In the Western Jin, Shi Chong, famed as the foremost in extravagant luxury, possessed "over thirty water-powered pounding mills and over eight hundred servants, with other treasures, merchandise, fields, and residences in proportion." Yet even his Golden Valley Garden occupied only a little over ten qing of land. Compared with the powerful clans of the Three Wu in the Eastern Jin, he was truly a lesser sorcerer confronting a greater one. The eight clans of Wu Commandery and Kuaiji each held over a thousand qing, and the servants on gentry estates numbered in the thousands. These tenant clients and household troops had to be entered in household registers and could scarcely escape the control of their aristocratic landlords; they were effectively semi-serfs. This gentry estate economy played a markedly progressive role during the Eastern Jin. After the Yongjia Southern Migration, to avoid conflicts with the great Jiangdong clans over acquiring fields and residences, the northern gentry began opening up backward areas of Jiangzhe that still practiced "burning fields to sow and flooding them to weed." The Langya Wang Clan and Chen Commandery Xie Clan, for example, avoided Wu Commandery, Wuxing, Danyang, and Kuaiji, the four commanderies where the great Three Wu clans congregated, and built their estates in Yongjia and Xin'an instead. Without the power of aristocratic landlords, how could vast numbers of laborers have been organized to reclaim the land!
-Droughts and floods were unpredictable in Jiangzuo, and ordinary independent farmers, already burdened with heavy taxes and corvée, could not withstand natural disasters. Aristocratic estates became refuges for bankrupt peasants. Provided the aristocratic landlords were not excessively harsh, the lives of these tenant clients and household troops were relatively stable. For the present, gentry estates were necessary. As for commoner landlords replacing aristocratic landlords, and contractual tenancy replacing hereditary