Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T22:52:20.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

North China Famine Revisited: Unsung Native Relief in the Warlord Era, 1920–1921*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2012

PIERRE FULLER
PIERRE FULLER*
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine Email: pierre@uci.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper makes the case that in China's most severe food crisis of the first quarter of the twentieth century—the great north China famine of 1920–1921—considerable life-saving relief was generated by three largely-neglected segments of Chinese society: Buddhist and other native charity efforts working along parallel social channels to the better-publicized missionary and international relief groups; the Republic's much-maligned military establishment; and officials and residents of the stricken communities themselves who were operating largely ‘below the radar’ of the distant, mostly city-based chroniclers of the famine whose voices have been privileged in the later history-writing process. Despite the recent fall of the Qing and the beginnings of a fractured era of warring between provincial governors, this paper suggests that communities in the increasingly neglected periphery of 1920 north China were significantly more viable and attentive to social welfare needs than has been previously recognized.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , May 2013 , pp. 820 - 850
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Kenneth Pomeranz and Jeffrey Wasserstrom for their invaluable guidance with this project; Gong Chen at Xi'an's Northwest University, Zhang Li and Guan Yongqiang at Tianjin's Nankai University, and Brooks Jessup at the University of California, Berkeley, for their kind assistance; and the Harvard-Yenching Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Fulbright Program, and the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine, for generous financial support. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.

References

1 This death toll is a ‘low estimate’ provided by the quasi-official international relief society based in Beijing. The estimate of 20 million directly afflicted by famine, defined as someone needing aid to survive through to the spring harvest, is equally conservative. Famine historian Xia Mingfang puts the number of ‘disaster-stricken (zaimin)’ from the five provinces in 1920 at thirty million. Edwards, Dwight W., ed., The North China Famine of 1920–21, with Special Reference to the West Chihli Area (Beijing, 1922), 10, 15Google Scholar; Mingfang, Xia, Minguo shiqi ziran zaihai yu xiangcun shehui (Republican-era Natural Disasters and Rural Society) (Beijing, 2000), 385Google Scholar.

2 Nathan, Andrew, Peking Politics, 1918–1923: Factionalism and the Failure of Constitutionalism (Berkeley, 1976), 68, 80Google Scholar; Nathan, Andrew, A History of the China International Famine Relief Commission (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathyrn, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth Century China (Berkeley, 2008)Google Scholar; Wue, Roberta, ‘The Profits of Philanthropy: Relief Aid, Shenbao, and the Art World in Later Nineteenth Century Shanghai’, Late Imperial China, 25, no. 1 (2004), 187–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rankin, Mary Backus, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911 (Stanford, 1986)Google Scholar. Studies on Republican-era Chinese charity relief are often heavily weighted towards southern China and/or to the Nationalist period; see Dillon, Nara, ‘The Politics of Philanthropy: Social Networks and Refugee Relief in Shanghai, 1932–1949’, in Dillon, Nara and Oi, Jean C., eds, At the Crossroads of Empires: Middlemen, Social Networks, and State-Building in Republican Shanghai (Stanford, 2008), 179–205Google Scholar; Katz, Paul, ‘‘It is Difficult to be Indifferent to One's Roots’: Taizhou Sojourners and Flood Relief during the 1920s’, Journal of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica 54 (2006)Google Scholar.

4 Shue, Vivienne, ‘The Quality of Mercy: Confucian Charity and the Mixed Metaphors of Modernity in Tianjin’, Modern China 32/4 (2006), 411–452CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rogaski, Ruth, ‘Beyond Benevolence: A Confucian Women's Shelter in Treaty-Port China’, Journal of Women's History 8/4 (Winter 1997), 54–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both Shue and Rogaski focus on Tianjin's Hall of Spreading Benevolence (Guangren tang).

