“Never has there been a flood greater than this”

Climate Memories and the Awareness of a Changeable Climate in 17th-century Jiangnan

Abstract

From the perspective of collective climate memories, this paper examines how people in the 17th century (1600–1700) in the Jiangnan region of East China related to climate history. This was a century of political and climatic upheavals, affected by a worldwide gradual turn to colder and more unstable weather which included memorable events. Did people have any awareness that the climate was changing around them? I demonstrate that there existed a well-developed tradition of climate history stretching back at least several hundred years. But to speak of a concept of changing climates in Late Imperial China is trickier. A basically stable climate subject only to short-term changes (often linked to the moral actions of rulers and others) was generally assumed in Chinese culture and found various expressions in local customs. Nevertheless, through examining not only the long-standing cultural perceptions of whether it was possible for the climate to change, but also such topics as observed changes in the landscape and fauna, perennial disasters and unprecedented calamities, disasters in ancient history (with all the preceding being possibly expressions of a changeable climate) and individual perceptions, we can attain a more nuanced image of how changeable the climate was in the thoughts of the 17th-century Chinese. In these years we can find those who thought a changing climate impossible, while the Kangxi emperor provides a counter-example of someone who was finely attuned to changes in weather patterns.

十七世紀，全球變冷和天氣不穩定引發過極端氣候事件。本文通過研究對氣候的群體記憶，探討十七世紀中國江南地區的人民對氣候環境的感知。研究顯示，對氣候的探索在明清時期已沉澱了豐富的歷程，但對現代語境中「氣候變化」的認知卻與目下有所不同。根據中國傳統觀念和風俗，氣候總體上比較穩定，若有異象也是暫時的，通常是天子德行所致。然而，通過查閱有關天災人禍的記載、考察自然景觀和生態的變遷、追蹤人們在文化和個體層面的感知，我們更為細緻地探察到十七世紀中國人對「氣候可變性」的理解。儘管當時普遍認為氣候是穩定不變的，但也有人對天氣變化表現出高度敏感，例如康熙皇帝。歷史上的治亂興衰與氣候之間是否也存在一定關聯呢？