CHINESE FISHING 



CHAPTER XLIII 



"PLUS UN PAYS PRODUIT DES POISSONS, PLUS IL 

 PRODUIT d'HOMMES " 



If the above dictum ^ and Williams's statement that " in no 

 country, except Japan, is so much food derived from the 

 water," 2 be accurate, modern China should lack not folk nor 

 food. Every method of fishing obtains in one part of the 

 country or other, and scarce a sea or stream exists unvexed 

 by some piscatorial implement. 



" Fish are killed by the spear, caught with the hook, scraped 

 up by the dredge, ensnared in traps, and captured by nets : 

 they are decoyed to jump into boats by painted boards, and 

 frightened into nets by noisy ones, taken out of the water by 

 lifting nets, and dived in for by birds, for the cormorant seizes 

 what his owner can not easily reach." ^ 



This description, minus the cormorant but plus leistering, 

 applies fairly well to Ancient China. Mr. Werner's great 

 work discloses no distinct mention of fishing previous to 

 1 122 B.C., although the present to a Viceroy of " cuttle fish 

 condiment " apparently implies it. From that date the 

 Spear, the Net, the Line, the Rod, and divers strange devices 

 figure frequently and historically.* In the eariier centuries 



^ See P. Dabry deThiersant, La Pisciculture et la Peche en Chine, Paris, 1872. 



- The Middle Kingdom (New York, 1900), vol. L, p. 276. Cf. S. Wright, 

 op. cit., p. 204, " In China there are more river-fishers than all the sea-fishers 

 of Europe and America put together." 



^ S. W. Williams, op. cit., J., p. 779 f. 



* E. T. C. Werner, Descriptive Sociology : Chinese, London, 191 1. This 

 work, an abiding monument of twenty years of unabated toil and unceasing 

 research into Chinese literature, ancient and modern, was published by the 

 Herbert Spencer Trustees. 



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