5 Peking United International Famine Relief Committee (PUIFRC Report) Report (1922), issued in both Chinese and English versions (and republished in 1971, Taipei), broke relief down into that handled by government agencies, the joint Chinese-foreign international societies, the Christian missions, the American Red Cross and by a total of 14 ‘native’ societies, offering—in its own words—‘merely a guess’ of $8 millions for what these latter native societies raised and spent on relief. Edwards, , ed., The North China Famine of 1920–21, with Special Reference to the West Chihli Area (Beijing, 1922), 20–25Google Scholar. The idea that 40 per cent of relief funds in 1920–1921 was non-Chinese, or that relief totalled $37 millions that year, informs the arguments of the few Western monographs that mention the event: Mallory's, WalterChina: Land of Famine (New York, 1926), 3Google Scholar; Nathan's aforementioned history of the CIFRC; Becker's, Jasper book on the Great Leap Forward famine, Hungry Ghosts: China's Secret Famine (London, 1996), 13Google Scholar; and Li, Lillian, Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s–1990s (Stanford, 2007), 297Google Scholar.

6 Pierre Emery Fuller, ‘Struggling with Famine in Warlord China: Social Networks, Achievements, and Limitations, 1920–21’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Irvine, 2011).

7 These include the PUIFRC Report (1922); Stuart Fuller and M. T. Liang, eds, ‘Statement of Aims and Report on Famine Conditions and How They Are Being Met with Map of the Famine Region’ (Tianjin: North China International Society for Famine Relief cooperating with the Chinese-Foreign Relief Committee, Shanghai, Tientsin Press, 1920); and John Earl Baker, ed., ‘Report of the China Famine Relief, American Red Cross, October 1920–September, 1921’, (Shanghai, 1921?).

8 Edwards, ed., North China Famine, 128.

9 Stauffer, Milton, ed., The Christian Occupation of China: a general survey of the numerical strength and geographical distribution of the Christian forces in China (Shanghai, 1922), 59–61Google Scholar, 68, 81, 299–300, 308, appendices A, v–vi; B, xiv; C, lviii–lix.

10 Edwards, ed., North China Famine, 21–25.

11 North China Herald, 18 September 1920; Edwards, ed., North China Famine, 20–25. Unless otherwise noted, dollars here refer to Mexican silver dollars, a common currency among many used in 1920s China.

12 Shi (stone) was primarily a measurement of volume in 1920–1921 granary records while it was used as a weight measure on the books of the Ministry of Communications. The three main grain measurements used in Chinese relief accounting over the course of the crisis were jin (catty, traditionally 0.6 kg), shi (as weight this most commonly corresponded to 120 jin or 72 kg, although shi could be as much as 160 jin), and dun (ton, which converted at 1,680 jin, or 1,008 kg, according to stipulations issued by the Ministry in December 1920). Unless specified otherwise, I have converted shi at the most conservative measure of 72 kg. Da gongbao, 19 December 1920.

13 Xiao gongbao, 3 July 1920; Da gongbao, 7 July 1920; Dingxian XZ 1934 3:11b–12a; Da gongbao, 21 July 1920; 12 August 1920; Guangzong XZ 1933 1:15a.

14 Perhaps most prominent of these was the October essay by student Yang Zhongjian in the Shanghai news journal Eastern Miscellany, ‘Bei si sheng zaiqu shicha ji (Investigation of the disaster zone in four northern provinces), Dongfang zazhi, 10 October 1920, 114–118.

15 In 1920–1921, this was the case in Zhili counties such as Jin, Shenze, Guangzong, Li, Baoding, Ningjin, Xian, Anxin, Mancheng, and Xinhe. Da gongbao, 12 August 1920; 18 September 1920; 31 October 1920; 3 November 1920; 14 November 1920; 16 November 1920; 1 December 1920; Minguo ribao, 18 September 1920; Mancheng XZ 1997, 18; Xinhe XZ 1929 1:22a.

16 Tianjin zhongmei ribao, 31 August 1920.

17 Xiao gongbao, 15 July 1920; 19 July 1920; Shihua, 29 July 1920; Xiao minbao, 21 March 1921; Zhenzai ribao, 28 November 1920. These were four of the more than 100 news dailies published in 1920–1921 Beijing. For possibly the most comprehensive list of these publications, see Beijing zhi: baoye, tongxun she xhi (Gazetteer of Beijing: Newspapers and Communications) (Beijing, 2005), 42–53. Note, though, that the gazetteer gives no indication of the existence of the news daily Shihua, for example, an important source for this paper. Nearly all the news dailies cited here can be found in original form at the Peking University library, or on microfilm at the National Library of China.

