The Southern Sea, Africa and Wei Yuan’s realism

Wei Yuan 魏源

I recently posted about Gong Zizhen 龚自珍 and intepreted him as a ‘revolutionary conservative’ in parallel with the Slavophils, up to and including his use of classical Confucianism to attack Qing corruption, materialism and concentration of power in his own day. I mentioned his colleague and fellow New Text scholar Wei Yuan 魏源 as a kindred spirit, and was motivated to read a brief biography and monograph of his work by Jane Kate Leonard. It turns out, he was one of the first people to understand the threat of Western capitalism and imperialism, and move to oppose it using China’s store of traditional wisdom.

Wei Yuan was very much a Confucian; he believed that the relationships between states should be governed not by vertical power relations nor by free-for-all trade, but instead by a harmonious, if slightly hierarchical, system of mutual security and tribute arrangements. In this, he deliberately cast back to the policies of the Ming Dynasty, and indeed consciously stood within the stream of reformist and statecraft-oriented thought that characterised the Ming Dynasty’s Donglin movement 东林党. But he was the first to use these insights in an analysis of the West and the threat of a very different world order that it represented, particularly in the wake of the Opium War (in which, on account of his close personal friendship with Commissioner Lin Zexu 林则徐, he took a strong personal interest). In his Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms 《海国图志》, Wei Yuan treated the subject of colonialism at length, in what turned from a study on the Southern Sea trading kingdoms into a much broader, politically-oriented project.

Wei Yuan had a profound, and profoundly realistic, view of the geopolitical landscape of his time. He understood the trade rivalries between France, Britain and the US. He understood in the broad strokes how they were able to project power abroad, and how they used their power projection to promote corporate-capitalist commerce (backing up trading company ‘rights’ with the military force of their navies). He elucidated for a Chinese audience the nature of the ‘fortified-port system’ by which French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and British navies could project hard power, even halfway across the world, to enforce their mercantilist goals. He also displayed, on this question, an altogether classically-Confucian aversion to the use of state power to back up private interests merely for the sake of profit. (In Wei’s view, Chinese trade in the Southern Sea was not only unfavoured by Chinese naval power, but entirely ignored – the Manchus had been forced by political expediency to turn a blind eye to the junk trade unless it involved piracy and land raids.) And he could be remarkably sensitive to the injustices perpetrated on other peoples by the pursuit of ‘free trade’ on the part of Western powers.

In Wei’s treatment of Africa, for example, he noticed how the ‘fortified-port system’ was used to enslave the inhabitants and drain the African coastline of its material wealth. ‘English and Dutch soldiers guard [the African coastline],’ Wei wrote. ‘They have taken the seaports for bases. They have built fortresses and markets, and the natives are used as slave labour.’ To this Leonard adds:

This passage contains Wei’s view of Western expansion, its commercial orientation, its application of force, its systematic exploitation of indigenous peoples, and its reliance on strategically located ports to maintain and protect lines of communication and trade. The same pattern reëmerges in Wei’s description of the rest of the network linking Europe and Southeast Asia.

In short, Wei’s attitude toward sub-Saharan Africa was one of humane (as in ren 仁) sympathy and solidarity. He betrayed no hint of the racism toward Africans that even some of the radical thinkers in his own school would, unfortunately, later harbour. The coastal black Africans may have been ‘barbarians’, but they were people all the same, and the radical implication of his geographical treatment of the African coastline was that their fate was intrinsically linked up with China’s. (This is an insight which, perhaps indirectly, the modern Chinese government has taken keenly to heart.) His message to the leaders and literati of the Qing was markedly not one of complacency; it was to the effect that ‘if exploitation and slavery could happen to the Africans through this system imposed by the West, it can happen to us – and it already is’. Despite the fact that, as Leonard convincingly argues, Wei is working out of a traditional Ming Confucian mindset regarding a hierarchical and harmonious tributary system, his insights lend themselves to an almost Wallersteinian sensibility regarding the workings of global capitalism.

Leonard is not uncritical of Wei’s remedies. In her view, Wei had an overly-confident view of China’s ability, in a rapidly-changing geopolitical environment, to reassert the traditional tributary system (however truly functional it was before his own time) and manipulate the Chinese ‘near abroad’ into action against particularly British encroachment. But she nonetheless has a keen appreciation for the subtlety and depth of Wei’s grasp of Western realpolitik given the paucity of the translated sources he had to hand. Interestingly, whereas Gong Zizhen saw Russia as a threat to China, his younger colleague and close friend Wei Yuan understood Russia (along with Nepal, Burma, Vietnam and Thailand) to be a natural geopolitical ally against powers further West: both on account of its long relationship as a frenemy of the Qing Dynasty, and also on account of the fact of its rivalry with Britain in ‘the Great Game’.

Another fascinating figure in the Chinese New Text tradition, and one for whom I have a great deal of respect. Though not nearly as pugnacious (and not nearly as given to jeremiads against the reigning order, foot-binding, opium-smoking, greed, corruption or inequality) as his elder comrade, his realism, his Third World solidarity with Africa and the victims of the Middle Passage, his advocacy for harmonious relations in the South China Sea and his (albeit mild and conditional) Russophilia endear him to me greatly. Wei Yuan is certainly someone to pay more attention to, particularly as each of his interests (up to and including the Chinese interest in Africa) has, again, become timely.

