As with all previous and subsequent regimes, the Ming or “Bright” dynasty (1368–1644) built on the institutional foundations established by its predecessor. Yet it also modified them in significant ways, and, of course, created new institutions as well. In the case of the Ming, the preceding regime was the Mongol-controlled Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), which, like the Manchu-dominated Qing less than three centuries later, created an administrative system that drew on the cultural traditions of the conquerors as well as those of the conquered. If we can speak of the “sinification” of the Qing, we can, perhaps, also speak of a certain “Mongolization” of the Ming.
The Ming was, by any standard, a great and glorious dynasty. Overall, the state was well organized and powerful, society was stable, and the regime’s agrarian economy flourished. Law codes became regularized and legal texts served as educational tools. Urban networks expanded, reflecting and contributing to the growth of productivity and commercial exchange. The Chinese population doubled over the course of the dynasty, and literacy became ever more prevalent. Massive construction projects reflected the state’s formidable political and economic strength, as did its military campaigns. The pacification of China Proper involved consolidation of areas in the far south and southwest that had been largely beyond imperial reach during the Yuan dynasty. Meanwhile, the more fully integrated southeastern provinces of China became the launching point for a vibrant maritime trade. By the late Ming period, China had become deeply involved, for better and for worse, in the world economy.1
Not surprisingly, the Ming was a period of great accomplishment in literature and the arts, not only in terms of elite culture but also “popular” culture. The Ming is known for its crafts (especially porcelain, but also gardens and architecture) and its vernacular literature (especially novels), as well as for its accomplished painters, essayists, and calligraphers. Ming religious life was robust and philosophy of all sorts flourished. What is more, although the Ming state generally championed a relatively rigid form of neo-Confucian orthodoxy known as the School of Principle (Lixue, also designated the Cheng-Zhu School, based on the family names of its two eleventh-century progenitors), a number of other schools of philosophy developed in the Ming, some of which offered radical challenges to orthodox Confucianism. A particularly distinctive feature of late Ming intellectual life was the presence of Jesuit missionaries at court and in the provinces, a development that had implications not only for Ming philosophy, but also for science and technology.
At no time in China’s history—either before the Ming dynasty or after—was the so-called tributary system of Chinese foreign relations as highly developed and comprehensive as it was during Ming times. John Wills has noted, however, that only from about 1425 to 1550 were all facets of the regime’s foreign relations “fitted into . . . a fully fledged ‘tribute system.’” After 1550 or so, he maintains, “private overseas trade in Chinese shipping, the opening of Macau, Mongol trade at border markets, and regional military politics on the northeast frontier were among the many signs of an unraveling of the Ming tribute system.”2 Looking ahead to the Qing, however, we may ask whether the tributary system unraveled irrevocably.
A fair-minded assessment of the Ming dynasty and its legacy forces us to consider a number of issues that will also be relevant to our analysis of the Qing: What was the nature of imperial rule? To what extent did the early emperors shape the character and course of the dynasty? Was the government marked by effective centralized administration or was it one constrained by factional politics at court and vested interests in the provinces? How prevalent were Confucian ruling principles, and how effectively did they operate? What was the relationship between “foreign” influences and domestic culture?
One can argue that the early Ming emperors’ desire to exert their will over all acts of governance was never as effectively institutionalized as they intended or perhaps supposed it to be. David Robinson writes, for example, that throughout the Ming period, even during the autocratic reign of the first emperor, the court was “an arena of competition and negotiation” in which “a large cast of actors pursued individual and corporate ends.” Moreover, “Ming court culture underwent frequent interpretation and rearticulation, processes often driven by immediate and keenly felt personal imperatives, mediated through social, political, and cultural interaction, and producing sometimes unexpected results.”3
Nonetheless, as Frederick Mote points out, “the aura of great power” on the part of the Ming cannot easily be dispelled: “For evidence,” he writes, “one need only look at China’s enhanced position in East Asia in Ming times.” Mote goes on to assert that the Ming emperors were “the capstone in an authority structure that could not function without them. They were the ritual heads of state and society within a civilization in which ritual possessed a scope of functional significance scarcely comprehensible to us today.” At the same time, they were “the executive officers of a system that required their daily participation in deciding and validating routine acts of governing.” Because no actions or appointments were possible without the emperor’s literal seal of approval, his workload was enormous, and his tasks were “operationally institutionalized in Ming times to a degree hitherto unknown.”4 Not all of the Ming emperors could shoulder this enormous burden, however, with the result that as the state administrative apparatus grew ever more expansive and sophisticated, there was a natural devolution of power holding from direct rule by a pair of extraordinarily powerful early autocratic emperors to a system of shared authority. Sometimes this authority was effectively delegated and at other times it was simply usurped.
One of the most important features of Ming government was the civil service examination system. As we shall see, this recruitment apparatus did not always yield officials who were properly prepared to undertake practical administrative tasks. But according to the deep-seated Confucian principles that served as justification for the exams, government was a matter of personal integrity and moral example, not technical expertise. Officials were not expected to be specialists, they were supposed to be moral leaders. Of course, there was always a gap between the theory and practice of Confucian government, but the Ming examination system assured that every decade or so a new group of highly educated individuals would enter the service of the state, bringing “freshness and energy” to the regime.5
Most scholars have favorably viewed the Ming founder’s efforts to better the lot of the peasantry by improving rural conditions and curbing abuses in local government. Whether these efforts were motivated by altruism or a recognition of the state’s political interests or both is impossible to state with certainty. But success in all such enterprises depended entirely on the cooperation of local bureaucrats and nonbureaucratic elites known as “gentry” (shenshi)—usually, but not always, examination degree holders. When these functionaries operated in concert and according to the dictates of the throne, much could be achieved. But resistance at the local level could, and did, thwart many an idealized plan. And so it was that in Ming administration, as it would later be under the Qing, imperial policymaking involved a wide array of actors, not all of whom had the same goals and interests, much less the same levels of integrity.
Timothy Brook has pointed out that although the Ming state “legitimately monopolized all authority, secular and spiritual,” this formal monopoly did not mean that the state’s authority was either “unencumbered or unchallenged.” Officials might resist government policies that did not suit their political interests, and the gentry class, for its part, proved able to develop “horizontal strategies of control and competition,” turning economic opportunity into social gain “without threatening the survival or legitimacy of the state.” This bargain between political and social power, “paid for by trading wealth and autonomy for durable state tokens of status,” held until the latter decades of the nineteenth century.6
The founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang (known by his posthumous title Ming Taizu or “Grand Progenitor of the Ming,” but more commonly by his reign name Hongwu, “Great Martial Power”), ruled China with an iron hand from 1368 to 1398. No account of the Ming can avoid reference to the personality and policies of this emperor, or those of his equally dynamic son, the Yongle (“Eternal Happiness”) emperor. John Dardess describes the dynastic founder as “a grim and suspicious autodidact” who “inspired fear and respect, but no love or devotion,” and whose “penal repressions were frequent and savage.” Not a pleasant fellow, it seems. Having raised the standard of revolt against the Yuan dynasty using the vocabulary of Buddhist millenarianism, Zhu Yuanzhang recognized in the course of his anti-Mongol rebellion, and especially after coming to power, the need to attract Confucian scholars to his cause as a form of legitimization. By the early 1630s he had recruited several prominent Chinese intellectuals—notably Liu Ji (1311–1375) and Song Lian (1310–1381)—as his political advisers. Their advice to him was to become a “ruler-teacher” (junshi), and to emphasize the idea of “restoring antiquity” (fugu). These roles, they argued, would bring China back from the laxity, corruption, and oppression that had occurred under Mongol rule.7
One may question whether the Hongwu emperor exemplified the “Confucian” values he espoused, but there can be no doubt about the vigor with which he championed them. During the early years of his reign, the emperor churned out a great many rules, regulations, and especially moral admonitions, including his famous Six Sacred Maxims (Shengyu liuyan), drawn directly from the writings of the great Song neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130–1200). They were: (1) perform filial duties to your parents; (2) honor and respect your elders and superiors; (3) maintain harmonious relationships with your neighbors; (4) instruct and discipline your sons and grandsons; (5) let everyone work peacefully for his own livelihood; and (6) do not commit wrongful deeds.8 These admonitions were distributed widely throughout the empire and were reportedly even recited to peasants in the field.
