The History of China - #137 - N. Song 5: A Song of Rice and Flour

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

"Rice is great if you're really hungry and want eat 2,000 of something." - Mitch Hedberg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Four hundred years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts. Or go to pod.link slash pax.

This episode is brought to you in part by Studio Headphones. Now, I've been running this campaign for a couple of episodes now, but I'm back to say that since I've recorded my first spot, I've gone back and ordered two more headsets from them. What I got, as I suggested in my last spot, was the wireless Regent headsets for both myself and my wife. She got the white, while I took that manly black pair. But you can also switch out the plates on each ear to a number of other designs if the simple, stylish plates they arrive with don't rub you the right way. I've had them on my ears pretty much every day since they arrived, and let me tell you,

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Episode 137, A Song of Rice and Flour. Hello, and welcome back. Let me start off by wishing you all a happy and successful Year of the Dog, now that the Chinese New Year has come and gone. I spent a solid week and a half at my wife's hometown visiting my in-laws, so as you might well imagine, I'm more than happy to be back in my own house and in my own bed. And of course, back delivering episode after episode directly to your ears. I should also say that since the 60-year calendar cycle of China stipulates both an animal from one of the 12 zodiacs, as well as one of the classical elements, 2018 is actually the year of the earth dog, or as I've come to call it, the year of the dirty dog. And yeah, that definitely does seem to be holding true thus far. Just wait for next

year, the year of the filthy pig. No implications there. Nope, not at all. Anyways, we last left off with the death of Emperor Taizong of Song in the year 997, after a reign of 21 years, and the accession of his third son, Zhao Heng, who would take the throne that May the 8th as Emperor Zhenzong at the age of 29. But as we close in on the turn of of his third son, Zhao Heng, who would take the throne that May the 8th as Emperor Zhenzong at the age of 29. But as we close in on the turn of the 11th century, we run the risk of marching right on by one of the real heroes of Chinese history, and that of East Asia as a whole for that matter. The little grain that could.

Rice. One of my all-time favorite comedians, the late, great Mitch Hedberg, had this to say on the food stuff. Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat 2,000 of something. True indeed, but it's also great if you want to feed a few billion people cheaply and nutritiously. In fact, rice is the world's second most important food crop after wheat. In terms of its protein, fat, vitamin, and mineral content, unmilled, that is, unmilled rice, actually often outperforms as competing grains and cereals, though it does lose much of its said nutritional value

when rendered into its much more popular, milled white state through polishing, losing in the process for instance as much as 30% of its unmilled protein content. Thus it was and remains true that in regions too poor to adequately supplement their rice-based diet with additional protein and vitamin sources, such populations have often run the risk of a disease called beriberi, also known as thiamine deficiency, which can result in limb numbness and swelling, increased heart rate and shortness of breath, confusion, and in some cases, even death. Yet for all of its importance to Asia, Africa, and increasingly much of the rest of the world, rice itself remains remarkably underclassified compared to other species Africa, and increasingly much of the rest of the world, rice itself remains

remarkably underclassified compared to other species of plants and animals. The late British sinologist and historian Joseph Needham wrote in his sixth volume of Science and Civilization in China, Part 2, Agriculture, quote, rice must be the most diverse and adaptable crop known to man. Some varieties flourish on dry mountain slopes, while others can survive floods five to six meters deep, growing more than 10 centimeters a day as the waters rise. Some varieties take seven months to ripen, others only two. The range of variation in rice is so great that no internationally recognized system of classification has yet been developed, although repeated attempts have been made ever since the Rice Congress at Valencia in 1914

urged the formation of a real botanical classification of the varieties of cultivated rice. Yet there are some rather broad classifications that the plant is commonly broken into. The species we're interested in is, of course, the rices native to Asia, known as Orisa sativa, or O. sativa. These are further broken down into what is often called the Indica and Japonica varieties, though as we'll come to see in a little bit, both of those names have been pointed out as problematic by Chinese and other scholars as incorrectly localizing said varieties. Within China, the Japonica strain is known as the Xian and Indica as Geng. Regardless of their nomenclature, both varieties are further broken down

into what is known as glutinous and non-glutinous varieties, though this is once again a misnomer since no variety of rice contains gluten whatsoever. So sufferers of celiac disease, be at ease, you need not fear so-called glutinous rice. Glutinous varieties are sticky, which need imposites is likely caused by dextrin and maltose,