A lover, not a fighter

Zhuo Wenjun 卓文君 listens to Sima Xiangru 司马相如 playing the zither

One name that came up a couple of times in the Yantielun 《鹽鐵論》 as I was reading it, once in approval and once in decided disapproval, was a rather familiar one. This official, on the good side, remonstrated with the Emperor Han Wu Di 漢武帝 against hunting in pleasure-parks. On the bad side, he opened up the Sichuan frontier with the construction of a road against the wishes of the local elders, and (according to the Literati) provoked conflicts between the Han Chinese and the ‘southwestern barbarians’ the Qiong 邛 and the Ze 筰. This official was also the single definitive poet in the fu 賦 form, and has been romanticised in modern times as a man who, unlike the vast, vast majority of his contemporaries, married for love rather than for material considerations, as recounted in the tale The Phœnix Seeks a Mate 《鳳求凰》. This official’s name was Sima Xiangru 司馬相如.

Sima Xiangru, apparently no relation to the Grand Historian, was born in Sichuan to a notable family, and nursed high ambitions for himself – after reading about the exploits of Lin Xiangru 藺相如, a minister for Zhao during the Warring States period, he took Lin’s personal name as his own. He travelled to the capital and made his living (grudgingly, it seems) as a low-ranking guard for some time under Emperor Jing 漢景帝, before Prince Xiao of Liang 梁孝王, a noted lover of poetry, took notice of the young man’s literary talents and invited him to his regional court, where Sima devoted his time to composition and developing the fu as his favoured literary form.

Sima Xiangru returned home only to find that his father had died, his mother was ill, his family’s wealth had evaporated, and only one loyal retainer remained with the family. Dispirited, Xiangru entered the service of the Magistrate Wang Ji 王吉 of Linqiong 臨邛 in what is now central Sichuan (the city of Qionglai 四川邛崍市), who planned to set Xiangru up with the recently-widowed daughter of a wealthy local iron trader named Zhuo Wangsun 卓王孫. According to the story, Xiangru was invited by Wang to Zhuo’s home, and, after having a few drinks, was prevailed upon to begin playing the zither for the assembled company. Zhuo’s daughter Wenjun 卓文君 was listening from outside the room, and was so enraptured by Sima Xiangru’s music that she peeked out and saw him, falling in love with him at first sight. Her father, however, had planned her remarriage to another local worthy. Enlisting the help of her older brother and Magistrate Wang, she fled her father’s house and eloped with Sima Xiangru. (It can’t be stressed enough how big a ‘no-no’ this was in the context of contemporary morals. Xu Fei stresses that her elopement with Sima Xiangru was ‘a rejection of the morality of the time’ and ‘an unpardonably wanton act’, and that ‘their actions embodied a search for love in the truest sense’.)

Her father having thereupon disowned her, the couple were incredibly poor to begin with. Eventually the couple resorted to opening a wine shop, the Rujun Tavern, in Linqiong, which ultimately had the effect of shaming Zhuo Wangsun into recognising their marriage. Meanwhile, in the Han capital – so the story goes – the new emperor Wu Di managed to pick up a copy of Sima Xiangru’s ‘Fu on Sir Vacuous’ 《子虛賦》, and exclaimed on reading it: ‘Why am I not privileged to be this man’s contemporary?’

The keeper of the Emperor’s dogs, Yang Deyi 楊得意, who was a childhood friend and rival of Sima Xiangru, heard this outburst and told the Emperor who had written the poem. Han Wu Di immediately summoned Sima to his court and asked him to compose a new poem, which turned out to be the famous ‘Fu on Shanglin’ 《上林賦》. Sima Xiangru was not a fan of Han Wu Di’s pleasure-seeking excursions and hunts, which he believed had a bad impact on the common people; he remonstrated with the Emperor about the subject. The Emperor, though displeased with Sima to begin with, eventually took his admonitions to heart and reduced his hunting trips accordingly.

Sima Xiangru had attained to his childhood ambitions, but his wife missed him dearly. Once again she took it on herself to set out alone and seek him out in the capital. Once there, she got a cold reception from him, and saw him noticing other women. Afraid of losing him, she at once penned the ‘White-Haired Lament’ 《白頭吟》. Xu Fei’s version of The Phœnix Seeks a Mate shows Sima Xiangru repenting of his neglect for his wife upon hearing the ‘Lament’, and indeed coming to a stronger appreciation of both his wife’s devotion and her literary virtues. This is in accord with both the Book of Han written by Ban Gu and Ban Zhao, and also the Records of the Grand Historian, which describe Sima Xiangru and Zhuo Wenjun as living happily as a couple well into their old age.

Eventually, Sima Xiangru sort-of retired with his wife to a secluded estate at Maoling near the capital, though he continued to write poetry and attend court from time to time. Though an accomplished poet and not one without a sense of public conscience, he had little stomach for court intrigues, which wore down on him. He also suffered from a chronic ailment which was probably diabetes. Despite his repeated remonstrations against hunting, he was certainly not an activist poet, which caused some consternation among his later artistic admirers. He was popular within the Old Text school – both Yang Xiong 楊雄 and Ban Gu 班固 were admirers of his style – but they both upbraided him for not taking an active interest in the contemporary disputes over politics or philology. Sima Xiangru was, to the end, a lover rather than a fighter.

