Wang Mang, nephew of the empress dowager Wang and championing
Confucian principles,
consolidated his power in the reign of the
boy Ping Di
by marrying his daughter to the emperor.
His treatment
of the Wei queen mother made Wang Mang's son Wang Yu afraid of
a feud
between the Wei and Wang clans, and he tried to use portents
to influence his father's policy.
So in 3 CE Wang Mang had his
son, the Wei clan, and hundreds of others executed.
Han propaganda
also blamed Wang Mang
for the death of 14-year-old Emperor Ping three years later.
Three consecutive emperors had died without
leaving a direct heir,
a bad omen that confirmed prophecies the
dynasty would end.
From many candidates Wang Mang chose a two-year-old
so that he could rule as regent.
In 9 CE Wang Mang took the throne, proclaiming the Xin (New)
dynasty.
A Han uprising was put down, and in 10 CE Han nobles
were demoted to commoners,
as a mutiny in Central Asia was crushed.
Wang Mang broke up the great estates
and prohibited the private
buying and selling of slaves.
Reducing the titles of kings to
marquises was only symbolic,
but it irritated border leaders and
led to revolts.
Wang Mang nationalized liquor, salt, iron implements,
cash,
and the resources of mountains and marshes (hunting, fishing,
mining, etc.).
As a devoted Confucian he did not call them monopolies
but "controls."
Government stores were set up in five
major cities to stabilize the changing prices
of essentials such
as grain, hemp cloth, and silk.
Loans were made to help peasant
farmers.
However, his debasing the currency with copper coins
while he collected five million ounces of gold caused economic
chaos.
The government's currency frauds led to widespread counterfeiting;
but prohibiting copper and charcoal could not be enforced and
had to be repealed,
though many were convicted of using the old
currency.
According to historian Ban Gu, Wang Mang kept his lamp
burning all night
trying to handle too much himself;
but legal
cases backed up, and corrupt bureaucrats took advantage.
Confucian philosopher Yang Xiong (53 BC-18 CE) took the moderate
position
that human nature is a mixture of good and evil.
Whoever
cultivates the good will become good,
and whoever cultivates the
evil will become evil.
The way of the sage is one with heaven
(nature).
Without people heaven could not realize itself as a
cause;
without heaven, people could not complete themselves.
Huan
Tan (43 BC-28 CE) considered Yang Xiong a sage and noted human
differences
related to intelligence, intuition, and character.
Huan Tan criticized Confucian scholars for being impractical,
noting that in the
reign of Wu
Di (141-87 BC) Confucian
scholarship had greatly increased,
but government policies got
worse.
Although it was fine to exalt the learned in times of peace,
he believed in difficult times men in armor should be honored.
His advocacy of strong government indicated the Legalist tendency
of the time.
The Yellow River broke its dikes and changed course.
Famines
in border areas occurred in 11 and 14 CE, causing cannibalism.
Wang Mang reduced official salaries according to the suffering
of the region,
but this increased corruption and bribery.
He tried
to raise funds by taxing the higher class for the slaves they
still owned.
Important provincial offices were now hereditary.
Rebellious peasants in Shandong were led by Mother Lu in 17 CE.
Rebels calling themselves the Red Eyebrows were activated
by a
five-year drought that began the next year.
These peasant rebellions
combined eventually with Han nobles and large landowners
and led
to the demise of this new dynasty.
In 19 CE Wang Mang twice took
one-thirtieth of everyone's property in tax,
and impressive buildings
were constructed in Chang'an the next year.
A plot to raise troops against him in Yan and Chao was discovered
and Wang Mang had several thousand prominent persons executed.
Hundreds of thousands of counterfeiters were arrested,
two-thirds
of them dying when they were made government slaves.
Bandits robbing
out of poverty grew to gangs of hundreds and thousands,
while
officials were not permitted to mobilize troops without the Emperor's
permission.
Bandits disbanding after amnesty were attacked and
fled.
Frontier defense crumbled as border states asserted their
independence.
By 22 CE the Red Eyebrows defeated the imperial
army in Liang,
and famine reached the capital at Chang'an.
Campaigns
against the Xiongnu had depleted the treasury except for the gold
Wang Mang hoarded, and the economic policies were repealed.
A
Han army was organized and took over the lower Yangzi region and
most of Nanyang.
Wang Mang's army attacked Han troops in Yingchuan
but was defeated.
Han armies marched on Chang'an; as the convict
army fled, they sacked the capital,
killing Wang Mang in 23 CE.
After two years under Emperor Geng Shi, the Red Eyebrows captured
Chang'an.
Historian Ban Gu estimated that the population of the
Chinese empire
had been reduced by half.
A Han descendant named Liu Xiu, who owned a huge domain near
Nanyang,
in 25 CE founded the Later Han dynasty, also known as
the Eastern Han
because he moved the capital to Luoyang in the
east from Chang'an in the Wei valley,
where the irrigation system
had been destroyed.
As Guang Wu Di he represented Henan and other
landowners and ruled for 32 years
by suppressing the Red Eyebrows
and other rebels,
freeing those who had fallen into slavery during
the revolutionary era,
and re-instituting a strong central administration.
With fewer great landowners and a smaller imperial clan and ruling
class,
tax returns enabled the Chinese empire to recover gradually
and prosper.
Under General Ma Yuan they reconquered the south
and northern Vietnam in 43 CE.
Whereas the Former Han dynasty
had only three uprisings in the southwest
during two centuries,
in the next two centuries
Yue people in the south revolted 53
times, as the Chinese migrated there.
During the reigns of Ming Di (57-75) and Zhang Di (75-88) China
reconquered
Central Asia and the northern nomads.
In 65 CE Ming
Di pardoned for subversion his brother, the king of Chu,
because
he had recited the subtle words of Lao-zi
and honored the humane cult of the Buddha.
It was also said that after a dream Ming Di sent a mission to
the west,
and two Indian monks brought back Buddhist scriptures.
Yet more than half of 500 officials imprisoned were killed by
flogging.
In 73 a Chinese army led by Dou Gu defeated the Xiongnu,
and the historian Ban Gu's brother Ban Chao had shamans murdered
to prevent them from helping the enemy.
In 89 after they had 13,000
killed, 81 Xiongnu tribes totaling 200,000 people
surrendered
to the Han army.
Ban Chao was appointed protector-general of the
Western Regions in 91
and kept order there until his death in
102.
More than fifty states sent hostages to Luoyang with tribute
in 94 CE;
as hostages' sons of prominent barbarian leaders could
be educated in Chinese culture.
The Chinese emperor sent gold
and silk, and the Xiongnu tribute
included jade, horses, and wine.
In 110 a large Qiang revolt in Liangzhou caused Han forces to
withdraw from that area.
After twenty years military service Ban
Chao's son Ban Yung gained control
over the Turfan depression
and got the Kucha, Khotan, and Yarkand to submit in 127.
Han garrisons
occupied the Gansu corridor until the middle of the 2nd century
when Han power began to decline.
At the beginning of the first century a hundred men a year
entered government
by passing civil service examinations.
A great
conference of Confucian scholars was held in 79 CE
to discuss
interpretation of the Confucian classics.
Wang Chong (27-c. 97)
believing in a natural order was not afraid
to criticize Confucius,
Mencius, and other philosophers.
From a poor family and having to read books in a bookstore,
he
condemned the superstitions involved in omens and portents,
suggesting
natural explanations for natural phenomena.
He wrote that saying
human nature is neither good nor evil is like saying
a person's
capacity is neither high nor low.
In 83 Wang Chong summarized
in Balanced Discussion (Lunheng)
previous Confucian philosophers'
views on good and evil in human nature
and concluded that Mencius described those above
average as good,
Xun-zi those
below average as evil, and Yang Xiong the average as a mixture.
Wang Chong ridiculed ideas of life after death and the fear
of spirits as unscientific,
though his ideas had little influence
on Chinese culture until recently.
He summarized his teaching
as hating falsehood and wrote,
"In things there is nothing
more manifest than having results,
and in argument there is nothing
more decisive than having evidence."1
Wang Chong did not
blame Confucians for political failures
if their character was
cultivated, and their moral standards were high.
He believed that
misfortune is often the result of fate
rather than a divine punishment
for moral wrong.
Able-bodied men could be drafted into the army at age 23 for
one year of training
and a year of garrison duty before being
assigned to a local militia
for service when needed until the
age of 56.
So much silk was exported by Han China that Rome noticed
a drain
on their gold and silver to the east, though the Han government
tried to prevent
the smuggling of iron and weapons.
Chinese iron
work was so sophisticated they could produce some steel.
The shoulder
collar for draft animals was used very efficiently as was the
wheelbarrow.
Porcelain is called china because it was invented
and propagated by the Chinese
at this time; it was more sanitary
and useful than wood.
The great literary culture of China led
to the important invention of paper in 105 CE.
Han land taxes were usually only one-thirtieth of the yield,
but rent was about half.
In the Earlier Han era there had been
nearly 60 million taxpayers;
in 57 CE only 21 million paid taxes,
but by 105 it was back up to 53 million.
Although the bureaucracy
was supposed to be based on merit,
officials usually achieved
their positions by family
and the patronage of influential landowners.
The burden of taxes on northern peasants caused some to flee to
the less-taxed south
and others to rob or revolt.
Once again powerful
families were weakening the financial system.
As powerful relatives
of empresses, during the reign of Ho Di (88-106)
the land-owning
family of Dou Xian became dominant at court; but he was killed.
An Di (r. 106-125) allowed a eunuch's adopted son to inherit a
fief,
and nineteen eunuchs were made marquises when they
helped
Shun Di (r. 126-44) to the throne by liquidating the Yan faction.
In 133 Zuo Xiong's complaint ended the flogging of high officials
begun in Ming Di's reign,
and the same year astrologer Zhang Heng,
the first to use a seismograph,
after an earthquake criticized
the corruption of the eunuch-dominated court.
After 135 CE eunuchs
were able to pass on their wealth and power to adopted sons.
Earthquakes also stimulated criticism during the reign of Huan
Di (146-68).
In 146 the number of students in the imperial academy
was increased to 30,000.
A royal Parthian named An Shigao gave
up his throne to become a Buddhist;
he spent twenty years at Chang'an
translating texts and propagating the religion.
Liang Ji was executed
and his family wiped out in 159 by five court eunuchs,
who were
ennobled and given huge fiefs of 76,000 families each;
the sale
of the Liang estate was equal to half the grain taxes for a year.
Cui Shi (d. 170) worked on the annals in the Dongguan library
but was dismissed
because he was a client of Liang Ji.
Cui Shi
found regional officials disobeying imperial edicts and changing
orders,
but he also criticized drastic administrative measures
as cruel, oppressive, and fault-finding.
Nonetheless his Treatise
on Politics in 151 was more Legalist than Daoist
in urging
stricter laws regardless of privileges.
Daoist Zhu Mu (100-163)
observed that violating natural virtue leads to
honoring humanity (ren) and justice (i); but when propriety (li)
and law (fa) are upheld,
human innocence is lost.
He suggested
this social degeneration to Confucian and Legalist methods
could
be reversed by individuals cultivating depth of feeling for other
people
and being more liberal and generous and less fault-finding.
Wang Fu (c. 90-165) failed in his official career
because he
could not compromise his integrity;
so he retired and commented
on political and commercial corruption
in his Remarks of a
Hermit.
Believing that evil conditions are created by people,
he suggested they could be corrected
by rational and effective
human effort, although what has accumulated over generations
can
not be remedied by short-term measures.
In his evil time he felt
that individuals needed tremendous effort
to resist temptations
and pressures.
Those in government must not be biased, narrow-minded,
self-willed, nor self-interested
as a private person might be,
but must act with social intelligence to uphold public laws.
Preservation
of the state, which is responsible for order,
depends on the enlightened choice of officials.
To attain the great peace (taiping)
the fundamentals of agriculture and essential goods
should be
emphasized instead of the secondary luxuries and refinements.
He complained that increased concentration of wealth
decreased
public revenues and caused poverty.
A cult of the Buddha associated
with Lao-zi was
formally introduced
at the Luoyang court in 166.
The same year attempts by Confucian
officials to stop the corruption
led to hundreds of them being
arrested, as one memorandum advised a reduction
of the palace
women, who numbered more than five thousand plus attendants.
During
the reign of Ling Di (168-89) more eunuchs were ennobled,
and
thousands of officials barred from office formed a league of literati
and were killed by the great proscription.
In 175 it was decreed
that all palace directors of departments would be eunuchs;
within
three years all high offices were sold for cash.
In the propitious year 184 two great rebellions led by Daoist
faith healers
erupted in the east and in Sichuan.
In the east
360,000 armed followers of Zhang Jue's "great peace"
that promised
equality and common ownership wore yellow turbans
to represent the earth
in their struggle against the red fire
of Han rule.
They joined in feasts and fasts lasting several days
during which they confessed their sins
and used amulets to ward
off disease they believed was caused by sin,
as floods in the
Yellow River valley had led to epidemics.
Zhang Jue and his two
brothers were killed along with half a million people that year,
but the Yellow Turban rebellion went on to devastate eight provinces
in the next six years.
The Sichuan rebels were called the Five
Bushels of Rice band
for the dues they paid to master magician
Zhang Daoling and others.
They also identified disease with sin,
used amulets, practiced confession,
and abolished private property;
but one of their leaders, Zhang Lu,
finally came over to the side
of Cao Cao in 215.
As the tax-paying peasantry declined, so did the imperial army
that drafted them.
Professional armies soon came under the control
of their commanders,
who were usually rich landowners that became
local warlords as they fought the rebels.
In 188 the imperial
court tried to appoint commissioners called shepherds
stationed
in rebellious areas with absolute authority over all local officials.
The next year general Yuan Shao of the Henan family gained control
of Luoyang
and massacred more than two thousand court eunuchs.
General Dong Zhuo with support from the Qiang made Xian Di the
last Han emperor,
and the next year his army sacked and burned
the capital,
destroying the imperial library.
Dong Zhuo moved
the capital back to Chang'an;
but notorious for cruelty, he was
assassinated in 192.
That year Cao Cao of a eunuch family incorporated 300,000 Yellow
Turbans into his army,
enabling him eventually to gain control
of the north by eliminating Yuan Shao's cousin
Yuan Shu, who had
founded a kingdom in 197.
The Qiang maintained an independent
kingdom in Liangzhou for thirty years
until they were conquered
by Cao Cao's forces in 214.
To explain why Cao Cao overcame Yuan
Shao a document described ten character faults
of the latter while
crediting Cao Cao with having the way, justice, order, judgment,
strategy,
virtue, humanity, and administrative and military skill.
