Abstract: Zhili was the area most affected by famine in the late Qing, and the province was first in the nation in the rate for all natural disasters. The three sections of this essay examine the patterns, influences and policies for reducing famine. Part one examines the severity and length of droughts and floods in Zhili. Part two explains how natural disasters not only created social and economic decline, homelessness, and death, but also how natural disasters caused psychological shocks that disrupted social order and heightened social contradictions. Part three looks at policies for alleviating natural disasters. Despite the fact that new methods for alleviating famine were introduced and used along with traditional formulas for disaster relief, these efforts yielded limited results and their overall impact was not great.