At any rate, an interesting figure from a troubled and intellectually tumultuous time – and remarkable for his rather unorthodox love life. Little wonder later generations of Chinese literati, particularly those in the late Qing and after, would make Sima Xiangru and Zhuo Wenjun out to be a romantic hero and heroine.

Salt and irony

Huan Kuan 桓寬

Time to revisit an old hobby-horse of mine: explaining why the entire concept of ‘Confucian capitalism’ is basically anachronistic bunk peddled by Westerners and West-friendly neo-Confucians in the mid-’90’s as a way of reconciling the Sage with his critic Max Weber (as if such a thing were necessary, let alone desirable).

First of all, it appears I owe an apology to Huan Kuan 桓寬. I took Long’s characterisation of Huan Kuan’s Discourses on Salt and Iron (Yantielun 《鹽鐵論》) at face value and didn’t look at the source myself. That’s a terrible ‘my bad’. The first nineteen chapters of the source text are available both in Chinese and in its partial English translation here. If we were to go by the scanty treatment of the Yantielun offered by Long, we would conclude – erroneously – that the discourse was primarily for the sake of arguing against price controls and proliferation of laws. That’s a fact so partial (and so partizan) as to obscure the entire meaning of the text.

The text itself takes the form of an argument between the ‘Literati’ (wenxue 文學) and the ‘Lord Grand Secretary’ Sang Hongyang 桑弘羊, who represented (roughly) the Legalist tradition, over a broad variety of topics ranging from the state-run salt and iron monopolies, monetisation and warfare to general governance policies. This debate takes place in the wake of the rule of Han Wu Di 漢武帝, who implemented a number of these Legalist policies; the Regent who succeeded him put these policies up for review and invited critiques from the Literati and defences from the Legalists led by Sang Hongyang. It is worth noting that neither side argues that the government should stay out of the œconomy altogether. The Literati themselves are emphatic about the proper rôle of government as being moralistic:

文學對曰：「竊聞治人之道，防淫佚之原，廣道德之端，抑末利而開仁義，毋示以利，然後教化可興，而風俗可移也。」

The Literati responded as follows: It is our humble opinion that the principle of ruling men lies in nipping in the bud wantonness and frivolity, in extending wide the elementals of virtue, in discouraging mercantile pursuits, and in displaying benevolence and righteousness. Let lucre never be paraded before the eyes of the people; only then will enlightenment flourish and folkways improve.

This is emphatically not ‘laisser-faire’ as we’re used to thinking of it – certainly it is not the wonted mode of argumentation among the Austrians. Little wonder Long only included one brief and partial quote from the Yantielun. Looking through the Yantielun, one will start to see a very different pattern of œconomic thinking begin to emerge. Indeed, the very opening statement of the Literati’s ‘basic argument’ (benyi 本議) states that the rulers do have some very specific and very active duties in governance that extend well beyond the Daoist idea of wuwei 無為. And not only that, the Literati state from the outset in this disputation with the Legalist Sang Hongyang that one of the duties of government is to ‘discourage mercantile pursuits’ and to prevent the ‘parade’ of ‘lucre’ before the eyes of the people.

Looking further down, the objection the Literati had to these monopolies is that ‘the Government has entered into financial competition with the people’ (yu min zheng li 「與民爭利」), and as a result, ‘few among our people take up the fundamental pursuits of life, while many flock to the non-essential’ (「百姓就本者寡，趨末者眾」). Immediately this is clarified. The Literati wished that ‘rural pursuits may be encouraged, [and] people be deterred from entering the secondary occupations, [so that] national agriculture be materially and financially benefitted’ (「進本退末，廣利農業，便也」). The Literati – the proto-Confucians – had a much more interesting argument here than is being portrayed in the ideological post-Weberian literature! It was not so much government interference on the whole that they object to. It’s that they objected to profiteering and rent-seeking behaviour on the part of private actors in collaboration with the government. This lent the Literati in the Yantielun a stance in opposition both to government monopolies, and to the speculative and rent-seeking private interests which benefit from the government’s actions. They sounded, not so much ‘laisser-faire’, but suspiciously distributist or even syndicalist. The Literati could be remarkably localist in their sympathies, as here in ‘Hindrance to Farming’ 《禁耕》:

「夫秦、楚、燕、齊，土力不同，剛柔異勢，巨小之用，居句之宜，黨殊俗易，各有所便。縣官籠而一之，則鐵器失其宜，而農民失其便。器用不便，則農夫罷於野而草萊不辟。草萊不辟，則民困乏。」

Now in Qin, Chu, Yan and Qi the quality of the soil differs. There is variety in the methods of cultivation of heavy and light soils. The use of large or small, the suitability of straight or curved ploughs, are different according to districts and customs. Each has its convenient use. But when the magistrates establish monopolies and standardise, then iron implements lose their suitability, and the farming population loses their convenient use. When the tools are not suited to their use, the farmer is exhausted in the fields, and grass and weeds are not kept down. When the grass and weeds cannot be kept down, then the people are wearied to the point of despair.

