Nine
Native-Place Hierarchy and Labor Market Segmentation: the Case of Subei People in Shanghai

Emily Honig

Both historians and economists have long been concerned with the nature of social inequalities and the processes by which they are created. This inquiry has often focused on employment opportunities, documenting the vastly different conditions of work and rewards for labor experienced by various groups of people. Recognizing that not all people have access to the same sets of jobs, institutional economists began, in the decades after World War II, to describe distinct and exclusive labor markets.^[1] Peter Doeringer and Michael Piore, writing in the early 1970s, argued that labor markets were divided into a primary and a secondary sector. Jobs in the former offered relatively high wages, desirable working conditions, job stability, and potential for advancement. The secondary sector, however, was characterized by low-paying jobs, few benefits, no security, high rates of turnover, and poor working conditions.^[2] Subsequent scholars insisted that this theory of "dual" labor markets overlooked the multiplicity of labor market segmentation that existed.^[3] Richard Edwards, Michael Reich, and David Gordon, for example, defined three labor markets.^[4]

[1] An excellent summary of this literature is in Mark Granovetter and Charles Tilly, "Inequality and Labor Processes," New School for Social Research Working Paper Series 29 (July 1986).

[2] Peter Doeringer and Michael Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (New York, 1985), pp. 165–70.

[3] See Richard Edwards, Michael Reich, and David Gordon, eds., Labor Market Segmentation (Lexington, Mass., 1975). See also David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States (Cambridge, 1982).

[4] The three markets are most precisely described in Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1979), pp. 167–74. Piore accepted the notion of three labor markets, although he used slightly different labels: in addition to the secondary market, he describes an upper and a lower primary sector. See Michael Piore, "Notes for a Theory of Labor Market Stratification," in Edwards et al., Labor Market Segmentation , pp. 125–50.

Despite disagreements over the number of labor markets and the exact jobs associated with each, these economists all share a recognition that no single labor market exists to which everyone enjoys equal access. Furthermore, they agree that there are vast differences among the markets: positions in some are more privileged, lucrative, and secure than in others. Finally, they share a conviction that differences in the labor markets both reflect and reinforce inequalities among different social groups, defined usually by gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

This paper explores the relationship between divided labor markets and social inequality in Shanghai during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the components of the Shanghai labor market do not correlate in any precise way to those described in the United States, distinct and exclusive labor markets existed. The divisions were obvious and crucial to those who labored in Shanghai and are particularly apparent when we shift our focus beyond factory work to examine the labor market in its entirety.

Labor segmentation theory might appear unable to explain these divisions, because aside from the foreign presence, the working population of Shanghai was not divided by race, nationality, or religion as in the United States. Closer examination, though, shows that in Shanghai local origins played a role analogous to that played by ethnicity elsewhere. An analysis of the relationship between labor market segmentation and social inequality in Shanghai therefore requires an examination of the role of native-place identity.

Shanghai was a city composed primarily of immigrants, though not from across national boundaries. From 1885 to 1935, Shanghai natives accounted for an average of only 19 percent of the population of the International Concession and 26 percent of the population of the Chinese-owned parts of the city.^[5] As the city developed into a large commercial and industrial metropolis, laborers, merchants, and entrepreneurs came mostly from three areas: Guangdong, Jiangnan (the Ningbo/Shaoxing region of Zhejiang and the Wuxi/Changzhou area of Jiangsu), and Subei (the area of Jiangsu north of the Yangzi River and south of the Huai, sometimes called Jiangbei; see Map 9.1).^[6] Which of these areas one hailed from was critical in shaping work

[5] Zou Yiren, Jiu Shanghai renkou bianqiande yanjiu (Shanghai, 1980), pp. 112–13.

[6] Ibid. No standard definition of Subei exists. Most literally, it would include all of Jiangsu that lies north of the Yangzi River, from Haimen and Nantong in the south to Xuzhou in the northwestern corner. Most geographers, however, consider the part of the province north of the Huai (and the former bed of the Yellow River) to belong to Huaibei, a different geographic region. The distinction between Subei and Huaibei is based on language as well as geography: Xuzhou dialect (close to Shandong dialect) predominates north of the Huai, while Yangzhou dialect prevails in almost all areas south of the Huai and north of the Yangzi.

Map 9.1.
Jiangsu Province, 1935.

opportunities, residential patterns, cultural activities, and social status. Hierarchy, in other words, was structured largely according to native-place identification: the elite was composed primarily of people from Guangdong and Jiangnan, the unskilled service sector staffed mostly by migrants from Subei. So marked was the equation of local origin and economic status that Jiangnan culture became the symbol of urban sophistication and modernity, while the language, customs, and manners of people from Subei were associated with backwardness. Their inferior status was so generally accepted that the term "Subei folk" (Subei ren ) connoted to Shanghainese poverty, filth, and uncivilized manners.

In this paper I focus on the experience of Subei people in Shanghai to explore labor market segmentation and its relationship to social inequality. The first part of the paper examines the status of Subei people in the labor market; the second part, addressing a question overlooked by labor market segmentation theorists, analyzes the reasons that Subei people in particular were tracked into and trapped in an inferior status. The divisions in Shanghai's labor markets, we shall see, both reflected and created the prejudice against Subei people that has been so prominent throughout the twentieth century.

The Regional Nature of the Shanghai Labor Market

Subei people constituted one of the largest immigrant populations in Shanghai, by 1949 representing approximately one fifth of the city's 5 million residents.^[7] Whether they had migrated from Subei themselves or were the offspring of Subei migrants, whether they were poor peasants fleeing the prospect of starvation or wealthy landowners fleeing land reform in the 1940s, Subei people in Shanghai concentrated in jobs that Shanghainese regarded as inferior. Republican period surveys of the Shanghai work force reveal three general patterns: (1) unskilled, physically demanding occupations were dominated almost exclusively by people from Subei; (2) occupa-

[7] It is impossible to know the exact percentage of the Shanghai population that was composed of people from Subei for other points in time, since population statistics that indicate native place specify only the province, not the district or county. According to the only available statistic, there were 1.5 million people from Subei in Shanghai in 1949. The entire population of Shanghai at that time was 5,062,878. See Xie Junmei, "Shanghai lishishang renkou de bianqian," Shehui kexue 3 (1980): 112.

tions attracting people from Jiangnan as well as Subei were stratified, with Subei people performing the lowest-paying, lowest-status jobs; and (3) jobs requiring high levels of skill or education were rarely available to Subei people.

The description of the labor market that follows relies on qualitative as well as quantitative data. An analysis of labor market segmentation in Shanghai would ideally include wage data, comparing the earnings of workers in different occupations. Unfortunately, such data are largely unavailable. Most of the unskilled jobs performed by Subei people were never surveyed by officials, who were more concerned with the plight of factory workers. Even when data are available, they are often unreliable. For instance, wage data for rickshaw pullers ignore the amount they had to pay for renting the rickshaw; conversely, wage data for barbers ignore the room and board that came with the job. Wage rates for most occupations fail to account for the seasonal nature of employment. Finally, wage data for any given occupation obscure the multitude of grades of workers within that enterprise, each of which had a different salary. Therefore, in the discussion that follows, wage data are used only when they may be helpful in placing the earnings of Subei workers in perspective.^[8]

It was not in the ranks of the industrial proletariat but rather among coolie laborers that Subei people were most commonly found in Shanghai. Occupations most closely associated with Subei people were those that required little skill, were physically demanding, offered low pay, and promised only irregular employment. They were, in other words, precisely the kinds of job constituting the "secondary market" in the theory of dual labor markets.

