to be as punitive as he is often portrayed, he would have combined high land taxes with equally heavy imposts on trade. Although neither commerce nor handicrafts escaped entirely, the state’s impositions (especially on the former) were relatively light.7 As Paul Smith’s study of the tea and horse trade shows, in China as elsewhere the power to tax remained the power to destroy.8 To the end of Song, commerce had remained socially despised and morally tainted, even those who trusted the market distrusting the merchant.9 Without in any sense embracing laissez-faire (consider the ban on unauthorized private foreign trade, the demonetization of silver, the system of internal passports, the brokerage system), Ming policies toward merchants seem moderate indeed either by comparison with Song precedents or with Ming treatment of Jiangnan landlords and the scholar-official elite.

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Allowing members of merchant households to participate in the examination system while barring them from reinvesting profits in land suggests that the Ming may even have hoped to use them as a counterbalance to the landed elite. Like the severe limits placed on the protection privilege, the variety of methods used to recruit officials, and the frequent resort to purges, this should probably be seen as part of a strategy to concentrate power in the hands of the dynast. This policy of benevolent neglect assumed that commerce was, and would remain, a necessary supplement to a fundamentally agrarian subsistence economy. Aided by a meritocracy of classically indoctrinated scholar-officials, Zhu Yuanzhang and his successors would preside over a subcontinental empire of self-sufficient (and largely self-governing) villages. Merchants were needed to exchange surpluses, make good deficiencies, and provide luxuries that reaffirmed (rather than challenged) the social order. Had the capital remained in Nanjing, both conspicuous consumption and the networks of transport and communication that made such consumption possible would have focused on the imperial capital. The political would have dominated the economic much as it had during earlier phases of Chinese history—and as it did in virtually all pre-industrial states of any size. It was of course the Yongle usurpation that upset these carefully crafted arrangements. By shifting the capital to Beijing, refurbishing the Grand Canal, plunging the currency into chaos, expanding the role of the examination system, abruptly escalating fiscal pressures on the most heavily taxed areas, and embracing an activist and far less ascetic style of governing, the second founder radically altered the context in which his father’s policies were applied. Had Suzhou not been able to commoditize (and evade), it would have foundered under dramatically increased and regressively apportioned burdens. Fortunately, Yongle’s policies were as fraught with possibility as with peril. Cotton had already emerged to trigger the Ming phase of Jiangnan’s economic development. Relocation of the capital on the North China plain was decisive, however: at a stroke, it created a major extraterritorial market for the luxuries and necessities Suzhou and its satellites produced.10 Similarly, although it was virtually impossible to eliminate use of silver as a store of value, the runaway inflation of the Yongle era must have hastened the expansion of counterfeiting and the resort to silver as a medium of exchange.11 Had these decisions been reversed—the capital being transferred once more to Nanjing, a substantial share of the tax burden shifted from agriculture to commerce (or from Suzhou to other parts of the empire)—these forces might not have had any lasting significance. In the event, they were reaffirmed. From the mid-fifteenth century, Suzhou men—often of merchant background—

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occupied the highest posts in the imperial bureaucracy. Although there is little evidence of their direct influence on economic policy, they were clearly able (witness the Tangs) to obtain low-ranking appointments for Suzhou merchants. In any case, Suzhou’s interests were well served by the emerging consensus, one articulated in the writings of Qiu Jun (1420–95; DMB). Qiu played a major role in persuading subsequent generations of officials that, for the most part, that government governs best which governs least.12 Thus all the factors conducive to Smithean growth under Suzhou’s hegemony remained in place. As a result, by the late fifteenth century, Suzhou attained unprecedented prosperity. Boats from Fujian, Sichuan, Henan, and Hebei filled its harbor, and the southeast coastal port of Zhangzhou styled itself a “little Suzhou.”13 Merchants went out from Wu and Changzhou, plying an especially vigorous trade with the northern capital. In 1466 they established a guild for marketing cotton cloth at the important Grand Canal port of Linqing in Shandong. Simultaneously, peasant weaving—first of cotton cloth, then of silk—was organized by merchants in Suzhou’s immediate hinterland. Suburbs expanded and the rural population was increasingly concentrated near the city. Given then-prevalent agricultural practices, such growth surpassed levels at which the arable would support the local population. The result was not adoption of more intensive techniques of cultivation—a choice that would have channeled energies into farming at the expense of commerce, transport, and handicrafts.14 Imports of grain rose instead, imports paid for not by exporting wheat and higher grades of rice (as they had primarily been in Song), but by profits from nonagricultural pursuits. Although surpluses close at hand were not to be despised, these areas were apt to suffer major natural disasters when Suzhou did. They were therefore likely to withdraw supplies at moments of greatest need. Had it not been for sources farther afield (rice from Anhui, Jiangxi, Huguang, and Sichuan brought by Dongting and Xin’an merchants), Suzhou’s position would have been untenable. That the city could not only survive but prosper signaled its achievement of hegemony within a Suzhou-centered Ming Chinese world system.

A Commoditized, Proto-Industrial—but Not Proto-Capitalist— Imperium Many facets of this system—the concentration of urban population in a few large cities, a stable (or declining) urbanization rate, the expansion of protoindustry in the countryside—were also crucial features of the loosely coupled urban system forged in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Europe.15

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There, a substantial proportion of the peasantry was transformed into rural wage-workers, the volume of manufactured goods expanded as production costs fell, and the total output of the agricultural sector rose as areas specialized in the production of the crops to which each locality was best suited. Although the collective population of Europe’s cities stagnated, some smaller places shrinking in absolute as well as relative size, the investors and the co-ordinators of these new forms of activity were generally urban people. Ironically, for proto-industrialization and de-urbanization to proceed there had to exist serviceable networks of communication and transportation linking towns to their hinterlands and to each other. That is, there had to exist an urban system capable of organizing the landscape into economic regions.16

Post-Song urbanism is thus far less an aberration than scholars once believed it to be. Indeed, recent work on individual Baroque cities suggests that these villes modernes more closely resemble Ming-Qing Suzhou than either do the medieval city described by Max Weber and Henri Pirenne.17 This merely adds to our perplexities, for “the autarchic urban structure of the middle ages could not serve as the urban framework of a commercial and industrial revolution.”18 That of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe not only could but did. How then do we account for the fact that Suzhou’s much-studied “capitalist shoots” failed to thrive? Studies of proto-industrialism elsewhere provide part of the answer. Fullblown instances of the phenomenon often proved harbingers of something other than an industrial revolution.19 One of the weakest elements of the model is, after all, its description of forces driving the entrepreneur to take control of, and rationalize, the means of production. In Medick’s formulation,20 the protoindustrial worker produced most when demand (hence price) was at its ebb, for he sought to maintain his income by increasing output. Given his marked preference for leisure, he (or she) slacked off when prices rose. Such behavior denied the merchant supplies at the very moment they were most urgently needed to satisfy the demands of his customers. It was this defect that ultimately forced him to resort to the more expensive but more readily controlled factory system. One is left wondering why a merchant able to shoulder the considerable burdens of constructing and operating a factory would not simply stockpile goods—buying cheap and selling dear was scarcely an unknown technique. And one of the model’s principal findings is that proto-industry breached the European marriage pattern: age at marriage fell, and completed family size rose dramatically among proto-industrial workers. Given the grinding poverty in which such workers lived, and the precarious balance they maintained between income and outgo, one wonders how often prices rose so high

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that “in addition to public tax, private rent, and the repayment of debts, those who feared being reduced to extremities [did not] number eight or nine out of ten.”21 If the internal impulse to shift from proto-industry to industrialism seems weak, we must also consider how economically rational actors would reinvest their profits. We thus return to the elites who controlled society’s surpluses. In China, money-lending and pawnbroking were lucrative sidelines. A certain amount was funneled into warehouses, shipping, and urban workshops where cloth was finished and dyed and where the best grades were manufactured. Part unquestionably went to defray the cost of improved living conditions for the merchant or was invested in civic amenities in his native place. Through charitable contributions, an ostentatious lifestyle, purchase of an Imperial Studentship or the education and marriage of offspring, much was undoubtedly used to enhance the social position of the individual and his line. Participation in government monopolies (especially salt) was at once lucrative and prestigious. Many who could afford it must have transferred their wealth to government coffers in this way. None of this would have struck contemporary Europeans as unreasonable. Nor would the classic end for merchant profits: secure and respectable investment in land. One of the crucial aspects of early-modern Europe’s economic development was the transfer of funds to the countryside. Many of these investments were doubtless no more productive than those made by their Chinese counterparts. Nonetheless, in Europe some of this wealth was invested in agricultural improvement. Although individuals continued to reclaim land and to undertake water-control projects in Ming, the land controlled by Jiangnan’s elites was increasingly let in small parcels to tenants rather than being worked by its owner.22 This made the direct involvement in agriculture that was elsewhere so important in laying the foundations of an industrial revolution less likely in China. Further, in Wu, a landlord owed 40 percent of his income to the state as land tax.23 If through default or crop failure rent was not paid in full, the absolute amount owed the tax-gatherer remained the same—and its share of the landlord’s income rose. The commercial tax was collected at a 3 percent rate, was assessed in depreciated paper currency, and could be passed on to the consumer in higher prices. Even if landownership had not made one liable for the most ruinous forms of labor service, an economically rational actor might well consider it an investment for fools.24 Given high land prices, above-average completed family size among the upper classes,25 and partible inheritance, such investments simply could not provide patrilines with a secure material base

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over the long term. The crucial decisions about where to allocate scare resources were made by family heads, the long-term interests of their patrilines constantly in mind. On the whole and in the long run, Ming policies greatly benefited Suzhou as a collectivity and, at that level, their positive effects seem to have been quite stable. For individuals, matters were far more ambiguous. If, on average, living standards were higher in Suzhou than elsewhere, those who depended on wage labor or by-employment to eke out a living were also more numerous. In time of natural disaster and economic contraction, the wealthy did aid their less fortunate brethren. Yet there were limits to the resources and to the altruism of these elites. One’s kinsmen, one’s neighbors in the village, and one’s tenants had a clearer claim to one’s charity than the beggars and street people of the marketplace. Insofar as relief took the form of loans rather than gifts, the wellto-do turned a handsome profit on their generosity. Crises accordingly widened the gap, and increased the animosities, between rich and poor. For the patriarch of an elite household, this was less will-to-power than instinct for survival. Confronted with the eternal flux of commerce, the constant fragmentation of agricultural estates, and an intensely competitive exam system, actors had little choice but to make the most of what they had. With each passing generation, the numbers of offspring of established scholar-official households increased while new patrilines entered the lists. Although quotas for shengyuan continued to expand, those for the (ever more crucial) upper degrees remained fixed. There were of course other ways to retain one’s standing in the local elite. Ironically, as the demographic cycle drove wages down and rents and profits up, concentrating wealth in elite hands, it fostered ever more blatant conspicuous consumption. In these circumstances, greater and greater emphasis was placed on tasteful extravagance. A few hardy souls even sought to justify the excesses of the rich in terms of the living they provided for the poor. Many more lived as though the latter justified the former.26 Yet even the most explicit defenses of elite extravagance did not imagine that elite seizing control of and rationalizing the production process. Thus the most iconoclastic of those in command of the society’s surpluses, human and material, remained resolutely precapitalist. In the last analysis, they were apologists for the status quo, not harbingers of some radically restructured order in birth.27 By the mid-fifteenth century, Suzhou authors were marshaling arguments and citing classics in defense of commerce. Merchants claimed (and in many quarters were accorded) a respectable if subordinate place in the existing social, political, and cultural scheme. As has long been recognized, the upper reaches

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of late imperial society were exceptionally free of institutional barriers. In midMing Suzhou, those members of the elite who were not themselves merchants (or the sons, brothers, cousins, in-laws, fathers, or silent partners of merchants) could scarcely avoid associating with those who were. The merchant who had made his fortune was perhaps no more eager in China than in Europe to invest that fortune in status and respectability. In China, he found it easier to do so. In China, that process demanded that one internalize the culture’s classical tradition. Those who passed the exams and became officials would certainly have absorbed a worldview shared by their peers throughout the empire. Even if most merchants never participated in the examinations, they needed to explain and justify their success, in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. Late imperial society offered few institutional supports for a line’s status. Standing as part of the elite depended on recognition of such pretensions by one’s peers; wealth in and of itself was never enough. Generosity was useful but, given the Mencian contrast between profit and virtue, it was far from sufficient. Hence the energy expended in showing that respectable merchants embodied benevolence and righteousness in their public and personal lives. Ultimately it was commitment to family virtues that enabled certain patrilines to demonstrate their adherence to the culture’s highest moral and cultural standards. Embodying those standards at once explained and validated a line’s social eminence.28 It has been suggested that wholehearted acceptance of one’s roles and obligations as a family member was the decisive moment in an individual’s appropriation of the Confucian heritage.29 Given the human and material resources they commanded and the Archimedean point they occupied, Suzhou’s elites were arguably well positioned to redefine the nature and possibilities of their society. As we have repeatedly seen, Suzhou men never embraced a narrow or rigid orthodoxy. Needing to understand and to sustain their claims to social eminence, they were nonetheless impelled to commit themselves to the central values and key assumptions of their civilization—for them, the only conceivable civilization—generation after generation.

The Long Seventeenth Century: The Limits of the Ming Synthesis Such a commitment did not impel them to identify with the plight of their less fortunate brethren. It appears that rates of population growth fell in the sixteenth century.30 Thus global demand within China—particularly effective demand for luxuries—expanded more slowly than it had in the fifteenth. Simultaneously, more and more areas followed Suzhou’s lead, expanding sup-

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ply and thus increasing competition. There is ample evidence that in concert these forces contributed to growing social strains in Suzhou. While some prospered, others foundered—and many, comparing the flux they experienced with the stability they had been taught to expect, found these developments profoundly disturbing. Increasingly preoccupied with social survival of their patrilines through the generations, Suzhou’s elites were ill-equipped to address these problems. In moving from the village to the city, elites removed themselves from face-to-face communities that embedded individuals in networks of particularistic obligation. The city was a far more impersonal environment, the obligations of rich to poor far less clear. This was all the more true given the strict limits the dynasty continued to place on autonomous organization and local activism.31 In 1586 the Suzhou degree-holders Zhao Yongxian and Yuan Huang submitted a fourteen-point memorial advocating reforms intended to relieve the area’s poor. It was rejected “on the ground that a local man should refrain from touching on matters concerning his native region.”32 The dynasty and its scholar-officials were not hostile to the area or indifferent to its condition. They repeatedly intervened to provide the public goods that made Suzhou’s prosperity possible. Imperial orthodoxy might privilege the roots (agriculture) over the branches (commerce and handicrafts), benevolence and righteousness over profit. Yet it was never narrowly physiocratic: an important strain of Confucian thought regarded cities as centers of civilizing influence for their backward hinterlands.33 The ideal official discharged his responsibilities in ways that harmed his subjects as little as possible; if anything, he sought to foster the creation of wealth among the people. Such promotion of the general welfare could, and did, lead to curbs on the activities of the single-mindedly acquisitive. But these curbs reflected official paternalism and a basic commitment to order rather than an anticommercial bias. Their objects were more likely to be local bullies and yamen runners than those who engaged in trade.34 Even those who allotted merchants a subordinate place regarded commerce as a necessary and respectable component of any civilized society. Nonetheless, in the post-wokou era, the Ming state proved incapable of addressing tensions unleashed by expansion of the market. The victories of the mid-sixteenth century left it bankrupt, its local institutions in disarray. The more disciplined management of a Zhang Juzheng (DMB) stabilized the state’s finances.35 Yet simple tightening of administrative practices was not equal to the challenges the regime now faced. If ten-year cycles had become five-year cycles, and once unitary obligations were divided among several households,36

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this was not just a result of the yamen’s insatiable appetite for unpaid labor. Many wealthy households connived with yamen underlings to remove their names from the registers. Still others avoided the landed possessions that would have made them subject to its more onerous forms.37 Contemporaries regarded these as less serious problems than the division of holdings among several jurisdictions (jizhuang) to evade labor service in any one of them and the abuse of privileged exemptions.38 There were two forms of the latter: a holder of privileges might offer protection in return for submission (touxian), or an individual might register land in the name of one entitled to exemption without the latter’s knowledge or consent (guiji).39 According to one memorial, in 1567 false custody accounted for 8.5 percent of the fields in the Yangzi delta, divided holdings for 14.2 percent.40 The “ten-part tax system” (shiduan jinfa)—originally advocated as an alternative to Wang Yi’s equalization policy in the 1530s—had been introduced in Suzhou in 1550 “to check the abuse of the privilege of exemption.”41 Its success had obviously been less than total. Correcting ills so widespread would take vigorous action from the top. Yet, if we are to judge by the percentage of the time “illustrious officials” held key posts, the caliber of those appointed to crucial local offices deteriorated after 1570 or so. Even when the able and dedicated addressed a pressing need with central backing, little was achieved—and that with difficulty. Attempting to maintain the area’s intricate system of local dikes, the Ministry of Works in 1566 endorsed the zhaotian paiyi system, under which landowners would contribute to maintenance of dikes and channels in proportion to the amount of land they owned in a polder. Nothing happened. In 1576 the court explicitly directed areas to implement zhaotian paiyi. This triggered adamant resistance by privileged landlords. Ultimately, a compromise was reached: exemptions would be limited with respect to local water control. Small-scale maintenance would continue to be carried out using the “field head” (tiantou) system, largescale efforts on the basis of the zhaotian paiyi. Even then, implementation of the compromise was not possible until Changshu magistrate Geng Ju devised systematic regulations for yeshi dianli (1604). Under this system, the absentee landlord paid a wage to the tenant who actually did the work. If the landlord refused to pay, the authorities would authorize the tenant to deduct twice that amount from his rent.42 Only when this system proved successful—almost four decades after it had been approved by the Ministry of Works—did zhaotian paiyi spread throughout the Jiangnan delta. If a reform apparently so sensible—and so clearly in the interest of landlords as well as tenants and small cultivators, of society as well as the state—faced this sort of opposition, one can imagine the resistance other policies faced.

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Hai Rui’s (DMB) brief and stormy career as grand coordinator (in office 1569–70) provides ample evidence of this. Wishing to put an end to annexation of the lands of the poor and weak by the strong and well-connected, he accepted accusations as proof and set aside the customary five-year limit on the right of redemption. Within the year, he was impeached for having tried to “purchase fame by confusing government.”43 It was Hai who is credited with introducing the mature Single Whip system to Suzhou. The reformed corvée burden was said to be so equitable that “men began to realize that there was profit in cultivating fields. Thus the wealthy who dwelt in the cities began to be interested in buying land, while poor commoners in the countryside became unwilling to abandon their fields.” If this accurately reflects the immediate impact of Hai’s efforts, the improvement was temporary. Within a decade, the regulations had fallen into confusion and, by the end of the Wanli era, allocation of labor services was once again a major problem. Hai Rui’s reforms did not in any case touch regular corvée duties of the hundreds and tithings or service as tax captain. The Kangxi (1661–1722) edition of the prefectural gazetteer recorded that “the commoners of Suzhou face great difficulties because of the corvée. The heaviest burden is that of households who send white rice [bailiang] under guard to the capital; none of these families escape bankruptcy. Next to this are households assigned to levy the land and poll tax [diding] silver; they are called receivers [shoutou]. Those who have ten or more mu of commoner fields cannot avoid this duty.” Since these burdens had to be borne, they were shifted to those who remained: “If there are not enough upper households, the choice falls on a middle household. If middle households are not numerous enough, the choice falls on associate [peng] households.”44 In truth, the late Ming state had neither means nor will to tackle the ills that plagued Suzhou society. Accordingly, in its last seventy-five years, the Ming state and Suzhou’s elites muddled through, leaving increasingly obvious tensions unresolved and largely unaddressed. This was possible given peace and limited prosperity. Population growth had slowed, not stopped. As it continued in those extensive portions of the Middle Kingdom that had suffered depopulation in the Yuan, wealth was increasingly transferred to elites, thus augmenting (albeit at reduced rates) effective demand for luxuries. In addition, overseas trade revived following relaxation of the ban in 1567. Even during the wokou crisis, the Portuguese foothold at Macao (let in 1557) had acted as intermediary for trade between China, Japan, and the Indies. After 1567, China’s legal maritime trade was funneled through Yuegang in Fujian. Spanish seizure of Manila (1571), the inauguration of the Manila Galleon trade (1573), and the rise of Guangzhou’s entrepot functions (after 1578) soon followed.

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Although these developments took place far beyond the confines of Suzhou prefecture, they served the interests of the city well. At least initially, the hinterlands of these new centers did not produce many of the goods in demand abroad. While production for export remained a modest portion of the Chinese economy, that production was concentrated in Suzhou and a handful of other areas. The additional demand may have been slight relative to that within China itself—but, if it ensured that supply did not quite equal global demand, it would have put upward pressure on prices. Moreover, Japanese and Europeans paid in copper and silver, beginning that long period (occasionally and wrenchingly interrupted) in which bullion from the rest of the world flowed into China. This was a continuing stimulus to expansion.45 Additional effective demand inside and outside China helped to make the unbearable bearable and to render unmanageable tensions manageable. In part this was the result of private institution-building: in the Wanli era (1573–1619), we find the first Ming evidence of guilds and native-place associations (huiguan) at Suzhou46 as well as increased efforts to build or repair monasteries and temples.47 There was also renewed interest in strengthening extended kinship networks and in establishing charitable estates. Thus, if the Chen of Iron Bottle Lane sought to use an updating of their genealogy to reinvigorate family bonds, the descendants of Chen Qiong emulated the strategies of Fan Zhongyan—in Ming Suzhou, a very rare phenomenon.48 Chen Renxi (1579–1643, js 1622; DMB), having survived his confrontation with the infamous eunuch Wei Zhongxian (DMB), advanced rapidly after being restored to office in 1627. He ultimately rose to the position of advisor in the establishment of the heir apparent (rank 5b). In 1630 he used his savings from eight years of official service, including the gifts he received in the classics mat ceremony (six hundred ounces of silver in all), to purchase three hundred mu of suburban fields in Suzhou. This was the original endowment of a “charitable estate” (yizhuang). The most impoverished and the next to the most impoverished groups of kinsmen were to receive grants. Gifts would also be bestowed each year on those who “faced toward virtue, were good at study, and preserved integrity.” Surpluses were to be used to expand the estate and to maintain the honorific arch bestowed on Qiong. Renxi’s aim in doing this was less to aid needy relatives than to transmit the family tradition of worthiness to future generations, enabling posterity to serve as officials.49 The endowment was ultimately able to extend its benefits to connections by marriage and to friends of the family. Significant as such activity was as a token of things to come, these initiatives remained modest in scope and inspired few emulators. Most auto-organization

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in late Ming Suzhou was less highly institutionalized.50 Moreover, it often exacerbated rather than assuaged local tensions. Beating societies (dahang) were perhaps the foremost example of this. Young thugs with no regular employment were organized into small gangs by well-to-do patrons. They terrorized their neighborhoods. Repeated official attempts to suppress them proved futile. Such groups not only organized the premier annual festival in late Ming Suzhou, that of the Sages of the Five Directions; they also usurped control of the city for its duration.51 Beating societies were merely part of the luxuriant expansion of clientage networks in late Ming Suzhou. The phenomenon took various forms: commendation to escape land tax and labor service, expansion of bond servitude, even the proliferation of “talents” (shanren). (The poet—and sometime magistrate of Wu—Yuan Hongdao (DMB) described the latter as resembling “mosquitoes” in the late sixteenth century.)52 Patron-client networks elsewhere proved an effective method of structuring unstable situations.53 The Chinese genius for forming “connections” (guanxi) could easily be adapted to this purpose. By establishing ties with a more powerful individual, the client could avail himself of a patron’s protection. He thus gained access to the patron’s material and social resources, using these assets to compensate for the client’s lack of literal or symbolic capital. In return, the patron expanded his social capital. He often gained more concrete advantages as well. Even those who commended themselves as bondservants could turn the situation to their own advantage: although “mean” people, bondservants were not slaves.54 The relationship was a limited one—and not only in the sense that master and man were formally unequal only in relation to one another, not to anyone else. The terms defining the relationship could (and often did) limit the duration of the tie and the responsibilities subordinates owed to their superiors. So flexible a system could readily be used to profit from rapidly changing conditions. Making the most of one’s opportunities demanded constant vigilance: in a world in flux, the value of a patron to a client or a client to his patron changed as circumstances changed. Yet these networks afforded a modicum of security to the individuals involved, workable substitutes for formal institutions that were either weak, or nonexistent, or that functioned in ways patron and client found unwelcome. As recent studies have emphasized, the operation of the market in late Ming Jiangnan was often a profound source of unease.55 As time went on, Suzhou’s manufactures faced increasing competition, the expanding web of market towns permitting more and more Jiangnan households to channel chronically underutilized labor into production for the market. Moreover, from the 1590s

244

Conclusion

(continuously from the second decade of the seventeenth century), the state was at war. The fact that additional imposts were superimposed on the uncertainties of the market goes far to explain the increasing number and violence of incidents at Suzhou. (There were outbursts in 1601, 1602, 1603, 1608, 1620, 1626, 1638, and 1640.)56 Yet taxes were hardly the only source of tension. Trade routes were disrupted and major internal markets destroyed as fighting within and without the empire continued. Bad weather and terrible epidemics decimated the population in and around Suzhou in the mid-seventeenth century. And, most menacing of all in the long term, areas that throughout the Ming had been forced to export raw cotton to and import finished cloth from Jiangnan discovered how to spin their own serviceable yarn.57 The Ming-Qing transition was thus the culmination of a prolonged crisis, a crisis neither imperial polity nor local elites appeared capable of resolving. As conquerors, the Manchus were not enmeshed in the thicket of entrenched interests and expedient compromises that had grown up under the prior regime. Most famously in the 1661 tax clearance case, they acted against the more egregious forms of elite malfeasance. They and their allies in the upper levels of the scholar-official elite imposed reforms on local administration, supporting the sort of moralistic paternalism espoused during the late Ming by members of the Donglin Academy and its successors.58 Chinese elites came to attribute the fall of Ming largely to the excesses and irresponsibility of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.59 Their penchant for recasting social strain and institutional inadequacy in moral terms did not limit their response to ethical rearmament: both the new dynasty and local elites embraced forms of auto-organization the Ming had generally sought to repress. At least at Suzhou, most evidence for mid-level institution-building in the Ming/Qing transition is post-, not pre-, 1644.60 Unlike the localist strategy of the Southern Song and the Yuan, it should accordingly be viewed as part of an emergent state-led civil society, not as an alternative to the imperial order.61

The High Qing: Renewed Expansion under a State-Led Civil Society The ways in which this crisis played itself out at the local level remain unclear. As has proved the case elsewhere, Suzhou’s renewed (and enhanced) dominance may owe as much to the vulnerabilities of its rivals as to its own strengths.62 That this laid the ground for a new phase of Smithean growth, larger in scale if more modest in rate of expansion, is beyond question.63 Despite the loss of Jiangnan’s natural monopoly on the production of cotton cloth, Suzhou not only survived, it thrived. By the early nineteenth century, those

Conclusion

245

residing in the city and the suburbs numbered more than a million. Finishing industries, which in Ming had been scattered throughout the Lower Yangzi delta, were now concentrated at Suzhou.64 Even as it successfully maintained its position in the interregional grain trade and in the production of fine cottons, Suzhou claimed a major share of the dramatically expanded silk trade.65 Its success was, moreover, not simply economic: a truncated Suzhou prefecture was even more successful in producing jinshi in Qing than it had been in Ming.66 Not only had it not lost ground; there is ample reason to believe that, until the mid-nineteenth century, it prospered more than any of its satellites.67 The restoration of peace and the resolution of tensions that had proved increasingly dysfunctional in the late Ming made such renewed growth possible. Will on closer examination the Qing city prove any more proto-capitalist, any more “early modern,” than we have shown its Ming predecessor to have been? Much remains to be learned, but most of what we know to date suggests that it will not. The cityscape of Qing Suzhou was more dominated by yamens than it had been in the Ming.68 Even those who find evidence of emerging capitalist relations of production in late Ming Suzhou conclude that they vanished in Qing.69 And what we know of Suzhou’s native-place associations, craft guilds, and other forms of auto-organization seems more consistent with the world of traditional, particularistic organs Byrna Goodman described than with elements of the emerging public sphere posited by Linda Johnson in their respective studies of Qing Shanghai. These rival accounts of nineteenth century Shanghai imply very different interpretations of society and economy in the Lower Yangzi macroregion during the high Qing. Were Johnson’s convincing, it would root early-modern phenomena firmly in indigenous developments of the imperial era. Unfortunately, her account of Ming/Qing Shanghai greatly exaggerated the importance of foreign trade in general, and of that with the West in particular. Shanghai was however a “river and sea station,” its fortunes dominated down to 1850 by its lucrative if subordinate role as out-port for Suzhou and its satellites.70 Having successfully negotiated the crisis of the long seventeenth century, Qing Suzhou was both more central to the Middle Kingdom’s economy (insofar as one existed) and more dominant within the Lower Yangzi macroregion than it had been in Ming. It was also more thoroughly integrated into the imperial order. It is thus even less likely that a Suzhou-centered world economy would prove conducive—either at the core or in places whose fortunes were so closely tied to those of the metropole as Shanghai—to an emergent early-modern order in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than it had in the fifteenth and sixteenth.

246

Conclusion

The system centered on Suzhou was neither opposed to economic betterment nor an insuperable obstacle to change.71 But the changes it encouraged were not the early stages of an industrial revolution. Unless we deny significance to any path but the one leading to that great transformation, we must grant that this was an order with great capacity for development—qualitative as well as quantitative development—if precious little capacity for transcendence. A high-level equilibrium was maintained,72 a result not of population pressing on resources but of the efficiency with which the Suzhou-centered system continuously allocated resources to their most productive ends. In concert with long periods of internal peace, this system may well have provided more decently for more people than any of its predecessors in world history.73 Suzhou’s accomplishments were remarkable, and of remarkable durability. Foreign observers had every reason to be impressed. Yet the darker notes struck by native commentators were equally important. All markets are imperfect approximations of the market model; we have repeatedly seen the imperfections of those centered on Suzhou in Ming times. But world cities are very like great powers: their interests are so intimately bound up with the perpetuation of existing arrangements that they become wedded to their inefficiencies and blind to their injustices. Suzhou was never quite heaven on earth. But it remains key to understanding “all under heaven” on the eve of its encounter with the cultural and economic order to which we all, Chinese and Western, now belong.

