The Great Drought and Famine of 1523

Date and extent

The gazetteer records a great drought in Lishui in 1523 and then two things immediately after: that people fled north and south, and that people ate one another. The first is a movement of population; the second is the gazetteer's summary of the severity of the famine, given without figures.

世宗嘉靖二年癸未，大旱，南北流移，人相食。遣侍郎席书赈之。 — Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer, 卷之一·邑纪·世宗嘉靖二年癸未

Translated: In the second year of the Jiajing era there was a great drought; people fled north and south and ate one another. The vice minister Xi Shu was sent to relieve them.

Relief

The response was to send the vice minister Xi Shu to relieve the county. The gazetteer records only the sending of an officer, and gives no figures for money or grain, no method of distribution and no extent of relief.

Consequences

The disaster did not end with that year. The gazetteer records that in the spring and summer of 1524 an epidemic swept Lishui and the dead lay in heaps along the roads; that there was a great drought in 1544 and another in 1545, when people dug lotus roots in Danyang Lake and Shijiu Lake for food. The early Jiajing years are among the periods of densest calamity recorded for Lishui in the gazetteer.

Uncertainties

First, cannibalism is the gazetteer's summary phrase, with no figures, dates or places; it is reproduced here without estimating the death toll from it.

Second, the scale and method of Xi Shu's relief are not recorded, and the entry for that year mentions no remission of tax alongside it.

Third, the gazetteer does not say whether the movement of population was into or out of the county, or where people went.

Fourth, the entry for 1545 is printed with a textual correction from "the fourteenth year" to "the twenty-fourth year"; the corrected date is used here.