SWALLOWS AND SETTLERS I SWALLOWS AND SETTLERS The Great Migration from North China to Manchuria Thomas R. Gottschang and Diana Lary plllii CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ANN ARBOR Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. MICHIGAN MONOGRAPHS IN CHINESE STUDIES ISSN 1081-9053 SERIES ESTABLISHED 1968 VOLUME 87 Published by Center for Chinese Studies The University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104-1608 © 2000 The Regents of the University of Michigan © The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives ANSI/NISO/Z39.48 -1992. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gottschang, Thomas R. Swallows and settlers : the great migration from north China to Manchuria / Thomas R. Gottschang and Diana Lary. p. cm.— (Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, ISSN 1081-9053) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-89264-134-7 1. Migrant labor — China — Manchuria. 2. Migration, Internal—China — Manchuria. 3. China - Economic conditions-1912-1949.1. Title: Great migration from north China to Manchuria. II. Lary, Diana. III. Title. IV. Series. HD5856.C5G67 2000 331.5I44"09518 - dc21 99-086273 CIP ISBN 978-0-89264-134-5 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-472-03822-0 (paper) ISBN 978-0-472-12779-5 (ebook) ISBN 978-0-472-90175-3 (open access) The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This book is dedicated to Ho Lian (Franklin Ho) and Owen Lattimore, pioneers in our field. CONTENTS List of Tables, Figures, and Maps ix Note on Romanization and Place Names xiii Foreword xv Introduction 1 Overview of the Migration 2 The Texture of the Migration 4 Family Ties: The Engine of Migration 9 The Migration and Other Historical Studies 11 1. Memories and Numbers: Sources of Migrant Information 13 Who Were the Migrants? 15 Home Areas of the Informants 22 Statistical Record of the Migration 32 2. Pushes and Pulls: Forces that Shaped the Migration 43 Migration and the Economy 44 Recruitment 59 Other Migrant Destinations 63 Migration to Manchuria from Other Countries 66 Statistical Insights into Migrant Motivations 68 3. Family and Migration 69 The Role of the Family 69 Family Migration Strategies 73 Migration and Family Composition 77 Family Help in Migration 79 Full Family Migration 82 Remittances 88 4. Local Connections 95 Home and Identity 95 Laoxiang and Migration 104 vii Vlll SWALLOWS AND SETTLERS 5. Return Migration 113 Reasons for Return 113 Return Rates 119 Postwar Returns 124 6. Not for Politics or Glory 127 Migration and Politics 128 Views About Migration 133 Post-1949 Migration 135 Migration in the 1990s 143 Chapter Notes 145 Glossary 167 Sta tistical Appendix 169 Bibliography 199 Index 223 TABLES, FIGURES, AND MAPS Tables LI Reasons for Migration 5 1.2 Landholding of Refugee Migrants 8 1.1 Disasters in Linqu, 1915-1932 28 1.2 Locations of Ding County Migrants, 1930s 33 2.1 Ratio of "Real Wages/' Manchuria over North China, 1941 45 2.2 Transportation Cost per Ton-Mile 50 2.3 Average Number of Junks Entering Port Annually 51 2.4 Major Disasters, 1891-1931 59 3.1 Migrants from Deping, 1919 and 1934 78 3.2 Migration Agents for Informants 79 3.3 Refugees Arriving in Jilin from Shandong, 1927-1928 82 3.4 Postal Lines in Shandong 88 3.5 Major Currencies Circulating in Manchuria, 1929 91 3.6 Remittances from Informants 94 5.1 Reasons for Migrants' Return 114 5.2 Migrant Fares Between North China and Manchuria 123 6.1 Net Migration by Decade in Manchuria, 1950-1989 139 6.2 Net Migration by Decade in Shandong and Hebei, 1950-1989 142 A.I Estimated Migration Between North China and Manchuria, 1891-1942 169 A,2 Estimated Migration to Manchuria by Area of Origin, 1891-1942 171 A.3 Estimated Population, 1891-1942 172 IX x SWALLOWS AND SETTLERS A.4 Migrants per Thousand Population, 1891-1942 174 A.5 Railway Freight Tonnage, 1891-1931 175 A.6 Railway Freight Tons Per Capita of Population, 1891-1931 177 A.7 Total Net Trade, 1891-1931 178 A.8 Total Net Trade Per Capita of Population, 1891-1931 179 A.9 Migration from North China to Manchuria, Return Migration, and Return Ratio, 1891-1942 180 A.10 Migration from Hebei and West Shandong to Manchuria and Return, 1891-1942 181 A.ll Migration from the Shandong Peninsula to Manchuria and Return, 1891-1942 182 A.12 Population Changes in Liaoning, 1950-1989 183 A.13 Population Changes in Jilin, 1950-1989 185 A.14 Population Changes in Heilongjiang, 1950-1989 187 A.15 Population Changes in Shandong, 1950-1989 189 A.16 Population Changes in Hebei, Beijing, and Tianjin, 1950-1989 191 A.17 Population Changes in Hebei, 1950-1989 193 A.18 Population Changes in Beijing, 1950-1989 195 A.19 