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The Economic and Social History of Former Han

Sadao, Nishijima. (1986). "The Economic and Social History of Former Han," in Cambridge History of China: Volume I: the Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220, 545-607. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521243270.

Rural Society and Developments of Agricultural Techniques

The Structure of Rural Society

Page 551-552: During the Han period, the local administrative divisions descended in the following order: the commandery, the county, the district, and the hamlet. A hamlet was a walled area with one or two gateways where about a hundred families lived. A hamlet could exist by itself, but several hamlets were usually grouped together to form a district.
Page 552: A religious altar built in honor of a local deity was each hamlet's center of religious life, where festivals were held and meat distributed to strengthen the community's spirits. Parallel to this, each district and county had its own official altar.
Page 552-553: The Han state controlled the hamlet by imposing a deliberate social hierarchy embodied in the rank system, which had existed since the Warring States Period. This consisted of twenty ranks, QUOTE: "the eight lowest of which could be bestowed on all male commoners apart from slaves." For the entire male population above age 15, an emperor could raise their ranks by one degree on special occasions such as the installation of a new emperor, inauguration of a new reign title, the wedding of a new empress, or the selection of an heir apparent. Thus the older a man was, the more likely it was to have received more rank promotions in his lifetime. It was during such occasions that permission for a banquet was sought and men's wives were given ox meat and 10 shi (200 liters) of wine for every hundred families.
Page 553: These rank titles did enhance the prestige of the commoner in his location, as his seating arrangement at the banquet would be changed with his new rank, his share of the food after hunting game would be larger, he would be punished less severely for certain crimes, and would be exempt from some statutory obligations to the state. Even The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art has math problems involving commoners' ranks.
Page 553: The rank system was the only way the state could impose itself on the populace at the hamlet level, since the bureaucracy extended only down as far as the district level, where county officials of a district included the chief of police in charge of public order, the overseer in charge of taxes, and elders who were distinguished members of the community who were often educated and could provide aid in solving complex issues.
Page 554: The Han court sponsored large-scale flood control and irrigation works in the countryside. Although the Cao Canal (south of the Wei River) was primarily built to provide better transport to Chang'an, it had the intended byproduct of irrigating around 10,000 qing (113,000 acres) of private fields for cultivation. The Longshou Canal (built north of the Wei River) had wells connected to underground drains to prevent the banks from collapsing. Flood control works along the Yellow River were first built in Han during the reign of Emperor Wen of Han, while Emperor Wu of Han initiated a massive effort in 109 BC to embank the Yellow River. Despite this, a catastrophic flood occurred in 11 AD when the Yellow River itself changed its course.
Page 555: QUOTE: "Peasant communities and cultivation in the newly opened areas depended for their continuance upon the maintenance by the state of the irrigation and flood control systems which had brought them into existence. Being thus dependent on state policy, the hamlets in these areas inevitably lacked autonomy. Taxation and labor service were thus not exacted solely to support the ruling class in luxury. By financing flood control and irrigation and maintaining the bureaucracy which implemented them, they benefitted the taxpayer, (that is, the peasant), to a considerable degree and provided many with a source of livelihood. Accordingly, when state power waned and its control over the peasantry declined, the latter were often driven either to abandon their fields or to seek the protection of powerful local families who could perform the functions previously undertaken by the state. This phenomenon was already apparent in the middle of the Former Han period and greatly increased in the Later Han period."
Page 555: QUOTE: "Not all hamlets in the Han period, however, were new communities lacking an autonomous social order. There remained many longer established hamlets which had no need of state irrigation and flood control and in which there was strong familial solidarity. State authority was therefore not easily exerted over these communities. Even in the newly founded hamlets, an independent social order gradually developed, and sometimes powerful families who rejected direct state control and exerted strong influence over the local peasants arose."
Page 555: The prominent clans of the Warring States Period remained prominent during the early Western Han. In order to break their solidarity, Emperor Gaozu of Han implemented Liu Jing's policy suggestion of having 100,000 members of prominent clans moved to Chang'an. Within this group of 100,000 were the former royal families of Qi, Chu, Yan, Zhao, Han, and Wei. The policy of resettlement could also apply to prominent provincial officials; emperors down the reign of Emperor Xuan of Han regularly had provincial officials that earned 2000 shi (40,000 liters) of grain or more in stipend moved to the villages within the vicinity of their imperial tombs. This also applied to certain families who owned property that valued one million coins or more.
Page 556: Any land that individuals could sell, acquir through a purchase, as a gift, as a hereditary bequest, or even imperial gift was considered private land (sitian). Private land could be owned by the sole owner-cultivator or the big powerful families. This is in contrast to state-owned land (gongtian), which comprised newly opened land by means of irrigation, military farmland on the frontiers, and formerly private lands that were confiscated by the government due to offenses such as tax avoidance and tax evasion. Agricultural fields of state-owned land were sometimes worked on by corvée laborers and slaves, but more often were rented out to peasants (which brought in a considerable amount of revenues for the state).
Page 556: Wealthy families buying up agricultural lands was perhaps well under way during the Warring States Period. The Hanfeizi states that some cultivated other people's fields for pay, while Chen Sheng, leader of the first revolt against the Qin Dynasty, was once a hired agricultural laborer. The scholar Dong Zhongshu (d. 104 BC) asserted that the wealthy clan landowners of his day were the result of the state's abolition of the well-field system that was first implemented by Shang Yang. After this was abolished, the free buying and selling of land was persued.
Page 556-557: Whenever there were disruptions in the Han taxation system or devastating natural calamities, there was increased clan ownership of great tracts of land while the peasant farmer barely lived at subsistence level. Chao Cuo (d. 154 BC) once pointed out that QUOTE: "a typical peasant family of five members, including two adult males liable to labor service, however hard they worked, would be unable to cultivate more than 100 mou (4.57 hectares; 11.3 acres), or to obtain a crop of more than 100 shih of grain (2000 liters). Even though the burden of year-round cultivation and labor service was very heavy, this would be greatly increased in times of flood or drought or of exceptionally high taxation. The peasants were then forced to sell their crops at half the market price or to borrow money at high interest rates. Entrapped in a spiral of debt, they ultimately had to dispose of their land, their houses, and even their children. Land sold in this way came into the hands of local wealthy people, merchants and usurers, mostly members of powerful families, who thus built up large holdings. THe process took place in both old settlements and the new communities established on lands opened by state irrigation projects."
Page 557: QUOTE: "Large landholdings were let out to landless peasants or cultivated by hired laborers or by slaves who, in the Han period, were either state or privately owned. The former category consisted of the families of criminals, prisoners of war, or confiscated private slaves; the latter were peasants sold into slavery as a result of debt, or state slaves who had been bestowed upon aristocrats and high officials as reward for their services. The state generally aimed to prevent the sale of peasants into slavery and consequent decline in the numbers of independent peasants...There were nonetheless considerable numbers of both types of slaves throughout the Han period. State-owned slaves were employed in miscellaneous duties, such as work in state-run factories and agriculture, while private slaves were used in farming and domestic service (often as entertainers) by high officials or powerful families."
Page 557: QUOTE: "Most of the landowners' holdings were not, however, cultivated by slaves or hired laborers, but were rented out to landless peasants." During the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, the scholar Dong Zhongshu complained that vast tracts of land were owned by the rich while many peasants were landless and forced to work on the rich people's land while paying half the crops they cultivated as their rent payment. Dong Zhongshu QUOTE: "demanded a law to restrict land ownership, but there is no evidence that his proposals were ever put into effect."
Page 557-558: The Chancellor Kong Guang and Imperial Counsellor He Wu suggested a number of restricts on landownership to Emperor Ai of Han on his ascension to the throne in 7 BC. Their proposal was to have a limited territory where marquises and kings were allowed to own their lands and restricted their holdings to 30 qing (340 acres), as well as a limited amount of slaves for kings and marquises. However, due to the opposition at court (especially from the Ding and Fu families), these policies were never implemented.
Page 558: On becoming emperor in 9 AD, Wang Mang was the next to attempt a land reform to curb the power of the powerful landowning families. He wanted to bring all land under the state's command (i.e. "the king's fields" or "wang tian") and wanted to abolish all slave trading activities. QUOTE: "In addition, all families fewer than eight male members and more than a specified amount of land were to divide any surplus plots they held among their relations and local persons; the landless were to be given holdings up to this size. Noncompliance might be punishable by death. This combination of a law restricting land ownership, which had already proved impractical, with features of the well field (ching-t'ien) system, and a total ban on the sale of land, houses, and slaves, naturally proved exceedingly difficult to enforce, and it had to be repealed within three years. Moreover, the violent opposition which it aroused among powerful landowning families and peasants alike was one contributory factor in the revolts which caused Wang Mang's downfall."
Page 558-559: Emperor Gengshi of Han, who overthrew Wang Mang, relied on the powerful landholding families of Nanyang District for much of his support. There was little protest against the great landholdings throughout Eastern Han, as many high ranking officials were great landholders who used their positions to gain even more land properties.
Page 559: However, QUOTE: "The growth of such holdings greatly weakend the Han government's attempts to exert direct control over the peasantry, from whom it required tax revenues and labor service, and resulted in considerable decentralization toward the end of Later Han. On the other hand, a great many peasants who were subject to the control and exploitation of both the great landowners and the state were driven by their poverty to rise in revolts like those of the Yellow Turbans."
Page 559: IN CONCLUSION, QUOTE: "the typical rural community during Han was the hamlet (li), consisting in theory of a hundred families, all of which owned small amounts of land. They had a few family ties and were organized hierarchically through the state rank system. Strong kinship solidarity did, however, continue to exist in some older hamlets. Owing to changing economic and social conditions, some peasants lost their lands and became tenants of the great landowners, whose growth was to alter the structure of the rural communities and exert great influence on the government. It must be noted taht the rise of the great landholdings during Han did not necessarily imply the development of large-scale farming, expect in the few cases where slaves were employed to work estates. Tenants of these landowners cultivated their holdings on an individual and small-scale basis and this, due largely to the lack of sufficient slave labor and intensive nature of farming, continued to be an important feature of Chinese agriculture."

Development of Dry Field Agriculture in North China

Page 559: In terms of agriculture, China is divided into two major regions, north and south CHina, which Nishijima Sadao 西嶋定生 (1919–1999) considers to be separated by the Huai River and the Qinling Mountains. The area north of these geographic features is the North China Plain, which receives light annual rainfall of 400 to 800 mm a year. This northwest region has a large loess area where wind casts primary loess across the landscape as well as a large deposit of alluvium due to the erosion of the loess heights by the Yellow River. Both the North China Plain and loess area proper are very fertile regions.
Page 559-560: There is heavier annual rainfall of 800 to 1,500 mm over the Sichuan Basin and middle-and-lower Yangzi River valley, which has no loess. Thus, the dividing line between northern and southern China is the southernmost edges of the loess area, where no more than 800 mm of rain fall annually. The region south of this dividing line is not characterized by dry-field agriculture, but by wetter climate paddy-field agriculture.
Page 560: During the Han Dynasty, northern China was far more cultivated than southern China, the latter of which was backwards in comparison. It was not until the Southern and Northern Dynasties that the south was able to compete with the agricultural productivity of the north (and it not until the 10th century that the south was able to outstrip the north as the agricultural and economic center of China).
Page 560: From dry-field agriculture of the north, the most common types of grains were the "five grains," which were wheat, hemp, beans, millet, and panicled millet (with glutinous and nonglutinous varieties of this millet). The prime crop grown during Han was millet, which was grown in the summer. During winter, wheat and barley were cultivated in smaller quantities. Rice was sometimes grown on heavily irrigated land, but only in limited quantities. Beans eaten during included soybeans.
Page 561: Zhao Guo, the Grain Intendant (Sousi Duwei) during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, invented the "alternating fields system" (daitian fa). This involved three furrows, each 1 chi (0.23 m) wide and 1 chi deep, that were plowed every mou; a mou at this time measured as a strip of land that was 1 bu (6 chi or 1.38 m) in width and 240 bu (331 m) in length, thus an area of 0.113 acres. QUOTE: "The seeds were sown in a straight line inthe furros and not on the ridges. In the course of weeding, earth from the ridges gradually fell down into the furrows, covering the roots fo the sprouting crops so taht by midsummer ridges and furrows were level with each other and the crops so deeply rooted as to be protected from wind and drought. The next year the position of ridges and furrows were reversed; hence the name of the new method."
Page 562: QUOTE: "The new method had several advantages over the old. It meant that for the first time crops could be grown in straight rows continuously from sowing to harvest, and that moisture in the soil could more easily be conserved. Oxen could now be used for plowing, thus making it possible to cultivate a larger area with the same amount of human labor. Damage and loss of crops from wind and drought was more easily prevented, and it was possible to use a long-handled hoe for weeding, saving time and effort. Finally, the yearly alternation of ridge and furrow helped to conserve the fertility of the soil and stabilize annual yields."
Page 562: Zhao Guo first experimented with this system right outside the capital region using palace guards. After satisfactory yields were gained through experimentation, he had instructions of the new method sent to all the heads of counties, districts, and hamlets throughout the country (via distribution by their Commandery governor). Although the new two-share plow driven by two oxen was in limited use due to the limited amount of oxen in China, the plow could still be worked by a large team of men.
Page 562-563: Sadao speculates that the real driving power in the promotion of the alternate field system may not have been Zhao Guo alone, but also could have been none other than the defamed Sang Hongyang (d. 80 BC), a Luoyang merchant who went from personal attendant under Wudi to the head of the salt and iron industries and Imperial Counsellor. It was his rival, the General-in-Chief Huo Guang (d. 68 BC), who was largely responsible for the calling of Confucian scholars from all over China to come and debate the faults or merits of the salt and iron monopolies supported by Sang Hongyang (put in written form by Huan Kuan as The Discourses on Salt and Iron). QUOTE: "Although this had no direct bearing on the alternate fields system, it does illustrate the contemporary economic conditions from which it arose."
Page 563: QUOTE: "The state-owned land (kung-t'ien) on which the new method of cultivation was first put into practice was in theory worked under the direct control of the central government, and all profits formed part of state revenues. Possibilities of increased productivity undoubtedly lay behind the adoption of the system, particularly on the military farmlands on the borders which supplied the food for their garrisons. The critics in the salt and iron debates, however, claimed that such state-owned lands, especially in the three metropolitan areas, were in practice not worked by the authorities, but rented out to powerful persons who alone enjoyed the benefits, and that these state holdings should therefore be given over to the general public. Thus it appears that the actual beneficiaries of the alternate fields system, as implemented on state lands, may have been powerful families rather than the government treasury."
Page 563: QUOTE: "The promotion of the alternate fields method among the common people also met with great difficulties. The use of human labor for plowing, necessitated by the shortage of oxen, proved inefficient and exhausting. Moreover, iron implements manufactured under the state iron monopoly were too large for practical use. Peasants soon reverted to their traditional wooden tools and weeding by hand. On the other hand, wealthy families who could afford oxen and iron tools derived much benefit from the new method."
Page 564: By the Eastern Han period an improved plow rendered Zhao Guo's alternate fields method much more efficient than it had originally been in Western Han. This new plow (as described by Cui Shi) needed only one man to push it, had three plowshares, a seed box, and a tool that turned down the soil again. It is said that it could sow more than one qing (11.3 acres) of land in a single day.
Page 564: During the reign of Emperor Cheng of Han (r. 33–7 BC), a manual (i.e. the Fan Shengzhi shu 氾勝之書) on agricultural techniques was written by Fan Shengzhi, who was perhaps a gentleman consultant (yilang) since he was responsible for instructing farmers how to cultivate wheat in the metropolitan area. It is known that he also became an official in the secretariat. His book is the only surviving book of its genre that was listed in the bibliography of the Book of Han, and even then only a little over 3,000 characters of the book have been preserved, which is not the entire text. QUOTE: "Besides the general theory of plowing, sowing, and harvesting, the book contains a detailed discussion of methods of raising such crops as millet, wheat, rice, deccan grass, soy beans, hemp, melons, gourds, taro root, and mulberries, and also describes the technique of intensive cultivation known as the ou-t'ien (pit field) system." DUDE! You found info on that here as well: User:PericlesofAthens/Sandbox4#Agriculture: Filed Work and Textiles. Awesome.
Page 564-565: Sadao discusses this pit field system as such, QUOTE: "There are two variants of this, sowing in furrows and sowing in pits. In the former, a standard mou of land 30 pu (41.4 m) long by 8 pu (11 m) wide is divided across into fifteen plots, with narrow footpaths left between them. The plots are then each divided breadthwise by twenty-four ditches in which the seeds are sown. If, as in the case of spiked and glutinous millet, there are two rows of plants 5 ts'un (11.5 cm) apart in each ditch, this means that over 15,000 plants can be grown in one mou. The distance between the plants and the total mou vary, of course, according to the kind of crop...[paragraph break]...Where the method of sowing in shallow pits is employed, the standard unit of land is divided into grids 1 ch'ih (23 cm) and 5 ts'un (11.5 cm) square, in each of which is dug a small pit, called an ou, 6 ts'un (13.8 cm) deep and 6 ts'un wide. One mou thus contains 3,840 of these pits. Twenty seeds are sown in each pit, one which is used 1 sheng (0.2 liter) of good manure mixed well with the soil. The total of 2 sheng of seeds sown in every mou will produce 3 sheng (0.6 liter) of grain per pit and thus 100 shih (2,000 liters) per mou (0.113 acre). One thousand shih (20,000 liters), the annual produce on 10 mou of land, is calculated to provide a twenty-six-year food supply for the cultivators. These figures apply to the best class of land; on middle- and lwer-grade land, where pits have to be made larger and farther apart, the yields are proportionately lower."
Page 565: QUOTE: "The advantages of this system were several. Only the actual pits in which the seeds were sown had to be cultivated and supplied with water and manure, and fertile land was not essential; it was even possible to use this method in upland areas and on sloping ground where there were problems of water supply. Unlike the alternate fields method, it did not require plowing with oxen, and yields were extremely high. Fan Sheng-chih devised and popularized the method, practical even for very poor peasants, in cooperation with the government, which was anxious to sustain the peasants as the cheif bsae of its power and preserve them from the steady encroachments of the large landowners."
Page 565-566: However, Fan's new pit field method did not become as widespread as planned and had essential drawbacks such as requiring intensive input of labor.
Page 566-567: From the Eastern Han period, the Simin yueling 四民月令 is the only significant agricultural work to have survived from that era (and even then it only survives in fragments that had to be pieced together). It was written by Cui Shi 催寔, a man born into a powerful family living near what is today's Beijing. He became an official during the reigns of Emperor Huan of Han and Emperor Ling of Han, including a commandery governor and member of the central secretariat. The book seems primarily concerned with the agricultural activities amongst the powerful families.
Page 567: QUOTE: "The most important directives in the Ssu-min yüeh-ling are concerned with the monthly festivals and rituals, especially those for ancestor worship. These began with the Great Festival on the first day of the first month and were followed by others in the second, sixth, eighth, eleventh, and twelfth months. Ancestor worship was supplemented by that of household and agricultural deities, the former including the gods of the gate, doors, stove, and well. It should be noted that the ancestor worship and visits to ancestral tombs which took place on specified days of the second and eighth months clashed with the biannual festivals of the hamlet (li), which also traditionally occurred during those days but which are not mentioned in the Ssu-min yüeh-ling. This indicates that powerful local families in this period did not always cooperate with the li system as the basis of social order int he community."
Page 567: QUOTE: "The Ssu-min yüeh-ling pays particular attention to the subject of kinship solidarity. Besides ceremonial greetings exchanged between relatives at the New Year, it prescribes practical measures of relief for kinsmen and relatives by marriage. These include donations to poor members in the third month, before the crops had grown, and for the bereaved and infirm in the ninth month, to sustain them against the coming winter. It is evident from this that the extended families were composed of a number of patriarchal families of varying degrees of prosperity, each of which had its own land and cultivated it separately."
Page 568: Older boys went to school during the slack season of agriculture, while the younger ones worked full time. The large-scale farming described in the book could not have been carried out by the family members alone, so slaves, hired workers, and tenant farmers must have been employed as well. The existence of poor peasants nearby the wealthy estates is evidenced by the instructions in Cui Shi's book on buying and selling commodities, some of which were distinctly rural and not urban items, such as straw shoes and wheat seeds. QUOTE: "as the peasants in this period had top pay their increasingly heavy taxes (apart from the land tax) in cash, they were driven to sell their crops at harvest time in order to get the necessary coins, and then buy them back again in the off-season when they were in need of food and seeds."

Development of Paddy Field Agriculture in Central and South China

Page 568-659: Chinese agriculture and cultivation of the land was extended to the Sichuan Basin in the Warring States Period and into the Pearl River Delta during the Qin Dynasty. During Western Han, the amount of cultivation throughout the Yangzi River valley was inferior to that of the north, as this area had smaller communities that still relied on an abundance of fruit and shellfish supplemented by limited agriculture. A money economy scarcely existed in southern China. The southern farming method described in the Book of Han was "plowing with fire and weeding with water," which meant that weeds on the land were burned out, water poured over it, and then the sowing of rice commenced. Yet the roots of the weeds would still survive, so when the rice and weed sprouts got 16 to 18.5 cm high, the weeds would have to be cut again and the land heavily watered to kill the weeds. This was a method of sowing seeds directly into the rice paddy and did not include transplantation.
Page 569: This was the method described by Ying Shao (died circa 204 AD), while Zheng Xuan (127–200 AD) further described the method in his commentary on the Rites of Zhou. He said: "When growing rice in a low-lying, wet area, prepare the paddy field by drawing water over it in the sixth month after a heavy rainfall so as to let the weeds perish. Get rid of any surviving weeds in the autumn when the water dries up. Rice should be grown on this field in the next year." Note how there is no mention of burning weeds here, but the passage does show how the field was left fallow for a year's time.
Page 570: The reason that the rice field had to lie fallow for a year was the fact that the Chinese were not yet able to perform the transplantation method, instead relying on weeding that had to be done three times a year during the fallow period. QUOTE: "This system of growing rice thus appears to have been less productive than methods of grain cultivation used in north China."
Page 570-571: However, in the limited amount of rice paddies grown north of the Huai River, northern farmers by the Eastern Han period did practice the more advanced method of transplantation, called "divide the plants", which used the same sowing methods practiced south of the Huai. The northern rice farmers had to grow rice along winding rivers and did not transplant their rice until the stalks reached about 16 to 18.5 cm tall.
Page 572: QUOTE: "The normal reasons for rice transplantation are that it enables intensive care to be given to the young plants in the nursery; more plants can be obtained through separating out their offshoots; and the main field can be well fertilized and used for some other, winter crop while the rice seedlings are in the nursery. None of these advantages is [sic], however, listed in the Ch'i-min yao-shu, which implies, on the contrary, that the sole purpose of transplantation is to facilitate weeding. Moreover, the fact that the method of seeding in the north was the same as that used in the south, where transplantation was not practiced, suggests that there was no special nursery field for the rice and in fact no distinction between the field for seeding and that for transplantation. The mere fact that the transplantation method was used in north China before the sixth century does not necessarily mean that it was superior in practice to the method employed south of the Huai River; its use was actually a result of restrictive natural conditions in the north."
Page 573: Sadao writes that it was not until the middle Tang Dynasty that the true adoption of transplantation take place in central China (and not the "plowing with fire and weeding with water" method), which allowed for two cereal crops a year to be grown.
Page 573: In order to successfully carry out the "plowing with fire and weeding with water" method, the large amount of water needed had to be supplied by irrigation works. In the north, damming the upper reaches of a river and digging a new canal from it was the preferred method. In the south the preferred method starting in the Spring and Autumn Period and frequently used in the Han Dynasty was daming a small valley to make an artificial reservoir from which water could be drawn from a sluice. The building of canals in the north required government-sponsored labor and supervision, while the building of reservoirs was a simpler affair that did not require a government role (therefore undertaken by local powerful families); even when officials did take part, it was rare compared to instances of private enterprise handling the job.

