Natural Disaster And The Local People's Livelihood

the drought in the Northwest of 1928-1930 is one of the ten greatestfamines of modern China. It influences strongly on the livelihood of northwest region,but the performance and impact of disasters in different regions also vary. In northernShaanxi, the disaster started from 1923, and its impact continued until 1932, far longerthan the entire Northwest. And the time discussed in. this paper is also from 1923 to1932.The relationship of natural disasters and social life is very close. In traditionalsocieties, the major natural disasters impacts extremely, especially in marginal areas.This article selects a time of huge disaster chain to discuss people's livelihood ofnorthern Shaanxi, which is in the non-central area of geographical position and politicalstatus. It focuses on the impact on the population, social, economic and environmentalof the disaster and peoples' self- responses, and discusses a series of achievements,problems and progress of the process through regarding governmental and socialRelieves. Finally, from the point of view of Famine treatment, look at the modernizationof the northern Shaanxi area.According to order of the event occurrence, influence and solution, the articledivides specifically into four parts to elaborate the disaster and people's livelihood ofnorthern Shaanxi. Specifically as follows:Firstly, recover the serious disaster condition, sum up the characteristics of disasters,and analyze the reason why disasters occurred multiple and unbalanced. This disastercontinued from 1923 to 1932. And as a result of natural and humanities factors, it hassome characteristics, such as long time, extensive scope, varying in disaster degree,region unbalance, having a great variety and disasters occurring simultaneously.Secondly, from the aspect of population, economy, society and environment carryon the influence of the disaster. Serious natural disaster has caused huge loss ofpopulation and large-scale trafficking; Moreover created poor grain harvest, farmers lifedifficulty, damage to various factors of production and economic order to be challenged;The serious natural disaster created the population massively to drain with thepopulation trades the large-scale existence; Meanwhile the anti- rents and anti- taxhappened frequently, the bandit stirred up, the morals perished, the social conflict was more serious and the social problem was outstanding; In addition, made the badecosystem environment further worsen.Thirdly, analyze peoples' self- responses. Because of the remote geographicalposition and poor social economy, people in northern Shaanxi take various measures todeal with the disaster to survive, under the less of government relief. They exileeverywhere seeking food, or employ all means to survive in the home, or even resort towitchcraft to gain vitality. Here discuss the number of victims to flee, the direction toflow and its conservative choice. Unlike most victims flow to the modern cities in otherregions, the victims in the northern Shaanxi fled to neighbor places, such as Ningxia,Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, in accordance with the traditional practices. And the localpeople made efforts to find food, organized themselves spontaneously to ask food fromgovernment and landlord, and even degenerated into the roving bandit to survive. Inaddition, due to the local environment and local traditions, they also resorted towitchcraft; this is a special kind of self-help.Fourthly, elaborates the government relief to the northern Shaanxi area. Certainly,because of the public opinion and government's function, the Relief outside to thefamine of northern Shaanxi gradually started. But the main supporter of relief was stilllocal self-preservation. The local clan forces played a leading role in disaster relief. Inaddition to the traditional masseurs, modern methods have also started to use in thisFamine Relief. Massive disaster relief associations appeared, the disaster relief thoughtis quite advanced.Finally, this famine has not certainly liked in Loess Plateau Region, had theprofound influence to the local social life and progress, the northern Shaanxi societystill defers to its inherent pattern slowly to develop.