Rickshaw pulling, more than any other occupation, was associated with and symbolized the status of Subei people in the Shanghai labor market. From the beginning of Shanghai's rapid development in the mid-nineteenth century, transport vehicles that depended on human labor power were considered the domain of Subei migrants. In the 1860s, well before the appearance of rickshaws, wheelbarrows used to transport both materials and people were called "Jiangbei carts," since Subei migrants were the majority of cart pullers.^[9] When rickshaws began to be used in 1875, Subei people immediately took over the work of hauling rickshaws. By 1913, when there were approximately 10,000 rickshaw pullers in Shanghai, an estimated 80–90 percent were from Subei.^[10] By the mid-1930s, when the number of rickshaw

[8] For a more thorough discussion of the problems of wage data in Shanghai, see Shanghai Bureau of Social Affairs, City Government of Shanghai, Wage Rates in Shanghai (Shanghai, 1935), pp. 33–62.

[9] Shanghaishi Chuzu Qiche Gongsi, "Shanghai jiedao he gonglu yingye keyun shiliao huiji" (Shanghai, 1982), p. 17.

[10] Huang Renjing, Huren baojian (Shanghai, 1913), p. 85.

pullers had soared to 80,000, 90 percent were of Subei origin.^[11] So extreme was the dominance of rickshaw pulling by people from Subei that one Republican period surveyor complained that the prevalence of Subei dialect among rickshaw pullers was an obstacle to his research work.^[12] Another reporter observed that only Subei people, plagued by natural disasters and economic destruction in their home villages, would condescend to do this "bestial" and "inhuman" work.^[13]

While rickshaw pulling may have been the job most immediately associated with Subei people, migrants from northern Jiangsu also dominated the ranks of freight haulers. The approximately 50,000 Shanghai dock workers in the 1930s were dominated by the so-called Subei bang . The predominance of Subei people among the loaders at the Shanghai docks was so extreme that, as in rickshaw pulling, the Subei dialect was the language of the trade.^[14] And like rickshaw pulling, dock work did not offer stable employment. Most employees worked on a temporary basis, usually 15 to 20 days a month.^[15] Most of the workers who hauled freight at the Shanghai train station were also from Subei.^[16]

The final category of jobs dominated by Subei people was in the service sector. The overwhelming majority of barbers, bathhouse attendants, cobblers, and night soil and garbage collectors were from Subei.^[17] Particularly the latter two jobs—quite literally "shit work"—were ones that only Subei people seemed willing to do, both confirming and reinforcing their lowly status. As one description of Shanghai Municipal Council employees notes, "Country people from Jiangbei, the Chinese who are most able to swallow hardship, are concentrated in the garbage department. Although there are individual Jiangbei people in other departments, the garbage department is

[11] Shanghaishi Shehuiju, "Shanghaishi renli chefu shenghuo zhuangkuang diaocha baogaoshu," Shehui banyuekan , Sept. 10, 1934, p. 103.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Shanghaishi Renlicheye Tongye Gonghui, Shanghai gongbuju gaige renliche jiufen zhenxiang (Shanghai, 1934), p. 3.

[14] Zhu Bangxing, Hu Lin'ge, and Xu Sheng, Shanghai chanye yu Shanghai zhigong (Hong Kong, 1939), p. 573. In addition to the Subei bang , there were also Hubei, Ningbo, and Guangdong bang at the docks. According to one study, workers from Subei did the heaviest jobs of transporting cargo on shoulder poles, while those from Guangdong worked aboard the boats, arranging cargo. Shanghai Gangshi Hua Bianxie zu, Shanghai gangshi hua (Shanghai, 1979), pp. 276–79.

[15] Shanghai Gangshi Hua Bianxie zu, Shanghai gangshi hua , p. 276.

[16] Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," Xin qingnian 7 , no. 6 (May 1920): 60.

[17] On the dominance of Subei people among barbers, see Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," pp. 48–49. See also Shen Bao , Apr. 26, 1915. For bathhouse workers, see Shanghaishi Renmin Zhengfu Gongshangju Jingji Jihuachu, ed., Shanghai siying gongshangye fenye gaikuang (Shanghai, 1951), p. 66; for cobblers, see Shen Bao , Apr. 26, 1915; for night soil collectors, see interview with Zhou Guozhen, Zhabei District Sanitation Bureau, Shanghai, Nov. 3, 1986; for garbage collectors, see Zhu Bangxing et al., Shanghai chanye , p. 607.

really theirs."^[18] So demeaning was it to be a garbage collector that a man from Yancheng preferred the privation of unemployment. When, in order to survive, he finally had no choice but to become a garbage collector, he did not want anyone to know. "Garbage collectors employed by the city had to wear a red shirt," he recalled. "I hated wearing that red shirt because everyone could then see who I was and what I did. So as soon as we finished work each day, I would take off that shirt."^[19]

The occupations dominated by Subei people were characterized by a further regional hierarchy. The most important division was between people from Yangzhou and those from the more northern areas of Yancheng and Funing. In general, people from Yangzhou had the jobs requiring slightly more skill and offering better working conditions than those employing people from farther north, reflecting perhaps the prosperity of Yangzhou compared with Yancheng. While some Yangzhou people could be found in all the occupations discussed above, they were particularly known for dominating the "three knives" occupations as barbers, bathhouse pedicurists, and cooks.^[20] Yangzhou was famous as an exporter of barbers, particularly to Shanghai, and the head of the barbers' guild in 1920, Chen Sihai, was a Yangzhou native.^[21] As one man who had come from a village near Yangzhou in the 1930s to work as a barber in Shanghai recalled, "My father was a barber in Shanghai; I was a barber, and my brother was a barber. In our village, at least ten out of every twenty families had members who were barbers in Shanghai!"^[22] People from Yancheng and Funing, in contrast, could claim dominance of the rickshaw-pulling profession. A survey of the native place of rickshaw pullers in 1934–35 showed some 53 percent coming from Yancheng and Funing, while only 17 percent hailed from the area near Yangzhou.^[23]

The hierarchy of jobs dominated by Yangzhou and by Yancheng and Funing people was confirmed by attitudes of pride and resentment expressed by people from each of those areas. People from Yancheng knew they could

[18] Zhu Bangxing et al., Shanghai chanye , p. 607.

[19] Interview with the author at the Jing'an District Sanitation Bureau, Shanghai, Nov. 18, 1986.

[20] Wu Liangrong, "Shanghaishi Subeiji jumin shehui biandong fenxi," in Shanghai shehuixue xuehui, ed., Shehuixue wenji (Shanghai, 1984), p. 177.

[21] Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," pp. 48–49.

[22] Interview with He Zhenghua, Xinxin Beauty Salon, Shanghai, Nov. 12, 1986. There were also a number of barbers in Shanghai from Zhenjiang, but the Yangzhou bang was clearly the dominant one. See Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," pp. 48–49; see also Shen Bao , Apr. 26, 1915.

