Watch the west

The news out of China recently has been all about the abolition of term limits for the presidency, thus theoretically allowing Xi Jinping 習近平 to hold power for an unlimited time. The reporting in many English-language news outlets has therefore gloomily (and, frankly, arrogantly) taken on the cast of how ‘we lost China’ again. The term limits question was not the only one addressed this past month. Rural issues have also taken a front seat. China’s leadership is planning to loosen institutional arrangements around land ownership and increase credit flows to farms and small rural businesses. But the response in English-language media, where this has been mentioned, has been likewise dour.

The Chinese state can do a great deal of good in this area if it wants to, though it has to avoid the IMF-prescribed patterns of privatisation and neoliberal ‘reform’. I’ve seen it for myself. When I was working with PlaNet Finance (now Positive Planet) China, I dealt first-hand with the data that showed how successful the Postal Savings Bank of China was in making credit easily available to farmers and to the getihu 個體戶 œconomy. The Postal Savings Bank had a decided edge over the big commercial banks. A state-run organ like the PSBC was demonstrably far less squeamish than the Big Four about sending credit into areas that were considered higher-risk and lower-return. Postal savings banks work – and it’s an initiative that I support here as well.

But that’s somewhat beside the point. The bigger question is: is China ‘backsliding’ on democracy? Or, indeed, was there ever much hope of China becoming democratic? Those of you who follow my blog know that I’m generally rather sceptical of democracy in the first place. And in China’s case, I’ve long held that people ask the wrong questions about democracy. To discuss democracy in a country with China’s history and institutions is inescapably to engage in multiple levels of irony. Insofar as there was ever any hope for freedom and justice in China (a question which is related to, but far from identical with, that of democracy), it’s always come from the interior and never from the cities. If you’re looking to Shanghai or Hong Kong for either one, you’re barking up some very tall, but very wrong, trees.

But is it a hopeless question? It’s ever been only halfway hopeless to begin with. There are two tricks to it. The first is not to consider China ‘ours’ to ‘lose’ in the first place. The second is to look at the grassroots. The old narodnik dream of YC Jimmy Yen 晏陽初 and Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 is still alive and kicking, with people like Wen Tiejun 溫鐵軍 and Wang Hui 汪暉 going out to the countryside and assisting grassroots self-help projects in places like Anren village in Sichuan Province, in ways that deliberately recall the old movements for rural reconstruction. Anren itself seems to be a place to watch, if for no other reason than that the rural reconstruction programme there seems to be far more comprehensive than just the ‘slow food’ initiative.

Does the recent move to give Xi Jinping more time in office change anything? I’m not so naïve as to think it won’t. But Zhongnanhai is not the only or even the most important place in China to watch – and if Zhongnanhai is smart (and they normally are), they’ll be watching elsewhere too. If massive change comes to China, history shows that it will normally come from the countryside.

A few words on Diaochan in Three Kingdoms

Diaochan 貂蟬

I lived and worked for two years in the city of Baotou, Inner Mongolia, as an English language teacher. The city has several claims to fame: it is, most recently, a centre for heavy industry; the centre of China’s rare-earth metals production and electronics industry; it sports some of the most polluted water on earth; it is also historically considered the ‘place where the deer live’, denoting its use as a hunting ground by the Mongols. But for a Three Kingdoms fan like me, it had a peculiar attraction. Baotou also happens to be the birthplace of one of China’s most-feared warriors, a man whose berserker strength and personal treachery both became infamous: Lü Bu 呂布.

Chen Shou’s 陳壽 Records of Three Kingdoms, considered to be one of the closest historical treatments of a contentious and still somewhat-shadowy period in China’s history which has turned to myth and folklore, has this to say about the assassination of the tyrant Dong Zhuo 董卓 at the hands of his foster-son, Lü Bu:

Lü Bu was an adept archer and rider and his arm strength was unmatched. He was nicknamed the “Flying General”. A little later, he was promoted to “General of the Interior”, and given the title of Marquis of Duting. Since Dong Zhuo knew that he treated others without much courtesy he was always in fear of being murdered, and for this reason had Lü Bu guard him wherever he went. However, Dong Zhuo was stubborn, easily enraged, and often expressed his anger without considering the consequences. Once, being vexed [by Lü Bu], he pulled out a short lance and threw it at him. Lü Bu, being strong and agile, dodged the lance and turned to apologize to Dong Zhuo. Dong Zhuo’s anger was relieved, but Lü Bu began to secretly harbor hatred toward Dong Zhuo. Dong Zhuo had often commanded Lü Bu to guard the inner houses, but Lü Bu had an affair with one of Dong Zhuo’s maids. Fearing that he would be found out, he lived in great anxiety.

