Having overthrown the oppressive Mongol rulers, Zhu Yuanzhang
founded the dynasty
he called "enlightened" (Ming) and
ruled (1368-98) as Emperor Hongwu.
His general Xu Da invaded and
secured Shanxi and Shaanxi in 1369.
Then the Ming army attacked
the fleeing Mongols.
Yuan emperor Toghon Temur died in 1370 and
was succeeded by his son Ayushiridara;
but as he fled to Outer
Mongolia, 50,000 Mongol warriors were captured
along with the
Empress and his son Maidiribala.
After putting a Ming commander
in chains for a defeat, Xu Da overcame Koko's army,
which lost
a reported 84,000 soldiers as Koko fled.
Emperor Hongwu gave hereditary
titles to 34 generals,
nine of whom were enemy generals who had
surrendered.
His oldest son was heir apparent, and his next nine
sons were given princely estates.
Sichuan refused to surrender
in 1369 and was conquered in 1371.
However, the next year Koko
Temur's army ambushed Xu Da's large cavalry force
of 100,000,
inflicting a disastrous defeat.
Tribute came from Korea, Annam,
Champa, Japan, Cambodia, and Siam by 1371
and even as far away
as from Borneo, Java, Sumatra, the Malay peninsula,
and the southeast
coast of India in the next few years.
Ming armies invaded Mongolia,
took over northwestern and southwestern territory,
fighting Koko
until he died in 1375.
In 1370 civil service examinations began again; discourses
and political analysis were added
along with tests on archery,
horsemanship, calligraphy, arithmetic, and the law code.
Grain
was distributed to the impoverished region of Shanxi.
During a
drought the Emperor exposed himself to the sun, and five days
later it rained.
Although and perhaps because secret Buddhist
societies, like the White Lotus,
had enabled him to overthrow
the previous regime, Hongwu banned them by decree.
Only the Emperor
was permitted to make sacrifices to Heaven and Earth;
but religion
was encouraged.
In 1373 he ruled that those ordained as Buddhist
priests had to pass an examination
on the scriptures, and 96,328
Buddhist and Daoist monks and nuns were ordained.
The Emperor
restricted the roles of the empress and other palace women.
To
educate his heir he had officials give their memorials to him
for decisions;
but Hongwu disliked the results and soon canceled
the policy.
In 1373 he abolished the examination system and had
officials
appointed based on recommendations.
Hongwu promulgated
the Ancestral Injunctions outlining the powers and responsibilities
of the princes; although nobles were not punished for taking land
unfairly the first time,
by the fourth violation the penalty was
death.
An imperial school system was established in 1375 for qualified
students.
During the 30-year reign of Hongwu 871 degrees were
awarded, 472 of them in 1385.
Emperor Hongwu wrote a commentary on Lao-zi's
Dao De Jing in 1375,
and he thought
maybe he should not put to death so many people;
but the next
year he had hundreds of officials executed
for pre-stamping fiscal
documents as a convenience.
The minister Yeh Bozhu, who criticized
the enfeoffment of princes,
harsh punishments, and arbitrary rule,
was imprisoned and died of starvation.
Yet Yeh's prediction that
the Prince of Yan would usurp power eventually came true.
Maidiribala
had been sent back to the Mongol court in 1374;
but when Ayushiridara
died in 1378,
he was succeeded by his younger son Toghus Temur.
The Ming army had invaded Tibet in 1377, killing thousands
and
capturing more than a hundred thousand animals.
Two years later
Mu Ying led the Ming army into Tibet,
capturing 30,000 people
and 200,000 domestic animals.
Hongwu named five more of his sons
princes in 1378,
and he would name ten more in 1391.
Hu Weiyong was prime minister from 1373; but when he failed
to inform the Emperor
about tributary envoys from Champa arriving
at the capital of Nanjing in late 1379,
Hongwu took power into
his own hands
by putting Hu Weiyong on trial for treason in 1380.
Hu Weiyong and 15,000 people were executed,
and the position of
prime minister was eliminated.
Eight years later Hongwu published
his account of the conspiracy he believed
threatened to overthrow
him with military power and Japanese assistance.
The Ming emperor
threatened to invade Japan in letters
he sent in 1374, 1376, 1380,
and 1381.
In 1381 the Emperor sent Fu Yude with 300,000 troops
to conquer Yunnan
in the southwest, killing or capturing 100,000
men before they capitulated the next year.
In 1380 Hongwu abolished the office of prime minister and created
a grand secretariat
that distributed and departmentalized power
under the direct control of the Emperor
into the six ministries
of Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Works.
Rites included
regulation of Buddhist and Daoist priests as well as imperial
entertainment.
The Works ministry had bureaus of construction,
forestry and crafts,
irrigation and transportation, and state
farms.
Additional service agencies were the directorates of astronomy
(overseeing the calendar and weather forecasts), imperial parks,
and education.
Counties were the basic units of administration
with magistrates responsible
for tax collection, labor services,
care of the aged and indigent, local ceremonies,
keeping peace,
and administering justice.
Taxes were low and only took about
three percent of the total produce
and usually were collected
in grain.
The administrative community (lijia) system was
promulgated in 1381.
A li contained 110 households-ten
jia of ten households plus the ten leading
(usually the
wealthiest) families, who provided the headmen responsible for
collecting the taxes and service labor while providing services
such as education.
The first land survey was done in 1387.
In 1382 the central authority of Emperor Hongwu organized a
secret police force.
Censors were organized into new agencies
in each of the twelve provinces and investigated.
This surveillance
bureau was the only department that was given unified central
control.
Also in 1382 the examinations were held again after being
suspended for a decade.
An edict was issued defining three kinds
of Buddhist monks as devoted to meditation,
scriptural exposition,
and ritual Buddhism, which meant teaching or yoga.
When Li Shilu
complained that Hongwu favored Buddhism and Daoism,
the Emperor
had him beaten to death on the palace steps.
Hongwu banned eunuchs from politics in 1384 though they still
served in the bureaucracy.
Scholars criticized the Emperor for
harsh methods;
but in 1385 Hongwu had his vice-minister of revenue
and hundreds of others
executed for embezzling, and the minister
of personnel was accused of slandering
the head of the National
University and was put to death.
In 1387 the Emperor had a change
of heart and ordered his bodyguards
to burn their instruments
of torture.
That year Feng Shang was sent with an army of 100,000
to suppress the Lolo revolt in Yunnan.
The Eastern Mongol leader
Naghachu surrendered to him;
but Feng Shang was dismissed and
lost his estate in Henan.
In 1388 General Lan Yu led an army of
150,000 across the Gobi Desert
to attack the Mongols; 77,000 people
were captured including 3,000 princes
and one hundred from the
ruling family and its entourage along with 150,000 animals.
Hongwu
had reunified all of China.
From 1385 to 1387 Hongwu promulgated three Grand Pronouncements.
In the first village elders were given the right to appeal to
the Emperor
when local officials were corrupt or incompetent.
Bribery was the biggest problem, and both parties were to be punished
severely.
Schools were to teach the laws, and defendants who could
recite them
were to get reduced punishments.
The second proclamation
concerned corruption of security forces and government officials;
the Emperor lamented that if he is lenient, the law is ruined;
but if he is harsh, he is called a tyrant.
In the third proclamation
he gave the death penalty to 68 metropolitan degree holders
and
53 students and said he would put to death
any talented man who
refused to serve the government.
This put scholars in a terrible
dilemma and led to further purges.
In 1390 Prince Zhu Zi committed suicide as the Hu Weiyong purge
claimed more victims from trumped-up charges.
The Emperor's heir
Zhu Biao died of illness in 1392.
Koreans let Emperor Hongwu choose
the old Chinese name of Choson for its new state.
Hongwu merged
the tributary gifts with the trading system
and required government
supervision of trade.
After Lan Yu's victory over Orlug Temur,
the Emperor assigned him, Feng Sheng,
and Fu Yude to the staff
of the young crown prince Zhu Jianwen, Zhu Biao's son.
Hongwu
had established the succession principle of primogeniture.
In
1393 four more princes were given fiefs in the north.
Lan Yu was
tried for mutiny and publicly dismembered.
The Emperor granted
an amnesty in September 1393
but acknowledged that 15,000 had
been executed in this purge.
Ten princes were called to the capital
for consultation,
and the generals Fu Yude, Wang Bi, and Feng
Sheng died in the next two years.
The Emperor tried to restrict
the princes' recruiting,
but they gained control of their military
forces.
Contrary to Confucian tradition, Hongwu began the custom
of inflicting corporal
punishment on government officials; some
were beaten to death,
though this did discourage bribery and corruption.
Between 1378 and 1395 Hongwu sent seventeen of his sons to princely
fiefs.
The Ming code of laws of Hongwu was developed over thirty years
and was completed in 1397.
The young scholar Xie Jin criticized
the Emperor for changing the laws too often.
He wrote that this
causes doubt and cynicism, and he recommended
ending extralegal
punishments and collective responsibility for criminal acts.
Punishment
had five levels of severity-beating with a light stick (10 to
50 strokes),
beating with a heavy stick (60-100 strokes),
penal
servitude (1-3 years with 60-100 blows),
banishment (to varying
distances with 100 blows),
and death (by strangulation or decapitation).
The Ming code allowed for the paying of fines in place of any
of these punishments,
especially for nominal capital crimes.
Women
were remanded to the custody of their husbands,
except in sexual
and capital crimes, because of the danger of rape in prison.
Killing
for adultery was justified if done by the husband
when the couple
was caught in the act.
If the wife survived, the husband could
sell her as a concubine.
In the Ming code the man's family was
no longer exempt
from punishment for breaking a marriage agreement.
Driving a person to commit suicide was punished by a hundred blows
or by death if aggravated by other crimes.
Economic reconstruction
of land, dikes, and canals revived the economy.
A rational and
comprehensive system of taxation and labor service was instituted.
Paper money was issued; but after it was no longer convertible
to metal currency,
it had to be abandoned by the mid-15th century.
In 1392 families in Anhui were directed to plant 200 mulberry
trees,
200 jujube trees, and 200 persimmon trees.
Scholars estimate
that in this decade about one billion trees were planted in China.
In 1395 they repaired or built 40,987 reservoirs in China.
That
year Emperor Hongwu issued a list of regions not to be invaded
by the Ming,
and tributary relations were limited to Ryuku Island
(Japan), Cambodia,
and Siam.
Imperial commands
posted in all villages urged the "six injunctions"
which
were to be filial to parents, respect elders and superiors,
maintain
harmonious relations with neighbors, teach and discipline their
sons,
peacefully pursue their livelihoods, and do not commit wrongful
actions.
Tax captains were responsible for registering property
and collecting taxes and labor services.
Crimes were prosecuted
locally, but serious offenders were sent to the capital.
In 1395
the Emperor decreed that all Buddhist and Daoist monks must go
to the capital
and pass an examination, and those failing were
to return to a lay life.
After learning that no one from the north
had passed the examinations in 1397,
Hongwu read the papers himself
and awarded degrees to 61 northerners.
Although the Emperor hated Mongol customs that violated Chinese
ethics,
after his death on June 24, 1398 all but two of his forty
concubines
took their lives in the traditional Mongol way.
The
empress of his successor complied in 1405, encouraging self-immolation,
and thirty concubines committed suicide at Yongle's death in 1424.
Also ten concubines were buried with Emperor Xuande in 1436.
However,
the practice of suicide by imperial concubines was curtailed after
1464.
During the Ming era widows were encouraged to be faithful
and not marry a second husband.
The second Ming emperor Zhu Jianwen was twenty years old
when
he succeeded his grandfather Hongwu.
He proclaimed a general amnesty,
put three Confucian tutors in influential positions,
and tried
to make Ming government more benevolent.
The six chief ministers
were elevated in rank over the military commissioners.
Hanlin
scholars instructed the princes in Confucian policies,
and the
princes were also ordered not to interfere in civil and military
matters.
Jianwen canceled many of the harsh pronouncements and
notices that
had been made by Hongwu.
Excessive land taxes in
the Jiangnan region were reduced, and restrictions
were put on
the tax-exempt lands of the Buddhists and Daoists.
Failing to
control the princes, Jianwen decided to abolish their fiefdoms,
and five of them were eliminated.
Zhu Di of Yan was Hongwu's fourth son; his mother was probably
a lesser consort,
but he later claimed he was the son of Empress
Ma.
He was born on May 2, 1360 and married the daughter of General
Xu Da in 1376.
He did not take up his Yan fiefdom at Beijing until
1380.
Zhu Di was ordered to patrol Daning in 1396 and captured
Bolin Temur.
By 1398 he had become the dominant power in the north.
After the five strategic princedoms were abolished, Zhu Di feared
he was the next target;
but his three sons were hostages at the
court in Nanjing
until Jianwen consented to their return in June
1399.
After two of his officials were executed for sedition the
next month,
Zhu Di attacked neighboring counties.
The Prince of
Yan claimed that he was upholding the laws of Hongwu
and blamed
the three Confucian advisors for persecuting the princes.
In the civil war Emperor Jianwen began with larger forces,
but his army of 130,000 sent to attack Beijing was defeated.
A
siege of Beijing also failed.
In May 1400 about 600,000 men fought
near Baoding.
The southern army used explosive weapons but suffered
heavy losses and retreated.
Prince Zhu Di was nearly captured
but was relieved by reinforcements.
He attacked again at Dezhou;
but in 1401 after losing tens of thousands of troops,
he decided
to use guerrilla tactics in a war of attrition.
By 1402 the Prince
of Yan was able to attack the capital at Nanjing.
He refused to
negotiate, and Jianwen's generals opened the city gates.
The imperial
palace was set on fire, and burned bodies were claimed to be
those
of Jianwen, Empress Ma, and Jianwen's eldest son.
On July 17,
1402 Zhu Di claimed that he was succeeding Hongwu
and proclaimed
himself Emperor Yongle.
The three Confucian advisors refused to
serve the new Emperor
and were executed with many others.
Eventually
tens of thousands were executed, incarcerated, or banished.
Military
power of an autocratic prince
had overcome the civil government of Confucian liberalism.
Legends were passed on that Jianwen had
escaped and continued to live as a monk,
and this tragic hero
became a popular literary motif.
Emperor Yongle (r. 1403-24) awarded noble titles to officers
who helped him,
establishing a hereditary military aristocracy;
but he also appointed seven scholars
to the Hanlin Academy and
used them as his principal advisors,
even taking some of them
on his military expeditions.
Examinations were revived but were
postponed for five years
during Yongle's Mongolian campaigns.
After 1412 they were held regularly,
and 1,833 metropolitan degrees
were awarded during his reign.
The Emperor made use of eunuchs,
who served him with complete loyalty,
and they were given a palace
school.
Yongle's first academic project was to have scholars revise
the historical records
to his advantage while portraying Jianwen
as a corrupt usurper.
By 1407 the Yongle Encyclopedia of
11,095 volumes on all subjects
was compiled by 2,169 scholars,
but it was too long to be printed.
In 1409 the Emperor published
a treatise on how mind and heart learn
according to the wisdom
of the Neo-Confucian sages.
The ruler should exemplify and encourage
the learning of virtues such as conforming
to principle, restraining
desires, practicing reverence, and rectifying the mind.
Ministers
were to advise the Emperor, but loyalty was most important.
The
Song dynasty commentaries on the five classics and four Confucian
books
were published in 1415, and the examinations were based
on these.
Yongle's empress Xu (1362-1407) had received a sutra
in a visionary dream in 1398
that instructed her to chant in times
of trouble which helped her during the civil war.
The sutra
declared that the mind and nature of the Buddha is possessed by
all
sentient beings and that purity could be found in true emptiness.
The number of Buddhist and Daoist clergy that could be ordained
was limited to twenty per district in 1418.
Two years later a
visionary claiming to be the mother of the Buddha
led an insurrection
in Shandong.
During a struggle for power in Annam (northern Vietnam)
a Ming army of 215,000
invaded in 1406, and it was declared a
Chinese province;
but a liberation movement began in 1408, accelerated
in 1418,
and was a problem Yongle left to his successors.
Korea sent horses and oxen occasionally
as tribute starting in 1403,
but the heaviest burden was the 150
ounces of gold and 700 ounces of silver sent annually.
Breeding
and purchases as well as tribute made the number of horses in
China
go from only 38,000 in 1403 to more than 1,500,000 in 1423.
China reopened trade relations in 1403 with Japan's
Shogun Yoshimitsu;
his successor Yoshimochi refused to have official
trade relations with the Ming court,
though private trade continued.
