The choice of the millets and the sorghums as the staple bread crops of northern China and Manchuria has been quite as remarkable as the selection of rice for the more southern latitudes, and the two together have played a most important part in determining the high maintenance efficiency of these people.  In nutritive value these grains rank well with wheat; the stems of the larger varieties are extensively used for both fuel and building material and the smaller forms make excellent forage and have been used directly for maintaining the organic content of the soil.  Their rapid development and their high endurance of drought adapt them admirably to the climate of north China and Manchuria where the rains begin only after late June and where weather too cold for growth comes earlier in the fall.  The quick maturity of these crops also permits them to be used to great advantage even throughout the south, in their systems of multiple cropping so generally adopted, while their great resistance to drought, being able to remain at a standstill for a long time when the soil is too dry for growth and yet be able to push ahead rapidly when favorable rains come, permits them to be used on the higher lands generally where water is not available for irrigation.

In the Shantung province the large millet, sorghum or kaoliang, yields as high as 2000 to 3000 pounds of seed per acre, and 5600 to 6000 pounds of air-dry stems, equal in weight to 1.6 to 1.7 cords of dry oak wood.  In the region of Mukden, Manchuria, its average yield of seed is placed at thirty-five bushels of sixty pounds weight per acre, and with this comes one and a half tons of fuel or of building material.  Hosie states that, the kaoliang is the staple food of the population of Manchuria and the principal grain food of the work animals.  The grain is first washed in cold water and then poured into a kettle with four times its volume of boiling water and cooked for an hour, without salt, as with rice.  It is eaten with chopsticks with boiled or salted vegetables.  He states that an ordinary servant requires about two pounds of this grain per day, and that a workman at heavy labor will take double the amount.  A Chinese friend of his, keeping five servants, supplied them with 240 pounds of millet per month, together with 16 pounds of native flour, regarded as sufficient for two days, and meat for two days, the amount not being stated.  Two of the small millets (Setaria italica, and Panicum milliaceum), wheat, maize and buckwheat are other grains which are used as food but chiefly to give variety and change of diet.

Very large quantities of matting and wrappings are also made from the leaves of the large millet, which serve many purposes corresponding with the rice mattings and bags of Japan and southern China.