Bing from farmer son to magistrate sparknotes

Copyright © 1993 by Patricia Buckley Ebrey

Copyright © 1981 by The Free Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chinese civilization: a sourcebook / edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey.—2nd ed., rev. and expanded.

p. cm.

Rev. and expanded ed. of: Chinese civilization and society.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-02-908752-X eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-8839-2

1. China—Civilization—Sources. 2. China—History—Sources. I. Ebrey, Patricia Buckley II. Chinese civilization and society.

DS721.C517 1993

http://www.SimonandSchuster.com
951—dc20 92-47017

CIP

CONTENTS Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Contents According to Topics A Note on the Selection and Translation of Sources Map of China

I. THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

1. Late Shang Divination Records. The questions and answers inscribed on oracle bones used to communicate with divine powers

2. The Metal Bound Box. A scene in which the Duke of Zhou offers his life to the ancestors in place of his nephew the king, from the Book of Documents

3. Hexagrams in the Book of Changes. Two passages from an ancient diviners’ manual

4. Songs and Poems. Songs of courtship, feasting, and war, from the Book of Songs

5. The Battle Between Jin and Chu. Description of the strategies, jockeying for position, and boasting of a major battle, from the Zuo zbuan

6. Confucian Teachings. Passages from the Analects, Mencius, and Xunzi

7. Daoist Teachings. Passages from the Laozi and Zhuangzi

8. Legalist Teachings. Passages from the Book of Lord Shang and Han Feizi

9. Two Avengers. From the Intrigues of the Warring States

10. Social Rituals. The procedures to be followed when an inferior visits a

superior and vice-versa, from the Book of Etiquette and Ritual

II. THE QIN AND HAN DYNASTIES

11. Penal Servitude in Qin Law. From excavated wooden-strip documents

12. The World Beyond China. From Sima Qian’s Historical Records

13. Heaven, Earth, and Man. From the writings of Dong Zhongshu

14. The Debate on Salt and Iron. A court debate between the Legalist prime minister and the Confucian scholars about the role of the government in economic matters

15. The Classic of Filial Piety. A popular primer that glorifies the virtue of filial devotion

16. Wang Fu on Friendship and Getting Ahead. A second-century man’s cynical view of how men get ahead

17. Women’s Virtues and Vices. An exemplary biography of a model woman, the lament of a man whose wife was far from model, and a woman’s admonitions to girls on how to behave

18. Yin and Yang in Medical Theory. The theory behind traditional medicine, from the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine

19. Local Cults. Three stone inscriptions describing shrines erected to honor various deities

20. Uprisings. Accounts of two religious leaders and the uprisings they staged

III. THE ERA OF DIVISION AND THE TANG DYNASTY

21. Ge Hong’s Autobiography. By a fourth-century scholar and reluctant official

22. Buddhist Doctrines and Practices. Wei Shou’s summary of Buddhist

doctrines, hagiographic accounts of two monks, and documents found at Dunhuang showing Buddhist belief in practice

23. Tales of Ghosts and Demons. Three tales from a fourth-century collection

24. Cultural Differences Between the North and the South. Two views of the distinctions that developed during a period of political separation and non-Han domination in the North

25. Emperor Taizong on Effective Government. A summary of political theory, written by the second Tang emperor for his sons

26. The Tang Legal Code. Sections from the laws on theft and robbery and those on land and taxes

27. The Errors of Geomancy. An official’s complaints about the profusion of theories

28. The Dancing Horses of Xuanzong’s Court. Unusual and exotic entertainment

29. Family Business. Documents from Dunhuang on the sale of slaves, division of property, and household registration

30. The Examination System. Humorous and semihumorous anecodotes about men’s efforts to pass the civil service examinations

31. A Pilgrim’s Visit to the Five Terraces Mountains. From the diary of a Japanese monk who made a pilgrimage to one of the sacred sites of Buddhism

IV. THE SONG AND YUAN DYNASTIES

32. The Tanguts and Their Relations with the Han Chinese. Some Tangut maxims, a Tangut ruler ’s letter to the Song emperor, and the preface to a Chinese-Tangut glossary