[23] Shanghaishi Chuzu Qiche Gongsi, "Shanghai jiedao," pp. 127–29. This survey was of 3,517 rickshaw pullers. The predominance of people from Yancheng and Funing among rickshaw pullers is confirmed by another 1934 survey. See Shanghaishi Shehuiju, "Shanghaishi renli," pp. 104–5.

not aspire to enter the occupations controlled by the Yangzhou bang . "The jobs done by people from Yangzhou were much better than ours," a man from Jianhu (near Yancheng) observed bitterly. "Their work was easier and lighter. Being a barber was much better than pulling a rickshaw! The worst work was hauling night soil carts, collecting garbage, and sweeping the streets. Not many Yangzhou people did those kinds of job. They were mostly in barber shops and bathhouses."^[24]

The envy Yancheng people felt for Yangzhou natives was matched by pride among the Yangzhounese. So strong was their sense of job superiority that people from Yangzhou sometimes expressed precisely the same attitudes of scorn and disgust toward Yancheng people that Jiangnan natives more frequently expressed toward Subei people as a group. Their sense of superiority was occasionally so extreme that they insisted Yangzhou was not part of Subei. For example, in explaining why the bathhouse bosses hired only people from Yangzhou, one man, himself a pedicurist from Yangzhou, said:

It was because we people from Yangzhou know how to speak well; we speak in a rather cultivated way. It was important for the service people to speak well, or the customers would not come. Our speech is very careful and soft, while theirs [people from Yancheng] is very crude—wawawawawawa . We were much more picky, while Subei people were very coarse; we were very sophisticated, while they were very poor.

Even though we were from Yangzhou, people still used to call us "Jiangbei folk." It was derogatory and it upset us. We knew we were from Yangzhou and were not really Jiangbei folk, but they did not know the difference.^[25]

Even he admitted, however, that despite the skill required to be a barber or pedicurist, both occupations were regarded as low-class by the more elite groups in Shanghai. Moreover, although the Yangzhou natives who worked in the service trades may well have represented the elite of Subei workers, their earnings were substantially less than even those Jiangnan natives who worked in the service sector. For example, tailors, most of whom came from the Jiangnan areas of Ningbo and Changzhou, earned 3–7 yuan (dollars) a day in 1920, while barbers could only count on making 2–3 jiao (dimes).^[26]

In addition to the occupations described above—ones completely dominated by Subei natives—a number of enterprises employed workers from both Jiangnan and Subei. Almost all such enterprises had a hierarchy of jobs in which Jiangnan natives were at the top and Subei people at the bottom. The most important such case, in terms of the number of Subei people employed, was factory work. As noted above, the majority of Subei migrants worked outside the ranks of the industrial proletariat. For them, factory employment

[24] Interview with Zhou Guozhen.

[25] Interview with Xu Liansheng, Yudechi Bathhouse, Shanghai, Nov. 12, 1986.

[26] Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," pp. 48–49.

was the highest-status work to which they could aspire. Recalled a man from Yancheng, who worked as a garbage collector, "We really wanted to work in a factory, and I was very envious of my relatives who had factory jobs. But we just couldn't get in."^[27] Another man who worked for the city's sanitation bureau insisted with absolute certainty that "no people who were themselves born in Subei could get jobs in cotton mills. The only Subei people who were able to work in cotton mills were people who had been born and raised in Shanghai."^[28] In fact, a sizable number of women actually born and raised in Subei worked in Shanghai's cotton mills.^[29] His distorted impression shows that, for Subei people, securing a factory job was considered a step up.

The elite of Shanghai's industrial working class—those who performed highly skilled jobs, became technicians, and were employed at the highest wage rates—were primarily from Guangdong and Jiangnan. The scarce information available about the native-place origins of factory workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests that Subei people were quite possibly latecomers to factory work in Shanghai.^[30] The earliest groups of factory workers were from Canton, Ningbo, and Shanghai proper. For example, when the first machine-building factories were established in the 1850s, skilled workers were recruited from Canton, where a foreign-owned shipbuilding factory already operated. Peasants from Ningbo and Shanghai were employed to perform the unskilled jobs. No mention was made of any workers from Subei.^[31]

When, in the early 1920s, Subei people began to appear in records of factory workers, they concentrated in industries that generally required the least skill and offered the lowest pay, such as silk reeling and cotton spinning. For example, while workers in the machinery industry earned an average of $0.85 a day in 1934, and those in shipbuilding earned $1.24, workers in silk filatures earned only $0.31, and in cotton spinning only $0.47. This gap partly reflects the difference in the earnings of male and female workers, for

[27] Interview with the author at the Jing'an District Sanitation Bureau, Shanghai, Nov. 18, 1986.

[28] Interview with Zhou Guozhen.

[29] Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949 (Stanford, 1986), pp. 59–62.

[30] The possibility that Subei people were latecomers to factory work, suggested by the scarce factory records that are available, is reinforced by the description of Subei people in a Japanese study written in 1909. The author observed a "class" comprising Subei people who worked as cobblers, coolies, cart and rickshaw pullers, night soil and garbage collectors, and peddlers. No mention was made of Subei people as factory workers at that time. This does not imply that no Subei people worked in factories but rather that their number was relatively small. See Toa Dobunkai, Shina keizai zensho (Osaka, 1908), 1:388–89.

[31] Zhongguo Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo, ed., Shanghai minzu jiqi gongye (Beijing, 1966), 1:50–51, 58, 68. See also Yuen Sang Leung, "Regional Rivalry in Mid-Nineteenth Century Shanghai: Cantonese vs. Ningpo Men," Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i 4, no. 8 (Dec. 1982): pp. 39–40.

the machinery and shipbuilding industries were dominated by men, while textiles primarily employed women. Yet even within the female-dominated textile industries, those dominated by Subei natives—cotton spinning and silk reeling—offered substantially less pay than industries where the majority of workers came from Jiangnan. In underwear-knitting factories, workers earned an average of $0.79 a day in 1934; in silk-weaving factories, $0.90; in cotton-weaving factories, $0.61; and in tobacco factories, $0.57^[32] —more than they earned in either cotton-spinning or silk-reeling factories.

Even within cotton mills and silk filatures, the higher-paying, skilled jobs went to people from Jiangnan. In the cotton-spinning industry—one of the largest employers of Subei workers—Subei women, considered strong, robust, and accustomed to dirt, were channeled into the workshops where the work was most arduous and dirty. Initially they dominated the undesirable jobs in the reeling workshops; in the 1930s, when mill managers began to hire women instead of men in the roving workshops, they recruited Subei women for the jobs.^[33] "This was because natives of Shanghai were not willing to do that work," a mill manager explained. "The wages were not necessarily the lowest, but the work was rough. In roving there was more dust and the air was not very good. Since the work was hard, Subei people were more able to do it."^[34] Women from Jiangnan villages concentrated in the weaving department, where the jobs generally required more skill and paid better: in 1934, women weavers earned an average of $0.64 a day, while women spinners earned $0.46; women rovers $0.53; and women reelers $0.43.^[35] Furthermore, a number of Jiangnan women who worked in the mills eventually became factory supervisors, secretaries, or bookkeepers, advancements unimaginable to women from Subei.^[36]

A similar division of labor between workers from Jiangnan and Subei was apparent in the silk-reeling industry. (The separate, and more prestigious, silk-weaving industry was dominated by workers from Zhejiang, Changzhou, and Suzhou.)^[37] When the head of the YWCA Labor Bureau, Cora Deng, visited a Shanghai silk filature in the late 1920s, she was especially struck

[32] Bureau of Social Affairs, Wage Rates in Shanghai (Shanghai, 1935), pp. 80–81. These wage statistics serve only as a rough index of the differences in earnings of workers in Jiangnan-dominated versus Subei-dominated industries. As averages, they represent workers in all workshops of particular industries, women, men, and children, those employed on both time and piece rates. They do not take into account the seasonal nature of some industries.