Yongle sent an army against the Mongols in 1409 to retaliate
for Eastern Mongol khan Bunyashiri killing a Chinese envoy.
After
the Mongol chief minister Arughtai defeated the Ming army,
Yongle
led 300,000 (some say 500,000) men in 1410
and drove Arughtai
east and defeated him.
The Oirat Mongol chief Mahmud had been
invested as a Ming prince in 1409
and killed Bunyashiri in 1412
while retreating from the Chinese.
The Ming made Arughtai prince
of Honing,
but he warned them Mahmud's forces were coming.
Emperor
Yongle launched his second campaign in 1414,
using cannons to
force Mahmud to flee,
and his death two years later ended the
Oirat Mongol threat.
Arughtai stopped sending tribute in 1421
and let Mongols raid across the border.
Two officials, who argued
against Yongle's next campaign,
were imprisoned and committed
suicide.
Arughtai retreated in 1422; but Yongle launched campaigns
in 1423 and 1424,
and he died of illness while returning from
the north.
These northern campaigns strained the economy of the
Chinese empire
and damaged military morale.
In 1405 the Muslim eunuch Zheng He (Cheng Ho) commanded a fleet
of 62 ships
and 27,870 men on an expedition to seek treasure that
visited Champa, Java,
Sumatra,
Malacca, Sri
Lanka, and even reached Calicut on the west coast of India;
at
Palembang on Sumatra they killed 5,000 men of the pirate Chen
Ziyi,
who was taken back to Nanjing and executed.
On the second
voyage in 1408 Zheng He intervened in a war between Siam
and Java.
On his third
voyage they were attacked by the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka in 1411,
and Zheng He brought back their king Alaghkkonara (Vira Alakasvera)
as a prisoner.
The fourth expedition reached the Persian Gulf
in 1414,
and the fifth visited east Africa before returning in
1419.
The fleet divided up to explore many areas (some possibly
in America)
on the sixth voyage that returned in 1422.
After Yongle
died, Zheng He became garrison commander at Nanjing for seven
years.
These voyages brought back many spices and exotic animals
to the capital
and for a time demonstrated the glory of Chinese
culture;
but long-term trade links were not established.
Preparations for moving the Ming capital from Nanjing to Beijing
went on for years
but little was accomplished until completion
of the Grand Canal in 1415
allowed large shipments of grain and
building supplies.
Yongle left Nanjing for the last time in 1417,
and Beijing was officially designated the Ming capital in 1420.
After a fire destroyed three halls in the forbidden city,
the
Emperor had to listen to criticism; but this evaporated after
a secretary
complaining about the move was executed.
The costs
of moving the capital had increased land taxes about ten percent.
Knowing how he came to power, Yongle disbanded princely guards
and removed the military commands from his sons.
A large military
establishment of more than two million was maintained
and put
a strain on the imperial economy.
Firearms were improved after
they captured an Annamese expert on muskets and artillery.
Yongle
suffered ill health and took an elixir that contained arsenic,
lead, and other metals,
which may partially account for erratic
behavior and his death in 1424.
Yongle's eldest son Zhu Gaozhi was born August 16, 1378
and
was educated by prominent Confucian tutors.
He often acted as
regent at Nanjing or at Beijing
during his father's northern military
campaigns.
As soon as he became Emperor Hongxi in September 1424,
he canceled Zheng He's maritime expeditions and abolished frontier
trade of tea for horses
as well as missions for gold and pearls
to Yunnan and Annam.
He restored disgraced Confucian officials
and reorganized the administration
to give high ranks to his close
advisors.
Hanlin academicians became grand secretaries, and they
dismantled his father's
unpopular militaristic policies to restore
civil government.
Hongxi improved finances by canceling requisitions
for lumber, gold, and silver.
Taxes were remitted so that vagrant
farmers could return home,
especially in the overburdened Yangzi
delta.
Hongxi appointed a commission to investigate taxes.
He
overruled his secretaries by ordering grain sent immediately to
relieve areas of disaster.
He ordered the capital be moved back
to Nanjing; but Emperor Hongxi died,
probably of a heart attack,
a month later in May 1425.
His son had been declared heir apparent
and became Emperor Xuande at age 26.
Although Hongxi had a short
reign, he is credited with reforms that made
lasting improvements,
and his liberal policies were carried on by his son.
Emperor Xuande (r. 1426-35) decided to keep Beijing as the
capital.
His uncle Zhu Gaoxu had been a favorite of Yongle for
his military successes;
but he disobeyed imperial instructions
and in 1417
had been exiled to the small fief of Loan in Shandong.
When Zhu Gaoxu revolted, the new emperor Xuande
took 20,000 soldiers and attacked him at Loan.
Zhu Gaoxu was reduced to a commoner
and died from torture.
Six hundred rebelling officials were executed,
and 2200 were banished.
Emperor Xuande wanted to withdraw his troops from Annam,
but
some of his advisors disagreed.
After Chinese garrisons suffered
heavy casualties, the Emperor sent Liu Sheng
with an army; but
they were badly defeated by the Annamese, losing 70,000 men in
1427.
The Chinese forces withdrew, and Xuande eventually
recognized
the independence of Annam.
In the north Xuande was inspecting
the border with 3,000 cavalry in 1428
and was able to punish a
raid by Uriyangkhad Mongols.
The Chinese let Arughtai's Eastern
Mongols battle with Toghon's Oirat tribes of the west.
Beijing
received horses annually from Arughtai;
but he was defeated by
the Oirats in 1431 and was killed in 1434
when Toghon took over
eastern Mongolia.
The Ming court then maintained friendly relations
with the Oirats.
China's diplomatic relations with Japan
improved in 1432.
Relations with Korea
were good except they resented having to send virgins
occasionally
to the Ming court's harem.
Xuande allowed Zheng He to make one
more voyage;
but such maritime expeditions by eunuch captains
ended in 1434.
A privy council of eunuchs strengthened centralized power by
controlling the secret police,
and their influence would continue
to grow.
In 1428 the notorious censor Liu Guan was sentenced to
penal servitude and replaced
by the incorruptible Gu Zuo (d. 1446),
who dismissed 43 members of the
Beijing and Nanjing censorates
for incompetence.
Some censors were demoted, imprisoned, and banished,
but none were executed.
Replacements were put on probation as
the censorate investigated
the entire Ming administration including
the military.
The same year the Emperor reformed the rules governing
military conscription
and the treatment of deserters.
Yet the
hereditary military continued to be inefficient with poor morale.
Huge inequalities in tax burdens had caused most in some areas
to leave their farms in the past forty years.
In 1430 Emperor
Xuande ordered tax reductions on all imperial lands
and sent out
"touring pacifiers" to coordinate provincial administration,
exercising civilian control over the military.
They attempted
to eliminate the irregularities and the corruption of the revenue
collectors.
Xuande often ordered retrials that allowed thousands
of innocent people to be released.
Xuande died of illness after
ruling ten years;
but his reign has been considered the Ming dynasty's
golden era.
Since Xuande's successor Yingzong (r. 1435-49) was only eight
years old,
the government was supervised by the grand Empress
dowager Lady Zhang.
After she died in 1442, the young Emperor's
eunuch tutor Wang Zhen dominated him
and the government; he intimidated
the highest officials by jailing some and executing others.
Numerous
famines and epidemics caused by droughts and floods from 1434
to 1448
stimulated a rebellion led by former regional official
Ye Zongliu supported
by silver miners resenting rich landowners
in Fujian and Zhejiang which began in 1444
and broke into open
insurrection three years later.
Non-Chinese people, such as the
Thais, Tibeto-Burmese, Miao, and Yao,
had rebelled occasionally
in the southwest, and a big rebellion of Maoqi joined the miners;
but they were severely defeated at Jianyang in 1449,
though some
mining reforms were achieved in the next few years.
Rural people
were exempted from corvée labor for three years;
output
quotas were lowered, and the death penalty for stealing silver
was abolished.
In the southwest General Wang Zhi made a treaty
with the Shan chiefs
making the Irrawaddy River the border.
Wang
Zhen has been criticized by some historians for instigating the
war
in the southwest for his own personal aggrandizement.
Great walls had been built in the north between 1403 and 1435,
but gaps remained.
After Oirat chief Toghon died, his son Esen
began invading Ming territory;
by 1448 he controlled Hami.
Increasing
numbers of Mongols came to the border markets to barter horses
for tea, grain, iron, and other goods.
In 1448 they demanded too
much, and Wang Zhen refused to pay.
So Esen invaded China with
three armies the next summer.
Because of desertions and corruption,
Ming armies had deteriorated to half their size,
though the empire
still had about 1,250,000 soldiers.
Because of the incursions
the buffer zone on the frontier had been abandoned;
but the walls
around Beijing had been completed in 1445.
Wang Zhen persuaded
Emperor Yingzong to lead the Ming army to Datong
about 270 kilometers
west of Beijing; but on their return Mongol cavalry wiped out
their rearguard, and at Tumu the Ming army was surrounded.
A Mongol
attack on September 3, 1449 panicked the Chinese troops,
and the
army was destroyed, losing half its men and most of its arms and
equipment.
Wang Zhen, whose advice had allowed the trap, was reported
killed by his own men,
and Emperor Yingzong was captured.
The Emperor's mother and wife sent jewels for his ransom.
His
younger brother Zhu Qiyu, the Prince of Cheng, was made regent,
and officials beat some of Wang Zhen's associates to death.
Esen
planned to marry Yingzong to his sister and put him on the throne
in Beijing.
So the Prince of Cheng was proclaimed Emperor Jingtai
on September 23, 1449.
War minister Yuqian defended Beijing with
cannons and 220,000 troops,
and Esen's army of 70,000 had to withdraw.
The next year when Esen sent his Chinese advisor Xi Ning as an
envoy,
he was executed for treason.
Esen agreed to release Yingzong
for the resumption of trade,
and Yingzong returned to Beijing
in September 1450;
but Jingtai remained Emperor.
Esen proclaimed
himself khan of the Mongols in 1453
but was opposed and killed
two years later.
Damage from the great flood of 1448 was repaired, and new sections
were added
to the Grand Canal so that by 1456 a major flood did
little damage.
During the reign (1449-57) of Jingtai several uprisings
around the empire had to be suppressed.
Jingtai appointed his
son heir apparent; but he died.
Some officials suggested the previous
heir apparent be named, but Jingtai had them flogged.
When Emperor
Jingtai fell ill in 1457, a conspiracy of eunuchs and high officials
"forced the palace gate" and restored Yingzong to the
throne.
Jingtai died; some reports indicated he was strangled
by a palace eunuch.
The leadership of the previous reign was purged;
even Yuqian, who had saved the capital,
was beheaded along with
four chief eunuchs and several top officials.
Even the leaders
of the coup had been replaced by 1461 as Emperor Yingzong
worked
to establish a stable administration of the empire.
Yingzong died
in 1464 and was succeeded by his son.
The Chinese had been manufacturing guns since the 13th century,
about fifty years before the Europeans did.
The Chinese had also
been casting iron many centuries before Europe,
and they invented
cannons.
Gun carriages were made to make the cannons mobile,
and
in 1462 the Ming made 1200 carriages.
In 1465 they manufactured
300 cannons and 500 gun carriages.
At this time a Chinese battalion
was supplied with forty cannon batteries,
160 general cannons,
528 continuous bullet cannons, 624 hand guns, 300 grenades,
seven
tons of gunpowder, and more than a million bullets.
Emperor Xianzong (r. 1464-87) was born on December 9, 1447.
He was dominated by his favorite consort Lady Wan,
who was 35
years old when he became Emperor.
He married Empress Wu, and she
had Lady Wan flogged;
but within a month Xianzong deposed Empress
Wu.
Empress Wang was installed but deferred to Lady Wan,
who gave
favors and bypassed the usual administration.
Lady Wan's son died
within a year, and she did not become pregnant again.
She sent
eunuchs to make sure other pregnancies by Xianzong were aborted;
but Empress Wu helped the son born in 1470 to the aborigine Lady
Zhi to survive,
and in 1475 Xianzong learned he had a son.
Lady
Wan caused lands to be confiscated and farmers to become tenants
on imperial estates.
She also had officers appointed without the
usual procedures;
many offices, ranks, and privileges were gained
by bribery.
About 10,000 eunuchs served in the bureaucracy,
though
officially they could not hold the highest ranks.
Officials futilely
submitted memorials to punish abetting castration,
often imposed
by parents hoping for tax exemptions and money from the palace
jobs.
In 1464 special examinations for selecting military officers
were devised.
Rewards and advancements in the army were often
based on how many men were killed,
and heads were collected as
proof.
Confucians criticized this policy
because innocent civilians
were killed to increase the numbers.
Heads of enemies usually
had more value than those of Chinese bandits and rebels.
A large
uprising of Guangxi rebels was suppressed by a Ming army in 1467;
thousands of Miao were killed.
They rebelled again in 1475, and
thousands more were killed in 1476.
The junior minister of rites,
Zhou Hongmo, suggested that they establish native chiefs
to govern
their own tribes under Chinese authority.
He argued that great
resentment had been caused when 270 native chiefs
had been treacherously
executed in 1473.
His advice was ignored.
The next year Zhou Hongmo
commented on the largest rebellion of the era
when he suggested
that refugees be given land in the Jing-Xiang region.
In fact
in 1476 Yuan Qie had allowed 113,000 households to claim vacant
lands
with tax reductions until the land produced.
Additions were
made to the Great Wall to keep the Ordos in the north
and to protect
the Shaanxi and Shanxi borders in the northwest.
Corruption entered Buddhist ordinations when 10,000 blank certificates
were sold
for grain in 1484 to relieve a famine, and two months
later
60,000 ordination certificates were sold for silver in all
thirteen provinces.
Emperor Xianzong ignored his secretaries and
relied on the eunuchs
Wang Zhi and Liang Fang and others patronized
by Lady Wan.
She died in 1487, and Emperor Xianzong passed away
from illness six months later.
When Xianzong's son Xiaozong (r. 1487-1505) became Emperor,
Lady Wan's eunuch
collaborators were dismissed from office;
but
only a few of the worst criminals were executed.
Two thousand
improperly appointed officials were dismissed
along with nearly
a thousand Buddhist and Daoist clerics.
Xiaozong married Lady
Zhang and was the only Ming Emperor
who was monogamous without
any other consorts.
He was dedicated to Confucian ethics and sponsored
work on the law code and precedents.
He reduced court luxuries
and eliminated eunuch procurements.
However, many Zhang relatives
were given court opportunities for corruption.
In 1493 Liu Daxia
was appointed to oversee the work of 120,000 men,
who altered
the course of the Yellow River south of the Shandong peninsula
into the Huai River, a change that lasted until the 19th century.
Liu Daxia was the Emperor's closest advisor and became minister
of war in 1501.
The Chinese used an embargo of the silk road in
1497 to restrain the Turfanese.
Most foreign trade was usually
managed by the eunuchs for their private benefit.
A Lolo rebellion
on the border of Yunnan lasted three years and was led by a woma
but was suppressed by an imperial army from four provinces in
1502.
The Li tribe on the island of Hainan also rebelled for three
years,
and Chinese and Mongol soldiers killed many of them in
1503.
Xiaozong was succeeded by his 13-year-old son,
who became Emperor
Zhengde or Wuzong (r. 1505-21).
He had been raised by eunuchs
and liked to cavort with them, often getting drunk.
Zhengde ignored
the elderly grand secretaries and let the eunuch Liu Qin
raise
money for his personal extravagances.
In 1506 the revenue minister
Han Wen submitted a petition that
the eight powerful eunuchs be
executed, instead of just Liu Qin;
but they persuaded the Emperor
to get rid of their enemies instead,
and all the grand secretaries
but one resigned.
Complaining officials were beaten and reduced
to commoners.
In 1507 Liu Qin spent 350,000 ounces of silver on
the Emperor's favorite lantern festival.
Zhengde also ordered
expensive building for a private palace and an imperial park.
In 1508 silver mine quotas were increased even though the ore
was diminishing;
Liu Qin's agents sold salt beyond the quotas
of the government monopoly;
Liu Qin began selling military commissions
for grain;
and heavy fines were imposed on officials displeasing
Liu Qin.
Resisting eunuchs were investigated and banished to Nanjing.
Hundreds of border officials were fined in 1509 as were salt administrators.
In 1510 the Prince of Anhua revolted against Liu Qin and was
taken to the capital
by supreme commander Yang Yiqing and the
eunuch army inspector Zhang Yong.
