Storms, State, and Society in South China Since the Fifth Century Ce

Home , Lingao County, Nandu River, Nanzhong, Northern Guangdong, Port of Shantou, Robert DeCourcy Ward

WEATHERING HISTORY: STORMS, STATE, AND SOCIETY IN SOUTH CHINA SINCE THE FIFTH CENTURY CE

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History

Clark L. Alejandrino, M.A.

Washington DC, USA April 16, 2019

WEATHERING HISTORY: STORMS, STATE, AND SOCIETY IN SOUTH CHINA SINCE THE FIFTH CENTURY CE

Clark L. Alejandrino, M.A.

Thesis Advisers: Carol A. Benedict, Ph.D. and John R. McNeill, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

My dissertation looks at typhoons in the history of the richest, most populous, and most typhoon-prone province of China: Guangdong. It considers political, social, cultural, and environmental aspects of typhoons from the fifth to the twentieth century and argues that successive states and generations of Chinese that occupied the province’s littoral regarded it as a

“typhoon space.” The real and perceived vulnerability of the Guangdong littoral inspired efforts at community- and state-building that had many consequences. In exploring the deep consciousness of storms and the social structures they inspired in a major part of China, I will contribute to both climate history and Chinese history by reimagining the spatial frameworks within which we study human interactions with the environment.

My project takes seriously the constructed nature of the Guangdong littoral as a “typhoon space” and its location in a tropical cyclone basin, arguing that its perceived vulnerability to storms across centuries was as influential in shaping its history as was the destructive force of the storms that so often came ashore. By delineating specific spaces where climatic phenomena have a deep influence on human society and culture, my project facilitates the reimagining of China, and even the world, as consisting of discrete, but at times overlapping, climate spaces. These, crucially, would not be the same as climate regions as understood by climatologists and enshrined in countless maps. Rather, they would be based both on climatic phenomena and social, cultural, and political structures that evolved to cope with climate features. Since climate spaces

iii do not neatly coincide with the nation, province, or other familiar spatial categories, my project invites a rethinking of space in Chinese history and more globally in environmental history.

Thinking in terms of climate spaces also eases comparisons by providing a common language for speaking about similar phenomena across the globe. For example, we can think of typhoon spaces in the Western Pacific and hurricane spaces in the Caribbean as comparable “storm spaces” within a transnational history of wind, water, risk, and response. It is my hope that reimagining coastal China as a typhoon space and thinking more broadly in terms of climate spaces may serve as catalysts for advancing both global environmental history and the underdeveloped field of Chinese climate history.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

On September 26, 2009, Typhoon Ketsana, better known in the Philippines as Typhoon

Ondoy, turned Manila into a water world. My entire home was underwater and half my family might have drowned had they not jumped across to our neighbor’s home, which was just one story higher than the floodwater. Though I was not in Manila then, Ondoy still affected me greatly with an anxiety I felt for the safety of my loved ones. When I returned home, Ondoy left its imprint on the landscape and mindscape of Manila through its floodmarks and the many stories people told about it. Trained in Sinology, I wondered if typhoons left its own lasting impressions on the denizens of coastal China. I thank Ondoy first, for I would never have embarked on this dissertation project had it not left such a deep impression in my mind.

As I navigated the tempestuous journey called graduate school, many helped me along the way. At Georgetown, Carol Benedict and John McNeill took me under their wing, knowing when to trust my trajectory and when to gently nudge me toward other directions. I would never have written about twentieth-century China if I had not studied it under Carol. She also lavished my writing with great care and often completed my thoughts long before I figured them out. She also got me to see the spatial implications of my work. John inspired me to think at a larger scale and to read more broadly in world and environmental history. A towering figure in the historical profession, he always amazed me with the speed and cheer of his responses to my drafts and emails and how accessible he was despite his inordinately busy schedule. His alacrity came with pithy insight and he never allowed me to lose sight of how my work might reach a larger audience. Carol and John believed in my ideas and nurtured them, treating me more like a junior colleague than a student. I could not have asked for two better advisers.

Micah Muscolino was my first adviser and though he left Georgetown in my third year, he never left me behind. He has always been ready to write me letters and read my drafts whether from rainy Oxford or sunny San Diego. Though we are not far in age, his knowledge of

East Asian environmental history is far more advanced and I can only hope to follow in his pathbreaking footsteps. More than anyone else, he constantly reminded me to find my niche in

Chinese history in general and Chinese environmental history in particular. Jim Millward, through his classes on Central Eurasia and many conversations, taught me much about the wider world to which China belonged and he did it with a lot of cheer, music, and a few house parties.

He was also there to guide me during a particularly difficult period of my studies. Tim Beach taught me how to appreciate the geosciences and their potential uses in history. To have a scientist of Beach’s caliber expressing so much enthusiasm for my work was also most uplifting and made it easier for me to bridge the gap between science and history.

None of the work I did for my doctoral studies at Georgetown would have been possible without the solid foundation laid by my first mentors in Sinology at the University of Sydney.

Helen Dunstan, Tim Chan, and Derek Herforth combined to teach me Classical Chinese, and the intricacies of sinological research. Helen gave me a firm grasp of late imperial Chinese history and she has been my most steadfast advocate. She never failed to lend me an ear or a sympathetic heart when I needed it. Tim made me appreciate Chinese literature, especially poetry and literary criticism, and I could never have written one of the earlier chapters without his training. He also provided me with library access and food in Hong Kong. Derek made me love Classical Chinese, both reading and teaching it. His constructivist approach made me conscious of the importance of knowing how language means not just what it means.

Other faculty members of Georgetown’s Department of History shared their expertise and support. Jordan Sand, as my sensei in Japanese history and as Director of Doctoral Studies, helped me to think about the cultural aspects of my dissertation and was always there to provide valuable perspective on academic life and the job market. Adam Rothman, Howard Spendelow,

Tommaso Astarita, Erick Langer, Dagomar Degroot, Timothy Newfield, John Tutino, Toshi

Higuchi, Chandra Manning, David Painter, David Collins, Ananya Chakravarti, Meredith

McKittrick, and Bryan McCann all guided and encouraged me on many occasions that they may not necessarily remember. Outside of Georgetown, Robert Marks, Mark Elvin, Judith Shapiro, and Michael Szonyi also read, commented, and supported my work.

Negotiating the bureaucracy of graduate school would have been more difficult without the staff of the Department of History. I thank Carolina Madinaveitia, Miriam Okine-Davies, Jan

Liverance, Kathy Gallagher, and Amy Chidester for all that they do to make the department a viable and sane place to work in. Fellow graduate students accompanied me on my academic journey on the hill. I thank Jonathan Van Harmelen, William Buchholtz, Anthony Eames,

Jackson Perry, Graham Pitts, Jordan Smith, Alex Macartney, Chad Frazier, Laura Goffman, Kate

Dannies, Daniel Cano, Gao Yuan, Shen Yubin, Shi Yue, Jason Halub, John Gregory, Robynne

Mellor, Alan Roe, Bader Al-Saif, and Faisal Hussain for their company.

Various institutions funded my graduate studies and research. Georgetown’s Graduate

School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of History provided me with a generous five- year fellowship and some money to attend conferences. The Luce Foundation and ACLS made it possible for me to do initial research in China in the summer of 2014. Jim Millward and Michelle

Wang gave me a pre-doctoral fellowship under their Mellon-funded Critical Silk Road Studies

Seminar series in spring of 2015. A research grant from the Center for Chinese Studies at the

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National Central Library of Taiwan allowed me to begin my research years away from

Georgetown at lovely Taipei in summer and fall of 2015. A Mellon SSRC International

Dissertation Research Fellowship allowed me to complete the bulk of my research in China during the entire 2016. A Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation doctoral fellowship (project number

DD032-A-16) in 2017 allowed me to conduct mop-up research and begin writing the dissertation.

Georgetown’s Department of History gave me the opportunity to teach in the summer of 2018, while the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, under Philip Kafalas, entrusted me with their students in spring of 2019.

During my travels, I met and benefited from the advice and company of many amazing individuals. I always had an academic and a gym community wherever I went. Let me start by thanking all the gyms I enlisted in that nourished my physical wellbeing. More importantly, I became part of many an academic community. In Taiwan, my aunt Nancy Lim and cousin

Jeffrey Lim made Taipei a second home. Wu Jen-shu, Paul Katz, Jane Liau, Geng Lih-chun,

Huang Wende, Roger Shih-chieh Lo, Michael Shi-yung Liu, Liu Tsui-jung, and Marlon Zhu welcomed me into Taiwan’s vibrant academic community. Jane Liau, Geng Lih-chun, and

Huang Wende made it possible for me to come to Taiwan and gave me a venue to present my research. Wu Jen-shu gave me the most enthusiastic welcome and fed me several times with food and insight. Paul Katz, Roger Shih-chieh Lo, and Michael Shi-yung Liu did me the honor of reading and commenting on my work. Melly Yu showed me the beauty of Tainan.

In Beijing, Bao Maohong and his students made the imposing but often smog-choked capital a much friendlier place to live and do research in. In Guangzhou, Zhang Shitao, Luo Bin,

Paul Van Dyke, Fei Sheng, Xie Shi, and Zheng Wei’an made my stay in the humid and busy city more relaxed and fun. David Faure, He Xi, and Lai Caihong helped me get my bearings in

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Leizhou. Ace Sy and Clarissa Syson welcomed me into their home during my brief stay in

Shanghai. I thank the many people in the villages of Leizhou who shared the stories that made

Chapter Four possible. I am grateful as well to the Niu Friends who generously recounted to me their memories of the 1969 typhoon at Shantou that made Chapter Eight feasible.

In Washington DC, Herb and Sharon Schwartz, and Kathy Gallagher welcomed me into their homes. Herb and Sharon, in particular, have tolerated me since 2012 and have made me part of their family. Lynn and Zach Topel were indispensable in helping me make the transition into DC and Georgetown life from Manila. Though we do not always see eye-to-eye on many things, I will always be grateful to the Topels. My mother Lily came down to visit me in DC on several occasions bringing with her the warm feeling of family. Even if we did not always meet,

Paolo del Mundo, Trang Nguyen, Mark Bryan Yu, and Ruska Guledani warmed my hearts just by being in the Greater DC area.

I thank all the archivists and librarians who facilitated my research across the oceans.

They belong to institutions such as the First Historical Archives and the Peking University

Library in Beijing; the Second Historical Archives in Nanjing; the Shanghai Public Library in

Shanghai; the Guangdong Provincial Library, the Guangdong Provincial Archives, the

Guangzhou Municipal Archives, and the Sun Yat-Sen University Library in Guangzhou; the

Municipal Archives and Municipal Libraries of Leizhou, Chaozhou, and Shantou; the Hainan

Municipal Library in Haikou; The Fu Ssu-nien and Kuo Ting-yi libraries of Academia Sinica,

Academia Historica, and the National Central Library of Taiwan in Taipei; the Library of

Congress’ Asia Reading Room and Georgetown’s Lauinger Library in Washington DC.

I thank my parents Carlos Alejandrino and Lily Lim for the gift of life and for nurturing my love for history and Chinese language at an early age, especially by indulging my love for

ix books. My siblings, Lynn, Lon, Lonson, and Cheryl have always been supportive. I thank Eba

Eslapor for her life-long care and love that she continues to bestow on me and our canine babies.

In some of my most difficult moments, Eba always reminded me why I live.

I also thank the people at the institutions of my earlier education in the Philippines.

Various history and Chinese teachers at Xavier School unwittingly whetted my curiosity. Jojo

Fornier, Ambeth Ocampo, and Glenn Ang were my first college history teachers at Ateneo and inspired me to pursue a US PhD. The Chinese Studies Program at Ateneo, under the wise leadership of Ellen Palanca gave me a chance to teach and share my love of Chinese history and language with hundreds of amazing students. I thank Ellen, my former colleagues like Richie

Santos-de Guzman, and Songbee Dy, for their confidence in me. Mike Pante and Leloy Claudio gamely chatted with me about our separate graduate school experiences. I thank all my students whether in Ateneo, Xavier, or Georgetown for letting me experience the joys of teaching and reminding me why I want to be an educator for the rest of my life.

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the people in Georgetown who made it unforgettable beyond my academic predilections. My friends from Georgetown Medical School and fellow Yates Field House workout enthusiasts brought so much joy into my life. I thank

Victoria Angelucci, John Solak, Rob Hagerty, Jim Chihun Han, David Xiao, Max Bergman, Joe

Serino, Ben Wilson, Shane Gately, Takashi Kitani, Henry Walsh, and Joey Travers. Most especially, I am most fortunate and grateful to have the friendship of Malcolm Magovern III,

Mary Jenkins, Andrew Beckwith, Amelia Wan, Vann Lavin, Edith Brignoni-Perez, and

Sebastian Orman. I only wish our Yates family did not have to break up so soon.

I dedicate this dissertation first to Eba, Mama, and Helen, and second to Malcolm, Mary,

Andrew, Amelia, Vann, Edith, and Seb, and all the storms of life we weathered together.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Cyclones, Climate, and Chinese History ...... 1 The Argument in Brief ...... 1 Cyclones and Climate History ...... 2 Climate in Chinese History ...... 5 Disaster History ...... 8 Chronology, Interdisciplinarity, Sources and Storm Spaces ...... 9

Chapter One: Where Storms Pass: Guangdong as Typhoon Space ...... 13 Introduction ...... 13 The Meteorological Setting: Guangdong in the Pacific World ...... 15 Guangdong’s Historical Typhoon Record ...... 28 The Tempestuous Storm Record ...... 34 Conclusion ...... 39

Chapter Two: Stormy Perceptions: Guangdong as Imagined Typhoon Space, 5th to 17th Centuries ...... 40 Introduction ...... 40 Stormy Definitions ...... 41 Southern-ness, Typhoons, and the Guangdong Connection ...... 45 Tempestuous Poetry ...... 49 Guangdong’s Typhoon Mother ...... 53 Lingnan and Typhoons in the Late Imperial Geographic Imagination ...... 60 Conclusion ...... 65

Chapter Three: Stormy Sensations: Typhoon Knowledge and Normalization in Late Imperial Coastal Lingnan ...... 66 Introduction ...... 66 Lingnan as Hanspace ...... 67 Hanspace and Typhoon Space ...... 72 Sensing Storms...... 77 Normalizing Storms ...... 89 Conclusion ...... 97

Chapter Four: Storm Spirits: The Wind God of Leizhou, Typhoon Space, and Ritual Space ...... 99 Introduction ...... 99 The Religious Side of Coastal Lingnan’s Typhoon Space ...... 101 Leizhou as Typhoon Space: Environment and Economy ...... 103 The Ming Typhoon Altar ...... 108 The Qing Wind God Temple ...... 114 The Localization of the Wind God ...... 119 Conclusion ...... 124

Chapter Five: Succor Against Storms: Typhoon Disaster Relief in Coastal Guangdong, 1722 to 1922...... 125

Introduction ...... 125 Pre-Qing Typhoon Disaster Relief...... 127 The Qing in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space ...... 128 High Qing Typhoon Disaster Relief ...... 131 Retreat of the State from Guangdong’s Typhoon Space ...... 138 The 1922 Chaozhou Typhoon ...... 145 Conclusion ...... 151

Chapter Six: The Science of Storms: Modern Meteorology in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space from the 1850s to the 1950s...... 154 Introduction ...... 154 Cyclone Meteorology in the Service of the Colonial State...... 155 Typhoon Meteorology in the Service of the Developmentalist Nation ...... 160 Building Meteorological Infrastructure in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space ...... 166 Typhoon Meteorology in the Service of Communist Scientific Consolidation ...... 174 Forming a Meteorological Society...... 180 Conclusion ...... 185

Chapter Seven: Fighting Typhoons in Communist China: Fangfeng Organization, Mass Mobilization, and Propaganda in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space...... 188 Introduction ...... 188 From Flood Defense to Typhoon Defense ...... 190 Mass Mobilization and Fighting Typhoons ...... 196 The Organizational, Financial, and Political Limits of Flood and Typhoon Defense .....206 Typhoon Control in Other Storm Provinces ...... 208 Typhoon Propaganda ...... 211 Conclusion ...... 221

Chapter Eight: Typhoon Identities: The Niutianyang Incident of 1969, the Politics of Memory, and Typhoon Place ...... 223 Introduction ...... 223 The May 7 Directive, Niutianyang, and Sent-Down Youth ...... 225 The Niutianyang Incident of July 28, 1969: What Everyone Agrees On ...... 230 Making Victory, Martyrs, Models, and Monuments ...... 237 The Politics of Memory, Typhoon Identities, and Typhoon Place ...... 246 Conclusion ...... 252

Conclusion: Guangdong’s Typhoon Space and Climate Spaces in Chinese and World History 254 Continuity and Change in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space ...... 254 Climate Spaces in Chinese and World History ...... 257

Bibliography ...... 262

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 Map of China ...... 14 Figure 1.2 Seven Tropical Cyclone Basins ...... 16 Figure 1.3 Hadley Cells of the Pacific Ocean ...... 21 Figure 1.4 Pacific Gyres ...... 22 Figure 1.5 Wind Circulation Around Low and High Pressure Zones in the Northern Hemisphere ...... 23 Figure 1.6 General Wind Circulation Patterns ...... 25 Figure 1.7 Northwest Pacific Basin Typhoon Tracks, 1983-2002 ...... 27 Figure 1.8 Southern 华南 (Green Line) and Eastern 华东 (Light Blue) Chinese Coast Typhoon Landfalling Frequencies, 1644-1911 ...... 31 Figure 2.1 Coastal Lingnan ...... 47 Figure 3.1 Ming Map of Coastal Lingnan ...... 73 Figure 3.2 Later Heaven Eight Trigrams 後天八卦 ...... 76 Figure 3.3 Eragrostis ferruginea or the Wind-Knowing Plant ...... 81 Figure 3.4 Oceanodroma monorhis or Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel ...... 84 Figure 3.5 Stone Dogs in Leizhou Museum ...... 92 Figure 3.6 Five Phases Gables or Typhoon Gables in the Chao-Shan Area...... 94 Figure 4.1 Wind God Procession on the Fifth Day of the Fifth Lunar Month (June 9, 2016) ....100 Figure 4.2 Leizhou Ocean Fields and Sea Dike ...... 106 Figure 4.3 Typhoon Altar Original Location ...... 112 Figure 4.4 Plaque of the Typhoon Shrine ...... 112 Figure 4.5 Ming Map of Haikang City Proper and its Environ with the Typhoon Altar...... 114 Figure 4.6 South China Typhoon Landing Frequencies, 1644-1911 ...... 116 Figure 4.7 The Wind God of Leizhou ...... 120 Figure 6.1 Typhoon Signals ...... 178 Figure 6.2 Candle Lamp Circulation and Cyclone Wind Circulation ...... 182 Figure 7.1 1975 Map of Guangdong Coast Depicting Extent of Typhoon Influence...... 195 Figure 7.2 Inspecting Dike Breaches (探漏) ...... 199 Figure 7.3 Reinforcing a Breached Dike ...... 199 Figure 7.4 Supporting Crops Before a Typhoon ...... 201 Figure 7.5 Strengthening Houses Before a Typhoon ...... 202 Figure 7.6 Preparing Boats Before a Typhoon ...... 202 Figure 7.7 Guangdong Typhoon Defense Leadership Division Organization Schema ...... 205 Figure 7.8 Caricature of Cadres and Villagers Saving Mao’s Portrait and Copies of His Little Red Book ...... 217 Figure 7.9 Defending Dikes from Typhoons I ...... 217 Figure 7.10 Defending Dikes from Typhoons II ...... 218 Figure 7.11 Women Reading Mao’s Little Red Book ...... 219 Figure 7.12 Women Fighting a Typhoon ...... 219 Figure 7.13 Typhoon Defense Model Xiao Jiawei ...... 220 Figure 8.1 Niutianyang (Enclosed in Red) ...... 227 Figure 8.2 Female Students at Niutianyang ...... 229 Figure 8.3 Niutianyang Dike ...... 231 Figure 8.4 Idealized Images of the Niutianyang Incident ...... 235

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Figure 8.5 Yang Jiansheng ...... 240 Figure 8.6 Panels Three, Ten, and Thirteen of Yang Jiansheng’s Cartoon Biography ...... 243 Figure 8.7 Memorial Stone to the Eighty-Three Martyred Students at Niutianyang ...... 244 Figure 8.8 July 28 Memorial on Liantang Mountain ...... 245

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 Average Numbers and Percentage of Tropical Cyclones per Basin, 1970-1995 ...... 18 Table 1.2 Minimum Conditions for Tropical Cyclone Formation ...... 18 Table 1.3 Northwest Pacific Basin Tropical Cyclone Numbers and Landfalls, 1983-2002 ...... 27 Table 2.1 Saffir-Simpson Scale ...... 42 Table 3.1 Calendrical Typhoons ...... 85 Table 4.1 Wind God Temple Construction along Coastal Guangdong ...... 117 Table 6.1 Zhu Kezhen’s Ten Meteorological Regions of China ...... 165 Table 6.2 Typhoon Warning Stations Completed Between 1952-1953 ...... 178

Introduction: Cyclones, Climate, and Chinese History

The Argument in Brief

Hato, a strong Category Three typhoon, landed on Zhuhai, Guangdong right in the middle of the densely populated Pearl River Delta on August 23, 2017.1 Some twenty people lost their lives and the economies of China, Hong Kong, and Macau together absorbed billions of US dollars in damage. Still reeling from Hato, residents along the Guangdong coast must have been alarmed at the news that another storm, Pakhar, was approaching and about to make landfall on

August 27.2 The government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) certainly felt the need to explain why Guangdong was seeing consecutive storms in barely four days’ time. On August 26,

Xinhua, the government’s official press agency, released an article partly entitled “Why does

Guangdong ‘Attract Typhoons’ so frequently?” It dryly stated that “Guangdong is the province that sees the most typhoon landfalls.”3

One cannot understand the history of China’s strategically important southern coast without understanding the typhoons that regularly visit it. Currently home to more than a 100 million people and boasting a GDP of over a trillion dollars, the southern coastal province of

Guangdong is China’s most populous and richest, accounting for more than ten percent of its total GDP. Excluding China, only ten countries have a bigger population and only fourteen have a larger GDP than Guangdong. Nearby Hong Kong, Macau, and Hainan Province add another seventeen million people and 500 billion dollars of GDP to the Guangdong region.4 The region’s

1 Hato 天鴿 is Japanese for pigeon but read tiange in Chinese. 2 Pakhar is Lao for a fresh water fish of the Mekong River. It is read paka 帕卡 in Chinese. 3 Hu Linguo 胡林果 and Tian Jianchuan 田建川, “Guangdong Weihe Ruci Zhao Taifeng? Zhexie Fangyu Changshi Ni bixu Zhidao,” 广东为何如此’招台风?’ 这些防御常识你必须知道 [Why does Guangdong “Attract Typhoons” so frequently? Some mitigation basics you need to know], Xinhua, http://www.xinhuanet.com/local/2017- 08/26/c_1121548030.htm, last accessed on April 2, 2018. 4 Hainan was for centuries associated with Guangdong as part of the Lingnan region (see chapter two) and was at least administratively part of Guangdong from at least the fourteenth century under the Ming until it became a separate province in 1988.

1 economic core, the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, is home to 57 million people packed into

56,000 square kilometers of land and is one of the most densely populated urban zones in the world. All these important territories are located in the path of typhoons. A total of 181 typhoons hit Guangdong in the period 1954-2008, an average of about 3.3 typhoons per year, causing economic losses amounting to 1.6 billion dollars per typhoon.5 One purpose of this dissertation is to trace the longer history of typhoons in Guangdong across more than a millennium of Chinese history and to explain how having the greatest frequency of typhoon landfalls in China has shaped the history of Guangdong.

By considering political, social, cultural, and environmental aspects of typhoons in

Guangdong from the fifth to the twentieth century, I argue that successive states and generations of Chinese that occupied the province’s littoral came to regard it as a “typhoon space.” This real and perceived vulnerability of the Guangdong littoral to storms inspired efforts at community- and state-building that had many consequences. In exploring the deep consciousness of storms and the social structures they inspired in a major region of China by viewing it as a form of

“climate space,” I contribute to both climate history and Chinese history by reimagining the spatial frameworks within which we study human interactions with the environment.

Cyclones and Climate History

Tropical cyclones such as hurricanes and typhoons have become something of a poster boy for climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, based on numerous peer-reviewed studies, warns that in a warming world there will be fewer tropical cyclones but they will be more intense. Rising sea levels would exacerbate storm surges; increased

5 Yin Jie, Wu Shaohong, and Dai Erfu, “Assessment of Economic Damage Risks from Typhoon Disasters in Guangdong, China,” Journal of Resources and Ecology 3.2 (2012): 144-150. Comparable figures for average human casualties in the same 55-year period are not easily had especially for the period under Mao’s rule (1949-1976).

2 atmospheric moisture would increase tropical cyclone rainfall rates; warmer oceans means more fuel for tropical cyclones and the greater likelihood of the formation of Category Four and above or super typhoons.6 To the lay person, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are invisible and global average temperature increases of one to two degrees Celsius barely discernible but super typhoons have a larger than life presence. They envelope entire countries, impress and terrify with their wind speeds and storm surges, and leave trails of destruction and death. They remind us dramatically of the frailty of human existence and of the larger environment we live in.

Climate change, which former US president Barack Obama once called the greatest threat to future generations, has become a rising field of study in the last four decades. In order to appreciate where our warming world stands in relation to earth’s geologic history, scientists reconstruct paleoclimates by utilizing an increasing variety of geological and biological proxies.

These growing natural archives have in turn fueled an uptick in the writing of climate history, the study of how climate factors into human history, society, and culture.7 Punctuating this climatic turn is the recent suggestion of a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, characterized by humanity’s greater role in shaping earth systems and causing climatic and environmental change.8

We can discern waves, particularly two major ones, in this ongoing development of climate historiography. These waves do not necessarily begin where one ends but are concurrent processes that are also simultaneously affecting one another. One wave consists of scholars utilizing the many indexes, such as temperature and precipitation, that paleoclimatologists have

6 IPCC, “Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report,” https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full.pdf. 7 Sam White, “State of the Field: Historians and Climate Change,” American Historical Association Perspectives 50.7 (2012). Mark Carey, et al., “Forum: Climate Change and Climate History,” Environmental History 19.2 (April 2014): 282-364. 8 Colin N. Waters, et al. 2016. “The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene,” Science 351.6269 (January 8, 2016). The Anthropocene has become an academic buzzword as well in Asian Studies. See the very tentative essays in a special issue of The Journal of Asian Studies 73.4 (November 2014): 941-1007.

3 produced from the natural archives to write broad-stroke studies giving us general correlations between larger climate patterns (e.g., warming and cooling periods) and particular historical events (e.g., war, the rise and fall of states).9 Climate historiography, thanks to the global nature of the interpretation of natural archives, lent itself well to a global scale.

But the global scale of climate history and the reliance on what seemed like superficial correlations has led to some doubts about the kind of history being produced and these doubts helped fuel another wave of climate history. The larger the spatial scale, the less likely are we to take particularities into account. This more “critical climate history” questions the inadequate attention of large spatial scale studies to a wider range of factors, especially human agency, and is wary of climate determinism, where climate becomes the prime mover of events and shaper of cultures. It is more attentive to the complexities of societies and cultures in the face of climate change.10 It points to the resilience and innovation of human societies in weathering climate change and to the changing meanings of climate and weather in local and popular culture.11

9 See Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); John L. Brooke, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Evert Van de Vliert, Climate, Affluence and Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 10 Mark Carey, “Climate and history: a critical review of historical climatology and climate change historiography,” Climatic Change 3 (2012): 233-249; Mark Carey, “Science, Models, and Historians: Toward a Critical Climate History,” Environmental History 19.2 (April 2014): 354-364; Fan Kawai, “Climatic change and dynastic cycles in Chinese history: a review essay,” Climatic Change 101 (2010): 565-573; and Christian Pfister, “The Vulnerability of Past Societies to Climatic Variation: A New Focus for Historical Climatology in the Twenty-First Century,” Climatic Change 100 (2010): 25-31. 11 Sam White, Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) for example shows the resiliency of the Ottoman state under the coldest years of the Little Ice Age. Lillian Li, Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s-1990s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007) does the same for north China showing how the Qing state kept grain prices from fluctuating wildly when climate changed between drought and flood conditions. Dagomar Degroot, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, The Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) questions Geoffrey Parker’s narrative of global crisis in the Little Ice Age by exploring how the Dutch Republic took advantage of colder conditions to create an empire. Studies of climate and their deep impact on culture and history, are Wolfgang Behringer, A Cultural History of Climate (London: Polity Press, 2009); Vladimir Jankovic, Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of the Weather, 1650-1820 (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2000) and Thomas Wickman, Snowshoe Country: An Environmental and Cultural History of Winter in the Early American Northeast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

The question of scale, especially spatial scale, then is important in climate history. Ideally, we need studies on all kinds of scales from the local to the global. As others have already pointed out, we should be able to downscale or upscale in accordance with the kinds of sources and questions we encounter.12 I propose in this project a kind of spatial framework that lends itself well to both downscaling and upscaling. I call it simply “climate space.” It is a region simultaneously physical and cultural. As a physical region, it is characterized by a particular form or forms of climate. As a cultural region, people who live and/or interact with the physical climate space also imbue it with meanings and values related to the specific climatic phenomenon in question. These meanings and values manifest themselves in a whole range of human expressions and actions that constitute a kind of climate culture. The region may vary in scale but the choice should be determined by both the frequency of the climatic phenomenon in the region and the degree of its inhabitants’ awareness of the phenomenon. Greater frequency is important because it increases the likelihood that historical subjects will exhibit particular climatic awareness. Prominent climatic awareness is important because it increases the chance that society will reflect changes and adaptations to suit its climate. The environment produces the climate space in physical form but it is culturally defined by the people through the structures and practices they develop within it.

Climate in Chinese History

China has a continuous written record longer than any other comparable society. This record is rich in meteorological data which historical climatologists have been mining for some

12 Adrian Howkins, “Experiments in the Anthropocene: Climate Change and History in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica,” argues for the benefits of upscaling, while Georgina H. Endfield, “Exploring Particularity: Vulnerability, Resilience, and Memory in Climate Change Discourses,” argues for the advantages of downscaling, in Environmental History 19.2 (April 2014): 294-310.

5 time. In 1972, the noted meteorologist Zhu Kezhen (1890-1974) utilized a variety of sources ranging from dynastic histories to local gazetteers to compile a 5,000-year record of climate change in Chinese history.13 Twentieth-century scholars in China and Japan also have a long tradition of curating records and creating compilations of source material concerning a variety of topics, including climate and weather patterns, for future analysis.14 But the emerging field of

Chinese climate history, given the size of China, exhibits the same problems of scale discussed above, which leads to studies that are clearly of the deterministic mold.15 Some Chinese scholars are conscious of the pitfalls of determinism and prefer to state that there are possible correlations between climate change and historical change but stop short of making any definitive conclusion.16 One way to make more solid conclusions about the role of climate in Chinese history is by examining in more holistic detail, especially the element of human agency, the interactions of climate and human history in more well-defined and manageable climate spaces.

The concept of climate space allows us to reenvision the geography and history of China.

Spatial conceptions of China have tended to be dominated by what I call posthistorical frameworks. These are spatial frameworks that were adopted by scholars to help them make

13 Zhu Kezhen 竺可楨, “Zhongguo Jin Wuqian Nian lai Qihou Bianqian de Chubu Yanjiu,” 中國近五千年來氣候變遷的初步研究 [A Preliminary Study of Climatic Change in China over the Past 5,000 Years] Kaogu Xuebao 1 (1972):15-38. Reprinted in Zhu Kezhen Wenji 竺可楨文集 [Collected Works of Zhu Kezhen]. Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 1979, pp. 475-498. 14 An excellent overview of this history of climate data collection and what they tell us about Chinese climate history is Liu Ts’ui-jung, “A Retrospection of Climate Changes and their Impacts in Climate History,” in Carmen Meinert, ed. Nature, Environment, and Culture in East Asia: The Challenge of Climate Change (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 107-136. 15 For examples of climate determinism in Chinese history, see the works of David Zhang et al., “Climatic Change, Wars, and Dynastic Cycles in China over the Last Millenium,” Climatic Change 76 (2006): 459-477; “Climatic Change and Chinese Population Growth Dynamics over the Last Millenium,” Climatic Change 88 (2008): 131-156; “Global Climate Change, War, and Population Decline in Recent Human History,” PNAS 104 (2007): 19214-19219; “The Causality Analysis of Climate Change and Large-Scale Human Crisis,” PNAS 108 (October 2011): 17296- 17301. 16 The work of Ge Quansheng 葛全胜, Zhongguo Lichao Qihou Bianhua 中国历朝气候变化 [Climate Change across Chinese Dynastic History] (Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 2011) is representative of what one might call climate “maybe-ism” (kenenglun 可能论) as opposed to determinism (juedinglun 决定论). All of Ge’s conclusions are qualified by the word ‘maybe,” as in maybe climate has a role in X historical event.

6 sense of historical processes even if historical subjects themselves never conceived of space in these ways. For decades, G. William Skinner’s macroregional approach (inspired by central- place theory) to Chinese history cast a long shadow. 17 His framework, while spatial, geographical, and useful in many ways, is post-historical because no one in Chinese history themselves imagined China as a set of nine economic macroregions, each composed of market towns linked together in discrete river drainage basins. What this means is that while it may help us explain patterns in history, Skinner’s macroregions do not move history.18 Recently, some scholars have called for taking more seriously the ways in which historical subjects thought geographically and how these imagined geographies have shaped and thus moved history.19 Peter

Bol argues for the importance of “humanistic geography” as “a focus on place as something socially and culturally constructed and a recognition that the ways in which humans at a given time and place relate to the environment is mediated by the ways in which they understand themselves and their relation to the world.”20 William Cronon reminds environmental historians to embrace the values that historical subjects reveal when they told stories about nature and he suggests that we “tell not just stories about nature, but stories about stories about nature.”21

Climate space and its emphasis on human awareness of climate and how people consciously shape their lives and history within particular climatic environments is one way of writing a more humanistic geography and “a story about a story about nature.”

17 G. William Skinner, “Presidential Address: The Structure of Chinese History.” Journal of Asian Studies 44.2 (1985): 271-292. 18 Carolyn Cartier, “Origins and Evolution of a Geographical Idea: The Macroregion in China,” Modern China 28.1 (2002): 79-142. 19 Du Yongtao and Jeff Kyong-McClain, eds., Chinese History in Geographical Perspective (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013. 20 Peter K. Bol, “Epilogue: What is a Geographical Perspective on China’s History?” in Yongtao Du and Jeff Kyong-McClain, eds. Chinese History in Geographical Perspective (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013), pp. 197-204. Quote is on p. 199. 21 William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” Journal of American History 78.4 (1992): 1347-1376. See pp. 1375-1376.

Climate space is particularly ripe for application in Chinese history. China is blessed with what J.R. McNeill calls the world’s greatest “ecological complementarity.” What he means is that China’s large territory stretching into different latitudes and ecological regions contains an ecological diversity of mutually supplementing zones that translated into resilience for the

Chinese state. 22 Part of its ecological complementarity is the diversity of climatic patterns.

Typhoon space is but one kind of climate space that one can identify and study within Chinese history. On a shifting scale, one might look at monsoon spaces, “plum rain” spaces, snow spaces, sandstorm spaces, drought spaces, and so on.

This framework also has the advantage of allowing us to both complement and transcend other forms of spatial configurations. Guangdong’s typhoon space is a refinement of the provincial framework. I have inevitably focused on this province, the use of sources from and about it, partly because typhoons were strongly associated with it. But not the entire province constituted typhoon space and the sources make these distinctions clear as well. Only the littoral spaces, the villages, counties, cities, and prefectures along the coast saw the application and development of social structures and cultural practices shaped by typhoons. The mountainous northern part of the province fell outside of typhoon space and its history.

Disaster History

Though not all climatic phenomena come in the form of disasters, typhoons are usually understood to be disasters. Hence, a comment is necessary as to how the typhoon space described here relates to the field of disaster studies. From once seeing disasters as exogenous and wholly natural occurrences that disrupt the normal workings and reveal the hidden

22 J.R. McNeill, “China’s Environmental History in World Perspective,” in Mark Elvin and Liu Ts’ui-jung, eds. Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 31-52. See pp. 34-35.

8 inequalities of human societies, disaster historians have progressed towards understanding disasters as a balance and complementarity between the natural and social elements.23 Chris

Courtney’s application of a “disaster regime” framework that takes into consideration all the social and ecological factors that went into the unfolding of the 1931 floods in the city of Wuhan is a recent reflection of the maturity of Chinese disaster history.24 Historians have also learned to look beyond disasters as short-term events and to regard them as long-term processes that shape the structures and culture of a society through citizens’ awareness of their vulnerability.25 This allows them to see disasters as not only destructive but also constructive in their historical impact.26 These scholars have helped inspire the ways in which my typhoon space looks beyond temporary and disruptive events by focusing on continuities and slow evolutions in how communities responded to storms over time and by shifting my lens so as to see typhoons as not merely destructive events but to regard them also as constructive agents of change along the

Guangdong coast.

Chronology, Interdisciplinarity, Sources and Storm Spaces

This project used a wide variety of sources and interdisciplinary methods to reconstruct the long history of Guangdong’s typhoon space. Climate history lends itself well to longue durée analysis but it also makes the task more difficult as the kinds of sources one uses and thus the

23 Jonathan Bergman, “Disaster: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” History Compass 6.3 (2008): 934-946. 24 Chris Courtney, The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 25 Kenneth Hewitt and Ian Burton, The Hazardousness of a Place: A Regional Ecology of Damaging Events (Toronto: University of Press, 1971); Ian Burton, Robert W. Kates, and Gilbert F. White, The Environment as Hazard (New York Oxford University Press, 1978); Greg Bankoff, Cultures of Disaster: Society and Natural Hazard in the Philippines (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). 26 Kevin Rozario, Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

9 kinds of methods and historiographical issues one has to take into account varies across time periods.

This dissertation presents a case study of a climate space: the typhoon space of the

Guangdong littoral. Most of the Chinese coast, from Shanghai in the north to Guangdong in the south, may in fact constitute one large coherent typhoon space. But I have chosen to focus only on the province of Guangdong. From the sources it is clear not only that Guangdong physically saw the most storms, but that cultural perceptions of Guangdong as a typhoon space were also the strongest of all the coastal provinces. It met in the best possible way, my two basic conditions for the identification of a coherent climate space.

In the course of writing the history of Guangdong’s typhoon space, I thus outline a method for analyzing a climate space. Placing the Guangdong littoral within the meteorological, geographical, and paleoclimatological context of the Northwest Pacific Typhoon Basin allows us to establish it as a physical typhoon space with a high frequency of landfalling typhoons

(Chapter One). Close reading of etymological and literary writing about storms from the fifth century onwards demonstrates that people living and/or interacting with this physical typhoon space strongly identified the region with storms (Chapter Two). Because they associated the region with typhoons, people produced knowledge, structures, and practices around them that one may constitute together as a form of typhoon culture. Extensive reading of late imperial sources illustrate how knowledge about what typhoons were, why they occur, how to forecast them, or an ethnometeorology of storms were produced and circulated in late imperial coastal

Guangdong (Chapter Three). These knowledge systems and cultural practices played themselves out in an arena wherein different actors contested the meanings of typhoons to suit their needs and circumstances. Historical research combined with anthropological fieldwork in the Leizhou

Peninsula show how imperial and local conceptions of typhoon deities competed and achieved reconciliation in Qing Guangdong (Chapter Four). Research in Qing and Republican archives inquiring into state paternalism and local charitable activities allow us to see the waxing and waning of typhoon relief patterns from the Qing to the early twentieth century (Chapter Five).

Examining the written pronouncements of modernizing states, scientists, and officials show that the modern meteorology of typhoons provided justification for imperialist, nationalist, and developmentalist schemes from the late Qing to the People’s Republic of China or PRC (Chapter

Six). Research in PRC archives demonstrate how typhoons and an ideology that propounded the belief that mass mobilization would allow humans to overcome the limits of nature framed the

PRC state’s reorganization of local society into typhoon defense units (Chapter Seven). Finally, the collection of oral histories reveals the contested meanings and memories of those involved in a tragic typhoon incident in eastern Guangdong in 1969 (Chapter Eight). As I hope to show,

Guangdong’s stormy history as it moved vertically through time intersected and interacted horizontally with various strands of Chinese history. Just as generations of Chinese had to deal with storms (continuity), the way the storms were dealt with and the kinds of meanings given to them transformed (change).

Scholars have written a great deal about hurricanes in the Atlantic but there are virtually no studies of Northwest Pacific typhoons despite their occurrence in one of the most densely populated regions of the world.27 The Northwest Pacific is broad and diverse and any attempt to

27 Louis Perez, Winds of Change: Hurricanes and the Transformation of Nineteenth Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Sherry Johnson, Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Stuart B. Schwartz, Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), and most recently, Eleonora Rohland, Changes in the Air: Hurricanes in New Orleans from 1718 to the Present (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019). The few works on typhoons are Greg Bankoff, “Storms of history: Water, hazard, and society in the Philippines 1565-1930,” in Peter Boomgaard, ed. A World of Water: Rain, Rivers and Seas in Southeast Asian Histories (Leiden: KITLV

11 unite it in one study of a large typhoon space without the foundation of smaller scale studies risks becoming another exercise in superficial correlation. This is comparable to the difficulties of thinking of the Pacific, because of its sheer size and diversity, as a coherent maritime region in comparison to the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean, which have longer histories of integration.28 Stuart Schwartz was able to unite the Greater Caribbean into one “Sea of Storms” because first, there were already existing hurricane studies of smaller spatial units within the region such as Matthew Mulcahy's study of the British Caribbean and Louis Perez's study of

Cuba. Secondly, Schwartz was able to link hurricanes to two other unifying themes of Greater

Caribbean history, namely slavery and US hegemony, which helped “provide continuities and interconnections.”29 Without other major typhoon histories of the Northwest Pacific to build on and with no other discernible unifying themes that may serve as interconnections and continuities, a history of the Northwest Pacific as an “Ocean of Storms” is not yet possible.

Perhaps one day, if enough studies of other storm spaces appear, whether of other typhoon spaces of the Northwest Pacific, the cyclone spaces of the Indian Ocean and South

Pacific, or the hurricane spaces of the eastern Pacific, combined with the rich studies of the

Caribbean already available, we may be able to write a global and transnational history of storms.30 Typhoon space, as an example of climate space, thus has the potential to move from one spatial scale to another. With its strong emphasis on human awareness of climate but also the

Press, 2007), pp. 153-183; and James F. Warren, “Typhoons and the Inequalities of Philippine Society and History,” Philippine Studies 64.3-4 (2016): 455-472. 28 On the problem of the Pacific see Jerry Bentley, “Seas and Oceans as Frameworks of Historical Analysis,” Geographical Review 89.2 (1999): 215-224, especially p. 219. And for consideration of this issue from an environmental history point of view, see J.R. McNeill, ed., Environmental History in the Pacific World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). 29 Schwartz, Sea of Storms, p. xviii. 30 Greg Bankoff, “Wind, Water, and Risk: Shaping a Transnational History of the Western North Pacific,” TRaNS: Trans –Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia 4.1 (January 2016): 187-207.

12 reality of climate itself and is impact on humans and human societies, it balances the natural and the social in a holistic manner.

Chapter One Where Storms Pass: Guangdong as Typhoon Space

Introduction

Why does Guangdong attract so many storms? As part of its explanation in August 2017 for the two consecutive storms hitting the province, PRC news agency Xinhua listed several reasons: Guangdong has the longest coastline of all the Chinese provinces (more chances for landfall) and it is close to both the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean (two main sources for typhoons).31 Comparing the meteorological context of Guangdong’s stormy history with other

Chinese littoral provinces to the north, this chapter shows that Guangdong’s reputation as the stormiest province of China (Figure 1.1) is an empirically grounded reality. This well-founded perception in turn has shaped the histories of the Guangdong coast as a typhoon space.

Figure 1.1 Map of China.32

31 Hu and Tian, “Why does Guangdong ‘Attract Typhoons’ so much?,” ibid. 32 Map is from “Chinese Geography: Readings and Maps,” Asia for Educators, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/china/geog/maps.htm, accessed on July 25, 2018.

Guangdong’s long coastline, while significant, was not as crucial a factor as its location at the juncture where the larger Pacific Ocean and the smaller South China Sea meet, and the role that the North Pacific High pressure zone plays in determining storm paths. This observation is based on studies utilizing tropical cyclone data from the 1970s onward, when satellite imagery heralded a more comprehensive age of meteorological documentation. 33 I ask whether the recorded patterns of the past few decades also held true in the more distant past by examining

Guangdong’s historical typhoon record as reconstructed by climatologists from documentary sources. Questions and criticism about the reliability of these historical sources prompt a discussion of the possible use of climate proxies in the reconstruction of past storms, which possess their own methodological issues. At the end of the chapter, I reflect on why a possible lack of fidelity in the storm record should not hinder us from writing a history of typhoons in

Guangdong. By establishing Guangdong’s meteorological connection with typhoons coming from the Pacific, I also seek to locate the environmental history of Guangdong within a larger

Pacific World.

The Meteorological Setting: Guangdong in the Pacific World

When Ferdinand Magellan crossed the South American straits that now bear his name and entered an unfamiliar ocean on November 28, 1520, he was struck by its calmness in comparison to the Atlantic. He consequently named this vast body of water the Pacific Ocean

(Mar Pacifico). Little did he know that the Pacific, especially its Western half where he met his demise on the island of Mactan, is far from peaceful. The Northwest Pacific, between the equator and 60°N in latitude and between 100°E and the International Date Line (180°) in longitude, the

33 V.F. Dvorak, “Tropical Cyclone Intensity Analysis and Forecasting from Satellite Imagery,” Monthly Weather Review 103 (1975): 420-430.

15 zone where Guangdong and indeed most of the Chinese littoral lie, is not only one of seven tropical cyclone (TC) basins on the globe (Figure 1.2), but among them it also annually sees on average the largest number of storm events as well as those of greatest intensity (Table 1.1).

Globally, around eighty tropical cyclones are formed every year, and thirty percent of these originate and travel on the waters of the Northwest Pacific. 34 In contrast, the Atlantic only accounts for around ten percent of all storms. Yet the typhoon-prone and densely populated regions of the Northwest Pacific have not received the same degree of historical interest as those in the Atlantic.35

Figure 1.2 Seven Tropical Cyclone Basins.36

34 Hamish Ramsay, “The Global Climatology of Tropical Cyclones,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias http://naturalhazardscience.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.001.0001/acrefore- 9780199389407-e-79, accessed on July 13, 2018. P. Peduzzi, B. Chatenoux, H. Dao, A. De Bono, C. Herold, J. Kossin, F. Mouton, and O. Nordbeck, “Global Trends in Tropical Cyclone Risk,” Nature Climate Change 2 (2012): 289-294. 35 Perez, Winds of Change, Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society, Johnson, Climate and Catastrophe, Schwartz, Sea of Storms, and Rohland, Changes in the Air. 36 Basin 3 is the Northwest Pacific Basin where Guangdong and the rest of the Chinese littoral are located. One Regional Specialized Meteorological Center (RSMC) appointed by the World Meteorological Organization is responsible for each basin. Map is a modified version of the one in “Hurricane Research Division,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/F1.html, accessed on July 12, 2018.

Almost twice as large as the Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean’s sheer size helps explain the

Northwest Pacific Basin’s greater propensity for numerous and more severe storm events.

Several factors are involved in TC formation (Table 1.2), also known as cyclogenesis, but the most basic requirement is the presence of ocean waters heated to at least 26.5°C (79.7°F) to a depth of 50 meters as fuel.37 The Earth’s average solar radiation is greatest in the equatorial zone and decreases toward the poles. The Pacific is widest at the equator, stretching 19,800 kilometers

(12,300 miles) – or halfway around the world – between Colombia and Indonesia. Thanks to water’s high heat capacity, ocean waters absorb much solar energy. This energy moves into the atmosphere above it through evaporation, a little conduction, and a lot of convection. This same energy is released when water vapor condenses into water droplets and ultimately into precipitation, wherein heat transfers from the gas to liquid and solid states of matter. As an organized convective system of clouds and thunderstorms, tropical cyclones are capable of carrying and releasing energy equal to 10,000 nuclear bombs. We tend to associate typhoons with their destructive potential but they, along with other kinds of moving convective systems, also perform the service of transporting and redistributing heat and precipitation to other parts of the planet. Covering 1/3 of the planet’s surface, the Pacific, a large expanse of which lies in the tropics, where it absorbs much solar radiation, forms a vast energy reservoir for forming and powering typhoons.

37 The classic study of TC formation is William M. Gray, “Global View of the Origin of Tropical Disturbances and Storms,” Monthly Weather Review 96 (1968): 669-700.

Table 1.1 Average Numbers and Percentage of Tropical Cyclones per Basin, 1970-1995.38 Tropical Storm Cyclone Intensity Intense Cyclone Intensity Intensity Tropical Cyclone Average % of Average % of Average % of Basin Total Total Total Basin 1: Atlantic 9.8 11.4% 5.7 12.1% 2.2 10.9% (1944-1995) Basin 2: Northeast 17.0 19.7% 9.8 20.7% 4.6 22.9% Pacific (1970-1995) Basin 3: Northwest 26.9 32.1% 16.8 35.5% 8.3 41.3% Pacific (1970-1995) Basin 4: North Indian 5.4 6.3% 2.2 4.6% 0.3 1.5% (1970-1995) Basin 5: Southwest 10.3 12.0% 4.9 10.4% 1.8 9.0% Indian (<100°E) (1969-1995) Basin 6: 6.5 7.5% 3.3 7.0% 1.2 6.0% Australian/Southeast Indian (100-142°E) (1969-1995) Basin 7: 10.2 11.8% 4.6 9.7% 1.7 8.5% Australian/Southwest Pacific (>142°E) (1969-1995) Global (1970-1995) 86.1 47.3 20.1

Table 1.2 Minimum Conditions for Tropical Cyclone Formation. Six Conditions for Tropical Cyclone Formation

1. Ocean waters heated to at least 26.5°C (79.7°F) to a depth of 50 meters

2. Moisture-rich mid-Troposphere that adds additional fuel for TC development

3. Atmosphere conducive to rapid cooling and release of moisture and energy with altitude

4. Preexisting near-surface disturbance where moist air is converging and beginning to rotate and exhibiting signs of organization into a system 5. Low vertical wind-shear values (less than 10 m/s or 20 mph or 32 km/h)39

6. Minimum distance of at least 500 km [300 mi] from the equator

38 Table is adapted from that of Chris Landsea, “Hurricane Research Division,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/climvari/table.html, accessed on July 12, 2018. 39 Vertical wind shear is a change in wind speed or direction with change in altitude. Strong vertical wind shear can remove moist air too quickly thereby removing a necessary source of fuel for TC development. If a TC has already formed, strong wind shear can still disrupt its structure and weaken or even destroy it.

Not all countries bordering or lying within the Northwest Pacific Basin are vulnerable to typhoons. In order to form their characteristic cyclonic structure, typhoons require a certain amount of vorticity, or a tendency to rotate or circulate. Every day, the earth spins to the east on its axis and completes one rotation. A person simply standing on either the North or South Pole would undergo a 360° spin in 24 hours. But someone standing on the equator and facing east would simply move in that direction without the body spinning. The equator thus has a vorticity value of zero, but this value increases as one moves toward the poles. With low vorticity values,

Pacific countries close to the equator, such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia hardly experience typhoons and for our purposes would not constitute typhoon spaces.40

Located north of 20°N, where vorticity is more than sufficient, Guangdong and most of the Chinese coast, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, and Korea fall into what I call the

Northwest Pacific typhoon space. Within this larger space, however, there are degrees of vulnerability. The Philippines historically receives the most storms, followed by southern China, especially Guangdong and Hainan, and Taiwan. The eastern Chinese coast (Fujian, Zhejiang,

Jiangsu, Shanghai), and finally Japan and Korea see fewer storms.41 As global warming changes atmospheric dynamics, it is possible that these trends may reverse in the future.42 To understand why the south China coast attracts more storms than its eastern counterpart, we need to look at some atmospheric features of the Pacific.

40 A very rare exception is Vamei, which was the first recorded TC to form within 1.5°N on December 27, 2001, near Singapore. It eventually moved west into the Malayan Peninsula and weakened over Sumatra before reorganizing in the Indian Ocean. Meteorologists estimate that equatorial storms like Vamei occur only once every 100-400 years. Whether Vamei was just a tropical storm or reached typhoon status is still being debated. See C.P. Chang, Ching-Hwang Liu, and Hung-chi Kuo, “Typhoon Vamei: An Equatorial Tropical Cyclone Formation,” Geophysical Research Letters 30.3 (2003): 1150, pp. 1-4. 41 James P. Kossin, Kerry A. Emanuel, and Suzana J. Camargo, “Past and Projected Changes in Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Exposure,” Journal of Climate 29 (August 2016): 5725-5739. On the Philippines seeing the most storms and their historical significance, see Greg Bankoff, “Storms of History,” ibid. 42 Peduzzi et al., “Global Trends in Tropical Cyclone Risk,” ibid.; Doo-Sun R. Park, Chang-Hoi Ho, and Joo-Hong Kim, “Growing Threat of Intense Tropical Cyclones to East Asia over the period 1977-2010,” Environmental Research Letters 9 (2014): 1-7.

A window into understanding both tropical cyclone formation and their tracks is the global atmospheric circulation system of low and high pressure zones known as the Hadley Cell

(Figure 1.3). Most tropical cyclones of the Northwest Pacific form between 122°-140°E and 5°-

30°N or at least 500 km (300 mi) away from the Equator. Lying far enough from the equator to enable vorticity but near enough to capture a good chunk of the sun’s equatorial radiation, these vast waters seethe with heat and the surface water quickly evaporates moisture and heat into the air. Earth’s atmosphere extends about 500 km above the surface, but most of the atmosphere and its weather lie in the Troposphere, the lower 10 km where temperature decreases by 6.5°C per km. This key part of atmospheric physics means that air masses heated preferentially (thus lighter) will rise and cool off steadily until they reach a layer of the same temperature and pressure. This heated air column, warmer and moister than the surrounding air, rises and cools and condenses, releasing more heat to warm the air and propel it upward even more. As this air moves higher up the cooling atmosphere, propelled by lower density, warmer, moist air and nearly continuous evaporation below, it reaches the veritable lid of the Tropopause, a zone where the temperature does not change. This air column from the Pacific Ocean does not rise further, but now moves poleward to the north and south of the equator steered by atmospheric pressure and the Coriolis Effect (explained in the next paragraph). As it enters higher latitudes, the air continues to cool and descend through the Troposphere at around 30° North and South from its starting point. The descending air piles up and forms subtropical high pressure zones, the North

Pacific High (NPH) and South Pacific High (SPH), in contrast to the low pressure equatorial zones left in the wake of rising air. The contrast between the wet and stormy weather of the low pressure zones with the calm and dry weather in high pressure zones is also why the latter are called anticyclones. The belt of low pressure zones at or near the equator forms a rain band of

20 great convective activity and TCs normally find their beginning in this region of rising moisture- laden air between 5°-30°N. Meteorologists call these related zones of atmospheric convection and subsidence Hadley cells.

Figure 1.3 Hadley Cells of the Pacific Ocean.43

The contrast between a Hadley Cell’s different pressure zones or pressure gradients helps us understand the movement of winds within cyclones. High pressure always moves toward lower pressure and the subtropical Highs direct air back at the surface to the Equatorial Low via the Trade Winds, the largest wind belt on the planet. Accumulated air in the mid-latitude North

Pacific High travels south and converges with winds traveling north from the South Pacific High.

Their convergence at the equatorial Low is the reason this rain band is also known as the

Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Instead of moving in a straight line south, the Earth’s eastward rotation causes this air to deflect toward the right in the Northern Hemisphere. In order to complete its daily rotation, the spherical earth moves fastest at the equator and slowest at the poles. As mentioned earlier, someone standing at the poles would need 24 hours for his body to

43 Figure is from Anthony Barnston, “How ENSO leads to a Cascade of Global Impacts,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/how-enso-leads-cascade-global- impacts, accessed on July 15, 2018.

21 make a 360° spin at a very slow and imperceptible speed, but someone standing at the equator would travel with the Earth at the astonishing – but also imperceptible – speed of around 1,675 km/h (or around 1,000 mph) and complete the 40,070 km (around 24,900 miles) rotation along the Earth’s equatorial circumference in one day. Winds from the slower moving mid-latitudes traveling to the more rapid equatorial low-latitudes would then fall behind as the land below it moves faster and make the winds look like they are being deflected to the right in the Northern

Hemisphere and left in the Southern Hemisphere. This deflection, known as the Coriolis Effect, makes winds around the North Pacific High move in a clockwise direction and counterclockwise around the South Pacific High. The winds generally drive ocean currents, which produces the characteristic circulatory motions of the North and South Pacific Gyres (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4 Pacific Gyres.44

The uneasy balance between the Coriolis Effect and pressure gradient force also helps produce the vorticity we associate with typhoons. When the low pressure centers of cyclones form, they attract surface winds from high pressure zones. Because the Coriolis Effect deflects the winds from their straight path toward the center it produces a centrifugal effect or a

44 Figure is modified from “Ocean Currents,” Science Education through Earth Observation for High Schools, http://www.seos-project.eu/modules/oceancurrents/oceancurrents-c02-p04.html, accessed on July 15, 2018. The North Pacific High is generally the area around which the winds and currents of the North Pacific Gyre circulate.

22 movement away from the center, whereas the pressure gradient force acts as a centripetal force pulling the wind toward the center. When the Coriolis Effect and the pressure gradient are the only forces acting on moving air, they cancel each other out and cause the air to move in parallel to the isobars, or the lines connecting similar points of atmospheric pressure.45 However, the surface of the earth creates friction that slows the Coriolis Effect. With a stronger pressure gradient, surface winds continue converging inward toward a low pressure center and to diverge outward from a high pressure zone. In the Northern Hemisphere, this causes the winds to circle the low pressure center in a counterclockwise direction and clockwise in the Southern

Hemisphere (Figure 1.5). Tropical cyclones above and below the equator circulate in these same directions. The greater the difference in pressure of isobars at the low pressure center, the faster the converging winds, and the stronger the cyclone will be.46

Figure 1.5 Wind Circulation Around Low and High Pressure Zones in the Northern Hemisphere.47

45 This is truer of the upper free atmosphere where there is less friction. Winds that move parallel to isobars are called geostrophic winds. 46 Daniel R. Chavas, Kevin A. Reed, and John A. Knaff, “Physical Understanding of the Tropical Cyclone Wind- Pressure Relationship,” Nature Communications 8.1360 (2017): 1-11, argues that differences in pressure at the center are a better indicator of tropical cyclone economic damage than wind speed. 47 Figures are from Stephen A. Nelson, “Tropical Cyclones (Hurricanes),” New Orleans and Hurricanes, https://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/New_Orleans_and_Hurricanes/tropical_cyclones.htm, accessed on July 15, 2018; and “Basic Meteorology and Oceanography,” NPTEL, http://nptel.ac.in/courses/119102007/2, accessed on July 26, 2018.

