Slavery Era_The Basic Library of National Studies

Author: Guo Moruo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-28
Features: What is the purpose of the well-field system? It is not, as Mencius said, that eight households share a well, with the central hundred mu serving as public land, and the surrounding hundred mu as land given to the eight households for common use. That is entirely Mencius's utopian idealization. Those square fields were not given to the common people but to the feudal lords and officials. The feudal lords and officials received the land and then distributed it to farmers to exploit their hard labor. Therefore, the well-field system had two purposes: for the feudal lords and officials, it served as a hierarchical unit of stipends; for the direct cultivators, it served as a unit for assessing diligence and laziness. — From The Age of Slavery