However, this is not an argument against government per se. On the subject of currency, the Yantielun has a remarkably nuanced view given the technical constraints of the time. The Legalists and the Literati were in agreement that currency needed to be regulated: the question was how. Sang Hongyang favoured a system whereby the money supply was constrained by an official centralised minting policy. The Literati recognised the problem but were not so concerned with the existence of independent moneyers and mints. The Literati perceived, astutely, that anything, even tortoise shells and cowries (or even bits of paper? naaah), could be used as a medium of exchange, regardless of scarcity, as long as it was backed by law. The problem of undervalued and counterfeit currency could be solved, therefore, not by limiting the money supply, but instead by ‘proper laws [against] coining bad money’ (「偽金錢以有法 」): that is to say, by indirectly regulating interest rates.

The Yantielun indeed provides ample evidence of an anti-capitalist slant to the argumentation of the Literati. In the chapter ‘Hold Fast the Plough’ 《力耕》, after citing a ‘utopian’ view that the ancients traded sparingly, out of necessity and only with the essentials of life in mind, the Literati drop these two strident and unequivocal bombshells: ‘Trade promotes dishonesty. Artisans provoke disputes.’ (「商則長詐， 工則飾罵。」) They launch into a diatribe against the ‘secondary occupations’ which convicts them of avarice and greed, and go on to accuse the foreign trade of draining wealth from the interior and from common people in pursuit of luxury goods, in what amounts to a stunningly protectionist argument – in opposition to Sang Hongyang’s argument that the Xiongnu can be impoverished and the Han strengthened through the foreign trade. Instead, the Literati promote the communal well-field system 井田 as a means for redistributing land to encourage productive agriculture. That’s not all – for the Literati, the institution of profit caps is one of the duties of a true and righteous King. Here is what the Literati have to say on the subject in the chapter ‘Circulation of Goods’ 《通有》:

「故王者禁溢利，節漏費。溢利禁則反本，漏費節則民用給。是以生無乏資，死無轉尸也。」

Hence the true King would prohibit excessive profits, and cut off unnecessary expenses. When undue gain is prohibited, people return to the fundamental. When unnecessary expenses are cut off, people have enough to spend. Hence people will not suffer from want while alive, nor from exposure of their corpses when dead.

Interestingly, the Literati of the Yantielun are quite aware of the charges of hypocrisy that might be laid at their door for this stand. Indeed, Sang Hongyang hurls the example of Zigong (who became a merchant) at the Literati in ‘The Poor and the Rich’ 《貧富》 . In response, the Literati go so far as to (mildly) criticise Zigong for engaging in commerce, but hold him up also to demonstrate how much further the rentier class have fallen even from his example by abusing their offices:

「子貢以布衣致之，而孔子非之，況以勢位求之者乎？」

[Zigong] secured wealth in the capacity of a common citizen; yet Confucius disapproved of him. How much more would he frown on him who does it through his position and rank!

Tellingly, the Grand Historian Sima Qian 司馬遷 – who, as Long does correctly note at length, is highly favourable to trade in all forms – is cited only by the Legalist in this discussion, Sang Hongyang, and at that in deferential tones as Master Sima 司馬子. The purpose of this quotation is to further accuse the Literati of hypocrisy in criticising the profit motive, which Sima Qian held to be universal and natural (much to the chagrin of the siblings Ban). Sang Hongyang even indirectly cites the Analects (「富貴者士之期也。」) as a way of doubling down on this accusation of hypocrisy. But it’s interesting indeed that Huan Kuan makes reference to the Grand Historian only here, as if (like the Bans later) he wishes to make an indirect criticism of Sima’s views by associating them with Legalism.

On that note: the Yantielun is actually one of the rare examples of discourse in post-classical China where the Legalists and the Literati (proto-Confucians) are seen to dispute with each other on relatively equal terms. Yet here, we see that the Legalists are the ones who favour trade (albeit under strict regulation), whereas the Literati themselves speak of ‘primary’ and ‘secondary occupations’ in a manner similar to the ‘city of utmost necessity’ in Plato’s Republic. This distinction between ‘primary’ agriculture and ‘secondary’ commerce and craftsmanship goes on to prefigure, and undoubtedly influence in a more direct way, the hierarchical ordering of the Four Occupations in the Book of Han. The proto-Confucian hierarchical ordering of the occupations is in contradistinction to the Legalist mode of thought, which disparages agriculture but praises pursuits which build power and wealth.

Touching briefly on Huan Kuan’s attitude to war with the Xiongnu – it’s enough to quote directly from the ‘Basic Argument’:

「古者，貴以德而賤用兵。孔子曰：『遠人不服，則修文德以來之。既來之，則安之。』今廢道德而任兵革，興師而伐之，屯戍而備之，暴兵露師，以支久長，轉輸糧食無已，使邊境之士饑寒於外，百姓勞苦於內。」

The ancients held in honour virtuous methods and discredited resort to arms. Thus Confucius said: If remoter people are not submissive, all the influences of civil culture and virtue are to be cultivated to attract them to be so; and when they have been so attracted, they must be made contented and tranquil? Now these virtuous principles are discarded and reliance put on military force; troops are raised to attack the enemy and garrisons are stationed to make ready for him. It is the long drawn-out service of our troops in the field and the ceaseless transportation for the needs of the commissariat that cause our soldiers on the marches to suffer from hunger and cold abroad, while the common people are burdened with labour at home.

