THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF

CAMBRI DGE
U N ci Y
PRESS”

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—— ———
(Geamaamencmanacs AS aeanenSe cummins

fo 2 a S eS ~~ © tT
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 To the memory of
Lloyd Eastman
and
Howard Wechsler

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA

10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia

© Cambridge University Press 1996

First published 1996

Reprinted 1997

This book was produced by

CALMANN & KinG LIp

71 Great Russell Street,

London WCI1B 3BN

Project editor: Damian Thompson

Picture research: Merilyn Thorold, Zhang Shuicheng, Wang Lu, Qiu Xi
Layout: Andrew Shoolbred
Cartography by Hardlines, Charlbury, Oxford

Printed in Italy

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, 1947—
The Cambridge illustrated history of China / Patricia Buckley Ebrey.
p. cm. — (Cambridge illustrated history)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-521-43519-6
1. China — History. 2., China — Civilization.
1. Title. Il. Series.
DS706.E37 1996
951 — dc20
95-38548
CIP

ISBN 0 521 43519 6 hardback

 Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements

The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to

the Western Zhou Dynasty 10

Animal and Human Imagery in Bronze Vessels 36

2 Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period 38

3. The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han

Dynasties 60

4 Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division 86

Early Buddhist Art 106

5 A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty 108

6 Shifting South: The Song Dynasty 136

Landscape Painting 162

7 Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties 164

Drama and the Performing Arts 186

8 The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 190

The Kilns at Jingdezhen 217

9 Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 220

Working for a Living 259

10 Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century 262

Modern Chinese Painting 292

11 Radical Reunification: The People’s Republic 294

Epilogue 333

Chronology 338
Picture Acknowledgements 339
Notes 340
Further Reading 341
Index 346
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Foreword
by Kwang-Ching Liu
Chinese history has often been seen as a mirror image of the history of the West.
After the unification of China under the Qin (221-206 Bc) and the Han (202
BC-AD 220), successor regimes were overwhelmed, like Rome, by nomadic people
of the northern frontiers and by the infusion of a foreign religion. But China,
unlike Rome, was to rise again, into a centralized, universal empire under the
Tang (618-906). Many of the Han imperial institutions were revived. The aris-
tocracy, powerful since the late Han, still retained its influence, but it recognized
a universal sovereign with real authority. Unlike the feudal lords of Europe, the
aristocrats in Tang China needed the ranks and titles dispensed by the imperial
courtto give them prestige required for the protection of their vast landed estates.
From Tang to Song (960-1279) came greater centralization of imperial power
and transformation of the aristocracy into a social-bureaucratic elite, of whom an
increasing number were products of a mature examination system. The Chinese
gentry, a term often used torefer to retired officials in the context of
their home
communities, essentially identified with the imperial state. With the spread of lin-
eage organizations during the Ming and Qing, Confucian social ethics grew to be
recognized as norms on which the government of China depended.
The history of imperial China, a subject of intrinsic interest, gains further fas-

cination with the rise of China as a world power, especially in the 1990s. What
can be learned, for example, about Chinese attitudes towards the Muslim world
west and northwest of China, especially since the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty
(1260-1368)? What lessons are there in the non-existence of a politically active
business class despite the growth in long-distance trade and the significant urban-
ization from the Song through to the twentieth century?
Patricia Buckley Ebrey is our foremost scholar of Chinese family and kinship
from the Han to the Song, and has meticulously analysed the cultural and social
outlook of the social-bureaucratic elite, both men and women, as well as the cap-
ping (coming of age), wedding and funeral rituals prescribed by Song monarchs
and philosophers. Editor of a widely used source book, Chinese Civilization and
Society, she has extended her analysis through the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing
(1644-1911) to twentieth-century developments. In calm and refined prose, she
brings her vast learning regarding earlier history to bear on China’s present, in the
belief that continuity in history is inevitable.
The splendid collection of pictures in the following pages displays the results
of a painstaking search; the features on aspects of Chinese life (from ceramics to
cuisine)and on the lives of distinguished writers add to the volume’s appeal. But
it is the author's careful and clear synthesis of China’s long history that is most
remarkable. This book will, in time, I believe, be regarded as
a classic.
Preface
_A westerner who visits China for the first time is likely to find much that
intrigues, surprises, confuses, inspires, or dismays. The sheer number of Chinese
is staggering. There are more than a billion Han Chinese — more than the entire
population of Eastern and Western Europe and North America put together. How
can so many people see themselves as sharing a common culture? Why haven't
differences in dialect, religion, or way of life led them to divide up into mutually
suspicious groups the way so much of the rest of the world’s population has? How
can a single government cope with ruling so many people?
a
Besides being staggered by their numbers, visitor will also wonder about Chi-
nese as individuals. Men and women observed working in the fields, buying or
selling in the markets, doting on their children in parks, enjoying their meals at
restaurants: What are their lives like? How has the tumult of the last century
affected them and their families? What do they think of China’s future?
The Chinese countryside is likely to make a deep impression as well. Through-
out China proper (the region historically settled by the people speaking Chinese),
land that can be used to grow crops has been treated as too precious to waste on
less productive purposes like pasturing animals. Even forested hills that might
have provided lumber and firewood have often been cleared and terraced to grow
grain. Why have the Chinese turned their earth into a vast garden? What connec-
tion is there between Chinese techniques of agriculture and Chinese modes of
social organization?
Urban spaces in China also have an unexpected look for a country with such a
long history. In Chinese cities, the past does not loom before one in the physical
presenceof statues of famous generals and statesmen, nor can one search out
many old houses, churches, and palaces where great events of the past occurred.
Even famous ancient capitals like Xi’an, Luoyang, Nanjing, and Beijing lack visi-
ble monuments on the order of those found in Rome, Athens, London, or Paris.
Do the Chinese have no heroes of the sorts we are familiar with, or are heroes cel-
ebrated a different way?
it
Within museums, is true, relics of an older China can be found, but these arte-
facts raise questions of their own. Ancient masterpieces — bronze ritual vessels,
landscape paintings, calligraphy, and porcelains — often seem silent indictments of
the visual dreariness of much of contemporary China, raising troubling questions:
Has the high point of Chinese culture already passed? Has the cultural link
between the past and the present become so attenuated that the two might as well
be viewedas different cultures? Those who discover themselves asking these ques-
tions may well begin to wonder whether theyare being fair: Am I judging the aes-
thetic attainments of Chinese culture by western, not Chinese, aesthetic standards?
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisTORY OF CHINA

Am comparing the elite culture of the past to a mass culture of the present?This
I

book was written for those who enjoy pondering these sorts of questions.
China is an extraordinarily complex society that has been in the making for
several thousand years, and its present is not comprehensible without an under-
standing ofits past. Contrary to the old western view of China as stagnant or
unchanging, as almost without history, the story of how China came to be the
huge country we know today is one full of drama. In each period Chinese have
made use of what they inherited, but also have come up with new ideas and prac-
tices as they have struggled to find meaning or peace, to impose their will or con-
tend with opponents, to survive and thrive, to care for their families and fulfil
their duties, in the process creating the society we call China. The present thus is
rooted in a complex, multi-layered, dynamic past that always had the potential to
develop in ways
the story.
it did not, meaning that every stage provides an essential partof
One could write a general history of ‘greater China’, the region of east Asia in
which China was the dominant power, much of which is now included within the
political borders of the People’s Republic of China. Here, however, I have set
myself a somewhat smaller task, the history of Chinese civilization, a civilization
never confined within well-demarcated borders, but loosely associated with
China proper. When neighbours imposed their rule on Chinese populations, my

|
point of reference is the impact of the encounter on the Chinese people and Chi-
nese culture, not the other way around. Although I have narrowed the meaning
give ‘China’, I have not narrowed itto the Chinese state or the Chinese educated
elite. My focus is on the Chinese people and the culture they have created.

Patricia Ebrey
Acknowledgements
This book owes most of its ideas to others. Everything I have learned during
nearly thirty years studying Chinese history has had some influence on the shape
and content of this book. Still, I did not write it with my desk clear, trying to dis-
til from memory what I knew of the course of Chinese history, but with a desk
continually overflowing with books and articles. I re-read many pieces I vaguely
recalled as trenchantor stimulating. I looked through ~ and sometimes became
totally engrossed in — books I had purchased over the years but never before found
enough time actually to read. Many of the books I drew from have been included
in the ‘Suggestions for Further Reading’, but that list by no means exhausts my
intellectual debts, because I also relied on specialized studies not written for a
general audience. | hope that authors who recognize places where I have adopted
their interpretations will feel pleased that I was persuaded by their evidence and
arguments rather than annoyed that they receive no credit. Certainly my debt to
them is very great.
Part of the pleasure of preparing this book was getting to pore over a great
many wonderful art and archaeology publications in search of good illustrations.
As I tried to narrow down my choices, | showed my preliminary selections to
other China specialists, and often received excellent advice in return. | would par-
ticularly like to acknowledge the advice of Wu Hong, Ellen Laing, Joseph McDer-
mott, and Jessica Rawson, each of whom had many suggestions to make. I am
equally indebted to colleagues who have generously read and commented on one
or more chapters, including Roger Ames, Alan Baumler, Zong-qi Cai, Kai-wing
Chow, John Dardess, Peter Gregory, Emily Hill, and David Keightley. For assis-
tance with the mechanics of preparing this book, I would like to thank three grad-
uate research assistants, supported at different times by funds from the University
of Illinois’s Research Board. Yao Ping helped bring order to the selection of illus-
trations; and Kathy Battles and Samantha Blum both helped with the preparation
of reference materials and related chores. Finally | am also grateful to Professor K.
C. Liu for reading through the entire manuscript as advisory editor and for con-

tributing a foreword.
I have dedicated this book to two historians of China who formerly were my

colleagues at the University of Illinois. Writing this book made me miss them all
the more, for often I stopped to think how they would have treated an issue.
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HistoRY OF CHINA
10

CHAPTER 1
The Origins of Chinese
Civilization:
Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou
Dynasty (to 771 BC)
Most peoples have myths about their origins, and the Chinese are no exception.
of
Through most of the imperial period, literate Chinese had a ‘great man’ theory
how their civilization developed. Unlike other peoples who pointed to gods as
their creators or progenitors, the Chinese attributed to a series of extraordinarily
brilliant human beings the inventions that step by step transformed the Chinese
from a primitive people to a highly civilized one. Fu Xi, the Ox-tamer, domesti-
cated animals and invented the family. Shen Nong, the Divine Farmer, invented
invented the bow and arrow,
the plough and hoe. Huang Di, the Yellow Lord,
boats, carts, ceramics, writing, and silk. He also fought a great battle against alien
earliest his-
tribes, thus securing the Yellow River plain for his people. In China's
tory, he was labelled the first of the five great pre-dynastic
rulers, the last two of
whom were Yao and Shun. Yao was credited with devising the calendar and ritu-
als. Rather than hand over power to his own less worthy son, he selected Shun as
his successor, a poor peasant whose filial piety had been demonstrated by his
devoted service to his blind father and evil stepmother. Shun not only became the
next ruler but also married two of Yao’s daughters. Despite their virtue, even
Yao

and Shun were unable to prevent floods, so Shun appointed official, Yu, to
an

tackle this problem. For over a decade Yu travelled through the land, dredging the
channels that became the rivers of north China. So zealous was he that he passed.
his own home several times without pausing togreet his wife and children. Shun
named Yu to succeed him. Yu divided the realm into nine regions, and had bronze
vessels cast to represent each one. When Yu died, the people ignored the succes-
sor he had chosen and turned to Yu's son to lead them, establishing the precedent
of hereditary, dynastic rule. Yu andhis son thus were the first two kings of the Xia
dynasty, a dynasty which lasted through fourteen rulers. It was overthrown
when

King Jie, a tyrant, was deposed by a subordinate who founded

his own dynasty,
the Shang. This dynasty in turn lasted through thirty rulers until a self-indulgent
and obstinate king lost the support ofhis nobles and people, making
the armies of Zhou to come from the west to overthrow the Shang. The Zhou
it
easy for

became the last of the three ancient dynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou).
These legends reveal how educated Chinese from the time of Confucius (c.500
BC) onwards constructed ‘China’. To them China was defined by technology and

statecraft — agriculture, writing, flood control, monarchy combining virtue and

 The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty il

cancel

____-SOUTH CHINA
SEA

sad eat Plain,

ecalae

Chinese civilization has throughout history had a strong asso- even with primitive techniques. Over time these early settle-
ciation with agriculture. The earliest stages of Chinese culture ments spread broadly within the more temperate regions of
developed in river valleys in which crops could be cultivated eastern Eurasia.

aint

Ges

Saino

ite

iii
Tue CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

hereditary succession, and so on. They recorded story of China as a single-

the

stranded narrative or genealogy, centred on a succession of rulers; China’s past

was thus much like the past of a family that could be traced back through single
line of ancestors one before the other.
Modern scholars, drawing on knowledge of geology, paleoanthropology, and
of Chi-
archaeology, not surprisingly construct very different stories of the origins
nese civilization. Their accounts do not slight agriculture, writing,
bronze tech-
nology, and state formation, but usually differ from the traditional story in giving
more weight tothe role of ritual and religion in shaping the significant character-
istics of Chinese culture. Equally important, they do not see Chinese history as a
single-stranded story, centred on a royal line, but a many-stranded one in which a
of which would undoubt-
great many distinguishable cultures interacted, some
edly have been labelled alien by the Shang or Zhou rulers. By influencing
each
others’ development, these cultures all participated in the evolution of Chinese
civilization.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE CHINESE SUBCONTINENT

Chinese civilization developed in a particular geographical setting, the more tem-
diverse enough to open many
perate zones of eastern Eurasia, an area large and
possibilities to early occupants but not without imposing some constraints as
well. China proper extends over 1,000 miles north to south and east to west; the
distance from Beijing in the north to Guangzhou in the south is about that from
in the west to
Bangor to Miami, or Oslo to Barcelona; the distance from Chengdu
Shanghai in the east is almost as great as that from Paris to Warsaw or Des Moines
to New York. This huge expanse of land is interlaced with mountain ranges,
which separate the more habitable river valleys from each other. It was in these
river valleys that the first human settlements were established.
Two great river systems flow east through China proper, the Yellow River in the
north and the Yangzi River in the centre. The Yellow River rises in the far western
highlands, makes sharp turns through the northern deserts, then flows swiftly
from north to south through a hilly area of loess — fine, wind-driven yellow earth
thatis fertile and easy to work even with primitive tools. At the southern end of
the loess highlands, the Yellow River turns abruptly eastward and spreads out, yel-
low with silt, between banks a mile or more apart. Finally ittraverses the whole of
the alluvial plain and empties into the sea. The other great river, the Yangzi, takes
in the water of many tributaries and carries a much greater volume of water. It
rises in Tibetan highlands, crosses the mountains encircling the Sichuan basin,
moves through magnificent gorges with sheer cliffs a thousand or more
feet in
height, then flows eastward a thousand miles to the sea, each day delivering an
average of half a cubic mile of water into the Pacific Ocean.
The regions drained by these two rivers differ in soil, topography, temperature,

and rainfall. The north is colder, flatter, and more arid; its growing season is
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty 13

shorter and its soil more alkaline,

making it best suited to crops like wheat and
millet. North of the Yellow River, rainfall is frequently too light for unirrigated
agriculture; in many areas it averages less than 20 inches a year. Flood and
drought recur with much greater frequency than in.the south. The Yellow River is
prone to flooding because as it flows though the loess regions of the northwest, it
collects silt which is gradually dropped as the river makes its way east and the cur-
rent slows. Because the silt builds up the height of the river bed, over the cen-
turies, farmers and government forces constructed dykes to keep the river in its
course, a practice that made floods, when they occurred, that much more destruc-
tive, inundating huge regions.
The region drained by the Yangzi River is warmer and wetter than the north.
Mostof it stays green all year and receives more than 60 inches of rainfall annu-
ally, making it well suited to rice cultivation and to double-cropping. The Yangzi
and many of the numerous small rivers crisscrossing the south are navigable,

a
making the south land suited toboat travel. In the north, by contrast, until mod-
ern times people travelled by land, on foot, on the backs of horses or donkeys, or
in carts drawn by animals.
Large stretches of land ill-suited to crop agriculture separated the Chinese
subcontinent from Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, the nearest sites of other
early civilizations. Beyond China proper to the north is the steppe or grasslands of
Inner Asia, a region even colder and more arid than north China, where animal
husbandry is a more productive use of land than planting crops. Inner Asia
was never populated primarily by Chinese; instead it was the home of nomadic
pastoralists, such as the Xiongnu and Mongols, China’s traditional enemies.
These steppes extend across Eurasia to the Ukraine, but China proper is cut
off from these steppe lands on the northwest by vast deserts where nothing grows
except in rare oases. South of these deserts and directly west of south and central
China
is Tibet, the ‘roof of the world’, whose high mountains were as unsuited to
Chinese farming life as the deserts and grasslands to the north. The mountainous
regions southeast of Tibet (modern Yunnan and Guizhou provinces) were not
quite so impassable, but by the time there was much reason to cross through
them into south and southeast Asia, travelling by sea had become the more prac-
tical option.
To see the Chinese subcontinent as early Chinese saw it, we must erase from

our minds all the maps we have seen showing

of
it to occupy only a small fraction of
the landmass Eurasia, and far to one side at that. The Chinese subcontinent is
so vast that by the first millennium sc the Chinese thought of it as All-Under-
Heaven (tianxia), the entire earthly stage on which human beings acted out the
dramaof civilization. Surrounding
it
were vast oceans, wild deserts, steep moun-
tains — regions much less central to the project of civilization. How far they
extended, no one knew for sure. But the location of the centre of civilization was
not in doubt.

TINIE
D0206784
 é

|
i

14 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA ‘

4

The Yellow River, shown here,

acquired its name because the
silt it carries gives ita muddy
look. The earth of the north
China plain is predominantly
wind-borne and river-borne
loess soil, which led early
Chinese also to think of the
earth as yellow.

The well-watered hills and val-

leys of south China offer a
much lusher landscape than
the colder, drier north.
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty 15

The geometric designs on the

pots of the Yangshao culture
(c. 3200-2500 Bc) often
evolved from images of birds,
fish, frogs, and other animals
that may originally have had
totemic significance. The
assemblage of painted pottery
depicted here captures the
variety of the geometric
designs that resulted, but does
not show howthe pots were
used, since no grave had so
many pots placed together.
16 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisTORY OF CHINA

Via:
The first sign of textile
pro- PREHISTORY
duction is
the appearance of
Early human beings, called Homo erectus, appeared on the Chinese subcontinent
spindle whorls like these ones
found at Hemudu, near Shang- over a million years ago, having gradually spread from Africa and west Asia dur-
hai, which date from about ing the Pleistocene geological era (the Ice Age). Even though no major glaciers
5000 sc. These wooden and extended into China, the average temperature was colder than in subsequent ages,
ceramic whorls were used to
and mammoth, elk, and moose roamed north China. Peking Man, discovered in
put a twist in hemp yarn, mak-
ing it strong enough to use
the 1920s, is one of the best-documented examples of Homo erectus. He could
in weaving. as
stand erect, hunt, make fire, and use chipped stones tools.
Modern human beings (Homo sapiens) appeared in East Asia around 100,000
Africa. During the long
years ago, probably also spreading from somewhere in
paleolithic period (Old Stone Age, c.100,000 to 10,000 Bc) of predatory hunters
and gatherers that followed, humans began to speak. Language expanded sym-
bolic capabilities, allowing the development of notions of gods and kinship, for
instance. Over the course of these thousands of years, we can reasonably assume
that many bands of people migrated across the Chinese subcontinent, fighting
with each other when threatened, splitting up or merging when survival dictated.
Some early bands moved on to the Pacific islands or the Americas. In what sense

This finely made stone

grinder, about 20 by 8 inches,
was unearthed at
the site of a
neolithic village in Cishan,
Hebei province, and dates
from no later than 5000 Bc.
Stone tools were used in food
processing even before crops
were cultivated; this one was
probably used to crush the
stalks of uncultivated vegeta-
bles to make them more
digestible.
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period through the Western Zhou Dynasty 17

any of those that spent time in the Chinese subcontinent should be considered
ancestral to the historic Chineseis largely a matter of speculation.
Distinctly Chinese history, therefore, begins much later, after the end of the last
ice age in about 10,000 Bc. By 5000 Bc neolithic cultures with agriculture, pottery,
villages, and textiles had emerged in many of the river valleys of today’s China.
Agriculture was undoubtedly the key change, facilitated by climatic change
towards warmer and wetter weather (warmer and wetter even than today). Culti-
vating crops allows denser and more permanent settlements. Pottery and textiles
This stemmed cup excavated
make life much more comfortable: pottery jars are excellent for transporting water from Taian, Shandong
and storing grain, cloth made into clothing and bedding provide protection province, has extremely
against cold. Tending crops, weaving textiles, and fashioning pots require differ- thin walls, as thin as an
ent sorts of technical and social skills than hunting, so warriors probably had to eggshell. Such finely made
black pottery is a distinctive
share leadership with skilled and experienced elders. At the same time permanent
feature of Dawenkou culture
settlements brought new forms of social organization; a territorial unit, the village (c. 2300 Bc).
supplemented kinship-based forms of organization.
Ignoring later historical legends and examining only material remains, these
neolithic cultures can be divided by latitude into the southern rice zone and the
northern millet zone. In the Yangzi valley rice was cultivated as early as 5000 Bc,
supplemented with fish and aquatic plants such as lotus, water chestnut, and cal-
trop. At Hemudu, a site south of Shanghai, neolithic villagers built wooden
houses stilts and made lacquered bowls and blackish pottery with incised geo-
on

metric designs. Basketry and weaving were highly developed; residents left behind
spindle whorls used to twist yarns and shuttles used in weaving. Other wooden
tools included hoes, spears, mallets, and paddles. The technological level of the
Hemudu villagers, in other words, was already higher than that of most North
American Indian tribes in the seventeenth century.
North China was too cold and dry for rice; the cereal that became the founda-
tion of agriculture there was instead millet. In Cishan, a site in Hebei dating to
before 5000 Bc, millet was cut with stone sickles and stored in crude pottery
bowls, jars, and tripods (three-legged pots), often decorated with cord or comb
impressions. The loess soil common in north China made cultivation relatively
easy for primitive farmers as it was easily worked and its loose structure allowed
fresh nutrients to rise to the surface. In both north and south, the domestication
of animals accompanied the domestication of plants. Dogs and pigs were found in
both areas as early as 5000 Bc, and by 3000 sc sheep and cattle had become impor-
tant in the north, water buffalo and cattle in the south.
In addition to this north-south division on the basis of subsistence technology,
Chinese neolithic cultures can be roughly divided east-west on the basis of artis-
tic styles and burial practices. In the west, in the Yangshao culture area (primarily
Shaanxi and Gansu provinces from about 5000 to 3000 Bc) burials were generally
simple and pottery was often decorated with painted geometrical designs. Grain
jars decorated in the fully developed Yangshao style were exuberantly painted in
18 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

red and black with spirals, diamonds, and other geometric patterns. The range of
shapes, however, was relatively limited, confined mostly to utilitarian jars and
urns. By contrast, in the east, over an area extending from Liaoning province to
Shanghai, pottery was rarely painted, but more elaborate forms appeared very
early, including tripods and pedestalled bowls and cups. The finest wares, formed
on the potter’s wheel, were thin-walled with a burnished surface almost metallic
in appearance. Many forms were constructed by combining parts, adding legs,
spouts, handles, or lids. The frequent appearance of ewers and goblets in this
region suggests rituals of feasting or sacrifice. Also in the east burials gradually
became more elaborate. At one site, Dawenkou in Shandong province, some of the
dead were buried in
coffins and occasionally a wooden chamber was built to line
the burial pit, giving a further layer of protection. The richest graves at this site
contained sixty, or even well over a hundred objects, including, for instance,
fifty,
necklaces and bracelets made of jade, stone, or pottery beads. One unusual feature
of the Dawenkou culture is that many people had their upper lateral incisors
extracted, a practice Chinese authors in much later times considered barbarian.
Even more distinctive of the eastern cultures is
their investment in
the produc-
tion of finely worked jade. Jade is a very hard stone, formed when the crystals of

Jade object with a snake- or dragon-like

body and pig-like snout, 6'/ inches long,
excavated at Sanguan Dianzi in Liaoning
province (Hongshan culture, c. 3500 Bc).
Neolithic villagers, using sand or other
abrasives, would have had to devote
many days to fashioning this small orna-
ment or talisman.
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty 19

Left. The most spectacular

neolithic jade discoveries are
from the Liangzhu culture (c.
.3300-2250 Bc). This grave
excavated at Sidun in Jiangsu
province contained long rows
of twenty-five cong (tubes with
cylindrical bores and squared
sides) and thirty-three bi
(discs). Archaeologists specu-
late that the individual buried

a
there was priest interred
with the treasures he used in
ceremonies.

Below. Skill atprecise mea-

surement and planning was
needed to achieve the highly
regular motifs on the jade cong
found at Liangzhu. The promi-
nent eyes and symmetrical
design on this 27/:-inch-tall
cong tube, excavated at Sidun,
Jiangsu province, suggest con-
nections with the famous
taotie design found on bronzes
a thousand years later.
20 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

rocks have been crushed over millions of years to make a matted configuration of
molecules. As jade does not split or fracture easily, to shape it requires grinding
with abrasive sand in a slow, labour-intensive process. The most spectacular dis-
coveries of neolithic jades are from the Hongshan culture of Liaoning province
(c.3500 Bc) and the Liangzhu culture of Jiangsu province (c.2500 Bc) — areas that
even two thousand years later were not considered fully ‘Chinese’. In the Hong-
shan area, jade was made into ornaments and small figurines of turtles, birds, and
at
strange coiled ‘pig dragons’. Some of these figurines were found sites of stone
ritual structures, suggesting that they had symbolic or religious meanings. In the
Liangzhu area as well, jade was fashioned into ritual objects, and hundreds of bi
(disks) and cong (columns) have been excavated. A couple thousand years later bi
and cong were still used in rituals and were considered to have cosmological sig-
nificance, the circles and squares representing heaven and earth respectively. Else-
where in the eastern half of China jade objects were not so distinctive, but jade
axes, presumably used for ritual purposes, have been widely found.
The late neolithic period (c.3000-2000 Bc) was a time of increased contact
between these regional cultures. Pottery shapes and designs spread into new
areas; cooking tripods, for instance, spread west, while geometric decoration
spread east. It was also a timeof increased conflict between communities. Metal
began to be used on a small scale for weapons, and in the north China plain
walled settlements appeared. The wall at Chengziyai in Shandong province is
estimated to have been 20 feet high and 29 feet thick. Enclosing a settlement with
such a wall of rammed earth no doubt required the ability to coordinate labour
and thus also indicates advances in social organization — by this time there must
have been chiefs capable of commanding men and resources in considerable
quantity. Another sign of the power of religious or military elites was the appear-
ance of human sacrifice. By 2000 sc, human remains were being buried under the
foundations of major buildings in the north China plain. Sacrificing captives may
have been seen as a way of pleasing ancestors or gods; it
probably also strength-
ened the political power of the elites who wielded the power of life and death so

dramatically. Social differentiation also was expressed in burials. In one large

cemetery in southern Shanxi province with over a thousand graves, nine individ-
uals were given elaborate burials, with wooden coffins and over a hundred grave
goods each, including musical instruments, jades, and jugs. Some eighty medium-
sized graves had similar objects in smaller numbers. More than 600 graves were
simple burials with neither coffins nor grave goods.
Even as late as 2000 sc, neolithic communities in the Chinese subcontinent
were probably as varied as they were in North America before Europeans arrived:
a great many languages were undoubtedly spoken, some related and some not,
shamans were probably powerful in some tribes, unknown in others; it seems
likely that warfare dominated life in some times and in some places but not so
much in others. Although archaeologists have identified features of these cultures
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty 21

The practice of buryi ng the dead with co ntainers of

drink or other objects needed by the living was in hist

with e mutual dependen

22 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

that persisted into later times, it would be misleading to think of themall simply
as proto-Chinese.

THE SHANG DYNASTY

Some time soon after 2000 sc there emerged out of the diverse neolithic cultures
in the north China plain a more complex bronze-age civilization marked by writ-
ing, metal-working, domestication of the horse, class stratification, and a stable
political-religious hierarchy administering a large territory from a cult center. The
earliest stages of this transition are traditionally associated with the Xia dynasty.
Since no site that might possibly be Xia has yielded written documents, it is still

The abrupt appearance of the

light, spoke-wheeled war char-
iot in about 1200 Bc suggests
contact with bearers of Indo-
European culture — similar
chariots with large, many-
spoked wheels had been in use
in the Caucasus for several
centuries. Chariots came to
play such an important role as
symbolsof rulership in late
Shang and Zhou warfare that
they were sometimes buried
with their owners in their
graves. This burial pit,
unearthed at Liulihe in Hebei
province and dating from the
Western Zhou period, con-
tains the remains of horses
and chariots.
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty 23

uncertain whether or not there was a fully fledged Xia dynasty before the Shang This tomb (number 1001) ofa
(c. 1600-c. 1050), but there was, without doubt, a major transition in this period Shang king is
one of eleven
large tombs and over a thou-
of Chinese history. From this point on, organized political entities become crucial
sand small graves excavated at
elements in the story of China. And literate elite associated with the polity
Anyang, all of which are ori-
begins to give us their version of what is important by producing the documents ented north-south. Although
that colour how we see all beyond them — not only other peoples they considered this tomb was robbed in
to be alien, but also other elements in their own society, ranging from slaves to ancient times, perhaps even by
the Zhou invaders, when exca-
rival elites.
vated it contained numerous
The Shang state did not control a very large part of China proper — their
stone, jade, shell, bone, antler,
domain probably did not even encompass all of Henan, Anhui, Shandong, Hebei, tooth, bronze, and pottery
and Shanxi provinces. The influence of Shang culture, however, extended far artefacts. As the pit is more
beyondits territorial limits, with its technology and decorative motifs adapted by than 300 feet long and 60 feet
deep, moving the earth to cre-
peoples throughout the Yangzi valley. The Shang was said to have had five suc-
ate the tomb must have
cessive capitals, and several large settlements of Shang date have been discovered,
required a huge mobilization
including Zhengzhou, possibly an early cult centre, and Anyang, from which the of labour.
Shang kings ruled for more than two centuries. Shang civilization was not as
densely urban as that of Mesopotamia, but these cult centres were large and com-
 THe CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HiStoRY OF CHINA

Headless skeletons of human plex. At their core were large palaces, temples, and altars
constructed on rammed-
sacrificial victims in tomb earth foundations, in one case 26 by feet 92
in
size. Surrounding the central core
1001 at Anyang. Textual evi-
were industrial areas occupied by bronze workers, potters, stone carvers, and
dence of the practice of human
other artisans. Further out were small houses built partly below ground level and,
sacrifice has been confirmed
by discoveries of clearly beyond them, burial grounds.
aligned headless skeletons like The inscribed oracle bones found at Anyang present a picture of an embattled
these. The heads were found central power, allied with some local powers and at warwith others. The king sent
elsewhere in the same tomb.
out armies of 3,000 to 5,000 men on campaigns. Over time vassals became ene-
mies and enemies became allies. War booty provided the king with resources: cap-
tives could be made into slaves or slaughtered as sacrificial victims. Even
though
agricultural technology had not advanced much since pre-Shang times, military
technology had. Bronze-tipped spears and halberds, composite bows, and horse-
drawn chariots provided significant advantages in warfare to the warrior elite who
possessed them. Chariots came into use around 1200 Bc, probably as a result of
diffusion from western Asia. Pulled by two or four horses, the chariot allowed
commanders to supervise their troops and gave archers and soldiers armed with
long halberds more mobility. Chariots were also used in royal hunts, grand out-
ings cum military exercises that might last months. Deer, bears, tigers, wild boars,
elephants, and rhinoceroses were plentiful, indicating that there was considerable
forest cover in the north China plain.
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty

Shang kingship, however, was not based simply on military supremacy, but was
firmly groundedin religion and ritual. The Shang king played a priestly role in the
worship of the high god Di and the royal ancestors, a role that justified his politi-
cal powers. To put this another way, it was because among the dead his ancestors
were best able to communicate with Di and because among the living he was best
able to communicate with his ancestors that the king was fitted to rule. Given the
importance of the royal ancestral cult, it is not surprising that patrilineal princi-
ples also governed succession to the throne: kingship passed from elder to
younger brother and father to son, but never to or through sisters or daughters.
To discover his ancestors’ wishes, the king employed professional diviners to
prepare the bones used in divinations, but he himself interpreted the meaning of
the heat-induced cracks. Many of the predictions the king made sound almost like
magical incantation or prayers — ‘It will rain’, or ‘During the next ten days there
will be no disasters.’ The king also played a priestly role during his frequent trav-
els through the reaim, for he often stopped to make sacrifices to local spirits.
As in many other societies, both animals and human beings were sacrificed to
royal ancestors andto various nature gods. The principles underlying sacrifice, in
China and elsewhere, are reciprocity and feeding: one makes offerings to those
from whom one wants help, and one feeds rich foods to the god or ancestor to
keep him strong. Shang kings frequently offered sacrifices of human beings,
sometimes dozens at a time. Subordinates would also voluntarily ‘accompany’ a
superior in death, showing that they felt obligations tantamount to servitude to
those above them. At the early or middle Shang royal burials at Zhengzhou, one,
two, or three sacrificial victims were often buried between the inner and outer cof
fin chambers or on the roof of the outer chamber. By the late Shang, many more
people accompanied the rulers into their graves. Tomb 1001 at Anyang, which
may be for the king who reigned about 1200 bc, has yielded the remains of ninety
followers who accompanied him in death, seventy-four human sacrifices, twelve
horses, and eleven dogs. These victims were placed in the shaft, ledges, and
ramps. Some followers were provided with coffins and bronze ritual vessels or
weapons of their own, some (generally female) with no coffins but with personal
ornaments; others were provided with no furnishings and were beheaded, cut in
two, or put to death in other mutilating ways.
The vast tombs of the royal family are one sign of the ability of the Shang rulers
to mobilize human and material resources. Thousands of labourers had to be
assembled to dig huge holes up to 40 feet deep, construct massive wooden burial
chambers, and then fill in the site with layers of rammed earth. This ability to
mobilize labour clearly predated the move to Anyang; the enormous city walls of
Zhengzhou, which were 60 feet wide, 30 feet high, and 2,385 feet long, would
have taken ten to twenty years to complete, even with 10,000 labourers working
to move and ram the earth.
26 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

WRITING
The organizational capabilities of the Shang government probably should be cred-
ited in part to the perfection of a system of writing. In China, as elsewhere, writ-
The modern Chinese writin
6
ing, once adopted, has profound effects on social and cultural processes. Exactly
system evolved from the script
employed by diviners in the when writing was first used in China is not known since most writing would have
Shang period. been done on perishable materials like wood, bamboo, or silk. Symbols or

tripot field then lo go

goal, vessel To show, (showing (men and ancestor against,
ox sheep tree moon earth water (ring) declare divisions) bowl) (phallus) towards heaven to pray

FIPS KID OG)) SRT BRB IS

ATE
w]e A
%

42K A KR) | RB) hb

=
wP Eg som - war
A)
|
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty Dud

emblems inscribed on late neolithic pots may be early forms of Chinese graphs.
Early Shang bronzes sometimes have similar symbols cast into them. The earliest
evidence of full sentences is found on the oracle bones of the late Shang. From
these divinatory inscriptions, there can be no doubt that the Shang used lan-
guage directly ancestral to modern Chinese and moreover used a written script
that evolved into the standard Chinese logographic writing system still in use
today. Of the thousand-odd characters that have been deciphered, some are pic-
tographs that visually represent a thing or an idea, some are borrowed for their
sounds, and others were created by combining two characters, one giving mean-
ing, the other sound. In China, as elsewhere, with writing comes list-making and
efforts to organize thoughts that facilitate higher-order mental processes of
abstraction and theorizing. In Shang times, one sign of such complex cognitive
is
organization the use of two sequencing systems, one based on ten andthe other
to
on twelve. The cycle of ten was used label days in the ten-day week, and a com-

a
bination of the two was used to produce sixty-day cycle.
28 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

It is essentially accidental that the Shang developed a logographic script rather

than a phonetic script like most of those that became dominant elsewhere in
Eurasia. This accident, however, had momentous consequences for the way Chi-
nese civilization developed. It shaped the nature of
the elite: the difficulty of mas-
tering this script made those expert in it
an elite possessed of rare but essential
skills. Because the Chinese logographic script did not change to reflect differences
in pronunciation, the literate elite easily identified with others whose writings
they could read, including predecessors who lived many centuries earlier and
contemporaries whose spoken languages they could not comprehend. Just as cru-
cially, this script also affected the processes of cultural expansion and assimila-
Cultural spheres. The cultural
tion. People on the fringes of Chinese culture who learned to read Chinese for
influence of the two great
states of Bronze Age China,
pragmatic reasons of advancing or defending their interests were more effectively
the Shang (c.1600-1050 Bc) drawn into Chinese culture than they would have been if China had had a pho-
and the Western Zhou (c. netic script. Reading and writing for them could not be easily detached from the
1050-771 3c) extended from
the Yellow River valley
into
body of Chinese texts imbued with Chinese values, making it
difficult for them to
use their literacy to articulate the vision of a local population defined in opposi-
the Yangzi River valley. In
neolithic times distinct cul-
tion to China.
tures had emerged in many
BRONZES
regions of the Chinese subcon-
tinent, but by the third As in other parts of the world, the development of more complex forms social of
organization in Shang China was tied to perfecting metal-working techniques.
millennium borrowing had
Bc
become
so
extensive that this
Ways to smelt metal ores were probably discovered in China as a by-product of
central China region had
already become
interacting cultures.
a
sphere of the use of high-temperature kilns for ceramic production. The earliest-known
bronze vessels date from about 1700-1600 sc, and were found at Erlitou, in

Late Neolithic Cultures Bronze Age China

Hongshan aingyuan

. ®

Erlitou
Zhengzhou

extent of regions with considerable cultural borrowing extent of Shang culture extent of Chou culture
e major sites Shang sites 2 Chou sites
cesses ancient shoreline neoenacseee ancient shoreline
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty 29

Henan province, a region associated with the Xia dynasty. The extreme thinness of
some of the vessels found there (in one case only 1 mm thick), coupled with fea-
tures of their shapes, such as sharp angles and crimped edges, suggest the possi-
bility of imitation of sheet-metal prototypes. But bronzes steadily got larger and
heavier, and by late Shang times huge bronze vessels were produced, some weigh-
ing more than 200 pounds.
The great bulk of the surviving bronze objects are cups, goblets, steamers, and
cauldrons, beautifully shaped and decorated, in a great variety of shapes and sizes,
presumably made for use sacrificial rituals. Some distinctive neolithic pottery
in

forms, such as tripods, were reproduced in Shang bronzes, showing links between
the artistic tradition of the Shang and the previous cultures of the area. The com-
plexity of design of Shang bronzes was achieved through mould casting and pre-
fabrication. Thus legs, handles, and other protruding members were cast first and
then the body was cast on to them.
The bronze vessels produced in Shang China reveal much about Shang culture
and society. Thousands of Shang bronzes survive today, and we know from exca-
vations that as many as 200 vessels could be interred in single grave. Their num-
bers testify to the willingness of the Shang elite to devote huge quantities of a
valued resource to ritual uses. The production of such quantities of bronzes also
provides further evidence of the organizational capacity of the Shang rulers, for
they had to mobilize men and material to mine, transport, and refine the ores, to
manufacture and tool the clay models, cores, and moulds used in the casting
process and to run the foundries. Additionally, the history of the decoration on
Shang bronzes provides evidence of the dynamics of cultural change during Shang
times. The animal mask or taotie was the predominant decoration throughout, but
its appearance changed markedly over time (see pages 36-37). Moreover, in some
periods patrons were more open to borrowing new forms from their neighbours;
at other times they turned back to old forms and motifs, reworking them, pre-
Regions beyond Shang pol-
sumably finding something admirable in their antiquity. itical control were not necesar-
Bronze technology spread beyond the area controlled by the Shang, probably ily backward, but without
even into areas the Shang would have considered entirely alien. In 1986 archaeol- written records we know little
ogists discovered at Sanxingdui in Sichuan province a bronze-producing culture of them. This extraordinary
bronze statue, about 6 feet tall
apparently contemporary with the late Shang that did not share either the basic
on a 2'/-foot base, was exca-
Shang artistic repertoire, nor, it would seem, Shang religious beliefs. At this site
vated at Sanxingdui, Sichuan
were rammed earthen city walls of the familiar sort, but also outside the wall two province. It was discovered in
sacrificial pits entirely unlike anything found earlier. One contained about 300 one of two pits filled with
gold, bronze, jade, and stone objects along with thirteen elephant trunks and bronze heads, masks, elephant
tusks and other objects that
nearly 100 cubic feet of burnt and broken animal bones. The most astonishing
reveal a technologically
finds were life-sized bronze heads with angular facial features and enormous eyes.
advanced culture whose reli-
pit,
In the second about 100 feet away, there was life-sized statue and forty-one gious practices differed from
bronze heads of varying size, some with gold masks. As most objects had been those of the Shang and early
burnt and broken, archaeologists infer that these two pits are the remains of large- Zhou.
30 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

scale sacrificial ceremonies held about a generation apart. There is no evidence of

human remains in these pits, which has led to speculation that the bronze heads
in
and the statue stood for the sacrifice of human beings.
Bronzes did not, of course, constitute all of Shang art, even if they have sur-
vived the best. Finely worked jade objects, many perpetuating neolithic forms,
such as cong, bi, knives, and axes, continued to be included among the objects in
opulent burials. Silk was already being woven, and traces of elaborate silk weaves
have been found. Carved wood and ivory, sometimes inlaid with turquoise, have
been discovered, as have traces of lacquer decoration. All this suggests that the
Shang kings and probably other noble families lived surrounded by objects of
great beauty.

THE ZHOU CONQUEST

How directly or tightly the Shang controlled its territories can only be dimly dis-
cerned from oracle bones and archaeological excavations. Certainly the Shang »

campaigned constantly against enemies. To the west were the fierce Qiang, con-
sidered barbarian tribesmen, and perhaps speaking a proto-Tibetan language.
Between the Shang capital and the Qiang was
a frontier state called Zhou, which
seems both to have inherited cultural traditions from the neolithic cultures of the
northwest and to have absorbed most of the material culture of the Shang. In
about 1050 sc, the Zhou rose against the Shang and defeated it in battle.
The early Zhouis the first period from which texts have beer transmitted. The
Book of Documents (Shujing), one of the Confucian classics, purports to contain

texts from the beginning of the Zhou, giving us the Zhou version of their history.
These documents describe the Zhou conquest of the Shang as the victory of just

Remains of rammed-earth
foundations at Fengchu in
Shaanxi province have allowed
archaeologists to reconstruct
the design of this early Zhou
palace or temple. The com-
pound was 145 by 105 feet,
the main hall in the centre 56
by 20 feet and the whole was
built around courtyards in the
fashion typicalof later Chi-
nese architecture.
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty 31

a
and noble warriors over decadent courtiers led by dissolute, sadistic king. At the
same time, they show that the Zhou recognized the Shang as occupying the cen-
tre of the world, were eager to succeed to that role rather than dispute it, and saw
history as a major way to legitimate power. Besides these transmitted texts, hun-
dreds of inscriptions on ritual bronzes have survived. Particularly useful are
inscriptions that record benefactions from the king and mention the services that
had earned the king’s favour.
The founding of the Zhou was associated with a series of important religious
changes. The scale of human sacrifice at burials declined, suggesting that ideas
about death and the afterlife were changing. The practice of voluntary accompa-
nying in death continued, but on a considerably smaller scale. The practice of
divining with oracle bones declined and the new divination system laid out in the
Classic of Changes (Yijing) gained ground, involving interpretations of randomly
selected sets of broken and unbroken lines. Another key development was the
introduction of the concept of heaven, conceived as something like the sacred
moral power of the cosmos. In transmitted texts and bronze inscriptions alike, the
rule of the Zhou kings was linked to heaven. A king and a dynasty could rule only
so long as they retained heaven's favour. If a king neglected his sacred duties and
acted tyrannically, heaven would display its displeasure by sending down omi- _gyonze was used not only for
nous portents and natural disasters. If the king failed to heed such warnings, ritual objects, but also for
heaven would withdraw its mandate, disorder would increase, the political and ore practical things such as
social order wouldfall into chaos, and heaven would eventually select someone “*#P0MS and armour. This

to
early Zhou helmet was proba-
else upon whom bestow a new mandate to rule. Moral values were thus built
bly actually used in warfare,
.

into the way the cosmos worked, and history was read as a mirror of heaven's will. _as it was unearthed alongside
The ruler mediated between heaven and the realm of human beings, and his virtue weapons inthe Beijing area.
ensured the proper harmony of the two sides. Because these ideas do not seem to
have any place in Shang cosmology, it may be that they were elaborated by the
early Zhou rulers as a kind of propaganda to win over the conquered sub-
jects of the Shang. Whatever their origin, the ideas proved compelling
and remained a central tenet of Chinese political cosmology until
modern times.
In early texts, three Zhou rulers have been given great credit
for establishing a stable state. King Wen (the ‘Cultured King’)
formed alliances with neighbouring states and tribes in prepa-
ration for attacking the Shang. His son King Wu (the ‘Martial
King’) built a new capital further east and launched the
expedition that succeeded in defeating the Shang army and
taking its capital. Rather than kill all members of the
Shang royal house, he left a son of the last king as nomi-
nal ruler of the city to continue sacrifices to his powerful
ancestors. King Wu died young, only six years after the
conquest, and his brother, the Duke of Zhou, acted as
 THe CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisToORY OF CHINA

Inscribed bronze ritual vessel,

unearthed from a storage pit
in Fufeng, Shaanxi province.
The 284-character inscription
on this bronze, composed
shortly before 900 Bc by Histo-
rian Qiang, relates the major
events under the six kings
from Wen
to Mu, such as cam-
paigns against various
‘barbarians’, as well as
the deeds of Qiang’s own
ancestors in the service of
these kings.

regent for King Wu's young son.The Duke of Zhou extended and consolidated the
new territories, conducting a series of expeditions eastward to bring the whole
Yellow River plain under Zhou control, destroying in the process, it
is said, fifty
states. He built a new city at modern Luoyang in Henang province from which to
govern the eastern territories and moved former Shang nobles to his new city.
When the young king came of age, the Duke of Zhou relinquished his powers and
became at once the most reverent of subjects. These three early Zhou rulers thus
became emblematic figures, representing the leadership qualities required for the
establishment of enduring states: military prowess, the morally based civil arts,
and loyalty.
The process of absorbing the tribes and states on the periphery of the Zhou
realm was slow and not always successful (the fourth Zhou king disappeared with
his armies on a campaign into modern Hubei province and was not heard from
again). Rather than attempt to all
rule of their territories directly, the early Zhou
rulers sent out relatives and trusted subordinates with troops to establish walled
garrisons in the conquered territories. Where that was not possible, they recog-
nized local chiefs as their representatives. These lords were giventitles that
became hereditary and were obliged to render military service and send tribute.
But all power was not parcelled out; the kings also set up a central proto-bureau-
cratic administration that made extensive use of written records. Moreover, the
kings maintained a royal army that fought alongside warriors contributed by the
feudal lords.

Kinship and the cults associated with it tied the lords to the king and to each
other. The king bore the title ‘Son of Heaven’ and had the unique right to make
sacrifices to heaven
at the capital. He also presided at rites to royal ancestors, in
muchthe way the Shang kings had. Lords conducted similar sacrifices to the first
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty

holder of their fiefs as well as their more recent ancestors.

Marriage among patri-
lineal relatives was not practised, so the king and lords of his surname had to
marry with the families of lords of other surnames, linking virtually all of the
upper ranks of the nobility through either patrilineal or affinal kinship. Loyalty
and military valour were much esteemed among these nobles, but familial ethics
of obedience, respect, and kinship solidarity were just as prized.
By 800 Bc there were around two hundred lords with domains large and small,
of which only about twenty-five were large enough to matter much. Each lord
appointed various officers under him, men with ritual, administrative, or military
responsibilities, and these posts and the associated titles tended to become hered-
itary as well. In this way each domain came to have aristocratic families with

patrimonies in offices and associated lands. Society was conceived in strongly

hierarchical terms, ranging from the Son of Heaven, through the lords, to the
great ministers, other officers, the knights and court attendants, and finally the
ordinary farmers who generally seem to have been attached to domains in a serf-
like manner.
Along the Zhou borders and interspersed among the Zhou domains were non-
Chinese peoples who resisted Zhou hegemony. Chinese writers of the time classi-
fied them into four ethnic groups: the Yi centring on modern Shandong, the Man
in the Yangzi valley, the Di along the northern border, and the Rong centring in
Shaanxi. These outsiders were not necessarily primitive tribesmen. In the south,
along the Yangzi, several political entities had come into existence independently
of the Zhou — the states of Chu, Wu, and Yue. Their chiefs called themselves
kings, but by the end of the eighth century Bc were allowing the Zhou kings to
consider them peripheral parts of the Zhou feudal order.
Zhou art shows important shifts from Shang tradition. Large bronze ritual ves-
sels continued to be produced in great abundance in
early Zhou times, probably
often by the same craftsmen who had served under the Shang rulers. Neverthe-
less, within a couple of generations of the conquest of the Shang, the dominant
motif on Shang bronzes, the animal mask or taotie, all but disappeared. Birdlike
imagery became more important, along with purely ornamental decorations, such
as spikes and ribs. The use of bold ribs and spikes suggests that vessels were being
viewed from greater distances, during rituals performed infront of audiences. At
the same time, ritual vessels came to be frequently treated as vehicles for texts,
which grew longer and longer, suggesting that the vessels were seen as family
heirlooms in the making, with thoughts to their effects on descendants as much
as on ancestors.
The earliest Chinese poetry originates from the early Zhou period. Many of the
305 poems in
the Book of Songs (Shijing) would have been sung at court during
important ceremonies. Some celebrate the exploits of the early Zhou rulers; oth-
ers praise the solemnity with which the living provide food offerings to their
ancestors during sacrifices. One court ode expresses a profound distrust of
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

women’s involvement in politics and the affairs of government:

Clever men build cities,
Clever women topple them.
Beautiful, these clever women may be
But they are owls and kites.
Women have long tongues
That lead to ruin.

Disorder does not come down from heaven;

It is produced by women.

Other poems in the Book of Songs appear to have begun as folk songs. These
include love songs and songs depicting ordinary people at work clearing fields,
ploughing and planting, gathering mulberry leaves for silkworms, spinning and
weaving. There are even complaints about tax collectors and the hardships of mil-
itary service. One stanza of a love poem reads:

Please, Zhongzi,
Do not leap over our wall,
Do not break our mulberry trees.
It’s not that I begrudge the mulberries,
But I fear my brothers.
You I would embrace,
But my brother's words — those I dread.

A stanza of a poem of complaint reads:

Which plant is not brown?

Which man is not sad?
Have
pity on us soldiers,
Treated as though we were not men!

Poems like these remind us that ancient China was populated by more than
kings, warriors, diviners, and bronzesmiths. The vast majority of the population,
then and later, were farmers, toiling in their fields, trying to fashion satisfying
lives and to limit the exactions of those with power over them.

Most of the basic elements of ancient Chinese civilization were not unique to
China. All over the world, people discovered that animals and plants could be
domesticated; there is little reason to think agriculture was invented in one place
and then carried to all parts of the world through migration of peoples or com-
munication of ideas. Very basic ideas about kinship and religion — such tracing
as

descent solely through the male line, or making sacrifices of animals or humans
to gods or ancestors — and very basic ideas about social order — such as enslaving
those defeated in war and passing kingship from one man
to
his son or brother —
The Origins of Chinese Civilization: Neolithic Period to the Western Zhou Dynasty

are also extremely common cross-culturally. These phenomena are more plausibly
attributed to shared human psychologythan to cultural contact.
Much less common in world history is the leap to complex civilization, to the
ideas and technology that allow co-ordination of large populations. Writing, met-
allurgy, and strong priestly kings appeared together in several ancient civiliza-
tions: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, and Mexico. It is generally
accepted that the American civilizations must have been independent in origin
from those of Asia and that those of the ancient Near East were influenced by each
other. But what about China? Did it make the leap entirely on its own? Ordid
knowledge of some of the advances of the ancient Near East cross the Eurasian
steppe and stimulate or spark similar developments in China? Are similarities all
the result of a common logic of socio-political-technological development, or are
somethe result of diffusion? Most Chinese historians and archaeologists seem to
think that it is more to China's credit the less their ancestors learned from others
and the more they discovered or invented themselves. They point to marks on
neolithic pots as possible early stages in a writing system to refute the notion that
the idea behind writing (that marks can represent words) might have been trans-
mitted by illiterate peoples across the steppe. They demonstrate how distinctive
Chinese bronze mould-casting was in order to cast doubt on the notion that the
idea behind metallurgy (that rocks can be smelted into a strong and malleable
substance) could have been transmitted in a similar way. Nor do they like to draw
attention to the strong probability that wheat, the chariot, the domesticated horse,
and the compound bow spread from west Asia.
Questionable assumptions about the worth of civilizations lie behind these
patriotic efforts to make China as independent a civilization as possible. Surely
the ancient Chinese would not somehow be more worthy of admiration if they
had refused to adopt useful ideas they learned about second or third hand for fear
of cultural contamination. Chinese civilization is obviously not an off-shoot of
anyof the ancient civilizations of the Middle East in any meaningful sense, since
its language, script, cosmology, and art are too distinctive. Still what made China
one of the great civilizations of the world was not its isolation or purity, but the
way the complex of ideas, social forms, skills, and techniques which coalesced in
ancient times gave China the capacity to grow, adapt, and expand.
 n the art of the ancient Middle East, including Egypt,
Assyria, and Babylonia, representations of agriculture
(domesticated plants and animals) and of social hierarchy
(kings, priests, scribes, and slaves) are very common,
matching our understandings of the social, political,
and economic development of those societies. Thus
somewhat puzzling that images of wild animals pre-
it
is

dominate in Shang art.

The zoomorphic images on Shang bronzes. range
from clearly mimetic low- or high-relief images of
birds, snakes, crocodiles, and deer, to imaginary ani-
mais like dragons, and to highly stylized taotie designs
that allude to animals but do not directly represent
them. It much less common for bronze. implements
is

to have images of human beings, and these rare

human images are generally associated with images of
animals. Since bronze vessels were used in sacrificial
rituals as containers for food or drink, most observers
assume the decoration on them symbolized some-~
thing important in Shang political and religious cos-
mology. Unfortunately, texts that discuss the meaning
of images exist only from much later periods.
Some animal images readily suggest possible meanings.
This bronze axe blade (13. by 14 inches), found in the
Jade cicadas were sometimes found in the mouths ofthe dead,
entrance ramp of a late Shang tomb at Sufutun in Shandong,
and images of cicadas on bronzes are easy to interpret as
images evocative of rebirth in the realm of ancestral spirits, as may have been used for the execution of some of the forty-
eight sacrificial victims found there. The face, depicted by.
cicadas spend years underground before emerging: Birds, sim-
perforation, bears some resemblance to more standard taotie
ilarly, suggest. to many the idea of messengers that.can com-
forms yet seems at the same time distinctly human.
municate with other realms, especially ones in the sky.
More problematic is the most common image; the taotie. To to eating, killing, and the transformation brought on by death.
some it is a monster - a fearsome image that would scare Others point to signs that ancient tribes or clans saw: them-
away evil forces. Others imagine a dragon - an animal whose selves as descended from particular animals (totemism) and
vast powers had more positive associations. Some hypothesize may have worshipped particular animals or birds. Shamanism
that it reflects masks used in rituals, others that it carries over is brought in because men and animals are sometimes associ-
the face-like imagery on neolithic jades from: the Liangzhu ated on Shang bronzes. As practised elsewhere in north Asia or -
area. Still others see these images as hardly more than designs. in south China in later times, shamans comnionly relied on
By tracing the evolution of the taotie over the course of the animals to help them communicate with the spirit world: In
Shang, it is possible to. show how vivid, highly animal-like
the this interpretation, images on bronzes of men in the mouths of
images of late Shang evolved from thin line and dot designs of animals depict shamans submitting to the powers of the ani-
early Shang. Perhaps the tcotie came simply to be associated mais who aid them in their trances.
with the Shang kings and the order they presided’ over, China in ancient times was undoubtedly no less: diverse a
respected and admired because it was an emblem of power place than China in more recent times, and these explanations
and focus for identity more than for any association with real ‘need not be mutually exclusive. There are enough regional dif-
or imagined animals. : ferences in design. to suggest that animal and human imagery.
Those who wish to find significance in the fact that Shang may have had different meanings in different times and places.
imagery made so much use of animals (much more than plants, Even in the late Shang period the tootie did not have the same
for instance} have tended to associate it with animal sacrifices, absorbing interest to the southern artist that it had in Anyang:
totemism, or shamanism. Since animals were slaughtered to be But images of distinguishable birds and animals proliferate in
offered in sacrificial ceremonies, the argument goes, the deco- the south, suggesting that they carried meanings there not
ration on the vessels used in the ceremonies probably alludes commonly given to them in the Anyang area.
 Rubbings of taotie decoration on Shang bronzes. Examples a
d
to are from central Shang sités, in chronological order; e is
from further west in Sichuan province. Over time, as can be
seen in a to d, taotie designs evolved from simple lines and
dots to high relief and more prominent eyes, horns, and
é
claws, rather than developing from more animal-like to more
~

(a) abstract. The treatment in the last example from the Sichuan
area is in marked contrast, suggesting considerable cultural
differences between the regions.

Oe.
'SO0006SH6 500 00000000000000 000)
|

Man and ‘animal are fused in an unusual way in this Shang

bronze ritual vessel, 13 inches tall. The vessel takes the shape
of a bear or tiger with mouth open and poised tc swallow a
man. The man seems not at all concerned, but rather to be
holding on to the animal asa child would hold on to its
mother. Other animals, including a deer, serpents, cattle, and
dragons, are incorporated into the decoration of the sides.

Reese
38 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

CHAPTER 2
Philosophical Foundations:
The Eastern Zhou Period 770-256 Bc

The intellectual foundations of Chinese civilization were established during the

Eastern Zhou dynasty (770-256 Bc), a period of political fragmentation and moral
crisis. The first half of this era is commonly called the Spring and Autumn period,
after the name of a chronicle covering the years 722 to 481 Bc. During these cen-
turies the Zhou kings continued to reign by default while their putative vassals
competed against each other, making and breaking alliances, exchanging
hostages, and sporadically taking up arms. Over time military conflict became
more frequent and more deadly, and the second half of this period is convention-
ally called the Warring States period (403-221 sc). By then the Zhou king was no
longer a major player and one by one the smaller states were conquered and
absorbed by the half-dozen largest ones.
The ruthlessness of the competition among the regional powers, although uni-
formly lamented, nevertheless served to foster social, technological, and eco-
nomic advances. These included the introduction of iron casting, infantry armies,
coinage, private ownership of land, and social mobility. New ideas also emerged
in profusion. Those engaged in advising rulers about state affairs began analysing
basic principles of human society and the natural order. Soon the most reflective
officials were questioning established assumptions and values. Their ideas began
to be written down, and the circulation of these treatises further stimulated intel-
lectual debate.

RIVAL STATES

The decentralized rule of the Western Zhou had from the beginning carried
within it the danger that the regional lords would become so powerful that they
would no longer respond to the commands of the king. As generations passed and
ties of loyalty and kinship grew more distant, this indeed happened. In 771 Bc the
Zhou king was killed by an alliance of Rong tribesmen and Zhou vassals. One of
his sons was put on the throne, and then for safety’s sake the capital was moved
east out of the Wei River valley to modern Luoyang, located just south of the Yel-
low River in the heart of the central plains. The revived Zhou never fully regained
control over its vassals, and China entered a prolonged period without a strong
central authority. The Zhou kings still had ritual functions as intermediaries with
heaven, but militarily they were inferior to many of their supposed vassals. In 335
BC regional lords began calling themselves kings, in essence refusing to recognize

the sovereignty of the Zhou king, who was finally deposed in 256 Bc.

a
The Eastern Zhou was violent age, a time when victors presented the cut-off
ears of enemies at their ancestral temples, when the blood of captives was spread
Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period

on ceremonial drums, when thieves had their feet cut off, and when rulers ran the
considerable risk of assassination. At the same time it was a period when diplo-
macy was studied earnestly and practised with finesse. During the Spring and
Autumn period a code of chivalrous or sportsmanlike conduct still regulated war-
fare between the states. For instance, one state would not attack another while it
was in mourning for its ruler, and during battle one side would not attack before
the other side had timeto line up. Perhaps outof fear of the wrath of the ances-
tors of defeated rulers, efforts were made not to wipe out ruling houses, but to
leave at least one successor to continuethe sacrifices.
In the Spring and Autumn period the head of one state was sometimes able to
get the others to recognize him as hegemon or overlord, chief of an alliance of
states. The most notable of these was Duke Huan of Qi (. 685—643 Bc). With the
help of his able minister Guan Zhong, he built up the economic power of Qi state,

casting coins, controlling prices, and regulating the production of salt and iron
tools. He organized the states in the central plains to resist the expansion of the
semi-barbarian state of Chu in the central Yangzi valley. With a mutual-defence
pact in place, he also organized defence against tribesmen to the north and even
got Chu to sign a peace treaty agreeing to send tribute to the Zhou kings.
Because of the need to form alliances, rulers regularly married their sons and
daughters into the ruling families of other states. These marriages then gave them
stakes in other states’ succession disputes, which were extremely common
because of the practice of concubinage. Rulers regularly demonstrated their
power and wealth by accumulating large numbers of concubines and thus would Late Zhou iron moulds for
have children by several women. In theory, succession went to the eldest son of casting iron knives. In Europe
wrought iron preceded cast
the wife, then younger sons byher, and only in their absence to sons of concu-
iron, but in China iron was
bines. In actual practice, however, the ruler of a state or head of a powerful min- cast from the beginning. In
isterial family could select the son of a concubine to be his heir if he wished, Shang times bronze ritual ves-
leading to much scheming for favour among the various sons and their mothers sels had been cast one at a
and the common perception that women were incapable of taking a disinterested time, as major works of art.
The casting of iron tools, by
view of the greater good. Succession disputes of this sort provide much of the nar-
contrast, constituted a form of
rative interest in the fullest history of this period, the Zuo zhuan. Sons not desig- mass production.
nated as heir were frequently assigned fiefs or posts in outlying regions where
they had the opportunity to build up a local power base and challenge the suc-
cession by recourse to arms. Even those unswervingly loyal to the legitimate suc-
cessor might face trumped up treason charges and have to
flee to another state to
avoid execution, picking when possible a ruler related through a mother, wife, or
sister. Such hosts were often happy to
help them, unafraid of stirring up trouble
in nearby states.
The seats of power for each ruler were cities protected by thick earthen walls of

the sort that had been built in north China since before the Shang dynasty. Within
the walls were the palaces and ancestral temples of the ruler and other aristocrats.
Sometimes there was an outer wall as well that protected the artisans, merchants,
40 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

“The WarringStates,
400-2208
eeoo
eo N u
~ ZONGSHAN 296
S

YELLOW
SEA:

“Shu(Chengdu)

core Qin territory WEI 225 state, with date of conquest by Qin FULL defensive walls

bed Qin expansion by 300BC =

imperial capital

Qin expansion by 220BC

8
state capital

During the Warring States period, the feudal domains of the as

the east, Chu in the south, and Qin in the west the strongest
early Zhou came to function as independent states. Over time powers. Chu exterminated Yue in 334 Bc and Confucius’s
the number of states rapidly declined as the more powerful home state of Lu in 249 Bc, but it was Qin that was eventually

ones conquered and absorbed their neighbours. In the north, all

victorious over the other states in 221 Bc.
Jin brokeup
in
into Zhao, Wei, and Han 453 Bc, leaving Qi in
Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period

and farmers who lived outside the inner wall. Descriptions of military confronta-
tions in this period are filled with accounts of sieges launched against these walled
of
citadels, with scenes of
the scaling of walls and storming gates. The technology
of building walls had to be steadily improved because techniques of attacking and
laying siege to city walls were steadily perfected. Treatises were written describing
siegecraft and other facets of military art and strategy, and many classical texts
devoted lengthy sections to these topics.
Constant warfare stimulated advances in military techniques and technology
it
that altered the social relations of warfare and rendered increasingly deadly. The
need for a chariot-riding aristocracy declined with the mastery of cavalry and
infantry armies. Cavalry techniques were first perfected by non-Chinese peoples
to the north of China proper, who at that time were making the transition to full
nomadism. In self-defence, the northern state of Jin developed its own cavalry
armies, which it soon used against other Chinese states. Acquiring and pasturing
horses became a key component of military preparedness, as it would remain for
many centuries. Well-drilled infantry armies, introduced in this period, also
proved potent against chariot-led forces. By 300 Bc states were sending out armies
of hundreds of thousands of drafted foot-soldiers, often accompanied by mounted
warriors. When armed with the powerful newly introduced crossbow, farmers
could be made into effective soldiers, able to shoot further than horsemen carry-
ing light bows. The trigger of a crossbow is an intricate bronze mechanism that
could only be produced by skilled craftsmen.
to
Since victory went the ruler who could raise and outfit the largest armies and
deploy the largest workforces to build defence walls, ambitious rulers began to
worry about ways to increase their populations and revenues. To bring new land
into cultivation, marshes were drained and irrigation works established. Serfdom
gradually declined, as rulers wanted to reward farmers for their efforts and to have
direct access to their labour power. Rulers looked on trade favourably and began
casting coins, which quickly supplemented the use of bolts of silk as units of
exchange. Economic expansion was also aided by the introduction of iron tech-
nology. By the seventh century Bc iron deposits were being exploited, and within
a couple of centuries iron was being widely used for both farm tools and weapons.
By the late Warring States period, great smelters might employ more than 200
Double-edged swords are not
workmen, and ironmongers were prominent among the rich entrepreneurs mak-
mentioned in Chinese sources
ing their appearance in this period. until the seventh century BC.
To expand their control over people and land, rulers also tried new techniques The inscription on this speci-
of governing. More and more they sent out their own officials rather than delegate men, unearthed at Wangshan
in Hubei province, states that
authority to hereditary lesser lords. This trend towards centralized bureaucratic
it is owned by Gou Jian, the
control created opportunities for social advancement for those on the lower end
king of Yue (r. 496-465 Bc),
of the old aristocracy. Competition among such men guaranteed rulers a ready a famous connoisseur of
supply of able and willing subordinates, and competition among rulers for talent fine swords.

meant that ambitious men could be selective in offering their services.

 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

States on the periphery — Jin in the north, Qi in the east, Chu in the south, and
Qin in the west — had the advantage in these struggles for supremacy because they
could expand outward. After they had expanded, they turned inward and soon
they were conquering the small states of the central plain between them, each lord
aspiring to be the great unifier. By 300 Bc, only seven major states survived and
was apparent that strife would end only when one state eliminated all its rivals.
it
Rulers searching for ways to survive or prevail were more than willing to
patronize men of ideas. As states were destroyed and their former nobles had to
look for employment elsewhere, ambitious rulers and even high officials were
able to gather around them numerous advisors, assistants, teachers, strategists,
and clerks. These men made proposals about what the rulers should do and
rebutted each other's ideas, in the process advancing the art of oratory, the science
of strategy, and the study of logic. Books recording the teachings of various mas-
ters came to be compiled and circulated, a development that fostered the appear-
ance of schools of thought, since the existence of a text tended both to freeze a
viewpoint among followers and to elicit refutations from other masters. The tra-
ditional label for this period as the time when ‘a hundred schools of thought con-
tended’ aptly captures the spirit of exuberant intellectual creativity that proved
the most important legacy of the late Zhou.

CONFUCIUS AND HIS FOLLOWERS

The earliest important would-be advisor was Confucius (traditional dates,
551-479 Bc). Born in Lu, a small state in Shandong province that had been the fief
of the Duke of Zhou, Confucius spent some years at the Lu court without gaining
much influence. He then wandered through neighbouring states with his disci-
ples, in search ofa ruler more receptive to his advice. Finding much that dismayed
him — greed, insincerity, irresponsibility, callous disregard for others’ needs and
interests — he committed himself to trying to inspire people to do good, becoming
China’s first moral philosopher. He linked moral behaviour
to traditional roles
and hierarchies and thus became
a great defender of the Zhou order, by then
already in decay. He identified with the ‘learned men’, the court experts who
assisted rulers in the performance of rituals and ceremonies, such as sacrifices to
ancestors and reception of envoys. These learned men knew about the heavens
and could advise on setting the calendar; they performed divinations and inter-
preted the results; and they kept records and advised on precedents. In Confucius’
Early coins, like these bronze
vision of the early Zhou, these learned men and all others — rulers and subjects,
examples of the Zhou period, nobles and commoners, parents and children, men and women — wholeheartedly
were made in the shape of accepted the parts assigned to them and devoted themselves to their responsibili-
knives and spades; circular ties to others. His ideal world thus was one where conventions governed actions
coins with square central
and hierarchical differentiation resulted in harmonious co-ordination.
holes for stringing them
together later became
In Confucius’ moral vision, intentions and acts towards other men are
at least
predominant. as important as those toward gods or ancestors. He extolled filial piety — the rev-
Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period 43

erent respect of children toward their parents. Filial piety was to him bothritual
and attitude; conventional actions needed to be animated by sincere feelings.
Moreover, filial piety could be extended outward beyond the family, since society
could be seen as the family writ large. Still, the highest virtue in Confucius’ vocab-
ulary was ren, variously translated as perfect goodness, benevolence, humanity,
co-humanity, human-heartedness, and nobility. It entailed deep concern for the
well-being of others, an orientation that makes right action almost effortless. Ren
a
extended to everyone and thus was virtue without the hierarchical dimension of
filial piety.
Confucius was apparently an extraordinary teacher. As he gained a reputation
as a learned man, people came to consult him, and many stayed on to study the
ancient traditions with him. Nevertheless, he continually hoped to play a greater
role in government and he prepared his students for careers in government ser-
vice. Towards that end he encouraged them to master the venerated traditions,
especially the Bookof Songs, Book of Documents, and ritual texts; indeed Confucius
is traditionally credited with having compiled. several of these texts himself.
Confucius’ students — and their students — deserve much of the credit for the
eventual success of Confucian ideas. The first important successor remembered

Line drawing of the decor on

aninlaid bronze wine vessel
from the Warring States
period. Depictions of people
engaged in such activities
as warfare, hunting, boating,
rituals, music-making, and
food preparation were a new
feature of the art of the late
Zhou period.
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSYRATEI HisTORY OF CHINA

by history was Mencius (c.370—c.300 Bc), who had studied with Con-
fucius’ grandson. In imitation of Confucius, Mencius travelled
around offering advice to rulers of nearby states. He reminded rulers
of the Mandate of Heaven, telling them to their faces that if
they did
not rule well, heaven would bring it about that their people would
rebel and oust them. He made it
the responsibility of rulers to see to
it that their people had enough to
eat at every meal in good years and
could avoid starvation in bad years.
The opening chapter of the Mencius records that during an audi-
ence with King Hui of Liang (870-319 Bc) Mencius responded to
the
king’s question about ways to profit his state by asking, ‘Why must
Your Majesty use the word “profit”? All I am concerned with are the
good and the right. If Your Majesty says, “How can I profit my state?”
your officials will say, “How can | profit my family?” and officers and
common people will say, “How can I profit myself?” Once superiors
and inferiors are competing for profit, the state will be in danger.’ In
a subsequent conversation, Mencius told this king that if he treated
his people well by reducing taxes and lightening punishments, they
would be so eager tofight for him that even if armed onlywith sharp-
ened sticks they could defeat the well-equipped soldiers of the pow-
erful and aggressive states of Qin and Chu.
Mencius’ concern with the common people was coupled with a
comparable concern for officials who, he felt, should be treated
respectfully by the ruler and be given incomes in proportionto their
rank. He argued for the superiority of hereditary ministers over ones
The decline in human sacrifice chosen bythe ruler for their merit, wanting ministers to have some independence
and ‘accompanying in death’ from the ruler.
led to substitute representa-
In conversations with his disciples and fellow philosophers, Mencius showed
tions of attendants being
placed in graves, a practice
interests beyond government. He debated abstract issues in moral philosophy,
Confucius mentioned approv- such as the incipient nature of human beings, their inborn potential and tenden-
ingly. This painted wooden cies. Mencius came out strongly on the positive side, stressing human potential
figure of a woman was for goodness. Proof, he asserted, could be found in people’s spontaneous
unearthed from a fourth- to
fifth-century tomb at
Bc
responses to the sufferings of others: ‘Anyone today who suddenly sees a baby

Changtaiguan, Henan
aboutto fall into a well feels alarmed and concerned’ and automatically reaches

province. out to help, without thought of personal gain. Gaozi, Mencius’ philosophical
opponent, had argued that ‘Human nature is like whirling water. When an outlet
is opened to the east, it flows east; when an outlet is opened to the west, it flows
west.’ To this Mencius countered, ‘Water, it is true, is not inclined to either east or

west, but does it have no preference for high or low? Goodness is to human nature
like flowing downward
led to
is to water.’ Just as water can be forced up, people can be
be bad, but this is not their natural inclinations. In another conversation
Mencius used another analogy from nature. Ox Mountain, he said, had once been
Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period 45

covered by vegetation, but farmers had denuded it

with their animals and wood-
cutting, until anyone looking at it would think that it was barren by nature. By
implication, the lamentable way most men act is no more natural to them than

a
.

barrenness is to a mountain.
The book recording Mencius’ thought, the Mencius, is, like the Analects, a col-
lection of the philosopher’s conversations, presented in no particular order.
Inconsistencies among his ideas are left for readers to resolve. The ideas of the
next most influential Confucian thinker, Xunzi, or ‘Master Xun’ (c.310—c.220 Bc),
survive in much more coherent and orderly form because the Xunzi is a set of
essays that Xunzi wrote by and large himself.
Xunzi had much more political and administrative experience than either Con-
fucius or Mencius and showed consideration for the difficulties rulers might face
in trying to rule through ritual and virtue. At the same time he was a rigorous
thinker who extended the philosophical foundations of many ideas merely out-
lined by Confucius or Mencius. For instance, whereas Confucius had declined to
discuss gods, portents, and anomalies, Xunzi explicitly argued for a humanistic
and rationalistic view of the cosmos. He argued that heaven is impartial and
human affairs result from human efforts. Praying to heaven orto gods does not get
them to intervene. ‘Why does it rain after a prayer for rain? In my opinion, for no
reason.It is the same as raining when you had not prayed.’
Xunzi still took great interest in ritual, for he saw both beauty and social bene-
fits in its practice. He believed educated men should continue traditional ritual
practices, such as divining before major decisions and praying during droughts,
even when they know their actions do not bring about the ostensible goal. He held
that rites are valuable because they provide an orderly way to express feelings and
satisfy desires while maintaining distinctions of rank, title, and honour. Just as
music shapes people’s emotions and creates feelings of solidarity, so ritual and eti-
quette shape people's understanding of duty and create social differentiation. In
defending ritual, Xunzi was probably responding
to the attacks of the Daoists and
Mohists, discussed below.
Xunzi directly attacked Mencius’ argument that human nature tends toward
goodness, claiming to the contrary that men’s inborn tendencies are wayward and
require curbing through education. He distinguished between what is inborn in
people and what is learnt only with effort. ‘It is human nature to want to eat one’s
fill when hungry, to want to warm up when cold, to want to rest when tired.’
-Much of what is desirable does not come naturally and must be taught. ‘When a
son yields to his father, or a younger brother yields to his elder brother, or when a
son takes on the work for his father or a younger brother for his elder brother,
their actions go against their natures and run counter to their feelings. And yet
these are the way of the filial son and the principles of ritual and morality’
Mencius and Xunzi were the two best-known of the hundreds of late Zhou fol-
lowers of Confucius. Some followers became experts in ritual, others masters of
 a
46 THE CAMBRIDGE LLLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

~
Confuclus ‘ideasare
i
1s

eden
inci to.us primarily radon the say-
ings recorded by his disci ples in the Analects (Lunyu). In this
short, loosely organized text, Confucius discussed the human
~
g

oe world of families and states rather thanthe world of gods 0

“spirits. The thrust of his thought as. thus ethical rather than
a theoreticalor metaphysic : ied his idea by
fovey

a shame. ead them by means of virtue and‘regulate them :

is through rituals. and they.will have a sense of shame and. e
Soa ‘moreover have standards! @ 3).

the ancient texts. Historically, the strand emphasizing moral self-improvement is

worth particular note. Two short treatises, of unknown authorship, the Great
Learning (Daxue) and Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong), expressed these ideas
concisely and compellingly. Peace in the realm cannot be achieved without first
transforming people. A ruler must perfect his own virtue before he can regulate
his family; not until his family is in order can he hope to govern his state effec-
tively; and only on the basis of a well-governed state can he bring peace to the
entire realm. In other words, one must change oneself before one can change
other people or improve the world.

DAOISM
Confucius and his followers were activists. They believed that government bene-
fited the people and felt called on to do what they could to make the government
Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period 47

work well. Those who came tolifebe and

labelled Daoists did not accept this basic
premise. They private
defended wanted the
rulers to leave people alone.
Seeking to go beyond everyday concerns, they let
their minds wander in
the more
fanciful aspectsoflife. They did not place human beings at the centre of the cos-
mos and were concerned that human contrivance upsets the natural order of
things. Rather theyaffirmed the Way
or Dao, the indivisible, indescribable, imma-
terial force or energy that is the source of all that exists or happens.
Our knowledge of early Daoism is based mostly on two surviving books, the
Laozi and Zhuangzi. The Laozi, also called the Classic of the Way and Its Power
(Daodejing), is traditionally ascribed to Lao Dan (sixth century Bc) but was proba-
bly compiled in the third century Bc. Poetic and elliptical, this masterpiece can be
interpreted and translated in many ways. A recurrent theme in
erence for the yielding over the
it is the mystical pref-
assertive and silence over words. The highest good
48 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

is like water: ‘Water benefits all creatures but does not compete. It occupies the
places people disdain and thus comes near to the Way.’ The interdependence and
mutual transformation of allopposites is another common refrain: ‘When everyone
in the world sees beauty in the beautiful, ugliness is already there. When everyone
sees good in the good, bad is already there.’ One implication of these ideasis
that
almost any purposeful action is counterproductive, and the ruler should allow a
return to a natural state in whichthe people are ignorant and content:

Do not honour the worthy,

And the people will not compete.

Do not value rare treasures,

And the people will not steal.
Do not display what others want,
And thepeople will not have their hearts confused.
A sage governs this way:
He empties people’s minds and fills their bellies.
He weakens their wills and strengthens their bones.
Keep the people always without knowledge and without desires,
For then the clever will not dare act.
Engage in no action and order will prevail.
It would be better, the Laozi asserts, if people knew less, if they gave up tools and
abandoned writing, if they lost their desire to travel or engage in war. They would
be satisfied with their own lives and not envy their neighbours.
The other key text of Daoism is the Zhuangzi, a good portion of which was
probably written by the philosopher Zhuang Zhou or Zhuangzi (369-286 Bc).
Zhuangzi shared much of the philosophy found in the Laozi, seeing the useful-
ness of the useless and the relativity of ordinary distinctions. Uninterested in pol-
itics, he celebrated spiritual freedom. He told of receiving an envoy from the King
of Chu who offered to give him charge of the entire realm. In response he asked
the envoy whether
a tortoise that had been held as sacred for 3,000 years would
prefer to be dead with its bones venerated, or
alive with its tail dragging in the
mud. On getting the expected response he told the envoy to go away; he wished
to drag his tail in the mud.
A masterful writer, Zhuangzi filled his book with flights of fancy, parables, and
fictional encounters between historical figures, including delightfully malicious
parodies of Confucius and his disciples. Whereas Laozi was concerned with pro-
tecting each person’s life, Zhuangzi searched for a conception of man’s place in the
cosmos that would reconcile him to death. How can we be sure life is better than
death? People fear what they do not know,but like a captive girl forced to become
a king’s concubine, they may learn to love what had terrified them. When a friend
expressed surprise that Zhuangzi was singing rather than weeping after his wife
died, Zhuangzi explained:
 49

When she first died, how could have escaped feeling the loss? Then I looked
I

back to the beginning before she had life. Not only before she had life,
but
before she had form. Not only before she had form, but before she had vital
energy. In this confused amorphous realm, something changed and vital energy
appeared; when the vital energy was changed, form appeared; with changes in
form, life began. Now there is another change bringing death. This is
like the
the
four seasons of spring and autumn, winter and summer. Here

I
progression of

she was lying down to

sleep in a huge room and followed her, sobbing and
wailing. When I realized my actions showed I hadn't understood destiny,
I stopped.

Zhuangzi’s views of life

and death coloured his views on politics. In one para-
ble he had a wheelwright insolently tell a duke that books were useless since all
they contained were the dregs of men long gone. When the duke demanded either
an explanation orhis life, the wheelwright replied:

I
I
see things in terms of my own work. When chisel at a wheel, if 1 go slow, the
chisel slides and does not stay put; if I hurry, it jams and doesn’t move properly.
When
it is neither too slow nortoo fast, | can feel it in my hand and respond to
it from my heart. My mouth cannot describe it in words, but there is something
there. I cannot teach it to my son, and my son cannot learn it from me. So I have
gone on for seventy years, growing old chiselling wheels. The men of old died
in possession of what they could not transmit. So it follows that what you are
reading are their dregs.

Truly skilled craftsmen do not analyse or reason or even keep in mind the rules
they once learned; they respond to situations spontaneously, a course others
should try. In other words, rational discrimination between alternative courses of
action did not appeal to Zhuangzi as much as simply knowing, a form of under-
standing that exists beyond the need to make choices.
Both Laozi and Zhuangzi treat the Dao or Way as a key concept. In contrast to
the Confucians who used this word to refer to the ethically correct way for
humankind, the way of the sages and the true kings, the Daoists used it to referto
the way of nature, a way beyond the full comprehension of human beings but a
way with which they must seek to accord. Confucianism, with its focus on human
affairs, is properly labelled a humanistic philosophy. In Daoism human society is
seen as only a small part of the total reality, and to gain freedom and power peo-
ple must come to see their continuity with the natural world.

LEGALISM

During the fourth and third centuries Bc, as small states one after another were
conquered by large ones and the number of
surviving states dwindled, those
rulers still in contention were receptive to political theorists who claimed to
50 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHIN

‘cent lifein anciientChi

4

Music played role in court

a :

Visitors to the courts of kings

and lords could expect to be
entertained by troops of dancers and accompanying musi- wee

cians. Many of the ‘poems in the classic Book of Songs were

3
Zeng, ruler of a petty state o modern Habel just north of
the great state of Chu. In the tomb were 1243in ruments, a
including drums, flutes, ‘mouth: organs, pan ipes. zithers,
:
Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period

understand power and the techniques that would allow rulers to enhance their
control over officials and subjects. These advisors argued that strong government
depended not on the moral qualities of the ruler and his officials, as Confucians
claimed, but on establishing effective institutional structures. Their starting point
was not what society should be but what it is. These statist thinkers are usually
labelled the Legalists because of their emphasis on laws. Uninterested in cosmol-
ogy, epistemology, or personal ethics, these strategists concentrated on proposing
political solutions to disorder and techniques for the accumulation of power.
The first of the two lengthy Legalist treatises that survive has traditionally been

ascribed to Lord Shang (Gongsun Yang, d. 338 Bc), chief minister of the state of
Qin, the state that adopted Legalist policies most fully. During the late Warring
States period, Qin took a series of steps to make itself a more efficient and power-
ful state. It abolished the aristocracy, substituting a hierarchy of military titles
awarded on the objective criterion of the number of enemy heads cut off in battle.
Thus the state alone determined rank and the privileges attached to it. With fiefs
rescinded, Qin divided the country into counties governed by appointed officials.
To attract migrants from other states, new settlers were offered lands and houses.
Private serfdom was abolished and farmers were free to buy and sell land. Ordi-
nary farmers were thus freed from the domination of the local nobility, but in
exchange they had the Qin state, with all its power, directly controlling them. The
all
state organized families into mutual responsibility groups, making each person
liable for any crime committed by any other member of their group. Ordinary res-
idents also had heavy obligations to the state for taxes and labour service and
could not travel without permits; vagrants and criminals were forced into penal
labour service.
In the book ascribed to him, Lord Shang heaped scorn on respect for tradition
and urged the ruler notto hesitate to institute changes in his efforts to strengthen
his state. The founders of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou had not been afraid to make
changes, because ‘wise people create laws while ignorant ones are controlled by
them; the worthy alter the rites while the unworthy are held fast by them.’ Law to
him was the sovereign’s will, carefully codified and impartially applied. The
monarch regulates those under him through rules but he himself remains above
the law.
The fullest exposition of Legalist thought was written by Han Feizi (d. 233 Bc),
who had begun as a student of the Confucian master Xunzi. In his writings, Han
Feizi analysed situations from the perspective of the ruler. Knowing whom to
trust was a major problem for ‘when the ruler trusts someone, he falls under that
person's control’. This includes not only ministers but also wives and concubines,
in
who think of the interests of their sons. ‘A man of fifty has not lost his interest
women, but a woman begins to lose her looks before thirty. When a woman whose
looks are deteriorating serves a man who still loves sex, she will be despised and
her son is not likely to be made heir. This is the reason queens, consorts, and con-
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

cubines plot the death of the ruler.’ Given the propensity of subordinates to pur-
sue their own selfish interests, the ruler can not afford to be candid or warm
towards any of them. Rather, he should keep them in awed ignorance of his inten-
tions and control them by manipulating competition among them.
The Confucian notion that government should be based on virtue and ritual
Han Feizi viewed as unworkable in
his day. Hierarchical relations had to be based
on the power to reward and punish; affection or example were not adequate.

Think of parents’ relations to

their children. They congratulate each other when
a son is born, but complain to each other when a daughter is born. Why do par-
ents have these divergent responses when both are equally their offspring? It is
because they calculate their long-term advantage. Since even parents deal with
their children in this calculating way, what can one expect where there is
no par-
ent-child bond? When present-day scholars counsel rulers, they all tell them to
rid themselves of thoughts of profit and follow the path of mutual love. This
is
expecting rulers to go further than parents.

Han Feizi urged rulers to be firm but consistent, to make the laws and prohibi-
tions clear and the rewards and punishments automatic. This would make the
officials and common people tractable, with the result that ‘the state will get rich
and the army will be strong. Then it will be possible to succeed in establishing
hegemony over other states.’
Confucians often likened the state to the family and the good ruler to a good
parent. Han Feizi drew different conclusions from his observations of family life:
‘A mother loves her son twice as much as a father does, but a father’s orders are ten

times more effective than a mother’s.’ Moreover, he thought the common people
had about as much understanding of what is good for them as infants.

If an infant’s head is not shaved, his sores will not heal; if his boils are not
lanced, his illness will worsen. Even when someone holds him and his loving
mother does the shaving or lancing, he will howl without stop, for a baby can-
not see that a small discomfort will result in a major improvement. Now the
ruler wants people to
till
land and maintain pastures to increase their produc-
tion, but they think he
iscruel. He imposes heavy penalties to prevent wicked-
ness, but they think he is harsh. He levies taxes in cash and grain to fill the
storehouses and thus relieve them in
time of famine and have funds for the
army, but they consider him greedy. He imposes military training on everyone in
the land and makes his forces fight hard in order to capture the enemy, but they
consider him violent. In all four cases, he uses means that will lead to peace, but
the people are not happy.

Han
Feizi and other Legalists had a highly authoritarian vision of order. There was
no room for private conceptions of right and wrong because diversity leads to
weakness and disorder. Law is something rulers decree for the interests of the
Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period

state. If well publicized and enforced unwaveringly, it gets people to do things

they would not otherwise be inclined to do, such as work hard and fight wars.
Order and predictability result, bringing benefit to all. The opinions of people
other than the rulers thus had no place in this system, any more than ancient priv-
ileges or traditional customs. In Legalist thought, there was no law above and
independent of the wishes of the rulers, no law that might set limits on their
actions in the way that natural or divine law did in Greek thought.

OTHER SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

Singling out Confucians, Daoists, and Legalists for more extended discussion can
be justified in terms of their long-term impact on Chinese civilization. It does not,
however, fully capture the intellectual vitality of the late Zhou. In addition to the
masters discussed so far, there were sophists fascinated by logical puzzles, utopi-
ans and hermits who developed rationales for withdrawal from public life, agri-
culturalists who argued that no one should eat who does not plough, and
cosmologists who propounded theories concerning the forces of nature. Military
affairs, not surprisingly, also attracted theorists. The Art of War, attributed to Con-
fucius’ contemporary Master Sun, not only discussed battle tactics but also the
gathering of intelligence and other ways to deceive the enemy and win wars with-
out combat.
Special mention should also be made of theorists of yin and yang. Yin is asso-
ciated with feminine, dark, receptive, yielding, negative, and weak; yang with
opposite qualities and forces: masculine, bright, assertive, creative, positive, and
strong. The interaction of these complementary poles was viewed as integral to
the processes that generate the natural order. The rhythmic movement from day
to night and from summer to winter result from the interaction of yin and yang.
Disturbances and imbalances can disrupt this order, in the way that improper
food or inadequate rest disturb the health of the body.
Of the masters who cannot be classed as Confucian, Daoist, or Legalist, Mozi
(active c.420 Bc) is particularly interesting. Only slightly later than Confucius,
Mozi came from a lower social level. There is some evidence that he may have
been an expert in the construction of scaling ladders and other weapons used for
both war and defence. Mozi loved to debate, and the style of argument found in
the Moziis different from thatin other early texts. He laid out his criteria for judg-
ing practices and institutions. Did they work well? Were they beneficial to people?
Was there authority for them in the teachings of the sages? Did they correspond to

common experience? In calculating utility, Mozi used the entire population as the
yardstick. He argued against aggressive war, saying that territorial gain was not
worth loss of life. To do away with war, he advocated mutual concern for all, with
no favouritism for relatives and neighbours. In place of contention, he advocated
adherence to the views of superiors, up to the ruler, who follows the will of
heaven: ‘What the superior considers wrong, all shall consider wrong.’
Ui ats THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisTORY OF CHINA

Silk has. a “special accoriation witth China.Bi th

ate.
period, tothose beyond China’ s borders
Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period a i

Mozi questioned the utility of traditional ritual practices, such as mourning

austerities. He said both advocates and opponents of prolonged mourning
claimed to be handing down the ways of the ancient sages, so the only way to
choose between them was to analyse the consequences ofthe practices. His con-
clusion was that mourning interrupts work and injures health, thus it impover-
ishes the people and weakens the state’s defences. In contrast to Confucians like
Mencius who favoured hereditary office, Mozi came out strongly in favourof pro-
moting the able and worthy, even if they were peasants, craftsmen, or traders.