Right from the beginning, Lü Bu was received warmly by situ Wang Yun, as he knew Lü Bu to be among the strongest in the province. Soon after, during one of his visit to Wang Yun, Lü Bu confided to him that he had seen Dong Zhuo looking murderous on several occasions. At the time Wang Yun was actually plotting with pushe Shi Sunrui to kill Dong Zhuo. As such, Wang Yun wanted Lü Bu to act as an insider to facilitate their plan. Lü Bu was vexed because he felt that he and Dong Zhuo had a father-son relationship. To this, Wang Yun pointed out that despite the oath, the father-son relationship would not hold since both of them had different surnames and Lü Bu was not Dong Zhuo’s own flesh and blood. Lü Bu was convinced and subsequently killed Dong Zhuo with his own hands [details can be found in Dong Zhuo’s biography]. For this deed Wang Yun recommended that Lü Bu be made Fenwu Jiangjun and given a fujie (the action being known as jiajie). In addition, Lü Bu was given the title Marquis of Wen and he was honored with a ceremony similar to those performed for sansi. Together with Wang Yun, Lü Bu oversaw court affairs.

This brief, in-passing allusion to Lü Bu’s affaire de cœur is all the historical treatment we get, pretty much, of this anonymous maid. There’s not much independent reason to doubt Chen Shou’s account of her historicity, but even so it’s a fairly marginal rôle. Later, though, she is elevated, through the Three Kingdoms operatic tradition and the literary hand of Ming novelist Luo Guanzhong 羅貫中, into the bewitching beauty and femme fatale Ren Hongchang 任紅昌, also known by her cognomen Diaochan 貂蟬 (meaning ‘Sable Cicada’, probably a reference to an item of jewellery she wore). This maid who got such a brief mention by Chen Shou in his biography of Lü Bu, became one of China’s celebrated Four Beauties.

Even if she is at best semi-fictional, Diaochan’s story is still one which illustrates – as well as, if not better than, those of Yang Yuhuan 楊玉環 and Dou Duanyun 竇端云 – the precarious, treacherous and often contradictory positions held by women in China’s old society. In the operatic (and later novelistic) embellishment of Chen Shou’s work, Diaochan is not the hapless serving-girl that comes between Lü Bu and Dong Zhuo. She is Wang Yun’s 王允 sixteen-year-old adopted daughter, and a key co-conspirator in the assassination of the tyrant. Seeing her adopted father in distress at the tyranny of Dong Zhuo, she agrees to help him, even if doing so would mean ‘dying ten thousand deaths’. She is then tasked by Wang Yun with seducing both Lü Bu and Dong Zhuo and driving a wedge between them, such that Lü can be more easily manipulated by Wang Yun into betraying Dong.

She pulls this honeypot subterfuge off with aplomb. Wang Yun sees to it that she is taken into Dong Zhuo’s household after being promised to Lü Bu in marriage, and she deftly begins leading each man on. Lü Bu begins to turn against his foster father, and Wang Yun exploits his discontent to make him party to the conspiracy to kill Dong Zhuo. Dong Zhuo attempts to move Diaochan out of his foster son’s reach to Meiwo 郿塢, and at the same time usurp the Han throne for himself. Wang Yun, now knowing Lü Bu is on his side, moves to arrest Dong Zhuo – and Lü Bu himself, loudly declaiming an edict to exterminate a traitor, personally lands the killing blow with his halberd. He then sought out Diaochan and, having secured her, proceeded to exterminate Dong Zhuo’s family. This action earned him the enmity of Dong Zhuo’s few remaining loyal generals, who force him to abandon Meiwo and kill Wang Yun.

Diaochan’s fate is left unknown both in Chen Shou’s work and in most versions of the novel. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, she survived Meiwo and is present at Xiapi 下邳; in some versions she is killed alongside Lü Bu after Cao Cao 曹操 and Liu Bei 劉備 defeat him there. The operatic tradition embellishes this somewhat: having taken her as booty from Xiapi, Guan Yu 關於 himself decapitates Diaochan, either because he fears her ability to manipulate men, or because he fears she will drive a similar wedge between himself and his sworn brothers, who desire her for themselves.