Looking at the Yantielun as a whole, then, it becomes clear that the Literati of the Han Dynasty – including the Yantielun’s transcriber and compiler Huan Kuan, who belonged to the same ‘institutional’ Gongyang tradition that Dong Zhongshu did – were still wrangling against the not-so-distant legacy of Qin Legalism at the same time as they were advocating for more agriculture-friendly and poor-friendly policies in government.

Five books that have materially changed my life

Based on a Facebook challenge from a friend of mine, Russell Arben Fox (who also blogs at In Medias Res), here is a list of five books that have materially changed my life. Some (actually, most) of them may be familiar to my gentle readers, others may come as a bit more of a surprise. But here they are, along with the reasons why they have been chosen.

1. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I devoured this book on a plane trip, at a time when I was feeling like a total failure as a human being. There is literature that medicates, that dulls pain, and then there is literature that heals. And this book was the latter: just the right book for me to read at just the right time. I wasn’t going through any of what Billy Pilgrim had to go through, but the story did help me put my struggles in perspective and got me through a bad depressive episode. So it goes.
   
   
2. The Russian Revolution by Nikolai Berdyaev. An existentialist history that shook off the dogmatic shackles of my college-leftist thinking and opened me to a theological way of thinking about the world that would really open me up to Taylor, MacIntyre, Grant, Milbank, Cavanaugh and the rest. Ultimately played an assisting role in my conversion to Orthodoxy. Pretty big material change in my life there.
   
   
   
3. The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck. Assigned reading. The only reason I joined the mandatory-for-graduation area studies class with Mr. Mjaanes in high school, who assigned it, was because my best friend in high school was joining it too. I came out of that class a convinced Sinophile. Would emphatically not be where I am today if not for Mr. Mjaanes or Ms. Buck.
   
   
   
4. Mencius by Mencius. Helped me begin the process of winning Jessie’s heart when we were students together. ‘Nuff said.
   
   
   
5. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. My parents were always insistent on my being exposed to ‘the other side’ of American history which doesn’t get taught in school, up to and including having me read James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me. But I think it was Zinn - which was also sitting on my parents’ bookshelf for me to read - who really gave my politics their radical bent. That book taught me to sympathise with the powerless and the downtrodden of history, which is probably most evident now in my love for the Rusiny, the Palestinians and the Yemenis.

China’s peaceful warrior

Cross-posted to In Communion and Public Orthodoxy

China is now portrayed in much of the news media as the world’s fastest-growing Christian country, and an increasing amount of attention is being paid to the plight of Christians inside China. Without downplaying either the successes or the struggles of modern Chinese Christians, particularly vis-à-vis the state, much of this coverage lacks a certain historical dimension, relevant to modern Orthodox and Catholic efforts inside China. Christianity – Eastern Christianity – has a long history in China which includes notable and well-respected individuals in Chinese culture.

An interesting historical factlet I came across recently in my traverses through Chinese opera in prose translation, is that Guo Ziyi 郭子仪, the ‘loyal and martial’ Prince of Fenyang 汾阳郭忠武王, historical military governor (jiedushi 节度使) of Shuofang Prefecture 朔方郡 (centred on present-day Ordos in Inner Mongolia) during the Tang Dynasty and literary inspiration for one of the heroes of Hong Sheng’s opera The Palace of Eternal Youth 《长生殿》, was in fact a member of the Syriac-Persian Nestorian Church of the East, a committed advocate for the rights of Christians in the Tang Empire, and – if such a thing can be believed – a peaceful warrior.

Guo’s portrayal in The Palace of Eternal Youth was that of an ‘upright and loyal official’ (zhongchen 忠臣) of the Tang court, an embodiment of Confucian virtues and righteousness, a cautious and deliberating general, generous to his troops and therefore popular, and one of the earliest officials to understand the deep threat posed by allowing An Lushan to go free. It was Guo’s swift and timely actions that allowed Emperor Minghuang to escape Chang’an with his life, and which allowed Emperor Suzong to regain control of the Empire after Yang Yuhuan’s death.

Guo Ziyi served as a military general under four Tang Emperors (Minghuang, Suzong, Daizong and Dezong), and was distinguished by his service to the Tang in putting down the rebellion of An Lushan. However, some of his greatest victories were achieved by being a peaceful warrior. In the true spirit of Sun Wu (or, indeed, in the spirit of some of the military martyrs of the Church!), Guo Ziyi was able to ‘subdue the enemy without fighting’. In the wake of the An Lushan rebellion, sensing weakness, the semi-independent Tibetan Empire and the Uighur Khaghanate sent invasion forces to loot, pillage, harry and invade chunks of the Tang Empire. Guo Ziyi was able to force the Tibetans to retreat with a mere four thousand tired and grumbling troops, using misdirection and trickery (lighting fires at various intervals and firing off firecrackers to confuse them and make them believe they were surrounded). In another instance, at the age of seventy, he went himself, unarmed and unarmoured, toward the Uighur camp. When they, who had been told he was dead, saw him and recognised him, they knelt down and surrendered to him at once. Guo thus turned the Tang Dynasty’s military fortunes around in a relatively bloodless way.