18 Ministry of Communications records regularly converted dai at a rate of fifty ‘pounds (bang)’ each. Aiguo baihuabao, 31 October 1920. Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921.

19 Throughout 1920–1921, newspapers followed the activities of half a dozen city charities that General Jiang reportedly founded or headed, from the Wushanshe, or Society for Awakening Goodness, which distributed grain and clothes in bulk to the doors of poor households and set up warming shelters, or nuanchang, for refugees, to a charity bank, or cishan yinhang, offering interest-free micro-loans to the working poor. Youchun, Xu, Minguo renwu da cidian (Biographical Dictionary of the Republic) (Shijiazhuang, 1991), 28, 109, 229Google Scholar; Fengsheng, 27 October 1920; Aiguo baihuabao, 20 November 1920; Guobao, 15 January 1921.

20 The grain was sold at some locations for five coppers per jin (0.6 kg) when the market price that week for millet, the favoured pingtiao grain, was listed at $9.5 per shi or anywhere from 8 to 12 coppers depending on the fluctuating exchange rate. Xiao gongbao, 20 July 1920; Shihua, 28 August 1920; 29 August 1920; 1 September 1920; 15 November 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 6 November 1920.

21 Xiao gongbao, 20 July 1920; 19 August 1920; Yuandong bao, 2 October 1920. Xiaomin bao, 13 January 1920; Shihua, 18 January 1921; Xiao gongbao, 25 August 1920; Chenbao, 20 December 1920; Xiao gongbao, 8 September 1920.

22 Zhongguo minbao, 10 November 1920.

23 The ‘(?)’ appears in the original text, the addition perhaps of an incredulous copy-editor. A. W. Lochead, ‘Pingtiao Chu’, Celestial Empire, 27 November 1920; Jiuzai zhoukan, 24 October 1920.

24 Weights and measures varied considerably between provinces and even localities. The above grain total was expressed in four segments: 5,183,600 jin (or 0.6 kg), 10,220 dun (tons, or 1,008 kg), 879,280 shi (which was normally converted by the Ministry of Communications in 1920 at anywhere from 120 to 160 jin) and 1,903,770 bao (normally converted by the Ministry at anywhere from 100 to 160 jin each). In metric units, the total amount for this grain was then in the range of 190,946,280 to 280,584,720 kg.

25 Zhonghua minguo shi dang'an ziliao huibian (A compilation from the archives of the Chinese Republic), Vol. 3. Nongshang (Farming and Trade) 1 (Nanjing, 1991), 388; Shuntian shibao, 8 October 1920; 13 October 1920; Da gongbao, 21 July 1920; 18 September 1920; 26 September 1920; 6 October 1920; 10 October 1920; 13 October 1920; 24 October 1920; 31 October 1920; 3 November 1920; 5 November 1920; 9 November 1920; 14 November 1920; 16 November 1920; 30 November 1920; 1 Dececember 1920.

26 Lillian Li writes that in 1920 ‘medical experts said that 8 ounces of millet (about half a catty [or jin]) or of gaoliang was sufficient as a daily ration’. Li, Fighting Famine, 300.

27 Fuller and Liang, eds, ‘Statement of Aims’, 11.

28 Yuandong bao, 3 October 1920; 9 October 1920; 16 October 1920; Consul Wilkinson, ‘Mukden Intelligence Report for March Quarter, 1921’, 31 March 1921, UK Foreign Office File 228/3290/67.

29 For more on this system, see Li, Fighting Famine, and Will, Pierre-Étienne and Wong, R. Bin, Nourish the People: the State Civilian Granary System in China, 1650–1850 (Ann Arbor, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Thaxton, Ralph A. Jr., Salt of the Earth: The Political Origins of Peasant Protest and Communist Revolution in China (Berkeley, 1997), 115, 249Google Scholar.

