back
24 comments
Interesting theory. The Chinese are fully aware of the "north-south" differences themselves, although they often attribute it to other reasons, such as legacy effects of numerous mongol/manchu/other "barbarian" invasions from the north through out China's history, which often times were stopped around the Yangtze River. This resulted in the north under "barbarian rule" for long period of time, while the south held refugees of original ethnic Han chinese from the north.
> Talhelm said that one of the most striking findings was that counties on the north-south border – just across the Yangtze River from each other – exhibited the same north/south psychological characteristics as areas much more distantly separated north and south.

This from the original article seems to support your "invasion stopped at Yangtze" theory more than a "rice/wheat divide" theory. Rice is grown north of the Yangtze also and the border seems to be on the hills between provinces such as Hubei and Henan.

Interestingly, I've always been taught that the difference is explained because of dryland farming vs irrigated farming (so essentially, rice vs wheat), which leads to difference in development of agriculture and so on. I'm actually surprised that there doesn't seem to be a consensus about that yet.
William McNeill, in Plagues And Peoples [1], makes the point that there are disease gradients that strongly influenced the movement of peoples and the development of culture, and that this gradient in China maps almost precisely to the rice/wheat border. Southern peoples had, by virtue of the ubiquity of disease vectoring mosquitos, an inbuilt defense against even massively superior Northern armies. This may be in large part why the Mongols took so long to conquer the Southern Song, and why Vietnam was able to successfully resist them.

[1] Highly recommended: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_and_Peoples

I think your analysis makes more sense to me than that article. I am from north and barbaric.
It annoys me a little that

a) Someone thinks so many people can be divided into just two groups

b) the idea that validating an assumption should also automatically validate the reason. People in the north might be more individualistic than in the south, and yes they grow wheat and not rice but that doesn't mean one depends on the other. It just doesn't seem all too scientific to confuse correlation with cause.

Your point (a) is ridiculous. For example, I could fruitfully divide the population of China into two groups, male and female. They're different in ways that are often useful to know.

North and South Chinese have been obviously different for many centuries. One of my favorite stories about this concerns the development of affirmative action in the late 14th / early 15th century:

> In 1370, the first Emperor of the Dynasty, Chu Yüan-chang, who expelled the Mongols in 1368, reinstituted the great Civil Service Examinations, which had been suspended by the Mongols. In 1371, 75% of the degrees from the national examination had gone to candidates from the South of China. This displeased the Emperor, who believed, with many traditionalists, that Northerners were morally more worthy -- from the area where Chinese civilization had begun. The examinations were thus suspended until 1385, but then the geographical division of those who passed did not change. At a special Palace examination in 1397, all of the 52 candidates who passed were Southerners. Borrowing from the Josef Stalin school of bureaucracy, the Emperor had two of the examiners executed. In a subsequent retesting, all the successful candidates were Northerners.

> By 1425 it was decided that places in the national examinations would be reserved by region, with 35% for the North, 55% for the South, and 10% for some places in the middle.

(sourced from http://www.friesian.com/discrim.htm)

It's worth noting that modern day China still has quite a bit of affirmative action. College entrance exam scores, for example, give bonus points to ethnic minorities.
I didn't know that, but I was aware that college applications are binned by geographic region of the applicant (i.e., before getting any applications, they decide "we'll have 200 from 山东, 100 from 北京, etc"). (numbers invented)

Do you have an english-language source for this? I'd be very interested to read about it.

From a logical point of view your argument makes a lot of sense. If you go to China it doesn't help you much though, because if you have 4 Chinese friends there you have to learn 4 different cultures and they speak 4 different dialects. I always feel that culturally China is comparable to the European Union, not to a single country. Just that they already made the decision to have a unified language.
A population the size of China is going to have plenty of people that don't fit the M/F choice. For an extreme example a fully functional hermaphrodite could be both or self identify as one or the other. Some people are XXY genotype or even XXXY so even genetic testing can be ambiguous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

You do realize XXY and XXXY are genetically male...?
There mostly male, but often with significant female secondary sexual characteristics and sterility. This is of-course ignoring Mosaic people which have two set's of DNA so you can be XXY and XX at the same time... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(genetics)
Perhaps it shocks your moral sensibility to generalize across humans, but it is perfectly legitimate for anyone who is seeking the truth to do these things. For them, the primary question must be "to what degree is a generalization meaningful?".

When we say things like, "The African American population in the US is materially disadvantaged.", that statement does generalize across many individuals. But it's also potentially very useful or actionable.

Also, anyone who says they judge people as individuals is probably bullshitting to the max. It sounds cognitively overburdening and wasteful.

I know that Malcolm Gladwell comes in for pretty harsh criticism in HN (and that also applies to comments that might be supportive of Gladwell :)

However, I think it is worth pointing out that the "rice theory" in the virginia.edu post isn't particularly new.

In 'Outliers' (which came out six years ago) Gladwell writes extensively about the "rice theory" (and Gladwell may have relied on prior research by other folks)

He writes about rice farmers in southern China who value hard work, co-operation with each other, planning etc and attributes that to the "rice theory"

Gladwell also contrasts these rice farmers with European farmers. Chinese farmers typically were entrepreneurial, but European peasants were generally low-paid slaves/workers of some aristocratic landlord.

He also contrasts them with French farmers who did virtually nothing in winter, Russians who came up with proverbs like "If God doesn't bring it, the earth will not give it" etc.

I'm certainly not a fan of Gladwell but it was never because he was wrong, but because his arguments are more of a string of cherry-picked anecdotes than rigorous studies backed by evidence and sound statistics. Granted, the former makes for a smoother read, but it deceives (intentionally or not) a lot of the public because it sounds so darn smart!
We changed the url from [1], which was more sensational and not as close to the original source.

1. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25538-how-your-ancesto...

about the same type of difference is between western europe and slavic people, and even inside the slavic people themselves there is the same gradient - the more eastern ones, like Russians, are more "communal"/less "individualized" than say Polish. And my personal impression is that further east you go, beyond slavic part of Russia, an individuality gets even less respect/recognition, and in particular North Chinese being more individualistic than South, still noticeably less so even than Russians.

A theory that something requires more cooperation in the east vs. west and what applies gradually and across the whole Eurasia continent - what can it be?. I think there must be something else beyond mere cooperation behind the phenomenon of the "a person is nothing" principle getting stronger with move toward the east.

In the case of cultural differences, sunshine does more work than rice.

In the north, you are locked in home in winter, while in south you get to go around and meet more people.

The article makes a good case for why agriculture could be more important than sunshine: the sun doesn't care about the Yangtze River as a border.
Nice try, but Yangtze River happens to be at the dividing line of north/south, not strictly but close.
Not at all. There have long been obvious differences between north and south china, but the Yangtze isn't the border between North and South, it's the heart of the South. North China is divided from South China by the Huai river (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huai_He).

Chinese civilization is essentially the story of intensely farming a flood plain. But China has two such plains: the Yellow River defines the north, and the Yangtze defines the south.

so... you agree with me? I don't get your point.
Social "science."