The Development of Cities, Commerce, and Manufacturing

Cities and Merchants

Page 574: Before the Warring States Period, cities in China were primarily centers of political authority, power bases for the nobility, and lacked a strong commercial function. With the development of a money economy, handicrafts, and commerce in the Warring States, new cities began to emerge along established trade routes. The majority of major cities in China during the Han period were located in the north (the Yangzi River region generally lacked urban development at this point) and were often built on the sites of old Warring States population centers. The city of Luoyang during Eastern Han is estimated to be about 500,000 people.
Page 574-575: In the beginning of Western Han, the capital of Chang'an was constructed from 200 BC onward and located near the old Qin Dynasty capital of Xianyang (and about 10 km west of modern Xi'an). Construction on the defensive walls began in 194 BC with a constant work force of 20,000 convicts supplemented by 146,000 workers recruited in 192 BC to work for thirty days on strengthening the fortifications, and another 145,000 recruited to do the same for the ninth month of 190 BC. The city's overall construction was essentially complete by the reign of Emperor Hui of Han.
Page 575: It was recorded that the city measured 32 li and 18 pu (13,300 meters) in both length and width, thus giving an area of 44.5 square km (1,100 acres). However, excavations at the site show that the east wall was 5,940 m, the south 6,250 m, the west 4,550 m, and the north 5,950 m, which made the circumference 25,100 m. This was an irregular shape, unlike the outline of the later Tang capital. The eastern wall of Han Chang'an was the only perfectly straight wall; this irregular shape can be explained by the fact that the palaces and streets were built first, thus the walls had to be built around them. It is not known how many households existed within the city, although estimates range from 80,000 to 160,000 households. It is known that the city had 160 residential wards, each of which had its own gate and walls. A low-ranking official was placed in charge of each ward while social order was maintained by a group of influential persons living within the ward. There were imperial palaces, an administrative area, and the government-controlled Nine Markets. Of these, the East Market and West Market were the most prominent, yet research hints that the other seven markets were actually parts of the East and West markets.
Page 576: In each marketplace there was a two-story government office demarcated by a flag and drum placed on the top. The officials in charge of the market was headquartered here, including a market chief and a deputy, but not much else is known. In Eastern Han Luoyang, it is known that the staff of the market chief included thirty-six officials who maintained order, collected commercial taxes, fixed standard prices for commodities on the basis of monthly reviews of prices, and authorized contracts between the merchants and their customers.
Page 576: It is known that in Western Han Chang'an, the market officials sold government surplus commodities such as fish from the nearby Kunming Lake. Under Emperor Wu of Han's "equal supply" system, these government officials were accused by merchants as being competitors. The commercial taxes they gathered went into the lesser treasury, the Shaofu, rather than in the official state treasury.
Page 576: There were two categories for merchants in the Han Dynasty: those who sold goods at shops in urban markets, and those who were itinerant traders between cities and foreign countries. The small urban shopkeeping merchants were placed on an official register and had to pay commercial taxes. The itinerant merchant was often wealthier and did not have to register as a merchant. It was the latter who made the greatest fortunes and participated in large-scale trade, often in cohorts with powerful families and officials. Sadao writes that most of the biographies of "wealthy men" in the Records of the Grand Historian and Book of Han were of this type of merchant.
Page 577: In contrast, those registered as merchants in the marketplace had a very low social status and were often liable to penalties. Emperor Gaozu of Han even passed laws which forbid the merchants to wear silk or ride on horseback. They were to pay heavier taxes and their descendants were not allowed to hold public office. These laws were somewhat abated and made less severe, but the persecution continued. During the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, he targeted both the registered and unregistered merchants with higher taxes. Registered merchants were not allowed to own land, and if they broke this law their land and slaves would be confiscated.
Page 577-578: During the reign of Emperor Wen of Han, the statesman Chao Cuo (d. 154 BC) once wrote: "At present the merchants are rich and honored although they are humbled by the law; farmers are poor and lowly although they are respected by the law." This statement is supposed to highlight the ineffectiveness of the government's anti-merchant policy since it worsened the situation it was trying to prevent. Chao Cuo continued:

Nowadays in a farming family of five members at least two of them are required to render labor service. The area of their arable land is no more than one hundred mou [11.3 acres]; the yield from which does not exceed 100 shih [about 2,000 liters]. Farmers plough in spring, weed in summer, reap in autumn and store in winter; they cut undergrowth and wood for fuel and render labor services to the government. They cannot avoid wind and dust in spring, sultry heat in summer, dampness and rain in autumn and cold and ice in winter. Thus all year round they cannot afford to take even a day's rest. Furthermore they have to welcome guests on their arrival and see them off on their departure; they have to mourn for the dead and inquire after the sick. Besides they have to bring up infants. Although they work as hard as this they still have to bear the calamities of flood and drought. Sometimes taxes are collected quite unexpectedly; if the orders are issued in the morning they must be prepared to pay by the evening. To meet this demand farmers have to sell their possessions at half price, and those who are destitute have to borrow money at two hundred percent interest. Eventually they have to sell fields and dwellings, or sometimes sell even children and grandchildren into slavery in order to pay back the loan. On the other hand great merchants get profits of two hundred percent by hoarding stocks of commodities while the lesser ones sit in rows in the market stalls to buy and sell. They deal in superfluous luxuries and lead an easy life in the cities. Taking advantage of the urgent demands of the government, they sell commodities at a double price. Though they never engage in farming and their women neither tend silkworms nor weave, they always wear embroidered and multicolored clothes and always eat fine millet and meat. Without experiencing the farmers' sufferings, they make vast gains. Taking advantage of their riches, they associate with kings and marquises. Their power exceeds that of the official and they try to surpass each other in using their profits. They wander idly around roaming as far as a thousand li; there are so many of them that they form long lines on the roads. They ride in well-built carriages and whip up fat horses, wear shoes of silk and trail white silk [garments]. It is no wonder that the merchants take over farmers and farmers become vagrants drifting from one place to another.

Page 578: QUOTE: "This indictment reveals striking contrasts between the lives of farmers and merchants in early Former han and shows that severe taxation merely impoverished the former and enriched the latter. The merchants who thus took advantage of the government's exploitation of the peasantry often invested their commercial profits in land and became great landowners...Thus many powerful landowning families also carried on commercial activities."
Page 578-579: As Sima Qian notes, the great merchants' enterprises ranged from operating iron mines, slave trading, speculation, fraud or usury, or the selling in general commodities such as QUOTE: "liquor, pickles and sauces, hides of cattle, sheep and pigs, grain, boat timber, bamboo poles, light two-wheeled carts, heavy oxcartss, lacquerware, bronze utensils, wood and iron vessels, dyes, horses, cattle, sheep and swine, slaves, tendons and horns, cinnabar, silk fabrics, fine and coarse cloth, raw lacquer, yeast for fermentation, bean relish, dried fish and abalone, dates, chestnuts, sable and foxskin garments, felt and mats, fruits and vegetables." Sima Qian wrote that some merchants gained annual profits of 200,000 qian, which was the same amount collected by a marquis from a thousand households.
Page 579: The general commodities that came from Shanxi were bamboo, timber, grain, and gemstones. The general commodities that came from Shandong were fish, salt, lacquer, and silk. The general commodities that came from Jiangnan were camphor, catalpa, ginger, cinnamon, gold, tin, lead, cinnabar, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shell, pearls, ivory, and leather. From the northern half of China, general commodities were horses, oxen, sheep, rugs, furs, and horns. Copper and iron mines were located in all regions of China.
Page 579: After the historic travels of Zhang Qian into the west to seek out the Yuezhi during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, new trade routes were opened into Central Asia. Goods exported there from China included gold and silk, while wine, spices, horses, and woolen fabrics were imported to China from the west. New flora, fauna, plants, fruits, and vegetables made their way into China due to this foreign trade, which included grapes, pomegranates, sesame, broad beans, and lucerne. Although there was a slight interruption in the trade routes in between Western and Eastern Han, the general Ban Chao's conquests fully secured the trade routes. His emissary Gan Ying was sent to the Roman Empire but he reached no farther than Anxi, or Parthia, due to their authorities not wanting him to venture further. Sadao writes that the Parthians were perhaps middlemen in the silk trade and wanted to retain their coveted position. The Romans spent large amounts of gold to purchase Chinese silk and called the Chinese Seres. The route leading to China was known as the Silk Road.
Page 579-580: After Emperor Wu of Han conquered Nanyue in 111 BC, Sadao says that overseas trade gradually extended to the countries in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Foreign traders using the sea route traded pearls, jade, lapis lazuli, and glass in exchange for Chinese silk and gold. One of the major pieces of evidence Sadao cites for such a trade route is the event in 166 AD when foreign merchants came to the coast of China claiming to represent Andun of Daqin (Marcus Aurelius Antonius of the Roman Empire). They presented gifts of ivory, rhinoceros horn, and tortoise shell to Emperor Huan of Han.

Manufacturing

Page 580-581: Before the Spring and Autumn Period, craftsmen worked for various great clans, but in that period they began working under the supervision of lords and aristocrats and were hereditary workers ranked below peasants. During the Warring States Period, the hereditary craftsmen were attached to central and local government offices and their skilled work was supplemented by labor of slaves, convicts, and commoners. At this point many commoners still produced their own goods and craftsmen were considered socially inferior to farming peasants. During these two eras mentioned, though, a division of labor and separating professional manufacturers from agriculture began to emerge as a commercial economy was created and people began buying goods that weren't produced in their own homes. It is interesting to note that the early followers of Mohism were also said to be craftsmen.
Page 581: In the Han Dynasty there was state-controlled manufacturing and private enterprises conducting manufacturing. State-controlled manufacturing workshops were controlled by the Lesser Treasury (Shaofu), the ministry in charge of finances for the imperial court and emperor's private purse. Under the Lesser Treasury was the Office for Arts and Crafts, which made weapons, bronze mirrors, bronze vessels, and other items. This type of office existed at the courts of kings and marquises as well. The Office of Manufactures was also controlled by the Lesser Treasury; this office made utensils, weapons, and armor that were less expensive than those made by the Office of Arts and Crafts. Funerary objects adorning the afterlife abodes of imperial tombs were created by the artisans of the eastern garden. The weaving house of the west and weaving house of the east made textiles and clothing for the court; the weaving house of the east was abolished in 28 BC while the western one was thereafter simply called the weaving house.
Page 581: The Superintendant of Agriculture, one of the Nine Ministers, was also in charge of producing implements for the alternate fields system. There was a subdivision of this ministry in charge of implementing Emperor Wu of Han's equal supply system and price standardization.
Page 581-582: The Court Architect was in charge of constructing palaces and tombs. The Superintendant of Waterways and Parks (established 115 BC) was in charge the Shanglin Park. When minting of coin currency in the provinces and kingdoms was abolished in 113 BC, the Superintendant of Waterways and Parks took over the new official state mint which was placed within the Shanglin Park.
Page 582: Workshops in the commanderies often made weapons for provincial arsenals, but some also fashioned gold, silver, and lacquer vessels; specimens of lacquerware and other items made in these workshops still survive. Others made silk and embroidered fabrics for the court. In Lujiang Commandery (modern Anhui), one Han workshop maintained a shipyard and built battle ships.
Page 582: The iron and salt industries were monopolized by the government in 119 BC, with Iron Agencies established at 48 different sites and Salt Agencies at 36 sites; these were often positioned where the raw materials were discovered, although lesser iron agencies were set up in areas where there were no raw resources but simply reused scrap iron coming from afar. The iron goods made under government control were mostly farming tools. The government salt plants were actually run by private salt makers
Page 583: To run these government agencies, the government employed state-owned slaves, corvée laborers, convicts, and skilled craftsmen. At the textile workshops of Linzi in what is now Shandong, there were literally thousands of craftsmen employed, and since each skilled craftsman earned a considerable government wage, ministers by the reigns of Emperor Yuan of Han and Emperor Cheng of Han began suggesting that state manufacturing should be abolished or at least curtailed with financial constraints on the state budget in mind. Regardless of this, state-controlled manufacturing continued into Eastern Han, although it was more limited in scale, QUOTE: "owing to the fact that some goods were now requisitioned or bought from the common people rather than manufactured. Surviving articles prove taht the office for arts and crafts, the weaving house, and the workshops at least continued to perform their previous functions. The iron and salt agencies had been abolished along with the monopolies in 44 B.C., only to be restored in 41 and carried on until the end of the regin of Wang Mang (A.D. 9–23). In Later Han they were put under the control of the commanderies and counties rather than that of the superintendant of agriculture, but there was no consistent policy regarding their maintenance or abolition."
Page 583-584: In the early Western Han, the most powerful private manufacturers listed in the "Biographies of wealthy men" of the Records of the Grand Historian were the iron manufacturers. Their ancestors in the Warring States Period were not surprisingly big name iron producers from the northeast, although during the Qin Dynasty their families were forcibly removed to Shu (Sichuan) and Wan (Henan) to produce iron there and explains why the iron industry was widespread throughout the regions of the later Han Empire.
Page 584: In the Han period, there were four kinds of extracted salt: sea salt, lake salt, rock salt, and well salt. Sea salt was mostly gathered along the coasts of the Shandong Peninsula and mouth of the Yangzi River, lake salt from a salt lake in Shanxi, rock salt from the deserts in the northern frontiers, and well salt from brine wells in Sichuan. Those entrepreneurs in the salt trade were also fabulously rich; for example, Liu Bi, King of Wu, made a fortune from the salt industry that rivaled the funds of the imperial court at Chang'an.
Page 584: Not surprisingly, these early Western Han salt and iron manufacturers invested their money in land, becoming great landowners with a large peasant workforce, many of whom were refugees. The reason that Emperor Wu of Han created central government monopolies over these industries was QUOTE: "not only to channel the profits from the two largest and most profitable industries into its own treasuries, but also to prevent the peasantry from abandoning their basic occupation of agriculture and the salt and iron merchants from developing into powerful families with many peasant dependents opposed to the interests of the authorities."
Page 584: It is important to note that, although the private iron and salt manufacturers could no longer practice their businesses independently, many of them ended up working for the government; Imperial Counsellor Sang Hongyang, a man from a merchant family and chief promoter of the monopolies, is a case in point. The millionaires in this business were ruined or declined, and although salt and iron were once again private enterprises in the Eastern Han, there were no ultra-wealthy iron and salt industrialists in that era who could challenge the Han state.
Page 585: Brewing liquor was another profitable private industry that was commandeered by a state-controlled monopoly in 98 BC. However, this monopoly was abolished soon after in 81 BC. Another highly profitable private industry was textile manufacturing, which the government did not impose a monopoly on. The silk fabrics of robes, caps, girdles, and shoes made in Qi were very popular and purchased throughout the empire. However, most wives and women in rural farming families continued to produce their family's clothing instead of purchasing it as just another commodity from manufacturers.

Changes in the Monetary System

Page 585-586: During the Warring States Period, the competing regimes of those states (and sometimes private merchants) issued their own currencies and coinage of various sizes, shapes, and weights. A uniform currency for the whole of China was not enforced until the unification of China by the Qin Dynasty. The latter issued a round bronze coin with a square hole in the middle, weighing 12 shu or half a liang (7.5 g), hence the name inscribed on its front, the banliang (half a liang).
Page 586: Emperor Gaozu of Han abolished government minting and legalized private minting of coins, due to the immediate need to generate currency and facilitate the trade of goods after the economic turmoil at the end of Qin. However, Empress Lü Zhi set up government minting in 186 BC and abolished private minting. The coin under her stewardship of government was still called banliang but only weighed 8 shu (5.7 g). In 182 BC the government changed this to the wufen coin which weighed only 2 shu and 4 lei (1.5 g); the widespread circulation of this lightweight coin caused an inflation that was not abated until the reign of Emperor Wen of Han.
Page 586: In 175 BC the law which outlawed private minting was lifted, although private minters had to obey new restrictions while the government continued to mint their own coins simultaneously. Although coins were still called banliang, private minters had to mint coins that were 4 shu (2.6 g) or one-sixth of a liang. They also had to mint coins which were made purely of copper and tin; if they added an adulterating ingredients such as iron or lead to the alloy they could be punished by law (which the government hoped would curtail the circulation of lightweight coins). During the reigns of Emperor Wen of Han and Emperor Jing of Han, the King of Wu, Liu Bi, added to his salt fortunes the supplementary enterprises of copper mining and coin minting.
Page 586-587: Private coin smelting was again made a government monopoly in 144 BC during the final years of Emperor Jing's reign (anyone caught minting private currency was punished with the death penalty). The 4 shu coin remained the standard until 120 BC, during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han. Up until that point, QUOTE: "there had been a great increase in forgery, aggravated by the great discrepancy between the face value and the actual weight of the coinage. It became common practice to clip the edges of the coins and make counterfeit money with the metal thus obtained." The 4 shu coin (2.6 g) was replaced with the 3 shu coin (1.9 g) that had the actual weight inscribed on its front rather than the false and misleading banliang (which was no longer minted). Also a new type of currency introduced was a note made of white deerskin with embroidered fringes that was given a value of 400,000 copper coins, QUOTE: "though it was in fact simply token money used in gathering revenues." Three other types of goverment coins made of an alloy of tin and silver were worth 3,000, 500, and 300 copper coins, respectively, yet each of them weighed less than 8 liang (120 g). If anyone was caught counterfeiting these coins they were given the death penalty. Despite this, many continued to break the law.
Page 587: Just a year later, the 3 shu coin was abolished and replaced with the wushu or 5 shu coin (3.25 g). Once again the weight corresponded with the face value. This coin remained the basic coin of China until the initation of the Tang Dynasty. It was deliberately cast with a raised edge to prevent clipping, yet despite this counterfeiting continued, and 5 shu coins made by the commanderies were often inferior and of lighter weight than those minted by the central government. To counter this, the central government made a coin with a red rim that was officially worth 25 shu and was used compulsorily in tax payments, but it was totally debased in private commerce. The greatly debased silver coins were abolished as well.
Page 587-588: Finally, in 113 BC, the government abolished commandery minting and minted all official coins under the monopoly of the three Shanglin Park offices directed by the Superintendant of Waterways and Parks (he shared responsibilities with the Privy Treasurer of financing the imperial court and emperor's private purse). Thus the Imperial Mint was born, and conducted all of its own activities of mining copper ore and transporting it to the capital region to mint new coins. All the commandery-issued coins still in circulation were to be sent to the Shanglin Park authorities to be melt down and recast into Imperial Mint coins. These coins were of high quality and counterfeiters found it unprofitable to compete since they were forced to run good facilities that could match the quality of the central government's coin.
Page 588: From 118 BC to 5 AD, the government minted over 28,000,000,000 coins, which meant the annual average minted was 220,000,000 (or 220,000 strings of 1,000 coins). In comparison with later periods, the Tianbao period of the Tang Dynasty from 742–755 AD produced 327,000 strings of 1,000 coins every year while 3,000,000 strings of 1,000 coins in 1045 AD and 5,860,000 stings of 1,000 coins in 1080 AD were made in the Song Dynasty.
Page 588: Wang Mang, wishing to revive ancient practices, began circulating three new coins in addition to the wushu coin in 7 AD. One was a large (daqian) coin weighing 12 shu (7.6 g) and worth 50 wushu, knife money worth 500 wushu, and inlaid knife money with gold inscriptions worth 5,000 wushu. After he took the throne in 9 AD, he discontinued all coins except for the large daqian coin. Yet he also instituted gold, silver, tortoise shell, and cowry shell currency. Then he allowed the mint to make two other types of coins, each with multiple variations. The first type was the qian which had five different variations ranging from 1 shu to 9 shu (used alongside the earlier daqian). The second type was the bu, a spade-shaped coin, which had ten variations of various weights and sizes.
Page 588-589: In all, there were twenty-eight units of currency listed above, yet their face value did not match the actual weight, and were abolished due to their impracticality. The two survivors, the small coin (xiaoqian) and large coin (daqian) were also replaced in 14 AD by two new coins, the huoquan ("a circular bronze coin with a hole, weighing 5 shu, 3.25 g") and the huobu ("the latter weighed only five times as much as the former, but its value was officially twenty-five times greater").
Page 589: Counterfeiters were executed, those possessing the coins were exiled, and those criticizing the currency system were even exiled. Eventually the violations were so numerous that the court settled for punishments of slavery or periods of hard labor, but when even the neighbors of people who were sentenced shared the same punishment, distress and disorder ensued and played a partial role in the downfall of Wang Mang.
Page 589: After Wang Mang's fall, the monetary system was still in disorder, as hemp, silk, and grain were used with existing coinage. Gongsun Shu, leader of a short-lived kingdom in Sichuan (24–26 AD), even minted iron coins. It was not until 40 AD that Emperor Guangwu of Han's government reinstated the wushu coin, as first suggested by Ma Yuan (Han Dynasty). During Eastern Han, government minting of currency was managed by the Superintendant of Agriculture rather than the agencies of the Privy Treasury.
Page 589-590: Gold was used as a currency under Wang Mang, but it never was during either Han dynasties; it did, however, serve as the main unit for purposes of valuation. Gold's basic unit was the jin (16 liang, or 384 shu, 245 g), nominally worth 10,000 qian of copper coins. Gold also served as jewelry and as a material for conserving wealth rather than common commercial exchange. However, in Eastern Han the role of gold in high-value transactions was usurped by silver. The government issued standard-sized ingots of silver as well.
Page 590: Drastic fluctuations in supply and demand caused by famine or glut caused prices to rise and fall in similar fashion. One shi (20 liters) of grain was worth 1,000,000 qian in the chaos following the Qin Dynasty's collapse, only 10 qian during Emperor Wen of Han's reign, 5 qian during Emperor Xuan of Han's reign, but skyrocketed up to 500 qian during Emperor Yuan of Han's reign due to famine. Standard prices are also hard to determine for the Han period due to regional differences.

