This is the rough draft of an extensively abridged and rewritten "Introduction" to Dialogue with the Ancients, which will be published by Harvard University Press in 2000.
 
 

THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD
DIALOGUE WITH THE ANCIENTS
BOUNDARIES, BARRIERS AND BRIDGES
RECREATING THE CENTRE
WHO, AND WHAT, WAS HOU JING?
SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
ENDNOTES
 

A key factor to remember as we look back at the period under question is the very limited range of voices that has come down to us. Our understanding of the early medieval's "Dialogue with Ancients" -- or for that matter, their dialogues with each other -- is channeled by the reality of who wrote what, and why; and what of that has survived, and why. This fundamental issue is seen as well in the question of ethnicity, an important one in the early medieval age, tightly intertwined with a very negative aspect of this concept, the definition of the other as "barbarian." To what extent did the application of these labels reflect the real world view of those who used them? To what extent did they reflect the reality of the time? To what extent did that reality change over time?

Another, related issue to which attention will be given is the question of the military, and more specifically, the relationship of the fighting man to the society as a whole. A state necessarily rests -- in some way or another -- upon an army. During the early medieval age, however, we see a particularly immediate connection within an often volatile military environment. At the same time, there was an extreme specialization of military activity among certain groups within the larger society. War -- and rumour of war -- looms across the early medieval age, so large and so omnipresent that at a certain point we no longer see it. How did this affect larger cultural developments? How were such forces tamed? How did they tame themselves?
 

THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD⁽¹⁾

The creation of an imperial state is a prolonged and complex process. So, of course, is its unraveling. The dismemberment of China's first empire began in earnest in the late second century AD, with the Yellow Turban rebellion and a broad militarization of the lands within the empire, leading shortly thereafter to the end of the Han dynasty, which had ruled for four hundred years. A century after this, in the year AD 311, came the "fall of Luoyang," and the empire's final extinction.

The abdication of the last Han emperor, the fall of Luoyang, are important events that have consistently stirred imaginations in later ages, through historical accounts and works of literature. They stand as symbols of a slow and gradual but very real change in the Chinese world. They have, however, become as much a part of the world of imagination as of reality. To get a clearer idea of how contemporaries saw such events, we must remember that there was a broad array of opinions. Some mourned the abdication of the last Han emperor. Needless to say, others made it happen. One cannot help but wonder if a tiller in the fields of a distant province thought or cared much about the matter at all.

If a Dark Age ever descended upon northern Europe -- we must leave such conclusions to our colleagues in that field -- it has already been made quite clear that nothing of the sort ever existed in early medieval China.⁽²⁾ Classical tradition carried on without significant interruption. The arts flourished. Vast networks of trade spread out from great urban centers. In some form, at least, the bureaucratic state system survived; toward the end of the age, in fact, it thrived, in quite new ways.

The center, however, could not hold. Never, of course, had the Han Son of Heaven been an all-powerful figure; never had reality entirely matched the ideal held up by imperial ideologues. Still, order and orthodoxy had for a very long time radiated outwards from a dominant hub. Its decay was, of course, an incremental process. Over time, the central government found increasing difficulty in efficiently taxing the peasant and drafting him into government armies. In the arena of the mind, there came a withering of imperial ideology, of the "moral order revealed in scriptures from heaven."⁽³⁾ In the early centuries AD, in a great variety of ways, we see a very distinct shift in the balance of power from the center to the edge, however these terms might be defined. This trend is best known in the development of increasingly independent local elites,⁽⁴⁾ a process voiced with particular power by the great fourth century poet Tao Qian, who in his poem, "To Return Home!", tells us that within a few days of taking up office,

I felt a longing to go back home. Why? Because it is in my nature to be spontaneous; I am unable to act affectedly or against my will. However sharply I may feel hunger or the cold, to go against my self would bring on sickness...⁽⁵⁾ From the "Greater Unity" of what remained of an imperial state, he had returned to the "lesser unity" of family and farm, leaving behind, in various forms, a passionate justification of this decision.

This swing of the pendulum from the center to the periphery is seen in other ways as well. Later Han saw an increasing restiveness of various groups along the western and especially the northern -- Inner Asian -- frontiers. During much of the Han, the Inner Asian groups had been bound together by the Xiongnu empire, a mirror-image of the Han largely dependent on the funneling-off of resources from the Chinese state.⁽⁶⁾ The collapse of the Xiongnu regime under Later Han led to an atomization of these groups, which now came to be placed not under the fundamentally political label "Xiongnu"⁽⁷⁾ but ethno-linguistic categories such as "Särbi" (a reconstruction of the original term, based on the Chinese transcription "Xianbei"). They played various, sometimes contradictory roles at the edges of the Chinese world, raiding one year, in the next serving as an increasingly important supplement to the emperor's soldiery. Though not "Chinese," in terms of language, custom, or mode of life, neither were they something entirely foreign. Many of these groups had lived from time immemorial in the frontier zones between the steppe and the sown.

Among these groups there was a significant diversity. Some spoke ancient forms of Tibetan. Others spoke Turkic tongues. The most important during the early medieval period were the Särbi, who are generally though to have used an ancestral form of Mongolian. What must be recognized, at any rate, is that these ethno-linguistic groups were not rigidly discrete entities but were in a constant state of interaction and recombination. Very early in the history of the Särbi, for example, following the fall and flight of the last Xiongnu lord, at the end of the first century AD, "more than 100,000 households (luo) of the remaining tribes went to Liaodong, where they lived interspersed among (its inhabitants, most of whom, at least, were Särbi). They all called themselves 'Särbi soldiers'."⁽⁸⁾

As a group, the peoples who called themselves "Särbi" never did take on an enduring, overarching political organization. In the third century, however, smaller, more compact "nations" began to form out of, or around them.⁽⁹⁾ These were complex political entities -- transcending ethno-linguistic limits -- built around loyalties and beliefs shared by a particular group of individuals. A minor example is the Qifu, a conglomeration of several groups that had come down into the frontier lands of Inner Mongolia from steppelands north of the Yinshan Mountains.⁽¹⁰⁾ Only one -- the core Qifu clan -- was clearly Särbi; some were Turkic. As nations sometimes do, the Qifu crystallized around a myth. Entering the Yinshan region, so the legend went, they encountered a "huge reptile," with the shape of a "divine tortoise."⁽¹¹⁾ To this, they sacrificed a horse, praying "If you are a good spirit, then open the gate; if an evil spirit, then through the stopper we will not pass" ­Y µ½ ¯« ¤] ¡A «K ¶} ¸ô ¡C ´c ¯« ¤] ¡A ¹E ¶ë ¤£ ³q ¡C Suddenly it was gone, and in its place appeared a boy, who grew up to be "Qaghan of the Qifu, brave demi-god"; a successor to the holy boy "brought together many tribes; the tribal army gradually grew stronger" ¦} ­Ý ½Ñ ³¡ ¡A ³¡ ²³ º¥ ²± .

Here we see the development around a group belonging to the dominant ethno-linguistic group -- Särbi, as was often the case -- of a complex polity built around a shared mythology. Our evidence is quite slender and it is difficult to say how tightly these merged culturally; whether, for instance, they came to speak a common tongue. But they did, clearly, band together to push into the rich frontierlands. Soon after the formation of the Qifu nation, we see in this region the rise of the Tuoba, or Tabgatch as dominant power in the central frontier region. In the mid-third century, the Qifu leader led a great exodus to the southwest, where after enduring as a polity for more than a century, they founded perhaps the most minor of all the minor Sixteen Kingdoms, the "Western Qin."

The fall of Luoyang in AD 311 had ushered in the age of the "Sixteen Kingdoms," during which the emergent nations contested for control of the interior, the rich lands of the Yellow River plain. That age came to an end with the rise of the Tabgatch, who had knit together many ethno-linguistic groups -- including a smattering of Chinese -- into a nation of "compatriots" (guoren), a potent reservoir of cavalry troops who shared a tightly knit martial culture centered on the frontier region of Dai (northern Shanxi and central-southern Inner Mongolia). This was the force sent forth by the lords of the emerging Northern Wei dynasty (386-534) to reunify the old heartlands of the empire. A century later, in the year 494, the Wei emperor Yuan Hong (Xiaowendi) moved his capital from the Dai region south to Luoyang. After almost two centuries, Luoyang flourished again. But just a generation after the relocation, in 523, the outbreak of rebellion among the specialized military populations of Dai -- the Rebellion of the Six Garrisons -- led to a great influx of the frontiersmen into the interior and, within a decade, the downfall of the Northern Wei court. Wei was now partitioned into two regimes dominated by military strongmen, each with its own Wei pretender. In the east was the Eastern Wei (534-550), eventually succeeded by Northern Qi (551-577), which contained the vast majority of the incoming men of Dai. In the west, dominated by the Yuwen family, was Western Wei (535-556). In 557 a Yuwen boy was put on the throne, as the first lord of a Zhou (or Northern Zhou) dynasty (557-580).

For three centuries, the northern territories of the old empire were dominated by militarists from the marginal frontier zones. In the southlands, the transplanted Jin court at Jiankang maintained unsteady control over the southern territories. With the fall of Eastern Jin (317-420), military men came to the fore in the south as well, in a string of volatile military dictatorships: Song of the Liu lineage (420-479), Qi (479-502), Liang (502-557) and finally Chen (557-589). Under these dynasties we see significant economic development, described by Liu Shufen in her chapter in this volume. While there was certainly economic resurgence in the north, as well, special qualities of the south -- such as its riverine quality, producing relative ease of transport -- fostered a particularly dynamic growth. But this also caused difficulty in tightly integrating the various regions into a whole.

The "nations" involved in the wars of the Sixteen Kingdoms were essentially "hordes" -- not ethnic units, per se, but groups built around commonly shared political and military aims. Their formation on the frontier is thus part of another, overlapping facet of the swing from center to periphery: the specialization of the military within Chinese society. A major development of the Warring States age had been the creation of mass armies, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, which were drawn broadly from the peasantry. This reached its peak under Qin, with the emergence of a regularized draft.⁽¹²⁾ Alternative, irregular sources of soldiery always existed: mercenary auxiliaries, convicts, slaves. But just as the peasant was the economic backbone of the emerging states, so was he the basic source of its soldiery. This carried on for a century or so under the Western Han. In the time of the great build-up of the Han war machine, however, under the "Martial Emperor" (Wudi), we already see the beginning of this system's decay. As the lines lengthened in the conquest of the far northwest and wars against the Xiongnu, there was a transformation of Wudi's army, which came increasingly to be composed of "mercenary troops" (mubing), recruited from peripheral regions to the north of Chang'an, and including people explicitly called "barbarian troops."⁽¹³⁾

During the Later Han period, it became ever more difficult for the imperial government to draft peasants into the army. At the same time, and for much the same reason, it became difficult to raise the monies needed to pay Chinese mercenaries or barbarian auxiliaries. The imperial army, the ultimate basis of imperial power, had begun to wither. Increasingly, the government stocked its troops with convicts and slaves. Increasingly, peasants fought not for a Son of Heaven but as bound retainers (buqu) belonging to a local lord.⁽¹⁴⁾

These developments reached a new level with the outbreak of the Yellow Turban rebellion. Hereupon, the emperor, Lingdi, attempted to build a major new standing army, and for the first time in centuries, the man on the throne put himself forth as an active commander-in-chief.⁽¹⁵⁾ In the event, the colonels of this Praetorian Guard, the "Army of the Western Garden," hardly ventured out onto the field. Power now slipped into the hands of men such as Dong Zhuo and Cao Cao, men with personal and direct control over an army, and an inclination to lead that army across the Rubicon.

It is during this time that we see developing a fundamental split between the ordinary peasant and the trooper, and the legal formulation of distinct "military households."⁽¹⁶⁾ Typically concentrated in specific districts, these families were obligated to provide hereditary military service: "the father dies, the son succeeds him" (fu si zi ji).⁽¹⁷⁾ They were drawn from a variety of sources: armies recruited or conquered, such as the "flower" of the Yellow Turbans that was moved to the Cao capital at Ye; fugitives and refugees; at times minority groups (in the second quarter of the fifth century, for instance, some 200,000 Man were taken and brought to Jiankang to serve as military households).⁽¹⁸⁾

Under the Cao regime, the military households were generally well-treated.⁽¹⁹⁾ Their position, however, began to decline rapidly under the Jin. With the split-up of the empire, the situation in the north changed; in at least their early stages, the mestizo "nations" that sprang up on the frontier afforded their "compatriots" a status clearly higher than the subject populations. In the south, however, the position of the military household continued to deteriorate. Whereas, under Western Jin a member of a military household could accumulate merit in battle and so receive a peerage and escape his situation, under Eastern Jin and the Southern Dynasties "once your name is stained by military service, it goes on generation after generation."⁽²⁰⁾ The situation was aggravated by the intermixture of convicts and captured tribalists. The response of the military household was, quite understandably, to attempt to escape the predicament; the consequence was a slow but steady decline in their numbers and a withering of the armies. Ominously, towards the end of the southern dynasties, the solution was increasingly to allow princes and powerful officials to build private armies of mercenaries (mubing).

In these events we see a profound social and political change within the Chinese world. The core of major military forces was now drawn from distinct and specialized social groups -- militarized societies, or sub-societies. This was true of the "officer corps," the men who assembled and led armies. Robert Joe Cutter tells us of the humble background of the Cao family, which we see as well in connection with the leaders of the Southern Dynasties. Needless to say, it was the case in the north as well, with Wei's "Great Martial Emperor" (Taiwudi), or a Yuwen Tai. It was also true of the troops themselves, which were drawn from the edge of the Chinese world, whether they were men of a horde, drawn from the frontier, the physical edge; or hereditary military households (shijia, binghu), which stood at the edge -- the bottom -- in terms of social status. In such a situation, the question becomes: are these specialized military groups organized from within or without? If from without, their status and treatment tends to plummet, and with it their effectiveness as a fighting force. If from within, they become a threatening "other," an eruptive force in the social order.

The second of these two alternatives describes the early stages of the development of the frontier nations, which became the dominant elements in the scramble for power in northern China that erupted with the fall of Luoyang. They did so not because as individuals they were necessarily better fighting men than the Chinese populations of the interior, though they did have larger numbers of horses, and were well accustomed to riding them. More fundamentally, however, in the fluid situation from which they derived they could be drawn together into large, unified groups, capable of overcoming the numerous but atomized militias scattered across the map of the Chinese interior.
 

DIALOGUE WITH THE ANCIENTS

The world changes. Quickly or slowly, in ways obvious or subtle, the world in which we live will not stay the same. Nor is memory a sturdy box in which we place fixed images that have come down from earlier times. It is a fluid, ongoing process, within our own minds, and as it is passed on from one generation to the next. Among we children of Mnemosyne is an innate, an endless reconciling of old and new, tradition and innovation.⁽²¹⁾

Writing has brought much to the human world. In concrete terms, it has allowed us to record transactions, to register and tax on a vast new scale, contributing to the development of economy and of the state. It has also brought to the human mind the ability to fix in a text unchanging truth. Laying "worship of the book" alongside the "magic of the word" (which has never, of course, completely disappeared) has facilitated the development of complex concepts and systems.⁽²²⁾ Detached from the tongue of any particular individual, some of these books become "scripture," to which are assigned, in the process of canonization, an authority transcending any particular time and place.⁽²³⁾ As long as these texts retain their authority -- and so remain worth bickering over -- there will be an ongoing enterprise of deciphering and debating their meaning; people will continue to run the flesh of their fingers over words set in stone.

In the scriptures of the monotheistic religions, ultimate truth, ultimate authority derives from a god transcending all time and space. In China, or at least in China's dominant Confucian school, authority derives from the past, or more precisely, from notions of the past: from a vision of "sages," who had at the dawn of history beheld the fundamental patterns of the world, prescribed a corresponding ideal form of human culture, and transmitted these prescriptions to later generations in the jing texts, the warp threads of civilization. These are, for the most part, traced back (accurately or not) to the "golden age" of Western Zhou. It was in the age of the first empire that they were drawn together into a canon, as the basis for a dominant orthodoxy.

