The Esculentist Movement Revisited: Famine Foods and Human Wellness

Jiuhuang bencao 救荒本草 (Materia Medica for Famine Relief), published in 1406, was the first printed monograph on famine foods in China. It listed 414 species of plants, with detailed description and naturalistic illustrations, telling people how to identify and prepare edible plants in times of scarcity. In 1524, Wang Pan published Yecaipu 野菜譜 (Manual of Edible Wild Plants), an illustrated manual containing poems describing edible wild plants and eulogizing their help in famines. These famine herbals became widespread and inspired a series of publications on the same subject in the following century. Joseph Needham coined it “the esculentist movement.” How do these books, as written knowledge in printed format, relate to the actual practice of survivalism and famine relief? How do the production and dissemination of knowledge about famine foods reflect human-nature relationship in Ming dynasty? This essay will touch on these questions by comparing and contrast two editorial schemes represented by the books in the esculentist movement.
As a pioneering project, Jiuhuang bencao tried to crystalize the knowledge gained from countryfolk and empirical research in the framework of pharmaceutical natural history. It succeeded in pushing the boundary of edibility to a wider range of underutilized plant species, but its relevance to famine relief remained uncertain. Yecaipu, in contrast, resorted to aesthetic and poetic forms in presenting the knowledge about famine foods. It served as both an ethnographical account of peasant knowledge and a reminder of the governmental duties. By the end of Ming dynasty, as both titles were incorporated in Nongzheng quanshu 農政全書 (Complete Treatise on Agriculture Administration), they were endorsed by the authority as critical knowledge of famine administration.
The esculentist movement diminished in the mid-seventeenth century, yet its influence continued into modern episodes of history. Inspired by the Ming books, foraging manuals were published by the Japanese government in World War II, and later by the PRC government in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward. Nowadays, scientists are turning to transplantation of wild food plants to preserve agrobiodiversity, in other to cope with unexpected ecological catastrophe and food insecurity.