CHINESE FISHING 
CHAPTER XLIII 
‘“PLUS UN PAYS PRODUIT DES POISSONS, PLUS IL 
PRODUIT D’HOMMES ” 
Ir 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.”’ 3 
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 
1122 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 earlier centuries 
1 See P. Dabry de Thiersant, La Pisciculture et la Péche en Chine, Paris, 1872, 
2 The Middle Kingdom (New York, 1900), vol. I., 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.” 
3S. W. Williams, op. cit., I., p. 779 f. 
4E, T. C. Werner, Descriptive Sociology : Chinese, London, 1911. 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. 
449 