Financial Administration

Government and Imperial Court Finance

Page 591: In Western Han times there was a clear distinction between public finances of the state and private finances of the imperial court. The former was controlled by the Ministry of Agriculture; the latter was controlled by the Privy Treasury.
Page 591: Taxes were the Ministry of Agriculture's main source of revenue, while the salt and iron industries, "equal supply system," and "price standardization" were figured into this after 119 BC. It could also garner profits by selling aristocratic ranks. Most of its expenditures were the payment of officials' salaries, building and maintaining public works (such as imperial tombs or flood control and irrigation projects), military supplies and expeditions, and costs of state festivals and rituals.
Page 591: The Privy Treasury gained much of its revenue from the taxes on registered merchants and various natural products from mountains, forests, rivers, seas, lakes, and marshes (considered possessions of the emperor). This meant taxes were imposed on fish and timber and any product of the imperial parks. The great exceptions to this were of course the monopolies on salt and iron, since Emperor Wu wanted to boost state revenues and so had the Superintendent of Agriculture oversee those industries. However, before these monopolies, taxes on salt and iron must have been forwarded to the Privy Treasury.
Page 592: The minting of currency was made a government monopoly in 113 BC, controlled by the Privy Treasury's subordinate office of the Superintendent of Waterways and Parks. The Privy Treasury also gained revenues from the poll tax on minors (of those aged 3 to 14) at a rate of 20 qian at first, but later raised to 23 qian (the additional 3 qian was actually not forwarded to the Privy Treasury, but went to military expenditures).
Page 592: The annual tribute of gold from the kings and marquises of the empire were proceeds given to the Privy Treasury. This tribute was required at the annual eighth month festival, the same month when liquor was brewed and offered to the shrines of imperial ancestors. The gold was nominally meant to assist in the payment of the festival. The gold was exacted according to the proportion of the population in the fief at a rate of 4 liang (60 g) per thousand people. If the gold was found to be inferior, the noble's fief could be confiscated, as happened in 112 BC when Emperor Wu of Han demoted 106 marquises to commoner status for presenting inferior gold. The revenues gathered from this practice were enormous; since the population of the kingly fiefs in 2 AD was over 6.38 million, this meant 380 kg of gold was sent to the Privy Treasury. This would have been the equivalent of 16,000,000 qian (coins). This did not even figure in the marquises.
Page 593: The expenditures of the Privy Treasury covered all the court's needs and desires, including the purchase of food, clothing, furniture, utensils, medicine, musicians, dancers, concubines for the harem, and the living expenses of courtiers. The same ministry oversaw the crafting of vehicles and clothing for the imperial court. It was also responsible for dispensing gifts of gold or bronze coins to individuals of merit, high officials, kings, and marquises. During the reign of Emperor Yuan of Han, the high official Huo Guang received a fief of 17,000 households, 7,000 jin (1,050 kg) of gold, 60 million copper coins, 30,000 bolts of silk, 170 slaves, 2,000 horses, and a large palatial mansion.
Page 593-594: In his Xinlun (新論), the scholar Huan Tan (43 BC – 28 AD) estimated that the central government raked in 4,000,000,000 qian annually from taxes. Half of this incredible figure was used to pay the salaries of officials. He estimated that the Privy Treasury's total annual revenues were 1,300,000,000 qian. This is compared to the Book of Han's annual revenue figures for the reign of Emperor Yuan of Han (r. 49–33 BC), which stated that the Superintendent of Agriculture gathered 4,000,000,000 qian, the Superintendent of Waterways and Parks gathered 2,500,000,000 qian, and the Privy Treasury gathered 1,800,000,000 qian. Although these totals are calculated in the amount of copper coins, the latter made up the bulk of the revenue items while there was also grain, hemp, silk, and gold to be figured in to these values.
Page 594: QUOTE: "Though stipends of officials in this period were usually measured in units of grain, a high proportion of all taxes was paid in money; there was thus created a monetary circulation of several thousand million coins a year, centering on the financial operations of the government. Since taxpayers had to sell their produce to get coin, this gave merchants great opportunities for profit-making."
Page 594: Emperor Guangwu of Han enacted a huge shift in policy when he moved the Privy Treasury's handling of private finances over to the Superintendent of Agriculture, thus blurring the distinction between private and public finances. The Privy Treasury QUOTE: "now became merely an administrative office with miscellaneous functions connected with the court, and was increasingly staffed by eunuchs. With the minor expection of the salt and iron agencies (now transferred to the control of the commanderies and counties), the superintendent of agriculture was now the only central financial organ of the state."

The Taxation System

Page 595: In the Spring and Autumn Period, a zu meant a tribute offered to the king during rites and festivals, while fu meant the obligation of military service that was eventually commuted to payments in kind, thus zu became associated with the Privy Treasury and the emperor's personal finances while fu became associated with the Superintendant of Agriculture. However, the distinctions between zu and fu during Han were no longer so clear. Tianzu, the land tax, were revenues collected by the Superintendant of Agriculture while the koufu, a poll tax on minors, went to the Privy Treasurer to handle. Although the following were considered zu taxes, the taxes on registered merchants, on profits of sea fishing, and all taxes on natural products, commercial products, and industrial products went to the state treasury of the Superintendant of Agriculture. Other fu taxes forwarded to the Superintendant of Agriculture were the poll tax on adults (suanfu), the property tax included in the poll tax for adults (suanzi), and the tax paid in lieu of labor service (gengfu).
Page 595: Taxes can also be classified under a different method which signifies three types which could be paid to either the Privy Treasury or the Ministry of Agriculture: taxes on profits, the poll taxes, and property taxes. Aside from taxes, there was also the labor and military service obligations.
Page 595-596: Family registers were kept by the state in order to accurately assess the multitude of imposed poll taxes and labor service duties. Theoretically, every living person in every county was registered in the census.

Registered population in late Western and Eastern Han
Year (AD)	Households	Individuals
2	12,366,470	57,671,400
57	4,279,634	21,007,820
75	5,860,573	34,125,021
88	7,456,784	43,356,367
105	9,237,112	53,256,229
125	9,647,838	48,690,789
136-141	10,780,000	53,869,588
140	9,455,609	48,000,000
144	9,946,919	49,730,550
145	9,937,680	49,524,183
146	9,348,227	47,566,772

Page 596: QUOTE: "These Han censuses are considered to be relatively accurate compared to those of later dynasties, which are full of omissions and other faults. From the figures in Table 15, taken from the existing census counts, it appears that there was a great decline in the total number of registered households at the beginning of Later Han, largely due to the confusion and unrest which followed Wang Mang's rule. In this administrative confusion many households were able to escape the notice of the authorities. The decline in figures does not mean a sharp decline of population, but rather a slackening of administrative control. These lists show the actual numbers of individuals on whom the state could lay hands and who were subject to taxation and labor service."
Page 596-597: Upon the suggestion of Chao Cuo (d. 154 BC), noble ranks were bestowed on all those who presented great quantities of grain to the throne.
Page 596-598: As established in 205 BC, the land tax was levied at one-fifteenth the actual crop yield from people's farmland. This must have been rescinded, because it was reinstated by Emperor Hui of Han when he came to the throne in 195 BC. It was changed to a rate of one-thirtieth in 168 BC and then abolished altogether in 167 BC until being reinstated again in 156 BC. The rate of one-thirtieth the crop yield of one's farm remained the standard rate of the Western Han Dynasty. In the beginning of the Eastern Han, the land tax rate was fixed at one-tenth the crop yield, but it was changed back to one-thirtieth in 30 AD when conditions in the empire became more stable and remained so for most of Eastern Han until it was dropped to an incredibly lenient one-hundreth during the final years of the dynasty. Yet this was made up for by increasing other taxes such as the poll taxes and property taxes. As Dong Zhongshu and Wang Mang pointed out, tenants working for big landowners still had to fork over half of their crops. Therefore, a lenient land tax favored the owner-cultivator, but it was incredibly favorable to a great landowner who did not give a tax break to his tenants, even during natural disasters.
Page 598: The suanfu poll tax was levied on all adult males and females between the ages 15 and 56. It was fixed at a rate of 1 suan (120 qian) per person annually in Western Han. In order to persuade women to marry, a law was enacted in 189 BC which forced unmarried women between the ages 15 and 30 to pay 5 suan (600 qian) instead, but this was reduced to 40 qian in the following reign of Liu Gong (r. 188–184). In 140 BC, a law was enacted that gave an exemption of 2 suan (240 qian) to any family who had a member over 80 years old. This was reduced to 90 qian in 52 BC and then 80 qian in 31 BC. In 85 AD, during Eastern Han, a three-year tax exemption of the poll tax was given to every woman who gave birth to a child while one year of tax exemption was given to all new fathers.
Page 598: It is important to note that both merchants and slaves were taxed at the same poll tax rate of 2 suan (240 qian).
Page 598: The poll tax on minors, the koufu, was levied on all children ages 3 to 14 at a rate of 20 qian per person. However, the age range was changed to 7 to 14 from the reign of Emperor Yuan of Han onward.
Page 599: The suanzi property tax was assessed on the basis of a person's declaration of the value of private property. The rate was 1 suan (120 qian) for every 10,000 qian worth of property owned. This law came into effect in 203 BC, the same year that the adult poll tax was established. However, Emperor Wu of Han changed the property tax rate for merchants in 119 BC to 1 suan for every 2,000 qian of property owned. He also raised the rate for manufacturers to 1 suan for every 4,000 qian of property owned. If a common person owned a vehicle (cart, carriage, wheelbarrow, etc.) it was taxed 1 suan, and if it was owned by a merchant he had to pay 2 suan. If a person owned a boat which was at least 5 chang (11.5 m) in length, it was taxed 1 suan. These measures were intended to suppress the power of the merchants while at the same time pay for Emperor Wu's costly military expeditions. Anyone who failed to report their properties and evaded tax inspectors were given one year exile to the frontier and confiscation of their property as punishments. The accusers of those found guilty were rewarded with half the sum involved in the confiscation, thus many great merchants were ruined by these measures while properties worth hundreds of millions of qian were confiscated (not to mention thousands of slaves).
Page 599: Labor services during the Han came in two varieties, labor service proper (gengzu) and military service (zhengzu). QUOTE: "The former required that all males between the ages of fifteen and fifty-six should work without pay for one month of the year on construction projects and miscellaneous duties in the commanderies and counties. For military service, young men who had reached the age of twenty-three were selected and assigned to be infantrymen, cavalry, or sailors, depending on their place of origin. After one year's training they were liable, until the age of fifty-six, to be called up for one year of service either in the guards at the capital or in the border garrisons."
Page 600: The various tax rates imposed on commodities are unknown except for that levied against liquor; after the state monopoly of it was abolished in 81 BC, the standard tax rate on liquor was fixed at 2 qian per sheng (0.2 liters)
Page 600: QUOTE: "Apart from the land tax and labor service, all these taxes were to be paid in money by the peasants as well as merchants...The fact that the Han tax system was based on money indicates that the peasantry of those days was substantially involved in the monetary economy. The only way for peasants to acquire money was to work for wages or to sell their produce on the market. It is well known that peasants did work for hire on the estates of great landowners or in various manufacturers such as brewing, but it is inconceivable that this was so common as to determine the form of the tax system. On the other hand, to sell their produce the peasants would need easy access to the markets, but it was not until the late T'ang period that these developed on any large scale in rural communities. It is thus hard to understand how peasants were able to pay most of their taxes in cash as demanded."
Page 600-601: QUOTE: "There are, however, one or two conjectures that may throw light on this problem. As was mentioned earlier, peasants lived within walled residential areas rather than on isolated farms. Although markets existed only in the cities, those peasants living near enough were probably supposed to bring their produce there and to exchange it for money in order to pay their taxes. Toward the end of Later Han and thereafter, as the rural community proper began to develop apart from the cities, peasants became isolated from their markets and found it increasingly hard to get money. This is why taxation was increasingly levied in kind, beginning with the household levy (hu-tiao) system established by Ts'ao Ts'ao at the end of Han and culminating in the tsu-yung-tiao system of T'ang."
Page 601: Sadao speculates that most taxes were paid in money due to the fact that paying taxes in kind meant an enormous effort by state authorities to haul around materials and goods in primitive transport. It was simpler just to collect coins.
Page 601: QUOTE: "There is a third possibility. Whereas taxes were levied in money, the peasants may actually have paid them in kind through the agency of wealthy men or merchants, who could exchange the peasants' produce for money at the markets, making a profit out of the transaction. Alternatively, peasants may have borrowed money from such men at high interest rates and thus paid their taxes in cash without having any contact with the markets. Several such instances are recorded."
Page 601: QUOTE: "Considerations such as these must be accepted if the fact that Han taxes were for the most part payable in money is to be explained. It was the resulting large-scale circulation of money that enabled merchants to make profits that they then invested in land to become, in their turn, great landowners. They thus joined the existing powerful families, themselves not averse to increasing their wealth by commercial ventures, in asserting control over the increasingly impoverished peasantry. Inevitably, as it lost its direct authority over the peasants, the central government began to decline. By promoting the circulation of money, the state itself had provided the opportunity for the rise of the merchants, the very social class which it took most pains to suppress."

Monopolies and the Control of Commerce

Page 602: The military expeditions of Emperor Wu of Han proved very costly, and the state mitigated its losses by establishing monopolies over the salt and iron industries in 119 BC. These two commodities were the most lucrative in terms of earlier private enterprise, controlled by wealthy entrepreneurs who drafted large labor forces that could evade the government. In that same year there was an increase in the property tax on merchants and manufacturers.
Page 602: Before 119 BC, taxes on salt and iron were directed to the Privy Treasury, yet the new monopolies of salt and iron were controlled by the Superintendant of Agriculture. In the previous year, the salt manufacturer Dongguo Xianyang from Qi and the great iron founder Kong Jin from Nanyang were employed by the Superintendent of Agriculture as officials in charge of taxes on salt and iron. They were the first to suggest a government monopoly. Many people who became officials in the new monopolies were previous salt and iron manufacturers.
Page 602: The Superintendent of Agriculture had direct control over the forty-eight iron manufacturing agencies where the iron ore was mined. Minor agencies which metled down and recast scrap iron were managed by local commandery and county governments. The labor force was diverse, consisting of paid professional craftsmen, convicts, local labor service draftees, and sometimes government slaves.
Page 602-603: A common complaint against the government's iron monopoly was that the agricultural implements made by their agencies was of inferior quality to earlier private-smelted iron products. To make matters worse, they pointed out, prices remained the same despite lesser quality.
Page 603: As for the thirty-four salt agencies, they were largely conducted by the old salt makers.
Page 603-604: Sang Hongyang, Dongguo Xianyang, and Kong Jin were the main officials enforcing the new monopolies. Kong Jin was made Superintendent of Agriculture in 115 BC, while Sang Hongyang succeeded his position as assistant. Sang then implemented the "equal supply" system, a new financial policy entailing state transportation. The government did not want to rely on merchants from distant areas bringing needed goods to the capital in a complicated transport system, so they had goods brought alongside proceeds of state taxes while new offices were established to arrange for the purchase of goods in local areas before they were transported to the capital. This was largely an effort to suppress the merchants' role. QUOTE: "The operation of the new policy ran into some difficulties when offices in the capital city began sending their own officials to the districts to buy goods; competition among them raised prices and even caused a shortage of funds for transportation."
Page 604: Sang Hongyang succeeded Kong Jin as Superintendent of Agriculture in 110 BC. He increased the amount of "equal supply" offices in the provinces and ordered them to buy goods in quantity when they were cheap so that the prices could be raised and remain stable. He created a price stabilization office in the capital city where these local goods could be stored and then sold when prices were high. This would benefit the common people since an influx of new goods released from government stores would cut prices. At the same time, it would keep powerful merchants in check.
Page 604: A government monopoly over the brewing and selling of liquor was established in 98 BC. This added to the growing revenues of the central government.
Page 604-605: After Emperor Wu of Han died in 87 BC, Sang Hongyang had become Imperial Counsellor (or Imperial Secretary), and nearly dominated the government. Despite opposition by merchants and powerful families, he continued the government monopolies. However, his rival Huo Guang, who became regent over the young Emperor Zhao of Han, supported the Confucian faction against Sang Hongyang's policies in the debate on salt and iron in 81 BC.
Page 605: The written account on the salt and iron debate of 81 BC was written years after the fact, and cannot be seen as a faithful record of the exact words spoken amongst the debating ministers of the time. The scholars arguing against the monopolies were on the side of the merchants and powerful families who did not want the government to compete in the private sector. One of their main arguments was that the products produced by the iron monopoly were of inferior quality to private-smelted iron, yet the people still had to pay high government-standard prices and travel long distances to buy iron products. The only compromise that was made in 81 BC was the abolishment of the liquor monopoly.
Page 605: Surprisingly, even after Huo Guang had his rival Sang Hongyang eliminated through execution, he continued the monopolies on salt and iron simply because the government could not afford to abandon the lucrative profits and state revenues generated from them.
Page 605: Between 57 and 54 BC, the government set up new storehouses for grain to control the price of this vital food commodity. This was the suggestion of Geng Shouchang, who suggested that grain be bought by the government when it was cheap and then sell it at low prices when merchants charged rates that were too expensive for commoners.
Page 605: In 44 BC, the government granaries were dismantled alongside the abolishment of the salt and iron industries. The ministerial faction in favor of this argued that the government was competing for profits with the same people it was trying to rule. However, such a move proved very difficult since the government lost huge amounts of revenue, so the monopolies were reinstated in 41 BC.
Page 605-606: Wang Mang continued the monopolies of salt and iron with his six controls in 10 AD. These so-called six controls included monopolies on salt, iron, liquor, natural products of land and water, copper mining and minting, and the controls on prices and financial transactions. Price standardization offices were set up in Chang'an, Luoyang, Linzi, Handan, Wan, and Chengdu, all of which fixed standard prices for grain, hemp, and silk in the city markets. To suppress merchants and protect the public, cheaply-bought goods were also placed in government storehouses and sold off at low prices when merchants charged too much for those commodities. The government also lent money to anyone free of interest if it was for funerals or festivals, while a 10 percent interest rate was exacted on loans if it was for business purposes. Popular resentment against all of these reforms brought about Wang Mang's downfall.
Page 606: The Eastern Han regime depended on the support from powerful families and great merchants, so the central government monopolies were abolished while salt and iron manufacturing was delegated to the local commandery administrations. Central monopolies imposed on salt and iron manufacture were revived for short periods of time in the reigns of Emperor Zhang of Han and Emperor He of Han, but they were unsuccessful. This reflects the increasingly different relationship the government had with great families by the time of Eastern Han.
Page 606: Never again in imperial Chinese history was iron manufacturing monopolized by the state; after the Eastern Han, it remained in private hands. However, during the Tang Dynasty the salt industry was to become a major source of state revenue.

The Economic and Social History of Later Han

Ebrey, Patricia. (1986). "The Economic and Social History of Later Han," in Cambridge History of China: Volume I: the Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220, 608-648. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521243270.

Economic History

Commerce and Industry

Page 609: In 40 AD, the Han government began minting the wushu (five shu) coin once more, and circulation of coinage by the imperial mint continued unabated until nearly the time of the fall of the dynasty. The government made up the revenue of the abolished salt and iron monopolies by taxing private manufacturers. QUOTE: "Even the swords and shields used by the army were purchased from private entrepreneurs."
Page 609-611: Social critics argued that the government's inability to check commerce and industry had led to excess and extravagance. Wang Fu (philosopher) (c. 90 – c. 150), in his Qian fu lun, wrote of how too many people in the cities were involved in unnecessary vocations while even more were simply useless idlers who leeched off the food produced by the farmers. His general complaint of the situation is very interesting and reveal a lot of information about material wealth and social life:
- QUOTE: "Nowadays people are extravagant in clothing, excessive in food and drink, and fascinated with clever language. They become expert in the arts of deception. . . .Some able-bodied men never learn how to handle plows and hoes, taking roaming and gambling as their profession. . . .There are also plaster carts and earthenware dogs, horses, figures of singers and actors, various children's toys. . . .Moreover, nowadays many [women] do not cultivate cooking and have given up tending silkworms and weaving, instead taking up the study of shamanistic prayers, drumming and dancing to serve the spirits, in order to deceive the common people. . . .Some cut good silk for the inscription of prayers; they order workers to paint the pieces, hire others to write the prayer, thus fashioning empty charms to seek blessings. Some cut silk a few fractions of an inch wide, five inches long, which they then embroider and wear. Or they twist silk into cords and cut it to make bracelets. . . .None of these sorts of things are of any help to good farmers and working women nor of any use to the world, yet good food is spent on them, daylight hours are wasted on them. . . .At present, the clothing, food and drink, carriages, adornment, and houses of the noble relatives in the capital all exceed even what is prescribed for kings. These people usurp the privileges of their superiors to an extreme. Their attendants, slaves, coachmen, and concubines all wear fine hemp, the thinnest cloth from Yüeh, sheer fabrics, fine open-work silk, silk broadcloth, brocades and embroideries, rhinoceros horns, pearls and jade, amber and tortoise shell subtly decorated with figures of stones and mountains, gold and silver inlaid and engraved, deerskin slippers with decorated laces and colored uppers. Being arrogantly extravagant, not only do they usurp the privileges of their rulers, but they brag to each other about it...When the rich and wealthy get married, they use ten carts and ten bridal wagons. Mounted slaves and attending youths proceed on either side of the carts and lead them. The rich compete to do better than one another while the poor are ashamed that they cannot keep up. In this way the expenses of one festivity destroy the accumulated estate of a lifetime. . . .[With regard to the coffins and funerals], recent generations use catalpa, locust, juniper, and lacquer wood, the products of every area. After glue and lacquer is applied to them, the baords are fastened by joinery and polished so smooth that the seams cannot be seen. The coffin is strong enough to depend upon and durable enough to bear a weight. This should be sufficient. However, the noble relatives in the capital now all want catalpa, camphor, and cedar from Chiang-nan [the southeast], and distant areas compete to imitate this style. But catalpa and camphor are produced in faraway areas and moreover come from deep in mountain valleys; to get them it is necessary to cross mountains, ascend ten thousand feet, cross gorges a thousand feet wide, and cling to the edges of precipices. It thus takes days to find the timber, months to chop it up, and a multitude of men to transport the logs. Lines of oxen must be used to get them to the water. They are put into the sea and sent by way of the Huai up the Yellow River. They arrive in Lo-yang after travelling several thousand li. They then require days and months for the craftsmen to carve. Thus to complete one coffin requires one million men and its weight will amount to 10,000 chin. A multitude is needed to pick it up, a large cart to transport it. yet east to Lo-lang [in Korea], west to Tun-huang, within ten thousand li, people fight for the chance to use them."
Page 611: As I expected Patricia Ebrey to say, QUOTE: "In this essay, Wang Fu's goal was not to describe the economy, but to criticize contemporary mores. In his zeal to ridicule he may sometimes have exaggerated, but his impression of the flourishing state of crafts and commerce was not without a basis in fact."
Page 611: As proven by the 225 tombs excavated at Luoyang in 1953, the tombs of very wealthy and important people were extremely lavish, but QUOTE: "the tombs of what appear to have been ordinary officials steadily increased in size and structural complexity" in comparison to the Western Han Dynasty.
Page 611-612: Ebrey also says that Wang Fu was not exaggerating when the metropolitan styles of luxury goods found at Luoyang were often imitated and copied in places as far east as Lelang in Korea and Dunhuang in Gansu, given the archaeological evidence from Han tombs in those locations. In Wuwei there have been seventy Han tombs excavated (as of 1986); in one mid-second century tomb there were QUOTE: "fourteen pieces of pottery; wooden objects such as a horse, pig, ox, chicken, chicken coop, and a single-horned animal; seventy copper cash; a crossbow mechanism made of bronze; a writing brush; a lacquer-encased inkstone; a lacquer tray and bowl; a wooden comb; a jade ornament; a pair of hemp shoes; a straw bag; the remains of an inscribed banner; a bamboo hairpin; two straw satchels; and a stone lamp."
Page 612: QUOTE: "Concerning money, copper cash gained full supremacy in the Later Han. By then cash was used as the normal measure of wealth and employed in large transactions...Transactions of hundreds of thousands of cash were not uncommon, and some men had large stores of money." Diwu Lun (fl. 40–85), Governor of Shu, described his subordinate officers' wealth not in terms of landholdings but in terms of their cash, revealing that their property amounted to about ten million cash.
Page 613: Wages were often paid solely in cash, as many were not not paid with the exchange of land, goods, or services. Gifts of cash were also common, and imperial gifts were surprisingly more often in the form of cash and silk than they were in land. When a natural disaster or famine struck, grants of cash were given to the poor families to bury their dead.
Page 613: QUOTE: "Further evidence for the strength of the money economy was the partial transformation of the labor service obligation into a monetary tax. By Later Han, commutation of the one-month labor service obligation seems to have been common; probably it was encouraged by the magistrates and governors, who could carry out public projects more conveniently with hired laborers than with drafted peasants...Sometimes it may even have been impossible for a peasant to perform the labor service in person if he wanted to. At least that seems to be the implication of the recurrent remission of the commutation tax during natural disasters."
Page 613-614: There is a total of nineteen stone inscriptions that survive from Eastern Han which commemorate the building of roads and bridges. In 63 AD, the Hanzhong Commandery (in southwest Shanxi) repaired the Baoye Road under central government orders, in order to connect travel points from the Qinling Mountains to the capital of Luoyang. Of this project, QUOTE: "Altogether 623 trestles, 5 large bridges, 258 li (107 km) of roads, and 64 buildings such as rest houses, post stations, and relay stations were completed. Other inscriptions record bridge and road projects undertaken between A.D. 57 and 174."
Page 614: QUOTE: "There were, of course, numerous reasons for maintaining roads. A unified political system could be maintained only as long as the government had the means of quickly dispatching officials, troops, or messengers as needed. Such a system of transportation, once established, facilitated commerce. At the local level, road and bridge projects seem to have been initiated as much for the sake of traveling merchants as for officials."
Page 615: Despite prohibitions during the reign of Emperor Ming of Han against people who tried to engage in both agriculture and commerce at the same time, these laws were ignored during Eastern Han as landlords were often merchants as well who amassed great profits from commerce. Besides the great magnates (haoyu), this could apply to members of lesser families such as Cui Shi (d. 170), QUOTE: "the son and grandson of well-known men of letters, started a brewing business after selling much of his property to pay for his father's burial. He was criticized for his action, but no one seems to have considered it illegal. His commercial bent is further revealed in his monthly guide to estate management, which advised combining agricultural activity with trade in foodstuffs and cloth. That guide lists the most profitable times to buy and sell various goods. For instance, wheat seeds were to be sold in the eighth month, when they were to be planted, and wheat bought in the fifth and sixth months, soon after the harvest, when it was plentiful. Dealing in agricultural produce in this way would have offered many opportunities for profit to the substantial landowner."

