A Brief History of the Tujia — The Tujia Under Yuan, Ming, and Qing Tusi Rule (II)
II. The Emergence of Feudal Lord Economy and Landlord Economy — (I) The Economic Form of Feudal Serfdom: The tusi system was built on a feudal serfdom economic base. The tusi were both political rulers and the largest feudal lords in their respective territories. Fields, land, and forests all belonged to the tusi; not a blade of grass or a tree could be taken by the common people without permission. Flat, fertile fields belonged to the tusi...
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II. The Emergence of the Feudal Lord Economy and the Landlord Economy
(1) The Economic Form of the Feudal Serf System
The tusi system was built on the economic foundation of the feudal serf system. The tusi was both the political ruler and the largest feudal lord within his respective territory. Fields, land, mountains and forests all belonged to the tusi, and the native people were not permitted to take even a blade of grass or a tree lightly. The flat and fertile fields were occupied by the tusi, and the rest were divided among the sheba and headmen; the vast native people had only a small plot of allotted land of "scattered and cornered" pieces. Only the peaks, ridges and slopes were permitted for the native people to cultivate; even if flat places were overgrown with thorns, the native people were not allowed to reclaim them.
After the native people received their allotted land, they were firmly bound to the land. Apart from spending part of their time laboring on their own plots, they spent most of their time cultivating the lands of the tusi, sheba and headmen and performing corvée labor, becoming serfs of the feudal lords. When native people gave birth to sons or daughters, they all had to report to the banner chief and have their names entered in the registers, and "when grown, they must serve." This fully reflects that the native people were in a serf status, and that they had a relationship of personal subordination to the tusi.
Corvée rent was the primary form of exploitation of serfs by feudal lords. "In the time of the tusi, the tusi and the tuzhizhou each owned their own mountains and fields, and conscripted tenant households to cultivate them. The tenant households were all people they had purchased, like slaves." The so-called "tenant households" here were not tenant farmers who rented land under a landlord economy, but serfs without personal freedom. The serfs performed corvée labor without compensation and received no remuneration whatsoever: "It was the established practice of the tusi that whenever laborers were needed, the sheba would assign them by household, and there was no payment for labor." In areas under tusi jurisdiction, because the system of combining soldiers and farmers was practiced—keeping soldiers among the farmers—corvée rent took two forms: military service and labor service. The native soldiers belonging to each banner were both a tool for the tusi to consolidate their rule and serfs under the feudal lord economy. In wartime they served as soldiers, and in peacetime they performed corvée labor: "In wartime they provided their own rations; in peacetime they took turns going to the office to await corvée assignments. Each quarter the service was only for one ten-day period, and they also provided their own food, with no wages given." During the Ming Dynasty, native soldiers were conscripted frequently and in large numbers—at minimum three to five thousand, at most tens of thousands—and military service had become a heavy burden on the native people.
In addition to the banners that combined military and administrative functions, there were also service serfs who labored exclusively for the tusi families. For example, the Yongshun Xuanwei Office, besides establishing fifty-eight banners, also set up the "Garrison" banner responsible for guarding the tusi office: "The tusi had five garrisons of soldiers stationed in the city, each with one hundred men, one to provide defense and one to provide labor service." The tusi also established a "Hunting" banner for hunting service: "Each winter they hunted, called 'driving the hunt.' First the sheba and headmen were ordered to observe where tigers lived, then several dozen to a hundred people would surround the area with large nets, then cut the grass, and use dogs to startle the beasts; when the beasts ran, they were immediately killed with muskets, and not one escaped." In addition, there were the "Inlay" banner, which specialized in crafting various gold and silver jewelry and vessels for the tusi and their relatives; the "Miao" banner, which managed the tusi's gardens; the "Rice House" banner, which specialized in milling rice; the "Six Banners of Wind and Drum Players," which provided service for the tusi's weddings, funerals, festivals, and other ceremonial occasions; the "Seven Banners of Companions," which accompanied the tusi on outings to enhance prestige and were ready to serve at any time; as well as the Sanren Banner, Changchuan Banner, Zongguan Banner, and the "Fu" character banner that managed tusi clans scattered in various places—the names were numerous and varied beyond enumeration. The ruins of the Tangya Tusi City in Xianfeng County, Hubei, reveal the heavy corvée labor of the serfs at that time. This tusi city was quite large, reputed to have three streets and eighteen lanes, and thirty-six courtyards. The streets and lanes were all paved with stone slabs, which would have been difficult to build without large numbers of serfs performing labor. The ruins also include a silver workshop, bowl yard, tile yard, horse guest rooms, and a hundred-beast garden, which sufficiently shows that the tusi possessed a certain number of service serfs laboring for their families. Not only that, the tusi also owned large numbers of slaves who had lost their personal freedom. During the Wanli reign of Emperor Shenzong of the Ming Dynasty, Tangya "Tusi Qin Ding's wife, Lady Tian, lived in leisure and pleasure. On one trip to Mount Emei in Sichuan, she brought over a hundred maidservants, selecting matches for them along the way." The "Stele Record of the Newly Established Youyang Prefecture" records: during the replacement of native officials with centrally appointed officials, the Qing court ordered that "all slaves and fields may be redeemed according to circumstances," which sufficiently proves that the Youyang tusi owned many slaves.