[33] The division of labor according to native place in the cotton industry is discussed more extensively in Honig, Sisters and Strangers , pp. 72–74.

[34] Interview with He Zhiguang, Putuo District Federation of Commerce and Industry, Shanghai, June 26, 1980.

[35] Bureau of Social Affairs, Wage Rates , pp. 102–3; 108–9. This represents the wage for women in the weaving department of cotton mills, whereas the $0.61 listed earlier is for women in separate weaving mills.

[36] Honig, Sisters and Strangers , p. 73.

[37] Zhu Bangxing et al., Shanghai chanye , p. 125.

by the concentration of Subei women in the worst jobs, which often involved the painful work of bobbing silk cocoons in boiling water. Women from Jiangnan, on the other hand—having personal connections to the factory management—were hired to work under much better conditions.^[38] Likewise, in the tobacco industry, where most of the workers were from Zhejiang, the minority of Subei workers were hired only to perform the unskilled tasks. Employed on a temporary basis, they were reportedly "maltreated and abused practically all the time, sometimes even being punched and kicked."^[39] In the flour industry, dominated by workers from Ningbo, Wuxi, and Changzhou, those from Subei worked primarily as coolies, loading the heavy sacks of flour to be transported for sale.^[40]

Even among prostitutes, the division between women from Jiangnan and Subei (and the further division between Yangzhou and the northern parts of Subei) was obvious to observers. The highest-class prostitutes (changsan ), who lived in lavishly furnished brothels, acquired skills as entertainers, and catered only to wealthy businessmen and officials, came from Jiangnan. The second-class prostitutes (yao'er ) were primarily from Yangzhou. Women (and more commonly girls) from Subei, many of whom had been kidnapped from their home villages, were the overwhelming majority of "wild chickens" (ye ji ), who wandered the streets of Shanghai's red-light district soliciting customers.^[41]

The dominance of Subei people in unskilled, low-paying jobs may obscure an equally important aspect of the work experience of Subei people in Shanghai: many never entered the formal labor market at all or worked outside it for long periods of time. Large numbers of Subei migrants eked out a living by peddling food, collecting and selling paper, hulling rice, making and selling charcoal briquettes, or doing other people's laundry. The garbage collector Zhou Guozhen spent several years supporting himself by peddling vegetables before securing a regular job in the city's sanitation bureau.^[42] One man who eventually worked as a rickshaw puller survived by picking and selling garbage when he first came to Shanghai in 1925; another made shoes and repaired umbrellas; a woman helped support her family by making charcoal briquettes and by selling vegetables and occasionally fish.^[43] Chen Dewang, selected as a model worker in the 1950s, recalled that upon arriving in Shanghai from Hai'an in 1944, he first lived with a group of rickshaw pullers in

[38] Yuzhi Deng, "A Visit to a Silk Filature in Shanghai," Green Year Supplement (Nov. 1928): 9–10.

[39] Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo, Nanyang Xiongdi Yancao Gongsi shiliao (Shanghai, 1958), p. 74.

[40] Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo, Rongjia qiye shiliao (Shanghai, 1980), 1:134.

[41] Honig, Sisters and Strangers , p. 71. See also Huang Renjing, Huren baojian , p. 127.

[42] Interview with Zhou Guozhen.

[43] Interview with retired workers at the Zhongxing Street Residence Committee, Zhabei District, Shanghai, Nov. 4, 1986.

the Nanshi District—all men from Subei who had come to Shanghai alone. "I couldn't pull a rickshaw then because I was too small. People felt sorry for me because I had no parents, so they let me wash their clothes, clean vegetables, and help them cook." When he was finally tall enough to pull a rickshaw, he still could not afford the rent, so he spent several years pulling other people's rickshaws when they were between shifts. Only after several years was Chen able to borrow enough money to rent a rickshaw with three other men and begin to work regular shifts.^[44] Some women from Subei gleaned some cash by working as "poor people's seamstresses" (feng qiong po ), sewing and mending clothes for factory workers and apprentices whose wives remained in the countryside.^[45] Many people from Subei, in other words, worked for long periods of time outside or on the fringes of the formal labor market, some never securing regular jobs at all. For them, regular employment as a rickshaw puller or garbage collector was a step up.

To the extent that Subei people performed casual labor and concentrated in unskilled, low-paying jobs, the Shanghai labor market was a divided one. The labor markets that employed people from Jiangnan were almost completely inaccessible to Subei migrants. Broadly understood, then, labor market segmentation theory contributes to a description and analysis of the status of Subei people in Shanghai, where hierarchical divisions were based on native place rather than race or nationality. It explains how the Shanghai labor market reinforced and perpetuated inequalities between Subei and Jiangnan natives, as the American labor market has done between blacks and whites.

The question that remains, however, concerns the creation of those inequalities. Labor market segmentation theorists, writing about the United States, assume the relative status of various social groups—that white people, for example, are of a higher status than black people and are therefore more likely to be found in one of the primary sectors of the labor market. Focusing more on how the labor markets actually operate, the theorists do not offer an explanation of why certain groups are located in particular sectors. Yet the relative status of Jiangnan and Subei natives cannot be taken for granted. Understanding the status of Subei people in Shanghai requires an examination of why they, in particular, dominated the ranks of laborers in unskilled, low-paying, physically demanding jobs.

The Origins of Native-Place Hierarchy

An explanation of the concentration of Subei people in the unskilled sector of the Shanghai labor market must begin with an examination of the region

[44] Interview with Chen Dewang, Shanghai Taxicab Company, Oct. 30, 1986.

[45] Tu Shipin, Shanghai chunqiu (Hong Kong, 1968), part 3, p. 90.

from which they emigrated and the circumstances under which they arrived in Shanghai seeking work. Conventional wisdom holds that Subei was traditionally a poverty-stricken, disaster-ridden region—representing the polar opposite of the economically advanced and prosperous Jiangnan. While poverty was the background to most migration that began in the early nineteenth century, Subei had not always been the economically inferior part of Jiangsu Province. Its prosperity, in fact, had previously rivaled that of Jiangnan. "The Grand Canal and the Huanghe [Yellow] River along with the waterways branching out from them," observes the anthropologist Hsiao Tung Fei (Fei Xiaotong), "once formed a web of canals resembling those seen south of the Changjiang [Yangzi] today."^[46] The city of Huaiyin, along the Grand Canal, had been the center for the tributary grain transport administration during the Qing.^[47] Yangzhou, a transshipment point on the Grand Canal, had been one of the most prosperous and famed cultural centers of China since the Tang. It "was the jewel of China in the eighth century," according to E. H. Schafer,

a bustling, bourgeois city where money flowed easily . . . a gay city, a city of well-dressed people, a city where the best entertainment was always available, a city of parks and gardens, a very Venice, traversed by waterways, where the boats outnumbered the carriages. It was a city of moonlight and lanterns, a city of song and dance, a city of courtesans.^[48]

Through the mid-Qing, Yangzhou remained a city whose wealth and prestige attracted merchants, artists, scholars, tourists, and even the Qianlong emperor himself on six occasions. Described as the "epitomy of Southern culture" and "the nerve center of domestic trade," it boasted teahouses, restaurants, literary salons, and some of the most famed artistic talents in China.^[49]

Only in the nineteenth century did Subei decline in prosperity and prestige. Its impoverishment can be attributed to two interrelated events. First, the Grand Canal was replaced by sea transport, particularly for the shipment of grain from southern to northern China. Coastal ships, first used in the 1820s when Yellow River silting severely impeded the passage of boats through the canal, became the major means of transporting tribute grain

[46] Hsiao Tung Fei, "Small Towns in Northern Jiangsu," in Hsiao Tung Fei et al., Small Towns in China (Beijing, 1986), p. 91.