33. Book of Rewards and Punishments. A moral tract associated with

popular Daoism

34. Precepts of the Perfect Truth Daoist Sect. Principles of a Daoist monastic sect

35. Wang Anshi, Sima Guang, and Emperor Shenzong. A court debate between the leading activist and his conservative opponent and letters they wrote each other outlining their differences

36. Rules for the Fan Lineage’s Charitable Estate. The rules by which a charitable trust was to be run for the benefit of the members of the lineage

37. Ancestral Rites. From a ritual manual giving the procedures to be followed

38. Women and the Problems They Create. Three folktale-like stories of unusual women and a sympathetic view of women’s problems

39. Longing to Recover the North. Poems by six twelfth-century writers expressing their anguish at the loss of China’s heartland

40. Zhu Xi’s Conversations with His Disciples. Conversations between a leading neo-Confucian philosopher and his students

41. The Attractions of the Capital. A description of economic activity, entertainment, and amenities in the city of Hangzhou

42. The Mutual Responsibility System. One magistrate’s instructions on how these units were to operate

43. On Farming. How to plant, weed, care for tools, budget time, and so on

44. A Mongol Governor. The biography of a Mongol who spent decades putting down rebellions and securing Mongol rule

45. A Schedule for Learning. Neo-Confucian rules and advice for teachers and students

46. A Scholar-Painter’s Diary. Two weeks of social and intellectual activity

V. THE MING DYNASTY

47. Proclamations of the Hongwu Emperor. A despot’s complaints about how difficult it was to get his subjects to act properly

48. The Dragon Boat Race. A description of the festival as performed in one place in Hunan

49. Village Ordinances. Sample ordinances a village could adopt

50. Commercial Activities. Sample contracts, an essay on merchants, and a biography of an admired one

51. What the Weaver Said. An artisan’s view of his work

52. Tenants. Two contracts specifying the responsibilities of quasi-hereditary tenant-servants on one estate and reports of riots by tenants

53. Shi Jin the Nine-Dragoned. Episode from a novel describing the background of one outlaw

54. Family Instructions. Advice and rules found in a lineage genealogy

55. Concubines. How concubines were bought, the reminiscences of a man for a beloved concubine, and an episode from a novel depicting the ploys of a malicious concubine

56. Widows Loyal Unto Death. Accounts from a local history glorifying women who showed loyalty to their dead husbands by killing themselves

57. Two Philosophers. Letters and conversations of two important thinkers, Wang Yangming and Li Zhi

58. A Censor Accuses a Eunuch. A memorial to the emperor accusing the eunuch Wei Zhongxian of usurping his authority and acting tyrannically

VI. THE QING DYNASTY

59. The Yangzhou Massacre. One family’s experiences, recounted in a diary

60. Proverbs About Heaven. Standard sayings

61. Taxes and Labor Service. A description of the forms in which taxes and service were assessed in one county

62. Permanent Property. The advice a man gave his sons concerning the importance of owning land and how to manage it

63. Lan Dingyuan’s Casebook. Two examples of how an energetic Magistrate solved administrative and legal cases

64. Exhortations on Ceremony and Deference. A lecture delivered by an official in the hope of teaching villagers good behavior

65. Village Organization. Two records of village affairs, one about a water- use agreement, the other the creation of a fair

66. The Village Headman and the New Teacher. Episode from a novel about how a teacher was hired

67. Boat People. A local history’s account of a minority group

68. Placards Posted in Guangzhou. Official orders to admit foreigners to the city after the Opium War and protests from local residents

69. Infant Protection Society. An account of one man’s efforts to stem infanticide

70. Mid-Century Rebels. Confessions, proclamations, petitions, and descriptions of a number of different rebel groups

71. The Conditions and Activities of Workers. A stone inscription recording official disapproval of organizing by workers and an official report of working conditions in a water-logged mine

72. Genealogy Rules. The rules one lineage used in compiling its genealogy

VII. THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

73. Liang Qichao on His Trip to America. Comments on the amazing sights

in New York, and reflections on Chinese social organization

74. Ridding China of Bad Customs. Proposals for ways to end footbinding, suppress opium addiction, and free young girl bondservants