31 Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921. See for example, Qiuguang, Zhou and Guilin, Zeng, Zhongguo cishan jianshi (A brief history of Chinese charity) (Beijing, 2006), 268–269Google Scholar.

32 The American Red Cross determined in 1920 China that relief grains averaged 2,000–2,500 calories per jin. Lillian Li cites medical experts who determined that half a jin of grain, or roughly 1,000–1,250 calories, was a sufficient adult daily relief ration. For the above estimate I have used a round ration of 1,500 calories. On the matter of grain measurements, this Ministry of Communications source calculates shi (stone) at a weight of 160 jin (or 96 kg). All figures used here from this source have been converted using this shi-kg rate since the Ministry's accounting would not otherwise compute. Shihua, 21 October 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 30 September 1920; Zhenzai ribao, 17 November 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 9 December 1920; Chenbao, 3 February 1921; Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921; Baker, ed., ‘Report’, 18, 222; Li, Fighting Famine, 300.

33 The source relates eleven grain shipments by the society, one of which comprised two back-to-back shipments of an enormous 120,000 shi, which appear to be two legs of the same movement of grain into and then out of the south Beijing rail hub of Fengtai.

34 Shuntian shibao, 15 September 1920; Shihua, 16 September 1920; Shibao, 9 November 1920; Zhengfu gongbao, 8 October 1920.

35 Haichao yin, December 1920.

36 Stauffer, ed., Christian Occupation, 59–61, 68, 81, 299–300, 308.

37 Xin, Zhang, Social Transformation in Modern China: the State and Local Elites in Henan, 1900–1937 (Cambridge, 2000), 99–100Google Scholar; Chinese Eastern Railway, North Manchuria and the Chinese Eastern Railway (Harbin, 1924), 9, 74Google Scholar.

38 Tharp, Robert N., They Called Us White Chinese: the Story of a Lifetime of Service to God and Mankind (Charlotte, North Carolina, 1994), 108–109Google Scholar.

39 Waln, Nora, The House of Exile (Boston, 1935), 17–18Google Scholar.

40 Handan XZ 1939 10:31b–32a; Haixing XZ 2002, 804; Qinghe XZ 1934 11:21a, 14:14b, 16:46a; Guangzong XZ 1933 14:19b.

41 Xinhe XZ 1929 2:21b–22a, 20:56b–57a; Li, Fighting Famine, 301. The estimated caloric value of grain purchased with this amount of coppers at the same prices paid by the American Red Cross for the relief of a nearby rural famine zone is 71.1 million, which amounts to 56,880 days at 1,500 calories per day. Baker, ed., ‘Report’, 18, 222.

42 North China Herald, 19 February 1921.

43 Nangong XZ 1936 16:25b, 24:61b; Xinhe XZ 1929 20:43a, 56b–57a; Handan XZ 1939 10.31b–32a and Handan XZ 1993, 17; Dingxian XZ 1934 3.20b; Guangzong XZ 1933 14.19b–20a; Baoding shizhi 1999, 50; Dingzhou shizhi 1998, 19; Haixing XZ 2002, 804; Linxi XZ 1996, 47; Linzhang XZ 1999, 542; Mancheng XZ 1997, 18; Da gongbao, 15 November 1920; 16 November 1920 (Suning County) and Suning XZ 1999, 373; Wei XZ 2003, 832 (formerly a Daming district); Xingtai shizhi 2001 22, 964; Zhenzai ribao, 15 November 1920 (Jinghai County); Da gongbao, 8 November 1920 (Raoyang County); Zhongguo minbao, 15 December 1920 (Yuanshi County); Da gongbao, 13 November 1920 (Wuqiang County); Yishi bao, 19 September 1920; Shihua, 15 November 1920; Beijing baihuabao, 16 February 1920 (Tong County); Da gongbao, 20 November 1920 (Shen County); Da gongbao, 3 December 1920 (Zaohuang County); Da gongbao, 7 December 1920 (Ji County); Da gongbao, 20 Novembre 1920 (Gaoyi and Zhao counties); Qing XZ 1931 14:27b; Fangshan XZ 1938 4:34a; Qingyuan XZ 1934 4:70b; Nanpi XZ 1932 9:78a; Jingxing XZ 1935 11:15b; Zhenzai ribao, 28 November 1920 (Ningjin County); Cang XZ 1933 13:59a–60a; Shuntian shibao, 1 January 1921 (Mancheng, Ding, Anxin, Yi); Wei XZ 1929 16:24a–42b.