Technical Advances in Agriculture

Page 616: The Western Han advances of the new iron plowshares which could plow deeper, pottery bricks which made the construction of wells for irrigation more convenient, careful attention to soil characteristics when choosing which crops to grow, treating seeds, and applying fertilizers became more widespread in Eastern Han. In the 2nd century BC, Zhao Guo championed intensive agriculture in a time when draft animals were not widely available, yet by the 1st century AD they must have been, since a cattle epidemic of 76 AD resulted in the drastic decline of cultivated land.
Page 616-617: In regards to archaeological finds, there have been many more Eastern Han iron farming implements found than Western Han ones, while QUOTE: "a wooden model of a plow and a half-dozen pictures of men plowing — reveal tthat the design of plows was gradually improved during the Later Han. By the second century the predominant form was one that was pulled by two oxen and controlled by one man. Archaeological evidence also shows technical advances that are not mentioned in any surviving texts; these included the use of a plowshare that could be adjusted to regulate the depth of the furrow, and the use of nose rings for the oxen so that they could be easily controlled from behind without needing another man to lead them."
Page 617: Several irrigation sites have been excavated from the Eastern Han, along with pottery models of irrigated paddy fields. The Book of Later Han QUOTE: "mentions over a dozen irrigation projects undertaken by officials, either on their own initiative as governors of commanderies, or on orders from the central government. Many of these projects were intended to repair existing pond and canal systems. In two cases, mention was made of the problem of keeping rural magnates from monopolizing the benefits of these projects. Since local magnates had a personal interest in the benefits of irrigation, they must have often built such dams or undertaken repairs on their own initiative. In north China, irrigation by wells faced with bricks was common. Wells that watered only small areas were not undertaken as government projects, but were sponsored by landowners themselves."

The Impoverishment of Small Peasants

Page 617-618: During the Eastern Han, there was a "peasant problem" of drastic proportions, as proven by essayists, government records of attempts to help the poor, and the recorded migrations of peasants, a large number of whom fled south to the Yangzi Valley.
Page 618: QUOTE: "It seems likely that many of the peasants who could not remain in their domiciles were victims of technological change and advances in the economy. Even if the tiles for wells and the iron blades for plows, sickles, and hoes were all becoming more widely used, their cost would have been beyond the means of peasants living at subsistence levels. Near the end of Former Han, the government had undertaken to distribute agricultural implements itself to overcome this problem. In Later Han this practice does not seem to have been continued, probably in part because the government no longer controlled iron production continuously. Small landowners, unable to afford the best equipment and methods, would have easily fallen into debt, and incurring debts could mean forfeiting their land to a local magnate. He might keep the family on as tenants, but since with the most advanced methods he needed fewer men for each unit of land, he could not keep all the former occupants. So a pool of rural unemployed was thereby brought into being."
Page 618-619: QUOTE: "To counteract these processes, the government adopted a number of policies aimed at helping small peasants. It taxed agriculture as lightly as possible, under the traditional theory that the best way to protect the people's livelihood was to interfere with it as little as possible. In A.D. 30 the low land tax calculated to be one-thirtieth of the average harvest was restored, and a new land survey was ordered. Kuang-wu-ti made every effort to see that this survey was carried out accurately, with large landowners fully registered. He even had seveal dozen officials executed for turning in fraudulent registers (A.D. 40). The pressures on officials were so great that riots broke out in several parts of the country, led by landowners who complained their their land was not being fairly recorded. Although it was always assumed that a reduction of taxes or labor services would improve the peasants' plight, the major beneficiary of light land taxes must have been the large landowner who could use the minimum number of workers per unit of land. This is because the poll taxes did not vary in accordance with wealth or income, and would have been larger than the land tax for most peasants with small plots."
Page 619: The government also took measures to relieve landless peasants by resettling them, as proven by this edict of 84 AD, which read as thus:
- QUOTE: "We now order the commanderies and kingdoms to recruit men without land who wish to move to rich and fertile regions elsewhere and to give them permission to do so. When [the recruits] arrive they are to be given state-owned land, paid wages for cultivating, leased seeds and provisioning, and lent agricultural tools. For five years no land [= rent] will be collected, and no poll tax for three years. Thereafter if they want to return to their native district, they should not be forbidden from doing so."
Page 620: QUOTE: "The third major way the government tried to aid peasants was through direct relief. Even in periods of general prosperity, it was recognized that people in certain categories—the elderly, widows, widowers, the childless, those seriously ill, and the poor with no means to support themselves—were in need of help. At least twenty-four times in Later Han, grants were made to persons in these categories, usually of two to five bushels (shih) of grain. But the government looked upon these groups as the kind of poor who would always be with them, a charge on public generosity. More important was the direct assistance extended when disaster struck those farmers who were usually self-sufficient. In the first fifty years of Later Han, only one recorded disaster occurred which could not be fully handled at the local level—an earthquake in Nan-yang in A.D. 46. But from the time of the cattle epidemic in 76, the assistance of the central government was almost always needed somewhere. For the next fifty years the government was remarkably successful in coping with each crisis. Wang Ch'ung (A.D. 27–ca. 100), a caustic critic who was seldom generous or complimentary in his judgments, thought that no ancient ruler could have handled relief programs any better than the senior statesman Ti-wu Lun (fl. A.D. 40–85) had during the cattle epidemic."
Page 620: The government under Emperor He of Han saw grave challenges with the locusts and drought of 92–93 and 96–97 as well as floods in 98 and 100. QUOTE: "Usually, at the first sign of trouble, orders were given to remit the land and straw tax for anyone who had suffered a loss of 40 percent or more of his crop and to give proportionate reductions for lesser losses. If the situation grew worse, granaries were opened in the commanderies to supply direct relief, and loans were made to those without enough to survive. Permission was periodically given to the poor (or sometimes specific groups of the poor) to hunt, fish, or gather food on public land without charge."
Page 620-621: QUOTE: "From time to time the government tried a new tack. In 94 an edict ordered that displaced persons should be excused from the land and labor service tax for one year if they would return to their homes. In the meantime they were to be given relief by the local authorities wherever they were, and if they engaged in peddling they were not to be taxed as merchants. In 101 the debts incurred by poor peasants for food and seed were canceled. Three years later, an edict ordered that poor people who owned fields but who because of 'exhaustion of supplies' were not able to farm on their own were to be lent seeds and provisions."
Page 621: While the government under Emperor He of Han was able to weather three general tax reductions during times of crisis due to the prosperity and stability of the times, after his reign relief measures became less complete, tax remissions less generous, and were often handled solely by local officials who were not adequately supplied by the central government. Government revenues were severely depleted by 143 AD, so much so that officials' stipends had to be cut significantly and the central government had to borrow a year's land tax from kings and nobles. A huge disaster struck in 153 AD when locusts swarmed the countryside and the Yellow River flooded, forcing estimated hundreds of thousands to become wandering vagrants. The central government ordered local authorities to solve the situation, but the latter were not given provisions they needed from the central government to cope with the calamity. It is recorded that many starved to death in 155; the central government responded by ordering local authorities to QUOTE: "requisition 30 percent of their grain from whoever had supplies in order to provide relief.
Page 622: As a result of these disasters, many landless peasants attached themselves to the estates of great landowners. Cui Shi, writing in perhaps 150 AD, traced the origins of this disaster back to the abandonment of the well-field system that was supposedly practiced in ancient China. He reasoned that the loss of this practice led to QUOTE: "the accumulation of large fortunes by a few, who had thereby become able to support their own armed retainers and who imitated the mores of the rulers of the land. At the other end of the scale, men were forced into disposing of their wives and children for money as the only way to survive." Cui Shi suggested that peasants should flee densely populated areas and make a living in uncultivated yet fertile wilderness.

The Prosperity of Large Landowners

Page 622: Despite the distress of the commoners and peasantry, agriculture continued to flourish and the rich and well-to-do lived handsomely, as suggested not only by the writings of Cui Shi, but also from archaeological evidence. QUOTE: "Starting near the end of Former Han, the objects and decorations prepared for tombs took a new direction. Tombs began to contain models or pictures of what was needed to produce prosperity, a diversified agricultural estate, perferably one that had hunting areas. The more elaborate tombs in Later Han had chambers of brick or stone with decorations on the walls or vaults. Sometimes the stone was carved in relief; sometimes the bricks bore molded relief patterns; and sometimes one of its surfaces was plasterd and painted. The scenes that were portrayed included historical and mythological personages, divine birds and animals, scenes from the career of the dead person, and in a significant number of cases, views of rural life."
Page 622: In a 1st century AD tomb of Pinglu county in Shanxi, painted murals on its walls depicted QUOTE: "hills, trees, birds, and animals, with a large, probably fortified, house. To one side a peasant is sowing with a seeding machine pulled by two oxen, a tool frequently mentioned in Han sources. Near him runs a stream or irrigation ditch."
Page 623: Of the painted murals of the six-room colonel's tomb that was found in Inner Mongolia, QUOTE: "The front room depicts the greatest glory of the occupant's official career: the various promotions and the processions that celebrated them. Then down both sides of the corridors on the central axis are further scenes of his official career: storehouses, layouts of the cities he ruled, and a few special incidents. The central chamber is largely devoted to another aspect of his life, his role as a cultivated gentleman who had studied with teachers, who was familiar with the great figures of the past and the mythology of his day, and who gave lavish entertainments with jugglers, musicians, dancers, and numerous servants in attendance. Attached to this central chamber is a small annex covered with pictures of kitchen activities, in a sense the support activities for the lavish entertainments. The rear chamber, farther away yet from the entrance, shows an even more private sphere of the life of the tomb occupant, his estate and his life at home. The pictures of the estate show hills and woods, a large house compound, wells, carriage sheds, a threshing ground, pens for cattle, sheep, and pigs, a stable for horses, and some chickens wandering around. Men are at work in a variety of tasks, some picking mulberry leaves, some plowing, some hoeing in vegetable plots. In two side chambers are scenes of plowing and the herding of horses, cattle, and sheep in large pastures."
Page 623-624: Of the miniature models found in the four Eastern Han tombs for the distinguished officials and members of the Yang family of Hongnong, there were QUOTE: "eleven wells, two kitchen buildings, one watch tower, four storehouses, three mill buildings, five pigsties, one sheep pen with four sheep, two pottery pigs and two stone pigs, six chickens, and four dogs. From the almost universal use of these kinds of models in larger tombs, it would appear that agricultural estates were widely regarded as sources of both profit and pleasure."
Page 624: Zhang Heng (78–139) wrote a rhapsody which mentioned Nanyang's QUOTE: "geographical situation and natural resources, the kinds of trees, birds, and animals in its hills, the fish in its ponds and streams, the irrigated ricefields which produced different crops in winter and summer, the orchards, gardens, and grain fields.
Page 624-625: The average household or family's holding of cultivated land in 144 AD was between 65 and 70 mou (7 or 8 acres), meaning that anyone owning ten times this amount, or 6 qing (70 acres) would be considered well-off at the local level. The following are the sizes of landholdings alotted to several incredibly wealthy individuals as mentioned in the Book of Later Han, the first two of which came from Nanyang and were related to Emperor Guangwu of Han:
- Fan Zhong (fl. ca. 20 BC – 20 AD) owned 300 qing (3,400 acres); his family did not have any distinguished office-holders
- Yin Shi (d. 59 AD) owned 700 qing (8,000 acres); during the civil war he was able to mobilize a thousand men in support of Guangwu.
- Zheng Tai (fl. 170–190) owned 400 qing (4,500 acres)
Page 625: In regards to continuous tracts of land depicted in tomb murals of the Eastern Han, this may have been the case in sparsely populated areas with newly-developed lands, QUOTE: "However, the process of division of property on inheritance among all the male heirs led to a constant division of every landed estate, and a compact holding was unlikely to survive beyond a few generations." In other words, the lack of primogeniture in Chinese culture often did not allow continuous, compacted tracts of land after even one generation's time (i.e. dividing up the estate equally amongst all sons of the deceased owner).
Page 625-626: The peasants attached to great estates as described by Cui Shi (d. 170 AD) and Zhongchang Tong (c. 180–220) could have been wage laborers or tenants who paid fixed rents or shares of the crop. There must have been great variation in different regions in regards to how the peasants worked for the great landowners. QUOTE: "One fairly common system seems to seems [sic, to] have been a kind of sharecropping in which the peasant received land and perhaps tools, oxen, and a house in exchange for one-half to two-thirds of his crop. This was the system the government itself used when it settled tenants no state-owned lands. There is little evidence of slaves being engaged in agricultural work in Later Han or of any legal restraints on tenant cultivators."
Page 626: As expressed in Cui Shi's agricultural manual, where sons only engaged in study during the farming off-season, QUOTE: "On small or medium-sized estates, the master may have acted as overseer, his sons helping in agricultural tasks, his wife and daughters working with the female servants in producing silk."

Social History

Local Social Organization

Page 626: Han scholars complained that the money economy had created new social inequalities that split apart the clan-based local communities of old.
Page 627: Yet in spite of great interaction between communities in densely populated territories and the great amount of social mobility as opposed to earlier eras (when China's governments did not provide favorable conditions for economic growth, such as maintaining roads and a stable currency), there was still a lot of kinship-based groups (i.e. clans and lineages) which dominated social life at the local level. If someone's fellow clan member was harmed by another, it was expected that people with the same clan affiliation would rise up in their defense, even to the point of seeking revenge and murdering opponents. Most kinship groups were not very powerful, but those that were could cause serious problems for authorities, especially if they had clan members holding government posts.
Page 628: Ironically, after 140 AD when the central government's power gradually waned and was unable to provide peasant relief or maintain order, it was the more developed parts of the country which were at greater risk of falling into chaos. This is because in less developed areas, kinship groups remained strong and unaffected by government intrusion, thus they were able to defend and uphold civility and business as usual in their communities. The more developed parts of the country, where strong communal kinship ties had been effectively broken down by central government interests, had inhabitants who were more susceptible to joining rebel movements for protection and survival, such as the religious-based Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184.
Page 628-629: However, religious-based societies could also thrive in less developed areas in the west where government control was limited and where refugees could seek aid. The leader of the Five Pecks of Grain, Zhang Lu (d. 216), maintained effective control over Ba and Hanzhong commanderies (southern Shanxi and northern Sichuan) from the 180s to 215 by establishing a strict religious hierarchy in graded ranks. He challenged the authority of the Han government by setting up charity houses which were modelled after government post stations, only his establishments offered supplies of grain and meat to all. Fearful of Zhang Lu's power even after he defeated him in 215 AD, Cao Cao enfeoffed him and his five sons as nobles to placate them.
Page 629: The communities of southern China typically did not involve themselves in the great religious movements of the day since their traditional community organizations were strong. By the late Eastern Han, many community groups deemed as "clan bandits" openly defied the Han government and posed a major obstacle to the consolidation of the south in the early 3rd century by the Sun family.
Page 629-630: After the chaos of 184 AD, peasants also gathered around local strong men who recruited followers and formed private armies of "guests," "troops," "family soldiers," or kinsmen in order to form voluntary self-defense groups. These retainers were often the tenants and workers who lived and worked on the local magnate's agricultural estate.
Page 630: The written histories have placed these local strongmen into two categories: (1) heroes who helped put down local rebellions and cooperated with the local government; and (2) villains who disrupted the local government's operations.

Social Statification

Page 630-631: The upper class of China during Eastern Han was characterized by two types of men: (1) the cultured, scholarly gentlemen associated with social honor; and (2) the economic or political strongmen.
Page 631: As mentioned previously, many commoners in Eastern Han were forced by economic concerns or the need for protection to become dependent tenants or retainers for wealthy landowning magnates, thus losing their independence and much of their social status.
Page 631: While opportunities for all to rapidly ascend to higher stations in society through open and fair social mobility seem to have decreased compared to Western Han, the local elites had become far more integrated into a nationwide upper class social structure, thus expanding the classification of who belonged to the upper class. This now included the cultured gentleman, or gentryman (shi), who QUOTE: "from the time of Confucius at least, was used to refer to those qualified, morally and culturally, to be officers of the state. Inlcuded within its scope were teachers, unemployed gentlemen, and officials. Within the broad group of gentlemen there were recognized levels, marked by mastery of certain traditions, professions of certain values, and extent of leadership."
Page 631-632: Huan Tan (43 BC – 28 AD) provided a description of the hierarchy within the upper class as follows: the gentlemen of the villages distinguished themselves by their care and diligence for family affairs; the gentlemen of the county offices distinguished themselves through the mastery of literature; the gentlemen of the commanderies were loyal to their superiors acted as fair administrators; the gentlemen of the central government had broad minds and were talented scholars. According to Huan Tan, QUOTE: "status as a gentleman depended on moral character, literary expertise, intelligence, and wisdom, and he seemd to assume that those with these attributes would gain the appropriate office." As Ebrey points out, these qualifications follow largely subjective criteria, though. Philosophical writings provided meaning to the terms 'filial', 'loyal', 'generous', and 'talented', but so did the biographies called "exemplary lives" found in the written histories, containing stories of virtuous individuals who exemplified valued traits.

Criticisms of the Social Structure

Page 633-634: Scholars agreed with Huan Tan's model, but some argued that his ideal had not yet been achieved since good men were blocked from attaining office or great status while those of inferior qualifications often had too much influence. Some blamed this on the unfair judgments placed on men which were often based on their family or amount of wealth they had. Wang Chong (27 AD – c. 100 AD), whose great-grandfather had been a landowner, his grandfather a merchant, and his father and uncle local bullies who had to move twice to escape newfound enemies, QUOTE: "asked rhetorically whether his ancestors' failure to gain a name for scholastic or literary attainments disqualified him from such achievements. In his answer, Wang argued that truly brilliant men appear individually, not as members of prominent families. But it is clear that many of his contemporaries did not agree. (He had solved the problem of having no books in his house by reading at the book shops in Lo-yang)."
Page 634: Wang believed that men who were knowledgeable in the classical precepts but did not hold office deserved much greater honor and respect than officials who were originally only functionaries and had become corrupted by their incumbency in office:
- QUOTE: "The functionaries in childhood become accustomed to brush and ink, but they do not recite the chapters and verses, nor even hear of benevolence and principle. When they grow up and become officials they manipulate words and use tricky techniques for their private benefit and to gain influence. They will accept bribes when they are making investigations; they will take what they can when they are in charge of the people. Having gained an honored position they seek power; as they gain power with the ruler, they sell out their chief. From the first day of office they wear new hats and sharp swords. After a year of service they will have appropriated fields and houses. It is not that their nature is bad; it is that their habitual practices are in opposition to the classical teachings."
Page 634: Wang Fu (philosopher) complained that while moralists extolled the virtue of poor scholars, the latter rarely became prominent in society. This was because the rich looked down on the poor and viewed all of their actions as potentially self-serving. If one wanted to get ahead, they needed connections with the wealthy and powerful first, which naturally blocked many virtuous people from advancing in government.

Social Mobility

Page 635: The biographies in the standard histories seem to support the complaints of Wang Chong and Wang Fu since the men listed in these were more often than not members of families which had already been prominent for generations and had already produced at least one official in the past. Out of the 252 men given biographies in the Book of Later Han, over a third were sons or grandsons of officials, while a fifth were from families described as prominent in their commanderies or had ancestors who had been officials. In most of the biographies little is provided on the background of the individuals unless they were part of the group who had a father or grandfather as an official, or were described as members of prominent families in the commanderies.
Page 635-636: Within the total amount of biographies, 132 were men known for their political activities while 120 were known for their literary accomplishments and exemplary character. Of the 120 in the latter category, only five can be viewed as genuine examples of upward social mobility. Some of the men are mentioned as being "poor," but this does not mean they lived in poverty, but had to work on their own farms or worked for someone else.
Page 636: Some families were renowned for churning out respected officials generation after generation. QUOTE: "In Later Han pedigree seems to have been accepted as a legitimate basis for making certain kinds of appointments. For 46 of the 110 years from A.D. 86 to 196, at least one of the three excellencies was a member of the Yang or the Yüan family."

Local Elites

Page 637: The local elites, although on the bottom of the upper class period, represented the majority of upper class members in society. However, little is said of them by scholars and official histories; usually the ones mentioned were trouble makers, criminals, rebels, and rogues who caused headaches for local and central administrations.
Page 637-638: The bulk of what we know about local elites comes from other sources besides those mentioned. Several hundred carved inscriptions on stone concerning local issues and dating to the Eastern Han offers a view of the lives of the local elite. These inscriptions were drawn up by lowly gentry scholars to commemorate achievements of worthy individuals, such as a renowned magistrate who had been transferred to another county. Some of the stone inscriptions were written to mark the occasion of a new templre or bridge being erected. A stele of the 2nd century AD was made in honor of Liu Xiong, magistrate of Suancao, who supervised public works projects; the stele also listed the donors and contributors, naming QUOTE: "four retired regular officials, thirty-two retired provincial and commandery officers, twenty-five county officers (the former subordinates of the magistrate), fifteen honorary county officers, fifty-five gentlemen of leisure, and forty-three students. So far eleven such steles listing donors to public works projects have been unearthed or discovered.
Page 638-639: Many of the local elites were these "men of leisure" who chose to be reclusive and devoted their time to studies or often served as officers and clerks or overseers of family tombs. For men who were subordinate officers, they were divided into two levels: those who served the county magistrate, and those who served the commandery governor or provincial inspector. Commandery-level subordinates were on a lower rung of the ladder which led to service in central government, while county subordinate officers had little or no chance of advancing their careers (especially if their goal was to work for the central government). The only evidence that county-level subordinates ever advanced their careers further was if they had proved to have military capabilities during times of crisis, and the only surviving examples of such date to the period of the civil wars when the Eastern Han had not yet fully reunited China. It should be noted that many of the men who had biographies in the Book of Later Han started their careers as commandery-level subordinates such as a clerk, master of records, investigator, officer of the five bureaus, an aide-de-camp in the bureau of merit, etc. Once a commandery-level subordinate reached the age of 36, they could be nominated as xiaolian if they proved capable and talented enough.
Page 639: QUOTE: "For the man who wished to remain at home for his whole life, county positions were fine; for those with ambition toward higher circles, it was best to seek a position as a commandery subordinate or even to travel to the capital to finish one's education and meet important people."
Page 639-640: It is important to note that not membership in certain kinship groups did not guarantee local elite status; a wealthy local scholar or official considered part of the local elite may be related to many kinsmen who are poor and considered commoners.

