Rice Theory - an interesting take on China's perceived North/South divide

[intaglio]

From Past Horizons

“It’s easy to think of China as a single culture, but we found that China has very distinct northern and southern psychological cultures and that southern China’s history of rice farming can explain why people in southern China are more interdependent than people in the wheat-growing north,” said Thomas Talhelm, a University of Virginia Ph.D. student in cultural psychology and the study’s lead author

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Talhelm and his co-authors at universities in China and Michigan propose that the methods of cooperative rice farming – common to southern China for thousands of years– make the culture in that region interdependent, while people in the wheat-growing north are more individualistic, a reflection of the independent form of farming practised there.

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He notes that rice farming is extremely labour-intensive, requiring about twice the number of hours from planting to harvest as does wheat. And because most rice is grown on irrigated land, requiring the sharing of water and the building of dikes and canals that constantly require maintenance, rice farmers must work together to develop and maintain an infrastructure upon which all depend. This, Talhelm argues, has led to the interdependent culture in the southern region.

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