Yang had been previously forced
out of office by Liu Qin and persuaded Zhang
that Liu Qin was
plotting to assassinate the Emperor.
The drunk Zhengde found Liu
Qin's hoard of gold and silver
and had Liu Qin killed by slicing
over three days.
His partisans were executed or dismissed, and
confiscation of his wealth
temporarily supplied the Emperor's
treasury.
Liu Qin's vile policies had caused desertions and banditry.
By 1511 they were numerous enough to be attacking administrative
cities,
and more than a thousand imperial grain barges were burned
that year;
but in 1512 they were surrounded by imperial armies
and slaughtered.
A heroic archer named Jiang Bin became Emperor
Zhengde's boon companion
and was put in charge of the capital
garrisons.
During an extravagant lantern festival in 1514 gunpowder
accidentally
exploded and burned the palaces and audience halls.
Rebuilding would cost a million ounces of silver,
and a 20% surtax
was charged for five years.
Imperial business was carried on by
eunuchs.
A costly trip to bring back a "living Buddha"
from Tibet ended in disaster.
The Portuguese reached the China
coast in 1514;
ut after the Emperor died in 1521, they were ordered
to leave China.
Emperor Zhengde began traveling in 1517, neglecting his ceremonial
duties.
He loved hunting and military adventures, and he fought
against the Mongol chief
Batu Mongke while demanding more silver
than was in the treasury.
In 1518 officials were not allowed to
leave Beijing
except when they had to wait for him in the mud.
The Emperor called himself General Zhu Shou and issued orders
as military commands.
When he intended to visit Nanjing, protesting
officials were beaten; twelve died.
Then the Emperor changed his
mind.
Zhu Chenhao, the Prince of Ning, had been plotting to increase
his power
and maybe take over the throne since 1514.
He protected
brigands and used them for his own purposes while driving others
to become outlaws because of his expropriating property and interfering
in commerce.
In 1517 the Prince of Ning sent spies to Beijing,
and the next year bandits attacked the Prince's nemesis Fei Hong.
The Prince of Ning got Qian Ning to let the Prince's son participate
in the sacrifices at the Ancestral Temple.
Qian Ning was a rival
of Jiang Bin, who finally in 1519
made Emperor Zhengde aware of
the danger.
The actual uprising by the Prince of Ning only lasted
43 days,
as the philosopher Wang Yangming (Wang Shouren) led an
imperial army that
ambushed the rebels and defeated them at Nanchang
in August 1519.
This gave Zhengde an excuse to tour the south the next month,
and the Emperor spent eight months at Nanjing in 1520.
For three
years the Emperor had been outraging many by taking women
from
private households for his harem and redeeming some
or high prices
or accepting bribes to leave them alone.
Hundreds of women ended
up at the palace laundry in Beijing,
where women from the palace
were disciplined or retired.
So many were there now that officials
complained they were dying of starvation.
Jiang Bin wanted to
let the Emperor pretend to capture the Prince of Ning
in a mock
battle; but Wang Yangming, who had captured the Prince,
refused
to agree to this and brought him to Nanjing.
Wang warned that
border troops would make the situation in Jiangxi worse;
but Jiang
Bin invaded with imperial troops anyway to wipe out the rest of
the Prince's rebels.
Wang returned to Jiangxi as governor and
gained such respect
that Jiang Bin soon returned to Nanjing.
Yet
the Emperor forced Wang to report that Jiang Bin had captured
the Prince.
Wang Yangming destroyed evidence so that not so many
would be purged by the Emperor.
Qian Ning was executed by slicing,
but the Prince of Ning was allowed to commit suicide.
After nearly drowning in a boating accident, Emperor Zhengde
became very ill but did not name an heir.
When he died in April
1521, the chief grand secretary Yang Tinghe
got the Empress dowager
to approve an edict naming
the grandson of Emperor Xianzong to
succeed.
Yang Tinghe governed for 35 days removing from court
those appointed by the late Emperor.
The new Emperor had been born on September 16, 1507
but had
succeeded his father as prince at Anlu in 1519.
A delegation hailed
him as Emperor, and he traveled to Beijing
and entered the palace
as Emperor Jiajing or Shizong (r. 1521-66).
He sent for his mother
and refused to refer to her as his aunt to please his adopting
mother,
the Empress dowager, who issued an edict giving imperial
titles to his natural parents.
Yang Tinghe tried to correct the
recent abuses by returning property to the tax registers
that
had been seized as imperial estates, dismissing unnecessary imperial
bodyguards,
suppressing unorthodox teaching from imperial schools,
and curbing the influence of eunuchs.
However, the Emperor brought
his own eunuchs and disagreed with Yang on rituals
and respect
for his grandmother when she died in December 1522.
Emperor Jiajing
gained support for his position from a governor's memorial
and
philosopher Wang Yangming.
Having lost influence, Yang Tinghe
retired in May 1524.
A bitter debate ensued over whether Emperor
Jiajing owed his primary reverence
to the late Emperor or his
natural parents.
He ordered protesting officials put in prison,
and 180 leaders were beaten at court; 17 died, and those recovering
were banished.
The next day the Emperor gave his father an imperial
title.
Emperor Jiajing had approved a hostile policy toward Mansur,
the Mongol sultan of Turfan,
killing his agent Sayyid Husain in
1521 and detaining his envoys in Beijing.
Raids and battles with
the Ming army went on from 1524 until the Ming court
acknowledged
Mansur's control of Hami in 1528.
In August 1524 garrison soldiers,
rejecting a transfer of troops,
murdered the Datong governor and
set fire to official buildings.
When imperial troops in the area
were suspected of a punitive expedition,
the mutineers took over
the city. Rebel leaders were trapped and executed the next year;
but soldiers were placated with a pardon and three ounces of silver.
A force of 60,000 Mongol cavalry raided the region in 1531,
and
two years later the Datong garrison revolted again.
In 1535 several
garrisons in the northeast rebelled.
Once again leaders were executed,
and the rest were pardoned.
A treason case in 1527 was used to purge the officials associated
with Yang Tinghe and his Hanlin Academy clique.
Zhang Cong replaced
Fei Hong as grand secretary.
A group of officials was dismissed
for falsely claiming that Mansur had been killed,
and Guei O,
who accused them, became a grand secretary in 1529.
He and Zhang
Cong were dismissed but won a struggle for power against Yang
Yiching.
In 1531 Zhang refused to carry out the changes the
Emperor
demanded in court ceremony and lost influence to Xia Yan.
Like
his English contemporary Henry VIII, Emperor Jiajing had trouble
producing
an heir and had a series of wives; in 1531 he chose
nine special consorts.
Only two of the Emperor's sons reached
maturity.
After the influential philosopher Wang Yangming died
in 1529,
his teachings spread as new academies were founded.
In
1534 a lecture hall was built in honor of Wang Yangming.
Xia Yan
and Yan Song were opposed to this faction,
and in 1537 many academies
were prohibited.
After 1534 the Emperor rarely had court audiences but relied
on close advisors.
In 1540 Jiajing announced he was going into
seclusion to pursue immortality
with Daoist aphrodisiacs and elixirs;
an official who warned that
they were dangerous was tortured to
death.
In 1542 the drunk Jiajing was nearly strangled to death
by women in his harem;
but he survived and had all the women involved
executed.
That year Xia Yan refused to wear a Daoist cap and gown
and was
pushed into retirement as Yan Song gained control of the
grand secretariat.
He got a censor beaten to death who had previously
accused him of taking bribes.
Building programs and military expenditures
strained the treasury,
but in 1543 the Emperor agreed to give
up some of his private revenues to pay for defense.
During a famine in 1541 Mongol Prince Altan was denied trading
because of
annual raiding, and grain was sent to the garrisons
at Datong and Xuanfu.
After Altan learned that a Ming subject
he sent
as an envoy had been executed as a traitor, he invaded
Shanxi.
About 30,000 Ming cavalry could not stop them.
In one
month in 1542 Altan's Mongols killed or captured 200,000 men and
took
a million head of cattle and horses, burning thousands of
dwellings and devastating farmland.
Under Weng Wanda from 1542
to 1550 the Datong region was well defended
by the building of
walls, military discipline, and spying
among the Mongols to gain
intelligence, though there was raiding.
In 1548 the Mongols attacked
and defeated the imperial army at Xuanfu,
and that year in a controversy
on whether to invade the Ordos region
Yan Song got Xia Yan put
to death for insubordination.
In October 1550 Altan's Mongols besieged Beijing and looted
the suburbs.
Emperor Jiajing held his first audience since 1539,
and the minister of war was executed.
In April 1551 Prince Altan
sent his adopted son Toghto,
and they agreed to stop raiding for
two annual horse fairs;
but later when they were not allowed to
trade cattle and sheep
for beans and grain, the raiding resumed.
Chinese rebels helped Altan take part of Shanxi in 1552.
Construction
of a wall to protect the suburbs of Beijing was begun in 1553.
For the next two decades raids were made annually along the northern
border.
Altan Khan invaded Zinghai in 1559, but he made a peace
treaty
with the Ming court in 1570 that was effective after 1573.
Altan conquered the Kirghis and Kazakhs in 1572,
and he invaded
Tibet for five years beginning in 1573.
The third Grand Lama of
the Yellow Sect visited Altan Khan in 1578
and called upon the
Mongols to give up their shamanism for Lamaism,
and Altan Khan
was the one who gave him the title Dalai Lama
from the Mongol
word dalai meaning "ocean."
In 1549 influence had been concentrated in the director of
ceremonial,
and in 1552 a palace army was established under his
jurisdiction.
The Emperor's Daoist advisor, Tao Zhongwen, kept
him from dismissing Yan Song.
In 1552 Emperor Jiajing had 800
girls under the age of fourteen selected
so that he could have
intercourse with them at the first instance of menses in order
to
absorb the yang (male energy) from their yin
(female energy).
In 1555 he selected another 180 under the age
of ten to experiment with the elixir.
These experiments were practiced
by other wealthy men,
especially in the south, but not on this
scale.
The Ming court officially allowed Japanese tribute (trade)
only once per decade;
but after Wang Zhi led a major mission to
Japan in 1545,
illicit private trade became common.
In 1547 Zhu
Wan was sent to stop overseas trade as the cause of piracy,
and
in 1549 he attacked a large merchant fleet off Fujian
and executed
96 captives but was dismissed that year.
In 1551 even fishing
boats were forbidden to go out to sea.
The next year Shandong
governor Wang Yu was put in charge
and released Zhu Wan's imprisoned
commanders;
but his army was often defeated as raiders took over
twenty cities and garrisons.
In 1555 Hangzhou was attacked, and
thousands were massacred in the countryside
while Nanjing minister
of war Zhang Jing was raising an army of aborigines.
That May,
Zhang's imperial army took 1900 heads of marauders.
Zhao Wenhua
opposed this policy,
and Yan Song got the Emperor to behead Zhang
Jing in November 1555.
Wang Zhi offered to wipe out the pirates in exchange
for a
pardon and permission to trade; but he was ignored.
The aborigines,
which Zhang had recruited, pillaged and attacked imperial troops.
Hu Zongxian was given supreme command and promised the rebel Xu
Hai
a pardon for surrendering, and Xu Hai's forces began campaigning
against pirates.
Zhao Wenhua repudiated Hu's policy of appeasement
and forced Xu Hai to surrender;
Xu Hai escaped but drowned in
a battle.
Yan Song got Zhao dismissed but could not get Wang Zhi
pardoned
even after Wang surrendered to Hu.
The Emperor had Wang
executed in 1559.
The war against the pirates receded when their
last base
on the Fujian coast was taken in 1563.
A fiscal deficit caused Emperor Jiajing in 1552 to impose a
surtax
of two million ounces of silver on the wealthy prefectures
of the Yangzi delta.
The next year drought and flooding caused
thousands of people to flock to Beijing for food;
but the price
of rice had doubled, and decaying bodies
of starved people in
the streets caused an epidemic in 1554.
When ceremonial buildings
in the Forbidden City burned down in 1557,
much money was used
to rebuild them.
This construction had not yet been completed
when the drunken Emperor carelessly
caused his own palace to burn
down in 1561.
The price of rice had risen so high in Nanjing that
soldiers learning their supplemental
rations had been cut in 1560
rioted.
Stipends for imperial clansmen fell behind,
and in 1564
the Emperor solved the problem by reducing them all to commoners.
Yan Song turned eighty in 1560 and became so feeble that he was
dismissed in 1562.
Emperor Jiajing suffered insomnia and varying
moods
because of the poisons in the elixirs he took.
His mental
abilities decreased in 1565, and after a long decline
he finally
died in January 1567.
His banning of maritime trade had caused
piracy and rebellions,
and the failure to obtain revenue from
commercial taxes strained the economy of the empire,
placing extra
burdens on the farmers and resulting in famines.
Emperor Longqing (r. 1567-72) presided over a tranquil period
and was more concerned with spectacular ceremonies than politics.
His young son Emperor Wanli or Shenzong (r. 1572-1620) was influenced
by his Buddhist mother not to inflict the death penalty except
in extreme cases.
For a decade his tutor and grand secretary,
Zhang Juzheng, governed with great skill,
increasing the imperial
treasury and maintaining an armed peace on the borders.
Unnecessary
government programs were suspended, and provincial officials
were
ordered to reduce greatly their labor service requirements.
Back
taxes were collected as tax delinquents were prosecuted.
A variety
of separate taxes were combined together into a single tax.
Magistrates,
wanting to be promoted, had to make sure
taxes were collected
and bandits were caught.
When Zhang Juzheng's father died in 1577, Confucian tradition
called for him
to take off 27 months for mourning; but he got
the 14-year-old Emperor
to give him leave from this mourning.
This caused a storm of protest over this religious issue.
Zhang
hated philosophical discussions; in 1579 after a local prefect
collected money
wrongfully for an independent academy, he had
many academies closed down.
In the next two years 64 academies
in the south
had been reported changed or abolished, but five
remained.
In 1580 Zhang ordered an imperial land survey, but he
died before it was completed.
After his death, Zhang was accused
of living in luxury, taking bribes,
granting his sons favors,
silencing public opinion, deceiving the Emperor,
and even conspiring
with eunuch Feng Bao to take over the throne.
All this made Wanli
become cynical about politicians' hypocrisy.
The Ming court did end the ban on foreign trade in 1567.
The
Portuguese had been at Macao since 1557;
China tried to keep them
insulated by building a wall there in 1574.
The Portuguese were
allowed to buy goods at Guangzhou (Canton) after 1578.
In 1582
Liu Ting led a punitive campaign into Burma and defeated them
again two years later;
but in the next decade the Burmans would
invade Yunnan.
In 1592 a small revolt led by the Mongol Pubei
and his son,
a Chinese officer, resulted in their deaths.
The
Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) arrived at Zhaoqing
in the
Guangdong province in 1583, made it to Nanjing by 1595,
and in 1601 settled at Beijing.
He learned Chinese and dressed
like a Buddhist monk
but then changed to the habit of a Confucian
scholar.
In his journal Ricci observed that upper class Chinese
sought enlightenment rather than faith,
while the peasants worshiped
idols and were superstitious.
Ricci taught the Chinese the latest
discoveries in world geography and astronomy.
He wrote books in
Chinese, and in 1603 he published his
Christian explanation of
God as The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven.
He became
the Chinese tutelary deity for the clocks the Jesuits introduced.
Ricci opposed the Buddhist theory of reincarnation and disagreed
with Zhuhong's vegetarianism, arguing that animals were created
for the benefit of humans.
In 1592 the Japanese invaded the Korean
peninsula
and marching north took Seoul and Pyongyang.
A small
Chinese force of 5,000 was sent and was defeated but gained a
truce.
The next year a Ming army of 43,000 crossed the Yalu River
and drove
the Japanese army out of Pyongyang but was defeated
outside of Seoul.
They agreed upon another truce, and the Chinese
left a force of 16,000 men.
In 1597 the Japanese army pushed forward, and China sent a force of perhaps 100,000.
Once again the battlefront
stabilized before the Japanese retreated south for the winter.
The Koreans and Chinese had raised powerful navies,
and in 1598
the Japanese withdrew except for some fierce Satsuma warriors.
When Emperor Wanli learned that Shogun Hideyoshi
Toyotomi had died,
both sides withdrew from the war that cost
China
10,000,000 taels (tael = 1.75 ounces of silver).
In 1603
eunuch envoys went searching for gold in the Philippines;
but after they left, fears of an invasion led to armed conflict
in which Spaniards and Filipino natives massacred 23,000 Chinese.
