Gourmets in the Land of Famine: The Culture and Politics of Rice in Modern Canton 9780804781763

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gourmets in the land of famine

Gourmets in the Land of Famine the culture and politics of rice in modern canton

Seung-joon Lee

stanford university press stanford, california

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2011 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lee, Seung-joon, 1970Gourmets in the land of famine : the culture and politics of rice in modern Canton / Seung-joon Lee. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047-7226-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Rice trade—China—Guangzhou—History—20th century. 2. Rice trade— Government policy—China—Guangzhou—History—20th century. 3. Rice— Quality—China—Guangzhou—History—20th century. 4. Food supply— China—Guangzhou—History—20th century. I. Title. HD9066.C573G835 2011 338.1'73180951275—dc22 2010024485 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10.5 ⁄12 Sabon

To my parents: Jong-yeon Lee Ok Yul Kim

Contents

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables

ix

Author’s Note

xi

Acknowledgments Introduction

xiii 1

Part One  Feeding the City of Gourmets 1. South of the Mountains: The Political Economy of the Pearl River Delta

21

2. The Organization of Rice Supplies in Canton: The Formation of the Cantonese Provisioning Networks for Consumer Satisfaction

38

3. Strengthening the Canton–Hong Kong Ties: Rice Relief and the Development of the Transnational Rice Business

63

4. Politicizing the Enterprise: The Nationalist Revolution and the Cantonese Rice Business

86

Part Two  Saving the Nation from Famine 5. Taste in Numbers: Science and the Chinese Food Problem

113

6. Taxes and Strikes: The Foreign-Rice Tax and Its Social Repercussions

136

7. Inventing “National Rice”: The National Goods Movement and the Issue of Rice Quality

154

8. Granary of the Empire, Laboratory of the Nation: The Canton-Hankow Railway and the Hunan Rice Sales Project in Canton

175

9. Provincial Politics and National Rice: The Canton Famine of 1936–1937 and the South China Rice Trading Corporation

196

Conclusion

215

viii

Contents

Notes

221

Select Glossary

255

Bibliography

267

Index

291

Maps, Figures, and Tables

Maps Map 1. China and Southeast Asia

xvi

Map 2. Guangdong, Hunan, and the Canton-Hankow Railway

xvii

Map 3. Rice trade routes in China

40

Figures Figure 1. Commercial advertisement for “Silk Sprout Rice”

60

Figure 2. Commercial advertisement for “Silk Sprout Rice”

61

Figure 3. “Economic Break Off with the British,” a propaganda cartoon

103

Figure 4. China’s foreign-rice imports, 1912–1933 (amounts)

117

Figure 5. China’s foreign-rice imports, 1912–1933 (value)

118

Figure 6. Guangdong’s foreign-rice imports in proportion to China’s net foreign-rice imports

118

Tables Table 1. Value of foreign trade in Guangdong province, 1927–1937

42

Table 2. Foreign and domestic rice imports in Canton, Guangdong, and nationwide

46

Author’s Note

Romanization In this book, I use several different systems of romanization. Although I use the pinyin system for most Chinese personal and place names, I have consistently kept the spelling Canton (rather than Guangzhou), because this name is well known and firmly established. A few figures and place names, such as Chiang Kai-shek (rather than Jiang Jieshi), T. V. Soong (rather than Song Ziwen), and Hankow (Hankou) are treated the same way. When names in Cantonese (or in another southern dialect) appeared in English documents but the Chinese characters cannot be determined, I have retained the original spelling. Conversion of Chinese Measurements Chinese Units

U.S. Equivalent

Metric Equivalent

1 li

1821.15 feet

3.581 meters

1 mu

0.16 acres

0.064 hectares

1 qing

16.16 acres

6.539 hectares

1 liang (tale)

1.327 ounces

37.62 grams

1 jin

1.33 pounds

603.277 grams

1 dan (picul)

133.33 pounds

60.47 kilograms

1 shi

160 pounds

72.574 kilograms

1 sheng

1.87 pints

1.031 liters

1 dou

2.34 gallons

10.31 liters

source: Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

Acknowledgments

Had I not had great teachers, colleagues, and friends on the both sides of the Pacific, I could not have finished this book. To be sure, I had the good fortune to work closely with many excellent teachers during my graduate years at Berkeley. My foremost gratitude goes to the late Frederic Wakeman, whose warm encouragement and indefatigable listening inspired me to develop a simple story about rice into this book. His wholehearted guidance and unforgettable sense of humor, which went far beyond the role of dissertation advisor, still remain with me vividly as a source of answers to the many questions that a junior scholar often faces—first of which is how to be a good scholar and, at the same time, a good teacher. I would also like to thank Wen-hsin Yeh for her remarkable support. With her thoughtful help, in particular her consistent emphasis on elaborating one’s own insights, even a student whose research interests were somewhat distant from her own was able to develop both a conceptual framework and empirical depth. In many different ways, Peter Zinoman, Yuri Slezkine, James Vernon, David Johnson, David Keightley, Andrew Barshay, and Liu Xin all helped me shape the basic ideas for this book. I hope their intellectual touches will be detected here and there in this work. However, any mistakes are of course my own. I owe great intellectual debt to my mentor at Korea University, the late professor Shin Seung-ha. From his survey course of Asian history to honors thesis to master’s thesis, he opened the door for me to the new scholarly world of modern Chinese history. Many senior and junior colleagues (sŏnbae; hubae) in the Department of Asian History there never lost their willingness to provide me with support and encouragement even after I left Seoul. At the National University of Singapore, my colleagues in the Department of History and the interdisciplinary reading group between History and Chinese Studies have been a model of collegiality. Many graduate students and honors students at the NUS have provided me with fresh and invaluable ideas. I also thank my former colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, who warmly transformed me from a clueless ABD to a faculty member. In Canton (Guangzhou), I benefited enormously from the help of Huang Xunba when I started archival research for this book. At Zhongshan University, Chen Chunsheng, Liu Zhiwei, Zhou Xiang, and Cheng Mibo kindly introduced me to new

xiv

Acknowledgments

kinds of material and helped my research in many different ways that cannot be enumerated here. A number of chapters have been presented at conferences, workshops, and talks. I would like to extend my appreciation to all participants and audience. Carol Benedict, James Carter, Chua Ailin, John Danis, Hamashita Takeshi, Huang Jianli, Grace Mak, Micah Muscolino, Seth Misel, Shakhar Rhav, R. Keith Schoppa, James C. Scott, Ling Shao, Nicolai Volland, Zuoyue Wang, Andrew Whareham, Xu Lanjun, Xue Liqing, Yan Wei, and Yung Sai-sing read my chapters thoroughly and provided incalculable suggestions. I owe special thanks to Richard Kim, who provided me with both insightful ideas and careful proofreading. Conversations with Tim Barnard, Emily Hill, John DiMoia, Thomas Dubois, Seunghyun Han, Seonmin Kim, Tae-ho Kim, and Yang Bin were tremendously helpful. I would also like to thank Lee Li Kheng of the Department of Geography at the NUS for drafting the fine maps. I hold a great debt to many librarians and archivists in the following libraries and archives: East Asian Library at Berkeley, East Asian Library and the Hoover Institute Archives in Stanford University, Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the History Department and Central Library at Zhongshan University, Guangzhou Zhongshan Library, Shanghai Municipal Library, Fung Ping Shan Chinese Library at the University of Hong Kong, Chinese Library and Central Library at the NUS, and Guangdong Provincial and Guangzhou Municipal Archives. Over the years, my research has been enormously helped by generous financial support. At UC Berkeley, the Department of History, the Center for Chinese Studies, the Institute of East Asian Studies, the Graduate Division, and the Institute of International Studies provided financial assistance. A Bernadotte Schmitt Grant provided by the American Historical Association was helpful in the early period of making the transition from dissertation to book manuscript. A faculty research grant provided by the History Department at UW Whitewater helped my further field research in China. Last but not least, support from Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the NUS was crucial in finishing the manuscript. At Stanford University Press, my editors, Stacy Wagner and Jessica Walsh as well as the members of publishing team, polished my coarse writing and produced a fine book. I would also like to thank Sally Serafim for her meticulous copyediting. Perhaps they know the secret of the Cantonese skill of rice milling. Two anonymous readers’ comments and suggestions enormously helped my final draft. Parts of Chapter 5 were previously published as “Taste in Numbers: Science and the Food Problem in Republican Guangzhou, 1927–1937” in Twentieth-Century China 35, no. 2 (April 2010). I

Acknowledgments

xv

would like to take this opportunity to thank the editor, James Carter, the editorial board of the journal, and the Ohio State University Press. Few can deny that academic writing is a complicated mixture of bliss and agony. My wife, Jiwon Han, has shared much more of the grief than she deserves yet she has partaken too little in the enjoyment as an academic writer’s spouse. Thanks and love, for her patient understanding over the years, from life in historic Berkeley student housing, to our “coldest winter” in Wisconsin, to tropical Singapore. I would also like to thank Kenneth and Jayden for their generous understanding and for forgiving their selfish father, who often sacrificed their bedtime reading—even bringing instead his own materials to write, rewrite, and revise for this book. Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to my parents, Jong-yeon Lee and Ok Yul Kim, for their tireless encouragement throughout my life.

map 1.  China and Southeast Asia.

map 2.  Guangdong, Hunan, and the Canton-Hankow Railway.

Introduction

Shortly after the Nationalist government was established in Nanjing in 1928, the Guomindang launched a nationwide statistical survey of food supply and consumption. Zhang Xinyi, a Cornell-trained agricultural economist and professor at Nanjing University, was hired as director of the Bureau of Statistics in the Legislative Yuan (Lifayuan) to conduct this grand-scale survey project.1 With the full support of the bureau, Zhang immediately started his research, and three years later he published his results in a report titled China’s Food Problem. Zhang concluded that six of the fourteen provinces he had examined were “definitely deficient in their food production.” Among the food-deficient provinces, he noted, “Guangdong stood at the top. [Guangdong’s] production can support only two-thirds of her population; the other one-third must be fed with imported foodstuffs.”2 This was the main conclusion of China’s first statistical study of national food production and consumption. Zhang’s research project claimed significance in modern Chinese history for several reasons. First, his research was conducted exclusively by Chinese experts who had mostly been trained in foreign universities, but without Westerners’ direct involvement. Second, it was the first thoroughgoing research to use modern methodology to address China’s worst social problem, which the country had confronted but could not yet remedy. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the food problem (liangshi wenti; shiliang wenti) had become more urgent than anything else. No other words more compellingly described China’s food problem than the “land of famine.” Many foreign observers long identified famine and malnutrition as the most remarkable characteristic of China and attributed them to China’s lack of scientific mind. It was widely lamented that scientific famine prevention was hindered by the incompetence of the Chinese state, because

2

Introduction

it could not provide complete and accurate data on food production and consumption nationwide. Until Zhang’s work was published, a survey made by a foreign philanthropic organization, the China International Famine Relief Commission, was regarded as the most reliable work about China’s food problem.3 Therefore, Zhang’s research was also viewed by the Chinese elite as a step toward redrawing the stereotypical images of China cast by Western observers. Food scarcity was nothing new to the local populace in Guangdong, however. Nor was it an urgent problem. The imported rice from foreign countries, rather, was a key component of the local rice supply that was taken for granted. Three decades before Zhang’s study, the last Guangzhou prefect of the Qing dynasty, Gong Xinzhan, had noted: “Guangdong has extensive land and various products, so we can call Guangdong a wealthy area. However, in recent years it has become too populous; the production of this area cannot meet the food requirement. [Getting] the required rice relies exclusively upon imports from other provinces and overseas (­waisheng waiyang).”4 As Prefect Gong noted, food shortages were especially prevalent in the Guangzhou prefecture, which consisted of Canton (Guangzhou) and the surrounding districts of the Pearl River Delta. Providing adequate rice supplies for the local population meant relying largely on the importation of rice from Southeast Asia via Hong Kong and external provinces, as rice production in the districts was never sufficient to meet local demand. Nonetheless, Canton had met with no disastrous famines in the turbulent decades of the late Qing and early Republican transitions. On the contrary, observers were struck by its ability to manage external rice supplies, as well as the rice that fed not only Canton’s urban population but also the people of the surrounding rural districts in the Pearl River Delta.5 In contrast to conventional wisdom, the city of Canton was indispensable in provisioning the rural population, with Canton the gateway for the largest amount of China’s foreign-rice imports to be shipped in and redistributed to the rural rice markets in the delta. As a matter of fact, the city of Canton was far from being in a famine-ridden situation. Rather, it never failed to uphold its reputation as China’s most flourishing commercial city (shangcheng)—a city that linked commodity circulation among the major entrepôts not only to Chinese coastal port cities but also to cities around the world. Along with its flourishing maritime trade, Canton embodied entrepreneurialism and cosmopolitanism; the local mercantile leaders accumulated wealth and developed depth and richness in their own urban culture. In particular, Canton had an outstanding food culture, which was widely touted as the most sophisticated local cuisine in China. What brought food scarcity and commercial prosperity together in

Introduction

3

Canton? How could the province’s rice scarcity coexist with the Canton’s affluent food culture and commercial prosperity? And how did such a seemingly insignificant local particularity happen to turn into the nucleus of China’s social problems in the late 1920s and early 1930s? In what ways did the Guomindang members who controlled China perceive this as the most serious problem facing China, and how did they deal with it? By taking a close look at food supply and consumption in early-twentieth century Canton, this book aims to not only shed a new light on the history of China’s southernmost metropolis but also illuminate how China’s food problem as a whole unfolded, how it was understood, and how it was treated in the early twentieth century with the rise of nationalism and fluctuations in global commerce.

Rice and the City Cities, whether Chinese or Western, have an inevitable vulnerability. Maintaining adequate amounts of foodstuffs for a city’s population is the most critical question, simply because food is not an urban product. Like any other city, Canton had to depend upon the flow of commodities to obtain what the city itself could not produce. The city’s population—both the haves and the have-nots—had to rely on grain imports from outside of the city for everyday food consumption. When the grain influx broke down, the urban population’s lifeline was threatened and the stability of the social order became imperiled.6 Canton was geographically isolated from the rest of China. Whereas ground transportation to northern China was severely restricted due to geographical conditions, Canton was only open to the South China Sea. Moreover, the city’s own hinterlands—the Pearl River Delta—were not able to produce sufficient amounts of grain. Consequently, the city’s major economies and industries were based on maritime trade, and substantial quantities of needed foodstuffs were shipped in from overseas rather than from the northern hinterlands. It is not surprising that Canton’s commercial prosperity and the vulnerability of its food security, which commonly took root in the flow of commodities and overseas trade, coexisted like two different sides of one coin. For that very reason, provisioning the city meant more than just administrative work to the Cantonese. It was rather a complicated political issue in which the different interests of people from all walks of life ceaselessly crisscrossed. Maintaining the flow of foodstuffs without rupture was the primary task for both municipal authorities and the city’s societal leaders, who assumed a twofold responsibility—promoting the flow of commodities and thereby improving the city’s commercial prosperity, on the one hand, and minimizing unpredictable food shortages and thereby

4

Introduction

maintaining social order, on the other hand. Given the political landscape of twentieth-century Canton, however, the relationship between government authorities and the societal elite was not without tension, instead becoming more and more intricate. From the last decade of the Qing dynasty’s imperial rule to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the residents of Canton experienced remarkable changes in every aspect of their daily lives. They witnessed unprecedented political upheavals, social transformations, and economic fluctuations. Imperial rule was violently overthrown in 1911. There then emerged new regimes, each one claiming to be the sole legitimate republican government, and new municipal authorities proposing a series of modernist projects. Newcomers of both Chinese and foreign origin poured into the city, escalating the stratification of urban society. The speedy circulation of currencies and commodities brought about economic fluctuations: economic ascents and booms, downturns and recessions, crises and panics.7 Managing the food supply, though often concealed by explicit political and social events that past scholarship has much explored, lay at the center of politics, since food security was the most sensitive barometer for maintaining social order in the city. This book studies the interplay between those who managed the city’s provisioning system and those who attempted to transform it through their own logic of modernity in the time between 1900 and 1937.8 What made the provisioning of Canton so extremely complicated was the fact that the city rested at the merger point of two historical processes: one global, the other internal to China. The time scope of this research coincides with the flourishing of world trade and the rise of nationalism in China. While the food supply for Canton relied on overseas trade crossing national boundaries, the city became the political power base for the Guomindang Nationalists, whose cardinal goal was to build a strong nation by fulfilling Sun Yat-sen’s will at any cost. Yet the spatial scope of the party-state’s endeavors drastically shifted in 1927. Before this time, the efforts to secure Canton’s food supplies had never clashed with the party members’ aspirations, namely nation-building, because Canton was the party’s sole power base. After the launch of the Northern Expedition and the subsequent establishment of a new Nationalist government in Nanjing in 1927, however, Canton’s local interests had to be subordinated to the national cause as defined by the Guomindang, since the party by then had come to rule the entire—albeit incomplete—national territory. In the eyes of the party leaders in Nanjing, increasingly larger foreign-rice imports to Canton at cheaper prices meant nothing but a trade deficit and the outflow of national wealth. Meanwhile, the domestic agricultural economy lost competitiveness with foreign grains, aggravating more and more inland provinces.

Introduction

5

Canton’s local food-supplying networks were far too intertwined with the circuitries of the rice trade, which cut across national borders. Therefore, the Nanjing authority argued that Canton and the delta had to be more tightly linked with the rest of the nation. However, the local residents in Canton had quite a different point of view. The local populace understood that the delta was part of a trade network that included Guangdong, Guangxi, Annam, and other parts of maritime Southeast Asia. Trading across the South China Sea was to them nothing more than an extension of local trade. What happened when these two different ways of looking at geography collided? This book begins by looking at local—yet globally interlinked—viewpoints from Canton.

Rice as a World Commodity To account for the political meaning of provisioning in Canton, this study seeks to explore a new dimension of rice consumption: the question of rice quality. The major staple food for the Cantonese was rice. A mid-1930s social survey indicated that almost every resident of Canton ate rice, whereas only a few ate other grains as everyday staple foods.9 Many anthropologists have argued that rice is a unique staple food, distinguishable from other grains. Unlike such staple foods as wheat and corn that are first ground and then made into bread and tortillas, rice can be directly cooked and consumed without any processing. Thus, Canton’s rice consumers—as did people in any rice-eating culture—insisted on rice quality: “a composite of appearance, fragrance, and most important, taste.”10 According to one contemporary observation of the world rice trade in the 1930s, market values of rice varieties were determined largely by their qualities.11 Canton was by no means isolated from that world trade, and market values of rice varieties traded in the Canton rice market were no different from those in the rest of the world. Insofar as rice was traded as a commodity, any variety of rice possessed characteristics that were ambiguous, subjective, and even arbitrary. Consumers asserted their own preferences for food grains with the appropriate qualities. As Steven Kaplan points out, even ordinary Parisians in the last days of the ancien régime demanded that food be of good quality and sufficient quantity, as they had to depend on it for their everyday subsistence.12 Why would the Cantonese in the twentieth century not make similar demands? By the turn of the twentieth century, rice was not simply a local product, but had become one of the most profitable commodities of world trade. As Peter Coclanis contends, the integration of the world rice market affected every inhabited continent on the globe.13 Canton was just one of the countless nodes in the spider-web of the world’s rice trade networks, and

6

Introduction

thus fully exposed the Cantonese urban public to the worldwide culture of rice consumption. As a gateway for the huge demands of the Pearl River Delta, Canton represented a lucrative market for the world rice trade. The transnational rice business contributed to the city’s commercial prosperity and provided a foundation for the Cantonese food culture, in which there was a wide range of rice varieties consumed: from the coarsest quality to the highest quality; from the cheapest to the most expensive; from native rice to foreign rice. Canton’s residents could in turn choose the best option depending upon their appetite, dietary preference, and income level. With the transnational rice trade, the Cantonese developed dietary preferences and sophisticated their local food culture in the urban milieu of the early twentieth century. This is not to say, however, that the Cantonese food culture took shape only after the Cantonese made contact with the modern and commercialized world. The question of food quality is part of a long tradition in Chinese culinary history. Concerns for rice quality stood out in particular. Chinese rice merchants and consumers carefully developed a differential grading system for rice quality for wholesale and retail transactions. As far back as the early eighteenth century, when China experienced the commoditization of rice and integration of grain markets throughout the empire, consumer preferences became more and more important. Rice had been classified into three different grades according to the quality of the rice variety: upper-grade rice (shangmi), medium grade rice (zhongmi), and lowergrade rice (xiami). There was also another type of a tripartite classification: white rice (baimi), second-grade rice (cumi), and coarse rice (caomi). In addition to such systems of categorization, Han-sheng Chuan and Richard Kraus cite another popular system: upper-grade rice (shangmi), second yet fine rice (ximi), and coarse rice (cumi).14 Needless to say, rice quality and consumer preferences varied from locality to locality. Any given local dietary preference took shape in a local context. By the turn of the twentieth century, Canton’s residents had certainly elaborated their consumer preferences for rice quality. The more Canton needed external rice supplies to supplement insufficient local supply, the more the Cantonese rice-consuming public accustomed itself to the quality of different rice varieties and became able to select their favorites. Under such circumstances, as will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2, foreign rice that was mainly shipped from Southeast Asia via Hong Kong not only provided a reliable quantity of supplies but was also attuned to Cantonese taste. In a number of surveys in the 1930s, Cantonese residents in the city generally stated that foreign rice (yangmi) tasted better than what was called national rice (guomi): Chinese rice varieties shipped from such northern ports as Wuhu, Zhenjiang, and Shanghai and from Hunan province. Moreover, the retail prices of most

Introduction

7

foreign-rice varieties, despite seasonal fluctuations, were generally lower than their domestic counterparts.15 However, local dietary preferences did not occur overnight by any means. To quote a famous phrase, the Cantonese made their own history of food culture, but they “did not make it as they pleased; they did not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”16 The Cantonese were lured into consumption of foreign-rice in part by the thriving maritime trade that coincided with the commercialization of agriculture in the Pearl River Delta. From the early nineteenth century onward, a burgeoning maritime trade in southern China that centered on Canton accelerated the urbanization of the delta; both the rural population and the grains they produced decreased remarkably, while sericulture and the silk industry came to dominate the local economy. The required rice was instead provided by the Southeast Asian rice trade coming through the port of Canton, which was facilitated by steamship cargo services linking Canton, via Hong Kong, to Southeast Asian entrepôts.17 At the same time, the prosperous maritime trade had been in part spurred by a decline in the domestic social order of southern China around the middle of the nineteenth century. Countless rebellions, from the Taiping rebels to the Heaven and Earth Societies, to a number of small-scale local feuds, had devastated arable land throughout southern China, particularly the hinterlands of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces—the major rice suppliers for the Cantonese population at the time. To supplement the insufficient local rice supplies, Canton became China’s leading entrepôt for foreign-rice imports. By the first decade of the twentieth century, Canton’s residents were the largest group of foreign-rice consumers in China.18 In short, Cantonese food culture and the popularity of foreign-rice consumption thrived as an unintended consequence of the provincial rice insufficiency vis-à-vis a thriving world rice trade. To grasp such a dynamic transformation of the Cantonese food supply networks and the subsequent development of their food culture, and at the same time, to delve deeply into the political complexity of rice consumption in the city of Canton, this book does not limit the scope of study to the boundaries of the city, nor to the province of Guangdong, nor to the nation. Rather, this book traces the trajectories of all those who cut across any type of conventional boundaries. In his study of Chinese migrant networks, Adam McKeown asserts a “global perspective,” because a territorially embedded perspective (such as national histories) is not suitable to the better understanding of the global circulation of people and commodity.19 Perhaps this book’s spatial scope can be overlapped with what Marie-Claire Bergère calls “coastal civilization,” in which the Cantonese played a significant role with remarkable vigor from the mid-nineteenth

8

Introduction

century onward.20 To the Cantonese, to be sure, the coastal civilization was much closer than the northern interior in their everyday lives. Around the South China Sea, Cantonese émigrés dominated the rice business in major entrepôts such as Saigon, Bangkok, and Rangoon, where many of them operated rice milling companies. The rice trade routes from there to Hong Kong and Canton were also largely dominated by the Cantonese merchants and traders. Perhaps the perimeter of this commercial network was too resilient to be measured. Sometimes it interlinked the quays of Bangkok, where the world’s largest rice milling companies gathered, to the wharves of Rice Street (or mibu dajie) on the northern bank of the Pearl River in Canton. At other times it stretched from the smuggling spots somewhere in the middle of the Pearl River near the border between present-day Shenzhen and Hong Kong to Dupont Street in San Francisco, home of the largest overseas Cantonese community in North America. The entire urban population of the city of Canton was not a border crosser by any means. Yet the residents of Canton could hardly maintain their daily rice consumption unless it was supplied by the transnational trade. things countable and uncountable

Employing the viewpoints of the Cantonese public, this study seeks to eschew the myopic essentialism that tends to place more emphasis on the former rather than the latter in the dichotomy between center and locale and between state and society. Little attention has been paid to the Cantonese urban dwellers—the anonymous rice-consuming public who lived underneath the conspicuous political celebrities and renowned entrepreneurs of the day. The Cantonese urban population lived their daily lives as rice consumers while depending entirely upon the influx of rice from outside the city. However, they were by no means faceless, passive beings; rather, each was an individual, passing through daily life with independent reasoning and making a food choice with a dietary preference. The city’s reliance upon external rice supplies did not necessarily mean that the urban population gave up their food choice. Rather, at each income level, they wanted a certain quality of rice to satisfy their appetite as much as they needed minimal quantities of rice for subsistence. beyond collective actions

Past scholarship has much explored the history of food and has indeed paid much attention to food consumers. Yet food consumers have been unwittingly described as collective beings, mostly either as famine victims or as crowds who took part in a riot. From the mid-nineteenth century onward, famine-ridden refugees have eloquently represented an image of the miser-

Introduction

9

able Chinese, who should be compassionately salved by external help.21 Otherwise, they were represented as simple participants in various types of collective action, such as hunger-driven crowds and food rioters. Unless the individual food consumers shaped “crowds” and evoked “disturbances”— such as grain seizures, rallies, or riots—they were not fully represented.22 Perhaps few can rival the field of Chinese history in such a strong tendency to insist on the famine-driven “crowds” and their meaningful collective actions. Given the mainstream narrative of modern Chinese history in the People’s Republic of China, it is not surprising that the history of food riots has overwhelmed the history of Chinese food consumption. Many historians have dealt with food riots as a sort of potential popular movement that gradually developed and ultimately contributed to the legitimacy of the revolutionary movements led by the Chinese Communist Party, not to mention official narrative lines—the linear history of popular uprisings that eventually reach the final victory of the party in 1949.23 Outside China, where scholars were able to keep distance from such political and ideological biases, “collective actions” of food rioters attracted many students of Chinese history.24 Strongly inspired by the “perspective from below,” many scholars enriched the field and explored a number of behavioral patterns of food rioters. First, food riots were “defensive.” Despite their seemingly violent aspect, the ultimate aim of food rioters did not go beyond reasserting previously established grain prices. Second, any given food riot was therefore a “spontaneous” and “impetuous” action that spearheaded violent protest only against a sudden break in the orderly delivery of grain. Last but not least, food riots were locally isolated and hardly developed into nationwide or empire-wide mass movements or political resistance. No matter how violent they may have been, food rioters neither shared a political consciousness nor displayed cohesive solidarity. The discovery of the “limitedness” of food rioters was not restricted to the field of Chinese history. Regardless of the geographical subdivision, such characteristics were widely witnessed in the study of food riots. 25 In hindsight, the revisionists criticize that the social history of food riots has tended to overly romanticize the crowd as a collective entity, while ignoring—intentionally or unintentionally—their individual voices as food consumers. In short, such a perspective, despite its tangible achievements and contributions, cannot fully explore the significance of the consumer dimension in the history of food. taste in numbers

A no less significant tendency that past scholarship has—albeit unintentionally—left to the field in the history of food is quantification. In

10

Introduction

spite of strong willingness to revive the subaltern voice, the aforementioned perspectives have tended to count the frequency of famines and food riots, the numbers of participating crowds and the localities, or the numbers of days or months of the collective events.26 Therefore, statistical analysis has been the prerequisite for such economic approaches. As a matter of fact, grain trade has been one of the most popular topics for economic approaches, and quantification has been the most favored methodology; from secular trends in market price fluctuations to changes in grain productivity; from land and population ratio to an analysis of labor inputs and grain outputs; from average income to amount of rice consumption per capita in any given society. In short, economic calculus and statistical representation have long overwhelmed the study of the food history, and the cultural dimension of food consumption has been treated as an insignificant—if not ignorable—realm that scientific methodologies have no need for. In stark contrast to the attempts to revive subaltern aspects, only numbers are represented in the history of food, while the faces and voices of the food consumers have been marginalized.27 To cite Nick Cullather’s words, food lost its cultural and qualitative dimensions. Instead, it became simply objectified as a “material instrument of statecraft.”28 In order to provide an alternative, some scholars have recently begun to shed new light on food consumption, including the question of food quality and consumers’ individual food choices. However, this book tries to eschew another scholarly tendency found in this new scholarship, specifically the assumption of evolutionary process in food consumption patterns—namely, the historical transition from an age of “scarcity” to an age of “affluence.”29 For example, French historian Eugen Weber once noted, “[passing] from hunger to subsistence and from subsistence to a degree of sufficiency is to make the transition from the ancient to the modern world.”30 What is the yardstick dividing the age of affluence from that of scarcity? Insofar as modern China is concerned, which historical moment could be the point when the fear of food scarcity completely—or at least significantly—disappeared? When could the Chinese be said to embrace the time of plenty? Could it be the year 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party triumphantly declared the liberation of all Chinese people from imperialist suppression? Or could it be 1978, when the party officially proclaimed the beginning of the policy of Reform and Openness under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership? Or has the age of modern affluence not come to China yet? Few claim that food provisioning is no longer a political matter. Even today, the first decade of the twenty-first century having just passed, global political tensions revolving around food consumption have not ended. Rather, food has become a new focal point of politics, not only for

Introduction

11

its quantity, but also for its quality. Moreover, it is not simply the problem of a nation, but also the problem of the world.31 This book argues that Canton’s thriving food culture was created only through the dual experience of both scarcity and abundance of food. The rice insufficiency in the province gave rise to unique features of the Cantonese food culture such as a diversity of foodstuffs, a wide range of rice varieties, and an abundance of culinary experiments. As an attempt to revisit the evolutionary presumption of human food consumption, this book contends that food affluence paradoxically coexisted with food scarcity, in spite of conceptual incompatibility. There is no doubt that there was a group of urban poor who stood on the brink of starvation in Canton while Cantonese food culture was gaining a worldwide reputation in the early decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, there were countless urbanites, within a wide income range, that were as concerned with getting certain minimal qualities of rice to please their palates as they were with getting certain quantities for daily consumption. Needless to say, wealthy Cantonese businessmen and high-ranking Guomindang officials lived quite differently from the starving urban poor. Yet none could live outside the need for daily rice consumption. Both groups were equally rice consumers. It is not easy to obtain primary documents that tell the stories of rice consumers’ daily lives. Yet archives and local libraries allow historians to trace the stories of local rice merchants who, next to the consumer public, judged and anticipated the particular consumer demands in the Canton rice market. Some of these rice merchants, although they have not drawn much scholarly attention, were well known within the Chinese mercantile community not only in Canton but also overseas. They developed the “on-site” expertise with which they thoroughly grasped market conditions and particular consumer expectations. Few could understand Cantonese culinary preferences for rice varieties better than these rice merchants. Decade after decade, perhaps generation after generation, they had acquired nuts-and-bolts knowledge about the marketability of rice varieties whose value was largely determined by their qualities. Careful consideration of consumer demands in return became the cornerstone for their business success. Nonetheless, any story of business success in the local documents could not have been told without a consideration of local rice consumers. As I will discuss in detail in the pages ahead, seeking better-quality rice was not simply for pleasure, nor was luxury for the wealth. Lower-income consumers were as concerned about rice quality as the upper class, largely because rice of poor quality could not provide them with a sufficient feeling of satisfaction. To be sure, the statistical data that the modern state compiled could hardly convey the feeling of fullness after a meal. Yet the Cantonese rice merchants painstakingly cared about quality, because their

12

Introduction

business success was largely hinged on it. This book explores regions that the impulse to quantify cannot reach.

Rice and Nationalism The preoccupation with quantification was not merely a typical academic tendency, but rather a centerpiece of modern statecraft. Numerical precision was a prerequisite for the success of modern statecraft because the state required detailed social information for the territorial entity that it ruled, such as an exact number for the population, accurate data about arable land, and a correct amount for food supplies. Yet this sort of information had to be simplified and standardized for easier understanding, thereby enabling government bureaucrats to plan and pursue a series of social policies. In terms of simplification and ease, nothing better provided clear information than quantification. In particular, precise quantification was the sine qua non for the success of the food supply, largely because a failure to provide correct information about provisioning could result in a collapse of the social order.32 In this sense, the government’s concern for food supply was not necessarily a matter of the modern state. Perhaps it was a universal phenomenon. Efforts at quantification of foodstuffs have been commonly practiced in any given society in human history, whether it was the traditional Chinese empire, the early modern European kingdoms, or the steppe empire ruled by the Khan. Why did quantification matter for food supply in modern China? What was completely new and “modern” was, as James C. Scott insists, the “magnitude” of the aspiration that the modern state had for the “wholesale transformation of society.”33 Such strong eagerness for the innovation of modern statecraft and vision for the building of a better society stemmed from the European Enlightenment, whose key ideas provided an unprecedented conviction in reason and science as well as progress. In the formation of modern Europe, quantification as a method of scientific understanding for a society became indispensable to political endeavors for a better society. Quantification provided scientific validation for new policies that the modern state devised, and the political authorities in turn justified the objectivity of the scientific truth. To be sure, the betterment of the food supply, at least preventing the worst kinds of famine, had to start with statistical research, by means of which the state could obtain precise understanding of the provisioning. Few deny the contributions that modern measurements have made to the remarkable decrease of famine. Nonetheless, quantification itself did not lead to a grasp of all aspects of food supply and consumption, nor did it guarantee the creation of a perfect food policy. Rather, the production of new knowledge in numerical form tended

Introduction

13

to block a comprehensive understanding of a society, while the statistical representation of social phenomenon came to be called science.34 Such a reciprocal relationship between science and power, despite the intellectual origins of the European Enlightenment, left a unique imprint in the non-Western world, from the mid-nineteenth century onward. The indigenous elite perceived the lack of science or the lack of an accomplished scientific corps as an indication of the inferiority of the indigenous society.35 In the early twentieth century, reform-minded Chinese elite and radical revolutionaries alike asserted that China’s independent territorial sovereignty would be a stepping stone toward building a new China as a wealthy and powerful nation. Many republican revolutionaries devoted themselves to rectifying the problem of diplomatic inequality and economic unfairness that China was facing within the modern capitalist world order. They firmly believed that regaining territorial integrity and commanding an autonomous economy were the cardinal goals in their efforts to build a modern Chinese nation. This concern became the ideological backbone for the Guomindang Nationalists, who claimed themselves the sole legitimate bearers of such a revolutionary cause. The food problem was urgent for many Guomindang members, who believed that it threatened the economic integrity of the Chinese nation. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, increasing foreign-rice imports devalued and aggravated domestic agriculture, while expenditures for the purchase of foreign rice became the primary cause of China’s trade deficit.36 The results of statistical surveys widely practiced at the time unequivocally indicated that the Cantonese consumed more than half of China’s net import of foreign rice. 37 To make matters worse, there were indications in the statistical data that inland provinces produced an excess of rice, yet they could not find proper markets to sell it. With cheaper prices and better quality, foreign rice dominated many urban rice markets in the coastal treaty ports, not just in Canton. Even competitive domestic rice varieties could not reach the urban rice markets, due to lack of transportation infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Chinese rural sectors collapsed. After the effects of the Great Depression hit China, the “dumping” (qingxiao) of foreign grain into Chinese markets was widely believed to be a main cause of the worsening of Chinese domestic agriculture. To the Guomindang leaders, therefore, the food problem was the centerpiece of what Ruth Rogaski terms “dual victimization.” China, long victimized by untamable natural hindrances, was victimized once again by Western imperialism.38 Yet the tougher the adversaries were, the stronger was the revolutionary resolve. To Guomindang technocrats, both in Nanjing and in Canton, devising and pursuing scientific solutions to the food problem was a great step toward progress that they could and should make. Scientific

14

Introduction

r­ esolution of the Chinese food problem would be the very first step to repudiate the backwardness of the past, during which traditional China had long been harassed by natural disasters. It would also be a cornerstone for China’s leap forward to a new era of scientific mastery, which would enable China to compete with technologically advanced Western countries. At the very least, it would be a chance to showcase the new regime’s capacity for the scientific management of the nation. Under such circumstances, new scientific knowledge and technical expertise as the fundamental solutions to the food problem were enthusiastically introduced from abroad and promptly put into practice. With strong confidence in scientific knowledge, the Guomindang policymakers implemented a series of food control policies, from the imposition of a foreign-rice tax (yangmi shui) as a protective tariff, to the sale of Hunan rice in Canton via the Canton-Hankow Railway (Yue Han tielu), to an all-out promotion program for the consumption of national rice. Moreover, their strong conviction about scientific knowledge drove the Guomindang technocrats to envision a recasting of people’s mindsets and behaviors, from revolutionizing peasants’ planting methods in the countryside, to regulating merchants’ manipulation of food prices, to moving the eating habits of the urban rice consumers in a more healthy and scientific direction. In effect, the Guomindang assumed the leading role of agent, or at least facilitator, of transplanting the modernity that would create a wholesale transformation of Chinese society, while eliminating the elements of backwardness stemming from the Chinese past. Perhaps the Russian Bolsheviks provide a plausible comparison, in that they fiercely struggled with the Russian backwardness, while eagerly pursuing a number of experimental social engineering programs to build a rational social order, with a fervent conviction in reason, science, and progress.39 This book therefore approaches the ways in which the Nationalists dealt with the food problem, with an emphasis on their enthrallment with Western science and technology. I place special emphasis on the Nationalists’ forward-looking stance, rather than on the governmental incompetence that past scholarship has long maintained. The Nationalists in Nanjing, to use Lloyd Eastman’s words, never lost sight of their self-ordained task of restoring “political unity, economic plenty, and national pride and security to the Chinese people.”40 However, for that very reason, their understanding of science and technology could hardly escape from a technocratic and instrumentalist view of modernity. Insofar as statistical reckoning and deductive quantification would provide accurate information, they had no reason to consider local particularities. In the scientifically proven food control program that the Republic’s best scientists and engineers drafted, they had no need to take into account the Cantonese food culture, which

Introduction

15

had developed from a long-standing provincial rice insufficiency. The question of rice quality was in their eyes not a matter of science. Rather, it was a matter of Cantonese proclivities. Meanwhile, the statistical fact that the Cantonese were the largest consumers of foreign rice in China overlapped with the stereotypical image of the Cantonese culture in general: the Cantonese were the most lavish consumer group because they were fond of extravagant yet unproductive lifestyles. Along with the popular consumption of foreign rice, their food culture was flamboyant and wasteful, while the rest of China suffered from a food problem. To equate the Cantonese culture with such luxurious aspects of lifestyle was hardly possible. However, “extravagance” was the most important element in the social imaginary of the Cantonese culture in modern China as a cultural construct, regardless of the Cantonese people’s actual life.41 Perhaps because of this stereotype (to be discussed in detail in Chapter 5), the local Cantonese party members were more ardent than those in Nanjing in their efforts to reorganize fundamentally the structure of rice supply and consumption in Canton. Consequently, all aspects of Cantonese food culture had to be guided and reformed anew under the direction of the party, which genuinely believed in the validity of science and technology. Did all of the Guomindang’s scientific endeavors succeed in Canton? How did the Cantonese society respond to these attempts? The following chapters will discuss the dynamics of the interactions, clashes, and negotiations between the local Cantonese society and the modern Chinese state.

Chapter Overview The book has two parts. Part One, consisting of chapters 1 to 4, is made up of interwoven local stories of the Cantonese rice-consuming public and merchants, the people who helped form the local food culture. Part Two, consisting of chapters 5 to 9, is the story of the Guomindang’s efforts to promote the consumption of “national rice” in Canton during the Nanjing Decade (1927–37). Chapter 1 provides an analysis of the social and economic conditions of Canton and the Pearl River Delta, giving attention to the area’s geographic conditions. Both the province’s rice insufficiency and the city’s commercial prosperity occurred because of the inhabitants’ efforts to adjust their lives to the ecological system of the region. Chapter 2 traces the formation in Cantonese food culture and the emergence of preferences for certain varieties of rice, mainly Southeast Asian varieties. This development occurred not only in the city of Canton but also in Cantonese communities abroad. Interestingly, the name of the place a variety of rice was imported from

16

Introduction

was used like a brand name on the Canton market, since each variety bore a different quality and had a different market value. In Chapter 3, I look at two cases of rice relief work (in 1907 and in 1919) conducted by the Cantonese mercantile elite, with strong cooperation from their Hong Kong counterparts. I argue that, counter to standard opinion, consumer concern for rice quality never weakened, even in a time of food scarcity, because people believed that satisfying their hunger was better guaranteed by eating rice of better quality. For that very reason, the Cantonese rice merchants carefully developed their skills at distinguishing between higher-quality rice and the poorer, coarser varieties. In short, the professionalization and specialization of the rice business assured the success of famine relief. Having experienced a relief campaign in turn provided the rice merchants with an opportunity to expand their business and to better understand consumer demands in Canton. Chapter 4 traces food supply and consumption during the Nationalist Revolution (1923–27), when Guomindang revolutionaries seized municipal authorities under the banner of a United Front with the Chinese Communist Party. I suggest that food policy in this period was a mixture of rhetorical nationalism and practical adaptations to local particularities. In order to secure sufficient food supplies to meet their revolutionary goals in the city, the Nationalist authorities had little choice but to enhance the transnational aspect of the Cantonese rice trade. To the revolutionaries, Hong Kong was the epitome of British imperial aggression against China. At the same time, however, the commercial network between Canton and Hong Kong was the only one that could supply substantial amounts of rice to revolutionary Canton. Part Two of the book explores how the Nationalists, after becoming the sole legitimate authority of China in Nanjing, dealt with the transnational rice trade and consumption in Canton under the complex international context of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Chapter 5 traces the Guomindang’s blind trust in Western science and technology and how these interests led to the technocratic and instrumental misunderstanding of the nature of rice supply and consumption. Guomindang officials regarded statistically represented information and quantified forms of knowledge as the only reliable data on which they could base a series of innovative food control programs. They firmly believed that the Chinese food problem could not be solved without the reduction of the popular consumption of foreign rice in Canton. Despite factional tension with Nanjing-based party members, local Cantonese Guomindang members who seized both municipal and provincial authority equally understood the urgency of establishing scientifically proven food regulation programs. Chapters 6 and 7 examine the political wrangling between Nanjing and Canton caused by the imposition

Introduction

17

of the Foreign-Rice Tax as a protective tariff, as well as the social repercussions of the tax scheme. Taxation, more than anything else, brought about fierce protests from the Cantonese rice merchants. Although the authorities soon suppressed the tax protests, these events marked the beginning of the move to exclude the practical expertise that local rice merchants had cultivated in their business from the state-led program for the promotion of national rice. I argue that the coercive means that the state used to suppress the concerns of Cantonese rice merchants were not the only reason for this exclusion. The growing National Goods Movement and increased public concern over the agrarian depression outweighed the concerns of the local Cantonese rice merchants. However, the expulsion of the merchants, and their local knowledge, from the new food control program were signs of a growing disregard for consumer demands in the government’s food program planning, which turned out to be a critical mistake. Chapters 8 and 9 illustrate how the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway, Republican China’s most ambitious engineering project, preoccupied the Nationalists, who saw it as the solution to the Chinese food problem. Indeed, the Canton-Hankow Railway project drew worldwide attention. For the first time, the line crossed the barrier of the Nanling Mountains to link Hunan, a province known for producing excesses of rice, with Guangdong, a province highly commercialized but in need of external rice supplies. The Nationalists believed the first task of this line was to replace foreign rice with Hunan rice in Canton; doing so was seen as alleviating the nation’s food problem, which was perceived as a menace to China’s progress. Guomindang members, who proclaimed themselves responsible solely for China’s modern reconstruction, considered the construction of the line a manifold triumph. First, it demonstrated China’s mastery of technology and competence in scientific state management. Second, it embodied China’s technological triumph over natural obstacles. However, this attitude of scientific triumphalism blinded the technocratic elite and prevented them from paying attention to local particularities, worsening further their misconception of the issue of rice quality. Chapter 9 traces the overall consequences of the government’s National Rice Promotion program. Unfortunately, despite their scientific validity, a series of scientific blueprints could not resolve the food problem, since the Guomindang’s technocratic elite, intentionally or unintentionally, had neglected to consider the qualitative dimension of rice.

1

South of the Mountains the political economy of the pearl river delta

By the turn of the twentieth century, the urban residents of Canton did not rely on getting their daily rice supplies from the rural hinterlands of Guangdong province. Rice shortages were prevalent in the surrounding rural districts of the Pearl River Delta. Since rice production in the delta was insufficient to meet local demand, Canton had come to rely largely upon imports from external provinces and the overseas market in order to maintain an adequate rice supply for the local population. The acting commissioner of China Customs at Canton, R. De Luca, remarked: “Even in ordinary years the local production of rice in the province is never equal to local requirements, and large imports are always necessary to supplement the deficiency. The greater part of the rice thus imported comes from abroad—principally Saigon—whilst the balance is brought from the Yangzi.”1 These supplementary rice imports had to come first to the port of Canton, after which they were redistributed at market towns in the rural districts. Instead of relying on its rural hinterlands for its food supply, Canton acted as a gateway and redistribution center for external rice supplies and provisioning the surrounding rural districts. Despite its chronic rice shortages, however, Canton never met with any disastrous food crisis in the turbulent decades of the late Qing and early Republican transition. Many contemporary observers were struck by the local rice insufficiency. At the same time, they were equally fascinated with the commercial prosperity in the city of Canton because in spite of chronic rice shortages Canton maintained its reputation for wealth and flamboyant urban commercial culture. As early as 1902, one foreign observer summarized the stereotypical image of Canton: “Even the wealthiest of inland Chinese cannot match Cantonese. In the variety of cultural and customary experience, there is a huge gap between coastal Chinese and inland

22

Feeding the City of Gourmets

Chinese. Daily requirements in foreign goods are enormous. The foreign goods consumed daily in Canton and Fuzhou, only two cities, might match the total consumption of Yunnan province.”2 Although rising rice prices “often caused considerable distress among the poorer classes,” it is true that no serious famine occurred.3 Rice relief efforts, operated competently by the Cantonese mercantile elite and local authorities alike, stabilized rice prices. Year after year in Canton, soaring rice prices and the consequent rice relief efforts were common features of everyday life. Once the “[local] crop was doomed to failure and fears of famine and disorder were entertained, the local authorities and a few of the well-known charitable institutions of Canton came to the rescue,” and rice imports “were sold at low rates to the urban poor.”4 Indeed, significant portions of food supplies for Canton were facilitated much more by the Cantonese commercial networks, which extended far beyond provincial boundaries and were inter­ woven throughout the coastal China and the South China Sea, than by local supplies from nearby rural districts. Why did the Pearl River Delta fail to provide enough rice to feed the local population? Why did such a rice-starved city never lose its reputation for commercial prosperity? Why did external rice supplies come from as far away as the Yangzi and Saigon? Why did they not come from Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, or Guangxi, which not only shared administrative borders with Guangdong but were also dominantly agricultural provinces? To answer these questions, this chapter will examine how Guangdong happened to become China’s largest food-deficient province and how local inhabitants coped with the region’s chronic rice shortages. As a matter of fact, nothing characterized the social world of Canton better than the chronic coexistence of rice insufficiency with commercial prosperity. To understand this state of affairs, we must start from the geography of the Pearl River Delta. This does not mean that rice trade routes were determined solely by topography. Geography in and of itself does not completely explain the complicated structure of Canton’s rice supply. Rather, we will trace the human efforts that developed and transformed the structure of the rice supply in the given environment.

The Topology of Guangdong: Waterways and Mountains The topographic conditions of the Pearl River Delta primarily defined Canton’s location: rivers and mountains. The delta provided excellent river ways to the city, but ground transportation routes were severely hindered, since the delta was surrounded by chains of hills and mountains on three sides: north, east, and west. The Nanling mountain ranges (also called ­Dayuling) separated the rest of China from Guangdong and Guangxi

Political Economy of the Pearl River Delta

23

provinces. The two provinces were thus known as Lingnan (literally, south of the mountains). The mountains also contained the watersheds of many rivers that flowed south into the South China Sea. The West River, the most significant waterway flowing from the mountains to the south, ran entirely across Guangxi and down to the delta. Two more rivers—the North and East rivers—whose confluence was immediately next to the city of Canton, provided principal waterways for the inhabitants of the delta by merging after Canton into the Pearl River.5 Most commodities transported back and forth between Canton and other market towns had to pass along these waterways. Yet the perimeters of trade were obviously limited, simply because they could not extend further north, east, or west beyond the mountains. Only Canton, then, connected the hinterlands of the delta to the south to the outside world, namely, the maritime world. For the hinterland population, the waterways that reached Canton were a lifeline on which they solely relied, since what the inhabitants of the “South of the Mountains” could not produce—or could not sufficiently produce—had to be purchased in Canton. One prominent commodity of this sort was rice. In the 1820s, the local population had to find significant supplies of rice in the Canton rice markets where external rice imports were primarily handled. One local account notes: “In 1825, many districts of the Lingnan were struck by famine. However, the only thing they could do was to rely on Canton and Foshan, where rice from all directions was shipped and stocked.”6 However, this is not to say that rice insufficiency hindered the economic development of the delta. Rather, the local rice insufficiency was an unexpected consequence of significant social and economic changes. In the eighteenth century, when the Qing empire had reached its height, the Pearl River Delta had become densely populated and intensively commercialized. In terms of urbanization, many scholars unequivocally rank the Pearl River Delta second after the Jiangnan region as the empire’s cultural and economic heartland. However, the delta’s population density far exceeded Jiangnan’s, since only the delta—about 30 percent of the provincial terrain—provided arable plains in a province surrounded largely by mountains.7 On the West River alone, for example, on average three thousand people were squeezed into one square mile of land.8 The dense population gave rise to economic development, because it provided a massive workforce for the thriving local economy. Yet such an economic shift was accompanied by the decline of rice production, because an increasing number of rural households abandoned grain cultivation and sought more profitable commercial crops. The rice insufficiency that Canton faced at the turn of the twentieth century, then, stemmed from the rapid commercialization of the local economy.

24

Feeding the City of Gourmets canton and the “silk districts”

What boosted the prosperity of Canton was the commercial agriculture of the delta, the major products of which were consumed much more in the overseas markets than in the local markets: silk, sugar, and handcrafts. Of particular prominence was the silk industry that flourished near Canton. Canton’s silk industry developed a unique system of raw silk production called “sericulture combined with pisciculture” (sangji yutang: literally, dikes of mulberry trees and fish ponds); it entailed planting mulberry trees on the dikes surrounding fish ponds, with the fish eating the silkworms’ wastes. The practice, widespread throughout the counties of Nanhai and Shunde, astonished Ruan Yuan, the new governor general and a native of Jiangnan, when he was first appointed to the empire’s southernmost province. In 1819, he noted: “These mulberry farms extend to one hundred li in diameter. Farming households in the hundreds of thousands raise mulberry trees and rely on sericulture. Indeed, this area is the most fertile land for sericulture in Guangdong.”9 To understand such changes of land use patterns, the ecological condition of the lower delta should be taken into account. From the viewpoint of the rural inhabitants in this region, it was a smart choice to give up rice cultivation and switch to sericulture. Not all parts of the region were suitable for grain cultivation. Despite being excellent waterways, the countless rivers and creeks carried huge amounts of sediment. As sediment was deposited over and over again on the alluvial plains, the height of the water tended to rise quickly, and the direction of the waterways frequently changed. In a chain reaction, such environmental pressures often caused the overflow of waterways and floods. In this environment, nothing would have been better than planting mulberry trees and building pisciculture, which required a certain degree of high water levels. The huge amounts of sediments brought by waterways could also be used for dike building. Massive plantings of mulberry trees along fish ponds were one way by which the local population tried to forge a local ecosystem as much as they adjusted themselves to it. Moreover, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when steam-powered silk filatures were introduced and constructed around suburban Canton, the silk industry blossomed further.10 Such a transformation of the rural landscape was noticeable throughout the lower delta, with such counties as Nanhai, Shunde, and Xiangshan, which foreign observers nicknamed “Silk Districts,” particularly prominent.11 Yet the increasing sericulture asymmetrically transformed the crop rotation patterns of the Silk Districts; rice cultivation was quickly supplanted by these new commercial developments. A local account noted: “The mulberry trees are so close together that it looks like a forest. Silkworm markets and raw silk markets are everywhere. Calculating these

Political Economy of the Pearl River Delta

25

mulberry farms, it is no less than thousands of qing. . . . Most of the arable land is filled with mulberry farms, with rice paddies only about one or one-and-a-half out of ten.”12 This transformation not only diminished the amount of arable land available for rice cultivation but also took huge numbers of workers away from rice cultivation. By the 1920s, approximately 70 percent of the arable land in the Nanhai County had become mulberry land, and nearly 80 percent of the working population was involved in some part of sericulture.13 Soon, however, widespread sericulture and silk filatures turned out to be a double-edged sword. Although the local economy thrived, the rural districts of the delta could no longer provide an adequate rice supply for the population. Increasingly, cultivable lands were being converted into sericulture and commercial planting. At the turn of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of rural dwellers flocked into Canton and its outskirts to seek work in such new industries as silk filature, sugar refining, and kerosene oil production, to name a few. How was this new urban workforce to be fed? Where would Canton find additional rice supplies? The rising urban population and decreasing local rice supplies became the greatest focus of Cantonese public concern: The silk export of this prefecture reaches over twenty million [units were not identified]. The population continues to be concentrated in Canton, the provincial capital (shengcheng), as well as its suburbs, and exceeds four million. Most counties, including Nanhai, Panyu, Dongguan, Shunde, Xinhui, and Xiangshan, have populations numbering in the several millions each. Thus, twenty million shi of rice needs to be shipped from Annam and Siam, three to four million shi each also from Zhenjiang, Wuhu, and Guangxi. As a result, living costs have increased, firewood has become as valuable as laurel, and, in this way, rice has become as valuable as pearls. There may never be a day when the poor do not sack the stores of rice.14

In short, the dearth of rice stemmed from this thriving commercial agriculture, led mostly by the silk industry. Yet some questions still remain. Why did the Cantonese find their supplementary rice supplies in such places as Zhenjiang (in Jiangsu province) and Wuhu (in Anhui province), and even foreign places like Saigon and Siam? Geography cannot give a complete answer, but it is a good starting point.

Mountain Barriers to Trade In stark contrast to the myriad waterways of the delta, the conditions for ground transportation over the mountainous northern hinterlands, through which one had to travel to reach the inland provinces, were severely underdeveloped. Trade and travel could be conducted only on foot or by sedan chair. The local population had developed a few travel paths,

26

Feeding the City of Gourmets

but they were “only a few feet wide and paved only with large stones.”15 An eyewitness account by a British geographer noted: This is not a land of carts or pack animals. South China is so densely crowded that there is no space for agricultural land, pasturage or for raising hay. Man has replaced all transport animals and carries the burdens of commerce by means of long poles borne on his shoulders. The only wheeled vehicle is the wheel of row, the use of which is much less common than north of the Yangtze.16

It was not until the provincial authorities launched road construction programs in the late 1920s that topographic conditions for interprovincial trade with Hunan and Jiangxi over the Nanling mountain ranges improved. And then, there were only a few ground trade routes connected Canton with the north, but they were not suitable for the grain trade by any means. meiling pass

The most prominent of these routes was the Meiling Pass. This route ran along the North River up through the Meiling Pass to Jiangxi province, connecting Canton to Nanchang, and ultimately leading to Beijing via the Yangzi River and the Grand Canal. This route was also known as the “Imperial Highway,” or the “Envoy Path” (Shijielu), since British envoys George Macartney and William Amherst had taken it to reach Beijing. Many merchants walked back and forth over this mountain path. However, they had little choice but to shoulder their cargo going over the hilly pass, because the pass was at most a “bit of foot wide and steep stone-made stairs.”17 Needless to say, transporting heavy cargo was by no means feasible along this trade route. Typical commodities transported over the pass were mostly such light items as tea, paper, and silk. Some sacks of grain might have been included. Workers could shoulder and carry grain over the pass, simply because grain was much lighter than such heavy items as timber or wooden goods, but this required higher transportation costs. Although a few scholars have found scattered documents proving that local merchants traded grain over the pass, such cases could have been non-regular trade of small volume, largely limited to local consumption. One Japanese observer’s account from the 1910s notes that one worker could carry only one or two sacks of rice, which contained five to six sheng, equivalent to about ten pints.18 This hilly terrain did not allow for a long-distance grain trade. zheling pass

The second noteworthy route was the Zheling Pass, a shortcut to Changsha and Hankow, the two key cities of the middle Yangzi region.19 Many parts of this route depended on waterways. The route branched from

Political Economy of the Pearl River Delta

27

S­ haoguan and continued northwards along the North River to the borders of Hunan province. At this point the route ran through the hills. The road conditions of this pass were somewhat better than those of the Meiling Pass. The peak of the pass was not as high as the Meiling Pass, and its paths were considerably flatter and wider. In a mid-nineteenth century eyewitness account of a British traveler, mules were used in cargo transport.20 However, trade through this pass was less developed than over the Meiling Pass. Whereas most goods of the Meiling Pass trade were lucrative foreign trade goods such as silks, cotton goods, and Chinese porcelains, the Zheling Pass was used only for local trade of herbs and Chinese medical ingredients, which were largely consumed by the local population in the mountain terrain. Moreover, the commercial significance of these passes quickly waned once Canton and other coastal cities were opened as treaty ports. By the mid-nineteenth century, Zheling Pass had dwindled to insignificance in terms of trade.21 a waterway detour to the north

There was one waterway trade route that linked the south and north of the Nanling mountain ranges along the upstream West River. This water­ way facilitated the Guangxi rice trade to Canton. As will be discussed below, Guangxi was the major rice supplier to feed the population of Canton and the Silk Districts in the eighteenth century; however, the waterway was unable to conduct a large volume of rice trade beyond Guangxi province. Compared to the mountain pass routes, the waterway could have provided much more suitable conditions for large volume transportation of grain. However, it took so much time that the market value of rice tended to drop, if one tried to transport rice from the northern inland areas beyond the mountains.22 In fact, the upper stream of the waterway was notorious for its complicated topography. The beginning of a journey was well facilitated through the mainstream waterway of the West River from Canton to Wuzhou, after which the route went further northward along the Gui River to Guilin, Guangxi. Yet, beyond this point, the shipment had to pass through an ancient canal that had been laboriously constructed during the Tang dynasty.23 In the upper reaches of the waterway, traffic conditions were extremely negative for any kind of trade. Many observers noted that this waterway was passable only during rainy season; otherwise, any boat drawing more than two feet found it impassable. Furthermore, a large number of low bridges along the whole waterway prevented large boats from passing underneath them.24 More than anything else, time was a fatal disadvantage for trade. In the 1860s, a few British geologists had explored these inland routes all the way from Canton to

28

Feeding the City of Gourmets

Hankow crossing the Nanling Mountains. One reported that the length of the waterway was twelve hundred miles, and 63 days were required to make the journey. Another reported that traveling the Zheling Pass route took 39 days from Canton to Hankow.25 .  .  . In sum, the bottom line for merchants was clear. They could not make a tangible profit using the mountainous routes for long-distance grain trade. The mountain paths were off limits to heavy-load transportation because of their physical condition. The waterway detour might have allowed heavyload cargos, but it took twice as much time. Even before the industrial age, time was extremely valuable for commerce. In particular, the rice trade required the careful calculation of many conditions because it was extremely time-sensitive. In fact, in the grain trade, nothing was more important than the timely arrival of grain at its destination. Spending too much time in transportation meant deterioration in the quality of the rice, not to mention that customers might be driven to the brink of starvation. In order to raise market value, rice had to be well husked, yet it could easily become rotten unless it was well preserved. Moreover, the high temperatures and high humidity of southern China had to be seriously considered for the successful shipping of such a perishable commodity. Even if the rice did not spoil outright at the departure point, its exposure to moisture and open air en route oftentimes triggered fermentation and deterioration. What concerned Qing granary officials was not so much procuring a certain quantity of rice as maintaining a certain quality of rice. Grain preservation was no less important than grain availability.26 Likewise, rice merchants had to struggle to keep rice fresh under high humidity. Although rice production was obviously limited in the province, long-distance rice trade over the mountains was by no means profitable for Canton’s rice trade. Thus, neither Jiangxi nor Hunan could supplement the rice insufficiency in Pearl River Delta. To the Cantonese, rice was overwhelmingly a maritime commodity. This was primarily the result of geography. Yet it was the Cantonese themselves who turned that misfortune into a blessing.

Canton’s Maritime Trade Network Faced with geographic barriers to the north beyond the Nanling mountain ranges, Canton developed much stronger ties with overseas communities throughout the South China Sea. To many Cantonese, overseas trade and migration over the South China Sea simply meant, in G. William Skinner’s words, “a southward extension of coastal shipping.”27 Trading across the South China Sea was not obviously different from doing business with

Political Economy of the Pearl River Delta

29

the rest of China in the north. Even communication with the rest of China was done much more easily and efficiently by sea than through the mountain paths. Shipping rice from the port cities in the lower Yangzi areas such as Wuhu and Zhenjiang by sea was much cheaper than the ground trade over the mountain passes. Furthermore, maritime commercial networks that the Cantonese fabricated meant more than a geographical advantage. By the turn of the twentieth century, over 7 million natives of Guangdong province had migrated to and settled in Southeast Asia, Japan, and the Americas. In the 1930s when that number increased to 12 million, reportedly 60 percent of all overseas Chinese came originally from this province. Notably, the rural districts of the Pearl River Delta were major departure points for migrants.28 Most emigrants did not cut relationships with their family members in native towns; rather, in many cases they had migrated to support family members back in their hometowns. The remittances that overseas Chinese sent to their family members became indispensable to the local economy, too. One native account noted: “Roughly seven or eight people out of ten in each county of Guangzhou prefecture emigrated overseas. The total value of money that they remitted to family and clan members was 10 to 20 million.”29 Needless to say, Canton was the hub for this network of relationships, and incessant emigration and remigration were normal aspects of Cantonese life. In the 1910s, annual average number of emigrants was in the 60,000s, with remigrants in the 80,000s, in Hong Kong, Canton, and many districts in the Pearl River Delta.30 In addition, the British colony of Hong Kong, located 90 miles to the south, played an important role in linking Canton with the Southeast Asian market.31 Having one of the largest port cities in China within a measurable distance from Canton proved a great advantage for Canton’s economy. In the politically turbulent years of the late-Qing and early-Republican transition, Hong Kong also provided a haven for many Cantonese merchants. They moved to and invested in the British colony; yet these same merchants never cut their commercial connections with Canton.32 The demarcation of national borders never interrupted the two cities’ interactions. The flow of cash, goods, contraband, and people never ceased, all of these incessantly “plying along the rivers in all directions” in the Pearl River.33 Indeed, the constant migratory flow in and out of the city was the most remarkable aspect of Canton. Canton did not have officially declared boundaries until the Municipal Council was established in 1918, although the city walls and natural creeks had marked out the functional boundaries of the city.34 Because of the continuous flow of population it was extremely difficult to count Canton’s urban population precisely. The China Maritime Customs Office estimated the rapid population change in the first decade of the century to be 1.5 million people. But, the report acknowledged,

30

Feeding the City of Gourmets

“it would not be unreasonable even to double that estimate, as the yearly movement of passengers alone, in and out, averages three-quarters of a million.”35 To estimate the real population in terms of demand for food, one must take Canton’s suburban population into account, as the majority relied on sericulture, silk filatures, and other handicraft industries instead of rice cultivation for their livelihood. For example, one social survey taken in the 1930s estimated that 840,000 people in Shunde County and one million in Nanhai County were engaged in non-foodstuff production. This survey concluded that more than 3 million people, including Canton and the Silk Districts, relied for their food supplies on the Canton rice market.36 In short, the coexistence of commercial prosperity and rice insufficiency was primarily preconditioned on geography: the mountains, rivers, and sea. Yet geography by itself was nothing more than a condition. How did the local actors respond to such circumstances and secure a route for their food supply? How did the Cantonese write the history of their rice supply? To better understand the history of the Cantonese rice supply, we have to begin with the origins of the interprovincial rice trade between Guangxi and Guangdong.

Getting Guangxi Rice to Guangdong The record of Canton’s external rice supplies traced back to the eighteenth century—a century often praised as the Prosperous Age (shengshi)—during which the Qing empire experienced both a growing economy and social stability. Cash-cropping and market specialization in both rural and urban sectors led to this century-long prosperity that the world admired. As the economic core of the region “South of the Mountains,” Canton and the surrounding Pearl River Delta claimed the second largest regional economy in the empire after the Jiangnan region; the population engaged in commercial and urban sectors was estimated to be about 2 million in Canton and the Pearl River Delta, while its counterpart in the Jiangnan region was between 3 and 4 million.37 To sustain the urban population, an interprovincial grain trade developed widely throughout the empire. Given the geographical conditions, Guangxi supplied grain through the West River to the Pearl River Delta, while middle-Yangzi provinces such as Hubei and Hunan became the major grain supplier for the Jiangnan population.38 To late imperial officials in Guangdong, Guangxi was indeed a reliable rice basket. The first account of interprovincial rice shipping is found in the records of the Qing government granary management. To lower soaring rice prices in Canton, in spring 1727 the governor-general of Liangguang (that is, “the two Guangs,” Guangdong and Guangxi), Kong Yuxun, was permitted by the court to transfer 300,000 shi of grain from Guangxi’s

Political Economy of the Pearl River Delta

31

ever-normal granaries (changpingcang) to Canton granaries. After its prompt arrival, Kong stored four-fifths of the grain in Canton’s provincial granary and the remaining fifth in a prefectural granary.39 After­wards, Guangxi became the key rice supplier for the increasingly urban population of Canton. By the 1750s, Canton’s provincial granaries stored double the reserves that they had had thirty years earlier. Furthermore, a special decision was made in 1759. Guangxi’s Governor E Bao decided to reserve 100,000 shi of Guangxi rice annually, about 8 percent of the Guangxi granary reserve. He called this special reserve the “Guangxi Grain Reserved for Guangdong” (Beidonggu).40 Maintaining the lifeline for a population of millions was the cardinal objective of local officials. A series of official efforts to ship Guangxi rice to Guangdong was no doubt a praiseworthy event. The nineteenth-century compilers of the “statecraft school” (jingshi) carefully recorded these cases of interprovincial rice shipments between Guangxi and Guangdong and extolled them as a role model for famine relief (huangzheng).41 The much-praised Qing granary management in Guangxi and Guangdong also gave rise to a bustling private rice trade. During the Qianlong reign (1736–1796) alone, the private trade in rice was at least four times larger than the government-managed granary system.42 Throughout the West River and as far away as about 150 miles from Canton, hundreds of local merchants ran the interprovincial rice trade. For example, shortly after arriving in Canton as the new governor-general of Liangguang in the spring of 1757, Chen Hongmou soon noticed that Canton’s market price for rice depended upon how many rice cargos arrived from Guangxi. Chen directed his officials in Guangxi to encourage this interprovincial trade.43 A provincial division of labor existed, too. A network of Guangxi merchants’ businesses spread throughout the border districts of Guilin, Pingle, Wuzhou, and Xunzhou, collecting rice from peasants; the Guangdong merchants mostly managed the wholesaling and redistribution of the rice to the many districts in the delta. Rice vessels from throughout the delta flocked into Canton to purchase Guangxi rice. Intense competition in the market often took place. Local authorities promulgated a new registration system in 1825: “all the merchants from the East River have to be registered in Panyu County, and all those from the West River have to be registered in Nanhai County. Otherwise, they cannot transship Guangxi rice from Canton.”44 Indeed, the trade in Guangxi rice along the West River became the most profitable enterprise in eighteenth-century south China. Even in the early twentieth century, Guangxi rice (ximi or guimi) was one of the most common rice breeds found in the Canton rice market.45 A number of success stories of family businesses were told and retold in local history and folklore. One about Lin Changshi’s Linbaochang was exemplary. Lin was a

32

Feeding the City of Gourmets

native of Panyu, Guangdong. His father, Lin Shijing, and his whole family had moved to Gui County in Guangxi in 1715, and came to engage in the West River trade, dealing in fabric, tea, and other goods between Gui County and Canton. When the Pearl River Delta was struck by famine in 1754, the year turned out to be one of good fortune for the Lin family. Despite that year being the first time Lin Changshi ever shipped Guangxi rice to Canton, he made a great profit. Shortly afterwards, the Lin family changed its major business to rice trading. When his son Lin Damao succeeded him in handling the family business, he named the wholesale trading firm Linbaochang. Their firm usually shipped cargos of rice, a hundred thousand jin at a time. Soon the family nearly monopolized the wholesale trade in grain and handicrafts between Canton and their county. The Lin family’s fame persisted in the county, even down to the early 1960s, when local historical documents were collected. Along with Lin family’s reputation, the phrase “Guangxi rice being shipped to Canton (Ximi dongyun)” was well-known in Guangxi.46 blocking the river

However, the role played by West River basin of Guangxi province as a source for feeding the population of the Pearl River Delta was by no means everlasting. Dealing with a rice trade that crossed a number of jurisdictions was no easy task for local Qing authorities. Caring about people’s subsistence was no doubt the Qing local officials’ priority, yet it was unlikely to go beyond an official’s own jurisdiction. Feeding the population of another jurisdiction was not as important as feeding those in one’s own district. As a matter of fact, by restricting outflows of rice beyond their jurisdictional boundaries officials could help secure grain for the population of their own jurisdiction. For commoners living in any given locality, likewise, nothing produced more anxiety than shipping rice out of their local boundaries. As a result, when a local population blockaded rice cargos being shipped to external regions, Qing local officials were reluctant to stop them. The local authorities’ dilemma was inevitable, as regional food supplies depended more and more on the inter-regional rice trade. Thus, there were many cases of “blockading rice outflows” (edi) throughout the eighteenth century.47 From the viewpoint of Guangxi’s local officials, preparing the extra rice reserves for Guangdong became a troublesome task. By the 1820s, these officials could no longer accede to Guangdong’s everlasting demands for Guangxi rice. Throughout the upper and middle sections of the West River, mostly in Wuzhou, Naning, and Gui counties, there were many feuds between Cantonese rice merchants, looking for “profiteering,” and local peasants, extremely concerned about local rice shortages; often, the feuds

Political Economy of the Pearl River Delta

33

resulted in “blocking the river” (fengjiang).48 In the worst cases, local officials—not the local populace—would blockade rice exports to retain rice in their own jurisdictions. In an unidentified year of the early Daoguang reign (1820–1850), for example, local Gui county officials blockaded rice cargos destined for Canton, demanding that the Cantonese rice traders pay them 1,400 liang to pass. Not until payment was received did they allow the ships to continue to Canton.49 Perhaps this event was the harbinger of growing tensions between officials of the two provinces. To avoid further collision, both sides reached a compromise. Guangxi would reduce the amount of Guangxi Grain Reserved for Guangdong to its minimum, precisely 100,000 shi, but only in the extreme case of a famine in Guangdong. Otherwise, Guangxi would no longer be obliged to set aside extra grain for Guangdong. In local accounts in Canton, however, this compromise was recorded as “the behavior of non-virtuous rulers” (bazi zhi suo).50

The Debut of Foreign Rice The emergence of a new trade route for foreign rice put an end to these controversies. Guangxi officials ultimately requested the abolition of Beidonggu, when they realized that the rice requirements of Guangdong could be met by rice imports from overseas.51 While trading rice with Guangxi was becoming more and more troublesome, Guangdong officials in a number of cases were successful in importing foreign rice, which relieved local rice shortages. In 1786, it was recorded that Mu Tenge, the director ( ­jiandu) of Canton customs (Yuehaiguan), allowed “foreign merchants to purchase rice from Luzon Island (Xiao Lüsong) in the Philippines and sell it in Canton without being taxed.” Twenty years later, in 1806, A Kedang, the new director, suggested that “all tax on foreign ships would be suspended, as long as they ship rice to Canton.” At the same time, he noted that Luzon island would be a regular rice supplier for Canton, because Luzon was located “just south of Taiwan and it took only six to seven days to come to Canton.”52 If Guangxi rice shipping was emblematic of the eighteenth-century interprovincial rice trade, the emergence of the ­foreign-rice trade was a hallmark of the nineteenth century. Historical documents indicate that the earliest case of foreign-rice imports date back to the 1720s, but this had been an exceptional case, aimed only at temporary famine relief in the coastal area.53 It was in the 1820s, a decade when controversies with Guangxi province reached a peak, that Canton officials begin to take foreign-rice trade seriously as a regular provisioning route.54 In the decline of the Guangxi rice trade and the rise of the trade in foreign rice, the most significant figure was Ruan Yuan, Liangguang governor-­ general (his term in Canton, 1817–1826), who paved the way for foreign-rice

34

Feeding the City of Gourmets

trade on a substantial scale. When Ruan arrived in Canton in 1817, it was the height of the rice debates with Guangxi. To stabilize local food supplies, Ruan stopped these unproductive controversies with Guangxi and eased the restrictive rules against trading foodstuffs of foreign origin. In order to encourage the foreign-rice trade, he eliminated all surcharges that discouraged the business. What Ruan wanted was not to devise a temporary ­measure to supplement local rice shortages; rather, he was determined to create a sustainable provisioning route for Canton. Above all, Ruan did not care who traded in foreign rice; he warned local functionaries not to harass rice traders, whoever they were. Ruan declared the following in the third lunar month of 1824: Until recently, those barbarians [who carried foreign rice to Canton] had no choice but to return [to their own countries] without carrying any [Chinese] goods, while risking their lives and businesses under winds and tides. They could not make any profit at all. Hence few foreign ships carrying rice came to Canton. From now on, we will distinguish foreign trade ships especially shipping rice from those carrying any goods but rice. When the former enter Canton, we will exempt them from entrance fees and taxes, and allow them to register and report the exact amount of rice. When they leave, we will allow them to export Chinese goods. But they must be differentiated from other foreign vessels (those not carrying rice cargo), on which we should levy taxes.55

Thereafter, foreign-rice vessels ceaselessly rushed to Canton and supplemented rice supplies in the Pearl River Delta. The compiler of Ruan Yuan’s chronological biography added: “Counting the number of vessels was as difficult as counting a fish’s scales.”56 From the viewpoint of the compilers of local history, Ruan Yuan’s encouragement of foreign rice was no doubt praiseworthy. Even after he left Canton, Ruan Yuan’s new policy was praised again and again as the finest example of “virtuous governing” (dezheng).57 To the local populace, Ruan Yuan’s decision-making was perhaps more than virtuous governing. From the perspective of local merchants, nothing seemed more attractive than the foreign-rice trade. There was no reason for Cantonese merchants to wait for foreigners to bring rice to their ports. When the province faced a series of riots and rebellions in the mid-nineteenth century, local authorities encouraged local merchants to sail abroad and import foreign rice. A dearth of local rice often turned into a great commercial opportunity; many merchants sailed southward, usually destined for Annam, at their own expense. The only thing that the Cantonese merchants had to do after coming back home was “report the precise amount of rice they sold to their magistrates.” No doubt, the foreign rice that they brought “enabled the prices of rice to come down to normal prices.”58

Political Economy of the Pearl River Delta

35

the “food of guangdong” and its tax-free legacy

Within a few decades, this foreign rice became regarded as the very “food of Guangdong” (Yueshi), in the eyes of local notables. Zhang Weiping (1780–1859), a renowned poet and one of the founding directors of the Xuehai tang, a local academy that Ruan Yuan established, noted that the “food of Guangdong” consisted of three different kinds of rice: Guangdong rice, Guangxi rice, and foreign rice. Zhang wrote: If fewer vessels arrived due to floods or droughts in Guangxi, then the rice price in Guangdong rose and people became furious. Recently, however, people experience no anxiety, because of foreign rice. It could be shipped to Guangdong in a couple of days from overseas under sea winds, and Guangdong could shortly be fed. In a year of scarcity or even when struck by a famine, we do not have to worry. This is the way that heaven loves Guangdong people. If Dongmi (Guangdong rice) is not sufficient, Ximi (Guangxi rice) can supplement it; if Ximi is not sufficient, yangmi (foreign rice) can do it. So government officials follow heaven’s intention and let the people’s spirits flow.59

Zhang’s account may seem exaggerated. However, given the fact of Ruan Yuan’s cultural and intellectual influence over the Cantonese literati throughout the nineteenth century, it is no surprise to see such strong praise for Ruan and his encouragement of the foreign-rice trade.60 To be sure, such an exaggeration was not just a matter of rhetoric. The decades of the mid-nineteenth century were the most disastrous in the history of imperial China, particularly in the south. Wars and rebellions profoundly devastated the social order. Omnipresent bandits and pirates often cut off the waterways. The trade routes for Guangxi rice declined, while the government’s management of granaries broke down.61 Meanwhile, the foreignrice trade became a more reliable means of providing food for Canton. One more remarkable aspect that many local accounts illuminated in their praise of Ruan Yuan and his facilitation of the foreign-rice trade was tax exemption. Luo Bingzhang, a prominent local literatus, remarked: Former Grand Secretary Ruan, the Liangguang governor-general, allowed foreign merchants to ship foreign rice to sell in Canton, after investigating the actual conditions of the province and observing the real situation of coastal districts. Tax was suspended and local functionaries never bothered this enterprise at all. Afterward, foreign rice was imported to Canton every year; it has continued for a few decades already. Whenever the price of rice rises in Canton, the number of local people who eat foreign rice increases.62

In the context of the reconstruction after the Taiping rebellion, maintaining the tradition of foreign-rice trade as duty-free was more important

36

Feeding the City of Gourmets

than anything else. During and after the rebellions, local authorities as well as gentry-led militia groups needed tremendous amounts of new revenues to rebuild. Imposing a provincial transit pass (lijin) and devising miscellaneous surcharges (juan) were widely used practices throughout the empire, particularly in the southern provinces where major battles with rebels had taken place. After the rebellions ended, Canton’s foreign-rice trade did not take long to recover its prosperity. Even so, local authorities never levied taxes. Ruan Yuan’s original intention had been to remain tax-free. In his “Food of Guangdong,” Zhang Weiping noted: For this, [Ruan Yuan] never built check points [for tax], and never allowed Yamen runners to levy sub-taxes. Doing so let the grain ships and rice vessels come to Guangdong ceaselessly. This was the way of good governing to prepare for famine; this was the fundamental plan for preventing crime. This was also the virtuous way and the fine intention for bringing peace to Guangdong.63

How did local officials restrain themselves from the natural temptation to tax such an alluring resource as foreign rice? Perhaps they still naively believed in the rule of “virtuousness.” Or perhaps they carefully calculated the effect of the duty-free policy on the public; in such a chaotic situation, nothing was better at winning popular support than to pretend to be “virtuous.” Or perhaps they saw that foreign rice was already internalized as the “food of Guangdong” and should not be taxed because neither dongmi (Guangdong rice) nor ximi (Guangxi rice) had ever been taxed. Whatever the real rationale was, there is no doubt that duty-free foreign rice became a local tradition for a generation of the Cantonese. Indeed, the exemption of food supplies from taxes is a remarkable feature in the local history of Guangdong. The Panyu County Gazetteer provides an exemplary local notable (renwu), Xu Hao, who consolidated the tradition of the duty-free rice supply. Xu Hao studied hard in the ­Xuhaitang and helped the Nanhai county magistrate as an assistant at the age of eighteen. When the Qing army and militia recaptured Canton from the Red Turban Rebels, all the counties followed Xu’s advice, because Xu was, in Steven B. Miles’ words, regarded as the leading figure of Canton’s “Reconstruction” generation.64 But the military cost was enormous. The vice-­ censor-in-chief (Fudouyushi), Yan Duanshu, decided to levy rice surcharges for military needs. Xu fiercely argued against this new surcharge. Xu’s rationale was as follows: “Cantonese food relies upon external supplies, but the local population may number the most in southeastern China. If new taxes are levied on the rice trade, rice merchants will never take care of the local population.” In the end, Xu’s appeal won; taxes on rice and grain were not levied. Afterwards, the local population acclaimed Xu’s contribution to society as not having simply been limited to quelling rebellions.65 As

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37

will be discussed in Part Two, Cantonese rice merchants claimed the timehonored tradition of rice being tax-free when the Guomindang imposed a foreign-rice tax in the 1930s. .  .  . By the late nineteenth century, the import of foreign rice had become an indispensable part of Cantonese economy and society. The maritime integration was profoundly defined by geographical conditions “South of the Mountains.” The Pearl River Delta was suitable for the commercialization of the silk industry and overseas trade, while communication with the northern hinterlands was severely handicapped. However, this is not to say that Canton’s rice trade routes were completely determined by geographical conditions. They were rather shaped and reshaped by the local inhabitants’ continual efforts to adapt to the environment and to find sustainable rice-supplying routes. During the eighteenth century, sericulture and the silk industry profoundly transformed the social landscape of the Pearl River Delta, particularly in the Silk Districts surrounding Canton. In becoming a workforce for the new commercial sectors, the local population abandoned rice cultivation. With Guangxi rice trade along the West River, the local Qing authorities were able to supplement the rice insufficiency that stemmed from the local commercialization. Yet Guangxi was not an everlasting rice supplier for the Cantonese. As Guangxi rice supplies dried up by the early nineteenth century, Cantonese had to secure reliable rice trade routes beyond the region called South of the Mountains. Against this backdrop, foreign rice became an indissoluble part of local food consumption. Needless to say, the successful management of foreignrice imports was deemed praiseworthy for many reasons. From Ruan Yuan to the new generation of local notables, rice was not only a subject of economic calculus but also a matter of “virtuous governing” that the Confucian elite had to uphold. At the same time, the foreign-rice trade promised potential economic fortune, because rice was a basic necessity for millions. How did Cantonese rice merchants develop this long-distance rice trade into a viable business? Why did they import rice from such faraway places as Saigon? What happened to the import of rice from Wuhu and Zhenjiang in the lower Yangzi area? What did the Cantonese rice trade look like from the perspective of rice consumers?