Such an end for Diaochan obviously makes sense within the framework of operatic tragedy. Like Dou Duanyun, she is possessed of an unshakeable inner integrity which conflicts with her outward appearance and behaviour. Like Yang Guifei, even within a position wherein she can sway powerful men to her bidding, she is still vulnerable to abuse by those same powerful people. Unlike the traditional Confucian views of Consort Yang, however, Luo’s treatment of Diaochan is almost – almost, but not quite – entirely sympathetic. Historically, Confucian scholars have been notably unkind to women who gain undue sway over men by means of sexual attraction. But even as a seductress, Diaochan’s motivations are accounted as pure, and she embodies both private and public Confucian virtue from the orthodox standpoint preferred in the Han Dynasty. Here she stands in marked contrast to her lover Lü Bu, who is only ever motivated by self-interest and lust.

Luo Guanzhong portrays Diaochan’s seduction and double-cross of Dong Zhuo as an act motivated by selfless patriotism on behalf of the Han Empire, and of filial obedience to Wang Yun. Diaochan’s sexual allure and ability to mask her true feelings are skills which she uses in a virtuous cause. I say that Luo Guanzhong’s treatment of Diaochan is almost entirely sympathetic, but not completely, because at the same time Luo alludes to the entire intrigue as cause for ‘sighing’ or ‘lamentation’ (tan 嘆): Dong Zhuo’s tyranny could not be brought down by righteous generals, knights-errant or men-at-arms, but instead had to be defeated by the wiles of a woman. In the end, though, the woman who risked execution between two powerful and unscrupulous men to save the Han Emperor is deemed too dangerous to live by the ‘righteous heroes’ of martial ability who couldn’t destroy Dong Zhuo themselves. Diaochan’s patriotism, filiality and selflessness, praised by Luo, counts for precious little with them.

Diaochan may be almost wholly fictional, but her example even as an operatic fictional character is interesting, because Luo’s novel points to a certain radical potential for a Confucian appreciation of ‘unconventional’ virtuous femininity – under certain conditions and in certain extraordinary situations. On the other hand, there is an implicit critique of the prevailing conventional expectations of women. The reason Diaochan’s story is a tragedy, is because Lü Bu’s execution by Cao Cao as a traitor and a kinslayer was justified. Diaochan, sharing that fate, was blameless.

A scholar’s frustration?

A modern artist’s depiction of Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒

I think I understand why Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 remains such a fascinating figure to me. From Michael Loewe’s book, combined with Sarah Queen’s which I’m reading now, a rather clearer picture of the man behind the texts begins to emerge.

A serious and studious literatus of deep feeling, endowed with a preternatural ability to see the hidden connexions in history and the workings of the cosmos, he nonetheless felt himself irreconcilably out-of-step with his own age and surroundings. The historian Sima Qian 司馬遷 makes note – possibly exaggerated – of his ability for concentration: that for three years he was so wrapped up in his work that he didn’t glance even once at his own garden. But the wondering and sensitive cast of his mind can be determined by his choice of subjects. His early fascination with the Daoist corpus, followed by a penetrating study of the Spring and Autumn Annals 《春秋》 and the accompanying Gongyang Commentary 《公羊傳》, hint at someone mystified by the ‘inner workings’ and the ‘grand design’. Given the penchant of the Daoism of the time for curing illnesses, purifying the body and seeking immortality; and given the world-rectifying mission ascribed to Spring and Autumn by the Gongyang Commentary, these twin preoccupations also hint at a man possessed of broad altruistic aspirations. A kind of messianic or ‘sagely’ complex would not be out-of-the-question for such a man, either.

One of the works by Dong Zhongshu which illuminates more of his personality is ‘A Scholar’s Frustration’ 《士不遇賦》, his rhapsodic prose-poem or fu 賦, of which Master Dong’s contemporary, the famous romantic lover Sima Xiangru 司馬相如, was the unrivalled master. Unlike Sima, a private and withdrawn man who limited his political commentary to indirect poetic criticisms of Emperor Wu’s 漢武帝 penchant for hunting, Master Dong was very much an activist as well as a poet; and this work of his can be demonstrated to that end.

It can be tempting to view ‘A Scholar’s Frustration’ as a pathetic and petulant expression of self-pity by a man of talent and erudition, important in his own mind, who feels himself to be insufficiently appreciated by his ungrateful superiors. However, David Pankenier (one of the English translators of ‘A Scholar’s Frustration’) argues that the poem contains a political-activist message sharply critical of Imperial authority, which relies on an esoteric dimension reliant on themes drawn from the Classic of Changes 《已經》 and the Spring and Autumn Annals. In addition, there are several further references to the Dao De Jing 《道德經》 and the Zhuangzi 《莊子》, which indicate that Dong Zhongshu had not fully left behind the Daoist pursuits of his early career.