Serfs not only had to perform corvée labor for the feudal lords but also had to pay a certain amount of rent in kind. The tusi stipulated that each serf household must annually present grain, chickens, ducks, meat, and other items to the large and small native officials; even households too poor to bear the burden still had to pay according to the rules. Under the tusi, rent in kind had no fixed items—"levies had no proper names"—and large and small native officials invented pretexts to extort arbitrarily. Every household that kept bees had to pay honey and yellow wax each year; later, even households that had once kept bees but no longer did were required to purchase honey and wax to pay. On the day a newly appointed native official took office, the headmen of the areas under their jurisdiction would send gifts to each household, called congratulatory gifts. When native officials went out on inspection tours, the headmen of the villages they passed through would levy food according to the number of households, invisibly adding many extra burdens to the vast number of serfs. In the early Qing Dynasty, taxes that should have been paid by the tusi were collected in tusi areas, but the tusi used their political and economic privileges to shift the burden onto the vast number of serfs who had little or no land. For example, Yongshun Prefecture had to remit 280 taels of autumn grain silver annually; the tusi did not collect according to the amount of land but assigned a "fire pit tax" of 2 to 5 qian of silver for each household with a fire pit. In Sangzhi Office, anyone with a stove had to pay a "smoke household tax." When the tusi collected autumn grain silver, they used old scales for weighing, and each qian of silver on their scales might weigh three or four qian. The weight of the exploitation was astonishing.
Under the brutal politics and cruel economic exploitation of the tusi, the vast number of serfs lived a miserable life in complete darkness. They had no personal freedom, their corvée labor was heavy, and they were conscripted at any time. The tusi treated them like cattle and horses: "Punishment and execution were arbitrary; confiscation and sale were done as they pleased." When civil disputes arose over land, marriage, or homicide cases, before the trial the defendant and plaintiff both had to give bribes to the native officials; after the trial, the winner had to send gratitude gifts, and the loser had to pay redemption money. Those too poor to pay had their property confiscated by the native officials or their family members sold off. The tusi's tyranny knew no bounds and reached everywhere. They practiced a policy of keeping the people ignorant, ordering that native people be prohibited from reading and writing, "and offenders would be punished down to their clans." They even claimed the right of first night at commoners' weddings—truly the height of brutality.
(2) The Emergence of the Landlord Economy and the Economic Ties Between the Tusi and the Central Dynasty
The landlord economy first appeared in the fields of the guard station areas, and appeared later in tusi areas. In the marginal zones of tusi jurisdiction, military farming was practiced during the Yuan Dynasty. Military farming was divided into two types: military colony and civilian colony. Land cultivated by military households to supply military grain, combining farming with defense, was called a military colony; recruiting Han Chinese to go and cultivate the land was called a civilian colony. By the Ming Dynasty, the scale of military farming in this region expanded. Successively at the guard stations of Yongding, Jiuxi, Shizhou, and in the areas of mixed native and Han residence near the military-civilian chiliarch offices of Maliao, Tianping, Zhangjiajie, Maogang, Datian, Bailihuang, and Qianjiang, troops were stationed and military farming was practiced to ensure that the garrison's grain and provisions could be supplied locally. The native chiliarchs and native centurions under the jurisdiction of each guard station were also included in the scope of military farming: "Their chiefs and pass guards were allowed to cultivate and work the land, without taxes." Civilian colonies, however, had to pay taxes—first, autumn grain rice, and second, summer tax; in addition, they had to provide various miscellaneous corvée labor services. After the mid-Ming period, politics became corrupt, military farming administration fell into neglect, and incidents of soldiers seizing civilian land and native officials collecting civilian grain occurred from time to time; the contradiction between military and civilian colonies grew increasingly serious. Some Han Chinese landlords passed off their own fields as land in native official areas to evade taxes and corvée labor. These burdens were undoubtedly shifted onto the poor peasants in civilian colony areas: "All corvée labor services were demanded of the common people."