2

The Organization of Rice Supplies in Canton the formation of the cantonese provisioning networks for consumer satisfaction

Canton residents’ day-to-day patterns of rice consumption reflected the structural complexity of the Pearl River Delta economy, with the coexistence of rice shortages and commercial prosperity. By the turn of the twentieth century, Canton came to need much greater external supplies of rice, especially foreign-rice imports from Southeast Asia. As the city depended more and more on maritime trade for its rice supplies, the security of the food supply within the city became uncertain and unpredictable. Above all, the Canton rice market had to do more than simply supply foodstuffs to the urban population of Canton. It also acted as the food-distributing center for the rural population in the Silk District, where most of the residents engaged in commercial agriculture and handicraft industries rather than rice cultivation. In other words, even the rural population had to rely on the urban rice market for their food supplies. However, this is not to say that Canton was always caught up in a subsistence crisis. On the contrary, the prosperity of Canton’s commerce and trade made it possible to afford a ceaseless supply of rice. Canton was a great marketplace into which a wide range of rice varieties poured, and within which urban consumers could enjoy the unique local food culture. While Cantonese rice merchants tried to diversify the routes for rice supplies to supplement a provincial-rice insufficiency, market conditions were created in which there were increased opportunities for Canton rice consumers to try out and compare different qualities of rice. In short, reliance upon external supplies gave rise to an unintended consequence: more rice varieties in the market and more choices for consumers. In addition to personal budgetary constraint, therefore, the consumers’ satisfaction with rice quality became an important factor in the marketability of rice. To be sure, rice prices were extremely erratic, due to changing inter-

Provisioning Networks for Consumer Satisfaction

39

national and local market conditions. Yet swings between plenty and scarcity were taken for granted as a feature of daily life in Canton. Occasional rice shortages, seasonal rice-price inflation, and the necessity to import rice from abroad all became accepted elements of Canton’s commercial world. In the Canton rice market, various kinds of rice from different geographical origins competed with one another. Some kinds of rice won consumer popularity, while others were doomed to failure. By the 1910s, foreign-rice imports that arrived in Canton via Hong Kong had come to dominate the market, while domestic-rice imports from the lower Yangzi area declined. In stark contrast to the great concern about rice insufficiency locally, food variety remarkably characterized the cultural and social landscape of the city. Why was the foreign-rice trade so successful? How did merchants who traded in foreign rice come to dominate the Canton rice market? Does rice insufficiency alone explain all of this? To answer these questions, this chapter examines Canton’s rice trade networks, which cut across national borders, and it analyzes the consumption of rice from the viewpoint of rice consumers. Rather than just focusing on insufficiency, this chapter also sheds new light on the issues of rice quality and consumer preference. A purely quantitative analysis cannot explain the paradoxical coexistence of a rice shortage with a food culture in which the urban residents were provided with ample food choices. As far as rice quality and consumer preference were concerned, Canton was not simply dependent on foreign-rice imports. Rather, this chapter argues, Cantonese consumer demands led to the blossoming of a worldwide rice trade.

Rice in Competition At the turn of the twentieth century, it might have been impossible to obtain statistical precision regarding the Cantonese rice trade. However, people widely believed that the rice production of Guangdong as a whole was not enough to feed the population of the province. In 1899, Tan ­Zhonglin, the governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi, noted that local rice production in Guangdong could supply the population what it needed for only six months out of the year.1 Even in a good harvest, local production was sufficient for no more than ten months’ consumption. In a meager harvest, such as that of 1933, nearly 80 percent of local demand had to be supplemented by foreign-rice imports.2 Under such circumstances, it is no surprise that Cantonese rice merchants sought to diversify their rice suppliers and increasingly imported rice. As early as 1888, an observer at the Canton Customs noted that “the quantities yearly conveyed into the province, both from Saigon and from the north of China, are always very

map 3.  Domestic and international rice trade routes in China. (source: Nōshōmu shō nōmu kyoku, Shina no kome ni kansuru chōsa, 1919)

Provisioning Networks for Consumer Satisfaction

41

considerable.”3 Even in years with normal harvests, reliance upon external rice supplies was by no means a novelty. For Cantonese rice merchants, deciding which types of rice to import was not an easy task. Crop availability varied from season to season. Cargo ship availability also varied from month to month. Market conditions on both the supplier and the consumer sides were extremely elastic and unpredictable. Even so, through decades of business experience Cantonese merchants developed two major rice trade routes. The first was a southern route from French Indochina and Siam through the Hong Kong rice market. The second was a northern route from the lower Yangzi region, coming mostly from Wuhu and other commercial ports via Shanghai.4 Since Guangxi could no longer provide sufficient rice to supplement Guangdong’s food needs, the burgeoning steamship service along the China coast and connecting Southeast Asian entrepôts was called on to help shape new rice trade routes.5 A map made in the 1910s by Japanese observers illustrates the patterns of Canton’s rice trade (Map 3). the southern rice trade route

As China’s earliest treaty port, Canton had comparative advantages in the southern rice trade route. The number of passengers and volume of cargo in steamer service between Canton and commercial ports such as Hong Kong, Macao, and others in Southeast Asia was rapidly increasing. Regular steamer service to many Southeast Asian entrepôts flourished in the 1910s. Domestic lines between Canton and the lower Yangzi cities ran only on semi-regular schedules, however.6 Canton’s proximity to Hong Kong and Southeast Asian ports enabled the rapid success of Canton’s foreign-rice trade. Rice was the staple food for the Chinese population in Hong Kong as well, but only a small amount of the rice shipped there was consumed by its residents; the great majority was bound for other destinations, such as Canton and the other treaty ports in southern China.7 Moreover, Canton’s chronic rice shortages and subsequent demands for external supplies of rice galvanized the rice business of Hong Kong. The volume of rice trade between Hong Kong and Canton was approximately equal to Hong Kong’s rice trade with the rest of the world. In one year alone, 1914, Hong Kong re-exported a total of 10 million piculs (dan) of rice abroad. Allowing 0.4 million for local consumption, 4.6 million piculs went to Canton, while the remaining 5.4 million piculs were shipped to many foreign and Chinese ports. In the 1930s, Canton and the Silk Districts consumed about 40 percent of the foreign-rice imports shipped from Hong Kong.8 In addition to geographical proximity, Cantonese rice merchants had many advantages in the rice trade with Hong Kong. First, Hong Kong’s

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excellent transoceanic harbor facilities kept Cantonese merchants from having to build equivalent harbor facilities in Canton. Once oceangoing rice cargo steamships arrived in Hong Kong from Southeast Asian ports, buyers who were dispatched from Canton rice firms could make deals on the spot. Thereafter, the bulk of the rice shipment had to be sorted and shipped to Canton in numerous small-scale junks. This transfer of cargo to junks in Hong Kong saved time and assured on-time delivery to the Canton rice market, since inner-water navigation of the 83 miles to Canton on the Pearl River took no more than a night.9 Shipping by junk also allayed rice merchants’ anxiety over cargo availability. Between 1891 and 1935, more than a thousand shipping junks registered at the Kowloon Customs Station and operated on this trade route. Of course, many more unregistered junks were engaged in smuggling between Canton and Hong Kong.10 Setting aside this illegal trade, the magnitude of the foreign-rice trade between the two cities was remarkable. Canton’s trade with Hong Kong represented more than 65 percent of the total trade in Guangdong province for the three decades between 1908 and 1937.11 Foreign rice was the single largest commodity in this trade. As Table 1 illustrates, the volume of foreign-rice imports between Hong Kong and Guangdong dwarfed that of other commodities. Hong Kong’s commercial power tremendously facilitated Canton’s foreign-rice trade as well. The Hong Kong dollar (gangbi) as the most powerful currency in the region dominated the Cantonese mercantile community. In particular, Cantonese wholesalers who dealt primarily with various imported items from Hong Kong favored the Hong Kong dollar, which was the most reliable transaction medium. In the 1910s, more than 90 percent of Canton trade was paid in Hong Kong dollars, while only 1 percent was paid with local currencies or Guangdong province notes.12 The Hong Kong dollar not only “dominated foreign imports and exports” but also served as the most reliable “medium of remittance in foreign currencies and for telegraphic transfers to Chinese treaty ports” in Canton.13 However, this table 1 Value of foreign trade in Guangdong province, 1927–1937 (annual averages, in thousand yuan) Export

Raw Silk Silk embroidery Ore Silk fabrics Vegetables

Import

35,153 9,283 6,412 5,545 5,485

Foreign rice Fuel Metal Chemical material Sugar

source: “Guangdong de shangye maoyi,” 41.

62,151 12,366 12,774 11,491 9,681

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is not to say that Canton was dependent on Hong Kong’s economic hegemony. As much as Canton relied on the trade with Hong Kong for its rice supply, Hong Kong also depended on the sustainable market in Canton. rice experts and rice expertise

At the centerpiece of the foreign-rice trade’s success was the fact that rice merchants carefully developed their business expertise to provide the consumer public with the most popular varieties of rice. Cantonese rice firms usually operated liaison offices in Hong Kong and could dispatch buyers to make deals on the spot (zhu Gang maishou). Although hundreds of Chinese and foreign buyers were competing for business in the Hong Kong rice market, the largest and most powerful buyers in this market were the Cantonese buyers.14 When rice shipments arrived from Southeast Asian ports, Hong Kong’s wholesale sellers started bargaining with buyers. A deal was usually made by mutual agreement after patient negotiation. The largest deals were usually made with Cantonese buyers. In this merchant community, nothing was more important than face-to-face intimacy. As the largest customers, Cantonese buyers were especially famous for wholesale price bidding, and some of them gained individual reputations. These well-known figures were influential even when a deal was not made, for then neither sellers nor buyers would be able to complete the transaction. Once such a feud began, only the most renowned and experienced buyer could act as an arbitrator and force traders to make a deal, by dint of his reputation (shengyu). His reputation had to be respected, and both buyers and sellers were obliged to accept his arbitration. Such men of influence would usually come from one of the biggest Cantonese rice firms.15 A noteworthy commercial custom in price negotiation in this market was called jianggu (literally, negotiating about the bygone). Even after a deal was made and all the shipping details were cleared, there was a lastminute chance for the buyers to adjust the price slightly. In contrast to regular price dealing, in which buyers could adjust their bidding prices collectively, this negotiation depended almost entirely upon one’s individual reputation and dealing skill. The Hong Kong resellers provided the chance for jianggu to only a few of the most trustworthy buyers. In the rice ­traders’ world, only a few prominent buyers (maishou zhi jiechu zhe) were allowed to make these exceptional deals, and the best one of them was lauded as the expert (nengshou).16 Needless to say, this prominent expert was usually associated with one of the Cantonese buyers. No doubt, these rice experts and their practical knowledge were far from the standards of modern expertise. They may have had little formal education in either traditional Chinese classics or Western knowledge. However, they were still

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the key players who kept Canton’s local rice supplies connected to the Southeast Asian rice trade, and they brought about great wealth in the transnational rice trade. the northern rice trade route

In contrast to the southern trade route, the formation of the northern rice trade route happened quite late. Up until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when steamship lines opened, neither northern rice nor Yangzi rice was known to Canton residents. Only after revolutionary changes took place in the technology of transportation and communication in China did this change in the commercial geography of rice begin to occur. The city of Wuhu, opened as a new treaty port in Anhui province in 1877, became the largest rice-exporting entrepôt of the lower Yangzi area. While searching for external rice suppliers, Cantonese merchants discovered a new rice supplier in Wuhu. Although Zhenjiang, Changshu, Shanghai, and Nanjing were also large rice markets in that region, those cities had to feed regional populations and they could not afford to export rice surpluses to external markets.17 Steamship cargo service, just recently introduced to China, enabled the growth of an unprecedented long-distance rice trade from the small market town of Wuhu. In the following years, this town was quickly transformed into a boom town; outside merchants poured into Wuhu and shipped huge volumes of rice to many coastal cities. Soon, the long-distance rice trade led by the Cantonese merchants became Wuhu’s primary business.18 When a Customs Office opened at Wuhu in 1885, its Annual Report noted that “a few years ago the native rice hongs of this port were few,” but “the influence of past successes and wider competition have roused them to more extensive operations and to a more systematic method in their mercantile dealings.”19 However, had not the Cantonese merchants rushed into Wuhu and developed the rice trade, such a success story might not have been told. With their complete familiarity with coastal navigation and their experience in various trades, Cantonese merchants who settled in Shanghai made way for a new enterprise, chartering steamships in Shanghai and shipping Wuhu rice to Canton. By the 1880s, Canton had become the largest customer for the Wuhu rice business. Among the four biggest merchant guilds (bang) that dominated the Wuhu rice enterprise, the Cantonese guild (Guangdongbang) was the most powerful.20 What brought such conspicuous success to Cantonese merchants in Wuhu? The most important factor for Cantonese dominance in the Wuhu rice trade was Shanghai, where they had already established commercial networks and trade facilities. According to the Annual Report of Wuhu

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Customs in 1884, “the [rice] business is principally in the hands of three Cantonese firms, which make contracts with the various steamer companies on the best terms obtaining during the period when the rice market is at its height; during the reminder of the year they are satisfied to ship by river steamers to Shanghai, where the rice is transferred to steamers for Canton.”21 To be sure, Shanghai was indispensable to the success of the Wuhu rice trade. Shanghai’s geographic proximity made up for Wuhu’s lack of trade facilities. Occasionally, because of drastic changes in external market demands, Wuhu rice could not find external buyers, and a large volume of rice had to be stockpiled and devalued. Wuhu’s underdeveloped warehouses and harbor facilities made the situation untenable. Yet this turned into a great fortune for Cantonese rice merchants residing in Shanghai. They bought up Wuhu rice in great amounts at a low price and resold it in Canton. Moreover, there was no direct steamer service between Wuhu and Canton. Any vessels carrying Wuhu rice to Canton had to stop at Shanghai for transfer to oceangoing vessels.22 In this respect, Shanghai was the equivalent of Hong Kong for the “northern route” rice trade. canton’s comparative advantage

However, Shanghai did not exert as great an influence as Hong Kong on Canton’s rice supply, simply because it was too far from Canton. Canton and Hong Kong were so close to the Southeast Asian rice market that Shanghai could not find any geographic advantage. Saigon, for example, was 930 miles from Hong Kong, while Shanghai was 850 miles away.23 Unless traders chartered an oceangoing steamship, Wuhu rice could not be brought to Canton. There were more conditions to be considered: seasonal crop availability in Wuhu, cargo ship availability in Shanghai, and the frequently changing seasonal demands of Canton. Whereas countless junks linked Canton with Hong Kong, just a few irregular steamships offered service from Shanghai to Canton. The arrival of Wuhu rice at Canton therefore happened on a less regular basis than the arrival of foreign rice from Hong Kong. If the timely arrival of rice to the market could not be assured, the marketability of the rice would be seriously damaged. In addition, there was little cultural affinity between Shanghai and Canton. Consistent, face-to-face acquaintances were not as developed between the Shanghai and the Canton rice merchant communities. Though Cantonese merchants residing in Shanghai (zhu Hu Yueshang) made deals and shipped Wuhu rice from Wuhu to Shanghai, and then from Shanghai to Canton, they could not maintain communications as well as Cantonese buyers could on-site in Hong Kong.

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The fatal disadvantage for the Wuhu-Canton rice trade was the difficulty in checking rice quality. Whereas the quality of Southeast Asian rice could be checked directly by the Cantonese buyers (zhu Gang maishou) in the Hong Kong rice market, such checking was impossible with Wuhu rice. The Canton rice firms could have sent a reliable buyer to Wuhu or Shanghai, but doing so would have cost time and money. And the firms could have hired agents on-site to check the quality of Wuhu rice, but they would have been less trustworthy than were the zhu Gang maishou. If the Wuhu rice trade was no match for the foreign-rice trade, what happened in the Canton rice market? As we see in Table 2, Wuhu rice and other domestic rice imports could not compete with foreign rice in the Canton rice market. By the 1920s, the marketability of Wuhu rice and other domestic rice imports from the lower Yangzi area had shrunk significantly. The biggest advantage of trade on the southern route was the role of the rice guilds in Hong Kong. In particular, Hong Kong’s facility with wholesaling and warehousing foreign rice dwarfed the capabilities along the northern route. In fact, Hong Kong’s major business was to channel Southeast Asian and Chinese trade, which was known as the “southern and northern trade” (Nanbei hang); the two most prominent guilds in this trade were called Shenzhuang (the Siam rice trade guild) and Annanzhuang (the French Indochina rice guild).24 Wuhu rice imports, on the one hand, had to detour all around the East China Sea, passing through Hong Kong before arriving in Canton. Moreover, these shipments did not enjoy the advantages that Hong Kong provided to the southern route trade. One day in 1902, for example, the port of Canton was congested with 34 steamers “with shipments of rice from Yangzi ports”; these steamers “were subject to several days’ detention, owing to the lack of sufficient storage accommodation.”25 On the other hand, Hong Kong assured punctuality to the southern route trade. Wuhu rice imports took more than 20 days to arrive in Canton, whereas Cantonese merchants would place an order and within table 2 Foreign and domestic rice imports in Canton city, Guangdong province, and nationwide (in millions of Haiguan piculs) 1899–1911 Classification*

F

Nationwide Guangdong Canton

6.0 5.1 4.5

D

4.4 2.3

1912–1921 T

F

9.5 6.8

6.1 5.3 4.9

D

3.0 1.3

1922–1934 T

F

D

T

8.3 6.2

16.3 10.3 8.3

1.6 0.6

11.9 8.9

* F: foreign rice; D: domestic rice; T: total (F + D) ** Canton includes Canton, Kowloon, Gongbei, Jiangmen, and Sanshui. source: Chen Bozhuang, “Guangdong quemi qingxing ji xiangmixiaoyue de xiwang,” 106.

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a week Southeast Asian rice would arrive at its destination. But with Wuhu rice, both the prolonged shipment and the delayed arrival tended to worsen the quality of the rice en route.26 the discriminating canton consumers

How did the Cantonese public respond to Wuhu rice and foreign rice? Indeed, the quality difference between Wuhu and Southeast Asian rice significantly determined their success in the Canton rice market. Since the Southeast Asian rice trade was flourishing around the world, there were well-established classification standards for it. In the world rice market, Burmese and Siamese rice were widely regarded as being of the highest quality, with French Indochinese rice ranked next.27 With their life-long business experience, traders in foreign rice—both Cantonese and Hong Kong merchants—were well aware of these standards and the requirements of the world rice market. Their expertise enabled them to even manipulate rice quality, depending upon the market’s requirements. For example, Hong Kong rice dealers would commonly mix French Indo­chinese rice with Burmese or Siamese rice before it was shipped to Canton; there the quality of this combination rice was still considered high.28 The Wuhu rice traders had no such sophisticated rice quality standards. The reputation of Wuhu rice in the Canton rice market was lower than the lowest-quality varieties of Indochinese rice. Cantonese rice consumers regarded most Wuhu rice and other rice varieties from the lower Yangzi area as belonging to the middle and lower grades (zhongxia deng). In the wholesale market of Canton, Wuhu rice was known to be unpopular with Cantonese city dwellers, but could be resold to the “rural districts” (xiangjian) of the province at a slightly lower price. 29 Although Wuhu rice was an indispensable commodity in the Canton rice market, it was only aimed at the second-tier market in terms of quality. Wuhu rice could not match the foreign-rice varieties preferred by Canton urbanites. However, better-quality rice was not determined simply by the biological characteristics of the different rice varieties; rather, it was created and elaborated as a commodity by commercial activities.

Canton’s South China Sea Rice Trade The success of the foreign-rice trade in Canton cannot be understood without exploring human factors. The scope of understanding should not be limited to the local context, since this success stemmed from a commercial network of Cantonese merchants that spider-webbed throughout the overseas Chinese communities, across the South China Sea. At the

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turn of the twentieth century this thriving trade in Southeast Asian rice was dominated by overseas Chinese merchants. According to a manager in one of the European rice-milling companies in Bangkok, for example, in 1893 the rice mills in Bangkok numbered 23, and of these the Chinese owned 17. Fifteen years later, the number had increased to 49, but Europeans owned only three firms, with Chinese merchants monopolizing the rest of them.30 Chinese merchants were no less dominant in French Indochina than in Bangkok. By the early 1930s in Cochin China, Chinese merchants were predominant, owning half of all the larger rice firms, most of which were located in Cholon, four miles from downtown Saigon.31 To the rice firms in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong was the gateway to China’s market. Yet their transnational business networks represented more than just economic calculation for commercial success; the intertwined trade routes cutting across national borders overlapped the trajectories of many overseas Chinese individuals and their life stories. Perhaps tracing the life stories of some of these merchants will provide a better understanding of the Cantonese foreign-rice trade than reckoning the business conditions of Canton’s southern rice trade route. rice trading magnates

Chinese dominance in the Southeast Asian rice trade was facilitated by their flexibility in transnational management. One exemplary business was Yuanfa hang (also known as Yuen Fat Hong), a Hong Kong-based rice firm whose founder was Gao Manhua. This rice firm was renowned not only in Hong Kong but also in most Southeast Asian port cities, as well as in small towns along the southern Chinese coast. Gao, a native of Chaozhou in easternmost Guangdong, started his first rice trade firm in Hong Kong in the 1870s. Thirty years later, the firm had grown to be the largest Chinese enterprise in Hong Kong.32 Many of his contemporaries observed that he had the “highest reputation amongst Chinese” in Hong Kong and “stood well with foreign bankers and merchants, with whom an extensive business was done.” With the rapid growth of the rice trade in Southeast Asia, many Chinese traders had achieved high reputations, but Gao was considered superb: “no other Chinese firm in Hong Kong could boast as fine a record or enjoy the confidence of greater concerns than this well-managed, progressive, and wealthy company.”33 Gao’s reputation was also high in Bangkok and Singapore. After leaving his hometown and drifting to Hong Kong in the 1870s, Gao found his first job as a local agent, or comprador, for a European steamship company. For many years Gao worked at the Scottish Oriental Steamship Company, which ran the ­Bangkok–Hong Kong steamer line service. Later, based on this job experience, Gao jumped

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into the rice trade, which was just beginning to flourish, and was a quick success. In the 1880s, he built his first rice mill at Bangkok and then built additional mills one by one. By 1908 he owned and operated at least three of the largest rice mills in Bangkok.34 In the Bangkok business world, Gao was well known not merely as a local businessmen but as the forerunner of the transnational rice trade all along the southern coast of China and Southeast Asia. Like many successful overseas Chinese merchants, Gao’s success story continued across generations. Out of Gao’s nine sons, four succeeded in the family business.35 In the 1900s, the eldest son took over the rice trade between Bangkok and Hong Kong as the stem business of the firm, and the others came to manage other enterprises throughout Southeast Asia. Needless to say, the Gao family was well known in Canton, although Canton was not their native town. In Canton dwelt the most valuable customers for the family business. One sales office of the firm was built there, and the Gao family was known not only for its successful entrepreneurship, but also as the major donor for a local merchant guild, the Bayi huiguan (Eight Districts Association).36 However, the Gao family’s presence was ubiquitous throughout Southeast Asia. In the heyday of the family business, for example, one of his sons took charge of the Bangkok business but spent the “greater part of the year at Hong Kong,” while making “periodical visits to the various ports where the business needed his personal supervision.”37 If Yuen Fat Hong was the most renowned business in the Siam rice trade, two firms, Kung Yuen Hong (Gongyuan hang) and Kwong Hang Hing (Guangheng xing), were exemplary in the French Indochinese rice trade.38 Kung Yuen Hong was founded by Liu Xiaochuan (in Cantonese, Lau Siu Cheun) and operated by his family. Liu Xiaochuan was also the leading board member of Hong Kong’s largest charity institution, the Tong Wah Hospital (Donghua yiyuan).39 One more prominent French Indochinese rice firm was Kwang Hang Hing, founded and run by a native of Xinhui county, Chen Ruiqi. The Chen family story was also typical. Chen entered the rice business at the age of 18 when his father, Chen Chengbo, established some rice shops in 1903. In only two years, Chen Ruiqi built several more rice firms in French Indochina. Together with his business, Chen was widely recognized as one of the prominent Chinese businessmen in the Hong Kong business world.40 His death notice in the 1950s acknowledged that his lifelong preeminence stemmed from his trading with French Indochina: Chen “owned two rice firms in Hong Kong and a number of rice mills in many cities in French Indochina,” while running a steamship company.41 Needless to say, Canton was the bullish market for their business.

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Perhaps the cultural geography of maritime China was what provided this locally based transnational business with both geographical mobility and cultural adaptability. Many people’s lives were sustained equally by local knowledge they obtained from their lifetime experience in the maritime trade. For example, Cantonese merchants were the best customers for both Western-style and traditional Chinese banks at the same time. The Western banks most trusted within the overseas Chinese mercantile communities were the Hong Kong–Shanghai Bank, Banque de l’indochine, the ­Chartered Bank, and Chase Manhattan Bank, to name a few. For many Cantonese traders, these foreign banks were reliable financial institutions with which to do business. At the time, the three major currencies being used for foreign trade were the Hong Kong dollar, the Spanish Carolus dollar, and the Mexican dollar, all easily exchangeable in these banks. In addition, remittances to their hometowns also represented a major business between the Chinese merchants and the foreign banks.42 Few were more familiar with such Western bank services than Cantonese merchants in China. This description from one English-language guidebook to Canton business exemplifies the entrepreneurial versatility of the Cantonese mercantile elite: “In the early days, the Cantonese were already gifted with a certain amount of the necessary knowledge and talents of good businessmen, and owing to their frequent commercial intercourse with foreign merchants; they had studied as well as acquired much from the latter of the high state of intellectual and moral development in trades and industries.”43 Chinese traditional banks also complemented the success of the rice enterprise. As a matter of fact, it was often difficult for Chinese merchants to get full financial services from Western banks. For example, in the 1930s in French Indochina, although the Chinese population dominated commerce and trade in the towns of Saigon and Cholon, a Chinese rice merchant needed to get a guarantee from an approved agent before he could obtain credit from a Western bank.44 The Chinese traditional banks in Canton and Hong Kong substantially countered this disadvantage. The traditional banks in southern China, called yinhao in Canton and Hong Kong, and qianzhuang in Swatow, were linked to one another and served as the major financial reserve for Chinese businesses in overseas communities. These banks’ patterns of business practice, particularly their emphasis on personal acquaintanceship, were noteworthy. In Canton, for example, each traditional bank (yinhao) hired several special agents, called Hangkai (hangjie, which literally means “business on the street”), who kept up relationships with customers. Indeed, this street-level banking practice was one of the most remarkable features of the Canton business world. It was observed that “there were street canvassers who made a daily visit to custom-

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ers of their acquaintance” to learn “their business conditions.” Daily visits from these street agents provided a bank with a “full knowledge about the standing of a customer, before determining how much was to be loaned out to anyone and for how long and at what rate.” Canton’s two most lucrative trades—in silk and in foreign rice—were the biggest customers of the traditional banks.45 In sum, the market dominance of Southeast Asian rice in Canton was not simply due to geographical proximity. Rather, human and cultural factors had a profound impact on the flourishing of the foreign-rice trade. One contemporary observer acknowledged that the failure of domestic rice shipping from the lower Yangzi area to southern markets had to be attributed to the lack of such advantages as the commercial networks, managerial flexibility, and cultural affinities that Cantonese merchants enjoyed in the commercial world to their south.46 However, the story does not end here. This is just an answer from the merchants’ viewpoint. Why did Cantonese consumers respond differently to varying types of rice? If foreign rice was of better quality than domestic rice, how popular was foreign rice in Canton?

Canton, the City of Gourmets Rice consumers were concerned about food quality as much as quantity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, eating means much more than taking in sustenance, even during periods of scarcity. Food has to satisfy consumers in terms of quality, taste, and palatability. In the last days of the ancien régime, even ordinary Parisians still thought about taste and palatability, despite their subsistence standard of living. In a nationwide dietary survey in the 1920s, British nutritionists were astonished to learn that the British urban poor sought the pleasure of high-quality food from day to day, rather than making the most economic and reasonable choices for survival.47 Canton was no exception. For urban rice consumers, be they haves or havenots, the question of which rice to buy was not just bound to the question of subsistence: quality always came into consideration. Canton residents required palatable rice of good quality as well as quantity. Although it is hard to assess precisely how to distinguish consumer preferences according to income levels, in Canton at the turn of the twentieth century there existed a group of urbanites whose incomes allowed for greater dietary discretion. One mid-1930s social survey categorized not only staple food consumption but also local dietary preferences as a part of Cantonese working-class family expenditures. In his 1934 work, A Research on the Canton Working Class Family, Yu Qizhong argued that “Cantonese tea drinking culture” (yamcha in Cantonese, yincha in Putunghua) made tea drinking one of the most important expenditures in everyday life, even for the working class.

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This was true because “food culture was Canton’s most distinctive custom, and there were tea drinking customs in Canton regardless of whether it was morning, afternoon, evening, or even night.”48 Tea drinking, smoking, and alcohol consumption constituted three major leisure expenditures for Canton working class in the early 1930s. Yet it should be noted that “tea drinking” (yamcha) in the culture of Canton was more than just drinking tea, but consisted of a light meal known as dimsum. Thus in Canton, tea drinking entailed a great deal of eating and snacking. In fact, Canton consumers’ preoccupation with rice quality was not just a matter of social class. In many rice-eating cultures, rice consumers tend to insist on quality rice, and consumer preferences vary from culture to culture. Even within China, dietary preferences differ from locale to locale. However, most rice consumers tend to prefer rice that is of good quality. As Francesca Bray states, “most rice eaters generally prefer their rice to be not only hulled, but also milled and polished.”49 Much like any other urban residents of Chinese treaty ports, most Canton residents were fond of higher-quality, whiter rice. Although the price of rice seriously affected an urban consumer’s food choice, the preference for higher-quality rice was still a general feature of twentieth-century Chinese urban culture. According to Mark Swislocki, most Shanghai residents, for example, “even the working poor,” were fond of “husked and polished rice, although many no doubt purchased second or third grade rice.”50 Just as most people in bread-eating cultures generally prefer white bread, rice-eating people prefer white rice (baimi). As long as the Canton rice market drew a wide variety of rice through its northern and southern routes, Canton’s rice-eating public doubtless expressed their preferences after comparing the differences in the quality of rice. the importance of consumer preferences

The Cantonese rice traders had to meet consumer demands for both quality and price. Through daily interaction with rice merchants in return, Canton’s rice consumers determined their preferred choice, between accepting lower quality at a cheaper price and paying more for higher quality. From the viewpoint of the consumer, the wide variety of rice meant a variety of brand names from which to choose. One Japanese observer found nineteen different varieties of rice listed on Canton’s wholesale rice market in the early 1910s. Likewise, twenty different varieties were listed in the early 1930s.51 Each rice variety represented a different brand name to Canton consumers. Similar to general Chinese commercial practice, rice was usually branded according to its geographical origins.52 In addition to geographical origins, a few more sub-classifications were made, depending on glutinousness, degree of whiteness, and harvest season. Influenced by

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the foreign-rice trade via Hong Kong, Cantonese rice merchants developed a new numerical grading system, which was used particularly for rice varieties of foreign origin. Although Canton’s rice grading system was not necessarily equivalent to the Southeast Asian grading system, the numeric order did represent the grade of quality. For example, No. 1 (yihao) of any given rice was of better quality than No. 2 (erhao) rice.53 In addition to quality, price and availability were key factors in Canton consumers’ food choices. In fact, rather than Southeast Asian rice, Canton residents’ favorite rice was that produced locally in the Pearl River Delta, which was called native rice (tumi). The local varieties Silk Sprout (Simiao) and Silver Glutinous (Yinnian), which were special products of Zengcheng County, were considered the best (shangdeng baimi). However, high-quality native varieties were expensive, because only small amounts were cultivated in a limited number of districts in the Pearl River Delta. The Southeast Asian rice varieties were seen as alternatives: the secondbest in quality, but cheaper and more readily available. One market survey in the 1930s explained: There is a small amount of higher quality rice (shangmi) such as Silk Sprout (simiao), West Glutinous (xinian), and Great Sweet Rice (danuo), produced in Zhengcheng and Mapai [counties] on the North and East rivers. Most of this was shipped to Canton and consumed by a small number of the well-to-do class (youchanjieji). Instead, the rice varieties that most of the ordinary people (pingmin) of Canton consumed were such kinds of rice as White Glutinous (bainian) and Bright Glutinous (xuannian), imported mostly from Siam and Annam. For the rest of the supply, the market relied on a small amount of local products. In addition, Wuhu rice was occasionally imported.54

Few could understand the diverse consumer demands for rice better than local rice merchants. Their market assessments also provide an answer to the question of why Wuhu and other varieties of rice from the lower Yangzi could not compete with local and Southeast Asian rice in Canton. According to a survey compiled on the basis of interviews with local rice merchants in the 1930s, most of the foreign rice was consumed in the city of Canton and in suburban districts such as Nanhai, Panyu, and Shunde counties, known as the Silk Districts. By contrast, Wuhu rice, due to its lower quality and cheaper price, was mainly consumed in the hinterlands of the upper valley of the West River. Many rice merchants testified that the main reason that urbanites disliked Wuhu rice was “its coarse quality”; meanwhile, the rural poor felt that the taste of Wuhu rice was no worse than the lower grade of Guangxi rice, and the “price was also cheap, so it was merely edible for those in the hinterlands.”55 This local assessment is similar to Japanese observations that analyzed differences in quality of rice varieties according to their geographical origin in China: “Anhui rice

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(including Wuhu rice) was thin and long-grained, but not glutinous, so that it was much worse than Jiangsu rice. Hence, Anhui rice was only suitable as a substitute for Saigon rice and the other southern rice varieties.”56 On the contrary, they added, “Guangdong rice was small, thin and long-grained, so it was similar to Rangoon rice, Saigon rice, and Siam rice. Some higher quality varieties were even much better than the best of Siam rice.”57 In this regard, Wuhu rice was at a dual disadvantage: price and quality. The Canton rice market was dominated by the best quality local rice and the second-best quality foreign rice. In order to compete with such popular brands, Wuhu rice had to be re-polished to improve the quality. The Cantonese merchants would order unhusked rice (gu) from Wuhu and husk it again at Canton before listing it on the market, yet this extra polishing process added extra cost.58 Consequently, Wuhu rice could not help but constitute a second-tier market, where consumers sought out rice varieties at lower prices and had to accept lower quality. rice quality and the canton consumer

Why were Cantonese consumers so sensitive to rice quality? The indulgence in rice quality was not just a matter of palate.59 As the staple food for the Chinese population, especially in the south, rice must provide basic nutrition. Lower-quality rice oftentimes contains many broken kernels and husks, thus reducing the actual portion that is edible rice. Above all, the lack of nutritional substance in lower-quality rice did not satisfy the rice eater’s expectation for satiety. Needless to say, satiety was (and is) a subjective matter and not easy to measure. Yet for that very reason, to the general rice-consuming public with no knowledge of twentieth-century nutritional science or of counting calories, the question of satisfaction was the most important factor to consider with regard to rice quality. One nineteenth-century ethnographic inquiry illustrates how the local population perceived the problem of rice quality and satisfaction. In 1873, John Glasgow Kerr, a British medical doctor, interviewed some old men in the care of Canton’s benevolent institutions. Although their rice was provided by the local authorities, they complained about its quality; “the rice which was issued by Nanhai county was always watered, so that the five catties which they received, when cleaned and dried, was very considerably reduced.” The men complained that “it was not good white rice, but it was of inferior quality, mixed with husk and broken grains.”60 Although they could not afford to purchase it, they no doubt would have preferred higher-quality rice. It was not simply that they sought pleasurable eating, but rather that the lower-quality rice could not meet their instinctive need for basic nutritional satisfaction. Moisture was no less significant to many rice consumers: it was impor-

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tant to ascertain how much moisture the rice contained. Canton’s subtropical climate made Cantonese particularly keen about the moisture of rice, since the mismanagement of rice granaries or inadequate transportation of rice often caused a deterioration in rice quality. In the last days of the Qing, the government was running four granaries in Canton. What concerned Qing officials was not so much the availability of local grain as their facilities’ ability to keep moisture to a minimum. If the granaries could not keep moisture out, the quality of the grain would easily deteriorate. At the turn of the twentieth century, a governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi, Tan Zhonglin, described the results of mismanagement of granary moisture in his memorial report: “The quality of grain was extremely deteriorated. All the grain was milled and husked in 1888, but the color of the rice was black. When it was cooked, it did not have any flavor and could not be given to people. All the grain was allowed to be sold at a cheaper price, four silver dollars per picul, for feeding livestock, but none purchased it.”61 Likewise, reducing moisture was the prime prerequisite for the rice business. But, at the same time, deliberately dampening rice was also the most common trick among rice merchants throughout China. Dampened rice weighed more when it was measured at the time of purchase, but it would rot shortly thereafter. If untrustworthy “outsider” merchants supplied rice, consumers’ suspicion of such trickery increased. To Canton rice consumers, lower-quality rice strains—mostly Wuhu rice and other Yangzi-area rice varieties—were infamous for being heavily watered. Cantonese consumers also believed widely that the frequent floods on the Yangzi River made Wuhu rice naturally damp, because such weather conditions exposed it to humidity for a long time.62 This might have been a rumor, yet the rumor proved stronger than fact when the facts could not be adequately verified. Moreover, Cantonese distrust of Wuhu rice was by no means groundless. A 1930s market survey of Wuhu rice provided a plausible explanation. Though Wuhu was located near the Yangzi River, there was no route other than a number of shallow inland waterways between Wuhu and the many rice districts, which were scattered throughout southern and central Anhui province. Hence, rice had to be transferred many times, requiring many middle men to be involved in the shipping. No doubt some middlemen would mix sand with the rice, or water the rice to get a heavier weight before it ever reached the Wuhu rice market.63 canton and food variety

A strong interest in food quality became a habitual part of most Canton residents’ daily lives, since so many kinds of foodstuffs in Canton were available in their markets. As many anthropological works have pointed

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out, eating habits are a product of a given culture, and the culture in turn provides various meanings to and for eating. The pattern of Canton’s day-to-day food consumption took shape within the milieu of the commercial culture of the city. By the late nineteenth century, Canton had become well-known for the variety of commodities available in its marketplaces, and rice and other foodstuffs stood out from other goods. Canton’s commercial fame stemmed not simply from the volume of trading, but also from the variety of foodstuffs. Canton’s lan markets exemplified the variety of the city’s food markets. Throughout the Ming-Qing period, Canton’s commercial district had been separated from the administrative section of the city, and it grew up around the outer city walls. Since the Pearl River was the most important trade route to Canton, various kinds of foodstuffs were shipped to the city’s wharves through the waterways. Many specialized food markets sprang up between the wharves and the southwestern side of the city wall. The nickname for these food markets was lan (literally, fence) after the location, around the southwestern section of Canton’s old city wall. The area of fruit markets and fruit-handlers, for instance, was called Guolan (literally, fruit fence), the wheat and miscellaneous grain market was Mailan (literally, wheat fence), and the rice and unhulled rice (gu) market was Gulan (grain fence).64 By the turn of the twentieth century, the variety of these food handlers and their trades (lan) had come to be reflected in the typical commercial culture of Canton. One local gazetteer depicted the prosperity of lan business as follows: “Canton is the gathering point of foodstuffs. Each [foodstuff market] is called lan. The sellers gather around the city walls and meet the buyers, and the deal is often made on either the inside or the outside of the city wall. . . . Canton’s lan is the gathering point for commodities.”65 The rice business had led to this prosperity. The wholesale rice market of Canton, whose origins were rooted in the traditional grain trade (Gulan), burgeoned into Canton’s largest and most lucrative wholesale market in the late nineteenth century. Many wholesale rice shops opened, one by one, at the southwestern riverfront of the city in the 1880s. Once the Pearl River Bund was constructed in the first decade of the twentieth century, this area became linked to the western edge of the bund and its modern wharves; Canton residents promptly nicknamed it Rice Wharf Street (mibu dajie).66 The location of Rice Wharf Street was critical for the commercial success of the rice business. It was at the intersection of the two largest business districts of the city: Shameen (Shamian), Canton’s international settlement, and the so-called western suburb (­Xiguan), where traditional banks and merchant guilds congregated. As early as 1905, one Hong Kong newspaper foretold the area’s business potential: “rice must be gathered like a mountain.”67 It took less than a decade for

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this projection to be realized. In the following decades, it was observed that “the harbor to the westward of Shameen, along the banks of which a large number of native vessels—rice junks, silk boats—are accustomed to anchor, presented a view which had not been seen for many years.”68 Along with Canton’s growing wholesale rice market there was a corresponding flourishing of retail rice shops throughout the residential district of Canton. A reported 400 or more rice shops in 1888 had increased to 871 in the heyday of the rice industry in the 1920s.69

The Rise of Brand Power and “Silk Sprout Rice” In the midst of Canton’s thriving rice business, some varieties of highquality rice gained brand loyalty in the market. Silk Sprout rice (Simiao), one of the local varieties from the Pearl River Delta, was exemplary. This strain was not consumed in the rural district where it was grown, but was shipped to and sold at the Canton rice market and usually consumed by urban residents. Peasant households in turn purchased cheaper and lowerquality rice at Canton. Moreover, there was a distinction even within Silk Sprout rice. The product of Zengcheng County was known as the very best of the best. The popularity of Zengcheng Silk Sprout rice was noted in many local accounts. The Panyu County Gazetteer reported that the shape of the Zengcheng Silk Sprout was “pointed and thin,” and the color was “white with a yellow stripe in the middle.” Most of all, “the quality and flavor were the best.”70 In present-day depictions of Silk Sprout rice, which still popular as a local specialty, the description is akin to the aforementioned observation, particularly in depicting its shape and color. According to A Guide for Local Specialties of Guangdong, published in 1983, the shape of Silk Sprout rice is “thin like silk string; its cleanness is limpid like jade.” Thus, it is also regarded as “the jade of rice” (mi zhong biyu). Above all, what most attracts the urban consumers’ appetite is said to be its “shiny whiteness and the aroma when it is cooked.”71 However, the reputation of Silk Sprout rice was not created overnight. It developed in the milieu of Canton’s food culture. One local gazetteer wrote about the brand popularity of a particular rice variety, which was not yet identified as Silk Sprout rice: Canton’s rice stores (midian) display signboards that read “superior-quality, white juan rice” (shang bai juan mi). One cannot understand what juan means when one sees the signboard for the first time. Later, it may be understood. When rice was to be taxed in the rural districts, such counties as Panyu and Huaxian in Guangzhou prefecture and Yangchun County in Zhaoqing prefecture, there existed a rice breed called juan rice (juanmi) in people’s kitchens and granaries. The shape of this rice was thin and long, clean and white. Total production was only about 120,000 shi;

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the production of this beautiful grain was small, and the price was high. People have understood this rice [to be the best rice] since the Ming dynasty.72

This story about juan rice might have been a reinvention of a popular folktale. Yet such imaginative features made the commodity more popular to consumers. In addition, the rising circulation of modern print media led to increased public interest in high-quality rice and, in turn, popularized certain brand names. By the 1920s, the popularity of certain rice varieties began to be gossiped about in newspapers. One gossip account in the Guangzhou Minguo Ribao, the second largest newspaper in the city, provides a more dramatized story of the local popularity of rice. The account named Silk Sprout rice as the most popular rice brand name of the day and said it was also identified with juan rice. According to the account, the story went back to the Ming dynasty: Wei Juan, a Ming court eunuch (taijian), whose mission was to patrol every province and inspect its political situation, came to Canton. Once he arrived at Canton, local officials welcomed and greeted him. But Wei took pleasure only in his research about rice. He tasted various kinds of local rice, such as Xuannian, Younian, but he was never satisfied with them. When Silk Sprout rice of Zengcheng County was served to him, he eventually realized that only this was the best. After Wei Juan left Canton, local people found out that Zengcheng Silk Sprout rice was the sole favorite of the rice master, Wei Juan. Thereafter, local people named this rice breed juan after Wei Juan. This rice is the present-day Silk Sprout in the Canton rice market.73

Perhaps suspicions about the story’s authenticity made it more popular. Regardless of the truth of the story, this account illustrates how Silk Sprout rice stood out in Canton’s rice-consuming culture in the 1920s. silk sprout’s overseas popularity

The popularity the Silk Sprout brand of rice was not limited to Canton; it was also a commodity exported to overseas Chinese communities. Perhaps the external demand for it enhanced the popularity of the Silk Sprout brand. Cantonese rice merchants were often testified that the wealthy Chinese population of Hong Kong consumed major volumes of Silk Sprout rice.74 Though it did not identify Silk Sprout rice by name, one British observation pointed to a similar pattern of rice consumption in Hong Kong: locally produced rice was “held in such high esteem in this part of China,” that it was “largely exported,” while “cheaper rice is imported from Burma, French Indochina, and Siam for local consumption.”75 The leading variety of this high quality rice being exported abroad was, no doubt, Silk Sprout rice. It was exported to major commercial ports in the world such as Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, and San Francisco. The Nanhai County

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Gazetteer noted: “Silk Sprout rice is being exported to San Francisco and Singapore every year. The annual average is about 100 thousand shi.”76 Canton Customs observed that the brand popularity of high-quality rice in Hong Kong was no less remarkable: “The white-grained Rice grown by these farmers is incomparably superior to the ordinary Foreign-bought grain consumed in the Colony, and is eagerly sought after by the richer Chinese; and moreover, Hong Kong seems the natural market for this product.”77 Earlier, the increasing brand popularity of local rice varieties had drawn the attention of the Qing authorities. In 1889, when Zhang Zhidong came to Canton as Liang Guang governor-general, he was amazed to find that while local production of rice was insufficient to feed the local population, some amounts of the local high-quality rice varieties were being exported abroad. After careful investigations of the local granaries and the market situation, Zhang realized that it would be impossible to strictly prohibit the export of local rice, because of increasing demands from overseas Chinese who favored local rice varieties. Zhang detailed the situation in his memorial report to the emperor: Nine out of ten overseas traders come originally from Guangdong. Overseas Cantonese number in the hundreds of thousands at least. Water and soil in foreign lands are strange to them and they are never accustomed to foreign foodstuffs. They must purchase and eat Younian white rice, one of the higher quality rice varieties of Guangdong products. Then they can be free from sickness. This is reason why local rice exports bring the highest price. And rice imported from such areas as Annam and Siam have reached a hundred thousand or more shi every year. The Cantonese purchase foreign rice at cheaper prices, while exporting local highquality rice and making a profit.78

The brand power of high-quality local rice varieties, and particularly of Silk Sprout rice, was well documented in the print media of overseas Chinese communities as well. According to the Hong Kong–based Chinese language newspaper Huazi ribao, once Zengcheng Silk Sprout rice arrived at the Hong Kong rice market, it was immediately sold out, because Zhengcheng was well known for producing the best Silk Sprout variety.79 Perhaps the arrival of Silk Sprout rice to Hong Kong was not an occasional event. About a year later, a similar advertisement appeared in the newspaper.80 The popularity of Silk Sprout rice was no different in the San Francisco Chinese community. The Chung Sai Yat Po (Zhongxi ribao), a San Francisco bay-based Chinese language newspaper, contained commercial advertisements for imported Silk Sprout rice from Canton. Despite the differences in form and content of the advertisements, the San Francisco rice firms all concurred about the superiority of Silk Sprout rice.

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One advertisement emphasizes the higher quality of the new stock of Silk Sprout rice, by giving detailed physiographical description (Figure 1). Our company carries Silk Sprout rice, which is late harvest. It is much better than the previous harvest, in that its quality is softer, thinner, and more lubricious. This spring we already received rice stock, but it was from last year’s harvest. Even so, at the time everyone who tasted this rice extolled it: The price was indeed low and the quality was excellent! Thus, many trading ports were ordering it non-stop. Unfortunately, there was not enough stock and it quickly sold out. We are terribly sorry for not responding to everyone. This year’s new Silk Sprout is coming right now, so we are promptly advertising it here. Customers, please come in and purchase it. We will appreciate it. Please come to 614 Dupont St., San Francisco, California.

Meanwhile, a second advertisement (Figure 2) emphasized the distinctive characteristics of the rice trader’s imported goods. More than anything

figure 1.  Commercial advertisement for Silk Sprout Rice. (source: Chung Sai Yat Po, Feb. 1, 1906.)

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else, the rice firm assured customers that it provided authentic Zengcheng Silk Sprout rice. Our rice firm is handling such white rice as “Tangshan” rice. This stock was specially purchased by the special resident buyers in Hong Kong from local cultivators. So it was well selected and good for the Chinese. It was also sent in large shipments, making cost and price cheaper than at any other rice firms. If you want Zengcheng Silk Sprout Rice, please ask for W.T.W. Mo. If you want Macao Silk Sprout, please ask for W. W. Mo.

.  .  . On the production side, the Pearl River Delta was no doubt a rice-­ deficient area, and the local population required external rice supplies. Yet from the perspective of consumers, Canton saw great food variety in the marketplaces. Moreover, Canton exported certain quantities of the ­highest

figure 2.  Commercial advertisement for Silk Sprout Rice. (source: Chung Sai Yat Po, Apr. 4, 1907.)

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quality of local rice varieties to overseas Cantonese communities. As long as Canton functioned as a gateway of communication with the world market, rice shortages and food variety could coexist with each other. As long as sojourning Cantonese merchants trading beyond provincial borders were able to facilitate the long-distance rice trade with Canton, the Canton rice market could consistently attract a wide range of different rice varieties, with varying qualities and prices. In short, both shortage and variety equally shaped Cantonese food culture. Of course, obtaining the minimal quantity of foodstuffs for assuring subsistence was sine qua non for the import of food. At the same time, for Canton’s sophisticated urban population, the pleasure that comes from eating high-quality foods was also an integral element. In order to meet people’s demands, both quantitative and qualitative, merchants offered different varieties of rice, which competed with each other in the Canton rice market. Competition created consumer preference, and popularity with consumers in return defined the marketability of certain varieties of rice. The reason foreign rice became so dominant in the Canton rice market was simply that the trade in foreign rice maximized the comparative advantage of trading its own rice. Together with commercial networks that many overseas Cantonese merchants cultivated, geographical proximity to Hong Kong and the Southeast Asian rice markets allowed southern trading to overwhelm the rice trade with northern ports in the lower Yangzi area. More than anything else, consumer satisfaction with the qualities of foreign-rice varieties was the defining factor for the success of the foreign-rice business in Canton. Yet rice was still a basic necessity for everyone. A thorough understanding of rice consumption required knowing much more than about consumer satisfaction with palatability. As long as rice was a commodity to be purchased in the market, its availability mattered as well. Indeed, the market was inherently erratic and risky. Although the Cantonese provisioning networks satisfied consumer demands, this does not mean that Canton was completely immune to chronic rice shortages. What if market conditions unpredictably turned foul? What if Canton were suddenly struck by a real famine?

3

Strengthening the Canton–Hong Kong Ties rice relief and the development of the transnational rice business

On March 12, 1907, an urgent telegram was wired from Dongguan County, southeast of Canton. Four days earlier, a bloody rice riot had occurred in the county seat of Dongguan. Dongguan was one of the most rice-deficient districts in the Pearl River Delta, where the rumors about merchants’ rice hoarding and profiteering were omnipresent.1 On the afternoon of March 8, more than a thousand local people took to the streets of the county seat and raided the building belonging to the rice merchant guild. Before long, all the main streets became crowded, and the situation was out of control. In an attempt to break up the unruly mob, local authorities fired blanks and arrested a few suspected instigators. Yet this only further ignited public anger. A short time later, angry crowds gathered in front of the police station and demanded the immediate release of those arrested. The local authorities took a firm attitude against this and gave the order to fire, but this time not with blanks. Two people were killed on the spot, and about ten more were severely wounded. The mob now became rioters. The county seat fell to the crowds in the end, and they blockaded all the gates of the city walls that evening. The next morning, Dongguan had become completely anarchic; thousands of residents stormed the two biggest rice shops in town, Maolong and Yuanlong (whose owners had long been suspected of rice hoarding and profiteering) and plundered the rice. Social order was not restored until Guangzhou Prefect Shen Zhiqian ordered the purchase of 200 sacks of rice from Canton and sent them, along with troops and sailors, to Dongguan. This was the bloodiest rice riot in the Pearl River Delta since the 1850s, during which Canton had been stormed repeatedly by rebellions and devastated by military conflicts with British forces.2

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This chapter explores what famine meant to the Cantonese public in a time of extreme rice shortage. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Canton’s rice trade with Hong Kong and Southeast Asia became the most profitable, yet risky, transnational enterprise in the region. The Cantonese public at times enjoyed a surplus of good quality rice, but at other times they suffered through chronic rice shortages that threatened their access to this most basic necessity of life. Indeed, a number of rice shortages stormed Canton, but most such situations were successfully resolved by the efforts of mercantile elite groups. At the heart of the famine relief effort in Canton was the merchant elite’s careful cultivation of commercial networks abroad and their worldwide business reputation. Their successful efforts towards famine relief led to the furtherance of their business and social influence. Until the mid-1920s, when the Guomindang seized power over the city, generations of mercantile elite held substantial social influence in the city. Nothing enhanced their reputation more than philanthropy. However, their relief efforts were not completely calculated to maximize their own commercial interests or social dominance. Nor were they naïvely altruistic. The following pages consider a question that has long preoccupied students working on the nature of modern philanthropy: how to distinguish altruism from commercial activity. The answer we will come to, simply put, is that they are not mutually exclusive. To the Cantonese mercantile elite, charity meant a practical extension of their business. At the same time, the lucrative rice trade gave them the ability to be more charitable. Moreover, their successful intervention in times of rice shortage provided the merchants with an opportunity to embellish their public reputation and increase their social influence. By tracing two cases of famine relief (1907 and 1919) in Canton, the following pages will demonstrate the continuity of the traditional pattern of local charitygiving, which was a quintessential part of local elite activism from the late Qing to the early Republican period. In the famine relief efforts examined in the existing literature, the leading role of the mercantile elite and their highly moralistic rhetoric characterized the local rice relief efforts.3 However, Canton’s encounter with rapid changes in world market conditions and flourishing commercial culture profoundly altered the social meaning of charity. Canton’s unique location distinguished Cantonese philanthropic activism from that elsewhere in China, due to the cooperation with Hong Kong. Because rice relief relied on the transnational commercial networks that Cantonese merchants wove, charity events in Canton drew wider attention in many overseas communities. Moreover, famine relief activities in Canton were not only an elite concern but became a part of daily Cantonese life because chronic rice shortages were taken for granted. What, then, did famine and the relief efforts

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of the mercantile elite mean to the non-elite public? Rather than regarding it as starving crowds passively waiting for the arrival of relief rice, this chapter illuminates that merchants treated the needy as potential consumers whenever normal rice supplies recovered. Rice quality and taste were still among the greatest concerns of the Cantonese public. Therefore, rice merchants cared about rice quality during rice shortages, just as they did during times of normal supply. In this regard, famine relief became a learning experience for both the public and the rice merchants. To the public, the distribution of relief rice became an opportunity to learn about the different qualities and different varieties of rice, as the selection of relief rice was based on availability rather than market price. Meanwhile, rice merchants could learn about their potential consumers’ responses to the rice during the relief efforts. Consequently, the variety of food in Canton was improved more by the experience of food shortages than by normal years.

Commerce and Charity Dongguan’s rice riot in 1907 drew a great deal of attention. Throughout the century-long history of rice insufficiency, the local Cantonese population always expected a rice shortage in certain months, customarily called “the period when green and yellow cannot meet” (qing huang bujie qi), usually the two to three months between November and February. This season was an interim between the late harvest (July to October) and the early harvest of the next year (March to June), and was thus the season of highest demand for foreign-rice imports. If rice prices did not drop by mid-March, it foreshadowed severe rice shortages to follow.4 Perhaps, the Dongguan rice riot was a precursor of a greater rice shortage to come. Even outside Canton, this was important news because the mismanagement of a rice shortage would lead to greater repercussions in business throughout the South China Sea. For example, the Bangkok Times, an English-language weekly in Bangkok, quickly reported the incident in detail.5 Concern in Hong Kong was great as well. With a two-day special report and editorial (lunshuo), Huazi Ribao, a Chinese-language daily in Hong Kong, blamed the local Qing authorities for their mismanagement and urged them to find a new solution. The editor worried that this riot could have an impact on Hong Kong’s rice markets, since substantial portions of rice from French Indochina and Siam were increasingly being shipped to Canton instead of being released to the Hong Kong rice market. To prevent the rise of rice prices in Hong Kong and to improve the rice supplies to Canton, the editor suggested that the Canton authorities develop a direct rice trade route with Siam.6

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Perhaps, what really mattered during the last decade of Qing rule was market unpredictability rather than rice insufficiency per se. Due to the declining central authority of Qing rule and rising provincialism throughout the empire, no one could control local officials’ arbitrary rice blockades, the banning of local rice exports out of one jurisdiction. Many of the sources of Canton’s domestic rice supply, such as the provinces of Guangxi, Anhui, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu, frequently banned the shipment of local rice to external markets. In some years, for example, the Canton authorities continuously sent telegrams of petition to a number of provincial officials in the Lower Yangzi area, asking for the lifting of their provincial rice surcharges (mili) in order to help the rice supplies to Canton. However, telegram after telegram, a series of rejection messages came in reply. These provinces had their own rationale for their actions. Anhui province refused to remove its rice surcharges because the major revenues were needed to pay for a new railway and a mine development project for the province, while the reason the Jiangxi authorities gave for declining was that they needed the funds for flood relief in Nanchang, the provincial capital. Meanwhile, Jiangsu authorities found their justification in the soaring rice prices in Nanjing. The central authorities were helpless to counter these moves.7 Yet chronic rice shortages were not new to Canton. Having struggled frequently with insufficient supplies and market uncertainty, the Cantonese mercantile elites developed a long tradition of philanthropic activism, particularly providing rice relief to the poor whenever rice shortages occurred. This charity was called “cheap rice selling” (pingtiao) and was mostly conducted by members of the Nine Great Charitable Halls society (Jiu da shantang), a coalition of the nine most influential merchant-led benevolent societies (shantang) in Canton. Not surprisingly, the flourishing of the Nine Charitable Halls and their private charity works were contemporaneous with the decline of the Qing authorities.8 The term pingtiao originated from the operations of the state granary system under Qing rule. One way this was done was to lower rice prices by releasing extra supplies from the state granaries at cheaper prices.9 However, by the mid-nineteenth century the merchant-led benevolent societies came to take over this role because the Qing authorities were unable to manage the empire-wide granary system. In Canton, large amounts of money had been raised for the granary restoration shortly after the Red Turban riots were quelled in the mid-nineteenth century, but those funds were actually used for training local militia to supplement the regular Qing army.10 These events marked the end of state management of the granary and operation of pingtiao. To

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respond to chronic rice shortages, merchant-initiated pingtiao had to be repeated seasonally and became a necessary and almost routine part of everyday Cantonese life by the turn of the twentieth century. merchants’ initiatives

The charity activity provided the Cantonese mercantile elite with a self-­ mobilizing experience that transcended the differences between individual and guild interests. Usually once one member society initiated a pingtiao, the others responded and joined in, creating a major public event in Canton. D. E. Sip, the vice consul at the British Consulate General Office in Canton, recorded an example in detail: the Guangren Hospital’s (­Guangren yiyuan) pingtiao in the fall of 1902. In that year, “the first crop of rice was spoiled and only a small quantity was imported from outside.” In order to “help the people in the immediate vicinity of Canton and even those in the more-distant country districts,” Guangren Hospital advanced 100,000 taels for their initial subscription. The hospital especially emphasized the participation of the “gentry and influential merchants,” without which the project would “not survive any long period of time.” Perhaps they knew very well that they could no longer expect a great deal of support from the authorities. The Guangzhou Prefecture only promised a contribution of no more than 60,000 taels and 20,000 taels on loan from the treasury, which was obviously much smaller than the amounts donated by a single benevolent society. It was the members of the rest of the Nine Charitable Halls that supported this project throughout several months of that year.11 Their active participation in local charities helped enrich the mercantile elite’s public reputation and social influence. As a matter of fact, most wealthy and powerful merchants affiliated themselves with one or more of the charitable halls. The heads of such powerful guilds as silk, rice, and foreign goods trades usually occupied directorships and key positions on the executive boards. For example, Fangbian Hospital (Fangbian yiyuan) was founded and operated by those three powerful trade guilds, although its membership was not exclusive.12 The Fangbian’s leaders oftentimes played the role of an arbitrator to solve troubles or disputes, too. Guangji Hospital (Guangji yiyuan), for example, was famous for its influence in resolving disputes between the guilds and the different branches of trade. Yet such social influence was not established overnight. In order to maximize such informal power, the charitable halls elected their directors and board members from among the socially reputable merchants. Whether they sought social influence or worked out of altruism, there was nothing better than pingtiao for garnering public support.13

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Founding of the Canton–Hong Kong General Pingtiao Association In the spring of 1907, when the Dongguan rice riot occurred, leading Cantonese mercantile and philanthropic elites began the largest rice relief effort to date by declaring that, together with Hong Kong’s leading welfare institutions, they would help stabilize rice supplies for the local populace. This effort was known as the Canton-Hong Kong General Pingtiao Association of Charitable Halls and Chamber of Commerce for Cheaper Rice Sales (Sheng–Gang shantang shanghui hangshang pingtiao zong gongsuo, the “General Association” hereafter). The results of this new institutional effort were remarkable. Having realized that the local authorities had little ability to manage the food supplies, the last Qing governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi, Cen Chunxuan, willingly endorsed the General Association. Tung Wah Hospital (Donghua yiyuan), Hong Kong’s leading welfare institution, immediately assured its full support for the General Association, as they realized that each city was dependent on the other. If the rice demands from Canton increased to an abnormal level, for example, this would immediately cause rice prices to skyrocket in Hong Kong, and, of course, vice versa.14 The news from Dongguan County about the bloody riots galvanized the coalition of the two cities’ merchant-led welfare societies. globalizing charity

The strong emphasis on the cooperation between Canton and Hong Kong had a purpose that was more than a rhetorical. In previous relief works of many kinds, both Cantonese and Hong Kong merchants learned that by taking a cooperative stance to public support efforts, namely Sheng-Gang, they could draw much wider attention from overseas Chinese communities elsewhere in the world. One year earlier, for example, Hong Kong’s Tung Wah Hospital had played a leading role in collecting donations to help Chinese refugees of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. This charitable work in far-flung regions raised the reputation of both cities, not only as the original home of the majority of the overseas Chinese population, but also as the center of the networks that interconnected all overseas communities.15 However, without the commercial networks, such world-wide charity efforts would have been impossible. This series of philanthropic activities, in turn, strengthened the reputation of the traders who led those activities. All those involved in these networks knew very well that both Canton and Hong Kong were the major markets for the world rice trade. Consequently, the nexus of the Canton and Hong Kong rice trade could provide the most professionalized and specialized rice relief, from initial fundraising to the

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selection of available relief rice, from the purchasing of rice to the arrangement of shipping and distribution. In spring 1907, these commercial networks were truly tested, not just for commerce but also for charity. Shortly after the Dongguan rice riot, Canton’s Nine Charitable Halls telegraphed the Tung Wah Hospital of Hong Kong and the two quickly reached an agreement to found the General Association. The Nine Charitable Halls selected thirty-two merchants to raise funds in Canton and sent seven delegates to Hong Kong to discuss details about rice relief with the leading merchants backing Tung Wah Hospital.16 Canton’s suggestion was warmly welcomed in Hong Kong. The Executive Council of Tung Wah Hospital passed several resolutions about the relief cooperation with their Cantonese counterpart. First, Tung Wah Hospital agreed not to take full responsibility for fundraising because of their recent over-extension in helping the Chinese refugees from the San Francisco Earthquake, recent typhoons in Hong Kong, and the troubled local economic condition. Never­ theless, both institutions agreed that telegrams asking for a subscription would be sent to the overseas Chinese communities only under the name of the both institutions together, namely, Sheng-Gang. When remittances arrived, Tung Wah would claim one-third, and Nine Charitable Halls would claim two-thirds of the total amounts. Second, Tung Wah Hospital would not be involved in the details of the rice sales in Canton and not take responsibility for any profit or loss from the sales. And third, Tung Wah Hospital would invite two special agents from Canton to supervise the purchase of rice and inspect its quality in Hong Kong. Should any misunderstanding regarding currency exchange arise or any miscommunication take place in Hong Kong, Tung Wah Hospital would not hesitate to assist. Immediately after the agreement was signed on March 24, the executive council of Tung Wah hospital requested their members who operated rice firms to order relief rice for Canton.17 Meanwhile, the executive council of the Tung Wah took full responsibility of fundraising throughout the overseas Chinese communities. As soon as the Hospital wired the subscription telegrams, responses and remittances promptly rushed to Hong Kong from the Chinese mercantile communities in places such as Tianjin, Hankow, Shanghai, Zhenjiang, Fuzhou, Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, Saigon, Cholon, Haiphong, Rangoon, Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi, Sydney, Vancouver, Victoria, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Panama.18 The first telegram arrived from Rangoon on April 9. A leading “Cantonese merchant in Rangoon,” Li Chaopei, expressed his sympathy and promised to donate two thousand sacks of Rangoon rice via the next steamship scheduled to go to Canton.19 One week later, the first French Indochinese rice that the two Cantonese agents and a Hong Kong rice firm Kung Yuen Hong (Gongyuanhang) had purchased

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arrived at Canton; the first release of this relief rice began shortly thereafter.20 Until September 1907, when the General Association stopped relief work, a great deal of overseas aid came to Canton.21 a man of “virtuous reputation and righteous fame”

The centerpiece of the Canton–Hong Kong cooperation was the role played by the Cantonese delegates, who were not only supposed to supervise all practical matters but were also well-known to the merchant world of Hong Kong. For this, the Tung Wah Hospital especially requested that the Cantonese agents should be “persons who were well aware of commerce and had harmonious personalities” (shuxi shangwu, renpin heping).”22 In Canton, Feng Pingshan and Liang Zhiting were recommended for those positions, since they were renowned as “working hard for the public good (rexin gongyi).” They also had a deep familiarity with the business world in Hong Kong. Feng Pingshan’s reputation reached far beyond the business circles of Canton and Hong Kong. Throughout the overseas Chinese communities in the South China Sea, Feng was known as a man “working as hard for the public good as for his own profit.” In 1866, at age sixteen, just after abandoning his two-year education in his native town of Xinhui, Feng started his career as a shop assistant in his uncle’s grocery in Siam. At age nineteen, Feng was promoted to a representative agent who supervised all of his uncle’s trade throughout Siam, Hong Kong, and Canton, as well as his native county. With the increasing success of his business ventures, he came to operate a native bank in Canton by the age of forty-seven, as well as a trade firm called, Suizhaofeng, in Hong Kong by age fifty.23 What made Feng so famous was not so much his commercial success as his philanthropy, especially his rice relief works. Feng’s philanthropic reputation brought him to the directorship of Fangbian Hospital. One well-known tale about a 1904 rice relief illustrates his reputation. In that year, Canton’s rice shortage was entirely relieved by the French Indochinese rice that Feng purchased from Hong Kong. Feng was able to accomplish this because he was regarded as the most trustworthy person in Hong Kong’s commercial world even before that year. Once Feng asked for an emergency rice purchase, Hong Kong rice dealers would immediately ship the rice to Canton without asking for deposits. As long as it was requested by Feng, there was no need to do so.24 The accounts of Feng’s virtues are very eulogistic and, perhaps, exaggerated. Yet there is no doubt that Feng’s philanthropic reputation made a deep impression on Hong Kong society. For example, Fung Ping Shan Chinese Library at the University of Hong Kong was named after him after the university received a personal donation from him in the 1930s.25

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In 1907, the General Association strongly recommended Feng to be on Canton’s delegation to Hong Kong and to gather further subscriptions from the overseas communities. For unknown reasons, however, Feng declined the position. Instead, the association appointed two agents whom Feng personally recommended and sent them to Hong Kong to handle all practical matters. Meanwhile, Feng decided to stay in Canton as he was offered the position of co-director of the General Association. Nonetheless, Feng’s personal reputation played a key role. The two agents were given full authorization from the Nine Charitable Halls, along with the official seal of the institution. They were allowed to go directly to French Indochina. At their own discretion, they were fully authorized to buy relief rice without further permission from Canton because they had been recommended by Feng. Having heard that Feng recommended them, two Hong Kong rice merchants, Liu Xiaozhuo and Ruan Licun, accompanied them.26 In addition, Kung Yuen Hong (Gongyuanhang), Hong Kong’s biggest rice firm specializing in trading French Indochinese rice, facilitated their purchase of relief rice.27 relief and the decline in qing authority

In stark contrast to the close and productive cooperation between the Hong Kong and Cantonese rice merchants, the incompetence of the Qing authorities was evident far and wide. The local situation had so deteriorated in 1907 that the two cities’ cooperation was the only way to bring down rice prices in Canton. One month after the rice riot in Dongguan, the Guagnzhou Prefect ordered the opening of the Anping granary in Canton and the release of 33,000 shi of grain. However, the grain that was supposed to be reserved in the granary had been neglected for years, and most of it had already deteriorated.28 To make things worse, local authorities could not even secure the trade routes for local rice supplies. Pirates and bandits operated with impunity throughout the waterways of the Pearl River Delta. On April 26, 1907, for example, members of the gentry from Shunde County were robbed on the river while returning home after purchasing relief rice in Canton. Soon afterwards, another junk filled with rice that had been purchased in Hong Kong was hijacked by pirates along the river.29 The situation was far out of control. With the authorities unable to relieve rice shortages immediately, rice riots were likely to spread throughout the province. Zengcheng County’s rice riot was indeed a final blow to the Qing authorities. This county, located north of Dongguan, was one of a few major districts in the Pearl River Delta with a rice surplus, a place where Canton rice merchants frequently came to purchase rice. One day in June 1907, Guangzhou Prefecture dispatched an officer, Huang Qian, to urge Zengcheng rice merchants to sell 100,000 shi of rice to Canton.