whereas non-glutinous rice tends to be the drier and thus more common variety. Glutinous rice has long been prized across East Asia as ceremonious, prestigious food used in the production of items like rice wines and beers, sticky cakes like Chinese nianggao and Japanese mochi, whereas non-glutinous varieties are typically the more pedestrian fare for everyday meals. D. H. Grist lays out the differences between Japonica and Indica very well in his aptly named book, Rice. He writes, quote, The Japonica form are typically of the more northerly and southerly areas of paddy cultivation and flourish under very long photoperiods, which is to say that they like growing seasons with very long days. When grown in tropical areas where the day length is short,

they respond by greatly curtailed life periods and often become so precocious as to be useless. The grains of Japonicas is commonly shorter and broader than is usual for Indicas. Japonicas usually have broad leaves, rather hairy flumes, and translucent endosperm. These differences are, however, by no means consistent, and if taken individually, would not serve to distinguish one from the other. Another difference of great importance is in the cooking character of the rices. Japonicas tend to soften rapidly after a certain time of cooking, and to become mushy if only slightly overdone. Indicas, in contrast, tend to resist some overcooking and to give a rice with each grain separating and not sticky." And that's really not even the half of the

murky world of differences between rice varieties. It's remarkably confusing, and it's no wonder that even after thousands of years of intensive cultivation, there remains no overall consensus about those varieties. Indeed, famed Qing dynasty doctor and official, or Tai, listed in his 1742 compendium, the Shoushi Tonggao, or Compendium of Works and Days, more than 3,000 names of known rice varieties, which modern experts reckon to account for more like a thousand or so varieties by multiple names. In China, nearly all rice grown is of the wet variety, which is a familiar image to most of us when we think of Chinese rice farmer. That is, stacks upon stacks of tiered

fields inundated with standing water for the majority of its growth cycle. The quality of the water of these rices is of pivotal importance, even more so than the soil quality, as noted in the Qiming Yaoshu, or the Essential Techniques for the Welfare of the People, written in the mid-6th century by the author Wu Ding of Eastern Wei. He says, quote, whether the land be good or poor, if the water is clear, then the rice will be good, end quote. Interestingly, though this flooding technique does have a positive effect on the eventual yield of the crop versus those grown in dry soils, the process of growing in flooded paddies has an additional beneficial effect of helping to suppress weed growth, which would otherwise compete with the rice for space and soil nutrients.

Where most plant species would die in flooded conditions, rice actually not only survives, but flourishes. The system of tiered and flooded rice paddies was known, at least in southern China, by the early Zhou period of the 11th through 8th centuries BCE. When on hillsides, the rice paddies are watered by gravity-fed canals, streams, and or tanks, whereas farmers with paddies located in river valleys have a much easier time of things, with their fields being fed by ditches and canals operated by pumping equipment and blocks to let the water in or out as required. This is, as you might imagine, an incredibly laborious task, especially in hilly regions. So much so that actual labor shortage has occasionally been a factor in limiting the number of fields that could physically be maintained. That is to say, certain regions simply didn't have enough people at times to grow all of their fields at capacity.

It's been estimated that in regions of Thailand, for instance, as much as 10% of the total annual labor performed by farmers is devoted solely to the upkeep, maintenance, and operation of the irrigation systems alone. Another interesting little aside about constructing and making fields ready for planting are the animals farmers often employed in that process. Now, it'll come as no surprise that great beasts of burden like the ox were frequently employed to dredge and till the soil. But there's a much less obvious animal partner at work too. Fish. From the 10th century Lingbiao Luyi, or Recordings of the Strange in Lingbiao, quote, in such districts as Xinzhou and Longzhou, which is in modern Guangiao, quote, herbivorous fish, which they distribute among the fields. After two or three years, the little fish

have grown large and have quite eaten away the roots of the weeds so that the field is ready to be planted. The farmers can sell the fish and plant their rice in weed-free fields. This popular method is really excellent." In terms of northern China, it's sometimes stated that the drier, colder climate has been the chief limiting factor in rice cultivation there. Needham, however, disagrees with this assessment, stating, quote, crop in Korea and Japan, both of which are at a higher latitude than much of northern China. But their terrain is hilly and broken, crossed by many streams, and thus, like much of southern China, suitable for the construction of wet fields dependent on small-scale irrigation systems. Northern China, on the other hand, needed to have large-scale irrigation constructions