44 The report refers to Shunde, today's Xingtai. Xingtai city's 2001 official history reads that in 1920 ‘city resident (yi ren) Yang Gengchen initiated and managed a soup kitchen feeding over 9,000 people a day’, which, considering the wide discrepancy in attendance figures, was probably an altogether different and larger operation from the one cited above. United International Relief Committee, ‘Famine Relief Work: Reports from Shuntefu’, Celestial Empire, 5 February 1921 (italics added); Xingtai shizhi 2001, 964.

45 Naquin, Susan, Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900 (Berkeley, 2000), 662–663Google Scholar.

46 As far back as 1652, Qing authorities began running ten soup kitchens in the capital for around four months each winter. Chenbao, 24 September 1920; Naquin, Peking, 642.

47 Shihua, 26 September 1920; Yishi bao, 26 September 1920; Xiao gongbao, 8 October 1920.

48 Funding was pieced together from a variety of sources, including grants from relief societies (including $100,000 from statesman Liang Shiyi's North China Relief Society), donations from grain firms, municipal fines, taxes on automobiles, and, reportedly, voluntary deductions of monthly pay by the full body of gendarmes under General Wang Huaiqing's command. Xiao gongbao, 4 October 1920; Gamble, Sidney D., Peking: a Social Survey: Conducted under the Auspices of the Princeton University Center in China and the Peking Young Men's Christian Association (New York, 1921), 279Google Scholar; Shihua, 15 October 1920; Xiao gongbao, 3 November 1920; Shihua, 7 November 1920; Aiguo baihua bao, 17 October 1920; Jiuzai zhoukan, 16 January 1921.

49 Shihua, 1 October 1920; Chenbao, 29 October 1920; Xiao gongbao, 29 October 1920.

50 Zhongguo minbao, 23 December 1920; Chenbao, 20 December 1920; Shuntian shibao, 15 October 1920; Minyi ribao, 21 October 1920; Shihua, 3 December 1920; Chenbao, 6 January 1921; Xu, Minguo renwu, 1761.

51 Xiao gongbao, 29 October 1920; 4 November 1920.

52 Shangye ribao, 6 November 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 28 December 1920; Li, Fighting Famine, 160. Gamble reports a total of 595,796 meals served in January of 1919 by 12 city facilities, or 19,219 people over 31 days. Gamble, Peking, 487.

53 Xiao gongbao, 19 November 1920; Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921. Li records an ‘adult famine ration standard of .005 shi of husked grain per person per day’ for the Qing period, which, at 120 jin per shi and an average of 2,250 calories per jin of relief grain, calculates to 1,350 calories per ration. Li, Fighting Famine, 159.

54 Chenbao, 1 August 1920; Fengsheng, 3 October 1920; Xiao gongbao, 17 October 1920; Chenbao, 19 October 1920; Fengsheng, 19 October 1920; Shihua, 20 October 1920; 22 October 1920; 23 October 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 24 October 1920; Fengsheng, 27 October 1920; Chenbao, 7 November 1920; Xiao gongbao, 11 November 1920; 11 November 1920; Zhenzai ribao, 13 November 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 20 November 1920; Shihua, 25 November 1920; Xiao gongbao, 28 November 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 29 November 1920; 7 December 1920; 15 December 1920; Xiao gongbao, 5 January 1921; Chenbao, 22 January 1921; Xiao gongbao, 26 January 1921; Beijing baihuabao, 14 February 1921; Guobao, 5 March 1921; 11 March 1921.