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This news caused a great deal of anxiety for county residents, who had just heard news about the bloody rice riots in neighboring Dongguan County. Huang Qian’s order was absolutely unacceptable to the local populace. As soon as a local member of the gentry, Li Chaojie, instigated the local population to block the shipment of rice, large crowds took to the streets. Huang’s response was premature. Huang ordered his guards to fire on the crowd. Before long, the situation became chaotic. That afternoon, Huang barely escaped from the scene, leaving behind one resident dead and a few wounded. Twenty rice shops and a few other shops and houses were sacked and burned that day.30 The only thing the prefect could do was ask for external support from other jurisdictions, yet he received only cold replies from other provinces. All the country’s rice ports, including Guangxi, Wuhu, and Zhenjiang, in quick succession embargoed export of their rice to Canton. There was nothing left in the local populace but distrust for the authorities. On the other hand, the General Association’s relief work performed extraordinarily well. As always, these efforts required rice merchants’ local knowledge and expertise about rice variety, quality, and market value. Moreover, no one could have a better grasp than them of changing market information about cargo and storage availability. Once the first shipment of the relief rice arrived in Hong Kong, they easily recognized the variety of rice as Annam White Jade (Annan Bai geng yu), one of the most commonly consumed varieties in Canton. From this first shipment, the rice merchants estimated Canton’s demand and their supply, predicting that the load would be enough for only a few days.31 They immediately asked the General Association to keep up continuous shipments, since each individual shipment would not be enough to bring down the rice prices permanently. They knew that insufficient rice supplies in the first rice relief shipment often gave rise to popular panic, because predictability was as important as the actual arrival of the relief rice in order to relieve the public’s fears. For this, they detailed a schedule for the shipment of rice relief. They set up a routine for the public: there would be a rice shipment to Canton every ten days (the 5th, 15th, and 25th of each month), with the rice released to the public on the next day (the 6th, 16th, and 26th of each month). They also estimated that the rice had to feed the 359,000 poor in the city and surrounding districts. The General Association established four depots in separate districts around the city and assigned each a portion of the rice for distribution. They issued the people different kinds of rice tickets, each of which was usable only at designated depots on designated days.32 In this context, Sheng-Gang ties meant more than institutional cooperation. Their collaboration was indeed required in order to make meticulous plans for distribution. In order to ensure even measurement and fair

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distribution, Hong Kong’s Kong Yuen Hong dispatched special agents to observe the rice relief sites in Canton, and these agents also acted as the liaison between Canton and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Cantonese agents expedited the purchase of relief rice in Hong Kong. Once the job was done, neither side missed an opportunity to praise the other. Kong Yuen Hong sent a telegram to Canton stating that the two Cantonese “shipping agents, Guo Yiting and Zhang Zuizhi, were working so hard for the public good (rexin gongyi) that they deserved our telegram of gratitude.”33 This halfyear-long rice relief work was remarkable. Despite a few rice riots near Canton, it prevented serious social disturbances. In particular, there were no major incidents in Canton that entire year. relief is a learning experience

To the Cantonese merchants, that year’s rice relief was much more than a preventive measure. They turned a crisis into an opportunity; they also strengthened their business networks with Hong Kong and other areas more than ever. No less important, the Cantonese merchants successfully increased their symbolic power through publicity, by conducting rice relief work in the name of benevolence. Shortly after the end of the rice relief, they claimed that they deserved “virtuous reputation and righteous fame” (renwen yisheng).34 At the same time, Hong Kong was recognized as the single most important rice supplier for Canton. In these more practical ways, the cooperation of two cities turned out to be a great learning experience for the Cantonese merchants. The members of the General Association learned how to deal with rice relief. Projects were organized under detailed plans, and the work was delegated to various trades and industries, with each guild training itself to leverage its own expertise, from communication and transportation to dispatching supervising agents to the sites, from judging rice quality and market values to distribution to the needy. Learning from this experience, the General Association was able to carry out the next rice relief project more professionally than ever before. When a rice shortage once more struck in the spring of 1908, already-experienced Cantonese merchants came to the Hong Kong Tung Wah Hospital. The Hong Kong merchants were also fully experienced from the previous year. Promptly, both sides arranged the cooperative rice relief for Canton.35 rice quality in a time of scarcity

More than anything else, the sale of urgently needed rice taught a valuable lesson; rice merchants’ expertise was vital for the success of rice relief, in particular, their ability to discern different rice qualities. Surprisingly,

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the Cantonese public cared about the rice quality as much during rice shortages as during the normal season. As I discussed in Chapter 2, Wuhu rice was normally imported for its cheaper price and mainly consumed by the urban poor in the second-tier market, or resold to the “rural districts” at a slightly lower price, because its quality was worse than high quality local varieties and worse than the middle grades of foreign rice. The rice relief efforts of 1907 turned out to be an opportunity for Canton’s urban poor to taste new varieties of rice. Because of market conditions, much more French Indochinese rice than Wuhu rice was purchased and distributed to Canton’s urban poor. Eventually, many people realized that French Indochinese rice possessed a “white and untainted” quality, while the “Wuhu rice quality was certainly a little bit worse than foreign rice” (mise xubi yangmi ­xiaoxun).36 Popular perceptions of rice varieties did not stop there. The genuine value of some high-quality local rice varieties was deeply imprinted in the popular understanding. Through the experience of the 1907 rice relief efforts, it became widely known that only local products possessed enough “stickiness” (jiang ye) to be satisfactory (naiji) compared to any varieties of foreign origin.37 What bothered the General Association throughout the rice relief efforts was how to deal with different rice varieties and their different qualities. Although the local populace was keenly aware of quality difference, it was impossible to distribute the same quality of rice to everyone in need. Oftentimes, the local populace compared the relief rice given to them at the rice depot to different rice varieties distributed in the neighboring districts. If they found that the quality of their rice was lower than in other districts, it could led to popular discontent toward the General Association, which could have been fatal to the reputation of its members. Indeed, many merchants were afraid that the “poor people so ignorant and fastidious” tended to complain about the differences in rice quality. Many members of the Association lamented that there must be “rumor mongers and a gang of wicked people” who wanted to defame the rice relief work.38 Accordingly, the merchants realized that they could not ignore the discriminating palate of the rice-consuming public, even in times of rice shortage. The consumer expectation of decent quality rice never abated. The urban poor, dependent on relief rice during the rice shortage, quickly turned into normal customers once rice prices went down. Only through the experience of providing relief for one famine after another did the Cantonese merchants come to a sort of “nuts-and-bolts” knowledge, which was nevertheless a sine qua non for business success. In other words, a successful charity needed more than a philanthropic reputation; it also required the professionalized and specialized knowledge of rice merchants.

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The World Rice Crisis of 1918–1919 One more rice shortage provided Cantonese merchants with another opportunity to build up their reputation and professional skills. In late 1918, rice prices abruptly began to soar in Canton, but no merchant in the cities had anticipated this. No sooner had the world war ended in November 1918 than international grain market conditions changed drastically. During the war years, rice businesses throughout the South China Sea had had a more difficult time than ever before; markets were distorted and closed by embargos and blockages due to worldwide fighting.39 With the end of the war, however, the world rice market encountered unprecedented new demands from Europe, where enormous amounts of food were required for feeding the demobilized soldiers and the postwar reconstruction workforces. The global pattern of ocean-going cargo service also contributed to this sudden change. The most visible of worldwide cargo routes during the wartime had been transatlantic services for the “American military supplies to European Allies,” but after the war it quickly became the Pacific routes for shipping the “cheaper foodstuffs from the colonial markets” to Europe.40 Through a chain reaction, Canton and Hong Kong had to face this sudden change, and the result was that there was much less rice in the Southeast Asian markets.41 Moreover, the competition to charter cargo ships became extremely intense. A new competitor, Japan, jumped into the Southeast Asian rice market, too. Although Japan’s increasing interest in the South China Sea rice trade was well known in East Asia and Southeast Asia, 1919 proved to be extraordinary. Because Japan too had experienced serious rice riots and popular protests throughout the country in 1918, many Japanese rice merchants eagerly sought new rice suppliers in the South China Sea region. It was reported that “the Japanese merchants in Hong Kong have been draining the market of its available supplies.”42 Accordingly, many Cantonese rice merchants had little choice but to rush back to the Wuhu rice market, where they had neglected their business because of the lower quality of its rice and the consequently lower marketability in Canton. J. W. Innocent, Commissioner of Wuhu Customs, observed that the sudden rejuvenation of the Wuhu rice business in 1918 and 1919 was largely caused by increasing demands from the south, where “the competition of rice from Indochina was gradually overborne, not because of diminution in quantities for export, but because the paramount needs of Japan led her merchants to outbid all rivals and thus to monopolize that source of supply.”43 Indeed, nothing more frightened the Cantonese public than the news of sudden changes in market conditions in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia caused by a new foreign rival’s search for rice. Cantonese newspapers

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headlined such gloomy reports, writing, for example, “some Saigon rice arrived at Hong Kong recently, it is reported here, but the Japanese there have bought all of it. There is no Saigon rice on the market at present.”44 To make matters worse, there was a domino effect from the rice markets on the other side of the world, in British India, where crops had been ruined by drought in 1918. To relieve the situation, Burma, the prime rice suppliers for India, diverted great amounts of rice to India, while steeply curtailing exports to other customers, particularly British-held Malaya and Singapore. As soon as rice shortages became prevalent throughout the Malay Peninsula, the next dominos fell, one by one: Siamese and French Indochinese rice was diverted to the Singapore rice market. The last domino eventually to fall was Hong Kong and Canton.45 Consequently, the last hope for the Cantonese was to find domestic suppliers through the full rehabilitation of the northern route of rice trade from the Yangzi area. In January 1919, the Canton Times noted: “nearly every home in Canton is now using Wuhu rice. It is reported that no traces of Saigon rice have been found in the market of Canton for nearly two months.”46 business geniuses help in a crisis

Promptly, Cantonese mercantile elite groups stepped in to provide relief. A number of influential Cantonese merchants, working in collaboration with their Hong Kong counterparts, established the Food Conservation Association and donated money to the relief activity.47 Perhaps many Cantonese remembered the successful famine relief in 1907, yet there were as many changes as similarities in the new relief effort. The traditional rhetorical device of benevolence was not as powerful as it had been twenty years earlier. The time-honored charitable halls had been eclipsed by a new form of merchant organization. The leading merchants might still have had their “virtuous reputations and righteous fame,” but many had retired and been replaced by a new generation of entrepreneurs. Feng Pingshan, for example, the exemplary figure of the 1907 rice relief, had retired and moved to Hong Kong, although he kept business ties with Canton. Instead of Feng and his generation, two ambitious businessmen came to lead Canton’s philanthropic efforts: Jian Zhaonan and Chen Lianbo. They were well aware of the importance of the news media and public advertisements. Perhaps they knew very well that that year’s rice shortage would provide them with a great opportunity to improve their reputations. This generational shift brought a change to the methods used in famine relief as well. Jian Zhaonan (1872–1923) was the founder of the Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company. Canton was the spearhead of his tobacco business in China, since Jian had launched his business in the Southeast Asian Chinese

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communities and had never expanded his market into China. Like many other Cantonese entrepreneurs of his age, Jian’s personal trajectory was completely interwoven with southern coastal Chinese and overseas communities. At age 17 he had left his native town in Nanhai County and had sailed northward to Kobe, Japan. With his family members’ commercial networks linking Kobe, Hong Kong, Saigon, and Bangkok, he operated medicine and marine product businesses. In a short time, he made a great fortune. Soon his “daring and decisive” (gangqiang guogan) business style became well known. After having raised huge amounts from Hong Kong investors, particularly from North-South (Nanbei hang) traders, Jian had drawn up an ambitious blueprint to set up his first Chinese office for the new cigarette business in Canton in 1915 and expand northward to Shanghai, Tianjin, and other northern Chinese markets.48 Jian was clearly shrewd in his business practices. In 1919, he was still a newcomer to the mercantile community of Canton, although he was a famous figure in Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian port cities. He had to find a way to effectively and promptly publicize himself and his business to the world of Cantonese businessmen. Nothing was better than philanthropy to make Jian appear to be a trustworthy businessman. As soon as he had set up his sales office in 1915, Jian began participating in many local charity activities. However, he had to face an intense rivalry with his competitors: Cantonese local businessmen and the British-American Tobacco Company. The British-American Tobacco Company’s personal attacks were more intense than he had expected. In the wake of anti-Japanese boycotts in the late 1910s, the British-American Tobacco Company’s native agents defamed Jian’s unclear nationality; Jian had spent so long overseas, particularly in Japan, that his nationality was not precisely defined. Moreover, his business headquarters was still in Kobe, Japan. He was charged with being a “treacherous merchant (jianshang)” and even called a “Japanese citizen, Matsumoto Shōnan (Japanese pronunciation of his first name).”49 In such a hostile environment, Jian had to show his altruism to his fatherland, where anti-foreign boycotts were often fomented in the market. Although it is unknown how much he donated, it was widely thought that there was no single charity missing his name in the donor lists in late 1910s Canton.50 Before long, Fangbian Hospital took official notice of ­Jian’s reputation: “with a good-natured personality, Jian contributed a great deal of money towards the public good” (gongyi). Although the Charitable Halls’ reputation was not as high as before, Fangbian Hospital’s recognition of Jian certainly raised his profile as a leading philanthropist. Moreover, Jian was a genius at combining charity and commercial advertising. For example, every convoy carrying relief rice or medicine displayed advertising banners and flags declaring “Nanyang Brothers.”51

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The biggest advantage for him was his “northern” commercial networks, which reached to Shanghai and other northern treaty ports that he had cultivated, since his business aim was not restricted to Canton. His business was much bigger and more modern than anyone else’s in Canton. By the late 1910s no single Cantonese entrepreneur had developed as extensive networks with Shanghai and the northern treaty ports as Jian’s. The rice crisis in late 1918 quickly turned into a great opportunity for Jian. The southern route of rice trade had dried up, yet no one was more familiar with the business in the northern route whose center was Shanghai. Jian suddenly became the guardian of Canton’s lifeline.52 founding of the canton food relief association

As soon as Jian Zhaonan publicly promised his donation, the rice relief campaign gained momentum. His promise included a personal donation of 50,000 yuan and full use of the Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company’s facilities and business networks that reached to Shanghai and other lower Yangzi areas. As a first step, he offered the use of his office in the Canton branch of Nanyang Brothers as the main office for the relief campaign, free of charge. Shortly thereafter, the Canton Food Conservation Association was reorganized and expanded as the Canton Food Relief Association (Guangdong Liangshi Jiujihui). On February 13, about a hundred Cantonese merchants and social notables assembled at Jian’s office building, and unanimously decided to immediately raise 500,000 yuan. In addition to Jian’s personal donation, the Nanyang Brothers Company would lend 150,000 yuan to this charity, and donations from other companies continued. The second largest donation, about 100,000 yuan, was donated by another aspiring entrepreneur from Canton, Chen Lianbo, the director of the Hong Kong–Shanghai Bank, Canton Branch.53 Chen Lianbo (1884–1945), who provided the biggest personal donation in this campaign, is worth discussing further. Chen is well known in the master narrative of modern Chinese history, as he led the Canton Merchant Corps’ insurrection against Sun Yat-sen in 1924. Because of this challenge to the founding father’s revolutionary effort, Chen has long been painted as an arch villain of modern China.54 A native of Nanhai County, Chen had a completely different professional background from other traditional Cantonese members of the mercantile elite. His grandfather, Chen Qiyuan, was a renowned silk magnate who had operated China’s first steam-powered silk filatures in Nanhai County. Chen had inherited his wealth and business from his grandfather and father, and became one of the wealthiest silk businessmen in Canton in his twenties. Thanks to his family background, he suffered no adversities in his career life. In addi-

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tion, educational background also distinguished Chen from other members of the Cantonese mercantile elite. He had studied at Queen’s College in Hong Kong for three years in his early teens. This British-style educational background enabled him to be hired as a Chinese director in the Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank, Canton branch. By 1919, Chen monopolized a quarter of Canton’s silk exports, and he was also president of three different business associations: the Canton Chinese Silk Association, the Canton Mining Association, and the Guangdong Export Association. He was also Commander-in-Chief of the Canton Merchant Volunteer Army with which he “rebelled” against Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary government in the 1920s (see Chapter 4).55 By the late 1910s, Chen was indeed a man of social influence in Canton. To the contemporary local news media, Chen was also something of a celebrity. For example, when he held a housewarming party at his new residence in a western suburb of Canton, more than 4,000 invitations were sent out, and the guests included 350 foreign businessmen. Canton’s largest-ever private party was quickly publicized as a spectacular event through news media.56 Needless to say, nothing was better for his reputation and social influence than acting as an outstanding philanthropist. In Who’s Who in China, Chen was described as follows: “Mr. Chan was renowned in all forms of useful charity and education, being a director in many schools and hospitals.”57 The Canton Food Relief Association quickly elected Jian and Chen co-directors and established a division of labor. The most basic jobs were assigned to the rice guilds, particularly the Sanjiang bang traders, whose businesses specialized in trading rice with Wuhu and many other lower Yangzi port cities.58 Under the guidance of He Shaozhuang, the biggest Sanjiang bang guild member, and his rice firm, Suishengyuan, the Association made a deal with Wuhu and brought rice by ten steamships in the winter of 1918–1919. Meanwhile, the association provided them with cover­ing fire, particularly whenever they had to deal with local authorities in the lower Yangzi area. The Anhui and Jiangsu authorities were notorious for their arbitrary tax imposition and rice embargos. To ship Wuhu rice to Canton, convoys had to get through countless customs checkpoints set up by various local authorities. During the turbulent first decade of the Republic, there was no central authority to supervise fair taxation. The best way to pass a customs checkpoint without delay was by lobbying local authorities. He Shaozhang asked the association to provide the “cooperative power of big groups (juda tuanti tongli hezuo),” which meant powerful men like Jian and Chen who could grease the wheels.59 This kind of matter was usually Jian and Chen’s job, because their reputation and influence could be effective even in the remote provinces in the lower Yangzi region. Indeed, Jian’s personal telegram to his acquaintances in the Jiangsu

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Provincial Assembly allowed for the ending of a rice embargo and helped Cantonese convoys pass through every provincial checkpoint. Jian also sent two of his trustworthy men to Shanghai to cooperate with his business partners to help in the shipping of relief rice purchased in Wuhu.60 The association had no reason to denounce Jian’s contributions to the public good in this way. Thanks to Jian’s and Chen’s reputations, the association had little difficulty in engaging in overseas fundraising, too.61 The first overseas donation for the food relief in Canton was remitted from Kobe, where the Jian family still managed the business.62 Subsequently, overseas and domestic donations rushed into the association from port cities such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Manila, and Sidney.63 a rice master and his expertise

However, the personal reputations of a few business magnates could not guarantee the success of rice relief efforts. The quintessential element for relief work was local rice merchants’ practical expertise. From the beginning, the Canton Food Relief Association invited a few leading rice traders to participate and took their advice. At the first meeting on March 2, 1919, which more than one hundred members of the Cantonese mercantile circle (shangjie) attended, the invited rice merchants thoroughly explained the latest market conditions in Hong Kong, Saigon, and Bangkok as well as Wuhu. After discussing availability, the meeting reached the conclusion that Canton had no other choice but to purchase relief rice at Wuhu and other northern port cities.64 On that day, the association decided to choose a “person having an intimate knowledge of the situation” (shuxi qingxing zhi ren) and have him take full charge of this rice relief.65 For this, Huang Xianzhi, the owner of the biggest rice firm and the leader of the foreignrice trade guild, received the most recommendations. Huang was widely regarded the only one who could supervise all the details required for the relief works, such as preparing extra storage and distributing the relief rice as it arrived. The most important reason the members of the Association recommended Huang was that there was no one as influential as Huang in the rice traders’ community. Only Huang could persuade his fellow guild members not to hoard or profiteer.66 Huang Xianzhi’s personal life was no less noteworthy than Jian Zhao­ nan’s or Chen Lianbo’s. Although Huang obviously had less financial power than Jian and Chen, his authority in the rice business was uncontested in Canton. A native of Nanhai County, Huang Xianzhi had started his business both by trading local rice within the Pearl River Delta and trading foreign rice with Hong Kong in the last decade of the Qing dy-

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nasty. By 1912, Huang had established his rice firm, Guangtongxing, which was solely dedicated to trade in foreign rice. Huang’s business soon flourished, and he merged six additional foreign-rice trading firms into his own. Thereafter, he became the sole leader of the foreign-rice guild (Yanghetang) in Canton. Yet Huang’s reputation was not made by his business skills alone. He was known as a man of “guts.” According to a local account, one day toward the end of the Qing dynasty, ten or more Qing soldiers ransacked a rice shop, destroying doors and furniture and stealing some bags of rice. Such looting by the authorities was ubiquitous during the late Qing, and no one could resist it. Yet Huang Xianzhi was different. Huang grappled with the officer who led the soldiers and bit off his ear. Dragging the bleeding officer to the street, Huang publicly humiliated him in front of a crowd. Thereafter, local authorities could not touch him.67 Huang’s social influence came not so much from gossip as from his genuine professionalism. Huang’s market predictions were regarded as the most reliable and important in the Cantonese rice business. Likewise, Huang’s contributions were important to the planning of the 1919 rice relief works, because rice relief work was not as simple as it looked. For example, an unanticipated oversupply of rice would result in a sharp slump in the market. Supplying rice of lower quality could foment the public anger, as discussed in the case of the rice relief work in 1907. To pursue relief work amidst the volatile price fluctuations of 1919, an ability to foresee rapid market changes was more important than anything else. No doubt Huang was regarded as the best person for this job, because Huang’s market analyses had always been professional and he was seen as deserving the admiration of his colleagues. At the meeting of the Association on March 22, 1919, Huang estimated that Wuhu rice was going to be cheaper than French Indochinese rice for some time, although the prices of the latter had suddenly dropped a great deal. He carefully advised that the Association continue importing Wuhu rice until April or May, when the new crops would be available in Southeast Asia, because he estimated that the Southeast Asian rice prices could not be stabilized until then. Based on his experience, Huang provided a synthetic analysis: despite this sudden drop in prices on the Southeast Asian rice market, prices were expected to rise again because the overall market conditions in Southeast Asia were not yet settled.68 Few challenged his analysis. What really strengthened Huang’s cultural authority and professional image was not only the precision of his forecast, but also his impartiality during the relief work. As discussed above, Huang’s personal business had nothing to do with the Wuhu rice trade, which his rival guild, Sanjiangbang, controlled. Although Huang knew that his advice would be detrimental to his best interests (he is the leader of the foreign-rice trade guild),

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he encouraged the continuing purchase of Wuhu rice for the relief  of Canton. At the same time, Huang warned against excessive purchasing of Wuhu rice, which would result in an uncontrollable situation. Huang never failed to pinpoint the shortcomings of the Wuhu rice varieties, stating that “Wuhu rice would easily get much moisture and deteriorate if it was stored for a long time.”69 Huang’s market predictions soon turned out to be accurate. From the beginning of May onward, the skyrocketing rice prices subsided, due to the release of local crops in the Pearl River Delta. However, the Southeast Asian rice market did not recover to normal price levels. To supplement local crops, it was still indispensable to keep importing Wuhu rice for a while. The end of May was the turning point of the rice price inflation in Canton, and the critical situation was clearly relieved by then. However, the Association was not dissolved until the end of July, because Huang warned that the danger would last for some time.70 To be sure, Huang’s precautious analysis and straightforward consultation with the Association greatly helped the rice relief efforts in 1919. Unlike the 1907 relief, Huang was not eulogized for his contribution. However, his expertise and dedication were outstanding in the relief work, and he was lauded in the Cantonese mercantile communities over the ensuing years. Huang’s dominance in the rice business in Canton continued until his retirement in the mid-1920s, when he turned over his position to his son, Huang Yongyu (see Chapter 4).71 popular involvement in charity

The 1919 rice relief was remarkable, in that the leaders drew participation from every corner of society. Unlike traditional pingtiao in the last decade of the Qing dynasty, participation in the relief work went far beyond the small elite groups of local gentry and merchants. Professionalization and specialization in business certainly diversified the character of relief participation, too, although this popular participation was carefully managed by the new generation of Cantonese mercantile elite for their own personal gain. From the beginning, the leaders of the Association saw that the entertainment business would be the best way to reach to the public. The Association contracted with the Haizhou Theater on the west side of the Bund to donate its entrance fees for several weeks to the relief fund. A number of actors and actresses also voluntarily donated funds to the Relief Association.72 Jian Zhaonan took full advantage of his popular brand of Nanyang Brothers Company cigarettes in a similar tie-in. He placed several hundred boxes in major thoroughfares around the city for the collection of empty “Globe”(Daqiu) cigarettes wrappers. The “Globe” brand was the Nanyang Brothers’ top brand and one of the most popular in the

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Canton market, accounting for 30 percent of market share in the city at the time.73 The scheme was that to collect all of these boxes twice a month and open them before a supervisor chosen by the Food Relief Association. The “Globe” wrappers were returned to the Nanyang Brothers, and after counting, the Nanyang Brothers paid “50 cent per 200 [wrappers] in aid of the Food Relief Fund.”74 This public fundraising plan was unexpectedly successful. Shortly, the Nanyang adopted similar measures in the villages outside Canton for the same purpose. The participation of foreign diplomats in Canton also characterized the 1919 rice relief work. The highlight of the Association’s public fundraising event was the presentation of the latest Western motion picture, the most rapidly growing entertainment business in urban China. Canton’s foreign communities were the best avenue to obtain the latest popular foreign films. The American Consulate in Canton agreed to rent eight reels of a motion picture, the “Great War in Europe,” for the benefit of the Relief Association and gave them full authority to manage the box office. The Daxin Company quickly took charge of showing this movie to the public. A temporary screen and outdoor auditorium was set up near the construction site of the Daxin Department Store along the Bund.75 All entrance fees and profits from the sales of cigarettes and tea inside this temporary movie theater were went to the Relief Fund.76 Meanwhile the Association asked the Provincial Government to assign the S.S. Kwonghoi, one of five Canton Navy cruisers, to the task of transporting relief rice from Saigon. Through diplomatic channels in Beijing, the provincial authorities also consulted with French diplomats and the colonial authorities. Although this attempt at international cooperation failed, Cantonese rice relief works did attract the attention of foreign observers.77

Globalizing Rice: Cantonese Rice Aid to Hong Kong The Cantonese rice relief in 1919 was a much more important event in transnational contexts than in the Chinese national context. Even after rice prices were stabilized in Canton, rice shortages and riots plagued many parts of the world. This is because many countries, particularly the riceproducing areas, took a protectionist stance in order to stabilize domestic grain prices. From spring to summer that year, the French colonial authorities imposed a strict control policy for Saigon rice, capping export at 60,000 tons per month, only enough to meet the needs of regular buyers. In July, the Siamese authorities also issued a Royal Decree that prohibited rice export “except under license and appointment by the Board of Rice Control.”78 That summer, a second round of rice shortages occurred in

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Southeast Asia. Prices for Siamese and Saigon rice more than doubled in the Singapore rice market and other parts of the Straits of Singapore. Shortly thereafter, Canton and Hong Kong alike were caught up in this worldwide chain reaction. As discussed above, Canton found an alternative rice supplier from northern China and successfully resolved rice shortages. However, Hong Kong failed to do so. Whereas the critical period had ended in Canton by that summer, Hong Kong had to again brace for the impact of the continuing Southeast Asian rice crisis.79 Telegram after telegram, bad news from Southeast Asia was sent to Hong Kong: a “heavy jump” in rice prices occurred throughout the British colonies in Southeast Asia.80 The Hong Kong authorities gave full authority to the Kong Yuen Hong and four other rice firms to relieve the situation.81 It was too late, however. July 1919 saw the first and last set of rice riots in the 150-year history of British rule in Hong Kong. On the morning of July 26, a Saturday, about a hundred Chinese residents forced their way in and raided a retail rice shop on the Queen’s Road in Wanchai. Quickly, raids spontaneously occurred wherever there was a rice shop, from the Central District to Mongkok, to Yaumatei, and to Tsim Tsa-tsui.82 The South China Morning Post reported: “They rushed in and carried off rice in anything they could find, bags, coats, shirts, etc. Some shopkeepers allowed themselves, wisely perhaps, to be intimated. . . . Not until Indian constables arrived at the scene and attacked them with batons and bamboo sticks, did the crowd scatter.”83 The next day, Bonham Street, nicknamed Nanbei hang jie by the Chinese, where most foreign-rice trading firms gathered (and therefore the most prosperous business quarter), became the target.84 Both the colonial authorities and the Chinese elite were shocked by the first-ever rice riot in Hong Kong’s history. Perhaps they were even more stunned by the news that there was little rice available in the Southeast Asian markets. Many members of the Hong Kong mercantile elite were called together to find a solution, emulating the Canton Food Relief Association’s recent experience in the spring. There was nothing better than calling on the key members of the Canton Food Relief Association. The Secretary for Chinese Affairs approached Jian Yingfu, Jian Zhaonan’s nephew, to contact Jian Zhaonan and the Canton Food Relief Association. At the same time, the British Consul in Canton, instructed by the Hong Kong Government, contacted Chen Lianbo and the Nanyang Brothers, in order to arrange Cantonese rice aid to Hong Kong. Right away, the committee of the Canton Food Relief Association held a special meeting and unanimously decided to appropriate 10,000 piculs of Wuhu rice to be sent to Hong Kong to help their starving compatriots.85 Having realized that Saigon and Bangkok were hardly available due to embargoes, the Association played the

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role of agents for shipping Wuhu rice to Hong Kong until the rice prices subsided.86 To be sure, the cooperation between the two cities for rice relief revived and strengthened their ties more than ever. .  .  . This chapter has examined two major rice relief efforts in Canton. To the Cantonese rice-consuming public, chronic rice shortage was indeed an annual occurrence they had to endure. Thanks to the efforts of the mercantile elite, however, many rice shortages were resolved without any serious social disturbance. Although some riots took place in the surrounding rural districts, Canton’s lifeline was never threatened. In particular, not one bloody riot took place in Canton, even though a number of riots occurred in neighboring rural districts (1907) and Hong Kong (1919). If a strong emphasis of moralistic rhetoric and personal reputation characterized the former effort, the latter was marked by professionalism that the participating businessmen showed in the rice relief efforts. To be sure, a rice relief effort was an extension of business practices. Leading a rice relief provided an excellent chance for Cantonese businessmen to publicize their businesses to the public. In particular, as we saw in the case of 1919, luring popular participation into the rice relief work was truly a public event. More than anything else, the practical skills that the rice merchants acquired during rice shortages strengthened the business for the eventual return to normalcy. Rice relief works required as much special care of rice quality as normal market conditions did, because rice quality and taste were the greatest concerns for the Cantonese public, even during a rice shortage. However, improving business skills did not guarantee the perfect prevention of rice shortages, because in the early twentieth century they were brought on not only by market uncertainty but also by political causes.

4

Politicizing the Enterprise the nationalist revolution and the cantonese rice business

What interrupted the rice influx to Canton was not only international market fluctuation, but also political upheavals that swept through Canton as well as through the whole of China. From the last decade of the Qing dynasty to the mid-1920s, when the Nationalists consolidated their power base in Canton and embarked on a number of political experiments under the banner of the First United Front with the Chinese Communist Party, Canton was entirely exposed to the turbulent political struggles of Republican China. With the rapidly changing political milieu around the city, in Canton the rice trade had to be more than a business. Likewise, rice relief work during rice shortages had to be more than charity for the urban poor. From the viewpoint of the Cantonese mercantile elite, gaining a public reputation through rice relief was not enough to guarantee the safe and stable management of their businesses. They also had to consider the rapidly changing political context, because a series of revolutions provided a new political meaning to business as well. From the viewpoint of the revolutionaries who came to seize the municipal power, the provisioning of the Revolution would rely entirely on the Cantonese rice business, yet it was not entirely trustworthy. How would the lifeline of the revolution be defended? Who would be the most reliable rice suppliers? Would Guomin­ dang members and the local mercantile elite cooperate and collaborate with each other? Or would they clash? These questions became the cornerstones of the political agenda. This chapter will trace the course that rice took into the center of political struggles. Much has been written about the political upheavals and key figures of this time, from the 1911 Revolution to the Nationalist Revolution, from Sun Yat-sen to the rise of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. Yet one simple question has not been asked: who fed them? In the rising

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tide of nationalism, what kind of rice should revolutionaries eat? Would they differentiate domestic rice from foreign rice? How would the swirling revolutionary politics affect Canton’s rice business, particularly foreignrice traders, whose business was deeply connected with overseas mercantile communities beyond national borders? Would the kind of rice that one ate come to define one’s political identity?

Political Strife and Rice in Early Republican Canton The Republican Revolution occurred in Canton overnight, peacefully and quietly. At midnight on November 8, 1911, the last Qing governor, Zhang Mingchi, secretly fled Canton. The next morning, the Canton Provincial Assembly declared its independence from the empire. Revolutionary leaders such as Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin, and Chen Jinghua returned to Canton one by one from abroad to set up a new republican government. Early in December, in the immediate establishment of a new provisional provincial assembly, the Nine Charitable Halls claimed that they deserved nine delegates out of the twenty representatives from Canton.1 Perhaps new political expectations so overwhelmed many members of elite groups in the city that few paid attention to the city’s daily subsistence. The revolution came with no bloodshed. However, one layer beneath the conventional narrative of early Republican history stood the daily lives of the Cantonese public and their concern for fair trade in rice. On lunar New Year’s Day in 1912, the first year of the new Chinese Republic, one new-year-mark writing (chunlian) was posted on the wall of a tall building in the western commercial district of Canton. It did not celebrate the new year or the beginning of the Republic. It instead read: “All lives under the heaven are thorny, where is freedom? Rice is as expensive as pearls, firewood as expensive as laurel, is this happiness?”2 To a great extent, in the initial months under the Republican order the daily lives of Canton residents were thorny, as indicated by this new-yearmark writing. Rice prices, though not high enough to cause a serious riot, were continuously soaring, and bandits frequently blockaded rice supply routes.3 While the Republican Revolution brought about a new opportunity to the elite class, to ordinary Cantonese residents it meant a deep concern about rice. As soon as independence was declared on November 9, 1911, the provisional military governor, Jiang Zungui, posted Republican Canton’s first public notice on the four major gates of Canton’s city walls: “Within a few days, a huge amount of rice will arrive at Canton.” A day or two passed, ten days passed, and even months passed; sufficient volumes of rice never came to Canton. The Cantonese public was acutely disappointed. Hu Hanmin, Sun Yat-sen’s long-time follower, took charge of

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the military governorship and promised to abolish many excessive taxes and surcharges on commerce. However, Hu retained those taxes and surcharges to meet military and political expenses for the revolutionary cause. Bandits, pirates, and secret societies randomly roamed and plundered the rural districts of the Pearl River Delta. There was no place to go to purchase rice, apart from Canton. People felt great alarm. People complained that wealthy merchants and prominent Charitable Halls did not actively pursue pingtiao, as they had done in the past. Canton residents distrusted the rice merchants and suspected them of hoarding and speculating.4 All commercial activities, including the rice trade, were threatened by the incessant political strife and armed conflict that emerged after the sudden collapse of the Qing. The chronicle of the first decade of Republican Canton was filled with the capture, loss, and subsequent recapture of Canton by Sun Yat-sen’s Guomindang and other warlords. In 1913, for example, a great number of casualties occurred just outside Canton in battles between Chen Jongming, one advocate for the provincial independence of Guangdong, and Long Jiguang, the Yunnan Army leader who occupied Canton. Including civilians, the casualties exceeded 3,000 and the reported damage was over $10 million.5 Even if Canton was not directly exposed to violent conflicts, the city’s business was completely interrupted, and public trust and market confidence trembled. In another big battle between regional warlords in 1917, A. H. Harris, Commissioner of Canton Customs, noted: “a prolonged passage of arms occurred” around the “battleground of the West Reach of Canton Harbor. Incessant rifle fire and desultory gunfire prevailed throughout the greater portion of the nights.” 6 Following the tide of political fluctuations, opportunism and profiteering became prevalent. The Canton public suspected that rice shortages resulted less from market changes per se than from politicians’ and profiteers’ deliberate manipulations. hoarders and “treacherous merchants”

The public hostility against “treacherous merchants” (jianshang) is deeply rooted in Chinese tradition. As is well known, merchants were located at the lowest layer in the Confucian understanding of social hierarchy, under literati, peasants, and artisans. Seeking excessive profit has long been regarded as the least desirable social behavior. Partly for that reason, as discussed in Chapter 3, the late-Qing and early-Republican Cantonese mercantile elite had consciously pursued charity. Once the revolution came, the traditional order collapsed. Public distrust of mercantile activity revived and strengthened, however, because political instability was accompanied with an increase in profiteering. One local account

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in ­Untold Stories in Guangdong vividly described popular antagonism against “treacherous merchants” and their hoarding and profiteering of rice in the first decade of the Republic. One rice merchant named Zhou was notorious for his profiteering. By taking advantage of his wealth, Zhou forestalled delivery of a huge amount of local rice. The interruption of the rice supplies by battles provided him the greatest opportunity for profits. He sold rice at higher prices when external rice supplies were cut off. In Canton, every rice merchant knew of Zhou’s profiteering, but no one could actually estimate how much he made in unfair profits. Whether rice in the market was foreign or local, once Zhou forestalled delivery, all market prices skyrocketed too much for most merchants to buy. One day Li ­Liangyue, another rice merchant, signed a contract with Zhou. Although Li was basically familiar with this business and with Zhou’s notorious reputation, Li had little choice but to deal with Zhou. A few days later, Li came to Zhou’s shop to get the rice, but Zhou unexpectedly demanded a new price that was 150 percent higher than the original contract. Li knew very well that disputing an influential business partner would ruin his reputation and his partnership in the business. However, he could not put up with Zhou’s misbehavior, and he fiercely rebuked Zhou.7 Shortly thereafter, the dispute developed into a fist shaking. Li and Zhou exchanged punches several times. The fighting became serious. Li threw his wooden abacus into Zhou’s head, and Zhou responded by kicking Li. As a matter of fact, Li was a martial arts expert and he directed a knock-out blow to Zhou in the end. Zhou fell down, but he could not stand up again. He died on the spot. As soon as Li realized what he had done, he panicked and immediately fled to Hong Kong, after quickly grabbing a few of Zhou’s silver coins. When a group of Zhou’s men heard of his death, they rushed to the spot—Zhou’s rice shop in the middle of the rice market street—and blamed the neighboring merchants for allowing Li’s escape. But the nearby merchants’ responses were cold. None blamed Li for killing Zhou. Instead they charged that Zhou’s profiteering was what caused his death. Before long, constables were called in to investigate this homicide case. Although the police chief ordered that the murderer be hunted down, the popular sentiments favored Li. Many believed that Li had done righteous things and had just expelled a social ill from Canton. None refused to applaud what Li had done. None thought Zhou’s death deserved lamentation.8 This account is the tip of the iceberg. The reputation and trust that the Cantonese mercantile elite had carefully cultivated was ruined, while traditional distrust against merchants prevailed. Popular fury indeed did explode once such a tale of “treacherous” behavior in handling rice became entwined with a political conspiracy.

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Rising provincialism in this period helped amplify the political meaning of the “treacherous” aspect of mercantile behavior when it was related to external-provincial power holders. In the first decade of the Chinese Republic, Canton was occupied by non-Cantonese militarists. What if non-native occupiers smuggled out certain portions of rice that the Cantonese held? It was no longer a moralistic blame game targeting hoarders or profiteers, but rather a matter of politics. The zenith of popular discontent with mercantile misbehavior was between 1917 and 1920, during the years when the Guangxi Army occupied Canton. When Chen Jiongming’s Guangdong Army expelled the Guangxi Army and recovered Canton, they found many “evildoings” that the Guangxi cliques had committed against the Cantonese during their occupation. Nothing infuriated the Cantonese more than an inappropriate management of rice supplies. During the military dominance of the Guangxi Army, the priority of provisioning was always military use. For example, in May 1920, Lu Rongting sent a load of rice to Canton. However, it was not for civilians; it was exclusively for a number of his military commanders who had occupied Canton.9 The military garrisons around the rural districts also harmed local rice supplies throughout the delta by forcefully seizing rice cargos to feed their armies. One local newspaper reported that “militarism” was “among the many curses causing the rising in cost of living.”10 One local account, published shortly after the ouster of the Guangxi Army, summarized “four evil-doings,” and pinpointed smuggling local rice as the worst. According to the account, Guangxi Army generals smuggled out thousands of tons of local Canton rice to Hong Kong and Macao, even during a time of rice shortage. Disguising their actions as military drills, a brigade of the Guangxi Army loaded rice onto their ten battleships and smuggled it out. This action was committed under Mo Zhengcong, General Mo Rongxin’s son, and an unidentified colonel of Mo’s brigade. Profits would have been immense. Every night they practiced “military drills.” Even customs officers could not touch their battleships. Despite severe censorship of the local newspapers, rumors of these “military drills” spread widely throughout Canton. When the truth was disclosed, General Mo had no choice but to search out the culprits. He prosecuted and immediately executed two suspects, yet he did not execute his own son. The suspects were innocent rank-and-file members of his army. Although Mo’s prompt action seemingly quelled the public wrath, it could not prevent the rising popular distrust of the non-native occupiers. Many believed that these operations would have been impossible without the collaboration of “treacherous rice merchants” among the Cantonese, because only they

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knew the smuggling routes in the Pearl River Delta and the rendezvous points to meet the foreign buyers.11 What did increasing popular distrust of “treacherous” behavior among merchants, particularly rice merchants, mean to the entire circle of businessmen? Temporary political allegiance to unpopular power holders was not a sustainable solution. Perhaps the merchants realized that in spite of short-term advantages, such behavior would be risky to business in the long run. It was against this backdrop that the Cantonese mercantile elite elaborated rice relief works, as was discussed in Chapter 3. As a matter of fact, political instability did not necessarily mean an insurmountable hindrance for business. Instead it provided a new opportunity for both high risk and high profit. This does not mean that opportunity was simply given to them. Rather, they vigorously turned political constraints into business opportunities.

Political Instability and the Professionalization of the Rice Business Despite its disastrous political strife, the 1911 Revolution inspired a new atmosphere in the city. As soon as the damage caused by political unrest and social upheavals was repaired, Canton’s economic life became invigorated. Notwithstanding the ascending living costs and ordinary residents’ daily hardships, Canton pulled in a massive population from the countryside throughout the Pearl River Delta and gave them opportunities to live their daily lives. According to an observation, there was “a large influx from country to the city” in the 1910s. For example, the annual exodus from the rural areas totaled over one million in the years of 1912 and 1913. Throughout the decade, “the large floating population in no way decreased.” The majority of this “floating” population poured into Canton and led to the demographic and economic expansion of the city.12 There were visible changes as well. Standing slightly apart from warlords’ battlefields, the Pearl River Bund along the riverside embraced new businesses and developed into a new commercial district, transforming the urban landscape. The 1910s were the heyday of construction of high-rise buildings; many modern buildings were erected along the riverside between the Shameen Island and the middle of the Bund. Traders and businesses flocked to this commercial district along the Bund. According to Francis Carl, Commissioner of Canton Customs in 1916, whenever “peace and quiet were restored, Canton’s business revived and became brisk.”13 To be sure, the rapidly increasing urban population created new demands for the rice business.

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The most outstanding part in this riverside boomtown was a new rice district: Shakee Street (Shaji) on the northern riverside facing Shameen Island (Shamian), which was Canton’s foreign concession, located in the Pearl River facing Canton’s longtime commercial district of Xiguan. As it was a foreign concession under the protection of foreign law and enforcement, Shameen Island provided Cantonese merchants with a shelter from political strife and bloody battles. Rice traders in particular flocked to this area. Although the Island itself excluded the native Chinese, Shakee, divided by a small creek, offered safe wharves for anchoring rice junks and unloading cargos. This area became known as Rice Street or Rice Wharf Street (mibu dajie) by native Cantonese and foreign merchants alike. According to Arnold Hotson, Acting Harbor Master in Shameen, there was an “extensive number of native small craft lying continually off the Rice Market.”14 This change accompanied the specialization and professionalization of the business. In the 1910s, Canton’s rice business separated into three specialized industries: (1) the foreign-rice trade (mikang hang), (2) the machine-­powered rice milling business, what Cantonese called miji, and (3) the Sanjiang bang (literally, “three rivers gang”) guild, whose specialty was trading rice and miscellaneous grains (zaliang) with the ports in the lower Yangzi area. The dominant business in the Shakee Rice Market was the foreign-rice trade. The traders organized their own guild (Guangzhou Kangmi hang) and came to lead the business in the 1910s. They had originally traded hulls of grain (kang) for feeding livestock in the late nineteenth century. Trading rice had been done just occasionally, and its scale had been much smaller than the major rice business (Gulan) of the city. However, by the turn of the twentieth century the guild members specialized in foreign-rice trade with Hong Kong, and they came to dominate the market. Within two decades, the guild members grew from just a few to 108 by 1921. The guild members customarily elected their director after considering a candidate’s “reputation, sincerity, and credibility.”15 Huang Xianzhi, who had played the leading role in the 1919 rice relief, dominated the guild because he satisfied this qualification. Under his leadership, the foreign-rice guild embraced unprecedented prosperity throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Although personal reputation was still important in the management of the guild, guild members consistently elaborated the principles and rules of their business, and these rules helped their dominance over the entire rice business throughout the city and the “Silk District,” where many of their retail buyers were from. Strikingly, it was the unfriendly environment engendered by the early Republican years that drove the foreign-rice traders to create new rules

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and principles of business. To survive political uncertainty, there was little choice but to professionalize the business itself. For example, the guild had two different payment periods; buyers who purchased foreign rice had to pay within fifteen days, and buyers had to pay within seven days if they bought local rice. Deals involving foreign rice were usually bigger than those for local rice, and hence the payment period was a little bit more generous to foreign-rice buyers. If payment was early, the buyer could get a discount. The guild also provided a grace period of up to eighteen days for both foreign and local rice. However, the guild blacklisted any buyer who could not meet the deadline. Once ostracized by this guild, rice retailers, who were mostly small-scale shopkeepers, could not run their businesses smoothly. Strict application of this new rule to the entire membership of the guild under Huang’s directorship developed into a new custom of the business.16 The cornerstone of the foreign-rice business was the management of buyers dispatched to Hong Kong (zhu Gang maishou) and their residential offices in Hong Kong (yusuo). The more domestic politics degenerated, the more the rice business became dependent upon foreign-rice trade with Hong Kong, simply because a large-scale deal with Hong Kong provided the most reliable rice supplies, in spite of occasional interceptions in the middle of shipping through the Pear River.17 Although the headquarters of the rice businesses were located in Canton’s Shakee rice market, their business emphasis was placed in Hong Kong, since the buyers’ choice of wholesale purchase substantially determined the success of a rice firm. As discussed in Chapter 2, the buyers residing in Hong Kong were professionals in the skills of discerning rice quality and understanding market conditions. Canton’s rice firms paid all rents, all charges for meals, and all per diems for their rice buyers, who bargained for all varieties of foreign-rice imports at the Hong Kong rice market. Some rice firms who could not afford to manage a residential office in Hong Kong alone collectively managed a buyers’ office in Hong Kong and shared the cost. To update and estimate market conditions, the dispatched buyers and the headquarters exchanged communications by telegram with the Canton headquarters every day.18 The internal hierarchy of foreign-rice traders also indicates the significance of these buyers’ role in the business. In every foreign-rice trade firm, job details were clearly specialized and ranks were strictly divided. At the top, there was a general manager, who took charge of overall management of the rice trade and received a monthly salary of 120 yuan. The second rank consisted of both a rice buyer dispatched to Hong Kong and an indoorservice seller (diannei maishou) who bargained with retailers in Canton. Each was paid a monthly salary of 100 yuan. Because they demanded a high

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level of professionalism, it took many years to get one of these ­second-rank positions. Only after many years of experience of discerning the quality of different rice varieties and haggling rice prices with business partners could one eventually be assigned to either position. To be sure, people in these positions were highly respected in rice business circles in Canton and Hong Kong, where they developed their personal and professional acquaintances. However, the rest of the employees were no more than trivial in rank. A typical wholesale rice firm usually hired one accountant, whose monthly salary was 45 yuan, and a few scalers, with a payment of 40 yuan each. At the lowest rank, there were three to four simple manual laborers with salaries of 10 to 20 yuan each.19 technological innovations in the business

The blossoming of the rice business in Canton came with the industrialization of rice husking. Once machine-powered mills (miji, literally rice machine) were introduced to Canton for the first time in 1906, they galvanized the business.20 Although some Cantonese consumers had tasted machine-husked white rice of foreign origins as early as the 1890s, it was the introduction of machine-powered mills that popularized white rice consumption among the Cantonese public. Many Cantonese soon realized that there was a big difference in terms of taste between traditional stone-milled rice and machine-husked white rice ( jinian baimi ). The marketability of the middle grade of rice varieties that were husked by machine came to surpass any varieties of high quality rice husked in the old style.21 Within two decades, more and more rice mills were built along the Pearl River, and the rice milling business became one of the six most important industries of Canton.22 The Decennial Report of the Canton Customs noted that the mechanization of rice mills was one of the most significant changes in the city’s entire business community in the decade of the 1910s.23 By the 1920s, the number of machine-powered rice mills in Canton totaled 25, and in 1926 the number of unionized workers in the rice industry totaled 2,650.24 The introduction of the mechanized rice husking industry brought about the “golden age of the Cantonese rice business” in the 1910s. Demand from the well-to-do class in the Silk District was noteworthy. In the late 1910s, there were no machine-powered rice mills in the rural districts of the Pearl River Delta. To obtain white rice, merchants had to bring local, unhulled rice from the rural districts to Canton to husk and polish, after which they had to ship it back to sell in their rural markets.25 In the heyday, every rice mill operated eighteen hours a day, yet they still could not meet the demand. In the peak season from May to November, when both the early and late harvests of local crops appeared in the market,

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they had to operate twenty-four hours a day.26 It was reported that “they worked almost daily except during the New Year and Dragon Festival holidays. It was difficult for the rice millers to take many holidays as the city consumed at least 10,000 piculs of rice daily.”27 The briskness of the rice milling industry resulted from the rice millers’ own expertise in rice husking, too. In general, Cantonese rice millers operated three different types of milling machines. They processed rice through three different stages using these machines. The first process was just hulling (pumo) in which the machine removed the rice husk, ground the husk in with the bran, and produced coarse rice (caomi). The second process was called hengmo, which involved husking coarse rice into normal white rice. The last process was called qimo, in which normal white rice was given a high polish to produce “highly refined rice” (shangdeng jingmi). This last process of polishing was also called “husking for shaping rubber-like bodies of grain” (xiangjiao qishen mo) because rice became very soft after this high polishing process. This three-staged rice milling process, many rice merchants believed, was a Cantonese specialty, which no other place in China could match. Some claimed further that their milling skills matched those of Rangoon’s rice industry, which was known as the world’s best. At the least, they were proud of themselves because domestic competitors in the lower Yangzi region could not rival Cantonese rice millers and their milling skills.28 business rivalry

Certainly, there was rivalry within the business. In particular, the rivalry between foreign-rice traders and domestic rice traders stood out. The Sanjiang bang merchants traded Wuhu rice and other domestic rice varieties from the lower Yangzi region. Although the name Sanjiang (literally, three “Jiang”: Jiangsu, Jiangsi, and Zhejiang) indicated the lower Yangzi region, their business networks reached as far as the treaty ports of northern China, and sometimes to Manchuria. While their Wuhu rice business waned due to competition with foreign rice, the Sanjiang bang by no means dwindled. Thanks to this “northern route” network, they could trade other kinds of grains, namely “miscellaneous grains”(zaliang), instead of Wuhu rice. In South China, no grain except rice was highly respected by consumers. Despite this fact, the Sanjiang bang traders ran a sizable business in Canton.29 The timely boom in the mechanized milling business provided a new business opportunity for them to import nuts, sesame seeds, and soybeans from the north, because new mechanized milling technology changed these sorts of miscellaneous grains into new processed foods to suit the Cantonese palate. The production of machine-produced peanut oil was a good example. Given Canton’s highly sophisticated food

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culture, these types of foodstuffs resulted from the combination of ­Sanjiang bang trade and the mechanization of milling, which brought about new business success. Trading miscellaneous grains of northern origins gave a comparative advantage and independence to the Sanjiang bang merchants to compete with the foreign-rice traders’ guild.30

Feeding the Guest Armies It was Sun Yat-Sen’s Guomindang that terminated the chaotic warlord era (1916–23). Although Sun Yat-sen’s painstaking and triumphant seizure of Canton in February 1923 marked the end of disorderly warlord rule in the conventional narrative, his capture of the city intensified political interruptions in the rice business. No place provided a better logistical base than Canton for his revolutionary cause. To the Cantonese public, however, the Guomindang’s recapture of the city from Chen Jiongming, a strong advocate of provincial autonomy under the slogan “Guangdong for Guangdong People,” meant the resumption of a military presence, one that was more burdensome than what they had experienced before. The Revolutionary Army that Sun Yat-sen brought into Canton consisted of a miscellany of autonomous brigades and regiments of different geographical origins, such as the Yunan Army, a few units of the Guangxi Army, and the Hunan Army. Instead of the National Army, its official name, many Cantonese just called them the “Guest Armies” (kejun), simply because they were not rooted in the locale.31 The primary reason to garrison them around the city was for a logistical advantage. The spatial pattern of military deployment clearly indicated their logistic concerns. The headquarters of the Coalition Army was built in Canton, and the logistic supporting headquarters was built next to the train station of the Canton–Kowloon Line at Dashatou.32 in the name of the revolution

As tens of thousands of Guest Army troops poured into Canton, the burden on the civilian residents to feed the soldiers became a serious problem. Because most soldiers were badly disciplined and suffered from ration shortages, they frequently looted small shops, especially rice shops, throughout the city. The armies were nothing more than half-bandit/­half‑soldier armies with little discipline, and their troublemaking got out of control. One night in December 1923, for example, a soldier from an unidentified unit banged on the door of Yongchanglong rice shop at midnight. It was too late for a clerk to allow him in. None made a deal that late at night. The soldier continued to bang on the door, and eventually a fight developed. As constables

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rushed into the shop and took control, the soldier was lightly injured on his face and was treated at the municipal hospital. After a while, the soldier came back with dozens of cohorts. The shop was plundered and the clerk was beaten and taken to the garrison. Police attempts to mediate this conflict were fruitless.33 Local law enforcement could not stop the soldiers’ troublemaking, and the Guest Army completely abused its power. The revolutionary cause justified any misbehavior of the military. Even local Guomindang members could not stop them. In another example, a score of armed soldiers under orders from their commanding officer raided the Shengyuan rice shop in April of 1924. The soldiers arrested and detained the manager and clerks without trial in the military headquarters. No one could resist them, however, because the military authorities declared that the rice shop manager was suspected of smuggling rice originally reserved for military use.34 As long as the use of military force was understood as the cardinal purpose of the revolution, no one could resist it. Outside Canton, conditions were no better than in the city itself. Everywhere a military garrison was set up, the extra demand for rice became a primary social problem. In Shaoguan, for example, where 3,000 soldiers of the Hunan Army were garrisoned to defend northern Guangdong, local rice could not meet the extra demand and the local populace fell under unprecedented hardship.35 Even in districts where no army units were garrisoned, forced “donations” of local rice for military use (junmi) were rampant. For example, the magistrate of Xinhui County compelled local merchants to raise funds to pay for rice for soldiers. It was allocated by the higher authorities in Canton.36 There were many cases of pirating and hijacking rice while it was being shipped to Canton. In a single day, an unidentified army unit on the West River pirated ten rice junks.37 Popular discontent was fomented throughout the province. On January 11, 1924, Zhao Zhuandian, Magistrate of Shixing County, declared that his local authorities would not provide rice for the Hunan and Yunnan Armies anymore. One brigade of the Hunan Army garrisoned in his county were already consuming 1,000 catties of rice a day. What really concerned the local populace, according to Zhao, was not just the one brigade currently staying in his county, but that another unit had already cleaned out the county’s granaries. Moreover, they could not predict how many more troops would come in the future.38 As C. Martin Wilbur points out, the Guest Armies were “virtual armies of occupation” for most Cantonese civilians.39 Even an editorial in Guangzhou minguo ribao, a Guomindangcontrolled newspaper, lamented the random abuses of power and arbitrary uses of local revenue by the military: “As militarism dominated Guangdong province, public finance fell into disorder. Every tax collecting office was freely controlled by men of power, and revenue was randomly

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­ etained. Armies also occupied tax collecting offices and imposed taxes. d The latter was not different from the former. This is a problem of subsistence for poor civilians.”40

The Canton Merchant Corps Incident In the end, such abuses of power by the Guest Armies and tacit toleration by the Guomindang authorities resulted in a violent clash with a group of the city’s merchants, the “Canton Merchant Corps Incident.” The Merchant Corps (shangtuan) was an armed force created and operated by many merchants for the protection of businesses. Its origins traced back to the days around 1911 when Canton had experienced a political vacuum. In August of 1924, Chen Lianbo, who took command of the corps, mobilized the corps to “stop the Army’s abuse.”41 The incident was sparked by the Guomindang authorities’ seizure of weapons imported for the Merchant Corps. Yet the mercantile communities’ discontent with the Guest Armies had been growing underneath the surface for a long time, and they provided a good pretext for the arming of the Corps. Once the Guomindang refused to release the confiscated weaponry, many merchants went on strike and shut down their shops throughout the city. compromising about rice supplies

The confrontation outlasted more than three months until October, when Guomindang’s military forces under Chiang Kai-shek’s command bombarded the western commercial district of the city and quelled the insurgents. Shortly thereafter, the Guomindang authorities established so-called Merchant Bureaus to reorganize and mobilize merchants around the revolutionary cause.42 Because this incident was an obvious challenge to the Guomindang authorities, it has long been described in conventional narratives in both China and Taiwan as “treason” plotted by reactionary bourgeois elements against the revolutionary cause. Scholarship outside China, though much distanced from such official narratives across the Taiwan Straits, also characterized the incident as a watershed after which the party-state strengthened its political authority and began subjugating societal power groups under the party line.43 However, the actual politics of provisioning under the confrontation provides a somewhat different story. One layer underneath the intransigent confrontation between the authorities and merchants there were mutual efforts to reach a compromise in the management of the food supplies to the city. As a matter of fact, the merchant members who took part in the strike were by no means a cohesive group. As many rice shop owners shut their businesses and caused rice

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prices to soar, the Guomindang persuaded and coerced the leading figures of the rice traders’ guilds not to side with the insurgents. This double-edged tactic was quite successful. One rice merchant, Huang Zhuping, leader of the Mibentang rice guild, expressed his “anxiety about the rupture in the food supplies” approached the authorities and suggested a deal.44 After a negotiation, Mayor Sun Fo issued one hundred special permissions and gave them only to rice shop owners who would surrender. If they did so, the authorities promised to protect their trades by all means. These merchants’ cargo ships and junks would be protected from any army units’ intervention. Before long, Huang and his rice guild members were given a hundred white flags embroidered with black characters. Authorities declared that any rice cargo on the Pearl River without that flag on the pole would be seized and its cargo would be confiscated.45 This modus vivendi was achieved under a conciliatory atmosphere between the authorities and the rice merchants. The leverage that the authorities wielded was the merchants’ precarious position between the authorities and the union workers’ continuing strike. Some weeks before the merchants’ strikes, labor unions had gone on strike. They had blockaded the foreign trade companies and refused to release rice from rice cargoes owned by foreign companies. Just before the deal was reached, Mayor Sun promised that the authorities would persuade the strike committee and union leaders to stop the strikes that damaged the distribution of rice supplies in the city.46 rice in political propaganda

Meanwhile, the Guomindang authorities completely won the minds of the populace with their political propaganda by skillfully relieving public anxiety over food security in the city. From the beginning of the merchants’ strike, the authorities claimed that they would completely bring the citizens’ food security (shimin liangshi zhian) under control and keep all the rice shops open to the public. The authorities clearly demarcated those who wanted to keep the city’s lifeline secure and those who opposed it and asserted that the latter should bear the burden of full responsibility for soaring rice prices. Perhaps this instance could be considered the first victory in modern propaganda warfare in China. On August 27, for example, the Guangzhou Minguo ribao reported that “in spite of strikes by a few rice shops, the two largest foreign-rice trader firms, Yanghetang and Yongandang, decided to side with the authorities and obey the party direction.” Meanwhile, the newspaper highlighted that more than 70 percent of Chen Lianbo’s followers had already surrendered to the authorities and the city’s food supplies were well maintained under government control.47 On the other hand, the newspaper decisively called strikers who sided with

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Chen Lianbo “enemies of the public.” They should therefore be blamed for “interrupting the influx of food supplies and causing other economic problems” to the city. In particular, Chen Lianbo, the mastermind of the insurgency, was painted as a coward hiding behind the imperialists: “Chen was controlling the strikes and manipulating rice prices, while safely hiding in the building of the Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank in Shameen.”48 Chen’s popular image as the greatest donor to rice relief had dramatically plummeted to an image of a profiteer hiding behind the protection of a foreign power. We do not know to what extent the Cantonese public was convinced by the villainous image of Chen depicted in the Guomindang’s political propaganda.49 Yet there was no doubt that from the May Fourth Movement in 1919 onward, China was swept by anti-foreign sentiments. Nothing seemed more villainous than profiteering in a time of soaring rice prices. At the same time, the Guomindang successfully created a new image of a legitimate and competent authority that would take care of the food supplies of the city. The projection of this new image of the authorities unfolded in two ways. First, the authorities emphasized that they continued to prioritize an urgent popular concern—the concern for people’s subsistence (minshi). Second, they demonstrated that no social group could challenge the authorities regarding the management of the food supplies. Shortly thereafter, Chen’s mansion was raided and confiscated as well. Eventually, after the remaining Merchant Corps soldiers completely surrendered on October 15, Chen had no choice but to flee to Hong Kong. He never returned to Canton again in his life.50 These events show how Canton’s food security became a political issue around which various forms of political struggles revolved. The Cantonese public came to realize that food security could be threatened not only by changes in market conditions, but also by politics—politics in which they did not deliberately participate but which they could not stay away from. However, this political incident was just a harbinger of the further politicization of rice; rice would soon become a political metaphor for the revolution and patriotism that swept 1920s China.

Feeding the Revolution Rice became a key political issue not only in the conflicts between mercantile communities and the authorities, but also in the increasing tensions between the working class and factory owners. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, increasing numbers of unionized workers and labor disputes helped raise salaries, but these increased salaries were accompanied by soaring living costs in the city. Although demographically the percentage of factory workers was hardly a majority in Canton, a substantial portion of Can-

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ton’s urban population were wage workers; most were employed as clerks, dock workers, or unskilled manual laborers in small shops. These urbansector workers were most sensitive to the fluctuations in rice prices and the cost of living. Needless to say, rice price was the most sensitive barometer for a change in the cost of living. One observer described working-class daily life in Canton as follows: On account of the failure of the autumn harvest, the price of nearly every kind of foodstuff has increased considerably. At the same time, the various labor strikes, ending always in an increase of wages, have also enhanced the prices of almost all the daily necessities. On average, the standard of living here has arisen from 20 to 30 per cent, to the great suffering of those who incomes are fixed or increased only after a definite period of time.51 rice and labor disputes

Labor disputes, especially in the transportation sectors, created significant oscillations in rice prices, since Canton’s rice supplies were dependent on long distance trade. The tide of the labor movement hit Canton’s rice business as well. The so-called “Rice Coolies” (migong) strike was considered to be one of the biggest labor disputes in the city. In January 1924, hundreds of manual laborers hired in the rice market in Shakee went on strike with their counterparts on the neighboring wharfs along the Pearl River. They called for “certain percentages to share the bonus earned by the shops.” Before long, “transportation of rice at the port was forcibly suspended,” and rice prices began soaring. The strikers, inspired by a series of political mass movements of the time, and in particular by the inauguration of the First United Front that year, were very persistent: “the situation was not a bit alleviated and the government order was apparently neglected.”52 This dispute went into a deadlock. Many rice merchants constantly requested the Canton Merchant Corps to crush the strikes by armed force. After a two-month stalemate, the rice strike leader Yan Yuesheng was shot dead in front of his house by four unknown assassins. Shortly thereafter, the parties to the strike reached the compromise at last: merchants would increase their employee’s wages by three-tenths, and that “they should have the liberty to use new men if the old workers did not return to the ship in due time.”53 The Rice Coolies strike was only a local event, and it has been completely neglected in the mainstream narratives of revolutionary labor movements. Perhaps its character did not fit into the revolutionary cause of the time: a strike led by revolutionary workers awakened to realize class consciousness and spearheaded by the struggles against imperialism and warlordism. Yet its social repercussions were no less significant than other

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mass movements that many Cantonese experienced at the time. The Cantonese public may have learned that they had to concern themselves with labor politics as much as they had to be concerned with market changes for daily rice consumption, since nascent yet rapid changes in industrial relations could also threaten the influx of food supplies. Rice was not free from politics. rice and the great canton–hong kong strike

The Nationalist Revolution (1923–27) brought about the politicization of food provision, which was indeed an unprecedented experience for the Cantonese public. Food provision had long been at the top of the agenda of “pre-modern” statecraft throughout the imperial centuries, yet it was by no means an issue of political negotiation, compromise, or mediation. Once the Guomindang, armed with revolutionary ideology, came to control the municipality, “sustaining people’s provision (weichi minshi)” came to mean more than guaranteeing daily necessities. It changed into a connotative indicator to distinguish enemies from friends and patriots from traitors. The politicization of the rice supply culminated in the Great ­Canton–Hong Kong Strike in 1925. On June 23, 1925, parading demonstrators, mostly students, laborers, and cadets from the Whampoa Military Academy, some of whom were armed, clashed with French and British guards on Shakee Road across from Shameen Island, Canton’s foreign concession. Although who fired first was unknown, the consequence was a profound tragedy. At least 52 Chinese “anti-imperialist” demonstrators were machine-gunned to death and more than 170 were wounded. Among the dead, 20 were known to be civilians, including one woman and four minors under the age of 16. In addition, 23 cadets and soldiers were killed, but apparently not all of them were armed.54 Before this incident, called the Shakee Massacre of June 23, a similar clash between Chinese demonstrators, most of whom were working in foreign factories, and the British police force had happened in the International Settlement in Shanghai. This was known as the May Thirtieth Movement, and it ignited massive anti-imperialist protests throughout China.55 Given the snowballing revolutionary environment in Canton, this event galvanized unprecedented mass protests throughout the city. Shortly thereafter, the similar “massacre” took place on Shakee Rice Street. This incident marked was the beginning of the “Great Canton–Hong Kong Strike (Sheng-Gang da bagong),” in which Canton and Hong Kong workers allied to protest Western, and especially British, imperialism. Even before the massacre took place, unionized Chinese workers in Hong Kong, whose union had been infiltrated by Canton labor organizers, went

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on strike against the unequal treatment of Chinese workers under British administration. Shortly after the incident, tens of thousands of Chinese workers in Hong Kong, mostly seamen and stevedores, left their jobs and flocked into Canton to join their compatriot strikers, who were also protesting against imperialist brutality.56 Indeed, the Shakee Massacre of June 23 had been the watershed of the labor movement in Canton. Despite Communist organizers’ extensive efforts, it had been extremely difficult to mobilize the Cantonese working class. The working class was divided by factionalism and rivalries, mainly between new trade unions constructed by Communist infiltrators and traditional guild members. However, the Massacre sparked them to unite.57 The ties between Canton and Hong Kong tightened again. These ties were no longer philanthropic or mercantile but rather political. Rather than emphasizing class conflict, the Communist strike leaders spearheaded a protest against foreign imperialism, especially against the British economic dominance of southern China. One week after the incident, the Guomindang’s Nationalist Government (Guomin zhengfu) declared that Revolutionary China would officially break off economic and diplomatic relations with the British. 58 In  that

f i g u r e 3 .  “Economic Break Off with the British,” a propaganda cartoon, GMRB, 1 Jul 1925.

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sense, the Sheng-Gang (Canton-Hong Kong) ties were broken not by market changes but by revolutionary politics. Political activists at the grassroots level were much more radical than the Guomindang authorities. Deng Zhongxia, a young Communist intellectual who led the General Strike Committee, proclaimed three cardinal principles of the strike, which were not negotiable at any cost: first, to maintain the strike until the imperialists completely surrendered and withdrew from China; second, to blockade Hong Kong and Shameen Island by force; third, to immediately assemble a national people’s convention to protest against imperialism.59 In Canton’s news media, rice had been a key item in the business section. By this point, it had also become the centerpiece of the political section. The Guangzhou Minguo ribao and the Gongren zhi lu (Workers’ Way), the Guomindang-edited and the ­Communist-edited ­dailies, respectively, both headlined the stories about strikes and anti-British propaganda every day. Hasty declarations of “economic independence” grew out of a number of emotional slogans. For example, one editorial in the Guangzhou Minguo ribao emphatically asserted that Canton had to embark on economic independence (jingji duli) to achieve genuine liberation from British influence.60 However, these schemes were extremely idealistic and risky. Even the anticipated social consequences would be tremendously shocking to the labor leaders themselves. What if the entire flow of people and goods between Hong Kong and Canton were to stop? How would they lead the revolution and run the government after an economic break-off with Hong Kong? More than anything else, who would feed the revolution? Public anxieties over provisions immediately increased. A rumor that the British would blockade the food supply routes between Hong Kong and Canton suddenly spread widely throughout the city, and rice prices promptly jumped. Both the Guomindang authorities and the General Strike Committee had to find alternative rice supply routes. Canton had had plenty of experience over the previous decades. Some suggested resuming rice imports from Yangzi ports (Wuhu, Zhenjiang, or Shanghai), as these imports had successfully managed rice shortages in 1919. However, many key players of the 1919 rice relief, including Chen Lianbo, had been ostracized by the Guomindang authorities as “enemies of the public” and had fled to Hong Kong. Others suggested a direct import of Siamese rice from Bangkok under government control, since there were many “patriotic overseas Chinese” (aiguo huaqiao) operating rice businesses. Yet what if the British attacked the rice convoys at the mouth of the Pearl River? Because of this concern, Hu Hanmin, the new provincial governor, declared that he would dispatch Canton Navy battleships to the mouth of the Pearl River to protect rice cargo ships from British seizure. Notwithstanding

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these efforts, public anxiety persisted. The Cantonese public, through the experiences of the previous decade, knew very well that rice crises with political causes were much harder to control than those simply brought on by market changes. Moreover, this crisis was not caused by domestic politics, but rather by a diplomatic confrontation with British Hong Kong. For this reason, the shortage would be more unpredictable than any rice shortages that they had confronted in the past. Neither news reports nor rumors helped calm down public anxiety. In the rising tide of revolutionary sentiment, newspapers were perceived as nothing but tools of political propaganda. Otherwise, they were silenced by the propaganda bureau’s censorship. Party-controlled papers were filled with sensational, polarized news accounts, either about villainous imperialists and their menaces or about heroic retaliation by the revolutionaries to defend the lifeline. For example, one unidentified news account reported in the Guangzhou Minguo ribao that a British gunboat near Macao had forcefully seized a steam cargo ship loaded with Siamese rice from Bangkok, and the Cantonese merchants and sailors in the vessels were seriously injured and arrested.61 In retaliation for this, Picketing Squads (jiuchadui) in Canton blockaded and seized all routes of food supply to Shameen Island from Hong Kong. Reprisal against Chinese collaborators was much harsher. Anyone who traded foodstuffs with the British on the Island was arrested and humiliated as a “slave of Western imperialists and a Chinese traitor” (yangnu hanjian).62 defending the lifeline

However, the radicals quickly realized that foreign-rice imports were a sine qua non for Canton’s daily survival. What would be the best way to secure Canton’s rice supplies while maintaining an “economic break-off” with Hong Kong? There seemed to be no other way than the opening of direct trade routes with “patriotic” overseas Chinese merchants in Southeast Asia. To pursue this project, the Canton Food Preservation Committee (Guangdong liangshi weichi weiyuanhui) was quickly organized under the supervision of the Nationalist Government. Although the authorities appointed the director, many merchants were allowed to participate, and most of the practical tasks of the new rice trade were assigned to them— particularly those who had led rice relief work in the past. For example, Jian Qinshi from the Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company was appointed as vice director. In spite of their recent confrontations with the authorities and with radical labor unions, mercantile groups were surprisingly cooperative with this project from the beginning. More than 180 members of the mercantile elite from various trades in Canton expressed their willingness

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to participate on the committee. Were these groups of merchants really patriotic, as they were often described in the official narrative accounts of the Nationalist Revolution? Did they really need to collaborate with the committee to keep the city’s lifeline, regardless of their political discord with the Guomindang? Or were they tamed by the authorities and then forced to support the committee? The answers remain unknown. Yet it is not difficult to assume that there were some plausible motives that propelled them to participate in a new rice business venture. At least there was little reason to reject the invitation from the committee. They might have known that a rice crisis often turned into a great business opportunity. They had learned from past experience. There is no way to know his genuine motive, but it is clear that Huang Xianzhi played a pivotal role this time. Huang, the most influential ­foreign-rice trader in Canton’s rice business circles, as discussed in Chapter 3, had successfully executed the 1919 rice relief with his practical expertise. He was again given full authority to command all practical matters for the committee. As he had done in 1919, Huang quickly arranged detailed jobs one by one. First, he called for a reconciliation and cooperation of rice merchants with the radicals. Huang insisted that the General Strike Committee, the Picketing Squad, and the Ministry of Labor should help rice merchants and not interrupt their business. At the same time, Huang persuaded many rice merchants who still hesitated, because of their suspicion that radicals manipulated the agenda behind the scene, to cooperate with the Food Preservation Committee. He assured them that disturbances of the rice business would not happen.63 How could Huang Xianzhi help the committee’s project for direct rice trade with Siam? Underneath the waves of political slogans and propaganda was what could be called the real warfare—a war of provisioning. One can hardly obtain a politically neutral account during wartime. Yet it was clear that direct interactions between Canton and the Chinese communities in Siam increased after the beginning of the strike. Some Chinese merchants in Bangkok reportedly wired 100,000 yuan to support Canton’s revolution, together with an expression of compatriotic sympathy.64 Praiseworthy actions continuously headlined the party-controlled news media. On August  29, for example, He Ruhui and Huang Rifang, delegates of overseas Chinese merchants from Siam, eventually made it to Canton. The Guangzhou Minguro ribao hailed them, stating that two “patriotic Cantonese overseas merchants” had made it. Yet they had no choice but to offer this support clandestinely, because the “Siamese authorities suspected that Chinese nationalism would spread to the Chinese communities in Siam.”65

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The influx of foreign-rice supplies to Canton was also interrupted for more complicated political reasons. Many foreign steamship owners operating their businesses along the South China Sea did not want to get involved in political and diplomatic confrontations. They wanted to find an alternative route to land and unload their cargoes before their journey became too prolonged. However, even finding alternative routes was not easy. For example, some “patriotic” overseas Chinese in Bangkok chartered two Norwegian steam cargo ships, the S.S. Helikon and the S.S. ­Helios. Yet the convoy did not sail to Canton but instead headed to Swatow when it approached the coast of Guangdong, due to the British blockade of the Pearl River.66 The sudden explosion of political events and the subsequent fluctuation of rice prices in the Canton and Hong Kong rice markets created worldwide shockwaves. However, news to and from the outside was limited due to a breach in communications between Canton and Hong Kong. Although only unreliable rumors were spread, the vacillation in the rice markets in Canton and Hong Kong attracted attention from foreign business communities, regardless of their political orientation. For example, the Bangkok Times closely followed news of the confrontation. From the viewpoint of Bangkok, Hong Kong was certainly troubled by the general strikes and blockades. It was reported that “since the beginning of the strike the price of rice sold in many shops [in Hong Kong] has gone up about 15% for no very obvious reason.”67 The news from Canton drew Bangkok’s attention as well, because the Siam authorities were alarmed by the increasingly tight ties between revolutionary Canton and the Chinese communities in Siam. The Siamese news media also provided nuanced yet less-biased accounts. One day the Bangkok Times quoted a news report from the Canton Gazette: Canton has been well-supplied with rice from the country districts of the province as well as from Siam since the strike was declared. Among the vessels the S.S. Kwangyuenshing sometimes makes four trips a month if there is no delay. The supply of rice from Siam alone is quite sufficient for the needs of the population of Canton. The steamers loading rice from Siam take in return large cargo of native products. Thus the trade is mutually profitable for the merchants. However, no more rice will be transmitted from Hong Kong in the future.68

However, this long quotation ended with an independent viewpoint from the newspaper: “No such vessel is known here; and Canton should know better than to speak of four trips a month in connection with Siam rice.”69 We do not know which account was closer to the truth. Yet, it is certainly clear that mercantile communities in Bangkok, whether Chinese or not, were by no means outsiders unaffected by the political struggles between Canton and Hong Kong. Rice entwined them all together.

