Why do clan customs prevail in South China?

The reasons for the differences of clan settlements between northern and southern Han areas in China.

Abstract: Clan is a traditional organization, and there is a situation that "the ancient north prospered in the south and the modern south prospered in the north". There are three main reasons for this difference between north and south: first, population migration, second, the gathering of the same clan after migration, and third, the relationship between state power organizations and clans.

Keywords: North and South; Clan residence; Reasons for differences

Erya Qin said: "The party of the father is the clan" [1]. In other words, clan refers to the group linked by paternal blood relationship. The tradition of China Han population living in groups originated in the north, and this custom was formed in the Central Plains of the Zhou Dynasty. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the pattern of northern clans living together reached its peak. In contrast, clan settlements in the south are far less common than those in the north. Since then, with the northerners moving south, "the economic center of gravity has moved south", and the trend of clan forces that are strong in the south and weak in the north has reversed. As Mr. Lv Simian said: "The wind of living in a compact community, the ancient north flourished in the south, and the modern south flourished in the north" [2]. On the whole, it is Yu Nan's jade victory and northern Henan's jade decline. In terms of provinces, in the south, Guangdong and Fujian in Lingnan area are the most prosperous, while Jiangxi, Hunan and southern Zhejiang are slightly inferior to Fujian and Guangdong, while Hubei, Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangsu are weaker than the above provinces, and clan settlements in Sichuan are even weaker. In the north, Shanxi and Shandong clans are powerful, but they are still weaker than the provinces in the Yangtze River basin, and Henan, Hebei and Shaanxi are weaker than Shanxi and Shandong. The three northeastern provinces are the weakest areas in China where Han people live in concentrated communities. Moreover, there are also great differences in clan settlements in different provinces. For example, in the south of Henan Province, which belongs to the northern province, there are many mixed clans, while in the north of Anhui Province, the mixed clans are closer to the north. For another example, in the so-called "Jiangnan" area in the south, the clan is not very developed.

There are many documents about clan settlements of Han population in China, some of which talk about the reasons why clan settlements and clan forces are different in different regions. Of course, different scholars talk about or emphasize different reasons. In this paper, the author thinks that there are many reasons for this difference, so it is impossible to cover all the reasons in this paper, and it is difficult to cover all the areas in detail. Just try to synthesize the literature I have seen, and analyze the reasons for the difference in settlement strength between the north and south clans from three aspects: population migration, ethnic agglomeration after population settlement, and the relationship between state power organizations and clans.

First, population migration and clan settlement

Judging from the history of population migration and clan settlement in different regions of China, the formation time of population migration and population settlement pattern in various regions is closely related to the degree of clan settlement and the strength of clan power. In a region, the earlier the primitive ancestors of the existing population move into the region, the stronger the clan society in the region. On the other hand, the later the ancestors of the existing population moved into this area, the weaker the clan society became. Although this is not an absolute law, it is quite common. As far as most areas in the north and south of China are concerned, the population settlement pattern in the south was formed earlier than that in the north. It can be said that the process of population migration largely determines the pattern of modern clans in China living in the south and prospering in the north.

Judging from the general trend of China's population migration history, the process of China's large-scale population migration from the north to the south ended after the last wave in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the subsequent population migration basically turned into internal population migration between the north and the south, and migration to surrounding areas and even overseas. Among the existing Han population in southern China, a few ancestors lived in the south in ancient times, and most ancestors migrated from the north to the southern provinces after the Jin Dynasty. As far as most areas in East China, such as Anhui, Jiangxi, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and cities are concerned, although wuyue was founded in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it was later merged into Chu, but the population of Han Dynasty was still quite sparse. According to historical records, "the population of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River accounted for only one tenth of the country in the Western Han Dynasty". During the Jin Dynasty, due to civil strife such as "Eight Kings Rebellion" and the southward invasion of northern minorities, Han people moved southward continuously. "From 3 13 to 450 AD, there were about 900,000 people with household registration who moved from the north to the south, accounting for one-sixth of the official population in the Southern Dynasties and one-seventh of the population in the Northern Dynasties. There may be/kloc-more than 0/100 million live-in refugees without household registration. " Among them, Yongjia period is the most famous, so there are a lot of records about "Yongjia moving south" in history books. After the "An Shi Rebellion" in the late Sui and Tang Dynasties and the war in the late Tang Dynasty, a large number of northern Han people moved south. By the Kaiyuan period of the Tang Dynasty, the population in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River had accounted for 40% of the national population, while it had accounted for half of the national population in the Yuanfeng period in northern Song Shenzong [3]. At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, Jin and Yuan invaded south one after another, which once again led to the wave of Han people moving south, the most famous of which was "Jingkang Du Nan" in history. By the Southern Song Dynasty, East China, located in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, had become the most densely populated area in China. Since then, there has been no large-scale population migration in this area except for some Hakkas who moved back to Jiangxi from Lingnan. During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the population in the border areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui decreased greatly, and a large number of immigrants moved in. However, most of these immigrants came from the surrounding areas that were less affected by the war, and there were fewer long-distance immigrants [4].