Reference Matter

Appendix A Population

Two sets of figures—those generated by Zhu Yuanzhang’s consolidation of Ming rule and the early nineteenth-century mutual responsibility system (baojia) returns—provide our least imperfect evidence for late imperial population.1 The district-by-district breakdown of the most accurate early Ming census (1393) does not survive. Although the 1376 figures claim to represent the number of those “actually resident” (shizai),2 the subsequent rise in average household size, and the emperor’s direct intervention in 1387strongly suggest that they are an undercount.3 Those for 1820 record the number of individuals, divided by sex; they include sojourners as well as natives.4 Those for the late fourteenth century only include natives. Any attempt to use the figures in tandem must reconcile these discrepancies. By assuming (a) that the local population had a 109.8:100 male-to-female sex ratio,5 and (b) that sojourning was an exclusively male phenomenon, it is possible to factor out sojourners. Multiplying the 1376 district returns by 5.486 enables us to correct for undercounting. Wu’s population (including the military households, which did not figure in early Ming local registers)7 rises from 349,114 in 1376 to 1,734,238 (826,615 female) in 1820, a quintupling of population that would have required a +0.00361 continuous rate of growth. Changzhou’s population increased over this same period from 486,668 to 757,491 (361,054 female). Thus Changzhou’s population was just half again as large in the early nineteenth century as it had been four and a half centuries earlier (continuous rate of growth +0.000996). In addition, there were 375,418 registered sojourners in Wu in 1820, 107,663 in Changzhou. Growth did not occur without interruption. One would expect a disproportionately large influx of immigrants, and minimal outflow, in times of prosperity. In years of crisis, the reverse would be true. The same pattern should have affected the celebration of marriages as well as infant and maternal mortality, and (in extreme cases) may have produced famine-related amenorrhea. Unfortunately, these fluctuations cannot be traced directly. We do, however, have lists of natural disasters, tax remissions, and military actions.8 By sifting such evidence carefully, then assigning weights that reflect the impact of these events on demographic trends, it is possible to take such factors into account. In assigning values, it seemed best to err on the side of caution. Accordingly, years were rated on the basis of the most serious disruption listed; multiple “minor” disturbances do not (here) a major crisis make. A bumper crop the year before a “minor” disaster was assumed to cancel out the disaster’s demographic effects, and care was taken to eliminate double counting (e.g., a calamity one year triggering tax remissions the next figures only once). Inclement weather between the end of the fall harvest and the beginning of spring planting was ignored. Even so, in 129 of the 444 years between 1376 and 1820, Wu and Changzhou suffered “major” or “minor” disruption. The former are

250

Appendix A table a1 Estimated Populations, 1370–1820 (in thousands)

Year/ Rate of growth

Wu +0.00949

1370 1395 1420 1445 1470 1495 1520 1545 1570 1595 1620 1645 1670 1695 1720 1745 1770 1795 1820 1820 (actual)

357.2 406.2 495.5 520.3 539.1 548.1 586.5 642.2 646.7 759.6 897.1 829.6 929.4 901.2 1099.4 1226.7 1312.7 1445.3 1730.0 1734.2

Changzhou +0.0058

Sojourners (minimum) +0.03518

Sojourners (maximum) +0.03

503.4 534.0 603.2 597.4 575.2 547.5 548.5 568.5 537.9 593.7 644.5 566.3 607.1 561.3 634.1 664.8 666.0 679.0 758.2 757.5

27.7 37.6 64.2 63.7 84.7 94.7 111.8 107.5 110.3 133.0 255.4 168.6 132.0 95.8 163.3 186.6 220.3 337.1 483.5 483.1

129.1 159.0 243.1 222.2 266.3 271.4 326.3 290.3 272.7 301.2 513.4 315.2 231.9 157.3 240.6 251.8 270.8 371.6 483.1 483.1

Source: Data cited in Appendix A.

years in which there are explicit references to famine or plague: in twenty-three of the twenty-five cases, the local population is assumed to have fallen 5 percent from the level attained the preceding year. The exceptions are 1640 and 1641, unusually harsh years in Suzhou and throughout the region. To reflect both the gravity of the crisis and the depleted ranks of potential immigrants (who might otherwise have replaced the dead), the population loss is assumed to have been 10 percent in each of these years.9 In time of “minor” disaster—drought, flood, excessive water, locusts, crop damage, or a major military operation—it is assumed that reductions in fertility rates and immigration rates, combined with increases in mortality and emigration, would result in a net balance of additions and subtractions. Under such circumstances, the number of people at year’s end would be the same as at its beginning. Sojourners are assumed to have been as susceptible to such influences (and associated fluctuations in economic activity) as the indigenous population. By definition, they were far more mobile. Accordingly, their numbers are assumed to have fluctuated more dramatically. Their ranks decline by 5 percent in time of “minor” crisis, by 10 percent during famine or plague, and by 20 percent in both 1640 and 1641. Given the arbitrary nature of our estimate of their numbers in 1376, the sketch of their pre-eighteenthcentury strength is in any case largely hypothetical. These assumptions produce the following estimates of Wu and Changzhou’s populations at twenty-five-year intervals between 1370 and 1820 (see Table A1 and Figure A1). The model posits a constant underlying rate of growth. Since starting and ending

Population

251

Sojourners

3,000

Population (in thousands)

2,500

.

Changzhou ...~ ~

...

/.:"./

..

2,000

Wu 1,500

1,000 Carrying capacity 500

1368

1506

1644

1820

Year

Fig. A1. Estimated Population of Wu and Changzhou, 1370–1820. The dashed line, carrying capacity, indicates the maximum number of people who could be supported by agriculture alone. points are independently fixed, Li Bozhong’s recent argument that Jiangnan growth rates fell in Qing would demand a higher rate of increase in Ming.10 Our figures for the Ming (especially the mid- and late Ming) would need to be revised upward. Table A1 thus represents a set of conservative estimates of the area’s population. The incorporation of checks and reverses demands substantially higher growth rates (+0.0095 for Wu, +0.0058 for Changzhou). The difference is here assumed to be the rate of net immigration: on average, migration into Wu and away from Changzhou. Times of crisis apart, this is assumed to have occurred gradually but steadily as a few sojourners (on average, 2.4 per 1,000 locals) were absorbed into Suzhou’s population. They then became part of a base population expanding through natural increase at an annual rate of +0.006. Using the Coale-Demeny “West” Model Life Tables, modified to incorporate female infanticide at a level consistent with a 106:100 male-to-female ratio at birth but 109.8:100 in the population as a whole,11 we can show that the total fertility rate needed to generate growth at such a rate is most consistent with a level 5 mortality schedule.12 Modified for female infanticide, this implies life expectancy at birth of 22.55 for women (26.70 at age 20, 16.55 at 40, 7.61 at 60); the comparable figure for males is 23.36 (and 24.82, 14.64, and 6.88, respectively). Approximately 60.82 percent of this population would have been of working age (between 15 and 64). Put another way, there were 64.42 “dependents” to every 100 adults in the local population; sojourners and transients, being predominantly individuals of working age, would further reduce the dependency rate. In such a society, 16.9 percent of the males would die without issue (3.5 percent because the unbal-

252

Appendix A

anced sex ratio made it impossible to find a bride, 4.8 percent due to sterility, 8.6 percent because their heirs predeceased them); 19.4 percent of males would sire only daughters; 33.1 percent would produce one son, 30.5 percent two or more.13 Such a population closely resembles that of contemporary China in age and (presumably) weight. Hence the estimate of 2,220 kcal per day for the latter can be applied to the former.14 Expressed in rice—at 3,598 kcal per kilogram15—a sixteenth-century resident of Suzhou thus required 0.62 kilograms of rice per day. Yet man did not live by rice alone: clothing, shelter, rent, taxes, and ceremonial expenses were no less inevitable. Food represented three-fifths of annual expenditure for J. L. Buck’s Chinese peasants in the 1920s; the same pattern characterized urban workers in the 1950s.16 Assuming such a household budget, a milling rate of 0.7, 4 percent wastage, and 2.25 percent of the crop reserved for seed,17 this comes to 1.57 kilograms of unhusked rice per person per day. (This equals 573.4 kilograms or—given Perkins’ conversion rate for unhusked rice— 8.82 piculs per annum.)18 Such calculations describe relatively privileged groups in “normal” years. If we assume that on average 70 percent of household income was spent on food,19 500.59 kilograms/7.7 piculs (or, in husked rice, 360.31 kilograms/4.8 piculs) per capita was needed each year. This—not very generous—standard of living is assumed throughout. It allows us to translate population totals into estimates of the size of the economy in a given year (in grain). Given acreage and an estimate of average yield per mu, this can in turn be compared to the carrying capacity of the area’s fields, before and after taxes. Using the highest Ming acreage figures in the sources,20 and an average yield of 2.25 piculs husked rice (equivalent to 3.6 piculs unhusked) per annum,21 Wu could have supported 333,094 people through subsistence agriculture, Changzhou 635,906. Any additional population was dependent on income from other sources. The latter would include profit gained by exchanging more highly prized foodstuffs for coarse (hence cheaper) grains as well as rent and interest from neighboring districts. Commerce and handicrafts were pursued in the villages as well as the city. Thus such calculations do not allow us to estimate the urban population per se. Direct evidence and prior estimates do not inspire confidence. If figures for Suzhou’s urban population in Song exist, Liang Gengyao has not found them. His late Yuan estimate of 80,000 households is based on evidence for the size of Liujiagang (Taicang) in that period.22 The 1529 Wu District Gazetteer (Wu yi zhi) does provide precise figures for Wu: 4,445 households (12,285 mouths) inside the walls, another 1,296 households (3,547 mouths) in the suburbs.23 Since Wu was the more populous side of the city, this would imply 10,000 households in toto during the early sixteenth century. This is difficult to reconcile with descriptions like those cited in the body of the text or with the Suzhou Prefectural Gazetteer (Suzhou fu zhi)’s assertion that the city had a half-million residents during the Wanli era (1573–1619).24 Estimates for the early nineteenth century range from 700,000 to 1 million.25 Analysis of the available data can help us assess informed guesses and evaluate the credibility of stray assertions. We do know that hundreds (li) were established in the Suzhou area in 1368, a period in which hundreds were actually 100-household units.26 If we multiply the number of rural hundreds by 100, then subtract that number from the 1376 district household figures, we are left with a maximum of 27,735 indigenous urban households (13,457 in Wu, 14,278 in Changzhou). To these, one must add the Ming garrisons stationed in the city—an additional 4,480 households—plus transients and sojourners.27 In sum, an early Ming total in the 175,000–250,000 range seems plausible.

Population

253

The 1598 Changzhou District Gazetteer (Changzhou xianzhi) provides the basis for a second estimate when it states that the rural population was “not less than” twice the number residing in the city.28 If we assume that 30 percent of the population was urban, we can use our interpolated district total for 1595 to calculate an urban population of 175,000. Late-sixteenth century sources emphasize that the western (Wu) side of the city was more populous than the eastern: doubling the Changzhou figure and adding sojourners, we would closely approximate the Suzhou Prefectural Gazetteer (Suzhou fu zhi)’s figure of half a million people. Finally, the Jiaqing (1796–1820) figures allow us to estimate the area’s urban population in the early nineteenth century. We can begin by assuming that the male sojourners who pushed male-to-female sex ratios above 109.8:100 (375,418 in Wu, 107,663 in Changzhou) were overwhelmingly urban. If we then divide the arable in mu by 5 (the minimum amount anyone has suggested able to support a household),29 then multiply by 5.48 (average household size), we obtain the maximum number of people who could have supported themselves through agriculture. When this figure is subtracted from the Jiaqing population totals for each district, the remainder must equal a minimum estimate of those residing in the city, its suburbs, and market towns. For Wu alone, this figure is 955,420. Although the entire local population of Changzhou and Yuanhe could, given our assumptions here, have supported themselves by farming, there is ample evidence that the eastern side of Suzhou, its suburbs, plus its five village markets (shi) and fourteen market towns (zhen), were not ghost towns. Thus, even allowing for Wu’s two village markets and six market towns,30 it is hardly possible to reconcile the data with a city population of less than a million in the early nineteenth century.

Appendix B Examination Graduates table b1 Examination Graduates (average number of graduates per examination) A. Juren (provincial graduates) Reign

Hongwu Jianwen Yongle Xuande Zhengtong Jingtai Tianshun Chenghua Hongzhi Zhengde Jiajing (1522–43) Jiajing (1546–64) Longqing Wanli (1573–94) Wanli (1597–1618) Tianqi Chongzhen

Wu

Changzhou

Kunshan

Changshu

Wujiang

1 4 7.25 2.25 4 6.67 3 6.25 3.5 6.2 5.375 4.43 8.5 6.5 5.375 4.33 4.4

1 5 6 3.25 3.75 5.67 2.5 5 4.17 3.4 6 6.71 9.5 6.875 4.75 5.67 5.2

1.33 3 3.25 2.25 4.25 5.33 6.5 6 6.67 7 7.625 4.29 9 5.375 6.375 5.33 6

0.83 2 2.25 1.75 5 7.67 9 8 7.5 7.6 5.125 5 5 4.5 4.875 4.67 4.8

0.67 0.375 1 1.75 3 3 2.125 2.5 4.2 3.625 5.71 5.5 5.5 6.375 5.67 7.2

B. Jinshi (metropolitan graduates) Reign

Hongwu Jianwen Yongle Xuande Zhengtong Jingtai Tianshun Chenghua Hongzhi Zhengde Jiajing (1523–44) Jiajing (1547–65) Longqing Wanli (1574–95) Wanli (1598–1619) Tianqi Chongzhen Source: GXSZFZ, 60, 61.

Wu

Changzhou

Kunshan

Changshu

Wujiang

0.33 1 2.75 1.33 1.2 2 0.67 3.625 4.17 3.6 2.5 2.43 4.5 3.5 2.625 3 1.14

0.17

0.17 1 0.625 0.67 3 3.5 1 3.375 3.5 4.4 3.5 2.57 3 3.125 2.375 1 0.86

0.17 1 0.5 0.67 0.8 5.5 1 3 3.33 3.4 3.75 2.57 3 2 2.25 1.5 2.143

0.125 0.33 0.6 1 0.67 1.25 1.67 2.4 1.625 2.14 2.5 2.125 3.5 3 2.714

2 0.67 1.6 2 1.67 3 2.67 2.2 2.625 2.57 5.5 3.375 1.5 3.5 2.71

Abbreviations

CZWXZ ECCP DMB GSZ GXSZFZ HWSZFZ MGWXZ MRZJZLSY TXJGLBS WLCZXZ

[Chongzhen] Wu xian zhi (1643 edition) Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period Goodrich and Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography Gu Su zhi (1506 edition) Guangxu Suzhou fu zhi (1883 edition) Hongwu Suzhou fu zhi (1379 edition) Minguo Wu xian zhi (1933 edition) Mingren zhuanji ziliao suoyin Gu Yanwu, Tianxia junguo libing shu Wanli Changzhou xian zhi (1598 edition)

Notes

Introduction 1. Polo, 277. 2. Hedde, 584–89. On Hedde, see S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom (New York: Scribner’s, 1914), vol. 2, p. 34. Hedde is also quoted by Miyazaki, “Min Shin jidai no Soshu ,” 310–11. 3. For population of European cities in the mid-nineteenth century, I have relied on Hohenberg and Lees, 227, table 7.2. On Istanbul, see S. J. Shaw and E. K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), vol. 2: 241; on Isfahan, see R. Savory, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 176; and P. Avery, Modern Iran (New York : Praeger, 1965), 80; and on Calcutta and Bombay, Kingsley Davis, Population of India and Pakistan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951), 129. For Suzhou’s population in the early nineteenth century, see Appendix A in this volume. 4. GXSZFZ, 13: 9a–9b; areas from Buck, Land Utilization, 24, cross-checked with the data in Bureau of Foreign Trade, 20, 23. 5. Skinner, “Regional Urbanization,” 229, table 4, gives an urbanization rate of 7.4 percent. While Skinner stands by his estimates of urban population, his subsequent study of population data for nineteenth-century Sichuan demonstrated that total population figures for the late nineteenth century were fabricated by clerks, applying formulas whose results can be replicated by computer. Given any one number, one can generate all the others in a series. The result was an inflated total population. The same appears true of figures for Zhejiang and Anhui provinces. A constant urban population and a smaller total population implies a higher urbanization rate. Skinner, “Sichuan’s Population,” 1–79. 6. Liu Shih-chi, 6–11; the appendix to which the text alludes is not part of the English version but is available in Chinese: Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan shizhen zhi shuliang fenxi,” 128–49. Given the number and distribution of urban centers in Suzhou’s vicinity—see Skinner, “Cities and the Hierarchy,” 298, 300, and the maps on the endpapers of that volume—the Qing boundaries of Suzhou prefecture must have roughly corresponded to those of Suzhou’s greater city system. In area, it was a bit larger than the average for such systems in the Lower Yangzi macroregion (5,550 square kilometers versus 5,350 square kilometers). See Buck, Land Utilization, 24; and Skinner, “Cities and the Hierarchy,” 300. 7. De Vries, European Urbanization, 175–98, confirms this. 8. Wheatley, 268, and n. 150.

258

Notes to Introduction

9. This is the core of the argument advanced in Wrigley’s classic “Simple Model of London’s Importance,” 44–70, and applied in de Vries, Dutch Rural Economy, 99– 101. 10. Shiba, “Environment versus Water Control,” 135–64. 11. Skinner, “Rural Marketing,” 21–22. 12. Myers, “Customary Law, Markets, and Resource Transactions,” 273–98. 13. On iron, see Li Bozhong, “Ming Qing Jiangnan shehui shengchan zhong de tie,” 153–164; on lumber, Li Bozhong, “Ming Qing shiqi Jiangnan diqu de mucai wenti,” 86–96; on precious metals, von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune. 14. Skinner, “Cities and the Hierarchy,” 342–43. 15. See Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 499; see also ibid., 417–21 (esp. n. 2). 16. See Skinner, “Regional Urbanization,” 216–18; and de Vries, European Urbanization, 260. Compare Skinner, “Marketing Systems,” 44; and Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society, 60–62. 17. Braudel, Perspective of the World, 21–88; Wallerstein, Modern World System, 228–39. Note that, before modern times, a world system was not coextensive with the globe. 18. See Roger J. Nemeth and David A. Smith, “International Trade and WorldSystem Structure: A Multiple Network Analysis,” Review 8 (1985), 524–25, for a theoretical discussion that emphasizes these aspects. 19. Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 496–99; and Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 687–92, stress the importance of this shift. 20. Liu Shih-chi, “Some Reflections on Urbanization,” 6–11. 21. Elvin, Pattern of the Chinese Past, 175–78; Elvin, “Chinese Cities since the Sung Dynasty,” 81–83. 22. Zurndorfer, “Hsin-an Ta-tsu Chih,” 192–212; Zurndorfer, Change and Continuity; Beattie. 23. Marmé, “Population and Possibility,” 40. 24. While no one questioned the ultimate primacy of the scholar-official, the discussion of merchants and markets herein lacks much of the defensiveness Brook has stressed, drawing on materials from the entire realm: see “Profit and Righteousness,” 27–44, and Confusions of Pleasure. I suspect Suzhou was actually different from, say, Dardess’s Taihe—in part because its pre-Ming elites had been so thoroughly disrupted, in part because the land tax and labor service hindered reemergence of rural elites, in part because—as Brook himself suggests—“the opening up of the commercial sphere may have made possible not just the getting of great wealth but the getting of it by means other than deception, fraud, and market manipulation. In other words, the appearance of a morally righteous tone in mid-Ming merchant biographies may have come about . . . because a more fully commercialized economy was providing merchants with opportunities to gain wealth by means that were popularly construed as ethically positive” (“Profit and Righteousness,” 38). 25. Rawski, “Research Themes,” 100. In spite of the stress Rawski put on their importance, my best estimate is that between1988 and 1997 an average of one such study in a Western language appeared each year. This does not include works such as P. C. C. Huang’s Peasant Family, Schoppa’s Xiang Lake, and L. C. Johnson’s Shanghai, which devote at least half their space to the post–Opium War era.

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26. For an important recent example, see Dardess, A Ming Society. 27. This is the third topic Rawski lists under “Problems and Prospects for Future Research” in her “Research Themes,” 100—after detailed local studies. 28. Yuan, “Urban Riots and Disturbances”; Tong, 155–63; Han, 415–39. 29. Ho, Ladder of Success, 246, Table 35. 30. See, for example, Mote, “Millennium of Chinese Urban History,” 42–43; Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 525–31; de Vries, European Urbanization, 242–43. 31. For the notion of the Ming bureaucracy as engaged in providing public goods, see Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy, 108. 32. This is a key theme of Ray Huang’s classic work on Ming fiscal administration: R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance. 33. Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 676–77; Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 109. 34. Marx, “Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,” in Surveys from Exile, 146. 35. The works of Robert Hymes, Jerry Paul Dennerline, and Hilary J. Beattie were pioneering steps in this reorientation. 36. For patrilines as the key units in understanding late imperial society, see Ebrey and Watson, Kinship Organization. 37. This model of elites deploying resources within an arena to achieve and perpetuate dominance is indebted to Esherick and Rankin, Chinese Local Elites. 38. See Polanyi, Great Transformation, for the classic, and still compelling, presentation of the shift from preindustrial to capitalist society in these terms. 39. Twitchett, “Problems of Chinese Biography,” 27–30, 32–33; Ebrey, “Women,” 416–21, 436; Dardess, A Ming Society, 79–81, 90; and Bossler, 9–12, provide an (on balance, positive) evaluation of social biographies as source material. 40. Although the Wang also produced eighty-four upper degree holders from Wu and Changzhou in Ming times, one more Wang is listed as “registered elsewhere.” 41. See the tables of recipients of upper degrees in MGWXZ, 9–17. 42. Rawski, “Research Themes,” 99, lists this as the first of the “Problems and Prospects for Future Research.” 43. Bray, Technology and Gender, 370 (emphasis added). 44. China’s population rose from 73 million in 1393 to some 205 million circa 1600; after remaining essentially flat until 1680, growth resumed, reaching 380 million in 1850. Jiangnan’s rate of population growth approximated that of China as a whole in the Ming but was significantly lower than that for the empire as a whole during the Qing. See Ge Jianxiong and Cao Shuji; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 436–439; Skinner, “Sichuan’s Population in the Nineteenth Century,” 75; Li Bozhong, “Kongzhi zengzhang, yi bao fuyu,” 25–71. 45. Li Bozhong, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan. 46. For the premodern Chinese economy as an example of Smithean growth, see Wong, “Chinese Economic History and Development,” 600–11; Wong, China Transformed, 13–32; and Feuerwerker, 763–65. 47. As provocative as the point is, I thus find the argument advanced by P. C. C. Huang in Peasant Family and Rural Development—that expansion of handicrafts was involutionary—anachronistic. Using data from land reform, Fan Jinmin, Ming Qing

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Jiangnan shangye de fazhan, 335–40, has called its empirical basis into question. See also Pomeranz, Great Divergence, and the testy exchange between Pomeranz and Huang in Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 2 (May 2002) and 62, no. 3 (August 2003). 48. Skinner, “Urban Development,” 19–23. 49. Hsi; Metzger, “State and Commerce”; R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 189–244. 50. K. Bernhardt and P. C. C. Huang, eds., Civil Law in Qing and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); W. P. Alford, “Law, Law, What Law?,” Modern China (1997): 398–419. 51. Yu Yingshi; and Lufrano, 1–7, 178–80. Watt, “Yamen,” 356–57, discusses elite views of cities as centers of civilizing influence set amid a backward countryside. See, however, the recent work of Timothy Brook, particularly “Profit and Righteousness,” 33–41, for a dissenting view. 52. On the “real” nature of Chinese urbanism, see Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society, 1–11. 53. For an especially vigorous critique of Skinner, which nonetheless adopts a regional approach, see Heijdra, “Preliminary Note on Cultural Geography,” 30–60; and Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 417–21. 54. See Patrick K. O’Brien, “Introduction: Modern Conceptions of the Industrial Revolution”; and Gary Hawke, “Reinterpretations of the Industrial Revolution” (especially 62–66) in O’Brien and Quinault. Not only did industrialization in one sector often lead to the expansion of proto-industry in other phases of the same industry (the mechanization of spinning leading to a “golden age” for handloom weavers); there is now evidence that in some areas a symbiosis of industrial and protoindustrial production was deliberately maintained for decades: see Pierre Deyon, “Proto-industrialization in France” in Ogilvie and Cerman, 45–46. 55. This point was made forcefully by Bray, Biology and Biological Technology, 603– 4. 56. Although we now know the proportions are based on Gu Yanwu’s rhetorical flourish (see Wada, 61–62), assume that 10 percent of the population did own 90 percent of the land, and that all of it was prime land producing an average of 4 piculs (shi) per mu unhusked. If the landlord received 1.5 piculs of the 3 piculs per mu rice crop (equal to 0.9375 piculs husked), his total receipts would have been 0.9 (2,067,200) × 0.9375, or 1,744,200 piculs of husked rice. This would have equaled 37.5 percent of total output. Even if we subtract the entire autumn tax from these receipts, landowners would retain 22 percent of output free and clear. Although elite households were larger than normal and enjoyed a higher standard of living than the rest of the population, this would leave a substantial surplus available for investment. But because the 62.5 percent of agricultural output left in peasant/tenant hands would not have supported the remaining 90 percent of the population, their ability to contribute to savings and investment out of earnings from agriculture was virtually nonexistent. 57. Cartier, “L’exploitation agricole chinoise,” 382–383. 58. See Spence and Wills; Brokaw; Brook, Praying for Power; Chow; Ko (especially 22–23); Wakeman, Great Enterprise. 59. Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, 2–3.

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60. Rowe first made this explicit argument in Hankow: Conflict and Community, 1– 11. 61. Rowe, “Public Sphere.” 62. Rowe, “Modern Chinese Social History,” 257. 63. Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, 9. 64. Smith, “State Power and Economic Activism,” 122–23. 65. Hymes and Schirokauer, 57–58. 66. Smith, “State Power and Economic Activism,” 125. 67. In addition to Hymes and Schirokauer, see in particular Smith, “State Power and Economic Activism”; von Glahn, “Community and Welfare”; and Hymes, “Moral Duty and Self-Regulating Process.” 68. The allusion is of course to Wakeman, Strangers, 7.

Chapter 1 1. Mote, “Millennium of Chinese Urban History,” 40–41; Skinner, “Introduction: Urban Development,” 14–15. 2. GXSZFZ, 13: 2a–2b, and discussion in the Statistical Appendix of my “From Rout to Hegemony”; twentieth-century figures are from Bureau of Foreign Trade, 112. 3. As Mote points out, this was often the tone of guidebook writers. Among these, I have consulted Du Bose; C. Crow, Handbook for China (4th ed., 1924), 186– 92; Les Guides Nagel: Chine (1967 edition), 1045–82; C. Courtauld, Nanjing, Suzhou and Wuxi (Hong Kong: China Guides Series, 1981), 55–74; Yang Zhijian, Jiangsu shanshui shengji (Jiangsu kexue jishu chubanshe, 1981); and Zhang Chishan, Ye Wanzhong and Liao Zhihao, Suzhou fengwu zhi (Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1982). 4. Miyazaki, “Min Shin jidai no Soshu ,” 318–19; Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (xia),” 373. There is evidence that the railroad did not supplant canal traffic, even in the early twentieth century: see Bureau of Foreign Trade, 1000. 5. Mote, “Millennium of Chinese Urban History,” 39; Skinner, “Introduction: Urban Development,” 17. See Appendix A. 6. Skinner, “Introduction: Urban Development,” 17. 7. On the “modernity” of sixteenth-century Rome, see Delumeau. 8. Ricci, 317. 9. There were, in fact, seven districts—Wu, Changzhou, Kunshan, Wujiang, Changshu, Jiading, and Chongming—and one independent subprefecture, Taicang. And since the offices of both Wu and Changzhou were within the prefectural seat, there were seven cities, not eight. For the reference to milk products, see GSZ, 14: 28a. 10. Ibid., 13: 9a. 11. For an explanation of the use of DMB throughout the text, see the list of abbreviations at the back of the book. 12. Quoted in Liao et al., 199; for a less prosaic rendering, see Chaves, 214. 13. An excellent discussion is to be found in Cahill, Parting at the Shore, 18, 173, 191–93. 14. Gu Yanwu in Xie Guozhen, zhong, 61–62.

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15. MGWXZ, 52 shang: 3b–4a, quoting the Qianlong (1736–95) edition of the local gazetteer. The debate is traced in Tsao, chap. 2. 16. Gu Gongxie (eighteenth century) in Xie Guozhen, zhong, 85. 17. Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (xia),” 371. 18. See Wheatley, 268, and n. 150. 19. The list in the WLCZXZ covers a page and a half while that in the CZWXZ runs to more than forty pages. 20. GSZ, 14: 3a–28b; note that, unlike the 1965 Taibei reprint, the Siku quanshu edition is complete. 21. Terada, “So Shu chiho ni okeru toshi no mengyo sho nin ni tsuite,” 52. 22. Bray, Biology and Biological Technology, 106–19, 495–510. 23. MGWXZ, 52 shang: 7b. 24. On river mud, see Hamashima, “Organization of Water Control,” 71, 74. According to Adachi Keiji—whose work is summarized in Modern China 6.4 (1980), 407; and Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 4.3 (1980), 76–77—soybean meal fertilizer was the “main fertilizer of Jiangnan” by mid-Qing, in such demand that it was being imported from the Northeast. As the well-known agricultural treatise Shen shi nong shu (1643) makes clear, soybeans were being used as fertilizer in the early seventeenth century; Yuan, “Continuities and Discontinuities,” 43. See also MGWXZ, 52 shang: 7b. 25. Rawski, Agricultural Change, 52–53; Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 459–61, 464 n.67, 472–73, presents the technical reasons for this preference. 26. MGWXZ, 52 shang: 7b–8a; Li Bozhong (“Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 458, 463–64) emphasizes that the rice/wheat cycle was possible on low-lying wet fields only after the water control regime was in place. Thus, until the mid-seventeenth century, it was largely confined to high-lying fields. 27. Ibid., 52 shang: 6a, 8a. 28. See for example the passage by Zhu Guozhen (a 1589 jinshi from Wucheng district, Huzhou, Zhejiang) cited in Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (shang),” 281 and repeated verbatim in the Kangxi (1661–1722) edition of the Changzhou xian zhi. Although their provenance is unspecified, it is unlikely that all the manufactured goods listed—the 1598 edition does no more (WLCZXZ, 7: 2a–2b)—came from the city alone. 29. On the internal frontier, see TXJGLBS, ce 4, 47b, 48a. 30. Calculated by dividing the late fourteenth-century rural population of Changzhou by the number of villages listed in Ming gazetteers: GSZ, 18: 8b–10a. (Population calculated in the statistical appendix to Michael Marmé, “From Rout to Hegemony.”) 31. See Gonzales, 77; Fukutake, 79–92; Cressey, “Feng Hsien Landscape,” 396–413; Hamashima, “Organization of Water Control,” 75–76. 32. Gu Yanwu Rizhilu 10 (p. 241); note that Mori Masao has established that the numbers were a rhetorical flourish added for emphasis: Wada, 61–62. 33. The dynasty had changed; in addition, the demographic (and economic) crisis of the mid-seventeenth century had been followed by the 1661 crackdown on wellconnected tax evaders.