The theme of the poem consists in a general lamentation of men of integrity who find themselves caught up in evil times; and in a personal tone of remorse that, unsure of how to proceed, he failed to act decisively when the time itself demanded it. As I have mentioned before, Dong Zhongshu found himself, figuratively, at the Emperor’s ear. Once there, very much like Archbishop Saint John Chrysostom, he spoke with such strident frankness that it got him imprisoned, nearly killed and at last exiled to a hostile frontier. Yet in later times he, by name, is credited with the very political opportunism that he abhorred, and blamed for a corruption of an ‘original’ Confucianism which he hoped to embody. Little wonder he should be frustrated, even in his own time! But at a deeper level, there is a Changes-inspired meditation on the proper – modest and reclining – course for the ‘worthy’ in times of darkness and chaos, and the fu ends on a hopeful note that a world-historical salvation will arrive in its due course. Pankenier describes how this meditation is ‘coded’ in an esoteric language that Dong’s students and sympathisers would understand, but which would evade those not schooled in the Zhuangzi, the Changes or Gongyang studies.

Another very interesting aspect of ‘A Scholar’s Frustration’ is the singular attention Dong Zhongshu pays to Qu Yuan 屈原. Qu Yuan, whose personal integrity and altruism for his state were so deep that they cost him his life, is presented as a paragon – alongside Wuzi Xu 伍子胥 – whose ideal he aspires to but whom he cannot quite reach, but with whom he desires to ‘wander far’ (yuanyou 遠遊), a wistful (and highly Daoist-inflected) term which Master Dong borrows directly from Qu Yuan’s writings in the Chuci 《楚辭》. Indeed, Pankenier notes three prominent references in ‘A Scholar’s Frustration’ to Qu Yuan’s most famous poem, ‘Encountering Sorrow’ 《離騷》. Unlike Qu Yuan, however, Master Dong rules out suicide as a solution to his problems, and in its place proposes something strangely similar to hermitage: withdrawing from the world and pursuing a life of solitary contemplation and quietude.

There is another reason for Dong’s emphasis on Qu Yuan and ‘Encountering Sorrow’ in particular. The fu form itself drew inspiration from ‘Encountering Sorrow’, and Master Dong wrote this poem in a genre which began with Xunzi 荀子 and continued long after him. Pankenier notes that these poems are meant to provide, in adverse political circumstances and using a circumspect language suitable to the court, a highly-personal ‘statement’ linking the life and works of the author to a broader set of enduring ideals and solidarity with a concrete intellectual lineage or group of students. Dong’s partial embrace of Qu Yuan points to an identification with his ideals and literary lineage, but his rejection of an honourable death at his own hand points to a very different eschatological hope.

‘The Scholar’s Frustration’ can be found in the original Chinese here, and Pankenier’s translation and analysis can be found here. Thankfully, I think academia.edu is not behind a paywall.

Bringing the charge home

Ouch.

子曰：「已矣乎！吾未見能見其過而內自訟者也。」

The Master said, ‘In vain I have looked for a single man capable of seeing his own faults and bringing the charge home against him.’

　　- Confucius, The Analects 5.27

Saint Ephrem, intercede with God for me, the blind man. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

(You gotta) fight for your right (to prostrate)

Empress Theodōra venerating icons with her daughters

Today is the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy (and, coincidentally, the Russian Men’s Olympic hockey team). Unfortunately this year, I’ve come down with the flu for the second time this season, so I kind of went through the procession in a bit of a haze. Last year I brought my icon of Father Alexis (Tovt) of Wilkes-Barre; this year my icon of New Hieromartyr Gorazd (Pavlík) of Prague. I am sensing something of a pattern here; I seem to have a preference for politically-active broadly-Czechoslovak saints.

But why the emphasis on iconography in the first place? Why did the Orthodox Christians from Emperor Leōn III’s time down to Saint Theodōra’s (the wife of Emperor Theophilos, not the wife of Emperor Ioustinianos) believe that the veneration of icons was a hill worth dying on? This was, after all, a question over which iconoclast Emperors were willing to inflict executions and other forms of ritual public degradation on iconodules, and over which iconodules were willing to riot. With apologies to the Beastie Boys (though I really prefer the Holy Moses cover), ‘you gotta fight for your right to prostrate’.