The relationship between the Coriolis Effect and pressure differentials also account for the basic tendency of Northwest Pacific tropical cyclones to move west toward Asia. As mentioned earlier, winds descending from the North Pacific High veer right producing the Trade winds or easterlies that blow from the east toward the west. As the winds go around the ridge of the North Pacific High the winds turn poleward, moving in a northwest direction, and finally curve around toward the northeast transforming into westerlies that blow from west to east

(Figure 1.6). The Spanish galleons that sailed the Pacific in the wake of Magellan from 1565 to

1815 between Acapulco and Manila would travel from Mexico to the Philippines with their sails powered by the easterlies and make their return trip to North America on the strength of the westerlies. Their role in facilitating commerce and exchange is often mistakenly thought to be the reason why they are called trade winds.48 Though a typhoon’s winds blow counterclockwise internally, the entire system itself is pushed by external winds. Originating in the ITCZ above

5°N, typhoons made their way to Asia just as the galleons with the easterlies pushing from behind.

48 On how general wind circulation patterns helped determine the contours of early European maritime empires, see Greg Bankoff, “Aeolian Empires: The Influence of Winds and Currents on European Maritime Expansion in the Days of Sail,” Environment and History 23.2 (2017): 163-196. The now obsolete word tred, meaning to take a steady course, is the origin of the name trade winds. See Greg Bankoff, “Winds of Colonisation: The Meteorological Contours of Spain’s Imperium in the Pacific,” Environment and History 12.1 (2006): 65-88. See page 67.

Figure 1.6 General Wind Circulation Patterns.49

Though pushed by easterlies, typhoons are steered by the larger environmental current they are embedded in. Typhoon tracks are mainly dependent on the strength and location of the

North Pacific High along whose southern ridge they travel.50 For so long as the ridge is strong, sits south, and continues to extend westward, the storm will continue to travel on a westerly course. The majority of typhoons travel in this direction, putting them on a course that is more likely to bring them to the Philippines and Guangdong.51 Weaknesses in the ridge, as a result of interactions with monsoon troughs or the Jet Stream, or its migration north allow storms to curve

49 Figure is from Greg Bankoff, “Aeolian Empires,” p. 166. 50 There are many factors that affect tropical cyclone tracks. I mention those concerning the ridge of the subtropical high such as its westward extent, north-south migration of its axis, and points of weakness. Other factors that may determine a cyclone’s track are interactions with mid-latitude weather systems, other tropical cyclones, terrain when it crosses land, and areas of weak flows with ill-defined steering currents. See Johnny C.L. Chan and William M. Gray, “Tropical Cyclone Movement and Surrounding Flow Relationships,” Monthly Weather Review 110 (1982): 1354-1374; Johnny C.L. Chan, “Identification of the Steering Flow for Tropical Cyclone Motion from Objectively Analyzed Wind Fields,” Monthly Weather Review 113 (1985): 106-116; James L. Franklin, Steven E. Feuer, John Kaplan, and Sim D. Aberson, “Tropical Cyclone Motion and Surrounding Flow Relationships: Searching for Beta Gyres in Omega Dropwindsonde Datasets,” Monthly Weather Review 124 (1995): 64-84; and Liguang Wu, and Xiaoyu Chen, “Revisiting the Steering Principal of Tropical Cyclone Motion in a Numerical Experiment,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16 (2016): 14925-14936. 51 Suzana J. Camargo, Andrew W. Robertson, Scott J. Gafney, Pahdraic Smith, and Michael Ghil, “Cluster Analysis of Typhoon Tracks. Part I: General Properties,” Journal of Climate 20 (2007): 3635-3653, especially Figure 6 on page 3643 where tropical cyclone movements in most clusters exhibit a tendency to move west.

25 northwest toward Taiwan and the eastern Chinese coast.52 Further recurving puts Japan within target range or causes the storm to curve toward the northeast where the westerlies may blow it into the North Pacific without touching the Asian mainland (Figure 1.7 and Table 1.3). There are also those that follow tracks outside of the former two, such as those that move straight north or in an S-shape. Scott Sandaghe classically described these three types as “straight-moving,”

“recurving,” and “odd.”53

Under these tracks, climatologists group tropical cyclones into several clusters that also consider their sites of origin within the Northwest Pacific. In Figure 1.5, Suzana Camargo and her colleagues used seven clusters to group tropical cyclone tracks from 1983-2002. The straight- moving tropical cyclones fell under clusters B, D, and F and tracked toward the Philippines and

Guangdong. In Table 1.2, these straight-movers account for 43% of the total number of tropical cyclones and their landfall rates are also the highest at 85%, 72%, and 63% respectively. The westward orientation of tropical cyclones in the Northwest Pacific Basin helps explain why

Guangdong sees more typhoons than other Chinese coastal provinces.

52 Mark A. Lander, “Specific Tropical Cyclone Tracks and Unusual Tropical Cyclone Motions Associated with a Reverse-Oriented Monsoon Trough in the Western Northern Pacific,” Weather and Forecasting 11 (1995): 170-186; Liang Wu, Zhiping Wen, Ronghui Huang, and Renguang Wu, “Possible Linkage Between the Monsoon Trough Variability and the Tropical Cyclone Activity over the Western North Pacific,” Monthly Weather Review 140 (2011): 140-150; Wei Zhang, Yee Leung, and Johnny C.L. Chan, “The Analysis of Tropical Cyclone Tracks in the Western North Pacific through Data Mining. Part I: Tropical Cyclone Recurvature,” Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 52 (2012): 1394-1416. 53 Scott A. Sandaghe, “Opportunities for Tropical Cyclone Motion Research in the Northwest Pacific Region,” Naval Postgraduate Research Paper NPS-63-87-006, (Department of Meteorology, Naval Post Graduate School, Monterey, California, USA, 1987), pp. 1-36.

Figure 1.7 Northwest Pacific Basin Typhoon Tracks, 1983-2002.54

Table 1.3 Northwest Pacific Basin Tropical Cyclone Numbers and Landfalls, 1983-2002.55 Cluster Number of Percentage of Number of Percentage of Tropical Tropical Landfalls per Landfall per Cyclones Cyclones Cluster Cluster A 306 22% 188 61% B 280 20% 238 85% C 235 17% 17 7% D 178 13% 129 72% E 176 13% 56 32% F 112 8% 71 63% G 106 8% 16 15% Total 1,393 100% 715 51%

While most storms form in the vast open ocean east of the Philippines, some are born in the South China Sea (SCS) located south of Guangdong and west of the Philippines.56 Storms originating in the SCS tend to be fewer in number and lesser in intensity than those entering from

54 Figure is modified from the one in Suzana J. Camargo, et al, “Cluster Analysis of Typhoon Tracks. Part I: General Properties,” p. 3640. 55 Table adapted from Suzana J. Camargo, et al, “Cluster Analysis of Typhoon Tracks. Part I: General Properties,” p. 3641. 56 Wei Mei, Chun-chi Lien, I-I Lin, and Shang-ping Xie, “Tropical Cyclone-Induced Ocean Response: A Comparative Study of the South China Sea and Tropical Northwest Pacific,” Journal of Climate 28 (2015): 5952- 5968. Classifying storms in the South China Sea as a fourth type of storm in the Northwest Pacific is not uncommon in the scientific literature. See Patrick A. Harr, and Russell L. Elsberry, “Large-Scale Circulation Variability over the Tropical Western North Pacific. Part I: Spatial Patterns and Tropical Cyclone Characteristics,” Monthly Weather Review 123 (1995): 1225-1246.

27 the larger Pacific Ocean mainly because of the smaller amount of tropical water in the former and also because the SCS is a region of upwelling with cooler sea surface temperatures (SST).57

Their tracks are also more erratic and less predictable due to their distance from the steering

North Pacific High. Far from this steering flow, most take north or northwestward tracks that hit

Hainan and Vietnam. On average, 10.3 tropical cyclones, of which six are of typhoon strength, affect the SCS annually. Of these tropical cyclone events, 3.5 of them originate in the SCS itself, including 1.3 typhoons, and the rest enter the region from the open ocean east of the

Philippines.58 Chinese government sources show that from 1949 to 1987, Guangdong and Hainan, which did not become a separate province until 1988, combined to receive 238 tropical cyclone landfalls, of which 138 originated from the larger Pacific Ocean and 100 from the South China

Sea.59 Guangdong’s position exposes it to both storms traveling north from the SCS and those moving west from the larger Pacific Ocean.

Guangdong’s Historical Typhoon Record

Late twentieth-century evidence is strong for Guangdong’s vulnerability to storms in comparison to other Chinese coastal provinces. But was this always the case? With growing recognition that climate has changed throughout human history, present climatological conditions are an incomplete analog for past climate. Yet the evidence we have suggests that

Guangdong was the most frequent storm destination in the past as well as well as the present.

57 Wei et al, “Tropical Cyclone-Induced Ocean Response,” ibid. 58 Wang Guihua, Su Jilan, Ding Yihui, and Chen Dake, “Tropical Cyclone Genesis over the South China Sea,” Journal of Marine Systems 68 (2007): 318-326. The numbers are on p. 319. 59 GDSZ-HYYHDZ, p. 169.

In the case of Guangdong, two Chinese scholars, Qiao Shengxi and Tang Wenya, took all mentions of disaster occurrences in records, primarily gazetteers, pertaining to the area around the capital of Guangdong, Guangzhou, and compiled them into a source book.60 Wen Kegang produced a massive collection of historical meteorological disaster data in several volumes categorized by province under the auspices of the China Meteorological Administration.61 The most well-known compendium and the one usually cited in the scientific literature is Zhang

De’er’s four-volume compilation of 3,000-years of climate data.62 These in turn have served as a convenient shortcut for historical climatologists who do not necessarily have the time or sinological training to look at the actual record.

As concerns about climate change heightened in the 1980s coupled with growing interest in past climate, many more climatologists took to the historical record. A number took an interest in past storms and their patterns, how a warming world might influence the numbers and intensity of storms and their possible tracks.63 One way to reconstruct a timeline of past storms is to comb the historical record or compendia of source material for reports and descriptions of storm-like conditions.

What kind of typhoon data did Chinese records hold? Compilers of source material compendia searched for all mention of the present-day words for hurricane (ju 颶) and typhoon

60 Qiao Shengxi 乔盛西, and Tang Wenya 唐文雅, Guangzhou Diqu Jiuzhi Qihou Shiliao Huibian yu Yanjiu 廣州地區舊志氣候史料彙編與研究 [Collection of Historical Material on Climate for Guangzhou] (Guangzhou: Guangzhou Renmin Chubanshe, 1993). 61 Wen Kegang 温克刚, Zhongguo Qixiang Zaihai Dadian: Guangdong Juan 中国气象灾害大典: 广东卷 [Compendium of Chinese Meteorological Disasters: Guangdong Volume], (Beijing: qixiang Chubanshe, 2006); and Zhongguo Qixiang Zaihai Dadian: Hainan Juan 中国气象灾害大典 : 海南卷[Compendium of Chinese Meteorological Disasters: Hainan Volume], (Beijing: Qixiang chubanshe, 2008). 62 Zhang De’er 张德二, ed., Zhongguo Sanqiannian Qixiang Jilu Zongji 中国三千年气象记录总集 [A Compendium of Chinese Meteorological Records of the Last 3,000 Years], 4 vols. (Nanjing: Fenghuang Press and Jiangsu Educational Press, 2004). 63 Richard J. Murnane and Liu Kam-biu, eds. Hurricanes and Typhoons: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 1-6.

(tai 颱) from the historical record. Historical climatologists, whether they relied exclusively on these compendia or did some archival legwork themselves, have tended to accept these as legitimate proxies for past storms. One study, for example, working with these compendia has argued that of all the Chinese provinces, Guangdong holds the longest historical record for typhoon landfalls at 1,000 years from 975 to 1975.64 Others, taking shorter time frames and looking for decadal and centennial patterns have argued that typhoon landfalls over Guangdong increased in the 462 years covering 1470 to 1931. 65 Not everyone has accepted these documentary proxies as convincing, arguing that Chinese records, in comparison with Western sources, lack measurements of wind speed, barometric pressure, and other scientific evidence for identifying tropical cyclones. 66 Perhaps reacting to such criticism or simply seeking more precision in compiling China’s storm records, some climatologists have tried to introduce stricter guidelines for the identification of past storms. In a recent study focused on the Qing dynasty

(1644-1911), a team of climatologists relying on these same compendia rejected records of ju when they occurred outside of summer months while accepting every mention of tai. They also looked for instances when neither of these words appeared but a combination of wind, rain, and tide 风雨潮 (fengyuchao) suggested a tropical cyclone. They found that the southern Chinese coast 华南 (Huanan), comprising Guangdong, Hainan, Guangxi, and Hong Kong and Macau, experienced 704 landfalling storms, which was many more than the 263 that hit eastern Chinese

64 Liu Kam-biu, Shen Caiming, and Louie Kin-shen, “A 1,000-Year History of Typhoon Landfalls in Guangdong, Southern China, Reconstructed from Chinese Historical Documentary Records,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91.3 (2001): 453-464. 65 Johnny C.L. Chan and Jiu-en Shi. “Frequency of Typhoon Landfall over Guangdong Province during the Period 1470-1931,” International Journal of Climatology 20 (2000): 183-190. 66 While no one has placed such views on the published record, I have encountered on many occasions, while presenting my work or in conversations with meteorologists and historical climatologists, refusal to acknowledge Chinese mentions of ju and tai as legitimate proxies. One even told me it would be better for me to do research in British East India Company records rather than waste time on Chinese sources.

30 coast 华东 (Huadong), comprising Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Fujian (Figure 1.8).67 In sum, Guangdong’s historical typhoon record seems to exhibit trends similar to those in the last few decades.

Figure 1.8 Southern 华南 (Green Line) and Eastern 华东 (Light Blue) Chinese Coast Typhoon Landfalling Frequencies, 1644-1911.68

If, for a moment, we assume the Chinese historical record is generally accurate and that

Guangdong historically saw more storms than other Chinese littoral provinces, we cannot immediately assume this was due to unchanging climatological conditions. Many of the time frames used in these studies of China’s typhoon record coincide with the Little Ice Age (ca. early

14th century to ca. 1850) when the earth underwent a period of general cooling with some periods of warming.69 In the study claiming a 1,000-year record of typhoon landfalls for Guangdong, the authors found a positive correlation between increases in typhoon landfalls and the colder periods of the Little Ice Age. They suggested that the movement of the North Pacific High

67 Pan Wei, Man Zhimin, Liu Dawei, Yan Tingxia, “1664-1911 nian Zhongguo Huadong yu Huanan Yanhai Taifeng Rujing Pinlü” 1644-1911 年中国华东与华南沿海台风入境频率 [Typhoon Landing Frequencies on the East and South China Coasts 1644-1911] Dili Yanjiu 地理研究 [Geographic Research] 33.11 (November 2014): 2195-2204. Again, even with such attempts at greater precision, these records are not universally accepted as legitimate proxies. In a talk I gave in Taipei in January 2018 where I cited the numbers given in this study, a prominent meteorologist of Taiwan questioned the numbers by citing the lack of quantifiable measures in Chinese sources. 68 Figure is from Pan Wei, et al, p. 2200. 69 O. Paasche, and J. Pakke, “Defining the Little Ice Age,” Climate of the Past Discussions 6 (2010): 2159-2175.

31 further south due to weaker solar radiation could be responsible for directing more typhoons toward Guangdong. Conversely, in warmer periods when the North Pacific High was further north typhoons were more likely to curve toward East China.70 Studies focused on eastern China also argue that the region saw more typhoon landfalls during the warmer periods of the Little Ice

Age and fewer in its colder periods and are consistent with predictions that a warmer world will see more typhoons threaten eastern China, Japan and Korea.71

The inverse relationship between typhoon landfalls in eastern and southern China is so evident that some researchers have put the dividing line for typhoon tracks at the juncture between the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong at the Tropic of Cancer (23°26’N).72 Using compendia of source material, they found that in years when Fujian had zero typhoons, the probability of a typhoon hitting Guangdong was greater and in years when Fujian had typhoon numbers greater than zero the probability of landfalling typhoons for Guangdong was smaller.

They used this inverse relationship to create a landfall index that could be compared with other indicators. They found that their landfall index was sensitive to changes in sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Pacific and to differences in the sea level pressure gradient between

Western China (i.e. Xinjiang) and Mongolia, a case of teleconnections wherein a correlation exists between meteorological or environmental phenomena that occur separately at long distances away from each other. They found that when a strong high pressure zone existed over

Mongolia, typhoons continued on their westward path toward Guangdong. Conversely, when a low pressure system prevailed over Mongolia in contrast to higher pressure in Western China,

70 Liu, Shen Caiming, and Louie, “A 1,000-Year History of Typhoon Landfalls in Guangdong,” p. 461. 71 Zhang Xiangping, Ye Yu, and Fang Xiuqi, “Reconstruction of Typhoons in the Yangtze River Delta during 1644- 1949 AD based on Historical Chorographies,” Journal of Geographical Science 22.5 (2012): 810-824. Peduzzi et al., “Global Trends in Tropical Cyclone Risk,” ibid.; Park, Ho, and Kim, “Growing Threat of Intense Tropical Cyclones to East Asia over the period 1977-2010,” ibid. 72 Emily A. Fogarty, James B. Elsner, Thomas H. Jagger, Kam-biu Liu, and Kin-shen Louie, “Variations in Typhoon Landfalls over China,” Advances in Atmospheric Sciences 23.5 (2006): 665-677.

32 the weakened pressure gradient allowed typhoons to recurve toward the north away from

Southern China. They also argued that higher pressure in Mongolia was associated with cooler sea surface temperatures in the North Pacific, which inhibited typhoons from recurving, while the warmer SSTs associated with lower pressure over Mongolia encouraged recurving.

Differences in sea surface temperatures in various parts of the Pacific are also characteristic of phenomena such as El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal

Oscillation (PDO). Others have indeed argued that the inverse relationship between east and south China typhoon landfalls is also reflected in the reversal of modes in ENSO and PDO. One study utilizing historical records focused on typhoon patterns per year during the months of July to September and found oscillations corresponding to periodicities of 250, 32-64, and 4-8 years.73 While centennial oscillations may correspond to cold/warm shifts in the earth’s general climate, they found that 32-64 year oscillations exhibited a correlation to Pacific Decadal

Oscillation (PDO), whose shifts occur every 25-30 years. During a PDO positive or warm stage, the Eastern Pacific waters off the coast of North America are warmer than the waters of the

Western North Pacific. The higher pressure gradient and cooler sea surface temperatures over the latter would have increased the probability of typhoons tracking west toward Guangdong. During

PDO negative or cold stage, the Western North Pacific is warmer than the Eastern Pacific. With higher sea surface temperatures and lower pressure, typhoons were more likely to recurve toward eastern China. They found that in PDO negative years, the average number of typhoons hitting eastern China was 3.28 in comparison to only 2.74 for PDO positive years.

The 4-8 year oscillations were found to roughly correlate with ENSO cycles which occur every 2-7 years. In El Niño years of ENSO, the equatorial waters of the Western Pacific are

73 Johnny C.L. Chan, Liu Kin-sik, Xu Ming, and Yang Qiuzhen, “Variations of Frequency of Landfalling Typhoons in East China, 1450-1949,” International Journal of Climatology (2011).

33 cooler and the warm waters and associated low pressure zones shift to the waters off the western coast of South America. Tropical cyclones tend to form farther east and need to travel greater distances to reach Asia. This provides the opportunity for more intense cyclones due to increased chance of gaining more energy by traveling over more warm waters. But it also increases the likelihood that they will recurve before reaching Asia and thus increase their chances of landing in eastern rather than southern China. During La Niña years, when the warm waters move from

South America back to the equatorial Western North Pacific, the number of typhoons that hit southern China is generally greater than those that hit eastern China. To further complicate the matter, ENSO cycles also interacted with PDO shifts. When PDO negative and La Niña years coincided, and generally warm waters existed over the entire Western North Pacific from equator to mid-latitudes, there was an increase in the number of typhoons that landed in East China. But in La Niña years coinciding with a PDO positive, more typhoons were likely to hit Southern

China due to the cooler sea surface temperatures and higher pressure in the mid-latitudes of the

Western North Pacific that inhibited storms from curving to eastern China. El Niño, by moving tropical cyclogenesis sites toward the east, tended to increase landings in eastern China regardless of whether PDO was positive or negative in the same year.74

The Tempestuous Storm Record

So far, studies of recent and historical typhoon tracks are in agreement that they tended to point in the direction of Guangdong. Those studies utilizing data after the 1970s are particularly convincing due to the completeness of the data available since the advent of satellite imagery.

The historical data, especially for the pre-twentieth century, is still open to debate as climatologists disagree over the reliability of the records. Those who rely on the sources have put

74 Johnny C.L. Chan, et al, “Variations of Frequency of Landfalling Typhoons in East China, 1450-1949,” ibid.

34 forward various methodological defenses for their utility. One such study extracted numbers and patterns available from the Annual Tropical Cyclone Reports issued by the Joint Typhoon

Warning Center in Hawaii for the years 1945-2003 and then compared them with the numbers reconstructed from the historical record. Disaggregating for each coastal province, they found that historical records yielded comparable but smaller numbers of storm counts when set against the modern record. For example, Guangdong yielded an average of 1.8 typhoons per year from

1945 to 2003 but only 1.5 per year from 1600 to 1909. The study then argued that the Chinese historical record only included stronger typhoons or those that made discernible impacts because the number yielded was smaller for the earlier period than for the later one, thus lending credibility to the use of historical records for the purposes of typhoon reconstruction.75 But some historical climatologists insist that every tropical cyclone event needs to be quantified in greater detail (e.g. barometric readings, precipitation data, wind speed, damages to life and property) before they can be properly registered as tropical cyclones.76 This caution is well-taken but the virtues of being precise can be overdone given the unevenness of historical records. Clearly, if barometric pressures and wind speed records were necessary conditions for identifying typhoons then we could never say anything meaningful about such events in the past.

One possible solution to concerns about the reliability of the historical record is to look instead at climate proxies, whether geological or ecological. Since the 1980s, scientists have identified many kinds of proxies, such as ice cores, tree rings, and speleothems for extending the climate record. This expansion in climate data has in turn led to the rise of a new field of climate history, as discussed in the Introduction to this dissertation. In 1998, the prominent hurricane meteorologist Kerry Emanuel coined the term paleotempestology to describe the study of past

75 Emily A. Fogarty, et al, “Variations in Typhoon Landfalls over China,” ibid. 76 Cary Mock, “Tropical Cyclone Reconstructions from Documentary Records: Examples for South Carolina, United States,” in Murnane and Liu, pp. 121-144.

35 storms and cyclones through primarily geological proxies. Paleotempestologists developed techniques for identifying past storms by borrowing methods from soil science, paleontology, and dendrochronology.77

The premise for using climate proxies is simple: if tropical cyclones landed and if conditions for preservation were ideal, their accompanying storm surges would have left traces in the geological strata or environment. Much of paleotempestology is about studying what such traces might be and how to detect them in the geological or ecological record. Proponents of paleotempestology use a modern analog approach by selecting sites along tropical cyclone-prone shorelines, especially those with freshwater lakes and marshes protected by dunes, recording their original soil make-up, and then studying them after a storm surge deposits new material.

Scientists then try to document and determine differences in the arrangement and size of sand, silt, and rocks before and after storm events, and they also look for the presence of foreign organic material such as single-celled ocean organisms like foraminifera.78 Climatologists also use paleontological and isotopic evidence to identify storm deposits.79 Marine organic matter and terrestrial organic matter have different isotopic ratios of carbon and oxygen. Rainwater (H2O) normally contains mostly Oxygen-16 isotopes and some Oxygen-18 isotopes, which are heavier by virtue of their carrying two extra neutrons. Because of intense convection and vertical mixing with higher-altitude air, which leads to isotopic fractionation, hurricane precipitation exhibits lower levels of Oxygen-18 (as much as 10% lower) compared to normal rainwater and that of

77 The following discussion is based on Murnane and Liu, pp. 13-53. 78 Harry F.L. Williams, “Stratigraphy, Sedimentology, and Microfossil Content of Hurricane Rita Storm Surge Deposits in Southwest Louisiana,” Journal of Coastal Research 25.4 (July 2009): 1041-1051. 79 The following discussion is based on Fan Daidu, and Liu Kam-biu, “Perspectives on the Linkage between Typhoon Activity and Global Warming from Recent Research Advances in Paleotempestology,” Chinese Science Bulletin 53.19 (October 2008): 2907-2920. George E. Boyajian, and Charles W. Thayer, “Clam Calamity: A Recent Supratidal Storm-Deposit as an analog for Fossil Shell Beds,” Palaios 10 (1995): 484-489.

36 low-altitude and weaker storms.80 This lower Oxygen-18 signal may manifest itself in the tree- ring cellulose and the calcium carbonate (CaCO3) of cave speleothems and the skeletons of reef corals. Because many of these studies were conducted on the Atlantic coast and under specific circumstances, one cannot blithely presume their applicability to other parts of the world such as the Chinese coast.

Paleotempestological studies of the Chinese coast are limited and have focused mainly on the eastern Chinese coast. One study of tidal flats in Jiangsu province documented and compared deposition during normal flood-ebb cycles, spring-neap cycles, and when Typhoon Winnie struck in 1997.81 Again they found differences in the stratigraphy before and after the storm in comparison with regular tidal cycles but tidal flats were also determined to be difficult places for long-term storm signal preservation given all the tidal activity and bioturbation or the disturbance of sedimentary deposits by living organisms including humans.82

To date there are no reliable paleotempestological studies of the southern Chinese coast.

An unpublished paper attempted to stretch the paleotempestological record for Guangdong province on the South China coast to an incredible 8,000 years ago through a study of offshore boreholes and beach-dune barriers. 83 The best paleotempestology studies in North America suggest that it is hard enough to get good reliable data on storms going back more than several hundred years, let alone thousands! The Pearl River Delta is also one of the most heavily human-

80 James R. Lawrence, Stanley David Gedzelman, John Gamache, and Michael Black, “Stable Isotope Ratios: Hurricane Olivia,” Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry 41 (2002): 67-82. 81 Wang Jian, Bai Chunguang, Xu Yonghui, and Bai Shibiao, “Tidal Couplet Formation and Preservation, and Criteria for Discriminating Storm-Surge Sedimentation on the Tidal Flats of Central Jiangsu Province, China,” Journal of Coastal Research 26.5 (September 2010): 976-981. 82 Liu Yongxue, Li Manchun, Mao Liang, Cheng Liang, and Chen Kefeng, “Seasonal Patterns of Tidal-Flat Topography along the Jiangsu Middle Coast, China Using HJ-1 Optical Images,” Wetlands 33 (2013): 871-886. 83 Huang G, and Yim Wyss W-S, “Reconstruction of an 8,000-year Record of Typhoons in the Pearl River Estuary, China,” Paper presented at the International Conference on Climate Change, 2007.

37 labored estuaries in the world, and subject to both natural and human-influenced siltation and delta-formation, which greatly complicates analysis of geological proxies.84

Another criticism of paleotempestology is that even when there are identifiable storm deposits, many of the characteristics of such deposition bear similarities to those left by analogous high-energy events such as tsunamis. This is a real problem along the volatile Pacific

Rim.85 In the future, meteotsunamis or non-seismic and non-cyclonic tsunami events, even more understudied, will further complicate the work of paleotempestology.86

Paleotempestology is a young science whose techniques are still in the process of refinement. The exact nature of storm deposition and preservation in the geological record remains problematic. 87 Its methods leave much to be desired because it is hard to tell the difference between deposits by storms and tsunamis and difficult to judge the size of storms or their number when there are many other forces at work. Every site is different in coastal geomorphology and level of bioturbation, every storm different in its precise meteorological dynamics, and storms may cover the tracks of other storms. A study of the impact of Hurricane

Irene (2011) on Onslow Bay, North Carolina showed that Irene left no long-lasting imprint on the geology of the land surrounding the Bay even in places identified as ideal by previous studies. 88 Hence, land, sea, and meteorological formations, already complex in themselves, combined with equally complicated human and biological processes, conspire to make the task

84 Robert Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 66-82. 85 Robert A. Morton, Guy Gelfenbaum, and Bruce E. Jaffe, “Physical Criteria for Distinguishing Sandy Tsunami and Storm Deposits using Modern Examples,” Sedimentary Geology 200 (2007): 184-207. 85 S. Kortekaas, and A.G. Dawson, “Distinguishing Tsunami and Storm Deposits: An Example from Martinhal, SW Portugal,” Sedimentary Geology 200 (2007): 208-221. F. Nanayama, K. Shigeno, K. Satake, K. Shimokawa, S. Koitabashi, S. Miyasaka, and M. Ishii, “Sedimentary Differences between the 1993 Hokkaido-nansei-oki Tsunami and the 1959 Miyakojima Typhoon at Taisei, Southwestern Hokkaido, Northern Japan,” Sedimentary Geology 135 (2000): 255-264. 86 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/meteotsunamis_n_2286374.html Accessed on December 13, 2013. 87 See the essays in Jennifer Collins, and Kevin Walsh, eds., Hurricanes and Climate Change (Springer, 2017). 88 Scott P. Hippensteel, Matthew D. Eastin, and William J. Garcia, “The Geological Legacy of Hurricane Irene: Implications for the Fidelity of the Paleo-storm Record,” GSA Today 23.12 (December 2013): 4-9.

38 of paleotempestology more difficult. The Chinese coastline, shaped by centuries of human activity, poses a great challenge for paleotempestology. Due to all these difficulties and uncertainties involved, it is not surprising that some have labeled paleotempestology a

“controversial science.”89 And those uncertainties are rarely greater than along the South China coast.

Conclusion Perhaps the historical records may serve as a guide for future work on paleotempestology in China. The records already identify sites and years in which a tropical cyclone supposedly made landfall. These sites immediately become candidate sites for fieldwork. Cores bored should encompass a long record including the years given in the historical record and cross-checking can be done between the geological and the historical proxy. The use of Chinese historical records or geological proxies is not a question of using one over the other: they can and should be used in tandem, so long as the limitations of each are kept firmly in mind.

We look forward to the day when a precise storm record will become available to us, but its inadequacies today should not stop us from writing a history of typhoons in China. Whether today or in the past, the Chinese littoral has encountered storms and Guangdong has taken the lion’s share. Its location in the stormy Northwest Pacific Tropical Cyclone Basin at the point where the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea meet and at the point the North Pacific High generally steers typhoons towards helped channel more storms in its direction. As I show in the next chapter, the earliest Chinese conceptions of storms were intimately connected and inseparable from Guangdong. Guangdong was not only a physical typhoon space – it would prove to be one in perception as well.

89 Hippensteel et al, p. 4.

Chapter Two Stormy Perceptions: Guangdong as Imagined Typhoon Space, 5th to 17th Centuries

Introduction

The story of how Guangdong became a typhoon space in the Chinese imagination starts with the stormy politics of succession of the Southern Liu-Song Dynasty (420-479 CE). A bloody family drama played out in the Liu-Song capital of Jiankang (present-day Nanjing) in eastern China in 453 CE. The crown prince Liu Shao 劉劭 (424-453 CE) murdered his father

Emperor Wen (r. 424-453 CE) and usurped the throne. Before the year ended, his younger brother Liu Jun 劉駿 (430-479 CE) overcame his usurper sibling to become the Emperor Xiaowu

(r. 453-464 CE). Xiaowu dealt with Liu Shao’s supporters accordingly: some were eliminated while others were exiled. One of those banished was the retainer Shen Huaiyuan 沈懷遠 (fl. fifth century) who was escorted to Guangzhou and stayed there till 454 CE.90 We cannot be sure if

Shen experienced a typhoon during his short one-year stay or whether he just heard about storms from people who lived there, but in his personal account of his southern tenure, “The Record of

Southern Yue” 南越志 (Nanyue zhi), he left behind what is often proclaimed as the world’s earliest written description of a tropical cyclone:

In the area of Xi’an (熙安) many jufeng 颶風 occur. Ju 颶 is something that has/involves (具 ju) the winds of the four (cardinal) directions. One (variation) calls it a “terrifying (懼 also pronounced ju) wind” and speaks to its terror. It often occurs in the sixth and seventh (lunar) months (around July and August). Before it arrives, roosters and dogs are silent for three days. Major ones may last seven days. Minor ones last one or two days. They are called black winds in foreign countries.91

90 Details of Shen Huaiyuan’s life are found in the official biography of his older brother Shen Huaiwen 沈懷文 in Shen Yue 沈約, Songshu 宋書 [A Record of the Song Dynasty], vol. 7, (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1974), j. 82, p. 2105 (22a-b). 91 Though this text no longer survives as a complete book, fragments of it were quoted in encyclopedias that remain extant. The fragment containing the locus classicus definition found its way into a famous early Northern Song dynasty (960-1279 CE) encyclopedia called the Taiping Yulan. Li Fang 李昉, Taiping Yulan 太平御覽 [Imperially Reviewed Encyclopedia of the Grand Tranquility Reign” (976 -983 CE)], volume 1, (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1960), j. 9: 6a-6b (p. 45) (p. 10b on SKQS edition). This encyclopedia was the largest collection of Chinese knowledge at that time and Shen Huaiyuan’s Nanyue Zhi was just one of 1,690 sources used in it. Also cited in the

Shen’s description of ju in the vicinity of Guangzhou would become the locus classicus definition for a word that climatologists think is the premodern equivalent of the modern word typhoon. It was also the beginning of a trend: the association of Guangdong with storms in the

Chinese imagination. From Shen’s time until the end of the Song dynasty (960-1279),

Guangdong was the site of exile for a number of famous Chinese scholars who linked the region to storms in their writing. These in turn served as the foundation for late imperial definitions and understandings of storms. While storms struck many parts of the Chinese littoral, definitions of them would originate exclusively and be linked most closely to Guangdong. Guangdong was the typhoon space par excellence in the Chinese imagination.

Stormy Definitions

During the nineteenth century when China was forced to open its doors to Western powers and an influx of foreign words needed translation, the word ju or jufeng became the equivalent for typhoon (See Chapter Six). This usage continued until 1949, when it was then applied to hurricanes, while typhoons came to be called tai 颱 or taifeng 颱風.92 Retrospectively searching for either of these two terms, abundant in the documentary record, is a basic methodology in studies of past Chinese storms.

1822 Provincial Gazetteer of Guangdong. See GDTZ 1822, j. 89:34a. Xi’an 熙安 is a fifth-century county near present-day Guangzhou and not to be confused with Xi’an 西安 the historical capital of numerous dynasties located in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. My translation is a modification of the one quoted on p. 300 of Kin-sheun Louie, and Kam-biu Liu, “Earliest historical records of typhoons in China,” Journal of Historical Geography 29.3 (2003): 299-316. Hereafter all translations are mine unless otherwise stated. 92 As will be evident in the rest of this dissertation, ju appears more often in pre-1949 sources and was commonly used to refer to both typhoons and hurricanes even during the first half of the twentieth century. Tai, a term that first appears in the seventeenth century but was sparsely used, only became the standard term for typhoons after 1949 when it became necessary to use different terminologies due to the establishment of the international practice of distinguishing Atlantic and Eastern Pacific storms as hurricanes and Western Pacific ones as typhoons. The history of tai is discussed in Chapter Three.

The search for historical typhoons is bound up with our modern understanding of what a typhoon is. Typhoons are a form of tropical cyclone, defined by one authoritative organization as a “rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms that originates over tropical or subtropical waters and has closed low-level circulation.”93 Cyclones are further classified by the intensity of their wind speed under the Saffir-Simpson scale (Table 2.1). Those <62 km/h (<39 mph) are tropical depressions; those with speeds ranging from 63-118 km/h (39-73 mph) are tropical storms; and only those that are 119 km/h (73 mph) and above deserve the appellation typhoon or hurricane.

Table 2.1 Saffir-Simpson Scale. Tropical Cyclone Wind Speed

Category of Typhoon kn (knots) Mph km/h

5 ≥137 kn ≥157 mph ≥252 km/h

4 113-136 kn 130-156 mph 209-251 km/h

3 96-112 kn 111-129 mph 178-208 km/h

2 83-95 kn 96-110 mph 154-177 km/h

1 64-82 kn 74-95 mph 119-153 km/h

Tropical Storm (TS) 34-63 kn 39-73 mph 63-118 km/h

Tropical Depression ≤33 kn ≤38 mph ≤62 km/h (TD)

There are reasons why historical climatologists Kin-sheun Louie and Kam-biu Liu have proclaimed Shen’s entry on ju a “brief yet accurate and elegant description of a typhoon.” They claim that Shen’s description of ju as involving the winds of all four directions captures a

93 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “What is the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon?” https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/cyclone.html. Last accessed April 3, 2018.

42 typhoon’s distinctive cyclonic wind movement.94 A shorter but similar definition of ju in an encyclopedia from the Sui (589-618) and Tang (618-907) dynasties even places it under the telling entry “Wind of the Four Directions” 四方風 (Sifang feng).95 Long after the Chinese, the

British came up with something similar for hurricanes they encountered in the Caribbean during the seventeenth century when they described them as a “general conspiracy of all the winds.”96

Additional details only cement the climatologist’s conviction that ju might stand in for typhoon.

In the passage, the timing of ju’s occurrence between roughly July and August fell well within the recognized typhoon season and researchers consider “generally accurate” the description of its duration lasting anywhere between one day to a week. They also point out that the silence of domestic animals, often more sensitive than humans, was a reaction to changes (drops?) in atmospheric pressure that are associated with a typhoon’s moving low pressure center prior to its arrival.97

Looking in the past for something modern in its conception is not without its problems.

Most of the published compendia of historical source material relied on by various climatologists take for granted that the words ju and tai correspond to typhoon. Kam-biu Liu and Kin-sheun

Louie have argued that the premodern definitions given for the terms, especially that of ju, are close to our modern understanding of typhoon and hence sufficient for purposes of identifying past storms.98 Others are either more cautious and/or more sensitive to other possibilities. Pan

Wei et al., for example, while accepting tai as a reliable marker of a typhoon, have attempted to

94 Kin-sheun Louie, and Kam-biu Liu, “Earliest historical records of typhoons in China,” Journal of Historical Geography 29.3 (2003): 301-302. 95 An earlier but shorter version of this fragment can be found in Yu Shinan’s 虞世南 (558-638 CE) Sui-Tang period encyclopedia Beitang Shuchao. Yu Shinan 虞世南, Beitang Shuchao 北堂書鈔 [Excerpts from Books in the Northern Hall] (Tianjin: Tianjin Guji Chubanshe, 1988), j. 151: 8a. 96 Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society, pp. 43-44. 97 Louie, and Liu, “Earliest historical records of typhoons in China,” pp. 301-302. 98 Louie and Liu. “Earliest historical records of typhoons in China,”ibid.

43 identify more specific criteria for ju, rejecting all instances where it appears outside of the known typhoon season. They are also open to looking for instances when none of these terms appear but there are descriptions that might mark a typhoon such as “great wind” (大風), “continuous rain”

(驟雨), or “tidal surge” (潮濃).99

As I have discussed in the previous chapter, the acceptance of these records as reliable evidence of past storms is not universal. Nevertheless, the obsession with finding measurable and identifiable typhoons should not prevent us from exploring the various ways that people in the past understood meteorological phenomena that seem similar to what we call storms or typhoons.

We should take inspiration from recent critiques of the problems of doing “retrospective diagnosis” in the history of medicine and Benjamin Elman’s exhortation that we take the history of Chinese science on its own terms.100 It would be foolish of course to simply reject the growing natural archives, or what environmental historians also call the bio-archives and geo-archives, and the magnificent climate histories based on them.101 But it would be equally unfortunate if, on account of scientific precision and retrospective diagnosis, we reject exploring a more cultural understanding of how past societies understood climate and weather.102

Shen’s description not only captured the cyclonic nature of typhoons, it also gave a sense of the disaster and distress it brought to those who experienced them. By acknowledging that some people associated ju with a homophone of the word for terrifying, Shen shows that

99 Pan Wei et al., p. 2198. 100 Hilary A. Smith, Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017); and Benjamin Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005). 101 Raymond S. Bradley, “Natural Archives, Changing Climates,” Contributions to Science 7.1 (2011): 21-25; J.R. McNeill and Erin S. Mauldin, “Global Environmental History: An Introduction,” in their A Companion to Global Environmental History (Blackwell, 2012), p. xviii. An ambitious synthesis of climate history based on the natural archives is John L. Brooke, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 102 Mark Carey, “Science, Models, and Historians: Toward a Critical Climate History,” Environmental History 19.2 (April 2014): 354-364.

Guangdong locals associated typhoons with horror both aurally and semantically. In another explanation from the Tang dynasty, what makes a ju terrifying is more explicitly laid out as a product of its wind strength: “Evil winds are called typhoon (ju). It is not enough to mention their ability to destroy houses and uproot trees. The worst ones can blow away house tiles as if they were flying butterflies.”103 Apart from strong winds, ju were also associated with what we call today storm surges:

Guangzhou (Canton) is less than a hundred kilometers from the great sea. Every year in the eighth lunar month the tides are biggest but autumn is also the time of many typhoons (jufeng). When the tides have not fully receded, and a typhoon (jufeng) occurs, the tide returns again. With its return the waves overflow the coast and inundate people’s houses, destroy crops, and sink ships. People in Nanzhong call it tachao (complementing or layered tides) ... Colloquially it is called haifan (sea roiling/sea surge) and mantian (sea joining the sky).104 Such descriptions of ju as involving all the cardinal winds, summer and autumn timing, destructive wind strength, and accompanying tidal surges make it a natural candidate as a premodern stand-in for our modern typhoon. There is therefore merit in starting with ju when searching for past storms in the Chinese record, while keeping in mind the protestations of some climatologists that such data remain scientifically imprecise.

Southern-ness, Typhoons, and the Guangdong Connection

Both Shen’s locus classicus definition of ju and the Tang description of complementing tides accompanying it were all made in relation to their occurrence in or near present-day

103 “惡風謂之颶。壞屋折樹，不足喻也。甚則吹屋瓦如飛蝶,” in Liu Xun 劉恂, Lingbiao Luyi 嶺表錄異 [Record of Strange Things in Lingnan], upper chapter (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1985), p. 1.The SKQS edition has this entry in the middle chapter, p. 1a. 104 “廣州去大海不遠二百里。每年八月潮水最大。秋中復多颶風。當潮水未盡退之間，颶風作而潮水又至，遂至波濤溢岸淹沒人廬舍，蕩失苗稼，沉溺舟船。南中謂之沓潮。。。俗呼為海翻為漫天,” in Lingbiao Luyi, p. 1. SKQS edition has this entry in the lower chapter, p. 9a. Cf. the translation in Louie and Liu, pp. 306-7. Nanzhong is one of the names used for the Guangdong area during Tang-Song times.

Guangzhou, the primary center of Guangdong for centuries. Guangdong was early on known by many other names that, by including the Chinese word for south or nan 南, emphasized its early remoteness from the centers of Chinese civilization on the North China Plains. It, together with the neighboring province of present-day Guangxi to its west, was commonly identified as

Lingnan 嶺南, a name that meant south of the mountains, or to be more specific, south of the

Nanling Range, which separates the middle Yangzi river basins to its north from the southern

Chinese river basins that empty into the South China Sea.

Scholar visitors to Lingnan clearly understood that storms only reached the coastal portion of this region, particularly that of Guangdong. In Fan Chengda’s 范成大 (1126-1193) twelfth-century travel account of the south, “Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the

Cassia Sea” 桂海虞衡志 (Guihai Yuheng Zhi), focused mainly on the Guangxi half of Lingnan, which is farther inland from the South China Sea, he wrote that “there are typhoons (jufeng) along the Southern Sea in Guangdong. None of the counties and towns slightly to the north on the [Guangnan] West Circuit (referring to most of present-day Guangxi) has them.”105

Other toponyms reinforced the southerness of Lingnan, as it was at times called Nanyue

南嶽, Nanzhong 南中, and Nanhai 南海. The last name, Nanhai or Southern Sea, also reinforces the idea of the region’s proximity to the ocean. The Pearl River basin, Guangdong’s primary river system, drains most of the province and also flows south. The Han River basin, which drains the smaller eastern part of Guangdong, flows east. Both Robert Marks, who wrote an environmental history of Lingnan, and G. William Skinner, who divided China into nine physiographic macro-regions, separated the Han River basin from the rest of Lingnan in their

105 Quoted from Fan Chengda, Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea, translated by James M. Haggert (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), p. 132. For Guangnan West Circuit covering most of Guangxi, see p. xxi of the translator James Haggert’s introduction.

46 analysis on the basis that the Han River basin was closer in physiography and directional (hence market) orientation to the river basins of neighboring Fujian province.106 But Chinese writers who visited the region made no such separation of the Han River system from the rest of the

Guangdong coast and instead joined them together under the title Lingnan. The entire Lingnan littoral, from Chaozhou prefecture in the Han River Basin in the east to Leizhou Peninsula and

Hainan Island in the west, formed in their eyes a conceptually coherent space frequented by typhoons (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1: Coastal Lingnan.107

Lingnan from Shen’s fifth century till the Song was different from the traditional centers of Han Chinese power in the North China Plains. From the second to the fourteenth century, in contrast to the already heavily deforested and highly agricultural North China Plains, Lingnan was thick with forests teeming with all kinds of wild animals, such as tigers and elephants, and

106 Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, p. 24. See map in G. William Skinner, “The Structure of Chinese History,” p. 273. Marks, p. 25, recognized that Lingnan has a distinct long coastal zone that stretches from the Pearl River Delta to the border with Vietnam but does not include the Han River delta. 107 Map is from Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, p. xvii.

47 swamps harboring lethal malaria.108 Many non-Han peoples who practiced different forms of subsistence lived in this environment.109 Their habits and culture were so different from that of the north that they were “barbarians” 蠻 (man) to the Han migrants who encountered them. As

Mark Lewis put it, the further one went from the Chinese center, “cultural variations became more pronounced, and this increasing exoticism served as a spatial marker of barbarism that delimited and defined the civilized center.” 110 From a northern vantage point, Lingnan’s remoteness and savage environment filled with strange animals, barbaric people, and lethal malarial miasma made it a favorite destination to send political exiles.111 Those in power hoped to use the fatal hands of the Lingnan environment to kill off their enemies. Many of these exiles were learned scholars and officials who had fallen from grace. They left behind a rich “literature of exile” describing their experiences of the south, including their encounters with ju or typhoons.112

The connection between Lingnan and ju or typhoons was explicit in much of this literature. Fang Qianli 房千里 (fl. early ninth century),113 a Tang official who was demoted to a minor post in coastal Gaozhou, Guangdong, associated Lingnan with typhoons in his book

108 For the history of Lingnan’s natural environment and its eventual transformation, see Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, pp. 16-83. On the deforestation of North China and gradual movement south see Mark Elvin, Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 19-39. 109 A useful survey of these non-Han peoples and their land use practices prior to the mass migration of Han down south is Harold J. Wiens, Han Chinese Expansion in South China (Hamden: Shoe String Press, 1967), pp. 29-72. 110 Mark E. Lewis, Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2009), p. 17. 111 On Tang exiles to Lingnan, see Edward H. Schafer, The Vermillion Bird: T’ang Images of the South (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 48-78. 112 I borrow the term “literature of exile” from Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1994), p. 207. Schafer, The Vermillion Bird, pp. 123- 134, documents early Chinese experiences of southern climate, including typhoons. But Schafer’s study of the Tang south is more delightfully descriptive and panoramic than one of deep interpretive value. 113 We only know that Fang Qianli obtained the highest jinshi degree in the civil service exams sometime between 827-835 CE and that he ended his life or career as prefect of Gaozhou. See Ji Yougong 計有功, Tangshi Jishi 唐詩紀事 [Recorded Events of Tang Poetry] (Shanghai: Shanghai Yingyinchang, 1989), j. 51, p. 433. SKQS edition has it on pp. 11a-12b. Song Qi 宋祁 and Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修, Xin Tangshu 新唐書 [New History of the Tang Dynasty], (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1975), j. 58: 25a-b. For translations of official titles, I follow Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985) unless otherwise stated.

“Exile Miscellany” 投荒雜錄 (Touhuang Zalu), when he wrote that “the commanderies of

Lingnan all witness typhoons (jufeng), which involve the winds of the four directions all arriving.”114 Later in the ninth century, Liu Xun 劉恂 (fl. late 9th century to early 10th century), who served as commander in Guangzhou during the reign of the Zhaozong emperor (r. 888-904

CE),115 would also write about typhoons in his book “A Record of Strange Things in Lingnan”

嶺表錄異 (Lingbiao Luyi). This book had three entries on typhoons. We have already seen two of them. One was the qualitative description of a ju’s wind strength and the other was about complementing or layered tides accompanying a ju.116

Tempestuous Poetry

Medieval scholars who wrote about Lingnan were conscious of its southerness and distance from the traditional northern centers.117 Those who were exiled or going to an unsure and probably dismal future in what they perceived to be a savage land often expressed their fears and frustrations in their poetry and writing by linking their own condition to that of the land they

(or their friends) were going to. Take the famous Tang poet Bai Juyi’s 白居易 (772-846 CE)

114 “嶺南諸郡，皆有颶風，以四面風俱至也.” Only one chapter (juan 卷) of Fang Qianli’s “Exile Miscellany” remains extant. One copy is in Tao Zongyi 陶宗儀, Shuofu Sanzhong 說郛三種 [Florigelium of Literature], volume 2 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1988), j. 23. and another in Wang Wenru 王文濡, Gujin Shuobu Congshu: Siji 古今說部叢書: 四集 [Collectanea of Stories from Ancient Times to Present: Four Collections] (Shanghai: Zhongguo Tushu Gongsi, 1915), j. 24. Neither extant copy contains the line on typhoons. Instead this line was quoted in other sources that must have utilized a no longer extant complete copy. See for example, Ma Duanlin 馬端臨, Wenxian Tongkao 文獻通考 [Comprehensive Study of Literary Documents], j. 205: 16b, 27a in SKQS edition. 115 See the abstract (tiyao 提要) written by the Qing dynasty SKQS compilers in SKQS, Shibu 史部 [History] 11, Dililei 地理類 [Geography] 8: 1a. 116 All three entries appear together in one page on Liu Xun, Lingbiao Luyi, upper chapter, p. 1. In the SKQS edition, the entries are separated. 117 Ping Wang and Nicholas M. Williams, eds., Southern Identity and Southern Estrangement in Medieval Chinese Poetry (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015). James A. Anderson and John K. Whitmore, eds. China’s Encounters on the South and Southwest: Reforging the Fiery Frontier Over Two Millenia (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

49 poem “Seeing Off a Guest Going to Lingnan for a Spring Trip in Twenty Rhymes,” 送客春遊嶺

南二十韵 (Songke Chunyou Lingnan Ershi Yun) where he describes Lingnan as simultaneously a place of miasma, “barbarians,” and typhoons:

In this miasmatic land, it is hard to reach old age, 瘴地難為老

In the realm of the Southern Barbarians, it is hard to tame them… 蠻陬不易馴…

When the skies turn yellow, the Typhoon Mother (jumu) is born, 天黃生颶母

In the darkness of rain, the burl grows.118 雨黑長楓人

Bai is worried for his friend going to Lingnan, for he will encounter dangers such as malarial miasma, southern barbarians, and typhoons. In another poem, “Seeing off a Guest

Moving South” 送客南遷 (Songke Nanqian), Bai again repeats these images of a terrifying south as an expression of concern for another friend. It is clear that “South” here refers to Lingnan because Bai calls it Nanzhong in the opening lines: “I speak about matters in Nanzhong, but you respond that you do not want to listen” (我說南中事，君應不願聽 wo shuo Nanzhong shi jun ying buyuan ting). He then goes on to describe again those well-known Lingnan features such as miasma (秋瘴露冥冥 qiuzhang lu mingming), dangerous animals (水虫能射影 shuichong neng sheying), and “typhoons (jufeng) that cast darkness for a thousand li” (颶風千里黑 jufeng qianli hei).119

Another famous Tang poet Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773-819 CE), in his poem “Travelling

Along the Rivers of Lingnan” 嶺南江行 (Lingnan Jiangxing),120 used Lingnan’s infamously

118 QTS, volume 13 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1960 [1705]), j. 440, p. 4898. Bai Juyi 白居易, Baishi Changqing Ji 白氏長慶集 [Changqing Collection of Mr. Bai], j. 17: 4a-b, SKQS edition. 119 QTS, j. 442, p. 4937, and Bai, Baishi Changqing Ji, j. 19: 9b-10a. 120 QTS, volume 11, j. 352, p. 3936. Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元, Liu Hedong Jizhu 柳河東集注 [Annotated Collection of Liu Hedong], j. 42: 25a, SKQS edition.

50 hostile environment, including its typhoons, to describe the unfavorable circumstances and endless travails he found himself in after being demoted to the region:

Along the miasmatic river traveling south, 瘴江南去入雲煙 I enter the clouds and mist,

Where the view of yellow reeds ends, 望盡黄茆是海邊 one finds the ocean edge,

When the rain clears, 山腹雨晴添象蹟 elephant tracks appear on the mountainside,

As the sun warms, 潭心日暖長蛟涎 the jiao dragon’s saliva floats in the heart of the pool,

The shegong creature insidiously observes 射工巧伺游人影 the traveler’s shadow.121

The Typhoon Mother (jumu) 颶母偏驚旅客船 often disturbs the traveler’s boat,

From then till now, 從此憂來非一事 the troubles that befell me are many,

How can I let this endure through my aging years? 豈容華發待流年

Han Yu 韓愈 (768-824 CE), yet another prominent Tang poet, who once held a petty post in Yangshan county in Lianzhou prefecture, and was also prefect of Chaozhou on the eastern coast of Guangdong, looked back in a poem on his stay in Lingnan and its storms after being promoted to a better post in Jiangling (present-day Nanjing) in the year 805 CE. In this poem,

“On My Way to Jiangling, I sent this poem to three Hanlin academicians named Wang Ya, Li

Jian, and Li Cheng”122 赴江陵途中寄贈王二十補闕李十一拾遺李二十六員外三學士 (Fu

121 The shegong was supposed to have been a worm or possibly a snail-like creature that was very small and had a mouth like a cross-bow that shot venomous qi-energy at people. See the compiler’s annotation to this poem in Liu Hedong Jizhu, ibid. 122 The poem and the names of the three academicians, Wang Ya 王涯，Li Jian 李建，and Li Cheng 李程, are found in QTS, volume 10, j. 336, p. 3769, and Han Yu 韓愈, Dongyatang Changli Jizhu 東雅堂昌黎集註 [Annotated Collection of Changli’s Dongya Hall], j. 1: 38b-43a.

Jiangling Tuzhong Jizeng Wang Ershi Buque Li Shiyi Shiyi Li Ershiliu Yuanwai San Xueshi), he describes, like his contemporaries, the savageness of the land of his exile and adds to it the awesome power of the typhoons he likely encountered during his exile:

When the typhoon (ju) rises it is the most fearsome, 颶起最可畏

The sound of its winds rocks the highest mountains. 訇哮簸陵丘

This trend of associating Lingnan with typhoons continued into the Song period. Yu Jing

余靖 (1000-1064 CE), himself a native of Shaozhou in Lingnan and having served as prefect of

Guangzhou after the “barbarian” rebellion of Nungz Ciqgau (Chinese: Nong Zhigao 儂智高)

(1025-1055 CE) was quelled in 1052 CE,123 wrote of typhoons in his poem “When I asked for advice from Overseer Dong upon arriving at Panyu” 和董職方見示初到番禺詩 (He Dong

Zhifang Jianshi Chudao Panyu Shi),124

Since antiquity, the diverse cultures of 五方殊俗古難并 the five directions have been difficult to combine,

For millennia, they have still been preserved in old Yue city, 千載猶存故越城

Visitors hearing the crow of 客聽潮雞迷早夜 the Chaozhou rooster wonder if it is day or night,

People look up to the Typhoon Mother (jumu) 人瞻颶母識陰晴 to distinguish between rainy and sunny,

The waves tumble at broad sky’s edge, 波濤洶湧天邊闊

Glistening rhinoceros and elephants 犀象斕斒徼外生 appear beyond the walls,

This talentless governor ought to 太守不才當遠寄 reside in this faraway land,

123 For details of Yu’s career see SS j. 320: 13b-18a. 124 The zhifang si (職方司) was the Bureau of Operations, one of the four bureaus, under the Ministry of War, and had oversight over the maps and statistics of an area usually newly incorporated into the Chinese empire or a place that was considered a frontier. Hucker translates zhifang as “Overseer of Feudatories.” See Hucker, p. 981.

His only worry is the southern fields 惟憂南畝廢農耕 and that farming might be forsaken. 125

Panyu is located in present-day Guangzhou and gives its name today to one area of the city.

Lingnan in the Song imagination continued to be a mix of Han and non-Han peoples, a landscape of wild and strange animals, and typhoons.

From the fifth century to the Song dynasty, numerous scholars were banished to Lingnan and encountered or learned of typhoons in places near or along the coast, such as in Guangzhou,

Gaozhou, Chaozhou, Huizhou, and Lianzhou. Typhoons became a standard trope for describing the experience of Lingnan.

Guangdong’s Typhoon Mother

Medieval scholars encountering the terrifying ju or typhoons naturally tried to explain their presence and seek ways of predicting their arrival. Correlative cosmology, wherein the state of the human world was reflected in the natural world, was one framework for explaining their occurrence. 126 When humans were living in morally bankrupt times, nature manifested this through inauspicious signs and phenomena such as eclipses, earthquakes, and of course, typhoons. Liu Xun, who wrote three entries on typhoons in his ninth-century book about Lingnan, noticed that typhoons sometimes did not appear for two or three years but might also come several times in a single year. He explained that:

There might not be a single typhoon in the span of two to three years but there are times when there will be two to three of them in a single year. This is also related to whether

125 Yu Jing 余靖, Wuxi Ji 武溪集 [Wuxi Collection], j. 2: 11b, SKQS edition. The glosses explain that the Chaozhou rooster would crow whenever the tide came in at the third watch or midnight so that unaccustomed visitors awakened by the fowls would experience disorientation (三更潮上即雞鳴). The Typhoon Mother is glossed as “the appearance of a dark cloud when a typhoon (jufeng) wishes to go west” (颶風欲至西黑雲起謂之颶母). 126 John B. Henderson, “Cosmology and Concepts of Nature in Traditional China,” in Han Ulrich Vogel and Günter Dux, eds. Concepts of Nature: A Chinese-European Cross-Cultural Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 181-197.

governance has been good or bad. When it occurs it goes from noon till dusk and surely ends at midnight. This is consistent with the idea that storms cannot last until dawn.127 In contrast to Shen Huaiyuan, who saw typhoons as lasting anywhere from one day to a week, Liu, who was thinking within the context of a well-known Chinese proverb rather than plain observation, thought typhoons had a fixed duration from noon till midnight. Liu also makes the “moral meteorological” correlation already current at that time between the presence and absence of typhoons with immoral and moral government, respectively.128 Whether or not a typhoon came with disastrous complementing/layered tides or storm surges was also dependent, in Liu’s opinion, on the current moral atmosphere. He thought that complementing tides occurred every decade or so and that their occurrence “is related to the (moral) lapses of the times.” 129 It is not clear if he was thinking of the moral record of all society or just the government.

