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By comparison with the forbidding north, the huge stretches of riceland in the south are luxuriant and subtropical. Rainfall is abundant. Flooded paddy fields curve around river valleys or climb in intricate contoured patterns up one hill and down another. In central China's Szechwan province, where Teng Hsiao-p'ing was born, the Yangtze River cuts through lofty limestone mountains, cascades through a series of spectacular gorges into the rich farm land of the Red Basin, finally emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai.
Although basically agrarian and inward-looking, China has 11,250 miles of coastline and numerous large ports. Well before Columbus was born, the Chinese were sending their ships around southeast Asia. In the early 15th century a celebrated eunuch of the Sung court, Cheng Ho, led a series of seafaring expeditions across the Indian Ocean to Arabia and Africa.
The essential fact about the geography of China is that it obliges most of its people to live on the great alluvial plains of the south and east, which provide barely one-third of an acre of cultivable land per person and crop yields per acre far lower than in the U.S. or Europe. Indeed, China has been trapped for centuries in a classic Malthusian crunch. Periods of peace and prosperity lead to a growth of population. Then, inevitably, floods or drought reduce the slender food supply, leading to the famines that have afflicted the people as regularly as wars and rebellions in China's 3,000 years of recorded history.
It is scarcely surprising that a nationwide preoccupation with food has led to an obsession with cuisine. China is matched only by France as producer of the culinary marvels of the world. Lightly cooked to save fuel, Chinese dishes make use of every available food. The great chefs of Canton make even pig ears, fish lips, dog chops and snake chowder taste delicious.
Nearly 40% of the Chinese people—400 million of them—are under 18 years of age. That stunning fact points to one notable failure of the Peking government: its inability to lower the birth rate despite contraception campaigns, restrictions on marriage (no younger than 28 for men, 25 for women in urban areas), and pressure to limit families to two children. The peasants in particular have been uncooperative. The bone-wearying life on rural communes obliges people to retire at dusk, especially since even homes with electricity may be only lucky enough to get one 25-watt light bulb a year. Moreover, peasants calculate that additional children will earn the family extra work points, translatable into meat, soap and other strictly rationed items.
Compounding the problem, according to a broadcast from Kwangtung province this month, are party administrators on the communes who have set a bad example. On one big farm, for instance, a top official has just sired his seventh child. As a result, the broadcast charged, the birth rate for the entire commune had soared to 30 births per thousand this year, as compared with an average of 22 for the rest of the country.