STATES AND ETHNIC IDENTITIES

Painted decoration on a coffin
Perhaps because the late Zhou was a time of division into separate states, it was
in the tomb of the marquis of
also a key period in the development of ideas about cultural and ethnic identity.
Zeng in Hubei province (c. 433
In other words, the weakness of the Zhou dynasty as a political force unifying the BC). These hybrid, part-human
known civilized world encouraged people to give more thought to issues of who creatures undoubtedly have
belonged together, who could be considered one of ‘us’. something to do with early
Each of the major states came to have
a distinct identity, tied to its own history
and to distinctive features of its culture. People’s identification with separate
religious beliefs in the Chu
area, perhaps representing
otherworldly guards, weapons
states was strong, and in most late Zhou literature, individuals are regularly iden- in their hands, ready to fend
tified by the state from which they came. Still, loyalties were not narrowly focused off evil forces.

on states. People moved from one state to another fre-

quently, and technological innovations and art motifs
spread readily from one region to another. To advance
diplomatic alliances the ruling houses ofthe various states
intermarried, so rulers regularly had grandmothers, moth-
ers, and wives from other states.
The idea of a broader realm on one central axis coun-
terbalanced identification with home states. This broader
realm could be referred to as ‘All-Under-Heaven’ (tianxia)
or ‘the Central States’ (zhongguo). The Zhou king, as Son
of Heaven, properly ruled over All-Under-Heaven. In late
Zhou, when it was apparent to all that the Zhou king did
not actually rule, the term ‘All-Under-Heaven’ continued
to be used refer to the civilized world, the collection of
to

states and people that belonged together. Mencius, for

instance, spoke of how a ruler who instituted good poli-
cies would please the farmers, merchants, and gentlemen
of All-Under-Heaven; thus the people of neighbouring
states would migrate to him, he would have no enemies in
All-Under-Heaven, and could reign as a true king. But All-
Under-Heaven was not an undifferentiated space or popu-
lation; it was focused onthe true king — the Son of Heaven.
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED Hisrory OF CHINA

A of centrality, this time geographical, is also appar-

notion
ent in the term ‘the Central States’, which referred to the
states along the Yellow River, a region that had been cen-
tral to the Xia and Shang and continued through the East-
ern Zhou to
set
the standard against which outsiders could
be judged deficient.
The degree to which outsiders were held to be deficient
varied along a continuum. At one end were thosé totally
outside the Zhou sphere, who did not recognize even the
nominal sovereignty of the Zhou kings. The distinction
between Zhou subjects and those who did not submit to
the Zhou tended to be merged with the distinction
between Hua or Xia people (which by this period can be
taken as ethnic terms for Chinese) and barbarians, of
whom there were several broad categories (Yi, Man, Di,
Rong) and a great many particular names for specific tribes
or cultures. A Rong lord allied with the state of Jin was
reported to have said in 599 sc, ‘Our Rong drink, our food,
our clothes are all different from those of the Hua. We do
not exchange presents with them. Our languages are
mutually incomprehensible.’
The concept of ‘barbarian’ was not invested with what
we would call racial characteristics. People’s physical
endowments were not seen as what makes them different.
Rather, there seems to have been a rather sophisticated
understanding of the variability of customs. Mozi, for
instance, to prove that people think that whatever has
been done inthe past is right, gave some examples of
Bronze oil lamp, almost 32
inches tall, excavated from the
strange beliefs and practices. ‘Formerly east of Yue there was the country of
fourth-century-Bc tomb of a
Shaishu whose residents would dismember and eat
the first-born
son, saying they
did so out of obligation toward the younger sons. After a grandfather died, they
Zhongshan king at Pingshan,
Hebei province. Although the would carry off the grandmother and abandon her, saying one could not live with
state of Zhongshan was estab- the wife of a ghost.’ Mozi sawthese customs as
strange, but did not suggest or
lished by the Di people, by the imply that the people themselves were beastly. Mencius had a similar sense of the
fourth century Bc its elite had
relativity of culture. ‘The northern tribes do not grow allthe five grains, only mil-
absorbed much of Chinese let. They have no cities, houses, orritual sacrifices. They do not provide gifts or
material and literary culture.
This lamp with fifteen oil cups banquets for feudal lords, and do not have full array of officials. Therefore, for
shows both superb casting them, [a tax of] one part in twenty is enough. But we live in the Central States.
technique and distinctive How could we abolish social roles and do without gentlemen?’ Xunzi said, ‘Chil-
motifs, such as monkeys dren born among the Yue in the south or among the Mo barbarians of the north
hanging from the branches
sound the same when they cry at birth, but as they get older they follow different
of a tree.
customs.’ If culture is a by-product of environment as Mencius implied, or an
accretion of custom as Mozi and Xunzi implied, it follows that people can acquire
cultures, and in Confucian teachings there are in fact many statements that reveal
a conviction that people can be transformed from barbarians to civilized beings.
When someone asked Confucius how he could consider moving to live among
uncouth barbarians, he responded, ‘If a gentleman lived among them, what
uncouthness would there be?’
For the late Zhou, there is considerable evidence, both textual and archaeolog-
ical, of the process by which the Chinese world was extended and groups that had
once been considered barbarian or quasi-barbarian came to participate in the Chi-
nese world as full members. In early Zhou the southern half of modern China was
considered barbarian or semi-barbarian. In the Yangzi valley the state of Chu
expanded rapidly, defeating and absorbing fifty or more small states as it extended
its reach north to the heartland of Zhou and east to absorb the old states of Wu
and Yue. Bythis point it controlled a territory as extensive as the Shang or West-
ern Zhou dynasties at their heights. The tremendous material wealth of Chu can
be gauged by the large number of late Zhou tombs found within its sphere. In art
it borrowed and elaborated styles from further north and added distinctive ele-
ments not present elsewhere, such as antlered cranes, motifs which may have con-
nectionsto distinctive religious ideas.
The Chu ruling elite was certainly conversant with both the material and intel-
lectual culture of the Central States, and by late Zhou was contributing to that cul-
ture in a major way. Chu, for example, proved an innovator both in bureaucratic
methods of government and in the use of infantry armies. Zhuangzi spent some
time in Chu, and many scholars associate Daoism with Chu. The fantastical
poems in the Songs of Chu (Chuci) are worlds apart from the earth-bound poems
of the Books of Songs of the early Zhou. The principal poem is presented as the
lament of Qu Yuan, a minister whose loyalty to his ruler is not appreciated and
who ends up throwing himself into a river. In the poem Qu Yuan imagines him-
self wandering on the clouds and looking down on the earth. There are also
poems in which shamans and shamanesses court elusive deities or fly through the
spirit world.
The history of Chu can be compared to that of a much more minor state in the
northeast, Zhongshan. The rulers of this state were recognized to be White Di,
non-Chinese nomads who in the sixth century Bc had been driven by other tribes
from Shaanxi into Hebei, where the local Chinese states were unable to expel
them. By the early fifth century Bc, these Di had gained the help of the state of Wei
and had established a city, from which they ruled for about a century before being
defeated bythe state of Yan, further north. Excavations of two tombs of kings of
Zhongshan show acculturation to the taste and values of the Chinese amongst
whom they lived. The figurines found in the graves are dressed in clothes more
typically Chinese than northern. The ninety-odd inscribed bronzes buried there
give detailed accounts of historical events in typically Confucian language. At the
58 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

same time the royal tombs also contained artefacts needed for life on the steppe,
such as hardware for tents. Shortly before the downfall of the state of Zhongshan,
the king of a neighbouring state sent someone to assess Zhongshan, and this spy
reported on his return that the king of Zhongshan loved learning, his people
sought fame, but his soldiers were cowardly.

The ideas expounded in the late Zhou originated in specific geographical and
temporal circumstances. The preference of the Daoists for private life and the
earnest wish of the Confucians and Mohists for a moral transformation of
humankind can be seen as responses to the brutality of the era. Moreover, late
Zhou schools of thought had strong ties to particular regions of the country where
they were first propounded and where followers found adherents.
Still, because the ideas of these thinkers were recorded in ‘books’ — actually,
rolls of bamboo strips or silk — in time the ideas expressed in them were détached
from their historical and geographical context. In this detached form, they came
to play an enormous role in shaping the development of Chinese culture. Chinese
education until modern times involved deep immersion in texts from this period.
Chinese who read these texts were not prevented from learning of very different
ways of looking at the world (the success of Buddhism is proof enough of that),
and certainly they always were capable of disagreeing with each other on how to
interpret and apply what they learned from ancient books, but it would be diffi-
cult to exaggerate the importance of these books in providing a common set of
understandings about the world and the people who live in it. This influence was
of course greatest on the educated, but over time as education spread and the edu-
cated interacted in more varied ways with the ordinary illiterate farmer, the most
basic elements in these cultural orientations came to be widely shared and thus to
constitute a large part of what is meant by ‘Chinese’ culture.
China was not the only place where key philosophical ideas were elaborated in
the first millennium Bc. In India of the Upanishads and the Buddha, in Greece of
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as in China of the Hundred Schools of Thought,
to
intellectual breakthroughs occurred as cultural or religious experts ceased limit
themselves to expounding the rules of their culture and began to stand back and
look beyond, to question and reflect on established conventions. In all these
places creative individuals began to propose new visions and perspectives. But the
visions thinkers of each region offered were rather different, with the result that
the outpouring of reflective thought in this era marks a major step in the diver-
gence of civilizations. When late Zhou philosophers are compared to Indian or
Greek thinkers, their disagreements fade a bit and what all Chinese thinkers had
in common becomes more striking.
At the cosmological level all the major philosophical schools in China shared
ideas related to ancestors and heaven discussed in the last chapter. They also
shared an underlying assumption that the cosmos came into being on its own,
Philosophical Foundations: The Eastern Zhou Period 59

without a creator of the sort so important in most western thinking. Instead of

focusing on mechanisms that set things into motion, which are important where
there is an assumption of a creator, these thinkers emphasized the organismic
interconnections among all the constituent parts, stressing relationships and con-
currences much more than causes. Seeing the cosmos as an integrated whole, Chi-
nese thinkers were not inclined to organize their world in terms of opposites that
exclude the other, such as natural and supernatural, life and death, or mind and
body. Rather, they saw all oppositions as complementary polarities, on the order
of night and day, yin and yang, and knowledge and action. Moreover, they thought
in terms of processes and phases more than discrete things.
At the level of social and political order, differences between Chinese assump-
tions or basic cultural orientations and those of other major civilizations are also
telling. Particularly important here is the unchallenged conviction that the family
is both natural and good. Unlike Greece, for instance, where the ‘private’ realm of
the family was not given the positive evaluation of the public realm of the polis,
in China devotion to family was taken as an obvious good. Laozi’s utopia is not
one that liberates the individual from the family, but one that lets families operate
with little or no pressure from social or political units much larger than the vil-
lage. Not only did Chinese thinkers assume that the family is essential to society,
they also did not question that it is patrilineal and patriarchal. The family thus
also provided for many a model for the ideal political order, one centred on an
authoritarian ruler who would make hierarchical co-operation as natural as
seemed to them in the family.
it
Political visions also show considerable agreement. Among all Chinese
thinkers of the period, order was viewed as inextricably connected to rulers,
indeed to cosmically based universal kings. It is the universal king who embodies
political order and possesses the power to transform the society below him for
good orill. Law, by contrast, was not granted comparable power by any Chinese
thinker. Whether from a Confucian, a Legalist, or even a Daoist perspective, law
was viewed as an expedient, not as something noble or inviolable, or something
that exists above and beyond the ruler.
Another widespread conviction in Chinese thought, one that contrasts espe-
cially with early Indian thought, is the belief that life in this world can be
improved. Most major schools of thought, with the important exception of the
Legalists, looked to the early Zhou or even earlier to ancient rulers like Yao, Shun,
and Yu for a better world. This belief in a golden age also meant that Chinese
thinkers, lamenting the failings of their own age, did not conclude that reality or
goodness lay in some other, unworldly realm. Achieving a golden age in this
world was possible.
60 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HistoRrY OF CHINA

CHAPTER 3
The Creation of the
Bureaucratic Empire:
The Qin and Han Dynasties 256 Bc—Ap 220
With Qin’s victories over all of its rivals, China became a great agrarian empire.
The centralized bureaucratic monarchy, the form of government that was char-to
acterize mostof the rest Chinese history, was created by the Qin (ruled all of
of in
China 221-206 Bc) and entrenched during the much longer Han dynasty (202
BC-AD 220). It was in this period too that the geographic scope of China*proper —
the region in which Chinese were to become the dominant ethnic group — was
staked out as the government extended overlordship across vast regions as far
south as Vietnam. The ideology of the new state incorporated elements of Legal-
ist, Daoist, and Confucian origin, but the officials who administered the state
came to be identified more and more with Confucian learning, giving them a
degree of independence from the throne. Overtime local elites were drawn both
to Confucian learning and to government service, and the Han government came
very much to depend on co-operation between local officials and the local elites.

UNIFICATION BY QIN
Qin, the westernmost of the Zhou states, had begun as a royal domain assigned
the task of raising horses and defending against the barbarians. After the Zhou
royal house fled the Wei River valley to resettle at Luoyang in 770 Qin was able
Bc,
to expandits territory and become the main power in the west. Not as urban or as
culturally advanced as the eastern states, Qin seemed in early and mid Zhou times
a rough and crude place, not that far removed from the Rong, Qiang, and Di tribes
along its frontiers with which it regularly fought.
To help them strengthen their state, the Qin rulers of late Zhou times recruited
advisors, strategists, and diplomats from the territories of their rivals. Lord Shang
arrived in Qin in 361 sc and soon launched
a series of Legalist measures intended
to strengthen the power of the ruler (see pages 49-53, Chapter 2). By the third
century BC, the people of Qin had become exceptionally law-abiding, agricultural
production had been increased, and direct taxation was bringing substantial rev-
enues to the king’s coffers. On visiting Qin in about 264 Bc, the Confucian
philosopher Xunzi reported that the people stood in deep awe of their officials
the
and officials were serious and sincere, free from the tendency to form cliques.
The man who was to preside over the unification of China, King Zheng, came
to the throne in as
247 a boy of nine. With the aid of two key ministers, Lt: Buwei
and Li Si, he led Qin to one military victory after another. In the final decade, from
230 to 221 Bc, Qin conquered the states of Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yan, and Qi.
—_—_
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties 61

6
Bronze weight, °A inches
high, excavated from the ruins
of the Qin palace in Xianyang,
Shaanxi province. Cast on to it
are the name of the workman
who
it
made and the unit of
weight, bearing testimony to
the Qin standardization of
measurement,

Finally ruling ‘All-Under-Heaven’, King Zheng took a new title for himself, First
Emperor (Shi huangdi). ‘Emperor’ (huangdi) was a term he coined by combining
two words for ‘august’ and ‘lord’, words that until then had been used for the leg-
endary sage rulers of China’s remote past.
Later Chinese historians did not celebrate the First Emperor as one of the
greatest conquerors of all time (as one suspects Greek or Roman historians would
have), but rather castigated him as a cruel, arbitrary, impetuous, suspicious, and
superstitious megalomaniac. The First Emperor was determined not only to amal-
gamate China into a single state, but to impose uniformity on it. Maintaining local
forms of currency, weights and measures, or writing scripts was made an act of
treason. The old states and their noble houses were abolished; the country was
divided into thirty-six commanderies, each in turn divided into counties. The
government dispatched officials to administer these new units and controlled
them by a mass of regulations, reporting requirements, and penalties for inade-
quate performance. To guard against the possibility of local leaders organizing
rebellions, private possession of arms was made illegal and hundreds of thousands
of prominent or wealthy families from the conquered states were ordered to move
to the capital, Xianyang (near Xi’an in Shaanxi province). As a result of the First
Emperor’s thoroughness, China lost much of its heritage, including local tradi-
tions of all sorts.
Criticism of the government was not tolerated by the First Emperor, who
wanted the government to control knowledge. Education was to be provided only
by officials and solely for the purpose of training future officials. After his advisor
Li Si complained that scholars used records of the past to denigrate the emperor's
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties 63

policies and undermine popular support, all writings other than useful manuals Opposite
on topics like agriculture, medicine, or divination were ordered to be collected for
The vast size of the terracotta
burning. Recalcitrant scholars were also suppressed — tradition holds that 460 army buried about a
half mile
from the tomb ofthe First
were buried alive in a common grave as a warning against defiance of the Emperor of
Qin near Xi’an in
emperor's orders. Shaanxi province points to
Ordinary people also suffered harsh treatment. Reporting crimes was rewarded, both the might of the Qin mili-
and the lawbreakers, once convicted, were punished severely by execution, hard tary machine and the concern
of the First Emperor with the
labour, or mutilation (ranging from cutting off the whiskers to the nose or the left
afterlife. Originally painted in
foot). Even perfectly law-abiding people were subject to onerous labour service, twelve or thirteen bright
and both conscripted and penal labour were used for the building of palaces, colours, these life-sized fig-
roads, canals, imperial tombs, and fortifications. Several hundred thousand sub- ures were made from moulded
jects were conscripted to build a huge new palace complex in 212 Bc. Even more interchangeable parts but
were hand finished, so that no
were drafted to construct the Great Wall. Earlier states had built ramparts of
two are identical. To add to
rammed earth along their borders. Qin knocked down those that separated the
the sense of verisimilitude,
old states and connected those along the northern frontier to make a vast defen- : they were equipped with real
sive system to protect against incursions from the nomads to the north. chariots and bronze weapons.
The First Emperor's successes were due in no small measure to his determina-
tion to manage every detail of his government himself. He set quotas for the
weight of documents he would read and dispose of each day, not resting until he
had finished his paperwork. He made several tours of the country to inspect his
new realm and awe his subjects. At sacred places he erected stone tablets inscribed
with accounts of his exploits; his empire, he declared in one, extended in alldirec-
tions, so that ‘Wherever human life is found, all acknowledge itssovereignty.’
After surviving three assassination attempts the First Emperor became
obsessed with avoiding death and devoted his energies to discovering the secrets
of immortality. He sent a delegation of young men and women out to
sea to search
for Peng Lai, a mythical land of immortality. Historical accounts of the vast sums
and huge labour contingents he expended on the secret construction of his tomb
have been verified by archaeological excavations. Three pits discovered about half
a mile from the emperor's tomb (not itself yet excavated) contain thousands of
life-size terracotta figures of armed soldiers and horses, lined up to protect the
emperor.

THE HAN GOVERNMENT

The institutions Qin had fashioned to concentrate power in the hands of the
monarch made the stability of the government dependent on the strength and
character of the occupant of the throne. When the First Emperor died in 210 Bc,
the Qin imperial structure fell apart. The legitimate heir was promptly murdered
by his younger brother and uprisings soon followed. In 209 Bc a group of con-
scripted peasants delayed by rain decided to become outlaws rather than face
death for arriving late for their frontier service. To their surprise they soon found
thousands of malcontents eager to join them. Similar revolts of people eager to
64 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED Hisrory OF CHINA

escape the burden ofQin labour and military service broke out elsewhere. In 208
Bc the Second Emperor killed his minister Li Si; in 207 Bc he was assassinated by
the new chief minister, who was in turn murdered by the successor he
placed on
the throne. Meanwhile, Qin generals were defecting and former nobles of the
late
Zhou states took to raising armies. The eventual victor was Liu Bang, known in
history as Gaozu (r. 202-195 Bc), a man of modest background who had served
the Qin as a minorlocal functionary, in charge of a postal relay station. In 206 Bc
he took the title King of Han and in 202 sc defeated his main rival, the brilliant
aristocratic general Xiang Yu. Gaozu made his capital at Chang’an, only a few
miles from the site of the Qin capital, which had been burnt tothe ground during
the rebellion.
The bureaucratic government At the time Qin was overthrown, most people apparently associated centraliza-
of Han times produced huge tion with tyranny and believed the Han government should parcel out domains as
quantities of documents on the early Zhou had. Gaozu thus began by rewarding his old comrades with large
wooden and bamboo strips,
territories to govern as vassal states, an action he soon recognized as a mistake,
and great caches of such docu-
since dispersed power proved a danger to the emperor. Thus the challenge for the
ments have been found among
the ruins of the garrisons early Han government was to develop a form of centralized power that could ~

established along the north- secure order and dynastic stability without undue harshness, one that, in more
western frontier. The one Chinese terms, combined military strength (wu) with the morally centred civil
shown here was excavated at
arts (wen).
Juyan in Gansu province;
The Han dynasty retained Qin’s principal weapon against the old aristocracy,
dated Ap 95,it is an inventory
of the equipment of two namely direct administration of localities by officials appointed by the court for
infantry units. their merit, not their birth, and subject to dismissal, transfer, and discipline. Han
prefects and magistrates had broad responsibilities and
powers: they judged lawsuits, collected and dispatched
taxes, performed ceremonies of the state-sponsored reli-
gion, commanded troops, decided when and how to
undertake public works like flood control, kept an eye on
the local economy and local education, and selected sub- -

ordinates from the local population. Those successful as

local administrators could be promoted to serve at court as
the head of a ministry or as a counsellor to the emperor.
The key figure in the strengthening of the Han govern-
mental apparatus was Wudi (r. 141-87 Bc), emperor fot
over fifty years. After coming to the throne as a vigorous
young man of fifteen, Wudi set about curbing the power of
princes and other lords; he confiscated the domains of
overhalf of them on whatever pretext he could find. More-
over he decreed that domains would have to be divided
among all the lord’s heirs, thus guaranteeing that they
would diminish in size with each passing generation. He
curbed the power of great merchants as well, in the
_‘
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire:
p The Qin and Han Dynasties
y 65

“The Han Empire, 2028¢ — AD220

Ries
~
7
7

_
Mongo bi au
ee
Lake Balkhash Alts jo. G6
oe
bi
:

es KIONGNU KR Ne
SS
Tian Shan
as ae
Turkestan “Ferghana
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Samarkand,
ioe

ARABIAN
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=

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Former Han Empire c.140BC territory under Han protectorate trade routes
territory added by Former Han by AD9 <— main Han military expeditions 5 trading centres
territory added by Later Han AD25-220 “Great Wall, rebuilt 220-2108 &
imperial centres

process gaining new sources of revenue through his state monopolies and com- The Han dynasty asserted sov-
mercial taxes. In foreign relations he was especially aggressive, reversing earlier —_¢Feignty over vast regions
froin, Korea ia FREeast To Cece
conciliatory policies (see below). In the cultural realm he imposed his authority
tral Asia in the west and
as well. He instituted imperial rituals as grand as the empire he ruled. He lured the Vietnam in the south. Once
finest writers and scholars to his court and at the same time suppressed rival cul- garrisons were established,
tural centres, including’some princely courts. traders were quick tofollow,
Wudi and other Han emperors, like the Qin emperors before them, were essen- leading to considerable spread
of Chinese material culture.
tially above the law, autocrats of theoretically unlimited powers. But rather than
try to control officials through Legalist means such as exhaustive specification of
rules and procedures, Wudi and other Han rulers made use of Confucian notions
of the moral basis of superior—subordinate relations, appreciating that in the long
run the ruler would achieve his goals more easily and economically when sub- his
ordinates viewed their relationship with the ruler in moral terms of loyalty and
66 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

responsibility. To cultivate such attitudes in his officials, Wudi

became
a patron of Confucian education (see below).
One problem Wudi did not solve was the vulnerability of the
imperial institution when a young or weak-willed emperor suc-
ceeded to the throne. Men of the imperial lineage — brothers and
sons of emperors — were regularly sent out of the capital to their
domains and were thus effectively kept out of court politics.
The same was not true of the male relatives of emperors’ wives
and mothers, who thus often became influential figures at
court. After Gaozu died, his strong-willed widow, Empress Lt,
took control and promoted the interests of her family. On her
death fifteen years later, her relatives were executed. Over a cen-

tury later Wang Mang came to power as a relative of Empress

Wang (d. AD 13), a woman of importance at court for more than
forty years as the widow of one emperor, mother of another, and
grandmother of a third. In ap 9, after serving as regent during
the reigns of two child emperors, Wang Mang acceded to the .

requests that he take the throne himself and founded the Xin or
‘New dynasty.
Although condemned by later historians as a usurper, Wang
Gilt bronze figure of a maid- Mang was a learned Confucian scholar who sincerely wished to implement polit-
servant holding an oil-lamp, ical programmes described in the classics. He renamed offices, asserted state own-
almost 19 inches tall, exca-
ership of forests and swamps, built ritual halls, revived public granaries, and cut
vated from the tomb of Dou
court expenses. Yet Wang Mang’s policies, particularly the repeated issuing of new
Wan, wife of one of Emperor
Wu's brothers, at Mancheng in coins and nationalization of gold, led to economic turmoil. Added to this, in ap 11
Hebei province. This elegant the Yellow River changed course to exit south rather than north of the Shandong
gilded bronze lamp was clev- peninsula, flooding enormous tracts of land and driving millions of peasants from
erly designed to allow
adjustments in the directness
their homes. Opponents of Wang Mang soon came to include displaced and hun-

and brightness of the light and gry peasants, landlords who had suffered under his fiscal policies, Confucian
scholars who regarded Wang Mang as a usurper, and members of the Liu imperial
to trap smoke in the body. It
was oneof the nearly 3,000 family. The eventual victor was Liu Xiu (reigned as Guangwu, AD 25-57), a mem-
objects of bronze, iron, gold, ber of the imperial clan whose family for generations had lived not as nobles but
silver, jade, pottery, lacquer,
as substantial local landlords. From the beginning, he made Luoyang on the east-
and silk from this huge tomb
that testify to the luxury and ern plain his capital. The period after Wang Mang is conventionally called the
Later or Eastern Han (25-220), the period before him the Former or Western Han
refinement of palace life.
(206 Bc-aD 9), east and west referring to the location of the capitals.

THE STEPPE AND THE SILK ROAD

The success of the unified bureaucratic form of government owes a great deal to
military necessity: beginning in the third century Bc, in order to fend off incur-
sions from the steppe, north China needed a government capable of deploying
huge, well-trained fighting forces.
Th e Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties 67

‘Sima Qian and the Historical Records

The way the Chinese have conceived of their past - and thus a 1

Chief Minister Xiao was in charge of the construction

of
in “the Eternal Palace and was working ‘on the eastern and
|

was profoundly shaped by a book written

—

of themselves —

: he
Han times, the Historical Records (Shiji) of Sima Qian western. gate towers, the front hall, the arsenal, and the:
his

6
ae
145-c.85 8c). Before Sima Qian was able to complete storehouse. When Gaozu arrived and saw the magnifi-
history, he made the political mistake defending a general
of ae cence of the buildings, hewas: outraged. ‘Warfare. has
who ‘had surrendered to the Xiongnu. Given a choice kept.‘the empire in turmoil for. years, and victory, isnot.
between death and becoming a palace eunuch, hechosethe i
yet assured. What is. the idea of buil ding palaces onsuch oe

oe
0as
humiliation of castration and servitude rather than leave his -: a an excessive Sealey
:
ee
:
history unfinished. Fe: wrote to a friend that he had chosen ATES precisely because the: ate of the ‘empire.is
tt ee
to live in disgrace “because | have things in my heart that eee “yet settled’ Xiao He responded, *that we need to puil do

ee
i

: havenot
been abl € to. express fully’.
The resulting monumental work in
j
130 chapters presents
the past from. several perspectives: a chronological narrative
|S
a8 SS and halls like true Son. of Heaven

ofpol litical events; topical accounts: oF key institutions; and

=
_ biographies of
inert individuals, The political narrative
n
:

2 ae
es wie postandard.
itical narratives,‘treatises, and bi 24 :

‘Equally important, Sima Qian, by

Hos well on so much, had a profound impact on Chinese
eS

-
ue
by
thinking about government, personal achievement, and - even.

a
the nature of China. Government, for instance, was too com-
plex to be narratedaround rulers alone: ‘institutional prac- ©
tices had their own complex histories that had.to be told in ae
thelr own terms. The way Sima Qian constructed biogra shies
ly reflected and shapes
restanis of thej in

versation between the fist emperor of the Han, ae ee S

Liu: Bang), and his chief minister Miao
of his reign:
i
He in the
scan
ae ess
ae
ae
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

From long before Han times, China's contacts with the

outside world had involved a combination of trade and
military conflict. Chinese products like silk and lacquer-
ware were superior to those of its neighbours, creating a
demand for Chinese goods. Some neighbours had goods
they could offer in exchange, such as timber, horses, sheep
and cattle. But raiding was a common alternative to trade;
non-Chinese groups who found that they could acquire
the goods they wanted by force had less incentive to
trade.
Moreover, those normally willing to trade might turn to
raiding when previously established trade relations were
disrupted or when drought drove them to desperate
measures. Defending against the raids of non-Chinese
peoples had been a problem since Shang times, but with
the rise of nomadism in the arid steppe north of China
proper in mid Zhou, the severity of the problem was
greatly exacerbated.
The Inner Asian steppe is a vast region of grasslands,
mountains, and deserts, capable of supporting only a
sparse population. In the best grasslands, such as those of
The metal ornaments of the modern Mongolia, rainfall is too light for grain to grow but animals can be pas-
Xiongnu provide convincing tured. Nomads of the steppe near China raised sheep, goats, camels, and horses,
moving their camps north in summer and south in winter. Their skill as horsemen
evidence that they were in
contact with nomadic pas-
and hunters, especially their ability to shoot arrows while riding horseback, made
toralists further west in Asia,
such as the Scythians, who them a potent military striking force. The typical social structure of the steppe
also fashioned metal plaques nomads was tribal, with family and clan units held together through loyalty to
and buckles in animal designs. chiefs selected for their military prowess. This structure could be exploited
This gold buckle or ornament, for efficient military mobilization when enough tribal units coalesced. The
about 3 inches long, probably
differences in the modes of living of farmers and herders led to sharp contrasts in
dates from the third
their social values. For most of the imperial period, Chinese farmers looked on
century BC.

horse-riding pastoralists as a scourge, as pitiless gangs of bullies who preferred

robbing to working for their living. The nomads, for their part, gloried in their
military might and looked with scorn on farmers as weaklings incapable of
defending themselves.
The first great confederation of nomadic tribes in Inner Asia was formed by the

Xiongnu in the late third century Bc. The First Emperor of Qin sent 100,000
troops against them in 213 Bc, and his Great Wall was intended for defence
against them. The early Han emperors tried conciliatory policies, wooing the
Xiongnu leaders with generous gifts, including silk, rice, cash, and even imperial
as
princesses brides. Critics of these policies feared that they merely strengthened
the enemy; and indeed, in 166 Bc 140,000 horseman raided deep into China,
reaching a point less than 100 miles from the capital.
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties 69

Wudi took the offensive. He sent 300,000 troops far into Xiongnu territory in
133 Bc. Subsequent expeditions, like those in 124, 123, and 119, often involved
over 100,000 men. These campaigns were enormously expensive, requiring long
supply lines and entailing great losses of men and horses. The gain was territory:
regions north and west of the capital were acquired, cutting off the Xiongnu from
the proto-Tibetan Qiang, whom they had subjugated. Four commanderies were
established in Gansu, and more than a million people were dispatched to colonize
this northwest region. At the same time Wudi sent troops into northern Korea to
establish commanderies that would flank the Xiongnu on their eastern border.
Wudi turnedhis attention to Central Asia as well, in part to find allies, in part
to improve the supply of horses for the army. In 139 Bc he sent one of his officials,
Zhang Qian, west in search of allies to fight against the Xiongnu. Captured and
kept prisoner for ten years, Zhang eventually escaped and made his way Bactria
to
and Ferghana, returning in 126 Bc. In 115 Bc he set out on a second journey west.
From his reports, the Chinese learned for the first time of other civilized states
Retinues of soldiers and atten-
comparable to China that had developed independently of China. Ferghana, for dants that accompanied
instance, he described as 10,000 li (about 3,000 miles) due west of China, a land officials when they travelled
of fortified cities and dense population, that grew wheat and grapes for wine and were an important symbol of
had fine horses that sweated blood. He described Parthia in similar terms, but official rank, and many Later
Han tombs had paintings of
drew particular attention to its merchants and to its coins, made of silver and
them on their walls. More
bearing the image of the king’s face. Zhang Qian discovered that these regions spectacular isthis set of
were already importing Chinese products, especially silk. In 101 8c, after three bronze figures excavated from
years’ effort, a Chinese army made its way beyond the Pamir Mountains to defeat a second-century-AD tomb at

Ferghana, seize large numbers of its excellent horses, and gain recognition of Chi- Leitai in Gansu. Altogether
this procession included sev-
nese overlordship, thus obtaining control over the trade routes across Central
enteen soldiers, twenty-eight
Asia. The territorial reach of the Han state had been vastly extended.
attendants, thirty-nine horses,
Soon the threat of the Xiongnu began to recede. In 55 Bc the Xiongnu confed- and fourteen carriages, each
eration broke up into five contending groups. Not long afterwards the chief of the roughly a foot tall.
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisTORY OF CHINA

southern Xiongnu acceded

to tributary statusVassal
like that of the tribes and states
had send
along China’s western and southern borders. states to a prince as
a hostage to the Chinese capital where he would be given a Chinese education.
Vassals also had to send periodic missions with tributary gifts, a practice that
appealed to them because it
allowed opportunities for trade. To the Chinese the
tribute system was costly but it avoided war and confirmed that China was the
centre of the civilized world. Over the course of the dynasty the Han government
gave enormous quantities of silk to the states and tribes that accepted tributary
status; in 25 BC, for instance, it gave out 20,000 rolls of silk and about 20,000
pounds of silk floss. It has been estimated that nearly 10 percent of state revenues
went on gifts of this sort.
of the silk acquired by the Xiongnu and other northern tributaries even-
Much

tually ended in lands far to the west. Chinese silk was already popular in Rome
up

by the and
time Julius Caesar died in 44 3c, ineven larger quanti-
was imported
ties in subsequent decades. This silk reached Rome after passing though many
hands; the middlemen included Sogdian, Parthian, and Indian merchants. The
silk arrived both as skeins of silk thread and as woven silk cloth produced in
China itself or in Syrian workshops. Caravans returning to China brought gold,
horses, and occasionally luxury goods of west Asian origin such as glass beads
and cups.
When the power of
the Han government waned under Wang Mang and the
civil war that accompanied his fall, many of the distant territories broke away
from China, but during the Later Han period, Chinese authority was reasserted.
The generals Ban Chao and his son Ban Yong re-established Han supremacy in
Central Asia, Ban Chao marching an army past the Pamir Mountains in Ap 97. The
city-states along the Silk Road did not necessarily resist the Chinese presence;
they could carry out the trade upon which they depended more conveniently with
Chinese garrisons to protect them than with rivaltribes raiding them.
The danger for the Han government was over-extension; supplying such dis-
tant frontiers could bankrupt the government. Maintaining the supply of horses,
for instance, was a constant problem, even after the government set up vast horse
farms. The Han government vigorously pursued cost-cutting ways to defend its
far-flung borders. It set up military colonies along the frontiers where soldiers
could be self-supporting and recruited non-Chinese nomads to
serve as auxiliary
forces. In the Later Han, the Southern Xiongnu, who had been offered land and
other inducements to
ally with the Han, were frequently used as the main forces
to fight the common enemy, the Northern Xiongnu. But defence remained costly,
and the need to support a huge military establishment kept pressure on the gov-
ernment tomaintain its
efficiency in extracting revenue and to improve transport
facilities by building roads, bridges, and canals.
 The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties

MYTH, MAGIC, AND THE MARVELLOUS

Perhaps because of the influence of the culture of the Chu region — the home of
the Han founder and most of his early followers — Han art and literature are rich
to
in references spirits, portents, myths, the strange-and powerful, the death-defy-
ing and the dazzling. The Huainanzi, a Daoist-tinged compilation of texts spon-
sored by the prince of Huainan during the mid second century Bc, contains lore of
mountain gods, some with human faces and dragons’ bodies, and describes the
magic realm of the Kunlun Mountains in the far west where immortality could be
attained. Han emperors attempted to make contact with the world of gods and
immortals through elaborate sacrifices, often designed by Daoist magicians.
Wudi, in particular, welcomed to his court astrologers, alchemists, seers, and
shamans; he listened to stories of how Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, had
ascended to the realm of the immortals with his whole court and all
his consorts.
Both at court and among the general population the desire to understand the
workings of cosmic forces and predict the future led to intense interest in omens
and portents. In the years leading up to and following Wang Mang’s accession,
portents of coming change were repeatedly discovered, including rocks and other
objects with messages inscribed on them. Although both Wang Mang’ allies and
opponents may well have manipulated much of this, they were building on an
abiding belief in messages from heaven.
The fate of the dead was similarly a subject of intense concern in Han times.
The soul was conceived to have two aspects. The lighter, more heavenly part
would ascend to the clouds and might possibly enter the realm of the immortals.
The more earthly part of the soul stayed in or near the grave and benefited from
the food and other goods placed in the grave. Constructing and furnishing a grave
was thus not simply an act of good will toward the dead, but also a way for the liv-
ing to protect themselves from the anger of dissatisfied ghosts. Notions of post-
mortem judgement — so important in later Chinese religion — began to appear in
Han times. Soon after the establishment of the centralized bureaucratic empire, it
seems, the otherworld became bureaucratized as well. Han tombs contain item-
ized lists of their contents addressed to the Lord Master of the Dead. Other texts
mention the tribunal on Mount Tai, a sacred mountain in Shandong, where the
records of the living and the dead were judged and appropriate rewards and pun-
ishments meted out.
During the Han period, the hope for deathlessness or immortality found
expression in the cult of a goddess called the Queen Mother of
the West. Her par-
adise was portrayed as a land of marvels where trees of deathlessness grew and
rivers of immortality flowed. Mythical birds and beasts were her constant com-
panions, including the three-legged crow, the dancing toad, the nine-tailed fox,
and the elixir-producing rabbit. People of
all social levels expressed their devotion
to her, and shrines were erected under government sponsorship throughout the
country. At times worship of her reached frenzied proportions. As illustration,
an

sai

ice

i
ial

hania
72

Left
Bronze ‘money tree’ of Eastern Han date excavated at
Guanghan in Sichuan province. The common coin of Han
times (round with a square hole) magically grows on this
nearly five-foot-tall tree. The Queen Mother of the West
is shown perching like a bird, seated on her dragon-and-
tiger throne. Money trees of this sort have been found
only in Sichuan.

Below
Inscribed on this small Han bronze mirror are the words:
‘The blue dragon made this mirror of unsurpassed qual-
ity. May you attain the highest political rank like the King
Father of the East. May you attain longevity like the
Queen Mother of the West.’ The Queen Mother, with
wings, has two seated attendants at her side, while the
King Father isattended by a standing man. Probably
because the dominant yin-yang cosmology called for com-
plementary pairing, by Later Han times the Queen
Mother of the West was often paired with the King Father
of the East.
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties 73

the History of the Han provided the following vivid account from 3 BC:

People were running about in

state of alarm, holding stalks of hemp that
they passed from one to
another, saying they were delivering the wand of
the edict of the Queen Mother of
the West. Thousands of people converged
on the roads, some with dishevelled hair or barefoot... They passed
.

through twenty-six commanderies and principalities on their way to the

capital... [Even those who stayed home in
their villages] became caught up
in the enthusiasm, holding services, setting up gaming boards for lucky
throws, and singing and dancing in worship of the Queen Mother. They
also passed around texts reading ‘The Mother tells the people that those
who wear this talisman will not die.’
This movement was the first recorded messianic, millenarian movement in
Chinese history. It coincided with prophecies foretelling the end of the dynasty,
fulfilled when Wang Mang took the throne.

THE AGRARIAN ECONOMY

Han civilization was built on an agrarian base. At the technical level, agriculture
certainly advanced during the Han. Improved methods included planting two
crops in alternate rows and planting a succession of carefully timed crops. Han
ploughs were notable for such advanced features as struts that could be adjusted
to control the depth of furrows and curved metal mould-boards that reduced fric-
tion. Use of oxen to draw ploughs became common, allowing farmers to cultivate
larger fields. Better irrigation was achieved not only through large state-sponsored
canal projects, but also through the spread of improved techniques like brick-
faced wells to ordinary farmers. The donkey, an animal of western origin intro-
duced into north China by the Xiongnu, came to
be widely used as a pack animal.
Probably equally useful was the wheelbarrow, first seen in Han times.
This 67/:-foot-long painting on
Asa result of advances of these sorts, as well as relative peace and the extension
silk was found draped over the
of frontiers, the Chinese population grew rapidly in the Former Han period; the coffin in the grave of Lady Dai
census of AD 2 recorded a population of fifty-eight million, making the Han (c. 168 Bc) at Mawangdui near

empire somewhat larger than the contemporaneous Roman empire. Nevertheless, -

Changsha in Hunan province.
in most texts written in the Han period, the fragility of the economy seems have to The scenes depicted on it
seem to illustrate the journey
been much more on people’s minds than its
underlying strengths. This sense of
of the woman's soul. The top
insecurity was aggravated by key features of the political economy that were to section showsthe heavenly
characterize much of the rest of Chinese history. Land tenure, inheritance prac- realm, complete with dragons,
tices, and government fiscal policies all fostered the simultaneous presence of leopards, and hybrid crea-
both very small family farms and large landed estates, with rapid mobility tures. At the corners are the
crow that symbolizes the sun
between wealth and poverty as some families lost their land and others were able
and the toad that symbolizes
to build up substantial holdings. the moon, the pairing of sun
The economic insecurity of smallholders was described by Chao Cuo in 178 Bc and moon representing the
in terms that could well have been repeated in most later dynasties: cosmic forces of yin and yang.
 74 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

They labour at ploughing in the spring and hoeing in the

summer, harvesting in the autumn and storing foodstuff in
winter, cutting wood, performing labour service for the
local government, all the while exposed to the dust of
spring, the heat of summer, the storms of autumn, and the
chill of winter. Through all four seasonsthey never get a
day off. They need funds to
cover such obligations as
enter-
taining guests, burying the dead, visiting the sick, caring
for orphans, and bringing up the young. No matter how
hard they work they can be ruined by floods or droughts,
or cruel and arbitrary officials who impose taxes at the
wrong times or keep changing their orders. When taxes fall
due, those with produce have to sell it at half price [to raise
the needed cash], and those without [anything sell]
to
have to borrow [at such high rates] they will have to
pay
| back twice what they borrowed. Some as a consequence
sell their lands and houses, even their children and grand-
'

children.

The expansion of the area of One fundamental reason farmers often had barely enough to survive was the
cultivated land under the Han
probably owes something to
equal division of family property among allsons, a custom fully established by
Han times. In the Zhou period, aristocratic titles and offices as well as the
the development
P of the ani- respon-
sibility to maintain ancestral rites had been passed to
. . . .
a single heir, generally the
. .

mal-drawn plough, depicted

Weveéti.astone relied found at eldest son. With the decline of feudal tenures and the spread of free buying and
Mizhi, Shaanxi province. selling of land, the division of family property became customary. Partible inheri-
tance in turn had profound consequences for both the structure of the family and
the dynamics of the rural economy. The Chinese family remained patrilineal,
patrilocal, and patriarchal, but it no longer favoured oldest sons in the transmis-
sion of property. Ownership of land changed hands frequently as those with
wealth (perhaps from office or commerce) purchased it and those who inherited
land had to sell parts of it to meet expenses. To a family head, the survival
of
his -
family depended not merely the survival of a male heir to continue the ances-
on

tral sacrifices, but also on preserving or securing enough family

property to allow
all the sons to marry and support a family.
Hard-pressed small farmers were driven to cultivate marginal land and to farm
intensively whatever they had. When that was not enough, they could search out
patrons, becoming tenants or dependants of
local magnates, whose land and
power accordingly swelled. Sometimes, undoubtedly, the decision was not volun-
tary; poor peasants could not always count on government officials to protect
them from the demands of local bullies. As critics already pointed out in
the first

century BC, the greater the number of peasants who escaped the tax
rolls, the
harder tax-collectors pressed those who remained. When demands became too
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties

great, the poor were left to choose between migration to areas where new lands
could be cleared or quasi-servile status as the dependant of a magnate.
The Han government, like most of its successors, was unhappy with the
shrinkageof its tax base and tried to stem the loss of independent, land-owning
peasants. It promoted irrigation works to enhance production. It issued limits on
the size of landholdings. It responded to bad harvests with tax reductions and
direct relief. For those who had fled in time of famine, it offered tax remissions
and loans of seed to induce them return. Its most basic policy, however, was to
to

try to keep land taxes light. The Han drew revenues bothfrom a poll tax and a tax
on agricultural production which for most of the Han period was only one-thirti-
eth of the autumn harvest. Large landowners, of course, benefited at least as much
as small ones from the light taxation on land.
Because the Han government did not want to burden farmers, it had to find
other waysto its
increase revenues. To pay forhis military campaigns, Wudi took
over the minting of coins, confiscated the lands of nobles, sold offices and titles,
and increased taxes on private businesses. A widespread suspicion of commerce —
from both moral and political perspectives — made
assessments on merchants.
it
Boats, carts, shops, and
easy to levy especially heavy
other facilities were made sub-
ject to property taxes. The worst blow to businessmen, however, was the govern-
ment’s decision to enter into competition with them by selling the commodities
that had been collected as taxes. In 119 Bc government monopolies were estab-
lished in the production of iron, salt, and liquor, enterprises that had previously
been sources of great profit for private entrepreneurs. Large-scale grain dealing
had also been a profitable business, which the government now took over under
the name of the system of equable marketing. Grain was to be bought in areas
where it was plentiful and cheap and either stored in granaries or transported to
areas of scarcity. This procedure was supposed to eliminate speculation in grain,
provide more constant prices, and bring profit to the government.
The long-term result of these fiscal policies was a disruption of the develop-
ment of the private commercial sector of the economy. During the first century of
the Han, the prosperity of this sector had led to the growth of towns and cities and
increased specialization in trade and manufacture. After the government took
over the iron foundries and salt works and became deeply involved in the grain
trade, the vitality of the business sector suffered. Even though the Later Han gov-
ernment abandoned these ventures, its laissez-faire policies tended to benefit large
landowners more than merchants. The Chinese economy thus
became firmly
agrarian, a pattern that was to continue through Chinese history.

CONFUCIANISM, THE STATE, AND THE EDUCATED ELITE

The Han period is,for good reason, associated with the victory of Confucianism.
Where the Qin had given political support to Legalism, the Han gave
it
to Confu-
cianism. As seen above, the special status of Confucianism did not keep all sorts
76 THE CAMBRI IDGE ILLt STRATED
Hist ORY OF CHINA

Houses
“Because the Chinese used
timber as the primary build-
ing material, there are no
©
remains of the palaces of the
Qin or Han, much less more ordi- placed in Han tombs.
nary buildings. ‘Nonetheless, basic fea-
tures. 0 house onstruction can be 2
disce ned “from ceramic. models of.
houses placed in: tombs and: sketches of
‘the. ayou “of ouses
co n carved, or:

a sarin
aiim
fins
RTT
“eal

teidiasiuaTite
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties ~ ~

Lacquer cups, bowls, chop-

sticks, and trays unearthed
from tomb 1 at Mawangdui
near Changsha in Hunan
province. Lacquer, made from
the sap of a tree indigenousto
China, was used from
neolithic times to waterproof
bamboo and wooden objects.
In Han times well-made lac-
quer objects were so highly
valued they could cost more
than bronze pieces.

of non-Confucian ideas about spirits, portents, or the marvellous from gaining a

hold on the Han imagination. Moreover, Han Confucianism itself was eclectic,
fortifying itself with precepts and philosophical concerns drawn from what had
been competing philosophical schools in the pre-Qin period. The Han ‘victory’ of
Confucianism thus did not entail the eradication of other ways of thinking. Its
historical importance lies rather in the ways it coloured the connections between
the elite, the society, and the state.
The first Han emperors, although prudently avoiding the harsh policies of the
repudiated Qin government, were not partial to Confucianism. Gaozu found the
Confucian scholars of his day useful primarily as formulators of court rituals that
would elevate him above his erstwhile companions and keep them from getting
rowdy in court. Wendi (r. 179-157 Bc) favoured Daoism, finding much of value in
its laissez-faire message. Ironically it was under his grandson Wudi, who was
often accused of Legalist tendencies, that Confucianism gained a privileged posi-
tion at court. Wudi recognized the advantages to the throne of employing men
who had learned Confucian self-restraint, concern for others, love of ritual, devo-
tion to principle, and loyalty to superiors, and he developed a state educational
system to train potential officials in the Confucian classics. The imperial academy
he founded was staffed with professors for each of the Five Classics (Book of
Changes, Book of Documents, Book of Songs, Book of Rites, and Spring and Autumn
Annals). His successors maintained these policies and by the first century BC, it
became widely accepted that officials should be men trained in the Confucian
classics and respected for their character. Officials could nominate their sons or
other close relatives for government posts, but a man did not have to come from
an official family to enter the civil service. The prestige and influence of govern-
ment posts steadily rose, and men of wealth and local standing throughout the
78 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

The pre-Han texts that had

survived the Qin burning of
the books came
to be
greatly
revered, especially the Five
Classics. In Ap 175 the govern-
ment had them carved in stone
in the calligraphy of the emi-
nent man letters
of Cai Yong
and erected the stone slabs at
the Imperial Academy. Schol-
ars could come there to copy
or take rubbings of them, fos-
tering the establishmentof
definitive versions of these
classics. This surviving frag-
ment is from the Spring and
Autumn Annals and measures
19 square inches.

country began to compete to gain recognition for their learning and filial piety so
that they could become government officials. Since the criteria for selecting and
advancing candidates for government office laid stress on Confucian learning and
it
virtues, was in the interest of ambitious young men to engage in study, for learn-
ing could lead to power and prestige. All over the country teachers attracted large
numbers of students and disciples, and enrolment at the Imperial Academy
increased from a few dozen students to more than thirty thousand in the mid
sec-
ond century AD,
Credit for the political success of Confucianism should also be given to schol-
ars who developed Confucianism in ways that matched the mood of the time and
met the needsof the state. It was as though the unification of the
country called
of
out for a synthesis of ideas diverse origin. Han Confucians sought ways to com-
prehend the world around them as a self-generating and self-sustaining
organism
governed by cyclical yet never replicating flows of yin and yang and the five
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties

phases (fire, water, earth, metal, and wood). These cosmological theories were
incorporated into explanationsof historical cycles and dynastic succession. Con-
fucian scholars propounded correspondences between the qualities of the succes-
sive phases and other sets of categories (the seasons, cardinal points, tastes,
smells, colours, musical notes, numbers, planets, bodily organs, feelings, and so
on), theorizing that disturbance in any one category would resonate with corre-
sponding alterations in every other category, in much the way that a note played
on one musical instrument resonates on a similarly tuned instrument.
This correlative and relational cosmology was used to legitimate the imperial
state and to elevate the role of emperor. Among human beings, the ruler was
deemed unique in his capacity to link the realms of heaven, earth, and humanity.
The philosopher Dong Zhongshu (c.179-104 Bc) spoke of the ruler in terms that
echo Daoist and Legalist conceptions, describing him as ruling through non-
action and keeping away from everyday affairs to maintain his exalted status.
Confucian moral conceptions of the ruler nonetheless pervade his thinking. A
ruler who did not fulfil his role properly, Dong wrote, would directly disturb the
balance of heaven and earth, causing floods, earthquakes, and other natural
calamities. As a revived and expanded theory of the Mandate of Heaven, these
ideas became intrinsic to imperial ideology, never publicly questioned even in
later dynasties.
Besides cosmological theorizing, Confucian scholars in the Han devoted enor-
mous energy to the reconstruction of the books destroyed by the Qin government
and the revival of the traditions of interpretation that had grown up around them.
A handful of recovered books came
to as
be regarded classics, canonical scriptures
containing the wisdom of the past, to be studied with piety and rendered more
useful for moral guidance through written and oral exegesis. Confucian scholars
often specialized in a single classic, with teachers passing on to their disciples
their understanding of each sentence in the work. Two separate sets of texts of the
classics gained currency — the ‘new texts’, recorded in Han period script from the
oral recitation of elderly scholars who had memorized the classic before the Qin
destroyed all copies, and the ‘old texts’, based on books in Zhou-period script dis-
covered hidden in a wall in the home of descendants of Confucius. Two great
Confucian scholars of the Later Han, Ma Rong and Zheng Xuan, fused these two
traditions; they masteredall of the classics and wrote important commentaries to
them, usually favouring the old text versions. Nevertheless, disputes about which
set of texts truly contained the wisdom of the ancients persisted into the twenti-
eth century.
Because Confucian officials were trained to view their relationship with the
ruler in moral terms, they were not bureaucrats in the modern sense of func-
tionaries, controlled primarily by a code of procedures and laws. Committed to a
principled loyalty, they retained their stance as critics of government and resisted
automatic compliance with the policies of their superiors, even the ruler. During
80 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

the Han period, many Confucian scholars and officials opposed activist policies
such as government monopolies, questioning their morality and their effect on
people’s livelihoods. Aggressive foreign policies were similarly criticized on the
grounds that military campaigns took great toll on the people and might not be
as effective as conciliatory policies in securing peace. Scholars also regularly
objected to imperial extravagance, urging emperors to reduce their spending on
palace ladies, entertainment, hunting parks, stables, and rituals. In the Later Han,
especially after 150, Confucian scholars were active in opposing the eunuchs then
influential at court, often risking their careers or even their lives to stand up to
those in power (see below). Thus, the coupling of Confucianism and the Chinese
bureaucracy created a sort of balance of power between the ‘inner court’ of the
emperor and those who relied directly on him (the consort families and eunuchs)
and the ‘outer court’ of the Confucian-educated officials.
A common set of ideas, values, and historical references contributed to the
cohesion of the bureaucracy and the ties between officials and the educated local
elite, which was expanding
in this period. Local officials often promoted educa-
tion, sending promising young men to
the
capital for advanced study. The spread
of education was undoubtedly aided as well by the invention of paper in Han
times, allowing an increase in the supply of books. The expansion of Confucian
education among the
helped to keep downthe
local elite was in the interest of the government, since
it
cost of government, as this elite tended to act in ways
compatible with the needs of the government. By the end of the Han, educated
men throughout the country, despite their geographic separation and the local
focus of most of their activities, came to see themselves not just as leaders of their
communities but also as participants, however marginally, in national literary,
scholarly, and political affairs. In the succeeding centuries, the strength and
In the art of the Han, represen-
tation of famous figures from
history played a larger role
than in any earlier period. The
lacquer panels onthe sides of
this covered basket shows a
series of men identified by
name, each about 3 inches tall.
The basket was unearthed
from a second century AD
grave in northern Korea, the
site of the Lelang colony estab-
lished after the region was
conquered by Wudi’s forces
in 109-8 Bc.
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: T he Qin and Han Dynasties

Filial sons and devoted women

Confucius had praised filial piety, which to him meant lov- text on.-women’'s virtues was written by a woman, Ban Zhao
ing, respectful, and dutiful attention to the needs. and {c. 45-176], who after being widowed took a
post in the
wishes of family. elders, especially parents.and grandparents. palace as instructress to the girls there. Her Admonitions for.
the exaltation of filial piety was carried
—
in the Han dynasty, Girls (NGjie). preached the cultivation of virtues appropriate.

|
considerably. further. Men could get appointments-as offi- to women, such as humility, subservience, obedience, clean-.
cials on the basis of reputations for exemplary filial piety, liness, and: industry. She assumed. men's and women 's social
and-in order to gain such a reputation some would perform places were quite. distinct and argued that women should
—

exaggerated acts, such as refusing to end their mourning for therefore culti vate the virtues suited to their vole:
-

a
their. parents. Tales circulated about filial sons whose m
‘Humility means. vieding and acting. respectful, putting
devoted service to the whims of peculiar parents brought.
others first and oneself last, never mentioning one's own.
natural or supernatural reward. The text of the Classic of Fil-
good deeds or denying one's. own faults, enduring insults
¢
“jal Piety (Xiaojing} came to be a common primer, used to
:

and bearing with mistreatment, all with due trepidation we

inculcate generations of students with such dicta as ‘He Industriousness. means. going to bed late, getting Up.
j
S
who really loves his parents. will not be proud in high posi- =

ae
early, never shirking work morning or night, never refus-
i
tion, insubordinate ina pu position, or
Beetis! some ae
ing to tal ke on domestic work, and completing everything. ee
his peers.
that needs to be done neatly. and carefully. Continuing
:

Exemplary. women were similarly celebrated. Pre- Hak thesacrifices.

means serving one 'S husband- master wiith
©

philosophers directed little of their writing to women, even

appropriate demeanour, keeping oneself el jean. and. pure,
women of
the nobility. In the Han period, however, the emi--
never joking or laughing, and preparing ‘pure wine and oe
nent scholar and bibliographer Liu Xiang (79-8 BC) wrote the
a.
_

food to offer to the ancestors. There has never been cS

Biographies of Heroic Women (Lienti zhuan), a collection of.
/ woman who had these three traits and. ‘yet ruined. her nes
“accounts of the. gallant deeds and unselfish behaviour of
725 women of antiquity, who were notable for their loyalty
reputation or fell into disgrace. On the other hand, if'a Be
have no nameSto:
woman lacks these three traits, she will:
to the ruler, wise counsel to their husband or father, or ‘preserve and will not be able to avoid shame. as
preservation of chastity under duress. An equally influential

ie
Rubbing of an engraved stone slaty de pictinig i
filial son Laizi, from the Wu Liang shrine, erected in ADDSL at Jiaxiang
ine
Shandong province. Laizi was renowned because even when he was over seventy himself he triedto make parents ie
ae ey were not yetoldby pretending to be a boy playing: with toys.
 82 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED Hisrory OF CHINA

The wooden and ceramic fig-

ures unearthed from Han
period tombs offer many
glimpses of everyday life,
including games and enter-
tainment. This pair of wooden
figures, about 11 inches tall,
were excavated from first-
century-Bc tomb at Mozuizi in
Wuwei, Gansu province.

coherence of this elite of educated gentlemen proved as important as political

cen-
tralization or economic integration as a basis for the unity of Chinese civilization.
Below
Seals inscribed with names or
titles were a potent symbols of
COLONIZING THE SOUTH
authority; the Han emperor The Qin—Han period was one of great territorial expansion southwards
encour-
conferred this dragon-embell-
aged by the state. Throughout these four centuries settlers kept advancing along
ished one on Zhao Mei, Zhao
the river valleys, pushing the indigenous population further south or into more
Cuo’s successor
as king of marginal upland areas. The pace was particularly fast in the first and second cen-
Nanyue. Gold, 1’ inches long,
unearthed at Guangzhou, turles AD, as peasants fled the economic confusion, natural disasters, and
Guangdong province, first upheaval of Wang Mang’s reign, and then the
incursions of the Xiongnu and other
century
the
BC.
non-Han peoples to the north and northwest. When censuses of ap 2 and 140
are compared, appears that between roughly five to ten million people migrated
it
from the north to the Yangzi valley and further south during the
first and early
second centuries.
Armies played a role in this vast expansion. The Qin had sent
expeditions into Fujian and Guangxi provinces, and even
into what is now Vietnam. The Han re-established these gar-
risons, protecting merchants, settlers, and adventurers and
thus aiding the commercial penetration of Chinese prod-
ucts. Once a sizable population of settlers was established,
the government would assign officials to govern and tax them,
resulting in a steady increase in the numbers ofcounties in the
south. As the Chinese presence increased, local officials could switch
their tactics for controlling the indigenous population, for instance
po
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties 83

encouraging full assimilation for those -already partly

assimilated by opening schools to train them in Chinese
texts. Those who resisted the Chinese government pres-
ence, however, were dealt with through military force.
The life and career of Chao Tuo offers a good example

of how adventurers contributed to Chinese expansion.

Born in north China, Chao went south as a member of
the
Qin expeditionary force and soon took a wife from among
the local Yue clans. With the death of his superior and the
collapse of the Qin, he took control of the Guangdong
region, allying himself to the leaders of the Yue. By the
time the Han was established, he had amalgamated the
three most southerly commanderies and declared himself
King of Southern Yue. When an envoy ofthe new Han
emperor approached him, Chao Tuo consented to being
enrolled as a vassal king. He nevertheless continued to act
on his own, conquering and annexing territory in the
northern part of present-day Vietnam. When Empress Lt
came to power, she tried to curb him by prohibiting the
export of useful products to his territory, such as iron
implements and horses. He responded by attacking Changsha in Hunan and tak- The expansion of the Han
ing the title emperor. Wendi took a more conciliatory approach toward Chao Tuo, empire to the south brought
China into contact with many
bestowing honours on his brothers still in the north and offering to renew friendly
distinctive cultures. The vivid,
relations if he would just stop calling himself emperor. Chao Tuo’s strength was
realistic depictions of people
based on gaining the support of the local population; he called himself Great and animals on this 15-inch-
Chief of the Southern Barbarians, used local warriors as generals and officers, and tall drum-shaped cowrie
encouraged intermarriage. At the same time, he strove to promote the absorption container are quite unlike any-
of Chinese material culture by the local population. After Chao Tuo’s death in 137 thing from the heartland of
China but typical of Dian arte-
BC at the age of ninety-three, Wudi was able to gain relatively effective control
facts of the period before
over his successors. extensive Han influence.
More often, of course, strongmen in the frontier zones were not Han Chinese Bronze drums were also found
in origin. The Dian state, which held the region of modern Yunnan, was domi- in southeast Asia, suggesting

nated by horse-riding aristocrats who made captured enemies into slaves and contact between the Dian and
cultures further south. Exca-
drew considerable wealth from trade conducted both in Chinese coins and in
vated at Shizhaishan, Yunnan
cowry shells. Dian religious life centred on bronze drums that symbolized both province; about 100 Bc.
political power and fertility. Although the Dian had no system of writing, their
material culture was advanced; archaeological excavations have unearthed bronze
weapons, tools, and ritual implements. In 109 sc Wudi attacked and defeated the
Dian and incorporated them into the Han realm as a tributary state. The Dian
rebelled several times (in 86 and 83 Bc, AD 14 and 42-5), but each time the Han
government was able to maintain or regain its presence.
84 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

THE FALL OF THE HAN

The first seventy years of the Later Han dynasty was a time of recovery and
reassertion of imperial power. During the second century AD, however, Han court
politics turned nasty as the eunuchs who served as palace servants vied with rela-
tives of the empresses for control of the court. Rulers had long used eunuchs for
more than tending to the needs of their women’s quarters, since eunuchs,
recruited from insignificant families, had no outside power base and could there-
fore be depended on to
do their master’s bidding; moreover, emperors raised in the
palace often trusted them. Weak emperors, however, ran the danger of becoming
the captives rather than the masters of the eunuchs. In Ap 124 a group of eunuchs
staged a coup and put on the throne a child that they could manipulate. In 159,
an emperor turned to the eunuchs tohelp him oust a consort family faction, and
from then on the eunuchs were in command. ‘Outer court’ officials who protested
were persecuted; hundreds were jailed, killed, or barred from office and exiled
from the capital in the purges that took place in 166 and 169.
With the central government indisarray, little was done to stem the shrinkage
of the tax base brought on by the steady decline in smallholdings and rise of local
magnates. With the fiscal resources of the Han government steadily deteriorating
it became more and more difficult for the government to provide relief during bad
harvests. In 143 government revenue was so depleted that official salaries were
cut and the government made the kings and nobles pay their land tax a year in
advance. In 153 swarms of
locusts and a flood of the Yellow River resulted in sev-
eral hundred thousand people taking to the roads in search of food, but all the
central government could do was give local authorities permission to requisition
30 per cent of private stores of grain.
The Han imperial institution never recovered from the outbreak in 184 of a
large-scale rebellion staged by followers of the Way of Great Peace, religious cult
a
inspired by Daoist ideas that offered mystical faith healing and social welfare pro-
grammes. Hundreds of thousands of zealots attacked local government offices
simultaneously in several parts of the country, killing magistrates and prefects
wherever they could. Although this uprising was suppressed within a year, other
rebels, some preaching similar doctrines and using similar principles of organiza-
tion, appeared throughout the
country and proved difficult for the government to
defeat or contain. The generals sent to put down the rebellions used the armies
they amassed to gain power for themselves, and this resulted in several decades of
civil war as they fought each other. In 189 the warlord who gained control of the
capital slaughtered more than 2,000 eunuchs and made the emperor his own
pawn. Luoyang was sacked and burned, the government libraries and archives
almost totally destroyed. The Han dynasty had effectively come to an end.

One of the aims of Qin Legalism was direct

rule by the emperor of everyone in
society. Even though the Han government moderated many Qin policies, it did
The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin and Han Dynasties

not abandon the goal of uniform administration reaching down to each house-
hold. The Han imposed its taxes directly on each subject according to age, sex,
and imperially granted ranks. Periodically, rich and influential families were
forcibly relocated; in 198 sc, for instance, 100,000 were moved to the new capital
at Chang’an. Public works projects similarly continued to involve drafting of huge
labour armies, including convict labour, albeit at a less onerous pace than under
Qin; over the course of the Han these projects included extensions of the Great
Wall, repairs on the dykes of the Yellow River, and great road-building projects.
Nevertheless, in Han times, the state and the capital did not totally dominate
life in local communities. Only the exceptional official (labelled a ‘harsh official’
in the terminology of the time) ignored the reality of the local power structure and
attempted to enforcein the local context all of the theoretical powers of the state.
More typical was a conciliatory approach, with officials sent from the centre offer-
ing subordinate posts to members of locally prominent families and leaving many
matters in the hands of the local elite in return for their support. This sort of bal-
ancing act between the central government and the locality was as much part a
the heritage of the Han imperial system as it was the assertion of unlimited impe-
of
rial authority.
The Han dynasty was contemporaneous with the Roman Empire and has often
been compared to it. Han and Rome both had strong governments that expanded
geographically, promoted assimilation, and brought centuries of stability to the
central regions. Both managed to deal with enormous problems of scale, ruling
roughly similar numbers of people over roughly similar expanses of land. Both
developed bureaucratic institutions, staffing them with educated landowners.
Both invested in the construction of roads, defensive walls, and waterworks. Both
were threatened by barbarians attheir frontiers and often used barbarian tribal
units as military auxiliaries.
The contrasts between the Han and Roman empires are equally instructive.
China was
a civilization based much more profoundly on crop agriculture. Not
only did animal husbandry play less of a role in agriculture, but cities and com-
merce played lesser role in the overall economy. Cultural cohesion was also of a
different order in Han China than in Rome. Perhaps because of the Chinese script,
it is much easier to talk about a common culture among the elite in Han China
than in the Roman Empire. As the influence of Chinese culture increased in fron-
tier areas with the presence of Chinese garrisons and magistrates, members of
the
local population learned to read Chinese in a logographic script that fostered the
acceptance of basic Chinese premises and hindered articulation of distinctly local
values. Even if Latin became
languages continued to
a lingua franca in the Roman Empire, other written
be used, including Greek, Hebrew, and Demotic Egyptian,
which facilitated the survival of non-Roman ideas in a way unknown in China.
What we know of the values of the Dian, Yue, and Xiongnu comes almost entirely
from texts written in Chinese.
86 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

CHAPTER 4
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and
Alien Rulers:
The Age of Division 220-589
The centuries that separated the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 and the reunifica-
tion of China by the Sui dynasty in 589 were marked by political division and
gov-
ernments unable to gain firm control of their territories. After several decades of
rivalry among three contenders (the Three Kingdoms, 220-265), China was
briefly reunified by the Western Jin (265-316). After the Jin fell to internal squab-
bling, non-Chinese tribes entered the
fray, and China entered a prolonged period
when the north was controlled by alien rulers and the south by
court of
a transplanted
emigré aristocrats. The weak governments of this period rarely tried to
curb tendencies towards social inequality, and during these centuries aristocracy
developed at the top of society and personal bondage expanded
at the bottom.
Confidence in the Confucian view of the social and political order declined and
people in all walks of life found hope in
religions promising salvation and tran-
scendence, not only Daoist cults but also the newly introduced Buddhist religion,
which vastly expanded China’s intellectual and religious imagination.

THE THREE KINGDOMS AND JIN DYNASTY

During the period between the Han and Tang dynasties, short-lived courts were
the norm, and even these courts never had the
degree of control over society that
the Han or Tang did at their heights. Tendencies of Chinese social organization
and culture that strong governments usually curbed were able to develop with
rel-
ative freedom for better and for worse.
—~

Thepolitical history of these three-and-a-half centuries is one of the most com-

plex in Chinese history. It began when the generals assigned by the Han govern-
ment to put down the rebellion of the Yellow Turbans became stronger than the
throne and fought among themselves for supremacy. By 205 the poet—general Cao
Cao had made himself dictator of north China. Instead of trying to curb the
growth of hard-to-tax local magnates, Cao Cao developed alternative ways to sup-
ply his armies. He carved out huge state farms from land laid waste by war and
settled landless poor and captured rebels to work them and thus made the
state
the greatest of all landlords. He also established military colonies for hereditary
military households whose men would both farm and fight. For his cavalry, Cao
Cao recruited Xiongnu tribesmen in large numbers, settling
many in southern
Shanxi. After his death in 220, his son Cao Pei formalized the family’s dominance
by forcing the abdication of the last Han emperor and founding the Wei dynasty
at the old Han capital of Luoyang.
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division 87

Two rival claimants to the throne had sufficient local power to thwart Cao Cao’s
and Cao Pei’s efforts to build a government on the scale of the Han. the centralIn
and lower Yangzi valley and further south, the brothers Sun Ce and Sun Quan China was fragmented for
established the state of Wu, supported by the great families that had settled in this most of the three and a half
centuries after the fall of the
frontier region, which was still heavily
populated by indigenous peoples. West in
Han, but no set of boundaries
Sichuan a distant member of the Han imperial family, Liu Pei, established a
ever lasted very long. The
stronghold, aided by the brilliant strategist, Zhuge Liang. Because Wei had more states established in the south,
than twice the population of either of the other states as well as the largest army, while nominally holding huge
it is not surprising that it eventually prevailed, defeating the Han state in Sichuan territories, never had the mili-
in 263. Two years later, however, the son of the victorious general forced the tary might of the strongest
northern states, and before the
Wei emperor toabdicate in his favour, founding the Jin dynasty (later called end of the sixth century China
Western Jin, 265-316). In 280, after a major naval campaign, the southern state was reunified by states origi-
of Wu was defeated. The Jin dynasty had thus succeeded in reunifying China, nating in the northwest.

The Three Kingdoms, WUHUAN The Sixteen

AD250 Jin
XIANBEI
Dunh :

DI
Western
WESTERN
TURKS
WEI
Southern
=
ap
QIANG Luoyang:
‘Jiankan
a

RUANRUAN Northe (Zhou, Northe rn Qi NORTHERN

TURKS
,

and Chen, AD560

:

see

WESTERN
TURKS
 &
ah
é

i
f

i
<

and for a brief interlude it seemed possible that the glories of the Han dynasty
could be reattained.
During this century of military struggles, an atmosphere ofalienation and per-
sonal indulgence pervaded elite circles. Confucian ideals of public service lost
muchof their hold, as the educated and well-off vied instead in extravagant and
often unconventional living. ‘Study of the Mysterious’ captured the interests of the
philosophically inclined. Books like the Book of Changes, the Laozi, and the
Zhuangzi were reinterpreted, arguments swirling over metaphysical questions
such as the meaning of ‘nonbeing’ and its relationship to ‘being’. Clever repartee,
called ‘pure talk’, was much instyle,especially pithy characterizations of promi-
nent personalities. Rather than participate in the often vicious clique struggles at
court, many men expressed an abhorrence of political life with its elaborate con-
ventions. A search for ‘naturalness’ and ‘spontaneity’ led to a burst of self-expres-
sion in the arts, especially poetry. Cao Cao, his successor Cao Pei, and Pei’s
younger brother Cao Zhi were all remarkable poets, important for developing
the lyric potential of verse in lines of five syllables. Among the sophisticated
aesthetes of this period were a group of gifted poets later immortalized as the
Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. One of them, Ruan Ji, shocked his con-
temporaries by wailing in grief when an unmarried neighbour girl died, but
eating meat and drinking wine on the day of his own mother’s funeral. He
summed up his attitude when someone rebuked him fortalking tohis sister-
in-law: “Surely you do not mean to suggest that the rules of propriety apply
to me?’ Such behaviour outraged conservative Confucians and autocratic
rulers, and in 262 one of the Seven Sages, Xi Kang, was executed for perver-
sion of public morals.

it had unified China, the Western Jin never in estab-

_

Although succeeded
lishing an autocratic imperial institution, that is, one capable of preserving
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division

ultimate power for the emperor and preventing dissension and power struggles. Within a century of their
The imperial family’s power was threatened bythe families of empresses, espe- deaths, the ‘Seven Sages of the

cially the Jia family, who were suspected of arranging the assassination of the pre-
Bamboo Grove’ had come to be
celebrated as prime exemplars
vious empress and her family as well as more than one heir to the throne. Nor of the individualistic and idio-
was it possible for the emperors fully to control the civil service. The system of syncratic artist. This rubbing
recruitment to government posts that had been instituted by the Wei — the ‘Nine of two sections of the bricks
Rank System’ — had degenerated from a system of local assessments of character lining a fourth-century tomb
excavated near Nanjing,
and talent into a procedure for assigning places in the bureaucracy according
Jiangsu province, depicts them
to the standing of the candidate's family. The Jin dynasty allowed further erosion
engaged in conversation.
of centralized imperial control by their policy of parcelling out enormous tracts
of land to imperial princes. Gaining such resources spurred the princes’ frat-
ricidal instincts and culminated in
a series of bloody struggles over succession.
Each prince sought out allies, including generals and non-Chinese chieftains
with their troops, and full-scale civil war raged in and near the capital between
291 and 305.

THE NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN DYNASTIES

The dissolution of the Jin into
internecine war invited non-Chinese chiefs to stage
a rebellion. During the second and third centuries, hundreds of thousands of Opposite
The introduction ofstirrups,
Xiongnu and other northern peoples had been settled within China’s political
at first used mainly to make
frontiers as an alternative to defending against their raids. Often recruited as sol-
mounting a horse easier, in
diers or used as auxiliary troops, these formerly nomadic peoples, now generally time greatly enhanced the
settled pastoralists, were not easy to govern or assimilate. In 304 the sinified mobility of mounted warriors.

Xiongnu chief Liu Yuan declared himself king of Han. His son went on to sack the This 9-inch-tall ceramic tomb
figurine, unearthed at Shashi
Jin capital at Luoyang in 311, sending its inhabitants fleeing in terror. Another in Hunan province, shows a
Xiongnu leader assaulted Chang'an in 316, and less sinified chiefs, such as Shi Le horseman not taking full
and Fu Jian, soon joined the fray. For a period of over a century (known as the advantage of the stirrup.
 90 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

Armour was worn by infantry-

men, cavalrymen, and war
Sixteen Kingdoms’, 304-439),
a
north China was battleground and Chinese civi-
lization seemed seriously threatened.
horsesin the frequent battles
As warfare brought in its wake banditry and famine, rural communities all
that marked the Age of Divi- over
north China built forts and organized self-defence forces, with
sion. Its use is illustrated in power devolving to
this sixth-century battle scene the local level even more than it had in the waning’years of the Han. The com-
on a wall of cave 285 at Dun-
huang in Gansu province.
mercial economy suffered and the circulation of money declined. A couple of mil-
lion residents of north China packed up what movable property they had and
fled
southwards across the Yangzi. Even the wealthy and high-ranking, facing depre-
dations and the unknown peril of alien rule, made the trek in huge numbers. At
Jiankang (modern Nanjing) leading officials set a Jin prince on the throne, creat-
ing a government in exile. This Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420) was followed by
four other dynasties that ruled from Nanjing — the Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen,
col-
lectively called the Southern Dynasties (420-589). These four short dynasties
were all founded by generals who proved capable of holding the government
together during their lifetime but not of to
assuring a successful transfer of power
their heirs. They possessed the desire to create imperial institutions but not the
ability to concentrate power.
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division 91

Part of the difficulty these rulers faced can be traced to the emergence of
a
hereditary aristocracy that entrenched itself in the higher reaches of officialdom.
Much more so than in the Han period, these families judged themselves and oth-
ers on the basis of their ancestors, and would only marry with other families of
equivalent pedigree. They even compiled lists, complete with genealogies, of the
most eminent families. By securing near automatic access to higher government
posts through the Nine Rank system, the aristocrats were assured of government
salaries and exemptions from taxes and labour service. Many were also able to
build up great landed estates worked by destitute refugees from the north who
were settled as serf-like dependants. At court, the aristocrats often set themselves

at odds with the ‘upstart’ rulers, doing what they could to frustrate these emper-
ors’ efforts to appoint or promote whom they wished. But the aristocrats should
not be looked on as foes of Chinese civilization. The men in these families saw
themselves as embodying Chinese civilization, maintaining the high cultural
accomplishments of the Han dynasty and the tradition of the scholar-official. The
solidarity of these cultivated families provided a centre around which Chinese
culture could adhere during a period when no state could serve that function.
Constructing a capital south of the Yangzi had a beneficial effect on economic
development of the south. When Luoyang fell in 311, the south probably had only
about 10 per cent of the registered population of the Jin (which did not include
non-Chinese, indigenous people of the south who paid no taxes). To pay for an
army and to support the imperial court and aristocracy in a style that matched
their pretensions, the government had to expand the area of taxable agricultural
land, whether through settling migrants or converting the local inhabitants into
tax-payers. The south, with its temperate climate and ample supply of water,
offered nearly unlimited possibilities for such development.
The courts at Nanjing repeatedly had to deal with challenges to their authority.
The most destructive uprising began in 548, initiated by a would-be warlord from
the north, Hou Jing;-who gathered a huge army of the disaffected and set siege to
the capital. By the time the city fell four months later, many members of the great
families had starved to death in their mansions. Although a general soon declared
a new dynasty (Chen), his control over outlying areas amounted
than the privilege of confirming local strongmen as his governors.
to little more

Meanwhile, the north was following a different trajectory. In the fourth century,
rival warlords of many different ethnic groups fought for control, ousting each
other whenever they could. The first to secure their position by finding ways to
draw on the wealth of China's settled agriculture was the Tuoba clan of the Xian-
bei who established the (Northern) Wei dynasty (439-534). Originally from
southern Manchuria, by the early fourth century the Xianbei occupied land in
northern Shanxi province, which they used as a base to raid other tribes and Chi-
nese settlements, bringing back captives, horses, cattle, and sheep. As they
expanded into Chinese territory, they forced massive relocations of population to
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

bring deserted land back into cultivation and to supply the capital they built. In
their desire to preside over the whole Chinese world, they turned to educated
Chinese as experts in statecraft. It was expedient for them to employ Chinese offi-
cials and adopt the institutions they proposed, because the total number
of
Xian-
bei and other northern tribesman
in
their confederation could not have been more
than a couple of million, but the Chinese, over whom they were trying to main-
tain military control, numbered twenty
or
thirty million or more.
It was on Chinese advice that in 486 the Northern Wei
government undertook
a major overhaul of its fiscal system, instituting an ‘equal field’ system reminiscent
of Han efforts to tax individual cultivators and Cao Cao’s military colonies and
state lands. The Wei system was based on the premise that the state owned all
land. Individual families were to be assigned 20 mu ofpermanent, inheritable land
for growing mulberry and other trees plus lifetime allotments of
crop land, the
amount depending on their available labour; for instance 40 mu was allocated per
able-bodied man (including slaves) and 30 per ox. Larger landholdings were only
to be allowed forthe families of officials. The memorial proposing this ‘equal field’
system argued that it would ‘ensure that no land lies neglected, that no people
wander off, that powerful families could not monopolize the fertile fields, and that
humble people would also get their share of the land’. Even if the powerful were
usually able to manoeuvre around the law, the government had asserted its power
to assign and tax land, a key step towards building
sive form of government.
a
fiscal base for a more intru-

A few years later, Emperor Xiaowen (1.471-99) decided to transform his state
into a true Chinese dynasty on the model of Han and Jin. In the 490s he moved
the capital more than 300 miles south to the ruins of Luoyang and built a splen-
did new city there; he gave Chinese surnames
to
the Xianbei, taking the name
Yuan (‘origin’) for the imperial house; he ordered the use of the Chinese language
and Chinese dress at court, even by Xianbei; and he encouraged intermarriage
between the Xianbei and Chinese elites. Within twenty-five
years Luoyang had
become a magnificent city with half a million people, vast palaces, elegant man-
sions, and over a thousand Buddhist monasteries. Many members of
the Xianbei
nobility became fully versed in Chinese cultural traditions, at home among the
leading Chinese families.
The stability
of this Luoyang-centred sino-foreign hybrid regime was brief. The
Xianbei soldiers assigned to the northern frontier garrisons to fend
offincursions
by new occupants of the steppe such as the Ruanruan and Turks came to
hate the
sinified Xianbei aristocrats leading what seemed to them self-indulgent lives in
the thoroughly Chinese atmosphere of Luoyang and in 524 they rebelled. Civil
war ensued as those sent to
suppress the rebels took to fighting each other, When
Luoyang was sacked, some 2,000 officials were slaughtered.
After a decade of constant warfare, two
principal rivals emerged, each control-
ling a claimant tothe Wei throne. In 552 the fiction of Wei rule was abandoned
in
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division 93

the east, and the (Northern) Qi dynasty (552-77) was established; in 557 the
western powers followed suit and declared the (Northern) Zhou dynasty
(557-81). Both courts suffered from ethnic tension between the sinified Xianbei,
Chinese aristocrats, and unsinified warriors. In the northwestern court, not only
was the law requiring Xianbei to take Chinese names rescinded, but Chinese offi-
cials were given Xianbei names. In 553 the northwestern court conquered
Sichuan, until then held by the south. In 575 the Zhou court, through clever
diplomacy, got the southern court of Chen to join in invading Qi. Qi was
destroyed in 577, most of its territory going to Zhou, thus reunifying the north.
The Zhou throne was in its turn usurped in 581 by one of its generals who
declared the Sui dynasty. Before long he destroyed Chen to unifyall of China
proper (see Chapter 5).
Reunification was made possible by the introduction of a new military institu-
tion that allowed for expansion of the army without bankrupting the state. This
was the divisional militia, an army of volunteer farmer-soldiers who served in
rotation in armies at the capital or on the frontiers. By the 570s this divisional
militia had been expanded to about 200,000 soldiers. Equipping soldiers had
become quite expensive because cavalrymen needed not only horses but also
armour for the men and horses to protect against arrows fired from powerful
crossbows. Cavalrymencarried light crossbows that could shoot arrows 1,000
feet, and infantry used ones with a range of 1,500 feet. Those defending
or attack-
ing city walls used larger, more powerful crossbows with a range of over 3,000
feet. The cavalrymen of the divisional militia had to provide their own horses, and
presumably came from families that had long served in the military, while foot sol-
diers were recruited from better-off peasant families who supplied them in
exchange for exemption from taxes. The cost of this army was also kept down by
letting the soldiers farm when not called up for training or campaigns. The divi-
sional militia was also easier to co-ordinate and command than the military forces
it replaced, most.of which had been loyal only to their own officers.