Patron-client Relations Among the Upper Class

Page 640-641: QUOTE: Much of the social life of the upper class in later Han was colored by the patron-client relations that tied men hierarchically to superiors and inferiors. Clients were of two principal types. A class of 'former subordinates' was created every time one man was appointed or recommended to office by another. A few high officials in the central government had a large number of staff positions which they could fill with men of their own choosing. Governors, regional inspectors, and magistrates also could appoint dozens of subordinates. The governor in particular played a crucial role, since he was the one who recommended local men as 'filial and incorrupt' and was thus able to form bonds of obligation with men who might well later rise high in the bureaucracy. The second type of client was called student (men-sheng). In theory, these men lay under an obligation to the patron because they had received instructions from him. The patron might be a genuine teacher, but regular officials also acquired student clients who came to them less for instruction than for assistance and protection.
Page 641: As private ties and institutions assumed greater importance over official and public connections during the 2nd century AD (due to greater emphasis on filial piety and community solidarity), the patron-client relationship became much more significant in Han society; QUOTE: "Just as a man was expected to remain loyal to his kin and his neighbors, so was he supposed to remember his former teachers and superiors."
Page 641-642: With the rise of consort families in 89 AD, they exercised political power through a regent, who in turn appointed hundreds of officials and subordinates who were expected to become his clients and treat him as their patron. These clients were usually expelled from office once their patron regent (and hence his consort family's faction) was overthrown at court in a coup. When the Liang family held power in the 140s, their rivals in officialdom resolved to challenge them by strengthening their own client-patron relationships, a fact evident from the role of the Academy where angry teachers encouraged many of their students to protest the maltreatment of officials by the Liang clan.
Page 642: Clients had various duties they were obligated by custom to fulfill. They were expected to mourn for their patron at his passing and to attend the funeral if possible. After a patron's death, clients usually had an honorary stele erected in his memory.

Increasing coherence and self-consciousness of the Upper Class

Page 643: QUOTE: "One of the major contributions of the Han period to Chinese history was the enlargement of the group of people who considered themselves gentlemen (shih). Members of local elites began to think of themselves as cultured gentlemen even if of modest attainment. Despite their geographic separation and the local focus of most of their activities, they came to see themselves not merely in terms of their own community, but also as participants, even if very indirectly, in national literary, scholarly, and political affairs. In the succeeding centuries, the strength and coherence of the upper class of 'cultured gentlemen' proved to be more durable than political or economic centralization as a basis for the unity of Chinese civilization."
Page 643: QUOTE: "Stone inscriptions erected to honor members of the local elite show how the ideal of the gentleman was spreading. These inscriptions show that the values expressed in 'exemplary lives'—filial piety, deference, indifference to personal advancement—were shared by members of the local elites. Inscriptions do not, of course, indicate that men practiced all the virtues of the cultured gentleman, but they do show that they shared a consciousness of how a gentleman was supposed to act. A good example is a funerary stele dated 182, which seems to have been composed by a principal subject himself."
- QUOTE: "In his youth [Mr. K'ung] studied the Classic of ritual. When he encountered a period of general hardship, in which people took to eating human flesh, he made a hut of dirt and thatch and wore himself out gathering wild vegetables to feed his parents. He was kind, benevolent, straightforward, quiet, and faithful, all virtues which were part of his nature, not ones acquired by learning. [Later] he proposed a little and he called to mind his grandmother. . . .He refashioned her coffin, built a temple and planted cypress trees around it. . . .His youngest brother. . . .was rich in virtue but poor in worldly goods. [Mr. K'ung] invited him to live with him for over forty years. Even when he had to borrow money himself, he was generous to his brother. . . .His fame spready widely, and the county asked him to be master of records (chu-pu), then to serve in the bureau of merit (kung-ts'ao). . . .
Page 643-644: QUOTE: "Thus a man who counted no officials among his ancestors and whose own official experience was simply that of a county subordinate claimed honor because he had fulfilled several times over the duties of filial piety and generosity."
Page 644: QUOTE: "Sometimes the local elite publicly took pride that their ranks included a man with these qualities. Fifty-eight men in Nan-yang, all former subordinate officers or gentlemen of leisure, contributed to the stele for a local scholar and teacher, Lou Shou (97–174). Lou's grandfather had been a regular official, but his father had lived 'contented in poverty'. Lou Shou himself was described as loving study, and as a warm person who got along well with others but remained respectful. He enjoyed the life of the recluse and the mist in the mountains and did not curry favor with powerful people. He refused all offers from the county or commandery, unmoved by thought of rank and stipend."
Page 644: Education in the classical studies was the mark of a true scholar and gentleman, yet it also opened up career opportunities in education and politics. Governors were often concerned with having subordinates study with established teachers so that their subordinates could become teachers themselves. Governors also often sent promising men to the capital to be educated in the classics. Teachers were given a prominent role in society, and some had as many as a thousand pupils, while many had several hundred.
Page 645: Professional scholars during the Eastern Han often commented in essay form about the various other gentlemen in their age, even characterizing them by region of the country they hailed from. It also became popular amongst the gentry to compile biographies on other men. Zhao Qi did this while he was banned from government during the Disasters of Partisan Prohibitions, although he later took a military officer's post and died in 201 at over ninety years of age. His collection of biographies on men from his home area was entitled Evaluative records of the Sanfu area, i.e. on men from the three commanderies around Eastern-Han-era Chang'an. Of his fellow gentlemen in his home area, he said QUOTE: "They love the lofty and honor principle, and are noble in both name and reality, but when customs deteriorate they chase after power and think only of profit."
Page 645-646: Another biographical compilation that enjoyed widespread popularity throughout China was A record on the heroes of the end of the Han by Wang Can (177–217). The genre of collective biographies became even more popular during the 3rd century.
Page 646: QUOTE: "One of the most important elements in the evolution of the upper class was the partisan movement of the 150s–170s. Men with widely differing origins responded to the leadership of the partisans because they were already self-conscious of being gentlemen and thus responsible for the moral guidance of the country. Yet the result of this political agitation, the persecution of the partisans from 166 to 184, undoubtedly increased the self-consciousness of these men. Above all, it created a large body of articulate, energetic, politically interested men who could not hold office. The social status of cultured gentlemen (shih) could no longer be defined in terms of personal characteristics and corresponding to political acvitity. Many men of the highest social position, including the leaders of the protest movement, did not hold office and could not look upon themselves as members of a government organization. Their sole surviving role was social and cultural, as the leaders of their communities and upholders of the values that had been fostered in them."
Page 646: QUOTE: "In theory, once deprived of office the agitators should have been rendered powerless; being disgraced in the eyes of the central government, their sphere of influence should have been sharply constricted to that of their home towns. Yet this did not occur. The partisans maintained their contacts all over the country without the mediation of official relations. Even if the 'cultured gentlemen' had not fully understood their independence from the government before, it now became obvious to all."
Page 646-647: The major changes that occurred in Eastern Han were the restructuring of local society, the restructuring of agricultural production, and the widening and strengthening of the upper class as a social group QUOTE: "with a political and social significance independent of any offices its members might fill." These changes were recognized by the last chancellor, Cao Cao, and his son Cao Pi, who usurped the throne of Han and initiated Cao Wei. Cao Cao realized that the best way to tackle the problem of vagrant peasants who were unable or unwilling to return to their land was to establish agricultural garrisons (tuntian) in order to provide them with real or security or at least the illusion of it. To ensure adequate agricultural production, Cao Cao had to QUOTE: "encourage landlords to bring their dependents with them to settle on deserted land, or to use the power of government to collect the landless peasants, organize them into groups, and settle them as state dependents. He took both courses."
Page 647: Cao Cao also realized that the state could not collec enough revenues through the per capita taxes alone, so he imitated the great landowners by collecting income from tenants and dependents working for these new agricultural garrisons. QUOTE: "Thus, even if the magnates could not be fully controlled and their wealth and landed property lay beyond the tax collector's reach, the government could still derive steady revenues from its 'colony fields.'"
Page 647-648: Cao Cao and Cao Pi also upheld a new government recruitment system called the nine-rank system, which later became notorious for an aristocratic bias but for the meantime QUOTE: "seems to have been a concession to the autonomy of the upper class. The consensus of local public opinion about individuals was recognized as an appropriate basis on which to select men for office. In each county and commandery, a local man of high repute was charged with ranking local gentlemen according to their reputation for talent and integrity. The government was to follow these rankings in appointing men to office, thus implicitly acknowledging that the upper class recruited and certified itself."

The Development of the Confucian Schools

Kramers, Robert P. (1986). "The Development of the Confucian Schools," in Cambridge History of China: Volume I: the Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220, 747–756. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521243270.

Just as a general note, I have skipped the first parts of this very small chapter on the Warring States and Qin eras, in order to get to the material on the Han Dynasty.
Page 752: The Qin Dynasty regime did not cultivate an open academic society; instead, they rigidly opposed any ideas viewed as outside the state-sponsored philosophy of Legalism. The burning of books and burying of scholars was a clear indication that the Qin regime did not tolerate independent thought, while many important writings save those on divination and medicine were not spared the Qin's brutal censorship.
Page 752-753: Emperor Gaozu of Han, although not as extreme as Qin Shi Huang, still held a negative view of scholars as pedantic parasites. His attitude was softened a bit by 200 BC when he was persuaded by the scholar Shusun Tong to establish a court ceremonial in the tradition of the Zhou Dynasty rulers King Wen of Zhou and King Wu of Zhou. Gaozu also listened to the advice of the Confucian scholar Lu Jia, who argued that a conquered empire could not be governed on horseback. There was no desire to return to the rigid Legalist system of the Qin Dynasty, but there was equal desire to avoid the failed feudal system of the Zhou Dynasty, which would not allow for a strong empire. After several of his old companions that he had enfeoffed turned against him in rebellion, Gaozu wanted to strengthen the central administration. In 196 BC he issued an edict which for the first time in Han regulated the recruitment of able persons who could be drafted into the central administration. QUOTE: "The edict of 196 B.C. therefore was an important step toward the realization of an administrative government system staffed by men of merit, and it may be said to have been the first major impulse toward the famous examination system."
Page 753: After the edict of 196 BC, there was small incremental progress for the Confucian ideology up until the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, when it became fully embraced. In 191 BC, Emperor Hui of Han finally repealed the Qin edict that ordered the burning of non-Legalist books. Emperor Wen of Han and Emperor Jing of Han had academicians established at court, although Confucian scholars weren't the only ones who were sponsored by the state, as scholars with other ideological preferences were also accepted. At this point in time the court seemed more in favor of the Huanglao school of Daoism.
Page 753-754: When Emperor Wu of Han took the throne in 140 BC, the grand empress dowager, Empress Dou (Wen), still retained effective control over government, thus Wu was not able to implement any new policies which she did not favor. He nonetheless sought advice from officials between 140 to 124 BC on how to fix the woes of state. Out of more than a hundred answers provided by candidates, he found the argument of Dong Zhongshu to be the most impressive. Dong was a specialist in the Spring and Autumn Annals as transmitted by the scholar Gongyang Gao, and claimed that he understood the true principles espoused by this doctrine. He taught that the means of attaining the tao, or correct way, was to use humaneness (ren), righteousness (yi), a sense of propriety (li), and music as a sense of harmony (yue). In honoring Confucius, Dong also emphasized the importance of education over punishment, yet he carefully fused together the concepts of punishment and education via the belief in yin and yang. QUOTE: "The tao of Heaven operates through the two primal forces of yin and yang. Yang is associated with the spring; it symbolizes the giving of life. To it corresponds the spreading of virtue, and also education. Yin completes yang; it is associated with autumn, the season of destruction, and therefore symbolizes death and punishment. Here we see the principle of change introduced as a principle which is operative in nature and should therefore be followed in government. Change is necessary not because Heaven, the origin of all things, is changing, but because circumstances change and therefore the application of the tao must vary accordingly. Thus, change and permanence are welded together into a universal system which combines natural and moral science."
Page 754: Kramer writes that the influence of the theories of Zou Yan here is unmistakable, as yin and yang and five phases became core ideas in not only Han but later traditional Chinese philosophy. QUOTE: "We may certainly speak here of a syncretism between the traditions handed down by the early Confucians and the universalistic theories that had been developed after the beginnings of the Confucian school. It was not the mere moralism of this school that proved its relevance for the time, but the fact that it promoted a universalistic, holistic world view providing inescapable sanctions for the deeds of men and the ordering of society, and a place in the cosmos for the imperial system."
Page 754-755: Dong Zhongsu may be considered the first Confucian "theologian", as he not only adopted the moral principles of Confucius but also cemented the standards for Confucian metaphysics with his naturalistic interpretation of ancient traditions. He advised that all other theories should be ignored while the scholar's focus should fall solely on the "six arts" of traditional Confucian literature, which were the Book of Songs, Book of Documents, Book of Rites, Book of Music, Book of Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals.
Page 755: QUOTE: "The Spring and autumn annals constituted the meeting point par excellence between ethics and metaphysics. Already Mencius had expressed the belief that Confucius in editing this chronicle had applied the heavenly norms governing all creation to the process of human history. With Tung Chung-shu, Confucius gains the dimensions of the sage at the center of history, the su-wang, the 'king incognito,' who in a subtle and hidden way formulates the praise and blame of human deeds proceeding from these eternal norms. The combination of ethics and metaphysics had its relevance in their quality of prophetic judgment, which must have impressed the rulers of those days."
Page 755-756: One of the main reasons the Confucians became accepted during Emperor Wu of Han's reign was the court's propensity to uphold religious ritual and court etiquette, two fields which the Confucians were fond of by tradition. Confucians found acceptance at court by promoting the old Zhou Dynasty court practices which the Han emulated. QUOTE: "In both fields of ritual and administration they were above all valued as preservers and transmitters of the ancient royal traditions, not as representatives of one among various schools. This fact may also be seen from the famous catalogue of the Han imperial library as recorded in the Han dynastic history. The six arts—the classical traditions from the time before the rise of the various schools—head the catalogue as a separate category. Only after this comes the category of the 'schools,' of which the Confucian school is the first."
Page 756: Emperor Wu of Han also entertained Confucian ideas about recruiting officials; influenced by the suggestions of Dong Zhongshu, Emperor Wu issued an edict in 136 BC which QUOTE: "changed the system of the officially appointed academicians, establishing chairs only for the five main classical traditions (Changes, Songs, Documents, Ritual, and Spring and Autumn annals). There may well have been more than one academician for each category, but even so they were far fewer than the traditional seventy-two." In 124 BC, once again upon the suggestion of Dong Zhongshu, Emperor Wu issued an edict which established the Imperial Academy, or Taixue; this had QUOTE: "regular groups of fifty pupils [who were] to be trained by the academicians. At the end of their study they were given an examination, probably to be written in much the same style as the memorials presented to the throne giving general advice on state matters. These measures constituted the beginning of the famous examination system that was for such a long time to be the means of reruitment for the higher echelons of the civil service."
Page 756-757: After the Five Classics became the official curriculum of study at court, there arose many interpretive traditions for each one of the classics; these traditions can be labeled as "schools" within Confucianism. There already existed some old regional interpretive traditions for the Book of Songs, since there was a different tradition from Qi, a different one from Lu, and a different one from Han. QUOTE: "The differences between the three cannot have been more than slight textual variants and different exegetical glossses. For the other classics there were as yet no different school traditions, but this situation was soon to change."
Page 757: During the reign of Emperor Xuan of Han (r. 74&dnash;49 BC), a controversey over the new Guliang tradition of the Spring and Autumn Annals which challenged the Gongyang tradition upheld by Dong Zhongshu sparked a spirited debate which culminated in the Shiqu discussions or Pavilion of the Stone Canal discussions in 51 BC (named after the pavilion in the palace where the debate took place). As a result of this court conference, eight additional schools were officially recognized by the court. By the time of Emperor Ping of Han (r. 1 BC – 6 AD), there was a total of twenty-one schools recognized and represented at the Imperial Academy (Taixue). Simultaneously there was also an increase in the number of teachers at the academy as well as a growth in the student body. During Wu's reign, there were only fifty attending pupils; by 8 BC there were three thousand pupils; by the reign of Emperor Shun of Han (r. 125–144 AD) there were thirty thousand pupils.
Page 758-759: QUOTE: "As we have already seen in the case of Tung Chung-shu, there came about a tendency to interpret the ancient texts in terms of a holistic world view which had been developed especially in the school of Tsou Yen. We may say with Ku Chieh-kang that the backbone of Han thought was the doctrine of yin and yang and the Five Phases. This meant that the Five Classics came to be interpreted in an esoteric way that was intended to reveal their true meaning for all time. For the classics were not revered for their historic value; as their categorical name ching indicated, they were 'canons . . . which provided the standards for man to arrange his life, for the ruler to govern his people.' ...This esoteric tendency was focused on the endeavor of what we may call 'reading the signs of the times.' Tung Chung-shu himself was a firm believer in this practice, which consisted of interpreting all kinds of curious deviations from nature. The holistic world view of man as embedded in a cosmic dynamism sought to determine the connection between natural phenomena and the deeds of man. It developed into a true science, interpreting and classifying any event or phenomenon that might possibly have a bearing on understanding the cosmic forces in their interaction with the human world."
Page 760: QUOTE: "The other problem with which the various schools had to contend was that of the authenticity of the classical texts themselves, at a time when there was as yet no question of an 'orthodox' version. At the beginning of Han, Confucian scholars had difficulty in recovering from the blow dealt by the regime of the First Emperor." Kramers then goes on to relate the story of Master Fu, or Fusheng, who had to hide his copy of the Book of Documents within the walls of his house but was forced to flee. When he retreived his copy after the Han restored the empire, he found that many chapters were missing and only twenty nine still existed. Emperor Wen of Han heard of Fusheng, who was by that point well over ninety, and so sent Chao Cuo to study with him to recover lost materials. QUOTE: "In this story the recovery of a text is mentioned side by side with its oral transmission. As written texts in those days must have been scarce, oral transmission probably played a much more important part in handing down the classical texts."
Page 760: As written by Ban Gu, the courts of kings also encouraged the recovery of ancient texts, especially that of Liu An, King of Huainan (who had the Huainanzi compiled).
Page 760-761: The Xin Dynasty scholar Liu Xin (d. 23) became the key initial player in a controversy involving the ancient text and new text tradition. Before him came Kong Anguo (c. 156 – c. 74 BC), a descendant of Confucius and academician for the Book of Documents who claimed that an even older version of the document called the Book of Documents in Ancient Characters, with an unknown sixteen chapter addition, was found within a wall of Confucius' house. This more "ancient" text was at first rejected, then accepted as official curriculum under Emperor Ping of Han, accepted under Wang Mang, but was abolished under Emperor Guangwu of Han. Later in the 12th century during the Song Dynasty, it was determined that this document was fraudulent and a forgery of later centuries.
Page 761-762: It was Liu Xin who propagated not only the Book of Documents in Ancient Characters, but also a newly-found Zuozhuan (Zuo's Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals). Liu allegedly found it while working in the imperial archives. However, his text was not accepted at court as he found much opposition to scholars who would rather trust other interpretations handed down orally. However, all of this changed when Wang Mang came to power between 7 BC and 9 AD. Liu Xin found his change to establish the ancient text tradition in the Imperial Academy. It was during Wang's reign that the Rites of Zhou was discovered and alleged to be a lost classic. Although it perhaps was written before the Han, it is uncertain where and in what era it originated from; one thing is for sure, it suited the overall aims of Wang Mang in his zeal to promote and reconstruct trends of antiquity.
Page 762-764: When Eastern Han was established, the ancient text tradition had become so heavily associated with Wang Mang that all the texts of that tradition were abolished. However, the scholarly conflict between adherents to the new texts and those of the ancient texts continued to rage, culminating in a court conference of 79 AD called the Bohu yizou, or Consultations in the White Tiger Hall. By that time the new text tradition had prevailed, while it was the new text tradition that was represented in the great stone classics inscribed on tablets outside of Luoyang in 175 AD (overseen by Cai Yong), some of which still survive. This formed a precedent that was followed by later dynasties.
Page 764: Although the Imperial Academy's (Taixue) student body had grown during Eastern Han, there was a simultaneous emergence of a private school tradition, most visibly those of Ma Rong (79–166) and Zheng Xuan (127–200), which undercut the importance of the Imperial Academy. QUOTE: "It was only natural taht the ancient text classics which could not obtain recognition at court were increasingly cultivated in these private centers of learning. But the rift between official and private scholarship cannot be simply identified with the division into two camps between new and ancient text scholars, nor with a division between esoteric and rationalist studies...It was rather the growing opposition to the narrow-minded bigotry of the new text academicians of the Academy, combined with the gradual decline of actual imperial power, that gradually drove serious classical scholarship away from the court. Although there is no indication that the private schools of Later Han were instrumental in developing a new metaphysic as an alternative to early Han cosmology, in the writings of such independent scholars as Yang Hsiung and Wang Ch'ung we find traces of a naturalist world view based on the early Taoist philosophers Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu which was to dominate the intellectual climate after Han. The climate of independent classical studies certainly helped to pave the way for a more truly universalistic mystique. This was not so clearly linked to actual political power; rather, it provided the rationale for an independent judgment of this political power."

Confucian, Legalist, and Taoist Thought in Later Han

Ch'en, Ch'i-Yün. (1986). "Confucian, Legalist, and Taoist Thought in Later Han," in Cambridge History of China: Volume I: the Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220, 766–806. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521243270.