Population Changes in Tianjin, 1950-1989 197 Figures 1.1 Migration Between North China and Manchuria, 1891-1942 38 1.2 Migration from the Shandong Peninsula and Hebei-West Shandong, 1891-1942 39 1.3 Rate of Migration from the Shandong Peninsula and Hebei-West Shandong, 1891-1942 40 2.1 Rail Freight Volume in Hebei-West Shandong and Manchuria, 1891-1931 53 2.2 Railway Freight Tons per Capita, Hebei-West Shandong and Manchuria, 1891-1931 54 2.3 Total Net Trade: Shandong Peninsula, Hebei-West Shandong, and Manchuria, 1891-1931 55 2.4 Trade per Capita: Shandong Peninsula, Hebei-West Shandong, and Manchuria, 1891-1931 55 TABLES, FIGURES, AND MAPS xi 5.1 Return Migration, 1891-1942 115 5.2 Total Return Ratio, 1891-1942 120 5.3 Annual Return Migration Rates by Home Area, 1891-1942 122 Maps Map 1 North China and Manchuria: Major Railways and Cities xii Map 2 Shandong Province with Interview Sites 22 Xll SWALLOWS AND SETTLERS • Interview site Railroad (1940) 0 50 100 150 200 miles City Grand Canal Province boundary (1970) Map 1 North China and Manchuria: major railways and cities. NOTE ON ROMANIZATION AND PLACE NAMES We generally follow China's official romanization system, Hanyu pinyin. Exceptions occur for people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other places that use the Wade-Giles system. We have spelled people's names the way they spell them in their own publications, including Chiang Kai-shek, who is Jiang Jieshi in pinyin. Quotations from works published in Western languages retain the romanizations used in the originals, which in some cases differ from both pinyin and Wade-Giles. A few places, like Manchuria, are familiar to readers in the English language by names that are not related to the current Chinese names; in these cases we have retained the more familiar names. Most of the important places mentioned in this study are widely known by more than one name. We have, therefore, listed below the different names for prominent places that we encountered in the course of our research. Manchuria is known in Chinese as either the Three Eastern Provinces (Dongsansheng) or the Northeast (Dongbei), the standard term used in China today. Manchuria is the most common term in inter- national English language usage (e.g., "the Manchurian Incident") and no longer carries the imperialist flavor that it acquired when Japanese forces created the puppet state of Manchukuo (Manzhouguo, Manchoukuo) in 1932. Manchuria also has a looser meaning, which obviates the need to change the terminology for the period of the Japanese occupation or for boundary changes that have occurred since 1949. Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang, the three provinces of Man- churia, have taken several different forms and names over the years. During the Republican period Liaoning was usually called Fengtien, but it was also known as Shengjing (Sheng-ching, Sheng-king) and Liaodong (Liao-tung). It encompassed much of present-day Jilin (Kirin) Province, Xlll xiv SWALLOWS AND SETTLERS while Jilin incorporated much of the territory of today's Heilongjiang Province. Yingkou, the first treaty port in Liaoning, was widely known in Western languages as Newchwang (Niuzhuang), which was in fact a town inland of the port where the Customs station was officially located. Dalian (Ta-lien), Manchuria's most important port, was pronounced "Dairen" in Japanese and appeared as Dairen in Western-language publications of the Japanese government. In Russian it was called Dalny. Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province, was called Mukden by the Manchus and was also known as Fengtien. North China traditionally includes the region containing today's provinces of Hebei (Ho-pei), Shandong (Shan-tung), Shanxi (Shan-hsi), Shaanxi (Shen-hsi), Henan (Ho-nan), and often the northern parts of Jiangsu and Anhui. Hebei Province was part of Zhili (Chihli) Province during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). In the Republican period (1911-1937) the northern third of Zhili was divided between Rehe (Jehol) Province and Chahar Province. In 1928 Zhili's name was changed to Hebei. After 1949 Hebei lost a narrow southern section but added much of Rehe to its northern border. Qingdao, Shandong's main port, was known to Westerners before 1949 as Ch'ing-tao or Tsingtao, but Customs reports for Qingdao were filed under the name of the town of Jiaozhou (Kiaochow) where the Chinese Customs station was officially located. Yantai (Yen-t'ai), the largest port on the north coast of the Shandong Peninsula, was known as Zhifu (Chih-fu) before 1949 and is commonly rendered Chefoo in Customs reports and other English language sources.