Silver taken by the Spaniards from mines in America
had become
so plentiful in China that it became the main currency.
Criticized after 1585 for his negligence and impropriety,
Emperor
Wanli had the protesting and informing officials beaten.
About
2,000 eunuchs and 3,000 women served on the palace staff,
and
the imperial civil service had about 16,000 eunuchs.
In 1587 some
3,000 peasants in Shandong had become bandits.
Bureaucrats were
further alienated when Wanli sent out eunuchs in 1596
as tax collectors
and mining commissioners.
Rioters killed a eunuch superintendent
of mining in Yunnan province in 1606;
though they lost good will,
the mining revenues supplied the treasury.
The Emperor usually
responded to criticism by not cooperating.
He left many departments
understaffed, except those for collecting revenue.
By 1604 about
half the magistracies and ministerial positions were vacant.
Wanli
also managed to increase his private treasury at the expense of
the government.
He spent 12,000,000 taels supporting princes and
9,000,000 taels rebuilding palaces.
Wanli's marriage ceremony
alone cost 90,000 taels.
Wanli's tomb took six years to build
and was completed in 1590,
costing about 3,000,000 taels.
The
Jia canal project was begun in 1593 but was not completed until
1609.
Eunuch tax collectors used hoodlums to shake down people
in Suzhou
so badly that the silk workers formed two groups and
went around
beating tax collectors to death in July 1601.
Ge Xian
volunteered to take responsibility for starting the riot
and after
a trial was sent to prison.
The disregard of the Emperor allowed factionalism to increase
in the Ming court.
A group of former officials and scholars not
in offices concerned
about moral Confucian traditions founded
the Donglin Academy in 1604.
They believed that the techniques
of bureaucratic tinkering could no longer
bring the needed improvements
that they hoped fresh moral evaluations could.
Evaluations of
officials took place every six years,
and by 1611 many of the
anti-Donglin advocates were being removed.
The Buddhist Yuan Liaofan (1533-1606) popularized the Daoist
idea of
merits and demerits in his book Record of Silent Recompense,
published in 1602.
Based on the principle of karma, this was intended
to encourage people to be
loving, respectful, sympathetic, helpful,
charitable, self-sacrificing to help others,
and to set a good
example.
The Buddhist monk Zhuhong (1535-1615) analyzed all deeds
with a system of merits and demerits into categories with points.
For example, under altruistic and compassionate deeds rescuing
a person from the death penalty was worth 100 merits;
helping
a sick person on the road return home
or saving the life of a
domesticated animal was 20;
rescuing one from bambooing was 15;
helping one recover from a serious illness was 10,
from a slight
illness 5; and offering medicine or saving a small animal was
one merit.
Not helping a sick person was 2 demerits, and killing
a person was 100 demerits.
The idea that the children would suffer
if a person's demerits were more than their merits
was a Daoist
concept, because the Buddhist idea of karma only affects oneself.
Some believed that if their merits reached 10,000, their wishes
would be fulfilled.
Other Buddhists criticized that this mechanical
system
went against the bodhisattva ideal of helping for
its own sake.
Zhuhong was also a leader in harmonizing the different Buddhist
schools,
especially the popular Pure Land and Chan (Zen),
and
he helped to develop the lay movement in Buddhism that encouraged
many people to practice Buddhist teachings without becoming priests
or monks.
During the Ming era many Confucians were influenced
by Buddhism and Daoism
as people became more eclectic in their
spirituality.
Zhuhong was the friend and teacher of the poet Yuan
Hongdao and his brothers.
Their clubs for releasing life would
purchase animals
from butchers and free them to gain merit.
The population of China was counted at about 60 million in
1393
but grew to about 230 million in 1600 as prosperity gradually
increased.
More families had joined the middle class as industry
and commerce developed along with agriculture.
Their sons could
be educated and hope to pass examinations for civil service
employment,
which became the usual path to a political career.
One could work
up from the lower ranks of the civil service;
but this became
less likely as education spread after 1440.
Yet this growing landed
class tended to manipulate the complicated tax system
to their
advantage, leaving the heaviest burdens on the poor peasants,
who became increasingly subservient to the landlords.
Often people
just moved to avoid the heavy taxes, and much of the population
shifted
from the south to the north, which became so deforested
that wood had to be imported from other regions.
The north was
also dependent on the south for food transported up the Grand
Canal.
Large industries developed in cotton and silk weaving and
in iron and steel production.
The Ming dynasty is famous for the
high quality of its porcelain.
By the end of the 16th century
Jiangxi alone had thirty paper factories with 50,000 workers.
Tea was another important export that helped the balance of trade.
The Manchu leader Nurhaci was born in 1559 in the Jianzhou
tribe among the Jurchens.
His father and grandfather secretly
cooperated with the Chinese
before the invasion of Atai in 1582,
but they were mistakenly killed during the assault.
To gain revenge
Nurhaci championed the Manchu cause
and was attacked by the Liaodong
governor in 1587.
Nurhaci made alliances with other Jurchens by
marrying two of their princesses.
After he rescued some kidnapped
Chinese and returned them in 1589,
Emperor Wanli granted him a
title.
He took tribute to Beijing four times.
Nurhaci gained a
monopoly over the Chinese trade of pearls, sable, and ginseng.
By the time of the campaign against Japan in 1592,
he led an army
of about 35,000 cavalry and 45,000 infantry.
In 1599 he had scholars
replace the Mongolian script with the Jurchen alphabet.
Nurhaci
organized the Jurchen people into companies of
three hundred households
and four banners of fifty companies.
Eventually there would be
eight Manchu banners, eight Mongol banners,
and eight Chinese
banners.
He made an agreement with Ming generals in Liaodong on
their boundaries in 1603,
and Manchu territory was closed to Chinese
immigration.
Nurhaci executed his brother Surhaci in 1611 and
his son Cuyen in 1613.
Nurhaci sent his last tribute payment to Beijing in 1615.
He
annexed all the Manchu tribes except the Yehe and Haixi,
and in
1618 he announced his seven grievances, which included his father's
death,
Ming aid to his tribal rivals, and encroachment by Chinese
settlers.
He demanded that territory be ceded and annual tribute
be paid in gold, silver, and silk.
The Ming court could not accept
this and appointed
Yang Hao as supreme commander of a campaign
in 1619.
The Chinese army was larger but was divided into four
parts.
Du Song led 25,000 men through the Fushun Pass,
but they
were ambushed and defeated by 30,000 Mongols.
Nurhaci won a series
of victories, captured Kaiyuan, and killed Ma Lin.
He entered
Tieling and annexed the remaining Jurchen tribes.
By 1621 he was
ruling a million Chinese, but two years later
they started fires,
tried to poison Manchu water and food, and then revolted.
This
caused the Manchus to stop treating the Chinese as equals.
The
Chinese got cannons from the Portuguese to defend their garrisons
outside the Great Wall, while the Manchus lacked firearms.
In
1625 the Chinese revolted again, and the Manchus raised taxes
on the Chinese from 13 percent of the harvest to 20 percent.
Manchus
were required to carry weapons, and the Chinese were forbidden
to do so.
Using cannons, the Ming army inflicted a major defeat
on the Manchus in 1626;
Nurhaci was wounded in battle and died
at Shenyang,
which he had renamed Mukden and made his capital.
Economic hardship resulted in famine for the next two years.
In 1620 thousands deserted the Chinese army, and the Ming court
raised taxes.
The influx of silver from Japan and the Philippines'
trade with Mexico and Peru
had enabled them to collect taxes in
silver instead of by land taxes and labor service,
but Ming spending
increased even more.
While the Manchus were raiding Chinese settlements
in Liaodong,
Wanli died in August 1620.
Zhu Changle became emperor
for the brief Taichang era
and released two million taels for
border defense.
In September he appointed several reformers from
the Donglin Academy movement,
but he soon fell ill and died from
suspicious medical treatment.
In October 1620 Zhu Yuzhao became Emperor Tianqi,
though his
reign did not officially begin until January.
This young Emperor
was obsessed by his hobby of carpentry
and let others run the
government.
His nurse, the Lady Ko, got the eunuch Wei Zhongxian
appointed to the office of rites,
and in 1621 censor Wang Xini
protested the gifts and honors
the Emperor conferred upon these
two.
That summer the eunuch Wang An, a Donglin supporter, was
murdered,
and others close to him were dismissed.
Wei Zhongxian
needed to pay gambling debts and accepted bribes.
He extorted
taxes from the provinces and dismissed patriotic generals.
In
1622 the Emperor closed the Donglin Academy; even the moderate
Zuo Yuanbiao
had to resign because he had promoted philosophical
discussions.
This led to conflicts between the extremes of both
factions.
In 1624 Donglin leader Yang Lian accused Wei of murders,
usurping imperial authority,
intriguing against ministers, and
forcing the Empress to have an abortion.
Wei reacted by proscribing
seven hundred in the Donglin movement,
and some were imprisoned,
tortured, and executed,
including Yang Lian and five others who
became known as heroic martyrs.
A decrease in silver imports from America reduced Chinese trade
with Manila and depressed Fujian's economy.
A White Lotus uprising
began in 1622 and was led by Xu Hongru.
He blocked the Grand Canal
and captured fifty imperial grain barges
headed toward Beijing,
but by November the imperial forces had regained the cities taken
by the rebels;
Xu Hongru and other leaders were executed.
Also
in 1622 a Dutch fleet of eight ships attacked the Portuguese colony
at Macao
and then withdrew to the Pescadores Islands in the Taiwan
Strait.
The Dutch sent an envoy to ask for trading privileges
and threatened
to disrupt Chinese trade with the Spaniards and
Portuguese,
but the Fujian governor ordered them to dismantle
their fort and leave.
The Chinese attacked them in 1624, and the
Dutch retreated to Taiwan.
After Tianqi died in 1627, his 16-year-old brother became Emperor
Chongzhen.
The eunuch Wei Zhongxian was denounced and demoted.
Learning he was to be arrested and investigated, Wei hanged himself.
Two dozen people, including Lady Ko and her relatives,
were executed
or committed suicide.
Han Kuang returned as chief grand secretary,
and other Donglin ministers published a blacklist of Wei's associates.
In 1628 the leading smuggler, Zheng Zhilong surrendered
and helped
rid the Fujian and Zhejiang coasts of pirates.
Trade resumed,
and in 1632 the silver coming into China
from Manila surpassed
two million pesos.
In the northwest the Shaanxi province suffered
famine in 1628,
and three years later Li Zicheng joined the bandits
and began raiding the Henan and Sichuan provinces.
Surhaci's son Amin led the Manchu invasion of Korea in 1627
and allowed
his forces to pillage the countryside despite the
decision of the other leaders.
Nurhaci was succeeded by his eighth
son, Abahai (Hong Taiji), in December 1629,
and the next month
the Manchus took over Guan near Beijing.
Amin disobeyed the khan
by massacring the population of Yongping,
for which he was imprisoned.
In 1631 Abahai's forces surrounded the Dalinghe fort, which was
starved into surrendering.
Abahai imitated Ming administration
and recruited Chinese officials,
and in 1632 he abolished the
law that required people
to report misconduct by their own family.
After the Wuqiao revolt, Kong Youde's regiment surrendered to
the Manchus,
who gained the firearms and experts that they turned
to their advantage.
In 1633 Abahai allowed Chinese, Manchus, and
Mongols
to take civil service examinations in their own languages.
By 1635 the Manchus had made the tribes of Inner Mongolia
their
vassals under Mongol banners.
Ming military defeats caused turmoil at court,
and Zhou Yenru
and Wen Tiren removed some of the Donglin partisans.
Once again
unpopular eunuchs were sent out to inspect the provinces.
Drought
and famine led to rebellions in northern and central China.
Increased
military costs brought higher taxes,
and many farmers could not
pay in silver.
Spain sharply reduced the silver exports from America.
The influence of Wen Tiren grew until 1637 when he tried
to arrest
Qian Qiani on false charges; but the Donglin faction got him dismissed.
Ming commander Yang He had been removed in 1631 and died four
years later.
After the mourning period, in 1637 his son Yang Sichang
became minister of war.
In 1636 Abahai had overcome his political
rivals and at Mukden
named the Manchu dynasty Qing, meaning "pure."
He invaded Korea, which capitulated to the Manchus in early 1637.
The next year the Manchu armies ravaged Bei Zhili and Shandong,
attacking sixty cities and returning with 400,000 captives.
Abahai
founded Office of Border Affairs for dealing with other nations.
Chinese troops in the Manchu army were organized under their first
banner in 1630;
by 1639 they had four banners and reached eight
in 1642
when one out of three Chinese was a soldier.
Devastating
war destroyed grain and prevented Korea from being able to send
its tribute;
by 1640 it could only pay one-tenth its quota.
After the Henan drought in 1639, scholars helped Li Zicheng
spread songs and stories,
distribute food to the hungry, and appoint
officials to run a government.
Li's rival Zhang Xianzhong had
been raiding in northern China since 1630,
and in 1638 he negotiated
with the Ming commander Xiong Wencan;
but the next year Zhang
repudiated his agreement and defeated imperial forces.
Famine
brought more recruits to Li Zicheng, who captured Luoyang in 1641.
Meanwhile Zhang defeated Yang Sichang, who committed suicide.
Factions at court agreed on the return of Zhou Yenru as chief
grand secretary.
In the 1640s China's trade with the Philippines
stopped,
and 20,000 Chinese died in violent conflicts there.
Rice
was for sale in southeastern China;
but many starved because it
was too expensive.
Li Zicheng besieged Kaifeng three times,
and
in 1642 starvation, disease, and a flood killed several hundred
thousand people.
That year Ming defenses north of the Great Wall
collapsed.
In 1643 Li made Xiangyang his capital and governed
much of Hubei, Henan, and Shaanxi.
After Abahai died in 1643,
a Manchu succession struggle resulted in his five-year-old son
becoming emperor with the boy's uncles Dorgon and Jirgalang as
regents.
Zhou Yenru left Beijing and claimed he drove away the Manchus,
who had withdrawn north of the Great Wall; Zhou Yenru was arrested,
charged with corruption, and committed suicide in January 1644.
Li Zicheng invaded Shanxi and in April occupied Beijing,
as the
last Ming emperor Chongzhen hanged himself.
The Ming army had
not been paid for five months,
and the granaries were nearly empty.
Li disciplined his troops by executing looters.
However, Ming
officials were tortured until Li stopped this.
Eventually his
soldiers went after the merchants and looted shops and homes.
The Chinese general Wu Sangui joined the Manchus
and helped them
defeat the forces of Li on May 29.
Li proclaimed himself Shun
emperor on June 3
but left before Dorgon's Manchu army entered
Beijing two days later.
The new Qing dynasty immediately announced
a
general amnesty for former officials and scholars.
Li Zicheng
fled and was killed by peasants a year later.
In 1644 Zhang Xianzhong
invaded Sichuan with about 100,000 men,
taking Zhongging and Chengdu
and establishing a government under military authority.
His plundering
caused a slave uprising.
However, his army slaughtered so many
people that they lost support,
and the Manchus killed Zhang in
1647.
Some Confucians during the Yuan dynasty disdained serving the
Mongol empire
and retired to reclusive lives of scholarship and
private teaching.
In the early Ming period Neo-Confucians
served the administration,
and they were still strongly influenced
by the great Song Confucians Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi.
Xue Xuan (1389-1464)
won the highest degree in 1421 and became an official;
he was
almost executed by a eunuch in 1443.
Xue Xuan promoted the teachings
of Zhu Xi because he believed that
all that was necessary now
was to put those teachings into practice.
Wu Yubi (1391-1469)
refused to serve the imperial administration
even though he was
asked to tutor the crown prince.
Wu Yubi wanted to spend the rest
of his life studying the Book of
Changes (Yi Jing).
Hu Juren (1434-84) considered Cheng's emphasis on reverence most
important.
He believed that reverence purified and illuminated
the mind, helping it to exercise
control and that it included
both movement and stillness, the inner and the outer.
Zhan Ruoshui (1463-1557) followed the line of teaching
that
came from Zhu Xi through Wu Yubi.
He served as an official from
1505 to 1540
and attained high positions in the ministries of
rites, military, and personnel.
He opened a school in 1517 and
taught by the methods
of reading the classics, group study, and
sitting meditation.
He wrote that the conditioned mind could be
melted away,
because its habits are only the result of external
circumstances.
As gold is smelted a hundred times before it is
pure,
so the mind must be refined a hundred times before it is
illuminated.
