We hear soon of water-cooled houses for the gentry, of artificial ponds for pleasure and fish breeding, artificial water-courses, artificial mountains, bamboo groves, and parks with parrots, ducks, and large animals.  Here, the wealthy gentry of both north and south, relaxed from government work, surrounded by their friends and by women.  These manors grew up in the hills, on the “village commons” where formerly the villagers had collected their firewood and had grazed their animals.  Thus, the village commons begin to disappear.  The original farm land was taxed, because it produced one of the two products subject to taxation, namely grain or mulberry leaves for silk production.  But the village common had been and remained tax-free because it did not produce taxable things.  While land-holdings on the farmland were legally restricted in their size, the “gardens” were unrestricted.  Around A.D. 500 the ruler allowed high officials to have manors of three hundred mou size, while in the north a family consisting of husband and wife and children below fifteen years of age were allowed a farm of sixty mou only; but we hear of manors which were many times larger than the allowed size of three hundred.  These manors began to play an important economic role, too:  they were cultivated by tenants and produced fishes, vegetables, fruit and bamboo for the market, thus they gave more income than ordinary rice or wheat land.

With the creation of manors the total amount of land under cultivation increased, though not the amount of grain-producing land.  We gain the impression that from c. the third century A.D. on to the eleventh century the intensity of cultivation was generally lower than in the period before.

The period from c.  A.D. 300 on also seems to be the time of the second change in Chinese dietary habits.  The first change occurred probably between 400 and 100 B.C. when the meat-eating Chinese reduced their meat intake greatly, gave up eating beef and mutton and changed over to some pork and dog meat.  This first change was the result of increase of population and decrease of available land for pasturage.  Cattle breeding in China was then reduced to the minimum of one cow or water-buffalo per farm for ploughing.  Wheat was the main staple for the masses of the people.  Between A.D. 300 and 600 rice became the main staple in the southern states although, theoretically, wheat could have been grown and some wheat probably was grown in the south.  The vitamin and protein deficiencies which this change from wheat to rice brought forth, were made up by higher consumption of vegetables, especially beans, and partially also by eating of fish and sea food.  In the north, rice became the staple food of the upper class, while wheat remained the main food of the lower classes.  However, new forms of preparation of wheat, such as dumplings of different types, were introduced.  The foreign rulers consumed more meat and milk products.  Chinese had given up the use of milk products at the time of the first change, and took to them to some extent only in periods of foreign rule.