Former Han and Wang Mang: The Heritage

Failure of the Confucian Ideal

Page 767: In the early years of Western Han, the Legalism (Chinese philosophy) of the Qin Dynasty was discredited, the Confucian concept of the Mandate of Heaven was doubted, and the main Daoism which was sponsored by the early Western Han court. They emphasized the Daoist ideal of wu wei, or non-action, meaning that they believed it was best for central government not to interfere in local administrations or with the commoners' lives. Any seemingly impractical effort was curtailed. Strict frugality was emphasized by the court, an import of Mohism which was adopted by Han Confucians as a main tenet of their philosophy. Since Legalism had been discredited and the central government largely left local administrations up to their own devices, local administrators emphasized a tradition of expert statecraft which became synonymous with neo-Legalism.
Page 768: Lu Jia tried to persuade Emperor Gaozu of Han to follow the Book of Songs and Book of Documents in the Confucian tradition, but Gaozu asserted that he had no use for the Confucians lofty and impratical ideas when he had the pragmatism of Daoism. Lu Jia agreed with Gaozu that he had won the empire on horseback, but the former argued that he could not rule it on horseback. Gaozu admired Lu Jia, and so commissioned him to write twelve chapters on the reasons why the Qin regime fell.
Page 768-769: In his Guo Qin lun ('The Faults of Qin'), the practical statesman Jia Yi of Emperor Wen of Han's reign condemned the Legalism of the Qin regime but argued that the Qin Dynasty could have survived the revolution if Qin Er Shi had withdrawn all his forces into Qin's original territory of the 'Land Within the Passes' (Guanzhong) and waited there, building strength for the opportune moment to strike back at the rebels. This is what Qin Shi Huang had done when he battled the other Warring States. Jia Yi argued that Qin Er Shi failed to adopt this strategy not because of moral inferiority, but because he was simply ignorant of martial strategy. Jia Yi associated this ignorance with Legalism's disdain for education. Following this line of thought, Jia Yi then argued that Han emperors should not go uneducated in their youth, a suggestion that was officially adopted in 176 BC when Confucian tutors were assigned to educating the imperial princes who would be future emperors. Thus, when Emperor Wu of Han came to the throne, he was already well educated by Confucian teachers.
Page 769: In 136 BC, Emperor Wu decred that the Five Classics would form the orthodox doctrines of the academicians. In 124 BC, not only did the first Confucian scholar from commoner status rise to the seat of Chancellor of China (Gongsong Hong), but a quota was put in place to fix the amount of disciples and students at the Imperial Academy (Taixue). QUOTE: "After one year of study at the Academy, and upon passing an examination in one of the classics, a student would be appointed to a middle- or lower-level government post. Here we find the origin of the civil service examination system." However, quota fixed the number of students at fifty during Emperor Wu's time. This was increased to one hundred during Emperor Zhao of Han's reign, to two hundred during Emperor Xuan of Han's reign, to one thousand during Emperor Yuan of Han's reign, and to three thousand during Emperor Cheng of Han's reign. Wang Mang made it so that there was no limit on the amount of students who could attend. Confucian scholars of the court were appointed tutors of the heir apparent and were promoted to high office when their tutored prince became an emperor.
Page 769: By the time of Emperor Yuan of Han (r. 49–33), the Confucians had permeated the higher and lower ranks of administration while even the local magnates, great landowners, and successful merchants began modeling their behavior after the Confucians.
Page 769-770: Unlike the Legalists of Qin, the Han Confucians did not outright suppress other philosophical schools; instead they used subtle but coercive methods in education. In 140 BC, however, Emperor Wu of Han did dismiss any candidates who were disciples of Legalist thought espoused by Shen Buhai, Han Fei, Su Qin, or Zhang Yi. However, this decree which favored the Confucians was rescinded in 139 BC, as the Daoist influence at court was not yet broken due to the grand empress dowager's considerable clout (Empress Dou (Wen)). When she died in 136 BC, the field was open for Emperor Wu to implement Confucian reforms.
Page 770-771: Disciples at the Academy had to be at least eighteen years of age and were to attend for one year before passing an examination in one of the Five Classics. This was hardly enough time and study to be fully indoctrinated, while many officials who had graduated from the academy made efforts to fuse ideas of other ideologies into the mainstream Confucian discourse, which had nominal dominance over the scholarly realm and imperial court. In reality, Emperor Wu accepted many ideas from Daoism, shamanism, yin and yang theory and the Five Elements cosmology. Dong Zhongshu, although the most prominent Confucian thinker of his day, still advocated yin-yang theory, Five Elements cosmology, and Legalist thought.
Page 771: According to the Confucians, QUOTE: "Human existence is not merely the enactment of a drama on a confined stage, devised, directed, and observed by divine providence; it is a sacraficial procession in which human actors intermingle with elements of nature and the divine."
Page 772-773: QUOTE: "According to the Han Confucian tenet, man's position in the world was determined by his intrinsic worth as developed by education; this was interpreted as a moral and cosmic principle. Since the position of the emperor was at the apex of the political and social hierarchy, he should be chosen from the worthiest of men. However, his occupying the throne had nothing to do with the Confucian tenet concerning education, merit, and promotion; it was due simply to the right of birth and inheritance. The principle of dynastic rule therefore compromised the ultimate Confucian ideal."
Page 773: This contradiction led to serious consequences. Gai Kuanrao cited the Book of Changes as providing grounds for truly implementing the Mandate of Heaven and suggesting that Emperor Xuan of Han abdicate the throne to someone of greater merit. Gai stated, QUOTE: "The five emperors took all under Heaven as public office; the three kings took it as their family property. As family property, it was transmitted to the son; as public office, it ought to be transmitted to the worthiest. This is like the rotation of the four seasons. The one who has accomplished his work should relinquish his post. A person undeserving of the position should not occupy that position." For suggesting this, Gai was indicted for treason and committed suicide. Yet his death did not quell the incredible pressure placed upon the subsequent leaders Emperor Yuan of Han and Emperor Cheng of Han to reform the imperial family's personal morality. After Wang Mang abolished the house of Former Han and initiated the Xin Dynasty, he QUOTE: "thus fulfilled the Confucian dream of a sage ascending the throne and replacing a failing dynasty. He went on to decree many grandiose but impractical reforms derived from the Confucian canons. The founding of Wang Mang's dynasty thus marked the climax of Han Confucian idealism."
Page 773-774: Wang Mang's impractical ideas were opposed by many Confucians, despite the fact that he championed Confucianism, a conflict which led to his downfall in 23 AD. QUOTE: "The fact that the great Confucian reform was opposed and aborted by those who called themselves Confucians indicates the meaninglessness of the Han Confucian label and the limitations of reform by education. It turned out that Confucian education, as propagated in Han times, not only failed to cultivate in its recipients a moral character as idealized by the classic Confucian masters, but even failed to inculcate in the so-called Confucians a common ideology. In spite of his Confucian education, a ruler might still be a cruel, legalistic, or a weak and incompetent ruler; an official might still be an oppressive or corrupt official; and a landlord could of course be as greedy as other landlords. Even worse, they could use their knowledge of Confucianism for an eloquent justification of their unworthy actions."

Yang Xiong: Mystery, Mind, and Human Nature

Page 774: QUOTE: "The failure of Wang Mang evoked a critical and discriminating spirit in the thinkers of Later Han. Although many Later Han thinkers still cherished a moral ideal, they had grown mistrustful of the holistic postulations of the Former Han schools. They realized that the political process was different from the educational process; that political achievement was not simply a function of a man's personal cultivation; that good public order was not a mere externalization of inner moral value; and that the motivation for political and economic reform must rest on political and economic rather than on ethical grounds. The tensions within the Han Confucian synthesis led to a gradual breakdown of that grandiose holism, out of which the various elements, Taoistic and Legalistic, now reasserted themselves."
Page 774: The writings of the scholar Yang Xiong (53 BC – 18 AD) QUOTE: "represent the culmination of Confucian idealism and optimism in Former Han, but also show an early sign of the disquiet and critical discernment that became more distinct in Later Han thought."
Page 774-775: As expounded by Yang Xiong in his Classic of the Great Mystery and Model Sayings, there is a cosmic trinity of Heaven, earth, and mankind where the latter is the central locus; all three parts of this trinity are bound by an all-embracing unity which he calls the "great mystery". This "great mystery" correlates with "spiritual intelligence" and is the only thing capable of comprehending both yin and yang, while yin only understands yin and yang only understand yang. For Yang Xiong, spiritual intelligence is QUOTE: "the power of cognition that implied human intelligence." In his Model Sayings, Yang Xiong wrote of man's central place in the universe, QUOTE: "Heaven and earth as divine intelligence are intangible, but the mind secretly penetrating them still will comprehend them. How is it to man, and to the affairs and categories of man. . . .The human mind is divine! When man exercises it, it exists. But when man forsakes it, it perishes. He who is able to exercise it constantly will be none other than the sage."
Page 775: On this last quote, this chapter's author Ch'en Ch'i-Yün writes, QUOTE: "Thus the way of the sage is one with Heaven. Without man, Heaven could not realize itself as a cause; without Heaven, man could not complete himself. With the power of knowledge, a true Confucian is invincible under Heaven."
Page 775-776: QUOTE: "A clear indication of the Later Han disillusionment with the Confucian idealistic view of human nature and reform was the increasing attention given to the concept of fate (ming). In his further discourses in the Model sayings on human nature, mind, human affairs, the Confucian teacher, learning, and careers, Yang Hsiung became soberly realistic and more pessimistic. He believed that fate is determined by Heaven. But he did not explicitly say that human effort could be of no avail over fate; rather, he restricted the meaning of fate to that with which man has nothing to do."
Page 776: On this point, Yang Xiong wrote, QUOTE: "For example, if one [chooses] to stand beneath a perilous wall where a slight movement might result in disaster, and if one thus behaves so as to invite his own death, is this fate?"
Page 776: Then Ch'en Ch'i-Yün comments on this, QUOTE: "Human intelligence might thus extricate man from numerous difficulties of a type that would otherwise incorrectly be attributed to fate. According to this view, it is intelligence rather than moral virtue that is crucial to successful human effort vis-à-vis fate. This concept sustains the Confucian belief in the potential development of an ideal humanity, but mitigates the excessive demand and consequent disillusionment arising from the idealistic view of human goodness as a moral essence."
Page 776: Unlike Mencius, who believed all human nature was inherently good, and Xun Zi, who believed all human nature was inherently bad, Yang Xiong took the middle route by stating human nature was morally indeterminate. He reasoned that men who cultivate the good will become good, and those who cultivate the bad will become bad. He then argued that only intelligence, garnered by education and learning, was the determining factor, thus putting the principles of li (ritual propreity) and yi (righteousness and justice) on lesser pedestals of importance.
Page 776-777: However, Yang Xiong conceded that all philosophical schools encouraged the exercise of human intelligence and thus had some value to offer their disciples. QUOTE: "He went so far as to admit that, although the deceitful intrigues and plots devised by military experts or adepts of practical statecraft were evil, these might be put to good use by the sage. He also admitted that some of the Confucian classics were based on corrupt texts and were of inferior intelligence, and that some of the Confucian teachers were ignorant."
Page 777: Yang Xiong asserted that it was easily to tell the difference between superior and inferior intellect, but much more difficult to tell apart a sage and an imposter who both possessed superior intelligence. Thus he championed law as a critical component implemented by sage-rulers which regulated society, but was quick to rebuke the Legalist of the Qin Dynasty for corrupting it. He argued that law was first created by Fu Xi, completed by Yao (ruler), elaborated by Shun (Chinese leader) and the Zhou Dynasty, thus law was not a creation of the Legalists. He condemned the statecraft espoused by Shen Buhai and Han Fei, considering it inhuman. However, so long as the teaching of law by the Legalists and the teaaching of the Tao by Daoist Zhuangzi did not discriminate against Confucius or Confucian values, then their teachings QUOTE "might be as valuable as those of the lesser Confucians. The shortcoming of these other schools, Yang Hsiung held, lay in their narrow-mindedness and one-sided intelligence. According to Yang Hsiung, illustrious intelligence enlightens a myriad of directions. Since there are countless little things in the world, mere knowledge or expertise in one of these does not qualify one to be a true master. What should be prized in a true master is his possession or awareness of great intelligence."

Huan Tan: A Call for Realism

Page 777-778: Huan Tan (43 BC – 28 AD) belonged to the same Old Text School (guwen xue) that Yang Xiong did and was an admirer of Yang Xiong, considering him to be a contemporary sage. However, while Yang Xiong was moderately idealistic, Huan Tan displayed an attitude which was far more pragmatic and realistic. Only fragments of Huan Tan's writing survives, embodied by his Xinlun 新論.
Page 778: Huan Tan agreed with Yang Xiong's postulation that mankind was morally indeterminate. To him, all people had the mental faculties to perceive and know, stating that the difference lies QUOTE: "in their ability which might be great or little, in their intelligent discernment which might be deep or shallow, in their intuition or intellect which might be unenlightened or enlightened, or in their character and conduct which might be cultivated to a greater or lesser extent; all of these vary in degree." Whereas Yang Xiong stressed the importance of intelligence in discerning who was a sage or not, Huan Tan argued that both intelligence and ability should be weighed in, stating QUOTE: "if a sage is born again in the later age, we can only recognize that his ability excels ours, but we will be at a loss to know whether he is a sage or not."
Page 778: Huan Tan criticized contemporary Confucian scholars much more harshly than Yang Xiong, citing a statement in the Analects that even Confucius struggled to define the Way of Heaven, human nature, and fate, while pointing out that contemporary scholars QUOTE "failed to observe the more tangible affairs of men while prizing what was intangible and remote—namely, the way of the ancient sages. He pointed out that although institutions of Confucian scholarship had grown greatly in size and importance during the reign of Wu-ti (141–87 B.C.), government practices had at the same time become very bad. This criticism struck at the heart of Former Han Confucian assumptions of a congruence between learning and political well-being, or of a grand unity of the sociopolitical, moral, and cosmic orders."
Page 778-779: QUOTE: "Huan T'an's pragmatic stance came close to that of the Legalist when he suggested that government policy should be changed according to the needs of different times and could not be based on one fixed doctrine (such as Confucianism). He argued that in peaceful times men learned in the moral way should be exalted, but that in difficult times men in armor should be honored. He further claimed that there is no qualitative difference between the Confucian ideal government of the sage-rulers (wang tao) and the successful administrations of the temporally minded hegemon (pa-kung)."
Page 779: In this passage of the Xinlun, which Ch'en Ch'i-Yün calls QUOTE: "the most explicit advocacy of Legalism by a Han Confucian," Huan Tan explains the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period:
- QUOTE: "The five hegemons [pa] used their expedient authority and practical wisdom [chüan-chih]. . . . They raised a multitude of soldiers and contracted alliances and covenants so as to control the realm by strong measures, and were called 'hegemons.' . . . The way of the sage-rulers [wang] and the way of the strong hegemons were the two prospering principles [respectively] of ancient and more recent times. . . . The greatest merits of the hegemons were elevating the ruler and humbling ministers and subjects; establishing unitary authority and an administrative system, thus avoiding conflict in power and policies; rewarding and punishing in good faith and without exception, making law codes and government orders clear and exact; edifying and rectifying the hundred officials; and making the influence and the orders [of the ruler] all-prevailing. This is the method [shu] of the hegemon."
- QUOTE: "The sage-king was pure and his virtue was thus; the hegemon variegated his way and his merit was thus. They both possessed the realm, ruled the myriad people, and passed the reign to their descendants. Their substance is the same."

Later Han

Su Jing, Ban Biao, and Ban Gu on the Right to Rule

Page 779-780: Su Jing, who had been dean of the Imperial Academy under Emperor Ping of Han (r. 1 BC – 6 AD) and held high office during Eastern Han, tried to grapple with the contradictions of political upheavals and the implication that the Mandate of Heaven concept had lost its validity. He asserted that the Will of Heaven was beyond the understanding of man and his mere human intelligence. In his essay "Wangminglun" ("On the Destiny of Kings"), the historian Ban Biao (3–54 AD) elaborated on this by asserting that the preordained Will of Heaven could not be altered or thwarted by the mundate efforts of man, who could never understand the true intentions of Heaven. His son Ban Gu (32–92) supported this thesis while condemning QUOTE: "the fredom with which the early Han thinkers had criticized the ruling dynasty." This can be seen in a memorial he sent to the court on November 25, 74 AD, in which he denounces the pragmatic discourse of Jia Yi's "The Faults of Qin" on the Qin Dynasty's failures due mostly to practical reasons. He also condemned Sima Qian's work Records of the Grand Historian because he deemed Sima's criticism of the dynasty to be disloyal and improper. In contrast, Ban Gu praised the poet Sima Xiangru (d. 117 BC), since the latter had eulogized and flattered Emperor Wu of Han and supported the extravagant court ceremonies in his prose. The Ban family's Book of Han was written in a more didactic fashion than the Records of the Grand Historian, therefore it was less critical of the Confucian tradition while noticeably less tolerant of any non-Confucian writings or deeds.
Page 780: QUOTE (plus look at note below): "In Pan Ku's writings, hereditary rights and family morality, especially filial piety (hsiao) and ancestor worship, were exalted in a manner that had not been common among Confucians of Former Han, but that became characteristic of the conservative Later Han Confucians. According to Pan Ku, the position of a ruler is sacrosanct regardless of his possession or lack of any personal virtue; he had inherited the right to rule from the founding ancestors of his house, who had received from Heaven a mandate to establish the dynasty. The wisdom of the sage is likewise superlative because it is endowed by Heaven at birth, rather than being the product of one's personal efforts. Instead of dreaming of the glory of remote antiquity, Pan Ku advised, scholars should be more appreciative of the accomplishments of the present dynasty, which he considered to have excelled any past dynasty. This thesis was closer to the teaching of the Legalist Han Fei than to that of the Confucians."
NOTE: For further information on this Legalist attitude of contempt for any antiquarian interest or learning from past dynasties, look to page 6 of Grant Hardy's Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo at User:PericlesofAthens/Sandbox4#The Role of History in Chinese Culture .

Wang Chong: Fate and Human Morality

Page 780-781: In his Lunheng, the philosopher Wang Chong (27– c. 100 AD) extended the discussion of fate or mandate (ming) as discussed by Su Jing, Ban Biao, and Ban Gu, but he also QUOTE: "shattered the Confucian postulation of a unified social-political, moral, and cosmic order."
Page 781: As written by Wang Chong, QUOTE: "while the life of a human being may seem to be a coherent whole, it is in fact devolved on three different planes: biological, sociopolitical, and moral. The biological plane might be further divided into two, physical and mental. The nature of and the course of events within each of these spheres is independently determined. Thus a person might be healthy, but stupid, unsuccessful, and immoral. And a person of good moral character might not be healthy or intelligent and might not be successful in his social and political life. This contradicted the idealistic Confucian assumption that moral cultivation would produce a healthy, harmonious (hence happy), wise and able (hence successful) human being, and that when such cultivation and education prevailed, the state, the society, and humanity as a whole would exist in a state of great harmony, which would in turn effect a cosmic harmony."
Page 781: QUOTE: "Wang Ch'ung argued that fate or destiny as it unfolded in an individual's physical life (health and longevity) and his sociopolitical life (successful or unsuccessful) was determined by three different factors: personal (inborn, hsing), interpersonal (chance meeting, feng-yü or tsao-yü), and transpersonal (time, shih; or common fate, ta-yün). Biologically, an individual might have the good fortune to be innately healthy and intelligent (the personal determinant), and should live a long life. But if he had the misfortune to encounter a violent person who killed him, his life span would be shorter than that of the one who was innately less healthy, but who did not have such ill fortune. Furthermore, thousands of individual lives, healthy or unhealthy, wise or stupid, good or bad, might be terminated by one great disaster, such as earthquake, civil war, or epidemic; thus all would suffer a common fate (the transpersonal determinant of the nature of a period of time, or ta-yün). On the sociopolitical plane, an individual might be intelligent, able, and good; if such a person chanced to meet a master who was also intelligent, able, and good, he would be successful; but if he met a master who had no such personal qualities, he would have no chance of being successful."
Page 781-782: QUOTE: "Whatever the nature of an individual's chance encounters, in hard times everyone, refined or rough, would be treated harshly; and conversely, in times of refinement, everyone would be treated in a refined way. Thus, even if a sage-ruler had the chance of being served by worthy ministers, their success could be undermined by great calamities (ta-yün) that are beyond human control. The more planes or subcategories Wang Ch'ung discussed, the more he saw the human world in terms of interacting fragments. In such a world, the best that men might accomplish would be a temporary order, based on an accidental compatibility among the fragmented parts, rather than a transcendent harmony ordained by the unitary Will of Heaven."
Page 782: QUOTE: "Wang Ch'ung reaffirmed the pragmatic principle that it is easier to understand and to learn from tangible human affairs and events than to discuss the elusive way (tao) or reason (li). On the basis of common sense, he criticized many Han Confucian theories on the interpenetration of the human (biological, sociopolitical, and moral) and the natural (Heaven, cosmic) spheres as being false. He cast doubt on many statements in the Confucian classics about the ancient sage-rulers and even held some of the sayings attributed to Confucius and Mencius to be untenable. He upheld Ban Ku's idea that the Han dynasty, imperfect as it was, might be the most glorious of all dynasties ever to have existed. This glorification of Han, in a sense, affirmed the positive value of many of the earthly, pragmatic, or Legalistic programs and doctrines adopted by the Han rulers with the connivance of the Confucians."
Page 782-783: QUOTE: "Ironically, in discrediting much contemporary Confucian doctrine, Wang Ch'ung contributed to the salvaging of the Confucian moral ideal by disentangling it from the superstitious and ideological encumbrances that had grown up around it. Although he suggests that it is predominantly extrinsic factors which determine the fate of a man on the various planes in which he moves, a unique exception is made for an individual's moral life, which Wang Ch'ung claimed was not thus other-determined. According to Wang Ch'ung, a morally good person might be unhealthy, short-lived and unsuccessful in the world, but these are failings only on the biological and sociopolitical planes, and as the course of events on these planes is determined by factors over which a man has no control, they are less significant than the inner, moral plane. The moral life of a man remains unaffected by worldy reverses and may continue to advance in spite of his other failings. Only the moral life, which is decided by an individual for himself, is of intrinsic value."
Page 783: QUOTE "What can one accomplish by a moral life? Very little beyond that moral life itself, Wang Ch'ung asserted. A person cannot be assured that by being morally good he will have good health, long life, or other worldly advantages; in fact, he should refrain from such false expectations because otherwise he is bound to be disappointed, and it is this disappointment rather than any external factor that is most harmful to his moral well-being."
Page 783: QUOTE: "Among all Chinese thinkers, Wang Ch'ung comes closest to a definition of moral autonomy for the inner spiritual world of a human being. According to Wang Ch'ung, the true value of Confucianism lay in its unique emphasis on the moral spirit of man."