CLIENTS, RETAINERS, SERFS, AND SLAVES

The Qin and Han dynasties had extracted the bulk of their revenue directly from
agricultural producers. It followed that these governments continually had to
strive to keep land and people from falling off the tax registers. The weaker gov-
ernments that followed the Han were even less able to stop the poor from fleeing
debt and tax collectors or the rich and powerful from amassing land and depen-
dent labourers. The Age of Division thus witnessed an increase in the proportion
of the population occupying servile statuses.
Demeaned status was not in itself new. By the late Zhou period a broad dis-
tinction was commonly made between ordinary ‘good’ people and base or ignoble
people, the latter including those who had undergone mutilating punishments for
crimes and those condemned to slavery as part of the punishmentof
a close rela-
94 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HIStoRY OF CHINA

Ox carts became a common

means oftransportation, an
economical alternative to
horse-drawn carriages. This
ceramic model was excavated
from a mid-sixth-century tomb
in Taiyuan, Shanxi province.

tive condemned to death for heinous crime. In addition, in late Zhou and Han
a

times, those desperately impoverished might sell their wives and children to be
household slaves or bondservants. The law codes, however, imposed severe
penalties for kidnapping ‘good’ people and selling them as slaves. Perhaps few
people thought the aborigines in the south counted as ‘good’ people, for in the
Han and later they were a major source of slaves.
With the appearance of great landed estates and the creation of private armies
from the Later Han period on, a whole variety of client statuses emerged. Many
people voluntarily became dependants, despite the loss of status, because rich
patrons could provide protection. Clients of local strongmen might till their land
and turn out to help during battles; others were essentially private soldiers.
Already in the third century the government gave some recognition to the wide-
spread existence of such dependants by trying to limit acquisition of them to offi-
cials. The Jin government decreed that the highest-ranking officials could have a
maximum of forty households of dependants free from taxation and labour ser-
vice, and lower-ranking officials proportionally fewer, down to a minimum of ten
households. These limits never seem to have been effectively enforced, however.
During the Southern Dynasties, serf-like dependent households grew in number
because many refugees accepted the status when they settled estates.
on

The customs of the northern pastoral tribes reinforced the tendency towards
increased incidence of serfdom and slavery. It was traditional for tribes to have
both full members and slaves. When one tribe or confederation defeated another,
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division 95

the victors enslaved the losers, distributing them as favours, and requiring them
to do mostof the menial labour. In
its
battles against the Southern Dynasties, the
Northern Wei armies would enslave captives, sometimes in the thousands. Gen-
erals who had been granted captured soldiers might incorporate them into their
own armies, but high officials who received dozens or hundreds of captives made
them into household servants or settled them to work on the land. The Wei gov-
ernment supported the use of slaves in agriculture through the provision in the
equal-field system that slaves be counted in
allotting land.
Captives made into slaves were sometimes freed or redeemed. In the mid fifth
century a southern official offered 1,000 bolts of cloth to redeem his sexagenarian
wife who had been captured and made into a palace slave. Once a northern officer
was sent to the south to offer 1,000 horses in exchange for fifty men captured in
a military campaign. When the Northern Zhou captured the city of Jiangling from
the Liang in 554, more than 100,000 civilians were enslaved. The general Yu Jin
was granted 1,000 slaves, and 200 were given to one of his sons. Some of the cap-
tives were redeemed by friends and relatives or freed by their new masters within
a few years. In 577 those still in slavery were freed by an imperial rescript, with
the provision that if they wished to remain with their master, they would be pro-
to the less ignominious but still mean rank of bound retainer.
moted
Much of what we know of the life of slaves and bondservants is found in casual
references to them in accounts of their masters. Members of high-ranking families
sometimes beat slaves to death on minor provocations, without any fear that they
would be charged with a crime. Slaves could also be tattooed on the face to make
it more difficult for them to flee. Female slaves were often used as concubines, and
some of the stigma of their status attached itself to their children. The offspring of
male slaves were unambiguously mean in status; their father’s master could give
them away, keep them on, or free them, as he pleased.
BUDDHISM
In this period when it was difficult to place much faith in civil governments,
China encountered
a religion whose reach extended way beyond any known gov-
ernment, a religion then spreading its
teachings across Asia. As knowledge of Bud-
dhism filtered into China during these centuries, Chinese learned a radically
different way of conceiving of life and death, humanity and the cosmos.
Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha (‘Buddha’ means enlightened one), lived in
India at about the time of Confucius. He naturally took for granted the basic con-
cepts of Indian cosmology, such as karma and reincarnation. In this world view,
men, women, animals, heavenly beings, hell dwellers, and other sentient beings
pass through an endless series of lives, moving up or down according
karma, or good and bad deeds, that they have accumulated. Shakyamuni’s own
to
the

spiritual journey led him to feel he had discovered basic truths about the human
condition, and he began to teach people that their desires and attachments were
THe CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

the source of their suffering; because they became enmeshed in the web of their
attachments, their lives were inevitably filled with disappointments and anxieties.
The way to put a stop to this process, he preached, was to live an ethical life
(abstaining from the taking of life, for instance) and engage in spiritual exercises
that enhance concentration and insight. Those who progress along this path can
eventually escape the cycle of rebirth and enter nirvana, though it may take many
lifetimes to reach that ultimate goal. Shakyamuni’s most committed early follow-
ers left their families and made the quest for salvation the prime activity in their
lives. After Shakyamuni’s death, his disciples passed down his sermons orally,
though after a few centuries these sermons were recorded, forming the basis of a
huge corpus of scriptures called sutras.
Buddhism arrived in China along with commercial goods, following trade
routes from northern India through the Buddhist kingdoms of Central Asia such
as Khotan and Kucha. At first the new faith was mostly religion of foreigners.
a

What Chinese encountered in the second, third, and fourth centuries was not a
single creed, but an extraordinary array of ideas and practices, ranging from
monastic discipline to magic, the worship of statues and relics, and techniques of
meditation and ecstasy. Mahayana (‘Great Vehicle’) Buddhist philosophy was
developing just as Buddhism was being introduced to China, and the Chinese
learned of earlier and later theories at the same time. Mahayanists argued that
pursuing the goal of nirvana was selfish compared to becoming a bodhisattva, a
being of advanced spiritual standing who postponed entry into nirvana in
order to
help other beings.
By the end of the Western Jin, members of the upper levels of Chinese society
had begun be attracted to Buddhism. Those who decided to become monks had
to
to give up their surname and take a vow of celibacy, thus cutting themselves off
from the ancestral cult that tied the dead, the living, and the unborn. Yet many
made this decision, and Buddhistphilosophy came to be widely discussed in
aris-
tocratic circles. The alien rulers in the north also found Buddhism appealing.
Devoted missionaries from Central Asia were quite willing to use feats of magic to
convince these rulers that Buddhism was a more powerful religion than the
shamanism they had traditionally practised. But Buddhism had other advantages
to alien rulers; universalistic claims did not put them at a disadvantage rela-
its in

tion to the Chinese in the way Confucian theories did, and thus offered a basis for
unifying an ethnically mixed population.
To many Chinese, Buddhism seemed at
first a variant of Daoism, which was
understandable since Daoist terms were used by early translators to convey Bud-
dhist ideas. For instance, the Mahayana concept of
the fundamental emptiness of
phenomena was identified with the Daoist notion of non-being. A more accurate
understanding of Buddhism became possible after the eminent Central Asian
monk Kumarajiva (350-413) settled in Chang’an and directed several thousand
monks inthe translation of thirty-eight texts. Chinese also began in this period to
 Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division

undertake the arduous journeyto India to discover for

themselves what might have been lost in translation. The
first to leave a record of his trip was the intrepid Faxian, a
monk who went to India overland in 399 via Kucha and
Khotan, returning by the sea route via Sri Lanka and Suma-
tra in 414.
The steady adaptation of Buddhism to China can be
illustrated through the career of the great teacher Huiyuan
(334-417). Born in the north, in
the period of greatest dis-
order, he still managed to get a basic education in Confu-
cian and Daoist texts. It was hearing a sermon by a Chinese
monk (himself a disciple of a Kuchan missionary) that led
Huiyuan to decide to ‘leave the family’ himself. Eventually
he moved to the south, founding a monastery on Mount Lu
in Jiangxi province. He kept up a learned correspondence
with Kumarajiva on points of doctrine but also interacted
with lay followers whom he taught concentration tech-
niques involving visualizing Buddhas. In 402 he assembled
a group of both monks and lay people in front of an image
of Pure Land, the western paradise of the buddha
Amitabha. Buddhism thus was well on its way to becoming
a religion of universal salvation with appeal toall the faith-
ful. Two years later, in 404, Huiyuan wrote a treatise enti-
tled On Why Monks Do Not Bow Down Before Kings,
asserting the political independence of the Buddhist
church. He also tried to assure the ruler that Buddhism was
not subversive, arguing that lay Buddhists make good sub-
jects because their belief in the retribution of karma and
desire to be reborn in paradise make themact circum-
spectly. ‘Those who rejoice in the Way of the Buddha invariably first serve their Bronze altarpiece, depicting
the Buddha Amitabha seated
parents and obey their lords.’
on a lotus throne and accom-
Before the end of the Age of Division, Buddhism had gained a remarkable hold
panied by disciples and
in China. It appealed to people in China above all because it addressed questions attendants. The inscription
of suffering and death with a directness unmatched in native Chinese traditions. indicates that it was commis-
It offered a fully developed vision of the afterlife and the prospect of salvation, sioned in 593 by a group of
promising that all creatures might one day find blissful release from suffering. Its eight older women (who iden-
tify themselves as mothers of
code of conduct, including the injunction against the taking of life, seemed to
named men) as a way to earn
many
to carry the principle ofa compassion to its logical extreme. Retreating to a
alternative to the world-weary, one especially
merit for members of their
monastery or nunnery offered new families.
attractive to high-born widows. Indeed, Buddhism had particular appeal to
women. Although incarnation as a female was considered lower than incarnation
as a male, it was also viewed as temporary, and women were encouraged to

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98 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

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In
its
transit from one country to the next, Buddhism absorbed Afghanistan. In a comparable way, Chinese understandings of
local ideas and art
styles and passed themon transmuted in filial piety and ancestors reached Japan
as
part and parcel of
forms. Thus Greek-influenced art forms reached China in the
form of Buddhist artistic traditions developed in the region of
sinified Buddhism with its
‘merit ceremonies’ for the salvation
of ancestors.
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division 99

pursue salvation on nearly equal terms with men. Moreover, Buddhism held out
for women some androgynous symbols unlike anything in native Chinese tradi-
tions; bodhisattvas were conceived as neither male nor female, transcending dif-
ferences of genderin addition to differences of class-and ethnicity.
The landscape of China, too, was transformed by Buddhism as temples and
monasteries were built in towns and remote mountains. The Buddhist church in
north China reportedly had 6,478 temples and 77,258 monks and nuns by 477;
south China was said to have had 2,846 temples and 82,700 clerics some decades
later. The beauty of Buddhist art and architecture (see pages 106-7) appealed to
people of all levels of education. Buddhism helped transcend class differences;
inscriptions on Buddhist statues and temples show that Chinese and non-Chinese
officials, local notables, commoners, and Buddhist clergy often all contributed to
a project, working together. The scale of contributions was enormous; pious lay
believers donated tracts of land and serfs in the conviction that donation of
worldly wealth to the monastic community was an especially effective way to gain
merit and to fulfil filial obligations to fathers and mothers. The most generous
imperial patron was Wudi of Liang (r. 502-549), who banned meat and wine from
the imperial table, built temples, wrote commentaries on sutras, and held great
assemblies of monks and laymen, one of which attracted 50,000 people. To raise
money for Buddhist establishments, he had himself held ‘hostage’ until those at
court raised huge sums to get him freed.
Not everyone, of course, was pleased by the many-faceted success of Bud-
dhism. Resentful Daoists and Confucians denounced many Buddhist ideas and
practices as immoral or unsuited to China. Monks’ practices of shaving the head
and cremating the dead they decried as violations of the body, not allowed in Con-
fucianism. Even worse was celibacy, for Mencius had stated that the ultimate
unfilial act was failure to provide one’s ancestors with an heir. The refusal of
monks to pay homage to the ruler, as well as their failure to contribute to the tax

coffers, were depicted by critics as threats to the well-being of the state. Such crit-
ics argued that the great sums spent on construction of temples, statues, and cer-
emonies were a drain on the economy, impoverishing the people and thus
indirectly the state. To rebut such criticisms, and to overcome resistance on the
part of potential converts, Buddhist apologists argued that their religion was basi-
cally compatible with Chinese values. It was the utmost expression of filial piety,
they argued, to free a parent from the suffering of purgatory by performing pious
acts in his or her name. By praying for the welfare of the ruler and the population,
they argued, monks were aiding the state, not injuring it.
Even rulers who accepted these arguments saw some need to set rules for the
Buddhist establishment, since it took so much land off the tax registers. Rulers
generally consented to making monastic lands inalienable and free from taxation
and to exempting monks from labour service, but in return they wanted guaran-
tees that monks were indeed pious and learned, not just tax-evaders. Twice
100 THE Ca \MBRIDGE LL LUSTRATERD HIisrorY OF CHINA

Tao Yuanming

The classical Chinese language, with its

aid the
tones and abundant
rhymes, was well suited to rhymed verse. The Chinese script
is similarly conducive to poetry-writing because it stimu-
artsak Chinese poetry
|
south (modern Jiangxi province), Tao had an inconsequential
political career, never holding any post very long. Once, itis -
&
:
told, he quit his post rather than entertain a visitiing inspec- Ss
lates visual associations in ways that purely phonetic scripts: tor, objecting, ‘How could | bend my waist to this. vilillage. ae

a
2
do not. Perhaps for these reasons poetry was from early buffoon’ for five pecks of rice!’ On some occasions he. ee
times the central literary art in China. During the age of expressed. fierce ambition, ‘at othertimes a desire to be left
Confucius, envoys and philosophers alike quoted the Book of alone to follow the dictates of,his heart.By the age of forty
Songsin their Speeches and essays, not only to demonstrate he quit:
government servi ce altogether and h me
their education but also. to make their points more effec-
tively. During Han times the scholarship surrounding this
self by
fron
ae which ‘couud be
classic emphasized the connection between poetry and the
expression of emotion. Poetry is what happens when emo-
considered
pipers it
pen Daoist sentiments as
‘€

a
tions are stirred, commentators explained, and sensitive.

to
reader of poetry can perceive through a poem the state of.
mind of the writer. The
art of poetry reached great heights in
the aesthetically inclined aristocratic society of the period of who withdrew. from friends and
division, and poets came to. play.a distinctiive cultural role as expressed. his enjoyment of books, music
exemplars of the complex individual, moved by conflicting.
but powerful emotions:
Tao Qian, known. as Tao Yuanming (365- 427), was
better
“one oF the first poets to.create such a persona. From the

northern rulers were swayed by the more virulent anti-Buddhist rhetoric to initi-
ate persecutions of Buddhism. In 446-52 and again in 574~79, orders were issued
to close the monasteries and to force Buddhist monks and nuns
to
return to lay
life. No attempt was made
in
these or subsequent persecutions to
suppress private
Buddhist beliefs, however; the state never sponsored any sort of inquiry into peo-
ple’s beliefs, nor did it ever insist that its officials renounce Buddhism. Moreover,
both of these persecutions lasted only to the end of the reign, and the next occu-
pant of the throne made generous amends.

DAOIST RELIGION

The development of Buddhism in China as a higher religion ~ a religion with a

body of
sacred texts and a clergy expert in them — coincided with and helped stim-
ulate the emergence of Daoism as a higher religion. Daoist religion drew inspira-
tion fromthe quietistic Daoist philosophy of the Zhou period, but was not simply
an extension of it. It drew as well from folk religion (worship of local gods along
with exorcistic and mediumistic techniques for dealing with them) and from elite
traditions related to the pursuit of longevity and immortality. Daoism as an orga-
nized communal religious movement began in the second century ap, when the
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division 101

Han order was losing its hold in the countryside. Two religious leaders, Zhang Jue,
the leader of the Yellow Turbans, and Zhang Daoling, the first Celestial Master,
were able to harness popular yearnings for a new and better age into major reli-
gious movements. Operating in different parts of the country, both built up fol-
lowings as faith healers and set up organizations of subordinates to supervise their
adherents. Zhang Jue and his followers were crushed soon after they revolted in
184, but Zhang Daoling and his sect survived in Sichuan.
The strand of Daoism related to the pursuit of immortality was already very old
at the end of the Han. The First Emperor of Qin and the Han emperor Wudi had
both consulted experts in the arts of extending lifespans. The Daoist pursuit of
longevity was phrased in terms of enhancing the body’s yang energy, thus revers-
ing the natural flow towards death. Through special techniques (such as breath
control, restricted diets, sexual techniques, and the use of elixirs, herbs, and talis-
mans) a person could collect and refine the yang energies in the body, transform-
ing a heavy mortal body into a light immortal one.
During the Age of Division, Daoism acquired a body of scriptures that rivalled
the Buddhist sutras. During the years 364-70 two men, father and son, had a
series of visions of a group of immortals from the heaven of Supreme Purity, a
102 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

realm loftier than any with which the Celestial Masters

had communicated. They learned from these immortals
that demonic forces would cleanse the earth of evildoers to
prepare it for the descent from heaven of a new universal
ruler. Some of the revealed texts show a thorough famil-
iarity with Buddhist thought, including notions of predes-
tination and reincarnation; they also contain much
alchemical lore. Within a few decades, other revelations
resulted in the Lingbao scriptures, these ones containing
elaborate liturgies for rituals. Then in 415 in the north,
Kou Qianzhi, a Daoist priest in the line of the Celestial
Masters, received revelations from Laozi himself. Laozi
charged him with the task of reforming Daoism, eliminat-
ing sexual rites and other practices offensive to the high
gods. The huge canon of scriptures that Daoism acquired
in these ways was generally kept secret from the uniniti-
ated, unlike the widely circulated Buddhist sutras.
Over the course of the Southern dynasties, Daoism
developed institutions similar to Buddhist monasteries. By
the end of the Age of Division, Buddhism and Daoism
were in competition with each other for the patronage of
ordinary Chinese in the cities and the countryside. In this
competition, Daoists claimed that they had better spells,
more potent hygiene techniques for achieving immortality,
and more control over malevolent local gods. Buddhists
Daoist religion continued to claimed that they had loftier principles and better techniques for attaining salva-
flourish in later dynasties, and tion and helping deceased loved ones achieve better rebirths. Both religions tried
Daoist priests frequently con-
to accommodate popular belief and tended to accept local deities as lesser figures
ducted grand ceremonies. This
in their pantheons but rejected the practice of making offerings of meat to gods of
illustration from a 1618 edi-
tion of a novel shows a Daoist any sort. In this period and for centuries to come, more Chinese would become
priest performing a ceremony Buddhist clergy than Daoist clergy, and more Buddhist temples were constructed
before an altar with statues, than Daoist ones, but both religions developed through interaction with each
candles, and incense burners,
other and with Chinese political authorities and lay society.
Musicians are in attendance,
and the man who commis-
DIFFERENTIAL REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
sioned the ritual is kneeling in
the centre. By themid sixth century, China had been politically divided north and south for
over two centuries, a situation that allowed society and culture in each region to
go their own ways.
The aristocratic families in the north and the south developed distinctive
styles. In the north, eminent Chinese families, generally well entrenched in the
countryside in places they had lived for centuries, put emphasis on their preser-
vation of Confucian learning and their embodiment of Confucian traditions of
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division 103

family ethics and rituals. They sought substantive posts in the government not
only out of a Confucian sense of duty but also because such service offered pres-
tige, power, and connections to elite families from other parts of the country. They
spent much of their careers in the provinces, often starting near home where
access to entry-level positions was nearly automatic, then rising to posts like pre-
fect that required commanding troops. At court, however, northern aristocrats
were expected to exhibit mastery of the classics and histories. Many were quite
learned, like Wei Shou, the scion of an eminent northeastern family, whose 114-
chapter history of the Wei dynasty provides full accounts of both the Xianbei and
the Chinese leaders and even an astute history of Buddhism and Daoism.
The practical experience of these high-ranking Chinese families made them a
real asset to the northern rulers intent on state-building. In the south, by contrast,
the families of highest prestige were ones who had settled there as homesick
refugees nostalgic for the cultural life of the Wei and Western Jin eras. With gov-
ernment salaries nearly guaranteed, they were free to cultivate the arts. Witty con-
versation, wine, and poetry were all characteristic of the cultural life of the
aristocrats in Nanjing. The ‘pure talk’, which in its early stages had concentrated
on the analysis of individuals’ characters, had gradually been extended to include
probing the essential features of literary, artistic, and philosophical works. Liter-
ary criticism flourished in an environment where taste was a matter of much
importance. In about 530 a prince of the Liang dynasty compiled an anthology,
the Selections of Literature, containing carefully selected examples of thirty-odd
genres of prose and verse. Calligraphy and painting similarly benefited from the
concern with individual expression and aesthetics. Wang Xizhi, taken by many to
be the greatest calligrapher of all time, drew inspiration from Daoism with its
emphasis on the natural and spontaneous. His younger contemporary, Gu Kaizhi,
became a master of figure painting. Interest in mountains where immortals
dwelled — as well as general Daoist interest in nature — led to the beginning of
landscape painting. Xie He, in the early sixth century, enunciated standards by
which paintings should be judged, such as the degree to which they are imbued
with vital force and the strength of the brushwork employed. Thus painting and
calligraphy came to be seen as carrying intellectual content in a way not true of
the decoration on ceramics, lacquerware, or textiles.
To northerners, southern aesthetes seemed effete. And even some southerners

saw how the pursuit of aesthetic values could deteriorate into an empty preoccu-
pation with style. Yan Zhitui complained that many young menin aristocratic
families knew how to perfume their garments and powder and rouge their faces,
but could not compose a poem for a court feast. In his view their vacuity stemmed
from too sheltered a life; they could live off official salaries and never know any-
thing about how grain was grown. His portrayal of the Nanjing aristocracy makes
it sound not unlike the aesthetically inclined aristocracy of medieval Japan
depicted in the Tale of Genji.
104 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisTORY OF CHINA

The political separation of north and south, thus, was not inimical to cultural
advance, and may even have helped foster the maturation of Buddhism. The cen-
tres of Buddhist learning in the north were in closer contact with Central Asia,
and awareness of the foreign origins of Buddhism was kept alive through the
active and earnest efforts at translation. In the south, which had no direct over-
land connection to Central Asia, effort was directed instead toward the sinifica-
tion of Buddhism and the interpretation and elaboration of Buddhist ideas within
the framework of traditional philosophy and religion. With the reunification of
China under the Sui and Tang dynasties, these two strands were able to cross-fer-
tilize each other and strengthen the hold of Buddhism in Chinese society.
In a comparable way, Chinese political theorizing was stimulated by political
division, as supporters of one regime or another tried to construct convincing
claims to the status of Son of Heaven and successor to the Han dynasty. In the
north much was made of geography, of controlling the region of the Zhou and
Han capitals, the land where all the places sacred or memorable in Chinese
history
were located, including the tombs of all earlier monarchs. Much also was made of
preserving the political traditions of the Zhou and Han. One of the northern suc-
cessor regimes took the name Zhou and evoked the heritage of the Zhou by
renaming government offices according to the nomenclature listed in the ancient
Rituals of Zhou (Zhouli). Chinese at the southern court could not make similar
claims to geographical centrality, but they could point to the ethnicity of their
rulers — indisputably Chinese. They also elaborated a theory based on the rituals
of succession, on the abdications that linked one ruler to the next in an unbroken
succession of Sons of Heaven. Thus, because the Han had turned over the imper-
ial seal to the Wei, the Wei to the Jin, and the Jin to the Song, it was the rulers in
exile in the south who were the legitimate Sons of Heaven.
North and south were not, of course, evolving independently of each other, but
rather in contact and competition with each other. The Chinese elite in both areas
were literate in the same language and read the same books. There was much
travel back and forth, some of it coerced, some voluntary. Thus distinctive identi-
ties were fostered as much by contact as by isolation.

To Chinese historians in subsequent ages, none ofthe rulers of the Age of Division
fulfilled the central role of Son of Heaven, namely
to establish a cosmically correct
and harmonious order for All-Under-Heaven. Thus this period was treated as sig-
nificant primarily as a negative example: the disorder and dislocation, the ethnic
hostility and bloody court struggles, the tyrannical rulers and enslaved captives
all demonstrated why powerful, intrusive, unified, centralized, imperial govern-
ments were necessary. Yet much that enriched Chinese culture was given a chance
to flourish in this period when thestate was unable to
penetrate very deeply into
society, and both ordinary people and the elites absorbed themselves in less state-
centred systems of meaning.
Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien Rulers: The Age of Division

Westerners and modern Chinese familiar with the course of western history
have often labelled the Age of Division ‘medieval’ because of its similarities to
Europein the period after the fall of Rome. In both instances, a great empire broke
up, barbarian tribes who had been used as auxiliary military forces gained the
upperhand, and the old urban economy suffered. In both places a foreign religion
with claims to universality rapidly gained adherents and the intensity of religious
fervour led to vast expenditure on monumental art. Intriguing as these corre-
spondences are, they should not deflect our attention from the equally important
differences between the experiences of China and Europe. Although north China
was in great disarray for over a century after the collapse of the Western Jin, state-
building efforts were well underway by the middle of the fifth century. Perhaps
because Chinese statesmen all knew the history of the Zhou dynasty — when
bonds of fealty between vassals and lords led eventually to the emergence of sep-
arate states empire-builders sought
— a strongly centralized, bureaucratically
administered political order, and not a decentralized, feudal one.
In China, moreover, the barbarian influx had much less impact on culture and
consciousness. Chinese continued to be the spoken language of north China,
Xianbei eventually disappearing. Charlemagne could not deny or obscure his Ger-
manic heritage and was restrained by itfrom acting out the part of a Roman
emperor. By contrast, neither the Sui nor the Tang emperors had any difficulty
presenting themselves and their ancestors as descended from ancient Chinese
stock. The sense of disjuncture, of moral and emotional separation from the clas-
sical past, thus, was not nearly so great in China as in the west.
Equally important, education and scholarship never went into eclipse in Trade with Central Asia con-
China. The aristocracies in both the north and south were fully literate, and the tinued through the Age of
Division, and aristocrats in
intellectual atmosphere in the south was as conducive to literary and artistic
north China in particular
experimentation as any in Chinese history. Leading men of letters were in no remained willing to import
sense less sophisticated than their Han counterparts centuries earlier. Indeed, the luxury items from distant
encounter with Indian civilization — a civilization much more on a par with China lands. This necklace of gold,
than any China had encountered before — stimulated intellectual inquiry and self- pearl, and lapis lazuli, dating
reflection. Struggling with ways to convey the sounds of the Sanskrit language, for from the late sixth century and
possibly made in Persia or
instance, led to the first analysis of the tones in the Chinese language. Even the Afghanistan, was among the
commercial economy was not hit as hard in China as it was in the West. Trade was objects unearthed from the
certainly disrupted in the fourth century and the use of coinage, for instance, tomb of a nine-year-old girl
declined. Still, the commercial economy had begun to revive by the late fifth cen- from a noble family.

tury and even trade between north and south grew to a considerable level.
 uddhism had an enormous impact on the
visual arts in the tallesta standing Buddha about 70 feet high.
China, especially sculpture and painting. The merchants Pre-Buddhist Chinese shrines had. not contained statues or
Lx and missionaries from Central Asia who brought Bud- paintings of deities, but Buddhists used images both to teach
dhism to China also brought ideas about the construction and Buddhist doctrine and provide a focus for devotional activities.
decoration of temples and the depiction of Buddhas and bod- Much of the early cave sculpture and painting portrayed the
hisattvas. this way Greek and Indian: artistic influence
In events in the life of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni. .Bud-
reached China, travelling via the Buddhist kingdom of Gand- dhas were often shown in a state of meditation, with masklike
hara (in present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan) through the faces that betray no emotion. Their faces bore distinctive marks
Buddhist centres along the Silk Road to Dunhuang and later to derived from Indian tradition, notably elongated ear lobes and
central China. cranial bumps. By contrast, the accompanying bodhisattvas
artis
The most extensive surviving early Chinese Buddhist were mortals, adorned with armlets and earrings, standing in
-
found the cave temples at Dunhuang and Yungang, spared
in “more varied poses. In the sixth century Chinese artists gradually
during the political persecutions which destroyed the temples refined the ways they portrayed Buddhas and bodhisattvas,
in urban centres. The cave temples at Dunhuang in western making them more slender and less angular, reflecting stylistic
Gansu province were probably begun by 400, initiated by local preferences seen also in secular Chinese painting.
monks; work continued on them over a period of several. cen- Although the cave temples of Dunhuang and Yungang,
turies..A large proportion of the residents of Du nhuang in this along with the slightly later ones at Longmen: near Luoyang,
period were probably not Chinese, and it is therefore not sur- contain the bulk of surviving fifth- and sixth-century Buddhist
prising that the decoration of the early caves at Dunhuang art, at the time they constituted just a small fraction of Bud-
shows strong connections to the Buddhist art at- other oasis dhist sites. The many temples and monasteries in cities, towns,
towns further west; such as'Kucha and Khotan.
~

In 460 the Northern Wei court commissioned the carving of This huge Buddha at Yungang (c. 490), about 45 feet tall, was
cave temples at Yungang, near its early capital in northern probably inspired by the colossal Buddha images at Bamiyan
~
Shanxi. Most ofthe fifty-three caves there were carved out in Afghanistan. It is the most massive of some 51,000 Bud-
before the Wei moved their capital south to Luoyang in 494. dhist images carved into the surface of a cliff, which extends
The five earliest caves contain huge Buddha figures in stone, for over halfa mile. :

_
 The walls of cave 9 at Yungang are decorated with standing
or seated Buddha images surrounded by bodhisattvas, adoring
heavenly beings, musicians, and flying apsaras. The lowest
register carries a series of reliefs illustrating the life of
Shakyamuni.

Central altar in Cave 432 at Dunhuang, Western Wei.

pesod
with painted clay statues of a Buddha flanked bya pair of.
4
bodhisattvas, each about feet tall.

and mountainsides provided: sensual stimulation of many sorts:

the fragrance of incense; the sound of chanting; and the visual
beauty of huge halls and towering pagodas whose walls were. .

covered with paintings of the heavens or

the lives of the Bud-
dha and his main disciples. Yang Xuanzhi. was so dismayed by
the destruction of the temples and monasteries in Luoyang in
the civil war beginning in 524 that he wrote an account of their
glories. According to him, Jingming monastery had been the
most magnificent. On the seventh day of the fourth month, all
the Buddhist statues in the city, over a thousand altogether,
were brought to this monastery, and the emperor would come
in person to scatter flowers on them as
part of the Great Bless- :
ing ceremony. ‘The gold and the flowers dazzled in the sun, and
the jewelled canopies floated like clouds; there were forests of :
banners and a fog of incense, and the Buddhist music of India.
shook heaven and earth. All kinds of entertainers and trick rid-
ers performed shoulder to shoulder. Virtuous hosts of famous
monks came, carrying their staves; there were crowds of the The grief of the Buddha’s disciples at his death is captured in
Buddhist faithful, holding flowers; horsemen and carriages: this painting from the west wall of Cave 428 at Dunhuang,
were packed beside each other in an endless mass: painted in the early sixth century.
108 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

CHAPTER 5 A Cosmopolitan Empire:

The Tang Dynasty 581-907
North and South China were reunited at the end of the sixth century under the
short-lived Sui dynasty (581-617) and fashioned into an expansive, dynamic, cos-
mopolitan empire by its successor, the Tang dynasty (618-907). The reunification
of the country, the opening of the Grand Canal linking north and south, the cre-
ation of two huge capitals, and the expansion of interregional and international
trade all stimulated economic growth. The Tang capital, Chang’an, grew to be the
largest city in the world, housing perhaps a million people and attracting traders,
students, and pilgrims from all over Asia. At least until the massive Rebellion of
An Lushan (755-63) brought to an end this era of expansion, the Chinese of the
Tang showed themselves remarkably open to what other cultures had to offer.
Music and art in particular absorbed considerable foreign influence, and Bud-
dhism continued to be enriched by doctrines and rituals introduced from outside
China proper.

EMPIRE-BUILDING
The recreation of a unified Chinese empire in the late sixth century was not
inevitable. By then China proper had been divided into separate northern and
southern states for over two centuries, each of which considered itself the true
heir to the Zhou and Han dynasties. Given the geographical differences between
north and south China, this situation might well have become a permanent one,
like the division into eastern and western Roman empires in the west; the north
and south could each have developed its own version of Chinese civilization.
But union of the north and south did occur, and the long-term consequences
for Chinese civilization were profound. The centralized bureaucratic monarchy
was refashioned on an even stronger basis than in the Han. This reunification and
the resultant peace ushered in three centuries of cultural flowering. From then on
those who thought about the history of China had two examples from ‘modern’
times (the Han and Tang) to add to the three ancient dynasties (Xia, Shang, and
Zhou) to prove the rightness of the unity of the Chinese world. Permanent divi-
sion into independent states seemed less and less a natural, reasonable, or desir-
able state of affairs.
Unification came about through force of arms. The successors of the Xianbei
Northern Wei, whose names changed as
a result of palace coups from Western
Wei to Zhou to Sui, took Sichuan in 553, the northeast in 577, and the south in
589. The conquest of
the south involved naval as well as land attacks, with thou-
sands of ships on both sides contending for control of the Yangzi River. The Sui
conquerors razed the southern capital at Nanjing and forced the nobles and
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty 109

officials living there to move to the new Sui capital at Chang'an,thus eliminating
them as a possible separatist threat and bringing their cultural traditions to the
north of the country.
The Northern Zhou rulers who built the army that reunified China were unam-
biguously Xianbei, but in 581 Yang Jian, a general with a Chinese surname, ousted
the heir to the throne (his daughter's son), secured his position by killing fifty-
nine princes of the Zhou royal house, and founded the Sui dynasty. Known as
Emperor Wendi (r. 581-604), he sought to
legitimate his actions by presenting
himself as a Buddhist Cakravartin King, that is, a monarch who uses military force
to defend the Buddhist faith. Both he and his successor had grandiose plans for
rebuilding China but tried to do too much toosoon. Levies for labour service and
military campaigns were onerous — 1,132,800 men were called up for a campaign
against Korea in 612, for instance. In less than four decades rebellion resulted in
the overthrow of the Sui dynasty. Of the many contenders who emerged, the most
formidable came from the same northwestern elite that had produced the North-
ern Zhou and Sui rulers. The victor, Li Yuan (who reigned as Gaozong, 618-26),
was in fact a first cousin of the second Sui emperor (their mothers were sisters).
He and his son Taizong (7. 626-49) not surprisingly largely continued Sui initia-
tives. Taizong ruled three times as long as his father and is generally treated as a
co-founder of the Tang. He used as much force as Wendi to come to the throne,
killing two brothers and seeing to the execution of all ten of their sons. Then he
demanded that his father abdicate in his favour. Despite this ruthless beginning,
Taizong proved a wise and conscientious ruler, able to select good advisors and
willing to listen to them, even when they criticized his personal behaviour.
Modern historians often describe the Sui and early Tang as sino-foreign
regimes to draw attention to the large contributions of the Northern Dynasties to
their institutional base and also the large component of families with Xianbei or
other northern ancestry among the
political and military elite of the period. It
is

Drinking tea became popular

in Tang times. The purpose of
this gilded silver tea grinder
was to pulverize powdered tea
that had been made into cakes.
Dated 869, it was among
a
of objects donated by the
set

imperial family to the Famensi

Buddhist temple in Fufeng,
near Xi’an, Shaanxi province.
110 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Tang China
Talas River 751: dateat Tang
KIRGHIZ
Arabs
armies; marks furthest extent of
“-
Tang and:Arab expansion:

anyfBaikal
Lod
KHAZARS

WEES TER NEO

MCAT UPRIK
Ses EASTERN TURKS

2 _TURKESTAN
SQ
N Tang
ae
= SOGDIANA
military)
= protectorate
| Lake!Balkhash
Dunhuang :

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&

659-65

(Ne
iy _Taklimakan
a khotan.
=
“TRA NSOXIANA
Hind’

INDIAN OCEAN

Tang empire ——— trade route metropolitan prefecture

eas) under temporary Tang control area of Chinese cultural influence major prefecture

Tang China's neighbours included states that had adopted east, and Nanzhao and Tibet to the west. China also exerted
many aspects of Chinese statecraft. These included the king- political overlordship over large areas in central Asia where
doms of
Silla and Bohai to
the northeast, Nara Japan to the Chinese culture did not penetrate so deeply.
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty

true that both founders came from families that had worked closely with the Xian-
bei rulers and had intermarried with them. But none of these early rulers chose to
present himself as synthesizing the best of Chinese and Xianbei traditions.
Because both Yang and Li were Chinese names, they could present themselves as
scions of old Chinese stock and emperors in the tradition of the Han. Certainly
they did not think martial prowess or love of horses and hunting were un-
Chinese. During this period the Xianbei presence rapidly faded as the Xianbei
were assimilated and their language disappeared. Many men of Xianbei descent
used the Chinese surnames they had been given at the end of the fifth century and
served in civil rather than military offices. One of Taizong’s chief experts in civil
administration, for instance, was Zhangsun Wuji, a well-educated descendant of
the Tuoba imperial clan.
if
Even the Sui and Tang founders framed their state-building in entirely Chi-
nese terms, they were heavily indebted to the groundwork laid during the North-
ern Dynasties. Both dynasties retained modified forms of the equal-field system
started during the Northern Wei. By setting the uniform taxes in
grain, cloth, and
labour services relatively low, they were able to increase the numbers of house-
holds on the tax registers, and within a few years after reunification, the number
of registered households had been doubled to about nine million (for a total pop-
ulation in the vicinity of fifty million). The Sui and early Tang also retained the
Northern Zhou divisional militia, the army of volunteer farmer-soldiers who in
return for their allocations of farmland served in rotation in armies at the capital
or on the frontiers.
Using this army, the Sui and Tang rulers quickly extended their control beyond
China proper. On the Inner Asian frontier, the powerful Turks had become a
recurrent threat. To keep them in check, these rulers used the old strategies of
strengthening fortifications, marriage diplomacy, investiture of their rulers, trade
and tribute missions, and getting one tribe or contender to
fight another. For
instance, in 605, when the Khitan from the northeast made raids into China, a
Chinese general was sent to lead 20,000 Turkish cavalrymen against them. When
the Khitan were defeated, their women and livestock were given to the Turks as
their reward. In 630, however, the Chinese turned against the Turks, wresting
control of the Ordos and of southwestern Mongolia away from them, and winning
for Taizong the title of great khan. This opened the way for joint Chinese-Turkish
expeditions into the Silk Route cities of Central Asia in the 640s and 650s, which
resulted in China regaining overlordship in the area.
The Sui and early Tang dynasties were also periods of empire building at home,
of strengthening, standardizing, and codifying the institutions of political control.
The Sui promulgated a code of law which combined elements of both northern
and southern legal traditions, and the Tang built on it. The code of 653, the earli-
est to survive, has more than 500 articles specifying penalties to be imposed on
list
those found guilty of a long of crimes. The penalties ranged from a beating of
112 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisTORY OF CHINA

_| ten blows with the light stick, to a hundred blows with the heavy
_

stick, to penal servitude lasting one to

three years, to life exile to dis-
~, tant locations with penal servitude, to execution. Like earlier laws,
|

ing penalties according to the relationship of the parties; for exam-

ple, it was more serious for a servant or a nephew to
strike or killa
j

master or an uncle than vice versa. The legal principles articulated in

|

this Tang code remained central to the Chinese legal system in all
succeeding dynasties.
Imperial control over provincial administration was
a
issue in this period. During the Northern and Southern dynasties,
critical

the number of prefectures had proliferated, and staffing them had

largely become the privilege of local elite families. To reassert central
control over local government, the Sui reduced the numbers of pre-
fectures and counties, gave the ministry of personnel the power to
fill even the lower posts in them, and ruled that officials could no
longer serve in their home prefecture or serve more than one tour in
any prefecture. These new policies worked to limit the power of
locally entrenched families and to keep centrally appointed officials
from allying with them.
As in the Han period, appointing men imbued with Confucian
values of loyalty to the ruler and duty to the people was another
means of strengthening imperial power, since it was much less costly
to appoint officials the government could trust thanto supervise and
monitor their every action. identify true
To Confucians, the Sui
introduced written examinations of candidates’ literary abilities and
knowledge of the classics. The Tang expanded this
civil service
examination system and took other measures to promote Confucian
education, such as setting up state schools and issuing authorized
versions of the Five Classics, complete with selected commentaries.
Although in the Tang period on average only twenty to thirty men

The calm, respectful, but

passed civil service examinations per year, the exams gradually came
the
to
play
determined demeanour of this an important role in identifying an elite within the bureaucracy, a group of men
stone statue was meant to cap- Who would spend much of their careers in the central government, rapidly pro-
ture the qualities desired in moted from one post to the next. The new system moreover expanded opportuni-
high officials. It was among
a
series of civil and military offi-
ties for the highly talented from unconnected families; by mid Tang, a man from
Guangdong province, far from any of the centres of aristocratic families, had risen
cials that lined the path to the
grave of the first Tang
through the examination system to hold some of
the highest offices in the court.
emperor. Still, members of the famous families were everywhere in the bureaucracy, espe-
cially at the highest reaches. Because men from old aristocratic families tended to
do well in the examinations, this recruitment system did not put an end
to
their
influence, but it did shape how they prepared themselves for government service.
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty 113
 + THE CAMBRIDGE [1
LLUSTRAT rED HISTORY OF CillNA

Undoubtedly the two most famous women-of Tang times

were Empress Wu and Yang Guifei, and popular understand-
ing of the power that women could gain over men was
much shaped by the stories told about these two rather dif-
eevery
:
:

.
1
ferent palace women, Before the end of the dynasty, how-
ever, fictional “women were. coming to play nearly as
j
important a role in shaping understandings of male-female .
relations. Well- crafted short stories written in the classical ae
ao
oe
language by. jeading men of letters came to shape cultural
expectations concerning. what makes men: and women eae toenuati
eee
regi

attractive to each other, how. they differ iin the ways they. see

express love, and their varying proclivitiesfor devotion or

callousness.
- a
ae
:
Becca ectrtieree
ree

eur
Tang love stories frequently concerned youngliterati aus
ee
who became enamoured of courtesans or prostitutes: Bai
Xingjian wrote about a young. examination candidate who cass
fell for the beauti ful courtesan Li Wa
on first glance. She and
-
sc
2
2ppea
Tee ke

her propriietrix ‘gradually squeezed him. of all his. money and

oe
|
then disappeare Totally impoverished, the young. man was. -cithe
reduced to.‘supporting. himself asa singerof funeral: dirges. ae
When. his father discovered himiin that demeaned‘capacity,
Ww
he beat him nearly to death. Fora while the young. man lived
by begging, until by accident. he again encountered ty Wa,
~

who out of a sense of guilt and.compassion first purchased

her freedom. from her proprietrix, then took him in. After
~ nursing him backto health, she convinced him to resume his.
studies. In the end he passed the examinations with. distinc-
tion, became an official, and was able to win overhis: father,
2
“An
a
who even accepted Li Wa as daughter-in--law.
even more famous love story. concerns an examina-
tion candidate ‘who felliin love with: a girl ofreece
2
e
fami fe and full-faced womeen.

From Tang times on, the education of the upper class tended to become more
bookish, and martial skills such as horsemanship, archery, and swordsmanship
gradually came to
play lesser role elite life.
a in

The examinations system helped to standardize and overcome differences

between the northwestern, northeastern, and southern elites. The economic and
political integration of the empire was similarly aided by an engineering feat: the
construction of the Grand Canal, dug between 605 and 609 by means of
enor-
mous levies of conscripted labour. Transport canals had been built since Qin
times, but these had never been anything this scale. The first stage linked the
on

eastern capital of Luoyang to the Yangzi valley at modern Yangzhou. On its

 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History or CHina

The Sui dynasty’s contribution completion, the second Sui emperor led a 65-mile-long flotilla of boats down to
to the developmentof Chinese his southern capital at Yangzhou. Soon the canal was extended south to
transportation was not limited
to the construction of the
Hangzhou and north to the Beijing area. An imperial road was built alongside the
Grand Canal. Roads were built canal and relay post stations were provided. In total, the canal extended almost
in the north China plain to 1,200 miles, allowing the government to draw on the growing wealth of the
improve access to the north-
ern frontier. This bridge in
Yangzi valley to support both the government in the capital area and the military
garrisons along the northeastern frontier. This new long-distance supply system
Zhouxian, Hebei province,
was constructed between 605
gradually obviated the need for the army
be brought fromthe south to the north.
to be
self-supporting, as supplies could
and 616 using over a thousand
stones weighing more than a Empire building continued apace during the late seventh century when the
It
ton each. has a span of court was dominated by Empress Wu, a powerful personality, as ruthless and
about 130 feet and a width of
politically adroit as Wendi or Taizong. Her rise to power is that much more
over 30 feet.
remarkable because she did not begin as an empress, but as Gaozong’s concubine.
Her influence on Gaozong (r.650-83) was such that within a few years of her
entering the palace he was willing to oust his previous empress to install her
instead, over the strenuous objections of his high officials. Once installed as
empress, she moved quickly to eliminate her rivals and opponents. After Gaozong
suffered a stroke in 660, Empress Wu took full charge. Even though he died in
683, she maintained her control during the reigns of her two sons, whom she
summarily deposed, one after the other. In 690 she proclaimed herself emperor of
a new dynasty, the Zhou, making her the only woman who took the title emperor
in Chinese history. She circulated the Great Cloud Sutra, which predicted the
imminent reincarnation of the Buddha Maitreya as a female monarch, under
whom all the world would be free of illness, worry, and disaster, thus providing
Buddhist legitimation for her ascent to the throne. During her reign the court fre-
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty 117

Chang’an was laid out in the

early years of the Sui and
CHANG'AN
developed in Tang times into a

<
cre great city. It was divided into
walled wards, the gates to
IMPERIAL PARK DAMING
PALACE 7
IMPERIAL PARK
which were closed at night. To
facilitate state supervision,
buying and selling was

7X
restricted to special market
quarters, but religious estab-
IMPERIAL city lishments were to be found
~ ~ Cilengtian throughout the city.
|
wpe nod ALE.

Jinguang.
Gate
,
WEST ?

MARKE

Gaie ©

probably
‘BUDDHIST MONASTERIES
DAOIST MONASTERIES
oa
MANICHEAN, NESTORIAN, MAZDEAN TEMPLES
mgde Gate
ce RPENTINE

quently moved east to Luoyang and she recruited many officials from the east,
seeing in them
a counterweight to the northwest aristocracy closely
LAKE
HIBISCUS,
GARDEN!

so
connected to the Tang imperial family. Execrated by later historians as an evil
usurper, Empress Wu was, without question, forceful. She suppressed rebellions
of Tang princes and maintained an aggressive foreignpolicy. Her hold on the gov-
ernment was so strong that she was not deposed until 705 when she was over
eighty and ailing.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE

A woman
in the role of emperor, as the link between heaven and humankind, was
certainly anomalous in
Chinese history, but was not the only anomalous feature of
the Tang period. More than in any other epoch in Chinese history before the
twentieth century, Chinese in early and mid Tang had the self-confidence to be
open to the new and different. Perhaps because a universal religion of foreign
118 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HistToRY OF CHINA

origin gave China links to

all the other countries of Asia east of Persia,
perhaps because the elite included many families of non-Chinese
descent, perhaps because China had the military might to garrison the
Silk Road and keep it open for trade, Chinese in this period were more
than happy to gather about them the best of what the rest of their
world had to offer.
The magnificent capital at Chang'an exerted a powerfully attractive
force on the outside world. Like earlier capital cities in the north,
Chang’an was a planned city laid out on a square grid, but it was con-
structed on a much larger scale than any previous capital. Its outer
walls, made of pounded earth about ten to fifteen feet thick and thirty-
five feet tall, extended over five miles north to south and nearly six
miles east to west. The palace was in
the north, so the emperor could,
in a sense, face south towards his subjects, whose homes were in the
108 wards, each enclosed by a wall. Certain blocks were set aside for
markets, open at specified hours each day. The great southern gate of
the city opened out on to an extremely broad avenue about 500 feet
wide. Foreign envoys seeking to see the emperor alltravelled along
this thoroughfare directly to the palace. This and other main avenues
were bordered by ditches planted with trees. When the city was first
built in the Sui, officials and nobles were offered incentives to build
residences and temples in the city, and many southern aristocrats were
forced to move there after their capital was conquered in 589. But
incentives and coercion were not needed for long; by the early Tang
leading members ofsociety sought to live in Chang’an or the sec-
ondary capital at Luoyang, also rebuilt in the Sui period.
The culture of Chang’an and Luoyang was enthusiastically cos-
mopolitan. Taizong was fascinated by the monk Xuanzang (602-64)
Silk remained a major item of who returned to China in 645 to tell about his fifteen years travelling across Cen-
trade through Central Asia in tral Asia and India. Knowledge of the outside world was also stimulated by the
presence of envoys, merchants, and pilgrims who came from the tributary states
Tang times. The most luxuri-
ous silks were generally used
in Central Asia as well as from neighbouring countries like Japan, Korea, and
for women’s clothes, as seen in
this painted wooden figurine Tibet. Goods from these distant regions — horses, jewels, musical instruments, and
excavated from the tomb of a textiles — were sources of endless fascination to both the court and the capital
Chinese official posted to the
far western frontier near Tur-
elite. Foreign fashionsinhair and clothing were often copied, and foreign amuse-
ments like the game of polo became favourite pastimes of the well-to-do. The car-
fan in Xinjiang province.
avans that came from Central Asia were so appreciated that pottery
representations of camels and their non-Han grooms were among the objects peo-
ple commonly placed in tombs. Foreign religions, including Islam, Judaism,
Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity were practised among
the thousands of foreign merchants resident there, though none of
these religions

spread into the Chinese population the way Buddhism had centuries earlier.
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty 119

Foreign influence had longer-term impact inthe arts. Silver-smithing was per-
fected, with cups, plates, ewers, and other small objects showing the influence of
Persian designs and techniques. The introduction of new instruments and new
tunes from India, Iran, and Central Asia brought about a major transformation of
Chinese music. Interior furnishings were also transformed, as the practice of sit-
ting on mats on the floor gradually gave way tothe foreign practice of sitting on
stools and chairs.
Prosperity undoubtedly aided the cultural vitality of the Tang period. The
reunification of the country, the opening of the Grand Canal linking north and
south, and the expansion of international trade via the Central Asian Silk Route

Ceramic model of a group of

musicians seated on a camel,
26 inches tall, excavated in
Xi’an (Chang’an) from a tomb
dated 723. The dress of some
of the musicians, along with
their beards and facial fea-
tures, indicate that they are
from Central Asia. Tang tombs
often contain ceramic models
of Central Asian men, both
musicians and grooms attend-
ing to horses or camels; the
presence of these objects
attests to the love of the Tang
elite for Central Asian music
and for the caravans that
brought goods from the west.
120

and the higher-volume sea routes all stimulated the economy. Economic develop-
ment of the south was particularly impressive, aided by convenient water trans-
portation along rivers and streams. River traffic had grown so heavy that storms at
Yangzhou in 721 and 751 were said to have led to the destruction of over 1,000
boats each time. Tea, native to the south, was no longer looked on as a medicinal
herb, useful primarily to those trying to stay awake, but had come tobe drunk all
over the country, making it a major item in trade. The southern port cities of Can-
ton, Quanzhou, and Fuzhou grew insize as maritime trade along the coast and
throughout Southeast Asia expanded greatly, much of it in the hands of Arab mer-
chants. By 742, when a census was taken, the proportion of the registered popu-
lation living in the south had increased from only a quarter in the early seventh
a
century to nearly half.
Neither economic growth nor the development of thriving commercial cities
brought about radical change in the composition of the social or political elite.
Tang China was still an aristocratic society. In elite circles, genealogies continued
to be much discussed and eminent forebears were looked on as a source of pride
and admiration; the most prestigious families still largely married among them-
selves, giving coherence and visibility to the highest stratum of the elite. Early in
the Tang dynasty the emperors sporadically made efforts to undermine the pres-
tige of aristocratic pedigree and to assert that high office carries more honour than
eminent ancestors. Once the families closest to the throne had become socially
accepted as aristocratic families, however, the emperors largely gave up trying to
challenge the aristocrats’ pretensions.
Aristocrats and other educated men in Tang times engaged in a wide range of
arts and learning. Confucian scholarship of many sorts flourished, especially the
writings of histories and commentaries to the classics. In this period education in

Confucian texts and commitment to Confucian principles of government service

was not looked on as incompatible with faith in Buddhism or Daoism, and many
men were learned in the texts of more than one tradition. The arts also attracted
scholars, many of whom were esteemed for their calligraphy. Almost all educated
men wrote an occasional poem, and poetic composition was tested on the most
prestigious of the civil service examinations, the jinshi, or ‘presented scholar
exam. Perhaps that contributed to the art of poetry, for the Tang produced many
of China’s greatest poets, including Wang Wei, Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, and Li
Shangyin. Over 48,900 poems by 2,200 Tang poets have survived. The parting of
friends was a common theme of
these poems, perhaps because officials were fre-
quently transferred to the provinces. The immense distances of the empire, the
dangers of travel, and the difficulty of keeping in touch once separated evidently
made every parting seem momentous. Poets also frequented entertainment quar-
ters of the cities where they could call on female musicians. In the late Tang
period, courtesans played an important part in popularizing a new verse form by
singing the lyrics written by famous men and by composing lyrics themselves.
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty 121

The high point of Tang culture came inthe first half of the eighth century, dur-
ing the reign of Xuanzong (r.712-56), a grandson of Empress Wu whose court
became the focal point of high culture. Xuanzong conducted state ceremonies on
a grand scale and authorized a major codification of state ritual. Buddhist and
Daoist clerics were also welcome at his court. Xuanzong invited teachers of the
newly introduced Tantric school of Buddhism, in 726 calling on the Javanese
monk Vajrabodhi to perform Tantric rites to avert drought and in 742 holding the
incense burner while the Ceylonese Amoghavajra recited mystical incantations to
aid the victory of Tang forces. To liven up the poetry written at his court and
amuse him on his outings with his palace ladies, Xuanzong established a new
academy for poets. The poet Li Bai served in this academy for a few years, writing
light sensual poems celebrating the beauty of the imperial parks and the ladies in
them. Xuanzong also enjoyed music and horses and even kept a troupe of danc-
a
ing horses. Han Gan, great horse painter, served at his court.
In his early years, Xuanzong’s love of court life did not keep him from tending
to affairs of state. He took prompt action to curb the power of imperial relatives
and Buddhist monasteries, both of which had gained strength under Empress Wu.
To deal with the declines in tax revenue caused by absconding peasants, he
ordered a new census and reformed the equal-field system. Because of threats
from the Turks, Uighurs, and Tibetans, he restructured the defence establishment,
setting up a ring of military provinces along the frontier from Sichuan to
Manchuria and giving their commanders great authority.
Xuanzong had many consorts and fathered thirty sons and twenty-nine daugh-
ters. But one woman had
is remembered above all
a special place in his life. In popular culture Xuanzong
for falling in love, when nearly sixty, with the young
imperial consort Yang Guifei, a beauty who shared his interest in music and dance
but lacked sound political sense. She was amused by the company of An Lushan,
one of the recently appointed military governors of non-Chinese origin. The dot-
ing Xuanzong showered An Lushan with favours and allowed him to amass
160,000 troops along the northern and northeastern frontiers. In 755 An Lushan
rebelled and marched on Luoyang and Chang’an, compelling Xuanzong
west. The troops that accompanied him staged a mutiny and forced Xuanzong to
to flee

have Yang Guifei strangled; Xuanzong, already over seventy and depressed bythe
turn of events, abdicated to his son and the most brilliant age of court culture
came to an end.

THE PENETRATION OF BUDDHISM INTO CHINESE LIFE

The outwardly oriented, cosmopolitan mood of the Sui and Tang periods allowed
Buddhist institutions to become an integral part of Chinese life. Buddhist monas-
teries ran schools for children; in remote areas they provided lodging for trav-
ellers; in towns they offered literati places to gather for social occasions like
going-away parties. Monasteries also played a major role in the economy. Their
122 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

huge tracts
of land and large numbers of to
serfs gave them the financial resources
establish enterprises like mills and oil presses and to open up new land. With the
income they earned from these ventures, they often expanded into money-lend-
ing and pawn-broking businesses, making monasteries an economic force in local
communities and contributing to further monetization and commercialization of
the economy.
Buddhism was also instrumental in transforming the Chinese imagination.
Stories of Buddhist origin became in Tang times among the most widely known
and popular tales. To spread the faith, monks would show pictures andtell
stories
to audiences of illiterate laymen. The story of Mulian, who journeyed to the
netherworld to save his mother, suffering the most harrowing punishments there,
gave rise to the ghost festival held the fifteenth day of the seventh month, one
on

of the most important festivals in Chinese popular culture. On this day Buddhists
The Great Hall of Nanchansi and non-Buddhists alike, from the most educated members of the clergy to
at Mount Wutai, one of the ordinary illiterate villagers, would put out food in order to feed hungry ghosts
oldest surviving buildings in
suffering in the netherworld. The Japanese monk Ennin, who spent the years
China, was probably built
shortly after the great sup-
838 to 847 in China, reported that on this day the forty-odd monasteries in
pression of Buddhism of 845 Yangzhou would compete with each other to make unusual candles, cakes,
was relaxed. in
and artificial flowers to offer in front of the Buddha halls. ‘Everyone the city
goes around to the monasteries and performs adoration during this most flour- Of all the large monastic com-

ishing festival.” plexes built in mountains far

from cities, probably none
By the mid-Tang period the most popular sects or schools of Buddhism were
attracted more pilgrims than
thoroughly sinified ones. Adherents of the Pure Land teaching devoutly paid the great establishmentat
homage to the Buddha Amitabhaand his chief helper, the compassionate bod- Mount Wutai in Shanxi
hisattva Guanyin, in order to be reborn in Amitabha’s paradise, the Pure Land. province. lts fame was so great
Among the educated elite, the Chan school (known in Japan as Zen) was becom- that hundreds of miles away at
Dunhuang in Gansu province
ing just as popular. Chan teachings rejected the authority of the sutras and
it was depicted on a mural in
claimed the superiority of mind-to-mind transmission of Buddhist truth through Cave ol.
a series of patriarchs, the most important of whom were the First Patriarch

Bodhidharma, an Indian monk who came to China in the early sixth century, and
the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, a Chinese monk whodied in the early eighth cen-
at
tury. The illiteracy of Huineng the time of his enlightenment was taken as proof
of the Chan claim that enlightenment could be achieved suddenly through insight
Into ones own true nature.
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

In the Lotus Sutra, the bod-

hisattva Guanyin was said to
have the power to grant chil-
dren to any woman who
prayed toher, an attribute that
undoubtedly added to
Guanyin’s appeal and the Chi-
nese tendency to conceive of
this bodhisattva as female.
These pages from a ninth- or
tenth-century illustrated ver-
a
sion show couple praying to
Guanyin for the birth of a
child (on the right), followed
by a midwife attending the
woman giving birth (on
the left).

The history of Buddhism in Tang times was not solely one of expansion and
penetration. In the late Tang period, opposition to Buddhism as foreign re-
emerged as China's international position weakened, and the court’s financial dif-
ficulties revived antagonism against Buddhism as an economic drain. In 841 the
court initiated a massive suppression of Buddhism and other foreign religions. By
845, when the orders were rescinded, around a quarter of a million monks and
nuns had been returned to lay
life, 150,000 slaves had been confiscated, and some
4,600 monasteries and-40,000 chapels had been demolished or converted to other
purposes. This blow came at an unfortunate time for Chinese Buddhism, for in
this period it also lost the intellectual stimulation of contact with Buddhist centres
in India and Central Asia due to the spread of Islam in Central Asia and the
decline of Buddhism in India. As a result of these two blows, although Pure Land
Opposite
Printed calendar for the year
and Chan continued to flourish, the more philosophical and exegetical schools of
877 found at Dunhuang in the Buddhist thought did not survive into later centuries.
far northwest. It is perhaps
not surprising that among the LIFE FAR FROM THE CENTRE
earliest surviving printed
A sense of what life was like for subjects of the Tang who lived far from the capi-
works arecalendars giving the
information needed to calcu-
tal and well below the upper reaches ofsociety can be glimpsed from a great cache
late what to do or avoid doing of documents found sealed in a cave temple at Dunhuang, at the far northwestern
on particular days. edge of China proper where the Silk Road across the desert began. Surviving
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty 125
 THe ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA
126 CAMBRIDGE

documents include contracts for the sale of land, houses, and slaves; household
registration records used in the equal-field system; elementary education primers;
forms for arranging divorce, adoption, or family division; sample or form letters
for many occasions; circulars for lay religious societies; local histories and lists of
local eminent families; and an enormous variety of government documents.
The farmers of Dunhuang may have lived far from the capital, but their daily
lives were still profoundly affected by the policies established there, particularly
the equal-field system. Documents found at Dunhuang prove that people did, in
fact, receive allotments land through this system, and this land did revert
of to
the
state after people died. But tenancy is also much in
evidence. Not only were there
also some people found
government lands worked by various types of tenants, but
it inconvenient to work the land allocated to them under the equal-field system
and rentedit to tenants while they worked as tenants themselves on other people’s
land. Monasteries were also large landlords, and their tenants were held serf- on

like bondage, unfree to move elsewhere or marry outside their status group. Dun-
free to
huang documents show, nevertheless, that monastery dependants were
own property of their own and to employ others to help them work it;
some even
had slaves of their own.
The state also had a large hand in the way goods were bought and sold. There
are about ninety fragments of official price lists showing that every month the
authorities established prices for three qualities of a wide range of commodities
sold in government-supervised markets, including foodstuffs and textiles. In
other matters, the role of the state was more indirect. Repair of irrigation ditches,
for instance, appears to
have largely been performed by small mutual-aid societies

of those farmers most directly affected, supervised by men performing their

labour-service duties.
This is not say that there were no private or non-governmental collective
to
activities in Dunhuang. The presence of Buddhist lay associations shows that even
ordinary farmers could organize themselves, passing around circulars to call
meetings. The expansion of education, largely outside government hands, can be
seen from the great quantity and variety of educational texts that survived in
Dunhuang. Confucian social ethics were taught in the primers used in schools
run by monasteries. The Family Instructions of the Grandfather, which survived in
forty-two copies in Dunhuang, employed simple verse to instruct young men in
correct manners:

When his father goes out to walk

The son must follow behind.
If on the road he meets a senior
He puts his feet together and joins his hands.
In front of a senior
He does not spit on the ground.
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty

The moral basis of women’s manners was also expounded:

A bride serves her husband

Just as she served her father.
Her voice should not be heard
Nor her body or shadow seen.
With her husband's father and elder brothers
She has no conversation.

The Dunhuang documents also include many books for somewhat more Metalwork in gold and silver
advanced students, such as multiplication tables, arithmetic exercises, vocabulary reached a high point in Tang
lists and etiquette books with elaborate rules for how to vary polite language times. The shape of this gilded
silver bottle, unearthed near
when addressing someone very superior, slightly superior, a peer, or an inferior;
Xi’an in Shaanxi province,
how to write a condolence letter or make a condolence visit; and how to conduct recalls the leather bottles of
weddings and funerals. nomadic horsemen, while the
The beginnings of printing can also be better understood in the context of the workmanship reflects Persian
Dunhuang documents. There was clearly a large local demand for primers for
influence. The playful etching
evokes the horses of Emperor
children, calendars of lucky and unlucky days, manuals of charms for warding off
Xuanzong, which were trained
evil, and guides for examination candidates. Another reason to make multiple to dance with cups of wine in
copies was to earn religious merit by copying and distributing sacred Buddhist their mouths.
texts. It was perhaps not a large step to begin carving
blocks to save time in reproducing texts, since the Chinese
had long used seals made out of metal, stone, and clay to
impress words on paper. They also knew how to make
copies of texts by taking rubbings of inscribed stones.
There is scattered evidence of the use of block printing as
early as the eighth century, and by the ninth century the
technique had been perfected. The oldest extant printed
book is a copy of the Diamond Sutra preserved in Dun-
huang, dated 868. Other Tang printed works preserved in
Dunhuang include dictionaries and almanacs. At about
this time the scroll format for long texts began to be super-
seded by flat books with folded pages, a format much more
convenient for storage. Within a couple of centuries the
invention of printed books would revolutionize the com-
munications of ideas.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC REALIGNMENTS

The Tang government never completely recovered from
the rebellion started by An Lushan. After eight years of
fighting (755-63), Xuanzong’s successor had little choice
but to make a compromising peace. To restore order he
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA
128

pardoned rebel leaders, often appointing them as military governors in the areas
where they had surrendered. From then on in several vital areas military gover-
their own
nors acted like rulers of independent states, paying no taxes, appointing
subordinates, and passing their power to
their own heirs. In these provinces, mil-
itary men, often non-Han or
semi-sinified, came to staff a large proportion of gov-
ernment posts. Even in provinces with civil governors, the provincial governors
were enhancing their administrative powers at the expense of both
the central

government and theprefects and magistrates.

In these circumstances, the central government finally abolished the long out-
from the Northern Dynasties and in 780
grown equal-field system it had inherited
substituted a twice-yearly tax on actual landholding. From this time on, regions
were given quotas oftaxes to fill and allowed considerable leeway in how they
raised the required funds. Government withdrawal from control of land owner-
ship amounted to a return to an open market in land, facilitating the growth
of

large estates as those who fell

into debt had to sell their land and those with
money could amass more and more property.
The new land tax worked well, but the central government discovered it
could raise revenue even more successfully through control of the production
and distribution of salt. By adding a surcharge to
the salt it sold to licensed mer-

chant distributors, the government was able to collect taxes indirectly, through
merchants, even from districts where its
authority was minimal. By 779 over half
the total revenue was being raised through the salt monopoly. Success with salt
led the government attempt similar policies with other commodities, inclu-
to
ding wine and tea. The Salt Commission became a
very powerful organization,
independent of the old organs of government and run by officials who specialized
in finance.
Besides withdrawing from control of the market in land, the post-rebellion
of urban markets.
Tang government largely gave up supervision of the operation
This retreat from management of
the economy had the
unintended effect of stim-
in
ulating trade. The circulation of goods increased and markets were opened
more and more towns, facilitating regional trade centred on the new provincial
the
capitals. Merchants, no longer supervised so closely, found ways to solve
perennial problems ofa shortage of coins by circulating silver bullion and notes of
exchange. Bythe ninth century a new economic hierarchy of markets and towns
had begun to emerge alongside the state hierarchy of administrative centres. The
entire south was also benefiting from yet another influx of migrants as Hebei
hit by the rebellion
province in particular and the north more generally were hard
its
and aftermath. Because agriculture was more productive in the south, every
shift of the population in that direction aided the overall economic prosperity of
the country. Cities of the lower Yangzi area, such as Yangzhou, Suzhou, and
Hangzhou, flourished, inducing many elite families from the north to relocate
permanently in the region.
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty 129

Chang’an continued to thrive as an urban centre in the post-rebellion era, but

the court based there did not fare so well. Capable and determined emperors and
court officials took many measures to strengthencentral control, but with limited
success. To counter the threat posed by the regional commanders, the court cre-
ated a Palace Army and put the emperor's personal servants, the palace eunuchs,
in charge of it. to
It did not take long for the eunuchs prove as much a bane as the
mutinous provinces. They gained control of palace affairs, and high officials
found themselves reduced to forming alliances with one group of eunuchs or
another. Accounts of court politics after 820 revolve around plots and counter-
plots, with the eunuchs and their allies enthroning, coercing, and murdering one
emperor after another. In 835 the emperor and a group of officials tried to strike
against the eunuchs but their plot was discovered. In retaliation, the eunuchs
ordered the immediate slaughter of over 1,000 officials. As a public display of
their power, the eunuchs had the three chief ministers and their families publicly
executed in Chang’an’s western market place.
External pressures coincided with these internal threats. Antagonistic states
were consolidating themselves all along the Tang’s borders — from Bohai on the
northeast to Tibet and Nanzhao on the west and southwest. The Turkish UVighurs
proved a burdensome ally. The An Lushan rebellion was put down in part through
their help, but to keep them from plundering Luoyang after they helped retake it,
they had to be paid off with huge quantities of silk. Thereafter, to keep them from
raiding, they had to be allowed to trade horses for silk at extortionate terms. At
the same time Tibet had formed a strong empire, and when Chinese troops were
withdrawn from the western frontier to help defend the capital after An Lushan
rebelled, it was easy for the Tibetanstostep in, cutting off Central Asia from met-
ropolitan China. When the Tibetan empire collapsed in 842 and the Uighur
empire broke up soon after, the Chinese court decided not to attempt the recov-
ery of their former dominions in Central Asia.
After 860, the decentralized government with so much of its power concen-
trated in the hands of regional commanders proved unable to maintain even a
semblance of order. Bandit gangs, some as large as small armies, ravaged the coun-
tryside and even attacked walled cities. These gangs preyed on traders and tax
convoys, smuggled illicit salt, and sometimes went on rampages that took them
far from their original base. Huang Chao, the leader of the most successful band,
was a salt merchant who had failed the civil service examinations. His army
moved rapidly across the country, from north to south and then north again, in
879 taking Guangzhou where they slaughtered thousands of foreign merchants,
and in 881 taking Chang’an, where they set up a government. At one point in
882,
after a poem ridiculing this new regime was posted on a government building,
orders were issued to kill all those capable of writing poetry, and some 3,000
people perished as a result. It was not for another twenty years, however, that all
pretence of Tang rule was abandoned, and the (short-lived) Liang dynasty pro-
 130 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

claimed, beginning the period conventionally called the Five Dynasties

(907-960) when China was fragmented into as many as ten regional states.

REASSESSING CHINA’S CULTURE AND INSTITUTIONS

In ancient times, when Chinese notions of their place in the world were first for-
mulated, it was quite possible for Chinese thinkers to see China as the sole locus
of civilization, the only place with writing, cities, and advanced manufacturing
techniques. In Tang times such a view was no longer sustainable. For centuries
pilgrims and missionaries had been travelling back and forth from India, bringing
knowledge of a land with a written tradition that was fully the match of China’s.
Moreover, China’s near neighbours could no longer be dismissed as primitives:
Korea, Bohai (in Manchuria), Nanzhao (in Yunnan), Tibet, and Japan all con-
structed states, adhered to universal religions, made use of writing (sometimes
inventing their own scripts), built cities, and engaged in long-distance trade.
China could view itself as the superior on any of a number of grounds, but could
not view itself as the only place with culture. In the early Tang, China’s political,
institutional, and cultural excellence received affirmation from all quarters; rulers

At the same time that printing

was introduced as a means to
reproduce texts, it
also began
to be used to decorate textiles.
This fragment of an eighth-to-
ninth-century silk banner,
from cave 17 at Dunhuang,
contains motifs of Persian
origin (the roundels come
from Persian metalwork)
mixed with other designs of
Chinese origin, such as the
pair of birds.
 131

in Korea and Japan, in fact, copied much of Tang culture and institutions whole- In Tang times people began to
sale in their own efforts to create powerful political centres. In the late Tang sit on raised platforms, as
dynasty, however, a profound sense of cultural crisis pervaded intellectual life. depicted in this mural ofa
feast. The men seated are
The sense that some sort of action had to be taken motivated many of the best
dressed in garb typical of
minds to rethink basic issues concerning the Chinese state and Chinese culture, scholars
at their leisure, in
in the process reinvigorating Confucian thinking. The ideas of two leading writ- gowns of blue or brown, black

ers, Du You (732-812) and Han Yu (768-824), can be taken to represent these boots, and black hats. The

intellectual trends. mural, 70 by 92 inches, was

painted on the wall of an
Du You, from an eminent aristocratic family, served with distinction in a series
eighth-century tomb near
of provincial and capital posts. In 801 he submitted to the throne his Tongdian, an Chang'an.
enormous history of Chinese institutions, in 200 chapters (over 5,000 pages in a
132 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

modern edition). This work can be read as a plea for an.activist approach to the
problems of his day, for reforming the government in orderto strengthen the cen-
tralized, interventionist aspect of imperial rule, then under threat from the
autonomous provinces. Most officials, of course, believed in the primacy and cen-
trality of the emperor, but in Du You’s view too many of them had an antiquated
view of the imperial institution, elevating the emperor's ritual and cosmological
roles and ignoring the ways government actually sustained itself. In organizing his
compendium, Du You did not begin with court ritual, in the traditional way, but
with food and money, the people’s livelihood and the government’s source of rev-
enue. In discussing taxation, he had great praise for Gao Jiong, the Sui official
who had taken charge of enrolling additional households in the equal-field sys-
tem. During the period when the northeastern and northwestern courts had been
in a state of constant war, ‘cruel rulers and dilatory officials, heavy taxes and fre-
quent labour service drove the people to seek the protection of local strongmen’.
When the Sui imposed order and people saw the government would take a much
smaller share of their harvests than the magnates did, they were willing to be reg-
istered. Thus to Du You, ‘It was all due to Gao Jiong’s efforts that the Sui fiscal sys-
tem was instituted throughout the land and the people thus able to enjoy
prosperity.’ With hindsight we can see that the late Tang withdrawal of the state
from management of the economy had positive effects, but to Du You well-
designed government control was much to be preferred to leaving people to their
own devices.
Du You took particular issue with Confucian scholars of
a literalist bent who
thought the government should pattern itself on ancient institutions described in
the classics. To refute them he argued that in distant antiquity the Chinese had
been as backward as some of the barbarians on the borders in his day. He con-
tended that the prefecture and county system of government perfected in the Han
and Tang was superior to the feudal system of the Zhou on the grounds that it
made possible long periodsof peace and population growth. The author of a
pref-
ace to the Tongdian described Du You as
believing that ‘for the superior man, real-

izing his purpose lies in ordering thestate, ordering the state lies in accomplishing
things, accomplishing things lies in learning fromthe past, and learning from the
past lies in changing with the times’.
Dus younger contemporary Han Yu saw China’s problems much more in
cul-
tural terms. A committed Confucian, he reaffirmed the Confucian classics as the
basis of education and good writing and promoted simplerstyles of prose based
on the ancient ideals of clarity, concision, and utility. He was as concerned as Du
You with the weakness of the central government, but believed a rejuvenation of
Confucian learning would bolster the state. He submitted a memorial to the
throne protesting against the emperor's veneration of a relic of the Buddha. In
it
he labelled Buddhism
a barbarian cult and the relic a foul object, much too inaus-
picious to touch. He argued that the emperor, by showing respect for it, was
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty

encouraging the common people to give up their proper work and social obliga-
tions to pursue Buddhist goals, to the detriment of the state whose tax base was
thereby reduced. In an almost equally famous essay on the origin of the Way, Han
Yu argued that there was a single line of orthodox transmission of Confucian
learning from the Duke of Zhou to Confucius and Mencius which had since been
disrupted. Han Yu was, in a sense, proposing that to revive the ‘Way of the Sages’
it was necessary to go back to the Analects and Mencius to recover the authentic
teachings. He provided a summary of Chinese civilization as broad in conception
as Du You's but much more succinct: Chinese civilization began with the sages
who saved people from peril, showed them how
to secure food and clothing and
defend against wild animals, taught them music and rituals, and created political
it
institutions for defence and the suppression of crime; but began to be perverted
with the rise of Daoism and Buddhism. Han Yu ended his essay by advocating that
Buddhist and Daoist clergy be layicized, their books burned, and their temples
converted into homes.
Du You's and Han Yu's views are, of course, at odds with each other at many lev-
els. Du You insisted on the need to grasp change and to know the details of con-
crete practices. Han Yu, by contrast, stressed what he saw as permanent and
universal, and at the policy level stressed issues of moral character, arguing the
need for leaders who had grasped the ‘Way of the Sages’. Du You traced the suc-
cessive stages of historical development, whereas Han Yu seemed to think
would be possible to leap back to a distant past as though the intervening cen-
it
turies could be cancelled. Still, both men were in agreement on some matters.
They both, for instance, had little interest in the sorts of cosmological theories
about emperorship in vogue since the Han. Moreover, they shared a basic opti-
mism about the possibility for men of good intention to take action in the world
that would bring about-change for the better. These attitudes were shared with
many of their contemporaries and did a great deal to enliven intellectual debate in
this period.

In Chinese historical consciousness, unity and expansion have been viewed as

much more to the credit of the Chinese people than fragmentation and contrac-
is
tion. The first half of the Tang dynasty thus viewed as one of the most splendid
its
eras in Chinese history, the second half as unfortunate aftermath. For a dynasty
to decline in this way was not unexpected because traditional historians saw
dynasties as progressing according to a predictable moral dynamic. Successful
dynasties, like the Tang, were founded by men of vigour and purpose whose com-
mitment to the larger good earned them the Mandate of Heaven. They built effi-
cient governments on the basis of low but equitable taxes, having cleared away
many of the local powers and corrupt practices that had accumulated before their
rise. Their successors, however, would not all be supermen able to prevent power
struggles at court, keep the cost of defence and local administration low, and
134 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Instruments such as this

three-foot-long, four-string
pipa, a type of lute of Iranian
origin, were given as gifts to
envoys of Japan who visited
China
in the late seventh or
early eighth centuries. The
wooden marquetry on the
reverse depicts flowers, birds,
butterflies, and mountains.
A Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty

preserve or enhance sources of revenue, all the while inspiring loyalty through
of
their bearing and virtue. In this view of history, men ability and integrity — both
emperors and their counsellors could arrest decline or even temporarily reverse
—

it, but inevitably the dynasty would weaken and eventually fall.
To traditional Chinese historians, there was no comparable moral logic linking

one dynasty to the next, and dynasties, presumably, could follow one after the
other indefinitely. Thus, when Chinese historians in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries first came across European theories of linear progression from
ancient, to classical, to medieval, and to modern civilization, they began to pro-
pose schemes for the larger periodization of Chinese history as well. As has
already been mentioned in earlier chapters, they noted correspondences between
Han and Rome, the Age of Division, and the Middle Ages. But the Sui-Tang reuni-
fication was an anomaly. In the west neither Justinian in Constantinople in the
sixth century nor Charlemagne at Rome in 800 had been able to recreate an
empire as large, centralized, or mighty as Rome. In China, the Tang more than
matched the Han; it was able to contain more formidable external threats and
manage a more diverse society with a more developed economy.
Few historians today accept either a cyclical view of Chinese history that
downplays long-term change or a three- or four-stage periodization that assumes
the normal pattern of historical development is the one that occurred in the West.
In their search for China’s own historical progression, it has become common for
historians to focus on the late Tang as a key turning-point, elevating it from a
period of lamentable decline to one of exciting growth. The distress that intellec-
tuals felt as they witnessed the deterioration of central control sparked a major
revitalization of Confucianism that continued into Song times. The inability of the
central government to keep tight control over the economy may have hurt state
coffers butit invigorated the underlying economy. Emerging from these confused
and often distressing circumstances, China became
political and military structures of the
a society less centred on the
state and therefore better able to weather
political crises.
136 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

CHAPTER 6
Shifting South:
The Song Dynasty 907-1276
The pace of change in Chinese society began to increase in the late Tang period.
By early Song times (960-1276) advances in agriculture and industry were con-

tributing to dizzying economic growth. The pace of migration south accelerated

and the Yangzi valley finally became as central to the Chinese economy and to
Chinese culture as the Yellow River regions in the north. The civil service exami-
nation system came to dominate the lives of the elite, and Confucianism was rein-
vigorated. Despite these signs of vitality, the Song dynasty was never able to
establish dominance of East Asia the way the Han and Tang dynasties had. Pow-
erful neighbouring states had to be treated as equals, not vassals, and limiting
their incursions became a major preoccupation of both the state and the intellec-
tual elite.

THE EMBATTLED STATE

During the chaotic century from 860 to 960 following the disintegration of the
Tang dynasty, political and military power devolved to the local level. Any strong-

a
man able to organize defence against rebels and bandits could become local war-
lord and declare himself king, and many ofthe kings of this period rose from very
lowly beginnings, one had even been a merchant’s slave. In the south, no self-pro-
claimed king ever consolidated much more than the equivalent of a modern
province or two, and historians generally refer to the regional states in the south
as the ‘Ten Kingdoms’. Political fragmentation in the south did not impair the
economy there; on the contrary, rulers of the regional states, eager to expand their
tax bases, successfully promoted trade.
The effects of fragmentation were less benign in the north. Many of the
regional warlords there were not Chinese but Turks from the garrison armies.
Both Chang’an and Luoyang had been ravaged by the wars of the late Tang period,
and Kaifeng, located in Henan province at the mouth of the Grand Canal, came to
be viewed as the central city in north China. The rapid succession of Five Dynas-
ties (Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, and Later Zhou) reflects how
little time any of the claimants of the throne was able to hold on to this capital
before being ousted by rivals. In 937, one contender for the Chinese throne
turned to the Khitans, the new power in Mongolia, to help him gain control of the
city of Kaifeng; and in repayment, he recognized the Khitans as overlords and
granted them the territory around modern Beijing. When his successor tried to
renounce this arrangement, the Khitans attacked Kaifeng between 946 and 947.
The general finally able to bring about military unification was Zhao Kuangyin,
who
reigned as Taizu (r. 960-76), first emperor of the Song dynasty. Previously
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty

commander of the palace army, Taizu was elevated to emperor by his troops, who
were unwilling to be led by the seven-year-old son of the former emperor. By the
time Taizu died sixteen years later, most of the warlords in the south had submit-
ted to the Song. Taizu’s overwhelming accomplishment was putting an end to two
centuries of independent regional armies. To solidify his control over militaryall
forces, he got his own commanders to
retire on generous pensions and gradually
replaced the military governors with civil officials. The best units in the regional
armies he transferred to the palace army, which he kept under his personal com-
mand, fashioning it into a large, mobile professional army charged with protect-
ing the capital. To prevent the rise of new regional strongmen, Taizu put the army
under civilian control and saw that its
officers were regularly rotated. This reor-
ganization of the military forces was completed by Taizu’s younger brother (who
succeeded to the throne in 976); he dismantled the military provinces and
appointed intendants in charge of
judicial, fiscal, military and transportation mat-
ters to supervise and co-ordinate overlapping sets of prefectures.
The reunification under the Song dynasty did not usher in an era of military
expansion on the order of the Han or Tang. Not only was there no hope regain- of
ing dominance in Central Asia, but it proved impossible under the Song dis-
to Chinese civilization flourished
lodge the Khitans from the area around Beijing. Moreover, the Tanguts, a people within constricted borders in
related to the Tibetans, had consolidated a state in the northwest, centred in mod- Song times — especially after

ern Gansu. Like the Northern Dynasties in

the fifth and sixth centuries, the Khi- 1127 when the Jurchen seized
the north, dividing China
tan’s Liao state and the Tanguts’ Xia state were ruled by non-Chinese who made
proper between the
Jin in the
use of Chinese officials and Chinese methods of government and ruled over north and the (Southern) Song
mixed populations, including many Han Chinese peasants, merchants, and crafts- in the south.

Northern Song “Huining

So MONGOLS

TANGUTS
aiver
XIXIA Z
é
2 /
Zhending
Taiyuari

TIBETANS TIBETANS

ume
major road
CONG!
pe
UTH CHINA
ESBA SC css

pues Bes
ese

a rs =
PERS
SEE
Leos
aa 1, 2 = Alternative courses
of Yellow River
after 1194
ee
SOUTH
:
CHINA
ne SEA me

. See
138 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

men (see Chapter 7). Under peace agreements reached in 1004 and 1044, the
Song court agreed to make substantial annual payments to both Liao and Xia, ina
sense buying peace. But defence remained a constant concern. The size of the
Song army was more than tripled between 979 and 1041 to about 1,250,000 men,
and the government manufactured armaments in huge quantities, arrowheads by
the tens of millions per year, armour by the tens of thousands. Military expenses
thus cameto absorb over three-quarters of state revenue.
The need to defend against such powerful enemies stimulated improvements
in military technology. In 1040, during the wars with the Tanguts, the emperor
Renzong commissioned a forty-chapter manual on military matters, which
includes instructions for the construction and use of a broad range of weapons
and siege machines. It
provides the first recipe for gunpowder, which at the time
was used for incendiary grenades delivered by catapults. Not until later in the
Song did military engineers discover that gunpowder could also be used as a pro-
pellant, thus inventing true cannons. In its wars, however, the Song's technical
superiority generally gave it only temporary advantages, because its enemies
would capture craftsmen and engineers and set them to producing comparable
weapons and tools.
Military crises also stimulated centralization of governmental power. Chinese
imperial government had always involved balances between the central govern-
ment and the local administrators, and between the emperors, who in theory held
all power, and the civil and military officials charged by the emperor to
carry out
his orders. During the Song dynasty, these balances tipped in favour of central
power and civil
officials, and in many ways Chinese government came closer to
matching the Confucian ideal in Song times than in any earlier or later period.
There were no tyrants among Song emperors, no empresses suspected of anything
but good intentions, and no coups staged by eunuchs.
Song emperors, moreover, rarely acted arbitrarily. They regularly listened to a
range of opinion before making decisions and usually deferred to their leading
officials. Taizu had vowed never to put anyone to death for disagreeing with him,
and enjoined his successors to follow his example. Court officials, in turn, gener-
ally identified with the dynasty and supported strengthening central control.
Many
were outstanding men, committed to good government and willing to stand
up for
a
what they believed. Fan Zhongyan, scholar-official who during 1043 and
1044 attempted to institute a reform of personnel recruitment and local adminis-
tration, described the duty of the Confucian scholar—official as being ‘to be first in
worrying about the world’s troubles and last in enjoying its pleasures’.
Despite an ample supply of worthy emperors and statesmen, the Song govern-
ment still exhibited two main weaknesses: factionalism and bureaucratism. Per-
haps because printing made it so easy, bureaucratic regulations came to be issued
in enormous quantities. Rules about use of one imperial ritual hall filled 1,200
volumes and rules concerning reception of envoys from Korea, 1,500. Changing
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty 139

regulations or procedures became so cumbersome that many officials objected to

all
any and reform as too bothersome.
Factionalism proved just as intractable. Because there were no legitimate
meansto resolve political conflicts, disputes among officials seeking to influence
the emperor often escalated, with each party lining up allies and focusing their
energies on devising ways to oust their opponents. The most divisive episode of
this sort began when Emperor Shenzong (r. 1067-1085) took the throne at the
age of twenty and decided to let Wang Anshi launch a thorough reform of the gov-
ernment. Wang’s goal was to enrich the country and bring more of the wealth into The connections between
water transport, water-pow-
state coffers. In the course of totally restructuring the fiscal administration, he
ered mills, and the production
changed the basis for land tax assessments, introduced new schemes for collect-
of grain are captured well in
ing and transporting special tribute taxes, instituted interest-bearing loans to this anonymous early Song
peasants to keep them from becoming dependent on landlords, converted labour painting on silk.
140 THE CAMBRIDGE TLLt
-UST RATED History OF CHINA

—
Su Dongpo

Identifying oneself as Chinese has. tone, other exude warmth and tender- friend discuss the shortness of life and
e
meant, over the centuries, taking pride. ness. During his exile, for instance, he» the joys to be had from enjoying the
in. association. with» symbolically ..
wrote playful but biting poem to-cels" breeze along the river. In the second
a

charged figures from the past. Of the ebrate the first bath of his month-old Ae described al
jeg
long the rocks
—

great figures from the Song, perhaps son, in which he claimed, ‘AIL want Is

none has inspired greater admiration

than Su Shi (1037-1101), better
a
backs or
j
son who is doltish and dumb. No
hardships wil
set-
obstruct his
known by the name he:chose for him-
self, Su Dongpo. Ranked among the
greatest of poets and essayists in the.
Chinese tradition, Su was also deeply
enmeshed the politics of his day.
i
in
From shortly after his death up to our
own..day, people have sought out.
pieces of Su's calligraphy, paintings a
depicting him, inseriiptions on stone
marking his visits, and shrines dedi- ap
cated tohismemory,
.
From Sichuan
i
‘China,
inwestern
“passed the civil service examinations
Su:
—

-
in 1056/57 and: quickly entered leading z

literary. circles. During his lengthy j

career in the bureaucracy, he was ane
outspoken policy critic and became a
leader of the opposition to Wang Anshi
and other reformists. He was once
arrested and thrown into prison on the
grounds that his poems slandered the.
emperor and his appointed officials. Su
expected execution, but instead was”
banished to Hubei, an area he came to
love and where he wrote some of his
returning
-

best poetry, Years later, after

to office, he was banished once more,
ending up atHainan island, the south- philo-
ernmost extremity of the realm. He sophical.
died on his way back from this second ideasas.
period of exile. 5 a well. Two of -
Su Dongpo wrote. prodigiously. his best-loved:
Some 800 of his letters survive along poetic essays
with ‘over 2,700 poems. His poetry is were occasioned by his visits
characterized by a remarkable variety to Red Cliff, the spot on the Yangzi
Su Déngpo atRed Clift by]Li Song
:

of subject matter and minute attention River where a famous battle took
to detail. Some poems have a playful. place in ab.208. In the first he and his (c. 1190-1225).
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty 14]

service obligations to money taxes, reformed the local

clerical service, set up government pawnshops, and intro-
duced a local militia to aid in national defence.
Eager to do everything at once, Wang Anshi quickly
antagonized much of the bureaucracy. Because leading
officials such as the historian Sima Guang and poet Su Shi
denounced his programs as un-Confucian, Wang had to
bring in his own men. To do this he revised the examina-
to
tions for entry office and increased the number of gov-
ernment schools, which only incensed his critics. Personal
antagonism, differences of regional and class interest, and
opposing philosophies of government all contributed to
the mounting hostility between those for and against
Wang's policies. Wang Anshi ousted from office many of
those who opposed him, and when they got their turn
they acted in like fashion. Factional hostility persisted
long after Wang and his original supporters and oppo-
nents had died, marring relations among scholar—officials
for half a century.

THE BURGEONING ECONOMY

As mentioned in the last chapter, the late Tang political
fragmentation so lamented by political thinkers seems, if
anything, to have stimulated economic growth. One of the
clearest signs of this is the doubling of the population between 750 and 1100. In Carrying this piece of paper
742 China’s population was still approximately fifty million, the same as it had money, issued in Hangzhou
been in AD 2. Over the next three centuries, with the expansionof rice cultivation during the Southern Song,
would certainly have been less
in central and southern China, China’s food supply steadily increased and so did
burdonesome than carrying
its population, which reached 100 million by 1100. Agricultural prosperity and the ‘string’ of a thousand cash
denser settlement patterns both aided commercialization. Peasants in more that it represented.
densely populated regions were drawn more deeply into commercial networks,
selling their surpluses and buying charcoal, tea, oil, and wine. Farming families
whose main crops were grain frequently could also engage in small-scale sideline
production of products like wine, charcoal, paper, and textiles, which they could
sell through brokers. Some farmers were even finding specialization profitable.
Local farmers near Suzhou, for instance, often devoted themselves
to raising silk-
worms and producing silk thread. In Fujian, Sichuan, and Guangdong many
farmers devoted their land to sugar cane. Other commercial crops included tea,
vegetables, oranges, timber, bamboo, oil seeds, hemp and ramie for cloth, and, by
the late Song, cotton.
The need to transport the products of interregional trade stimulated the inland
and coastal shipping industries, providing employment for ship builders and
142 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

sailors and business opportunities for enterprising families with enough capital to
purchase a boat. Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant who wrote of his visit to
China in the late thirteenth century, was astounded at the boat traffic on the
Yangzi River: ‘I tell you that this river goes so far and through so many regions and
there are so many cities on its banks that, truth to tell, in the total volume and
value of the traffic on it, it exceeds all the rivers of the Christians put together plus

their seas.’
As trade increased, demand for money grew enormously. The late Tang gov-
ernment had abandoned the use of bolts of silk as currency, which created
increased demand for coins. By 997 the Song government was minting 800 mil-
lion coins a year, two and a half times the largest output of the Tang. By 1085, less
than a century later, the output of coins had increased almost another eightfold to
over six billion coins a year. The use of silver was increasing concurrently; in 1120
the government collected eighteen million ounces of silver as taxes.
Indeed, the demand for currency was so great that paper money came into exis-
tence. The initial step was a byproduct of the peculiar coinage situation in
Sichuan, where coins were made of iron rather than bronze. To avoid the weight
and bulk of iron coins for large transactions, local merchants in late Tang times
The finest porcelain and started trading receipts from deposit shops where they had left money or goods.
stoneware were not produced The early Song authorities awarded a small set of shops a monopoly on the issu-
in the capital, but in regional
ing of these certificates of deposit, and in the 1120s took over the system, issuing
pottery centres, where tech- the world’s first government paper money. The Song government proved capable
niques of mass production
of controlling this currency, on the whole avoiding the sorts of over-issuing that
were perfected. Merchants
then transported the pots all result in rapid inflation.
over the country and through As interregional trade intensified, merchants became progressively more spe-
much of Asia. This late-tenth-
cialized and organized. Partnerships were common, and commercial ventures
century ewer, made at the
were sometimes organized as stock companies, with a separation of owners
famous kiln at Dingzhou in
Hebei, is 10 inches tall, and (shareholders) and managers. Credit was widely available, not only through
has lotus-leaf patterns carved money-lenders, but also through brokers, wholesalers, and warehousemen. In the
on its body. large cities merchants were organized into guilds, such as the rice guild which
arranged sales from wholesalers to shop owners and periodically set prices. Guild
heads represented all the merchants when dealing with the government in matters
of taxation or requisitions. .