75. Rural Education. Recollections of a teacher introducing science to a rural school

76. My Old Home. A story showing problems of communication between upper and lower class men

77. The Spirit of the May Fourth Movement. Recollections of a woman who had been in middle school at the time

78. The Haifeng Peasant Association. How one man tried to organize peasants

79. The Dog-Meat General. An account of one of the more incompetent and brutal warlords

80. The General Strike. A magazine account of a strike in Shanghai in 1928

81. Funeral Processions. A description of two funeral processions with a list of the equipment used and the cost

82. My Children. An essay by a man with five children

83. The Life of Beggars. An account of the social organization of beggars and their various techniques of earning a living

84. Generalissimo Jiang on National Identity. Two speeches, early and late in the War Against Japan, on China’s relations with other countries and the relations of the various nationalities within China

VIII. THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC

85. The Communist Party. A speech by Liu Shaoqi on party organization and discipline

86. Land Reform. An episode from a novel showing peasants learning “to

stand up”

87. Hu Feng and Mao Zedong. Letters of a leading intellectual which Mao published with his own commentary on how they demonstrated his counterrevolutionary tendencies

88. A New Young Man Arrives at the Organization Department. An episode from a story of the conflict between an idealistic young party member and the entrenched power structure

89. Peng Dehuai’s Critique of the Great Leap Forward. Peng’s letter to Mao offering measured criticism of his policies

90. Developing Agricultural Production. A newspaper account of efforts to inspire members of a production brigade to work harder

91. Lei Feng, Chairman Mao’s Good Fighter. Inspirational anecdotes about a model worker and soldier, devoted to aiding the people

92. Housing in Shanghai. A newspaper article describing the effects of state control of housing

93. Red Guards. Red Guards’ accounts of their activities during the Cultural Revolution

94. Victims. A short story written after the fall of the “Gang of Four,” showing some of the negative effects on both the older and younger generations of the Cultural Revolution

95. The Changing Course of Courtship. Four documents that show the changing circumstances in which young people have looked for spouses

96. The One-Child Family. One province’ regulations for fostering the one- child family and a magazine article on the pressure young mothers have experienced because of this policy

97. Economic Liberalization and New Problems for Women. Newspaper and magazine articles protesting some of the ways new policies have had adverse effects on women’s employment or welfare

98. Peasants in the Cities. An interview and a newspaper article concerning the rural residents who flocked to the cities in the 1980s

99. Posters Calling for Democracy. Posters from the 1989 Democracy Protests

100. Defending China’s Socialist Democracy. A newspaper article refuting the views of those who believe that the West is more democratic than China Glossary Suggestions for Further Reading Original Sources Index

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Over the years I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking with many students and teachers who used Chinese Civilization and Society: A Sourcebook in their classes. Repeatedly they told me that what they liked most about it was its liveliness—the variety in the kinds of sources, the abundance of ones about ordinary life, the sprinkling of humor and glimpses of personal life. For their sakes I have long been thinking I should update it to bring it up to the 1990s and take into account reevaluations of the Mao years. When I finally found the time to tackle revisions, I decided to do a more thorough rethinking of the overall purposes of this sourcebook and how it actually gets used. My original goal fifteen years ago was to get into print lots of new translations of the sorts of documents that had been neglected in other sourcebooks: popular stories, descriptions of local customs, texts like tenancy contracts, essays that would reveal how relatively ordinary people thought, and so on. There were already many good translations of philosophical and religious texts, of standard historical accounts of great events, and of China’s relations with foreign peoples, so I did not give these topics as much space as texts about daily life or the mental world of ordinary people. From my conversations with colleagues around the country who have been assigning this book to their students, I have come to realize that few of them assign any other sourcebook or any other original texts. Chinese history is commonly taught in a rapid survey lasting only one or two semesters, with never enough time to read widely in the available translations. The Sourcebook would better meet classroom needs, I now realized, if it gave balanced coverage to all aspects of Chinese civilization, regardless of whether a source had also been translated elsewhere. Consequently I have made revisions throughout this book. The selection of sources for China since 1949 has been extensively revised and the coverage of the earliest periods expanded. Sometimes I have substituted an earlier piece for a later one on the same subject; for instance, I added a selection from the Tang code in place of one from the Ming code and some fourth-century ghost stories instead of some seventeenth-century ones. I have also expanded coverage of philosophy and religion in general, with new selections on Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, and Buddhism. In addition, I have added