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34. Tsurumi, “Ko ki ju gonen jo ryo , Soshu fu Cho shu ken gyorin zusaku no dento to keiteki ko satsu,” 311–44. 35. As Tsurumi, in fairness, explicitly recognizes. 36. Note however that owner-cultivators and tenants had disproportionately large amounts of marsh and waste: Tsurumi, “Cho shu ken gyorin zusaku no dento to keiteki ko satsu,” 329. 37. According to the Tiangong kaiwu (1637) of Song Yingxing, however, those who engaged in careful cultivation without using animals could survive on five mu; the case of Tang Zhen (mid-seventeenth century) makes clear that an inept landlord could lose money even if he controlled forty mu: Terada, “Mindai Soshu heiya no no ka keizai ni tsuite,” 10–11. 38. See the summary of a more recent article by Tsurumi, using similar methods and similar evidence to study ward (tu) 20 in Changzhou’s township (du) 24: Asai, 88. Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 539–42, noting that these were “largely, but not completely, traceable to the [Zhang Juzheng] survey,” also uses these materials to describe Suzhou’s rural hinterland in the Ming. 39. MGWXZ, 52 shang: 6a. Note the degree of commercialization this Qing text implies. 40. Cao Zishou, “Wu xian jiangyu tu shuo” in TXJGLBS, ce 5, 11a. 41. Marmé, “Population and Possibility in Ming Suzhou,” 37. 42. GSZ, 13: 8b. 43. DMB, 1343. The dullard was Wang Ao’s father; he eventually became a Tribute Student at the Imperial University. 44. The most famous of such groups in Ming were the Huizhou merchants; see Fu Yiling, Ming Qing shidai shangren ji shangye ziben, esp. 49–50. 45. Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 6, 21–22; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 91. 46. MGWXZ, 52 shang: 9b for this (and the above) quotation; an alternate version of the same passage is reproduced in Xie Guozhen, zhong, 113–14. 47. Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 15, 25–40. 48. Ibid., 40–46, 22, 99–102. 49. Ibid., 16–17, 20. 50. Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 99–100. 51. Ibid., 106–9. 52. MGWXZ, 52 shang: 9b. 53. Cited in MGWXZ, 53: 2a. 54. Xie Guozhen, ed., zhong, 114. 55. Fu Yiling, Ming Qing shidai shangren ji shangye ziben, 92–106; Li Jiaqiu, 230– 34; Fan and Luo. 56. GSZ, 18: 2b–3b, 7b–8a; WLCZXZ, 2; CZWXZ, 2. 57. GSZ, 18: 7b; compare the passage from Geng Dingxiang’s (1524–1596) Xianjin yifeng cited in Hsi, 31. 58. The number of households is taken from MGWXZ, 49: 2a. 59. Skinner, “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,” part 1, 32–33. Skinner notes that the standard marketing town he observed firsthand in Sichuan was “an atypically large system” with 2,500 households.

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60. Skinner, “Rural Marketing,” 21–22. 61. On agent boats in this area in the twentieth century, see Fei, 243–44, 249–59. The best direct evidence that such boats date back to Ming times is provided by an anecdote about the Changshu bibliophile Sun Lou (1515–84): “Whenever the book boats (shuchuan) arrived, he reported, he always got on before others, and stayed on and on until even the book dealers considered him a nuisance” (DMB, 1217). If floating bookstores existed, we may be fairly confident that boats trafficking in more mundane commodities also plied these waters. 62. Xie Guozhen, ed., zhong, 114–116; for the fragmentary data available for Wu and Changzhou (and the rest of Jiangnan), see Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan shizhen zhi shuliang fenxi,” 31–36. Drawing on evidence from all of Jiangnan in Ming and Qing, Fan Shuzhi (Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei, 99, 103) states that most village markets (shi) were in the 100–300 household range although some had 500 to 1,000 resident families; market towns (zhen) usually had more than 1,000 households, the largest numbering 10,000 or so. 63. Zhang Xuan (fl. 1573–1620), quoted in Chan, 252. 64. Fu Yiling, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan shizhen jingji de fenxi,” 303–5. 65. Fan Shuzhi, Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei, 279–83, provides a lively description. None of his sources refers specifically to Ming Wu or Changzhou, however. 66. GSZ, 14: 26a. 67. CZWXZ, 10: 3a. Modern readers need to be reminded of the difficulties provisioning a large city with fresh meat presented in the premodern era. 68. MGWXZ, 53: 1b–2a; TXJGLBS, ce 4, 45b–46a. 69. GSZ, 14: 28b; Liao et al., 151–54. 70. GSZ, 14: 28b. 71. Ibid., 14: 28a; Yang Xunji (1458–1546), Wu yi zhi (1529), cited in Guangfu zhi (1846, reprinted 1929), 1; Fan Shuzhi, Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei, 131. According to MGWXZ 33: 2b, it was the site of a city-god temple from the early fifteenth century. Hamashima, who notes that “according to official regulations, [township city-god temples] should not have existed at all,” dates the phenomenon to the late Ming and early Qing: Hamashima, “City-God Temples,” 13, 15. 72. Ju qu zhi (1689 edition), 7. The market’s distance from the city—110 li (55 kilometers) west—is given in the GSZ, 18: 3a; sites of Police Offices in ibid., 25: 6b–7a. Their strength is noted in MGWXZ, 54: 13b. On markets as potential flashpoints, see Dardess, “Transformations,” 541–42; and C. K. Yang, “Some Preliminary Statistical Patterns,” 188. 73. GSZ, 25: 6b; TXJGLBS, ce 4, 48a. 74. Fan Shuzhi, Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei, 133. 75. Han, 672, notes that the Kangxi edition of the prefectural gazetteer lists twelve markets for Changzhou, not nine. One of these new markets, Shantangzhen, is described as second only to Maple Bridge (Feng qiao), having becoming a center for goods from Sichuan and Guangdong (ibid., 691). 76. TXJGLBS, ce 4, 46a, 46b. 77. Ibid., ce 4, 47b; MGWXZ, 53: 2b. 78. GSZ, 14: 26a; Fan Shuzhi, Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei, 133.

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79. MGWXZ, 54: 13b; TXJGLBS, ce 4, 46b. The one major difference in the area occupied by Wu and Changzhou in Ming times and that designated Wu district in modern times was the severing of Changzhou’s township (du) 28, an island of control at the headwaters of the San Mao: see GSZ, 18: 10a; MGWXZ, 1 (Zhanglian tang tu); ibid., 23 xia: 11b–12b; and U.S. Army Map Service (Department of Defense), series L500, NH 51–5. 80. GSZ, 14: 28b, 26a; Fan Shuzhi, Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei, 131, 133. 81. See the Kangxi (1661–1722) edition of the Changzhou xian zhi, quoted in MGWXZ, 51: 15a; and Liu Shiji, “Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (shang),” 284 (table 2). On the sixteenth century, see the passages from the Wu yi zhi (1529 edition), which are reproduced in MGWXZ, 51: 15a; as well as GSZ, 14: 24b–25a. (The first part is preserved in the Siku quanshu edition, but not in the 1965 Taibei reprint.) See also Fan Shuzhi, Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei, 309–16, on Zhouzhuang and Weiting (especially evidence that Weiting was developing in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at 313); and Duan and Zhang, 110–11. 82. As it is described in the classic Qing novel, Hong lou meng [Dream of the Red Chamber]: Cao Xueqin (1719–64), The Golden Days, 52. 83. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 308. 84. The quotation is from GSZ, 17: 11b; compare HWSZFZ, 5: 7a–10a; and GSZ, 17: 5b–12a. 85. GSZ, 18: 2b. 86. Cited in Liu Shiji, “Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (xia),” 373. 87. Cao Zishou, “Wu xian cheng tu shuo” in TXJGLBS, ce 5, 12a. 88. TXJGLBS, ce 4, 48a. 89. Liu Shiji, “Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (xia),” 371. Given the reference to fourteen provinces, this passage presumably dates from the period 1413–28. 90. GSZ, 18: 8a. 91. On the rice market at Hushu in Qing times, see Chuan and Kraus, 59–65. 92. GSZ, 14: 26a. Even the unfortunate murder victim in late seventeenth-century Tancheng slept on a Huqiu mat: Huang Liu-hung, 346. 93. GSZ, 17: 11b–12a; Fan Jinmin, “Qing qianqi Suzhou nongye jingji,” 49. 94. WLCZXZ, 12: 3b–7a; CZWXZ, 15: 9a–13b. 95. See the passage from the Silkworm Classic (Can jing) of Huang Xingzeng (1490–1540; DMB) cited in MGWXZ, 51: 16b. 96. The stress should apparently fall on “relatively,” not “deserted.” See Ch’oe Pu, Ch’oe Pu’s Diary, 92. 97. GSZ, 14: 26a, 28b. 98. CZWXZ, 10: 1b. 99. TXJGLBS, ce 4, 47a–47b; Fu Yiling, Ming Qing shidai shangren ji shangye ziben, 12. 100. MGWXZ, 52 shang: 6a. 101. GSZ, 27 and 29. See Taylor, “Official and Popular Religion,” esp. 134. 102. Han, 86. 103. See the very suggestive remarks in L. C. Johnson, 83–89, as well as the far more skeptical comments of Goodman, 91–106. 104. See Figure 1 and the associated discussion in Chapter Six.

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105. Mote, “Millennium of Chinese Urban History,” 53–55, 58. 106. See Appendix A; and HWSZFZ, 5: 7a–10a; WLCZXZ, 12: 3b–7a; CZWXZ, 15: 9a–13b. This may also reflect the silting up of the Lou River and the decline of Suzhou as a port for oceangoing ships in the fifteenth century. 107. Skinner, “Regional Urbanization,” 230–31. 108. Wen Zhengming (1470–1559), “Zhongxin Suzhou zhiranju ji” in Hong Huanchun, Ming Qing Suzhou gong shang ye beike ji, 1. 109. On the lanes, see Wang Zhideng (1535–1612), “Changchun xiang xiu jie shu” in CZWXZ, 15: 12a–12b; on paupers’ fields, see MGWXZ, 41: 27b–30a. 110. On which, see Wheatley. Although taken up in the Classics, this model of city planning long antedated anything that can be called Confucian. 111. L. C. Johnson, 66–69, 81–83, 94–119. 112. See Gernet, 24; Mote, “Transformation of Nanking,” 135. 113. The shifting residence pattern was calculated from data in MGWXZ, 39 shang: 4b–30a; 39 zhong: 1b–10a; 39 xia: 2a–10a. See also the comment in CZWXZ, 10: 1b. 114. CZWXZ, 10: 1b. 115. Endymion Wilkinson notes the inordinate size of the gardens of the wealthy in the “Introduction” to Jing and Luo, 30. Clunas, Fruitful Sites emphasizes that the laying out of gardens was a novelty in late fifteenth-century Suzhou, a novelty whose meaning changed over time. He argues that it moved from a method of dealing with unease over new wealth (the garden as orchard) in its initial stages to the garden as act of conspicuous consumption in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Wang Ao’s garden was apparently one of those that had been appropriated; see MGWXZ, 36 shang: 17b (Zhongfeng si). 116. Although it is of Qing, not Ming, date, the approach to the Garden of the Master of Nets, down a nondescript lane of houses turned in on themselves in the city’s southeast quarter, continues to provide visitors with a particularly vivid experience of this. On domestic architecture in this region, see Bray, Technology and Gender, 51–172. 117. The shorter but later (1551) series is reproduced in Whitfield, 29–31, 66–75; Clunas, Fruitful Sites, 22–59, reproduces scenes from both sequences. He also provides an extremely illuminating discussion of the garden and its meaning. In passing, he demonstrates that the Ming garden was far more generally accessible than most treatments, including this one, imply (94–97). Even so, Clunas notes that one ordinarily had to tip the gatekeeper to gain admittance and that, over time, restricting access to one’s peers became a way of demonstrating one’s “purity” (101–2). Its potential as locus of an emergent public sphere thus seems limited even given these qualifications. 118. GSZ, 17: 1a–5b. In this and in other respects, the figures in Yang Xunji’s Wu yi zhi (1529), 4: 1a–4b, are quite different: he lists 17 rather than 33 wards, 27 rather than 100 lanes, and 24 rather than 131 bridges in Wu. Since the figures provided by the CZWXZ are much closer to those of the GSZ, the most plausible explanation is that Yang simply omitted the less important ones. He gives population figures for both the city proper (4,445 households, 12,285 mouths) and the attached suburbs (1,298 households, 3,547 mouths). These seem implausibly low, but they may well accurately reflect the number of Wu households officially registered in the city in the 1520s.

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119. On the regulation of traveling merchants, see Tang Wenji, “Ming chao dui xingshang de guanli,” 19–32; on the treatment of resident merchants, see Xu Min, “Mingdai Jiajing, Wanli nianjian ‘zhaoshang maiban’ chutan,” 185–209; and Xu Min, “Guanyu Mingdai puhu de jige wenti,” 178–96; on brokers., see Liu and Zuo, 187– 204. 120. Han, 177–80, 486–510; Fuma, 47–55; von Glahn, “Municipal Reform and Urban Social Conflict,” 280–307. 121. Geng Dingxiang (1524–1596; DMB), cited in Hsi, 31. 122. On lanterns and embroidery, see CZWXZ, 10: 1b–2a, GSZ, 14:25b–26a; on sweets, GSZ, 14: 27b; on spectacles, MGWXZ, 51: 17a–17b; this Yuan dynasty innovation must have contributed to the success Suzhou natives enjoyed as scholars throughout the late imperial era. 123. GSZ, 14: 28b. 124. Wen Zhengming, “Zhongxiu Suzhou zhiranju ji,” 1; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 210, sketch the process of conversion. As Fan emphasizes, the Imperial Textile Works continued to play a vital role in producing robes for court use—some functions were too critical to privatize; see ibid., 124, 129–30. 125. Yang Xunji, Wu yi zhi (1529 edition), cited in Liao et al., 199; and Peng Zeyi, “Yapian zhanzheng qian Qingdai Suzhou sizhiye shengchan guanxi de xingshi yu xingzhi,” 346. 126. On textile quotas, see Xu Daling, 919; on price-setting, Fu Zhifu, 458–60. 127. So Kwan-wai, 133. 128. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 249–51; 244–47. 129. On the structure of this trade, see Xu Daling, 914; and Peng, “Cong Mingdai guanying zhizao de jingying fangshi kan Jiangnan sizhiye shengchan de xingzhi,” 307–44; on the connections of Huizhou merchants to those offshore, see Fu Yiling, Ming Qing shidai shangren ji shangye ziben, 58–60; Xie Guozhen, zhong, 99; and Fitzpatrick, 1–50. 130. Fu Yiling, Mingdai Jiangnan shimin jingji shican, 87. 131. A single passage describing these arrangements has been cited repeatedly in PRC scholarship on the “shoots of capitalism.” For an English translation, see Wiens, “Cotton Textile Production,” 527. 132. Fu Yiling, Mingdai Jiangnan shimin jingji shican, 87 (citing Cao Shipin [1548– 1608] from Ming Shanzong Wanli shilu, 361) and 87–90; Hong Huanchun, “Lun shiwu-shiliu shiji Jiangnan diqu zibenzhuyi shengchan guanxi de mengya,” 252. In disputing the capitalist nature of this system, Peng Zeyi provides an interesting analysis of these materials: “Cong Mingdai guanying zhizao de jingying fangshi kan Jiangnan sizhiye shengchan de xingzhi,” 334–44. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 209–14, 231, conclude that, in Marxist terms, labor relations in early seventeenth-century Suzhou’s silk industry had reached “the starting point of capitalist production,” but that they failed to develop further. 133. Fu Yiling, Mingdai Jiangnan shimin jingji shican, 87. 134. Rowe, Hankow: Conflict and Community, 29–45, sketches the occupational structure of late nineteenth-century Hankou. As he makes clear there and in his other writings, such estimates refer not only to a different time but also to a very different sort of place. Although both were major centers of interregional commerce,

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Suzhou was more official, more elite, and more heavily devoted to handicrafts. It thus appears impossible to modify his estimates to limn even a rough statistical portrait of sixteenth-century Suzhou. See also Han, 322 (on peddlers in Suzhou), and 344 (on the city’s hoodlums). 135. In addition to those praised for moral uplift or for curbing the abuses of clerks and local bullies, Li Congzhi (prefect, 1445–46), Cao Feng (prefect, 1497–99), and Liu Ke (Changzhou district magistrate, 1498–1501) are singled out for their efforts to control prostitution and gambling: MGWXZ, 63: 13a, 19a. Using the much less intractable data for nineteenth-century Hankou, Rowe estimates that such “marginal” groups constituted 10 percent of that city’s population: Hankow: Conflict and Community, 31, 37–38, 217–44. 136. As I suggest below, the “system centered on Suzhou probably did provide better for more people than any previous [regional] system in world history.” This does not imply that the mass of the population were all that comfortable. 137. Elvin, “Review of Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China, by Evelyn Sakakida Rawski,” 141–42, toys with this. As his own comments (on the decline of monastic ownership of land and changing nature of water control organization in Fujian, for example) make clear, it was “not possible to re-enter the same stream twice.”

Chapter 2 1. DMB, 102. 2. On the fall of Zhang Shicheng, see ibid.; Dreyer, 58–59; Liao et al., 80–84; and Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 198–203. Primary sources on the downfall proper are conveniently collected in MGWXZ, 53: 27a–28b. 3. GSZ, 13: 1a. For an excellent account of the physical development of Suzhou over time, see Xu Yinong. 4. Liao et al.,18–20, 10–13, 22–23; for a detailed account of this complex series of events in English, see Maspero, 209–21. 5. Zhong, 6–7. 6. Liao et al., 23–28. 7. Ibid., 71, 9–11, 72. On Huang Xie’s posthumous service to the community as guardian of walls and moats, see GSZ, 27: 13a–14a. 8. On Gao Qi, see Mote, “A Fourteenth-Century Poet,” 248–51; on Han Yong, DMB, 498–503; the family of the famed rebel leader Xiang Yu had fled to the Suzhou area from Chu; he was thus a “man of Wu” only by adoption. His is the earliest “righteous uprising” (qiyi) to be discussed in Liao et al., 29–31; on Gan Jiang, ibid., 13–14; and GSZ, 13: 1a. 9. GSZ, 27: 2b–23b, and similar sections of other editions of the local gazetteer. 10. GSZ, 13: 2a. 11. Liao et al., 4–6. 12. Bureau of Foreign Trade, 15, 112. 13. Bray, Biology and Biological Technology, 99, 504. 14. Liao et al., 2. Designated Kuaiji jun in 222 B.C., in 201 B.C. it was renamed Jing Guo. In 196 B.C., it was again called Kuaiji; the following year, Wu Guo. In 154

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B.C., Kuaiji was restored. In A.D. 129, the northeastern portions of Kuaiji were separated out and designated Wu Jun. From 326 to 421, the area was known as Wu Guo; from 421 to 558, once more as Wu Jun. (In 558, the latter comprised Wu, Kunshan, Changshu, and Jiaxing districts). The late sixth and early seventh centuries saw another spurt of name changes: Wu Zhou in 587, Su Zhou in 589, Wu Zhou once again from 605 to 607, Wu Jun from 607 to 624; in the latter year, it was once again designated Su Zhou. (In 696, Changzhou district was created from the northeastern parts of Wu district.) In 742, the name Wu Jun was restored, supplanted once again by Su Zhou in 757. (In 909, Wujiang district was carved out of the southern portions of Wu district.) The Tang-Song transition saw another series of fairly rapid shifts in nomenclature: Zhong Wu Fu from 917 to 924, Zhong Wu Jun from 924 to 975, Su Zhou from 975 to 978, before finally being designated Pingjiang Jun in 978. In 1113, the Jun was redesignated a Fu; it comprised the districts of Wu, Changzhou, Kunshan, Changshu, and Wujiang. To these, Jiading—carved out of the eastern portion of Kunshan—was added in 1217. In 1277, the Fu was designated a Lu; in 1356–57, it was briefly known as Longping Lu. From 1357 to 1368, it was once again called Pingjiang Lu. In 1368, the area was redesignated Suzhou Fu. Chongming district was attached to the prefecture in 1375 and, in 1497, Taicang zhou was created from portions of Kunshan, Changshu, and Jiading districts. Under the Qing, Taicang was elevated to the level of an independent subprefecture: from 1667, Suzhou Fu controlled Wu, Changzhou, Wujiang, Kunshan, and Changshu districts. In 1724, the last four districts were each split in two (Yuanhe being created from Changzhou, Xinyang from Kunshan, Zhaowen from Changshu, Zhenze from Wujiang), and in 1735 Taihu ting (subprefecture) was created from Wu. See Wu Naifu, 288–303. 15. Liao et al., 70; see map 3 in P. C. C. Huang, Peasant Family and Rural Development, 27; and map 5.1 in Shiba, “Environment versus Water Control,” 139. 16. P. C. C. Huang, Peasant Family and Rural Development, 1–3; compare the traditions associated with the Taihu shuishen miao as recorded in GSZ, 27: 24a–24b. 17. Shiba, “Environment versus Water Control,” 136–141, and map 5.1. This was the area of Wu district in Song through Qing; the city of Suzhou lay on the border between fan/slope and deltaic lowland. As Robert Marks emphasizes in analyzing a similar pattern of settlement in the Guangdong area, water-logged lowlands were not only difficult to work; they were also deadly centers of malaria: see Marks, 71–78. 18. GSZ, 13: 1b. 19. MGWXZ, 36 shang: 1a (Bao’en jiangsi). 20. GSZ, 35: 10b–12a. The four surnames (Lu, Gu, Zhu, and Zhang) accounted for half the entries (and 63 percent of the running text) devoted to local notables in Han. Between 220 and 589, members of these groups were even more dominant: 89 percent of the entries and 83 percent of the text devoted to the Three Kingdoms, 79 percent of the entries and 88 percent of the text on Jin, and 86 percent of the entries and 89 percent of the text on the Northern and Southern Kingdoms are devoted to them. In Sui-Tang, this fell to 55 percent of entries and 63 percent of text; under Song, they only account for 11 percent of the entries and 7 percent of the text. If the Fan are included, these five surnames collectively account for 24 percent of the en-

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tries and 34 percent of the text. As late as Yuan times, the five account for 26 percent of the entries and text. Calculations based on MGWXZ, 65 shang: 1b–30b; 65 xia: 1a– 7a. 21. Liao et al., 34–38. 22. Ibid., 32–33. 23. Rogers, 64–69. 24. Maspero and Balasz, 150. 25. Liao et al., 20. 26. Twitchett, Financial Administration, 51–58; Liao et al., 47; siltation from 738 on also appears to have eliminated its direct access to the Yangzi, thus undercutting its value as a port: see Shiba, “Environment versus Water Control,” 150. 27. This influx seems to have coincided with a silting up of the major rivers draining Lake Tai and widespread sinking of land in its vicinity, a process that continued to the twelfth century: see P. C. C. Huang, Peasant Family and Rural Development, 29–30. 28. Cartier, “Aux origines de l’agriculture intensive du Bas Yangzi,” 1009–19. 29. Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 109, 111; Shiba, “Environment versus Water Control,” 149–61. 30. Wu Naifu, 52–53. 31. Miyazaki, “Min Shin jidai no Soshu ,” 306; P. C. C.Huang, Peasant Family and Rural Development, 31–32; Shiba, “Environment versus Water Control,” 138, 155, gives due credit to Wu-Yue’s role while stressing that “the central lowlands in the delta remained unstable till the mid-Northern Song dynasty.” Shiba emphasizes that late Tang and Song Chinese reclaimed the Ningbo/Hangzhou regions before tackling the more difficult deltaic lowlands. 32. Wang Zhongle, 8. 33. Liao et al., 21. 34. GXSZFZ, 13: 2 ; Hangzhou figures are from Hartwell, “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations,” 392 (table 8). 35. Balasz, 591; Shiba, “Urbanization,” 26. 36. Shiba, Commerce and Society, 112. 37. Liao et al., 49; Shiba, Commerce and Society, 58–59; Liang Gengyao, Nan Song de nongcun jingji, 276–78, discusses the areas supplied by private commerce during this period. 38. In 1012, officials began distributing samples of the early-ripening rice throughout Jiangnan. Ho Ping-ti, “Early-Ripening Rice,” 32. 39. Rawski, Agricultural Change, 41, 52 (citing the work of Sudo Yoshiyuki). Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 459–61, 464n.67, 472–73, presents the technical reasons for this preference. 40. Quoted in Shiba, Commerce and Society, 55–56; for a complete translation, including Fan’s preface and note, see Lo and Liu, Sunflower Splendor, 389–91. As Fan Chengda notes, many varieties of rice (including early-ripening ones) were grown in Suzhou. Liang Gengyao concurs, but suggests that the need to use additional fertilizer to maintain fertility may have discouraged its widespread adoption: see “Song Yuan shidai Suzhou de nongye fazhan,” 272–73. Fan’s poem emphasizes taxes and debts, not rents, as the mechanisms that prevented Suzhou peasants from sharing in

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the bounty. Although he lacks direct Song evidence for peasant involvement in the market from Suzhou itself, the passage Liang Gengyao cites from Xiuzhou (in the area of present-day Songjiang and Jiaxing) is plausible evidence for the market orientation of Suzhou peasants as an additional cause; see Liang, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 269. 41. Liang Gengyao (Nan Song de nongcun jingji, 145) notes that officials mandated that tenants keep all income from wheat and other miscellaneous crops as a way of stimulating their production. 42. Fan Shuzhi, “Shiyi zhi shiliu shiji Jiangnan nongye jingji de fazhan,” 385–86; Perkins et al., 269–70, suggest that wheat yields per mu were one-third to one-fourth those for rice. As Li Bozhong (“Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 458, 463–64) emphasizes, the rice/wheat cycle was possible on low-lying wet fields only after a water-control regimen was in place. Until the mid-seventeenth century, it was largely confined to high-lying fields. 43. Shih Chin, 167 (cited in Wakeman, Great Enterprise, 605) has argued that peasants were “neither the [direct] suppliers of market goods nor the main consumers of market goods” (emphasis added.) While it is no doubt true that landlords long played a predominant role as both suppliers and consumers, I find this difficult to reconcile with the evidence of commercial orientation in this area during the Song. 44. Jing, 77. In Ming and Qing, the statutory ceiling was 3 percent. 45. Liang Gengyao, Nan Song de nongcun jingji, 161–64, 223–25. For a far more positive evaluation of peasant reliance on credit, see Pan, “Rural Credit in MingQing Jiangnan.” 46. Chaffee, 37–38, 110–112, 149, 153, 155. 47. Hartwell, “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations,” 419. 48. Twitchett, “Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 98–120. 49. Wu Naifu, 62–63; de Bary, 88–91 (on Hu Yuan) and 93–94; James T. C. Liu, 105–31; Twitchett, “Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 98–108. 50. GSZ, 14: 1b; Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai Suzhou de nongye fazhan,” 261. 51. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai Suzhou de nongye fazhan,” 261–62, 264– 69. The price of a mu rose from one string in the 1070s to fourteen strings in 1204. 52. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai Suzhou de nongye fazhan,” 274–75. 53. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 52, 45. Although the textile works was not reestablished in Southern Song, Suzhou’s silk tax continued to rise; ibid., 46, 54. 54. Wu Naifu, 63–64. 55. Haeger, “1126–1127,” 143–61; Gernet, 22–23. 56. MGWXZ, 53: 23a–24b. 57. GSZ, 14: 1b. The registered population rose from its post-flood low of 152,821 households in 1102 to some 173,000 households in 1184; 329,600 households (“Buddhist monks and Daoist priests not included”) in 1275; and 466,100 households in 1290 (again excluding Buddhist and Daoist clergy). 58. Shiba, “Environment versus Water Control,” 136–41, 149–61. 59. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 230–43, describes the process of reclamation and water control in detail. 60. Hartwell, “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations,” 391, citing

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the work of J. Steurmer; GXSZFZ, 13: 2a–2b; Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai Suzhou de nongye fazhan,” 265–71. Liang notes that, at the end of Song, the need to raise more tax revenue and to settle the uprooted led the government to drop its prohibitions on land reclamation. 61. See Shepherd, 403–31. 62. MGWXZ 33: 38b. Although the shrine commemorates the officials who ultimately intervened to restrain the Zhangs, the fact that they had been able to pursue their activities unchecked for over thirty years is probably just as significant. 63. Cressey, Land of the 500 Million, 192. 64. GSZ, 13: 3b. 65. Shiba, “Urbanization,” 31; Liao et al., 49–51. 66. “Began” should be stressed here; see Shiba, Commerce and Society, 112–15 (esp. 115); Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 31–61; and Li Bozhong, “Ming Qing Jiangnan yu waidi jingji lianxi de jiaqiang,” 7–8. Suzhou’s rise as a center of silk production coincided with changing consumer preference. These changes marginalized peasant production of silk cloth, concentrating activity in state factories and urban workshops; see Bray, “Le travail féminin dans la Chine impériale,” 798–99; Bray, Technology and Gender, 206–12. 67. Compare the discussion of Huang in Liao et al., 72, with the discussion in David Johnson, 366–68. Huang Xie’s work as a wall-builder at Suzhou was certainly not unprecedented. 68. Data, from GSZ, 29 are collected in Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 316. Temples that vanished from the record as well as the landscape are necessarily omitted. Just as serious is the omission of regular rebuilding (necessary, given the climate and the building materials, for survival through the ages) and periodic expansions (often as significant as the original foundation). For example, the Ruiguang Chan monastery was built in the middle of the third century. A thirteenstory pagoda was added at the beginning of the twelfth. Destroyed by fire in 1126, it was rebuilt in the Chunxi era (1174–89); the new pagoda had seven stories. In the Mongol period, it burned down again; it was restored in the late fourteenth century; GSZ, 29: 6b. Analysis of MGWXZ, 36 shang: 1a–15a; 37: 1a–4b; and 38: 1a–6b, indicates that six large (si) and seventeen small (an, yuan) Buddhist temples were built in the city of Suzhou during the Yuan (1276–1367). In the first two centuries of Ming (1368–1566), only one si and two an were constructed. The former reflects “the Ming ban on private funding of new si,” not a slowed tempo of urban growth; see Brook, Praying for Power, 4. While only two si were rebuilt in Yuan times, fifteen si and two an were rebuilt between the beginning of Ming and the 1560s. Figures comparing repair and expansion in Ming and Yuan tell the same tale: twenty-nine si and ten an for Ming, five si and three an under the Mongols. Thirteen si and one an were destroyed or abandoned between 1276 and 1367, eighteen si and one an between 1368 and 1566. Changes in the city’s inventory of temples thus does not seem to explain differences in the level or nature of activity. 69. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 316–17. As the discussion in David Johnson, 413–14, suggests, Suzhou’s maintenance of this organization in Song is itself a sign of backwardness.