Trade was not confined to the domestic market. From the beginning of the
dynasty the government encouraged foreign trade, especially maritime trade.
Court officials were sent on missions to southeast Asian countries to encourage
their traders to come to China. Chinese traders took the initiative as well, and in
Song times Chinese merchants sailing Chinese ships displaced south and south-
west Asian merchants in the south seas. Maritime trade was aided by the develop-
ment of huge ships powered by both oars and sails and capable of
holding several
hundred men. Also important to ocean-going travel was the invention of the com-
pass, first reported in Chinese sources in 1119. The expansion of maritime trade
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty 143

helped fill government coffers, especially in the Southern Song, as the Song gov- The commercial revolution
ernment had learned effective ways to tax commerce. Just as important, this new depended on a well-developed
orientation toward the sea contributed to the unprecedented creation of a power- transportation system. Cargo
boats like this, a detail from a
ful ocean-going navy.
Song period painting silk,
on

Industrial development was no less impressive in Song times. Traditional carried goods on the extensive
industries such as silk, lacquer, and ceramics reached their highest levels of tech- river and canal network.
nical perfection. Many of the finest silks continued to be made in government
workshops, but small-scale family-based enterprises were not uncommon. Rural
families might grow mulberry trees and raise silkworms, selling reeled silk to
weaving households in the cities. Ceramics also prospered under workshop con-

ditions, with a few major regional centres acquiring reputations for high-quality
wares. With the rise in demand for books, documents, money, and wrapping
paper, paper-makers flourished as well. Heavy industry, especially iron produc-
tion, also grew astoundingly. With advances in metallurgy, iron production grew
144 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HistTorY OF CHINA

to around 125,000 tons per year in 1078, a sixfold increase overthefigure for 800.
At first charcoal was used in the production
process, leading to deforestation of
parts of north China. By the end of the eleventh century, however, bituminous
coke had largely taken the place of charcoal. Other important technical advances
allowing the expansion of the iron industry were the use of hydraulic machinery
to drive bellows and explosives to excavate mines. The iron produced was used in
industrial processes (the production of salt and copper, for instance) as well as
for tools, weapons, nails for ships, chains for suspension bridges, and even for
Buddhist statues.
All of this commercial and industrial expansion fuelled the growth of cities.
The population of many cities grew so rapidly that more than half the people had
to live outside the city walls. Kaifeng, the capital of the Song until 1126, was as
populousas the Tang capital at Chang’an, but it was much more a commercial city,
dominated more by markets — open all hours — than by palaces and government
offices. Multi-storey houses, situated directly on the streets rather than behind
walls, became common and were often-let out for rent. After the north was lost,
the new capital at Hangzhou quickly grew to match or even surpass Kaifeng in
population and economic development. Marco Polo described it as without doubt
the finest and most splendid city in the world. ‘Anyone seeing such a multitude
would believe it impossible that food could be found to feed them all, and yet on
every market day all the market squares are filled with people and with merchants
who bring food on carts and boats.’
Cities in the provinces also grew at an unprecedented pace, dozens attaining
populations of 50,000 or more. Jiankang, an inland city in north Fujian, had per-
haps 200,000 residents; Quanzhou, acoastal city in southern Fujian, was even
larger — its governor in 1120 claimed 500,000 residents for the city and its hinter-
land. In addition, market towns began springing up everywhere. Many of these
towns began as periodic markets where trading occurred on a regular schedule,
such as every fifth or tenth day. These markets soon attracted tea houses, then
shops that sold daily necessities, and in time new residents. Eventually the
government would notice these emerging towns and establish tax collection
offices in them.
Economic opportunities and a growing population led to the gradual ‘filling up’
of much of south China. Fujian provides a good example of this process. In the
early Tang an official had claimed that half the people in Zhangzhou were not
Chinese but ‘barbarians who button their coats on the left and have unkempt
hair’, and in the late Tang an observer commented on the presence in Fujian of
indigenous people unable to speak Chinese who lived in caves or on rafts. Yet by
mid Song population pressure in Fujian had resulted in the terracing of hills for
cultivation and migration to less developed areas such as Guangdong. One
observer claimed that nine out of ten pawnbrokers in one prefecture in Guang-
dong came from Fujian.
 Spring Festival along the River
Concurrent with these econc politicalboy yee Awas the em
lees,
i

hl changes
J s

DE eagpen.y

af the mast distinctive feature the scholar class

other major civilization. Although members of thi

shidafu. term
“ead Ti lal
scholar—olfic
.
their predecessors in sever
decline of aristocratic habits and ideals. the inc
excitement caused by onfucian tea
the importance of the ex: ation system for recruitment to office all resulted in
an elite both broader and more schoo!
work is 9

over scventeen feet long,

Producing silk involved many
Dp
concermead above all to avoid domination of the government by military men,
steps. In this detail froma greatly expanded the civil service examination system and the government school
thirteenth century handscroll
system. The number of those passing the highest examinations soon averaged
on silk. people are shown
four to five times the number in Tang times. Great efforts were put into perfecting
picking mulberry leaves. sort-
to
ing leaves feed the silk the examinations as
a tool for discovering the most qualified candidates. To assure
that examiners were not influenced by their personal knowledge of the candidates
worms, moving the frames on
which the worms will spin (something not considered objectionable in Tang times), the papers were recopied
their cocoons, and packing
by clerks and identified only by number. Through this system, for the first time in
cocoons into baskets and
Chinese history, a large proportion of officialdom was recruited from families
weighing them.
living in central and southern China. ending the dominance of the north. The
prestige of suecess in the exams was very high. Even men who could enter the
government through the privileges extended to the sons and grandsons of higher
officials often chose to take the exams because success there gave one a much
better chance of rising to a policy-making post at court. Men who entered
government service without passing the most prestigious examinations were
usually forced to start their careers as sheriffs in remote places and might well
Shifling south: The song D

spend theirentire careers in county-level positions, never managing to rise above

the post of magistrate.
Given these incentives, more and more men attempted the civil service exami-
nations. In the early eleventh century less than 30,000 candidates took the pre-
fectural examinations each year. This rose to nearly 80,000 by the end of the
century and perhaps 400,000 before the dynasty’s end. Because the number of
available posts did not change, each candidate's chances of passing plummeted,
reaching as low as one out of 333 in some prefectures. To prepare to take such
competitive exams, candidates needed to memorize the classics so that they could
recognize even the most obscure passages. They also needed to master specific
forms of composition, including poetic genres. Fortunately for them, with the
spread of printing, books became much more widely available. Scholarly families
and aspirants for office could much more easily buy or borrow the Confucian clas-
sics, the dynastic histories, collections of poetry and prose, and reference books of
many sorts. Wealthy families were now in a position to amass thousands of books
tor their private libraries.
148

Men of wealth and taste would Leading members of this new scholar—official elite were often men of remark-
often hold banquets in their able intellectual breadth. Ouyang Xiu, besides serving in some of the highest
homes, sometimes even hiring offices in the land, composed excellent poetry and essays, edited two major histo-
female entertainers from the
ries, and compiled an analytical catalogue of rubbings on stone and bronze, a pio-
courtesan quarters to help.
Elegant furnishings with neering work in the fields of epigraphy and archaeology. Su Shi had similarly
painted screens and fine broad interests, with more emphasis on the arts. Sima Guang, besides serving as
porcelain wine ewers added to prime minister and leading the opposition to Wang Anshi, undertook to write a
the feeling of luxury. Note the
narrative history of China covering over 1,300 years from the late Zhou to the
use of chairs with backs.
Detail from a Song copy of the founding of the Song in 960. Perhaps the most broadly accomplished of themall
tenth-century handscroll by was Shen Gua. During his official career, Shen designed drainage and embank-
Gu Hongzhong. ment systems that reclaimed vast tracts of land for agriculture; he served as a
financial expert skilled at calculating the effects of currency policies; he headed
the Bureau of Astronomy; he supervised military defence preparations; and he
even travelled to the Liao state as an envoy to negotiate a treaty. Over the course
of his life he wrote on geography, history, archaeology, ritual, music, mathematics,

military strategy, painting, medicine, geology, poetry, printing, and agricultural

technology. Although often labelled a scientist, he wrote commentaries to Confu-
cian classics and had deep interests in divination and Buddhist meditation.
As a class, the scholarly elite was composed of families, only some of whose

men entered national political and social life. Families able to educate their sons
were generally landholders, established as members of the local elite in their
home area. Once a family got one member into government service, it was easier
to get others to follow, not only because office holding generally helped a family’s
economic standing, but also because the sons, grandsons, and sometimes more
distant relatives of mid-rank or higher officials had a variety of privileges and
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty 149

advantages, ranging from access to examinations with better success ratios to Printing could be done ina
small workshop with only a
direct entry into the lowest posts. Therefore when the elite is looked at from the
few workers. After the carver
local, rather than the national, level, established families are more striking than
had copied the text on to
newmen. In a county with a population of perhaps a hundred thousand, a dozen wood blocks, a worker
or so families might produce virtually all the prominent figures over the course of brushed ink over the block,
a century or two. Not that these families had any guarantees; indeed, they were all then placed a piece of paper
too aware of the possibility of downward mobility as family property was divided it,
on then brushed over it
with the dry side of the brush.
among complacent sons. Family heads who hoped to preserve their families’ eco- Using this method one person
nomic base, one writer warned, had to know how to manage tenants and agents, could print up to 1,000 pages
buy and sell land, lend money, and invest in business; otherwise their family in a day. Since blocks could be
might well lose its property and decline into poverty. saved and used to make on

By the end of the Song dynasty, the scholar—official elite had attained remark- average 20,000 copies, the
cost of each copy could be
able social, political, and cultural importance and marked China as different from
kept low. This illustration of a
other major societies of Eurasia. Looked at from the perspective of the central printing workshop, from a
government, a much higher proportion of the most powerful posts was going to Qing period book, depicts the
men selected for their literary abilities. Looked at from the perspective of class father of the Cheng brothers
and the local power structure, the ruling class was becoming more closely identi- printing a morality book as a
charitable act.
fied with education and the examination process, even if
its chief economic resource remained landholding. Looked
of
at in terms larger cultural symbols, the identification of
Chinese civilization with the literati ideal was strength-
ened, thanks in part to the rivalry between the Song and
the militarily stronger nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples
to the north.

LOSS OF THE NORTH

The most cultivated Song emperor was Huizong (r.
1100-26). A talented painter and calligrapher, Huizong
not only used the resources of the throne to build up the
imperial painting collection (his catalogue lists over 6,000
paintings), but he personally developed new styles of cal-
ligraphy and bird and flower painting, often instructing
the painters employed at the court how to paint. Huizong
was also deeply interested in Daoist religion and had grand
ritual pageants performed at court. In the popular imagi-
nation, it was because Huizong was so absorbed in aes-
thetic and religious matters that not only did he lose the
throne but the dynasty lost north China.
In 1115 the Jurchens, an agricultural, herding, and
hunting people based in eastern Manchuria, rose up in the
region north of the Khitans’ Liao state, declared them-
selves the Jin dynasty, and began a war against the Khitans
150 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

(see Chapter 7). The Song thought they had found a new ally and soon concluded
an alliance with the Jin that called for a division of Khitan territory. Within three
years this alliance
collapsed and in 1126 the Jurchens attacked Kaifeng. The city
fell after a siege lasting less than two months and was sacked. By that time
Huizong had abdicated in favour of a son; he and this successor were captured
and taken to the far northeast along with 3,000 members of the imperial family.
Negotiations to ransom Huizong were not successful and he died in captivity in
North China in 1135. The period before the loss of the north is commonly called
the Northern Song, the period after it the Southern Song, north and south refer-
ring to the location of the capitals.
Chinese loyalists regrouped in the south and proclaimed a younger son of
Huizong as emperor. This court now found itself in the humiliating position of
having to request peace talks with invaders who were holding the emperor's par-
ents, wife, brother, and numerous other relatives. Yet by 1138 the situation had
stabilized, with the Song court at Hangzhou controlling most of the area south of
the Huai River.
For the rest of the twelfth century the overriding concern of Song officials and
intellectuals was regaining what they still saw as the heartland of China, the land
where all major dynasties had had their capital and where the tombs of all prior
Song emperors were located. Later historians have nearly uniformly condemned
the various peace parties as appeasers and found a hero in Yue Fei, a general who
tried to regain the north and who in fact reached the Luoyang area before being
recalled and executed. After a treaty of 1142 the Song government appeased the
Jin with annual tributary payments, much as it
had earlier bought off the Liao.
From time to time one or the other side would launch military efforts to conquer
the other, but there was not much change until the rise of the Mongols in the early
thirteenth century (see Chapter 7).
The loss of the north did not destroy the Song economy; in fact, having the cap-

ital in the south seems to have further stimulated the development of

the region.
The transport of goods to the capital had always formed a large share of total
trade, and could be accomplished more cost-effectively with the capital in the
south. Goods could be brought to Hangzhou economically by boat, through the
many streams and canals criss-crossing the region. Moreover, the political border
between the Song and Jin proved no obstacle to trade, as the north continued to
import vast quantities of tea, rice, sugar, and books from the south.

A TURN INWARD
The inability of the otherwise impressive Song government to achieve the sort of
military dominance the Han and Tang had attained at their heights was pro-
foundly disturbing to Song writers, thinkers, and officials. Those who felt acutely
the threat posed by northern neighbours were less open to borrowing foreign
styles and more sensitive to issues of Chinese cultural identity. Writers more read-
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty

Emperor Huizong
(x. 1100-1126) was greatly
interested in Daoism as well
as painting and calligraphy.
Onthis silk painting he

recorded that in 1112 a flock

of cranes arrived at oneofthe
palace buildings, and that to
commemorate the auspicious
omen, be wrote a poem.
Huizong has traditionally been
credited with executing the
painting as well, but it is just
as likely he had one of his
court artists do it for him.

ily rejected things foreign on the grounds of their origins. Like Han Yu in

the late
Tang, they sometimes rejected Buddhism — on Chinese soil nearly a millennium —
on the sole ground that it was not indigenous. Sun Fu declared that allowing a
‘teaching of the barbarians’ to bring disorder to ‘the teachings of our sages’ was a
great humiliation to Chinese scholars. Shi Jie wrote that it was perverse for Chi-
nese ‘to forget their ancestors and abandon sacrifices to them, serving instead bar-
barian ghosts’. In Tang times the widespread popularity of Buddhism throughout
Asia had added to its appeal. In the Song, however, as international politics
changed, so too did perceptions of cultural integrity. That the Tanguts, Khitans,
and Jurchens were all zealous Buddhists seemed only to underline Buddhism’s for-
eignness, rather than confirm it as the universal religion.
The complexity of issues of loyalty to Chinese culture was explored by Song
painters and poets through depictions or evocations of well-known stories of Chi-
nese women forced to live among the barbarians. One story concerned Wang
Zhaojun, a Han palace woman sent as a bride to a Xiongnu chief. In a poem about
her, Ouyang Xiu referred to the unfeeling winds and sands of the barbarians’
homeland, and the ironythat palace ladies in later centuries were eager to master
the barbarian musical instruments that Wang Zhaojun had used tosing about her
homesickness. Another story concerned Cai Wenji, the daughter of a well-known
a
Han scholar, who was abducted by band of Xiongnu and forced to marry one of
their chiefs. Because she bore him children, deciding to return to China when ran-
somed years later was not an easy choice for her. Huizong’s son, enthroned as the
first emperor of the Southern Song, commissioned paintings of Cai Wenji’s saga
while negotiating his own mother’s ransom.
 ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

Paintings of Cai Wenji’s story Revitalizing Confucianism was seen by many Song thinkers as the best way to
commissioned by the South-
ern Song court accentuate the
strengthen the core of Chinese culture. Even though most ofthe students of the
leading Confucian teachers were studying to prepare for the civil service exami-
differences between the mater-
ial culture of the barbarians nations, the most inspiring teachers regularly urged their students to set their
and the Chinese: the tents in sights on personal moral and intellectual growth. Teachers and their disciples
the wilderness contrasted to debated the merits of the examination system and the ways Confucian ideas could
the elegant buildings of be applied to current problems. Some Confucian thinkers concentrated on devel-
Wenji’s hometown. Detail
from a fifteenth-century
oping philosophical frameworks for understanding the world that could stand up
to the challenges of Buddhism. Two brothers, Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao, devel-
copy of a
twelfth-century
handscroll. oped metaphysical theories about the workings of the cosmos in terms of li (prin-
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty

ciple, pattern) and qi (vital energies, material force, psy-

chophysical stuff). The li for something could be moral
or physical; thus, for example, the li for fatherhood is
essentially moral in nature, that for mountains, physi-
cal. For either to exist, however, there must also be gi,
‘the energy and substance that makes up things. The
theory of li and qi allowed Song philosophers to accept
Mencius’ theory of the goodness of human nature and
still explain the evidence of human waywardness; peo-
ple had good li but their more or less impure qi
accounted for their selfish desires. The sages had per-
fectly clear gi, but ordinary people have turgid gi and
have to work to improve themselves.
In the Southern Song Confucian scholars gave more
and more attention to what people could do themselves
at the local level. These scholars were frustrated with
the failure of the government to regain the north and
aware of the drawbacks of the large-scale reform pro-
grammes of the Northern Song. Thus they proposed
ways to build a more ideal society by starting from the
bottom, reforming families and local communities,
establishing academies, and spreading their message
through publishing. The greatest of these Southern
Song masters was Zhu Xi. Immensely learned in the
classics, commentaries, histories, and the teachings of
his predecessors, Zhu Xi managed to serve several turns
in office and still write, compile, or edit almost a hun-
dred books, all the while corresponding with dozens of
other scholars and regularly teaching groups of disci-
ples, many of whom stayed with him for years at a time.
Zhu Xi considered himself a follower of the Cheng
brothers and elaborated on their metaphysical theories.
He gave particular weight to the ‘investigation of things’, intensive study that
would allow the learner to discover the li of any matter at hand. Zhu Xi’s own
interests were very broad, and his recorded conversations with his disciples range
widely over subjects such as how to analyse and evaluate what they read, what to
make of ghost stories, how to engage in quiet sitting, and how to rid themselves
of selfish thoughts. Zhu Xi played an active role in developing the institutional
basis of a revived Confucianism, helping establish academies as private gathering
places for teachers and their disciples. These academies were sometimes located
in cities, but also often in quiet mountain settings, much like monasteries. When
he taught at the White Deer Grotto Academy, Zhu Xi offered the students there
pols
Ui ay THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

both moral exhortation and scholarly exegesis, hoping they would become both
virtuous and erudite.
Zhu Xi’s insistence on the correctness of his own interpretations offended
many as pretentious, and for a few years near the end of his life his teachings were
condemned by the government as ‘spurious learning’. Candidates for office were
barred from the examinations unless they denied any faith in Zhu Xi’ teachings.
of
Still, within a few decades his death, his learning received unprecedented polit-
ical support. In 1241 the emperor credited Zhu Xi with ‘illuminating the Way’ and
government students were ordered to study his commentaries on the Four Books
(the Analects, Mencius, Doctrine of the Mean, and the Great Learning). This shift in
the government’ position probably reflected its political needs. By this time the
Mongols had conquered north China and the survival of the Song dynasty was in
jeopardy. To bolster support, the Song government had to demonstrate that even
though it did not occupy the Central Plains, it was still the guardian of Chinese
culture and the greatest patron of Confucian scholars. In subsequent dynasties as
well, rulers found it to their advantage to recognize this school of Confucian
learning as the correct or orthodox teaching.

Consumer goods were not to

be found only in the great
cities, as shown in this silk

painting by Li Song (c.

1190-after 1225). This
woman nursing a baby and
surrounded by four small chil-
dren, one too young yet to
wear trousers, has stopped to
look at the wares offered by a
pedlar making his rounds
through the countryside.
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty 155

LOCAL SOCIETY

The basic realities of peasant life did not change much from century to century;
ploughing and planting, paying rents and taxes, caring for the young and the
elderly, arranging and celebrating marriages, defending against bandits and bul-
lies, worshipping at local temples and buying and selling at local periodic mar-
kets, all gave rhythm to peasant life throughout the imperial period. Yet the
economic expansion of the Song period was of such magnitude that even ordinary
peasants found their lives changed in major ways.
Peasants were certainly affected by the emergence of widely varied forms of
land tenure and landlord—tenant relations. In frontier regions like Hunan and
southern Sichuan, to which large numbers of people had migrated, new lands
were being opened, and the wealthy often established large manors tilled by serfs
given little freedom. By contrast, in the most advanced areas where rice had long
been grown, wealthy people invested in land but did not tryto create consoli-
dated, centrally managed great estates. There were no economies of scale to be
had in wet-rice cultivation, nor were there advantages to centralized management.
Landlords thus usually let tenants manage on their own, setting fixed rents in
kind or cash and thus offering the tenants an incentive to improve their produc-
tivity. In the advanced areas, in addition to such tenants, there were small owners
and owners who rented land as well to supplement what they held outright. Then
there were economically peripheral areas, such as hilly areas far from trade routes
and not suited to rice, where large landowners were nearly absent, and most farm-
ing was done by owner-cultivators.
Even in the most advanced areas, village life seems to have been far from
serene. Local officials regularly complain of the difficulty of suppressing banditry.
Legal casebooks show law courts clogged with neighbours and relatives suing
each other over rights to land and other property. Yuan Cai, author of a book of
advice to family heads, bluntly warned the well-to-do not to let their children out
unaccompanied for fear that they would be kidnapped and held for ransom. He
also urged families to have servants patrol their property at night to prevent theft
and repeatedly warned of the possibility of being sued.
Economic development may have accentuated differentiation between core
and peripheral areas, but other trends were tending to
tie
distant regions of China
more closely together. Because of improvements in transportation and communi-
cation, customs, ideas, and practices spread more quickly in the Song than they
had earlier. By the end of the Song, for instance, cities all over the country had
temples dedicated to the god of the city wall. Many also had temples to Wen-
chang, a deity who began as a fearsome serpent spirit in Sichuan, but by Song
times had taken on the identity of patron of the examinations. Stronger forms of
local descent group organization were also spreading across broad regions of the
country. Leading literati helped to publicize some key elements of these lineages:
Ouyang Xiu was one of the first to show how to compile a suitable genealogy, Fan
156 THE CA) if LLLUSTRATED HisTorRY OF CHINA

Rice did not become a central element to cook, the ciily cereal that can simply cpesistant ricefrom Southeast ‘Asia, oe
in the Chinese diet until Song times. In be boiled and eaten without disinte- - made it possible to grow rice in previ- oS
its wild form a swamp plant; rice grows grating into mush. But probably most ously” unsuitable. places. Technical
most easily in standing water, It had
been cultivated in the Yangzi regions |
important, rice almost always yields improvements in. damming methods —
more calories per. unit of land than and.water pumps.facilitated recon
:

“since neolithic times, in some sites as other crops. In the most suitable. clin lowi
early as 5000 Bc. As the settlement and mates, two or even three crops | can be
rec

|
:
development of the south progressed, grown in the same.field, rice can be
or

rice occupied a larger and alternated with other.

CPOps.
e

lige! place
in Chiinese life.
~
South China had the ‘temperature
Rice production steadil y expanded =>
and rainfall needed for wet
because. itisa ‘nearly ideal food crop. It.
but much of the terrain was
_
tastes good, is highly digestible, and:
when eaten along with soy products.
offers: good nutrition.When milled, it.
stores well. Itiis easy and economical
bie
i
zsD
1 Me
WE
RRS)
Bie ST
"Be? GB
Ee ee
ad

BB+

apy 6B #3 te tk +. als Be
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty WwW
rT

[aw :5
S Wh ‘ :

Wo
Wl:
dys
is
«
Lee BO

saw
ee ee
e
Hane
Ag
atin
pce
Eee’

‘
se eR
158 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Zhongyan was credited with inventing the idea of the corporate lineage estate,
and Zhu Xi was associated with the idea of halls for ancestral rites. By the end of
the Song, lineages had become major forces in local social and political life in
Fujian, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, and other provinces.
The expansionof printing must have contributed to the spread and standard-
ization of ideas and practices, but its impact on local social order went beyond
that. By late Song, the books being printed were not confined to the histories, clas-
sics, and belles-lettres traditionally associated with the scholar-official class, but
included handbooks on agriculture, childbirth, pharmacy, divination, and Daoist
rituals. Thus traditions of knowledge that had previously been transmitted pri-
marily through oral means came to be
fixed in print, a change that opened them
up to both criticism and appropriation. The well-educated could now point to
inconsistencies, or identify unverifiable ‘superstitions’, in order to undermine the
authority of these traditions. At the same time ordinary people gained access
bodies of knowledge formerly restricted to experts. They could thus organize
to
their own funeral services, dabble in geomancy, or prescribe medicines for their
family members, all with more confidence.

WOMEN’S LIVES
Due to the development of printing, many more books survive from Song times
than from earlier periods, and this increase in documentation makes
it
possible to
discern more clearly than before the roles women played in Chinese society. In
Song sources one encounters widows who ran inns, maids who ran away from
abusive masters, midwives still delivering babies into their seventies, nuns who
called on upper-class families to preach to their women, singing girls and courte-
sans who entertained in cities, female mediums adept at communicating with
spirits, farmers’ daughters skilled at weaving mats, daughters of literati who loved
to write poetry, elderly widows who accused their nephews of stealing their
prop-
erty, to provide a far from complete list.
These women were certainly not all confined to the home, but neither were
they very powerful outside it. In descriptionsof village and town life, commerce
and government, and the social and cultural life of the elite, references to men
vastly outnumber those to women. Inside the family, however, women were with-
out doubt very important. They did much of the child rearing, usually played a
role in selecting spouses for their children (often trying to find one of their
own
relatives), and continued to have strong ties to their sons after they were grown
and married, since their sons stayed at home.
The great social and economic changes of Song times had a substantial impact
on women’s lives. With printing and the expansion of the educated class, more
women were taught to read and write. It was not at
all uncommon
inthe educated
class for wives to be able to write letters and tutor their young children. One
woman, Li Qingzhao, even attained great fame
as a poet. Increased prosperity
 Shifting South: The Song Dynasty

AD2
(population:
60 million fy 742
(population:
49 million)

density

Nx nce
1990
(population: (population:
100 million)

highest
density

-.
lowest fowest |

“A,
density
|

densityh

World population in 1600 World population in 1800 World population in 1990

< North America 0.8% North America 1.825%
c North America 4.9%
&£ Latin America 1.6% 2 Latin America 2.65% 5 Latin America 2.65%
= Africa 21.5% = Africa 20.25% = Africa 13.3%
o Europe 18%
7 Europe 22.1% = Europe 13%
g Middle East 45% = Middle East 3.1%
nt Australasia 0.6% wnt Australasia 0.15%
wh

=
i Middle East
Australasia
4%
0.45%
8 Rest of Asia 33.9% 8 Rest of Asia 24.8% 3 Rest of Asia 33.6%
= China 19.1% =, China 25.125% = China 22.2%

Shifting patterns of population density. Because of extensive living in the Yangzi Rivervalley and further south. Even with
migration and acculturation, settlement patterns in China major movements of population within the country, China has
shifted over the centuries. The Yellow River regions were
nearly as dominant in
742 as they had been in
ap 2, but by
always had
a large share of world population; if
figures were
available, China’s share in 1100 would probably be even higher
Song times something much closer to the modern distribution than in modern times.
had already been attained, with a large share of the population
160 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Shoes for bound feet exca-

vated from the tomb of Huang
Sheng (1227-1243), the young
wife of an imperial clansman.
This tomb contained several
pairs of shoes for bound feet,
each measuring 5 to 5'/ inches
in length. Unearthedat
Fuzhou, Fujian province.

resulted in both dowry inflation and in an expanding market for women to be

purchased as servants, concubines, courtesans, and prostitutes. In the upper class,
families gave their daughters large dowries to attract sons-in-law with good
prospects for official advancement. Families that had channelled significant prop-
erty through their daughters wanted to see it used to their benefit, and probably
as a consequence in the Song period women’s legal claims to property were
improved. Judges assigned orphaned daughters shares of family property for their
dowries, even landed property. Moreover, wives’ and widows’ control over the use
of their dowries was widely recognized.
These changes can all be classed as favourable for women, opening new possi-
bilities to them and offering them more avenues for influence both within the
family and outside it. But there were concurrent changes in Song times that are
generally classed as detrimental to women, particularly footbinding and more
rigid notions of ethically acceptable female demeanour. In the Tang, court life was
occasionally dominated by powerful women like Empress Wu and Yang Guifei,
and physical activity was fashionable enough that palace womenplayed polo. In
Song times, standards of beauty shifted to favour the delicate and restrained
woman. Notions of female modesty became more rigid; women veiled their faces
more often and rode in curtained sedan chairs when travelling through the streets.
By the twelfth century medical authorities were reporting that doctors who called

on women in elite households could neither view the woman nor question her; all
they could do was take the pulse of a hand extended through the bed curtains.
These shifts in notions of what was attractive and becoming in a woman must
have had something
to do with the spread of footbinding during the course of the
Song. This practice apparently began among dancers in the tenth or eleventh cen-
turies, but in time it spread to upper-class homes. By the Southern Song, mothers
were binding the feet of their five- or six-year-old daughters painfully tight to pre-
Shifting South: The Song Dynasty lol

vent them from growing normally. Tiny narrow feet were considered to enhance a
woman's beauty and to make her movements more dainty.
Developments in Confucian thought also reinforced these trends toward a
more restricted sphere for women. All of the leading Neo-Confucian teachers
were moralists, firm in the conviction that social harmony depended individ-
on

ual moral actions. When discussing family ethics, they stressed the need for men
and women alike to identify with the interests of the family. In women’s case, this
meant identifying with the family of their husbands and sons. Women should
have no desire to have their own property, feel no jealousy
iftheir husband took a
concubine, show no bias against the children of concubines, and remain to care
for their parents-in-law and children if their husbands died. Learning to read and
write was fine, but they should not indulge in frivolous pastimes like writing
poetry. Confucian scholars found nothing objectionable about the growing ten-
dency toward stricter seclusion of women, and encouraged clear separation of the
men’s and women’s quarters in the house. And they reiterated in the clearest pos-
sible terms the impropriety of widows remarrying, Cheng Yi even arguing that
starving to death was lesser evil.

In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries China was the leading society in
the world. By the eleventh century, Europe was certainly out of the shadows of the
Dark Ages, but improvements in its economy were not occurring at anywhere
near the rate they were in China. At the end of the thirteenth century, when Marco
Polo crossed Asia, neither Venice where he came from nor any of the countries of
Europe or Asia that he passed through could compare to China in agricultural
productivity, industrial technology, sophistication of commercial organization,
urbanization, or standard of living.
The rapid development of commerce and appearance of commercial cities did
not play the same political or intellectual role in China as it did in Europe slightly
later. Chinese cities did not become places identified with personal freedom. They
were not communities of merchants at odds with the lords in the countryside.
Merchants penetrated rural areas, and both cities and rural areas were under the
political control of representatives of the central government.
Other societies in Asia had cities not unlike China’s, but no other society had
an elite comparable to the scholar—official elite of the Song and later. Key features
of this elite can be traced back to the Han dynasty and even earlier, especially its
Confucian ideology and government service, but the elements came together ina
new and stronger way in the Song period. Unlike the elites of most other pre-
modern societies, China’s late empirical elite was not military in character, nor
was
it a hereditary aristocracy, a
nor priestly caste. Its stature was buttressed
and service, and by the
by
its
ideology of duty ostensibly fair and objective ways in
which its members gained access to ranks and honours.
 “
hinese painting falls into two large divisions: painting larger quantities. These portable paintings include vertical
on walls and painting on the portable media of paper scrolls that could be hung against a wall, horizontal scrolls that
.#and silk. Paintings discovered on the walls of exca- could be unrolled little by little on a table, and smal! round or
vated tombs and the rare surviving temple give us hints of how square pictures that could be used as the face of a fan or col-
magnificent the interior of palaces and temples must have lected in aloums. Whatever the format, the painting was done
been, but painting on paper and silk have survived in much with brushes and ink much like those used for writing; supple-
mented often, but not always, with water-based coloured
washes applied with the same sorts of brushes.
Many paintings depicting people have been reproduced in
this book because they help convey a sense of Chinese social
.

life. In the estimation of Chinese art critics, however, the great-

est glory of the Chinese art of painting was not figure but land-
scape painting. Centuries before western artists began to see_
natural scenery as anything more than background, Chinese»
artists had developed the depiction of landscape into a great
art. Mountains had long been seen as sacred places
- the
homes of immortals, close to the heavens. Philosophical inte
est in nature could also have contributed to the rise of. land-—
scape painting, including both Daoist stress on how minor the
human presence is in the vastness of the cosmos and neo-Con-
o
fucian interest in the patterns or
pri inciples that underlie all
phenomena, natural and:social.

i
;

Three masterpieces of Song landscape painting are

=
trated here. Majestic mountains are the focus of the earliest of

ee
these, a scroll
nee seven feet tal] by Fan Kuan
ies €

age bel
forest on ‘the cliff areeal vividly depicted. ther isisa :

-
between the foreground and ‘the towering: central peak b
which is treated as if it were.a backdrop, suspended and fitted

Fan Kuan’s Travellers amid Mountains and sieams was

“monumental insize as
wellas subject matter Ctound 6h by ©
2hfeet). 3
i
 into. a slot behind the foreground. There are human figuresin one were often collected into albums and paired with poems or
-

this scene, but it is easy to imagine them overpowered by the

magnitude and mystery of their surroundings.
:

poetiic couplets, both poets and paiinters seeing commonalities

“in the ways they depicted exarosttion of scene, ‘season,
a
a
oe
Little is known of Fan Kuan other than that he loved the and humanactivity
_

mountains of his native region in north China. By the late’

h

Northern Song, prominent literati like Mi Fei ‘(1051- 1107).

li

“sometimes: achieved fame as both calligraphers and painters.

Mi Fei and ‘his son Mi Youren (1086- 1165) had: successfuloffi-
who often gathered
:

cial careers and mixed with eminent men,

to. ‘appreciate each ‘others’ art objects. AS painters, the Mis
developed a distinct on €
a
nee and composition they a
164 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

CHAPTER 7
Alien Rule:
The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties
907-1368
Over the course of four centuries, progressively greater parts of China proper were
conquered by Inner Asian tribal peoples, culminating in 1276 with the Song sur-
render to the Mongols who incorporated all of China into their empire. Each of
the three dynasties of conquest — Liao (907-1125), Jin (1125-1234), and Yuan
(1215/1276-1368) — built on the achievements of its predecessors to gain greater
dominance in China. The Khitans’ Liao dynasty did not merely extort material
benefits (as the Uighurs had in late Tang) but also occupied a strip along the
northern edge of China proper, populated primarily by Chinese. The Jurchens’ Jin
dynasty, once it defeated the Liao, expanded the occupied zone to include all of
north China. The Mongols’ Yuan dynasty, after defeating the Jin, built up the
machinery needed to conquer all of China. Just as the foreign conquerors gradu-
ally learned more effective ways to control and exploit China, the opportunities
for the Chinese living under them became progressively more restricted. By the
time the Mongols had defeated the Song, chances to serve, resist, or flee were
severely limited atall social levels. And yet Chinese civilization not only survived
but responded creatively, developing means of expression and modes of coping
that added to the richness of the Chinese heritage.

STEPPE NOMADISM AND THE INNER ASIAN STATES

Ever since Qin and Han times, when the Xiongnu became a major threat to the
Chinese empire, geography had dictated the basic contours of the relations
between China proper and Inner Asia. Although as large as China proper, Inner
Asia was always much more sparsely settled because it was unsuited to crop agri-
culture. China proper at the beginning of the Song had a population of perhaps
eighty million people, but only about five million lived in all the Inner Asia
regions from Tibet through modern Mongolia and Manchuria. Even fewer would
have been able to survive in Inner Asia if tribes had not had access to
the settled
agricultural society of China. Herders could trade animals and animal products
for grain, textiles, and ceramic and metal utensils from China. When drought or
disease among their animals reduced their resources, or when the Chinese refused
to trade on acceptable terms, the herders had the mobility and military skills to
make raids to get what they wanted. This hardly promoted friendly relations or
sympathy between herders and farmers. Agriculturalists saw the nomads as bul-
lies who preferred taking from others to working for their living; the nomads
looked on Chinese farmers as weaklings.
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties 165

Despite diverse and shifting tribal identification among the various peoples of
the steppe, the basic tribal form of social organization remained remarkably
constant. All men learned to ride and shoot and were potential warriors. Families
were patrilineal and camped in clan units. Clans. would coalesce into tribes, with
tribal chiefs selected for their military prowess. Predatory activities were taken as
normal; clans and tribes were regularly at odds with each other, seizing cattle,
horses, and women, thus setting off cycles of revenge. Captives would be incor-
porated into the victors’ clans as slaves or serfs. The alternative to fighting was to
form alliances, and at times
a tribal leader would build up a large coalition or
confederation through a combination of military victories and alliances. Personal
loyalty of warrior to chief, of chief to lord, and lord to overlord tied such
structures together. But lords and overlords were not autocrats; major decisions
were typically reached at deliberative assemblies of military leaders. Great leaders
who had defeated or wonover other tribes could aggregate huge armies and keep
them happy with the spoils of expansion. Expansion could not be sustained
indefinitely, however, and squabbles among heirs or successors might conceivably

Rubbing
of a ‘Map of the Chi-
nese and the Barbarians’
carved on a stone about 2'/2
feet square in 1137. The map
depicts the major rivers and
cities of China and the Great
Wall, and gives historical
accounts of the various non-
Chinese people settled along
the borders, including the
Khitans, Tanguts, and numer-
ous smaller tribes and
city-states.
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

lead to the break-up of the confederation within a genera-

tion or two.
Between the pure nomad of the steppe and the Chinese
farmer who encountered non-Chinese only when they
raided his settlement, there was a large fluid frontier zone
where distinctions of ethnicity and way of life were not so
clear-cut. From Later Han times on there was always a
broad region settled both by Chinese and non-Chinese.
Some of the non-Chinese became farmers, others remained
herdsmen or served in military units. Some non-Chinese
were still very much members of a tribe, responding to the
orders of tribal leaders, while others identified themselves
as subjects of the Chinese government or were even assim-
ilated into the Chinese population. Chinese in the frontier
zone often made their living rendering services to non-
Chinese, whether as farmers, traders, craftsmen, or gov-
|

ernment advisers, and some of them intermarried with and

The material culture of Inner were assimilated into the non-Chinese groups.
Asia was often in striking con- In contrast to the non-Chinese regimes of the Sixteen Kingdoms and Northern
trast to China's. Metalwork
Dynasties, who were able to rise to power above all because the Chinese state tore
was more central to Inner
Asian art, perhaps because itself apart through civil war, the Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongol states wrested
treasures of gold and silver power from a strong dynasty willing and able to devote vast resources to its
were easy to transport. The defence. These alien dynasties erupted into Chinese history because of the
dragonson this 8-inch-tall
dynamics of the border zone. The first to succeed in this way were the Khitans, a
gilded silver Khitan crown
reveal Chinese influence,
proto-Mongol people from the fringes of the steppe in Manchuria, where they
but the form is not borrowed practised agriculture along with animal husbandry and hunting. The Khitans had
from China. participated in the Tang tributary system, sending envoys to Chang’an, but they
also fought and raided as circumstances allowed. As the Tang dynasty disinte-
grated and north China was vulnerable to attack, Abaoji, of the Yel clan, united
some eight to ten Khitan tribes into a federation, secured control of the steppe,
and proclaimed the Liao dynasty as a way of announcing his intention to compete
for north China. Abaoji set aside the traditional Khitan practice of electing chiefs
for limited terms. Not only did he rule until his death in 926, but he set
up hered-
itary succession on the Chinese model to ensure that his son would succeed him.
The ruling line he established married exclusively with the Xiao clan, and the Yelii

and Xiao clans dominated government affairs throughout the Liao dynasty.
At the peak of their power, the Khitan probably numbered about 750,000 and
ruled over two or three million Chinese. They created a dual state, with distinct
Khitan and Chinese areas. The southern section encompassed sixteen prefectures
in north China (compared to 300 under Song control). These were nominally
governed through the institutions of the civil bureaucracy inherited from the
Tang, but counties and sometimes even prefectures were granted to Khitan impe-
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties

rial relatives and high-ranking officials who had absolute jurisdiction in their
fiefs and did not have to pay taxes to the government. The main cityof this region
was their southern capital at modern Beijing, which until then had been little
a
more than border garrison city. In the huge but sparsely settled northern part of
their domain, Khitan institutions were employed. The government in the north
was a mobile organization with the emperor and his important officials moving
from one place to another in different seasons. A script was created so that docu-
ments could be kept in the Khitan language. Even though the Liao ruled over a
population tiny by Song standards, its armies had such striking power that the
Song found it easier to buy them off than try to defeat them in battle. The Liao
state intimidated other neighbours as well, including at times the Korean state
of Koryéand the Tangut state of Xia, located in modern Gansu province. Probably
because they retained the northern sector as a Khitan preserve, the Khitan effec-
tively resisted sinification. The ruling elite became culturally dual — adept in
both Khitan and Chinese ways — but the bulk of the Khitans preserved their
ancient customs.
It was not Chinese forces that destroyed the Khitan state but the rise of another
northern confederation, this one led by the Jurchens. The Jurchens originated fur-
ther east than the Khitans, in the mountains of eastern Manchuria. In the early
twelfth century, Aguda, of the Wanyan clan, formed a confederation of Jurchen
tribes, proclaimed it the Jin dynasty, and began attacking the Liao, soon allying
with the Song for this purpose. After he died in 1123, Aguda’s successor not only
defeated Liao in 1125 but turned on the Song.

Siege warfare required up-to-

date military technology, such
as the portable scaling ladder
and catapult illustrated here
from an early Song manual,
the Comprehensive Essentials
of the Military Classics (Wujing
zongyao), commissioned in
1040. The Khitan and Jurchen
quickly mastered this technol-
ogy, adding expertise in
siegecraft to their previous
‘mastery of cavalry warfare.
168 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisTORY OF CHINA

Jurchen military successes against Chinese-fortified cities owed much to

Jurchen willingness to incorporate Chinese experts in siegecraft into their army.
To take the medium-sized city of Taiyuan they brought in thirty catapults to throw
a barrage of stones, and built over fifty carts protected by rawhide and iron sheet-
ing to bring in troops to fill the moat. Kaifeng, defended by 48,000 troops, many
equipped with powerful crossbows and flame throwers, posed an even greater
challenge. The Jurchens brought in siege engines, including mobile towers higher
than the city walls, in order to fire incendiary bombs into the city. They suc-
ceeded: Kaifeng fell, the Song imperial family was captured and held for ransom,
and the remnants of the Song government and army fled south across the Yangzi.
Thus, in less than a generation, the Jurchen went from being a group of tribes
concentrated in the far eastern edges of Inner Asia to being the masters of north
China, the lords of a densely settled land with over forty million residents, in pos-
session of the treasures of both the Liao and Song capitals. Having gained power
so quickly, the Jurchens initially continued the Khitans’ dual government and
employed former Liao officials, both Chinese and Khitan. The Jin dynasty moved
its capital from central Manchuria to Beijing in 1153 and to Kaifeng in 1161, all
the while steadily adopting more Chinese political institutions and employing
more Chinese officials. As the Liao rulers had before them (and the rulers of the
Northern Dynasties still earlier), the Jin rulers found that Chinese political insti-
tutions provided them with a potent weapon in their competition with their own
nobles. Hereditary monarchy and a bureaucracy of officials willing to do the
ruler’s bidding enhanced the power of the ruler. The Jurchen emperors, however,
did not copy all aspects of Tang and Song government practice, and in particular
did not treat civil officials with the respect traditionally accorded them in China.
Jin emperors instituted the practice of flogging high officials in open court, a bru-
tal violation of the Confucian dictum that corporal punishment should not extend
to the educated elite. Such humiliating punishment was never imposed by the
Song and only rarely by earlier dynasties.
The Jin government settled the bulk of the Jurchen in North China so that they
could aid in maintaining control over the Chinese population. Immersed in Chi-
nese society in this way, the Jurchens, unlike the Khitans, rapidly adopted Chinese
customs, including language, dress, and rituals. Jurchen commanders who
objected to the trend toward assimilation assassinated the Jin emperor in 1161,
and the succeeding emperor sought to revitalize the Jurchen heritage. He pro-
moted the use of Jurchen as a written language, commissioned translations of the
Confucian classics into Jurchen, ordered Jurchen to study at specially established
Jurchen schools, set up civil service examinations for Jurchen candidates that
would test their mastery of Jurchen, and issued terrible threats against those who

adopted Chinese customs. Still the process of sinification continued apace, and
later emperors shifted their policies. In 1191 an emperor even forbade referring to
Jurchen as people ‘of the border areas’, not wanting them to be seen as outsiders.
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties 169

By the end of the dynasty most Jurchen spoke Chinese, wore Chinese clothes,
used Chinese-style surnames, and married with the local population. A century
later hardly anyone claiming to be Jurchen could be found in China proper,
though there still were some inthe original homelands in Manchuria.

CHINGGIS KHAN AND THE MONGOLS

Neither the Khitan nor Jurchen empires ever fully controlled the Mongolian
steppe, though they sometimes got the various Turkic- and Mongol-speaking
clans and tribes that occupied the area to recognize their overlordship. In the late
twelfth century this region was facing a subsistence crisis because a drop in the
mean annual temperature had reduced the supply of grass for grazing animals.
The man who saved the situation by gaining access to the bounty of the agricul-
tural world for them was Chinggis (Ghengis, c.1162-1227).
A brilliant and utterly ruthless military genius, Chinggis proudly asserted that
there was no greater joy than massacring one’s enemies, seizing their horses and
cattle, and ravishing their women. His career as a military leader began when he
avenged the death of his father, a tribal chieftain who had been murdered when
Chinggis was still a boy. As he subdued the Tartars, Kereyid, Naiman, Merkid, and
other Mongol and Turkic tribes, Chinggis built up an army of loyal followers. In
1206 the most prominent Mongol nobles gathered at an assembly to name him
their overlord, or great khan. He then fully militarized Mongol society, ignoring
traditional tribal affiliations to form an army based on a decimal hierarchy, 1,000
horsemen in the basic unit. A new military nobility was thus created of comman-
ders loyal to Chinggis. They could pass their posts to their sons, but the great
khan could remove any commander at will. Chinggis also created an elite body-
guard of 10,000 sons and brothers of commanders, which served directly under
him. To reduce internal disorder, he issued simple but draconian laws; the penalty
for robbery and adultery, for instance, was death. He ordered the Uighur script to
be adopted for writing Mongol, seeing the utility of written records even though
he was illiterate himself.
His organization in place, Chinggis initiated one of world history’s most aston-
ishing campaigns of conquest. He began by subjugating nearby states. First he
would send envoys to demand submission and threaten destruction. Those who
submitted without fighting were treated as allies and left in power, but those who
put up a fight faced the prospect of total destruction. City-dwellers in particular
evoked his wrath and were often slaughtered en masse or used as human shields
in the next battle. In the Mongol armies’ first sweep across the north China plain
in 1212-13, they left ninety-odd cities in rubble. When they sacked the Jurchen’s
northern capital at Beijing in 1215, it burned for more than a month.
Chinggis’s battle-hardened troops were capable of enduring great privation and
crossing vast distances at amazing speed. In 1219 he led 200,000 troops into Cen-
tral Asia, where the following year they sacked Bukara and Samarkand. Before his
170 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

death in 1227, Chinggis had conquered Mongolia and Manchuria, brought Korea
into submission, driven the Jurchen south of the Yellow River, destroyed the
Tangut state in northwest China, overrun Central Asia, and plundered the Grand
Duchy of Kiev in the Ukraine. He ruled from the Pacific Ocean on the east to the
Caspian Sea on the west.
Chinggis Khan’s conquests
had as much impact on west Chinggis’s death created a crisis due to the Mongol tradition of succession by
Asia as they did on China. election rather than descent. In the end the empire was divided into four sections,
This Persian illustration of each to be governed byone of the lines of his descendants. Ogddei, Chinggis’s
Chinggis pursuing his enemies third son, got control of Mongolia. In 1234 he crushed the Jin and became ruler
is from a manuscript copy of
of north China. By 1236 he had taken all but four of the fifty-eight districts in
the history of the Mongols
written by Rashid al-Din Sichuan, previously held by the Song, and had ordered the total slaughter of the
(1247-1318), a Persian admin- one million plus residents of the city of Chengdu, a city the Mongols had taken
istrator in the employof the easily with little fighting. Even where people were not slaughtered, they were fre-
Mongol Ukhans in Iran.
quently seized as booty along with their grain stores and livestock. Ogédei’s
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties

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tlmmain Mongol campaigns 1211-40

borders of successor states after 1259
=== later campaigns
route described by Marco Polo

troops also participated in the western campaigns begun in 1237. Representatives The Mongol conquests
of all four lines, with some 150,000 Mongol, Turkic, and Persian troops, cam- expanded contacts across
Eurasia, which led to the
paigned into Europe in 1237, taking Moscow and Kiev in 1238 and striking into
spread of deadly plagues but
Poland and Hungary in 1241 and 1242. Although they looted cities in central also the transfer of technical
Europe on these campaigns, the Mongols soon retreated to Russia, which they and scientific knowledge. Visi-
dominated for over a century. tors like Marco Polo brought
The Mongols could not have numbered more than 1.5 million. Their success, back to Europe reports of the

thus, was due in large part to their willingness to incorporate other ethnic groups
wealth and splendour of Chi-
nese cities and information on
into their armies and government. In their campaigns against the Jurchen, they Chinese inventions such as
recruited both Khitan and Chinese who felt no great loyalty to their Jurchen lords. gunpowder and printing.
172 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Chinese catapult experts enabled the Mongols to storm walled cities, and Chinese
shipbuilders enabled them to engage the Song in naval battles. Whatever their
nationality, those who served the Mongols loyally were rewarded and given
important posts. Uighurs, Tibetans, Persians, and even Russians came to hold
powerful positions in the Mongol government.
The Mongols conquered in order to enrich themselves, but their perception of
how best to do this changed over time. Looting and pillaging were a standard fea-
ture of the first phase of takeover. Lands and those living on them were appropri-
ated and assigned to military commanders, nobles, and army units, to be
exploited as the recipients wished. Skilled workers were brought back to Mongo-
lia to provide the Mongols with the material goods of civilized life and to help
populate the new capital city of Karakorum. After Bukara and Samarkand were
captured, some 30,000 artisans were seized and transported to Mongolia to work
as slaves, and many Chinese craftsmen suffered the same fate. More sophisticated
methods of extracting revenue took longer to master. After Ogédei conquered the
Jin, some Mongols suggested that he turn all of north China into pasture land. An
alternative was proposed by
asinified Khitan, Yelt Qucai, who had taken up ser-
vice with the Mongols after they took Beijing in 1215. Yelti convinced Ogédei that
greater wealth could be gained by taxing farmers, calculating a revenue of 500,000
ounces of silver, 80,000 bolts of silk, and over 20,000 tonsof grain. But his insti-
tutional arrangements did not last long. Soon Yelt’s rivals convinced Ogédei that
Yelt’s method of direct taxation was less lucrative than their plan to let Central
Asian Muslim merchants bid against each other for licences to collect taxes. These
Central Asian tax farmers quickly gained a reputation for rapaciousness and came
to be as hated by the conquered Chinese as the Mongol soldiers.

THE MONGOL CONQUEST OF THE SONG

It was not until Chinggis’s grandson Khubilai (r. 1260-94) came to power that the
conquest of the Song began in earnest. Before succeeding to the title of great khan,
Khubilai had ruled a prefecture in Hebei as an appanage and thus knew something
of Chinese ways. He had Chinese as well as Uighur and Central Asian advisors,
and even knew little spoken Chinese. In 1264 he transferred the capital from
Karakorum in Mongolia to Beijing, known then as Dadu, and in 1271 he adopted
a Chinese name for his dynasty, Yuan, and instituted Chinese court rituals.
China south of the Yangzi had never been captured by non-Chinese from the
of
steppe, in large part because the rivers, canals, and streams the region posed an
effective barrier to cavalry forces. But on the advice of a surrendered Song com-

a
mander, the Mongols began the construction of river fleet. In 1268 they set siege
a
to Xiangyang, city on the Han river in Hubei recognized by both sides as the key
to control of the Yangzi valley. Both sides were equally determined to win, and the
siege lasted five years. Thousands of boats and tens of thousands of troops were
involved on both sides. The Mongols employed Chinese, Korean, Jurchen,
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties L&3

Uighur, and Persian experts in naval and siege warfare. Muslim engineers
designed artillery that sent a barrage of rocks weighing up to a hundred pounds
each. The Chinese started with substantial food stores, but had to run the block-
ade to get in supplies of salt and other essentials, leading to many naval engage-
ments on the river.
The Song did not lack officials and generals devoted to the cause of stemming
the Mongol onslaught, but co-ordination of their efforts was poor. The emperor at
this time was a child, and the highest officials got caught up in opposing each
other’s plans. In 1275, after the Mongol armies crossed the Yangzi, Empress
Dowager Xie issued an appeal to the populace to rise up and fight the barbarians,
and within a couple of months 200,000 soldiers had been recruited. But even this
force could not counter the Mongols’ scare tactics; during their advance towards
Hangzhou they ordered the total slaughter of the population of the major city of
Changzhou. Empress Dowager Xie surrendered in hopes of sparing the people of
the capital of a similar fate. Three years later, in 1279, the Mongols were able to
defeat the last of the loyalists in a naval battle off the coast of Guangdong during
which the last of the Song princes drowned.

By the time the Mongols had conquered the Song, there was no longer a pan-
Asian Mongol empire. Much of Asia was in the hands of Mongol successor states,
but these were generally hostile to each other. Khubilai was often at war with the
Khanate of Central Asia, then held by his cousin Khaidu, and he had little contact
with the Khanate of the Golden Horde in south Russia. In these other areas the
Mongols tended to merge with the Turkish nomads already there and, like them,
to convert to Islam. Thus, from Khubilai’s time on China proper was united with
Mongolia, Manchuria, and Tibet, but not with Persia, Iraq, or Russia.
Like the Khitans, the Mongols resisted assimilation. Although the Mongol
rulers developed a taste for the material fruits of Chinese civilization, they pur-
posely avoided many Chinese social and political practices. The rulers conducted
their business in the Mongol language and spent their summers in Mongolia.
Khubilai discouraged Mongols from marrying Chinese and took only Mongol
women into the palace. Some Mongol princes preferred to live in tents erected in
the palace grounds rather than in the grand palaces constructed at Beijing. Mon-
gols continued to choose their rulers through competition, often bloody. As
recorded in the Chinese history of the Yuan dynasty, succession after Khubilai is a
sordid tale of assassinations, coups d’état, enthronements of youthful incompe-
tents, fratricide, and domination by nobles.

LIFE IN CHINA UNDER ALIEN RULE

Under these alien rulers, the Chinese were not forced to adopt the customs of
their conquerors. Chinese cultural life continued, much as it had under the
Northern Dynasties, with members of the Chinese elite continuing to read and
write books and ordinary Chinese continuing to worship gods of their choice in
 THE

In 1280 Khubilai had the Chi- their own ways. To Song literati, the culture of the Chinese living under the Liao,
nese court painter Liu Jin, or early Yuan was rather provincial, but that did not make it non-Chinese.
Guandao depict him on horse-
Still, it would be difficult to argue that ordinary Chinese fared as well under
back in a hunting party. In this
detail from the silk handscroll,
these alien rulers as under earlier native dynasties. Large numbers had their lands
he is clothed in the brightly expropriated or were forced into serfdom or slavery, sometimes transported far
coloured Chinese brocades from home. Taxation, especially under the Mongols, was often ruinous. The econ-
underneath the more dis-
omy of north China seems to have taken a downward turn that took centuries to
tinctly Mongol furs.
reverse. Added to this was the indignity of being treated as a legally inferior caste.
The Venetian merchant Marco Polo, who spent twenty years in Mongol-ruled
China (1275-95), found ethnic animosity intense. ‘All the Cathaians detested the
rule of the great khan because he set over them Tartars li.e. Mongols], or still
more frequently Saracens [i.e. Muslims], whom they could not endure, for they
treated them just like slaves.’
Since all three sets of conquerors were interested in maximizing their revenues,
they did not purposely damage the economy. All three encouraged trade beyond
their borders, the Jin managing extensive officially sanctioned trade with the
Southern Song, and the Mongols encouraging trade throughout Eurasia. The
Jurchen allowed the circulation of Khitan and Song money and issued their own
currency, including paper money, which, however, suffered from serious inflation
after 1190. The Mongols similarly tried to maintain the existing paper currency
system and even allowed conversion of Song paper money into Yuan currency.
They were no more expert than the Jurchen in its management, however, and
inflation became ruinous by the fourteenth century. The Mongols, of course, fos-
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties

Built in 1212 in the early Yuan

period, the Yongle (‘Perma-
nent Joy’) Temple in Shanxi
is
province one of the oldest
surviving Daoist temples in
China. The walls of its main
hall, shown here, are deco-
rated with paintings of gods in
the Daoist pantheon.

tered north-south trade within China by reunifying the country. Added to this,
they rebuilt the northern section of the Grand Canal, inoperative since Northern
Song times, and extended
it to the capital they had built at Beijing.
None of the three conquest dynasties aimed at as open or mobile a society as
the Song, preferring to place people in hereditary occupational and ethnic cate-
gories. Ethnic divisions were codified to preserve the conquerors’ privileges. At
times the rulers’ greatest concern was to prevent their own people from being
assimilated into Chinese culture, at other times, to prevent Chinese from learning
their language and adopting their identity. Intermarriage was usually discouraged
but certainly occurred. Chinese were sometimes encouraged to learn the con-
queror’s language (as it demonstrated the conqueror’s dominance), and sometimes
discouraged (as it might undermine their privileges). During the Yuan period, the
ethnic hierarchy was particularly complex, with the Mongols the most privileged,
then allies of the Mongols from areas outside China (Uighurs, Turks, Tibetans,
Tanguts, Persians, Central Asians, called collectively semu), then former subjects
of the Jin (Chinese and sinified Khitans and Jurchens, called Hanren), with the
bottom occupied by former subjects of Song (called ‘southerners’). This system of
classification affected methods of taxation, judicial process, and appointment to
office. Chinese in north China, for instance, were taxed by household in ways that
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

reflected Jin practice, whereas Chinese in south China were taxed by land owned,
following Song precedents. Each ethnic group was judged and sentenced accord-
ing to its own legal traditions, so that, for instance, the Chinese, but no other eth-
nic groups, were tattooed if convicted of theft.
Other ethnic distinctions were clearly based on the fear that the Chinese were
the most likely of all the Mongols’ subjects to rebel. Chinese, for instance, were
forbidden to congregate in public or to own weapons. Khubilai even prohibited
Chinese from dealing in bamboo since it could be used for the manufacture of
bows and arrows. Chinese were subject to severe penalties if they fought back
when attacked by a Mongol; by contrast, Mongols who murdered Chinese could
get off by paying a fine. Probably because Chinese so outnumbered them, the
Mongols were particularly vigilant in their efforts to keep the Chinese from trying
to pass as Mongols and prohibited the taking of Mongol names.
Hereditary rank and station were a normal part of
the social structure of these

nomadic peoples, so they fostered it to make society more stable, but for China
was a regressive step. The Mongols went the furthest in this regard, registering the
it
population into hereditary statuses by occupation, such as ordinary farmers,
This crate of ceramic bowls is scholars, physicians, astrologers, soldiers, military agricultural workers, artisans,
evidence of the continuation
salt producers, and miners. Specialized occupational groups were required to pro-
of sea-borne commerce under
the Mongols. It was excavated vide unpaid services needed by the state according to rotational quotas and to
in 1976 from a ship that sunk earn their living during the rest of the year. The rigidity of the system led to wide-
off the coast of Sinan in Korea spread absconding by families unable to provide the required services.
in 1323 while en route from
Ningboto Japan. The 17,000-
The Chinese may not have welcomed alien rule but atall social levels they
found ways to adapt creatively to their new situations. The Khitan, Jurchen, and
odd ceramic pieces found on
the ship came predominantly Mongol rulers all needed men capable of handling the paperwork that made cen-
from major kilns in Zhejiang, tralized bureaucratic government possible, and for this purpose functionaries,
Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces. whom the Chinese literati dismissed as ‘clerks’, could be just as useful as men who
had studied the classics. But scholars also found employ-
ment, if somewhat more slowly, and at lower levels than
they would have liked. During the Yuan period, Chinese
scholars in the north took to serving the Mongols more
readily than those in the south. They were already accus-
tomed to rule by non-Han conquerors, and saw that Mon-
gol rule would be more palatable if Chinese scholars were
the administrators. Moreover, they anticipated that the
Mongols would gradually become more sinified as the
Jurchens had, and could view themselves as shielding Chi-
nese society from the most brutal effects of Mongol rule.
Scholars like Xu Heng devoted their lives to teaching the
Mongol rulers Chinese principles of the moral basis of pol-
itics. In the south, where the literati had identified so
strongly with resistance to the Mongols, accommodation
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties

was slower. Still, as southern Chinese literati

came to realize that Mongol domi- The scholar who did not find

nance was not to be an ephemeral event, more and more accepted posts where government employment
under the Mongols might still
they could put their learning to use, particularly by serving as instructors at gov-
ernment-sponsored academies.
hope to lead a comfortable
life, attended by elegant maid-
To the literati, the best way for the alien rulers to show their commitment to servants and surrounded by
good government was to hold civil service examinations and employ the best- objects that evoked the culti-
vated life. Using the conceit of
educated in positions of authority. The Khitans maintained a limited examination
paintings within paintings to
system, modelled on the Tang system, which the Jurchen perpetuated and then
greatly expanded. The Mongols were more hesitant. They did not reinstitute the
draw attention to the role of
art in such a lifestyle, Liu
civil service recruitment examinations until 1315, and then had quotas that Guandao (active 1279-1300)
ensured that Mongols and other non-Chinese candidates (such as Central Asians) depicted a scholar reclining -

before a painted screen that

would get half the degrees awarded, another quarter going to former subjects of
itself depicts a scholar sitting
the Jin, and only a quarter to former subjects of the Song (who accounted for well
by his books and antiques in
over half the total population). There were, moreover, regional quotas, restricting front of a screen painted with
the number of candidates from each province, which worked to limit the influ- a landscape.

ence of the educationally-advanced lower Yangzi regions. Perhaps most impor-

tant, only about 2 per cent of the ranked bureaucracy was recruited through the
examinations anyway. Instead, the majority entered by promotion through the
clerical ranks.
.

Those southern literati who could not or would not work for the Mongols
often supported themselves as doctors, fortune-tellers, Daoist priests, teachers of
children, or playwrights. This abundant supply of
talented and educated men
seems to have proved beneficial to the literary art of drama, which flourished in
this period. The presence of an alien elite controlling the government did not
diminish the prestige of the literati within Chinese society, and they continued to
178 THE CAMBRIDGE IL LUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Demons and demon quellers _

The Chinese religious imagination had room for all sorts of ‘stole his favourite concubine’sembroidered ‘perfum bag a
beings, good and bad. Among the dangerous beings were and his own. jade tflute and then 5 large demon who. ‘came to
|
i
vengeful ghosts, extortionate gods who could be merciless. f the emperor's aid.by not only catching thesmall demon but
toward those. who did not serve them properly, and. demons a gouging
out yes:and eateghim. When Avanos que
who carried out the orders of gods. More benevolent spiri-
as
tual beings, suchas ancestors and Buddhist and Daoist ‘gods, dh
could protect people. from. the more baleful beings.There
were also human exorcists who could ssu bdue or expel the

aspect to Chinese demon lore. ‘there was3

dimensionaas well,as. seen in the
grea
f :

Demons whom he had already subjugated carry Zhong Kui and his sister on anew demon hunt in-
this detail irom a painting by Gong KaiH222-< 1304).
¢
 Jin, and Yuan Dynasties
é

Alien Rule: The Liao,

7 ‘ . .

be accepted by ordinary Chinese as the natural leaders of local society, active in

local defence and kinship organization. Educated men could also concentrate on
their cultural responsibilities, looking on themselves as trustees of the Confucian
tradition. In Yuan times, in particular, academies flourished as alternative centres
of cultural life, beyond the scope of state domination. These were places where
scholars could attempt to assert the importance of civil as opposed to military val-

ues, and to sustain confidence in their own moral and intellectual autonomy.

ETHNICITY, LOYALTY, AND CONFUCIAN UNIVERSALISM

Confucianism had always made universal claims: the ruler was the Son of Heaven
and he ruled over All-Under-Heaven. True, there were ‘barbarians’ at the fringes of
the civilized world who did not obey the Son of Heaven, but this was the result of
their not yet having received the transformative influence of Chinese culture, not
the consequence of anything inherent in them as a race. To put this another way,
China was superior to all its neighbours, but that was because Chinese culture
was superior, not because the Chinese, as a race, were physically or biologically
better. Barbarians could in time be transformed into Chinese if
they adopted Chi-
nese ways clothes, manners, family system, ethics, and so on. At the same time,
—

Chinese culture was not lacking in ethnic or particularistic sentiments. Deeply

ingrained habits of ancestor worship required recognizing obligations to forebears
— it would be a violation of filial piety for someone descended from a sinified

Xiongnu, Turk, or Khitan to falsify a genealogy to claim descent from an ancient

Chinese line. The importance of loyalty to one’s ruler also tended to foster a sense
of ethnic identity. When one’s ruler was threatened byalien enemies, as they were
repeatedly in Song times, it was difficult not to blur hostility to them as enemies
with hostility to them as culturally alien.
Confucian theory of the transformative power of Chinese culture worked well
in situations where China was the dominant force. Throughout the south, local
populations that were at one period considered non-Chinese came to merge with
the Chinese. Even in the north there were plenty of examples of originally non-
Chinese groups that eventually were assimilated into the Chinese — the Xianbei of
the Northern Dynasties offer a good example. But the conquest dynasties of the
tenth to fourteenth centuries put these Confucian ideas of transformation to
much more severe tests. Exposure to Chinese culture and Confucian values did
not lead to full-scale sinification of the Khitans or Mongols, even if many individ-
uals became sinified. This exposure did, however, lead to the Jurchens and the
Mongols using Chinese universalistic political ideology to their own advantage.
By the thirteenth century the Jin emperors presented themselves as supporting an
order in which Chinese subjects and non-Chinese conquerors would live together
in peace and prosperity under a universal empire. One ofthe last Jin emperors has
come down in history as a model Confucian ruler, the patron of a cultural revival
led by Chinese Confucian scholars. Khubilai similarly played up the universal
180 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

dimensions of his rule. When he announced that his dynasty would be called
Yuan, he cited a passage in the Book of Changes and pointed out that his erandfa-
ther, Chinggis, had expanded the realm to dimensions never before equalled.
Alien emperors could not both preserve their own ethnic identify and perform
all of the Chinese rituals traditionally associated with the Son of Heaven and Chi-
nese culture. Alien rulers erected ancestral temples, long identified with the
dynastic principle and imperial legitimacy, but this step did not involve symbolic
identification with the Han Chinese since the ancestors to be worshipped were
their own non-Chinese ancestors. Chinese advisors to alien rulers convinced
them to imitate or adopt some features of Chinese impérial funeral and wedding
rituals, explaining to them the moral interpretations Chinese scholars tradition-
ally put on such acts. But given the need to preserve their own ethnic identity,
none of these alien rulers ever fully adopted such Chinese rituals.
Even though these alien rulers came to
act out the role of ritual centre for Chi-
nese culture, many Chinese intellectuals could not accept them as legitimate
—

rulers of China, developing a proto-nationalistic conception of loyalty not just to

ruler but to nation and culture. As discussed in Chapter 6, in the early Southern
Song period regaining the north was seen as tantamount topreserving China. In
the thirteenth century many of those who participated in the resistance to the
Mongol invasion saw themselves as engaged in a desperate struggle to save Chi-
nese civilization. Wen Tianxiang, the most famous of the literati-turned-generals,
gave everything he had to the cause. Long after there was any real chance of
dri-
ving out the Mongols, he continued to fight, withdrawing further and further
south, hoping to keep the Mongols from the two Song princes the loyalists had
rallied behind. Even after he was captured, for three years in captivity he resisted
all inducements to serve in the Yuan government, right up to his execution by
Khubilai three years later.
The Mongols’ policies of favouring other ethnic groups over the Chinese fur-
ther aroused Chinese ethnic consciousness. Former subjects of the Song were par-
ticularly incensed when the Tibetan cleric, Yang Lianjianjia, was given so much
power he was able to convert the former Song palaces in Hangzhou into Buddhist
temples and excavate the Song emperors’ tombs to extract the treasures in them to
pay for the of
building more Buddhist temples. Defeated Song loyalists gave mean-
ing to their survival by secretly searching out the bones of the Song emperors and
burying them elsewhere.. ,

It is true that in each of these dynasties the conquerors and their subjects
reached a workable accommodation within a couple of generations as military -

to
rule yielded civilian rule. But persisting tensions should not be underestimated.
Although the Jurchen were by far the most sinified of the conquerors, Chinese
and Khitan subjects of the Jin readily defected to the Mongols out of hatred for the
Jurchen, and after the collapse of the Jin, Chinese common people reportedly
massacred large groups of Jurchen. In the case of the Mongols, even in the four-
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties 181
182 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

teenth century they and their Chinese subjects had considerable suspicion of each
other. Bayan, the Mongol chief minister dominant at court from 1328 to 1340,
made efforts to ensure that no Chinese gained leading positions in the central,
provincial, or local government. Fearing that he would be assassinated by a Chi-
nese, he reiterated rules against Chinese owning weapons or retaliating if struck
by Mongols or Central Asians. The Chinese for their part were just as frightened
of him, especially when rumours spread that the government was going to seize
all unmarried young people inthe country, and that Bayan intended to have every-
one with the common surnames Zhang, Wang, Liu, Li, and Zhao slaughtered.
Bayan’s fears of Chinese conspiracy were thus balanced by Chinese fears of Mon-
gol political brutality. When widespread rebellion in south China brought the
Yuan dynasty to the point of collapse (see Chapter 8), the Mongols in China did
not simply melt into the Chinese population the way the Xianbei and Jurchen
had. Rather, those who could escape fled northward back to the steppe. The post-
Yuan Mongols resumed their nomadic, tribal life, looking back on their period of
hegemony over China with pride.
Chinese notions of ethnic identity were undoubtedly sharpened by defeat and
occupation by the Mongols, but these sentiments should not be taken as equiva-
lent to modern nationalism. Loyalty to
one’s ruler remained to many
a
higher
virtue. Many conscientious Confucian scholars did everything in their power to
make the Yuan government work well, at both the central and local level. And
when the Yuan fell to a native Chinese dynasty, a not inconsiderable number of
such scholars remained loyal to the Yuan and refused to serve the Ming.

During the four and a half centuries separating the fall of the Tang and the begin-
ning of the Ming, north and south China experienced markedly different fates.
The north was at peace and part of a unified China under Chinese rulers for only
about
a century and a half during the Northern Song (and even then strip at the
northern edge was under the control of the Khitans). For most ofthe rest of the
time it was under the domination of states formed beyond its frontiers by non-
Chinese tribesmen. Social and economic dislocation were thus greater in the
north, which had hardly had time to recuperate fully from the destruction caused
by the Jurchen invasion and subsequent Jin—Song wars before it was devastated by
the waves of Mongol campaigns and the militarization of society that came in
their wake. Confiscation of land, warlord domination, and frequently changing
civil service recruitment policies upset the old power structure, so that relatively
fewof the families that were eminent in the Northern Song maintained elite sta-
tus into the Ming.
In the south, by contrast, alien rule lasted for
a
little less than one century, and
even then was not so thoroughly militarist or so disruptive of the old social and
economic order. Alien rule did not last long enough to seem inevitable, and it was
never accommodated tothe degree it was in the north. To the Mongol rulers, the
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties

Chinese of the north and the south were so different that they put them in differ-
ent ethnic categories and administered them differently.
The history of the conquest dynasties has usually been told from the point of
view of the conquerors and how successful they were in consolidating and
extending their rule. Western historians have been fascinated with the Mongols’
extraordinary war machine and have focused on Chinggis and Khubilai as con-
Chinese historians, with their
querors of world-historical proportions. Traditional
focus on political history and reliance on the dynastic histories, have for their own
reasons concentrated on the rulers. Moreover, the dictates of modern politics have
required recent Chinese historians to treat the Jurchens and Mongols as minority
peoples of China, rather than as alien conquerors. This allows contemporary Chi-
nese to take pride in the geographical sweep of the Mongol empire but in the
process distorts history.
When the is
central concern the history of Chinese civilization and the Chinese
people, the conquest dynasties look rather different. Just as Chinese culture
would have to respond to
the threat of the west in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, so Chinese culture had to respond to the threat of conquest by horse-
riding nomads in this period. Its response had profound effects on many aspects
of Chinese culture.
Even though all three alien dynasties patronized Buddhism, China did not
become a more Buddhist society under their tutelage. Buddhism probably had
special appeal to the conquerors since it was a universalistic religion with no
did
greater ties to China than to anywhere else. Still, the patronage of alien rulers
not stimulate an intellectual renaissance among Buddhists in China, nor did
increased contact with Buddhists from other lands. Chinese Buddhist monks, for
instance, seem to have found little to celebrate in the increased prominence of
Tibetan lamas in court circles. It would be going too far to say that the patronage
of alien rulers undermined the appeal of Buddhism to the Chinese at large, but it
did not enhance it.
During the Mongol occupation, China was tied into a Eurasian empire, and
foreigners from west Asia and Europe visited China in unprecedented numbers.
These cross-cultural contacts whetted the appetite of Europeans for increased
contact with distant lands but had the opposite effect on the Chinese. Chinese
inventions — suchas printing and gunpowder — spread westward, and the demand
for Asian goods eventually culminated in the great age of European exploration
and expansion. By comparison, in China protecting what was distinctly Chinese
became
a higher priority than drawing from the outside to enrich or enlarge Chi-
nese civilization. Much more in the way of foreign music and foreign styles in
clothing, art, and furnishings were integrated into Chinese civilization in Tang
times than in Song or Yuan times. In this regard, China was more like the Islamic
world, where the Mongol conquests and military threats provoked conservative
reactions, not enhanced interest in distant regions.
184 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

For the Chinese, bamboo is

a The impact of Jurchen and Mongol conquests was certainly detrimental the to
symbol of survival in adver-
economy. The iron industry that had been central to the Northern Song economic
sity: it is strong but flexible;
expansion never regained its former vitality. Population growth was replaced by
because
it bends, it can with-
stand storms and winds population decline. By 1100 the population of Northern Song was in
the
vicinity
without breaking. Perhaps for of 100 million. The Jurchen invasion led to population loss in the north, but by
this reason bamboo was

ular subject among Chinese

a pop- 1207 the Jurchens had fifty-three million people in the north, which combined
with perhaps sixty-five million in lands held by the Southern Song gives a com-
literati painters during the
bined population of nearly 120 million. In 1290 the registered population of °

Mongol period. This 17-inch-

tall album leaf was painted in China-was down to 60 million, and was still at that level a century later. Indis-
ink on paper in 1350 by Wu criminate slaughter by Mongol armies undoubtedly accounts for some of this
Zhen (1280-1354), a scholar drop. Certainly some large areas, like Sichuan and Hebei, were devastated and
who supported himself as a
took several centuries to recover economically and demographically from the
fortune-teller.
Mongol conquest. The increased communications across Asia may also have led
to the spread of deadly plagues. Shortly after the lifting of the first siege of Kaifeng
in 1232 an epidemic spread, killing nearly a million people over the next three
Alien Rule: The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties 185

months. The turmoil of the final years of the Yuan, when civil war raged,
undoubtedly contributed as well to population loss.
The Jurchens and the Mongols have also been blamed for introducing more
authoritarian forms of government, forms that their Chinese successors main-
tained or even perfected. The alien rulers and officials often had little patience for
following written regulations, and accomplished their goals more easily through
violence and terror. Their governments were not necessarily stronger or more cen-
tralized than the Song; indeed, in many ways they was more decentralized, the
residue of a more feudal-patrimonial mode of governance. But under foreign
dynasties the imperial exercise of power was less constrained by precedent and
more given to overt use of force.
Despite all these negatives — or perhaps because of them — Chinese civilization
also gained something during these centuries of alien domination: a confidence in
its ability to survive, to bend just enough to ward off the worst blows, and to
defeat aggressors through simple staying power. Chinese civilization survived not
by transforming the Mongols, but by strengthening those facets of cultural iden-
tity independentof the Son of Heaven. More important to the survival of Chinese
culture than Khubilai’s gestures of playing patron was what was going on
far
from
the court — in academies where Confucian teachings were being transmitted, in
circles of artists and writers who found ways to maintain confidence in their cul-
tural traditions, in local lineages where self-defence and distinctly Chinese rituals
were both promoted. The association of the conquerors with military values may
well have strengthened the identification of China with the opposite — with the
arts of peace and order.
 an hinese performing. arts have: aJong history. Acrobats
j
and dancers entertained in the pal aces of the Warr
States period. Cities in Song times were: enlivened by.
Z
j
1g

comedians, puppeteers, singers, and storytellers who drew on a

substantial Fepertory offarces moral F
love ‘stories, and
tales,
historical legends. — 0
io
SREB
BSEES
UR

Drama as.a Hiteraryart was3s establ ned during the J

up, shown here iina large Yuandynassty mural ina hall of th G angsh ngtem
le
in Hongtong,
| Shanxi ‘Brovance,:
y

Right. Story-tellers and puppeteers entertained city-dwellers with uch the same
stories that play-
wrights worked into: theirpolished dramatic texts. Detail from a fourteenth-century handscroll ne
190 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

CHAPTER 8 The Limits of Autocracy:

The Ming Dynasty 1368-1644
With the disintegration of the Mongol empire and collapse of the Yuan dynasty,
China got a respite from alien rule. The Ming dynasty (1368-1644), founded by
a
poor peasant turned rebel general, managed to secure all of China proper and
even to expand into areas in the southwest. The early Ming emperors, struggling
to gain personal control over a huge, complex empire, used terror to keep officials
in line. Despite the despotism of the rulers, however, competition to join official-
dom quickly reached and exceeded Song levels. Literati culture was especially
vibrant in the Lower Yangzi region, where levels of urbanization were very high
and the publishing industry grew rapidly. One reason for the prosperity of this
region was a burgeoning of trade, including international maritime trade. Even
though the Ming rulers had little sympathy for commerce and tried to
force all for-

eign trade into the structure of the tribute system, the Ming government could not
keep high foreign demand for Chinese silk and porcelain from drawing China into
the rapidly expanding international trading system. The resulting influx of silver
speeded the monetization of the Chinese economy and had pervasive social and
cultural effects, some of which contributed to the unravelling of social order in
the seventeenth century.

MING TAIZU AND DESPOTISM

Seldom has the course of Chinese history been as influenced by
a single personal-
ity as much as it was by the founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang
(1328-1398), better known by his imperial temple name, Taizu, and the name of
his reign period, Hongwu. The first commoner to become emperor in1,500 years,
Taizu proved shrewd, hardworking, and ruthless. He knew poverty first-hand. His
destitute parents frequently had to move to look for work or escape rent-
collectors; they even had to give away several of their children because they could
a
not afford to rear them. When Zhu Yuanzhang was sixteen, shift in the route of
the Yellow River brought floods, famine, and epidemic to his region, and took the
lives of both his parents. Taizu, without even the resources for coffins to bury
them in, presented himself to a Buddhist monastery; but the monastery, hard-
pressed itself, soon sent out the novices to beg. After several years wandering
across east-central China, Taizu returned to the monastery for three or four years
until it was burned to the ground by the Yuan militia attempting to suppress local
rebellions. Homeless again, in 1352 Taizu joined one of the many rebel groups
affiliated with the Red Turbans, a branch of the millenarian White Lotus Society
whose teachings drew on Manicheism and the Maitreya cult of popular Bud-
dhism, as well as Confucian and Daoist values and symbols. Taizu rose quickly in
The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 191

this rebel group, especially after he married the foster daughter of the commander.
In 1355, on the latter’s death, he took over command of the troops and the fol-
lowing year captured the majorcity of Nanjing. In these early years he attracted
to his service a small band of able soldiers of peasant origins as well as a few
learned men who served as advisors.
Emperor Taizu’s detractors
Using Nanjing as a base for campaigns against other local strongmen, Taizu described him as ugly and
gradually became supreme in the southeast, even though he still nominally rec- pockmarked, with a protrud-
ognized the dynastic claims of the head of the Red Turbans. After the latter died ing lower jaw. Although some
of the portraits preserved in
in 1367 (somewhat suspiciously while Taizu’s guest), Taizu made clear his own
the palace collection show him
imperial intentions, sending his army north toward the Yuan capital at modern
to have been as handsome as
Beijing. The Mongol ruler was not captured and did not abdicate; rather he and
any other emperor, several
his court fled, retreating into Mongolia. Subsequent Ming efforts to defeat the survive that match the most
Mongols there were unsuccessful, so the Ming domain never extended into Inner negative descriptions.
Asia. In 1368, after gaining control of Beijing, Taizu razed
the palaces and declared the establishment of the Ming
dynasty. He retained Nanjing as his capital, making the
Ming
the first dynasty to rule a united China from city
south of the Yangzi River. Nanjing’s population rapidly
swelled from about 100,000 to perhaps one million. Taizu
built huge walls around the city, nearly thirty miles long,
as well as palaces and other government buildings.
Influenced, it would seem, by Daoist notions of heav-
enly autocrats, Taizu made every effort to exalt the posi-
tion of emperor. He saw his task as bringing into being a
world where people obeyed their superiors and where
those who did evil were promptly punished, in other
words, a world quite unlike the violent, amoral one he
knew. He required his officials to kneel when addressing
him and did not hesitate to have them beaten. In order to
lighten the weight of government on the poor, he ordered
a full-scale registration of both population and cultivated
land as the first step toward reallocating service and tax
liabilities more fairly. For the same reasons he cut govern-
ment expenses wherever he could. The army, over two
million strong, was made largely self-supporting byallot-
ting land to soldiers’ families to farm. The cost of the civil
bureaucracy was kept under control by retaining the Yuan
system of hereditary artisan households who would pro-
vide for the needs of the palace and government. Similar
principles were applied to local government; better-off vil-
lage families were assigned the obligation to perform low-
level judicial, police, and tax-collecting services without
192 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HiSTORY OF CHINA

pay. This village service policy also appealed to Taizu because it allowed local
communities to protect themselves from rapacious tax
collectors: they themselves
would be responsible for assessing, collecting, and transporting taxes. Taizu also
thought government intrusion could be cut back if people would observe tradi-
tional moral standards and social hierarchies and live together harmoniously.
Towards this end he issued hortatory admonitions for village heads to read aloud
to their neighbours, urging them to behave with filial piety towards their parents,
live in harmony with their neighbours, work contentedly at their occupations,
and refrain from evil. |

Taizu’s sympathies did not extend to the commercial and scholarly elites. Inor-
dinately high tax rates were imposed on the rich and cultured southeastern area
around Suzhou in Jiangsu province, and thousands of wealthy families from the
southeast were forced to settle elsewhere, especially in the new capital Nanjing.
Taizu complained about the 120 jinshi chosen in the civil service examination of
1371, declaring, “We sincerely searched for worthy men, but the empire
responded by sending empty phrase-makers.’ Not only did he cease holding
examinations for over a decade, but he even had the Mencius edited to remove
eighty-five sections that implied curbing the authority of the ruler. Once, after the
examinations were reinstated, Taizu had the chief examiner executed when it
turned out that only candidates from the south had been selected as jinshi.
When overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems he tackled, Taizu began
to suspect that others were plotting against him or secretly ridiculing him. He
turned his palace guard into a secret police force to spy on officials and ferret out
political crimes. In 1380 he had his chief minister executed, and almost anyone
remotely connected with him was soon arrested and executed as possible accom-
plices; after fourteen years of investigation over 30,000 had lost their lives. Two
other major purges took ariother 70,000 or so lives. The return of native rule to
China had become a nightmare for the literati.
These purges were not directed only at the mighty; Taizu waged repeated cam-
paigns against the activities of the assorted underlings, runners, guards, and ser-
vants who did the bidding of officials and controlled ordinary people’s access to
them. As he reported in one of his proclamations, he felt driven to rid the world
of evil people:

I
In the morning | punish a few; by evening others commit the same crime. pun-
ish these in the evening and by the next morning again there are violations.
Although the corpsesof the first have not been removed, already others follow
in their path. The harsher the punishment, the more theviolations. Day and
be
night | cannot rest. This is a situation which cannot helped. IfI enact lenient

punishments, these persons will engage in still more evil practices. Then how
could the people outside the government lead peaceful lives? What a difficult
situation this is! If I punish these persons, I am regarded as a tyrant. If | am
 The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 193

lenient toward them, the law becomes ineffective, order deteriorates, and people
deem me an incapable ruler.

Unable to put his trust in a prime minister, Taizu acted as his own chief executive,
dealing directly with officials on matters large or small. Like the First Emperor of
the Qin, Taizu went through huge piles of paper work himself, exhausting himself
in his determination to manage all matters.

MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS

a
of
The layout and design the
Taizu had instructed his descendants to preserve intact the institutions he had
Ming palace complex in Bei-
;

| created, a wish they did not always honour. Nanjing, for instance, did not remain largely retained by
_jing were
the capital for even a century. Taizu was succeeded by his legitimate heir (his the subsequent Qing rulers.
deceased eldest son’s fifteen-year-old son), but within three years this emperor’s Visitors to Beijing today can
wander through the orderly
uncle, Taizu’s fourth son Chengzu, waged a civil war to usurp the throne.
sequence of courtyards and
Chengzu moved the main capital to his power base at Beijing and demoted Nan- halls where twenty-four
jing to the rank of secondary capital. Thereafter Beijing was the residence of the emperors both lived and con-
court and seat of military power while Nanjing had supervision of fiscal matters ducted the affairs of state.
194 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

and of supplying the poorer north with tax revenues collected in the wealthier
south. To build up Beijing hundreds of thousands of workmen were setto con-
structing walls and palaces. The city was arranged like a set of nested boxes: the
main hall of the palace was the centre of the palace compound (called the Forbid-
den City), itself the centre of the government district (called the Imperial City),
which in turn was the centre of Beijing, with movement in
and out of
these boxes
limited to the gates that pierced the walls. By 1553 an Outer City had been added
to the south, with its own walls and gates, bringing the overall size of Beijing to 4
by 4'/ miles. supply Beijing with grain, the Grand Canal was brought up over
To
western Shandong through a chain of fifteen locks, a major feat of engineering.
The 15,000 boats and 160,000 soldiers of the transport army — who pulled loaded
barges with ropes where needed — thus became the lifeline of the capital.
Taizu’s efforts to
organize his government around unpaid service created many
headaches for later Ming administrators. Local officials found that legal sources of
revenue were so limited that they had had no choice but to
levy extra-legal ones
to keep basic services going, leading to just the sort of abuses Taizu had wanted to
prevent. Ordinary households, for their part, were often devastated by the burden
of uncompensated responsibility for delivering taxes or maintaining local hostels
for government travellers. Reforms eventually had to be introduced, which con-
verted most obligations into a monetary tax. As in previous dynasties, the army of
hereditary farmer-soldiers came nowhere near paying for itself or maintaining
itself as an effective military force. Soldiers who were not paid deserted or sold
their lands, and mercenary armies had be
to
created in their stead. The Ming mon-
etary system never was managed very effectively; for instance, the government
failed to meet the need for coinage, to control counterfeiting of coins, or to
enforce the use of its poorly backed paper currency. In the end paper money was
abandoned and the government acquiesced to
the circulation
of silver ingots.
Taizu’s solution to the perennial problem of palace eunuchs also did not work
as planned. Taizu had stipulated that eunuchs should not be allowed to learn to
read or to interfere in politics. Within decades, however, palace eunuchs were not
merely managing huge imperial workshops, but also playing major roles in mili-
tary affairs and even such civil service matters as the appointment and promotion
of officials. During the last century of the Ming 70,000 eunuchs were in service
throughout the country, 10,000 in the capital. They had their own bureaucracy,
parallel to that of the civil service bureaucracy but not controlled by it. A school
was set up to educate them, and many became expert in bureaucratic procedures
and documentary forms. Eunuchs staffed such palace offices as the Bureau of Cer-
emonial, whose chief was the undisputed manager of the palace quarters and the
emperor's schedule, and when the emperor allowed it,
a kind of chief of staff who
could impose his will on the civil bureaucracy. Eunuch control over vital govern-
mental processes was particularly detrimental during the long reign of Guang-
zong (also called Wanli, r. 1573-1620), who, weary of the bickering among his
The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty

top officials and their resistance to his desire to command troops in person, sim-
ply stopped attending to the affairs of government, neither reading papers sub-
mitted to him nor filling vacancies in key posts. He let eunuchs collect taxes in the
provinces, unconcerned with how they might tyrannize wealthy families.
While conscientious Ming bureaucrats were preoccupied with trying to make a
flawed system work, the society and economy were continuing to grow. China’s
population more than doubled over the course of the dynasty, from between sixty
and eighty million to between 150 and 200 million. Small market towns appeared
all over the country. Regional specialization increased as communities took
advantage of the availability of cheap water transport to take up cash-cropping. By
the seventeenth century the Yangzi river delta area had become
a centre of cotton
and silk production, coastal Fujian became known for tobacco and sugar cane,
and porcelain manufacture at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi had achieved unprecedented
levels of output. All of this occurred despite continued government suspicion of
those who pursued profit and of economic growth beyond the state’s plan.

THE SOUTHWESTERN FRONTIER

It was not until Ming times that the southwestern provinces of Yunnan and
Guizhou became fully incorporated into the Chinese realm. The Mongols had
destroyed the kingdom of Dali in 1253 and incorporated it into their empire, set-
tling over 50,000 soldiers and their families there, including many Muslims from
the northwest. This pattern of furloughing soldiers after campaigns was repeated
by the Ming after it conquered the region in 1381. By the end of the century some
200,000 military colonists had cleared at least two million mu (about 350,000
acres) in Yunnan and Guizhou. Subsequent settlements of military households
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brought at least another half million
government-sponsored settlers, coming from as far away as Shanxi, Shandong,
Jiangsu, and Fujian. These migrations had a major impact on the ethnic mix in the
area, as Yunnan and Guizhou probably had only around three million people at
the beginning of the Ming, well over half of whom were non-Han. Colonists gen-
erally opened uncultivated lands near non-Han settlements, leading to friction
but also to assimilation in both directions.
In frontier areas like the southwest the Ming government followed earlier
dynasties’ policies of dual administration. Places with extensive Chinese popula-
tions were ruled through prefectures and counties whose regular civil servants
enforced nationwide law codes and tax regulations. In other places where native
tribes were clearly in control, the Ming recognized tribal rulers as hereditary
chieftains and ruled ‘with a loose reign,’ obligating the chief to maintain order,
help the Mingif other nearby tribes caused trouble, and send tribute in return for
which he received ample goods in exchange. The Ming central government played
the role of distant overlord, not able to control much of what occurred, but not
having to expend many resources either.
196 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisTORY OF CHINA

Ming China‘s contacts with the outside world

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JuuL Ming Wall

provincial capital “=== Portuguese trading contacts

China’s sea links to other nations became important in Ming Thus in Ming times it was not enough to defend the northern
times. Early in the dynasty, China was sending out sea-borne borders against horse-riding nomads; the government also had
missions to distant lands: late in the dynasty merchants and to worry about defending its southern coastal borders from
adventurers from distant lands were coming to China by sea. pirates and smugglers.
The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty

Despite the potential benefits of this quasi-feudal system to both local chiefs
and the Ming government, violent conflict between settlers and the indigenous
population was not uncommon. In ways reminiscent of conflicts in the American
west, provocations could come fromeither side: individual Chinese would exploit
or reduce to near slavery local tribal people, and tribal people, where they had the
military means, would rob, enslave, or otherwise terrorize Chinese settlers and
merchants who ventured into their enclaves. The largest-scale uprisings occurred
between 1464 and 1466 when Miao and Yao tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong,
Sichuan, Hunan, and Guizhou left their remote border areas to
attack heavily pop-
ulated cities. Concluding that the previous conciliatory policies had exacerbated
the problem, the minister of war decided to pursue a military solution. Thirty
thousand soldiers, including 1,000 Mongol horsemen, were assembled in Nanjing
and marched from there into Guangxi, where they were joined by 160,000 local
troops. The main Yao stronghold, located in a deep gorge surrounded by jungle-
covered mountains, was attacked, and the leader and 800 followers were captured
and sent to Beijing to be beheaded. Armies were then dispatched to pacify the
neighbouring provinces.
Some Chinese officials argued against pursuing military supremacy over the
non-Chinese tribes. In 1479 official argued that conflict with the aborigines in
an

southern Sichuan was due largely to the Ming governments decision to

assign reg-
ular civil service officials to the area, men unfamiliar with the local people and
unable to speak their languages. The recent campaigns, resulting in the deaths of
270 native leaders, he reported, had provoked such hatred for the Chinese that the
local people saw no alternative but to pillage and plunder. ‘When they capture a
Chinese, they bind him to a tree and shoot arrows at
him, saying: “You have been
a plague on us all too long.” Other officials sought a middle ground between
granting tribal people autonomy and trying to force them into total submission.
The philosopher-official Wang Yangming, experienced in suppressing Miao rebel-
lions in Guangxi, advocated joint administration by both local chiefs and Chinese
officials to allow gradual sinification. In the case of unsinified tribal people, he
remarked, ‘instituting direct civil administration by Han Chinese magistrates is
like herding deer into the hall of a house and trying to tame them. In the end, they
merely butt over your sacrificial altars, kick over your tables, and dash about in
frantic fright.’ On the other hand, leaving them to their own devices was likewise
no solution since it was like releasing deer into the wilderness without putting up
fences to keep them from trampling on young crops.
The creation of a trans-local Chinese identity not merely among the educated
but also among ordinary farmers owes much to
the sort of long-distance migra-
tion that filled the southwest with Chinese settlers. Migrants came from widely
separated parts of China; they could not fail to notice the differences in dialects
and customs that divided them, but they also came to recognize what they had in
common, what distinguished them as Han Chinese from the local tribal people. In
198 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

the case of the southwest, as Chinese immigrants and native people lived in closer
contact, there was enough cultural interchange for new provincial dialects and
identities to emerge, with Han Chinese identity and culture dominant, but incor-
porating many particular practices of local indigenous origins.