to render the majority of its land suitable for rice cultivation, a process that was often bitterly opposed by local landlords who saw public irrigation works as a populist threat to the almost feudal organization of production on their estates. Alright, so that about taps out my inner botanist. Let's get down to the history of rice in Asia. If you think back, way back, all the way back to the very first two episodes of this very podcast when we were talking about the mythical three sovereigns and five emperors who forged China out of the primordial world, you may remember the second of the sovereigns, that clear-skinned and

ox-horned demigod, Shannong, the god of farming, who, surprise surprise, taught the Huaxia people how to farm things like tea and rice as far back as 4,500 years ago. Though this is an obvious myth, the timeline is actually not that far off. Though in the first half of the 20th century, it was widely thought that rice cultivation actually began rather late in China compared to India and Southwest Asia as of circa 2000 BCE. Archaeological discoveries in the Yellow and Yangtze River valleys in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s overturned this theory, with sites like Qinglian Gang near Shanghai showing strong evidence of rice cultivation as far back as 4000 BCE, and around the Taihu Lake in northern Zhejiang province near Hangzhou showing cultivation of both Japonica and Indica

strains as of 3300 BC. Though some scholars, such as K.C. Chang and He Bingdi, long maintained that the earliest Chinese rice farmers were the millet growers of the Yangshuo culture in the Yellow River area, and that Chinese rice was domesticated by migrants from the north who introduced their superior culture to the southern regions during a period of rapid expansion under population pressure. Needham points out, though, that such a hypothesis ignores the fact that millet grows well at tropical latitudes, thus nullifying the proposed necessity of domesticating southern

rices. Nevertheless, such dates far outstrip evidence of rice cultivation in either India, tracing back to the 3rd millennium BC, much less Japan, adopting the crop as a Chinese import as of the 4th century BC. This lends major credence to the Chinese complaint against the terms Indica and Japonica themselves, which were proposed, after all, by a group of Japanese workers in the 1920s. Still, in spite of the push towards the relabeling of Indica and Japonica strains, respectively again to the Xian and Geng, specifically by the, and I must say I love this title, great Chinese expert on rice, Ting Ying, in 1961, the earlier labels have retained their preeminence in much of the world,

at least outside of China. Yet even this theory of central and northern Chinese original cultivation of rice in the 5th millennium BCE was dealt a blow in 1976 by the discovery of remains of rice cultivation at Ningbo, in southern Zhejiang, at the Hemutu site, dating back a thousand years before even that to the 6th millennium BCE, as early, if not even earlier, than the first known farming settlements whatsoever along the Yellow River. Needham writes of this civilization, quote, The village of Hamutu consisted of houses on stilts built on the edge of a marsh.

Even the earliest cultural stratums show signs of considerable technological sophistication, including well-made, finely decorated pottery and complex carpentry works. And the sheer volume of rice remains shows that the inhabitants were not proto-farmers, but relied heavily on cultivated rice for food supply. The Hamutu culture has few, if any, affinities with the contemporary cultures of the Yellow River Valley, but we may find a plausible explanation for this in the hypothesis, now accepted by many archaeologists in both East and West, that mainland Southeast Asia played a crucial role in early East Asian cultural development, end quote. Hopefully not to put too fine of a point on it, but this is just one more nail in the coffin of the traditional Chinese historiography

of itself, which saw itself as the primary cultural exporter to any and all barbarous neighbors who, seeing the obvious superiority of the Yellow River civilization, signified themselves or were subsequently colonized. Instead, we start to see a picture far more in line with virtually every other instance of cultural interaction across time. It's always, always a two-way street. There's no single fount of culture or civilization flowing outward into the rest of the unenlightened world. Instead, cultures meet, trade, and share what works for them, and take unto themselves better solutions when those are made available. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating

