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Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Zhang Gang: A Village Man in Rui'an

Living on a plain with extensive “tang” rivers, people had long enjoyed water transportation in Wenzhou. Ferries and boats could be seen everywhere. Water routes remained the main option roughly until the late 1990s.

Here, I will briefly explore a Rui'an village man's experiences with water transportation. The gentleman here, Zhang Gang, was a teacher and mediator in the village of Tingtian. From 1888 to 1942, he recorded almost everything in his diary, including his conversations with friends and officials, his meals and the goods he purchased, the places he visited and the books he has read, and the disputes he reconciled and the events he witnessed. Unsurprisingly, he recorded many of his thoughts about water in this precious diary.

In my 2013 article, “Living with Disputes,” I explore Zhang Gang's experiences with local actors during his mediation practice. Here, I will focus on Zhang Gang's experiences with water, which occurred every day—and sometimes, every hour. During the Chinese New Year, he traveled by boat to greet his friends. He took a boat to watch dramatic performance. He would watch fireworks and lanterns from a boat. He also took a boat to sweep ancestor’s tombs.

Sometimes, he would hire a boatman to take him and his friends to travel around. Zhang Gang had a group of friends who liked to write poems and comment on books. He quite enjoyed trips with them, even if the trip was so short that they could finish it within a few hours. After these boat trips, Zhang Gang and his friends would usually relax in a tea house or a friend’s place. Sometimes they would visit an attraction, such as a temple, other times they would have a meal before going home or staying at a relative’s place.

Zhang Gang also traveled by boat to visit officials. As a village mediator, he was obliged to deal with lawsuits and disputes in a prompt manner, and boats could help him reach this goal. In many cases, Zhang Gang had to meet different parties before he settled a dispute. He even used boats to escape quarrels—he did this in an 1899 dispute, where he fled to a boat and carried the compensation to the victims of the incident.

Boats made his life convenient, but they also caused trouble in some situations. In 1888, for example, Zhang Gang wanted to travel by boat to take a civil service exam. The boatman attempted to raise the price. Zhang and the boatman had a dispute about the rate, leading Zhang to pay a fee to a yamen runner—the government personnel who exercised a wide range of administrative functions—to report this to the government. The boatman then had no choice but to accept the rate, so he intended to be late the next morning. Zhang Gang quickly reported this to an official, who sent a runner to urge the boatman to show up. In the end, the boatman took Zhang to the next stop. Zhang was aware he had pushed the boatman quite hard, so he agreed to buy more food and wine for the poor man after the ride.