China's early medieval age was a time of volatile change, when new peoples and very new ideas were woven into the Chinese tapestry. But the warp threads remained. Entering no Dark Age of painful (or blissful; does a Dark Age bring a certain relief?) separation from the past, this world lived on under what Charles Holcombe has so aptly described as the "shadow of the Han."

This occurred, in the first place, because men of the upper classes in this age were typically able to read. The exceptions make the rule, for they are generally fighting men -- Chinese or barbarian -- who having risen to power on the field of battle, would promptly send their boys off to school. Raised to the level of paradigm was the Liang prince and heir apparent Xiao Tong, who was praised for the fact that he had "received" (shou) the Xiaojing and Confucius' Analects by the age of three sui, and by the age of five could recite the Five Classics.⁽²⁴⁾ Explaining why he had not included the scriptures in his Wen xuan, Xiao Tong wrote: "The works of the Duke of Zhou, And the writings of Confucius, Hang as high as the sun and moon, Compete with the mysteries of ghosts and spirits." ⁽²⁵⁾

Scripture also played an important, though not exclusive role in the examinations that played a role in selection for the bureaucracy. Albert Dien has brought forth some interesting examples of this in his chapter on the examination in the early medieval period, when it played a more significant role in the selection of officials than is generally recognized. Among the translations offered therein are answers to an examination given in 408 by the Western Liang regime (AD 400-421). We do not have the questions, but Dien has deduced that one of them asked why the Guanju ode had been placed first in the Shi jing and what this implied for the role of royal consorts. Another question -- based on a story given in Zuozhuan, supplemented and expanded in Shiji and Zhanguo ce -- revolved around the breakup of Jin in the fifth century BC, during the Warring States period, in the course of which an Earl Zhi laid siege to and attempted to flood the city of Jinyang.

Western Liang was a very minor dynasty, ruled by a family that conceived of itself as Chinese, which survived for just a few decades up in the Gansu corridor. Its examinees' use of the classics is none too impressive; their answers were, according to Dien, "rather perfunctory." One fellow, whom we know only by the personal name Zi, described the origin of writing by tracing it, correctly, from Cang Jie, through King Wen and Confucius, and then on to the Book of Changes, which, Dien points out, is not known "to have had an impact on styles of script."

In the more affluent, interior regions, both education and scholarship carried on in a more respectable manner. With some fitful interludes, but increasingly over time, lords actively encouraged this. After a lull in the fourth century, imperial academies were established in the south; interestingly, even earlier in the north. At Luoyang, where stone classics survived from Later Han and Wei, the Northern Wei emperor Yuan Hong established an "Exhortation to Study" (quanxue) ward.⁽²⁶⁾ In the early stages, private education was of even greater importance. As is discussed in the Zhouli paper, it was here that ritual scholarship carried on through the fourth and fifth centuries, before being wrenched back into the world of politics by the Liang and Western Wei courts.

The perpetuation of classical tradition -- and more fundamentally, of memory of past times -- is brought to life in Donald Holzman's paper on Tao Qian. As Holzman points out, Tao cannot be taken as a two-dimensional representation of one or another sort of "early medieval thought." He is far too complex and interesting a figure to make into a tidy package. But he does, in a quite evocative way, react to the circumstances of the world in which he dwelt. In his breast, he feels a "wrenching pain and inner guilt." A member of what had originally, at least, been a military clan (hanmen) -- perhaps even of non-Chinese origin -- his early efforts to climb the bureaucratic ladder had not gone as he had wished. Turning back to his own little estate, he had at the same time turned back to the past, with a deep nostalgia: "the times, alas, are different, too far away to be revived."⁽²⁷⁾ His nostalgia is not for Leviathan, as a quick reading of "Peach Blossom Spring," and the famous story of his flight from bureaucratic office, make clear.⁽²⁸⁾ "Thinking of the ancients" (huaigu), he reaches back beyond the age of empire, to carry on dialogue with that most revered of the ancients, Confucius. Tao Qian shows respect for this man -- this symbol -- from the past. He feels a need to respond to the ideas that have been put forth in his name. But Tao did not simply accept the givens; listening thoughtfully, he then offers his own ideas: "the principles I live by make me feel ashamed before the all-knowing, but is what I want to preserve shallow?" §Y ²z ·\ ³q ÃÑ ¡A ©Ò«O ÛÖ ¤D ²L .⁽²⁹⁾

Tao Qian is quite conscious of the fact that he has preserved some elements of tradition, but has left others aside; this is the cause of his shame before Confucius, the "all-knowing." Though traditions are constantly being reworked, most of the time this is not in a self-conscious way. Change takes place gradually, with subtle increments from one generation to the next to the next after that. But in all civilizations there are times of rapid and turbulent change when people begin to open the treasure chest of tradition and make free play of its contents. China's early medieval was such a time. Images of the past remained starkly engraved upon at least some minds, but people were quite conscious of the fact that "the times were different." State orthodoxy still existed, to the extent that rulers were willing or able to shore it up. But it was no longer a dominating presence.

Thus, Tao Qian carried on a two-way conversation with Confucius, a "dialogue." Others of less highly developed heart-and-mind also quite self-consciously took a part, but not the whole, of the pie, as we see in the "doubting Thomases" in Albert Dien's chapter on the examinations. The examination question relating to the break-up of the original state of Jin centered on events that occurred when Earl Zhi attacked Viscount Xiang, lord of Zhao. Laying siege to Jinyang, the earl diverted the Fen River, the waters of which came but three "boards" from going over the top of the walls. Zi replies to this saying that

your vassal has heard that [on the occasion of] Earl Zhi's besieging Jinyang, that part of the city walls which was not submerged was three boards. Your vassal considers that this...[to the] bottom three boards and does not refer to the three top boards [of the wall]. How could at one time the waters of the...reach the top three boards and [the inhabitants would be] able to survive in its midst. There has never yet been such! The reason for the Chunqiu [Spring and Autumn Annals] to have written this was to praise Viscount Xiang's mercifulness being able to affect [the outcome], and to censure the Earl Zhi's lack of virtue. According to one Ma Zhi, "to speak of there being three boards not submerged is in general to praise the Viscount Xiang, but the acclaim goes beyond the facts."

Another form of interaction between past and present is seen in histories -- or mythologies -- clearly establishing links between the present with the past. In the Western Liang examinations, testees were asked to discuss such matters as "mankind's decline from a state of unadorned simplicity," and even more interesting, "the origin of writing (wen) and the sources for later changes in the script."⁽³⁰⁾ This theme is carried on in a more detailed and sophisticated form in the preface to the Wen xuan by Xiao Tong:⁽³¹⁾

Let us examine the primordial origins of civilization,

And distantly observe the customs of the remote past --

Times when men dwelled in caves in winter, nests in summer,

Eras when people consumed raw meat and drank blood.

It was a pristine age of simple people,

And writing had not yet been invented.

Then when Fu Xi ruled the empire,

He first

Drew the Eight Trigrams,

Created writing...

He then carries on to describe the development of the major forms of writing contained therein. According to Knechtges,⁽³²⁾ reconciliation of past and present was a major theme of the volume.

For some at least, there was a poignancy to the past, with links to the pain of the present. "The Ruined City," a poem by Bao Zhao, describes a city called Guangling, on the northern bank of the Yangtze, near the modern city of Yangzhou (this was, during the Southern Dynasties, the seat of Southern Yanzhou, whose significance we shall explore a bit further below). Guangling had been wrecked in Bao Zhao's own lifetime, with the rebellion of a Song prince. It had also been wrecked half a millennium before, by a Han prince:⁽³³⁾

In the past

During its age of consummate splendor,

Chariots rubbed axle-hub to axle-hub,

Men bumped shoulder to shoulder,

Settlements and ward gates covered the land,

Singing and piping pierced the sky.

It multiplied wealth with its salt fields,

Dug profits from the copper hills.

In talent and man power it was strong and rich;

Warriors and steeds were well-trained and well-fitted...

Yet, as three dynasties have entered and exited,

And over five hundred years have passed,

It has been carved like a melon, split like beans.

Marsh moss clings to the wells,

Wild kudzu vines tangle the paths;

The halls are filled with snakes and beetles,

By stairs contend deer and flying squirrels.

Physical sites and objects are indeed a powerful generator of memory. They were at least one of the reasons why Yuan Hong moved his capital from Dai down to Luoyang in the late fifth century. Ruins remained there from the Han era: the Imperial Observatory, and the Hall of the Circular Moat (Piyong). Ghosts remained, as well.⁽³⁴⁾ In the Zhouli chapter, we are told how in the 530s the military interloper Yuwen Tai led his men on an excursion to see the ancient site of the Pool of Teeming Brilliance, an artificial lake made on the palace grounds of Chang'an during Former Han. It was on this occasion that, dispirited by his cohorts' ignorance concerning the site, he first encountered Su Chuo, with whom he concocted the plan to restructure his administration around the Rituals of Zhou.

For Yuan Hong and Yuwen Tai, in the north, encounter with a particular place invoked memory and feeling. In the southlands, there was a tendency to transpose essential identity to more accesible points on the map. In a piece by Shen Yue, "Poems on Mount Zhong written in response to instructions of the Prince of Xiyang,"⁽³⁵⁾ names of famous sites in the Han capitals were transposed to the lands south of the Yangtze. The Mysteriously Martial (Xuanwu) Lake north of Jiankang, for instance, was now referred to as "Pool of Teeming Brilliance." Involved here are two ways of connecting past and present. The contrast of fixed place as opposed to transferable essence comes vividly to life in an exchange between a southerner and a northerner (which will be discussed in more detail below). "The Grand Jade Seal of the Qin dynasty," a transferrable object, is according to the southerner, "now in the possession of the Liang dynasty." To this the northerner responds by stating that having "received an appointment from heaven through the holy maps, our Wei selected an area between the Song Mountain and the Luo River as the site of our capital."
 

BOUNDARIES, BARRIERS AND BRIDGES

The human triumph has rested upon a mind able to stand apart from the world, to analyze, judge, decide, and on this basis to manipulate the world in ways quite different from any other beast. These notions are transmitted to the next generation not through immediate experience, but as mental formulation -- "maps" that we have made of the world. These maps must, of course, originally reflect the reality of the world in some way. But never can they fully encompass the "real world," as is revealed in a myriad forms of religion and mysticism. And the maps that we draw inside of our heads are often lifted off that world altogether, to become a heap of broken images that we arrange and rearrange at will.⁽³⁶⁾

One manifestation of this tendency is the creation of boundaries among different human groups, the endlessly unfolding process of labeling, contrasting and judging I and thou, us and them. This human tendency has taken shocking new forms in the modern age. It has, however, certainly had antecedents in the past. It plays a prominent role in early medieval China.

The lines we draw across the map of humanity are typically based on some real difference: the shape of the nose, the cut of the clothes; the words that come from the mouth; what people eat and where they get it; complexity of organization; the ideas that have been packed into minds or packed into books. These are the basis of labels that reveal understanding of the self and of the other, the basis of the fundamental human tendency to divide the world into the raw and the cooked, the savage and the civilized, the bad and the good -- into Grand Dichotomies.⁽³⁷⁾ But whatever the starting point for these formulations, the objects -- the groups -- to which these labels are attached can, at times, change with great rapidity, while the labels themselves continue to be used.

Särbi had legends of coming from far away. Some, perhaps, did. Others had lived on the fringes of the empire for a very long time. In the course of turbulent times, they developed into nations -- with names and myths that afforded them a sense of collective identity. They did so both because they were endangered by others and because, like the armies of the interior, they wished to lay hold of the material wealth of the Chinese lands. The lords of these new, invented nations quickly came to be drawn to the book as well, or -- and perhaps this is true of all -- to what they wished to take from the book. In form and content, a Northern Wei tomb discovered at Guyuan in Ningxia was apparently built for a man of the Särbi elite. It contains stirrups and swords, and depicts the fellow on the coffin in a form seen among the Hephtalites, at the other end of Asia. Incorporated into this, however, in a complex interweaving, are Chinese elements -- an image of the Queen Mother of the West on the coffin's cover, and on its sides, depictions of traditional Chinese morality tales, such as that of a fellow who dug a pit in which to put his son so that he would have enough food to keep his mother, and in the process found a pot of gold. To take this to an even more interesting level, the clothing worn by the tale's protagonist is not traditional Chinese garb, but that of a Särbi.⁽³⁸⁾ In this context, it is interesting to note that, apart from military treatises, the Xiaojing was one of the few texts translated into the Särbi "national language" (guoyu).⁽³⁹⁾ As the early history of the Tabgatch -- with its acts of royal parricide -- will show, this did not always work for the Tabgatch. But then again, neither did it always work for the self-defined Chinese of the Southern Dynasties.

These changes did not take place in a smooth, orderly fashion; instead, they occurred in eddies of cultural interaction, in different forms under different circumstances. In her "Hybrid Vigor" chapter, Audrey Spiro describes for us the process of "localization" -- the creation of a cultural unity of a particular group of people in a particular place. The discussion is built around a Buddhist stele dating from 471 in the Chang'an region, on the back of which is depicted the tale of Sumedha (Ch. Rutong), an early incarnation of the historical Buddha, ending in his birth as kyamuni. Using clearly recognizable iconic elements, the images on the stone call up in the viewer an already-known story. At the same time, as Spiro says, it "turns the old into something new." On the one hand, as is quite familiar, it transports a tale from India to China -- placing the final birth of kyamuni in China. At the same time, at least certain episodes of this tale turn from the "Chinese" as well, to the Särbi; in the pictorial depiction of garb we see a style that "calls into question the very meaning of 'native'." Sumedha is "born a Särbi but in a later reincarnation he has become, at least in part, Chinese, like the virtuous wife on his right. However in the next scene he reverts to Särbi identity while awaiting his final rebirth." Spiro goes on to discuss the depictions of donors shown on the base of the stele, in which some men at least wear Särbi garb, while the women wear Chinese. "It is possible that this donor procession reflects the actual ethnic mix of the donor family. It is more likely, however, that this arrangement was the conventional pattern accepted by the Buddhist community in Chang'an, an effective ethnic-political compromise that, like that of the narrative scenes, was pleasing to all in its suggested inclusiveness. By this date, intermarriage among Chinese, Tuoba, Di, Qiang and perhaps still other ethnic or tribal groups in Shaanxi province had produced a generation of Chang'anese whose ethnic lifestyles -- as proclaimed by clothing -- were undoubtedly more a matter of choice, expedience, or opportunism, than of genealogy."

A few decades later, Wei princes at Luoyang had begun to choose for themselves the garb of Chinese culture:⁽⁴⁰⁾

[Yuan] Yu was well-versed in classics, discerning and refined. He was punctilious in his carriage, and admirable in his manner. . . Yu by nature was fond of woods and fountains. Further, he loved the company of visitors. At the time when spring breezes gently blow and flowering trees are like brocade, he would take his morning meal in the southern hall and roam at night in the rear garden. With his subordinates in a throng and gifted men filling the mats, [he would listen to] the sounding lute as the winged wine cups were passed around. When he presented poems and rhymed prose, or suddenly took up "pure conversation," everyone [in attendance] would drink in its profundity and overlook its [possible] shortcomings...

Such activities are sometimes taken simply as the barbarian bending his knee to a superior civilization. But if the past is a foreign country, it is then really, in some sense, foreign to us all. If the past is a treasure chest, it is a treasure chest that can be rummaged through by anyone who puts value on, who wishes to use, the objects contained therein. Fossils can be both hard and yet slippery things. Though differing in approach -- perhaps in sophistication, as well, that is a matter of opinion -- both Xiao Yan, Liang's Martial Emperor (Wudi), and the power behind the Western Wei throne,Yuwen Tai, tinkered with bits from antiquity, including the Zhouli. Both also tinkered with something much newer: Buddhism. To whom do these things belong? Who owns relics from the past?