From the perspective of South China, according to historical records, the Han people moved to Guangdong Province in the Qin Dynasty, but most of them moved to Guangdong in the Song Dynasty, especially the southward migration in the late Northern Song Dynasty and the migration from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River to Lingnan in the late Southern Song Dynasty. There are two major ethnic groups in Guangdong, and the so-called "aborigines" are Guangfu people. Guangfu people in the Pearl River Delta say that their ancestors moved south from Nanxiong Zhuji Lane because of the disaster in Su Fei (or Hu Fei) in the Song Dynasty. Hakka people in Guangdong say that their ancestors entered Jiangxi from the Central Plains, then from Jiangxi to Fujian, then moved to Shibi in Ninghua, Tingzhou, and then re-entered Meijiang in eastern Guangdong. Han people moved to Fujian later than Cantonese. Since the Han people entered Fujian in Sun Wu period, after the migration of Jin Dynasty, Southern and Northern Dynasties and Sui Dynasty, to the Tang and Yuan Dynasties (AD 806-820), Fujian Province was only 74.

There were 467 households, which increased to 467,865,438+05 in the Taiping and Xingguo years of the Northern Song Dynasty (976-983 AD) and to 65,438+0,390 in the Shaoxing years of the Southern Song Dynasty (65,438+065,438 AD).

566 households [5], obviously, the Han nationality in Fujian mainly migrated in the Tang, Five Dynasties and Song Dynasties, especially in the Song Dynasty. After the Yuan Dynasty, the population patterns of Guangdong and Fujian were basically stable. By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, these two provinces had changed from immigration places to emigration places. Among them, some people moved back to Jiangxi and other places, and some people moved back to Taiwan Province Province and Southeast Asia.

During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Hunan and Hubei provinces in central China were all inhabited by ethnic minorities in the south, except for the Han nationality, and their populations were quite sparse. Since the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, every time there is a major war in the Central Plains, a large number of Han Chinese have flowed in. Especially "Yongjia's southward migration" and the subsequent Southern and Northern Dynasties, it was a peak period for Han people to migrate to the Central Plains. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, especially during the "An Shi Rebellion" and "Jingkang Du Nan", a large number of Han people moved in. Among them, most of the Han people who moved to Hubei Province moved directly from the Central Plains. Those who moved to Hunan passed through Jiangxi. According to Cao's research, by 1947, the descendants of Hunan immigrants accounted for 90% of Hunan's population, and 56% of the province's population were descendants of immigrants before Yuan Dynasty. About 70% of all descendants of immigrants came from Jiangxi, and 58% of them were descendants of immigrants before the Yuan Dynasty [7]. When the Yuan soldiers went south, the war broke out at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and the population of the two lakes suffered heavy losses. In the early Ming Dynasty, a large number of people migrated from Jiangxi to Hunan and Hubei, including some immigrants organized by the government. This is called "Jiangxi lake filling". From the middle Ming Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty, the Han population in Hunan and Hubei migrated to the surrounding mountainous areas and Sichuan. So far, the pattern of population settlement in the two lakes has been formed and tends to be stable.