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Racing through Water
As one of the most popular holidays in Chinese society, Dragon Boat Festival, as well as dragon boat racing, have commonly been perceived as being associated with the commemoration of an ancient poet, Qu Yuan (circa 343 — 278 BCE). Yet, as historian Hsi-yüan Chen points out, the festival varies regionally in terms of rituals, deities, and dates, and it has been closely correlated with local identities, popular practices, and political deliberations (Chen 2008).
In Wenzhou, for example, this festival was not solely for the commemoration of Qu Yuan. It was linked with various sections in local society, and was also used as an instrument for conflicts and competition. As historian Roger Shih-chieh Lo persuasively argues, dragon boat races in Wenzhou–with varied origins, forms, and beliefs—have constantly been used for distributing social, cultural, and political resources. Local people usually used these races as an opportunity to show their opinions, and hence were involved in behind-the-scene conflicts and negotiations at their races and festivals (Lo 2019).
Moreover, while the races had constantly been regarded as an arena for competition, they were also related to one of the most important elements of Wenzhou society—namely, water. The canals and rivers were not only used for irrigation, flood drainage, and transportation, they were also used as boundaries between lands and as routes connecting villages with shared interests. These waterways could be the causes of disputes regarding the use of waters and lands; they could also serve as the site for resolving disputes or reshaping social relationships. In either case, dragon boat races have served as a useful instrument for local communities to connect, contest, or negotiate with one another.
In the following sections, I will use Zhang Gang's experiences to discuss how dragon boat racing became an integral part of daily life in Wenzhou. I will also use these cases to analyze how such races shaped the ways people interacted with water—especially the rivers and canals where the races were performed—and constructed a space for negotiating resources and communal affairs in people's daily life.
Making Alliances
As Zhang Gang mentioned in his diary, the Gongrui, Xincheng, Tangxia, and Suifeng rivers were the major sites for dragon boat racing. Other rivers also held racing, including those outside the Wenruitang region. In either case, the practice of dragon boat racing was an integral part of the ritual of forming an alliance.
According to Roger Shih-chieh Lo's recent work (2019), which adopts both historical and ethnographic approaches in the exploration of Wenruitang's dragon boat practice, three major ritual alliances existed in the Wenruitang region: (from top to bottom) the Xianyan-Xialin system, the Tangxia-Tangxi system, and the Xincheng-Xiacun system.
The villages in these systems paid tribute to their “Dragon Boat Madam,” which was a huge dragon boat that was used as a symbol for the entire ritual alliance. Upon the building of a new boat, villagers performed a ritual to invite gods to their boats, then carried the boat from their temple to the water. After the ceremony, the new boat was recognized as a member of the alliance, and hence was permitted to participate in racing under the Madam's scrutiny. Villages belonging to one ritual alliance were thus the players of local political games, using the races to confront and negotiate with other villages within the same alliance (Lo 2019).
The map here shows these three major regions, as well as their ceremonial centers (marked with a semi-circle “U” sign), which housed their Madam boat and possessed the power to adjudicate disputes. In some regions, as Lo points out, communities had built more than one Madam boat. The boundary of each alliance evolved over time, depending on the power balance and the values and shared interests between villages.
In general, the Dragon Boat Madam culture helped local communities maintain their local self-governance system. Villages formed a bond with one another using shared culture and ceremony. When disputes occurred, they also resorted to the deity and the authoritative figures who had managed these rituals.
Building Sea Walls
While seawalls and canals played an important role in Wenzhou’s plain formation, they were also sites of conflict and instruments of struggle. Focusing on a case in 1901, which I have explored further in my 2013 article on Zhang Gang's life, this section will examine how seawall construction triggered a conflict between villages (Guo 2013).
In 1901, after a thunderstorm demolished the harbor of Rui'an, the local communities discussed plans to rebuild the seawall. One villager from Xiaodianxia expressed willingness to donate to the communities, asking Zhang Gang—who was a native of the Tingtian village—to coordinate the project. Zhang had previously suggested the government rebuild the seawall. He was delighted to take on this new role.
After a prompt survey of the surrounding area, Zhang found that a nearby seashore had been severely destroyed. He proposed to lengthen the seawall so that it could protect a majority of the land. However, the neighboring village, Houli, argued that the new wall would invade its lands. With Zhang’s intervention, the villagers reached an agreement for their seawall boundary.
Unfortunately, the agreement only lasted for one day. The villagers from Houli and Tingtian argued that the other side had crossed the boundary. Those from Houli carried over 100 wooden sticks to threaten Tingtian farmers, while the latter turned to borrow militia weapons from Zhang Gang’s stocks (Zhang Gang’s father had previously organized a militia during the Taiping Rebellion). Ultimately, the two sides did not battle, but tensions continued to boil over.
The following day, Zhang Gang invited the representatives of both sides to settle the dispute. He condemned the Houli elders for failing to control their “ne’er-do-wells,” as they were the ones that first started the quarrels. He also waived Houli’s responsibility of providing compensation, probably in the hope of showing an impartial attitude. After that, he designated a boundary between the villages and asked both sides to maintain the peace.
A new seawall was then built along the coast. While Zhang himself did not mention how local officials dealt with this seawall, sources suggest that the county government built a long seawall from Dongshan to Meitou (which covered the shore between Houli and Tingtian).
However, the conflicts between these villages did not cease. In the following years, villagers continued to blame their neighbors for stealing crops, eroding soil, and poisoning fish. Like many other communal affairs, seawall construction was deeply entrenched in local politics and economic competition, and hence became a common source of disputes.
Zhang Gang's Experiences with the Races
As a village man who had witnessed and engaged in local affairs for over fifty years, Zhang Gang recorded numerous incidents in his diary involving dragon boat races. Here I will use an 1899 case, which I have explored in the 2013 article, “Living with Disputes,” to demonstrate how villages engaged in a dragon boat conflict and resolved the dispute through formal and informal channels.
Before the incident, Zhang Gang had witnessed the practice of dragon boat racing on many occasions. He was quite familiar with the customary practices surrounding these races, including the extortion that took place between racers and family members and the fighting between villages and lineages. In some cases, he mediated the disputes between villagers and even reported his observation to local officials.
When Rui'an celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival in 1899, fierce feuding took place between the Shen’ao and Yanxia villages. Thirteen villagers from Shen'ao were killed during the fighting. While Zhang's relatives in this villages informed him of this tragedy, many others came to ask Zhang to settle the dispute.
Zhang then went to Yanxia and Suifeng, the site of the slaughter, where people agreed to make peace with the victims' families. One of the victims’ relatives, Li Shumei, represented the victims. He and Zhang successfully persuaded the two sides to reach an agreement: Yanxia should pay 400 foreign yang and Suifeng should pay 300. Just when their negotiations had come to an end, a villager, Chen Pingdong, and a litigation master, Shao Yichen, requested additional payment. They attempted to rob Li and Zhang, where the latter successfully fled to a boat and carried the money away.
The villagers then abducted Li as a hostage. This prompted the magistrate to send runners to rescue Li and investigate the case. After that, the magistrate told Zhang to re-conduct the mediation and close the case. The entire case took around three months before compensation was finally paid. However, the perpetrators were not punished, even though state law stipulated severe punishments for manslaughter cases.
The motivation behind this fighting remains unknown to this day. Yet, as Zhang concluded in later years, such incidents usually involved extortion, competition, and various miscellaneous matters. Many “scoundrels,” as Zhang repeatedly asserted, saw the races as an opportunity to mobilize villagers and turn a profit through extortion or false accusations. Some took advantage of racing to take revenge on their opponents, either during the races or in following years. Some even destroyed their opponent's villages and property. At times, local officials banned this practice, but their runners (or later, the local policemen) received bribes and tolerated fighting by local bullies during the races. All these customs, together with the rivalries between neighboring villages, continued to fuel dragon boat fighting and eventually made it a violent practice in local society.

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