As steadfast as he was tireless, the Hongwu emperor transformed much of the Ming political, social, and economic landscape in the thirty years of his reign, leaving a concrete institutional legacy to his successors.9 In the realm of government, he began by establishing a rudimentary Yuan-style bureaucratic structure in his southern capital at Nanjing (formerly known as Jiankang or Yingtian), and ordering leading scholars of the realm to draft ceremonial regulations, statutes, and ordinances. He embarked on a building campaign to erect imposing palace structures, as well as altars for imperial sacrifices to Heaven, Earth, and other state-approved spirits.10 He commissioned educational institutions, including a new National University and a new Hanlin Academy for Confucian scholars who were charged with various literary and secretarial tasks. He also ordered the building of a shrine to his ancestors, and arranged for the preparation of a state calendar to be known as the Datong li (Calendar of the Great Unification).
All these measures were designed to bolster the new emperor’s claim to have received the Mandate of Heaven (Tianming) from the Mongols. This legitimizing concept, which lay at the heart of Chinese dynastic politics from the early Zhou dynasty (c. 1050–256 BCE) into the twentieth century, was predicated on the idea that Heaven, variously conceived (as an impersonal deity or an abstract moral-spiritual force; see chapters 3, 6, and 7), bestowed the right to rule on the household of an ethically upright leader, but its “mandate” could be withdrawn if any ruler of the family line proved unworthy.
The accession of the Hongwu emperor took place on January 23, 1368. It began with sacrifices to Heaven and Earth at separate suburban altars, followed by ceremonies at the shrine of his ancestors, where he bestowed patents and seals conferring posthumous temple names on four generations of his forebears. The ceremonies ended at the imperial palace, where he received congratulations from civil and military officials. John Langlois summarizes the purpose of these activities:
The accession ceremony blended the emperor’s two roles in a formal ritual. The emperor was head of the imperial lineage, which he ruled by birthright in perpetuity. He thus performed sacrifices and acts of filial submission to his ancestors in a shrine constructed expressly for this purpose. He was also head of the bureaucracy and the representative of all the empire vis-a-vis the powers of Heaven and Earth. The ceremonies allowed the officials and the emperor to act out symbolically their respective relationships.11
Significantly, the emperor issued a “Proclamation of the Accession,” which was not only circulated throughout the areas under direct Ming control, but also distributed to neighboring East Asian states. It is worth quoting at length:
I am the ruler of the Middle Kingdom. When the dynastic fortune of the Song dynasty had reached an end, Heaven commanded the immortal [referring to Qubilai Khan] in the desert to enter the Middle Kingdom and become the lord of the empire. [The throne] was passed from son to grandson for more than a hundred years. But now [the Yuan] dynastic fortune also has ended. . . . Bearing the favor of Heaven and the spirits of the ancestors, . . . [I] repeatedly commanded my military officers to make a rigorous show of our might. The four quarters were suppressed and settled, and the people have come to rest secure in their fields and villages. Today the great civil and military officers, the numerous officials, and the masses join in urging me to ascend [the throne], revering me as August Ruler (Huangdi), thereby making me the lord of the black-haired people [the Han Chinese]. Reluctantly acceding to the requests of the multitude, on the fourth day of the first moon of the second year of Wu, I offered sacrifices to Heaven and Earth on the south side of Zhong Mountain and ascended the throne of the emperor at the southern suburban altar. The title of the empire has been set as Great Ming. The present year has been designated the first year of Hongwu [Great Martial Power]. Respectfully entering the Ancestral Temple, I have conferred posthumous titles of emperor and empress upon four generations of my ancestors. [I] have erected in the capital a great altar to the Spirit of the Land and a great altar to the Spirit of the Grain. The consort, née Ma, has been made [my] empress, and the eldest son has been made heir apparent. This shall be promulgated throughout the empire, and all shall be made to know of it.12
Here we see the Ming emperor performing his most important symbolic and substantive roles: as high priest, secular king, filial son, and protector of China’s agrarian economy.
The Hongwu emperor was also commander in chief of the Ming military. Because several parts of China Proper were still in the hands of the Mongols or millenarian rebels, he sent his armies to “pacify” these areas to the north, west, and southwest. His most pressing goal was, of course, the capture of the Yuan capital of Khanbaliq (Chinese: Dadu). On September 14, 1368, his forces attacked the city, which soon fell. He renamed it Beiping (“Pacified North”). Further campaigns secured control over various strategic northern areas. Meanwhile, Ming troops extended the reach of the dynasty into the southern provinces of Guangxi, Fujian, and eventually remote Yunnan.
During the long reign of the Hongwu emperor, the Ming army came to be organized into outposts known as weisuo. Under this system, which had its direct origins in the Yuan, each prefecture had a garrison (suo) of about a thousand soldiers and each grouping of two or more prefectures had a military district (wei) consisting of about 5,600 troops. These forces were sustained by the so-called tuntian system, which provided each soldier in peacetime with from forty to fifty mou of agricultural land (c. six to eight acres). The result was that weisuo garrisons were largely self-sufficient. According to the official Ming History (Mingshi), about 70 percent of the soldiers in border areas took up farming while the remaining 30 percent were employed as guards. In the interior, the balance was about 80 to 20.13 These soldiers were recruited primarily from three sources of manpower: Yuan dynasty remnants, the military forces that had brought Zhu Yuanzhang to power, and a system of conscription implemented after the conquest. All of these troops and their families were part of a hereditary class of warriors. This system operated with reasonable effectiveness until the 1430s.
The Hongwu emperor recognized from the outset that military power, although essential, was only part of the formula for effective dynastic rule. Within weeks of his accession to the throne in 1368, therefore, he made a concerted effort to bolster his religious authority, creating a pair of parallel agencies to control the two main religious orders of the realm. These agencies were known as the Buddhist Affairs Academy (Shanshi yuan) and the Daoist Affairs Academy (Xuanjiao yuan), each headed by a respected cleric. Later that year, while the emperor was campaigning in the north, the learned Buddhist monk Fanqi (1296–1370) conducted elaborate ceremonies outside of Nanjing designed to placate the spirits of the soldiers who had died in the Ming wars of conquest (monetary indemnities were also distributed to survivors).
In early 1369, the emperor further extended his religious reach by granting official titles to several hundred “spirits of walls and moats” in administrative centers from the county level to the capital. These deities were known popularly as City Gods (chenghuang), and they served as the otherworldly counterparts to local civil officials (see chapter 7). Somewhat later, the emperor brought Daoist clerics to Nanjing to give counsel on religious affairs and to assist in divination. Meanwhile, he banned all “unorthodox” sects, including the White Lotus Teachings (Bailian jiao) and the Manicheans (Mingjiao). Later (1382) the emperor would order the Confucian temples throughout the land to offer twice-yearly sacrifices to the Sage and his major disciples.14
One of the first official secular documents issued by the Hongwu emperor was the Great Ming Code (Da Ming lüling; later simply Da Ming lü), promulgated in 1368 and based on the Tang dynasty’s legal code of 653. As with his administration more generally, the emperor tinkered with the Code substantially, making major revisions that were published in 1374, 1376, 1383, and 1389. The final version of 1389 became the law of the land for the rest of the Ming dynasty (it is sometimes described as the Ming “constitution”), as well as a concrete model for the Great Qing Code of the following regime. Yonglin Jiang has translated the Ming Code into English and, in a companion study, he has situated it in the broader context of the evolution of law in late imperial China. What he shows clearly is that although the Code was intended to be a tool of social engineering, designed to harmonize Ming society and assimilate non-Han peoples to Han culture, it was also a deeply metaphysical document, predicated on the idea that crime was nothing less than a violation of the cosmic order, which had to be rectified by state policy.15
During the early years of the Hongwu reign, the Ming bureaucracy followed the general administrative model of the Yuan. At the highest level it consisted of a Grand Secretariat (Zhongshu sheng and later Neige, led by a Prime Minister), a Censorate (Ducha yuan; later Yushi tai) and a Chief Military Commission (Dudu fu). Below these three major offices were the Six Boards (Liubu), in charge, respectively, of Civil Appointments, Revenue, Rites, War, Punishments, and Public Works. An office of transmission soon developed to handle written communications between the Six Boards and provincial officials who were known as “commissioners for the promulgation and dissemination of government policies” (chengxuan buzheng shi, later shortened to buzheng shi).