Sichuan was Bashu in ancient times, and a large number of Han people moved in during the Qin and Han Dynasties, and Chengdu Plain became a inhabited area of Han people. From Sui and Tang Dynasties to Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms to Song Dynasty, Sichuan was relatively stable and became a "land of abundance", and the population of Han nationality increased rapidly. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the war in Sichuan was extremely fierce, lasting for half a century, and the population dropped sharply. The population of the Yuan Dynasty increased, but the war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty greatly reduced the population. In the early Ming Dynasty, a large number of Han people moved from Shaanxi, especially Hubei. Even in local chronicles, inscriptions, genealogy and oral legends, Sichuanese often said that their ancestors came to Sichuan from Xiaogan Township, Macheng, Hubei. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Han nationality in Sichuan suffered another disaster, and the population dropped sharply. In the early Qing dynasty, there was a large-scale migration tide of Han people into Sichuan that lasted for more than a hundred years. In the two waves of immigrants entering Sichuan in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Hubei people were the majority, so these two waves of immigrants were called "Huguang filling Sichuan". Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, the population of Sichuan has been quite dense, and it began to migrate to the surrounding areas.

From the perspective of southern provinces, although the history of Han population settlement in Guangdong and Fujian is relatively late, once settled, the possibility of population reconstruction is small, so its settlement pattern formed earlier. The population pattern of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Jiangxi in East China is earlier than that of Fujian and Guangdong. Hubei and Sichuan still experienced large-scale population reconstruction after the Song Dynasty, and the pattern of population settlement in Sichuan was formed after "Huguang filling Sichuan" twice in Ming and Qing Dynasties. Prior to this, there was a process of "Jiangxi filling Huguang District". In addition, affected by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom War, many villages in the border areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui have experienced the process of population reconstruction. What needs to be pointed out in particular here is that according to Fei Xiaotong's jiang village economy (Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 1986), Jiangcun is a village with many surnames and weak clan power. In addition to the ancestral graves, the clans in the village "have nothing in common. This description often gives people, especially some foreigners who study China, an illusion. It seems that the clans in Jiangnan are not developed. In fact, Jiangcun is located at the junction of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the pattern of population settlement in this area was greatly impacted. The existing pattern of population settlement is formed by reconstruction factors, but the degree of clan settlement and clan power are indeed weaker than those in most parts of South China and East China, and are roughly equivalent to those in Central China, but still stronger than those in Sichuan.

Northern China is the birthplace of the Han nationality. However, since ancient times, five provinces and cities in North China, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Henan, have often been invaded by northern minorities, and they were all under the rule of northern minority regimes in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty. Every inter-ethnic war has greatly reduced the population and population migration. At the end of Yuan Dynasty, the population of North China was quite sparse. Later, during the Hongwu and Yongle periods in the early Ming Dynasty, the basic framework of population settlement in North China was formed. A survey of Ganshu in Shanxian County, Hebei Province, found that most villages were built in Hongwu and Yongle periods in Ming Dynasty, which is proved by the materials in Manchu-Qing Railway Habits [9]. Cao Jinqing's investigation of Henan in recent years also reflects this situation [10]. From a large number of inscriptions, genealogy and oral legends of local residents, it can be seen that a considerable proportion of the existing residents in North China have their ancestors who moved from Sophora japonica in Hongdong, Shanxi Province in the early Ming Dynasty. Of course, this statement is not completely reliable. Qiu Zhuo, a member of Amin Dynasty, wrote in the article "Setting Jidian in the District to Reduce Foreigners" that in the early Ming Dynasty, "when the country was first established, all Mongolians and Semu people scattered in various states had changed their surnames and mixed with the people. After a long time, we have forgotten each other and it is not easy to recognize them. " [1 1] Some people who migrated from Sophora japonica in Hongdong may be "Mongolians and Semu people scattered in various states". At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was a large loss of population in North China, and immigrants moved into this area at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, but the scale was not as good as that at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, this area had become the emigration place of immigrants.

Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, from the Han Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, were all border areas of past dynasties. Before the Ming Dynasty, its population migrated frequently and came from various sources. Among them, a large number of northwest ethnic minorities live together and have been ruled by ethnic minority regimes for a longer time than other provinces in the mainland. After a long period of ethnic integration, a modern Han population has been formed. For example, during the Jin dynasty, a large number of nomadic people in the north moved inward. According to historical records, "at that time, all the counties in the northwest were in the military camp, and the Guanzhong area was in the military camp." ..... At the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, when Hu Sansheng wrote "Learning from Mutual Adversity", he said with emotion, "Alas! Since the Sui Dynasty, those whose names have been promoted in the times, representing the descendants of the North, have lived in six or seven places! " "[3]。 During the Northern Qi Dynasty, Yan Zhitui said that the northern and southern sounds of China were "wuyue in the south and foreign countries in the north". During the Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, a large number of northern minorities were integrated into the Han population. It can be said that among the Han population, the Han nationality in northwest China is the most mixed with the ancestry and customs of the northern minorities. Since the Ming Dynasty, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces have been mainly used as places for immigrants, while few people moved in from other provinces.

Compared with North China and Northwest China, the comprehensive development of Northeast China (including Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces) is much later. In the long ancient history before the Qing Dynasty, except for some areas in Liaoning, other areas have always been inhabited by ethnic minorities, and even these areas in Liaoning were really incorporated into the power map of the central government during the prosperous period of history, such as the heyday of Han, Tang and Ming Dynasties. At that time, the population in Northeast China was quite sparse, and most ethnic minorities were still living a nomadic life. In the early Qing dynasty, only a few people stayed behind, and almost all Manchu people entered the customs, with a total population of only a few million. It was not until the Opium War that the Qing government controlled the migration of Han people to the "land of Longxing" in Northeast China. In the thirty years of Daoguang (1850), the population of Northeast China was only 2.89-8 million. Since then, the Qing government began to relax the control of immigration, and the number of Han immigrants who moved to the northeast began to increase. Especially after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the Qing government further promoted the policy of "border consolidation" and began to encourage immigrants. In the second year of Xuantong (19 10), the growth rate was 2.

158-220,000 population figures come from Xu Daofu-China modern agricultural production and trade statistics; Quoted from Aarif Lee: A General History of Northeast China, Zhongzhou Ancient Books Publishing House, 2003, p. 563-. Obviously, during this period, most of the new population were immigrants from the customs, most of whom came from Shandong, followed by Hebei. From then on, until the 1950s and 1960s, a large number of immigrants moved to the northeast, and even in the 1970s, a small number of farmers in the customs area moved to the northeast, until the population density in the northeast was basically the same as that in the general provinces in the customs area.

Judging from the formation time of the existing population settlement pattern in various regions, generally speaking, the south is earlier than the north. In the south, the existing pattern of population settlement in East China and South China was first formed, usually in the Song Dynasty. The two lakes were formed in the early Ming Dynasty, while Sichuan was formed in the early Qing Dynasty. One exception is that during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the population and its settlement pattern in the border areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui in East China changed greatly. In the north, the existing population settlement pattern was first formed in the northwest, generally in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, in North China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and in the Northeast after the late Qing Dynasty. In addition, from the historical investigation of existing villages, we can see that in the south, there are quite a few ancient villages formed from the Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties to the Song Dynasty, while in North China, except Shanxi Province, villages were basically formed after the Ming Dynasty.

According to historical records, in ancient China, the main reason of population migration was war. On the whole, in the long historical process of China, large-scale wars in the north are more frequent than those in the south. In addition, many wars are ethnic wars triggered by the invasion of northern minorities, which are usually more intense, leading to greater population loss and migration. However, since the adjustment in the early Qing dynasty, the situation has changed fundamentally: except for the population migration caused by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, there is almost no large-scale population migration in the northern and southern inland areas. In the Qing Dynasty, the inland areas were relatively stable, but since the late Qing Dynasty entered the era of hot weapons, although the lethality of weapons has greatly increased, for ordinary people, relatively speaking, wars are not as cruel as in ancient times, and there are fewer mass killings of civilians. A war has reduced the population of a country or a large area by half or even left only a small number of residual population. War is no longer the main reason for population migration. Therefore, Fei Xiaotong said that "even if such a big event as the Anti-Japanese War caused the flow of grassroots population, I believe it is still insignificant" [13]. Of course, large-scale natural disasters will also cause population reduction and migration. Especially in North China and Northwest China, the climate is dry, the groundwater level is low, there are few rivers, the flow is unstable, the rainfall varies greatly in different years, and the rainfall in a year is mostly concentrated in the summer months, so floods and droughts often occur, resulting in famine. However, the population movement caused by this natural disaster is usually accompanied by the return of population after the disaster, which has little effect on the long-term population settlement pattern. For example, the Huayuankou incident in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period caused a large number of refugees, but after the flood, the village was rebuilt in the flooded area of the Yellow River.

