The Complexities of Rural Life
Life in rural China in the seventeenth century was certainly more complex than an uninformed assumption would presume. In formulating such an assumption, of a pre-modern agrarian society, one would include preconceived ideas of poverty, unrest, and a generally harsh existence. While these assumptions are not necessarily incorrect, they do preclude the investigation of information relevant to the study of seventeenth century China, a process that not only would destroy such simplistic and general ideas, but would also reveal a whole new level of complexity seeking exploration. To this end, Jonathan Spence’s The Death of Woman Wang attempts to betray the viability of such an uninformed assumption, by focusing on a small, representative Chinese county, T’an-ch’eng, to reveal the reality of rural life in seventeenth century China.
Spence begins by introducing the reader to T’an-ch’eng county, in the northeast of China. Focusing on a particular location gives Spence the ability to prevent what he calls “depersonalization” of characters1, allowing the reader to more closely witness the events, as they unfold, rather than forcing the reader to assemble information in a hodgepodge sort of way across a greater expanse of China. Spence then proceeds to begin his narration of the series of misfortunes and calamities that strike the county. Next, he goes on to describe at some length and purpose the system of taxation and administration of T’an-ch’eng. In the third chapter, Spence recounts the plights of several widows, both fictional and real, cohesively allowing the reader investigate the significance of each episode. Overall, each event Spence recalls from the annals of local history2 serves to enhance the reader’s understanding of a smaller part of the sheer complexity of life.
Spence discusses some thematic units that reveal important aspects of Chinese life in T’an-ch’eng during this time, among which is the enduring tension and conflict among several groups. Tension between the tax-paying peasantry and the tax-collecting government is a recurring theme. As he develops this feeling of tension through various examples and anecdotes, Spence plainly exhibits the fact that the peasantry often had difficulty in making ends meet. The most significant cause for this difficulty usually gravitated around the occurrence of one natural disaster or another, killing people, and destroying their crops. In the span of thirty years, T’an-ch’eng had suffered an earthquake, countless marauding invaders, and several floods3, with each event usually punctuated by a famine. In spite of such overwhelming misfortune, taxes had to be paid, and assistance from the government usually remained rather wanting for the people of T’an-ch’eng.4 Thus, tension developed between the beleaguered peasantry and the apparently unconcerned government. Merely labeling the situation as “unrest” would hardly do it justice, as the populace became recipients of a solution that simply did not match the problem. As tensions became greater, the complexity of the situation continued to deepen.
Further complicating the situation for many Chinese was that in addition to the general tension with the government, the people tended to also have conflicts among the various classes. Spence recounts episodes of conflict between rich and poor, such as the uneven distribution of taxes paid by the capable townsmen and gentry in comparison to the country people.5 Dismissing the role of corruption in perpetuating this uneven distribution is impossible, as landlords routinely produced much more than they reported.6 Furthermore, the peasantry had to compete with the system of pao-lan, or proxy relationships, by which wealthy landowners would deed their land to people exempt from paying taxes. The result of the various schemes enacted by people with the faculties to do so was that the peasantry’s share of the tax quotas continued to rise, although their actual income did not.7 Spence uses these examples and more to show the inequality of life, especially for the poorest peasants, who were helpless to fight the schemes of the gentry. Spence shows that the details of day-to-day life belie the expectations of a generally homogeneous existence; the environment in which the poor suffered changed daily. This is certainly not the ideal situation in an ever increasingly complex society.
In addition to the problems people had to face concerning other groups, difficulty even appeared in family life. Spence provides a few anecdotes involving husband and wife, but more often than not, the subject involves a widow and children. Spence uses these episodes as a commentary on various topics of Chinese society. For example, a prominent incident of propriety being secondary to improbity involves a plot to murder a widow’s son, so that the deceased father’s family could reclaim the widow’s land as dowry recompense8; the episode reveals the worst in human nature, in the form of the murderer, and does little to redeem the loss of the widow, woman P’eng, other than the conviction and execution of the guilty.
Here, Spence’s approach to presenting China reveals a flaw, in that, by focusing so closely on one location’s time and events, Spence has no recourse but to present the material available in the records. Of itself, that should be taken as a positive action, but the problem lies in the sheer resonation of pervading ill abounding in T’an-ch’eng through Spence’s historical recreation; Spence’s imagery is, routinely, bleak and foreboding. Although this very well could be a barometer to the actual conditions of life in seventeenth century China, one cannot exclude from imagination the probable ubiquity of conversely inspiring happenings. Perhaps no such events exist in the records of the time, but, nonetheless, Spence’s portrait of life as being rarely other than overtly and caustically miserable certainly excludes a significant part of life.
Assuming that Spence’s utterly bleak portrayals of everyday life were based upon as much information as he had available, it should be noted that, despite the shortcomings in presentation, that Spence creates a fully immersing environment in which the reader is able to explore everyday society through a fairly unique perspective. In addition, the way in which Spence blends the fictional writings of P’u Sung-ling with the accounts of verifiable events from the Local History of T’an-ch’eng and the memoirs of Huang Liu-hung9 affects to provide a seamless segue between fact and fiction, useful since the exploration of Chinese society does not cease at the fringes of ascertainable fact. The discoveries inherent in the day’s literature, such as now remains, can provide just as much insight, and more, into the life of a suffering man or a grieving woman as could any log in Huang Liu-hung’s memoirs. Neither archaeology nor any other discipline could truly affect the sentiments conveyed in some of P’u Sung-ling’s writings, such as his stories involving the manifestation of various forms of magic, at least without much circumlocution.
From a standpoint of being purely historic, Spence probably wrote as helpful a book as is conceivable, given the topic and information available. While necessity likely forced a few fictional elements into the mix, generally speaking, The Death of Woman Wang is a useful resource for gaining greater insight into the day to day living of seventeenth century China. Spence’s overarching themes of conflict, tension, and hardship are firmly grounded throughout the book, evidenced, respectively, by: the corruption of the gentry, particularly in regard to pao-lan; poverty of the poorest classes due to unaffordable taxes; the repeated misfortunes heaped upon T’an-ch’eng by nature. All the while, Spence continues to delve deeper into the ethos of the Chinese people, through story after story. His chronology in the telling of the stories is such that he is able to thoroughly discuss a topic within the framework of a sequence of accounts, which often work together to drive home a teaching or moral pertinent to study within not only T’an-ch’eng, as a representative county, but also of China as a whole, as national culture was bound together; the lessons from the county would serve to represent what one could assume to be typical of the country. Providing accurate glimpses into the life and reality of a now distant time, it is clear that seventeenth century China is more complex than a quick glance would indicate. Spence succeeds in making that longer look possible.