LITERATI LIFE
The Ming government may have been seriously flawed and careers
risks, but the supply of
in

it
full of
educated men eager to enter government service never
diminished. The civil service examination system thus continued to play a major
role literati life.
in

In terms of intellectual and literary content, the Ming examinations are notable
for their narrowness. They tested above all knowledge of the Four Books
(Analects, Mencius, Doctrine of the Mean, and Great Learning) as interpreted by the
Song scholar Zhu Xi. This emphasis on a single scholar’s interpretations made
study and grading more straightforward but served to separate preparation for the
examinations from intellectual life to an even greater degree than in the Song
period. Preparing for the examinations became divorced from literary trends as
well, especially after 1487 when it was ruled that essays had to be written in a
fixed formal eight-part style dubbed the ‘eight-legged’ essay style. In termsof
the
opportunity for advancement they offered, however, the Ming examinations are
notable for their geographical and social breadth. To prevent the most prosperous
parts of the country, where education was most advanced, from monopolizing the
civil service, and to guarantee representation to even the most backward regions,

One way
to try to improve
one’s chance of passing the
civil service examinations was
to cheat, for instance by wear-
ing undergarments on which
the classics were written in
small characters. This ‘cheat
shirt’ probably dates from the
nineteenth century, but the
practice began much earlier.
The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 199

provincial quotas were instituted. Just as significant, the Ming added a new lower At age eighty, the scholar—
official Wen Zhengming
tier to the degree system, the government students (shengyuan) who qualified by
passing a local examination, thus greatly expanding the numbers of degree-hold-
(1470-1559) depicted an old
gnarled cypress and a
solid
ers. By the sixteenth century there were generally over 100,000 government stu- rock using only ink and paper,
dents (about one out of every three or four hundred adult males). These men giving a fresh interpretation to
could wear distinctive caps and sashes, were exempt from labour service, and these long-established sym-
were sometimes given stipends. At least as important, their titles gave them stand- bols of endurance. In
the

ing as community leaders and entry into educated circles; if in reduced circum-
upper left heconveyed the
idea in a poetic couplet:
stances, they could probably use their titles to secure a job as a tutor in a wealthy ‘Weighed down by
snow,
family. The 10 per cent or fewer who were successful at the provincial level Guren) oppressed by frost, with the
were entitled to greater privileges, including eligibility for appointment to lower- passing of years and months
level government posts, even without passing the next, and most prestigious its branches become twisted
and its crown bent down, yet
examination, the jinshi, offered in the capital. There would only have been two
its strength remains majestic.’
to four thousand jinshi at any given time, on the order of one out of 10,000
adult males.
The key role of the civil service examination system in elite life did not make
wealth no longer of significance. Since office could be used to enhance family
property and property could be passed from one generation to the next, families
of officials still did better than other families. As in Song times, when theclass
sys-
tem was viewed from the county or prefectural level, a relatively small number of
landholding families in a locality could well garner a disproportionately large
share of the higher degrees generation after generation. In one county in Anhui,
for instance, nineteen of the eight-five jinshi awarded in Ming times came from
just three family lines.
200 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

Hopeful candidates who had taken the civil service examinations would crowd around the wall
where the results were posted. Detail from a handscroll in ink and colour on silk attributed to
Qiu Ying (active 1530-1552).
The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 201

The wealthy, moreover, had the resources to pursue a

rather idyllic version of the literati life, combining the
practice and connoisseurship of art and literature with
study and occasional office holding. In 1570 the ‘Four
Great Families’ of Suzhou invited the local literati to view
their ancient bronzes and other antiquities. Wealthy
Suzhou families like these often lived in elegant walled
garden homes. Quite unlike the rural and urban mansions
of their European counterparts, these urban retreats pro-
vided no external visual interest. Only those invited
within the high walls could discover the imaginary worlds
created within small courtyards, reached after zigzagging
along covered galleries, pierced in places by decorative
windows offering glimpses of further worlds. In the tiny
gardens within these complexes could be found bamboo
or plum trees as well as rocks that evoke mountains.
In this milieu the amateur ideal — already present in
Tang and Song art circles — blossomed. Great literati
painters like Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, and Dong
Qichang were scholars thoroughly familiar with the clas-
sics, the works of the great poets, and the styles of former
poets and calligraphers; and they tried to imbue with
meaning the landscapes, gardens, trees, rocks, or other
scenes they depicted. They attracted many students and
followers, both amateurs who painted for self-expression while pursuing other The elegance of the hardwood

careers, and men who decided to devote their full energies to painting. Making a furniture crafted in Ming
times was never surpassed.
living as a painter had become feasible because works of art by well-known This ‘official’s’ chair was con-
painters commanded high prices. One wealthy man, planning the celebration of structed from slender, gently
his mother’s eightieth birthday, paid the prominent painter Qiu Ying 100 ounces curved pieces of Huanghuali
of silver to paint a long handscroll for the occasion. Older paintings were also wood,
a beautifully grained
highly valued; one man acquired a landed estate in exchange for a set of four
hardwood grown primarily in
tropical Hainan Island, south
scrolls by Shen Zhou, a famous painter of a prior generation.
of mainland Guangdong
province. The apron and the
POPULAR CULTURE
splat are embellished with
The efforts
literati took to perfect the cultivated life may reflect an attempt to but- low-relief carving of dragon
and cloud motifs. Fine hard- -
tress the boundaries between literati and popular culture, which were being
wood furniture like this chair
breached bit by bit by urban culture, the explosion of the publishing industry, and was fashioned without the use
the rise of vernacular literature. In the early seventeenth century, the Italian mis- of metal nails, the pieces being
sionary Matteo Ricci commented on ‘the exceedingly large numbers of books in held together through elabo-
circulation here and the ridiculously low prices at which they are sold’. The rately fitted joints.

printer Mao Jin employed up to twenty craftsmen and published no less than 600
titles, using over 100,000 wooden printing blocks. More and more books were
202 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

being published for the lower end of the market. Profusely illustrated home refer-
ence books provided everything from multiplication tables and rules for perform-
ing funerals to what to specify in a contract for buying a water buffalo. Popular
religious tracts included ledgers for calculating moral worth, in which people
determined their fortunes by measuring good deeds against bad ones: For school
children there were primers introducing elementary vocabulary. For candidates
for the examinations, there were inexpensive editions of the Confucian classics
as
well as collections of successful examination answers.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries more and more books were being
published in the vernacular. Only those able to devote years to study could com-
fortably read books written in the terse and allusive literary language used in the
classics and employed by the literati and the government ever since. There was a
much larger potential audience for fiction and plays written with the grammar
and vocabulary people used in everyday speech, for this audience included
women in educated families, merchants, shop clerks, and anyone else with at least
a rudimentary education. The enterprising writer and editor Feng Menglong, for
instance, found a ready audience forcollections of vernacular short stories, often
humorous, populated by a cast of clerks and brigands, kings and monks, courte-
sans and ghosts.
The
scripts of plays also found a ready market. Tang Xianzu’s love stories and
social satires were particularly popular. The Dream of Han Tan concerns a young
man who falls asleep while his meal of millet is cooking. He then sees his whole
life in a dream: he comes first in the examinations, performs great deeds
as an offi-
cial, is slandered and condemned to death, then cleared and promoted. As he is
aboutto die he wakes up
to see his millet almost done and realizes that life passes
as quickly as a dream. Peony Pavilion, Tang’s most popular play, tells the story of
Du Liniang, the daughter of a high official who dreamed of a young scholar she
had met. Consumed by her longing for him, she finally pined away. But before she
died she buried a portrait of herself in the garden. The young scholar later visited
her family again, discovered the painting, and fell in love with her. She appeared
to him in a dream, renewing their dream-time love affair, and told him to open her
coffin. There she lay alive, as beautiful as ever, his ardour having brought her back
to life. After some tribulations, the play ends happily, with the scholar coming first
in the examinations and her family welcoming him.
Full-length novels also began to be written in Ming times. The plots of these
early novels were heavily indebted to the story cycles developed by oral story-
tellers who had been performing in urban centres for centuries. Among the
great-
est Ming novels, all of uncertain authorship, are The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan),
the story of a band of outlaws in the Song; The Romance ofthe Three Kingdoms
(Sanguo zhi yanyi), the story of the martial exploits of the rivals for power at the
end of the Han; The Journey to the West (Xiyuji), the fantastic account of a Bud-
dhist pilgrim to India in Tang times, accompanied by a monkey with magical
The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 203

powers; and Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei), an erotic tale of a lustful mer-
chant and his wife and concubines.
The popularity of vernacular literature in late Ming times had a broad impact
on cultural sensibilities. Educated men and women-alike seem often to have imi-
tated the actions of fictional characters and judged themselves and others on the
standards of purity of feelings they had come to expectin literary characters.
Quite a few men and women idealized headstrong romantic attachments to peo-
ple, things, or causes. Zhang Dai went so far as to claim, ‘One cannot befriend a
man who has no obsessions, for such a man lacks deep emotion.’ Courtesan cul-
ture flourished in this environment and a great many poems written by late Ming
courtesans have been preserved. Late Ming writers romanticized liaisons between
famous courtesans and prominent literati like Chen Zilong, Wu Weiye, Hou
Fangyu, and Qian Qianyi. Writers associated courtesans with high aspirations and
disappointed hopes, seeing parallels between their own predicaments and those of
talented but powerless women waiting for a lover able both to appreciate them
and to remove them from their demeaned circumstances.

PHILOSOPHICAL CURRENTS
The affirmation of passion evident in the Peony Pavilion and in the romanticiza-
tion of courtesans was not unconnected to important trends in Ming Confucian
thought. During the first half of the Ming, Zhu Xi’s synthesis of Confucianism was
treated as orthodox by both the state and most scholars. In mid Ming, however,
Wang Yangming (Wang Shouren, 1472-1529) challenged Zhu Xi’s understandings
of metaphysics and the process of self-cultivation and inaugurated a period of
wide-ranging intellectual debate.
Wang was an official of some distinction. He had earned a jinshi degree at the
early age of eighteen and gone on to hold many posts. At one point he coura-
geously submitted a memorial to the throne, protesting against the corrupt behav-
iour of a powerful eunuch. As a result, he was publicly flogged and banished to
remote Guizhou. His most significant challenge to orthodox Confucianism,
namely his idea of intuitive moral knowledge, came to him suddenly during this
period of exile.
What Wang objected to in Zhu Xi’ teachings was his understanding of moral
principles as something that could be understood and realized only through care-
ful and rational investigation of events and things, a process which generally
required devoting many years to the study of the classics and other books. To
Wang Yangming’s way of thinking, universal principles existed in every person's
mind. People could discover them by clearing their minds of obstructions such as
material desires and allowing their inborn knowledge of the good to surface. He
also argued that moral action results spontaneously from the extension or realiza-
tion of knowledge. True knowing, he held, is not abstract intellectualization but
is inseparable from experience; one does not understand filial piety if one does
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Book
ill ustration
The art of book illustration benefited from the rapid expan- rest of the book. The artistry of these illustrations advanced oe
sion of the publishing industry in Ming times. With nothing . rapidly as publishers devoted more space to illustrations. By
like copyright protection, no publisher could be sure another _

the seventeenth century. publishers occasionally even issued

printer would not try to sell the same book. To make their books with multi-coloured illustrations. Such colour printing
version attractive in this competitive market, publishers —
more and more frequently hired artists to draw illustrations.
was expensive because
it
required carving separate blocks
for: each colour and carefully positioning the blocks and
a
Z

to be carved on wooden blocks and printed along with the sheets of paper aula theseparate printing «ef each colour.

The illustration from’a 1640 edition of the Romance

Western Chamber (Xixiang jo (below) shows Cui Yingying —
ofthe ecg Zhang
her affection.
Gong
i
in response to his many efforts to win

preparing a letter she will have her maidcarryto the: vee

The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 205
oo

Illustrations were used to attract.

readers to many sorts ofbooks.
The depiction of farmers celebrat-
-inga harvest enlivened the
Pictorial Reference Compendium,a
_
1593 manual full of information on
S agriculture, medici cooking
@,
COC

and other practical affairs (left).

_ The depiction of the technology 0
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

not practise it, any more than one understands pain without experiencing
Knowing right from wrong leads to taking right action, as one is compelled to act
it.
upon what one truly knows.
Because he believed moral knowledge was innate in the mind, it followed for
Wang Yangming that sagehood existed inside everyone and that the learned had
no special claims to it. Self-cultivation, moreover, could be practised in the midst
of everyday affairs. When official told him that his official duties left him no
an

time to study, Wang said there was no need to abandon his work because ‘Real
learning can be found in every aspect of record-keeping and legal cases. What is
empty is study that is detached from things.’ Wang wanted people to concentrate
on the fundamental moral truths that even ordinary uneducated people could
understand, once asserting that what was truly heterodox was not Buddhism or
Daoism but ideas incomprehensible to average people.
Wang Yangming’s ideas attracted a lot of notice, and in the century after his
death, Wang's followers took Confucian thought in many new directions. Some
turned with interest to Buddhism and Daoism. Others questioned the traditional
hierarchical arrangement of society, such as the elevation of the scholar—official
above the commoner. One of Wang's most enthusiastic followers, Wang Gen, vig-
orously asserted that social standing did not limit one’s possibilities for moral per-
fection. He gave public lectures to crowds of ordinary people whom he taught to
sing that happiness comes from the elimination of selfish desires. Another icono-
clast, He Xinyin, proposed that merchants should rank higher than peasants on
the social scale and criticized the family as restrictive, selfish, and exclusive
institution. What he exalted instead was friendship which he considered non-
hierarchical and unselfish. Li Zhi, a generation later, undertook to rethink the
philosophical basis of feelings, passions, and the
self, a trend clearly tied to devel-
opments in literature. A fierce critic of hypocrisy, Li Zhi saw little if any value in
conforming to conventional patterns of behaviour. Both He and Li made many
enemies and both died in prison, having been arrested on charges of spreading
dangerous ideas.

LOCAL SOCIETY

Continuing trends already apparent in Song times, local society in the Ming
period steadily became less isolated. Not only were men like Wang Gen preaching
to common people, but the distance between market towns was shrinking, tying
villages more tightly into nationwide marketing systems. Moreover, local volun-
tary organizations, such as schools, descent groups, religious associations, and
‘community compacts’, were increasing in number and providing more and more
opportunities for contact between educated men and local villagers.
Descent groups had been organized or revived sporadically and unevenly since
Song times. Patrilineal principles, Confucian esteem for kinship solidarity, the
economics of land ownership, and the political value of local allies all offered
 The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 207

inducements for kinsmen join forces. Periods of disorder often stimulated these
to

activities, since strong descent groups could provide local defence. So did the
presence of educated men, who often compiled genealogies or built halls for
group ancestral rites. Still, descent groups also easily fell apart, for they required
continuous leadership to maintain solidarity and joint assets. Broadly speaking,
lineages were more common insouth China where centuries earlier migrants had
often settled in places with enough uncultivated land for many descendants to
remain in the vicinity, making for a critical mass of nearby kinsmen. In Fujian,
substantial descent groups were quite evident by the twelfth century, as they were
in some places in Zhejiang by the next century. In Huizhou in Anhui province,
lineages were flourishing in the mid Ming, undoubtedly benefiting from the will-
ingness of the many wealthy local merchant families to make donations. In
Tongcheng, as well as in Anhui but north of the Yangzi, lineages were being
formed by the late Ming, but merchants played less of a significant role than suc-
cessful officials who used lineage property and lineage schools as part of their
family survival strategies.
By the mid Ming, lineages in some areas of the country were introducing elab-
orate systems to control and discipline members. In one area of Jiangxi province,
for instance, lineages wrote up sets of rules, giving the lineage leaders consider-
able authority to settle disputes and enforce compliance. The timing of this trend
suggests that it was inspired by the concurrent renewal of interest in ‘community
compacts’, a form of local association that had been promoted by scholars in the
Song period for the purposes of moral renewal. Members had to agree to correct
each other's faults and offer assistance in times of difficulty, with expulsion the
sanction for anyone who failed to co-operate. In the mid Ming, Wang Yangming
revived the term ‘compact’ to refer to the organizations heset up as parts of a rebel
pacification programme. His followers made even broader use of it as a basis for
public preaching to assembled villagers, whom they would urge, in folksy terms,
to make a commitment to doing good.
There were sound philosophical reasons for Confucian scholars to undertake
these efforts at moral education: if sagehood existed in everyone, everyone could
potentially gain a less clouded understanding of right and wrong, and it was
worth making the effort to reach them. Self-interest played a part as well. Many
people thought that the moral fabric of society was deteriorating, with enmity
replacing mutual respect between rich and poor. In the mid sixteenth century the
grand secretary Xu Jie reported that landlords and tenants looked on each other as
enemies, the peasants refusing to pay their rents, landlords refusing to assist them
aia when harvests failed. Lti Kun, a few decades later, observed that ‘when tenants ask
for help, the landlords ask for higher interest’. Besides lecturing, literati turned to
her

pple

ANA
charitable works as a way to alleviate social tension. At the end of the sixteenth
century, for instance, one man setup a Society for Sharing Goodness whose mem-
bers paid monthly dues into a fund used to support community projects like
ta
208
=
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED
—
HISTORY OF CHINA
POS

a Eseaaa

The Great Wall _

No relic of China's past is more imposing than the
Great Wall: Faced with brick and stone and averag-
ing twenty-five feet high and wide, this wall extends
about 1,500 miles from its point at
i
westernmost
-

“ Jiayuguan in modern Gansu province to

its eastern
“most point at Shanhaiguan, near Beijing. Built to.
keep out invaders,it is dotted wiith a series of
watch towers. ‘Europeans who. fi ‘st saw the wall
‘wrote home and great! y praised: its immense size
seventeenth century observer Ferdinand Verbiest
recorded that ‘the seven wonders ofthe world ut
together are not comparable to this work; and

péans, comes far short of what I myself have

Chinesein the twentieth century hav picked. LU
|
Fame hath published concerning it among the Euro

s
these ideas, making the Great Wall into a symbo!
China’s indomitable
wile
Closer reading of history reveals that
:

Ming government's siege mentality ‘that led

t

wall we see today. Government: from pre-Han mes

Most i
on: engaged in the constructi ion of defensive wall
famouswas the First Emp ror of Qin whose
costly wall- building was classed one of his crimes
as

“against the Chinese people. But: subsequent dynas

ties did not keep-a solid wall in constant repair
because walls, even massive ones, did not: keep. out
raiders or invaders andother defence strategies were
usually. more cost- effective. The Ming rebuilt the.
wall because it had found
no other way to protect
against the Mongols. The preferred policy during the
first century of Ming rule was to control the Mongols
through a combination of offensive attacks and con-.
trolled trade carried out under the guise of tribute.
This strategy was of limited success, and in. 1449. the
-
| 4
Mongols won a decisive battle at Tumu, capturing
:

the Ming emperor Yingzong, The: Ming chose to

instal a new emperor rather than bargain with the -
-Monigols over ransom, but could not agree on how
deal with the Mongol threat. A deadlock between
to
officials who rejected any contact with the Mongols
and those who saw increased trade with them asthe ae eS

“best solution prevented effective decision- making for The towers in this heavily fortified section of the Great
decades, allowing the Mongols to grow stronger. No longer “Wall were intended as signalling stations, to allow rapid
financially able to undertake offensive actions, the govern- warning of the approach offsuch mobile opponents as.
ment resorted to reconstructing the Great Wall instead. the Mongols.
The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 209

repair of roads and bridges or to provide assistance to families facing heavy

expenses for weddings and funerals.
By bringing together the educated and commoners, both community compacts
and lineages added to of
the sharing ideas, values, assumptions, and frames of ref-
erence across class lines. To some extent, the common people were being indoc-
trinated, but that does not mean that they were necessarily being exploited or
pushed intosituations detrimental to their interests. Lineages, in particular, were
often of genuine benefit to ordinary members who did much to keep them going.
An ordinary poor farmer had much to gain from belonging to a group with clout;
a neighbour might not make such a fuss about your water buffalo wandering into
his field if your kinsmen were known stick up for you. Even community com-
to

pacts may have served the practical interests of local residents by expanding their
contacts with members of the elite.

RELATIONS WITH THE OUTER WORLD

The second half of the Ming dynasty coincided with the great age of European
exploration and the first phase of its expansion. At the beginning of the Ming,
however, Europe was not yet a force in Asia, and China could continue to look on
the outer world in traditional terms. The early Ming emperors had no desire to
return to the multi-state system of the Song; their goal was to reassert Chinese
centrality in East Asia on the model of the Han or Tang dynasties. They re-estab-
lished the tribute system, posited on the moral centrality of the Chinese emperor
who received tribute and conferred largesse. Taizu forbade private foreign trade,

wanting all exchange to occur through the framework ofthis tribute system. The
third emperor, Chengzu, sent out a series of emissaries to visit potential tributary
states. The grandest of these were the overseas voyages of 1405 to 1433, led by
one of his most trusted servants, the Muslim eunuch Zheng He. The huge flotilla
assembled for the first expedition carried 27,000 men sixty-two large and 225
on

small ships, the largest of which was 440 feet long. The first three voyages stopped
at places as distant as India. The fourth went further, to Hormuz on the Persian
Gulf, and the last three as far as the east coast of Africa. Unlike the European
oceanic expeditions later in the fifteenth century, trade and exploration were not
the primary motive behind these voyages; their purpose instead was to enroll far-
flung states into the Ming tributary system. They were abandoned when court
officials persuaded later emperors that they were not cost-efficient.
The tribute
system tended to work best for the conduct of
relations with small
or remote states. The northern frontier zone was harder to confine within its
framework. The northern border was porous, with Chinese settled in Mongol ter-
ritory, Mongols (many ofthem soldiers in the Ming army) settled inside China,
and Chinese garrison troops carrying on surreptitious trade and smuggling with
the enemy. Nor did China militarily dominate this border zone. In 1449 an
emperor foolishly led an army into Mongol territory, allowing himself to be cap-
210 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

Residents of coastal areas tured and many of his courtiers slaughtered. A century later the Ming was no
often had to take to boats
more successful in defending itself against the raids of Altan Khan. In 1542, for
themselves to battle the
instance, in a single month Altan Khan captured or killed 200,000 people, seized
pirates who attacked their
settlements. a million head of cattle and horses, and reduced several thousand houses
toashes.
Because of events like these, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Ming
court invested heavily in reconstruction of the Great Wall.
The tributary system implied paternalistic obligations for China to cometo the
aid of loyal vassal states, which the Ming government accepted, sometimes
at con-
siderable cost. In 1407 the Ming sent troops to Vietnam to support the collapsing
Tran dynasty. The situation rapidly deteriorated and the Ming attempted an out-
right annexation, giving up only in the face of widespread armed resistance. Near
the end of the Ming dynasty, China similarly undertook a massive campaign into
Korea (1592-98) to defend
it against a Japanese invasion led by Hideyoshi. These
battles were the first China fought in which muskets played a major role, the
Japanese using matchlocks they had copied from the Portuguese.
Despite the naval strength displayed by Zheng He's expeditions, China’s mar-
itime frontier came, in Ming times, to cause almost as many defence problems
as
the northern frontier. By the sixteenth century, official prohibitions against for-
eign trade ran up against the emergence ofan international East Asian maritime
community made of
up Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and Chinese mer-
chants and adventurers. In theory, for instance, official relations with Japan were
 The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 211

supposed to be conducted only through theport of

Ningbo on the Zhejiang coast, those with the Philip-
pines only through Fuzhou, and those with Indonesia
only through Guangzhou. There were in addition lim-
its on the frequency and size of tribute missions:
Japanese embassies, for instance, were notto call more
than once every ten years and to bring no more than
300 men on two ships. In fact, however, both open and
clandestine trade took place all along the Chinese
coast. Merchants often turned into smugglers, espe-
cially when official obstacles hindered their pursuit of
profit. Boats laden with goods attracted pirates, and A giraffe acquired in Africa
Japanese and Chinese pirates became a scourge along during one of Zheng He’s voy-
the coast in the mid sixteenth century, raiding at will ages of 1405 to 1433 aroused
considerable interest at court
anywhere along the coast from northern Shandong to and lived for several years on
western Guangdong. Ming anti-pirate efforts did not the palace grounds. The court
achieve much success until forceful military measures painter Shen Du depicted it in

were accompanied by a relaxation of the maritime

this painting dated 1414. The
inscription associates this ani-
trade restrictions. Under the new policies, Portugal
mal with the unicorn (jilin),
was allowed to establish a trading base at Macao in whose appearance was inter-
1577, beginning the era of European penetration (dis- preted in ancient texts as a
cussed more fully in Chapter 9). sign of heaven’s favour.
In the burgeoning maritime trade, China exported
mainly silk and porcelain. Silks included gauzes, crepes,
velvets, taffetas, damasks, and brocades, both bolts of
cloth and finished garments. In one case a galleon to the
Spanish territories in the New World carried over 50,000
pairs of silk stockings. In return China imported mostly
silver from Peruvian and Mexican mines, transported via
Manila. Chinese merchants were active in these trading
ventures, and many emigrated to such places asthe Philip-
pines and Borneo to take advantage of the new commercial
|
opportunities.
Besides stimulating the Chinese economy, the expand-
ing maritime trade brought with it new goods and new
ideas. New-world plants entered China, including sweet
potatoes, maize, and peanuts, foods which facilitated pop-
ulation growth because they could be grown in land previ-
ously left uncultivated, such as hilly or sandy soil.
European ideas, including scientific ones, began to filter in
through Christian missionaries. The first missionary to
have much of an impact on China was the Italian Jesuit
212 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Matteo Ricci, who arrived in Macao in 1583. Of the opinion that European mis-
sionaries would do best by presenting themselves as men of education rather than
as monks, Ricci concentrated his initial efforts on acquiring command of written
and spoken Chinese. These skills enabled him to win many influential friends in
Beijing, where he lived from 1601 to his death in 1610. Ricci and other Jesuits
were accepted in late Ming court circles as foreign literati, regarded as impressive
especially for their knowledge of astronomy, calendar-making, mathematics,
hydraulics, and geography.
By the end of the Ming, there were Jesuit, Dominican, or Franciscan missions
in most of the coastal provinces and even some inland areas. Although quite a few
late Ming intellectuals showed an interest in western ideas and knowledge, the
obstacles to quick understanding of western philosophy, science, and religion
were just as great as the obstacles encountered over a millennium earlier to full
understanding of Indian Buddhism. Many educated Chinese were entirely hostile
to Christianity, disturbed especially by the missionaries’ efforts to convert com-
mon people, filling their heads, they thought, with wild, impossible ideas. Even
relatively open-minded Chinese found some ideas hard to swallow, such as the
dogma that the universe came into being because of the actions of
a creator. Chris-
tian social teachings also aroused resistance; many scholars could not accept the
requirement that they get rid of their concubines in
order to convert to Christian-
ity, viewing such action as callous to both the woman and their children by her.
an

FACTIONALISM AND POLITICAL PROTEST

Confucianism in the Ming
is usuallyfollowers.
discussed in terms of the ideas of philoso-
phers like Wang Yangming and his This
story generally told as one
is of
increasing openness to ideas of non-Confucian origin, to people of non-literati
background, and to people with eccentric tastes or unconventional preferences.
There was another historically important strain of Ming Confucianism, which
was, however, much more political and judgmental. Throughout the Ming many
officials, imbued with Confucian notions of
loyalty to the throne and the respon-
sibility of officials to speak out on matters of principle, courageously protested
against bad officials and harmful policies. In 1376 when Taizu asked for criticism
of his rule, Ye Boju submitted a memorial that criticized the harsh punishment of
officials for minor lapses, noting that many literati considered themselves fortu-
nate not to be summoned to serve. Taizu was so incensed he had Ye brought to
the
capital in chains where he died of starvation in prison. A few decades later some
officials were willing to protest against Chengzu’s usurpation of the throne.
Among those who suffered the consequences was the leading scholar Fang
Xiaoru, executed along with hundreds of relatives, students, neighbours, and
friends. In 1519, when Emperor Wuzong announced plans to tour the southern
provinces, officials submitted a flood of negative memorials and over a hundred
officials staged a protest by kneeling in front of the palace. Outraged, the emperor
The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 213

ordered that as punishment they kneel there for five days, after which he also had
them flogged. Eleven eventually died of the beatings. Only a few years later in
1524 hundreds of officials again gathered at the palace gate, this time to protest
against the new emperor's refusal to treat the previous emperor .as his adoptive
father and his plan to reserve the title father for his own deceased father. Unable
to bend them to his interpretation of Confucian family ritual, the emperor had
134 imprisoned; sixteen died of the floggings they received.
The last great protest movement of the Ming was as much a factional struggle
as an expression of conviction. It had an institutional base in the Donglin Acad-
of the govern-
emy, near Wuxi in Jiangsu province, and in the censorate, an organ
ment whose officials had the right and responsibility to speak out against
malfeasance and abuse of power. After the Academy was rebuilt in 1604 it became
a centre for frustrated ex-officials to discuss the evils besetting the empire. They
called for a revival of orthodox Confucian ethics, rejecting the more liberal views
of Wang Yangming and Li Zhi. Gu Xiancheng, for instance, claimed that the idea
of following naturally the dictates of innate moral knowledge was used by
unscrupulous literati as a justification for the greedy pursuit of personal gain.
These teachers’ zeal inspired younger activist officials in the censorate who
labelled themselves men of integrity, the ‘good sort’, the ‘pure current’, and called
their opponents ‘small men’, ‘deviant officials’, and ‘cliques’. Officials from both
sides impeached each other, accusations and counter-accusations crossing so fre-
quently it is no wonder that emperors wearied of the in-fighting of their officials.
The most dramatic phase of the struggle occurred when the censor Yang Lian
submitted a long memorial accusing the eunuch Wei Zhongxian of twenty-four
‘great crimes’. The central thrust of Yang’s argument was that the young emperor,
only eighteen, had ceded his rightful prerogatives to the cruel and power-hungry
eunuch. Even though the emperor flatly denied the charge, other censors sent up
a flood of memorials supporting Yang Lian, defying the court’s warning against
such action. Eventually Yang and five others were arrested in highly public ways,
crowds gathering along the way to
see them carted off to Beijing. All were even-
tually tortured to death. Other rounds ofarrests, tortures, deaths, and protests
soon followed.
In protests of these sorts, Confucian officials diagnosed the problems of the
dynasty in moral terms. The Confucian tradition celebrated these acts of political
protest as heroic — the morally committed individual taking a stand against the
abuse of power. There is a negative side to these acts as well, however. The line
between heroism and factionalism was not always clear, because so much of the
struggle consisted in officials condemning the character or motivesof their adver-
saries. Judging by results rather than motives, the penchant of Ming officials for
risking their lives to assert the purity of their cause and the moral turpitude of
their opponents may have made it more difficult to find political solutions to the
problems of the Ming government.
214 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

FISCAL COLLAPSE
Some of the most destructive warfare in Chinese history occurred in the early and
mid seventeenth century when the Ming government lacked the capacity either to
come tothe aid of the indigent or to mount effective
campaigns against insurgents
and invaders. Despite the expansion in the Chinese economy during the course of
the sixteenth century, the government became progressively less solvent, and by
the early seventeenth century was nearly bankrupt. The cost of maintaining the
imperial clan had got out of hand. In the Wanli reign (1573-1619), there were
23,000 clansmen receiving stipends, and more than half the revenue of
the
provinces of Shanxi and Henan went to
pay these allowances. Military campaigns
were also a huge drain; those in Korea against the Japanese, for instance, had cost
the treasury twenty-six million ounces of silver.
The decline of Ming finances can be explained in part by reference
to
the
tra-
ditional dynastic cycle. Government expenses inevitably increase as the popula-
tion grows and the bureaucracy becomes less efficient; revenue does not keep up
because of long-standing tendencies for peasants to lose their land and rich land-
lords to find ways to minimize their tax payments. Short of revenue, the govern-
ment cannot respond effectively to natural disasters, such as those brought on the
the early seventeenth century by the ‘little ice age’, a drop in average temperatures
that led to lakes freezing over that had never frozen before in recorded history and
a shortening of the growing season, leading to poor harvests. In 1627-8 famine
became serious in northern Shaanxi, and soon army deserters and laid-off soldiers
were forming gangs and ravaging the countryside. In 1632 they moved east into
Shanxi and Hebei and south into Henan and Anhui. The government armies
proved unable to destroy these gangs, which kept gaining new adherents. By 1636
two main leaders had emerged, Li Zicheng, a former shepherd and postal relay
station worker who was paramount in a
the north, and Zhang Xianzhong, former
soldier who became paramount in the area between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers.
Neither Li nor Zhang gained control of the lower Yangzi, but conditions there
were not much better. Tax increases in 1639, followed by floods, drought, locusts,
and epidemics took such toll that hordes of beggars became a common sight.
Tenants rose up against landlords, and urban workers rioted. A folk song of the
period accused the Lord of Heaven of failing to perform his duties:

Old Skymaster,
You're getting on, your ears are deaf, your eyes are gone.
Can't see people, can’t hear words.
Glory for those who kill and burn;
For those who fast and read the scriptures,
Starvation.
Fall down, old master sky, how can you be so high?
How can you be so high? Come down to earth.
The Limits of Autocracy: The Ming Dynasty 215

The fiscal problems at the end of the Ming were in part unprecedented, due to a
sudden shutdown in flow of silver rather than the dynastic cycle. In 1639 the
the

Japanese authorities refused to let traders from Macao into Nagasaki, ending trade
that had brought huge quantities of silver into China. A few.months later, Sino-
Spanish trade in the Philippines came to virtual standstill when tensions
between the Chinese and Spanish in turned bloody, leaving over 20,000
Manila
Chinese dead. This cut off China from another major source of silver. The effect
on the Chinese domestic economy was rapid deflation, hoarding of the silver that
remained, then hoarding of grain, which created artificial famines. Tax defaults
became widespread, as did rent riots. In these conditions it became impossible for
the government to collect even its usual taxes, much less what it needed to con-
duct military campaigns.
With rebellion spreading and the Ming government facing bankruptcy, the
death toll mounted steadily. In 1642 a group of rebels cut the dykes of the Yellow
River, thereby killing several hundred thousand people in the flood and subse-
quent famine. Epidemics, especially of smallpox, also contributed to a demo-
graphic disaster of huge proportions — China’s population dropped by several tens
of millions during these decades. As the social fabric unravelled, Li Zicheng took
hold of Hubei, Henan, and Shaanxi; in 1644 he moved through Shanxi and Hebei
into Beijing, where the last Ming emperor, in despair, took his own life. Mean-
while Zhang had moved into Sichuan, where he caused great loss of life in his
attacks on Chongqing and Chengdu. Both Li and Zhang announced the establish-
ment of dynasties, setting up governments complete with civil service examina-
tions and coinage, but neither inspired much confidence that orderly life would
be soon restored. Looting and violence of
all sorts remained pervasive. In the end
it took an army from beyond the Great Wall to restore order.

The Ming period

is generally judged rather harshly. Since it was the only extended
period of native rule over all
of China proper from the fall of the Northern Song
in 1126 to the fall of the Manchus in
1911, historians wish they could assign more
accomplishments or advances to
it or at least discover a few heroes.
From the perspective of traditional Confucian statecraft, the Ming government
failed to do what a Chinese state should do, namely to manage through a mini-
mum of force the affairs of All-Under-Heaven. The Mongols, the Japanese, the
eunuchs, and the flows of revenue were all beyond the government's control.
Worse yet, tensions inherent in the Chinese bureaucratic monarchy between arbi-

trary power and orderly rules, between absolute monarchs and their advisors and
surrogates, recurrently reached the point where the government was immobilized.
Over the course of Chinese history a few exceptional emperors managed the
imperial system with consummate skill, getting officials to perform to the stan-
dard set by the throne, neither antagonizing nor demoralizing them, nor letting
them take over and serve their own interests. But the Ming offers no such exem-
216 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

plary emperors. Taizu, frustrated by his inability to make the system work as he
wanted, fell back on full use of his arbitrary powers. Other Ming emperors dele-
gated these management chores to officials or eunuchs, with highly variable
results. A few simply opted out, refusing to let officialdom control them, but not
really controlling the situation themselves either.
From a modernist perspective, where the implicit standard is Europe, the Ming
does not come off any better. Here the implied charge is not that the Ming state
was too weak, but that it was a dead weight, slowing down innovation and entre-
preneurship just when some real competition was about to emerge. Precisely
when western maritime nations were sending ships into Asia, China was with-
drawing from the sea. Just when Europeans were learning to put to good use Chi-
nese technological advances like printing, gunpowder, and the compass, China
was letting its scientific and technological leadership slip and forgoing opportuni-
ties to take part in the scientific advances beginning to transform European intel-
lectual life.
Probably the only way to view the Ming more positively is to view it from the
bottom up. The arbitrary actions of the emperors undoubtedly demeaned the sta-
tus of high officials and jeopardized their welfare, but they had less impact on vil-
lagers and townspeople who were left to run many of their affairs on their own.
The Chinese population was growing. Increased commercialization, a growing
publishing industry, and increased elite leadership and intervention in local com-
munity life were all strengthening ties among this population, giving them a
stronger sense of common history and identity. The southwestern region of mod-
ern Yunnan and Guizhou was absorbed into the Chinese sphere to a degree never
true before. The inability of the government to control everything was not entirely
bad, after all. Indeed, if judged in comparative terms, the Ming government's suc-
cess in managing problems of scale is truly impressive. For over two centuries
maintained a high level of peace among a huge population spread across a sub-
it
continent, using inexpensive forms of motivation like the examination system
and imperial exhortations to keep the cost of government down. The magnitude
of this accomplishment does not seem insignificant when it is measured against
the lawlessness that resulted when
itcollapsed.
 f the material artefacts surviving from the Ming the busy summer season who came into town from nearby
dynasty, none is appreciated more than the
fine porce- counties. In 1601 10,000 workers rioted to protest against the
4 \ains produced in the town of Jingdezhen in northern demands for increased production of the eunuch director of the
Jiangxi province. During the Ming dynasty these kilns produced imperial works; in 1604 rioters demanded higher wages from
enough porcelain to supply not only the whole country but also the merchants who controlled much of the business.
muchof the rest of the world as well. Jingdezhen produced porcelain in many shapes and designs
Porcelain is distinguished from other types of ceramics by its but became particularly noted for its pieces decorated in blue
whiteness, smoothness, and translucence. Producing it requires underglaze and polychrome enamels. These highly decorative
special clays and high temperature firing (1280-1400°C, pieces were in immense demand outside China, in Japan, South-
2336-2552°F). The clays were found in particularly pure form east Asia, West Asia, and eventually Europe. Thus when imperial
near Jingdezhen, which also was favoured with access to forest- orders declined in the early seventeenth century when the court
covered mountains for fuel and rivers for inexpensive transport. had to devote all its. revenues to defence and other urgent mat-
Imperial patronage led to a rapid increase in the production ters, the ceramic industry was able to survive by responding to
of high-quality porcelain at Jingdezhen. The palace placed the preferences of foreign markets. The cult of tea in Japan led
orders for specific wares - in 1551 for 8,400 small pieces and: to a huge market for all sorts of small dishes, cups, and bowls.
2,300 large ones;.in 1577, the peak year, for 96,500 small Europeans sought dinner services, especially after 1604 when
pieces, 56,600 large ones, and 21,600 items for
use in sacrificial two Portuguese ships were captured by the Dutch and their car-
ceremonies. Many of these pieces were destined for use in the goes of 200,000-odd pieces of Chinese porcelain were put up
palace, others for gifts, including gifts to vassal
states in return for their ‘tribute gifts. Imperial qual-
ity controls were exacting; archaeologists have dis-
covered huge piles of shards of imperial porcelain
that was deliberately broken because they did not
meet standards of colour, form, of design, but could
not be put on the open market because of their
imperial markings.
in the early Ming much of the labour required for

these imperial orders was supplied on an unpaid

\MA

i
basis by hereditary artisan households who owed no
other taxes. Later, labour at imperial kilns and work-
\
A\ t
WY
SN
AWW \\
XS

SAN
shops was paid. When large orders came in, how-
£

Ly |

4
ever, much of the work would be sub-contracted out
to the numerous private workshops and kilns. Mass
AAT TI NOT,
ONESRR.
v4
production techniques were employed at both pri- Is Li BS
SSP

aE
4

vate and imperial workshops. In other words, potters

did not see an object through from the mixing of the
| \ué
a
Loishen
NLL
yt ay
EMT Bea
“| esiF
fia, JANE SRE
“tl ‘sé
EY
Bee eo

clay to the firing and packing; rather there were

separate workshops involved in each process, with
workers speedily and repetitively performing a single task ona
large number of objects. Those who painted on the underglaze In 1743 Tang Ying, the director of the imperial kilns, wrote explanations o:
designs, for instance, needed to work in very clean quarters, a set of paintings illustrating the steps in producing porcelain. The paint-
far from those who handled wet clay or chiselled partially dry ings have not survived, but his descriptions largely match a somewhat late
the kilns in the early eigh-
clay. A French missionary, visiting set of wood block illustrations. Hedescribed the division of labour
teenth century, reported watching a cup pass through more employed in the application of the decoration to large sets of dishes as fol-
than a dozen hands, one worker giving it an initial shaping on lows: ‘If the painted decoration on each piece is not exactly alike, the set
2 wheel in a matter of seconds, another setting it on a base, will be irregular and spoiled. For this reason the men who sketch the out-
another pressing it into a mould to make sure its size was uni- lines learn sketching but not painting; those who paint study onlypainting
form, another polishing it with a chisel, and so on. Altogether, no sketching; by this means their hands acquire skill in their own specialit
he reported, as many as seventy people could be involved in and their minds are not distracted. In order to secure a certain uniformity |

the production of a single item. Besides high-skilled workers, their work, the sketchers and painters, although kept distinct, occupy the
there were thousands of low-skilled workers employed during same house.’
for sale, attracting bidders from all over Europe, including Chinese porcelain {not including the more common blue-and-—
agents for Henri IV of France, James | of England, and the Grand white wares). By the eighteenth century European traders often
Duke of Tuscany. Over the next two centuries exports to Europe. commissioned specific designs, sending samples to China for
were huge. Between 1602 and 1682 the Dutch East India potters to copy. oad : :

Company imported about twelve million pieces of polychrome

Narrative scenes were not
uncommon on Jingdezhen
porcelains. Depicted on
this one is the widow Li,
recordedin history for her
remarkable commitment to
chastity: she cut off her
hand after it was grabbed

by an innkeeper who did

not want her and her son,
both in deep mourning,
inside his-inn.

el
&
af
220 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

CHAPTER 9
Manchus and Imperialism:
The Qing Dynasty 1644-1900
After the Ming collapsed, a new dynasty was founded not by
a
warlord or rebel
leader but by the chieftains of the Manchus, a non-Chinese people living in the
hilly forests and plains to the northeast of China proper. Although Chinese elites
and commoners in many parts of the country put up a determined resistance to
Manchu rule, within a generation Chinese were co-operating with the new rulers.
The three Manchus who ruled in the course of the eighteenth century — Kangxi,
Yongzheng, and Qianlong — proved excellent managers, and by many measures
that century was the high point of traditional Chinese civilization. Over the
course of the nineteenth century, however, China’s place in the world plummeted.
By the end of the century, China was derided abroad as pathetic; its size seemed a
burden and its form of government seemed woefully inadequate to the needs of
the time. Although China did not suffer outright colonization or dismemberment,
after its defeat by the British in the Opium War of 1840 to 1842, western nations
posed more and more of a threat to China as a polity and a civilization. Western
merchants sold manufactured goods that competed with Chinese industries; their
missionaries competed with the Chinese literati for moral and religious leadership
in the countryside; and their armies and navies repeatedly proved themselves
superior to China’s, raising fundamental questions about what, if anything; China
should copy from these aggressive foreigners.

MANCHU RULE
The Manchus were not nomadic horsemen like the Mongols, living on the open
steppe and engaging in near constant warfare to defend and augment their herds.
Rather they were a hunting, fishing, and farming people of central Manchuria
(Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces), east of Mongolia and northeast of the eastern
end of the Great Wall. They believed themselves to be descended from the Jurchen
who had ruled north China as the Jin dynasty, contemporaneous with the South-
ern Song. In Ming times several different Manchu tribal groups had participated
in the Ming tribute system. Many Manchus had settled to the south in the
Liaodong peninsula, where they lived among Chinese villagers and townsmen,
some served as soldiers of the Ming, others as farmers or traders in furs, horses,
and other goods.
The creation of a Manchu state was accomplished by Nurchaci (1559-1616)
over a period of thirty years. The entire population under his control was enrolled
in four military units, each identified by a coloured banner. Eventually the num-
ber of Manchu ‘banners’ was increased to eight, and eight Mongol and eight Chi-

rs
nese banners were established as well. This shift from tribal toward bureaucratic
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 221

organization was aided by the creation of a script for writing in Manchu (based on

into
the Mongolian alphabet); translations of the Ming law code and other basic Chi-
this script further aided the adoption of administrative practices
nese
modelled on Chinese experience. In 1616, as conditions in Ming China were dlete-
riorating, Nurhaci renounced fealty to the Ming, and two years later he attacked

the
Ming territory in the Liaodong area. He promised opportunities to serve in his

government to officials and officers who surrendered. He did not make service
optional for the craftsmen needed by his army — especially ones with knowledge
of artillery — or for the farmers he forced to produce food for the troops. All men
in the areas he subjugated were ordered to adopt the Manchu hairstyle, which
involved shaving fronts of their foreheads and braiding the rest of their hair
into a long plait or queue. When the Chinese in Liaodong rebelled in 1622 and
again in 1625, the Manchus responded by executing many of the educated, who

books
were suspected of having fomented dissatisfaction, and by instituting stricter sep-
aration of Chinese and Manchus. Manchus were
henceforth required to stay in
their own sections of the towns and to carry arms at all times, while possession of
weapons by Chinese was declared illegal.
Nurhaci’s successor, his eighth son Hong Taiji (r. 1626-1643), went further in
adapting Chinese institutions and made increasing use of Chinese subordinates.
Ming generals began to defect with their armies, and Mongols also joined in large
numbers. After ten years of successful expansion of his domain, Hong Taiji
declared the establishment ofthe Qing (‘pure’) dynasty, implicitly staking a claim
to sovereignty over China.
The key advantage the Manchus had over Chinese rebels like Li Zicheng was
that they were able to build up a state structure outside the Great Wall, largely
beyondthe reach of the Ming government and army. By the time the Manchus
crossed the wall and competed for the throne of China, they had a much stronger
military and administrative machinery than any contender in China. In 1644,
after the Ming emperor in Beijing committed suicide and the armies of the rebel
Li Zicheng sacked the city, prospects for reattaining order seemed better with the
Manchus than with the rebels — at least to the general Wu Sangui, who was
charged with guarding the easternmost pass of the Great Wall. Working with Wu
and other Ming generals, the Manchus crossed the wall, defeated the rebels, and
rid north China of bandits.
Ming generals had wanted the Manchus to play the time-honoured role of bar-
barian auxiliaries, but the Manchus quickly showed they intended to rule the
country themselves. In Beijing they forced all Chinese to move into the southern
part of the city. They got rid of most of the eunuchs, assigning many of the tasks
eunuchs had performed instead to Chinese they had enslaved years earlier in
Liaodong. Like the Mongols before them, the Manchus confiscated hundreds of
thousands of acres of farmland in north China to support their huge armies, some
of which had been Ming imperial land, but much of which had been in private
222 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HiSTORY OF CHIN

*
let

ws

)
be

Maintaining the dykeson the Yellow River required periodically calling up large levies of
labourers. Inspecting dyke work also provided an excuse for the emperor Kangxi to make
several tours of the provinces.
=
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 223

ee
hands. Some of this land was assigned to Manchu noblemen and imperial clans- the Qing dynasty expanded

__
men, while the rest was divided up among the banners for their support. Allmen, the territorial reach of the Chi-

of whatever rank and station, had to show their submission through their hair: in ese state to its maximal
dimensions. Ateas noteetiled
1645 it was decreed that any man who did not cut his hair and start a queue
within ten days would be executed. This tonsure decree allowed the conquerors
to tell at a glance who had acquiesced to
their rule and who persisted in resisting.
. E rimarily
a by
Chinese, how-
ever, were given considerable
autonomy to manage their
.

Chinese felt humiliated by the order, but most saw no alternative to obeying. own affairs. Suppressing

Opposition soon concentrated on keeping the Manchus from penetrating uprisings in such a far-flung
south of the Yangzi, but none of the Ming loyalist courts proved any more com- “PIE proved very taxing for
the Qing government, espe-
petent than the court in Beijing. The Manchus offered the southern gentry peace cially in the nineteenth
and stability, and threatened them with awful destruction — like the massacre at century when they occurred
Yangzhou, where the Manchus slaughtered thousands. Even with the assistance of with increasing frequency.

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224 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

former Ming generals like Wu Sangui, took fifteen years to subdue the south. In
it
1662, finally, Wu hunted down the last Ming pretender in Burma. There was one
major attempt to throw off Qing rule — led by Wu Sangui himself in 1673. Wu's
past as a collaborator made it difficult for him to rally the full support of Ming loy-
alists, and after several years of bloody fighting, the rebellion was suppressed and
the Manchus were in firm control of all of China proper.

KANGXI, YONGZHENG, AND QIANLONG

From 1669, when Kangxi (r. 1662-1722) reached the age of fifteen and assumed
rule himself, until 1799, when Qianlong died (r. 1736-95), China was ruled by
only three emperors. The stability Europeans saw in China in
this period is prob-
ably due to the exceptional longevity of Kangxi and his grandson Qianlong, each
of whom ruled no less than sixty years. By the standards of the Ming, all three of
these rulers were outstanding managers, willing to work hard at the art of gov-
erning, to temper the exercise of arbitrary power and concentrate on developing
routine, institutional ways to solve the daily problems of
raising revenue, keeping
officials in line, and maintaining peace. During their reigns the Manchus won
over the Chinese gentry by restoring social order and reconfirming the gentry’s
place in Chinese society. Looking at these emperors’ accomplishments one could
almost argue that Chinese political institutions survived the Ming crisis only
because new leadership was brought in, leadership committed to the Chinese
form of government but capable of instituting tighter discipline and doing away
with much of what did not work. The fact that these rulers were not Chinese
made
it easier for them to break with longstanding but often paralysing patterns
of court politics.
All three of these Manchu rulers presented themselves as both protectors of
China’s cultural heritage and at the same time Manchu military leaders. Kangxi
was an active man who loved to goon hunting expeditions and take tours of the
provinces (ostensibly to inspect rivers and water control projects). The extension
of the Manchu’s military positions along the borders with Russia, Mongolia, and
Tibet were a source of great pleasure for him. He patronized the Chinese literati
and made efforts to induce prominent scholars to join the government, but also
saw to it that bannermen dominated the government; each of the six boards was
to have both a Chinese and a Manchu minister, and half the grand secretaries were
to be Manchus. Regular provincial posts went mostly to Chinese, but the higher
-

supervisorylevel, the governor-general positions, were filled by Manchus.

Kangxi not only gained familiarity with Chinese literati culture, but also
became intrigued by Western mathematics, science, and mechanical devices. He
was hospitablé the Jesuit missionaries at court, and appointed Jesuits to direct
the Imperial board of Astronomy when their predictions proved more accurate
than calculations made by their Chinese counterparts. In 1692 he issued an edict
tolerating Christianity so long as converts continued to perform ancestral rites, a
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty
bo
ipo er
|

position that matched Matteo Ricci’s view that ancestral rites were commemora-
tion, not worship. He reversed his position, however, alter the Vatican sent a
legate, Maillard de Tournon, who after several meetings with Kangxi, ruled
against permitting ancestral rites, siding with other. Catholic orders against the
Jesuits. De Tournon moreover insisted on papal authority over missionaries and
their converts in China, to be exercised by a papal nuncio resident in Beijing.
Kangxi responded by ordering the expulsion of missionaries who would not sup-
port his stance.
Kangxi’s heir Yongzheng (r. 1722-36), already forty-five when he ascended the
throne, proved a hardworking emperor, able to curb the military power of the
Manchu aristocracy and tighten central control over the civil bureaucracy. He put

from
particular effort into trying to set state finances on a sound footing, substituting
new public levies for the patchwork of taxes and fees inherited from the Ming.
Another step toward uniformity and rationalization was his decree forbidding any
sort of hereditary servile status, which legally emancipated members of various
local demeaned castes.
Qianlong, Yongzheng’s fourth son, benefited from his father’s fiscal reforms,
and during his long reign the government regularly ran a large surplus. Much of
Qianlong’s own energies were put into making sure he went downin history as a
sage emperor, exemplifying both Chinese and Manchu ideals. From dawn until
afternoon he tended to affairs of the state, after which he would read, paint, or The Manchus cultivated an

of
Far
write. He made many displays his filial devotion to his mother, visiting her image of themselves as tough
warriors. One hundred por-
daily and attending to her every comfort. an outstanding poet, Qianlong
traits of the emperor
nevertheless published over 42,000 poems under his name and freely inscribed Qianlong’s badyguards.
his own poetry on hundreds of masterpieces of painting and calligraphy in the including this silk hanging
palace collection he had amassed. His concern with preserving Manchu identity scroll painted in 1760. deco-
led him similarly to patronize projects that glorified Manchu history and culture,
i ads.
ime
%
i r

state banquets were held.

such as the compilation of dictionaries, histories, and genealogies.
There was, however, a darker side to the Qianlong emperor. Anyhint of anti-
Manchu activity brought quick and forceful action. When rumours reached him
in 1768 that sorcerers were ‘stealing souls’ by clipping the tips of queues, he was
quick to suspect seditious conspiracy and pushed his officials so hard that their
interrogations under torture turned up more and more evidence implicating peo-
ple in several provinces of complicity in a non-existent plot. A few years later
Qianlong orchestrated a huge literary inquisition. Thousands of books collected
for a worthy bibliographic project (the Complete Books of the Four Treasuries) were
scrutinized for slighting references to the Manchus or previous alien conquerors
and all copies of offending books were ordered destroyed. So thoroughly was this
proscription carried out that no copies have been recovered of over 2,000 titles.
After he reached the age of sixty-five, Qianlong’s political judgment began to
with a handsome and intelligent twenty-five-year-old imper-
falter. He was taken
ial bodyguard named Heshen. Before long he promoted Heshen to
posts normally
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 227

held by the most experienced officials, including ones controlling revenue and Opposite

civil service appointments. Officials began to suspect Qianlong was senile, as he

Not one to do things in a small
way, the Qianlong emperor
did nothing to curb Heshen’s blatant corruption. The extent of Heshen’s abuse of
spent over twenty million
power was corroborated after Qianlong’s death, when his successor had Heshen ounces of silver on his six
executed and confiscated his property, assessed at 800 million ounces of silver. tours of the south (1751,
1757, 1762, 1765, 1780,
TERRITORIAL EXPANSION 1784). For many of his sub-
jects it was their one
It was during the century and a half of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong that
opportunity to gain a glimmer
Greater China — the multi-ethnic territory controlled by the Chinese state today — of the pomp surrounding the
was staked out. Taiwan, Chinese Central Asia, Mongolia, and Tibet were all imperial institution. This
attached to China proper to form single polity. detail is from set of twenty-
six handscrolls in colour on
The large island of Taiwan was acquired in 1683. Populated by indigenous peo-
paper, altogether 500 feet
ples who spoke a language related to languages spoken much further south in long, painted by the court
Indonesia, Taiwan had attracted Portuguese and then Dutch traders since early in artist Xu Yang to commemo-
the century, as well as Ming loyalists in the 1640s and 1650s. In 1662 Zheng rate the nearly four-month
Chenggong (known in the west as Koxinga), a pirate and trader who had taken on tour in 1751 through Hebei,
the Ming cause, attacked Taiwan and drove out the Dutch. For the next two
Shandong, Jiangsu, and Zhe-
jiang provinces.
decades, while Taiwan was under the
control of his sons and grandsons, over
100,000 Chinese emigrated there, creating a booming frontier community. Finally
the Qing sent a naval expedition to defeat these forces and made Taiwan a prefec-
ture of Fujian province.
More territory was added in the interior as the Manchus worked at subduing
the Mongols. The Qing forces were equipped with cannons and other modern
weapons, giving them military superiority over nomads armed only with bows
and arrows, allowing them to dominate the steppe cheaply, effectively ending
2,000 years of defence problems. The Manchus conquered the Eastern Mongols in
the 1630s and subdued the Western (Dzungar) Mongols in 1696. These Dzungar
Mongols still held the Islamic cities in modern Xinjiang province, and tried to
expand their territory into Tibet, invading it in 1717. The Qing responded by
invading Tibet themselves, taking Lhasa in 1720. Tibet was made a protectorate
and a permanent Manchu garrison was established there. Previously Tibet (like
Korea and other neighbouring states) had acquiesced to tributary status but had
not had troops or governors from China proper stationed in

its
territory. Still, the
Qing interfered relatively little in Tibetan affairs, allowing local leaders to do most
of the actual governing.
Chinese Central Asia (modern Xinjiang province) had had Chinese troops sta-
tioned there in the Han and Tang dynasties, but not during the Song or Ming
dynasties. The Qing acquired the region in the 1750s when their armies defeated
the Dzungar Mongols and Uighurs in a series of campaigns. Like Tibet, these
largely Muslim areas were ruled rather lightly. The local population was allowed
to keep their own religious leaders, follow their own dietary rules, and not wear

the queue. Qing expansion into Central Asia brought China into contact with the
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

+® HERE

The emperor Qianlong, an Russians, also expanding into the same territory. To the Chinese, the Russians
admirer of European painting
were another Central Asian confederation, to be treated circumspectly, since so
and clocks, decided to test out
European architecture as
many powerful states had been founded to China’s north and west. Treaties with
well and had the Italian them were signed in 1689 and 1728 that ignored the conventions of the tribute
missionary painter Castiglione system, discussed in Chapter 8.
(1688-1768) design for him a In the nineteenth century Russia steadily acquired more and more territory in
new Summer Palace. Qianlong Central Asia, taking Samarkand, Tashkent, and Bokhara in 1865-68, arousing
used the new palace mostlyas
a storehouse for his growing
fears in the British that Russia might threaten its
interests in India. For a while it
collection of European objects, seemed that China was in danger of losing itsclaims inthe area. The British sup-
and in 1783 commissioned a ported the local leader Yakub Beg when he declared the establishment of
an inde-
set of copperplate engravings
of its buildings and grounds,
pendent state in Kashgar 1870. The Russians seized the Ili
valley in 1871. Yet the

one of which is shown here. In

Chinese were eventually able to reassert military supremacy
because and
in
the region, in
large
part Russia Britain felt more threatened by each other’s expansion
1860 the palace was burned
by British and French troops,
but the ruins remain open to
than by China. In 1884 the region was
name ‘New Territory’ (Xinjiang).
made
a regular province of China with the

visitors today.
CULTURE AND SOCIETY
Chinese culture took a conservative turn during the Qing period. This complex
phenomenon had philosophical, political, social, and probably even economic
roots. The collapse of social order in the late Ming and the Manchu conquest
seemed
to many irrefutable evidence that the more open and fluid society emerg-

ing in late Ming was profoundly dangerous. As population increase outpaced the
 Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 229

growth of resources (not only at the level of the farmer but also at the level of the
educated elite, since the number of examination degrees was fixed) and society
became more competitive, those who felt their position jeopardized favoured the
imposition of rules and norms supportive of traditional social hierarchy. The
impulse for this conservative turn came from within Chinese society, but the
Manchu rulers had nothing against it, since they themselves were inclined toward
a more disciplined social style and were content to see the Ming condemned as a
degenerate dynasty the world was better off without.
This conservative reaction was manifested in many ways. Laws against behav-
iour deemed deviant, such as homosexuality, became much harsher. Many literati
turned against drama and fiction as socially subversive or licentious. Official
injunctions were issued with some frequency banning novels and plays or order-
ing theatres closed. The highly learned Qian Daxin went so far as to condemn ver-
nacular novels as the main threat to Confucian orthodoxy. Concern forthe purity
of women reached all-time high. There was a staggering increase in the num-
an

widows
ber of recorded cases of faithful widows who refused to remarry, and engaged
teenagers who spent their lives as celibate ‘widows’ of men who died before they
had even met. The local history of one Jiangnan prefecture, for example, records
four

faithful in the Song, ninety-five in the Ming, and 203 by the mid
Qing. Construction of memorial arches to honour faithful widows got so out of
hand that in 1827 the government decreed that only collective arches could be
built and in 1843 that only widows who had gone to
the extreme of committing
suicide should be honoured by arches. Literati competed among themselves to
bring attention to the virtues of the women in
their families or communities; they
also took practical measures to encourage widow chastity, such as the establish-
ment of group homes for impoverished widows where visits by men would be
strictly limited.
These stern and strict views of socially acceptable behaviour were not unre-
lated to intellectual trends. Many Confucian scholars concluded that the Ming fell
as the result of moral laxness: they thought Wang Yangming and his followers, by
lauding spontaneity and emotion, had undermined commitment toduty; then
because the educated abandoned their obligation to provide ethical leadership,
the common people understandably lost their respect for authority. These schol-
ars saw a solution to laxness in the reassertion of Zhu Xi’s teachings, with their
emphasis on objective standards outside the individual.
As the Qing progressed, the search for norms and certainty led some scholars
to turn their attention to earlier and earlier texts. Many Confucians turned to the
Han commentaries in the hope that they could free their understandings of the
classics from the contamination of Buddhist and Daoist ideas. Some became
absorbed in close textual analysis of earliest texts, trying to sort out genuine
the

ancient texts from later accretions. Yan Ruoju, for instance, compiled a guide to
the placenames in the Four Books and proved conclusively that the ‘old text’ ver-
230 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Memorial arches honouring sion of the Book of Documents could not be genuine. Such ‘evidential’ research
chaste widows were erected
required access to large libraries, making it the speciality of scholars in the
throughout the country during
wealthy lower Yangzi region, with its concentration of academies and private
the Qing period. Shown here
are some still standing in She
libraries. Even in the world of art, recovering and re-embodying the best of the
county, Anhui province. past became a central concern of most painters and calligraphers. Collecting rub-

a
bings of old inscribed stones became passion, as Qing scholars assiduously mod-
elled their calligraphy on rubbings of Han dynasty inscriptions.
The overall conservative direction of Qing cultural change did not prevent cre-
ative innovations on the part of many exceptional individuals. During the
Ming-Qing transition some of the most probing minds looked for the institu-
tional roots of China's crisis. Huang Zongxi, a committed Ming loyalist, reconsid-
ered many basic tenets of Chinese political order, coming to the conclusion that
the problems were not minor ones, like inadequate supervision of eunuchs, but
much more major ones, such as the emperor having too much power. Equally
probing were the political and historical
analyses written by Gu Yanwu, who trav-
elled across north China to gain a better grasp of such economic issues as bank-
ing, mining, and farming. Moreover, even those who participated in fairly
conservative literati circles could be personally open to unconventional ideas. The
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 231

eighteenth-century poet Yuan Mei, for instance, was on familiar terms with the
great classicists and philologists of his day but was willing to risk their censure by
taking on women as poetry students. Even more powerful evidence that Chinese
civilization had not grown too rigid for creative growth is the appearance near the
end of the eighteenth century of one of the masterpieces of world literature, the
novel Dream of Red Mansions (Honglou meng).
It is perhaps in the world of painting that departure from convention — even
cultivation of eccentricity - was given the most room to flourish. During the
Ming—Qing transition Zhu Da and Shi Tao, both members of the vast Ming impe-
rial clan, ended up taking on the persona of Buddhist monks to avoid having to
get involved with the new government. Zhu Da resolved stop talking after the
to

Manchus took the throne. His paintings of birds, fish, rocks, and mountains evoke
the sense of crazy, creative energy that he apparently also conveyed to those who

The painter Zhu Da (also

known as Bada Shanren,
1616-1705), a Ming imperial
clansman who refused to co-
operate with the Qing,
developed a highly expression-
ae istic style, making the most of

ju sparse, wet strokes. The

Me
inscription on this page from a
ee 22-leaf album painted in 1694
dpa for a friend says, ‘After spend-
ing all day chatting we feel
like two birds — Yellow Gold
eems
wT,

and White Sun — kept in cap-

ism

- By
tivity for imperial hunts.’
bly:

0 ee
Ns
LLESIRASE SD
His RY OF CHINA

Dream of Red Mansions

The greatest masterpiece of traditional Chinese fiction is the novel ends with Baoyu passing the highest level. of the civil
Dream of Red Mansions, a 120-chapter novel conceived and service exams as his father wanted, then leaving his new
substantially written by Cao Xueqin (1715-64). As a work of wife and crumbling family to seek religious goals. :

literature, the novel can be read on many levels: as a mythic ‘Since it was first published in 1791, the Dream of Red
story on the Buddhist themes ofattachment and enlighten- Mansions has entranced readers with its numerous. subplots
ment, as a psychologically realistic autobiographical novel, and a host of minor characters from all walks of life. The.
or as a novel of manners chronicling the mores of the upper seamier side of political life is portrayed through memorable
i
:

reaches of Chinese and Manchu society in the

eighteenth ie cases of miscarriage of justice. The machinations of family
century. politics are just as vividly captured through numerous. inci- ae
Cao Xuegin came from a Chinese family that had-risen to. dents in which family. members. compete ‘for advantage. The :

great: power and wealth as bondservants of the Manchus

i
ins Dream of fed Mansions is especiall celebrated for
- itssensi-

the seventeenth century. but lost favour and went bankrupt tive depictions of female charaeters. not merely. the two oF
in the eighteenth century. The Dream of Red Mansions por- main heroines, but also Baoyu's grandmother, mother, sister, 2
;

trays in magnificent detail the affairs of the comparably sisters-in-law, and the dozens maiids with whom
of they sau
wealthy, imperially favoured Jia family. The central charac- reside.
i
: :

ters are three adolescent relatives: Jia Baoyu and his two In the scene. given below, the well- educated and sensi-
female cousins, the sickly, difficult Lin Daiyu, and the capa-
ble, cheerful Xue Baochai, both of whom come to live with
tive Lin
i
Daiyu is alone in the garden:
With Baoyu gone and the girls evidently all out, Daiyu:
his family. period in which the three get to live in
An idyllic
began to fee! lonely and depressed. She was on- her way
a splendid garden and amuse themselves with literature is
brought to an end when Baoyu is‘ tricked into marrying
back to her. own room and was just passing by the corner
of Pear Tree Court when she heard the languorous mean-
Baochai and Daiyu dies after learning of the deceit. The
 Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 233

a
derings of a flute and the sweet modulations of girlish
~yoice coming from the other side.of the.wall, and knew
that the twelve little actresses were at their rehearsal.
|
to0ee
noes
inside. Although she waspaying no particular attention

|
the singing, a snatch of it suddenly chanced: to fall with.
“very great clarity on her ear, SO that she was able make.to
“out quite distinct the words of two whole lines of the S
aria
ly
being Sung:
.
a
¢
ee :

8
hfe multif orate sp lendour bllooms forlorn
is
Midst broken
ores nolan walls

" delicate. “Theeepeinings of characters int he Dream wi te

done
a
a
patter
~

the woman xu Bao ©, 1810).

Se
v

my
denen S

Joy and gladness have withdrawn Le

fo other gardens, other halls =

:

At this
poinethe listener unconsciously nodded her head
i
and sighed.
;
234 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

European-style buildings met him as he wandered across China. Shi Tao was more sociable but no less
began to appear in Guangzhou expressive in his paintings. In the eighteenth century Shi Tao’s style inspired
in the eighteenth century in
much of the best of the individualist painters conventionally labelled the
the restricted district where
the foreign merchants were Yangzhou Eccentrics.
allowed to arrange for the
loading and unloading of
MARITIME TRADE AND RELATIONS WITH EUROPEAN NATIONS
their ships. The balance of world power slowly shifted in the eighteenth century without any-
one in China taking much notice. Until 1700 China’s material culture had been
unrivalled; its standard of living was among the best in
the world, and inventions
flowed more commonly from east to west than vice versa. Yet by the nineteenth
century, China found itself outmatched in material and technological resources by
western nations.
Europeans had been coming to trade at south Chinese ports since the late
Ming. Spain and Portugal had been the main European traders in the sixteenth
century, their place taken by the Dutch in the seventeenth century and the Eng-
lish in the eighteenth. During the eighteenth century the trade between China and
England was handled mostly by government-recognized monopolies, on the Eng-
lish side the British East India Company, a joint-stock company, and on the Chi-
nese side the Co-hong, the official merchant guild in Guangzhou (Canton), after
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 235

1759 the only city in which Europeans were allowed to trade. To keep the for-
eigners from disrupting Chinese society in this city, they were obligated to reside
in a special quarter and stay only as long as business required. After a few weeks
in their ‘factories’ (office and warehouse buildings) the Europeans would go to the
Portuguese colony of Macao, some residing there permanently, others waiting
only until the winds changed so that they could return to India or Europe.
The demand for Chinese silk and porcelain remained strong, and a new taste
for tea developed. Over the course of the eighteenth century British demand for
tea increased exponentially. From five chests in 1684, English imports of tea rose
to 400,000 pounds by 1720, then grew over fiftyfold to reach twenty-three million
poundsin 1800. By this point the British were purchasing about a seventh ofthe
tea sold in China and deriving a tenth of their state revenue from the import tax
on tea. The flow of silver into China rose from about three million ounces of sil-
ver per year in the 1760s to sixteen million in the 1780s.
In this same period European estimation of China and Chinese culture gradu-
ally grew less rosy. The seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries had sent back
admiring accounts of the laws and customs of China, undoubtedly putting their
emphasis on the positive to encourage financial support for their endeavours.
Voltaire later drew on their writings to portray China as a remarkable civilization
of
based on ethics instead religion and thus free from the domination of a church.
It was not long, however, before other Europeans, including the philosophers
Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Hegel, were describing China as inferior to Europe
because neither liberty nor progress was valued there. They contrasted China's
antiquity with the modernity of Europe.
This shift in attitudes and the concurrent emergence of Britain as a major mil-
itary power led British merchants and the British government to begin demanding
in
change the way they traded with China. To improve their profits and their bal-
ance of payments, the British wanted to create a market for their goods in China
and get tea cheaper by trading closer to its source in the Yangzi river provinces.
They also wanted China to abandon the tributary system and deal with other
nations through envoys, ambassadors, commercial treaties, and published tariffs,
in the way that European nations dealt with each other. In 1793 the distinguished
Lord George Macartney, a cousin of the king and former ambassador to Russia as
well as governor of Madras, was sent as an envoy to Qianlong, charged with mak-
ing headway these goals. He brought
on
a retinue of eighty-four, including scien-
tists, musicians, artists, and Chinese-language teachers, and 600 cases packed
with scientific instruments, carpets, woollens, knives, plate glass and other gifts
intended to attract Chinese interest in British manufactured goods. Macartney
had trouble getting received since he refused to perform the kowtow (a formal
bow that involved kneeling and touching the forehead to the floor), but in the end

was allowed to see Qianlong at his summer retreat in Rehe. Macartney sized up
the Chinese more accurately than Qianlong sized up the British. Macartney
236 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

reported that the Chinese were ill-prepared for war with European powers as
poverty was widespread, the literati were not interested in material progress, and
soldiers still used bows and arrows. Qianlong, for his part, could see no merit in
the British request for a permanent envoy in Beijing, remarking that there were
too many nations in Europe to allow each an envoy. Moreover, even though the
government derived important revenue from taxes on maritime commerce, Qian-
long saw no real use to trade. “We possess all
things, he wrote in a letter to the
king of England. ‘I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use
for your country’s manufactures.’

OPIUM AND THE OPIUM WAR

aon
Xv

It would be tedious to relate all of the military encounters between China and
Western powers over the course of the nineteenth century and the penalties China
suffered in consequence. The first of these encounters, the Opium War of
1840-42, is, however, worth recounting because it set the tone for those to follow
and cameto carry great symbolic weight in China. In Chinese eyes there could not
have been a more blatant case of international bullying, of the morally repugnant
imposing their will on those trying to do the right thing. This moral dimension in
turn made it that much more difficult for Chinese to discern in western civiliza-
tion anything worth adopting.
The rise of Britain as a great naval power dependent
on foreign trade probably
made conflict with China inevitable, since China had no desire to organize trade
on the European model and Britain had the power to
force acceptance of its terms.
The specific circumstances of the conflict, however, were tied up with trade in the
narcotic opium. Opium, derivative of the poppy, had long been used in China for
a
medicinal purposes, such as control of diarrhoea. In the seventeenth century the
practice of smoking opium in combination with tobacco spread from southeast
Asia. In the eighteenth century a way was found to smoke pure opium sap in a
pipe. Soon people were smoking opium simply for its narcotic effects: it relieved
both physical and emotional pain and made tedious or physically taxing work
seem less onerous. But opium was addictive; withdrawal symptoms included
severe cramps, muscle twitching, chills, and nausea.
Following the British conquest of
large parts of India, the British invested mas-
sively in the manufacture and distribution of opium, seeing its sale as a way to
solve the problem of their balance of payments with China. The East India Com-
pany controlled the sale of opium in India and licensed private traders to ship it
to China. Beginning with only 200 chests of opium in 1729, imports had passed
1,000 chests in 1767 and 4,500 by 1800. During the next quarter century imports
more than doubled to 10,000 chests, then quadrupled to 40,000 in 1838.
The Chinese authorities were well aware of the evils caused by opium smoking.
By the early nineteenth century addicts included government clerks and runners
as well as imperial clansmen and eunuchs at
court. To fight the spread of addic-
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty

tion, in 1800 both importation and domestic production were banned. In 1813
smoking opium was outlawed, made punishable by 100 blows and wearing the
‘cangue’ (a heavy wooden collar) for a month. Open trading then disappeared but
the British and other traders managed to stay clear of the Chinese authorities by
docking their boats off the coast of Guangdong and selling the drug to Chinese
smugglers who would distribute it through a series of middlemen, making
difficult for the Qing governmentto
it very
trace the major dealers. Suppression was also
hampered bythe huge profitability of the trade; criminal gangs stepped in and
found ways to buy off police and officials, in ways the modern world
familiar with.
is all too
.

Soon the outflow of silver caused by the opium trade gave additional urgency
to the need to solve the opium problem. By the 1820s two million taels of silver
were flowing out of China a year, which rose to nine million by the early 1830s.
In 1839, after proposals to legalize opium were rejected in favour of tougher anti- The English proudly commem-

smuggling measures, the experienced and high-minded official Lin Zexu was dis- orated their victory in the
Opium War. In this lithograph
patched to Guangzhou to compel the foreign traders to stop bringing opium into Chinese wooden ships are
China and the Chinese to stop smoking. He confiscated pipes, seized opium destroyed by the Nemesis, a
stores, and arrested some 1,600 Chinese. The foreigners proved harder to manage. paddle-wheel iron ship that

en,
Lin Zexu used threats and bribes to get the foreign merchants to turn over their could operate by sail or steam.
238 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 239

stores of opium. He offered to trade the opium for tea at a ratio of one to five and
threatened to execute the heads of the Co-hong. He wrote
a letter to Queen Vic-
toria with the following appeal: ‘Suppose there were people from another country
who carried opium for sale to England and seduced your people into buying and
smoking
it; certainly your honourable ruler would deeply hate it and be bitterly
aroused.’ He even barricaded the foreigners in their factories to pressure them to

India
turn over their stocks.
By this point the British had abolished the and a superin-
tendent of trade had been appointed to represent British interests in Guangzhou.
To end this impasse, the British superintendent, Charles Elliot, collected the

East
opium from the merchants and turned it over to Lin, who promptly destroyed
in the presence of the British. Lin ruled that only traders who put up bonds and
it
promised not to deal in opium would thereafter be allowed to trade at
Guangzhou. Lin also pressured the Portuguese to expel the British from Macao, as
a consequence of which they moved to the barren island of Hong Kong. Mean-
while, in England, commercial interests were pushing for war with China.

Company
William Jardine, of the major opium trading firm of Jardine, Matheson, and Com-
pany, sailed to London to lobby for war. Once the decision went his way, he sup-
plied assistance, leasing vessels to the British fleet and lending pilots and
translators. A British expeditionary force left India in 1840 with sixteen warships
and thirty-one other ships.
In preparation for a military confrontation, Lin bought new cannons for the
forts and laid great chains across the estuary leading into Guangzhou. This caused
no problem for the British expeditionary force, since they simply bypassed
Guangzhou and made for the major ports of Ningbo and Tianjin, which they shut
down in short order. The Chinese could no longer refuse to negotiate. The agree-
ment worked out in Guangzhou called for ceding Hong Kong, repaying the British
the cost of their expedition (an indemnity of six million Mexican silver dollars),
and allowing direct intercourse between officials of each country.
Upon learning the terms of the settlement, the public in both countries was

outraged. Lin Zexu had already been exiled for having allowed the war start; to

the
now official who negotiated the treaty was broughtto the capital in chains. In
England a new expeditionary force was ordered, this time with 10,000 men, more
than twice the previous number, and in 1841 the British occupied several strate-
gic coastal cities, including Shanghai. Dozens of Qing officers committed suicide
when defeat was certain. Finally, when the British took up positions outside the
walls of Nanjing, the Chinese were forced to sue for peace. The Treaty of Nanjing,
concluded at gunpoint, raised the indemnity to twenty-one million ounces of sil-
ver, abolished the Co-hong, opened five treaty ports (Guangzhou, Xiamen,
Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai), and fixed the tariff at 5 per cent. Through the
provision of ‘extraterritoriality’, British subjects in China were answerable only to
British law, even in disputes with Chinese. The ‘most-favoured nation’ clause
240 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

provided that if another nation extracted a new privilege from China, that same
privilege would be extended automatically to Britain.
During the course of the nineteenth century China signed many more ‘unequal’
treaties with imperialist powers, but the basic terms had been set. China could not
set its own tariffs and eventually even had to appoint European officers to collect
them. When Chinese did not buy the Europeans’ woollens, knives, and pianos in
the hoped-for numbers, European merchants did not fault their own expectations
but the obstructionism of Chinese officials; they demanded more
treaty ports and
fewer restrictions on trade. In 1860, an Anglo-French expedition occupied Beijing
for a month to force the acceptance of new treaties, which brought the number
of
treaty ports to fourteen. By the end of the century more treaty ports were added
and large areas within some
treaty ports were leased in perpetuity to foreign pow-
ers. These concessions, where foreigners did not have to obey Chinese laws, came
to resemble international cities attached to the Chinese mainland. Foreign coun-
tries won the right to establish legations and consulates in China, with their diplo-
mats treated according to European definitions of international protocol. Also as
a result of gunboat diplomacy, Christian missionaries obtained rights to preach
throughout China. By the end of the century foreign businessmen had even
gained the right to open factories on Chinese soil.
Another consequence of the Opium War was the continued increase in opium
addiction. Trade in opium was legalized by treaty in 1860, and opium remained a
major item of trade until the end of the century, though the proportion imported
declined after 1880 with the expansion of domestic production. By the end of the
century, western observers estimated that about 10 per cent of the population of
China smoked opium, with a third to a half of them addicted. This would mean on
the order of fifteen million opium addicts and about another thirty million occa-
sional users. The highest rates of addiction were probably found among imperial
clansmen and bannerman, living on meagre stipends without much to do.

INTERNAL ADVERSARIES
Until 1860, no high-ranking official viewed the foreign adversaries along the
coasts as a major threat to the survival of the Qing dynasty. The trouble they
caused could not be compared to the danger posed by internal adversaries.
Suppressing insurgencies could be enormously difficult. It took eight years,
from 1796 to 1804, to defeat a rebellion of the millenarian White Lotus sect, well
entrenched in the hilly frontier areas of Hubei, Sichuan, and Shaanxi provinces.
Several hundred forts had to be constructed, the local people recruited into mili-
of
tia, and the equivalent five years’ revenue expended. In 1813, 100,000 follow-
ers of the millenarian Eight Trigrams sect rose not far from the capital itself,
seizing several cities in the north China plain and even penetrating the Forbidden
City in Beijing. Some seventy thousand people died before the rebellion was |

quashed. Most difficult of all to suppress was the massive Taiping rebellion
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 241

x NJ A N G.
Taklimakan
8 ie
ZHRIANG

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Tibetan Platead EPs eee
Sp
AG
TIBET
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bat:
1
autonomous after ‘aia!
under British in ence
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NG British 1842

fese 1557 | aA Spanish: to USA

Vd in 1898

ARABIAN
SEA

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CEYLON

INDIAN OCEAN

Manchu empire in 1850 = Treaty ports by 1911 colonial possession areas of influence
foreign attacks Russian
British (Opium War 1839-42) Japanese
<n
<———=
Anglo-French expeditions 1858-60
French 1883-85
French
British
area of Boxer Uprising 1900-01 German

By the
end of the nineteenth century, the expansion of imperi- imperialist powers in southeast Asia were also among the
alist powers in
Asia raised fears that China might soon be favourite destinations of Chinese emigrants, especially Singa-
dismembered. Ironically the lands being developed by the pore, Malaysia, and the Dutch East Indies.
242 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

(1850-64), which eventually spread over sixteen provinces and led to the destruc-
tion of six hundred cities and the deaths of twenty million people.
The Taiping Rebellion is the best documented of any of the great peasant upris-
ings in Chinese history. It got its start in south China, an area of secret societies,
lineage feuds, and conflict between the locals and the Hakka or ‘guest people’,
later migrants to the area with a distinct dialect and distinct customs (their
women did not bind their feet, for instance, and were active in farm work). This
region, in addition, had suffered the most disruption from the Opium War. Opium
addiction was particularly pervasive in the area, as was resistance to allowing for-
eigners to reside in Guangzhou. Added to that, huge numbersof porters were put
out work after newports were open, obviating the need to transport tea across
of
the hills of south China to the port at Guangzhou.
The charismatic religious leader who mobilized the discontented of south
China was a Hakka who had failed the civil service examinations, Hong Xiuquan.
His career as a religious leader began with visions in which a golden-bearded old
man and a middle-aged man who addressed him as younger brother told him to
annihilate demons. After reading a Christian tract, Hong interpreted hisvisions to
mean that he was Jesus’ younger brother. He turned to a Christian missionary to
learn howto baptize, pray, and sing hymns. Attracted especially to the monothe-
ism of the Old Testament, and austerely puritanical, he instructed his followers to
destroy idols and ancestral temples, give up opium and alcohol, and end foot-
binding and prostitution. There was a virulent anti-Manchu strain to his teachings
as well: these wicked oppressors were the devil incarnate whom God had com-
manded him to destroy.
By 1850 Hong had 20,000 ardent followers-at his base in Guangxi, armed to
protect themselves against banditry, but sometimes coming into clashes with
imperial forces. That year he instructed them to sell their property and pool the
proceeds in a common treasury. Early the next year he raised the standard of anti-
dynastic revolt and declared himself king of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace
(Taiping). Inspired by a militant commitment to throw off oppressors, Taiping
soldiers proved brave warriors. Other discontents, including secret-society mem-
bers, joined forces with the Taipings as they moved east and north, and large
stores of government weapons and cash fell into their hands as they captured
cities. By early 1853 they had reached Wuchang on the Yangzi River. They pro-
ceeded to Nanjing, where they defeated a major Manchu banner force of about
5,000 combat soldiers and 35,000 dependants. All Manchus who did not die in
battle, even the children, were rounded up
by the victorious rebels and slaugh-
.

tered by burning, stabbing, or drowning.

In Nanjing the Taipings set up a government and issued utopian calls for a new
type of society based on the equalization of land holdings and the equality of men
and women. Civil service examinations — open to women as well as men — were to
be based on mastery of Hong's teachings and Chinese translations of the Bible.
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 24

The Taipings held on in Nanjing for a decade even though they never gained
many gentry followers. Nor, despite their overtures, did they get aid from Christ-
ian missionaries, who quickly concluded that the Christian elements in Taiping
doctrines were heretical. When the Taipings tried to take Shanghai in 1860 and
1862, the westerners there organized a vigorous counterattack. Leadership prob-
lems plagued the Taipings as well; Hong remained the religious leader, but he let
other men run much of the government and army, and they sometimes manipu-
lated him. Dissension eventually led to assassination df several top leaders. Still,
whatever the Taipings’ weaknesses, the Qing court did not find them easyto sup-
press. Only after the Chinese scholar-—official Zeng Guofan built an army from his
home base in Hunandid the situation begin to turn around. Zeng, personally
appalled bythe threat the Taipings posed to the Confucian order, recruited schol-
ars to serve as officers, and these officers recruited peasants from their communi-
ties to serve under them. Ittook Zeng and the 120,000 troops of his Hunan army
ten years to destroy the Taipings. When Nanjing was finally captured,the death
toll was enormous — Zeng claimed that the Taipings were so fanatical that they all
took their lives, though systematic slaughter is at least as likely an explanation for
the lack of survivors.
Once the Taipings were defeated, the new armies had to be reassigned to deal
with insurrections that had broken out elsewhere, since the evident weakness of
the central government had invited malcontents everywhere to seize power for
themselves. In the north China plain, especially along the route of the Grand
Canal, villagers driven to banditry had become ascourge; these ‘Nian’ gangs
would seize villagers’ crops, rob merchants, and kidnap wealthy landlords to hold
them ransom. In the southwest and northwest, Muslim and Miao rebellions flared
up, revealing the potential for ethnic separatism to lead provinces on the periph-
ery to break away from central control. It took Zeng and his
protégé Li Hongzhang
four more years to suppress the Nian rebels. It took until 1873 before the insur-
rections of Muslims in Yunnan and Gansu had been put downby other provincial
generals. Not until 1879 was Zuo Zongtang able to lead troops from Gansu into
Xinjiang to defeat Muslim invaders there.
The Qing dynasty’s success in suppressing these rebellions can be taken as evi-
dence that the Chinese gentry fully sided with it. Uprisings on the scale of the
Taiping rebellion had toppled many dynasties: the Yellow Turbans brought down
the Han, White Lotus rebels destroyed the Yuan, and Li Zicheng brought an end
to the Ming. In most these cases, those generals who proved able to defeat the
of
rebels were soonfighting among themselves to see who would get to found the
new dynasty. The Qing after the Taiping rebellion had some resemblance to the
late Tang, which survived the An Lushan rebellion only by creating regional
armies that in turn undermined central control. The Hunan army of Zeng Guofan
and the Anhui army of Li Hongzhang, however, functioned as imperial armies,
deployed outside their home provinces. The power of
the central government was
244 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

To defeat the Taiping rebels, somewhat compromised, however, since in the post-rebellion period provinces
troops loyal to the Qing often
had
to lay siege to their
gained greater fiscal autonomy, able to keep more of
the taxes collected for their
strongholds.
own purposes. In addition, Manchu domination of the military establishment was
brought to an end. The Chinese scholar—official Li Hongzhang, who outlived
Zeng Guofan by nearly three decades, came to hold as much power any of the as
Manchus at court.
SELF-STRENGTHENING
In 1860 the Taipings held Nanjing; the Russians were encroaching in Central
Asia; and British and French troops were in Beijing, where they had destroyed and
looted the Summer Palace as retaliation for Chinese refusals to meet the terms of
a recent treaty. That the dynasty might collapse if
it did not take urgent action was
a plausible fear.
Reform-minded officials had to try to revitalize the dynasty. Their first goal was
to re-establish local control and restore the economy by reducing government
expenditures, repairing the transportation infrastructure, and inducing peasants
to return to abandoned land. They drew on large body of writings on tax assess-
ment, water-control, grain transport, defence, suppression of bandits, and similar
statecraft topics. But they also recognized the need to reorganize the military
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty

along western lines and to deal with western nations in accordance with western
diplomatic protocol, if for no other reason than that problems with foreigners
were distracting the government from its most urgent tasks.
In the 1860s and 1870s, on the advice of men like Zeng Guofan and Li
Hongzhang, the court authorized setting up factories and dockyards to manufac-
ture western-style weapons and warships. Even these measures, which turned out
to be insufficient, provoked considerable resistance and became the subjects of
factional struggles. One respected neo-Confucian scholar, the grand secretary
Woren, objected to the establishment of an interpreters’ college on the grounds
that ‘from ancient down to modern times’ there had never been ‘anyone who
could use mathematics to it
raise a nation from a state of decline or to strengthen
in times of weakness’. At all social levels from peasants to Chinese and Manchu
officials, a majority probably kept hoping the west would just go away and
thought that copying western social or political practices was compounding
defeat. Nor was the pay-off for these modernizing ventures quick in coming. In
1884-85 when China was drawn into a conflict with France over Vietnam, ittook
only an hour for the French to destroy the warships built at the Fuzhou dockyard.
Few Chinese yet understood the speed with which western science was produc-
ing improved technology, nor that modern weapons by themselves would not be
enough without modernized training and leadership.
Knowledge of the west did, however, gradually improve. Books were translated
and foreign language study introduced. Modern newspapers, with up-to-date cov-
erage of world affairs, began to appear in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Information
was also acquired through visits abroad. In 1868, the retiring American minister
Anson Burlingame was sent along with a Manchu and a Chinese envoy to repre-
sent China on a visit to major foreign capitals. By 1880 China had legations in
London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Washington, Tokyo, and St Petersburg. Guo Song-
dao, the minister to England, already in 1877 wrote home of the importance of
railroads to economic development. Even though Guo had to withdraw from pub-
lic life on his return — so savage was the attack on him from reactionary ‘purist
critics — those in power did begin to shift their attention from strictly diplomatic
and military issues to economic development.
Li Hongzhang, in particular, became convinced that guns and ships were
merely the surface manifestation of the western powers’ economic strength and
therefore in order to compete China had to modernize its economy. Li played an
active role in starting the China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Company (1872),
the Kaiping coal mines (1877), a telegraph network (1879), a cotton spinning fac-
tory (1882), and a cotton weaving mill (1890). He had the first railroad track laid
to connect the Kaiping mines to the docks at Tianjin (1880), aiding the develop-
mentof Tianjin into a manufacturing city. A few other provincial officials under-
took comparable projects; Zhang Zhidong, for instance, opened the Hanyang Iron
Works at Wuhan in 1890. In these joint government-merchant ventures,
246 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

merchants provided the capital, officials the initiative and political connections.
The first
steps of technology transfer were thus underway, but not industrial take-
off, as bureaucratic control prevented the sort of reinvestment of profits that
would have allowed self-sustaining growth.
There are many other reasons as well that China did not transform itself into a
modern industrial power in the rapid way Japan did in these decades. The
unequal treaties, with their low tariffs, kept China from protecting its fledgling
industries from competition with better-established foreign manufacturers. A
modern communications infrastructure was difficult to establish because of resis-
tance from people who thought railroads and telegraph lines would create unem-
ployment or disturb graves (by 1894, only 195 miles of track had been laid). Local
resistance to newprojects also grew from poor people's suspicion that they were
being taxed to pay for projects whose benefits would go not to them but to a small
reformist elite.