quite a few pieces that relate to political ideas and practices and to China’s contacts with foreign peoples. Altogether there are thirty-nine new selections, bringing the total to one hundred. To make room for these new pieces, I have had to make cuts, sometimes shortening pieces, sometimes eliminating ones that seemed, on balance, to contribute less to the overall understanding of Chinese civilization. Although the final selection is still rich in sources for social and cultural history, I now believe that it is sufficiently well rounded to serve as the sole sourcebook in a course on Chinese history or civilization. To bring attention to the change in the focus of this book, I decided to change the title as well, to Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. Several people have helped me prepare this new edition. My colleagues Kai- wing Chow, Peter Gregory, and Kenneth Klinker offered advice on new selections. Chiu-yueh Lai did the conversions from Wade-Giles to pinyin romanization. She and Chunyu Wang each translated one of the new pieces. Susan Harum helped with the final preparation of the manuscript. Two scholars at other universities generously provided translations in areas of their expertise, David Keightley of the University of California at Berkeley and Ruth Dunnell of Kenyon College. The remainder of the new translations I did myself. P.B.E.

September 1992

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION This sourcebook came into being because of my belief that listening to what the Chinese themselves have had to say is the best way to learn about China. In teaching Chinese history and culture, however, I found that available translations were of limited use for the kinds of questions students were asking: How different were ordinary Chinese from ordinary Westerners? Did their different religions or philosophies lead to major differences in daily life? Did the Chinese have the same kinds of personal, social, and political problems as we do, or different ones? To help students find answers to these questions, I had to search for sources that could tell us more about the lives, outlooks, and habits of the full range of the Chinese population, not merely philosophers and scholars, but also women, peasants, townsmen, and undistinguished local officials. Since such people seldom wrote essays or autobiographies, I had to look for different kinds of sources—folk songs, plays, moral primers, descriptions, contracts, newspaper articles, and so on. My efforts to make a sourcebook out of this material could never have succeeded without the generous help of others. Acknowledgment for funding must be made to the National Endowment for the Humanities for an Education Project Grant. This grant allowed me to employ several graduate-student research assistants. Jane Chen, Lucie Clark, Mark Coyle, Nancy Gibbs, Lily Hwa, Jeh-hang Lai, Barbara Matthies, and Clara Yu helped prepare, correct, and polish the translations in this book. Although all the translations we did are attributed to specific translators, they are in fact joint efforts, since in all cases either I as editor or one of the assistants extensively revised the translation to improve accuracy or style. Clara Yu’s contribution to this book deserves particular note; she worked with me from the inception of the project to its completion and is responsible for thirty of the eighty-nine selections. Over the past five years, I have also regularly profited from the advice and criticisms of colleagues. Robert Crawford and Howard Wechsler helped test the translations in courses at the University of Illinois. Several other faculty members at Illinois have been ready to answer my questions on subjects about which they knew more than I, including Richard Chang, Lloyd Eastman, James Hart, Richard Kraus, Whalen Lai, and William MacDonald. I have also benefited greatly from the reactions and suggestions of professors at other

colleges who saw earlier versions of this sourcebook in whole or part. These include Suzanne Barnett (University of Puget Sound), David Buck (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Parks Coble (University of Nebraska), Wolfram Eber-hard (University of California, Berkeley), Edward Farmer (University of Minnesota), Charlotte Furth (California State University at Long Beach), Peter Golas (University of Denver), John Langlois (Bowdoin College), Susan Mann Jones (University of Chicago), Susan Naquin (University of Pennsylvania), John Meskill (Barnard College), Keith Schoppa (Valparaiso University), Jonathan Spence (Yale University), Philip West (Indiana University), and Arthur Wolf (Stanford University). Finally, I was fortunate to have excellent clerical assistance from Mary Mann, who typed several versions of this manuscript, and Sandy Price, who helped with the final typing. Christina Pheley conscientiously corrected the page proofs and galleys. P.B.E.