Though nature exhibited the moral bankruptcy of humans, it also gave signs to warn them of impending disaster. The most well-known omen of an impending typhoon, one that would last all the way down to the present, is the Typhoon Mother or jumu 颶母. We have already encountered this omen in three of the above poems cited. Tang poet Bai Juyi mentioned it when he warned his friend to look up into the yellow skies for the Typhoon Mother. The Song poet Yu

Jing tells us that “people look up to the Typhoon Mother to distinguish between rainy and sunny.”

In Liu Zongyuan’s poem, travelers on a boat are disturbed by the sight of a Typhoon Mother.130

127 “或二三年不一風，或一年兩三風，亦繫連帥政德之否臧者。然發則自午及酉，夜半必止。此乃飄風不終朝之義也,” in Lingbiao Luyi, p. 1. SKQS edition has this entry in the middle chapter, p. 1a. 128 The term “moral meteorology” is borrowed from Mark Elvin, “Who Was Responsible for the Weather? Moral Meteorology in Late Imperial China,” Osiris, 2nd Series, 13 (1998): 213-237. 129 “或十數年一有之，亦繫時數之失耳,” in Lingbiao Luyi, p. 1. SKQS edition has this entry in the lower chapter, p. 9a. 130 The word typhoon (ju) is also glossed with a reference to Liu Xun’s work: “The Lingbiao says that during autumn in Nanhai, among the objects in the winds and clouds is a halo like a rainbow and is called the Typhoon Mother (jumu), (when you see it) there will surely be a typhoon (jufeng)” (Lingbiao Zhi yun Nanhai qiufeng yunwu

What exactly is the Typhoon Mother? This piece of typhoon forecasting knowledge originated at least as long ago as the Tang dynasty with seafarers who thought it a sign of an impending storm. A ninth-century source, the “Supplement to the Tang History” 唐國史補

(Tang Guoshi Bu) of Li Zhao 李肇 documented this piece of seafaring knowledge and emphasized how rare it was to see it in practice:

The people of Nanhai say: When the sea winds from the four directions converge it is called typhoon (jufeng). When a typhoon (jufeng) is about to arrive then there will be many rainbows called the Typhoon Mother (jumu). However, only one can be seen every thirty to fifty years.131 Note again that this important piece of typhoon knowledge is made in relation to Lingnan, here referred to as Nanhai. The connection with Lingnan is reinforced by a more substantial entry in Liu’s ninth-century book on Lingnan. His first entry on typhoons, the opening lines of his book, is an early discussion of how to observe clouds and rainbows in order to forecast typhoons:

In Nanhai, during the summer and autumn, there are clouds that appear gloomy but reflect light like a rainbow that is six to seven zhang (around three meters per unit) in length. After this omen appears, a typhoon (jufeng) is certain to develop. Hence it is called the Mother (or source) of Typhoon (jumu). But if thunder suddenly occurs after this omen then the typhoon (jufeng) cannot happen. Mariners often use this omen as a means of forecasting and preparing for it.132 By the ninth century, it was clear that seafarers developed and believed in the observation that the appearance of a certain combination of a rainbow and gloomy clouds was a reliable predictor for the development of a typhoon, even going so far as to call this its source. A Tang

you yun ru hongzhe weizhi jumu biyou jufeng 嶺表志云南海秋風雲物有暈如虹者謂之颶母，必有颶風), further reaffirming the connection between these storms and the place. Liu Hedong Jizhu, ibid. 131 “南海人言：海風四面而至，名曰「颶風」。颶風將至，則多虹霓，名曰「颶母」。然三五十年始一見,” in Li Zhao 李肇,Tang Guoshi Bu 唐國史補 [Supplement to the History of the Tang Dynasty], lower chapter (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1957), p. 63 (p. 20a in SKQS edition). 132 “南海秋夏間或雲物慘然則暈如虹，長六七丈。比侯則颶風必發，故呼為颶母。忽見有震雷則颶風不能作矣。舟人常以為候，豫（預）為備之,” in Lingbiao Luyi, p. 1. SKQS edition has this entry in the same position in the upper chapter, p. 1a. Cf. the translation in Louie, and Liu, pp. 306-7.

55 handbook on winds included it in a long rhyming list of weather advice called “The Water

Classic for Ocean Travel” 海運水經 (Haiyun Shujing). This list, with its catchy rhymes, provided easy-to-remember advice for ocean-goers and a section of it linked double rainbows with typhoons:

If one is spared from seeing the double rainbow 斷虹免見 (jian)

One cannot understand the changes in the sky 不明天變 (bian)

If one can early foresee the double rainbow 斷虹早掛 (kua)

Even if there be wind one will not fear it 有風不怕 (pa)133

The relation between omen and phenomenon was so strong that the Typhoon Mother omen and the typhoon itself were interchangeable in Tang and later poetry. Just as one need only write about dark clouds to create the idea it is about to rain, simply mentioning the Typhoon

Mother in Chinese poetry was enough to create the image of a terrifying storm arriving.

A vivid image of the Typhoon Mother and a monstrous typhoon that followed it is given in the first-ever Chinese poem that has typhoons as its main topic. In 1093 CE, with the death of the Empress Dowager Gao, who was acting as regent, the young Song emperor Zhezong (r.

1085-1100 CE), now seventeen years old, took over the reins of government. With his rise, conservative officials, favored by the empress dowager and opposed to the so-called New

Policies championed by Wang Anshi (1021-1086), quickly fell out of the emperor’s good graces.134 One of them, famous poet Su Shi 蘇軾, better known to the world by his pen name Su

Dongpo 蘇東坡 (1037-1101 CE), underwent a series of demotions and exiles that took him from the capital Kaifeng in Henan province to Huangzhou in Hubei province in 1093. In 1094 he was

133 See Zhang Erqi 張爾岐, Fengjiaoshu 風角書 [Wind Book], Preface dated 1639, vol. 1, juan 8: 8b. 134 On Wang Anshi’s reforms see James T.C. Liu, Reform in Sung China: Wang Anshi and His New Policies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959).

56 sent further south to Huizhou along the coast in Guangdong and finally Danzhou on Hainan

Island. Though he was reassigned to a better post in Chengdu, Sichuan province upon the death of the emperor in 1100 CE, he died in Changzhou, Jiangsu province in 1101 CE before he reached his post.135 During his exile south, he brought with him his most talented third son, Su

Guo 蘇過 (1072-1123 CE). In the eighth lunar month (approximately September) of 1095 CE, while serving in coastal Huizhou, the pair experienced a strong typhoon. Afterwards, the elder

Su ordered his son to compose a fu-poem aptly entitled Typhoon (Jufeng) Fu 颶風賦.136

Fu-poems were long poems that employed a mix of rhyme and prose with lines of varying length, in contrast to strictly pentasyllabic or heptasyllabic poetry, and approached a topic as exhaustively as possible.137 The longer first part of the Typhoon Fu (translated below) details the progression of a typhoon from the signs foretelling its occurrence to its terrifying unfolding and its quiet end:138

On Mid-autumn’s eve, 仲秋之夕, a guest knocked on my door 客有叩門指雲物而告余曰： and pointed to a thing in the clouds and told me: “The qi of the ocean is very bad, not a good omen. 海氛甚惡，非祲非祥。 The double rainbow drinks from the 斷霓飲海北指 ocean and points north, the red clouds 赤雲夾日而南翔。 squeezing the sun and flying south. This is the gradual development 此颶之漸也， of the typhoon (ju). How will you prepare for it?” 子盍備之？

He had hardly finished his words when the 語未卒，庭戶肅然，。 household became solemn and the rotting leaves 槁葉蔌蔌。驚鳥疾呼，怖獸辟易

135 On the circumstances of Su Shi’s exile see Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, pp. 213-219. Egan discusses Su’s “Literature of Exile” on pp. 207-260 but does not mention the typhoon poem. 136 For a discussion of Su Guo’s role and contribution in Su Shi’s poetry, see Li Yanxin, “Su Guo suifu bianju Linghai zhi Shengming Qinghuai,” 蘇過隨父貶居嶺海之生命情懷 [The Life Emotions in Su Guo’s Accompanying His Father in Exile in Coastal Lingnan.” Datong Jishu Xueyuan Xuebao 大同技術學院學報 [Datong Technology University Bulletin] 16 (July 2006): 249-272. 137 See David R. Knechtges. The Han Rhapsody: A Study of Fu of Yang Hsiung (53 B.C.-A.D. 18) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 138 Su Shi 蘇軾, Dongpo Quanji 東坡全集 [Complete Collection of Su Dongpo], j. 33: 23a-24b, SKQS edition.

57 started to flutter in the wind. Startled birds cried 驚鳥疾呼，怖獸辟易 out loud while frightened beasts retreated.

Suddenly it is the stampede of wild horses. 忽野馬之決驟， Look up and see the retreating flight of the 矯退飛之六鷁， six kinds of water birds. It invades caves and 襲土囊而暴怒， explodes with fury. It takes away the breath 掠眾竅之叱吸。 and utterings of everybody’s orifices.

I then entered the house and sat, 余乃入室而坐，斂衽變容。 fixed my clothes and changed my demeanor. The guest said: “Not yet. This is just the 客曰：未也，此颶風之先驅爾。 vanguard of the typhoon (jufeng).” Not long after, doors were pushed open and 少焉，排戶破牖，隕瓦擗屋。 windows broken. It blew off tiles and rended houses. It pummeled the largest boulders and 礧擊巨石，揉拔喬木。 uprooted the straightest trees. Its force rocked the very sea; its sound jolted 勢翻渤澥，響振坤軸。 the center of the earth.

One suspects it to be the fury of 疑屏翳之赫怒，執陽侯而將戰。 The weather god Pingyi or holds that it is The water god Earl of Yang about to go to war. It drums up a thousand chi of clear waves. 鼓千尺之清瀾，翻百仞之陵谷， It roils a hundred blades of mountain valleys. In one roll it swallows mud and sand, 吞泥沙於一卷，落崩崖於再觸。 in another hit it causes rock cliffs to fall. It divides the myriad horses advancing together. 列萬馬而並騖，潰千車而爭逐。 It breaks up the thousand chariots competing with each other. Beasts lose their guts. Leviathans beat a retreat. 虎豹讋駭，鯨鯢奔蹙。 It is like the battle of Julu and the deafening sounds 類鉅鹿之戰，殷聲呼之動地; that moved the earth. It is like the battle of Kunyang and the 似昆陽之役，舉百萬於一覆。 rousing of a million into a defeat.

I too found my legs shaking and my hair on edge 余亦為之股慄毛聳，索氣側足。 on its account. My qi was bound and I could not take a step forward in fear. During the night I held on to my bed and turned 夜拊榻而九徙， endlessly. During the day I sent for the tortoise and made 晝命龜而三卜。 many divinations. It lasted around three days before it finally ceased. 蓋三日而後息也。 Elders came to comfort me and wine was arrayed. 父老來唁，酒漿羅列，

Children and servants were put at ease and 勞來僮僕，懼定而說。 when their fears were settled they were happy. They attended to the plants that had fallen and 理草木之既偃，輯軒檻之已折。 mended posts that had broken. They covered the holes in their thatched roofs and 補茅屋之罅漏，塞墻垣之隤缺。 filled the cracks in their walls. When it was over, mountains and forests were still. 已而山林寂然，海波不興， The oceans and waves did not rise. That which moves knows when to stop. 動者知止，鳴者自停。 That which sounds halts on its own. Deep is the blue of the heavens. 湛天宇之蒼蒼，流孤月之熒熒。 Flowing is the movement of the lone moon. It suddenly dawns on me but then I sigh. 忽悟且嘆，莫知所營。 None know that which I feel.

Su Guo’s narrative of an unfolding typhoon is vivid and detailed. Especially noteworthy is the reference at the start to the distinctive combination of a double rainbow and crimson clouds.

Liu Xun’s “Record of the Strange in Lingnan” had simply identified a mix of rainbows and gloomy, presumably dark or gray, clouds as constituting the Typhoon Mother. Su’s double rainbow is a more specific kind of rainbow and the red clouds a bright contrast to the gloomy clouds. Despite these subtle differences in description, it is clear that there was a widespread belief that a combination of rainbows and certain clouds was a reliable predictor for typhoons.

The timing, force, and duration of the storm also convince that what they experienced was indeed a major typhoon and lends strength to the idea that the words ju or jufeng corresponded to our modern idea of a typhoon.

In the shorter final part of the Typhoon Fu, not given or translated here, Su reflects on how different kinds of air are strong or weak depending on who is experiencing them. He uses the example of our breath and how it hardly compares with the force of a typhoon, but when applied to ants and mosquitoes it wreaks great destruction as well. This realization of the relativity of experience allows him and his father to see past the illusory burdens of their own political ordeals and exile. He thus ends his fu-poem with the lament that “Is it real? Is it illusory?

Pity how late I came to realize this” 實耶虛耶，惜吾知之晚也 (Shiye? Xuye?Xi Wu zhizhi wan ye).139 The Typhoon Fu-poem was not only made in the context of a prominent poet’s exile to

Lingnan, it offered an early meditation on typhoons in China that gave to them a meaning beyond a disaster.

Lingnan and Typhoons in the Late Imperial Geographic Imagination

During the Yuan (1279-1368) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties, Lingnan continued to be associated with typhoons. Like his Tang-Song forbears, the Yuan poet Fu Ruojin 傅若金 (1303-

1342) continued to associate the Lingnan coast with typhoons when he wrote that the “Typhoon

Mother (jumu) returns in autumn as the isle fog clears” 颶母秋還㠀霧清 (Jumu qiuhuan daowu qing) in a poem seeing off his friend Yuan Qing who was traveling to Chaozhou.140

Even in general literature, such as texts on etymology or agriculture, and encyclopedias, where Lingnan was not the focus, ideas about typhoons were drawn from older sources about

Lingnan. Gu Qiyuan’s 顧起元 (1565-1628 CE) encyclopedic compilation of past explanations of things, “An Outline of Explanations” 說略 (Shuolue), cites Liu Xun’s “Records of Strange

Things in Lingnan” and a Song dynasty text called the “Panyu Miscellany” for its explanation of typhoons.141 Since understanding the workings of heaven and earth (天時地利 tianshi dili) was

139 This interpretation and discussion of the philosophical part of the Typhoon Fu-poem follows and is indebted to Li Yanxin, “Life Emotions,” pp. 257-258. 140 Fu Ruojin 傅若金, Fu Yuli Shiji 傅與礪詩集 [Poetry Collection of Fu Yuli], j. 3: 17a, SKQS edition. 141 Gu Qiyuan 顧起元, Shuolue 說略 [Selected Stories], j. 1: 19a, SKQS edition. Gu referred to Liu Xun’s “Record of Strange Things in Lingnan” as the “Record of Lingnan” (Lingnan Lu 嶺南錄). The “Panyu Miscellany” was authored by Zheng Xiong 鄭熊 of the Song dynasty and is no longer extant as a complete book. Parts of it, around ten lines, were preserved in the Late Yuan/Early Ming dynasty work (1368) ““Florigelium of [Unofficial] Literature” (Shuofu 說郛) by Tao Zongyi 陶宗儀 (1329-ca.1412 CE). None of the preserved lines are about typhoons. But in a gloss to Han Yu’s poem mentioning typhoons there was apparently and unsurprisingly mention of them in the book. The gloss reads: “The Panyu Miscellany says: typhoon (ju) has the same sound as “to have” (ju). Others say: When the typhoon is arriving one does not hear the sound of chickens and dogs for three days, as if there was something

60 considered vital to military strategy, military treatises contained sections on how to forecast the weather including typhoons. He Rubin’s 何汝賓 (fl. early 17th century) military treatise “A

Record of War” 兵錄 (Binglu) not only cites again Liu’s “Records of the Strange” but also the line “the double rainbow drinks from the ocean and points north, the red clouds squeezing the sun and fly south” in Su Guo’s typhoon fu-poem as evidence for why strategists need to know that double rainbows herald a typhoon.142

Works pertaining to agriculture did not cite the sources of their information, but the similarities in wording and nature with sources from and about Lingnan makes clear where their information on typhoons was derived. In one of the earliest Chinese agricultural compendiums that integrated climate knowledge from all across China, Lou Yuanli’s 婁元禮 (fl. 14th century)

“Five Phases for the Agricultural Household” 田家五行 (Tianjia Wuxing) described typhoons as involving the winds of the four directions and mentioned mariners identifying the double rainbow as an omen used to forecast typhoons. 143 The even more authoritative “Complete

Treatise on Agricultural Administration” 農政全書 (Nongzheng Quanshu) of Xu Guangqi 徐光

啟 (1562-1633 CE) would also repeat the same information but only attribute the source as coming from “the ancients” 古人 (guren).144 As there are no other “ancient” Chinese sources

they were afraid and worried of” (Panyu Zabian yun ju yin yu biren yun fenglai zhi sanri buwen jiquan zhi sheng ru yousuo youju ye 番禺雜編云：颶音具。彼人云：風來至三日不聞雞犬之聲，如有所憂懼也). The Panyu Miscellany’s description of unusual silence from domestic animals prior to a typhoon is very similar to and should be considered taken from the one given in the “Record of Southern Yue.” Glosses and mention of the “Panyu Miscellany” and “Supplement to the Tang History” are in Dongyatang, ibid. The remaining extant lines of the “Panyu Miscellany” can be found in in Shuofu Sanzhong, ibid, volume 1, j. 4, p. 70 (5b). 142 He Rubin 何汝賓, Binglu 兵錄 [A Record of War], j. 14: 613a, SKJHS edition, volume 94, p. 764. 143 Lou Yuanli 婁元禮, Tianjia Wuxing 田家五行 [Five Phases for the Agricultural Household], (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 2002), p. 337. In XXSKQS edition, it is in the middle volume, p. 28a. 144 Xu Guangqi 徐光啟, Nongzheng Quanshu 農政全書 [Complete Book of Agricultural Administration], (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, 2008), j. 11: 13a-b (SKQS page numbers are 14a-b). Xu’s “Complete Treatise on Agricultural Administration” was only published in 1639 by Chen Zilong 陳子龍, six years after Xu’s death. For the history of this work and its publication see Francesca Bray and Georges Métailié, “Who was the Author of the

61 about typhoons other than those in fifth to eleventh-century encyclopedic entries, poetry, and writing concerning Lingnan, and the wording of these Ming agricultural treatises is similar to these early sources, they were in effect reaffirming the connection between Lingnan and typhoons even without directly naming their sources.

Most importantly, works on Ming geography continued the association between typhoons and Lingnan. In the considerable geography portion (39 out of 127 chapters) of the Ming encyclopedia “Compendium of Pictures and Writings” 圖書編 (Tushu bian), compiled by Zhang

Huang 章潢 (1527-1608 CE) between 1562 and 1577, and under the entry “Guangdong Climate”

廣東風氣 (Guangdong Fengqi), typhoons are identified as part of the province’s climate and the classic definition from the “Record of Southern Yue” is directly quoted, while the double rainbow is again mentioned as the omen to watch out for.145

The Lingnan lineage of late imperial definitions of typhoons is most evident in works of phonology, morphology, and etymology. In the Southern Song (1127-1269 CE) phonology

“Concise Rhymes of the Ministry of Rites with Added Corrections and Correlated Commentaries”

增修互註禮部韻略 (Zengxiu Huzhu Libu Yunlue), written between 1194-1233, the entry for typhoon (ju) is glossed with references to Han Yu’s poem, Liu Xun’s “Record of Strange Things in Lingnan,” Fang Qianli’s “Exile Miscellany,” and Su Guo’s typhoon fu-poem.146 Succeeding works tended to copy from their predecessors, so the exact same glosses and sources for typhoon

Nongzheng Quanshu?” in Catherine Jami, Peter Engelfriet, and Gregory Blue, eds. Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 322-359. 145 Zhang Huang 章潢, Tushu Bian 圖書編 [Compendium of Pictures and Writings], Preface 1613, j. 41: 16b-17a., SKQS edition. 146 Mao Huang 毛晃 and Mao Juzheng 毛居正, Zengxiu Huzhu Libu Yunlue 增修互註禮部韻略 [Concise Rhymes of the Ministry of Rites with Added Corrections and Correlated Commentaries], j. 4: 27a, SKQS edition.

(ju) were to be found in the early Ming phonology “Correct Rhymes of the Hongwu Reign” 洪武

正韻 (Hongwu Zhengyun).147

The phonology of typhoon (ju) did not pass down uncontested. Yang Shen 楊慎 (1488-

1599 CE), an erudite Ming scholar who was banished from the court after his father, the Grand

Secretary Yang Tinghe (1459-1529 CE), lost the Great Ritual Controversy,148 thought that it should be pronounced bei. He noted that Liu Xun’s “Record of Strange Things in Lingnan” and

Su Guo’s fu-poem both associated typhoons with rainbows 虹 (hong). Claiming that in unnamed

Buddhist classic there was the line “wind rainbows are like shells” 風虹如貝 (fenghong ru bei), he argued that because of the rainbow connection the character ju (颶), which has the radical ju

具 as its sound signifier, should instead use the closely similar looking but different sounding radical bei 貝 . 149 Yang was thus arguing for a different phonological reading using a morphological argument based on his speculative mixing of Buddhist classics with Lingnan sources. Zhang Zilie’s 張自烈 (1597-1673) late Ming morphology “Comprehensive Dictionary of Correct Characters” 正字通 (Zhengzi Tong), first published in 1627, would reprint Yang’s suggestion, including all his glosses of Lingnan sources and the unnamed Buddhist classic. On the question of whether ju 具 or bei 貝 was the proper reading and radical to use, it would seem that Zhang erred on the side of ju 具 because he glossed the version using bei 貝 with the

147 Song Lian 宋濂 and Yue Shaofeng 樂韶風, Hongwu Zhengyun 洪武正韻 [Correct Rhymes of the Hongwu Reign], j. 11: 3b in SKQS edition. For a discussion of the intellectual lineage of Song to Ming phonological works see Young Kyun Oh, Engraving Virtue: The Printing History of a Premodern Korean Moral Primer (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 146-148. 148 On the Great Ritual Controversy see Carney T. Fisher, The Chosen One: Succession and Adoption in The Court of Ming Shizong (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990). 149 Yang Shen 楊慎, Sheng’an Ji 升庵集 [Sheng’an Collection], j. 74: 17a-b, SKQS edition.

63 judgement that it was “the corruption of typhoon (ju)” 颶字之譌 (juzi zhi e).150 Tang and Song associations of typhoons with rainbows in Lingnan were causing Ming scholars to debate morphology.

The authoritative early Qing “Imperially Commissioned Kangxi Dictionary” 御定康熙字

典(Yuding Kangxi Zidian), the foundation of all modern Chinese dictionaries, had the last word on the etymological history of the word typhoon (ju), on Yang’s argument for a bei reading and radical, and my contention that understandings of typhoons were inextricably bound to Lingnan.

First, the Kangxi Dictionary cites only sources from Lingnan that we have already discussed and various commentaries on these sources. In order of their appearance in the gloss, the Lingnan sources cited are the “Exile Miscellany,” “The Record of Southern Yue,” “The Record of

Strange Things in Lingnan,” the typhoon line in Han Yu’s poem, and the typhoon line in Liu

Zongyuan’s poem. Yang Shen’s suggestion of a bei reading is brought up in the middle, but by the end of the entry the Qing dictionary compilers decide that because most phonologies use the reading and radical ju 具, the matter can only be recorded and left for later study (韻書多作具，

姑誌以備考 Yunshu duozuo ju, gu zhi yi beikao).151 On the proper reading and radical, the

Kangxi Dictionary is inconclusive but confirms that Yang Shen’s argument for bei over ju was most certainly a minority opinion. As any historical climatologist who has tried to comb the

Chinese typhoon record would know, one mostly finds the word ju in Chinese sources until 1949.

After 1949, it became used to describe Eastern Pacific and Atlantic hurricanes and the word tai finally replaced it for typhoon. But by citing familiar sources about Lingnan, these linguistic

150 Zhang Zilie 張自烈, Zhengzi Tong 正字通 [Comprehensive Correct Characters], j. 11: 24a-25a, in XXSKQS edition, volume 235, p. 722. 151 Chen Tingjing 陳廷敬, Zhang Yushu 張玉書, Yuding Kangxi Zidian 御定康熙字典 [Imperially Commissioned Kangxi Dictionary], j. 33: 32b-33a, SKQS edition.

64 arguments over the word’s phonology and morphology only confirmed the connection between

Lingnan and typhoons.

Conclusion

I have shown in this chapter that the earliest surviving definitions and conceptions of typhoons in Chinese thinking originated in the experience of exiled intellectuals in coastal

Guangdong from the fifth century onwards. From Shen Huaiyuan to Su Shi, exiled intellectuals depicted Lingnan’s environment as inhospitable and typhoons helped to emphasize this point.

The place was inextricably linked to these storms, even if it was subsumed in writing under the name of the broader region of Lingnan, as evidenced especially in poetry from the Tang and

Song dynasties. The etymological history of the word ju as it passed into late imperial texts on agriculture, geography, strategy, and linguistics also shows that the connection with Guangdong was sustained and provided the main fodder for any attempts to define or dispute conceptions of these storms.

This connection to storms was not only sustained at the textual level. As we shall see in the next chapter, the perception of coastal Lingnan as a typhoon space continued into late imperial China and manifested itself in the growth and sharing of typhoon knowledge along the littoral. Rather than exiles and outsiders from the north, the creators of this new knowledge were locals. Creating and acting on this new knowledge, the peoples of Guangdong would create a culture of typhoons in coastal Lingnan that went beyond mere textual associations.

Chapter Three Stormy Sensations: Typhoon Knowledge and Normalization in Late Imperial Coastal Lingnan

Introduction

In 1794, exactly seven hundred years after Su Shi was exiled to Lingnan, another learned northerner Jiao Hesheng 焦和生 (1756-1819, jinshi 1784) from Liaodong in Manchuria traveled south to take up his post as prefect of Qiongzhou, the late imperial administrative unit encompassing Hainan Island. Along the way, he composed poems to mark his passage into

Lingnan echoing the journey of his eminent predecessor. Like Su Shi and most travelers to

Lingnan from the north, Jiao entered the region via the great Meiling Pass through the Nanling mountain range that divided Lingnan from the Middle Yangzi region. He too wrote a poem to commemorate the occasion. Continuing on, he crossed the Qiongzhou Strait, arriving in

Qiongshan county (present-day Haikou), the prefectural seat, where he paid his respects and composed another poem at a shrine built in Su Shi’s honor during the Ming dynasty. 152 In conscious imitation of Su Shi whose Typhoon Poem we encountered in the previous chapter,

Jiao later wrote four poems about these storms. In the last poem, he describes in a parallel couplet how he recalled the beautiful verses of his predecessors Liu Zongyuan and Su Shi when he first encountered the awesome power of typhoons: “My heart cold, Master Liu [Zongyuan]’s

‘frightening the boat’ line; My gall faltering, the honorable [Su Dong]po’s Typhoon Poem verse”

(心寒柳子驚船句, 膽落坡公颶賦詞).153 Jiao was following in the exalted footsteps of many a famous Tang-Song intellectual and his celebration of their verse reaffirmed the long-standing connection between Lingnan and typhoons late in the eighteenth century.

152 Jiao Hesheng 焦和生, Lianyun Shuwu Cungao 連雲書屋存稿 [Surviving Drafts from the Lianyun Bookhouse], 1815 edition, j. 2, p. 16. Jinshi or ‘presented scholar’ indicates that Jiao passed the metropolitan portion of the civil service examination in 1784 and obtained this highest degree. 153 “Jufeng Sishou” 颶風四首 [Four Typhoon Poems], in Jiao, j. 2, pp. 16-17.

But there was also something new in the air. The Lingnan of Jiao’s time was vastly different from that of Su’s. Unlike Su, Jiao was hardly an exile in a land perceived as lethal barbarian space and on the edges of Chinese civilization. In the intervening centuries, millions of

Chinese had migrated to the region transforming the once deadly environment into one conducive to Chinese agriculture and driving indigenous populations to the margins in the hills and mountains. The densest population centers were situated along the coast where more and more people reclaimed land from the river deltas near the sea, thereby multiplying their exposure to typhoons. This chapter considers how the increasing overlap of Lingnan’s typhoon space with

Chinese settlements, the ensuing proliferation of new forms of typhoon knowledge, and the normalization of typhoons as just another part of the experience of living along the coast all developed in late imperial coastal Lingnan. It demonstrates that by late imperial times, coastal populations in Lingnan had formed a complex system for understanding and dealing with typhoons and expressed this in a culture of typhoon coping practices that was shared across the south China coast.

Lingnan as Hanspace

As Jiao’s example demonstrates, old poetic tropes that linked Lingnan with typhoons did not disappear. But by the late imperial period, the association of typhoons with exotic peoples and environments was shrinking in focus to just Hainan Island, where the Li people 黎族 still made up a substantial population. Knowing his uncle would be traveling to Hainan, Hubei scholar Chen Dazhang 陳大章 (b. 1659, jinshi 1688) wrote a parting poem telling his relative he

67 would see singing Li women, coconuts, and the Typhoon Mother.154 Sometime between 1774 and 1781, Sichuan native Li Tiaoyuan 李調元 (1734-1803, jinshi 1742), who was assistant examiner and later Commissioner of Education for Guangdong province, travelled to Qiongshan county to oversee the civil service examinations. Like Jiao, Li wrote poems at major spots along his journey. When he crossed the narrow Qiongzhou Strait separating Hainan from the Chinese mainland early in the fourth lunar month (late April-mid May), not exactly typhoon season, he found it appropriate to describe seeing a Typhoon Mother flying in the sky amidst rain clouds and driving winds while ships sailed beneath. Li also visited Su Shi’s Hainan shrine and wrote another poem to mark that occasion.155

For the rest of coastal Lingnan beyond Hainan Island, the stereotypical mix of typhoons, exotic people and dangerous environments was no longer true—even if typhoons remained a fact of life. Furthermore, locals, not outsider officials like Jiao, Chen, and Li, were writing new things connecting typhoons to Lingnan. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the prolific poet, writer, and Guangdong native Qu Dajun 屈大均 (1630-1696) wrote:

Annually in Nanhai, there are old winds 舊風 (jiufeng). They are also referred to as [just] wind (feng). Old (jiu) refers to typhoons (jufeng). If the typhoon begins in the northeast, it will move towards the west from the north. If it begins in the northwest it will move towards the east from the north. But all end in the south. It is called ‘lands in the west’ 落西 (luoxi), also called ‘swings to the west’ 蕩西’ (dangxi), and also called ‘returns to the south’ 廻南’ (huinan).156

Qu reiterated the age-old link between coastal Lingnan and typhoons, aurally cemented here by the similar-sounding Chinese words for old and typhoon. But there is also new knowledge here

154 Chen Dazhang 陳大章, “Song Liushu Wenzi zhi Qiongzhou,” 送六叔文子之瓊州 [Seeing my Sixth Uncle Wenzi off to Qiongzhou], in Yuzhaoting Shichao 玉照亭詩鈔 [Collection of Poetry from Jade Reflection Pavilion], 1744 edition, j. 1, p. 3. 155 Li Tiaoyuan 李調元, Tongshan Shiji 童山詩集 [Tongshan Poetry Collection], 1828 edition, j. 22 p. 176. Li was appointed to Guangdong in 1774 and reassigned to Jehol in 1781. See ECCP, pp. 486-487. 156 “南海歲有舊風，亦曰風舊，蓋颶風也。其起也，自東北者必自北而西，自西北者必自北而東，而俱至南乃息，謂之落西，亦曰蕩西，又曰廻南,” in GDXY, vol. 1 juan 1: 11a-b.

68 as well. Unlike Shen Huaiyuan’s fifth-century locus classicus definition, which merely implies involvement of winds from all directions, Qu is more specific in his description of cyclonic wind movement from the north toward the south. Later in his text, Qu explains this southward movement by strongly associating typhoons with this cardinal direction:

It is because the winds of the south take the south as their proper position. If it [the typhoon] begins in the improper (referring to a northern position) it will end in the proper. Thus typhoon winds (ju) will certainly return to the south. This is to return to its original cardinal position.157

For Qu, like his Tang-Song forbears and his late imperial contemporaries, typhoons were a thing of the south, which is why he considered the impossible to be possible: that typhoon winds could travel clockwise from the north to the east and then south. By the Ming dynasty, people in coastal Lingnan already knew that typhoon winds went “from the east, then north, then west, then south.”158 Indeed, none of the three colloquial names he gives at the end of the passage indicates clockwise movement. By referring to winds that land or blow to the west and return to the south, locals clearly knew that typhoons exhibited counterclockwise rotation. Caught in the middle of a typhoon, one only knows the direction the wind blows where one is located. To recognize the counterclockwise pattern would have required combining reports from various locations, a sort of collectivized knowledge. Locals were observing storms closely and as we shall see they were sharing information along the coast.

Unlike Su Shi, Qu Dajun was not an exile; and unlike Jiao Hesheng, Qu was not an outsider.159 A native of coastal Nanhai county in the Pearl River Delta near Guangzhou, Qu was

157 “蓋南方之風，以南為正。始於不正終於正，故颶必廻南乃止，歸於其本方也,” in GDXY, Vol. 1 juan 1: 13a. 158 “自東而北而西而南,” in Zhang Huang 章潢, Tushu Bian 圖書編, Preface dated 1613, j. 41: 16b-17a, SKQS edition. 159 Qu was once a Ming loyalist who eventually came to accept that the Manchus were China’s new rulers. Qu’s son and his family were banished temporarily to Fujian after Qu’s death due to the discovery of seditious lines in Qu’s earlier writing. Details of Qu’s life are in ECCP, pp. 199-202. On the later uses of Qu’s image as a Ming loyalist, see

69 part of a growing population of Chinese who called Lingnan their home. While historical population figures are never precise, the most careful estimates indicate that Lingnan’s Chinese population had grown steadily in the centuries between Shen Huaiyuan and Qu Dajun as China’s demographic center of gravity shifted southward from the Song onward. 160 When Su Shi composed his typhoon poem toward the end of the eleventh century and soon after the Mongol invasions of the 1290s depopulated much of Lingnan, its population was likely fewer than four million. Population steadily grew under the Ming and by 1640, when Qu Dajun was ten years old and four years before the Ming collapsed, there were probably around twelve million people living in the region. War and disease resulting from the Ming-Qing transition circa 1648 to 1653 and the forced relocation of the coastal population from 1661 to 1669 resulted in the loss of about two million people in Lingnan. But by the time Qu died in 1696, Lingnan still had a population of around ten million and this number would increase even further in the eighteenth century.161

Most of Lingnan’s population congregated along the coast. Robert Marks identified four core population centers for late imperial Lingnan, one inland in Northern Guangxi, and three along the Guangdong coast: Chaozhou prefecture in the east, Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan

Island to the west, and the most densely populated Pearl River Delta in the middle.162 These three coastal areas correspond for the most part with the modern designations for eastern Guangdong

粵東 (Yuedong), western Guangdong 粵西 (Yuexi), and central Guangdong 粵中 (Yuezhong).163

En Li, “A Banned Book Tradition and Local Reinvention: Receptions of Qu Dajun (1630-1696) and His Works in Late Imperial China,” Frontiers of History in China 12.3 (2017): 433-464. 160 Robert M. Hartwell, “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750-1550,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42.2 (December 1982): 365-442. 161 For Lingnan population figures and estimates, see Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, pp. 56-66, 84-91, 144-158. 162 Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, pp. 89-90. 163 Central Guangdong 粵中 (Yuezhong) today comprises primarily the Pearl River Delta and is administratively divided among the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Zhaoqing, and Huizhou. Eastern Guangdong 粵東 (Yuedong) today comprises the cities of Shantou, Chaozhou, Jieyang, and

In the fifteenth century, population grew steadily in these littoral areas especially in the Pearl

River Delta where people reclaimed land from the river deltas and sea for rice production to create distinctive and highly productive shatan 沙灘 (“sand flats”) fields. The entrance of New

World food crops like peanuts, sweet potatoes, and maize in the sixteenth century gave farmers incentives to accelerate the clearing of forests in the mountains of northern Guangdong and supported further population growth downriver. Cooler temperatures of the seventeenth century and the Ming-Qing transition temporarily disrupted economic growth. From 1700 onward, warmer climate and demand for silk, sugarcane, tea, and tobacco in the larger Chinese and global economy fueled economic growth in Guangdong as peasants shifted from rice agriculture to planting these commercial crops. Robert Marks has convincingly demonstrated how this increasing “commercialization without capitalism” coupled with a burst in population growth late in the seventeenth century intensified the degradation of Lingnan’s environment.164

Clearing the once verdant tropical forests and swamps of Guangdong to create the kind of arable land they were accustomed to farming, the Chinese pushed out the original non-Chinese inhabitants with their different forms of sustenance into peripheral areas. They drove the Zhuang and Yao people into the hills of western Guangxi and confined the Li people to Hainan Island where poetry associating them with typhoons continued to be written.165 David Bello has called the process of Chinese population growth and the transformation of borderland environments

Shanwei. Western Guangdong 粵西 (Yuexi) today comprises the cities of Yangjiang, Maoming, and Zhanjiang. The Leizhou Peninsula today falls under Zhanjiang. Before 1988, Hainan would fall under Western Guangdong. There is also Northern Guangdong 粵北 (Yuebei) that today comprises the cities of Shaoguan, Qingyuan, Yunfu, Meizhou, and Heyuan. These latter cities are not strongly affected by typhoons because of their location in the northern mountainous part of Guangdong, are not linked in the sources with them, and thus do not fall under my conception of typhoon space. Instances of storm damage in these areas are almost non-existent. There is one lone entry in the 1822 Provincial Gazetteer for a storm that destroyed crops in Yangshan county in Qingyuan sometime during the mid-Ming, likely the late fifteenth century. There is also one entry for Xinxing county in Yunfu for a storm that brought down a tree in front of the county yamen and caused its living quarters to collapse. See GDTZ v. 71 j. 187 p. 30b, and v. 54 j. 133 p. 9a. 164 This summary is based on Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, pp. 84 onward. 165 Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, pp. 87-99.

71 into one conducive to their agrarian needs as the making of “Hanspace.” 166 The growing encroachment on the coastline by Chinese farmers also increased their exposure to typhoons. In coastal Lingnan, Hanspace came to overlap with typhoon space.

Hanspace and Typhoon Space

Typhoon vulnerability varied across coastal Lingnan. In the latter half of the twentieth century, when typhoon data is most reliable, it is clear that western Guangdong bore the brunt of most storms. As mentioned in Chapter One, Guangdong and Hainan combined to receive 238 storms from 1949 to 1987, when they were still one province. Hainan Island (39.1%) and

Western Guangdong (26.5%) received most of the landing storms, followed by the Pearl River

Delta (19.8%), and Eastern Guangdong (14.7%).167 Another source, with data from 1949 also but extending to 2000 and not counting Hainan storms, has Western Guangdong (44%) at the top spot, followed by the Pearl River Delta (32%), and Eastern Guangdong (24%).168

As we go further back in time, the data becomes less reliable and we can only make rough estimations of typhoon landing frequencies. The most up-to-date but no doubt still incomplete dataset for the Qing dynasty contains over 900 storm entries for Guangdong from

1644 to 1911.169 After disaggregating the data, the Pearl River Delta (45.3%) comes out on top, followed by Eastern Guangdong (30.7%), and Western Guangdong (24%). Data are even patchier for the Ming. Although the Ming dynasty lasted slightly longer than the Qing, we have a

166 David A. Bello, Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China’s Borderlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 23-26. 167 GDSZ-ZRZHZ, p. 169. 168 Wen, Zhongguo Qixiang Zaihai Dadian: Guangdong Juan, p. 129. The Hainan volume lists 383 storms for Hainan from 1949-2000. A number of these storms would have overlapped with the Western Guangdong numbers in the Guangdong volume dataset but would nonetheless still have increased the percentage of storms in favor of Western Guangdong. See Wen, Zhongguo Qixiang Zaihai Dadian: Hainan Juan, p. 17. 169 Pan Wei, et al., pp. 2195-2204. I thank Pan Wei for sharing with me the dataset.

72 record of fewer than two hundred Ming storms for coastal Lingnan.170 The Pearl River Delta

(41.62%) again leads, followed by Western Guangdong (39.46%) including Hainan, and Eastern

Guangdong (15.68%) trails the pack (Figure 3.1).

Why did Western Guangdong see more storms in the near present while the Pearl River

Delta seems to lead in this category during the Ming-Qing period? Meteorologically, the question cannot be answered adequately at this point. It would in fact make more sense if

Western Guangdong still saw more storms in the past because of its location. It receives both storms traveling east from the Pacific and those traveling north and northwest from the South

China Sea, as I have shown in Chapter One. Historically, the explanation might be even simpler: the richer Pearl River Delta likely had better documentation than its poorer neighbors and was thus recording more storms.

Figure 3.1 Ming Map of Coastal Lingnan.171

170 This is based on Wen Kegang’s dataset of a combined 185 Ming storms in his Guangdong and Hainan volumes. See Wen, Guangdong Volume, pp. 131-138, and Hainan Volume, pp. 22-25.

It is quite possible that Western Guangdong indeed saw more storms than the richer Pearl

River Delta in the late imperial period. At least, people in late imperial Guangdong saw it that way. Wen Tianxiang 文天祥 (1236-1283 CE), who famously resisted the thirteenth-century

Mongol invasion of the Southern Song from his base in Guangdong, claimed: “Where there are places near the ocean that have formed prefectures all have typhoons. Among them, Lei[zhou] is worst-hit.”172 Ming gazetteer compilers, in describing the winds of the prefecture, noted that: “In maritime areas, winds are plentiful and the most extreme are in Lei[zhou]. Those that transform into enormous ones are typhoons.” 173 Qu Dajun, comparing typhoon vulnerability among

Guangdong prefectures, observed that “regarding typhoons, none are worse-hit than Qiong[zhou] and Lei[zhou]; followed by Lian[zhou]; then followed by Guang[zhou]; and by the time a typhoon reaches the south of Shao[zhou], its strength would have reached its end.” 174 Qu understood (correctly) that typhoons expended their energy and had little influence once they reached the mountainous prefecture of Shaozhou in northern Guangdong. Chaozhou is curiously missing in Qu’s ranking. But it is clear that he considered both Hainan Island (Qiongzhou) and the Leizhou Peninsula as the most vulnerable parts of the province to typhoons.

Qu had a cosmological explanation for Leizhou and Hainan’s greater vulnerability to storms. Using language steeped in the terminology of the Classic of Changes 易經, Qu expounded: “Yue [Guangdong] lies in the Li sector. Typhoons are the accumulation of Li winds

171 Map is from Zhang Huang, Tushu Bian, j. 41: 3a-3b. From west to east, the coastal prefectures depicted are Qiongzhou 瓊州, Leizhou 雷州, Gaozhou 高州, Guangzhou 廣州, Huizhou 惠州, and Chaozhou 潮州. Qiongzhou, Leizhou, and Gaozhou fall under Western Guangdong. Guangzhou and Huizhou under Central Guangdong, and Chaozhou encompasses Eastern Guangdong. 172 “凡並海而為州者皆有颶風，而雷為甚,” in Wen Tianxiang 文天祥, “Leizhou Chongjian Qiaolou Ji” 雷州重建譙樓記 [Record of the Reconstruction of the Qiao Tower in Leizhou] 雷州重建譙樓記 in Wenshan Xiansheng Quanji 文山先生全集 [Complete Collection of Mr. Wenshan], SBCK edition, j. 9, pp. 193-194. 173 “海郡多風而雷為甚,其變而大者為颶風,” in LZFZ 1614, j. 2: 3a (p. 171). 174 “颶莫甚於瓊，雷、廉次之，廣又次之，至韶南而力末矣,” in GDXY, j. 1: 13a. Lianzhou, just northwest of Leizhou, is now part of Guangxi province.

74 unable to find release. When the fire-qi energy explodes it leads to disaster. Every year, Yue has typhoons. Most arise from Qiong[zhou] and Lei[zhou]. [They are] the extremities of Li.”175 He first situates Guangdong in the Li 離 sector of the Later Heaven Eight Trigrams system 後天八

卦.176 The Li sector occupies the south position in the Later Heaven system (Figure 3.2) just as

Guangdong was the southernmost province of China.177 Each of the eight sectors of the trigram was associated with an element and Li was paired with fire. Qu identified typhoons as the embodiment of Li or fire wind that was bottled up and accumulated and when unleashed produced explosive fire-qi 火氣 energy capable of producing disasters. Qu’s explanation for why

Guangdong was the most vulnerable to typhoons of all the coastal provinces hinges on

Guangdong’s “southern-ness.” Within this southern-ness, the most southerly were Leizhou and

Hainan. Accordingly, in his view, it made sense that most typhoons occurred in these two prefectures.

175 “粵在離方，颶者，離風之鬱而不得出，火氣暴發而為災患者也。粵歲有颶，多從瓊、雷而起。離之極方也,” in GDXY, j. 6: 2b-3a. 176 On the uses and evolution of Classic of Changes theory in China see Richard J. Smith, Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I-ching, or Classic of Changes) (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008). 177 The Li sector would have occupied the east position in the less utilized Former Heaven Eight Trigrams system 先天八卦.

Figure 3.2 Later Heaven Eight Trigrams 後天八卦.178

Western Guangdong indeed saw its fair share of strong typhoons during the Ming. In the autumn of 1411, during the ninth lunar month (around September and October), a typhoon struck

Leizhou peninsula flooding the counties of Suixi and Haikang, destroying more than 800 qing or

12,800 acres of crops, and drowning around 1,600 people.179 The prefect of Leizhou and the county magistrates hid the incident from the court but it was discovered eventually and the concerned officials were investigated and punished. 180 In the summer of 1501, during the intercalary seventh month, a storm surge flooded Qiongshan county with more than seven feet of water.181 Also in the seventh lunar month, but of 1524, a storm that hit Wanzhou on the southern coast of Hainan carried boats inland as far as two to three li or more than a kilometer, left only one out of every ten houses standing, and was considered an unprecedented storm by locals.182

178 The Trigrams are normally inverted, with south (Li) on top; north (Kan) at bottom; east (Zhen) to the left; and west (Dui) to the right. 179 MS, j. 28 p. 446; GDTZ v. 71 j. 187 p. 10b. Official histories, such as the Mingshi, have the least complete coverage of storms but give a sense of what the state considered major natural disasters. Late imperial sources usually only provide the lunar month when a storm occurred. I have done my best to ascertain which month or possible months in the Gregorian calendar it occurred in any given year. 180 MSL-Taizong, j. 123 p. 3b (p. 1548). 181 MS, j. 28 p. 451; GDTZ v. 71 j. 187 p. 27a. There might have been casualties in such a large flood but the record is silent on this account. 182 GDTZ v. 71 j. 188 p. 2a. Despite its “unprecedented” nature, this storm does not appear in the Mingshi. It is also not in Timothy Brook’s list of unfortunate events that befell Hainan during the Yuan and Ming dynasties. See

In contrast to Western Guangdong, the densely populated and economically important

Pearl River Delta seems to have gotten off lightly during the Ming despite its larger number of recorded storms. The worst event occurred on May 23, 1422 when a typhoon brought both torrential rains and a storm surge to Guangzhou itself. Over three hundred sixty people drowned and one thousand two hundred houses were swept away while more than 25,300 piculs or bushels of stored grain were destroyed.183

Eastern Guangdong did not see as many storms and Qu even omitted it from his ranking of typhoon vulnerability but what Chaozhou lacked in numbers it made up for in intensity. On

September 22, 1618, a strong typhoon affected six out of the eleven counties that fell under

Chaozhou prefecture drowning more than 12,500 people and destroyed 31,689 homes.184 It was the most severe typhoon disaster recorded during the Ming. With more and more people exposing themselves to potentially destructive storms, people needed to find ways to cope. One way of coping was to create and share useful knowledge about typhoons.

Sensing Storms

In Leizhou, seen by a number of late imperial observers as the most typhoon-prone province, there were many ways of “typhoon prognostication” 占颶 (zhanju). The provincial gazetteer lists them:

Timothy Brook, Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2010), p. 51. 183 MSL-Taizong, j. 249 p. 1a. The date given is 20th year of the Yongle reign, the third day of the fifth lunar month or May 23, 1422. 184 MS, j. 28 p. 454. The names of the six counties and the date of September 22 or the fourth day of the eighth lunar moon are provided in MSL-Shenzong, j. 583: 5a-b. The six counties are Chaozhou, Puning, Raoping, Haiyang, Chaoyang, and Chenghai. Under the Qing, Chaozhou was composed of nine counties. Despite the catastrophic numbers involved in this storm, it does not appear in the 1822 provincial gazetteer. This and note 30 above show that it is not entirely clear how compilers of either histories or provincial gazetteers decided which storm events were included or omitted in the record.

“In Lei[zhou], the ways to forecast a typhoon are not unified. Some know by the lines on the leaves of the wind-knowing plant. Others know by observing the west wind from the fourth day to the ninth day of the first lunar month. Each day governs one month following the fourth lunar month Others tell from the cloud peaks that form on the morning when one rises on the Duanwu festival (fifth day of the fifth lunar month). Others know by the seabird flying away in alarm. Others know by the double rainbow drinking water from the sea, also known colloquially as the sea cable or the water’s shadow or the sail. Others know from the sudden slowing and speeding of a sound like a beating gong being heard from afar and is colloquially called the sea’s roar. All of these are omens for a typhoon.”185

One might order these methods into three categories of signs: signs of an atmospheric or oceanic nature, signs of a floral or faunal nature, and signs of a calendrical nature.

Of all the signs, the one with the oldest history is the atmospheric and oceanic Typhoon

Mother omen we first encountered in the previous chapter. Tang mariners first developed the idea that a certain combination of clouds and rainbows was a sure sign of an impending typhoon.

In the Song dynasty, Su Shi further elaborated on it by describing it as a fire cloud with double rainbows drinking from the ocean. Indeed, the gazetteer detail about rainbows drinking from the ocean is lifted straight from Su Shi’s Typhoon Poem. Ming household encyclopedias 日用類書

(riyong leishu), which were made for a popular audience and had a readership beyond

Guangdong, identified the Typhoon Mother or a double rainbow as the definitive omen for a typhoon.186 By late imperial times, people in many parts of coastal China knew the Typhoon

Mother and knew it by many names. Because the rainbow of the Typhoon Mother often looked like a sail with a mast flying in the sky, people referred to it as “the sail” 風篷 or “the cable” 牽

纜. The rainbows were often split or broken 斷虹/斷霓/半虹/半霓, so this sign was also known

185 “雷之占颶不一，或以知風草葉上之節，或以正月初四日至初九日之西風，每一日管四月以後之一月，或以端午晨起東方之雲峰，或以海鳥驚飛，或以斷虹飲水，俗曰牽纜曰水影亦曰風篷，或以空中有聲乍急乍緩似遠聽鏜嗒之音，俗曰海吼，此皆颶之先兆,”in GDTZ vol. 36 j. 89: 32b-33a. 186 Bianmin Tuzhuan 便民图籑 [Illustrated Handbook for People’s Convenience], 1544 edition, j. 7; Yu Xiangdou 余象斗, Xinge Tianxia Simin Bianlan Santai Wanyong Zhengzong 新刻天下四民便覽三台萬用正宗 [New edition of The Correct Source for a Myriad Practical Uses for the World’s Four Kinds of People], 1599 edition, j. 21.

78 as “the Broken Sail” 破帆/破篷. 187 Rainbows often have positive associations in Western culture.188 But traditionally in China, rainbows tended to be portents for disasters.189 So while

British colonists in the seventeenth-century Caribbean may not have considered rainbows as a sign of a hurricane, it is uncanny that they also thought clouds of “a pale fire colour” preceded a hurricane’s arrival.190

Both seventeenth-century Chinese in Guangdong and British in the Caribbean understood that the ocean looked and sounded different before a tropical cyclone arrived. People in

Guangdong listened for a “sea roar” 海吼 or the “slowing and speeding of a sound like a beating gong being heard from afar.” Qu Dajun described it in slightly more detail: “There is a sound that starts to rumble. When it starts, the whirl 旋 stops. When it is urgent, the whirl slows down.

This is what is called ‘tempered wind’ 練風… The sound of the sea turning is roaring and angry.

The waves roll as if the sea were boiling. Rocks jutting out from the sea slam into each other.”191

In between the sound of tempered winds and the roiling sea, he squeezed in the well-known

Typhoon Mother drinking from the ocean with the rainbow as its straw. On the other side of the world, British colonists too found the Caribbean sea sounding with a “great Noise…smelling stronger than at other times” prior to a hurricane.192

187 GDTZ vol. 36 j. 89 p. 33b. 188 Just to cite one example, the Bible sees rainbows as an auspicious symbol of God’s covenant with humanity. Genesis 9:13, "I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth." 189 A well-known sign in Chinese literature that unfortunate events were unfolding on earth is the “white rainbow covering the sun” 白虹貫日. For example, this omen appears in the stories of two assassination attempts in Sima Qian’s Shiji, including the failed attempt of Jing Ke to kill the First Emperor of Qin. See SJ, j. 83, Biographies 23, “The Biography of Zou Yang” 鄒陽傳,” p. 2470. 190 Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society, pp. 51-52. 191“有聲微作，作而旋止，急而旋緩，謂之練風。於是炎雲鬱結，雷聲殷殷，有虹欲斷欲連，下飲海水海翻聲吼怒，浪浪沸騰，磯石搏觸,” in GDXY vol. 1 j. 1: 13a. 192 Cf. the sights, sounds, and smells that plagued British colonists before, during, and after a hurricane in Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society, pp. 51-52.

One did not always have to look out toward the ocean to find signs. Nature planted typhoon omens as well among the animals and plants of coastal Lingnan. Qu wrote that water birds flew away in fright and some trees bent their trunks and leaves south in anticipation of the typhoon winds that would inevitably blow in that direction.193 We cannot identify these trees for

Qu left them nameless, but there was a plant that people all over coastal Lingnan knew had a way of knowing how many typhoons would arrive each year. They literally called it the “wind- knowing plant” 知風草 (Zhifeng Cao). This name has stuck to this day for a plant known to science as Eragrostis ferruginea, a perennial lovegrass or canegrass that grows along mountain slopes and roadsides in many parts of China and East Asia (Figure 3.3).194

193“水鳥驚飛，木葉南側,” in GDXY vol. 1 j. 1: 13b. 194 “Eragrostris ferruginea,” Flora of China, http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200025340, last accessed October 5, 2018.

Figure 3.3 Eragrostis ferruginea or the Wind-Knowing Plant195

The Gazetteer of the Unified Great Qing 大清一統志 claims that this widely dispersed plant has a Guangdong origin.196 While the plant itself may not have necessarily spread from

Guangdong, the practice of looking at its leaves to predict typhoons most certainly did. The leaves of E. ferruginea usually have lines that separate the leaves vertically into columns.

Anytime during the year, one could count the number of lines on the plant and the total supposedly corresponded to the number of typhoons that would come that year. Zero lines meant zero typhoons, one line meant one typhoon, and so on and so forth.197 One could just pick any

195 Image is from “Zhifeng Cao” 知風草 [Wind-Knowing Plant], Diancang Taiwan 典藏台灣 [Taiwan Collection], http://catalog.digitalarchives.tw/item/00/10/ee/03.html, last accessed on October 6, 2018. 196 ZWDCD, vol. 32, p. 269 (10043). 197 “土人視節知一歲風候，每一節一風，無節無風,” in GDTZ j. 52, p. 166.

81 single E. ferruginea plant and leaf at random because Qu Dajun claimed that “each year every leaf [of each plant] is the same.” A Ming poem from Hainan makes clear the connection between typhoons and E. ferruginea:

“The Typhoon Mother rises and falls, the mountains move, 颶母崩騰山嶽移 (yi)

Before the tempering winds appear in the sea, 方當海未練風時 (shi)

No signs [of an impending typhoon] in north or south Qiongzhou 瓊南瓊北無消息 (xi)

Only the small wind-knowing plant knows.” 獨有知風小草知 (zhi)198

Typhoon Mother, tempering winds, and E. ferruginea were all part of Hainan’s repertoire for forecasting storms.

The practice must have either spread to other parts of coastal China or was part of a common coastal typhoon culture in the seventeenth century. In Taiwan, conquered by the Qing in 1683, “the locals know of a typhoon plant. If this plant has no lines then that year there will be no typhoons. If one line then one typhoon. If two lines then two typhoons. If many lines then many typhoons. Never has this not been the case. At present, many people know of this plant.”199

Though E. ferruginea also exists on Taiwan, the plant taking on the exact same role on the island is the palmgrass Setaria palmifolia. It is still called the typhoon plant 颱風草 (Taifeng Cao) to

198 GDXY vol. 1 juan 1: 28a-b. “每歲葉葉相同，無間彼此.” Qu suspects that there must be an insect 蟲 that determines the number of lines on the plant. “瓊州有知風草, 每能變化, 乃蟲所變.” Qu Dajun indicates that this poem was written by Wang Zuo 王佐. Of the many people in Chinese history with the same name, it is certain that the poet in question is the Wang Zuo (1428-1512) from Lingao county in Hainan who is famous for writing Hainan’s first local gazetteer, Qiongtai Waiji 瓊臺外紀 [The External Record of Hainan], and a collection of his own poetry called Jilei Ji 雞肋集 [Chicken Ribs Collection]. Qian Zhixi 钱志熙, “Mingdai Hainan Zuojia Wangzuo Sanlun,” 明代海南作家王佐散论 [The Writings of Wang Zuo, A Ming Dynasty Hainan Author], Qiongzhou Xueyuan Xuebao 琼州学院学报 [Qiongzhou Academy Bulletin] 21.6 (December 2014): 18-26. 199“土番識颱草，此草生無節，則周年俱無颱；一節，則颱一次；二節，二次；多節，多次；無不驗者，今人亦多識此草,” in TWFZ, j. 1.