Liu Nan (1479-1542) took first place in the highest
exams of 1501.
He was removed from office three times because
of his moral stands,
but he was able to keep his mentor Zhan Ruoshui
from being persecuted
and stopped attempts to ban the writings
of Wang Yangming.
He wrote that people may lose their minds because
of wealth and profit
or food and drink or fine clothing or luxurious
houses or power and position.
To regain their minds they must
go back to where they lost them.
Xia Shangpu attained the highest
degree in 1511
and rose to a high position in the government.
Yet he warned that craving high rank and wealth could separate
one from humanity.
He complained that too many people sought only
profit
and made fun of humanity and justice;
but he argued that
being devoted to humanity and justice
instead of profit is most
advantageous.
The philosopher Wang Yangming, whose private name was Wang
Shouren,
was born in 1472.
His father was a scholar and minister
of civil personnel in Nanjing.
When the boy was eleven, they moved
to Beijing and lived there five years.
Wang's mother died when
he was 13.
He married when he was 17, though he considered
going
to a Daoist retreat to seek immortality.
Wang passed the second
degree exams when he was 21;
but he tried twice and failed to
attain the highest degree
before he ranked second in the exams
of 1499.
He was employed in the public works department.
Wang
wrote a memorial suggesting eight means of defense
against nomadic
aggression in the northwest.
His memo began as follows:
I respectfully submit eight emergency measures
for your consideration namely:
building up a reservoir of personnel for emergency use,
overlooking defects and utilizing excellences,
reducing the army to save expenses,
carrying on military farming to provide sufficient food,
enforcing the law to inspire awe toward the government,
showing imperial kindness
to arouse indignation against the enemy,
sacrificing the small in order to preserve the great,
and using a strong defense
in order to take advantage of the enemy's defects.1
Wang's ideas made him well known, and he was appointed to the
department
of justice in Yunnan, where he investigated and reversed
many convictions.
Practical experience made him realize the folly
of his previous flowery rhetoric
and of some errors in Buddhism,
Daoism, and Confucianism.
When the eunuch Liu Qin usurped power
in 1506 and put protesting officials in prison,
Wang wrote a memo
in their defense.
For this he was given forty strokes and banished
to Longchang, where Miao tribes lived.
On the way there Wang visited
his father and had to throw away his clothes
to suggest suicide
in order to escape Liu Qin's assassins.
In exile in 1509, Wang Yangming declared his doctrine
of the
unity of knowledge and action.
The next year he was transferred
to be a magistrate and was promoted to the
justice department
in Nanjing and from there to higher positions in personnel at
Beijing.
In 1512 he went back to Nanjing as junior lord of imperial
stables,
and two years later he was made senior lord of ceremonies.
Wang's fame spread, and he gained disciples.
In 1516 Wang was
named senior censor and was assigned to govern
the region bordering
Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Fujian,
where bandits and rebels were
flourishing.
He implemented a detailed ten-family registration
system
so that outlaws could not hide in people's homes.
He reorganized
the armed forces and restored social order, putting down the rebellions
so that he could establish primary schools in Jiangxi by 1518.
He exhorted people to do good and help each other,
and he warned
against the troubles of litigation.
The elders should teach the
young, and he sent gifts of cloth to elders and leaders.
In one
area he petitioned to form a new county.
Wang wrote a detailed plan for a community compact to help
people
become united in harmony.
They were to elect a chief and
assistants.
A record book should display good deeds, and in another
book
bad deeds could be reported but in obscure and gentle language.
Violators should be urged to reform; only when they fail to reform
should they be punished.
Poor debtors who cannot repay should
be treated liberally,
and interest should not be compounded.
Wang Yangming was promoted to right assistant censor
and instituted
his community compact.
On his way to suppress a rebellion in Fujian
in the summer of 1519, Prince Ning rebelled.
Wang managed to capture
the Prince after ten days of fighting,
and he was made governor
of Jiangxi, where he implemented more reforms.
Wang's earlier
registration system may not have been effective, because in 1520
he issued instructions that emphasized persuasion more than restrictions.
He was unpopular at the court of Emperor Zhengde,
because they
wanted credit for capturing the Prince.
When Jiajing became Emperor,
Wang was appointed minister of military affairs
at Nanjing, though
he still had enemies.
He was given honors and titles but actually
lived in retirement
and was used only for advice and planning.
His father died in 1522, and he stayed home mourning.
His philosophy
of extending innate knowledge won over many followers,
though
his teachings were sometimes prohibited.
In 1527 Wang was summoned
as left censor to help suppress rebellions in Guangxi.
In 1528
he restored order and established schools.
His health was declining,
and Wang Yangming died on January 10, 1529.
After his death Wang Yangming's hereditary privileges were
revoked,
and he was condemned for not respecting ancient traditions
and for putting forth strange ideas,
particularly for opposing
Zhu Xi's theory on investigating things.
Some scholars who protested
were dismissed or banished.
Only when the next Emperor came to
power in 1567 were his titles and honors reinstated,
and in 1584
imperial decree allowed the rare honor of sacrifices
to Wang Yangming
in the Confucian temple.
His followers spread all over China,
and his philosophy was the most influential
until the end of the
Ming dynasty.
The longest work of Wang Yangming's teachings, Instructions
for Practical Living,
was published in 1524 and presents dialogs
between his students and Wang, the teacher.
Wang Yangming's philosophy
is idealistic.
He taught that the highest good is the original
substance of the mind
which manifests clear character by refinement
and singleness of mind.
As an idealist he did not separate the
mind from events and things.
The mind is principle, and there
is nothing in the world that is outside of the mind.
When the
mind is freed of selfish desires,
then it embodies the principle
of heaven (nature).
From this comes ethical action.
When the mind is free from the obscuration of selfish desires,
it is the embodiment of the principle of nature (heaven),
which requires not an iota added from the outside.
When this mind, which has become
completely identical with the
principle of nature (heaven),
is applied and arises to serve parents, there is filial piety;
when it arises to serve the ruler, there is loyalty;
when it arises to deal with friends or to govern the people,
there are faithfulness and humanity.
The main thing is for the mind to make an effort
to get rid of selfish human desires
and preserve the principle of nature (heaven).2
Wang Yangming accepted that knowledge could be separated from
action by selfish desires;
but there have never been those who
truly know and do not act,
for those who think they know and do
not act do not really know.
He argued that knowledge is the direction
of action, and action is the effort of knowledge.
Knowledge is
the beginning, and action is the completion.
Those who act blindly
or erroneously obviously do not know,
while those with vague theories
often are not willing to practice them.
Wang believed that our
nature is the basis of the mind,
and heaven is the source of our
nature.
We develop our nature by exerting our mind.
Unlike Zhu
Xi, Wang Yangming believed that sincerity of will
is more important
than investigating things,
because the sincerity of will is what
corrects the investigation of things.
Wang taught that to investigate
is to rectify.
He found that disorder in the world is the result
of popular literature
and the declining practice of moral values.
He taught that the principle of history is to distinguish good
from evil
so that instructions can be given for doing good and
warnings for avoiding evil.
Wang found activity and tranquility
both useful.
The actual affairs of life are what train and polish
us
so that we can stand firm and remain calm.
To eliminate selfish desires Wang Yangming recommended sitting
in meditation
to stop those thoughts and practicing self-examination
and self-mastery to cast them out.
Too much sitting in meditation
he found made his students too fond of tranquility
and disgusted
with action and so lifeless.
He developed the idea of extending
innate knowledge
to apply to both tranquility and action.
When
evil desires are eradicated, there is nothing to think about;
the mind becomes clear, and the will sincere.
If you eliminate
all thoughts of sex, wealth, fame, and so on, there will be nothing
but the original substance of the mind in equilibrium and impartial.
When these selfish desires are cleaned up and wiped out,
one identifies
with the principle of heaven
with a broad and balanced mind that
is the foundation of virtue.
The mind of the sage considers heaven, earth,
and all things
as one body and all people of the world as brothers and children.
The sage wants to secure, preserve, educate,
and nourish all as
forming one body with all things.
This is the original nature
of the mind; but it becomes obstructed
by selfishness and blocked
by material desires, making it small.
Wang believed that the poison
of success and profit has infected human minds
for thousands of
years and has become a second nature.
People have boasted, crushed
each other with power, competed for profit,
and striven for superiority
with skill.
Those who follow this doctrine of selfishness
consider
sages and innate knowledge as useless.
Yet the principle of heaven
in the human mind can never be destroyed,
and the intelligence
of innate knowledge shines forever.
Wang Yangming believed that to nourish life one must have a
pure heart
and that the original substance of the mind is joyful.
In educating the young he recommended teaching filial piety, brotherly
respect,
loyalty, faithfulness, propriety, justice, integrity,
and a sense of shame.
Children love to play and dislike restriction;
they should be allowed to sprout and grow like plants so that
they can develop.
He complained that those emphasizing intelligence
more than nourishing goodness
tend to beat the students and treat
them like prisoners
so that pupils come to think of their school
as a prison and their teachers as enemies.
Thus they avoid education,
deceive, and cheat to indulge in mischief.
To avoid these evil
results, Wang put forward his program of school regulations.
Every
day teachers should ask students if they have been negligent in
loving their parents
or respecting elders or whether their words
have been deceitful and disrespectful.
They must answer honestly
and correct their mistakes.
After examining their moral conduct,
they may study their lessons.
Wang recommended singing and practicing
courtesy in their demeanor.
Reading should emphasize learning
well, not quantity.
It is better to investigate every phrase thoroughly
than to try to do too much.
Wang believed that all people have innate knowledge, but only
the sage preserves it
completely and keeps free from obscuration
by being careful continuously.
Wang came to think of innate knowledge
as the spirit of creation.
He warned against the defect of pride
and believed that the selfless are naturally humble.
Thus he considered
humility the basis of virtue, and pride the chief vice.
He criticized
Buddhists for not caring about the relationships
between father
and son, ruler and minister, or husband and wife.
Yet Confucians
must learn not to be attached to these relations.
Sometimes Wang
noted that concepts of good and evil can perturb the mind;
for
things change, and sometimes a plant one thought was a weed
can
become useful and good.
Thus one should not be attached to particular
distinctions of good and evil.
Yet his primary philosophy is that
the principle of the highest good
is what guides the mind to rectify
things and benefit people.
His disciples divided and formed several
different sects.
Some, like Wang Ji, argued that their teacher
held to no distinction between good and evil,
and this one-sided
interpretation caused many to criticize
the philosophy of Wang
Yangming as corrupted by Buddhism.
Wang Yangming's ideas were
summarized as follows:
In the original substance of the mind
there is no distinction between good and evil.
When the will becomes active, however,
such distinction exists.
The faculty of innate knowledge is to know good and evil.
The investigation of things is to do good and remove evil.3
Some consider Wang Yangming's short "Inquiry on the Great
Learning"
his most important work.
The title of the short
Confucian classic Da Xue can
also be translated
as Higher Education
or Learning of the Great.
Wang's "Inquiry" was
published in 1527 before he left
on his last campaign to suppress
a rebellion.
It summarizes his teachings.
The great consider all
things one body, the world one family, the country one person.
Those who divide oneself from others are small persons.
The functioning
of the state as one body is put into operation by loving the people.
Wang wrote,
The highest good is the ultimate principle
of manifesting character and loving people.
The nature endowed in us by heaven is pure and perfect.
The fact that it is intelligent, clear, and not beclouded
is evidence of the emanation
and revelation of the highest good.
It is the original substance of the clear character
which is called innate knowledge of the good.
As the highest good emanates and reveals itself,
we will consider right as right and wrong as wrong.
Things of greater or less importance
and situations of grave or light character
will be responded to as they act upon us.
In all our changes and movements,
we will stick to no particular point,
but possess in ourselves the mean that is perfectly natural.4
Wang Yangming criticized some Buddhists and Daoists for not
living in the highest good
but being lost in illusions of emptiness
and quietness
and not participating in the work of the family,
the state, and the world.
Others are not living in the highest
good because their minds sink to base and trifling things;
they
are lost in scheming strategies and cunning techniques and lack
sincere humanity.
People fail to realize that the highest good
is within but seek it outside in individual things.
This fragments
and isolates the mind in confusion without definite direction.
Wang's concept of innate knowledge of the good is similar to the
view of Mencius
that the sense of right and wrong is common to
all humans.
The extension of knowledge comes from investigating
things,
but for Wang this means correcting things with the sincere
will.
Like modern physicists, Wang believed that the only real
things are events,
but he also held that the sincere will can
shape events for the highest good.
Li Zhi (1527-1602) passed the provincial exams in 1552 but
declined to take
the metropolitan exam and entered the civil service
at a low rank.
All but one of his seven children died young, two
of his daughters from malnutrition
probably during the rebellions
and pirate wars of the 1550s
when the price of grain was very
high.
When his father died in 1560, he resigned to mourn;
he withdrew
from the Imperial College in 1564 after his grandfather died.
Two years later he became a secretary in the ministry of rites
at Beijing.
He studied Buddhism and the teachings of Wang Yangming,
and during the 1570s at Nanjing he met Wang Ji.
After three years
as prefect of Yunnan he retired in 1580
After being a typical
civil servant, Li Zhi began
an extraordinary career as an eccentric
writer.
He lived for four years with the Geng brothers, but he
criticized them and moved on.
He sent his wife to her former home
and moved into
a Buddhist community in 1585 at Macheng.
He shaved
his head and dressed like a monk;
but he was not ordained and
kept his beard like a Confucian.
He denounced the hypocrisy of
Confucian bureaucrats and espoused
an extreme moral relativism
that encouraged every individual
to follow one's own ideas of
good and evil no matter how bizarre.
In 1590 Li Zhi published his letters, poems, and other writings
under the title
A Book to Burn, and in 1599 he published
A Book to Conceal.
His writings were very popular and controversial.
He suggested that each person should determine one's own values
and not be dependent on any outside authorities.
He wrote,
Yesterday's right is today's wrong.
Today's wrong is right again tomorrow.
Even if Confucius reappeared today,
there is no means of knowing
how he would judge right and wrong,
so how can we arbitrarily judge everything
as if there were a fixed standard?"5
Li Zhi went against most Chinese philosophers when he urged
individuals
to follow their own desires instead of conventional
moral judgments.
He denied that women are inferior to men in intelligence,
and he encouraged everyone to express their own ideas.
He praised
the courage of the reformer Zhang Juzheng, and he was upset by
his downfall.
Yet he accepted that if Emperor Wanli was oppressive,
the people have to bear it.
Li argued that ethics was only connected
to food and clothing;
he dismissed talk about virtue as hypocritical,
and he thought devotion to ritual was a waste.
The Buddhist community
at Macheng was attacked in 1596,
but Li was able to defend the
hall as a licensed religious establishment.
Then he traveled for
four years before returning to Macheng.
Some have argued that Li Zhi took Wang Yangming's idea of innate
moral knowing
to an extreme, and he was criticized for opposing
Yangming in suggesting that
alcohol, sex, wealth, and anger do
not block enlightenment.
In 1600 a mob, angry over his radical
ideas about sexuality and social mores,
destroyed the Buddhist
refuge where Li Zhi was staying.
He fled to the north near Beijing
and was taken in by a retired censor.
Li was accused of slandering
Confucius and of shameful personal behavior.
To keep from contaminating
the capital and having his books burned,
Li Zhi fled again toward
Fujian; but he was arrested.
He was allowed to read and write,
and he was going to be sent back to Fujian;
but one day he requested
a razor and cut his own throat,
asking what else could a man over
seventy do.
He died two days later.
The poet Gao Qi was born at Suzhou in 1336.
He became the leader
of ten friends he wrote about; but during the rebellions in 1360
he apparently served Zhang Shicheng, who was grand marshal for
the Mongols in Suzhou.
His poetry mocked those without talent
who curry favor with the powerful but fall into disgrace.
However,
in 1363 Zhang Shicheng declared himself a rebel.
Gao Qi wrote
an essay based on the ideas of Sun-zi
on how to discipline and
use military forces.
He described four kinds of ministers who
are indispensable to the state, namely,
loyal officials who deter
enemy states from attacking,
perceptive officials who understand
the secrets of cosmic balance and know
appropriate policies, remonstrating
officials who dare to inform the ruler of errors
without fear
of sycophants or a tyrannical ruler,
and officials who uphold
the law without serving special interests or bowing to pressure.
Yet Gao Qi thought he lacked the ability for politics
and took
up the humble calling of a country teacher.