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70. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 318–19. 71. Wang Jian, 347–48, provides references to rice, fruit, fish, silk, and straw guilds. 72. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 316. 73. Thus the decline in temple-building may reflect changes in the ways, and the degree to which, commerce and manufacture were privately organized in the early Ming. 74. Wu and Xu, eds.,129–39; K. C. Liu, 3–5. 75. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 309–12. 76. Data on the residences of the elite are drawn from MGWXZ, 39 shang: 4b– 30a; 39 zhong: 1b–10a; and 39 xia: 2a–10a, and collected in Marmé, “Population and Possibility,” 47 (table XI). Given the importance of the protection (yin) privilege in Song times—permitting sons of successful officials to enter the elite without sitting for the examinations—examination lists provide a highly misleading picture of its composition. The generosity of the late R. M. Hartwell, who made his painstaking reconstruction of the Suzhou elite in Song available to me, alone enables me to make categorical statements about its composition. 77. Liao et al., 66; see the discussion in Mote, “Millennium of Chinese Urban History,” 38–42; and in Skinner, “Introduction: Urban Development,” 14–15, 17. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 306, notes 63 bridges circa 1010, 222 circa 1190, and 288 circa 1380. 78. Hangzhou fu zhi, 57; Shiba, “Urbanization,” 34 (table 2.11); Shiba, “Ningpo and Its Hinterland,” 399. Paul Smith has suggested that difficult times began (Jiangnan largely excepted) under the Southern Song, spreading to Jiangnan as well under the Yuan: see Smith, “Do We Know as Much as We Need to about the Song Economy?”and “Fear of Gynarchy” (esp. pp.3–31). 79. GSZ, 14: 1b–2a. 80. MGWXZ records one grave for every two years of the Song, and more than one a year for the Ming. The average for the Yuan is only one every three years (40: 5a–29a; evidence refers to the boundaries of the late imperial district of Wu). A comparison of the number of biographies and the number of entries in the bibliographic section yields similar results. 81. Herbert Franke, 229–31; Davis, 46–49; Cai Meibiao et al., 430–32; Lo Jungpang, “Maritime Commerce,” 57–101. 82. MGWXZ, 53: 25a. 83. Wu Jihua, 22; Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai Suzhou de nongye fazhan,” 274 (who notes that 300,000 piculs came from Changzhou district alone). 84. Golas, 302. Originally, only estates of more than 200 mu were to be affected. The owners of such estates used their connections so effectively to evade forced sale that the quotas could only be reached by using the lower figure; Cai Meibiao et al., 431. 85. Xiang (Hucker translated it as “township”) were fairly large subdivisions of a district: in Ming times rural Wu was divided into nineteen such subdivisions, rural Changzhou into twelve. GSZ, 18: 1b–2b, 7a–7b. 86. Cai Meibiao et al., 431. 87. Twitchett, “Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 124, cites the “disastrous series of

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crop failures in 1319, 1322, 1323, 1324, and 1328” that preceded and followed the 1324 dredging of the Wu Song River. 88. Liao et al., 73; Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan Suzhou de nongye fazhan,” 265– 66. 89. Hamashima, “Organization of Water Control,” 72–73. 90. Mori, “Gendai Sesei chiho no kanden no binnan tenko ni kan suru ichi kento,” 88–91. 91. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 31, 63–65. 92. Ibid., 49, 71–77. 93. Liang Fangzhong, “Yuandai Zhongguo shougongye shengchan de fazhan,” 230–82; Bray, Technology and Gender, 191–212. 94. Wang Zhongle, 5–6, 15. 95. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 307–08, 319; Lu Yunchang, 244. 96. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 308. 97. Fu Yiling, Ming Qing shidai shangren ji shangye ziben, 3. Places of origins from Cihai, 503, 668 and DMB, 1179. 98. Xin Yuan shi, 182: 3; cited in Jung-pang Lo, “Controversy over Grain Conveyance,” 284. 99. Miyazaki, “Min Shin jidai no Soshu ,” 308; Lu Yuncheng, 244–45; Wang Dajing, 151–52; Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan Suzhou de nongye fazhan,” 262, 276. 100. Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 323; see also the general discussion of the growing importance of Liu jia gang (as Taicang was then known) in ibid., 274–76. 101. Lo, “Controversy over Grain Conveyance,” 278–79. 102. Mote, Poet Kao Ch’i; Cahill, Hills beyond a River. 103. Shiba, “Ningpo and Its Hinterland,” 392. 104. Xiao, 151–78. 105. Twitchett, “Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 122–24. 106. Claims that one was descended from distant elites were of course far easier to make, and to maintain, than were claims of descent from prominent local families. 107. Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 198–200. 108. Liao et al., 80–84. 109. Wu Jihua, 22; Lu Shiyi, 19: 1b. 110. DMB, 102. For example, Zhang dredged the tanks and riverways of Kunshan and Changshu, a task that had been neglected (in spite of the occasional urgings of Yuan local officials) since the 1260s: Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai Suzhou de nongye fazhan,” 266, 268. 111. Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 201–02. 112. Dreyer, 58–59. 113. Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 203. 114. As the next chapter describes, grain production was still, however, below the critical threshold: the prefecture was a net exporter of grain in normal years, not one dependent on grain imports for survival. 115. See Appendix A. Liang Gengyao, “‘Zhongguo lishishang de chengshi renkou’ tanhou,” 136, notes that, given 80,000 households in late Yuan Suzhou, the city

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would have accounted for 54.8 percent of the population registered in Wu and Changzhou.

Chapter 3 1. Chen Ji, 15: 11b; on female literacy, see Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 61–62, for its rarity in early Ming; Handlin; Ko; Mann, 76–120; and Bray, Technology and Gender, 140–41, for its frequency by the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. 2. When Zhuan’s son invited scholars to discuss philosophy at the library of his country villa, Zhu Xi (1130–1200), then serving as prefect of Nankang (1179–81), personally wrote the inscription. The grandson is said to have “constantly imitated Zhu Xi. He was familiar with righteousness and principle and very clever at affairs.” Qian, 40: 46b [Chen Wan, Tomb Record and Inscription of Chen Kuan]. 3. This mechanism, through which the sons of officials could receive official appointment without first passing the examinations, was far more important in Song times than it was later. Hucker, Dictionary, 50, indicates that half the bureaucracy was recruited in this way under the Song. 4. Gedalacia, 186. 5. Zhu Cunli, 7: 10b (660); for reasons that are unclear, Zhu wrote that both Tong and Zhong had “concealed virtue” (e.g., did not hold an official post). 6. According to Wu Kuan, 73: 13b, he did so to avoid the soldiers. Zheng died before the outbreak of the late Yuan rebellions however. 7. The date given in the gazetteer (1371) is, however, almost certainly incorrect: MGWXZ, 9: 9a; see also DMB, 164. 8. Jinan was the capital of Shandong province, but Ruyan’s appointment was probably at the prefectural level. 9. The gazetteer—MGWXZ, 40: 13b—notes that Zheng and his son Ji were both buried here; Ji’s funerary inscription is more precise, stating that he was buried at Jianfushan in Taiping xiang (du 5–6). Qian, buyi, shang 10b [Yang Shiqi (DMB), Gravestone and Inscription of Chen Ji]. 10. On this figure (also known as Ji of Lu), see the discussion in Raphals, 30–33, 88, 92–98, 120–123. 11. Although the early Ming was a difficult time for the Fan, given the bride’s age, the marriage must have occurred before the 1384 “confiscation of two thousand mu of land belonging to the charitable estate,” a blow that reflected (as well as intensified) state hostility and internal weakness; see Twitchett, “Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 124–26. 12. In MGWXZ, 70 shang: 7b, Wang Xing (1331–1395; jianbi 1371) and Yu Li’an were also listed as his mentors. Miyazaki Ichisada notes that, until he was executed for his involvement in the Lan Yu case, Wang Xing was regarded as the successor to Gao Qi among Suzhou literati: “Mindai So-Sho chiho no shi-dai-fu to min-shu ,” 3. 13. Jin Jiong had advocated equalizing the tax on official and private land. Found guilty of a crime, he was ordered by the emperor to commit suicide: MGWXZ, 63: 7b. GSZ, 3: 38a, notes that “one” places him in office in 1386. 14. Chen Ji, 14: 8b. 15. On Chen Zheng, see Qian, buyi, xia: 40a–42a. On Chen Ruzhi, Zhu Cunli, 7:

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10b–11a. On Chen Ruyan, DMB, 163–65. On Ms. Wu, Chen Ji, 15: 11a–14b. On Chen Ji, Ming shi, 152; Jiao, 22: 16a–17a; and Qian, buyi, shang, 7b–11a. On Ms. Jin, Chen Ji, 14: 8a–9a. See also MGWXZ, 40: 12b, 13b, 15a; 56 shang: 12a, 13a; 66 shang: 2b–3a; 70 shang: 7b; 74 xia: 2b; 76 shang: 10b. 16. Compare Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 664–65 (on libraries), and Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 61–62 (on female literacy in early Ming). 17. Compare Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 61, 99–101; and Raphals, 113–38. As Bossler emphasizes, though (17–24), accounts of poor but virtuous and literate widows able to educate their sons are repeatedly found in Song sources. For female literacy, and the maternal role in education in late Ming and Qing, see Handlin, “Lü K’un’s New Audience”; Bray, Technology and Gender, 335–68; Ko; Mann, Precious Records. 18. Zhu Yunming, Jiuchao yeji, 1: 14b. 19. GXSZFZ, 12: 5b. 20. Miyazaki, “Mindai So-Sho chiho no shi-dai-fu to min-shu ” is representative. 21. Mote, “Growth of Chinese Despotism,” 1–41. 22. On the limitations the size of the empire imposed on the degree of control the center could exercise, see Skinner, “Introduction: Urban Development,” 19–21; on the specific dynamic in Ming, see R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, esp. 1–5 and 36. 23. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 99. 24. In Suzhou prefecture in the early Ming, the quota was 254,300 ounces of silk, 10,100 piculs of barley, 51,800 piculs of wheat, 17 piculs of beans, 27 piculs of rape, 94 piculs of liang cao gengmi (grain and coarse and nonglutinous rice) and 10,980 strings of copper coins and paper money. GSZ, 15: 5b. Suzhou’s summer tax was light relative to the amounts demanded elsewhere; see Wu Jihua, 38–40 (table 1). 25. The definition is Ray Huang’s; see Taxation and Governmental Finance, 100. 26. GSZ, 15: 8b–11a. 27. Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 671–72; Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 66–70; Tong, 164–65; Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 132–33. As Liang emphasizes, the prohibitions on investment in land were flouted by bribing clerks to falsify records, by using false names, or by dividing their holdings and entrusting them to others. 28. Dardess, “Transformations,” 541–42; C. K. Yang, “Some Preliminary Statistical Patterns,” 186–88. 29. At least by mid-Ming, such arguments were widely accepted; see Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 102, 211–12. On merchant advisers, see discussion of members of the Tang family appointed to the Court of State Ceremonial in Chapter 7. 30. Dreyer, 129. 31. Duan and Zhang, 10; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 73. 32. Tsurumi, “Rural Control,” 254. For evidence that a variant of the hundreds and tithings system was in use in Suzhou prefecture in 1368, compare the passages on altars to the unworshipped dead of the canton (xiang litan) in MGWXZ, 33: 2a and 34: 1b, with the number of hundreds and tithings in Wu and Changzhou districts cited in GSZ, 7: 5a–5b. 33. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 34. In late fourteenth-century

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Wujiang district, “at least 21,471 men were needed each year to provide the necessary services to the [district]. Of this total, only 25 persons, including the [district] magistrate, were government employees”; J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 41. 34. Tsurumi, “Rural Control,” 259; Wiens, “Changes in the Fiscal and Rural Control Systems,” 56–62; George Chang, 53–72; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 458–76. 35. Tsurumi, “Rural Control,” 259; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 474–475 discusses the complexities involved. Although in practice (he concludes) private tenants were usually omitted, those who rented official land were included. 36. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 37. 37. Tsurumi, “Rural Control,” 262. 38. In addition to the writings of Huang, Wiens, and Tsurumi, the classic description is still Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu. 39. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 110; Yamane, 285; as Heijdra (“Socio-Economic Development,” 479–80) emphasizes, until 1433, tenants on government land were exempted from miscellaneous corvée. 40. In this, as in other ways, Zhu Yuanzhang continued policies of the preceding Yuan dynasty; see Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 4–5. The Guard and Battalion (weisuo) system and the retention of a hereditary artisan caste show similar continuities; see Taylor, “Yuan Origins of the Wei-so System,” 23–40; Chu, “Government Artisans of the Yuan Dynasty,” 234–46; and Ho, Ladder of Success, 56– 59. Recent work by John W. Dardess (on politics and political thought), J. D. Langlois (on Jinhua thought), and J. F. Fletcher (on “bloody tanistry”—see Wong, “China and World History,” 1–11) suggest far more extensive continuities. 41. Dennerline, “Fiscal Reform and Local Control,” 95. 42. Mote, “Chinese Society under Mongol Rule,” 637; Xiao Qiqing, 151–178; and Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy, 14–18, discuss their number and privileges in the Yuan. Only 4,000 of these households were in the North. Although the Ming huiyao 50: 936 lists Ru as one of the categories of commoner household, and some of those who passed the early exams identified themselves as members of such households, the category ceased to have the same significance once large numbers were being recruited for government service by examination. 43. Famous descendants of early Ming garrison households include Wen Zhengming and Huang Xingzeng, both of whose ancestors were stationed at Suzhou in the early Ming; DMB, 661, 1471. 44. Both Wu and Changzhou districts had all of these; see MGWXZ, 2–8. 45. Dagao xugao, cited in Wu Han, 156. It is not clear whether this was the total in the prefectural yamen or the total in the city of Suzhou. 46. Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 13. The phrase was used in the order establishing the tax captaincy. 47. On population levels, see Bielenstein, 125–63; Cartier and Will, 161–235; Ho, Studies of the Population of China, 9; Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 28; Ge and Cao, 35– 42 (which concludes that in the late fourteenth century the population was at least 73 million); and Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development, 436–39 (who argues that it was closer to 85 million). On the degree to which populations of approximately 60 million were controlled in detail by centrally mandated institutions, see Ikeda On, 121–50. On the concentration of population in the early Ming, see Perkins et al., 178–79.

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48. Shih Chin, 8; R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 44. 49. For the definitive description and analysis of the Ming fisc, see R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance. 50. On the censorate, see Hucker, Censorial System. 51. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 5. Note that, even at this pace, the emperor would have averaged one report per district during that period. 52. As early as 1370 there were complaints that landless households in Suzhou “constantly pursue profit from the ‘branches’ [of commerce and handicrafts]; consequently, food is insufficient.” Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 105–6. 53. DMB, 595 (Xu Ben), 1502 (Yang Ji). Both had been closely associated with one of Zhang Shicheng’s leading lieutenants, Rao Jie; they were permitted to return in 1369. 54. Wiens, “Changes in the Fiscal and Rural Control System,” 53, has households; Farmer, 47, has persons. Given the population of Fengyang prefecture in 1393— 79,107 households according to Da Ming huidian, 19: 4a—Farmer’s version is the more plausible. The forced migration was apparently part of the effort to turn Fengyang into an imperial capital: see Mote, “Urban History in Later Imperial China,” 63 (summarizing the recent work of Wang Jianying). 55. Mote, “Transformation of Nanjing,” 145; Lin, “Shilun Mingdai Su Song erfu de zhongfu wenti,” 112. These were apparently the 14,241 households in the realm (exclusive of the far southern and western provinces) reported to own 700 or more mu in the late fourteenth century: Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 23. (Liang gives the year as 1397; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 474, and n.167, shows that these figures actually date from the second month of 1370.) 56. Da Ming huidian, 19: 3b–4a. 57. Wu Han, 130. The memory of these yearly migrations persisted into the twentieth century; Perry, Rebels and Revolutionaries, 55, footnote. 58. Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 23. 59. Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 212–13. 60. See Chapter 7. The quotation is from Oyama, 108. Ho, Ladder of Success, 58– 59, notes that the Wu family were registered as artisans. He therefore assumes that the land holdings that underwrote Wu Kuan’s education were accumulated between 1380 and Wu Kuan’s youth (the 1440s and 1450s). Lee Hwa-chou more plausibly describes them as “members of the gentry engaged in the textile business” (DMB, 1487). The nucleus of the Wu family holdings clearly existed before their exile. 61. The concept and the phrase come from Clifford Geertz’s study of a Javanese town in the colonial and postcolonial era; Geertz, Social History of an Indonesian Town. 62. MGWXZ, 2: 12a–13a; 7: 20b–22a; 63: 7b–9a. A comparison with other editions of the local gazetteer confirms that those listed as “illustrious officials” varied little from one edition to the next. 63. MGWXZ, 63: 6a (He Zhi). 64. MGWXZ, 7: 20b; 63: 7b (Wei Guan). 65. Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 211 (who places the incident in 1377); GSZ, 3: 38a; MGWXZ, 7: 21a; 63: 7b (Jin Jiong), both of which place it in 1371.

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66. Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 210; MGWXZ, 7: 21a. 67. MGWXZ, 7: 21a; 63: 7b; 67: 7a; Mote, Poet Kao Ch’i, 234–43. 68. MGWXZ, 7: 21a–22a. The felon/illustrious official was Tang De, prefect in 1378; ibid., 63: 8a. 69. Huang and Needham, 388. 70. DMB, 386–87; 788–91; MGWXZ, 66 shang: 1b (Wang Xing). Wang Xing’s son had been appointed to office in the capital. When Wang Xing visited him, Lan Yu put the father up in his own home and repeatedly recommended him to the emperor. In due course, Wang Xing obtained an imperial audience. When Lan Yu subsequently got into trouble, the emperor had both Wang Xing and his son put to death as members of the plot. The incident is discussed in Miyazaki, “Mindai So-Sho chiho no shi-dai-fu to min-shu ,” 3; and in Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 208. 71. MGWXZ, 66 shang: 1a–4b. 72. Fan Shuzhi, Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei, 309–10. Shen Fu was also known as Shen Wansan. 73. In transmission, these figures were badly mauled. The GXSZFZ, 12: 5b–6b, has 2,994,551 mu of commoners’ land; the GSZ, 15: 3a–3b, makes the total 2,904,500 mu. The HWSZFZ, cited by Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite (Part One),” 3, provides the figures used here. This is not only a more contemporary source (since it specifically includes Chongming, not transferred to Suzhou’s jurisdiction until 1375, it must reflect the late 1370s); it is also the only source that sums to the total all three share. Given that the commentary appended provides subtotals for Wu, Changzhou, Wujiang, Kunshan, and Changshu districts, all of them internally consistent (or nearly so—Changzhou’s subtotals exceed the stated total by 1200 mu, Wujiang’s exceed the stated total by 200), this fourteenth-century version provides a reassuringly solid portrait of officially registered land at the beginning of Ming. Its relation to acreage actually under cultivation is of course more problematic. 74. Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 4. As Mori notes, land that was abandoned was entered in the same category as Song/Yuan official land rather than being combined with land confiscated after the Ming conquest. The figure for the former category is thus somewhat too high, while that for the latter is not quite the same as land that first became official land after the tenth month of 1367. The distortion is probably slight, but cannot be corrected with the available sources. 75. Lin, “Mingdai zhonghouqi Jiangnan de tudi jianbing,” 33. Land was seldom sold outright; if after a number of years the owner was unable to redeem it, title passed to the lender—often after paying an additional sum to the owner. 76. Gu Yanwu, “Su Song erfu tianfu zhi zhong,” Rizhilu jishi, 54. As Lin Jinshu emphasizes, the state’s contribution was largely to newly reclaimed land; see Lin, “Shilun Mingdai Su Song erfu de zhongfu wenti,” 103. 77. Given that extensive tracts of deltaic lowland were still too water-logged to produce maximum rice yields, much less to permit wet-field/dry-field rotation, in the late fourteenth century, one needs to emphasize “best” land; see Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 447–84; and Li Bozhong, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 125–27, 130–32. Although he does not provide esti-

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mates of average yields in Suzhou in early Ming, Li’s work is a powerful argument for regarding such levels as the exception, not the rule, before the high Qing. 78. The form of tax evasion in question is a practice called jizhuang. In part as a concession to the taxpayer, in part as an adjustment to administrative reality, jizhuang exempted those who owned land in more than one hundred (li) from labor service in those in which they did not actually reside. In practice, it was often used to avoid labor service in all. Those who had been granted limited tax-exempt status found it advantageous to divide their holdings among several hundreds, then claim the full exemption in each of them. See Wiens, “Changes in the Fiscal and Rural Control Systems,” 60–62, 65; and Liang Fang-chung, Single-Whip Method, 12–13, for this and other methods. 79. Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 214, citing Ming huiyao gao; also in Zhu Yunming, Jiuchao yeji, 1: 14a–15b. 80. Lin, “Guanyu Ming chu Su Song zigengnong de shuliang wenti,” 161–62. 81. At an average tax rate, they held 471,909 mu, or 7 percent of the total arable registered in Suzhou prefecture. Estates would have ranged in size from 300 to 12,000 mu. 82. DMB, 696. 83. Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 204–5. 84. Ibid., 204; Lin, “Shilun Su Song erfu de zhongfu wenti,” 111; MGWXZ, 43: 8a; 63: 8b. 85. Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 204; GXSZFZ, 18: 29b–30a; MGWXZ, 44: 3a. 86. Dreyer, 128. 87. Lin Jinshu, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 206. 88. Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 7–8. If one holds the rate on commoners’ land constant and leaves the amount assessed Song and Yuan official fields as they were, fields confiscated after 1368 would have paid an average 0.571 piculs per mu. As Heijdra (“Socio-Economic Development,” 476) notes, this was substantially less than the rent on private land. 89. Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 29, specifically notes accountants, measurers, and transport workers in Su in 1373. Assistant tax captains were created in 1377: ibid., 59. J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 34, notes that “nearly 230,000 men” were mobilized for long-distance transport of Suzhou’s taxes in 1430. 90. The figure is provided by GSZ, 15: 8b, one that explicitly includes transportation and wastage. (Since taxes were paid in kind, a portion of the grain was inevitably lost as a result of spills and spoilage; this loss—which those delivering the tax had to make good—is referred to as wastage.) It seems modest, relative either to the total quota of 214,000 piculs of white rice—all of it assessed on the Yangzi delta prefectures—or to Suzhou prefecture’s tax quota as a whole. Yet the commentator found this charge especially onerous, for the actual burden to the taxpayer was two to five times (beixi—a stock phrase, not a precise estimate) the amount budgeted. The difference had to be made good by the taxpayer. Noting that rice was grown everywhere under heaven, he asked rhetorically why only that from Suzhou would do. “White rice” often was more broadly defined, including all the rice taxpayers were compelled to deliver to the capitals themselves. The additional rice was used to

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pay official salaries. Suzhou prefecture was required to deliver 379,445 piculs of such rice (transport and wastage allowance included) in addition to that intended for the emperor’s personal use. See GSZ, 15: 7a and Hoshi, 36–41. 91. GSZ, 15: 14b–16a. 92. Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 323–26; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 479–80. As the latter (474) emphasizes, they were, however, enrolled in the hundreds and tithings. 93. See Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 582–603, on these services. 94. Lin, “Shilun Mingdai Su Song erfu de zhongfu wenti,” 112. 95. Liang Fang-chung, “Local Tax Collectors,” 260–61. Liang here cites Zhu Yuanzhang. In the quotation in the text, official titles have been changed to conform to usage elsewhere in this book, and the gloss of distance is the author’s insertion. 96. Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 56; see also Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 604, and map 10.8 (621); Ming shi 88 (p. 2146). 97. Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 90; Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 34–35, 45. Before this, natural outlets had oriented Huizhou merchants to Hangzhou and Jiangxi; see Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 126. 98. MGWXZ, 63: 8a–9a. 99. Based on the 1393 returns for the prefecture as a whole: 491,514 households; 9,850,600 mu of registered arable; and an autumn tax quota of 2,746,990 piculs. Although district subtotals do not survive, the 1503 figures (which do) are clearly based on these late fourteenth-century returns. Note that the disgreement with Fan Jinmin, Ming Qing Jiangnan shangye de fazhan, 48–49, is more apparent than real. Fan there calculates the supply and demand for rice; here rice is used to represent total income. Fan is moreover primarily concerned with the region as a whole, while this discussion (like his treatment of cotton) focuses on the match between supply and demand at the district level. 100. Ming huiyao, 1085. 101. Li Chien-nung, “Price Control and Paper Currency,” 283; and R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 70. 102. The deficit for Wu and Changzhou districts in the 1370s was 948,571.38 piculs; the commercial tax quotas for Wu, Changzhou, and the prefectural seat imply annual trade (excluding foodstuffs) worth 2,956,274.2 strings of cash. 103. Lin, “Shilun Mingdai Su Song erfu de zhongfu wenti,” 115. 104. See Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 66–70; and Wang Zhongle. 105. Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 12. 106. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 159; Cartier, “Institutions impériales et situations locales,” 276–81. 107. CZWXZ, 9: 2b; Xie Zhaozhe, 3: 23b; Cao Zishou, “Wu xian jiangyu tushuo,” in TXJGLBS, 5: 10b. 108. See Appendix B, “Upper Degree Graduates in Ming.” On examinations in the early Ming, see Elman, 29–49. He notes (41) that “efforts to control Jiangnan economic resourses were paralleled by the emperor’s efforts to thwart their translation into cultural resources leading to southern examination success. . . . during the thirty years of the Hongwu reign, only four literati from Suzhou achieved jinshi status.”

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109. A restricted version of rotation of office was employed in some areas, the tax captain and his deputies moving from one post to the other. This kept effective control of the office within a very few hands. Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 64. On tax captains in early Ming Jiangnan, see also J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 11–21, 30–33. 110. Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 50. The three bonds are those between parent and child, husband and wife, and ruler and minister. It is unclear if the punishment would have been as severe if the falsely accused had not been kinsmen. 111. Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 13, quotes the hundred elder Wang Zhongren and his fellows who told the new prefect that “under ZhuYuanzhang, there was no official to control the peasants and yet taxes were not owed and payments were not deferred for long periods of time.”

Chapter 4 1. MGWXZ, 42: 16b. 2. Lin, “Shilun Mingdai Su Song erfu de zhongfu wenti,” 108. 3. GXSZFZ, 12: 7b–8a. 4. Dreyer, 164. 5. GXSZFZ, 60: 1b; 61: 1a–3a. Enthusiasm for these new opportunities was muted, at least in Wujiang; see J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 39. 6. MGWXZ, 63: 8b–9a; on the usurpation and its aftermath, see Elman, 23–29, 49–57, 62–68. 7. A point stressed in Lin, “Mingchu Wuzhong diqu shehui jingji zhuangkuang chutan,” 207. 8. Ming shi, 78: 1896. 9. Da Ming huidian, 19: 21a–21b. The fact that one could find “prosperous dahu” (great households) that paid no land tax or paid less than five piculs in 1403 Suzhou again suggests that the early Ming had been less of an unmitigated disaster for the area’s elite households than the received version implies. In 1403 and 1409, twelve and ten Wujiang households, respectively, were ordered to move to Beijing; see J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 16. 10. MGWXZ, 2: 13a; 7: 22a–22b; 63: 8a, 9b, 11a. Moreover, these were holdovers. 11. MGWXZ, 63: 9a–11b. 12. MGWXZ, 63: 9b. 13. Farmer, 148–82. 14. The government imposed “annual contributions” and charged the tax captains with collecting them: J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 33. 15. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 46–47, 175–77. 16. Farmer, 112–13, 123, 150–51,161. 17. MGWXZ, 63: 10b. 18. Wu Jihua, 85, notes that in addition to the official quota of 2,810,490 piculs, transport and wastage allowance required an additional 1,157,020 piculs. 19. Zhou Liangxiao, “Mingdai Su Song diqu de guantian yu zhongfu wenti,” 136. Li Bozhong’s review of the sources (Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 144–47) indicates that sharp sex-linked divisions of labor were a Qing development in this

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area. Women routinely working in the fields thus made the prolonged absence of males sustainable. 20. MGWXZ, 63: 10b, 9b; DMB, 1608. 21. Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 71, 35, 64. 22. Lin, “Mingdai zhonghouqi Jiangnan de ditu jianbing,” 32. 23. For an introduction to this topic, see Liang Fang-chung, Single-whip Method, 11–19; Wiens, “Changes in the Fiscal and Rural Control Systems,” 62–66; Wakeman, “Introduction: The Evolution of Local Control,” 2–13; and Dennerline, “Fiscal Reform and Local Control,” 87–96. 24. MGWXZ, 63: 9b (Liu Gan) and 10b (Shao Xin), both refer to this in passing. 25. Wu Jihua, 88–89, citing the 1425 report of Zhou Gan. 26. Terada, “Mindai Soshu heiya no no ka keizai ni tsuite,” 4. 27. Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 442. 28. Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 326, 443. 29. GSZ says that Li Zong was appointed in 1411; the MGWXZ, 7: 22a, puts him in office from 1409 to 1415. Neither is consistent with the tale preserved in the funerary inscription. 30. No one by the name of Hu Gai appears in the Combined Indices to EightyNine Collections of Ming Dynasty Biographies or in the Mingren zhuanji ziliao suoyin. According to the table of officials in the MGWXZ, the post of grand coordinator was established in 1421. From that time until the end of the sixteenth century (when the office was shifted to Suzhou), the grand coordinator was stationed at Jiangning. The creation of the post and its location are thus consistent with Wu Kuan’s account yet the officials named suggest that the details are more than slightly suspect. 31. Wu Kuan, 61: 1a–3a. 32. MGWXZ, 63: 11b. 33. Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 28; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 479–80; and J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 37–38—all quoting Zhou Chen. This has often been seen as beginning of a shift from an egalitarian early Ming society of smallholders to a highly stratified late Ming order in which 10 percent of the households controlled 90 percent of the land. There is, however, good reason to believe that the early Ming was not all that egalitarian, and the bulk of the evidence suggests that large estates remained a rarity throughout (consider the case of Prefect Jin Jiang, the repeated deportation of “rich households,” and the ban on mortgage pawn of more than fifty mu of official land). 34. Wu Jihua, 89, citing Zhou Gan’s 1425 report. 35. MGWXZ, 63: 10b. 36. The commentaries in the genealogy state that the third and fifth sons of the founding ancestor’s youngest son made the move; Yuan Xuan, “Chenshi jiapu xu (1452),” states that all five sons of the branch did. Sucheng Chenshi jiapu (1870 edition). 37. Hymes, “Not Quite Gentlemen?” 9–76. At issue is the status of doctors relative to classically educated scholar officials. 38. On this group of Chens, see Sucheng Chenshi jiapu; on Fan, Chen Ji 12: 8b– 10a; on Qi, Wu Kuan, 60: 3a–3b; on Chen Yi, Jiao, 54: 33a–35a, and Ming shi, 159; MGWXZ, 40: 14b, 19a; 56 shang: 13a, 14b; 66 shang: 6b–7a; 70 shang: 20a.