CONTENTS ACCORDING TO TOPICS RELIGION AND COSMOLOGY

1. Late Shang Divination Records 2. The Metal Bound Box 3. Hexagrams in the Book of Changes 7. Daoist Teachings 13. Heaven, Earth, and Man 18. Yin and Yang in Medical Theory 19. Local Cults 20. Uprisings 22. Buddhist Doctrines and Practices 23. Tales of Ghosts and Demons 27. The Errors of Geomancy 31. A Pilgrim at the Five Terraces Mountains 33. Book of Rewards and Punishments 34. Precepts of the Perfect Truth Daoist Sect 60. Proverbs About Heaven 63. Lan Dingyuan’s Casebook

CONFUCIANISM

6. Confucian Teachings 10. Social Rituals 13. Heaven, Earth, and Man 15. The Classic of Filial Piety 17. Women’s Virtues and Vices 35. Wang Anshi, Sima Guang, and Emperor Shenzong 37. Ancestral Kites

40. Zhu Xi’s Conversations with His Disciples 45. A Schedule for Learning 57. Two Philosophers 64. Exhortations on Ceremony and Deference

GOVERNMENT

2. The Metal Bound Box 4. Songs and Poems 6. Confucian Teachings 8. Legalist Teachings 11. Penal Servitude in Qin Law 14. The Debate on Salt and Iron 16. Wang Fu on Friendship and Getting Ahead 25. Emperor Taizong on Effective Government 26. The Tang Legal Code 28. The Dancing Horses of Xuanzong’s Court 30. The Examination System 35. Wang Anshi, Sima Guang, and Emperor Shenzong 42. The Mutual Responsibility System 47. Proclamations of the Hongwu Emperor 58. A Censor Accuses a Eunuch 61. Taxes and Labor Service 63. Lan Dingyuan’s Casebook

64. Exhortations on Ceremony and Deference 70. Mid-Century Rebels 77. The Spirit of the May Fourth Movement 79. The Dog-Meat General 80. The General Strike 84. Generalissimo Jiang on National Identity 85. The Communist Party

86. Land Reform 88. A New Young Man Arrives at the Organization Department 89. Peng Dehuai’s Critique of the Great Leap Forward 90. Developing Agricultural Production 91. Lei Feng, Chairman Mao’s Good Fighter 92. Housing in Shanghai 93. Red Guards 93. Victims 99. Posters Calling for Democracy 100. Defending China’s Socialist Democracy

HISTORY WRITING AND HISTORICAL GENRE

2. The Metal Bound Box 5. The Battle Between Jin and Chu 9. Two Avengers 12. The World Beyond China 19. Local Cults 20. Uprisings 21. Ge Hong’s Autobiography 44. A Mongol Governor 46. A Scholar-Painter ’s Diary 58. A Censor Accuses a Eunuch 67. Boat People 70. Mid-Century Rebels

CONTACTS WITH OUTSIDE PEOPLES

12. The World Beyond China 22. Buddhist Doctrines and Practices 28. The Dancing Horses of Xuanzong’s Court 31. A Pilgrim’s Visit to the Five Terraces Mountains 32. The Tanguts and Their Relations with the Han Chinese

39. Longing to Recover the North 44. A Mongol Governor 59. The Yangchow Massacre 68. Placards Posted in Guangzhou 73. Liang Qichao on His Trip to America 84. Generalissimo Jiang on National Identity 100. Defending China’s Socialist Democracy

FAMILY, KINSHIP, AND GENDER

15. The Classic of Filial Piety 17. Women’s Virtues and Vices 29. Family Business 36. Rules for the Fan Lineage’s Charitable Estate 37. Ancestral Rites 38. Women and the Problems They Create 54. Family Instructions 55. Concubines 56. Widows Loyal Unto Death 72. Genealogy Rules 74. Ridding China of Bad Customs 81. Funeral Processions 82. My Children 95. The Changing Course of Courtship 96. The One-Child Family 97. Economic Liberalization and New Problems for Women

LOCAL SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES

4. Songs and Poems 41. The Attractions of the Capital 43. On Farming 48. The Dragon Boat Race

49. Village Ordinances 50. Commercial Activities 51. What the Weaver Said 52. Tenants 53. Shi Jin the Nine-Dragoned 65. Village Organization 66. The Village Headman and the New Teacher 67. Boat People 69. Infant Protection Society 71. The Conditions and Activities of Workers 75. Rural Education 76. My Old Home 78. The Haifeng Peasant Association 83. The Life of Beggars 86. Land Reform 92. Housing in Shanghai 97. Economic Liberalization and New Problems for Women 98. Peasants in the Cities