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The social repercussions of the strike on the Cantonese public were no less significant than the international repercussions in the Southeast Asian rice markets. First, the popular image of overseas Chinese communities and their patriotic efforts, particularly those in Siam, became more clearly imprinted upon the Cantonese public than ever. This is not to say that the Cantonese public just embraced the images as filtered by the Guomindang authorities at face value. But there is no doubt that this experience enhanced a network—a network already interwoven for commercial reasons that could be tightened once again for political reasons. Because they sent rice to Canton during a critical time, new attention was paid to the Siamese rice industries dominated by overseas Chinese merchants.70 Second, as many merchants expected, the strike turned out to be a great stepping stone to cultivating direct rice trade networks with the Southeast Asian rice market. In 1926, Canton Customs reported that “rice usually shipped from Hong Kong in the past, was now directly shipped from Indochina by steamers.”71 From the revolutionaries’ standpoint, opening up a direct rice trade route with Siam was more than a business activity. There was nothing more patriotic then feeding the revolution in Canton. The Cantonese foreign-rice traders were hailed, not because of their charity, but because of their “patriotic contribution” to the revolutionary cause. Indeed, accounts praising Huang Xianzhi filled the Guomindangcontrolled news media. Reportedly, Huang Xianzhi himself went to Bangkok and Rangoon, not for normal business but rather to secure the lifeline of the revolution. When he returned to Canton after making successful deals there, he was enthusiastically welcomed and praised not only for his successful business deals but also for “patriotic achievement.”72 Confrontational distinctions between merchant and workers immediately faded. Huang Xianzhi and all of his colleagues in the rice business received more praise than they had ever heard before, because the rice they brought to Canton saved huge numbers of “patriotic working class comrades” (aiguo gongyou).73 On the flip side, those who tried to sell foodstuffs to the enemy were relentlessly branded “food traitors” (liangshi hanjian). In September, three months after Canton’s break-off with the British, a limited reconciliation was made; any foreign traders and goods except those of British origin were allowed to land in Canton; however, British citizens and goods were subject to confiscation. Any Chinese trading with the British was still branded as traitorous and was severely retaliated against throughout the year 1925. The Strike Committee and the Picket Squad were notorious for their harshness toward such “food traitors.”74 A Chinese businessman whose major base was Bangkok was reportedly “executed at Can-

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ton for the crime of trading with Hong Kong.”75 A few days later, the Picket Squad raided the Shenzhen Train Station and arrested 19 “food traitors” and seized 50 heads of pigs that were supposed to be smuggled to Hong Kong. All the arrested “traitors” were repatriated to Canton and displayed on downtown streets as a warning to the public.76 Eventually, food became the political basis for judging whether one was a patriot or a traitor. .  .  . Despite the triumphant tone in the mainstream narrative of the Great­ Canton–Hong Kong Strike, little is known about the end of the strike. The strike, blockade, and break-off lasted more than three months and gradually ended by the end of the year, after continuous mediations by merchants from both sides. Traffic and trade between Canton and Hong Kong had resumed by then. The Great Strike provided a lesson to both sides that they were indispensable to one another. However, after a series of political events, a new political meaning was given to rice, and it developed into a new political cleavage in the following years. After these events, the rice trade of Canton with Southeast Asia via Hong Kong became more than a simple trade. Rice became more than a daily necessity for the Cantonese populace. Depending upon how rice was used, it could be regarded as the rice of “patriots” or the rice of “traitors.” Coincidently, Shakee Rice Street was no longer just a rice market. It became a symbolic place to commemorate China’s heroic resistance against imperialism. It was the very place where the Shakee Massacre had happened, where British imperialists massacred scores of Chinese compatriots. It was the location of the event that no Chinese should ever forget. Of course, on the same street, rice merchants resumed flocking to the street and going about their daily business. Perhaps the retailers’ bidding punctually started at eight o’clock in the morning as usual.77 Yet the meaning of the place had changed. On June 23, 1926, the Guomindang authorities renamed the street “June Twenty-third Street” (Liu er san lu) and erected a stone monument, whose inscription read “Never forget this day (wuwang ciri),” along the street. The day was designated as a “National Memorial Day.” In the first anniversary commemoration, according to an official account, 300,000 people held memorial services there and throughout the city.78 Whether it was called June Twenty-third Street or Shakee Street, this street was the place where Canton’s first national monument was erected, yet it was also the street where the most trading of foreign rice occurred in China. Perhaps erecting the nationalist monument on this rice trading street was a prognostication that in Canton imports of foreign rice would no longer a matter of local politics; it would develop into the focal point of nationwide controversy.

5

Taste in Numbers science and the chinese food problem

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, China was immersed in two compelling currents: an irresistible aspiration to construct a modern Chinese nation and an overwhelming sense of urgency. At the confluence of these two currents lay the problem of food supply. Although Chiang Kai-shek’s military victories over regional warlords and the Communists allowed him to seize power, a huge portion of the infrastructure necessary for grain trade remained to be constructed. Bandits and guerrillas as well as natural disasters constantly devastated the rural social order, further diminishing grain production. Above all, the effect of the Great Depression soon hit the Chinese economy as well.1 The most remarkable feature of China’s food problem, after the Nationalist Government was established in Nanjing in 1928, was that great portions of foreign-rice imports were being consumed in coastal cities, mostly varieties of white rice, whereas the countryside was suffering from a plunge in the prices of domestic crops. Needless to say, Canton’s massive consumption of foreign rice drew nationwide attention. Moreover, when local crops failed, even Shanghai and other coastal cities came to import significant amounts of foreign rice. Given disruptions in transportation and communication with inland agricultural districts, nothing was cheaper and easier than to import foreign rice to make up for rice shortages in the cities.2 The popularity of foreign rice increased in the coastal cities, since both qualities and prices were competitive. In addition to its cheap price, the quality of the Saigon rice popularly consumed in Shanghai, for example, was by no means worse than such domestic varieties as Wuhu rice.3 The popularity of foreign-rice consumption was no longer a particular feature of the provisioning of Canton, but it became perceived as the heart of China’s food problem as a whole. One observer noted: “Foreign rice was imported by the authorities in many places and

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sold to the poor at very cheap rates. [I]n rice-growing districts where the crop was fairly good . . . embargo was placed upon exports to other parts of the country in order to prevent stock being depleted by the keen demand from districts where there was an acute shortage.”4 Such a bifurcated pattern of food supply and consumption between the city and the country aggravated China’s rural economy. Record-breaking floods hit many rice-producing districts in the middle and lower Yangzi River areas consecutively in 1931 and 1932, with disastrous effects on harvests. More than four hundred thousand refugees lost their homes and land and about nine thousand people drowned. One single county, Fengtai County in Anhui province, recorded seven thousand deaths and a 100 percent loss of summer crops in 1931.5 Simultaneously, after the Manchurian Incident (September 1931) and the Shanghai Incident (January 1932), Japanese aggression stirred up psychological panic. Like a chain reaction, such a series of disasters both worsened agricultural conditions in the countryside and made the coastal cities more and more dependent on imports of foreign rice. Grain trade routes between the city and the country were frequently cut and destroyed. Unsecured and unpredictable rice supplies drove city merchants to distrust their counterparts in the countryside. Dampened local rice crops resulted in deteriorated quality, and lost their market value even before arriving at retail markets in the cities, while the urban population increasingly sought foreign rice at cheaper prices and better quality. To the Nationalist government in Nanjing, the perennial food problem was perceived as a matter of the Chinese state mismanaging modern provisioning. The “Land of Famine” became a common phrase to portray China’s food situation. Western observers identified famine and malnutrition as the most remarkable characteristics of China and attributed them to the Chinese elite’s lack of scientific mind.6 To the Guomindang leaders, therefore, the devising and pursuing of scientific solutions to the food problem meant a pivotal change in many regards. It would be the very first step to end China’s history of thousands of years of natural disasters that mainly caused famines. It would also be a stepping stone for China’s leap forward to a new scientific era that would permit it to vie with technologically advanced Western countries. At the least, it would represent a chance for the Guomindang to prove the new regime’s capacity for modern statecraft. Under such circumstances, new scientific knowledge and technical expertise, as the fundamental solutions to the food problem, were enthusiastically introduced from abroad and promptly put into practice.7 Yet this did not mean a simple application of new technology; rather, what occurred was a complicated mixture of politics and science in various forms of technical expertise, such as statistics, agricultural science, nutrition sci-

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ence, and macroeconomics. The Guomindang leaders and many reformers believed that only policies that were scientifically proven could change the fundamental structure of that led to the food problem and improve domestic grain productivity. Furthermore, such a strong belief in scientific knowledge drove them to envision a recasting of people’s mindsets and behaviors—from revolutionizing planting methods in the countryside to regulating merchants’ manipulation in provisioning to directing the healthy eating habits of the urban rice consumers. By tracing the discourse and practice surrounding these new scientific disciplines, this chapter illustrates how not only did the food problem legitimize the Guomindang’s political application of scientific knowledge but also how science gave the Guomindang’s planning impeccable credence. Nowhere was the agricultural reconstruction program envisioned more enthusiastically than in Canton, where the local Guomindang members consolidated their provincial power, because Canton was stamped as the leading foreign- rice importing city. Canton was renowned for its lavish food culture, and especially its consumption of foreign rice. Chen Gongbo, Minister of Commerce and Industry in the Nanjing Nationalist Government, observed: “Once we can resolve Guangdong’s food problem, it will mean that more than half of China’s food problem will be solved.”8 However, Canton was a stronghold also for Chiang Kai-shek’s political rivals within the party, especially the provincial military leader Chen Jitang. 9 Never­theless, both the municipal and provincial authorities shared a common concern with the food problem, and they upheld the Guomindang’s basic principle that scientifically created plans could be effectively put into practice through administrative enforcement.10 Despite the political tension, the Canton authorities understood that the provincial food supply problem could not be solved without consideration of the national food supply as a whole; meanwhile, Nanjing perceived that the national food supply could not be secured unless Guangdong’s food problem was resolved. This chapter approaches Canton’s consumption of foreign rice from the viewpoint of the Chinese state. I argue that quantitative methods, introduced as the most objective and most reliable ways to understand social phenomena, overwhelmed any other ways of representing China’s social problems and ultimately blinded the Guomindang planners’ eyes. Due to its simplicity and ease, the statistical representation of the food problem quickly captured Guomindang members’ attention. Nothing could more lucidly explain the agrarian crisis to the reading public than statistical representations, which were often accompanied by diagrammatic illustrations. In a clear but schematic way, the statistical representation of foodstuffs could translate the complexity of the overall food problem into simple calculations, such as comparisons of the income gap between social classes,

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the frequency of famine and starvation, and the minimal calorie requirement for subsistence. Simultaneously, the statistical representation of China’s food problem engendered new perceptions of nationhood, while growing Chinese nationalism affected the how quantified knowledge was reproduced. Furthermore, numeric analysis of China’s food trade helped to spread a new and abstract concept, that of a national economy. The numerical understanding of the national economy in return led to a proliferation in new sorts of economic understanding, such as national trade deficit, national food security, and China’s position in competitive world capitalism. To the Guomindang leaders, numerically proven fact meant something equivalent to social and political neutrality. They had no reason to pay attention to the particular complexity of the local rice trade and food culture unless it was represented in numbers. Rather, any local particularity had to be contributed and, in urgent cases, sacrificed for the good of the national economy and the nationalist cause.

China’s Food Problem and Foreign Rice By the early 1930s, foreign-rice consumption was not a matter of the single city of Canton but was a nationwide problem, existing widely throughout the coastal treaty-port cities. Between 1927 and 1934, foreign rice was one of the China’s top five most imported commodities every year except for 1928 and 1931.11 Minister of Industry and Commerce Chen Gongbo claimed that in 1933, 19 percent of China’s total imports was spent on purchasing foreign foodstuffs, which not only threatened China’s self-­ sufficiency in food supply but also intensified the trade deficit.12 Having realized that China required supplementary grain imports to feed the entire population, Chen dealt with achieving China’s food self-sufficiency as the primary item on the Ministry’s agenda. To improve agricultural productivity, Chen established the Central Agricultural Experimental Station to draft a master plan for national food self-sufficiency. At Chen’s invitation, many agricultural experts undertook scientific experiments in breeding, irrigation improvement, and fertilizer and pesticide development.13 The agricultural reform program alone would not resolve the Chinese food problem completely, however, since the increasing imports and consumption of foreign rice in the coastal cities resulted from the popularity of foreign-rice varieties among consumers. The Chief of the Shanghai Bureau of Commodity Inspection remarked: “The reason foreign rice (yangmi) is so attractive to rice merchants and the Chinese [consumers] is that its qualities are classified in well-defined grades, its dryness is evenly maintained, and packing is done under precise standards. On the other hand, the origin of Chinese grains is complicated and their quality is by no means consistent.”14 This

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situation pertained not just to a single city, widely witnessed throughout the coastal treaty-port cities. Statistics compiled in the late 1920s and early 1930s indicated beyond a doubt that China’s overall imports of foreign rice, despite fluctuations, significantly increased from the early 1920s onward (see figures 4 and 5). Consequently, many came to see a big disparity between the city and the country, although the urban and the rural problems were by no means separable from each other.15 It is no surprise, then, that Canton, the leading port city of Guangdong, whose population consumed the largest amount of foreign rice imported to China, drew nationwide attention (see Figure 6). a city of commerce

Canton was famous for its imaginary cityscape as the most extravagant and lavish commercial city in China. Indeed, Canton’s economic character itself helped to create this imaginary cityscape. What characterized Canton most was its commerce and consumption, not industrial production. One observer noted that the Canton residents were occupied only with commerce and consumption. Whereas the foreign-rice trade thrived, the city lacked such productive sectors as manufacturing and industry.16 Canton was thus often called a “commercial city” (shangye dushi), but this name was always

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figure 4.  China’s foreign rice imports, 1912–1933 (amounts in piculs). sources: Quanguo jingji weiyuan hui nongye chu, Migu tongji, “Maoyi,” table 39; Chen Gongbo, “Zhongguo liangshi de zigei,” 198–200.

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figure 5.  China’s foreign rice imports, 1912–1933 (value in 1,000 Haiguan taels). sources: Quanguo jingji weiyuan hui nongye chu, Migu tongji, “Maoyi,” table 39; Chen Gongbo, “Zhongguo liangshi de zigei,” 198–200.

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figure 6.  Guangdong’s foreign-rice imports in proportion to China’s net ­foreign-rice imports (amounts in piculs). source: Guangdong liangshi wenti (The food supply problem in Guangdong province) (Guangzhou: Guangdong Liangshi tiaojie weiyuanhui, 1935), 8; Lin Tongjing, “Yangmi shuru Guangdong zhi shide funxi” (A historical analysis of foreign rice-imports to Guangdong), Guangdong shengyinhang jikan 1, no. 2 (Jun. 1937). Reprinted in Guoshiguan, eds., Liangzheng shiliao (Historical documents on food policy) (Taipei: Guoshiguan, 1988), 3: 177.

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accompanied by the additional explanation that the city’s commercial economy was stagnating, rather than following the evolutionary process toward industrialization that China as a whole wanted to achieve. Canton was far from an industrial city (chanye dushi).17 This characteristic overlapped with its increasing consumption of foreign rice, creating an image of urban extravagance. As was discussed in previous chapters, imported rice was popularly favored for its desirable color, shape, and taste, not to mention its reasonable market price in Canton. In China’s first ethnographic compilation of local customs, Canton’s style of living was depicted as follows: Guangdong was the first place Chinese encountered foreigners and international trade. So, it is still prosperous and lucrative. Their living conditions are the highest in China. In Canton, the provincial city, the life style of the residents is no less than that of Europeans and Americans. It is much higher than even Shanghai’s . . . Cantonese have self-esteem. Even in poor households, their every meal must include meat, and rice must be of superior quality and whiter, more expensive varieties.18

When Canton’s voluminous importing of foreign rice as represented in statistics overlapped with the city’s thriving commercial culture in the popular imagination, the Cantonese urban culture soon came to be represented as a consumerist city. Nothing shaped the popular image of the city more remarkably than Canton’s food and restaurant businesses. Indeed, these businesses had long been the city’s most conscious undertaking. Though some thought that Canton’s overly flourishing commerce and consumerist culture might be hindering the city’s evolution toward industrialization, the city was renowned for its food culture, which offered a variety of exotic and local cuisines.19 Even in Shanghai, it was the Cantonese restaurants that were known as the most expensive and fashionable ones in the city.20 Many guidebooks to Canton introduced its food culture as a proud local specialty. One English city guidebook, for example, noted that the city’s “inhabitants are nationally known for their Epicureanism”; thus visitors not only could enjoy any cuisine other than Cantonese, but also need not worry about special dietary requirements, because one could be served “Buddhist dishes which are free from meat, Mohammedan dishes which eliminate pork, and Szechwan dishes which contain pepper in abundant quantities.”21 In such a milieu, the popular saying “Eating must be done at Canton” (chi zai Guangzhou, shi zai Guangzhou) was created, and it was widely popularized by print media to the rest of China. To newspaper readers outside Canton, the Cantonese food culture and food consumption habits were exotic topics in the newspaper gossip sections. Shanghai urbanites, for example, regarded Canton’s food culture as obviously distinct from theirs, and much more flamboyant.22 Even in Hong Kong, where

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people shared much the same local cuisine, it was widely believed that truly authentic Cantonese cuisine had to be served and tasted in Canton.23 However, as public concern over China’s food problem increased in the early 1930s, the popular attitude toward eating foreign foodstuffs became ambivalent. To local residents, Canton’s food consumption habits, and especially the consumption of food of foreign origin, were a point of pride but at the same time a shame. In Canton, consuming Western cuisines and imported wine at Western-style restaurants was very popular. The majority of the patrons of expensive Cantonese restaurants were well-to-do locals, but lavish images of foreign food consumption became a representative image of the Canton lifestyle as a whole.24 The more attention paid to rural impoverishment, the more the image of Canton’s luxurious food consumption changed from one of local pride to one of collective shame. This image might have remained just newspaper gossip or an onlooker’s chitchat. However, the imaginative depiction of Canton’s eating habits happened to coincide with the proliferation of the numerically proven fact: in short, Canton was the city importing the most foreign rice and Guangdong was the province eating the most foreign rice imported into China. On the other hand [stet], Canton’s contribution to China’s industrial production remained insignificant. The combination of Canton’s popular image and the quantified truth resulted in local context and particularity being overlooked: that is, the situation of a provincial rice insufficiency and a time-honored custom of foreign-rice imports to Canton. Even those who distanced themselves from the Guomindang authorities could not free themselves from the tendency to oversimplify. For instance, one prominent economist, Ma Yinchu, said: “Cantonese (Yueren) are accustomed to foreign rice, so they think domestic rice is not really good for their appetite. I understand that Cantonese merchants do not want to purchase domestic rice again from the hinterlands. But I sincerely solicit them to show their self-sacrifice so that China can substitute domestic rice for foreign rice.”25 controlling urban extravagance

To Guomindang members, an extravagant and consumption-oriented urban culture was, needless to say, detrimental to their nation-building efforts; therefore, under the party’s scientific guidance they needed to reform this culture. Unlike more conventional social matters such as the regulation of gambling, prostitution, or opium smoking, to change people’s eating habits from lavish to thrifty required something other than the usual means. Law enforcement, for instance, was not adequate for this matter, simply because lavish habits of food consumption were by no means criminal. For that very reason, public instruction through print media was

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thought to be the best means by which to recast new social habits. At the heart of this instruction lay an emphasis of “scientific” reform of daily eating habits. As soon as the Guomindang members officially established a new regime in Nanjing, they began their attempt to intervene against “extravagant” behaviors. As early as May 22, 1928, one small change took place in the editorial tone of the party-controlled Guangzhou ­minguo ribao. The most popular sections of the paper, “Little Canton” (Xiao Guangzhou) and the dining section “Food Talk” (Shihua), were suddenly discontinued. These sections had introduced a “variety of new lifestyles” to the city, including new restaurants, exotic cuisines, and recipes. Given that this was a party-controlled newspaper, those sections represented the greatest contrast to the overall tone of the paper, which consisted mainly of political propaganda and public instruction. Announcing the cessation of publication of the two sections, a special editorial stressed that the primary task of all Chinese was to “revolutionize minds and spirits in order to expedite the revolutionary reconstruction.” To do this, the editorial contended, both the paper and its readers should do their best to get rid of all bad habits, including indolence (daiduo), indulgence (xiyou), luxury (shechi), and debauchery (yinle). It said that although the editorial board fully understood the “popularity of the sections and the readers’ disappointment, no one should forget that Canton was the birthplace of the National Revolution.” Cantonese, therefore, had to proudly “sacrifice themselves and become the vanguard of the revolution”26 The very next day, the paper’s opening editorial more strikingly criticized the “Little Canton” sections nothing but a “disposable utensil for one-time consumption,” since the section provided only “gossip for useless chatting after tea drinking.” The editorial argued: “Insofar as the section continued to promote Canton’s lavish lifestyle, it represented a social evil.” Instead, a new section titled “General Knowledge of Society” (­Shehui changshi) replaced it. The editorial board listed six subcategories under the new section that citizens of the new China urgently needed to learn: (1) general knowledge of science, (2) society and art, (3) physical education, (4) hygiene, (5) general knowledge of law, and (6) general knowledge of agriculture and industry. Again and again, the board emphasized that with this scientific guidance Cantonese readers would redefine and remake their social and cultural habits.27 Among many topics related to scientific changes in everyday life, the section “general knowledge of society” constantly introduced new scientifically proven and politically healthy ways of food consumption, which were not wasteful, extravagant or harmful to the cause of the National Revolution. The series emphasized a new scientific concept: nutrition. The first series, for instance, warned that the prevalence of beriberi could be blamed

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on the excessive consumption of white and polished rice, which led to nutritional imbalance.28 Another article, entitled, “nutritional value of the husk” lamented that people were completely ignorant of the nutritional value of the husk which was removed and wasted by polishing rice.29 The section also gave comparative analyses of the nutritional value of different foods: “a comparison of nutritional value of vegetarian and carnivorous diets,” “white rice and tofu,” and “less-polished rice and highly polished rice.”30 As this change in tone indicated, party officials often saw urban culture as a potential hindrance to their revolutionary causes. As long as they understood urban eating habits as a cause of China’s food problem, Cantonese patterns of food consumption would not escape from regulatory attention. the bureau of social affairs intervenes

The Canton municipality was also featured in the Guomindang’s attempts to regulate the local rice trade. By 1928, the primary concern that the municipality had to fulfill for the party’s cause was “maintaining the food supply” (weichi minshi).31 The role that government officials played in “maintaining the food supply” was more than simply “maintaining” it, however. Rather, this represented the party’s first step toward altering merchants’ customary practices and building a new order for food distribution and consumption. In this regard, September 1929 was a turning point in the history of the municipality. Creation of a Municipal Bureau of Social Affairs was the start of the party’s direct intervention in the city’s rice trade. The bureau’s many responsibilities included cracking down on profiteers and speculators as well as directing the sale of relief rice at cheaper prices (pingtiao) if needed. The appointment of a new bureau chief also reflected the municipality’s new direction. Having served in the medical units at the Whampoa (Huangpu) Military Academy and Zhongshan University Medical School, Wu Boliang, M.D., was appointed as the chief. His educational background was noteworthy as well; he had studied Western medicine in Lyon and Berlin before returning to Canton.32 He felt a strong distrust toward traditional Chinese medicine and other social practices that could not be proven by Western medicine. The leading merchants’ benevolent societies became Chief Wu’s first target for reform, since they had long provided famine relief and medical treatment for the urban poor, and as such, had significantly controlled the city’s food supply. In the eyes of Chief Wu, such activities meant nothing but Canton’s “old grievance” (shehui jiu’e) since such practices could not be proven by modern science. Indeed, it was during Chief Wu’s term that Canton’s largest benevolent society, the Nine Charitable Halls, lost its social influence. Moreover, Chief Wu completely excluded the participation of the Nine Charitable

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Halls from the bureau’s discussion sections on the issue of food supply. The bureau officials instead consulted a few rice merchants individually and selectively when necessary. Furthermore, Chief Wu redefined the Nine Charitable Halls as a “private charity group” (sili cishan tuanti), and as such it had to register at the bureau in order to be allowed to conduct any form of public charity work.33 In many respects, Wu’s confrontation with the merchants’ leading charity organizations was inevitable, because he stubbornly refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of traditional Chinese medicine, which was practiced by these organizations to treat the urban poor and famine-ridden refugees. In order to induce the populace to trust Western medicine over Chinese medicine, he forced one benevolent society (Aiyu shantang) to stop using Chinese medicine and switch to using Western medicine only. Furthermore, Chief Wu soon appointed himself as the head of Fangbian Hospital (Fangbian yiyuan), the leading institution of the Nine Charitable Halls and largest traditional hospital in the city, and directed that Western medicine be exclusively used there.34 While taming the merchant-led benevolent societies and charity organizations, Chief Wu decisively embarked on a policy of direct intervention in the city’s rice trade. His suspicion of rice merchants was as strong as his distrust of Chinese medicine. He firmly believed that the fair distribution of grain would be the single most important factor in fulfilling Sun Yatsen’s teaching, especially his emphasis on the people’s livelihood. Nothing could assure fairness other than government direction. He soon created the Office for Food Control (Shehui ju liangshi guanli suo) under the direction of the Bureau to eradicate profiteering and speculation in the city’s rice trade. Under the slogan, “Reforming People’s Provision” (minshi zhi gailiang), he tasked the Office two instructions: to watch rice merchants with an eagle eye and to track their businesses from wholesaling to retailing. By October 1929, for example, every single rice shop in the city was required to register with the office and get a business license. Their warehouses had to tender the correct amounts and prices of rice and were to be regularly inspected by the office’s agents. Then, the office’s agents were to gather this numerical information and report the figures to the Municipal Bureau of Social Affairs and Municipal Bureau of Statistics. This process of quantification of foodstuff data was repeated again and again in different levels of bureaus. Meanwhile, Chief Wu continued his emphasis on scientific methods.35 Wu’s efforts certainly imprinted a change in the city’s political landscape: namely, a remarkable alteration of the power relationship between the city’s mercantile elite and the municipal authority regarding the food supply. From 1929 onward, the Bureau of Social Affairs controlled every step of the rice relief from estimating the duration of relief to calculating

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the amounts of rice needed, while rice merchants were kept away from the bureau’s decision-making process. All the rice traders could do was to follow Chief Wu’s guidelines and directions. And at the very places throughout the city where rice used to be given to the needy, bureau agents dispatched by Chief Wu now supervised the distribution of relief.36 From then on, the social character of Canton’s rice relief substantially changed from a merchant-led local charity effort to an administrative task of the Guomindang municipality. However, Wu’s drastic vision for recreating a new order of provisioning did not entirely solve the problem. Recurring rice shortages followed by price soaring continued to barrage Canton. Despite temporary decreases, the import of foreign rice never dropped significantly. Moreover, many other coastal cities saw an increase in foreign-rice imports. “plunging grain prices damage the peasants”

By 1932, foreign-rice consumption in the city had become the focal point of a crisis discourse: that the dumping of foreign agrarian products on the Chinese market (qingxiao) was profoundly aggravating the Chinese rural economy and making the coastal cities increasingly dependent on the foreign food supply. At the same time, there was a growing realization that China would not escape from the effects of the worldwide depression, and that the agricultural sector would be most vulnerable. Indeed, whereas China had become an optimal market for an overproduction of Southeast Asian rice, many other countries had enacted protectionist policies. 37 Besides scholarly discussion and debate of the situation, concerns and opinions were also being expressed in newspapers and popular magazines. In November 1932, the opening article in Dongfang zazhi, written by You Xin, was titled “Alas! Plunging Grain Prices Damage the Peasants!”38 He argued that China’s current agrarian problems could not be understood apart from the context of the worldwide depression. In December 1932 the magazine published a special edition entirely dedicated to the issue of the “agrarian depression” (nongye konghuang), and presented a variety of case studies and opinions. Among the many social problems that China was facing, the contributors agreed that the problem of food supply was imminent, since it was aggravating both rural and urban problems. One prominent piece was Wu Juenong’s “The Imminent Food Problem in Our Country.” Wu was a leading researcher on the Committee of Shanghai Food Supply under the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Social Affairs. Based on his experience in dealing with the food supply to Shanghai, Wu asserted that continuing the import of foreign rice would lead to the collapse of the rural sectors, and furthermore bring about fatal damage to China’s national food security as

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a whole.39 Six other articles in the same issue, addressing various aspects of food insecurity in foreign countries and agrarian problems worldwide, all reached similar conclusions to Wu’s. Indeed, the food problem had become a primary concern for Chinese people of all sorts, at least those who could read and follow current events. In an article in Shenghuo zhoukan, Bi Xinsheng observed that in its economy China was, except for a few sectors in the cities, stuck in an agricultural economy, its development trapped there from evolving into the last stage of capitalism. Hence, Bi asserted, the disparity between urban and rural sectors had to be narrowed immediately.40 Many authors reached the common conclusion that China’s rural problems were inseparable from both its urban problems and the worldwide economy, and that China’s urban sectors had to contribute something to resolve such problems as well. Bankers and financiers were equally concerned with the issue, and discussed and exchanged a variety of opinions on the agrarian problem through the trade publication Yinhang Zhoubao. Chen Guangfu, one of China’s most influential bankers, asserted that China was facing a host of economic problems but added that all problems were enmeshed with both the urban and rural sectors. Thus, the first step toward the fundamental solution for all problems would be, Chen continued, to restore balance between the urban and rural sectors.41 But what convinced them that the increasing consumption of foreign rice in the coastal cities was such a threat to China’s economy as a whole?

Quantifying China’s Food Problem Numerical indicators powerfully represented the food problem. Quantification, once introduced from the West as a way of social survey, quickly came to be seen as the single most neutral, objective, and precise method to measure social problems in general. Government authority, directly and indirectly, validated the numeric representation of the food problem in particular. Soon after establishing the national government at Nanjing, the Guomindang prioritized making statistical surveys in its program for restoring China’s food supply. In November 1929, a special section of the Central Political Committee convened in Nanjing to discuss what they termed the “national food problem,” and founded the Committee for the People’s Food Supply (minshi weiyuanhui). Among many other resolutions that this committee devised, the most remarkable was strengthening the role of the Bureau of Statistics.42 To support and supervise all its local branches, the Central Bureau of Statistics in Nanjing took charge of making all “statistical research and surveys.” To expedite these nationwide surveys, the Central Bureau distributed an Outline of Social Survey (Shehui diaocha gangyao) as a guideline to every branch bureau in local government.43

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It was during the late 1920s and early 1930s that social surveys, whether government-sponsored or not, flourished in China. More than nine thousand social surveys were carried out between 1927 and 1935, which averages to almost one thousand annually.44 There is no doubt that such a great intellectual enterprise coincided with profound changes in the political atmosphere. As Wen-hsin Yeh notes, the Guomindang came to see science and technical expertise as the principal means of realizing the nation’s material reconstruction.45 Toward that end, Guomindang needed a new form of knowledge— knowledge conducive to comprehending the problems of society—which would thereby allow the production of a blueprint for the modern Chinese reconstruction. Chen Guofu, a high-ranking party member, even proposed in 1932 that all the Chinese universities “should stop admitting students of humanities and laws for a decade” in order to meet such demands.46 However, this intellectual trend did not simply appear in order to meet the needs of the government. There was in addition a strong consensus and hope that the current problems of China could be accurately understood and solved by a scientifically designed modernization program. Scientists— young, forward-looking, mostly trained in Western or Japanese universities and hired by major Chinese universities—firmly believed that application of their knowledge was the most rational and best way to guide China’s modern reconstruction.47 One foreign observer’s statement reflects this atmosphere of intellectual aspiration: “What is required [in China] is a science of constructive economics.”48 Under such circumstances, it was believed that no method of social survey but statistical quantification could satisfy both Guomindang’s political vision and the scientists’ intellectual aspirations. With regard to the food supply, only quantification could simplify the complexities of the food provision mechanism and make them understandable to government planners. The application of quantification to the problems of food supply was not a phenomenon particular to Republican China. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many Western countries encouraged and employed statistical research about population and food supply to effectuate their governance. In particular, countries that were often identified as “backward” tended to strongly favor the use of quantification.49 Many contemporaries believed that China no longer needed a paternalistic approach to the food supply problem but required modern expertise and scientific statecraft instead.50 the statistical representation of rice

Once the Nanjing authority had created guidelines for a quantitative survey of the food supply, Canton’s municipal authority, which Nanjing extolled

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as the nation’s model municipality, immediately founded both municipal and provincial bureaus of statistics. These bureaus compiled and published Canton’s first statistical yearbook and its first census report. Before long, the provincial Bureau of Statistics also published Land and Population of the Province (Tudi yu renkou) as the first volume in the Guangdong Statistics Series (Guangdong tongji conkan), and one year thereafter published Food Statistics of Guangdong Province (Guangdong liangshi tongji).51 Meanwhile, other bureaus were popularizing the new type of knowledge that these series produced. The party-controlled daily, Guangzhou minguo ribao, continuously published a series of reports under the titles of “Food Problem of Guangdong” and “Foreign Rice Imports to Canton.”52 Quite independently of the government bureaus’ efforts, social scientists in universities and research institutes also tended to believe that quantification was the most reliable research method, and they conducted various social surveys using this method. Zhongshan University in Canton was the forerunner of this academic trend, largely due to the changing academic orientation of the school. The university had been transformed by Guomindang into the party’s “model university” by 1928. Combined with a “partification” (danghua) of the core curriculum in humanities and the social sciences, the university reoriented its educational goals to favor such practical programs as science, agriculture, and medicine.53 With the strong support of the university administration, a prominent economics professor, Huang Yuanbin, who had been trained at Tokyo Imperial University, led and supervised all quantitative research projects on the campus. The Office for Economic Survey (jingji diaocha chu), which Huang founded and directed, published a number of statistical research monographs.54 A ­university-published social science periodical, Shehui kexue luncong, indicated the school’s academic focus. For example, economist Zhang ­Shantu’s statistical research in an issue of this periodical was widely valued as the first and foremost reliable quantitative analysis of the behavior of rice prices in the Canton rice market.55 In fact, such efforts for quantification, on the part of both government officials and non-governmental sectors, swept through China. The central authorities in Nanjing devoted their efforts to compiling a quantitative data­base on nationwide production and consumption of grain. In so doing, they helped to spread a new economic concept to the public: national economy. These quantification efforts represent a remarkable achievement in the intellectual history of Republican China. Both government officials and the reading public came to understand the details of China’s nationwide food supply more accurately than in any other period in Chinese history. The information drawing the most attention was that foreign-rice imports

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had dramatically increased since the 1920s and that China therefore was spending increasing amounts of money for them. The statistical reports also indicated, despite small deviations, that Guangdong consumed the most foreign rice imported to China. Needless to say, Guangdong’s rice insufficiency and Canton’s huge quantities of foreign-rice imports were nothing new to the local populace. But this fact was wholly and newly objectified by the state-sponsored quantification enterprise, enabling this objectification to gain political legitimacy and providing the Guomindang authorities with “scientific” truth. Only these statistical representations were taken as unquestionable fact (shishi), on which the government authorities could rely. Thus this statistical objectification became the basic source for government officials to make political judgments; these political decisions in turn justified the objectivity of the numbers. In this circular process, the non-government sector’s embrace of quantification also enhanced its legitimacy.56 Many Guomindang officials understood that such quantifications were indispensable to their governance. In a newspaper article titled “The Function of Statistics” (tongji zhi gongyong), an anonymous government functionary argued, in a didactic tone, that “if one cannot understand statistics, all the various policies and plans of government would stop. Without exception all plans should be guided by statistics.”57 In general, the statistical representation of a social phenomenon tends to challenge other forms of description, especially textual representations. This blind trust in quantification kept Guomindang authorities from seeing the true complexity of socio-economic conditions in the Pearl River Delta. The increasing size of China’s net rice imports and the consequent foreign trade imbalance overwhelmed the province’s particularities: i.e., that because the rice supply was insufficient for the province’s needs, it relied on foreign-rice imports. Perhaps some local party members, even though they might have well understood local particulars, could find their justification in quantification. Juxtaposing Guangdong’s provincial foreign-rice imports with the net expenditures of all of China’s foreign-rice trade, statistical data objectified and legitimized a new conclusion: the total expenditure for foreign-rice purchases was nothing but an indication of a “leak” (louzhi) of national wealth, and Guangdong was leading this “leak.” To government officials, even including the Cantonese party members, the results of the statistical surveys seemed more alarming than anything else. Their concern was well reflected in the introduction of Rice Statistics (migu tongji): We usually call our country a country founded on agriculture (yinong liguo zhi guojia), but food is dependent upon others and its quantity is so enormous. Economic outflows continue even in peacetime, so China’s reaching economic self-sufficiency is impossible. If external food supplies are suddenly cut and an emergency situation arises, how can we support ourselves? How can we even survive?58

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Consequently, China had to confront not only the food supply problem but also the leak of national wealth (­louzhi). The foreign trade deficit (ruchao) and the “leak” of Chinese wealth quickly came to prevailingly characterize the Chinese economic situation.59 The Guomindang’s national reconstruction plan therefore had to start by correcting this trade deficit, minimizing the import of foreign foodstuffs and maximizing China’s agricultural productivity.

Country and City: Two Tales The prevailing concerns about the food problem were well reflected in literary representations of the time. Xu Zhongwei’s didactic novel, The Difficulty of Eating: A Food Problem (Chifan nan: shiliang wenti), is a good example of this. The author was by no means celebrated, nor was his fiction popular. This work was part of a series of publications aimed at promoting a “national citizens’ productive economy” (Guomin shengchan jingji). Hence it was written in a short, easy-to-read style, and printed in a small booklet. However, the publication contained numerous contrasting images between the lavish way of life in the city and the declining state of rural life, as well as some suggested resolutions, the most important being scientific reconstruction of the agrarian system. The major plot was ­simple: a young Shanghai boy named Chen Rensheng accompanies his father, Chen Tiande, to help out when his father’s home village is struck by floods. This journey of charity turns out to change his life; the boy’s perception of society is extended far beyond the boundaries of the city, reaching the countryside and ultimately to the whole national community.60 In the story, Chen Rensheng, though young, is mature enough to read newspaper articles and understand rural impoverishment and the alarming dumping (qingxiao) of foreign rice into the city. One day, Rensheng realizes that severe floods had swept through many remote villages that were supplying rice to the Shanghai area. The disastrous scene described in the newspapers moves the conscientious father and son to action. Once Tiande and Rensheng have collected donations in Shanghai, they visit Yingle, a backwater village in southern Anhui province, and distribute relief rice to starving villagers. What Rensheng witnesses is the most miserable scene he has ever encountered, and this charity trip turns out to be an eye-opening moment for a city boy to see the reality of life in the countryside. Rensheng comes to know that this is only the tip of the iceberg; most of the rural hinterlands have been hit by floods and no one knows the exact number of refugees. On his return trip to Shanghai, Rensheng fully realizes that urban dwellers such as he have to make some contribution to rural revival, which is urgently needed throughout the country.61

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How, then, can urban dwellers contribute to rural reconstruction? The author has a strong emphasis on his message and an instructive tone: urban residents must deal with their consumption of foreign rice. Rensheng learns that many coastal cities in the southern provinces, such as Guangdong and Fujian, need to import foreign rice frequently, since the provinces barely produce enough rice to feed their own populations. He learns that even Shanghai has to import foreign rice more and more; meanwhile, the price of domestic rice is plummeting. Rensheng learns from his father that importing and eating foreign rice is by no means a solution to China’s food problem; instead, it has given rise to an outflow of Chinese money, while aggravating poverty in the countryside. Rensheng also learns that eating foreign rice is China’s shame, because China is the world’s largest agricultural country. Until then, he had never considered his eating habits in the city.62 If this emotional moment is the climax of the story, the finale is no less remarkable. After coming to thoroughly understand the discrepancies between city and country life, Rensheng decides to go to the United States to study. Neither humanities nor classics attracts his attention; instead, he is determined to study agricultural science, in order to contribute to the poor peasants, and ultimately to his country. After three years of study in the United States, Rensheng comes back to Yingle village—rather than Shanghai or any other city—to put his knowledge into practice. He is not a city-spoiled boy anymore; he has indeed become a model citizen of the new China. He returns as an agricultural expert able to contribute to the rural reconstruction that he has dreamed of ever since he first became aware of rural misery. Rensheng’s dream is eventually realized, and he succeeds in breeding a new variety of rice. His new rice breed leads not only to greater productivity of crops but also to excellent quality. Three years later, the rice Rensheng bred is widely cultivated throughout Anhui province; moreover, it becomes the most popular brand in the Shanghai rice market due to its quality. But Rensheng’s success does not stop here; he is invited to take a government position managing the rice supply of the whole nation. Three years later, China finally eliminates its need to import foreign rice, producing grain enough to be distributed evenly and efficiently to the city and the countryside. The Chinese people will never forget Rensheng’s lifelong dedication.63 Leftist literature, too, grasped the deepening rural impoverishment engendered by increasing foreign grain imports. Ye Shengtao’s realist short story, “You Were Paid Enough: Three to Five Bushels” (Duoshoule, san wu dou), vividly depicts peasant despair in remote villages. The plot is simple but contrasts with Xu Zhongwei’s naively optimistic viewpoint. Ye’s attitude toward the rising discourse on the agrarian problem among urban

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intellectuals is severely sarcastic. To Ye, the absurdity was that the vast majority of foreign-rice imports was being consumed in the coastal cities; hence, the backwater peasants had little chance to understand fluctuating market conditions while being hurt more than anyone else. In Ye’s eyes, there is no likelihood of diminishing the disparity between the city and the country. “In the cities, a proverb, ‘Cheap rice is ruining the peasant (gujian shangnong),’ became a favorite headline for newspaper editorials . . . Social scientists published their views in different journals with statistics and theories. . . . However, all of these things happen in the cities. Those who lived in the countryside remained totally ignorant of it.”64 The main figures in the story lament that yangmi (foreign rice), yangmai (foreign wheat), and even yangfen (foreign flour) are overflowing into the Chinese market, while villagers get little money for their grain in the local market. No sooner do they come to a town to sell their rice than they realize that domestic rice prices have plummeted to half price or lower, due to surpluses of foreign rice in the urban markets. No one respects their backbreaking jobs.65 Whether or not the rural situation was as disastrous as Ye depicted still remains controversial. No one accepts Xu’s children’s story–like fiction at face value either. But there is no doubt that the food problem was central to popular concern and equally intertwined with the problems of city and country. Despite their different perspectives, both authors indicate the widespread perception that agricultural science and statistics were the sort of new knowledge that China badly needed.

Searching for the Agricultural Revolution It was no surprise that agricultural science was seen as the most needed discipline and was understood as an efficient means to improve China’s agricultural productivity. Agricultural experts, especially those trained at foreign universities and therefore able to introduce the latest technology, were widely hired and promoted in both academic and government positions. Ding Ying (1888–1964), dean of the College of Agriculture at Zhongshan University, was a noteworthy example. He was one of the leading figures in Zhongshan University’s curricular reorientation to agriculture and science. Having graduated from the agricultural program at Tokyo Imperial University in 1924, he returned as a professor at the university’s College of Agriculture. His lifelong specialty was improving rice varieties through scientific breeding.66 Ding’s attitude at the time was not much different from that of many contemporary intellectuals, believing that “Chinese agriculture had become bankrupt” and Guangdong was “worst because of its reliance upon foreign-rice imports.” Ding’s frustration with China’s rural backwardness turned into an ambition for scientific breakthrough.

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He often claimed that all of the agrarian problems resulted from “peasants’ obsolete knowledge and practice,” and that only scientific knowledge would fundamentally change such problems. Ding strongly believed that his improvements in rice-breeding technology would lead to self-sufficiency in the province’s rice production. His resolution was decisive: “Peasant experience is by no means equal to scientific theory.”67 Ding played a leading role in the practical application of agricultural science in China. His firm dedication to scientific rice breeding made him the most hopeful advisor to the Guangdong provincial government and the most productive scholar at the College of Agriculture of Zhongshan University. He was also a frequent contributor to Nongsheng (lit., the voice of agriculture), the monthly journal of the college. Ding spent most of his time at the Guangdong Agricultural Experiment Field on the eastern outskirts of Canton, while the provincial government provided full support to his research there. His efforts produced substantial success in terms of increasing rice productivity. In March 1933, Ding proudly announced new rice varieties that he himself created. It was stated that these new varieties possessed outstanding productivity, which was 25 to 30 percent more than traditional varieties.68 Such an accomplishment soon became a step toward further developing a scientific program for rural reconstruction. Ding submitted a plan for Guangdong’s food relief to the provincial government, estimating that his blueprint would achieve self-sufficiency of rice production in the province within ten years.69 Whereas Ding Ying was an outside advisor helping the provincial government, Feng Rui was the province’s single most important expert, since he engaged himself in politics and drafted a master plan for what he called “Guangdong’s agricultural revolution.” Feng’s dedication to agriculture could be traced back to his graduate life in the United States. Feng obtained his doctoral degree from the College of Agriculture at Cornell in 1924. In his dissertation, titled “A Problem of Chinese Agriculture,” he analyzed the “backwardness” of Chinese agriculture and concluded that it could and should be overcome through modern agricultural science.70 Feng was perhaps more interested in professional practice than in academia. During his graduate career and shortly after graduation, he interned at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., to learn about agricultural administration in the United States. After he returned to China, he sought to put this new knowledge into practice. He was briefly hired by the agriculture department of Lingnan College in Canton, but he left shortly thereafter for Dongnan University (National Southeastern University) in Nanjing at the invitation of James Yen (Yan Yangchu), a leading rural reformer. Soon Feng was invited to work with Yen at the Ding County Rural Experiment, where he could realize his dream.71 One day Feng told James

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Yen: “Once China’s agrarian problem has been overcome, a major social problem in China would easily be solved, since 80 percent of the Chinese population is involved in agriculture.”72 In the fall of 1931, Feng returned to Canton, not as a scholar but as a full-time administrator in the provincial government. In order to draw him there, the provincial authority did not simply open a position but created a new bureau: the Bureau of Agriculture and Forestry, under the Provincial Department of Reconstruction. Feng’s coming to Canton galvanized all those concerned with the food problem in the province. Feng’s inauguration ceremony, on November 21, 1931, turned out to be a remarkable public event. More than a hundred administrators and experts packed the auditorium to listen to his speech, in which he explained why he had accepted the new position. He said he had realized that there was a “great distance between the professorship in academia and the reality of rural society.” Participating as an administrator was the “best way to shorten that distance,” he concluded.73 Shortly thereafter, using the USDA as a model, Feng divided the bureau into three divisions: practical research, extension, and administration. He also created a research cluster, for cooperative research with the colleges of agriculture at Zhongshan University and Lingnan College. Feng named this program the “Guangdong Agricultural Revolution.”74 Feng gave priority, of course, to the problem of Guangdong’s rice insufficiency. Based upon data compiled by the provincial Bureau of Statistics, he estimated that, at any given time, about 10 percent of the province’s total population of 3 million had no rice to eat. He identified two factors: the inferior quality of local rice breeds and the peasant farmers’ outmoded cultivation techniques.75 Peasants, he emphasized, must use the new rice breeds and scientific cultivation methods that agricultural experts like Ding Ying and others developed. Otherwise, nobody could solve the problem. Moreover, the province’s dependency on foreign-rice imports meant shame to him, to his native province, and to his nation. He stated: If agricultural products can be produced in our country, then they should be produced in our country, and we should not depend on foreign imports. Our Guangdong is spending one hundred million yuan annually importing foreign rice; our country is spending two hundred million yuan annually importing sugar. This all is a disgrace to the Cantonese (Guangdong ren de xiuchi)!76

In order to maximize such a fundamental reorganization of agriculture, Feng tried to implement a rural cooperative movement on the model of the Ding County Experiment: experts at research institutions producing and introducing new technology into the countryside, supported and guided by government authorities. No less important, he asserted, was purchasing and using American farming machinery, which would improve agricultural

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productivity. These measures were, Feng asserted, the first steps toward the “agricultural revolution” in Guangdong.77 What made Feng rise so rapidly in rank was not just his scholarly qualifications and personal connections with provincial power holders, but also the intellectual atmosphere of his time: there was a sense of urgency, especially regarding the food problem, and a strong desire for scientific reform. There was a strong belief that the “agrarian crisis” (nongcun weiji) should be resolved through “scientific measures” (kexue de banfa).78 Although Feng’s case may seem to merely be a provincial case involving Guangdong, his perception of the food problem was by no means exceptional. The issue of food supply as the center of the agrarian crisis was drawing scholarly attention throughout the country. Many scientific programs for rural revival were devised to improve rice productivity and lead to greater selfsufficiency. However, few of these seriously took into account the issue of rice quality. Priority was always given to the issue of quantity rather than quality. The fact that the consumer preferred foreign rice was seen as nothing but an individual indulgence, to be sacrificed for the national cause. .  .  . The Guomindang’s attempts to resolve the food problem were not simply aimed at renovating the material infrastructure. Rather, they tried to create fundamental changes in the whole structure of food production and consumption—from regulating rice merchants, who were seen as treacherous from the perspective of Sun Yat-sen’s principle of the People’s Livelihood, to guiding urban consumers’ dietary habits away from lavishness, to revolutionizing rice productivity in the countryside. All of these scientifically directed policies also had to be conducive to the revolutionary cause. What was the cause that propelled such ambitious blueprints, which many bureaus in many different levels devoted their willpower and energy to? This chapter has sought to elucidate first the Guomindang technocratic elite group’s aspiration to reconstruct China into a modern nation and second the idea that this reconstruction should be achieved by means of scientific knowledge—which China had hitherto lacked in the past but was now passionately being introduced and put into practice. It was not simply that the Guomindang took advantage of science as a political ideology or manipulated it for political purposes. Partly due to the government’s constant efforts to propagate scientific methods, and partly due to the reformers and scientists’ increasing sense of urgency, there seems to have been a consensus favoring this emphasis on the practical application of science by and large throughout the country. Chinese scientists themselves embraced cooperation with the government, once the Guomindang proclaimed itself to be the sole legitimate authority. The urgency of

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the food problem in particular compelled the mutual cooperation between state power and science. At the very confluence of the two “victimizing forces,” as Ruth Rogaski puts it, that twentieth-century China faced—an uncontrollable natural force and Western imperialist power—was the food problem.79 Therefore, China had to both obtain scientific knowledge and practice it to make a breakthrough. While this sense of political urgency bolstered the Guomindang’s technocratic approach to the food problem, scientific knowledge itself came forward to help the escalation of Chinese nationalism. Such scientific efforts during the Nanjing Decade may strengthen the revisionist viewpoint toward the Guomindang rule—that is, the viewpoint that values, in Julia Strauss’s words, “what the Guomindang regime attempted to do” rather than its weakness.80 However, we must go one step further to distinguish what the Guomindang really did from what they tried to do. Although we can see how devoted they were to solving the problem of food supply, we can hardly say that it was successfully resolved. As the following chapters will show, food problems perennially harassed both the city and countryside throughout the Republican period. Moreover, the regime’s mismanagement of the food supply was one of the most common arguments that its political opponents used in criticizing Guomindang rule.81 In that sense, it might be said that the Guomin­ dang’s efforts to reform the food supply structurally were in fact no more than another disclosure of the regime’s inability and weakness. Yet this does not mean a revival of the conventional approach, either. Rather, I argue that the failure of the Guomindang’s efforts can be explained less by its reactionary tendencies and bureaucratic ineffectiveness than by its ­forward-looking attitude—an attitude that enthusiastically embraced Western science and modern technology, whose basic rationale was quantification and simplification.

6

Taxes and Strikes the foreign-rice tax and its social repercussions

How would the Guomindang state create financial resources for the new agricultural programs that it wished to enact? In order to embark on these experimental programs, the authorities needed to have secure financial resources. What if the state were to impose reasonable taxes on foreign rice and invest that income in domestic-rice promotion? And what if the state were to invest this new revenue in the rural revival program? This was the eventual resolution that economists, agricultural experts, and government planners together devised in order to rescue the declining Chinese agricultural sector in the early 1930s. Given the plunge of domestic agricultural prices, many believed the imposition of a protective tariff would help domestic rice to compete with foreign rice. This strong intervention in the economy was indeed what many Guomindang technocrats, who saw agricultural revival as particularly urgent, firmly advocated. In the 1930s such an approach was of course not unique to China. With the global economy hit by the Great Depression, there were few countries that refused to take an interventionist policy. This was particularly true for countries like China whose economies relied largely on the agricultural sector. Such countries desperately needed this protectionist stance. Moreover, in China the social climate too was favorable to an approach like state intervention for self-sufficiency. In scholarly debate, as well, protectionism became more and more persuasive. For example, in a debate in Nong­ sheng, a Cantonese scholarly journal specializing in agricultural sciences and agrarian affairs, Xie Entan emphatically asserted that China needed strong protectionist measures to preserve its food security. Xie suggested that the best solution would be nothing other than a protective tariff. He argued that countries such as France, Germany, and Italy had imposed tariffs at higher rates and had successfully stabilized their wheat prices.1 In

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newspapers and magazines as well, new concepts such as protective tariffs (baohu guanshui) and autarchy (yataiji: national self-sufficiency and government involvement) were frequently discussed and advocated.2 However, proposing a new protective tariff set off a chain reaction of political tensions. First there was the question of what level of political authorities would take charge of the new taxation scheme. During the Nanjing Decade, classifying taxes as national versus provincial oftentimes provoked discord between the central authority in Nanjing and the provincial governments. In particular, there was the municipality of Canton and the provincial government of Guangdong, both controlled by the powerful Cantonese General Chen Jitang and his political allies in the Guomindang Southwest Political Affairs Committee. Together they made up a rival faction of the party that was opposed to Chiang Kai-shek.3 Although Chen was not a direct military threat to the Nanjing authority, he and many of the Cantonese Guomindang members were the strongest political opponents—perhaps even more than the Chinese Communist Party—of ­Chiang’s Nanjing authority.4 If the Nanjing authority were to impose a tariff on foreign-rice imports and take all revenue to Nanjing’s treasury, would the Canton authority accept it? A second question involves the public antagonism against additional taxes on staple foodstuffs. In particular, many Cantonese, regarding foreign rice as the mainstay of their daily diet, believed that the foreign-rice imports should be immune from any additional taxation. As we saw in Chapter 1, the import of foreign rice to Canton had been lauded as a symbol of “virtuous governing” and exempted from taxation in the nineteenth century. If the authorities were to effectuate the new tariff scheme, what would the Canton public’s reaction be? With the proposal of a foreign-rice tax scheme (yangmi shui) by the Nationalist government in Nanjing, the politics of rice consumption in Canton began to draw nationwide attention. Tension over the new revenues arose between two Guomindang authorities at Nanjing and Canton. At the same time, tension also emerged between government authorities and the Cantonese public, who took the consumption of foreign rice for granted.

A Taxing Plan to Solve the Food Problem With the rise of nationwide concern over the food problem, the central authority in Nanjing took the first step toward enacting a state-interventionist policy in the matter of food supplies. On October 6, 1932, T. V. Soong, Minister of Finance in the Nanjing Nationalist Government, summoned delegates representing eight local authorities to Nanjing for a “National Food Conference.” The top item on the agenda of the meeting was how to cope with the “tragic devaluation of [domestic] rice prices due to the

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dumping of foreign rice” (yangmi qingxiao mijia canluo). The conference passed a proposal by Soong that the Nanjing authority would impose a new tariff on foreign-rice imports in order to protect domestic agriculture. However, some delegates expressed skepticism over this new tax plan and opposed Soong’s proposal. The opponents’ rationale was clear: If this plan were implemented immediately, while China’s food self-sufficiency was still doubtful, it was likely to raise grain prices in urban markets. The Cantonese stood out in the opposition. They argued that when a new tax was imposed on the rice trade, it could cause prices to rise, because it would check the influx of the foreign rice that the Cantonese population relied on for their daily consumption. Though the purpose of the protective tariff was reasonable, it would put at risk the entire structure of the Chinese food supply.5 The outcome of the council was extremely divisive. While Soong’s plan was welcomed by many rice-producing provinces, such as Anhui, Jiangsu, and Jiangxi, it generated fierce opposition from Guangdong and Fujian, whose rice production was extremely inadequate. canton’s reaction

The news triggered great social repercussions in Canton. The Cantonese foreign-rice trade guild immediately sent a telegram to the council stating that T. V. Soong and the Ministry of Finance in Nanjing should reconsider Canton’s particular circumstances. Given the deficiency of rice grown in the province, a new tax on foreign-rice imports would hurt local rice businesses and raise rice prices in Canton.6 The strongest veto came from General Chen Jitang—Guangdong’s de facto power holder—and his Guomindang Southwestern Political Affairs Committee. Given the fact of factional confrontation between Chen Jitang and Nanjing authorities, Chen suspected that there might be a hidden political intention.7 To make matters worse, Chen’s charges against Soong’s policy sounded convincing to the Cantonese public. Fueled by the general’s strong opposition to Nanjing, large numbers of Cantonese rice retailers expressed their concerns. In a special convention of the rice retailers’ guild, more than two hundred members participated and sent a protest telegram to Nanjing. In the following months, a detailed explanation by Soong was released to the public, saying that no political calculation was involved in the foreign-rice tax. Soong claimed that the new tax was aimed only at gaining more revenue to be invested in the country’s rural revival program.8 Yet his explanation did not quell Cantonese anxiety. The protest against Soong’s policy did not stop in Canton but spread to the entire province. Together with those in Canton, rice merchants from counties in the Pearl River Delta such as Panyu, Dongguan, Shunde, Zhongshan, and Taishan also decided to join Canton’s protests.9

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Calling for the immediate abolition of a new rice tariff plan, they continued to send a stream of protest telegrams to Nanjing, stating “Nanjing’s new plan is poisonous to Cantonese.” They contended that the Cantonese population would have “little choice but to eat extremely expensive rice” under the new tax scheme.10 The “telegraph warfare” between Canton and Nanjing was the most heated confrontation since the conclusion of factional struggles between the Canton Clique and Chiang Kai-shek at the end of 1931.11 Finally, Canton’s fierce resistance to Nanjing’s new policy ended with the government temporarily suspending the plan. However, the tension between Canton and Nanjing had ignited nationwide debates on the advantages and disadvantages of the new protective tariff. The political tensions also stemmed from the interpretation of statistical data. In general, statistical projects tended to suggest that the nation was the principal unit to be investigated and measured. Statistical knowledge, in turn, provided legitimacy to nation-building projects, because there was no better claim to objectivity than numerical representation. Meanwhile, provincial particularity tended to be regarded as merely China’s heterogeneity, which should be minimized, if not eliminated, in nation-building projects.12 To many proponents of the protection tariff, that China as a whole was an economic unit was undeniable, and it followed that the food problem had to be understood as part of the agenda for the national economy. For example, Minister of Industry and Commerce Chen Gongbo called strongly for transforming China into “a whole economic unit (jingji danwei)” which would be “highly unified and centralized.”13 An onrush of publication of statistical surveys in the early 1930s corroborated his arguments. Record-breaking trade deficits occurred consecutively for 1931, 1932, and 1933. The deficit was largely due to the imbalance in food imports: foodstuff imports exceeded exports by 56 percent.14 To Chen, this number meant that China had to embark on an immediate program of protectionist measures to prevent the leaking away of the national wealth through purchase of foreign rice. In particular, he wanted Guangdong to put in place a special measure to improve provincial rice production, as the province was leading this trade deficit. In publication after publication, statistics indicated that Guangdong’s foreign-rice imports amounted to more than two-thirds of China’s net foreign-rice imports.15 Nevertheless, mere quantified fact could not create a solution to a highly politicized aspect of the food problem. Facts could just provide plausibility to one party or other in a political contestation. On the one hand, the Cantonese could have claimed that their importing of foreign rice was inevitable, due to the provincial rice shortages; the provincial rice deficiency could be, and was, clearly represented in statistical data. On the other hand, the Cantonese could not claim to speak for the nation, whereas Nanjing

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a­ uthorities were entitled to do so. Thus the Cantonese could not refute the new tax scheme that the Nanjing authority had devised for strengthening the integrity of the national economy of China as a single economic unit. From the viewpoint of the ministers in Nanjing, the Cantonese foreign-rice imports were being favored and protected by the provincial power holder, Chen Jitang. However, in their view, the Cantonese foreign-rice imports were in no way conducive to the national economy as a whole. the politics of accuracy

Once Soong’s proposal of a foreign-rice tariff had gained political attention across the country, all sorts of experts in government and extra-governmental institutions jumped into the debate and proposed different solutions. In spite of the political confrontation between Nanjing and Canton, a tacit consensus still existed. The two unequivocally agreed that China was by no means self-sufficient in food production. But as yet no one could obtain accurate statistical data to measure the exact amount of food deficit. Therefore, the opponents of the new tax scheme stressed that the imposition of the agricultural protection tariff should be applied to Guangdong with great care. At the same time, few denied the importance of China’s preventing the devaluation of agrarian sectors and the spread of rural bankruptcy. Moreover, the food problem was not just an economic issue. In the international context of the early 1930s, food supply was regarded as a centerpiece of national security. Given China’s rising tensions with Japan, reliance on foreign trade for a substantial proportion of the food supply would be the Achilles heel of national defense. What if a potential enemy country blockaded China’s coasts and cut off the rice trade routes?16 The import of foreign rice thus had to be a temporary measure, to be substituted by domestic supplies as soon as possible. Once China became selfsufficient in food production, foreign-rice imports must be discontinued. Yet questions continued. How much imported foreign rice should be allowed before then? What would be the optimal amount needed to supplement China’s food deficiency, while minimizing the damage to China’s domestic agriculture? How could the rice requirements of the entire Chinese population be precisely measured? All these questions escalated to a politics of accuracy. Once the debate reached the question of accuracy, opinions divided in many directions. For example, one of the most vocal advocates of the foreign-rice tax, Zhang Kewei, complained that the Chinese rice deficiency was exaggerated by those who wanted to take advantage of foreign-rice trade. By his calculation, the rice deficiency was much less than one-fifth of the country’s net requirement. Zhang believed that the central authorities’ new rice production program would have no prob-

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lem supplementing this, and that the financial resources for the program had to come from the foreign-rice tax.17 One of the most tenable and valid arguments was provided by Jia Shiyi, a finance expert and Deputy Minister of Finance in Nanjing. After a detailed study of foreign cases, Jia claimed that many countries had taken extraordinary measures to protect their agricultural sectors and food supplies. Particularly since the beginning of the Great Depression, a strongly protectionist stance had become an irresistible trend in the world economy. Jia argued that no exception could be found in Europe. Spain had “put an embargo on foreign wheat imports,” and countries like “Norway and Switzerland had placed imports under government control.” Moreover, Jia stressed that a high tariff rate was key to the protectionist policy in countries that had successfully fended off the dumping of foreign grains. The rates in “Germany, France, Italy, and Poland were close to 100 percent,” for example, while “Austria, Greece, Czechoslovakia, and Japan kept at least a 50 percent rate.”18 Therefore, Jia concluded, China should not be an exception. Others, however, called for a more careful application of the tax. This was necessary because such the government’s macroeconomic approach tended to drive the issue to a somewhat holistic understanding, and the unanticipated consequences could greatly affect the subsistence of the Chinese people, particularly in such rice-deficient provinces as Guangdong. Ding Ying, for example, expressed his concern. Although Ding had guided many ambitious agricultural reconstruction programs with the support of the Guangdong provincial authority, he was extremely cautious about this new tariff scheme. Ding lamented that many bureaucrats naïvely trusted unreliable calculations on the basis of statistical data. For Ding, the worst example was a new concept that proponents of the foreign-rice tax used, per capita rice requirement. In Guangdong, the provincial Bureau of Statistics estimated that the average Cantonese person needed two piculs of rice a year. Ding severely criticized the estimate of per capita rice consumption as being by no means measurable.19 Without an accurate understanding of the minimal requirement for subsistence, the debate could not produce a meaningful solution. Ding argued that regional and cultural variations must be considered in this sort of calculation. He noted that a “Singaporean needed 3.1 piculs of white rice a year, while the Japanese needed 2.2 piculs, the Taiwanese 2.1 piculs, and the Vietnamese 1.15 piculs.” Why did the average Cantonese consume only 2 piculs? Why not 3 piculs, like the Singaporeans, or 1.15 piculs, like the Vietnamese?20 If no one could define a precise, accurate unit of per capita rice consumption, then it was impossible to come to an objective conclusion in this debate. While the “numbers game” unfolded in the name of objectivity, the political environment was forcing the debaters to reach a tentative conclusion.

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During the Great Depression, all bureaucrats and experts were immersed in an overwhelming sense of urgency. Many advocates of the foreign-rice tax could no longer wait for all debates to be resolved. Tang Wenkai, a researcher on the Rural Revival Committee under the Nanjing authority, eloquently argued that timely taxation was the most important factor, because “if China were to lose momentum, there would be no effect.” He called for immediate taxation, under a certain tax rate; if some adjustments were needed, they could be made “after the first two months of observation.”21 By the spring of 1933, when T. V. Soong again summoned the eight provincial delegates to the Rural Revival Committee, the issue was no longer whether or not the foreign-rice tax would be imposed. The Rural Revival Committee passed these revised proposals: (1) the elimination of all local miscellaneous taxes and levies, thereby allowing free interregional and inter-provincial grain trade; (2) the creation of a Bureau of Internal Grain Shipping and Transport under Nanjing’s direction to help the domestic rice trade; and (3) a tax on rice imported from abroad, with a tax rate carefully devised and authorized under the Legislative Yuan’s approval. Meanwhile, the committee was to facilitate the inter-provincial rice trade.22 But even if such an agreement were reached, questions could be raised again and again. Most important, would the Canton authority accept these proposals? toward a provincial way

While pros and cons divided along the lines of provincial politics between Nanjing and Canton, Feng Rui’s stance deserves our attention. Feng, the master planner of the provincial agricultural revolution in Guangdong, asserted a unique proposal. Feng was one of the strongest advocates of a protective tariff on foreign-rice imports, yet at the same time his position was distanced from that of his counterparts in Nanjing. To Feng, the protection program should be implemented on the provincial level, not on the national level. To corroborate his arguments, Feng provided a different rationale. In Feng Rui’s calculation, foreign-rice imports constituted less than one-tenth of the province’s food demand as a whole, and this was a negligible amount. Feng argued that the new tariff would not affect the provincial rice supply, since provincial rice productivity could be scientifically improved through his new agricultural program. What concerned him more than a potential rise in rice prices in the province was the nationwide agrarian crisis that China was facing. In this regard, Feng did not oppose the Nanjing’s protective tariff scheme, yet what he called for was not a national tariff but a provincial tariff. If the foreign-rice tax scheme and agricultural reconstruction programs were pursued on a nationwide scale, the planners were much more likely to neglect regional variations and details. If provincial authorities took charge of the plans on a provin-

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cial scale, they would be more effective.23 The Cantonese authorities could not claim the nation, but they could question the efficiency of Nanjing’s new tax scheme. Feng Rui’s proposal provided the Cantonese authorities with an excellent rationale for the defense of provincialism. In Feng’s calculation, the state apparatus at the provincial level, rather than the central government, would better suit the genuine reason for protectionism. After a course of fierce debates, a wide range of choices was narrowed down one by one. First, few denied the need for a protectionist tariff. Second, though opinions were still divided, the details of rates and times of enforcement would be discussed again and adjusted shortly after the promulgation of the tariff. However, the last question that Feng Rui put on the table went beyond his control. It was no doubt a political question. Who would take charge of the new tariff scheme? Would it be the central authorities in Nanjing or the provincial authorities in Canton? Guangdong’s heavy reliance on foreign-rice imports was no doubt a provincial problem. At the same time, however, it was also a national problem, because those imports represented the largest proportion of China’s net foreign-rice imports.