82 this day and the belief that it accurately predicts the number of typhoons that will hit the island remains alive and well.200

Both local gazetteers and Qu Dajun mention that seeing sea or water birds in flight was a sign of a typhoon coming. Again in Western Guangdong, people knew “a typhoon was coming when crying seabirds flew into the mountains at night during summer and autumn [typhoon season].” 201 But which seabirds? The most likely candidate is Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel

(Oceanodroma monorhis), which can be found off the Northwest Pacific coasts of East Asia

(Figure 3.4).202 It is one of many bird species belonging to the globally distributed storm petrel family Hydrobatidae. Storm petrels are said to hide in the lees of ships during storms and in maritime cultures around the world are considered signs of imminent inclement weather.203 Birds of the Hydrobatidae family all fall under the category sea swallow 海燕 (haiyan) in Chinese translation.204 Quite appropriately, Haiyan was one of the storm names that China contributed as one of fourteen countries or entities located in the Northwest Pacific Tropical Cyclone Basin.205

200 “Typhoon Plant” 颱風草, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, http://data.odw.tw/record/d6605940, last accessed on October 5, 2018. The plant is also known in Taiwan as the “Zongzi Leaf Dog Tail Plant” 粽葉狗尾草 because its leaves either look like the leaf wrapping for a zongzi, a glutinous rice dish eaten on the Duanwu Festival, or the tail of a dog. The Taiwan Typhoon and Flood Research Institute even posted an article about the plant with the intention of convincing people to rely on modern technology instead. See “Taifeng Cao Zhenneng Yuce Taifeng Ma?” 颱風草真能預測颱風嗎 [Can the Typhoon Plant Really Predict Typhoons?”], Taiwan Typhoon and Flood Research Institute 台灣颱風洪水研究中心 , http://www.ttfri.narl.org.tw/sp/?p=419, last accessed October 5, 2018. 201 “海鳥夏秋夜鳴飛入山有颶風,” in GDTZ vol. 39 juan 99: 9b. Cf. Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society, p. 52, where British colonists look for birds coming down from the mountains. 202 Mark Brazil, Birds of East Asia: Eastern China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Eastern Russia (London: A&C Black Publishers, 2009), pp. 86-87. 203 “Petrels gathering under the stern of a ship indicate bad weather. The stormy petrel is found to be a sure token of stormy weather. When these birds gather in numbers in the wake of a ship, the sailors feel sure of an impending tempest,” in Richard Inwards, Weather Lore: A Collection of Proverbs, Sayings, and Rules Concerning the Weather (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015 [1893]), p. 141. 204“Hydrobatidea,” Birds of China 中国的鸟类, http://sibagu.com/china/hydrobatidae.html, last accessed on October 4, 2018. 205 “Pacific Tropical Cyclone Names,” Central Pacific Hurricane Center, http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc/pages/names.php, last accessed on October 4, 2018.

Haiyan eventually became the name of the headline-grabbing super typhoon that took more than

6,000 lives in the Philippines in November of 2013.

Figure 3.4 Oceanodroma monorhis or Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel206

Residents of coastal Lingnan also used other birds to conduct “wind prognostication” 占

風. They thought they could tell how strong a storm would be by observing how the magpie, likely either the Eurasian magpie (Pica pica) or the Oriental magpie (Pica sericea), built its nest.

“If the nest is high, the wind will be small. If the nest is low then the wind will be great. This is because these birds are prescient and fear that the wind will destroy their nests, thus one may use the height of their nest to predict the strength of the wind.” 207 Magpies and seabirds were creatures of the air and ocean, so perhaps people thought they knew something about the cyclones that traversed the same space.

Finally, some people thought typhoons had patterns that could be predicted by looking for signs that happened on particular days of the calendar. On the list of methods used in Leizhou, people would look out for a west wind from the fourth day to the ninth day of the first lunar

206 Image is from “海燕科 Hydrobatidae,” Blue Animal Bio, http://www.blueanimalbio.com/bird/hu/haiyan.htm, last accessed on October 6, 2018. 207“又鵲巢占風。巢高風小，巢低風大。蓋鳥的幾先，畏風覆巢，故以巢之高低占風之大小,”in GDTZ vol. 36 j. 89: 26b.

84 month. If it blew on the fourth day then a typhoon would happen in the fourth month. Each successive day governed a successive month. People who used this method understood that typhoon season fell somewhere between the fourth and ninth months. E. ferruginea could only tell how many typhoons will happen in a year but not in which month of the typhoon season.

This method of looking for a west wind allowed for a monthly prediction. One reputed method involved observing cloud peaks on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month or the Duanwu Festival but I have not found further elaborations of this method. The practice of divination by observing particular phenomena especially during the first few days of the New Year was quite common by the Ming.208

There was also a belief that typhoons tended to happen more often on certain days of the year. A number of these days fall outside what we understand today as typhoon season. In a 1751 source about Macao, a list of these days and the names for the typhoons are given (Table 3.1).209

Table 3.1 Calendrical Typhoons Lunar Typhoon Name Lunar Typhoon Name Lunar Typhoon Name Calendar Calendar Calendar Date Date Date (m/d) (m/d) (m/d) 1/4 Spirit-Receiving 4/8 Buddha Typhoon 8/21 Dragon God Typhoon 接神颶佛子颶 Typhoon 龍神颶 1/9 Jade Emperor 4/23 Great Protector 9/9 Double Ninth Typhoon 玉皇颶 Typhoon 太保颶 Typhoon 重陽颶 1/13 Guandi Typhoon 4/25 Venus Typhoon 9/16 Zhang Liang 關帝颶太白颶 Typhoon 張良颶 1/15 Three Officials 5/5 Qu Yuan Typhoon 9/19 Guanyin Typhoon Typhoon 三官颶屈原颶觀音颶 1/29 Dragon Gods 5/13 Guandi Typhoon 9/27 Cold Wind Gathering 關帝颶 Typhoon 冷風颶 Typhoon 龍神會颶

208 There is, for example, a local Ming divination calendar from Cili in the Huguang area, which predicted the fortunes of people and their domestic animals and plants with reference to the first eight days of the New Year. See Brook, Troubled Empire, p. 75-76. 209 Table is compiled from the list in Zhang Rulin 張汝霖, Aomen Jilue 澳門紀略 [A Record of Macao], 1751 ed., j. 22, pp. 10a-11b.

Lunar Typhoon Name Lunar Typhoon Name Lunar Typhoon Name Calendar Calendar Calendar Date Date Date (m/d) (m/d) (m/d) 2/2 White-Haired 5/21 Dragon Mother 10/5 Seasonal Wind Typhoon 白髮颶 Typhoon 龍母颶 Typhoon 風信颶 2/7 Spring Typhoon 6/12 Ancestor Peng 10/11 Water Spirit 春期颶 Typhoon 彭祖颶 Typhoon 水仙颶 2/21 Guanyin Typhoon 6/18 Ancestress Peng 10/20 Eastern 觀音颶 Typhoon 彭婆颶 Marchmount Typhoon 東嶽颶 2/29 Dragon God 6/24 Washing the 10/26 Father Typhoon Typhoon 龍神颶 Cooking Utensils 翁爹颶 Typhoon 洗炊籠颶 3/3 Zhenwu Typhoon 7/15 Ghost Typhoon 11/15 Water Spirit 真武颶鬼颶 Typhoon 水仙颶 3/7 King Yama 7/18 Shensha Typhoon 11/27 Pu’an Typhoon Typhoon 閻王颶神煞颶普庵颶 3/15 Perfected Person 8/1 Kitchen God 11/29 Western Typhoon 真君颶 Typhoon 竈君颶 Marchmount Typhoon 西嶽颶 3/23 Empress of 8/14 Samgha Typhoon 12/24 Returning to Dust Heaven Typhoon 伽藍颶 Typhoon 歸塵颶天后颶 4/1 White Dragon 8/15 Star Prince Kui 12/29 Fire Bowl Typhoon 白龍颶 Typhoon 魁星颶 Typhoon 火盆颶

From as early as the fourth day of the first lunar month, when a Jade Emperor Typhoon occurs to as late as the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month, when a Fire Bowl Typhoon blows, a total of forty-two days were said to have a high likelihood of seeing a typhoon every year. This calendar of typhoons bearing names of deities and other religious terms suggest that coastal people believed that on certain religious occasions typhoons were more likely to occur, perhaps brought about by the day’s deity itself. This calendar seems to have existed across coastal southern China with variations that perhaps reflect local conditions. A shorter list of only twenty- five typhoon days existed in Taiwan as early as 1685.210 All twenty-five typhoon days in the

210 TWFZ, j. 1.

Taiwan version can be found in the Macao forty-two days typhoon list suggesting that between

1685 and 1751 new dates had been added to the preexisting calendar. The existence of similar practices in Guangdong and Taiwan such as the counting of lines on leaves and similar typhoon calendars strongly suggests that a culture of typhoons was being shared across the southern

Chinese coast.

The sharing of a coastal typhoon culture is also evident in the rise of a new term for typhoons: taifeng 颱風. As discussed in the previous chapter, only the word ju 颶 was used for typhoon prior to 1600. The word tai makes its appearance only in the seventeenth century.

Seventeenth-century writers thought it had something to do with the contemporaneous colonization and conquest of Taiwan. Wang Shizhen 王士禎 (1634-1711, jinshi 1658) wrote that,

“Taiwan’s winds are different from those of other waters. Winds that are great and strong are called ju. Those that are even worse are called tai. Ju unfold quickly and end quickly. Tai often last for days on end. Those typhoons that occur in the first to fourth lunar months are called ju, while those that occur in the fifth to eight months are called tai.”211

But a similar passage occurs in Guangdong gazetteers without reference to Taiwan,

“those (typhoons) which occur in the second to fourth lunar months are called ju, while those that occur in the fifth to eighth lunar months are called tai. Tai is worse than ju but ju is faster than tai. Ju has no fixed time period while tai lasts for several days. From the ninth lunar month to winter there are many northern winds. Occasionally (at this time) there are tai that are as fast as spring ju. When a boat is at sea, if it encounters a ju it can survive but if it meets a tai then it will be extremely difficult (to survive). This is because ju are loose/scattered while tai are gathered/compact.”212 The question of the English word typhoon’s provenance has been debated for years and one line of reasoning is that typhoon comes from Chinese taifeng but taifeng’s own provenance is also a question in itself. Marlon Zhu has argued, citing a 1625 source discussing the Pescadores Islands,

211 “臺灣風信與他海殊異，風大而烈者為颶，又甚者為颱。颶倏發倏止，颱常連日夜不止。正二三四月發者為颶，五六七八月發者為颱,” in Wang Shizhen, Xiangzu Biji 香祖筆記 [Orchid Notes], Preface dated 1702, j. 2: 6a. 212 GDTZ vol. 36 juan 89: 35b-36a.

87 that the word taifeng already appeared almost six decades before Taiwan was incorporated into the Qing empire. His point is that the connection with Taiwan was a later impression by confused scholars. Citing the interconnected maritime worlds of the Indian Ocean and the South

China Sea, he argues that the Arabic word for tropical cyclone tufan was likely the most widely used in this ocean corridor because Arab merchants dominated the trade in the larger Indian

Ocean. Zhu suggests that taifeng is likely a cognate of tufan, which may have been derived from

Greek typhon, was likely used much earlier in the Indian Ocean, and is supposed to be the source for Italian tifone and other European cognates. For Zhu, it made no sense for the Chinese to invent a new word for typhoon when they already had one, jufeng. So taifeng must have been an early seventeenth-century introduction from outside by Chinese traders who were part of a common maritime culture shared across coastal Monsoon Asia and had transliterated the Arabic word. William Dampier, an English pirate who ran into a storm in the South China Sea on July 3,

1687, may have heard of tufan or more likely its Chinese cognate and was the first to use the word typhoon in written English.213 In any case, taifeng does not widely replace the word jufeng in written sources until 1949. But the appearance of the word in seventeenth-century texts about

Taiwan and Guangdong, whatever its origins, does suggest the sharing of typhoon knowledge across the southern coast.

It is possible that these typhoon prognostication practices in Lingnan might have already been practiced under the Song and Yuan dynasties. But starting with the Ming, China experienced a golden age of publishing. “More books were available, and more people read and owned more books, in the late Ming than at any earlier time in history, anywhere in the

213 Marlon Zhu 朱瑪瓏, “Jindai Taifeng Zhishi de Zhuanbian” 近代颱風知識的轉變 [The Evolution of Modern Typhoon Knowledge], National Taiwan University, MA Thesis, 2000, pp. 29-36. I thank Marlon for sharing his MA Thesis with me.

88 world.” 214 The Ming publishing industry produced a stunning array of calendars, almanacs, divination handbooks, gazetteers, and household encyclopedias. Many of these sources are cited here and their increasing availability no doubt helped spread typhoon-related practices and new terminology to other parts of coastal China.

Normalizing Storms

The production of new forms of typhoon knowledge in late imperial coastal China points to the increasing normalization of typhoons in the everyday existence of littoral people. They were part of the ethnometeorology of the region or a system that allowed people to explain weather and their relationship to it.215 People living along the southern Chinese littoral, knowing they would encounter storms, sought to discern patterns so as to avoid their destructive potential.

They looked to the ocean, sky, birds, and plants around them for signs. They literally inscribed storms onto a calendar that governed the daily ritual lives of coastal people.

There were other ways in which this normalization process manifested itself. For example, normalization was reflected in how people made adaptations to decrease the harm that storms did to their dwellings. Local gazetteers of Guangdong mention a Song official named

Zhang Qi 張岐, who served on Hainan sometime between 997-1022, and taught the locals how to build houses that could withstand gale force winds. Unfortunately, the method is not discussed

214 Brook, Troubled Empire, p. 199. On Ming publishing, see Lucille Chia, Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th-17th Centuries) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002); Cynthia Brokaw, and Kai-wing Chow, eds., Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and Joseph McDermott, A Social History of the Chinese Book: Books and Literati Culture in Late Imperial China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006). 215 Borrowing the term from Philip Clarke’s study of Australian aboriginal ethnometeorology, Chris Courtney has applied the concept to explain the various ways that people living in the floodplains of Hubei understood their relationship with the capricious rains and floods of the region. See Chris Courtney, The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 91. Citing Philip A. Clarke, “Australian Aboriginal Ethnometeorology and Seasonal Calendar,” History and Anthropology 20.2 (2009): 79-106.

89 and there is always the possibility that this was a case of Han condescension toward indigenous people. 216 Though there exists great variation in form, style, and building materials used throughout China, most peasants in coastal Guangdong would have lived in some form of single- story house made of a wooden frame, walled with tamped earth, and covered by thatched roofing made of some combination of straw or mud. Urban or richer dwellings were more likely to be made of stronger material such as bricks, covered in clay tiling, and be multi-storied. 217

Typhoons could damage any of these. The late imperial state, especially the Qing, was very worried about people “losing their homes and roaming the land” 流離失所 (liulishisuo) in the aftermath of disasters. Memorials concerning typhoons and the state’s fear of vagrancy give us an idea of how housing in coastal Guangdong was adapted to typhoons in late imperial times.

In the seventh and eighth lunar months of 1736 or the opening year of the Qianlong reign

(1736-1796), typhoons struck Guangdong at Chaozhou in the east and Hainan in the west. The

Qianlong Emperor was naturally concerned that people would “lose their homes” and ordered provincial and local officials to see to it that people were assisted in the rebuilding of their houses. The local officials reported that in both Chaozhou and Hainan, urban dwellings, which had some height, experienced damage to their roof tiling, which were blown away. They insisted though that most urban homeowners could handle the repairs on their own and did not require state relief. As for rural dwellings, they reported that Chaozhou homes were made of thatched straw 草房 or mud 瓦房 and that while they were easy to destroy, they were also easy to rebuild.218 Even so, the poorest residents still required some financial assistance for rebuilding their homes. On the other hand, on Hainan Island, officials enthusiastically reported that people

216 “張岐，字邵卿，崇安人。真宗朝以秘書丞知瓊州。。。其地多颶風，能拔屋。盛夏猶甚。岐教之以立屋之法，稍免其患。後卒曹州,” in GDTZ v. 87 j. 239, pp. 27b-28a. 217 Ronald G. Knapp, China’s Old Dwellings (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000), pp. 236-241. 218 People living on the floodplains of Hubei also found it easy to rebuild or move their homes made of cheap wood, bamboo, earth, reeds, and straw. See Courtney, The Nature of Disaster in China, pp 43-45, 61.

90 built low straw-thatched houses framed by bamboo (茅蓋竹編) and that these houses were built amidst bamboo thickets and dense clumps of trees, which provided extra stability against strong winds. They claimed that the houses were also easy to repair and that the locals could “at anytime, keep their houses in good shape by using vines and bamboo to secure them.” There was no need for the government to expend too much effort except for the poorest people because

Hainan locals were “used to this, and none had to undergo the suffering of a wind disaster.”219

Prior to 1970, most peasants in Leizhou Peninsula lived in houses of thatched straw.

These, like those in Chaozhou, easily succumbed to typhoon winds. They too were easy to rebuild but in the aftermath of typhoons the problem was determining where one’s house and fields once stood in a sea of fallen houses and scattered straw. Property disputes could possibly occur in such a situation. Locals arrived at a solution by drawing on a remnant from their pre-

Sinitic past when a southern cultural group known as the Yue 越 inhabited the southern Chinese and Indochinese frontier.220 Common to the peoples falling into this group was reverence of dogs and the building of stone dogs 石狗 as guardians against evil spirits. Any visitor to Leizhou today will be struck by the fact that one will not see the traditional Chinese stone lion guarding houses and will find instead stone dogs (Figure 3.5). Even more amazing is that each stone dog is unique. No one canine resembles the next. People placed these stone dogs inside, outside, and on the roofs of their houses. They also placed them beside wells, graves, and fields. While they did

219 “俱系茅蓋竹編之屋，房間底小，且在深樹密竹之內，四圍遮護甚周。。。難遇颶風吹揭落，隨時用青藤竹篾再加綁紮則依然完好。。。民間習以為常，無被風之苦,” in FHA 04-01-0002-007Emida 鄂彌達, Yang Yongbin 楊永斌, Zoubao Dongsheng Shoucheng Fenshu bing Qibayue Chaoqiong ershu Beifeng Chazhen yi’an 奏報東省收成分數并七八月潮瓊二屬被風查賑一案 [Reporting the harvest numbers of Guangdong province and the relief case of Chaozhou and Qiongzhou being hit by a typhoon in the seventh and eighth lunar months], QL 1/2/3. 220 On the pre-Sinitic origins of Leizhou’s stone dogs, see Lin Tao 林涛, “Leizhou Shigou Wenhua Yanjiu,” 雷州石狗文化研究 [A Study of Leizhou’s Stone Dog Culture], MA Thesis, South China Agricultural University 华南农业大学, 2010. On the Yue’s early history, see Erica Fox Brindley, Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c. 400 BCE-50 CE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

91 serve a religious purpose as guardians against evil spirits, the stone dogs also served a practical purpose by marking the territory of the owner just as a real dog might do. In the event of a typhoon or a fire, these stone dogs were the most durable structures and would outlast these storms. An owner could identify his or her property by virtue of recognizing their own signature stone dog/s.221

Figure 3.5 Stone Dogs in Leizhou Museum.222

Meanwhile, in the eastern prefecture of Chaozhou, people with some means designed their houses with typhoons in mind. In the more humid south, good Chinese houses tended to follow the tianjing 天井 or “skywell” type of architecture with its multiple small courtyards, which created more ventilation than the siheyuan 四合院 or large single courtyard or

221 This argument is made by He Xi 贺喜, “Jisi Kongjian yu Diyu Shehui – Leizhou Leizuci ji qi zhoubian Xiangcun de Lingwu, Shenmiao yu Citang” 祭祀空间与地域社会 – 雷州雷祖祠及其周边乡村的灵物, 神庙与祠堂 [Ritual Space and Local Society: The Sacred Objects, Temples, and Ancestral Halls of the Thunder God’s Temple and its Surrounding Villages in Leizhou], in Lao Gewen 劳格文 [John Lagerwey] and Ke Dawei 科大卫 [David Faure], eds., Zhongguo Xiangcun: Xuzhen Shensheng Kongjian de Jiangou 中国乡村: 墟镇神圣空间的建构 [The Chinese Village: The Formation of Sacred Space in Market Towns], Shanghai: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2014, pp. 188-230. I thank Lai Caihong for alerting and sending me this chapter. 222 Photo by author.

92 quadrangle-style houses of the north. But along coastal Guangdong, people had a preference for housing complexes called “Four Metal Points” 四點金 houses, so-called because the gable walls on all four sides looked like the Chinese character for metal. Many of these houses date to at least the Ming and Qing dynasties. They were single-story structures that were less likely to block the fearsome winds of typhoons. These were also closer in style to the northern siheyuan than the southern tianjing but incorporated details that increased ventilation and shading. In

Chaozhou prefecture, there is a more dramatic curve in the upper gables of the walls than in other parts of coastal Guangdong. Ronald Knapp tells us that this exaggerated gable helps shade the structure from the passing sun and reduces heat.223 These dramatic gables are also known as

Five Phases gables 五行墻頭 and inhabitants supposedly chose the shape of their gable based on the character of one of the five elements (water, wood, fire, metal, earth) they wished to use.

RonaldKnapp is skeptical about whether these gables indeed have such a cosmological function.224 What Knapp is unaware of is that residents of Chaozhou also refer to these gables today as Typhoon Gables 颱風墻頭 (Figure 3.6). The dramatic gable with its extra material and weight help to reinforce the structure and hold the roof and wall together during a typhoon.225

223 Knapp, China’s Old Dwellings, pp. 236-246. A picture of the dramatic gables is on p. 240, figure 5.27. 224 Knapp, China’s Old Dwellings, p. 144. 225 Lin Kailong 林凯龙, Chaoshan Laocu: Sihai Chaoren de Xinling Guxiang 潮汕老厝: 四海潮人的心灵故乡 [Old Dwellings of the Chaozhou-Shantou Area: The Soul and Homeland of Chaozhou People] (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 2013), p. 295. I thank the author Lin Kailong for showing me around Chaozhou in 2016 and educating me on this feature of the area’s houses and for sharing his pictures of them.

Figure 3.6 Five Phases Gables or Typhoon Gables in the Chao-Shan area.226

Typhoons were so prevalent in the region that some of its landmarks were named or described in relation to storms. A small bay called Sand Bridge Mouth Long Sands 沙橋嘴長沙 in Xin’an county, located in the Pearl River Delta, was known for rising and falling in rhythm with any tide so that typhoon storm surges were harmless against it.227 In the maritime defense

(海防) section of gazetteers, harbors were sometimes assessed for their ability to withstand typhoons. The description of Jiazimen harbor (literally harbor A) in Lufeng county on the eastern

Guangdong coast described as being too shallow and difficult so that boats would not be safe there during a typhoon.228 Hainan, in particular, had many places with names related to storms. It

226 Photo courtesy of Lin Kailong. 227 “沙橋嘴長沙一灣千餘丈。其嘴透海，隨流上下。潮上則彎上，潮下則灣下。颶風不能掃蕩,” in GDTZ v. 41 j. 101 p. 26b. 228 GDTZ v. 51 j. 123: 12b-13a.

94 was said that Qiongshan county during the Song dynasty lacked a good harbor for the many foreign trading ships that sought to dock there but sometime between 1174 and 1189 a typhoon swept through the area and carved out a harbor. Because it seemed like an act of divine intervention to a local need, the new harbor was named Harbor of Divine Response 神應港.229

Typhoons were thought to affect the eastern portion of Hainan more than the western part of the island. The point where typhoons supposedly turned back was a mountain in the middle part of southern Hainan thus named the Returning Wind Mount 迴風嶺, which was around 60 kilometers northeast of the county seat of Yazhou. 230 Finally, one mountain in far western

Hainan, which we will discuss in some more detail in the next chapter, was named the Wind-

Stopping Mountain 息風山 because the Li minority who had been forced into the inner mountains of the island prayed there to put an end to typhoons.231

Apart from place-name geography, typhoons also found their way into stories. When one finds typhoons or other forms of disasters in gazetteer biographies, one does not expect to find a positive story. But as Andrea Janku has noticed, disasters in biographies of moral exemplars were often opportunities to display human virtue rather than human destruction.232

For example, Feng Yayu 馮雅玉 of Zengcheng county in the Pearl River Delta was guarding over his mother’s tomb for the mandated three-year mourning period when a typhoon occurred. The ferocious typhoon sent sand flying and caused all the trees to be uprooted. His mother’s tomb, however, was miraculously spared leading everyone to take it as proof of his exceptional filial piety. In 1738, the Qianlong emperor honored his filial piety by bestowing him

229 GDTZ v. 45 j. 112 p. 33b. 230 GDTZ v. 45 j. 112 p. 29a. 231 GDTZ v. 45 j. 112 p. 29b. 232 See Andrea Janku, “What Chinese Biographies of Moral Exemplars Tell Us about Disaster Expriences (1600- 1900),” in Andrei Kirchhofer, Daniel Kramer, Christoph M. Merki, Guido Poliwoda, Martin Stuber, Stephanie Summermatter, eds., Nachhaltige Geshichte: Festschrift für Christian Pfister (Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2009), pp. 129-148.

95 with a commemorative door plaque.233 Another man Wang Shi 王實, from Jieyang county in

Chaozhou, was known to be a poor but extremely filial son. Aside from feeding his ill father and restoring him to health with meat cut from his own body, his most famous deed of filial piety occurred during a typhoon. When his father died and had just been put into his coffin, a typhoon swept him and the hearse into the sea. Clinging tightly to his father’s coffin, Wang wailed in pitiful mourning. After some time floating in the sea, they were eventually wafted back to shore.

After verification, a filial virtue temple was erected in his honor in 1801.234

Typhoons could provide the occasion for meritorious conduct by women as well. When her husband surnamed Lin died a certain Ms. Chen 陳氏 of Huazhou county in Hainan Island was only twenty. During his funeral wake, a typhoon left the city walls and houses completely destroyed. Throughout the typhoon, Mrs. Chen had lain on top of her husband’s coffin and wailed. The result was that her husband’s coffin, and presumably the house wherein it rested, was spared from damage. Considering it proof of her fidelity, the last Ming emperor Chongzhen built her a memorial arch in 1631.235

Are these examples of typhoons as a test of personal virtue surprising? Surely they are if we continue to think of typhoons simply as disaster. But if we begin to realize that typhoons by virtue of their frequency in a certain area, or having a long history with local society, may become part of its very culture, then the preceding examples cease to be anomalous. These stories about demonstrations of filial piety and marital devotion during typhoons show how typhoons came to fit into the larger cultural matrix of a typhoon space, how they could be conscripted in effect, to confirm the basic cultural principles of social relations.

233 GDTZ vol. 103 juan 287: 16b. 234 GDTZ vol. 105 juan 293: 30a. 235 GDTZ vol. 115 juan 319: 16a.

Conclusion

If Qu Dajun had witnessed the 1618 Chaozhou typhoon that claimed more than ten thousand lives, he would have classified it as an “iron typhoon” 鐵颶 (tieju). An iron typhoon

“blew houses into the mountains, ran boats ashore, knocked horses and cattle to the ground, and uprooted trees. [With it], the ocean waters rise several meters high and the fields reclaimed from the sea are inundated. Where the salt seeps in, crops cannot grow.”236 Typhoons were destructive but they were also a fact of life on the Guangdong coast. As population in the area increased during the late imperial period, people learned to live with these storms by creating new knowledge about them. They distinguished different levels of vulnerability among the coastal prefectures with many identifying Leizhou and Hainan as the most vulnerable. They attempted to predict the arrival of typhoons by looking for signs provided by nature. Apart from the old

Typhoon Mother omen, new signs were identified by observing the behavior of birds, looking for patterns in plants, and conducting divination on certain days of the calendar. The inscription of typhoons onto calendars in particular indicated just how much they were a part of the temporal rhythms in the lives of the coastal population. Houses or features of dwellings were also designed in relation to storms such as the stone dogs of Leizhou and the typhoon gables of

Chaozhou. Place-names and local stories also reflected the ubiquity of storms in the region. All these point to a process wherein storms are normalized as an integral part of living in a typhoon space.

Facets of what we might call a culture of typhoons spread or were shared with other parts of coastal China like Taiwan where storms also made their presence felt. It is often taken for granted that the rich and prosperous Lower Yangzi Region was a primary source of knowledge

236 “屋飛於山，舟徙於陸，顛仆馬牛，摧拔樹木，海水湧高數丈，洋田浸沒，鹵咸所留，稼穡不育, 是之謂鐵颶,” in GDXY vol. 1 j. 1: 13b.

97 and cultural production in late imperial China. But in terms of typhoon knowledge and culture, coastal Lingnan with its frequent storms was the epicenter. By late imperial times, a complex ethnometeorology of typhoons was in place in the region. In the next chapter, we explore the religious aspect of coastal Lingnan’s ethnometeorological system for understanding storms by looking at the special case of the Wind God of Leizhou.

Chapter Four Storm Spirits: The Wind God of Leizhou, Typhoon Space, and Ritual Space

Introduction

In the early hours of June 9, 2016, people from the village of Xiaguang 下广村 just north of the former county town of Haikang 海康 (now Leizhou city) were busily preparing for the day’s procession. It was the fifth day of the fifth lunar month or the Duanwu Festival 端午節 and they were going to parade the village’s guardian deities out on the streets. The village is home to two temples, the Temple to the Deity of the Eastern Peak 東岳廟 and the Wind God Temple 風

神廟. At nine in the morning, the villagers entered the former and brought out the statues of the

Deity of the Eastern Peak 東岳大帝 and the Duke King General Ban 班帥侯王. Then they entered the Wind God Temple and carried out the Wind God 風神. The three gods were seated in their sedan chairs and the procession soon began. The whole procession was a raucous and festive affair that lasted the entire morning with gongs, horns, and firecrackers accompanying the gods as they visited one village after another (Figure 4.1). In the afternoon, the gods were taken to a large open grass field at Zhangshuwan 樟樹灣 west of the city and there a kite festival 風箏

節 was held in their honor. The villagers proudly proclaimed it to be the greatest kite festival in all of China. The gods were placed on an elevated mound overlooking the field and watched as colorful kites made in the image of birds, dragons, centipedes, and other animals fluttered across the sky.237

237 From May 22 to June 20 of 2016, I lived in Leizhou and conducted fieldwork in the villages surrounding the Wind God’s Temple and observed the events that transpired on June 9, 2016 in relation to the Wind God’s procession and kite festival.

Figure 4.1 Wind God Procession on the Fifth Day of the Fifth Lunar Month (June 9, 2016).238

Local religion in China has very much experienced a revival in recent years.239 This narrative of the morning’s events could very well describe any other procession in some other part of rural China today. But the afternoon’s kite festival is unique to this village in China. It is held in honor of the Wind God who protects local residents from typhoons and brings good weather. This chapter tells the story of how Leizhou villagers during the Ming dynasty first came to worship a storm spirit, how the Qing state tried to impose its own deity upon the locality, and how the villagers appropriated the official deity into their own local traditions. It shows how competing local and state perceptions of typhoon space played out in the religious arena to produce this unique festival. In the process, we learn how the locals creatively adapted their storm spirit to meet the needs of different times and the way in which typhoon space continually reproduces ritual space in a process that continues to this day.

238 Photo by author. 239 Ian Johnson, Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Knopf, 2017).

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The Religious Side of Coastal Lingnan’s Typhoon Space

The study of local and popular religion is one of those fields in Chinese history that has made great strides since historians started doing anthropological fieldwork alongside archival research. From the image of an all-encompassing state religion anchored on Confucianism, we now know that popular religion in China is highly local and more dependent on though not identified solely with Daoism and to a lesser extent Buddhism. Every village has its own distinctive cults and festivals.240 In the area of rituals associated with typhoon management, this holds true as well.

Villagers living along the Guangdong littoral prayed to their local gods for relief against typhoons. One of the most popular maritime deities found in coastal China is the Empress of

Heaven 天后 also known as Mazu 媽祖. In her origin story as the young woman Lin Moniang, she and her father and brothers were out at sea fishing and were caught in a typhoon. Lin entered a trance and saved her family but died as a result. Since then, as a protector of fishermen and other seafarers, her cult grew and her temples continue to dot the coastline of south China and are also found among the Chinese of Southeast Asia.241 Another popular god whose temples are found in many parts of China and who could also provide typhoon relief was the Dragon King.242

Leizhou hosts both these deities. Villagers south of the former city walls of Leizhou worship the

Empress of Heaven while those living just west of the walls pay homage to the Dragon King.

240 See the critiques of James L. Watson’s ideas of cultural standardization in the special issue of Modern China 33.1 (January 2007); Stephan Feuchtwang, Popular Religion in China: The Imperial Metaphor (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001). 241 James L. Watson, “Standardizing the Gods: The Empress of Heaven (Tianhou) Along the South China Coast, 960-1960,” in David Johnson, et al, eds. Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 292-324. Zhang Rulin, Aomen Jilue, p. 3a-b. 242 Different Dragon Kings ruled various watery realms and had command over the powers of the seas, rivers, and rain. In flood-prone Hubei for example, the Dragon King was a very important deity. See Chris Courtney, “The Dragon King and the 1931 Wuhan Flood: Religious Rumors and Environmental Disasters in Republican China,” Twentieth-Century China 40.2 (2015): 83-104.

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Unlike the widespread cults of the Empress of Heaven and the Dragon King, some gods were unique and can only be found in one area. Chaozhou is home to a deity known as the Great

Lord 大老爺, who is worshipped in the Green Dragon Ancient Temple. Locals pray to him for everything, including safety from typhoons.243 In Guangzhou, there is a temple to the God of the

South Seas 南海神 who also guarantees the safety of seafarers and also protects against typhoons.244 What makes the Wind God of Leizhou worthy of special attention in the context of this study is that its origin and function, or the reason why locals worshipped him, is due primarily to typhoons. This is in part due to the unusual two-temple structure of the village.

Instead of having the deities of one temple manage all the religious needs of the village, the

Eastern Marchmount Temple and the Wind God Temple divide the work. The villagers themselves describe the former as handling “everyday concerns” 日常生活 such as childbirth, health, and good fortune while the latter “ensured good weather 風調雨順 and protected against typhoons 防颱風.” In other places, one god such as the Empress of Heaven would have sufficed to handle all of these. But a more important reason for this distinctive deity is that of all the prefectures along coastal Lingnan, Leizhou had a reputation for being vulnerable to typhoons.

As we saw in the previous chapter, there has long been a perception that Leizhou

Peninsula and Hainan Island were the most susceptible to storms. Qu Dajun ranked them first on his list of typhoon-prone prefectures. Leizhou had a long list of typhoon divination practices in late imperial times. Another way in which Leizhou’s perceived close association with storms was evident was the presence of a deity in the area dedicated primarily to typhoons. To understand

243 Lin Kailong 林凱龍, Chaoshan Gusu: Sihai Chaoren de Jingshen Jiayuan 潮汕古俗: 四海潮人的精神家園 [Old Customs of the Chao-Shan Area: The Spiritual Garden of Chaozhou People] (Hong Kong: Zhonghe Chuban, 2017), p. 274. 244 Wang Yuanlin 王元林, Guojia Jisi yu Haishang Silu Yizhi 国家祭祀与海上丝路遗迹: 广州南海神庙研究 [National Rituals and the Vestiges of the Maritime Silk Road: A Study of Guangzhou’s God of the South Seas] (Guangzhou: Zhonghua Shuju, 2006), pp. 76, 91, and 197.

102 why Leizhou, in particular, produced a specialized storm spirit we need to look at the local environment and economy of the peninsula in relation to typhoons.

Leizhou as Typhon Space: Environment and Economy

Leizhou Peninsula’s most important climatic concerns were drought and typhoons.

Almost ninety percent of it is composed of basalt and marine terraces, and low-lying alluvial plains.245 Moisture-laden air, more likely to release its watery load as it climbs in altitude, often passes over this flat topography without incident.246 Wind thus also blows unimpeded and aids in further drying up the land. Flat land combined with proximity to the sea also means that much of the rain that falls quickly runs off rather than being stored in soils as groundwater. Leizhou

Peninsula’s annual evapotranspiration rate (1,800-2,000 mm per year) is also greater than its precipitation rate (1,600 mm per year).247 Despite its tropical climate and being surrounded by water on three sides, Leizhou thirsts for fresh water.

The importance of sufficient and timely precipitation explains why locals revered lei (雷), understood as both thunder and lightning in the Chinese language, as a sign of impending rain.

Unsurprisingly, the most well-known and most studied deity on the Peninsula is the Thunder

245 Late imperial gazetteers also point to Leizhou’s flatness: “Lei[zhou]’s mountain terrain is flat and broad and dangerous mountain miasma does not exist but where it connects to the ocean the earth is low-lying and thin. [雷山勢夷衍無嵐瘴患, 惟近挹洋海土卑而薄].” See LZFZ 1614, j. 2: 2b (p. 170). 246 Li Jiuhao 李就好, Luo Xiwen 罗锡文, Qu Yinggang 区颖刚. “Leizhou Bandao de Shui ziyuan Zhuangkuang yu Jieshui Tujing” 雷州半岛的水资源状况与节水途径 [Leizhou Peninsula’s Water Supply Situation and Its Path to Water Saving], Nongye Shuitu Gongcheng Kexue 农业水土工程科学 [Agricultural Engineering], (2001): 398-403; See also the discussion of Leizhou topography and climate in Situ Shangji 司徒尚纪. Leizhou Wenhua Gaikuang 雷州文化概况 [Survey of Leizhou Culture] (Guangzhou: Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe, 2014), pp. 34-42. 247 Late imperial gazetteers are in agreement about the hot weather in the summer and lack of precipitation in winter (albeit as a place that never really sees snow or frost), the concentration of precipitation in spring and summer, and high rate of evaporation: “[The phenomenon of] severe frost and snow is too distant [from Leizhou] for it to occur, [Leizhou] is rather [the place] where great waves crash and water vapors rise…within the year summer heat dominates for more than half [the year] and is worst as one enters autumn…in spring and summer, deluges often occur.” [霜雪之嚴遠不能加乃洪濤震蕩濕氣上蒸。。。一歲間暑熱過半入秋為甚。。。春夏多淫雨]. See LZFZ 1614, j. 2: 2b (p. 170).

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God 雷神 or Thunder Ancestor 雷祖 Chen Wenyu 陳文玉.248 Before his apotheosis into the

Thunder God, Chen, as prefect, successfully petitioned the Taizong Emperor (r. 626-649) in 634 to rename his prefecture Leizhou, literally Thunder Prefecture.

From a water supply point of view, Leizhou also needed typhoons. Despite their destructive nature, typhoons could bring on average 200-300 mm of rainwater to the Peninsula and with an average of 5.1 tropical cyclone visits each year, storms helped slake Leizhou’s thirst.249 A recent study comparing Leizhou’s surface and groundwater discovered that the latter had higher salinity and ratio of δ18O (oxygen-18) isotopes than the former. These characteristics indicate that the groundwater came from oceanic meteorological sources rather than local geological sources. Typhoons were clearly helping to recharge Leizhou’s precious water stock.250

Typhoons brought life-giving water to Leizhou but the same water could also bring disaster. Apart from strong winds, typhoons could be accompanied by torrential rains and storm surges. Surrounded on three sides by the sea, the Peninsula, especially its eastern coast, is highly susceptible to storm surges. Thanks to Leizhou’s flat topography, typhoons did not weaken much while crossing it and storm surges could crash well inland with minimal obstruction. Without natural barriers, Leizhou’s only defensive structures were man-made sea dikes. During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), locals knew that:

248 On the history of Chen Wenyu as both deity and ancestor, see He Xi 贺喜, “Leizu yu Leizhou: Zuxian haishi Sheming?” 雷祖与雷首: 祖先还是神明? [Lei Ancestor and Lei Head: Ancestor or Deity?], Chapter 4 of her Yishen Yizu: Yuexinan Xinyang Goujian de Shehui Shi 亦神亦祖: 粤西南信仰构建的社会史 [Also Ancestor, Also God: A Social History of Religious Structures in Southwest Guangdong] (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 2001); See also her Leimin Leishen 雷民雷神 [The Thunder God and His People] (Guangzhou: Lingnan Meishu Chubanshe, 2013). 249 The estimate of 200-300 mm is from Li Jiuhao et al, “Leizhou Peninsula’s Water Supply Situation and Its Path to Water Saving,” p. 399. The figure for 5.1 storms per year is from Situ Shangji, Survey of Leizhou Culture, p. 40. 250 Lu Yintao et al, “Groundwater Recharge and Hydrogeochemical Evolution in Leizhou Peninsula, China.” “Groundwater Recharge and Hydrogeochemical Evolution in Leizhou Peninsula, China,” Journal of Chemistry 2015 (2015), Article ID 427579, 12 pages.

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When typhoons come the waves ride along with it. Lei[zhou]’s land is low and near the ocean and has no mountain and valley barriers. What it relies on [for defense] are dikes from the Song and Yuan [dynasties] but with time these break easily. The waves crash and burst the dikes. A wide [swath of land] is left floating and empty and the crops completely ravaged. The tide is salty and damages the soil for a year. The land can only be cultivated again after three years.251 Locals slowly built up a system of sea dikes in Leizhou after the fall of the Tang, when China’s demographic center shifted south of the Yangzi River effecting major economic and ecological transformations in this region. As discussed in the previous chapter, Guangdong and Leizhou’s population grew from the Song onward. Leizhou was one of the four main population centers of late imperial Lingnan.

Through dikes, locals reclaimed more land from the sea in order to increase cultivable acreage and within these dikes sluices and canals helped channel and store precious water.

Leizhou’s economy largely depended on these fields reclaimed from the sea. Locals call them

“ocean fields” 洋田 (Figure 4.2) and they still remain a sight to see when visiting the peninsula.252

251 “又颶之來潮輒乘之. 雷地卑迫海無山谷之限. 所恃宋元來堤岸, 然久則善崩, 潮衝輒潰, 浮空杳漫, 禾稼盡傷. 潮味鹹, 一歲罹害, 越三歲乃可種” LZFZ Wanli, j. 2: 3b (p. 171). 252 Situ Shangji, Survey of Leizhou Culture, pp. 136-138.

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Figure 4.2 Leizhou Ocean Fields (洋田) and Sea Dike (堤岸).253

Many of these ocean fields were located near the eastern coast where storms could overwhelm them. The prefectural gazetteer’s discussion on tides describes how they “normally reach up to [the edge of] the fields. Only when typhoons unfold does the salty tide rise and overflow [into the fields] greatly harming the crops. Hence the eastern ocean fields all have built dikes in order to stop it.”254 Locals like to describe the directional symmetry between the ocean fields, which are historically divided into eastern and western portions (東西洋田), and the great dike, which has southern and northern halves (南北堤). Though it is clear that the dikes were important in increasing arable land, the Ming prefectural gazetteer attributes the reason for building the sea dikes during the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) to the need to protect against typhoons.255 Over generations, local officials in cooperation with ordinary people built an

253 LZFZ 1811, j. 2. 254 “平時潮水到於田畝, 惟颶發則鹹潮逆起, 大傷禾稼. 故東洋田俱築堤岸以遏之.” See LZFZ 1614, j. 2: 4b (p. 171). 255 Circa 1131-1162 CE (the Shaoxing reign period). “雷地濱海平疇萬頃, 颶風時作鹹水逆流,田盧盡傷. 宋紹興經界司始委胡簿沿海築堤以禦之. 起自海康白院渡延袤遂溪進得村.” See LZFZ 1614, j. 3: 29a-b (p. 187).

106 impressive dike system that stretched from the prefectural county seat Haikang in the south to

Suixi county in the north.256

On several occasions during the Ming, typhoons breached the dikes and even brought disaster to Leizhou. In 1408, a storm surge reached the walls of Haikang and drowned many people. In 1472, a typhoon broke the dike but no damages were recorded. In 1516, not only did pirates raid Suixi but a storm also destroyed crops and necessitated the grant of tax relief to the prefecture. Another storm destroyed both crops and houses in 1542. A 1552 strong typhoon with a large storm surge brought salty floods up to the city walls of Haikang. Its arrival at night when many people were asleep resulted in the drowning of countless people. A series of storms hit

Leizhou between 1588 and 1590, broke the very foundations of the dike, and rendered large swaths of land untillable.257 Only by constantly rebuilding and maintaining these dikes could locals manage to maintain their fragile ecosystem.

The last dike expansion occurred during the Kangxi reign (1661-1722) of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) under the leadership of a native son Chen Bin 陳璸 (1656-1718; jinshi

1694) who had an illustrious career as an official in Hunan, Zhejiang, and Fujian (including

Taiwan) before retiring and dying in the same year, 1718. While serving away from home, Chen wrote numerous memorials to the throne supporting the need to build and maintain dikes in his

256 Haikang county now forms the core of the modern city of Leizhou. But older residents still refer to the city as Haikang. 257 The 1472, 1552, and 1588-1590 storms are recorded in LZFZ 1614, j. 3: 29b-30a (pp. 187-188), with the 1552 and 1588-1590 storms described in some detail: “嘉靖壬子颶風大發, 鹹潮淹至東南城. 南北二洋居民漂湯數千家, 淹死數千人…萬曆十六年至十八年颶風連作岸基崩䧟, 兩洋億萬頃田悉屬荒蕪.” The 1408, 1516, 1542, 1552, and 1589 storms are recorded in LZFZ 1614, j. 1: 14a-16b (pp. 167-168). The nighttime arrival of the 1552 storm is given in the latter.

107 home prefecture with typhoon threats as one of the main reasons.258 Not only was the ocean field system prone to drought, it was extremely exposed to storms.

The Ming Typhoon Altar

Counties across late imperial China normally had Altars to the Winds, Clouds, Thunder,

Rains, Mountains, and Rivers (風雲雷雨山川壇) – all smaller versions of the Temple of Earth

(地壇) in Beijing – where officials and locals could perform rituals in an open raised square to convince the powers above to grant them favorable weather. But during the sixteenth century, another altar appeared in Leizhou:

Aside from the Altar to the Winds, Clouds, Thunder, Rains, Mountains, and Rivers, every county in Leizhou has a Typhoon Altar. Every year on the Duanwu Festival [i.e. the fifth day of the fifth lunar month or better known as the Dragon Boat Festival], a designated official sacrifices to the spirit and prays for the people to avoid disaster. They call the spirit the Typhoon Mother. Mother is what customary appellation refers to as the greatest.259

As discussed in Chapter Two, the Typhoon Mother 颶母, which appeared in the form of a double rainbow and fire clouds, was the oldest and most well-known omen for an impending typhoon along coastal Guangdong. But by late imperial times, this meteorological omen started acquiring anthropomorphic traits on its way to becoming a storm spirit. Qu Dajun explains how the

Typhoon Mother was not only an omen but also the source and literally the mother of storms:

“The Typhoon Mother first takes the form of a double rainbow. It incubates the wind inside its womb. After four or five days, a typhoon is unleashed. The longer it incubates then the more explosive it will be when unleashed.”260 With anthropomorphic traits and a supernatural ability

258 See Deng Biquan 邓碧泉, compiler and ed., Chen Bin Wenji 陈瑸诗文集 [Chen Bin’s Literary Collection] (Beijing: Renmin Ribao Chubanshe, 2004), pp. 24-35. 259 “雷之各縣於風雲雷雨山川壇外, 別有颶風壇。有司歲以端午日祭為民禳厲。稱其神曰颶母。母者俗之所謂大也。” in GDTZ 1822, j. 89: 32b-33a. 260 “颶母先成形而為半虹, 胎風其中, 經四五日而後颶發, 積之久者發之暴,” in GDXY j. 1: 26a-b.

108 to produce storms, the Typhoon Mother was not far from becoming a storm spirit. It just needed believers and it found them in the typhoon space of Leizhou.

The Leizhou Typhoon Altar 颶風壇 was the result of collaboration between local officials and the residents of Haikang. In 1538, “the prefect Hong Fu 洪富 felt that there were too many typhoons coming from the ocean, he started discussions [with locals], and setup an altar on the coastal edge of the eastern ocean fields for the purpose of performing sacrifices.”261

The choice of its location made it clear that the Altar was envisioned as the first line of defense against typhoons. The rituals performed to propitiate the Typhoon Mother were done on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the date of the Duanwu Festival. These rituals were preemptive in nature. The language used in the local gazetteer makes this clear: “a designated official sacrifices to the spirit and prays for the people to avoid disaster.”262 The Chinese words used are rangli 禳

厲 or “to pray to a spirit to avert disaster.”

The choice to perform these prophylactic rituals on the Duanwu Festival was quite appropriate. The Chinese, especially along the southern coast, used the Duanwu day to pray to all sorts of spirits in the hope of averting disasters such as epidemics. In Chinese folklore, the five deities of Heaven’s Ministry of Epidemics undertook their earthly tour on this day. Wherever in

China proper where Duanwu was celebrated, people performed various rituals to exorcise plague spirits and other demons. Numerous scholars of Chinese epidemics and religion have made a strong case for the connection between Duanwu and efforts to prevent the spread of epidemic

261 “洪富以海多風，始議，設壇於東洋海岸以祭,” in GDTZ 1697, j. 8: 24a. 262 “有司歲以端午日祭為民禳厲,” in GDTZ 1822 ed., j. 89: 32b-33a

109 disease.263 In Leizhou, Duanwu day served not only as the occasion to exorcise plague spirits, it was also a day to propitiate storm spirits.264

There were other reasons why the Duanwu rituals were clearly preemptive. As mentioned in the previous two chapters, coastal people knew that the typhoon season was at its strongest between the sixth and ninth lunar month. The preemptive intent is also clear in documentation from the Leizhou Typhoon Altar’s counterpart in Hainan Island (Qiongzhou Prefecture), another place viewed as especially at risk of storms. In Qiongzhou’s county seat, Qiongshan, Ming authorities built a Typhoon Shrine 颶風祠 in 1617.265 The Guangdong Provincial Gazetteer notes that the functions of the Leizhou altar and Qiongzhou shrine were similar:

It [the Typhoon Shrine] is similar to Leizhou having a Typhoon Altar for the purpose of sacrificing to the Typhoon. Wherever along the Guangdong coast, during the sixth and seventh lunar months all experience typhoons. As for Qiong[zhou] and Lei[zhou], storms are especially plentiful. Hence, they each set up sacrificial sites… I say that to sacrifice to the Typhoon when it is already unfolding is not as good as sacrificing to it when it is still in the stage of desiring to unfold. Thus worshipping the Typhoon Spirit, how can it be as good as worshipping the Typhoon Mother to stop the birth of typhoons!266

Not only did this repeat the idea that Leizhou and Hainan were the most at risk from storms, it emphatically stresses the importance of propitiating the Typhoon Mother before the storm season began. The Li 黎 of Hainan Island also appeased a Typhoon Spirit 颶風神 by praying at the

263 See Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 119; and Paul Katz, “Demons or Deities? The “Wangye” of Taiwan,” Asian Folklore Studies 46.2 (1987): 209. 264 Leizhou did not see as many epidemics in the Ming as it would in the Qing. See Tana Li, “Epidemics, Trade, and Local Worship in Vietnam, Leizhou Peninsula, and Hainan Island,” in Victor H. Mair, and Liam C. Kelley, eds. Imperial China and its Southern Neighbors (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2015), pp. 194-213. Bubonic plague also does not arrive on the Peninsula until the latter half of the nineteenth century, so far as we know. The documentary evidence does not allow us to be definitive about when plague might have first appeared in the region. See Carol A. Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 71. 265 Susan Naquin defined, in the case of Beijing temples, ci (祠), translated as shrine, as places of worship usually housing historical personages not yet deemed gods. This definition does not apply to the Typhoon Shrine in Qiongzhou. See her Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 20. 266 “他如雷州有颶風壇以祭颶風。凡嶺海所在遇六七月皆有颶風。若瓊雷二州尤多，故各立祭所。。。予謂祭颶風於即發，不若祭之欲發之時。則祠颶風，豈若祠颶母不生颶風載！” See GDTZ j. 151: 16b-17a.

110 giant cave located at the Wind-Stopping Mountain 息風山 in Gan’en county of southwest

Hainan. They did this after a typhoon had already unfolded whereas the Chinese performed their rituals prior to the start of the typhoon season. Written in the context of Hainan where Han

Chinese and Li relations were not always friendly, the gazetteer was claiming superiority of

Chinese practices over non-Chinese ones.267

After the Typhoon Altar was built in 1538, locals moved it twice to different locations.

According to locals, the original site was too inconvenient for the prefect. He had to travel through muddy rice fields to reach the altar (Figure 4.3). So in 1546, prefect Lin Shu 林恕 moved it to Nandu 南渡, a ferry site where the Qinglei River joins the Nandu River. When the

Typhoon Altar was removed from its original site in the eastern fields, nearby villagers replaced it with a small Typhoon Shrine 颶風宮 at an unknown later date and this replica continues to receive incense to this day. Inside there is only a plaque (See Figure 4.4) to a spirit capable of

“miraculous response to typhoons” (感應颶風). This shows the importance that locals attached to regular typhoon worship because even after the official altar was moved, they replaced it with their own. With the reclamation of more land during the Qing dynasty, the first site now lies within the Kangxi-era dike and is no longer the vanguard in ritual defenses against typhoons.

267 On Han-Li struggles and how they translated into stories about the land and spirits in Hainan, see Anne Csete, “The Li Mother Spirit and the Struggle for Hainan’s Land and Legend,” Late Imperial China 22.2 (2001): 91-123.

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Figure 4.3 Typhoon Altar Original Location.268

Figure 4.4 Plaque of the Typhoon Shrine.269

268 Eastern most spot highlighted in blue indicates the original site of the Typhoon Altar and the current site of the Typhoon Shrine. Note that, after further land reclamation, it now lies within the Kangxi-era dike but would have been on the coast itself when it was first built in 1538. Map made using SixfootProject 六只脚 software. 269 Photo by author.

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The Typhoon Altar did not stay long in Nandu. Prefects may have chosen to move the altar to Nandu because the annual Dragon Boat race of Leizhou was held there on the Duanwu day just as it is today. Situating the altar at Nandu would have allowed prefects to both perform the typhoon preventive rituals and watch the dragon boat race at the same location. Locals claim, however, that prefects also found this location inconvenient due to the poor roads leading to it.

After the disastrous 1552 typhoon, aside from leading rehabilitation efforts, the prefect Luo

Yiluan 羅一鸞 decided in 1554 to move the Typhoon Altar to its present location just outside the northern gate of the county (See Figure 4.5).270 Outside the northern gate, the Typhoon Altar became neighbors with the Temple to the Deity of the Eastern Peak, which has stood there since the Song dynasty. Because the Ming capital Beijing and the rest of China was to the north, the road outside the north gate was the widest and best kept. This made it easier for prefects to travel to the altar every year. Even today it is the easiest to visit of the three sites when traveling from the city proper.

270 See LZFZ 1614, j. 3: 30a (p. 188); GDTZ 1822 ed., j. 151: 1b. The date of 1554 is given in GDTZ 1697 ed., j. 8: 24a.

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Figure 4.5 Ming Map of Haikang City Proper and its Environs with the Typhoon Altar.271

The Qing Wind God Temple

Leizhou’s Typhoon Altar changed sites several times under the Ming but under the Qing it would undergo a change in name by becoming the Wind God Temple (風神廟). Just as the

Typhoon Altar reflected the Ming state’s attempts to ritually keep storms in check, the history of its name change reflects the Qing’s own attempts to do the same.

Early in 1734, Emida 鄂彌達 and Yang Yongbin 楊永斌, the Governor-General of

Guangdong and Guangxi and Governor of Guangdong respectively, sent a joint memorial to the

Yongzheng Emperor 雍正 (1723-1735). In their memorial, they reported a series of typhoons that had struck Western Guangdong, including Leizhou, in the space of a few months the previous year.272 Wuchuan county in Gaozhou prefecture was hit by a storm surge and torrential

271 LZFZ 1614, j. 1: 1a (p. 160). The first site was located east of the fields 萬頃田 and the second site at Nandu was near the bridge at the confluence of two rivers south of the city. 272 NPM 402010639 Emida 鄂彌達, Yang Yongbin 楊永斌, “Zoubao Yuedong Gaoleiqiong Sanfu Qianhou Beiju Shousun Qingxing ji Chendeng luxu weiyuan zhenxu yuanyou” 奏報粵東高雷瓊三府前後被颶受損情形及臣等陸

114 rain in the eighth lunar month, which brought down 143 homes and killed 231 people. The same typhoon hit Leizhou’s Suixi county, toppled thirty-nine homes and killed eighty-two people. In the ninth lunar month, storms hit Qiongzhou and drowned three sailors. In all these events, many others needed to have their homes and ships restored; damaged crops compensated; and relatives buried. For all these disasters, as discussed in the next chapter, the government had to provide funds for relief.

In his vermillion-ink response to the memorial, the Yongzheng emperor candidly expressed his anxiety about storms. He wrote: “In recent years, [I] feel that typhoon disasters are a bit worse. You officials should assess the capabilities of the area to build several shrines to the

Wind God. Try and see for maybe we can invite the protection of the divine. You never know. I leave it up to your discretion in handling this.”273 The Yongzheng emperor may have been right.

The High Qing period (1661-1796 CE) encompassing the reigns of the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and

Qianlong emperors were also a period that saw a steady increase in the recorded number of storms landing in south China, peaking with Yongzheng’s reign (Figure 4.6).

續委員賑恤緣由 [Reporting the Circumstances in Which Three Prefectures of Guangdong (Gaozhou, Leizhou, and Qiongzhou) were Struck by a Typhoon and Sustained Losses and How Your Humble Servants Delegated Personnel to Provide Relief], YZ 12/2/4. 273 “近年覺風颶之災稍甚, 汝等可酌量地方之力建立風神之祠數處試行看或可邀神明之佑亦不可知。可作汝等意見為之,” vermillion rescript to NPM 402010639, ibid.

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Figure 4.6 South China Typhoon Landing Frequencies, 1644-1911.274

In 1728, the Yongzheng Emperor had just built a Wind God Temple in Beijing where he and his officials could pray for good weather.275 He later bestowed upon the deity the title of

“Count Wind, the God who Spreads Benevolence and Manifests Peace” (宣仁昭泰風伯之神), and the Beijing temple was called the Spreading Benevolence Temple (宣仁廟).276 Yongzheng is well-known in Chinese historiography for his indefatigable efforts to centralize and rationalize government including all manner of ritual and customs.277 But Mark Elvin has also argued that

Yongzheng developed a “moral meteorology” that allowed him to shift responsibility for climatic anomalies onto local officials.278 In leaving the matter to the discretion of his provincial officials, Yongzheng was exercising a mild form of moral meteorology. But in suggesting to them a deity he had recently promoted in the capital and asking them to look into the possibility

274 Image is from Pan Wei, et al. p. 2201. Landing frequencies are indicated as a line. The Yongzheng Period (1723- 1735) saw a peak in storm events documented. The bars indicate average temperature changes in Celsius. 275 QSL-Yongzheng, j. 39, p. 1404. The Yongzheng emperor had invented a number of deities during his reign, first promoting them in the capital and then establishing them in select provinces. The Ocean God 海神, for example, was promoted in the capital at around the same time as the Wind God and then established in Zhejiang. Scholars are still exploring the reasons why the Yongzheng emperor undertook this trend of creating gods. I thank Roger Shih- Chieh Lo, who is currently doing research on the Ocean God, for pointing out this interesting line of inquiry. 276 The temple still stands but its interior has been converted into government office space. 277 For Yongzheng-era fiscal rationalization see Madeleine Zelin, The Magistrate’s Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth-Century Ch’ing China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); An example of how the Yongzheng emperor vigorously sought to establish models and standards for rituals and customs can be seen in his many interventions into the state chastity cult, attempting to “enhance the reach, prominence, efficiency, and integrity of the state’s system for awarding chastity.” See Janet Theiss, Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 30-38. Quote on p. 30. 278 Mark Elvin, “Who Was Responsible for the Weather?” ibid.

