Lineage Society on the Southeastern Coast of China: The Impact o ...

Haining somewhat unique within the framework of Freedman’s patrilineal descent group is the readiness with which they embraced uxorilocal marriages, even to the extent of recognizing branches within the larger lineage that had been created when such marriages were contracted by male descendants. This trend suggests that even within the geographical region of the lower Yangzi, variations to the lineage organization could and did exist due to variance in local customs and practices.

China in the Sixteenth Century

China in the sixteenth century, especially the later half, has been characterized by one historian as “the best of times and the worst of times.”²¹ It was a time that saw both the fruition and the beginning of the decline of the “agrarian based centralized regime” put in place by Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming founder also known as the Hongwu emperor (r. 1368–1398).²² This period also witnessed the culmination of economic, social, and cultural developments that had begun in the mid-fifteenth century as Ming China gradually recovered from climatic disasters brought about by the “little ice age” and what William Atwell has termed the “bullion famine.”²³ As Chinese agricultural production began to benefit from warmer temperatures, extended growing seasons led to a sharp increase in food production after 1500. The south and southeast regions of China began to experience “a period of rapid urban and commercial growth,” supported in the later years of the century, no doubt, by the introduction of food crops from the New World.²⁴

The boost in agricultural production, coupled with an upsurge in population growth and official encouragement of cash-crop cultivation, led in turn to increased internal circulation of manufactured goods (especially textiles) and other commodities.²⁵ This was especially so in the lower Yangzi delta, where, as shown by G. W. Skinner, a graduated marketing hierarchy of villages, market towns, and cities developed in response to new economic opportunities; some locales became specialized production centers or markets for specific products.²⁶ Whether this expansion of trade and increased commercialization—stimulated in part by