FARMERS SINCE NOAH

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 70, 14 June 1927, Page 14

FARMERS SINCE NOAH

MINIATURE RICE-FIELDS A STUDY OF CHINESE LIFE # Farmers since the days of Noah the Chinese excel all nations in the character and extent of their intense cultivation of their soil. As noted by Mr. Adam Warwick in “The National Geographic Magazine,” a rice-field may be no larger than a small room, but duly surrounded by its own*little dam a foot high. John Chinaman’s genius for miniature farming beats the world. It is pointed out by Mr. Warwick that “with no strong central Government, but only a vacillating administration over which rival war-lords scrap like dogs over a bone; with none of the advantages of scientific bureaus for the study of soils, crops and weather conditions, China, nevertheless, stands in the world to-day, just as it did, according to Ptolemy, 2,000 years ago, as a land of plenty, inhabited by a quarter of the human race.” And this enviable position, China owes to “the note of permanent agriculture struck by its husbandmen when our ancestors were skin-clad nomads.” And we read on: “In China this is all the more significant, for its soil has been cultivated since the days of Noah, and has supported the densest population in the world through millenniums of history longer and more checkered than our own. “The Chinese are able to live on their small holdings only by reason of favourable climatic conditions, the fertility of the soil, effective agricultural methods, extreme personal economy, and the small taxes taken by the State. Chinese Farmer's Life “What kind of a household life does the Chinese farmer enjoy? His pigs and his chickens share the family liv-ing-room. There are no carpets to be muddied, no furniture, save simple wooden benches and tables, to be scratched. In fact, the average Chinese farmhouse is the acme of discomfort. according to Western ideas. As a rule, it contains not‘more than three rooms around a mud courtyard: a central kitchen, with the shelf for the Kitchen God’s shrine, and sometimes the tablets of the ancestors: and one or two sleeping-rooms adjoining it, with wide kang beds often warmed by a connecting brick flue with the waste heat from the cooking. “Yet. despite the number of mouths he has to feed the Chinese farmer is always smiling, polite, and apparently contented. He is blest with great physical endurance and a profound moral philosophy. Toiling Millions “His wife, though too often a drudge, surrounded by a pack of children that she nurses herself until they are two or three years old. is far from discontented. His sons and unmarried daughters, stalwart and sound in body and in mind, work beside him willingly. “His grandchildren begin to take their share of the daily tasks almost as soon as they can toddle, or play nursemaid to still smaller brothers and sisters. “Telephones and automobiles are unknown conveniences to these toiling millions, but most of the farmer folk in China have the advantage of living close to their neighbours, though each farmhouse is shut off by a solid earth wall as high as the eaves. * “The habit of gathering together in

villages has existed in the Middle Kingdom from time immemorial and persists for the sake of mutual security and society—a great convenience in a land where the danger from brigands is often considerable. Moreover, the Chinese are a sociable people, and a man who is not a good mixer is looked upon with suspicion in country districts.”