[47] Harold Hinton, "The Grain Tribute System of the Ch'ing Dynasty," Far Eastern Quarterly 11, no. 3 (May 1952): 345.

[48] E. H. Schafer, quoted in Antonia Finnane, "Prosperity and Decline under the Qing: Yangzhou and Its Hinterland, 1644–1810" (Ph.D. diss., Australian National University, 1985), p. 34.

[49] Ping-ti Ho, "The Salt Merchants of Yang-chou: A Study of Commercial Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century China," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 17 (June 1954): 156–58. See also Finnane, "Prosperity and Decline," pp. 2, 279–304.

beginning in the 1840s.^[50] This meant that certain cities and towns in Subei lost their importance as transportation and commercial centers. Mid-nineteenth-century Yangzhou, for example, was described as a "skeleton" of its former self.^[51] Decline of the Grand Canal also meant that the government paid less attention to maintaining and repairing the dikes on waterways connecting with the canal, thereby leaving parts of Subei vulnerable to unprecedented numbers of floods and natural disasters.^[52] Second, in 1853 the Yellow River shifted course: rather than flowing into Hongze Lake and then across Subei to the sea, it now ran northeast from Kaifeng, then crossed Shandong. The Huai River subsequently emptied into Hongze Lake with no further outlet, thereby becoming a source of treacherous flooding in Subei.^[53] From the mid-nineteenth century on, then, cycles of floods, famine, and poverty characterized large portions of Subei.

The impoverishment and decline of Subei was made all the more conspicuous by the simultaneously rapid economic development of Jiangnan. By the early twentieth century, Jiangnan was as famous for its wealth as Subei was for its poverty. These differences between the two parts of the province were more than impressionistic. Modern industry as it developed in Jiangsu was centered almost entirely in the cities of Jiangnan. In 1931, for example, some 95 percent of Jiangsu's 403,152 industrial workers were employed in Shanghai and cities of Jiangnan, such as Wuxi or Changzhou. In Subei, only the city of Nantong could boast a significant number of factory workers; cities farther north, such as Yangzhou, Yancheng, and Funing, had fewer than 100 workers each.^[54] Whereas industry was a growing part of the Jiangnan economy, Subei continued to depend on agricultural production—it was a major producer of cotton, salt, and pigs (thereby giving rise to the derogatory expression "Jiangbei swine" in Shanghai dialect).^[55] Even when it came to agricultural production, Subei could not compete with Jiangnan, as reflected in the relative values of land in the two parts of the province. In the mid-1930s, while paddy land in Jiangnan counties such as Wuxi or Changshou sold for an average of 100 to 140 yuan per mu , they cost only 30 to 50 yuan per mu in Subei; a mu of dry land that cost anywhere from 55 to 120 yuan in Jiangnan was worth only 20 to 40 yuan in Subei.^[56] Compared to Jiangnan,

[50] Susan Mann Jones and Philip Kuhn, "Dynastic Decline and the Roots of Rebellion," in John Fairbank, ed., The Cambridge History of China , vol. 10 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 119.

[51] Finnane, "Prosperity and Decline," pp. 4–5.

[52] Charles Davis Jameson, "River Systems of the Provinces of Anhui and Kiangsu North of the Yangtzekiang," Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal 43, no. 1 (Jan. 1912): 69–75.

[53] David Faure, "Local Political Disturbances in Kiangsu Province, China, 1870–1911" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1976), p. 37.

[54] Li Pingheng, Zhongguo laodong nianjian (Beijing, 1932), pp. 2–3.

[55] Bureau of Foreign Trade, Ministry of Industry, China Industrial Handbooks: Kiangsu (Shanghai, 1933).

[56] Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsusheng jian (Shanghai, 1935), chap. 8, pp. 17–22.

one of the wealthiest agricultural and commercial regions in all of China, Subei was indeed poor and undeveloped.

The relative wealth and poverty of the two parts of Jiangsu was reflected in patterns of migration: from the time of Subei's decline in the nineteenth century, we find records of "Jiangbei refugees" heading south to Jiangnan. Subei, it seemed, was a notorious producer of refugees. Having fled their homes because of natural disasters, or sometimes simply because it was the winter slack season, peasants congregated in Jiangsu's cities and towns, hoping to take advantage of the relief services—food, clothing, and medical care—that were often provided. Towns within Subei were the first destination for many. In 1876, for example, some 60,000–70,000 refugees were reported in Huaiyin and 42,000 in Yangzhou; in 1898, 100,000 camped in Huaiyin (arriving allegedly at the rate of 2,000 per day) and 40,000 in Yangzhou.^[57] Others headed directly for Jiangnan cities, such as Suzhou, Changzhou, or Shanghai. At least as early as 1907, the Jiangbei Famine Relief Committee was established in Shanghai to attend to the problem of Subei refugees.^[58]

Whether in cities of Subei or Jiangnan, Subei refugees were considered a source of disorder. As early as 1814, officials from Jiangsu and Zhejiang complained to the emperor about disruption caused by the "Jiangbei vagabonds" in such areas as Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Huzhou, Suzhou, and Changzhou. "Every year during the autumn and winter slack season," stated the edict,

there are vagabonds from the Jiangbei places of Huaiyin, Xuzhou, and Haizhou. Usually several hundred band together as a group. They come by boat or on foot, [sometimes] pushing small carts. They are dressed in every which way and almost look like beggars. They call themselves famine victims. Whenever they pass through a village, they sit there and beg for free meals, a place to stay, or money. You must give them whatever they want so that they will leave. Otherwise they will rob you, since they have a lot of people. Everyone is afraid of their toughness; no one dares argue with them. . . . Some wealthy shopkeepers have moved to avoid trouble. . . .

Recently there have been more and more of these [Jiangbei people]. When they come south, they are joined by all the other unreliable elements—bandits, hoodlums, etc. I am afraid that if we let this situation continue, a major incident will occur.^[59]

In his study of Jiangsu, the historian David Faure observes that throughout the second half of the nineteenth century there were constant reports of incidents—from petty thieving to conflicts provoked by "famine-begging"—involving "Jiangbei vagabonds." Officials in some Subei cities were so deter-

[57] Faure, "Local Political Disturbances," 163.

[58] North-China Herald , Feb. 22, 1907.

