Qi Zhu, year 2, 2021

The White, the Deer and the Plain Qi Zhu 2021

Prologue

Figure 1 Border Stone. From pt-br.facebook.com

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The scene of digging out the border stone comes from the novel “The White Deer Plain” (白鹿原) by Zhongshi Chen (1942-2016). The novel depicted lives of people and the land on loess plateau in north-west China during the first half of the 20th Century.

The core story was around three generations of people from the Bai (White) family and the Lu (Deer) family who shared their ancestral blood and lived in the same village called White Deer Village on the White Deer Plain.

As the representatives of the Whites and the Deers respectively, Jiaxuan Bai and Zilin Lu are the protagonists in the novel. In the opening quote, Zilin Lu was changing the ownership of the land that Jiaxuan Bai passed to him. It is the consequence of the most important event which drew the beginning of the novel – land exchange.

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Introduction

The White Deer Plain in the novel “White Deer Plain” refers to a real geographical location to the east of Xi’an City in Shaanxi Province, China. The area of White Deer Plain is around 263 square kilometers, with a length of 25 kilometers from the east to the west and a south-to-north width between 6-9 kilometers. Its east end connects to the Zhongnan Mountain and its north bound was drawn by the Ba River (Bian 2012, 12). The geographical feature of White Deer Plain is actually the loess plateau which under ages of erosion by the wind and the rain has formed layers of platforms along its cliff edges. It is called “the plain” in custom, however, because the top of the plateau is flat and fertile with the moisture of rivers and rare but continuous streams from the south-eastern mountains, and, with the cultivations of generations of people living on the land.

Figure 2 White Deer Plain, Shaanxi. From Baidu Map.

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The White Deer Village in the novel, however, is a literature creation as a timeand-space synthesizing the general traditions, characters and the history of people living on the White Deer Plain. The name of the village and the family names of the people in the village – White and Deer were both drawn from a myth ever-spreading on the plain:

Figure 3 The White Deer. From TV series “The White Deer Plain”.

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Then at some time in the history, the dominant Hou family in the village managed by two brothers decided to change their surnames to White and Deer to share the fortune of the mythical White Deer which once brought thrive and remedy to dying fields and suffering people. The offspring of the elder brother continued the surname White and the offspring of the younger brother continued the surname Deer. For every generation, the eldest brother of the Whites would be the patriarch of the village – the great parent of both the Whites and the Deers, for the two families always share the same blood on the same piece of land.

The novel “White Deer Plain” has a strong tie to the land and the people’s attitude towards the land. Referring back to the prologue, the land exchange between Jiaxuan Bai and Zilin Lu was the first critical interaction between the two protagonists and two families in the novel to unfold farmers’ use of land for living and choice of land for burial of the dead in two valuation systems.

Figure 4 the order of narration and the order of the essay. Qi Zhu.

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Both land valuation systems bring up three intertwining factors – nature time, land advantage1 and human harmony - which originated from Mencius classical essay on strategy plans in the way of propriety and was believed to turn the wheel on people’s fate and the land’s vitality in traditional agricultural society. In this essay, I would like to examine the land exchange event in an order from “the vanishing of the land border” to “the use of land for living” and “the choice of burial for death”. This theoretical order would reverse the chronological narration of the event and the essay would be formulated into three chapters2:

Firstly, I would attempt to explain the unusual nature of the change of land boundary by looking at the artifact border stone which leads to a strong family field inheriting tradition in Chinese agricultural society under the rule of grid-field division.

Secondly, by looking at the six hierarchies of land evaluation on White Deer Plain, I would examine the practical land profit that the Deer family gained from the White’s water fields and draw the plan of the upgraded field grids with the well in the center which again reflects the grid-field tradition and the significance of irrigation.

Finally, I would explore the reason why Jiaxuan Bai Bai decided to gain Zilin Lu’s poor land with his good field due to his specific personal experience and the social expectation for blessing from ancestors and the rebirth of the dead as a spirit in meaningful landscapes in personification.

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Land Advantage is the translation from Chinese term “地利” (Di Li) which means the land productivity in

agriculture, the land topography in war strategies or the thriving potential of a land in choice of burial site or city location.

