A popular video clip on the Chinese social network Red shows Jiahui (who posts clips of everyday life under his channel ‘a warm family’) taking his father-in-law, Xiaofu, on a visit to the local food market. Jiahui lives in southern China while his father-in-law is visiting from the north. Xiaofu is mortified when his son-in-law casually elicits the help of various vendors, asking them to husk the corn kernels, peel potatoes, or to cut the dry tofu, admonishing him for being rude. The northerner is clearly uncomfortable at this sort of give-and-take, but a comment on the post advises the father-in-law ‘not to break the rules of the southern vegetable market’.In China, there is a general perception that social ties are stronger across the south as opposed to the north.1 Globally, the East is seen as a more collectivist society, with stronger community cohesion, than the industrialised, capitalist West where individualism triumphs. This idea was formalised through what is known as modernisation theory (a theory developed in the post-WW2 anti-communist atmosphere), according to which economic growth creates an individualistic society, while at the same time individualism is a necessary factor for growth.It has also been argued that the lone nature of herding and roaming traditions in medieval Europe could explain individualism in the West in contrast to the East where crop farming has been the mainstay. However, historically, grains, such as wheat and barley, have also been grown in Europe. Similarly, herding is still the primary means of subsistence in some parts of East Asia, for instance, in the nomadic communities of Inner Mongolia, China. Other studies looking at the impact of weather and climate on cultural difference have found that extreme weather patterns can make for a more interdependent society.2However, these models do not explain the differences in social cohesion between northern and southern China. There is insufficient variation in many of the factors and some are contrary, for instance the south is relatively wealthier than the north and could therefore have been expected to be more individualistic.In China, the physical border between north and south is considered to be the Qinling–Huaihe Line — a natural geographic divide created by the Qin mountain range (or Quinling) on the west and the Huai River (or Huaihe) to the east. The northern provinces become colder and dryer as the latitude increases, and the hottest and most humid parts of the country are found in the deepest south. The climate and geography are the main determinants of which domestic crop is grown in each region.China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of rice and wheat, which are consumed in almost equal quantities (around 150 million metric tons each per year).34 Wheat is typically milled into flour for making bread and noodles, whereas cooked rice is eaten in its original form or shaped like pasta or made into rice cakes. Most of the country’s rice is grown in the wet and hilly south, whereas wheat, which requires lesser humidity, is the dominant crop of the north.Rice seedlings are first grown in small pots before being transplanted onto large flooded fields known as paddies. A paddy field can be flooded using a naturally flowing river, but most often requires irrigation infrastructure which involves separating fields into smaller plots by building a network of short embankments (known as bunds), digging reservoirs, canals and dredging silt. The work is planned through meetings amongst village representatives and residents, and implemented through coordination between households across the village. The system has its roots in China’s Maoist period, 1949–76, during which the economy was centrally planned and labour and production was controlled by the government. In 1958 individual household agriculture was abolished in favour of village collectives known as Rural People’s Communes.5 Village resources were organised into Sheng Chan Dui — production teams consisting of several households each under a team leader. Communities would rise together in the mornings at the sound of the team leaders’ whistles, and then work under supervision to achieve set production goals of rice yield per acre.The work is manual and strenuous. Before transplanting the seedlings, the men often go to the fields at dawn, ploughing all day, while the women prepare food at home and support the ploughing in shifts. During planting, amidst the muddy and difficult-to-navigate terrain, the workers carefully manage the space between seedlings to prevent crowding and maintain water levels through foot pumps. As the seedlings grow, the fields must be fertilised, and weed and pest control measures are a constant concern. There is a strong incentive to cooperate; households are encouraged, and even feel obliged, to join group activities, such as harvesting, or in building new irrigation systems or maintaining existing ones. A failure to effectively cooperate could result in some paddies becoming dehydrated and others failing to drain, leading eventually to crop failure.Wheat farming, on the other hand, does not require complex irrigation systems, relying instead largely on rainfall. Sowing and harvesting is less labour intensive, and farmers typically use machinery which lessens the harvesting time considerably. In wheat-farming regions the men of the household commonly leave home for better-paid opportunities during the off-season.6The collaboration required to successfully farm rice could help to explain the tendency towards more closely-knit communities and a more collectivist impulse across southern China. Here, the actions of each individual has the potential to disrupt or to preserve the delicate balance of an entire community. Jiahui, then, unlike his father-in-law, had grown up in a society where it is not asking too much of a vegetable seller to see if they would peel the potatoes.In recent times, China has rapidly industrialised and in 2021 less than 37% of Chinese considered themselves to be farmers (across all crops), down from 80% in 1984.78 However, the legacy of the rice-farming days continues to shape the character of the community in the south when the village once rose at dawn on a collectivist mission.