The thirteen provinces (sheng) of the Ming empire were subdivided into prefectures (fu), departments (zhou; also known as subprefectures), and counties (xian; often described as “districts”). These counties, administered by magistrates (zhixian) who were appointed directly by the throne, served as the key institutions of Ming local government. At the beginning of the dynasty, the state claimed jurisdiction over 887 counties, and by the end of the dynasty this number had risen to 1,159. These units, in turn, were divided into administrative subcategories known generally as xiang (sometimes translated as “cantons”), which were, in turn, subdivided into various smaller units. At the lowest level, villages were organized into essentially self-governing communities overseen by “elders” (laoren).16
In order to help staff his nascent bureaucracy, the Hongwu emperor ordered the reinstitution of the civil service examinations in mid-1370, based on Yuan models and Yuan neo-Confucian orthodoxy. The format did not, however, become regularized until 1384. From that time onward the exams consisted of three main parts: (1) explicating the meaning of the Confucian Classics and the Four Books (see chapter 6); (2) discourses (lun), including questions on law; and (3) policy questions (ce). The notorious “eight-legged” essay (bagu wenzhang), based on carefully balanced clauses (duiju) and equally well-chosen pairs of balanced characters (shudui), did not become the official style of the civil service examinations until 1487. This basic stylistic model prevailed in China until the late nineteenth century.17
A high priority of the new Ming government was naturally the reconstruction of the agrarian economy and the distribution of grain to war-ravaged parts of the country. As early as 1370, the emperor ordered the Board of Revenue to require all households (hu) throughout the land to register with the local government, listing the names of all adult males and all properties. Although taxes were comparatively low, the imperial granaries almost always had a surplus. Later, in the 1380s, after various experiments with different forms of tax collection, the Hongwu emperor instituted two new systems—the “Yellow Registers” (huangce) and the “Fish Scale Registers” (yulin tuce)—ostensibly in order to curb governmental fiscal abuses that had disadvantaged the peasant class, but also to curb tax evasion. He also embarked on campaigns to improve the state’s economic infrastructure, opening up new land, planting trees, building roads and bridges, institutionalizing the courier system of communications, repairing irrigation systems, building dikes, and dredging waterways, including the Grand Canal—the economic lifeline between north and south China. In addition, he enrolled the population in a household registration system known as lijia (“communities organized by decimal units”), which provided labor and material for local government offices and projects, supplementing the land tax.
A turning point in the early history of the Ming was the emperor’s personal attack on a number of his high-level administrators and their followers, beginning in 1380. Fearing that his Prime Minister was planning to assassinate him, the Hongwu emperor began a wide-ranging purge that lasted for nearly fifteen years. An estimated forty thousand individuals lost their lives as a result. From an institutional standpoint, the vendetta was also far-reaching. In the course of his purge, the emperor abolished all three of his highest-level administrative bodies—the Grand Secretariat, the Censorate, and the Chief Military Commission. From this point onward, the emperor acted as his own Prime Minister, the sole supervisor of about a dozen major organs of Ming government. Small wonder it has become common among historians of China to describe the early Ming dynasty as particularly “despotic.”18
In foreign policy, the Hongwu emperor’s priority remained the eradication of the Mongol threat in the north and the protection of other parts of the empire. After the Eastern Mongols had been defeated and a Tibetan invasion of Sichuan had been repelled, the emperor turned his attention to solidifying and regularizing China’s relationships with its tributaries. Early in his reign he had proclaimed a noninterventionist policy toward tributary states on or near China’s borders. In this proclamation he made it clear that these foreign entities were all equal to one another but not equal to the Middle Kingdom, and that China would not attack them unless compelled to do so for defensive purposes. He also sought to limit Ming contact with foreigners and to ban maritime trade—apparently because he feared that foreign alliances might threaten his regime. Naturally, however, the ban could not be effectively enforced.
The last two decades or so of the Hongwu emperor’s reign were marked by further military campaigns, more tinkering with both the bureaucracy and the law, uneasy relations with the tributary state of Choson (Korea), and a number of brutal purges of real or suspected enemies, including scholars who had not even become officials yet. On occasion there were mass slaughters of officials and commoners alike. In December 1397, after dealing personally with several administrative problems, including the handling of some recalcitrant princes, the Hongwu emperor fell seriously ill, and on June 24, 1398, he died. In his last edict, promulgated posthumously, the emperor directed the entire Ming empire to acknowledge his teenage grandson, the bookish Zhu Yunwen, as his legitimate successor. Since Yunwen was part of the required lineage (the male issue of a principal consort), he was eligible to become the new Son of Heaven. But in an another edict issued by the Hongwu emperor not long before his death, he charged his “oldest and wisest” son, Zhu Di, prince of Yan, with the defense of the entire empire, writing: “For repelling foreign [threats] and keeping secure the interior, who is there but you?”19
Historians of the Ming may debate the legacy of the Hongwu emperor, but standard Chinese sources of the period sing his praises unequivocally. Consider, for example, the preface to a revised edition of the Da Ming huidian (Collected statutes of the great Ming dynasty), published in 1587, which states:
Our Exalted Emperor Taizu, having attained the virtue of a sage, expelled the barbarian Yuan dynasty and came into possession of All under Heaven. In all events [desiring] to practice unified government and exercise unified authority, he would invariably summon the multitude of Confucian scholars and consult with them. While respecting the laws of antiquity, he gave careful consideration to what was appropriate in the immediate circumstances, leaving something out here or adding something there. Gloriously the principle of Heaven [Tianli] was applied [in his laws]. His divine plans and sage-like decisions excelled those of earlier ages, and he wholly purged the vulgar accretions of later times.20
Zhu Yunwen ascended the throne on June 23, 1398, at the age of twenty-one, announcing that his reign title would be Jianwen (“The Establishment of Civil Virtue”). Unlike his grandfather, he was meek and moderate in temperament.21 Tutored and advised by several outstanding Confucian scholars, including the legendary Fang Xiaoru (1357–1402), the Jianwen emperor, as his reign name suggests, sought to regularize and “civilize” Ming imperial administration. But the changes that he and his advisers attempted, which seemed to be departures from the policies of the Hongwu emperor, eventually gave the militant, aggressive, and ambitious Prince of Yan, Zhu Di, a pretext for usurping power. One change in particular—the tightening of imperial control over the adult Ming princes, who had become semi-autonomous power holders in their vast hereditary estates—gave Zhu Di the pretext he needed to move against his nephew. When the Jianwen emperor began to purge some of his brothers, the Prince of Yan acted decisively and raised the standard of revolt.
In July 1399, after a military official loyal to the Jianwen emperor seized two officials connected to Zhu Di’s fief in the area now known as Hebei province, he retaliated, inaugurating a three-year civil war. Justifying his actions on the filial grounds that the Jianwen emperor had repudiated the policies of his (Zhu Di’s) father, the Prince of Yan moved against the young emperor. At the outset of the rebellion, Zhu Di had about one hundred thousand men, including a crack contingent of surrendered Mongol cavalry. Aided by defectors from the Ming court and possessed of superior military skill, Zhu Di marched southward toward Nanjing and eventually reached the outskirts of the capital unopposed. Negotiations followed, and the rebellious forces entered the city without a fight. The imperial palace compound was then set ablaze and several badly burned bodies were discovered—reportedly those of the Jianwen emperor, his principal consort, and his eldest son. Their actual fate has never been decisively determined.
On July 17, 1402, after ritually declining a number of petitions urging him to become emperor, Zhu Di ascended the throne as the “rightful” successor to his father, declaring his reign name to be Yongle (“Eternal Happiness”). The remaining months of 1402, however, were designated the thirty-fifth year of the Hongwu reign, in effect denying the legitimacy of the Jianwen regime altogether. In an effort to underscore the theme of filial devotion, the Yongle emperor quickly restored all the laws and institutions of his father and ordered the destruction or proscription of all writings related to events of this period. He also executed a large number of the Jianwen emperor’s supporters, along with their entire extended families. Fang Xiaoru was only one of many who suffered this cruel fate. By such means, the reign of the Yongle emperor’s immediate predecessor was essentially effaced, except for documents, many of them fabricated, designed to justify Zhu Di’s usurpation of the throne. Only in 1595 did the then-reigning emperor restore the Jianwen reign name.