[59] Daqing shichao shengxun (Taibei, n.d.), Jiaqing, p. 1820. The edict is dated July 9, 1814. I am grateful to Harold Kahn for calling my attention to this document.

mined to dispose of these undesirables that they actually paid for their transport to Jiangnan, where they were presumably headed anyway. And officials in Jiangnan cities, partly resigned to the seasonal influx of the refugees, waited for winter's end and then provided the refugees a "travel fee" so they would return to Subei.^[60]

Not all migration was temporary or seasonal. Large numbers of people from Subei went to Jiangnan with the hope of settling there permanently. Some continued to farm, certain that even the worst circumstances in Jiangnan were better than their circumstances would be in Subei. Hsiao Tung Fei recalled often having seen, as a child, migrants from Subei cultivating the newly reclaimed land surrounding Lake Tai. Vulnerable to flooding whenever the lake water rose, this land was undesirable to natives of the area.^[61] Yuji Muramatsu, in his study of landlordism in Jiangnan, corroborates this portrait of Subei immigrants forming an "underclass" among the Jiangnan peasants: they were "willing to be content with rather poor conditions to get a start in life as tenant farmers."^[62] In addition to those who worked as farmers, a large number of Subei migrants settled in Jiangnan cities, living either on the boats they had brought from Subei or in shacks made of reed mats and whatever scrap materials they could find. By the 1870s the shack settlements of Subei refugees had already attracted the concern of officials in Shanghai.^[63]

Although by Jiangnan standards the conditions under which Subei migrants lived and labored may have appeared intolerable, for many people from Subei these conditions were a vast improvement over what they had left behind. A man who left Yancheng in the early 1940s to work on the Wuxi docks explained that "life in Wuxi was completely different from life in Subei. My own opinion is that life in Subei was very tough. We ate turnips and sweet potatoes. Actually sweet potatoes were considered really good food in Subei. But when I came to Jiangnan, I ate rice. Rice was one of the best things about Jiangnan!" When asked whether having to work as a coolie lessened the desirability of Wuxi, he emphatically replied, "Of course Wuxi was still better—I was eating rice there!" Even when he moved to Shanghai, where he worked as a night soil collector and lived in one of the shack settlements, he remained certain that he was better off than in Subei. "At least we could earn some money in the shack settlements," he explained. "In the countryside we couldn't earn a cent."^[64]

[60] Faure, "Local Political Disturbances," pp. 279–80.

[61] Hsiao Tung Fei, "Small Towns," p. 107.

[62] Yuji Muramatsu, "A Documentary Study of Chinese Landlordism in the Late Ch'ing and Early Republican Kiangnan," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 24, no. 3 (1966): 581.

[63] Shen Bao , Sept. 24, 1872.

[64] Interview with Zhang Ronghua, Zhabei District Sanitation Bureau, Shanghai, Nov. 3, 1986.

The picture that emerges, then, is that throughout Jiangnan, Subei refugees—whether they migrated seasonally or moved south permanently—accepted a much lower standard of living, and hence poorer working conditions, than Jiangnan natives. This at least partly explains the concentration of Subei people in the unskilled sector of the Shanghai labor market. They were, as conventional wisdom holds, fleeing poverty and willing to do jobs that no one else would do, much like the Irish who fled famine and migrated to the United States in the early nineteenth century. Furthermore, the migration experience of Subei people to Jiangnan suggests that the stereotype of them as willing to do the lowliest jobs may even have preceded Shanghai's modern development; people from Jiangnan who moved to Shanghai most likely brought with them an impression of Subei people as poor, menial laborers, for that is what they had observed in the countryside.

This alone, however, does not fully account for the concentration of Subei people in the unskilled sector of the Shanghai labor market nor for their domination of that sector. Subei was not the sole source of the poverty-stricken peasants who migrated to Shanghai. What of those who came from the Jiangnan districts of Wuxi, Changzhou, Ningbo, or Shaoxing? Despite the relative prosperity of these regions, they too were the source of many poor peasants who came to Shanghai hungry for both food and work. Why, then, do we find such little evidence of them among the ranks of Shanghai's unskilled and coolie laborers?

Scholars attempting to explain the experiences of different immigrant groups in American history have proposed a connection between the types of job experience immigrants might have acquired in their home countries and their employment patterns in the United States. A study of German and Irish immigrants in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, for instance, suggests that the Irish, coming from an underdeveloped rural economy, arrived in the United States with no industrial experience and therefore were concentrated in the unskilled sector of the labor market. The Germans, in contrast, came from an industrializing country and were able to use their previously acquired skills to obtain better jobs in Philadelphia.^[65]

At least one scholar has suggested a similar connection between rural handicraft industries and the kinds of job held by people of different local origins in Shanghai.^[66] At first glance this seems a compelling explanation. Jiangnan people hailed from a region famous for highly developed handicraft industries, while Subei was equally notorious for its lack of handicrafts. That men from Wuxi, known for its production of tin, dominated the tin-smithing

[65] Bruce Laurie, Theodore Hershberg, and George Alter, "Immigrants and Industry: The Philadelphia Experience, 1850–1880," in Richard L. Ehrlich, ed., Immigrants in Industrial America, 1850–1920 (Charlottesville, Va., 1977), pp. 123–50.

[66] Wu Liangrong, "Shanghaishi Subeiji jumin shehui biandong fenxi," in Shanghai Shehuixue Xuehui, ed., Shehuixue wenji (Shanghai, 1984), p. 177.

jobs in Shanghai is hardly surprising. Nor should it be surprising that women from Wuxi and Changzhou, areas known for the production of handwoven cloth, dominated the weaving jobs in Shanghai's textile mills. Upon closer scrutiny, though, this explanation is problematic. First, Subei was not completely lacking in handicrafts, although their development may have been retarded compared to Jiangnan. For example, the Subei counties of Taixing and Taixian were known for the production of handwoven cloth.^[67] Why, then, do we not find more women from these areas in the weaving departments of the mills? Second, there appears to have been little connection between the handicraft traditions of a region and the specific skills brought to Shanghai by peasants migrating from that area. Few women from Wuxi who were employed as weavers in the Shanghai mills had themselves engaged in cloth weaving before leaving the countryside.^[68] While Yangzhou's history as a consumption center might seem to explain the predominance of Yangzhou men employed in the Shanghai barbershops and bathhouses, few had themselves ever worked as barbers or bathhouse attendants before coming to Shanghai. Rather, the majority had been peasants.^[69]

An explanation of the correlation between local origins and labor market segmentation must consider how Shanghai's labor markets operated—how labor was recruited and how individuals sought employment. Previous studies have already documented the crucial role of personal and native-place connections in obtaining jobs, even in Shanghai's most modern enterprises.^[70] People in management or supervisory positions tended to hire relatives, friends, or people from their home district. The important question, then, becomes the kind of connections available to migrants from Subei compared to those from Jiangnan.

An examination of the local origins of Shanghai's business community—including the owners, directors, and managers of enterprises ranging from factories to banks—indicates that people from Subei indeed had limited personal or native-place connections on which to draw in seeking jobs. Of the 2,082 individuals from Jiangsu and Zhejiang (representing nearly 90 percent of the total) listed in a commercial directory published in the 1940s, only 175 (8 percent) were from Subei. Of those from Subei, the majority were from the southernmost areas of Nantong, Haimen, and Rugao, leaving only 88 (4 percent of the total) from Yangzhou north to Funing. A closer look at the individuals from Subei listed in the directory reveals that most were involved in rickshaw companies, barbershops, bathhouses, and construction; none was

[67] Cao Hui, "Jiangbei funü shenghuo gaikuang," Nüsheng 2, no. 10 (Feb. 1934): 10–11.