The time when the ancestors of the existing population moved in has an important influence on the strength of clan settlement, because it takes time for population reproduction and clan formation. The era of population migration has long meant that a clan has settled in a place for a long time. If the settlement lasts for a long time, it is possible to form a larger ethnic group through natural population growth.

Secondly, it is the difference of clan settlement and population migration mode in the emigration area at that time. As mentioned above, the clan settlement of the Han nationality originated in the north and reached its peak in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. Until the Northern Song Dynasty, the clan settlement in the Central Plains was still quite common and the clan organization was quite developed. When the population in this area is forced to move, it is usually the whole family. This is particularly prominent in the process of northerners moving south in the Jin Dynasty. Wang, Xie, Yu, Huan and other big families in the Eastern Jin Dynasty all moved south. Until the population moved south in the Northern Song Dynasty, a considerable part of them still moved south. After moving into a new settlement, immigrants usually keep the tradition of living together.

After the Song Dynasty, there were few family immigrants, mostly small families, and quite a few immigrants were just family members or individuals. In the history of China, population migration was mainly spontaneous, but some people were organized by the government or even forced to migrate. However, among the immigrants organized by the government, most of them were family immigrants before the Song Dynasty, and most of them were small families or individuals after the Song Dynasty. In the past dynasties before the Song Dynasty, there were often cases in historical materials in which the government moved away giants to enrich the capital or frontier in order to prevent rebellion. In the early Ming Dynasty, the government organized the population migration from Shanxi to other provinces in North China. Although it was mobilized or even forced by the government, it was also based on individuals or small families. First, they are concentrated in designated places and receive a small amount of relocation fees from the government, and then they are moved to designated areas to settle down. Even adult brothers are often arranged in different places. Since the end of Qing Dynasty, some family members first moved to Northeast China, and the rest moved in after the pioneers settled down.

The change of immigration pattern before and after the Song Dynasty is related to the degree of clan settlement in the place of emigration. Before the Song Dynasty, as a place of immigration, the phenomenon of living in groups was very common in the north, but after the Song Dynasty, the clans in the north had declined. There is no clan settlement in the emigration place, and the migration process will certainly not be clan migration. However, in the south after the Southern Song Dynasty, clan migration was gradually replaced by individual migration. With the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty, population migration is often called "the gentry moved south" in history. "Although some families have moved, it is no longer the mainstream form, and most of the immigrants are individuals and small families" [14]. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the process of "Jiangxi filling Huguang" and "Huguang filling Sichuan" was also dominated by the migration of individuals or small families.

The changes of migration patterns before and after the Song Dynasty were also related to the causes of migration and the nature and duration of the war. Generally speaking, the migration caused by war may be the overall migration of villages and towns, while the migration caused by non-war is mostly carried out in a decentralized way. Due to the population growth in the emigration area, population migration caused by population pressure is generally not family migration. Generally speaking, the internal population migration between the North and the South after the Song Dynasty is more caused by population pressure, which is also an important reason why the population migration mode is different from that before the Song Dynasty. In the migration caused by war, the occupation war of northern minorities to the south is also different from the war between regional forces. The former may cause large-scale migration with clear direction, while the latter may cause immigrants with unclear direction. In addition, the duration of the war or the occupation speed of the invaders is also related to the scale and mode of immigration. Before the Song Dynasty, after the invasion of northern minorities, the speed of advancing southward was slow. After the Song Dynasty moved south, the Southern Song regime remained for a long time, which gave people time to migrate according to clan. When Manchu entered the customs, the occupation speed was faster and the Nanming regime lasted shorter. The speed of the Qing army entering the south is faster than the migration speed of immigrants. The Han population often has no time to move south, and their homes have been occupied, so they have no time to organize the overall migration of villages and towns.