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The introduction to historical grid order on agricultural land can naturally provide a context for Zilin Lu’s

calculations on practical use of a field and echo to the prologue soundly. Jiaxuan Bai’s unusual valuation of a land primarily from the perspective of death is more suitable to be arranged after the first two layers as a deeper reading on the social and aesthetic connotations of a land. That is the reason why I structure the essay in the unique theoretical order.

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1. Border Stone and Grid Field

On the White Deer Plain – as one of the most fertile arable lands immediately outside the capital of Zhou Dynasty – a long social management system based on field inheriting had deeply rooted since 3000 years ago. The methodology of constructing the land boundary thoroughly influenced the plan of the fields in a principle called Jing Tian (井田) – literally as grid field.

The Chinese word for field is Tian 田, which directly takes the form of four square grids. Jing 井 was also a Chinese character drawn in a plan of grids depicting the irrigating well at the center of the farmlands.

Jing Tian as a combined term refers to a crucial farmland and feudal sovereignty subdivision law formalized in Zhou Dynasty which divided one piece of land as a threetime-three frame of grids, placing the “public” field in the center with eight “private” parcels surrounding it. More precisely, the ownership of the central field belonged to the state of Zhou, the power of taxation belonged to the local feudal lord; while the decisions of cultivation on the surrounding parcels were made by the father of each family (Lv 2018, 68). The same pattern of division continued on a smaller scale where one individual parcel would be divided in the same grid-frame manner with the well in the center. The same Law also applied to the whole state where smaller city-states under the rule of feudal lords surrounded the central state of Zhou (Yi 2013, 20).

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Figure 5 Origin of Field Grids. From Tong Jin, “The Aftertaste of Jing Tian”.

The cultivation of cotton and grains accelerated the process of domestication and family extension within the range of one life-sustaining landscape. Together with the ownership over fields, the ownership over housing, ancestral burials and sacrificial halls all gradually set the foundation of living and sense of belonging of individuals, families and social groups who inherited their fields and blood from the same ancestors on the same piece of land. The Whites and the Deers in the novel “The White Deer Plain” demonstrated the human-land relationship thoroughly from their clear awareness on what is shared and what is bounded on the issue of ownership.

The Whites and Deers share the same sacrificial hall, however they have had separated ancestral burials, family properties strictly from generations of inheriting.

Among the family properties, fields were the most valuable and fundamental for farmers’ living. Like other locations all around China, the border stone served as the sign of division between different families’ lands throughout the history. Referring back to the Prologue, border stones between fields are buried underground at the point where two perpendicular field ridges cross over. It would be lay on lime and charcoal as the protection from erosion because the border stone used to symbolize one permanent contract between family ancestors – the land division should not be changed by their offspring, otherwise, the offspring would be cursed as the unfilial.

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Figure 6 Zilin Lu (left) and Jiaxuan Bai (right) kneeling in the shared sacrificial hall of the Whites and the Deers. From TV series “The White Deer Plain”.

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The border stone underground between the fields of Jiaxuan Bai and Zilin Lu held up crossing ridges of division which together with other countless crosses formulated the grid matrix of fields over the White Deer Plain – not in perfect squares but as stripshaped adaptations to the loess plateau land features. From the time of division between the Whites and the Deers as two family names, the division of their land contracts and the position of the border stone were also due as the basis of the extended clan who would continue their lives in the same village like a one-headed creature with two separated bodies. Without the expansion on the size of the village range as a whole, the inheriting of family lands and the insisting on the land borders became one of the most essential rules to maintain the social harmony.

That was why the land exchange and vanish of land boundary between the fields of Jiaxuan Bai and Zilin Lu became a controversial and unusual event in its social context, because the family contract for hundreds of years had been violated between the two dominant families against the traditional morality. Meanwhile it distinctly marked the land profit expansion of the Deer family over the White after Zilin Lu gained the beneficial water field from Jiaxuan Bai which seemingly broke the equilibrium between the two families as two balancing forces on the plain.

Figure 7 Fields bounded by ridges on White Deer Plain. From k.sina.cn.