Yet a contemporary physiognomist described Cao Cao as "a
vile bandit in times of peace,
a heroic leader in a world of turmoil."2
While campaigning against Zhang Lu in 215 Cao Cao composed Daoist
poetry.
Cao Cao was advised by the "mad" Daoist Zhongchang
Tong,
who observed huge domains with thousands of slaves and recommended
ending the aristocracy with land reform and strong laws.
Instead
Cao Cao put abandoned land under state control and divided it
among his veterans and dispossessed peasants in military colonies
that would give the new Wei kingdom a tax base as half tenants'
crops
went to the state, which provided agricultural tools and
draft animals.
Power eventually split three ways between Cao Cao in the north,
Liu Bei in Sichuan,
and Sun Quan in the south, as Cao Cao was
defeated by the latter two,
who allied together to defend themselves.
After Cao Cao died in 220, his son Cao Pei usurped the throne
and named his dynasty Wei;
the next year Liu Bei, claiming to
be of the house of Han, proclaimed the Shu Han dynasty;
and in
222 Sun Quan founded the Wu dynasty to begin the Three Kingdoms
period.
In this era of warfare Wei defeated the Yan king
in southern
Manchuria and conquered Korea; Shu Han invaded the southwest;
and Wu's military power extended into Vietnam.
In Wei a system
of classifying officials into nine grades was supposed to select
the best men;
but emphasis on filial piety favored superficial
outward behavior, and soon men were being
selected primarily for
family status, power, wealth, and military distinction.
Generals from dominant families like the Sima gained power
in Wei.
Yet for a decade during the regency of Cao Shuang and
Sima Yi,
philosophers Ho Yen and Wang Bi (226-49) gave official
advice based on the mysteries
of Lao-zi,
Zhuang-zi, and the Yi
Jing until Sima Yi took control
and executed Cao Shuang
and Ho Yen in 249.
Daoist Wang Bi, who died in a plague,
taught
that virtue could be attained through non-being.
Daoism grew in
popularity as outstanding individuals such as the seven sages
of the bamboo grove retreated from political life and participated
in "purified conversation."
One of the seven, Ruan Ji
(210-63), refused to accept an official position
and once stayed
drunk for sixty days in order to avoid
a marriage alliance proposed
by Sima Zhao.
Ruan Ji entitled all his poems "Songs of My
Cares,"
and he protested the Sima clan's usurpation of power.
Xi Kang (223-62) believed in transcending moral doctrines of good
and evil
by harmoniously entering into the feelings of all living
creatures.
No longer having an ego, he asked why he should feel
anxious.
The best person makes use of the heart without having
attachments.
Xi Kang criticized the boredom of official life,
the servitude
imposed by propriety and morals, and social affectation.
He worked as a smith, but he was executed for being impolite to
an important minister
and for defending a friend unjustly accused
of violating filial piety.
Guo Xiang (d. 312) was a high government official who incorporated
Xiang Xiu's
Commentary on Zhuang-zi into his own.
Guo Xiang
recommended spontaneity in a changing universe.
To imitate sages
is to imitate the dead past instead of meeting the living present.
Everything is always changing, and institutions and morals are
not exceptions;
when they do not change, they become artificial
and harmful.
One should live according to one's own nature, not
that of others,
so that integrity will be preserved.
Transcending
distinctions leads to freedom and happiness.
The Daoist alchemist
Go Hong (253-333) quoted the writing of Bao Jingyen
who criticized
Confucian literati for assuming that heaven placed rulers over
people
when it was really the strong oppressing the weak
and the
cunning tricking the innocent that caused mastery and servitude.
Using force against other creatures is not natural
but humans'
attempts to gain useless adornments.
Go Hong complained that the
poor were forced to work
so that officials could enjoy fat salaries.
Sima Yen succeeded his father as Wei ruler in 251, conquered
Shu Han in 263,
and two years after that declared himself Wu Di
Qin, the Martial Emperor of Qin.
Four centuries of Han law were
compiled into a new Qin code.
Wu Di Qin also annexed the Wu kingdom
in 280, briefly reuniting China;
but ten years later his death
the Jia family stimulated
a civil war called the Revolt of
the Eight Kings.
Sixteen kingdoms of five "barbarians" (Xiongnu, Jie,
Xian Bei, Qiang, and Di)
ruled northern China between 304 and
439.
In 304 a Di family founded the Cheng Han kingdom in Sichuan,
while the Xiongnu of southern Shansi became the independent kingdom
of Zhao,
seizing Luoyang in 311 and Chang'an five years later,
once again destroying the library.
A Buddhist monk from Central
Asia named Fotudeng advised Zhao ruler Shi Hu
to rule with compassion
and avoid killing; though he said the guilty could be executed,
killing the innocent would cause calamities.
When a minister complained
the Buddha was a foreign deity,
Shi Hu replied that
as he and the people of Zhao were also foreign,
Buddha was the very god they should
worship.
In the 4th century most of northwestern China converted to
Buddhism.
Yao Xing (r. 393-415) of the Later Qin patronized Buddhism,
sustaining 3,000 monks with his donations.
Kumarajiva (350-413),
son of a Brahmin father and Kuchean princess,
was born at Kucha,
followed his mother into a Buddhist order at age seven,
studied
Buddhism in Kashmir, and was converted to Mahayana in Kashgar.
Kumarajiva was kept a prisoner at Wuwei by general Lu Guang of
the
Earlier Qin kingdom for seventeen years until Later Qin ruler
Yao Xing
conquered Gansu in 401 and took Kumarajiva to Chang'an,
where he directed
a team of scholars in making excellent translations
of Buddhist scriptures.
While millions of people migrated south into the Yangzi valley,
the Eastern Qin established themselves at Jiankang (near current
Nanjing) in 317.
Ho Chong became regent in 345 and promoted Buddhism
at court;
two years later Sichuan was subjugated.
When Emperor
Xiaowu came of age, he indulged in pleasures
while allowing monks
and nuns to run the government.
Daoan (312-85) promoted Buddhism
south and north of the Yangzi River.
Graft and corruption increased
at the Eastern Qin court,
and during the reign (397-418) of An
Di a great peasant rebellion broke out
and threatened Jiankang
in 400 CE but was crushed in two years.
About twenty years after
founding the Donglin monastery in the Yangzi valley,
in 402 Huiyuan
(334-417) led initiated monks and lay people in vowing to be reborn
in the Pure Land of the western paradise proclaimed by Mahayana
Buddhism.
Huiyuan communicated with Kumarajiva and wrote the Treatise
on the Three Rewards
to defend the doctrine of karma by explaining
that
some actions have their consequences in future lives.
Faxian,
after spending 15 years traveling to India, in 414 settled in
Jiankang
to translate the Buddhist scriptures he brought back.
General Liu Yu organized a campaign to invade Henan province
and captured Luoyang
and Chang'an in 417, but the territories
were lost as soon as he returned south.
He forced the Eastern
Qin emperor to abdicate and founded the Liu Song dynasty
at Jiankang
in 420; but it was overthrown in 479 by a general named Xiao Daocheng,
who proclaimed the Qi dynasty.
In 502 this was transformed into
the Liang when his relative Xiao Yen
became the Martial Emperor
(Wu Di) of Liang and patronized Buddhism
so generously that Confucians
protested.
In 507 he sponsored a debate on the immortality of
the soul,
and materialist Fan Zhen criticized the money spent
on
lazy monks, monasteries, and images.
In 529 it was said 50,000
Buddhists assembled, and four years later 300,000 persons
received
material gifts along with Buddhist doctrine.
The preaching emperor
joined the Buddhist community three times
and had to be bought
back by the court for large ransoms.
When Liang Wu Di died in
549, powerful generals caused a civil war until one of them
established
the Chen dynasty (557-89) that was taken over by the Sui.
Northern China was united for a few years when Tibetans led by
Fu Jian (r. 357-85)
used great military force to expand the Eastern
Qin kingdom.
After capturing Xiangyang with 100,000 soldiers Fu
Jian brought Daoan back to Chang'an.
Daoan advised Fu Jian not
to attack the Eastern Qin but was not heeded,
and in 383 their
massive army was defeated at Fei River in a critical battle
that
preserved Chinese culture in the south.
The Toba people had moved
into northern Shansi and asserted their independence in 386
as
the Northern Wei, which eventually gained control of northern
China in 439.
During the reign (386-409) of Dao Wu Di 460,000
people were deported.
Convicts were made slaves at Buddhist monasteries
to reclaim wasted land by cultivation.
Confucian Cui Hao (381-450) became chancellor and gained influence
with Wu Di (r. 424-51) by promoting the successful campaign against
the Bei Liang kingdom in the northwest in 439.
Cui Hao also recommended
his Daoist friend Kou Qianzhi, who prevented the ruler
from executing
3,000 resisting monks captured in that battle at Liangzhou,
putting
them in labor battalions.
Cui Hao won the Daoist master over to
Confucian principles and applied
a strong Chinese penal code to
the Wei kingdom.
Kou after having a series of visions and taking
the title of Heavenly Master
persuaded the Northern Wei emperor
to declare Daoism the official religion in 444,
condemning mediums
and sorcerers and abolishing most local cults,
while anyone supporting
Buddhist monks privately might be executed.
Two leading monks
were executed, and during a rebellion the next year at Chang'an
weapons were found in a Buddhist monastery.
The emperor condemned
those monks to death, and Cui Hao suggested
executing all the
monks in the realm, though Kou managed to delay that.
Cui Hao
was hated for his prejudice against non-Chinese in the history
he was writing, and the people's complaints led the emperor to
liquidate him
and his entire clan of 128 people.
When Wu Di died,
his successor granted Buddhists freedom.
During the 5th century
and early 6th nine peasant rebellions
were stimulated by bands
of Buddhists.
Xiao Wen Di (r. 471-99) promoted Chinese customs and prohibited
other languages in court;
when nomadic fighters resented the influence
of Confucian scholars,
he even executed his own son for refusing
to cooperate with the Sinicization program.
Early in his reign
Buddhist monasteries were greatly expanded by Tanyao's plan
of
assigning penal slaves to cultivate their fields.
With many farms
abandoned after two centuries of war,
in 485 the Wei government
began distributing land to males over 15 years of age.
During
the reign (515-28) of Xiao Ming Di his empress Hu oversaw lavish
building
as Luoyang became a great center of Buddhism.
By the
end of the Northern Wei dynasty there were said to be 30,000 monasteries
and two million Buddhist clergy.
Outside the capital less effete
military forces in six garrisons revolted in 523,
and a civil
war raged for a decade.
Empress Hu had Xiao Ming Di assassinated
and put a child on the throne;
but tribal armies from Shansi seized
Luoyang, drowned them both in the Yellow River,
and murdered two
thousand courtiers.
In 534 General Gao Huan set up an Eastern Wei emperor hostile
to Chinese culture
that in 550 became the Northern Qi dynasty,
while general Yuwen Tai created
a Western Wei puppet depending
on the Chinese aristocracy at Chang'an.
In 544 this emperor recommended
the following Confucian principles to local officials:
administer
with compassion, value learning, cultivate land,
use able and
good people; penalize sparingly, and tax fairly.
His son took
the throne to found a Northern Zhou dynasty in 557.
Wu Di of Northern
Zhou (r. 561-78) organized a debate between
Confucians, Buddhists,
and Daoists, and in 573 he declared Confucians the winner
and
the next year interdicted the losing Buddhists and Daoists.
Using
the strategic capital at Chang'an, this dynasty also
destroyed
the Northern Qi in 577, reunifying north China.
Yang Jian (541-604) married a devout Buddhist, whose father
Dugu Xin
had been forced to commit suicide by a powerful Yuwen
prince in 557.
Yang Jian succeeded his father as Duke Sui in 568.
As a reward for helping Wu Di on his victory over the Northern
Qi in Henan in 577
Yang Jian was appointed commander of the army
and governed the conquered territory.
The religious persecution
ended with Wu Di's death;
but his son Yuwen Bin was Yang Jian's
son-in-law and violated his consorts and concubines.
After ruling
two years he died in 580, leaving a 7-year-old son under the control
of General Yang Jian, who ended the proscription of the Buddhists
and had 120 monks ordained for the temples in Luoyang and Chang'an.
Two senior princes failed to assassinate Yang Jian and were executed.
The boy abdicated in 581, and Yang Jian usurped the throne as
Wen Di (r. 581-604)
to found the Sui dynasty.
Sui Wen Di claimed
the mandate of heaven
but put to death 59 members of the Yuwen
family;
yet as a Buddhist he believed in karma, and these killings
would haunt him.
Wen Di established national Buddhist temples,
and in 583 he ordered regular services performed.
The ban on Daoists
was also lifted, and Daoists were granted a metropolitan temple.
Wen Di had previously revised Northern Zhou laws,
and he promulgated
a New Code in 581, moderating previously severe punishments.
In
583 Wen Di ordered the code simplified, and the commission headed
by Pei Zheng
reduced the Kaihuang Code to 500 articles.
The main
punishments were death, deportation to forced labor
or military
service, and beatings.
Officials could commute these sentences
to fines measured in copper.
The Tribunal of Censors investigated
crimes and supervised all imperial officials.
The Board of Civil
Office appointed suitable officials according to nine ranks,
each
with an upper and lower grade, and they were also responsible
for annual reviews.
Thus hereditary privilege was lessened.
In
587 Wen Di ordered the prefectures to send three worthy men annually
to the capital,
but merchants and artisans were disqualified.
He established schools for the study of the Confucian classics,
and he particularly admired the Classic of Filial Submission.
Examinations on a single classic or for literary ability were
used to screen men for positions.
The rule of avoidance meant
that local officials could not serve in their place of origin
so that family and friends would not influence them.
Terms of
service were for only three or four years, and parents and sons
over fifteen
could not accompany them. Each prefecture sent delegates
to an annual court assembly.
In 588 a Sui edict condemned the immoral incompetence of the Chen
ruler,
and the next year eight forces said to total 518,000 men
attacked the Chen
in eight different places with armies, cavalry
using 100,000 fresh horses from the north,
and three flotillas
of ships led by Yang Su.
The Chen capital at Jiankang was defended
by more than 100,000 troops;
but the Sui forces took over the
entire Chen domain of southern and eastern China
from the Yangzi
River to the South China Sea.
Chen officials were treated leniently,
and local administrations were governed
by newly appointed Sui
officials.
However, Su Wei tried to impose the "Five Teachings"
of public and private morality
so forcefully that revolts broke
out and killed Sui officials.
Yang Su had to suppress the rebellion
by killing thousands and executing their leaders.
Yang Guang, the second son of Wen Di, was the official commander
in the Chen war
and became the ruler of the conquered territory
in 589.
He attempted to make them loyal Sui subjects by introducing
rational administration.
He ordered Buddhist scriptures collected
and copied,
building a library and Buddhist temples.
