This research used samples and data provided by the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP). ODP is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and participating countries under management of Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI), Inc. We are grateful to the Ocean Drilling Program Leg 184 Shipboard Scientific Party for devoting the time to coring the sediment section at Site 1143. We thank N.J. Shackleton for sharing his data online. We also thank Mr. Fang Dingyuan for a great deal of help in stable isotope measurement; Profs. Jian Zhimin, Jean-Claude Duplessy, Warren Prell, Tadamichi Oba, Pieter Grootes, and Dr. Helmut Erlenkeuser for suggestions and guidance in stable isotope measurement; and Prof. Ralf Tiedemann and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript. Funding for this research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 4999560) and the National Key Basic Research Special Foundation Project of China (G2000078502).