his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating

era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Ultimately, Needham concludes that the most likely origin point for rice cultivation was the multitudinous river valleys of Southeast Asia, that is Thailand, Burma, Assam, and Yunnan in China, from a Meso- and Neolithic culture group known as the Hua Bin that existed between 12,000 and 2,000 BCE. Rice cultivation is claimed to go back in that region at least as early as 5,000 BCE, and perhaps even as early as circa 7,000 BCE, potentially marking the region as one of the culture and domestication hearths of the prehistoric world, alongside the more commonly known ones like Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, the Indus River, Mesoamerica, and, of course, the Yellow River Valley. Where does all this talk about varieties of rice and its

origin get to the Song Dynasty, though? Don't worry, it's right about now. The most important distinctions between types of rice have long been noted to be their flavors, favorable growing conditions, and critically, their ripening period. This last will prove the most important at the turn of the 11th century, and here's why. Rice that takes longer to ripen, often thought of as being primarily gung or japonica varieties, though both strains have early and late ripening varieties, it should be noted, tend to yield a significantly larger crop of food, which is great as far as such things go. Early ripening varieties, though, yield a different sort of boon, the possibility of multi-cropping and receiving

multiple harvests in a single growing season, or at the very least a fallback in case of environmental disaster or crop failure. 12th century scholar from Anhui named Xu Lin wrote of these and other differences between Indica and Japonica strains. Quote, the greater cereal Da He Gu is nowadays known as Geng rice. Its grains are large and it has awns, and it can only be grown on fertile land. The lesser cereal Xiao He Gu is nowadays known as champa rice, or xian. It has smaller grains and no awns, and can be grown on any land, fertile or not. The grain called geng gives low yields and commands a higher price, and apart from being used to pay taxes, is eaten only by upper-class people.

The small-grained rice gives high yields and commands a low price, and is eaten by everybody from modest property owners down. End quote. It would be this Champa rice that would revolutionize Song Chinese agriculture in the 11th century. The rice derives its name from its supposed place of origin, the kingdoms of Champa, a collection of largely independent polities that extended from the center to the southern coasts of what is today Vietnam, and has beaten off both Chinese and Viet attempts to seize control over the territory since its formation in the late 2nd century CE, something it would continue to do until 1832 when it was at last defeated and annexed by the Nguyen dynasty, though a sizable number of Cham peoples

would escape to Cambodia, where they still exist today. In any case, the majority of rices of both Geng and Xian strains ripen in the ninth month, known as Shuangjiang, or when the hoarfrost descends. These late ripening rices were virtually the sole source of food for Chinese prior to the 11th century, though there are minor indications of some earlier ripening varieties being used in regions like Jiangxi and the Yangtze Valley as early as the 5th century CE. Even so, these were of virtually no importance to the grand scheme of things. In all, rice farmers had little choice but to put all of their rice in one basket, to play on the old saying. That is, plant in the spring, wait seven months, and cross your fingers that something terrible didn't happen, like a flood or locusts

or the like. Because if it did, barring an imperial grain silo being stalked and opening its doors, you were just out of luck. Disaster or crop failure for any reason at all could and frequently did result in massive starvation, instability, and even revolution and rebellion across the eras. And much of it tied squarely to the fact that everyone's fortunes were inextricably tied to that of their rice that they all planted and harvested at roughly the same time. The Shoushan Nongpu, or Survey of the Agriculture of Shuttle Mountain, describes the kind of helplessness the peasantry would feel in the event of such disasters befalling them. The peasants accept these disasters as inevitable. Though they weep and curse them, there's nothing they can do. Alas, how bitter is such fate. The first disaster strikes in mid-autumn,

when the grain has started well, has flowered, and is just heading. Suddenly, a cold spell strikes several nights running. The rice panicles are blasted by the cold, shrivel, and turn black and mottled. This is called the dark wind. The other strikes in midsummer, in stifling, humid weather, when the hot air presses down on the lands so clouds form in the mountains. Frequently, this produces rain, and its arrival coincides with the strong southerly wind which carries the rain back and forth with it. Such constantly changing weather, veering from wet to dry, affects the grain of the fields, for locusts appear and, munching noisily, devour all the leaves completely. Such constantly changing weather, veering from wet to dry, affects the grain of the fields, for locusts appear and, munching noisily, devour all the leaves completely.

The peasants say these two disasters fall from heaven. End quote. Indeed, though there were methods farmers used to attempt to control pest populations and the like, in reality there was very little that farmers could do at all to save their crop from such events right up until the advent of chemical pesticides. But as the 10th century winded down towards the 11th, China was fast approaching an even greater agricultural challenge than periodic famine, which could, after all, at least partially be solved by effective government taxation and by storage of crop yields for those lean times.

