THE SEVEN SORROWS OF YUNNAN - Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World - page 60

There are no words for the bitterness of
An empty September. The flood-drowned fields
harvest three grains for every ten of a good year.
And from these three grains? Meals and clothes till next September.
In Chinese folklore, the cloud dragon represents life-giving rain from the east, the crop-sweet-
ening spring rains. But Li Yuyang conjures here an angry, unpredictable weather Dragon,
roused to punish the people.
Environmental historians have linked the vulnerability of the flood-prone agricultural
zones of Qing China to the policy of unconstrained logging and land clearance operated over
several centuries. While the intensification of agriculture, including widespread double crop-
ping, had to some degree decoupled crop yields from normal climatic variability, the manu-
factured agro-ecosystem was much more vulnerable, at the system level, to high-impact cli-
mate events such as Tambora. Bigger yields meant a bigger society, but it also meant that
many more lives were now exposed to the dangers of a failed harvest. 13 Yunnan, ordinarily
an exporter of grain to the rice-poor east, now faced a drastic food shortage of its own.
In a subsequent poem, Li Yuyang turns an accusing eye on local officials, who show no
mercy even in the time of crisis, demanding the people pay their taxes as usual. Meanwhile,
the legendary Shang-yang , bird of rain, still flies:
Grain tax! the policemen shout. Their whips
Slice the air, and the agony of the people
is neverending. Who can plug heaven with a stone,
or command the Shang-yang stop flying?
If only the sun would rise where it should,
And the dragon with his dark clouds disappear.
O our free hearts then! But when I ask if tomorrow
will be fine, the flower under my feet says nothing.
As the bad weather continues into the fateful year of 1816, Li Yuyang frets increasingly
about the crop-destroying rains. He writes of feelings of helplessness as he watches his wife
and children waste away from hunger. He takes to sitting up alone at midnight. Brooding
over the painful images of the day, his hair begins turning white:
Rain falls unending, like tears of blood
from the sentimental man.
Houses sink and shudder
like fish in the rippling water
I see my older boy pulling at his mother's skirt.
The little one cries unheard. Money gone, and
Rice rare as pearls, we offer our blankets to save ourselves.
A single dou of grain, and nothing over to fix the house.
We have only a few acres, and these grow nothing.
My wife and children portion out their grains across
The wide year. At least the taxman stays away.
How could anyone fill his deep pockets?