A new study that looked into the psychological differences between people from northern and southern China showed a possible link between behaviours and the staple food they grow.

Cultural psychology students at the University of Virginia, who conducted the study, found that people from southern China share common traits with people from East Asia while those living in northern China behave more like people from western countries.

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This, according to Thomas Talhelm, the lead author of the study, may be due to the fact that southern Chinese have long been into cooperative rice farming, while the northern Chinese are largely into wheat-growing.

The study showed that the rice-growing southern Chinese are more family and community-oriented, just like most people from East Asia.

The wheat-growing northern Chinese, on the other hand, are highly independent and individualistic, which are traits commonly attributed to western cultures, according to the study.

This "rice theory" may explain why the wheat-growing northern Chinese are more independent people, a reflection of the more independent form of farming they have practiced over hundreds of years, Talhelm claims.

The study was conducted in the Chinese cities of Beijing and Liaoning in the north, Fujian, Guangdong and Yunnan in the south and Sichuan in the west. 

It involved 1,162 Chinese students who were tested with intensive psychological studies that determined their thought styles.

The results showed that northern Chinese were more individualistic and analytical, akin to Westerners. 

Southerners, on the other hand, were more interdependent, holistic-thinking and highly loyal to friends and family, traits which other studies have shown to be common among East Asian nations that grow rice, such as South Korea and Japan. 

The Chinese have long been aware of this cultural divide, with the borders commonly drawn along the Yangtze River, the largest river in China, splitting the country in two.

Common perception among the Chinese is that people of the north are more aggressive and independent, while people from the south are more interdependent, docile and cooperative.

Previously, the differences have been attributed to climate differences, with the north being considerably cooler, but the new study shows that the role climate plays is more of an indirect role by defining the agriculture.

Rice farming is also extremely labour-intensive, requiring about twice as much working hours to grow than wheat. And because of the irrigation concerns, rice farmers have to constantly work together as a group to develop and maintain their rice farms with shared dikes and canals.

Wheat, however, is grown dry, requiring only rain water for moisture. This simple fact means wheat growing requires far less labour, fewer farmhands per farm and less cooperation between farms. As a result, wheat farmers acquire a strongly independent mindset.

The same difference can be found between East Asia and the West, Talhelm says, suggesting that the legacies of farming continue to affect people in the modern world.

Talhelm developed the theory after living in China for four years, first in Guangzhou in the south, then moving to Beijing in the north, noting clear differences in the way the locals spoke and behaved.

The northerners, Talhelm says, were far more direct and outgoing and less concerned with how they affect other people.

During his ensuing research into the subject, he discovered that the Yangtze River not only divides farming practices, but dialects and Chinese culture as well.

TagsCulture, Yangtze River, North-South, Rice farming, Wheat farming, Irrigation, Cooperative, East Asia, Independent, Individualism, University of Virginia