FARM-LIFE IN CHINA. 323 



FAEM-LIFE IN CHINA. 



By ADELE M. FIELDE. 



THE number of persons that may subsist upon the products of 

 an acre of land appears to have been practically determined 

 by the Chinese. On ground that has been tilled for thousands of 

 years they, by a skillful use of fertilizers and by attention to the 

 welfare of each plant, raise crops that would honor a virgin soil. 



In this Swatow region probably nine tenths of the men are 

 engaged in agriculture. The farmers live in villages, isolated 

 dwellings being uncommon. The villages are walled, contain no 

 wasted space, and are densely peopled. The wide-spreading, flat 

 fields, lying along the river-banks at the foot of the hills, may be 

 made to yield here on the Tropic of Cancer a constant series of 

 crops without interval on account of winter. Their chief produc- 

 tions are rice, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, pulse, garden vegetables, 

 peanuts, indigo, sesamum, ginger, the grass-cloth plant, tobacco, 

 and wheat. Rice is the staple food of the people, and in the best 

 years the local product just supplies the local demand. Sugar is 

 the principal export. The cane requires less labor than any other 

 crop, and will grow upon unwatered land, which is unsuitable for 

 rice-culture. One crop of cane or two crops of other produce may 

 be grown in the same year upon unwatered land. On the best 

 rice-fields three crops are sometimes raised. The early rice is 

 sowed in April and harvested in July ; the late rice is sowed in 

 August and harvested in November, and the field is then some- 

 times planted with garden vegetables, which are pulled in March. 

 The expense of fertilizing the third crop is so nearly equal to its 

 value that it is never reckoned as a source of profit to the culti- 

 vator. 



The whole country belongs theoretically to its sovereign, and 

 upon all land that can be tilled with profit a tax is paid into the 

 imperial treasury. The sum due annually to the Government for 

 the use of land is fixed for each field, amounts to from sixty cents 

 to two dollars, and averages a dollar and a half upon each Eng- 

 lish acre. 



When a father dies his land is divided equally among his sons, 

 the eldest receiving an additional tenth on account of the extra 

 expense to which he is put in worshiping the manes of the ances- 

 tor. The land is distributed very generally, though unequally, 

 among the people, and is usually tilled by its peasant proprietor. 

 Few own so much as two hundred acres ; one who owns ten acres 

 is reckoned wealthy, and he who owns one acre possesses a compe- 

 tence. Those who own from one tenth to one half an acre are 