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39. Chen Ji, 12: 9a–9b. 40. The capital was presumably Nanjing. Although the emperor spent a major part of his time in the North, the seat of government was not formally transferred to Beijing until 1421. 41. Fan was buried beside Ms. Gao. The emphasis placed on Ms. Gao may reflect the attitudes of Ms. Weng’s stepsons rather than those of her husband. Apparently the second wife did not give birth to a son; she may thus have lacked a champion when the record came to be written. Chen Bo appears in the genealogy without wife or descendants. Although it is not explicitly stated that this was the case, the position he occupies in the table suggests that, having died young, he was appended to the ancestral cult of his elder brother, Ji. 42. Wu Kuan, 60: 3a–3b. His adoptive parents were presumably buried here as well. 43. GSZ, 6: 36a–39b; see Elman, 49–57, on the examination politics of the Yongle era. 44. GXSZFZ, 61: 3a–7b: see Appendix B. 45. Jiao, 22: 16a [Yang Rong, Tomb Record and Inscription of Chen Ji]. 46. Qian, buyi, shang: 9b. 47. According to MGWXZ, 70 shang: 7b, when Xia Yuanji (DMB) was engaged in water control in Suzhou and Songjiang prefectures, he obtained copies of Ji’s essays. Returning to the capital, he showed them to Yang Shiqi (DMB); Yang was favorably impressed by them. On the success of Jiangxi men in the early Ming, see Elman, 41, 53–54, and Dardess, A Ming Society, 139–95. 48. On Chen Ji, see Jiao, 22: 16a–17a; Qian, buyi, shang: 7b–11a; Ming shi, 152; MGWXZ, 40.13b, 15a; 56 shang: 13a; 70 shang: 7b. This passage is from the tomb inscription by Yang Shiqi in Qian, buyi, shang, 10a. 49. In addition to the father and uncle of Shen Zhou, these included Zhang Yi (jinshi 1415) and Liu Pu (jianbi 1427). 50. Teng and Biggerstaff, 83; see Elman, 49–61, on the political implications of these projects. 51. DMB, 1561–1565. Yao is also known by his monastic name, Daoyan. 52. Ho, Ladder of Success, 246–49; Parsons, “Ming Dynasty Bureaucracy,” 182, 190. 53. The percentage of households (in 1393) is from Da Ming huidian, 19: 1a, 3b; DMB. 54. Individuals could, and did, change their registration for exam-taking purposes. Chen Huan had three sons, one a district student in Changzhou, one a district student in Wu; the former’s second son held the same status in Kunshan: Sucheng Chenshi jiapu. Such people could and did pass the higher exams; see the Hengshan branch of Lu in the 1745 edition of the Lu shi shipu, generation 66, and the case of Chen Chun, Chen Daofu’s nephew, who passed the metropolitan exams as a man from Wujiang (GXSZFZ, 60: 19a). 55. Ho, Ladder of Success, 172–79, discusses changes in the enrollments of these institutions. 56. Mori, “Ju go seiki zempan Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kokka to no min,” 68– 75; the quotation is from 72.

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57. Wu Naifu, 298–99; Wang Dajing, 152–59; Lu Yunchang, 245–46; Levathes, 92– 93; Huang Renyu, 492. The ban was originally imposed in 1372. 58. Bao Yanbang, 297; Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 602, emphasizes that “the Ming state was relying directly on the profitability of private commerce to pay for its [shipping] costs.” 59. Fan and Xia, 30–31. 60. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 66–67, invoke the HWSZFZ description of Suzhou weavers’ skill in producing figured gauze. 61. Peng, “Cong Mingdai guanying zhizao de jingying fangshi kan Jiangnan sishiye shengchan de xingzhi,” 310; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 104, 114–19; Santangelo, “Imperial Factories,” 281–82, notes that it was also rebuilt and expanded in the Yongle (1403–24) and Tianshun (1457–64) eras. Completely dependent on pleasing their imperial masters, eunuchs were regularly employed to carry out sensitive assignments. 62. Grand Coordinator Zhou Chen, cited by Hsi, 28–29. 63. Qianlong Wujiang xian zhi, cited by Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (zhong),” 331. On male involvement, see Wang Zhongle, 12– 14. 64. Peng, “Cong Mingdai guanying zhizao de jingying fangshi kan Jiangnan sizhiye shengchan de xingzhi,” 313–18; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 75–76, 124–25; Santangelo, “Imperial Factories,” 272–77. 65. Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (xia),” 371. The reference to “fourteen provinces” in the passage Liu cites indicates that this describes the the period 1407–28, when northern Vietnam was organized as a fourteenth province. 66. Li Bozhong, “Ming Qing Jiangnan yu waidi jingji lianxi de jiaqiang,” 9–10. 67. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 63, 79–88, 257; Li Bozhong, “‘Sang zheng daotian,’” 1–12. 68. How much of this was due to taxpayer flight and failing dikes, how much to taxpayers’ resistance in the wake of the Jianwen emperor’s 1399 decree, is of course unknown. 69. MGWXZ, 63: 11a (Tang Zong); Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (xia),” 371. 70. MGWXZ, 42: 17a; 63: 9a–9b. 71. MGWXZ, 55: 6b; GXSZFZ, 18: 30a–30b. 72. MGWXZ, 43: 12b; 55: 19a. 73. MGWXZ, 42: 12b. 75. MGWXZ, 43: 2a, 8a; GXSZFZ, 18: 30b. 76. Wu Jihua, 86–90. 77. Du Zonghuan, cited by Gu Yanwu, “Su-Song erfu tianfu zhi zhong,” Rizhilu jishi, 4: 48–49. 78. Shih Chin, 25; J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 35. 79. Ming shi, 153: 4212. 80. Wu Jihua, 43. 81. Wu Dange, 4. The biography of Prefect Kuang Zhong indicates that this was the deficit for four years; MGWXZ, 63: 11b.

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82. Gu Yanwu, “Su Song erfu tianfu zhi zhong,” 47. 83. A point driven home by Wu Jihua, 85–86. 84. See Mori, “Ju go seiki zempan Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kokka to no min,” 68–76.

Chapter 5 1. Skinner, “Structure of Chinese History,” 285. See also Zhu Keshen, 226–56; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 421–27; Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Effort,” 450–54; Stevens; and anecdotal accounts like that of Huang Wei (b. 1439, jinshi 1490), 1: 6b–7a. 2. TXJGLBS, 4 ce: 47a–48a; MGWXZ, 43: 12b–13a; 63: 22a; 78: 19a. As suggested later, these areas may have become underdeveloped in the wake of the end of seaborne shipments of grain, the ban on private overseas trade, and the end of Zheng He’s voyages. 3. Compare GSZ, 18: 6a–6b, and CZWXZ, 2. 4. Except for the last reign of the dynasty (whose Veritable Records consist of a scant one fascicle or juan per year), that key record of developments averages ten fascicles per year after 1424, twelve fascicles per year after 1435. Those covering the period 1351–1424 average five fascicles per year. See Wolfgang Franke, 30–33, and discusssion on 15–16. Accounts of the early period were heavily edited to establish the legitimacy and good fortune of the Yongle usurpation. The fact that unofficial sources are far more numerous for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than for the fourteenth and fifteenth prevents us from relying on private writings to fill gaps in the offical records. See also the discussion of the handling of early Ming in the Qing in Kahn, 12–46. 5. GXSZFZ, 18: 31a; MGWXZ, 42: 17a. 6. MGWXZ, 55: 7a. 7. MGWXZ, 42: 17a–17b. 8. MGWXZ, 55: 7a; 42: 17b. 9. GXSZFZ, 18: 31a; MGWXZ, 55: 7a; 63: 13a (Weng Shizi, who was credited with convincing the throne to remit 700,000 piculs (shi) in the late 1440s and organized relief, saved the lives of many). 10. MGWXZ, 63: 10a. 11. Han, 420, citing Ming shi 282 (7229). The local gazetteers do not mention this incident. Only because Xue Xuan, the philosopher-official then serving as chief minister of the Court of Judicial Review at Nanjing, sought clemency for the falsely accused do we know of the affair. 12. MGWXZ, 55: 7a, 63: 13b. On Yang’s subsequent career as prefect, see note 63 in this chapter. 13. MGWXZ, 55: 7a; GXSZFZ, 18: 31a–31b. Grand Coordinator Zou Laixue (in office 1455–56) was able to persuade the government, which had transferred all available troops to the northern border in the wake of the Tumu incident, to restore the system under which the military transported tax grain to distant points. This substantially relieved the burdens borne by Suzhou’s taxpayers; MGWXZ, 63: 14a.

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14. MGWXZ, 63: 13a. 15. GXSZFZ, 18: 31b. 16. MGWXZ, 63: 15b. A hu is a dry measure equal to either a whole or a half picul. No flood is recorded during Xing You’s term of office in the list of natural disasters—a sign either that the list only reflects officially certified disasters, that the disaster in question was too localized to merit inclusion, or that the list is incomplete. 17. GXSZFZ, 18: 31b. 18. MGWXZ, 55: 7a–7b. 19. Liu was also remembered for issuing grain to make congee for the starving and for aiding the poor to marry; MGWXZ, 63: 17a. 20. MGWXZ, 55: 7b, 19b. 21. MGWXZ, 63: 17b. 22. By the time of Ms. Chen’s death in 1490, Wu Kuan’s family grave was located in Wu district, west of Mount Heng at Huayuanshan in Taiping xiang (du 5). In the Yuan period, this Wu family was based in the southeastern corner of Changzhou and, for exam-taking purposes, Wu Kuan and his brother Xuan maintained their registration there. The location of the grave site at a spot more convenient to the city than to Lake Chen may reflect the early Ming uprooting of the family, an uprooting that was followed by a shift of family occupation to commerce in textiles—a calling Wu Kuan’s eldest brother continued to pursue (see DMB, 1487). The Wu family was in any case a wealthy one; see the passage cited by Oyama, 108. 23. From the location of the family burial plot—in Wu’s Zhide xiang (du 11– 12)—and the descriptive information, the river may well have been the Grand Canal. 24. Wu Kuan, 67: 9b–10b, suggests that men of the village saw the hand of Ms. Zhu in such practices. 25. Wu Kuan adds a diatribe on doctors (especially Buddhist doctors) and their incompetence. He concludes, however, that a deeply rooted illness cannot be eliminated and that attempts to treat it will simply cause death; at least Lun’s fate can serve as a warning for future generations of the dangers of medicine. Ibid., 62: 6a–6b. 26. Chen Ji’s daughter wed Tang Zhang, certainly a member of the prosperous merchant family discussed in Chapter 7. 27. Wu Kuan, 62: 6b; on this family, see ibid., 62: 5b–6b; 67: 9b–10b; 68: 6b–7a. 28. Wu Jihua, 91. 29. Farmer, 130, 175. 30. R. Huang, “Fiscal Administration,” 82–88; R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 5. Although (as Dreyer points out) the early Ming state extracted substantially more than it needed, the Yongle emperor’s ambitions had far exceeded its available resources. Huang clearly seems correct when he argues that, even under normal circumstances, the tying of particular sources of revenue to particular purposes hindered the reallocation of burdens. 31. MGWXZ, 44: 3a. 32. Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 317–18. 33. MGWXZ, 44: 3b; 46: 11a; Zhou, 136. 34. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 159. Since the use of silver as a medium of exchange had been banned since 1375, and that ban strictly enforced be-

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tween 1403 and 1435 (Tang Wenji, “Mingchao dui xingshang de guanli he zhengshui,” 26), this price reflects the government-mandated rate at which official salaries in kind were converted to silver; Lin, Zhongguo Mingdai jingji shi, 131. 35. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 52, 100. As Huang emphasizes, this proposal—first made to the Xuande emperor in 1433—was approved only in 1436, when a nine-year-old child occupied the throne. Given the rates adopted and the timing of the decision, this certainly looks more like a concession to wealthy landlords—and to bureaucrats previously compelled to convert their salaries at a heavy discount—than “yet another attempt on the part of the state to pull private stocks of bullion into its treasuries.” See, however, von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, 76. Lin, Zhongguo Mingdai jingji shi, 132, notes that this was in any case the first permanent conversion of land tax to silver in Chinese history. 36. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 101–2; Wu Dange, 14. 37. Zhou, 138; Mori, “Ju go seiki zempan Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kokka to no min,” 111–15. 38. MGWXZ, 63: 11b. 39. Mori, “Ju roku seiki Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kanden seido no kaikaku,” 432–33. The late fourteenth-century practice of converting summer tax to cloth so that the wheat could be retained, enabling the local peasantry to survive until the autumn harvest could be gathered in, had apparently lapsed under Yongle; see Mori Masao, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 327 (citing Kuang Zhong). 40. Thus, hostels and storehouses catering to traveling merchants were assessed 500 strings in paper notes per bay (jian) a month. Loaded donkey carts were to pay 200 strings each time they entered or exited. Mills and oil-pressing shops were to give 500 strings per month. Warehouses, lumber yards, bakeries, and brick and tile shops were charged 400 strings a month, shops specializing in mounting paintings only 30 strings (Han, 524–25). It is unclear if the levies on particular branches of commerce were applied generally or were restricted to the capital. 41. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 226. The title of the memorial cited by Mori Masao (“Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 317) suggests that Kuang Zhong felt that commerce was an underutilized source of revenue even after the customs houses were in place. By mid-Ming, many writers stressed that attempts to tax commerce were unwise and counterproductive; see Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 102 (quoting Qiu Jun), 211–12. 42. Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 480. 43. Zhou, 138; Mori, “Ju go seiki zempan Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kokka to no min,” 96–101. 44. Mori, “Ju go seiki zempan Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kokka to no min,” 115–20 and 91–96, discusses these measures. 45. Shih Chin, 25–27—and in his published work, J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 35–36—stresses these aspects. 46. MGWXZ, 63: 10a; DMB, 753. 47. At least no one seems to have suggested that these groups had so distorted the records that a new cadastral survey (or the development of methods that did not depend on the accuracy of the official records) was the sine qua non of reform. 48. Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 443 (quoting Ming shi, 153).

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49. MGWXZ, 63: 12a. 50. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 52; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 481, on the link between military pay and conversion of taxes to silver. 51. Compare the Ming shi’s bald assertion (cited by Lin, “Mingdai Jiangnan mintian de shuliang he keze,” 21) that “official land was tenanted and cultivated by poor commoners” with the prohibitions on mortgage pawn of more than 50 mu of official land or the details of the Jin Jiong case. (On the former, see Lin, “Mingdai zhonghouqi Jiangnan de tudi jianbian,” 33.) 52. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 186–88, for a critique of this stance. 53. MGWXZ, 63: 11a (Huang Chen); 11b (Zhu Sheng). 54. The first point derives from the work of Max Weber, the second from Mancur Olson, Logic of Collective Action. 55. Mori, “Ju go seiki zempan Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kokka to no min,” esp. 68–75. 56. See Mote, “T’u-mu Incident.” 57. For example, Huang Chen was specifically praised for curbing the engrossment of surpluses generated by Zhou Chen’s reforms; MGWXZ, 63: 13a. 58. Wu Dange, 14–15; Mori, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 397–98. 59. Wu Dange, 16. 60. Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 434–35 (citing the Ming shi lu). 61. Mori, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 401. It was during these same years (1453–55) that Prefect Wang Hu introduced the ninegrade ranking system in an attempt to allocate the heaviest labor service to the households best able to bear it. But thanks to the machinations of subbureaucrats, this did not solve the problem; GSZ, 15: 15a and 3: 40b. 62. Mori, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 399– 402. 63. MGWXZ, 63: 15a. See also the reference to efforts by Prefect Yang Gong (in office 1457–59) to establish “benefit the commoner”granaries as a hedge against famine; ibid., 63: 13b. 64. MGWXZ, 63: 15a. 65. Twitchett and Grimm, 341, argue for continuity in policy; on the importance of the 1457 coup for bureaucratic politics, see Dardess, A Ming Society, 144, 194–95. 66. Mori, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 402–4. 67. Ibid., 406–11, where Wang Shu is quoted. Wang sought (unsuccessfully) to persuade the court to reduce the amount of white rice demanded of Suzhou, noting that commoners in Jiangnan were being driven into bankruptcy to provide salaries for cooks and petty workmen at court. He also sought to protect the area from eunuch abuses—both their attempts to introduce heterodox ideas into the curriculum of the prefectural school and their demands for additional tribute. His resistance helped trigger the fall of eunuch Wang Jing; see MGWXZ, 63: 17a; DMB, 302; Murck, 101–4. 68. MGWXZ, 63: 13a (Huang Chen).

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69. Mori, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 443. 70. Tang Wenji, “Mingdai Jiangnan zhongfu wenti he guoyou guantian de siyouhua,” 89. 71. In addition to figures cited in the Statistical Appendix of my “From Rout to Hegemony,” the CZWXZ, 7: 7b–12a, gives figures for Wu in 1479 (704,200 mu), in the 1506–21 era (663,294 mu), and—by adding the areas given in a 1538 discussion of taxes—703,264 mu. For 1503 it gives 710,300 mu. The WLCZXZ, 2: 2b–3b, gives figures for 1503 (1,356,600 mu), 1538 (1,299,800 mu), 1566 (1,319,300 mu), and 1570 (1,319,300 mu) for Changzhou. 72. Lu Shiyi, 19: 2a. 73. GXSZFZ, 12: 10a; Bao Yanbang, 297. 74. GXSZFZ, 18: 31a; MGWXZ, 42: 17a. 75. Hong, Ming Qing Suzhou nongcun jingji ziliao, 317–23, provides an exhaustive list of major water-control efforts undertaken in Suzhou prefecture during the Ming. 76. MGWXZ, 42: 17a–17b. 77. MGWXZ, 55: 7a; 42: 17b. 78. Apparently triggered by the crisis of 1454–55, this effort seems to be related to the dispatch of Xu Guan, then left vice minister of the Ministry of Works, to the region by imperial order: MGWXZ, 63: 14b. The dredging of the Wu Song River alone involved more than 14,200 zhang (47,286 meters)—more than twenty-five miles. 79. Cai Tailin, 137–47. 80. Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 111–17; Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Effort,” 456–58, 475–76. Although average size (as indicated above) may have been smaller than Kuang Zhong claimed, large polders clearly occupied an important part of the landscape. If a 6,000–7,000 mu polder (average 6,500 mu) were divided into 200–300 mu polders (average 250 mu), the perimeter—hence the number of prime mu—would fall from 330 to 70 per polder. There would, however, be twenty-six polders where there had been one before; thus the total length of the dikes (and the number of prime fields) would rise to 70 × 26, or 1,820. Further, the least advantageously situated field would be forty mu from the edge of a 6,500 mu polder; it would be eight mu from the edge of a 250 mu one. 81. Some notion of the man-hours this required may be gained by reading Helen Siu’s account of the effort expended to transform marsh into paddy in the Pearl River delta; see Siu, 25–26. Although the details were not the same, the transformation Hamashima has identified implies an equally massive expenditure of human energies. 82. Cai Tailin, 143–44. Note that transferring responsibility for long-distance tax delivery to the military and elimination of exemptions from such labor service for tenants on government fields would dramatically expand the labor available for such tasks. 83. Yamane, 286–87; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 480, argues that changes in methods of allocating miscellaneous corvée duties were actually more important than changes in the way land taxes were assessed. 84. Tang Wenji, “Mingdai Jiangnan zhongfu wenti he guoyou guantian de siyouhua,” 81.

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85. Mori, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 447, quoting Shi Jian. 86. Yamane, 289; Fan Shuzhi, “Yitiao bianfa de youlai yu fazhan,” 127. Fan attributes the innovation to Han Yong (1422–78; DMB), then serving in Jiangxi. Han was from Changzhou district but, his father having been ordered to move to Beijing in 1403, he had never seen his “native” area until after his appointment to office in Jiangxi. It thus seems difficult to argue that Suzhou experience had anything to do with the development of that system. 87. Fan Shuzhi, “Yitiao bianfa de youlai yu fazhan,” 127–29; Yamane, 285–90; R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 110–11. 88. Hong, Ming Qing Suzhou nongcun jingji ziliao, 319. 89. MGWXZ, 63: 16a, 49: 17a–17b; R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 51–52; Dietrich, 22. The military assumed these responsibilities at rates much more favorable to the taxpayer than those imposed on deliveries undertaken in 1430. 90. MGWXZ, 2: 13a–13b; 7: 22b; 63: 10a–14a.

Chapter 6 1. Jiaofang literally refers to the [Imperial] Music Office. As Paul Rouzer shows, from the Tang on, the term was used to refer to areas where prostitutes (whether or not they were formally enrolled in the Imperial Music Academy) were concentrated. 2. Wang Qi, Yupu zaji (1500), 5; cited in Xie Guozhen, ed., zhong, 111–12. 3. Zhang Chang, 9: 25b. The account notes that he spent his last years in seclusion. His (undated) note may thus refer primarily to the 1480s. Some sense of the affluence of this family can be gleaned from Clunas, Superfluous Things, 105–6. 4. For a more static but equally effusive description, see the “Suzhou Prosepoem” of Mou Zhao, quoted in Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (xia),” 372–73. Mou was active in the Chenghua era; see Duan and Zhang, 93. 5. The most graphic instance of this is the use of the same passage to describe the city at two different points a millennium apart: compare HWSZFZ, 16: 2a–3b and GSZ, 13: 1b. 6. Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 110–17; Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 455–58, 475–76. 7. Bray, Biology and Biological Technology, 499–500. 8. Fan Jinmin, “Qing qianqi Suzhou nongye jingji,” 50–51. Note that direct evidence comes from Jiangyin district (on Changshu’s western border) in the early sixteenth century. Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 532, argues that these were cases of permanent tenancy but not multiple ownership. 9. Yoshikawa, “Shin Sekiden,” emphasizes this aspect of Shen Zhou’s poetry; Chaves, 166, 172, provides elegantly translated examples. 10. Mori, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 445; Mori says Zhao was from Changzhou; the Mingren zhuanji ziliao suoyin, 757, says he was from Wu. 11. J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 37–38, 43–44, shows that exercise of local power remained a real incentive in Wujiang until the end of the fifteenth century.

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12. Chuan and Kraus provide detailed evidence for this in a later period. 13. Oyama, 108–9; McDermott, “Bondservants,” 690; McDermott, “Charting Blank Spaces,” 28. 14. Bray, Biology and Biological Technology, 604–5; Cartier, “L’exploitation agricole chinoise,” 365–88. 15. Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 101–22. Hamashima does discuss a family that rose by developing a piece of Wu’s internal frontier—the Chens of township (du) 7. On them, see Wang Ao, 26: 15a–16b, 28: 12a–13a; Zhang Bangqi, 6: 22b–26a; Lu Shidao, 5b–7a; MGWXZ, 40: 18a; 56 shang: 15a; 66 shang: 17a–17b. The material is summarized in Case Study 5.3: 7 of my dissertation, “From Rout to Hegemony.” Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 538–41, has marshalled the evidence to show that the largest landlords in sixteenth-century Suzhou held 2,000–2,500 mu, with the vast majority owning no more than 40 mu. Landownership was highly concentrated, but most working farms were both small and relatively compact. The model J. C. Shih develops—large estates with concentrated manors worked by bondservants—thus seems to have been very atypical (Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 45–70). Only the highest-ranking officials could create such estates, and there were simply not that many of them from a given area at any one time. 16. Population data for 1376 and 1820 were drawn from GXSZFZ, 13: 9a–9b. The former figure was converted from households to individuals assuming an average household size of 5.48, a calculation based on data in Juqu zhi, 6; sojourners were factored out of the 1820 figures by assuming a 109.8:100 male-to-female sex ratio for the indigenous population. In 1725, Changzhou had been divided into Changzhou and Yuanhe; the 1820 figure is the combined total for both districts. For further explanation of the assumptions made, consult Appendix A. 17. Perhaps the best evidence that agent boats plied the rivers and canals of Suzhou prefecture in the Ming is the account of floating bookstores provided by the anecdote about the Changshu bibliophile Sun Lou (1515–84) in DMB, 1217. On the absence of standard market towns in this area in the early twentieth century, see Skinner, “Rural Marketing,” 21–22. 18. Fei Hsiao-t’ung, 249–59. In the twentieth century, they also brokered loans for villagers from town-based rice merchants. According to Fei, this was however a recent development in the 1930s (274–76). In the absence of further evidence, it cannot be read back into the Ming. 19. See Wong, “Chinese Economic History and Development,” 603–6, 610; and Feuerwerker, 757–69. 20. Dennerline, Chia-ting Loyalists, 82. 21. GSZ, 13: 6b. 22. Song Yingxing, 1. 23. Wilentz, Chants Democratic, particularly 107–42. 24. In the absence of those external links, one might well question whether the artisan—and aristocratic—order of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries would have promptly evolved into a democratic and capitalist one; see ibid., 23– 103; and Wood, Radicalism, 11–225.

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25. Thus, well into the nineteenth century, the factory hand was a small part of the English work force; see E. P. Thompson, 192–93, 213. 26. My thinking on these subjects owes much to Marx, as well as to the writings of Thompson and Wilentz, Polanyi, and Eric R. Wolf, 73–88, 99–100. The latter was particularly crucial in convincing me that “commercial capitalism” was an oxymoron. 27. Marx argued that, “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed—a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market” (Tucker, 478–79). Thus it is not exploitation per se—which, in one form or another, is as old as human society—but exploitation as a commodity by capital that defines the proletariat. 28. Wiens, “Origins of Modern Chinese Landlordism,” 321–22, provides a brief and lucid discussion of the legal standing of hired laborers in the Ming. Short-term laborers were accorded free legal standing only in 1588. 29. See the works of E. P. Thompson and Sean Wilentz cited herein. 30. On these issues, see Perry, Shanghai on Strike, 15–64; and Honig. 31. Philip C. C. Huang, Peasant Family and Rural Development, 1–20, 44–114. Focusing primarily on Qing developments, Li Bozhong’s Agricultural Development in Jiangnan argues that the productivity of labor increased throughout the period. See also Fan Jinmin, Ming Qing Jiangnan shangye de fazhan, 335–40. 32. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 211–14, conclude that, despite survivals, by the early seventeenth century Suzhou’s labor relations met Marx’s definition for the “starting point of capitalist production” (emphasis added). As Fan emphasizes (231), these never developed into full-blown capitalism. Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 199–201, emphasizes that in late Ming merchants “who exercised control over household textile production did so by extracting their profits from outside the production process.” He concludes that the merging system was “not capitalism in the European sense.” 33. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 251–53, estimate that production of Jiangnan silk increased thirty-fivefold between late Ming and high Qing. Though skeptical of growth remotely approaching that magnitude, Li Bozhong, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 104–7, argues that there was a substantial increase. 34. Ibid., 78–80, 87. 35. Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 15; on the trade with North China, see 25–40. 36. MGWXZ, 63: 12a (Kuang Zhong). As Fan, Xia, and Luo, 75–76, note, Suzhou was then unable to meet the demands: the districts had to collect 2,000-plus ounces of silver to enable eunuchs to purchase the cloth demanded in Songjiang. 37. Mori, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 447, quoting Shi Jian. 38. MGWXZ, 63: 12a–12b. 39. Linqing zhou zhi, cited in Fu Yiling, Mingdai Jiangnan shimin jingji shican, 84.