The Politics of Provincialism In the summer of 1933, rumors that the Nanjing regime was going to impose a foreign-rice tax spread across Canton.24 Many local rice merchants did not expect that this imposition would ever really be effectuated in Canton, since they firmly believed that the provincial authorities under General Chen Jitang were strongly opposed to Nanjing’s taxation plan. Huang Yongyu, the leader of the Cantonese foreign-rice traders’ guild and the son of Huang Xianzhi, confirmed again and again that all guild members would oppose the foreign-rice tax at any cost. The chief of the provincial Department of Civil Administration, Lin Yizhong, visited Huang and said that the provincial authorities had no objection to Huang’s opinion.25 However, in September of 1933 Huang was betrayed. The provincial government—not Nanjing—imposed a foreign-rice tax across the province. While the Nanjing authorities had originally planned the foreign-rice tax to be a “national tax” (guoshui) to go into the central treasury, the provincial authoritiesin Canton devised a different category of tax, a “provincial tax” (shengshui). This new kind of revenue would finance many provincial reconstruction programs, particularly Feng Rui’s agricultural program. Shortly after the declaration of the new tax plan, Feng also announced that his grain improvement program was aimed at a 30 percent increase in provincial grain production and that it urgently needed financial resources.26 Given the political tension and distrust between Nanjing and Canton, Chen Jitang had no reason to support Nanjing’s new tax scheme. This was

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one of the main reasons why provincial authorities had fiercely resisted the plan when T. V. Soong had first proposed it. As John Fitzgerald puts it, Chen Jitang and many other Cantonese Guomindang members had strong doubts about the style of national integration being pursued by the Nationalist government in Nanjing.27 At the same time, the Guangdong provincial authorities had no reason to resist the chance to gain new provincial revenue. What if the foreign-rice tax resulted in the province gaining new income for its provincial treasury? Needless to say, Chen Jitang set forth his own provincial reconstruction blueprint (which Feng Rui had devised), requiring large amounts of financial resources.28 If the imposition of a foreign-rice tax was fait accompli, why did the provincial authorities have to allow Nanjing to take away financial resources from the province? Canton’s declaration of the new “provincial tax” was indeed a preemptive strike to the Nanjing authorities.29 An Agricultural Products Tax Bureau was newly created under the Provincial Treasury Department to manage and collect the new tax, which was called “imported agricultural product tax” (bolai nongchanpin zhuan­ shui).30 By September 1933, political tensions between Canton and Nanjing over the tariff had developed into a twofold contention. The situation was caused by not only dissonance with the Nanjing authorities, but also a clash between the Canton authorities and Canton’s foreign-rice traders. a new provincial tax

In Canton, the provincial authorities’ sudden change of position was absolutely unacceptable to many rice merchants, who believed it was nothing but a political betrayal. The tax itself was unprecedented, and the rates were higher than expected.31 The rice market was panicked. Perhaps it was no surprise that the rice merchants broke out in a spontaneous protest. Once the official announcement was made on September 13, some merchants stopped doing business and took a wait-and-see attitude; others hurriedly finished up deals before the proposition took effect at 3 p.m. on Saturday, September 16. Along with news, unidentified rumors spread, for instance, that as long as a deal was made before 3 o’clock, tax duty would be exempted, regardless of the arrival time. The rumor that many Hong Kong rice merchants heard was somewhat different: that Canton authorities leniently exempted rice stocks that arrived in Canton by noon Sunday morning. On the night of September 13, “the long distance telephone lines to Hong Kong were kept busy the whole evening,” as many Canton rice firms made “last-minute efforts to order large consignments of rice [hoping] to evade the duty before it came into effect.”32 The repercussions in the market did not stop in Canton; the shockwave quickly spread beyond the national border. A number of large rice firms in Hong Kong immediately

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sent a protest telegraph to the provincial government. When the news was heard in Bangkok on September 18, many rice milling companies temporarily stopped operations in anticipation of any effects on their businesses.33 To ease concerns and reduce anger, the Canton authority repeatedly explained that their decision came from goodwill, in order to improve provincial agriculture and food supplies. In a response to the Hong Kong rice firms’ telegram, the chair of the Provincial Government, Lin Yungai, himself stated: “The new duty must be enforced for the benefit of the Cantonese peasants.”34 Many high-ranking officials in the provincial government attended a meeting called by the mercantile group and explained their position.35 At the same time, the authorities continuously sought a quantified justification. In an announcement, the authorities claimed that “even if every man in the province ate 4 piculs of rice a year, the proportion of foreign rice that the province still needed to import would be no more than 15 percent of total rice demand.” Therefore, the foreign-rice tax, the announcement concluded, would “not affect the cost of living.” 36 Even so, these explanations did not bring back peace of mind to the public. Tensions between rice merchants and the authorities quickly escalated. Rice merchants convened an all-Guangdong rice merchants’ conference (quansheng mishang huiyi). This became the largest provincial gathering of merchants for a political purpose since the Guomindang’s seizure of municipal power in the mid-1920s. The conference resolved to go on strike to protest the new regulation imposed by the authorities was stricter than ever before. As soon as the resolution was passed, the rice merchants were warned that their business could be completely suspended if they did not pay the tax.37 Shortly thereafter, the clash began. Agents from the Agricultural Products Tax Bureau detained 24 vessels and their 4,000 bags of foreign rice for “non-payment of duty.” Huang Yongyu rushed to the site and contended that the rice had been ordered prior to September 16, so these bags ought to be exempt. At the same time, he suggested a deal: a temporary exemption of duty for foreign-rice imports between September 16 and October 1. Perhaps in the past this kind of on-the-spot deal would have worked, but the Tax Bureau was implacable. Huang received only a cold reply: “There will be no remission of the money due; if the bill has not been met, every bag [of rice] will be sold” by the bureau.38 In order to differentiate tax-paid rice bags from others, the bureau devised the new measure of stamping and posting tax receipts on every rice sack at the time of entry. Even though this extra measure probably caused more delay in unloading, the bureau remained bull-headed in its stance. The confrontation seemed irreconcilable. About a month later, and only after the rice detained on the wharf had deteriorated, the standoff finally ended. The merchants had little choice but to pay the tax and unload the rice.39

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To be sure, this was a remarkable victory for the authorities. Nonetheless, Huang Yongyu continued to oppose the tax plan, although this first confrontation had ended with his defeat. He had still won tremendous support from local rice guilds throughout the province, and had also received a series of encouraging telegrams from Hong Kong rice traders.40 for the sake of the province

The Canton authorities had no need to compromise with their opponents. First, despite merchant protests and the prolonged detention of rice on the wharves, overall retail rice prices throughout the city did not fluctuate much. Coincidentally, the local harvest that year provided sufficient amounts of rice to the market. Occupational rivalry within the rice business was also a factor worth mentioning. Huang’s rival guild, the Sanjiang bang, was able to take advantage of the situation: they announced that they would increase Wuhu rice trade if the confrontation lasted longer than expected.41 Finally, a telegram with news from Changsha, Hunan, relieved public concerns: the Hunan provincial government authorized shipping 1.2 million piculs of Hunan rice to Canton. Hunan rice had never gained popularity with the Canton rice consumers before, yet this news no doubt provided the Cantonese public with a sense of relief.42 At the same time, the authorities continued a provincial version of the “numbers game” with merchants. Statistical knowledge that the state apparatus monopolized —more precisely, a well-balanced combination of political rhetoric and numerical fact—was the most powerful tool that the authorities used in this contest. Perhaps nothing seemed more plausible than the numbers that the authorities provided. Of course, plausibility could not be achieved by using numeric data alone. One official announcement contended: “Some argue that our province is able to produce rice to meet demand for only four months. Yet that is by no means true. It was just a groundless rumor spread by treacherous merchants. Right now, we need to have patriotism.”43 Having refuted the merchants’ calculation of the rice deficit, the authorities contended that the province supplied rice sufficient to feed the entire provincial population for eleven months a year. To meet the one-month deficit, the province still needed foreign-rice imports. Within a few years, they insisted, the province would transform itself into a self-sufficient economic entity. With this, they emphasized again, substantial portions of new revenue from the foreign-rice tax would be invested in “agricultural experiments and scientific education,” which were being conducted in the province’s leading academic institutions, such as the “College of Agriculture at Zhongshan University.”44

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The Rice Masters Go on Strike Nonetheless, a clash with rice merchants was inevitable. Huang Yongyu organized and led the merchant protests. Huang’s rice business had been bequeathed to him by his father, Huang Xianzhi, who had been the single most powerful rice merchant. The Huang family’s dominance over the business had continued even after Xianzhi’s retirement in 1928, with the son taking up the father’s position as leader of the foreign-rice traders’ guild.45 Although Xianzhi’s reputation might have helped his son’s succession in the business, Yongyu himself showed no less talent for expanding the business. A man of strong character, Huang Yongyu extendeed his influence over the mercantile communities in Canton. To many guild members, he was well known for his boldness, which resembled his father’s, particularly when a tax dispute with the authorities took place. Whenever guild members clashed with local officials, Huang was the one to come up with the most amicable solutions. The way that he preferred to solve disputes was by buying off local officials. Huang therefore usually raised extra money from his guild members for this purpose. Yet few of the guild members complained, since his bribes worked very well. As long as the young Huang’s influence continued to work efficiently, his leadership among the guild members was unchallengeable. The trust that Huang received from his guild members turned into political capital for him. At the same time, the guild had political leverage, too. This enabled Huang to organize and lead protests to the foreign-rice tax indefatigably. According to an anonymous rice merchant’s memoir, compiled in 1985, had Huang not fiercely resisted the tax, the local population believed that the Canton authorities would have imposed it much earlier and more easily.46 the arts of dispute

In addition to Huang’s bold personality, the Huang family wielded two other sources of power. One was their commercial network, which linked mercantile communities throughout the South China Sea. The other was their expertise in rice varieties and qualities. Even before the imposition of the foreign-rice tax in 1933, the Huang family had had a number of clashes with the local authorities. In the fall of 1927, for example, the provincial Department of Treasury devised a new surcharge, called the “husked bran and broken rice tax” (kangpusui shui). This would be imposed only on husked bran and broken rice—the byproducts of mechanized rice husking— imported to Canton. The department argued that this new tax would not hurt the poor, because these materials were used mostly for feeding farm animals. The rice merchants nicknamed it the “pig bran tax” (zhukang shui). However, the merchants refuted that rationale, insisting that the poor in

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fact ate these as foodstuffs. The Huang family led the merchants’ refutation. In the petition, Huang father and son, as well as two other rice experts, explained in detail why broken rice had to remain tax free: “there are three different degrees of broken rice, but one of them, called No. 3 broken rice, is edible. Moreover, its kernels are too small to distinguish it from No. 2 sweet rice.”47 No one could come up with criteria to distinguish one from another, except rice experts with as much experience as the Huangs. Needless to say, no one in the department could comprehend that level of expertise. In addition, the Huang family had received support from overseas colleagues in the form of telegrams of petition sent by the rice trade guilds in three port cities—Bangkok, Tonkin, and Rangoon.48 In the end, the authorities had no choice but to recant this new tax plan. One and a half years later, in the spring of 1929, the authorities tried again to impose this tax plan. Once again, they met with merchant protests led by Huang Yongyu, and postponed the immediate effectuation of the new tax. Both sides made an official announcement that the tax would be postponed again. However, it was widely rumored that behind the scenes Huang Yongyu had managed to make this compromise; he had bought off not only the provincial officials but also some higher-ranking officials in Nanjing.49 Huang Yongyu’s rice business expertise was no less significant than his real-world networking skills. One day in spring 1930, a few rice firms chartered a rice vessel and shipped 580 bags of broken rice from Rangoon to Canton. Customs agents examined all the bags of broken rice and judged it to be a kind of unhusked bran, which was supposed to be taxable. They quickly took custody of the rice and warned the rice merchants to pay the tax. As soon as Huang Yongyu heard the news, he ran down to the customs office. Huang strongly argued that this Rangoon broken rice was by no means the taxable kind of unhusked bran. In order to prove it, Huang ran to a rice shop nearby and returned with some samples of broken rice. The customs agents refused to accept his appeal, however; the sample that Huang brought, they asserted, was obviously different from the confiscated rice. Again Huang explained that there were dozens of varieties of unhusked rice and bran and most of them were distinguishable from the confiscated Rangoon broken rice variety, especially in the rice kernel. Huang ran out again to purchase another sample of unhusked bran and rice from another neighboring rice shop. He asked the agents to carefully compare each rice sample. After examination, they admitted that two varieties were apparently different in shape. Despite this admission, the customs officials refused to release the rice, simply because it was too late. The agents stated that because it was already after 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the customs officials and clerks in charge of this matter had already left the office and there was no one left to do the paperwork. Huang could not curb his tem-

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per. That evening, he summoned the standing committee members of his guild and informed them about the outrageous behavior of the customs authorities. Late that night, the committee decided that guild members would go on strike in the event of another such an arbitrary detention of rice.50 Although Huang Yongyu was considered a great troublemaker by the local authorities, they could not easily dampen his influence over Canton. He not only had a good reputation within the mercantile community but also had close personal relationships with a number of high-ranking officials in the provincial government. One account provides a plausible explanation, although the tone is overwhelmingly eulogistic. The work Elegance and Talent in Xiguan, Canton (Guangzhou Xiguan fenghua) describes how the Huang family consolidated their networks and strengthened ties with many Guomindang members. In the account, Huang Yongyu was one of the most renowned entrepreneurs in the Xiguan (Western commercial district), yet he was also outstanding in his contributions (gongxian) to the Guomindang’s revolutionary cause. The Huang family’s help and support for the revolutionary efforts of Sun Yat-sen’s Guomindang were firm and consistent throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Sun Yat-sen awarded the Huang family for their consistent help, particularly for supplying rice to Sun’s Revolutionary Army in 1922–24. They again helped strikers during the Great Hong Kong–Canton strike of 1925, for which they received an award from the Minister of Labor, Liao Zhongkai.51 The family’s contribution to the revolutionary cause did not stop there. After the Shanghai Incident in 1932, Yongyu raised money, organized a group, and went to Shanghai to pay special tribute to the Nineteenth Route Army that had fended off the Japanese invasion. This army consisted mostly of Cantonese sons, including its commander, General Cai Tingkai, who attained celebrity status for his leadership of the army. General Cai was so impressed by Yongyu that he invited him to his office to be commended. In the rising national mood of patriotism in the early 1930s, the reputation of General Cai empowered Huang’s standing as well.52 This account may have been exaggerated; however, the family’s consolidated network, which included party officials, may in turn have given Huang some degree of protection. the arrest of huang yongyu

In 1933, however, Huang’s notability (shengjia) collapsed. There were no more “Guomindang elders” who could afford to protect him. By the early 1930s, Sun Yat-sen and Liao Zhongkai had already died, and General Cai Tingkai and his Nineteenth Route Army fled Canton after losing political power to his rival, General Chen Jitang. More than anything else, Chen Jitang and Feng Rui were too firm in their resolution to accept Huang’s

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bribes.53 On December 21, Huang was suddenly arrested while presiding over a small business meeting at the New Asia Hotel in Xiguan.54 Charged with fraud and corruption, Huang was arrested by two uniformed police officers and two undercover agents from the Special Brigade of the Provincial Department of Treasury (Caizheng ting tewudui). First, the authorities claimed that Huang had forced his guild members to pay an extra fee of six cents per bag of rice. They also claimed that he deceived guild members by informing them that such a fee was required for registration, despite the fact that the customs office did not issue certificates of registration. Second, they charged that Huang had collected more than 30,000 yuan from guild members to bribe key officials in the provincial authorities. Undeniable evidence was also found. For this he had purchased three motor cars. Finally, Huang had collected an additional 22,000 yuan to use for buying off more officials. In return, he had expected some exemptions of foreignrice imports.55 While Huang was being detained and interrogated in the Special Brigade Office on the second floor of the Provincial Department of Treasury Building, his henchmen were arrested one by one.56 Needless to say, Huang’s arrest was a fatal blow to the merchants’ antitax protests. Dozens of leading rice firms petitioned for Huang’s release and decided to pay bail for him, yet the effort was rejected.57 They also decided to go on strike, but the authorities’ continuous arrests of guild members were enough to terrorize them. After spending more than three months in custody, Huang was found guilty and sentenced to be detained until he paid a fine of 50,000 yuan.58 At the same time, he was forced to resign from the chairmanship of the guild and from many other merchant associations. While he was in custody, the standing committee of the guild silently approved his resignation in June 1934. Shortly thereafter, he was released from ten months of custody, but by now he was completely forgotten and no news reports paid him any attention.59 The guild members could not put up as fierce a resistance as they had under Huang’s leadership. Now, one side of the political tension had dissolved. The Canton authorities had successfully tamed the rice merchants. The next question became how to handle political dissonance with the Nanjing authority.

Modus Vivendi: Provincial Tax and National Tax In October of 1933 a new session of the National Food Conference was called. However, the venue was not Nanjing, nor did the same person host the conference. Instead of T. V. Soong, Chiang Kai-shek himself summoned ten provincial delegates to Nanchang, Jiangxi, where he remained with his army, and tried to make a political deal. At the conference, a sharp line was drawn again between Guangdong and the many inland provinces that

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were siding with the Nanjing authority. The issue was no longer whether or not the foreign-rice tax would be imposed. Every delegate unanimously agreed on the need for an agricultural tariff as a protective measure for the agricultural sector. The question then became whether the tariff would be imposed at the national or provincial level. Delegates from such rural provinces as Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi strongly advocated the immediate imposition of a foreign-rice tax all over China as a tariff (guanshui), whereas the Cantonese delegates contended that certain portions of the new tax revenue should be used for provincial programs. No one, however, wanted to have another political stalemate. The conference ended with a compromise: the foreign-rice tax would be a national tariff and all revenues would belong to the National Treasury (guoku); however, there was an exception for the Cantonese.60 The Cantonese provincial authorities of Guangdong were allowed to send 44 percent of the revenue that the authorities collected within the province to the National Treasury but they claimed that 56 percent of it would belong to Provincial Treasury (shengku). In turn, the Guangdong authorities promised that this new provincial revenue would be used for the provincial agricultural program, which would arguably contribute to the revival of Chinese agriculture as a whole.61 Neither Nanjing nor Canton would affirm that there was any political calculation. In order to realize this political promise, the Canton authorities launched a new committee specializing in provincial food supplies called the Guangdong Food Regulation Committee (Guangdong liangshi tiaojie weiyuanhui). Not a single rice merchant was allowed to participate in the decision making of the committee, however.62 The first showcase policy that the committee made was on foreign-rice imports: Foreign-rice varieties would not be allowed to be imported to any port within the provincial boundaries without the committee’s approval. Instead, the committee promoted trade in Wuhu rice, and promised to invest the revenues in the construction of new granaries around Canton.63 At the same time, the Canton authorities announced new food regulation programs with a strong emphasis on the necessity of state intervention at a provincial level. In a press conference for foreign correspondents at a Rotary Club lunch on board the S.S. Fatshan, the chief of the Provincial Bureau of Information, Lee Fong, delivered an address. He stated that the provincial authorities had seen “what the Russians ha[d] accomplished with their Five-Year Plans, and no doubt the Russian success ha[d] stirred their imaginations.”64 Lee insisted again that Guangdong province’s foreign-rice tax program was by no means a hindrance to the similar programs conducted at the national level. Rather, it represented a stepping stone for national construction, because it was precisely based on Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles. Lee

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concluded that the program would “put Guangdong in many respects far ahead of any other province in China.”65 .  .  . From the late 1920s onward, the Cantonese foreign-rice trade experienced unprecedented government regulation. In the eyes of many Guomindang members and government officials, “foreign-rice dumping” (yangmi qing­ xiao) not only generated China’s trade imbalance but also devalued the Chinese agricultural economy. It caused national wealth to be constantly drained, and rural society to be fundamentally devastated, since Chinese agricultural products were not able to compete with cheaper foreign products in the marketplace. Given mounting tensions with Japan, the increasing reliance of food supply on foreign-rice imports came to be regarded as the single most serious threat to the Chinese national food security. To cope with this situation, self-determined, technocratic elite groups proclaimed a series of bold rural reconstruction and food regulation programs. If a sense of urgency pushed them to embark on the programs, their confidence in their “scientific” understanding of society pulled them into expediting their goals. A series of statistical surveys of rural condition were carried out throughout China, and a number of rural revival programs were promulgated. Many agricultural experts and economic specialists advised that a new protective tariff should be imposed on foreign-rice imports, with the new revenue to be used for those ambitious agricultural programs. Few objected to this scheme. Perhaps people’s sense of urgency overwhelmed their political differences. Opinions diverged, however, on one question: Should the rural reconstruction programs be administered at the national level or at the provincial level? Only after years of political strife, the central and provincial authorities in Nanjing and Canton reached a compromise. The Cantonese provincial authority would receive part of the foreign-rice tax collected in Guangdong, with the rest going to the National Treasury under the control of the Nanjing authorities. Meanwhile, the rice merchants’ valuable local knowledge was entirely excluded from the debate and in the decision-making. The enforcement of the new policy, plus a crackdown on the foreign-rice merchant guilds, signified such exclusion. In this sense, the arrest and detention of Huang Yongyu, the most powerful rice merchant in Canton, meant more than the political suppression of the mercantile elite groups, as was widely practiced by the Guomindang authorities in the 1920s and 1930s. Legitimizing a certain type of knowledge represented a political victory for the modern state. Huang’s arrest could be justified as long as the Guomindang members and technocratic elites believed their plans to be grounded in new scientific methods—from the experimental rural revival program, devised by

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agricultural scientists, to the optimal rates of the new foreign-rice tax, calculated by fiscal experts. The Canton authorities showed zero tolerance to any rice merchant who challenged the new foreign-rice tax scheme. However, they did not heedlessly emphasize the scientific validity of their new policy. To achieve the political goal, they also thoughtfully revived a traditional notion: “treacherous merchant” (jianshang). It was not an easy task, perhaps, for the authorities to crush the Huang family’s symbolic capital, which the family had carefully cultivated over decades in the Cantonese mercantile communities. For this, the Canton authorities dexterously adopted a traditional derogative term to blame him as a “treacherous merchant.” Rice was no longer a matter of political contest. Now foreign-rice imports to Canton, lauded as the finest example of “virtuous governing” in the last decades of the empire, were to be detected, scrutinized, and taxed by the modern state apparatus. But would the modern government be able to monitor the myriad of navigation routes, big and small, between Hong Kong and Canton and throughout the Pearl River Delta? And would the modern technocratic elite be able to anticipate the ups and downs of the rice market, discern the public’s rice preferences, and satisfy popular demand, as had rice merchants done before?

7

Inventing “National Rice” the national goods movement and the issue of rice quality

The National Goods Movement provided the foreign-rice tax scheme with a favorable social environment. Had the Guomindang authorities not initiated the movement in a timely manner, it might have been much more difficult to convince the public that imposing a foreign-rice tax would protect and improve China’s domestic agriculture. The origins of the movement can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, when it developed gradually and spread throughout the treaty ports. Although there was no single leading organization, its message was simple and clear: to improve the Chinese economy by promoting the purchase of Chinese goods and discouraging the use of foreign goods. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, as China confronted a hostile international environment, the movement experienced a turning point. As early as the inaugural year of the regime, having foreseen the potency of such a patriotic consumer movement, the Guomindang authorities promised to give it their full-fledged sponsorship. The minister of Industry and Commerce, Kong Xiangxi, sponsored a National Products Exhibition in 1928. Thereafter, a number of government institutions continuously boosted the movement throughout the country.1 Mass urban rallies, whether sponsored by the party or not, were common in 1930s China. In Canton, for example, the Municipal Trade Restoration Committee took charge of what they called the “Buy Chinese” Movement and successfully mobilized a large crowd for the movement. One news­ paper reported that in Canton a mass rally with more than 10,000 participants throughout the city had ended climactically. The event “lasted from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm in spite of rain.”2 The National Goods Movement was not simply a movement for promoting certain goods. As a strong motif for this movement deeply rooted in nationalism, the movement treated one’s consumption habits as an

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important measure of one’s own identity, because now everyone was assumed to belong to a national community. Under the slogan “promoting Chinese goods” (tichang guohuo), it asked all Chinese to consume Chinese products, regardless of quality or one’s own preferences. Rice was no exception. Eating a certain kind of rice went beyond one’s individual food choice. In the early years of the movement, however, rice had been given little attention, as the movement had mainly spearheaded a boycott of foreign manufactured goods, which had often been preferred over Chinese goods because of their superior quality. Hence, the major items boycotted had been foreign manufactured goods (e.g., cotton goods, cigarettes, and matches), which had been in direct competition with their Chinese counterparts. As the food problem became urgent on the national agenda in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the focus of the movement then shifted to foodstuffs. Although rice was a commodity rather than a manufactured item, the domestic rice business was in keen competition with imported rice. Moreover, many Chinese came to see foodstuffs as industrial products of a sort because milling technology improved their quality, taste, and color. Indeed, all kinds of “industrially [re]produced foodstuffs” of foreign origin, such as highly polished white rice, machine-refined white sugar, and wheat flour, were popularly consumed as, in Frank Dikötter’s words, an “exotic commodity” throughout China.3 Once the disparity in quality between domestic rice and foreign rice was determined be the main reason why the popular consumption of foreign rice had not decreased, rice quickly became the key target of the movement. Therefore, together with the imposition of the foreign-rice tax, the National Goods Movement brought nationwide attention to Canton, as we will see in the following pages. Because Canton was known to the rest of China as the treaty port that imported the largest amount of foreign rice, altering Cantonese rice consumption habits also came to be the touchstone of the Guomindang regime’s experimental programs to ameliorate the Chinese food problem as a whole.

Rice as “National Goods” The most remarkable feature of the National Goods Movement was the creation of a new vocabulary and new notions to define what was authentically Chinese. Once a commodity had been approved as an authentic Chinese product, the prefix “national” (guo) could be added to its name. In general, any products of Chinese origin were called “national goods” (guohuo); for example, authentic Chinese medicine was called “national medicine” (guoyao). By the same logic, Chinese rice could be called “national rice” (guomi).4 Surely, this creation of a new vocabulary was, as

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Karl Gerth argues, a significant part of imagining Chinese nationalism. On the other hand, once a commodity was defined as being of non-Chinese origin, its political connotations developed far beyond its name. All goods of foreign origin were given the prefix indicating “foreign” (yang). But if a foreign country were viewed as an enemy or potentially hostile to China, a  different prefix would be used, designating “enemy” (chou): for example, chouhuo, meaning “enemy goods.”5 Under these circumstances, a newly coined term, “national rice,” (guomi) was quickly introduced to the public; it simply meant any rice variety cultivated within China. However, the new notion of national rice was also confusing, particularly for the Cantonese public. In the Canton rice market, rice varieties were named according to their geographical origins, such as Siam rice, Annam rice, Wuhu rice, and the like. These names meant more than an indication of geographical origins to the Cantonese consumers. They also signified different qualities, flavors, and market values. Thus, rather than simple classifications of geographical origin, these names rather resembled  brand names. Instead of saying “national rice,” Cantonese rice merchants used the term “native rice” (tumi), and this indicated varieties produced in the Pearl River Delta or within the bounds of the province at most.6 However, the National Goods Movement and the Foreign Rice Tax scheme brought about a new order for naming rice. Such local classifications were simplified into two categories, either national rice or foreign rice. Regardless of their quality, market value, or consumer popularity, all kinds of rice produced within Chinese soil were now lumped together and given one name: national rice. Few merchants in the Canton rice market traded Hunan rice. Yet the new names grouped Hunan rice in the same category as some local Cantonese rice varieties whose taste was much closer to Siamese or French Indochinese rice. Moreover, high-­ranking party officials proclaimed that Chinese citizens must all eat Chinese rice in order to revive the collapsed Chinese agriculture and rectify the national trade deficit. In “Self-Sufficiency in the Chinese Food Supply,” Chen Gongbo, Minister of Industry and Commerce, asserted that self-sufficiency in China’s food supply was the most urgent goal to be achieved during his term of office.7 food and national security

If mercantile groups, concerned about competition with the foreign manufactured goods, had led the early phase of the movement, it was the state that played the key role in the movement in the early 1930s. Promoting national goods developed into protecting national food security. It was understood that the increasing foreign-rice imports and the subsequent

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trade deficits weakened the Chinese economy as a whole. Moreover, it was more than an economic issue: the nation’s reliance on foreign trade for the nation’s food supplies was potentially a menace to the national security of China. By the early 1930s, the international environment had become more hostile than ever; Japan’s military aggression was escalating, and more and more countries adopted protectionist measures because of the Great Depression. Party members, while following Chiang Kai-shek’s appeasement policy, admitted that China would someday be engaged in a full-fledged war with Japan. Given that China’s national food supply had not yet reached the goal of self-sufficiency, what would happen if Japan were to blockade Chinese ports? China had to learn from foreign countries, and looked to Germany as a good example. Despite Germany’s worldwide reputation for military might and administrative efficiency, Germans had failed to maintain their food supplies, leading to defeat in the war. Chen Gongbo stated: “In Europe during the war, regardless of how many soldiers Russia was able to rely on or how powerful ­Germany’s offensive apparatus was, Russia ended up with a revolution and Germany was defeated. . . . In reality the outcome was still due to the fact that ­Russia and Germany did not have enough grain.”8 Nothing, he felt, was more imperative to the strengthening of national defense than self-­ sufficiency in the food supply. This strong emphasis on self-sufficiency was not simply Chen’s personal concern, but reflected the priorities of the majority of Guomindang members. to eat or not to eat

The new notion of “national rice” caused cognitive dissonance for party officials as well. Despite the enthusiastic growth of the movement, advocates of national rice promotion faced the same problem: How should “national rice” be defined? If rice were shipped to a Chinese port from Manchuria— a region occupied by the Japanese Kwantung Army illegitimately and where Japan’s puppet state of Manchukuo had been established—should it be called “national rice”? No one could provide a crystal-clear answer to this question. This was rather a political question. If rice were classified as “national rice” because it was grown in the “Three Eastern Provinces” (Dongsansheng: Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Jilin), which were no doubt Chinese territory, it had to be considered tax free. If it were classified as foreign rice imported from Manchukuo, it had to be taxed, if not boycotted. However, to do so meant to recognize Manchukuo as a normal, sovereign country. Hence, the authorities hesitated to provide precise definitions for this sort of rice. Meanwhile, anti-Japanese popular sentiment urged the Guomindang authorities to answer the question. Even before the official

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imposition of the foreign-rice tax, disputes of this kind had occurred in many treaty port cities. In 1932, for example, members of the National Salvation Association in Canton detained soybeans from Dalian for “being of Japanese origin” and for a long time refused to release them to local merchants.9 The members of the Association argued that all such foodstuffs from northeastern China were not acceptable by any means because they were produced under the Japanese occupation. Though a protectionist step had taken by adopting the Foreign Rice Tax scheme, Guomindang officials were still confronted by the same dilemma. In 1933, Lin Yungai, chairperson of the Guangdong provincial government, visited Swatow, where local party members and merchants’ groups were debating how to deal with the import of beans and bean oils from Manchuria. In a press conference, a local newspaper reporter asked him which country the Three Eastern Provinces belonged to. Lin had to eschew a clear answer because he could neither admit the sovereignty of Manchukuo nor carelessly grant a tax exemption. As a party member who viewed Manchukuo as a “fake country” (weiguo), he regarded granting tax exemption as absolutely unacceptable. At the same time, Lin could not answer that they were Chinese territories, either. Doing so amounted to allowing all beans and bean oils shipped from Dalian to be categorized as “national products,” and thus able to evade the tax. Eventually, Lin stammered out that grains from the Three Eastern Provinces would not be subject to the tax, although he never publicly acknowledged that these grains could be categorized as a sort of national grain. Shortly thereafter, Lin’s statement was used by many merchants to avoid paying the tax when trading northeastern grains.10 This case was just the tip of the iceberg. Although the Foreign Rice Tax was put in place, tax disputes continued to occur, ruined the original purpose of the tax scheme. This happened simply because the notion of national rice had been artificially invented. tax exemptions and tax evasions

After the promulgation of the Foreign Rice Tax in 1933, the rice trade imbalance did not improve as much as the government planners had hoped. The most striking fact was that across the country China’s domestic rice business was still in recession (bujingqi). The harvest of 1934 as a whole was recorded in the national statistical survey as an abundant year. However, the actual market situation at the local level varied from region to region. In some rural areas, a devaluation of rice prices occurred. In other urban areas, rice shortages and an inflation in rice prices took place. Meanwhile, foreign-rice imports as a whole were not reduced in the major coastal cities.11

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Misunderstandings about local variations led to inconsistencies in the foreign-rice tax policy. Once the rice yields in the lower Yangzi area turned out to be much less than expected, a sudden decision was made to encourage the purchase of foreign rice from the international market. For example, in 1934, the Shanghai Municipal Authority became concerned with the unpredictability of the rice supply and the effects of the foreign rice tax. In an interview the head of the Shanghai Bureau of Social Affairs, Wu Huanru, requested a temporary tax exemption for Shanghai. He stated: “the lower Yangzi area needs about 10 million piculs of extra rice due to regional floods and famines; if this amount of foreign rice or any equivalent is not guaranteed, many people will starve to death.”12 Shortly after this interview, the market was shaken. Shanghai rice merchants ordered the purchase of 100,000 sacks of Saigon rice and planned to purchase 900,000 more sacks, with the expectation that they would be tax exempt.13 As the significance of Shanghai to the regime was well understood, the central authority in Nanjing publicly discussed a temporary tax exemption. Needless to say, this exceptional tax exemption, albeit temporary, caused discontent elsewhere. Some regions were given temporary exemptions, whereas in the rest of the country the foreignrice tax was strictly imposed. Was this not political favoritism? In particular, the Cantonese could claim that their province was a scapegoat of this political favoritism. The Cantonese had to pay the tax, although they needed to import a certain amount of foreign rice to supplement the province’s perennial rice shortages. But the lower Yangzi area, where Chiang’s power was secure, could readily obtain a temporary exemption. Indeed, Canton’s was a reasonable complaint. In a contribution to Dongfang zazhi, Guo Gang expressed his skepticism about the temporary tax exemption scheme in Shanghai, because Wu did not provide reliable statistical data.14 More than anything else, countless cases of tax evasion had increased public skepticism regarding the real effect of the foreign-rice tax. Many cases of tax evasion and smuggling of foreign rice were found in Guangdong province. The myriad waterways and porous border patrol between Hong Kong and the Chinese territory on the Pearl River made Guangdong one of the most smuggling-ridden provinces. But, in fact, Cantonese rice merchants did not have to risk their business with illegal practices. Thanks to the political tension between the central and provincial authorities, local rice merchants were able to take advantage of a loophole in the taxation system. One observer provided a plausible explanation. In an official customs report, Commissioner of Canton Customs L. K. Little noted that although national rice was cheaper than foreign rice, “importations of the latter at Canton were not inconsiderable.”15 According to his account, the sudden imposition of the foreign-rice tax in September 1933 diminished foreign-rice imports to a certain degree, yet this was only a temporary ­effect.

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He listed a number of explanations for why foreign-rice imports had not decreased as much as expected. First, there was still room for them to to evade the tax. Having realized the difference between provincial and national taxes, many Cantonese rice merchants changed their trade pattern: they went down to the Kowloon Customs office, if the tax rate was cheaper there than in Canton, in order to evade provincial tax. The Canton Customs office was controlled by the provincial authorities, while the Kowloon office was under the national revenue system that was enforced by the Nanjing authorities. Merchants could report their tax at the Kowloon station, where tax rates were sometimes lower than in Canton.16 Although they paid additional freight and handling charges to get rice home from Kowloon, it was nevertheless cheaper than paying the tax in Canton. As was previously discussed, Canton was the gateway for imported foreign rice that was redistributed to many rural rice markets throughout the Pearl River Delta. Even so, the merchants had no need to ship rice to Canton and pay tax at a higher rate. Approximately 40 percent of foreign-rice imports registered in Kowloon Customs were then shipped by junk to Canton and consumed in the city and suburbs, with the remainder distributed to various districts in the Pearl River Delta, according to Little.17 Second, political factors had to be considered in the constant importing of foreign rice to the province, with military urgency foremost among them. Fighting the communist guerillas in the northern hinterlands of the province required substantial amounts of rice, whether it was foreign or domestic. The provincial authorities exempted the tax for military use ( junmi), especially for the Guangdong Army in the northern border areas of the province. They did so partly because the army was engaged in the operation of “swiping communist bandits,” and partly because they were defending the borders from a potential invasion by Chiang Kai-shek’s central army. Based on interviews with local rice merchants, Little concluded that “considerable quantities of foreign rice are imported tax-free by the military, and forwarded by them to the North River Districts for the use of both the garrisons and the local population.”18 As a matter of fact, such official smuggling in the name of military use was by no means new to the local public. The Guangdong Army often sent agents to purchase tax-free rice at the Hong Kong rice market.19 This exception also generated popular discontentment, because the provincial authorities were never fair in levying the tax for civilian and military uses. To quell the increasing popular furor, the provincial authorities promised that foreign-rice smuggling of any kind would be severely punished. For example, if a government official were engaged in it, he would be subject to the death penalty. Even so, foreign-rice smuggling under the guise of “military use” never decreased throughout the province.20

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The third, and primary, factor that the tax scheme could never dampen, however, was the consumer popularity of foreign rice. In spite of the price difference, certain consumer groups were willing to buy better-quality foreign rice at higher prices. Little concluded: I am informed that native rice is, in general, distinctly inferior to imported rice, and that the people of this section who can afford foreign rice invariably prefer it to the native product. That this is so is substantiated by the fact that, although for the first time in many years, Kwangtung produced a surplus of native rice in 1934 which was exported to northern provinces, there was no diminution in the amount of rice imported from abroad.21

Consumer popularity of foreign rice never diminished in Canton even after the imposition of the foreign rice tax. spotting problems

The issue of quality also embarrassed the customs authorities, especially customs agents, who had to discern rice varieties at the inspection point. As they lacked the expertise to do so, they frequently had tax disputes with rice merchants. In Canton, the so-called “mixture of white rice and husks” (baimi hunkang) was representative. After the imposition of the foreign-rice tax, rice merchants came up with new ways to evade it, such as mixing foreign rice with other grains. One day in early 1934, three rice vessels, all fully loaded with foreign-origin white rice (baimi), broken rice (misui), and husks (kang), arrived at the port of Canton from Hong Kong. After receiving the ships’ tax reports, customs agents carefully searched the cargo and found a case of smuggling. They found three sacks of mixed white rice and husks, in a 7:3 ratio, hidden among the reported 157 sacks of husks and broken rice in one of the vessels, the Yuanheli. They also found 37 sacks containing a mixture of broken rice and husks in the cargoes of the other two vessels, the Yiheli and the Xinwangli, in an effort to evade the foreign-rice tax. Shortly after this case was reported, the Provincial Department of Finance declared that shipping such illegal mixtures for the purpose of tax evasion would be fined at three times the regular tax rate.22 However, the task of spotting a case of illegal rice mixing was extremely difficult. If merchants fiercely refused to admit that mixing had been done, customs agents could not dispute with them. Perhaps some agents would have been able to discern the different rice quality, yet this difference by itself did not mean the difference between foreign and national origins. As a matter of fact, custom agents in many coastal cities, not just Canton, had to struggle with the same kind of trouble-making. In order to help its field agents, the Inspector General’s Office of Chinese Customs issued a

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basic guide to rice varieties, titled Characteristics of Various Kinds of Foreign and Native Rice, which was provided to all customs offices throughout the country: Rangoon rice (Mindang): This rice is of a creamy color and dirty-looking. Some grains have reddish skins still attached. Grains when cut from the lower broken end are somewhat square, usually mixed in a large population of broken rice. Rangoon rice (Xiaojiao): Same as Mindang, but more oblong in shape. Saigon rice: (Xigong): This rice is of an even, creamy color and a pillar-like shape, much longer than both kinds of Rangoon rice. Sung-kiang rice (Songjiang): This rice is a little bigger than both Japanese and Korean rice and of an even, icy-white color with a bluish tint. Its furrows or grooves on the external surface are nearly invisible. Chang-shu rice (Changshu): Same as Sung-kiang rice, but lighter in color and flatter in shape. Many of the grains have chalky patches on the side and are of an uneven shade. Pa-ching rice (Bacheng): This rice is of a dirty-white color with a rough surface. Size is same as Korean rice. Most grains have a distinctive chalky patch on the side, and their longitudinal furrows on the surface are nearly invisible. Some grains have reddish skins still attached. Usually mixed with broken rice. Korean rice: This rice resembles Chang-shu rice in size, but is nearly free from chalky patches; grains are clean and of an even snowy-white color. Their longitudinal furrows or grooves are more distinctive than those of Chinese rice. Grains with reddish skins attached cannot be found, and the percentage of broken rice is comparatively small. Japanese rice: This rice is fuller and rounder than Chinese rice and of an even snowy-white color. The longitudinal furrows are deeper and more distinctive than in Chinese rice. The grains are of an even size and usually contain stone powder. Grains with reddish skins cannot be found, and the percentage of broken rice is negligible.23

We do not know how much this standardized guide helped the local customs officers. Yet it is certain that it was not by any means comprehensive in listing all rice varieties traded within China. Furthermore, this kind of classification was far from what many technocratic elites considered to be scientific knowledge, since it was nothing but a physiognomic description, which they looked down on. Moreover, it was but a compilation of some of the “primitive” methods that “untrustworthy” rice merchants commonly used in their local transactions. We see the technocrats’ pervasive antipathy toward such methods in many social surveys of rice market. For example, the compilers of a Shanghai rice market survey introduced a popular way of judging rice in the Shanghai area; Shanghai residents commonly distinguished types of rice based on physi-

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ognomy. Yet at the same time, they commented: “such a way is not scientific by any means. A scientific way of judging rice should help ordinary people understand what underlying ingredients, how many calories, and how many vitamins the rice possesses.”24 Having experienced the difficulties of distinguishing different types of rice themselves, however, customs authorities had to admit that without changing their viewpoints, there was no better way to do so. Eventually, many advocates of national rice promotion began to consider the significance of rice quality. As rice quality was known to be an important factor in the marketability of national rice, the debate over whether or not Chinese rice production was sufficient to feed the country faded away. Instead, a number of scholars and government officials started a discussion over rice quality and local tastes.

The Problem of Taste The first to pay cautious attention to the issue of rice quality was Chen Guangfu. He was an influential Shanghai banker who had graduated from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania. Like many urban professionals of his time, Chen turned his attention to the Chinese agrarian problem. Favoring rural revival, Chen established a rural credit department in his Shanghai Commercial and Saving Bank.25 Chen warned that the promotion of the national rice program should not ignore the side of urban consumers. His balanced viewpoint toward both rural and urban aspects of the food problem was well represented in his article, “Fundamental Problems in the Reform of the Chinese Economy.”26 Chen stressed that, among other reasons, rice quality was what characterized the difference in marketability between national rice and foreign rice. He also admitted that government planners had to carefully study the popular methods of telling various types of rice apart. He enumerated the five most important factors separating superior-quality rice from inferior-quality rice: (1) color and whiteness, (2) polishing and size of granules, (3) dryness, (4) percentage of heterogeneous substances (zazhi), and (5) absorptive character (zhangxing). However, only a few varieties of Chinese rice were able to satisfy all five points by which people discerned rice quality. Chen pointed out that the failure of Wuhu rice in the Canton rice market stemmed from the fact that many varieties of Wuhu rice could not meet these five standards. In stark contrast, varieties of foreign rice were typically moderately dry, allowing them to be stored for a long time with little deterioration of quality. They also possessed lower mixture rates and less discoloration. All foreign rice had to pass quality checks before shipping so as to maintain standardized classes of quality. Therefore,

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foreign-rice merchants could fill an order on time with little deterioration of rice quality. If Chinese farmers and merchants could not grow rice varieties that matched the same quality requirements, Chen concluded, China’s promotion of national rice would not succeed.27 In other words, the quantitative abundance of Chinese rice production did not assure the marketability of national rice; rather, success depended largely on the extent to which that rice was handled in a businesslike manner. The case of Wuhu rice was hence a great example to all those who realized anew the significance of rice quality. Under the enthusiastic mood of the National Goods Movement, some hoped that new scientific methods would revive the Wuhu rice business. In a report titled “The Situation of the Wuhu Rice Business and the Methods for Its Revival,” Chen Bikuang eloquently argued that the collapse of the Wuhu rice business was due to Chinese negligence of new rice-processing technology. Chen noted that foreign-rice varieties shipped from Southeast Asian entrepôts were managed with foreign capital investments and cutting-edge milling technology, which kept the rice in fine quality for a long time. On the other hand, the Wuhu rice trade still depended upon small-scale local businesses that could afford neither big facilities nor technological improvement. Moreover, there was no direct shipping route from Wuhu to Canton, so all rice vessels had to be reloaded in Shanghai. Such troublesome factors worsened the marketability of Wuhu rice. Therefore, Chen concluded that this problem should be resolved by new investments in science and technology. Because a rice cargo was often exposed to humidity in the transshipping process and because some vessels were too small to keep the damp out, Wuhu rice easily deteriorated even before reaching the Canton market. Chen also called for an introduction of advanced milling technology for the improvement of rice quality.28 In academic circles, whose members were not necessarily affiliated with government institutions, a new trend emerged as well. As a leading member of the Chinese Economics Association, the Yale- and Columbia-­educated economist Ma Yinchu asserted that the side of consumption should be taken into full account in the discussion of the food problem. In his book Reorganization of the Chinese Economy, Ma emphasized that China’s food problem had to be understood as a matter of consumption rather than a problem of production. Ma warned that simplistic viewpoints visà-vis quantification tended to mask the actual problem. He admitted that foreign-rice dumping was the single most important factor to aggravate the income disparity between rural and urban sectors. However, blocking foreign rice with protective tariffs would not be a total solution, because such a policy tended to cause sudden rice shortages in coastal cities. Ma emphasized that protective measures had to be put into practice along with re-

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moving internal hindrances within China such as the income gap between the coastal provinces and rural hinterlands, miscellaneous local levies and surcharges, and an underdeveloped ground transportation infrastructure. Without overall progress in solving these internal problems, Ma warned, the successful substitution of foreign rice was not possible by any means.29 Ma carefully analyzed why Cantonese merchants, once the largest customers for Wuhu rice, had left Wuhu and sought new suppliers in Southeast Asia. In addition to the disparity in quality, Wuhu rice cost much more than foreign rice because in the Wuhu trade too many middlemen and agents were involved. This factor raised transportation costs in the Wuhu rice trade. Ma pointed out that manipulation by middlemen was rampant in China. Together with the complexity of the local taxation system, a lack of communication also profoundly hindered the marketability of Chinese domestic rice. Finally, Ma argued, because the foreign-rice traders utilized technological advances in husking, milling, and drying, they were able to maintain its popularity in the Chinese market. These factors, Ma concluded, meant that foreign rice never lost popularity in the Canton rice market, even after the Foreign Rice Tax scheme was put into practice.30 Above all, Ma stressed that non-economic factors had to be considered in the resolution of the Chinese food problem. The issues that government planners had to admit were two: regional dietary diversity and consumer preference. Even statistical documents published by the government corroborated Ma’s explanation. A statistical dietary survey conducted by the Central Agricultural Experiment Office in Nanjing, for example, noted that the Cantonese were the nation’s largest “rice-eating population” (shimizhe), with rice constituting more than 50 percent of the grains they regularly consumed. By contrast, for the poorest rural population the average rice consumption was less than 28 percent of all grains consumed. The survey also provided a detailed province-by-province comparison. Following Guangdong, in Zhejiang and Fujian, about 50 percent of all grain consumed by the population was rice. On the contrary, the figure was 40 percent for residents of Hunan, Jiangxi, Yunnan, Jiangsu, and Anhui provinces. The provinces consuming the least rice were Hubei, Sichuan, and Guizhou, where it amounted to less than 30 percent of all grains consumed.31 Given such habitual dietary differences, Ma acknowledged that it could take a long time to change Chinese eating habits. In the meantime, for the first step in creating a new diet, Ma noted that there was little choice but to appeal to urban rice consumers’ patriotism to convince them to eat Chinese rice.32 There were many problems left unsolved, however. Given the under­ development of infrastructure and the lack of milling technology and such, what would be the best way to promote national rice consumption? How could the promoters of national rice persuade the public to eat more

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Chinese rice, in spite of its coarse quality? Moreover, Chinese rice was oftentimes not competitive in terms of price in the markets. If the national rice advocates sought accuracy in the statistics that they used in the debate over the foreign-rice tax, on the issue of rice quality they tended to use patriotism to appeal to the Chinese public. Simply put, eating national rice—which was not as cheap as foreign rice in some cases, and despite its coarse quality—would be the best way to strengthen the Chinese national economy. To be sure, encouraging nationalism via a new form of consumerism resonated well with the National Goods Movement. nutrition and national rice

New types of medical and nutritional knowledge also provided the proponents of national rice with a favorable argument against foreign rice. Some nutritionists and medical specialists claimed that the nutritional value of less-husked rice was actually higher than that of highly polished foreign rice. Because the Chinese husking technology was unable to husk rice well, the rice still kept much of the husk with its valuable nutrients. In truth, the husk possessed valuable nutrients, in particular, Vitamin B, quintessential to the prevention of beriberi (jiaoqi), although it was thought to worsen the taste of rice. As early as 1928, a small newspaper article in Guangzhou minguo ribao, titled “Vitamins in Rice Husk” (mipi zhong zhi weitaming), called for correcting popular misunderstandings about the nutritional values of rice and its flavor. The author, Lei Ming, contended that wasting the rice husk was the Chinese rice-consuming public’s most common misunderstanding. Despite the valuable nutrients in less-husked rice, Lei disparaged the consumer public for valuing the completely polished rice (jingmi) much more than less-husked rice (cumi or caomi) because they preferred the taste of the former to the latter.33 Another article, “Beriberi and White Rice,” was published in the “Weekly Medical Science” (yixue zhoukan) section of the same newspaper. This article warned that excessive consumption of white rice would lead to beriberi, because it would cause an imbalance of nutrients. It concluded that to maintain their health, the newspaper’s readers should follow medically approved guidance.34 Shifting the issue of rice quality to an issue of public health might have been a strategy for the promotion national rice. But as a matter of fact, the Canton Municipal Bureau of Social Affairs categorized beriberi as one of the seven diseases requiring special attention for the control of public health.35 Besides, promoting a new, healthy, and scientific diet was the key theme in popular magazines specializing in public health. The centerpiece of promoting the new healthy diet was discouraging the public from eating highly polished white rice, because it caused Vitamin B deficiency and

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beriberi. For example, “Home Treatment for Beriberi Patients,” an article in the health magazine Kangjian zazhi, emphasized that the best way to help beriberi patients recover was “to keep white rice out of the patient’s diet” because it worsened vitamin B deficiency.36 However, many of the magazine’s contributors had to acknowledge that eating less-husked rice was not easy, by any means, as its taste was not palatable to consumers. Yuan Lan, another contributor to the magazine, lamented that nothing was more ignorant than to eat only white rice and expect to live a healthy life. Yet at the same time, he admitted that it would take time to get used to the coarser taste of less-husked rice. Therefore, Yuan suggested a special recipe for half-husked rice: It should be “cooked with 50 percent water and 50 percent half-husked rice.” Although it would be “extremely difficult to eat this sort of rice at the beginning and awkward to the palate,” Yuan insisted that “after eating it for about a week one would be able to overcome it.”37 Although certain efforts were not directly aimed at the promotion of national rice, they were attempts to correct the public’s perception of rice quality, since eating highly polished rice could ultimately cause a decline in public health in China. Both political authorities and nutritional experts were deeply concerned with the public’s unhealthy dietary habits. Dr. He Zhuo warned that the popular obsession with highly polished white rice would cause a massive beriberi outbreak in the Chinese population. In an article in the same magazine titled “The Medical Treatment and Prevention of Beriberi,” he addressed in detail how Japan had been haunted by a massive beriberi outbreak until its dietary cause was realized. In the worst years, reported cases of beriberi in Japan reached “an average of no less than two million annually; cases of death after illness also reached far more than thirty thousand.”38 Given the magnitude of the disease, he noted, “Japanese called it a “national disease” (J. kokumin byō; Ch. guominbing) and the authorities treated it seriously. Therefore, he concluded, “beriberi should not be disregarded as a mere dietary disease,” because its “impact on the Chinese nation and population” could be enormous.39 But encouraging the consumption of less-husked rice would not just be good for improving the individual rice consumers’ health. In addition, it was also understood as the best way to reduce overall rice consumption in China, and thus to make a contribution to the nation. In general, the mechanized milling and husking process brought about 30 percent reduction in the volume of rice. If the Chinese rice consumers were to eat more less-husked rice than they did highly polished white rice, China could theoretically alleviate its rice shortage by at least 30 percent. Hence, changing eating habits and altering the diet were expected to achieve a dual goal at once, both improving individual health and reducing

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the wasting of rice. Reaching these goals would ultimately contribute to resolving the food problem and strengthening national food security. However, no one knew whether the Chinese public would seriously accept this new nutritional advice and change its dietary habits overnight. patriotic eating

It is difficult to assess to extent to which the public feared beriberi and appreciated the proposed new diet. However, the new dietary suggestions no doubt had extra-governmental repercussions. For example, a small booklet with a long title that was circulating in Canton reflected the public’s increasing concern over the issue of rice quality versus national food security: The Way to Improve Rice Quantity and Quality Without Wasting Money and Time: The First Step Towards a Long-Term National Salvation Mobilization.40 The author, Chen Zhongmeng (who revealed no identification other than that he was a man from Shunde County), probably had only the lowest level of medical and nutritional education. Despite his lack of expertise, however, Chen’s work offers a great window through which to glimpse the public’s perceptions of the issue at the time. Chen criticized the popular misunderstanding about rice in Canton in two ways. To Chen, Canton’s preoccupation with white rice of foreign origin was neither scientific nor patriotic. Although many medical specialists scientifically proved the nutritional value of the rice husk, Chen lamented, the “Cantonese were reluctant to compromise their palates.” This was completely “unpatriotic.” Of course, the problem was not limited to the Cantonese. Chen argued that the entire Chinese population should emulate the Germans and their spirit during the World War I, when they suffered under the Allies’ blockade. The Germans endured the war eating only coarse black bread (hei mianbao), yet they never forgot their pride in Germany’s military prowess. Chen claimed that China should emulate the German spirit of eating “black bread.” It might have been as “inedible as coarse Chinese rice,” yet surely it must have been as “good in nutrition as Chinese rice.”41 Taking his argument one step further, Chen severely scorned the popular justification that the Cantonese were accustomed to the taste of high-­quality foreign rice. As a Cantonese, Chen himself admitted that ­foreign-rice consumption was popular in Canton. However, he strongly argued that it was by no means historically rooted in their culture. Rather, the popularity of foreign rice was merely a recent phenomenon. He called on people to recollect the taste of coarse rice in the old days, when neither mechanized husking nor high-quality foreign rice had been introduced to Canton. Chen asserted: “Many Cantonese urban dwellers nowadays eat only foreign rice or otherwise mechanically well-husked

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rice. However, they have never tasted the hidden aroma and sweetness of the less-husked rice of the old days. My appetite never changed. Anyone over fifty who had the experience of living in the countryside must share my memory of the old taste.”42 Chen concluded that changing one’s eating behavior, although it may seem to be a trivial matter, was the first step toward saving the nation, which faced an imminent war with Japan.43 The readers’ responses to Chen’s argument are unknown. However, it is certain that Chen’s persuasive argument drew the authorities’ attention. To acknowledge the valuable suggestions in the booklet, both municipal and provincial governments in Canton circulated the copies of the booklets to all their offices.44 As long as discouraging the eating of high-quality white rice was a part of promoting national rice, it is no surprise that this sort of argument, intertwined with scientific knowledge, had a nationalist appeal. This is not to say that Chen’s argument was scientifically correct. Yet his lay understanding of nutrition science surely shows that he wanted to use science to justify his argument. And at the heart of the confluence of nationalism and scientific knowledge underlay the idea of national security. Feng Yuxiang, a northern warlord who was now the leader of the “National Army,” also called for a change in popular eating habits, not only for individual health but also for patriotism. In a book titled P­ancakes: Resistance to Japan and Military Provision, Feng lamented that the danger of increasing foreign-rice imports was not limited to the realm of economy but reached as far as the overall military power of the nation. Given the intensifying tensions with Japan, a full-fledged war was inevitable in the foreseeable future. The outcome of modern warfare, Feng noted, relied on the “economic capacity” (jingji de liliang) of the nation, because belligerent countries would maximize both war materials and manpower for total mobilization. China seriously lacked both resources, however, because it wasted its national wealth purchasing foodstuffs from abroad.45 In Feng’s understanding, habitual foreign-rice consumption in China was mostly concentrated in coastal cities such as Canton and Shanghai, where a population of between 10 and 20 million were eating imported rice. Altering the eating habits of this urban population, therefore, Feng asserted, would be just a trivial matter in comparison with the entire national population.46 Many Chinese, and particularly southerners, valued white rice more than any other foodstuffs. However, this preference resulted from a popular misunderstanding of nutritional values, and other grains were no less valuable nutritionally than white rice. To emphasize the higher nutritional value of other grains and coarse-quality rice, Feng made a stark contrast. Although the northern population, who ate miscellaneous grains (zaliang), consumed fewer vegetables and meats than

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the southern population, who favored white rice, northerners usually had much stronger physiques (tige gaoda) than southerners.47 In making all-out preparations for an imminent war, Feng concluded, China had to encourage people to eat a northern diet, which relied less on rice consumption than its southern counterpart. What, then, should the southern Chinese do?

Foreign-Rice Boycotts in Canton With increasing concern about the issue of rice quality vis-à-vis national food security, the campaign to promote national rice also witnessed a few successful boycotts of foreign rice in southern China, including Canton. As a matter of fact, the issue of rice quality was not always hostile to government policies aimed at discouraging consumption of foreign rice. The centerpiece of the National Goods Movement was a massive boycott movement that targeted foreign goods that competed with their Chinese counterparts. While they protested the foreign-rice tax policy, Cantonese rice merchants themselves sometimes voluntarily organized and participated in boycotts targeting certain kinds of foreign rice. Their boycotts were not based on an opposition to the import of foreign rice, but arose from their calculation that some varieties of foreign rice, due to their unacceptable quality, would damage their business. the boycott of japanese “overly stored rice”

In the Hong Kong rice market, Cantonese foreign-rice traders actually had foreign rivals. Japanese buying often resulted in rising prices in times of scarcity, while their dumping could ruin the market in times of abundance. The worst was Japanese dumping of rice in huge amounts after it had been in storage too long. This occurred because the Japanese purchased foreign rice in order to procure extra reserves for emergency situations. Therefore, this “overly stored rice” (chenmi), regardless of its original quality, would be extremely deteriorated and might even have lost its nutritional value by the time it got to market. Generally, Cantonese and Hong Kong rice merchants said that the market value of rice would be zero if it had been preserved in the granary more than three years under southern China’s weather conditions.48 Needless to say, handling this kind of deteriorated rice disrupted normal wholesale and retail processes, and it especially ruined mercantile credibility. Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, Japanese merchants purchased great quantities of rice from the southeastern Chinese coast and Southeast Asia for military purposes. However, preserving the rice over a long period of time was not an easy task. Once the

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deterioration had started, they would have to dump it at even lower prices, and supplement it with new purchases before the quality completely deteriorated. Given the Japanese empire’s increasingly villainous image, it is no surprise that Japanese hoarding and dumping became the major target of a Chinese rice merchants’ boycott. Regardless of the degree of deterioration, Chinese rice merchant groups commonly regarded any overly stored rice as resulting from Japanese dumping. Consequently, many cases of overly stored rice were usually prefaced by the prefix Ri (meaning Japan). For example, one newspaper report on a case of “Japanese overly stored rice” (Ri chenmi) concluded with the opinion that it was “unacceptable rice in any case.”49 Early 1934 saw the height of the anti-Japanese rice boycotts. From the beginning of the year, rumors were circulating among rice merchants throughout southern China that the Japanese would soon dump five million sacks of overly stored rice into the Chinese rice market.50 More than any place in China, Canton was keen to this rumor, because the most likely dumping place was expected to be Hong Kong, and thus it would have a direct impact on the Cantonese rice market. This expectation was plausible. Dumping would not be easy for the Japanese merchants to do, because many rice markets in the coastal cities were protected under the newly imposed foreign-rice tax. Moreover, the rising anti-Japanese sentiment throughout China made them hesitant to sell rice in China. The only choice they had left was Hong Kong, where they could evade the tax. In the fall of 1933, the detention of Huang Yongyu, the leader of the foreign-rice traders’ guild in Canton, was threatening to collapse the mercantile community’s ability to self-regulate business. Newspapers reported a number of cases of the smuggling of Japanese overly stored rice into marketplaces in the Pearl River Delta.51 The majority of the rice guild members knew that such smuggling could ruin the entire rice business. Consequently, Canton’s foreign-rice trader guild and its Hong Kong counterpart declared a boycott and promised to cooperate as closely as they had in the past.52 Perhaps it was not difficult to make such an anti-Japanese gesture. Canton’s boycott might well be praised as a patriotic activity. However, there was a greater reason for the rice merchants to consider this action. They anticipated that a period of scarcity of rice in the market would occur between April and June, because that year’s early harvest had been worse than usual. This period of dearth would offer the best opportunity for speculators to smuggle in Japanese overly stored rice and sell it at a cheap price. Once the late harvest of local rice came to market in June, however, market prices would be stabilized and the Cantonese rice merchants would no longer need to boycott.53

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A second boycott targeted the Siam rice trade. In the early 1930s, diplomatic relations between China and Siam had worsened due to rising nationalism in both countries. After a military coup under the catchphrase “Thailand for the Thais,” young military officers seized power in Siam in 1932. Along with the change of the country’s name from Siam to Thailand, growing nationalism quickly developed into antagonism against ethnic minority groups in the country. The Chinese community became the primary target of discriminative policies, because ethnic Chinese groups represented the single most powerful immigrant community in Thailand; they dominated significant portions of Thailand’s major industries such as rice milling, the timber industry, and tin production.54 A new tax code devised by the new Thai authorities restricted ownership of businesses by ethnic Chinese. Moreover, Thailand’s new education policies provoked the Chinese because they suppressed the use of the Chinese language in the community. All Chinese immigrants now had to study the Thai language, even in Chinese schools.55 To the new Thai authorities, this change of policy was a sort of preemptive measure. They were cautious about the increase in radical Chinese nationalism within the Chinese community in Thailand. They believed that political ties between the Chinese community and Republican China had become closer after the promulgation of the Nationalist government in 1928. In particular, they suspected that most Chinese language teachers were in fact political activists infiltrated by the Guomindang into Thailand’s Chinese schools.56 The mutual antagonism culminated in 1934. Although the majority of the Chinese community, mostly led by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, wanted to make a political compromise with the new Thai authorities, a small number of radicals continued to spread anti-Thai sentiment. Some radicals sailed back to China, where they organized groups that inflamed anti-Thai sentiment. By propagandizing that the Thai attitude was an insult not only to the ethnic Chinese in Thailand but also to the dignity of the entire Chinese nation, they called for an immediate boycott that would target all products imported from Thailand. One group in Shanghai, called the “Overseas Chinese Association,” whose membership probably consisted of returned or deported ethnic Chinese from Thailand, submitted a petition to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to put an embargo on imports of Siamese rice.57 Needless to say, Siamese rice—the largest trade item between China and Thailand—became the primary target of the boycott, on the grounds that a diminution in consumption of Thai rice would serve as a warning to the Thai, aside from the damage it would do to the economy.58

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Again, Canton drew nationwide attention in this regard, for many reasons. First, more than 80 percent of the Siamese rice imported annually was shipped to Canton.59 Second, unexpectedly, the Cantonese merchants participated actively in the boycott. When boycotters in Shanghai called for nationwide participation, few expected that the Cantonese would comply. Surprisingly, after spending two months in silence, many of the Cantonese rice merchants decided to take part in the boycott. Although the Cantonese decision astonished the boycott’s advocates, it was based on a careful calculation of market conditions over the year. Before they officially announced they would participate in the boycott, the Cantonese rice merchants established that it would have little effect on their business. Because market conditions in French Indochina and Burma were unusually good that year, they would be able to substitute French Indochinese rice for Siamese rice.60 Given these favorable market conditions, the Cantonese may have thought they had a good opportunity to show a gesture of goodwill to the advocates of the boycott. When they replied to Shanghai, where headquarters of the boycott movement was located, they proudly announced a “united action” (yizhi shixing) in the telegram.61 We have seen that the Cantonese rice merchants were a key player in politics, yet in most cases, their activities hardly went beyond the boundary of local political arena of Canton. However, the political, both domestic and international, environment of early 1930s China extended the perimeter of their political activities. .  .  . Together with the imposition of the foreign-rice tax, the National Goods Movement brought new political connotations to the eating of rice. Differentiating between foreign and national rice meant more than just a difference in taxation category. What kind of rice to be eaten now defined one’s own political identity. Eating foreign rice or national rice would no longer be just an individual choice; one’s decision had to take into consideration the nation’s food self-sufficiency. Unlike other items that the National Goods Movement targeted, rice deserved special attention, because under the increasingly hostile international circumstances of the 1930s the discussion of national food self-sufficiency had become part of the agenda for national security. Reducing the consumption of foreign rice was important not just to facilitate the marketability of national rice or to help it be more competitive; rather, it was regarded as the first step to strengthen China’s national security. Therefore, decreasing the consumption of foreign rice in Canton was the touchstone of all the efforts to strengthen national security. Nevertheless, the amount of foreign rice being imported to the port of Canton did not significantly decrease, nor did consumption of national

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rice increase as expected. In the trade routes between Canton and Hong Kong throughout the Pearl River Delta, rice merchants’ tax evasion and smuggling never ceased. Meanwhile, foreign rice was found to be similarly popular with consumers in many coastal cities. Proponents of the foreignrice tax and the National Goods Movement soon realized that the question of rice quality was an essential factor to be considered in the resolution of the Chinese food problem. Belatedly, coming to grips with the rice quality issue brought nationalism and science together once again. New discoveries in the medical and nutritional sciences proved that less-husked rice was more nutritious than highly polished white rice. Consequently, the proponents of national rice could both emphasize that national rice was higher in nutrition—despite being seen as less palatable than foreign rice—and call for patriotism. Indeed, the mixing of nutrition science with nationalism was one of the dietary suggestions provided by Feng Yuxiang and Chen Zhongmeng. Although these men were not experts in nutrition science, they unequivocally asserted that China needed to develop a new scientific way of food consumption in order to maximize nutritional value and minimize waste. Yet this suggestion, more than just providing a scientific regimen for the improvement of individual health, also amounted to a new moral language calling for a change in every individual’s eating habits for the nation’s sake.

8

Granary of the Empire, Laboratory of the Nation the canton-hankow railway and the hunan rice sales project in canton

In April 1936, a celebratory mood was sweeping China. The Zhuzhou– Shaoguan section, the last section of the Canton-Hankow railway—the most grandiose engineering project of Republican China—was finally complete.1 In addition to news media coverage that drew worldwide attention, the Ministry of Railway shortly compiled and released a commemorative volume, titled Special Volume for the Celebration of the Completion of the Zhuzhou-Shaoguan Section of the Canton-Hankow Railway.2 While it was filled with high-ranking Guomindang members’ congratulatory remarks and leading technocrats’ triumphant accounts, the survey report by Chen Bozhuang it contained was outstanding for its in-depth research. It was titled “Expectations for Hunan Rice Sales in Canton after the Completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway.” Chen Bozhuang—a Columbia graduate and leading member of the Research Institute of the Communication University (Jiaotong daxue yanjiusuo)—was the master planner of the Hunan rice sales project.3 He remarked that the completion of the CantonHankow line would be remembered as the most significant milestone in China’s history of transportation, since the line would not only lead to new economic cooperation between Guangdong and Hunan provinces but also generate a greater economic integration that would stretch from Canton to Changsha, Hankow, and all the way down to Shanghai through the Yangzi waterways. More than anything else, Chen strongly asserted, trading Hunan rice to Canton represented the greatest potential business deal for the two provinces; furthermore, it would be the best solution to China’s food problem.4 Unlike conventional engineering writing, Chen’s account was not full of monotonous technological jargon. His main argument was firmly grounded in a rich understanding of Chinese history, though his tone

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was imbued with triumphal confidence. In the “2,000 years of Chinese history since the king of Nanyue Zhao Ta (Nanyue wang Zhao Ta),” he wrote, “nothing had been more remarkable than the completion of the Canton-Hankow line,” which had overcome a hitherto-insurmountable traffic barrier: the Nanling mountain ranges, which separated “South of Mountains” (lingnan) from “Central China” (zhongyuan). By his estimate, Hunan could provide sufficient rice to replace foreign-rice imports in Guangdong, since Hunan was renowned for its productivity and ricegrowing potential. To emphasize this argument, Chen cited a traditional popular saying: “When Hunan reaps its harvest, all under heaven want for nothing (Hunan shu, tianxia zu).”5 This one saying had in part inspired the republic’s most ambitious engineering project. In turn, the project provided a chance to rethink China’s imperial past—the perhaps glorious, yet forgotten, old days. This chapter explores the Guomindang’s attempt to enhance domestic rice consumption in Canton through the construction of the Canton-­ Hankow Railway. As the completion of the line was expected in the not-too-distant future, many expected that transportation of Hunan rice over the mountains into Guangdong would replace the importation of foreign rice. At the zenith of advocacy for a foreign-rice tax, a plan titled “Hunan Rice Sales in Canton” (Xiangmi xiao Yue) was devised by a number of technocrats in research institutes affiliated with or supported by the Guomindang authorities. They firmly believed that this new trunk line would remarkably integrate the nation’s economy, thereby helping China accomplish self-sufficiency. What if a new railway could be built over mountains that had always hindered inter-regional domestic rice trade? What if new railways could connect the rice-productive Hunan province with China’s largest foreign-rice-importing port city, Canton, while a ­foreign-rice tax protected China’s agricultural market? Although this new project was grounded in a technological understanding of rice, its advocates sought bases for its validity not purely in science but also in history. While they embraced Western science and technology, twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals’ understanding of the Chinese past had become more and more ambivalent. Contemporary problems came from the Chinese past; therefore, it should be iconoclastically repudiated. Yet, at the same time, the imperial past was also praiseworthy. As Joseph Levenson put it, the two opposite tendencies paradoxically coexisted with each other: both “intellectual alienation” from the Chinese tradition and an “emotional tie” to the past.6 What if China were to make a technological breakthrough? What if Chen Bozhuang could find validation for his engineering project in the Chinese past while maximizing the versatility of Western technology? By illustrating the historical significance of

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the Canton-Hankow Railway project, the elites tried to illuminate China’s triumph—a scientific triumph over Chinese “backwardness”—without entirely negating the Chinese past. However, once the Canton-Hankow Railway was complete, their technocratic triumphalism blinded their eyes to the complexity of the rice trade.

The Rediscovery of Hunan Rice The popular phrase “When Hunan reaps its harvest, all under heaven want for nothing” is worth exploring in its own right. This saying had become renowned in the late Ming period, during which Hunan was being integrated into empire-wide rice markets and began to supply substantial amounts of rice to the Jiangnan population, which was mostly engaged in commerce. The original phrase refers to not only Hunan but Hubei as well (Huguang, meaning Hunan and Hubei); it read “when Huguang reaps its harvest, all under heaven want for nothing (Huguang shu tianxia zu).” This phrase indicated a long-term change in the structure of interprovincial rice circulation in late imperial China. Previously, during the Sung-Yuan period, there had been a similar phrase: “when Suzhou and Changshu [in Jiangsu province] reap their harvests, all under heaven want for nothing (Su Chang shu tianxia zu),” which indicates that the Jiangnan population had been sufficiently fed by rice supplies from the Jiangsu province itself. “Huguang” had replaced “Jiangsu” by the late Ming and early Qing period, during which Jiangnan’s rapid commercialization and urbanization absorbed the arable land and population there. A timely early-Qing stabilization of the social order and improvement of agricultural productivity helped the interregional rice trade between the middle Yangzi (Huguang) and lower Yangzi (Jiangnan) regions.7 Thereafter, Hunan acted as the granary of the empire, and Changsha and Hankow functioned as a gateway for the rice trade. However, thanks to doublecropping, Hunan supplied substantial portions of Huguang rice to Jiangnan rather than Hubei. Whether Hunan was the largest rice-producing province in the Qing empire still calls for more scholarly debate, but there is no doubt that Hunan acted as a major supplier for the interprovincial rice trade.8 According to Han-sheng Chuan and Richard Kraus, Hunan alone regularly shipped “somewhere in the range of two million and ten million shi ” of rice per year down the Yangzi to Jiangnan during the eighteenth century.9 The Qing emperors also knew very well the reputation of Hunan rice. In a response to Huguang Governor-General Zhang Liandeng’s memorial report in 1719, Emperor Kangxi commented: “[I know] there is such a popular saying. If Hubei meets such a good harvest, I can see Hunan’s situation as well.”10

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Needless to say, Jiangnan was the economic and cultural heart of the empire. To the Qing emperors, who meticulously monitored the administration of food supplies, Huguang rice meant more than a popular saying; it was a psychological safety valve that assured a stable provisioning for the heart of the empire. Whether or not Huguang had a good harvest often changed the emperor’s mood. During one of his imperial southern tours (nanxun) to Jiangnan, for example, Emperor Kangxi became extremely anxious about rising rice prices, since he had learned that when the Jiang­nan populace complained, it was because little rice was being shipped from Huguang. On the other hand, in his comments on Huguang ­Governor-General Mai Zhu’s memorial report in 1731, Emperor Yongzheng remarked: “There is such a popular saying. If this year’s yields are so good, it truly relieves me.”11 Indeed, Hunan’s abundant rice production gained a legendary reputation over the centuries. Far beyond Jiangnan, Huguang often shored up the empire’s rice-deficit areas, so it deserved to be hailed as the granary of Tianxia (all under heaven). In the early eighteenth century, even after supplying rice to the Jiangnan population, rice merchants often transshipped the remaining Huguang rice to rice-deficit districts in Fujian, as this passage describes: Fujian rice has long been insufficient to supply the demands of Fujian. Even in years of abundant harvest much has been imported from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. What is more, Jiangsu and Zhejiang rice have long been insufficient to supply Jiang­su and Zhejiang, so that even in abundant years they have looked to Hunan and­ Hubei. For several decades, rice from Hunan-Hubei has collected at the market town of Fengjiao in Suzhou prefecture [just west of Suzhou city]. By way of Shanghai and Xupu, This Fengjiao rice makes its way to Fujian.12

The reputation of Hunan rice, however, despite its century-long reputation, was always seen as somewhat bad. Despite its quantitative abundance, the Hunan rice trade was unstable and complicated, and thus often the quality of the rice that reached the Jiangnan market was poor. Its bad reputation often resulted from its being too damp, reducing the quality. As a matter of fact, controlling moisture was an extremely annoying problem for the Qing officials managing the empire-wide granary system during the eighteenth century. Hunan’s granaries in particular needed careful management because of its distinctive “local conditions” (dishi). In 1735, Qing authorities divided Hunan into three districts: first, Changsha and forty-five counties were categorized as a “dry” (ganzao) district; second, Yingzhou and thirty-one more counties were a “little bit humid” (shaoshi) district; finally, Longyang and three more counties were an “especially humid” (youshi) district. Qing authorities managed the granaries flexibly, according to the district’s degree of humidity. They were more eager for prompt release than for preservation in the humid district, but maintained

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opposite priorities in the dry district. The “dry” district maintained a ratio between preservation and releasing of 7:3, a principle originally created in the Kangxi reign (1661-1722), while the “little bit humid” district kept a ratio of 5:5, for example. An “especially humid” district was allowed to manage a ratio of 3:7.13 By doing this, officials could prevent the rice from deteriorating in quality during preservation in the granaries. Trading rice under humid conditions required prompt transactions, yet Hunan’s complex market structure did not meet this prerequisite. Moreover, a complicated trading structure hindered Hunan’s rice trade. The major hub of the Hunan rice trade was Xiangtan, near Dongting Lake, but rice was not directly transported there by the same merchants who had first purchased it in the market towns throughout the province. At various points, numerous middle-men were involved, and since Hunan lacked a well-developed waterway system except for the Xiang and Yuan rivers, merchants had to spend excessive amounts on transition costs.14 Conditions worsened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To keep provincial food security on the one hand but gain provincial revenue on the other, Hunan’s provincial authorities tended to control the interprovincial trade of Hunan rice. All Hunan rice had to be checked and an “export tax” had to be paid before it could pass through the provincial borders. Once the provincial authorities decided it was a “time of rice dearth,” even this restricted trade had to be suspended until the authorities permitted its resumption.15 Consequently, Hunan’s complicated marketing structure of interprovincial rice trade often delayed shipment and caused a deterioration in rice quality along the way. Needless to say, this gave rise to the reputation of Hunan rice as being of poor quality. According to a Japanese observation in the early twentieth century, Hunan rice was regarded as “worse than Wuhu rice and Jiangsu rice,” two varieties still regarded as popular in the rice markets in the Lower Yangzi region. In particular, Hunan rice was notorious for its “moisture, which caused deterioration during transportation.”16 beyond the mountains

Regardless of the quality and marketability of Hunan rice, Canton and the Pearl River Delta were completely out of Hunan’s macroregional trade structure. As we discussed in Chapter 1, topographic conditions profoundly hindered interprovincial rice trade between Guangdong and Hunan over the Nanling mountain ranges. There were a few cases of grain trading between the two provinces over a narrow and steep path through the Zheling pass. However, these transactions were temporary, local, and small-scale, limited to the hinterlands near the provincial borders.17 Many

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Qing scholars and officials were concerned with the “statecraft” (jingshi) of the empire. Hunan’s potential rice surplus must have been very attractive to them. However, officials knew very well that it was not an easy task to develop the Hunan rice trade into a full-scale interprovincial trade with Canton, because transporting Hunan rice over the mountains would incur tremendous costs. Chen Hongmou, the single most prominent Qing official, was no exception. When Chen arrived in Canton after being appointed as Liangguang governor-general, he learned that Guangdong suffered chronically from soaring rice prices. In spring of 1757, Chen made plans to ship Hunan rice to Canton immediately. Spending twenty thousand liang of silver from the treasury, Chen appointed one of his lieutenants as a special collector and sent him to Xiangtan County in Hunan to purchase rice at lower prices. Chen clearly noted that this purchase was made only to immediately supplement the granary reserve, not to be released to the public in the market. Surprisingly, the rumor (feng­sheng) of this action by itself caused the soaring prices to drop. Speculators and hoarders saw that once the Hunan rice arrived, hoarding would not be profitable, and they soon sold their rice in the market.18 Chen’s idea, intentionally or unintentionally, created a psychological effect, but a sustainable interprovincial rice trade would be possible only by using the waterways in Guangxi, not shipping directly from Hunan. The detour through Guangxi would cost less but take more time. As a Guangxi native himself, Chen would have been very aware of this. During his two-year tenure in Canton, Chen never tried to do it again. To Qing local officials in Guangdong the idea of trading Hunan rice seemed far from realistic. It was considered no more than a myth. The myths about Hunan rice continued even into the early ­twentieth century. Hunan never lost its legendary reputation as the granary of Tianxia, and Hunan’s provincial authorities were reluctant to cooperate with other provinces. Between 1921 and 1931, the provincial authorities lifted the prohibition on rice exporting (jinmi) only three times; all the while, China was undergoing famine after famine. The Hunan authorities would have pointed out that they did so due to the province’s underdeveloped infrastructure for interprovincial transportation; at the same time, however, the authorities’ tight control of the interprovincial rice trade weakened Hunan’s trade infrastructure, leaving Hunan’s merchants with no chance to develop their trade skills for dealing with merchants from outside. Chen Bozhuang, who had been the master planner of Hunan rice trading in Canton, lamented that the Hunanese psyche was still imprisoned in the “mentality of an age of agricultural parochialism.”19 Although after 1928 Hunan’s new leadership under General He Jian planned to change such a provincial mindset, the topological barriers and underdeveloped

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infrastructure still hindered the province’s ambitious reconstruction program. Geographic conditions in particular obstructed the trade of Hunan rice to Guangdong. Nevertheless, the painful lessons they had learned from previous failures brought different groups of Chinese together for the new engineering project: the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway, which would finally make possible “Hunan rice sales in Guangdong” (Xiangmi xiao Yue). The first failed trading attempt had taken place in early 1919, when soaring rice prices caused great suffering in Canton. As discussed in Chapter Three, rice shortages were rampant throughout Southeast Asia as well. At the same time, the British colonial government in Hong Kong solicited China’s help.20 In response to these urgent demands from the south, Cantonese merchants residing in Shanghai and Beijing tested the waters, but learned that the shipment of substantial amounts of Hunan rice was possible only via a waterway detour through Hankow and Shanghai, then a long sea journey down the East and South China seas to Hong Kong and Canton. This detour would obviously be more expensive, and the long trip would cause deterioration in rice quality. Canton’s merchants, after purchasing only small amounts of Hunan rice through the detour, turned down the deal. This turn of events created mutual distrust between rice traders in the two provinces; to the Hunanese, who rarely dealt with Cantonese traders, it turned out to be an enormous disappointment. They had naively expected that it to be a new business opportunity and therefore a great boon to their provincial economy.21 The Cantonese, whose major business partners were typically not Hunanese, saw them as untrustworthy business partners. Despite their eagerness, the Hunanese rice merchants had no knowledge of how to handle the business: they could neither ship the rice on time nor assure the rice quality that the Cantonese required. With the failure of the interprovincial rice trade in 1933, the Guomin­ dang authorities sought to speed up the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway. In this instance, the Hunanese initiated the deal. General He Jian, the provincial power holder, expected that interprovincial rice trade with Guangdong would benefit his province.22 Shortly after the Guangdong provincial authorities imposed the foreign-rice tax in September 1933, General He’s personal envoy, Zhang Peiqian, held a press conference in Canton, in which he promised that all Hunanese would provide full support for Hunan rice sales in Canton. The same positive mood was also witnessed in Changsha, Hunan’s provincial capital. When Zou Dianbang, the chair of the Canton Chamber of Commerce, visited Changsha to discuss the details, all Changsha’s bankers and chiefs of provincial departments packed the station to greet him.23 Despite the overwhelming excitement of the public mood, however, there were still many concerns. The most urgent was,

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needless to say, the lack of transportation infrastructure. The estimated date for the Canton-Hankow Railway to be completed was 1937 at best, and an interprovincial highway (Yuexiang gonglu) was not yet opened.24 The majority of Canton’s rice traders—mostly members of the foreignrice trade guild—were reluctant to get involved in this new experimental project. Only Canton’s Sanjiangbang merchants, a rival of the foreign-rice traders’ guild whose members dealt mostly in the many different varieties of domestic rice from the lower Yangzi area, wholeheartedly welcomed this project. They could not wait for the completion of the interprovincial highway and shipped the first cargo of Hunan rice to Canton through the detour route via Hankow and Shanghai. Again, transportation costs were high, but more than that, the project cost time. The first order of Hunan rice took a month to arrive in the port of Canton. Although in April 1934 the interprovincial highway was opened, it was only partially paved. The Sanjiangbang merchants diverted their investments into trade with another business partner in the north and resumed trading Wuhu rice.25 The first shipment of Hunan rice, in the fall of 1933, turned out to be the last order of the trade. Shortly thereafter, the authorities in both provinces acknowledged that their plan had been premature: “without a transportation infrastructure, it was by no means reliable.”26 Meanwhile, the major portion of Hunan’s interprovincial rice trade was still heading to the lower Yangzi area, the region called Jiangnan. The Hunan provincial government’s official statistical report for 1933 claimed that Hunan’s rice production was 140 million shi that year. While 2.5 million shi of rice was transported through waterways of the Yangzi to the Shanghai area, only 2 thousand shi was transported over the Nanling mountain ranges to Canton.27 With the Canton-Hankow Railway not yet completed, the promoters of “Hunan rice sales in Canton” had no choice but to continue to follow eighteenthcentury methods. The problems did not stop there. Even the small amount of Hunan rice that did reach Canton did not sell well. Its quality was far worse than that of Guangdong’s local rice and the Southeast Asian rice varieties. According to a market report compiled by Liu Hou, a Ministry of Industry agent, “the best grade of Hunan rice can not match the middle or lower grade of the local rice varieties.” Hunan rice had no advantage, even in competition with Wuhu rice. What damaged its reputation in particular was its moistness. In 1933 Hunan rice sold in Guangdong left a “bad impression on the Cantonese rice consumers because of its poor quality (Xiangmi elie zhi huai yinxiang).”28 Indeed, this was the debut of Hunan rice in the Canton rice market. Although it had been shipped to Canton before, in 1919, that was an emergency shipment for famine relief. The quality issue was hence not as important then. This time, however, the Cantonese rice consumers

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got a chance to truly test the quality of Hunan rice. Their bad impressions did not change afterward.29 Despite this failure, Guomindang authorities never abandoned the plan. The more disappointed they were with such failures, the more they aspired to launch a new engineering project. A number of ambitious “reconstruction” programs at the provincial level also acted as powerful engines for the Canton-Hankow line. Under the guidance of the Provincial Department of Reconstruction, Guangdong promulgated the Three-Year Provincial Reconstruction Program. Hunan also drafted its own provincial construction programs. By issuing provincial bonds, Hunan was able to lure investments from a number of Shanghai-based banks for its provincial reconstruction program.30 More than anyone else, the Shanghai investors knew that the republic’s best engineers and experts were still working hard on the most difficult engineering project ever, going over the Nanling mountain ranges.