He ‘turned the other cheek’ in domestic affairs as well – never fighting back even when he was slandered by jealous members of the eunuch faction at the Tang court, particularly Yu Chao’en. In another instance, his son boasted to his wife, a Tang princess, that his father Ziyi, powerful general that he was, could become Emperor any time he wanted. Guo Ziyi, who valued loyalty above every other consideration, punished his son severely for that boast, imprisoning him and offering him up before Emperor Daizong for judgement. But when Emperor Daizong entered the court, he forgave the junior Guo, saying, ‘When son and daughter fight, it’s better as old men to pretend to be deaf.’

Guo Ziyi’s military service indeed calls to mind that of the Syrian-Byzantine Saint Andrew Stratelátes – Saint Andrew, like Guo, was able to surprise and trick superior enemies into retreat from engagement using relatively small numbers of troops. Also like Guo, Saint Andrew fell wrongful victim to court intrigues; though, whereas Guo Ziyi was merely dismissed temporarily from his post by Yu Chao’en’s slanders and did not attain martyrdom, Saint Andrew and 2,593 of his soldiers were martyred at the hands of Emperor Diocletian.

Interestingly, however, it was Guo’s selfless and grateful treatment of the great Tang poet Li Bai 李白 – then suspected of desertion during the An Lushan rebellion – that exhibited in literary critic Wu Jingxiong’s 吴经熊 view the Christian temperament of the good general. Li Bai had saved Guo’s life long before, when he had been facing court-martial and execution for offending his commander in Shanxi. From The Four Seasons of Tang Poetry (pardon the Wade-Giles):

Unfortunately for Li Po, the troops of Prince Ling were routed in 757, and our poet had to escape to P’eng-tse in Kiangsi, but was caught and put in prison. He was sentenced to death, but Kuo Tzu-i, whom he had saved twenty years before, and who was by this time Minister of War and commander-in-chief of the imperial troops, went to the new Emperor and offered to ransom the life of Li Po by giving up his own official rank. Incidentally, Kuo Tzu-i, the greatest soldier-statesman of T’ang, was a Nestorian, and in this case he certainly showed the spirit of Christ. As a result of his intercession, the death sentence was remitted, and instead Li Po was banished to Yeh Lang.

For all of Guo Ziyi’s distinction in military service, being a servant of Christ he was also truly a man of peace, who desired peace and stability for his country above everything else, even though that state was not guided by Christian values. He was willing to subordinate his own personal interests and even suffer personal insults from high officials without complaining or retaliating, if doing so meant that he could preserve the dynasty. And he remembered what Li Bai had done for him in his youth, and laid down his career and even perhaps his life to save Li’s: the witness of Guo Ziyi for Li Bai is, perhaps not exactly analogical to, but mildly reminiscent of the intercessions of saints of the Church (like Saint Nicholas of Myra and Saint Alexandra of Rome) for criminals, even deserters, who were caught by the state and sentenced to death. Interestingly, the same virtues and skill that made Guo Ziyi a great general who could win battles without fighting and who became respected without striving for power and titles, also made him respected among the Confucian literati of his own time.

Guo Ziyi’s example may be something for Chinese Christians – indeed, all Christians – to consider. Balancing one’s loyalties to the ‘two cities’ is never easy, let alone practising an ethic of peace from a position of military authority, and Guo Ziyi’s example shows both the limitations and the personal sacrifices and risks entailed. At the same time, the fascination of Guo is that he shows a loyalty both to the Chinese dynasts and to Christian praxis to be possible.

Jane Kate Leonard on the self-institution dialectic

Late Ming jingshi thinker Chen Zilong 陈子龙

Jane Kate Leonard, China historian and scholarly biographer of Qing statesman (Gongyang-school political Confucian and close friend of Gong Zizhen 龚自珍 and Lin Zexu 林则徐) Wei Yuan 魏源, on the complexities of the Confucian self-institution dialectic:

Statecraft themes were perpetuated in the early Ch’ing period by Ming loyalists who saw statecraft as the ultimate goal of study and self-cultivation. The concept of statesmanship contained two main elements which provided its philosophical foundations. The first was the moral element which affirmed that the primary aim of statesmanship was the creation of a moral order at both the societal and cosmic levels. The moral leader or statesman played a key rôle in this process because his influence and charisma transformed lesser men into morally perfect beings which, in turn, resulted in the creation of a moral society and universal moral order. This idealistic approach took little account of the rôle of man’s institutional and legal environment in shaping character and human values.