The Call to Enforce Laws

Page 783: QUOTE "The conflict between a commonsense affirmation of the pragmatic or utilitarian (hence Legalistic) approach to the world and an inner (hence Taoistic) need for freedom or autonomy for the self in the moral and spiritual realm characterized the upsurge of the Legalist and the Taoist subcurrents within the nominally Confucian synthesis. Many of the minor Confucian thinkers of the Later Han may be assigned to one of three categories: Confucian Legalists who were concerned with practical government measures or reforms; Confucian conservatives who were devoted to upholding the tradition of learning and rituals and the legitimacy of dynastic ruling power; and Confucian Taoists who adopted an attitude of defiance toward the outside world and turned their attention to a search for security and consolation in the moral and spiritual realms. This triple division coincided with the divergent interests of officials, literati, and the provincial elite."
Page 783-784: Wang Mang had the support of all three interest groups when he came to power, yet his idealistic reforms perhaps had the full support of the literati and officials while alienating the provincial elite (i.e. big landlords, great families, local magnates) who played a dominant role in Wang Mang's downfall.
Page 784: Eastern Han emperors, at least the early ones, gained the support of all three interest groups. After reestablishing the Imperial Academy as well as the examination and recommendation systems for recruiting officials, the Eastern Han emperors actively engaged in debates, lectures, and court conventions on Confucian doctrine; they also commissioned scholars to devise sacrificial and ceremonial rituals for the court. These measures shored up support from the literati interest group. To shore up support from the Neo-Legalist official interest group concerned with pragmatic reform, the emperors strengthened the position of the ruling house and concentrated more power in the emperor's hands. However, the emperors did not want to antagonize the provincial elite by doing so, thus they praised certain individuals who refused to humble themselves before the emperor or serve in his government, so long as these individuals did not QUOTE: "endanger their moral integrity or spiritual purity."
Page 784-785: The collective reigns of Emperor Guangwu of Han, Emperor Ming of Han, and Emperor Zhang of Han were praised by contemporaries and later historians alike as an aggregate period of harmonious governance, yet the facade of the virtue of Eastern Han faltered after the violent power struggle between the emperor's consort family's relatives and the palace eunuchs, which disillusioned the aristocrats and local magnates. As a result, QUOTE: "The orthodox New Text School of Confucian learning no longer enjoyed the respect of true scholars; they turned to the unofficial Old Text School of Confucianism or other non-Confucian traditions of thought to satisfy their scholarly and intellectual interests. The Imperial Academy became an institution of empty lecture halls and absentee students, lacking any real vitality as a center for learning. Court rituals became trivial formalities. The government could neither defend its frontiers against the influx of barbarian tribes nor control the extravagant and disorderly behavior of the big landlords and powerful families, who ignored the law with impunity as they exploited and oppressed the poor and the weak. Confucian thinkers, appalled at the state of affairs, searched agonizingly for quick remedies or escape."
Page 785: Despite the opposition by conservative Confucian literati, the pragmatic officials followed the advice of the Neo-Legalist Liang Tong, a scholar of the Spring and Autumn Annals and expert on law codes who in 36 AD argued for a strict enforcement of the penal law to ensure public order. To support his argument, he pointed to the failure of governance brought about by the leniency of enforcing the laws during the late Western Han era. The Legalistic trend was noted by the conservative Confucian Du Lin, who became Grand Minister of Works in 47 AD; he stated that the Legalistic regime of Eastern Han should be complemented by an emphasis on cultivating moral virtue. This opinion was echoed by the two prominent Confucians Lu Gong (32–112) and Lu Pi (37–111).
Page 785: In 80 AD, Zhang Min argued for even stricter enforcement of the law and supported his position by pointing out that the penal code was established by the sage-ruler to rid society of its ills and thus was on an equal plane of importance with the Confucian canons. Emperor Zhang of Han rejected the suggestion for stricter enforcement, but Emperor He of Han was much more receptive to the idea.
Page 785: QUOTE: "This emphasis on strict enforcement of the law, however, differed greatly from the ambitious classic Legalist schemes for achieving a maximum of totalitarian government power. The Confucians supported the use of law, but only as a last resort to maintain a minimum of control over the country. Later Han Confucian Legalists abhorred the increasingly powerful and refractory landed proprietors, the great families and clans, and other privileged social groups that undermined the effective administration of local and central government. They advocated strict enforcement of the law as virtually the last means of governance."
Page 786: Yet even during the heyday of Eastern Han, the government had trouble curbing the increasing influence of local magnates, a situation exacerbated when the central government began to decline in efficiency. Instead of tackling the local magnates, high-ranking officials and Neo-Legalists began to argue for tighter control over the empire's administration and tigher supervision and monitoring of middle-ranking and minor officials.

Moderate Approach to Reform and Cultivation of Personal Morality

Page 786: However, it should be noted that scholars, such as Ma Rong (79–166), who stressed the importance of law and its strict enforcement were in the minority of eminent Confucian thinkers. Wang Tang (fl. 96–131), Zuo Xiong (d. 138), Li Gu (d. 148), and Yang Bing (92–165) all supported the moderate approach of reforming the civil service personnel system as well as tightening control over the administration. They called for the recruitment and promotion of more honest and competent officials who could be drafted by more reliable examinations, special selection, and recommendation.
Page 786-787: Those Eastern Han Confucians who were inclined toward Daoism also favored the moderate approach. The Daoist attitudes of nonstriving, self-preservation, and eremitism appealed to many of the provincial elites who became disillusioned with government and did not want to serve in the administration. As the central and imperial power waned and had visibly less influence in local communities, these elites began to treasure more their quiet life in the provinces than involvement in the intrigue and struggles of the capital. Yet even those who served as officials in government found some appeal in the attitude of resignation, such as Zhongli Yi (fl. mid 1st century), who advised that a civil servant should not concern himself with trivial affairs of governance and focus only on matters of great importance, thus favoring the Daoist-inclined Confucians as the best persons to fill official posts.
Page 787: Fan Jun (d. 118 AD), a prominent man of letters from Nanyang Commandery, advocated the Taoist-inclined Confucian view in his memorial to the throne in 106 AD. In it, he praised the early rulers of Eastern Han for promoting Confucianism, which he believed reached a zenith from 58 to 75 AD, but he also criticized orthodox Confucianism as empty of substance. He believed that Confucian scholarship and the law were essentials, but argued that neither would foster the moral virtue in men which sustained good law and true scholarship. He believed that a Daoist could cultivate such a high moral virtue, pointing to the success of Emperor Wen of Han's reign when Huanglao Daoism was sponsored at court. Fa Jun QUOTE: "suggested that the emperor should seek out those recluses who lived in retirement, cultivating their personal virtue, and invite them to the court."
Page 787-788: Zhu Mu (100–163), another man of letters from Nanyang Commandery, wrote in his Chonghou lun (Discourse in Praise of Liberality) that over the ages men had gradually lost their morality. He noted that even Confucius stated he lived in an age which the great Tao had been lost. Zhu believed that the original moral virtue, the "nature of primitive innocence," was chipped away and devolved as the human-heartedness and righteousness of Confucius, coupled with the codes of proper conduct and codes of law, became cemented in human society. Thus, Confucius's moral teaching is but a product of the age of degeneration and served only as a short-term remedy for society's failings. In general, Zhu Mu advised that everyone should become more generous and liberal-minded with others, to find less faults in other people to criticize and instead find more things to praise about others. To him, this was the only way to initiate the reversal of the degenerative trend in human society.

Cui Shi's Drastic Advice

Page 788: While some Daoists favored retirement from the world in order to cultivate moral virtue and prepare for a long-range solution, other Daoists viewed the present public affairs as in a crisis that required immediate involvement. These Daoists, although favoring the moderate approach as given above, advocated in part some Legalist measures to put society back on track. The two writers who best represent this strain of thought were Cui Shi (d. 170 AD) and Wang Fu (philosopher) (c. 90–165 AD).
Page 788-789: In his essay Zheng lun, Cui Shi criticized the self-serving interests of officials, the lenient policies of the imperial court, the undisciplined nature of the soldiers on the frontier, extravagance of the merchants and local magnates, and the idealists who advocated the model of the sage-rulers of antiquity. He believed the only thing that would push all these elements of society in the right direction was the reinstituting of Legalist measures espoused by the hegemons. QUOTE: "The court should cultivate open-mindedness in its ruler, but demand strict obedience from its ministers and subjects. It should encourage agriculture and discourage commercial and industrial profiteering."
Page 789: Like all Legalists, he emphasized reward and punishment for good service and bad, and that the emperor should concentrate as much power in his hands as possible to implement reforms which would forcefully save the dynasty from disaster. His criticism was rather unrealistic, given the fact that by his time the Eastern Han court had lost much of its influence in the affairs of local communities and could hardly control its own officials' behavior. Cui Shi also failed to reconcile his Daoist and Legalist inclinations since he counselled at the sime time that a ruler should treat high officials with great leniency and be generous towards lower-ranking officials, which would contradict absolute power put in the hands of the ruler.

Wang Fu: Moral Values, Public Justice, and Leadership

Page 789-790: Wang Fu (philosopher), a self-proclaimed hermit, also attempted to fuse together Daoist, Confucian, and Legalist inclinations into a coherent synthesis. His essay, the Qian fu lun (Discourses of a Recluse), QUOTE: "discussed in detail how the current tendencies of various groups of people deviated from what he considered to be the original and fundamental moral norms." Wang Fu wrote:
- QUOTE: "Policy-makers should encourage agricultural production but now they favor non-productive pursuits. Artisans and manufacturers should produce useful articles but now they work on decorative objects. Merchants and traders should circulate goods but now they turn to hoarding and speculating in commodities. Confucian masters and teachers should propogate the moral and just way but now they devote themselves to specious argument. Men of letters should write in good faith and earnest accord but now they prize deceitful grandiloquence. Those famed gentlemen should distinguish themselves in filial virtues but now they pay more attention to cultivating friendship and social intercourse with outsiders. Those who are known for their filial virtues should emphasize the nourishing of their parents but now they are concerned mainly with flowery appearance and display. Officials should be loyal and upright in their conduct toward the state but now they are inclined to appease the ruler and improperly endear themselves to him."
Page 790: To Wang Fu, these norms were the origins of social well-being, as man had the willpower, intellect, and guidance of the canons to build a virtuous and harmonious society, but they also had the capacity to violate these norms and throw everything into confusion and chaos. Thus, like Xun Qing's school of Confucianism, he advocated prescribed norms and human effort to sustain well-being while he also shared Xunzi's belief that good or evil traditions came about by the cumulative total of human actions.
Page 790: QUOTE: "Two basic premises thus underlie Wang Fu's analysis of the evil conditions of his time and the necessary remedy. First, evil conditions were created by man and therefore can and must be rectified by rational and effective human effort; second, such evils are not the result of the actions of any one individual or government, but have been accumulated through many generations and therefore will not be readily eliminated by any simple or short-term measure. On the basis of this analysis, Wang Fu reconciled a Taoist approach toward the individual man with a Legalist approach toward the body politic; he believed that both could contribute to the realization of the long-range Confucian goal of universal harmony."
Page 791: QUOTE: "Confronted by the prevalant evils of his time, Wang Fu argued, an individual must make a tremendous effort to resist all kinds of outside temptations and pressures in order to preserve his personal integrity and inner moral autonomy. It is this inner moral autonomy, not outward achievements such as 'high positions, great emoluments, wealth or honor,' that should be the measure of a superior man (chün-tzu). Mediocre, ordinary people often judge a person's worth by his outward achievements. But a superior man might not have the benefit of those outward achievements, which are determined by random chance and fate (tsao-ming). Furthermore, under such evil conditions those who are capable of undertaking the difficult task of becoming a superior man are rare. Therefore a superior man is lonely. He is in a dangerous situation because the majority of people misunderstand him, and many evil persons will slander and harm him. It is thus best for such a superior man to retire from the world. The Later Han Confucian ideal of the autonomous moral life thus strengthened the Taoist eremitic inclination."
Page 791: QUOTE: "Concerning the ruler, however, Wang Fu's advice was highly Legalistic. He believed that the ruler is not a private person (ssu), but is given by Heaven a public (kung) responsibility to care for the state. As a public figure, he must devote himself to the practice of statecraft, the control and exercise of power, and the application of "generous rewards" and "severe punishments"; he should not delegate this awesome power and responsibility to others. To manage the state, he should possess a 'public intelligence' based on open-mindedness, unobstructed communication of information, and comprehensive consultation with others. He must not be biased, nor narrow-minded, nor self-willed or self-interested as a mere private person may be, but must rely on the public intelligence to establish and uphold the public laws and ordinances. Otherwise he betrays the command of Heaven."
Page 791: Wang Fu also believed that if a ruler did not appoint officials according to public laws and ordinances, then the emperor QUOTE: "committed the crime of stealing an office from Heaven and converting it into his private property." Thus Wang Fu's Neo-Legalism emphasized public rulership, public intelligence, public law, and public offices.
Page 792: Given that Wang Fu believed that some men were morally superior to others, he advised that rulers should not trust favorites and should always seek out and appoint men proven by their merits; if a ruler failed to obey this, then he defied Heaven and would not rule for long.
Page 792: QUOTE: "Concerning the long-range goal of the body politic, Wang Fu suggested that if a ruler is open-minded and has faith in the public law, this will lead to the proper enforcement of such law. This in turn will produce a system of official selection and recommendation based on true merit; such a system will ensure that officials are good and loyal men who will care for the welfare of the people. This, in turn, will lead to a good reign, and the people will be peaceful and happy. The Will of Heaven having been fulfilled, the yin and yang forces of the cosmos will be in harmony, and all will be well."
Page 792: Yet Wang Fu was not a believer in the Legalist claim that statecraft alone brought about "great harmony" in the world; although he admitted that laws and ordinances, rewards and punishments were essential to govern society, it did not promote a great transformation, which would only be achieved by cultivating moral virtues to produce an honest, generous, and liberal populace. Thus, Wang Fu did not betray his overall Confucian-Daoist intent of affirming an all-embracing moral-cosmic transformation to bring about harmony.
Page 793: Wang Fu believed that there were two important safeguards against the rule of a morally-corrupted emperor: QUOTE: "First, if this happens, the ruler will have forfeited Heaven's trust and will not be able to maintain himself for long. Second, although the ruler through his policies will have a tremendous impact for good or ill upon the general populace, there are still men who are not susceptible to such influence. Among the people there exist rare examples of the superior man who can withstand the evils that have infected society and cultivate their inner morality in bad times as well as good."
Page 794: According to Wang Fu, such men were modern-day sages and worthies who had the higher mission in life to protect mankind from potentially bad rulers. Sages were those who spoke of Heaven's true intention and will, while the worthies' role was to interpret the sages' thoughts. However, QUOTE: "these superior men would not degrade themselves or their high principles to approach the earthly ruler." According to Wang Fu, QUOTE: "it is the ruler's obligation to recognize their superiority and accord them the honor of high position that is their due. Hence the urgency of reforming the civil service personnel system on the basis of true merit. It is this system that should bring together the Legalistic ruler and the Taoistic superior men in a harmonious Confucian union."
Page 794: QUOTE: "Wang Fu's writings clearly indicate the danger of a confrontation between the ruler who demands obedience of his subjects for the good of the state, and those superior men who strive for spiritual freedom and moral autonomy in defiance of any earthly power, be it the ruler's authority or the vulgar opinion of the people. According to Wang Fu, the burden of resolving this conflict falls mainly on the office of the ruler. In other words, while the superior man is accorded the freedom to be individualistic or even antisocial, the ruler is faulted for his inability to maintain the unity of state and society."

The Breakdown of Central Authority

The Individual and the State: Disillusion with Public Life

Page 795: QUOTE: "The emphasis on the schism between the individual and the state, as evidenced in the writings of Later Han, is in striking contrast with the vision cherished by Former Han thinkers of an all-embracing unity within the world. In the heyday of the Former Han dynasty, the ruler was conceived of not only as the dispenser of earthly power, honor, and wealth, but also as the pivot that effected spiritual and cosmic harmony. An individual's worth was judged on the basis of his accomplishment in government service, rather than by his personal morality or familial virtue. In some cases, the call to service by a ruler was sufficient justification for a person to cut short the three-year mourning period prescribed for the death of a parent."
Page 795: QUOTE: "In Later Han, however, one sees a shift in the relative values assigned to the public and the private spheres. In the early years of Later Han, there had been a few prominent individuals who were so utterly disillusioned with court politics that they refused to accept government office. As Later Han declined, this type of behavior became the vogue among members of the elite, and a new ideal that attracted some eminent Confucian scholars, as well as numerous provincial notables and local magnates. These were no longer simply frustrated individuals who had failed to win promotion in the civil service; often they were owners of prosperous estates, heads of great families and clans, or men with good connections and prestige in the provincial communities, where they served as patrons of learning and the arts and as arbiters of local customs and mores. As the court's control over the countryside deteriorated, an increasing number of such notables found that retirement in the provinces was more pleasant, and their leadership and service at the local level more rewarding, than an official career at the imperial court. In Confucian parlance, when these superior men had become disillusioned with the great unity of the imperial order, they retreated to establish a lesser unity for themselves on the local level."
Page 796: QUOTE: "Wang Fu speaks of a superior man who considers honor, high position, and wealth to be his due without regard for the earthly ruler's will, and who confidently claims a sphere of action which is not only independent of the ruler's political power, but even takes precedence over it...Wang Fu's argument that a public union might be preserved by an enlightened ruler who wielded supreme power and yet was open-minded and self-denying in cultivating the good will and support of the increasingly vigorous and self-assertive local elite is consistent with the Confucian emphasis on compromise. It was a lofty moral ideal, but the possibility of its realization in Later Han times was slight. The political history of Later Han bears clear testimony to the futility of numerous attempts to reconcile the schism between the autocratic ruler and the elite establishment."

Protests and Proscription

Page 796-797: This schism between the ruler and the elite had real consequences for the stability of the empire and resulted in hazardous and open confrontation. The emperor did not allow officials into his palace chambers, as services within the palace were usurped by eunuchs who became the sole personal servants of the emperor. QUOTE: "While these measures insulated the ruler from the pressure of the elite, they also reduced his contact with the outside world. Isolated in the palace and surrounded by eunuchs, later emperors of the dynasty came to rely more and more on the eunuchs' service and support in their effort to boost the declining dynasty's power. In this manner, the emperor and the eunuchs repeatedly gained control of the court by coups in A.D. 91, 121, 125, 159, and 168. In the ensuing political struggles, the officials, who found their legitimate position at the court threatened by the eunuchs, allied themselves with dissatisfied Confucian men of learning and the Taoist-inclined local elite in a righteous protest (ch'ing-i) against the wayward ruler and his irregular eunuch agency. For this, the court accused them of engaging in partisan conspiracy (tang) and initiated a series of persecutions (tang-ku) in A.D. 166, 169, 172, and 176."
Page 797: QUOTE: "The scholar's dissident voice gave intellectual respectability to the partisans of the protest movement. The protesting partisans viewed their movement as a crusade to establish a spiritual and moral order for the realm independent of the political power of the corrupt dynasty...The proscriptions lasted for more than twenty years and affected many aspects of the political and intellectual life of Later Han. Aggravated by government persecution, the movement became more violent in character and more radical in its antigovernment stance. At the height of the movement, even some of the Confucian classics, which constituted the canonical writ of imperial orthodoxy, came to be reinterpreted in such a way as to justify a moral crusade against the corrupt dynasty, as can be seen in Hsün Shuang's commentaries on the Book of changes."

Xun Shuang: the Book of Changes as a Means of Protest

Page 797-798: Xun Shuang (128–190 AD) came from a family in Yingquan Commandery which was deeply involved in the protest movement; he himself lived in government proscription from 169 to 184 AD. He fled into the countryside and wound up hiding in a location along the Han River. It was here that he devoted his time to scholarship, producing the now lost works of "traditions" or commentaries on the Five Classics, the Hanyu, a collection of commentaries on the events of contemporary Han times, a 'Criticism of the Prognostic Writings', and a collection of essays entitled the Xinshu, or the New Book. His only surviving work (of which only parts were preserved) is the Yiquan, or Tradition of the Book of Changes.
Page 798: The esoteric statements in the Book of Changes were interpreted by Han scholars in many different ways, and those who commented on it could emphasize occult prognostication, or numerological and cosmological speculation, or general political and moral philosophizing. In Xun Shuang's commentary, there was a QUOTE: "unique insistence that the symbolism of the Book of changes is an expression of a moral and political conflict between the just and the unjust forces within the state, a conflict that presages an inevitable victory for the forces of justice. Within the linear constructs of the hexagrams, which present various situations of tension in the body politic, he identified the forces of justice with the unboken yang line (———), and the unjust forces with the broken yin line (— —)."
Page 800-801: Xun Shuang's unique commentary on the Book of Changes was thus an assault on the imperial power using established doctrine. As for its influence in China at the time, his nephew Xun Yue wrote that his commentary was widely read in the middle Yellow River and Upper Huai River valleys. As for the impact of his teachings on the religious movement of the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184 AD, that QUOTE: "remains a matter of conjecture."

The Way of the Great Peace and the Yellow Turbans

Page 801: Taiping Dao, or The Way of the Great Peace, was a religious movement initiated in 170 AD by three brothers, Zhang Jiao, Zhang Bao, and Zhang Liang, at roughly the same time Xun Shuang wrote his Tradition of the Book of Changes. It drew on elements of Daoism, yin and yang cosmology, and Wu Xing cosmology. From the latter it drew its elemental color of yellow, representing earth, hence the yellow-colored head scarves of the followers of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. The members of this cult also borrowed the Confucian concept of the Mandate of Heaven. The movement gained hundreds of thousands of followers, mostly peasants, but also some notable rich provincial elites and local officials. In 184 AD the religious leaders of the movement initiated a rebellion in central and eastern China, the regional hotbed of political protest against the government proscriptions. At the same time, Zhang Lu's Way of the Five Pecks of Grain society gained control of the upper Han River valley in western China. QUOTE: "Coincidences like these indicate at least that the prevalent mood of dissatisfaction with the ruling dynasty had spread from a few sensitive thinkers to elite groups and provincial populations in many parts of China, and that the attitudes of protest, defiance, resistance, and revolt tended to intermingle."
Page 801: The rebellion produced two immediate results: the court abolished its unpopular proscriptions against many of the literati; this, along with the destruction the Yellow Turbans made, encouraged the literati leaders of the righteous protest to make the surprise move of rallying behind the government and failing dynasty. The major rebellion was quelled within months but pockets of insurrection continued for years. The court subsequently lost control of the army and provinces to frontier generals, regional governors, and local magnates. Many of these were leaders of the partisan protest movement against the proscriptions. The struggle between the partisans and eunuch faction continued until the death of Emperor Ling of Han in 189 AD, when a coup led to the massacre of the eunuchs in the palace and the flight of the emperor. From then on, China went into a stage of civil war while a nominal figurehead, Emperor Xuan of Han, sat on the throne until 220 AD.
Page 802: QUOTE: "Military men, particularly frontier generals, whose armies were decimated in the protracted civil war, also tende to lose out. What emerged on the political scene from A.D. 189 to 280 were several regional states sustained by allied groups of scholar-officials and local magnates, the former with their knowledge and experience of statecraft and their appeal for unity and order, and the latter with their solid support from the holders of landed estates and powerful clans. The sociopolitical and the intellectual-ideological foundations for such an alliance had been fashioned in the preceding centuries by the expansion of Confucian education and institutions of the civil service, which recruited a great proportion of the scholar-officials from among large landholders and the powerful clans. It was also influenced by the popularization of the Confucian emphasis on harmony and compromise as a political, social, and moral ideal for the state, provincial society, and local communities, as well as for the family and clan. On the other hand, disillusion with the ideal of grand unity, a feeling of dissatisfaction with the imperial regime, and the exaltation of spiritual freedom and moral autonomy in Later Han thought had the effect of transferring the Confucian appeal to the more tangible goal of a 'lesser unity' to be founded on the solid basis of the individual and his concentric circles of family and clan, friends and community."

The Importance of Kinship and Its Obligations

Page 802-803: In a memorial of 166 AD, Xun Shuang argued that since the element of the Han Dynasty was fire in the Wu Xing cosmology, the Han court should reserve the highest honor for the virtue associated with fire, which was filial piety. Xun Shuang denounced the Western Han regime's many attempts to reduce the people's and the ministers' obligation of observing the three-year mourning period after a parent's death. The three-year mourning period was explicitly supported in the Confucian classics, which Xun Shuang wanted to strictly adhere to the canon. He argued that the basis of society was the relationship between husband and wife, which gave birth to the relationship of father and son, which in turn allowed for the existence of the relationship of ruler and subject. Thus, following this linear model, Xun argued that the family took precedence over political obligations and public duties.
Page 803-804: QUOTE: "Within the regional states, the schism between the Legalist assertion of power and order and the Taoist demand for freedom and autonomy thus continued to upset the uneasy alliance of the scholar-official bureaucrats and the local landlords and powerful clans. To prevent a further breakdown of the alliance, the old Confucian appeal for harmony and compromise needed to be periodically evoked." This was achieved by Xun Yue 荀悅 (148–209 AD), QUOTE: "the last of the great Later Han thinkers."