Icons are not merely optional. They’re not just decorations. They aren’t only ‘ritual trappings’, though there’s something to be said for valuing ritual trappings in their own right, as bulwarks of humanity and justice. They are personal reminders that Heaven is near to us – that the boundary between the temporal and the æternal is not nearly so hard-and-fast as we can be lulled into thinking. The icons show us the face of the ultimate Truth, who is also a person: Christ. If we lose these kinds of reminders that Christ was a person – a flesh-and-blood human being who could weep, become angry, bleed and die – then we run the risk of forgetting the personality of Christ. And if we forget the personality of Christ our God, the ‘religion’ we claim for ourselves becomes simply one more ‘values’ system among the rest – or else it thins into a kind of fluffy sentimentalism, if it doesn’t evaporate altogether. As Orthodox philosopher Davor Džalto puts it:

In Christ’s person, God became visible, as a concrete human being, so painting Christ is necessary as a proof that God truly, not seemingly, became man. The fact that one can depict Christ witnesses God’s incarnation.

This is an important point. The icon’s primary justification is not merely symbolic but Christological – and moreover, it’s one which witnesses solidly to the depth at which the Incarnation of Christ itself was ‘unto the Greeks foolishness’: the degree to which the Eastern, Persian-Arabic civilisational principles had penetrated into Greek society with the coming of Christianity. To the classical Greeks from Herodotos on, the practice of proskynēsis was considered a foreign, Persian thing – and kneeling down to any man was considered unworthy of a manly Greek. But what is a Greek to do before Christ, who is both ‘flesh and blood’ man and ‘awesome God’? (I’ll be honest – I don’t think it’s an accident that one of the most vehement defenders of the use of icons during the iconoclast controversies was an Arab Christian.) Blessedly, the Eastern civilisational principle – and with it the correct Christology which holds Christ to be fully God and fully man – carried the day with the iconodules. After much ado, proskynēsis and the use of icons in veneration became accepted practice in the Church.

Coming into the Church from Episcopalianism, the practice of bowing before icons, prostrating myself before them, kissing them – all made me feel quite silly and awkward at first. I never really got the knack of it, or had the right attitude toward it, until I returned to Saint Mary’s Antiochian Church in Pawtucket. My Syrian, Lebanese, Armenian and Ethiopian fellows in that church possessed a kind of intimacy with each other (and with me) which I had some trouble accepting at first. It was a bit of a shock to me and my Anglo sensibilities to be hugged on sight and kissed once on each cheek – at first. But there’s really nothing quite like the warmth of an Arab greeting in Church! I soon came to realise it was a gesture of the hospitality and love that Christ had meant for us to exhibit to each other, and I got quite good at reciprocating it. Kissing the icons is a natural answer to that same kind of hospitality and love which Christ and His Mother extend to us – not just once every week, but every living, breathing moment of our lives.

Earnestly loving each other in such a way, though – that’s a right well worth fighting for.

Heaven is within you

Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒

「物之所由然，其於人切近，可不省邪？ 」

The causes of events are closely bound up with human beings. Is it possible not to contemplate them?

　　- Dong Zhongshu, Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn Annals 3.3

In my last, Lenten-minded post on Xi Shi 西施 and Fuchai 夫差, I made a passing reference earlier to the ‘personalist cosmology’ of Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒, whose work I’m rather accidentally finding to be good Lenten material. It’s a bad intellectual habit of mine that I tend to condense very, even crucially-important concepts into a dense or obscurantist kind of language like that, and while I’m in the season for breaking bad habits, it pays to start off well. Consider this, then, gentle readers, part of my ‘intellectual’ repentance.

The caricatured view of Dong Zhongshu that still sadly obtains somewhat in scholarship both inside and outside China is that he cultivated a close relationship with Emperor Wu and inaugurated something called ‘imperial Confucianism’, which is in essence a fusion between the Classicist school (Rujia 儒家) and the Legalist school (Fajia 法家) which takes Confucianism as the outer trappings of a Legalist core of political-philosophical commitments (rubiao fali 儒表法里). This ‘imperial Confucianism’ is usually taken to be a corruption of ‘original’ Confucianism, of whom Mencius in particular is usually taken as the defining canonical representative – ironically following the preferences of Zhu Xi 朱熹. There’s just one problem with this view of Dong Zhongshu’s life and work: almost none of it is actually true.

Now, there is a reason why the caricatured view of Dong Zhongshu still holds some water. Dong Zhongshu did make proposals that would ultimately ‘institutionalise’ Classicist thought and link it indelibly to the Chinese state. He advocated establishing an Imperial College (Taixue 太學, inaugurated in 124 BC) for training Ru scholars, and (unsuccessful in his own lifetime) a civil service system that would elevate men of worth rather than men with powerful connexions. Dong Zhongshu’s thought was later (after Wang Mang 王莽) directly used to bolster the Han Emperor’s legitimacy. But (to give just one example) Tu Wei-ming’s 杜維明 outrageously-unjust gloss of Dong Zhongshu as a ‘true heir of the spirit of’ (Qin-Han transition political opportunist) Shusun Tong 叔孫通 falls wildly far of the mark.