The Scientific Reinvention of Hunan Rice Only modern science—more precisely, the twentieth-century preoccupation with science—could fundamentally transform the Hunan rice trade from myth into a engineering project: building a railway to ship Hunan rice to Canton using ground transportation. While the Guomindang government led the Canton-Hankow Railway project, a number of technocratic elites drafted a blueprint for the project. To them, the construction of the Canton-Hankow Railway represented a “laboratory of modernity.” The project required more than civil engineering; it also required rigorous social scientific research in order to understand the socio-economic conditions of the rice markets in Hunan and Guangdong provinces. In addition, a historical and geographical understanding of macroregional trade and transportation was required. Few could handle this complicated task better than Chen Bozhuang, who was leading a research team at the Research Institute of the Communication University—China’s best engineering school. Even before taking charge of completing the Canton-Hankow Railway, Chen was renowned for his mastery of an encyclopedic range of knowledge, from Chinese classics and history to Western philosophy, from modern science and technology to economics and administration.31 the technocratic master planner

Chen’s academic career was indeed representative of his generation of technocratic elites, who helped with many of Guomindang’s engineering projects. Frustrated with China’s many failed modernizing efforts yet fascinated

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by Western science and technology, many aspiring young Chinese students sought a new path: studying abroad, particularly in the fields of science and engineering. Yet for Chen, life was more than just being an engineer (gongchengshi). After mastering the traditional Confucian classics (jing) and Chinese history (shi) at an early age, he had decided to study Western science and technology. In 1910, at age seventeen, he was awarded a full scholarship to study abroad in a program financed by the Chinese government, by means of which he pursued his studies at Columbia University. On the ship on the way to the United States, Chen met Hu Shih (Hu Shi), a member of his cohort, who would become a lifelong friend. Hu Shih later remembered Chen as the “youngest but he had the biggest scope and worked hardest” of his six cohorts at Columbia that year, who remained friends until their later years in 1950s Taiwan.32 After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, Chen returned to China in 1914, but instead of searching for an engineering position, he became interested in studying modern economics and administration. Later, impressed by Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People, particularly the principle of People’s Livelihood (minsheng zhuyi), Chen devoted himself to drafting a blueprint for China’s modern economic reconstruction. In particular, he wanted to shrink the gap between urban economic cores and rural hinterlands. In 1931, thanks to his devoted study, Chen was appointed as “Committee Chair for the Completion for the Canton-Hankow Railway” and simultaneously as a member of the Research Institute of the Communication University in Shanghai. One year later, he was also appointed as director of the Communication Bureau under the Committee for National Defense Planning (Guofang sheji weiyuanhui). Balancing a practical administrative position in the building of a railroad with a researcher’s job in academia, Chen became one of the most prolific and influential technocrats of the 1930s.33 Chen’s cosmopolitan experience was also significant in the shaping of his intellectual and professional persona. For this technocrat, traveling to Europe in the spring of 1931 turned out to be an eye-opening experience. His first task as chair of the Canton-Hankow Railway Committee was to negotiate regarding the Boxer Indemnity Funds—the major financial source for the project—in London. After successfully accomplishing this mission, Chen made an itinerary for returning to Shanghai. He did not return as he came, via steamship, but planned a ground trip that took him via the Trans-Siberian and Chinese Eastern railways to Manchuria. At station after station, Chen was overwhelmed by spectacular scenes along the way, countless tunnels and bridges, and stockpiles of industrial and building materials. His first experience on what was the world’s longest transcontinental railway trip was, as he put it, the “impact that you might

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feel if Tai Mountain (Taishan) were to hit your head.”34 This was just two months before the September 18th Incident (the Mukden Incident) in 1931. Japanese colonial ambition, as reflected in the Manchurian Railway project, was equally impressive to Chen. Going along the Chinese Eastern Railway lines, he witnessed countless banners with catchphrases and propaganda slogans that glorified the colonization of Manchuria. In Dairen (Dalian) Station, Chen had a chance discussion with a security agent at Mantetsu (the Southern Manchuria Railway Company) which made him realize how important railway construction was to a new industrial country.35 This experience also made Chen realize that a country’s modern construction, particularly that of an agrarian country like China, should be based on an efficient combination of railways and agricultural production. At the time, Chen was already well aware of how the dumping of foreign rice and wheat imports had ruined China’s agricultural market. This awakening drove him to concentrate on the contribution modern transportation could make to the agricultural sector.36 technology and the nation

For the next six years, Chen led a series of research projects with the full support of the Research Institute of Communication University. Chen’s research projects provided theoretical and empirical foundations for many social engineering projects combining railway construction with agricultural improvement. But in his ideal plan for national construction (Jianguo fanglüe), Sun Yat-sen had established its impeccable legitimacy. One phrase in Sun’s plan in particular summed it up: “transportation is industrialization’s mother; railway is transportation’s mother.”37 Chen’s careful field research confirmed his belief that members of a rural society could increase their income by having greater accessibility to railway lines. A monograph titled Economic Survey of the Villages along the Beijing–­Hankow Railway was exemplary. Chen based the monograph on his 1934 survey of 34 villages in Hebei, Henan, and Hubei provinces that were along this 745 milelong line. Thanks to the railway, Chen concluded, peasants had cultivated a variety of cash crops such as sesame, soybeans, and tobacco; the profits of these farmers were much greater than those of villages that were not accessible to a railway.38 The rest of Chen’s research in the 1930s focused consistently on the same topic: transportation and agricultural improvement. In his Wheat and Wheat Flour (Xiaomai yu mianfen), Chen analyzed the influence of the increase in foreign grain imports on the rural economy. He concluded that China had to import foreign grains, not because its grain production was insufficient, but because its domestic transportation infrastructure was underdeveloped. The sole way to prevent increasing

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foreign grain imports was to build more railways throughout the country. To illustrate his argument convincingly, Chen also examined the role of China’s Customs vis-à-vis railway networks in A Survey on Commodity Circulations through China’s Maritime Customs and Railways.39 A network of railways would promote China’s agriculture, he believed, while Maritime Customs would protect China from foreign products through protective tariffs. As discussed in Chapter 5, in the decade between 1927 and 1937, there was an explosive boom in the publication of social surveys and compilations of statistical data, supported and guided by either provincial or central authorities. On the subject of China’s food supplies, few could challenge Chen Bozhuang in terms of either publication productivity or research quality. Chen never failed to understand the problem of Guangdong’s rice insufficiency and Canton’s continuous foreign-rice imports as well as its consequences: the loss of national wealth. He also knew very well Hunan’s legendary reputation for rice productivity, which traced back to the imperial past.40 The Canton-Hankow Railway project provided Chen with a great opportunity to delve into Hunan’s rice economy and its potential contribution to replacing foreign rice in Guangdong’s diet. Before the completion of the railway, therefore, Hunan’s rice productivity had to be precisely measured and scientifically verified. However, Hunan rarely produced reliable statistics on its rice production. What was available were nothing more than optimistic overestimates of Hunan’s rice productivity. For example, Rice in Hunan Province, a volume compiled by the Hunan provincial government, stated that Hunan was the third largest grain-producing province and contributed 11 percent of China’s total grain production.41 The Hunan provincial authorities even argued that its grain production reached around one hundred million shi a year.42 To get more precise estimates, Chen conducted research in Changsha personally. After careful study of the Customs report of 1932, when Hunan had record-breaking yields, Chen drafted “Expectations of Hunan Rice Sales in Canton after the Completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway.” Chen estimated that Hunan’s exportable rice surplus would be 5 million shi in an extremely plentiful year and at least 3 million shi in an average year. Chen concluded that Hunan had a sufficient surplus of rice to supply Guangdong.43 The reinvention of Hunan rice was not achieved by Chen’s efforts alone. Had he not been assisted by the Research Institute’s research staffs, such a prolific number of his surveys and research reports would not have seen publication. Furthermore, it took place in the early 1930s, a period when the sense of urgency and aspiration for transforming China into a new modern nation no doubt overwhelmed the Chinese public. Nothing displayed this public sentiment better than the railway construction project,

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a project that Sun Yat-sen had strongly emphasized in his plan for “Chinese nation building.” On the other hand, the “failure” of the food supply management appeared constantly in the headlines of daily newspapers; foreign observers labeled China as the “land of famine.” The fact that these two starkly different provinces were neighbors seemed ridiculous; one was known for its rice production, while the other was known for its consumption of foreign rice. The first step in solving China’s perennial food problem would be the completion of a railway connecting these two provinces in order to build a sustainable interprovincial rice trade route. Natural obstacles not only could be overcome but should be conquered and tamed. The empirical validity of Chen’s research supported the necessity for the project. In return, the need for urgency provided Chen’s research with maximum authority. However, without the completion of the railroad, the prerequisite for this project, Chen’s project would be useless. Upon completion of the construction, Chen dedicated his survey article to the engineer-in-chief of the Canton-Hankow Railway, Ling Hongxun, who was also the most prominent alumnus of Communication University.

The Completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway From the beginning of building the last section, the construction site of the Canton-Hankow Railway drew nationwide attention. This focus was not simply due to its paving the way for the interprovincial rice trade but also because it was a touchstone for displaying the Guomindang’s capability with cutting-edge technology. Constructing a major north-south trunk line meant the first step in fulfilling Sun Yat-sen’s gigantic national construction program, which called for a hundred thousand miles of railways at a cost of 6 billion Chinese dollars.44 As a matter of fact, the construction project that the Guomindang embarked on was not to complete the entire line, but rather only around 40 percent of the line. In the 1910s, a northern section of 260 miles between Wuchang and Zhuzhou and a southern section of 160 miles between Canton and Shaoguan had both been completed. Despite partial completion of the line, a section of about 252 miles of track had remained unbuilt for over a decade, partly due to China’s internal struggles in the 1910s and 1920s. Another reason for it was the absence of political authorities able to assure reliable financial support. For that very reason, in the eyes of the Guomindang members the Canton-Hankow Railway symbolized the incompleteness of China’s modern imperative and Sun Yat-sen’s plan left unfulfilled.45 Not until 1930 did the new Minister of Railways, Sun Fo, embark on the resumption of the project. He tried to obtain extra funding from the British Boxer Indemnity Funds. However, shortages of money often

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hindered construction. The British bankers who lent the funds were extremely reluctant to invest in this project. The managing boards of the banks feared that the loan would be spent for political purposes instead of railway construction; they also suspected that the scale of the project was so enormous that it would cost far more than the original estimate to finish it. This calculation was sound and rational. As we have seen, topographic conditions made the uncompleted section connecting Hunan’s Zhuzhou and Guangdong’s Shaoguan the most technically difficult part of the line. It required highly advanced technology that Chinese engineers had never utilized before, from rock cutting and tunneling to building retaining walls and bridges in high elevations.46 The harder the obstacle was to overcome, the greater were their aspirations. If China could overcome all of these disadvantages—natural barriers, technological difficulty, and international prejudice—it would mean that through science and technology, China would triumph over all adversaries at once. More than anything else, China would prove itself competent to pursue this kind of civil engineering project on its own, without any foreign help or intervention. the republic’s best engineers

The Nationalist authorities in Nanjing put the republic’s best engineers to work on the site. Ling Hongxun, a Columbia University–trained engineer, took charge of the task as engineer-in-chief of the Zhou-Shao section in 1932. Much like Chen Bozhuang, Ling gained his reputation from both his cosmopolitan experience and his education from his alma mater, Communication University. He was part of one of the earliest generations of Communication’s alumni, the class of 1915, when the university was called Nanyang College (Nanyang gongxue). Ever since its founding in 1896 under the Qing imperial court, Communication University had graduated the majority of Chinese engineers, with full financial support from the government.47 The university fully supported Ling throughout his fiveyear enrollment with financial aid. Even after graduation, the university continued its substantial support for alumni, and this tradition remained a unique strength of the university. Communication University was a publicly funded college, but its endowment and financial resources were indeed outstanding. While many state-sponsored schools were funded and supervised by the Ministry of Education, Communication University was unique in being independently funded by the Ministry of Communication. The university thus enjoyed comparatively stable funding. In laboratory facilities and equipment, for example, Communication was ranked in 1930 as the nation’s third-best college, close behind Beijing and Qinghua universities.48 However, the university’s reputation was also made by its gradu-

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ates’ successful careers. Even before graduation, many senior students were obtained positions with the ministries of Communication or Railway, as well as decent jobs in Shanghai’s private sector. In addition, a number of Communication graduates pursued their studies overseas in governmentsponsored study abroad programs.49 The top student (di yiming) in his graduating class, Ling was chosen for the Ministry of Communication’s study-abroad program and went to Columbia University.50 Ling’s life after returning to China in 1918 was still inseparable from Communication University. Although he worked as an engineer for the Ministry of Communication, his career path seemed to be much closer to that of a scholar than a technocrat. He served the university as a faculty member (1920–24) and later as president (1924–27), and his scholarly reputation was as preeminent as his professional esteem. During his faculty years, the Shanghai Commercial Press published two textbooks for engineering education by Ling: Urban Planning (Shizheng gongcheng xue) and Bridges (Qiaoliang).51 While serving as university president, he kept the student population under three hundred to maintain the quality of teaching and a fair ratio between students and instructors. Ling also authorized the opening of three new departments in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and railway administration.52 Ling’s professional career was no less distinguished. In 1928, Ling took charge of the Guomin­ dang’s major railway projects as director or engineer-in-chief; in total, nine railways were built under his supervision between 1929 and 1945. In his memoir, titled Life Building Railways for Sixteen Years, Ling claimed that they were the most splendid years of his life.53 What sustained him was the network he had woven with former classmates, colleagues, and disciples during and after his years at Nanyang and Communication. This is not to say that Ling was trapped in the kind of factionalism or favoritism that often characterized Chinese society during the Republican period. Rather, Ling was a leading professional in the world of Chinese engineers. In the sixteen years Ling devoted to building railways, completing the Canton-Hankow Railway was his most remarkable accomplishment. His first assignment as engineer-in-chief was the Lunghai Railway (Long-Hai tielu), an east-west trunk line between Lanzhou, Gansu and the Jiangsu province, which would be extended to Shanghai (1929–32). Even before that project was completed, the Ministry of Railway appointed Ling to take charge of the Canton-Hankow Railway, since its political and economic importance was greater than the Lunghai line.54 At the same time, the Canton-Hankow Railway required a more experienced engineer because of the topographic conditions. In stark contrast to the Lunghai Railway, which required simply extending the line section after section on flat land in northwest China, the Canton-Hankow Railway needed to go

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through the heart of the Nanling mountain ranges. Even an engineer as experienced as Ling found the last section of the Canton-Hankow Railway by no means easy to build: in his words, “although the topography was not deep or steep, it was so complicated that it needed careful research.”55 Yet, for that very reason this project was an experimental attempt to test the level of China’s mastery of technology and engineering, which was why Ling was brought in. As soon as Ling arrived at the construction site of the section in 1932, he and his engineers reviewed the original plan and embarked on a new topographic survey. They pinpointed a defect in the original blueprint, which British engineers had drawn, which had called for 66 tunnels of a total length of 5,800 meters. Ling Hongxun revised the plan and reduced it to 44 tunnels at a length of about 4,000 meters. This adjustment also reduced the cost, saving four million yuan, and allowed the entire construction to be finished one year earlier than anticipated.56 Not only the technical skills but also the teamwork and cooperation within Ling’s team of engineers played a pivotal role. Though some of Ling’s colleagues were senior (qianbei)—the oldest being twenty years older than Ling—they forgot about age hierarchy and did their best under Ling’s leadership.57 a laboratory of modernity

The site was the best training field for young Chinese engineers. Ling invited students from engineering schools across the country to the site to learn and make practical use of their expertise. Ling brought students from many schools, from his alma mater, Communication University (Shanghai), to Zhongshan and Lingnan universities (Guangzhou) to Beiyang University (Tianjin) to Hunan University (Changsha). Although this kind of practical training went on at many engineering sites throughout China, only the best engineering students were, Ling emphasized, invited to the Zhu-Shao section.58 Nevertheless, the task of the construction was still hard, and the financial support available was by no means sufficient. The projects not only required China’s best engineering techniques but also tested the men’s will power. To build morale, Ling created the slogan “one man has to shoulder two men’s workload; in one day we have to finish two day’s workload; one penny of budget (yigeqian) we have to spend like two pennies.” Achieving such a task was by no means easy, yet Ling’s slogan inspired his men.59 Every­one knew that they were building “the most important railway on the continent of Asia.”60 In short, the deep, hilly hinterlands of China were not simply a laboratory of modernity but also a place where enthusiasm for modernity soared to the sky. The construction site represented a cultural front between old and new, backwardness and progress, superstitious parochialism and universal mo-

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dernity. Not only geographically but also culturally, the construction site was a backwater. Villages along the line were obsessed with the rumor that non-native construction workers were killing local people and mixing the victims’ flesh and bones with cement to build tunnels and bridges. News media in the coastal cities never failed to point out this “backwater ignorance.” The Tianjin daily Dagongbao reported in detail what they called “ridiculous nonsense filled with deception” (huangtang guihua, yuan bu zhi shizhe yixiao). On January 27, 1935, a mob of hundreds of local people in Yingxing County, Hunan, had brutally slaughtered ten or more railway workers, all of whom were natives of the northern province of Hebei. According to the report, two nights before the incident a local carpenter, Xu Guilin, had fallen down a river bank in the dark and hit his head. Upon returning to his home village with his head bleeding, he created a cock-and-bull story (bujing zhi tan) that he had seen a suspicious boat filled with non-native strangers when he was injured. There were plenty of reasons for the local people to suspect the presence of strangers and their possible involvement in Xu’s injury.61 Given the geographic conditions, the construction site’s authorities often hired local boats to ship cement and steel scaffolding to the site. To supply the workforce for the project, at the onset of the project Ling had hired mostly local Hunanese men for contract work. However, when the scale of the project turned out to be bigger than estimated, Ling needed more contract workers. The project authority arranged for manpower with workers’ agents in Shanghai, Hankow, and other cities in the north of China, which could afford to provide a large number of contract workers.62 Early in the morning after the accident, local people, incited by Xu, gathered at the wharf and thoroughly searched every boat coming and going through town. They spotted one suspicious boat approaching—a boat packed with eighteen northerners. These strangers were Hebei natives who had just finished their contracts and had started on the long trip back home. Suspicious, the local people halted and searched the boat, where they found a few sacks of things like rice and tools, along with a piece of dynamite. The last sack, however, was filled with the cremated ashes of a human. They were those of a worker who had been killed in a work accident. His fellow workers from his native province had courteously cremated his body and were bringing it back home. Unfortunately, the northerners could not explain the situation to the local populace because they did not understand the local dialects, and no one could translate. To the local populace, this was crystal-clear evidence that the rumor was true: non-native strangers had killed local people at the construction site. Immediately, a slaughter started. More than ten of the northerners were brutally beaten to death, with most of the rest mercilessly thrown

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into the water, where they drowned. Only two barely escaped with their lives. Not until county police officers arrived at the site did the slaughter stop. But the rumor did not stop. Rather, it snowballed through the neighboring villages. Another day, in a town two kilometers away, forty-six railway workers—all northerners from Hebei—were besieged by hundreds of local residents. If local police officers had not arrived on the scene in timely fashion, there might have been a second incident of bloodshed. By firing blanks, the police officers scattered the mob; they rescued the northerners, then guarded them while they safely left the area.63 This event was just the tip of the iceberg. There was a great deal of adversity at the construction sites, and such incidents took a huge toll. Work was frequently disrupted by banditry, diseases stemming from non-­hygienic working conditions, accidents (some fatal), as well as decampment of contract workers. To battle these issues, Ling divided the railway section into six districts and posted a medical unit and security guards in each district.64 The construction site was indeed at the forefront, a place where new medical knowledge and work discipline were deployed against all kinds of obstacles; however, these measures did not reduce the toll. During the last phase of construction (1933–36) alone, the work took more than 3,400 lives: among the deceased were 11 engineers, 32 long-term employees, and 3,072 short-term contract laborers.65 In addition, preventing the “communist bandits” (gongfei) from pillaging the site, though it did not cause any serious casualties, was a nuisance for the site’s authorities. After the Communists broke through the Guomindang army’s encirclement in Jiangxi in October 1934, they began their “Long March” into the JiangxiHunan-Guangdong border region. The site’s logistical bases were good targets for looting. On November 9 and 28, two offices were attacked, with five workers and two engineers kidnapped. Building materials, communication equipment, and telegram wire were also taken. Luckily, the two engineers were ransomed a few days later.66 Nevertheless, maintaining a high degree of safety and security at the construction site was impossible. Day after day, the battle for survival continued, and the battle to eliminate “backwardness” and transplant modernity could not be stopped. Indeed, battle or struggle was a frequently used metaphor in the world of the technocratic elite during the Republican period. We see this in a memoir drafted in the midst of the Anti-Japanese Resistance War, by Minister of Railways Zhang Gongquan (Chiang Kia-ngau), who termed ­China’s railway construction a “struggle” (fendou). To Zhang, the war did not start on July 7, 1937, at the northeast border, but much earlier than that. His war had already started at the cultural frontier, where his best engineers were fighting to build a railroad. Zhang stated: “this war is to liberate us from the shackles of the past, as I believe it must, and I hope

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that victory will open for us a new era of rational and unobstructed railway development.”67 The fierce struggle against its adversaries illustrated the symbolic power of the accomplishment. Once the Zhu-Shao section of track was opened, colorless technological concerns faded away at once, to be replaced instead by triumphant accounts. Many prominent figures of the republic offered their congratulations and expressed their faith in a new vision for China’s future. Ma Yinchu, a renowned economist, rejoiced that the new railway line finally linked two major Chinese entrepôts, Hankow and Canton, and hoped that it would bring about a real integration of China’s national economy. Cai Yuanpei, the former chancellor of Peking University in the May Fourth years and the founding president of the Academia Sinica, anticipated that the line would lead to cultural integration between the cultures of northern and southern China.68 The news media highlighted the accomplishment and again and again published dramatic accounts of it. An account in Shenbao, for example, said: “[Along the Zhou-Shao section], the area around Jiufeng Mountain and Mei Mountain was interconnected through seven tunnels. This area was close to the Nanling mountain ranges, which used to frighten tourists. Many tunnels were constructed by digging and penetrating through rock beds so numerous that to understand the difficulty involved truly goes beyond our imagination.”69 This account was no exaggeration. Foreign observers seemed to have much higher expectations for the line than did the Chinese. Technically, this was not yet a complete link between southern and northern China. In the section between Wuchang and Hankow, a train ferry was still required to cross the Yangzi River. However, finishing the toughest section of the line constituted the completion of the Chinese transcontinental railway, a railway from Beijing to Canton. Its significance was equivalent to the American transcontinental line. One China Weekly Review editorial noted: Some far-sighted persons have described [the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway] as an enterprise that may change the destiny of Asia. As the opening of the first American transcontinental railway, also constructed by Chinese labor, was responsible for the unification of the United States into one political body, many see similar influences [possible] here in connection with the completion of the Peiping-Canton [Beijing-Canton] railway.70

Likewise, Japanese observers envisioned the extended transcontinental line and its future contribution to their colonial project in Manchuria. By connecting the Canton-Hankow railway to the Beijing-Hankow and the Beijing-Fengtian railways, it would lead to the complete integration of China and Manchuguo.71 A Hong Kong–based English newspaper, the South China Morning Post, expressed its own vision of a Canton-Hankow Railway that would make Canton a hub of global trade connecting the

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Yangzi treaty ports with British settlements in Malaya, French Indochina, the Philippines, and even Europe. Eventually, the mountainous hinterland would become a showcase to display what it called the “greatest Nationalist achievement.”72 Last but not least, the railway’s completion remarked a dual triumph over space and time. Much like nineteenth-century Europeans and Americans, who had experienced the “annihilation of time and space,” the ­Canton-Hankow line simultaneously brought about a reduction in travel time and a shrinkage of space.73 Previously, both passenger traffic and freight transportation from Hankow to Canton had taken a minimum of ten to twenty days going via the Yangzi River, Shanghai, and the East China Sea; this was almost equivalent to the time needed to travel from Shanghai to Seattle by transpacific steamer. Now, however, train service was expected to take no more than thirty-two hours from Hankow to Canton. In the future, extending the connection to Kowloon Station in Hong Kong would add just a few more hours.74 More than any other commodity, rice needed quick and efficient transportation. The once-common phrase, “when Huguang reaps its harvest, all under heaven have no want,” was now no longer a popular saying. The republic’s best technocratic minds had fundamentally transformed the once-mythical Hunan rice into an object of social engineering. It could now be shipped to Canton, promptly and efficiently, on the new railway. And trading Hunan rice to Canton was no longer a provincial matter. With the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway, Hunan rice (Xiangmi) had become, both nominally and virtually, the “national rice” (guomi) of China.

Conclusion The completed Canton-Hankow Railway reignited the dream of “Hunan rice sales in Canton.” Before the railway was finished, the Canton Food Regulation Committee, under the Guangdong provincial government, finished a careful survey of the anticipated Hunan rice trade and started to negotiate with the Hunan authorities. Authorities in both provinces reached an agreement not to charge any provincial taxes on trade and to reduce transportation fees as much as they could.75 Yet the project was no longer a provincial matter; it was rather a stepping stone to the complete reorganization of China’s agriculture, substituting “national rice” for foreign rice. The Nanjing authorities thus paid special attention. September 1936 was the busiest month the Cantonese authorities had ever experienced; they had to greet many high-ranking Guomindang officials and technocrats from Nanjing, Shanghai, and Hankow. The minister of Railways, Zhang Gongquan, accompanied by many engineers from the Min-

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istry, came to Canton via train. The Ministry of Industry and Commerce also dispatched agents from Nanjing to help with the Hunan rice trade project. Of course, Hunan provincial officials frequently visited Canton to work out details for trade.76 The mood was no doubt positive. However, this triumphant moment turned out to be a prelude to dreadful consequences. As we will discuss in the next chapter, the Guomindang authorities soon had to acknowledge that the project for Hunan rice sales in Canton had failed. They were forced to authorize the resumption of foreign-rice imports to Canton at reduced tax rates, because Canton suffered a disastrous rice crisis at the end of 1936. Nonetheless, from the perspective of the Nanjing authorities, this was not a serious setback. Canton’s rice crisis was nothing but one more case of the perennial rice crises that had long menaced China. Nanjing’s grand plan for reviving China’s agriculture had its own priority: to diminish overall foreign-rice consumption and increase the consumption of national rice. Why did the central authority have to give special favor to the Cantonese, who consumed the largest amounts of foreign rice and turned their noses up at national rice? To many “northerners,” who were dispatched to Canton in the summer of 1936 by the Nanjing authorities to take up government positions in Canton after Chen Jitang’s provincial regime collapsed, such local peculiarities were by no means acceptable. To achieve the cardinal goal of reconstructing China’s national economy, local particularities had to be sacrificed. More than anything else, the republic’s best engineers had applied themselves to the project of scientifically facilitating sales of Hunan rice in Canton. On the one hand, Western science and technology had made it possible to build the infrastructure for the new interprovincial trade, and on the other, China’s glorious past had validated Hunan’s potential. Hunan, which had once fed the empire, was now enabled to feed the nation. Certainly, the Canton-Hankow Railway was paving the way for a genuine integration of a self-sufficient national economy in China. In the eyes of the Guomindang members in Nanjing, all problems stemmed from Cantonese eccentricity. Canton’s rice-eating habits therefore had to be rectified in the name of the nation. Both Western science and Chinese history provided the project with impeccable authority. To promoters of national rice, changing one’s eating habits did not seem as difficult as building a railway through daunting natural obstacles. As long as the project was backed by both Western science and Chinese history, Nanjing authorities had no reason to acknowledge the project’s drawbacks.

9

Provincial Politics and National Rice the canton famine of 1936–1937 and the south china rice trading corporation

The completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway was not just a technological triumph for China. It also brought political victory to Chiang Kaishek and his Nanjing regime in the form of a sudden dissolution of the factional confrontation with Guangdong’s Chen Jitang. In summer 1936, Chen Jitang was brought down, and fled to Hong Kong (Liang Guang shibian, the “Two Guang Incident”). In 1934, Chiang’s army had flushed out the Communist guerrillas, who fled to the northwest, creating a political vacuum in Guangdong’s northern borders with Hunan and Jiangxi. Two years later, the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway represented a political milestone for Chiang Kai-shek, who deployed a military force of half a million men along the rail line and in summer 1936 surrounded Guangdong’s northern borders.1 With troops flanking the railway and along the northern border of the province, Chiang’s military forces surrounded and overwhelmed Chen Jitang and forced him to step down. Shortly thereafter, Chiang Kai-shek’s men from Nanjing took over the key positions at the provincial and municipal levels in Canton. For example, a former mayor of Shanghai and loyal Chiang follower, Wu Tiecheng, was appointed head of the Provincial Council. Those who marched into Canton to occupy key government positions were either ignorant of the local situation or willing to disregard it in any event, because Canton had been such a nuisance to the Nanjing authorities. Likewise, personnel on the Canton Food Regulation Committee were all replaced by Chiang Kai-shek loyalists and “northerners” from Shanghai and Nanjing.2 Moreover, the Canton Food Regulation Committee’s cardinal purpose was changed; its job was no longer to facilitate the local food supplies but to fulfill Nanjing’s guidance, namely, promoting national rice. The first proclamation of the Food Committee was concise and assertive: “National

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rice should be used for the Cantonese food supply (Yuesheng minshi caiyong guomi).3 This power shift intensified the predominant technocratic understanding—perhaps more precisely misunderstanding—of the Cantonese rice trade. The mood of extreme excitement deriving from the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway may have blinded the new Food Committee members to the local situation. Under the Nanjing authorities’ direct control, the Guomindang now embarked on a more ambitious engineering project in Hunan and Guangdong: creating a new market structure. The completion of the railway was but a prerequisite for trade. Thus, a new market structure had to be built from ground zero. Who could handle this new business? For example, who would collect rice from Hunanese peasants? Who would rank the quality of Hunan rice and evaluate its market value? Would they be private businessmen, or government agents? Would they be Hunanese, Cantonese, or someone else appointed by the Nanjing authorities? Although the triumphant mood had not yet faded, technocratic elites had to answer all of these questions. This chapter traces how they did so. Perhaps they were able to tame nature, but they were by no means able to create a new culture of trade. Creating a new trade structure would require going far beyond the technological imagination.

“National Rice” at the Market To promote Hunan rice effectively, the first obstacle that the authorities newly installed in Canton had to confront was the quality problem. Many market surveys and reports compiled by government bureaus expressed concern about the marketability of Hunan rice in Guangdong. Some government agents realized why Hunan rice sales in Canton had failed in 1919. Due to the complex market structure of rice trade in Guangdong, all Hunan rice had to be shipped to Canton first, then redistributed to the rest of the province from there. This meant that Hunan rice was in direct competition with other varieties of rice (both local and Southeast Asian) in the Canton rice market. Liu Hou, an engineer from the Ministry of Railway, completed a market survey based on fifty days of research along the ­Canton-Hankow Railway and titled “A Report on a Survey of Rice Production and Consumption in Guangdong and Hunan.”4 Liu was well aware of the significance of rice quality in the market. During his research, he realized that the success of Hunan rice in Guangdong relied entirely upon the demand side rather than the supply side. Liu warned that unless transportation fees were reduced, Hunan rice sales in Canton would fail, since rice from Hunan could not compete with Guangdong rice varieties. The quality of Hunan’s best variety was still far lower than local

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rice or popular Southeast Asian varieties. Therefore, the sole way for it to compete successfully in the Canton rice market would be to sell the best variety of Hunan rice for a price cheaper than that of the second or third class of the other kinds. Although Cantonese consumers preferred the better quality rice, Liu believed that this preference might belong only to the Cantonese “bourgeoisie” (zichan jieji). “A majority of people” (dabu ­renmin) would be willing to buy Hunan rice despite its lower quality, as long as it had a lower price.5 Chen Bozhuang expressed the same opinion. Chen also noted that “the success of Hunan rice sales in Canton depended on whether the quality of Hunan rice suited Cantonese eating habits.6 Aside from the quality problem, Hunan rice sales possessed other disadvantages vis-à-vis the Southeast Asian rice trade. Chen Bozhuang warned that unless the time it took for Hunan rice to travel to Canton could be reduced even further, Hunan rice could not compete with foreign rice in the Canton market. Once a shipping order was received, French Indo-­Chinese rice and Siamese rice could both arrive in Canton within two weeks. Given its lower quality and other disadvantages, Chen argued, “shipment of Hunan rice should be completed within three days.”7 Given this concern about transportation, Liu Hou devised an alternative marketplace to replace Canton. Most of the demand in the Canton rice market was for middle or higher grades of rice, which were distributed to so-called Silk Districts such as Shunde and Nanhai counties. To give comparative advantage to Hunan rice, a new distribution center would have to be built in a rural area in the interior. With such a center, Liu Hou argued, Hunan rice could avoid competing with higher-quality rice in Canton. To this end, a huge-size granary would have to be built in Shaoguan.8 Otherwise, Hunan rice sales would not achieve their original goal. making improvements to national rice

Improving the marketability of Hunan rice did not stop here. Pointing out a few problems in the Hunan rice market, Liu asserted a series of plans for improvement. However, he simply equated quality improvement with technological upgrades. First, he wanted to introduce new husking machines everywhere in the Hunan rice market. Liu believed that husking techniques were what determined the quality of rice, and he did not trust the oldstyle methods. But only a few Changsha rice merchants were already using the new machines. Even the husking machines used in Changsha were not able to remove the husk (kang) from the rice completely. Although the husk was valuable nutritionally, its color and appearance did not appeal to consumers. Second, he wanted the Hunanese rice merchants to standardize their quality grades. Although about 120 Hunanese rice firms were

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operating mechanized husking machines in Changsha, they produced rice of all different grades. To improve the reputation of Hunan rice (Xiangmi shengyu), Liu argued, the first step should be “stipulating standards of rice quality” (guiding biaozhun).9 In the long run, Hunan’s entire rice market structure would need to be reorganized under government control and a new rice market would need to be created in Zhuzhou, a relatively small Hunan market town. Changsha, the provincial capital, was located in the north, and thus its trade network did not fit into the new trade with Guangdong. Unlike Changsha, Zhuzhou had no major rice merchants or machine-husking rice firms, however. To this end, Liu asserted that the authorities should encourage private rice firms to relocate to Zhuzhou, where their operations should be supervised by a new government bureau, which, he believed, should manage the details of the rice business, such as initial investment capital, storage of rice, operation of husking machines, husking degree, and classification of rice quality, as well as making decisions about daily trades.10 Despite displaying a fair understanding of the quality problem, Liu’s plan was limited by an instrumentalist understanding of the technology and a mechanical perception of the rice trade. The centerpiece of Liu’s blueprint was the establishment of an inspection bureau (shangpin jianyan ju) to check the Hunan rice for quality before it was shipped to Canton. He believed standardization of Hunan rice’s quality was the single most important factor in increasing its marketability. Liu realized that its bad reputation in the Canton rice market stemmed from the problem of dampness. To correct this problem, Liu specified the need for quantified standards of quality inspection. He claimed that “welldried rice has to be maintained at a moisture level of no more than 13 percent”; this would be the minimum condition “for shipping and storing for a certain duration of time.” Rice with a moisture of 14 percent could still be stored; however, if a moisture rate is “more than 16 percent,” it must not be shipped long-distance or stored for a long duration.11 Liu distrusted Hunanese rice merchants because they failed to meet these requirements. To rectify what was the quintessential defect in Hunan rice, therefore, an inspection bureau would have to take charge of quality control. For overall quality control, Liu suggested that a main office of the inspection ­bureau should be established in Changsha, with branch offices in Hengyang and Zhuzhou.12 In short, the government should not only be involved in the entire market mechanism, but it also had to undertake new roles, from husking to quality control and from shipping to redistribution. The simplification involved in this instrumentalist solution did not derive solely from Liu’s personal character. The issue obsessed all promoters of Hunan rice sales in Guangdong. Government agents took the quality problem fully into account yet believed that it was no more than a technological

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matter. In an interview with a Hong Kong newspaper, Zhong Zhenzhong, secretary of the Canton Food Regulation Committee, expressed confidence. The quality problem could, and should, be resolved in a scientific manner, he argued; his team of agricultural scientists would improve Hunan  rice quality, even though “many Cantonese are still concerned that Hunan rice will not be suitable for the Cantonese appetite.”13 However, Liu and Zhong both dismissed one important question completely: how long would it take to create a new Hunan rice variety that was of scientifically proven quality and suitable for the Cantonese consumer? With the governing majority overcome by jubilation after the completion of the railway, few could lower their expectations for the rice trade project. The completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway had been praised over and over again, and called a milestone for “the genuine beginning of the reconstruction movement for the national economy.”14 With an agrarian crisis at hand, the rice project was believed to be the sole breakthrough required to revive China’s agriculture. If they could accomplish such a gigantic engineering task successfully, with its great technical difficulties, how could they not succeed such a trivial matter—namely, the rice quality issue? If the unruly province of Guangdong had submitted to the central authority, why did Nanjing still need to defer to Cantonese consumers’ particular tastes? What China needed now was a popular willingness to sacrifice for a greater cause, the key to building a modern nation-state. the guomindang way

To make matters worse, Guomindang authorities neglected merchant participation from the beginning. When a Department for the Introduction of Hunan Rice (Xiangmi xiao Yue jieshao chu) was established under the direction of the new Guangdong provincial government, many rice merchants opposed the new institution. An observer in the Canton Customs office related that “the local merchants are dissatisfied with the proposed scheme, on the grounds that it is tantamount to a monopoly, and they will, if necessary, take joint action against its realization.”15 Although the chair of the Canton Chamber of Commerce, Zou Dianbang, was selected as a member of the new body, he had no connection to Canton’s rice business. Instead, Zou was one of the most influential yinhao (traditional bank) owners in Canton. He was well-known for leading the promotion movement of “national products” (guohuo) in Canton, and it may have been because of this that he was promoted and had the support of the Guomindang authorities. Though the new chair of the Canton rice dealers, Han Zhuofu, was allowed to participate in the new department, he was barred from the important decision-making meetings. He acted merely as liaison

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to deliver decisions from above to the merchant community.16 Preventing most of the Canton rice merchants from participation in the department meant dismissing their expertise and, in particular, their techniques for judging rice quality. Instead, the Guomindang authorities would rely on a few rice inspection points (gumi jianyansuo) that they planned to erect along the railway. However, these points were to be staffed entirely by government agents dispatched from Nanjing’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce.17 How could these men know which Hunan rice varieties would be suitable for the Cantonese palate? How could they anticipate future marketability amid daily fluctuations in the market price of rice? Likely foreseeing such a situation, Chen Bozhuang warned that “unless Cantonese buyers voluntarily shoulder a burden, this enterprise will not succeed, due to the general tendency of rice merchants not to jump into an experimental and risky new business.”18 But under the circumstances, it should come as no surprise that the Cantonese rice merchants were wary of beginning new business ventures that involved Hunan rice. teaching a new dietary lifestyle ( shishenghuo )

The Guomindang’s entirely technocratic understanding of the rice trade soon resulted in a series of disastrous consequences. The authorities had hastily declared the creation of the new trade of “Hunan rice sales in Canton” in the fall of 1936, but their judgment turned out to be premature. The authorities announced that the first transport of Hunan rice over the Nanling mountain range to Canton was scheduled for November 1, 1936.19 However, no one questioned how a rice inspection bureau could be established and operated by then. Therefore, not unlike the previous attempts in 1933, the first order of Hunan rice shipping had to be delayed, until January 1937.20 In many key stations in Hunan, both the granaries and the conveying tools needed at the train stations were still under construction.21 Meanwhile, huge amounts of Hunan rice were stockpiled in the open air, where it was completely exposed to humid weather and insects. The authorities’ lack of preparedness thus not only delayed the arrival of Hunan rice but led to deterioration in its quality. The bad reputation of Hunan rice continued, but the difficulties did not stop there, because the problems could not be adequately fixed in such a short period of time. Perhaps political triumphalism also blinded the authorities from seeing the worsening food situation. Indeed, until recently the authorities had regarded Canton as nothing but an enemy capital, controlled by Chiang’s most intransient, freshly conquered, political opponents. It was like General Sherman’s Atlanta. Once the enemy leaders had been expelled, Nanjing’s

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new order set to work to tame Canton. The city’s lavish consumerist image became the first target. Every aspect of the city’s commercial culture was painted as urban decadence. In the summer of 1936, Nanjing dispatched agents to implement the Nanjing Nationalist government’s New Life Movement in Canton. All these agents were in the New Life Movement Promotional Association, most of whom were members of the Blue Shirt Society, a secret clique in the Nationalist party. The New Life Movement started in 1934, but it was limited to only a few cities and provinces in the lower Yangzi area where Chiang Kai-shek extended his personal control.22 The full-fledged practice of this movement in Canton began only after the Nanjing authorities’ consolidation of power there in the summer of 1936. The movement was intended not only to strengthen Chiang’s authority but also to govern the Chinese individual’s daily behavior in the way that the party devised for the revitalization of the Chinese nation. Although the movement’s rhetoric was, as Frederic Wakeman argues, mainly a mixture of Fascist and Confucian elements, all of the details of the rules were aimed at reforming the daily habits of the Chinese people.23 If the four core virtues of the movement, “propriety, justice, honesty, and a sense of self-respect” (li yi lian chi), derived from Confucian values, the detailed list of daily practices that it promoted consisted of 109 meticulous rules of what to do and what not to do in daily life. The majority were designed to improve the decorum and public health of the Chinese people. It is no surprise that some “right” eating behaviors, such as “do not eat (unnecessary) snacks” and “drink only boiled water,” were covered in the rules.24 In Canton, the New Life Movement emphasized two elements in particular. First, the Cantonese should adopt a plainer and simpler lifestyle (jiandan pusu).25 Second, in order to be more productive, they needed to change their eating habits. In an official statement, the new mayor, Zeng Yangfu, insisted that urban dwellers, more than rural dwellers, needed to improve in their “neatness and cleanliness (zhengqi qingjie), simplicity and plainness (jiandan pusu), as well as promptness and precision (xunsu queshi).”26 Especially with regard to their “dietary life (shishenghuo),” the new Cantonese citizens should not eat as they pleased (mozikoufu). More than anything else, they should eat Chinese products so as to prevent the national interest from leaking away (yaoyong tuchan liwu waiyi).27 At the same time, the Nanjing authorities claimed political and fiscal compensation for the Cantonese semiautonomous rule previously practiced under Chen Jitang. Shortly after Chen fled to Hong Kong in the summer of 1936, Canton’s new authorities abolished many provincial taxes (shengshui) and imposed new national taxes (guoshui). The foreign-rice tax went from being a provincial tax to being a new national tax that had to be collected by Chinese Customs. Only the Central Authority of

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China in Nanjing could control it. This also meant that in Canton the rice merchants were required to pay tax at the same rate as in Shanghai and other Chinese seaports, which was much higher than the tax they had paid under Chen Jitang’s rule. The new authority’s attitude was determined; no local exceptions would be allowed. Local merchants petitioned for a temporary tax reduction because of a bad season, but they were immediately denied.28 In the eyes of many Guomindang members in the new authority, a reduction in the foreign-rice tax meant allowing the resumption of the Cantonese way of eating, which was too flamboyant and extravagant. To the Guomindang, the Cantonese still lacked one virtue that the new Chinese citizen had to uphold under the guidelines of the New Life Movement: “simplicity and plainness.” In this social atmosphere, reductions in the foreign-rice tax were not to be spoken of.

The Canton Famine Before long, what had been a grandiose plan suddenly turned into a disaster. In December 1936, the city’s rice merchants were warning that “a rice crisis was imminent in Canton (minshi konghuang).”29 On the one hand, the long-anticipated arrival of Hunan rice was delayed again and again. On the other hand, foreign rice was being taxed at a higher rate. Few were willing to trade foreign rice with a higher tax rate. Soon Canton ended up in a deadlock. The Canton rice merchants, led by the Sanjiangbang members, resumed trade of Wuhu rice over the maritime route, but the situation did not improve.30 Canton Customs reported that an adequate amount of rice supplies for Canton “depends chiefly on shipment by sea from Wuhu,” but added, a “further rise in its price is anticipated.”31 All of these problems, it claimed, resulted from “inadequate rolling stock on the Canton-Hankow Railway for the conveyance of rice from Hunan.”32 Indeed, great amounts of Hunan rice were stockpiled in that province’s train stations and in the open air, where quality deteriorated. A Hong Kong newspaper reported that this amount “totaled 70,000 sacks of Hunan rice.”33 One foreign correspondent, in a January 1937 article titled “A Canton Famine,” noted: The only source on which Kwangtung [Guangdong] is dependent is Hunan, but due to the delay of the establishment of the Canton-Hankow Railway, only a small quantity of rice can be imported from Hunan. According to investigations, rice stored in Bunchow [Binzhou: this is a misreading of the first syllable of Chenzhou, a town in southern Hunan], a station of the Canton-Hankow Railway, amounts to over 300 tons; and more is in Changsha and Hankow. The rice cannot be transported to Canton on a large scale, because the Canton-Hankow Railway has not sufficient freight coaches. As there are no granaries, the rice and grain are tied up on both sides of the railway, and are being damaged by continuous rain. In view

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of the delay of transport from those places, merchants are attempting to transport rice from Changsha to Hankow by steamers en route to Canton. But this way, the freight charges for the rice will be much higher and the burden on Kwangtung people cannot be lightened.”34

In stark contrast to the government’s great expectations, the plan for the Hunan rice sales through the Canton-Hankow Railway had soon destroyed the Canton rice market. To make matters worse, that year’s rice harvest turned out to be seriously poor throughout the province.35 In addition, in the exchange rate with Hong Kong dollars, Canton’s currency was steeply depreciated as it lost the market value that had been guaranteed by provincial authorities under Chen Jitang. Coincidentally, extraordinarily good harvests had been recorded in the lower Yangzi area, and the northerners refused to acknowledge the tense situation in Guangdong.36 Meanwhile, the Hunan rice promised to Canton was delayed or had deteriorated on the road. It took six months for the new provincial authorities to realize the situation. In December 1936, the new provincial government petitioned Nanjing, calling for a temporary tax exemption for about six months.37 This petition was authorized by Provincial Head Huang Mosong and Commander of the Canton Army General Yu Hanmou, the highest figures in the province, both of whom were appointed by the Nanjing authorities.38 However, Nanjing’s response was negative: “The central government has signified no intention to accept the request for exemption of import duty on foreign rice.”39 In Canton the repercussions of this abnormal rice scarcity—aggravated by political misunderstanding and mismanagement of the tax scheme—were tremendous. Rice prices in Hong Kong also fluctuated, because the Canton market had become completely unpredictable. The Nanjing authorities’ stubborn refusal of the tax reduction greatly concerned Hong Kong rice merchants. Editorials in a Chinese-language daily in Hong Kong lamented the Canton rice famine and severely criticized Nanjing’s apathy.40 The way the Nanjing authorities dealt with the matter infuriated the Cantonese local population as well as Hong Kong’s mercantile community. In January 1937, the Nanjing authorities did authorize a reduction of the import duty by one-half in the province of Guangdong, but allowed only up to 30,000 tons, which was by no means enough to feed the Canton’s starving people. In an interview in the South China Morning Post, Li Koon-chun, a “prominent rice dealer” operating a rice trade firm in Hong Kong’s Nanbei Hang, made an extremely negative comment: the rice would be “sufficient to meet only a few days’ needs, or in the case of Canton city alone, for only a fortnight.”41 Some 3,000 tons of rice were immediately shipped to Canton from Hong Kong, and new shipments from Saigon and Bangkok arrived in the next few days.42 However, as Li predicted, the

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amount was far from enough to stabilize the rice markets throughout the province. What the Cantonese rice merchants could do was not to resume their business; rather, they telegraphed petition after petition to Nanjing. While these petitions were being neglected by the Nanjing authorities, local rice prices in Canton skyrocketed unprecedentedly. A correspondent for the South China Morning Post reported that “a virtual famine [w]as taking place in Canton as a result of acute shortage of rice.” It was widely witnessed that many streets in commercial districts were filled with “groups of beggarly men, women, and children, begging for food. Most of them [were] farmers and workers in the suburbs who [were] starving.”43 The detailed report continued: Robberies of rice and other cereals are frequent occurrences. As a precautionary measure, the shops have to hoard their rice and other cereals in secret quarters; only a limited amounted of rice is kept in the shops and even this is carefully protected with wire covers. In fact, of the disturbed situation, restaurants suffer no less than the rice shops. Driven by starvation, a gang of five or six starving men will boldly enter a restaurant. After a sumptuous feast, they decamp without paying the bill. If they are caught, they willingly enter jail, professing that they cannot get food in any other way. Others who are unable to get sufficient food have to reduce their daily rations.44

Two months after this report was made, Nanjing authorities permitted a tax reduction at half rates for Cantonese foreign-rice imports, which were capped at 240,000 tons, but it was to last only for three months. This decision surprised the mercantile communities in Canton and Hong Kong, because the amount allowed was eight times the previous authorization.45 However, this reduction was by no means helpful because it came too late to relieve the worsening situation substantially. There was still an irreconcilable distance between Canton and the decision-making process in Nanjing. Because the foreign-rice tax was a national tax, and making even a single small change in its rates required going through a host of bureaucratic procedures in Nanjing; even after that, there was still an extremely complicated procedures to go through before that change could be executed in Canton. On the one hand, what obstructed a prompt response to the famine was Nanjing’s negligence of the local situation and its ignorance of how the rice market worked—whether intentional or not. On the other hand, Nanjing’s meticulous regulations were extremely harsh. For instance, following Nanjing’s guidance, the Canton Food Regulation Committee allocated a certain quota for every port and Customs branch throughout the province, and equally had to set up amounts and rates for the temporary imports of foreign rice.46 A sudden and unrealistic policy change led to chaos and confusion in the market, too. Despite Nanjing’s eventual authorization of a tax exemption, Hong Kong rice traders could not make

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immediate rice shipments to Canton. In order to ship only 24,000 tons, they had to wait fifteen days to receive rice supplies from French Indochinese and Thai ports. This happened because Hong Kong rice traders had reduced their wholesale stocks as of summer 1936, when Guangdong’s provincial foreign-rice tax was converted to a national tax, anticipating a steep drop in orders from the Canton market.47 In short, the market could not swiftly respond to a bureaucratic change of policy overnight.

The Battlefield of Provincialism There was one more obstacle to easing the foreign-rice controls in Canton. The temporary duty exemption in Canton brought about a strong reaction from those who called for the rigid execution of the foreign-rice tax and the national rice promotion program. Many merchant groups from inland provinces strongly opposed the change in Nanjing’s stance. Both “promoters of national rice and delegates from rice-producing provinces” in central China jointly protested to Nanjing that this tax repeal showed favoritism to Canton. Why, they asked, were only the Cantonese allowed to import rice, while elsewhere the provinces adhered to Nanjing’s strict control of rice consumption?48 Among these groups, Hunan’s reaction was the most intense. In a telegram to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Hunan provincial authorities opposed the reduction of the foreign-rice tax in Guangdong.49 Others expressed attitudes that were similar to Hunan’s. The Hubei authorities, too, contended that reducing the tax on the Cantonese foreign-rice imports would dampen the spirit of national rice promotion, because it would add “wings to the dumping of foreign rice.” 50 Shanghai’s merchant groups remarked that it would be hard to bear watching the Cantonese receive this privilege (tequan) from the central authority.51 In a telegram of petition to Nanjing, the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce requested that rather than the Cantonese justifying their “custom of eating foreign rice (shi yangmi zhi xiguan),” they should “consider the impoverished rural situation and the systematic payment of tax and customs throughout the country.” The telegram concluded that therefore “Cantonese solicitation of the tax exemption will create more harm and less profit to the country,” and there was “by no means any need to give the Cantonese an exemption.”52 This would be the best way to protect “national rice and stop the leak of national wealth.”53 Together with the many telegrams of petition, Nanjing’s authorization of a temporary tax exemption for Cantonese foreign-rice imports developed into a nationwide dispute, and the issue’s pros and cons divided in terms of the different provinces’ positions on rice production and consumption. Local newspapers from the inland provinces called for strict

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application of the foreign-rice tax throughout the country, whereas papers in Canton and Hong Kong firmly opposed it. The “public opinion” (yulun) was compiled in a booklet titled Problem in the Tax Exemption for the Cantonese Foreign Rice Imports, which represented the positions of the inland regions. It was no surprise that Hunanese opinion was the most intransient. One op-ed titled “Oppose Tax-Free Rice Imports” from a Changsha newspaper is a good example. The author, writing under the pseudonym Xi Suan, understood the matter like this: the tax reduction was made by Cantonese “deliberation” (guyi) that aimed at an “ultimate abolition of the foreign-rice tax” and a “complete destruction of the unified national tax system.”54 With a strong nationalist tone, the author lamented: Under the slogan of “promoting national goods,” the [Nanjing] central authorities have just launched relief programs for the rural poverty that is so pervasive throughout the nation. Yet the authorities have suddenly abolished the foreignrice tax. Damage to the entire Chinese farmers will be tremendous. How is this different from borrowing a foreigner’s sword and cutting the necks of all Chinese peasants? We must understand that by no means can foreign-rice and our farmers coexist with each other. Therefore, the government should keep up the tariff, which is the last stronghold to protect our national agriculture.55

At the same time, he did not conceal his provincialism when his writing turned to the matter of fairness between Guangdong and Hunan: “Socalled Cantonese merchants and Cantonese goods are ubiquitous throughout the nation. However, our Hunanese farmers have to trade their blood and sweat for rice to eat. We cannot help asking the question: Why is it that only we, the Hunanese, are not allowed to sell our rice in Guangdong?”56 Of course, not all inlanders’ opinions were unequivocally hostile to the Cantonese. However, the vast majority were opposed to Canton’s request for an exception because allowing it would obstruct the integrity of the national economy. In one example, an op-ed column in Hankow’s Xinminbao warned that such a reduction in the foreign-rice tax in one province would ultimately cause “trade imbalance and a drain of the wealth of the nation as a whole.”57 There was also a strong tendency to express distrust toward the Cantonese. Although there was no expression of emotion in the article, an op-ed in Shanghai Xinwenbao asserted that “Canton must not really need such huge amounts of duty-free imported rice.”58 It is no surprise that stereotypes of the Cantonese and their eating habits are dominant in these writings. Yet they were not necessarily unfavorable to the Cantonese. One op-ed, in Shanghai Xinwenbao, appealed to Cantonese patriotism: “I sincerely believe that Guangdong was the birthplace of the revolution and that Cantonese patriotism was superb throughout the nation. In regard to the anticipated outflow of national wealth due to the exemption from the foreign-rice tax, I believe that Cantonese people

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will never respond lukewarmly to the matter. I hope to see their mutual patriotism.”59 Nevertheless, many used harsh tones when they attributed the problem to the provincial tendencies of the Cantonese. In particular, major targets were the peculiar appetites of the Cantonese and their incomprehensible fondness for eating foreign-rice. Xi Suan, the strongest opponents to the exemption in Hunan, concluded an opinion article like this: Even if the quality of national rice is much worse and it is not fit for the Cantonese appetite, this does not mean that every individual Cantonese can afford to eat greasy rice. They disregard that many in the poor rural population are barely able to afford a meal. But they should not look down on national rice. . . . All of us belong to China. We can eat it, but why is it only the Cantonese cannot swallow it? The rice quality issue is indeed not the problem!60

The key points of this criticism focused on Cantonese negligence vis-àvis the movement to promote national rice, but the Cantonese contested this argument. In particular, the Cantonese side insisted that stubbornly upholding the tax could not solve Canton’s food problem, nor would it revive Chinese agriculture. In an editorial, the editor-in-chief of Gongshang ribao of Hong Kong argued: All those who stand against the temporary lifting of the foreign-rice tax in Guangdong want all Cantonese to eat expensive rice. If doing so would really revive the Chinese agriculture, then our Cantonese brethren would all willingly starve for it. However, even after all rice imports were taxed, look what happened to Chinese agriculture. Many chanted; “Revival!” “Revival!” “And revival!” This Revival is nothing but a small number of [national] rice merchants’ making some pocket money!61

A few weeks later, the same editor severely reprimanded the “rice merchant delegates from the six provinces and a city” for completely manipulating Canton’s rice supplies. The editor concluded: “What the Cantonese want is not a revival of duty-free rice imports, but simply a practical solution to the rice-deficiency problem in the province.”62 As a matter of fact, this dispute could not be easily resolved, because the key issues were deeply intertwined with the regional interests of the impoverished backwater provinces in the interior and the wealthy commercial province on the coast, respectively. At the same time, the dispute was not completely free from the political remnants of a rivalry within the Guomindang—a rivalry between the provincial and central authorities. Moreover, the rationales on both sides were understandable, although sometimes they used belligerent language when addressing each other. As the dispute became increasingly unproductive, the Nanjing authorities tried to devise a solution to satisfy both sides. Once again, their solution

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was to devise a new government bureau, under the control of the central authority, that would deal with rice trade issues of all sorts. Above all, this new bureau was supposed to hold supreme power to intervene, mediate, and resolve any kind of dispute over rice trade, and be above the local authorities. Needless to say, its first task was to clear up all the messes created from the issue of the foreign-rice tax exemption in Canton. The measures that this new bureau took were swift and decisive. The authorities were to exercise the temporary tax exemption for three months in Guangdong, as it had promulgated earlier. However, they also stipulated that all new benefits and interests generated from this tax exemption would pass on to this new government bureau. Therefore, no private group could take advantage of this exemption.63

The Founding of the South China Rice Trading Corporation It is well known that during the Nanjing Decade creating a new government bureau was nothing new. However, this change of policy signaled a dramatic shift in the Nanjing authorities’ perception of the foreign-rice issue; the key members of the Guomindang in Nanjing had finally recognized that foreign-rice imports were the sine qua non for governing Canton. Thus, they decided to repeal the foreign-rice tax in the province, despite the fierce opposition of the inland provinces. However, for the first time they tried to put all affairs of the foreign-rice trade completely under the control of the central government. This fundamental change of viewpoint was soon realized with the founding of a new government institution, the South China Rice Trading Corporation (Huanan miye gongsi, hereafter SCRTC). Previously, the Canton Food Regulation Committee had worked to supervise and regulate the local rice trade, but now the aim of SCRTC was to put all rice trading throughout south China under a central authority.64 In so doing, no one would have to distinguish “national rice” from “foreign rice.” As long as the SCRTC dealt with the rice trade, under the supervision of the Nanjing authorities, foreign rice was no longer foreign rice; it too could be called national rice. No longer would the Cantonese be blamed, in the name of the nation, for the selfish provincialism of their eating habits. Now, they would again be allowed to eat foreign rice, which was also national rice, because it was authorized by the SCRTC. No one could complain about the tax exemption for the Cantonese, since all benefits derived from the duty-free foreign-rice trade would be taken into the national treasury, and not go into the hands of any private party.

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Putting the rice trade under government control was the centerpiece of the Guomindang’s economic reconstruction programs that many technocratic elite members had devised. Earlier, at the end of 1936, some highranking officials may have realized that to succeed with the national rice promotion program in Canton would require a new, joint-capital institution, with both government and private investments, as the Canton-­Hankow Railway had done nothing to advance the campaign in Canton. At the same time, the authority of this new institution had to be backed by the central authorities in order to transcend provincialism. The chair of the National Economic Committee, T. V. Soong, spearheaded the promotion of the plan. Once Soong publicized his idea, Song Ziliang, who was chair of the Canton Food Regulation Committee—and T. V.’s brother—welcomed the plan.65 In March 1937, the SCRTC as a joint-capital company, yet de facto a state enterprise, was launched under the supervision of the Nanjing Ministry of Finance and the National Economic Council. In an interview with the press, Soong expressed the hope that the SCRTC would not only solve the Cantonese food issue but also stop the downward spiral of controversies between the pros and cons of the foreign-rice tax exemption throughout many different provinces. Given the political circumstances, and especially an imminent confrontation with Japan, Soong emphasized that the SCRTC would unite the provinces under one national goal.66 The founding of the SCRTC was not altogether a pivotal change, however. Soong’s rationale and the rhetoric of the speech at the press conference launching the company were noteworthy, if not substantial. The plan promised much greater flexibility than ever before, yet at the same time, the basic rationale varied little from a typically technocratic understanding of the rice trade. In order to maximize efficiency in the management of the company, Soong promised cooperation with rice merchants—both domestic and overseas—and welcomed their investments. However, Soong attributed the failure of the national rice policy to the scale of domestic rice companies: they were too small to develop good standards of rice quality and too underdeveloped to practice efficient management in competition with foreign-rice firms. They completely lacked the capacity to make timely shipments, for instance. Without systematic improvements, these disadvantages would make it impossible to reduce business costs in the ­national-rice trade below those of their competitors, the firms trading foreign rice, which managed a great deal of money and facilities.67 For this, Soong insisted that the ultimate priority of the SCRTC would be the enhancement of domestic transportation between provinces and the improvement of the quality of national rice.68 No sooner had the SCRTC been launched than the Nanjing authority authorized an exemption of the foreign-rice tax. At the first board meet-

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ing, Soong was appointed as chair. Although he had earlier promised that overseas Chinese would be welcome to invest in the company, he stipulated that investment would be open only to those holding Chinese citizenship. In its personnel policy, the SCRTC was close to what has often been termed in PRC scholarship “bureaucratic capitalism.” The seats on the Executive Board were held by T. V. Soong himself, Song Ziliang, and Wu Tiecheng, all loyal followers of Chiang. It was largely funded by Shanghai financiers.69 Above all, under SCRTC supervision, foreign-rice imports of any sort were not to be subject to the foreign-rice tax.70 The SCRTC was able to bring about a reconciliation between Canton’s foreign-rice merchants and national-rice merchants in the rice-producing provinces. At the invitation of the SCRTC, the Delegation for National Rice Trade and Sales (Guomi yunxiao kaochatuan) from Shanghai traveled via steamship to Canton in June 1937.71 In meeting with officials of the SCRTC, these northern delegates learned why northern rice varieties, especially Wuhu rice, had not been welcome in the Canton rice market. The SCRTC handed over a detailed report on why Wuhu rice was regarded as inferior in quality to foreign rice. The reasons given included (1) the shape at both ends of the kernel was not sharp and slender, (2) Wuhu rice was not dried enough for Canton’s subtropical climate and was oftentimes rotten, (3) carbide, which changed the color of the rice, was often detected in Wuhu rice, and (4) Wuhu rice contained too much chaff. In order to solve these problems, both sides agreed to found a new institution, to be called the Association for the Cooperative Improvement of China’s National Rice Production and Marketing (Zhonghua guomi chanxiao xiejinhui).72 Thereafter, the SCRTC would monopolize all aspects of the foreign-rice trade centered in Canton and other port cities in southern China. Its duty-free foreign-rice trade continued until October 1938, when the Japanese Army captured the city. Until then, the SCRTC took advantage of its duty-free foreign-rice imports. Once the SCRTC was founded, the sharp distinction between national rice and foreign rice immediately blurred. As the SCRTC was under government supervision, no one could use its foreign-rice trade as a scapegoat for “treacherous merchants” (jianshang). Moreover, the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1937 legitimized the SCRTC’s exclusive right to handle rice trading throughout southern China and Southeast Asia. As the port cities in the lower Yangzi were captured by the Japanese one by one, the route through Hong Kong and Canton for foreign-rice supplies suddenly became the lifeline for the Chinese resistance in southern China. The Guomindang authorities proclaimed a “wartime control economy,” and confirmed the authority of the SCRTC once again by putting all trading of rice—of both foreign and domestic origins—under the control of the SCRTC.73 Indeed, the outbreak of the war changed completely the

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connotation of foreign rice. Neither eating foreign rice nor handling it was blamed for hindering the integration of the Chinese national economy. Rather, sustaining the supply of rice—regardless of origin—was extolled as making a patriotic contribution to the Chinese nation.

Conclusion This chapter has traced the Guomindang’s mismanagement of food supplies after the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway, which resulted in a so-called “famine” in Canton in 1936–37. The Guomindang authorities firmly maintained the national rice promotion program, together with the project on Hunan rice sales in Canton and the strict imposition of the foreign rice tax. What convinced them to stay the course? First and foremost, many members of the Guomindang elite maintained the sense of technocratic confidence that arose from the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway. Many believed that the successful completion of the line, the largest civil engineering project undertaken in Republican China, would transport Hunan rice in massive amounts to Canton, thereby supplementing Canton’s insufficient rice supplies and ending Canton’s consumption of foreign rice. Few doubted that the carefully devised foreign-rice tax scheme and enthusiastically asserted national rice promotion had created favorable conditions for this. But their anticipation ended with a devastating consequence, an unprecedented rice shortage in Canton. Not only had they overlooked the poor quality of Hunan rice and over­ estimated its marketability in the Canton rice market but also they failed to notice that science and technology could provide only the groundwork for a new interprovincial rice trade network. A series of government programs could not guarantee—in spite of their scientific solidity and praiseworthy achievements—that the new rice trade would succeed. Perhaps the domestic and international upheavals that confronted China in the mid-1930s hardened their excessive preoccupation with science and technology. The “northerners” who were dispatched from Nanjing to take over key positions in the municipal and provincial governments were negligent in their understanding of the complicated nature of the rice trade in Canton.74 Perhaps they were unwilling to trust the Cantonese, who for years had challenged the authority of Chiang Kai-shek and the legitimacy of the Nanjing authority. Nor could they count on the local rice merchants, who had outwitted the foreign-rice tax scheme and put a damper on the national rice promotion program. To be sure, the mutual distrust between the center and the southernmost city was much greater than the mere physical distance. For example, the authorities had suddenly arrested the master planner of the Guangdong’s agricultural revolution, Feng Rui,

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on charges of collusion with sugar smuggling, embezzlement, and bribery in August 1936. Astonishingly, he was given the death penalty and quickly executed on September 9, 1936.75 Political targets thus included others besides the provincial officials who had collaborated with Chen Jitang. By silencing the Cantonese merchants’ voices and blocking their participation in the proposed rice promotion program, the new authority ignored the knowledge that local merchants had meticulously garnered from their business experience; such knowledge could have supplemented the instrumentalist understanding of the technocratic elite. However, the final solution that the Guomindang eventually proposed was neither sales of Hunan rice via the Canton-Hankow line nor the promotion of new rice varieties that the Chinese scientists had bred in their experimental agricultural fields. Instead, it was to directly intervene in the foreign-rice trade and to place all profits from the trade under government control. As the SCRTC claimed to control south China’s entire foreign-rice trade under the auspices of the Guomindang regime, now no one had to distinguish “foreign rice” from “national rice.”