By the late Northern Dynasties -- and into the Tang -- we see an ability to manipulate several traditions simultaneously, self-conscriously to put on different masks at different times, in a manner reminiscent of the Manchu lords at Jehol. In ca. 550, for example, a man of Särbi ancestry, Zhangsun Jian, was sent by Yuwen Tai to serve as Inspector of Jingzhou (seat at Dengxian, Henan).⁽⁴¹⁾ Raised in Luoyang, Zhangsun was a man of polish, of wen. He was also a man of imposing appearance, with a voice like a bell. On one occasion, meeting with a Liang emissary on his way to Chang'an,⁽⁴²⁾ Zhangsun received the southerner in accordance with military etiquette, wearing the clothes of a warrior. He did not speak to his guest directly, but boomed out his speech in the Särbi tongue, allowing aides to translate. That evening, Zhangsun donned a short jacket and skirt, and a cap of silk gauze, and invited his guest back to another chamber for a feast. He now spoke directly to the Liang ambassador, in Chinese. The southerner was both pleased and startled, and is quoted as saying to himself as he left, "[He is] something I cannot fathom." §^ ©Ò ¤£ ¯à ´ú ¤] Zhangsun Jian had chosen what to use, and when to use it.

As cultures mingled, so did DNA. It is well-known that in the later Northern Dynasties it became more and more difficult to define the great families -- including the forebears of the Tang dynasty -- as "Chinese" or "Särbi." Assertion of dubious kinship relations played a role as well. After forcibly transporting Wang Bao, a man of the prestigious Langye Wang lineage, up from the taken city of Jiangling, Yuwen Tai had an interesting response: "I'm a nephew of a Madame Wang -- you and the other [Wangs] are all of my uncle's clan! We should base our feeling on kinship. Don't remain unsettled about having left your homeland."⁽⁴³⁾ §^ §Y ¤ý ¤ó µc ¤] ¡A ­ë µ¥ ¦} §^ ¤§ ¸¤ ¤ó ¡C ·í ¥H ¿Ë ±­ ¬° ±¡ ¡A ¤Å ¥H ¥h ¶m ¤¶ ·N ¡C Chinese lineages -- or lineages claiming Chinese origin -- defined themselves by tracing a family line back to an official of Han, or at least Wei or Jin. In many cases, however, this seems to be either fakery or self-delusion or some combination of the two. John Marney suggests that this was even true of the "He begat Yan, Yan begat Biao" formula put forth by the purple-clad Xiao.⁽⁴⁴⁾ For those unable or unwilling to pull this off, there were alternatives: immigrants could reach back beyond the empire to times of antiquity, or times of myth. Thus, the Tabgatch traced themselves back to the Yellow Emperor; Yuwen Tai created for himself a genealogy stretching back to the Divine Husbandman.

The tale of Zhangsun Jian reveals the intersection of several important ways in which the Chinese world at this time was dichotomized and idealized: Chinese/barbarian, civil/military northerner/southerner. The distinction between north and south is defined by lines on a map -- political lines. Based to some extent on physical reality -- the lay of the land, defensible frontiers -- these boundary lines were at the same time human creation, based on negotiation or how far an army could advance. In this way, they took on a meaning beyond the world of strategy maps, or civil administration -- coming to epitomize a human divide in which one side is "Chinese" or "civilized," the other "barbarian." In his "Rhapsody on the Yangtze River," Guo Pu (a northerner who after fleeing south with the fall of Luoyang played an important part in designing Jiankang) makes that great river the line: it "criss-crosses the land of flaming brilliance (i.e., the south, Guo's new homeland), As a means To set a boundary between China and outland §@ ­­ ©ó µØ ¸Ç ..."⁽⁴⁵⁾

It is quite obvious, of course, that such an assertion is undercut by several features, probably the most important being that the vast majority of the population of northern China was at all these times Chinese. And particularly in the fourth and fifth centuries, before the boundaries came to be more forcefully drawn, there was a great porousness to "north" and "south," with many groups lying outside of any precise political entity. In such places, identity came not from a sense of "nation" but from one's own local community, one's turf.

Even more to the point, in contemporary texts, people in the north as well as in the south regularly applied the label "barbarian" to their rivals, and on occasion, at least, enjoyed making a show of contempt. While the Nan Qi shu, written by a member of the Xiao lineage, describes the northern rulers in a chapter called "Caitiffs of Wei (Wei lu)," Wei Shou's Wei shu includes a biography of "Xiao Yan, the islanded barbarian (dao yi)." It should also be noted that the Tabgatch enjoyed applying quite rude "barbarian" labels to the peoples of the steppelands where they had once dwelt, while men of different southern regions, such as Shu and Yue, enjoyed poking at each other as much as they did poking at the northerners.⁽⁴⁶⁾

There was between north and south a rivalry for culture and for authority that we see in a number of quite well-known anecdotes, including the great row between the Liang general Chen Qingzhi and the northerner Yang Yuanshen -- a Chinese -- at a feast in Luoyang. A man who had long served on the frontier, Chen came north in 529 -- a tumultuous time of civil war and court intrigue in the north -- leading a southern army sent by Xiao Yan to attempt to install on the Luoyang throne an expatriate Wei prince, Yuan Hao. Having drunk a bit at the feast, Chen said "The Wei, though flourishing, are still referred to as one of the five barbarians. Legitimacy of course rests in the Southern Court. The Grand Jade Seal of the Qin dynasty is now in the possession of the Liang dynasty." With a "stern countenance", Yang, the Grand Master of the Palace, replied with this tirade, setting out an image of Wei as in accord with the cosmic patterns, the southern regime as an abode of immoral savages:⁽⁴⁷⁾

The Southern Court, breathing a stolen breath, lives in seclusion in an-out-of-the-way corner [of China]. Its land for the most part is low-lying and damp, where insects and ants swarm and breed. Its domain is infected with a malarial epidemic, where frogs and turtles share the same cave and where men and birds are of the same flock. The ruler, with his hair cut short, does not appear to have that elongated head [we associate with good breeding]; the people, with tattooed bodies, are by nature small and vile. Floating in the three rivers and boating in the five lakes, they are neither accustomed to rituals and music, nor are they governed by statues and laws. As fugitives from the Qin and Han, although their spoken language has an admixture of standard Chinese, [in the main] it is the difficult dialect of Min (Fujian) and Chu (Hubei), which can never be changed. Even when they set up rulers and subjects, the superiors are insolent and the subordinates violent. That is why first Liu Shao killed his own father (Emperor Wen) and second [Liu] Xiulong committed incest with his mother. They violated the principles governing human relationships and acted no differently from birds and beasts...

Having received an appointment from heaven through the holy maps, our Wei selected [an area between] the Song Mountain and the Luo [River] as the site of our capital. Safeguarded by the [Sacred] Five Mountains, we treat all within the four seas as one family. The statutes regulating reforms in customs and tradition are comparable to those of the Five Emperors, and the richness of rituals, music and institutions dwarfs that of the hundred kings preceding us. Now how can you, one of a band of fish and turtles...be so insolent?

According to this text at least, Chen was overpowered by Yang's "torrential and rapid-flowing phrases and sentences, which were both beautiful and elegant" and shut his mouth "with sweat flowing." Perhaps as a result of the stress this caused him, perhaps not, Chen soon afterwards came down with severe heart pains. Having volunteered to perform exorcism for him, Yang first spat a mouthful of water on the southerner then continued his harangue:

You specter⁽⁴⁸⁾ of the Wu region who lived in Jiankang... Having just arrived in the central lands⁽⁴⁹⁾ you are homesick. Hurry, hurry to leave here, leave here for your [native] Danyang. Now perhaps you are a specter from a family of humble origin (hanmen)... Like a fish in a net or a turtle in a trap you are fond of munching waterchestnuts and lotusroots, collecting chicken-heads, and savoring frog and oystersoup. Wearing cloth garments and straw sandals, you may enjoy riding a buffalo backward. Or you may like to be driven aimlessly in a boat though the Yuan, Xiang, Yangtze and Han Rivers, following the waves or running against the current, surfacing, sinking or floating, as do the fish. Wearing garments of coarse white fabric, you may like to stand up and dance, or beat the waves and burst into song. Hurry, hurry to leave here, leave here for your [native] Yangzhou!

After "hurrying, hurrying, back" to the south -- Chen's was a small force, engaged as much as anything else in looting the city of Luoyang, and they were soon thrown out⁽⁵⁰⁾ -- he was made Inspector of the two crucial border provinces, Sizhou North and Sizhou South, where, Luoyang qielan ji tells us, he showed unusual respect for northerners. When asked why (by Zhu Yi, whom we shall encounter below in connection with Hou Jing), Chen replied:

Since the time of the Jin and the Song, Luoyang has been labeled a piece of deserted land, and we in our area categorically refer to those [living] to the north of the Yangtze as barbarians. After my recent visit to Luoyang, I began to realize that cultured clansmen are [all] in the Central China plain where rituals and etiquette flourish and people are rich and prosperous. There were things that I did not know when I saw them, neither can I give a verbal account of what I have seen. That is what we call:

"Splendid, splendid is the capital city,

A model for the whole nation to follow."⁽⁵¹⁾

We are told that Chen now led the way in an imitation of Luoyang insignia and costumes that swept through Jiankang. Needless to say, written in the northlands, this is a story that we must take with a grain of salt.

Defection was, at any rate, a quite common phenomenon during this age, going both ways across the frontier. Before the Yuan Hao affair, during the early 520s, Chen Qingzhi had been sent north to assist in the seizure of a border province turned over to Jiankang by a Wei prince bolting from his fold. The operation failed when the Liang prince leading the southern armies himself jumped the fence going the opposite way, leading to a collapse of the southern forces.

The encounter between Chen and Yang Yuanshen took place in the household of a southerner named Zhang Jingren, who had been lured north by the active effort of the Wei court to inspire defectors. It "treated the southerners with generosity. Anyone who pulled up his skirt and crossed the [Yangtze] River would be given a [high] post [without the usual process of grading]."⁽⁵²⁾ Invitations and fine treatment came from the south, as well. Caught up in deadly court intrigue during the Shengui period (AD 518-19) the prince Yuan Lüe had fled south to Xiao Yan, who "had long heard of [Yuan] Lüe's fame. Once he had seen his sagacity and his outstanding literary talents, he held [Yuan Lüe] in great respect." When asked how many there were like him in the north, Lüe replied that men of his meager qualities existed by "cartloads and bushels." The refugee Wei prince was treated with great magnanimity by the southern monarch, honored with "courtesies comparable to those of the emperor's own sons" »ö ¤ñ ¤ý ¤l . When, in 525, the situation in the north had stabilized a bit and the Wei throne asked for their boy's return, offering to Xiao Yan a captured southern general, Jiang Ge, in return, Xiao is quoted as saying "We are prepared to lose Jiang Ge, but cannot be without Your Highness." Sobbing, Yuan Lüe begged leave to return to his own court (benchao) to tend to the needs of kinsmen, living and dead. Hereupon, Xiao Yan permitted him to go, piled with rich gifts of gold, silk and embroidery. As Yuan Lüe departed, Xiao saw him off in person, leading a group of one hundred southern courtiers, each of whom presented him with a piece of pentasyllabic verse. "He was treated with all the respectful courtesy due an intimate" § ·q ¦p ¿Ë .⁽⁵³⁾

If anything, the fierce internal power struggles in the south caused more to flee to the "outlands." Of the sons of the Song emperor Wendi, for instance, only one, Liu Chang, produced lasting progeny: abandoning his wife and mother, with but a concubine in hand, in 465 he fled from his appointment as Inspector of the border province of Xuzhou up to the Wei, followed by a growing body of anti-Jiankang supporters.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Well-received in the north, he received a new princely title, married in succession two imperial princesses, and won frequent praise and the title Grand General from Yuan Hong.

Several decades later, Zhang Jingren came north in the train of Xiao Baoyin, a scion of the Qi ruling family, who had his own reasons to flee to Luoyang: take-over of the Jiankang throne by his Liang cousins.⁽⁵⁵⁾ The prince served with real distinction in the north until, having failed in his mission to suppress rebellion in the northwest in the late 520s, he turned on Luoyang in alliance with local, non-Chinese groups; he was eventually captured and ordered to commit suicide.

During his stay in the north, Xiao Baoyin became connected with a very interesting fellow by the name of Yang Kan, a fellow with something of an identity problem. Yang's family had come originally from the Shandong border region, a region in which, as Jennifer Holmgren has pointed out, loyalty generally did not extend beyond one's own local community.⁽⁵⁶⁾ Yang's grandfather had originally served the Song, but came over to the Wei when his homeland fell into Tabgatch hands. In the course of the great rebellions of the 520s, Yang Kan accompanied Xiao Baoyin into Guanzhong, where he won glory fighting Qiang rebels for the Wei. Subsequently, however, he attempted to take his home region and turn it back over to the southern throne. (In this, he foreshadowed the actions of Hou Jing, whom he resembled in a number of ways; it is all the more interesting to note, then, that Yang played a major role in defending Jiankang against his late-arriving counterpart.) Yang's venture was, at any rate, undercut by his own cousin, and by an army sent out by what had become the Eastern Wei. He was forced to flee south with his army of ten thousand. Many of these troops did not, however, wish to leave their homeland. Touched by the dirges they sang on the eve of the border-crossing, Yang begged forgiveness, saying "You gentlemen love this turf. If your principles do not allow you to follow, you should stay or go as is appropriate, and now we shall part"­ë µ¥ Ãh ¤g ¡C ²z ¤£ ¯à ¨£ ÀH ¡A ©¯ ¾A ¥h ¯d ¡A ©ó ¦¹ §O ²§ .⁽⁵⁷⁾ Arriving south with what remained of his army, he was given a general's title and made inspector of the Liang border province of Xuzhou. Later, when asked to accompany an expatriate Wei prince (Yuan Faseng, who was in his own way another interesting forerunner of Hou Jing) in an effort to seize the northern throne, Yang said, "In truth, I have never been willing to go together with Faseng. Though northerners say your servant is a (man of) Wu, the southerners call your subject a caitiff. Now, if I go together with Faseng, this competition among the different sorts will not only run counter to the pure and simple heart, but will also cause the men of the steppes (lit. "Xiongnu") to hold the Han people in contempt"⁽⁵⁸⁾.⁽⁵⁹⁾

Another such figure was Wang Su (a namesake of the great third-century scholar). Wang fled north in 493 because of connections with a failed rebellion against the Qi regime. Received with great respect by Yuan Hong, he became a prominent figure in the Northern Wei court, playing a role in the great reforms of the era and receiving from his host a princess bride. His attitudes and adaptations are interesting. On first arriving in the northlands, Wang Su was unable to stomach lamb or goat's milk, preferring to eat fish and drink tea. After several years, it was noted at an imperial feast that the southerner was now consuming lamb and yogurt. Surprised, the emperor asked "Of the foods of China (the "central states," zhongguo), how does mutton compare with boiled fish or tea with yoghourt?" Wang Su replied "Mutton is the finest product of the land, and fish the best of the watery tribe (shuizu). They are both delicacies in their different ways. As far as flavour goes there is a great gap between them. Mutton is like a big country the size of Qi or Lu and fish are like such small states as Zhu and Ju. Tea is way off the mark and is the very slave of yoghourt."⁽⁶⁰⁾ This subtle portrayal of diversity within a larger whole led to great guffawing. At the end of the affair, a Wei prince said to Wang Su "You do not really esteem the big countries of Qi and Lu, as you prefer the small states of Zhu and Ju." To which Wang Su replied, "One cannot help liking the best things of one's home" ¶m ¦± ©Ò ¬ü ¡A ¤£ ±o ¤£ ¦n . It is interesting to note, however, that although Wang Su continued to prefer "the best things of one's home," the expatriate was a hawk against the Jiankang regime.⁽⁶¹⁾

These movements back and forth across the frontier occurred in other arenas as well. There was, of course, a movement of faith. Well-known with the Buddhists, it occurred with the Daoists as well, as we see in the Bokenkamp chapter, where we are told of a Lingbao-inspired stele in north, a few decades after Lu Xiujing. Classical scholars came as well. We see this in the interaction over the Zhouli described in this author's piece and in other cases as well, such as the Liang men's request to a Wei diplomatic party that next time they bring with them, as a sign of good-will, a particular erudite, a man "intelligent and refined," who produced thirty-juan of poetry, rhymed prose, rescripts, memorials, stone inscriptions, epitaphs, comments and accounts.⁽⁶²⁾

Despite the efforts of governments to make economic boundary lines conform to those of the political landscape, there is evidence of a fairly widespread north-south trade as well. During the fourth century, regimes of neither north nor south exercised any close control over these activities.⁽⁶³⁾ With the unification of the northlands under the Tabgatch regime, suspicion grew and efforts increased to close off economic interchange. Responding to a Wei request to open markets along the frontier, one official said that "the northern barbarians (xunxian) have discarded righteousness -- profit is the only thing they look to. This request for border markets, perhaps they will use it to spy on our state" íe ê` ±ó ¸q ¡A °ß §Q ¬O µø ¡C Ãö ¥« ¤§ ½Ð ¡A ©Î ¥H ÛÑ °ê .⁽⁶⁴⁾ In later times the situation had reversed and it was Northern Qi that sought to contain and restrain these activities.

