A Question About Survival
How did people in Quanzhou survive?
This question sounds extreme, but in the Wanli Quanzhou Prefecture Gazette and Qianlong Quanzhou Prefecture Gazette, it’s a very real question.
Quanzhou sits on the southeast coast, and it coincided with the global “Little Ice Age”—typhoons, droughts, earthquakes, one after another. For two hundred years of the Ming and Qing, Quanzhou’s disaster records were terrifyingly frequent.
But Quanzhou people not only survived—they built a social safety net even in the hardest times. This wasn’t luck, it was resilience.
Typhoons, Droughts, Earthquakes: The Little Ice Age Test
The Ming and Qing coincided with the Little Ice Age, and Quanzhou’s climate data is full of trials.
Typhoons and Storm Surges: According to the Wanli Edition, Volume 10, multiple disasters with “great wind and rain, uprooting trees and destroying houses” were recorded during the Wanli era. This corresponds to strong typhoons in modern meteorology. By Qianlong, “sea overflow” (storm surge) records increased significantly. Disasters concentrated in coastal counties like Jinjiang and Hui’an, directly causing sea wall collapses and farmland salinization, even damaging Zayton’s ocean-going merchant ships.
Droughts and Famines: Droughts also showed periodicity. In Wanli, frequent “no rain from spring to summer” caused rice prices to skyrocket. With a larger population in Qianlong, similar droughts created greater famine pressure. Interestingly, gazetteers began recording widespread use of “sweet potatoes” as a famine-relief crop—biological globalization also enhanced local resilience.
Earthquakes: Quanzhou lies on the Quanzhou-Shantou seismic belt. The Great Earthquake of 1604 caused “the stone pagoda tip at Kaiyuan Temple to fall” and “houses to collapse”. These records provide historical intensity basis for modern earthquake fortification.
Disasters weren’t accidents—they were part of life in Quanzhou.
Social Granaries, Charitable Granaries, Reserve Granaries: The Social Safety Net
Faced with disasters, Quanzhou wasn’t a passive victim. The gazetteers record a complete “social safety net”.
Reserve Granaries: State-led, primarily for large-scale wars or extreme famine.
Social and Charitable Granaries: Emphasized grassroots mobilization. During Wanli, Quanzhou’s local clans began establishing social granaries in natural villages. This “privately run, government-supported” model solved logistics lag in mountainous counties like Dehua and Anxi—mountain roads were long, official grain couldn’t reach, so social granaries worked.
Interestingly, mapping “relief amounts” from the Qianlong edition reveals that government fiscal allocations weren’t perfectly linear with disaster intensity. Instead, they were heavily influenced by local administrative efficiency and gentry mobilization capacity.
Market Stabilization and Tax Exemptions: These were two major fiscal levers maintaining southeast coastal stability—stabilizing rice prices and reducing taxes.
The safety net didn’t fall from the sky—it was woven by both people and state.
Liuli Weir and Sea Walls: Water Conservancy as Lifeline
Water conservancy facilities weren’t just production tools—they were critical disaster infrastructure.
Liuli Weir: Located in Nan’an, it has repair records in both Wanli and Qianlong editions. It not only provided irrigation but also regulated Jinjiang River flow during droughts to prevent saltwater intrusion. This integrated design demonstrates an ancient understanding of disaster management in “land-sea interaction zones”.
Sea Walls and Stone Bridges: Luoyang Bridge and Anping Bridge weren’t just transport hubs—their massive piers also acted as diversions to reduce pressure during flood peaks. Meanwhile, stone sea walls built along coastal counties were the final line of defense against typhoon storm surges.
Bridges weren’t just bridges, dikes weren’t just dikes—they were part of the defense system.
Micro-narratives: Donating Grain and Wangye Worship
When disasters struck, Quanzhou people responded not just with institutions—but with culture.
Gentry Donations: During major disasters, the Quanzhou Prefecture Gazette commended “righteous men who donated grain for relief”. These were often successful overseas merchants or retired officials who converted wealth into relief efforts in exchange for elevated family social status. This mechanism allowed Quanzhou to maintain grassroots operations even when state resources were insufficient.
Religious Consolation: Disasters were often followed by plagues. After major disasters or epidemics, sacrificial activities at Mazu temples and Plague God temples (Wangye belief) increased significantly. This wasn’t just psychological comfort—it was an opportunity for collective mobilization of local communities to clean up after disasters and restore order.
“Dare to win” isn’t a slogan—it’s resilience etched into Quanzhou’s bones.
What Digital Humanities Can Tell Us
Based on the Quanzhou Prefecture Gazette, we can do many things on chinaroots.org:
Disaster Heatmaps: Extracting timestamps and locations of “Wind, Water, Drought, Earthquake, and Plague” over three hundred years to generate dynamic heatmaps identifying the most vulnerable historical zones in Quanzhou.
Famine Crop Diffusion Maps: Analyzing the timing of sweet potato and early-ripening rice distribution in each county to reconstruct how globalized crops changed Quanzhou’s disaster resistance landscape.
Clan Resilience Indices: Combining the Quanzhou Village Gazette with “Donation Records” to analyze which clans didn’t decline under long-term disaster trials but instead expanded influence through charitable acts.
The Quanzhou Prefecture Gazette is more than a heavy ledger of catastrophes—it’s a guide showing the continuous adaptation of human wisdom to the environment. By comparing Wanli and Qianlong data, we see not just the cruelty of nature, but a complex resilience system established by Quanzhou society through technology (water conservancy), institutions (storage), and spirit (faith and philanthropy).
For readers seeking their family roots, understanding how their ancestors experienced and overcame these natural disasters will give “roots” a deeper, more powerful meaning.