The second element in statecraft thought was the practical or pragmatic one which expressed a greater concern for the realities of the here and now, especially the smooth functioning of the dynastic order. This approach, while affirming the central rôle of moral leadership, sought to achive the establishment of a stable, prosperous state and society which was viewed as the first step in realising the ultimate goal of universal moral order. The affirmation of moral ends, however, served to justify actions that were essentially utilitarian and directed toward the solution of immediate political, social and œconomic problems. Implicit in this approach was the Mencian view that the purpose of government is to rule on behalf of the people and that the conditions of life, to a great extent, shape human character. Because of a willingness to concede the important effect of man’s institutional environment on behaviour, advocates of the practical approach to statesmanship emphasised the importance of laws and institutions. They saw both in relative terms and were inclined to regard change in a positive light.

Moral statesmanship and practical statesmanship were closely tied; each represented different points on a continuum of Confucian values ranging from the idealistic and abstract to the more practical and concrete. In the rhetoric of Confucian political thought, the idealistic, moral approach was the more dominant. In reality, the two were inextricably entwined, with idealistic ends justifying a broad spectrum of practical means. In the early Ch’ing period, the lines between the two were blurred, and, although it was called the age of ‘practical statesmanship’, there was, nonetheless, an overriding concern with moral leadership and its achievement through rigorous scholarship and self-cultivation.

Leonard argues, convincingly, that early Qing dynasty jingshi 经世 (or ‘statecraft’) thought, the milieu to which Wei Yuan belonged, came largely out of the loyalist reform-minded cliques of the late Ming, as they grappled both with big existential questions and with the more immediate and nitty-gritty ones of how to run a just and well-ordered state. Their entire world, after all, had been completely overthrown: it’s only natural that much of their reform-driven energy would be redirected into questions normally reserved for Daoist reflection. It’s particularly interesting that Leonard mentions Mencius as a forerunner of the ‘practical’, political strand of Confucianism – that goes slightly against the received wisdom which sees Mencius as a forerunner of the ‘heart-mind’ school and Xunzi as that of the ‘political’ school, but it jives nicely with Song Dynasty reformer Wang Anshi’s preferences.

I’m only just beginning this text, and it’s already proven to be a fascinating one. Leonard is much more knowledgeable than I am, that’s clear to me already. But it’s interesting that she used her monograph on Wei Yuan to touch on a philosophical dialectic I’ve been thinking about and grappling with on my own for a long time, and that she expressed it in such clear terms.

Yang Guifei and Dou E as victims and scapegoats

Yang Yuhuan (left) and the execution of Dou Duanyun (right)

Unsurprisingly, SPOILER ALERTS apply for this entire blog post.

Two of the other Chinese operas I’ve read recently have been The Palace of Eternal Youth and Snow in Summer; both of which centre on a female protagonist who is the victim or scapegoat of forces entirely outside her control, but for which she wrongly takes the blame and pays for it with her life. In each of these plays, traditional morality and family norms form the context within which these women act. In neither play is the traditional morality entirely rejected, but it is subjected to various levels of critique.

Yang Yuhuan 杨玉环 is the tragic heroine of Hong Sheng’s 洪升 The Palace of Eternal Youth 《长生殿》. The youngest daughter of four, of an impoverished Sichuanese official, she is procured as a palace maid and given as a concubine to Prince Shou 寿王, the son of Emperor Tang Minghuang 唐明皇. The emperor, upon seeing Yang himself, is smitten with her and arranges for her to be sent to a Daoist monastery as a novice named Taizhen. After some time, she is taken into the Imperial harem herself, gifted with the rank of ‘Guifei’ 贵妃 (literally, ‘precious concubine’) and given some unprecedented privileges, like access to the Huaqing Pool 华清池, which was normally reserved for the Emperor’s exclusive use. Her promotion is good news for her overbearing and ambitious brother Guozhong 杨国忠, who is quickly promoted to prime minister, but she herself is surrounded by eunuchs and other court ladies in the emotional hothouse of harem life and secluded from the life of the people. Yang Guozhong abuses his position by pardoning a barbarian general named An Lushan 安禄山 for a favour from his patron; after that Yang and An become bitter enemies and pursue a private rivalry and feud with each other at the expense of the Empire. Loyal officials like Guo Ziyi 郭子仪 (on whom another blog post at some future date – he’s a fascinating character in his own right) can only look on in horror at the oncoming disaster for the state.

The Palace of Eternal Youth juxtaposes scenes of human suffering at the hands of Yang Guozhong, An Lushan and even Emperor Minghuang’s other underlings, with the scenes of luxury, lust, jealousy and intrigue within the court itself. Despite her self-aware pulchritude and vampish demeanour, Yang Yuhuan is actually one of the single most blameless characters in the opera, apart from some wholly natural twinges of jealousy toward the other court ladies for Emperor Minghuang’s affections. She is kept oblivious to the human cost of her and the Emperor’s lifestyle until the very end. And yet by the end she is singled out by Emperor Minghuang’s guard as a scapegoat for the troubles of the Empire when An Lushan rebels. She hangs herself with her own girdle on orders from the eunuch Gao Lishi 高力士, over the initial objections of Minghuang, in order to appease the rebellious imperial guards and save her beloved Emperor’s life. The Emperor himself spends the rest of his life in a state of depression, wondering if he could have done anything to save the life of his beloved.