There was, however, a great enthusiasm among the bureaucrats of both north and south to engage in trade in the course of diplomatic missions. In one such case, we are told of the rush of Southern Qi emissaries to the Luoyang markets, where one southerner said to a more recent arrival, "In the northlands, gold and jade are very cheap; it must be taken out of the hills and streams." The Wei official in charge of them snapped back that "The sagacious court does not consider gold and jade to be precious; therefore, it is as cheap as potsherds." Embarrassed, the southern diplomat ceased going to the market.⁽⁶⁵⁾ Northern emissaries did much the same sorts of things in Jiankang. In times of peace between Liang and Northern Qi, we are told, those "who sought profit all sent people to follow the envoys and engage in trade." The hero of the biography in which this statement is made was, no doubt, a quite rare exception, who sought only Buddhist scriptures, some of which he received from a much-impressed XiaoYan.⁽⁶⁶⁾

Trade ties crossed political boundaries on lower social levels, as well. The host to Chen Qingzhi, Zhang Jingren, had originally lived in a sort of ghetto, a neighborhood of Luoyang known popularly as the "Southerners' District" (Wu ren fang) where lived some 3000 emigre families. (It must be pointed that, ashamed of the place, Zhang moved to another Luoyang neighborhood as quickly as he could.) The residents of this district were allowed to carry on their own ways and to maintain their own marketplace, called the Fish and Turtle Market because most of the food sold there was seafood; presumably, at least a part of their perishable produce regularly crossed the border from the south.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Other goods that came from south to north included such luxury-objects as tusks and exotic birds. Going in the other direction were, among other things, horses.⁽⁶⁸⁾

On the border itself, trade and efforts to contain trade could turn into rebellion and defection. In the year 511, for instance, as Jiankang and Luoyang fought over the bordertown of Qushan (near mod. Lianyungang, Jiangsu) -- which had been offered to Wei by a rebellious Liang official -- we are told that the region "lay on the border and its subjects had by custom frequently traded with the Wei people. When Qushan rebelled, some made contact with Wei..." ±µ Ãä ¶« ¡A ¥Á «U ¦h »P ÃQ ¤H ¥æ ¥«. The Liang general sent to hold the region was eventually killed by the locals, who attacked the town at night. Once again, the loyalty of these people lay neither with Luoyang nor Jiankang, but with Qushan.⁽⁶⁹⁾

The military is another arena in which it is interesting to compare the northern and the southern regimes; and more broadly, to examine social structure during this age. In both the northern and southern territories, the military formed a specialized population within the larger society, which played a particularly direct role in the political realm. Over time, the northern regimes began to build their armies around more traditional Chinese forms, adopting titles such as "Great General of the Chariots and Horsemen" (juji da jiangjun); by the end of the fifth century, in fact, tables of rank in north and south were mere variants of the same basic formula.⁽⁷⁰⁾ There are, however, important differences between the military in north and south. Wei grew from a militarized "nation." Though we do see a major decline in status of the soldiery under the late Northern Wei -- as convicts and slaves were added to the ranks -- it never sank as low as the southern military households,⁽⁷¹⁾ and martial culture was raised up again under the later northern dynasties, perpetuated into the early Tang.

The situation in the south was somewhat different. While the military household was the core of the army under Eastern Jin, the low status and enormous demands made upon these families caused their slow disappearance; those who remained were often not much able to fight. Though we see a number of different ways of building up the troops, including ad hoc conscription, increasingly we see dependence on voluntary recruitment (mubing).⁽⁷²⁾

Of great importance in these volunteer armies were the Northern Garrison Troops (Beifu bing), the main military force in the lower Yangtze, which was centered in the districts of Southern Yanzhou and Southern Xuzhou, just to the east of Jiankang.⁽⁷³⁾ Coming from refugee families from the north (qiaohu), these "hard men" ¤H ¦h «l ®« ⁽⁷⁴⁾ in very real ways resemble Yuwen Tai and his comrades; a particularized group of refugees from which troops were regularly drawn, on a voluntary basis. Built up under the Eastern Jin as a Jiankang-centered counterweight to the Western Garrison -- the great military center at Jingzhou (near modern Jiangling, Hunan) -- the men of the Northern Garrison made their name at the (perhaps unjustly) famous battle of Feishui, went on several northern campaigns, and played a role in the defeat of the rebel Sun En. Well-selected and well-trained units, they had a negative side as well, in the late fourth century repeatedly turning on the throne. Eventually, it was from the Northern Garrison that rose the founder of the first of the Southern Dynasties, Liu Yu.

With the rise of Liu Yu we see a new sort of figure emerging on the southern stage, the hanmen, "poor and humble household," or, more accurately, the provincial elites that would make their appearance in the Southern Dynasties largely through military activity. While the term hanmen took on this connotation of social status during the Three Kingdoms period, earlier, during the Han, it had referred to "the extreme north."⁽⁷⁵⁾ Thus, hanmen as a social designation in some sense dove-tailed with "barbarian," a concept echoed in a line from Bao Zhao's "Rhapsody on the Ruined City": "Border winds are fierce, Above the wall it is cold" Ãä ­· «æ ¤¼ «° ¤W ´H .⁽⁷⁶⁾ Border winds are seen as fierce; but in much the same way, fierce winds are viewed as from the border, from the edges.

Though he claimed to be a member of a "gentle lineage" (shizu), Liu Yu came from difficult circumstances; his father having died when he was young, Liu became a wood gatherer. Entering the Northern Garrison officer corps, he went on to receive merit in the campaigns against Sun En, rising to high rank under the military tyrant Huan Xuan. Eventually he led the Northern Garrison against Huan, defeating him in the western region and eventually mopping up the Western Garrison (the conflict between the two was to be an enduring theme of the Southern Dynasties). Seeking to consolidate his army and raise himself to a supreme position -- above his fellow officers -- he then led his armies north on a campaign in which, for a brief time, he seized the Wei River Valley.

There is a certain irony to the fact -- revealed in Dien's chapter -- that the hanmen came to the fore chiefly via the xiaolian degree. As mentioned by Yang Yuanshen, and as we shall see below, these fighting men were not especially filial. Neither were they generous to their brothers. These tendencies derived, in part at least, from specific policies introduced under the Western Jin regime. Seeing the downfall of his antecedents, the Cao clan, as connected with over-concentration of power in the center, the Western Jin founder reversed precedents established during the early Han, and gave to his princes real military power in the provinces. Several decades later, this led to the Rebellion of the Eight Princes.⁽⁷⁷⁾ The situation carried on into the Southern Dynasties. Song saw intense struggle within the ruling house, between the central throne and the princes who had been set up in positions of real power in the provinces. This situation would repeat itself in the events surrounding Hou Jing and the fall of Jiankang.

The Xiao clan, like their predecessors, the Liu of the Song, were hanmen expatriates from the north.⁽⁷⁸⁾ On the basis of military exploits, the father of Xiao Daocheng pulled himself up by his bootstraps to became a Governor (taishou); Daocheng himself rose to Inspector of the Southern Yanzhou -- connected with the Northern Garrison -- and then to the rank of Capital Commandant, supreme commander of the central armies (zhong ling jun jiangjun). Eventually, he seized power in the regime to establish his own Southern Qi dynasty.

On lower levels as well, the real power of the state shifted to the hanmen.⁽⁷⁹⁾ Under the Southern Dynasties, we see repeated references to generals who had "risen from among the lowly"; to dung-peddlers and bandits; to figures who "did not know books, understanding no more than ten characters."⁽⁸⁰⁾ The dominant figure at court was the Receptionist of the Secretariat (zhongshu tongshi sheren), a relatively low-ranking post held, during this time, mostly by hanmen. Concerning this post, a man of the prestigious Langye Wang lineage, who held one of the honorary Three Dukes titles said "Though I am of lofty station, how could my power rival that of Duke Ru?" §Ú Áö ¦³ ¤j ¦ì ¡A Åv ±H °Z ¤Î ¯ø ¤½ , a reference to Ru Faliang, a man of humble background who held the Receptionist post.⁽⁸¹⁾ Ru had earlier held a number of Document Clerk (dian qian) posts. Functioning in the headquarters of princes and Provincial Inspectors in the provinces outside of the capital, these relatively lowly posts had also developed as real centers of central administrative power, keeping track in particular of the local armies.⁽⁸²⁾ According to Yan Zhitui, the "great clans" "resent that Liang Wudi and his sons love the little men and keep the gentlemen at a distance".⁽⁸³⁾

It was not, of course, simply soldiers and administrators who came up from the "humble" classes. So did poets. Shen Yue came from a lineage of farmers -- "raising mulberries" -- who from the late Han had developed a tradition as fighting men. Some were unable to read and write.⁽⁸⁴⁾ At about the same time that Liu Yu, the founder of the Song, clawed his way to power, Tao Qian, another man of hanmen origin, turned away from it, rejecting the privilege of the state to determine hierarchy and withdrawing to the farm. While men like Confucius or Dong Zhongshu can forgo the labor of the field, can, that is, live off the state, farming is an acceptable alternative for those closer to the earth, living within a "lesser unity," apart from the state, the court. We see this anarchist streak in Peach Blossom Spring, and in a phrase from the poem "Drinking Alone": "in my true nature all differences" -- perhaps we might change this to "hierarchies" -- "are abolished." ¥ô ¯u µL ©Ò ¥ý .
 

RECREATING THE CENTER

In the early medieval age there were a variety of efforts to recreate the center, to move from "lesser unity" back to some sort of "Greater Unity." We see this in realms of the imagination, in poems and in collections of poems. We see it in at least certain tendencies of religion, in the unifying features of Buddhism, or of Daoism as it is described in Bokenkamp's article.⁽⁸⁵⁾ Needless to say, we see it in the realm of realpolitik as well, in the arena of warfare, and in efforts to transform victory on the field into the creation of a stable, enduring political regime. These tendencies reached a new level of intensity in the late fifth century, under the Southern Qi, which saw the great growth of Jiankang expressed in the Yongming literature. These changes in the south certainly influenced Yuan Hong's decision to move his capital from the Land of Dai down to Luoyang.

The growth of the court in the fifth century was spurred by broad changes in social topography. The situation, particularly in the north, had stabilized, with a slowing of the tempo of war. When fighting did occur, it was generally on a larger scale -- between rather than within states, with more central direction.

With this stabilization came economic development. Luoyang, which had previously been virtually a ruin, became in a decade or two a rich city: "There were two wards...where rich men lived. Within a stretch of ten li (about 3 miles), residents for the most part were artisans, merchants, and tradesmen. Wealthy families lived in a nearby neighborhood. Storied buildings, set with double doors and open screens, faced each other... Slaves and maid-servants wore brocades and embroidered articles of gold and silver, and were fed with the five flavors and rarities." The country being rich, "state coffers and treasuries were inundated. As a result, countless coins and silks were stored exposed in the galleries. When the empress dowager bestowed on various officials bolts of silk, the latter bore away as many as they wanted. The court officials carried away as much as their physical strength permitted." Drawing on the court, while also "enjoying the riches [yielded by] mountains and seas, and living on the wealth [reaped from] rivers and forests," members of the Luoyang elite competed "among themselves in building gardens and residences and showed off against each other. There were imposing gates and spacious rooms, cavernous houses and joined suites, lofty buildings that generated breezes and storied structures where mist arose." At his manse, the prince Yuan Chen is said to have "gathered members of the royal household, and displayed all his treasures [for them]: more than one hundred gold vessels and silver jars, about the same amount of [gold or silver] bowls, footed containers, plates and boxes. Among other drinking vessels were several scores of quartz bowls, agate cups, glass bowls, ruby goblets -- such marvelous craftsmanship was not to be found in China. All came from the Western Regions."⁽⁸⁶⁾

Although the cups and bowls of the southern courts cannot have been any finer than this, Liu Shufen makes clear that commercial development had reached an even higher pitch in the south.⁽⁸⁷⁾ At the center of this lay Jiankang, the center of an extensive network of rivers and canals that converged on the lower Yangtze. The swarms of vessels that traveled along these watery highways could pull up to the capital by leaving the Yangtze and sailing a short distance east, up the Qinhuai River. Running south of the city, the Qinhuai was crossed just below it by the great Vermillion Sparrow pontoon bridge (Zhuque fuhang), some fifty feet wide and more than four hundred feet long.⁽⁸⁸⁾ At certain set times the central portions of the floating bridge would be opened up, to allow vessels to pass up and down the river. Apart from this, it served as a dense concourse allowing people to cross the Qinhuai, then move north through the rich suburbs along an avenue that led to the Xuanyang Gate, the impressive-looking central southern portal of the city's outer wall, decorated with carvings of tigers and dragons.⁽⁸⁹⁾ In the time of Xiao Yan, the addition of yet another rampart brought to three the number of stout walls that surrounded the inner, or so-called "terraced city" (taicheng), protecting it from the outer city -- often pocked by the private armies of powerful men⁽⁹⁰⁾ -- as well as that which lay beyond.⁽⁹¹⁾

With a dense population within the walls, and surrounded by thriving suburbs, Jiankang was a city of perhaps a million people, littered with "rows and rows of markets," selling everything from livestock and oysters to silk and salt. Some here were rich -- densely concentrated along the northern banks of the Qinhuai were the estates of the wealthy, marked by renowned gardens featuring artificially constructed hillocks and streams, interspersed with trees putting forth fruits and flowers, as described in Shen Yue's "Poetic Essay on Living in the Suburbs":⁽⁹²⁾

The evening trees are opening their flowers,

Early blooms have shed their petals.

Now, with trees in different groves, the pinks and purples are separate,

Then, on a sudden gust of wind, the reds and purples fuse...

From these elegant suburban gardens came forth at least a few upper-class toughs, such as the "Four Vicious Ones" (sixiong) mentioned in Liu Shufen's chapter, a gang including the prince Xiao Zhengde, which moved through an urban environment "diverse and mobile," containing rich merchants and common peddlers, prostitutes and thugs.

There are various, well-known reasons for the particularly rapid growth of the southern economy.⁽⁹³⁾ If not entirely a frontier, the Yangtze region had more that could profitably be opened up. These potentials were enormously fostered by the riverine network of the area, which allowed for far more efficient transportation than the camel or ox-cart.⁽⁹⁴⁾ Within this network, bridges, fords and other easily controllable passing points played a particularly interesting role, allowing Jiankang to function, in large part at least, less as an administrator of the output of the earth than as a "customs union." Jiankang had developed a far more complex commercial tax system than under Wei, with market taxes, sales taxes and customs duties.⁽⁹⁵⁾

The rise of commericial activity that we see in the Yangtze region at this time can certainly be taken as a prelude to the great commercial revolution of the Song dynasty of the Zhao family. It must be remembered, however, that the potential was yet to be fully realized. If nothing else, in Jiankang, as in Luoyang, we see a fundamentally parasitic relation between the trader and the court, pervasive corruption and exploitation. In other ways, however, the southern court controlled commerce less tightly, as Liu points out in comparing the "ward system" in the north with the situation in the southern cities, where commercial ventures were not restricted to specific districts, and probably not to curfew, either. Jiankang also exerted a less powerful central hold over the constituent parts of the state, exercising an uneasy control over a string of pearls -- Guiji, Jiankang, Jiangling -- which in a world of regionalism and fluid wealth it bound only loosely together. In the south, there was not only the emperor's court at Jiankang -- attempting to bind together the whole -- but also local courts of princes, which attempted to integrate regions and to build local power. With varying degrees of success, the northern courts tried more consistently to exert a stronger central control over their territories.

