China's Village Folk
" ORIGINALLY published in 1938 this book is reprinted in the Inter- national Library of Sociology because of its importance in relation to problems of reconstruction today." So say the publishers on the flap, or cover, of the book, and there can can no doubt that they have judged rightly. A study in miniature of peasant life, the book is of great value as a portrayal of China's rural difficulties and potentialities. These lie at the centre of her tasks of reconstruction, first because the bulk of her population is dependent for its existence upon farming ; secondly because this dependence is complicated, and in some respects rendered desperate, by maladjustments long neglected by reason of the traditions which sanction them, and thirdly because in the innumerable villages of which China consists are to be found, side by side with the maladjustments, qualities and aptitudes which make her one of the biggest reservoirs of moral strength and practical capacity in the world. A short cut to under standing why China has proved unconquerable by Japan, and wh. on the other hand so much of her territory has passed into Japanese hands, is to read this book.
It describes the village of Kaihsienkung on the south-east bank of Lake Tai in the lower course of the Yangtze river, about 8o miles west of Shanghai. Kaihsienkung stands in a rice and silk growing district, its area being 461 acres and its annual average rice produc tion 18,000 bushels. The population, when Dr. Fei made his inve tigations, was estimated at 1,458 persons, of whom 771 were mal
and 684 females, men between the ages of 20 and 6o totalling 41 women between the same ages 357. The silk which the distri produces is the silk so well known in European markets as tsatlee Wheat, rapeseed and vegetables are also grown, while the waterways provide fish, shrimps and crabs and various edible clants.
The villagers proper are all farmers. Not regarded as village though resident in Kaihsienkung, are two barbers, the miller and t shoemaker, the grocer, the spinner, the silversmith, the bamboo artisan, a medicine dealer, the operator of the pumping mach' and a priest. Their birthplaces were in other Kiangsu villages,
in the next province of Chekiang. Their pronunciation of the locs dialect, their t'u hue, is different, nor do their women wear skirt
as the village women proper do, even in summer. These "out siders " are useful but small fry, because four miles south of t village is a town, Chen Tse, in which most of the important sho
ping is done. It is done by boatmen who offer a free daily service to purchase necessities, and derive their income from acting as selling agents of the villagers. No written orders are given to the boatmen, but bottles and other receptacles only, with cash in the form of coppers, which are handed over in small sums and thrown into the bottom of the boat. Not a note is made of the amounts received. The commissions are all executed iron.' memory. Rarely is there any mistake ; disputes, apparently, are unknown.
The basic social group in the village is the Chia, an expanded family which sometimes includes grown and married children and relatively remote patrilineal kinsmen. It has a common property, a common budget and pursues its livelihood through division of labour. Contrary to prevalent notions of China, the average Chia in the village consists of four persons. The so-called large family is chiefly found in towns and has a different economic basis. The rural basis is narrow ; life is hard and very poor.. About 27 bushels of rice are needed to support one man, one woman and one child. In a normal year six bushels can be obtained from one mow of land. There are 36o households, 461 acres of land, say, assuming equal division, 9.5 mow, or 1.2 acres per household. So 3 family with nine mow faces a serious problem if a second boy is born. More- over, tradition dictates that, if and when the boys grow up, they divide the land. " The usual solution," says the author, " is in- fanticide or abortion." It is generally the girls who are got rid of, for " a girl is of less value in the eyes of the parents because, as soon as she is mature, she will leave her parents and have no obliga- tion to support them." On the other hand, she then ceases to have any call on them ; that ends with her dowry. Property is inherited by sons only, notwithstanding recent legislaticn. Children begin work, light work, at six. Education is haphazard, for school terms are not adjusted to the calendar of rural work. Absence, accord- ingly, is frequent. " Illiterate parents do not take school education very seriously," remarks Dr. Fei.
But the cohesion of the village and its moral strength are great. In selling or leasing the land nobody excepi the head of the Chia can make a decision. Individual ownership is confined mostly to goods for consumption. Members of a Chia are under an obliga- tion to protect any article belonging to any particular member in the group. To sell a piece of land inherited from one's father offends the ethical sense of the village. It is very common for people to work on the same piece of land from early manhood till death. There are absentee landlords but unless the absentee owns the surface of the land as well as the subsoil he has no right to use the land directly. The Chia always holds the ownership of the land surface ; it may, or may not, own the subsoil also and so be the title-holder of the land. As holder of. the surface land the Chia cannot be interfered with—unless rent is not paid for two years. And even if that happens, well, outsiders are not welcomed if they come at the expense of the villagers, and land uncultivated is
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