Xun Yue: Human Limitations and the Approximation of Truth

Page 804: Xun Yue was the nephew of Xun Shuang. He was the inspector of the Imperial Library (bishu qian) and served as a Palace Attendant from 109 to 209 AD, during the figurehead reign of Emperor Xian of Han. He wrote the Qianhan ji (Chronicles of the Former Han Dynasty) as well as the Shenqian (Extended Reflections). Xun Yue QUOTE: "tried to reconcile the conflict between public order and personal morality, between universalist and particularist interests, and between idealistic vision and practical strategy, employing a synthesis of Legalist, Taoist, and various other strains of Later Han thought."
Page 804: Like other Confucians, Xun Yue believed that there was an ultimate truth which was the Way (Tao) that transcended heaven, earth, and the human world, yet he placed emphasis on the variety of forms it could present itself as in the spheres of heaven, earth, or the human world. He believed that there might be a transcendent Way in the holistic universe, but he did not believe it could be adequately understood by man nor expressed sufficiently in writing. He believed in following the canonical classics but stressed that its teachings should be checked and verified with supplementary examples embodied by recorded events of the past and present. He believed that one could find an approximation of the truth and of perfection, but this was the best that man could achieve.
Page 805: Using his idea of approximation of the truth, Xin Yue QUOTE: "upheld Confucius as the sage who had envisaged the true Way but had been unable to transmit his konwledge in clear or simple terms. According to this view, Confucianism as espoused by Mencius and Hsün Ch'ing would then be only an approximation of the Way of Confucius, and Han Confucianism was in turn only an approximation of this classic Confucianism. Nevertheless, it was the most valuable tradition, partly because its opponents could do no better; as Hsün Yüeh intimated, many of the critiques of Confucianism in Later Han times were more simplistically conceived than the Confucian ideas they deprecated. Hsün Yüeh thus defended Confucian orthodoxy with utter sophistry. But he also justified the need for flexibility and the possibility of reinterpretation. Since the true Way of Confucius was as remote as ever, and even the Five Classics were but an imperfect exposition of the Way, no orthodoxy could be infallible and every generation of Confucians should renew the effort to attain an approximation of the Way."
Page 805: QUOTE: "With equal sophistry, Hsün Yüeh upheld the imperial order as a symbol of political unity with profound cosmic and moral meaning, as attested in history and sanctified in the canonical classics. But it was only the symbol that was perfect, inviolable, and unchanging. In reality, any political order could be only an approximation of the ideal; all governments could be corrupted, and no dynasty could last forever. The emperor, mindful of the symbolic sanctity of his position, should not compromise it as a principle. As an individual, he should strive toward moral and intellectual perfection; as the occupant of the throne, he should observe all the appropriate rituals but exercise his authority only within the preserve of inviolable imperial sovereignty. Actual governance often involves conflicting interests and attitudes, adjusting policies according to changing times, and compromise between ideal and reality. Since such issues impinge on the symbolic sanctity of the throne, Hsün Yüeh argued, the task of government should best be left to officials.
Page 805: QUOTE: "By separating the ideal from reality, Hsün Yüeh was able to profess his loyalty to the Han dynasty while criticizing the policies and personal conduct of the Han emperors, and to support officialdom while censuring many individual officials. He remained highly sympathetic toward the elite's feeling of dissatisfaction, their protest and defiance, and their quest for spiritual freedom and moral autonomy. But he denounced their extreme partisanship and their unruly activities, their exploitation of the poor, and their responsibility for the erosion fo the empire's political unity. He was Confucian in his approach to scholarship, Taoistic in his relativistic view of reality, and Legalistic in his pragmatic appraoch toward politics, while finding fault with Confucian learning, Taoist practice, and Legalist statecraft."
Page 806: QUOTE: "In a sense, it may be said that Hsün Yüeh tended to find fault with reality as such. He was seeking a kind of learning and a level of truth that were beyond human capacity. As a historian and a political thinker, he was well aware of the cumulative problems of the Later Han that frustrated any solution. As an attendant of the figurehead last Han emperor, Hsün Yüeh was well aware of the impending catastrophe, the fall of the empire, but was powerless to avert it. In his writings he offered the lessons of history, his reflections on a myriad of problems, and his vision of perfection not so much for the benefit of his contemporaries as for the benefit of future generations, in whose time he hoped the realm would be changed for the better."

The Value of Later Han Thought

Page 806: Chinese philosophy from the 1st to 3rd centuries saw dramatic shifts and reversals, from the idealistic enthusiasim of Yang Xiong for Wang Mang's Xin Dynasty and confidence in the superiority of intelligence to Xun Yue's pessimistic view of reality and modest apology for the rigidness of Confucianism and the imperial order.
Page 806: QUOTE: "The strength of the Legalist tradition lies in its practical approach to problems of the state and public interest; its shortcoming lies in the advocacy of dictatorial power for the ruler and a subservient obedience by subjects. The value of the Taoist tradition lies in its vision of transcendence, of spiritual freedom, and its defiance of earthly power and gain; its weakness lies in its aloofness from worldly problems and the nihilism and escapism it encourages."
Page 807: QUOTE: "Confucianism, even in its declining phase during the Later Han, revealed a comprehensive flexibility which may be considered its vital strength as well as its basic weakness. The flexibility of Confucianism lies in its complex humanistic concern. Ever since Confucius had called for special attention to them, certain questions have never ceased to interest Confucians, while humanity has remained as intractable as ever. These questions concern the meaning and the ideal of humanity, the moral and amoral nature of man, man's potential for cultivation and reform, and man's manifold predicament in the spiritual, moral, social, political, and economic realms. These complex problems called for a wide range of approaches, pragmatic or idealistic, general or particular; and they evoked a variety of attitudes, optimistic or pessimistic, engagement or withdrawal. The spectrum thus encompasses both the Legalistic and the Taoistic strains of thought. The Confucian ideal of harmony and the mean, and its counsel of compromise and tolerance, though less grandiose, was proper to its task."
Page 807: QUOTE: "Later Han thought lacked the creative grandeur of classical and early Han thought, but it subsumed more experience and wisdom. The thinkers of the classical age and early Han had laid the intellectual foundation for an emerging imperium, but had anticipated neither the cumulative problems of an ossifying regime nor the implications of their ideas when tested by reality and transformed into dogmas."

Philosophy and Religion from Han to Sui

Demiéville, Paul. (1986). "Philosophy and religion from Han to Sui," in Cambridge History of China: Volume I: the Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220, 808–872. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521243270.

Decline of Philosophy during Later Han

Page 808-809: QUOTE: "Confucianism is a doctrine of this world, a sociology, and also a cosmology that links man to the universe through the heaven-earth-man triad, yet pays little attention to the ultramundane realms of the supernatural. The Son of Heaven is the link between heaven and earth; man, his subject, has merely to keep to his appointed place in the machinery of the state, of which the emperor forms the hub."
Page 809: During the Han, the canonical Confucian doctrines of antiquity, the Five Classics, were given interpretations which involved cosmological theories, the chief writer of this tradition being Dong Zhongshu (c. 179–104 BC). The latter QUOTE: "propounded a system of micro-macrocosmic correspondences that enable the future to be foretold. These included correlations between yin and yang, between left and right, and between the Five Elements, the five notes of the pentatonic scale, the seasons, the points of the compass, the five colors and the five flavors, the organs of the body, and other numerological categories. At that time there wasa current a large number of works that may be classified as oracular prognostication (ch'an), and apocryphal writings (wei or "wefts"); these latter consisted of commentaries on the canonical texts themselves (ching or "warps"). Western sinologists refer to both types of texts as Han apocrypha; their esoteric character is illustrated by the tradition that Tung Chung-shu used to teach hidden behind a curtain. In the ch'an and wei literature Confucius is transfigured as a 'king without attributes' (su-wang: a king without the actual insignia or royalty) who did not reign, but who nevertheless had received the Mandate of Heaven (t'ien-ming) to reform the world. Official Han philosophy was restricted to speculation on a relatively low level such as this."
Page 809-810: Emperor Gaozu of Han was receptive to Daoism, taking advice from the Daoist Zhang Liang (d. 187 BC). Under the influence of Empress Dou (Wen), her husband Emperor Wen of Han and son Emperor Jing of Han became staunch Daoists and followed the principle of quiescence, or wu wei. Even the Confucian-minded Emperor Wen of Han turned to the aid of Daoist magicians in order to prolong his life on earth.
Page 810: In Han texts (most notably the Huangdi Sijing), the ancient sage of Daoism, Laozi, became heavily associated with the persona of the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, also known as Huang Lao. QUOTE: "The Yellow Emperor was a mythical figure dating back to primeval times who later became the patron of the occult sciences and of medicine; writings that are now mainly lost, and that seem partly to have resembled those of Lao-tzu, are attributed to him by Han bibliographers. Such an association paved the way for the deification of Lao-tzu. When either Lao-tzu or Huang-Lao is mentioned in Han texts, it is generally in connection with some question of morality or politics, or else with techniques of longevity; in brief, with practical matters rather than with philosophical doctrines proper."
Page 810: The prominent Daoist Zhuangzi is rarely mentioned in these texts; he is eclipsed by Laozi's importance. Zhuangzi QUOTE: "was too intellectual, too dialectical, and too literary for a period such as Han, when action took precedence over through."
Page 810-811: In Han texts, whenever Zhuangzi is mentioned, he is always associated with Laozi and viewed more or less as a subordinate of the latter. His ideas are presented as utopian rather than practical. In the 3rd century BC, Xun Qing wrote that Zhuangzi's ideas were QUOTE: "so clouded over by Heaven that he knew nothing of man." Sima Qian, in his Records of the Grand Historian, only mentions Zhuangzi after Laozi QUOTE: "as a mere epigone." Sima Qian conceded that Zhuangzi illustrated Laozi's doctrine with brilliant fables, but he still found Zhaungzi's wild rhetoric too impractical for any ruler of the world to follow. Yang Xiong (53 BC – 18 AD), although an admirer of Laozi (drawing inspiration from Daoism to write his Taixuan qing, or Classic of the Great Mystery), went as far as to call Zhaungzi a "fomenter of disorder and enemy of the laws," much like Yang Zhu.
Page 811-812: Nonetheless, Zhuangzi was given attention by the King of Huainan, Liu An, whose literary scholars cited Zhuangzi's work in the collection of essays known as the Huainanzi (139 BC). A cousin of Ban Biao named Ban Si inherited from his father Ban Yu (d. 2 BC) a manuscript of Zhaungzi's that was given as a gift to the latter by Emperor Cheng of Han. Ban Si held the doctrines of Laozi and Zhaungzi in high esteem. When the bibliophile and scholar Huan Tan (c. 43 BC – 28 AD) asked Ban Si if he could borrow some books including the Zhuangzi, Ban Si rejected him wholeheartedly as a Confucian dolt who did not understand Zhaungzi at all.
Page 812-813: With the exception of Laozi, the texts of the ancient philosophers like Zhuangzi before Han were rarely copied and jealously hoarded as secrets by a small amount of admirers. It was not until the 3rd century AD that the revival of such texts would allow their teachings to reenter mainstream thought. Zhuangzi would be restored to a place of honor after the initiation of the Eastern Han trend of ignoring public affairs and the call for civil service to instead foster cultivation of one's inner life and focus on religious preoccupation. There were several reasons why this trend began. Wang Chong (27 – c. 100 AD), in his Lunheng, wrote about the misuses and inconsistencies of the official school's interpretations of the Five Classics. The lexicographer Xu Shen of the 2nd century AD came to similar conclusions in his Wujing Yiyi (Divergences of Meaning Among the Five Classics). To save the Five Classics, Ma Rong (79–166), who was branded as a Daoist by his critics and even alluded to a passage in the Zhaungzi, tried to comment on the classics as a whole in order to derive a single and coherent doctrine from them, not a single and separate commentary for each of the classics. Paul Demieville, author of this book chapter, asserts that it was these men of Eastern Han who were the last great exegetes of the classics before the revival of Confucianism in the Song Dynasty with Neo-Confucianism.
Page 813: Orthodox Han Confucianism was under attack during the late Eastern Han, criticized by Wang Fu (philosopher) (c. 90–165) in his Qian fu lun and Cui Shi (d. 170) in his Zhenglun. It was further undermined by the competition between the ancient text and modern text traditions (or, conversely, Old Text versus New Text). QUOTE: "Manuscripts of the classics written in old characters—that is, in a script used before Han, were alleged to have been found, and the comparison of these texts with Han versions, taken from oral tradition and written in contemporary script, soon led to a controversy about the doctrinal interpretations of the classics."
Page 813-814: QUOTE: "The supporters of the ancient texts objected to the extrapolations made in the official exegesis and denied the quasi-deification of Confucius and the miracles that were attributed to him. As early as A.D. 79 a conference on the classics had been held at the imperial palace, and the records have survived to the present day. The supporters of the modern school had triumphed over those, more advanced in their views, of the ancient school. A century later, the second school had the commentators Ma Jung and Cheng Hsüan on its side, and it was destined to make a brilliant showing during the philosophical revival of the third century."

Popular Daoism at the End of the Han Dynasty

Page 815: QUOTE: "In the midst of the upheavals of the end of the Han dynasty, the long-concealed layer of popular Taoism rose to the surface in a series of rebellions that broke out in 184. This was a year marked by the start of a new cycle, according to the enumeration of years by the sexagenary series. The rebellions were inspired by Taoist utopias, and were the forerunners of all the peasant revolts and secret societies that were periodically to challenge the abuses of Confucian government. Similar revolts, led by men who proclaimed themselves emperor and assumed a religious role, are mentioned from the middle of the second century, but the historians give us no information as to the religious beliefs which inspired them. In 184 two different movements sprang up within a few months of each other: the Yellow Turbans (huang-chin) and the Five Pecks of Grain (wu-tou-mi). The former took their name from the yellow turbans or caps that they wore (yellow was the color of the Yellow Emperor, Huang-ti, whom they took, along with Lao-tzu, as their patron); the latter were so called because they were each obliged to give a certain amount of grain to provide for the community, and in particular for the gratuitous houses (i-she) where adepts were lodged and fed during their wanderings or their periods of retreat."
Page 815-816: Although Zhang Jiao, leader of the Yellow Turbans in the eastern half of the country (especially in coastal areas), and Zhang Lu, leader of the Five Pecks of Grain in the western half of the country (Sichuan and Shanxi), shared the same surname, the two religious leaders do not appear to be related. By the end of 184, the three brothers Zhang Jiao, Zhang Liang, and Zhang Bao were all defeated and killed, in part due to the efforts of Cao Cao. Zhang Lu did not want to do away with the imperial system of power, but wanted merely to reform it. His movement came to an end in 215 when he was offered a fief by Cao Cao and a marriage to one of his daughters. It was his Daoist tradition that survived in the western half of the country that would bring about the later Daoist tradition.
Page 816-817: Despite little nuances, there seems to be little difference between these two Daoist movements, as both adhered to the Way of the Celestial Masters (or, the Yellow Turbans at least used titles of 'Celestial Masters' in the east). Both movements were inspired by theocratic messianism which can be traced back to Western Han when a man from Shandong presented to the throne of Emperor Cheng of Han (r. 33–7 BC) a Book of the Great Peace which was allegedly revealed by the Heavenly Sovereign in order to renew the Mandate of Heaven for the Han Dynasty. When Emperor Ai of Han (7–1 BC) became ill in 5 BC, he took on the title Emperor of the Great Peace (Taiping huangdi). QUOTE: "The utopia of the Great Peace, adopted later by the Yellow Turbans, thus had claims to antiquity. It was also adopted later by Buddhist rebels, and again in the nineteenth century by the would-be Christian T'ai-p'ing rebels."
Page 817: A version of the Book of the Great Peace served as the scripture for the Yellow Turban movement, revealed in the middle of the 2nd century by Kan Ji (or Yu Ji) from Langye (Shandong, another home base of the Yellow Turbans). A manuscript of this book was presented to Emperor Shun of Han in 170 rolls. Only fragments of it survive in Dunhuang manuscripts, although these are most likely abridged and corrupted versions of the sixth century since they allude to borrowings from Buddhism.
Page 818: The Yellow Turbans in the east had their own penal legal code and complex administrative system working underground while the Han Dynasty still officially ruled. Punishments for crimes in Yellow Turban society included public confessions of sins (Buddhist influence?), doing good deeds to make amends (such as almsgiving, helping the poor, helping orphans, etc.), and withdrawing to live in "houses of quiet" where the guilty became recluses so they could reflect on their faults.
Page 818: The three Zhang brothers of the Yellow Turban movement, titled as Celestrial Masters considered themselves living representatives of Laozi on earth. They considered Laozi a deity who counselled and taught the Son of Heaven. In order to represent the cosmic triad of heaven, earth, and human society, Zhang Jiao took on the title General of the Heavens while his other two brothers took on the titles Earthly General and General of Mankind, respectively.
Page 818-819: Buddhism may have had an influence on the Yellow Turban movement. It is known that there was a good amount of Buddhist converts in and around Pingcheng in 194 AD, which was formerly a Yellow Turban stronghold. These Buddhists also worshipped Buddha and Huanglao.
Page 819: Also present in the Great Peace utopia mythology are several references to Daqin, the Roman Empire or perhaps more specifically Asia Minor. It was depicted as an exotic land which they depicted as a utopia compared to China.
Page 819: The messiah of the Great Peace in the east was of course the deified Laozi, worshipped under the name Huanglao. In the west, the Laozi messiah was worshipped under a different name, the Lord Lao Most High (Taishang Laojun). In an inscription on a stele erected by order of Emperor Huan of Han in 165 AD, Laozi is deemed an eternal god who presides in the heavens and rules over the universe, appearing below on earth to advise the emperor. In the following year, Emperor Huan made a sacrifice to Laozi and the Buddha.
Page 819-820: Laozi was thought to have many transformations on eath. By the Tang Dynasty, he was even considered at one point to be embodied by Mani (prophet) of Persia who initiated Manichaeism.

The Introduction of Buddhism

Page 820-821: Buddhism entered China via the Silk Road during the Han Dynasty, via the route through Central Asia in an Indo-European territory that is sometimes termed as Serindia (Xinjiang), a combination of the words Seres and India. The Buddhism that evolved in China was immediately mixed with elements of Daoism and native traditions, thus Chinese Buddhism has differed from Indian Buddhism from the beginning.
Page 821-822: The first mention of Buddha in China can be found in an edict dated 65 AD, which announced the exoneration of Liu Ying, King of Chu (centered at Pengcheng, on the borders of Shandong, Henan, and Anhui), a younger brother of Emperor Ming of Han who was ultimately spared the death penalty when it was determined that he meant no harm to Emperor Ming in an alleged plot against the throne; Liu Ying even atoned for his mistakes by presenting the emperor with fine silks. Emperor Ming thus noted his brother's good behavior in the edict, saying that he dutifully recited the doctrine of Huang Lao and adhered to the humane cult of the Buddha. Thus, from the beginning, Buddha was associated with Huang Lao. From Emperor Ming's words, it can be vaguely determined that the Buddha was kindly regarded even in Luoyang at that point.
Page 822-823: A century later in Pengcheng, records show that Buddhism was sponsored by a local official named Zhai Rong, who was generously commissioned by the Governor of Pengcheng, Tao Qian, to control the lucrative grain transport in the region. Using his funds, Zhai built a massive Buddhist temple, which was said to be several stories high and topped with a spire with nine superimposed disks like the Indian stupa. Inside it had a gilt bronze statue of the Buddha dressed in brocade. It is recorded that the temple could hold three thousand people or more at once. If anyone wanted to devote themselves to the temple, Zhai exempted those persons from the mandatory labor services to the state. For the Buddha's birthday and other notable scheduled events, he threw large festivities providing food and alcoholic drink along the roadsides. Expenses were said to be in the millions of cash for these events, which drew crowds of tens of thousands, yet these are without a doubt exaggerated figures by non-Buddhist historians wishing to criticize the excess of the religion (they also disapproved of the tax exemptions granted to the faithful). It is noteworthy that Zhai's Buddhism was not crossbred with Daoism, as so many Buddhistic teachings of the period were.
Page 823: When Cao Cao attacked and destroyed Pengcheng in 193 AD, Zhao Rong is said to have fled with tens of thousands of his followers to the banks of the Yangzi River.
Page 823: At the beginning of the 3rd century AD, there is record of a Xu Chang Monastery in Luoyang, which must have been established in the 1st century AD since Xu Chang was a maternal uncle of King Liu Ying of Chu. During this time, Emperor Ming of Han is said to have had a peculiar dream which inspired him to send a mission to the west to inquire foreigners about Buddhism. The mission allegedly returned with two Indian monks, Jia-she-mo-teng 迦葉摩騰 (Kasyapa Matanga) and Zhu Falan 竺法蘭 (Dharmaratna the Indian); the famed White Horse Temple in Luoyang is said to have been erected by Emperor Ming in their honor, named after the auspicious animal on which sacred Buddhist texts were brought to China (although this is the legend of a much later date). These monks are credited with the translation of a Sanskrit text into Chinese, the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters. This text is said to have been translated in 67 AD, but Paul Demeiville asserts that it can be dated no earlier than roughly 100 AD. Other translators during the Han period include two Parthians, two Sogdians, three Yuezhi, and three other Indians, thus pure Sanskrit wasn't the only language which was used to translate Buddhist texts into Chinese. One of the Parthian translators was An Shigao, who came to China in 148 and was assisted by his fellow-countryman An Xuan, the Parthian of the Mysteries, who was a merchant that arrived in Luoyang in 181 AD. Yet the translations they made were chiefly concerned with numerological categories of the Lesser Vehicle (Hinayana), yoga practices that could be compared to similar Daoist exercises, and other aspects of Buddhism that already appealed to the Chinese. It was not until the late 2nd century and early 3rd century that a new generation of translators that the Great Vehicle (Mahayana), the doctrine of voidness (Śūnyatā), and Pure Land Buddhism texts were translated into Chinese. It is known that the Buddhist gnosis (Prajñā) was translated in precisely 179 AD by a Yuezhi Indian who was assisted by Chinese Daoists.
Page 825: Despite the Indian origin of the religion, the Chinese assimilated Buddhism into Daoism and thus thought of yoga or bodhi as the tao, nirvana as wu wei, and the saintly arhat as the Daoist immortal zhenren.
Page 825-826: Foreign monks made their presence known at court and rubbed elbows with the educated elite. The official and scholar Zhang Heng (78–139 AD) mentions them in his poem of about 100 AD dedicated to Chang'an. In 166 AD, the cult of the Buddha was formally introduced to the Eastern Han court at Luoyang, although he was heavily associated with Huang Lao still. In that year, Emperor Huan of Han made a sacrifice to Laozi, in association with the Buddha, at the palace in Luoyang. This is known from a memorial that year by Xiang Kai, an astrologer from Shandong, who quoted the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters and even asserted that the Buddha was actually Laozi who had gone west into the lands of the barbarians.
Page 826: Paul Demieville states that QUOTE: "One cannot help feeling that this joining of Buddha to the deified Lao-tzu was a mere exotic fantasy on the part of a puppet ruler at a time when the fashion at the Han court was to imitate the customs of the Western barbarians together with their clothes, chairs, musical instruments, and dances. The very same year a Westerner came to China and presented himself as an envoy of Marcus Aurelius, from the Roman Empire that the Chinese imagined, under the name of Ta-Ch'in, to be some exotic mirage."