Differences clearly do exist between the northern and southern regimes. But looking at this world from a broader point of view, what we see is a united constellation of rival stars, rival centers of politics cum culture, "courts," which reacted to each other -- fought each other -- but in ways subtle and not so subtle shared a great deal in common and so were constantly responding to each other. Though with different foci and emphases, all the courts -- even poor Chang'an, where, said the poet Yu Xin, men "bray like donkeys" -- were involved in a broad set of shared cultural activities: writing poetry, tinkering with ritual, exploring the realm of belief. As Knechtges points out, rhapsodies (fu) on the Han capitals were drawn on to build palaces at the great rival centers at Jiankang, Luoyang, Ye.⁽⁹⁶⁾

These courts shared something else as well, something equally important. All were the creation of men who -- in one way or another -- had come from the edge. And to recreate the center, they needed to tame, to "civilize," the beasts that had brought them there; and, in fact, needed to tame and civilize themselves.⁽⁹⁷⁾

Forces of fighting men take shape in many forms. The Han system of universal conscription -- continuing the Qin pattern -- created a certain stability. Men were, theoretically at least, called up for a limited time and then returned to their village, at times with a symbolic send-off by the emperor.⁽⁹⁸⁾ In the early medieval period, however, the troops were no longer kept down on the farm. This was a situation imposed upon the military households. The increasing decay of this institution, led to the formation of units of volunteers, forces that were both more effective in battle but almost difficult to control and difficult to disband. One solution to such difficulties was the domestication of the warriors. When the stick proved insufficient, generals who had risen from the ranks to become the "one man" used a carrot of wen, of civilization.

The development of the court communities was a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. It would be simplistic to suggest that they were simply self-conscious, top-down processes; if they were, in part, programs laid down by one individual -- by a Yuan Hong, or Xiao Yan -- they were more than that as well. The growth of the court must also be viewed from those at the edge. By the late fifth century, borders had become more sharply defined; disappearing were the porous frontier zones where local groups had long maintained autonomy by playing off the major powers. With the growing wealth of the great metropolises -- dependent in large part, at least, on commercial activity -- there would be a relative decline in the wealth of local elites, who depended on fixed holdings. This would only increase the tendency to be drawn towards the wealth and brilliance of the center. These sorts of processes have taken place in many societies, in different forms, at different rates of development. What is extraordinary, comparing China with the situation in Europe, is the way in which the more highly developed economies of the former, and the courts' ability to siphon this wealth into the metropolis, led to a much more rapid process of construction of the court. This is, of course, a fundamental difference between "medieval" in China and in northern Europe.

In Yuan Hong's move of the Wei capital from Dai to Luoyang, we see an effort physically to escape from the core zone of military recruitment and so to raise himself above the military; to separate himself, and his courtiers, from the troops; to escape the "nation" and become the centerpiece of an empire. In the southlands, we see a tension between social categories; between the shi, or "gentleman," and the hanmen. When looking at the development of the court in southern China, we must remember that we see this world primarily from the point of view of the center, and more than that, through the eyes of the shi, the "gentleman"; or, if not quite that, at least through the eyes of men who wished to be a shi. To accept this view alone would be rather like viewing the history of Boston only from the perspective of its brahmins; hanmen were the active, vital force of that society -- its rulers, its generals, and most of its poets as well. Needless to say, they could also be a very destructive force.

A few, at least, of the prestigious Eastern Jin clans lingered on, but in a fundamental sense they were window-dressing, props upon a stage.⁽⁹⁹⁾ Whether it was acknowledged or not, they existed on the basis of a reciprocally dependent relationship with the court: the shi depended on the throne for substantive and abstract benefits; while the throne depended on the shi, not so much for what they could do, but what they represented -- an ideal that could be held up to tame the upcoming hanmen, to impart order to a volatile world. Thus, in some fundamental sense, both shi and hanmen were categories defined from the center. In the later Southern Dynasties, at least, the distinction was maintained as a way of forcing -- or attempting to force -- the hanmen to go through a rite of passage which would make him a tamer, more civilized creature; one who might, perhaps, be able to marry the daughter of a shi (or, as we shall see in the case of Hou Jing, not).

Having raised above the issue of dichotomy, it must be acknowledge here that one of the most fundamental of the dichotomies of the Chinese world is that between wen and wu. Wen is, as Knechtges puts it in his chapter in this volume, "a very complex term in the Chinese tradition." Referring originally to "marking" or "pattern" on bird or beast, embroidered upon a piece of clothing or tattooed onto human flesh, it was greatly expanded to point in a great variety of contexts to ordered, hierarchical pattern. To the patterns of the cosmos as a whole; to the patterns created particularly by humans -- culture, writing, and the outflow of writing, literature; to "the virtues of peace and civilization as opposed to the values of war." Referring to "war," wu more broadly represented the "other", the "inferior", the raw, disordered stuff that produces disorder. It was a label placed upon the "barbarian," as we see in the term rong, which meant both "army" and "western barbarian." This dichotomy between wen and wu can be extended to a whole series of relationships: civilized vs. uncivilized, order vs. disorder, center vs. edge -- and shi vs. hanmen.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ The choice for the hanmen was either to jump the hurdle to become a courtier -- imbued with wen, a creature of the burgeoning center; or to be rough, "barbaric" warrior, a man of the edge. By the fifth century, as Cutter has pointed out in his chapter, one's nature -- what he is in and of himself -- no longer suffices. He must have nurture as well, must study texts and take examinations, in the process imitating and internalizing certain fundamental patterns. In the process, the individual -- the fighting man -- is drawn from the field of naked force into a new arena of shared, restrained activity. And within this arena, they will also always remain insecure, aware of shared judgement.

These efforts to "civilize" and "domesticate" the fighting man took place in a variety of arenas in the early medieval courts. One was ritual, an expression of "strong antiquarian interests," which sought to uphold "classical norms" (dian) and complained, as did Pei Ziye in his "Treatise on Insect-Carving," that modern poets "do not fit their compositions to the pipes and strings, nor do they 'stop with rites and propriety.'"⁽¹⁰¹⁾ This line of thought was particularly important in the north, as we see in Yang Yuanshen's sputtering at the absence of li in Jiankang. It was at Chang'an that we see these concerns taken to their extreme in the Zhouli reforms.

Another line of development lay in the creation of new realms of "polite" competition, especially poetry, which in this age reached new heights, particularly in the south. Developments of this sort are extremely complex cultural phenomena. Here we will confine ourselves to look at this activity in the political realm. "Whenever anyone was favored with an imperial audience, the emperor immediately commanded all of his courtiers to recite poems. Those who wrote the best pieces were presented with gold and silk".⁽¹⁰²⁾ The carrot here was reward for fulfilling the group's aims; the stick was opprobrium for "being a hanmen."

The antiquarian Liu Xie took this attitude -- this effort to create a great dance, in which positions are known and accepted -- a step further in his comments that "the function of literature is actually a branching out from the classics...It is the means by which the relationship between ruler and subject brilliantly shines forth, and the way in which the relationship between military and the state is made clearly manifest."⁽¹⁰³⁾ In Xiao Yan's heir apparent, Xiao Tong, we see a more moderate stance. The very name of the fellow, Tong ²Î , is intriguing by reason of its meaning, "uniting," which appears in various cognate forms in reign titles in both north and south during the sixth century (regarding which, see the Zhouli chapter). Pursuing his own style of "uniting," Tong:⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

invited and received talented and learned scholars, and he was untiring in his appreciation and admiration for them...At this time, the Eastern Palace had some 30,000 juan of books, and famous men of talent gathered together here. Such a flourishing of literature and scholarship (wenxue) had not been seen since the Jin and Song.

Possessing a certain aura, this huge collection of scrolls was like a great magnet, drawing to it a certain kind of man. One thinks immediately of famous stories of the Tang emperor, Taizong, of the Qing emperor, Qianlong.

But it is, of course, in his anthology -- his "garden" -- that Xiao Tong takes the effort to create harmonious union to its greatest height. Such anthologies had begun with Cao Pei, but appear in especially large numbers during the Liang period.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ According to Knechtges,⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ Xiao was concerned "with the lack of order in the literary tradition, and especially in the collections that had been compiled up to his time." This ordering is seen in the very arrangement of the collection, which begins with rhapsodies built around imperial themes: capitals, sacrifices, ceremonial plowing of the sacred field and hunting. Liu Xie said of these categories, "all [are for the purpose of] 'governing the state and managing the outer divisions'" Åé °ê ¸g ³¥ , drawing his quote from the opening lines of Zhouli.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾

The difficulty with domesticating the warrior is, of course, that once the hanmen has been pulled up onto the platform of wen, he may not be much use in the realm of realpolitik. Referring inter alia to Shen Yue, heir to a long line of warriors, the Southern Qi "Martial Emperor" (Wudi) voiced his contempt thusly: "the scholar-type are unable to run the country; all they do is read a lot of books... Shen Yue, Wang Rong, those hundreds of men -- what use are they?"⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ It is well known that in Xiao Tong there was little of the fighting man; he died young, in fact, after falling from his boat into the garden pond behind his palace. Those who remained behind, on the other hand, at the limites of the world of war, remained a potent and unpredictable threat. As we shall see below, many of Xiao Tong's brothers were quite eager to fight. The question was, who they wished to kill, and for what ends; little is seen of any deep-seated sense of the self as a cooperative participant in a "great enterprise."

The centerpiece of the enterprise, such as it existed, was of course Jiankang, which had for centuries been the most stable of the great early medieval courts. Its period of splendor ended with the well-known story of a fellow named Hou Jing -- a man from the north, a liminal figure -- in whom are wrapped up many of the issues we have examined up to this point: the Great Dichotomy, the role of the hanmen, the significance of war.
 

WHO, AND WHAT, WAS HOU JING?

This interloper from the north is a shadowy figure, not for any particular reason in and of himself but because, unlike Gao Huan or Yuwen Tai, he never succeeded in establishing a stable regime and thus was never able to put in place for himself a stable of history-writers.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ From what we do know of him, he was a man descended from a non-Chinese stock called the Jie, a rather heterogeneous category of groups that had originally been subject to the Xiongnu, which lived scattered through Hebei, Shanxi, and Shaanxi, and were self-consciously distinct from the dominant Särbi.⁽¹¹⁰⁾ It is not clear where Hou Jing's family originally came from. His biography in Liangshu states that it was Shuofang (near mod. Zizhang, in Shaanxi), "or perhaps" Yanmen (near mod. Daixian, Shanxi, and just north of Xiurong, the home base of Erzhu Rong, a dominant figure in the early stages of the civil war that brought Northern Wei down).⁽¹¹¹⁾ Hou himself may not even have known with any clarity. Later in his life, when down in Jiankang he attempted to don the garb of an emperor, Hou was asked by his Chinese scribe, Wang Wei, for the last seven generations of his forebears for the ancestral hall. To the snickers of the onlookers, he admitted that he knew only the name of his father, Biao. A companion put forth the name of Hou's grandfather, Yiyuzhou.⁽¹¹²⁾ Hereupon, the scribe concocted a geneaology, pasting in men with the surname Hou from the Han and Jin periods.

Whatever the homeland of the family (or, more properly, of course, families) from which he sprang, Hou Jing himself was born to Biao up in the Northern Wei garrison of Huaishuo, and, whatever his ethnic background, it was this militarized, Särbi-dominated zone that shaped his attitudes and actions in the world.⁽¹¹³⁾ Though "selected as a garrison soldier for the Northern Garrisons" ¥H ¿ï ¬° ¥_ Âí ¦§ §L, Hou walked with a limp, having one leg shorter than the other, and was never a skilled rider or archer.⁽¹¹⁴⁾ His forte would always be wily resourcefulness. In Huaishuo, Hou became connected with another serviceman, a Särbi named Gao Huan.⁽¹¹⁵⁾ During the rebellion of the garrisons that broke out in 523 and eventually brought Luoyang down, Hou Jing became connected at first with fellow Jie, the Erzhu of Xiurong.⁽¹¹⁶⁾ In time, however, he jumped ship to ally himself with Gao, who was to become the military dictator of the emerging Eastern Wei regime.⁽¹¹⁷⁾

Under Gao Huan, Hou Jing emerged as viceroy of a broad swath of Eastern Wei's southern marches, lying between the Yellow and the Huai rivers, and commanded an army of 100,000 men. He was a powerful, even threatening, element within the regime.⁽¹¹⁸⁾ While Gao Huan was able to keep his comrade in check, the death of Gao the elder, in the first month of 547, led to an immediate split between Hou Jing and Gao the younger, whom Hou had contemptuously referred to as "that Särbi laddie" ÂA ¨õ ¤p ¨à .⁽¹¹⁹⁾ With broad support from entrenched local powers, Hou Jing now began looking for ways to preserve the region's autonomy under his authority.⁽¹²⁰⁾ He turned first to Western Wei, but when it became clear that Chang'an wished only to snatch the territories itself, Hou Jing turned south, to receive support from Jiankang.⁽¹²¹⁾

This he received. Xiao Yan's decision was opposed by many of his advisors and has subsequently been much-criticized. It is clear, however, that it was only a continuation of long-standing program of attempting to manipulate power struggles in the northern regimes for his own ends. Conferring his own vice-regal titles upon Hou Jing, the Liang emperor then sent his nephew, Xiao Yuanming north with an army, in an effort to assert direct control over Wei's Xuzhou (located in southern Shandong).⁽¹²²⁾ The affair was a disaster. Routed and captured by the Eastern Wei forces, Xiao Yuanming was taken first to the court of the Eastern Wei puppet at Ye, then up to the military center of Jinyang. Treated with great courtesy there, he was asked to inform his good uncle that a mistake had been made.⁽¹²³⁾ Thereupon Hou Jing consolidated his forces -- which still consisted of several tens of thousands of men -- and moved them south towards the Huai River. During a long standoff with the Eastern Wei troops, Hou Jing attempted to prop up southern support by asking for a refugee Yuan prince, who he would lead north to place on the (Eastern) Wei throne, in a manner resembling the Yuan Hao incident, two decades before.⁽¹²⁴⁾ Finally, however, with food running out and Hou's following of northerners (bei ren) reluctant to cross the Huai south,⁽¹²⁵⁾ the army began to crumble (as it earlier had for Yang Kan).⁽¹²⁶⁾ What followed was a rout. With just a few close comrades, Hou Jing fled across the Huai into Liang territory. Eventually, he was able to put back together a small force of 800 cavalry and footmen.

Hou Jing's entrance into Liang was thus something like that of Yuwen Tai, who rode into the unknown lands of the Wei River valley with only a slightly larger military force. Unlike the founder of the new Chang'an, the efforts of Hou Jing did not in the end succeed. Still, Hou Jing did show something of Yuwen Tai's talent for cobbling together military forces and political coalitions. As the Eastern Wei Viceroy of Henan, he had already revealed an ability to build support among parochial lordlings. Similar efforts payed off in the southern territories, as he used the backing of local Liang officials to carve out a stronghold for himself at the town of Shouchun (the mod. Shouxian, north of Hefei, in Anhui).⁽¹²⁷⁾ Though the core of his force consisted of non-Chinese from the north, at Shouchun Hou Jing began the process of building around this an army of southerners, as he "recruited all of the inhabitants of the subordinate towns as his army troops" ÄÝ «° ©~ ¥Á ¡A ±x ¥l ¶Ò ¬° ­x ¤h , for whom he suspended commercial and land taxes, a familiar practice at the beginning of new dynasties.⁽¹²⁸⁾

Initially, at least, Hou Jing seemed to be regrouping in Shouchun, with the intention of pushing back across the Huai. And for a time, the Liang throne was willing to support Hou Jing -- giving his followers arms and uniforms -- seeking to use him as a buffer against Eastern Wei attempts to follow up their victories by pushing down into Liang territories.⁽¹²⁹⁾ Quite soon, however, Jiankang grew tired of the situation and resumed negotiations with Eastern Wei, with which it had maintained cordial relations for many years. The porous nature of the southern court is revealed in these activities: while Jiankang and Ye bargained over what to do with him, the renegade received a constant stream of intelligence on the unfolding situation.