In 1365 he moved back
into the city of Suzhou, and for the next two years
he could rarely
leave because of Zhang Shicheng being besieged there.
As Emperor Hongwu founded the Ming dynasty, most of Gao Qi's
friends were banished.
He faced heavy taxes, but Gao Qi stayed
in Suzhou and escaped punishment.
In 1369 he was appointed by
the Emperor to serve
on the committee at Nanjing writing the Yuan
History.
Eight months later the sixteen scholars presented
the 120 volumes of the Yuan dynasty
history up to but not including
its last emperor.
Gao Qi wrote poems for such formal occasions
but soon decided to resign.
He declined a very high promotion
to the Board of Revenue
by telling the Emperor it was beyond his
abilities.
The poet and his family returned to Suzhou in 1370.
There he read and wrote poetry, taking Lao-zi's advice to be satisfied
with a humble status;
but two years later he was drawn again to
the heroic life
and served the governor Wei Guan in rebuilding
the government of Suzhou.
Gao Qi wrote a poem commemorating restoration
of the prefectural hall.
Emperor Hongwu became suspicious of the
growing power of Wei Guan
and had him executed for sedition.
Because
of his poem, Gao Qi was charged with revealing palace secrets
and was cut in half at the waist in 1374.
So ended the short life
of the poet considered by some the best of the Ming dynasty.
Gao Qi wrote a story about a gambler who loves cockfights.
He is a bully, and neighbors follow his orders.
During the Zhi
Zheng period the prefect of Yuan
is serving the people well and
enjoying their affection.
The intendant Zhang is sent on an inspection
tour.
When the prefect sneers at him as the pampered son of the
Zhang family,
the intendant looks for a way to prosecute him.
A wealthy man, who resents a flogging, falsely accuses the prefect
of accepting bribes.
When the prefect is discharged, the people
appeal to the gambler.
With a group of rowdies he captures the
wealthy man while he is riding his horse,
strips off his rich
gown, ties his arms, and parades him through town,
making him
confess that he falsely accused the prefect.
The son raises a
band of followers but can do nothing, because his father is held
hostage.
The gambler warns the rich man he will destroy his house
and family
if the rich man does not mend his ways; then he releases
him.
The people still complain that the prefect is out of office.
So the gambler makes a banner saying "Unjust" and complains
to the censor in Nanjing.
After they march in protest every day,
the censor finally lets the prefect resume his office
and has
the intendant Zhang dismissed.
Gao Qi wrote this story to show
how the Yuan government was confused and weak,
causing social
unrest among the lower classes.
The astrologer Liu Ji (1311-75) helped Zhu Yuanzhang become
the first Ming emperor,
and he was rewarded with an earldom; but
he was falsely accused
by prime minister Hu Weiyong and was poisoned.
Liu Ji wrote satirical parables that criticized the Yuan government
and other follies.
In one an ancient nobleman turns to divination;
but the augur suggests that
he consider the past and wisdom within
rather than yarrow stalks and a tortoise shell.
Liu Ji satirized
corruption in a story about a man who can keep his oranges
looking
good on the outside for a year, while on the inside they dry up.
When asked about this, the man asks if his questioner
is the only
honest man and he the only cheat.
Do ministers have the ancient
wisdom?
Wrong-doers arise, and no one subdues them; the people's
misery is unrelieved;
clerks are corrupt; laws decay; officials
live in luxury without shame;
they are gold and gems outside but
dried up within.
Why does this man pay no attention to these things
while he is so particular about the oranges?
Liu Ji wrote how Gong Zhiqiao crafts a beautiful lute;
but
it is not considered precious, because it is not ancient.
So Gong
has artists paint it to look old and inscribe it with ancient
writing.
After burying it in a box for a year, he sells it to
a nobleman for a hundred taels of gold.
Realizing that this happens
with other things also, Gong decides to flee to the mountains.
When a long drought afflicts the east capital of Han emperor Min
Di,
a sorcerer suggests they appeal to the divine creature in
the south mountain;
but an elder warns that this spirit is a flood
dragon that will bring future troubles.
The suffering people do
not care about tomorrow
and have the sorcerer appeal to the flood
dragon.
A thunderstorm lasts three days; rivers flood, and the
east capital is inundated.
Then the people regret that they did
not listen to the elder.
Liu Ji also told how a deer escapes hunters
by picking out its coveted naval;
but he notes that the wealthy
often die with their families.
Liu Ji told how those without virtue may also lead their friends
astray,
like the man who falls into a pit of manure but lets his
two friends fall in too,
because he does not want them laughing
at him.
Yet Liu Ji had Confucius commend the priest who saves
a tiger
from drowning even though the tiger later attacks him.
The son of a beekeeper finds that his father's bees gradually
leave him without this income,
because he has not taken care of
their hives.
A merchant in a sinking boat promises a fisherman
a hundred taels if he will save him;
but when he does, he only
gives him ten.
The next time the fishermen let the merchant drown.
Yu Li Zi comments that merchants care more about their profits
than their lives.
A monkey master trains monkeys to collect nuts
in the forest
and give him ten percent as tax; those not giving
the tenth are beaten;
but the monkeys realize they do not need
to be manipulated,
steal the nuts in the storeroom, and escape
to the forest.
Yu Li Zi points out that humans are rarely killed
by stronger tigers,
because they know how to work together to
become a hundred times more powerful;
but the man who does not
use wisdom or weapons is eaten by the tiger.
Thus it is said that
a man who uses only his own strength
and no wisdom is like a tiger.
Qu Yu (c. 1341-1427) wrote "The Spirit Land," telling
how the starving Yuan decides
not to kill the man who cheated
him, because it would harm that man's wife and children.
A Daoist
explains to him that in a previous existence he was conceited
in high office
and did not honor the talents of others; so in
this life he had to be uneducated and poor.
In "The Peony
Lantern" by Qu Yu a man falls in love with a seductive ghost
who draws him to her coffin and death.
A Daoist from the mountains
is called in and gets the ghosts to confess their evil deeds.
He explains that destructive ghosts can be scourges that bring
about suffering,
which is why in the heavenly regions messengers
are sent,
and courts are set up in the underworld to punish wrong-doers.
Since then, cleanliness, order, peace, and contentment have reigned.
A similar theme of spiritual justice is found in Qu Yu's story
of
"The Donor of Riches and Honors" about a poor scholar
who prays for knowledge of the future.
He witnesses divine officials
of the City God judging cases.
A man who opened his storehouse
of rice to the starving without looking for profit
is granted
36 more years of life.
A woman who gave her own flesh to heal
her mother-in-law
is blessed with two successful sons.
A judge
corrupted by bribery will have catastrophe fall on his family,
and a district superintendent who cheated a farmer out of his
land will be reborn
as a bull and suffer on that very farm.
The
scholar is then told that the sun will bring security, the moon
success,
clouds decline, and lightning death, which all come to
pass
because of the armed rebellion that began in 1351 and killed
at least 300,000.
The author concluded that those who use tricks
to find out their future
may bring about their own downfall.
"Kingfisher" by Qu Yu tells of a poor man who marries
a wealthy
and educated young woman his same age named Kingfisher.
They write charming poems to each other.
During the fighting before
the founding of the Ming dynasty a general abducts Kingfisher.
After years of searching and then pretending to be her brother,
they are briefly reunited before they both die and are buried
together.
Her father goes there and finds them living happily
together
but awakes to discover that this had been a dream.
Li Chang Ji (1376-1452) also wrote several stories of the struggles
of romantic couples
to get together including one in which the
wife throws herself onto her husband's funeral pyre.
About 1592
Shao Jingzhan wrote the story "Young Mr. Yao," who likes
to hunt
and gradually spends all his wealth on his friends until
he is reduced to dire poverty.
In Shao's "Priest Wu Falls
into a Trance" this mystic says people create their own destinies
by the law of reason, and he predicts how the adulterous Hu will
be punished in hell.
Song Maocheng heard and wrote a story in 1600 that was developed
into
The Courtesan's Jewel Box by the writer Feng Menglong
(1574-1646).
A scholar named Li from eastern Zhejiang falls in
love with the beautiful Du Shiniang.
Li is poor, but she contributes
half the 300 taels needed to pay off her "mother"
in
the courtesan business so that they can leave.
He raises a hundred,
and her courtesan sisters provide the rest.
The young lovers travel,
are very happy, and plan to marry.
When they run out of money,
she unravels her sleeves
to pay expenses and rent a boat to cross
the Yangzi River.
A champion heartbreaker persuades Li to turn
over Shiniang
for one thousand taels he can take home to his father.
After another night of love, Li explains to Shiniang the proposal,
and she says she will go with the other young man.
On the boat
they count the money.
Then Shiniang opens the drawers of her jewel
box
and throws the precious gems into the river.
Finally she curses
both men and jumps into the river, drowning.
This short story
is a powerful protest of the way Chinese men exploited women
and
failed to appreciate their true value.
The first major Chinese novel is The Three Kingdoms
by Luo Guanzhong from the late 14th century.
Based on histories
of the third century CE when wars between forces led by Cao Cao,
Liu Bei, and Sun Quan resulted in the breakup of Han China into
three kingdoms,
the long novel developed over several generations
and was not published until 1522.
The Three Kingdoms portrays
four hundred characters in 120 chapters and is packed
with stories
of intriguing diplomacy, clever military strategies, and exciting
battles.
The story goes from the declining Han dynasty, starting
in 168 CE and ending in 220,
through the existence of the three
kingdoms until they each have fallen
to the Jin dynasty by 280,
when even Wei succumbed.
The first chapter moves quickly to the yellow scarves rebellion
of 184,
when Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei in a peach garden
swear to help each other,
serve their country, and save the people
without turning away from justice or forgetting kindness.
They
soon come into conflict with Cao Cao, who believes
he will restore
peace after the Han dynasty falls.
Cao Cao, whose motto is preferring
to injure others rather than have them injure him,
is portrayed
as despotically attempting to take over the Han empire himself.
Liu Bei is shown as more humane and just,
and he gains loyalty
because of his claim to be restoring the Han dynasty.
Thanks to
the genius of his advisor Zhuge Liang and the heroic Guan Yu,
his forces make a successful alliance with Sun Quan's realm in
the southeast
in order to defeat the greater numbers garnered
in the north by Cao Cao.
Chapters 43-50 on the battle of Red Cliff in 208 CE give one
an idea of the clever intrigues,
plot twists, and references to
historical exemplars
as the main characters attempt to outsmart
each other.
Cao Cao with one million men has written to Sun Quan,
asking him to join forces to punish Liu Bei.
Sun Quan's civil
counselors recommend submission,
while the military advisors want
to fight.
Liu Bei's advisor Zhuge Liang is in Sun Quan's camp
and argues brilliantly for
joining forces against Cao Cao, whose
army is tired and unfamiliar with naval warfare.
At first Sun
Quan's commander Zhou Yu says that surrender is better;
but when
Zhuge Liang agrees that all they have to do is turn over the two
daughters
of Lord Qiao to Cao Cao, Zhou Yu suddenly wants to fight
because one of them is his wife.
Although they are allies, Zhou
Yu wants to kill Zhuge Liang for being too clever;
but the latter
always manages to outwit the general and Cao Cao as well.
Zhou
Yu also plots to assassinate Liu Bei, but he is guarded by the
brave Guan Yu.
Zhou Yu violates the rules of war by killing an envoy from
Cao Cao.
Both sides send spies in the guise of deserters; but
Cao Cao is duped by letters
a spy finds into killing his two best
admirals, fearing they are traitors.
Zhuge Liang is able to collect
a hundred thousand arrows by sending ships
with bales of hay in
the fog that Cao Cao's archers attack.
Cao Cao shows his bad character
by killing the worthy prefect of Yangzhou
for merely speaking
a bad omen at a drunken feast.
Cao Cao is also lured into chaining
his ships together, because he does not expect
an eastern wind
in winter; but a fire ritual by Zhuge Liang invokes the needed
wind
that allows fire to burn the ships and give Zhou Yu's forces
victory.
Yet Zhuge Liang allows Cao Cao to escape capture by assigning
Guan Yu to trap him,
knowing that the good treatment Guan Yu received
when he was captured by Cao Cao
before would cause him to let
Cao Cao go.
The Three Kingdoms became very influential
in literature and in military strategy,
particularly during the
rebellions that led to the founding of the Ming dynasty
but also
in the peasant revolt that ended the Ming dynasty in the 17th
century
and in the Taiping revolution.
Many believe that this
textbook on feudal life taught wisdom,
while Outlaws of the
Marsh taught courage.
Luo Guanzhong (c. 1330-c. 1400) is also credited with writing
or editing
Shi Naian's (1290-1365) stories of sympathetic outlaws
in Shandong who join together
after suffering government abuses
during the reign of Huizong (r. 1100-25).
Pearl Buck retitled
the epic novel with its theme, All Men Are Brothers,
in
her translation of an early version in 70 chapters.
Later versions
of Outlaws of the Marsh extend the story to 100, 115, or
120 chapters.
The 36 major robbers and 72 minor ones do live by
violence
and take the law into their own hands; but even though
they are outlaws,
they usually respect the rights of the just
while punishing wrong-doers,
taking from the undeserving wealthy,
much like contemporary English Robin Hood stories.
Because of
its challenge to law and government authorities,
this book was
occasionally banned, and officials caught with it
could lose their
positions and pay heavy fines.
A young swordsman defends his town against robbers, who ask
to use the road
because all men are brothers; they claim they
have no other way to live
because they are persecuted by officials.
Lu Da kills a pig butcher, who had bullied a mother and daughter;
then he causes havoc in a Buddhist monastery he entered to escape.
Ling Chong joins the band after he is falsely convicted of murder
and branded,
because commander Gao's son lusted for his wife.
After plotting to steal gifts, Chao Gai is made chief.
Song Jiang
is captured and welcomed by the robbers.
General Ching Ming, who
attacks the robbers, is won over by them.
Song Jiang is branded
for murder, writes revolutionary verses on the wall,
and is freed
by the robbers.
From their lair at Liangshan Marsh the robbers
plan warfare against the village of Zhu,
while Li Kui breaks their
pact by slaughtering the Hu household.
Zhu Tong is forced to join
the robbers when they kill a magistrate's little boy he is attending.
A campaign against the robbers by Commander Gao
results in numerous
defections of captured officers.
Chief Chao Gai is killed, and
he is avenged primarily by Lu Zhun Yi,
who declines Song Jiang's
offer to be chief.
Leadership is determined by a simultaneous
attack on two cities led by these two men;
Song Jiang succeeds
and then aids Lu Zhun Yi.
The first version ends with all 108
robbers
swearing undying loyalty to their leader Song Jiang.
In the longer version of 100 chapters published during the
reign
of Emperor Jiajing (r. 1521-66), the rebels defeat government
forces three times.
They are given amnesty so that they can fight
the Liao Tatars,
and in doing so they win a pardon.
Apparently
in history the rebellion of 1120 ended the next year
with the
mass slaughter of the entire robber band.
As the Song dynasty
was reduced to paying tribute from southern China,
stories of
the rebels became popular, resulting eventually in this influential
novel.
At the end of the extended novel 81 of the 108 have died
one way or another;
of those surviving, ten chiefs are made imperial
prefects,
and fifteen are given commands of Song army units.
Song
Jiang and Li Kui loyally drink poisoned wine sent by the Emperor
and die.
After their spirits appear to Wu Yong in a dream, he
and Hua Rong hang themselves.
Instead of concluding with the rebels
at their peak of power,
these later versions have restored the
imperial order.
The 120-chapter version was not published
until
the decline of the Ming dynasty between 1621 and 1644.
However,
the version in 100 chapters from the middle of the Ming dynasty
became the most popular.
Wu Chengen lived from about 1500 to 1582.
From childhood he
loved strange stories.
He never passed the government examinations
and did not have an official position
until he was over sixty
when he was appointed an assistant magistrate.
After writing more
traditional works, Wu Chengen finally created
what he loved—fantastic
stories; but he was too ashamed to put his name on the novel,
The Journey to the West, and it was circulated anonymously.
This long novel, also translated in an abridged version by Arthur
Waley as Monkey,
is about the historical Buddhist monk
Xuanzang (596-664),
who in 627 without Emperor Taizong's permission
joined a merchant caravan
and made it to the Magadha kingdom in
India four years later.
He studied with Silabhadra at the famous
monastery at Nalanda
for five years between traveling around.
Xuanzang was considered one of the greatest of many Chinese pilgrims
to India
for his preaching and winning debates against scholastics.