[68] This observation is based on interviews I conducted with retired women cotton mill workers in Shanghai during 1979–81, as well as a survey of retirement cards at the Shanghai Number Two Textile Mill indicating each worker's personal history.

[69] Interviews with He Zhenghua and Xu Liansheng.

[70] See Honig, Sisters and Strangers , pp. 79–93.

involved in industry or banking.^[71] Little wonder, then, that Subei migrants concentrated in these enterprises. Furthermore, this distribution of the Shanghai business elite explains why peasants from Wuxi, who might have at least occasionally been as poverty-stricken as those from Subei, did not end up in the unskilled sector of the Shanghai labor market. They had connections elsewhere. As a woman factory worker from Yuyao observed, "Those of us from Zhejiang could sometimes get jobs in banks because there were a lot of Zhejiang bankers. But if you were from Subei, you could never get a job in a bank."^[72] (This may also help explain why poor peasants from Jiangnan areas were not the objects of social prejudice: they came from the districts that were associated with the Shanghai elite.)

We can at this point only speculate as to why merchants from Subei failed to join the ranks of the Shanghai business elite. Possibly they lacked sufficient capital to invest in Shanghai as extensively as merchants from Jiangnan did, and used what little they had to invest in enterprises, such as rickshaw companies and bathhouses, that did not require large amounts of capital. One must wonder, however, why the prosperous salt merchants of Yangzhou did not use their funds to stake a claim in the profits to be made from Shanghai's development. Perhaps, as the historian Ping-ti Ho suggests, conspicuous consumption and patronage of the arts left them with little capital for potential investments.^[73] Yet another possibility is simply that individuals from Jiangnan, pushed partly by the Taiping occupation, arrived in Shanghai first and established control over the more lucrative enterprises. If there was competition over Shanghai's wealth during its early development, it was between people from Canton and Ningbo. People from Subei do not even appear to have been in the running.^[74] A full explanation requires research that is beyond the scope of this paper. Nonetheless, it is clear that Shanghai's economic elite was divided according to local origin, with Jiangnan people in positions far superior to those that people from Subei attained. Subsequent migrants concentrated in the areas where they had connections; Subei people worked in precisely the enterprises that were owned or managed by individuals with whom they could claim "hometown connections" (tongxiang guanxi ).

In addition to connections with individuals based on native-place ties, two kinds of institution played a significant role in securing jobs: the Green Gang and native-place associations. From the early twentieth century, Green Gang leaders carved out spheres of influence in Shanghai, subgroups of the gang sometimes controlling entire enterprises.^[75] Connections with gang leaders,

[71] Shanghaishi Shanghui, ed., Shanghaishi geye tongye gonghui lijianshi minglu (Shanghai, n.d.).

[72] Interview with Shi Xiaomei, First Shanghai Textile Mill, Mar. 11, 1980.

[73] Ping-ti Ho, "Salt Merchants," pp. 166–67.

[74] Leung, "Regional Rivalry," pp. 29–30.

[75] Xue Gengxin, "Jindai Shanghaide liumang," Shanghai wenshi ziliao 3 (1980): 160–78.

which often intersected native-place connections, thus assumed importance in the search for jobs. The fragmentary information currently available about the Green Gang suggests that here too the resources of Subei migrants were not as plentiful as those of their Jiangnan counterparts. Even though Subei itself was often described as a center of Green Gang activity, none of the three major Green Gang leaders in Shanghai was from Subei.^[76] Du Yuesheng was a native of Pudong (part of Shanghai); Huang Jinrong hailed from Suzhou; Zhang Xiaolin came from Hangzhou. A Jiangbei bang existed within the Green Gang, led by Gu Zhuxuan and Jin Jiulin. Neither was ever as influential as the former three, who had "pupils" in almost every enterprise in Shanghai. Gu Zhuxuan, called the "Subei Emperor" by Subei people in Shanghai, was powerful in the rickshaw business, where thousands of workers recognized him as their master.^[77] In other words, migrants from Jiangnan had a network of people from their hometowns whose position in the gang provided them access to a wide range of jobs; the gang connections available to Subei people, though, offered more limited opportunities and may indeed have contributed to the tracking of Subei migrants into jobs such as rickshaw pulling.

In addition to the Green Gang, Jiangnan migrants could draw on the influence and services provided by native-place associations. The Ningbo Guild, which existed from the 1860s, actively helped nonelite people from Ningbo find jobs in Shanghai. In the early stages of Shanghai's development, the guild recruited workers and apprentices from Ningbo for employment in Shanghai's foreign shipyards.^[78] Previous scholars have assumed that no native-place associations from Subei existed in Shanghai.^[79] If this was the case, Subei migrants clearly lacked a resource that benefited people from Jiangnan areas. Preliminary research suggests, however, that several Subei districts had native-place associations. In the 1910s an association of Yangzhou sojourners existed in Shanghai, and by the 1930s and 1940s most Subei districts had associations in Shanghai.^[80] Unfortunately little is known about

[76] Feng Hefa, ed., Zhongguo nongcun jingji ziliao (Shanghai, 1933), 1:359–60.

[77] Interview with Gu Shuping, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Nov. 19, 1986.

[78] Leung, "Regional Rivalry," p. 40. Also see Susan Mann Jones, "The Ningpo Pang and Financial Power at Shanghai," in Mark Elvin and G. W. Skinner, eds., The Chinese City between Two Worlds (Stanford, 1974), pp. 73–96.

[79] The only study that deals extensively with guilds and native-place associations in Shanghai is Negishi Tadashi, Chugoku no girudo (Tokyo, 1953). Also see Negishi, Shanhai no girudo (Tokyo, 1951). Neither study makes reference to Subei associations in Shanghai.

[80] The association was the Yangzhou Bashou Gongsuo and was reported in Shen Bao , Jan. 4, 1917. A Yangzhou Bayi Lühu Tongxianghui was reported in Shen Bao , Sept. 2, 1931; a Dongtai Lühu Tongxianghui in Shen Bao , Sept. 8, 1931; a Xinghua Tongxianghui in Shen Bao , Sept. 10, 1931; a Huai'an Liuyi Huiguan is mentioned in Shanghaishi Shanghui, ed., Shanghaishi geye , pp. 17, 94. In addition, there were several associations that represented larger parts of Subei. For example, a Jianghuai Lühu Tongxianghui existed at least from the mid-1920s. See Shen Bao , July 7, 1925. There was also a Subei Lühu Tongxianghui, although nothing is known about its origins or development. It is mentioned in Gu Shuping, "Wo liyong Gu Zhuxuan de yanhu jinxing geming huodong" in Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi, Shanghaishi Weiyuanhui Wenshi Ziliao Gongzuo Weiyuanhui, ed., Jiu Shanghai de banghui (Shanghai, 1986), p. 360.

their activities. Many of the associations appear to have been created at the time of the 1931 flood that devastated large portions of Subei. They raised money to help refugees relocate.^[81] Aside from relief work, none of the Subei migrants I interviewed could recall an instance in which they had had any contact with the native-place associations from their area. They assumed the organizations catered primarily to people of wealth. This at least suggests that the Subei native-place associations did not serve as quasi employment agencies in the way that the larger, more prestigious Jiangnan guilds did.