Because guard station areas had mixed native and Han residence and were close to Han areas, they were influenced by the landlord economy earlier. At the end of the Yuan and beginning of the Ming, private land ownership by native people had already appeared; in Cili County, "fertile fields and rich soil were taken as hereditary property by pass guards." Private ownership of land provided the conditions for land transactions and the development of the landlord economy. Native officials gradually began to transform into landlords, using wealth obtained through exploitation to purchase land. In the early Ming, native officials of Cili successively purchased Han Chinese fields producing over 1,000 shi of grain. Due to the strong influence of landlords in Han areas, by the late Ming and early Qing, land transactions became even more prevalent. The tusi, as feudal lords, purchased land everywhere and gradually transformed toward a landlord economy. The Han Chinese fields purchased by the Baoping tusi Peng Zehong amounted to 800 taels of silver just for the "grain remittance." The fields and houses purchased by the Rongmei tusi were spread across Shimen, Lizhou, and Changde in Hunan, and Changyang, Yidu, Zhijiang, and Wuchang in Hubei. In the early years of the Yongzheng reign of Emperor Shizong of the Qing, a Tang surname pass official of Cili sold thirty li of mountain land around Qianjinping to the Rongmei tusi for over 1,000 taels of silver. During the Kangxi reign of Emperor Shengzu of the Qing, although the court issued repeated orders, it could not prohibit the tusi from purchasing land in Han areas.
Han Chinese peasants and merchants gradually migrated into tusi areas, further promoting the transformation from a lord economy to a landlord economy. At the end of the Ming and beginning of the Qing, native officials within the territory of present-day Wufeng County recruited Han Chinese tenant farmers to cultivate land in their jurisdictions and collected rent, with all construction costs borne by the tenant farmers. Han Chinese peasants from Jiangxi, Chenzhou, Yuanzhou, and other places migrated into the Yongshun area and settled down: "Some owned property, some had graves for burial, and those who had lived for thirty to fifty years or even two or three generations all called themselves Hakka." Some Han Chinese merchants, within a dozen or so years, "accumulated enormous wealth, purchased fields and houses, and formed marriage alliances," becoming landlords. "The great clans of the county were mostly of guest origin." It can be seen that no small number of Han Chinese merchants became landlords. To consolidate their rule, the tusi on the one hand purchased land everywhere or seized civilian fields to expand their economic power, and on the other hand used their political power to order the prohibition of Han Chinese purchasing land within their jurisdiction.
As mentioned earlier, the feudal lords among the Tujia, to consolidate their ruling position and maintain close relations with the central dynasty, paid tribute to the central court at regular or irregular intervals, and often received return gifts exceeding the value of the tribute. This official trade activity, essentially an exchange of needed goods, became even more frequent after the tusi system was implemented. The native officials of Youyang, Sanmao, Shibi, Dapan, and other offices and caves successively paid tribute to the Yuan court. By the Ming Dynasty, the number of tribute payments and return gifts was even greater and on a larger scale. In the early Ming, it was stipulated that tusi would pay tribute once every three years, with no more than 100 people each time and no more than 20 going to the capital; but to obtain more return gifts, the tusi often exceeded the Ming court's regulations in the frequency of tribute and the number of personnel. Yongshun Xuanwei Peng Yuan, in the sixteenth year of the Yongle reign of Emperor Chengzu of the Ming (1418), sent his son leading native officials and "tribal chiefs"—667 people—to the capital to present horses as tribute. In the seventh year of the Jiajing reign of Emperor Shizong of the Ming (1528), the Rongmei Xuanwei Office and Longtan Anfu Office led a thousand people to pay tribute in order to obtain more return gifts. The Youyang and Yongshun Xuanwei Offices successively presented local specialty large nanmu timber many times for the Ming court to build palaces. Although this relationship of tribute and return gifts took place between the ruling classes, objectively it served to strengthen the economic ties between the Tujia and Han Chinese areas.