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On the importance of Linqing, see Terada, “So Shu chiho ni okeru toshi no mengyo sho nin ni tsuite,” 58–59; Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 27, 35; and Wilkinson, 46–53. 40. Terada, “Mindai Soshu heiya no no ka keizai ni tsuite,” 16; Zhu Guozhen (js 1589), Yongzhuang xiaopin, cited in Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (shang),” 281. Although Wu was a native of Wuchang district in northerrn Zhejiang, the passage is quoted in the Kangxi (1661–1722) edition of the Changzhou xian zhi. See also Rawski, Agricultural Change, 202 n. 81. 41. Citations from the Gu Su zhi (1506) and Wu yi zhi (1529) are conveniently marshalled in MGWXZ, 51: 15a. 42. MGWXZ, 51: 15a. 43. Terada, “Mindai Soshu heiya no no ka keizai ni tsuite,” 64–66. 44. Fan Shuzhi, “Shiyi zhi shiqi shiji Jiangnan nongye jingji de fazhan,” 394. 45. P. C. C. Huang, Peasant Family and Rural Development, 11–15, 52–56, 77–92. 46. See the discussion in Terada, “So Shu chiho ni okeru toshi no mengyo sho nin ni tsuite,” 64–66. 47. Shih Chin, 167, argues that, in Ming, virtually all contact between tenants or bondservants and the market was controlled by landlords and masters. I remain skeptical that these exchanges were, or could have been, controlled for so extended a period. 48. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 117–19, 123–24. 49. Ibid., 118, 124–25, 131–33; on “hall chiefs” (tangzhang) in the Yuan, see 75. Though he desires to correct the negative image of Ming eunuchs, Tsai, 186, notes that “textile superintendent was one of those ‘fat cat’ positions that ambitious eunuchs generally coveted and would pursue by underhanded means to secure appointments from the Directorate of Ceremonials.” 50. Santangelo, “Urban Society,” 221. 51. Peng, “Cong Mingdai guanying zhizao de jingying fangshi kan Jiangnan sishiye shengchan de xingzhi,” 322; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 119–23, 128. 52. Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (zhong),” 331, quotes Qianlong Wujiang xian zhi, which states that this development began in the Xuande era (1425–36). 53. Peng, “Cong Mingdai guanying zhizao de jingying fangshi kan Jiangnan sishiye shengchan de xingzhi,” 323–31; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 127–31. 54. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 63, 215–16, 257–58. 55. Peng, “Cong Mingdai guanying zhizao de jingying fangshi kan Jiangnan sishiye shengchan de xingzhi,” 322; Chen Zhiping, 185; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 121. 56. Qianlong Wujiang xian zhi, cited in Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (zhong),” 331. 57. Wang Zhongle, 12–14. 58. Jiang, 5. Note that weaving was far the more lucrative activity. 59. GSZ, 13: 10a. 60. Du Bose, 22. As the discussion in Davin, 118–24, emphasizes, the participation of women in labor outside the household varied greatly from one part of China to another. It was also invariably regarded as less valuable than male work. Such participation did, however, affect their status “since in traditional China, as land ownership conferred power and prestige within the village, productive labor did so

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within the family.” Li Bozhong, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 143–51, has shown that exceptions to sex-linked occupational spheres were common in Ming Jiangnan. He argues that their increasing salience in the Qing was an economically rational response to available economic opportunities. 61. Bray, Technology and Gender, 376; on the adverse status implications for women of loss of standing as direct taxpayers, see ibid., 252–72. Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 201–2, suggests that women’s marginalization was a post-Ming development. 62. In addition to descriptions of Dongting, see the account of silkworm-raising in MGWXZ, 52 shang: 8a–8b, and the lucid analysis of its implications for the agricultural cycle as a whole in Shih Chin, 229–30. 63. K. C. Liu, 5–9; Peng Zeyi’s marshalling of circumstantial evidence is nonetheless impressive: “Cong Mingdai guanying zhizao de jingying fangshi kan Jiangnan sishiye shengchan de xingzhi,” 336–39. 64. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 90–93. 65. Ibid., 249–51; for a translation of Feng Menglong’s fictional description of brokerage in the Suzhou area during the sixteenth century, see J. C. Shih, Chinese Rural Society, 124–25. 66. Han, 82–83. 67. Jiang, 4, citing Ming Qing shehui jingji jiegou (Beijing, 1992). See Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 476–78, for salutary skepticism about all our attempts to estimate historical yields. 68. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 252, estimate that private production was three times that of the imperial workshops. Although most artisanal labor service was converted to compensating payments in cash by the decrees of 1486, 1529, and 1562 (ibid., 210), production for the court remained too sensitive to privatize. 69. In 1450: MGWXZ, 6: 22b. 70. In his work on the seventeenth-century crisis, J. A. Goldstone argues that population played a much more important role in stimulating economic activity than did the importation of New World silver; see Goldstone, 107–10, 115–16. Velocity of circulation increases if additional people become involved in market transactions. The effect would be the same if a fixed number of people became involved in market transactions on a more regular basis. Thus, even if the supply of silver and copper did not change and the population did not grow, monetizing tax payments should have stimulated economic activity. On the role of money in the Ming economy, see also von Glahn’s important recent work, Fountain of Fortune. 71. As Du Zonghuan noted in his report to Zhou Chen, by the 1430s the Su Song taxes “had only the name of a heavy tax; in reality, it is without the substance of taxes levied.” He urged that reducing the quotas and improving transport would provide the state with “the fame of a light tax and yet will have the substance of taxes levied.” Cited in Gu Yanwu, “Su Song erfu tianfu zhi zhong,” 4: 47–49. 72. Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 498, and Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 687–92, stress how crucial this distinction was. 73. Marmé, “Population and Possibility,” 40–41. 74. Ch’oe Pu, 92, 93. Note that the directions given in the passage on page 91 seem impossible to reconcile with the map. The most plausible explanation is that

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Ch’oe Pu, a captive/observer in a strange land, simply became confused about direction in the dark of night. 75. Ch’oe Pu, 93–94. 76. Zelin, 46–51. 77. Wolf, 83–88. 78. Huang Renyu, 505. 79. Han, 162–63; Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 631. According to Zhang Han, the rate of profit in domestic wholesale trade was usually less than 100 percent: Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 207. 80. Li Jiaqiu, 230–34, can now be supplemented by Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun’s Dongting shangbang. Although the latter lacks scholarly apparatus, it is the work of experts in the field. With Xia Weizhong, they have published the fully documented Ming-Qing volume of Suzhou diqu shehui jingji shi, as well as other key works on the area’s late imperial history. 81. Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 103–9; Duan and Zhang, 124; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 211, 214; Yu, 29. Hamashima also cites examples from neighboring prefectures. 82. Li Jiaqiu, 234. 83. On the guarded attitude toward the market and merchants elsewhere, see the writings of Timothy Brook: “Communications and Commerce,” 699–707; “Profit and Righteousness,” 27–44; Confusions of Pleasure. On the conservative audience writers of funerary inscriptions for the Huizhou merchants had to address, see Zurndorfer, Change and Continuity. 84. Zhu Yunming, Zhu shi jilue, 19: 10b. Qin Yunyan’s illustrious ancestor had been cashiered and exiled to Liaodong; his father died when Yunyan was still a child and he was raised by his mother. Zhu Yunming attributes his honorary official rank to his good character—and to his efforts in organizing famine relief. 85. Duan and Zhang, 170; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 249–51; on brokers, see also Liu and Zuo, 187–204. 86. Fan Jinmin, “Ming Qing shiqi huoyue yu Suzhou de waidi shangren,” 39–43. 87. Few of these households were registered in the city. Yang Xunji, Wu yi zhi (1529 edition), 4: 3b, 4b records 4,445 Wu households (12,285 mouths) within the walls; another 1,298 households (with 3,547 mouths) were registered in the suburbs. (Their autumn tax quota averaged 0.056 piculs and 0.072 piculs per household respectively.) No comparable figures survive for Changzhou. 88. The classic study is Fujii Hiroshi. (There is a Chinese translation in Anhui lishi xueba, 2; and Anhui shixue tongxun, 9–10.) See also Fu Yiling, Ming Qing shidai shangren ji shangye ziben, 49–91; the work of H. Zurndorfer; and the concise recent summary by Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 126–29. 89. Chuan and Kraus, 59–60. 90. See Xu Daling, 905 citing the Wanli (1573–1620) edition of Hushuguan xuzhi. The Fu Wu xi lue ji of Huang Xixian, grand coordinator from 1640 (cited in Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (xia),” 368) pushes official awareness of the area’s routine dependence on imports back to the middle of the seventeenth century. 91. See Rawski, Agricultural Change, 52–55.

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92. Although Shiba, Commerce and Society, 67, stresses the importance of Hubei/Hunan area rice in the Song dynasty (960–1276), other studies suggest this was a late development and somewhat ephemeral; see Haeger, “Between North and South,” 469–88. While the Da Ming huidian, 17: 1b, gives an acreage figure for 1393 Hubei/Hunan five times that for Jiangxi, the registered population of Jiangxi was twice that of Hubei/Hunan (ibid., 19: 1b). If population does not strain resources, more people implies greater output in an peasant economy. In any case, the early Ming data for Hubei/Hunan are highly suspect; see the discussion in Perkins et al., 222–31. Perkins concludes that the true figures were 24 million (Hubei/Hunan) and 40 million (Jiangxi) Ming mu respectively. The central Yangzi provinces were an extremely important source of rice by the end of the Ming. In the first years of the dynasty, other areas were clearly able to produce marketable surpluses. See also Perdue. 93. Chuan and Kraus, 67–68. 94. Fu Yiling, Mingdai Jiangnan shimin jingji shican, 93; see also the anecdote in Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 193. 95. Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 40–46. 96. Cartier, “Une nouvelle historiographie chinoise,” 1303–12; Bray, “Le travail féminin dans la Chine impériale,” 802–12; Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 19–46; Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 237–61 (on cloth and grain); Li Bozhong, “Ming Qing Jiangnan shehui shengchan zhong de tie,” 153–57 (on importation of iron and other metals from Fujian, Guangdong, and—occassionally—Huguang, Sichuan, and overseas); Li Bozhong, “Ming Qing shiqi Jiangnan diqu de mucai wenti,” 91–92 (on lumber drawn from Fujian and Sichuan, with silks flowing in the other direction); Lin, Zhongguo Mingdai jingji shi, 184–86 (on imports of Jiangxi grain, the cotton trade between North and South, the export of Huzhou silk to Fujian through Suzhou, and purchases of raw silk from Sichuan); and von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune (on precious metals). See also Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 496–513; and Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 670–99. 97. See, most recently and most forcefully, Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 418 n.2, 498–99. 98. Thus neither Wu Chengming nor Fan Jinmin attempts to gadge the contribution of particular areas to global totals in their pioneering estimates of trade volume: Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 252–54; Cartier, “Une nouvelle historiographie chinoise,” 1303–12. See also Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 497–508. 99. CZWXZ, 7: 7b–8a. 100. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 63. 101. See Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 476–84; and Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Devlopment,” 436–39. Li’s discussion suggests that average yields per mu in Ming Jiangnan were substantially lower than assumed here; and by accepting Shiba Yoshinobu’s estimate of annual grain consumption (3.6 piculs per capita), he necessarily implies a higher level of total consumption. Both Li and Heijdra suggest that we have underestimated the rate of population growth in Ming, particularly (Li argues) in Jiangnan, while overestimating that in Qing. 102. The estimates were derived by weighting the demographic impact of recorded natural disasters, then reconstructing the development of Suzhou’s population between the two points for which we have reasonably plausible data—the late

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fourteenth century and the early nineteenth. For a detailed discussion of the methods used and a defense of the assumptions made, see Appendix A. 103. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 257–59, provide evidence that collapse of sumptuary restrictions on the use of silk was limited to the capital; only in the Jiajing and (especially) the Wanli era did it become a general phenomenon. Whether this simply reflects a Ming convention splitting the dynasty into pre- and post-Zhengde eras—as suggested by Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 139–52—or reflects actual changes is at present unclear. 104. Li Bozhong, “Ming Qing Jiangnan yu waidi jingji lianxi de jiaqiang,” 7. 105. Although the amounts extracted and exported were much greater in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Japanese copper was being mined (and exported) in significant quantity by the late fifteenth century; see Brown, 33–34, 96. Richard von Glahn emphasizes that in the fifteenth century the Japanese brought copper but demanded minted copper cash in return; he notes that the Japanese silver boom dates from the 1530s; see Fountain of Fortune, 83–88 (on counterfeit and debased coin), 91, 114. Han, 205–6, 209–10, 562, shows that in the late fifteenth century the Suzhou area dealt with the liquidity crisis by resorting to debased silver ingots and counterfeit copper cash. As he emphasizes, the latter activity required both capital and daring. 106. MGWXZ, 55: 7b; GXSZFZ, 18: 31b. 107. MGWXZ, 55: 7b. 108. GXSZFZ, 18: 31b. 109. MGWXZ, 55: 8a. 110. Compare TXJGLBS, 4 ce: 47a–48a, and MGWXZ, 43: 12b–13a; 63: 22a; 78: 19a, with passages from the Kangxi (1661–1722) Changzhou xian zhi cited in MGWXZ, 51: 15a; and Liu Shiji, “Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (shang),” 280, 284. 111. MGWXZ, 78: 19a. 112. MGWXZ, 63: 17a. 113. Wang Dajing, 159. 114. MGWXZ, 63: 17b. 115. MGWXZ, 54: 1a–1b; 63: 23b–24b. 116. MGWXZ, 43: 12a–12b. 117. MGWXZ, 43: 2a, 8a, 12b. 118. MGWXZ, 42: 17b–18b; Hong, Ming Qing Suzhou nongcun jingji ziliao, 319, gives 1494, but the local gazetteer dates this massive effort to 1495. 119. MGWXZ, 43: 12b–13a; 63: 18a. 120. MGWXZ, 43: 13a. 121. MGWXZ, 63: 18b. 122. MGWXZ, 63: 19a. 123. MGWXZ, 63: 19a. These may well have been centers of the Wutong cult discussed by von Glahn, “Enchantment of Wealth,” 651–714. Although “licentious temples” may merely have been a derogatory term, descriptions from the early Qing seem lurid enough to have provoked the ire of relatively tolerant members of the elite; see Silas H. L. Wu, 91. Whether similar practices were the issue in mid-Ming is unclear.

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124. MGWXZ, 63: 19a. 125. Hamashima, “City-god Temples,” 11; GSZ, 27: 11b; MGWXZ, 26 shang: 12b, 13b, 16a. Note that, at least in Suzhou, the last two were the result of establishing separate shrines for those previously honored jointly. Thus it was not the first time that these figures had been officially venerated; honoring them in separate shrines can just as plausibly be understood as a way of distancing officials from locals as it can be viewed as a method of drawing the two groups together. See, however, Carlitz, 631–33. 126. For the concept of auto-organization and its expression in late imperial Shanghai, see Brook, “Auto-Organization,” 22–30, 42–45. 127. Carlitz, 634. 128. MGWXZ, 63: 18b. 129. MGWXZ, 63: 18a. 130. The latter’s collected works are listed in MGWXZ, 56 shang: 12b. Of these, only the Xianggong jinshi Pu could not be identified. 131. GSZ, 13: 2a–2b. 132. Suzhou’s reputation as a center of extravagance persisted; see Zhang Han’s analysis of its role in promoting Suzhou’s cultural influence and economic prosperity in late Ming in Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 221.

Chapter 7 1. Beattie; Dennerline, Chia-ting Loyalists; Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen, 7– 10; McDermott, “[Review of] Statesmen and Gentlemen,” 347–48; Heijdra, “SocioEconomic Development,” 552–54. 2. Esherick and Rankin, 10–13, 305–45. 3. Philip C. C. Huang, Peasant Economy, 177–79, develops this model at some length. 4. Most marriages in Ming Suzhou were between individuals from the same or a neighboring district—even when one had to go across half the empire to marry locally. (See the case of Tang Xuan and Ms. Zhu discussed later.) Suzhou’s Ming elite thus continued the localist strategy Hartwell and Hymes have described as emerging in the Southern Song; Hymes, “Marriage, Descent Groups, and the Localist Strategy,” 95–136. 5. Rowe, “Introduction,” 10 (emphasis in original). 6. A dry measure of about five decaliters (dou). The amount donated would be about 400 piculs (41,500 liters); Grove and Daniels, 437. 7. Littrup, Subbureaucratic Government, 55, provides the needed clarification of bureaucratic argot. 8. For members of this patriline, see Jiao, 64: 58a–58b; Li Dongyang, 20: 3a–5a; Wang Ao, 28: 9b–12a (all Qiong); Wen Zhengming, 29: 11a–12a (Yao); Wu Kuan, 65: 1a–2b (Mengshan); Xu Jie, 19: 12b–14b (Jian); MGWXZ, 31: 21b; 40: 16b; 41: 17a; 57: 4b, 6b; 67: 19a–19b. 9. Li Dongyang, 20: 4b. 10. Wen Zhengming, 29: 11a. 11. Ibid., 29: 11b–12a.

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12. The chronology is not clear, but his resignation may have been related to his father’s death. 13. In the son’s biography, but not in the husband’s, the fact that she was the daughter of Lin Fu, a 1466 metropolitan graduate who rose to be vice censor-in-chief (rank 3a), is mentioned; Chen Chun, Chen Baiyang ji [Grave Record and Inscription of Chen Chun by Zhang Huan, 1a]. 14. We know little about Yao’s brothers and even less about most members of the next generation. On Jian (d. 1518) see the “Declaration” by Xu Jie (1503–1583; DMB) in Xu Jie, 19: 12b–14b; Xu was a friend of Jian’s son. One of Qiong’s grandsons, Jin, passed the provincial examination in 1528, ultimately rising to be director in the Ministry of War (rank 5a). Of Jin’s cousin Pang, Li Dongyang simply wrote that “Qiong’s position did not accord with actions like causing things to be made for sale.” (Li Dongyang, 20: 4a). Another cousin,Ying, served as drafter in the Central Drafting Office (rank 7b). If he passed the examinations, the fact is not recorded in the local gazetteer. Like Chun, he may have passed them in another district, or he may have been a student of the Imperial Academy who was appointed directly to office. The latter was an avenue available by purchase and must have been especially common among families from affluent areas like Suzhou; see Lin Liyue; Hagman; and Ho, Ladder of Success, 32–33. 15. Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 107–10. See also Han, 305, on powerful officials using their influence in the Hongzhi era to set family members up in business and to collude with merchants to evade taxes. In the Jiajing reign-period, Suzhou merchants obtained the credentials of scholar-officials to facilitate transport of their goods. 16. The Imperial Bodyguards are more commonly known in English as the Embroidered Uniform Guards. Although this organization had a rather unsavory reputation, it was often used to provide sinecure appointments for court painters and the like in Ming times. 17. The texts give a number of different figures concerning the size of this holding. These presumably reflect different definitions (the graveyard itself versus the graveyard and land let out to provide funds for sacrificial offerings and upkeep) and different dates of composition. Chen Zhu, “Youcheng gong yixun,” in Sucheng Chen shi jiapu, 4a, states that twenty plus mu of mountain land near the apical ancestor’s grave had been acquired during the Xuande era (1426–35). 18. Wu Kuan, 60: 3b. 19. Dardess, A Ming Society, 112–25; Hazelton, 137–69; Ebrey, “Types of Lineages,” 1–20. 20. Yuan Xuan, “Chen shi jiapu xu,” in Sucheng Chen shi jiapu, 2a. 21. In addition to other achievements, two of his grandsons (Han and Bian) had passed the exams; Han never went further than the district level. 22. Wu Kuan, 65: 3a. 23. In the seventeenth century, this was copied into the genealogy. An inquiry had revealed that only two of the five branches could find their copies of the original. See the note appended to “Youcheng gong yixun” by a member of the thirteenth generation (active in the seventeenth century), Chen Mingshu. 24. Chen Zhu, “Youcheng gong yixun,” 4a–5a.

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25. His sons recovered the body and returned it to Suzhou. 26. Her first cousin through her mother, Ms. Xia, was also an investigating censor (rank 7a): Wu Kuan, 68: 10a. 27. Zhu Mu. The betrothal took place before Zun’s death, suggesting either immense good luck, a shrewd eye for talent, or a fairly closed group from which degreeholders were drawn. 28. In addition to the Sucheng Chen shi jiapu, on Zhu see Wu Kuan, 65: 2b–3b; on Zun, ibid., 58: 1a–3b (reprinted in Jiao, 98); on Ms. Zhou, ibid., 68: 9a–10a plus MGWXZ, 40: 14b; 69 shang: 16b. 29. From the form of his, and his son’s, name, Lian was likely a member of the eighth generation. He was not a direct descendant of Yi. 30. Gao was a good ninth-generation name. He may have been the Chen Gao who became a Tribute Student in the Jiajing reign period (1522–66). Since the gazetteer fails to record his courtesy name, one cannot be certain that it was this Chen Gao and not Chen Dian’s grandson. 31. Lian explicitly calculated that there were twelve hundred plants that could be used for firewood growing on the hills and mounds. In addition, there were more than four mu of fields. The income from these sources should have been reserved for maintenance of the graves and provision of sacrificial offerings. Yet, if there were a shortfall, the descendants had to be prepared to supply what was needed if (in Lian’s view) they were not to be considered worse than wild beasts. 32. Chen Lian, “Chunqiu jisaoli xu,” in Sucheng Chen shi jiapu, 6a–7a. 33. None of the names of Meng’s ancestors correspond to those given as the descendants of the other three members of generation six, and only three ascending generations are given. But one of those who signed Chen Zhu’s 1474 counsels bore the name of Meng’s grandfather, and the names given use markers appropriate for the seventh, eighth, and ninth generations. (Meng’s is also a good tenth-generation name.) The text does refer to Yi as Meng’s uncle and to Zun as his first cousin. This may be metaphorical or it may simply reflect the writer’s weak grasp of the broader context. Gu Lin figures in the Wu district gazetteer as a local, and he did write funerary inscriptions for several Suzhou families. But the Gu had moved to Nanjing in the late fourteenth century, and there they remained. Gu Lin’s works are included in a Nanjing collectanea—the Jinling congshu—and many of the “Suzhou natives” for whom he wrote also prove to have been long-term residents of Nanjing. 34. Gu Lin, 5: 19b. 35. See MGWXZ, 33: 17b–18a. There the impetus for the shrine is treated as public and official; Meng’s role is not mentioned. 36. It was biology that ultimately threatened Chen Meng’s success. In his last years, he finally managed to sire a second son (apparently by a concubine). At the time of Meng’s death, his elder son, Ao, still had no children of his own. Ao took responsibility for rearing his baby brother, but the child died young. As of 1544, continuation of Meng’s patriline depended on the survival of a single grandson, then only a few years old. 37. Zhu Yunming, Zhu shi shi wenji, 91–92. 38. Wu Kuan, 63: 16a.

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39. See Dardess, “The Cheng Communal Family,” 7–52, on communal families. 40. Zhu Yunming, Zhu shi jilue, 17: 17b–18a. 41. Ibid., 15: 14a. 42. Min she—its precise nature remains unclear. 43. Wu Kuan, 61: 10a–11a. 44. The other two brothers—of whom nothing is known—were apparently Shan’s offspring by a concubine. 45. Zhu Yunming, Zhu shi shi wenji, 92. 46. Theoretically equal to ten decaliters (dou), in practice the hu was about half that. A modern decaliter is a tenth of a picul, or ten liters. 47. Hsiao, 208–20, gives a full (if jaundiced) account of the drinking ceremony. The sources leave the impression that it was taken much more seriously in the Ming. 48. Zhu Yunming, Zhu shi shi wenji, 92. 49. Zhu Yunming, Zhu shi jilue, 15: 14a–14b. 50. Lu Shidao, 1a; on cross-surname adoptions in law and practice, see Waltner, 48–50, 94–99, 110–16. 51. Yuan Zhi, 17: 32b. 52. Zhu Yunming, Zhu shi jilue, 17: 19b. 53. Yuan Zhi, 17: 33a. Note that Xi’s actions closely parallel those of Wu Kuan’s father, another retired merchant who was one of the innovators in the revival of garden-building in Suzhou, as analyzed by Clunas, Fruitful Sites, 16–19. 54. Zhu Yunming, Zhu shi jilue, 17: 20a. 55. This presumably means “by a concubine rather than by his wife.” 56. Yuan Zhi, 17: 10a. 57. Chen Ji, 15: 11a, 14a; Wu Kuan, 65: 1a, 67: 9b; Zhang Huan, Tomb Record and Inscription appended to Chen Chun, Chen Baiyang ji, 1b; Lu Shidao, 5b, 17a; Chen Lian, “Chunqiu jisaoli xu,” 6a, 6b, in Sucheng Chen shi jiapu; Wen Zhengming, 34: 3b; and Yuan Zhi, 17: 16b. 58. One possible exception to this is the Chen family described in the 1845 Chenshi shi pu. They claim descent from an early Ming official from Xuancheng, Anhui, who was put to death by the victorious Yongle emperor in 1403. After “several” generations, a descendant of his posthumously born son (the others were all slain in 1403) moved to Suzhou. 59. See the kinship tables appended to Chapter 5 of my “From Rout to Hegemony”—only a partial record of those who could (or did) claim descent from the Lu of “four great surnames” fame. Assuming an average generation (the time separating the birth of a father from that of his eldest son) to be twenty-five years and an average of 1.296 sons per father, a single immigrant in A.D. 100 would have 550,000 male descendants in the generation born circa 1400, 7.4 million in the generation born circa 1650. 60. Smith, “Family, Landsmann, and Status-Group Affinity,” 667, has emphasized that “immigrant families, even immigrant elites, were not especially welcomed in the settled regions of China.” One suspects, though, that this was more true of rural than of highly urbanized areas. 61. Sucheng Chen shi jiapu, 1a, shows that Jie (jr 1405), who rose to prefect, was the second son of Luxiang.

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62. See the case of Chen Meng (1470–1529), discussed earlier. 63. See Chen Chong (1469–1542)—member of the family of physicians that produced Lu Shidao’s mother—and his generosity to the widow and orphans of his elder brother: when household division took place, Chong gave them his share. Chen Zuo’s descendant, Liu (1506–75; jinshi 1538), was similarly openhanded. Jiao, 78: 25a– 26b (Chong’s Tomb Record and Inscription by Xu Jin); ibid., 98: 10a–13a (Liu’s Grave Declaration by Mao Kun); Shen Shixing, 26: 8b–12a (Liu’s Tomb Record and Inscription); and Wang Shizhen, 72: 7a–11a (biography of Liu). 64. The tensions among Chen Qiong’s sons appear to have been especially pronounced; see Xu Jie, 19: 12b–14b on Chen Jian (d. 1518). 65. See the earlier discussion of the Tang. Myron Cohen has discussed the advantages (and the relative ease) of maintaining such an undivided household in midtwentieth-century Taiwan; see his “Developmental Process in the Chinese Domestic Group,” 28–36. On the “communal household” in Ming times, see Dardess, “The Cheng Communal Family,” 7–52; and Elvin, “Female Virtue and the State in China,” 121–22, 126. 66. Thus the aid given Chen Ji by his uncle must have been far more substantial than the texts suggest despite the fact that the burial sites of senior and junior lines were separate. 67. When a man approached forty and still had no son, it was apparently time to consider adoption; see Chen Ruyan. 68. See the Hancun branch of Lu, included in both the 1745 Lushi shipu, 10, and in the 1873 Lushi shipu. 69. The case of Tang/Yuan Zeng was not atypical: Wu and Changzhou examination lists for Ming include several cases of reversion to an “original” surname. 70. Thus, in the Tang case, family headship passed to Tang Xi despite the fact that the other adoptive son, Tang (né Yuan) Gui, was biologically fifteen years his senior. 71. See kinship diagrams appended to Marmé, “From Rout to Hegemony,” Chapter 5. 72. The family medical tradition predated uxorilocal marriage, but its fame appears to have begun only after a union that secured access to the medical secrets of Meng Jingyang. The Chen surname was retained throughout. See Yuan Zhi, 17: 15b–17a. 73. See Dennerline, Chia-ting Loyalists, 117–20 and Chapter 4; and Dennerline, “Marriage, Adoption, and Charity,” 170–209. Walton, 35–77, also emphasizes the importance of connections by marriage. 74. Thus Wu Kuan composed ritual texts for the Chen and Zhu Yunming for the Tang. Lu Shidao wrote a number of inscriptions for members of his mother’s family as well; Lu Shidao, 21b–22b, 24a–26a. See also the network on which Ms. Shen drew to obtain an inscription for her in-laws in the next chapter (Chen Daofu). 75. See Lu Shidao, 16b–17a. Chen Ji’s text devoted to his mother, Ms. Wu, strikes a similar note. 76. Thus Chen Yao’s wife, Ms. Lin, was daughter of 1466 jinshi who rose to be vice censor-in-chief (rank 3a)—a fact only mentioned in his son’s inscription. 77. Like dates and places, such minor details were often supplied when the text was engraved.

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78. Eighteen of seventy-five marriages of Chen daughters that were found in the gazetteers and funerary inscriptions for Ming Wu and Changzhou; 0.5 percent is the maximum rate estimated below. 79. Chen Ji’s daughter married the son of Tang Han. Chen Yu’s wife, Ms. Xu, was daughter of a tax captain from another part of Wu district. 80. Among the marriages excluded were those of Chen Daofu’s daughter-in-law, Ms. Shen; Zhu Yunming’s foster mother, Ms. Chen (see Zhu shi jilue, 15: 1a–2b, 14b– 15b; 19: 16b–18a); and Tang Xuan’s wife Ms. Zhu. 81. Perhaps the most vigorous argument against seeing all South and Central China in terms of Freedman’s Type Z lineages has been made by Ebrey; see “Types of Lineages,” 1–20. Hazelton, 137–69, finds only enough corporate property to subsidize ritual expenses and maintenance of graves and ancestral halls; lineage activists drawn from the small number of patrilines that produced degree-holders; and “a social landscape composed of residentially concentrated descent groups” in early Ming Anhui. Strauch, 21, shows that, even in the New Territories, a majority of the population could not claim membership in powerful, cohesive lineages. 82. See Chen Yuanmo (1429–91; 1474 jr): Wu Kuan, 63: 6b–7b. 83. Ms. Wu, Ms. Jin, Ms. Yuan, and Ms. Xu are explicitly said to have been literate. (On the latter and her family, see Wang Ao, 26: 15a–16b; 28: 12a–13b.) Usually the subject does not arise; thus silence cannot be interpreted as evidence that others were not literate. On female literacy in late imperial times, see Handlin; Ko; and Mann, 76–120; on the importance of mothers as educators, see Bray, Technology and Gender, 347–50. 84. See the essays in Goody, Thirsk, and Thompson. 85. See the Statistical Appendix to Chapter 4 of my “From Rout to Hegemony.” 86. De Vries, European Urbanization, 184, reports that studies of seventeenthcentury Geneva show that life expectancy at birth “among the working classes— irrespective of their place of origin—stood at 20.5 years, while that for the ‘middle class’ was 26.0 years, and among the upper class 36.8 years.” The life expectancy of the Ming elite from Wu and Changzhou districts at age forty was 27.9 years, at fifty 19.9 years, and at sixty 12.9 years: Marmé, “Population and Possibility,” 43 (table 3). Comparable figures for all males were 14.64, 10.45, and 6.88 respectively; see Appendix A. 87. A study of 544 potential fathers (drawn from the Hengshan, Wan’an qiao, Daze, Houbu, and Xiaoxia wan branches of the Lu and the Sucheng Chen) are the basis for this assertion. Thirty-four percent of these men had no recorded children. If they were said to have moved, they were excluded from the pool of fathers but were counted as sons. Among those who did have children, there was an average of 1.96 sons per father; 82 of the 359 had three or more. In addition to the genealogies cited above, these numbers are drawn from 1745 Lushi shipu, 13 (Daze fenzhi); 1873 Lushi shipu (Xiaoxia wan branch), and 1870 Sucheng Chen shi jiapu. 88. The numerous, if vague, references to local bullies in the accounts of “famous officials” suggest that, in Wu and Changzhou as in Jiading, the ruthless exploitation of every available opportunity was often the one embraced. On the frequency with which locally prominent families resorted to such practices, see Dennerline, Chiating Loyalists, 89–92.