55 By comparison, the ‘police and Military Guard’ gave clothes to 5,740 city residents in the winter of 1916–1917, according to Gamble (plus another unspecified amount to the ‘inmates of the charitable institutions’). Shihua, 30 September 1920; Fengsheng, 16 October 1920; Minyi ribao, 4 November 1920; Shangye ribao, 6 November 1920; Jiuzai zhoukan, 7 November 1920; Shihua, 7 December 1920; Yishi bao, 15 January 1921; Beijing baihua bao, 15 January 1921; Xiao gongbao, 4 February. 1921; Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921. The official tally of Beijing's poor is provided by Gamble, Peking, 270, 282.

56 Aiguo baihua bao, 24 December 1920.

57 Xiao gongbao, 9 January 1921; Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921.

58 Shihua, 3 October 1920; Yishi bao, 10 October 1920; Jiuzai zhoukan, 7 November 1920; Xiao gongbao, 19 November 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 26 November 1920; Chenbao, 27 November 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 14 December 1920; Aiguo baihua bao, 24 December 1920; Chenbao, 5 January 1921; Beijing baihua bao, 12 January 1921; Chenbao, 21 January 1921; Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921.

59 ‘To give an adult a suit of padded clothes costs approximately $2.75’, Gamble noted in 1919. Gamble, Peking, 282.

60 Yishibao, 12 January 1921.

61 Thaxton, Salt of the Earth, 249–250; ‘Hankow Intelligence Report, December Quarter, 1920’, 24 January 1921, UK Foreign Office File 228/3282/125; Hankou zhongxi bao, 29 January 1921.

62 Zhongguo minbao, 21 January 1921.

63 The native relief successes in 1920 Shanxi were recognized as far back as 1973 by Marie-Claire Bergère in one of the first scholarly studies of the famine. Bergère, however, saw it as an anomaly, offering an otherwise negative narrative on corruption and inefficacy for China as a whole over the crisis on the basis of foreign press and consular reports. Laifu bao, 10 October 1920; 7 November 1920; Jiuzai zhoukan, 14 November 1920; Laifu bao, 26 December 1920; Jiuzai zhoukan, 6 March 1921; Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921; Bergère, Marie-Claire, ‘Une crise de subsistence en Chine (1920–1922)’, Annales. Histoire, Science Sociales 28:6 (1973), 1375xsGoogle Scholar.

64 Will, Pierre-Étienne, Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China, trans. Forster, Elborg (Stanford, 1990), 45Google Scholar.

65 New York Times, 13 February 1921; Da gongbao, 30 November 1920; Chenbao, 11 December 1920; Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921.

66 Zhongguo minbao, 3 October 1920.

67 Yuandong bao, 30 December 1920.

68 Tharp, White Chinese, 108–109.

69 As late as 1923, a mere 14 per cent of the surface area of the 48 counties ‘gravitating to the Chinese Eastern Railway’ in north Manchuria were cultivated, the railway estimated that year. ‘All other lands still await the plough of the farmer’. Yuandong bao, 14 December 1920; Zhongguo minbao, 22 December 1920; Yuandong bao, 30 November 1920; Economical Bureau of the Chinese Eastern Railway, ‘The Chinese Eastern Railway and its zone’ (Harbin, 1923), 12.

70 Yuandong bao, 4 September 1920; 9 September 1920; Jing bao, 6 October 1920; Jichang ribao, 15 September 1920; 23 September 1920; 27 September 1920; ‘Mukden Intelligence Report, September Quarter 1920’, 2 October 1920, UK Foreign Office File 228/3290/26–27; ‘Intelligence Report for December Quarter, 1920’, 15 January 1921, File 228/3290/43; McCormack, Gavan, Chang Tso-lin in Northeast China 1911–1928: China, Japan and the Manchurian Idea (Stanford, 1977), 15Google Scholar.

71 Edwards, ed., North China Famine, 21; Godement, François, ‘La famine de 1928 à 1930 en Chine du nord et du centre’ (Paris, 1970), 90–93Google Scholar, microfiche.