POPULATION GROWTH AND PEOPLES’ LIVELIHOOD

From the time when the Roman Empire broke up, China was never seriously
rivalled as the world’s most populous country. Indeed, China regularly had a
greater population than all of the countries of Europe put together. Until 1700
population growth was slow everywhere in the world, never exceeding half a per
cent per year for any lengthy period. Thereafter, populations through much of
Eurasia began growing at more rapid rates, increasing 50 per cent or more during
the course of the eighteenth century, probably as a result of a combination of such
developments as global warming that lengthened the growing season, new crops
increasing food supply, a reduction of disease after a period when increased global
traffic had spread new diseases, and advances in
©

state organization improving the

delivery of relief in times of famine. In a small part of the world — western Europe
~ increased rates of growth were soon moderated by changed family practices, pri-
marily later marriage and increased rates of celibacy. In even more limited regions
of England and the Netherlands the eighteenth century upswing in population
coincided with the industrial revolution, allowing standards of living to rise as the
population grew. Elsewhere population growth was less of a boon. In 1800 China
had about 300 million people, Russia 40 million, Japan 30 million, and England
11 million. From 1800 to 1850 China added
at least another 100 million people,
reaching over 400 million.
In China the population explosion had enormous consequences for every
aspect of Chinese life. For every Chinese person living in 1650, there were three
in 1850. Villages and towns grewcloser, farms grew smaller, forests were hewn
down and ploughed up, labour was insurplus everywhere, suppressing wages and
intensifying the competitiveness of everyday life. Until the end of the eighteenth
century these processes had as many positive consequences as negative ones, as
they fostered regional development and commercialization, but by the beginning
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty

As the west came to loom

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earlier. The caption to this

Roses
_ CHOY ROWE

illustration in a popular 1890s

magazine begins ‘Different
places have different customs’,
and notes that western con-
ventions like shaking hands
and kissing cheeks should be
likened to Chinese kneeling
and bowing. Thus in France,
as depicted here, a daughter-
in-law kisses her father-in-law
and brother-in-law goodbye,
something required by good
manners among high-ranking
families there. To the Chinese,
it goes without saying, such
behaviour was considered
quite indecent.

of the nineteenth century the negative consequences were becoming pronounced.

Both the massive rebellions of the mid-nineteenth century and the difficulties
reformers and entrepreneurs encountered in developing modern industry owe
much to the economic consequences of these demographic trends.
As population pressure mounted, farmers intensified their efforts; they
expanded use of irrigation and fertilizer and opened lands previously considered
too marginal (sometimes growing new-world crops like sweet potatoes and
maize). But onceall of the land that could profitably be exploited using traditional
methods was under cultivation, any increase in food supply had to come from less
and less rewarding additions of labour or marginal land. Not only did this reduce
agricultural productivity, but it had long-term effects on local ecology. Cutting
forests on hills to grow new crops hurt those further downstream, since defor-
estation worsened soil erosion and silting of rivers, leading to flooding. When
arable land was extended by building polders or dykes along the edge of lakes,
lakes disappeared or shrunk, their catchment basins so reduced that they could
no longer contain flood waters.
The steady increase in population also complicated the introduction of indus-
trial manufacturing. As farms grew smaller, there was a surplus labour available of
in farming households. Peasant households with unprofitable farms made ends
meet by sending men out to work or engaging in sideline production at home,
248 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

With the doubling of the pop- mostly spinning and weaving performed by women and girls. These sidelines
ulation
in the first half of the
posed an obstacle to the establishment of textile factories. Because farmers’ wives
Ging period, villages alten:
became densely packed towns.
and daughters would work at spinning and weaving for a return that would not be
_
This depiction of a village in. . sufficient to maintain a full-time worker, urban factories could not compete.
:

Too many people trying to make a living on too few resources naturally also
Shoxtan in seomhkern Anti
province was included the in exacerbated social tensions. As an area filled up and the choicest lands were occu-
1757 book, Scenes of
Old She.
pied, the potential for conflict over rights to water or rights to tenancy naturally
increased. Feuds between ethnic groups, lineages, or villages became all
too com-
mon. Hard times also to rise in the rate of
led female infanticide, as families felt
they could not afford to raise more than two or three children, but saw sons as
necessities. The
a
inescapable consequence was shortage of marriageable women,
reducing the incentive for young men to stay near home and do as their elders
told them. Those who did not join bandit gangs or emigrate tended to drift into
cities where they might find work as boatmen, carters, sedan-chair carriers, and,
by the end of the century, as rickshaw pullers.
The new international order China was forced to
join during the nineteenth
century did little to ease these economic strains. Some merchants and entrepre-
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty

neurs in the treaty ports amassed fortunes, but no region really boomed. As Lineage organization remained
the importation of opium skyrocketed, China’s balance of payments suffered, and strong through the nineteenth
this in turn resulted in a long period of deflation and recession. Prices dropped century, especially in south
China. In some areas, descen-
by half from 1815 to 1850. Yet because of changing copper-silver ratios a tax dants had paintings made of
obligation that had required handing over 100 copper cash in 1800 required 200 their ancestors for use during
cash by 1850. the group sacrifices performed
The slow introduction of machine-powered manufacturing also caused dislo- at New Year. In this detail
from a large painting owned
cations. As late as 1875 almost all cotton yarn used in China was hand-spun there,
but by 1905 only half. Machine-spinning, which is certainly much more efficient
by the Wu family of Liancheng
county in Fujian, the ancestor
than hand-spinning, helped the Chinese economy in the long run, but until the of the eighteenth generation is
machine-spinning was done in China (which was largely the case by 1925), and shown flanked by his two
until those who had depended on hand-spinning for extra income found other wives and above his three
sons. Although these individu-
employment (such as knitting or weaving with machine-spun yarn), tens of thou-
als were ordinary commoners
sands of village families suffered financially from its introduction.
in life, they are depicted in
officials’ garments, a reflection
THE CHINESE DIASPORA of the ranks it was hoped they
During the nineteenth century, when millions of Europeans emigrated to the had attained in heaven.
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Americas and Australia, millions of Chinese emigrated as well, mostly to South-

east Asia, but some travelling much further from home. As in the case of Europe,
both push and pull factors prompted emigration. As population swelled, oppor-
tunities for internal migration to thinly populated regions all but disappeared.
Then, after 1842, the economic decline around Guangzhou brought on bythe
local collapse of the tea trade increased the supply there of young men in need of
a way to make living.
On the pull side were new opportunities abroad. Since Ming times, Chinese
from the southern coastal regions of Fujian and Guangdong had formed mercan-
tile communities throughout Southeast Asia. In Buddhist countries like Thailand
and Vietnam, Chinese often assimilated, intermarrying with the local population
and adopting their language and customs. They rarely assimilated in Muslim areas
(such as Java), Catholic areas (such as the Philippines), or primitive tribal areas
(such as northern Borneo). In these places, Chinese communities remained sepa-
rate and distinct, many of them consisting primarily of speakers of one dialect.
Voluntary associations, such as the Triads, were frequently the main organiza-
tional force in these Chinese communities, as local authorities preferred to let
them govern themselves.
With the expansion of European imperialism into Southeast Asia, new oppor-
tunities were created for enterprising Chinese. After Singapore was founded on a
nearly barren island in 1819, Chinese poured in. The region around Guangzhou
was soon sending thousands of men to work in the tin mines in nearby spots in
Malaysia. By 1850 there were about 10,000 Chinese in the city of Malacca, and the
Chinese had become the dominant ethnic group in the nearby cities of Kuala
Lumpur and Singapore. Further away, in Sarawak and Sabah, on the north side of
the island of Borneo, Hakkas from Guangdong were arriving in large numbers,
encouraged by British authorities who perceived a local shortage of labour.
Chinese fared better in some places than in others. Great fortunes were made
from the tin business in British-dominated Malaysia, where the Chinese commu-
nity included both old overseas families long settled in Malacca, who spoke Malay,
and a much larger number of more recent immigrants, mostly Cantonese speak-
ers. In the Spanish-controlled Philippines and Dutch-controlled Indonesia, how-
ever, the Chinese had to put up with repeated persecutions. Early in the
nineteenth century, the Dutch seized the mines in Borneo that Chinese had
worked for generations, and hostilities between the Chinese settlers and the
Dutch lasted until 1854, after which Chinese emigration to the region essentially
ceased. Yet the Dutch conquest of southern Sumatra led to a massive immigration
of Chinese to work in the sugar and tobacco plantations there, beginning in 1864.
In Java, where Chinese merchant communities were well established, the Dutch
used Chinese merchants as tax farmers, and some Chinese became very rich in
this way. By 1900 there were more than 500,000 Chinese living in the Dutch East
Indies (now Indonesia).
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 251

Starting in the 1840s, because the world-wide anti-slavery movement had

largely ended the trade in African slaves, labour contractors began coming to
China to recruit cheap workers. Unscrupulous foreign contractors and equally
unsavoury Chinese middlemen signed up hundreds of thousands of Chinese to
workfor plantations and mines in Cuba, Peru, Hawaii, Sumatra, and elsewhere.
lit-
These ‘coolies’ (from the Chinese kuli, for ‘bitter labourers’) were often treated
tle better than slaves during transit and at the plantations and mines. Some of the
worst abuses were in Peru, where nearly 100,000 Chinese had arrived by 1875,
lured by promoters who had promised them easy riches only to find themselves
forced to work in chains if they tried to flee. In Hawaii, sugar planters brought
over the first Chinese labourers in 1852 on three- or five-year contracts, giving
them $3 per month plus room and board for a twelve-hour day, six days a week.
Yet many of those who finished their contracts chose to stay in Hawaii, where they
set up small businesses, eventually forming an important part of the Hawaiian
business community. By 1900 there were about 25,000 Chinese in Hawaii.
Discoveryof gold in California in 1848, Australia in 1851, and British Colum-
bia in 1858 led to a large voluntary migration to these still thinly settled areas. In
California few arrived soon enough to make lucrative strikes, and they drifted
The Chinese settled
into other lines of work. Thousands found employment laying railways and oth- who in

ers took up mining in Wyoming and Idaho. In 1880 more than 100,000 Chinese
Singapore or nearby regions of
the Malaysian Straits adopted
menwere living in the western part of the United States, but only 3,000 women. a style of dress that incorpo-
Friction between Chinese and white settlers erupted periodically, spurred by rated diverse features, as seen
racist rhetoric that depicted Chinese as depraved, lawless opium smokers. In 1882 in this 1918 family gathering.
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

Because the US government

made
it difficult for Chinese
women to enter the country,
during the first years of the
twentieth century Chinatown
in San Francisco was a pecu-
liarly male place.

Chinese labourers were banned from obtaining American citizenship and immi-
gration of Chinese labourers was suspended. In 1888 President Cleveland
declared the Chinese ‘impossible of assimilation with our people, and dangerous
to our peace and welfare’, It became nearly impossible for Chinese men to bring
over wives, and even to bring sons Chinese labourers usually had to engage in
deception, such as getting a merchant to claim the boy was his son.
Chinese in these scattered communities retained an interest in what was going
on in China, where most had relatives. Although a majority of those who left
China were probably illiterate, as they prospered they saw to it that their children
learned to read Chinese, and Chinese-language newspapers circulated in all areas
of significant Chinese settlement. Even though few Mandarin speakers were to be
found among the immigrants, and spoken language could not tie them together,
the written language and common ties to China made it possible for scattered
communities of overseas Chinese to identify with each other. By the end of the
nineteenth century theywere playing a role in Chinese politics (see Chapter 10).

TOTAL HUMILIATION, 1894-1900

Nothing seemed to go right for China in the last years of the nineteenth century.
First came the humiliating discovery that Japan had succeeded where China had
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty 253

failed and now posed a threat to China. From about the time the Taiping Rebel-
lion began, Japan had embarked on a determined effort to make itself into a mod-
ern country, capable of defending itself against any of the western powers. By the
1890s Japan had achieved a great deal: it had a constitutional monarchy; the priv-
ileges of the old ruling class had largely been eliminated; new industries had been
Japanese efforts to strengthen
founded: and a universal school system was turning out young men ready to take the country in the late nine-
positions in a modern army and navy. Japan thus felt ready to become an imperi- teenth century had verged on
alist itself. wholesale westernization, as

In the 1870s Japan laid claim to the Ryukyus, islands that had long had tribu- is evident in the differences in

tary relations with China. Next Japan turned its attention to Korea, which had
dress of the Chinese and
Japanese officials assigned to
been one of Qing China’s most loyal vassals, sending four tribute missions a year.
negotiate a treaty after China’s
Japan had forced Korea to ‘open’ itself in 1876, much as the United States had disastrous defeat in 1894/95.

a
forced Japan to ‘open’ two decades earlier. When rebellion broke out in Korea in
1894 both China and Japan rushed to send troops. The Japanese were looking to
The elderly Li Hongzhang
depicted seated in
the front.
is
After a Japanese fanatic shot
provoke a war with China and so sank a steamer carrying Chinese troops. In the
ensuing war, the Chinese navy fared poorly, its worst losses coming when the
and wounded him inthe face,

the Japanese had to temper

Japanese went overland to take the Chinese port city of Weihaiwei from the rear, their demands.
254 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

turning the Chinese guns on the Chinese fleet in the bay. This then was a defeat
not of Chinese-produced weapons (most were actually foreign-bought) but of
Chinese leadership and strategy.
China sued for peace and sent its
most distinguished elder statesman, Li
Even the modern urge to find Hongzhang, to negotiate. China agreed to the cession of Liaodong and Taiwan, an
positive role models among indemnity of 200 million ounces of silver, and Japan’s right to open factories in
women of the past cannot China, which by the terms of the most-favoured national clause then was
make a heroine of Empress
Dowager Cixi, the power
to
extended all of the other powers. Much to the indignation of the Japanese, the

European powers were not pleased with this outcome, and pressured Japan to give
behind the throne during the
back Liaodong for an additional fifty million ounce indemnity.
reigns of two young emperors
from 1861 to 1908. When her This was the era when Africa and Southeast Asia were being carved up by the
son the Tongzhi emperor died powers, who each feared the others would get the best pickings. Seeing how eas-
at the age of eighteen in 1875, ily China was defeated by Japan, the western powers began scrambling for con-
she appointed her three-year-
cessions in China. Germany seized Jiaozhou in Shandong; Russia got Liaodong;
old nephewas heir, assuring
herself continued tenure as
Britain leased Weihaiwei in Shandong and the New Territories next to Hong
regent. Selfish and ignorant, at Kong; France leased Guangzhou bay near Hainan island. Only the Italian demand
a time when China needed for territory was successfully refused.
bold,risk-taking leadership, At this juncture, when China seemed about to be dismembered, a group of
she played reactionaries off
young scholars in Beijing to take the jinshi examination presented a long memor-
against reformers, seeming to
ial to the throne urging thorough-going reforms. China needed to raise taxes,
support modernization pro-
jects while encouraging critics develop a state bank, build a railway network and a commercial fleet, and set up
to attack them. a modern postal system, they argued. The government should call on Chinese
who had emigrated abroad for technical help in these and
other modernizing endeavours. The leaders of this group
were Kang Youwei, thirty-seven, and Liang Qichao,
twenty-two, both from Guangdong. Of all the Confucian
scholars then struggling to find justification for modern-
ization from within China’s tradition, Kang was perhaps
the most brilliant, presenting Confucius in a new light, as
an institutional innovator and proponent of
change. In
1898 when the empress dowager allowed her nephew, the
23-year-old Guangxu emperor, to rule on his own, he
called on Kang
to help himstep up reform. Kang submitted
several essays, including one on the fate of Poland
(divided
by the European powers in
the eighteenth century) and
one on the triumphs of the Meiji reformers in Japan. The
emperor was soon issuing edict after edict ordering
reforms in education, commerce, government and the mil-
itary. After three months of this, Empress Dowager Cixi
had had enough. Afraid that the reforms would undermine
the position of the Manchus, she locked up Guangxu and
= captured and executed those of the reformers she could
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty NR an iw

find. Kang and Liang, safely out of Beijing at the time,

managed to flee to Japan. But hopes for reform from the
top were dashed.
Further humiliation for the Qing dynasty came just two
years later with the Boxer Rebellion. The secret society at
the centre of this uprising called itself the ‘Harmonious
Fists’. Like many earlier secret societies, the Boxers com-
bined traditional martial arts with shamanistic belief in
special powers; to this they added the explosive ingredient
of xenophobia, blaming China’s ills on the evil of foreign-
ers, especially the missionaries who had ventured out of
the treaty ports into the Chinese interior to tell Chinese
that their beliefs and practices were wrong and backward.
In 1898 the Boxers emerged in impoverished northwest
Shandong. As they seized and destroyed the property of
foreign missionaries and the Christian converts whose
privileges they decried, they attracted more and more
young men trying to survive on the margins of local soci-
ety, including peasants, discharged soldiers, canal boat trackers, and salt smug- In 1896, at
the age of seventy-
four, Li Hongzhang went ona
glers. When the government in Shandong took action against them, the Boxers
world tour, representing
moved elsewhere. Small groups of Boxers began to appear in Beijing and Tianjin
China at the coronation of the
in June 1900, harassing and sometimes killing both foreigners and converts. Russian czar and visiting the
Western powers protested and prepared for war. Empress Dowager Cixi wavered German, Dutch, Belgian,
but finally decided to support the Boxers, deluding herself into thinking they French, British, and American

might solve the foreign problem for her, since nothing else had worked. When the
headsof state. Here he is
Boxers laid siege to the foreign legation quarters, the empress dowagerissued a
shown sitting with the retired
British prime minister
declaration of war: ‘The foreigners have been aggressive toward us, infringed on William Gladstone.
our territorial integrity, trampled our people under their feet... . The common
people suffer greatly at their hands, and each one of them is vengeful.’ Boxers
spread also to other provinces where they attacked mission compounds. In
August, 20,000 troops drawn from over a dozen nations marched from Tianjin to
Beijing, where they lifted the siege and looted the city. Meanwhile the empress,
with the emperor in tow, had fled. Li Hongzhang was again called on to negotiate,
and he had to accept a whole series of penalties, including cancelling the exami-
nations for five years in areas where anti-foreign violence occurred (punishment
for gentry collaboration), and a staggering indemnity of 450 million ounces of sil-
ver, almost twice the government's annual revenues, to be paid over forty years,
with interest. Ordinary people had risen up, thinking they could rid China of its
enemies, only to find that their efforts left China in an even worse predicament.

China as a polity was expanded during the Qing dynasty, but China as
a civiliza-
tion suffered a series of blows. First was the alien conquest by the Manchus. That
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Above. The Boxers mostly poor peasants from

—

Shandong and Hebei provinces — placed the

blame for hard times on foreign encroachment

and Christian missionaries. When the Boxers

appeared in Tianjin, depicted here, they alarmed
foreign residents, who had already heard many
rumours of the viciousness of their attacks.

Right. On 14 August 1900, 20,000 foreign troops

— mainly from Japan, Russia, Britain and
its
colonies, the United States, France, and Germany
— entered Beijing through
this great gate on its
wall. After lifting the siege on the legation quar-
ter, they set about capturing and punishing
Boxers in and near the capital and looting the city.
Manchus and Imperialism: The Qing Dynasty wnt ~~

China had once again succumbed to the military might of a northern neighbour
and that Chinese men had toalter their hairstyle as a sign of submission raised
questions about China’s greatness. Committed Confucians could take comfort in
notions of Confucian universalism and maintain belief in China’s moral centrality
by focusing on the Chinese side of Manchu rule, such as the ways the Manchus
adopted Chinese institutions and fulfilled the role of Son of Heaven, ruling All-
Under-Heaven through their moral virtue. After all, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and
Qianlong proved their ability to manage the Chinese state as well or better than
any Ming emperor. Still, ethnic tensions erupted from time to
time, and even after
two centuries of Manchu rule ordinary people retained an awareness that the
rulers were alien conquerors — witness the use made of anti-Manchu slogans by
the Taiping rebels.
The failure of China to come off well in its nineteenth-century encounters with

the western imperialist powers was at least as heavy a blow to Chinese self-confi-
dence. Western Europe had undergone dramatic change between the mid Ming
and the mid Qing — moving from the Renaissance and age of Columbus through
the Reformation, the rise and fall of the Spanish empire, to the Enlightenment, the
French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Both in technology and in polit-
ical organization China found itself at a disadvantage. It had become enmeshed in
an international economic order stacked against late comers, an order whose rules
China had no ability to shape.
But even if we recognize that China's precipitous drop in world standing had as
muchto do with the rise of Europe as the decline of China, it remains difficult to
be upbeat about the history of China in the nineteenth century. It is much easier
to
to find people criticize than people to celebrate. Chinese and Manchu officials
who resisted every effort to copy from the west seem irresponsibly obscurantist,

blind to the damage delay was inflicting. Chinese officials who promoted limited
measures to learn western science or military technology without any other
aspects of western culture can be dismissed as short-sighted and inept, wasting
time with half measures that would not work. Similarly, officials who thought
they could attain industrial growth through projects designed and sponsored by
the government can be charged with failing to appreciate the key dynamic
elements of capitalist expansion and thus wasting scarce resources. Outside
the scholar—official class it is just as difficult to find heroes. None of the leaders
of the mid-century rebellions showed the kind of visionary leadership that would
have been needed to unite China and lead it forward. The Boxers’ solution to
the foreign menace can hardly be seen as helpful. Chinese merchants in the
it
treaty ports, is true, often found ways to build great fortunes, but rarely did they
develop ways to extend the benefits they were gaining to a broader segment of
the population.
Could things have turned out differently? Would China have fared better if
culture had not taken a conservative turn in the early Qing? Did this turn keep
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

scholars from following up on their initial interest in the Jesuits’ scientific knowl-
edge? Would China have modernized as quickly as Japan if Qianlong had been
entranced by Macartney and taken up hisoffers and suggestions? Or if its leaders
had not been preoccupied by internal adversaries in the 1850s and 1860s? Would
China have done better if the Taipings had succeeded in overthrowing the Qing,
and someone like Zeng Guofan or Li Hongzhang had founded a new dynasty and
provided vigorous leadership? What if
the dynasty in power had not been an alien
one? Would that have made mobilization for modernization any easier? This list
could be extended indefinitely. There is nothing inevitable, | think, about the
results of the confrontation between China and the imperialist powers: a whole
concatenation of contingent events contributed to the outcome.
The exact twist one puts on China’s decline during the nineteenth century
depends on one’s assessment of China in the twentieth century. Those who cele-
brate how thoroughly China broke with the past in the twentieth century to
become a modern, forward-looking society can view China's steady decline in
standing during the nineteenth century as a blessing in disguise: the centralized
bureaucratic monarchy, the patriarchal family, and the scholar—official elite were
all so deeply embedded in Chinese culture and society that it took a century of
bad news to undermine people’s belief in them and force them to recognize that
change was both possible and necessary. On the other hand, those who look on
the twentieth century as just as tragic as the nineteenth have reason feel that
to

the Chinese people might have been spared much suffering if China had managed
to muddle through this stage of its encounter with the west without suffering so
much humiliation, for then revolutionary change might not have come to seem
absolutely necessary to so many thinking Chinese.
 Left
A common fate of thosetrained in the.
classics but unsuccessful inthe examina-

at the end ofithe nineteenth cen-

tions was teaching in village schools.
Even

tury, most schoolchildren were taught to.

read the traditional way, learning pas-
sages by rote then reciting them with
their backs to the teacher.

Below.
ep
:

farmers who could notafford to a

draft animal had to their ploughs
pall
" themselves. :
 Left
Even women with bound feet
could find employment in
_
Shanghai with its many work-
shops. These women (grouped
for the photographer's conve-
nience) are sorting tea leaves.

Below
Whenonly hand tools were
available, sawing logs for con-
struction required-both skill
and strength.
262 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

CHAPTER 10
Taking Action:
The Early Twentieth Century 1900-1949
The half century from 1900 to 1949 was
an increasingly diverseelite
a
period of intense effort on the part of
to refashion China into a powerful, modern state.
Centre stage was taken by energetic men and women who felt compelled to act: to
promote new ideas, start new enterprises, build new institutions, organize the
oppressed, fight corruption, and defeat aggressors. Patriots wanted-to-reconstitute
China as a nation of the Chinese people and make it strong enough to stand up to
foreign threats. Intellectuals and artists wanted to create a new culture that would
be Chinese but modern.
Revolutionaries succeeded in toppling the Qing dynasty in 1911, but their ini-
tial efforts to replace it with a republican government foundered. From 1916 to
1927 China was politically fragmented as local warlords competed for supremacy
and imperialist powers extended their domination. Even after political division
was largely overcome by the Nationalists, bitter strife between the Communists
and the Nationalists and Japan’s progressive aggression kept the Nationalists in a
state of war, deflecting them from their goals of modernization. During the war
with Japan, the Communist Party successfully mobilized poor peasants into a
well-disciplined fighting force, an army that eventually defeated the much better-
equipped Nationalist army
in civil war.
UNDERMINING THE QING DYNASTY

During the first decade of the twentieth century, the Qing dynasty was under-
mined simultaneously on nearly every front. Its moral authority had been greatly
weakened by the final events of the nineteenth century, the defeat by Japan, the
Empress Dowager’s coup against the emperor, and the imperialists’ intervention
into the Boxer Rebellion. In localities across the country, a more activist local elite
was emerging, eager to take part in the refashioning of the political order, out of
both idealistic and self-interested motives.
The story of the overthrow of China’s 2,000-year tradition of monarchical rule
has generally been told as a story of revolutionaries inspired by ideas from abroad.
In the last decades of the Qing the educated were gaining a better grasp of how
wealth and power had been secured by the European powers and Japan. Yan Fu,
one of the first to study in England, published translations of Huxley’s Evolution
and Ethics (1898), Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1900), J.S. Mill’s On Liberty
(1903) and Logic (1905), Herbert Spencer's A Study of Sociology (1903), and Mon-
tesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws (1909). Yan Fu argued that the western form of gov-
ernment freed the energy of the individual, which could then be channelled
toward collective goals, in contrast to the Chinese “Way of
the Sages’ which dis-
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century

ladivostok

SEA
OF

YELLOW
SEA
a
u
Sshanghai
Ningbo EAST
hou

PACIFIC
OCEAN

Hong Kong
SOUTH CHINA SEA

> Communist strongholds to 1935

w= route of the Long March Oct 1934-Oct 1935 x“autonomous
ang =
Manchuria’
Japanese puppet.
state of Manchu

--©| Communist base 1935-45 “ewarlords

. area occupied by Japan by 1944

"areas controlled by Communist groups by 1945
# main urban/industrial centres

|
occupied by Japan 1933
Japanese sponsored puppet state 1935
under effective control of Nationalist Pai
government at Nanjing 1928 (en,
Nanjing control 1929-34
Nanjing control 1935-37

The Nationalist Party and government were preoccupied with Nationalist army succeeded in driving out the Communist
military matters from the start. Even after the Northern Expe- Party from central China in 1934 (beginning the famed Long
dition of 1926/7, large parts of China were under the March, which eventually took them to Yan’an in Shaanxi), but
domination of warlords, the Japanese, or the Communists. The had little success in stemming the Japanese invasion of 1937.
264 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

couraged the development ofthe people’s capabilities. Yan Fu once commented

that only 30 per cent of China’s troubles were caused by foreigners; the rest were
her own fault and could be remedied by her own actions.
During the decade 1900 to 1910 probably the best-known reformers were Kang
Youwei and Liang Qichao. After fleeing the wrath of the Empress Dowager, Kang
travelled widely, visiting overseas Chinese communities, while Liang settled in
Japan where by 1906 over ten thousand Chinese students were studying. The
experience of living in a foreign country, where they felt humiliated by China’s
weakness and backwardness, aroused ardent nationalistic feelings in these stu-
dents. Liang published magazines for them in which he analysed China's deterio-
rating condition and introduced western ideas. He promoted the idea that China
could become strong through ‘democracy’, which to him meant a government that
drew its strength from the people, not necessarily a representative government or
one that defended individual rights. Having travelled in the United States for five
months in 1903, Liang was not enthusiastic about the American form of republi-
can, populist democracy, but he found much to admire in the statist ideas and
constitutional monarchies of Japan and Germany.
Back in China, the Qing court was itself edging in the direction of constitu-
tionalism and parliamentary government. In 1905 the civil service examinations
were abolished and steps were taken to set up both a modern school system
and a modern government bureaucracy. A modern police force, for instance,
was introduced. After collecting advice from abroad, in 1908 Empress Dowager
Cixi announced a plan to phase in constitutional principles over a nine-year
period of tutelage.
With the mysterious death of the 33-year-old Guangxu emperor, reported to
have occurred the day before the empress dowager died at age seventy-three,
China once again had an infant on the throne, and hope for a Japanese-style con-
stitutional monarchy looked less and less promising. Still, in 1909 consultative
provincial assemblies met in each province and sent representatives to Beijing. |

Although only a tiny portion of the population had been allowed to vote in the
elections, the impact of the assemblies was magnified by the excitement that the
idea of participatory government generated.
Such top-down reforms were not change enough for the growing reformist seg-
ment of the elite, not to mention real revolutionaries. In 1903 the nineteen-year-
old Zou Rong had published an inflammatory tract, calling for the creation of a
‘revolutionary army’ to ‘wipe out the five million barbarian Manchus, wash away
the shame of 260 years of cruelty and oppression, and make China clean once
again’. He described the ‘sacred Han race, descendants of the Yellow Emperor’ as
the slaves of the Manchus and indanger of extermination. The language of Social
Darwinism and the struggle for survival in an international arena of predatory
states was borrowed from European rhetoric of the period, but seemed to many
Chinese an accurate analysis of their current crisis.
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century 265

The anti-Manchu revolutionary who would eventually be mythologized as the

founding figure of the movement was Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yatsen, 1866-1925).
Like Hong Xiuquan, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao, Sun came from Guangdong,
but unlike them, he was neither from a literati family nor trained in the Confucian
classics. Two of his uncles had emigrated to the United States in the gold rush
days, and another uncle and brother went to Hawaii, where Sun was sent in 1879.
After Sun became interested in Christianity, his brother sent him back to China.
No
longer fitting into his village, he went to Hong Kong, where he was baptized
and studied western medicine. It was in Hong Kong that Sun and his friends
began discussing the advantages of a republic, the kind of government they had
learned about in their westernized schools. They thought the best way to over-
throw the Manchus would be to ally with the secret societies so pervasive in the
south. The Triads were not only anti-Manchu, but they had large mass followings
and an organizational base reaching from one province to another.
In 1894 Sun went to Beijing in the hope of seeing the leading reformist official
Li Hongzhang, but when that failed he returned to Hawaii where he founded a
hundred-member chapter of the Revive China Society. The next year he set up a
similar group in Hong Kong. The society's efforts to instigate an uprising with
secret society members as the muscle never got very far, however. Meanwhile Sun
continued to look for support outside China. In 1896 he cut off his queue and
began wearing western clothes. He spent time in England where he discovered
that many westerners saw flaws in their own institutions and were advocating a
variety of socialist solutions. As others would after him, Sun began try
to
to devise
ways for China to skip ahead of the west by going directly to a more progressive
form of government. He also spent time in Japan, where he found Japanese eager
to participate in the regeneration and modernization of China. In 1905 they
helped Sun join forces with the more radical of the student revolutionaries to form
the Revolutionary Alliance. Despite the difference in social background, the stu-
dents from gentry families were attracted to Sun’s promise of quick solutions to
China’s problems. This Alliance sponsored seven or eight attempts at uprisings
over the next few years. Sun himself continued to spend most of his time travel-
ling in search of funds and foreign backers.
Sun was in Denver when a plot finally triggered the collapse of China’s imper-
ial system. A bomb that accidentally exploded in the headquarters of the revolu-
tionary group in Wuchang led the
to a coup by army officers fearful that their
connectionsto the revolutionaries would be exposed. After taking over the city in
less than a day, they telegraphed all the provinces asking them to declare their
independence. Within six weeks fifteen provinces had seceded. The court in des-
peration turnedto its top general, Yuan Shikai (1859-1916). Rather than mount a
military campaign, Yuan negotiated with the revolutionaries, who, out of fear of
foreign intervention, were willing to compromise. In the end agreement was
reached to establish a republic with Yuan as president; the emperor would abdi-
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Sun Zhongshan spent much of cate but he and his entourage would be treated well and allowed to keep much of
his time abroad, trying to gain their property. In February 1912, the last Qing emperor abdicated, and in March
financial support for his cause.
Sun Zhongshan, back in China, issued a provisional constitution.
He is shown here, centre front,
The speed with which the Qing was ousted is evidence of how much Chinese
in Japan in 1916.
society had changed since the Taiping rebellion when the educated class had ral-
lied behind the throne. Forced to look after their own interests, local elites
increasingly found themselves in opposition to the state. Merchants, now fre-
quently organized into chambers of commerce, were more actively engaged in
Yuan Shikai, a leading general running the cities in which they lived. By the beginning of the century, both rural
under the Qing, became presi- and urban elites shared the revolutionaries’ zeal for modernization and reform,
dent of the new republic in
1912 and promptly began act-
if
even for different reasons; to the local elite they appeared to offer the best means
of achieving local order.
ing like a dictator.
The new republican government never really got off the ground. The attempt
to co-opt Yuan Shikai and his army proved a
total failure. Parliamentary elections
were held, but when in 1913 the Nationalist Party (the successor to the Revolu-
tionary Alliance) succeeded in winning more than half the seats, Yuan showed he
had never become a constitutionalist by ordering the assassination of the key
Nationalist organizer, Song Jiaoren. Local elites had never approved Yuan's con-
centration of power at the centre, and six provinces promptly declared their inde-
pendence. Yuan successfully used military force against them, thus establishing
himself as a military dictator. In late 1915 he even announced that he would
become emperor on | January, 1916. This action aroused enormous protest,
which ended only when Yuan died unexpectedly in June 1916.
a Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century

DISLODGING AUTHORITY
The twelve years from Yuan Shikai’s death until the establishment of the Nation-
alist government in 1928 are usually referred to as China’s warlord period. In the
absence of a strong central power, commanders in Yuan’s old army, governors of

provinces, local strongmen, and gangsters busied themselves building up power

bases. Territories conquered by the Qing but never fully integrated into China
proper, like Tibet and Mongolia, declared their independence. While Sun Zhong-
shan and his allies tried to build a power base for the nationalist revolutionaries at
Guangzhou in the far south, a government of sorts was maintained in Beijing,
with six different presidents and twenty-five successive cabinets. Fora while the
key struggle seemedto be for control of the north, as the strongest warlords waged
highly destructive wars across north China. With no one in charge, bandit gangs
appeared everywhere, often causing more disruption to everyday life even than
the warlord armies, and forcing villages to form local defence forces.
While all this was going on, young intellectuals were waging their own wars
against old and outmoded ideas. Those who received modern educations felt that
they had inherited the obligation of the literati to advise those in power; they
moreover believed themselves uniquely qualified by their modern educations to
‘save’ China. This was particularly true at the newly reorganized Beijing Univer-

sity, where Chen Duxiu, the founder of the periodical New Youth, had been
appointed Dean of Letters. Chen, who had studied in Japan and France, was a
zealous advocate of individual freedom. In the first issue of New Youth in 1915 he

Political cartoons began

appearing in newspapers and
magazines early in the cen-
tury. In this 1918 cartoon, the
warlords of the north and
south are shown trampling
on the people as they battle
each other.
268 THE CAMBRIDGE LLLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

One of
Lu Xun on Chinese

the most appealing personalities of the early twenti-

collections of stories, “Those who come down in the

cha
eS ce
tache style itself copied om the
was
eth century was the author and. commentator Lu Xun. nese-men in Tang and Song times had had moustaches

ti
Or if Chi-

(1881-1936). As he explained in the preface to one of his like his turned upat the ps? If fountain pens worked better
world thanold- fashioned. Chinese brushes and inkstones for stu-
thatoS
os :
a
learn in the process.what society is really like! Thus his: dents
taking notes inclass, wouldn’ £ itbe better to manu :

uncharitable view of both the old Chinese literati and ordi-

n

nary: Chinese peasants and townsmen probably owes some : a

a - aa
thing to his childhood in famil y on the- way. down = his” “in
grandfather, an ‘official, was imprisoned for bribery, his” St
father was an opium addict, and Lu Xun himself as boy a ofae
.
going unc
ae Ss as
mademany a visit to ‘pawn

oa
to keep the family from
fons
Through his writing«career, Xun responded we
£aaa
ie
mer- S
clless sarcasm to callsto preserve China! Ss
nauenal essence’ :

The Shangha newspapeShen

ce
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century 269
270 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

challenged the long-standing Confucian deference toward elders by celebrating

youth: ‘Youth is like early spring, like the rising sun, like the trees and grass in
bud, like a newly sharpened blade.’ He urged his readers not to waste their ‘fleet-
ing time in arguing with the older generation on this and that, hoping for them to
be reborn and remodelled.’ They should think for themselves and not let the old
contaminate them. In other articles he wrote that Confucianism had to be
rejected
before China could attain equality and human rights: ‘We must be thoroughly
aware of the incompatibility between Confucianism and the new belief, the new
society, and the new state.’
of
One the first faculty members appointed to Beijing University by Chen
Duxiu was Hu Shi, just back from seven years’ study of philosophy in the United
States at Cornell and Columbia. Hu Shi was not as all-encompassing in his rejec-
tion of tradition as Chen. The aim of the new thought, he wrote in New Youth, was
not to replace old beliefs with ones imported from the west but to develop the
of
habit critical thought: ancient wisdom had to be re-evaluated on the basis of
whetherits of
tenets were still suitable to the needs the day.
While still in the United States, Hu Shi began a campaignto get people to aban-
don writing in the classical literary language that had been the mark of the edu-
cated person for so many centuries. ‘A dead language’, Hu declared, ‘cannot

a
produce living literature.’ Since Chinese civilization had been so closely tied to
this language, his assertions came dangerously close to declaring Chinese civi-
lization dead. Hu Shi did recognize that the old written language had allowed
communication between speakers of mutually unintelligible dialects and thus had
been a source of unity, but he argued that once a national literature was produced
in vernacular Chinese, a standard dialect would establish itself, much as such
standard vernaculars had gained hold in Europe. Chen Duxiu supported Hu’s lit-
erary reform, and soon New Youth was written entirely in colloquial Chinese. To
Chen, the liberating effects of language reform were its strongest drawing points,
its use would open literature to ‘the people’ and free thought from the stultifying
effect of old mindsets.
One of the first to write well in the vernacular was Lu Xun (1881-1936), edu-

cated in Japan and well read in European literature, especially Russian. The May
1918 issue of New Youth contained his first vernacular short story, ‘Diary of a Mad-
man’, a powerful condemnation of traditional Chinese civilization. In it the main
character goes mad (or is taken to be mad) after he discovers that what his seniors
saw as lofty values was nothing more than cannibalism. The humour of Lu Xun’s
longest story, ‘The True Story of Ah Q’, was also black. The protagonist is a man of
low social standing. Always on the lookout for a way to get ahead, he is too cow-
ardly and self-deceiving ever to succeed. No matter how he is humiliated he
claims moral superiority. His ears prick up in 1911 when he hears talk of a revo-
lution, but soon he discovers that the old, classically educated elite and the new,
foreign-educated elite are collaborating in taking over the revolution for them-
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century

selves and want no interference from him. He comes toa sorry end, executed by
representatives of the revolution for a robbery he would have liked to have com-
mitted but actually had not managed pull off. In stories like these, Lu Xun gave
to

voice to those troubled by China’s prospects and weary of China’s old order but
reluctant to set their hopes on easy solutions.
In 1919, four years after New Youth had set the ‘New Culture’ movement in
motion, young people determined to arrest China's decline took to the streets,
their anger triggered by news of how the Versailles Peace Conference was han-
dling the disposition of German rights in Shandong. In 1914 Japan as an ally of
Britain and France had seized German territories in China. In 1917 the Chinese
joined the allies as well, and even though they sent no combatants, they did send
some 140,000 labourers to France, where they unloaded cargo ships, dug
trenches, and otherwise provided manpower of direct use to the war effort. China
was, thus, expecting some gain from the allies’ victory, particularly in light of Wil-
son's stress on national self-determination. Unfortunately for China, Japan had
reached a secret agreement with Britain, France, and Italy to support Japan’s claim
to German rights in Shandong. Japanese diplomats had also won the consent of
the warlord government that held Beijing at the time.
On 4 May 1919, when word reached them that the decision had gone in favour
of Japan, some 3,000 Beijing students assembled at Tiananmen Square in front of
the old palace, where they shouted patriotic slogans and tried to arouse spectators
to action. After some students broke through police lines to beat wp a pro-Japan-
set
ese official and fire to the homeof a cabinet minister, the governor suppressed
the demonstrators and arrested their leaders. These actions in turn set off a wave
of protests around the country in support of the students and their cause. Every-
one, it seemed, was on the students’ side — teachers and workers, the press and the
merchants, Sun Zhongshan and the warlords. Soon strikes closed schools in more
than 200 cities. The Beijing warlord government finally arrested 1,150 student
protestors, turning parts of Beijing University into a jail, but patriotic sympathy
strikes, especially in Shanghai, soon forced the government to release them. The
cabinet fell and China refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
The protestors’ moral victory set the tone for cultural politics through the
1920s and into the 1930s. The personal and intellectual goals of the New Culture
Movement were pursued along with and sometimes in competition with the
national power goals of the May Fourth Movement. Nationalism, patriotism,
progress, science, democracy, and freedom were the goals; imperialism, feudalism,
warlordism, autocracy, patriarchy, and blind adherence to tradition were the ene-
mies. Intellectuals struggled with how to be strong and modern and yet Chinese,
how to preserve China as a political entity in the world of competing nations.
Many concentrated on the creation of a new literature in the vernacular, others on
the study of western science, philosophy, and social and political thought. Promi-
nent intellectuals from the west were invited to visit China and lecture. When the
a)
| iN THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

educational reformer John Dewey visited in 1919 to 1921,

_

he was impressed by the openness of Chinese young peo-

ple, commenting, ‘There seems to be no country in the
world where students are so unanimously and eagerly
nterested in what is modern and new in thought, espe-
_| cially about social and economic matters, nor where the

arguments which can be brought in favour of the estab-

lished order and the status quo have so little weight —
ndeed are so unuttered.’ Others who visited include
Bertrand Russell (1920-21), Albert Einstein (1922), Mar-
'

garet Sanger (1922), and George Bernard Shaw (1933).

|
The attraction to liberal western culture was strong but
it did not go unchallenged. Some who for a while had been
attracted to things western came feel western culture
|

to

was too materialistic, especially after World War I. Out of

fear that China was in danger of losing its ‘national
essence’, concerned scholars turned to studies of ancient
history and folklore to try to identify this essence.
With the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia
in 1917, intellectuals also began to take an interest in
Marxism-Leninism. This strain of socialism offered a blue-
print for a world of abundance without exploitation and
‘

had the added appeal that it was anti-western and anti-

|
imperialist and had just proved itself capable of bringing
revolution to a backward country. The basic tenets of
Marxism—Leninism were even more at odds with tradi-
|

tional Chinese thought than western liberal ideologies of

The outside world learned of democracy and representative government. The emphasis on class struggle and

nee
the plight of China’s starving violent overthrow of those in power was diametrically opposed to Confucian
ene
relief
tional
ts wh

effort was
int - :
on
.

_
emphasis on harmony and respect for hierarchy, though descriptions of an
riommredl tu ald-the ewenty
eventual utopia of to each according to his needs had some resonance with Chi-
million people devastated by nese millenarian rebel ideologies.
the north China drought of For the May 1919 issue of New Youth Li Dazhao, the librarian at Beijing Uni-
1920/21. versity, wrote an introduction to Marxist theory, explaining such concepts as class
struggle and capitalist exploitation. Soon intellectuals were looking not only into
the works of Marx but also those of Lenin and Trotsky with their evocations of an
imminent international revolutionary upheaval that would bring an end to impe-
rialism. Though China did not have much of an urban proletariat to be the van-
guard of its revolution, the nation as a whole, Li Dazhao pointed out, could be
looked on as exploited by the capitalist imperialist countries. Li organized a Marx-
ist study group at
Beijing University that attracted progressive young intellectuals,
including Mao Zedong, recently arrived from Hunan. At much the same time
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century 273

Chen Duxiu was also becoming interested in Marxism. Chen had ended up in

jail
as a result of the May Fourth demonstrations, and had became disillusioned with
the west and its
talk of democracy. He resigned from his university post and went
to Shanghai where he formed Marxist study groups.
The early Marxist study groups might not have amounted to much if it had not
been for the Comintern, the Russian-led organization to promote communist rev-
olution throughout the world. Soon after the Comintern learned of the existence
of Marxist study groups in China, agents were sent to help them turn themselves
into communist partycells. These agents taught Chinese organizations how to
attain party discipline through ‘democratic centralism’. Each local cell elected del-
egates to higher levels, up to the national party congress, with its central execu-
tive committee and the latter’s standing committee. Delegates flowed up,
decisions flowed down. Decisions could be debated within a cell, but once deci-
sions were reached, all were bound to obey, decisions madeby higher levels being
binding on lower ones. This Leninist form of organization provided a degree of
discipline and centralization beyond anything in the existing repertoire of Chi-
nese organizational behaviour. Following Comintern advice, in July 1921, ata
meeting of thirteen delegates representing fifty-seven members, the Chinese
Communist Party constituted itself as a secret, exclusive, centralized party seek-
ing power; it broke with the anarchists and guild socialists and asserted the pri-
macy
of class struggle.
BUILDING A PARTY-STATE
The central story in the politics of China from the early twenties to 1949 concerns
the effort to create a new type of political centre. The ease with which Yuan Shikai
had pushed the revolutionaries out of power demonstrated that they needed their
own army. From the early twenties on, both the Nationalist and the Communist
parties made concurrent attempts to build up Leninist party-states and party
armies. Twice the two joined forces in united fronts, but at bottom they were
rivals, both pursuing full control of a government governing all Chinese territory.
The similarity of their party-building endeavours owes much to Comintern
influence on both of them. Until representatives of the Comintern offered assis-
tance to Sun Zhongshan in 1921, he had had little luck in gaining the help of for-
eign powers, who treated whatever government held Beijing as the legitimate
government of
China. The newly established Soviet Union saw its interests differ-
ently; it wanted to help build a revolutionary China not only to spread world rev-
olution but also because a weak China might invite the expansion of Japan, the
USSR’s main worry to the east. In Marxist-Leninist theory, socialist revolution
would occur by stages, and since China had not yet gone through a bourgeois,
capitalist stage, a victory by the Nationalist revolutionaries who would overthrow
the imperialists seemed the next stage for China. Then, in the future, when con-
ditions ripened, there could be a social revolution and a communist victory.
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

To help the Nationalists build a tight party organization, the Comintern sent
advisors who introduced democratic centralism to them as well. On Borodin’s
encouragement, Sun Zhongshan elaborated his ‘Three Principles of the People’
into an ideology for the Party. The principles were nationalism (anti-imperialism),
democracy (anti-monarchy), and ‘people's livelihood’ (now equated with social-
ism). Building a party army toallow seizure of power also was a Comintern pri-
ority; by 1925 there were about 1,000 Russian military advisors in China helping
the Nationalists. Chinese officers were also sent to the Soviet Union, including
Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek, 1888-1975), who was sent there for four months’
training before being made head of a new military academy at Huangpu (Wham-
poa) near Guangzhou. The communist Zhou Enlai (1898-1976), recently
returned from France, became deputy head of this academy’s political education
.

department.
At the same time that Comintern advisors were aiding the build-up of the
Nationalists’ power base, they continued to guide the development of a Chinese
Communist Party. This party grew slowly, and at no time in the 1920s or 1930s
had nearly as many members or supporters as the Nationalist Party. In 1922, on
Comintern urging, the decision was made to ally with the Nationalists, as a con-
sequence of which members of the Communist Party joined the Nationalist Party
Child labour was common in as individuals but continued separate Communist Party activities on the side.
the textile industry, not only The development of China’s industries made labour organizing a fertile field for
I,
because young children could
communists in the 1920s. During World War a drastic reduction in Europe's
be hired for very low wages,
but also because, with their capacity to export allowed China’s industries to expand rapidly; from 1914 to
small fingers, they were good 1922 the number of looms
in textile factories increased threefold, from 4,800 to
at tending spinning machines. 19,000. Conditions in China’s factories in the 1920s were as bad as they had been
a century earlier in Britain, with twelve-hour days, seven-
day weeks, and widespread child labour, especially in tex-
tile mills. Labour contractors often recruited in the
countryside and kept workers in conditions of debt slav-
ery, providing the most minimal housing and food. That
many of the factories were foreign-owned (increasingly
Japanese-owned) added to
friction between the propri-
etors and the workers. With the support and encourage-
ment of organizers, such workers were quite willing to
strike; there were fifty major strikes in 1921 and ninety-
one in 1922. Anti-union violence became common as well.
In one incident in 1923 soldiers of the warlord Wu Peifu
killed sixty-five striking railway workers in Henan.
Agitation against capitalist factory owners became more
and more entangled with agitation against the unequal
treaties and the privileges of foreigners in the treaty ports.
The incident that created the greatest uproar occurred on
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century

30 May 1925, when the British police in the International

Settlement in Shanghai shot at a group of demonstrators,
killing eleven. Almost immediately strikes, boycotts, and
demonstrations were staged all over the country. Then in
June in Guangzhou fifty-two Chinese demonstrators were
killed when British troops opened fire, which led to a huge
strike and a boycott of trade with Hong Kong. In these cir-
cumstances union and party recruiting by both the Com-
munists and the Nationalists was very successful. The
time seemed ripe to mobilize patriots across the country to
fight the ‘twin evils’ of warlordism and imperialism, to
reunify the country under a government strong enough
and determined enough to end the unequal treaties and
the semi-colonial status of the treaty ports.
In 1925, before the planned Northern Expedition to
reunify the country could be mounted, Sun Zhongshan
died of cancer. The recently reorganized Nationalist Party
held together after his death despite the jostling of more
leftist and more rightist leaders to succeed. In July 1926
the Northern Expedition was finally launched with Jiang
Jieshi as military commander and with Communists aid-
ing the military advance by organizing peasants and work-
ers along the way. By the end of 1926 the Nationalist
government was moved from Guangzhou to Wuhan, In Jieshi married
1927, Jiang
where the left wing of the party became dominant.
Song Meiling, daughter of a
The United Front between the Nationalist and Communist parties was expedi- wealthy Christian industrialist
ent for both at the time, but covered over deep differences. Many of the support- aud sister of Sun Zhongshan’s

ers of the Nationalists felt rightly threatened by talk of class warfare, and the widow. Song Meiling had been
educated in the United States,
Nationalist military included many staunch anti-communists. In April 1927, with
spoke perfect English, and
the Nationalist army approaching Shanghai, Jiang organized members of the worked hard to gain American
Green Gang, a Shanghai underworld racketeering gang, to kill all labour union help, especially after the out-
members and Communists in the city. Within a few days, hundreds had been break of war.
slaughtered and Jiang had secured control of the Nationalist Party.
During this crisis Comintern representatives and Communist Party leaders in
Wuhan still followed Moscow’s instructions to try to salvage the situation by
working with the left wing of the Nationalist Party. Finally in August Communist
forces began fighting back. Mao Zedong’s attempted ‘Autumn Harvest Uprising’
was quickly suppressed, as were comparable insurgent actions elsewhere. From
1927 to 1930 the hunt was on for Communist organizers all over the country — in
some areas the only evidence troops needed to conclude that a young woman was
a Communist was bobbed hair. What Communist leadership survived was driven
underground and into the countryside.
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

As the anti-Communist terror continued, the military unification of the coun-

try proceeded, and in 1928 the Nationalists gained the allegiance of three key war-
lords to reunite the country. International recognition quickly followed, and the
prospects for China looked brighter than they had for decades. With many
returned students appointed to key government posts, the Nationalist govern-
ment appeared increasingly progressive to foreign powers, who over the next
several years consented to reductions in their special privileges. Tariff autonomy
was recovered, as well as control over the Maritime Customs, Salt Administration,
and Post Office. In addition the number of foreign concessions was reduced from
thirty-three to thirteen, and extraterritoriality was eliminated for some of the
more minor countries.
From 1928 on Jiang Jiéshi was the key leader of the Nationalists. A determined
all
patriot, Jiang was above a military man. From a landlord-merchant family near
Ningbo, he had aspired to take the civil service examinations but when they were
When the Nationalists reached abolished he went to Japan to study military science, joining the precursor of the
Shanghai in 1927, they turned Nationalist Party while there. His appointment to head the Huangpu Academy
on the Communists and
was crucial to his rise because it allowed him to form strong ties to young officers
unleashed a ‘White Terror’,
searching out and killing
in the party’s army. A skilful politician, once Jiang became fully enmeshedin party
union members and party and government matters, he proved able to balance different cliques and build
organizers. personal ties to key power-holders.
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century

Many of Jiang’s efforts at state building focused on the

army, for the new government stillneeded to rein in sur-
viving warlords, suppress the Communists, and resist
Japan’s aggressive designs. To modernize the army, Jiang
turned to Germany, attracted by the success the Nazis were
having in mobilizing and militarizing their nation. Ger-
man advisors helped Jiang train an elite corps and plan the
campaigns against the Communist base in Jiangxi. They
also arranged for the import of German arms. Besides
modernizing the military, the Nationalist government
made concerted efforts to revive and modernize the econ-
omy, battered by the disruption of the warlords, who, for
instance, often took over railroad lines for their own pur-
poses. For guidance on economic matters the Nationalists
turned to the liberal, capitalist west. Western-trained
economists and engineers undertook to modernize the
banking, currency, and taxation systems, as well as to improve transportation and In 1923 the Comintern sent
the experienced organizer.
communication facilities.
Mikhail Boredin. to China to
During his first few years in power, Jiang had considerable success in gradually
help the Nationalists organize
eliminating his warlord opponents. He proved less successful in state building. themselves into a Leninist
however, due in large part to his mistrust of institutions and his unwillingness to party. with strong discipline
allow the emergence of rival centres of power. To combat the intellectual appeal of and central control. He is
shown here at a rally in
the communists and build support for his government, in 1934 Jiang launched an
Wuhan in 1927 during the
ideological indoctrination program, the New Life Movement. inspired by contem- Northern Expedition.
porary fascist movements in Europe. Its goal, he claimed, was to militarize the lile
of the people of the entire nation’ and to nourish in them ‘a capacity to endure
a
hardship and especially habit and instinct for unified behaviour
‘willing to sacrifice for the nation at all times’. Also based on fascist models was
the creation of an organization of graduates of the Huangpu military academy,
dubbed the ‘Blueshirts’, who pledged themselves to an ascetic life devoted to their
leader, Jiang. The Blueshirts came to play a significant role in the Nationalists
secret police.
In the early thirties China appeared to be rapidly modernizing. Despite the
worldwide depression, life in the major cities was taking on more of a western
look. The urban middle class frequently wore western dress for work and school.
Banks, trading firms, and clubs constructed large European-style buildings on the
main streets, not hidden behind walls in the traditional style. in the coastal treaty
ports foreigners and their material goods were as pervasive as in the outright
European colonies of the period in south and southeast Asia. Other cities
remained more distinctly Chinese in appearance — Beijing, for example, still had
its huge walls — but conveniences like electricity were gradually changing the way
all major cities functioned. Even intellectual life acquired a more western form.
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

with higher education and the public press emerging as the key institutions. A
professional class was gaining influence, composed not simply of intellectuals
(heirs to the old literati elite) but also of scientists, engineers, architects, econo-
mists, physicians, and others with technical expertise, often acquired through
study abroad. Even those who remained in China for their education had become
comfortable with western ways of thinking and acting; not only did they study
books written by western authors, but they frequently studied under foreign
teachers, especially if they attended one of the many Christian colleges active in
the period. One should not imagine, of course, that everyone in the cities was
middle class or prospering. With an enormous reservoir of labour, life for the
urban poor seemed hardly to improve at all. In 1937 Lao She published one of the
most successful novels about life at the bottom in Beijing, Rickshaw. But the west,
after all, also had its proletariat, and those who wished to see signs of progress
toward a more prosperous future could find them in 1930s China.
Much good can be said of the Nationalists’ efforts to build China into a strong
and modern nation, but they were focused on the cities, not the countryside.
When the British economist R. H. Tawney surveyed China in the early 1930s, he
found China’s peasants caught in an ecological crisis of soil exhaustion, defor-
estation, erosion, and flooding, made worse by primitive technology, inadequate
credit and transportation systems, and exploitative tenancy arrangements. ‘In
some districts, he reported, ‘the position of the rural population is that of a man
standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that even a ripple is sufficient to
drown him.’ Most peasants had seen no improvement in their standard of living
since Qing times. Continued population growth — by 1930 the figure was over 500
million — resulted in relentless increase in the pressure on available land. The
advantages brought by modernization, such as cheaper transportation via rail-
ways and cheaper manufactured consumer goods, were yet to have a major impact
on the rural economy. China's exports of silk and tea were suffering, first because
Chinese producers lost ground to Japanese and Indian competitors, then because
foreign demand plummeted due to the Great Depression. Villagers also suffered
from local bullies, warlords, and local elites who put their own survival ahead of
anything else. The Nationalist central government did little to build new political
institutions in rural areas, giving provincial governments considerable autonomy.
The Northern Expedition had succeeded by accepting virtually anyone willing to
throw in his lot with the Nationalists, and thus all sorts of local power holders had
been incorporated. The government and private philanthropic organizations did
sponsor some rural reconstruction projects that tried to raise the level of rural
education, create facilities for credit, encourage modern enterprises, and form
peasant associations, but gains were usually limited to small areas and short peri-
ods. Moreover, after the purge of the Communists, grass-roots reforms like land
redistribution were looked on with suspicion.
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century

LIBERATING WOMEN
Of the many social changes of the early twentieth century, the most fundamental
may be the changes in the family and women's roles in society. Assumptions about
women’s place in society that had gone unquestioned for centuries came under
concerted attack in the early decades of the century, and women began to partici-
pate in society in ways never before imagined.
Political and intellectual revolutionaries of the early twentieth century — from
Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao to Sun Zhongshan, Chen Duxiu, Lu Xun, and
Mao Zedong — all spoke out on the need to change ways of thinking about women
and their social roles. Early in the century the key issues were footbinding and
women’s education. In a short period of time, women’s seclusion and tiny feet
went from being a source of pride, a basis for asserting the superiority of Chinese
culture, to a source of embarrassment. That foreigners pointed to footbinding as
proofof the barbarity of Chinese civilization undoubtedly made modernizers even
more determined to get Chinese to give up the practice. Opponents of footbind-
ing described it as a gruesome custom that stood in the way of modernization by
crippling a large part of the Chinese population. The earliest anti-footbinding
societies, founded in the 1890s, were composed of men who would agree not only
not to bind their daughters’ feet, but even more crucially not to marry their sons
to women with bound feet. The proportion of women with natural feet steadily
increased in the early twentieth century, and after 1930 only in scattered, outlying
areas did young girls still have their feet bound, though, of course, there remained
many older women with bound feet, as it was difficult and painful to reverse the
process once agirl had reached ten or twelve.
Female political activists even began to appear, such as Qiu Jin, a woman who
became an ardent nationalist after witnessing the Boxer Rebellion and the imperi-
alist occupation of Beijing. Unhappy in her marriage, in 1904 she left her husband
and went to Japan, enrolling in girls’ vocational school but devoting most of her
time in Japan to revolutionary politics, even learning to make bombs. She also
took up feminist issues. In her speeches and essays she castigated female infanti-
cide, footbinding, arranged marriages, wife-beating, and the cult of widow
chastity; she called on women to stop submitting to oppression and to give up
attempting to please men. In 1906 she returned to Shanghai where she founded
the Chinese Women’s Journal and taught in a girls’ school. Anti-Manchu political
revolution was still her principal objective, however, and in 1907 she was exe-
cuted for her role in an abortive Nationalist uprising, making her a heroine to
many of the young.
Schools for women, like the one Qiu Jin taught at, were growing more and
more common inthis period. In 1907 the Qing government approved a national
system of women’s education. By 1910 there were over 40,000 girls’ schools in the
country, with 1.6 million students; by 1919 the figures had reached 134,000
schools and 4.5 million students. Although there were still seven times as many
280 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

boys in school as girls, girls’ opportunities had been more fundamentally altered.
After 1920 opportunities for women in higher education rapidly expanded, and
by 1935 there were more than 6,000 colleges, universities, and teachers’ colleges
admitting women, resulting in a substantial supply of women as teachers, nurses,
and civil servants in the larger cities. In the countryside, of course, change came
By the 1930s and the 1940s
much more slowly. A large-scale survey of rural households in the 1930s discov-
city residents were no longer ered that fewer than 2 per cent of the women were literate, compared to 30 per
surprised to witness women cent of the men.
students take to the streets to Women in middle and higher schools were subjected to the same bombard-
protest government actions.
ment of new ideas as their male counterparts, and were just as enthusiastic about
Here a group of female stu-
dents are photographed
whatever was new and modern, Both men and women became caught up in
protesting against the black enthusiasm for the new woman after a special issue of New Youth included a full
market in 1949. translation of Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, in which the central figure, Nora,
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century 281

decides by the play’s end to leave her husband and find her own destiny. The play
was soon being performed on stages around China, with people latching on to
lines such as ‘don’t become a man’s plaything’, ‘recognize individuality’, and
‘demand freedom’. The pursuit of personal fulfilment through love came to be
looked on as legitimate, obedience to the demands of elders as craven. Not that
people thought achievement of these new goals was easy. Ba Jin’s highly popular
novel, The Family, published in 1931, narrates the struggle of the youngest mem-
bers of an old, wealthy, scholarly family to save themselves from being crushed by
the oppression of traditional morality and traditional authority structures. Sons
and daughters and masters and servants are all shown to be equally trapped, but
the obstacles keeping the women from extricating themselves are even more for-
midable than those confronting the men.
Besides attempting to change people’s ways of thinking about parental author-
ity and women’s proper roles in society, activists fought for changes in women’s
legal status. Efforts to get the vote were generally unsuccessful. However, in the
1920s both the Nationalists and Communists organized women’s departments
and adopted resolutions calling for equal rights for women and freedom of mar-
riage and divorce. Divorce proved the trickiest issue. As Song Qingling, the widow
of Sun Zhongshan, reported, ‘If we do not grant the appeals of the women, they
lose faith in the union and in the women’s freedom we are teaching. But if we
grant the divorces, then we have trouble with the peasant’s union, since it is very
hard for a peasantto get a wife, and he has often paid much for his present unwill-
ing one.’ Once in power, the Nationalists set about drafting a new civil code,
issued in 1930. Daughters were given not onlythe right to choose their husbands
and repudiate betrothals made in their childhood by their parents, but also rights
to inherit family property equally with their brothers. Wives were given rights to
initiate divorce on nearly equal terms with their husbands. The new labour law
issued the next year ordered that women get the same pay as men when they did
the same work.
To women outside the educated class, these legal changes had a limited impact.
No campaign was undertaken to spread knowledge of the provisions of the new
marriage laws in the countryside, and getting them observed in rural areas was
never given any priority. Surveys of rural villages in the 1930s and 1940s found
not only that arranged marriage and inheritance by sons continued, but that few
people even knew that the laws had changed. Changes that did alter the lives of
working women had more to do with the growth of industrial capitalism than
with new liberal ideas about women’s equality with men. Growing industrial cities
provided many employment opportunities for women, but few of them were very
attractive. In Shanghai in 1930 over 170,000 women worked in industry, about
half in cotton mills. There were also about 50,000 prostitutes and probably as
many household servants. The typical prostitute or mill hand was a young unmar-
ried illiterate woman recruited in the countryside by labour contractors. The con-
282 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Opposite tractor would supply a small advance payment, often to the girl’s parents, and
Shanghai inthe late 1940s was would make arrangements in the city for employment, housing, and food. The
an exciting city where the new
and the old, the rich and the
women were often kept in conditions of debt servitude, and few found their situ-
ations in any way liberating. Some factory workers joined unions and engaged in
poor rubbed shoulders with
each other. Here two women strikes; others put their hopes on getting married and returning to
the patriarchal
have set themselves up to take structures that educated women were decrying as oppressive.
on mending in front of a shop
selling western hats. DEFENDING AGAINST THE JAPANESE INVASION
From the time of the May Fourth protests in 1919, Chinese patriots saw Japan as
the greatest threat to China’s sovereignty. In 1895 Japan had won Taiwan. In 1905,
after an impressive victory over Russia, it gained a dominant position in southern
Manchuria. In 1915, by applying pressure on Yuan Shikai, Japan had secured a
broad range of economic privileges. The Japanese Army in Manchuria, ostensibly
there to protect Japan’s railroads and other economic interests, was full of mili-
tarists who kept pushing Japanese civil authorities to let the army occupy the
entire area. In 1928 Japanese officers assassinated the warlord of Manchuria,
Zhang Zuolin, hoping for a crisis that would allow Japan to extend its power base.
In 1931 Japanese soldiers set off a bomb on the Southern Manchurian Railroad to
give themselves an excuse to occupy Shenyang ‘in self-defence’. China did not
attempt military resistance, but did appeal to the League of Nations, which recog-
nized China as being in the right but imposed no real sanctions on Japan. Then in
January 1932 Japan attacked Shanghai to retaliate against anti-Japanese protests.
Shanghai was by that point such an international city that the Japanese assault
was widely witnessed and widely condemned, especially the bombing of civilian
residential areas. After four months the Japanese withdrew from Shanghai, but in
Manchuria they set up a puppet regime, making the last Qing emperor the nomi-
nal head of ‘Manchukuo’.
Anger at Japanese aggression heightened Chinese nationalism and led to the
formation of national salvation leagues and boycotts of Japanese goods. Still, Jiang
Jieshi, like most military men of the day, did not see any point in putting up fight
when Japanese firepower was so clearly superior. Thinking in traditional terms
that.coupled unity and strength, Jiang assumed that all Chinese would have to be
united under one leader in order to oppose Japan — a country with only about a
fifth of China’s population. His first priority, therefore, was to rid the country of
internal enemies. It took a mutiny to compel him to change his policy. In 1936
troops that had been driven out of Manchuria by the Japanese kidnapped Jiang on
a visit to Xian, and would not release him until he agreed to form a united front
with the Communists to fight Japan.
In 1937 Jiang decided to fight when the Japanese staged another incident as an
excuse for extending their territory. Jiang was probably hoping to
inflict a quick

a
defeat to convince Japan that the Nanjing government was power to
be reckoned
with, so that they would negotiate with him rather than continue to move into
284 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century 285

China as thoughit was unoccupied, but Japan instead launched a full-scale offen-
sive sweeping south. Jiang was forced to abandon Beijing and Tianjin, but he used
his best troops to hold off the Japanese at Shanghai for three months. He asked for
an all-out stand, and his troops courageously persisted despite heavy shelling and
bombing, in the process absorbing 250,000 casualties, killed or wounded. After
Shanghai fell, the Nationalist troops streamed toward the Nationalist capital
at Nanjing. When the Japanese conquered Nanjing in December 1937, they went
on a rampage, massacring tens of thousands of civilians and fugitive soldiers,
raping at least 20,000 women, and laying the city waste. The seven weeks of
mayhem was widely reported in the foreign press, where it was labelled the Rape
of Nanking.
During the course of the next year, the Japanese secured control of all of east-
ern China and set wp puppet regimes headed by Chinese collaborators. When the
Chinese had to retreat from Kaifeng, Jiang ordered his engineers to blow up the
dykes on the Yellow River, creating a gigantic flood that engulfed more than 4,000
villages and held up the Japanese for three months. The Nationalists’ capital was
moved inland first to Wuhan, then to Chongqing, deep in Sichuan. After the
retreat to Chongqing, the war was locked into stalemate until the Japanese offen-
sive of 1944. Free China contained 60 per cent of China’s population but only 5
per cent of its industry. Chinese engineers made heroic efforts to build a new
industrial base, but constant Japanese bombing, the end of Soviet aid in 1939, and
the closing of the Burma Road in 1942 made it impossible to build a modern army
capable of driving the Japanese out of China. After 1941 American advisors and
American aid flown over ‘the Hump’ from Burma enabled Jiang to build a number
of modern divisions, but the bulk of China's five-million-man army consisted of
ill-trained, demoralized conscripts.
During the first few years after the Japanese invasion, there was some genuine
co-operation between the Communists and Nationalists. This largely ended, how-
ever, after the Communists’ New Fourth Army was attacked by the Nationalists in
January 1941 because it had not complied rapidly enough with an order to retreat
north of the Yangzi. Not only were around 3,000 troops killed in battle, but many
were shot after arrest or sent to prison camps. From this point on the Nationalists
imposed an economic blockade on the Communists’ base area in Yan’an, which
led to serious shortages of food and weapons.
In this period international alignments were shifting rapidly. Britain proved
unable to defend Hong Kong, Singapore, or Burma from Japanese invasions in
1941-42, and it became apparent that the emerging power in the Pacific was the
United States. The American-educated wife of Jiang, Song Meiling, was popular
with the American press and lobbied effectively for China. Roosevelt, looking
ahead, wished to see China become the dominant power in East Asia after the
defeat of Japan, and convinced his allies to include Jiang in major meetings of the
allies at Cairo and Yalta (though Churchill referred to the idea of making China
286 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HistOrRY OF CHINA

one of the Big Four as ‘an absolute farce’). It was as a result of this sort of geo-pol-
itics that China, so long scorned as weak and backward, became one of the five
permanent members of the United Nations’ security council after the war.

THE COMMUNIST VICTORY

The rise of the Communist Party is one of the most intensively studied subjects in
all of Chinese history. The more scholars uncover about life in the 1930s and
1940s, the more failings of the Nationalists they find: widespread government
corruption, spiralling inflation, intractable poverty, the alienation of the educated
elite, the persistence of warlordism, and so on. The accumulation of this evidence
makes the victory of the Communists seem almost adventitious: they just hap-
pened to be there as the Nationalists lost popular support. On the other hand,
scholars who have studied the Communists’ local programmes have been
impressed by the way they turned dismal rural poverty and foreign invasion into
assets, using them to convince villagers that radical change was imperative and
the Communist Party was best qualified to institute it. Seen in this light, the vic-
tory of the Communists seems almost foreordained, the result of superior strategy
and organizational methods. Then again, research into internal Communist Party
politics has revealed the importance of Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung, 1893-1976)
as a master tactician who almost single-handedly transformed the party into a
potent weapon, responsive to
his will. There is probably truth to
all three of these
perspectives; if the Nationalists had been more successful, the Communist Party,
no matter what its
internal organization or external strategies, would not have
been able to bring revolution to China; but the sort of revolution that came to
China was powerfully shaped by the ideas, experiences, and personality of Mao
Zedong and the policies for training cadres and mobilizing peasants that he suc-
ceeded in getting established.
Mao was from a farming family in Hunan; his mother was illiterate and his
father, a hard worker, was slowly able to build up his holdings to the point where
he could be classed as a rich peasant. Mao rose through the emerging modern
school system, going to the provincial capital, Changsha, for middle school and
teachers’ college. On graduation, he travelled to Beijing where he worked in the
library of Beijing University and participated in Li Dazhao’s Marxist discussion
groups. Heeding Li’s call for educated youth to go to the countryside to organize
peasants, he returned to Hunan. He was the Hunan delegate to
the first
meeting of
the Communist Party in Shanghai in 1921. Through the 1920s he concentrated on
rural work.
After the Nationalist purges of 1927-28, those Communists who had survived
scattered, some going underground in major cities, other seeking rural bases far
from Nationalist strongholds. The party had to assess its mistakes and decide
what to do next. Chen Duxiu was made the scapegoat and purged from positions
of authority for opportunism, though in fact he had merely been following direc-
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century

tives from the Comintern. Mao led a few thousand men into the mountains along
the Hunan—Jiangxi border where they soon joined other Communists to form the
Jiangxi Soviet. They set up a government that gained the support of the peasants
by redistributing land and promoting social programmes like family reform. In
the autumn of 1932 they were joined by the Central Committee of the Commu-
nist Party, which had finally been forced to flee Shanghai. The very real dangers
the Communists faced in these years were compounded by fears of spies and con-
spiracies, intensified by the presence of Soviet agents who brought with them the
mentality that had resulted in Stalin’s factional struggles and purges. Between
1928 and 1935 the Chinese Communist Party killed thousands of its own adher-
ents in purges or betrayals to the Nationalists.
After several years battling the Nationalist armies sent to destroy them, the
Communist Party had to give up the Jiangxi Soviet, having been thoroughly
defeated in the fifth of the ‘extermination campaigns’. In October 1934, 80,000
Communist soldiers, cadres, porters, and followers broke out of the Nationalists’
encirclement. This was the start of the much mythologized Long March insearch
of a new base area. Most wives and children, as well as over 20,000 wounded
troops, had to be left behind. For a year the Red Army and party command
columns kept retreating, fighting almost all the time, suffering enormous casual-
ties. By the time they had found an area where they could establish a new base,
they had marched almost 6,000 miles. They had crossed south and southwest
China and then turned north to reach Shaanxi. Only about 8,000 of the original
Red Army made it the whole way, though some new recruits and Communists
from other base areas had joined en route to bring the total to nearly 20,000. For
the next decade the Communist Party made its base at Yan’an,
acity in central
Shaanxi where homes were often built by cutting caves into the loess soil cliffs.
This group of survivors came to see themselves as men of destiny, with a near
sacred mission to remake China.
When the American journalist Edgar Snow visited Yan’an in 1936, the sur-
vivors of the Long March appeared to him to be an earthy group of committed
patriots and egalitarian social reformers, full of optimism and purpose. They lived
in caves, ate simple food, and showed no disdain for the peasants whom they were
mobilizing to fight against the Japanese. During the war, too, outside observers
were impressed with the unselfish commitment to group goals of the Yan’an
forces. This image of the leaders of the Yan’an soviet as a solidary group of battle-
toughened but warm-hearted and idealistic revolutionaries was cultivated in
China as well all through Mao’s lifetime, to inspire dedication in the young.
Most of Mao’s most famous writings date from the Yan’an period, adding to
its
lustre. During the early years at Yan’an, Mao had time to read Marxist and Lenin-
ist works and began giving lectures at party schools in which he spelled out his
version of Chinese history, the party’s history, and Marxist theory. Neither Marx
nor Lenin had seen much revolutionary potential in peasants, viewing them as
288 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

petty capitalist in mentality, and in Russia the party had

seized power in
an urban setting. Since in China the Com-
munists had failed in the cities, Mao needed to reinterpret
Marxist theory in such a way that the peasants could be
seen as the vanguard of the revolution. Indeed Mao came
more and more toglorify the peasants as the true masses
and elaborate the theory of the ‘mass line’: party cadres
had to go among the
peasant masses and learn from them
before they could become their teachers. Everyone at
Yan’an had to study Mao’s writings in small study groups,
acquiring a vocabulary and conceptual framework that
united them and strengthened their sense of purpose.
Since Mao’s death in 1976, another side of this period of
party history has been revealed. The ‘Thought of Mao
Zedong’ did not win out in a free competition of ideas
among the survivors of the Long March, but in a brutal
power struggle in which Mao proved a master tactician,
able to eliminate his rivals one after the other, getting the
central committee to label them deviationists of the right
or left, that is, opportunists or adventurists. Moreover, it
was not just study of Mao’s writings that united the grow-
ing collection of students and activists who gravitated to
Yan’an, but an extraordinarily potent technique of
intellec-
tual and moral remoulding perfected during ‘rectifica-
the

tion campaign’ of 1942-43. Everyone able to read was

swept up in an intense drama, starting with close discus-
sion of assigned texts, then moving on to personal confes-
At the soviet base in Jiangxi, sions and struggle sessions. Everyone watched the dramatic public humiliations
Mao Zedong was active in of the principal targets, including the party theorist Wang Ming and the writer
pushing land reform. He is Wang Shiwei. People learned to interpret any deviation from Mao’s line as defects
shown here addressing peas-
in their thinking due to subjectivism and liberalism, characteristics of their petty
ants at a meeting in 1933.
bourgeois background. One man, for instance, who confessed to being bothered
by the party elite’s special privileges (such as getting to ride on horseback while
others walked) was taught that liberal ideas elevating the individual over the col-
lective lay behind his feelings. Many of those invited to overcome their errors
truly developed a new collective consciousness that greatly increased their use-
fulness to the party. Others, by contrast, simply learned to be more circumspect
when they talked.
At least as important to the Communists’ victory was its success in building a
base of popular support. The Japanese invasion proved a perfect opportunity in
this regard. In areas of north China where the Japanese armies had penetrated,
peasants were ready to be mobilized against the Japanese. They hated the Japan-
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century 289

The 8,000-odd survivors of the

Long March became the core
of the Communist Party lead-
ership for the following
decades. Depicted here in
Shaanxi in 1938 are (left to
right) Peng Dehuai, Zhu De,
Feng Xuefen, Xiao Ke, and
Deng Xiaoping.

ese for seizing women for prostitution and men for forced labour levies and espe-
cially for their ‘three all’ policy of retaliating against resistance by ‘killing all, burn-
ing all, looting all’.
Since the Japanese forces were stretched thin, occupying major cities and
towns and guarding railway lines, there was plenty of room for resistance forces to
hide and conduct guerrilla operations. These resistance forces were not exclu-
sively communist. Patriotic urban students fled to these relatively uncontested
rural areas where they helped both Nationalist and Communist resistance forces.
The Communists, however, were particularly successful in gaining control of the
social, political, and economic life in villages because they gave peasants what
they wanted: an army of friendly troops who not only did not steal their crops but
helped them bring in the harvest and who implemented popular but gradual eco-
nomic reforms. Even without much confiscation of land, considerable redistribu-
tion was accomplished by imposing graduated taxes in such a waythat larger
landholders voluntarily sold land because it was no longer profitable. Class strug-
gle was not emphasized in this period. Larger landowners were more than wel-
come to help with forming and supplying militia forces, and educated youth from
better-off families were recruited as party members. Party propagandists taught
villagers songs to stir patriotic passions and glorify the Soviet Union. They also
290 THE CAMBRIDGE LLLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

oxen pig sack of flour hen eggs piece of sheet of

e<j
coal paper
ft

_-
wey
-
1943 1945 1947 1949

Urban populations became held meetings, leading rural folk in Hebei to quip ‘Under the Nationalists, too
increasingly disenchanted
many taxes; under the Communists, too many meetings.’ People were indoctri-
with the Nationalist govern-
nated with the message that they could build a better, more egalitarian future by
ment asit failed to control
inflation in the 1940s. The working together with each other and accepting the leadership of the party.
decline in the purchasing The end of the war with Japan laid the stage for the final confrontation. When
power of 100 Chinese dollars Japan surrendered after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August
is represented graphically in
1945, there were over a million Japanese troops in China proper and nearly
this political cartoon,
another million in Manchuria, as well as about 1,750,000 Japanese civilians. Dis-
arming and repatriating them took months, as the Nationalists, the Communists,
the Americans, the Russians, and even some warlords jockeyed for position. The
United States airlifted 110,000 Nationalist troops to key coastal cities like Shang-
hai and Guangzhou, and American troops were sent to help secure Beijing and
Tianjin. The Russians entered Manchuria in early August in fulfilment of their
secret promise to the United States and Britain to join the eastern front three
months after victory in Europe. They dismantled as much as they could of the
Japanese industrial plant to take back to the Soviet Union, but did help the Red
Army by seeing to it that large stores of Japanese weapons got into their hands.

a
For over year, until January 1947, the United States made efforts to avert civil
war by trying to convince Jiang to establish a government in which opposition
parties could participate. When these efforts failed, full-scale civil war between
the Communists and the Nationalists ensued. The unpopularity of the National-
ists was soon apparent. Unchecked inflation had so alienated those living in cities
that they wanted the government thrown out. Moreover, Nationalist army officers
and soldiers were widely seen as seizing whatever they could for themselves
rather than working for the common good. As a result, to most people’s surprise,
the civil war was over in less than two years of actual fighting. The Nationalists
were defeated militarily even though they had started with much more the wayin
of modern armaments and several times the number of troops. Jiang Jieshi and
much of his army and government retreated to Taiwan and re-established their
government there.

Little of what China experienced in the first half of the twentieth century was
unique to China. In most other Asian societies, including Japan, the educated
similarly struggled with the contradictions between nationalism and modernity,
Taking Action: The Early Twentieth Century 29)

trying to create a new culture that could incorporate elements of modern science
and western social and political ideologies while enhancing rather than under-
mining pride in their own national identity. There were analogies between China's ©

experience and those of countries colonized by western powers, such as India,

Vietnam, and Indonesia, in that the privileged position of the westerners aroused
enormous resentment and feelings of injustice. Several other old states were torn
apart by social revolutions in the early twentieth century; the comparison with
Russia is undoubtedly the most striking. China even shared experiences with
some of the most economically advanced countries of Europe, including those
like Germany and Austria that witnessed the abolition of once powerful monar-
chies, and the many who lived through the destructive power of modern warfare

I
during World War or IL.
These correspondences are not simply coincidences but evidence that Chinese
history had entered a new phase, becoming integrated into global history to a
degree never before true. The course of Chinese history during the nineteenth
century can be analysed in terms of what was indigenous and what was external,
between what was sparked by something foreign and what came entirely from
within China’s own culture and society. By the early twentieth century, such dis-
tinctions become increasingly meaningless. It was Chinese who were making Chi-
nese history, but these Chinese were struggling to fashion meaningful lives in an
environment where national boundaries had become increasingly porous, letting
in goods, people, and ideas, all of which interacted in complex ways with what
was already there. No region of China was so isolated that it totally escaped the
impactof the political struggles between the Nationalists and Communists or the
war with Japan, all of which had roots in events that occurred outside China.
There were, it is true, people who strove to keep some domain of their lives free
of anything foreign; some artists and intellectuals, for instance, did their best to
preserve distinctively Chinese art forms like Beijing opera or ink painting. Para-
doxically, the passion with which such cultural patriots erected barriers against
foreign influence can be taken as further evidence of how overpowering the global
context had become in shaping Chinese life.
 ta time when most intellectuals laid the nineteenth century. The
out in Below left
were transforming their fields preeminent painter of the first quarter is
The influence of calligraphy readily
E. through growing contact with of the twentieth century was Wu apparent in
this depiction of a tangled
their western Changshi (1844-1927), a man of literati mass of plum branches, painted ona
counterparts, Chinese
painters were creating a highly suc- background who had established a repu- hanging scroll by Wu Changshi in 1915,
cessful modern art form that owed a tation as a poet, calligrapher, and seal- aged seventy, when he was living in
great deal more to native roots than to carver before he turned to painting. In Shanghai.
foreign influence. his plum, flower, and bamboo paintings,
In the second half of the nineteenth he adopted the style of the masters of Below

century, as Shanghai grew into the the Shanghai school, but Chinese con- Xu Peiheng had been back from Europe

largest, richest, and most vibrant city in noisseurs also detect in his brushwork a for four years when he painted this
China, the artists who congregated rooster in 1940.
there perfected bold, colourful styles
that appealed both to traditionally edu- ys
cated scholars and the emerging com- AER
mercial elite. The art of this Shanghai
school was modern in
that it responded RH poaarsy

to the taste of the time, but it was: not.:

an art that rebelled against the past. The re
possibilities inherent in.both the old and Ge

the new were explored; conservative BESTT

landscape. paintings were as popular as

iconoclastic bird and flower paintings; <-
archaic calligraphy styles were incorpo-.
rated into painting at the same time as
RN
artists were experimenting with western
—

techniques of shading to achieve more

photographic facial likenesses. EL
In the early twentieth century oppor-

tunities. in the art. world expanded Be eg

rapidly. New printing techniques made co

possible much better reproductions,

which the booming publishing industry he
quickly exploited, issuing art books and
magazines in profusion. The establish-
—
Shel
ment of art schools changed the ways
painters mastered their art, allowing
them to study with more than just one
_

Beep

master and even to learn western tech- win

=
niques. The opening. of the Palace
a
Museum in Beijing in 1925 a lowed the
~

ees
public to view masterpieces long hidden’
-

away by the Qing emperors. Selling Sy

~ paintings through public exhibitions at.
commercial galleries became common. a PAIAwa

practice, adding both to the public's -

access to art and to the artists’ means of : ~,

earning living.
Stylistically, however, Chinese paint: ets

ing continued to develop. in directions

 strength self-confidence derived
and. painter of undistinguished origins who» homely pubic such as mice, “shrimp,
from his years of calligraphy practice. lived in the brothel district of Shanghai, ~eraos, and: fruit: and Wang- Yiting
The: next generation. of painters, Qi Baishi (1863-1957}, who began:as a (1866- 1938), a successful Shanghai
coming of age in the twentieth century, carpenter but found an eager audience merchant and lay. Buddhist who painted
could not be quite as oblivious as Wu for his inventive, playful-paintings. of asa hobby.
Changshi to alternatives to traditional
modes of painting. Still, evén those who.
Right
went abroad to study art did not neces-
Qi Baishi’s whimsical, almost folksy
i
sarily turn against Chinese materials,. LE
-

paintings were immensely popular in how

techniques, or aesthetics. Xu Peiheng SAY
both China and Japan. The inscription.
(1893-1953) went to. Europe to learn
. :

realistic, academic painting techniques,

on this one, painted in 1935, reports ERPVN
that it was painted bycandlelight one
seeing in them an antidote to the repe-
tition and imitation he disliked in Chi- night when the artist returned hometo
find everyone asleep except the mice GRRE BIN
ARK
a book. t
nese. painting. ‘Yet, after eight. years who were
studying painting in Paris and Berlin, he perusing
—
Ay
came back to perfect a style that made

=
£2
use of Chinese media and drew heavily.
from Chinese painting traditions. S
ED
role |in Fue.
~- Nationalistic pride played a
So
Baoshi's (1904- 1965) efforts to develop:
distinctively Chinese ‘modern painting.
The son of an umbrella--repairer, Fu
‘a struggling student. when Xu Peiheng
was
noticed him and helped him get to Japan
to study at the imperial Art College in
i
.

Tokyo. There his teacher told. him: it was”

-ridi¢ulous fora Chinese. to. come. tol:
Japan to learn Chiinese painting. ‘Chic.
“nese ink painting iS the greatest and
highest. form art in the. world. It is
of
your enviable national treasure, handed
down from your. ancestors. Fu then
-
> turned to the study¢of Chinese art his-
‘tory, and on his return to China in 1936 |
was.appointed to. the. faculty of the art”
department of. National Central. Uni er-
_

sity in Nanjing, then headed by Xu. Pei-

heng. In the highly esteemed landscapes

eo
«

and figures he. painted through the for-

__

ties and fifties, Fu celebrated C ina’s

history, geography nd
artistic traditions. a a
Not all important painters. in.the
early twentieth century came as close toe:
the old. scholar-pain er ideal asWu
Changshi, Xu Peiheng, and Fu Baoshi. —
: Among those who. “successfully painted a
in Shanghai--school ‘styles close to Wu.
=q
hat

Changshi' 5 were PuHua (1834- 7911), a

 Tue CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

CHAPTER ll Radical Reunification:

China Since 1949
held
With the victory of the Communists in the civil war, China was once again
together by a powerful central government. Committed to a more egalitarian
social and economic order, Mao Zedong and other leaders of the Communist
would empowerpeasants and
Party set about to fashion a new China, one that
and for-
workers and limit the influence of landlords, capitalists, intellectuals,
that struggle, revolution,
eigners. New values were heralded: people were taught
bad.
and change were good while compromise, deference, and tradition were
Wealth and power were redistributed on a vast scale. Massive modernization pro-
schools, hospitals, and reser-
jects were begun and soon new factories, railroads,
voirs were transforming the landscape of China. Ordinary life was politicized in
how their children
unprecedented ways; what farmers would produce, where and
where they
would be educated, what they might read in books and newspapers,
could live or travel, all came increasingly under political control.
The Communist Party’s efforts at refashioning China entered a more
radical

phase after the launching of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, then a more moder-
ate phase after the death of Mao in 1976. In the 1980s
the intrusion of the gov-
ernment and party into daily life abated, leaving people more
leeway to
get on
increased
with their lives in their own ways. Not only did the government permit
market activity and private enterprise, but it began courting foreign investment
and sending students abroad. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the economy
grew at a spectacularrate, and it
became more and more difficult for the govern-
ment to cut China off from global cultural trends.

IMPOSING CONTROL
The Communist Party came to power through a civil war that almost amounted to
in north China, where the
a plebiscite. Because of the support of the population
party had been active for a decade and where key it
battles took place, was able to
actual
defeat the better-equipped Nationalist armies in less than two years of
the estab-
fighting. On 1 October 1949 Mao Zedong as party leader proclaimed
lishment of the People’s Republic of China.
By 1949 the Communist Party was experienced at taking control of rural areas.
Cities, however, were a new challenge. As the Red Army
entered cities its peasant
soldiers clamped down on vice — ending looting and rounding up beggars, prosti-
re-educated and set to productive
tutes, opium addicts and petty criminals to be
work: Through street committees they tried to rid the cities of what they saw as
decadence — flashy clothes and provocative hairstyles, for instance. But urban
and tax-
institutions like factories, railways, universities, newspapers, law courts,
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 295

collecting stations could not simply be shut down, nor could they easily be run by
model of the Soviet
peasant soldiers. The party wanted to reorganize China on the
Union and needed to keep open these modern institutions so that the transition
The People’s Republic of
could proceed in an orderly way.
In terms of formal political organization, the Soviet Union's model was fol-
China is organized into
twenty-two provinces, five
lowed, though in contrast to the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet autonomous regions (for the
Union, China had a ‘people’s democratic dictatorship’, which included rich peas- Tibetan, Uighur, Mongolian,
ants, the national bourgeoisie, and others in a united front. Some high posts the in Muslim, and Zhuang nationali-

government were given to non-Communists in an attempt win broad support. to ties), and three independent

The people as a whole were represented by a hierarchy irregularly scheduled of municipalities (Beijing,
Tianjin, and Shanghai). The
People’s Representative Congresses convened at each level from the village up to country’s exact boundaries
the National People’s Congress. Real power lay with the Communist Party, how- are still in dispute in
ever. By the end of the 1950s there were more than a million branch party com- several places.