116 of forming a system of Wind God Temples in Guangdong, he was acting as Yongzheng the centralizing rationalizer.

In 1735 the Yongzheng Emperor issued an edict approving and ordering the building of

Wind God Temples in all the coastal prefectures and counties of Guangdong.279 Yongzheng clearly saw Guangdong as a more susceptible typhoon space for his edict did not cover other coastal typhoon provinces. Early in the same year, Emida and Yang Yongbin sent up another memorial requesting an imperial plaque to adorn all the Wind God Temples in coastal

Guangdong. 280 They claimed success in getting local officials of the coastal prefectures to establish the temples and report that as of the first lunar month of the New Year, they had already received building completion dates for all of them. Hence, they were requesting that an imperial plaque be made and sent down to hang in the temples.

Table 4.1 Wind God Temple Construction along Coastal Guangdong.281 County/Prefecture Date of Wind God Temple Construction Baochang County (Northern Guangdong) 1736 Haifeng County (Eastern Guangdong) 1735 Jieyang County (Eastern Guangdong) 1735 Panyu County (Central Guangdong) 1735 Lufeng County (Eastern Guangdong) 1735 Jiaying County (Eastern Guangdong) 1734 Lianzhou Prefecture (Western Guangdong) 1733 Nanxiong Prefecture (Northern Guangdong) 1735 Gaoyao County (Central Guangdong) 1732 Haiyang County (Eastern Guangdong) 1734 Heyuan County (Eastern Guangdong) “Heyuan has not yet built its Wind Temple.”

Wind God Temples start appearing mid-century in the records of the gazetteers from

Guangdong’s coastal counties and prefectures bearing for the most part the building date of

279 “[雍正]十三年覆準廣東邊海郡縣建立風神廟,” in DQHD, j. 83, p. 1282. 280 FHA 03-0005-007 Emida 鄂彌達, Yang Yongbin 楊永斌, “Couwei Qing Ci Fengshen Miao Bian’e shi” 奏為請賜風神廟匾額事 [Memorial Requesting for a Plaque to be Bestowed for the Wind God Temple], YZ 13/2/12. 281 NXFZ, 1753 ed., j. 17, p. 1615; LZZ, 1771 ed., j. 3, p. 199; JYZZ, 1750 ed., j. 2, p. 266; HFXZ, 1750 ed., j. 2, p. 94; BCXZ, 1753 ed., p. 254; JYZXXZ, 1937 ed., j. 2, pp. 300-301; PYXZ, 1774 ed., j. 8, pp. 433-434; HeYXZ, 1746 ed., j. 8, p. 618; GYXZ, 1826 ed., j. 7, p. 35; HYXZ, 1900 ed., j. 20, p. 693.

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“thirteenth year of Yongzheng” or 1735 (Table 4.1). Two were built in Northern Guangdong where typhoons have minimal impact and two in Central Guangdong near or in the Pearl River

Delta. Most of them were built in small counties in Eastern Guangdong under Chaozhou prefecture. Lufeng County, for example, reports the construction of its temple in 1735 and the receipt and hanging of an imperial plaque bearing the deity’s official title “Count Wind, God who Spreads Benevolence and Manifests Peace” and the allocation of funds to support rites during spring and autumn.282 Lufeng’s neighboring county, Haifeng, also indicates the building of its temple in 1735; records that Emida had requested it; and includes a copy of the official invocation for the deity that must have been read during the performance of the rites.283 Some of the dates are earlier than 1735, such as a building date for 1732 in Gaoyao county. These are no doubt errors of documentation. There was no decree to order the building of Wind God Temples prior to 1735. Most of these state-imposed Wind God Temples do not survive to the present day.

Some were never even built in the first place, such as in Heyuan county where the gazetteer entry simply says “Heyuan has not yet built its Wind Temple.” It seems that only a number of small counties recorded attempts to build the temple.

As for Western Guangdong, the Wind God Temples replaced earlier structures that existed to ritually deal with typhoons. In Qiongzhou, the Ming Typhoon Shrine was replaced with the Qing Wind God Temple. The Guangdong Provincial Gazetteer entry of 1822 for

Qiongzhou’s Wind God Temple has the gloss: “It lies outside the East Pass and its old name is the Typhoon Shrine.”284 The same gazetteer indicates that Leizhou’s Wind God Temple was outside the north gate of the prefectural county seat, which is also where the Ming Typhoon

282 LFXZ, 1744 edition, j. 6: 14a-b (p. 89). 283 HFXZ, 1749 edition, j. 5: 46a (p. 127). 284 “風神廟在東關外, 舊名颶風祠,” in GDTZ, j. 151, p. 2776.

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Altar was finally relocated.285 A stele in the temple indicates that the Wind God Temple was rebuilt in 1810 but that the original building date “can no longer be ascertained.”286 We can safely assume that it was no earlier than 1735. Today, the Wind God Temple stands beside the

Eastern Marchmount God’s Temple where one should find the Typhoon Altar listed in the Ming gazetteer. Not only did the Qing temple physically replace the Ming altar, the female Typhoon

Mother originally sacrificed to in the latter had become the male Wind God of the former. When asked how the female Typhoon Mother became the male Wind God, locals replied that the

“Typhoon Mother was the Wind God” (颶母就是風神). They glossed over the change in gender by simply equating the two. From the Ming to the Qing, the typhoon god of Leizhou changed its identity but would keep its essence.

The Localization of the Wind God

In this final section, I look at how the villagers of Xiaguang village accommodated and co-opted the state-imposed Wind God (Figure 4.7) into their established worship of the Typhoon

Mother.

285 “風神廟在城北關外,” LZFZ 1811, j. 151, p. 2765 and 2771. 286 “風神廟始建年代無考,” in “Chongjian Fengshen Miao Ji” 重建風神廟記 [A Record of the Rebuilding of the Wind God Temple], stone stele inside the temple grounds, Leizhou, China.

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Figure 4.7 The Wind God of Leizhou.287

The villagers did not follow the Qing rule of performing ritual offerings to the Wind God once in spring and once in autumn. They continued to follow the Ming ritual of holding it on the

Duanwu Festival by parading the Wind God on this day. According to local lore, the Jiajing period (1521-1567) of the Ming was a period of many disastrous typhoons accompanied by many rats and insect plagues (鼠盛蟲多). We already know that in 1552 Leizhou was struck by a strong typhoon. Villagers claim that in 1554, the same year the Typhoon Altar was moved outside the north gate, the prefect Luo Yiluan had a dream wherein the gods of the Eastern

Marchmount Temple and the Wind God both instruct him to make and fly kites shaped like birds of prey: 300 harriers (鷂) and one mother kite (母鳶). The kites were to be flown on Duanwu day at the Five-Li Slope (五里坡) just north of the temples. The avian-shaped kites subsequently made the rats and insects disappear and brought favorable weather (i.e. no disastrous typhoons) to the region. Due to its success, prefect Luo ostensibly ordered the people to turn it into an

287 Photo by author.

120 annual tradition. The villagers claim that apart from the years surrounding the Mao period (1949-

1976) they have been holding this festival continuously and they revived it as soon as the authorities allowed them to.

Luo’s dream is not in the written record and we only know about it thanks to oral tradition. Similarly, the Kite Festival’s older history does not appear in documents. At most, the

1811 edition of the prefectural gazetteer lists flying paper kites (放紙鳶) as one of the local

Duanwu activities apart from Dragon-Boat racing (競渡) and the making of realgar bags (雄黃

袋) for repelling plague spirits.288 The Republican period 1938 edition of the Haikang County gazetteer only lists kite-flying (放風箏) as a leisure activity but does not link it to Duanwu.289

But the locals have preserved not only Prefect Luo’s dream but also the story of the kite-making master Zang Dingren 臧定仁 who the villagers claim was born in 1541 and had answered the calls of Luo to make kites. It was Zang’s exquisite life-like bird kites that helped drive off the rats, insects, and typhoons. Zang trained and left successors to continue his tradition of kite- making. As of 2016, the villagers of Xiaguang claim that counting from Zang, the first generation, there have been fifteen generations representing thirty masters in the village’s history.

The two living masters, Li Banji 李班吉 and Wu Yujiang 吳羽江, aged forty-seven and fifty- two in 2016, both sit in the village and temple committee and help organize the whole festival.

The Kite-Flying Festival was a nation-wide contest in 2016. Teams from all over China came to

Leizhou to compete.

Several things about Leizhou’s relationship between typhoons and religion require scrutiny. First, there is no mention in historical records for the Wind God already being in

288 LZFZ 1811, j. 2, p. 460. 289 HKXXZ, j. 2, p. 195.

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Leizhou during the Ming or even the early Qing. We only know of a Typhoon Altar built as a collaboration between local officials and the population with official rites held on Duanwu day to appease the Typhoon Mother. Ming sources do not mention the kite festival. Documentary evidence points to the Wind God only making his appearance on the Guangdong coast in the eighteenth century as a consequence of Yongzheng’s decree. Local villagers’ accounts conflate the events of the Qing with those of the Ming in ascribing an earlier appearance for the Wind

God in local memory. This conflation also allows for the lack of explanation for the shift from the female Typhoon Mother to the male Wind God, for if the Wind God was always there, no change in gender occurred. While it is possible that there may have been a physical statue of the

Typhoon Mother at the Typhoon Altar, it has not survived. There was no female statue to reconcile with that of the male Wind God. The locals also disregarded the Qing prescription to perform rites to the Wind God once during spring and once in autumn and simply continued on with their own Ming traditions on Duanwu day. The Qing prescription obviously held no local relevance whereas the more established practice of holding the rites on Duanwu day did and were then transposed onto the body of the Wind God.

Today, the Kite-Flying Festival is an officially recognized provincial-level intangible heritage (省級非物質文化遺產).290 A plaque on the Temple of the Deity of the Eastern Peak

(not the Wind God’s Temple!) indicates that this distinction was granted in February of 2012. It is part of a contemporary revival of local religion coinciding with the spread of intangible heritage as a concept. Ian Johnson, writing about his experience with the Miaofengshan (妙峰山) pilgrimage near Beijing, shows how locals exploit the new concept of intangible heritage to preserve local culture, attract tourism, and gain some measure of government financial support

290 Its official classification number is 4-X-52

122 and more importantly government approval of local religious celebrations. 291 Government financial support is actually meager. As a provincial-level intangible heritage, the Kite-Flying

Festival receives a mere 10,000 yuan (approx. 1500 USD) and donations have to be solicited from the villagers (their names and the amounts donated are placed on a red board in front of the temples) and sponsors solicited. In 2016, the temple committee informed me that the event cost more than 400,000 yuan (or over 60,000 USD). But holding the festival is a source of pride and community for the villagers outside the old north gate of Haikang. The village elders on the temple committee proudly talk about how a once local tradition is now a national competition.

People from other villages who worship other deities also consider the Kite Festival one of the things to see when visiting Leizhou, so that it has also become a source of Leizhou pride, not just localized village pride.

There are several reasons that the Wind God survives and remains relevant in Leizhou while its brother and sister temples across Guangdong all disappeared. One is that there was an existing ritual tradition officially imposed by Ming local officials that led to a practice of performing rites to propitiate typhoon gods on Duanwu day. This must have sunk roots in local life if it was continuously practiced from the mid-sixteenth up to the early eighteenth century so that by the time the Wind God Temple was imposed by the Yongzheng Emperor, the locals conflated and connected the Ming rituals with the new Qing deity. These Ming rituals, not mentioned in written sources, involved a tradition of kite-flying based on accounts of miraculous gods, dreaming prefects, and master kite-makers who saved the villagers from pest infestations and typhoons. All these point to the Wind God’s localization or becoming part of the rituals, stories, and lives of the locals. In other parts of Guangdong, Wind God Temples were externally

291 See Ian Johnson, Souls of China, ibid.

123 imposed, with no pre-existing typhoon rites to graft themselves onto, and no stories to weave them into local worship. So they did not last.

Conclusion

The people of Leizhou Peninsula, living in an area prone to storms, negotiated with local officials to establish propitiating rites for a storm spirit, the Typhoon Mother. These rites were held on the day of the Duanwu Festival as a preemptive act before the typhoon season.

According to oral tradition, prophylactic rituals involved more than just rites at the altar but also entailed holding a kite festival in honor of the deity. Stories of prefects receiving instructions from efficacious local gods in dreams were the justification for holding the kite festival. But by the Qing dynasty, central government perceptions of the Guangdong coast’s vulnerability to storms led to a decree establishing Wind God Temples along the coast. Most of these temples did not survive and some were not even built at all. In places like Leizhou where there was an existing cult to a storm spirit, the Wind God became the new avatar of the local god. The locals thus received imperial sanction for their own cult but nonetheless continued the old traditions they practiced to the Typhoon Mother but under the guise of the Wind God.

As an officially recognized intangible heritage, the Kite Festival along with the associated stories with the Wind God will likely remain with us into the foreseeable future, a complicated legacy of late imperial attempts to cope with typhoons. From societal and cultural adaptations to coastal Lingnan’s typhoon space, we now look in the next chapter at Qing and

Republican period efforts to conduct disaster relief for typhoons.

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Chapter Five Succor Against Storms: Typhoon Disaster Relief in Coastal Guangdong, 1722 to 1922

Introduction

The same 1733 storms that inspired the Yongzheng emperor’s call to establish Wind God

Temples along the Guangdong coast also pushed the Qing bureaucracy into action. Local officials conducted detailed surveys in the aftermath of the typhoon that hit Leizhou Peninsula on the night of September 28, just six days after the postharvest Mid-Autumn Festival. Luckily, as most of the autumn crop had likely been harvested already, the storm had only managed to destroy 4.84 qing or 0.77 acres of crops, roughly half a football field. But officials determined that in Wuchuan county, the storm destroyed 143 homes, left 658 others damaged but repairable, blew the roofs off another 118 homes, sank seventeen boats, damaged nine others, and killed 231 men and women. In Leizhou, the numbers were thirty-nine houses destroyed, 216 damaged, fifty-three homes minus roofs, eight boats sunk, another twenty eight damaged, and eighty-two lives lost.

Once the surveys were complete and people eligible for relief determined, officials made their way to the affected areas and distributed relief in the form of silver. Officials gave households that had lost their homes one silver tael (one liang), those who only needed home repairs half a tael (five qian), while those who lost their roofs 3/10s of a tael (300 wen). For each mu or 1/6 of an acre of crops destroyed, a household received 1/10 of a tael (one qian). Those who lost ships received three taels per boat lost, while those who just needed boat repairs received 1.5 taels per damaged unit. For each casualty, relatives of the deceased received four taels to cover funerary expenses. In total, the Qing state provided 1,373.56 taels of relief silver for the 1733 storm that struck Leizhou Peninsula.292

292 NPM 402010639, ibid.

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In the eighteenth century, the Qing possessed the early modern world’s most efficient system for countering disasters through its empire-wide network of relief granaries run by a bureaucracy skilled at mobilizing resources, both grain and silver, to deal with environmental challenges.293 Just as the Wind God Temples were part of the Qing state’s cosmological and ritual repertoire for coping with bad weather, the ever-normal granary system provided the material relief for victims of climatic anomalies.294 The famine relief system is one of the most studied and impressive aspects of Qing history. However, much of our understanding of how the system responded to disaster is built around the challenge of drought and we are only beginning to understand in more depth how the system adapted itself to the scourge of floods.295 Typhoons represented a further kind of challenge, one that involved not only flood waters but also damaging winds and not only destruction on the land but also damage at sea. In this chapter, I add another dimension to Qing disaster relief by laying out for the first time the general pattern of how typhoon relief was conducted along coastal Guangdong. Officials were aware of coastal

Guangdong’s typhoon space and by the eighteenth century had developed standard procedures for providing storm relief in the region. Like the larger granary system on which it was based, this typhoon relief system declined after the eighteenth century. As the state retreated from its official capacity in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, civilian charity took up most of the slack left by the withdrawal of the state. By 1922, when a devastating typhoon struck

Chaozhou, foreign and local charities combined to provide most of the relief that the state could

293 Pierre-Etienne Will, Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China, translated from the French by Elborg Forster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), and Pierre-Etienne Will, and R. Bin Wong, Nourish the People: The State Civilian Granary System in China, 1650-1850 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1991). 294 The late imperial state’s cosmological responses to drought and famine are the best studied. See Jeffrey Snyder- Reinke, Dry Spells: State Rainmaking and Local Governance in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), especially chapter four. 295 Helen Dunstan, “Heirs of Yu the Great: Flood Relief in 1740s China,” T’oung Pao 96 (2011): 471-542; Lillian M. Li, Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s-1990s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), especially Chapter 8.

126 no longer provide. As the state partially retreated from typhoon space, charitable entities filled the void.

Pre-Qing Typhoon Disaster Relief

Though the idea of establishing a system of granaries to anticipate harvest shortfalls has a long history in China, there is very little evidence that survives to suggest that earlier dynasties implemented anything close to what the Qing achieved in the eighteenth century.296 Occasionally, one finds in the pre-Qing record signs of a state capable of providing post-typhoon disaster relief, whether in the form of relief grain or tax remission. After a typhoon with an accompanying storm surge killed numerous people in Chaozhou in the ninth lunar month of 1304, the Yuan state distributed two months’ worth of relief grain to affected households.297 The early Ming provided relief, likely in grain, for the families of thirty-five people who drowned from a storm surge that struck Nanhai and Panyu counties in the Pearl River Delta on June 19, 1403.298

Victims of a storm surge in Haikang and Suixi counties in Leizhou were granted a tax remission of over 1,600 Chinese bushels in 1420.299 In 1434, granaries that might be state-owned provided relief grain for survivors of a typhoon that struck Zhaoqing and Leizhou prefectures.300

Recent research has shown that the late Ming state and society was far from moribund when it came to famine disaster relief.301 There is some evidence that this held true as well for typhoon disaster relief. The great 1618 typhoon that devastated Chaozhou on September 22 and

296 Will and Wong, Nourish the People, pp. 8-12. 297 YS, j. 21, p. 460. 298 MSL-Taizong, j. 20: 6a. 299 MSL-Taizong, j. 231: 3b. 300 MSL-Yingzong, j. 3: 5a. 301 Joanna Handlin Smith, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). See also Roger V. Des Forges, Cultural Centrality and Political Change in Chinese History: Northeast Henan in the Fall of the Ming (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 34-35, for another example of late Ming government-organized relief effort.

127 took more than 12,500 lives and destroyed 31,689 homes also saw the Ming state at its best.

After officials surveyed the damage and identified the victims, government granaries (yubei cang

預備倉) provided 3,730 Chinese bushels of grain to survivors and 597.69 taels for the funeral expenses of the deceased. Civilian charities were also at work with local elites donating money to assist in the recovery of corpses. In addition, the state approved the retention for local use of

3,087.796 taels that were supposed to be remitted to the central treasury and the remission of

3,700 taels worth of taxes.302 These efforts were certainly impressive but there is not much further documentation that survives that will allow us to take the story of late Ming vitality further. The Qing on the other hand left both abundant records and evidence of a state adept at handling typhoons especially in its eighteenth-century heyday.

The Qing in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space

The political and economic importance of Guangdong and its coastal areas, especially the

Pearl River Delta, grew from the late Ming onwards. As demonstrated by Robert Marks, and summarized in Chapter Three, population increase drove growth in the region from 1400 to 1550, and then commercialization took over as Guangdong, especially the port of Guangzhou, where foreign silver entered the Chinese economy, became a major trading nexus for both domestic and foreign goods.303 Guangzhou and coastal Guangdong’s economic importance became only more evident in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century in the run-up to Commissioner Lin

Zexu’s burning of opium at Guangzhou’s harbor and the start of the First Opium War in 1839.

Aside from Guangzhou playing host to a garrison of Chinese bannermen ever since 1680, the Qing demonstrated their recognition of Guangdong’s economic and strategic value in their

302 MSL-Shenzong, j. 583: 5a-b. 303 Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, ibid.

128 provincial appointments. Guangdong was the first of the provinces south of the Yangzi River to host a Manchu governor, Manpei, who governed from 1710 to 1714. By the Qianlong reign

(1736-1796), Manchus governed Guangdong 41.3% of the time. Illustrating the importance the

Qing emperors gave to Guangdong and the need for a more personal link between Beijing and

Guangzhou, governors of Guangdong, whether Manchu or Han, were directly appointed from the court as opposed to rising from within the provincial ranks. Unlike their counterparts in other provinces who tended to rotate around several governorships, Manchus governors of Guangdong usually served only in Guangzhou. And with only 5.6% of governors dismissed or demoted from

1700 to 1900, Guangdong had the most stable governorship among the Qing’s Chinese provinces.304

The rule of avoidance prevented Han governors from serving in provinces where they were originally from. Together with the Manchu governors, most of the governors, unless they came from other coastal provinces that experienced typhoons, would have found storms to be a quite alien experience. But they quickly recognized that it was part of the valuable space they governed and a constant thorn in their administrative side.

Memorials to the throne reporting storm events in Guangdong often begin by identifying the coastal areas as a typhoon space. As one typical description in 1749 goes, “Guangdong is close to the southern sea. Every year there are many southern winds. In the summer months, some turn around and blow from the north [referring to the counterclockwise motion of a typhoon] and becomes a typhoon.” That storms tended to come in summer when the autumn crop

304 R. Kent Guy, Qing Governors and Their Provinces: The Evolution of Territorial Administration in China, 1644- 1796 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), pp. 311-314.

129 was ripening was not lost on these officials and they were also aware of the devastating storm surges that accompanied typhoons.305

As we saw with the 1733 storms that began this chapter, typhoon disaster relief in Qing

Guangdong appeared in the form of silver rather than grain. By the eighteenth century, highly commercialized Guangdong simply did not grow enough rice to meet its own needs let alone maintain well-stocked granaries. It instead relied heavily on grain shipments from neighboring

Guangxi. The ever-normal granary system was most effective in the Yongzheng reign (1722-

1735) but even in 1724 granary stocks in Guangdong tended to be kept in silver and by the 1760s the state had fully abandoned grain storage in the province in favor of the precious metal.306

After 1749, the Qing state also increasingly relied on the market to move grain from areas of surplus and low prices to regions of high demand and prices like Guangdong.307 The distribution of silver in place of grain would allow typhoon victims to purchase the needed grain that market forces would bring to them. Because typhoons had effects that went beyond food sustenance, such as repairing and replacing homes and boats, and burying the dead, silver’s flexibility also made much more sense.

305 “廣東瀕臨南海, 歲多南風。若夏月偶作北風則逆而為颶。颶風一作往往潮水隨之。雷瓊高濂一帶禾穂成熟之時尤以為慮。” in FHA 04-01-01-0183-056 “Guangdong Xunfu Yue Jun Zouwei Qianlong Shisi nian Wuyue Gaozhou dengfu cu Beifengchao Qingxing bing Banli Zhenxu shi” 广东巡抚岳濬奏为乾隆十四年五月高州等府猝被风潮情形并办理赈恤事 [Guangdong Governor Yue Jun reports the situation and disaster relief matters in the prefectures of Gaozhou and others when they were suddenly hit by a storm surge in the fifth lunar month of the fourteenth year of the Qianlong Reign], QL 14/6/25. 306 Will, Bureaucracy and Famine, p. 303; Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, pp. 229-238. 307 Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, pp. 246-247. On the slashing of grain stock targets throughout China proper and the increasing reliance on markets, see Helen Dunstan, State or Merchant: Political Economy and Political Process in 1740s China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006).

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High Qing Typhoon Disaster Relief

The First Historical Archives in Beijing contains more than 900 memorials that possibly pertain to typhoon disaster. 308 Almost 200 such memorials concern Guangdong alone. A complete survey of these documentary sources would be valuable for the purposes of palaeotempestology and could also be used to further our understanding of Qing economic and financial history or political economy. Such a survey is neither the intent of this project nor practical given the constraints of time and source reproduction at Chinese archives. Instead, I simply aim to demonstrate Qing awareness of typhoons along the Guangdong coast and how it adapted its famine relief system to deal with them by examining a select number of cases rich in detail that likely exemplify trends in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In what follows, I first compare Qing relief after the 1733 storms that began this chapter and those that were provided after separate storms struck Chaozhou in eastern Guangdong and

Hainan Island in western Guangdong in the autumn of 1735.309 It is generally agreed that the

Yongzheng period was the height of the Qing famine relief system and the aid provided after the

1733 storms provides a glimpse of how the system worked toward the end of the Yongzheng reign. The 1735 storms may have occurred in the last year of the Yongzheng reign but the processing of disaster relief marks the beginning of the Qianlong reign period when the commitment to the system began to decline especially in the 1740s. Both the 1733 and 1735 storms affected eastern and western Guangdong and thus official responses display an effort to deal with storms at a provincial level.

308 This estimate was arrived by conducting keyword searches on the First Historical Archives digital system of terms with a high probability of indicating a typhoon event (ju 飓, jufeng 飓风, taifeng 台风, and beifeng 被风). 309 FHA 04-01-01-0002-007 “Liangguang Zongdu Emida Zouwei weiyuan Chaming Chaoqiong suoshu Zhouxian Beifeng Qingxing Fenbie Zhenxu shi” 两广总督鄂弥达奏为委员查明潮琼所属州县被风情形分别赈恤事 [Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi Emida reports on delegating personnel to investigate the circumstances of typhoon damage in Chaozhou and Qiongzhou and disaster relief efforts], QL 1/2/3.

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To start off this effort, county officials from Jieyang, Chenghai, and Chaoyang in

Chaozhou, and Wenchang and Huitong in Qiongzhou, conducted initial surveys of damage and reported them up to the provincial authorities in Guangzhou. The governor-general Emida then dispatched officials carrying an initial batch of silver who could immediately dispense relief once they had ascertained the veracity of the first reports. If the silver they brought was not sufficient then they were to draw from the prefectural and circuit stores that were responsible for each county.

Qing post-typhoon surveys, like their famine-related counterparts, had a great degree of specificity. Famine surveys focused primarily on classifying different levels of disaster victims especially identifying those who were “very poor” (最貧) and “less poor” (次貧) and in determining the percentage of crop losses by field. This calculus would determine the amount of relief to be distributed to whom (i.e., how many months’ worth of grain or its equivalent in silver).310 Post-typhoon surveys predictably observed a similar calculus. Typhoons could blow down crops, drown them, and in the worst cases a storm surge could damage soils for years by bringing in salty water that inundated fields. One had to be in one of the categories of “poor” and sustain more than 50% crop loss to receive state relief to get them through to the next harvest. In the case of the 1735 storms, “very poor” households received 2/10 of a tael per individual or one tael if there were at least five in the family. “Less poor” households received 1.6/10 of a tael per individual. These were intended to sustain these households until the first two lunar months of

1736, when the officials were instructed to lend the households grain or its equivalent in silver for the spring planting. These loans were to be paid back to the ever-normal granary system after

310 These criteria and procedures, especially the flexibility with regard to determining who was “very poor” and “less poor,” are discussed in Will, Bureaucracy and Famine, pp. 97-148. For assessing flood victims and affected acreage and how they compare with drought-induced famine cases, see Dunstan, Heirs of Yu the Great, pp. 479-492.

132 the autumn harvest. Officials were also instructed to persuade landlords to be more lenient in rent-taking.

Typhoons, like famine, had the potential for creating vagrancy by destroying crops and thus forcing people to move in search of sustenance but unlike famine, typhoons destroyed the very homes that people lived in. The Qing state was concerned with keeping people in their place not only to ensure that agricultural processes resumed following disasters as soon as the land was ready but also to guarantee the rapid resumption of tax collection because existing tax registers were tied to the land and it would be difficult to collect taxes if people moved to places where they were not registered. The eighteenth-century Qing state had a system of reception centers and “assisted passage home” (留養資送) for famine victims that also functioned when typhoons forced people to migrate.311 The state specifically allocated resources to assisting people with rebuilding their houses after storms. Again, the state distinguished between those with means (有

力) and those who were “poor.” Only the latter qualified for housing funds. As noted at the start of the chapter, the poor victims of the 1733 storms received one tael if they had lost their entire house, half a tael if it merely required repairs, and 3/10 of a tael if they needed to replace their roof. For the 1735 storms, the state continued its commitment to housing repairs but reduced the amount of aid a little by making further distinctions between tiled roof and straw-thatched homes.

Households with tiled homes that were completely blown down received the full tael. Those that required only repairs received half a tael. Straw-thatched homes regardless of degree of damage received only 3/10 or 4/10s of a tael under the assumption that they were easier to restore.

Whereas famine killed people slowly, typhoons brought about immediate casualties and thus required speedier funerary assistance. For the 1733 storms, families received four taels per

311 For vagrancy concerns during famine events see Will, Bureaucracy and Famine, pp. 226-240; For flood events see Dunstan, Heirs of Yu the Great, pp. 509-519. For a case of typhoon vagrancy, see Marks, Tigers, p. 212.

133 dead individual. Victims of the 1735 storms whose cases were processed under the Qianlong emperor received only two taels per corpse. Unlike drought-induced famine and land-based flooding, typhoons also affected the livelihood of those at sea. Fishermen who lost boats received three taels and those who needed only repairs 1.5 taels from the Yongzheng bureaucracy for the

1733 storms. The Qianlong bureaucracy distinguished between large boats and small boats that sunk and gave four taels for the former and only two taels for the latter while no longer providing funds for any kind of boat repair. Given that the 1733 storms did not do much damage to crops and the state did not have to provide relief grain, the state still provided 1,373.56 taels of relief silver in 1734. This is not far from the 1,411.26 taels of silver that the state provided in 1736 when it had to budget for relief grain that would sustain the poorest victims of the 1735 typhoon till spring. We still lack a more complete picture of provincial finances in the Qing, though some work is in progress. It is hard to say if the greater generosity of the Yongzheng bureaucracy in comparison to the early Qianlong one was due to a greater availability of funds and the greater vitality of the system or if it was one of working within a more or less fixed budget range for disasters and the Qianlong bureaucracy cutting some of the relief silver to keep within that range.312 Suffice it to say that the Qing state in its heyday strove to provide for typhoon victims by adapting its famine relief system to meet its special circumstances. This it did by not only implementing similar surveys and relief grain allocations but by making sure that the immediate damage to housing, shipping, and burial of the dead were provided for. The Qing thus reflected an understanding of typhoon events in a typhoon space such as the Guangdong littoral as a disaster involving land, air, and sea.

312 For preliminary reconstructions of provincial finance for China proper in the Qing, see Helen Dunstan, “The Finance of Imperial Munificence: How Simple Quantitative Work Can Help Us Rethink High-Qing History,” T’oung Pao 100.1-3 (2014): 164-236.

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The understanding that typhoons menaced the surrounding sea and coasts of Guangdong was so clear to people in government service that some tried to use it to their own advantage.313

Qing military regulations recognized the danger of unpredictable winds for naval ships and their crew on different kinds of waters. They distinguished between wind events (zaofeng 遭風 or beifeng 被風) that occurred on the great ocean and rivers (大洋大江) and those that happened on smaller, inner lakes and rivers ( 內洋內河 ). Naval soldiers who perished in wind events regardless of the type of water were treated as if they had died in battle (陣亡) and their families were given corresponding compensation. But for injuries, those soldiers who incurred them on the great ocean and rivers were financially compensated at a level higher than those who were hurt on inner lakes and rivers. Commanding officers who were able to preserve the lives of their soldiers on the former waters were also eligible for promotion at least one level higher than those stationed in the latter waters. This provided opportunities for corruption especially off the

Guangdong coast where typhoons were a fact of life.

Li Shiyao 李侍堯 (?-1788), a Chinese bannerman who served on and off as governor- general of Guangdong and Guangxi from 1767 to the 1770s,314 complained about naval officers using typhoons as an excuse to receive relief silver, promotions, and cover up their own failings

313 The following discussion is based on the contents of a 1770 memorial, FHA 04-01-10-0014-001”Liangguang Zongdu Li Shiyao zouwei Dujue Shuishi Maolan yaoxu Qingzhun Zhuoding Xunyang Zaoju Xushang lishi” 两广总督李侍尧奏为杜绝水师冒滥邀恤请准酌定巡洋遭飓恤赏例条事 [Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, Li Shiyao reports on the need to determine the terms of compensations and rewards for those who encounter typhoons while patrolling waters in order to put an end to naval units falsifying incidents for the purpose of receiving relief], QL 35/7/24. 314 There is some confusion as to when exactly Li Shiyao was in Guangdong. Li Shiyao’s biography in ECCP, pp. 478-482, states that he served as the provincial commandant of the Guangzhou green banner garrison from 1755 to 1759, was acting governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi from 1757-1759, 1764, and from 1767 to 1777. R. Kent Guy claims that Li was commandant in 1756, acting governor-general in 1757, and appointed governor-general from 1761 to 1771 before becoming governor-general of Yunnan and Guizhou in 1771. See R. Kent Guy, “Qing Imperial Justice? The Case of Li Shiyao,” in Jeroen Duindam, Jill Diana Harries, Caroline Humfress and Hurvitz Nimrod, eds. Law and Empire: Ideas, Practices, and Actors (Leiden: Brill, 2013) pp. 197-224, Li’s dates of office are provided on page 200. But it is clear from both accounts that he was the governor-general in 1770.

135 at sea. In the third lunar month of 1769, a Green Banner squad leader Mo Shan took thirty-five soldiers out to sea on regular patrol. He and his squad were suddenly hit by a typhoon. Holding on to floating remnants of their ships, they were fortunately rescued by fishermen. When they were safely ashore, Mo reported back that he had lost none of his men. He would have received a promotion and his men some financial reward but Li Shiyao thought the circumstances were suspicious. Li thought “if indeed on that day there really was a typhoon, one would be hard- pressed to save even oneself let alone save all thirty something people.” He investigated Mo and learned that he and his soldiers had been negligent while sailing at night and crashed the boat into a rock jutting out from the sea. Hoping to evade their responsibility and even gain reward they had made up the report about the typhoon. Li Shiyao recommended that rewards be reduced by one degree (一等) and that more rigorous measures for verifying reports be implemented in order to discourage false typhoon reports.

On land, the Green Banner garrison in Guangzhou, responsible for keeping Qing control over this strategic port city, was provided with support whenever its soldiers suffered from typhoons. A typhoon that struck Guangzhou on the night of September 25, 1745, brought torrential rains that flooded many parts of the city. The Manchu garrison commander Sitku 錫特

庫 reported that 1,282 soldiers’ quarters were damaged by the typhoon, of which 628 could be repaired without state assistance but the remaining 653 needed help from the government. Sitku had managed over the years to save around 4,369 taels from the livelihood allocation to the garrison (旗營生息銀兩) and made the decision to lend part of it to the affected soldiers on the understanding that it would be returned to the state coffers through a monthly pay reduction over the course of one year. Bannermen 旗兵 were given preferential treatment and were lent silver at a rate of four taels for one house in need of repair, six taels for two, and eight taels for three.

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Ordinary Chinese soldiers 營兵 were lent a flat rate of three taels regardless of the number of houses they lost. All in all, Sitku lent out 1,418 taels of silver to ensure that his soldiers had their homes repaired.315

The High Qing state was quite impressive in its commitment to helping victims of typhoons. The state provided silver to the poorest peasants so that they could procure relief grain, repair homes, and bury their dead. Fishermen also acquired state funds to repair boats. In the city of Guangzhou, the state lent money to its soldiers both bannermen and ordinary ones to help them rebuild their homes. Naval officers and sailors were rewarded whenever they were able to survive storms. Recognition by naval personnel that the waters off Guangdong were part of typhoon space led to dishonest reporting for the sake of gaining reward or avoiding punishment as it was harder to verify storms out at sea. This compelled officials to institute measures to discourage the practice of false reporting.

Many related memorials from the eighteenth century basically conform to the practices described above with very little variation. Silver for relief grain for typhoon disasters was measured in terms similar to those used for famine. Funds for house repair tended to follow the standard of one tael for tiled houses that needed to be completely rebuilt, half a tael for tiled houses that required only repair, and less than half a tael for thatched straw house. Funds for boat repair and funerary expenses also tended to vacillate between two to four taels each per boat and corpse. It was not uncommon for many less detailed memorials reporting typhoon disasters to simply mention that they had “followed the standard” (zhaoli 照例) in conducting typhoon

315 FHA 04-01-01-0123-007 “Guangzhou Jiangjun Xiteku zouwei Yuedong yizao Jufeng Baoyu Baqi biaobing fangwujian you daota zhanjie Qiying Shengxi Yinliang Xiuqi shi” 广州将军锡特库奏为粤东奕遭飓风暴雨八旗标兵房屋间有倒塌暂借旗营生息银两修葺事 [Guangzhou Garrison Commander Sitku reports that Guangdong suffered a typhoon that caused the homes of Bannermen and soldiers to collapse and that he has lent them assistance from the livelihood allocation of the garrison for repairs], QL 10/10/1.

137 relief.316 As typhoons often happened along the Guangdong coast and because officials were aware and constantly experienced them it was possible to develop a “standard” procedure for coping with them. Not only was the Qing famine relief system accustomed to dealing with drought-induced famine, and non-typhoon related flooding, it was also well-adapted to dealing with typhoons.317

Retreat of the State from Guangdong’s Typhoon Space

Scholars tend to date the start of the decline of the Qing with the signs of the deterioration of the Qianlong emperor’s ability to maintain empire-wide social order in the

1770s.318 Some have pushed this date earlier to the 1740s by citing the beginning of the state’s failing commitment to maintain the grain stocks of the famine relief system.319 From the point of view of the Guangdong littoral and the state’s ability to provide typhoon relief, decline was not noticeable until later in the nineteenth century. One reason decline was not so evident was because typhoon relief was customarily provided totally in silver as we saw from the High Qing cases and not dependent on the slashing of grain targets. So long as the state could provide silver, typhoon relief continued. The immediate successors of the Qianlong emperor seem to have been able to continue this trend at least for the first half of the nineteenth century.

316 One example is FHA 04-01-01-0183-057 “Liangguang Zongdu Shuose zouwei Qianlong shisinian Wuyue Guangdong Leizhou dengfu Beifeng Qingxing bing Banli Zhenxu shi” 两广总督硕色奏为乾隆十四年五月广东雷州等府被风情形并办理赈恤事 [Governor-General Šose reports about the typhoon disaster and relief efforts in Leizhou in the fifth lunar month of 1749], QL 14/6/26. The memorial no longer breaks down how the officials determined allocations but merely states that they had “followed the standard.” 317 Helen Dunstan has argued that like the well-studied famine relief system, the Qing state had “generally standardized procedures” for dealing with floods. Dunstan, Heirs of Yu the Great, p. 479. 318 Philip Kuhn’s Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990) makes the most iconic case for dating the start of the Qing’s decline to the 1770s. 319 Will and Wong, Nourish the People, make the case for the 1740s and are seconded by Helen Dunstan in her State or Merchant, where she portrays the Qianlong emperor as an autocrat, who in cutting down the granary quotes, went against the sound political analyses of his officials in order to satisfy his ambitions of conquest.

138

Recently, scholars have attempted to rethink the reign of the Qianlong emperor’s successor, the Jiaqing emperor (r. 1796-1820) not in terms of illustrating the inexorable decline that began with the capricious and extravagant policies of the former but as one that creatively responded to challenges by being pragmatic and realistic. 320 In terms of typhoon disaster management, the Jiaqing reign was not only pragmatic but also remained impressively capable of dealing with storms as illustrated by how officials dealt with a particularly severe typhoon that struck Hainan Island in the last years of the Jiaqing emperor.

On September 3 and September 18 of 1818, China’s southernmost island was struck by strong typhoons. The southern and eastern coastal counties of Hainan were devastated. The

September 18 storm in the southern county of Wanzhou brought down 12,189 homes, sank forty- three boats, drowned thirty-four people while leaving 108 others injured by collapsing structures and debris. Toward the east, Lehui suffered the loss of 7,759 homes, fifty boats, fifty-seven dead, and eight injured. Officials calculated that Wanzhou and Lehui required 5,981.2 taels and

3,988.55 taels of relief silver respectively for a total of 9,964.75 taels. The provincial treasury and Qiongzhou prefecture’s treasury provided 4,000 taels each. The remaining 1,964.75 taels were scraped up from various sources. The storm had also damaged the granary stocks of both counties but the officials made sure that whatever remained that was still edible was sold at below market prices to immediately alleviate hunger. Wanzhou’s granary had 3,689 Chinese bushels of unhusked grain that could be processed and sold at low price. Lehui had 1,958

Chinese bushels of grain that could still be dried, processed, and sold at a low price. The official

320 Wang Wensheng, White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); Daniel McMahon, Rethinking the Decline of China’s Qing Dynasty: Imperial Activism and Borderland Management at the turn of the Nineteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2015); and the essays in the special issue of Late Imperial China 32.2 (2011), especially William Rowe’s article “Introduction: The Significance of the Qianlong-Jiaqing Transtition in Qing History,” pp. 74-88.

139 report no longer indicates how the silver was allocated per home, boat, and corpse but simply claims that it had followed “standard procedure.”321

The 1818 effort to relieve disaster in Hainan was to say the least still activist and reflects the capacity of the Jiaqing state to still function in a paternalistic manner. Even memorials reporting typhoon events and relief in the succeeding Daoguang reign (1820-1850) suggest the

Qing state was still capable of providing the now standard and expected relief silver.322 This is not to say that local elites did not provide any assistance whether in the form of organizing or donations in any of these events. But from the point of view of the state, it was providing sufficient assistance and did not see the need to record in its own reports extragovernmental efforts. The Qing had obviously not yet undergone what Qing revisionists, citing Jack Goldstone, have called a “state breakdown.” Revisionists claim that the Jiaqing emperor’s continued ability to maintain a semblance of effective governance had to do with a “pragmatic retreat” by an overworked Qing state that surrendered part of its responsibilities to society. This pragmatic retreat was marked by the devolution of authority and initiative from Manchu to Han officials, from central to regional and local government, and from local government to non-government entities such as local elites.323 On the one hand, the 1818 typhoon relief operations in Hainan would seem to fit the revisionist scholarship that argues that the Jiaqing era saw the start of the

321 FHA 04-01-10-0022-008 “Ruan Yuan Li Hongbin zouwei Kanming Qiongzhou fushu Wanzhou Lehui erzhouxian Beifeng daota fangwu xihuai chuanzhi shangbi renkou bing shelan canggu fenbie heshi Dongxiang fuxu maibu” 阮元李鸿宾奏为勘明琼州府属万州乐惠二州县被风倒塌房屋袭坏船只伤毙人口并湿烂仓谷分别核实动项抚恤买补 [Governor-General Ruan Yuan and Governor Li Hongbin report the confirmation of the number of homes, boats, people, and grain stocks destroyed, relief undertaken, and restocking of grain after Wanzhou and Lehui of Qiongzhou prefecture were hit by a typhoon], JQ 24/3/19. 322 One example is the typhoon relief effort in the summer of 1835 in the Pearl River Delta, see FHA 04-01-01- 0766-013 “Guangdong Xunfu Qi Gong zouwei Bennian run liuyue Xiangshan deng binhai zhouxian beifeng qingxing bing banli fuxu ji shichuan bingfang chengyuan deng buzao xiufu shi” 广东巡抚祁贡奏为本年闰六月香山等濒海州县被风情形并办理抚恤及师船兵房城垣等补造修复事 [Governor Qi Gong reports the disaster conditions, relief measures, and repair of naval boats, soldiers’ homes, and city wall after the typhoon struck coastal areas of Xiangshan county in the sixth lunar month this year], DG 15/7/29. 323 The findings of the revisionist scholarship are summarized in Rowe, “Introduction: The Qianlong-Jiaqing Transition,” ibid.

140 devolution of authority from the central government to regional and local administrations.

However, typhoon disaster relief had always been conducted at the level of the local with the provincial authorities coordinating action and cannot be used as a marker of change.

Signs of state decline in typhoon disaster relief become more evident after 1850 when we do see the devolution of initiative from local government to local elites. I have found no memorials on typhoon disasters for Guangdong during the Xianfeng reign (1850-1861) and very few for the Tongzhi reign (1861-1875). These were times of extraordinary struggles for the Qing as it simultaneously dealt with the Second Opium War (1856-1860) and numerous rebellions especially that of the Taipings (1850-1864). So when a typhoon took almost 40,000 lives in

Guangdong in 1862, the Qing state’s capacity to handle storms was tested.

It was still two years before the Taipings were suppressed and there were fears that if survivors of the 1862 typhoon did not get adequate relief they might become bandits or rebels.324

We know some of the meteorological details of the 1862 typhoon as it was one of the first major storms that the British who took over Hong Kong after 1842 experienced. It had 172 km/h winds

(making it a category two typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson scale) and it pummeled Guangzhou in the afternoon of July 27, 1862 pouring down seven inches of rain. It leveled Guangzhou’s waterfront and blew many boats ashore, including six steamships.325 The Qing, facing military threats in other parts of the country, clearly paid special attention to the welfare of troops stationed in Guangzhou where more than 4,000 military homes were brought down and thirteen bannermen injured. One of the two memorials available in the First Historical Archives in

Beijing on the 1862 typhoon chronicles the effort to provide funds to repair soldiers’ homes.

Though it does not go into great detail on the relief of ordinary people it seems that the local

324 QSL-Muzong, pp. 36b-37a. 325 David Longshore, Encyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones (New York: Facts on File, 2008), p. 95.

141 government was able to provide some degree of relief (酌量撫恤).326 That they were able to contain the situation may be supported by a report that the governor-general sent up on January

25, 1863 informing the central government that there was no need to provide any more relief to help victims get through the lean spring months.327

Typhoon memorials start to pick up again in the Guangxu reign (1875-1908) but they also begin to reveal that the state was increasingly reliant, even in times of peace, on non- government entities especially local elites to cope with typhoons. This was especially clear in

1889 when a combination of torrential rain and a typhoon simultaneously struck eastern and central Guangdong in May and June. The state at the provincial and local level was clearly strained from the very start. A typhoon had struck central Guangdong in May in conjunction with what was likely a very wet season of plum rain (梅雨), which is late spring and early summer precipitation that affects East Asia every year. When rain first caused flash floods in Chaozhou and Huizhou prefectures in May, the state could not provide even the usual preliminary silver relief (fuxu 撫恤) on its own. It borrowed 5,000 taels from local businesses (商號) to provide this initial relief while scrambling to raise its own funds (籌銀). But as the province was dealing with this initial disaster, news broke out that floods had inundated the fields of Jiaying in northeastern

Guangdong on June 1. The governor was able to produce 2,000 taels to provide initial aid for

Jiaying. But soon more dikes were breaking and more fields were flooded as reports came in from various counties in eastern and central Guangdong. Officials held four fundraising events to

326 FHA 03-4839-008 “Guangzhou Jiangjun Mukede nazouwei Guangzhou Qiying Yashu bingfang Beifeng daota qing yuan’an jiexiang xiuli shi” 广州将军穆克德讷奏为广州旗营衙署兵房被风坍塌请援案借项修理事 [Guangzhou Commander Mukede reports on the damage to soldiers’ homes in Guangzhou and the matters related to borrowing funds to repair them], TZ 1/11/13. 327 FHA 03-4973-002 “Shuli Liangguang Zongdu Yan Duan zouwei chaming Guangdongsheng Beishui Beifeng Beirao geshu laichun wuyong jieji shi” 署理两广总督晏端书奏为查明广东省被水被风被扰各属来春毋庸接济事 [Acting Governor-General Yan Duan reports on the investigation into the typhoon and flooding incidents in Guangdong and the unnecessity of relief for the coming spring], TZ 1/12/7.

142 produce the 27,000 taels necessary to cope with this large-scale disaster. In order to repair the dikes, the governor also ordered the implementation of a “work in exchange for relief” (以工代

賑) program wherein disaster victims repaired dikes in exchange for the relief they would have gotten for free in previous reigns.328 This was long before foreign experts started advocating for and implementing similar kinds of labor in exchange for relief programs under the Nationalist regime.329

Local officials in the places affected were donating their own money or borrowing money from local elites in order to meet the crisis. Zeng Jiqu the prefect of Chaozhou donated (捐銀)

1,000 taels of his own money. Zou Zhiping, the magistrate of Zhenping county (now known as

Jiaoling county) in Jiaying, solicited donations from civil and military officials and local elites

(紳) to produce some 600 taels for relief. One superintendent donated 100 Chinese bushels of grain while the prefect of Jiaying borrowed 300 taels. In Guangzhou, charity halls gathered and donated money to assist provincial disaster relief efforts. The board of directors of the Aiyu

Charity Hall (愛育堂) donated 7,000 taels. The Guangxu Emperor (r. 1875-1908) merely acknowledged in his vermillion rescript the current state of affairs by just indicating his awareness of the situation (知道了) and giving the usual exhortation to his officials to do their best to help the people.330 Here we see the signs of a state in decline, still committed to dealing with crisis but unable to provide the usual disaster relief from its own coffers, and forced to accept donations from its own officials and local elites in order to restore social order.

328 FHA 04-01-02-0089 “Liangguang Zongdu Zhang Zhidong zouwei Jiayingzhou dengshu Beishui Beifeng ji chouban gongzhen qingxing shi” 两广总督张之洞奏为嘉应州等属被水被风及筹办工赈情形事 [Governor- General Zhang Zhidong reports on the typhoon and flooding events and the work to raise funds in Jiaying and its subordinate areas], GX 15/7/3. 329 See Chris Courtney, The Nature of Disaster, pp. 153-194. 330 FHA 04-01-02-0089, ibid.

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This situation of the state needing to draw on society’s resources to perform typhoon relief lasted till the end of the Qing dynasty. In 1906, plum rains and storms again combined to test the state’s mettle. In early April, plum rains engorged two branches of the Pearl River system.

The North and West Rivers soon burst their banks. Dikes that controlled the waters of the Pearl

River Delta were in turn overwhelmed leading to widespread flooding and damage to fields and homes. The governor-general of Guangdong at that time, Cen Chunxuan 岑春煊 (1861-1933) reported that county magistrates were cooperating with local elites and merchants in efforts to repair the dike breaches. What made matters even worse was successive storms that struck the

Pearl River Delta on April 15 and western Guangdong on April 27. The former brought down

400 houses and killed thirty-five people while the latter took down 280 homes with fortunately no casualties. Cen himself traveled by boat on May 4 to survey the affected areas of the province and reports seeing “a piece of ocean” (一片汪洋) where land once stood. Government alone could not save the situation and Cen led local elite and merchants (紳業人等) in fundraising relief money. Charity halls were also busy purchasing and transporting grain to flood-stricken areas. Xiangshan county in the Pearl River Delta saw its typhoon disaster relieved through the cooperation of officials and local elite. In the less prosperous Western Guangdong, even elites could not cope and were petitioning government to send down funds. But as Cen writes, the provincial treasuries were “amazingly deficient” (奇絀) and there was nothing more that the government could do. The last part of Cen’s memorial sees him engaging in self-blame for his inability to do more and he asks the emperor and empress dowager to relieve him of his position to appease the victims of all these disasters. Whether he was sincere or not, Cen was representing a state that still clung to its paternalistic role but unable to completely fulfill it. In the end, it was the weather that finally let up when rain stopped by mid-May and saved the people of

144

Guangdong from further misery. 331 We know that Cen, the last Qing governor-general of

Guangdong who was a trusted official of the empress dowager, never had to vacate his position.

There was really nothing more he could have done.

The Qing in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was capable of providing what it thought to be adequate relief for typhoons. Local elites may have operated beneath them but the state never really had to call on them openly and they never appear in reports to the central government. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the Qing entered its final days, the Qing continued to maintain its paternalistic commitment to crisis management yet it was clear that the dynasty was increasingly incapable of meeting the needs of typhoon victims on its own.332 Reports openly acknowledge the lack of government funds and mention the assistance of local elites, merchants, and charity halls. As the state partially retreated from its duties in

Guangdong’s typhoon space, others filled the void.

The 1922 Chaozhou Typhoon

After the Qing fell in 1912, typhoon disaster relief in Guangdong remained largely in the hands of society as hardly a semblance of state efficiency existed prior to the Nationalist consolidation of power in the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937). The aftermath of the great 1922

331 FHA 04-01-05-0309-037 “Shuli Liangguang Zongdu Cen Chun zouwei Bennian ruchun Guangzhou dengfuzhou geshu Beishui Beifeng Chengzai fenbie xunshi weikan zhenfu pingtiao geqingxing shi” 署理两广总督岑春煊奏为本年入春广州等府州各属被水被风成灾分别巡视委勘赈抚平粜各情形事 [Acting Governor-General Cen Chunxuan reports about the typhoon and flood disaster in the various prefectures of Guangzhou and the effort to survey, provide relief, and control grain prices], GX 32/4/24. 332 Kathleen Edgerton-Tarpley shows in the case of the Great North China Famine that despite its declining capacity, the Qing state had not abdicated its duties completely to market forces and remained committed to its paternalistic obligations. See her Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 90-113. Nonetheless, it was clear that there was much nongovernmental participation and activism especially from Jiangnan elite in famine relief to make up for the state’s reduced ability to manage crisis, see pp. 131-156.

145 typhoon that killed more than 50,000 people in the Chaozhou and Shantou (Swatow) region of eastern Guangdong best illustrates this continuing situation.

The 1922 typhoon likely originated somewhere near the Caroline Islands out in the

Pacific around July 27 and just missed the Philippines on July 29 by passing through the Luzon

Strait that separates it from Taiwan.333 It started to make its presence felt in eastern Guangdong on the afternoon of August 2, hence it is still remembered in China as the August 2 typhoon disaster (八二風災), but it fully unleashed its fury at around midnight when everyone was asleep.

What made this typhoon so deadly, aside from its arrival in the dead of the night, was that it came with a 12-foot storm surge. Many accounts, both Chinese and foreign, describe the awesome tidal wave and its gruesome aftermath. Foreign missionaries had been in Shantou

(Swatow) since 1860 when it became a treaty port after the Second Opium War and have played an important role in the region till at least 1949.334 One Baptist missionary described with a mix of exhilaration and horror seeing a “wall of sea which appeared to be volleying full speed into our front yard. Talk about surf – and breakers – there they were, at our very door!”335 The tidal wave overwhelmed the coast bringing houses down, drowning and crushing people underneath.

One of many Chinese accounts described the scene the next morning, “when dawn broke, the land was strewn with corpses. Cries and wails shook the region. All who bore witness shed

333 A Jesuit meteorologist Jose Coronas detected the low pressure zone of the typhoon from the Manila Observatory and also received barometric readings from observatories in the islands of Guam and Yap. See “The Swatow Typhoon of August, 1922,” Monthly Weather Review 50.8 (1922): 435. 334 Joseph Tse-hei Lee, “Christianity and State-Building in Republican Chaozhou, South China,” in Friederike Assandri and Dora Martins, eds., From Early Tang Court Debates to China’s Peaceful Rise (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), pp. 67-87. See also his book, The Bible and the Gun: Christianity in South China, 1860-1900 (New York and London: Routledge, 2003). 335 Quoted in Joseph Tse-hei Lee, “Disaster Management and Christian Church Networks in Early Twentieth- Century Chaozhou, South China,” in Jens Damm and Mechthild Leutner, eds. China Networks (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2009), pp. 64-79. Quoted on p. 69.

146 sorrowful tears…it was a tragedy never before seen.”336 Both Chinese and foreign accounts agree that the storm and its accompanying wave killed at least 50,000 with some official figures claiming a death toll of over 100,000.337

Joseph Tse-hei Lee has argued that ineffective disaster governance from the end of the

Qing up to the establishment of the Nationalist Regime in 1927 helped foreign missionaries and their local converts establish an “effective stewardship of the local society” in eastern

Guangdong. Starting with the floods of 1911, continuing into the earthquake of February 13,

1918, and culminating with the August 2, 1922 typhoon, local governments showed that the

“administration of relief was not at the top of their agendas. This left the Protestant missions and native churches as the only viable institutions to undertake emergency relief operation.” 338

Lee provides abundant evidence to show that the Presbyterian missions did indeed carry a great load of disaster relief though he may have taken his claim too far by citing them as the

“only viable institutions.”

Presbyterians coordinated with local government, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and appealed to the Christian sensibilities of Western merchants to raise funds for necessities such as food, clothing and medicine, the burying of the dead, and the repair of infrastructure.

Missionaries and their volunteers went from village to village setting up relief centers, producing

336 Zhanglin Jiuzai Gongsuo 樟林救災公所[Zhanglin Disaster Relief Headquarters], Chenghai Zhanglin Ba’er Fengzai 澄海樟林八二風災 [Chenghai Zhanglin August 2 Typhoon Disaster], (Shantou 汕頭: Cheng’an Yinwu Gongsi 誠安印務公司, n.d.), p. 2. 337 It is not necessary for us to go further into the morbid details of this well-documented disaster. The Guangdong Provincial Library holds a number of Chinese first-hand accounts. Apart from the Zhanglin Disaster Relief Headquarters report cited in the previous footnote, there is Ruan Meihu 阮梅湖, Chaoshan Dongnan Yanhai Juzai Jilue 潮汕東南沿海颶災紀略 [Account of the Typhoon Disaster that struck the Chaoshan southeast coastal region] (Shantou 汕頭: Mingli Xuan 名利軒, n.d.). Another source focused on relief efforts in Shantou is the Shantou Zhenzai Shanhou Banshichu Baogaoshu 汕頭賑災善後辦事處報告書 [Report of the Shantou Office for Post- Disaster Relief] (Shantou: n.p., 1922). This is the official report of a joint government and societal organization that was established on August 4 and operated till August 31, 1922. The 100,000 figure is from the latter. Foreign missionary accounts have been mined by Joseph Tse-hei Lee, ibid. 338 Lee, “Disaster Management and Christian Church Networks,” pp. 65-66.

147 lists of beneficiaries, distributing relief goods, and running medical missions. Utilizing their overseas connections, Presbyterians received donations from churches in Britain and elsewhere by circulating leaflets detailing the horrors of the disaster with quotes from Joseph Conrad’s then popular South China Sea novella Typhoon. Lee gives numerous examples of Presbyterian

Chinese converts actively organizing relief work in their own affected villages.339

But there were other non-Christian Chinese organizations that performed important relief work. The Chaozhou region was the ancestral home of many overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia.

Social historian Chen Chunsheng has shown that families in the Chaozhou market town of

Zhanglin appealed to their overseas relatives for assistance. Overseas remittances made possible all relief efforts in Zhanglin and were transformed and executed into relief work by lineages, temples, schools, and local militias.340

Zhanglin elites led by the prominent Zheng lineage organized the community relief effort.