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89. Thus when Chen Zun (1422–66) was charged with collecting salt taxes, a merchant obtained a copy of the Chen genealogy, hoping to use it to establish a connection with Zun. The upright and outraged official tossed the book into the fire and had the merchant flogged with the light bamboo for his presumption. 90. Wang Ao, 21: 16a–18a, describes efforts by Chen Zuo’s descendants to set up a shrine and augment the ancestral sacrifices.They were inspired by official efforts to honor Zuo. 91. Rowe, “Success Stories,” 52, 79, and 357 n. 94, follows Fu Yiling in emphasizing the crucial importance of the canton (xiang) as an arena of activity. But given the absence of standard markets in Suzhou’s immediate vicinity, the landscape was only organized at levels below and above that. 92. The “common descent group” was the typical form of extended kinship organization in Taihe in the fifteenth century; see Dardess, A Ming Society, 112–24; on the prevalence of such weak forms of kinship organization in other parts of the Lower Yangzi macroregion, see Ebrey, “Types of Lineages,” 1–20; and Hazelton, 137– 69. Beverly Bossler has shown the weakness of formal extended kinship organization in Song Jiangnan; see Bossler, 148–55, 187, 210. 93. Watson, 594; emphasis in the original. 94. This was even true of the most famous of them, the Fan charitable estate; see Twitchett, “Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 124–28. 95. Two of the three charitable estates found in Wu and Changzhou districts during the Ming were established by high officials (Shen Shixing and Chen Renxi); only Shen’s exceeded one thousand mu. Note that high officials gave their blessing— and made contributions—to Chen Renxi’s: MGWXZ, 31: 21b. This appears to confirm one of the key findings of Twitchett (“Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 132): that such institutions survived “largely owing to assistance from outside the clan. In particular, [the Fan charitable estate] survived by official recognition, and by continual support from well-disposed local officials.” As Twitchett goes on to note, this support was in no small measure due to the fame enjoyed by this particular estate. One assumes that others, lacking similar cachet, were more vulnerable. 96. Certainly such troubled circumstances were the impetus for the establishment of more cohesive extended kinship organizations in late Ming Taihe; see Dardess, A Ming Society, 125–34. 97. Guan Zhidao, Congxian weisuyi, 5: 36a–37a, cited by McDermott, “Charting Blank Spaces,” 31. 98. Zhang Huan, Tomb Record and Inscription of Chen Daofu in Chen Chun, Chen Baiyang ji, 2b. 99. This was of course the plight of Chen Ji’s family in the late fourteenth century. 100. MGWXZ, 31: 21b. At two piculs of rice per ounce of silver, this was approximately enough to support one person for a year. 101. See R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 159; and Cartier, “Institutions impériales et situations locales,” 276–81, for examples. 102. Chen Yu reclaimed land from the lake in Wu’s township (du) 7 during in the mid-fifteenth century: Wang Ao, 26: 15a–16b. But in this he was quite exceptional; see Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 107–11.

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103. In addition to Tang Xi and Chen Gang (Lu Can, 2: 9b–11b), see discussion of Tu Yunfeng in Marmé, “Heaven on Earth,” 40–41. 104. Chen Jing, “Jiaxun shuxu,” in Sucheng Chen shi jiapu, 14b. 105. On Chen Kuan, see Qian, 40: 45b–49a. One of Shen Zhou’s earliest surviving paintings, “Towering Mount Lu” (1467), used the landscape of Jiangxi—from which his ancestors had migrated—to paint a metaphorical portrait of his teacher. It is reproduced in Fong and Watt et al., 375 (plate 187). 106. See the case of Chen Gang in Lu Can, 2: 9b–11b. 107. Almost every family studied mentions charitable works. The recipients range from relatives to passersby and tenants. Charity is even invoked as justification for the unequal distribution of the world’s goods (Wen Zhengming on Chen Yao above). 108. Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 103–9; he also cites examples from neighboring prefectures. 109. Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 26, 87; [Wang shi] Taiyuan jiapu (1803 edition), 5. 110. DMB, 262–63; 371–72; 392–97; 591–93; 651–53; 1173–77; 1256–59; 1322–23; 1343– 47; 1471–74; 1487–89; 1513–16. See also Cahill, Parting at the Shore, 57–96, 135–36, 157– 253; Yoshikawa, Five Hundred Years, 121–32; Yoshikawa, “Shin Sekiden,” 562–612; Edwards, Field of Stones; Murck; and Clapp, Painting of T’ang Yin. Note that Belsky, 60, has found that wealth rather than status determined the configuration of social space in Ming Beijing. 111. Li Jiaqiu, 234. On Shi Pan, see MRZJZLSY, 341. 112. Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 34; on the phenomenon generally, see Yu Yingshi, 28–37. Note that Yu’s discussion stresses the role of the “school of mind,”suggesting that Wang Yangming’s 1525 funerary inscription for the Kunshan merchant Fang Lin was a pathbreaking innovation. This may have been true of the empire as a whole. It was demonstrably not the case in the Suzhou area. 113. Both Wu Kuan and a member of the Jixiang li Tang had married daughters of the Chen family discussed in Chapter 5. 114. Brook, “Profit and Righteousness,” 40, argues for such a distinction. 115. In expanding his estates, for example, Mengshan is said to have paid generously for everything he acquired, leading unscrupulous villagers to take advantage of his good nature. In time, however, even they are said to have become too consciencestricken to profit by Mengshan’s honesty and sincerity; Wu Kuan, 65: 1a–2b. Compare Brook, “Profit and Righteousness,” 36–37. 116. Brook, “Profit and Righteousness,” 36. 117. Tu, 59–61, 70–72. 118. In this regard, see in particular the prefaces to Sucheng Chen shi jiapu. 119. Tang Zeng (later Yuan Zeng) is an example of this. 120. Brook, “Profit and Righteousness,” 39; on the unease the expanding reach of the market caused throughout the empire in Ming times, see his Confusions of Pleasure. Handlin Smith, “Social Hierarchy and Merchant Philanthropy,” 420–25, emphasizes that positive evaluations of trade and traders remained rare in China until the end of Ming. 121. For an up-to-date and systematic summary, see Dardess, A Ming Society, 139–69.

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122. Ming huiyao, 47 (870–71). 123. MGWXZ, 10: 6b–11a. 124. See Appendix B “Examination Graduates.” 125. Ho, Ladder of Success, 32–33. In the mid-sixteenth century, 42.6 percent were students by purchase—a disproportionate number presumably from cash-rich areas like Suzhou. 126. The genealogies examined do not refer to X as a former district student, and funerary inscriptions do not say that Y used to hold the first degree. The same was not true elsewhere; see Dardess, A Ming Society, 97, 152, 160. 127. This observation is based on information for individuals bearing the surnames Chen, Fan, Kong, Lu, Tang, Wang, Xu, and Yuan in the list of graduates in the MGWXZ. Collectively, these account for 386 of the 1,539 Ming upper-degreeholders listed for Wu and Changzhou (25.1 percent). 128. Although the family discussed in this text was not a local family in Ming times, the 1825 edition of Pingyuan [Lushi] zongpu, 16, has a particularly systematic roster: one jinshi, two civil and one military juren, three gongsheng, and thirty-seven zhusheng. Others range from infinity (the Wan’an qiao branch of the Lu had three lower-degree-holders, no upper-degree-holders) to 1.5 (the Hengshan branch lists twelve upper-, eighteen lower-degree-holders): 1745 Lushi shipu lists nine and thirteen respectively. The 1934 Weiting zhi, 11, lists thirty-eight upper-degree-holders and seventy-five lower-degree-holders (including eleven Imperial Academy students). The 1930 Xiangcheng xiaozhi, 5, lists nine and thirty-eight respectively. In almost every case (including subdistrict gazetteer lists), lower degree-holders occupied places in more than one district. 129. The Wan’an qiao branch of the Lu is of course an exception. 130. Chang, Chinese Gentry, 137, has an 8:1 ratio. 131. This would accept the Xiangcheng xiaozhi figure as a conservative, but not absurdly conservative, indicator. Fan, Xia, and Luo, 300, note that at the beginning of the seventeenth century there were more than five hundred students in the Changzhou district school. 132. Calculated using the examination lists in the MGWXZ and vital data from entries in MRZJZLSY. 133. Chen Ji obtained a place in the district school at the age of nine, but this was exceptional: Zhang Bangqi, 6: 22b–26a. 134. Population figures for 1368 and 1644 were interpolated using the method described in Appendix A. Given these figures and the sex ratio assumed in making those calculations, the number of adult males at those points can also be readily estimated. The total number of person-years lived was then calculated by finding the area of the figure shown below, where A is the population in 1368, B is the population in 1644, and T is the number of years.

A

B T

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This was then divided by an e0 weighted to reflect the assumed sex ratio and by an e20 for males respectively. This calculation provided the number of individuals at risk in these districts during the Ming. 135. The number of wards (tu) is taken from GSZ, 7: 5a–5b. The calculation is simply [7,695 × 45.7]/1,252 = 280.88. 136. See Mammitzsch. 137. Murck, 445–554; Clapp, Painting of T’ang Yin, 17–24. 138. Yoshikawa, Five Hundred Years, 181, notes that Bai Juyi and Su Shi (Dongpo) were among the poets most despised by the Old Phraseology (guwen) Movement. Yet Xu Zhenqing—the only one of the Seven Early Masters of the Old Phraseology movement from Suzhou—took Bai Juyi as a model (150); Wang Shizhen (DMB) of Taicang, usually considered the most eminent of the Seven Later Masters, also wrote in the style of Bai Juyi (168–69). The same late Tang/Song masters provided perennial themes for Suzhou’s painters in the sixteenth century; see Cahill, Parting at the Shore, 209, 219– 20, 242–43. Thus, when Shen Zhou presented his good friend Wu Kuan with a painting as parting gift in 1479, he invoked Su Dongpo as well as Fan Zhongyan to praise him; Edwards, Field of Stones, 90–91. Wen Zhengming returned repeatedly to Su’s Red Cliff theme and emulated his calligraphic style (Edwards, Art of Wen Chengming, 69, 109, 196–97, 209–12; Clapp, Wen Cheng-ming, 19, 30, 45, 72). Given Zhu Xi’s animus against Su Dongpo—whose moral relativism and aesthetic approach to knowledge Zhu regarded as dangerous (see Egan, 357–60; Gardner, 63–73)—the fact that Suzhou’s leading figures made repeated, positive reference to his work suggests that the area had not fully committed itself to a narrow Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy. 139. Dennerline, Chia-ting Loyalists, 155–56, is a representative summary. 140. Cahill, Parting at the Shore, 4–5, 57–96, 158–59, 163–253. 141. Birdwhistle discusses the work of Li Yong in “Confucian Learning.” Although her study has no direct relationship to Suzhou, I found her willingness to take seriously those who continued but did not seek to reformulate the tradition they inherited—surely the overwhelming majority—stimulating. Many of the cultivated members of Suzhou’s elite appear to have adopted a similar stance. 142. Bol, 12. I have found Bol’s description of these figures extremely helpful in attempting to understand Suzhou culture in the Ming. Kenneth James Hammond has arrived at a similar conclusion by a very different route; see Hammond, 21. 143. Murck, 529. 144. Twitchett, “Fan Clan Charitable Estate,” 100–103, stresses the Buddhist aspects of Fan Zhongyan. Langlois and Sun, 137, note the persistence of Three Teachings Syncretism throughout the Ming in Suzhou. 145. Murck, 491. 146. Compare Murck, 25, with his remarks on 87 and 137, particularly his conclusion that Zhu Yunming—Miyazaki’s key examplar of this spirit—“can be seen as a social critic only in the sense that he upheld with integrity conventional political values.” 147. Murck, 302–3. For a discussion of his criticism of Mencius, see Murck, 331– 67; for his discussion of human nature, see 106–7, 468–91. These attitudes were unusual, but they were not unique. D. T. Roy has recently argued that the Jin Ping Mei should be read as a Xun Zi school critique of late Ming society; see Roy, xvii–xlii.

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148. Cahill, Parting at the Shore, 201–2. 149. Ibid., 90–91. Liscomb, 381–403, provides a complete annotated translation and analysis emphasizing connections to the orthodox Neo-Confucian tradition. 150. See Metzger, Escape from Predicament. 151. Translation from de Bary, 93. 152. DMB, 1488. Although we developed our ideas independently, using very different approaches, the picture of mid-Ming elite culture portrayed here is broadly similar to that described by John Meskill in Gentlemanly Interests. 153. Tu Yunfeng was the only one of his surname to achieve upper-degree status in Wu or Changzhou during the Ming. He must have been well into middle age when he did so. Yuan Zhi’s inscription (16: 19b–21a) is crafted as much to honor the mother, and the values she embodied, as it is to enhance the son’s status. Chen Yuanmo’s son, Yan, passed the jinshi examination in 1496 and served as secretary in a bureau of the Ministry of Justice. Because of this, their case was not as socially marginal; see Wu Kuan, 63: 6b–7b. 154. Dennerline, Chia-ting Loyalists, 69–150. 155. See the case of Chen Run’s son Jian. After his father was exiled to the frontier, Jian was raised in the capital by a family friend; in 1448, the exile’s son became a jinshi; Wu Kuan, 61: 1a–3a. 156. See, for example, the case of Tu Yunfeng discussed in Marmé, “Heaven on Earth,” 40–41. 157. Since our sample is, broadly speaking, representative of the elite as a whole, we can use evidence of the frequency with which lines grappled with adversity as evidence of the condition of Suzhou’s elites as a group. 158. Lu Quan (Lu Weizhen, “Xiankao Fengxuan fujun bi Jin shi shiren muji” in 1745 Lushi shipu) and Tang Liu in retirement continue the circumscribed participation one finds in the early fifteenth century; if asked, they were free to provide information and advice. See Mori, “Minsho Ko nan no kanden ni tsuite,” 326–27. Note that much of the evidence for local self-government in nineteenth-century Hankou refers to such day-to-day issues of management and accommodation—issues unlikely to leave many traces in nonarchival sources; see Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society. 159. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, passim. 160. Elvin, “Market Towns and Waterways,” 452, provides examples of fifteenthand sixteenth-century water control. 161. Tang Han’s role in distributing relief is an obvious exception to this. 162. As Brook has recently underlined, “The emergence of local political power was what the [Ming] imperial state strove to prevent, and it structured the rules of bureaucratic participation accordingly. The rule of avoidance barred officials from holding office in their home regions, and nonofficials were forbidden to meddle in official affairs.” Brook, Praying for Power, 20 (emphasis added).

Chapter 8 1. Recently retired, Wang Ao had been chosen to complete the editing of the Gu Su zhi on Wu Kuan’s death. In office, he had served as minister of rites and grand secretary.

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2. Clapp, Painting of T’ang Yin, 33–37. 3. Cahill, Parting at the Shore, 191–93; the complete series is reproduced and discussed in Siggstedt, “Zhou Chen,” 97–99, 211–22. 4. See Murck, 33, 69, 87, 101–4 on fifteenth-century elite opposition to eunuchs. 5. On Liu, see Yuan Zhi, 17: 10a–11a. 6. Wang Ao, 26: 15a–16b; Zhang Bangqi, 6: 22b–26a. 7. On the structural conflict between inner and outer, at court, in society, and in Chinese culture at large, see Levenson, Confucian China, vol. 2, 25–73. On eunuch competence, see Mammitsch; Tsai; and Grimm, “State and Power,” 27–50. On eunuchs as “the only possible viable alternative to civil service rule” after early Ming, see Dreyer, 244–48. 8. Duan and Zhang, 4–5. 9. Santangelo, “Urban Society,” 102, and n. 121. 10. MGWXZ, 63: 20a–20b. Zhang had an especially bad reputation. “Relying on having bestowed favors on the bold and arrogant, he let his underlings levy miscellaneous corvées, thus cutting and skinning the artisans. Wherever he went, there was nothing that he feared to do.” Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 132. 11. Mou Zhao is quoted in Liu Shiji, “Ming-Qing shidai Jiangnan diqu de zhuanye shizhen (xia),” 372–73; Wang Qi in Xie Guozhen (zhong), 111–12. Ch’oe Pu has been translated by Meskill; see Ch’oe Pu, 93–94. GSZ, 13: 2a–2b. See also the discussion of extravagance in Tsao, chapter 2. 12. MGWXZ, 55: 8a; 63: 19b–21a; GXSZFZ, 18: 32a. Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 139–52, has argued that dividing the Ming into an idyllic pre- and a decadent postZhengde era is primarily a literary convention. The year 1506 was taken as a breaking point here primarily because the deaths of Wu Kuan and Shen Zhou and the publication of the Gu Su zhi all occurred around this time; certainly pre–1506 developments were not uniformly positive. The data do, however, suggest that—at least in Suzhou—the early sixteenth century was a more difficult period than the late fifteenth had been. 13. Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 67. 14. Ibid., 123, quoting Huang Xingzeng, who says that the evils continued until his day. The text refers to the Wu Magistrate Guo; there was was no such person in the first two hundred years of Ming. 15. Ibid., 129–30; Liang then quotes Yu Bian, a resident of Wu in the Jiajing era (1522–66), who analyzes Sang’s remark in the same terms Shen Zhou used. 16. Cai Tailin, 145. 17. Lin, “Mingdai zhonghouqi Jiangnan de tudi jianbing,” 32. These rates were fairly modest (an official of the first through third rank serving in the capital could shield a mere 400 mu), but the principle, once established, could be expanded dramatically: by 1610, the top exemption of 400 mu had risen to 10,000 mu. 18. Liang Fangzhong, Mingdai liangzhang zhidu, 69, 76–80; Liang Fang-chung, “Local Tax Collectors,” 258. 19. On the timing of the process, see Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 110–16. 20. Cai Tailin, 155. 21. Stevens, C4 (see particularly the graph, based on findings of R. S. Bradley and

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P. D. Jones). Compare the discussion in Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 426–27 (which dates the onset of cold winters to 1500); and Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Effort,” 451–54. 22. Expressing one’s opinions in such a fashion was an extraordinary opportunity that even the most distinguished officials could not exercise without invitation. 23. This and the quotations in the following paragraphs are from Wang Ao, 36: 10a–14a. 24. Mori, “Ju roku seiki Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kanden seido no kaikaku,” 75–76. There are constant (if vague) references to the misdeeds of clerks, and to the struggle to control them, in gazetteer accounts of “illustrious officials.” 25. MGWXZ, 63: 21a. 26. Liang Fang-chung, “‘Ten-Parts’ Tax System,” 278. 27. Cai Tailin, 156. 28. MGWXZ, 63: 20b. 29. MGWXZ, 42: 18b–20a; 43: 2a–2b, 8b. According to Hong, Ming Qing Suzhou nongcun jingji ziliao, 320, Cai Gan’s efforts were concentrated within the prefectural city (three sections of urban waterway near the Feng Gate, seven sections near the Pan Gate) and at Xingfu Channel. 30. MGWXZ, 55: 8a–8b. 31. GXSZFZ, 18: 32a–32b; MGWXZ, 55: 8a–8b. 32. MGWXZ, 63: 21a. 33. Fan Jinmin, Jiangnan shangye, 5; Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 676–77; Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 109. The tax itself, originally collected in paper notes, seems to have been converted to silver at a substantial discount—thus, for the central government, the amounts involved were trivial. Yet, in addition to its nuisance value, there is evidence that the amounts actually collected from shopkeepers could be substantial; see R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 236. The benefit was one that all the major centers of Jiangnan shared, not one that aided Suzhou more than it did potential rivals. While it may thus have contributed to the commercial prosperity of the Yangzi delta region as a whole, it did nothing to advance the fortunes of one center over another. Perhaps for that reason Censor Zhu never figured in the roster of Suzhou’s illustrious officials. 34. Stevens, C4; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 426–27; and Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 451–54, seem at odds here: Heijdra sees the 1520s as the onset of a wet and cold period that lasted through the 1560s, Li says the same period was warmer and dryer. Li shows that warm and (relatively) dry conditions are favorable for wet-rice agriculture in the Yangzi delta. Wet and cold conditions are not. 35. Thus Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 507, notes that around 1500 there were major technical improvements in Fuzhou’s silk industry, making its fabrics competitive with those from Suzhou and Shanxi—especially in highly lucrative overseas markets. 36. The key passage is quoted in Xie Guozhen, zhong, 224. He’s writings are one of the major sources Meskill used to reconstruct sixteenth-century Songjiang; see Gentlemanly Interests and Wealth on the Yangtze Delta. 37. I believe, but am not yet able to prove, that if the data on expanding com-

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mercialization and by-employments were arranged chronologically they would show that these phenomena moved from the center (Suzhou city) out and from the core down the hierarchy of central places. 38. Yuan Zhi, 16: 19b–21a; this patriline is briefly discussed in my “Heaven on Earth,” 40–41. See also the experience of Chen Gang (1462–1540+): Lu Can, 2: 9b–11b. On the dangers of travel, see Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 622–23; and (specifically including discussion of dangers in the Suzhou area) Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 177–79. 39. Ideally, one would here introduce price data to clinch this argument; unhappily, such information is not presently available for Ming. 40. Elvin, Pattern of the Chinese Past, 268–84; Zelin, “Structure of the Chinese Economy,” 31–51. 41. This is demonstrated in the recent studies of Li Bozhong; see “Ming Qing Jiangnan gong nongye shengchan zhong de ranliao wenti,” 39–49, and “Ming Qing Jiangnan shehui shengchan zhong di tie,” 153–64. 42. On the importance of foreign trade, see Li Bozhong, “Ming Qing Jiangnan yu waidi jingji lianxi de jiaqiang,” 2–20; on its profitability, see Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 207. 43. Huang Xingzeng, 1: 4a; Dongting merchants were involved in overseas commerce in the Ming: Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 20. 44. Fu Yiling, Ming Qing shidai shangren ji shangye ziben, 58–60; the natural outlets from Huizhou oriented its merchants toward Jiangxi and (especially) Hangzhou. The growing prominence of this group of merchants in the Suzhou area during the sixteenth century seems to have been a result of the improved access the Eastern Dams project afforded them, the growing popularity of leaf tea (a local specialty), their increased prominence in the salt trade (especially at Yangzhou) after the 1492 reforms, and the intensified fiscal pressures on their agricultural base from 1494; see Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 126–27. 45. So Kwan-wai, 4–5, 43; as Brook (Confusions of Pleasure, 119–20) stresses, foreign trade was never actually banned, though it was (in theory) highly regulated. He also (121–23, 147) links tighter enforcement to an early sixteenth-century recession in Southeast Asian trade. This reflected both the arming of the trade in the wake of the Portuguese arrival and the entry of Chinese merchants into that trade out-stripping its rate of expansion. 46. Xie Guozhen, zhong, 99; Fitzpatrick, 8, 14. 47. So Kwan-wai, 132–33. 48. Ibid., 20–21; Chuan and Kraus, 60. 49. Yang Xunji, 1: 9b. 50. Lu Can, 3: 23a (funerary inscription of Wang Ao’s son). On Lu Can, see the discussions in Tsao, chapter 4; and von Glahn, “Enchantment of Wealth,” 682–88. Note that Lu, like Gu Yanwu, bore one of the “four surnames of Wu.” Huang’s family had been registered as a military household in the early Ming. 51. Huang Xingzeng, 1: 5b. See also the similar critique by Yuan Zhi (1502–47; DMB), cited in Han, 290. 52. For a formal model, see Hohenberg and Lees, 113–20, 343–44. Fernand Brau-

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del made the same general point more impressionistically in Perspective of the World, 85–88. This is a model (albeit one firmly rooted in the empirical evidence for earlymodern Europe). We lack the wage and price data needed to demonstrate directly its applicability to Ming Suzhou. The model does, however, allow us to make sense of otherwise apparently contradictory data—falling prices for cotton cloth, rising prices for rice, growing incidence of rural and urban disturbances (including grain riots), and accounts of peasants deserting the land, all coinciding with evidence of everincreasing levels of elite extravagance. See Tong, 155–63, 180–86; Heijdra, “SocioEconomic Development,” 503, 518–19, 566; and Clunas, Superfluous Things. 53. See Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 221, on the role extravagance played in maintaining Suzhou’s cultural influence and economic importance. 54. The number of shengyuan expanded “from about 30,000 [circa 1400] to perhaps as many as 600,000” in 1600; Atwell, “From Education to Politics,” 338. Given 159 prefectures, 234 subprefectures, and 1,144 districts, the latter implies an average of 390 per district or prefectural school. Fan, Xia, and Luo, 300, note that just after 1600 the Changzhou district school enrolled more than five hundred students. Ho, Ladder of Success, 172–78, discusses the relaxation of quota ceilings and requirements—a movement that advanced in the early Jiajing era. On the “sale” of minor office, see Ming shi 78 (1909). 55. Lin, “Mingdai zhong houqi Jiangnan de tudi jianbian,” 32; Heijdra, “SocioEconomic Development,” 562–64. 56. See Appendix B, “Examination Graduates.” 57. Zhifu was his courtesy name (zi); his formal name (ming) is not given. Zhifu was descended from the son adopted in from Zun’s elder brother’s line. 58. The discussion of Chen Zhifu is based on Zhao Yongxian, 19: 9b–12a. Zhao and Zhifu’s son, Chen Ye, were both 1558 juren. 59. Brook, “Profit and Righteousness,” 30–41. 60. Based on the tables in the Sucheng Chen shi jiapu. 61. MGWXZ, 66 shang: 31a. The gazetteer uses the sun radical rather than the fire radical in writing Ye. 62. These and the following quoted passages are from Chen Jing, “Jiaxun shuxu,” Sucheng Chen shi jiapu, 15a. 63. Younger brothers are to obey their elder brothers, concubines are not to be raised to the status of wife—that sort of thing. 64. Noting that the Chen, unlike some other families, do not forbid going into trade, he wrote, “There are worse things than becoming a resident trader in Changsha [Huguang].” Thus his invocation of the famous opening passage of Mencius cannot be interpreted as evidence of opposition to merchants or markets; Chen Jing, “Jiaxun shuxu,” 14b. 65. Yet another graph appears to have been used for Ye—the copy is blurred. A second member of the same family serving in Huguang province (the Jingling public office) in the late sixteenth century is hardly plausible: however it is written, it is the same man. 66. Chen Ye, “Zhongxiu jiapu xu,” Sucheng Chen shi jiapu, 18a–18b.

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67. On marriage with the Xu, see Murck, 65. The early history of the Tang is discussed at length in Chapter 7. 68. The term is borrowed from Dardess, “Cheng Communal Family,” 7–52. 69. Wang Chong, 10: 7b–9a. 70. The discussion of Tang Ru is based on Lu Shidao, 1a–2a. Note that Gui’s adoptive uncle, Wei, had been an Imperial Academy student, a district magistrate, and registrar in the Nanjing Court of the Imperial Clan. Scholar-official status would raise up the family only if family were narrowly defined as patriline. 71. There are several districts of that name; see Cihai, 616. 72. MGWXZ, 66 shang: 22b–23a. Since Zeng appears to have been an only child raised in a nuclear household, it is not clear how he was able to demonstrate that he was fraternal by nature. His filiality is also open to question—at least from the perspective of the Tangs, whose surname he renounced. On the dilemmas crosssurname adoption posed, see Waltner, 94–99, 110–16. 73. The discussion of Tang Chou is based on Zhao Yongxian, 16: 18a–24a. See also GXSZFZ, 61: 40a. In addition to the children discussed below, Chou sired two sons by a concubine; nothing more is known of them. 74. How one reconciles this mention of his brother’s child with the assertion in Xi’s funerary inscription that he was the “only son of the father” is unclear. 75. This is probably the same family from which Rui had been adopted; Yuan was not a common Wu surname. The family was, however, extremely prominent in the early sixteenth century: two of the “four Yuan” receive separate entries in DMB, 1626–29. 76. Apparently Gao Di, in office 1516–20. 77. The text says that he “rejected human existence” (chensu)—a term with Buddhist connotations. It is unclear if this is a reflection of Chen Daofu’s allegiances or of Zhang Huan’s. The funerary inscription the latter composed (in Chen Chun, Zhiming, 1a–4a) is the primary source for Chen Daofu. 78. Presumably Hu Zuanzong, in office 1524–26. 79. Apparently Zheng Chaofu, who served in that post in 1527–28. His term of office may have briefly overlapped with that of Prefect Hu. 80. As yet unidentified; several of those who held the post under the Jiajing emperor (r. 1522–66) were named Chen. 81. Chun served as prefect of Jingzhou, Huguang (rank 4a). He passed the examinations registered as a man of Wujiang district; GXSZFZ, 60: 19a. 82. On the primary importance of the social (rather than biological) aspects of motherhood, see Bray, Technology and Gender, 335–68. 83. The Shens, like the Zhaos and the Zhangs to which the family was related, were also apparently from Kunshan. Note that if one only knew the name of Ms. Shen’s father, it is highly unlikely that the family’s elite background would emerge (see figure). A=B X | | C--------Y===D------Y===X | Y* Ms. Shen’s Ancestors (Partial Reconstruction)

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In the figure, A = Surveillance vice commissioner for the Zhejiang Educational Intendant Circuit (rank 4a); B = Xingbu fujun; C = Assistant transmission commissioner in the Office of Transmission (rank 5a); D = Assistant prefect (rank 6a); X = Male (no known government rank); Y = Female; Y* = Ms. Shen. 84. Note that the dowry fields were hers to do with as she would in her lifetime: Shu zo Shiga, 118. 85. She has an entry in the appropriate section of the local gazetteer; MGWXZ, 72 shang: 4a. 86. Chen Chun, zhiming, 1a–4a; DMB, 179–180; Ming shi, 287 (7364); MGWXZ, 40: 19a; 57: 6b; 72 shang: 4a; 75 xia: 3b–4a. Lu Shidao’s second wife, Ms. Chen, was a descendant of Chen Qiong’s elder brother; see Lu Shidao, 16b–17a. 87. Zhang Huan, “Baiyang xiansheng muzhiming” in Chen Chun, 352. There is a great deal of evidence that, when members of the elite are said to be poor, they are poor relative to elite expectations rather than in real need. 88. Wang Chong died at thirty-nine; hence he (like Xu Zhenqing in the earlier cohort) is not included. While Xu’s family was registered in the military category, Wang’s father was adopted—across surnames and across district boundaries; the social status of the families involved is not specified. The eight who are included are Chen Daofu, Huang Xingzeng, Lu Zhi, Qiu Ying, Wei Liangfu, Xie Shichen, Yuan Qiong, and Zhu Wan. 89. The others are Gui Youguang, Liang Chenyu, Peng Nian, Qian Gu, Sun Lou, Wang Shizhen, Yuan Zhi, and Zhang Fengyi. 90. In addition to the criticism of elite involvement with the market by Huang Xingzeng, Lu Can, and Yuan Zhi—all active in this period—cited earlier, note the willingness of the Iron Bottle Lane Chens to contemplate involvement in trade: “There are worse things than becoming a resident trader in Changsha (Huguang).” Chen Jing, “Jiaxun shuxu,” Sucheng Chen shi jiapu, 14b. 91. Collections fell roughly 10 percent short of quotas—not a critical problem given that 30 percent of each year’s income “was set aside for emergencies”; Liang Fang-chung, “‘Ten-Parts’ Tax System,” 278. On the 1523 debate, see Ming shi, 78 (1897–99), 79 (1925). 92. Cai Tailin, 151. 93. MGWXZ, 63: 22a. 94. Ming shi 203 (5374–75); on the connection between Wang and Gu, see Gui Youguang(also fromKunshan: 1506–71) in TangWenji, “Mingdai Jiangnan zhongfu wenti,” 82. 95. Ming shi 193 (5115–16); MRZJZLSY, 956. 96. GXSZFZ, 18: 32b; MGWXZ, 63: 23a. According to Lu Shiyi, from the Chenghua and Hongzhi reign-periods (1465–1506), when 70 percent had been collected, the practice was to halt the levy and wait for remission of the balance: “Although the quota was more than 2 million piculs, the amount was constantly reduced by 30 percent.” “Su Song fuliang kao,” 19 ce: 3a. 97. Tang Wenji, “Mingdai Jiangnan zhongfu wenti,” 94. 98. MGWXZ, 63: 23a–23b. 99. Fan Shuzhi, “Yitiaobianfa de youlai yu fazhan,” 131. SingleWhip refers to the process (never entirely completed) of converting all taxes in kind and in labor into a single cash payment.