In 591 at
Qiangdu during a vegetarian feast for a thousand monks
Yang Guang
asked Zhiyi (538-97), founder of Tiantai Buddhism and the most
respected
monk in the south, to name him a bodhisattva.
Later Zhiyi petitioned Yang Guang to stop the razing of the Chen
capital,
particularly its Buddhist temples, and he complained
after a thousand monks,
who had come to hear him speak, were dispersed
by Sui officials.
In addition to supporting Buddhism Yang Guang
had two Daoist monasteries built at his capital.
Yang Su used cavalry to scatter the army of the Eastern Turks.
Wen Di ordered the collecting of a progressive grain tax that
stored as much as
three-quarters of a large crop but took nothing
in hard years,
establishing relief granaries to prevent famines.
A canal was constructed from Chang'an to the Yellow River,
and
great walls were built in the northwest.
Construction on a grand
scale was begun at both capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang.
Sui
Wen Di also saw the completion of the Tongji canal connecting
the Yellow River
with the Huai and the Yangzi, and his armies
gained control of northern Vietnam.
In spite of his massive construction
projects a militia system lessened military expenses
except during
campaigns, and Wen Di by frugality and his huge granaries was
able
to reduce taxation and exempt new population from taxes for
ten years.
He even proclaimed himself a disciple of the Buddha
and donated 120,000 bolts of silk
to repair the damage of the
recent persecutions in the north.
Books were collected, annotated, and copied.
An edict of 593 forbade
apocryphal and prognostic books;
unofficial histories and character
reading were also prohibited to prevent subversion.
Wen Di became
dissatisfied with Confucianism, and in 601 all schools in the
empire
were abolished except for one college with seventy students
in the capital.
Instead the Emperor distributed Buddhist relics
to all the prefectures,
and thirty missions were sent out, followed
by 53 the next year and thirty more in 604.
In 600 Yang Guang visited his mother, the monogamist Empress,
who complained that the crown prince Yong had four sons by a concubine.
Yang Guang began to plot against his brother Yong and was supported
by Yang Su;
later that year Yang Guang had himself proclaimed
crown prince.
In 603 Wen Di degraded his fourth son on suspicion
of black magic.
The next year the Emperor became ill, and Yang
Guang ascended the throne,
as Yang Su may have suppressed the
reinstatement of Yong as successor.
Han prince Liang, the youngest
brother, revolted in the east;
but Yang Su's army defeated his
forces and put him in prison, where he soon died.
So Yang Guang became the second Sui emperor as Yang Di (r. 604-17).
He traveled frequently between his three capitals at Daxing Cheng
in the west, Luoyang,
and his beloved Yangzi capital at Qiangdu.
Yang Di was criticized for the extravagant re-building of the
capital at Luoyang.
Great libraries were built; the largest at
Luoyang had 370,000 scrolls.
An examination system based on the
Confucian classics was instituted in 606
to attract scholars into
the bureaucracy from the south.
The new emperor disliked the criticism
of his father's advisor
Gao Qiong and had him executed in 607.
Several other important officials were also put to death,
and
their families were banished.
Yang Di continued to conscript large
numbers of workers to extend canals
to Hangzhou Bay and north
to what is now Beijing,
to build the great wall at Shansi, and
to complete projects at Chang'an and Luoyang.
Not frugal like
his father, it was said that he once hired 18,000 musicians
to
entertain guests for a month.
Such ambitious projects and floods
on the lower Yellow River in 611
caused greater peasant rebellions
in Hebei and Shandong.
In 608 a Sui army led by Yuwen Shu was sent to assist the Tuyu
Hun;
but when the latter fled, Yuwen Shu drove them from their
land and enslaved 4,000 captives.
Yang Di personally led the campaign
against the Tuyu Hun
in the Gansu corridor the next year.
An expedition
against Formosa or the islands in the China Sea failed in 610.
The Chinese also failed to get Turkish mercenaries, and special
war taxes were levied.
The Sui dynasty began its decline when
Yang Di mobilized 1,132,800 men
for a campaign against Koguryo
(Korea) in 612.
Although
Yang Di's armies had conquered Tibet, the three annual campaigns
against northern Korea and southern Manchuria were disastrous;
Eastern Turks revolted, and uprisings occurred until the end of
the dynasty.
In 615 Yang Di offered bounties to fight against
the Turks at Yenmen
and announced the end of the unpopular Koguryo
war;
but when the Emperor went back on both promises, he lost
credibility.
Stimulated by his son Li Shimin, general Li Yuan
rebelled in Shansi,
allied with Turkish tribes, and marched on
Chang'an, where he founded the Tang dynasty.
As the Sui empire
was disintegrating, Yang Di fled to southern China,
where he was
assassinated in his bath by a descendant of the Yuwen family
and
the son of his general Yuwen Shu in 618.
While Li Yuan reigned (618-26) as Gaozu at Chang'an, many contenders
for the Sui throne fought each other in the south.
Gaozu had twelve
large standing armies plus regional commands of local militias.
Yet with so many domestic battles, Gaozu paid tribute to the Eastern
Turks
to keep them from invading.
In 622 the twelve imperial armies
were disbanded.
That year Li Shimin stopped a force of 150,000
Turks led by khagan Xieli into Taiyuan;
but the next year
the twelve armies were called back to counter the Turkish threat
that put the capital at Chang'an under martial law
and to face
another incursion into Taiyuan in 625.
Tang armies led by the
Emperor's sons, Li Shimin in the south and eastern plain
and crown
prince Jiancheng in the northwest,
offered amnesty and put down
most of the resistance by 624.
Uniform coins were minted starting in 621.
Most of the great Luoyang
library was lost in a disastrous accident in 622,
leaving only
90,000 scrolls, though this was increased to 200,000 by the end
of the reign.
By 624 Gaozu had completed a centralized code of
Tang laws,
distributed land to adult males, implemented the northern
equal-field system,
and reformed taxes to apply to persons instead
of property.
Irrigation systems were constructed diverting water
from the Huangho (Yellow River) in 624,
and a canal was built
in Shensi to transport grain to the capital.
The three schools
in Chang'an were re-opened
to prepare sons of the aristocracy
for examinations.
At court heated debates took place between Confucians,
Buddhists, and Daoists.
The court astrologer Fu Yi wrote memorials
criticizing Buddhism for removing
tens of thousands of men and
women from secular work.
In 626 Gaozu reduced 120 Buddhist temples
to three and Daoist temples
from about ten to one; but these directives
were canceled three months later
when Gaozu's son Li Shimin took
over the government.
Li Shimin had gained much prestige for his victories over the
rebel leaders
Dou Jiande and Wang Shichong, and in 621 he founded
his own literary college.
After falsely accusing his brothers
of having illicit relations with the imperial harem,
Li Shimin
ambushed them at the palace gate, killing the heir apparent Jiancheng
himself,
while his officer murdered his younger brother Yuanji.
Three days later Li Shimin proclaimed himself Emperor Tang Taizong
(r. 626-49)
and forced his father to retire.
Having had a successful
military career, Taizong restrained building projects
and listened
to his advisors, gaining a fine reputation
for good Confucian
rule for several years.
He expanded Confucian education, standardized
the curriculum on its classics,
and developed the civil service
examination system.
Under his father the Sui bureaucracy had doubled,
but Taizong reduced administrative subdivisions.
Relief granaries were established in 628.
That year a school of
calligraphy was founded, followed by a school of law in 632.
A
commission was appointed in 629 to write histories,
and the same
year an imperial order proclaimed that monks illegally ordained
for tax evasion
were to be executed, though after ten years of
development a new law code
was decreed in 637 that reduced the
number of capital offenses.
By 637 Ma Zhou was complaining of
increased labor services and disregard of the people,
and Wei
Zheng criticized Taizong's arrogance and extravagance.
The appointment
of Wei Zheng as counselor had set an example of amnesty,
because
he had supported a major rebel.
In 639 Taizong ordered clergy
to obey the dying instructions of the Buddha
in the Fo Yijiao jing in order to keep them out of politics.
Xuan Zang (602-64) traveled to India (629-45) and then returned
to Chang'an
to direct the translation of 1338 chapters of Buddhist
texts
out of the total 5084 translated into Chinese over six centuries.
Wars between the Turks helped the Tang regime to subjugate the
Eastern Turks in 630
when Taizong was declared a khan,
their chief ruler.
About 100,000 defeated Turks were resettled
in southern China.
The silk route west was protected when the
Chinese were aided by the Uighur tribes
in taking the Tarim Basin
from the Western Turks,
who were also divided by a civil war in
630.
An administrative protectorate was established there along
with one in the north
for Mongolia, in the east for southern Manchuria,
and in the south called Annan,
which later gave the name Annam
to Vietnam.
The state
of Karashahr began paying tribute to the Tang in 632;
but an alliance
with the Western Turks made them stop
until the Chinese invaded
and occupied Karashahr in 644,
defeating the Western Turkish army.
This war caused Kucha to stop paying tribute until the Tang army
defeated them in 648.
The Tibetan Tuyuhun brought tribute to Chang'an in 634 but plundered
Chinese territory
on their way home, causing the Tang army to
launch a punitive campaign.
Tibetan king Srongbtsansgampo asked
to marry a Chinese princess and was rebuffed,
causing fighting
until the Chinese complied in 641.
Peace was maintained with the
Koguryo after they sent tribute to the Tang in 619
until the Tang
vassal state Silla complained that
Koguryo and Paekche attacked
them in 643.
A large Tang campaign was planned; but in 645 the
Tang army could not take
the fortress city of Anshi, and thousands
of returning soldiers perished in a blizzard.
Taizong ordered
a large armada built and prepared an even larger expedition,
but
he died before it could be launched.
Despite this disappointment
at the end of his life, Taizong was remembered
as one of the greatest
of Chinese emperors, and his discussions with his advisors
compiled
by Wu Jing in 705 in the Zhenguan Zhengyao
became a popular
guidebook on imperial government.
The heir apparent Li Chengqian's plot to take the throne was exposed
when Qi prince Li You's revolt failed in 643.
Chengqian was degraded
to a commoner and died the next year.
Taizong was succeeded by
his son Li Zhi, who became Gaozong (r. 649-83);
but most of his
reign was overshadowed by the clever and powerful Empress Wu.
Wu Zhao came to the palace about 640 during her teens as a low-ranking
concubine.
According to the story, after Taizong died, she went
to a nunnery,
where she was found by Gaozong and bore him a son
in 652.
The Empress Wang had made many enemies;
Wu intrigued with
them until Wang was demoted,
and Wu became Gaozong's principal
consort in 655.
Wu then had Wang and her concubine accomplice
murdered,
and many of her opponents were also purged by exile,
murder, or suicide.
When Gaozong suffered bad health as the result of a stroke in
660,
Empress Wu took control of the imperial administration.
She
became a devoted Daoist,
and the immense Buddhist translation
project was ended in 664.
Lao-zi
was given resplendent titles in 666,
and Daoist temples were erected
in every prefecture.
That year the currency was debased 90%, and
in 670 grain was so scarce
that wine brewing was prohibited.
More
than half the population was unregistered and so paid no taxes.
In 674 Empress Wu tried to win public favor by proclaiming
an
enlightened twelve-point reform program that promoted agriculture,
remission of taxes,
cessation of military operations, no extravagant
building, reduction of unpaid labor,
increased free expression,
suppression of slander, study of the Dao
De Jing,
full mourning periods for mothers, making honorific
officials permanent,
increased official salaries, and promotion
of talented officials.
Yet the next year she started removing
imperial family members she considered threatening,
and many prominent
officials were banished.
Meanwhile the empire was in a financial
crisis because of decades of ruinous wars
and extravagant public
building.
The examinations were suspended most of the time between
669 and 679
but were held regularly after they were reformed in
681.
By helping the Silla defeat the Koguryo, Tang forces made a unified
Korea
a loyal vassal in 668 as 200,000 captives were deported
to China.
Two years later a revolt against Chinese occupation
restored the Koguryo house,
and in 676 the Chinese withdrew from
Pyongyang.
During the reign of Gaozong the Tarim Basin was lost
to Tibet,
though it was later regained under Empress Wu.
Tang
armies were able to quell a 679 rebellion by Eastern Turks after
heavy losses by 681.
Empress Wu deposed Gaozong's successor after
one year and installed a puppet,
ordering many in the royal family
and hundreds of aristocrats executed.
She quelled rebellions by
rewarding those who resisted them while granting amnesty
to those
who had been coerced into joining them.
In 685 she took a lover,
who was installed as abbot of the most prestigious monastery.
In 690 Empress Wu inaugurated the Zhou dynasty, proclaimed herself
an incarnation
of the future Buddha Maitreya, and made Luoyang
the "holy capital."
In 693 she replaced the compulsory
Dao De Jing in the curriculum
temporarily
with her own Rules for Officials.
In 697 while
Empress Wu was considering adding to the 870 tons of bronze
already
used for nine ceremonial tripods,
Khitans were marching unopposed
into the Beijing area.
Then she sent two large armies to stop
their advance.
Eventually she allowed the Northern Turks led by
Qapaghan with his army of 400,000
to take over large territories
north of the Wall.
The last years of her reign were dominated
by the Zhang brothers
when corruption and patronage became widespread
until they were executed by a conspiracy in 705.
The Tang dynasty
was restored, and Empress Wu died later that year.
Objective assessment
of her policies is difficult since Confucian historians disapproved
of her as a woman and a Daoist.
For five years while Empress Wei
and her daughter were powerful,
princes, officials, favorites,
and monasteries enriched themselves and enlarged their estates,
while taxes falling on peasant farmers and tenants multiplied.
In 710 Xuanzong (r. 712-56) put his father on the throne
but after
two years became emperor himself.
After the Taiping princess committed
suicide in 713,
all but one of the chief ministers were executed
or committed suicide.
Yao Chong implemented the following ten
reforms: govern humanely instead of
by harsh deterrents; refrain
from military adventures; apply law equally to all;
exclude eunuchs
from politics; prohibit excessive taxes;
exclude imperial relatives
from the central government;
restore the personal authority of
the emperor;
allow ministers to freely remonstrate without fear
of punishment;
suspend construction of Buddhist and Daoist temples;
and eliminate the power of consort families.
Court business was
now conducted openly in public,
and examination graduates were
appointed as the chief ministers.
The Buddhist clergy was investigated,
and more than 30,000 monks and nuns
were returned to lay life.
Building of new monasteries was banned.
New Statutes, Regulations
and Ordinances were promulgated in 715.
Stored grain was no longer
sent to the capital
as revenue but was saved for relieving famine.
Xuanzong managed to increase the number of families on the tax
registers,
gave more control to local military commanders,
increased
the number of horses by improving government stud farms,
and repaired
canals to facilitate grain transport from the south to northern
armies.
