With coastal population growth, a large number of arable land
resources attracted the notice of the nearby salt production
workers and the farmers. Although the government banned coastal
land exploitation for reclamation, the local had reclaimed some of
the grass land privately. The cultivation of the land on the Jiangsu
coast was recorded in historical documents to various degrees. For
instance, in the saltworks of the middle parts of the Jiangsu coast,
according to Chronicle of the Lianghui-Yunshi (Xu, 1499), in the
Hongzhi period (AD 1488e1505), there were about 161.2 km2
farmland in the saltworks from Fu'an to Miaowan, and in the Jiajing
period (AD 1522e1566), the farmland areas were about 291.2 km2,
which was nearly doubled in decades of time. Apparently, coastal
land reclamation had been expanded. Moreover, according to
Chronicle of the L. sea salt industry (Wang, 1892) in the Guangxu
period (AD 1875e1908), there were about 426.1 km2 farmland in
the saltworks over the middle parts of the Jiangsu coast in 1745.