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2. Land Hierarchies: Natural > Human

The land exchange between Jiaxuan and Zilin took place around 1910 – it was at the end of Qing Dynasty (1636-1912). For this reason, the principle on land value and hierarchies in the novel goes along with its dynastic context.

Qing Dynasty as a typical centralized and unified empire had abolished the level of feudal lords as a power-divider between the Son of Heaven and the people under rule. The taxation power and land ownership directly belonged to the state. While at a practical level, agricultural lands were divided as governmental land and people’s land – the land which individual families could self-cultivate and exchange (Shi 2018, 5). For the quality of people’s land, three levels of productivity “high, middle and low” and two factors “water or dry” would influence the subdivision of hierarchies distinctly in different geographical context. On the White Deer Plain, like widely in northern China with a relatively dry climate, arable lands with surface or underground water were called fields – Tian 田; while dry lands normally on higher altitude slopes were called soil land – Di 地 (Hai 2015, 326).

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Figure 8 Arable land hierarchies. Qi Zhu summary from “The White Deer Plain”.

According to the form above, the Nature-leveled land from Jiaxuan – as the top quality land with high productivity and water supply was a great natural gift and thriving opportunity in Zilin Lu’s eyes:

Firstly, the water field near the Ba River has two harvests per year for corns and wheat alternately. While his Human-leveled soil land was not a promise for even one harvest annually. Secondly, the water field on the flat and fertile bank is also easier for transport of fertilizers on bullock cart. Thirdly, after pulling up the border stone, Jiaxuan’s fields and his own field on the bank combined into a whole piece large enough to be divided into a three-time-three grid with a well at the center. He even designed to plant four willows on the four corners of the well in order to cover the dazzling sunlight from the east, south and west throughout a day for laboring people and animals3 (Chen 2013, 33, 36).

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Through the whole paragraph, I rewrote Zilin Lu’s calculations on page 33 before land exchange and his practice of digging a well with four trees surrounding on page 36 after the land exchange together concisely. Direct quotations here would be too long and confusing.

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The calculations and design by Zilin Lu revealed the typical valuation of land from a farmer’s view in traditional Chinese society where the utilization of productive natural condition of a field is the foundation of prosperity.

Figure 9 Zilin Lu’s Plan for the combined field. Qi Zhu collage elements from j.17qq.com.

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3. Landscape Will: Human > Natural

Besides being the names of six land hierarchies in the novel “White Deer Plain”, “natural time, land advantage and Human harmony” as three compound terms had their origin in Mencius: “natural time could fail to land advantage, land advantage could fail to human harmony” (Meng 2013, 57). Back to the day when Jiaxuan Bai was impressed by the vitality of Zilin Lu’s slow gradient land, it was a combination of nature chance, vantage perspective and, most importantly, dream for harmony which made him the will to own the barren land:

After the death of his sixth wife, Jiaxuan Bai had spent a tremendous amount of money on the succeeding short marriages leaving him no single offspring. His father had also died with a heavy will on him to continue the family of White with at least one son. In a desperate mood, Jiaxuan went on a trip to invite the landscape expert to find a better place for his father’s grave in order to change the misfortune of himself and his family.

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Figure 10 Crystal Herb - White Deer herb. From www.zhihu.com.

In the local myth, the white deer was a good omen bringing fortune and remedy to barren land and suffering people. In the novel, the white deer is also a symbol of harmony between the Whites and the Deers. Besides the awareness of boundary and emulation everlasting between the two families throughout the novel, they are ultimately blood brothers. The burial of the old patriarch, Jiaxuan’s father, was a meaningful land choice influencing the unity of the whole village and people’s expectation on their new patriarch Jiaxuan Bai.

The slow gradient land raised Jiaxuan’s attention again not because of the mythical creature but its special landscape surrounding:

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The poetic diagnosis on one piece of land made by landscape expert in Chinese “Wind-water” theory is like qualifying the topography of a land in a picture frame with harmonious depth and height relationships. Different from qualifying an arable land where the water supply and lower altitude can provide advantages of fertility, the choice of a burial site is better on a higher and dryer position with wide sight, balancing view and protect from water erosion.

Figure 11 Landscape body. From TV series “the White Deer Plain”.