Lineage leader Zheng Yiluan 鄭奕巒 opened the Zheng ancestral hall to refugees and donated funds. On the morning of August 3, after the typhoon had wrought its terror, Zheng and other

Zhanglin elites setup a Disaster Relief Headquarters 救災公所 with three main goals: to organize labor to provide gruel for hungry typhoon victims; to send Zheng Yizhen 鄭弈珍, Yiluan’s brother, to neighboring Chao’an to persuade the various charity halls based there to come to

Zhanglin to collect corpses; and to put up a temporary hospital and invite notable local doctors to heal the sick and wounded. Chao’an charity halls such as Youde, Xingyuan, Yongde, Fulian, and the Red Cross Society came to collect more than 4,000 decomposing cadavers. The Disaster

339 Lee, “Disaster Management and Christian Church Networks,” pp.73-76. 340 Chen Chunsheng 陈春生, “Ba’er Fengzai Suojian zhi Minguo Chunian Chaoshan Qiaoxiang – yi Zhanglin wei li” 八二风灾所见之民国初年潮汕侨乡 – 以樟林为例 [Qiaoxiang Communities in Early Republican Chaoshan as seen through the lens of the August 2 Typhoon Disaster: A Case Study of Zhanglin], Chaoxue Yanjiu 潮学研究 [Chaozhou Studies] (Shantou: Shantou Daxue Chubanshe, 1997), pp. 369-395. Lee acknowledges Chen’s research but claims that the Christian networks were the only organization that linked the entire region and were not just limited to single villages. See Lee, “Disaster Management and Christian Church Networks,” p.76.

148

Relief Headquarters solicited donations and local elites gladly used the opportunity to display their philanthropy. The wife of Zheng Shunzhi, another Zhanglin elite, donated 1,000 yuan to help buy coffins. Huang Qiaomei gave up his hill garden to provide burial ground. Much of

Zhanglin’s Disaster Relief Headquarters’ report of its own activities reads much like a celebration of the goodness and empathy of the local elites but it nonetheless shows that local society was organizing and carrying the responsibility for disaster relief in the absence of effective government.341

In the treaty port of Shantou, which suffered extensive damage especially to public infrastructure, municipal officials and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce banded together on

August 3 to set up the Shantou Office for Post-Disaster Relief 汕頭賑災善後辦事處. The Office had numerous functions but their primary activity was to gather funds to purchase and collect donations of sacks of rice to be distributed to the counties of Chenghai, Chaoyang, Raoping,

Chao’an, and Jieyang. It also engaged in the repair of roads and other public infrastructure and setup medical missions, which were supplied by donations of medicine from pharmaceutical companies such as Guangzhou’s Heping Company. Chaozhou merchants in Hong Kong represented by the Hong Kong Chaozhou Chamber of Commerce also engaged in fundraising activities and contributed rice, money, and medicine to support their hometowns.342

As the work of the Shantou Office for Post-Disaster Relief shows, government was not totally ineffective and the state did not totally retreat from its typhoon disaster relief responsibilities. While foreign missions, overseas Chinese, and local elites performed a great deal of relief work, they did it in cooperation with the local authorities. Government also performed one important task that has so far not been mentioned in the literature: they helped

341 Chenghai Zhanglin Ba’er Fengzai, ibid. 342 Shantou Zhenzai Shanhou Banshichu Baogaoshu, ibid.

149 raise between 700,000 to 800,000 yuan to help fund all this relief work by raising customs duties for one year. As a treaty port, Shantou’s customs duties were controlled by the Maritime

Customs Office, a mostly foreign controlled institution charged with collecting all fees from every Chinese port and city open to free trade. The Maritime Customs Office and the Imperial

Post Office were the only holdovers from the Qing when the dynasty collapsed. The Shantou

Office for Post-Disaster Relief worked together with the foreign affairs office to communicate the gravity of the 1922 typhoon disaster to the foreigners in charge of the Maritime Customs

Office. There was a precedent for going to the Maritime Customs Office for help as the same institution had helped to relieve the 1920-1921 North China Famine by managing all the details of securing a famine-loan from four foreign banks.343

The basic proposition of the provincial government to the Maritime Customs Office was to finance relief operations for typhoon-stricken areas by imposing a special ten percent levy on customs for only one year. Goods entering Shantou on average produced around 600,000 to

700,000 yuan annually in customs duties. But a relief fund of only 60,000 to 70,000 yuan was considered small. Imports and exports, however, combined for around 2,000,000 yuan in customs duties and would produce a relief fund of 200,000 yuan. The Maritime Customs Office approved this proposal and first lent the amount out expecting to recuperate it through the special levy. Soon both sides agreed that extending the levy to all customs duties throughout Guangdong province would be a great idea. Every year, Guangdong customs averaged anywhere between

7,000,000 to 8,000,000 yuan and this would have produced an immediate additional relief fund

343 Pierre Fuller, “North China Famine Revisited: Unsung Native Relief in the Warlord Era, 1920-1921,” Modern Asian Studies 47.3 (2013): 820-850. In this study of the 1920-1921 North China Famine, Fuller argues mainly that there were many understudied segments of society that were active in disaster relief between the end of the Qing and the Nanjing Decade but he also acknowledges that there were is “evidence of relief coordination at multiple levels of government in the early Republic” and rejects the portrayal of the warlord era as one of just chaotic governance. Arthur Waldron was one of the first to reject portrayals of warlord politics as simply “comic opera.” See his From War to Nationalism: China’s Turning Point, 1924-1925 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 4-5.

150 of 700,000 to 800,000 yuan. By August 14, the representatives of all the countries that ran the

Maritime Customs Office had approved the measure.344 These funds helped finance the relief efforts of the Shantou Office for Post-Disaster Relief, whose operations could rival those of the missionaries that Joseph Tse-hei Lee writes about. There was more than one viable organization capable of handling disaster relief in the region and it involved both state and society.

Conclusion

This two-hundred year survey of typhoon disaster relief efforts in Guangdong’s typhoon space shows that the state committed itself to dealing with these bothersome storms but with varying degrees of effectiveness and participation. There is some evidence that pre-Qing states were capable of providing disaster relief, but the height of state participation and confidence coincided with the heyday of the Qing’s famine relief system in the eighteenth century under the

Yongzheng emperor and the early decades of the Qianlong emperor. Only the Mao state would exceed the High Qing’s capacity as we shall see in Chapter Seven. Facets of the famine relief system such as the government surveys and allocation of relief silver for grain were adapted to dealing with typhoon disasters and other distinctive aspects such as providing silver for housing, boat repair, and funerary expenses became standard procedure. Due to both Guangdong being unable to provide for its own food sustenance and the many different aspects that went into typhoon relief that did not necessarily involve grain, it made sense that Qing typhoon disaster relief came in the form of convenient and flexible silver.

344 There are several documents in the Second Historical Archives (SHA) documenting the process of negotiating and approval for this special levy. They are all in the SHA 1001(2)-506 folder of their online system. I have followed the online systems own arbitrary page numbers, wherein they grouped what were originally separate documents together and numbered them as if they were one document. See SHA 1001(2)-506, pp. 6, 11-15, 17-18, 22-24, 27, 31, 36-37, 39-40, 53-54, 107-112, 116-118, 120-121, 131-132, and 136-138.

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As the functioning of disaster relief was not tied to adequate grain stocks, typhoon disaster relief in Guangdong did not noticeably decline for most of the nineteenth century so long as the state could provide silver. The strain on financial resources becomes clear in the late nineteenth century in the Guangxu reign. Likely, the shifting trade imbalance from the Opium

Wars, the cost of fighting wars and rebellions and to pay indemnities took its toll on things that required money such as disaster relief. It became increasingly clear that by the late Qing, even if the government remained paternalistically committed, it was society that was taking on a larger role in disaster relief.

The larger role of society continued into the early years of the fledgling republic in the wake of the 1922 Chaozhou typhoon disaster. Foreign missionaries, local lineages, and overseas

Chinese worked to prop up society after the devastating typhoon of August 2. But the state was not totally absent. It worked with these communities and even helped raise a significant amount of funds by negotiating a special levy with the foreign-controlled Maritime Customs Office.

Hans Van de Ven has shown that in its almost one-hundred year history, the Maritime Customs

Office helped hold China together in times of crisis through its hybrid personnel and ability to manage China’s international and domestic loans.345 In the case of the 1922 typhoon, it played a role as well in holding the eastern Guangdong region together. By taxing the rest of the

Guangdong littoral’s typhoon space, it helped alleviate the suffering in one part of it.

As the Chinese population grew in Guangdong in late imperial times and as the region grew in strategic and economic importance from the eighteenth century onward, the late imperial state committed itself to providing disaster relief for the storms that disrupted the region every so often. This commitment waned but was never abandoned in the nineteenth and early twentieth

345 Hans Van de Ven, Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

152 century but as it weakened and the state retreated partially from its responsibilities in

Guangdong’s typhoon space, others took up the slack. If typhoons help demonstrate how committed a state was to public welfare, it also afforded society the opportunity to display its vitality. In Guangdong’s typhoon space state commitment and societal efforts swayed together, one sometimes stronger than the other, but never in opposition to alleviating the suffering caused by being lodged in a place where storms would surely visit. In the next chapter, we look at how state and society once again interacted in a common quest to understand the meteorology of storms.

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Chapter Six The Science of Storms: Modern Meteorology in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space from the 1850s to the 1950s

Introduction

In 2010, the Guangdong Provincial Meteorological Bureau published a “brief” history of the meteorological stations in the province proudly portraying their successful operation as a product of Communist grassroots effort. At 666 pages, this thick tome was anything but brief but its treatment of the early history of Guangdong meteorology nonetheless was abbreviated. It traced the beginnings of Guangdong’s “civilized” (文明) meteorological network only to the

1950s when the provincial government issued a 1951 directive for how the province would disseminate typhoon warnings and then a 1955 meeting to discuss how to do model meteorological work (工作功模代表会议).346 While this historical work was right to emphasize that the development of a meteorological network across the province was driven by threat of typhoons, recognition of this need goes back much earlier than 1950.

I have already shown in Chapter Three that typhoon knowledge, including methods of forecasting storms through the observation of atmospheric and other natural phenomena, was widespread in the southern coastal regions of late imperial China. In this chapter, I look at how the developing science of Western meteorology came to be established in China and how the plan to set up a system of meteorological stations along Guangdong was tied closely to its perception as a typhoon space. Along the way, I demonstrate how Chinese interest in modern science, nationalism, and development colored these ambitions.

346 Guangdongsheng Qixiangju 广东省气象局 [Guangdong Provincial Meteorological Bureau], Guangdongsheng Jiceng Qixiangtaizhan Jianshi 广东省基层气象台站简史 [A Brief History of Guangdong’s Grassroots Meteorological Stations] (Beijing: Qixiang Chubanshe, 2010), p. 3.

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In the mid-nineteenth century, the seeds of modern meteorology and the specific interest in the science of storms were developing in the Western world. From the very beginning, this interest in storms was shaped by Western colonial interests. Certainly in China, the concurrent entrance of more Westerners, and the establishment of treaty ports in the nineteenth century, and the desire to protect both colonial communities and shipping routes helped to bring this meteorology of storms and the accompanying quest to establish a viable network of meteorological stations into the country. In the early twentieth century, not only typhoons but also nationalist and developmental goals pushed the Nationalist state to lay the groundwork for a meteorological network. It would be the Communist state in the 1950s that would eventually bring this network to fruition accompanied by campaigns to eradicate typhoon superstition and to inculcate correct typhoon science in the minds of ordinary people.

Cyclone Meteorology in the Service of the Colonial State

The history of modern meteorology cannot be separated from the history of European colonial expansion. As Europeans explored the distant oceans and settled in diverse climatic regimes, the need to understand the precise workings of climate and weather for the purposes of facilitating navigation, agriculture, and settling into colonial life became evident. We will not go into every aspect of this early history of modern meteorology but only focus on storms, which were an important concern both to European mariners and European colonial agents as they found their way to the typhoon spaces of the Northwest Pacific Basin.

Early pioneers of the colonial meteorology of storms were Jesuits in the Spanish territories of Cuba and the Philippines. Cuba lay in the path of many Atlantic hurricanes while the Philippines often experienced typhoons. The Jesuits, well-known for their intellectual

155 leanings, were interested in studying storms and the Spanish colonial authorities and elite recognized that their administration of the colonies would benefit from such research and so they financed and supported the Jesuit endeavor. With state and elite support, the Jesuits setup observatories and produced some of the world’s first cyclone-warning systems based on scientific experiments and observations.347

Elsewhere, in the cyclone spaces of the Indian Ocean, Henry Piddington (1797-1858), a

British merchant ship captain turned scientist who also served in British India’s Agricultural and

Horticultural Society and as Coroner of Calcutta, became interested in storms after a cyclone hit

Calcutta in 1833. Utilizing logs of British East India Company ships, Piddington studied the nature and structure of storms not only in the Indian Ocean but also those in the South China Sea, which resulted in a treatise on what he called “the law of storms,” first published in Calcutta in

1844. Piddington is normally credited with coining the term “cyclone” even if many before him had already noted the cyclical nature of these storms. He made two important observations, however. One is that cyclones in the Indian Ocean were the same phenomenon as typhoons in the South China Sea and second that storms in the latter originated in the Pacific east of Luzon in the Philippines and tended to travel in a northwest direction.348 Piddington’s work was picked up by scholars in the Royal Society of London, particularly a fellow named William Reid, who published his own analysis in 1849 of the same storms that Piddington had studied.349

347 Aitor Anduaga, Cyclones and Earthquakes: The Jesuits, Prediction, Trade, and Spanish Dominion in Cuba and the Philippines, 1850-1898 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2017). Jesuit typhoon meteorology also remained a tool of empire when the US acquired the Philippines in 1898. See James F. Warren, “Scientific Superman: Father Jose Algue, Jesuit Meteorology, and the Philippines under American Rule, 1897-1924,” in Alfred W. McCoy, and Francisco A. Scarano, eds. Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), pp. 508-519. 348 Henry Piddington, The Horn-Book for the Law of Storms in the Indian and China Seas (Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press, 1844). 349 P. Kevin MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology: The Role of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), pp. 137-138.

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Protestant missionaries who started to make their presence felt after the opening of treaty ports in the 1840s brought the findings of this new meteorology of storms to China. Like the

Jesuits who were in China from the late Ming to the High Qing, Protestant missionaries sought to use translations of Western scientific writings to attract the interest of Chinese elite and promote

Christianity.350 An American missionary based in the treaty port of Ningbo, Daniel J. MacGowan

(1815-1893), made it clear that it was necessary to promote Western science to the Chinese to

“not only promote their material interest, but by employing these as media for conveying religious truth, we shall contribute largely to their intellectual and moral regeneration.” As

Benjamin Elman has noted, the presentation of Western science as “superior knowledge systems…presented the wealth and power of Western nations to the Chinese as inseparable from the Christian gospel they preached.”351 To this end, MacGowan produced a thirty-seven page pamphlet on meteorology and navigation called the Hanghai Jinzhen 航海金針 (Navigator’s

Golden Needle) with a chapter on typhoons, based on the work of William Reid, which he envisioned as guiding Chinese mariners in the task of avoiding typhoons and mastering the art of navigation.352

Like the Jesuits before them, nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries had Chinese collaborators who helped introduce Western science into Chinese intellectual circles. Alexander

Wylie (1815-1887), a polymath British missionary in China, collaborated with Chinese scholar

Li Shanlan (1810-1882) to translate a number of important Western scientific writings into

Chinese. Among their many translations was one of John Herschel’s Outline of Astronomy

(1851), which was called Tantian 譚天 in Chinese. Herschel had included a discussion of

350 Elman, On Their Own Terms, pp. 283-319. 351 Elman, On Their Own Terms, p. 296. 352 MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology, pp. 5-7. MacGowan is quoted on p. 6.

157 hurricanes in his astronomical treatise, meteorology being subsumed under astronomy at this time. Both Daniel MacGowan and Li Shanlan used the Chinese word jufeng to render the idea of tropical cyclone. As we have seen in earlier chapters, jufeng was the word used most often in

Chinese documents to describe what we know today as “typhoon.” While Wylie and Li’s translation explains the word now in terms of modern Western meteorology, traces of historical definitions remain as Li defines jufeng as a wind of the four directions (四面之風).353

These intellectual exchanges between Western missionaries and their Chinese interlocutors did not remain on the level of conversation and translation. The growing number of foreigners residing in China’s treaty ports and the increasingly busy trade routes between these cities and the rest of the world gave concrete value to the recording and transmission of daily weather forecasts and storm warnings along the Chinese littoral. As Robert Bickers put it, “talk turned slowly into action, and informed discussion evolved into infrastructure and system.” The

Maritime Customs Service in China, institutionalized in 1869 and run by foreigners, financed the operation of meteorological stations up and down the China coast. These stations had links with major observatories in East and Southeast Asia, namely the Jesuits who operated another observatory at Zikawei in Shanghai, the Hong Kong Royal Observatory, and the Jesuit Manila

Observatory in the Philippines. By 1932, fifty coastal meteorological stations along the coast of

China fed vital climate data to major observatories in East and Southeast Asia, which processed and published this information for the benefit of foreign shipping. 354 Marlon Zhu has persuasively argued that the mercantile community residing in the treaty ports, concerned

353 Tantian 譚天 [Outline of Astronomy], by John Herschel and translated by Alexander Wylie and Li Shanlan (1851), pp. 11b-12a. I looked at an original copy of this at the Asia Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.. On Wylie and Li Shanlan’s productive collaboration, see Elman, On Their Own Terms, pp. 297- 319. 354 Robert Bickers, “Throwing Light on Natural Laws: Meteorology on the China coast, 1869-1912,” in Robert Bickers, and Isabella Jackson, eds. Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, land and power (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 179-200. Quote is on p. 179.

158 primarily with the threat of typhoons to their businesses, played a major role in the formation of this “inter-port meteorology” and the creation of a submarine telegraph network that efficiently relayed climatic information from one commercial node to another.355

To the Chinese in Guangdong’s typhoon space, the Hong Kong Royal Observatory might have functioned as the node that relayed vital typhoon information to the rest of the region.

However, at least until 1906, it seems that Hong Kong’s possession of a meteorological observatory linked to others in the China seas was of little benefit to Guangdong. The information collected was geared mainly toward foreign shipping and no effort was made to share it with people living in Guangdong.356 Also, the information that Hong Kong received was not necessarily reliable for two reasons. One, the science of storms was in its infancy and there were still many things that people did not understand about typhoons and their tracks. Two, the relations between observatories were not necessarily as cordial and collegial as it might seem.

August William Doberck (1852-1941), who headed the Hong Kong Royal Observatory for twenty-four years until 1907, despised the Jesuits in Manila and Shanghai, repeatedly accusing them of relaying erroneous and tardy meteorological information. So great was his contempt for the Jesuits that he was known for ignoring communications sent to his office in Hong Kong from

Manila and Shanghai. This led to some catastrophic consequences as Hong Kong was struck by typhoons with very little advance warning on several occasions. The last straw for Dobreck came in 1906. Whenever the Hong Kong Observatory received news of an approaching storm it fired a typhoon gun that indicated the hoisting of a storm signal for the British colony. The observatory detected an approaching storm in the morning of September 18 and fired the gun at 8 am. But there was very little time to prepare for the typhoon as it came crashing in at 11 am. More than

355 Marlon Zhu, “Typhoons, Meteorological Intelligence, and the Inter-port Mercantile Community in Nineteenth- Century China,” Unpublished PhD Dissertation, SUNY Binghamton, 2012. 356 Bickers, “Throwing Light on Natural Laws,” ibid.

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10,000 people perished as a result. Later investigation showed that Dobreck had refused to read messages sent to him from Zikawei and Manila two days before the storm landed. Dobreck was finally forced to retire in 1907.

Less adversarial relations between the different observatories thereafter may have made

Hong Kong’s warning system more reliable. In 1908 Guangzhou adopted the Hong Kong signal system and received corresponding information via telegraph.357 But as we saw in the case of the

1922 typhoon that took the treaty port of Shantou and the surrounding area by surprise, it seems that the benefits of this emerging meteorological network were not yet reaching the majority of inhabitants of Guangdong’s typhoon space.

Typhoon Meteorology in the Service of the Developmentalist Nation

In a 1921 essay about “The Responsibility of Geoscientists to our Nation” 我國地學家之

責任, the “Father of Chinese Meteorology” Zhu Kezhen 竺可楨 (1890-1974) expressed his disappointment that foreigners controlled the two primary observatories on the China coast on which the Chinese relied on for typhoon forecasts. He wrote: “Today’s government is concerned only with meeting the needs of the warlords. How can one expect it to spare resources and fund the development of meteorological stations and other institutions? To accomplish this, we have to rely on the whole society and the citizens. Every man shares the responsibility for the rise and fall of our country.” 358 In this section, I show the centrality of typhoons to the nascent

357 MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology, pp. 173-199, narrates Dobreck’s adversarial tenure in Hong Kong. On the adoption of the Hong Kong system in Guangzhou, see p. 215. 358 Zhu Kezhen 竺可楨, “Woguo Dixuejia de Zeren” 我國地學家的責任 [The Responsibility of Geoscientists to our Nation], in Zhu Kezhen Quanji 竺可桢全集 [Complete Writings of Zhu Kezhen], volume 1 (Shanghai: Shanghai Keji Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2004), pp. 338-341. I have adopted the translated quote of Zhu Kezhen by Wang Zuoyue in “Saving China Through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China,” Osiris, 2nd series, 17 (2002): 291-322. Translation is on p. 310.

160 meteorological nationalism and developmentalism of the Republican state. Typhoons drove the desire to establish China’s own meteorological network along Guangdong’s typhoon space.

The defeat of China by Japan in 1895 was, as Benjamin Elman has argued, a watershed in that it changed China’s self-image and its international reputation. Few expected China to lose to a war Japan, since both countries were on the path of modernization. Chinese intellectuals began to view their own heritage as degenerate and the reason for the loss. They turned their back on

Chinese tradition and looked to Western science as the means to save the Chinese nation.359 In the last decade of the Qing dynasty, numerous Chinese students went overseas, to Japan, Europe, and the United States to study in foreign institutions.

Leaving China in 1910 at the age of twenty, Zhu made his way to the University of

Illinois to study agriculture. He was convinced that the modernization of farming in China was critical to the future of the nation. But Zhu, who was known as Chu Co-ching outside of China, realized in 1915 that climate and weather were even more important for the success of agriculture and he decided to do his Ph.D. in meteorology at Harvard University. It became clear to him that understanding typhoons and their tracks in Asia was crucial to China. He finished his dissertation in 1918 under the direction of American climatologist Robert DeCourcy Ward

(1867-1931). In his work he proposed a new classification method for typhoons in Asia.360 Zhu’s writing in the early 1920s about the importance of meteorology for the nation was very much in the spirit of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 when people clamored for “Mr. Science” to

359 Elman, On Their Own Terms, ibid. 360 [Zhu Kezhen] Chu Co-ching, “A New Classification of Typhoons in the Far East,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1918. He expresses the importance of understanding typhoons by the Chinese in an 1922 essay entitled “Shuo Jufeng” 說颶風 [Speaking of Typhoons]. See Zhu Kezhen, Zhu Kezhen Quanji, volume 1, pp. 401-408. His dissertation research was published in his anthology, Zhu Kezhen Wenji 竺可楨文集 [Collected Works of Zhu Kezhen]. Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 1979, pp. 25-51.

161 come to China.361 Zhu would have ample opportunity to promote meteorology in particular and science in general to the Chinese nation as Chair of the Meteorology Department at Nanjing

University (1920-1929), director of meteorology for Academia Sinica (1929-1936), President of

Zhejiang University (1936-1949), and later as Vice-President and Fellow of the Chinese

Academy of Social Sciences under Mao.362

When the Nationalists established control over China in 1927, they had great ambitions for turning the country into a modern nation-state that was technocratically competent, scientifically planned, industrially advanced, and internationally respected. 363 Zhu, with his scientific credentials and nationalistic ambition, was thrust into this endeavor from the very start.

The Nationalists established the Academia Sinica in 1928 to concentrate the nation’s scientific resources and promote scientific research. The first president Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940) recruited

Zhu to head the Academia’s Institute of Meteorology. In 1929, Zhu proposed an ambitious ten- year plan to build meteorological stations in the entire country, including Tibet.364

Zhu’s plan makes clear that the building of meteorological stations was a way of reasserting what we might call China’s meteorological sovereignty. Zhu starts by claiming that every civilized and advanced nation (文明先進之國) already has a network of meteorological stations. He lists imperial powers such as Germany, France, Britain, the USA, and Japan, whom

361 On the May Fourth Movement, see Chow Tse-tung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), and Vera Schwartz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 362 Details of Zhu’s life are from Wang Zuoyue, “Zhu Kezhen,” in Noretta Koert, ed. New Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2007), pp. 402-405. He was luckily never purged by Mao unlike many other scientists such as those documented by Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 21-66. On Zhu’s major role in the scientific nationalism of his time, see Wang Zuoyue, “Saving China Through Science,” ibid. 363 William C. Kirby, “Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928-1937,” in Yeh Wen-hsin, ed. Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 137- 160. 364 Zhu Kezhen, “Quanguo Sheli Qixiang Cehousuo Jihuashu” 全國設立氣象測候所計劃書 [Plan to Establish Meteorological Stations in the Entire Country], in Zhu Kezhen Quanji, volume 2, pp. 24-26. I have also seen an original version in the Second Historical Archives of Nanjing. SHA 393-2898, pp. 114-116.

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China sought to catch up with. But he also indicates that China is inferior in this category to new nations such as Turkey and so-called “backwards” nations (退化之國) like Brazil and Argentina, and even to colonies such as India, the Philippines, and Korea, where the British, Americans, and

Japanese had set up meteorological stations. Worst of all, the forecasting stations that were built within China were all made and controlled by foreigners. Zhu again brings up the French Jesuits in Shanghai, and the British in Hong Kong, and adds to them the Germans in Qingdao, and recent news that the Japanese were building stations in Manchuria, the Russians in Outer

Mongolia, and the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin (1865-1952) in Xinjiang. He lamented the fact that foreigners were responsible for building these much-needed meteorological stations in China as a situation wherein “the guest’s voice has overpowered that of the host” 喧賓奪主

(xuanbinduozhu). 365 The foreign guests had usurped China’s sovereignty by building meteorological infrastructure on its own land. The Chinese needed to reassert it by building their own.

Meteorological sovereignty also extended into other realms. Meteorology, Zhu argued, was connected to issues of war (he emphasizes here the control of airspace), knowledge, agriculture, and commerce. Weakness in meteorology also meant China would be vulnerable to foreign “invasion” (侵略) in all these fields. Accordingly, Zhu specifies five major reasons why

China needed a nation-wide meteorological infrastructure, only the second of which dealt with storms. The other four all addressed other matters: the first predictably emphasizes the link between meteorology and agriculture and the third argues that meteorology and the mastery of air travel went hand-in-hand and even claims that Hedin set up a station in Xinjiang to provide

365 Zhu also describes it as “the host of a ritual going into the kitchen to be the cook [preparing the sacrificial meal]” 越俎代庖 (yuezudaipao), which is another Chinese idiom to describe how someone, in this case foreign nations, has overstepped their bounds.

163 data to a German airline company. The fourth reason is that measuring precipitation would aid

China in its quest to control the flooding of its many rivers. His fifth reason is that the promotion of the science of meteorology through physical stations and data accumulation would help rid the people of “superstition” about how weather worked.366 Returning to the second reason, Zhu notes that typhoons not only endanger the Chinese coast every summer and autumn but also the air and shipping lines that linked it with the rest of the world. Zhu explicitly gives the 1922

Chaozhou typhoon (he refers to it as the Shantou typhoon) and the thousands who perished in it as an example of the gravity of the need for meteorological stations. 367 Mastering typhoon meteorology was necessary to build a strong nation and assert Chinese sovereignty.

Meteorological sovereignty required state investment. Having compared the number of observatories other countries had in relation to their surface area, Zhu concludes that China needed at least ten observatories ( 氣象台 ), each supported by a number of primary meteorological stations (頭等測候所), secondary stations (二等測候所), and precipitation stations (雨量測候所). He divides China into ten regions, which seem to have corresponded more to political divisions rather than climatic regimes (Table 6.1).

366 In this regard, Zhu was party to the Nationalist belief that “superstitious regimes” would destroy the modern nation. See Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010). 367 The second reason is worth quoting in full here, “沿海各省如閩粵江浙一帶秋夏之交. 時有颱風往。覆舟沒頂呈為海航業之阻。近年如汕頭颱風損失在千萬元以上頭等颱風之來蹤去跡易於追尋，可以預告” [During the transition from summer to autumn, the coastal provinces such as Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang will experience typhoons from time to time. They sink boats and are an impediment to the business of air and ocean travel. Recently, there have been major typhoons such as the Shantou Typhoon that resulted in damages worth billions of yuan. The comings and goings of these typhoons are easy to track and can be forecasted.]

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Table 6.1 Zhu Kezhen’s Ten Meteorological Regions of China. Region (區) Province/s Involved (包含省)368 Surface Area ( 面積) in Chinese square miles (方里)369 Northeast Region Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, 3,625,290 Rehe, Chahar Northwest Region Shaanxi, Gansu, Suiyuan 2,903,500 Central Region Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei, Hunan, 3,041,500 Anhui, Jiangxi Southeast Region Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, 3,100,500 Yunnan Southwest Region Sichuan, Guizhou, Chuanbian 3,150,600 Manchuria Fengtian, Jilin, Heilongjiang 3,767,700 Qinghai Qinghai 2,400,000 Tibet Xizang 2,200,000 Xinjiang Xinjiang 5,364,800 Mongolia Menggu 4,886,432

The cost to build, run, and maintain all these stations was expensive for the young

Nationalist state. Zhu estimates that building the stations would require at least 900,000 yuan and then every year personnel and maintenance costs would average 480,000 yuan. To finance this,

Zhu proposed reallocating a portion of the annual indemnity payments China owed to Britain and the USA toward his meteorological plan. How successful was Zhu in implementing his project?

The current figures we have are inconsistent and unreliable. One recent study claims that between 1929 and 1941 Zhu was able to build only twenty-eight meteorological stations.370 Not only is the terminology not clarified, for the study does not distinguish between observatories, meteorological stations, and precipitation stations, as Zhu did, it is obvious that the data are not complete. Many provinces such as Guangdong where we know observatories and stations were built are not included in the list. It has not been possible nor is it necessary for me to attempt a

368 The Nationalist provinces did not always correspond to those of the People’s Republic of China but Guangdong was the same for both. 369 Pre-1930 Chinese mile would be 576 meters and after 1930 it would be 500 meters in length. 370 Wang Dong 王东 and Ding Yuping 丁玉平, “Zhu Kezhen yu Woguo Qixiangtai de Jianshe”“竺可桢与我国气象台站的建设 [Zhu Kezhen and the Establishment of Our Nation’s Meteorological Stations], Qixiang Keji Jinzhan 气象科技进展 [Meteorological Technology Progress] 4.6 (2014): 67-73.

165 reconstruction of a nationwide figure. But I hope that we can take one step toward a clearer understanding of theis network by reconstructing the history of how Guangdong built its meteorological system during the Nanjing Decade.

Building Meteorological Infrastructure in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space

We do not have a reliable picture of exactly how successful Zhu’s plan was because construction was dependent on many factors, such as the availability of funds on the national and local level, the commitment of local politicians, and so on. The outbreak of war with Japan after

1937 would have also complicated the situation by preventing the building of more stations or the destruction of built ones. In this section, I narrate the story of how the Guangdong network was established to illustrate how complicated this was to do even in one province. It also highlights the Nationalist commitment to its developmental state ambitions through meteorology and shows that typhoons were a primary motive for building the network in Guangdong.

Though the national plan to construct meteorological stations was promulgated in 1929 and a national plan for the conduct of meteorological forecasting announced in 1932, these only began to be implemented in Guangdong in 1933.371 Though Guangdong was the base from which Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition was launched to consolidate Nationalist control of

China in 1926, the establishment of Nanjing as the Nationalist base meant leaving Guangdong in the hands of military governors who effectively functioned as what James Sheridan has called

“residual warlords” or what Diana Lary prefers to call Guomindang warlords. 372 The

Guomindang warlord in Guangdong in 1929 was Chen Jitang 陳濟棠 (1890-1954), a Hakka

371 The Guangdong government received the national plan for the conduct of meteorological forecasting 全國氣象觀測實施規程 by early November of 1932. GZSZGB 409.1 (1932/11/10) pp. 1-8. 372 James E. Sheridan, Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), and Diana Lary, Region and Nation: The Kwangsi Clique in Chinese Politics, 1925-1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 130.

166 from Guangxi who served as Chiang Kai-shek’s top military man in Guangdong. In 1930, Chen was preoccupied with fighting the Guangxi clique and he also did not have full control of

Guangdong as he had to share power with Chen Mingshu, the chair of the Guangdong Provincial

Government. Then in 1931, he joined an anti-Chiang Kai-shek movement that was provoked by

Chiang’s imprisonment of Hu Hanmin, the president of the Legislative Yuan. Chen Jitang used the opportunity to oust Chen Mingshu and gain full control of the province. But his engagement in military struggles from 1930 to 1931 meant that he channeled much of the provincial revenue into his war effort rather than development projects. In early 1932, with Chiang Kai-shek busy dealing with the Japanese after the Mukden Incident in September 1931 and the release of Hu

Hanmin in October, Chen Jitang dissolved his national government and mended fences with

Nanjing. A series of political and military maneuvers allowed him to remove all opposition to his authority in Guangdong and he also obtained full control of the province’s finances.373

Secure in his power, with the revenue of the province at his disposal, and eager to show his constituents that he was a progressive politician, Chen launched on January 1, 1933, his own three-year version of Sun Yat-sen’s famous Industrialization Plan of 1924. This Three-Year

Administative Plan (三年施政計劃) promised to create a “new model Guangdong” (模範之新廣

東) for the rest of the country to follow.374 Alfred Lin, studying the province’s fiscal record, argues that this ambitious modernization project ran into serious constraints because Chen continued to funnel money into military financing. 375 Nonetheless, compared to many other provinces, historians consider Chen’s efforts in Guangdong to be impressive.376

373 Albert H.Y. Lin, “Building and Funding a Warlord Regime: The Experience of Chen Jitang in Guangdong, 1929- 1936,” Modern China 28.2 (2002): 177-212. 374 Lin, “Building and Funding a Warlord Regime,” p. 183. 375 Lin, “Building and Funding a Warlord Regime,” ibid. 376 Lary, Region and Nation, p. 17, identifies Guangdong, Shanxi, Shandong, and Guangxi as the provinces where the most serious modernization efforts occurred.

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Within Chen’s triennium modernization project there was a meteorological three-year plan. Chen assigned astronomy professor Zhang Yun 張雲 (1897-1958) to come up with a plan to create the meteorological infrastructure to be run under the education bureau. Zhang Yun, who hailed from Kaiping near the Pearl River Delta, followed an interesting career trajectory. After finishing college in Wuhan in 1917, he became principal of a Chinese school in the province of

Iloilo in the Philippines before returning to China in 1920 and traveling to France to obtain his

Ph.D. in astronomy from Université de Lyon in 1926. He became a noted expert on eclipsing variable and Cepheid variable stars. He returned to Guangzhou in 1927 to Sun Yat-sen

University, one of the nation’s premier universities established by no less than Sun himself who saw the university and the Whampoa Military Academy as the civil and military complements to the formation of a strong Chinese nation. Zhang quickly rose through the academic ranks, becoming a full professor and eventually the president of the university. He was also a fellow of the astronomy division of Academia Sinica.377 Meteorology as a Western discipline was first subsumed and had a close connection to astronomy from the beginning (recall how meteorology and typhoons were embedded in John Herschel’s treatise on astronomy). As a prominent

Western-educated astronomist, Zhang Yun was called upon to implement Chen’s meteorological ambitions.

In the plan that Zhang drew up, Guangdong’s vulnerability to typhoons remained prominent as justification for the building of meteorological infrastructure. Zhang writes of his province:

377 Details of Zhang’s life are from “Zhang Yun Chuan” 張雲傳 [Biography of Zhang Yun], in Nong Mei 溢美, and Lu Jiaxi 盧嘉錫, eds. Zhongguo Xiandai Kexuejia Chuanji 中國現代科學家傳記 [Biographies of China’s Modern Scientists], volume 2, (北京: 科學出版社, 1991), pp.294-298. Practically a mirror biography is “Zhang Yun Chuan” 張雲傳 in Song Lizhi 宋立志, ed., Mingxiao Jingying-Zhongshan Daxue 名校精英-中山大學 [Outstanding Alumni of the Famous Schools: Sun Yat-sen University] (Yuanfang Chubanshe, 2005), pp. 94-98.

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Our Guangdong is located between the temperate and tropical belts and is our nation’s southernmost territory. To its south lies the ocean and to its north it links with the mainland. [As a result,] the changes in its weather are extremely complex. The elements of climate are of great significance to every part of the country. For example, many East Asian low pressure systems [= cyclone/typhoon] come from the western Pacific, cross the Philippines and the South China Sea and reach Guangdong and Fujian before turning north or northeast. If Guangdong had adequate meteorological resources then [the task of] forecasting the whole country’s and Japan’s weather would be easy. Furthermore, with regard to the typhoon disasters that our Guangdong has suffered over the years, the pain and suffering of it is something that we should keep in our memory.378

This concern with typhoons and the need for adequate meteorological warning systems was also expressed in terms of nationalist and developmentalist sentiment. Guangdong and its ports were a major thouroughfare for both international shipping and air routes. With the rise of air travel after World War I, planes increasingly relied on meteorological stations for timely weather information. Zhang considers the provisioning of such information as planes enter China’s airspace the duty of a nation party to international agreements (締約國). If China did not have meteorological stations, then pilots would have to request this data from other countries, such as the British in Hong Kong, and this would constitute “the greatest humiliation on the level of international relations and national sovereignty” (國際上與主權上之損辱，亦莫大焉). Like

Zhu Kezhen, Zhang Yun believed that China needed to enforce its meteorological sovereignty.

To ease the financial burden of the whole endeavor, Zhang spread the cost across three financial years. The first year would be used to complete the main observatory in Guangzhou, supply it with the minimum necessary equipment, and train personnel. Providing a detailed breakdown of the expenses, Zhang requested a budget of 89,998 yuan for the first year divided into 69,940 yuan for the first six months of construction and 20,478 yuan for the next six months

378 “吾粵處溫帶與熱帶間，為吾國最南領土。南濱洋海，北連大陸，天氣之變化極繁，氣象要素，對於國內各地之影響尤鉅。蓋東亞低氣壓中心，多由太平洋西岸，經菲律濱及南海而至粵閩，以轉向北或東北行。如粵方有氣象上之充分材料，則我國全部與日本方面之氣象，其預測也易矣。即以吾粵歷來所受風災而論，其痛苦亦當為吾人所記之憶。” in GZSZGB 417 (1933/01/31), pp. 40-46.

169 for salaries and material upkeep of the observatory. In the second year, Zhang aimed to expand the facilities of the main observatory with equipment necessary to produce high quality forecasts for air and oceanic travel. He also wanted to begin construction of nine primary meteorological stations that would feed data to the main observatory. These nine stations were located in cities that either already had airports (Haikou, Doushan, Heping, Deqing, Qujiang, Maoming, Beihai, and Shantou) or were expected to build one (Shanwei) thereby emphasizing the close connection between meteorological and economic progress. The second year would require 230,544 yuan of funding. The third year would require only a budget to provide for annual maintenance, which

Zhang estimated to be 84,544 yuan per year. The money for all this was to be taken from the resources of the Bureau of Education, which in fiscal year 1931-1932 had a budget of 1,611,809 yuan; in 1932-1933 of 1,993,597 yuan; and in 1933-1934 of 2,369,717 yuan. The second year of

Zhang’s plan would have consumed more than ten percent of the Bureau of Education’s budget from 1932 to 1933 and was the most burdensome part of the plan.379 Chen Jitang approved the project immediately and by the end of January 1933 the Bureau of Education started allocating funds for it. In early February Zhang Yun was appointed director of the project.380

From 1933 to 1935, work on the meteorological network proceeded fairly smoothly with few hiccups. On October 10, 1933, the Double Tenth holiday commemorating the founding of the Republic of China, the mayor of Guangzhou announced that one of the city’s northern districts, Shipai 石牌, would be home to the observatory and that the municipal government had contracted Yongyi Company to build it for 34,961.90 yuan. The mayor made a point of saying that once the observatory was completed, the citizens of Guangzhou could expect to receive

379 The budget figures of the Bureau of Education are from Lin, “Building and Funding a Warlord Regime,” p. 193. 380 GZSZGB 418 (1933/02/10), p. 82.

170 reliable weather and typhoon forecasts.381 Yongyi began construction work in November. Zhang encountered some financial issues as construction progressed. Since Shipai was farther from the city center, existing electricity, phone, and water lines did not reach the observatory and so more money was requested. The company also needed to purchase equipment through Hong Kong but the value of the Hong Kong dollar had risen in the time between Zhang’s first budget estimate and the time when they were ready to buy the equipment so more funds were requested to make up the difference. The municipal government approved all of Zhang’s requests in their next meeting.382

Though Zhang could not complete the main observatory within the first year, progress on it continued as work on the nine primary meteorological stations also began in the second year.383 By the end of January 1935, Zhang reported that the main observatory was almost done and that they had purchased all equipment for it. 384 The next month, Yongyi Company announced the end of construction and the municipal government approved the four-story building upon inspection.385 Zhang Yun was officially appointed the director of the Guangzhou

Observatory at the end of February. 386 On March 12, the mayor of Guangzhou Liu Jiwen presided over the inauguration of the observatory.387

The choice of March 12 for the observatory’s inauguration was highly symbolic of the link between meteorology and nation. March 12 was the anniversary of the Father of the Nation

Sun Yat-sen’s death. Chiang Kai-shek had also designated it Arbor Day in 1929 when he launched his Afforestation Movement to build up China’s forest reserves. Arbor Day, first

381 GZSZGB 442 (1933/10/10), Appendix, p. 48. 382 GZSZGB 459 (1934/03/31), pp. 10-11. 383 GZSZGB 486 (1934/12/31), p. 76. 384 GZSZGB 488 (1935/01/20), p. 111. 385 GZSZGB 490 (1935/02/10), p. 60. 386 GZSZGB 492 (1935/02/28), p. 14. 387 GZSZGB 494 (1935/03/20), p. 143.

171 enacted in 1914 by Yuan Shikai had originally been celebrated on the Qingming Festival, which was a family holiday. Chiang disassociated the Afforestation Movement and thus his developmental agenda from the family and sutured it to the nation.388 Mayor Liu made this connection clear when he explained in his speech why the observatory was opened on this date:

We know that the Afforestation Movement is one of the [Guomindang] Party’s seven movements and has a strong connection with the ideology of the nation. Sun Yat-sen’s posthumous instruction was that we needed to create forests in order to guard against typhoon and flood disasters and to regulate the climate and soils.389

By opening the observatory on March 12, Mayor Liu was linking meteorology with forestry, the nation, and its developmental agenda.

The gravity of this symbolism was matched by the seriousness of the ceremony. The main gate of the observatory was covered in silk gauze in preparation for its’ unveiling and a platform was setup in the open space in front of the gate. A battalion of soldiers patrolled the grounds and the municipal’s official description of the ceremony remarked that the

“circumstances were unusually grand” (情形異常隆重). All of the city’s bureau directors were present as well as the municipal secretary, a Guomindang Party representative, and guests numbered more than a thousand. The ceremony started at noon and including Mayor Liu’s speech lasted for an hour.

Apart from his linkage of the observatory to the Afforestation Movement and the Father of the Nation, Mayor Liu’s speech reiterated in other ways the developmental and nationalist sentiment behind the building of the observatory. He connected meteorology to every aspect of a nation’s well-being including agriculture, railroads, air travel, shipping, military, commerce, waterworks, and hygiene. He noted how every great nation built meteorological stations and how

388 E. Elena Songster, “Cultivating the Nation in Fujian’s Forests: Forest Policies and Afforestation Efforts in China, 1911-1937,” Environmental History 8.3 (2003): 452-473. See p. 464. 389 “我們知道造林運動是本黨七項運動之一，與民主義有重大的關係。總理遺教對於造林可以防止風災水災旱災，以及調節氣候土壤等,” in GZSZGB 494 (1935/03/20), p. 143.

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China was so vast that it was important that the nation be able to grasp the entirety of its climate.

The humiliating examples of foreign observatories in Shanghai and Hong Kong were repeated and the mayor proudly proclaimed that it will “no longer be like before when they needed to intermittently inquire from the Hong Kong Observatory to receive news” (不至若以前須間接由

香港天文台探訪，傳遞消息了). China could now produce its own forecasts and assert its meteorological sovereignty. Most importantly, for the story I am telling, and for practical reasons the Mayor justified the expense of building all this meteorological infrastructure as resulting from “the fact that Guangdong is a littoral region with a very long coastline. Typhoons, shipping, and people’s livelihood were very much related” (況且廣東是瀕海的地方，海安線極長，颶

風暴雨對於航海及人民生命財產極有關係). In Guangdong’s typhoon space, the observatory was not just a “showpiece” (裝飾品).390

By the end of 1935, the observatory was fully operational and publishing weather information daily and monthly, including temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloud cover, wind direction and strength, visibility, and barometric pressure.391 The observatory also had ties with international observatories with which it shared data. A 1938 list included countries and territories such as Canada, Germany, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Hong Kong, France, Argentina, Spain,

Syria, Austria, and Western Samoa. 392 These lists were part of the observatory’s monthly publications.393

390 GZSZGB 494 (1935/03/20), p. 143. 391 GZSZGB 518.2 (1935/11/20), p. 164. 392 Guangzhoushi Qixiangtai Qixiang Yuekan 廣州市氣象臺氣象月刊 [Guangzhou Municipal Observatory Monthly Publication], February 1938. This and other municipal sources used in this chapter are from the Guangzhou Municipal Archives. 393 The Guangdong Municipal Archives has a number of these journals/bulletins stored and would be basic primary sources for local climate reconstruction

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The observatory’s publication of weather data stops abruptly in 1938. The Japanese launched their Guangzhou operation that year and took over the city and the Pearl River Delta.

When the municipal government evacuated they were unable to take with them any of the observatory’s equipment and the observatory itself was destroyed in the fighting. A year after

World War II ended in the Pacific, the provincial government revived discussions to rebuild the observatory and its associated meteorological stations. Zhang Yun returned to draft the new plan.

His postwar plan required three phases and would cost 913,563,210 yuan! The first development phase required 61,839,120 yuan. The second construction phase would eat up the most money at

665,000,000 yuan. The final phase when maintenance began would cost 192,220,460 yuan.394

Given the expense, and the outbreak of civil war, the Nationalists never completed the project but they laid the foundation for the Communists who inherited the plans and executed it in their own way.

Typhoon Meteorology in the Service of Communist Scientific Consolidation

There is now widespread consensus in the field of Chinese historiography that 1949 did not necessarily constitute a sharp break. The pre-1949 Nationalist regime and the post-1949 regimes in both mainland China and Taiwan shared much continuity in policy and personnel.395

Aside from demonstrating that the Nationalist regime was far from feckless, this research also showed that the Communist regime owed much to its defeated predecessor and indeed carried

394 Guangzhoushi Zhengfu 廣州市政府 [Guangzhou Municipal Government Bulletin] 4-02-525-361811, (September-October 1946). Copy in Guangdong Municipal Archives. It contains a copy of Zhang Yun’s draft blueprint for the Guangzhou Observatory. 395 William C. Kirby, “Continuity and Change in Modern China: Economic Planning on the Mainland and on Taiwan, 1943-1957,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 24 (1990): 121-141.

174 out its own modernization program on the foundation set by the former. 396 In the area of meteorology, this continuity was also evident.

Like the Nationalists before them, the Communists saw meteorology as their ally in their quest to modernize. In its early years, the PRC state identified typhoons (颱風) and cold-air outbreaks (寒潮) as enemies capable of destroying infrastructure (land), disrupting lives (labor), and damaging the economy (capital). From the Marxist view of production, such weather events threatened everything from industry, agriculture, forestry, waterworks, shipping, rails, fisheries, pasturage, to salt industries, and thus required state attention. 397 The Communists would eventually fulfill Zhu Kezhen’s dream. Zhu, who was disillusioned by the Nationalists, and defied Chiang Kai-shek’s order to retreat with him to Taiwan, escaped to Shanghai where he eventually joined the Communists to continue his work of promoting science in China.398

With China as an emerging world power after World War II, the Mao state was less concerned with meteorological sovereignty but nonetheless saw meteorology as a tool for establishing its domestic legitimacy. In a 1954 national directive on “Strengthening Forecast,

Warning, and Preventive Work Against Disastrous Weather” (加強災害性天氣的預報，警報和

預防工作的指示 ), Premier Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) emphasized the importance of

396 This was true on many levels from the national to the local. Some recent research has shown for example that the vigorous economic planning that occurred under Chen Jitang in Guangdong led by his agriculture right-hand man Feng Rui formed the foundation for the Communist economic restructuring of the future powerhouse province in the 1950s. See Emily M. Hill, Smokeless Sugar: The Death of a Provincial Bureaucrat and the Construction of China’s National Economy (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010). 397 See the March 6, 1954 directive (approved at the 204th meeting of the Government Administrative Council of the Central People’s Government (中央人民政府政務院) led by Premier Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) on January 28, 1954) on “Jiaqiang Zaihaixing Tianqi de Yubao, Jingbao he Yufang Gongzuo de Zhishi” 加強災害性天氣的預報，警報和預防工作的指示 [Strengthening Forecast, Warning, and Preventive Work Against Disastrous Weather] in Taifeng Gongzuo Shouce 颱風工作手冊 [Typhoon Work Handbook] (Guangdongsheng Fangxun Fangfeng Shengchan Jiuzai Lianhe Zong Zhihuibu Bangongshi, 1954), pp. 1-3. The Government Administrative Council, established on October 21, 1949, was the main executive organ of the People’s Republic of China before it was renamed the State Council after a constitution was passed on September 20, 1954. 398 Wang Zuoyue, “Zhu Kezhen,” pp. 404-405.

175 disseminating timely and accurate climate information in order to “strengthen the people’s belief that we can prevail over natural disasters” (加強人民對戰勝天災的信心).399 The provincial government of Guangdong issued on June 9 its own directive “On Strengthening Typhoon

Preventive Work in 1954” (關於加強 1954 年防風工作的指示) where it highlighted the province’s extensive littoral, proximity to the Northwestern Pacific Typhoon Zone, and long history of landing typhoons. The Guangdong directive identified a number of issues for rectification including lack of scientific knowledge about typhoons among the general public and cadres, and inefficiency in the dispatch of meteorological reports.400 The PRC state pinned its hopes of climatic defense on the science of meteorology.

The first step in developing such a science was to build an adequate meteorological infrastructure that could provide timely weather reports. To aid with flood control, Guangdong and Guangxi combined had fifteen flood report stations (報汛站) in 1951 with three more in the works, whose job it was to record precipitation and water levels. These stations reported daily to the Pearl River Waterworks Engineering Main Bureau and other concerned units via telegraph. 401 Though Zhang Yun had relocated to Hong Kong, where he died in 1958, the

Communists inherited his meteorological building plans, which not only led to the rebuilding of the Guangzhou Observatory but also contained a blueprint for the establishment of seventeen typhoon signal warning stations (颱風信號站) all along the Guangdong coast.402 By the 1950s,

399 Taifeng Gongzuo Shouce, p. 3. 400 Taifeng Gongzuo Shouce, pp. 4-7. 401 GPA 235-1-81-047~048 Huanan Fenju 華南分局 [South China Branch Bureau], Sheng Renmin Zhengfu 省人民政府 [, Provincial People’s Government], Huanan Junqu 華南軍區 South China Military, “Guanyu Fangfeng Qiangxian de Lianhe Zhishi”關於防風搶險的聯合指示 [Regarding the Joint Directive for Typhoon Control and Rescue] (1951/04/29). 402 The seventeen stations were, from east to west, to be established in Nan’ao, Chaoyang, Huilai, Jieshi, Bao’an, Qingcaoxu, Chixi, Jiangmen, Guanghai, Yangjiang, Dianbai, Zhanjiang, Haikang, Xuwen, Beihai, Dongxing, and Qinzhou. GPA 006-002-0044-067~068 王憲釗 Wang Xianzhao, “Zhongyang Qixiangju Guangzhou Qixiangtai guanyu wei fangfan Taifeng Qinxi Niding sheli Xinhaozhan Hezuo Banfa shi Zantong yishi Gonghan” 中央氣象局

176 technology available both worldwide and in the observatory allowed for the tracking of typhoons at least a day and even two in advance of its arrival. From 1952-1953, the Communists out did the Nationalists by constructing fifty-four typhoon warning stations (颱風警報站) along the entire coast from Chaozhou down to Hainan (Table 6.2). The Observatory telegraphed or phoned the stations information on the typhoons and the stations then put up typhoon signals to indicate the wind force (according to the Beaufort scale), a proxy for how strong the storm would be, and time of possible arrival in their area of the approaching storm (Figure 6.1).403 The Beaufort scale used in Guangzhou was a direct descendant of the Hong Kong system adopted by Guangzhou in

1908.

廣州氣象台關於為防範颱風侵襲擬定設立信號站合作辦法是讚同一事公函 [Official Letter of Approval from the Central Meteorological Bureau Guangzhou Observatory Regarding the Plan to Establish Signal Stations to Guard Against Typhoons], (1949/04/25). See also GPA 006-002-0044071~072 Guangdongsheng Zhenfu Jiansheting Jiaotongbu Zhongyang Qixiangju Guangzhou Qixiangtai Sheli Taifeng Xinhaozhan Hezuo Banfa 廣東省政府建設廳交通部中央氣象局廣州氣象台設立颱風信號站合作辦法 [Guangdong Provincial Government Infrastructure Department Transportation Division, Central Meteorological Bureau Guangzhou Observatory Joint Plan to Setup Typhoon Signal Stations], n.d. 403 GPA 235-1-104-152~157 “Guanyu Jueding Bensheng Yanhai Taifeng Jingbaozhan Quanbu yijiao Difang Zhengfu Banli Xizhuanzhi Yanhai Difang Zhengfu Jinxing Jieguan bing Banli Qingkuang bao Sheng Fangxun Fangfeng Zong” 關於決定本省沿海颱風警報站全部移交地方政府辦理希轉知沿海地方政府進行接管并將辦理情況報省防汛防風總 [Regarding the Decision to Transfer Control of Coastal Typhoon Warning Stations to the Local Governments and to Report the Management Situation to the Flood and Typhoon Control Headquarters], 1953

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Table 6.2 Typhoon Warning Stations Completed Between 1952-1953.404 Region Completed in 1952 (Location Completed in 1953 Total and number of stations) (Location and number of stations) Eastern Chaoyang (2), Nan’ao, Huilai, Raoping, Nan’ao, Chaoyang, Huilai, 17 Guangdong Lufeng (2), Haifeng (3), Chenghai, Lufeng (粵東) Huiyang (2) Central Zhuhai (3), Bao’an Zhuhai (7), Bao’an 12 Guangdong (粵中) Western Taishan (2), Yangjiang (2), Yangjiang (2), Taishan (3), Haikang, 17 Guangdong Dianbai (2), Haikang, Xuwen, Suixi (2) (粵西) Leidong Hainan (海南) Yazhou (2), Lingshui, Lingao, Danxian, Wenchang, Bo’ao 8 Danxian Total 27 27 54

Figure 6.1 Typhoon Signals.405

404 Adapted from the table in GPA 235-1-104-152~157, p. 154. The original table listed very specific locations, some of which were not legible, within each county. I have chosen to just present the county and the number of stations built within. 405 The dark diamond on the left (daytime) and the red and green circles on the right (nighttime) indicate that a storm with level-8 winds may appear on this part of the coast within the next six hours. Hu Jiqin 胡繼勤 and Li Cimin 李次民, Huanan de Taifeng 華南的颱風 [South China Typhoons] (Guangzhou: Huanan Renmin Chubanshe, 1955), pp. 15-16.

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During typhoon season, the Guangzhou Observatory sent out official reports to the radio stations, provincial channels, coastal channels, and newspapers that in turn were responsible for copying and passing on the information to units assigned to them. Newspapers published them for the reading public while radio stations broadcast them to a listening audience. The province’s main channels, the People’s Guangzhou Channel ( 省人民廣州臺) and the Industrial and

Commercial Channel (工商臺), made several daily broadcasts of the reports. Ships received their news through coastal channels, which specifically reached them. Radio stations, upon receiving reports, were to put up typhoon signals and pass the report and signal on to the various levels below the provincial government such as the county, and departments such as transport and commerce. These in turn informed smaller units such as the district, community, and village until they finally reached the brigades and work teams.406

Because the presence of radio stations could not be assumed of these most basic units, a variety of alternative methods were used to disseminate said information. These included blackboard reports (黑板報), alarm bells (鳴鐘), blow horns or criers (土廣播), and beacon fires

(烽火). Coastal shipping, fishing, and salt industries were told to acquire equipment like radios, flags, and typhoon signal posts, and to assign professionals to man them. The provincial government did its best to allocate funds to help set them up but their future management would be left to local maritime industries and fishing associations (水產公司或漁協會). Local units that had radios were told to assign someone to listen for typhoon reports and disseminate them to others in timely fashion.407

406 GPA 235-1-94-007~015 Sheng Renmin Zhengfu 省人民政府 (Provincial Government) “Guanyu Zuzhi Fangfeng Zhihui Jigou Jiaqiang Fangfeng Gongzuo de Jueding Tonzhi” 關於組織防風指揮機構加強防風工作的決定通知】[Regarding Decision to Organize a Typhoon Control Leadership Structure and Strengthen Typhoon Control Work] (1952/10/23). 407 GPA 235-1-94-007~015, ibid.

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The Mao period was fortunate as well to have access to radar technology for typhoon forecasting. The US Navy in World War II had discovered in their Pacific Ocean campaigns that when they sent out radar signals to detect enemy aircraft, they were receiving strange signals.

They found that these signals were coming from storm and precipitation systems and radar operators quickly learned to use the technology for the purposes of meteorology.408 In 1958,

China acquired its first radar systems, one for Beijing and one for Shanghai, and radar technology steadily grew in China over the next several decades.409 Guangdong, through the

Guangzhou Observatory, acquired for the price of 14,4000 US dollars its first radar specifically for the purpose of detecting typhoons in 1959.410 In these ways, the early PRC state sought to combat typhoons by creating a network of meteorological nodes, equipped with modern equipment that passed vital climate information from one point to another.