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100. Mori, “Ju roku seiki Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kanden seido no kaikaku,” 76 (quoting Wang Yi). 101. See Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 102, 211–12, for mid-Ming critiques of taxes on commerce. 102. Liang Fang-chung, “‘Ten-Part’ Tax System,” 274; this had first been implemented in Changzhou prefecture in the 1510s to cope with the defects of the equalized labor service; see Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 483–84, 493–94, 563. 103. GXSZFZ, 12: 10b–11a. Here “level rice” refers to the tax quota calculated in kind, the allowance for spills, spoilage, etc. (“wastage”) included. 104. Da Ming huidian, 17: 6b–7a (15,524,997 mu) and 17: 11a (9,295,950 mu). 105. MGWXZ, 63: 23b. 106. Mori, “Ju roku seiki Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kanden seido no kaikaku,” 429–32. 107. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 159–60. 108. Mori, “Ju roku seiki Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kanden seido no kaikaku,” 432. 109. Ibid., 437. 110. Tang Wenji, “Mingdai Jiangnan zhongfu wenti,” 79. 111. This change came at considerable cost to the taxpayer who previously held land assessed at a lower rate. This is a matter of indifference only if one assumes that virtually all low-tax fields were in the hands of wealthy households and that poor households by this time held the high-tax lands. 112. Mori, “Ju roku seiki Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kanden seido no kaikaku,” 76. 113. Ibid., 432–37; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 491–96. 114. As Heijdra emphasizes, since the old categories were retained, calculating taxes remained extremely complex; “Socio-Economic Development,” 495. 115. Of the 425,960 mu in Wu district, 157,383 (36.9 percent) had been rated 0.4 piculs or more; 71,170 (16.7 percent) between 0.3 and 0.4 piculs per mu; the remaining 46.4 percent was assessed less than 0.3 piculs per mu. CZWXZ, 7: 9a–12a. As Twitchett noted in his study of the Fan charitable estate, although it “remained theoretically privileged, [the 1538 reform] led to such a sharp increase in taxation that the funds of the estate were entirely exhausted, and the managers had to pay the excess out of their own resources, nearly ruining their families.” This was partially remedied in 1556; a decisive adjustment came only in 1569; Twitchett, “Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 127. 116. Were it not for the 4.1 percent of Changzhou fields added to the registers, that district’s rate per mu would have been 0.015 piculs higher. 117. Thus 1,125 mu were added to the rolls in Wu district—but 10,800 mu previously registered proved either to be have been submerged or abandoned; CZWXZ, 7: 13b–14a. 118. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 172–73, 187. 119. MGWXZ, 63: 23a–23b (Wang Yi). 120. Ibid., 63: 22b–23a (Wu Shiliang). 121. See the complaints in GSZ, 15: 8b, which notes that “rice is produced throughout the empire—why will only that from Suzhou do?”

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122. Dennerline, “Fiscal Reform and Local Control,” 94–95; and Liang Fangchung, “Local Tax Collectors,” 268, give some of the more egregious examples. 123. This is based on a review of MGWXZ, 63: 15b–26a; sections of the various gazetteers consulted devoted to taxation; and the available secondary literature. 124. Mori,” Ju roku seiki Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kanden seido no kaikaku,” 67–72; it averaged 0.0077 ounces of silver per mu; Tang Wenji, “Mingdai Jiangnan zhongfu wenti,” 83. As Heijdra observers (“Socio-Economic Development,” 492–93, and n. 230), this happened so quickly that the authorities did not assess adequate amounts to hire replacements; as a result, Suzhou landholders had to pay in silver for services they continued to have to perform in person. 125. CZWXZ, 7: 7b–8a. 126. CZWXZ, 8: 39b–40a (summary of the 1619 Yaoli quanshu). This seems to reflect a mid-Ming belief that taxing commerce was counterproductive for state as well as society: Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 102, 211–12. 127. It has been estimated that a typical district spent 2,000 ounces of silver each year merely to defray the expenses of the official transport service: R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 184–85. Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 496, notes that the Single Whip reforms made no attempt to provide relief for those performing the most onerous forms of labor service “because hired replacements were hard to find.” 128. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 144, 180–86. 129. Ibid., 120. 130. Ibid., 48–49, 152, 184–85, 278–79. 131. Dennerline, “Fiscal Reform and Local Control,” 94–95. 132. Or so we have always believed. Dennerline’s work on Jiading suggests that the name of powerful people may have been used without their knowledge or consent and that the ties between local elites and those active on an imperial scale were often tenuous at best: Dennerline, Chia-ting Loyalists. See, however, Heijdra, “SocioEconomic Development,” 494 n. 236, for evidence that “the going rate in Jiangnan [for use of scholar-official tax exemptions] was 0.3 piculs/mu.” 133. GXSZFZ, 18: 32b. 134. MGWXZ, 43: 8b. 135. TXJGLBS, 4 ce: 32b–35a; MGWXZ, 42: 21a–21b; Lu’s efforts continued (primarily in Changshu and Kunshan) the following year—Hong, Suzhou nongcun jingji ziliao, 321. 136. Cai Tailin, 153–54. 137. Hamashima, “Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong,” 118; Cai Tailin, 161. In Hamashima’s view, this differentiates the stipend paid to peasants mobilized for regional or local water control quite sharply from that in earlier times. In Song, this was a form of famine relief; by mid-Ming, it was a wage. 138. Cai Tailin, 153–54, 144–46. 139. MGWXZ, 55: 9a. 140. The most famous examples of the idea that Suzhou men shunned investments in land date from the late Ming: thus Xie Chaozhe’s dates are 1567–1624; Geng Ju was a Wanli juren who served as magistrate of Changshu in the first decade of the seventeenth century. They are quoted in Elvin, Pattern of the Chinese Past, 248; and in

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Fu Yiling, Jiangnan shimin jingji shican, 44, 30. This appears to be a marked contrast with the behavior of Quanzhou’s local elites at a comparable point in the Southern Song; see So Kee Long, “Financial Crisis and Local Economy,” 119–37. 141. Mori, “Min chu yo Ko nan ni okeru zeiryo cho shu seido no kaikaku,” 448. 142. See the translation of “The Scene at Heaven Gate” in Chaves, 214. 143. Ibid., 229.

Epilogue 1. DMB, 372, 375. 2. On Zhu and his attitudes, see Higgins, 30–37; and So Kwan-wai, 50–72. 3. In addition to the relevant portions of the DMB, Higgins, and So Kwan-wai, my understanding of the broader wokou crisis and its background is based on Lo Jung-pang, “Decline,” 149–68; Geiss, 490–505; and Wills, 210–13. 4. MGWXZ, 54: 1a–1b; 63: 23b–24b. At night at least, the pirates were able to draft (sometimes treacherous) locals to serve as guides. 5. Cited in MGWXZ, 53: 1a. 6. Zhu Yunming, Zhu shi shi wenji, 3: 12b; Terada, “So Shu chiho ni okeru toshi no mengyo sho nin ni tsuite,” 53–54, 63; Huang Xingzeng, 1: 5b; Peng, “Cong Mingdai guanying zhizao de jingying fanshi kan Jiangnan sizhiye shengchan de xingzhi,” 529; Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 25–48. 7. The decline in the number of lanes on the east side of the prefectural city, and the retrogression and lawlessness of areas east of the city, are also evidence of this. 8. GXSZFZ, 18: 32b. 9. MGWXZ, 55: 9a. 10. GXSZFZ, 18: 32b; MGWXZ, 63: 24b–25a (Zhou Rudou). 11. MGWXZ, 63: 25a; GXSZFZ, 12: 12a–12b notes that an additional 69,486 ounces of silver were raised to organize and train soldiers: Wu was assessed 4,411.8 ounces, Changzhou 12,885. 12. MGWXZ, 25: 15a. 13. Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, 27; on the Weng, see ibid., 26–29, 37–40, 77, 97–98, 104–5. 14. Cited in MGWXZ, 53: 2a. 15. Skinner, “Chinese Peasants and the Closed Community,” 270–81, describes a cyclical pattern in which village communities regularly open up in times of peace and prosperity and close themselves off in times of crisis. 16. This conclusion is based on the land, yield, population, and consumption data compiled in the Statistical Appendix to Chapter 4 of my “From Rout to Hegemony,” less the estimated urban population. 17. Rowe, “Success Stories,” 79, cites Fu Yiling’s work on the canton (xiang)centered lineages of Ming and Qing. 18. Perdue, 179–80, 182; see also Bernhardt, 35. 19. GSZ, 13: 1a–1b. 20. Mote, “Fourteenth-Century Poet,” 248–53; Murck, 93–94. 21. An example of the poetry is translated in Yoshikawa, Five Hundred Years, 166. 22. Wen Zhengming’s New Year’s poems for 1555 and 1559 have also been trans-

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lated by Chaves; neither poem provides the least inkling that he or his circle was inconvenienced by turmoil in the wider world. Chaves, 230. 23. Zhao Yongxian, 16: 22b–23a. 24. Dennerline, Chia-ting Loyalists; Kuhn. 25. MGWXZ, 63: 34b. 26. Ibid., 63: 23b–24b. 27. Ibid., 63: 25a; So Kwan-wai, 87–88. 28. See Tsao, chapter 4; Santangelo, “Urban Society,” 105–8; Tong, 153–54. 29. MGWXZ, 63: 25b. 30. Fu Yiling, Mingdai Jiangnan shimin jingji shitan, 123. 31. MGWXZ, 55: 9a. On similar popular delusions in a later period, see Philip A. Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 3–29, 73–118. 32. GXSZFZ, 12: 12b 33. MGWXZ, 63: 22b. 34. MGWXZ, 54: 1b–2a. 35. Ibid.; Fu Yiling, Mingdai Jiangnan shimin jingji shitan, 123–24 (citing Ming shilu). 36. MGWXZ, 63: 25b. 37. Ibid., 55: 9a. 38. Ibid., 63: 24b–25a. 39. GXSZFZ, 18: 32b. 40. On Chiping, see J. W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 207–9. 41. Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, uses Zhang Tao’s anticommercial diatribes as the frame for his book. This certainly succeeds in bringing the enduring strength of antimerchant, antimarket strains within the Ming educated elite into sharp focus. Magistrate Cao might well have agreed with Zhang on many points; in my view, that does not necessarily make him an unreliable informant. Social critics often have ideological axes to grind and often use an idealized past to pillory an imperfect present. That does not make the specific ills that they describe figments of their imagination. 42. “Wu xian cheng tu shuo,” preserved in TXJGLBS, ce 5, 11b–12a. 43. MGWXZ, 63: 25b.

Conclusion 1. On the challenges expansion of the market posed, and the imperfect ways those challenges were resolved, see Hymes and Schirokauer, 1; Hymes, “Moral Duty and SelfRegulating Process”; Smith, “Do We Know as Much as We Need to about the Song Economy?”; Smith, “Fear of Gynarchy” (esp. 3–31); von Glahn, “Community and Welfare,” 223–34; von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune (esp. 2–3); von Glahn, “Enchantment of Wealth”; and Endicott-West, “Merchant Associations in Yuan China.” 2. Ge Jianxiong and Cao Shuji (implying a growth rate of 0.5 percent per year); Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 436–39; Jiang, 4 (citing Ming Qing shehui jingji jiegou).

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3. The foremost exponent of this approach is Ray Huang; see Taxation and Governmental Finance. Smith, “State Power and Economic Activism,” 122–25, builds his interpretation of Ming-Qing developments on Huang’s arguments. 4. Dreyer, 129. 5. Hymes, “Marriage, Descent Groups and the Localist Strategy”; Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen; Dardess, “Confucianism, Local Reform, and Centralization.” 6. On auto-organization, see Brook, “Auto-Organization in Chinese Society,” 19–30, 40–45. 7. R. Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 226–44. 8. Smith, Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse. 9. Gernet, 76–91; Hymes, “Moral Duty and Self-Regulating Process,” 297, 301. 10. On the importance of this, see Rowe, “Introduction,” 6: “What factors determine the fortunes of a region’s or a subregion’s economic development? The trigger, according to American economic historian Douglass North, is most often provided by the discovery of an export staple which is able to find a steady, cost-effective, and lucrative extraregional market.” 11. See von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, 73–74 on Yongle in particular, 70–88 on the early Ming in general. 12. This point is forcefully made in Will and Wong, 11–14; see also the discussion in Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 673–75; and Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 101–3. 13. Ch’oe Pu, Ch’oe Pu’s Diary, 93–94; Duan and Zhang, 93; Rawski, Agricultural Change, 66. 14. Shih Chin, 229–30, provides an admirably lucid discussion of the trade-offs between by-employment and a more intensive agriculture. The key argument was that made by Rawski (Agricultural Change, 52–56) more than three decades ago: it was maximum profit, not maximum yields, which determined peasant decisions with regard to the allocation of labor and capital. 15. De Vries, European Urbanization, 253–66. 16. Ibid., 240. 17. See in particular Delumeau, Rome au XVIe siècle; and Perrot, Genèse d’une ville moderne. Although important differences remain, they are more subtle—and more interesting—than those that separate an ideal-typical chartered city of the European Middle Ages from the cities of late imperial China. We should also note that specialists in European history have found that the generalizations of Weber and Pirenne require drastic modification as descriptions of urban phenomena in the medieval West. 18. De Vries, European Urbanization, 1500–1800, 254. 19. Stone, 46. See also Ogilvie and Cerman; and O’Brien and Quinault. 20. Medick, “Proto-Industrial Family Economy,” 298–301. 21. A paraphrase of GSZ, 13: 6b. On proto-industrialism in late imperial China and early-modern Europe, see Wong, China Transformed, 33–52. 22. Cartier, “L’exploitation agricole chinoise,” 382–83. As McDermott points out, by mid-Ming the prudent landlord used bondservants to cultivate a quarter of the estate. The balance was let to tenants; McDermott, “Charting Blank Spaces,” 28. 23. Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance, 160–61.

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24. The passage—by Geng Ju, who flourished circa 1600—is translated by Elvin, Pattern of the Chinese Past, 248. This is a decisive difference between seventeenthcentury Suzhou and thirteenth-century Quanzhou: in the latter case, mercantile fortunes were apparently reinvested in land; see So Kee Long. 25. Harrell, 81–109. 26. See the discussion of Lu Ji (of Songjiang: 1515–52) in Clunas, Superfluous Things, 148; in Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 152; in Tsao, chapter 2; and in Yang Lien-sheng, 36–52. 27. Liu Zhiqin, 73, 84–85, contrasts the vigorous commercialization of the late Ming with the sluggish development of productive forces and notes that even those (like Huang Zongxi: ECCP) who defended merchants only defended those who dealt in necessities of daily life. 28. This emerges most explicitly in the Chens of Suzhou city. There are however traces of it in other patrilines. In this nonaristocratic society, the need for intersubjective confirmation of elite status by other members of the elite limited the scope for eccentricity in such matters. On the tensions involved, see Brook, “Profit and Righteousness,” 30–41; Brook, “Communications and Commerce,” 699–707; and Brook, Confusions of Pleasure. 29. Tu, 70–72. 30. Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 435–39. 31. On the lack of ideological resources, see Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 152. 32. DMB, 139. 33. Watt, “Yamen and Urban Administration,” 356. 34. See Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society, 177–210; Metzger, “State and Commerce in Imperial China,” 23–46; and Hsi. 35. Ray Huang in particular has underlined the limits of Zhang’s accomplishments; see Taxation and Governmental Finance, 294–301. 36. Ibid., 110–11; Liang Fang-chung, “Local Tax Collectors,” 258. 37. Mori, “Ju roku seiki Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kanden seido no kaikaku,” 71. 38. Liang Fang-chung, Single Whip Method, 12–13. 39. Wiens, “Changes in the Fiscal and Rural Control Systems,” 60–66; Dennerline, “Fiscal Reform and Local Control,” 95–96; MGWXZ, 63: 23b (Ouyang Duo). 40. Liang Fang-chung, “‘Ten-Parts’ Tax System,” 272. 41. Ibid., 275; Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 484, 493–94. 42. Cai Tailin, 156–58, 160. 43. On Hai Rui, see MGWXZ 63: 26b; R. Huang, 1587, 130–55. 44. Fan Shuzhi, “Yitiao bianfa de youlai yu fazhan,” 135, 140–41. 45. See Ray Huang, “Lung-ch’ing and Wan-li reigns,” 559–62; Atwell, “International Bullion Flows,” 68–90; von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune. As von Glahn notes, welcome as this increase in liquidity may have been overall, the unstable silver/copper ratio and the erratic policies that followed fostered a continuing sense of insecurity; see “The Enchantment of Wealth,” 712–13. 46. Liu Yung-ch’eng, 124–27. 47. Marmé, “Shanghai,” 14–15, shows a sharp increase in temple-building and repair in Wu during the Wanli era. Such activity peaked in the Chongzhen era. It continued strongly in the first decades of Qing but declined sharply under Kangxi.

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48. MGWXZ, 31:11a–26a, lists charitable estates in this area. Only one (the Fan) dated back to Song times; only three were Ming foundations. As Denis Twitchett has demonstrated, even the first and most famous of these barely survived the Ming; its revival dates to the 1620s and 1630s. Twitchett, “Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 124– 28. 49. MGWXZ, 31: 21b. The classics mat ceremony was the (stylized) forum in which the emperor read through the Five Classics and Four Books under the guidance of scholars of high repute. Chen’s was one of the smallest recorded in the gazetteer: all but three of the sixty-one listed had endowments of 500 mu or more (often much more). Office may well have been the best means of acquiring the necessary funds quickly. Support of high officials was obviously useful in creating and maintaining such an estate. 50. While emphasizing that they did not lead to permanent organizations, von Glahn has stressed that urban plebeians’ ability to form “alliances, clubs, and gangs” around issues of the moment made the “urban crowd itself . . . a powerful vehicle of plebeian dissent.” In this regard, he suggests, the weakness of communal ties may have actually facilitated the role of such ad hoc organization in “forging new social identities.” See “Urban Social Conflict,” 302. 51. Tsao, chapter 4; Tong, 153–63; Santangelo, “Urban Society,” 101–8; Fu Yiling, Mingdai Jiangnan, 105–6. Although von Glahn, “Enchantment of Wealth,” 678–80, emphasizes the domestic aspects of the Wutong cult in Ming Suzhou, the Wufang are almost certainly another permutation of the diabolic trickster god of wealth analyzed there. The link to criminal elements is entirely consistent with von Glahn’s analysis of late Ming attitudes to the market. 52. On the expansion of bondservant networks in this areas after 1570, I follow McDermott, “Bondservants in the T’ai-hu Basin,” 675–701; on shanren (which I see as an analogous phenomenon), see Tsao, chapter 1. She defines the term as “a social category, referring to those literati who, without any higher degrees, possessed an above-average writing skill, which they used as an asset to win recognition and often material support from the more powerful.” 53. See Brucker, 97–101, for a discussion of the important role such networks played (particularly after 1382) in Tuscany. Plague, revolt, economic dislocation, and the weakening of corporate institutions had made individual connections with the powerful especially important. 54. Moreover, as McDermott stresses, the difference between bond servitude and employment was not a clear one, even after the 1587 decision eliminated the formal stigma previously associated with hired work for short terms as well as long ones; McDermott, “Bondservants in the T’ai-hu Basin,” 279, 282. There is no reason to assume that, since hired work had long been common in the Suzhou area, Suzhou employers were less likely to regard their employees as social inferiors than were employers in areas less accustomed to hiring by the day, week, month, or year. 55. See in particular von Glahn, “Enchantment of Wealth”; and the work of Timothy Brook: “Profit and Righteousness” and Confusions of Pleasure. 56. Han, 415–39; Tong, 157–62, 185–86; Yuan Tsing, “Urban Riots and Disturbances,” 287–90, 292–96, 311–13; Santangelo, “Urban Society,” 101–8; Wiens, “Origins,” 335.

Notes to Conclusion

323

57. On the highly disruptive nature of the Ming/Qing transition, see Wakeman, Great Enterprise (whose overall force endures even though von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, 207–45, has shown that the “monetary crisis” thesis will not stand up under scrutiny); on epidemics, see Dunstan; on the rise of northern cotton spinning (and its limits), see Bray, Technology and Gender, 216–22. For the reality and severity of the socioeconomic crisis more generally, see Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 162–63, 167, 174–78, 192–93; and Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 503, 518–19, 566. 58. Dennerline, “Fiscal Reform and Local Control.” 59. Brokaw; Chow; Ko. 60. Marmé, “Shanghai,” 15–18; Bernhardt, 124. 61. A concept borrowed from Frolic. Heijdra, “Socio-Economic Development,” 478, concludes that the “Qing socio-economic structure thus does not represent a break with the Ming structure; it is the continuation of it.” Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, 252–253, 260, concurs. While broadly in agreement with this, I would emphasize the degree to which the Qing represented the continuation of certain strains in late Ming and the repression (or reconfiguration) of others. 62. Braudel, Perspective, 86. 63. Skinner, “Sichuan’s Population in the Nineteenth Century,” 75, concludes that China’s total population in 1850 was approximately 380 million. Assuming that China’s population was static from 1600 to 1690, this would imply a growth rate of 0.386 percent between 1690 and 1850. 64. Duan and Zhang, 114 n. 1. 65. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 253, estimate that the production of Jiangnan silk cloth in high Qing was thirty-five times that of the late Ming. Li Bozhong, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 104–7, sees a more modest, but still substantial, increase. 66. Ho, Ladder of Success, 246–247; it was more successful in terms of rankings of prefectures, not in terms of the number of successful candidates. 67. See the comparison of population and of rates of guild construction and repair in Suzhou and Shanghai in Marmé, “Shanghai,” 11–13, 15–17. 68. Thus, Qing Suzhou was headquarters of a provincial governor, provincial treasurer, provincial judge, education commissioner, salt controller, Suzhou grain circuit intendant, prefect, and three district magistrates; see Leung Yuen-sang, The Shanghai Taotai: Linkage Man in a Changing Society, 1843–1890 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), 12. 69. Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, 231. 70. Thus, in her eagerness to establish the importance of Shanghai’s role in trade with the West even before its opening as a treaty port, Johnson (175) calculates that “annual export of cotton cloth . . . was probably [close] to 28 percent of southernroute exports.” In addition to ignoring the fact that many of the nankeens exported were produced in Suzhou and Taicang, Johnson’s calculations assume that a ton weighs 1,000, not 2,000, pounds—then misplaces the decimal point. Using Johnson’s assumptions but correcting her arithmetic, I calculate that Shanghai’s export of cottons to the West falls to 0.7 percent by weight and 1.4 percent by value of a trade that accounted for only a quarter of Shanghai’s coastal trade. The Yongzheng period apart, it was only during the first half of the Daoguang era—when the Grand Canal crisis diverted tax grain shipments to the coastal route—that investment in the

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building and repair of guilds at Shanghai surpassed that at Suzhou (Marmé, “Shanghai,” 16–17). In terms of relative population, Shanghai was smaller relative to Suzhou in the early nineteenth century than it had been in the late fourteenth (ibid., 11–13). On the importance of Shanghai’s regional links until the mid-nineteenth century, see also Hanchao Lu, “Arrested Development: Cotton and Cotton Markets in Shanghai, 1350–1843,” Modern China 18 (1992): 468–99. 71. Nor was it uniquely Chinese: compare the “small commodity production” system analyzed in DuPlessis and Howell, 49–84, and the discussion of merchant status in monarchical and republican society (on both sides of the Atlantic) during the eighteenth century in Wood. The social distinctions Wood describes seem strikingly similar to those usually attributed to late imperial Chinese. 72. Elvin, Pattern of the Chinese Past, 298–315. 73. See the estimates of per capita income developed by Paul Bairoch and cited by Braudel, Perspective of the World, 534.

Appendix A 1. Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 3–9, 23, 49–50; Cartier, “La croissance démographique chinoise de XVIIIe siècle,” 9–23. 2. GXSZFZ, 13: 3b–4a. 3. Household size rose from 4.11 in 1371 and 4.26 in 1376 to 4.79 in 1391: calculated from the figures in GXSZFZ, 13: 3a–4a. The average for this area a century earlier was 5.22; that for the capital region as a whole in the late fourteenth century was 5.62; see Liang Fangzhong, Zhongguo lidai hukou, tiandi, tianfu tongji, 181 (table 49: Pingjiang lu); Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 10 (table 3). On the emperor’s direct intervention, see Dreyer, 128. 4. Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 43, 44, 53; Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society, 215, 235–37; Rowe, Hankow: Conflict and Community, 297–300. 5. Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 12 (table 4); Aird, “Population Growth,” 268–269. 6. Household size based on the exceptionally precise, township (du) by township figures for the Lake Tai region of Wu (East and West Dongting) in Ju qu zhi, 6. 7. Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 15–16. According to the GSZ, 25: 1a–1b, four battalions (qianhu suo) were stationed at Suzhou. Subtracting the number of these households registered in Changzhou in the late sixteenth century—as given in WLCZXZ, 7: 1a–2b—from the statutory total (4,480) gives us the number in Wu. 8. MGWXZ, 54: 1a–4a; 55: 6b–15b, 19a–20a, 20b–21b; GXSZF, 18: 29b–32b. 9. On these years, see Dunstan, 11–17. A general crisis would reduce the number of potential replacements and create an unusually large number of alternate possibilities elsewhere. Given the tax rates and population densities of Suzhou, such alternatives might well seem preferable in these periods. 10. Li Bozhong, “Kongzhi zengzhang, yi bao fuyu,” 25–71. 11. For explanation of the methods employed, see my “Population and Possibility in Ming Suzhou,” 33–34, 44–45. More pessimistic assumptions about the underlying mortality rate (level 5 versus level 7) have been incorporated in the calculations used here.

Notes to Appendix A

325

12. For a population not practicing contraception, level 7 would imply too many children, level 3 too few. 13. These calculations are based on Goody, appendix 2: “Probability of Family Distributions.” 14. Smil, 5–6. 15. Calculated from ibid., table 2. Buck, Chinese Farm Economy, 360 (table 10.2) gives 3,488 calories per kilogram of nonglutinous rice. 16. Buck, Chinese Farm Economy, 386 (table 11.3); Smil, 3–4. 17. Smil, table 1. 18. Perkins et al., 314 (table G.1). 19. C. K. Yang, Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition, 56, uses this figure. Fei Hsiao-t’ung—in his classic study of Kaixian’gong, Wujiang—states that only 40 percent of income was used for food (125). If so, the village was surely an exceptional one. Note that Li Bozhong, following Shiba Yoshinobu, uses 3.6 piculs per annum as the best estimate for grain consumption (“Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 480). Given C. K. Yang’s budget, total annual expenditure per capita would rise to 5.14 piculs. 20. Those for 1503: see MGWXZ, 45: 1a–2b; 46: 1a–3b; 47: 1a–3a; Bureau of Foreign Trade, 6, 20, 23; Buck, Land Utilization in China. Statistics, 24. Comparison of Ming, Qing, and Republican data shows that unregistered arable was a relatively minor problem. The sources suggest that significant proportions of this land were less than optimal. WLCZXZ, 2: 2b–3b, indicates that 7.5 percentof the land registered in 1566 was classified as pond, another 1.4 percent as wheat land; figures for Wu in 1479, 1589, and 1619 indicate that 28 percent of the registered arable was “mountain and marsh” (CZWXZ, 7: 7b–8a; 8: 1a–3a, 39b–40a). Those for 1538—cited in ibid., 7: 9a– 12a, and analyzed by Mori Masao in “Ju roku seiki Taiko shu hen chitai ni okeru kanden seido no kaikaku,” 429–31—imply an even higher percentage of marginal land. 21. This estimate is based on analysis of “actual rents” collected from the 2.6 percent of Wu’s arable registered as public fields in the 1540s: see CZWXZ, 9: 3a–9a. Mean rent—presumably collected, like other rents, in unhusked rice—was 1.16 piculs per mu. Doubling these figures to obtain yields of the principal crop, the data clustered in the 2.31–2.40 piculs per mu range (11 below, 13 above, with 12 in the modal category; 22 of the 36 fall between 2.21 and 2.50). Although we need to make allowance for the spring harvest retained by the tenant (here estimated at 1 picul of winter wheat per mu), these results presumably reflect good fields in average years. Since natural disasters were frequent (in some decades, they occurred in one year out of two) and many fields were less than ideal, an estimate of 2.25 piculs of husked rice per mu is probably overly optimistic. Li Bozhong, “Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts,” 481, estimates average rice yields in the early seventeenth century of 1.63 piculs per mu; these rise to 2.3 piculs per mu in the early nineteenth century. As he shows, in the early Ming, much of this land was too wet to support any crops, much less a secondary crop of winter wheat. 22. Liang Gengyao, “‘Zhongguo lishi shang de chengshi renkou’ duhou,” 136; Liang Gengyao, “Song Yuan shidai de Suzhou,” 232, 299–300, 323. 23. Yang Xunji, Wu yi zhi (1529 edition), 4: 3b, 4b.

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24. Zhao and Chen, “Zhongguo lishi shang de chengshi renkou,” 125. They do not specify the edition of prefectural gazetteer used. 25. Ibid., 126; Mote, “Millennium of Chinese Urban History,” 39; Skinner, “Introduction: Urban Development,” 29. 26. On hundreds (li) in Wu and Changzhou from 1368, see GSZ, 27: 2a, a passage analyzed in Marmé, “Population and Possibility in Ming Suzhou,” 37–38. For early Ming hundreds as 100-household units (rather than the later standard of 110), see Littrup, “Yellow Registers,” 73. Evidence for such hundreds and associated “small yellow registers” comes from Huzhou prefecture—which borders Suzhou on the southwest—in 1370. 27. Liang Gengyao estimates that there may have been 100,000 of these in the late Yuan; I would suggest that 25,000 in early Ming would not be an unreasonable minimum estimate. 28. WLCZXZ, 12: 7b. 29. Song Ying-sing, Tien-kung-kai-wu [Tiangong kaiwu], 8. 30. Fan Shuzhi, Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei, 502, 508.

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