As population increased along with the concentration of
wealth and property,
there was not enough land for the poor, and
per-capita taxes paid in grain,
cloth (silk or hemp), and labor
(or military service) became problematic;
gradually more progressive
taxes on land and wealth
were instituted along with commercial
taxes.
Although fighting occurred in 714 with the Tibetans and Eastern
Turks,
a large imperial army estimated in 722 at more than 600,000
kept the peace.
Zhang Yue persuaded the Emperor to return a third
of these to farming.
By 723 120,000 paid soldiers had replaced
the militia in the capital guards,
and frontier armies also became
more professional.
Chief ministers were also paid regularly with
the revenues of 300 households,
while provincial officials received
regular salaries,
though allowances for their attendants were
cut.
Roads with post-stations at intervals provided hostels
and
restaurants for traveling officials.
Hierarchical and delegated
government authority included an independent board
of censors to investigate public and private abuses by officials.
After 738
more and more imperial edicts were drawn up by the Academy of
Scholars.
Schools of Buddhism flourished throughout China as never before.
The Pure Land sect practiced chanting homage to the Amitabha Buddha.
One of its masters, Cimin (680-748), spent twelve years in India
(704-16)
and criticized the popular Chan school for concentrating
on meditation
while neglecting equally important learning and
moral behavior.
To limit corruption in growing Buddhist monasteries
in 729
a government census was begun to assure that each prefecture
had only one official monastery with no more than thirty monks.
Xuanzong sponsored at the capital Tantric masters Subhakarasimha
716-35
and Vajrabodhi 719-41.
In 741 the Emperor set up Daoist
schools,
and in 747 the Dao De Jing
was declared the most important canonical book.
The aristocracy
won a major battle against the meritocracy in 737
when Wei valley
noble Li Linfu overcame the scholarly civil servant Zhang Jiuling,
and his new versions of the law codes and commentaries were promulgated.
By 742 military forces of 574,733 men made up
a little more than
one percent of the population.
The violent purges of Li Linfu
that began in 744
removed many prominent men from government.
The peace with Tibet ended in 736 when they attacked Gilgit,
and
sporadic fighting continued through the rest of Xuanzong's reign.
The Turkish empire ended when the Uighurs killed their last kaghan
Baimei in 745.
Although military expenditures were increasing,
the great Tang empire in this era had no equal in the world.
At
this peak of imperial power in 751 Tang armies were defeated by
the Thai state
of Nanzhao, and the Muslims defeated the Tang's
Korean general at Talas in Central Asia.
When the prime minister
Li Linfu died the next year, and the Emperor Xuanzong,
distracted
by a high-class prostitute, appointed his favorite Yang Guozhong,
the slighted general An Lushan brought his armies from the north
in 755
and took over Luoyang and Chang'an.
The Emperor fled to
Chengdu in Sichuan, where his army forced him to put to death
his favorite concubine and her brother.
Xuanzong was declared
retired in 756 and died five years later.
His son Suzong reigned
(756-62) while China was torn apart by An Lushan's rebellion.
An Lushan was murdered by his son in 757,
and so was the general
who took over the rebellion.
In 760 insurgent bands massacred
several thousand
Arab and Persian merchants at Yangzhou.
Daizong (r. 762-79) sent a Turkish general to bribe the Uighurs,
who helped Tang forces
defeat the rebels at Chang'an in 763, the
year the Tibetans invaded Chang'an.
As regional commanders became
more independent, the decline of the central
government is indicated
by the census figures for the next year
that showed a population
of 16,900,000 compared to 52,880,488 ten years earlier.
Unable
to raise revenues with regular taxes, the Tang state created a
salt monopoly in 759
which in twenty years was producing half
the government's revenue,
as merchants became richer collecting
salt taxes.
Monopolies were also organized in alcohol in 764 and
in the rapidly expanding
consumption of tea in 793.
Daizong was
criticized for being influenced by the Tantric monk Amoghavajra
(715-74).
The energetic Dezong (r. 779-805) tried to stop the decline.
A
twice annual tax on land and harvests was systematized by reformer
Yang Yen in 780.
Large sums of capital and credit stimulated commerce,
as each provincial capital thrived.
Improvements in growing rice
enabled the south to export large amounts of food via canals.
Yet rebellions by independent commanders in the northwest broke
out
between 781 and 786 after Emperor Dezong assigned a quota
of taxes to each province
and would not allow them to appoint
their own governors.
In 783 Dezong had to flee Chang'an.
In this
crisis the leadership of two eunuchs and Lu Zhi
began the rise
of the inner court's power.
Tibet took advantage of the situation
by breaking their pledge to help fight the rebels
and by invading
Shensi in 785.
The independent Hebei provinces increased their
armies;
but the rebels could not get along with each other, and
the south stayed loyal.
Lu Zhi had served in the Hanlin Academy
(779-91)
before he was appointed chief minister;
but he was replaced
by the corrupt finance minister Pei Yenling in 795.
In 790 Tibetans
had defeated the Uighurs and the Tang army,
but in 794 Nanzhao
renounced Tibetan sovereignty
and joined with the Chinese invading
Tibet in 801.
A half century of foreign wars were over by his
death,
and Dezong had built up the palace army to 100,000
though
command was given to the eunuchs,
who managed to get rid of the
next monarch in a year.
Xianzong (r. 806-20) used Tang imperial power to quell rebellions
in Sichuan
and the Yangzi delta, though he had to compromise with
the governors of Hebei.
In 807 chief minister Li Jifu reported
that only eight provinces
were paying taxes to the Tang government.
Pei Ji tried to gain money by controlling the price of silk,
but
mobilization for the internal wars of 809-10 exhausted Tang finances.
Uprisings in the Huai valley and Pinglu province 815-818 were also
crushed,
restoring central governmental authority.
After Pinglu
governor Li Shidao was assassinated in 819,
this dangerous northern
province was divided into three parts.
New prefectures were also
organized in the Tianping and Yenhai provinces,
and they were
allowed to keep their entire revenues until 832.
Chinese militarism is indicated by government estimates of the
number of soldiers
that went from 850,000 in 807 to a record 990,000
in the early 820s;
the central government alone was paying 400,000
in 837.
Observing hysteria over moving a relic of the Buddha in
819,
the influential writer Han Yu (768-824) criticized Buddhism
as a foreign religion
that changed Chinese customs adversely;
he was banished for his temerity.
In 836 an imperial decree forbade
the Chinese from having relations
with "people of color"
(foreigners).
Provincial administrations were controlled by eunuch
army supervisors,
who were resented by officials, and factional
conflicts between
the Niu and Li political parties weakened the
Tang regime.
Eunuchs had murdered Xianzong, and in despair Emperor
Wenzong (r. 827-40)
seems to have drank himself to death at the
age of thirty.
His attempt to ambush eunuchs in the "sweet
dew" incident of 835 had resulted
in the army massacring
more than a thousand people in the government quarter.
When Wuzong (r. 840-46) became emperor, only the benevolence of
Li Deyu,
son of Li Jifu, prevented the two chief ministers of
the Niu party from being put to death;
but by consolidating power
Li Deyu was able to implement some minor reforms
in reducing the
independence of the Hanlin secretaries.
Li Deyu took command of
the war against the Uighurs that killed 10,000 of them in 843.
The cost of wars, harem luxury, and the eunuch establishment caused
the
Daoist Wuzong to try to solve the financial crisis by reigning
in the economically
powerful Buddhist monasteries and their monks
that were exempt from taxation
by closing 40,000 shrines, melting
down their precious metals, confiscating their gems,
freeing their
150,000 slaves (dependents),
and returning 260,000 monks and nuns
to lay life.
Buddhist monasteries operated mills and oil presses,
provided loans, lodgings for travelers,
hospitals for the sick,
homes for the aged, and primary schools for poor children.
Other
foreign religions that had also been tolerated, such as Zoroastrians,
Nestorian Christians, and Manichaeans were closed down,
though
Jews and Muslims managed to survive.
The next emperor Xuanzong (r. 846-59) was elevated to the throne
by palace eunuchs
and immediately demoted Li Deyu, who was sent
to an island, where he died in 850.
Xuanzong revived Buddhism
after the three-year persecution,
executing eleven Daoist advisors
who had urged that policy.
Buddhists sects emphasizing rituals,
shrines, and temples did not revive as well as
the Pure Land and
Chan schools that emphasized prayer and meditation respectively.
During the first half of the 9th century much of the tax burden
had fallen
on the prosperous lower Yangzi provinces until they
could no longer be exploited.
Thus in the second half of the century
Tang administration gradually declined.
Insurrections began in
southern China in 856.
A revolt broke out in Annam in 858, and
the next year the Nan Zhao invaded.
At the same time the bandit
leader Qiu Fu revolted in Zhedong,
gathering peasants who had
abandoned their lands,
though in 860 Qiu Fu was captured.
Emperor
Yizong (r. 859-73) was chronically ill from taking Daoist elixirs,
and the hostility between the eunuchs and officials increased.
In 868 a mutiny in Pang Xun had to be put down by using tribal
cavalry
from beyond the Great Wall.
When Yizong's daughter died
after marrying Wei Baoheng in 870,
the Emperor executed her physicians
and put their families in jail.
Wei Baoheng then banished his
opponents, and the mayor of Chang'an committed suicide.
Yizong
did further his father's patronage of Buddhism.
Two eunuch generals raised Yizong's fifth son to the throne as
Xizong (r. 873-88).
In 874 a rebellion led by Huang Chao began
with defiance of the salt tax,
and brigandage became widespread
especially between the Yellow and Huai rivers.
Bandits attacked
prefectural cities and confederated into large organizations.
By 877 few areas of China were free of rebel activity,
but the
next year the Tang government began winning victories.
More mutinies
north of the Yellow River weakened imperial forces,
and in 879
rebels sacked Nanhai (Canton) and massacred foreign merchants.
The capitals of Luoyang and Chang'an were captured by 600,000
insurgents
led by Huang Chao in the next two years,
forcing the
Emperor to flee to Chengdu in Sichuan for four years.
During the
exile the court was divided by the hatred between the eunuchs
and the aristocratic officials and tried to raise revenue with
a monopoly tax on salt.
Irked by a critical poem, Huang Chao ordered
every poet killed
and made anyone who could write do menial labor;
more than 3,000 people were killed.
Two prefect governors defected
from the harsh Huang Chao.
In 883 Shato leader Li Koyong's Hodong
forces defeated the army of Huang Chao
and those of other provinces
before sacking the capital at Chang'an
that had been abandoned
again, leaving it in ruins.
The next year Huang Chao was cornered
and cut his own throat.
His former ally Zhu Wen was by now a military
governor.
Zhaozong (r. 888-904) merely tried to survive
while eunuchs were
in control of diminished territory.
Local militias were organized
by Wei Zhunjing to fight the rebels,
and by 892 his 34 militia
armies had about 45,000 men.
During the ten-year revolt, regional
commanders became independent.
By 901 eunuchs and ministers were
even injuring themselves to defeat their court enemies.
A struggle
for control in the north resulted in Zhu Wen setting up a puppet
emperor in 904
and usurping the throne himself three years later
when he moved the capital east to Bian (Kaifeng).
He thus ended
the Tang dynasty and founded the Later Liang dynasty (907-23)
during which wars continued to ravage northern China.
After the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907, northern China
was ruled by a sequence
of five dynasties until 960—Later Liang
907-23, Later Tang 923-36, Later Jin 936-46,
Later Han 946-50,
and Later Zhou 951-60.
At the same time ten kingdoms ruled fairly
consistently with eight of them in the south,
the Tangut in the
northwest, and the Khitans (Liao) in the far north.
Block printing
had been used to print books since at least the seventh century.
In 940 an anthology of lyric poetry was published that was called Amidst the Flowers
because many of the poems were about
courtesans.
Around the same time eleven Confucian classics were
printed in 130 volumes.
After the Later Han emperor was assassinated
at the end of 950,
the popular military leader Guo Wei proclaimed
the Great Zhou dynasty (951-60)
that unified most of northern
China and in 955 melted down precious metals
taken from Buddhist
shrines to make coins.
During this rebellious era many aristocratic
estates were taken over by their managers.
When the second Zhou
ruler, Guo Rong, was succeeded by his six-year-old son in 959,
soldiers rioted and made Zhao Kuangyin emperor.
He restrained
the military and founded the Song dynasty in 960.
Abaoji was born in 872, and in 901 he was elected chieftain
of the Yila tribe.
In 905 he led 70,000 cavalry in an attack on
Datong in Shanxi
and became the blood brother of Li Keyong.
Two
years later the chieftains recognized Abaoji as the great khan
of the Khitan nation.
He modeled the Liao government after the
Chinese, and in 918 had a capital built.
Abaoji called the military
department of the government the Northern Chancellery
and the
civil section the Southern Chancellery.
Although his empire took
in sedentary peoples,
the Khitans maintained the steppe traditions.
Under Abaoji the Khitans took over Inner Mongolia and southern
Manchuria,
and the Liao had regional capitals.
He extended the
Liao empire east to the Yalu and Ussuri rivers,
conquering the
Bohai kingdom, where he died of typhoid fever in 926.
Abaoji had
named his son Bei the prince of Dongdan and his successor,
and
the clan name Yelu was adopted by his dynasty.
However, Empress
Yingtian and others forced Bei to abdicate
and made her second
son Deguang the second Liao emperor.
Bei was drawn to Chinese
culture and in 934 urged the Khitans to invade northern China.
When the Khitans attacked in 936, the Later Tang ruler had Bei
assassinated.
In 940 an imperial decree abolished the Khitan custom
of making a younger sister
marry the husband of her dead older
sister.
The Liao demanded sixteen prefectures in northern China
from the Later Jin
and gained nineteen prefectures by invading
the capital at Kaifeng in March 947,
ending the Later Jin dynasty.
Yelu Deguang put on the imperial robes of the Chinese,
but he
left when the weather got warm and died of illness in May.
Dowager Empress Yingtian named Bei's son Wuyu as emperor.
The
short-lived Later Hans (947-51) pushed back the Khitans and destroyed
30,000 Buddhist monasteries and shrines in order to confiscate
their property.
When Wuyu was killed by a rebellious nephew in
951,
Deguang's son Yelu Jing became Emperor Muzong.
He was violent
and cruel, spending his time hunting and drinking;
when he started
killing his bodyguards, six attendants finally murdered him in
969.
Then the Liao line reverted to Bei's grandson Xian, who became
Emperor Jingzong.
In 979 the Khitans defended the Northern Han
and helped them defeat the attacking Song armies.
Jingzong's son
became Emperor Shengzong (r. 982-1031).
