
‘Rice Theory’ Explains North-South China Cultural Differences, Study Shows - aakil
http://news.virginia.edu/content/rice-theory-explains-north-south-china-cultural-differences-study-shows
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fredliu
Interesting theory. The Chinese are fully aware of the "north-south"
differences themselves, although they often attribute it to other reasons,
such as legacy effects of numerous mongol/manchu/other "barbarian" invasions
from the north through out China's history, which often times were stopped
around the Yangtze River. This resulted in the north under "barbarian rule"
for long period of time, while the south held refugees of original ethnic Han
chinese from the north.

~~~
NhanH
Interestingly, I've always been taught that the difference is explained
because of dryland farming vs irrigated farming (so essentially, rice vs
wheat), which leads to difference in development of agriculture and so on. I'm
actually surprised that there doesn't seem to be a consensus about that yet.

~~~
jfb
William McNeill, in _Plagues And Peoples_ [1], makes the point that there are
disease gradients that strongly influenced the movement of peoples and the
development of culture, and that this gradient in China maps almost precisely
to the rice/wheat border. Southern peoples had, by virtue of the ubiquity of
disease vectoring mosquitos, an inbuilt defense against even massively
superior Northern armies. This may be in large part why the Mongols took so
long to conquer the Southern Song, and why Vietnam was able to successfully
resist them.

[1] Highly recommended:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_and_Peoples](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_and_Peoples)

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erikb
It annoys me a little that

a) Someone thinks so many people can be divided into just two groups

b) the idea that validating an assumption should also automatically validate
the reason. People in the north might be more individualistic than in the
south, and yes they grow wheat and not rice but that doesn't mean one depends
on the other. It just doesn't seem all too scientific to confuse correlation
with cause.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Your point (a) is ridiculous. For example, I could fruitfully divide the
population of China into two groups, male and female. They're different in
ways that are often useful to know.

North and South Chinese have been obviously different for many centuries. One
of my favorite stories about this concerns the development of affirmative
action in the late 14th / early 15th century:

> In 1370, the first Emperor of the Dynasty, Chu Yüan-chang, who expelled the
> Mongols in 1368, reinstituted the great Civil Service Examinations, which
> had been suspended by the Mongols. In 1371, 75% of the degrees from the
> national examination had gone to candidates from the South of China. This
> displeased the Emperor, who believed, with many traditionalists, that
> Northerners were morally more worthy -- from the area where Chinese
> civilization had begun. The examinations were thus suspended until 1385, but
> then the geographical division of those who passed did not change. At a
> special Palace examination in 1397, all of the 52 candidates who passed were
> Southerners. Borrowing from the Josef Stalin school of bureaucracy, the
> Emperor had two of the examiners executed. In a subsequent retesting, all
> the successful candidates were Northerners.

> By 1425 it was decided that places in the national examinations would be
> reserved by region, with 35% for the North, 55% for the South, and 10% for
> some places in the middle.

(sourced from
[http://www.friesian.com/discrim.htm](http://www.friesian.com/discrim.htm))

~~~
dmoy
It's worth noting that modern day China still has quite a bit of affirmative
action. College entrance exam scores, for example, give bonus points to ethnic
minorities.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I didn't know that, but I was aware that college applications are binned by
geographic region of the applicant (i.e., before getting any applications,
they decide "we'll have 200 from 山东, 100 from 北京, etc"). (numbers invented)

Do you have an english-language source for this? I'd be very interested to
read about it.

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credo
I know that Malcolm Gladwell comes in for pretty harsh criticism in HN (and
that also applies to comments that might be supportive of Gladwell :)

However, I think it is worth pointing out that the "rice theory" in the
virginia.edu post isn't particularly new.

In 'Outliers' (which came out six years ago) Gladwell writes extensively about
the "rice theory" (and Gladwell may have relied on prior research by other
folks)

He writes about rice farmers in southern China who value hard work, co-
operation with each other, planning etc and attributes that to the "rice
theory"

Gladwell also contrasts these rice farmers with European farmers. Chinese
farmers typically were entrepreneurial, but European peasants were generally
low-paid slaves/workers of some aristocratic landlord.

He also contrasts them with French farmers who did virtually nothing in
winter, Russians who came up with proverbs like "If God doesn't bring it, the
earth will not give it" etc.

~~~
fatjokes
I'm certainly not a fan of Gladwell but it was never because he was wrong, but
because his arguments are more of a string of cherry-picked anecdotes than
rigorous studies backed by evidence and sound statistics. Granted, the former
makes for a smoother read, but it deceives (intentionally or not) a lot of the
public because it _sounds_ so darn smart!

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dang
We changed the url from [1], which was more sensational and not as close to
the original source.

1\. [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25538-how-your-
ancesto...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25538-how-your-ancestors-
farms-shaped-your-thinking.html)

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trhway
about the same type of difference is between western europe and slavic people,
and even inside the slavic people themselves there is the same gradient - the
more eastern ones, like Russians, are more "communal"/less "individualized"
than say Polish. And my personal impression is that further east you go,
beyond slavic part of Russia, an individuality gets even less
respect/recognition, and in particular North Chinese being more
individualistic than South, still noticeably less so even than Russians.

A theory that something requires more cooperation in the east vs. west and
what applies gradually and across the whole Eurasia continent - what can it
be?. I think there must be something else beyond mere cooperation behind the
phenomenon of the "a person is nothing" principle getting stronger with move
toward the east.

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chj
In the case of cultural differences, sunshine does more work than rice.

In the north, you are locked in home in winter, while in south you get to go
around and meet more people.

~~~
m_mueller
The article makes a good case for why agriculture could be more important than
sunshine: the sun doesn't care about the Yangtze River as a border.

~~~
chj
Nice try, but Yangtze River happens to be at the dividing line of north/south,
not strictly but close.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Not at all. There have long been obvious differences between north and south
china, but the Yangtze isn't the border between North and South, it's the
heart of the South. North China is divided from South China by the Huai river
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huai_He](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huai_He)).

Chinese civilization is essentially the story of intensely farming a flood
plain. But China has two such plains: the Yellow River defines the north, and
the Yangtze defines the south.

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vzhang
Social "science."

