In the fields between Tientsin and Peking all wheat was being pulled, the earth shaken from the roots, tied in small bundles and taken to the dwellings, sometimes on the heavy cart drawn by a team consisting of a small donkey and cow hitched tandem, as seen in Fig. 202.  Millet had been planted between the rows of wheat in this field and was already up.  When the wheat was removed the ground would be fertilized and planted to soy beans.  Because of the dry season this farmer estimated his yield would be but eight to nine bushels per acre.  He was expecting to harvest thirteen to fourteen bushels of millet and from ten to twelve bushels of soy beans per acre from the same field.  This would give him an earning, based on the local prices, of $10.36, gold, for the wheat; $6.00 for the beans, and $5.48 per acre for the millet.  This land was owned by the family of the Emperor and was rented at $1.55, gold, per acre.  The soil was a rather light sandy loam, not inherently fertile, and fertilizers to the value of $3.61 gold, per acre, had been applied, leaving the earning $16.71 per acre.

Another farmer with whom we talked, pulling his crop of wheat, would follow this with millet and soy beans in alternate rows.  His yield of wheat was expected to be eleven to twelve bushels per acre, his beans twenty-one bushels and his millet twenty-five bushels which, at the local prices for grain and straw, would bring a gross earning of $35, gold, per acre.

Before reaching the end of our walk through the fields toward the next station we came across another of the many instances of the labor these people are willing to perform for only a small possible increase in crop.  The field was adjacent to one of the windbreak hedges and the trees had spread their roots far afield and were threatening his crop through the consumption of moisture and plant food.  To check this depletion the farmer had dug a trench twenty inches deep the length of his field, and some twenty feet from the line of trees, thereby cutting all of the surface roots to stop their draft on the soil.  The trench was left open and an interesting feature observed was that nearly every cut root on the field side of the trench had thrown up one or more shoots bearing leaves, while the ends still connected with the trees showed no signs of leaf growth.

In Chihli as elsewhere the Chinese are skilled gardeners, using water for irrigation whenever it is advantageous.  One gardener was growing a crop of early cabbage, followed by one of melons, and these with radish the same season.  He was paying a rent of $6.45, gold, per acre; was applying fertilizer at a cost of nearly $8 per acre for each of the three crops, making his cash outlay $29.67 per acre.  His crop of cabbage sold for $103, gold; his melons for $77, and his radish for something more than $51, making a total of $232.20 per acre, leaving him a net value of $202.53.