Michael Loewe’s thesis on Dong Zhongshu is contrarian and overly-scrupulous in language to the point of being a distortion in some places, and therefore Dong Zhongshu himself might not wholly approve of it. Sarah Queen argues persuasively that even if Dong Zhongshu was not the sole author of the Luxuriant Gems, there is a good chance that at least the first five chapters are his writing and that later chapters attributed to him were part of an oral tradition of commentary that may have had him as one of its sources. But Loewe’s work is otherwise an excellent piece of research and scholarship, which serves to clear away a lot of the political dross that surrounds Dong and his career.

Loewe examines several contemporary biographies of the man, and determines that Dong Zhongshu never did have a close relationship either with Emperor Jing 漢景帝 or with his heir Emperor Wu 漢武帝. He issued three ‘rescripts’ (basically, petitions) directed at the throne, which – though couched in the usual polite language of the court – in fact contained some strident critiques of Emperor Wu’s policies. Dong Zhongshu inveighed against the corvées and conscription, against usury, against the salt and iron monopolies, against nepotism in the court, against the overuse of the death penalty, against the concentration of land in the hands of a few rich landowners, against land privatisation more generally and against the destructive policy of Han wars against the Xiongnu. The Emperor had him thrown into prison at one point, and his archrival Gongsun Hong 公孫弘 had him exiled to Weifang 濰坊 (where it was hoped he would die). His fortunes improved in his later years, but he still never attained to the kind of prominence his latter-day detractors suggest. Leaving aside the fact that it takes a rather strange kind of crypto-Legalist to speak out against the iron monopoly, to defend the commons from the predations of the state and powerful landlords, or to lament frequent executions and expansive wars of conquest, Dong Zhongshu’s thought bears none of the hallmarks of Legalist thinking.

Dong Zhongshu’s contributions to Classicist thinking, in fact, seem to offer us not a ‘Legalist’ interpretation but instead something very close to a personalist one. For example: Dong Zhongshu did not see human nature as inherently bad (as the Legalists did), nor as inherently good (as Mencius did). Instead, Dong’s interests lay in the interactions between human beings and the cosmos, and he comes to some surprising conclusions. The human being herself, Dong Zhongshu held, is a microcosm – the stamp of heaven and earth is upon her. In the question of whether her nature is ‘good’ or ‘evil’, Dong Zhongshu evidently felt that question cheapened the fundamental dynamism, development, freedom and potential for growth that she possesses – the very marks that claim her as made in the image of Heaven. Here is how he puts it:

「身之有性情也，若天之有陰陽也。言人之質而無其情，猶言天之陽而無其陰也。」

A person has a nature and emotions just as Heaven possesses yin and yang. To speak of one’s basic substance without mentioning one’s emotions is like speaking of Heaven’s yang without mentioning its yin.

　　- Dong Zhongshu, Luxuriant Gems 35.4

Dong Zhongshu holds, in these chapters touching on human nature, that ascribing ‘goodness’ or ‘evil’ to the ‘unadorned’ substance of the human being will result in a misnomer. He does not deny, as the Legalists do, that the ‘myriad commoners’ (wanmin 萬民) are capable of goodness. Instead, he likens the goodness of an ‘ordinary’ person to a cocoon or an egg – precious, unique, and possessing all the ‘basic substance’ of goodness, but in a potential state. The goodness that is in them must be cultivated and brought out by means of education and admonition. Here he comes quite close indeed to Mencius 孟子 and his ‘four sprouts’ (si duan 四端), but not quite. Dong takes care to distinguish his ideas from those of Mencius by name. He holds that Mencius’ view of human nature is not expansive enough, not demanding enough, and that holding human beings to a standard that elevates them only slightly above ‘birds and beasts’ (qinshou 禽獸) is more than somewhat patronising:

「吾質之命性者異孟子。孟子下質於禽獸之所為，故曰性已善；吾上質於聖人之所為，故謂性未善。」

My evaluation of what the word “nature” designates differs from that of Mencius. Mencius looked below to find the substance [of goodness] in comparison with what birds and beasts do and therefore said that nature is inherently good. I look above to find the substance [of goodness] in comparison with what the sages did, and therefore I say that nature is not yet good.