The Liao empire assimilated
Chinese immigrants and culture,
while treating badly the Bohai
people of eastern Manchuria.
The Khitans adopted the Chinese examination
system in 988
and began holding triennial exams.
In 1005 the Song
Chinese bought peace with the Khitans by offering to pay them
200,000 bolts of silk and 100,000 ounces of silver annually.
After
the Korean king was deposed in 1009, Shengzong led the Khitan
invasion with an
army reported to be 400,000 that burned the Korean
capital at Kaekyong (Kaesong).
The Liao made territorial demands,
but in 1019 Korea gained a favorable settlement.
The Bohai people
rebelled in 1029 but were put down the following year.
Xingzong
(r. 1031-55) was also interested in Chinese culture.
In 1036 the
Liao compiled their laws passed since Abaoji,
though conflicts
between the tribes and the Chinese continued.
A Liao edition of
the complete Buddhist Tripitaka was completed about 1075
while Daozong ruled the Liao from 1055 until 1101.
The last Liao ruler, Tianzuo (r. 1101-25), led the losing effort
against the Jurchens
until he fled west into the desert in 1122.
Nobles put his uncle on the throne as Tianxi,
and the Liao forces
fought off the Song invasion.
When Tianxi died in 1123, the Jurchens
recaptured the southern capital,
forcing Yelu Dashi and other
nobles to flee to join Tianzuo.
He led an attack on the Jurchens
but in 1125 was defeated, captured, and died in prison.
Meanwhile
Yelu Dashi and a few hundred followers
had crossed the Gobi Desert
to Zhenzhou.
He was given the Turkic title Gurkhan, meaning chief
of the khans.
In 1131 they moved northwest into Transoxiana and
eventually became known
as the Kara-Khitai, or Black Khitans.
Yelu Dashi died in 1143 and was succeeded by his son and grandson,
who ruled until they were absorbed by the Mongols in 1221.
Tangut chieftains of the Tuoba clan had been recognized
as
Xia dukes by the Tang empire in 883.
Using the imperial surname
Li, in 954 the Chinese acknowledged Li Yixing
as the king of Xiping,
and upon his death in 967 Song Taizu called him the king of Xia.
Like Korea in the east, the Xia in the west had to compete
with
both the Liao and the Song empires.
Li Jipeng became king of Xia
in 980 and two years later went to live at Kaifeng
as China's
military governor of Xi (Western) Xia.
His young cousin Li Jiqian
objected to this submission and fled to the desert in the north.
When the Song armies invaded the Khitans in 986,
Li Jiqian became
an ally of the Liao and attacked the Song forces.
He married a
Liao princess and in 990 was recognized by the Liao as king of
Xia.
The next year Li Jipeng came back from the Song court to
fight his cousin
and was called the king of Xiping by the Liao
court.
In 1004 Li Jiqian was killed fighting the Tibetans in the
west,
and Li Jipeng died the same year.
Jiqian's son Li Deming
became king and ruled the Xia until 1032.
Deming's son Yuanhao rejected the Li surname and thought his
father
had made Tanguts weak by accepting Chinese bribes.
He went
back to raiding, ordered a new script that used 6,000 characters,
and in 1038 proclaimed himself emperor of Da (Great) Xia.
Yuanhao
ordered Tangut clothing worn and all men to shave their heads
within three days or be decapitated.
He conscripted men older
than fourteen into his army and took the tribal nobility
into
his elite cavalry of 5,000.
The Song empire closed its borders
and became antagonistic.
In 1042 the Liao joined with the Xia
and threatened to invade China,
resulting in a new treaty that
increased the Song tribute to the Khitans
to 300,000 bolts of
silk and 200,000 ounces of silver.
The Xia demanded tribute also,
and in 1044 the Song
agreed to give them
130,000 bolts of silk,
50,000 ounces of silver, and 20,000 catties of tea annually,
plus
lavish gifts on three annual festivals and Yuanhao's birthday.
When Tangut tribes revolted in the Liao empire,
a Khitan army
of 100,000 crossed the border and defeated the Xia army.
Yuanhao
went to the Liao capital and returned to arouse
his own forces
that then defeated the Khitans.
In 1048 an opposing clan assassinated Yuanhao,
and the next
year the Liao took advantage of the chaos to invade again.
In
1061 the fourteen-year-old heir Li Liangzuo reversed his father's
policies
and adopted Chinese culture; but the Song court insulted
the Xia envoy in 1064,
causing border skirmishes for several years.
Li Liangzuo was called Emperor Yizong and died in 1068;
his son
Bingchang was only seven years old, and his mother ruled as regent.
When she sent him to an isolated garrison in 1081, civil strife
broke out.
In 1086 Bingchang's son became Emperor Chongzong at
the age of three.
Another regency lasted until the Empress was
poisoned by a Liao envoy in 1099,
and then Chongzong ruled until
1139.
He continued sinification and centralized his authority
over the tribal chiefs,
whom he appointed as kings.
Buddhism was
popular, and scriptures were translated
from Chinese and Tibetan
into Tangut.
While the Liao empire was being taken over by the
Jurchens,
the Song briefly made the Xia submit in 1119.
As the
last Liao emperor was fleeing,
the Xia emperor led a fight against
the Jurchens in 1122,
but the Xia were defeated the next year.
In 1127 the Xia made a treaty with the new Jin empire
that recognized
their superiority and redefined borders.
Xia emperor Renzong (r. 1139-93) succeeded his father at the
age of fifteen.
Renzong had a Chinese mother and favored Chinese
culture.
His extravagance burdened the Tangut people and aroused
rebellion.
In 1143 a severe earthquake and Yellow River flooding
devastated farmers.
Ren Dejing, a former Song military commander
whose daughter was an empress dowager, led the effort that suppressed
the rebellion.
Ren Dejing was named duke of Xiping and had an
extravagant court.
In 1170 he told the Emperor to divide the empire
and recognize his independent state of Chu, but Renzong refused.
Ren tried to send a messenger through Jin territory to the Song
state;
this was intercepted by the Xia, and Ren Dejing and his
faction were executed.
Renzong promoted Confucian education and
expanded
the National Academy his father had founded.
After Huanzong (r. 1194-1206) the Xia had four rulers
before
they succumbed to the Mongols in 1227.
The Mongols
first raided Xia in 1205, and four years later they surrounded
the capital.
In 1211 Li Zunxu usurped the throne from his nephew
and ruled as Shenzong until 1223.
He made peace with the Mongols
but refused to supply them with warriors in 1217.
The Mongols
surrounded the capital again.
The Jurchens refused to help; so
the Song and the Xia formed an alliance against the Jin.
In 1220
the Jin asked for help against the Mongols; but this time Shenzong
refused,
and the Jin defeated the Xia. In 1221 the Mongols occupied
Xia territory for two years.
The unpopular Shenzong abdicated
in 1223,
and the next emperor allied with the Jurchens against
the Mongols.
In 1226 Genghis
(Chinggis) Khan led the final
siege against the Xia capital,
but he died before the Mongols'
victory.
In 1227 the last Xia ruler surrendered and was butchered.
Like the Koreans and Manchus, the Jurchens used a Tungusic
branch of the Altaic language.
Wanyan Wugunai (1021-74) arose
as the leader of the wild Jurchens,
and his grandson was Wanyan
Aguda (1068-1123).
Aguda succeeded his older brother in 1114
and
attacked the Liao border defenses the next year.
In 1115 he founded
the Jin dynasty, and with an army of 10,000 defeated the Liao
army
that was at least ten times as large but retreated.
The fierce
Jurchens captured the Liao's eastern capital in 1116,
their main
northern capital in 1120, and in 1122 the central, western, and
southern capitals.
Aguda was advised by the scholarly Yang Pu,
who was a Bohai but had earned the highest jinshi degree.
He was experienced in the Liao's dual administration that the
Jurchens adopted.
Aguda made a treaty with the Song to return
the northern territory
the Khitans had occupied since 938.
However,
the Song armies failed to take the southern capital as promised.
The Jurchens turned over the city but only after looting it and
deporting the residents.
Aguda's brother Wuqimai was an effective administrator and
became Jin Taizong in 1123,
imposing an alliance on the Xi Xia
the next year.
In 1126 the Jurchens took back the Liao southern
capital
and then invaded the Song, surrounding Kaifeng.
Before
fleeing, Emperor Huizong abdicated to his son, who became Emperor
Qinzong.
Aguda's son, Wanyan Zongwang, was commander of the Eastern
Army
and made a treaty with the Song.
Qinzong surrendered, and
Huizong was captured;
both were sent into Manchuria to spend the
rest of their lives in exile.
From the Song treasury the Jin gained
150 million ounces of gold,
400 million ounces of silver, and
millions of bolts of silk,
plus weapons, manufactures, and artistic
productions.
Song emperor Gaozong (r. 1127-62) escaped by crossing
the Yangzi
and even going to sea for a while.
The Jurchens ordered
the Chinese men to shave the front of their heads
and wear Jurchen
clothing styles.
The Jin tried to establish a puppet regime as
the state of Qi until 1137
but then made the Huai River their
southern boundary.
Wuqimai abolished the council of the great
chieftains in 1134.
The Jurchens adopted the Chinese civil service
examinations but had a dual system
that enabled many Jurchens
to pass in their own language.
During the century-long Jin empire
more than 16,000 jinshi degrees were awarded.
Most chose
the literature exam that emphasized poetry,
and very few attempted
the most difficult test on history, statecraft, and philosophy.
About three million people, half of them Jurchens, migrated
south into northern China
over two decades, and this minority
governed about thirty million Chinese.
The Jurchens were given
land grants and organized society into
meng'an (one thousand
households) and mouke (one hundred households).
Many married
Chinese, although the ban on Jurchen nobles marrying Chinese
was
not lifted until 1191.
After Wuqimai died in 1135, the next three
Jin emperors
were grandsons of Aguda by three different princes.
Young Jin Xizong (r. 1135-49) studied the classics and wrote Chinese
poetry.
He adopted Chinese cultural traditions, but the Jurchen
nobles had the top positions.
In the winter of 1142 the Jin dynasty
made a treaty with the Song
that gave them annual tribute and
diplomatic respect.
Jin Xizong became an alcoholic and executed many Chinese officials
for criticizing him.
He also had Jurchen leaders who opposed him
murdered,
even those in his own Wanyan clan.
In 1149 he was murdered
by a cabal of relatives and nobles,
who made his cousin Wanyan
Liang the next Jin emperor.
He was also violent, and historians
refused to give him a posthumous name
as an emperor but only referred
to him as Prince Hailing.
In 1153 he moved the Jin capital to
the site of the old Liao southern capital,
which is now Beijing,
and four years later he had the old capital razed,
including the
nobles' residences.
He lavishly reconstructed the Song capital
of Bian (Kaifeng) as the Jin southern capital.
Hailing also tried
to suppress dissent by killing Jurchen nobles, executing 155 princes.
He spent two years preparing for a war against the southern Song.
His building and military expenses strained the resources,
and
in 1161 Khitans revolted in Manchuria.
Jurchen nobles rebelled
in southern Manchuria and were led by Wanyan Yong,
who was proclaimed
emperor in October, two months before the generals
assassinated
Hailing in his military camp after his defeat by the Song.
His
son and heir was also killed in the capital,
and Wanyan Yong became
Emperor Shizong.
Jin Shizong (r. 1162-89) attempted to revive the fading Jurchen
traditions.
The Khitan uprising was not suppressed until 1164;
their horses were confiscated so that the rebels had to take up
farming.
Other Khitan and Xia cavalry units had been incorporated
into the Jin army.
In the early 1180s Shizong instituted a restructuring
of 200 meng'an units
to remove tax abuses and help Jurchens.
Communal farming was encouraged.
The Jin empire prospered and
had a large surplus of grain in reserve.
Shizong's grandson, Emperor
Zhangzong (r. 1189-1208) venerated Jurchen values,
but he also
immersed himself in Chinese culture and married a Chinese woman.
The Taihe Code of law was promulgated in 1201 and was based mostly
on the Tang Code.
Near the end of his reign the Song Chinese tried
to invade,
but the Jin forces effectively repulsed them.
In the
peace agreement the Song had to pay higher annual indemnities
and behead Han Tuozhou, the leader of their war party.
Genghis Khan first led the Mongols
into Xi Xia territory in 1205
and ravaged them four years later.
In 1211 about 50,000 Mongols on
horses invaded the Jin empire
and began absorbing Khitan and Jurchen
rebels.
The Jin army had a half million men with 150,000 cavalry
but abandoned the western capital.
The next year the Mongols
went north and looted the Jin eastern capital,
and in 1213 they
besieged the central capital.
The next year the Jin made a humiliating
treaty but retained the capital.
That summer Emperor Jin Xuanzong
(r. 1213-24) abandoned the central capital
and moved the government
to the southern capital.
In 1216 a war faction persuaded Xuanzong
to attack the Song,
but in 1219 they were defeated at the same
place by the Yangzi River,
where Prince Hailing had been defeated
in 1161.
Emperor Jin Aizong (r. 1224-34) won a succession struggle
against his brother
and then quickly ended the war and went back
to the capital.
He made peace with the Tanguts, who had been allied
with the Mongols.
Genghis
Khan died in 1227 while his armies were conquering the Xia.
His son Ogodei invaded the Jin empire in 1232.
The Jurchens tried
to resist; but when the southern capital was attacked, Aizong
fled south.
The Mongols looted
the capital in 1233, and the next year
Aizong committed suicide
to avoid being captured, ending the Jin dynasty.
General Zhao Kuangyin was chosen commander of the imperial
army
by the last Zhou emperor in 959 after gold he had been accused
of taking
during a military campaign turned out to be trunks of
books.
The next year the army hailed him as the emperor of China,
and as Song Taizu he founded the Song dynasty (960-1279).
The
ingenious Taizu (r. 960-76) managed to accomplish "disarmament
over a wine-cup"
by persuading his generals to retire with
generous pensions and honors.
He dismissed old commanders and
relied on younger generals
who followed his humane policies.
He
also strengthened the central government
by transferring the best
military units to the capital.
Regional governments were put under
civilian authority emphasizing
the Confucian spirit of administration.
Scholars became prominent advisors,
and taxes were reduced as
the emperor lived modestly.
Having superior force, Taizu was able
to use diplomacy and accommodating terms
to bring back into the
Chinese empire the southwest (965), the south (971),
and the Yangzi
basin (975).
Thanks to the book-loving emperor, the imperial library
founded in 978 had 80,000 volumes.
Taizu made peace with the Liao
in 974 and set up garrisons along the northern border.
Taizu was succeeded by his brother, who became known as Song
Taizong (r. 976-97).
He broke the peace by invading the Northern
Han territory in 979
and besieging their capital at Taiyuan.