In short, compared with the south, the population in the north not only moved in relatively late, but also did not have the custom of cohabitation when the population first moved in, and the ways of moving in were mainly small families and individuals. Therefore, at the beginning of population migration, the pattern of clan settlement was rarely formed. However, in the south, there are still more tribes living in close communities. The same conclusion can also be drawn from the fact that some people in the south moved to these areas late. In Hubei province in the middle, the degree of clan settlement is weaker than that in most parts of South China and East China, and the clan power in Sichuan is even weaker.

In addition, the process of blood reunion to be discussed below will also take some time. This is also a reason why the formation time of the existing population settlement pattern is related to the strength of clan settlement.

Second, family gatherings after settlement.

After people settle in an area, whether they live together with other families or live separately depends on whether and to what extent people need to cooperate with others. Although, as many scholars have pointed out, compared with modern society, in traditional agricultural society, the frequency and degree of communication and cooperation between peasant families are very low, but the need for cooperation exists after all, and there are many needs for cooperation between peasant families, including cooperation in daily production and life and cooperation in case of conflict with the outside world. Therefore, in the period of traditional agricultural society in China and most countries and regions in the world, people all live together in villages, and scattered forms are not common. Whether the peasant families in these villages live with the same family or with different families is also related to the number and degree of cooperation. The need for cooperation itself cannot guarantee the implementation of cooperation. Compared with the modern society, in the traditional agricultural society, the cooperation between peasant families needs more traditional relations such as blood and geography as a link, and different peasant families can be linked together to form effective cooperation [15]. In China, where the clan system has a long history and is strongly supported and maintained by ideology, consanguinity, especially paternal consanguinity, is undoubtedly a stronger bond. It is more effective to organize cooperation with this relationship as a link and the transaction cost is lower. Therefore, there is a strong positive correlation between the cooperative needs of peasant families and the degree of clan settlement. In different regions, the demand for cooperation between peasant families is different, which is also an important reason for the different degree of clan settlement between different regions.

1, cooperation in farming activities and clan settlement

In the traditional agricultural society, the cooperation of farmers' families in production is also the cooperation in farming. Many scholars distinguish rice cultivation from dry farming in related research, and think that rice cultivation needs more cooperation among farmers than dry farming. For example, when discussing the cooperation in rice planting, Moore wrote: "When the soil reaches a certain pulp concentration suitable for planting seedlings, a lot of water is needed. Because only a few fields can supply water at the same time, we need to cultivate one field at a time to save the time for transplanting each field. In order to complete the transplant work in a suitable time, it is necessary to gather more members than a single family member "[16]. Daisaku Ikeda said: "Because rice farming can't be based on one family, but on a village, forming a close isomorphism. For example, paddy fields where rice is grown need large-scale water conservancy systems. Water drawn from reservoirs or rivers flows through rice fields owned by many families. Or let a small river divide the rice fields horizontally. ..... In addition, the operation of transplanting or harvesting rice is also concentrated in the same operation mode. Its practice is: today, the whole village came out to transplant rice seedlings for Jia Jia; Tomorrow I will always go out to plant seedlings in B's field "[17]. Lin issued a similar statement on Tuesday: "In a rice-growing society, when rice fields need irrigation or drainage, people must do it at the same time;" Fertilizing paddy fields in high places will inevitably flow to other people's fields in low places. On the contrary, when the water is flooded, the paddy fields in low-lying areas suffer first. Every advantage has its disadvantages. All these mean that the village * * * is bound to bear the same fate. They are not only the same body of the village, but also the same body of fate. This determines that the rice culture is not only different from the hunting nation, but also different from the people in the wheat farming society "[18].

In dry farming, there is almost no need for cooperation beyond the family size. Although in some areas of dry farming, plowing requires more cooperation between animal power and human power, but the scale of this cooperation is very small, only a few days a year. Huang Zongzhi once said: "The planting method in northwest Hebei uses more animal power when plowing. On the surface, these farming methods seem to require close clan relations: uncles and brothers cooperate for this purpose. However, such cooperation only takes a few days in the whole agricultural cycle. Although some small farmers also partner with their people, many people are not limited to their people, but partner with friends or neighbors. The cooperation needed for farming alone is not enough for married brothers who get along badly to live together without separation, nor is it enough to become the economic foundation of a strong clan organization "[18].