　　- Dong Zhongshu, Luxuriant Gems 35.4

Note that he says ‘not yet good’ (wei shan 未善) rather than ‘not good’. With Dong Zhongshu in particular, Gongyang scholar that he was, one has to be very careful about shades of meaning. The connotation is one of potential and choice. The difference between him and Mencius, therefore, is subtle, and does not place him alongside Xunzi or Han Fei. In fact, the difference between Dong Zhongshu and Mencius is somewhat parallel to the distinction, on a very similar question, between Abba Cassian and Pelagius.

Not just on this contemporary philosophical question of ‘nature’, but even more generally, Dong Zhongshu frequently evinces a desire to show the intrinsic value of the human person. In the later chapters, too, which are ascribed to Dong Zhongshu but whom very few people now actually accredit to him directly, we see this kind of reverent awe at the cosmos which the human person – even the ordinary uncultivated human being – contains, and consequently a kind of anthropomorphic cosmology emerges:

「人之人本於天，天亦人之曾祖父也。人之形體，化天數而成。」

The humanness of human beings is rooted in Heaven. Heaven is also the supreme ancestor of human beings. This is why human beings are elevated to be categorised with Heaven.

　　- Luxuriant Gems 41.1

And again:

「天乃有喜怒哀樂之行，人亦有春秋冬夏之氣者。」

Heaven surely possesses expressions of happiness, anger, sorrow, and joy, and human beings likewise possess the qi of spring, autumn, winter, and summer.

　　- Luxuriant Gems 46.1

Even if these sentences were not written by the hand of Dong Zhongshu himself, they are of a piece with his sentiments elsewhere. And they provide a very, very different cosmology from that of Xunzi 荀子 – and even further from that of the Legalists. Even if Dong Zhongshu selectively used Xunzi against Mencius in arguing for a dynamic interpretation of human ‘goodness’, his cosmology is inherently personalistic. He argues that human beings deserve to be classified with Heaven, that they indelibly possess the ‘vital energy’ (qi 氣) of Heaven, and that Heaven in turn possesses intelligence, a personality and characteristics that we would associate with human beings. This renders him a rather unique (and, to my Berdyaev-influenced mind, intriguing) figure in the Classicist tradition, which is not normally given to theological or cosmological speculations except those which directly impact the questions of practical life and government. Roger Ames sums up Dong Zhongshu’s personalist-cosmological distinctions quite nicely:

There is much in the writings of Dong Zhongshu that gives the human being a special place in the cosmic order, distinguishing humanity from all other forms of life by virtue of its intimate relationship with tian [天, Heaven]. The human being is the child of a divinely inspired nature to the extent that the human body and its various functions are a microcosm of the natural processes and regularity. Since the human being is produced by tian and is defined by correspondences with nature, it follows that the proper model for human development is tian itself. And the patterns and purposes of tian are revealed immediately in the world around us. It is thus incumbent on the ruler to organise the human world on the basis of what can be understood about the natural world.

But the role of the human being is more than just to be a compliant creature of tian. The human being, by living in harmony with and contributing to nature, becomes a co-creator of the cosmic order. Where nature leaves off, humanity begins… it is the responsibility of the efficacious human being to bring the possibilities of the natural world to fruition.

Oh, yes. A certain historical irony strikes me, which is too savoury not to mention here in a postscript. Given his emphases on the unique and dynamic placement of the human person in the cosmos, and the passing similitude which he therefore shows with the likes of Bowne and Brightman, would that make Dong Zhongshu the original Boston Confucian?

Xi Shi, Fuchai and the gates of repentance

Xi Shi 西施

Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 says this in The Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn 《春秋繁路》:

King Fuchai of Wu bullied the state of Yue. He made the ruler [of Yue] his subject and took the ruler’s wife as his concubine. Ultimately he brought about his own destruction. His ancestral temples were razed, and his altars of the soil and the grain were destroyed. This certainly was painful. The aged king [Fuchai] drowned himself at Xi. This certainly was regrettable…

… Having shown that self-importance brings about defeat, there still remain [cases in which] upright remonstrations were presented but not put into action. In the end, all those [who did not heed these upright remonstrations] always suffered destruction…

Wuzi Xu warned King [Fuchai] of Wu that Yue would inevitably rise again [from its defeat by Wu]. The king of Wu did not heed his advice but instead murdered Wuzi Xu. Nine years later, Yue destroyed the state of Wu.

Dong Zhongshu does not mention the instrument or means by which King Goujian of Yue 越王勾踐 avenged himself and his state upon King Fuchai of Wu 吳王夫差, though Dong does hint at one of King Fuchai’s fatal weaknesses in alluding to the liberties Fuchai took with Goujian’s wife. Goujian possessed two very loyal ministers who continued to serve and advise him even after his military defeat and humiliation by Wu: steward Wen Zhong 文種 and master businessman Fan Li 范蠡. The two of them suggested to Goujian that the state of Wu might become corrupted by taking advantage of Fuchai’s lusts.