After
they surrendered in June, the Song army invaded the Liao.
However,
his exhausted troops were badly defeated by the Khitan cavalry,
as Emperor Taizong fled in a mule cart.
Some generals considered
replacing him with Taizu's oldest son.
When the Emperor heard
of the idea, he forced him to commit suicide.
Taizu's other son
died of illness two years later.
In 982 the brother of Taizong
and Taizu was accused of treason,
and he died in exile two years
later.
The Chinese bought 170,000 horses from the Khitan
and consolidated
a more compact empire.
Annam (Vietnam) repelled a Song campaign
in 981,
and the Chinese armies were badly defeated again five
years later by the Khitan Liao.
After several battles ended in
stalemate, Emperor Zhenzong (998-1022)
in the 1005 treaty of Shanyuan
agreed to pay the Liao an annual tribute
of silver and silk if
the Khitans would stay on the north side of the Great Wall.
Better
civil service examinations improved the quality of the Song bureaucracy,
and paper money was introduced as promissory notes in 1024.
As
the Song army grew from 378,000 in 976 to 1,259,000 in 1041,
military
expenses took up four-fifths of government expenditures.
Taizong
and Zhenzong were Daoists and sponsored the building of Daoist
temples.
Fan Zhongyan (989-1052) rose from a poor family by study
and
became prefect of the capital at Kaifeng.
In 1043 he submitted
a ten-point memorial.
He proposed reforming the civil service
by promoting the able, dismissing the incompetent,
eliminating
favoritism, and making exam questions more practical.
Local government
could be improved by increasing salaries,
by making corvée
labor requirements more equitable, and by investing in dykes,
canals, land reclamation, and grain transportation.
Localities
could be better defended by creating militias,
especially on the
dangerous frontiers.
His policies also brought about a new peace
treaty with the Liao in 1042
and one with the Xi Xia empire in
1044.
Fan's reforms established inalienable lands called estates
of equity to provide income
for educational and other needs of
clan members,
thus enabling a charitable estate to hold property
jointly for the benefit of all its members.
Fan Zhongyan said,
"An educated person should suffer before anyone else suffers
and should enjoy only after everyone else has enjoyed."3
He recommended The Center of Harmony (Zhong Yong)
as a Confucian classic
and helped catalog the library along with
historian Ouyang Xiu,
who suggested adding as a classic Higher
Education (Da Xue).
Ouyang defended Fan from his critics by
arguing that a political faction could be good.
This idea was
denounced by conservative Confucians,
who prevented political
parties from developing in China.
Ouyang was put in charge of
compiling the New Tang History,
which was completed in
1060.
He lamented the split between politics and culture since
the era of pure conversation;
he believed that politics without
culture lacks soul and is corrupted,
while culture without politics
loses touch with reality and is superficial.
In 1047 army officer Wangzi led a revolt of Buddhists expecting
Maitreya;
they took over the city of Beizhou in Hebei before they
were crushed.
Buddhism was becoming corrupted by selling certification
of monks
as an alternative to passing an examination on the scriptures.
In 1067 the Song government made the sale of such certificates
official policy.
Powerful families appropriated temples as merit
cloisters,
but in 1109 a decree stopped this for officially recognized
temples,
and four years later the merit cloisters lost their tax
exemptions.
The prestigious title Master of the Purple Robe was
also sold, and by 1129
it was estimated that annual sales of such
Buddhist titles were up to about five thousand.
The booming money economy is indicated by the statistic that
the Song government in 1065
was taking in twenty times as much
cash annually as it did at the height of Tang power in 749.
Rice
yields were doubled in the 11th century when a new strain from
Champa (Vietnam)
produced two or three crops per year.
Tea cultivation
grew, and in the 12th century cotton
began supplementing hemp
and silk for clothing.
Technical advances were made in the traditional
industries
of silk, lacquer, and porcelain as trade increased.
In 1078 Song China produced 114,000 tons of cast iron.
(England
produced 68,000 in 1788.)
As urban population and the number of
wealthy people increased, importation of luxuries
such as incense,
gems, ivory, coral, rhinoceros horns, ebony,
and sandalwood caused a deficit paid in precious metals.
Business calculations were
facilitated by using the abacus.
The Chinese also invented gunpowder and used it militarily
as early as 904.
They began experimenting with explosive devices,
and primitive mortars date from 1132.
Chinese shipping in well
designed junks using the compass pioneered sailing
and water-tight
compartments, and a navy was developed.
The status of women declined
as men took additional wives or concubines,
and the atrocity of
foot-binding began crippling girls for life.
Prostitution was
common in urban areas;
those with musical training were called
"sing-song girls," others simply "flowers."
The city of Hangzhou tried to prohibit male prostitution with
a decree in 1111,
but apparently the effort only lasted six years.
The Chinese had been printing with blocks on paper for centuries
when they began using moveable type made of wood, porcelain, and
copper about 1030.
In the middle of the 10th century the nine
classics were printed at Kaifeng and in Sichuan,
where at Chengdu
the entire Buddhist canon was engraved on 130,000 two-page blocks
and printed between 972 and 983.
Sima Guang (1018-86) wrote an
immense chronicle of China's history
from 403 BC to 959 CE called The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government,
which Yuan
Shu (1131-1205) revised into a smoother narrative
and to which
Zhu Xi (1130-1200) made moral judgments as to which
governments'
claims to the mandate of heaven were legitimate.
Reform began when Emperor Shenzong (r.1068-85)
appointed poet
Wang Anshi (1021-86) prime minister.
Wang's new laws and regulations
brought drastic changes.
Farmers suffering outrageous usury received
"green shoots loans" from the government
at 20% interest
at the time of planting that was paid back after the harvest.
Traders were given loans at state pawnshops.
The money economy
was stimulated by increasing the supply of currency,
and prices
were stabilized by government agencies
buying and selling commercial products at a profit.
Land tax was cut in half and was progressively
based on its size and productivity.
The hated compulsory labor
demanded from peasants was converted into a reasonable tax.
Large
government projects reclaimed wasteland and improved irrigation
and flood control,
and other such projects were encouraged with
government loans.
The government hired workers to reduce unemployment.
Subsidizing a horse on each farm was intended to improve the army,
which lacked a cavalry to match the northerners.
Villages were
made responsible for organizing militias, as the regular army
was reduced.
Wang Anshi instituted the famous baojia system
that organized households
into tens (bao) and hundreds
(jia) so that they could maintain order
and report crimes
with collective responsibility.
Wang Anshi also established an imperial public school system
and specialized training
in practical professions such as the
military, law, and medicine
as well as in the Confucian classics.
During the Song dynasty education spread to more people
as scholars
became teachers in even the smallest villages.
Merit promotion
and better pay attempted to improve bureaucratic performance.
The state began to take on social welfare functions previously
provided
by Buddhist monasteries, instituting public orphanages,
hospitals,
dispensaries, hospices, cemeteries, and reserve granaries.
Buddhism gave women a professional role as nuns,
although their
rules treated the nuns as inferior to the monks.
Family clans
also took care of their own with the estates of equity,
and improved
literacy helped them follow Confucian traditions.
The radical
reforms naturally met with resistance from powerful landowners,
merchants, and moneylenders whose opportunities for exploitation
were diminished,
the most opposition coming from the conservative
north.
Disruptions in implementation brought criticism from orthodox
bureaucrats
and others objecting to government regulation from
the top.
Factionalism sabotaged the administration of the programs.
In 1074 a famine was made worse because farmers were forced to
borrow money
they could not pay back.
After the drought Wang Anshi
was dismissed in 1076.
He was recalled four years later;
but he
was forced out again when his policies were reversed in 1085.
Perhaps the best example of a Song renaissance man is Su Shi
(Su Dongpo 1037-1101).
Lin Yutang in his biography, The Gay
Genius, described Su Shi as among other things
a humanitarian,
painter, calligrapher, wine-maker, engineer,
imperial secretary,
judge, political dissenter, and poet.
In 1070 and the next year
Su Shi wrote two long letters to the Emperor.
He criticized Wang
Anshi for claiming to make government loans to farmers
without
interest while collecting twenty percent.
He asked the Emperor
not to use force,
which since history began has never been able
to suppress the people.
Banning officials causes more protest,
and he asked
how extreme punishments can prevent rebellion.
He
complained that Wang Anshi arbitrarily fired censors who criticized
his policies
and replaced them with two disreputable characters.
The ruler's power depends on the support of the people in their
hearts.
When freedom of speech is destroyed, the best people are
silenced.
Censors need to be given freedom and responsibility.
Su Shi's protesting the bringing back of mutilation as a punishment
may have prevented that.
In his official position Su Shi announced
the subject for local examinations
in 1071 as "On Dictatorship,"
angering Wang Anshi.
Su Shi escaped punishment this time, but eight years later
he was charged by censors
with slandering the government with
his poetry.
He was arrested and tried at court, and they argued
over the interpretation of his poems;
but the emperor only sent
him into exile in Huangzhou with a low rank.
Su Shi urged the
building of dams, instituted prison physicians, forgave debts,
and worked on famine relief, collecting and feeding famine orphans.
He was the first we know of who protested the custom of drowning
girl babies at birth.
He organized a charitable foundation that
collected money to give to parents
who would promise to keep their
children.
In 1083 he wrote a letter to the chief magistrate of
Uozhou,
where poor farmers tended to raise only two sons and one
daughter,
drowning additional babies; the result was more males
and many bachelors in that region.
He observed that because of
parental love if the babies were saved for a few days,
the parents
would even refuse to give them away for adoption.
He urged the
official to enforce the law that imposed two years' hard labor
on anyone
who killed a descendant, hoping that this would be a
warning and stop the horrible custom.
Wang Anshi died within a year of Emperor Shenzong, and the
Empress Dowager,
acting as
regent for the young successor Zhezong
(r. 1086-1100), rescinded most of the reforms.
When she died in
1093, Zhezong tried to reinstate the reforms;
but once again tax
evasion by powerful landowners put the burden on the poor.
Complaints
by Su Shi caused him to be demoted
and exiled again along with
more than thirty high officials.
As factionalism from nepotism
caused corruption and cheating on examinations,
artistic Emperor
Huizong (r. 1100-25) spent money on more schools, irrigation,
land reclamation, Daoist temples, the arts, and a lavish palace
garden
while confiscating art objects throughout the empire.
Such
demands for "rare flowers and stones" in 1120 caused
Fang La to lead a revolt
with hundreds of thousands of followers
that captured Hangzhou;
but two years later the rebellion was
crushed by imperial forces relying on foreign troops,
as two million
people were killed.
Prime minister Cai Jing and the eunuch military
commissioner, Tong Guan,
kept Emperor Huizong ignorant of uprisings
as long as they could.
Song Jiang led a small band of rebels that
held out at Liang-shan in Shandong
for two years and later became
the basis for the popular novel, Outlaws of the Marsh.
In 1120 Tong Guan secretly negotiated with envoys
of the Jurchens
in order to destroy the Liao.
Unable to capture the Liao's southern
capital, the Song asked the Jurchen for help,
allowing them south
of the Great Wall.
With victory over the Liao achieved, the Song
wanted their old provinces back;
but the Jurchen, calling themselves
Jin, were unhappy with the broken treaty of 1123,
though they
inaugurated the examination system that year.
The next year the
Xi Xia agreed to be the vassal of the Jin,
who also captured the
last Liao emperor Tianzo in 1125, reducing him to a prince.
Then
the Jin besieged Kaifeng, and Song Huizong abdicated to his son,
who became Qinzong.
In 1126 Tong Guan was executed, and Cai Jing
was banished and assassinated.
Qinzong sued for peace, but he
and the capital
were captured by the Jurchen army in 1127.
Qinzong's brother Gaozong (r. 1127-62) became the first emperor
of the southern Song dynasty south of the Huai River.
He had criticized
the use of eunuchs in court positions.
When he did not immediately
eliminate the influence of eunuchs in his court,
in February 1129
a cabal forced him to abdicate to his infant son.
Dozens of rival
courtiers and eunuchs were executed,
but in April military leaders
from around the country
came and restored Gaozong, ousting the
conspirators.
On the 26th of January 1130 Gaozong escaped from
the Jurchen army by boarding a ship.
On the same day Prince Zongbi
and the Jurchens captured Hangzhou.
The Song emperor returned
to the mainland in June but stayed at Shaoxing until 1133.
The
next year General Yue Fei led a daring attack against the puppet
regime of Qi
that had occupied territory north of the Yangzi.
A peasant uprising led by Yang Yao killed and plundered while
trying to implement
the revolution advocated by Zhong Xiang, who
wanted to pass a law
making the rich and poor equal.
The rebellion
was suppressed by Yue Fei's army by 1135,
and he incorporated
50,000 of the rebels into his "Yue family army."
That
year Gaozong established a court at Hangzhou,
which he renamed
Linan, meaning temporary safety.
While Emperor Gaozong was negotiating a peace treaty with the
Jin empire in 1140,
Yue came to Hangzhou to protest.
In 1142 Gaozong
agreed to be a vassal of the Jin and pay an annual tribute
of
300,000 taels of silver and an equal number of bolts of silk.
Two generals accepted retirement on pensions, but Yu Fei was arrested
for insubordination and was poisoned by Chief Councilor Qin Gui.
Many considered Yu Fei a patriotic hero, and his grandson Yue
Ke
labored to give him an honored place in history.
Putting back
into cultivation the rice fields south of the Huai River ruined
in the war
profited the wealthy who had the capital to invest.
Qin Gui (1090-1155) replenished the imperial treasury by increasing
taxes;
but as the Jin broke the treaty, continual wars pushed
up prices and taxes.
During the failed Jin invasion of 1161, Xin
Qiji (1140-1207)
defected to the Song with a thousand troops.
He stayed in southern China and became an outstanding poet.
In
1162 Gaozong abdicated so that his stepson could become Emperor
Xiaozong,
and he remained as his advisor at court until he died
in 1187.
In 1164 internal strife in the Jin government enabled the Song
to gain equal status and reduce the tribute.
Xiaozong was grieved
by his father's death and abdicated in 1189; he died five years
later.
His son Guangzong (r. 1190-94) was so mentally disturbed
that he did not even give his father a funeral.
He was forced
to abdicate in favor of his grandson Ningzong (r. 1195-1224).
Zhao Ruyu gained influence and appointed the Neo-Confucian philosopher
Zhu Xi
to a high position, but Han Tuozhou, who was criticized
for making nepotistic appointments,
replaced Zhao as chief councilor
in 1195 and accused Zhu Xi of "false learning."
Han
banned Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian doctrines and
compelled examination
candidates to renounce that school.
Zhu Xi was driven from the
court in 1196 and died in 1200,
but he was restored to his official
rank and awarded honors in 1202.