Like his father, the Yongle emperor was intensely ambitious and wildly energetic. During his twenty-two-year reign, he revamped his father’s civil bureaucracy; sponsored a number of important scholarly projects; conducted several major military campaigns against the Mongols; moved the primary capital of the Ming from Nanjing to Beiping (renaming it Beijing, the “Northern Capital”), where he built what is now known as the Forbidden City (Zijin cheng); ordered massive repairs to the Grand Canal; established diplomatic relations with several Inner Asian states, including Tibet; restored trade and tributary relations with Japan and Korea; annexed the state of Annam (part of present-day Vietnam); and sponsored a series of extraordinary naval expeditions. Let us look more closely at some of these endeavors and their consequences.
As a usurper, the Yongle emperor was somewhat paranoid and relied on an extensive secret police apparatus to root out potential enemies. But unlike his father, who disdained eunuchs, Yongle relied heavily on them as palace spies. By stages, the eunuch population, comprised not only of Han Chinese but also some Mongols, Central Asians, Jurchen, and Koreans, grew in numbers and responsibilities, becoming involved not only in espionage and matters of internal security, but also in politics, military and foreign affairs, taxation, tributary administration, and the operation of imperial monopolies. Their proliferation and abuse of power caused serious difficulties down the road for the Ming dynasty, as we shall see.
During the Yongle emperor’s time, eunuchs were not the problem they would become. Although he was a military man by training and experience, the Yongle emperor also received a thorough classical education. He thus understood the need to bolster the civil side of Ming administration. So it was that in addition to reorganizing the military establishment and abundantly rewarding the military officers who had brought him to power, the Yongle emperor rebuilt the imperial bureaucracy. His justification came in an edict that read in part:
Giving and nourishing lives is the utmost virtue of Heaven. A humane ruler needs to learn from Heaven; hence, loving the people should become the principle of his rulership. The four seas are too broad to be government by one person. To rule requires the delegation of powers to the wise and able who can participate in government. That was the way followed by such sage kings as Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen and Wu. Throughout history there have been clear examples showing that when the government was run by wise and able ministers, the state was orderly. On the other hand, when the ruler failed to find the wise and able to help him, the state was chaotic. My late father, the Hongwu emperor, received the Mandate of Heaven and became the master of the world. During his rule there was peace and tranquility within the Four Seas. . . . His clear administration and disciplined population were not matched by any in the recent past. The way he accomplished these feats was by selecting the wisest persons of the world to help protect the people and run the government.22
One of the first administrative changes undertaken by the Yongle emperor was to gather together a group of seven high-ranking Hanlin Academy scholars known as “grand secretaries” (da xueshi), whose offices were located inside the palace compound. These scholars had personal access to the emperor and enjoyed his trust; they made important state decisions and assisted the throne in policymaking. They also came to exert considerable influence on the Six Boards and other metropolitan offices. Another major administrative step taken by the Yongle emperor was to regularize the civil service examination system. During the Hongwu period, the examinations had been somewhat sporadic, and there were times when they were suspended altogether. But empire-wide exams were revived in 1404 and soon they became routinized, providing the dynasty with a steady pool of highly literate talent.
As mentioned previously, the subject matter and evaluation of these tests was heavily weighted in favor of Cheng-Zhu neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Thus we find that in 1414, acting as a “sagely ruler” and the leading imperial patron of Chinese scholarship, the Yongle emperor ordered a team of Hanlin scholars to compile a definitive collection of the Five Classics and Four Books with commentaries written by Zhu Xi and like-minded Song dynasty scholars. This work, published in 1417, was intended as a summary of “all true learning,” a Confucian guide for all the literati of the land. He also ordered the compilation of other reference works designed to provide guidance for examination candidates. Another reference work, completed somewhat earlier and intended for different purposes, was the gigantic Yongle dadian (Great [literary] repository of the Yongle era, more commonly known as the Yongle encyclopedia), bound in 11,095 large volumes. Although never printed, this comprehensive compendium later served as a vast repository of information for Qing dynasty encyclopedists.23
The Yongle emperor’s foreign policy, which was far more sophisticated than that of his father, involved both the carrot and the stick. During the first few years of his reign, the situation on China’s northern borders was relatively stable. Several Mongol tribes in northwestern Manchuria that had surrendered to the Ming became part of the dynasty’s weisuo system and offered regular tribute. Other loyal Mongol tribes were resettled in the area of modern day Rehe. To the west, the Yongle emperor courted Muslim states and cities in Central Asia, offering them an opportunity to participate in the Chinese system of tributary trade. Many accepted. In July 1404, for instance, the ruler of Hami, Engke Temür, received the Ming title of “prince” (wang). Later that year, Tamerlane, the powerful ruler of the Timurid empire, embarked on a full-scale invasion of China, but he died en route in early 1405 and the planned campaign never materialized.
Meanwhile, to the west and north of the Mongol tribes in Manchuria, other powerful groups of Mongols refused to acknowledge Ming authority. In response to their recalcitrance and incursions into Chinese territory, the Yongle emperor launched five major campaigns in the period from 1410 to 1424. Unfortunately for the emperor, who often went into battle with his troops, these costly campaigns did not eliminate the Mongol threat. Indeed, from this time onward, Ming military strategy in the north remained basically defensive (except for a disastrous campaign against the Mongols in 1449). Ming military operations to the south of China were no more successful. Displeased over political developments in Annam, the Yongle emperor ignored the stated policy of his father and sent forces to “pacify” the region in 1406. Initially, Ming troops prevailed, and on July 5, 1407, Annam was incorporated into the Ming empire as the province Jiaozhi—the name it had been given during the Tang dynasty occupation of this same area. Soon, however, Annamese rebels rose up against the Ming and eventually, after twenty years of almost continual struggle and great expense, the Chinese forces withdrew.
The most spectacular achievements of the Yongle era came by sea. In the period from 1405 to 1421 the emperor launched six major maritime expeditions into the area that was then known as the Western Ocean (Xiyang). All were commanded by a Muslim eunuch named Zheng He, who had entered the Ming service after being captured during a military campaign in Yunnan. Subsequently castrated and placed in the service of the Prince of Yan, he became a confidant of the future emperor and went on several military missions with him. The motives behind Zheng’s naval voyages are not entirely clear, but we can assume that at least one goal was to find new sources of wealth (the largest vessels, some reportedly over four hundred feet long, were called “treasure ships,” or baochuan). Another goal was to extend the reach of the Ming tributary system, contributing to the glory of the empire. Still another may have been to gain information about the emperor’s enemies to the west. Geoff Wade, for his part, argues that Zheng He’s expeditions were part of a “proto-colonial” project, motivated by the Yongle emperor’s desire to establish strategic footholds in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.24
Descriptions of Zheng He’s voyages abound, and although some writers—notably Gavin Menzies—have made wild and unsustainable claims about them, we can say with assurance that they were impressive displays of China’s advanced naval technology. Some of the expeditions involved as many as 250 ships and boasted nearly thirty thousand sailors at a time. These armadas not only penetrated the coastal waters of Southeast Asia, they also sailed through the Indian Ocean and at least one expedition reached the eastern coast of Africa. Yet soon after the death of the Yongle emperor in 1424 these maritime voyages were discontinued. Why?
In part, the reasons were financial; they were an enormous drain on the already strained Ming coffers, without yielding any significant economic gain. Moreover, after the death of the Yongle emperor there were no strong advocates of naval exploration. In fact, Confucian scholars increasingly criticized the idea of maritime expeditions as being antithetical to the tributary notion that foreigners would gravitate on their own to China and offer their submission. Aggressive measures, they argued, were not only costly but also unnecessary. Finally, the fact that Zheng He’s expeditions reflected heightened eunuch influence in Chinese politics offended the sensibilities of Chinese scholar-officials. As a result, most records of Zheng He’s naval voyages (and a subsequent one in 1433) were destroyed.