At least, ideally, you know, if the government could be bothered. No, the problem as of the year 1000 was that China's population was approaching something of a hard limit on just how many people their rice could possibly feed. According to Kent G. Dung of the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics in his paper, Fact or Fiction, Re-examination of Chinese Pre-Modern Population Statistics, China's population had positively ballooned in an incredibly short period of time following the establishment of the Song Dynasty in 960. The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period had, like virtually every period of disunion, devastated the Chinese

population, especially given the destructive and far-reaching effects of the Qitan Liao's frequent raids. Census data, adjusted by Deng as of the year 659, dipped to as low as 13.3 million people. Compare that to a population in 845 of more than 28.5 million, or back in 742, just prior to the unrest that would lead to the An Lushan Rebellion, of almost 49 million. Yet, by 976, just 17 years later, China had gone from 13 to 17.8 million people, and by 996 to 26.4 million, and by 1006, this just prior to the formal introduction of Champa Rice, up to 42.8 million. So that's a population explosion nearly quadrupling the population back to the highs not seen since the height of the Tang dynasty in just half a century. That'd be like the population of the United States going from

its current population of about 323 million people to a population rivaling that of modern China at 1.3 billion people by the year 2068. You'd better believe that the US would have problems dealing with that sort of societal and food strain, and we have access to far greater farming and industrial capacity to absorb such a rapid shift than 10th century China did. It would take something of a quantum leap in agricultural technology to absorb such a change, and fortunately, Champa rice was there to provide in just the nick of time.

Champa rice was special for two primary reasons. First, it was very drought-resistant and required very modest amounts of water to reach its full capacity, compared to other rice varieties. The second, as I mentioned before, was that it ripened very quickly, in as little as two to four months, versus the typical seven and nine month growing cycle. This meant that it could be doubled and sometimes even triple cropped, which more than outweighed its relatively smaller individual yields. This isn't to say that suddenly Champa rice and its ilk just came out of nowhere in the 11th century. To the contrary, it's very likely that the rice had been used as some form of insurance in southern China

since as early as the Han dynasty of the 3rd to 3rd centuries BCE and CE, respectively. It could be grown where other rice would not, and needed very little care, meaning that even if it produced lower yields, it was a relatively bulletproof fallback in the event that your varieties of long-ripening rice failed to come through. Maybe you wouldn't turn a profit in a bad year, but at least you wouldn't starve to death. Indeed, knowledge, or at least word, of this hearty, fast rice must have been fairly common knowledge even in northern China by the time Zhao Hang acceded his father, Tai Zong, as Emperor Zhen Zong in 997. Since little more than a decade later, he'd be

ordering it sent to the north for further experimentation and eventual widespread adoption north of the Yangtze. Zhenzong would order 30,000 bushels of Champa rice delivered from South China to the lower Yangtze and the Huai River Valley from the province of Fujian in the year 1012. It was distributed from the local officials to the individual farmers, with additional crop given to those with fields further from liable water sources, and along with precise instructions of where and how to plant and grow the crop for maximum effect. Needham writes, quote, the campaign was a resounding success. By the mid-12th century, it was reported that 70% of

the rice grown in Jiangxi was Champa rice, and by the end of the century, we hear that 80-90% of the wet rice in the lower Yangtze was the Champa type. The success of the Champa introduction program is borne out in the population statistics of the time as well. As I mentioned before, by 1006, China's population had ballooned some 400% to 42 million. Yet by 1083, that number had more than doubled itself again to 99.3 million, and then until an all-time high of more than 120 million people in the census of 1110, a number that would not be reached or surpassed again for more than 600 years until sometime between 1753 and 1756, when China's population again breached nine digits and never looked back.