As the scholars became martyrs,
Han rescinded his order.
He tried to win bureaucratic support
by going to war against the Jurchens' Jin empire in 1206
even
though deputy war minister Yeshi refused to draft the declaration.
The Song army of 160,000 men met 135,000 Jin forces along the
Huai River.
In heavy rain most of the Song soldiers deserted.
Though weakened by Mongol attacks and flooding as the Yellow River
changed its course,
the Jurchens defeated the Song army, discrediting
the ungentle approach of Han Tuozhou.
In Sichuan governor-general
Wuxi defected with his 70,000 soldiers,
but some loyal officers
murdered him in 1207.
The next year the Song agreed to a treaty
with the Jin but had to pay more tribute
and send them the head
of Han Tuozhou in a box.
Chief Councilor Shi Miyuan (1164-1233)
had Han secretly assassinated in order to comply.
Shi Miyuan developed more subtle methods and appointed some
followers of Zhu Xi.
He succeeded in choosing as the next emperor
the younger heir Lizong (r. 1225-64),
who indulged in pleasures
concealed from the public,
as did his successor Duzong (r. 1265-74).
Jia Sidao (1213-75) became chief councilor in 1259
and was criticized
by Confucian historians.
He dismissed incompetent ministers, bureaucrats,
and army officers,
making generals accountable for misappropriating
funds.
In 1263 the government began buying for a low price one-third
of the largest estates,
using the money for the army in the crisis
and to institute
a system of public fields for landless farmers.
Threatened by Mongols who honored Confucius and in 1237 reinstituted
civil service exams
in north China, the southern Song dynasty
made Zhu Xi's writings
the orthodox doctrine of the state.
Even
though he attempted to defend the middle kingdom from the Mongol
invasion,
Jia Sidao was blamed for the defeats even by those who
had defected to the enemy.
He was banished in 1274 and was murdered
by a local official.
The gentle and scholarly Song dynasty had lasted more than
three centuries,
but a bloated bureaucracy supported by high taxes
gradually caused decline.
Misconduct, corruption, and tax evasion
put too much of the burden on the poor,
though this had been alleviated
for a long time by the prosperous urban areas.
Few rebellions
occurred in this peaceful state, as the military life was devalued
and left to the "worthless," a point made indelible
by branding the face of Song soldiers.
Such an army was no match
for the Mongols, who recruited many Chinese.
The capital at Linan
fell in 1276, and the three young children of Duzong
were named
as emperors in the last three years of the Song dynasty,
which
ended when the Mongols destroyed their naval fleet off Guangzhou
(Canton) in 1279.
Influenced by Daoism, Zhou Dunyi (1017-73) commented on the
Yi Jing (Book of Changes)
and explained the cosmic diagram of the great ultimate
in a new
way according to Confucian philosophy that emphasizes ethics.
Superior people cultivate moral qualities and enjoy good fortune,
while the inferior violate them and suffer.
Following The
Center of Harmony (Zhong
Yong), Zhou Dunyi believed the foundation
of a sage comes
from cheng, which means sincerity, honesty, integrity,
and authenticity.
From this integrity he derived the five traditional
Confucian virtues of humanity, justice,
propriety, wisdom, and
faithfulness.
Humanity is loving; justice is doing what is right;
propriety is putting things in order;
wisdom is penetrating; and
faithfulness is abiding by one's commitments.
Zhou Dunyi explained
that in human nature are strength and weakness, good and evil,
and the mean (center).
Justice, uprightness, decisiveness, strictness, and firmness of action are
examples of strength that is good, and fierceness, narrow-mindedness,
and violence are examples of strength that is evil.
Kindness, mildness, and humility are examples of weakness that is good,
and softness, indecision, and perverseness
are examples of weakness that is evil.
Only the mean brings harmony.
The mean is the principle of regularity,
the universally recognized law of morality,
and is that to which the sage is devoted.
Therefore the sage institutes education so as to enable people
to transform their evil by themselves,
to arrive at the mean and to rest there.
Therefore those who are the first to be enlightened should instruct those
who are slower in attaining enlightenment, and the ignorant
should seek help from those who understand.
Thus the way of teachers is established.
As the way of teachers is established, there will be many good people.
With many good people, the government will be correct
and the empire will be in order.4
Thus when a sage governs the empire, everything is cultivated
by humanity,
and all people are set right with justice.
Governing
an extensive empire with millions of people begins with purifying
the heart.
The pure in heart do not violate humanity, justice,
propriety, and wisdom.
The virtuous and talented will be attracted
to the pure,
and with their help the empire can be well governed.
Zhou Dunyi also recommended appropriate ceremonies and music for
harmony.
To be impartial toward others one must first be impartial toward
oneself.
The most valuable things in the world are moral principles
and virtue,
but these cannot be attained without the help of teachers
and friends.
At birth humans are ignorant, and they remain stupid
if they have no teachers or friends to help them.
Zhou Dunyi complained
that people have faults,
but they do not like others to correct
them.
He thought it lamentable that, like one hiding illness and
avoiding a physician,
people would rather destroy their lives
than awake.
Better people consider moral principles honor and
peace in themselves wealth.
Integrity leads to action, change,
and transformation,
and the way of the sage is absolutely impartial.
Having no desires in peace leads to emptiness and enlightenment,
while in movement it leads to straightforwardness, impartiality,
and universality.
Zhang Zai (1020-77) returned to Confucian classics
after years
of studying Daoism and Buddhism.
His teachings were encapsulated
in "The Western Inscription" on the wall of his lecture
hall.
He began this by declaring heaven his father and earth his
mother,
as he regarded the universe as his body and what directs
it as his nature
with all people his brothers and sisters and
all things his companions.
He recommended treating elders with
deep respect and showing deep love
toward the young, orphans,
and the weak.
The sage identifies with heaven and earth, and to
disobey violates virtue.
Those who destroy humanity are robbers.
One knowing the principles of transformation, putting moral nature
into practice,
and penetrating spirit skillfully carries forward
its will.
Do nothing shameful to dishonor your family.
While believing
that wealth, honor, blessing, and benefits enriched his life,
Zhang Zai found that poverty, humble action, and sorrow helped
him to fulfillment.
In life he served and followed, and in death
he expected to be at peace.
Zhang Zai's major work is called Correcting Youthful Ignorance
(Zheng-meng).
He too emphasized integrity.
One's nature is
the source of all things but not one's private possession.
The
great know and practice it, sharing knowledge with all and loving
universally.
Such a one achieving something wants others to achieve
too.
Those fully developing their nature may realize they possess
nothing in life and lose nothing at death.
"Those who understand
the higher things return to the principle of heaven (nature),
while those who understand lower things follow human desires."5
The sage differentiates what is one's concern
and does not worry
about the natural operation of destiny (mandate of heaven).
Yet
by assisting heaven productions may be brought to perfection.
Those who understand virtue will have sufficient physical things
and will not allow
sensual desires to burden their mind, the small
to injure the great,
or the secondary to destroy the fundamental.
One's true nature is never insincere or disrespectful,
and so
he concluded that those who act in these ways do not know their
nature.
Sincere people obey principle and find advantages,
whereas
the insincere disobey principle and meet harm.
The wise regard
everything in the world as their own self,
for nothing is outside
of vast heaven.
Thus the mind that leaves something out cannot
unite itself with the mind of heaven.
The brothers Cheng Hao (1032-85) and Cheng Yi (1033-1107) both
studied
with Zhou Dunyi and became important Neo-Confucian philosophers.
Cheng Hao gained prominence helping to avert a famine by saving
the dikes,
and for three years he was a popular magistrate;
but
he opposed the reforms of Wang Anshi, was demoted, and later dismissed.
More idealistic than his brother, Cheng Hao based the other four
virtues on humanity,
which he believed is preserved by integrity
and seriousness (jing).
The feelings of sages are in accord
with all creation,
and they have no feelings of their own.
Thus
the better person is trained by becoming broad and impartial
in
order to respond spontaneously to whatever comes.
Most people's
nature is obscured in some aspect so they cannot follow the Way,
usually because of selfishness.
The selfish cannot take purposive
action in response to things.
Anger is a difficult emotion to
control; but if one can forget anger
and look at the right and
wrong of the matter according to principle,
one will see that
the external temptation need not be hated.
Original nature is
like clear water; but humans must make vigorous efforts
at purification,
because evil often clouds the water.
Cheng Hao believed that investigating principle, developing
one's nature,
and fulfilling destiny can be accomplished simultaneously.
The student does not need to look far away but to search seriously
within oneself to understand the principle of humanity.
Selfishness
causes people to belittle others;
but if they could view all people
in the same way, what joy there would be!
Cheng Hao admired Zhou
Dunyi for not cutting the grass outside his window,
because he
felt toward the grass as he felt toward himself.
Cheng Hao summarized
humanity as implying impartiality,
justice as a standard for weighing
what is proper, propriety as distinguishing differences,
wisdom
as knowing, and faithfulness as confidence.
Both brothers agreed
that seriousness is straightening one's internal life,
while justice
is squaring one's external life.
For Hao every human mind possesses
knowledge;
but when it is obscured by human desires,
the principle
of heaven is forgotten.
Along with humanity he valued altruism,
which puts oneself in the position of others.
He criticized the
Buddhists for being devoted to their own selfishness.
Cheng Yi briefly served as director of education in the western
capital in 1087,
but censors criticized him so much he soon resigned.
He was banished ten years later, and in 1103 his teachings were
prohibited;
three years later he was pardoned, but the ban lasted
for a half century.
Cheng Yi emphasized the extension of knowledge
as the key to self-cultivation.
He warned against the reckless
feelings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, joy, love, hate,
and desire
which must be controlled according to the center,
as one rectifies
one's mind and nourishes nature.
The virtues must be practiced
with such determination that they will never leave
one's heart
even in moments of haste so that one will act according to them
in difficult times.
Like Socrates, Cheng Yi believed that those
claiming to know evil and still doing it
do not have true knowledge.
When knowledge is profound, action will be thorough.
No one ever knows without being able to act.
If one knows without being able to act, the knowledge is superficial.6
Desires lead people away from the principle of heaven (nature);
without desires there will be no delusion.
Love is the function
of humanity, and it is applied in altruism.
Being serious is to
be unselfish; but lacking it allows thousands of desires
to arise
and injure one's humanity.
Understanding principle enables one
to know the mandate of heaven,
which can only be changed by a
virtuous person.
Cheng Yi recommended several ways one may investigate moral
principles
such as reading books, discussing people and events
of the past and present,
and handling affairs so as to settle
them correctly.
Knowledge about moral nature does not come from
seeing or hearing;
first a student must learn to doubt.
Humanity
is universal impartiality and the foundation of goodness.
Principle
is one and is inherent in all things, but things are managed by
moral principles.
In the 12th century the more idealistic school of Neo-Confucianism
was best
represented by Lu Xiangshan (1139-93) who debated Zhu
Xi.
In a lecture comparing justice to profit Lu Xiangshan moved
his audience to tears.
He castigated Buddhists for withdrawing
from the world
out of desire for profit and selfishness,
while
he believed Confucians were public-spirited in working to put
the world in order.
He found moral principles inherent in the
human mind
and believed they could not be wiped out;
but they
are clouded by material desires which pervert principles,
because
people do not think.
Self-examination and intelligent thought
can awaken the sense of right and wrong.
In addition to self-examination
he emphasized genuine and personal concern,
correcting one's mistakes,
and reforming to do good.
He noted that the universe never separates
itself from humans;
but humans separate themselves from the universe.
Zhu Xi (1130-1200) as a young man left the capital because
he opposed
the humiliating peace terms with the northern invaders.
Declining official positions, he devoted himself to study until
1179
when he was appointed a prefect.
However, he was demoted
three years later for criticizing
the incompetence of various
officials.
Later he served for a time as a prefect in his native
Fujian.
Zhu Xi was responsible for editing and grouping the four
books of the
Analects of Confucius,
Mencius, The
Center of Harmony , and Higher
Education.
With his and Cheng Yi's commentaries on them
and the five older classics
they became the basis for civil service
examinations in 1313
until the exams were abolished in 1905.
His
extensive writings were collected in 36 volumes.
In 1195 Neo-Confucian
teachings were proscribed,
and a censor accused Zhu Xi of ten
crimes, mostly for "false learning."
When he died, several
thousand people attended his funeral,
and he was honored posthumously
with the title for culture.
Zhu Xi defined humanity as the character of the human mind
and the principle of love.
This virtue he believed embraced justice,
propriety, and wisdom.
He posited an invariably good principle
before physical form existed;
but after physical form exists,
good and evil become mixed and confused.
Deviating from the center
results in evil.
He defined seriousness (reverence) as the mind
being its own master,
enabling it to be tranquil and understand
the principle of heaven (nature).
If selfish human desires win
though, this principle is destroyed.
If one can forget anger and
examine right and wrong according to principle,
desires will be
unable to persist.
Zhu Xi valued both knowledge and action, considering
knowledge prior
but action more important.Moral principles are
inexhaustible;
the more we go into them, the more we discover.
Principle can be investigated by reading books and handling affairs.
For Zhu Xi the virtues of humanity, justice, propriety, and
wisdom enable people
to have the feelings of empathy, shame, deference
and compliance, and right and wrong.
He distinguished the relative
good and evil of the world
from the transcendent and absolute
quality of the original nature.
The Way is everywhere, but it
is found by returning to the self and is discovered
within one's
true nature and function.
Because we possess the cardinal virtues,
we know that others do too.
The mind by using its inherent moral
principle is master of the body.
By eliminating the obstructions
of selfish desires, the mind will be pure and clear
and able to
know all.
Then the principle of heaven (nature) freely operates
as humanity.
Its principles are love and impartiality.
Zhu Xi
defined the great ultimate as the principle of the highest good
that is in everyone and expresses all the virtues.
Cheng Hao said
that the wise have no mind of their own,
because the mind of heaven
and earth is in all things;
they have no feelings of their own,
because their feelings are in accord with all creation.
Zhu Xi
noted that when a person receives this mind of heaven and earth,
then it becomes the human mind.
Zhu Xi wrote the manual Family Rituals that influenced
social customs
such as initiation into adulthood, weddings, funerals,
and other ceremonies.
He has been criticized for restricting the
roles of women and the young.
Zhu Xi emphasized the importance
of correct human relationships,
and he believed that learning
is the main goal in human life.
Zhu Xi put together an anthology of Neo-Confucian teachings
called
Reflections on Things at Hand, in which he commented
on the writings of
Zhou Dunyi, the Cheng brothers, and Zhang Zai.
Cheng Yi wrote that only the humane person can be free from aggressiveness,
pride, resentment, and greed, although others with these defects
may be able
to suppress them and not practice them, a difficult
task.