Opinion on Yang Yuhuan among the Confucian scholarly class was sharply divided after her death. Some scholar-officials saw her as a blameless victim of her family’s intrigues, guilty only of being an object of a besotted Emperor’s affections; others saw her as an evil temptress responsible for misleading the Emperor and bringing disaster on the Tang. The later Tang Buddhist poet-official Bai Juyi 白居易, whose ‘Song of Everlasting Regret’ 《长恨歌》 was the inspiration for Hong Sheng’s opera and is quoted at length within it, went a long way toward rehabilitating Yang Yuhuan’s memory and guiding scholarly opinion toward a more sympathetic and tragic view.

Snow in Summer, also called The Injustice to Dou E 《窦娥冤》, by Guan Hanqing 关汉卿, is a much earlier work that functions as a subtle attack on the social conditions for ordinary Chinese people under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty – but the main character is, like Yang Yuhuan, a young woman who has very limited control over her own immediate situation and who is also scapegoated for a crime she didn’t commit. Duanyun 端云, the daughter of an impoverished but highly-talented scholar Dou Tianzhang 窦天章, is sold to a petty usurer, Widow Cai 蔡婆, in lieu of a significant debt as a child bride for Cai’s son. Famine forces the three of them to move into another town, where Widow Cai again takes up her lending business to keep her family fed. Unfortunately, Widow Cai’s young son dies of illness.

One of Widow Cai’s debtors, a dishonest pharmacist named Dr Sailu 赛卢医, attempts to strangle her to avoid paying the debt he owes, but he is stopped by a pair of hooligans – Zhang the Dog 张狗儿 and his son Zhang the Mule 张驴儿 – who force themselves upon Widow Cai’s household. Zhang the Mule tries to rape Dou Duanyun, but she fights him off repeatedly. Scorned by the object of his lust, Zhang the Mule blackmails Dr Sailu into selling him poison to kill Widow Cai, but he poisons his father Zhang the Dog by mistake. Zhang the Mule then blames Duanyun for the deed and takes her before the corrupt and degenerate Mongol magistrate Taowu 梼杌, who then throws her in prison. He then robs Widow Cai of all her silver and uses it to bribe Taowu into finding in his favour. Dou Duanyun is sentenced to death by beheading for poisoning Zhang the Dog.

Dou Duanyun goes to her death in midsummer insisting that she was framed and protesting her innocence before Heaven. She proclaims that if Heaven has any justice, it will not let any of her blood stain the ground, it will cover up her dead body with snow despite the heat, and the district of Chuzhou will suffer three years of drought. When the executioner brings down his sword, none of Duanyun’s blood falls upon the ground, but instead flies up onto a white silken garment hanging over her head. A snowstorm blows up and covers her body in a snowdrift – and no more precipitation falls for the next three years.

In the meanwhile, Duanyun’s father Tianzhang has passed the civil service examinations and is sent to a remote district where he is promoted. He attempts to go back and find his family only to find that Widow Cai has already left their hometown. Heartbroken he returns to the Imperial court, where he is appointed a Censor and sent to back to his home province of Anhui to investigate wrongdoings by local officials. He comes across Chuzhou and discovers a drought that has been going on for three years – Taowu organises a lavish banquet for Tianzhang and offers him a hefty bribe to cover up the drought to higher officials, arousing Tianzhang’s suspicions.

The rest of the opera reads like a Judge Dee courtroom drama, with Tianzhang in the role of the magistrate as he reopens his daughter’s case. Under Tianzhang’s unrelenting and thorough investigation, the truth comes out about Zhang the Mule’s parricide and Taowu’s gross miscarriage of justice. The now-homeless Widow Cai is avenged and Duanyun’s memory is vindicated. Zhang the Mule is sentenced to death by slow dismemberment, Taowu to death by beheading, and Dr Sailu is exiled to a border garrison. After the sentences are carried out, a heavy rain falls on Chuzhou, ending the drought and indicating that Heaven’s justice is satisfied. Tianzhang weeps before his daughter’s grave, and takes Widow Cai into his home.

Duanyun, of course, is fictional and Hong Sheng’s Yuhuan a fictionalised version of a historical woman (who really was forced to commit suicide for the crimes of her brother). In their literary contexts, although they come from markedly-different backgrounds and live very different lives, they nevertheless share some similarities. Their ability to speak up for themselves is compromised in each case, and in the end they, innocent, are made to suffer and die as scapegoats for the guilty party: Yuhuan in her brother’s place at the hands of the Emperor’s guard, and Duanyun to save her persecutor’s skin at the hands of a corrupt and perverted magistrate.

Yuhuan is a much more ambiguous figure than Duanyun, being in a position of power that she herself is unaware of except insofar as it involves the person of the Emperor, and it’s stated in Hong Sheng’s drama that there are sins that her spirit must atone for. One can see, in fact, that the Confucian literati themselves were divided on how to view the historical Yuhuan – though in the end they were swayed to the view that she was an innocent victim of political intrigue. In each case, though, the positions of Yuhuan and Duanyun – as scapegoats for injustices they aren’t responsible for – are used to illustrate broader questions about political justice and legitimacy. This is an ambiguous point. There is a certain sense in which these literary portrayals of women justifies Chinese classicism’s claim to being a humanistic ethos, but there’s also a sense in which the same classicism understands women’s experiences and subjectivity to be still, in a broader sense, not their own.