To once again pull the U.S. as an example, if the current population were again to track to the 959 census of 13.3 million, the U.S. would between 2018 and 2170 rise more than nine times from 323 million to almost 3 billion people. The way that China was able to so massively boost its crop output was, as I said earlier, through the process of double planting. But it actually works a little differently than what one might initially think, or at least how I had initially thought that I understood it before this whole research rabbit hole. I thought that they might have planted one batch of the fast-growing rice, harvested it, and then planted another, but in most cases that wasn't actually what they did. Instead, the fields would be divided between early and late ripening shoots, with the majority usually being planted with the

early champa rice, and the rest, the late ripening variety, all at the same time. Since the late ripening sections would yield considerably more food per unit, that might have still resulted in something of a 50-50 split in overall production, but now with two harvesting times rather than just the one. This of course led to a much more stable and predictable output, since the hardier and faster growing rice served as an insurance against a late summer catastrophe wiping out the late ripening strains. The real difference maker was in Champa rice's innate hardiness and ability to grow where Geng rice simply would not. Needham writes that, quote, they were invaluable in marginal rice areas, which called for varieties that would

ripen even more rapidly or for special strains that could serve unusually menacing natural conditions. The marshy flats of Jiangsu, north of the Yangtze, visited by the Midsummer Flood and consequently submerged for a great part of the year, made up one such blighted area. For this reason, Gaoyu and Tanzhou cities, both in the heart of the Jiangsu Flats, became virtually the experimental farm for extremely early ripening varieties. To beat the annual Midsummer Flood, peasants from Gaoyu developed the 50-day variety in the 16th century. It was the 50-day that saved Gaoyu's peasants from Gaoyu developed the 50-day variety in the 16th century. It was the 50-day that saved Gaoyu's peasants from total crop failure during the terrible flood of 720-21. In the 18th century, the 40-day strain was developed, probably independently, in Gaoyu

and Hangzhou in southern Hunan. When Jiangsu was particularly hard hit by the flood of 1834-35, the 30-day variety, which was said to have been developed in Hubei, was rushed in and distributed to the peasants of the Jiangsu flats. Just as important as early ripening strains, though, were those varieties of rice that could be sown late and then harvested quickly before winter frosts set in. These were used both in areas that wished to be replanted after the quick-ripening spring crop had been harvested, so my initial thought wasn't totally wrong after all, and also where floods tended to occur earlier in the year and would thus need to be waited out before planting could

begin at all. These varieties would come to be known as cold champa or winter champa due to their late harvesting season. But maybe the single most useful variety of the champa rice to be engineered by Chinese farmers was the chitaohua, or rouge peach blossom, rice. Not only could it be harvested very quickly after planting, but its most useful quality was its high salt resistance. Songwriter Lou Yuan wrote in 1175 that, quote, Rouge red rice is soft, fragrant, and sweet, andzong's introduction of Champa rice in 1012, China was able to now plant on hilly, insufficiently watered lands, in semi-saline lands or those that had been inundated by seawater, along with providing both higher yields and more crop sustainability

through multi-cropping. In fact, in some of the southernmost provinces, it even became possible to plant as many as three crops per year, though the return on that would prove to be such a marginal gain for the amount of extra work required that it remained uncommon. This, combined with the cultivation of winter wheat that could be sown after the last crop of rice had been harvested, and then itself harvested in early spring before the spring rice crop was planted in regions like the Lower Yangtze provinces, and later Hubei and Hunan, provided a degree of food surplus and stability that had

never before even been dreamed. And yes, me mentioning wheat does technically qualify me as talking about flour, which does justify the whole episode of this title. Though, I will say, you can totally turn rice into flour too. So there. Thus, China has solved its burgeoning population crisis with the introduction of these new varieties of fast-growing crops, meaning that next time we can get back to the nitty-gritty details of 11th century politics within the Song state. But, and this was brought up to me by a listener, since it is the turn of the century, it seems like as good a time as any to once again open up the lines to your questions about all things China.

I've got a few in the bank already, but would love to have more and devote a special episode to answering them for you. This will definitely not be for the next episode, as I don't expect everything to come flooding in all at once, and certainly couldn't get to answering them all even if they did. Let's set the cutoff point for this round of questions for the third week of March. That'll allow me enough time to hopefully get another narrative show out, and then get back to you with all your questions and my answers. Again, they don't necessarily need to be constrained to the Song Dynasty or the

Five Dynasties period, though that will obviously still be the freshest thing in my head. You can submit your queries to our Facebook page, which is at slash thehistoryofchina, via Twitter at the handle at THOCpodcast, via our email, THOCpodcast at gmail.com, or as always, through our home on the web, thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. Thanks for listening. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered. Follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast.

Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.