He left India in 643 and returned to the western capital of Chang'an
two years later with 657 Buddhist scriptures.
He impressed the
Emperor with his knowledge of foreign cultures
but refused an
official appointment.
Supported by imperial grants and a large
staff in nearby monasteries,
he was able to translate 74 works
in 1,355 volumes.
Xuanzang also wrote treatises on the Consciousness-Only
school of Vasubandhu.
Stories about Xuanzang grew into written
legends, and Wu Chengen's masterpiece,
The Journey to
the West, was finally published in 1592.
The first seven chapters tell about the Monkey,
who is born
from a divine embryo in a stone egg and is called Stone Monkey.
His inward shape is concealed, because it has no form.
Other monkeys
proclaim him king; but after three or four centuries
he becomes
sad at a feast and wants to know about Yama (Death).
He learns
there are Buddhas, immortals, and sages who can
avoid the wheel
of reincarnation, and he declares his intention to find them.
However, he notices that people in the world are all seeking profit
and fame
without concerning themselves about their end.
He learns
that the Daoist immortals are hiding in the Yellow Court.
After
ten years of searching, in a cave marked by a stone "Mountain
of Heart and Mind,"
the Handsome Monkey King finds Patriarch
Subodhi,
who gives him the name Wukong, meaning "Wake-to-Vacuity."
After six or seven years the Patriarch lectures on Dao and Zen,
harmonizing these with the Confucian school.
After learning the
oral formulas, the Monkey King masters 72 transformations
and
shows the Patriarch he can fly.
The Patriarch fears Monkey will
end up doing evil
and forbids him ever to mention he was his disciple.
Accomplished in the Great Art, the Monkey King
can change his
shape into whatever he desires.
So from the hairs on his body
he creates thousands of monkey warriors
to attack and kill the
Monstrous King.
Monkey King's army of 47,000 monkeys impresses
all the wild beasts of the mountain
who do him homage and bring
annual tributes.
From the Dragon King in the Water-Crystal Palace
the Monkey King
gets a suit of golden armor and cloud-treading
shoes,
and he makes alliances with other kings as well.
In the
Region of Darkness he meets the Ten Kings of the Underworld.
Old
Monkey has acquired the Dao (Way) and attained immortality,
and
so he erases his name and others from Death's ledger.
He awakes
from this dream and tells other monkeys
he erased their names
in the Underworld.
In the Heavenly realm the Gold Star of Venus, the spirit of
that planet,
is sent by the Jade Emperor to make peace with the
Monkey King.
The Jade Emperor says that Sun Wukung has only recently
become a human being,
and so he sends him to work in the imperial
stables.
When Monkey learns his rank is so low that it is unclassified,
he demands the rank of Great Sage, Equal to Heaven.
The Mighty-Spirit
God is sent, but the Monkey King fights him and spares him.
Young
Nata uses six arms to fight Monkey, who matches him.
So the Jade
Emperor recognizes him as Great Sage
and says he has neither duties
nor a salary;
but he warns Monkey not to indulge in preposterous
conduct.
After Monkey steals heavenly peaches and wine and robs
Lao-zi of his immortal elixir,
the Jade Emperor sends an army
of 100,000 celestial soldiers against him;
but Monkey uses his
magical powers to multiply himself, and neither side wins.
Finally
the Bodhisattva Guanyin intervenes,
and the Four Great Devarajas
capture Monkey.
He is placed in the brazier of Eight Trigrams.
After 49 days Monkey escapes.
The Buddhist Patriarch Tathagata
follows him and wins a bet
that Monkey cannot leap out of his
hand.
Monkey does penance and learns the teachings of Buddhism.
The Tathagata Buddha declares that he has three baskets of
scriptures on
Heaven, Earth, and redeeming the damned.
Guanyin
says that she will go to the East to find a scripture pilgrim.
Chen Guangrui in Chang'an wins the top prize in the examinations,
marries,
and is appointed a governor; but the boatman Liu Hong
kills him
and takes his wife Lady Yin by force to become governor.
A Dragon King preserves Guangrui's body, and Lady Yin gives birth
to a son
and floats him on the river with a letter in blood.
The
boy is raised by an abbot and is given the spiritual name Xuanzang.
When he is eighteen, he finds his mother and grandmother.
Emperor
Tang is told, and the Dragon King brings Guangrui back to life.
Lady Yin commits suicide out of shame.
In the underworld the Dragon
King complains that the Emperor had him executed
after promising
to save him; but the judge Wei Zheng
had sentenced him for a mortal
offense.
Emperor Taizong is allowed to return from the Underworld
for twenty more years.
The judge tells him to explain the six-fold
path of transmigration.
Those doing good ascend to be immortals;
the patriotic become noble;
the filial pious are blessed; the
just and honest become humans;
the virtuous become rich; but the
vicious and violent fall back to being demons.
The Tang emperor
sighs and says,
Ah, how truly good is goodness!
To do good will never bring illness!
Let kindness always be your aim.
On charity don't shut your door.
Allow no evil thoughts to rise.
Be certain to cut down mischief.
Don't say there's no retribution,
For gods have their disposition.6
The judge warns him that only when there are no cries for vengeance
in the region of darkness will the world of light have the prosperity
of peace.
He must change his wicked ways one by one and teach
his subjects to do good
so that his empire will be established
firmly.
When he returns to Earth, the Emperor proclaims,
The world, though immense,
Approves not villains in Heaven nor on Earth.
If your intent is trickery,
Even this life will bring retribution;
If your giving exceeds receiving,
There's blessing not only in the life hereafter.
A thousand clever designs
Are not as living according to one's duties;
Ten thousand men of violence
Cannot compare with one frugal and content.
If you're bent on good works and mercy,
Need you read the sutras with diligence?
If you intend to harm others,
Even the learning of Buddha is vain!7
Meanwhile Guanyin has been searching for a scripture pilgrim
and offers a cassock
for 5,000 taels but gives it to the Emperor
for Xuanzang, who has performed
a grand mass and volunteers to
go to India for the Buddhist scriptures.
The Emperor gives him
the byname Tripitaka, meaning "three baskets."
He understands
that the mind is easily tempted,
and that is why the Buddha pointed
to the heart, not the head.
The Tang pilgrim survives many dangers
and by a prayer
releases Monkey from five hundred years imprisonment.
Monkey and two other monsters, Bajie and Sha monk,
are instructed
by Guanyin to serve the pilgrim on his journey.
Both Bajie and
Sha monk had been marshals in heaven but were banished.
A dragon
destroys Tripitaka's horse; but realizing it was a mistake,
he
changes into a horse to serve the pilgrimage.
Thus the horse of
the will is reined.
Bajie indulges his large appetites and is
jealous of Monkey's power.
When Monkey Mind becomes obstreperous,
pilgrim priest restrains him
by means of a golden fillet around
his neck he can tighten.
During their western journey the four pilgrims experience 81
calamities;
but Monkey overcomes many monsters and demons,
and
they learn their Buddhist lessons along the way.
In the Cart-slow
kingdom Daoists are persecuting Buddhists;
but Monkey overcomes
three Daoist magicians in dangerous ordeals.
Occasionally Guanyin
intervenes to save them, and the Tathagata reveals the true master.
Mind Monkey devises a way of avoiding a nation of women.
Washing
off filth is cleaning the mind, and binding demons is self-cultivation.
The four pilgrims arrive in India, meet the king, and are given
a feast in the imperial garden.
They receive thousands of Buddhist
scriptures.
Tripitaka forgets his promise to mention to the Buddha
the big turtle's quest to be human,
and while crossing a river
on his back they are all dumped in the water.
Some of the scriptures
are lost in this last calamity.
Finally the Buddha notes that
the sage monk had failed to listen to him
in his previous lifetime;
but he succeeds in this incarnation and becomes a Buddha.
Victorious
in strife, Monkey also becomes a Buddha and has the fillet removed.
Bajie has not yet extinguished his desires and so is made a janitor
of the altars.
Sha monk for his service is declared a golden-bodied arhat (saint),
and the horse is promoted to be a supernatural
dragon.
Finally everyone at the Tang court chants their submission
to the Buddha.
In 1640 Dong Yue (1620-89) wrote the novel Tower of Myriad
Mirrors based on
the Monkey character and meant to extend Journey to the West and fit in after chapter 61.
In Dong
Yue's story Monkey mind experiences fantasy and dreams.
In a preface
Dong Yue explained the main point of his novel.
For men, desire is a demon without form, without sound—
a man may not be conscious of it or know about it.
It may enter by way of grief, indulgence,
a single doubtful or vacillating thought,
or the sensory perceptions.
It seems as if the desire
that enters the sphere of your thought
cannot be stopped or changed or ignored;
as if once it enters it can in no way be expelled.
But to recognize desire for the demon is to achieve success.
Therefore, when the Great Sage
was in the belly of the Qing Fish,
he didn't know it was the Qing Fish.
Moreover, he didn't know when he leapt out of the Qing Fish
that he who shortly would kill the Qing Fish
was none other than the Great Sage himself.
The deluded man and the enlightened man
were not two men.8
The fourth great novel of the Ming era, The Plum in the
Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei),
is also very long in a hundred
chapters.
It was written anonymously in the late 16th century
and circulated privately
until it was published about 1618.
Shen
Defu wrote that he had a copy of it and could have made much money
by giving it to a printer; but he was afraid it would lower the
moral tone
of the community and cause him to go to hell.
He said
the copy that was printed lacked chapters 53-57,
and these were
replaced clumsily by someone else's writing.
Jin Ping Mei
is frankly erotic but did not attract the attention of censors
until the edicts of 1687 and 1725; the latter calling for strict
punishments
for anyone selling, buying, or reading the book was
in effect until 1912,
and the full text is still restricted in
China.
A preface published in 1695 suggested the book expressed
filial piety
and recounts an elaborate legend of how the author
wrote the book
and gave it to the murderer of his father with
poison on the pages so that by the time
he had finished the book
exposing his vile character the poison killed him.
Arthur Waley has speculated that the author was probably Xu
Wei (1520-93)
or perhaps someone in his circle that believed literature
should reflect real life.
David Tod Roy is doing a complete translation
in five volumes
of an earlier manuscript that was only rediscovered
in 1932.
He has suggested that the preface naming the author as
the "scoffing scholar of Lanling"
refers to the ancient
Confucian scholar Xun-zi,
who taught a realistic philosophy of
learning how to overcome our evil nature.
Roy has selected the
playwright Tang Xianzi (1550-1616) as the most likely author,
and he has determined that the preface to the earlier edition
is very likely by the original author or someone who knew him
well.
The preface mentions that of the seven human feelings
(joy,
anger, sadness, fear, love, disliking, and liking),
melancholy
(sadness) is the hardest to dispel.
The scoffing scholar has poured
a lifetime of wisdom into this immense novel
that may beguile
readers into forgetting their melancholy, because it is
designed to illuminate the cardinal human relationships,
to discourage sexual promiscuity,
to distinguish between the pure and the impure,
to edify both the good and the ungood,
and to expound the secrets of flourishing and decay,
failure and success,
through the inexorable working of karmic cause and effect,
in such a way that
they lie utterly revealed before the reader's eyes.9
The preface admits that the language is vulgar but notes that
even Confucius said that
pleasure not extending to wantonness
is not harmful and that few are able
to attain wealth and distinction
without resorting to such indulgence.
The preface reminds readers
that joy after reaching its zenith gives birth to sorrow,
that
disruptions from calamitous missteps are inescapable,
that the
world of light has imperial law while the world of darkness has
ghosts and spirits,
and that calamity results from accumulated
wrong-doing
while good fortune is the reward for virtue.
Thus
heaven has its seasons, and humans have their joys and sorrows.
An introductory song also warns of the four vices
of drunkenness,
lust, avarice, and anger.
The novel Jin Ping Mei is set in Shandong during the
reign of Huizong (r. 1100-25)
in the last part of the Song dynasty
before the north was conquered by the Jin dynasty.
Corruption
and decay are proverbial during the decline of a dynasty,
though
this reign is named "harmonious."
The main character
Ximen is thirty years old and has inherited
a prosperous pharmacy
business from his father.
He lives in a large house with many
servants.
He has business ability but spends most of his time
seeking pleasure.
His first wife has died, and Ximen has recently
married a governor's daughter.
In addition he has two secondary
wives
and is also granted favors by three or four pretty maidservants.
Ximen spends much time cavorting with a group of nine friends,
who swear loyal brotherhood in a Daoist temple.
Hundreds of characters
appear in the novel, and in the first half
Ximen finds great success
and indulges in innumerable pleasures.
His lavish gifts and corrupt
ways gain him appointments in the judiciary.
The widow of one
of his sworn brothers bears him a son and heir,
although his attention
to her alienates many in his household.
At the halfway point in the novel, Ximen is given an aphrodisiac
by an Indian monk
and violates propriety by using it as instructed
during his favorite wife's menstrual period.
This begins a gradual
decline.
His son and his favorite wife die, and in chapter 79
Ximen himself
succumbs at age 33 to an overdose of the aphrodisiac.
His household eventually disintegrates.
As Ximen is dying, a son
is born to his legitimate wife;
but he eventually decides to become
a celibate Buddhist monk,
thus failing in his filial duty to perpetuate
the family line.
Ximen's wife ends up dependent on a servant as
wanton as his master had been.
The decadence of the family is
meant to mirror the decline of a dynasty,
and a Daoist theme is
indicated in the erotic imagery,
suggesting that the continual
wasting of semen uses up vital energies
and eventually causes
the source to dry up at the base,
symbolizing the extravagant
expenditures by the Emperor
at the capital draining the prosperity
of the empire.
Influenced by Jin Ping Mei, Li Yu (1611-80) wrote the
erotic novel Jou Pu Tuan
n 1635 to entertain young men
but also to warn them
of the consequences from a life of sensuality
and moral corruption.
A young scholar visits the hermit Lonely
Summit, who learns
the youth wants a "prayer mat of flesh"
(jou pu tuan).
The youth marries the girl Noble Scent,
who is protected by her father.
The Before Midnight Scholar teaches
her erotic techniques from illustrated books
and then leaves to
seek teachers so he can pass the examination.
Instead, he pursues
beautiful woman.
After having an operation to enlarge his instrument,
he has numerous encounters with wives and their cousins.
The husband
of Aroma gets revenge by seducing Noble Scent.
She ends up being
sold into a brothel and committing suicide,
but Before Midnight
Scholar castrates himself to live ascetically as Stupid Pebble.
In the last chapter the author preaches his sermon,
explaining
that without the erotic literature no one would ever read his
message.
An example of the southern drama early in the Ming era
is the
play Record of a Dog Slain by Xu Ji.
The plot is based
on a northern Yuan drama, but it is lengthened to 36 scenes.
Wealthy
young Sun Hua of Luoyang indulges in drinking and women
and is
reprimanded by his younger brother Sun Yong,
who is expelled from
the family and attempts suicide.
One day the brothers meet in
a snowstorm, and Sun Yong saves the life
of his intoxicated older
brother by carrying him home.
To teach her drunken husband, Yang
Yuezhen has a large dog
killed and dressed in a man's clothes
near their home.
She asks the intoxicated Sun Hua to get rid of
the corpse,
and he asks his two drinking companions to bury it;
but they do not help.
So she suggests he ask his brother to help,
and Sun Yong buries the body by himself, reconciling the brothers.
When the two companions next ask Sun Hua for a drinking feast,
he declines.
So they decide to expose his crime by digging up
the body;
but the carcass of a dog proves there was no crime,
and they are punished for attempted blackmail.
Zhu Chuan wrote about drama in the Yuan and early Ming eras,
and his nephew Zhu Yudun (1379-1439) wrote 31 plays,
of which
25 are extant, about Daoists, prostitutes, and other subjects.
The shorter northern plays had only four acts, but he expanded
that.
While the hero sang in the northern style, the heroine sang
southern melodies.
In his Tragedy of the Fragrant Bag the
Kaifeng prostitute Liu Banchun is not permitted
by her parents
to marry the poor scholar Zhou Gong
since a rich salt merchant
wants to marry her.
She chides Zhou for being a cold-hearted scholar, because he did not come to see her;
but she is so moved by the
love poem he wrote to her
that she puts it in her fragrant bag,
singing she will treasure it more than her life.
After being forced
to marry the merchant, Liu commits suicide.
Her body is cremated,
but Zhou finds the bag
with the poem and vows to remain a bachelor.
In other plays prostitutes reform or are transformed into fairies,
but in Descending to Be a Prostitute the courtesans do
not reform.