In the end, the Yongle emperor’s efforts to extend his influence beyond China’s immediate maritime frontiers, as with his attempts to stabilize the land areas beyond China’s northern, western, and southern borders, had no lasting effect. Another one of his projects did, however: the establishment of the primary Ming capital at Beijing. This ambitious move, begun as early as 1403, made sense to the Yongle emperor. In the first place, the continued Mongol threat to China argued for a substantial and sustained Chinese presence in the north. Even the Hongwu emperor had at one time contemplated moving the capital northward for this reason. Also influencing the Yongle emperor’s decision was the fact that the Beijing area had been his base of operations as Prince of Yan—the source of his initial power and support. Finally, in the first half of the fifteenth century, Beijing seemed to be the only major city near the northern frontier that could adequately support a large military garrison and a substantial civilian population.25
Between 1403 and 1420 the Yongle emperor effected the transfer. In February 1403 he formally designated the city his “Northern Capital” and soon sent his eldest son Zhu Gaochi (later to reign briefly as the Hongxi emperor, 1424–1425) to administer it. He also established a “branch ministry” (xingbu) to oversee branch offices of the Six Boards and other administrative organs at the capital. Significantly, he renamed the metropolitan prefecture Shuntian (“Obedient to Heaven”), echoing the designation given by his father to the metropolitan prefecture of Nanjing—(Yingtian “Responsive to Heaven”).
In 1404 the emperor moved ten thousand households from nine prefectures in Shanxi province to increase the population of Beijing. Soon thereafter the city walls underwent repairs. Then, in 1407, preparations began for the building of a new imperial palace—the Forbidden City. Ming officials gathered together a huge work force—numbering hundreds of thousands of artisans, soldiers, and common laborers—including several thousand Annamese, who had been captured during the wars of annexation in the south. Meanwhile, repairs on the Grand Canal facilitated the movement of tribute grain and other commodities from the rich Yangzi River area to the new capital, supplementing the coastal transportation system of the Yuan. By 1418, most of the major palace buildings had been completed, and improvements to the city walls, moats, and bridges of Beijing were also made.
On October 28, 1420, Beijing became the new Ming capital. The next year, however, a fire destroyed the three main audience halls of the Forbidden City. Following precedent in the wake of such disasters, the emperor called for criticism of his rule. Several censors and some Hanlin scholars denounced the move to Beijing for the economic and other hardships it caused. One official by the name of Xiao Yi so offended the Ming monarch that he was executed. Thereafter, matters went forward without much further dissent.
A great many administrative changes took place in the next few years. Nanjing offices and agencies became auxiliary branches of their counterparts in Beijing. Frontier defenses came to be concentrated in garrisons south of the Great Wall rather than beyond it as in the Hongwu era. Meanwhile, most of the capital guards (jingwei) were transferred from Nanjing to the new capital and its environs, making them the largest single body of troops in the entire empire—a total of perhaps 250,000 soldiers. Military farms (juntian) in the Beijing area were enlarged, but substantial grain shipments by sea, inland waterways, and land were still necessary to meet the needs of both military men and civil employees.
In order to finance his ambitious civil and military projects and to prop up the tributary system (which often resulted in financial losses for the Ming state because tributary envoys regularly received lavish gifts), the Yongle emperor was constantly in the business of raising money. Financial austerity had been a priority for the father, but not for the son. A rough estimate is that the Yongle emperor’s annual expenditures averaged about two or three times those of the first emperor. How did he meet these expenses? Ray Huang provides the basic answer:
Although the details are not clear, the scattered evidence in many contemporary sources, when put together, suggests that taxation under the third emperor of the Ming was basically carried out by means of requisitions. Nominally, the tax rates were never increased; there were even select reductions. Yet, the service obligations of the populace were greatly extended. Taxpayers in the Yangtze delta were ordered to deliver their grain payments to Peking, which was over 1,000 miles away. Even when the army transportation corps took over some of the deliveries after the Grand Canal was opened for traffic, the surcharges collected from the taxpayers to cover the transportation costs equaled or exceeded the basic tax payments.26
The corvee labor system clearly felt the strain:
Statute laborers who normally had been required to perform unpaid services for thirty days a year were forced to work for considerably longer periods, sometimes for over a year. Furthermore, during the early Ming, surplus commodities in government granaries were not sold in the marketplace. They were distributed to pay for the materials and labor submitted by the populace beyond the statutory limits of taxation. . . . The compensation rendered for such goods comprised only a fraction of the actual market price. Such practices undermined the tax system. While ostensibly retaining the first emperor’s fixed quotas for state income, extraordinary demands were placed on all fiscal units. The extra financial burden was not apportioned according to any plan, but was distributed on the basis of uncoordinated local ad hoc decisions.27
Tributary trade occasionally brought in some revenue for the state, but not enough to ease the burdens imposed by land taxes and corvee obligations.
The death of the Yongle emperor in the summer of 1424 marked the end of military expansion and a sharp inward turn in Ming policy. Not surprisingly, the emperor’s successors, including his own son, “quietly retreated from his policies of unrestrained spending.”28 Institutional changes did take place, however: for instance, the establishment in the 1420s of a palace school for eunuchs (nei shutang), taught by Hanlin scholars and designed to give eunuchs the tools needed to handle documents and communicate formally with court officials. From this time onward, eunuch involvement in state affairs increased dramatically, as the Ming emperors charged them with ever-expanding responsibilities. Another important development at about the same time, which also enhanced the ability of emperors to work outside of established bureaucratic channels, was the expansion of censorial activities. Increasingly, censors served as a check on both the civil and military arms of the Ming government.
In the provinces, a significant change during the 1420s and 1430s was the establishment of a quasi-formal system of governorship known as xunfu (lit. “roaming pacifiers”). As with so many other Ming institutions and practices, this system had its origins in the Yuan dynasty. It was designed to coordinate the functions of the major civil, military, and censorial officials of each province, but it was not a recognized substantive position with a regular tenure. Most xunfu were metropolitan officials, often from one of the Six Boards, and their appointments were essentially ad hoc. They were, in effect, special imperial representatives with different responsibilities and different ranks. Eventually the xunfu system evolved into a type of governorship known as zongdu (lit. “general supervisor”). The upshot of this particular development was the imposition of an ever-greater degree of civil control over Ming military officials.
From an economic standpoint, the post-Yongle period was marked by a shift in fiscal assessment from discrete payments in labor and kind to unified payments in cash—a reform known as the “single-whip system” (yitiaobian fa). This development “moved the operation of state communications away from the ancient agrarian model of corvee in the direction of a more commercial model of hired labor.” At the same time, “the monetization of the tax system induced more silver to enter the economy and to circulate at greater speed, thereby contributing to the conversion of goods into commodities and making it possible, and more economically rational, for a household to buy what it needed, rather than to grow it or to make it.”29
On the foreign policy front, aside from the enormously expensive late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century efforts to strengthen the Great Wall,30 Ming emperors in the post-Yongle period continually sought to use the tributary system to minimize military threats on the Chinese periphery. The pattern was a familiar one. To the degree that foreigners found the status of “tribute-bearer” advantageous for political or economic reasons, they conformed to Chinese expectations, performing the appropriate rituals, offering local products as tribute, and receiving in return gifts, patents of authority, and trade privileges. Thus, for example, the “submissive” Mongol tribes in Manchuria periodically supplied the Ming throne with horses and other domestic animals and received in return paper money, silver, silk, and textiles. The chieftains and their “envoys” were granted official ranks and titles and the right to trade in certain specified locations. Similar arrangements prevailed with other Inner Asian peoples (including the Jurchen, precursors of the Manchus).
The Ming emperors made special efforts to enroll Korea, Japan, and the Liuqiu (Japanese: Ryūkyū) Islands as tributaries in an effort to protect the northeast, and they also tried to solidify tributary relationships with various Southeast Asian countries for the same strategic reason. But there was more to the matter than strategy. The Ming rulers also celebrated the symbolic dimensions of the system—in particular the idea that foreign peoples admired Chinese culture and were inclined to “turn toward civilization” (xianghua). As a result of these dual considerations—strategic interests and matters of dynastic prestige—the Ming dynasty sent an estimated 167,000 troops to Korea in order to help repel devastating Japanese military assaults in the period from 1592 to 1598. The Chinese incurred severe losses and spent millions of ounces of silver on what Kenneth Swope describes as the “first great East Asian war.” In Swope’s opinion, “modern scholars are mistaken to cynically underestimate the importance of the [Ming-Korean tributary] relationship and Ming feelings of obligation toward Korea.”31 Indeed, out of gratitude the Koreans would later send troops to help the Ming resist the Manchus.