Zhu Xi gave the following analogy:
To master oneself is like capturing a thief in the house.
If one kills the thief, there will be no more trouble.
But if one has aggressiveness, pride, resentment, and greed
and merely suppresses them so that they cannot be expressed,
it is like locking up the thief in the house so that
he cannot go out to commit any crime.
After all, he is still hidden there.7
Cheng Hao noted that controlling anger and fear are difficult.
Anger can be controlled by mastering oneself,
and fear can be
controlled by understanding principle.
Cheng Yi wrote that one
should criticize one's own mistakes
but should not retain the
sense of guilt in the mind forever.
Cheng Yi has been criticized by many scholars for taking a
hard line on widows remarrying,
which he considered a lack of
integrity.
Even when asked if they could remarry when they are
all alone
and poor with no one they can depend on,
he wrote that
they should starve to death,
which he considered a small matter
compared to losing one's integrity.
This harsh statement reflects
the Neo-Confucians' intolerance regarding women.
In governing,
Cheng Yi suggested first priority should be given to
making up
the mind (decisiveness), delegating responsibility,
and finding
virtuous men to take responsibility.
In being decisive he warned
against following too rigidly the advice of those nearby
or being
fooled by public opinion; rather one should take responsibility
oneself,
rely on the teachings of the wise, and consider the practical
measures of the ancient kings.
Sincerely treating others is practicing
the golden rule of doing to them
what one would want others to
do to oneself.
The ruler should extend humanity so that the people
of the empire
are benefited by his kindness.
But to show off small
kindness while violating principles in order to solicit praise,
hoping to gain associates, is a narrow way that may not succeed.
Cheng Yi warned against individuals manipulating for themselves.
The world was united in one mind when farmers, artisans, and merchants
were diligent and lived simply; but lately people turn their minds
to glory,
and millions compete for wealth and extravagance.
How
can the world fail to become chaotic when there is such confusion?
Cheng Yi recommended education as a way to stop robbery.
People
with desires will be moved to act.
For the uneducated driven by
hunger and cold even harsh punishments
applied daily will not
overcome the desires of millions of people for gain.
When people
are well educated to practice their occupations and understand
the principles of integrity and shame,
they will not steal even
if they are rewarded for it.
Zhang Zai pointed out that the wise employed military strategy
and army regulations with great reluctance.
He recommended bringing
back the punishment of mutilation as a substitute
for the death
penalty in some cases.
The Neo-Confucians did not always emphasize
the control of feelings.
Cheng Hao wrote that the way to govern
the people is to enable them
to express their feelings, and the
way to manage officials is to make oneself correct
so as to influence
people.
Having synthesized some of the mystical elements from
Daoism and Buddhism
with the educational and humane ethics of
the Confucians,
this Neo-Confucian philosophy, after a short period
of being eclipsed
by the Mongols' affinity with Buddhism,
would
dominate Chinese culture until the 20th century.
The value the Chinese placed on literature is well expressed
by Lu Ji (261-303)
in his "Poetic Exposition on Literature"
(Wen fu).
The functioning of literature lies in its being
The means for all principles of nature.
It spreads thousands of miles and nothing can bar it;
It passes millions of years, is a ford across.
Ahead it grants models to ages coming,
Retrospectively contemplates images of old.
It succors the old kings' Way, on the verge of collapse;
It makes reputation known, does not let it be lost.
No path lies so far it cannot be included;
No principle so subtle it cannot be woven in.
Peer of clouds and rain with its nurturing moisture,
Divinity's semblance in its transformations.
When it covers metal and stone, virtue is spread;
Through strings and flutes flowing, it is daily made new.9
Poetry was so popular in Tang China that candidates for the
civil service
had to submit poems they wrote.
In 1707 a complete
collection of Tang dynasty poetry published 48,900 poems.
For
the most part Chinese poetry expresses an esthetic appreciation
of nature and life
that is often a retreat from social and ethical
issues.
Wang Bo (648-76) was dismissed from the Historical Department
for satirizing the imperial princes' indulgence in cock-fighting.
The Buddhist Wang Wei (c. 699-761) believed he brought forward
his ability
as a painter from a previous life, but in this age
he turned out to be a writer.
Wang Wei's poems describe a simple
life in nature,
as this one called "Villa on Zhongnan Mountain."
In my middle years I came to much love the Way
and late made my home by South Mountain's edge.
When the mood comes upon me, I go off alone,
and have glorious moments all to myself.
I walk to the point where a stream ends, and sitting,
watch when the clouds rise.
By chance I meet old men in the woods;
we laugh and chat, no fixed time to turn home.10
The most acclaimed of Chinese poets are the wine-loving Li
Bo (701-62)
and his friend Du Fu (712-70).
Li Bo failed his examination
but told how he was called to court to translate
a Korean letter,
claiming the terrifying reply he wrote caused them to continue
their tribute.
Both poets barely eked out a living with their
voluminous poetry.
Li Bo referred to his reclusive life in "Dialogue
in the Mountains."
You ask me why it is I lodge in sapphire hills;
I laugh and do not answer—the heart is at peace.
Peach blossoms and flowing water go off, fading away afar,
and there is another world that is not of mortal men.11
Li Bo was said to have drowned while drunkenly
embracing the
reflection of the moon in water.
Du Fu's poetry lamented that young men are drafted into war
and are slain like dogs;
yet he was saved from poverty when a
general made him his secretary.
In "Out to the Frontier"
he described the experience of a soldier as cheerless.
Officers
have strict schedules, and deserters are enmeshed in trouble.
The soldier asks what anguish or rage can remain when a true man
swears to serve the realm.
While famous deeds are depicted in
the royal gallery,
bones turn to dust on the battlefield.
A long
march brought him to the Grand Army; when he saw Turkish riders,
he realized he had become a slave.
The soldier gives this advice:
To shoot a man, first shoot the horse, to capture the foe,
first capture their chief. Yet there are limits to killing men,
and a realm is secured by natural bounds.
If only we can check their raids—
it is not how many we wound and kill.12
He wonders when they will return from building the Wall.
In
battle this soldier hides as one of the company,
doing small deeds
and ashamed to speak like others.
Yet he asks if a true man is
concerned with all the world,
how can he refuse to hold fast in
hardship.
In old age Du Fu gave up wine as a Buddhist for many
years
but then died the day after a drunken feast.
His 8th-century
contemporary Li Hua wrote a lamentation at an ancient battlefield,
suggesting that because the peaceful influence of culture has
failed to spread,
military officials have applied their own irregular
solutions
opposed to fellow feeling and right.
Yet Li Hua concluded
that imperial virtue must be spread to the barbarians.
Meng Jiao (751-814) wrote a brief poem warning against both violence and sex.
Keep away from sharp swords,
Don't go near a lovely woman.
A sharp sword too close will wound your hand,
Woman's beauty too close will wound your life.
The danger of the road is not in the distance,
Ten yards is far enough to break a wheel.
The peril of love is not in loving too often,
A single evening can leave its wound in the soul.13
Li Ho (791-817) suggested that if it had passions, even heaven
would grow old.
Wang Jian (756-835), noting that in the past soldiers
got one year's leave out of three,
complained that in the current
war they have to fight until they are dead.
The poet Lu Dong was
executed in 835 for being involved in the Ganlu rebellion.
Bo Juyi (772-846) managed to balance writing many volumes of
poetry
with occasional government service.
While a scholar at
the Hanlin Academy he wrote to his friend Li Jian
how wonderful
it was they talked the other day and never spoke of profit or
fame.
Bo Juyi criticized war with his poem about an old man with
a broken arm
who as a young soldier smashed his arm with a huge
stone
so that he could not handle a bow.
He compared his joy of
being alive with those who were dead.
Even while at court Bo Juyi
asked the common question
whether the hermit enjoying the green
grass had not chosen the better part
when a counselor in one day
can go from a high-salaried position to banishment.
After being
banished in 814 Bo Juyi wrote three years later:
This year there is war in Anhui,
In every place soldiers are rushing to arms.
Men of learning have been summoned to the Council Board;
Men of action are marching to the battle-line.
Only I, who have no talents at all,
Am left in the mountains to play with the pebbles of the stream.14
Yet Bo Juyi went on to become governor of Hangzhou, Suzhou, and from Chang'an Honan.
When he left Hangzhou, elders lined the
road and wept
even though he said his taxes were heavy; people
were poor,
and farmers were hungry and often had dry fields;
but
he had dammed the water in the lake and helped a little when things
were bad.
Bo Juyi recommended a fortunate and secure half-hermit
life
between the embittered hunger and cold of the humble
and
the worries and cares of the great.
Wen Tianxiang (1236-83) refused to give up his allegiance to
the Song emperor
to serve Khubilai Khan; he asked to die and was
executed.
While in prison he wrote a poem that begins by recognizing
there is an aura which permeates everything in the universe.
In
humans it is called spirit, and in times of peace it is not noticed
because harmony prevails;
but in a great crisis it becomes manifest.
Liu Yin (1241-93) resigned his office to care for his sick mother.
He wrote that heaven gave humans the resources they need to cope
with the exigencies of the environment.
He quoted Zhu Xi who said
that when heaven is about to send down a calamity,
a heroic genius
is raised up to handle the situation.
Every human has a use, and
there is no society that humans cannot correct.
A Buddhist priest
of this era noted that if one is human,
the mills of heaven grind
one to perfection; but if not, to destruction.
Early Chinese fiction often was concerned with the supernatural.
In the late 8th century Shen Jiji, who served briefly as Imperial
Censor,
wrote about a beautiful woman who turned out to be a fox
that ran away.
Poet Yuan Zhen's story of disappointed romance
called "The Golden Oriole"
was later dramatized by Wang
Shifu in The Romance of the Western Chamber.
Although the
Golden Oriole believes that Zhang's vow to her has been broken,
she swears to keep her oath to him.
Years later though, both have
married other people;
she would not see him, and in his final
poem Zhang advises her
to love the man before her.
Li Gongzo told
"A Lifetime In a Dream" about a man whose political
career
turns out to have been spent in an ant colony while dreaming.
Liu Zongyuan (773-819) wrote a parable of a pack beetle that
continues
to put loads on its back until it can no longer move.
It also likes to climb to high places but falls to the ground
and dies.
He compares this creature to people of his time who
never seem to have enough
possessions no matter how much they
are encumbered by them
and who seek higher positions even though
a perilous fall is bound to ensue.
Poet Bo Juyi's brother Bo Xingqian wrote a romantic story of
a man's drastic changes
of fortune in "The Lady in the Capital."
After Miss Li and her aunt run out on a young man whose money
is spent,
she later finds him destitute and helps him because
"as we have cheated heaven and done harm to human beings,
no spirit and no god will come to our aid."15
In the late 8th century a story named after the clever woman
Red Thread
has her stealthily penetrate the chamber of the governor
about to attack her friend's province;
removing a golden casket
it is sent back to him,
causing him to send gifts and renew good
relations.
Red Thread explains that she is making up for a former
life in which as a man
she was a physician who accidentally poisoned
a woman pregnant with twins.
Punished as a humble woman, she has
now prevented
an offense against the heavenly order.
In the same
era Xu Tang's story of "Two Friends" shows the value
Chinese
often placed on loyal friendship,
as two men make difficult
sacrifices to help each other in trying circumstances.
"The Forsaken Mistress" by Jiang Fang is another
story of a woman
betrayed by a man's false promise.
Little Jade
is afraid that when her beauty fades,
Mr. Li's favors will wander
elsewhere despite his protestations.
Like many young men in China,
Li is dominated
by his mother and accepts an arranged marriage.
When he fails to return to her at the promised time, Little Jade
becomes ill.
Educated people are revolted by Li's base heartlessness.
Little Jade dies; but her spirit haunts Li and makes him jealous
of his wife,
causing him to divorce her and confine two more wives
cruelly.
The murder mystery "Beheaded In Error" is from the
Song dynasty collection Popular Tales of the Capital.
This
story shows the harmful consequences that can result from careless
words.
Wei Bengzhu after excelling in the examinations has a promising
career ruined
when he jokingly writes his wife he has taken a
concubine.
She writes back with a similar jest, and the spreading
rumors prevent him
from gaining a good position.
In poverty he
borrows money from his father-in-law to start a grocery store,
but he kids his concubine that he has pawned her for that money.
When she leaves him, the open gate allows a robber to come in
to find the money;
after a fight he kills Wei with an ax.
When
the concubine is found with a man carrying the same amount of
money,
circumstantial evidence causes a lazy judge to torture
the concubine
and that man until they confess, the serious ethical
violation
that causes the worst part of the tragedy.
The innocent
couple is executed, but later Wei's widow is robbed by the ax
murderer.
After making friends with him to survive and living
with him,
he becomes respectable and confesses the crime she then
identifies.
The bandit is beheaded; the offending magistrate is
dismissed;
the families of the innocent victims are given pensions;
and the widow spends the rest of her life chanting sutras to the
spirits of the dead.
In "The Scholar and the Courtesan" by Qin Chun of
the 12th century Zhang is persuaded
to marry another woman by
his mother; but when his wife dies after three years,
this story
ends happily with his marrying his sweetheart and having many
children.
"The Whore with the Pure Heart" describes
how an orphan put into a house of
prostitution manages to put
off the sexual attentions
of Emperor Huizong (r. 1100-25) himself.
1. Wang Xiong, Lun Heng 67 in A Short History of
Chinese Philosophy
by Fung Yu-lan, p. 210.
2. Hou Han shu 98.7b in Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy
by Etienne Balazs,
tr. H. M. Wright, p. 194.
3. Li, Dun J., The Ageless Chinese, p. 225.
4. Penetrating the Book of Changes Ch. 7 by Zhou Dunyi,
in
A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy tr. Wing-tsit Chan,
p. 468-469.
5. Zheng-meng 2:34 in Wing-tsit Chan, A Sourcebook in
Chinese Philosophy, p. 509.
6. A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy tr. Wing-tsit Chan,
p. 558.
7. Chu Tzu yu-lei, 44:3b by Zhu Xi in Reflections on
Things at Hand tr. Wing-tsit Chan,
p. 160.
8. The Ageless Chinese by Dun J. Li, p. 255.
9. Anthology of Chinese Literature tr. Stephen Owen, p.
342-343.
10. Ibid., p. 390.
11. Ibid., p. 403.
12. Ibid., p. 474.
13. "Impromptu" by Meng Jiao, tr. A. C. Graham, Poems
of the Late T'ang, p. 67.
14. "Visiting the Hsi-lin Temple" by Bo Juyi, tr. Arthur
Waley,
Translations from the Chinese, p. 204.
15. The Golden Casket tr. C. Levenson, W. Bauer, and H.
Franke, p. 131.
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