Even more ominously for Jiankang, it was also around this time that Hou Jing established a secret alliance with the Liang prince, Xiao Zhengde. A nephew of the emperor, Zhengde had originally been taken as his heir, before Xiao Yan had sired a son of his own. When eventually put aside, the nephew felt bitter resentment. In 525 he fled north to Luoyang, but was not well thought of at the Wei court and received offish treatment. A year later Zhengde fled back to beg his uncle's forgiveness. In return, he was restored to his princely title and given a generalship.⁽¹³⁰⁾ A member of the so-called "four vicious ones" gang, the imperial nephew then began to recruit absconders ©Û »E ¤` ©R into a personal fighting force in the capital. Knowing of his rebellious intent, Hou Jing now sent Zhengde a secret communication (in Chinese, of course) in which he stated that the emperor was old, his officials corrupt and conniving, and the regime soon doomed; and further, that Zhengde had been insulted by being deprived the position of heir and that all the "righteous" felt pain for him. Hou went on to make the following, very interesting assertion: "Although not a fighting man, Jing truly wishes to rouse himself [on your behalf] ´º Áö ¤£ ªZ ¡A ¹ê «ä ¦Û ¾Ä ." "Heaven," sighed the Liang prince, "has bestowed him upon me."⁽¹³¹⁾

In the 10th month of 548, seeing his position in Shouchun untenable, Hou Jing suddenly led his small army down to the Yangtze, where he seized a town on the north bank (near mod. Hexian, Anhui). As so many others had done, and would do, the Liang official in charge of the place jumped ship and persuaded his new master to cross the Yangtze immediately, before a defense could be put in place that would prevent landing on the southern shore.⁽¹³²⁾ Xiao Zhengde now sent out several dozens of large ships -- supposedly to gather firewood -- which surreptitiously carried Hou Jing's troops to the southern banks of the Yangtze, at a point some 30 miles southwest of Jiankang (near the mod. town of Maanshan).

The reaction of the Jiankang court had heretofore been quite relaxed. Zhu Yi, a hanmen who was the dominant statesman in Jiankang at this time, had shrugged off Hou Jing, saying "he has with him but a few hundred caitiffs; what can he do?" And how could they cross the Yangtze?⁽¹³³⁾ Unknown to the capital, the small force of 800 which Hou had led originally across the Huai had already grown ten times larger.⁽¹³⁴⁾

Hou's force would continue to grow with extraordinary rapidity in the southlands as he led it to bang on the gates of Jiankang. Once again he received assistance from Xiao Zhengde, who had been given the task of defending the great Xuanyang Gate. As the defenders moved to dismantle the Vermillion Sparrow pontoon bridge, the Liang prince sought delay, arguing that to do so would spread panic in the populace. Immediately thereafter, Hou Jing's army appeared on the southern banks of the Qinhuai. Yu Xin, more famous as a poet than an officer of the corps, was then sent to lead a contingent to dismantle the floating bridge. He had just begun to pull back the first of the great barges, however, when Hou Jing's men drew close enough for the poet to see their iron masks. Yu Xin thereupon retreated to the defense portal at the northern end of the bridge, where he is said to have stood sucking on a piece of sugarcane. When an arrow struck the gate right next to him, Yu dropped his snack, abandoned his troopers and fled.⁽¹³⁵⁾ The pontoon bridge was closed up again by a follower of Zhengde. With the Liang prince, Hou Jing now marched his men through the rich suburbs north of the bridge, past the tigers and dragons of the Xuanyang Gate, and into the outer precincts of Jiankang.

Packed with tens of thousands of people and surrounded by three walls, the inner, imperial precincts were, however, much more difficult to break into.⁽¹³⁶⁾ It would take months, from the tenth month of the second year of Great Clarity (Taiqing) until the third month of the third year of that reign period. Furthermore, the encirclers were soon encircled in turn by a so-called relief army, composed of forces led by various princes and local officials. For months, however, they would not act, but only watched the unfolding spectacle. During this time, Hou Jing's army continued to grow, drawing in the disaffected, the discontented, the ambitious in a manner reminiscent, perhaps, of the rebellion of Sun En, a century and a half before. Those who flocked to Hou Jing included the high and mighty: Liang princes, expatriate princes of the Wei, as well as fellows such as Xiahou Kui. Kui's father had served Liang as governor of Yuzhou (seat at mod. Shouxian, Anhui), a region beset by banditry, which he had quelled by building a personal army of ten thousand men. Inheriting Xiahou the Elder's army, Kui became a local power. He was later inducted into the force led north by Xiao Yuanming. After Yuanming's disastrous defeat, Xiahou Kui became an aide to Hou Jing, dropping the "xia" from his venerable name to become a kinsman of his new master.⁽¹³⁷⁾ The new Hou Kui, a man of a quite eminent southern family, was in the vanguard of the interloper's army as it entered Jiankang. It is said that he then led his personal force in a brutal looting of Jiankang's western suburbs. Among his prizes were four ravishing concubines of his former lord, Xiao Yuanming, who was at the time still a prisoner in the north.

Lower, restive, elements of Liang society were drawn to the rebel camp as well.⁽¹³⁸⁾ In one famous incident during the siege of the inner city, a tatooed slave who had heretofore belonged to Zhu Yi managed to vault the walls and come over to Hou Jing. Lavishing upon the fellow titles and the properties of his former master, Hou Jing then placed him before the walls, where he bellowed to Zhu Yi that "Only after serving for fifty years did you receive the office of Capital Commandant (zhong ling jun); I've just begun serving Prince Hou and am already Unequalled in Honor (yi tong sansi)."⁽¹³⁹⁾ This had its intended effect: within a few days, thousands of slaves had fled the city to Hou Jing's camp. Having received both freedom and magnanimity, they would (for a time at least) be quite willing to give up their lives for Hou Jing's cause. In the fifth month of 549, two months after he had finally taken the inner city, Hou Jing expanded this effort, issuing a decree "that in all the provinces, northerners (bei ren) who are now slaves, with their wives and children, can all be freed" ½Ñ ¦{ ¨£ ¦b ¥_ ¤H ¬° ¥£ ±A ªÌ ¡A ¨Ã ¤Î ©d ¨à ¡A ±x ¥i ­ì ©ñ .These are said to have numbered in the tens of thousands.⁽¹⁴⁰⁾

During the course of the siege, Hou Jing himself made speeches in which he sought to inflame class tension:⁽¹⁴¹⁾

In recent years, powerful favorites have held sway over Liang, exploiting the common people so as to satisfy their own desires. If (you think) what I say is not true, look gentlemen, at what exists today: the ponds and gardens of the imperial family, the mansions of the lords, the temples and pagodas of the monks and nuns. And (look at) all the officials holding office, with one hundred chambers full of concubines, with servants numbering in the thousands. They do not till, they do not weave. Their brocaded apparel, their fine delicacies -- if these things are not wrenched from the people, where do they get them?
At another point, Hou said "those within the city are not without food; all they lack is soy sauce."⁽¹⁴²⁾

But, in fact, those within the city were starving, resorting, our texts claim, to cannibalism. And the besiegers were becoming hungry as well. Though they still had not moved against Hou Jing, the relief forces that had circled the encirclers blocked the way to nearby granaries. In the early stages of the siege, Hou Jing is said to have imposed a tight discipline on his men. ("Hou" Kui seems to have been an exception; perhaps he was out of sight up in the western suburbs.) Over time, however, as they grew hungry and discontented, the men's "spirits sapped away" ¤H ¤ß Â÷ ªý .⁽¹⁴³⁾ Hou now reversed his orders, and set them free on a looting spree -- centered on the households of the rich and powerful -- that "left the streets blocked with corpses."

The inner city finally fell on the first day of the third month -- April 24 -- of 549. As the relief armies slowly melted away, Hou Jing now pushed Zhengde aside, inserting himself as power behind the throne of the aged emperor (replicating the roles of Yuwen Tai, Gao Huan, and long before, Cao Cao). In a famous encounter with Xiao Yan -- and it must be remembered that we hear of this from a highly slanted angle -- Hou Jing was asked "you, sir, are a man of what province, that you have had the courage to come here? Are your wife and children still in the north?" ­ë ¦ó ¦{ ¤H ¡A ¦Ó ´± ¦Ü ¦¹ ¡C ©d ¤l µS ¦b ¥_ ¨¸ ⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ Xiao Yan knew, no doubt, that Hou Jing's family had already been put to death by "the Särbi laddie." When Hou would not answer, an aide informed the southern monarch of this, adding that "it is only this solitary individual who gives himself over to Your Majesty" °ß ¥H ¤@ ¨­ Âk °¡ ¤U . Hou Jing did muster up the courage to answer the next question: "When you first crossed the Yangtze how many men did you have?" "One thousand," Hou Jing replied. "When you laid seige to Taicheng, how many?" To which Hou Jing replied, "One hundred thousand." "How many do you have now?" "Within all the lands, there are none who I do not possess" ²v ¤g ¤§ ¤º ¡A ²ö «D ¤v ¦³ .

Hou Jing's bestowal of self upon Xiao Yan had, of course, been a debacle for the House of Liang. Two months after the city's fall, Xiao Yan died, possibly starved to death by his captor, perhaps simply finding the inglorious end of a long life. Shortly after his uncle's demise, Zhengde turned on the one who Heaven had bestowed upon him and was put to death. For two years, Hou Jing kept Liang puppets, and married a Liang princess. At the same time, he undermined the Liang throne by enfeoffing Yuan expatriates as princes of the realm.⁽¹⁴⁵⁾

In the eleventh month of 551, however, he finally took for himself the title huangdi, as lord of a regime he chose to call the "Han." He did not last long himself. Hou Jing had never controlled anything but a part of the Liang lands roughly equivalent to the modern provinces of Anhui and Jiangsu.⁽¹⁴⁶⁾ Hou assumed the imperial title in the midst of growing defections, including that of one of the scions of the Yuan line, who had first jumped ship to Hou Jing and then jumped back against him.⁽¹⁴⁷⁾ His army had grown very quickly, but the "flock of crows" ¯Q ¦X ¤§ ²³ -- as it had been pointedly described by the defender, Yang Kan -- would disperse with equal rapidity.⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ In early 552, the prince Xiao Yi, who wished to take the throne for himself, sent an army from Jiangling east to the capital. Hereupon, Hou Jing recounted to his scribe, Wang Wei, the great military deeds he had performed first in the northlands and then in the south. But "as for the situation on this day, I fear it is Heaven that has swept me away." Sighing, he bade farewell to the great stone towers of Jiankang and then fled east with but one hundred horsemen, and with two sons strapped into a leather bag over his saddle.⁽¹⁴⁹⁾ The boys were eventually given a mercy killing, cast into the sea as Hou Jing fled to an island off the coast.⁽¹⁵⁰⁾ Here he was captured and killed. His body was sent back to Jiankang, where it was said to have been devoured in the marketplace; his head was passed on to Jiangling. Liang did not, however, recover. Xiao Yi ruled, in Jiangling, from 552 until 554, when the city fell to Western Wei armies. In 557 the southern general Chen Baxian -- who had played an important role in the defeat of Hou Jing -- finally established a new regime, bearing his own surname. But the southlands had been crippled. The western territories that had, from Jin through Liang, been ruled from Jiankang were lost: Sichuan was now directly under Chang'an's control; Jiangling was the seat of a Western Wei puppet regime, the so-called Western Liang, which would cease to exist in Sui times.⁽¹⁵¹⁾

It is easy to criticize Xiao Yan, as he criticized himself, when upon hearing that Hou Jing's troops had finally breached the walls, he resignedly sighed that "It was I who won Jiankang; it is I who have lost it. What more do I have to grumble about?"⁽¹⁵²⁾ But perhaps he had done his best, in a world of limited possibilities.

The Liang was one of a series of Jiankang regimes built around loose military conglomerations; a larger sense of enduring community did not exist on any wide scale. We see this, quite shockingly, in Xiao Zhengde. We see it in a more passive way in the Liang princes -- sons of Xiao Yan -- who watched the unfolding of the debacle, and nervously watched each other, from the circle of reinforcement troops. Most of these troops were volunteers, adventurers, who had been recruited by the prince, and to whom they gave their primary allegiance -- such as it existed.⁽¹⁵³⁾ We see this also in a figure such as Yang Kan (mentioned above in connection with Xiao Baoyin). Yang was one of the few significant loyalists portrayed in the defense of Jiankang. It is interesting to note, however, that when Xiao Yan offered large sums of silk and precious metals to reward Yang's thousand horsemen, their commander chose to decline the offer: "the more than thousand private troops (buqu), he would all reward himself."⁽¹⁵⁴⁾ In the southlands, armies -- quite effective armies -- could be raised. But their leaders -- generals, even the monarch's sons -- could not be relied upon. And Xiao Yan "was weary of using troops" ¹½ ¥Î §L .⁽¹⁵⁵⁾ One way to view the court activities -- the blooming of art that took place in that world, the patronage of Buddhism -- is as an effort simultaneously to demilitarize the kingdom and to create a new sort of community. The effort ultimately failed. Hou Jing's entrance into the Chinese world led, once again, to the formation of standing armies, whose leaders had their own ambitions, whether that be Xiao Yi, or Xiao Zhengde, or Chen Baxian. It was not, however, an effort without logic, in the world of limited possibilities in which it was attempted.

But turning from the southern court, it would be well to look a bit more closely at the interloper himself. After Hou had breached the walls, Xiao Yan asked him "from what province do you come?" Though perhaps meant in narrower terms, this raises a question that is both profound and without a simple answer: "What are you?" Contemporaries referred to the interloper with such subjective and value-laden terms as "petty Hu" ¤p ­J or "fierce Jie" ¤¿ ½~ . In his famous poem, "Lament for the South," Yu Xin used even more fanciful terms, referring to Hou as the "foreign stem from Da Xia" ­J ¬_ ©ó ¤j ®L or "the giant Di" ªø ¨f , and caricaturizing him as "drawing on his strength of ox or sheep, wild by his nomadic nature" ­t ¨ä ¤û ¦Ï ¤§ ¤O ¡A ¤¿ ¨ä ¤ô ¯ó ¤§ ©Ê , despite the fact that whatever the man was, neither he nor his ancestors had for a very long time been in any real sense "nomads."⁽¹⁵⁶⁾ But only in the mind did there exist at this time any clear distinction between "Chinese" and "barbarian." Jie and Särbi and other such groups had been active elements in the Chinese territories for many centuries, dividing, recombining, interacting with many different groups to form a vast mosaic. Among the various elements of this mosaic there are clear differences. But they also shared -- and competed for -- a great deal, in particular for symbols of power and authority, which had long ceased to belong to any one group. To call Hou Jing a "giant barbarian" was not only to define him, but to define oneself as "Chinese", a "true" heir of Han.

It is, at any rate, interesting to note that Hou Jing's biography in Liangshu does not use these demeaning terms at all.⁽¹⁵⁷⁾ Whatever his ethnic origins in the complicated world of early medieval China, Hou's fundamental presence on the stage of history is that of a military adventurer, a soldier of fortune -- an individual moving for his own ends. Coming south with a small body of personal followers -- of which only a minority were of indisputably Jie origin⁽¹⁵⁸⁾ -- Hou Jing had assembled for himself in Liang territory a heterogeneous following, a "flock of crows." While ethnic terms of contempt were doled out upon him, the derogative term most frequently used was zei ¸é , "brigand."⁽¹⁵⁹⁾ This was a term applied to many others, including the Taoist rebel Sun En, who 150 years before had brought down the Eastern Jin, and who had also, in an astonishingly short time, built up a "flock of crows."⁽¹⁶⁰⁾ It was also used by "non-Chinese" such as Yuwen Tai, in whose name, at least, the Särbi Gao Huan was disparaged as a "brigand vassal."⁽¹⁶¹⁾ It is interesting to note that the historian's comments following the Liang shu chapter on Hou Jing place him in a chain of renegades that begins with Yi barbarians that overthrew Xia, and the "dog Rong" ¤ü ¦¥ who pressed in upon the Zhou, but then proceeds with Wang Mang and Dong Zhuo, and for the Jin, the eminent Chinese rebels, Wang Dun and Huan Xuan.⁽¹⁶²⁾

Hou Jing was also refered to by terms referring to social status. Clearly, he was seen as at least the equivalent of a hanmen: a man from the social fringes, who thrust into turbulent times had sought to raise himself from lowly status, and to build his own regime around a newly constructed force of fighting men. Seen from this point of view, we may at least compare him to men such as Yuwen Tai, or Napolean, or for that matter, Xiao Yan himself.