A final point to make about Ming administration is the increased power of eunuchs during the Chenghua emperor’s reign (1464–1487) and thereafter. The pattern was always the same: by virtue of their closeness to emperors, empresses, and concubines, eunuchs managed to gain the trust of the inner court, acquiring control over important offices, either directly or indirectly, and proceeding to patronize others of a similar disposition. Their involvement in Ming political and economic life took a variety of forms, even when strong rulers were on the throne—in part because they seemed to offer the emperor a check on civil service bureaucrats and even military leaders. As early as the Yongle period, for example, eunuchs had already become involved not only in espionage and internal security but also military affairs, foreign relations, taxation, tributary administration, and the operation of imperial monopolies, including the vital salt industry. In later periods, eunuchs also assumed prominent roles in the manufacture of silk and porcelain, flood control, the building of temples and shrines, and judicial affairs. Some were even able to draft edicts of appointment in the emperor’s name, without his knowledge.
The less administratively engaged the emperor, the more likely eunuchs would arrogate power to themselves. And in the late Ming there was a great deal of imperial disengagement. According to one study, in the period from 1471 to 1497, the Chenghua and Hongzhi (r. 1487–1505) emperors held no audiences with their ministers. This was also reportedly true for the entire reign of the Zhengde emperor (r. 1505–1521). In the forty-five years of the Jiajing emperor’s reign (1521–1567) he apparently held only one audience, and from 1589 to 1602, the Wanli emperor (1572–1620) also met his ministers only once. The result was that eunuchs such as Wang Zhi in the 1470s, Liu Jin in the early 1500s, and Wei Zhongxian in the 1620s virtually controlled Ming administration at the highest level.32
By 1644, there were an estimated seventy thousand eunuchs in the imperial city and another thirty thousand scattered throughout the rest of the empire. The more active the eunuchs became, the more opportunities arose to become embroiled in factional politics. As is well known, the abuse of power by eunuchs and factional strife proved to be enormous problems in the late Ming. Yet even in decline, Ming intellectual, artistic, and literary life remained remarkably vibrant. Indeed, as Jonathan Spence has written about the year 1600:
[At that time] China clearly appeared to [be] the largest and most sophisticated of all the unified realms on earth. The extent of its territorial domains was unparalleled . . . [and its] population of some 120 million was far larger than that of all the European countries combined. . . . The Chinese state was more 38 Chapter One effectively centralized than those elsewhere in the world . . . [and if] one points to the figures of exceptional brilliance or insight in late sixteenth-century European society, one will easily find their near equivalents in genius working away in China at just the same time. . . . Without pushing further for near parallels, within this same period in China, essayists, philosophers, nature poets, landscape painters, religious theorists, historians and medical scholars all produced a profusion of significant works, many of which are now regarded as classics of the civilization.33
The Ming period is generally regarded as a time of enormous cultural achievement. What were the reasons for its splendor, even when the dynasty seemed in decline? One important factor was continued economic development, in part a function of China’s increasing involvement in global exchanges.34 As Timothy Brook points out, from the standpoint of commodity production and circulation, the Ming dynasty
marked a turning point in Chinese history, both in the scale at which goods were being produced for the market, and in the nature of the economic relations that governed commercial exchange. The improvements in transportation brought about by the Ming state and by individuals or groups were not of the same order; even so, the expansion of the state courier system [yichuan] and the reconstruction of the Grand Canal, plus the cumulative effect of mundane investments in canals and roads, were grand enough to contribute significantly to the movement of goods and people, and thus to facilitate the elaboration of commercial networks.35
The growth of commerce contributed to a blurring of class distinctions. To be sure, Ming China was by no means an egalitarian society. As the scholar Zhang Tao (fl. 1586) observed: “One man in a hundred is rich, while nine out of ten are impoverished. The poor cannot stand up to the rich who, though few in number, are able to control the majority. The Lord of Silver rules Heaven and the God of Copper Cash reigns over the earth.”36 Nonetheless, Ming commercial prosperity made it possible, at least in theory (and often in practice), for all classes of Chinese society to improve their respective situations. Assisting in the process was the emergence of a group of scribes, public lectors, and other village specialists who lowered the social barrier that separated those who could read from those who could not. Furthermore, there was a rise in general literacy. A Korean visitor to China in 1488 observed with some surprise that many Chinese could read, “even village children, ferrymen and sailors.”37
The remarkable expansion of commercial printing in the Ming both reflected and contributed to this rise in literacy. As Brook, Benjamin Elman, Cynthia Brokaw, Lucille Chia, Kai-Wing Chow, Joseph McDermott, Wei Shang, Harriet Zurdorfer, and others have shown, the impact of printing on cultural production in the Ming (and Qing) dynasties cannot be overestimated. In the first place, commercialized printing facilitated the emergence of a distinctive new class of literary professionals—“writers, editors, compilers, commentators, critics, publishers and proofreaders”—whose professional life reflected the convergent careers of literati (shi) and merchant-businessmen (shang), hence the hybrid term shishang. Second, the expansion of the book market in Ming times created new forms of authority, new literary genres, and new readerships, whose interests went well beyond the boundaries of state orthodoxy.38
The emergence of new genres is especially significant. In addition to an unprecedented outpouring of scholarly works on the usual topics—language, philosophy, art, literature, belles lettres, and so forth—the Ming dynasty witnessed an explosion of “how-to” books on every conceivable subject, from sex to carpentry. There were primers for students, works to assist scholars in preparing for the examinations, guides to help literate artisans and peasants produce and market their goods more efficiently, and books designed to help merchants develop their businesses. There were also painting and calligraphy manuals, letter-writing guides, books about law and contracts, handbooks on ritual, works on the composition of verse, medical treatises, route books for travelers, and systematic tracts on connoisseurship, such as the famous Gegu yaolun (Essential criteria of antiquities, 1388). Printed almanacs provided valuable calendrical, divinatory, and other forms of practical information for all sectors of society, and morality books (shanshu) of various sorts transmitted information about Buddhism, Religious Daoism, and syncretic belief systems.
A particularly popular genre of “how-to” books in Ming dynasty China was the “encyclopedia for daily use” (riyong leishu). Works of this sort were designed to supply advice that might prove useful for literate commoners (shumin) who hoped to interact with members of the exalted “gentry” class, and much of their content clearly reflects this basic goal. Of all the encyclopedias for daily use that circulated in Ming times, the Santai wanyong zhengzong (Three platform orthodox instruction for myriad use) and the Wanbao quanshu (Complete book of myriad treasures; hereafter WBQS) seem to have been among the most popular. They were printed (and reprinted) in Fujian province, but distributed empire wide. A distinctive feature of these and related publications is that although they were produced locally, their content was designed to reflect forms of universal cultural knowledge—applicable and of value throughout the entire realm. For this reason, encyclopedias of daily use tended to have a similar system of categories and to draw on similar sources of information and authority.39
Let us look briefly at the content of a 1636 edition of the WBQS—putatively, but no doubt erroneously, attributed to the precocious and charismatic late Ming scholar Zhang Pu (1602–1641)—to get a sense of these categories (men).40 In order they are: (1) the Heavens, (2) the Earth, (3) Human Relationships, (4) the Seasons, (5) Farming and Sericulture, (6) Correspondence, (7) Stylistic Models, (8) Exhortation, (9) Rank and Emoluments, (10) Tea Protocols, (11) Outer Barbarians, (12) Drinking Games, (13) Medicine, (14) Dream Interpretation, (15) Written Complaints, (16) Selection of Auspicious Dates, (17) Fortune-telling, (18) Physiognomy, (19) Fate Calculations (based on the “eight characters” of one’s birth), (20) Chess (and other amusements), (21) Jokes (plus an unnumbered section on Playing the Zither), (22) Gestation, (23) Construction, (24) Geomancy, (25) Calligraphy, (26) Divination with Milfoil, (27) Couplets, (28) Calculations, (29) Painting, (30) Managing Illness, (31) Nourishing Life, (32) Divination with Arrowheads, (33), Oxen and Horses, and (34) Miscellaneous Matters (see appendix E).
Other Ming editions of the WBQS had special sections on marriage, mourning and sacrifices, the “immortal arts” (xiuzhen), infants, instructing children, mathematic calculations, and sexual adventures (fengyue). Many of these categories persisted in encyclopedias of daily use from the early seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century or later (see chapter 9), although the category on sexual adventures disappears in the WBQS with the fall of the Ming.