Fan Li went to Yue and there procured two local young women renowned for their beauty: Zheng Dan 鄭旦 and her friend Shi Yiguang 施夷光. Shi Yiguang’s parents were poor – her father was a woodcutter and her mother made a living washing raw silk. (Yiguang herself is often shown in traditional Chinese art washing silk beside a stream.) They lived in a hut to the west of a village sout of present-day Zhuji; for this reason she was called Xi Shi 西施 (or ‘Shi from the west’). Fan Li put these two girls through three years of training in etiquette and song-and-dance before sending them to Wu; however, during that time, he himself fell in love with Shi Yiguang.

Upon receiving the two girls, Fuchai was instantly bewitched by Shi and Zheng. Zheng died only a year after arriving in Wu, but Shi – possessed of a beauty that would literally become proverbial – kept a powerful hold on Fuchai, who showered the state of Yue with various gifts and subsidies on her account. It is here that the aforementioned Wuzi Xu 伍子胥 began to remonstrate with the king, objecting specifically to his squandering state funds on a woman from Yue, whose military threat he stressed as Dong Zhongshu recounts above. That advice cost Wuzi Xu his life – Fuchai gave Wuzi a sword and ordered him to kill himself with it; Wuzi obeyed, but asked that his eyes be put out and placed on the gates of the Wu capital so that he could view the approach of the Yue armies.

As it turned out, Wuzi was quite right about Shi, who was loyal both to her home state of Yue and personally to Fan Li. It is said that she convinced Fuchai to build a canal from Gusu to Lake Tai in Yue – ostensibly so that she could take more pleasure-trips with him, but actually so she could pass key tactical information on Gusu to Fan Li. Goujian, coming into possession of this information from his loyal minister, readied an attack on Wu which overran Gusu and obliterated Fuchai’s armies. Fuchai was forced to cut his throat with his own sword, but not before he bewailed the fact that he hadn’t taken the advice of Wuzi Xu, and ordered that his face be covered so he wouldn’t have to be shamed by Wuzi in the afterlife.

Xi Shi’s fate after having seduced Fuchai to his ruin is unclear and unknown. Some sources have it that she lived out the rest of her days happily, living on a fishing boat with Fan Li and sailing around Taihu. Others have it that she returned home to her native village, where she drowned herself in the river where her mother had washed silk. And still others have it that Goujian and his wife forced Xi Shi to drown herself – with Goujian’s wife holding that Xi Shi’s beauty and ability to bewitch powerful men made her too dangerous to leave alive.

In Luxurient Gems, Dong Zhongshu uses the example of the Wu-Yue contention – specifically the wrongful death of Wuzi Xu and the ruin of Fuchai – as one among many examples of destroyed states, to advise rulers against overbearing arrogance and to admonish them to accept loyal criticism. He does not mention the rôle of Xi Shi in assisting King Goujian of Yue’s revenge, however, even though he is not averse to castigating other rulers for their lewd behaviour or their improper treatment of women. I’m still not clear on how to take such an omission: knowing Dong Zhongshu’s subtlety of mind and careful reading of the Spring and Autumn Annals, such an omission may well have been deliberate. His intention was not, after all, to eulogise a blameless girl who was the instrument of a lord’s downfall, but to hold up a mirror to the Han Emperor so that he could avoid a similar fate as Fuchai. The upright official, or zhengguan 正官, of classical times was very much like a prophet in this respect, and Dong Zhongshu’s remonstrances, linked as they are to his personalist cosmology, have more than a hint of the theological about them.

And not only lords can benefit from the story of the Wu-Yue contention. I find my thoughts bending another way during Clean Week. Like Fuchai I have coveted in my heart what was my neighbour’s. Like the King of Wu I have justly earned the enmity of my brothers. I have rejected good counsel; I have sought refuge in the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Like Xi Shi the objects of my passion are without stain; the evil I am mired in is mine alone. In my heart I have done more than destroy a Wuzi Xu; I am guilty of the crucifixion of Christ our Saviour. Even now the soldiers of Yue are at the gates of Gusu; the snares of the world and the Evil One defeat me again and again. The end is at hand; where will I turn?

Such medicine is bitter. The Hebrew Law and Prophets, as the Luxuriant Gems and other classical works of historical commentary, are stern teachers – not easy for me to hear. Yet I must hear them. For Fuchai, the gates of Gusu may have been destroyed by the rampaging Yue, but for us the gates of repentance are yet open.