All these factors, then, contribute to an explanation of the concentration of Subei people in the unskilled sector of the Shanghai labor market. Migrants or refugees from an often poverty-stricken area, Subei people seemed willing to perform the most menial, lowest-status jobs in Shanghai. To them, even the worst job in Shanghai was preferable to life in Subei. Most had no non-farm skills when they arrived in Shanghai, making it difficult to secure jobs requiring other skills. More important, however, they lacked the personal and institutional connections—based on native-place ties—that might have given them access to those jobs, enabling them to move out of the unskilled sector as migrants from Jiangnan were able to do.

One question remains concerning the jobs dominated by Subei people. We observed that a number of Subei people (particularly women) worked in factories and that several industries relied heavily on Subei workers. Yet factory work was the highest to which Subei people progressed in Shanghai's job hierarchy; moreover, they never seemed to represent the majority of factory workers. How are we to explain why Subei people never dominated the ranks of Shanghai's industrial proletariat? That most factory owners and managers were from Jiangnan is only part of the answer. Given their interest in maximizing profit, one would expect them to have hired the cheapest labor available, presumably people from Subei. Why did this not happen? Supply was not at issue, particularly after the major floods of 1911, 1921, and 1931 brought massive numbers of Subei people to Shanghai, many of whom were constantly unemployed.

The failure of Subei people to dominate factory jobs requires a consideration of some of the factors that have been used to explain the scarcity of Chinese workers in California factories during the mid and late nineteenth

[81] Shen Bao , Sept. 2, 8, and 10, 1931.

century, the initial absence of Irish immigrants in factories of the American Northeast, and the prolonged absence of black workers in factories throughout the United States.^[82] In all these situations, factory owners chose not to draw on the cheapest sources of labor. The most important explanations that have been offered concern popular prejudices, among both factory managers and workers.

If popular attitudes toward and beliefs about Subei people are an indication, then they were quite possibly regarded as undesirable workers. People from Subei, as noted above, were commonly perceived as poor, dirty, backward, and uncultured. "In general, Jiangnan people are civilized, while Jiangbei people are coarse," reads a typical description.^[83] "People dislike [Subei people] because they are dirty and rude," states another.^[84] Yet another, slightly more specific, observes that "in terms of personality, Jiangnan people are soft and flexible, while Jiangbei people are firm and strong. . . . In terms of customs, religion, and superstition, Jiangnan people tend to be more civilized and open-minded."^[85]

Although it is difficult to determine how much these views affected hiring decisions, they most likely contributed to a prejudice against Subei workers among factory managers from Jiangnan, who were willing to pay a higher price for workers more familiar to them. One cotton mill engineer, recalling hiring practices in the 1920s and 1930s, stated this explicitly. "In cotton spinning," he said, "we tried to use as many natives as possible. It's hard to say why. It is not good to say that Subei people are not good workers. It's just that there are certain social attitudes. It's easier to talk to natives. Subei people are harder to handle. We did not like Subei people very much."^[86] Subei women who tried to get jobs in the mills often had to dress in a way that would disguise their origins and allow them to pass as Jiangnan natives.^[87] Cotton was one of the few industries that employed a large number of Subei people, but this was most likely because by the 1920s roughly half of

[82] On Chinese workers in California factories, see Paul M. Ong, "Chinese Labor in Early San Francisco: Racial Segmentation and Industrial Expansion," Amerasia 8, no. 1 (1981): 69–82. On the Irish, see Clyde Griffen, "The 'Old' Immigration and Industrialization: A Case Study," in Richard L. Ehrlich, ed., Immigrants in Industrial America , p. 194. The failure of blacks to become a major component of the industrial proletariat in the United States until World War II is discussed in Harold Baron, "Racial Domination in Advanced Capitalism: A Theory of Nationalism and Divisions in the Labor Market," in Richard Edwards et al., Labor Market Segmentation , p. 201.

[83] Wang Peitang, Jiangsusheng xiangtu zhi (Changsha, 1938), p. 369.

[84] Lu Manyan, "Jiangnan yu Jiangbei," Renyan zhoukan 1, no. 9 (June 23, 1934): 389.

[85] Zhao Ruheng, Jiangsusheng jian , chap. 8, p. 189.

[86] Interview with He Zhiguang, Putuo District Federation of Industry and Commerce, Shanghai, June 26, 1980.

[87] Honig, Sisters and Strangers , pp. 76–77.

Shanghai's cotton mills were owned by Japanese capitalists, who did not share the prejudice against Subei workers.^[88]

It is possible that ordinary workers shared the prejudice of factory owners and managers against Subei people. While they did not necessarily play a major role in hiring decisions (except through the introduction of friends and acquaintances for new jobs), groups of workers could make it difficult for others to maintain jobs, particularly if they felt that the newcomers threatened their job security. Given that Subei people entered the factory work force after people from Jiangnan, it is possible that the latter actively resisted the recruitment of these "northerners." In the Jiangnan arsenal, for example, Guangdong and Jiangnan workers made it impossible for people from Subei to become apprentices for skilled jobs.^[89] A similar phenomenon is suggested by an incident that ocurred in a cotton mill in 1920. A man from Rugao had wangled an introduction to a job as an apprentice mechanic in a Shanghai cotton mill. Enraged that he worked so hard, and fearful that he would eventually get their jobs, the other workers subjected him to physical and verbal harrassment until he finally left his job and returned to the countryside.^[90] If incidents like this occurred with any degree of frequency, we might conclude that territoriality, prejudice, and quasi-ethnic conflict among workers—reminiscent of the bitter protests against the use of immigrant workers by native artisans in nineteenth-century American cities—contributed to the failure of Subei people to dominate the ranks of the industrial proletariat.^[91]

Conclusion

Prejudice, then, combined with other factors to account for the tracking of Subei people into the unskilled sector of the Shanghai labor market. We have seen that Subei people initially came to Shanghai because of poverty and natural disasters in their home villages and therefore performed the most menial tasks to eke out a living. Because hometown connections played such a major role in securing jobs in Shanghai, subsequent waves of immigrants from Subei continued to be tracked into these jobs, for that is where they had connections. Eventually, as Shanghai industrialized and more complex and highly differentiated labor markets developed, the jobs performed by Subei people assumed an even lower status. As the attitudes toward rickshaw

[88] Honig, pp. 30–31, 77–78.

[89] Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo, Jiangnan zaochuanchang changshi, 1865–1949 (Jiangsu Renmin Chubanshe, 1983), p. 155.

[90] Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," p. 12.

[91] Griffen, "The 'Old' Immigration," p. 177. Also see Ong, "Chinese Labor in Early San Francisco."

pullers indicate, the association of Subei people with unskilled, physically demanding labor created and continually reinforced the belief that they were poor, ignorant, dirty, and uncivilized.

It would be misleading to imply that a simple relationship existed between prejudice and the status of Subei people in the labor market, that there was first prejudice and subsequently an inferior economic status. Popular beliefs about Subei people they may well have prevented their entrance into preferable labor markets, but the divisions in the labor market themselves contributed to the creation of these beliefs. The propagation of negative stereotypes about Subei and Subei people was partly a product of the development of segmented labor markets in Shanghai, serving to justify the unequal access of different groups of people to job opportunities.