These encyclopedia categories provide an illuminating inventory of Chinese cultural concerns. The section on erotica, for example, is a veritable goldmine of information on Chinese sexual life in the late Ming, providing all kinds of practical advice, from sample letters for winning the hearts of courtesans to “marvelous recipes for thoughts of love” (chunyi miaofang). In addition to a wide range of prescriptions designed to provoke sexual arousal or increase male potency and stamina, there are various tips for men in the arts of seduction. They are told, for example, not to mention “the beauty of pale skin” to a woman with a dark complexion, and advised that giving napkins and fans as gifts to a courtesan is like “throwing out a brick to attract jade.” Men also learned of the ways that courtesans and prostitutes might try to manipulate them, and the devices that they (men) could employ to manipulate women.41 The significant point here is that popular encyclopedias like the WBQS not only played an important role in disseminating useful knowledge to literate commoners, they also served as a source of inspiration for other forms of cultural production, such as novels, in both the Ming and Qing periods.
The Ming was a time when short story writers and novelists had unprecedented influence.42 Among other things, we can see in their works a new focus on the details of everyday life and greater attention to issues of gender, sex, and romantic love. Andrew Plaks argues that Ming novels reflect a self-conscious reevaluation of tradition on the part of the literati class, which can also be found in poetry and painting of the period.43 But these works had multiple audiences, and even among elites there were a number of different opinions about how such forms of vernacular literature could and should be read. We may question, then, the degree to which at least some of these works actually subverted traditional views.
In two of the “four great masterworks” (si daqishu) of the Ming novel44—all four of which exist in excellent English-language translations—we find decidedly negative views of women that are not, I think, designed to be ironic. The popular historical narrative Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms period) is one; it depicts women as, among other things, devious subverters of male virtue. Reputedly written by Luo Guanzhong (c. 1330–1400), the novel is set in the Three Kingdoms period that followed the breakdown of the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). The novel is full of battle and intrigue, with prominent themes of brotherhood, loyalty, personal ambition, and righteous revenge. Among the many historical characters of the novel, several have become universally known in China as either noble heroes or arch villains: Zhang Fei, the symbol of reckless courage; Guan Yu, noteworthy for his unwavering loyalty; Zhuge Liang, the brilliant strategist; and Cao Cao, the selfish and evil tyrant.45
Like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Shuihu zhuan (Water margin), is full of courageous deeds, with themes of friendship, loyalty, and revenge, as well as righteous revolt. But it, too, promotes negative female stereotypes. Although traditionally attributed to Luo Guanzhong (based, it would appear, on an earlier work by Shi Nai’an, 1296–1371), Water Margin is much more colloquial and less historical than Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It covers a shorter time span (during the Song dynasty) and consists of a sequence of cycles rather than an interweaving of narrative strands. Of the 108 “righteous brigands” of Water Margin—who represent a fascinating cross section of Chinese society—the faintly historical Song Jiang and the loyal and powerful Wu Song have become especially popular folk heroes. To this day, few Chinese are unfamiliar with the story of Wu Song’s killing of a ferocious tiger with his bare hands.46
Xiyou ji (Journey to the west), as its title suggests, is a travel epic, full of adventure, magic, religious symbolism, and satire. The novel is based on the historic pilgrimage to India of the famous Buddhist monk Xuanzang (596–664), who made the trip by way of Central Asia between 629 and 645. But instead of the sober travel account left by the historic Xuanzang, Journey to the West is a comic fantasy, written by the scholar Wu Cheng’en (c. 1506– 1582). It revolves around the adventures of the humorless pilgrim Sanzang (“Tripitaka,” a Buddhist pun on the name Xuanzang) and his traveling companions, including the well-known magical monkey named Sun Wukong and a sensual and slothful pig-like creature called Zhu Bajie (“Pigsy”). The novel can be approached from several angles—as allegory, social and political satire, comedy, and myth. At the level of allegory, and in the popular mind, Tripitaka represents selfishness and spiritual blindness; Pigsy, gross human appetite; and Monkey, intelligence, resourcefulness, and supernatural power. Monkey is, of course, the hero of the work. The novel is full of good-natured satire, and few subjects escape the author’s barbs, including the “Monkey King” himself.47
Far different in subject matter from either the puritanical heroics of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin or the delightful escapades of Journey to the West is the much-acclaimed Ming erotic novel Jin Ping Mei (Plum in the golden vase). This work has been aptly described by literary critics as inaugurating a “new era in the history of the Chinese novel”—not only because of its carefully constructed overall structure, but also because it captures in a vibrant fictional form the “rhythms, dynamics, and predicaments of the daily world.”48 The book consists of ten-chapter sets, each covering a major plot and a number of subplots. As many as four different authors have been credited with writing the novel, most notably the scholars Wang Shizhen (1526–1596) and Xu Wei (1521–1593).
Plum in the Golden Vase draws on many diverse literary sources, including Water Margin, vernacular short stories, classical works, plays, songs, and even popular encyclopedias. It is essentially a “novel of manners” set in the Song dynasty, which describes Chinese urban middle-class life in realistic detail and dwells at length on the sexual exploits of the merchant, Ximen Qing. The author shows a certain ambivalence toward his characters, displaying outward disapproval of their immoral behavior but covert sympathy for their physical and emotional frustrations. Yet ultimately he opts for morality: Ximen Qing dies of sexual overindulgence, and most of the other “evil” people in the novel are punished in one way or another. Ximen Qing’s son redeems his father’s sins by becoming a Buddhist monk. One especially noteworthy feature of the novel is its comparatively full and sympathetic treatment of women, a sharp contrast with the negative and stereotypical views projected in Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin.
As part of the process by which Ming society changed in response to economic transformations, elite women—especially those who lived in the rich area of Jiangnan and who enjoyed educational advantages—began to assume an ever greater role in Chinese literary life.49 In the first place, they became readers of the new forms of vernacular and classical literature. But more importantly, they increasingly became writers themselves. The anthologies of Chinese women’s poetry edited by scholarly teams such as Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy, Wilt Idema and Beata Grant, and Susan Mann and Yu-yin Cheng provide abundant and eloquent testimony to this point. Why the emphasis on poetry? Because, as Chang and Saussy point out, poetry has always been the most exalted literary form in China, whereas fiction seemed to be “a commercial venture engaged in by men who had failed in their pursuit of a literary career or who had stooped to putting their talent at the service of the market.”50 The fact that very few women wrote novels or even short stories in late imperial times is at least partly a reflection of their social status: they wrote verse because the elite men with whom they shared their lives did so.
The number of women poets in the Ming dynasty is enormous by comparison to earlier periods, not only because of their unprecedented access to printed books, but also because certain philosophical currents in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, such as the iconoclastic thought of Wang Yangming (1472–1529) and his disciples, conduced to it (see below). Another factor contributing to this surge of poetic creativity was the support of male scholars. At the same time, however, as Daria Berg demonstrates, many male literati in the Ming (and many of their early Qing counterparts as well) found the emergence of women writers to be an unsettling and even threatening development.51
In any case, the poetry of women writers such as Xia Yunying (1394–1418), Zhang Hongqiao (fl. c. 1400), Zhu Jing’an (fl. 1450), Chen Deyi (fl. 1476), Meng Shuqing (fl. 1476), Shen Qionglian (fl. 1488–1505), Zou Saizhen (fl. 1495), Wang Su’e (sixteenth century), Huang E (1498–1569, aka Huang Xiumei), Li Yuying (b. 1506), Wang Jiaoluan (sixteenth century), Yang Wenli (sixteenth century), Duan Shuqing (c. 1510–c. 1600), Dong Shaoyu (fl. 1545), Bo Shaojun (d. 1625), Xue Susu (c. 1564–c. 1637), Ma Shouzhen (1548–1604), Xu Yuan (fl. 1590), and Lu Qingzi (fl. 1590) reveals a high degree of achievement and a broad range of subject matter and style. The same can be said of talented women painters in the Ming, including not only Xue Susu (see immediately below), but also such celebrities as Ma Shouzhen (1548–1605), Xue Wu (c. 1573–1620), and Wen Shu (1595–1634)—the last, a descendent of the great poet and painter Wen Zhengming (1470–1559).52
Several of the above-mentioned writers deserve further mention. Lu Qingzi, for example, exceeded her talented husband in poetic skill and wrote with a flagrant disregard for social status, taking entertainers and servants as well as other gentry women as her audience. Xue Susu, a gifted courtesan, was a famous Ming dynasty painter and calligrapher, whose landscapes, orchids, and bamboo elicited the highest praise from Dong Qichang (1555–1636)—the foremost painter and art theoretician of his day (see below). Dong, it may be added, also thought highly of Xue Wu’s paintings and calligraphy. Huang E is best known for her part in one of the most famous husband-wife dialogues in all of Chinese literary history, and some critics believe that she should be considered “the first woman of letters in the entire Ming period.” But many other women poets of the Ming were also highly accomplished. Meng Shuqing, for instance, gained justifiable fame for her sociability, debating skills, cleverness, literary talent, and discrimination. She is especially well known for her ability to weave the lines of precursors seamlessly into her own poetry (on this technique, see chapter 9).53
Male writers in the Ming are comparatively well known and much discussed. In the early years of the dynasty, four of the most famous authors (three of whom were also highly regarded painters) were designated the “four literary giants of Suzhou”—Gao Qi (1336–1374), Zhang Yu (1333–1385), Yang Ji (c. 1334–1383), and Xu Ben (1335–1380).54 All were gifted poets and essayists, but they ran afoul of the Hongwu emperor for reasons related to their hometown loyalties. Gao paid most dearly: he was executed by a punishment known as “slashing in half at the waist.” Naturally enough, then, in this early period there was a great deal of self-censorship on the part of Ming writers. One of these authors was the child prodigy Qu You (1347–1433), who is particularly well known for his collection of classical fiction, Jiandeng xinhua (New tales told by lamplight). Zhu Youdun, a gifted playwright who authored thirty-two short plays, seems to have been less restrained, perhaps in part because he was a favored member of the royal household.