UPPER CLASS AND INTELLECTUALS

5. The Battle Between Jin and Chu 10. Social Rituals 16. Wang Fu on Friendship and Getting Ahead 21. Ge Hong’s Autobiography 24. Cultural Differences Between the North and the South 30. The Examination System 39. Longing to Recover the North 45. A Schedule for Learning 46. A Scholar-Painter ’s Diary 57. Two Philosophers 62. Permanent Property

69. Infant Protection Society 73. Liang Qichao on His Trip to America 74. Ridding China of Bad Customs 76. My Old Home 77. The Spirit of the May Fourth Movement 78. The Haifeng Peasant Association 87. Hu Feng and Mao Zedong 94. Victims

TALES AND FICTION

9. Two Avengers 23. Tales of Ghosts and Demons 38. Women and the Problems They Create 53. Shi Jin the Nine-Dragoned 55. Concubines 66. The Village Headman and the New Teacher 76. My Old Home 86. Land Reform 88. A New Young Man Arrives at the Organization Department 94. Victims

A NOTE ON THE SELECTION AND TRANSLATION OF SOURCES

In selecting sources for inclusion in this book, I had to balance many goals. Each source had to reveal something important about Chinese civilization, but at the same time I wanted each to be intrinsically interesting to read. I also tried to balance the needs of topical and chronological coverage and my desire to show something of the life of people in different stations in society. I have drawn from many well-known works but have also made a concerted effort to find sources about the lives of the kinds of people who did not ordinarily write, such as women, peasants, soldiers, artisans, and merchants. Translating the sources was as challenging as selecting them. Fully capturing meaning, style, and mood is never possible. If we transpose other peoples’ common ways of expression into ways of expression common to us, important elements of the culture are lost to us, for much of culture is communicated in the metaphors and imagery people use. On the other hand, to convey all of the meanings in a text usually results in such bad English that the intelligence, grace, or humor of the original is lost. And even when the style is satisfactory, bringing out too many subtleties from texts, especially popular works, can distort their real meaning. For instance, Buddhist monks certainly read more into technical Buddhist terms than lay persons do; to bring out all possible meanings for such terms in a popular moral tract or fictional story would be to misrepresent what it meant to much of the audience that actually read it. Unfortunately, judging how much an audience understood is nearly impossible. Did most people who invoked the phrase “the tyrant Xia Jie” know anything about Xia Jie except that he was a famous tyrant? If they did know more, was it very close to the Xia Jie of the historical accounts, or was it based on the portrayal of him in popular plays or operas? Thus a number of compromises have been made in the translations in this sourcebook. To make extensive reading more inviting, we have translated into standard, easily intelligible English, often eliminating redundancies but trying to preserve much of the imagery and style of the original. Many selections have been abridged, but omissions are marked with ellipsis points (…). To avoid cluttering the text, footnotes and interpolations have been kept to an absolute minimum. When authors mention specific people, they are not

identified when the point can be understood without it. Allusions and philosophical terms are translated simply, generally with little explanation. It is hoped that wide reading will give readers a surer sense of what authors and audiences understood by such terms than footnotes ever could.

PART I

THE CLASSICAL PERIOD The archaeological record of human existence in China goes back to the remote past. By the fifth millennium b.c. neolithic cultures flourished in several parts of the country. Archaeologists have found village settlements, finely decorated pottery, carved and polished jades, and evidence of ancestor worship. With the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600-ca. 1050 B.C.), the historical and archaeological records begin to coincide; the Chinese accounts of the Shang rulers match the diviners’ inscriptions on animal bones and tortoise shells found during the past century at the city of Anyang in the Yellow River valley. The Shang had built a strong state on the basis of bronze technology, chariot warfare, and elaborate social differentiation. Shang kings could mobilize large armies for warfare and huge numbers of workers to construct defensive walls or elaborate tombs. Much fuller historical records survive for the next dynasty, the Zhou (ca. 1050- 256 B.C.). The Zhou house originated in what is now Shaanxi province in northwestern China, moving eastward to conquer the Shang and establish their rule over much of northern China. The early Zhou rulers secured their position by enfeoffing loyal supporters and relatives in different regions, thus establishing a social order somewhat like the feudal system in medieval Europe. The early Zhou dynasty was an age when blood kinship was honored and social status distinctions were stressed. Members of the nobility were linked both to each other and to their ancestors by bonds of obligation based on kinship. Ancestors were seen as having great influence over the living, with powers similar to but far surpassing those of the living elders of the clan. Even the relationship between lord and peasant was supposed to be a paternalistic one, the peasant serving the lord and the lord concerned about his welfare.

