The turbulent yet all-embracing Yangtze River cuts through the expansive industrial heartland of Central China. This vital river for commerce and trade begins its journey in the glacial meltwater of the Tanggula mountains. It then carves its way through 6,300 kilometers of rugged plateaus, exquisite basins, and dilapidated foothills. Eventually, reaching its penultimate end by violently draining its contents into the East China Sea near the affluent city of Shanghai. Ancient warlords fought brutally to access the resources and services this river had to offer. The Han Dynasty dating back roughly two and a half thousand years continually engaged in skirmishes along the sandy banks of the Yangtze River to reap the economic and social benefits the river provided. Today, locals conveniently refer to the river as Chang Jiang meaning “long river”. The origins of the phrase can be derived from ancient anecdotes believed to be conceived by a prominent general that served the Han Dynasty. The Yangtze River has witnessed monumental shifts in culture and traditions as China has transformed itself from several fractured nation-states to a robust unified country. However, the mighty Yangtze has yet to see one commodity diminish.
Shaan Xi, a Chinese province renowned for its majestic lowlands and striking rice paddy terraces, appears to have withstood three millennia of environmental pressures. Just as the sun prepares to pierce through the hill covered horizon with a deep orange glow, the tranquility and silence of a remote homestead portray a sense of eeriness, as if no trace of life had ever inhabited this quaint household. Nonetheless, the reality is, as the star-covered night still envelops the sky, Changying, a humble rice paddy farmer gathers his 150-year-old handcrafted bamboo basket and a wide-brimmed straw hat to begin his lingering journey toward the rice paddy terraces. Changying’s daily trek through the countryside materializes into an astonishingly beautiful scene of sweeping hills carpeted with various croppings against the rigid walls of limestone rock. Only here are the remnants of ancient China present, where traditional chestnut-colored mud-brick huts constructed by the isolated Chinese farmers remain. Changying begins to plant the rice seeds in early spring as the humid air provides vital nutrients for the rice plants to first turn a stunning green. Then within a few months, as the time for the first harvest approaches, the grains begin to appear at the end of the rice shoots, transforming the rolling hills into a vast sea of deep gold.
The practice of cultivating rice in China has remained the dominant crop process for thousands of years. Central China is where the techniques of rice cultivation spread throughout east Asia using trade routes. Since the beginning of recorded human history, Asian farmers year in and year out have involved themselves in the same tedious and relentless cycle of terrace agriculture. Rice paddies are strenuously built rather than simply cleared as in western wheatfields. Farmers such as Changying, are forced to excavate unimaginable amounts of cumbersome earth and rock to form an intricate series of terraces. A farmer simply cannot clear the trees, undergrowth, and stones to then plow. Also, a rice patty must be irrigated so a sophisticated system of dikes is integrated around the perimeter of the field. Channels are then dug connecting the nearest water source with a series of gates linked into the dikes for the water flow to be precisely allocated amongst the rice plants. Changying and, to be more precise, his entire family since rice cultivation is a family matter; plant the seeds in an already designated seedbox. After a few weeks pass, the rice seedlings are transported to a field in a calculated manner to then be planted into rows six inches apart. All the clearing of invasive plants is conducted by hand ardently and purposefully since the rice seedlings are easily suffocated by other plant life. “Rice is life,” suggests anthropologist Gonçalo Santos, who has studied extensively traditional Chinese agriculture. “Without rice, you don’t survive. If you want to be anyone in this part of China, you would have to have rice. It made the world go round.”
One of the most noticeable features regarding a rice paddy— rarely conceived until you stand right in the middle of one— is its size. It’s uniquely tiny. The common rice paddy is no larger than a midsize New York City apartment room. The classic Asian rice farm typically consists of two to three paddies. At this scale, with families living off a farm the size of two New York City apartment rooms, agriculture alters the techniques and skills required to produce a successful crop. Historically, Western cultivation is “machine” oriented. If a farmer in the West desires to intensify crop yields or operate more efficiently, he would acquire increasingly refined equipment, which in turn opens up the door for better profit margins because he replaces human labor with mechanical labor. He can clear another field and increase his total acreage, due to the increase in efficient mechanical labor. However, in China rice farmers are the personification of poverty therefore they cannot pay for equipment— and in many cases, the land cannot be easily transformed into new, perfectly leveled-off fields. So rice farmers are required to compensate for the lack of equipment by becoming smarter, by managing their time more efficiently, and making better choices to survive against the competition. Anthropologist Francesca Bray explains that rice cultivation is very “skill oriented”: if you’re inclined to clear invasive plants a bit more carefully, become more diligent when fertilizing, or monitor the water levels a bit more precisely, and optimize every square inch of each rice paddy, then you’ll collect a larger amount of crops.
Over the course of history, it comes as no surprise that Changying and the rice farmers situated in Central China have meticulously developed their rice patties, having labored harder than any other variant of farmer.
Consider the miserable life of peasantry in 18th century Europe. The men and women labored significantly from dawn to midday for roughly two hundred days a year, which is equivalent to twelve hundred hours of labor annually. Wheatfields when compared to rice paddies are not as nearly a labor-intensive crop creating inconsistencies within Western peasants’ work schedules. Chinese and Western institutional hierarchical structures varied by a significant margin to allow for different philosophies to take root regarding the role of the peasantry. In Europe, the peasants essentially labored as under-paid slaves for an aristocratic landlord, with no control over one’s destiny. Alternatively, in China, this oppressive feudal system never came to fruition, particularly because a rice-based economy doesn’t breed financial success for feudalism. The cultivation of rice is far too complex and self-reliant for a system based on coercion and threats to the farmers to effectively motivate them into working in the fields each morning. Therefore, this gave Chinese rice farmers a sense of autonomy from the governing body, which in turn led to dramatic and exponential advances in science and philosophy. These advances in science and philosophy have been manifest within In The Discovery of France, where historian Graham Robbs believes the peasantry in a country such as France, lasting well into the nineteenth century, consisted of free episodes of labor then subsequently followed by long periods of indolence. “ 99% of all human activity described in this and other accounts of French country life,” he says, “Took place between late spring and early autumn.” Essentially, once the snow began to trickle down from the clouds; western wheat farmers would hibernate by not engaging in a form of labor from November through the beginning of March.
However, the agricultural cycle of rice prevents peasant farmers in central China from resting throughout the winter. When a short break presents itself, typically from November through January because of the dry climate, farmers construct bamboo hats and baskets to sell at the local market. Tending to a rice patty is roughly three times more labor dependent than working on an equivalent sized wheatfield. Estimates put the annual work time of rice cultivation in Asia at three and a half thousand hours compared to their European counterparts farmers spend roughly twelve hundred hours. The deeply integrated work ethic that has been ingrained into Asian communities passed through many generations is evident today. Working extremely hard is a fundamental aspect of successful individuals, and the brilliance of the culture created in those rice paddies is that a strong work ethic gave those laboring in the field a sense of reason or meaning amid unimaginable poverty. As the day comes to a close, the rich soil seems to glisten like diamonds as the cool water recedes; a bent-over Changying seems to be pondering. He mutters a famous Chinese proverb “no one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich”. This attitude fostered by rice cultivation is what continues to transform a nation into a global superpower.