The People’s Republic RUSSIAN FEDERATION Amur/Ussuri 1960 }

of China territorial dispute 7}

with Russia et

KAZAKHSTAN

MONGOLIA
4 Whigs KYRGYZSTAN
@

4a boos
Urumai
XINJIANG
Uighur Autonomous
Region
PAKISTAN
aS
TES, NINGXIA
x
oa

Aksai Chin 1962

occupied by China,
claimed by India

TIBET

Occupied 1950;
revolt suppressed
iy ELhasa
NE |i;

INDIA Quemoy and

Matsu disputed®..
with ‘Taiwan

GUANGXI
aiwan:seat of (Nationalist)
epublic of China since. 1949

Hong Kong: British Crown Colony

since 1842; scheduled.to become
cao: Portuguese enclave. Special Administrative Region of
Arunuchal Pradesh since 1557; scheduled to China.in 1997
1962 occupied by india, become'a Special Sg
claimed by China Administrative Region of
China in.1999.
Paracel Is
>rder dispute
disputed
THAILAND Sewith Vietnam Me claim

i“4
be

;
Chinese provinces
‘ :
®
a
Provincial capital
: 4
Territorial and border dispute

Autonomous region (Zizhiqu) & Special Economic Zone

 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

mittees in villages, factories, schools, army units, and

other organizations. Each party committee sent delegates
up to higher units, including county and province com-
mittees, leading up to the three top tiers, the Central Com-
mittee with around a hundred members, the politburo
with around a dozen members, and its standing commit-
tee, which in 1949 consisted of Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi,
Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Chen Yun and was subsequently
expanded to include Deng Xiaoping. Within the standing
committee Mao Zedong was recognized as the paramount
leader; his image adorned buildings and his pronounce-
ments were treated almost like those of an emperor.
The Communist Party’s economic goals required that
the economy be both revived and restructured. The new
government promptly took over the banks and got hold of
money and credit. Within a year it had brought inflation
under control, an impressive achievement. Building on the
Nationalists’ wartime industrial policies, the new govern-
ment took control of key industries, including the railways
and foreign trade. The Five-Antis campaign of 1951~2 was
Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai launched to weed out the least co-operative of the capitalists still controlling pri-
travelled to Moscow soon after vate enterprises. With much fanfare people were mobilized to accuse merchants
the establishment ofthe Peo-
and manufacturers of bribery, tax evasion, theft of state assets, cheating in labour
ple’s Republic. They are
or materials, or stealing state economic secrets. In the single month of April 1952,
shown here with Stalin, con-
cluding a treaty of friendship 70,000 Shanghai businessmen were investigated and criticized. Family members
and economic co-operation. and friends were often induced to a
join in attacking those accused, tactic that led
Although this
treaty was to intense feelings of betrayal. Once the businessmen confessed, they had to pay
signed, Mao felt that Stalin
restitution, which often meant turning over all their assets. The party thus
had not shown him proper
secured control of more factories, often retaining the former owners as govern-
courtesy.
ment-paid managers. Many small manufacturing plants, stores, and restaurants
remained in private hands, but gradually the government came to dominate them
by controlling supplies and labour.
Expanding heavy industry was seen as the key step tolifting China out of
poverty. Mao spent nine weeks in Moscow inearly 1950, negotiating a treaty that
called for Soviet loans and technical assistance to help with industrialization.
Before long over 20,000 Chinese trainees went to the USSR and some 10,000
Russian technicians came to China to help set up 156 Soviet-designed heavy
industrial plants. To pay for these projects, agriculture was heavily taxed, again on
the Soviet model. According to the five-year plan put into effect for the
years 1953
to 1957, output of steel was to be quadrupled, output of power and cement dou-
bled. Consumer goods, however, were to be increased at much lower rates — cot-
ton piece goods byless than half, grain by less than a fifth.
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949

The new government did not have even a year to get its new structures and
policies in place before it was embroiled in a war in Korea. After World War IL,
Korea had ended up with the USSR dominant above the 38th parallel and the
United States below it. In June 1950 the north attacked the south, probably on
Stalin’s urgings, since Kim I] Song, the north’s leader, was Stalin’s protégé. US
forces, fighting under the flag, came to the south’s defence and in early Octo-
UN

ber crossed the 38th parallel and headed toward the Yalu River, the border
between North Korea and China. With an enemy approaching its border, the Chi-
nese government found it could not demobilize its armies as planned. ‘Volun-
teers’, under the command of Peng Dehuai, began to cross the river secretly. In
late November they surprised the Americans and soon forced them to retreat
south of Seoul. Altogether, more than 2,500,000 troops were sent to Korea, as well
as all of China’s tanks and over half its artillery and aircraft. A stalemate followed,
but peace talks dragged on until 1953, largely because China wanted all prisoners
repatriated but 14,000 begged not to be sent back.
This war raised the legitimacy of the Communist Party in China: China had
‘stood up’ and beaten back the imperialists. But the costs were huge. Not only
were the casualties enormous, but the war eliminated many chances for gradual
reconciliation, both internal and external. The United States, now viewing China
in Cold War terms, imposed an economic embargo and sent the seventh fleet to
patrol the waters between China and Taiwan. American protection effectively
guaranteed that the Nationalists would be able to survive as bitter opponents of
the Communist regime. China began to
vilify the United States as its prime enemy
and outof fear of espionage expelled most of the remaining western missionaries
and businessmen.
A worse fate awaited those who had served in the Nationalist government or

army, now suspected of being enemy agents. A campaign of 1951 against such
‘counter-revolutionaries’ resulted in the execution of tens or hundreds of thou-
sands, and similar numbers were sent to harsh labour reform camps. This cam-
paign was also used to disarm the population; over 500,000 rifles were collected
in Guangdong province alone.

COLLECTIVIZING AGRICULTURE
In the 1940s, one out of every six people in the world was a Chinese peasant. The
lives of these hundreds of millions of people were soon to be radically altered by
the progressive collectivization of land and the creation of a new local elite of
rural cadres. As the Communist Party took control of new areas it taught peasants
a new way to look on
the
old order. Social and economic inequalities were not nat-
ural, but a perversion caused by the institution of private property; the old literati
elite were not scholars who acted according to elevated moral principles, but the
cruellest of exploiters, content to pressure their tenants to the point where they
had to sell their children. To replace that antiquated ‘feudal’ order, the party
298 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HisTORY OF CHINA

brought a vision of a communal order where all would work together unselfishly
for common goals.
Fortwenty years the party had been redistributing land wherever it
established
bases, but its methods and approaches varied depending on the political exigen-
cies of the moment. On some occasions, hostility was minimized, on others it was
stirred up as a way to generate enthusiasm the part of the poorest. Typically, the
on

party would send in a small team of cadres and students to a village to cultivate
relations with the poor, organize a peasant association, identify potential leaders
from among the poor peasants, compile lists of grievances, and organize struggles
against those most resented. Eventually the team would supervise the classifica-
tion of the inhabitants as landlords (those who lived off the rents of their lands),
rich peasants (those who rented out some land but worked the rest themselves),
middle peasants (those who worked their own land without the help of tenants or
hired hands), poor peasants (tenants and owners of small plots who also rented or
worked for wages), and hired hands (those with no land who worked for wages).
The analysis of class was supposed to be
scientific, but application of the rules was
not always straightforward. Many people felt uncomfortable classifying as
exploiters widows who rented out their meagre holdings because they were inca-
pable of working them themselves and the somewhat better-off families of veter-
ans, or, for that matter, classifying as hired hands those who
had been reduced
to
working for others only after wasting their inheritance through gambling or
opium addiction. But once a moral dimension was added to the classification
process, it created room for manoeuvring, for helping friends and getting back at
enemies. In some villages there really was not much of a surplus to redistribute;
in others there was a reservoir of ill-will from previous conflicts unrelated to land
ownership that complicated matters. At times terror tactics were employed, espe-
cially to try to get those labelled landlords or rich peasants to reveal where they
had buried their gold. Landlords and rich peasants faced not only loss of their
land, but also punishment for past offences. How many were executed is uncer-
tain; estimates range from hundreds of thousands totens of millions. Another
result of the class-struggle stage of land reform was the creation of a caste-like sys-
tem in the countryside. The lowest caste was composed of the descendants of
those labelled landlords, while the descendants of former poor and lower-middle
peasants became a privileged class.
Redistribution of land was only the first step toward reorganizing the country-
side. Agricultural collectivization followed in several stages. First farmers were
encouraged to join mutual-aid teams, then to set up co-operatives. The members
of co-operatives pooled resources and were compensated on the basis of their
inputs of land, tools, animals, and labour. In the ‘old liberated areas’ in north
China this was accomplished in the early forties; in south China these measures
were initiated during the period 1950 to 1953. From 1954 to 1956 a third stage

was pushed — higher-level collectives that amalgamated co-operatives and did

Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 299

away with compensation for anything other than labour. Most of these higher- During the land reform cam-
level co-operatives (labelled ‘production teams’ from 1958 to 1978) were old vil- paigns of the late forties and
early fifties, poor peasants,
lages or parts of large villages. Once higher-level co-operatives were in place,
even women as depicted here,
economic inequality within villages had all but been eliminated. were encouraged to speak out
As collectivization progressed, the Chinese state took over control of the grain against landlords who had
market. After taking 5 to 10 per cent of each collective’s harvest as a tax, it allowed exploited them. At such meet-
the unit to retain a meagre subsistence ration per person, then purchased a share ings, landlords not only had
their land confiscated, but
of the ‘surplus’ at prices it set. In 1951-52. as a by-product of the Five-Antis cam-
were frequently beaten, even
paign, interregional commerce was redefined as criminal speculation, an extreme executed.
formof capitalist exploitation. Trade was taken over by the state and rural markets
withered. Many peasants lost crucial sideline income; this was especially true in
many of the poorer areas where peasants had made ends meet by operating such
 300 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HistorY OF CHINA

Collectivization of agriculture small enterprises as oil presses, paper mills, or rope factories. Carpenters and
and mobilization of labour led
to a much greater participa-
craftsmen who used to travel far and wide became chained
their trades
tothe land, unable to
practise except in their own localities.
tion of women in agricultural
Reorganization of the countryside created a new elite of rural cadres. Policy
work. By 1965, the dateof this
photograph, women were per- may have been made at upper reaches ofthe party, by Mao’s whims
or through
forming around half the struggles between different lines and different factions, but the way policy shifts
lower-skilled farm labour in
were experienced by ordinary people depended on the personal qualities of the
many areas; by the late 1980s,
by which time opportunities
lowest level of party leaders who now had
power over
almost every
facet
of
their
for men outside of farming lives. In villages, team leaders were generally local residents who had been
had expanded, women were selected for any of a number of reasons. In some villages, middle peasants who
often doing considerably more
than half the field labour. a
could read and write, keep books, and knew lot about farming rose to leadership
positions. In others village, toughs from the poorest families rose because of the
zeal they showed in class struggle against the former landlords or rich peasants.
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 301

To get ahead, a team leader had to be energetic in producing a substantial surplus

to serve the needs of the revolution; on the other hand, to keep the members of
his team motivated, he had to make sure too much was not taken away. His suc-
cess depended on
hisskill in ingratiating himself with both sides and stretching
the truth when needed. As units were urged to consolidate and enlarge, rural
cadres had to spend much of their time motivating members and settling squab-
bles among them.
Team leaders and other local activists had opportunities to rise in the party
hierarchy, creating social mobility way beyond anything that had existed in impe-
rial China. The party grew steadily, from 2.7 million members in 1947 to 6.1 mil-
lion in 1953 and 17 million in 1961. Many of these party members were poor
peasants had joined
who the Red Army or emerged as activists in various political
campaigns.

NEW CHINA
The aspirations of Mao and the other Communist leaders were not limited to
restructuring the social organization of production. Chinese culture and the Chi-
nese state were both to be transformed as well. China’s new leaders called their
victory in the civil war ‘the liberation’. The Chinese people had been freed from
the yoke of the past and now could rebuild China as a new, modern, socialist, egal-
itarian, forward-looking nation. China would no longerbe shunted to the margins
of world history, but would regain its rightful place in the centre. It would demon-
strate to the world the potential of socialism to lift the masses out of poverty and
create a better form of human community. Tiananmen Square combines
Spreading these ideas was the mission of propaganda departments and teams,
some of thefinest surviving
architecture from the Qing
which quickly took over the publishing industry. Schools and colleges were also
period with huge buildings
put under party supervision, with a Soviet-style Ministry of Education issuing and spaces directly inspired
directives concerning such curricular matters as the textbooks to
use for Chinese by the example of the
history and the promotion of the ‘common’ language as a standard dialect. Soviet Union.
302 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Numerous mass organizations were set up, including street committees cities,in

the Youth League, Women’s Federation, and Labour Union Federation. Party
workers who organized meetings of these groups were simultaneously to learn
from the masses, keep an eye on them, and get them on theside of new policies.
They decorated meeting halls and other buildings with banners and posters pro-
claiming party slogans. In the early 1950s, these efforts at mobilization and pro-
paganda met with considerable success. People began giving their children
names that testified to their patriotic hopes, names like ‘Build China’ or ‘Make the
Nation Flourish’.
New China needed symbols of its rebirth. The old city of Beijing was given a
new look to match its status as capital of New China. In the late 1950s the huge
walls around Beijing were torn down because they impeded traffic. At the same
time the area south of the old imperial palace was cleared of buildings, creating
room for the world’s largest square, Tiananmen Square, soon to be the site of huge
May Day and National Day rallies. On either side of this square two huge Soviet-
style buildings were erected, the Great Hall of the People and the Museum of Chi-
nese History. In the very centre was placed a 100-foot-tall stone Monument tothe
Martyrs of the People, decorated with carved reliefs depicting heroic revolution-
aries of the past century. Neither monuments nor squares had been a part of old
China’s cities; the ‘international’ socialist style, adopted to update China’s look,
introduced elements of western art, architecture and urban planning.
The pervasive attack on the old was extended to many features of traditional
culture: much of traditional religion was labelled feudal superstition, as were
social customs such as deference to superiors and women’s deference to men. The
state endorsed the goal of women’s equality and promoted reform of family and
marriage practices (as the Jiangxi and Yan’an soviets had done earlier). In 1950
the Marriage Reform Law granted young people the right to choose their marriage
partners, wives the rightto initiate divorce, and wives and daughters the right to
inherit property. The provisions of these laws did not go a lot further than the
Nationalists’ Civil Code of 1930, but they had a considerably greater impact
because campaigns were launched to publicize them and to assure women of
party support if they refused a marriage arranged by their parents or left an
unbearable husband or mother-in-law. During first five years of the newlaw,
the

several million marriages were dissolved, most at the request of the wife. This
campaign should not, of course, get full credit for changes in the Chinese family
system, for many other forces contributed to undermining the old family, such as
the drastic shrinkage of family property as a result of collectivization of land and
appropriation of business assets, the entry of more children into schools and mass
organizations like the Youth League and Young Pioneers, the mobilization of
women in large numbers into the workforce, and the public appearance of more
women in positions of authority, ranging from street committees to university
faculties and the upper echelons of the party.
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 303

CHINA AS A MULTI-NATIONAL STATE

Old China had been an empire; new China was proclaimed to be a multi-national
state. Officially, at least, the old view of China as the civilizing centre, gradually
attracting, acculturating, and absorbing non-Chinese peoples along its frontiers
a
was replaced by vision of distinct but equal ethnic groups joined in a collabora-
tive state. ‘Han’ was promoted as the correct term for the ethnic group; ‘Chinese’
would be stretched to encompass all ethnic groups in the People’s Republic.
The policy of multi-nationality can be seen as another instance of imitating the
Soviet Union, which had devised it as the best way, in an age of nationalism, to
justify retaining all the lands acquired by the czar in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries. For China the model similarly provided a way
dominion Tibet and
to justify reassert-
ing over Xinjiang, which had been attached to the Qing but
had broken away after the collapse of the dynasty in 1911. (Mongolia had fallen
away as well, but under the Soviet Unions influence it had established a commu-
nist government in the 1920s, so China did not challenge its independence.)
Identifying and labelling China’s minority nationalities became a major state
project in the fifties. Stalin had enunciated a nationalities policy with four criteria
for establishing a group as a ‘nationality’: common language, common territory, a
common economic life, and a common psychological make-up manifested in
common cultural traits. Using these criteria, Chinese linguists and social scien-
tists investigated over 400 groups requesting recognition, rejecting most as local
sub-branches of larger ethnic groups, and ending up with more than fifty recog-
nized minority nationalities. There were a few clear cases of distinct nationalities
like the Tibetans and Uighurs who spoke distinct languages and lived in distinct
territories. But there were many more ambiguous cases ranging from the Hui, Chi-
nese-speaking Muslims scattered throughout the country, to the Zhuang of
Guangxi who had long been quite sinified, to those labelled Miao, spread out over
many provinces whose unity depended more on Han folk categories than their
own sense of identity, to small tribal groups of a few thousand people in the hills
of the southwest. In cases where a particular minority dominated a region (from
county to province in size), the region could be recognized as ‘autonomous’, giv-
ing it the right to use its own language in schools and government offices. Tibet,
Xinjiang, Ningxia, Guangxi, and Inner Mongolia were all made autonomous
regions (for the Tibetan, Uighur, Hui, Zhuang and Mongol peoples, respectively)
and large parts of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou were declared autonomous dis-
tricts of the Zhuang, Miao, Yi, and other minorities. Officially, all of these regions
are glad to be part of the grand multi-national People’s Republic of China, and by
1957 400,000 members of minority groups had been recruited as party members.
Thereis plenty of evidence, however, that satisfaction has been far from universal,
especially in the case of Tibet. In Tibet, incorporation was resisted in 1950, a
revolt was staged in 1959, and protests and other forms of resistance have
recurred with some frequency ever since.
as
304 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Linguistic and ethnic RUSSIAN FEDERATION

diversity in China today.
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The citizens of the People’s Republic of China speak many lan- tones, Cantonese has twelve. Traditionally, the major way the
guages. Nearly a billion, about 94 per cent of the population, divergence of dialects was overcome was through the written
speak a Chinese language. Not all of these people can under- word, since Chinese ideographs can be read using any dialect.
stand each others’ speech, however, since many of the ‘dialects’ Educated men also learned to speak ‘official speech’, a version
of Chinese differ more than French and Spanish and could eas- of Mandarin, to communicate with people from other regions.
ily be considered separate languages. Over the centuries, Early in the twentieth century, proponents of the New Culture
pronunciation has diverged considerably; for instance, the advocated making this official speech the national language.
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word for ‘difficult’ is pronounced nan in Beijing, but le in The People’s Republic has promoted it
as well, requiring that
the ‘common language’ be used in schools as well as on radio
Yanzhou, ne in Suzhou and lan in Changsha. All of the Chinese
languages employ tones, but northern Mandarin has four and television.
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949

SUBORDINATING INTELLECTUALS
In the 1920s and 1930s, intellectuals — like Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, Lu Xun
and Ding Ling — were among the most enthusiastic supporters of socialism, seeing
in ita way to rid China of poverty and injustice. In the late 1930s and 1940s, quite
a few well-known writers made their way to Yan’an where they soon learned that
their job was to serve the party, not stand at a critical distance from it.
After 1949 the party had to deal with a new category of intellectuals, individu-
als who had not publicly sided with it, but rather had stayed in the cities, holding
jobs that linked them one way or another with the Nationalist cause. Most mem-
bers of this small urban educated elite responded with enthusiasm in the early
fifties to the signs that China finally had a government that could get the job done Tibet was largely independent
— control inflation, end corruption, spread literacy,
promote equality for women, from the time of the collapse
clean up the streets, and get everyone working. Many enthusiastically volunteered of the Qing dynasty in 1911
to serve the new government in whatever capacity they could, and thousands who until the People’s Republic
reasserted military control.
were studying abroad hurried home to its
see how they could help. The party for Here the People’s Liberation
part needed experienced supervisors, administrators, teachers, journalists, scien- Army
is entering Lhasa
tists, writers, and functionaries. Thus even though Mao insisted that ‘being red in 1951.
306 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

China's ethnic diversity was

made
a of
part the official rep-
resentation of China through
the images depicted on
Chinese paper money.

was more important than being expert’, most of the educated were kept in their
jobs, whatever their class background.
The new state did, however, devise ways to limit the influence of the intellec-
tuals it had inherited. Schools, universities, publishing houses, research institutes,
and other organizations were all reorganized and the intellectuals employed there
‘re-educated’. ‘Thought reform’ generally entailed confessing one’s former sub-
servience to capitalist imperialism, guilt at betraying the Chinese people, and
gratitude to Chairman Mao for having pointed out one’s errors. Many who went
through it were inspired to dedicate themselves to the socialist cause. The inde-
pendenceof intellectuals was also undermined by the elimination of alternative
ways to make a living. There were no more independent presses or independent
colleges; society no longer tolerated men of leisure who derived income from
investments and spent it on art or antiques.
Some branches of intellectual work were given generous government support,
none more so, perhaps, than archaeology. The Institute of Archaeology was
founded in 1950 to co-ordinate archaeological excavations and research through-
out the country. It soon set up permanent field stations at major sites such as
Anyang, Xian, and Luoyang, and despatched trained teams to investigate when-
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 307

ever ancient graves or relics were uncovered in the course of construction of

roads, factories, or reservoirs. As a way of approaching thepast, archaeological
research had the attraction of being scientific; it was expected that excavated
materials would demonstrate the conformity of the Chinese past to the Marxist
schemeof historical development from primitive clan to slave to feudal society.
Archaeology also promised a less text-centred view of the past, one that would
allow celebration of the contributions of the working people who crafted the
objects discovered rather than the elites who wrote texts.
By 1956 Mao was confident that the combination of inducements and retrain-
ing had won over the educated. That year Mao called on the intellectuals to help
him identify problems within the party, such as party members who had lost
touch with the people or behaved like tyrants. Although most intellectuals were
wary when they first heard Mao’s call to ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom’, they lost
their inhibitions as praise was lavished on those who came forward with criti-
cisms. The outpouring of criticism that followed apparently took Mao by surprise;
he abruptly reversed course and angrily accused the critics of harbouring rightist
ideology and opposing the party.
In the massive anti-rightist campaign that followed, half or more of China’s tiny
educated elite were stigmatized, ostensibly because of something anti-party they
said during the ‘Hundred Flowers’ period, but actually often for no other reason
than that unit leaders felt compelled to discover their quota of rightists. Alto-
gether almost three million people were labelled ‘rightists’, which assured that
they would no longer have anyreal influence at work, even if they were allowed
to continue in their previous jobs. Half a million were sent to the countryside to
overcome ‘separation from the masses’ through manual labour among them. Vic-
tims included the young and the old, those who had taken a stand and those who
had stayed the sidelines. Thirty reporters who had written stories exposing the
on

much resented secret shops for officials ended up in labour reform camps. There
were also many cases like that of a railway engineer relegated to menial labour for
twenty years because someone reported hearing him say ‘how bold’ when he read
some of the Hundred Flowers critiques of the party. By removing so many of those
with higher educations from positions of authority, the new elite of party cadres —
largely from worker and peasant backgrounds and often both xenophobic and
anti-intellectual — destroyed the urban, educated, western-influenced professional
elite created in the 1930s and 1940s. Old China had been dominated, culturally at
least, by an elite defined by lengthy education; Mao refused to let that happen to
new China. Those with higher educations had been put in their place: they were
employees of the state, hired to instruct the children of the labouring people or
provide technical assistance; they were not to have ideas of their own separate
from those of the party or a cultural life distinct from that of the masses.
 el
308 Tu
1

> CAMB
RIDGE ILLUSTRATED FlisrORY OF CHINA |

Ding Ling

Chinese intellectuals have not had it easy during the twenti- became active in the League of Left-Wing Writers. The next
eth century, especially those most committed to using their year Hu was arrested and executed by the Nationalists. Devas-
talents to assist in the creation of a better China. Ding Ling .
tated, Ding Ling committed herself to revolutionary work. She -

{1904-85}, the most prominent woman. writer of her genera-

- Joined the party and took up writing proletarian literature. She. ;
tion, not atypically found hersel fin qpounle with authorities announced to a group of students that she would no. longer
again and again. =
write about love. Abducted by: Nationalist agents herself j in.
Ding Ling grew. up in Hunan province among ‘the pioneers: 1933; was imprisoned for a time, then heldinmhouse
Ding Ling
of women's education: Her widowed mother entered. school at 5
arrest
i
in Nanjing for three years. ESRUE
eS noe
Se
a
thirty and later taught at girls’ schools. Ding Ling in: time oe After she managed to: escape, Ding Una madeher“way. to.
proved just as. ready to break conventions. In 1919. she entered : Yan'san. There she fo many. of he ‘op Communis
eee
one of the first men’s high schools to turn co-educational. The
ile
next year, at. sixteen, she left Hunan to escape her uncles’ s
efforts to arrange a marriage for her and to throw. herself into
ee a
the exciting world of the May Fourth ‘movement. Thus. she :
began an emancipated life in Nanjing, Shanghai, and Beijing = comfortable with all ‘aspects oF
|
~

that mixed study, writing, frequent moves, and the never--end-

aat
lstanch, in one womanparty. a
a
ing pursuit of ways to make ends meet. She joined the Anar--
chist Party and read about the lives of li berated women in
the
Soviet Union. She also met
and fellinlove with the young poet.
Hu ‘Yepin.
~

int
5

story was bubliste 1927 and ‘her first

oe
Ding Ling’ S first ae
collection, an instant
i herBu
success, in 1928. The heroines in.

.
:

early stories. were modern women; ‘they weredaring, ‘passion-

~

ate, and eager to be independent, but unable to find. emotional

_
satisfaction or to ‘develop truly independent personalities.
;

Miss ‘Sophiethe title character of her best-‘knownstory,

THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD

By late 1957, to Mao
at least, following the Soviet model no longer seemed good
enough. Growth was too
slow, too dependent on technical experts, too con-
strained by
the
scarcity of capital. China had find a way to use what to
was rich it
in ~ labour power — to modernize more rapidly. Mao began talking of a Great Leap
Forward. Through the concerted hard work of hundreds millions of people of
labouring together, China would transform itself from a poor nation into a mighty
 Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 309

such titles as Impressions ofa Visit to'the Soviet Union and

Songs of Praiseforthe Five Year Plan. When the writer and edi- es
~

tor Hu Feag: became the target of a campaign agaiinst liberal

u

one. The latent creative capacity of the Chinese masses, previously held in check
by the domestic and foreign exploiting classes, would be unleashed and China
would surpass Great Britain in industrial output within fifteen years.
Soon visions of accelerated industrialization were coupled with yet further
transformation in the countryside. In 1958, in a matter of months, agricultural
collectives all over the country were amalgamated into gigantic communes. These
communes were expected to complete the proletarianization of the peasantry —
divorcing them totally from the ownership of
the means of
production and bring-
ing them such benefits of modern urban life as schools and hospitals. China’s
leaders proclaimed that productivity would reach new heights as peasants ingen-
iously planied seeds more densely and opened small-scale factories using locally
available materials.
Trusting Mao, both party cadres and ordinary working people got caught up in
a wave of utopian enthusiasm. Economists and engineers, like other educated

experts, had been downgraded or removed in the anti-rightist campaigns of the

year before, so plans were formulated not byexperts, but by local cadres eager to
show their political zeal. During the late summer and autumn
of 1958, com-
munes, factories, schools, and other units set up ‘backyard steel furnaces’ in order
to double steel production sy combining small, native techniques with large, for-
eign ones. Peasant men were marched in
military style to work on public-works
projects while the women took over much of the fieldwork. Both were exhorted
by slogans like ‘More. faster, better. and more economical’ and
songs like ‘Com-
munismis heaven./ The commune is the ladder./ If we build that ladder/ We can
climb the heights.” As workers were mobilized to put in long hours on these
pro-
jects, they spent little time at home or in normal farm work, and to meet their
needs units were encouraged to set up mess halls where food was free. Commen-
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949

tators hailed this as a major step in the transition from socialism to communism. Mobilization of labour ona
Counties claimed 1,000 and even 10,000 per cent increases in agriculture pro- grand scale during the Great
duction. Pictures were even published of fields where the wheat grew so thickly Leap Forward made possible
some highly valuable public
that children could stand on top of it without pushing it down. The Central Com-
works, such as flood control
mittee trumpeted abroad claims that national production had nearly doubled ina projects along the Yellow
single year. River, depicted here. Remov-
Some Great Leap projects were successes; bridges, railroads, canals, reservoirs, ing so many men from
agricultural work, however,
power stations, mines, and irrigation works were constructed all over the country,
aggravated other planning
many of them proving of enduring value. All too often, however, projects were errors and led to severe food
undertaken with such haste and with solittle technical knowledge that serious shortages during the next few
mistakes were made, such as ploughing so deep that the soil became salinized. By years, reaching famine propor-
the time the first year of the Great Leap had passed, even Mao began calling for a tions between 1960 and 1962.
less frenetic pace and more realistic goals.
In the summer of 1959 the veteran revolutionary and minister of defence Peng
Dehuai offered measured criticisms of the Great Leap policies at a party meeting.
Mao Zedong was deeply affronted. He vehemently countered the charges and had
Peng forced outof the leadership. The call for a Great Leap Forward was reinten-
sified; problems with it were now blamed on Peng
and all those like him who
lacked faith in its premises.
312 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Because Mao dominated party decision-making and because the party appara-
tus had gained power over all
aspects of China’s economy, Mao’s faulty economics
ended up creating a famine of massive proportions. The size of the 1958 harvest
was wildly exaggerated and much of it
was left to rot in the fields, the men

deployed elsewhere. When harvests fell the next two years, the effects of shortages
were magnified by cadres who continued to report gains in production to show
their revolutionary zeal. Because the central government based requisitions on
these reports, much too large a share of the food supply was removed from the
countryside: in many places the local people were left with less than half of what
they needed to survive. Rationing was widespread and soup kitchens serving
weak gruel were set up to stave off starvation. Still, from later census reconstruc-
tions, it appears that during the Three Hard Years (1959-62) there were on the
order of thirty million ‘excess’ deaths attributable to the dearth of food.
Not surprisingly, the Great Leap Forward strained the
relations between China
and the Soviet Union. With the death of Stalin, Mao thought he deserved to be
recognized as the senior leader of the international communist movement, a view
Khrushchev did not share. The Russians began to fear that China would drag
them into a war with the United States because during the Great Leap period
China intensified its anti-imperialist rhetoric and began shelling the islands off
the coast of Fujian still held by the Nationalists on Taiwan. Khrushchev made two
visits to Beijing in 1958 and 1959, and concluded that Mao was a romantic devia-
tionist, particularly wrongheaded inhis decision to create communes. (It did not
help that Mao claimed that the creation of communes would allow China to
achieve communism sooner than the USSR.) Khrushchev reneged on a promise to
give China atomic weapons, then in the summer of 1960, when famine was hit-
ting China, he ordered all Russian technical advisers out of China. By 1963 Mao
was publicly denouncing Khrushchev as a revisionist and capitalist-roader and
challenging the USSR’s leadership of the international communist movement.
Communist parties throughout the world soon developed pro-Soviet and pro-
Chinese factions. Fearing a Soviet invasion, the Chinese built air-raid shelters on
a massive scale all over the country. The government also devoted enormous.
resources to constructing a defence establishment in
mountainous inland areas far
from both the sea and the Soviet border.
The long-term impact of the Great Leap on the countryside was also largely
negative. The struggle to survive led to rampant self-seeking that brought with it
cynicism and loss of faith in the lower levels (at least) of the party state. People
saw not only that the powerful few could impose irrational top-down policies, but
also that they frequently worked for the parochial interests of their own families,
cliques, or neighbours. Just as devastating was a further blow to peasants’ mobil-
ity. Beginning in 1955 a system of population registration bound rural people to
the villages of their birth, or in the case of married women, their husbands’ vil-
lages. Whenthe hasty expansion of the nation’s industrial plant was reversed, mil-
 313
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949

lions of unemployed workers were sent out of the cities to the countryside.
To
the cities, a sys-
keep them from returning, or other peasants from sneaking into
tem of urban household registration was introduced, tied to grain rationing. Only
needed
those with permission to reside in that city could get the ration coupons
effect of locking
to purchase grain. These residence policies had the unintended
rural communities with unfavourable man-land ratios into dismal poverty. Com-
pared to
life in the countryside, life in the cities was secure, especially for the sub-
stantial share of city-dwellers employed in the state sector who had housing at
low prices, pensions, health care, and various subsidies, not to mention reliable
middle school
supply of subsidized food. Children could stay in school through
and the luckiest (or best-connected) could go further. In the countryside, how-
ever, only a tiny proportion of exceptionally wealthy
communities could come
anywhere near to providing such benefits. In the poorest regions farmers, forced
by the government to concentrate on growing grain, could do little to improve
their situations other than invest more labour. Weeding more frequently, levelling
and terracing fields, expanding irrigation systems, and so forth, did not always
bring much of a return, leading to a decline in agricultural productivity right
across the country.

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Mao’s vision of revolution, made clear in his grand plans for the Great Leap For-
mobilized to
ward, was voluntaristic: it emphasized the potential for people, once
struggle, to transform both themselves and the world through
the power of
their
wills. Inherent in Marxism, however, was another, quite different view of revolu-
who rejected idealist
tion and historical change. Marx was, after all, a materialist
rather they
interpretations of history. Ideas, he asserted, did not make history,
reflected the economic base, the mode of
production and the relations of produc-
tion. A committed Marxist could, therefore, quite reasonably concentrate on
changing the economic system and expecting ideas and culture to change
as a

result. Many members of

the Chinese Communist Party, despite the great prestige
of Mao and histhought, were themselves more inclined toward the materialist
interpretation of history; political mobilization, to them, could not replace party
control of the economic base.
In the aftermath of the failure of the Great Leap, economic planners and party
organization men came to the fore. Mao withdrew from active decision-making
and Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and other leaders set about
stands
reviving heavy industry and market activity. The need to take ideological
was dismissed by Deng Xiaoping in language as
pithy as Mao's: ‘White cat, black

cat — either will do as long asit catches mice.’

bureaucratic organization with
By this time the party had become an enormous

some 17 million members. At the upper reaches, the

fate of Peng Dehuai had not
front
been forgotten, and honest debate of party policy was no longer attempted in
314 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HistToRY OF CHINA

Mao Zedong encouraged the

Red Guards by coming out to
of Mao. This opened the door tofactionalism and secret manoeuvring. Mao’s
sense that the party was shunting him aside probably lies behind his call for a
fencer thignLin She Siimeeny
Great Revolution to Create a Proletarian Culture — or Cultural Revolution for
and autumn of 1966 when
they converged on ‘Tanammen
short — a movement that came close to destroying the party he had led for three
Squarein Beijing by the mil- decades. But ideology entered into Mao’s thinking as well. He probably genuinely
lions from all over the country. feared that China was slipping in the inegalitarian direction of the Soviet Union;
he would not stand by and watch asa new elite took over the party and subverted

it
the revolution. To Mao the revolution had to be continued to succeed; had to be
a permanent process, constantly kept alive through unending class struggle. Ina
manner reminiscent of Stalin, Mao was convinced that hidden enemies within the
party and intellectual circles had to be identified and removed.
The Cultural Revolution was set in motion in the spring of 1966 when the
mayor of Beijing was denounced for allowing the staging of
a play that
construed as critical of Mao. A Cultural Revolution Small Group was
could be
with
formed,
Mao's wife Jiang Qing (1914-91) as a key member. Jiang Qing had not played
muchof a part in politics before, and was widely seen as a stand-in for Mao, now
over seventy. Soon radical students at Beijing University were agitating against
party officials ‘taking the capitalist road’. When Liu Shaogi tried to control what
was going on at Beijing University, Mao intervened, had him demoted by a rump
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949

session of the Central Committee, and sanctioned the organization of students Revolutionary films, plays,
there into Red Guards. and operas were avidly pro-
moted by Jiang Qing during
The Cultural Revolution quickly escalated beyond the ability of Mao, Jiang
the Cultural Revolution. Per-
Qing, or anyone else to controlordirect. Young people who had grown up in new formers were expected to
China responded with alacrity and enthusiasm to calls to make revolution, happy instil martial spirit, discipline,
to help Mao oust revisionists. In June 1966 middle schools and universities and zeal in their audiences.

throughout the country, from large cities to small towns, were closed as students
devoted all their time to Red Guard activities. The initial membership of the Red
Guards was limited to those with ‘good class backgrounds’ — the children of peas-
ants, workers, cadres, military men, and revolutionary martyrs. The children of
high-ranking cadres, who boasted of themselves as the ‘natural reds’, became the
leaders and treated with contempt their fellow students from ordinary or bad class
backgrounds — especially the children of intellectuals who tended to do well in
examinations. At the same time, they completely avoided the issue of the new
privileged elite in socialist China. The students from ordinary or bad class back-
grounds who suffered in the first phase of the Red Guard mobilization gradually
formed their own Red Guard organizations. In place of class background they
emphasized personal loyalty to Mao Zedong Thought as the criterion for judging

a revolutionary. From August through November 1966, eight massive Red Guard
THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

rallies were held in Beijing at Tiananmen square, attracting more than eight mil-
lion youths from all over the country. These Red Guards waved their little red
books, Quotations from Chairman Mao, compiled a few years earlier by Lin Biao
(1908-71) to indoctrinate soldiers, and filled with such wisdom as, ‘In class soci-
ety everyone lives as a member of
a particular class, and every kind of thinking,
without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class’, or ‘The people, and the
people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.’
Tensions and antagonisms that had been suppressed by tight social control
broke into the open as Red Guards found opportunities to get back at people or
vent their fury. Red Guards roamed the streets in their battle against things foreign
and things old, breaking into the homes of teachers, cadres, those with bad class
backgrounds, and those with connections to foreigners, searching for old books,
genealogies, or art treasures to seize or destroy. They orchestrated countless
denunciation meetings at which accused cadres, teachers, or writers were forced
to stand with their heads down and their arms raised behind them in the aero-
plane position while listening to erstwhile friends and colleagues jeer and curse
them. In the words of a People’ Daily editorial in 1966, ‘With the tremendous and
impetuous force of a raging storm, the Red Guards had ‘smashed the shackles
imposed on their minds by the exploiting classes for so long in the past, routing
the bourgeois “specialists”, “scholars”, “authorities”, and “venerable masters”,
sweeping every bit of their prestige into the dust.’
,

Targets included well-known intellectual figures like Ba Jin, author of Family,

the novel that had captured the mood of educated youth of the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1966 Ba Jin was publicly ‘struggled with’ in Shanghai, compelled to kneel on
broken glass before a huge angry crowd. His wife was forced to clean the streets
and became ill; since she had been classed as an ‘enemy of the people’, however,
she was denied medical care, and Ba Jin was left to feel grievously responsible for
her death. The Red Guards, with the blessings of the Maoists, even took on the
head of state, Liu Shaoqi, now labelled the ‘chief capitalist-roader’. In the summer

of 1967 they stormed Zhongnanhai, the well-guarded quarters where the party
hierarchy lived, and seized Liu. Then they taunted and beat him before huge
crowds. Liu died two years later from the abuse he received; and four other mem-
in
bers of his family also died as a result of beatings or mistreatment prison where
interrogators made every effort to force them to reveal evidence that Liu or his
wife were spies.
By November 1966 workers were also being mobilized to participate in the
Cultural Revolution. Rebel students went to
factories to ‘learn from the workers’
but actually to instigate opposition to party superiors. Party leaders tried to
appease discontented workers by raising wages and handing out bonuses, but
Mao responded to this ‘economism’ by instructing students and workers to seize
from corrupt, revisionist party leaders. Confusing power struggles were the
power
predictable result; as soon as one group gained the upper hand, another would
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 317

challenge its takeover as a ‘sham power seizure’ and attempt ‘counter-power At Beijing University students
seizure’. had to use ladders to post new
‘big character posters’ in 1967.
to
Up this point, the involvement of the military in the Cultural Revolution had
been minimal. armed conflict Mao turned to the People’s Lib-
Such posters denounced by
However, as spread, name ‘revisionists’ and ‘capi-
eration Army as the only organization capable of restoring order. The army was talist roaders’ among the
given conflicting tasks: to help leftist groups seize power and to ensure that indus- faculty and administrators.
trial and agricultural production continued. Generally the army pursued its own
interests by supporting conservative mass organizations and disbanding the rebel
organizations as ‘counterrevolutionary’. Maoist leaders initiated a counterattack,
accusing the army of supporting the wrong side. In July 1967 a conservative fac-
tion in Wuhan kidnapped two of the radical leaders from Beijing, and the Cultural
Revolution Small Group responded by calling on the Red Guards to arm them-
selves and to seize military power from the ‘capitalist roaders’ in the Army. Thus
began the most violent stage of the Cultural Revolution, during which different
factions of Red Guards and workers’ organizations took up armed struggle against
not only each other but also in opposition to regional and national military forces.
318 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HiSTORY OF CHINA
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 319

Communications and transport came to a standstill and

__
consumer goods became scarce in urban areas.
Faced with this deteriorating situation, Mao had no
choice but to moderate the whole movement in
order to
prevent full-scale civil war. In July 1968 Mao disbanded
the Red Guards, who were soon sent off to work in the.
countryside. He and other leaders called for the creation
of Revolutionary Committees to take the place of the old
party structure. Each committee would have representa-
tives from the mass organizations, from revolutionary
cadres, and from the army; in most places the army
quickly became the dominant force. Military control did
not mean an end to violence, however. The military’s
search for hidden enemies and traitors among intellectu-
als and party members plunged the Cultural Revolution
into a phase of state-instigated terror. The military’s
investigation of the probably fictitious ‘May 16 Group’
conspiracy culminated in the torture and execution of
thousands of people.
By this time the Cultural Revolution was also having
an impact in rural areas. In a manner reminiscent of the
Great Leap Forward, those with bad-class labels again
became scapegoats and extreme collectivism was pushed.
All sideline activities, even raising chickens and pigs,
were labelled incipient capitalism and had to
be dropped.
Because peasants did not spontaneously support these
policies, heavily coercive tactics frequently had to be
employed. Thus, although ideological emphasis was
placed on mass participation in the political process, in
actuality the power of local cadres tended to increase much more than the power Im
the early 1980s, walking
down Nanjing Road, the main
of local people.
° hoppi
Opping street t tn Shanghai,
in

The dominance of the military

5
a2 declined after the bizarre downfall in 1971 of
‘ ‘ :

aangna
was enough to convince any-
the minister of defence, Lin Biao. To the public, Lin Biao was a paragon of devo- gue that China has too een
tion to Mao, and the Chinese press regularly referred to Lin as Mao’s close com- people.
rade-in-arms and best student. Yet, according to the official account, Lin became
afraid that Mao had turned against him and decided to assassinate him. When
Lin’s daughter exposed his plot, he decided to flee to the Soviet Union, but died
when his plane, out of fuel, crashed over Mongolia. Whatever the truth of the
matter, news of his plot was kept out of the press for a year, the leadership appar-
ently unsure how
to tell the people that Lin Biao turned out to be just like Liu
Shaoqi, a secret traitor who had managed to reach the second highest position in
the political hierarchy.
320 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HiSTORY OF CHINA

The fall of Lin Biao left Jiang Qing the main leader of the radical faction. Dur-
ing these years she devoted much of her energies to promoting revolutionary
operas and other ‘proletarian’ art and standing vigil against the intrusion of feu-
dalist, capitalist, or revisionist ideas into art or culture. The leader of the more
moderate faction was Zhou Enlai, still principally responsible for foreign affairs.
During the Cultural Revolution, China’s main external fear was of Soviet invasion.
In the more fluid situation after the fall of Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai sought ways to
improve relations with the United States to make it a counter-weight to the Soviet
Union, and he arranged for the US President Richard Nixon to visit in 1972. By
1973 Zhou, although ill with cancer, was able to bring back many disgraced lead-
ers, including Deng Xiaoping, and reinstate them to important posts. Zhou died
in January 1976. When residents of
Beijing spontaneously gathered in April to pay
respects to him at Tiananmen Square, Jiang Qing’s group condemned them as
‘counter-revolutionary’ and purged Deng again. But with Mao’s death in October
that year, Jiang Qing and her Gang of Four were arrested. At a show trial held in
In April 1976, three months 1980-81, they were convicted of most of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.
after the death of Zhou Enlai,
a spontaneous movement to
a
When Deng regained power second time in 1978, there were nearly three mil-
lion victims of the Cultural Revolution to be rehabilitated. But almost everyone
put wreaths by the Memorial
to the Martyrs of the Revolu-
who had participated in any way ended up feeling a victim, short-changed or

tion ended in violent manipulated if not actually abused. Urban young people who had been exhila-
confrontation and the arrest of rated when Mao called on them to topple those in power soon found themselves
hundreds of demonstrators. at the bottom of the heap, sent down to the countryside where hostile peasants
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 321

could make life very harsh. Their younger siblings had their education seriously
interrupted, with schools closed for long periods, then reopened with watered-
down curricula. The cadres, teachers, and intellectuals who were the principal
.

targets suffered appalling physical abuse, but the sense of betrayal often was
worse. When they had to continue working with people who had beaten, humili-
ated, or imprisoned them, the wounds were left to fester for years. Even those who
agree that elitist values and bureaucratic habits were rife in the party and educa-
tional institutions find little positive in the outcome of the Cultural Revolution’s
massive assault on entrenched ideas and the established order. Indeed, most
inside China and out put this episode of China’s history high on a list of man’s
inhumanity to man.
The historical verdict on Mao Zedong has not been quite so negative as that on
the Cultural Revolution, but seems to have steadily declined as the years have
passed since his death. In 1981 when the party rendered its judgment on Mao, it
still gave him high marks for his leadership during the war and his intellectual
contributions, but assigned him much of the blame for everything that went
wrong from 1956 on. Since then, Mao’s standing has been further eroded as doubts
are raised about the impact of Mao’s leadership style in the 1940s and early 1950s.
Some critics go so far as to portray Mao as a megalomaniac, so absorbed
inhis pro-
ject of remaking China to match his will that he was totally indifferent to others’
suffering. Other Chinese intellectuals, however, worry that making Mao a monster
relieves everyone else of responsibility and undermines the argument that struc-
tural changes are needed to prevent comparable tragedies from recurring.

PROMOTING ECONOMIC GROWTH

In the long sweep of Chinese history, periods of turmoil have been associated with
population declines. The Mongol and Manchu invasions, as well as the rebellions
of the fourteenth, sixteenth, and nineteenth centuries are all believed to have
caused drops in population of ten million or more. Measured this sort
on
of scale,
the disorder created by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution does
not even register. From 1957 to 1970 China’s population grew from about 630
million to 880 million. Public health measures promoted in the 1950s deserve
much of the credit for reducing the death rate and thus improving
life expectancy,
which increased dramatically from forty years in 1953 to sixty in 1968 and sixty-
five in 1984. As a consequence, however, population growth accelerated, and even
the terrible famine of 1959-62 could only make a temporary dent in its upward
course. Mao rejected the idea that China could have too many people, but by the
time Mao died, China’s population was approaching the billion mark, and his suc-
cessors recognized that China could not afford to continue experimenting with
policies that favoured egalitarianism over economic growth.
After he gained ascendance in 1978, Deng Xiaoping placed the problem of
poverty high on his agenda and let ideology and class struggle recede. Deng had
322 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Good agricultural land

is in
such short supply in China
that efforts must be made to
use every bit ofit efficiently.
In this fertile region of
Jiangsu, the houses are con-
centrated along the canal to
allow full use oftillable land.

In the 1980s and 1990s, popu-

as impressive a revolutionary pedigree as Mao, going back to the early 1920s
lar magazines were
;

encouraging young women to

when
he was active with Zhou Enlai in France and continuing through the Shang-

beautify themselves and hai underground, the Long March, and guerrilla warfare against Japan. In 1956, at
become fashion-conscious. age fifty-two, he became a member of the standing committee of the politburo and
general secretary of the Communist Party. Having been twice
ousted from power during the Cultural Revolution, Deng
Xiaoping labelled as absurd the Cultural Revolution slogan
that it was ‘better to be poor under socialism than rich under
capitalism’, insisting instead that ‘poverty is not socialism’.
As guiding slogans, Deng formulated the Four Moderniza-
tions (of agriculture, industry, technology, and defence) along
with the Four Cardinal Principles (retaining the socialist
path, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the leadership of the
Communist Party, and the ideology of Marxism, Leninism,
and Maoism).
Deng’ policies set in motion an economic boom that led to
a tripling of average incomes by the early 1990s and moved,
the World Bank calculated, 170 million peasants out of
extreme poverty. Poverty was most intractable in the country-
side, and to battle it Deng sanctioned steps toward disman-
tling collective agriculture. He instituted a ‘responsibility
system’, under which rural households were assigned land
and other assets that they could treat as their own, and were
given incentives to increase production. Each production
team contracted with member households who agreed to pro-
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 323

vide the team with specified crops in exchange for use of particular fields; what-
ever the household produced above what it owed the team was its to keep or sell.
Teams were, in essence, renting out their land rather than farming
ilies were both landlords (as members of
it directly. Fam-
the team) and tenants (on the land they
had contracted for). Sideline enterprises like growing vegetables and raising pigs
or chickens were encouraged, as were small businesses of all sorts, ranging from
fish farming and equipment repair to small workshops producing consumer
goods for export. Especially in the coastal provinces, where commercial opportu-
nities were greatest, the income of farmers rapidly increased. Even the poorest
areas benefited, especially when restrictions on travel and residency were eased,
freeing millions of young men to move to where the jobs were and send money
home.
Deng also pushed for reform of education, asserting that the influence of the
Gang of Four had created ‘an entire generation of mental cripples’. Party members
qualified to manage and direct the modernization projects were in particularly
short supply. The oldest cohort of party cadres, those recruited before 1949, had
mostly minimal educations; the youngest cohort, those recruited during the Cul-
tural Revolution, had been selected more for anti-intellectual fervour than acade-
mic achievement. As a result, in the early 1980s only 14 per cent of the forty
million party members had finished the equivalent of high school and only 4 per
cent had college educations. Moreover, many of those with college degrees had
attended college in the 1970s when the quality of their education suffered from

Lingering resentment of Japan

did not dampen Chinese
enthusiasm for newly avail-
able Japanese consumer
goods, ranging from tape
recorders and televisions to
washing machines and televi-
sions.
324 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

the anti-elitist and anti-intellectual policies of the period. College entrance exam-
inations were reinstituted in 1977. The new prospect of getting a chance to study
abroad in Europe, the United States, or Japan provided an incentive for students
to apply themselves and even soon led to a craze for studying English.
To speed up economic development, Deng also abandoned Mao’s insistence on
self-sufficiency and began courting foreign investors, even encouraging joint ven-
tures between foreign firms and Chinese government agencies. Foreign manufac-
turers were attracted to the low labour costs in China, and both setup factories to
produce goods for the Chinese market (such as vehicles) and contracted with
Chinese manufacturers to produce consumer goods for western markets (such as
clothing, stuffed toys, watches, and bicycles). Guangdong, with the best access to
the financial giant Hong Kong, did especially well in the new environment.
Between 1982 and 1992, 97 per cent of Hong Kong’s 3,200 toy factories had relo-

a
cated to Guangdong. Many had moved to Shenzhen, special economic zone set
up at the border with Hong Kong, which grew at a dizzying speed. By the end of
1991 some 300,000 people in southern Guangdong had acquired electronic
pagers and 30,000 already graduated to cellular phones, the talisman of Hong
had

Kong businessmen, a remarkable change considering that only a decade earlier

making phone calls between cities in China had been a major hassle.
Even
in the cities, not all have benefited equally from reform. Those who
worked for the state found that reform meant they could lose their jobs. Moreover,
their wages did not always keep up with inflation, something they had not had to
Once stock markets were
introduced into the People’s
Republic, the desire to get rich
fast led to frequent, rather
frenzied efforts to buy stock.
These eager buyers were pho-
tographed in Shenzhen in
1992.
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 325

worry about during the era of tight central

control over the economy. Intellectuals felt
left out when they saw the new independent
entrepreneurs — even street vendors ~ earn
ing enough to buy all sorts of consumer
goods never available before, such as motor-
cycles. But most galling of all were signs that
the children of high officials were getting
rich by using their connections to secure
lucrative contracts.
The list of the negative consequences of
the otherwise promising political and eco-
nomic reforms can easily be expanded.
Illicit trade has grown rapidly, not only in narcotics traffic, but also in art objects In the 1980s and 1990s cen-
looted from graves. Pollution and other environmental problems have been exac- sorship was relaxed and film
erbated. Women have lost many of their advances in employment and education rapidly became a major
medium for exploring the
as parents pull girls out of school to put them to work, and employers dispropor-
meaning of China’s recent his-
tionately lay off women. Freer markets have even led to renewed buying and sell- tory. Film makers were
ing of women as wives; in 1989 and 1990 more than 65,000 people were arrested allowed to critical but not
be

too critical: the script for The

for abducting or selling women and children. The disparity between the coastal
Blue Kite, the story of a fam-
and the inland provinces has created new inequalities. When internal controls on
ily’s suffering during the
migration collapsed, the coastal regions flooded with job seekers willing to live in political movements of the
shanty towns or a dozen to a room to get a chance to share in the wealth that the 1950s and 1960s, was
market economy has been bringing to the fortunate regions. In Guangdong inter- approved by the authorities
nal migrants, especially those who cannot speak Cantonese, have become an but seized by them after it was
filmed. It was finished abroad.
exploited class, hired for the worst work, kept on the job for ten or twelve hours
and proved a success there,
a day, seven days a week, unable to protest without losing their jobs. but in 1994 it was banned in
Post-Mao efforts to blunt population growth have also given rise to consider- China.
able resentment. Because Mao rejected the Malthusian premise that productive
capacities were limited, during his lifetime there were only sporadic attempts to
curb population growth through such measures as encouraging late marriage.
Since his death, however, the government has worked hard to promote the one-
child family. Targets have been set for the total numbers of births in each place,
and quotas then assigned to smaller units. Young people have needed permission
from their work units to get married, then permission to have a child. Women
who become pregnant outside the plan, if they do not manage to
hide, face often
unrelenting pressure from birth control workers and local cadres to have an abor-
tion. When ultrasound screenings became available — in the late 1980s and early
1990s —
many gave in and had an abortion
if an ultrasound scan showed the foe-
tus to be female. Others have apparently practised or concealed
female infanticide
female births, since the reported sex ratios for second and subsequent births are
strongly skewed in favour of sons.
326 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

CULTURAL TRENDS IN THE 1980S AND 1990S

Culture did not prosper during the decade of the ‘Cultural’ Revolution; intellec-
tuals learned to keep quiet and ordinary people were fed a dull and repetitious
Below
left diet of highly politicized stories, plays, and films. With the downfall of the Gang
The image ofthis lone protes-
tor standing in front of a line
of tanks on 5 June 1989, a day
of Four, people’s pent-up desire for more varied and lively cultural expression
quickly became apparent. A literature of the ‘wounded’ appeared at the end of the
-
after the bloody crackdown on 1970s, as those who had suffered during the Cultural Revolution found it politi-
the democracy protests, made cally possible to express their sense of betrayal. Greater tolerance on the part of
a deep impression outside the government soon resulted in much livelier press and media — with everything
China. Millions around the
from investigative reporters like Liu Binyan and Dai Qing reporting on corruption
world who had watched the
of cadres, to philosophers who tried to re-examine the premises of Marxism, to
progress ofthe protests on
television saw this brave indi- novelists, poets, and film-makers who experimented with previously taboo explo-
vidual as a symbol of
China’s rations of sexuality.
hopes. Television as a cultural force expanded enormously as TV sets became a read-
ily available consumer good and programming became diverse enough to capture
Below right
The 1989 student democracy people’s interest. Television brought knowledge of what was happening in the out-
protests were re-energized in side world. Such knowledge was also enhanced by the fact that tens of thousands
late May when art
students at of Chinese got the opportunity to go abroad and similar numbers of foreigners
the Central Art College visited China for business, study, or tourism. Moreover, Chinese began to gain
erected a 37-foot-tall ‘goddess
access to information outside the control of the government — from Chinese-lan-
of democracy’ statue. Placing
it across from the portrait of guage publications elsewhere, television broadcasts from Hong Kong, and from
BBC and VOA shortwave broadcasts in English and Chinese. People came to
Mao
in Tiananmen Square was
meant to be provocative. understand how underdeveloped China was in comparison both to the old impe-
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 327
328 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

rialist powers but also to more recently developed places like Taiwan and South
Korea.
The government tolerated the loss of its monopoly on
information but did not
renounce its authority to censor publications or condemn writers for expressing
counter-revolutionary ideas. When college students, writers, artists, intellectuals,
and urban young people became attracted to western popular culture — especially
its music, eroticism, hairstyles, and apparently self-centred individualism, conser-
vative party critics responded with periodic campaigns against ‘bourgeois liberal-
ism’ and ‘spiritual pollution’.
Much more threatening to the party elite was growing interest in western polit-
ical ideas. Chinese intellectuals were beginning to draw on western ideas to
protest not merely against abuses of the government, but some of the basic prin-
ciples underlying the communist system. The first ‘big character’ posters were
pasted on Democracy Wall in Beijing in the autumn of 1978. Soon electricianan

named Wei Jingshen had courageously pasted up a call for the ‘fifth moderniza-
tion’, namely real democracy, which he identified as the right of the people to
choose their own representatives. The party state, Wei claimed elsewhere, had
become an autocracy imposed on the workers and peasants of China. By April
1979 Wei had been arrested and the Democracy Wall shut down. Wei eventually
served fourteen-and-a-half years in prison for these offences, with long stretches
in solitary confinement during which he was forbidden even to talk to his jailers.
Wei’s fate did not deter intellectuals from more measured analyses of the state
of China’s culture and political system. Many were fascinated by the economic
success of the ‘four little dragons’, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South
Korea, where authoritarian governments, suffused with Confucian values, had
managed to promote rapid growth; their successes seemed to imply that China
should consider reviving some elements of its old culture. A diametrically
opposed view was widely publicized in the spring and summer of 1988 in a pop-
ular six-part TV documentary entitled River Elegy which traced many of China’s
problems back to
its
ancient traditions, especially its persistent inward orientation
and lack of interest in the outside world. River Elegy attacked some of the coun-
try’s most revered symbols, re-labelling the Yellow River, the Great Wall, and the
dragon as symbols of backward passivity, not greatness.
Debate about China’s culture and political form spilled out into the streets in
the spring of 1989 where it was captured by the world press, present to witness
the Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev bring a formal end to the Sino-Soviet split.
The students’ protest began modestly in April with a parade honouring the mem-

a
ory of Hu Yaobang, recently deceased party leader who had been relatively tol-
erant of dissent. Buoyed by the positive reaction of the Beijing citizenry and
angered at the negative reaction of the government, student leaders gradually
escalated their activities and their rallying cries. They called for more democratic
government: ‘Make officials disclose their income and assets!’ ‘Renounce the
use
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 329

of mass political campaigns!’ ‘Abolish prohibitions against street protests!’ ‘Permit

journalists to report protest activities!’ Many evoked the ideas of the May Fourth
Movement, claiming that China had still not achieved science and democracy.
Through much of May 1989 there were students in Tiananmen Square, their
numbers ranging from a few thousand to, at the greatest rallies, perhaps a million.
To testify to their sincerity and determination, a couple of thousand students
staged a hunger strike. On 17 May, during Gorbachev's visit, the square was filled
not merely with students from every university in Beijing, but also from other
organizations, even government ones like the Foreign Ministry, the Central Tele-
vision Station, the National Men’s Volleyball Team, even the Public Security
Bureau Academy. There were also workers in their work clothes, holding banners
inscribed with the names of their factories. The formation of the Beijing
Autonomous Workers Federation was announced, calling for democracy and
opposed to the ‘lawlessness and brutality of corrupt officials’. The next day the
Beijing Youth News reported that 95 per cent of those surveyed considered the stu-
it
dent movement ‘patriotic’ and 80 per cent thought would ultimately ‘compel the
government to give in and initiate democracy’.
The public’s support for the students — the farmers who bicycled in to give
food, the vendors who passed out free drinks, the citizens who displayed home-
made placards and banners with the words ‘support’ on them — were a humiliation
to Deng and the other hard-line leaders, who declared martial law as soon as Gor-
bachev left. Yet when truckloads of troops attempted to enter the city, the citizens
in Beijing took to the streets to stop them. Successful against these unarmed sol-
diers, they were exhilarated by this evidence of ‘people power’. Only two weeks
later, on the night of 3/4 June, tanks and artillery were brought in, and though
many unarmed citizens still tried to halt their advance, the armoured vehicles got
through the blockades after bloody clashes and successfully ended both the
protest and the occupation of the square. At least several hundred people lost
their lives that night, many of them ordinary citizens trying to stop the soldiers
from entering central Beijing.
This bloody suppression, so damaging to China’s international image, was con-
sidered essential to party hard-liners who saw the entire power structure in jeop-
ardy. In their view, allowing non-party forces to interject themselves into the
decision-making process was a greater threat to stability than corruption or infla-
tion. In Poland it was the workers’ union, Solidarity, after all, that had recently
undermined the Communist Party there. Soon Deng and the hard-liners, led by Li
Peng, followed up the initial military seizure of the square with the arrest and sen-
tencing of hundreds of participants along with well-known intellectuals like Dai
Qing who had never gone to the square but whose writings could be interpreted
as encouraging dissidence.
Economic progress did not suffer much of a setback in the aftermath of the
crackdown. By the early 1990s, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and
330 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Despite a considerable invest- the Soviet Union reinforced Deng Xiaoping’s determination to carry through his
ment in the construction of economic reform programme. The Soviet Union broke up and Gorbachev fell,
high-rise housing in major
Chinese leaders inferred, because central planning was not producing prosperity.
cities, a large portion of the
urban population in the 1980s Deng Xiaoping made his continuing support for market reforms and rapid eco-
still lived in cramped quarters nomic growth as clear as possible in 1992 when he took a trip south to visit the
along narrow alleys. Special Economic Zones. He told people not to worry
socialist, only whether they would make China
if policies were capitalist or
more prosperous. Shortly after,
the party constitution was rewritten to describe China as a ‘socialist market econ-
omy’ and to declare ‘the essential nature of socialism’ to be ‘to liberate and develop
productive forces’,
Young Chinese responded to Deng’s call to make money with the same zeal
their parents had shown in response to Mao’s call to make revolution. In the early
1990s they were plunging into private enterprise in unprecedented numbers, set-
ting themselves up in businesses ranging from food stalls in the lively night mar-
kets, to factories making down coats for the Russian market, Buddhist altars for
the Japanese market, or stuffed toys for the US market. Many grew rich enough to
buy imported cars, build lavish houses, and make generous gifts to all the officials
they dealt with. In 1978 there had not been single privately owned carin China,
but by 1993 there were over a million and the number was increasing at a rate of
12 per cent a year.
Radical Reunification: China Since 1949 331

Since the People’s Republic was proclaimed in 1949, China has not only been
transformed, but transformed several times. Some of the changes can be seen as
modernization or development, comparable to changes in other countries, social-
ist and non-socialist. These include improvements in public health, health care,
and the distribution of food, all leading to much longer life expectancy; the exten-
sion of elementary education and of modern communications which encouraged
greater literacy and an expansion of shared culture; higher levels of industrializa-
tion, which led to greater availability of consumer goods, beginning with thermos
bottles and electric fans, advancing to watches and bicycles, then to televisions
and washing machines, and by the 1990s to air
cars and conditioners.
In terms of political organization, change has also been marked. Reversals after
the death of Mao have been so extensive that observers sometimes think China is
cancelling or forgetting all the changes made in the name of New China in
the
1950s and 1960s. But history is not easily rolled back, and much that was put in
place during the Mao years still shapes contemporary China. The Communist
Party still dominates the government and has itshands in much of what goes on
in the country. The Chinese state no longer interferes in everyday affairs to the
extentit used to, it still has tremendous coercive force: witness its ability to
but
force adherence to a very unpopular birth limitation programme and to silence
most of its critics.
Culturally, China is a very different place than it was in the 1930s and 1940s.
Several decades of tight government control over what was published, broadcast,
or taught inschools did much to standardize Chinese culture, to enlarge the com-
mon vocabulary crossing regions and classes. The shared drama of political events
over the last few decades has also strengthened a sense of shared identity. City
dwellers and peasants in remote villages have all gone through the mobilizations
for major campaigns, the blaring of loud-speakers, the political meetings and
study sessions, the dependence on low-level cadres. Memories of these experi-
ences came to bind Chinese all over the country in the way that the examination
system used to bind members of the educated elite in imperial China.
This common identity, moreover, has been tied up with the Chinese state to an
unparalleled degree. Mao did succeed in making people proud of China. China
fought the United States to a standstill in Korea and survived its long embargo,
successfully extricated itself from an unbalanced relationship with the Soviet
Union, and proudly offered itself as a model to other developing nations, both in
its most radical and most reformist stages.
The state,
it
is true, has not been able totally to manipulate popular conscious-
ness. Declaring the People’s Republic of China to be a multi-national state has not,
in fact, succeeded in altering common understandings of the term ‘Chinese’ to
make it encompass Tibetans, Mongols, and Uighurs. Still, the nationalities poli-
cies have had an impact on the construction of ‘Chineseness’ because they have
made assimilation much more problematic than it had been through most ofChi-
332 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

nese history. Even though forces fostering acculturation have been strengthened
(more Chinese in-migration, more opportunities and more incentives to learn
Chinese), the state now impedes full assimilation by giving everyone an official
ethnic classification. In other words, what had been a more fluid situation, sus-
ceptible to negotiation and choice of self-presentation, has been turned into a

a
matter of legal status. A Zhuang or Yi or a Mongol can no longer present himself
or herself one way to one audience and another way to another audience.
The project of creating a new modern China
is
still very much alive in the
1990s. In the Maoist years New China rejected both China’s past and much
western culture, especially anything that could be labelled capitalist or bourgeois.
of
To be modern was to have broken with the feudal
past with its class exploitation,
its suppression of women and youth, and
its
superstitions. But to be modern was
also to be strong enough to resist domination and exploitation, the threat of
which came overwhelmingly from places already modern — in the twentieth cen-
tury the European imperial powers, then Japan, then the United States, then the
Soviet Union. Mao was determined that China not let the outside world tell it
what to do. China, he thought, had to
toward its own goals.
go
it alone, in its own way, at its own pace,
Post-Mao China is not so absorbed in excluding the outside world or cutting
itself off from all that is bourgeois and western. Even the
old culture is not being
so resolutely excluded; young people are willing to explore the possibilities of
drawing both from western rock music and fashions and from such varied facets
of traditional culture as fortune telling and martial arts. They even draw from
recent history; in 1990 a cult of Mao appeared — taxi drivers nationwide were
hanging plastic pictures of Mao from their mirrors and his portrait reappeared in
many shops and offices. To some, Mao was simply a protective deity, a new addi-
tion to the Chinese pantheon. To others, he represented a better time when lead-
ers were dedicated to the welfare of the common people rather than their own
enrichment. Some liked to note that Mao had purged most of
the current leaders
at least once; to them honouring Mao constituted a mild form of political protest.
 333

Epilogue
When history is viewed from the western edge of Eurasia, the natural pattern
to for
seems be civilizations and empires to rise and wane. By 2000 Bc Egypt had
eclipsed Sumeria; by 1000 Bc Egypt was on
thedecline but Babylonia was an
impressive power. In time, however, it would be surpassed by the Persians, then
the Greeks, then the Romans. Some civilizations were totally destroyed and dis-
appeared from history, others were simply overshadowed by new, more vigorous,
more successful civilizations. Even in more recent periods, those viewing history
from Eurasia’s western edge speak of the rise and decline of the Italian
city states,
the Spanish Empire, the Hapsburg Empire, and the British Empire. Americans
today take it quite for granted that their international predominance
to last
is unlikely
for ever, and books about the coming Pacific Century sell well. Underlying
this view of history is an unspoken analogy between civilizations and human
lives, or perhaps the lives of competitive individual warrior-heroes. Civilizations
have early, creative, aggressive stage followed by a strong, mature age, but over
an

time they lose vigour and become less flexible until eventually they are defeated
in battle or succumb to
old age. And only one can be supreme
When history is viewed from the eastern edge of Eurasia, a
at any given time.
very different pat-
tern emerges as natural and normal. There
but that
is no sense that younger civilizations
supplant aging ones, civilization progresses through a series of yin-yang-
like reversals of direction from excessive disorder to excessive order and back
again. Thus periods of creative but frightfully deadly disorder are followed by the
imposition of stringent political order, sometimes so heavy-handed as to be
oppressive. But order eventually unravels into disorder once again, renewing the
pattern. The course of a civilization thus does not resemble that of a human life.
It has some similarity to a line of descent, however, a series of entities linked one
to another much the way fathers and sons are linked in a family, and the succes-
sion of dynasties in Chinese history was often discussed using the vocabulary of
legitimate succession. These differences in metaphor shape expectations for his-
torical change. In China, neither a period of disorder nor an episode of oppres-
sive order is viewed as likely to
last indefinitely or to bring about the total ruin of
the civilization. Children get a lot from their parents, materially and culturally, so
even though the family property may be nearly ruined by natural disasters or war,
with hard work and commitment tothe survival of the family, in time
it
rebuilt and even enhanced; in a comparable way the ruin of one dynasty does not
can be

preclude a successor from rising. Moreover, just as the future of one family line
is nearly independent of the success or failure of other families, so outside pow-
ers canrise and decline without altering China’s prospects. The rise of Japan does
not mean China must be in decline.
334 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Given the difference between these visions of the course of history, when
Europeans first began to study Chinese history they often unconsciously to tried
discover where China stood in the scheme of civilizations on rise and decline
the

based on western experience. Most seem to have felt that the China they encoun-
tered was on the decline, but they differed in their dating of its golden age. That
there was little reason to expect a new glorious age in China was taken for grant-
ed; their age was the age of the European conquest of the world and while China
might benefit from the fruits of western civilization, they assumed the creative
impulses would be western, not Chinese.
This conceptual framework did not require westerners always to write nega-
tively of China or its history. China has often served as the perfect ‘other’ for the
west, as the other side of the world where everything is upside down and oppo-
site. Thus those who wished to criticize the west have sometimes done so by
cel-
ebrating China as a place that disproved the validity or universality of something
western. Thus Voltaire found in China a land without an established church
where rational philosophers ruled; in the 1950s western feminists found in China
a land where women held up half the sky; in the 1960s western radicals found in
China a place imbued with a communal spirit so strong that streets were magi-
cally cleaned by friction-free street committees; and in the 1980s western conser-
vatives found in China a nearly crime-free society where everyone learned the
virtue of self-restraint.
By bringing up these issues of conceptual framework in the epilogue, I am
hoping to stimulate readers to stop and reflect on the task of understanding a cul-
ture different from their own. Readers of this book have not gained unmediated
access to Chinese culture. This book is written in English for a western audience,
using concepts and modes of analysis and presentation that will seem familiar
and reasonable to such an audience. The kind of history I have tried to write is
without doubt a western type of history, strongly influenced by trends in history
writing in Europe and the United States over the last few decades. I bring women
into the story more than once was common, for instance, and rarely devote much
space to political intrigues at the top of the government. We can enrich our
understanding of China’s history by trying to see how Chinese were interpreting
their world, but we only delude ourselves if we deny that our ideas, assumptions,
and theories shape what we notice and consider significant about China’s past.
In writing this book, the difficulty of coping with the east-west conceptual gap
did not seem as challenging to me as bridging the modern—premodern gap. Two
overlapping but slightly contradictory problems proved most unsettling: the first
is the bias in sources that makes it easier to say good things about earlier periods,
and the second is the difficulty in seeing any period except in terms of what came
afterwards. In China, as elsewhere, the closer to the present, the more evidence
survives. We know much more about the details of life during the twentieth cen-
tury than we do about the Qing dynasty, and we probably know as much about
Epilogue 335

the Qing as of all of earlier China put together. Added to this, the closer to the
present, the less editing historians have done to the sources. From the time of
Sima Qian in the first century Bc, most Chinese historians were social critics of
one sort of another. When they wrote of their own times, they usually found
much to condemn. When they wrote about the distant past, they were still often
subtly commenting on the present, but saying good things tended to be more use-
ful. One of the best ways to criticize the present was to describe a better age in
the past — if necessary a past so distant that contradictory evidence was scarce.
Taken together, the forces shaping what evidence has survived make it harder
to take a rosy view of recent history than earlier history. I tend to believe that
China in Song times was more impressive than China in the nineteenth century
— that not only did it
compare better to other contemporary states, but that the
daily lives of people atall social levels were in many ways more satisfying. Yet
how can I be sure that generations of historians have not discarded most of the
evidence that would tend to refute my views? Long-ago cruelties are less vivid
than recent ones: we may know that many emperors had malicious streaks, but
we do not have vivid first-hand accounts from witnesses the way we do from
Mao’s victims. Even material evidence — the paintings, porcelains, and silks — are
winnowed over time so that there is little from the eleventh century that is not
pleasing in some way whereas much that is ordinary or unimpressive survives
from the nineteenth century.
Exacerbating these source problems is the difficulty of telling history in
chronological order, of putting the past before the present, the way people want
to hear it told. The story one choosesto tell about one period depends very much
on what one thinks of the next. In the 1960s and 1970s, when many westerners
were inclined to look as positively as they could on both Mao Zedong and the
People’s Republic of China, accounts of the 1920s and 1930s often subordinated
almost everything to the story of the rise of the Communist Party: the May Fourth
Movement was the first step towards breaking with the past intellectually, impor-
tant as a formative part of the experience of Mao and Zhou. Similarly, industrial-
ization needed to be described, because without it one could not recount the
urban labour organizing that played a role in the early stage of the Communist
Party before it broke with the Comintern, and so on. We may feel superior to this
generation of historians, but can we be sure that we have somehow found a van-
tage point that will not keep shifting? In recent years there have been many rev-
elations of internal party viciousness. Should we totally rewrite our accounts of
the last few decades? How then can we capture what Mao or the Long March or
the Great Leap meant to people at the time ignorant of these happenings?
These problems are even more acute for earlier periods. Always concentrating
on what proves to be important in later times makes history seem the working
out of the inevitable. I could not omit mention of ideas about ancestors in the
Shang dynasty, the ideas of Confucius in the late Zhou, or centralized government
336 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

in the Qin and Han. Yet | am uncomfortable with conveying the impression that
the direction of China's future course was firmly
set
at these early dates. Doing so
seems to diminish the agency of the Chinese people, their capacity to respond to
new situations creatively, to make use of what they inherited from their ancestors
without being immobilized by
it.
lam definitely not the only historian who has struggled with this difficulty in
linking Chinese civilization — a story that can be told in an upbeat, even celebra-
tory mode — and the story of modern China — where itis difficult to avoid the lan-
guage of victimization from creeping in occasionally. Those with the darkest
views of modern China sometimes cast the story of premodern China
so
leads inevitably to what happened in the twentieth century. China’s history can
that
it
be told, for instance, in terms of the development of state institutions that
allowed arbitrary exercise of power or the development of Confucian cultural val-
ues that became too inward-looking. Those with the most positive views of pre-
modern China can solve the problem a different way by making all of China’s
woes since the Opium War the fault not of Chinese civilization but of an unfair
world system.
The reason I persisted in trying to link the story of China’s more distant and
more recent pasts despite these intractable problems is that I am convinced that
it is a continuous story. Chinese people today do not simply occupy the same ter-
ritory occupied by subjects of the Tang, Song, or Ming dynasties; their notions of
who
they are and of what their nation is are profoundly shaped by the ideas and
institutions created during these centuries, even if they have been much trans-
muted in the intervening centuries. To minimize somehow the impression of
inevitability, I have tried to cast the inheritance from the past as a resource, not a
prison. In every epoch Chinese have made use of the resources they inherited —
material, intellectual, and institutional — to set goals, respond to new challenges,
protect themselves, and advance their interests. Because their actions have a
cumulative impact on the resources the next generation inherits, change is
inevitable but so are links to the past. This I believe is as true today as ever.
338 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Chronology
100,000 Bc Hemo sapiens in China. Paleolithic 868 Oldest extant printed book published. 1905 Abolition of civil service exam system.
cultures.
907 Five Dynasties period (to 960). Khitans 191] Qing dynasty overthrown by revolutionar-
10,000 Bc Early Neolithic cultures. declare Liao dynasty (to 1126). ies.
3000 Bc Late Neolithic cultures (to 2000 Bc). 960 Song dynasty (to 1276). Northern Song 1915 Periodical New Youth begins publication.
dynasty (to 1126).
1600 Bc Shang dynasty (to c. 1050 Bc). 1916 Death of Yuan Shikai (b. 1859). Warlord
1069 Wang Anshi institutes New Policies (to period begins (to 1928).
1050 BcZhou dynasty (to 256 Bc), Western Zhou
1085).
dynasty (to 771 Bc). 1919 May Fourth protests in Tiananmen Square
1126 Jurchen seize north China, extending Jin against Versailles Treaty.
770 Bc Eastern Zhou dynasty (to 256 8c), Spring
and Autumn period (to 481 Bc). dynasty (1115-1234).
1925 Death of Sun Zhongshan (b. 1866).
c. 479 Bc Death of Confucius.
1127 Southern Song dynasty in south (to 1276).
1926 Northern Expedition of combined
403
1200 Death of Zhu Xi (b. 1130). Nationalist and Communist forces (to
Bc Warring States period (to 221 Bc).
1927).
1215 Mongols seize most of north China.
286 Bc Death of Zhuangzi (b. 396 Bc).
1927 Nationalists turn on Communists; ‘White
221 Bc Qin unifies China. First Emperor under-
1227 Death of Chinggis Khan.
Terror’ (to 1930).
takes massive projects (to 210 Bc). 1276 Mongol Yuan dynasty gains control of south
1927 Nationalist period (to 1949). Jiang Jieshi
China.
213 Bc Burning of Confucian books. leader.
1368 Ming dynasty (to 1644).
206 Bc Han Dynasty (to Ap 220), Former or 1930 Mao Zedong and other Communists form
Western Han dynasty (to aD 9). 1405 Zheng He's maritime expeditions (to 1433). Jiangxi Soviet.
141 Bc Wadi succeeds to throne (to 87 Bc). 1528 Death of Wang Yangming (b. 1472). 1930 New Civil Code gives women marriage and
133 Bc Campaigns against Xiongu (to 119 Bc). 1583 Matteo Ricci arrives in China (to 1610). property rights.

126 Bc Zhang Qian returns from western 1931 Japan seizes control of Manchuria.
regions. 1592 Ming campaigns in Korea (to 1598).
1934 Red Army flees Nationalist encirclement,
c. 85 Bc Sima Qian completes Historical Records. 1598 Peony Pavilion written by Tang Xianzu.
begins Long March (to 1935).
AD 9 Wang Mang usurps throne, founds Xin 1624 Struggles between Donglin scholars and
1936 Death of Lu Xun (b. 1881).
dynasty (to 25). eunuch dictator Wei Zhongxian (to 1627).
25 Later or Eastern Han dynasty (to 220). 1644 Ming emperor commits suicide after rebels
1937 Sino-Japanese War
(to 1945). Rape of
take Beijing. Nanjing.
105 First mention of paper.
1947 Civil War between Nationalists and
1644 Manchu Qing dynasty (to 1911).
184 Rebellion of Yellow Turbans. Communists (to 1949).
1645 Chinese men required to wear Manchu
220 Age of Division (to 589). Three Kingdoms 1949 People’s Republic of China founded. Mao
hairstyle.
period (to 265). Zedong leader.
1673 Rebellion of the Three Feudatories (to
265 WesternJin dynasty (to 316). Reunifies 1950 Korean War (to 1953).
China in 280. 1681).
1950 Marriage Reform Law.
1720 Qing army enters Lhasa; Tibet made Qing
304 Sixteen Kingdoms (to 439). Non-Chinese
protectorate. 1951 Redistribution and collectivization of land
compete for control of north China.
(to 1956).
1792 Novel Dream of Red Mansions published.
317 Eastern Jin dynasty set up in south (to 420).
195] Five Antis Campaign (to 1952).
Beginning of division between north and 1796 White Lotus Society rebellion (to 1804).
south (to 589). 1956 Hundred Flowers and Anti-rightist cam-
1840 Opium War, ending with Treaty of Nanjing
404 Huiyuan writes On Why Monks Do Not Bow in 1842. Britain obtains Hong Kong. paigns (to 1957).
Down Before Kings. 1957 Great Leap Forward. Agricultural com-
1850 Taiping Rebellion (to 1864).
427 Death of Tao Yuanming (b. 365). munes established (to 1958).
1860 Anglo-French expedition occupies Beijing.
589 Reunification of China bySui dynasty 1959 Three Hard Years (to 1962).
Burning of Summer Palace.
(581-618). 1959 Tibetan uprising suppressed. Dalai Lama
1862 Zuo Zongtang suppresses Muslim rebellions
flees.
609 Grand Canal completed. in northwest, regains central Asia (to 1878).
618 Tang dynasty (to 907). 1884 Sino-French War (to 1885).
1960 Sino-Soviet split.
653 Earliest surviving law code. 1966 Cultural Revolution (to 1969).
1894 Sino-Japanese War (to 1895).
690 Empress Wu usurps throne from her son, 1976 Death of Mao Zedong (b. 1893). Gang of
1894 Sun Zhongshan establishes Revive China
Four arrested.
declares the Zhou dynasty (to 705). Society.

713 Death of Huineng, Sixth Patriarch of Chan 1978 Deng Xiaoping regains power. ‘Big character
1898 Guangxu emperor's attempted reforms
Buddhism. thwarted by Empress Dowager Cixi. posters’ appear on Beijing’s Democracy
Wall.
755 An Lushan Rebellion (to 763). 1900 Boxer Rebellion. International expedition to
1979 Special economic zones created.
relieve siege of legations.
843 Suppression of Buddhisin (to 845)
1989 Pro-democracy movement violently sup-
1901 Death of Li Hongzhang (b. 1823).
pressed,
 339

Picture Acknowledgements
The author, the publishers, and Calmann & King Lid would like to thank Paludan. 124 BL. 125 BL. 127 Shaanxi Provincial Museum. 130 British
the museums, galleries, collectors, and other owners who have kindly Museum, London. 134 Shésé-in Treasure House. 139 Shanghai Museum.
allowed their works to be reproduced in this book. Every effort has been 140 NA (Purchase: Nelson Trust), 49-79. 142 Dingzhou Museum. 143
made to trace copyright holders and we apologize in advance for any unin- NPM. 145 Palace Museum, Beijing. 146-7 Cleveland Museum of Art, John L.
tentional omissions. We would be pleased to insert the appropriate acknow1- Severance Fund, 77.5. 148 Palace Museum, Beijing. 149 Ying Chih Wen
edgement in any subsequent edition of this publication. Thu Chu. 151 Liaoning Museum. 152-3 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift
of the Dillon Fund, 1973. 154 NPM. 156 FGA. 157 FGA. 162 NPM. 163
The following abbreviations have been used: top NPM. 162-3 bottom Cleveland Museum of the
Art, Purchase from J.H.

BL: British Library, London

Wade Fund, 33.220. 165 Royal Geographical Society. 166 Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. William Sturgis Bigelow Collection by exchange. 170
CHM: Chinese History Museum, Beijing Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. 174 NPM. 176 Orientations magazine. 177
FGA: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC NA (Purchase: Nelson Trust), 48-5. 178 FGA. 181 NPM. 184 NPM. 188-9
NA: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
Kansas City, Missouri Art Institute of Chicago. 191 NPM. 193 RH. 198 Yurinkan Museum, Kyoto.
NPM: National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China 199 NA (Purchase: Nelson Trust), 46-48. 200 NPM. 204 Museum fur
PE: Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts Ostasiatische, Cologne. Inv. no. R62 1 (18) (Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv,
RH: Robert Harding Picture Library Cologne). 208 Michael Nichols/Magnum Photos. 210-11 Historiographical
XNA: Xinhua News Agency, London Institute, University of Tokyo. 211 bottom Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Given by John T. Dorrance. 217 BL. 218 M. Medley. 219 top Henan
Page 14 top China Tourism Photo Library. 14 bottom RH. 15 Palace Provincial Museum. 219 bottom Percival David Foundation. 222 Musée
Museum, Beijing. 16 bottom XNA. 17 Shanghai Museum. 19 bottom China
Tourism Photo Library. 21 CHM. 22 Institute of Archeology, Beijing. 23
Guimet, Paris (ET Archive). 225 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase) the
Dillon Fund Gift, 1986 (1986.206). 226 CHM. 228 Bibliotheque Nationale,
Academia Sinica, Taiwan. 24 Academia Sinica, Taiwan. 26 top Wang Yang Paris, 230 XNA. 231 Sen-Oku Hakko Kan (Sumitomo Collection). 234 PE
(artwork). 26 bottom Institute of Archeology, Beijing. 29 Sichuan Provincial (Photo: Mark Sexton), 237 National Maritime Museum (ET Archive). 244
Antiquities Committee. 31 Capital Museum, Beijing. 32 Shaanxi Provincial Private collection (ET Archive). 251 Peter Wee, Katong Antique House,
Museum. 36 Shandong Museum. 37 left Shanghai Museum. 37 right Sen- Singapore. 252 Library of Congress. 254 FGA. 255 Hulton Deutsch
Oku Hakko Kan (Sumitomo Collection). 39 XNA. 41 Hubei Provincial Collection Lid. 256 top Library of Congress. 256 bottom Library of
Museum. 42 American Numismatic Society. 43 Shanghai Museum. 50 Hubei Congress. 259 top BL. 259 bottom PE. 260 Photographic Archives of the
Provincial Museum (XNA - Photo: Li Jilu). 54 left Jingzhou Museum. 54 Arnold Arboretum. ©The President and Fellows of Harvard College (Photo:
right Jingzhou Museum. 55 Hubei Provincial Museum. 61 Shaanxi E.H. Wilson). 261 top PE. 261 bottom PE. 266 top XNA. 266 bottom
Provincial Museum, 62 RH. 64 BL. 66 Hebei Provincial Museum. 68 Hulton Deutsch Collection Ltd. 267 BL. 269 top XNA. 269 bottom BL..274.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917. 72 left bottom Museum of Revolutionary History, Beijing. 275 Popperfoto. 276
Chinese Cultural Center, San Francisco. 72 right Metropolitan Museum of Ringart Collection. 277 Range/Bettmann/UPI, 280 Henri Cartier-
288°.)
:

Art, Rogers Fund, 1917. 76 top Christie's Colour lmages. 76 corners XNA. Bresson/Magnum Photos. 283 Sam Tata/Batsford Publishing. 284 BL.
78 National History Museum, Taiwan. 80 Werner Forman Archive. 82 top XNA. 289 XNA. 292 left Patricia Buckley Ebrey. 292 right Christie's Colour
Gansu Provincial Museum. 82 bottom Royal Tomb Museum, Taiwan. 83 images. 293 top Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Madam Fan Tchum-pi:
Yunan Provincial Museum. 88 bottom Hunan Provincial Museum. 88-9 and her sons. 293 bottom Sotheby's, Hong Kong. 296 XNA. 299 XNA, 300.005
Nanjing Museum. 94 CHM. 97 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Mrs René Burri/Magnum Photos (Paris). 309 Lois Wheeler Snow. 310-LI XNA.
Scott Fitz (22.407). Gift of Edward Jackson Holmes in memory of his moth- 314 XNA 315 Camera Press, London. 317 Harry Red/Black Star. 318 Sally
er, Mrs W. Scott Fitz (47.1407-12). 101 Patricia Buckley Ebrey. 105 CHM. and Richard Greenhill. 319 Kubota/Magnum Photos. 320 Camera Press,
106 Ingrid Morejohn. 107 top left Ingrid Morejohn 109 China Cultural London. 322 top Dr G. Gerster, ©1995, Comstock. 322 bottom BL. 323°T.S,
Relics magazine. 112 RH (Photo: G.P. Corrigan). 113 Kyoto National left
Lam/World & |. 324 Popperfoto. 325 British Film Institute. 326
Museum. 115 Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Mrs Pauline Palmer Wood, Popperfoto. 326 right Associated Press Photos. 327 Chris Stowers/Panos.
1970.1073. 116 XNA. 117 David Kemp (artwork). 119 CHM. 122 Ann Pictures. 330 Cary Sol Wolinsky/Trillium Stock, Nowell, Mass.
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

Notes
=) Credit-is-given here to quotations from other ‘When they capture a Chinese .. .’ Frederic Mote, (Penguin Books), [, pp. 465-67.
S scholars’ works, primarily their translations from The Cheng-hua and Hung-chih reigns, 1465-
Chinese sources, When no credit is given fora 1505, in The Cambridge History of China, vol 7, Chapter 10
translation, itis by the author, sometimes previously The Ming Dynasty 1368-1644 (Cambridge: Zou Rong, ‘wipe out the five million barbarian
published in her Chinese Civilization:
ree. ed. (New
A

York: The Free Press, 1993).

Sourcebook, Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 383-4. Manchus
... Michael Gasster, ‘The Republican
Revolutionary Movement,’ Cambridge History of
Wang Yangming, ‘Instituting direct civil adminis- China, vol. 11 part 2 Late Ch’ing (Cambridge:
Chapter Ls
tration...“ Herold].Wiens, Nan Chinese Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 482.
303
Ancestors’ ‘Take me as a substitute... Expansion in South China (New Haven: The Shoe
by James Hart, in Patricia Buckley Ebrey, String Press, 1967), p. 219, modified. Chen Duxiu, ‘Youth is like early spring .. ”
Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, rev. ed. Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement:
(New York: The Free Press, 1993), p. 6. Matteo Ricci, ‘the exceedingly large numbers / . . Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Stanford:
Louis J. Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth Century: Stanford University Press, 1967), pp. 45-46.
The Journals of Matteo Ricci, 1595-1610 (New

é that no land. vs Mark Elvin, The Pattern York: Random House, 1953), p. 20-21. ‘We must be thoroughly aware
.. / Lin Yi-sheng,
the Chinese Past (Stanford: Stanford University The Crisis in Chinese Consciousness: Radical
5,
1973), p. 48, modified. Lt Kun, ‘when tenants ask for help, Johanna FE Antitraditionalism. in the May Fourth Era
Handlin, Action in Late Ming Thought: The Reori- (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979),
vho rejoice... Wim. Theodore de
Bary, et entation of Li Kun and Other Scholar-Officials p. 76.
ed Source of Chinese Tradition (NewYork: (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p.24.
mb University Press, 1960), p. 321, modi- John Dewey, ‘There seems to be no country...
“Old Skymaster ..*' Mi Chu Wiens, ‘Masters and cited in Chow, p. 183.
Bondservants: Peasant Rage in the Seventeenth
Spread, Early Buddhist Art. “The gold Century, Ming Studies 8 (1979):57-64, quote 63. ‘militarize the life of the people ’ Jonathan D. . .

vers as . from W. J. FE Jenner, Memories Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York:
Verbiest, ‘the seven wonders of the world...“ Norton, 1990), p. 415.
Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From
History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge Tawney, ‘In some districts .. . RH. Tawney, Land
University Press, 1990), p. 206. and Labor in China (Boston: Beacon Press, 1932),

.
p. 77.
perior 2 Peter Bol, ‘This Culture of Photo Spread, caption, ‘If the painted decoration
Hectual. Transitions in T’ang and Sung ...” Robert Tichane, Ching-te-chen: Views of a Song Qingling, ‘If we do not grant... Anna
stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), Porcelain City. (New York State Institute for Glaze Louise Strong, China’ Millions (New York:
Research, 1983), p. 142, modified. Coward-McCann, 1928), p. 125.

