Land supports fishing people: The fishermen of Dongting lake from the 1930s to the 1950s

Dongting lake lies astride the provinces of Hubei and Hunan. The flow of the Yangzi river enters the lake from the north and drains out of it towards the south and southwest. As the flow slows in the lake, sediments are deposited, forming mudbanks. Such land has been embanked and cultivated. Embankment reduces the surface area of the lake: between 1542 and 1860, the lake covered 2,300 square miles in its peak season, but by 1949 that had been reduced to 1,680 square miles. Because the mudbanks formed by the sediments remain low-lying, embankments create enclosures, in many of which are small lakes surrounded by farmland.1 The farmland attracts immigrants and so the communities formed on them are relatively recent. Temples, ancestral halls and powerful lineages are uncommon, houses are scattered rather than clustered. Compared to other parts of Hubei and Hunan, the banks of Dongting lake represent recent developments and the villages lying on them are culturally and politically peripheral to urban centres such as Xiangtan and Hankou.