Thus, Hou Jing is called a "child of the hill folk" ¤s ®a ¤p ¨à .⁽¹⁶³⁾ Even more common is the term "peon" ½Ý : Hou Jing is a "crafty peon" ·â ½Ý , a "fierce peon" ¤¿ ½Ý , a "petty peon" ¤p ½Ý and a "rebellious peon" °f ½Ý .⁽¹⁶⁴⁾ "Your majesty has loved an oaf ¤Ç ¤Ò , and cast away an ally," said one official to Xiao Yan, referring to Hou Jing, of course, as the oaf, and to Eastern Wei as the abandoned ally.⁽¹⁶⁵⁾ Perhaps even more striking is an event that occurred shortly after Hou Jing had pushed across the Huai. Moving into Liang territory with his force of 800, Hou passed an unnamed fortress, from the walls of which came a voice mocking him as a "gimpy slave" ¶_ ¥£.⁽¹⁶⁶⁾ Enraged by this, Hou, who did limp, having one leg shorter than the other, forced his way in and killed the mocker, before proceeding on to Shouchun.

It becomes clearer that Hou was a man of many facets, who could be seen out of many lenses, when we look again at the "Lament for the South." In this, Yu Xin refers to the interloper not only metaphorically as a "giant Di," but also as "a garrison soldier from the left side of town"¾[ ¥ª ¦§ ¨ò , an analogy to the peasant Chen She who began the rebellions that brought down the Qin.⁽¹⁶⁷⁾ It is even more interesting to hear echoes of these sneers from Murong Shaozong, the Särbi Eastern Wei general who forced Hou Jing south, then sent a letter telling Xiao Yan that "Hou Jing is a menial, who comes from the lowly classes" «J ´º ¤@ ¤¶ §Ð ¤Ò ¡A ¥X ¦Û ¤Z ½â .⁽¹⁶⁸⁾ Gentlemen of north and south alike expressed irritation and anxiety for this individual by demeaning not his ethnic but his class origins.

It must be kept in mind, however, that while Hou Jing did come from a "lower class," and sought to build his army out of them, in no sense were his actions governed by a fundamental aim of acting on behalf of the downtrodden. In his ache to rise in the world he would employ slave and prince alike. Sui shu relates in its monograph on the Five Phases, that under the Liang Hou Jing's seizure of the throne was presaged by a flood, analyzed according to these words from the Han prognosticator Jing Fang: "great floods come to the capital city; a base man seizes honor" ¤j ¤ô ¦Ü °ê ½â ¤H ±N ¶Q.⁽¹⁶⁹⁾ Our sources do not show Hou Jing arguing that he is "not a barbarian." He does, however, wish to convince the Jiankang Brahmins that he is not a hanmen, or worse yet, a member of a military household. Rage welled up within the man when he was called a slave (worse yet, a "gimpy slave"). Rage appeared again when, still up in Shouchun, he asked the Liang emperor for a daughter of the much-esteemed Wang or Xie lineages (he did not yet dream of taking a princess as his bride). Xiao Yan's response was that "these houses are lofty, not a match for you" ªù °ª «D °¸ . In place of this too-grand a gift, the southern monarch instead offered the newcomer a daughter of the most powerful man in Jiankang, the hanmen Zhu Yi.⁽¹⁷⁰⁾
 

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Thus we see in the "dialogue with the ancients" that served as the cornerstone of this conference both a complexity and a fluidity. The dialogue centered on symbols and ideas derived from authority-laden scripture. But in the vast and complex of early medieval China, these symbols and ideas were claimed by many different figures, for various ends.

Perhaps we need now to put aside for a time over-arching and confining labels, such as "Chinese" or "non-Chinese" or even "Särbi," and follow the path blazed by Jennifer Holmgren and Audrey Spiro, turning from the mosaic as a whole to particular constituent parts of that mosaic. Textual fragments describing local communities are scarce for this time. But by incorporating the written text with the archaeologist's find, the known spectrum of human possibilities with the physical lay of the land, we will be able to develop a clearer sense of how in this age, on the ground, groups of people acted and intertwined, took shape and dissolved. In the process we may, perhaps, shed some of the caricaturizing labels that have hidden as much as they have revealed.

In this connection, we will need to further hone our understanding of continuity in these communities, of deep structures of thought, action and expectation that were inculcated in the mind of a child within household and village. This sense of enduring tradition, on the most basic level, is important. But this was also an age of change, change that was, at certain times at least, of dizzying rapidity, in a society of enormous fluidity. "Solitary individuals" found themselves in new places. What possibilities were presented to such a person? What choices did they make?⁽¹⁷¹⁾ And to reconcile the arena of the individual with that of the community, how did such changes took place incrementally, from generation to generation? To pursue such questions, building on the fine work within this volume, will only add still greater depth to our understanding of that scanty collection of individuals put forth by chroniclers as symbols of the age. Because, of course, such people never stand alone.

1. A passage borrowed from Yeats' "Second Coming": "Turning and turning in the widening gyre, The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..."

2. See, for example, Charles Holcombe, In the Shadow of the Han: Literati Thought and Society at the Beginning of the Southern Dynasties (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1994), pp. 3-4.

3. See David Knechtges' article in this volume, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms," p. (1).

4. For an overview of these changes, see Patricia Ebrey, "The Economic and Social History of Later Han," in Cambridge History of China, Vol. I, The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C.-A.D. 220 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 608-648.

5. See Donald Holzman's article in this volume.

6. See discussion of these matters in Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1989).

7. The term "Xiongnu" has a certain complexity. In a narrow sense, it does refer to a particular ethno-linguistic group: see the comments by E. G. Pulleyblank, "The Chinese and their Neighbors in Prehistoric and Early Historic Times," in The Origins of Chinese Civilization, ed. David N. Keightley (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1983), pp. 449-52. The term was, however, consistently applied to the confederation created by the Xiongnu, a confederation containing a wide variety of different groups.

8. See the "Account of the Xianbei," SGZ 30.837; and discussion of this particular usage of the term luo in Yü Ying-shih, "Han Foreign Relations," in Cambridge History of China, Vol. I, p. 443 note 206.

9. For an overview of the concept of "nation" before the modern age, see John A. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1982).

10. JS 25.3113; WS 99.2198; Hong Tao ¬x ÀÜ , San Qin shi ¤T ¯³ ¥v (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 1992), pp. 129-132 .

11. The dragon probably represents in some way an initial rival, with whom peace was made.

12. For a broad discussion of the development of the military from the first empire into the early medieval age, see Chen Yubi ³¯ ¥É «Ì , Wei Jin Nanbeichao binghu zhidu yanjiu ÃQ ®Ê «n ¥_ ´Â §L ¤á ¨î «× ¬ã ¨s (Chengdu: Ba-Shu shushe, 1988).

13. Chen, Wei Jin Nanbeichao binghu zhidu yanjiu, p. 16.

14. See Mao Han-kuang, "The Evolution in the Nature of the Medieval Genteel Families," in State and Society in Early Medieval China, ed. Albert Dien (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 78-9.

15. In the year 188, Emperor Ling, "seated under a magnificent umbrella, reviewed his troops and declared himself supreme general (wu shang chiang-chün µL ¤W ±N ­x )-- the first time during Later Han that an emperor took an additional title." B. J. Mansvelt Beck, "The Fall of Han," in Cambridge History of China, Vol. I, The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C.-A.D. 220 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), p. 326, citing HHS 8.356; Hou Han ji (Sibu congkan edn), 25, f. 9b (p. 303).

16. See Chen, Wei Jin Nanbeichao binghu zhidu yanjiu; Tang Changru ­ð ªø À© , Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang shi sanlun ÃQ ®Ê «n ¥_ ´Â ¶¦ ­ð ¥v ¤T ½× (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue chubanshe, 1992), pp. 53ff., 179ff.

17. Chen, Wei Jin Nanbeichao binghu zhidu yanjiu, pp. 48ff. These are referred to by a variety of terms: binghu, shijia.

18. Chen, Wei Jin Nanbeichao binghu zhidu yanjiu, pp. 148-9. Regarding the captured Man, see SoS 77.1996-8. (This was, by the way, done by Shen Qingzhi, relative of Shen Yue. And note that, in some cases, members of northern minority groups were used as well.) Chen, Wei Jin Nanbeichao binghu zhidu yanjiu, pp. 50ff., gives examples of such activities under Shu and especially Wu, which drafted "Mountain Yue folk," who were described and treated much as were the northern barbarians (Chen, Wei Jin Nanbeichao binghu zhidu yanjiu, p. 149; SoS 48.1422; and see also Nanchao Liang huiyao «n ´Â ±ç ·| ­n , written by Zhu Mingpan ¦¶ »Ê ½L of the Qing, rpt. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1984, p. 520). Chen suggests this probably continues into later decades -- but there is not enough information to be sure.

19. Chen, Wei Jin Nanbeichao binghu zhidu yanjiu, p. 128.

20. Tang, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang shi, p. 180.

21. Susanne Küchler and Walter Melion, ed. Images of Memory: On Remembering and Representation (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), p. 3 and esp. p. 7: "memory is socially and culturally constructed, and recourse to the processes of construction must mediate the understanding of memory, especially the understanding of its embeddedness in active processes of cognition and image production."

22. Jack Goody, Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 149-50. See also Jack Goody, ed. Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1968).

23. See John B. Henderson, Scripture, Canon and Commentary: a Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), p. 38.

24. LS 8.165.

25. Wenxuan, preface. Tr. David Knechtges, Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, Vol. I, Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1982), p. 87. See further description of Xiao Tong in ibid, pp. 4ff., and in Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms."

26. Luoyang qielan ji ¬¥ ¶§ ¦÷ ÂÅ °O , rpt. as Luoyang qielan ji jiaozhu ®Õ ª` , with commentary by Fan Xiangyong ­S ²» ¹l (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978), 3.145-6. The passage is translated by Yang Hsüan-chih, A Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Lo-yang (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 136-8. In the passages taken from Yang's translations, minor changes have been made in romanization, etc. As early as 423, we are told that the Tabgatch lord had gone to "gaze upon the Stone Classics": WS 3.63. They remained prominent in the north. Note that though mention of Stone Classics is made under the Song (SoS 14.360), there are no such references at all in Nan Qi shu, Liang shu, or Chen shu.

27. It has been repeatedly suggested -- with no hard proof or certainty -- that the poem from which this line comes was written at that critical turning point for a man, forty years. See A. R. Davis, T'ao Yüan-ming (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983), Vol. I, p. 15.

28. Holzman does suggest that Tao Qian was a Jin loyalist. Perhaps what he liked about Jin was that it was in some sense a "theater state," whereas he saw in the rise of the military dictator Liu Yu an attempt to create a more interventionist entity.

29. See the quotation by Holzman in his chapter in this book.

30. Dien's chapter in this book.

31. Wenxuan preface; tr. Knechtges, Wen xuan, Vol. I, p. 73. For another example of this predilection, a discussion of the origins of gardens by the poet Shen Yue, see Mather, Shen Yüeh, p. 192.

32. Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms," p. [46].

33. Wenxuan 11; tr. Knechtges, Wen xuan, Vol. II, pp. 253ff.

34. LYQLJ 3.140, 183 (tr. Wang, Record, pp. 133, 161-2).

35. See the translation and discussion in Richard B. Mather, The Poet Shen Yüeh (441-513): the Reticent Marquis (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988), pp. 15ff.

36. See Robert Ford Campany, Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (Albany, New York: State Univ. of New York, 1996).

37. See discussion of these tendencies in Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, esp. chapters 1 and 8.

38. Dien, "A New Look at the Xianbei and their Impact on Chinese Culture," in Ancient Mortuary Traditions of China: Papers on Chinese Ceramic Funerary Sculptures, ed. George Kuwayama (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991), pp. 46-7, citing, among other things, Guyuanxian wenwu gongzuodui, "Ningxia Guyuan Bei Wei mu qingli jianbao," WW 1984.6: 49-50; and Sun Ji, "Guyuan Bei Wei qiguanhua yanjiu," WW 1989.9: 38-44.

39. SS 32.935, cited by Dien, "A New Look at the Xianbei," p. 59, note 87.

40. Luoyang qielan ji 4.201-2 (tr. Wang, Record, p. 180).

41. ZS 26.428.

42. This occurred, by the way, in the aftermath of the Hou Jing affair, which we shall examine in more detail below.

43. ZS 41.731

44. See the comments by John Marney, Liang Chien-wen ti (Boston: Twayne, 1976), p. 17. See also Jennifer Holmgren, "Lineage Falsification in the Northern Dynasties: Wei Shou's Ancestry," Papers on Far Eastern History 21 (1980): 1-16.

45. Knechtges, tr. Wen xuan, Vol. II, p. 325.

46. BQS 32.428.

47. LYQLJ 2.117-19 (tr. Wang, Record, pp. 113-19).

48. Here I make a minor alteration to Wang's translation, turning "ghost" into "specter."

49. Here, I change Wang's translation a bit to make it more literal.

50. WS 21A.564-6.

51. Which, as Wang tells is, is a paraphrase of an ode from the Shijing.

52. LYQLJ 2.117 (tr. Wang, Record, p. 112).

53. LYQLJ 4.224-5 (tr. Wang, Record, pp. 197-99). On the term "intimate" applied to the farewell, see Wang, p. 199 note 230; and the commentary in LYQLJ, p. 225. Though put forth in a book from the northern point of view, see the support for this in Liang shu: LS 36.524, 50.718. Yuan Lüe is described in the sources as an intelligent and cultured man. "Dignitaries east of the Yangtze were extremely haughty," we are told, "but whenever they saw [Yüan Lüe] arriving at the court, they watched his every move with trepidation." On returning to the north, we are told that "he became more dignified. Both those in and out of court took his words and conduct as a model." (LYQLJ 4.225, 226; tr. Wang, Record, pp. 198, 201). He died two years after his return in the great Heyin massacre. See his biography in WS 19B.506-7. For another example of a Yuan prince, who came south in 528, see LS 3.72. Note as well that there was a line of refugee Yuan princes in Jiankang given by Xiao Yan the title Prince of Sanggan Wang ®á °® ¤ý , the old heartlands of the Tabgatch in their early history: LS 56.858; NS 80.2011; WS 21A 540-1; BS 19.692. For a general defection of northern princes, see Liang hui yao, pp. 458-9, 525.

54. See WS 59.1307-12; BS 29.1046-49; SoS 72.1868-69.

55. WS 59.1313ff.; BS 29.1049-57.

56. See Jennifer Holmgren, "The Making of an Élite: Local Politics and Social Relations in Northeastern China during the 5th Century AD," Papers on Far Eastern History 30 (1984): 1-79.

57. LS 39.558.

58. Yuan Faseng had served his own house as Inspector of a border province, until in 524, in the midst of the tumult that followed the outbreak of the Rebellion of the Six Garrisons, he declared himself emperor of the Wei. When Luoyang sent an army against Faseng, he sought to become a Liang Viceroy in the territories he held. Wei armies eventually pushed him south, where he was received by Zhu Yi with great pomp, who sought hereby to draw over support in the Wei territories. LS 39.553; WS 16.394-5.

59. LS 39.558. This last clause is a reference to a comment made by a Xiongnu courtier of Han Wudi: HS 68.2962, translated in Burton Watson, Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China: Selections from the History of the Former Han (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1974), p. 154.

60. LYQLJ 3.147. For this passage, I have taken the translation of W.J.F. Jenner, Yang Hsüan-chih and the Lost Capital (493-534) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 215, again, with minor alterations of romanization. Qi and Lu were two large states from Eastern Zhou period; Zhu and Ju two small ones.

61. LYQLJ 3.148 (tr. Jenner, Yang Hsüan-chih and the Lost Capital, p. 216).

62. LYQLJ 3.133-4 (tr. Wang, Record, pp. 127-31); BS 43.1591.

63. For this point, and that which follows on north-south trade, see Li Jiannong §õ ¼C ¹A , Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang jingji shi gao ÃQ ®Ê «n ¥_ ´Â ¶¦ ­ð ¸g ÀÙ ¥v ½Z (Peking: Sanlian shudian, 1959; rpt. Taipei: Huashi chubanshe, 1981), pp. 86ff.