Conclusion

This study has argued that the modern Chinese state’s attempts to recast the Cantonese transnational rice trade networks into a national framework were doomed to failure, because policymakers were concerned only with the quantitative precision of rice production and ignored the quality of the imported rice. Canton had long been renowned for its food culture, which is distinctive in its flamboyance and sophistication. However, for its rice supplies Canton relied on transnational, high-volume trade with Southeast Asia via Hong Kong, because of the shortage of grain production in the Pearl River Delta region. By the turn of the twentieth century, as the Cantonese silk industry replaced rice cultivation and began dominating markets far beyond the Chinese borders, trade with Southeast Asia—largely dominated by Cantonese émigrés—supplemented the rice shortfall. The Cantonese had to ship in a variety of foodstuffs for their daily consumption to make up for the insufficiency. Rice, in particular, was the staple food and the primary import. The unique food supply structure that was preconditioned by the regional rice shortage and transnational supplement resulted in an unintended consequence, the foundation of a thriving Cantonese food culture. It resulted in a diversity of foodstuffs, along with a wide range of rice varieties and culinary experiments. To be sure, in the early twentieth century Canton’s trade with Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, though highly lucrative, was a risky transnational business. Canton was not completely free from chronic rice shortages. However, rice shortages were usually resolved by the skillful efforts of the elite mercantile groups, whose business networks formed a web linking the coastal Chinese cities and overseas Chinese communities. The merchants’ successful management of famine relief not only strengthened their business influence and social reputation but also provided an opportunity to test new

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business possibilities, because distributing relief rice to the needy offered a chance to learn about the public’s reaction to different varieties and different qualities of rice. Once normal rice prices returned to the market, many of those who had relied on relief rice then turned into normal consumers. From the Cantonese consumers’ viewpoint, neither the dichotomy between plenty and scarcity nor the contrast between famine victim and normal consumer were necessarily germane to their concerns, which concerned the quality of the rice they ate. The better-quality varieties of rice not only satisfied their palates better, but also alleviated their hunger better. In this sense, Canton’s urban population were not passive recipients of transnational philanthropy. Nor did they see the city as a victim of chronic rice shortages. On the contrary, they saw Canton, with its incessant commercial and charity relationships with overseas Chinese communities, as a key player in a maritime trade network encompassing Guangdong, Guangxi, and the South China Sea. While politically subsumed to the Beijing-centered Qing empire before 1911, Canton economically and culturally was part of an entirely different trading system. To the local Cantonese population, sailing the South China Sea meant a simple extension of their local trade. Moreover, the Cantonese themselves never thought of their provisioning as being dependent on this maritime trade. Foreign-rice trade and transnational rice relief were nothing but taken-for-granted elements of their daily life. Since the Guomindang authorities believed that Canton’s trade network should be linked to the north, in order to build a new nation-state at any cost, however, this was an unacceptable narrative. Moreover, Canton was the birthplace of the party. In order to fulfill Sun Yat-sen’s incomplete will, the political tensions between Nanjing-based party members and the local Cantonese group did not make a big difference. Despite their obvious political discord with Nanjing, Canton’s party members, modernists, and technocrats all ardently tried to reorganize the region’s food-supplying structure. Both parties, Nanjing and Canton, understood in common that the city’s reliance on foreign rice both weakened the national economy and endangered the food security of China as a whole. Expenditures to purchase foreign rice, and those of Canton in particular, represented the primary cause of China’s trade deficit in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In the eyes of the technocratic elite at both central and provincial levels, switching to consumption of domestic rice was the solution for Canton’s dependence on foreign rice and could be accomplished through scientifically devised state projects. These projects were to be implemented with many top-down measures. Since government officials treated rice as a calculable object of social engineering, however, a monolithic state-centered program of food control eclipsed local dietary preferences and consumer demand for higher-quality foreign rice. Despite the successful application

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of technical expertise ranging from statistics and civil engineering to agricultural and nutritional sciences, the state’s food control program was unable to successfully replace Canton’s transnational rice trade. Simply put, domestic rice varieties from inland areas, and in particular Hunan rice, in the name of “national rice,” could not compete with foreign-rice varieties in quality. At the same time, political tensions between Nanjing and Canton played a part in the course of events. Once Guangdong’s provincial power holder, Chen Jitang, was deposed and the “northerners” from Nanjing had their power over Canton in the second half of 1936, the situation grew more grave.1 In the end, a series of programs under the label of National Rice Promotion Program resulted in the unprecedented famine in Canton in 1936–37, and the program was rescinded shortly thereafter. What blinded the government policymakers, I contend, was the inner logic of modern science and technical expertise, a new sort of knowledge that was enthusiastically introduced from the West. In this book, a study of the cultural politics of food, I have tried not only to shed new light on the local history of Canton but also to illuminate how China’s food problem as a whole unfolded, how it was understood, and what measures were used to treat it, during the rise of nationalism and the fluctuations of global commerce in the early twentieth century. Few countries can rival China in the complexity of their food situation, because in China both scarcity and plenty, albeit seemingly incompatible, were equally characteristic. Nothing has so haunted China as famine. Yet at the same time, the food culture of China has been superb in the diversity of its local dietary preferences and the variety of its culinary styles. To the Guomindang, who proclaimed themselves the sole legitimate bearers of China’s modern reconstruction, however, China’s food problem, far from being a simple matter of food scarcity, represented a menace to the country’s progress toward modern nationhood. They believed that the problem stemmed from uncontrollable, widening disparity in patterns of food consumption between the impoverished countryside and the rich coastal cities. In many coastal cities, domestic agriculture had been devalued and imported rice, with its better quality, had inundated the rice markets. Therefore, the party regarded devising scientific famine prevention and achieving self-sufficiency in the national food supply as the dual keystones of competent statecraft, which they had urgently introduced from the West while striving to distinguish it from Western modernity. To achieve these dual goals, the Guomindang state chose to intervene in the “consumerist aspects” of food as much as it had in the alleviation of famine. Not only did famine concern the modern state, so did feast. They believed that creating scientifically accurate food consumption, and therefore a politically correct way of eating, would be the first step to the scientific resolution of China’s

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food problem. As China’s largest foreign-rice consumer, the city of Canton was the touchstone for a series of innovative food control programs that a number of experts—mostly trained in western or Japanese universities in the fields of science and engineering—developed. The centerpiece of the government-developed National Rice Promotion Program was the Hunan Rice Sales in Canton Project, which was expedited after the completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway. As Republican ­China’s largest civil engineering project, this line drew worldwide attention, since it had been built over the Nanling Mountains, a barrier which divided Hunan, a province believed to produce an excess of rice; and Guangdong, a highly commercialized province that produced a dearth of rice and thus required imported rice for its sustenance. The Canton-­ Hankow Line was expected to unravel the spatial disparity of China. Moreover, the successful completion of the project seemed to symbolize the reconnection between China’s glorious imperial past and the forward-looking imagination of a new nation. Once Hunan had provided a substantial portion of the rice supplies of the Qing empire, but in the Republican era it remained a predominantly agricultural backwater. The Guomindang technocrats’ fervor for finishing this railway project resonates with what Joseph Levenson eloquently argued: modern Chinese intellectuals had great psychological ambivalence in their attitude toward the Chinese past, an attitude that incessantly oscillated between iconoclastic negations of the past and emotional attachments to it.2 They believed that the backwardness of China stemmed largely from their tradition, and at the same time they found the glory of China to be in the past. Building a new railway and linking Hunan to Canton represented a breakthrough toward ending this ambivalence. In the carefully planned railway project, they could make use of the versatility of Western science and technology, without entirely negating the Chinese past. In turn, rediscovering Hunan’s reputation as the granary of the empire provided cultural authority to their engineering project. However, the “scientific” blueprints drawn by the modern Chinese state did not resolve the food problem entirely. The government planners, immersed in their technological triumphalism, intentionally or unintentionally neglected the qualitative dimension of rice. The case we have examined asks us to consider the contest over types of knowledge in the cultural politics of food consumption. In his study of illegal trades in colonial Southeast Asia, Eric Tagliacozzo argued that at the heart of the tension between the colonial states and contrabandists lay a competition to obtain different types of knowledge. In their attempts to eradicate illegal trade across their borders, the colonial states realized how significant the local knowledge that smugglers used for their border trespassing was; the smugglers, for their part, learned how useful Western sci-

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ence and technology were in the interactions with the colonial powers.3 In the case we are considering here, the Guomindang state belatedly discovered the significance of the qualitative dimension of rice in its attempts to control the Cantonese foreign-rice trade. Rather than admitting that this immeasurable aspect of the rice trade existed, and adjusting its policies to local particularities, however, the Guomindang government accelerated its program and completely disregarded the element of local expertise. In developing the National Rice Promotion Program, the Guomindang members took the recalcitrant stance of viewing Western science and technology as the single and fundamental solution. In their view, the local knowledge that rice merchants could provide—in particular their expertise in handling the issue of rice quality—was nothing but an old custom to be eliminated under the party’s scientific guidance. Similarly, the Cantonese rice consumers’ preference for the better quality of foreign rice was something to be rectified with a new regimen provided by nutritionists who supported the party’s food control policy. Perhaps the Guomindang members’ adamancy and technocratic overconfidence stemmed from what Daniel Kwok has termed “scientism,” which entails a strong intellectual predisposition that assumes that scientific knowledge is universally applicable to every aspect of society. In early-twentieth-century China, beset by political disunity and economic devastation and imperiled by both foreign interference and social upheaval, such a tendency rose to fever pitch. Science was imported to China as an “ideological entity,” Kwok avers, “to replace the old cultural values.”4 But was the fervor for scientific knowledge a particularly Chinese phenomenon? Going one step further, this book has tried to ask this question: Isn’t it time to rethink the political complications of science and ideology as a crucial part of modern statecraft in general, rather than emphasizing the difference between the East and the West? Although a comparative study is far beyond the original scope of this study, I have tried in this book to argue that what the Guomindang technocrats envisioned and what they really achieved vis-à-vis the resolution of the food problem were not that different from the best practices of the day: that is, to wholeheartedly utilize scientific approaches endorsed by technical experts in various disciplines. Actually, many different countries commonly followed such practices in the early twentieth century. Dreaming up and putting into practice a scientific agricultural revolution, particularly to increase agrarian productivity, was not something only Republican Chinese technocrats wanted. Strengthening a nation’s protectionist measures, similarly, was common practice throughout the world during the Great Depression. Even today, whenever there is a potential food problem somewhere in the world, achieving and maintaining food self-sufficiency are given top priority. The best remedies

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being currently recommended for the food problem are not obviously different in the twentieth-first century than they were in the twentieth century in the case that this book has examined. They include, for example, obtaining accurate statistical estimates, improving agricultural technology, building a better transportation infrastructure, and so forth.5 In this way, this book has attempted to shed new light on the nature of the Guomindang state. Rather than focusing, as has traditionally been done, on the incompetence of the Chinese government and the obsolete attitude of the Guomindang party, I have argued that the failure of the Nationalists’ food policy can more convincingly be explained by their progressive stance and their audacious embrace of Western science and technology, whose fundamental rationales were quantification and simplification.

Notes

abbreviations used in the notes BT

Bangkok Times

CSYB

Chung Sai Yay Po

DR

Decennial Report

DZ

Dongfang zazhi

ECR

Events and Current Rumors

GDLJB

Guangdong Liangshi Jiujihui Baogaoshu

GDWZ

Guangdong wenshi ziliao

GDJXRWCD

Guangdong jinxiandai renwu cidian

GMRB

Guangzhou minguo ribao

GRZL

Gongren zhi lu

GSRB

Gongshang ribao

GZWZ

Guangzhou wenshi ziliao

HGD

Haiguan dang’an

HZRB

Huazi ribao

KSMD

Kanton shokuryō mondai

MSONJ

Minami Shina oyobi Nanyō jōhō

RTTR

The Returns of Trade and Trade Report

SCMP

South China Morning Post

SB

Shenbao

XHRB

Xunhuan ribao

YHB

Yuehua bao

YHZB

Yinhang zhoubao

YHZSTJ

Yue-Han tielu Zhu-Shao duan tongche jiniankan

YYMW

Yuesheng yangmi mianshui wenti

ZW

Zhuanji wenxue

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Notes to Introduction

introduction 1.  Zhang graduated from Qinghua University at age 25 in 1922 and entered the University of Iowa. He returned to China after earning his master’s degree at Cornell University in 1926. Xu Youchun, 1991, 909. 2.  Zhang concluded that Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Anhui, Zhejiang, and Guangdong provinces were food-deficient, whereas Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Jehol, Chahar, Shanxi, Hubei, and Jiangsu provinces were self-sufficient. This information comes from the English edition of his book, C. C. Chang, 1931, 27. The Chinese edition, titled Zhongguo liangshi wenti, was published in 1932. 3.  Both foreign and Chinese experts agreed that they needed more comprehensive and accurate statistical data, without which any effort at famine prevention would be no more than a local and temporary solution. See Walter Mallory, 1926, 7; Tung Shih Tsin, 1926, 454–55. On the leading role of Western missionaries and philanthropists in famine relief in China since the mid-nineteenth century, see Lillian M. Li, 2007, ch. 10. 4.  Gong Xinzhan, 1902, 1: a. 5.  The most important first-hand observations are in a compilation of China Customs documents. The sections titled “Canton Report” in the annual reports, RTTR (Returns of Trade and Trade Reports), and DR (Decade Report) provide not only statistical data on trade in the port of Canton but also detailed narrative descriptions of the region. As Canton’s largest trade partner was Hong Kong, “Kowloon Report” also provides useful information about Canton. In addition, HGD (Haiguan dang’an, Customs Archive) reserved in the Guangdong Provincial Archives is equally important primary document for this book. In particular, a biweekly report called “ECR” (Events and Current Rumors) complied by Canton Customs Office is invaluable to exploring detailed local events. 6.  A groundbreaking work on a city’s food dependency and the vulnerability of the urban social order is Steven L. Kaplan, 1984; see also Kaplan, 1996. 7.  For a detailed analysis events of the 1911 Revolution in Canton, see Edward J. M. Rhoads, 1975. A study of economic urban-rural networks of this region is David Faure, 1989. For the Nationalist Revolution based in Canton during the 1920s, see C. Wilbur Martin, 1984; John Fitzgerald, 1996; and John Fitzgerald, “Misconceived Revolution: State and Society in China’s Nationalist Revolution, 1923–1926.” On the discourse of regulatory modernity and the rise of modern power which was institutionalized in the municipal authority of Canton, see Michael Tsin, 1999. 8.  The time scope of this research ends at the outbreak of the second SinoJapanese War, also called the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance (1937–1945), which brought about drastic destruction of the socio-political contour of China. 9.  Guangzhou zhi miye, 1; Chen Heng, Guangdong duiwai maoyi, 64. 10.  Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, 1993, 13. 11.  C. J. Robertson, “The Rice Export from Burma, Siam and French IndoChina,” 249. 12.  Steven L. Kaplan, 1996, 2–3. 13.  Peter A. Coclanis, “Distant Thunder: The Creation of a World Market in Rice and the Transformation It Wrought,” 1050–78.

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14.  Han-sheng Chuan and Richard A. Kraus, 1975, 10–11. 15.  Many treaty ports in Anhui, Jiangsu, and other provinces throughout the lower Yangzi area provided a major portion of the “national rice” supply; the Cantonese perceived the region as “northern” China. This local perception of “north” differed from the general term referring to North China (Huabei). To the Cantonese, northern China meant the rest of China north of the Nanling Mountains and the borders of Guangdong province. 16.  Karl Marx, 1963, 1990, 15. 17.  The origin of the overseas grain trade between south China and Southeast Asia can be traced back to the early eighteenth century. However, at that time trade was only occasionally conducted. Full-scale development of the overseas rice trade was galvanized by the introduction of steamship maritime navigation, starting in the mid-nineteenth century. See Feng Liutang, 1934; Lü Shaoli, “Jindai Guangdong yu Dongnanya de miliang maoyi,” 33–78. 18.  RTTR, 1903, 655; However, a quantitative comparison with other Chinese cities and provinces was available only after the late 1920s and early 1930s, during which time statistical surveys were widely made throughout the country. 19.  Adam McKeown, 2001, 4–5. 20.  “Coastal civilization” refers to the countless networks that connected treaty ports in the Chinese coast and overseas Chinese communities throughout the world, in particular in Southeast Asia (also known as South China Sea, or Nanyang), and the Pacific Rim. See Marie-Claire Bergère, 1998, 20–23. 21.  A path-breaking work on the cultural dimension of modern Chinese famine is Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, 2008. 22.  This scholarly tendency is not limited to the field of Chinese history. Groundbreaking scholars that might be called collectivists include Charles Tilly, “Food Supply and Public Order in Modern Europe,” in Charles Tilly, ed., 1975; Louise Tilly, “Food Riots as a Form of Political Conflict in France,” 23–57; George Rudé, 1964; Edward P. Thomson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” 76–136. 23.  For example, see Zhongguo Remin Daxue Qingshi yanjiusuo, 1979; Fu ­Yiling, “Ming Wanli ershier nian Fuzhou de qiangmi fengchao—Mingmo ­shehui biange yu dongluan zakao zhi er,” 15–19; Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’anguan, “Qianlong chuqi Yue Min Xiang Gan qiangmi edi shiliao.” 24.  A groundbreaking work in English is R. Bin Wong, “Food Riots in the Qing Dynasty,” 767–88. For Japanese scholarship, see Miki Satoshi, “Kōso to ­sobei— Minmatsu Shinshoki no Fukugen o chūshin toshite,” 659–91; Horichi Akira, “Shindai zenki shokuryō bōdō no kodo ronli,” 222–55. 25.  For a revisionist critique of food riots, See Taylor Lynne, “Food Riots Revised,” 483–96. 26.  One good example is C. K. Yang, “Some Preliminary Patterns of Mass Actions in Nineteenth-Century China,” in Wakeman and Grant, 1975, 174–210. 27.  This does not mean this research denies the scholarly achievement economic historians have thus far made. Exemplary works in Chinese history include the following: Han-sheng Chuan and Richard A. Kraus, 1975; Yeh-chien Wang, “Food Supplies in Eighteenth-Century Fukien,” 80–117; Chen Chunsheng and Robert B.

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Marks, “Price Inflation and Its Social, Economic, and Climatic Context in Guangdong Province, 1707–1800,” 109–52; Thomas G. Rawski and Lillian M. Li, eds., 1992. 28.  Nick Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie,” American Historical Review 112, no. 2 (Apr. 2007): 338. 29.  It is true that the public pays much more attention to food consumption and food quality at present than before. See Ben Fine, Michael Heasman, and Judith Wright, Consumption in the Age of Affluence: The World of Food (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). 30.  Eugen J. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France (Stanford: Stanford University Press: 1976), 130. 31.  For example, grain dearth and subsequent price rises throughout the world in 2008 require considerations that go beyond such a binary conceptualization. See Michael Pollan, “Farmer in Chief,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 9, 2008. 32.  James C. Scott contends that the “politics of measurement” was one of the key features of the formation of the modern state. See James C. Scott, 1998, 29–30. 33.  Ibid. 343. 34.  Theodore M. Porter argues that the rise of quantification was not limited to the academic world. It coincided with the development of modern government and administration. Theodore M. Porter, 1995, 137–39. See also J. Adam Tooze, 2001, 19–21; Silvana Patriarca, 1996, 178. 35.  The passion for scientific modern statecraft was much stronger in non-­ European contexts than in western European nation-states. For example, it was stronger in the colonies than in European metropoles, as Timothy Mitchell asserts. In a comparison between the colonial and postcolonial periods, postcolonial nationalists have pursued it with much greater eagerness than colonial bureaucrats did. For the case of Egypt, see Timothy Mitchell, 2002; for India, see Gyan Prakash, 1999. 36.  For a general explanation of the Chinese agricultural economy during the Nanjing Decade, see Ramon H. Myers, “Agrarian System,” 230–69. For the impact of the Great Depression on Chinese agriculture, see Tomoko Shiroyama, 2008, 156–61. 37.  Although there are no official statistics that compare rice imports to Canton and China’s net imports, a comparison of the provincial-level foreign-rice imports and those at the national level, as well as comparisons of each port city within the province, is available. Canton alone was responsible for 70 percent of Guangdong province’s foreign-rice imports in the early 1930s. See Quanguo jingji weiyuan hui nongye chu, 1934; Guangdong liangshi tongji, 1933. 38.  Ruth Rogaski, “Nature, Annihilation, and Modernity: China’s Korean War Germ-Warfare Experience Reconsidered,” 382. 39.  Stephen Kotkin, 1995. 40.  Lloyd Eastman, 1974, xii. 41.  Sarah Maza’s study of the French bourgeoisie as a culturally constructed social imaginary provides a good conceptual tool for this research. “Luxury” became identified with the French bourgeoisie in the construction of the French national identity in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. See Sarah Maza, 2003, 42–43.

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chapter 1 1.  RTTR (1903), “Canton Trade Report,” 655. 2.  Oda Hajime, 5: a. 3.  DR (1902–11), “Canton,” 151. 4.  RTTR (1902), “Canton Trade Report,” 77; DR (1902–11), “Canton,” 151. 5.  Countless small channels, creeks, and canals spider-webbed the Pearl River Delta, which was the largest plain in Guangdong province; it was eighty to one hundred miles from north to south and fifty miles from east to west. See George B. Cressey, 1934, 348–49; Robert B. Marks, 1998, 24–25; Louis Richard, 1908, 203; Ye Xianen, ed., 1989, 1–19; George D. Hubbard, “The Pearl River Delta,” 23–24. 6.  Wu Lanxiu, “Lun mipiao.” Foshan was the hub for trading Guangxi rice through the West River to rice-deficient districts in the Pearl River Delta. Mary Backus Rankin, “Managed by the People: Officials, Gentry, and the Foshan Charitable Granaries, 1795–1845,” 4. 7.  G. William Skinner, “Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth Century China,” 227–30; Baba Kuwatarō, 1936, 61; Liang Rencai, 1956, 2. 8.  Edward J. M. Rhoads, 1975, 8–9. 9.  Zhang Jian, ed., 1995, 130. 10.  The first steam-powered silk filature in Canton was built in 1874. Chen Tianjie and Chen Qitong, “Guangdong diyijian jingqi saosichang Jichanglong ji qi chuangbanren Chen Qiyuan,” 58–71. 11.  The conversion of arable land to sericulture and other commercial crops occurred widely in such counties as Panyu, Sanshui, Dongguan, Xinhui, Qingyuan, Huaxian, Gaoyao, Gaoming, and Sihui. See Morita Akira, 1974, 141; “Report from Consulate General of the United States” (Canton, China), in Despatches From United States Consuls in Canton, 1790–1906, no. 149, August 5, 1904. 12.  Xuxiu Nanhaixian zhi, 1910, juan 4 and juan 10, as cited in Morita, 143. 13.  Lillian M. Li, 1981, 115; David Faure, 1989, 31. 14.  Linag Guang bianlan, 1904, 1: 14. 15.  Cressey, 359. 16.  Ibid. 17.  Ibid. 18.  Despite the physical difficulty, Meiling Pass was known as the best route over the Nanling Mountain ranges. For interprovincial trade over Meiling Pass, see Liao Shengfeng, “Qingdai Ganzhou guan shuishou de bianhua yu Dayuling shanglu de shangpin liutong,” 85–91; For a description of rickshas (J. jinrikisha, lit. “man-power carriage”), see Tōa Dōbunkai, 1917, 311–12; Baba Kuwatarō, 1922, 1254. 19.  The pass was at an elevation of 984 ft., and the portage was about thirty miles. See Baba Kuwatarō, 1922, 1252–53. 20.  W. Dickson, “Narrative of an Overland Trip, through Hunan, from Canton to Hankow,” 165. 21.  Ibid., 160; Louis Richard, 205. 22.  Trade volume on this West River trade route was much greater than on the Meiling and Zheling passes. See Albert Feuerwerker, 1980, 43–44. 23.  The canal, built in 214 c.e., was called Lingju; it cut through a low divide

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betweeb the headwaters of the West River and the Xiang River. See Kuwatarō, 618–19. 24.  Albert S. Bickmore, “Sketch of a Journey from Canton to Hankow through the Provinces of Kwangtung, Kwangsi, and Hunan, with Geological Notes,” 17; Cressey, 360–61; Dickson, 167. 25.  Bickmore, 17; Dickson, 167. 26.  Pierre-Etienne Will and R. Bin Wong, 104–5; “Food Conservation in China,” 9–13. 27.  G. William Skinner, 1957, 28–29. 28.  See Cressey, 367–68; Liang Rencai, 17. 29.  The precise currency was not identified. Liang Guang bianlan, 13:b–14:a. 30.  Tōa Dōbunkai, 1917, 20. 31.  China was the largest trade partner of Hong Kong, followed by French Indo-China. Forty-two percent of Hong Kong’s trade was with China; More than 50 percent of the China–Hong Kong trade was with Canton. Ho Ping-yin, “A Survey of China’s Trade with Hong Kong,” 331–33. 32.  Oda Hajime, 1902, 31:a; Edward J. M. Rhoads, “Merchant Associations in Canton, 1895–1911,” 100–101. 33.  W. H. Morton Cameron, 1917, 504; “Smuggling at Hong Kong,” 395–400. 34.  Guangzhou shi shizheng baogao huikan, 1924, 69. 35.  DR (1912–21), “Canton,” 200. 36.  Liu Hou, “Diaocha Xiang Yue liang sheng diaomi chanxiao baogao,” 293. 37.  Chuan and Kraus, 1975, 70–71; Philip A. Kuhn, 1990, 32. 38. Abe Takeo, “Beikoku jūkyū no kenkyū: ‘Yoseishi’ no issho to shite mita,” 192–94; Chuan and Kraus, 65–67. More details in Chapter 8. 39.  Yamamoto Susumu, “Shindai Kanton no shōhin seisan to Kōseimai ryūtsū,” 149–51. For the general management of the provincial ever-normal granaries, see Pierre-Etienne Will and R. Bin Wong, 1991, 43–74. 40.  Yuedong shenglie xinzhan, juan 2, 33:b; Inada Seiichi, “Seibei tōun kō,” 92–93; Yamamoto Susumu, 153. 41.  For example, Peng Tailai, “Shuozhen.” 42.  Wu Jianyong, “Qing qianqi de shangpin liang zhengce,” 87. 43.  Chen Zhongke, juan 10, 7:b (1999), 244. For Chen Hongmou’s life as a successful Qing official, see William T. Row, 2001. 44.  Wu Lanxiu, “Lun Mibo.” 45.  Nōshōmu shō nōmu kyoku, 1919, 248–51. 46.  This West River trading firm lasted until the mid-1850s, when Taiping rebels plundered the shop. See Guangxi Zhuangzu zizhi qu tongzhiguan bian, 1962, 28–30. 47.  The blossoming of long-distance rice trade during the Prosperous Age coexisted with a growing number of local food riots. Tho most common type of food riot was the blockading of rice outflows, which did not involve direct confrontation with the authorities. At the same time, it could be easily justified. R. Bin Wong, “Food Riots in the Qing Dynasty,” 767–88; Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Qingshi yanjiusuo, Kang Yong Qian shiqi chengxiang renmin fankangdouzheng ziliao, 1979; Zhongguo di yi lishi dangan’guan, “Qianlong chu Yue Min Xiang Gong qiangmi edi shiliao,” pt. 1 and 2.

Notes to Pages 33–40

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48.  Peng Tailai, “Shuo zhen: xia.” 49.  Inada Seiichi, 97. 50.  Peng Tailai, “Shuo zhen: xia.” 51.  Yuedong shenglie xinzhan, juan 2, 23:a. 52.  Wu Lanxiu, “Lun mibo.” 53.  The first foreign-rice imports to China occurred in 1723. In the sixty-first year of the Kangxi reign, the Kangxi emperor made an exception for Siam junk traders, permitting them to ship 300,000 shi of Siamese rice to a number of districts in Guangdong, Fujian, and Ningbo where rice yields had been below expectation. See Feng Liutang, 225–27; Li Pengnian, “Luelun Qianlong nianjian cong Xianluo yunmi jinkou,” 83–90; Sarasin Viraphol, 107–20. Afterwards, local officials occasionally allowed the importing of foreign rice when they needed to check the rice prices in the market. For example, in the summer of 1743 Guangdong’s governor (xunfu), Wang Anguo, relieved a rise in rice prices with Siamese rice imports. See Zhongguo di yi lishi dangan’guan, “Qianlong nianjian Taiguo jinkou dami shiliao xuan,” 17. 54.  Inada, 99. 55.  Zhang Jian, ed., 1995, 145–46. 56.  Ibid., 146. 57.  Ibid., 146. 58.  Yuedong shengli xinzhan, juan 2, 33:a. 59.  Zhang Weiping, “Yueshi.” Zhang, a native of Panyu County, earned the jinshi degree in 1823. After serving as a local official in Hubei, Jiangxi and other provinces, he retired and returned to Canton in 1836. Then, he worked and taught at the Xuehaitang. See GDJXRWCD, 251; Pan Mingshen, 1986, 213–14. 60.  For Ruan Yuan’s intellectual influence over local literati groups, see Steven B. Miles, 2006. 61.  In addition to secret societies disturbing the hill counties, the Red Turbans attacked and occupied Canton for more than a year in 1854 and 1855. On social disorder in mid-nineteenth century Guangdong, see Wakeman, 1966, 139–48. 62.  Luo Bingzhang (1793–1867), a native of Hua County, had obtained the jinshi degree in 1832. He was promoted to governor-general of Hunan in 1850, and there he successfully defeated the Taiping army in 1851. Afterwards, he helped Zeng Guofan and Zuo Zhongtang. The quotation is taken from Luo Bingzhang, Luogong nianpu, 1867 (reprint 1967), 144: 228–29. For brief biographies of him, see GDJXRWCD, 397–98; and Pan Mingshen, 218. 63.  Zhang Weiping, “Yueshi.” 64.  Steven B. Miles, 2006, 178. 65.  Panyu xian xuzhi, juan 21, “Renwu” (Notables), 10:b–11:a. chapter 2 1.  Tan Zhonglin (Feb. 28, 1899), Zhongguo di yi lishi danganguan, Guangxu chao zhupizouzhe, vol. 91, 250; Likewise, a Japanese observer also estimated that local rice production of the province was only enough for about 50 percent for local needs in the 1910s. See Nōshōmu shō nōmu kyoku, 247. 2.  Guangzhou zhi miye, 1; Guangzhou shizhengfu Gongbao no. 446 (Nov. 20, 1933), 95–6.

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Notes to Pages 41–43

3.  “Canton Trade Report,” RTTR (1888), 407–8; Local accounts also provide similar observations. For example, according to the county gazette of Panyu: “cultivable land is small, while the population of tenant peasants is increasing. Rent is gradually increasing. But, the more [rice is] planted, the less profitable it becomes. Rice cultivation cannot provide [the same profits as] other [commercial] crops, such as fruits and vegetables. Because of this, rice production has become insufficient. Most people rely on the rice supply from external provinces and overseas. Such external provinces are as Guangxi, Wuhu, and Zhenjiang; overseas as Siam and Annam.” Panyu xian xuzhi (n.p., 1911), juan 12, 2:a. 4.  “Kowloon Trade Report,” DR (1892–1901), 206. 5.  By the late 1880s, the amount of the foreign-rice imports to Canton was three times bigger than Guangxi rice. Zhou Hongwei, Qingdai liangguang nongye diri, 1998, 192. 6.  By the 1910s, only three steamship companies ran regular service between Canton and Shanghai, while eleven companies ran charter services between Canton and other coastal cities, including Shantow (Swatow) and Xiamen (Amoy). See John Glasgow Kerr, A Guide to the City and Suburbs of Canton, rewritten and brought up-to-date (Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh Ltd, 1918), 1; Canton; its Port, Industries and Trade (Canton: The Canton Advertising & Commission Agency, 1932), 49; W. H. Morton Cameron, Present Days Impressions of the Far East and Prominent and Progressive Chinese at Home and Abroad (London: Glove Encyclopedia Co., 1917), 504. 7.  For example, a total of 18 million piculs of rice and paddy (unhusked rice) were imported from Southeast Asian ports into Hong Kong in 1922. Only 13 percent was locally consumed, while the remainder (87 percent) was re-exported to other destinies. David Faure, “The Rice Trade in Hong Kong before the Second World War,” 216. One Japanese observer also noted that more than 80 percent of “Southern Rice,” imported via Hong Kong to China, was consumed in the treaty port cities in southern China. Uchiyama Kiyoshi, 1915, 523. 8.  Gaimushō Tsūshōkyoku, ed., 1917, 273–74; “Rice: Price and Importation: Replies to Queries Raised by the National Tariff Commission,” (Feb. 26, 1935), HGD 94–1/1826. 9.  Guangzhou zhi miye, 39–40; Canton: Its Port, Industries, and Trade, 1932, 1971, 3. 10.  The reason the Kowloon Station was established under the mutual acknowledgment of Qing and British authorities in 1887 was to control and suppress all cases of smuggling carried out small-size junks. Jiulong haiguan zhi, 1887– 1990, 1993, 15, 117; Stanley F. Wright, 1938, 310–20. 11.  In 1937, more than 70 percent of Guangdong’s trade was carried out between the two cities. This year’s trade between two cities consisted of 73 percent imports and 77 percent of exports of the entire province. Cai Lian, 1939, 1–2. 12.  Ibid., 14–15. 13.  “Canton Trade Report,” DR (1921–31), 184. 14.  In his memoir Chen Zhupei, who worked as a rice dealer in Hong Kong in the late 1920s and early 1930s, left a vivid description of the prosperity of the Hong Kong rice market in its heyday. In addition to Canton and other southern

Notes to Pages 43–48

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port cities, the Hong Kong rice market drew rice merchants from northern cities such as Yantai, Qingdao, and Tianjin. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, Japanese merchants were also conspicuous customers. Huang Yinhui, “Lijin kanke shi baoguoqing weile: ji Chen Zhupei xiansheng de aiguo shiji,” 4. 15.  Guangzhou zhi miye, 38–39. 16.  Ibid., 39. 17.  Chen Pikuang, “Wuhu miye zhi shikuang yu qi jiuji fangfa,” 21. 18.  In each year between 1877 and 1931, 50 percent to 80 percent of the domestic export value for Wuhu amounted to rice alone. Fan I-chun, “The Rice Trade of Modern China: A Case Study of Anhwei and Its Entrepôt, Wuhu, 1877–1937,” 689–91, 693–95, 717; Matsuura Akira, “Shindai Buko shijō to minsen: Shindai Buko gaikan zenshi,” 2. 19.  “Wuhu Trade Report,” RTTR (1885), 125. 20.  The Swatow merchant guild (Chaozhoubang) ranked second, and Yantai and Ningbo merchants ranked below them. See Chen Bikuang, “Wuhu miye zhi shikuang yu qi jiuji fangfa,” 27; H. F. Merrill, Commissioner of Customs at Wuhu Office, also reported that “of the commercial rice shipped, Canton was the largest purchaser, taking 1,230,648 piculs; Swatow took 823,566 piculs; Hankow, 57,149 piculs; Chefoo, 50,007 piculs; and Kiukiang [Jiujiang], 36,468 piculs.” “Wuhu Trade Report,” RTTR (1901), 218. 21.  “Wuhu Trade Report,” RTTR (1884), 125. 22.  For example, it was reported that “Cantonese merchants chartered two steamers from Shanghai and purchased 40,000 sacks of rice and shipped to Canton by October 26.” SB (Nov. 4, 1884), as citied in Li Wenzhi and Zhang Youyi, 1:479. 23.  Canton: Its Port, Industries, and Trade, 2–3. 24.  The Nanbei hang was well known as Hong Kong’s largest guild. The majority of the guild members’ shops were located on Bonham Street, which was also nicknamed Nanbeihang jie (lit., Nanbei Hang Street). See “The Nan Pak Hong (Nanbeihang) Commercial Association of Hong Kong.” 25.  “Canton Trade Report,” RTTR (1902), 611. 26.  Fan I-chun, 720–21; Lai Gongzou, “Guangdong liangshi wenti zhi yanjiu,” Nongsheng 181 and 182 (bound volume) (Feb. 1934), reprinted in KSMD, 55–56. 27.  The leading markets for Burmese rice exported from Rangoon were India, Ceylon, British Malaya, and (through Singapore) the Dutch Indies, while Siam rice and French Indochina rice traveled to China through Hong Kong. See C. J. Robertson, 249–50; V. D. Wickizer and M. K. Bennett, 1941, 79–80. 28.  However, they strictly followed the quality standard when exporting to San Francisco, where consumers were demanding higher quality with their strong purchasing power. To prevent Chinese merchants from cheating on rice qualities and prices, in 1919 the Rice Association of San Francisco made new rice quality standards and regulations. Wikczer and Bennett, 80; CT, 31 Jan. 1919. 29.  Guangzhou zhi miye, 53, 57. 30.  The number grew to 66 by 1919, of which 56 were Chinese-owned. See, A. E. Stiven, “Rice,” 144–46; James Ingram, 1954, 70–71. 31.  In the early 1920s, six mills were French-owned and nine were Chineseowned in Cholon. See Saigonmai no chōsa (Taipei: Taiwan Sōtokufu kanbō

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Notes to Pages 48–53

chōsaka, 1925), 116–17. By the early 1930s the number of Chinese-owned rice mills had increased to 45, while 67 were owned by native Annamese and five by French. See Ellen A. Tsao, “Chinese Rice Merchants and Millers in French IndoChina,” 454–56. 32.  David Faure, 1990, 219. 33.  W. H. Morton Cameron, 1917, 586. 34.  His firm was known as Koh Mah Wah & Co in the businessmen’s world in Bangkok. The three mills, Guan Chiang Seng, Guan Hoa Seng, Guan Hong Seng, were capable of working around the clock and had as many as a thousand employees. See A. E. Stiven, 165. 35.  They were Gao Shunqin (Ko Soon Kum), Gao Yiqin (Ko Yick Kum), Gao Huishi (Ko Fei Seck), and Gao Wenqin (Ko Wa Kum). The names in parentheses are the names they were known by in Bangkok. See W. H. Morton Cameron, 1917, 586. 36.  GDJXRWCD, 417. 37.  His name was romanized as Koh Khee Soon in Bangkok, but his Chinese name was not identified. A. E. Stiven, 165. 38.  The headquarters of the both companies were also located at Hong Kong. Nōshōmu shō nōmu kyoku, 1919, 270–71. 39.  Although his precise Chinese name was not identified, Lau Sheung Nin was recorded as the co-founder with Lau Siu Cheun (Liu Xiaochuan). See W. H. Morton Cameron, 601. In the Tong Wah Hospital’s board meeting in 1907, two other members, Liu Yinquan and Liu Xiaochao, represented the Liu family’s Kung Yuen Hong (Gongyuan hang). See HZRB (March 28, 1907); Hokari Hiroyuki, “Honkon Tōka iin to Kantonjin nettowaku—nijyūseiki shotō ni okeru kyūsai katsudō o chūshin ni,” 96–97. 40.  Faure, 1990, 220–21; The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong, 29. 41.  Xinhui Chen Ruiqi xianshang aisi lu, 1950, 5. 42.  Foreign exchange and remittances were the two major businesses favored in overseas Chinese communities. George L. Hicks, 85–86. 43.  Canton: Its Port, Industries, and Trade, 149. 44.  Ellen A. Tsao, 461–62. 45.  Canton: Its Port, Industries, and Trade, 97–98. 46.  Chen Bozhuang, “Yuehan tielu tongche hou xiangmi xiaoyue de xiwang,” 138–41. Chen, a key technocrat during the Nanjing Decade, drafted the plan of national rice promotion in Canton. See Chapter 8. 47.  Steven L. Kaplan, 1984; James Vernon, 2007, 133. 48.  Yu Qizhong, 1934, 64. 49.  Francesca Bray, 13. 50.  Mark S. Swislocki, 2001, 18. 51.  Nōshōmu shō nōmukyoku, 1919, 253; Guangzhou pipa wujia zhishu huikan, 1927–1933, 17. 52.  Gary G. Hamilton and Chi-kong Lai, “Consumerism Without Capitalism: Consumption and Brand Names in Late Imperial China,” 258. 53.  Wikizer and Bennett, 80.

Notes to Pages 53–59

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54.  This research was based on a market survey made between 1927 and 1933. See Guangzhou pipa wujia zhishu huikan, 1927–1933, 15. 55.  The counties of Fengquan, Deqing, Guangning, and Huaiji were the biggest market for Wuhu rice. Guangzhou zhi miye 49; Guangzhou zhi gongye, 1937, 191. 56.  See Nōshōmu shō nōmu kyoku, 8–9. 57.  Ibid. 58.  Guangzhou zhi gongye, 1937, 191. 59.  Recent studies have found that rice consumers prefer better-quality milling (that is, more highly polished with fewer broken grains) and aroma, although their preference for kernel shape varies from region to region. See L. J. Unnevehr, B. Duff, and B. O. Juliano, eds., 1985, 2. 60.  John Glasgow. Kerr, “The Native Benevolent Institutions of Canton,” 93. 61.  Tan Zhonglin’s memorial (02/28/1899) in Zhongguo di yi lishi dang’anguan, Guangxu chao zhu pi zou zhe, vol. 91, 249. 62.  Guangzhou zhi miye, 34. 63.  Chen Bikuang, “Wuhu miye zhi shikuang yu qi jiuji fangfa,” 23. 64.  Grains other than rice had been categorized as “miscellaneous grain” (zagu) or “miscellaneous foodstuffs” (sheliang). Guo Zenong, “Guangdong Sanjiangbang de xingqi, fanlong ji shuailuo,” 56; Guangzhou zhi gongye, 191. 65.  Xuxiu Nanhai xianzhi, juan 26, “zalu,” 60:a. 66.  In addition to the traditional gulan marketplace, the wholesale trading of foreign rice was also conducted on wooden rice junks anchored at the wooden wharves of Huangsha, on the other side of the river. See Guangzhou shi difangzhi bianchan weiyuanhui, 500; Guangzhou zhi gongye, 182. 67.  HZRB (Feb. 22, 1905). 68.  “Canton Trade Report,” DR (1912–21), 204. 69.  Guangdong sheng difangzhi bianchan weiyuanhui, 1996, 73; Guangzhou shi difangzhi bianchan weiyuanhui, 500; Guangzhou shangye nianjian, 1932, 1933, “tongji.” 70.  Besides Zengcheng Silk Sprout, there were a few other higher-quality rice breeds. But they possessed shortcomings in terms of either yield or disease-tolerance. See Panyu xian xuzhi, juan 12, 13:b; juan 12, 5:b. 71.  “Zhengcheng Simiao mi,” in Guangdong techan fengwei zhinan, 67–68. 72.  Panyu xian xuzhi (1911), juan 44, “yushi,” 7:a. 73.  GMRB, Oct. 1, 1925. In the 1920s there were no fewer than twenty daily Chinese newspapers in circulation in Canton. In a Canton Customs report, Guangzhou minguo ribao ranked second in popularity with a circulation of 5,000 after Yuehua bao, which had a circulation of 7,000. DR (1921–31), 212. 74.  Guangzhou zhi gongye, 201. 75.  Economic Advisory Council Committee on Nutrition in the Colonial Empire, 1939, 67. 76.  Xuxiu Nanhai xianzhi (1910), juan 3, “Yudilüe.” 77.  “Canton Trade Report,” RTTR (1888), 407. 78.  In order to cap the export of the high-quality rice varieties, Zhang decided on 500,000 shi of rice at minimum and 1,000,000 shi at maximum per year. Yet

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Notes to Pages 59–68

the numbers had to depend on the local harvest. See Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Wenxiang gong zougao, vol. 17, 10:a. 79.  HZRB, Dec. 21, 1905. 80.  HZRB, Feb. 27, 1907. chapter 3 1.  Dongguan was famous for sugarcane cultivation. When the silk industry began to flourish throughout the lower Pearl River Delta in the late nineteenth century, sericulture and the silk industry also blossomed in this county. To expedite the new business, Dongguan’s entrepreneurial gentries purchased mulberry seedlings and even hired instructors from Shunde county to teach the locals. See Mazumdar, 1998, 355. 2.  HZRB, Mar. 15, 1907. 3.  Past scholarship has explored the leading role that local elite members played in many kinds of social relief work vis-à-vis the decline in state authority in late Qing. See, to name a few, Mary Backus Rankin, 1986, 142–47; Kathryn EdgertonTarpley, 2007, 131–57; Carol Benedict, 131–50. 4.  The term “the period when green and yellow cannot meet” was a generic term widely used throughout China. For more about seasons of local scarcity in the Pearl River Delta, see Guangzhou zhi miye, 57; DR, 1912–1921, 212. 5.  “Famine Riots in China,” BT, Mar. 19, 1907. 6.  The editorial insisted on the immediate establishment of a consular office in Siam whereby the Qing authorities could take care of an overseas Chinese population that carried on more than 60 percent of the rice business in Siam. See HZRB, Mar. 13 and 14, 1907. 7.  Local authorities’ unpredictable taxation and arbitrary intervention was partly responsible for the decline of Canton’s “northern route trade” and the Wuhu rice trade. HZRB, Dec. 26, 1905; Jan. 10, 1906; Jun. 9, 1906. 8.  Between 1869 and 1900, fifteen shantang were established, among which Nine Charitable Halls became the most influential. John Glasgow Kerr, a British physician residing in Canton, had once surveyed the government-sponsored institutions in the 1870s. See Kerr, “The Native Benevolent Institutions of Canton,” 91– 95; For a more detailed history of Nine Charitable Halls, see Michael Tsin, 24–29. 9.  For the general principles and practices of pingtiao in the Qing granary system, see William T. Rowe, 2001, 253. 10.  Matsuda Yasuhiro, “Shin dai kōgi Kanton Kōsūfu no sōgo to zendō,” 40–41. 11.  “A Subscription List Opened by the Kuang Jen Charitable Hospital to Enable the Cheap Sale of Rice” (trans. by D. E. Sip, British vice consul), attached to no. 206 (Oct. 16, 1902), in Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Canton, 1790–1906. 12.  These were Nanbei hang (Hong Kong traders), Jinsi hang (silk traders), and Sanjiang bang (traders of miscellaneous grains with the Lower Yangzi area). See Lu Yu, “Guangzhou Fangbian yiyuan,” 140. 13.  See Michael Tsin, 26. 14.  Panyu xian xuzhi, juan 42, 14:a. 15.  The name “Tong Wah” (Mandarin, Donghua) itself was short for Guang-

Notes to Pages 68–73

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dong huaren (Cantonese Chinese). Hokari Hiroyuki, “Honkon Tōka iin to ­Kantonjin nettowaku(nijusseki shotō ni okeru kyūsai katsudō o chūshinni,” 80, 95. 16.  HZRB, Mar. 22, 1907; Hokari, 95; Deng Yusheng, 1:a. 17.  Meanwhile, the Cantonese merchants elected Chen Huipu and Xiong Liting as chairmen of the Canton branch of the general association. Hokari, 95–96. 18.  The total donated by overseas communities was about 99,000 HK dollars. As both Cantonese delegates and the board of Tung Wa Hospital had agreed at their first meeting, the General Association had about 66,000 HK dollars at their disposal. Cantonese merchants paid this money to Kung Yuen Hong (Gongyuan hang) to purchase relief rice. See Hokari, 96–97. 19.  HZRB, Apr. 10, 1907. 20.  Deng, 1:a. 21.  The last overseas aid came from the Cantonese merchant association (Guangdong huiguan) in the Philippines at the end of September; such leading Cantonese merchants in the Philippines as Wang Haijian, Lin Jiesheng, and Li Mingpo donated 817 silver yuan to the General Association. HZRB, Sept. 28, 1907. 22.  HZRB, Mar. 28, 1907. 23.  Feng Pingshan, 1972, 6–13. 24.  Zou Shouchen, 1929, 21–22. According to the records of “prominent Chinese” in Hong Kong, Feng’s contribution to the rice relief remained noteworthy, even after his death, for providing “rice relief that saved countless lives from disaster without hesitation.” See The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong, 1937, 25. 25.  Xianggang daxue Feng Pingshan Tushuguan jinxi jinian lunwen ji, 1932– 82, 1982. 26.  Liu and Ruan were also former directors of the Tung Wah Hospital and ran Indochinese rice firms for their French owners. Deng, 2:a; Hokari, 97. Liu had been the director of the Tung Wah Hospital in 1899, and Ruan was head director in 1900. HZRB, Apr. 9, 1907. 27.  As discussed in Chapter 2, the Kung Yuen Hong specialized in trading French Indochinese rice from Saigon. It had an annual value of about 800,000 HK dollars. See Cameron, 1917, 601. 28.  HZRB, Apr. 23, 1907. 29.  Ibid., Apr. 30, 1907; CSYP, Apr. 29, 1907. 30.  HZRB, Jun. 22 and 24, 1907. 31.  Ibid., Apr. 16, 1907. 32.  Ibid.; Deng, 1:b. 33.  In such a cooperative environment, the General Association continued its relief work through the end of September 1907. HZRB, Apr. 27 and 30, 1907; Sept. 14 and 28, 1907. 34.  Deng, 2:a. 35.  The overseas fundraising was not different from the previous year’s experience. The Cantonese and Hong Kong merchants appealed to donors, and responses soon arrived. Before long, the four rice depots had been reopened, and distribution immediately commenced in Canton. SCMP, Mar. 18, 1908; Apr. 2, 1908; Apr. 29, 1908. 36.  Deng, 3:a.

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Notes to Pages 74–79

37.  Ibid. 38.  Ibid. 39.  Paul Kratoska, “The British Empire and the Southeast Asian Rice Crisis of 1919–1921,” 117–19. 40.  CT, Feb. 11, 1919. 41.  Francis Carl, Commissioner of Canton Customs, noted a sudden drop of Southeast Asian rice imports to Canton: “the importation of rice and paddy further declined, due to shortage of tonnage; the supplies from abroad decreased some 75% from the usual quantity.” See “Canton Trade Report,” RTTR (1918), 1131. 42.  CT, Jan. 9, 1919. For Japan’s nationwide rice riots in 1918–19, see Michael L. Lewis, 1990. 43.  “Wuhu Trade Report,” RTTR (1918), 679. 44.  CT, Jan. 25 and 27, 1919. 45.  Ibid., Jan. 31, 1919; Feb. 4, 1919; Kratoska, 125–26. 46.  CT, Jan. 17, 1919. 47.  Ibid., Jan. 17, 22, and 23, 1919. 48.  Jian was better known as Kan Chiu-nan (his name in Cantonese). Who’s Who in China, 1920, 83–84; Sherman Cochran, 1980, 55–57. 49.  As a matter of fact, many of the technical advisors for his cigarette factories were Japanese, and his legal advisor in Shanghai was also Japanese. See Guangdong Guohuo Jiuzhenghui, 1919, 2–4; Cochran, 63. 50.  Who’s Who in China, 1920, 84. 51.  His donations were not restricted to Canton. He built schools in Shanghai and donated “over $300,000 worth of cigarettes to the American Expeditionary Forces when he visited the United States in 1918.” His first Shanghabi branch was built in 1919. Who’s Who in China, 1920; Guangdong guohuo jiuzheng hui, 5–7. 52.  “Dasheji” (chronology), in GDLJB, 1919, 4. 53.  SCMP, Feb. 15, 1919; CSYP, Mar. 27 1919. 54.  For more detail analysis of Chen’s role in the Merchant Corps Insurrection, see Michael Tsin, 89, 103–9. 55.  He operated several more companies in Hong Kong. See Hou Zhigang, “Chen Lianbo,” 318–29; Who’s Who in China, 1925, 123–24; Chen Tianjie, “Wo suo zhidao Chen Lianbo de jijian she,” 188–90. 56.  This was reported in “Chan Lim Pak Host to Four Thousand Guests,” CT, Sep. 13, 1919. 57.  Who’s Who in China, 1925, 124. 58.  The Wuhu rice trade in Canton had declined by the early 1910s (see Chapter 2) In its heyday, there were sixteen firms, but only four were still in business in 1919, and they had changed their main business to trading miscellaneous grains from the north, because they had past experience and knowledge of trading them. 59.  “Dasheji,” in GDLJB, 5–6. 60.  In response to Jian’s personal request, Shanghai’s Cantonese Chamber of Commerce chartered a number of oceangoing steamers from the China Merchants Navigation Company to ship Wuhu rice to Canton. “Dianwen” (Telegram), in GDLJB, 1; CSYP, Mar. 12, 1919; SCMP, Mar. 25, 1919.

Notes to Pages 80–87

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61.  The success of the 1919 rice relief resonated well with the rise of diasporic elite groups in overseas Chinese communities. See Adam McKeown, 2001, 116–18. 62.  SCMP, Apr. 28, 1919. 63.  For example, Chang Yao Hin, a wealthy merchant in the Straits Settlement, remitted $10,000 through the Hong Kong–Shanghai Bank. SCMP, May 3, 9, and 29, 1919. 64.  “Huiwu” (Conference), in GDLJB, 6–9. 65.  Ibid. 10. 66.  Ibid. 17–19. 67.  “Chen Jitang kaizheng yangmi shui shimo,” 124–25. 68.  “Huiwu,” GDLJB, 43. 69.  Ibid., 44. The first steamer loading Wuhu rice arrived in Canton on March 16, and several more relief-rice convoys followed thereafter. See SCMP, Mar. 20 and 25, 1919, Apr. 14, 1919. 70.  SCMP, May 9, 1919; July 28, 1919. 71.  After Huang’s retirement, his son Huang Youngyu developed and expanded the family business in the following decades. See Chapter 6. 72.  “Huiwu,” GDLJB, 6; CT, Feb. 18, 1919. 73.  Zhongguo Kexueyuan Shanghai Jingji Yanjiusuo, 31–32. 74.  SCMP, May 7, 1919. 75.  The Daxin Department Store became a landmark of the metropolis. Michael Tsin, 1999, 59. 76.  The Chinese translated “Great War in Europe” as Ouzhou dazhan. The original title is unidentified. “Huiwu,” GDLJB, 25. 77.  Although the tentative response from the French consul general in Canton was positive, the province’s naval authorities refused the request on the grounds that the S.S Kwonghoi was reportedly under repair, and the others were on “other important engagements.” CT, Jan. 24, 1919; SCMP, Mar. 15 and 17, 1919. 78.  Kratoska, 126–27, 129–31; SCMP, Jul. 28, 1919. 79.  Figure 4 on page 117 illustrates the abnormal ratios of Wuhu and foreignrice imports to Guangdong province in 1919 and 1920. 80.  SCMP, Jun. 7, 1919. 81.  At the same time, the British officers asked the Chinese leaders at Tung Wah Hospital to help. SCMP, Jul. 24, 1919. 82.  HZRB, Jul. 28, 1919. 83.  SCMP, Jul. 28, 1919. 84.  In the Wanchai district alone, fourteen retail rice shops were raided and members of nine mobs were arrested. HZRB, Jul. 28, 1919. 85.  Ibid., Aug. 8, 1919; SCMP, Aug. 1, 8, and 12, 1919. 86.  SCMP, Aug. 18, 1919. chapter 4 1.  Edward J. M. Rhoads, 1975, 228, 246–47. 2.  Liang Jipei, 13. 3.  Rising rice prices in the early Republican years were caused not only by occasional bad harvests but also by interruptions of rice influx due to a lack of security

236

Notes to Pages 87–95

on the trade routes. Zhang Shantu, “Minguo yilai Guangzhou shi mijia biandong zhi yanjiu,” 102. 4.  Liang Jipei, 13–14. 5.  Long was new military governor of Canton, appointed by Yuan Shikai. The currency is not identified in this report. DR (1912–21), 190. 6.  Ibid., 203. 7.  Liang Jipei, 14. 8.  Ibid., 15. 9.  For example, Guangdong Military Governor Mo Yingxin was a member of the Guangxi Army. CT, May 14, 1920. 10.  Ibid., May 17, 1920. 11.  The other three “evil-doings” consisted of, first, the declaration of martial law, suspension of a number of Canton newspapers, and arrest of scores of editors and reporters in 1919. Second, the legalization of gambling by the Guangxi cliques in order to levy a gambling tax. The third, which happened when they left Canton, was the theft of at least three thousand rare books from Canton’s libraries and traditional academies. See Li Peisheng, 1921, 8–14. 12.  Both pull and push factors caused this demographic change. Canton’s prompt recovery of industry partly pulled in the rural population, whereas population was pushed out of the rural districts by rampant “lawless elements” since 1911. DR (1912–21), 200, 205. 13.  RTTR, 1916, “Canton Trade Report,” 1059. 14.  Ibid., 1911, “Canton Trade Report,” 650. 15.  Guangzhou zhi miye, 1938, 61–62. 16.  Ibid., 4, 48; Guangdong sheng zhi: liangshi zhi, 1996, 72. 17.  To prevent any kind of loss in the shipping process, the guild created an insurance corporation. See Guangzhou zhi miye, 40. 18.  Ibid., 22, 48–49. 19.  Ibid., 22. 20.  Ibid., 23. 21.  Four points gained favorable comment from the consumer public. Machine-husked rice, they said, was outstanding for its “pure whiteness” (jiebai), softness and mellowness (youhua), uniformity of quality (qizheng), and palatability (kekou). See Guangzhou zhi gongye, 182. 22.  Most of them were located on the southern and northern river banks and in Henan (on the southern side of the Pearl River) and Huadi (a western suburb along the River), as well as on the Rice Wharf Street. Ibid., 182. 23.  DR (1912–21), 215. 24.  CT, Jun. 25, 1920; “Labor Condition in Canton: A Statistical Study,” 519; Guangzhou shizhengfu tongji nianjian, 1929, 285. 25.  Guangzhou zhi gongye, 182–83. 26.  Ibid., 199. 27.  CT, Jun. 25, 1920. 28.  Guangzhou zhi miye, 25–26; Guangzhou zhi gongye, 188. 29.  The Sanjiang bang’s official guild name was Huasheng zhima zaliang

Notes to Pages 95–102

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hangye (lit., peanut, sesame, and miscellaneous grain trade). Guo Zenong, “Guangdong ‘Sanjiang bang’ de xingqi, fanrong, ji shuailuo,” 56–57. 30.  For example, as I discussed in Chapter 3, when the price of Southeast Asian rice soared in 1918 and 1919, the members of the Sanjiang bang were able to provide substantial portions of relief rice from Wuhu. Guangzhou zhi miye, 29; Guo Zenong, 58–61. 31.  Marie-Claire Bergère, 1998, 294–304; Leslie H. Dingyan Chen, 1998, chaps. 7 and 8; C. Martin Wilbur, 1983, 2–5. 32.  GMRB, Dec. 17, 1923. 33.  Ibid., Dec. 11, 1923. 34.  Ibid., Apr. 12, 1924. 35.  Ibid., Dec. 6, 1923. 36.  Ibid., Dec. 15, 1923. 37.  Ibid., Jan. 10, 1924. 38.  Ibid., Jan. 15, 1924. 39.  Ibid., Mar. 15, 1924; Guangzhou shi zhengfu gongbao, no. 79 (May 1923); C. Martin Wilbur, 1983, 3–4. 40.  GMRB, Mar. 1, 1924. 41.  The original purpose of the Merchant Corps was to “protect merchants and their business from unstable social order and incessant political strife around Canton.” Guangdong kouxie chao, 1924, “Shishi,” 2. 42.  Under Chen Lianbo’s command the Canton Merchant Corps justified their armaments by the Guest Armies’ abuse of power, although the Guomindang had zero tolerance on private armed forces. Qiu Jie, “Guangzhou shangtuan yu shantuan shibian,” 61–62; Michael Tsin, 1999, 105–9. 43.  John Fitzgerald, 1996, 287–88; Marie-Claire Bergère, 1989, 229–32. 44.  Minbentang was a guild consisting of small-scale rice shops. See Guangzhou zhi miye, 63. 45.  GMRB, Aug. 30, 1924. 46.  “ECR,” Aug. 5, 1924, HGD 94–1/1585. 47.  GMRB, Aug. 27, 1924. 48.  Ibid. 49.  In circulation the Guangzhou Minguo ribao ranked fourth, with average of 10,000 copies a day; it followed Gongpingbao (17,000 copies), Yuehuabao (14,000), and Guohuobao (11,000) in the municipal survey of 1929. Guangzhou shi zhengfu tongji nianjian (1929), 340. 50.  GMRB, Aug. 19, 1924; Hou Zhigang, “Chen Lianbo,” 1996, 331–32; Li Langru et al. “Guangzhou shangtuan fanluan shimo,” GDWZ no. 42 (Jul. 1984): 256–57. 51.  “ECR” (Nov. 1, 1921), HGD 95–1/1545. 52.  GMRB, Jan. 23–Feb. 29, 1924. 53.  The dispute seemed to end in favor of the laborers. Presumably, the rising revolutionary environment after the First Congress of the Guomindang, which had passed the United Front with the Chinese Communist Party, helped end the strike in favor of the laborers. “ECR” (Jan. 18–Feb. 29, 1924), HGD 94–1/1584. 54.  Chen Zhihan, “Liu-er-san Guangzhou Shaji can’an shomo,” 18–19. On the

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Notes to Pages 102–113

Shameen Island side, one French man was killed and eight others were wounded. Michael Tsin, 153. 55.  In the rise of anti-foreign radicalism, British police force fired on unarmed students and worker demonstrators in the International Settlement in Shanghai on that day. Ten were dead and fifty more wounded. The Chinese outrage immediately spread throughout the country. Elizabeth J. Perry, 1993, 80–81. 56.  Michael Tsin, 150. 57.  According to Chinese Communist Party statements, the number of strikers reached 250,000 by the end of June. See Guangzhou shi bainian da shiji, 1984, 2: 317–18; C. Martin Wilbur, 1983, 15. 58.  Guangzhou bainian da shiji, 2: 318–19; GMRB, Jul. 1, 1925. 59.  GRZL, Jul. 18, 1925. 60.  GMRB, Jul. 20, 1925. 61.  “ECR” (Jul. 31, 1925), HGD 94–1/1586. 62.  GMRB, Jun. 30, 1925; Jul. 1, 1925, Jul. 8, 1925, GRZL, Jul. 21, 1925; Jul. 23, 1925. 63.  For example, Huang reassured the owner of the Yuanfengtai, a rice trading company, that its rice steamer, the Donglong, would not be seized. The ship was loaded with substantial amounts of rice for immediate use, yet it hesitated to come into Canton out of fear of the uncertain political situation. Huang also wired all rice traders throughout the delta under his influence, instructing them that to ship all available rice in the region to Canton. GMRB, Jul. 2 and 11, 1925. 64.  GMRB, Jul. 23, 1925; GRZL, Jul. 23, 1925. 65.  GMRB, Aug. 29, 1925. 66.  BT, Oct. 12 and 17, 1925. 67.  BT, Aug. 22, 1925. 68.  BT, Sep. 12, 1925. 69.  Ibid. In order to relieve popular anxiety over rice shortages, the Canton authorities tended to perhaps overstate the overseas Chinese efforts to ship Siam rice to Canton. 70.  Huaqiao yu qiaowu shiliao xuanbian, 1999, 1: 410–13. 71.  Guangzhou shi difangzhi bianchan weiyuanhui, 1995, 738. 72.  GRZL, Feb. 2 1926; GMRB, Feb. 6, 1926. 73.  GMRB, Aug. 18, 1925. 74.  “ECR” (Sep. 18, 1925), HGD 94–1/1586. 75.  However, this was not identified in available local documents. BT, Sep. 18, 1925. 76.  GMRB, Sep. 9, 1925. 77.  Guangzhou zhi miye, 47–48. 78.  Guangzhou bainian da shiji, 346. chapter 5 1.  China stayed on the silver standard until 1934, thereby avoiding the worst effects of in the initial years of the Great Depression. But once the United States adopted the Silver Purchase Act in 1934, silver was drastically drained out of China, and the devaluation of the Chinese currency ensued. For a succinct explanation of

Notes to Pages 113–121

239

the effects of the Great Depression on China, see Wen-hsin Yeh, “Corporate Space, Communal Time: Everyday Life in Shanghai’s Bank of China,” 115; Tomoko Shiro­ yama, 2008, 156–61. 2.  For example, Shanghai’s Bureau of Social Affairs planned to purchase rice abroad to prevent the rise of rice prices in the cities in 1929 and 1930. See Christian Henriot, 1993, 214–15. 3.  Zhu Liangmu, “Wuguo liangshi de zili wenti zhi guoqu yu weilai,” 85. 4.  “Development of China’s Foreign Trade,” 21. 5.  Li Wenhai et al., 1994, 213. 6.  Walther H. Mallory, 1926, 23; Shi Tsin Tung, “The Food Supply of China,” 454–61; Lillian M. Li, 2007, chap. 10. 7.  From the beginning, the Chinese elite’s interest in Western science during the late Qing and early Republican periods stemmed largely from the needs of nationalistism. The first generation of students dedicated to learning Western science began to go abroad during the last decade of Qing rule, and most of them returned in the wake of the New Culture and May Fourth movements. To many returning Chinese scientists, the establishment of the Guomindang regime in 1927 was perceived more as the birth of a new, reliable sponsor than as a threat to their professionalism and autonomy. Zuoyue Wang terms the phenomenon “scientific nationalism.” Zuoyue Wang, “Saving China Through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China,” 317–19. 8.  Chen Gongbo, “Zhongguo liangshi de zigei,” 198. 9.  Consequently, past scholarship has paid much attention to Guangdong’s “separatist” tendencies vis-à-vis the factional tensions between Nanjing and Canton. See Nantian suiyue: Chen Jitang zhu Yue shiqi jianwen shilu, 1987; John Fitzgerald, “Increased Disunity: The Politics and Finance of Guangdong Separatism, 1926–1936”; Alfred Lin, “Building and Funding a Warlord Regime: The Experience of Chen Jitang in Guangdong, 1929–1936.” 10.  Alfred Lin, 178. 11.  Zhongguo wenhua xiehui, eds., 1937, 232. 12.  Chen Gongbo, “Zhongguo liangshi de zigei,” 194. 13.  Chen Gongbo, Sinian congzheng lu, 72–73. 14.  Cai Wuji, “Shiliang wenti yu shiliang jianxian,” 10. 15.  Feng Liutang, “Yangmi mianshui ji qi zhengshui zhi jingguo.” 16.  Li Yian, “Zuijin Guangzhou shi jingji de lunkou,” 25. 17.  Guangzhou zhi gongye, 1937, 4. 18.  Hu Puan, 1936, vol. 4: juan 7:5. 19.  Virgil K. Y. Ho, 2005, 63–64. 20.  Mark Swislocki, 2009, 162–63. 21.  Edward Lee, 1936, 148. 22.  Qian Hua, “Nanyou yinxiang ji: ‘chi zai Gaungzhou,’” SB, Aug. 15, 1935. 23.  Jing Shan, “Chi zai Guangzhou,” GSRB, Dec. 16 and 17, 1934. 24.  Virgil K. Y. Ho, “The Limits of Hatred: Popular Attitude Toward the West in Republican Canton,” 87–104. 25.  Ma Yinchu, 1936, 225. 26.  GMRB, May 22, 1928.

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Notes to Pages 121–128

27.  GMRB, May 23, 1928. 28.  Ibid. 29.  GMRB, June 20, 1928. 30.  GMRB, June 15, 1928; Jan. 14, 1929; Mar. 5, 1930. 31.  GMRB, May 28, 1928. 32.  GDJXRWCD, 97. 33.  GMRB, Sep. 21, 1929. 34.  GDJXRWCD, 97. On the Guomindang’s distrust of traditional medicine, see Hsiang-lin Lei, “When Chinese Medicine Encountered the State, 1910–1949,” diss., U. of Chicago, 1999, chap. 3. 35.  GMRB, Oct. 26 1929, Nov. 29, 1929, Jan. 4, 1930, Feb. 2 and 27, 1930. 36.  GMRB, Jun. 3, 1930; Aug. 29, 1930. 37.  For a general explanation of the agrarian crisis in 1930s China, see Ramon H. Myers, “The Agrarian System,” 256–57; Tomoko Shiroyama, 2008, 92–94. 38.  You Xin, “Gujian shangnong hu!” 1–2. 39.  Shanghai’s increasing foreign-rice imports, though smaller quantities than those of Canton, helped to spread a general awareness of China’s food problem and the issue of foreign-rice imports. Wu Juenong, “Woguo jinri zhi shiliang wenti.” 40.  Bi Xinsheng, “Zhongguo jingji de shiji yanjiu,” 207–9. 41.  Chen Guangfu, “Woguo jingji gaizao de genben wenti,” 18. 42.  GMRB, Nov. 10, 1929. 43.  GMRB, Dec. 9, 1929. 44.  Yung-chen Chiang, 2001, 58. 45.  Wen-hsin Yeh, 1990, 261–64. 46.  William C. Kirby, “Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928–1937,” 147. 47.  Yung-chen Chiang, 2001, 63; Zuoyue Wang, “Saving China Through Science,” 219. 48.  C. A. Middleton Smith, “Engineers and Doctors in China: Their Fight for Health and Human Efficiency,” 541. 49.  Silvana Patriarca, 1996, 177; Timothy Mitchell, 2002, 80–81; Joshua Cole, 2000, 8–10. 50.  “Rice: Its Production, Consumption, and Marketing,” 878–88. 51.  Guangzhou shi zhengfu tongji nianjian, 1929; Guangzhou shi ershi yi nian renkou diaocha, 1932; Tudi yu renkou, 1932; Guangdong liangshi tongji (Guangzhou: Guangdong sheng zhengfu mishu chu, 1933). 52.  GMRB, Oct. 6, 1928; Feb. 15, 1929. 53.  Wen-hsin Yeh, 1990, 174. 54.  These works include Guangzhou gongren jiating yanjiu, 1934; Guangzhou laozi zhengyi de fenxi, 1934; Guangzhou pifa wujia zhishou buibao. For more on Huang’s efforts to establish the office within the university, see Huang Yinpu, 1989. 55.  Zhang Shantu, “Minguo yilai Guangzhou mijia biandong zhi yanjiu,” 101–18. 56.  Theodore M. Porter argues that the rise of quantitative methodologies in the natural and social sciences was inseparable from the ascendance of modern political and administrative cultures generated by the modern state. See Theodore M. Porter, 1995.

Notes to Pages 128–137

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57.  GMRB, Oct. 14, 1928. 58.  Migu tongji, 1934, 1. 59.  GMRB, Feb. 15, 1929; June 24, 1932. 60.  Xu Zhongwei, 1936. 61.  Ibid., 18. 62.  Ibid., 17–22. 63.  Ibid., 37–44. 64.  Ye Shengtao, “Duoshoule, san wu dou,” 237–38. 65.  Ibid., 238. 66.  GDJXRWCD, 1. 67.  Ding Ying, “San shi ba nian de huiyi he ganxiang,” 481–82. 68.  Emily M. Hill, “The Life and Death of Feng Rui (1899–1936): Sugar Mills, Warlord Rule in Guangdong, and China’s Agrarian Economy,” 122. 69.  Ding Ying, “Guangdong sheng liangshi jiuji de chubu jihua dagang,” 179–83. 70.  Emily M. Hill, 54–62. 71.  In the Rural Experiment, led by James Yen, who dreamed of building a model village in north China, peasants were taught modern agricultural technology, public hygiene, and self-government. See Sydney G. Gamble, Ting Hsien: A North China Rural Community, 1954. 72.  Feng Rui, “Zizhuan,” in Guangdong tangye yu Feng Rui, 2–3; Hill, 65–66. 73.  GMRB, Nov. 22, 1931. 74.  Emily M. Hill, 107–10. 75.  Feng called for an immediate transformation from the backwardness of the peasant mentality to a realm of scientific rationality. See Virgil K. Y. Ho, 2005, 29. 76.  Guangdong tangye yu Feng Rui, 4. 77.  GMRB, 2 May 1932. 78.  Ding Ying, “San shi ba nian de huiyi he ganxiang,” 482. 79.  Ruth Rogaski, “Nature, Annihilation, and Modernity: China’s Korean War Germ-Warfare Experience Reconsidered,” 382. 80.  Julia C. Strauss, 1998, 331. 81.  The Communist disapproval of the Guomindang mismanagement of food supply culminated during the Civil War. See Suzanne Pepper, 1978, 71–72. chapter 6 1.  Xie Entan, “Zhongguo zhi liangshi shengchan wenti,” 138–9. 2.  For instance, “Baohu guanshui yu Zhongguo chanye” (Protective tariffs and China’s industries) GMRB, May 16, 1930; “Baohu guanshui fengxing quan shejie” (Protective tariffs are in fashion throughout the world), GMRB, Aug. 3, 1931; Ma Xingye, “Jingji shejie de xinlu: yataiji,” 15–21; Zhu Xie, “Nongye baohu guanshui wenti: yangmi jinkoushuilü de yanjiu,” 27–38. 3.  For a discussion of provincial power holders and local Guomindang factions that opposed Chiang Kai-shek’s Nanjing authority, see James E. Sheridan, 1975; Hung-mao Tien, 1972, 121–22. 4.  One Japanese reporter wrote: “What most harasses Chiang Kai-shek, who has seized central power in Nanjing, is neither North China (where a military

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Notes to Pages 137–141

confrontation between the Japanese Kwantung Army and the Chinese Army took place) nor the Chinese Communist Party. Rather, it is the Southwestern Faction, which consisted of allies of Guangdong and Guangxi power holders and such Guomindang elders as Hu Hanmin; they never submit themselves to Nanjing’s authorities, even though they feign obedience to Nanjing.” Hoshino Tatsuo, ed., 1936, 118. 5.  In total, sixteen delegates from the seven provinces and one special city that fell under Nanjing’s authorityattended the conference: Shanghai, Zhejiang, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, Fujian, and Guangdong. See Wu Jingping, 1998, 242; Zhu Hanguo, ed., 1993, 277. 6.  GMRB, Oct. 29, 1932. 7.  The formal purpose of the Guomindang’s Southwestern Political Affairs Committee (Xinan zhengwu weiyuanhui) was to help communication between Nanjing and the southern provincial authorities, where Chiang’s power did not reach. It was established shortly after the end of the anti-Chiang movement (1931– 32) led by the Canton national government. Despite many southern provinces’ participation, only Chen Jitang and the Guangxi clique wielded substantial power in this institution. Takeyama Kōo, “Shina seinan seigyoku no tenbō,” 70–71; HZRB, Nov. 15, 1932; GMRB, Nov. 25, 1932. 8.  GMRB, Nov. 27, 1932. 9.  HZRB, Nov. 29, 1932; XHRB, Nov. 29, 1932; XHRB, Dec. 16, 1932. 10.  Feng Liutang, 1935, 1989, 3: 31. 11.  Among the series of factional struggles within the Guomindang after the consolidation of Chiang’s authority in Nanjing in 1928, the greatest dispute came with a second national government under the direction of the so-called Canton clique at Canton in 1931. Although this “Canton national government” relinquished its legitimacy and many of its members agreed to participate individually in the national government in Nanjing shortly after September 18, General Chen Jitang, commander of the First National Army, seized substantial power in Guangdong. For details about Guomindang factional struggles, See Fan Jiang yundongshi, 1934; John Fitzgerald, “Increased Disunity: The Politics and Finance of Guangdong Separatism, 1926–1936,” 745–75. 12.  One good example is the role that statistics played in the Risorgimento, the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century. See Silvana Patriarca, 1996, 7, 227. 13.  Margherita Zanasi, 2006, 3, 29. 14.  Bo Ying, “Liangshi jinkou de toushi,” 67. 15.  Tang Huisun, “Duiyu yangmi zhengshui zhi yijian,” 144–45. 16.  Cai Wuji, “Shiliang wenti yu shiliang jianxian,” 1. 17.  Zhang Kewei, “Waimi rukou zhengshui de yanjiu” (A study of foreign-rice import tax), Shenbao yuekan 2, no. 1 (Nov. 1933), in Liangzheng shiliao, 1989, 3: 62–63. 18.  Feng Liutang, 1935, 1989, 3: 39. 19.  There was no consensus about this calculation. Some estimated that the average Cantonese adult needed 3 piculs of white rice annually for subsistence, while others claiming 4, there were some who even estimated 5 piculs. Ding Ying, “Waimi keshui wenti,” 207.

Notes to Pages 141–145

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20.  Ding did not identifyi the source of these numbers. Ibid., 212. 21.  Tang Wenkai, “Zhengshui yangmi yangmai yangfen yangfen jinkoushui yijian shu,” 41. 22.  Zuo Zhou, “Shixing yangmi zhengshui yiqian,” 2–3; Feng Liutang, 1935, 1989, 3: 35–36; GMRB, Feb. 9, 1933. 23.  SCMP, Oct. 6, 1933. 24.  SCMP, Aug. 30, 1933. 25.  “Cheng Jitang kaizheng yangmishui shimo,” 120–21; Chen Boren, ed., “Caizheng he shuijuan,” 309–10. 26.  SCMP, Sep. 19, 1933. 27.  John Fitzgerald argues that the financial confrontation between Canton and Nanjing during the Nanjing Decade originated in the National Revolution period (1924–28). During this time, the party issued a great deal of government bonds in Canton, but the Nanjing authorities did not pay the money back after Chiang Kaishek established a new Nationalist government in Nanjing. See John Fitzgerald, “Increased Disunity: The Politics and Finance of Guangdong Separatism, 1926– 1936,” 748–49. 28.  This does not mean that we accept Chen’s explanation in face value. Chen’s semi-autonomous anti-Chiang institution, the Guomindang Southwestern Political Affairs Committee, also needed reliable financial resources for their political and military expenditures. See Qiu Ping, “Guomin zhengfu Xinan zhengwu weiyuanhui jianwen,” 123–29. 29.  As a matter of fact, in Nanjing, the Executive Yuan completed the proposition on September 12 and waited for the Legislative Yuan’s approval. Before it could approve the measure, Canton preemptively declared it to be a provincial tax. XHRB, Sept. 13, 1933. 30.  “Caizheng he shujuan,” 298–99; YHB, Sep. 19, 1933. 31.  Any variety of foreign rice imported to Guangdong province would be “taxed one yuan of duty for each picul, and each paddy (rice and husk) would be taxed 0.285 haiguan taels.” XHRB, Sep. 13, 1933; “ECR” (Canton, Sep. 16–30, 1933), in HGD 94–1/1590. 32.  However, “Saturday’s orders were subsequently all canceled on Sunday, when the merchants realized that it was too late.” SCMP, Sep. 19, 1933. 33.  SCMP, Sep. 27, 1933. 34.  XHRB, Sep. 27, 1933. 35.  On September 25, Lin Yungai, Feng Rui, Provincial Treasurer Ou Fangpu, and General Li Zhonglin attended this meeting to discuss their position with merchants. XHRB, Sep. 25, 1933. 36.  YHB, Sep. 26, 1933; SCMP, Oct. 4, 1933. 37.  In addition to the tax, each vessel shipping foreign rice had to submit a written report on a registration form to the authorities, which cost two cents apiece. XHRB, Sep. 27, 1933; SCMP, Sep. 28, 1933. 38.  SCMP, Oct. 9, 1933; “ECR” (Canton, Oct. 1–15, 1933), in HGD 94– 1/1590. According to a different news account, in Canton a total of 6,000 bags of rice were detained by the bureau. See XHRB, Oct. 6, 1933. 39.  XHRB, Oct. 14, 1933; SCMP, Oct. 18, 1933.