Chapter 9 ‘Under the Nationalists .. ’ Edward Friedman,

Qianlong, ‘we possess all things “ Harley
. . Paul G. Pickowies, and Mark Selden, Chinese
olo,‘Ttell you that this river. 7 A.C. . Farnsworth MacNair, Modern Chinese History: Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale
-and Paul Pelliot; trans., Marco Polo, The Selected Readings (Shanghai: Commercial Press, University Press, 1991), p. 41.
ption of
the World (London: Routledge, 1927), p. 4.
modified.
',

320, ‘Wiping Out the Reds — A Great Spectacle,’ from

Lin Zexu, ‘Suppose there were people... Ssu-yu Lu Xun, Selected Works, trans. Yang Xianyi and

Teng and John K. Fairbank, China’ Response to Gladys Yang (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press,
the West: a Documentary Survey 1839-1923 (New 1956), LI, 45-47, slightly modified.
York: Antheum, 1971), p. 26.

picture spread, Modern Chinese Painting,

.
Wroren, ‘From ancient down to modern times,

Teng and Fairbank, p. 76, modified.

. . ‘Chinese ink painting . .. Chu-tsing Li, Trends in
.

Modern Chinese Painting (Ascona, Switzerland:

Artibus Asiae, 1979), p. 131 modified.
‘The foreigners have been aggressive . .
” Victor
Purcell, The Boxer Uprising, A Background Study Chapter 1]
uu,
“in
the morning I punish
trans.a .few . . (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), ‘Communism is heaven . .
.” Friedman et al., p.
by Lik Hwa in
Patricia Buckley Ebrey, ed. Chinese
_p. 225, modified. 218.
lization: A Sourcebook, rev. ed. (New York:
ree Press, 1993), p. 207. Long passage from The Dream of Red Mansions, “Compel the government . Orville Schell,
. .

from Daniel Hawkes, The Story of the Stone Mandate of Heaven (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1994), p. 103.
 341

Further Reading
Readers who would like to learn more about the main themes of Chinese civ- Warfare, eds. Frank A. Kierman. Jr. and John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Harvard
ilization would do well to read another general overview of Chinese history, University Press, 1974).
such as Ray Huang’s lively, interpretive China: a Macro History (Armonk, N. Y.:
M. E. Sharpe, 1988). John K. Fairbank’s China: A New History (Cambridge. the history of the Chinese family and kinship systems are dealt with in Patricia
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), with its frequent references to recent Ebrey and James Watson, eds., Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China,
scholarship, or Jacques Gernet’s solid A History of Chinese Civilization 1000-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); and Rubie Watson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), which is particularly strong and Patricia Ebrey, eds., Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Berkeley:
on the premodern period and Chinas connections to the outside world. University of California Press, 1991). The classic study of Chinese lineages in
Conrad Schirokaur’s A Brief History of Chinese Civilization (New York: Harcourt Fujian and Guangdong provinces is Maurice Freedman’s Lineage Organization
Brace Jovanovich, 1991) is a popular and balanced textbook. For premodern in Southeastern China (London: Athlone Press, 1965). Two edited volumes look
China, Charles Hucker’s China’ Imperial Past (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1975), provides broad coverage of arts and literature in addition to pol-
specifically at the lives of women in varied time periods: see Richard Guisso
and Stanley Johannesen, eds., Women in China: Current Directions in Historical
itics and institutions. For modern China, a concise interpretation is offered by Scholarship (Youngstown, NY: Philo Press, 1981); and Margery Wolf and.
John K. Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, Roxanne Witke, eds., Women in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University
1987); for a fuller yet still very readable narrative, see Jonathan Spence’s The Press, 1975). Woll’s Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan (Stanford: Stanford
Search for Modern China (New York: Norton & Company, 1990). Political his- University Press, 1972) is especially valuable for its attention to the ways
tory is covered inthe greatest detail in the multi-volume, multi-authored The women view the family differently than men. A more demographic approach to
Cambridge History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 15 vol- women's livesis offered by Arthur P Wolf and Huang Chieh-shan's Marriage and
umes to date, with more to come. Paul S. Ropp’s edited volume, Heritage of Adoption in China, 1845-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980).
China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1990), offers readers essays on religion, thought, family, art, Intellectual history is thoroughly surveyed by Fung Yu-lan’s A History of
and other topics. For translations of Chinese writings providing insights into Chinese Philosophy, Derk Bodde, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
Chinese society and culture see Patricia Ebreys Chinese Civilization: A 1983). William Theodore DeBary, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson's Saurces
Sourcebook (New York: The Free Press, 1993). of Chinese Tradition, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960, 1964)
provides introductions to andselections from the works of the key thinkers in
For the best single-volume reference workoffering quick access to topics con- Chinese history. Several symposium volumes show the diversity. of
cerning contemporary and historical China, see Brian Hook and Denis Confucianism; see David Nivison and Arthur Wright, eds., Confucianism in
Twitchett, eds., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959); Arthur Wright, ed., The
Cambridge University Press, 1991). Of similar value are the entries on China Confucian Persuasion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960); and Arthur
topics in the Encyclopedia of Asian History, ed. Ainslie T. Embree (New York: Wright and Denis Twitchett, eds., Confucian Personalities (Stanford: Stanford
Scribner's, 1988). For provincial and city maps, as well as physical geography, University Press, 1962). Two broad-ranging analyses of Confucianism by: an
populations, climate, and economic conditions, see The Times Atlas of China, P. influential interpreter are The Liberal Tradition in China (New York: Columbia
Geelan and Denis Twitchett, eds. (London: Times Books, 1974). For historical University Press, 1983) and The Trouble with Confucianism (Cambridge:
maps and well-illustrated topical essays, see Caroline Blunden and Mark Elvin, Harvard University Press, 1991), both by Wm. Theodore de Bary.
Cultural Atlas of China (New York: Facts on File, 1983). For current scholar-
ship on all aspects of Chinese history, society, and culture, consult the For the history of Chinese science, the standard work is the encyclopedic;
Association for Asian Studies’ annual Bibliography of Asian Studies. See also the many-volumed survey Science and Civilization in China, by Joseph Needham
China section of the American Historical Association’s Guide to Historical and co-workers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954—). for Chinese
Literature (1994). For literature, see the Indiana Companion to Traditional historiography and historical thought, see W. G. Beasley and E. B. Pulleyblank;
Chinese Literature, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., ed. (Bloomington: Indiana eds., Historians of China and Japan (Oxford: Oxlord University Press, 1961). For
University Press, 1986), which contains a wealth of information on fiction, overviews of Chinese religion, see Daniel Overmyer, Religions of China: The
drama, and poetry, with detailed entries on specific authors and titles. World as a Living System (New York: Harper and Row, 1986); or Laurence. G.
Thompson, Chinese Religion: An Introduction (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth;
Broad interpretations of social and economic history can be found in Kang 1988).
Chao’s Man and Land in Chinese History: An Economic Analysis (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1986); Mark Elvin’s The Pattern of the Chinese Past Many fine surveys of art and literature are available, inchiding Laurence
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), and Lloyd Eastman’s Family, Field, Sickman and Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of China (New York:
and Ancestors: Constancy and Change in China’s Social and Economic History, Penguin Books, 1978); and Jessica Rawson, ed., The British Museum Book of.
1550-1949 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Food, not an insignif- Chinese Art (London: British Museum Press, 1992). The best general survey of
icant facet of economic and cultural history, is dealt with in both E.N. Chinese painting remains James Cahill’s Chinese Painting (New York:
Anderson's The Food of China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); and Skira/Rizolli, 1985). The Chinese Garden: History, Art and Architecture (New
K.C. Chang, ed., Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical York: Rizzoli, 1978), by Maggie Keswick and Charles Jencks can also be rec-
Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). ommended. A handy survey of Chinese literature, with extensive quotations, is
Wu-chi Liu’s An Introduction to Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana
Broad surveys of institutional history include wwo studies of law and penal University Press, 1966). A good selection of literature in translation can be
institutions, Tung-tsu Ch’tis Law and Society in Traditional China (Paris: found in Cyril Birch, ed., Anthology of Chinese Literature, 2 vols. (New York:
Mouton, 1961) and Geoffrey MacCormack’s, Traditional Chinese Penal Law Grove Press, 1965, 1972). For poetry, a good place to start is Stephen Owen's
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990). On foreign relations, see The Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: Omens of the World (Madison: University,
Chinese World Order, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Harvard University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). For an introduction to Chinese linguistics, see S.
Press, 1968); and John K. Fairbank, The United States and China, 4th ed. Robert Ramsey, The Languages of China (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). China's relations with northern 1987).
neighbours is covered in Owen Lattimore’s Inner Asian Frontiers of China, 2nd
ed. (New York: American Geographical Society, 1951); now partially super- Besides these broad-ranging books covering long time spans, there are hun-
seded by Sechin Jagchid and Van Jay Symons, Peace, War and Trade along the dreds of excellent books covering limited epochs. For the ancient period, a
Great Wall: Nomadic Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia (Bloomington: good place to begin is with the writings of archaeologist K.C. Chang, most
Indiana University Press, 1989). For military history, see Chinese Ways in notably The Archeology of Ancient China, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale University
 342) THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

oo Press) I 986): Shang Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); and Medieval China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). Also recommend-
“Art; Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China ed is Arthur Wrights gracefully-written The Sui Dynasty (New York: Alfred A.
:
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). For a comparative perspective Knopf, 1978). Ssu-yu Teng’s translation of Yen Zhitui’s Family Instructions of the
“son prehistory and the ancient period, see Gina L. Barnes, The Rise of Civilization Yen Clan (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968) provides a view of social life and cultural val-

“in East Asia’ C:ondon: Thames and Hudson, 1993). For more detailed analyses, ues in the sixth century, as does WJ.E Jenners Memories of Le Yang: Yang
‘see David: NvKeightley, ed., The Origins of Chinese Civilization (Berkeley: Hsuan-chih and the Lost Capital (493-534) (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
University. of California Press, 1983); Cho-yun Hsu and Katheryn Lindulf, 1981). Biographies of literary figures offer important insights into cultural and
Wester Chou Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); and intellectual developments of the period. See John Frodsham’s The Murmuring
Xureqin. Li, Eastern Zhou and Qin Civilizations, K.C. Chang, trans. (New Haven: Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Poet Hsieh Ling-ytin (385-433), Duke
Yale University Press, 1985), all of which make extensive use of archaeological of K’ang-lo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malay Press, 1967); Richard Mather's
discoveries. Sarah Allan examines Shang cosmology and Zhou myths in The The Poet Shen Ytieh (441-513): The Reticent Marquis (Princeton: Princeton
eof the Tirrtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmology in Early China (Albany: State University Press, 1988); and John Marney’s Liang Chien-wen Ti (Boston:
1iversity Press of New York, 1991). For ancient art and technology, see the Twayne Publishers, 1976).
shly illustrated Great Bronze Age of China: An Exhibition from the People’
ublic:of China, Wen Fong, ed. (New York: Metropolitan Museum Art, of The best short introduction to the topic of Buddhism in China remains Arthur
80): Jessica: Rawson, Ancient China: Art and Archeology (London: British Wright’ brief Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
us um, 1980); and William Watson, Cultural Frontiers in Ancient East Asia 1959). Much more thorough is the fascinating, highly scholarly study by Erik
Zurcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of
‘dinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971).
Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1959). See also Kenneth
pe Hecrwal. ‘flowering of the Warring States period provided the founda-
ant Chen's The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton
onof Chinése thought for centuries to come. Excellent overviews can be University Press, 1973). Edwin O. Reishchauer provides a glimpse into social
A.C. Graham's Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient and cultural aspects of Tang Buddhism in his translation, Ennins Diary: The
La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989); Benjamin Schwartz’s The World of Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law, and the companion vol-
‘Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); and ume, Ennin’ Travels in T’ang China (both New York: Ronald Press, 1955). See
efly, in W: Mote’s Intellectual Foundations of China (New York:
FE.
also Jacques Ternet, Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the
Hil, 1989). James Legge did a complete translation of The Chinese Fifth to the Tenth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
vols. 5
Kong:
eee Kong Hong
aed
Press, 1960) in the nine-
Diverse aspects of the Tang period are explored in two collections of essays,

a Classics ‘Hong Kong. Chinese University ‘Sieae, 1982): and

altimore: Penguin, 1970). Watson has published The Tso Chuan:
om. China’ Oldest Narrative History (New York: Columbia
Arthur Wright and Dennis Twitchett, eds., Perspectives on the T'ang (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), and John Curtis Perry and Bardwell
Smith, eds., Essays on T'ang Society: The Interplay of Social, Political, and
Economic Forces (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1976). On Tang rulership, see Howard J.
téss, 1989); The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Wechsler, Mirror to the Son of Heaven: Wei Cheng at the Court of Tang T’ai-tsung
iversity Press, 1968); the Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hsun Tzu, and (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974). A history of public finance and eco-
(New. York: Columbia University Press, 1967). For military think- nomic conditions is offered by Denis Twitchett in Financial Administration
=t2U: The Art of War, translated by Roger T. Ames (New York: under the T’ang Dynasty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
L

R.WL. Guisso analyses the career of China’s only empress in Wu Tse-t’ien and
Books,
cae the Politics of Legitimization in T’ang China (Bellingham, Washington: Western
Ly of ihe Qin period remains DerkBodde’s China’ First Unifier: A Washington University, 1978). On the Tang State see also Edwin G.
in Pulleyblank’s The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan (London: Oxford
f

the Ch’in Dynasty As Seen the Life of Li Ssu (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1938).
es ‘of the Han period include Ying-shih Yu's Trade and Expansion in University Press, 1955) and David McMullen’s meticulously documented State
i: A Study: in the Structure of Sino-barbarian Economic Relations and Scholars in Tang China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
University of California Press, 1967); Michael Loewe’s Everyday Life

it
mperial’ China During the Han Period, 202 Bc — Ao 220, rep. ed. For an introduction to Tang poetry, see Stephen Owen's The Great Age of
Carousel Books, Michele Perazzoli- tSerstevens’
The
Han Chinese Poetry: the High Tang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); or
one of the many biographies of Tang poets, such as William Hung’s Tu Fu:
Ciylligation and Bureaciaes: "Variations Chinas Greatest Poet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1952); Arthur
hinese ona Theme, H.M.
New: Haven: Yale University 1964). Other aspects ak Waley’s The Life and Times of Po Chu-i, 772-846 ap (London: George Allen &
Press,
Unwin, 1949); or Charles Hartman’s Han Yu and the T’ang Search For Unity
versity ‘of Washington Press, 1972). “Cho.-yun Fis, Han Agriculture: (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

te ean
ation. Early. Chinese (206 Bc — aD 220) Geatil e:
of Economy
Probably the best general introduction to the Song period is Jacques Gernet's
Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-76, H. M. Wright,
trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962). For biographies of promi-
nent Song figures, see Herbert Franke, ed., Sung Biographies (Wiesbaden: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 1976). The flourishing economy of the Song is analysed in
Shiba Yoshinobu’s Commerce and Society in Sung China, Mark Elvin, trans. (Ann
graphies-offer-readers more personal glimpses of Chinese society Arbor: The University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1970). Song
times, especially Burton Watson's Ssu-ma Chien: Grand Historian of foreign relations are covered in the symposium volume edited by Morris
“York: Columbia University Press, 1958); and Nancy Lee Swann’s Rossabi, China among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its
Neighbors (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983). The classic study of Song government is
Edward Kracke, Jrs Civil Service in Sung China: 960-1076 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1953, 1968). More recently John Chaffee brilliantly
analysed the expansion of the examination system in The Thorny Gates of
Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985). Lin Yutang’s biography of the literary fig-
ure Su Shi, The Gay Genius: The Life and Times of Su Tungpo (New York: John
Day, 1947) remains valuable, despite its bias against Wang Anshi. For more bal-
ew York: Columbia University Press, 1974). anced coverage see James T.C. Liu, Reform in Sung China: Wang An-Shih
(1021-1086) and His New Pelicies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
scholarship on the turbulent Age of Division after the fal] of the Han 1957); and Paul Smiths Taxing Heavens Storehouse: Bureaucratic
urrent
an be sampled in Albert Dien’s edited volume, State and Society in Early Entrepreneurship and the Sichuan Tea and Horse Trade, 1074-1224 (Cambridge:
:
Further Reading 343

Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991). Brian McKnights China: From History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1990).
Law and Order in Sung China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) Two important studies of elite mobility from Ming times through the end of the
describes in detail both the police system and the penal institutions involved Qing are Ping-ti Hos The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York:
©

in catching and punishing criminals. Columbia University Press, 1962); and Hilary Beattie’s Land and Lineage in
China: A Study of Tung-ch’eng County, Anhwei, in the Ming and Ch’ing Dynasties
The intellectual shifts from Tang to Song associated with neo-Confucianism are -

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). For an analysis of the rural

analysed in Peter Bol’s ‘This Culture of Ours’: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and economy over the period, see Evelyn Rawski’s Agricultural Change and the
Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), For Song intellectual Peasant Economy of South China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972):
history, see also A.C. Graham, Two Chinese Philosophers: Ch’eng Ming-tao and
Cheng Yi-ch'uan (London: Lund Humphries, 1958); and Hoyt Tillman, Important recent studies of Ming culture include Cynthia Brokaw’s The Ledgers
Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi Ascendancy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China
Press, 1992). For translations of neo-Confucian texts, see Reflections on Things (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); and Craig Clunas’s Superfluous
at Hand: The Neo-Confucian Anthology Compiled by Chu Hsi and Li Tsu-ch’ien, Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Urbana:
Wing-tsit Chan, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967); and University of Illinois Press, 1992). See also David Johnson, Andrew Nathan,
Learning to Be a Sage: Selections from Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged and Evelyn Rawski, eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley:
Topically, Daniel K. Gardner, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, University of California Press, 1985), for essays on both Ming and Qing cul-
1990). For Song poetry see Jonathan Chaves, Mei Yao-ch’en and the ture. The diversity of Ming intellectual life is amply demonstrated in Wm.
Development of Early Sung Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, Theodore deBary’s edited volume, Self and Society in Ming Thought (New York:
1976).
,

Columbia University Press, 1970). Wei-ming Tu examines the early life of oné
of the Ming’s most influential thinkers in Neo-Confucian Thought in Action:
On the emergence of the scholar-official elite in Song times, see Robert P, Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472-1509) (Berkeley: University of California Press,
Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern 1976). See also Wing-tsit Chan’s translation of Wang Yang-Ming’s Instructions
and Southern Sung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For other for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings (New York: Columbia
topics in Song social history, see Valerie Hansen's study of popular religion, University Press, 1963).
Changing the Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1276 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990); Richard von Glahn’s study offrontier expansion, The The development of the novel in the Ming is masterfully analyzed by Andrew:
Country of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion and Settlement, and the Civilizing of Plaks in The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel (Princeton: Princeton
the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, University Press, 1987). For translations see Luo Guanzhong’s Three Kingdoms:
1987), and Patricia Ebrey’s studies of family and marriage, The Inner Quarters: A Historical Novel, Moss Roberts, trans. (Berkeley: University of California
Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Song Period (Berkeley: Press, 1991): and Outlaws of the Marsh, Sidney Shapiro, trans. (Bloomington:
University of California Press, 1993) and Family and Property in Sung China: Indiana University Press, 1981). Biographies of late Ming cultural figures
Yuan Ts’ais Precepts for Social Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, include K’ang-i Sun Chang's The Late-Ming Poet Cl’en Tzu-lung (New Haven:
1984). Yale University Press, 1991); Willard Peterson’s Bitter Gourd: Fang I-chih. and
the Impetus for Intellectual Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979);
Coverage of the Conquest Dynasties isalmost as rich as for the Song. The Liao and Wang Fangyu, Richard Burnhart, and Judith Smith, eds., Master of. the
dynasty founded by the Khitans is the subject of the large and fully docu- Garden: The Life and Art of Bada Shanren (New Haven: Yale University Press;
mented study by Karl Wittfogel and Chia-sheng Feng, History of Chinese 1990). For biographies of other important individuals during the Ming
Society: Liao (907-1125) (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Dynasty, including both Chinese and foreigners, see L. Carrington Goodrich
n.s. 36). The major authority on the Jin period is Jing-shen Tao. See his The and Fang Chaoying, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368-1644 (New York
Jurchen in Twelfth-Century China: A Study of Sinicization (Seattle: University of and London: Columbia University Press, 1976). The history of Ming painting
Washington Press, 1976). Morris Rossabi provides a lively account ofthe life is covered by James Cahill in two works, Painting at the Shore: Chinese Painting
of one of the most important Yuan rulers in Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty, 1368-1580 (New York: Weatherhill,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). Readers can get a more per- 1978); and The Distant Mountains: Chinese Painting of the Late Ming Dynasty,
sonal glimpse into the times in The Travels of an Alchemist (London: Routledge 1570-1644 (New York: Weatherhill, 1982).
and Keegan Paul, 1931), Arthur Waley’s translation of the diary ofa traveller
to Ghengis Khan’s camp. The authoritative translation of Marco Polo’s diary
A. C. Moule and P. Pelliot, Marco Polo: The Description of the World (London:
is The fall of the Ming
is the central issue in Jonathan Spence and John Willss
edited volume, From Ming to Ch’ing: Conquest, Region, and Continuity in
G. Routledge and Sons Ltd, 1938). Further information into social, cultural, as Seventeenth-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). The
well as political aspects of Yuan history can be found in John D. Langois Jr's efforts of the Ming princesto restore their rule is dealt with in detail by Lynn
Struve in The Southern Ming, 1644-1662 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
edited volume, China Under Mongol Rule (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981). 1984). The turbulent seventeenth century is seen from the perspective of a fas-
cinating man of letters in Chun-shu Chang and Shelley Hsueh-lun Chang,
For Chinese culture during the Yuan period, see Hok-lam Chan and Wm. Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China: Society, Culture, and
Theodore deBary, eds., Yuan Thought: Chinese Thought and Religion Under the Modernity in Li Yu World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991),
Mongols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); and J. L Crump’s and Patrick Hanan, The Invention of Li Yu (Cambridge: Harvard University
Chinese Theater in the Days of Kublai Khan (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988).
Press, 1980). Two important works covering the art of the era are Sherman Lee
and Wai-kam Ho's Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Ytian Dynasty The best introductions to the Qing period are probably Frederic Wakeman’s
(1279-1368) (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968); and James F survey, The Fall of Imperial China (New York: Free Press, 1975); and Chinese
Cahill’s Hills Beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368 Society in the Eighteenth Century by Susan Naguin and Evelyn Rawski (New
(New York: Weatherhill, 1976). Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). Jonathan Spence offers a glimpse of the
Kangxi emperor through his own words in Emperor of China: Self Portrait of
The transition from the Yuan to the Ming is covered through the life of one Kang Hsi (New York: Knopf, 1974). Philip Kuhn examines the relationship
literati in Frederick W. Mote’s work The Poet Kao Ch’, 1336-]374 (Princeton: between popular culture and the bureaucracy during the Qianlong reign in
Princeton University Press, 1962); and through those close to the throne in Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (Cambridge: Harvard University
John Dardess’s Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding Press, 1990). The eighteenth century campaign to suppress anti-Manchu writ-
of the Ming Dynasty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). An acces- ings is studied by L. Carrington Goodrich in The Literary Inquisition of Clrien-
sible introduction to Chinese society and government in Ming times is Ray lung (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1935). Harold Kahn provides an subtle analy-
Huang’s 1597, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (New sis of the Qianlong emperor's personal self-image in Monarchy inthe Emperors
Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). Other worthy studies of Ming politics Eyes: Image and Reality in the Clvien-lung Reign (Cambridge: Harvard
include Charles O. Hucker’s The Censorial System of Ming China (Stanford: University Press, 1971). Arthur W. Hummel’s Eminent Chinese of the Ching
Stanford University Press, 1966); and Arthur Waldron’s The Great Wall of Period (1644-1912), 2 vols. (Washington, D C.: U.S. Government Printing
 THE CAMBRIDGE LL! LUSTRATED History OF CHINA

"Office, 1943) contains over eight hundred biographies of important Chinese, The concerns of leading intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century and
~- Manchus, ahd Mongols. beginning of the twentieth are analyzed in Hao Chang, Chinese Intellectuals in
Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890-1911) (Berkeley: University of
Insight into Qing society can be found from reading Jonathan Spence'’s The California Press. 1987). See also studies of particular thinkers, including
Death of Woman Wang (New York: Viking, 1978), Arthur Waley’s biography, Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West
_ Yuan Mei; Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet (New York: Grove Press, 1956): (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964); Paul Cohen, Between Tradition
Evelyn Rawski’s Education and Popular Literacy in Ching China (Ann Arbor: and Modernity: Wang Tao and Reform in Late Ch’ing China (Cambridge: Harvard
‘University of Michigan Press, 1978); and Djang Chu’s translation of Liu-Hung University Press, 1974); Kung-chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World:
% “Huang’sA Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence: A Manual for Kang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858-1927 (Seattle: University of
- Local Magistrates in Seventeenth-Century China (Tuscon: University of Arizona Washington Press, 1975); and Hao Chang, Liang Chii-ch’ao and Intellectual
Press, 1984). Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris reveal much about Chinese soci- Transition in China, 1890-1907 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
ety through their translation of legal cases in Law in Imperial China: Exemplified
by 190. Ching Dynasty Cases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). On the boxers, see Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising
n cities in ing
times, see G. William Skinner, ed., The City in Late Imperial (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). The subsequent decade and
China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), as well as two volumes by the collapse of the monarchical system is considered in Mary Wright's edited
William Rowe, Hangkow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796-1889 volume, China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900-1913 (New Haven: Yale
ind Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796-1895 (Stanford: University Press, 1968);and Joseph Esherick’s Reform and Revolution in China:
Stanford University Press, 1984 and 1989). The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (Berkeley: The University of California
Press, 1976). See also Harold Schiffrin’s Sun Yat-sen: Reluctant Revolutionary
“der
interested. in’ Qing intellectual and cultural history should see
njamin. Ellman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1980). Fora different perspective on the changing cul-
ture at the end of the century, see Dan J. Cohn, ed., Vignettes From the Chinese:
Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Council of East Asian Studies, Lithographs from Shanghai in the Late Nineteenth Century (Hong Kong: Research
rd University, 1984); and Kai-wing Chow, The Rise of Confucian Ritualism Center for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1987), which looks
Late Imperial’ China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse (Stanford: at newspaper illustrations; and Colin Mackerrass The Chinese Theatre in
mnford University Press, 1994). An excellent biography is The Life and Modern Times: From 1840 to the Present Day (Amherst: University of
ought ‘of Chang. Hstieh-ch’ eng (1738-1801) by David S. Nivison (Stanford: Massachusetts Press, 1975). Ida Pruitts A Daughter of Han: the Autobiography
ford University Press, 1966). Contact with European ideasand religion is of a Chinese Working Woman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), offers
ophis ticatedly analyzed by Jacques Germet in
China and the Christian Impact: a
the reader glimpse into a segment of Chinese society rarely depicted in books.
iflict ‘of Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). The
place of painting in High Qing culture is analyzed in Ju-hsi Chou and Claudia
“Brown, eds:, The Elegant Brush: Chinese Painting Under the Qianlong Emperor, The Republican period is ably surveyed in James Sheridan's China in
1795 (Phisenix: Phoenix Art Museum, 1985). China’s greatest novel is Disintegration: The Republican Eva in Chinese History, 1912-1949 (New York:
i
ble in an excellent translation by David Hawkes and John Minford, The Free Press, 1975). Andrew Nathan analyzes the skewed politics of the early
of
the: Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber), 5 vols. (Hardmonsworth: Republic in Peking Politics, 1918-1923: Factionalism and the Failure of
enguin, 1973-1982), Another important and entertaining eighteenth century Constitutionalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). An analysis
i
novel is The Scholars, Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang trans. (Beijing: Foreign
nguages Press, 1973).
of the political situation of the warlord era is provided by Chi Hsi-sheng in
Warlord Politics in China, 1916-1928 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1976). The politics of the Nationalists and Chiang Kai-shek are given unfavor-
able reviews in Lloyd Eastman’s influential The Abortive Revolution: China
Under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Council on East Asian
Studies, Harvard University, 1990) and Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China
in War and Revolution, 1937-1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984).
Two works discuss the first United Front between the Nationalists and the
‘
3
ae
(Seattle:
University of Wickes — 1966- 1971); aid Communists (1922-1927): Harold R. Issacs’ The Tragedy of the Chinese
i abeth
Perry, Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845-1945 Revolution, rev. ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951); and Dan N.
tanford:. Stanford University Press, 1980), which emphasizes the connection Jacobs’ biography of the top Soviet advisor to Sun Yat-sen, Borodin: Stalins Man
etween. environment and rebellion. in China (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1981). For the
Nationalists’ efforts to take control of Shanghai, see Frederic Wakeman, Jr.,
id ah
kth ‘West has been studied in least as much detail as rebellions.
at Policing Shanghai 1927-1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
‘ot good overviews see Jerome Chen's China and the West: Society and Culture, For the life of Chiang Kai-shek see Brian Crozier’s accessible biography, The
“by
815-1937 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979); and The Outsiders Man Who Lost China: The First Full Biography of Chiang Kai-shek (New York:
Rhoads ‘Murphey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977). Schribners, 1976).
than Spence’s To Change China: Western Advisors in China, 1620-1960
Little, Brown; 1969), describes the expetiences of some of the most
:

The major intellectual changes of the May Fourth era are ably analyzed in Tse-
prominent
ves
adviisors. For Chinese went
wre abroad,see id Arkush
he tsung Chow's The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern
China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960); Leo Lee, The romantic
Generation of Chinese Writers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973):
in
Lin Yua-sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism
the May Fourth Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979); and Vera

<
reated in Hoa Chi-ming’s Foreign Investment and Econonsle
Schwarz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May
Development in Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Min-
China, 1840-1937 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1965), a con- chih Chou deals with one of the foremost intellectuals of the time in Hu Shih
troversial analysis which asserts that because foreign trade and investment were and Intellectual Choice in Medern China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
crucial tothe’ modernization of the Chinese economy, they should not be Press, 1984). Jonathan Spence’s The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and
yegarded as imperialistic. Iwo works that deal specifically with the relationship Their Revolution, 1895~1980 (New York: The Viking Press, 1981) chronicles
-
“between the: Chinese and Christian missionaries are Paul Cohen’s China and the life experiences of many of the key intellectuals of the twentieth century,
~ Christianity: The Missionary Movement and Growth of Chinese Anti-Forcignism, including the May Fourth generation. Not all intellectuals of the period wel-
- -1860-1870° (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1963); and Jane Hunter's comed the new currents; for conservative reactions, see Charlotte Furth, ed.,
-The'Gospel of Géntility: American Missionar ‘y Women in Turn of the Century China The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). which deals more specifically with (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976); Guy Alitto, The Last Confucian:
“the nature of the missionary impact on Chinese women. Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979).
Further Reading 345

As an overview, C.T. Hsia’s A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (New Haven: Dorothy J. Solinger, Chinese Business under Socialism: The Politics of Domestic
Yale University Press, 1971) has not yet been surpassed. On writers of the
peri- Commerce 1949-1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). One of
od, see Ou-Fan Lee, ed.. Lu Xun and His Legacy (Berkeley: University of the most devastating critiques of the Maoist system is provided by Edward
California Press, 1985): and Olga Lang, Pa Chin and His Writings: Chinese Youth Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, Mark Selden, and Kay Ann Johnson in Chinese
Between the Two Revolutions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). For Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), which follows
translations, see The Collected Works of Lu Xun (or some other selection of sto- one village in north China from the late 1930s through the early 1960s.
ries). Pa Chin, Family, Sydney Shapiro, trans. (New York: Anchor. Books,
1972), Lao She's Rickshaw, Jean James, trans. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii First hand accounts and oral histories abound for life in recent China.
Press, 1979): and Tani Barlow and Gary Bjorge, eds., | Myself Am A Woman: Changes of the 1960s and 1970s are examined from the perspective of local
Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989). leadership in Shu-min Huang’s The Spiral Road: Change in a Chinese Village
Through the Eyes of a Communist Party Leader (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989).
For an interesting biography of one of the most popular Peking Opera stars, see Other personal views of Chinese life can be found in Michael Frolic’s Mao’
A.C. Scott's Mei Lan-Fang: Leader of the Pear Garden (Hong Kong: Hong Kong People: Sixteen Portraits of Life in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1959). Upper class life in the same period is depicted in Ida University Press, 1980); Jung Chang. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
Pruit’s Old Madame Yin: A Memoir of Peking Life, 1926-1938 (Stanford: (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991); and Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye, Chinese
Stanford University Press, 1979). Six hundred important individuals from the Lives: An Oral History of Contemporary China (New York: Pantheon Books,
1912-1949 era are given brief biographies in Howard L. Boorman and Richard 1987). More analytical treatments of social change are presented by William
C. Howard's Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, 4 vols. (New York: Parish and Martin Whyte in Village and Family in Contemporary China
Columbia University Press, 1967-77). Additionally, Donald W. Klein and Anne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) and Urban Life in Contemporary
B. Clark’s Biographic Dictionary of Chinese Communism 1921-]965, 2 vols. China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). See also Anita Chan,
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1971) has entries for people Richard Madesen, and Jonathan Unger, Chen Village: The Recent History of a
prominent from the founding of the Chinese Communist Party up until the Peasant Community in Mao’ China, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California
Cultural Revolution. Press, 1984).

Transformations of the rural economy are analyzed by Ramon Myers The Good first hand accounts of the Cultural Revolution include Gao Yuan, Born
Chinese Peasant Economy: Agricultural Development in Hopei and Shantung, of the Cultural Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
Red: A Chronicle
1890-1949 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1970); and by Philip 1987); Yue Daiyun with Carolyn Wakeman, To The Storm: The Odyssey of a:
Huang in two books, both of which cover longer time spans, The Peasant Revolutionary Chinese Woman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);
Economy and Social Change in North China and The Peasant Economy and Rural Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro, Son of
the Revolution (New York: Vintage Press,
Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988 (Stanford: Stanford University 1983); and Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai (New York: Grove Press;
Press, 1985 and 1990). The industrial and commercial economy are analyzed 1986). Anne Thurston examines the negative effects of the movement in
in Lillian Li, China’ Silk Trade: Traditional Industry in the Modern World, Enemies of the People: The Ordeal of Intellectuals in China’ Great Cultural
1842-1937 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Sherman Cochran, Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).
Big Business in China: Sino-Foreign Rivalry in the Cigarette Business, 1890-1930
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980); and Parks M. Coble, The Readers interested in the culture of the PRC andits relation to the state can
Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927-1937, 2nd. ed. turn to Ellen Laing, The Winking Owl: Art in the Peoples Republic of China
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). The lives of urban factory work- (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Merle Goldman, Literary
ers are documented in Gail Hershatter's Workers of Tianjin, 1900-1949 Dissent in Communist China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967),
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986); and Emily Honig’s Sisters and which looks at writers of the 40s and 50s; Bonnie McDougall, ed., Popular
Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949 (Stanford: Stanford Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the Peoples Republic of China;
University Press, 1986). For a more general analysis by an economist, see 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984): Paul Clark,
Thomas Rawski, Economic Growth in Prewar China (Berkeley: University of Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge
California Press, 1989). University Press, 1987): and two books by Richard Kraus, Pianos and Politics in
China: Middle-class Ambitions and the Struggle Over Western Music (New York:
The rise to power of the Communist Party is examined by Arif Dirlik, The Oxford University Press, 1990) and Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the
Origins of Chinese Communism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), Chinese Art of Calligraphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971); and Suzanne Pepper in Civil War in China: The Post-Mao changes are considered in Ezra Vogel's One Step Ahead in China:
Political Struggle, 1945-1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). Guangdong Under Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); Orville
Two first hand accounts offer unique and exciting glimpses into the period. Schell’s Discos and Democracy: China in the Throes of Reform (New York: Anchor
Edgar Snow covers the experiences of the Communists, especially of Mao Books. 1989): and James Lull’s China Turned On: Television, Reform, and
Zedong, to the mid 1930s in Red Star Over China (New York: Random House,
1938. Reprint, New York: Grove Press, 1968) and Jack Belden reports on the
Resistance (London: Routledge, 1991). The fate of women under the CCP
considered in Margery Wolf's Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary
is
civil war in China Shakes the World (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970). China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985); and Gail Hershatter and
William Hinton documents the effects of the numerous political movements on Emily Honig in Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980% (Stanford: Stanford
the residents of one rural village in Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a University Press, 1988). Readers interested in the recent democracy movement
Chinese Village (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966). can turn to Han Minzhu, ed., Cries For Democracy: Writings and Speeches from
the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
An excellent narrative history of the post-1949 period is Maurice Meisner 1990): Liu Binyan in collaboration with Ruan Ming and Xu Gang, “Tell the
Mao’ China and After: A History of the Peoples Republic, rev. ed. (New York: Free World”: What Happened in China and Why, Henry L. Epstein, trans. (New York:
Press, 1986). For the life of Mao, see Ross Terrill’s Maa: A Biography (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989); Lee Feigon, China Rising: The Meaning of Tiananmen
Harper and Row, 1980). Ezra Vogel examines Communist policies at the local (Chicago: lvan Dee, 1990); and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrons and Elizabeth J. Perry,
level in Canton Under Communism: Programs and Politics in a Provincial Capital, eds.. Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China: Learning from 1989
1949-1968 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). Vivienne Shue looks (Boulder: Westview, 1992). Two well-written journalists’ accounts of China
at policies concerning rural China in Peasant China in Transition: The Dynamics from 1989 to 1993 are Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, China Wakes: The
of Development Toward Socialism, 1949-1956 (Berkeley: University of California Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power (New York: Random House, 1994) and
Press, 1980). On state organization during the Mao period, see Harry Harding, Orville Schell, The Mandate of Heaven (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994).
Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949~1976 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1981) and Victor Li's Law Without Lawyers (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1978). Readers interested in economic development would do
well to begin with Carl Riskin’s Chinas Political Economy: The Quest for
Development Since 1949 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); see also
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

age numbers refer to picture fortifications see fortifications Bodhidharma (First Patriarch) 123 Dawenkou culture 17, 18
old page: numbers refer to gunpowder 138 Bohai 110, 129, 130 export 176, 190, 217-18, 218, 235
{special features. infantry 41, 57, 90, 93 Bokhara 228 Ming dynasty 195, 217-19, 217,
Manchu banners 220, 223, 224, Book of Changes (Yijing) 31, 77, 88, 218, 219
242 180 neolithic 15,17, 17, 20
military unification under Song Book of Documents (Shujing) 21, 30- porcelain 195, 217-19, 217, 218,
dynasty 136-7, 138 1, 43, 77, 230 219
Ming dynasty 194 Bookof Rites 77 Song dynasty 142, 143
musket 210 Bookof Songs (Shijing) 21, 33-4, 43, Yangshao culture 15, 17-18
Nationalist and Communist armies 50, 77, 100 Chang'an 64, 85, 89, 136
273,274,277 Borneo, emigration to 250 Sui and Tang capital 108-9, 117,
neolithic period 20 Borodin, Mikhail 274, 277 118, 129, 131
private armies under the Southern Boxer Rebellion 255, 256, 262, 279 Changtaiguan 44
Dynasties 94-5 British Columbia, emigration to 251 Changzhou, Mongol capture 173
> Qing dynasty 236 bronzes Chao Cuo 73-4
Shang dynasty 22, 24, 27 animal and human imagery 36-7 Chao Tuo 83
siegecraft 167, 168, 172 Buddhist altarpiece 97 Chen Duxiu 267, 270, 273, 279,
westernization 245, 254 Han dynasty 66, 69, 72 286-7, 305
Zhou dynasty 31 Shang dynasty 22, 26, 28-30, 29, Chen dynasty 90, 91
art see visual arts 36-7, 36, 37 Chen Hongshou 101
Art of War 53 taotie designs 19, 29, 33, 36-7, 36, Chen Yun 296, 313
astrology 71 37 Chen Zilong 203
astronomy 148, 224 Zhou dynasty 31, 31, 32, 33, 43 Cheng Hao 149, 152-3
Australia, emigration to 25] Buddhism 58, 86, 92, 95-100, 97, 98, Cheng Yi 149, 152-3, 161
autonomous regions 295, 303 102, 104, 178, 250 Chengdu 170
Autumn Harvest Uprising 275 Cakravartin King 109 Chengziyai 20
Chan (Zen) 123, 124 Chengzu 193, 212
Ba Jin 316 and class 99 Chiang Kaishek see Jiang Jieshi
Bactria 69 Diamond Sutra 127 China Merchants’ Steam Navigation
Bada Shanren see Zhu Da early Buddhist art 106-7, 106, 107 Company 245
Bai Juyi 120, 293 educational institutions 121 Chinese Central Asia 227-8
Bai Xingjian 114 Great Cloud Sutra 116 Chinese Women’s Journal 279
bamboo 184 Jin dynasty 183 Chinggis Khan (Ghengis) 169-70,
Ban Chao 70 Liao dynasty 183 170
Ban Yong 70 Lotus Sutra 124 Christianity 118, 265, 278
Ban Zhao 81 Mahayana 96 Boxer Rebellion 255, 256
banditry 243, 248, 267 Maitreya cult 190 missionaries 211-12, 220, 224-5,
barbarians 179 Ming dynasty 206 235,240, 255
Bayan 182 non-Chinese rulers 96 Taiping rebellion 242-3
Beijing 136, 137, 277, 302 On Why Monks Do Not Bow Down Chu 33, 40, 42, 55, 57, 60, 71
Anglo-French occupation 240, 244 Before Kings 97 Chuci 57
Boxer Rebellion 256 Pure Land 97, 123, 124 Churchill, Sir Winston 285-6
Democracy Wall 328 Song dynasty 140, 151, 152 Cishan 16, 17
Forbidden City 193, 194 Sui and Tang dynasties 108, 109, civil service examination system 112,
Grand Canal 116 116, 118, 120, 121-4, 122, 123, 114, 120, 136, 145-7, 152, 155,
Imperial City 194 124, 126, 132-3 161, 177, 198-9, 198, 200, 202,
Jin dynasty capital 168 Tantric 121 264
Khitan capital 167 and women 97, 97, 99, 124 Civil War (Nationalis/Communist)
Ming capital 193-4, 193 Yuan dynasty 180, 183 262, 290, 294, 327
Mongol capital 172, 175 Bukara, Mongol sack 169 Cixi, Empress Dowager 254-5, 254,
Mongol sack 169 Burlingame, Anson 245 255, 262, 264
Outer City 194 Burma, Japanese invasion 285 class stratification 20, 22, 23, 28, 33, ‘

People’s Republic of China 295 99, 120 :

pro-democracy movement 326, Cai Wenji 151, 152 Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing) 81
328-9 Cai Yong 78 Classic of the Way and Its Power see
sack by armies of Li Zicheng 221 Cairo Conference 285 Laozi
Tiananmen Square 301, 302, 314, California, emigration to 251-2, 252 Cleveland, Stephen Grover 252
316, 329 calligraphy 103, 113, 113, 120, 140, climate 13, 156
Yuan capital 190 181, 230, 292 ‘little ice age’ 214
Beijing Autonomous Workers cangue 237 Co-hong 234-5, 239
Federation 329 Canton 120 coinage and currency 41, 42, 54, 72,
Beijing University 271, 286, 314-15, Cao Cao 86-7, 88 75
317, 329 Cao Pei 86-7, 88 Jin dynasty 174
Bianci 113 Cao Xuegin 232-3 Ming dynasty 194
‘big character’ posters 317, 328 Cao Zhi 88 Nationalist government moderniza-
Biographies of Heroic Women (Lient Castiglione, Guiseppe 228 tion 277
zhuan) 81 Celestial Masters 101-2 paper money 14], 142, 174, 194
Blue Kite, The 325 Central Asia, Khanate of 173 People’s Republic of China 306
Zhou 3829, 41-2; 41 Blueshirts 277 ceramics 28 Yuan dynasty 174, 181
Index

Cold War 297, 312, 327 314, 317 music 50, 50 examination system see education
Comintern 273, 275, 277, 287 currency see coinage and currency Spring and Autumn period 38, 39 and scholarship, civil service
Communist Party 262, 263, 275, 313 succession 39 examination system
army 273 Dadu 172 Warring States period 38, 40, 41-2, Explications of the Works of Nature
Civil War 262, 290, 294 Dai, Lady 73 43,51 (Tiangong kaiwu) 205
Comintern support 273-4, 275, 287 Dai Qing 326, 329 economy explosives 138, 144
Communist victory 286-91, 294 Dali 195 agrarian 75
intellectuals 305-6 :
dance 187 Buddhist monasteries 121-2 fairs 284, 284
and the Japanese invason 285, 288- Daodejing see Laozi coinage see coinage and currency family
90 Daoism 46-9, 57, 58, 59, 60, 71, 77, commercial development 161 Confucianism and filial piety 81,
Jiangxi Soviet 287 96, 100-2, 102, 103, 162, 178, employment see employment 81, 99, 126
land reforms 288 190 Great Depression 278 descent groups 206-7, 249
Long March 287, 289 architecture 175 Han dynasty 71-5 importance of concept in China 59,
membership 301 Celestial Masters 101-2 industrialization 245-6, 247-9, 274- 148-9
modernization programme 294 heaven of Supreme Purity 101-2 5, 274 partible inheritance 74, 149
Nationalist blockade 285 Its
Laozi (Classic of the Way and Jin dynasty 184 Family, The 281
Nationalist purges 275-6, 276, 278, Power, Daodejing) 47-8, 49, 88 Ming dynasty 190, 195, 214-16 Family Instructions of the Grandfather
286-7 Lingbao scriptures 102 Nationalist government 276, 277, 126
organization 273 Ming dynasty 206 290, 290 Fan Kuan 162-3, 162
People’s Republic of China 294-332 religious cults 86 People’s Republic of China 294, Fan Zhongyan 138, 155, 158
purges 287 Song dynasty 140, 15] 296-7, 308-13, 322-5, 323, 324, Fang Xiaoru 212
‘rectification campaign’ 288 Tang dynasty 120, 133 330 fascism 277
United Front 273, 275 texts 101-2 Qing dynasty 245-6, 247-9, 259 Faxian 97
warlords period 268-9 Zhuangzi 48-9, 88 Song dynasty 136, 141-4, 150, 155, Feng Menglong 202
Yan’an period see Yan’an soviet Dawenkou culture 17, 18 161, 184 Feng Xuefen 289
Complete Books of the Four Treasuries Daxue see Great Learning stock market 324 Fengchu 30
225 deforestation 144, 247, 278 Tang dynasty 120, 121-2, 127-30, Ferghana 69
Comprehensive Essentials of the democracy movements 326, 328-9 133, 135 festivals and fairs 284, 284
Military Classics (Wujing demons and demon quellers 178, taxation see taxation feudal system 32, 33, 74
zongyao) 167 178 trade see trade ‘fifth modernization’, call for 328
concubinage 39, 51, 95 Deng Xiaoping 289, 296, 309, 313, Yuan dynasty 174, 184 film 325, 326
Confucianism 42-6, 49, 50, 52, 57, 320, 321-4, 329-30 education andscholarship 58, 61, Five Dynasties period 130, 136:
58, 59, 60, 65-6, 96, 102-3, 162, Four Cardinal Principles 322 63, 105 five phases 78-9
163, 185, 190 Four Modernizations 322 Buddhist institutions 121 Five-Antis campaign 296, 299
academies 153-4 descent groups and lineages 206-7, and Confucianism 77-80, 112, 114, footbinding 160-1, 160, 242; 261,
Analects (Lunyu) 45, 46-7, 133, 249 120 279
154, 198 Dewey, John 272 examination system 112, 114, 120, fortifications 20, 25; 29, 32; 39, 40,
Book of Changes (Yijing) 31, 77, 88, Di (Lord on High) 21, 25 136, 145-7, 152, 155, 161, 177, 63, 68, 85, 111, 191
180 Di people 33, 56, 57, 60 198-9, 198, 200, 202, 264 see also Great Wall
Book of Documents (Shujing) 21, 30- Diamond Sutra 127 Jiterary and vernacular language Forum on Art and Literature. 308°:
1, 43, 77, 230 Dian 83, 83, 85 202 Four Cardinal Principles 322
Book
of Rites 77 ‘Diary of a Madman’ 270 Nationalist government moderniza- ‘four little dragons’ 328
Book
of Songs (Shijing) 21, 33-4, 43, diet 17, 156-7, 318, 318 tion 277-8 Four Modernizations 322
People’s Republic of China 301,
ie
50, 77, 100 Ding Ling 305, 308-9, 309 France
Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing) 81 Dingzhou 142 305-7, 313, 321, 323-4 Anglo-French occupation of Beijing
decline 86 Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong) 46, Qing dynasty 229-30, 259, 264, 279 240, 244
and filial piety 81, 81, 126 154, 198 Song dynasty 145-9 Boxer Rebellion 256
Five Classics 77, 78, 79, 112 Dong Qichang 20] Tang dynasty 112, 114, 120-1, 127 concessions in China 254
‘four little dragons’ 328 Dong Zhongshu 79 women 158, 202, 231, 279-80, 280 Vietnam 245
Han dynasty 60, 65-6, 75, 77-80, Donglin Academy 213 Yuan dynasty 176-7, 177 Fu Baoshi 293, 293
82 donkey, introduction 73 ‘Eight Talents’ of Wuxing 181 Fu Fengjun 268
Jin dynasty 179 Dou Wan 66 Eight Trigrams rebellion 240 Fu Jian 89
drama and the performing
Ming dynasty 203, 206, 212-13, arts 177, Einstein, Albert 272 Fu Xi (Ox-tamer) 10
215 186-9, 186, 187, 188, 202, 325 Elections (1913) 266 Fufeng, Famensi Buddhist temple:
Qing dynasty 229-30, 243, 254, 257 Dream of Han Tan 202 Elliot, Charles 239 109
Song dynasty 136, 138, 140, 145, Dream
of Red Mansions (Honglou emigration 241, 249-52, 251, 252 Fujian 82, 144, 156-7; 207, 250, 327
furniture and furnishings 119; EST:
:

152-4, 163 meng) 231, 232-3, 233 Emperor

Spring and Autumn Annals 77, 78 drought 272 elevation of role 79 148, 183, 201
Sui and Tang dynasties 112, 120, Du Fu 120 use of term 61 Fuzhou 120, 211, 239, 245
126-7, 131-3 Du You 131-2, 133 employment
transformative power of Chinese Dunhuang 69, 90, 106, 107, 123. child labour 274, 275 Gandhara 106
culture 179-80 124, 124, 126-7, 130 labour unions 274, 275, 282, 302 Gang of Four 320, 323, 326
twentieth-century rejection 270, Dutch East Indies 241 women 248, 261, 280, 281-2, 282, Gansu 17, 82, 137-8, 243
272 emigration to 250 300, 302 Gao Jiong 132
universalism 179-80, 182-5 dynastic rule 10, 25 England see Great Britain Gaozong (Li Yang) 109, 110, 116
women 81, 127, 161, 229 Dzungar Mongols 227 Ennin 122 Gaozu (Liu Bang) 64, 66, 67,77
Yuan dynasty 179-80, 181, 182, 185 environmental damage 144, 247, geography of Chinese subcontinent
Confucius 10, 42-3, 44, 50, 133, 335 East India Company, British 234, 278, 325 12-13
coolies 25] 236-7, 239 epigraphy 148 Germany
cotton 141, 245 Eastern Jin 90 Erlitou 28-9 Boxer Rebellion 256
courtesans 120, 148, 203 Eastern Zhou 38-59 eunuchs 84, 129, 194, 221 Chinese army trained and modern-
crossbow 41 Confucianism 42-6, 49, 50, 52, 57, European imperialist expansion 241, ized by 277
Cultural Revolution 294, 309, 313- 58, 59 250, 254 Jiaozhou 254
17, 314, 315, 317, 319-21, 322 Daoism 46-9, 57, 58, 59 European view of China and Chinese rights in Shandong 271
Cultural Revolution Small Group Legalism 49, 51-3, 59 culture 235, 238 Ghengis see Chinggis Khan
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CHINA

ghostfestival 122 Han Feizi 51-2 labour unions 274, 275, 282, 302 220
Gladstone, William 255 Han Gan 121 People’s Republic of China 296-7, Jin dynasty see Jin dynasty
golden age, belief in 59 Han Yu 131, 132-3, 151 308-10, 324 seizure of northern China 137, 149-
Golden Horde, Khanate of the 173 Hangzhou 116, 128, 144, 180, 181 infanticide 248, 279, 325 50, 167-8, 182
Gong: Kai 178 Hanyang fron Works 245 Injustice to Dou E, The 187, 187 sinification 168-9
orbachevy, Mikhail 328, 329, 330 Hao, Lady, tomb of 26-7 Inner Asian states 164-9, 165, 166, Juyan 64
Gow Jian; King 41 Harmonious Fists (Boxers) 255, 256 190
Grand Canal 108,114, 116, 116, Hawaii, emigration to 251, 265 Iraq 173 Kaifeng 136, 144, 145, 150
119, 136,175,194 He Xinyin 206 iron production and technology 39, Jin dynasty capital 168
Great Britain Hebei 57 41, 143-4, 184, 245 Jurchen seige 168, 184-5
anti-British strikes and demonstra- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 235 irrigation 73, 75, 156, 157 Kaiping coal mines 245
tions 27455 Heilongjiang 220 Islam 118, 124, 243, 250 Kang Youwei 254-5, 264, 265, 279
Oxer Rebellion 256 Hemudu 16, 17 People’s Republic of China 295, 303 Kangxi 220, 222, 224-5, 227
concessions in China 254
‘

Heshen 225, 227 ltaly 254 Kashgar, independent state declared

a Company 234, 236-7, Hideyoshi 210 228
239 higher-level co-operatives 299 jade 18, 20, 27, 30, 36 Kereyid 169
in, Kong 23000 Historical Records (Shiji) 67 bi 19, 20, 30 Khaidu 173
iy War: 220, 236-7, 237, 239- History of the Han 73 cong 19, 20, 30 khan, great, title of 111
homosexuality 229 neolithic period 18, 18, 19, 20 Khitans 111, 136, 137, 149-50, 151,
(
Russian expansionism 228 Hong Kong 324, 328 Japan 98, 118, 130, 131, 210 165, 166-7, 166, 167,171,175
with’ China 235-7, 239-40
-

British rule 239, 275 anti-Chinese aggression 262, 277, Liao dynasty see Liao dynasty
oud Sutra 116 Japanese invasion 285 282 Tang dynasty 166
epression 278. Hong Taiji 221 Boxer Rebellion 256 Khotan 96, 97, 106
Hong Xiuquan 242-3, 265 claim to Ryukyus 253 Khrushchev, Nikita 312
at Learning (pla) 46, 154, 198 Honglou meng see Dream of Red industrialization and moder
niza- Khubilai 172, 173, 174, 176, 179-80,
Te:
Wall 63, 68, 85, 165, 208, 208, Mansions tion 253, 253 181, 185
Hongshan culture 18, 20 invasion of China 263, 285-6, 288- Kiev, Grand Duchy of, Mongol con-
Hongtong 188 90 quest 170, 171
Hongwu period 190-4 Manchukuo puppet regime 282 Kim I] Song 297
horses Nara 110 King Father of the East 72
cavalry techniches 41 Rape of Nanking 285 kinship see descent groups andlin-
domestication 22, 35 Revolutionary Alliance 265 eages
introduction of stirrups 89 Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) 253-4 Korea 65, 69, 80, 109, 118, 130, 131
Hou Fangyu 203 Treaty of Versailles 271 Ming dynasty campaign 210, 214
Hou Jing 91 World WarII 285, 288-90 Mongol conquest 170
housing 76 Jardine, William 239 North 297
Hu Feng 309 Java, emigration to 250 Sino-Japanese conflict 253-4
Hu Shi 270 Jesuits 211-12, 224-5, 235 South 297, 328
Hu Yaobang 328 Jia family 89 Korean War 297
Hu Yepin 308 Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek) 274, Koryé 167
Hua 56 275-7, 275, 282, 285, 290, 327 Kou Qianzhi 102
Huainanzi 71 Jiang Jingquo 327 kowtow 235
Huan of Qi, Duke 39 Jiang Qing 314, 315, 315, 320 Koxinga 227
Huang Chao 129 Jiangling 95 Kucha 96, 97, 106
Huang Di (Yellow Lord) 10, 67, 71 Jiangsu 20, 322 Kumarajiva 96
Huang Sheng 160 Jiangxi Soviet 287 Kunlun Mountains 71
Huang Zongxi 230 Jiankang 90, 144. See also Nanjing
Huangpu Academy (Whampoa) 276, Jiaozhou 254 labour unions 274, 275, 282, 302
277 Jiaxiang 81 lacquer 30, 68, 77, 80, 143
Hubei 240 Jiayuguan 208 Laizi 81
Hui 303 Jie, King 10 lamp, Han dynasty 66
Huineng (Sixth Patriarch) 123 Jilin 220 land ownership
Huiyuan 97 Jin dynasty Qurchen) 150 Age of Division 93-4
Huizhou 207 Buddhism 183 Communist reforms 288
Huizong 149-50, 151 Chinese attitude towards 180, equal-field system 92, 95, 111, 121,
¥
60, 63-85, 64, 65, 66, Hunan 155, 197 182 126, 128, 132
, 108; 335 Hundred Flowers period 307, 309 Confucianism 179 Ming dynasty 191-2
economy 73-5, 74, 85 Hundred Schools of Thought 42, 58- drama 186, 187 Northern Wei dynasty 92
16, 76 9 economy 184 partible inheritance 74
Hungary 171 impact on Chinese civilization 183- People’s Republic of China 298,
fucianism 60, .65-6,.75, 77-80, Huxley, Sir Julian Sorell 5 299, 322-3
Evolution and Ethics 262 Mongol conquest 170-1 Qing dynasty 221, 223
hydraulic machinery 144 sinification 168-9, 179-80, 182 taxation 128
trade 174 tenancy 126, 155, 278
ibsen, Henrik Jin dynasty (Eastern Jin) 90 twentieth century 278
A Dolls House 280-1 Jin dynasty (Western Jin) 86-9, 96 land reclamation 156-7
ice ages 16, 17 Jin dynasty, Later 136 language 16, 27, 105, 304
Ili valley 228 Jin (Zhou state) 40, 41, 42 literary and vernacular 202
independent municipalities 295 Jingdezhen porcelain 195, 217-19, logographic writing system 27, 85
India 70, 96 217, 218, 219 Tibetan 30
Indonesia, emigration to 250 jinshi (presented scholar’) exam 120 Lao Dan 47-8
ion 74-5, 82,85, 93 industrialization 245-6, 247-9, 274- Journey to the West, The (Xiyuji) 202- Lao She 278
i |
expansion 69, 82-3, 83 5, 274 3 Laozi (Master) 102
8-70. 6

child labour 274, 275 Judaism 118 Ming dynasty 212

te system 70, 82-3 foreign investment 324 Juarchens 151, 166, 167, 175, 180, Its
Laozi (Classic of the Way and
Index

Power; Daodejing) 47-8, 49, 88 Liu Xiang 81 Miao 197, 243, 303 music 30, 50, 186
law codes and punishment 63, 93-4, Liu Xiu see Guangwu Mill, John Stuart 262 foreign influence 108, 119, 119,
238, 238 Liu Yuan 89 millet 17 134, 183
Chinggis Khan 169 Liulihe 22 Ming dynasty 182, 190-219 opera 284, 284, 291, 315, 320
Jin dynasty 168 Long March 263, 287, 289,322 _. agriculture 195, 211 Tang dynasty 120
People’s Republic of China 297. Longmen 106 army 194 musket 210
298, 299, 302, 307, 316 Lotus Sutra 124 Buddhism 206 mythology 10. 71, 73
Qing dynasty 229, 238, 238 Lu, state of 40, 42 ceramics ]95, 217-19, 217, 218,
Sui and Tang dynasties 111-12 Lu, Empress 66, 83 219 Naiman 169
torture 238 Lu, Mount 97 charitable works 207, 209 Nanjing &9,90, 91, 103
treaty ports 240 La Buwei 60 colonization and frontier areas 195, Ming capital 190, 192, 193
Yuan dynasty 176 L& Kun 207 196, 197, 209-10, 210 raised by Sui 108-9
League of Left-Wing Writers 308 Lu Xun 268-9, 269, 270-1, 279, 305 commercial and scholarly elites 192 Rape of Nanking 285
League of Nations 282 Lunyu. see Analects Confucianism 203, 206, 212-13, Taiping rebellion 242-3, 244
Legalism 49, 51-3, 59, 60, 75 Luoyang 32, 38, 60, 66, 84, 86, 89, 215 Nanjing, Treaty of 239-40
Leitai 69 91, 92, 107, 136, 306 Daoism 206 Nanzhao 110, 129, 130
Lenin, Valdimir Ilyich 272 Grand Canal 114 depostism 190-3 Nara Japan 110
Leninism 273, 277, 287-8 Tang dynasty 118 descent groups and lineages 206-7 Nationalist government 308
Lhasa 227, 305 economy 190, 195, 214-16 civil code 281
fi 152-3 Ma Rong 79 eunuchs 194 Civil War 262, 290, 294, 327
Li (widow) 219 Ma Shuchun 268 factionalism and political unrest economy 290, 290
Li Bai 120, 121 Ma Zhichun 268 212-13 Japanese aggression and invasion
Li Dazhao 286, 305 Macao 211, 212, 235, 238, 239 fiscal collapse 214-16, 221 282, 285-6, 289
Li Hongzhang 243-4, 245, 253, 254, Macartney, Lord George 235-6, 258 foreign relations 209-12 rural areas 278
255, 255, 258 magic and magicians 71, 72, 73 furniture and furnishings 201 Taiwan 297, 312, 327
Li Peng 329 Malacca 250 geographical extent 190 Nationalist Party 262, 263, 266, 267,
Li Qingzhao 158 Malaysia 241, 250, 251] government organization and 268, 275
Li Shangyin 120 Man people 33, 56 employment 197, 198-9, 201 anti-Communist purges 275-6, 276,
Li Si 60, 61, 63, 64 Mancheng 66 191-5 278, 286-7
Li Song 140, 154 Manchu people 220-1, 257 Great Wall 208, 208, 210 army 273, 274, 277
Li Yuan see Gaozong banners 220, 223, 224, 242 hereditary rank and station 191, Blueshirts 277
Li Zhi 206, 213 creation of Manchu state 220-1 206-7 Comintern support 273-4, 277
Li Zicheng 214, 215, 221 hairstyle, tonsure decree 221, 223 imperial clansmen 214 Jiang Jieshi secures control 275-7
Liang dynasty 90, 95, 103 Qing dynasty see Qing dynasty Jingdezhen porcelain 195, 217-19, modernization programme 277
Liang dynasty, Later 129-30, 136 warrior image 225 217, 218,219 New Life Movement 277
Liang Qichao 254-5, 264, 265, 279 Manchukuo puppet regime 282 literati culture 190, 198-9, 201, People’s Republic of China 297
Liangzhu culture 19, 20 Manchuria 130, 164, 166, 170, 173, 20 Ty 2h2 in Taiwan, after 1949 327
Liao dynasty (Khitan) 137-8, 148, 282 literature 201-3 Three Principles of the People 274
149, 150, 164, 166-7, 173-7, Manichaeism 118, 190 local society 206-7, 209 United Front 273
179-80, 182-5 manufacturing see industrialization migration 195, 197-8 navy 143, 210, 245
Buddhism 183 Mao Dun 309 Mongol threat 208, 209-10 neolithic period 17
defeat by Jurchens 167 Mao
Jin 201 philosophy 203, 206 Nestorian Christianity 118
New Culture Movement 270-1
impact on Chinese civilization 183- Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) 272, popular culture 201-3
5 279, 286-8, 288, 294, 296, 296, population 211, 215 New Life Movement 277
trade 174 300, 301, 305-17, 314, 321-2, publishing 201-2, 204-5, 204, 205, New Youth periodical 267, 270-1,

Liaodong 254 324, 331, 332, 335 216 272, 280

Liaoning 18, 20 Autumn Harvest Uprising 275 purges 192-3 Newly Compiled Four Character
Lientt zhuan 81 cult of Mao 332 taxation and land ownership 191-2, Glossary 205
Lin Biao 316, 319-20 Cultural Revolution 294, 309, 313- 195, 214 ‘Nian’ gangs 243
Lin Zexu 237, 239 17, 314, 315, 317, 319-21 trade 190, 195, 209-11, 217-18 Nine Rank System 89, 91
Lingbao scriptures 102 Jiangxi Soviet 287 tribute system 209-11, 217, 220 Ningbo 211, 239
literature 103, 308 Long March 287 visual arts 201 Ningxia 303
drama 177, 186-9, 186, 187, 188, Quotations from Chairman Mao (lit- Mizhi 74 Nixon, Richard 320
202 tle red book) 316 Mohists 38 Northern Dynasties 86, 89-95, 102-5,
Forum on Art and Literature 308 Yan’an soviet 263, 285, 287-8, 305, money-lending 142 108-9, 111, 128
Han dynasty 71, 73 308, 309 money tree 72 Northern Expedition 263,275, 277,
League of Left-Wing Writers 308 marquetry 134 Mongolia 111, 136, 164, 173 278
literary and vernacular language Marriage Reform Law (1950) 302 declares independence 267 Northern Qi dynasty 93
202, 270 Marx, Karl 272 . Qing dynasty expansion 227 Northern Song 145, 149-50, 182
Ming dynasty 198-9, 201-3 Marxism 272, 273, 287-8 Mongols 166, 195, 197, 208, 209-10 Northern Wei dynasty 91-3, 95, 106,
New Culture Movement 270-1 Mawangdui 73, 77 Chinggis Khan 169-70, 170 108, 111
novels 202-3 May Fourth Movement 271, 273, militarization 169 Northern Zhou dynasty 93, 95, 104,
People’s Republic of China 308-9 282, 308, 309, 329, 335 Mongol conquests 169-73, 171 108-9, 111
measurement, standardization 61 People’s Republic of China 295, Nu Jie 81
Qing dynasty 225, 229, 231, 232-3,
233 Mencius (Master) 44-5, 55, 56, 99, 303, 331, 332 Nurchaci 220-1]
socialist realism 308 133 Song dynasty 172-3
Song dynasty 140, 145-7 Mencius (book) 44, 45, 133, 154, 198 Yuan dynasty see Yuan dynasty Ogoédei 170-3

Tang dynasty 114, 114, 120-1 Merkid 169 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, opera 284, 284, 291, 315, 320
see also poetry; printing; publishing metalwork 22, 28-30, 35 Baron de la Bréde et de 235 Opium War 220, 236-7, 237, 239-40,
Liu Bang see Gaozu cast iron 39 The Spirit of Laws 262 242
Liu Binyan 326 Inner Asian states 166 Moscow, Mongol conquest 171 Ordos 111
Liu Guandao 174, 177 silver-smithing 119, 127 Mozi (book) 53 Ouyang Niu 148, 151, 155
Liu Pei 87 see also bronzes Mozuizi 82
Liu Shaoqi 296, 313, 314-15, 316, Mi Fei 163 Mozi (Master) 53, 55, 56-7 paleolithic period 16
319 Mi Youren 163, 163 Mulian 122 Pamir Mountains 69, 70
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History of CHINA

‘painting sée visual arts Ming dynasty 203, 206 economy 245-6, 259 Revive China Society 265
papermaking 143
©

Mohists 58 education and scholarship 229-30, Revolutionary Alliance 265, 266

“paper. money 141, 142 Mozi 53,55 259, 279 Ricci, Matteo 201, 212, 225
Parthia 69, 70 Wayof the Sages 262, 263 establishment 221 rice 17, 155, 156-7, 157
Peking Man 16 yin and yang 53, 59, 72, 73, 78 foreign relations 244-6 Rickshaw 278
eng Dehuai 289; 297, 311, 313 Pictorial Reference Compendium 205 geographical extent 223, 227-8 Rituals of Zhou (Zhou li) 104
Peng Lai 63 pipa 134 industrialization 245-6, 247-9 River Elegy television documentary
‘Peony Pavilion 202, 203 piracy 196, 210, 211, 227 internal adversaries 240, 242-4 328
ples Mepoblic of China 294-332, plague 184 land confiscation and ownership Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The
Pleistocene era 16 2215,223 (Sanguo zhi yanyi) 202
a giteulnire 296:.297-301, 299, 300, Plumin the Golden Vase (Jin Ping legal system 229, 238, 238 Romance of the Western Chamber
TI, 312,313, 319, 322-3, 322 Mei) 203 literati culture 224, 229-31, 236, (Xixiang ji) 204
omots regions 295, 303 poetry 100-1, 129, 181 243-4 Rong people 33, 38, 56, 60
rder disputes 295 Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove literature 225, 229, 231, 232-3, 233 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 285
nsorship: 325;326 88, 89 Mongolia 227 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 235
lleetivization 297-301, 300, 319, Song dynasty 140, 147-8
Tang dynasty 120-1
nineteenth-century reforms 244-6
opposition to 223-4, 223
Ruan
Ji 88
Ruanruan 92
Revolution 294, 309, 313- Western Jin 88, 89 population 228-9, 246-9, 248 Russell, Bertrand 272
314, 315, 347,-319-21, 322 Zhou dynasty 33-4 Russia, relations with 228 Russia 173
al trends
325, 326, 328-32 Poland 171 scholarship 229-3] Bolshevik revolution 272
police force, introduction 264 Taiwan 227 Boxer Rebellion 256
Polo, Marca 142, 144, 161, 171, 174 taxation 225 concessions in China 254
population Tibet 227 Mongols 171
emigration 241, 249-52, 251, 252 tonsure decree 221, 223 nineteenth century territorial
Han dynasty 73 trade 234-7, 234, 239-40, 245-6 expansion 228, 244
Jin dynasty 184 treaty ports 239-40 see also Soviet Union
Ming dynasty 211, 215 tribute system 228, 235 Ryukyus, Japanese claim 253
People’s Republic of China 319, Western influence 224-5, 228, 234-
321, 325 6, 234, 247 Salt Commission ]28
Qing dynasty 228-9, 246-9, 248 Qiu Jin 279 Samarkand
Song dynasty 141, 144, 159, 164, Qiu Ying 200, 201 Mongol sack 169
184 Qu Yuan 57 Russian rule 228
twentieth century 278 Quanzhou 120, 144 San Francisco 252
Yuan dynasty 184 Queen Mother of the West 71, 72, 73 Sanger, Margaret 272
prehistoric China 16-22 queue, Manchu tonsure decree 221, Sanguan Dianzi 18
printing 124, 127, 130, 138, 147, 223 Sanxingdui 29, 29
149, 158, 183 Quotations from Chairman Mao (little Scenes of Old She 248
book illustration 204-5, 204, 205 red book) 316 Scythians 68
provinces 295 Second Emperor 64
Pu Hua 293 railroads 277 Selections of Literature 103
publishing 201-3, 216 Japanese bomb Southern serfdom 94
book illustration 204-5, 204, 205 Manchurian railroad 282 Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove 88,
People’s Republic of China 294, 306 rainfall 13, 156 89
puppetry 188 Rape of Nanking 285 Shaanxi 17, 240
Rashid al-Din 170 Shakyamuni (historical Buddha) 95-
Qi (Zhou state) 39, 40, 42, 60 Rebellions see An Lushan rebellion, 6, 106, 107
qi 153 White Lotus Society, Red Shandong 255, 284
Qi Baishi 293, 293 Turbans, Box rebellion, Yellow German rights in 271
Qi dynasty 90 Turbans Shang, Lord 51, 60
Northern 93 Record of the Orchid Pavilion Shang dynasty 10, 12, 22-30, 67, 108
Qian Daxin 229 Gathering 113, 113 bronzes 22, 26, 28-30, 29, 36-7, 36,
Qian Qianyi 203 Red Army 294 37
Qiang (historian) 32 Long March 287 extent and influence 23, 28
Qiang people 30, 60, 69 Red Cliff 140, 140 religion and ritual 21, 25, 26-7, 29-
Qianlong 220, 224, 225, 225, 227 Red Guards 314, 315-17, 319 30, 36, 36
227, 228, 235-6, 258 Red Turbans 190-1 Shanghai 239, 282
Qin dynasty 60-1, 63-5, 68, 335 regional development, differential British occupation 239
architecture 76, 76 102-5, 182-3 Japanese attack 282
Confucianism 60 religion 34, 118 Japanese capture 285
Legalism 75 ancestors 21, 25 People’s Republic of China 295
taxation 93 Buddhism see Buddhism Taiping rebellion 243
territorial expansion 82-3 Christianity see Christianity Shanhaiguan 208
Qin people 40, 42, 51 Chu era 55 Shanxi 86
Qing dynasty 220-58 Daoism see Daoism Shashi 89
abdication of last emperor 266 demons and demon quellers 178, Shaw, George Bernard 272
agriculture 247, 259 178 Shen Du 211
architecture 301 divination 21, 25, 27, 31 Shen Gua 148
army 236 Han dynasty 71, 72, 73 Shen Nong (Divine Farmer) 10
Boxer Rebellion 255, 256, 262 neolithic period 20 Shen Zhou 20]
Confucianism 229-30, 243, 254, philosophy see philosophy shengyuan 199
257 sacrifice 20, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32- Shenyang 282
conservatism 229-30, 257-8 3, 36, 44 Shenzhen 324, 324
‘see Daoism constitutional reforms 264 Sui and Tang dynasties 118
:

Shenzong 139
Hectual foundations 38 culture and society 228-31, 234 ren 43 Shexian 248
disintegration 252-8, 262, 264-6 Renzong 138 shi 145
Index 35]

Shi
Jie 15] Comintern 273-4 135 imports 211
Shi Le 89 invasion of Manchuria 290 education and culture 112, 114, Jin dynasty 174
Shi Tao 231, 234 Korean War 297 120-1, 127, 127 Liao dynasty 174
shidafu 145 and the People’s Republic of China Empress Wu 116-17 Macao, Portuguese trading base
Shiji see Historical Records 296, 296, 312, 320, 328. foreign influence 108, 118-19, 130- 211, 235, 238, 239
Shijing see Bookof Songs see also Russia ]
Ming dynasty 190, 195, 209-11,
Shizhaishan 83 Spencer, Herbert geographical extent 110, 111 217-18
Shujing see Book of Documents A Study of Sociology 262 law code 111-12 Nationalist government 276
Shun 10 Spring and Autumn Annals 77, 78 literature 114, 114 Opium War 220, 236-7, 237, 239-
Sichuan 108, 155, 197, 240, 303 Spring and Autumn period 38, 39 metalwork 127 40, 242
Sidun 19 Sri Lanka 97 officials 112, 112, 114 Qing dynasty 234-6, 234, 245-6
silk 30, 41, 54, 54, 68, 69, 70, 141, Stalin, Joseph 296, 297, 303, 312 religion 118 Silk Road 69-70
145 steppe nomads 68-70, 68, 164-73, taxation 111, 121, 128, 133, 135 Song dynasty 141-3, 154
trade in 69, 70, 118, 119, 143, 190, 227 trade 118, 118, 119-20, 128 Tang dynasty 119-20, 128
211, 235, 278 stirrup, introduction 89 transportation 119-20 Treaty of Nanjing 239-40
Silk Road 69-70, 106, 118, 119, 124 stock market 324 Tang dynasty, Later 136 treaty ports 239-40, 274-5
Silla 110 Study of the Mysterious 88 Tang Xianzu 202 Yuan dynasty 174-5, 176
silver-smithing 119, 127 Su Dongpo (Su Shi) 140, 140, 141, Tang Ying 217 Tran dynasty 210
Sima Guang 141, 148 148 Tangut people 137-8, 151, 165, 167, transportation and communications
Sima Qian 67, 335 Su Shi see Su Dongpo 175 73, 94, 260
Singapore 241, 250, 251, 328 Sufutun 36 Mongol conquest 170 automobile 330
Japanese invasion 285 Sui dynasty 111 Tao Qian see Tao Yuanming donkey 73
Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) 253-4 Buddhism 121-2 Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian) 100-1, 101 Grand Canal 108, 114, 116,119,
Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) 263, development of transportation 114, taotie designs 19, 29, 33, 36-7, 36, 37 136, 175, 194
285-6, 288-90 116, 116 Tartars 169 Great Leap Forward 311
Sixteen Kingdoms period 90-1 education 112, 114 Tashkent 228 Ming dynasty 196 :

slavery geographical extent 111 Tawney, Richard Henry 278 Nationalist government moderniza-
in China 92, 93-5 law code 1] 1-12 taxation tion 277
coolies 25} officials 112 Age of Division 93 railroads 245, 246, 277, 282
Smith, Adam 262 overthrow 109 Buddhist lands 99-100 roads 116, 116 4

smuggling 196, 209, 211, 237 religion 118 Han dynasty 74-5, 82, 85, 93 shipping 141-3, 143, 144,196
Snow, Edgar 287 reunification of China 86, 93, 104, Ming dynasty 191-2, 195, 214 Song dynasty 141-2, 145
Society for Sharing Goodness 207, 108.111, 135 Nationalist government moderniza- and the spread of disease 184
209 Sumatra 97 tion 277 Tang dynasty 119-20
Sogdia 70 emigration to 250 Northern Wei dynasty 92 telegraph 245, 246
Son of Heaven 104, 179, 180 Sun, Master 53 People’s Republic of China 296 telephone 324
Song dynasty 90, 136-61, 187 Sun Ce 87 Qin dynasty 93 television 326, 328
agriculture 136, 141, 155, 156-7, Sun Fu 151 Qing dynasty 225 treaty ports 239-40, 274-5
157, 158 Sun Quan 87 Salt Commission 128 Triads 250, 265
arts 139, 140, 162-3 Sun Yatsen see Sun Zhongshan Song dynasty 139, 141, 142-3, 144 tribute system
Buddhism 140, 151, 152 Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yatsen) 265-7, Sui and Tang dynasties 111, 121, Han dynasty 70, 82-3
centralizatiom and bureaucracy 266, 273, 275, 275, 279 128, 133, 135 Ming dynasty 209-11, 217, 220
138-9 suspension bridges 144 Yuan dynasty 174, 175-6 Qing dynasty 228, 235
Confucianism 136, 138, 140, 145, Suzhou 128, 201 tea 109, 120, 141, 260, 261 Trotsky, Leon 272
152-4, 163 swords, double-edged 41 export 235, 250, 278 ‘True Story of Ah Q, The’ 270-1
Daoism 140, 151 television 326, 328 Tumu, battle of 208
economy 136, 141-4, 150, 155, Tai, Mount 71 Ten Kingdoms 136 Tuoba clan 91, 111
161, 184 Taian 17 terracotta army 63, 63 Turks 92, 111, 129, 136, 175
education and scholarship 145-9 Taiping rebellion 240, 242-3, 244, textiles 16, 17, 30, 54, 54, 73, 248,
factionalism 138-9, 141 244, 258 274, 274 Uighurs 129, 175, 227
industrial development 141-4 Taiwan 328 printed 130 People’s Republic of China 295,
Jurchens seize northern China 137, Chinese cession 254, 282 see also silk 303, 331
167-8 economy and trade 227, 327, 327 Thailand, emigration to 250 unification of China 60-1, 63
military unification and expendi- Nationalist government 297, 312, theatre 177, 186-9, 186, 187, 188, Ming dynasty 190-1
ture 136-7, 138 B27 202, 315 Sui dynasty 86, 93, 104, 108; 11,
Mongol conquest 172-3 Qing dynasty 227 Three Hard Years 312 135
Northern Song see Northern Song Taiyuan 94, 168 Three Kingdoms period 86-8, 87 Western Jin 86
population 141, 144, 159, 164 Taizong (Tang dynasty) 109, 110, Three Principles of the People 274 United Front 273, 275.
scholarly elite 145-9 111, 113, 113, 118 Tianjin 239, 245, 295 United Kingdom see Great Britain
Southern Song see Southern Song Taizu (of Song) 136-7, 138 Tibet 13, 110, 118, 129, 130, 164, United Nations security council 286
taxation 139, 141, 142-3, 144 Taizu (of Ming) 190-4, 191, 209, 173, 175 United States of America
trade 141-3, 154 212, 216 created Chinese protectorate 227 Boxer Rebellion 256
transportation and communications Tang dynasty 104, 108-35 declares independence 267 emigration to 251-2, 252
141-2, 145, 155 agriculture 126, 128 People’s Republic of China 295, Korean War 297 .
:

urbanization 144 An Lushan Rebellion 108, 127-8, 303, 305, 33] and the People’s Republic of China
women 158, 160-3, 160 129 Qing dynasty expansion 227 297, 320, 327
Song Jiaoren 1966 Buddhism 121-4, 122, 123, 124, Tongcheng 207 support for Nationalist Party 275,
Song Meiling 275, 285 126, 132-3 Tongdian 131-2 285, 290
Song Qingling 281 class system 120 Tongzhi emperor 254 urbanization
Songs of Chu (Chuci) 57 codification of state ritual 121 Tournon, Maillard de 225 Ming dynasty 190
Southern Dynasties 86, 89-95, 102-5, Confucianism 112, 120, 126-7, trade 65, 68, 69, 70, 96, 105 Qing dynasty 248
108 131-3 China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Song dynasty 144
Southern Song 141, 143, 150-4, 152, Daoism 120, 133 Company 245
180, 184 disintegration 127-30, 136 Co-hong 234-5, 239 Vajrabodhi 121
Soviet Union 330 economy 120, 121-2, 127-30, 133, exports 211, 217-18, 218, 234-5 Verbiest, Ferdinand 208
 THE CAMBRIDGE ILLUSTRATED History OF CHINA

-Nersailles, Treaty of 271 Wilson, Thomas Woodrow 271 Xinjiang 243

Bos Victoria, Queen 239 impact on Chinese civilization 183-
women People’s Republic of China 303 5
Vietnam 65, 82, 83 Admonitions for Girls 81 Qing dynasty expansion 227-8 legal system 176
emigration to 250 in art and literature 114, 114, 232- XNiongnu 67, 68-70, 68, 73, 83, 85,
Sino-Frénch. conflict 245
north and south China 182-3
3, 233 86, 89, 151, 164
Tran'dynasty 210 population 184
Biographies of Heroic Women 81
~

Northern 70
=
visual arts.
“Buddhist 106- 7;
Buddhism 97, 97, 99, 124 Southern 70
succession 173
taxation 175-6
106, 107 Chinese Women’ Journal 279 Au Bao 233 trade 174-5, 176
“foreign influence 108, 130, 183 Confucianism 81, 127, 161, 229 Xu Heng 176 Zhao Mengfu 181, 18]
"Han dynasty 71, 73 cult of widow chastity 229, 230, Xu Jie 207 Yuan Mei 231
landscape painting 103, 162-3, 162,
-
279 Xu Peiheng 292, 293 Yuan Shikai 265-6, 266, 273
163 education 158, 202, 231, 279-80, Xu Yang 227 Yuan Zhen 114
280 Xuanzang 118 Yue 33, 40, 83, 85
“painting 103, 139,162 employment 248, 261, 280, 281-2,
‘Song dynasty 139, 140 282, 300, 302
Auanzong 121,
Xunzi (book) + ao
178 Yue Fei 150
Yungang 106, 106, 107
Tang dynasty: 121 female infanticide 248, 279, 325 Xunzi CMaster Xun) 45, 50, 51, 57, Yunnan 13, 130, 243, 303
_twentieth-century painting 291, female political activists 279 60
292-3, 292, 293 incorporation into China 195, 197
footbinding 160-1, 160, 242, 261,
Yuan. dynasty 181, 181 279 Yakub Beg 228
“also architecture: bronzes; Zeng 50
callig- People’s Republic of China 302, 322 Yalta Conference 285 Zeng, Marquis of 55
iaphy, ceramics: metalwork Qing dynasty 229, 231 Yan 57, 60
ltaire, ‘Francois Marie Arouet de Zeng Guofan 243-4, 245, 258
Shang dynasty 26-7 Yan Fu 262, 264 Zhang Daoling 101
235, 334 Song dynasty 158, 160-1, 160 Yan Ruoju 229-30 Zhang Jue 101
twentieth-century liberation 279- Yan Zhitui 103 Zhang Qian 69
‘anderin
g 269 82, 280, 302 Yan’an soviet 263, 285, 287-8, 305,
Wang, Empress 66 Zhang Xianzhong 214, 215
visual arts 181, 233 308, 309 Zhang Zeduan 145
Wang Anshi 139; 140, 141, 148 Zhou dynasty 34 Yang Guifei 114, 121 Zhang Zhidong 245
Wang Gen 206 Women’s Federation 302 Yang Jian see Wendi, Emperor Zhangsun Wuji 111
Wang Mang 66, 70,71, 73, 82 Woren 245 Yang Lian 213 Zhangzhou 144
g Ming 288 World War I 271, 274 Yang Lianjianjia 180 Zhao 40, 60
ang Shiwei 288 World War IL 285-6, 288-90 Yang Xuanzhi 107
Wang Shouren’see. Wang Yangming Zhao Kuangyin see Taizu of Song
writing 22, 23, 25-8, 35, 54, 85 Yangshao culture 15, 17-18 Zhao Mei 82
Vang Wei 120 calligraphy see calligraphy Yangzhou 120, 122-3, 128 Zhao Mengfu 181, 181
Wan Xizhi 1035113, 113 wu 64 Grand Canal 114, 116 Zhejiang 207
Vang ‘Yarigming (Wang Shouren) Wu 33, 87 Yangzhou massacre 223 Zheng, King (First Emperor) 60-1,
197,203, 206; 207; 212, 213, Wu, Empress 114, 116-17, 121 Yangzi River 12-13, 17, 140, 142, 63, 68, 208
Wu, King 31-2 159 Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) 227
Vang Viting 293 Wu Changshi 292, 292 Yao 10 Zheng He 209, 210, 211
Wang Zhaojun 151 Wu Ding, King 21, 27 Yao uprising 197
Vanli 194-5, 214 Zheng Xuan 79
Wu Liang shrine, Jiaxiang 81 Ye Boju 212
Zhengzhou 23, 25
Vanyan clan 167 Wu Peifu 274 Yellow Lord see Huang Di
are. see army. and warfare Zhong Kui 178, 178
WuSangui 221, 224 Yellow River 10, 12-13, 14, 159, 222
d period 267, 267, 270-7 Zhongnanhai 316
Wu Weiye 203 course changed 66
ig States period 38, 40, 41-2,
Zhongshan 57-8
Wu Zhen 184 dykes blown up by Nationalist gov-
3.51, 187 Zhongyong see Doctrine of the Mean
Wuchang 242 ernment 285 Zhou li 104
Vater Margin, The (Shuihu zhuan) Wudi of Han 64-6, 67, 68-9, 71, 75, dykes cut by anti-Ming rebels 215 Zhou, Duke of 32, 42, 133
202: 205: 77, 80, 83, 101 Yellow Turbans 101 Zhou dynasty 10, 12, 22, 30-5, 38,
Way
of Great Peace rebellion 84 Wudi of Liang 99 rebellion of 86 67, 108
“Way of the Sages 262, 264 Wuhan 245, 275, 277, 285 Yelit clan 166
i dynasty 86 religion 31, 32-3
Wutai, Mount, Buddhist monastery Yi people 33, 56, 303, 332
see also Eastern Zhou; Northern
i dynasty, Northern see Northern 122, 123 Yi of Zeng, Marquis 50 Zhou; Western Zhou
“Wei dynasty Wuxi 213 Yijing see Book of Changes Zhou dynasty (of Empress Wu) 116-
Wei:Jingshen 328 Wuzong 212-13 yin and yang 53, 59, 72, 73, 78, 101 17
“Wei people 40; 57; 60: 87, 89
Yongle Temple, Shanxi province 175 Zhou dynasty, Later 136
4Shou 103 Xi Kang 88
Yongzheng 220, 225, 227 Zhou Enlai 274, 296, 296, 313, 320,
Wei Zhongxian:213 Xia 137-8, 167 Young Pioneers 302 320, 322, 335
Xia dynasty 10, 22-3, 29, 56, 67, 108 Youth League 302 Zhouxian 116
Xia Gui 163, 163 Yu 10 Zhu Da (Bada Shanren) 231, 231,
ven, King 31 Xiamen 239 Yu Jin 95 234
Wen. Tianxiang 180 Xian 119, 127, 306 Yuan Cai 155 Zhu De 289, 296
Wen Zherigming 199, 201 Xianbei 91-3, 105, 108, 109-10 Yuan dynasty 164, 172-85, 175, 190 Zhu Xi 153-4, 158, 198, 203, 229
Wenchang.155 Xiang Yu 64 Buddhism 180, 183 Zhu Yuanzhang
“Wendi 77, 83 Xiangyang, Mongol siege 172-3 collapse 190, 191
see Taizu of Ming
Wendi, "Emperor (Yang Jian) 109, Zhuang 295, 303, 332

bos
XMianyang 61, 61 Confucianism 179-80, 181, 182, Zhuang Zhou (Zhuangzi) 48-9, 57
Xiao clan 166 185 Zhuangzi 48-9, 88
Jin
‘Western 86-9, 96 Xiao He 67 cross-cultural contacts and influ- Zhuge Liang 87
Western Zhou 21; 22. 38 Xiao Ke 289 ence 183 Zoroastrianism 118
-eXtent and influence 28 Xiao Yi 113 drama 187 Zou Rong 264
wheel 22,35 Xiaojing see Classic of Filial Piety economy 174, 184 Zuo zhuan 39
wheelbarrow 73 Xiaowen 92 education and employment 176-7
=

White Di 57,
Zuo Zongtang 243
Xie, Empress Dowager 173 ethnic hierarchy and tensions 174,
= White ‘Louis Society 190-1, 240 Xie He 103 175, 179-82
White Terror 275- 6, 276 Xin dynasty 66 hereditary rank and station 176