64. SoS 85.2168.

65. See, for example, WS 53.1175, cited with other examples in Li, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang jingji shi gao, pp. 89-90.

66. BQS 30.405.

67. LYQLJ 2.117 (tr. Wang, Record, p. 112).

68. Li, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang jingji shi gao, p. 88.

69. LS 16.272; ZZTJ 147.4598-9, 4604. Note the connection with Shen Yue: Mather, Shen Yüeh, p. 221

70. For Northern Wei, see WS 113.2977ff.; and the slow incorporation of these titles that can be followed in Wan Sitong ¸U ´µ ¦P , "Wei jiangxiang dachen nianbiao" ÃQ ±N ¬Û ¤j ¦Ú ¦~ ªí , rpt. in Ershiwu shi bubian ¤G ¤Q ¤­ ¥v ¸É ½s (Peking: Zhonghua shuju, 1956), Vol. IV, pp. 4489ff.

71. See Tang, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang shi, pp. 193-94.

72. See Chen, Wei Jin Nanbeichao binghu zhidu yanjiu, p. 168; Tang, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang shi, p. 184ff.; and Liang huiyao, pp. 508-11, where troops drafted in emergencies generally number in the thousands, voluntary recruitment in the tens of thousands.

73. Chen Qun ³¯ ¸s , Zhongguo bingzhi jianshi ¤¤ °ê §L ¨î ² ¥v (Peking: Junshi kexue chubanshe, 1989), pp. 91ff.; Wang Zhongluo ¤ý ¥ò ºº , Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi ÃQ ®Ê «n ¥_ ´Â ¥v (Peking: Renmin chubanshe, 1980), Vol. I, pp. 357ff.; Tian Yuqing ¥Ð §E ¼y , Dong Jin menfa zhengzhi ªF ®Ê ªù »Ö ¬F ªv (Peking: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1989), pp. 210-16.

74. JS 67.1803. See the related comment of Huan Wen (ibid) where he says that "in Jingkou (the seat of Southern Xuzhou, just to the east of Jiankang, mod. Zhenjiang shi) you can drink the wine and use the troops" ¨Ê ¤f °s ¥i ¶¼ §L ¥i ¥Î .

75. See HHS 59.1924.

76. Wen xuan 11; tr. Knechtges, Wen xuan, Vol. II, p. 261.

77. See Chen Qun, Zhongguo bingzhi jianshi, p. 82.

78. NQS 1.1. Note that Marney, Liang Chien-wen ti, p. 17, quite rightly, refers to the genealogy going back to the Han as "tendentious and contrived."

79. Wang, Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, Vol. I, p. 367. Mao Hanguang ¤ò º~ ¥ú , Zhongguo zhonggu shehui shilun ¤¤ °ê ¤¤ ¥j ªÀ ·| ¥v ½× (Taipei: Lianjing chuban, 1988), pp. 88-90, states that from up to 94% literati holding military office in fourth century had dropped to a mere 16.7% in sixth. Note also the comments in Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms," [p. 34] on the Liang, when the Xiao Yan reached out to draw in men in exams.

80. NS 55.1376. See other examples in Wang, Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, Vol. I, p. 406.

81. NS 77.1929; NQS 56.976-7.

82. Wang, Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, Vol. I, pp. 410-11; Chen, Zhongguo bingzhi jianshi, p. 95.

83. Yan Zhitui, Yanshi jiaxun, "Shewu"; cited in Wang, Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, Vol. I, p. 409.

84. Mather, The Poet Shen Yüeh, pp. 8-10.

85. See also Max Kaltenmark, "The Ideology of the T'ai-p'ing ching," in Facets of Taoism: Essays in Chinese Religion, ed. Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 19-52; Anna Seidel, "The Image of the Perfect Ruler in Early Taoist Messianism: Lao-tzu and Li Hung," History of Religions 9.2-3 (1969-70): 216-247.

86. LYQLJ 4.205, 208, 206, 207 (tr. Wang, Record, pp. 187-8, 195, 190, 193).

87. See also the comments of Li, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang jingji shigao, pp. 90ff.

88. See Liu Shufen, Liuchao de chengshi yu shehui, p. 53.

89. Liu, Liuchao de chengshi yu shehui, p. 50.

90. See the comments on the formation of buqu within the capital: NQS 27.507.

91. Liu, Liuchao de chengshi yu shehui, pp. 67-8.

92. Translated in Mather, The Poet Shen Yüeh, p. 211.

93. See comments in Li, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang jingji shigao, pp. 90ff.; Holcombe, In the Shadow of the Han, pp. 68-72.

94. Li, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang jingji shigao, pp. 94ff.

95. Li Jiannong, p. 105; Wang, Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, Vol. I, p. 488. See the comments of a Wei official on the differences: WS 68.1510.

96. Liu Shufen points out that this was first done with Jiankang in the south, and more than a century later, in Luoyang: see Liu, Liuchao de chengshi yu shehui, p. 178.

97. This is a phenomenon that can be seen, in broad outline at least, at many places and times. My thinking on these matters has been particularly stimulated by Norbert Elias, Power and Civility, Vol. II of The Civilizing Process. Published originally in 1939, this has been translated and reprinted: New York: Blackwell, 1982. Needless to see, the similarities between early modern Europe and medieval China should not be overdone. See also Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995).

98. Tang, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Sui Tang shi, p. 53.

99. See discussion of this in Dennis Grafflin, "Reinventing China: Pseudobureaucracy in the Early Southern Dynasties," in State and Society in Early Medieval China, ed. Albert Dien (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990). One might also compare Tao Qian's "To Return Home!" with a later version of this by Shen Yue: according to Mather (Shen Yüeh, p. 107) Shen's song consists ultimately of "a rueful reflection on his inability really to break free of official life."

100. These idealized dichotomies are expressed in a number of ways, including the well-known example of the Tang tomb sculptures, which depict the civil official as, in some sense, "Chinese" and thus civilized, the fighting man as a barbarian.

101. See Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms," p. 11.

102. Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms," p. 7; quoting LS 49.685.

103. Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms," p. 9.

104. LS 8:167; tr. by Knechtges, Wen xuan, Vol. I, p. 7.

105. See the bibliography in SS 35.

106. Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms," p. [14].

107. Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms," p. [22].

108. NS 77.1927. See also comments made by Xiao Yan. Regarding Wang Rong: he "is not of the caliber to save the world" «D ÀÙ ¥@ ¤~ (ZZTJ 138.4332; tr. Mather, Shen Yüeh, p. 132). Regarding Shen Yue, it was said that he was too "light and facile" »´ ©ö (ZZTJ 145.4530; NS 34.896; tr. Mather, Shen Yüeh, p. 132).

109. Discussion of Hou Jing is contained in Mori Mikisaburo's Ry no Butei: Bukky ch higeki (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1956); William T. Graham, Jr., 'The Lament for the South': Yü Hsin's 'Ai Chiang-nan fu' (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980); and Marney, Liang Chien-wen ti.

110. At various points, Hou Jing is referred to as such, as in LS 45:627, where he is called "a fierce Jie, a petty Hu" ¤¿ ½~ ¤p ­J. See the other evidence put forth byYao Weiyuan «À Á¨ ¤¸ , Beichao huxing kao ¥_ ´Â ­J ©m ¦Ò (Peking: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), pp. 84-85. On the Jie per se, see Tang Changru, "Wei Jin zahu kao" ÃQ ®Ê Âø ­J ¦Ò in his Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi luncong ÃQ ®Ê «n ¥_ ´Â ¥v ½× ÂO (Peking: Sanlian shudian, 1955), pp. 415-16. For the clear contrast with the Särbi, see, for instance, a remark made by Hou Jing concerning Gao Huan's heir, whom he referred to as "the Särbi laddie" ÂA ¨õ ¤p ¨à , BQS 2.23.

111. LS 56.833. In this connection, there may be some significance in a comment made by Yu Xin in his famous poem, "Lament for the South," where at one point Hou Jing is referred to as "the foreign stem from Da Xia". See Graham, Lament, p. 67. Da Xia was a reference to the northwestern territories, and had not long before been the name of one of the Sixteen Kingdoms located in northern Shaanxi.

112. NS 80.2012. In LS 56.860 the grandfather's name is given in the simplified, "sinicised" form of "Zhou."

113. See this statement in NS 80.1993.

114. NS 80.1994.

115. BQS 1.2.

116. See BQS 40.529; WS 98.2181. For the Jie status of the Erzhu, see Yao, Beichao huxing kao, p. 360.

117. On the ethnic background of the Gao lineage, see Yao, Beichao huxing kao, pp. 136-37.

118. Hou Jing received the honorary title Minister of Education (situ) and was appointed Director of the Henan Branch Department of State Affairs Henan da xingtai, with authority to take military action without permission from court: WS 12.308; LS 56.833; NS 80.1994.

119. BQS 2.23. See the warning given Cheng by Gao Huan before his death, in LS 56.834; and the earlier comments made to Gao Huan by his wife: BQS 9.123-4; NS 80.1993-4.

120. See Hou Jing's assertion, in a letter to Xiao Yan, the Liang Emperor Wu, that all the border officials waiting to come over: LS 56.835.

121. See LS 56.834ff.

122. See the comments made in the Bei Qi shu biography of the nephew, Xiao Yuanming (or in BQS, Xiao Ming): BQS 33.441.

123. BQS 33.441; LS 3.92-3; ZZTJ 160.4963.

124. ZZTJ 161.4968, 4979; LS 39.555; LS 56.840; NS 80.1995. This was the son of a Yuan prince who had fled south to Jiankang in the midst of the rebellions of the 520s. Enfeoffed by Liang as Prince of Ye, he was sent north to campaign against Eastern Wei. There he was captured and died. In the late 530s, the son, who is the individual mentioned here, went north to give his father a proper burial, and then returned to Jiankang. Hou Jing wished to use him as a pawn in a struggle with Ye.

125. This, of course, reminds us of the similar case involving Yang Kan: see above and LS 39.558.

126. See LS 56.840; ZZTJ 160.4969-161.4970-1.

127. Shouchun ¹Ø ¬K is referred to in ZZTJ as Shouyang ¹Ø ¶§ .

128. LS 56.840; ZZTJ 161.4977.

129. LS 56.841. NS 80.1996, ZZTJ 161.4974-7 suggests that this took place because Hou Jing learned of a move toward reconciliation between Jiankang and Ye. Although this might have been a major factor in Hou Jing's moves, it likely came from his own inner ambitions as well.

130. LS 55.828ff.; WS 59.1326.

131. LS 55:829. ZZTJ 61.4980 gives a rather different phrasing.

132. LS 56.842; NS 80.1998; ZZTJ 161.4983.

133. ZZTJ 161.4980-81. For Zhu Yi's biographies, see LS 38; NS 62.

134. Both NS 80.1998 and ZZTJ 161.4984 say the force he led across the Yangtze numbered 8000 men and several hundred horses. LS 56.842 gives the number of men as 1000. The latter seems less likely, since the number recruited in the Shouchun area to add to his original force would then have numbered only 200, hardly worth remarking on.

135. Note the suggestion by Graham ('Lament for the South', p. 183 note 28) that this story was distorted by an enemy of Yu Xin. For me, the hypothesis is considerably undercut by Graham's further denial of a comment made by Li Yanshou in Nanshi to the effect that Yu Xin had quarreled with this fellow after the break-up of a homosexual relationship.

136. For the structure, see Liu, Liuchao chengshi yu shehui, pp. 67-8.

137. ZZTJ 161.4979; LS 28.420-2; NS 55.1361-2.

138. See the discussion in Liu, Liuchao chengshi yu shehui, p. 137, of the large numbers of servile dependents in Jiankang.

139. NS 80.2001; ZZTJ 161.4991. It should be noted that whereas Unequaled in Honor was a mere prestige title, the Capital Commandant held a position of significant power.

140. LS 4.104, 56.852; NS 80.2008; ZZTJ 162.5017. NS 80.2001 suggests that this process had begun earlier, before Taicheng had fallen. See general discussion of slavery and other forms of servile dependency in China in this age in Wang Yi-t'ung, "Slaves and Other Comparable Social Groups during the Northern Dynasties (386-618)," HJAS 16.1-2 (1953): 293-364; and Scott Pearce, "Status, Labor and Law: Special Service Households under the Northern Dynasties," HJAS 51.1 (1991): 89-138.

141. ZZTJ 161.4991. Marney has made a partial translation of this, Liang Chien-wen di, p. 148.

142. WS 98.2185.

143. LS 56.843; NS 80.2001.

144. ZZTJ 162.5010; LS 56.851; NS 80.2007.

145. NS 80.2008.

146. LS 56.852, NS 80.2008.

147. LS 56.858.

148. Even before crossing the Jiang, it had been called a "flock of crows": LS 39.559.

149. LS 56.861.

150. LS 56.862.

151. See the article by Takeda Ryoji ¦Ë ¥Ð Às ¨à ,"K Kei no ran ni tsuite no ikksatsu," «J ´º ÇU ¶Ã ÇR ÇK Æê ÇM ÇU ¤@ ¦Ò ¹î , Shigaku 29.3 (1956):34-5, and esp. pp. 50ff. for the larger consequences of the rebellion upon the southlands.

152. ZZTJ 162.5009, using a phrase found in a story in Shiji 107.2851.

153. See such voluntary recruitment ¶Ò §L in the cases of, for instance, Xiao Zhengde (for whom see above) or another prince, Xiao Cha: LS 48.855.

154. LS 39.560. For reference to these men as cavalry, see LS 39.559.

155. ZZTJ 161.4975. It should be pointed out that I have been unable to find this comment in any of the Standard Histories.

156. Graham, Lament, p. 67, line 123, p. 83, line 303, p. 67, lines 115-16.

157. See LS 56.833ff.

158. Among these were Hou Zijian «J ¤l ų , a possible kinsman of Hou Jing, who appears throughout the Hou Jing chapter of Liangshu (56) as a major commander of Hou Jing's central force ¤¤ ­x ; and Erzhu Jibo Ét ¦¶ ©u §B (mentioned on LS 56.853 on a list of top officers, a number of whom are clearly of non-Chinese origin). Members of other frontier groups are also seen. Yu Ziyue ¤_ ¤l ®® was of a lineage -- originally from Khotan -- that had been quite presigious under Northern Wei (LS 56.842; Yao, Beichao huxing kao, pp. 54-6). Hexi Jin ¬ø ®O ¤ç was of Turkic (Ruanruan) origin (LS 56.853; Yao, Beichao huxing kao, p. 220). Note the comment in the Chenshu biography of a man who had been at Jiankang during this period that "Hou Jing's troops all came from mestizo groups of Qiang and Hu" ´º §L ¤h ¬Ò ªÊ ­J Âø ºØ (CS 32.424). Describing the unruliness of Hou Jing's followers at the Liang court, such comments must, of course, be taken with a grain of salt. They do not, at any rate, describe Hou Jing's forces as a whole, but the officers and guardsmen who accompanied him to audience with the Liang ruler.

159. See, for instance, the references to him found throughout the biography of Wang Sengbian, LS 45. In Nan shi, Hou Jing's biography is contained in the "brigand official" ¸é ¦Ú section (NS 80).

160. See JS 10.252, 254; SoS 1.1. Note that Sun was often, though not always, called a yao zei§¯ ¸é , a "demonic brigand," referring to the religious aspects of his actions. For the rapid growth of Sun's army -- even more dramatic than in the case of Hou Jing -- see JS 100.2632.

161. ZS 1.10; BS 9.316.

162. LS 56.864.

163. LS 56.863; NS 80.2016.

164. LS 5.125, 45.628, 29.432, 56.864; and NS 72.1775. See also how Xiao Yan dismantled the name Hou Jing as "a petty man who shall be Son of Heaven for one hundred days": ¤p ¤H ¦Ê ¤é ¤Ñ ¤l (LS 56.863; NS 80.2016).

165. LS 41.588.

166. NS 80.1995; ZZTJ 161.4970-1.

167. Graham, Lament, pp. 64-5 line 83, p. 117.

168. WS 98.2181.

169. SS 22.622.

170. ZZTJ 161.4979.

171. In this connection there has recently appeared several works treating the issue of "prosopography," the study of individual behavior. One that I have found particularly useful is Patrick Amory's People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997).