Discussion Is ancient China perilous?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Bad Storm, Oct 2, 2019.

?

Would you want to live in ancient China?

  1. Yup

    11.4%
  2. Nope

    46.6%
  3. Wars and schemes? Ofc, I'm in!!!

    5.7%
  4. No internet? F*ck no!

    62.5%
  5. I'm an Emperor/Empress in my previous life. Hmph!

    11.4%
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  1. Kutaifa

    Kutaifa Pokémon trainer

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    It's not a belief. It's fact.

    "The Chinese tradition of holding the state responsible for famine relief and water
    control was rooted in the Confucian classics. The Confucian philosopher Mencius
    (372–289 BCE) insisted that a benevolent ruler should guard against famine by storing
    grain during times of plenty and distributing it during times of dearth. Blaming poor harvests
    for bringing starvation to the people, taught Mencius, was no less wrongheaded than
    “killing a man by running him through, while saying all the time, ‘It is none of my doing. It‘
    is the fault of the weapon.’” It was also Mencius who popularized the idea that a ruler’s
    Heaven-granted mandate to rule (tianming) was not immutable, and could be revoked if
    the ruler ignored Heaven and “lost the people’s hearts” by failing to practice benevolence
    (Mencius 1970, I.A.52, IV.A.7–9)."

    "
    In China the principle that major calamities were connected to the ruler’s conduct
    went far beyond the symbolic, and indeed “shaped expectations of imperial and bureaucratic
    responsibility” in important ways (Li 2007, 2–3). “In comparative perspective,”
    writes J. R. McNeill, the Chinese state “appears remarkable for its ecological role.”
    There more than elsewhere “the state took primary responsibility for building and maintaining
    many big waterworks” (McNeill 1998, 36–37). In the case of the Yellow River,
    erosion and the deposition of sediment caused the bed of the river to rise above the surrounding
    plain, so it was necessary to build huge embankments in order to keep the river
    in its place. During the period from 1194 to 1852–55 when the Yellow River ran into the
    sea south instead of north of the Shandong peninsula (as the strategic breach would force
    it to do again from 1938 to 1947), argues Elvin, the scale of the man-made effects that
    resulted from the herculean efforts that China’s “river tamers” made to control the
    merged flows of the Yellow and Huai rivers “was probably unequalled anywhere in premodern
    history” (Elvin 2004, 24, 128, 131–40).
    The Chinese state’s commitment to nourishing the people during times of famine
    also has a long history. Formative famine-relief measures were codified in China’s first
    imperial dynasty, the Qin (221–206 BCE), and the importance assigned to famine
    relief increased in the late imperial era (Li 2007, 3). The Qing state in particular
    devoted an extraordinary amount of bureaucratic attention and financial resources to
    famine relief."

    TLDR;
    People must be feed to ruler to continue to possess mandate of heaven. Therefore, the various dynasties collected grains and stored them in case of famines or drought. The state therefore feed the populace if their harvest wasn't adequate enough in that regard. The food storage was gathered by the government through the taxation of grains and collection of it. Furthemore, "The importance assigned to famine relief increased in the late imperial era, when a diverse array of local elites worked in tandem with officials to manage and fund relief operations."
    The definition of a famine is by the "the United Nations humanitarian criteria, (that) even if there are food shortages with large numbers of people lacking nutrition, a famine is declared only when certain measures of mortality, malnutrition and hunger are met."
    So famine did occur a lot yes, but the government actively tried to prevent it to legitimize themselves. Overt corruption and silence during droughts and famine was what caused the destruction of dynasties. And once again to reiterate: So no, agrarian life is not just at the mercy of the elements, but also very much so by the government and their food redistribution policies. "The food redistribution system in early imperial China was ideally designed to benefit all people under heaven “equally” within the framework of the social hierarchy, meanwhile providing extra resources to those of lower status and to people in distress. However, the ideology of the regulations and their actual implementation were frequently out of sync, as laws were applied flexibly and human greed worked every possible step of food redistribution."
     
