Glenn T. Trewartha

Chinese Cities: Origins and Functions

U URBAN development in China appears to be almost as old as China itself. This may appear anomalous in view of the fact that modern China is overwhelmingly rural and agrarian in character with at least three quarters of its population engaged in agriculture and dwelling in rural hamlets and villages. The beginnings of town building and urban life in China appear to coincide with the Bronze Age and are associated with the second, or Shang, Dynasty. Sometime during the second millennium B.C. there developed among the bronze-using groups in North China the habit of living in clustered settlements composed of rectangular timbered houses forming quandrangular towns defended by ramparts of tamped earth. The Bronze Age civilization did not immediately replace the earlier Neolithic culture in North China, for there was a long period during which the former was restricted to a small warlike, aristocratic, ruling class occupying a number of small, scattered, autonomous city states which existed like islands in a sea of Neolithic barbarism.1 These town dwellers were the rulers, fighters, landlords and priests all in one. Shang society thus consisted of two very contrasting groups, one urban and the other rural.

Chinese Cities: Numbers and Distribution

HERE is no possibility of presenting a highly accurate account of the number of cities in China, together with their populations, or even to estimate the total urban population of China. Any figures dealing with the numbers of Chinese cities and their individual populations are at best only estimates taken from a variety of sources, most of which cannot be counted upon as being highly reliable. One of the first attempts at a listing of Chinese cities, together with their populations, was contained in the publication, The Christian Occupation of China, Milton E. Stauffer, editor, Shanghai 1922, Appendix G. Three hundred seventy cities with populations over 25,000 are listed by name and a population estimate given for each. According to the above source there were 69 cities which had a population of over 100,000 or greater, and 186 with a population of 50,000 or more. The list of

French Settlement in the Driftless Hill Land

The region here designated as the Driftless Cuestaform Hill Land refers to that part of the inner basin of the Upper Mississippi unmantled by recent till sheets, where the local relief usually exceeds 250 feet. It is not identical with the well known Driftless Area although, in general, that region forms its innermost and roughest part. Relatively inconspicuous deposits of ancient glaciers cover extensive areas in its western and northern parts (Fig. 1). Except in a few sectors its circumference coincides with a belt enclosed between the local-relief isarithms of 200 and 300 feet (Fig. 2). Over considerable areas relief exceeds 500 feet and at a maximum reaches 800. Low hill country and rough plain are the most suitable descriptive terms for the region. Lying as it does in the midst of extensive youthful till plains, the Driftless Cuestaform Hill Land has distinctiveness not only in its degree of local relief but likewise in the patternful arrangement of its stream-eroded relief forms. In all schemes of physiographic subdivisions of the United States the region under consideration stands out as a clearly defined unit.

Notes on a Physiographic Diagram of Japan

C OMPLEXITY and fineness of pattern are the keynote of the surface configuration of Japan. Even within small areas there is often the greatest diversity in earth materials, their structures, and the land forms resulting. Lofty folded ranges forming the axis of the archipelago have been altered by block movements so that faulted and folded forms are intermingled. Peneplain remnants at relatively high altitudes are widespread throughout the country, contrasting curiously with the steep slopes and high relief. Repeated volcanic eruptions and intrusions, extensive and widespread, have added further complications. Moreover, none of these tectonic forces are at present quiescent; on the contrary, their current activity is conspicuously evident in the recurring showers of volcanic ash, outpourings of lava, numerous earthquakes, and changing strand lines. Short streams of steep gradient, acting upon these complex structures and materials, have sculptured a land surface whose lineaments are varied and intricate. A thick core of moderately rugged hill and mountain land, containing numerous tectonic depressions with a narrow and discontinuous perimeter of terraces and less elevated delta fans-such is the gross pattern. Roughly 75 per cent of the area is hill or mountain country in which slopes are usually too steep and soils too thin for normal cultivation. As a result of recent and rapid uplift, with associated vigorous erosion, the rounded land forms and deep regolith cover typical of mature climatic landscapes in the rainy subtropics are not predominant except where granite weathers to rounded cupola features. Fault and flexure scarps are conspicuous and commonly serve as boundary lines between the geomorphological subdivisions. Scores of volcanic cones, in various stages of activity and dissection, accounting for some of the highest elevations of the archipelago, together with their associated lava and ash plateaus, are both widespread and strikingly prominent. The widespread Tertiary sediments are geographically significant, first, because they are the sources of much of Japans mineral wealth, more especially coal, and, second, because

Land Utilization Maps of Manchuria

The heart of Manchuria thus defined is an alluvial plain whose flat surface has a total spread of more than I20,000 square miles. On the east, north, and west, highlands enclose the sediment-filled basin, these barriers drawing close together on the south so that the 300-mile breadth of plain in the latitude of Harbin is reduced to 75 miles where it fronts on the Gulf of Liaotung. In its climate Manchuria bears most of the earmarks of middlelatitude continentality, viz. large seasonal extremes of temperature, short frost-free season, and meager precipitation remarkably concentrated in the warm season (see Table II). South of Harbin most of the plain has I50 or more frostless days, this same isopleth extending much farther poleward in a narrow strip along the Sungari Valley (Fig. 3). In northwestern Manchuria the growing season is reduced to less than IOO days. South and east of

Ratio Maps of China's Farms and Crops

C HINA is one unit of the larger monsoon realm of southeastern Asia where about one-half of the earths population live according to the simple standards of an ancient Oriental civilization, where agriculture is dominant and peasant farm families make up a large proportion of the total population. Of Chinas 450,000,000 people, 73 per cent earn their living directly from the soil. In Figure I, which shows the ratio of farm households to total households in China, the ratios are about IO points higher in the north than in the south. In the south somewhat more emphasis on manufacturing and trade results in a slightly larger urban population. Nearly go per cent of the Chinese live in communities of IO,OOO or fewer, and the fundamental unit of settlement is the farm village of 250 to 2500 people. Rarely does the Chinese farmer live on an isolated farmstead; village occupance is the rule. Chinese agriculture, therefore, is composed of almost innumerable independent and relatively self-sufficient units or cells-the village communities. One of the distinguishing features of land use in the monsoon realm, and especially characteristic of China, is the extreme concentration of agricultural population on the fresh, and therefore fertile, alluvial soils of flood plains and deltas. In many places almost knife-edge boundaries separate regions overtaxed with dense masses of people from others that are nearly free from settlement. This concentration of effort on the best soils has been interpreted as reflecting the characteristic dependence on hand labor and the general lack of machines and animal power. It takes I5 days for one man to spade a single acre; and, as he cannot cultivate more poor soil than good soil, it behooves him to spend his energies only on the most productive land. It is partly for this reason that only IO.3 per cent of Chinas area is under cultivation. So high a degree of population concentration on a relatively small part of the countrys area obviously leads to overcrowding and associated intensive cultivation of the land. Such practices as multiple cropping of the same field and interculture of different crops are the result.

The Iwaki Basin: Reconnaissance Field Study of a Specialized Apple District in Northern Honshiu, Japan

The Iwaki Basin in far northwestern Honshiu is not without fame in Japan, for within its borders are grown 50?So of the nations apple crop. Except for its extraordinary specialization in fruit, the basin is a representative sample of much of the Japan Sea littoral of Honshiu north of 380; a rustic and provincial district, well removed from the great urban centers of Japanese culture and industry; a region whose citizens speak a dialect not well understood by the native of Tokyo. Thus Iwaki offers an opportunity to study traits of land occupance in a part of Nippon lying beyond the zones of tea and mulberry, two commercial crops which are so important in the agricultural economy of sub-tropical Japan.