In short, according to most scholars, in dry farming activities, the need for cooperation between farmers is not frequent and small, which is not enough to promote clan settlement and strengthen clan organizations. In contrast, in the cultivation of rice, it is more necessary for farmers to cooperate. In southern China, rice cultivation is extremely common. The north, including the northwest, north China and northeast China, is dominated by dry farming (most of the rice cultivation in the contemporary north only started in modern times). Therefore, some scholars believe that the difference between rice farming and dry farming is one of the reasons for the different degree of settlement between the northern and southern clans in China.

Emphasis on cooperation in farming usually involves "water problems" and emphasizes the importance of water conservancy projects to cooperation. In the north of China, the distribution of rainfall and river flow is extremely uneven within a year and between years, and droughts and floods often occur. This greatly increases the cost of canal irrigation and reduces the efficiency of irrigation. Generally speaking, the north is short of water, and there are more droughts than floods. When the drought is severe, many rivers have little or no water, which makes irrigation channels useless. Therefore, in the period of traditional agricultural society, there were few canal irrigation projects in the north. According to Huang Zongzhi, water conservancy projects in northern China tend to be at two extremes: on the one hand, large-scale projects that need national construction and maintenance, and on the other hand, well-drilling projects that only require a small amount of labor input. "The contrast between the large-scale flood control projects built and maintained by the state and the small irrigation wells dug and owned by individual farmers is enough to show the strong contrast in the political and economic structure, that is, the disparity between the huge state machine and the scattered small-scale peasant economy. In this respect, if we compare North China with the lower reaches of the Yangtze River or the Pearl River Delta, the differences between them are very obvious. " Flood and drought disasters are a little different: drought will cause famine, while flood will not only cause famine but also directly take away people's lives and property. Therefore, the water conservancy projects organized by the state mainly focus on flood control. Obviously, this large-scale project is not a spontaneous cooperation between farmers. Drinking water for people and livestock and a small amount of irrigated agriculture in the north mainly rely on well water. Drilling a well usually takes only one family's labor and a few helpers, and it can be completed in a few days. The use and maintenance are usually limited to one family. In areas that are extremely dry and short of water and need to drill deep wells, the cooperation of the whole village is often needed under the traditional technical conditions, and well water is also enjoyed by the whole village. But even in this case, more people need to work together in the process of drilling wells, and in the process of maintenance, it is usually only necessary for everyone not to deliberately destroy them. Only in a few areas and during extreme drought, cooperative water distribution is needed.

In the south, the water conservancy project system with village as the unit is quite common. Of course, in the traditional agricultural society, there are canal irrigation projects in the north, but compared with the south, there are far fewer medium-sized water conservancy projects that require the regular cooperation of several peasant families. Moreover, even for water conservancy projects of the same scale, the cooperation between farmers in the north is weaker than that in the south. Wang Jiange compared canal irrigation projects in North China and South China, taking farmland irrigation and water conservancy in the upper reaches of Fuyang River in Hebei and Tianjin as examples. He pointed out that due to the scarcity of water resources, the water rights in the people's water conservancy system based on private ownership in North China at least show some separability; The rice-growing areas in the south of the Yangtze River are not only inseparable from the right to water, but also a group responsibility. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the land in Tianjin was owned by the state from the beginning, and the government was responsible for the construction and daily management of channels [20]. Huang Zongzhi's conclusion is that "the scale of clan organizations in the Yangtze River and Pearl River Delta is consistent with the scale of water conservancy projects". "North China Plain is mostly a dry farming area, and even if there are irrigation facilities, it is mostly limited to irrigation by one household and one well. In contrast, canal irrigation and reclamation projects in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River Delta need more manpower and cooperation. This difference can be regarded as the ecological basis for the different functions of clan organizations in the two regions "[19].

In addition, some scholars pointed out that more cooperation among farmers is needed to carry out reclamation activities in newly opened areas, which is conducive to the formation of clan settlements and the development of clan forces. For example, Friedman pointed out that one of the reasons for the development of clans in southeastern China is to develop virgin land in border areas, which requires people to cooperate more. Ye Xian 'en, Liu Zhiwei and others pointed out that the development of Shatian has created quite favorable and unique conditions for the development of clan forces in the Pearl River Delta region [2 1-23].