The Residents’ Living In The Ecological Environment Of South China In Wei Jin Southern And Northern Dynasties

As the mankind born, the residents and their ecological environment constitute an organic unity. As living in the ecological environment, the residents participate in the environmental evolution. This paper attempts to study the residents and their life under the Southern ecological environment in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. This paper not only investigates how the ecological environment influences on the residents and their life, but also examine how the production and living of the residents affects the environment of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Through this kind of study, we can make a new interpretation to the life of the Southern residents in the the Periond of Wei, Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties.The environment of South China during the Periond of Wei, Jin Southern and Northern Dynasty can be summerized as:Warm-wet climate, diverse landform including mountainous, hilly and basined area etc., numerous of rivers and abundent water resource, high forest coverage, a wide range and a great number of wildlives. To the-residents of this area, the environment is both a challenge and an opportunity: On the one hand, the abundent resources of south China offer them planty of resource, on the other hand, the environment brought difficulty and risk to their living and production.Under this condition, south China saw many waves of immigration. Northern people mass migrated southward, brought south China a big change. The old mode of scattered inhabited minority groups transformed to a new one in which Han People and different ethnic groups lived together over vast areas with a more frequent population movement. It provided a geographical possibility to change environment, use the natural resources and fuse different national or regional cultures.As the large immigrated northern Han people incorporated into south China residents, the southern way of life had been changed. In the new way, there are a reservation of oringinal residents’s life-style and the Han people’s new living ways which is based on their Zhongyuan culture and the local environment. All of them constitude the living condition of southern people during Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasty, which is mainly expressed in four aspects:diet, dress/adornment, dwelling, and transportation.First, the diet. south China has a great number of animals and plants, so people can both get food directly from the nature and also develope some cultured animals and plants as another diet resource, based on their local envrionment. People could also adjust their diet by control the food circulation, on the basis of the possibility of climate-caused famine, local products difference, and different food needs among different cultural groups. In the respect of food consumption, besides those successful northern introduced species and those species exist in both north and south, south China products its unique regional food, on account of its particuly climate and environment. The southern diet method is almost the same with the northern one, but has its own characteristic. And the diet consuming concept developes some new ideas that time. Southern residents choose different ways of food production, diet preference, consuming concepts, etc., all base on the southern environment, although can be influnced by culture, class and other factors.Second, the dress and adornment. The southern dress and adorment of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasty, on the basis of the clothing material and the wearers’ range and scale, can be devided into five kinds:hemp, silk, cotton, kudzu/banana/bamboo/bark and feather clothing. Dress and adornment are closely related with natural environment. They must be based on the local animal and plant resources and the local warm-wet climte which impels its residents to choose some relevent materials to resist the environment hazard to human body. In particular cases, different parts of south China also have slight differences. Southern region during Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasty products decorations which are mainly made of pearal, kingfisher feathers, rhinoceros horn or hawksbill. The regional and scarcity of those resource makes them extremely precious. In conclusion, southern dresses and adornments have a distinctive feature which keeps close relevent with the local climate and the natural resource. By the same time, different clothing materials are used by people from different classes, which shows that different classes occupies different amount of natural resources. Third, the dwellings. During this period minorities mainly lived in stilt houses. In the mountainous area low stilt houses are very common, while in the waterfront area high stilt houses are widespread. And in the specific districts of Wuyue, Jiaoguang, Jingchu and Bashu, the stilt houses have some slight differences in shape and structure. Han people’s dwellings reflects a class difference in shape, structure and building material:The ruling class use rare kinds of wood from southern mountain area to build their palace, only for royal folks; the influential and privileged families can live in the tile-roofed houses which have more than3rooms, and the building structures are often Qvchi or Sanhe style, main building material is wood; normal people live in dwllings built of bamboo, and is roofed by thatch; there are also some stome rooms which usually owned by monks and hermits, that’s how they adjust building material to local environment and living conditions. Dwellings grew larger and become settlements. Manor and city are the two forms of settlement: Manor in the southren environment can supply the aristocratic family and their subordination population; the city can resist foreign invasion and enhance trading functions. in the south, the apparence of some central cities shows obvious local environmental characteristics.Forth, the transportation. There are local characteristics in southern land route and civilian trips. Water route transportations are basically ships and bamboo rafts, and the Lingnan shipbuilding technology which has an unique feature is different from Jiangnan and the north. The open up of new traffice routes on land and in water makes hotels become flourishing. During that period, residents getting around in the south is more dangerous than in the north, because southern environment is more complicated and has more poision animals or plants. So the residents use herbal medicine knowledge and cultural strategy to avoid the environmental hazard. Especially the chapter"Dengshe"in Baopuzi writes up the environmental dangerous of the trip in the south and the correspondent solution methods, which are adopted not only by monks, but also by common people.From diet, dress/adornment, dwelling and transportation, we can see the living condition of southern residents in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasty. They have a colorful life on one side and a dangerous life on the other side. This is the double-gift to local residents from the southern environment. Besides those banifits they can directly get from the environment, southern residents can bring their subjective initiative into full play while they adapt and change nature for a better life. This adaption and changing procedure, by the same time, is a natural and economical developing procedure. This is the solid base of the prosperity and fast development in the south after Tang and Song Dynasty.