Zhu Yudun portrayed prostitutes with sympathy and
exposed the cruel procuress.
The dramatist Kang Hai (1475-1540) went to the corrupt premier
Liu Qin
and persuaded him that the talent of the imprisoned official
Li Xianji
would be wasted if he were executed;
but years later
after Liu Qin was gone,
the powerful Li Xianji allowed Kang Hai
to be dismissed.
So Hai wrote The Wolf of Mount Zhong to
satirize his ungrateful friend,
using the northern zaju
style in four acts.
Wang Jiusi (1468-1551) had written a zaju
play with the same title to show that
the universal love of Mo-zi
is not as discriminating as Confucian humanism.
Master Dongguo,
a philosopher of the Mo school, helps a wolf escape
from the king's
hunt by hiding him in his trunk he had been using to transport
books.
When the hungry wolf wants to eat him, Dongguo asks three
witnesses their opinions.
An old apricot tree and an old ox agree
the wolf should eat him;
but a local deity disguised as an old
man has the wolf put back in the trunk
to verify his story and
advises Dongguo to kill him.
Dongguo realizes that he failed to
recognize treachery
and laments that human hearts are often like
the wolf's.
Xu Wei (1521-73) was a painter as well as a writer.
His ideas
may have helped General Hu Zongxian defeat the Japanese;
when
Hu was unjustly imprisoned, Xu attempted suicide.
Xu was then
imprisoned for having murdered his wife out of jealousy but was
released.
He traveled, drank, and suffered extreme poverty;
yet
he would not accept financial assistance.
Xu studied Daoist and
Buddhist books and was admired for his calligraphy and paintings.
Xu Wei is most famous for the four plays he called The Four
Shrieks of the Ape,
because folklore held that an ape who
lost a baby would shriek four times and die.
The Drummer's
Scorn is about a scholar in the declining Han dynasty,
who
is insulted by the cruel Cao Cao and is made a drummer;
so he
beats the drum with hatred as if he were beating Cao Cao.
The
second play is called The Monk's Dream.
The third play
in the series, The Lady General, tells the famous story
of Hua Mulan,
who lived in the eighth century when women were
forbidden to appear in public.
Disguised as a man, she becomes
a great general
and is appointed chief of staff by the Emperor.
However, Mulan declines the honor, because in twelve years of
fighting
she has accomplished her purpose.
The fourth play, The
Lady Scholar, is a romantic comedy
based on a folk tale of
the tenth century.
The learned Huang Conghu also dresses as a
man and is imprisoned for arson.
The magistrate admires the writing
of his prisoner
but cannot make her his son-in-law when he learns
she is a woman.
So he lets her continue her disguise as his secretary,
and she even passes the government exam with the highest honors,
demonstrating Xu's theme that women are not inferior to men.
Liang Chenyu (1520-80) is best known for his play The Beauty
Trap
that popularized the new chuanqi style started
by Wei Liangfu.
The play has 45 scenes with twelve characters
and ten songs;
it is set during the declining Zhou dynasty of
the third century BC.
Yue premier Fan Li falls in love with beautiful
Xi Shi.
When Yue is attacked by Wu king Fu Chai,
Fan Li persuades
his king Gou Jian to surrender; they are exiled to tend horses.
After two years Gou Jian meets the Wu king while he is hunting
and predicts his recovery from illness.
Gou Jian is allowed to
return to his Yue people.
Fan Li suggests they train the beautiful
Xi Shi to seduce King Fu Chai,
who ignores the warning of his
premier Wu Zixu, falls into the beauty trap,
and even has Wu put
to death.
Before he is killed, Wu asks that his eyes be put on
the gate
to see the conquest of the Wu kingdom by the King of
Yue.
While Fu Chai is distracted by Xi Shi, the state of Qi attacks.
Fu Chai leaves his son in charge and leads the campaign against
Qi,
allowing the Yue to attack.
Led by Fan Li, they capture and
behead the Yue prince.
When Fu Chai returns to Wu, he is executed
by Yue king Gou Jian.
Fan Li finds Xi Shi, and they sail away
on the five lakes to a life of love and peace.
Zheng Royong was a contemporary of Liang Chenyu and is renowned
for his tragicomedy The Broken Jade Ring.
During the southern
Song dynasty the wife of Wang Shang persuades him to go to Nanjing
for the examinations and gives him a jade ring as a reminder to
return to her.
When Wang fails the exam, he is so ashamed that
he stays and falls in love with the courtesan Ji Zhuannu.
Wang
Shang's wife is captured by the invading northern Jin army;
but
she cuts off her hair and threatens suicide
to escape the desires
of the rebel Zhang Anguo.
Intoxicated by Ji Zhuannu, Wang Shang
breaks the jade ring and throws it into a temple;
but after all
his money is gone, the prostitute abandons him.
Helped by a Daoist
priest, Wang studies hard
and passes the examinations with high
honors.
The Emperor makes him a judge,
and he condemns the ungrateful
Ji Zhuannu to death for murdering a rich merchant.
When the Jin
army and the rebels are subdued,
the fleeing Anguo leaves behind
the captives.
Wang Shang is reunited with his wife;
later he is
made minister of state, and she is ennobled.
This play criticizes
a greedy procuress and commends the wife's loyal chastity
while
showing Wang Shang's melodramatic changes.
Wang Shizhen wrote a book on dramatic criticism.
His play The
Singing Phoenix is significant, because it portrays living
people.
The corrupt prime minister Yan Song had unjustly condemned
Shizhen's father to death.
The tyrannical prime minister imprisons
those opposing his policies
even though the Mongols are invading;
but the result is the fall of the Yan house.
Li Kaixian wrote short northern plays.
The Magic Sword
is adapted from a conflict between heroes
of the novel Outlaws
of the Marsh, and in Cutting Off Her Hair,
the heroine
Fei Shuying does that and goes on a hunger strike
to keep from
being married again while her husband is away.
Tang Xianzu (1550-1617) passed his civil examination in 1583;
but he criticized the unfairness of the exams
and was banished
to Guangdong province in 1590.
He was a county magistrate in Zhejiang
but was dismissed in 1598.
Tang Xianzu was from Linchuan and founded
that school of drama
which emphasized diction and romance rather
than form and rhythm.
He wrote that the four essentials of good
drama are theme,
vivid presentation, style, and beauty.
Later
he lived in poverty and was influenced by a Buddhist priest;
his
last two plays are more mystical.
Tang Xianzu wrote two plays that adapted a Tang dynasty story.
The later Purple Hairpin is considered the better play.
When bandits raid a lantern festival, beautiful Huo Xiaoyu drops
her jade hairpin,
and the prominent Li Yi finds it.
He refuses
to return it unless she marries him; but she refuses until her
mother consents.
Shortly after their wedding, Li Yi goes away
to take the exams
and leaves a promise written on silk that he
will not forget her love.
After passing the exam, he hurries to
return but offends the army commander Lu,
who sends him to fight
on the frontier, where Li Yi conquers two tribes.
After three
years, Lu wants Li Yi to marry his daughter
and sends word to
Xiaoyu he has already done so.
Poor and in bad health, she finally
sends her maid to sell the purple hairpin.
Lu buys it and shows
it to Li Yi as proof she is no longer faithful.
When Li Yi is
told about this at a temple, bandits abduct him
and take him home
to his wife Xiaoyu.
He gives her wine, and she is so weak that
she faints.
She is revived; they realize how Lu came between them;
and they are reunited.
The play gives a happy ending; but in the
original story
Xiaoyu dies and haunts Li Yi so that he suspects
all his wives.
During the stable Ming dynasty happy endings were
most common.
Tang Xianzu's most famous play, The Peony Pavilion,
was written in 1598.
In the southern Song era Liu is a scholar
and dreams of a beautiful maiden
standing by an apricot tree;
so he adopts the name Mengmei, meaning "apricot dream."
Prefect Du Bao is descended from the great poet Du Fu,
and he
hires the old scholar Chen Zuiliang to tutor his daughter Bridal
Du
along with her rambunctious maid Spring Fragrance.
The comic
scene in which the maid teases the tutor
is still often performed
in Chinese opera.
Du Bao inspects the farmers and invites them
to a feast.
Bridal Du makes herself beautiful and goes to the
back garden
on a spring day and dances with her maid.
Left alone,
Bridal Du falls asleep and dreams she meets Liu,
who makes love
to her in the peony pavilion;
this famous scene is also performed
in Chinese opera.
Awake, Bridal Du goes back to the pavilion looking
for Liu
but finds only the apricot tree and asks to be buried
under it.
Before she dies, she paints her own portrait.
Bridal
Du even goes to the Daoist nun Sister Stone to drive away her
evil spirits,
but she faints and dies.
After three years Liu is on his way to the capital to take
his exams
when he collapses and is taken to the Apricot Shrine
by the tutor Chen.
Meanwhile Bridal Du's spirit is put on trial
in the underworld
but is successfully defended by Flower Spirit
so that she can return to life.
Liu recovers and on a walk in
the garden sees the portrait of Bridal Du.
He puts it in his room
and gazes at it day and night.
On the third anniversary of her
death Bridal Du appears to Liu,
and they begin to spend every
night together.
One night she explains who she is and tells Liu
to open her grave.
So Liu goes to Sister Stone, and they open
the Apricot Shrine grave.
Bridal Du comes forth alive and elopes
with him to the capital
so that Liu can take his government examination.
Chen discovers the body of Bridal Du is gone;
but Commissioner
Du Bao has been besieged in Huaian by the Jin army,
and the old
tutor is captured by Jin troops.
Chen lies that Du's wife and
family were killed;
Du Bao fights on in Huaian while the tutor
negotiates
a treaty between the Jin commander and the Song government.
Madame Du is reunited with her daughter at the capital.
Liu passes
the metropolitan examination and takes Bridal Du's portrait
to
her father in Huaian; but Du Bao suspects that
Liu robbed his
daughter's grave and puts him in prison.
Du Bao learns from reports
that Liu won the highest prize in the examination,
and Bridal
Du arrives to explain her resurrection
so that Liu can be released
as the happy family is reunited.
This romantic play was such a
sensation that it was reported
some girls even died from having
these romantic feelings.
The Peony Pavilion became so popular
that
the price for The Western Chamber was reduced.
Tang Xianzu's The Nanke Story is also a romantic dream
play.
While drinking, the soldier Shun Yufeng offends the Huaian
commander and is dismissed.
He lives in retirement outside of
Yangzhou.
At a festival he meets Huaian princess Golden Twig but
cannot find out who she is.
Getting drunk, Shun Yufeng dreams
the Big Ash-tree king orders him
to marry Princess Golden Twig
and to defend the state as Nanke prefect against the Danlo.
He
does so for twenty years, but his wife avoids the heat by living
alone in Yao Citadel.
The fourth Yanlo prince tries to take her,
but Yufeng saves his wife.
However, she becomes ill, dies, and
is buried on Turtle Hill.
Yufeng starts drinking again and is
banished by the king;
but he falls out of a cart and wakes to
learn it was a dream.
His servants explain it as the spirit of
the big ash-tree;
but the abbot says it was love sickness.
When
Yufeng vows to give up love, heaven opens;
his friends, family,
and the king and queen all ascend to heaven.
Golden Twig arrives
as a spirit, and Yufeng forces her to be his wife;
but he must
let her spirit go, and he cannot do so
until the abbot separates
them with his magic sword.
She ascends to heaven, and Yufeng disciplines
himself to become an immortal.
This Daoist ending thus substitutes
a spiritual fulfillment for the romantic one.
Tang Xianzu wrote The Handan Story in 1613,
the year
of Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest.
Also based on
Shen Jiqi's "Story of the Pillow," it is very similar
to Ma Zhiyuan's The Dream of Yellow Millet.
The immortal
Lu Dangbin is guided to a restaurant,
where he meets farming inspector
Lu Sheng.
Dangbin puts his porcelain pillow under the head of
sleepy Lu Sheng,
who dreams he can crawl in one end.
He meets
the beautiful daughter of a millionaire and marries her.
She urges
him to take the examinations, and he goes to the capital
and takes
her advice to bribe an official to win the highest prize;
but
the chief examiner Yu Wenyong knows of this and blackmails Lu
Sheng
to open a difficult road to the Yellow River.
The Emperor
is pleased, but Yu Wenyong next sends
Lu Sheng to command the
army on the western frontier.
He uses a clever stratagem to cause
dissension among the enemy leaders and triumphs.
Finally Yu Wenyong tries to get the Emperor to execute Lu Sheng
for bribery;
but his wife's plea keeps Lu from losing his head.
Yet she is condemned to weave, and he is imprisoned.
She makes
a tapestry depicting the wrongs her husband has suffered,
and
it is presented at court to a foreign envoy, who alerts the Emperor
to its story.
Yu Wenyong is the only official who does not testify
to the integrity of Lu Sheng;
so the Emperor punishes Yu and releases
Lu Sheng.
He becomes prime minister and prince of Zhao; his four
sons become officials.
Lu Sheng dies at age eighty, happy he had
a successful life;
but then he awakes and realizes it was a dream.
After discussing his dream with Lu Dangbin, Lu Sheng understands
how futile it is to strive for wealth, fame, and honor.
So he
wanders with the immortal,
and they live as carefree and harmoniously
as the clouds in the sky.
The Kunshan play Fifteen Strings of Cash by Shi Wu Guan
was based on a story
published in a collection in 1627 and was
performed in the 17th century.
A drunk butcher brings home fifteen
strings of coins a relative has loaned him
so that he can restart
his pork business.
As a joke before he falls asleep, he tells
his stepdaughter
that he has sold her into slavery.
That night
she flees to another town.
A thief called Lou the Rat takes the
money from under the pillow.
When the butcher wakes up, Lou murders
him with a meat cleaver.
The next morning neighbors find the dead
body,
and Lou says the missing daughter is suspect.
She is found
on the highway with a merchant's apprentice,
who happens to have
fifteen strings of cash to purchase goods.
Both are arrested and
convicted of the murder
on circumstantial evidence by a rather
stupid judge.
They appeal to a fair prefect, who is in charge
of the execution
but manages to get permission from the governor
to investigate.
Disguised as a fortune-teller he learns the truth
from Lou the Rat,
who is arrested and brought to trial.
This satire
and near tragedy exposes how people can easily jump to conclusions
and convict innocent people, and it shows the importance
of investigation
and judicial safeguards.
Meng Chengshun (1599-1684) is best known for his romantic tragedy
Jiaohongji,
which is a chuanqi play written in 1638.
The complete title is The Story of Jiaoniang and Feihong and
of Chastity and Integrity
in the Mandarin-duck Tomb, sometimes
shortened to
The Mandarin-duck Tomb or Jiao and
Hong.
Cyril Birch has translated it into English as Mistress
& Maid.
Jiaoniang means "charming girl," and
Feihong is her maid.
The story is taken from a novella by Song
Yuan of the Yuan era.
The play in fifty scenes is long and was
probably performed over at least two days.
Shen Chun is the devoted
suitor of Jiaoniang, but he also flirts with her maid.
Shen Chun
romantically makes marriage more important than his career.
He
keeps his red-stained sleeve as a remembrance of their first night
together.
A matchmaker informs Shen and his family that his proposal
has been refused,
but they get another chance by staging a Daoist
exorcism.
In the last part of the play a ghost impersonates Jiaoniang.
She is not willing to obey her father and marry Governor Shuai;
so she takes her own life.
Shen Chun tells his family and dies
also to be with her.
In the final scene the maid Feihong sees
Jiaoniang and Shen in their immortal forms.
1. "Memorial Outlining Policies for the Frontier"
in Instructions for Practical Living
by Wang Yangming,
tr. Wing-tsit Chan, p. 284.
2. Instructions for Practical Living by Wang Yangming,
tr. Wing-tsit Chan, 1:3, p. 7.
3. Ibid. 3:315, p. 243.
4. "Inquiry on the Great Learning" by Wang Yangming,
tr. Wing-tsit Chan in
Instructions for Practical Living,
p. 274.
5. Cang shu by Li Zhi, p. 7 quoted in Cambridge History
of China, Volume 8, p. 749.
6. The Journey to the West 11 tr. Anthony C. Yu, Volume
1, p. 248.
7. Ibid. p. 253-254.
8. Tower of Myriad Mirrors by Tung Yueh, tr. Shuen-fu Lin
and Larry J. Schulz, p. 192-3.
9. Plum in the Golden Vase, The or, Chin P'ing Mei, Volume
One: The Gatheringtr. David Tod Roy, p. 3.
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