72 For examples, see Shuntian shibao, 28 September 1920; Yishi bao, 7 September 1920; 15 September 1920; Shibao, 30 October 1920; Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn, ‘The ‘feminization of famine’, the feminization of nationalism: famine and social activism in treaty-port Shanghai, 1876–9’, Social History 30/4 (2005), 421–443CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Sheridan, James E., Chinese Warlord: the Career of Feng Yu-hsiang (Stanford, 1966), 23–24Google Scholar; Suleski, Ronald Stanley, Civil Government in Warlord China: Tradition, Modernization and Manchuria (New York, 2002), 190Google Scholar. See also Gillin, Donald, Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province, 1911–1949 (Princeton, 1967), 37–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Early in the crisis, in December 1920, Beijing's Government Relief Bureau and provincial governments moved 21,786,384 kg free relief grain to stricken parts of Shandong, 12,406,248 kg in Henan, and 1,270,560 kg in Shanxi, enough to sustain three million adults for the month using Qing-era rations of 1,350 calories, according to data from the Ministry of Communications, which in turn covered the costs of its transport. This was in addition to relief by native and foreign relief societies, missions and county governments. Zhengfu gongbao, 13 June 1921.

75 See Feuerwerker, Albert, The Chinese Economy, 1870–1949 (Ann Arbor, 1995), 82–85Google Scholar.

76 Celestial Empire, 5 March 1921.

77 Waldron, Arthur, From War to Nationalism: China's turning point, 1924–1925 (Cambridge, 1995), 7, 141–160Google Scholar.

78 Wen-Hsin Yeh, ‘Huang Yanpei and the Chinese Society of Vocational Education in Shanghai Networking’, in Dillon and Oi, eds, At the Crossroads of Empires, 27. Examples include Garrett, Shirley S., Social Reformers in Urban China: the Chinese Y.M.C.A., 1895–1926 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Caroline Reeves, ‘The Power of Mercy: the Chinese Red Cross Society, 1900–1937’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1998); Sheehan, Brett, Trust in Troubled Times: Money, Banks and State-Society Relations in Republican Tianjin (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003)Google Scholar; and Yunlan, Ren, ‘Lun Huabei zaihuang qijian Tianjinshanghuide zhenji huodong, 1903–1936 (On the Relief Measures of the Tianjin Chamber of Commerce in the Natural Calamity of North China)’, Shixue yuekan 4 (2006), 104–109Google Scholar.

79 Shue, ‘The Quality of Mercy’, 416–417.

80 Smith, Joanna Handlin, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China (Berkeley, 2009)Google Scholar; Susumu, Fuma, Zhongguo shanhui citing shi yanjiu (A history of Chinese charities and benevolence halls) (Beijing, 2005)Google Scholar; Qizi, Liang (Angela Leung), Shishan yu jiaohua: Ming Qingde cishan zuzhi (Dispensing charity and culture: philanthropic organization in the Ming and Qing) (Shijiazhuang, 2001)Google Scholar.

81 Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron; Li, Fighting Famine; Will, Bureaucracy and Famine.

82 Both Edgerton-Tarpley and Li identify a surge in relief organization among lower-Yangzi elites and its projection into the North. For a recent Chinese example of this narrative, see Hu, Zhu, Difangxing liudong ji qi chaoyue: wan Qing yizhen yu jindai Zhongguo de xinchen daixie (Localist circulation and its transcendence: Late-Qing charity relief and modern China's supersession of the old by the new) (Beijing, 2006)Google Scholar.

83 This includes Li, Fighting Famine, 295–302; and Wenhai, Liet al.Zhongguo jindai shi da zaihuang (The Ten Greatest Disasters of Modern China) (Shanghai, 1994), 135–167Google Scholar.

84 The loan of four million dollars, in Shanghai currency and secured on the revenue from a temporary increase in China's maritime and native customs tax from 5 per cent to 5.5 per cent, was divided equally between four banks, American, British, French and Japanese. Albert B. Ruddock to Secretary of State, 1 February 1921, US State Department File 893.48g/157–159; Foreign Minister Yen to the UK Minister, 1 October 1920, UK Foreign Office File 228/3029/143; Draft British Legation letter, 7 October 1920, UK Foreign Office File 228/3029/145.

85 See for example Harrison, Henrietta, The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village, 1857–1942 (Stanford, 2005), 151–158Google Scholar; and Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society and Economy in Inland North China, 1853–1937 (Berkeley, 1993)Google Scholar.