(3) Production Conditions Under the Lord Economy
From the Yuan to the early Qing, the social economy of the Tujia region developed slowly but continuously. Cattle plowing was already widely used; rice was planted in flat plains, and miscellaneous grains such as millet and beans were sown on mountain slopes and at the foot of rocks. Ditches were dug by rivers and streams to channel water, or tube waterwheels were used to lift water for irrigating farmland. Although the production tools of the native people improved somewhat during this period, they still remained in a state of slash-and-burn cultivation. During spring plowing, thorns and weeds were cut down and burned with fire as fertilizer; after a few years when the soil became barren, they moved elsewhere to clear new land—this was called burning the fields. There were very few water conservancy facilities such as canals, weirs, and ponds, and human and animal manure was rarely used, so agricultural yields were relatively low. With increased economic and technological exchanges with Han areas, the Tujia people learned from outside experience and used the natural resources of the mountain region to engage in oil pressing, lacquer tapping, tea cultivation, herb gathering, mulberry planting and silkworm raising, and beekeeping for honey. Rongmei tea gradually became a famous item of tribute from the tusi to the central dynasty. From the tusi's repeated tribute of horses, it can be seen that Tujia animal husbandry still maintained a relatively high level at that time.
Handicrafts developed rapidly, with household weaving being the most prominent. Weaving used cotton, hemp, and silk as raw materials, and could also weave mixed cotton-silk and cotton-hemp fabrics, with craftsmanship roughly the same as that of the Han Chinese. "Tujia women are quite skilled at weaving cloth; their hemp work is on par with Han people. Tujia brocade may have both warp and weft of silk, or silk warp and cotton weft. Using one hand to weave the weft and one hand to pick the pattern, five colors are gradually formed." Tujia women in Yongshun, Baojing, Longshan, and other places also made "cave brocade, cave quilts, and cave towels in the shapes of cranes, phoenixes, flowers, and birds." The weaving level in the Rongmei area was also very high: "Cave quilts are like brocade, woven from native silk; the expensive ones are priced the same as satin. With dragon-and-phoenix and gold-and-jade patterns, they are suitable for bedding." In the Xiushan, Youyang, and Qianjiang areas of Sichuan, because cotton was not planted, weaving mostly used hemp as the main raw material: "In Shizhu and Yimei, people weave patterned cloth for clothing; in Pingcha, wild hemp is twisted into cloth."
Rock cave architecture was uniquely distinctive. The Rongmei tusi used natural rock caves to build offices such as Wanquan Cave, Wanren Cave, and Qingtian Cave. Inside the caves, eight cave plank roads, stone platforms, checkpoints, fish ponds, and pavilions were carved by hand, with fine chiseling and a unique style. The Yuyin Tower in the Shizhu tusi office had seven pillars and three stories, over 60 zhang high, which sufficiently shows that their stonework, woodwork, and architectural skills had reached a considerable level. The abundant mineral resources were already being exploited to some extent: iron in Longshan, Baojing, and Sangzhi; copper and sulfur in Yongshun and Rongmei; lead in Shizhu; and cinnabar and mercury in Youyang—all were mined on a small scale by manual methods at that time. The development of industry and agriculture prompted commerce and trade to flourish increasingly, and the seats of tusi offices became important places for commodity exchange. The Rongmei tusi office, "in the prosperous Ming period, gathered all kinds of goods, and there was no shop or pawnshop that did not exist." At the old tusi site of Yongshun, Laosi City, "there were quite a number of shops in the city." In places like Liye in Longshan County and the border areas with Xiushan and Youyang, "saltpeter was always produced, and the native people made a living by boiling it." Merchants from Han areas brought cloth, salt, and other daily necessities to Liye for trade, then hired boats to load the saltpeter and transport it elsewhere for sale; Liye had become a distribution center for trade from all directions. However, tusi rule seriously hindered trade between the Tujia and Han areas. They stipulated that at every festival, anyone engaged in trade and transport must present gifts to the large and small native officials, called festival gifts. "If anything was not thorough, they would either forcibly seize the goods or plunder the capital... so that merchants halted their steps and goods could not circulate." When goods did not flow smoothly, production development was limited.