Changes Of Huizhou Lineage Populations And Livelihood In The Ming-Qing Periods

This paper is based upon the study of a lineage of two Xu clans in the She-xian Xucun and Ji-xi Kantou villages in Huizhou. The main point is to ascertain changes in the lineage population and livelihood in the Huizhou area during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The goal of this population research is to provide the demographic tools with which to analyze the growth and decline of populations, development of clan organizations, conventions of marriage and adoption, migration and external business ventures as well as the role of the imperial examinations enabling officials to obtain external resources. It also provides information about the historical quest for increasing clan properties and the rules tenants had to follow. There are six chapters with approximately 140 thousand Chinese words on these topics.Xucun was developed by the Xu Clan for more than 1500 years since the late Tang Dynasty. Due to the continuing population growth in the village, Xu clan members began migrating to other places since the 9^th generation. The population of Xucun reached its apex in history between 1522 and 1567 during the Ming Dynasty. The pressure of the growing population was the cause of fighting with other clans for land resources and difficulties between landlords and their tenants. However, these difficulties like these increased the need for clan organizations to more effectively control their land resources and tenants. To obtain external resources to feed their growing populations back home, Xu clan members had to expand economically and utilize the imperial examination system for officials and to go to big cities to expand their businesses. The success of Xucun's Hui merchants and officials helped build the economies of their own villages and enabled their village to prosper for a thousand years. It also appears that the Xu clan of Xucun was more inclined toward marriages with other clans of wealthy merchants and this inclination made them more competitive in business ventures.On the other hand, the Village of Kantou which had been developing since 1369 during the early Ming Dynasty, reached its highest population number in the middle of Qing Dynasty. Since the Kantou lands were extremely uneven and small, there was always a need for migration to lessen the pressure of insufficient food supplies by obtaining external resources. In the mean time, Xu's patriarchal clan tribunal occupied most of the lands in the area and thus controlled the tenants. Kantou's Xu Clan also worked hard to develop timber processing enterprises and handicraft industries as well as many family owned food processing and poultry raising businesses to relieve the stress of difficulties financially. These efforts eventually shaped the combination of the village's small-scale peasant economy and family industry economic development. Although the Xu Clan of Kantou also tried to pursue business ventures and to use the imperial examination system to enable its officials to seek external resources, doing business was not the main model they employed to improve the livelihood of the people. Compared to the experience in Xucun, the Xu Clan in Kantou seemed much more inclined to engage in marry with partners around the village and thus reduced their competitive power in business ventures.With the declining populations and damaged villages brought about by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom wars and other natural calamities, both the Xucun and Kantou villages experienced a parallel decline in all aspects of development, including business and other means of providing a living for its members. Although both villages tried to rebuild, unfortunately declines in population, plus rapid changes in the macroscopic historical environment, caused the two villages to fall into decline and the self-enclosed status which was once a feature of their prosperous past, was never again obtained.A strained relationship between man and land property shows not only the relationship between population and resources, but also reflects its "systematic space" of the population growth. The methodical study of a population is one of the most basic means of understanding the development of human condition and its "systematic space". All these developments were rooted in the population and the changes of systems. Population pressure can be seen as dynamic for all social and cultural changes, indeed.