Forming a Meteorological Society

For information to have value and lead to action, those who receive it must be able to process and understand it within a context that is meaningful to them. Though the early PRC state was impressive in its ability to reach and mobilize the masses, it wanted and needed the populace to understand that its policies were scientific and rational and thus legitimate and worth following. As detailed in previous chapters, there were many different explanations of typhoons that circulated in coastal village China. The Mao state, like the Nationalist regime before it,

408 Robert C. Whiton, and Paul C. Smith, “History of Operational Use of Weather Radar by U.S. Weather Services. Part I: The Pre-NEXRAD Era,” Weather and Forecasting 13.2 (1998): 219-243. 409 Xu Yumao, “Radar Meteorology in the People’s Republic of China,” in David Atlas, ed., Radar in Meteorology (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1990), pp. 80-85. 410 GPA 306-1-20-38 to 40 “Shengwei guanyu Taifeng Leida Teshu Shebei he Cailiao de Pifu” 省委關於颱風雷達特殊設備和材料的批復 [Provincial Board Regarding the Approval of the Typhoon Radar and Special Equipment and Material] (1959/07/07).

180 sought to eliminate such “superstitions” (破除迷信) as a step toward what Miriam Gross has called the “scientific consolidation” of its power among the masses.411

Guangdong’s meteorological infrastructure and network were impressive given how young the PRC regime was in the 1950s, but officials, cadres, and more importantly the people needed to understand the information that coursed through it if they were to voluntarily mobilize to fight typhoons, as the state wanted them to do. The provincial government printed short pamphlets that explained typhoons in simple language, complete with figures and illustrations.

An early and short 12-page pamphlet, Typhoon Basics (颱風常識), printed by the Guangdong

Maritime Observatory (廣東海洋氣象台) in July of 1953, begins with “what is a typhoon?” (颱

風是什麼), progresses into questions and answers about where and why it originates, when and how it is formed, leads into questions asking how dangerous can it be, and ends with questions about whether people can defend against it (the answer is yes! [颱風是可以防禦的]) as a way to convince people about the logic of the state’s meteorological and mobilization policies.412

Aside from the simple question and answer format, the authors of these primers and pamphlets did their best to appeal to a wide audience by being creative in their explanations and by even incorporating widely accepted “superstition.” A longer but still simple pamphlet, the

1955 South China Typhoons (華南的颱風), printed by the South China People’s Press, used a candle lamp to illustrate how warm and cold winds mix together to form the cyclonic structure of a typhoon (Figure 6.2).413 Rather than outright rejecting all “superstition,” the CCP at times acknowledged widely accepted beliefs. Typhoon Basics recommends using “horsetail clouds”

411 Miriam Gross, Farewell to the God of Plague: Chairman Mao’s Campaign to Deworm China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), p. 11. 412 Guangdong Haiyang Qixiangtai 廣東海洋氣象台 [Guangdong Maritime Observatory, ed], Taifeng Changshi 颱風常識 [Typhoon Basics], 1953. 413 Huanan de Taifeng, pp. 3-5.

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(馬尾雲), bright red rays of light or rainbows that fan out around six to eight hundred li from the eye of a typhoon, as an early warning sign for an impending storm. By at least the tenth century, people living on the Guangdong coast knew this as the Typhoon Mother (see previous chapters).414 Science mixed with “superstition” when necessary or when it could help the state establish a connection with people.

Figure 6.2 Candle Lamp Circulation and Cyclone Wind Circulation.415

Another way of bringing science to the people was to organize public exhibitions. It is not uncommon to read in summaries of typhoon control work throughout the Maoist period that people did not follow through because they were “superstitious” and lacked scientific knowledge of both typhoons and how to defend against them. In May of 1955, the provincial organization in charge of typhoons (to be discussed in the next chapter) decided to put on a traveling exhibition

(巡迴展覽) about typhoons that would begin with Guangzhou and move through the coastal areas. The organizing committee was large, comprised of representatives from fourteen different

414 Taifeng Changshi, pp. 7-8. 415 Huanan de Taifeng, 1955, pp. 4, 6).

182 departments! Aside from the provincial typhoon division, members from provincial administrative branches such as the Guangzhou Observatory, the Forestry Bureau, the

Waterworks Bureau, the Maritime Transport Administration, and scientific societies such as the

Provincial Society for the Promotion of Science and Technology (省科學技術普及學會) and the

Guangdong Branch of the Society of Geologists (地理學會廣東分會) sat on the committee.

But even planning and executing the initial exhibition in Guangzhou was difficult. The estimated cost to set up and maintain it would amount to almost 2,000 yuan. The organizers could not get to that amount even after the Society for the Promotion of Science and Technology put up 500 yuan while the rest of the departments contributed 60 yuan each. They chose an appropriately large venue. The Lingnan Relics Palace (嶺南文物宮), the present Guangzhou

Cultural Park (廣州文化公園), had a spacious main hall with side rooms and corridors covering

2,000 square meters. The exhibit was divided into four parts: 1) typhoon as disaster, 2) typhoon meteorology, 3) the Guangzhou Observatory’s forecasting (work and equipment) and the typhoon control work done by the GTCLD, and 4) results of such work. There were twenty-eight models, 180 pictures, fifty-two kinds of equipment, and one science film. But later criticism of the event revealed that some of the exhibit material contained flawed information, that the order of the exhibit was not well thought-out, and that there were not enough visual models while there was too much information in writing. They also had trouble finding people to function as guides for this massive event and there were always questions about the competency of those who served in this capacity. Due to other political campaigns underway at the time, the government could only mobilize thirty faculty and students from Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University with assistance from experts of the Guangzhou Observatory, the provincial typhoon division, and the

Society for Promotion of Science and Technology to man the exhibit. The Lingnan Relics Palace

183 contributed thirty-two guides (講解人員) whose education levels did not exceed secondary school. Some even did not speak the appropriate languages, whether Mandarin or Cantonese.

There was also a bit too much enthusiasm (熱情) and not enough expertise (專業).416

The exhibit still had its successes. Though the opening day was delayed two weeks, it opened on August 15 rather than August 1, the exhibit lasted till September 5 for a total of twenty-two days. 47,618 people showed up or an average of 2,100 people per day. Most went at night after work and on one busy night 3,500 people walked through the exhibit doors. Some were repeat visitors who showed a lot of curiosity by asking many questions each time. Non-

Guangzhou residents from coastal areas also found their way to the exhibit and at least one teacher who wandered in wished that all schools had a meteorological exhibit for their students.

Nonetheless, despite printing over 50,000 brochures, having all the newspapers cover it, and regularly broadcasting news of the event over the radio, the organizers complained that more people could have seen the exhibit had other government units (單位) organized group visits and if the newspaper ads had not posted a few days late. Planning and executing this one event was so difficult that the bureaus involved eventually called off plans to have a roving coastal exhibit.417 Despite never making it out of Guangzhou, the exhibition embodied the hopes of the

PRC state to promote meteorology all along the province’s coastal typhoon space.

416 GPA 266-1-40-56~59 Sheng Shuiliting 省水利廳 [Provincial Wateworks Bureau] “Guangdongsheng Fang Taifeng Zhanlanhui Guangzhoushi Zhanchu Gongzuo Zongjie” 廣東省防颱風展覽會廣州市展出工作總結 [Summary of the Work Done on the Guangzhou City Exhibit Part of the Guangdong Province Typhoon Control Exhibition], (1955/10/15). 417 GPA 266-1-40-56~59, ibid.

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Conclusion

We began this chapter with the 2010 claim of a PRC publication that Guangdong’s meteorological infrastructure began in the 1950s with the PRC. As I have shown, this inaccurate chronology only serves to highlight 1949 as a break with a past wherein Guangdong supposedly had no such infrastructure prior to the establishment of the PRC. While it is true that the

Communists created a meteorological network that past regimes could not rival, the dreams that envisioned it and the foundations on which it was built were laid long before 1949.

The people of coastal Guangdong already possessed a large repertoire of methods, albeit unsystematic and whose effectiveness is debatable, for forecasting typhoons (Chapter Three).

One might even be tempted to say that the Yongzheng emperor’s order to establish a series of

Wind God Temples along the coast constituted a form of state investment in meteorological infrastructure (Chapter Four). If we think of meteorology as a Western scientific discipline with its accompanying theories, experts, equipment, and bases, and as an agent of imperialism, then the Chinese coast in the 1850s was already brimming with aspirations of meteorology as colonial powers saw the utility of being able to forecast typhoons in light of the damage they could wreak on settlements and shipping lanes.

The establishment of meteorological observatories by foreign powers along the Chinese coast became a source of irritation for Chinese scientists who hoped that by bringing Western science back to China they could make their nation great again. Scientists like Zhu Kezhen saw meteorology as a key science as climate and weather had ramifications for practically every other aspect of national governance from agriculture to defense. In light of China’s precarious status in the international community of nations, they also constantly invoked the need for China to assert its meteorological sovereignty. The dream of a national meteorological infrastructure that

185 answered the needs of a nation seeking to redeem itself in the world began in the early twentieth century with scientists like Zhu who tried to make it reality under the Nationalists.

But implementing their plans even at the local level was never easy during the Nanjing

Decade. In Guangdong, the rule of Chen Jitang, a Guomindang warlord who had progressive inclinations, helped get the meteorological ball rolling. Through the vision of astronomist Zhang

Yun, the first blueprint for a meteorological network on the Guangdong coast was written up.

The first Guangzhou observatory and a limited number of satellite meteorological stations was established in 1935.

Though the Nationalist network was destroyed in World War II, the Communists inherited the blueprints and brought them to fruition. Meteorology was an important part of the

Communist campaign to consolidate CCP governance at the most basic levels of society by portraying them Communist Party as one whose decisions and actions were based on rational science. To this end, they not only brought to life Zhu Kezhen’s dream of meteorological infrastructure and broadcasting apparatus, they attempted to create a meteorological society through the dissemination of scientific pamphlets and the holding of scientific exhibitions.

Typhoons were at the center of all this activity. Typhoons inspired foreign merchants to support the building of observatories in treaty ports. Zhu Kezhen considered the threat of typhoons one of the main reasons why China needed a nation-wide meteorological infrastructure.

Along Guangdong’s typhoon space, typhoons justified the need to build the Guangzhou

Observatory and its allied stations whether in Nationalist or Communist times. Typhoons inspired the creation of meteorology pamphlets and exhibitions in the 1950s.

Typhoons and the goal of building a meteorological infrastructure were a continuous thread in the history of Guangdong’s typhoon space from the 1850s to the 1950s. Along the way,

186 this thread was twisted to meet the needs of different states and societies. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, meteorology served imperialism. In the first half of the twentieth century, it served the developmental and nationalist dreams of Republican China. In the 1950s, and one might say up to today, meteorology and weather forecasting provided the Communist regime with one basis for its legitimacy. The Communists had the resources and organizational capacity to realize the dreams of the past. In the next chapter, we look at other ways in which the Mao state utilized the fight against storms to further its agenda.

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Chapter Seven Fighting Typhoons in Communist China: Fangfeng Organization, Mass Mobilization, and Propaganda in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space

Introduction

Though there were many continuities between the Nationalist and Communist regimes across the 1949 divide, there was also something distinctive about the Mao period. In the history of Guangdong’s typhoon space, the Maoist state not only conducted typhoon relief on a scale that its predecessors could only imagine, it was also able to do pre-typhoon mitigation work. The latter was due primarily to improvements in weather forecasting especially the use of radar as mentioned in the previous chapter. These developments gave authorities time to prepare communities for an incoming storm. The Qing had an impressive disaster relief system that functioned well until the mid-nineteenth century but it was post-typhoon oriented because there was no reliable way to forecast typhoons at the time. The Nationalists, as we have already seen, were still in the process of establishing a meteorological infrastructure when the events of World

War II took place. The Mao-era state also possessed the organizational ability to mobilize people in an unprecedented manner. This chapter explores the leadership structures, organizational work, and propaganda that the Mao regime employed to perform fangfeng 防风 or typhoon defense work.

The Communist party-state in China is of a “fragmented authoritarian” nature where central government goals and local aspirations are often in tension. 418 For better or worse, disaster management in Mao-era China displayed the same nature. In his recent book on disasters in the city of Tianjin, Lauri Paltemaa argues that “the central government constituted the crucial

418 The term “fragmented authoritarianism” is from Kenneth G. Lieberthal, and David M. Lampton, eds. Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision Making in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) but see also Vivienne Shue, The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).

188 bottleneck in the whole system, making disaster governance erratic and sometimes making it fail totally” but the center was also capable of making disaster management “highly effective when it had the highest political sanction behind it.”419 When the Party prioritized other campaigns

(yundong) over the immediate task of disaster relief as in the case of the Great Leap Famine

(1959-1962), results could be catastrophic; when it focused on mobilizing against disasters, as in the 1963 floods and the 1976 earthquake in Tianjin, outcomes could be successful. Of these disasters, floods could be forecast with reliability a few days in advance but, like famine, they do not occur with any degree of regularity. Meanwhile, earthquakes were and still remain highly unpredictable. The irregular and unpredictable nature of the disasters that Tianjin experienced in his study led Paltemaa to argue that Maoist disaster management was very ad hoc wherein temporary organizational structures linking central and local government were established during an event and abolished afterwards. Success was highly contingent on the political atmosphere at the time of the event for “disaster management campaigns were always disruptions of normal functions of the party-state and command economy, and there were no automatic mechanisms that could trigger an anti-disaster campaign as such in Maoist China.”420

Because typhoons could be expected to occur along the coast on a fairly regular basis, especially in Guangdong’s typhoon space, Mao-era China had on-going mechanisms for fighting them. Regularity of fangfeng work meant that there was a decent level of disaster-preparedness in the province that was fairly resistant to the impulses of different political campaigns which also ensured that the fight against typhoons would have a more enduring role in the Party’s efforts to mobilize people in the province. In contrast to the cases in urban Tianjin, typhoons also had a greater impact on poorer rural and fishing areas where the state focused its mobilization

419 Lauri Paltemaa, Managing Famine, Flood and Earthquake in China: Tianjin, 1958-85 (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 2-3, 13. 420 Paltemaa, pp. 11, 13.

189 efforts in the hope of increasing economic production. Going hand-in-hand with these mass mobilization efforts were propaganda campaigns that targeted the coastal area specifically. I suggest also that similar kinds of typhoon defense and propaganda work was likely also being done in other typhoon-prone provinces.

From Flood Defense to Typhoon Defense

After establishing itself as China’s government on October 1, 1949, the Chinese

Communist Party (CCP) faced the gargantuan task of restoring to functionality a nationwide system of waterworks on which their vast agrarian nation relied. Neglect and destruction of large-scale waterworks had occurred during the Second World War but the CCP conveniently blamed only the “degenerate rule” of the defeated Guomindang for all the drought and flooding problems of 1949.421 To demonstrate their commitment to reconstruction, the CCP convened a

National Waterworks Meeting (全國水利會議) in 1950 to assess the situation and provide direction for the near future. With pledges from provincial government officials that they would implement projects for building and repairing waterworks, the meeting’s final report estimated that around seventy million mu or more than 4.6 million hectares of land could be protected from from flooding in 1951. This plan, which was no doubt ambitious, involved focusing first on improving flood control in several major river systems, one of which was the Pearl River (珠江), the main watershed of Guangdong province.422

421 For the most extreme example of waterworks destruction, the breaking of the Yellow River dikes in the Second World War, see Micah S. Muscolino, The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 422 A copy of the final report of the National Waterworks Meeting is included in Zhujiang Shuili Gongcheng Zongju 珠江水利工程總局[Pearl River Waterworks Engineering Main Bureau], Fangxun Shouce 防汛手冊 [Flood Control Handbook] (Guangzhou: Zhujiang Shuili Gongcheng Zongju, 1951), pp. 2-24. The Pearl River is identified on pp. 14-15. I found a copy of this handbook in the Guangdong Provincial Library’s Special Collections.

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From March to April of 1951, spring rains fell early and endlessly on Guangdong. A developing, albeit weak, El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was likely playing a part as

ENSO events tend to produce more spring rainfall in southern China.423 To the party officials of the province, the rains were historic (歷年所罕見).424 The relentless downpour had raised the waters of the Pearl River and its tributaries to critical levels even before the peak rainy season from June to September had arrived. At an upstream city like Qingyuan, around 70 kilometers north of the provincial capital Guangzhou and along the tributary waters of the North River, water levels were reportedly more than a foot higher than the previous year’s highest record.

Everywhere in the province, there were reports of dikes starting to show cracks just as the spring transplanting was at its busiest. With the spring crop in danger, repairing waterworks and saving the spring planting became the central mission of the provincial party apparatus. In order to take stock of the situation, provincial authorities called for a flood control meeting (防汛會議) in

April of 1951. As a result of this conference, the South China Military Affairs Committee (中南

軍政委員會) issued a directive in the same year to the Guangdong provincial government to

423 Juan Feng and Jianping Li, “Influence of El Niño Modoki on Spring Rainfall over South China,” Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (July 2011) D13102. Instrumental data shows that sea surface temperatures in the El Niño 3.4 region were 0.2 degrees Celsius above average (28 degrees Celsius) from March to May of 1951 as the previous year’s La Niña was ending and the year’s El Niño was forming. The 3.4 region, in the equatorial Pacific, is the most commonly used region for classifying the intensity of an El Niño or La Niña by measuring its sea surface temperature anomalies. By June-August 1951, the SST anomalies reached 0.5 degrees above average, the threshold for positively identifying an El Niño event. See “Historical El Niño/La Niña episodes (1950-present),” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml. Last accessed May 26, 2017. 424 It is possible that the idea that they were witnessing an extraordinary event stems is hyperbolic and stems from the fact that the PRC had only been established for two year. Calling an event extraordinary or unprecedented was also typical prior to and around the 1950s when systematic instrumental and later satellite records had only begun to be kept for the world. Only with systematic records could one really say with empirical certainty if an event was extraordinary in history.

191 establish a body that would lead in organizing provincial flood control: the Guangdong Flood

Defense Leadership Division (GFDLD) (省防汛指揮部).425

In order to fulfill its mandate of coordinating province-wide flood control, the GFDLD needed to overcome spatial and administrative divisions. From 1950-1952, Guangdong was divided into eight short-lived special districts or zhuanqu 專區, namely Dongjiang 東江, Xijiang

西江, Yuezhong 粵中, Zhujiang 珠江, Chaoshan 潮汕, Xingmei 興梅, Gaolei 高雷, and

Beijiang 北江, while Hainan Island 海南島 was identified separately as an administrative district or xingzhengqu (行政區). To cross spatial divisions and establish its presence, the GFDLD established local subunits in each district, zhuanshu (專署), and county.426

Sometimes, spatial administration was temporarily rearranged for the purpose of facilitating flood control work. Qingyuan city, located in mountainous Beijiang but prone to flooding, and Dongguan city in Zhujiang, were, for the purposes of flood control only, parceled out and put together with Guangzhou and managed directly under the control of the provincial

GFCLD. To further facilitate flood control work, dikes that fell under certain counties and special districts in normal times were placed under the responsibility of others during times of flood. The Taihe (泰和) and Maning (馬寧) dikes, which fell under the jurisdiction of Xijiang’s

Gaoyao county, were to be defended by Yuezhong’s Gaoming county flood control division. The

Guiyuan (桂園) dike of Zhujiang’s Shunde county was assigned to Yuezhong’s Xinhui county.

Langang (攬崗) dike of Xijiang’s Sihui county went to Sanshui county in Zhujiang. In return,

Sanshui surrendered its Ruigang (瑞崗) dike to Xijiang’s Sihui county. Dongguan county’s

425 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid. The provincial government laid out a blueprint for flood control in a document entitled “Seven missions for our two struggles to ensure that [dikes] will not break in normal floods and that disaster will not occur in the worst floods” (為保證普通洪水不潰決, 爭取最高洪水不成災二鬥爭之七項任務). One of the seven missions entailed establishing one body for overseeing provincial and local flood control efforts. 426 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid.

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Tonghu (潼湖) dike was given to Dongjiang’s Huiyang county. Each dike’s closer proximity to the centers of the counties they were assigned to highlighted the need to prioritize speedy defense during times of flood. In the name of flood control, spatial reconfigurations were deemed necessary.427

Flood control not only crossed administrative spatial divisions, it required the cooperation of different, normally independent, institutions. Aside from ensuring that Party officials at all levels were involved, flood control also entailed enlisting the military for rescue operations, drawing on the expertise of the waterworks bureau, which had jurisdiction over dikes, and calling on the construction and engineering departments for help in strengthening and repairing damaged structures before, during, and after anomalous weather events. Officials from these different units filled the ranks of the GFDLD. At each level, a Party official was head and seconded by officials representing different departments. At the top provincial echelon (省防汛), an early veteran of the 1920s Communist movement and vice chairman of the Guangdong provincial government, Gu Dacun 古大存 (1896-1966) became the GFDLD’s first director with a military deputy commander Wu Kehua (兵團吳克華副司令), and a Party secretary Yun

Guangying (省府雲廣英秘書長 ) serving as assistant directors. At the special district (專署防汛) and county (縣防汛) levels, there was a senior administrator (行政首長) as director, aided by two vice-directors, and three roving military officers (游軍事), with further assistance from those heading the local party (黨務) and waterworks institutions (水利機構).428

Aside from leadership, different departments cooperated to make the GFDLD an organization capable of action. At the top, the Pearl River Waterworks Engineering Main Bureau

427 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid. 428 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid.

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(珠江水利工程總局) handled the provincial GFDLD’s everyday operations with the assistance of the Provincial Waterworks Bureau (省水利局) and the Guangzhou Municipal Construction

Bureau (廣州市建設局). Below it, local Flood Defense Leadership Divisions (FDLD) saw their everyday operations taken care of by engineering brigades (工程隊/組) from the construction department (建設科) with assistance from units under civil affairs (民政), education (文教), finance (財經), and sanitation (衛生軍). During times of crisis, the GFDLD could thus, at different levels, direct other units that handled mobilization, transportation, and communication toward the common goal of disaster mitigation.429

Because floods are one of the major challenges that typhoons bring, flood control and its associated leadership structures formed the foundation for typhoon control. On October 23, 1952, the Guangdong provincial government issued a directive to “form a leadership structure for fighting typhoons” (組織防風指揮機構), stating, ““Every June to October, during the typhoon season, the provincial government and the people’s governments of coastal zhuan (專), cities, and counties will, on the foundation of existing flood control leadership structures at various levels, invite other related departments to form a typhoon control leadership structure or join together to strengthen typhoon control work” [emphasis mine]. In its directive, the provincial government recognized the annual but seasonal littoral threat that typhoons posed to Guangdong

(Figure 7.1) and mandated the organization of typhoon control on the foundations of preexisting flood control structures. The Guangdong Typhoon Defense Leadership Division (GTDLD) (省防

風指揮部), the fruit of this directive, was manned by the same personnel as the GFDLD and this

429 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid.

194 pattern replicated at the lower levels, but only for coastal areas, where the local flood control division also doubled as the local typhoon control division. 430

Figure 7.1 1975 Map of Guangdong Coast Depicting Extent of Typhoon Influence.431

From this declaration, we can highlight some distinctions between flood defense and typhoon defense even as the latter stood on the foundations of the former. Spatially, flood defense was organized for most of the province except the northern mountainous area. Typhoon defense was clearly limited to the coastal areas. Whereas flood defense work typically began around spring and continued for the rest of the year, typhoon defense work was only activated

430 “省府及沿海專, 市, 縣各級人民政府在每年六至十月颱風季節期內應在原有各級防洪指揮機構的基礎上, 邀請其他有關部門參加成立防風指揮機構，或合併組織加強防風部分工作,” in GPA 235-1-94-007~015, ibid., and GPA 266-1-22-103 Sheng Renmin Zhengfu 省人民政府 [Provincial Government] “Sheng Fangfeng Fangxun Jigou Zuzhi Banfa Cao’an” 省防風防汛機構組織辦法草案 [A Draft Plan for the Organization of the Provincial Flood and Typhoon Control Structure], (1953). 431 Guangdong Zaihaixing Tianqi Zongjie (1951-1972): Disi Bufen, Taifeng 广东灾害性天气总结 (1951-1972): 第四部分，台风 [Guangdong Disastrous Climate Summary (1951-1972): Part 4, Typhoons] (Guangzhou: Guangdong Province Observatory, 1975).

195 during the typhoon season. Though such work only occurred in certain times of the year, their regular activation annually meant that they were not ad hoc mechanisms.

To ensure uniformity of vision, the top levels of the GFDLD and GTDLD mandated the holding of annual flood defense meetings (防汛會議) and typhoon defense meetings (防風會議) at all levels. These meetings were to always involve members of the Party and the military.

There was leeway provided for local units to reconcile the overall vision emanating from the top with the specifics of local circumstances. Those in command also saw holding meetings as a way of instilling an awareness of the importance of disaster control among the people by turning it into a mass movement.432

Mass Mobilization and Fighting Typhoons

In Mao’s “war against nature,” the organization and language of mass mobilization against inclement weather was highly militarized.433 Establishing leadership structures or high commands like the GFDLD and GTDLD was just the first step. As the founders of the GFDLD put it, “we cannot fight a winning battle if we have leaders but no good divisions to lead” (有了

指揮部沒有好隊伍是打不了勝仗的).434 The GFDLD prepared to do a province-wide battle against floods while the GTDLD readied itself for a coastal war with typhoons fought by people organized into local brigades, teams, and work groups. The provincial, special district, and county level FDLD and TDLDs were divided into secretariat (秘書處/組), intelligence (情報處/

組), and engineering (工務處/組) teams, with the county level adding a propaganda team (宣教

432 “將省的防汛方針任務及各種具體辦法傳達下去，與各地實際情況相結合,” and “變為全體群眾行動, in GPA 235-1-81-047~048 , ibid., and GPA 235-1-94-007~015, ibid. 433 Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 434 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid.

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組). Beneath the county were the district (區防汛/防風), community (鄉防汛/防風), and village

(村防汛/防風) versions of the FDLD and TDLD. These were run by local cadres who divided the residents into different brigades (隊) and teams (組) for the purpose of conducting flood and typhoon control operations. District brigades were classified as large brigades ( 大隊); community ones medium (中隊); and village ones small (小隊). District and community brigades were further subdivided into teams that handled general (總務), intelligence (情報), engineering (工務), and material (材料) affairs with community ones having an additional team for preparedness (調配). In the villages, there were theoretically only brigades. Flood control handbooks tend to use fancier terminology in their classification of villagers by assigning them to technology (技術), defense (防守), mobility (機動), backup (後備), and inspection (巡檢) brigades.435 Leadership simply divided them into management brigades (管養隊) and repair brigades (修防隊). The former were responsible for everyday management and inspection of dikes and waterworks, while the latter were in charge of their repair and defense. Smaller work groups called gongban (工班), likely parts of the repair brigades, handled the work of ramming

(夯工), piling (樁工), diving (潛水工), and earthworks (土工) during times of flood.436 In later reports of flood and typhoon defense work, every kind of brigade or team tasked with flood or typhoon relief were all simply called rescue brigades (搶險隊).

Preparation for war against the elements involved constant training. Village brigades conducted annual simulations of relief exercises after work on the spring crop (春工) concluded.

Such simulations involved regular inspection of breaches in dikes because “a thousand li of

435 Fangxun Shouce 1951, p. 78. 436 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid., and GPA 235-1-94-007~015, ibid.

197 golden dike breaks with one hole” (千里金堤潰於一穴) and “one weak spot renders the whole line weak” (一點弱全線皆弱) (Figure 7.2).437 People were expected to learn how to quickly perform together specific skills necessary for saving breached dikes. A common method for patching breaches involved creating a “mud cow” (泥牛), a structure of 100 straw bags filled with soil packed tightly together, and then constructing a piling frame (樁架) to hold the soil in place (Figure 7.3). Nanhai county, cited as a model of exemplary flood control, was reportedly capable of organizing 10,700 villagers into rescue brigades by making them outdo each other in timed competitions. The county recorded one brigade of sixteen individuals, aided by a foundation protection brigade (護基隊) of twenty-five, making a mud cow in forty-four minutes and ten seconds with four pilings rammed seven feet deep into the ground as support; another brigade constructed a piling frame in seven minutes while a third was able to build one in ten minutes during a nighttime rehearsal. Naturally, the local cadres who acted as leaders (領導首長) to these brigades were supposed to set an example and be first in action on the dikes (各級領導

首長須親自上堤，下手搶險).438

437 One li is 0.5 kilometers. 438 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid.

198

Figure 7.2 Inspecting Dike Breaches (探漏).439

Figure 7.3 Reinforcing a Breached Dike.440

439 A long bamboo pole with four panels at the bottom end and two branches on the top end is used to check for whirling water signaling a leak. Fangxun Shouce 1951, p. 60. 440 The slope around the area of the breach is dug out and soil is packed down to patch the breach and held together by wooden pilings. Fangxun Shouce 1951, p. 74.

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Typhoons, with their accompanying winds, needed more methods than did floods to control their damage. Powerful winds could easily destroy wet rice, the staple of southern

Chinese agriculture, and to a lesser extent, they damaged upland dry rice and sweet potatoes.

Typhoon control handbooks detailed steps brigades could take to protect or salvage rice before and after storms. Depending on the development stage of rice, pre-typhoon mitigation techniques varied from intentionally flooding fields to no more than half the length of the rice stem (water level depended on development stage) to counteract the wind, gently bending the stem with the foot or bamboo to allow it to sway with the winds or planting it sideways in the first place to create the same effect, harvesting the rice early, and setting up support frames or bundling plants together to make them sturdier (Figure 7.4). Post-typhoon salvaging methods included washing mud from still healthy leaves or cutting damaged ones, and spreading additional night soil to boost growth. In the case of storm surges that brought salt water into fields, brigade members needed to drain the fields immediately and then clean the salt out by flooding with fresh water to minimize soil salinization. Cadres also taught villagers strategies for protecting and saving sugar cane, jute, and banana trees that centered primarily on creating wooden supports for their stems.

In the case of bananas, damaged parts of the plant could be cut to make room for the banana to regrow. 441 As agricultural collectivization prior to the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) intensified, village communes experimented further to find the best ways of saving crops. Jinhua

Cooperative (金花社), a commune in Qiongshan county (present-day Haikou, Hainan), sent up a list of methods for protecting vegetables like Chinese cabbage and Chinese mustard. They claimed to have achieved anywhere between seventy to a hundred percent success rate with their tried and true techniques, which ranged from tying sticks and rope to support plants, bending the

441Taifeng Shouce, 1954, pp. 69-72.

200 stems, pre-harvesting, and piling a layer of straw on top of the vegetables until the storm passed.442

Figure 7.4 Supporting Crops Before a Typhoon.443

442 GPA 235-1-184-042 Qiongshan Xian 瓊山縣 [Qiongshan County], “Qiongshan Jinhua She Shucai Fangfeng Jingyan” 瓊山金花社蔬菜防風經驗 [Qiongshan County Jinhua Collective’s Experience in Protecting Vegetables before Typhoons], 1957. 443 Taifeng Shouce 1954, p. 69).

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Figure 7.5 Strengthening Houses Before a Typhoon.444

Figure 7.6 Preparing Boats Before a Typhoon.445

444 Taifeng Shouce 1954, p. 75. 445 Taifeng Shouce 1954, p. 77.

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Typhoon winds can bring down houses. Though urban areas presented additional problems such as the need to remove billboard advertisements, reinforce electricity and telephone poles, and so on, urban residences were in general made of strong material such as concrete and their proximity to one another collectively strengthened their resistance to wind. In rural areas, houses were often scattered and less sturdy: most were made from thatched straw and mud. Brigades prepared rural residences by reinforcing their walls with wooden pilings, and fastening wooden boards and stones to the roofs to prevent them from flying off (Figure 7.5).

Typhoon defense leadership admirably learned and promoted best practices from villagers living on the coast of southern Hainan Island where fishing nets effectively secured roofs during storms.

Authorities also took advantage of typhoons to force villagers to rebuild their homes side-by-side in a more orderly grid manner, although this may not have been the best arrangement if the building material was not sturdy.446

The waters that typhoon defense managed were not limited to those on land. As an oceanic phenomenon, typhoons could also do damage at sea and thus posed a threat to fishermen and shipping. Coastal TDLDs organized rescue (搶險), defense (守護), and survey (巡邏) brigades. These were mobilized when necessary to protect boats, crops, livestock, and structures like houses, offices, dikes, and granaries. The GTDLD also did surveys of harbors and drew from local fishermen’s ideas (廣泛匯集漁民意見) in order to determine where boats could be docked safely during typhoons. Small boats were pulled to shore while larger ones were anchored in safe harbors with some distance in between each (Figure 7.6).447 Where necessary, local TDLDs were to use dynamite to create waterways or harbors, revive or build lighthouses, create typhoon shelters, and engineer seawalls or dikes. To accomplish these tasks, they were

446 Taifeng Shouce, 1954, pp. 75-76. 447 Taifeng Shouce, 1954, pp. 77-78.

203 given the prerogative to draw labor for such efforts from ongoing land and social reforms (土改

及民主改革的基礎上).448 For example, an ongoing unspecified reform movement (漁改運動) in the fishing villages of eastern Hainan was stopped and transformed into disaster relief mobilization when Typhoon Betty, a Category three cyclone, wreaked havoc from October 31 to

November 1, 1953, and sunk eighty boats, killed over thirty people, and destroyed 214 houses.

The reform movement only resumed in December as relief operations occupied the whole month of November.449

The meteorological infrastructure built by the Communists and described in the previous chapter was crucial to the task of mass mobilization. So important were meteorological units in the fight against typhoons that in the organizational schema (Figure 7.7) of the GTDLD it was joined at the top of the provincial command hierarchy by the Guangzhou Observatory. Crucial too were the broadcasting units who were responsible for conveying meteorological information to the relevant units responsible for mobilizing the population. Broadcasting was especially critical to typhoon defense because while flooding was mainly a problem on land, typhoons also posed problems for both people and industries at sea, and these could only be reached by radio.

The process of broadcasting and the accompanying campaign to educate people about typhoon meteorology was discussed in the previous chapter. Through a meteorological network and mass mobilization, the Mao-era state developed the ability to “fight typhoons.”450

448 GPA 235-1-94-007~015, ibid. 449 GPA 204-5-18-190~193 Hainan Qu Bianwei 海南區邊委 [Hainan Border Committee], “Taifeng Qinxi Zaiqing Baogao” 颱風侵襲災情報告 [Typhoon Disaster Report], (1953/11/16). For meteorological information for Typhoon Betty see Guangdong Zaihaixing Tianqi, p. 8. 450 When Zhou Enlai passed away in 1976 he was remembered by the nations “climate warriors” 气象战士 for laying the groundwork for the Mao state’s meteorological defense by establishing typhoon warning systems throughout China. See HNRB (1977/01/17), “Qixiang Zhanshi Shenqie Huainian Zhou Zongli” 气象战士深切怀念周总理 [Climate Warriors deeply miss Premier Zhou].

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Qu, Zhen, and Basic Units Unified Radio Coastal Xingshu, Station Zhuan, and (區, 鎮, 基層組織) Counties (統一收聽站) Nearby Transportation, (各沿海行署, 專縣) Shipping, Production, Business Divisions

Provincial (附近之交通航運生產企 People’s 業等部門) Guangzhou Channel Daily scheduled X number of broadcasts with each branch station copying and sending to the (省人民廣州台) relevant institution GTDLD Industrial and (每日定時廣播 _ 次, 各分站抄送主要機關) (省防風指 Commercial 揮部) Channel

Guangzhou (工商台) Observatory Shantou Branch Copy and send to Channel, Beihai local shipping, (廣州氣象 Branch Channel, military, 台 ) Haikou Branch industrial, and Coastline Main Channel other institutions Channel (汕頭分台, 北海分台, (抄送各該地航運 (海岸總台) 海口分台) 軍政企業等機關)

Travelling Ships

South China Daily (航行船隻)

(南方日報)

United News

(聯合報)

South China News Publishing

(華南新聞出版處)

Figure 7.7 Guangdong Typhoon Leadership Division Organization Schema.451

451 GPA 235-1-94-007~015.

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The Organizational, Financial, and Policing Limits of Flood and Typhoon Defense

The task of mobilizing so many units and coordinating across different levels of government and society was taxing and no one unit wanted to be saddled with this responsibility.

In 1957, the Party decided to place the combined flood and typhoon defense leadership division

(防汛防風生產救災聯合總指揮部) under the direction of the Aquatic Resources Bureau (水產

廳).452 In just a year, the Aquatic Resources Bureau, feeling the burden of the task imposed on it, requested that the Agricultural Bureau take over operations on land. Aquatic Resources offered to keep its maritime responsibilities arguing that its expertise was only in matters related to the sea.453 The Agricultural Bureau, seeking to avoid this additional administrative burden, argued that typhoons were primarily a coastal phenomenon for “all those threatened by typhoons are coastal counties” (因受颱風威脅的都是沿海各縣) to successfully counter the request.454 The

Aquatic Resources Department was stuck with the difficult task of coordinating and implementing typhoon defense.

Funding was also hard to come by during the Maoist period, and all kinds of work was financed through a combination of limited central government but mostly local fund-raising (自

籌). In 1951, the central government sent down 1.8 billion yuan for the province’s flood control efforts. Of this amount, 500 million was set aside for emergency use (機動使用) while the rest

452 GPA 235-1-188-217~218 Sheng Renwei 省人委 [Provincial People’s Committee], “Guanyu zai Shuichanting nei Chengli Shengchan Zhihuibu Fangfeng Gongzuo Bangongshi de Han” 關於在水產廳內成立生產指揮部防風工作辦公室的函 [Letter Regarding the Establishment of a Typhoon Control Leadership Division in the Aquatic Resouces Bureau], (1957/06/16). 453 GPA 235-1-224-200~202 Sheng Renwei 省人委 [Provincial People’s Committee] “Guanyu zhaokai Fangfeng huiyi yixie wenti de pifu” 關於召開防風會議一些問題的批復 [Regarding the Approval of Certain Issues Brought up During the Typhoon Control Meeting], (1958/06/07). 454 GPA 217-1-83-121~124 Sheng Nongban 省農辦 [Provincial Agricultural Office] “Fu Shuichanting jianyi jiang yuan Fangfeng Siban Fenbie Zucheng Hailu Liangge Fangfeng Jigou de Qingshi Baogao”復水產廳建議將原防風四辦分別組成海陸兩個防風機構的請示報告 [In Reply to the Aquatic Resources Bureau’s Proposal to Divide Typhoon Control into Land and Maritime divisions], (1960/06/25).

206 was disbursed to the special districts, counties, and prefectures. The amount allocated was predictably insufficient and local authorities were encouraged to conduct their own fund-raising among the populace, which doubled as a means of encouraging an attitude of thinking in terms of the group as opposed to the individual (發動群眾想辦法). Appealing to the “group yet dearly personal benefits” (群眾切身利益) of flood and typhoon control and the interconnectedness of individuals (人人關係密切), people were called on to donate money and/or materials for the cause. Such efforts raised 120,890,500 yuan in additional funds, 15,159 hemp bags, 5,111 wooden piles, and 2,378 straw bags. These were added to material savings from the previous year: 71,818 wooden piles (from 109,970), 872,533 straw bags (from 992,104), 5,449 stone slabs

(from 18,876), and 34,207 hemp bags (from 37,190). The large savings in all kinds of materials except the stone slabs may suggest that flooding was not severe in 1950. Nonetheless, an atmosphere of limited funding no doubt encouraged a culture of saving against future disaster.455

In the aftermath of floods and typhoons, cadres filed reports describing mitigation, rescue efforts, and losses incurred. 456 Authorities then meted out sanctions to erring units, such as weather stations tardy in their reports, and individuals or groups, such as rescue teams whose laxity of resulted in losses of life and property that were in theory preventable. 457 In 1951, provincial officials castigated the local flood control division in Chaoshan district for its sloth in dike repair work. The emphasis on quantity of work done, such as amount of soil moved, sometimes took away from the goal of accomplishing effective flood control. In parts of

455 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid. 456 There are a number of such files in the Guangdong Provincial Archives and in the municipal archives of Chaozhou and Shantou but access is limited as many are not yet declassified. An example of a yet to be declassified but interesting-sounding file is GPA 204-5-23-212~216 Yuedongqu Bianweihui 粵東區邊委會 [Yuedong Border Committee] “Yanhai Baxian Zaoshou Taifeng Haichao Xiji Jinji Jiuzai Xunsu Huifu Shengchan de Gongzuo Baogao” 沿海八縣遭受颱風海潮襲擊緊急救災迅速恢復生產的工作報告 [Work Summary of the Emergency Disaster Relief and Swift Return to Production of Eight Counties Hit by a Typhoon Storm Surge], (1953/09/20). 457 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid.

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Zhujiang district, people had focused on quantity over quality in moving soil for dikes resulting in large but weak structures that water broke easily. Sometimes competition for scarce resources got in the way of flood control as when materials specifically allotted for strengthening dikes in

Dongjiang were put to other unspecified but surely non-flood related use so that when the time came to patch the holes in their dikes, the local flood control division had nothing to use.458

Typhoon Control in Other Storm Provinces

The kind of organizational work I describe in Guangdong was no doubt being performed as well in other provinces where typhoons may land. In the summer of 1952, the arrival of

Tropical Storm Gilda 459 on the East China coast was observed closely by authorities in

Guangdong looking to learn best typhoon defense practices. Gilda made landfall in southern

Zhejiang province on July 19, and dissipated in Jiangsu, but its effects were also felt as far south as Fujian’s provincial capital of Fuzhou. 460 Before Gilda arrived, the east China coast was prepared. The East China People’s Channel (華東人民電台), which had just started a typhoon report program (颱風報告節目) on June 1 of the same year, had passed on word about the approaching storm as early as July 17. Jiangsu promptly suspended all summer recruitment activities (夏征) and ordered all local units to make flood and typhoon control the “central focus of their attack” (突擊中心任務). In Nantong (南通) county, flood control meetings were held and a reported 90% of the labor force was mobilized as a result. As many as 2,400 people were

458 GPA 235-1-81-047~048, ibid. 459 Storms were typically identified by a number in Mao sources. Gilda was 195207, indicating that it was the seventh storm of the year 1952 to enter (not necessarily land in) China’s area of responsibility. Wherever possible, I identify and use the international name. 460 The reports of two radiomen (收音員), Gu Hao (顧浩) from Subei and He Suolan (賀鎖蘭) from Lianjiang county, Fuzhou, Fujian, were appended to GPA 234-1-94-007~015 to illustrate the importance of radio stations in the fight against typhoons.

208 said to have patrolled the sea dike of the county’s Sanyu district (三餘區) day and night. Other cadres and their teams went around strengthening houses. County party secretary Xu (縣委徐書

記), Bureau chief Ji (紀部長), and Secretary Ji (季秘書), were said to have been glued to the radio station all day until midnight listening to typhoon reports sent by the East China People’s

Channel.461

Thanks to all the warnings and preparations, losses were minimal. In Heping village (和

平村), only six out of 168 houses fell and “not a single shard of glass blew away” (連一塊玻璃

也沒有被風吹掉). In Zilang qu (紫瑯區), only 1,200 meters of dike were breached and with the help of 2,000 laborers who worked day and night and material from ten dismantled houses, they were able to patch the break. Purported praise for the Communist Party was (predictably) profuse:

“It’s good that the government warned us beforehand to do typhoon defense work, or else, who knows how many more houses would have been blown down?” (好得政府預先告訴我們要防

風，不然，房子被吹掉的還要多呢?) said one set of villagers from Xiting qu (西亭區) . Those from Erjia qu (二甲區) beamed, “The Party cares for everything about the masses. From now on we should listen more to the cadres because this is to our advantage” (共產黨對群眾的事情, 樣

樣關心, 今後要多聽幹部的話, 這對我們是有好處的). Encouraged, Secretary Xu directed the various qu and zhen to hold more radio work meetings (收音工作會議). In Xiaohai zhen (小海

鎮 ) of Zilang qu, locals, supposedly impressed by the radio station’s work during Gilda, requested to form radio groups (收聽小組), add and install more radio and broadcasting equipment such as blow horns (添置喇叭).462

461 GPA 235-1-94-007~015, ibid. 462 GPA 235-1-94-007~015, ibid.

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Radio stations played their role as well in coastal Lianjiang county, northeast of Fuzhou.

Apart from the East China People’s Channel, Fuzhou station also sent out a flood emergency warning (洪汛緊急警報). These warnings were recorded and updated on village blackboards (黑

板報), which gave locals regular updates on where water levels were critically high (各地水位大

部分超過危險水位). Rains poured endlessly from July 19 to 20, but despite waters reaching critical levels (supposedly surpassed the county’s highest record of June 18, 1948), there was very little loss. The local trading company was supposed to have saved products worth around several billion yuan, a vague and likely exaggerated amount for a small county, by mobilizing labor to move them to higher ground. A breach in one dike caused water to flood into the county seat but because people were forewarned, they were able to move their belongings to safety.

Lianjiang locals were grateful: “If not for the reports provided to us by broadcast stations and blackboards, we would not be able to move our belongings in time, and losses would have been unthinkable. The Party really cares for us” (要不是廣播台和黑板報對我們說了，我們的東西

搬也來不及搬，損失就不得了了，共產黨真關心我們 )! Storms helped amplify the importance of having and listening to radio stations and the Party.463

These stories illustrate how provinces on the Chinese littoral, not just Guangdong, had to organize yearly against storms. Guangdong provincial authorities surely thought them worthy to learn from for they appended them to the decision to form the GTDLD and entitled that portion

“In the struggle to control flood and typhoon, radio stations play a massive role” (在防汛防風鬥

爭收音站起了巨大作用). Their inclusion as reference in the October 23 decision shows how best practices were shared between provincial governments or how events in one province might

463 GPA 235-1-94-007~015, ibid.

210 inspire efforts in others or simply how similar kinds of meteorological events lead to similar efforts at control in Mao’s China.464

Typhoon Propaganda

Typhoon defense work, on paper, tended to meet less opposition from locals than campaigns like the Snail Fever Campaign that Miriam Gross465 describes because flood and typhoon defense work was more directly relevant to people’s lives and livelihood. Unlike schistosomiasis which only ravaged individual bodies slowly over time, the damage wrought by typhoons was immediate and impacted the entire community. Nevertheless, like those directed at controlling disease, propaganda about the benefits of mobilizing for typhoon defense work also intensified into the 1960s as the Cultural Revolution unfolded and as typhoon defense work became linked to different political campaigns.

That typhoons could be useful to the goals of the Party-state can be illustrated by an editorial written by a commune leader that builds on Mao’s ideas about the unity of opposites and contradictions:

We need to learn to view issues holistically. Not only should we look at its positive side but also its negative side. Under specific circumstances, a bad thing can lead to a good result and a good thing can lead to a bad result. Typhoons have great destructive power. They can bring about losses and that is a bad thing. But, it is during hard winds that we recognize the sturdy plant, and it is during blazing fires that we see what is real gold. By fighting disasters, people can better develop their revolutionary will and acquire the ability to overcome difficulty. In this sense, it [typhoons] is a good thing.466

464 GPA 235-1-94-007~015, ibid. 465 Gross, Farewell to the God of Plague. 466 “我们必须学会全面地看问题，不但要看到事物的正面，也要看到它的反面。在一定的条件下，坏的东西可以引出好的结果，好的东西也可以引出坏的结果。台风有很大的破坏力，它可以招来损失，是件坏事。但是，疾风知劲草，烈火见真金，人们通过抗灾斗争能更好地锻炼革命意志，学会战胜困难的本领，在这个意义上，它又是件好事。” HNRB (1971/10/14), Liang Zhendong 梁振东, “Taishan Yading bu wanyao” 泰山压顶不弯腰 [When Mount Tai presses down on your head and you do not bend over at the waist].

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The baseline for understanding typhoon propaganda lies in Mao’s so-called “war against nature.” Mao believed that by concentrating human will and effort, one could overcome material constraints and achieve socialist goals. Here material constraints meant the limits imposed by the natural world and overcoming them meant waging war against nature.467 Typhoons were a threat to production. But one could overcome them through collective militant action. Typhoon propaganda was first of all marked by militant language.

Barbara Mittler has already dispelled the notion that Cultural Revolution culture was nothing but propaganda. Cultural production appeared in forms, such as art, music, and print that appealed to people and consequently were truly popular and had an audience that lasted beyond the Mao years.468 Typhoon propaganda also appeared in various forms but it appeared mainly in the coastal areas, the typhoon spaces of south and east China.

One famous example of typhoon propaganda that expresses its militancy, artistic appeal, connection to the littoral, and the longevity and popular appeal of Cultural Revolution is an exquisite piece of Chinese zither (zheng 箏, known in English by the Japanese name, koto) music, a 1965 composition entitled “Fighting the Typhoon” 战台风 (Zhan Taifeng) by Wang

Changyuan 王昌元 (1946-present). Wang Changyuan, daughter of a zither master and professor of music at the prestigious Shanghai Conservatory of Music Wang Xunzhi, is a master of the

Zhejiang school of Chinese zither, characterized in technique by unaccompanied fingerwork on the right hand (右手清彈) and the borrowing of circular rolling techniques from the playing of the pipa. A precocious child, at the age of twelve, she was the youngest female to ever perform solo on stage in front of China’s top leaders. She was admitted to the Shanghai Conservatory of

467 Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature. 468 Barbara Mittler, A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013).

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Music in 1960 and graduated in 1969 at the height of the Cultural Revolution. She moved to the

United States in 1984 to study music at Kent State University and eventually settled down in

New York City where she continues to teach and perform.469

Wang composed “Fighting the Typhoon” while she was a student in Shanghai. At the time, she lived with workers in dormitories near the harbor and she composed this piece to capture the spirit of the laborers’ struggle against storms at the port city. 470 “Fighting the

Typhoon” is divided into five discernible segments that illustrate the victorious battle that the proletariat waged against a typhoon. The first segment is the “Worker’s Place” 劳动场面 marked by an upbeat spirit that exudes the feeling of a happy workforce.471 The scene of joyous laborers gives way to the beginning of the “Typhoon’s Assault” 台风袭击. Wang uses a variety of fingering techniques to simulate the waxing and waning of the whirling winds, the pitter patter of pouring rain, and growing urgency.472 The workers mobilize and “Fight the Typhoon” 与台风搏

斗 in the third and longest segment. A series of rising, thumping, and heart-racing crescendos conveys the relentless counterattack of the workers and a fighting spirit that only grows stronger with time.473 Then the tune lightens and the rhythm slows down as the “Rain Passes and the

Skies Clear” 雨过天晴.474 Shanghai, which was a proletariat battleground against a typhoon, now reverts back to being a “Happy Harbor” 欢腾的码头 as the music ends on an upbeat tone that echoes the first segment.475

469 See Wang Changyuan’s own website http://wangchangyuan.com/. Last accessed on March 15, 2019. 470 One can listen to this piece on Youtube where a user has uploaded a video of Wang playing it in the 1976 film “A Hundred Flowers in Bloom” 百花争艳 . See Zhan Taifeng 战台风 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEvyu1rTOvM. Last accessed on March 15, 2019. 471 The first segment is from 0:13 to 0:45 on the Youtube video. 472 The second segment is from 0:46 to 1:12 on the Youtube video. 473 The third segment is from 1:13 to 2:40 on the Youtube video. 474 The fourth segment is from 2:41 to 3:58 on the Youtube video. 475 The fifth and last segment is from 3:59 to 4:26 on the Youtube video.

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The main title and the segment titles clearly depict a militant and defiant attitude toward typhoons. The setting is Shanghai, a major coastal city that is known to also experience typhoons.

People who did typhoon defense work in Guangdong (see next chapter) remember hearing

“Fighting the Typhoon” being broadcast to them by their cadres during the Cultural Revolution in order to inspire them. Though Wang has and continues to compose other pieces, “Fighting the

Typhoon” remains her most popular and famous piece. The Chinese zither, with its pre-twentieth century origins, might have been deemed “feudal” and “counterrevolutionary” in the Cultural

Revolution but it was utilized to provide familiar entertainment to the Chinese and in the case of

“Fighting the Typhoon” conveys the spirit of Mao’s war against nature. 476 “Fighting the

Typhoon” remains popular today and is still performed at Chinese instrumental music concerts, as evidenced by the number of versions that have been uploaded to video-sharing websites such as Youtube.

During the Cultural Revolution, it was not uncommon to read in Guangdong coastal newspapers all kinds of militant typhoon propaganda that expressed not only the sentiment of

Mao’s war against nature but also finding within Mao’s writings the power to fight typhoons.477

One story published in the Hainan Daily in early 1969 described “A Battle Amidst Vicious Wind and Rain” 暴风雨中的一场战斗. It begins with a poem that frames a story of how an ordinary person becomes a “warrior” 战士 in Mao’s war against typhoons:

The newest directive arms the people 最新指示来武装 Heart red, bones hard, our courage is robust 心红骨硬胆气壮

476 On music in the Cultural Revolution, see Mittler, Continuous Revolution, pp. 35-128. 477 The following section relies primarily on the Hainan Daily. I had open access to most of its issues between the Cultural Revolution years of 1966 to 1976 in the Hainan Municipal Library. This allows me to look at how typhoon propaganda changed across campaigns and years. It was much harder to gain access to counterparts in other archives. For example, the Shantou Municipal Archives has the Shantou Daily but it is not open access and you have to specify what issue you want to see and for what reason. My sense is that the kinds of typhoon propaganda I see in the Hainan Daily are generic enough or generally applicable, meaning they do not convey a sense of this could only happen in Hainan, that one can also find them in the newspapers of other coastal areas.

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Wild winds and vicious rain forge the loyal heart 狂风暴雨炼忠心 Supporting the army and loving the people, a new chapter is written 拥军爱民新篇章

The typhoon warrior is Zhong Yuxi 钟玉溪 who in the middle of August was implementing one of Chairman Mao’s many directives to “X village” 某村 when a strong typhoon with eleven- level winds on the Beaufort scale hits the village. “Comrade Zhong” runs to the village to engage in typhoon defense work and to encourage the villagers to do so as well. As he is carrying wooden parts up a roof to repair someone’s house amidst the typhoon he succumbs to hunger and fatigue. But then he hears Chairman Mao’s injunctions in his ear: “We must support the army and love the people. Our army is truly a people’s army…” and as if the words had some kind of power, Zhong suddenly feels a surge of energy that allows him to continue repairing the home.

The villager whose home Zhong has helped save from the typhoon thanks him but Zhong tells him: “We should thank Chairman Mao, it is he who taught us to do this.” And they together exclaim: “Long live Chairman Mao!”478

Typhoon propaganda stories in print did not necessarily describe actual events. One cannot be certain if a Zhong Yuxi actually existed. It was not uncommon to simply say in “X year, X month, X day, X village” 某年某月某日某村 such and such typhoon with X-level winds strikes and the villagers led by cadres fight back by repairing homes, dikes, saving crops and neighbors, etc. All the kind of work that typhoon defense entailed. When the villagers’ fighting spirit flagged, Mao’s instructions as they appeared in his Little Red Book would renew their spirit and allow them to overcome the typhoon. Readers would have been familiar with the form of the heptasyllabic poem that starts the story and the story itself, or at least the experience of dealing with typhoons and having to do typhoon defense work, would have been relatable to the reader as well.

478 HNRB, 1969/01/21.

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On the ocean, typhoon propaganda would describe the valor of the navy personnel and crews of fishing boats against storms. In one story, details are once again given only in the general way such as “X division and X ship” 某部某舰 encounter a typhoon with twelve-level winds. The navy sailors exclaim that they must save the ship and its armaments from destruction as all these were given to them by Chairman Mao. As Mao put it, “first they are not afraid of hardship, and second they are not afraid to die” 一不怕苦, 二不怕死. So they fight great winds and waves and preserve the ship and its contents thereby saving the products of the nation while demonstrating how human will can overcome nature.479

Fighting the “great winds and great waves” of typhoons became a very literal way of celebrating Mao’s supposed swim across the Yangzi river in 1966, which inspired the Little Red

Book line, “Great winds, great waves, we do not fear. Human society was developed amidst great winds and great waves” 大风大浪也不可怕, 人类社会就是从大风大浪发展起来的.

“Great winds, great waves, we do not fear” became a tagline in many typhoon stories and cartoons (Figure 7.8).

479 HNRB (1969/09/02), “Wild Wind, Great Waves, There is None that we Fear” 狂风巨浪无所惧.

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Figure 7.8 Caricature of Cadres and Villagers Saving Mao’s portrait and Copies of His Little Red Book during a Storm.480

Propaganda idealized feats of collective human will and effort. A typical image of flood and typhoon defense work was the linking of human bodies to block break and gaps in dikes and dams (Figure 7.9 and 7.10).

Figure 7.9 Defending Dikes from Typhoons I.481

480 HNRB (1969/01/16), “Dafeng Dalang, Ye bu kepa” 大风大浪, 也不可怕 [Great Wind, Great Waves, We do not fear]. 481 HNRB (1970/08/22) “Xionghuai Quanju Zhan Xiandi”胸怀全局战险堤 [With the Big Picture in Mind, Fight for the Endangered Dike].

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Figure 7.10 Defending Dikes from Typhoons II.482

Typhoon propaganda also targeted women and reassured them that typhoon and flood defense work was not just a man’s job. Mao, who once said that “women hold up half the sky,” would empower them. In two cartoons that were part of the headline story of the Hainan Daily on September 5, 1970, three women are depicted happily reading Mao’s Little Red Book (Figure

7.11) in the first cartoon. In the second cartoon, they are in the lead against a storm that has breached their local dike (Figure 7.12).

482 HNRB (1971/06/30), “Tuanjie Zhandou de Kaige” 团结战斗的凯歌 [Victory Paean of the Collective Battle].

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Figure 7.11 Women Reading Mao’s Little Red Book.483

Figure 7.12 Women Fighting a Typhoon.484

Finally, Maoist campaigns involved the identification of specific models for people to emulate. Typhoon propaganda upheld and told the stories of exemplary individuals who fought typhoons. On July 21, 1973, the Hainan Daily published a set of cartoon panels depicting the life of a store owner Xiao Jiawei 肖家纬 (Figure 7.13). He was shown to be a dedicated reader of

Marx who was passionate about the people’s production and always there to help people in their

483 HNRB (1970/09/05), “Hongxin Yongxiang Hong Taiyang, Geming Qingchun Xian Renmin” 红心永向红太阳, 革命青春献人民 [Red hearts forever toward the red sun, Revolution’s youth offer it to the people]. 484 HNRB (1970/09/05), ibid.

219 work. But he makes his mark fighting typhoons. In one panel he is shown saving the products of people’s labor from a storm. And his courage worth emulating is summed up in two non- rhyming couplets:

The typhoon, what is to be feared of it? 台风何所惧 Flood, it is just another ordinary thing 洪水只等闲 Saving the nation’s products 救国家财产 With no care about his own safety 不顾家安危485

Figure 7.13 Typhoon Defense Model Xiao Jiawei.486

Like all other campaigns in Mao-era China, typhoon propaganda went hand-in-hand with the mass mobilization of villagers to do typhoon defense work. Typhoon defense work was justified in Maoist terms often by directly quoting Mao and his Little Red Book. Through

485 HNRB (1973/07/21), “Renmin de Hao Yingyeyuan Xiao Jiawei” 人民的好营业员肖家纬 [Xiao Jiawei, A Good Entrepreneur of the People]. 486 HNRB (1973/07/21).