    AMissingLinguist likes this.
  2. Nightow1

    Nightow1 Well-Known Member

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    You realize that EVERYTHING you posted simply proves my point that their government takes a dim view on mismanagement?
     
  3. Blobina

    Blobina Well-Known Member

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    There was one detail, if I remembered correctly, Chinese monarch governments levied based on head count of males in each household. I were not certain on whether they did that by taking grains, products or currency, and the cut percentage though.
    There was a funny folktale on how the local head official judged a case:
    One guy A was accused of stealing from his neighbour B. Guy A sneakily gave the official 1 coin (I forget the name of currency). Guy B saw that and gave the official 2 coins. The official ruled that guy B won.
    Guy A was very surprised and protested again the ruling.
    The official calmly showed one finger: "Indeed, you were right but", he showed another finger, "he was doubly right".
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2019
  4. mir

    mir Well-Known Member

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    Oh. I thought they sacrificed enemies mainly, so being an Aztec citizen would be safer. (Though I got that info from a movie. I have to sleep an hour ago, so I'll just do a really quick websearch instead of a thorough one, to see if I can find some more reliable info.)

    I heard they apparently had really good farming methods, so that's less starvation than what this thread is making me think ancient China had.
    http://www.aztec-history.com/aztec-farming.html

    (edit 2):
    It just occured to me. The Aztecs (and the ones they inherited the technique from) basically did the opposite of most other farming methods in the world.
    Farmers in Europe, Asia, etc:
    "I'll bring the water to the fields"

    Aztecs, living on a lake:
    "I'll bring the fields to the water!"

    lol

    edit:
    I found these:
    https://www.history.com/news/did-the-aztecs-really-practice-human-sacrifice
    https://www.archaeology.org/news/4096-160125-aztecs-tenochtitlan-human-sacrifices
    So both citizens and non-aztecs were sacrificed, but for citizens it seems it would have been done voluntarily. So being a citizen definitely seems safer.
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2019
  5. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    The short answer is yes, and no.

    The longer answer is that things in the past tended to less pleasant than they are now. Even not counting modern conveniences, there are things like high infant mortality, all the women dying at childbirth, dangers from disease, the constant threat of starvation and malnutrition, and so forth. Living in those eras was just a lot more unpleasant and fraught with challenges than TV and other media would have you believe.

    And so the operative question isn't really whether living in ancient China was bad because living anywhere back in the day was bad. The question is really about whether living in ancient China was worse than other places. And generally speaking, it wasn't. China was generally more prosperous and more advanced than just about any other civilization up until the modern era which was why it was able to sustain large populations and urban centers. Sure it had famines and wars and other calamities, but these were present everywhere else as well. At least China had the centralized government and bureaucracy to mitigate some of these problems while other peoples were mostly left to fend for themselves. I think that one of the reasons why China may see worse off is that Chinese writers are less prone to romanticizing what their country was like in the past.
     
  6. Kutaifa

    Kutaifa Pokémon trainer

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    I said: There were many times in Ancient China that a lack of food for the peasantry was caused by the corruption of several officials as they attempted to squeeze as much they could from them.
    You responded: Yeah and I'm sure the "officials" are so well connected with heaven that they can call a drought or flood on demand. Stop trying to perpetuate webnovel stereotypes, they don't reflect reality any more than Rambo or Superman does.
    You: You'll see that it is DROUGHT, especially from the cyclic fluctuations over the Pacific Ocean that caused famine, not "government officials".

    You said that drought and famines were the killers, not state corruption. I just proved that one, the state took it upon themseves to feed the populace and two that they actively engaged in disaster prevention. Thirdly, that alot of people died not solely because a drought occured and famine followed afterwards, but because officials who stood for the distribution turned corrupt and the famine become widespread.
     
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