During the long fifteenth century, the city of Suzhou bounced back culturally from the devastation caused by the first Ming emperor. Among the brightest lights of the period were Shen Zhou (1427–1509), Zhu Yunming (1460–1526), Wen Zhengming, and Tang Yin (1470–1524). All four were accomplished poets and extremely talented painters and calligraphers, who earned a living primarily by selling their artwork. Touched by the vibrant market forces at work in the Jiangnan area, money became a significant theme in their writing—Shen’s in particular. By contrast, at about the same time, a group of young poets and prose stylists in north China developed what came to be called the Revivalist School (fugu xuepai), inspired by great writers of the distant past. Like certain women poets and their male supporters in the Ming, they were influenced by the freewheeling thought of Wang Yangming (see below), who was not only an enormously influential philosopher, but also an excellent poet. These revivalist writers all started out as high court officials, and so they had an unmasked disdain for the developing commercial culture of the south.55
As in other realms of cultural life, the late Ming was a “great age” for theater, in particular a genre known as the “southern play” or Kunshan opera (Kunqu)—a creative blend of previously developed literary and musical forms. The most famous work of this sort in Ming times was Mudan ting (Peony Pavillion), written by Tang Xianzi (1550–1616). Tang’s passionate love story revolves around a young woman, Du Liniang, who falls in love with a young man in an erotic dream. She dies pining for him, but not before she makes a self-portrait, which the young man, Liu Mengmei, later discovers. Naturally he falls in love with her, and through supernatural means they are united in life. Despite the difficulty of the play’s language (a modern edition contains more than 1,700 explanatory notes), it was wildly popular, published in numerous private and commercial editions, performed onstage, and imitated by many playwrights. It appealed to both men and women and to elites and commoners alike.56 Many authorities consider “Peony Pavillion” to be at the heart of the cult of romantic love (qing) that flourished in the late Ming.
Another late Ming development of a very different sort was the proliferation of literary societies (wenshe), which both reflected and contributed to the political factionalism that was endemic at the time.57 Several renowned poets, including Chen Zilong (1608–1647) and Qian Qianyi (1582–1664), found themselves in the thick of it. Chen, along with such famous intellectuals as Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), and Wu Weiye (1609–1672), was a member of the famous Revival Society (Fushe), which by the end of the Ming boasted members from all over China, including more than 15 percent of the successful examination candidates from the wealthiest provinces. Despite their political orientation, the members of the Revival Society did not suffer the fate of so many members of the Donglin (“Eastern Forest”) Academy, whose direct involvement in late Ming politics during the Tianqi reign (1620–1627) resulted in a massive purge orchestrated by the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627).
The most important philosophical movement of the late Ming period was associated with the Learning of the Mind (Xinxue), championed by Wang Yangming and his disciples, Wang Gen (1483–1541), Wang Ji (1498–1583), and Li Zhi (1527–1602). This “intuitive” approach to moral knowledge—anticipated by Zhu Xi’s intellectual rival in the Song, Lu Xiangshan (1139– 1192)—emphasized the innate ability of all human beings to recognize goodness (liangzhi) without the need for formal study of the sort advocated so persistently and energetically by Master Zhu. In the hands of Wang Yangming and especially his disciples, the Learning of the Mind encouraged forms of relativism and skepticism that led, among other things, to a certain moral and even social egalitarianism. The irreverent polemicist Li Zhi, for example—one of the most influential figures in late Ming literature and arguably the most infamous of Wang Yangming’s followers—offered many deliberately provocative and iconoclastic remarks in his wide-ranging writings. Thus, he once wrote: “It is fine to say that there are better and worse views—but can it be that men’s are always better and women’s always worse?”58
Li Zhi and several other prominent late Ming scholars were acquaintances of the famous Jesuit missionary, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), architect of the Jesuit accommodation strategy in China from 1583 onward.59 The Jesuit interlude, which extended well into the Qing, has been the subject of a great many scholarly studies. For our purposes, the salient point is that Ricci and his successors brought new religious, philosophical, mathematical, scientific, and technological knowledge to Ming (and Qing) dynasty China, which not only amplified the already vast Chinese cultural repertoire, but also stimulated research into indigenous Chinese traditions of learning in these areas. As Joanna Waley-Cohen, Benjamin Elman, Roger Hart, Harriet Zurndorfer, and others have pointed out, Chinese scholars borrowed European knowledge selectively during the late Ming and thereafter, just as previous Chinese regimes had drawn on Arabic and Indian knowledge. It is worth remembering that the Ming Directorate of Astronomy (Qin Tian jian) was often dominated by Muslims.
Contrary to the common stereotype that Chinese scholars in late imperial times were not curious about the natural world, a careful look at the literature reveals a long tradition of precisely such curiosity.60 Encyclopedic works by late Ming scholars such as the Bencao gangmu (Compendium of materia medica; 1587–1596) by Li Shizhen (1518–1593) and the Tiangong kaiwu (Works of Heaven and the inception of things; 1637) by Song Yingxing (1587–1666) bear eloquent testimony to this sort of interest. Both of these individuals failed the Ming civil service examinations repeatedly, but both were first-rate intellectuals who read broadly and who carefully observed the world around them. They also engaged in lively and productive debate with their scholarly peers.
Li’s work, which has been thoroughly and insightfully studied by Carla Nappi, took him thirty years to complete; it consisted of fifty-two volumes in its final form. Song’s study, equally well examined by Dagmar Schafer, was more modest in scale; nonetheless it described the terms, configurations, and production stages for more than 130 different technologies and tools. The important point here is that late Ming scholarship of the sort conducted by Li and Song reflected a wave of literati interest in new approaches to knowledge “driven by the uncertainties of this era and a changing material and cultural world.”61 One might mention an additional late Ming work in this vein: the scholar-merchant Hu Wenhuan’s set of books titled Gezhi congshu (Collectania for investigating things and extending knowledge), published in the 1590s. Although not as scholarly as the publications by Li and Song, it was more broad ranging, representing the interests of “low-brow literati” rather than elites, and reflecting traditions of “nourishing life” (yangsheng) that were central to Ming popular religious discussions about longevity and immortality.62
The introduction of Jesuit learning was part of this ongoing process of seeking scientific and technological knowledge. It may be true (and I believe it is) that the most valued knowledge in China remained moral knowledge,63 but this did not prevent Chinese scholars of the Ming (and Qing) from reading and discussing scientific and technological ideas derived from the many Chinese-language tracts produced by the Jesuits and their amanuenses. When this information proved useful, as it did in the realms of astronomy, cartography, calendrics, and military affairs, it was eagerly embraced. If not, it was understandably rejected or ignored.64