220 appealing or relatable songs, stories, cartoons, etc. it was hoped that people would learn how to do typhoon defense work. Stories of model individuals were designed to inspire everyone else to do their part. If everyone acted like these models than their powerful

Conclusion

From the legend of the sage king Yu putting the primordial floods under control to the building of the enormous Three Gorges Dam, water control has been central to Chinese governance throughout history. Dikes, dams, canals, and other waterworks were built to ensure both a steady supply of water for agriculture and to prevent floods from overwhelming fields and homes. The Mao state was no exception and took to this task with energy unequaled in Chinese history. Flood control work and its accompanying motives and organizations provided the foundation for subsequent typhoon defense work in Guangdong. Meteorology anchored the scientific legitimacy of this enterprise and the state did its best to make the people climate- literate. Complementing meteorology was the communications network of broadcast and radio stations that spread climate information from the Guangzhou Observatory on top to the villages below. Though difficult, the early Mao state managed as well as it could organizationally, meteorologically, and through mass mobilization, to create a viable line of defense against typhoons that its predecessors could not even imagine.

During the Cultural Revolution, typhoon propaganda flourished in Guangdong’s typhoon space. Utilizing different forms of entertaining media and the identification of exemplary models, the Party sought to encourage people to participate in typhoon defense work. The spirit of this propaganda was militant and exhibited Mao’s belief that people’s collective effort would allow them to prevail over nature and achieve greater prosperity. Official reports suggest that typhoon

221 defense work approximated the idealized and exaggerated examples given in typhoon propaganda without disastrous results. But as we shall see in the next and last chapter, when the

Maoist belief that “man can prevail over nature” was taken to the extreme and when propaganda became reality, the consequences could be lethal.

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Chapter Eight Typhoon Identities: The Niutianyang Incident of 1969, the Politics of Memory, and Typhoon Place

Introduction

On July 28, 2017, more than sixty septuagenarians gathered for lunch in a restaurant in

Guangzhou. Aside from their advanced age and Chinese ethnicity, they all had one other thing in common: they had survived Typhoon Viola when it slammed into Shantou on July 28, 1969, forty-eight years earlier. At that time they were sent-down students who were tasked to reclaim land on the tidal beaches of Niutianyang 牛田洋, which is now a thriving mix of agricultural and aquaculture fields, and where a large dike had been built to keep out the tides. They were there under the supervision of the 55th Army. Typhoon Viola was barreling toward Niutianyang on

July 27 and the authorities knew it more than a day in advance before the storm made landfall.

But instead of retreating, in an extreme case of typhoon defense work, the students were ordered to defend the dike together with the soldiers. By the end of the day, bodies covered the beach and others were floating in the water. Official records indicate 470 soldiers and eighty-three students perished and also around a thousand locals for a total official death toll of 1,554. But old villagers who spent their whole lives at Niutianyang and those students who lived to tell the tale claim that these numbers are too low and cannot explain the mass of corpses they witnessed in the typhoon’s aftermath.

Despite the large number of casualties, the Communist Party declared it a great victory of man over nature and subsequently published propaganda extolling the bravery of those who gave their lives to beat the storm and save the dike. To this day, much of the documentation related to this incident is off-limits to researchers. Because the People’s Liberation Army was involved, some of the records are in the army archives, which are not open. In the Guangdong Provincial

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Archives, documents related to the 1969 Niutianyang incident remain classified. At the Shantou

Municipal Archives, some propaganda material was available but everything else remained classified. Though I was still able to gain something from the propaganda material, I knew there was a story hidden and waiting to be told. With the help of a local graduate student, I tracked down one survivor who then linked me to others. In July and August of 2016, I interviewed my first five informants (all male) in Guangzhou and Shantou, who each granted me an hour of their time. At the 2017 Guangzhou reunion, I was also able to interview an additional fifteen people, three of whom were women, in shorter timeframes ranging from ten to twenty minutes.487

Anyone who survived the incident refers to him/herself as a “Niu Friend” 牛友 (niuyou), for they all share the camaraderie of having undergone the ordeal and lived. The most famous

Niu Friend, who I did not have access to, is Li Zhaoxing 李肇星 (1940-present) who was

Foreign Minister of the PRC from 2003 to 2007. The story or to be more exact, stories, I learned from these survivors brought the official narrative into question. But they also alerted me to the politics of memory, for different Niu Friends had a distinct ways of remembering and understanding what they had experienced and what it meant to them today, and at times these differences resulted in conflict among them. Nevertheless, despite their differences, they all agree that July 28, 1969 was a life-changing event. They are all thankful to have survived and consider their success thereafter a result of overcoming that ordeal. There could be no other life challenge more insurmountable than what they experienced at Niutianyang in 1969. So

Niutianyang holds a special place in their hearts and minds and thus constitutes a unique kind of

487 I thank Ryan Cheng or Zheng Wei’an for first alerting me to the 1969 Niutianyang incident and later helping me track down my first informant. I also thank all the Niu Friends who generously shared their stories and memories with me. To protect my informants, I have decided not to use any name or pseudonym unless I am quoting from published material, such as the numerous memoirs that survivors published over the years or from online public blogs they keep.

224 typhoon space: a typhoon place, one where the space is imbued with an extraordinary amount of meaning so as to constitute a kind of identity distinct to it.

It is the purpose of this chapter to look into the official narrative and juxtapose it against other sources such as memoirs, oral history, and the varied memories of those who survived

Typhoon Viola. In doing so, I hope to show the complicated politics of memory involved when a disaster is turned into a “hidden tragedy” in a state that continues to tightly control the meaning of the event.488 This chapter shows how special typhoon places might emerge within a larger typhoon space through the case study of how a group of people came to strongly associate their particular experience of a typhoon with their identities linked to a specific locality.

The May 7 Directive, Niutianyang, and Sent-Down Youth

One key to understanding the events surrounding Typhoon Viola and Niutianyang is the

May 7 Directive 五七指示 of 1966. This directive was issued by Mao with the aim of turning the

People’s Liberation Army into a “school,” wherein the military would cooperate with civilians in all fields of work and thus learn from each other and create revolution together. Mao was able to use this directive to send to the countryside many of his political opponents and cadres who were forced to work on opening new lands for agriculture. Whether they were fields or factories, these became “May Seventh Cadre Schools.”489

Mao issued the May 7 Directive after reading a report sent to him by his second-in- command Lin Biao (1907-1971) called “On Further Improving the Army’s Work in Agriculture and Side-line Production.” The topic of this report was PLA reclamation activity at Niutianyang

488 The term is borrowed from Chris Courtney, “At War wih Water: The Maoist State and the 1954 Yangzi Floods,” Modern Asian Studies 52.6 (2018): 1807-1836. The term is used on p. 1810. 489 Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, 3rd ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1999), p. 345.

225 in the first half of the 1960s. Lin, the Defense Minister under Mao, had ordered the 41st Army of the PLA to engage in land reclamation at Niutianyang in 1962. Just west of the coastal city of

Shantou, Niutianyang sits near the mouth of the Rongjiang River (Figure 8.1). In the early 1960s,

Niutianyang was a tidal beach of around 21,313 mu or 3,511 acres. During high tide, South

China Sea waters push into the mouth of the Rongjiang River and low-lying Niutianyang was covered in water of around six inches to two feet in depth. The water is pushed back out into the ocean with the Rongjiang River during low tide. Local authorities had established a fish farm in the area. But the area also looked conducive for land reclamation. The beach was flat and river and tidal deposition meant the soil was potentially fertile. The river could help wash away the salinity of tidal deposition once a dike with sluice gates was built and the river could naturally provide irrigation water once land was reclaimed.490

490 GPA 264-1-119-27 省農墾廳潮陽縣牛田洋地區圍墾海灘地意見 [Provincial Agriculture Division Opinion on Chaoyang County Niutianyang Beach Reclamation] (1963). This is the only Niutianyang-related document that the Guangdong Provincial Archives allowed me to access.

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Figure 8.1 Niutianyang (Enclosed in Red).491

Between 1962 and 1965, the 41st division of the PLA had successfully built a great dike, reclaimed land, and started tilling it with the help of locals. It was the success of this cooperation between the PLA and locals that inspired Mao to pass the May 7th Directive. Thus, Niutianyang had great symbolic value to the Party for it was the direct inspiration for one of Mao’s most famous orders.

In 1968, after the PLA’s general repression of the Red Guard movement, Mao sent millions of educated urban youth “sent up the mountains and down to the villages” to learn from peasants. It was in this context that in December of 1968, a total of 2183 university students or alumni from all over China were sent down to Niutianyang to engage in manual labor.492 They

491 The present dike protects the water-facing side. Map is modified from Google Maps. 492 Some were university-educated employees from central government departments such as Foreign Relations and Foreign Trade. Among the students, eleven Beijing universities were represented including the nation’s top schools Peking and Tsinghua universities. There were two Shanghai schools, Shanghai Foreign Languages University and Shanghai Foreign Trade University represented. Ten Guangdong schools had students in the group including Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, Jinan University, South China Agricultural University and South China Normal University. Fujian was represented by Overseas Chinese University and Xiamen University. There were also

227 were assigned to work with the PLA there to continue reclaiming the land and bringing it to agricultural life.

When the students arrived at Niutianyang in late December 1968, the 41st Army was no longer there having been reassigned to Guangxi. Instead, the students were placed under the supervision of the 55th Army, which had just taken control of the reclamation site in the same year. The 219th Division (which later became the 164th Division) of the 55th Army was in charge of Niutianyang. Three artillery regiments (Regiments 655, 656, and 657) of the 219th Division divided Niutianyang into three segments (East, West, and Central Niutianyang respectively). The students were divided into companies and distributed among the regiments.493 One memoirist had just graduated with a major in agricultural studies at South China Agricultural University when he was sent down to Niutianyang. He belonged to the Second Student Company (学生二

连), which was under the 657th Artillery Regiment and based in Central Niutianyang. His company had 138 members of whom thirteen were PLA soldiers. Two-thirds of them were his fellow students and alumni of his alma mater. The rest were from Beijing schools. The company was divided into four platoons, which were further divided into squads. The thirteen PLA soldiers of course took the role of company leader, squad leaders, and platoon leaders. There was one female student company (女生连) in Niutianyang.494

Needless to say, the students faced many hardships there in their first half year. First, they had to accustom themselves to military discipline, with fixed times for waking up, using the

students from Sichuan (Sichuan University, Sichuan Foreign Languages University), Hubei (Wuhan University), and Hainan (Hainan University), which was then still part of Guangdong. See Chen Shuren 陈树仁, Niutianyang Zainan Qinliji 牛田洋灾难亲历记 [A Personal Memoir of the Disaster at Niutianyang] (Guangzhou: Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe, 2009), pp. 11-12. I thank Chen Shuren for giving me a copy of both of his published memoirs. 493 The relevant PLA sections (not a complete list) for this chapter are armies (军), beneath them divisions (师), then regiments (团), companies (连), platoons (排), and finally squads (班). 494 Chen Shuren, Niutianyang Zainan Qinliji, p. 15. On the female student company, see pp. 35-37.

228 bathroom, eating, and sleeping. There were specified times for reading Mao’s Little Red Book, and learning to sing, dance, and recite patriotic works. The hardest adjustment of all was doing backbreaking labor building the dike, creating paths, digging through the mud to make irrigation channels, and tilling the fields. While they were there, students joked that in Niutianyang they were the “fake cows [plowing the land] as if they were real cows” 假牛当真牛, making a pun on the niu, which means cow, in Niutianyang. In the semi-tropical region of Guangdong, hot and humid summers and cold winters added to the suffering of the inadequately supplied students.495

Pictures taken of pre-1969 typhoon Niutianyang depicted a happy life with smiling students but these were staged, according to survivors. They recall their lives in Niutianyang as having been very difficult (Figure 8.2).496 But their biggest hardship would arrive on July 28, 1969.

Figure 8.2 Female Students at Niutianyang.497

495 On the hard life at Niutianyang, see Chen Shuren, Niutianyang Zainan Qinliji, pp. 15-46. The pun is on p. 33. 496 Every memoir has its own set of pictures from Niutianyang. A good number of these photos of a “happy” Niutianyang life can be found in the fifty picture pages before the memoir begins in Liu Jinting 刘锦庭, Fengyu Niutianyang 风雨牛田洋 [Wind and Rain Niutianyang] (Fuzhou: Fujian Shaonian Ertong Chubanshe, 2000). See especially picture pages 15-27, 29-39. 497 This picture is a favorite mainstay of many memoirs. I have used the one in Liu Jinting, Fengyu Niutianyang, picture page 19, because of its higher resolution.

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The Niutianyang Incident of July 28, 1969: What Everyone Agrees On

Typhoon Viola was a powerful typhoon, which had wind speeds of 140 mph or 225 kmh as it was crossing the Bashi Strait between the islands of Luzon and Taiwan. It was on a collision course with eastern Guangdong with a trajectory likely similar to the 1922 typhoon that took more than 50,000 lives. Despite similar paths and comparable strength, it would not take as many lives.498 The difference in mortality between the two storms in 1922 and 1969 lay in the presence of the Mao state’s meteorological infrastructure during Viola. As early as July 26, authorities knew the storm was coming and they had two days to prepare whereas the 1922 typhoon took everyone by surprise. The Shantou Daily published the news the same day. 499 By July 27, government and society began typhoon defense work.

It was said that Premier Zhou Enlai himself made a phone call to the municipal government on July 27. This was a big deal and hinted at the possible severity of the storm.

Some memoirs contain versions of this important phone call and claim that Zhou called just to ask everyone to take seriously the task of doing typhoon defense work. 500 Some survivors speculated that there might have been something else in the phone call, perhaps special instructions to protect the Niutianyang Dike (Figure 8.3).

498 For a quick comparison of the two storms, see Le Kentang, “Marine Disasters in China and the Strategy for their Mitigation,” in M.I. El-Sabh, S. Venkatesh, H. Denis, and T.S. Murty, eds., Land-based and Marine Hazards: Scientific and Management Issues (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), pp. 265-278, see p. 275. Viola supposedly had wind speeds of 80 m/s, which would be the equivalent of 250 kph winds. Chinese sources at that time, using the Beaufort scale indicate it was a typhoon with winds greater than 12-level winds, since 12 was the highest level on the Beaufort scale. Later, the Chinese government added 6 more levels to capture the wind speeds of larger typhoons and match the Saffir Simpson scale. Memoirs start appearing in the 90s and 2000s and many indicate that Viola landed as a typhoon with 18-level winds, which is the equivalent of 250 kph winds or a Category Five super typhoon. 499 STRB, (1969/07/26). 500 One version with what is obviously improvised language that might have approximated what Zhou Enlai said is in Huang Jianbin 黄建斌, Niutianyang Fengchao 牛田洋风潮 [Niutianyang Wind and Waves] (Changsha: Hunan Wenyi Chubanshe, 2009), pp. 23-24.

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Figure 8.3 Niutianyang Dike.501

Niutianyang after all was the inspiration for Mao’s May 7 Directive. All survivors and memoirs agree that the significance of the political link between the Niutianyang Dike and

Mao’s famous directive played a role in the events that unfolded. One memoirist claims that a newspaper at that time (without identifying the newspaper) reported: “Niutianyang is the production base from which the path of Chairman Mao’s glorious May 7 Directive developed…to defend the great dike is to defend Chairman Mao’s May 7 Directive.”502

And another memoirist described Niutianyang as having a “magical political and emotional power as the origin site of the May 7 Directive.” One of his commanders from the 55th

Army told the sent-down youth that “Niutianyang is the origin site of the May 7 Directive that

Chairman Mao himself put out. It is the place that our older brother the 41st Army built by battling heaven and earth. It is the model for our entire nation to learn from. We must swear to

501 It is now made of strong concrete unlike the 1969 version. Photo by author. 502 “牛田洋生产基地是沿着毛主席光辉的五七指示道路发展起来的。。。守护大堤，就是捍卫毛主席五七指示。” in Huang Jianbin, Niutianyang Fengchao, p. 26.

231 the death to defend this revolutionary path of Chairman Mao’s. We must defend it to the death.”503 Despite the militant language and the idealized but close to extreme examples that

Cultural Revolution typhoon propaganda spread, as we saw in the previous chapter, it was likely that a sense of pragmatic caution was exercised on the ground. Interviewed survivors and memoirs all compare the 41st Army with the 55th Army’s approach to typhoons. They claim that when the 41st Army was still in charge in 1968, they chose retreat as their primary option in the case of a strong typhoon that struck that year. Only if the storm was forecast to be weak would the 41st Army make efforts to defend the dike. The 55th Army had hardly any experience with typhoons.504

Tragically, the 55th Army made the decision not to retreat but to defend the dike. One Niu

Friend I interviewed recalls that on July 27, his regiment had a meeting. His regiment commander surnamed Bai, told all the companies under his control that “If we are here then the great dike will be here!” 人在大堤在. As the Niu Friend ominously pointed out, the unspoken corollary to this rhetorical stance was “If we perish then the great dike will perish” 人亡大堤亡.

Throughout the three 55th Army regiments stationed in Niutianyang, “If we are here then the great dike will be here” was the mantra. 505 Many also recall their commanders repeating a famous line from Mao’s Little Red Book: “We are first not afraid of hardship, and second not afraid to die.” Regiment leader Bai even drove his Army-issued car up the dike and parked it there to demonstrate his resolve, recalls one survivor I interviewed.

503 “五七指示发源地的神奇政治感力,” and “牛田洋是毛主席亲手批示的五七指示发源地，是四十一军老大哥部队战天斗地创起来的，是全国人民学习的样板，我们要誓死保护毛主席的革命路线，一定要死守严防,” in Chen Shuren 陈树仁, Linan Niutianyang 厉难牛田洋 [Experiencing Ordeal at Niutianyang] (Hong Kong: Tianma Chubanshe, 2014), pp. 45-55, and 103. This memoir is a longer but self-censored version of Chen Shuren’s 2009 memoir under a new title. 504 Huang Jianbin, Niutianyang Fengchao, p. 25. 505 Chen Shuren, Linan Niutianyang, p. 103. Chen recalls how his regiment emotionally expressed their conviction: “If we here then the great dam will be here, we vow to live and die with the great dam!” 人在大堤在, 誓与大堤共存亡.

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Staring death in the face, the students were assigned to different tasks related to securing the dike. The ones who would be placed in the most vulnerable position were those sent up to the dike to patrol it and keeping a lookout for leaks and cracks. It was considered an honor to be assigned to the dike or to be on the frontline (前线) of this battle with a typhoon. One memoirist recounted how his squad leader had great difficulty choosing who would go up the dike and who would stay behind because everyone was volunteering to go up. One person would shout “I’m a

Communist Party member, I will be the first to volunteer!” and another would exclaim, “I’m a

Red Guard from the capital, I insist on going up!”506 Chen Shuren was one of those students assigned to rove the dike. He recalls that everyone in his company was assigned a partner who patrolled the dike with them as a pair in shifts that would last till dawn. He remembers while on his shift seeing whole families of rats scurrying out of their holes in the dike as if they knew something bad was about to happen and were busy moving to a new home. Two stray dogs busily chased them.507 The rat holes suggested that the dike was not structurally sound. The dike had been made only of mud and soil reinforced by wooden pilings without concrete, built by soldiers and students who were not necessarily engineers. The weakness of the dike’s foundations was a point that everyone agreed on. Many of the survivors were assigned to secure the quarters of the soldiers and students and reinforce them. Or they were assigned to protect the belongings of those who had gone up the dike and write names down on these objects to help identify owners later. Being away from the dike and a bit further inland improved their chances of survival.508

506 Deng Siniu 邓四牛, Niutianyang zhi Lu 牛田洋之路 [The Road to Niutianyang], p. 34. This memoir was printed and published by the author himself. Preface was written in 2009. I thank the author for giving me a copy on July 28, 2017. 507 Chen Shuren, Linan Niutianyang, p. 103. 508 A research group in South China Normal University of Guangzhou has a project tracking down and interviewing survivors to reconstruct their exact locations when the typhoon struck and how they survived.

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July 27 was a 15th day of a lunar calendar month. The full moon that night meant that the tide would be at its highest level when the storm arrived the next morning. Viola was later estimated to have brought a storm surge of around ten feet in height.509 Dawn never broke. The sky was shrouded in darkness in the morning and the wind was so loud those present had to shout directly into another’s ear to be heard. Rain poured down as giant waves pummeled the dike one after the other. Chen Shuren, as he stood on the structure, saw the ocean in front of him and another inland ocean slowly building behind him as the water reclaimed the land. The dike was so soaked that it seemed like “soft tofu” and water was spouting from many holes. More students and soldiers were sent trudging through the water to help reinforce the dike. The reinforcements told the students who were already there how lucky they felt to be on the dike and how some of the students who were left behind were frustrated they could not join them!

Some used their hoes to load mud and soil into sacks while others carried filled sacks as heavy as fifty pounds to block up holes. When the holes became too big and the leaks too fast, students and soldiers jumped in to block them with their own bodies. One student named Peng Zili, who specialized in domesticated cattle at South China Agricultural University, was one of those students that Chen remembers using his body to block a large hole in the dike. “The flowing water was choking his breath but he still kept stubbornly shouting to others to lay stones and sandbags around him.” In many places, the water had burst through, making holes so large and flowing so powerfully that the wooden pilings intended to secure the structure were uprooted and carried out to sea.510 The image of students and soldiers linking their arms together to block water flowing from the gaping holes was the kind of representation of brave collective will and

509 Le Kentang, “Marine Disasters in China and the Strategy for their Mitigation,” p. 275. 510 Chen Shuren, Personal Memoirs, pp. 66-69.

234 effort that later typhoon propaganda would paint of the July 28 Incident, also known in Chinese as the 7.28 Incident 七二八事件 (Figure 8.4). Reality was far messier.

Figure 8.4 Idealized Images of the Niutianyang Incident.511

511 Soldiers and students are depicted linking their bodies together through arms and holding copies of the Little Red Book while singing patriotic hymns. STRB (1969/08/20) and (1969/08/22).

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It did not take long for the leaders of the 55th Army’s regiments to realize that defending the dike was a lost cause. They had originally planned to shoot three bright red whistling signals from a signal gun to indicate it was time to retreat. But the howling wind and rain made the signal useless. When they shot out the signal, it never climbed high enough for people to see it and the roaring wind ensured no one would hear the whistle. They had no choice but to dispatch more people up the dike to inform the rest of the decision to retreat.

The dike had already caved in at several places and a number of students and soldiers had already been snared by the waves and taken out to sea. Chen Shuren recalls telling the person beside him, “Today, might be our end.” Between 9 and 10 am, the dike below him was crumbling and they were about to fall into the water. Chen shouted, “Grab wood!” Chen was one of those lucky enough to find and hold on to a piece of floating wood. Chen was also fortunately an accomplished swimmer when he was in university. Holding on with his remaining strength, he floated in the waters of the Rongjiang River till 6 pm carried by the tide and storm’s power upstream where he finally made it to land.512 Many others were not so lucky.

One former student interviewed had the good fortune to be assigned to protecting guns and other military equipment and was thus far from the dike when all this was unfolding. Even so, he recalls that the wind was so strong he had to crawl on his belly to escape. The quarters he was reinforcing had collapsed between 11 am and 12 noon and he was forced to flee north away from the dike. He later dug up the sweet potatoes in a peasant farm just north of the Niutianyang camp and ate them raw to stave off his hunger. When the storm finally ended, he walked back to the fields of Niutianyang and recalled the stench of death overpowering his nostrils. The fields of

Niutianyang and the waters beyond it were littered with corpses. He told me, “It was a heaven- sent disaster plus a human catastrophe” 天灾加人祸. Elderly locals claim that every year on the

512 Chen Shuren, Niutianyang Zainan Qinlii, pp. 77-89. A map with the route of Chen’s float is on p. 89.

236 night of July 28, they would hear ghosts 冤魂 roaming the fields and that there were times when they would ask Buddhist monks to conduct prayer services to allow the souls to be reborn.

Making Victory, Martyrs, Models, and Monuments

If we accept the official death count, 1,554 people died as a result of Typhoon Viola.

Among them were 470 soldiers and eighty-three students who had defended the dike.513 The government nonetheless declared it a great victory. On August 1, the Shantou Daily was filled with articles celebrating how humans had overcome the forces of nature. One title went:

“Snatching victory from fighting disaster, fully exhibiting the utility of an assault by a soldier- civilian organization” 夺取抗灾斗争的胜利: 充分发挥兵民组织的突击作用. Apart from declaring the July 28 incident a victory over the typhoon, the article extolled Mao’s idea of having the military and civilians work together. Another article had that ominous Little Red Book quote in its celebratory title: “If “We are first not afraid of hardship and second not afraid to die” then we will be victorious wherever we go.”514 One of the official reports filed after the incident makes it clear that the Party wanted this to be seen as a triumph of Maoist collective will and effort. It concluded: “Undergoing this struggle against disaster has been one great military training for all the soldiers and civilians in this entire area. Political ideology has been greatly exercised and improved and in terms of governance we have fought to a great victory.”515 To this day, this is the official narrative of this human tragedy.

513 Chen Shuren, Niutianyang Zainan Qinliji, pp. 174-175 has a complete list of all eighty-three students. 514 STRB, (1969/08/01), ” 一不怕苦，二不怕死，就所向無敵.” 515 “通过抗灾斗争，对全区广大军民是一次战备大演习，政治思想得到了很大锻炼，很大提高，在政治上打了个大胜仗,” in 汕头专区革命委员会 “用毛泽东思想统帅抗灾斗争就无往而不胜,” [If we use Maoist thought in leading the fight against disasters then we can go anywhere and be victorious] in SMA-SGF 汕革发 (69) 138 号 (1969/08/16), pp. 1-10. Copy in Shantou Municipal Archives. This is one of a number of “propaganda” documents shown to me.

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Because there was a victory, there were to be rewards. The Shantou Revolutionary

Committee (SRC) met in September to decide which individuals and organizations merited honors and commendations for their performance in the battle against nature. They needed to know who had helped the most in “obtaining a great victory in the struggle against disasters.”516

The committee had forms for individuals and organizations to fill out and attach supporting testimony to prove that they had distinguished themselves. The living filled the forms out themselves if they were literate while the dead had their forms filled up by others. The Shantou

Municipal Archives still has ninety four preserved, all showcasing the bravery and enthusiasm people had for typhoon defense work.517

The SRC came up with a long list that was divided into organizations (集体) and individuals (个人) and for each they determined who fell under first honors, second honors, and third honors (一等功, 二等功, 三等功). A table at the end of the report helpfully indicates the number of commendations given. The committee had commended 392 organizations and 2,897 people. Of these sixty-one organizations and sixty-seven people received first honors.518 It was almost like what the Dodo said in Alice in Wonderland, “everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”

An awards ceremony was held on September 14. Apart from the 3,298 civilian organizations and individuals recognized, 1,070 soldiers of the PLA were also commended for their outstanding performance during the typhoon. The ceremony must have lasted the whole day

516 “取得了抗灾斗争的伟大胜利,” in 汕头专区革命委员会, “关于授予在抗灾斗争中光荣立功的集体和个人的决定,” [Regarding the Decision to Honor those Organizations and Individuals who Distinguished themselves in the Battle Against Disaster] SMA-SGF (69) 148 号 (1969/09/14), p. 2. 517 These are all filed in SMA-SGF (69), no. 11. 518 “取得了抗灾斗争的伟大胜利,” in 汕头专区革命委员会, “关于授予在抗灾斗争中光荣立功的集体和个人的决定,” SMA-SGF (69) 148 号 (1969/09/14), pp. 5-12, and appendix with table containing number of awards dated September 8, 1969.

238 for apart from the large number of people recognized, over sixty lectures were delivered and over forty speeches were reportedly given. The oldest honoree was a seventy-three year old peasant and the youngest was a twelve-year old Red Guard. There is no indication that any of these awards, at least for the living, came with a monetary incentive. To be recognized was reward enough. The Shantou Municipal Archives showed me 180 documents from the awards ceremony of which a good number were speeches. The representative of the Shantou revolutionary committee Luo Xingzhou 罗兴洲 had the longest speech at twenty-eight pages single-spaced.

Regardless of length, all of the speeches claimed victory for the Party against the typhoon.519 The

Shantou revolutionary committee made it clear that such a grandiose ceremony was “only held because under very good circumstances they had obtained a great and important victory.”520

The living received recognition but what about the dead? The dead needed to be buried but the monetary compensation provided to most families of the deceased was insufficient to do so. If the living were divided in terms of first to third honors, the dead were divided into those who simply died and those who distinguished themselves as martyrs or lieshi 烈士. Families of martyrs were eligible to receive anything from 100 to 200 yuan but non-martyr families received a mere ten to twenty yuan. These amounts were quite insignificant. As one Niu Friend told me, the price of a pig at that time was between 300 to 400 yuan. “Humans were nothing compared to pigs” 人不如猪.

519 Luo Xingzhou 罗兴洲, “高举毛泽东思想伟大红旗进一步掀起抓革命促生产的新高潮加强团结做好工作准备打仗,” [Raise high the great red flag of Mao Zedong Thought. Take a step forward in setting off a new high tide of grasping the revolution and promoting production. Strengthen mass mobilization, do our work well, and prepare for battle], SMA-SGF (69) 38 号, pp. 12-39. 520 “取得了重大胜利的大好形势下召开的,” in 汕头专区革命委员会, “关于召开抗灾斗争庆功授奖大会的情况报告” [Regarding the circumstances surrounding the convening of a fighting disaster great awarding ceromony], SMA-SGF (69) 153 号 (1969/09/18), pp. 1-5.

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Figure 8.5 Yang Jiansheng.521

As in all Maoist campaigns, model typhoon defense workers were identified for others to emulate. In the case of the 1969 “victory” in particular and typhoon defense work in general,

Yang Jiansheng became that model in 1970 (Figure 8.5). Yang was given posthumous first honors in 1969 and he was singled out in the rewards report for being a “cadre who fully and

521 The caption reads “The spirited vanguard warrior of the proletariat Comrade Yang Jiansheng.” STRB, (1970/05/24).

240 utterly served the people” 完全，彻底为人民服务的干部.522 He was a thirty seven-year old cadre from Chaoyang county’s Xilu Commune where there was another great dike, the Xilu harbor great sluice gate 西芦港大关. Like Niutianyang, a local effort to stop the Xilu Gate from bursting ended in tragedy. Yang drowned trying to defend the sluice gate from the typhoon.

Though there were many like him at Niutianyang, Yang alone became the model for all.

The Guangdong Provincial Revolutionary Committee passed a resolution in 1970 to make Yang the model on May 18 and in the following days the Shantou Daily and other

Guangdong newspapers such as the Southern Daily 南方日报 and the Hainan Daily printed the same resolution and ran similar feature articles and pieces on Yang.523 A thirteen-panel cartoon depicting the life and martyrdom of Yang appeared in all the Guangdong newspapers on May 30,

1970 (Figure 8.6). The life trajectory of a Maoist martyr was stereotypical. Martyrs always start out by reading the works of Mao and being inspired by them (panel three of the cartoon biography). The cartoon’s depiction of typhoon defense work showed the ideal collective will and effort with people like Yang joining arms to block a gap in a dike (panel ten). Finally, the martyr dies for the people in selfless sacrifice. Before Yang drowns, he tells the people “Do not mind me…” (panel thirteen). Many of the Niutianyang survivors do not deny that such a person existed but they doubt whether he did what the state claims he did. It also seemed unfair to some of them that only one person would receive such recognition when so many of them had done similar if not greater things.

522 汕头专区革命委员会, “关于授予在抗灾斗争中光荣立功的集体和个人的决定,” SMA-SGF (69) 148 号 (1969/09/14), p. 5. 523 STRB (1970/05/24), “ 广东省革命委员会关于学习杨健生同治的决定 ” [The Guangdong Provincial Revolutionary Committee’s Decision Regarding Learning from Comrade Yang Jiansheng]. See also NFRB and HNRB (1970/05/24).

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Figure 8.6 Panels Three, Ten, and Thirteen of Yang Jiansheng’s Cartoon Biography.524

Though the families of martyrs seem not to have received adequate financial recompense, the memories of the martyrs themselves were honored with their own spaces in Niutianyang. At one point of the dike where a four-meter wide and two-meter long break was produced by the typhoon, the Party allowed for a memorial stone to be laid in April of 1970 (Figure 8.7). This was where a group of students and soldiers had reportedly formed a human chain in order to block the large hole and died in the process. The writing on the memorial stone celebrates their collective sacrifice: “United in Battle, Unbreakable” 团结战斗, 坚不可摧. This piece of special stone specifically commemorates the eighty-three students who died on July 28.

524 STRB (1970/05/30). Same cartoon was printed in the NFRB and HNRB on the same day suggesting that it was printed in at least all the Guangdong newspapers.

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Figure 8.7 Memorial Stone to the Eighty-three Martyred Students at Niutianyang.525

Meanwhile, on Liantang mountain 莲塘山, which overlooks the fields of Niutianyang and lies on PLA camp grounds, the Guangdong provincial headquarters of the PLA erected in

1972 a memorial to the 470 soldiers who perished fighting the typhoon. In 1999, on the thirtieth anniversary, the Shantou municipal government and the PLA cooperated to refurbish the memorial and include the names of all the 470 soldiers and eighty-three students (Figure 8.8). It is officially known as the July 28 Memorial 七二八纪念碑 and is the main site for any commemorative ceremonies. As it is on PLA grounds, any kind of ceremony requires official approval. Otherwise, the memorial is located on an open part of the PLA camp and is thus accessible to anybody. However, outside of Niu Friends and their families and people who live in Niutianyang, not many people know about these sites. Even Shantou locals are unaware they exist let alone Chinese from other parts of the country. I found myself explaining the July 28

Incident and giving directions to the Shantou local I hired to drive me to these two sites on a

525 Photo by author.

244 motorcycle. The July 28 Incident is not well-known at all because, for the most part, the government has discouraged any grandiose public commemorations.

Figure 8.8 July 28 Memorial on Liantang Mountain.526

The only time a large commemoration was held and televised was on the thirtieth anniversary in 1999. This was the occasion when the July 28 Memorial was renovated. More than 1,000 attended the event. To some, justice and recognition had finally been served as all of

526 The main inscription reads “7.28 Martyrs will be remembered forever.” Photo by author.

245 the deceased became martyrs.527 Gracing the ceremony and surely one of those who helped push for it was a rising star in the Party, future foreign minister, and Niu Friend Li Zhaoxing. Li and

Party representatives from the Guangdong provincial and Shantou municipal government laid wreathes of flowers at the memorial and everyone paid their respects to the martyrs. When the

Niu Friends petitioned to hold a 40th anniversary commemoration in 2009, the government denied their request. In 2019, it will be the 50th anniversary. The Niu Friends will once again petition to hold a commemoration at Niutianyang itself but most think that the government will deny their request. July 28, 1969 remains politically sensitive today.

The Politics of Memory, Typhoon Identities, and Typhoon Place

Sensitivities over the memory of July 28 exist not only between the state and the survivors but also among the survivors themselves. The South China Normal University has an ongoing project that seeks to document the experiences of the Niu Friends and plot out their locations during the July 28 Incident. A number of the Niu Friends told me about this effort, pointing out the difference between that project and my own interests. Whereas the South China

Normal University endeavor was interested in “facts,” how old they were, where and what they studied, which company they belonged to at Niutianyang, blow-by-blow accounts of how they lived through July 28, 1969, facts which the interviewees were happy to supply as they were hardly political, I was asking them what their experience meant to them in retrospect and what they thought of the circumstances before and after the incident. I was interested, for example, whether they agreed with the government’s narrative of it as a victory, or if they thought someone was to blame. I was also concerned with how the incident has shaped their lives.

Understandably, not everyone was willing to answer these questions. No one gave me

527 This sentiment, for example, was expressed in Chen Shuren, Niutianyang Zainan Qinliji, p. 4.

246 permission to voice record them but I was allowed to take notes. Those who were willing to be interviewed considered it important in a sense to “speak for the record.” I found women less inclined to be interviewed and, when they consented, to be more cautious than men.528 Like Gail

Hershatter in her study of the memories of rural women in 1950s China, I do not assume memory to be the keeper of what is ‘true’ but recognize that memory is a changing process that helps individuals comprehend their past and how it shapes their lives.529 In the following section, I explore why Niu Friends, despite their shared experience, have chosen to remember the same event and what it means to them personally in very different ways.

The most contentious question I asked was about what they thought of the official narrative that Niutianyang was a human victory over the typhoon. Responses to this question fell along a discernible spectrum. On one end were people who agreed with the official account. On the other end were those who thought the incident was less a victory and more of a tragedy and that the Party bore a lot of responsibility for what had happened. Between these two poles there was a middle ground occupied by the majority. Most felt that the July 28 Incident was a tragedy that could have been avoided but stopped short of criticizing the Party. Among Niu Friends, people were aware that such differences existed and it affects some of their relationships to each other.

Those who accept the Party’s version of events are known to the others as the “sing the praises and virtues” group 歌功颂德派 (gegongsongdepai). To “sing the praises and virtues” is a derogatory phrase in Chinese to indicate fawning and obsequiousness to those above. They are perceived to have accepted the official narrative uncritically, and to readily extol the Party in

528 Perhaps they might have been more receptive had the interviewer been a women as well as Gail Hershatter and her female collaborators experienced in working on her book The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), pp. 19- 23. The quote on “speak for the record” is on p. 20. 529 Hershatter, p. 22.

247 their memoirs or other public engagements. A number work for the government or the Party itself. When I interviewed individuals who had been lumped into this group by others, these individuals never held the Party directly responsible. They did think that the incident was tragic but argued that it was an inevitable product of history. Most often began answering my question by giving me a history lesson, telling me about the Cultural Revolution and how everyone listened to and admired Mao at that time. They point out the political importance of Niutianyang as the origin site of the May 7 Directive and the popular Mao dictum that “man would certainly emerge victorious over nature” 人定胜天. To them, the fight against the typhoon had to be fought and inevitably there would be martyrs. If they wrote memoirs, these tended to avoid the use of the word “disaster” 灾 or “ordeal” 难 in the title and in the text. Instead they replace such words with euphemisms such as “wind and rain” 风雨 or “wind and wave” 风潮.530 The texts were also more in line with the official narrative in terms of emphasizing the importance of

Maoist Thought at that time, their inclusion of typhoon propaganda stories no matter how exaggerated, and the importance of defending Mao’s “revolutionary path” 革命路线 in the form of the Niutianyang Dike. They are also aware that some of their fellow Niu Friends have identified them as sycophants. During my interviews of “sing the praises and virtues” individuals, some would just bring up the point that there were Niu Friends out there who “do not understand history” and who dare to think that the Party was responsible for the deaths at Niutianyang.

It would be easy to simply see the “sing the praises and virtues” group as obsequious but one can also understand them being sincere in their beliefs or as taking logical courses of self- preservation and promotion in the context of an authoritarian state. Maybe their experiences in the 1960s made them believe in things like personal sacrifice for the common good. A number of

530 For example, Huang Jianbin’s Niutianyang Fengchao, and Liu Jinting’s Fengyu Niutianyang.

248 them worked for the government and are members of the Party. It would be hard to imagine them taking a stance against the Party and not endangering their own livelihoods and families.

In contrast to the “sing the praises and virtues” group are those who are accused of

“failing to understand history” 不懂历史. They do not publicly condemn the Party, nor do they do so in their memoirs but they have been known to pin responsibility on the Party in private conversations and in more subtle ways in print. When interviewed they made it clear that deaths could have been avoided. Their memoirs do not shy away from the use of the words “disaster” and “ordeal” 灾难 in the titles. Nonetheless, they too are careful about how they frame what happened. Their memoirs stop short of pinning responsibility on the Party and they also praise

Mao. They argue however that their memoirs are more truthful and factual than official accounts because they do not include fantastic stories about Niutianyang that are based on Cultural

Revolution propaganda. They also suggest that the memoirs written by the “sing the praises and virtues” group include many things that are not historical.

The conflict between the two groups is largely hidden because it is carried on by talking behind each other’s backs. However, there are times when it becomes more manifest. Every year on July 28, since the 1990s, commemorative reunions are held in different cities of China where a large number of Niu Friends live or are nearby. The largest gathering is always in Guangzhou, but decent numbers also show up for reunions held in Shantou and Beijing. At these gatherings,

Niu Friends meet to catch up and reminisce about their time at Niutianyang. Speeches are delivered and songs are sung. No one of course delivers a speech that is highly critical of the

Party. Individuals from the “sing the praises and virtues” group might deliver speeches that irritate those who disagree with them but for the most part no conflict arises from the speeches themselves.

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Surprisingly, it is karaoke time that is more likely to spark minor spats. Niu gatherings often involve the singing of songs from the Cultural Revolution and for the most part everyone enjoys them. But a few tunes are contentious. The most problematic is a song attributed to Lin

Biao, who supposedly composed or had someone compose a tune to celebrate the success of the

41st Army’s reclamation work at Niutianyang. “Bright Bright Red Niutianyang” 红彤彤的牛田

洋 is a favorite of members of the “sing the praises and virtues” group. They often request to sing it at gatherings. It is here that others voice their displeasure and ask that the song not be sung because it glorifies the hardships they suffered as sent-down youth and their near-death experience with the typhoon. Wang Changjun’s “Fighting the Typhoon,” which was discussed in the previous chapter, is the other contentious tune. Though it is not sung, members of the “sing the praises and virtues” group sometimes ask that it be played during the reunions to the disgust of some survivors. As one interviewee pointed out, Wang’s 1965 paean to Shanghai workers fighting back a typhoon became associated with the incident at Niutianyang after 1969. Conflict over the playing of these songs was confirmed by many that I interviewed.

These conflicts are not going to go far. Those who fall on the extreme ends of the spectrum are very few. Most Niu Friends hold the view that while Niutianyang was tragic and not a victory, they were living in extraordinary times. What happened to them, while not inevitable, was not surprising. Everyone understands that the official narrative is not likely to change in their lifetime and to them there is no point trying to get it revised. Instead everyone agrees that it is better to preserve the memory of the incident through the publishing of memoirs and the continued holding of reunions. Conflicts have also been smoothed out over the years through practical accommodations. Because there are several cities where one can congregate with other Niu Friends every year on July 28, people tend to avoid gatherings where they know

250 they will run into someone they dislike. Most of those who were identified as “singing the praises and virtues” tend to gather in Shantou while their opponents tend to meet in Guangzhou.

The easy solution to the irritation over certain songs is to just simply avoid requesting them.

When I observed the 2017 reunion in Guangzhou, neither “Bright Bright Red Niutianyang” nor

“Fighting the Typhoon” were ever played.

Conflicts between Niu Friends are kept to a minimum also because they all respect each other for having gone through the same traumatic incident. Niutianyang the memory and

Niutianyang the place occupy a special position in the way they see themselves. Each proudly carries the badge of being a Niu Friend. They gather without fail every July 28. When asked what the July 28 Incident means to them, they all claim that it changed their life and also helped them succeed in it. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the students were soon reassigned from the fields of Niutianyang. Niu Friends claim that Premier Zhou Enlai was furious that so many talented students had died. Many of the students were skilled in foreign languages, a skill that was important to a China that saw itself as a world power under Mao. One interviewee recalls how in 1969 only three people in the whole nation were fluent in Icelandic and one of them had perished at Niutianyang. All the students had thought that they would spend the rest of their lives doing backbreaking labor at Niutianyang but a few months after July 28 they were all reassigned to other places. One person I interviewed recalls the relief he felt after he was assigned to a department store in Meizhou to work as a clerk. It was a waste of his talent, which was proficiency in Russian, but he preferred working in an urban department store to doing reclamation and farming work. In the long term, everyone proudly agrees they became ready to face any challenge life threw at them because to them nothing was more challenging than what they experienced on July 28, 1969.

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Conclusion

The Cultural Revolution was an extraordinary time in Chinese history, one that can be compared to a disastrous storm. One American woman who was in Guangzhou from 1966 to

1976 and had experienced real typhoons in the province saw it fit to compare the Cultural

Revolution to a “social typhoon that shook all Eastern Asia.” In his foreword to this American woman’s account, John King Fairbank took up the metaphor: “A revolution is not like any other human experience. It is really an act of nature, like an earthquake, a typhoon…A society in revolution has somehow gone off the rails. The norms of behavior have evaporated. People live by their feelings and perform the most heroic deeds as well as dastardly crimes.”531

The Maoist state arose during a time when typhoon forecasting was improving and at first it utilized this ability to prepare communities in advance for a storm. In this sense, it still behaved within the “norms of behavior” that prevailed over the past centuries. But the Cultural

Revolution, even for just a moment on July 28, 1969, threw all these years of experience “off the rails.” Mao, PLA commanders, cadres, and ordinary students and soldiers believed they could fight and conquer typhoons. One might say that the attempt to preserve the Niutianyang Dike during a super typhoon could constitute a “heroic deed.” But one could also say that the unnecessary loss of life that ensued and the Communist Party’s failure to take responsibility to this day for what happened was a “dastardly crime.”

The July 28 incident was an unfortunate confluence of factors. Niutianyang had great political symbolism as the origin site of one of Mao’s most famous directives. To protect

Niutianyang was to protect Maoist ideology. The 55th Army of the PLA, inexperienced with typhoons, was stationed there and commanded a group of soldiers and students who were

531 Ruth Earnshaw Lo and Katharine S. Kinderman, In the Eye of the Typhoon: An American Woman in China During the Cultural Revolution, with an introduction by John K. Fairbank (New York: Da Capo, 1980), vii, p. 2.

252 steeped in Maoist propaganda. Niutianyang was also located in China’s greatest typhoon space and a Category Five typhoon arrived at just the wrong moment, when ardent but totally unprepared volunteers put their bodies on the line in a “battle” they could never hope to win. The stories of what happened are many, most of them are harrowing, but some are idealized, even sanitized, or just simply not publicized. Many know that on July 28, 1976, a big earthquake struck Tangshan in North China. But very few in China let alone the world know that something tremendous happened on July 28, 1969. And because very few know what happened, there is no real discussion about it let alone a “politics of compassion” for the people who suffered through it.532

But the memory of it lives on among those who lived through it, people who self-identify as Niu Friends. Their memories are not uniform, and that is as it should be. Some have chosen to conform to the official narrative; others disagree with it and think the Party is shirking its responsibility but they cannot express this openly, and most feel it was a tragedy that unfolded in extraordinary times that could not be helped. Admirably they have all embraced the memory of what must have been a traumatic event. It even defines who they are, who their lifelong friends are, and is the reason why they consider themselves successful in life. Within Guangdong’s typhoon space, a typhoon place emerged. Part of it will last for a long time in the form of the monuments and the memoirs of the incident. But much of it will be lost once the last Niu Friend inevitably passes away. For it is the people who lived through it who invest Niutianyang with the most meaning.

532 Xu Bin, The Politics of Compassion: The Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017).

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Conclusion: Guangdong’s Typhoon Space and Climate Spaces in Chinese and World History

Continuity and Change in Guangdong’s Typhoon Space

On September 9, 1996, Typhoon Sally, which at one point was a Category-Five typhoon, landed on the Leizhou Peninsula. Apart from inflicting more than three billion dollars in economic damages it took 330 lives. The damage and casualties might have been greater but the

Three Defenses Leadership Division, the same government structure that was established in the

1950s to deal with drought, floods, and typhoons, mobilized the units under it to prepare for

Sally. But this time, the typhoon defense units who were piling sandbags onto dikes and moving around securing structures and rescuing people were all military personnel. After the reforms of the 1980s, the PLA had taken over many of the anti-disaster mass mobilization tasks that once fell to cadres and ordinary citizens. 533 Responses to the 1996 storm underscore the many continuities but also changes in Guangdong’s ongoing history with typhoons.

In the twenty-first century, the long history of Guangdong’s typhoon space continues to manifest itself in familiar but also new ways. In the government published provincial gazetteer of

2001, one finds strange fragments of Guangdong’s typhoon past. In the appendix, there is a list of omens or signs that people should look out for that signal a typhoon is approaching. One of these pertains to observing the color of clouds. The appendix begins and ends with two local proverbs: “[If] in the west, [one sees] fiery skies, then wind and rain are not far” 西方火烧天, 风

雨离不远 and “If white rainbows [suggesting white rays of light] are hanging from the sky, then there will be many typhoons” 天挂白虹, 多有台风.” A scientific explanation accompanies the proverbs: before a typhoon arrives, the air pressure is low, atmospheric moisture is high, and in these conditions, only red, orange, and yellow colors of light are able to shine through the water

533 GDSZ-ZRZHZ, p. 847.

254 droplets. Thus, a “fiery sky” of red clouds is a sign of an approaching typhoon. Another scientific-sounding explanation claims that the clouds within a typhoon are pushed out from east to west so when a hanging line of white clouds appears at dusk like white rainbows this is another sign of an impending storm.534 More than a millennium ago, as discussed in Chapter

Two, Tang mariners had already identified something called the Typhoon Mother as a reliable omen for typhoons. Famous Song poet Su Shi immortalized it in his Typhoon Poem and described it as a fiery red cloud with rainbows drinking from the ocean. Though the 2001 gazetteer no longer mentions the Typhoon Mother by name, we can see its spirit lives on in the red clouds and white rainbows it describes.

Flipping to the next page of the 2001 gazetteer, one finds a list of typhoon portents from nature that might be found in a local gazetteer from late imperial China. The following strange sights were endorsed as reliable typhoon omens: crows washing their bodies (乌鸦洗身), shrimp traps catching fish (虾笼得鱼), groups of dragonflies flying low (蜻蜓结群底飞), and one that comes straight out of a Ming gazetteer, “seabirds returning to land in groups” (海鸟成群归来).

Like colored clouds, these phenomena come with a scientific explanation: the lower air pressure, higher atmospheric moisture, and low oxygen levels in the water would cause animals to behave abnormally.535 Late imperial portents have been repackaged with twenty-first century science, underscoring the myriad ways typhoon space remains the same even as it is transformed over time.

On June 7, 2019, the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the Wind God will again march in procession and a kite festival will be held in his honor. When I asked young villagers in 2016 if they still believed that the Wind God protected them from typhoons, a number remarked that

534 GDSZ-ZRZHZ, p. 871. 535 GDSZ-ZRZHZ, p. 872.

255 they could now watch and prepare for a typhoon by getting news from the TV or from their cellphones. But they are proud of the kite festival with its long history and how it is now one of the attractions of Leizhou. In 2016, the kite festival officially became a national kite-flying contest with teams from Beijing, Shanghai, and many other cities in China coming to compete.

Companies were sponsoring the competition and their advertising flags were fluttering in the wind along with the kites. The Wind God’s Kite Festival had taken on new meanings and was providing the community with a source of cultural and tourist capital and local pride. The Wind

God was no longer just catering to local needs. It now had a national dimension.

On July 28, 2019, the Niu Friends will gather again for the 50th anniversary of their ordeal. Whether or not the government approves their request for a grand commemoration, many of them will still make their way to Niutianyang itself. There is something extra meaningful about half-centuries and other numbers divisible by five and ten when it comes to anniversaries.

They cannot just meet in some Chinese city for the fiftieth anniversary. As they all agreed, this time they must go to Niutianyang. To the Niu Friends who will make it there, it means they will have lived an extra fifty years from a day on which they almost died. It means they will have lived another year to remind themselves of what they were able to walk away from and the friends who accompanied them through it all. As a number of them told me, they wish to be able to attend as many Niu reunions as possible before they die. It is almost as if they wish that the memory of Niutianyang would live on.

As all these stories illustrate, the ghost of Guangdong’s typhoon past remains but clad in new clothes. The legacy of centuries of dealing with storms continues to manifest itself in

Guangdong’s typhoon space. And so long as storms continue to visit it then old stories will

256 continue to be told and new stories will arise. History on the Guangdong coast will continue to be shaped by the storms that land every year.

Climate Spaces in Chinese and World History

This dissertation has attempted to present a spatial framework for studying climate history that is flexible in spatial and temporal scale and is holistic in its analysis of how climate and human society interact. It does this through a case study of the typhoon space in the

Guangdong littoral in South China and in doing so introduces a methodology for applying the concept of climate space to the study of other regions. There are two basic requirements of the climate space, that the climatic phenomenon being studied be real and that it be perceived as being real and important by the inhabitants of the space. Establishing the real may involve climate reconstructions, through documentary and geological proxies, the reading of historical climatology, paleoclimatology, and meteorology. As I showed in Chapter One, though the historical climatology of past storms is still in its infancy, Guangdong’s preliminary record suggests that the province had the highest frequency of landfalling cyclones in China’s littoral and climate history. But the real is of little relevance if the people experiencing climate do not invest in it any or much meaning. From the fifth century onward, as Chinese writing about typhoons emerged and grew and discussed in Chapter Two, the Chinese strongly identified the

Guangdong littoral with these cyclones. No other Chinese coastal province experienced the same level of identification with storms as Guangdong. Hence, even if the physical reach of typhoons may stretch further than the Guangdong coast, the intensity of cultural association crucial to climate space may not necessarily extend as far. Thus climate spaces are not necessarily the same as climate regions on a Köppen climate map.

257

Awareness of historical subjects of climate is the most crucial aspect of climate space.

After all, what distinguishes environmental history from natural history is that it is the history of

“mutual relations between humankind and the rest of nature.”536 Though awareness does not always lead to action, awareness increases the likelihood of deliberate action in relation to the object one is aware of. Thus, as the population of stormy coastal Guangdong grew in late imperial China, its inhabitants produced a vast corpus of knowledge and practices related to the prediction of and preparation for typhoons. Both state and society also sought to manage typhoons through the worship of storm spirits as evidenced by the entangled history of Leizhou’s indigenous Typhoon Mother deity and the imperially-promoted Wind God of Chapter Four.

Materially devastating, typhoons also induced state and society to develop means of supplying tangible relief to victims of storms in cycles that reflected the ebbs and flows of state effectiveness in Guangdong’s typhoon space, as illustrated in Chapter Five. As modernity set in, different regimes occupying coastal Guangdong in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, citing the threat of typhoons, harnessed the science of meteorology to promote their imperial, nationalist, and developmentalist agenda, as reflected in their determination to establish a viable meteorological network of climate observatories and stations, as narrated in

Chapter Six. The Mao-era state, confident in its belief that collective human action would allow the emerging Chinese nation to overcome the limits of nature, used typhoons, typhoon-related propaganda and leadership structures to promote the mass mobilization of coastal people into typhoon defense units, as reconstructed in Chapter Seven. But the extremes of Mao-era typhoon defense work, which went against centuries of healthy awareness and respect for the awesome power of typhoons, resulted in the tragic Niutianyang incident described in Chapter Eight.

536 J.R. McNeill, “Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History,” History and Theory 42 (2003): 5-43. See p. 6.

258

Nevertheless, the Niutianyang incident elicited within a particular group of people, the Niu

Friends, a very strong sense of identity around their memories and experiences of a particular typhoon event, thereby illustrating the complex interactions between climate and human consciousness in the confines of a climate space.

Awareness alone helps us preclude the enormous and unnecessary task of discussing climate history through a blow-by-blow account of every occurrence of a climatic phenomenon.

Though it might be important to a historical climatologist of typhoons to have and discuss every typhoon, it is unnecessary to the climate historian of typhoons to do a typhoon-by-typhoon account. But I have also taken my history in a slightly different direction from other hurricane histories in order to illustrate the idea that awareness is powerful. I have deliberately chosen not to structure most of the dissertation around single catastrophic typhoon events except for the last chapter on the 1969 Niutianyang incident and a sub-chapter on the 1922 Chaozhou or Swatow typhoon.537 There are comparatively fewer iconic storms wreaking havoc and people dying in this dissertation than in other hurricane works. I do this to illustrate my point about awareness: the specter of storms was enough to make people along the Guangdong coast act. It also prevents my project from being primarily one of disaster history, though it would be one in the constructive rather than destructive sense, and allows the typhoons to represent climatic phenomena rather than just disaster phenomena.

Within the climate space, awareness translates into action and action creates the structures, cultures, and stories that animate the region. I have done my best to capture some of

537 Stuart Schwartz in Sea of Storms, p. xix, wisely chose to focus on “storms in each period that could be used to illustrate the predominant thinking about natural phenomena at the time, or which because of the availability of sources about them make it possible to recapture social and political strategies in meeting their threat.” His Chapter Six revolves around the San Zénon hurricane and the Hurricane of San Ciriaco; the Great Hurricane of 1831 forms a sub-chapter in Chapter Four; Chapter Eight revolves around Hurricane Flora; and Hurricane Katrina anchors Chapter Nine.

259 these structures, cultures, and stories. There could be more but I believe there is enough in this dissertation to illustrate the power of climate awareness in shaping the history of a region.

Depending on the kinds of sources and the kind of historical dynamics, other climate spaces might write their histories differently. But the point is to be open to the myriad ways that the history of a climate space might unfold.

As I intimated in the introduction, I hope that this work may spark a respatializing of

Chinese history by encouraging others to explore the possible different climate spaces within the vast territory and ecological complementarity of China. And just as one can do this for China, one can also do this for the rest of the world. Wherever there is enduring climate and wherever there are people aware of it, then climate space is possible. Climate spaces also provide a common language and ground for comparing places experiencing similar forms of climate. The hurricane spaces of the Caribbean and the typhoon spaces of the Northwest Pacific are all storm spaces scattered around the seven tropical cyclone basins of the world. In many of these places, continuity of dealing with storms is common to them, and the differences may lie in the horizontal dynamics of each place. One may use the common vertical thread to illuminate similarities and differences in how horizontal threads are woven into the historical fabric.

One may also scale up and down with climate space. The monsoon, for example, is an important climatic characteristic of Eurasia. A climate history of a monsoon space could range from the local history of a Chinese or some other Eurasian village whose historical rhythms are affected by the monsoon to a history of a province’s monsoon space, to a nation’s monsoon space, or to a larger regional monsoon space perhaps encompassing East Asia or Southeast Asia or both. My sense is that larger climate space histories will require the writing of smaller ones

260 but I do not preclude the possibility that someone will be able to write larger climate space histories on the basis of perceived patterns that unite larger spatial units.

Finally, climate spaces themselves may change, shrinking, growing, appearing and disappearing. Guangdong’s typhoon space is likely to continue to see storms in the foreseeable future. But studies suggest that the frequency of typhoon landfall in Guangdong may go down in a warming world and increase for the East China coast and Japan and Korea.538 As Earth’s climate changes, climate spaces will too. Climate spaces are never the same for long. Like history, they change. Perhaps someday Guangdong’s typhoon space might no longer have the same dynamism and animation I tried to describe in this dissertation. But as the threat of typhoons increases along the eastern coast of China, the less dynamic typhoon spaces in this corner may come alive someday with the kind of stories that attracted me in the first place to

Guangdong.

538 Peduzzi et al, “Global Trends in Tropical Cyclone Risk,” ibid.; Doo-Sun R. Park, Chang-Hoi Ho, and Joo-Hong Kim, “Growing Threat of Intense Tropical Cyclones to East Asia over the period 1977-2010,” Environmental Research Letters 9 (2014): 1-7.

261

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