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In the system of “Wind-water”, burial site choice was considered a rest place of permanency for the ancestral spirits’ rebirth and blessing on their offspring. That is why the landscape expert in the novel described the layout of the grave in personification of “head” “feet” and “spine” – it is like considering where the body of a baby would be reborn from the vaginal mouth of the mother. In this analogy, the body of human takes its place on the landscape of the nature and became the source of personal will and social meaning (Gao 1992, 36-40).

Figure 12 Landscape or female body. From Qi Zhu. Line drawing.

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Conclusion

In this essay I explored the physical and cultural connotations of land for Chinese families and the importance of boundaries between them. The border stone is an artifact which materialized grid-field principle in traditional Chinese agricultural society. The division archetype was then followed by the further land evaluation formed during Qing Dynasty for which a land acquires more values for its higher productivity and accessibility to irrigation.

Based on this criteria of natural conditions, the disparity between Jiaxuan Bai and Zilin Lu’s lands become evident and this sheds a light on the motive behind the landexchange; while the final chapter revealed a more sentimental motive of exchange from Jiaxuan Bai. The narration of the essay as an analytical tool drawn through the literature “the White Deer Plain” is aimed to take the readers through a trip in Chinese culture on how people deal with the living and the death on the land where nature time, land advantage and human harmony comes together.

In the land exchange event – as the first appearance of both characters, Zilin Lu revealed his practical personality and calculations on profit which were typical to him all through the novel; while Jiaxuan Bai revealed more complex layers of longing, doubts, fears and strategies.

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He was equally clever on land calculations as Zilin Lu, and compared to Zilin, he was more insisting on family inheriting and his fundamental role as a farmer. Later in the novel, when Zilin Lu chased after the official title in order to fulfill his greatgrandpa’s last hope before death: “I was a rich and famous cook, but still a cook – someone who serves others. My offspring should bear in mind that the really respectful people should be the one who is served by others” (Chen 2013, 57); Jiaxuan Bai always stayed on his land, ploughing and reciting the codes of conducts: “The virtue is to practice the kind and to refine one’s negligence; the virtue is to take care of yourself and to love your family … The living is to keep family harmony, ploughing and reading” (Chen 2013, 81).

With a heart closer to the land, Jiaxuan was always able to go beyond the direct profit and gain life strength from the land. Though he struggled in fears and doubts under the shadow of the deaths of his dearest relatives, and the pressure to continue the blood of the White family, his sharp observation into the tiny plant in the world of snow and his belief on the spectacular landscape as a site of rebirth recovered his courage, and even, his romantic aesthetics.

Figure 13 the living and the rebirth. Collage from TV series “the White Deer Plain”.

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Then on a strategic level, Jiaxuan pretended that he had to give up the water fields for exchange of the huge amount of money for another marriage4, and, it would be a less loss of face if Zilin Lu exchange his worst land with him along with the money – land exchange was less a shame than land sale. Jiaxuan deeply knew the character of Zilin Lu and how ridiculous his own faith on the White Deer could be for any other people. Thus, Jiaxuan directed the event of land exchange and made up the only lie throughout his life which brought together the Whites, the Deers and the Plain.

The practical spirit towards living and the aesthetic sprit towards death draw two sides of one coin of the human and the land. In the space-and-time of the White Deer Plain, the history interweaves with the literature, the social rules formulated geometrical land division, while the life itself melted into the body of mountains and waters which tolerated all forms and characters in the yellow of the wheat, the white of the snow and the blue of the sky.

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In traditional Chinese morality, the continuity of family blood is dearer than anything including the land, and the deaths of Jiaxuan’s six wives had made less and less people willing to risk their daughters with him.

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Mao, Xianzhi. "Real White Dear Plain in Shaanxi." sina articles. September 28, 2020. https://k.sina.cn (accessed February 16, 2021).

Meng, Ke. Mencius. Beijing: China Book Press, 2013.

Shi, Tao. "Social factors influencing grain price in Shanxi 1820-1850." In Grain Price and Merket in Shanxi 1820-1850, by Yuming Gao et al Peng Li, 1-32. Taiyuan: Social Science Publish, 2018.

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