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40.  For example, merchants in Swatow, Chencun, and Shunde had joined this protest since September. See “Caizheng he shuijuan,” 205; XHRB, Sep. 25 and Oct. 7, 1933; XHRB, Sep. 23 and 27, 1933. 41.  XHRB, Sep. 25, 1933. 42.  Two delegates had been sent by the Canton authorities to make this deal. The shipment was arranged to take the waterway route through the Yangzi River via Shanghai. SCMP, Oct. 7, 1933. For more details about the sale of Hunan rice in Canton, see Chapter 8. 43.  XHRB, Oct. 13, 1933. 44.  XHRB, Nov. 7, 1933. 45.  “Chen Jitang kaizheng yangmi shui shimo,” 124; Guangzhou Xiguan fenghua, 1997, 3: 35. 46.  “Chen Jitang kaizheng yangmi shui shimo,” 124–25. 47.  GMRB, Nov. 6, 1927. 48.  Ibid. 49.  GMRB, Mar. 6 and 11, 1929; “Chen Jitang kaizheng yangmi shui shimo,” 125. 50.  The consequences of this feud are unknown. This account is from an unidentified Chinese newspaper clipping in HGD 95–1/1555. 51.  This narrative is not an exaggeration. The role of his father, Hang Xianzhi, during the Great Canton–Hong Kong Strikes (Chapter 4) is quite identified with the “contribution” described in this account. See Guangzhou Xiguan fenghua, 35. 52.  Making donations to General Cai and publicizing them for advertising purposes was also witnessed in the case of the founder of Tiger Balm, Hu Wenhu. See Sherman Cochran, 2006, 138–39. 53.  “Chen Jitang kaizheng yangmi shui shimo,” 121. 54.  XHRB, Dec. 21 and 22, 1933. 55.  SCMP, Dec. 23, 1933. 56.  Two Department of Treasury officials, an unidentified man and Yang Yourong, were also arrested on the charge of accepting bribes from Huang. XHRB, Dec. 22, 1933; SCMP, Jan. 1, 1934. 57.  XHRB, Dec. 23 and 28, 1933, Jan. 15, 1934. 58.  XHRB, Feb. 26, 1934. 59.  Huang claimed that it all had been a plot by Chen Jitang, seeking more pocket money. “Chen Jitang kaizheng yangmi shui shimo,” 121; XHRB, June 11, 1934. 60.  “Gan Xiang Yue Yu Wan Ji Zhe Su Hu Yue shi shengshi liangshi huiyi,” 66–67. 61.  The standard tax rate was 1 yuan in “big money” (dayang) per 100 catties, which was equivalent to 1.3 yuan in the local currency of Guangdong, which was called “small money” (xiaoyang). The Canton authorities were therefore obliged to send 0.575 yuan to the National Treasury, while claiming 0.725 yuan for the Provincial Treasury. SCMP, Nov. 18, 1933; Feng Liutang, 1935, 1989, 40–41. 62.  XHRB, Nov. 15, 1933. 63.  XHRB, Nov. 16, 1933; SCMP, Nov. 20, 1933. 64.  Lee’s Chinese name cannot be identified. SCMP, Dec. 20, 1933. 65.  Ibid.

Notes to Pages 154–165

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chapter 7 1.  Pan Junxiang, ed., 1998, 28–30. 2.  SCMP, Mar. 3, 1934. 3.  Frank Dikötter, 2006, 219. 4.  Karl Gerth, 2003, 8–10. 5.  Ibid., 139; GMRB, Feb. 28, 1929. 6.  Of course, this local classification was loosely used. For example, tumi was sometimes called bensheng tumi (native provincial rice). Guangzhou zhi miye, 3. 7.  Chen Gongbo, “Zhongguo liangshi de ziji,” 215. 8.  This article was originally published in Minzu zazhi in June 1935. Chen Gongbo, “Zhongguo liangshi de ziji,” 193–94; this statement was also cited in Margherita Zanasi, 2006, 42. 9.  “ECR” (Sep. 1–15, 1932), in HGD 95–1/1550. 10.  Chen Boren, ed., 298–99. 11.  “Yinian lai de guochan miye,” Yi: 59. 12.  Besides Wu’s estimate, it was reported that the Shanghai rice guild estimated that 500,000 piculs of foreign rice needed to be imported duty-free. SCMP, Jul. 17, 1934. 13.  XHRB, Sep. 5, 1934. Guo Gang, “Tianzai yu yangmi jinkou,” 1. 14.  Guo Gang, 1–2. 15.  Little, “Rice: Price and Importation: Replies to Queries Raised by the National Tariff Commission,” in HGD 94-1/ 1826 (Feb. 26, 1935). 16.  Although the provincial tax rates were higher than the national tax at the beginning, the provincial authorities changed flexibly the rates according to the market fluctuation and revenue requirement. Following the difference of rates between the two tax categories, therefore, the rice merchants decided where to pay it. 17.  Little, “Rice: Price and Importation.” 18.  Ibid. 19.  XHRB, Oct. 30, 1934. 20.  SCMP, Jun. 20, 1934. 21.  Little did not distinguish “native rice” as a local product of the Pearl River Delta from other kinds of Chinese rice shipped from the north. Little, “Rice: Price and Importation.” 22.  XHRB, Feb. 8, 1934. 23.  “Characters of Various Kinds of Foreign and Native Rice,” in circular 4798; enclosure no. 2, The Inspector General’s Office of Customs (Shanghai, Feb. 27, 1934) in HGD 94–1/ 1687. 24.  Shanghai shangye chuxu yinhang diaochabu, eds., 1931, 4–5. 25.  Howard Boorman and Richard Howard, eds., 1967, 1: 192–96. 26.  Chen Guangfu, “Woguo jinji gaizao de genben wenti,” 4. 27.  Ibid., 5. 28.  Chen Bikuang, “Wuhu miye zhi shikuang yu qi jiuji fangfa,” 28. 29.  Ma Yinchu, 1936, 225. 30.  Ibid., 224–25. 31.  Chen Gongbo cited this statistical analysis of regional dietary diversity in

246

Notes to Pages 165–173

his memoirs, though he did not provide bibliographical information. See Chen Gongbo, 1936, 70–71. 32.  Ma Yinchu, 1936, 224. 33.  Lei Ming, “Mipi zhong zhi weitaming,” GMRB, 20 June 1928. 34.  “Jiaoqibing yu baimi,” GMRB, Jul. 7, 1931. 35.  The other categories include respiratory, circulatory, digestive, urinary, and metabolic diseases, and “others.” Guangzhou shi sannian lai shizheng baogao, 1935, 404. 36.  He Zhuo, “Jiaoqibingze de yangsheng fa he jiating liaofa,” 18–19. 37.  Yuan Lan, “Caomishi de gongxiao,” 3. 38.  He Zhuo, “Jiaoqi de zhiliao ji qi yufangfa,” 1. 39.  Ibid. 40.  Chen Zongmeng, 1933. 41.  Ibid. 3, 9. 42.  Ibid. 8. 43.  Ibid. 14. 44.  Chen’s suggestions were put on the agenda of the Guomindang Southwest Political Council, and a copy of his booklet was also reserved in “Guangzhou shi liangshi dang’an” (Canton municipal archive on food supply) Guangzhou: Guangzhou shi dangan’guan. 45.  Feng Yuxiang, 1935, 51. 46.  Feng estimated that more than 52 percent of the entire population had never tasted the higher-quality foreign rice. Feng, 61. 47.  Ibid. 96. 48.  XHRB, April 30, 1934. 49.  This kind of rice was distinguished from rice varieties that originated in Japan. In this news report, all varieties identified as “Japanese overly-stored rice” had French Indochina and Siam origins. GSRB, Apr. 15, 1934. 50.  XHRB, Feb. 24, 1934. 51.  GSRB, Apr. 15, 1934; XHRB, Apr. 27, 1934. 52.  XHRB, Apr. 30, 1934. 53.  GSRB, Jun. 2, 1934. 54.  One journalist claimed that the Thais’ antagonism against the Chinese stemmed from the increasing nationalistic and fascist political movements of the 1930s. In particular, economic hardship inflamed “anti-Chinese” sentiments throughout the world. C.Y.W. Meng, “Chinese Overseas Are Discriminated Against Everywhere, Not Only in Japan,” 194–96. 55.  Under the new regulation in Thailand, anyone defined as a “foreigner” had to pay a head tax, and the children of foreigners had to take at least thirteen hours of Thai language class in school. XHRB, May 2, 1934. 56.  G. William Skinner, 1957, 231–37. 57.  Ibid., 240; XHRB, May 17, 1934. 58.  This incident was thus called “the case of the Siamese rice” (Xianmi an). XHRB, May 4, 1934. 59.  XHRB, Jun. 3, 1934. 60.  XHRB, Jun. 16, 1934.

Notes to Pages 173–179

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61.  XHRB, Jul. 7, 1934; G. William Skinner, 1957, 240. chapter 8 1.  The financial resources for building China’s trunk line depended largely on a 1930 agreement with British banks that the Boxer Indemnity funds (about £11,000,000) were to be invested by the Nanjing government in development of industry and transportation. About two-thirds of the funds were invested in building the Canton-Hankow Railway. See “New Railway Construction in China,” 102. It was the largest-scale railway construction project in China’s history. The ZhuShao section alone consumed 50,000 tons of railway tracks, 545,000 sacks of cement, and 670,000 crossties. More than 100,000 workers were working at the peak of its construction. See North China Daily News (3 May 1936), as cited in MSONJ 6, no. 2 (Jun. 1936): 53; SB, May 6, 1936. 2.  The volume has three parts: a calligraphic commemoration (tici), written by many high-ranking Guomindang members including Chiang Kai-shek; analytical essays (lunwen); and summaries of technical works (gongzuo jiyao). YHZSTJ, 1936. 3.  Chen Bozhuang, “Yuehan tielu tongche hou Xiangmi xiao Yue de xiwang.” For Chen’s career, see GJXRWC, 283; Gaimushō jōhōbu, Gendai Chūka minkoku Manshū teikoku jinmeikan, 1937, 391. 4.  Chen Bozhuang, “Yue-Han tielu tongche hou Xiangmi xiao Yue de xiwang,” 107. 5.  Ibid. 6.  Joseph R. Levenson, 1968, xxxii. 7.  Abe Takeo, “Beikoku jūkyū no kenkyū: Yōseishi no issho to shite mita,” 495, 521; Ping-ti Ho, “Early-Ripening Rice in Chinese History,” 213; Zhang Jianmin, “’Huguang shu, Tianxia zhu’ shulun—bingji Ming Qing shiqi Changjiang yan’an de miliang liutong,” 55. 8.  Evelyn S. Rawski, 104; Yasuno Shōzo, “’Kogō shuku sureba Tenka kataru’ ko,” 304–5. 9.  Han-sheng Chuan and Richard Kraus, 1975, 70. 10.  Zhang Jianmin, 58. 11.  Ibid., 58–59. For example, during only the first half of 1734, Huguang supplied five million shi of rice to Jiangnan. Chuan and Kraus, 71. 12.  Liu Shiji, Ming Qing shidai Jiangnan shizhen yanjiu [A study on the Jiangnan market towns during the Ming and Qing period] (Beijing: Shehui kexue chubanshe, 1988), 61, as cited in Philip A. Kuhn, 1990, 33. 13.  Feng Liutang, 1934, 198. 14.  Hunan’s major rice districts were located around the Dongting Lake and along the two rivers. Evelyn S. Rawski, 104–7; Baba Kuwataro, 1936, 225–26. Peter C. Perdue, 1987, 28–33. 15.  Zhang Renjie (Chō Jinkai), 1940, 114–15. 16.  See Nōshōmu shō nōmukyoku, 1919, 8, 158–59. 17.  While Chuan and Kraus casually mention that Huguang was widely acknowledged as a regular source of rice supply for Guangdong, Rawski points out that the barrier to traffic between Hunan and Guangdong hindered trade. Chuan and Kraus, 69; Rawski, 109.

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Notes to Pages 180–186

18.  Inada Seiichi, 91–92; For Chen Hongmou’s official life and his posthumous reputation in the context of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see William T. Rowe, 2001. 19.  Chen Bozhuang, “Yue-Han tielu tongche hou Xiangmi xiao-Yue de xiwang,”143. 20.  See Chapter 3. 21.  CT, Sep. 11 and 12, 1919; Zhang Renjie, 115; Chen Bozhuang, 145. 22.  The first preliminary discussions between Gangdong and Hunan authorities took place in fall 1932. Guangzhou qishier hangshang bao (Dec. 5, 1932), as cited in MSONJ 3, no. 2 (1933): 27–28. 23.  XHRB, Sept. 29, 1933; “Xiangmi yunxiao Guangdong,” 177. 24.  However, the interprovincial highway was expected at the time to be accomplished much sooner than the Canton-Hankow Railway. XHRB, Apr. 10, 1933, Jul. 4, 1933. 25.  The first shipment reportedly left from Changsha but arrived in the port in Canton October 22 and 23. See XHRB, Sept. 21, 1933, Oct. 23, 1933. 26.  XHRB, Dec. 13, 1933. 27.  “Ekkan tetsudō no kensetsu to sono shōrai” (The construction of the YueHan railway and its future) MSONJ 6, no. 1 (Jan. 1936): 7. 28.  Liu Hou, 289–90. 29.  Ibid. 30.  GMRB, May 2, 1932; XHRB, Jul. 5, 1933. 31.  See Ling Hongxun, “Jiaotong daxue shi nian yijiu,” (3) ZW 1, no. 5 (Aug. 1962): 23. Hu Shih attributed the timely completion of the Canton-Hankow Railway project between 1930 and 1936 to Chen’s devoted efforts. See Hu Shi, “Xu” (Foreword), in Chen Bozhuang, 1959, 1. 32.  Hu Shi, 1. 33.  Chen Bozhuang, 1959, yi-33. 34.  Ibid., yi-34. 35.  Again, Chen visited Russia in 1939 and had discussions with high-level officials in various bureaus. Based on his second visit, he published On the Soviet Union’s Economy (Sulian jingji zhedulun), Shanghai: Shangwuyin shuguan, 1943). See ibid., yi-34–35. 36.  Ibid., yi-73–74. 37.  Ibid., yi-69. 38.  Chen and his research team interviewed 10,821 peasants and 1,690 households. See Chen Bozhuang, 1936a; Chen Bozhuang, 1959, yi-49; E. B. Vermeer, “Income Differential in Rural China,” 3. 39.  Chen Bozhuang, Xiaomai yu mianfen, 1936c. 40.  Under Chen’s supervision, Wu Zheng surveyed Wuhu’s rice market and its decline in status in competition with foreign-rice imports. Chen’s survey report on Hunan and Guangdong was compiled using Wu Zheng’s work. See Chen Bozhuang, “Guangdong quemi qingxing yiji Xiangmi xiao-Yue de xiwang,” in Wu Zheng, 1936. 41.  Under the auspices of the Hunan Provincial Reconstruction Program, the Hunan provincial government compiled eleven volumes of the series, from March

Notes to Pages 186–190

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1934 to June 1935. Yet its statistics on provincial rice production were a simple quotation of the central authority’s data compilation of 1932. See Zhang Renjie, 28–29. 42.  It was claimed that Hunan’s rice production totaled 100,017,800 shi in 1933 and 90,000,000 shi in 1934. See “Ekkan tetsudō ōensen no keizai kinkyō,” (The recent economic situation along the Yue-Han Railway) MSONJ 7, no. 12 (June 1937): 16. 43.  Chen Bozhuang, “Guangdong quemi qingxing yiji Xiangmi xiao-Yue de ­xiwang,” 144. 44.  Chiang Kia-ngau, 1943, 46. 45.  To expedite Sun’s railway-building dream, immediately after the establishment of the Nationalist government in Nanjing in 1928, the Guomindang government created the Ministry of Railways (tiedaobu), independent from the Ministry of Communication (jiaotongbu). 46.  Many observers remarked that the most difficult part of the project would be building three bridges over rivers in southern Hunan and tunneling in northern Guangdong. See “Ekkan tetsudō no kensetsu to sono shōrai,” MSONJ 6, no. 1 (Jan. 1936): 4–5; “Canton-Hankow Railway, Greatest Nationalist Accomplishment, Precipitates New Problems,” 412; Chiang Kia-ngau, 77–78. 47.  In 1928, for example, engineering students who enrolled in Communication University comprised 40 percent of the all engineering majors in all universities and colleges in China. The percentage fell to around 25 percent thereafter, largely due to the Nanjing Nationalist regime’s new investments in other party-sponsored universities and their engineering programs. See Wen-hsin Yeh, 1990, 93–94, 332n7; Ling Hongxun, “Jiaotong daxue shi nian yijiu,” (1) 10; (2) 34. 48.  See Wen-hsin Yeh, 1990, 94; Ling Hongxun, “Jiaotong,” (1) 10. 49.  Due to sound sources of funding and good career prospects for its graduates, Communication drew the largest number of applicants from secondary schools (zhongxue) in the Shanghai area, but its acceptance rate was extremely low. Nevertheless, many brilliant students were willing to spend one or two years repeating the exam in order to enter Communication. In order to raise the number of Communication admissions from their schools, a few nearby secondary schools copied Communication’s curriculum and used it to teach their students. Ling ­Hongxun, “Jiaotong,” (1) 10. 50.  Ibid., (2) 34. 51.  Both works were published by the Shanghai Commerical Press (Shangwuyin shuguan) in 1929. Ibid., (3), 22. 52.  Ibid., 23–24. 53.  Ling Hongxun, “Shiliu nian zhulu shangya” (1) 19. 54.  The railway’s potential contribution to the imminent war with Japan was tremendous. If coastal ports were blockaded by Japanese naval forces, the CantonHankow Railway could connect Hong Kong to many inland cities. 55.  Ling Hongxun, “Shiliu nian,” (3) 36. 56.  Ling Hongxun, 1954, 229–32; “Canton-Hankow Railway,” 412. 57.  Ling Hongxun, “Shiliu nian,” (3) 36. 58.  Shen Yunlong, ed., 1982, 110; Ling Hongxun, “Shiliu nian,” (4) 35.

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Notes to Pages 190–197

59.  Ling made his headquarters in Hengyang, a small city in Hunan’s southern rural area, in order to facilitate the logistics of supplying materials to tunnels and bridges. As it was distant from Canton, Changsha, and Nanjing, locating in Hengyang allowed Ling and his engineers to work in a more autonomous atmosphere without political interference. Although some branches of the Nationalists were busy producing slogans and catchphrases, in this isolated location Ling was not aware of the doings of this bureaucratic Guomindang culture. See Ling Hongxun, “Shiliu nian,” (4) 35. 60.  “Canton-Hankow Railway,” 409. 61.  Dagongbao (Feb. 3, 1935), cited in Chen Yimin et al., 1998, 48. 62.  The railway construction authorities preferred Hebei workers because of their previous work experience on the railway construction project in the north. See Ling Hongxun, “Zhu-Shao duan wan’gong yu suode jianzhu zhi jiaoxun,” 189. Ling Hongxun, “Shiliunian,” (4) 35. 63.  Dagongbao (Feb. 3, 1935), cited in Chen Yimin et al., 49. 64.  “Ekkan tetsudō no kensetsu to sono shōrai,” 4. 65.  “Gongzuo jiyao” [A summary of works] and “Jingdao Zhu-Shao duan xunzhi luyangong,” 54–55. 66.  Ling Hongxun, “Shiliunian,” (4) 36. 67.  Chiang Kia-ngau, 1943, 1; Zhang Gongquan, 1945, 1974, 30. 68.  Ma Yinchu, “Yue Han tielu wancheng yu Zhongguo jingji ji fazhan,”161–62; Cai Yuanpei, “Yue Han tielu yu nanbei wenhua goutong zhi guanxi,” 97–98. 69.  SB, May 25, 1936. 70.  “Canton-Hankow Railway,” 409. 71.  “Ekkan tetsudō no kensetsu to sono shōrai,” MSONJ 6, no. 1 (Jan. 1936): 1. 72.  SCMP, Feb. 3, 1936; “Canton-Hankow Railway,” 409. 73.  Wolfgang Schivelbusch, 1986, 33–35. 74.  “Canton-Hankow Railway,” 413. 75.  Guangdong qishier hangshang bao (Mar. 2, 1936), in MSONJ 6, no. 7 (Apr. 1936): 41; XHRB, Dec. 15, 1935; Jul. 23, 1936; GMRB, Sep. 20, 1936. 76.  XHRB, Sep. 11 and 23, 1936; Oct. 13, 1936; “ECR” (Sep. 1–15, 1936), HGD 94–1/1596. chapter 9 1.  The power game between Canton and Nanjing quickly ended. Some of Chen’s Canton Army generals defected to Chiang Kai-shek, including virtually the entire Guangdong Air Force. As Chen Jitang himself had fled to Hong Kong, many members of the provincial and municipal authorities in Canton resigned their posts. XHRB, Jul. 19, 1936; For a succinct discussion on the Guomindang’s factional struggles during the Nanjing decade, see James Sheridan, 1975, 194–95. 2.  Five seats on the Standing Committee were entirely taken by Chiang loyalists who had no experience of local administration in Canton: Wu Tiecheng, Song Ziliang, and three other bankers from Nanjing and Shanghai. See Gongzuo baogaoshu, 1937, 7–8. 3.  GMRB, Aug. 25, 1936.

Notes to Pages 197–203

251

4.  Liu Hou, “Diaocha Xiang Yue liangsheng daomi chanxiao qingxing baogao,” 291. 5.  Ibid., 288–89. 6.  Chen Bozhuang, “Yue-han tielu tongche hou Xiangmi xiao Yue de xiwang,” 145. 7.  Ibid., 142. 8.  Liu Hou, “Diaocha,” 293. 9.  Ibid., 289–90. 10.  Ibid., 295. 11.  Ibid., 288–90. 12.  Ibid., 296. 13.  HZRB, Jun. 16, 1936. 14.  For instance, Guangzhou minguo ribao published a four-day series of special issues on Hunan rice. GMRB, Aug. 10–14, 1936. 15.  “ECR” (Sep. 1–15, 1936), HGD 94–1/1596. 16.  Han Zhuofu replaced Huang Yongyu, who had firmly resisted the introduction of a foreign-rice tax, and was then detained in 1933. See GDJXRWCD, 225; XHRB, Sep. 23, 1936. 17.  GMRB, Sep. 29, 1936. 18.  Chen Bozhuang, “Yue-han tielu,” 145. 19.  XHRB, Oct. 24, 1936); Zhonghang yuekan 13, no. 4 (Oct. 1936): 149. 20.  “ECR” (Jan. 1–15, 1937), HGD 94–1/1596; “More Rice for Canton,” Canton Gazette (Jan. 15, 1937), in “Zhong Ying wen baozhi jientie” (Clip and paste of Chinese and English newspapers), HGD 95–1/1557. 21.  Until summer 1937, many stations reportedly lacked such auxiliary facilities as storage, working decks, and loading equipment. See MSONJ 7, no. 12 (Jun. 1937): 15. 22.  Frederic Wakeman, Jr., “A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade: Confucian Fascism.” See also Lloyd Eastman, 1974, 66–70. 23.  Frederic Wakeman, Jr., “A Revisionist View,”396–97. 24.  Zhen Chao, “Xin Shenghuo yundong yu kangjian,” 8. 25.  GMRB, Aug. 16, 1936. 26.  GMRB, Sep. 13, 1936. 27.  GMRB, Aug. 16, 1936. 28.  The Cantonese rice merchants asked for a 25 percent reduction for one month. GMRB, Jul. 25 and Aug 7, 1936; “ECR” (Sep. 1–15, 1936), HGD 94–1, 1590. 29.  XHRB, Dec. 9, 1936; GMRB, Dec. 29, 1936. 30.  The Sanjiangbang merchants wholeheartedly welcomed the Hunan Rice Sales project at the beginning. As their participation in the new business project was regulated by the authorities and even the arrival of Hunan rice to Canton was delayed, however, they resumed their normal business (trading Wuhu rice). HZRB, Feb. 19, 1937. 31.  “ECR” (Dec. 1–15, 1936), HGD 94–1/1596. 32.  Ibid. 33.  XHRB, Dec. 26, 1936.

252

Notes to Pages 204–209

34.  “A Canton Famine,” SCMP (Jan. 19, 1937), in “Zhong Ying wen baozhi jientie,” HGD 95–1/1557. 35.  It was reported that drought in the Swatow and Chaozhou area in the eastern part of the province was much worse than in the Pearl River Delta. “ECR” (Nov. 16–30, 1936), HGD 94–1/1596; HZRB, Feb. 27, 1937. 36.  The Nanjing authorities and the new provincial authority alike suspected that easing up on the foreign-rice tax in Canton would bring about a depreciation of agricultural products throughout the country; in short, “plunging grain prices hurt the peasants” (gujian shangnong). GMRB, Aug. 4, 1936. 37.  GSRB, Dec. 3, 1936; XHRB, Dec. 10, 1936; “ECR” (Nov. 16–30 1936), HGD 94–1/1586. 38.  Huang had followed Chiang Kai-shek since the Northern Expedition in 1926 and returned after Chen Jitang fled to Hong Kong. Yu had been one of the key generals in Canton Army under Chen Jitang’s command. However, his taking sides with Chiang in summer 1936 turned out to be the turning point of the political confrontation between Nanjing and Canton. See GDJXRWCD, 220–21, 466. 39.  “ECR” (Dec. 1–15, 1936), HGD 94–1/1586. 40.  GSRB, Jan. 19 and 24 1937. 41.  SCMP, Jan. 20, 1937. 42.  GSRB, Jan. 20, 1937. 43.  SCMP, Feb. 2, 1937. 44.  Ibid. 45.  GSRB, Apr. 1, 1937. 46.  “Guonei yaowen” (Domestic news), YHZB 21, no. 17 (May 1937): 5–6. 47.  GSRB, Apr. 1, 1937. 48.  “ECR” (Mar. 16–30, 1937), HGD 94–1/1596. 49.  YYMW, “Wendian” (Telegrams) 18. 50.  Ibid., 20. 51.  “Yuesheng yangmi mianshi wenti,” YHZB 21, no. 13 (Apr. 1937): 3–6. 52.  YYMW, “Wendian” 2. 53.  Ibid., 1. 54.  Xi Suan, “Fandui Yangmi mianshui” (Oppose Tax Free Rice Imports) Changsha pilibao, Apr. 8, 1937. Reprinted in YYMW, “Yulun” (Public opinion) 11–12. 55.  Ibid. 56.  Ibid. 57.  Hankou xinminbao, Mar. 26, 1937, reprinted in ibid. 2. 58.  Shanghai xinwenbao, Mar. 30, 1937, in ibid. 8. 59.  Shanghai Xinwenbao, Apr. 26, 1937, in ibid. 11. 60.  Xi Suan, in ibid. 12. 61.  GSRB, April 11, 1937. Presumably, local newspapers in Canton may not have been able to speak openly about this issue, although no study has been done about possible differences in press censorship in Canton in the Chen era and the post-Chen era. 62.  GSRB, Apr. 21, 1937. 63.  SB, Apr. 1, 1937; “Yuesheng yangmi mianshui wenti,” 3–4.

Notes to Pages 204–213 and Conclusion

253

64.  “Yuesheng yangmi mianshui wenti,” 4. 65.  Song Ziliang promised to make a 5 million yuan investment in this new joint business. “Yuesheng zushe liangshi zong gongsi,” 2–3; “Yuesheng minshi tiaojiehui,” 6–8. 66.  “Song Ziwen deng chouzu liangxhi yunxiao gongsi,” YHZB 21, no. 8 (Mar. 1937), 1–2. 67.  Ibid., 2; “Huanan miye gongsi faqiren dahui” (The first board meeting of the South China Rice Trading Corporation), YHZB 21, no. 10 (Mar. 1937), 5. 68.  “Song Ziwen deng,” 2. 69.  “Huanan miye gongsi zhengshi chengli” (The official founding of the South China Rice Trading Corporation), YHZB 21, no. 16 (Apr. 1937), 3–4. 70.  Chen Boren, ed., “Caizheng he shuijuan,” 305. 71.  The group consisted of fourteen rice merchants from the rice-producing provinces of Hunan, Anhui, Jiangxi, and Jiangsu, as well as merchants from Zhejiang and Shanghai. “ECR” (Jun. 16–30, 1937), HGD 94–1/1596; GSRB, Jun. 25, 1937. 72.  GSRB, Jun. 29, 1937. 73.  “Yuesheng liangshi teweihui” (The special committee for food control in Guangdong), YHZB 22, no. 5 (Feb. 1938), 1. 74.  The term “Northerner” here is not exclusively defined by one’s geographical origins, but it refers to all those who obeyed the Nanjing authority. For example, Wu Tiecheng was a Cantonese, but he was loyal to Chiang Kai-shek throughout the Nanjing Decade. 75.  It is unknown what the hidden motives behind Feng’s arrest and execution under the new authority were. The best research into Feng’s life and death is Emily M. Hill, “The Life and Death of Feng Rui,” 275, 300–301. conclusion 1.  The situation of mutual consensus in big ideals yet discord in details between the center and Canton resembles the early years of the Communist takeover of Canton. See Ezra Vogel, 1969, 92–95. 2.  Joseph R. Levenson, 1968, xxxii. 3.  Eric Tagliacozzo, 2005, 18. 4.  Daniel W. Y. Kwok, 1965, 11–13. 5.  For example, see “How to Feed the World,” The Economist, Nov. 21, 2009, 13.

Select Glossary

A Kedang

阿克當

aiguo huaqiao

愛國華僑

aiguo gongyou

愛國工友

Aiyu shantung

愛育善堂

Annan yihao bainian

安南一號白黏

Bacheng

巴澄

baimi hunkang

白米混糠

baohu guanshui

保護關稅

Bayi huiguan

八邑會館

bazi

霸子

beidonggu

備東穀

beifang

北方

bolai nongchanpin zhuanshui

舶來農產品專稅

bujing zhi tan

不經之談

bujingqi

不景氣

Cai Tingkai

蔡廷鍇

Cai Yuanpei

蔡元培

caizheng ting

財政廳

canluo

慘落

caomi

糙米

Cen Chunxuan

岑春煊

Changshu

常熟

Changpingcang

常平倉

Changsu shu tianxia zu

常蘇熟 天下足

chanye dushi

產業都市

Chaozhou

潮州

Chen Bozhuang

陳伯莊

Chen Gongbo

陳公博

Chen Guangfu

陳光甫

256

Select Glossary

Chen Guofu

陳果夫

Chen Huipu

陳惠普

Chen Hongmou

陳宏謀

Chen Jinghua

陳景華

Chen Jitang

陳濟棠

Chen Jiongming

陳炯明

Chen Lianbo

陳廉伯

Chen Qiyuan

陳啟沅

Chen Ruiqi

陳瑞祺

chenmi

陳米

Chenzhou

郴州

Chifan nan

吃飯難

chizai Guangzhou

吃在廣州

chouhuo

仇貨

Chung Sai Yat Po (Zhongxi ribao)

中西日報

chunlian

春聯

cumi

粗米

dabu renmin

大部人民

daiduo

怠惰

danghua

黨化

Daqiu

大球

Dayang

大洋

Dayuling

大庾嶺

Deng Zhongxia

鄧中夏

dishi

地勢

di yiming

第一名

diannei maishou

店內賣手

Ding Ying

丁穎

Dongguan

東莞

Donghua yiyuan

東華醫院

Dongsansheng

東三省

Duoshoule, san wu dou

多收了﹐ 三五斗

E Bao

鄂寶

edi

遏糴

elie zhi huai yinxiang

惡劣之壞印象

Select Glossary er hao

二號

Fangbian yiyuan

方便醫院

fendou

奮鬥

Feng Pingshan

馮平山

Feng Rui

馮銳

fengjiang

封江

fengsheng

風聲

Fudouyushi

副都御史

Gangbi

港幣

gangqiang guogan

剛強果敢

ganzao

乾燥

Gao Manhua

高滿華

Gong Xinzhan

龔心湛

gongchengshi

工程師

gongxian

貢獻

Gongyuan hang

公源行

gongzuo jiyao

工作紀要

gu

穀

guanshui

關稅

Guangdongbang

廣東幫

Guangdong Liangshi Jiujihui

廣東糧食救濟會

Guangdong liangshi tiaojie weiyuanhui

廣東糧食調節委員會

Guangdong liangshi tongji

廣東糧食統計

Guangdong liangshi weichi weiyuanhui

廣東糧食維持委員會

Guangdong tongji congshu

廣東統計叢書

Guangheng xing

廣恒興

Guangji yiyuan

廣濟醫院

Guangren yiyuan

廣仁醫院

Guangtongxing

廣同興

Guangzhou Kangmi hang

廣州糠米行

guiding biaozhun

規定標準

Guimi

桂米

gujian shangnong

穀賤傷農

gulan

穀欄

gumi jianyansuo

穀米檢驗所

Guofang sheji weiyuanhui

國防設計委員會

257

258

Select Glossary

guohuo yundong

國貨運動

guoku

國庫

guolan

果欄

guomi

國米

Guomi yunxiao kaochatuan

國米運銷考察團

guominbing (kokumin byō)

國民病

guomin shengchan jingji

國民生產經濟

Guomin zhengfu

國民政府

guoshui

國稅

Guo Yiting

郭翼亭

guyi

故意

Han Zhuofu

韓桌甫

Hangjie

行街

He Jian

何健

He Ruhui

何汝輝

He Shaozhuang

何少莊

hengmo

橫磨

Hu Hanmin

胡漢民

Huanan miye gongsi

華南米業公司

Huang Musong

黃慕松

Huang Qian

黃謙

Huang Rifang

黃日芳

Huang Xianzhi

黃 顯芝

Huang Yongyu

黃 詠雩

Huang Yuanbin

黃元彬

Huang Zhuping

黃竹平

Huangpu

黃埔

huangtang guihua

荒唐鬼話

huangzheng

荒政

Huxian

花縣

Huguang shu tianxia zu

湖廣熟 天下足

Hunan shu tianxia zu

湖南熟 天下足

Jia Shiyi

賈士毅

Jian Zhaonan

簡照南

Jian Qinshi

簡琴石

Select Glossary Jian Yingfu

簡英甫

jiandan pusu

簡單 樸素

jiandu

監督

jianggu

講古

Jiangnan

江南

jianguo fanglüe

建國方略

jiang ye

漿液

Jiang Zungui

蔣尊簋

Jiaotongbu

交通部

Jiaotong daxue

交通大學

jiaoqi

腳氣

jiebai

潔白

jinian baimi

機碾白米

jingji danwei

經濟單位

jingji de liliang

經濟的力量

jingji diaocha chu

經濟調查處

jingji duli

經濟獨立

jingji juejiao

經濟絕交

jingmi

精米

jingshi

經世

jiuchadui

糾察隊

Jiu da shantang

九大善堂

Juda tuanti tongli hezuo

巨大團體 通力合作

junmi

軍米

kang

糠

Kangmi hang

糠米行

kangpusui shui

糠樸碎稅

kejun

客軍

kekou

可口

kexue de banfa

科學的辦法

kokumin byō (guominbing)

國民病

Kong Xiangxi

孔祥熙

Kong Yuxun

孔毓珣

langshi hanjian

糧食漢奸

liangshi wenti

糧食問題

Liang Zhiting

梁峙亭

259

260

Select Glossary

Liao Zhongkai

廖仲凱

Li Chaojie

黎朝傑

Li Chaopei

李潮沛

liliang

力量

Li Liangyue

李良約

Linbaochang

林寶昌

Lin Changshi

林昌世

Lin Damao

林大楙

Lin Shijing

林仕經

Lin Yizhong

林翼中

Lin Yungai

林雲陔

Ling Hongxun

凌鴻勛

Lingnan

嶺南

Liu er san lu

六二三路

Liu Xiaochuan

劉小泉

Liu Xiaozhuo

劉小焯

li yi lian chi

禮義廉恥

Long−Hai tielu

隴海鐵路

louzhi

漏卮

Lu Rongting

陸榮廷

lunshuo

論說

lunwen

論文

Luo Bingzhang

駱秉章

Ma Yinchu

馬寅初

mailan

麥欄

maishou

買手

maishou zhi jiechu zhe

買手之傑出者

Mai Zhu

邁柱

Maolong

茂隆

Mapai

馬排

Matsumoto Shōnan

松本照南

Meiling

梅嶺

mibu dajie

米埠大街

midian

米店

migong

米工

Select Glossary migu tongji

米穀統計

miji

米機

mikang

米糠

mili

米釐

Minbentang

民本堂

Mindang

敏黨

minshi konghuang

民食恐慌

minshi wenti

民食問題

minshi zhi gailiang

民食之改良

minshi zhian

民食治安

minshi weiyuanhui

民食委員會

mipi

米皮

mise xubi yangmi xiaoxun

米色 須比 洋米 小遜

misui

米碎

mi zhong biyu

米中碧玉

Mo Rongxin

莫榮新

Mo Zhengcong

莫正聰

mozikoufu

莫恣口腹

Mu Tenge

穆滕額

naiji

耐饑

Nanhai

南海

Nanling shanmai

南嶺山脈

Nanxun

南巡

Nanyang gongxue

南洋公學

nengshou

能手

nongcun weiji

農村危機

Nongsheng

農聲

nongye konghuang

農業恐慌

Ouzhou dazhan

歐洲大戰

Panyu

番禺

Peng Tailai

彭泰來

pingtiao

平糶

pumo

朴磨

qianbei

前輩

qianzhuang

錢莊

261

262

Select Glossary

qimo

企磨

qizheng

齊整

qinghuang bujie qi

青黃不接期

qingxiao

傾銷

Quansheng mishang huiyi

全省米商會議

Ri chenmi

日陳米

Ruan Licun

阮荔村

Ruan Yuan

阮元

renpin heping

人品和平

renwen yisheng

仁聞義聲

rexin gongyi

熱心公益

ruchao

入超

sangji yutang

桑基魚塘

Sanjiangbang

三江幫

Shaji

沙基

Shamian

沙面

shang bai juanmi

上白卷米

shangdeng jingmi

上等精米

shangjie

商界

shangpin jianyan ju

商品檢驗局

shangtuan

商團

shangye dushi

商業都市

shantang

善堂

Shaoguan

韶關

shaoshi

稍濕

shechi

奢侈

shehui changshi

社會常識

Shehui diaocha gangyao

社會調查綱要

shehui jiu’e

社會舊惡

shehuiju

社會局

Shehuiju liangshi guanlisuo

社會局 糧食管理所

Shehui kexue luncong

社會科學論叢

shengcheng

省城

Sheng–Gang da bagong

省港大罷工

Select Glossary Sheng–Gang shantang shanghui hangshang pingtiao zong gongsuo

省港善堂商會行商平糶總公所

shengjia

聲價

shengku

省庫

shengshi

盛世

shengshui

省稅

shengyu

聲譽

Shengyuan

生源

shenliang

什糧

Shen Zhiqian

沈之乾

shihua

食話

Shijielu

使節路

shimin liangshi zhian

市民糧食治安

shimizhe

食米者

shishenghuo

食生活

shishi

事實

shi yangmi zhi xiguan

食洋米之習慣

shizai Guangzhou

食在廣州

shizhi yixiao

識字一笑

Shunde

順德

shuxi qingxing zhi ren

熟悉情形之人

shuxi shangwu

熟悉商務

sili cishan tuanti

私立慈善團體

Simiaomi

絲苗米

Songjiang

松江

Su Chang shu tianxia zu

蘇常熟天下足

Suishengyuan

穗生源

Suizhaofeng

穗兆豐

Taishan

泰山

Tan Zhonglin

譚鐘麟

Tang Wenkai

唐文凱

tequan

特權

tewudui

特務隊

tichang guohuo

提倡國貨

tici

題詞

Tiedaobu

鐵道部

263

264

Select Glossary

tige gaoda

體格高大

Tongji zhi gongyong

統計之 功用

Tudi yu renkou

土地與人口

tumi

土米

waisheng waiyang

外省外洋

weichi minshi

維持民食

weiguo

偽國

weitaming

維他命

Wu Boliang

伍伯良

Wu Huanru

吳桓如

Wu Juenong

吳覺農

Wuhu

蕪湖

Wu Tiecheng

吳鐵城

wuwang ciri

勿忘此日

Wuzhou

梧州

Xiangjian

鄉間

xiangjiao qishen mo

橡膠企身磨

Xiangmi xiao Yue

湘米銷粵

Xiangmi xiao Yue jieshao chu

湘米銷粵介紹處

Xianmi an

暹米案

Xiao Guangzhou

小廣州

Xiao Lüsong

小呂宋

Xiaojiao

小絞

Xiaoyang

小洋

Xigong

西貢

Xiguan

西關

Ximi

西米

Ximi dongyun

西米東運

Xinhui

新會

Xinwangli

新旺利

Xiong Liting

熊禮廷

xiyou

嬉遊

Xiuchi

羞恥

Xu Guilin

許桂林

Xu Hao

徐灝

Select Glossary Xu Zhongwei

徐鐘渭

Xuehaitang

學海堂

xunsu queshi

迅速 確實

Yan Duanshu

晏端書

Yan Yangchu

晏陽初

Yan Yuesheng

嚴月笙

Yangchun

陽春

yangfen

洋粉

Yanghetang

養和堂

yangmai

洋麥

yangmi

洋米

yangmishui

洋米稅

yangnu hanjian

洋奴漢奸

yaoyong tuchan liwu waiyi

要用土產 利勿外溢

Yataiji

亞泰基

Ye Shengtao

葉聖陶

yigeqian

一個錢

yihao

一號

Yiheli

義和利

yincha

飲茶

yinhao

銀號

yinle

淫樂

Yinnianmi

銀黏米

yishang

夷商

yizhi shixing

一致實行

Yongantang

永安堂

Yongchanglong

永昌隆

Youhua

幼滑

youshi

尤濕

Yuanfahang

元發行

Yuanheli

源合利

Yuanlong

遠隆

Yu Hanmou

余漢謀

yulun

輿論

Yun bu zhi

原不值

Yuehaiguan

粵海關

265

266

Select Glossary

Yue−Han tielu

粵漢鐵路

Yueshi

粵食

Yueren

粵人

Yuexiang gonglu

粵湘公路

Yusuo

寓所

zagu

雜穀

zaliang

雜糧

zazhi

雜質

zengcheng

增城

Zeng Yangfu

曾養甫

Zhang Kewei

張恪維

Zhang Liandeng

張連登

Zhang Mingqi

張鳴岐

Zhang Peiqian

張沛乾

Zhang Shantu

張善圖

Zhang Weiping

張維屏

Zhang Xinyi

張心一

Zhang Zhidong

張之洞

Zhang Zuizhi

張最芝

zhangxing

漲性

Zhaoqing

肇慶

Zhao Zhuandian

趙傳典

Zheling

浙嶺

zhengqi qingjie

整齊 清潔

Zhenjiang

鎮江

Zhonghua guomi chanxiao xiejinhui

中華國米產銷協進會

zhongxia deng

中下等

zhongyuan

中原

zhu Gang maishou

駐港買手

zhu Hu Yueshang

駐滬粵商

zhukang shui

豬糠稅

Zhuzhou

株洲

zichan jieji

資產階級

Zou Dianbang

鄒殿邦

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Index

Note: Figures, maps, notes, and tables are indicated by f, m, n, and t, respectively, following page numbers. Agricultural Products Tax Bureau, 144–45 Agriculture: food problem and, 116, 131–34; foreign-rice tax in support of, 136, 146, 151–52 A Kedang, 33 Altruism, 64 Amherst, William, 26 Anhui, 66, 79 Annanzhuang (French Indochina rice guild), 46 Anti-imperialism, 102–4 Anti-Japanese War of Resistance (1937– 1945), 192, 222n8. See also Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) Army: behavior of, 90, 96–98, 236n11; feeding, 96–98, 149, 160; and rice smuggling, 90 Association for the Cooperative Improvement of China’s National Rice Production and Marketing, 211 Autarchy, 137 Backwardness, of China, 14, 131–32, 177 Bandits, 71 Bangkok, 8 Bangkok Times (newspaper), 65, 107 Banks and banking, 50–51 Banque de l’indochine, 50 Benevolent societies, 122–23. See also Nine Charitable Halls society Bergère, Marie-Claire, 7 Beriberi, 166–67 Bi Xinsheng, 125 Blockades, 32–33, 226n47 Blue Shirt Society, 202 Boxer Indemnity Funds, 184, 187–88, 247n1 Boycotts, of foreign rice, 170–73

Brand names, 52, 57–62 Bray, Francesca, 52 Britain, Chinese anti-imperialism and, 102–4 British-American Tobacco Company, 77 Bureau of Internal Grain Shipping and Transport, 142 Bureau of Social Affairs, 122–24 Bureaus of Statistics, 1, 125–27 Burma, 47, 229n27 Buy Chinese Movement, 154 B vitamins, 166–67 Cai Tingkai, 149 Cai Yuanpei, 193 Canton: Chiang Kai-shek’s regime and, 196; commercial advantages of, 41– 42, 50; commercial prosperity of, 3, 24–25, 56–57, 117–20; culture of, 15, 21–22, 56, 117, 119, 202–3 (see also and urban extravagance; Food culture, Canton’s); early twentieth-­century changes in, 4; export of rice from, 59; famine in (1936–1937), 203–9, 212; flourishing of, 2; food culture of, 119– 20 (see Food culture, Canton’s); food supply in, 21–22; and foreign-rice boycotts, 170–73; and foreign-rice tax, 138–40, 143–46, 203–9; geography and trade related to, 3, 22–23, 179; Guomindang and, 96, 115; importation of rice in, 21, 30–33, 159–61, 195; maritime trade network of, 3, 7, 23, 28–30; migration to and from, 29; Municipal Council of, 29; and nationalism, 4–5; population of, 29–30, 91; Republican Revolution in, 87; rice milling expertise in, 95; rice supplies in, 2–5, 25; and rice trade, 7–8; social reform in, 202–3; trade in, 3, 5–7, 23, 28–30; and urban extravagance, 119– 22, 195, 202–3; urbanization of, 25. See also Guangdong Canton Chinese Silk Association, 79

292

Index

Canton Clique, 139, 242n11 Canton Food Preservation Commmittee, 105 Canton Food Regulation Committee, 196–97, 205 Canton Food Relief Association, 78–84 Canton Gazette (newspaper), 107 Canton-Hankow Railway, xviim, 17; adversity connected with, 192; completion of, 175, 187–94; difficulties represented by, 190; engineers for, 188–90; and food problem, 187; funding for, 187–88; and Hunan rice, 186, 195, 203–4; importance of, 175–76, 185, 193–94; knowledge and information required for, 183; master planner behind, 183–87; rumors concerning, 191–92; scale of, 247n1; as test of Chinese accomplishment, 187–88, 190, 193–94, 218 Canton-Hong Kong General Pingtiao Association of Charitable Halls and Chamber of Commerce for Cheaper Rice Sales (Sheng-Gang), 68–74 Canton Merchant Corps, 78, 79, 98–100, 101, 237n41 Canton Mining Association, 79 Canton Times (newspaper), 76 Carl, Francis, 91 Cen Chunxuan, 68 Central Agricultural Experimental Station, 116 Changsha, 26, 181, 198–99 Chang-shu rice (Changshu), 162 Characteristics of Various Kinds of Foreign and Native Rice, 162 Charitable halls, 67 Charity. See Philanthropy Chartered Bank, 50 Chase Manhattan Bank, 50 Cheap rice selling. See Pingtiao Chen Bikuang, 164 Chen Bozhuang, 175–76, 180, 183–87, 198, 201, 248n31, 248n35; Economic Survey of the Villages along the Beijing– Hankow Railway, 185; A Survey on Commodity Circulations through China’s Maritime Customs and Railways, 186; Wheat and Wheat Flour, 185 Chen Gongbo, 115, 116, 139, 156, 157 Chen Guangfu, 125, 163–64 Chen Guofu, 126 Chen Hongmou, 31, 180

Chen Jinghua, 87 Chen Jiongming, 90, 96 Chen Jitang, 115, 137, 138, 140, 143– 44, 149, 195, 196, 202–3, 213, 217, 242n11, 243n28, 250n1 Chen Jongming, 88 Chen Lianbo, 76, 78–80, 84, 98–100, 104 Chen Qiyuan, 78 Chen Ruiqi, 49 Chen Zhongmeng, 174; The Way to Improve Rice Quantity and Quality Without Wasting Money and Time, 168 Chiang Kai-shek, 98, 111, 113, 115, 137, 139, 150, 157, 160, 196, 211, 242n4, 250n1 China International Famine Relief Commission, 2 China’s Food Problem, 1 China Weekly Review (newspaper), 193 Chinese Chamber of Commerce, 172 Chinese Communist Party, 86 Chinese Eastern Railway, 184–85 Cholon, 50 Chung Sai Yat Po (newspaper), 59 City, food problem and, 113–14, 117, 129–31 Coastal civilization, 7–8, 223n20 Coclanis, Peter, 5 Commercial prosperity: food security in relation to, 3; rice insufficiency in relation to, 21–22, 30 Committee for the People’s Food Supply, 125 Communication University, 188–89, 249n49. See also Research Institute of the Communication University Communist Party. See Chinese Communist Party Communists, 192 Confucian values, 202 Consumers, 8–9, 11, 47 Country: food problem and, 113–14, 117, 129–31; rural revival, 129, 134, 136, 138, 152, 163 Cullather, Nick, 10 Currency, 42, 50, 238n1 Customs authorities, 161–63 Dagongbao (newspaper), 191 Dalian, 158 Dashatou, 96 Daxin Company, 83

Index Delegation for National Rice Trade and Sales, 211 De Luca, R., 21 Deng Xiaoping, 10 Deng Zhongxia, 104 Department for the Introduction of Hunan Rice, 200 Dikötter, Frank, 155 Dimsum (light meal), 52 Ding Ying, 131–32, 141 Domestic rice. See National rice (guomi) Dongfang zazhi (magazine), 124, 159 Dongguan, 63, 65, 232n1 East China Sea, 46 Eastman, Lloyd, 14 East River, 23 Eating habits: and national security, 173; northern vs. southern, 169–70; nutrition and, 166–68, 174; patriotism and, 165–66, 168–70, 173–74; promoting change in, 201–3; public health and, 166–68 E Bao, 31 “Economic Break Off with the British,” 103f Elegance and Talent in Xiguan, Canton, 149 Elite: and famine relief, 64; government in relation to, 4 Emigration, 8, 29 Enemy goods, 156 Enlightenment, 12–13 Famine, 1, 114 Fangbian Hospital, 67, 77, 123 S.S. Fatshan, 151 Feng Pingshan, 70–71, 76, 233n24 Feng Rui, 132–34, 142–44, 149, 212–13, 253n75 Fengtai County, 114 Feng Yuxiang, 174; Pancakes, 169–70 Films, 83 First United Front, 86, 101 Fish industry, 24 Fitzgerald, John, 144, 243n27 Floods, 114 Food affluence, food scarcity and, 11 Food Conservation Association, 76 Food culture, Canton’s: consumer preferences and, 52–54; extravagance of, 15, 119–22, 195; reform of, 120–24, 202– 3; reputation of, 2–3, 51–52; rice and,

293

3, 6, 51–52, 54–55, 168–69; scarcity/ abundance and, 3, 11; variety as element of, 55–57, 61 Food problem, 1–3, 13–14; agricultural production and, 116; agriculture and, 133; city vs. country and, 113–14, 117, 129–31; factors in, 113–14; foreign rice and, 113–14, 116–25; growing awareness of, 124–25; Guomindang and, 1–3, 13–14; as national security issue, 140, 156–57; national vs. local approaches to, 139, 141–43, 152–53; quantification of, 115, 125–29; railway and, 187; scientific approach to, 13–14, 113–35; taxation as answer to, 137–38; twenty-first century approaches to, 219–20; urgency of, 1, 13, 113, 134–35, 142, 155 Food quality, importance of, 5, 51, 55– 56. See also Rice quality Food Relief Association. See Canton Food Relief Association Food riots, 9, 63, 65, 84, 226n47 Food scarcity, food affluence and, 11 Food scholarship, 8–11 Food security, 3, 4, 168–70 Food Statistics of Guangdong Province, 127 Food traitors, 108–9 Food variety, 56, 61 Foreign goods, 156, 170 Foreign rice, 32–33; beginning of trade in, 33–34, 223n17, 227n53; boycotts of, 170–73; cost of, 7; dominance of, 51, 61, 117; dumping of, 13, 129, 138, 152, 164, 170–71, 185, 206; and food problem, 113–14, 116–25; geographic origins of, 7; importation of, 117, 117f, 127–28, 240n39; mixing, with national rice, 161; as national security issue, 156–57; national vs., 6, 13, 39, 116, 163–64, 197–98, 209, 211; native rice vs., 53; preference for, 6–7, 13, 35, 39, 47, 74, 113, 116, 119, 161; in Republican period, 92–94; taxation of, 35–36 (see also Foreign-rice tax (yangmi shui)) Foreign-rice tax (yangmi shui), 14, 136– 53; agricultural programs as beneficiaries of, 136, 146, 151–52; Canton and, 138–40, 143–46, 203–9; debates over, 140–42, 158; exemptions from and evasions of, 159–61, 204–7,

294

Index

210–11; less-than-expected effect of, 159–61, 173–74; merchants’ response to, 144–50; National Goods Movement and, 154; national imposition of, 202–3; opposition to, 137–40, 144–50; politics of, 138–40, 160; proposal for, 137–38; provincial imposition of, 143– 52, 245n16; quantification in debates about, 140–42, 146; reductions in, during Canton famine, 204–7; repeal of, 209. See also Rice: taxation of Foreign-rice traders’ guild, 147–49 Foshan, 23, 225n6 French Indochina, 47, 49, 50, 83, 198, 229n27. See also Saigon Fujian, 178 Gao Manhua, 48–49, 230n34, 230n35 General Association. See Canton-Hong Kong General Pingtiao Association of Charitable Halls and Chamber of Commerce for Cheaper Rice Sales General Strike Committee, 104, 106, 108 Geography, 22–28, 179 Germany, and food insufficiency, 157, 168 Gerth, Karl, 156 Gongren zhi lu (newspaper), 104 Gongshang ribao (newspaper), 208 Gong Xinzhan, 1–2 Government: elite in relation to, 4; quantification as tool of, 12–14, 115–16, 224n35; and social transformation, 14. See also Nationalist government Grains: consumption of, 165; miscellaneous, 95–96, 169–70; nutritional value of, 169–70 Great Canton–Hong Kong Strike (1925), 102–9, 149 Great Depression, 13, 113, 136, 142, 157, 238n1 “The Great War in Europe” (film), 83 Guangdong, xviim; food problem in, 115; food production in, 1; foreign-rice tax in, 143–46, 151–52; geography of, 22– 23; importation of rice in, 1–2, 33–37; migration of merchants from, 8, 29; rice production in, 39; rice trade in, 30–33; value of foreign trade, 42t. See also Canton Guangdong Agricultural Experiment Field, 132 Guangdong Air Force, 250n1 Guangdong Army, 90, 160

Guangdong Export Association, 79 Guangdong Food Regulation Committee, 146 Guangdong Statistics Series, 127 Guangji Hospital, 67 Guangren Hospital, 67 Guangtongxing (rice firm), 81 Guangxi, 22–23, 27, 30–33 Guangxi Army, 90, 96, 236n11 Guangzhou Minguo ribao (newspaper), 58, 97, 99, 104, 106, 121, 127, 166 Guest Armies, 96–98 A Guide for Local Specialties of Guangdong, 57 Guo Gang, 159 Guomindang: and Britain, 103–4; in Canton, 98–100; and nationalism, 13; objectives of, 4; and science, 13–14, 134–35, 219. See also Nationalism; Nationalist government Guomindang Southwestern Political Affairs Committee, 138, 242n7, 243n28 Guo Yiting, 73 Haizhou Theater, 82 Hangkai (special banking agents), 50–51 Hankow, 26 Hankow Xinminbao (newspaper), 207 Han-sheng Chuan, 6, 177 Han Zhuofu, 200 Harris, A. H., 88 He Jian, 180 S.S. Helikon, 107 S.S. Helios, 107 He Ruhui, 106 He Shaozhuang, 79 He Zhuo, 167 History, attitude toward, 176–77, 218 Hoarding rice, 63, 80, 88–90, 171, 180 Hong Kong: Cantonese rice aid to, 84– 85; and Canton rice famine, 204; commercial power of, 42; dollars from, 42, 50; and foreign-rice tax, 144–45; politics and rice, 103–9; rice dumping in, 171; and rice trade, 6, 7, 41–43, 45– 47, 93; Silk Sprout rice in, 58–59; and Southeast Asian market, 6, 7, 29; trade partners of, 226n31 Hong Kong–Shanghai Bank, 50, 78–79 Hotson, Arnold, 92 Huang Mosong, 204, 252n38 Huang Qian, 71–72 Huang Rifang, 106

Index Huang Xianzhi, 80–82, 92, 106, 108, 143, 147 Huang Yongyu, 143, 145–50, 152–53, 171 Huang Yuanbin, 127 Huang Zhuping, 99 Huazi ribao (newspaper), 59, 65 Hubei, 30, 177, 206 Huguang, 177–78 Hu Hanmin, 87–88, 104, 242n4 Hunan, xviim, 28, 30, 206–7 Hunan Army, 96, 97 Hunan rice: and Canton famine, 203–4; Canton-Hankow Railway and, 186, 195, 203–4; government failures regarding, 201; improvements to, 198– 200; market structure for, 197–99; quality of, 178–79, 182–83, 197–200; supplies of, 176–77, 180, 194; trade in, 179–82, 198, 201 Hunan Rice Sales, 175, 176, 181–82, 186, 194–95, 197–99, 201, 204, 212, 218 Hu Shih, 184 Husked bran and broken rice tax, 147–48 Husks, rice, 166–69, 198 Imperialism, and rice, 102–5 Indochina. See French Indochina Innocent, J. W., 75 Japan: antipathy toward, 170–71; as national security threat, 140, 157; and origin of Chinese-consumed foods, 157–58; and rice trade, 75–76. See also Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) Japanese rice, 162, 170–71 Jianggu (negotiation after the deal), 43 Jiangnan, 23, 30 Jiangsu, 79 Jiangxi, 28, 66 Jiang Zungui, 87 Jian Qinshi, 105 Jian Yingfu, 84 Jian Zhaonan (Kan Chiu-nan), 76–80, 82, 84, 234n48 Jia Shiyi, 141 Juan rice, 57–58 June Twenty-third Street, 109. See also Shakee Street Junks, 42, 231n66 Kan Chiu-nan. See Jian Zhaonan Kangjian zazhi (magazine), 167

295

Kangxi, Emperor, 177–78 Kaplan, Steven, 5 Kerr, John Glasgow, 54 Kong Xiangxi, 154 Kong Yuen Hong, 73, 84 Kong Yuxun, 30–31 Korean rice, 162 Kowloon, 160 Kraus, Richard, 6, 177 Kung Yuen Hong (Gongyuan hang), 49, 69, 71 Kwantung Army, 157 Kwok, Daniel, 219 Kwong Hang Hing (Guangheng xing), 49 S.S. Kwonghoi, 83 Labor, rice and, 100–102 Land and Population of the Province, 127 Lan markets, 56 Lau Sheung Nin, 230n39 Lee Fong, 151–52 Lei Ming, 166 Levenson, Joseph, 176, 218 Liang Zhiting, 70 Liao Zhongkai, 149 Li Chaojie, 72 Li Chaopei, 69 Li Koon-chun, 204 Li Liangyue, 89 Lin Changshi Linbaochang, 31–32 Ling Hongxun, 187–92, 250n59; Bridges, 189; Life Building Railways for Sixteen Years, 189; Urban Planning, 189 Lingja Canal, 27, 225n23 Lin Yizhong, 143 Lin Yungai, 145, 158 Little, L. K., 159–61 Liu Hou, 182, 197–200 Liu Xiaochuan (Lau Siu Cheun), 49, 230n39 Liu Xiaozhuo, 71, 233n26 Long Jiguang, 88 Long March, 192 Lunghai Railway, 189 Luo Bingzhang, 35, 227n62 Lu Rongting, 90 Luzon Island, 33 Macartney, George, 26 Machine milling, 92, 94–96, 167, 236n21 Mai Zhu, 178 Malnutrition, 1, 114

296

Index

Manchuguo, 193 Manchukuo, 157–58 Manchuria, 157–58 Manchurian Incident (1931), 114 Manchurian Railway, 185 Ma Yinchu, 120, 164–65, 193; Reorganization of the Chinese Economy, 164 May Thirtieth Movement, 102 McKeown, Adam, 7 Medicine, 122–23 Meiling Pass, 26, 225n18 Merchant Bureaus, 98 Merchant Corps. See Canton Merchant Corps Merchants: and banking, 50; and boycotts of foreign rice, 170–73; expertise of, 43–45, 72, 73, 80–82, 94, 148, 152, 200; and foreign-rice tax, 144–50, 152–53; and Hunan rice, 200–201; migration of, 8, 29; and nationalism, 106; philanthropy of, 64, 66–67, 76–78, 122–23; reputation of, 88–91, 153 Mibentang rice guild, 99, 237n44 Miji (machine-powered mills), 92, 94–95. See also Machine milling Miles, Steven B., 36 Milling, of rice, 92, 94–96, 167, 236n21 Ministry of Labor, 106 Ministry of Railways, 175, 249n45 Miscellaneous grains, 95–96 Modern state, and quantification, 12–14, 224n35 Mo Rongxin, 90 Mountains, trade influenced by, 25–28 Mo Zhengcong, 90 Mukden Incident, 185 Municipal Trade Restoration Committee, 154 Mu Tenge, 33 Nanbei hang, 46, 77, 229n24 Nanhai County Gazetteer, 58–59 Nanjing, 4 Nanling mountain ranges, 22–23 Nanyang. See Southeast Asia Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company, 76–78, 82–83, 84, 105 National Army, 96–98 National Food Conference, 137, 150–51 National goods, 155–56, 200 National Goods Movement, 17, 154–74 Nationalism, 12–15, 86–109; Canton and, 4–5; and eating habits, 165–66,

168–70; national goods and, 155– 56; National Goods Movement and, 154–55; quantification and, 116, 139; and science, 239n7; Siamese, 172; and territorial integrity, 13. See also Guomindang Nationalist government: anti-imperialism of, 103; establishment of, 1; failures of, 135, 195, 201–12, 219–20; and food problem, 1, 3, 13–14, 114; and foreign-rice tax, 136–53; provincial opposition to, 137, 143–44, 242n4, 242n11; and quantification, 125–29, 219; and railways, 249n45; and rice supply, 105; and rice trade, 122–24; and science, 13–14, 114–15, 126, 134–35, 217. See also Guomindang Nationalist Revolution, 102 National Products Exhibition (1928), 154 National rice (guomi), 154–74; boycotts in support of, 170–73; coining of term, 155–56; confusion concerning, 156– 58; defining, 157–58; foreign vs., 6, 13, 39, 116, 163–64, 197–98, 209, 211; native rice vs., 156; nutritional value of, 166–70; patriotism and, 168–70; promotion of consumption of, 165–66, 196–97; quality of, 6, 116, 161–63. See also Hunan rice; Wuhu rice National Rice Promotion Program, 217, 218, 219 National Salvation Association, 158 National security, 140, 156–57, 169–70, 173 Native rice (tumi), 53, 156 New Life Movement, 202–3 New Life Movement Promotional Association, 202 Nine Charitable Halls society, 66, 67, 69, 71, 87, 122–23 Nineteenth Route Army, 149 Nongsheng (journal), 132, 136 Northern China, 223n15 Northern Expedition, 4 North River, 23 Nutrition, 121–22, 166–70, 174. See also Malnutrition Office for Economic Survey, 127 Office for Food Control, 123 Pa-ching rice (Bacheng), 162 Panyu County Gazetteer, 57

Index Patriotism, 108, 165–66, 168–70. See also Nationalism Pearl River, 23 Pearl River Bund, 56, 91 Pearl River Delta: commercial agriculture of, 24–25; ecology of, 24; economic status of, 30; geography of, 22–23, 225n5; insufficient grain production in, 3; migration from, 29; political economy of, 18–37; population of, 23; rice production in, 21; rice supplies in, 2; silk industry in, 24–25; urbanization of, 7, 23 Philanthropy, 64, 66–70, 76–78, 82–83, 122–23. See also Rice relief efforts Picketing Squads, 105, 106, 108–9 Pingtiao (cheap rice selling), 66–67, 88, 122 Pirates, 71 Polished rice, 52, 54, 94–95, 122, 166–67 Politics: of foreign-rice tax, 138–40, 160; Guomindang and rice supplies, 99– 100; and national rice, 157; of provincialism, 143–46; rice and imperialism, 102–5; rice and labor issues, 100–102; and rice in early Republican period, 87–94; and rice trade, 105–7 Porter, Theodore M., 240n56 Problem in the Tax Exemption for the Cantonese Foreign Rice Imports, 207 Profiteering, 32, 63, 80, 88–89, 100, 122, 123 Propaganda, 99–100, 105 Prosperous Age, 30, 226n47 Protectionism, 136–37, 141, 157 Provincialism, 90–91, 142–46, 206–9 Public health, 166–67 Qing empire, 21, 28–32, 55, 65–66, 71– 73, 87, 177–78, 180 Quantification: of food problem, 115, 125–29; and foreign-rice tax, 140–42, 146; of grain consumption, 165; nationalism and, 116, 139; nationalist government and, 125–29, 219; political effects of, 128; scholarship and, 8–12; science identified with, 13; statecraft and, 12–14, 115–16. See also Statistical representations, of food problem issues Rangoon, 8, 95, 148 Rangoon rice (Mindang), 162

297

Rangoon rice (Xiaojiao), 162 Red Turban riots, 66 Red Turbans, 227n61 Remittances, 29, 50 Republican Revolution, 87 Republican transition, 2, 21, 29, 87–94 Research Institute of the Communication University, 183–86 Revolutionary ideology: science and, 121; and social behavior, 121 Rice: consumption of other grains compared to, 165; foreign vs. national, 46t; as national goods, 155–63; nutritional value of, 122; payment regulations for, 93; price of, 5, 38, 43, 53–54, 87, 101, 166, 198, 205; as staple food, 5, 54; statistical representations of, 126–29; varieties of, 38, 52, 161–63; white, 166–67; white, preferred, 52, 94–95; as world commodity, 5–8. See also Foreign rice; National rice (guomi); Native rice (tumi) Rice business: labor and, 101–2; professionalization of, 91–94; rivalries in, 146; technological innovations in, 94– 95. See also Rice market; Rice trade Rice Coolies strike, 101–2, 237n53 Rice in Hunan Province, 186 Rice insufficiency: anticipation of, 65–67; Canton’s food culture and, 7, 11, 15; causes of, 23–25, 133; commercial prosperity in relation to, 21–22, 30; quantification of, 128; rice quality during, 73–74; scientific approach to, 133; worldwide (1918–1919), 75–85. See also Rice relief efforts Rice market, 38–39; competition in, 46, 46t, 197–98; junks and, 231n66; local variations in, during Nationalist government, 158–59; other markets dependent on, 56–57; restructuring of, 197–99; rural areas supplied by, 38; surveys of, 162–63; variety in, 38, 52. See also Rice business; Rice trade Rice quality: classifications of, 6, 47, 52–53; components of, 5; consumers and, 11–12, 38, 51–55; and eating habits, 174; factors in, 163; food security and, 168; foreign vs. national, 6, 116, 161–63, 197–98; foreign vs. native, 53; of Hunan rice, 178–79, 182–83, 197– 200; inspection bureau for, 199, 201; local preferences for, 6, 51–52; market

298

Index

values tied to, 5; milling process and, 94–95, 236n21; moisture content and, 54–55, 178–79, 199; on northern vs. southern trade routes, 46; and nutritional value, 54; during rice shortages, 73–74; and satiety, 54; storage time as factor in, 170–71; taste and, 163–66 Rice relief efforts, 22, 65–85; declining Qing authority and, 71–73; for Hong Kong, 84–85; lessons learned from, 65, 73; merchants’ expertise and, 80–82; Nationalist government and, 123–24; political motivations for, 91; popular participation in, 82–83; significant individuals in, 70–71; world crisis (1918–1919) and, 75–85 Rice riots. See Food riots Rice shortages. See Rice insufficiency Rice supplies: Canton-Hankow Railway and, 175–76; Hunan rice and, 176–77, 180 Rice surcharges, 66 Rice trade: blockades in, 32–33, 226n47; Canton and, 5–8; Chinese dominance in, 48; climate as factor in, 28, 55; comparative advantage in, 41–42; expertise in, 43–44; foreign vs. national, 53; Guangxi and, 27; Guangxi-Guangdong, 30–33; Guomindang’s regulation of, 122–24; hierarchy in, 93–94; human factors in, 48–51; Hunan and, 179–82, 198; interprovincial, 30–33, 181; junks and, 231n66; northern route of, 44–45; politics and, 105–7; private, 31; in Republican period, 92– 94; rivalries in, 95–96; routes of, 40– 45; security problems in, 71; southern route of, 41–44, 47–51; time as factor in, 28, 47, 198. See also Rice business; Rice market Rice Wharf Street, 56, 92. See also Shakee Street Riots. See Food riots Rogaski, Ruth, 13, 135 Ruan Licun, 71, 233n26 Ruan Yuan, 24, 33–36 Rural areas. See Country Rural Experiment, 241n71 Rural revival, 129, 134, 136, 138, 152, 163 Rural Revival Committee, 142 Russia, and five-year plan, 151; and food insufficiency, 157

Saigon, 8, 21, 45, 50, 83 Saigon rice (Xigong), 162 San Francisco, 8, 58–60, 229n28 Sanjiang bang (rice guild), 79, 92–93, 95– 96, 146, 182, 203, 236n29, 251n30 Satiety, as criterion for choosing rice, 54 Science: advancement of, 13–14; and agriculture, 131–34; and food problem, 13–14, 113–35; Guomindang and, 13– 14, 134–35, 219; and Hunan rice quality, 198–200; nationalism and, 239n7; nationalist government and, 126, 217; and nutrition, 121–22; and power, 13; quantification identified with, 13; and revolutionary ideology, 121; and statecraft, 12–14, 126, 219, 224n35; supposed deficiency in, 1–2, 13, 114. See also Quantification; Statistical representations, of food problem issues Scott, James C., 12 Scottish Oriental Steamship Company, 48 Self-sufficiency, in food production, 116, 128–29, 132, 136–37, 140, 146, 156–57 September 18th Incident, 185 Sericulture. See Silk industry Shakee Massacre (1925), 102–3, 109 Shakee Street, 91, 109. See also Rice Wharf Street Shameen district, 56–57 Shameen Island, 92 Shanghai, 44–45, 78, 119, 159, 162–63, 172–73, 206, 211, 240n39 Shanghai Commercial and Saving Bank, 163 Shanghai Commercial Press, 189 Shanghai Incident (1932), 114 Shanghai Xinwenbao (newspaper), 207 Shanzhuang (Siam rice trade guild), 46 Shaoguan, 97 Shehui kexue luncong (journal), 127 Shenbao (newspaper), 193 Sheng-Gang. See Canton-Hong Kong General Pingtiao Association of Charitable Halls and Chamber of Commerce for Cheaper Rice Sales Shenghuo zhoukan (magazine), 125 Shengyuan rice shop, 97 Shen Zhiqian, 63 Shixing County, 97 Siam, 47, 49, 83, 106–8, 172–73, 198, 229n27. See also Bangkok Silk Districts, 24, 198 Silk industry, 24–25

Index Silk Sprout (Simiao) rice, 53, 57–61, 60f Silver Glutinous (Yinnian) rice, 53 Silver standard, 238n1 Singapore, 58–59 Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), 4, 211, 222n8, 249n54. See also Anti-Japanese War of Resistance (1937–1945) Sip, D. E., 67 Skinner, G. William, 28 Smuggling, 42, 90, 159–60, 171 Social surveys, 126–27, 186 Societal elite. See Elite Song Ziliang, 210–11, 250n2 Soong, T. V., 137–38, 142, 144, 150, 210–11 South China Morning Post (newspaper), 84, 193, 204–5 South China Rice Trading Corporation (SCRTC), 209–12 South China Sea, maritime trade on, 8, 28–30, 47–51, 75 Southeast Asia: rice from, 6, 7; and southern rice trade route, 41–44 Special Brigade of the Provincial Department of Treasury, 150 Special Volume for the Celebration of the Completion of the Zhuzhou-Shaoguan Section of the Canton-Hankow Railway, 175 Speculation, in rice trade, 88, 122–23, 171, 180 Statecraft school, 31 Statistical representations of food problem issues, 115–16, 126–29, 139, 141, 146, 165. See also Quantification Steamship cargo service, 7, 41, 44 Strauss, Julia, 135 Suishengyuan (rice firm), 79 Suizhaofeng, 70 Sun Fo, 99, 187 Sung-kiang rice (Songjiang), 162 Sun Yat-sen, 4, 78, 87, 96, 111, 123, 134, 149, 151, 184, 185, 187, 216, 249n45 Surveys of food supply and consumption, 1–2 Swatow, 158 Swislocki, Mark, 52 Tagliacozzo, Eric, 218 Tang Wenkai, 142 Tan Zhonglin, 39, 55 Taste, of rice, 163–66. See also Rice quality

299

Taxes, administration of, 137. See also Foreign-rice tax Tea drinking, 51–52 Technology, 94–95 Territorial integrity, 13 Thailand. See Siam Three Eastern Provinces, 157–58 Three Principles of the People, 184 Trade, 47–51; in Canton, 3, 5–7, 23; geography and, 22–23, 25–28, 179; international, 4–8; origins of overseas grain, 223n17; rice and international, 4–8; sources of information on, 222n5. See also Rice trade Traditional medicine, 122–23 Trans-Siberian Railway, 184 Treacherous merchants, 88–91, 153 Treason. See Food traitors Tung Wah Hospital, 68–70, 73 Untold Stories in Guangdong, 89 Urban areas. See City U.S. Department of Agriculture, 132 Vitamin B, 166–67 Wakeman, Frederic, 202 Wang Jingwei, 87 Warlord period, 96 Waterway trade route, 27–28 The Way to Improve Rice Quantity and Quality Without Wasting Money and Time, 168 Weber, Eugen, 10 Wen-hsin Yeh, 126 Western culture: banks and banking of, 50; medicine of, 122–23; science and technology of, 14, 16, 135, 176– 77, 184, 195, 218–20; statistical in, 126 West River, 23, 30–32 Whampoa Military Academy, 102 White rice, 52, 94–95, 166–67. See also Polished rice Wilbur, C. Martin, 97 Working class, 103 World War I, 75 Wu Boliang, 122–24 Wu Huanru, 159 Wuhu rice: abandonment of, in favor of foreign rice, 165; as chief export of Wuhu, 229n18; costs of, 165; foreignrice tax and, 146; problems in business

300

Index

practices of, 164; quality of, 46, 53– 55, 74, 82, 163, 211; rice relief and, 75–76, 79–82, 84–85; trade in, 44–46, 95, 151, 234n58 Wu Juenong, 124 Wu Tiecheng, 196, 211, 250n2 Xie Entan, 136 Xiguan district, 56 Xinhui County, 97 Xi Suan, 208 Xu Guilin, 191 Xu Hao, 36 Xu Zhongwei, The Difficulty of Eating, 129–30 Yan Duanshu, 36 Yanghetang (rice firm), 81, 99 Yangzi, and rice trade, 21, 29, 30, 44–45, 104, 114, 159, 177–78 Yan Yuesheng, 101 Yen, James, 132, 241n71 Ye Shengtao, “You Were Paid Enough,” 130–31 Yinhang Zhoubao (magazine), 125 Yongandang (rice firm), 99 Yongchanglong rice shop, 96–97

Yongzheng, Emperor, 178 You Xin, 124 Yuanfa hang (Yuen Fat Hong), 48–49 Yuan Lan, 167 Yuen Fat Hong (Yuanfa hang), 48–49 Yu Hanmou, 204, 252n38 Yunan Army, 96, 97 Yu Qizhong, A Research on the Canton Working Class Family, 51 Zengcheng County, 53, 57, 71–72 Zhang Gongquan, 192 Zhang Kewei, 140 Zhang Liandeng, 177 Zhang Mingchi, 87 Zhang Weiping, 35 Zhang Xinyi, 1, 222n1 Zhang Yueping, 36, 227n59 Zhang Zhidong, 59 Zhang Zuizhi, 73 Zhao Zhuandian, 97 Zheling Pass, 26–27, 225n19 Zhongshan University, 127, 131–32 Zhong Zhenzhong, 200 Zhou (rice merchant), 89 Zhuzhou, 199 Zou Dianbang, 181, 200