The Zhou kingdom remained strong for over two centuries, but its position gradually weakened, until finally in 771 B.C., the capital was sacked by non-

Chinese tribes. The Zhou rulers then established a new capital further east in the Yellow River valley, marking the beginning of the Eastern Zhou. In this period real political power lay with the feudal states. The Zhou king continued to reign only because of the prestige of his house and the fact that no one feudal state was strong enough to dominate the others. The Eastern Zhou is divided into two major eras, the Spring and Autumn period (722-481 B.C.) and the Warring States period (403-221 B.C.). During these centuries the states attacked and absorbed each other until only a half- dozen powerful ones survived. This period of political strife witnessed social and economic advances of all sorts, including the introduction of iron, the development of infantry armies, the circulation of money, the beginning of private ownership of land, the growth of cities, and the breakdown of class barriers. During this period also there was a gradual expansion of the culture of the North southward into the Yangzi River region, and at the same time elements of the indigenous culture of the lusher southern region were incorporated into the culture of the North. The political disruption and social change of the late Zhou drew many men’s attention to the problem of how to achieve stability. Those who responded to this challenge included not only military and political leaders but also many philosophers. The foremost philosophers were Confucius (551-479 B.C.) and his followers Mencius (ca. 370-ca. 300 B.C.) and Xunzi (ca. 310-ca. 215 B.C.), who emphasized the preservation of tradition and moral cultivation. They were closely rivaled at the time by the Mohists and Legalists, the former emphasizing frugality, discipline, and universal love, the latter law and statecraft. Opposed to all of these proposed methods of reform were the Daoists, who preached a return to the Dao or Way, the true condition of man, which had been lost through the process of civilization and could be regained only if people were allowed to return to naturalness. The proliferation of philosophy in this period was so great that it came to be known as the period of the “one hundred schools.” Without doubt it was one of the most intellectually creative eras in Chinese history. The major sources for the Classical period are the oracle bones and bronze inscriptions, the Book of Documents, the Book of Changes, the Book of Songs, the ritual classics, several historical texts, and the essays and recorded sayings of the philosophers. Passages from these texts have been selected for inclusion here first of all to illuminate the Classical period. A second, complementary goal, is to introduce the classics themselves, important because they were studied by so many generations of Students and thus profoundly shaped the

thinking of the educated.

1 LATE SHANG DIVINATION RECORDS The kings of the late Shang (ca. 1200-1050 B.C.) attempted to communicate

with the spiritual forces that ruled their world by reading the stress cracks in cattle bones and turtle plastrons. They and their diviners produced these cracks by applying a heated brand or poker to the consecrated bones or shells, intoning as they did so a charge that conveyed their intentions, wishes, or need to know. After the divination ritual was over, a record of the topic and, sometimes, of the prognostication and the result, was engraved into the bone. Those inscriptions, only recovered in the twentieth century by archaeologists and painstakingly deciphered by paleographers, provide direct contact with many of the Shang kings’ daily activities and concerns. Some 150,000 oracle- bone fragments, mainly excavated at the late Shang cult center near modern Anyang, have been preserved, of which 50,000 have been thought worth reproduction. The following inscriptions—most of them from the reign of the twenty-first king, Wu Ding (ca. 1200-1181 B.C.), the heyday of Shang divination as it is recorded in the bone inscriptions—cover the topics that were of major concern to the Shang diviners. As in the first example, many of the early charges were paired, being expressed in both the positive and negative mode and placed in matching opposition on the bone. The inscriptions, as can be seen below, include references to Di, the high god of the Shang. The offering of cult to Di, however, was rarely divined, perhaps because, unlike the ancestors, Di was virtually beyond human comprehension and influence.