Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

Until the Han, there aren’t depictions of earlier things–such as Yu the Great–so we turn to this period for imagery of earlier times. Somehow, China is held together in the Qin and other periods even in spite of the different people and languages. In particular, a story of the failed assassination of the first Emperor fascinates Chinese because if the assassination had occurred, Chinese unity may not have come about.

The Han tell stories about the Qin, including that they do not have the mandate to rule, because they lose the 9 cauldrons of Yu to the Yellow River. The story explains why the Han don’t have the mythical 9 cauldrons, as well, because the 9 cauldrons probably don’t actually exist.

The Chinese word for To Have Fun is 玩 (wan2). The character is quite cute, with the right portion having tails!

The Chinese word for lake is 湖 (hu2). The character is very beautiful and proportional.

Urgent news!! The grading of section papers only rewards 6/6 for a perfect, brilliantly written paper. Scores in the range of 5-5.5 are within A, but not A+ range. Here is sample quiz, like what we’ll have on Tueday:

ASIAN 212: Introduction to China
The sample Quiz 1: total 30 points, 10 per question.

1. Comment on the significance to early Chinese civilization of any TWO of the following in paragraph form:

Yellow river
King Wen
Book of Changes
Zhou feudalism
ancestor worship

The Zhou administered a large territory by sending out the brothers and sons of the king out to small feudal states. They became rulers of these states, and owed loyalty to the Zhou throne. They had to pay regular visits to the Zhou court and had to defend the Zhou interests in their area. Each local ruler had a small replica of the Zhou court, with all its rituals and sacrifices, and sharing in these Zhou rituals was supposed to keep all the states united. Over time, local rulers felt less connection to the Zhou and more connection to local concerns. States competed with each other for local resources, and even inside the states, powerful families competed with one another, so that by the 8th century BC, the Zhou feudal realm was at war with itself constantly. Despite this war, Zhou culture remained strong and even spread, even as the Zhou rulers themselves became powerless.

2. Briefly discuss the significance of one of the images below. (followed by a slideshow image)

Qin unification (221 - 207 BCE)

Around 300 BC thinkers are beginning to consider a unification of the warring factions. Remember, they had this half memory half fantasy of the Zhou being like that in the past. They imagined a time in the past where everyone lived harmoniously under an empire. So they looked both forward and backwards in time to try to find a new model for unification. The Qin state, in 3rd century BC, was a place to try and get away with new administrative ideas. Xunzi wrote in his book, there’s something about Qin that has a powerful state apparatus–watch out for them!

In 256 BC, the Qin ends the old Zhou. They had been kept alive as figureheads representing the old ways and Divine authority. The new Qin founder was portrayed a brutal tyrant, which is probably also inaccurate, him falling somewhere between both extremes. Since the Han come immediately after the Qin, we can’t trust their account of him.
The story that the Qin Emperor’s tomb was extremely well protected prevented it from plundering. We will not see the riches of the tomb until China has the archaeological resources to open and catalogue it. It is supposed to be a microcosm of the universe around us, with a great flowing ocean of mercury. Surrounded by individually crafted and painted terra cotta warriors, the Qin Emperor wanted to live on and carry over his earthly status. In the next world, an emperor would need an army.

Qin stele inscriptions

The striking relic of the Qin are a set of inscriptions made after conquering the east, when the Emperor tours the eastern lands and visits all the sacred sites. At various locations, he erected large stones with inscriptions on them, celebrating his creation of a unified empire. The text of the inscriptions was recorded by Sima Qian in his history of the period and survived to this day. By comparison with the steles and other texts, we are convinced the Sima Qian is correct. A snippet:

“Now in his 26th year, Huangdi has created a new beginning. He rectified and balanced the rules and measures as … He has made manifest the way and the inner pattern. Eastward he tours the eastern lands to inspect the soldiers and officers… he looks down on the land by the eastern sea–he has great merit. The people he enriches, everywhere under heaven he unifies their minds. [Everywhere] there is none that does not achieve his ambitions under the guidance of the first Emperor.”

Concern with order, uniformity
The ordering of space and time

There is an increasing focus culminating in the Qin and Han to paying attention to the physical organization of space. This is the extension of the uniformity and order over everything. In the Qin, all the states were connected by new roads into one unified empire–these roads partially existed, but the emperor unified the width of all carts. This allowed carts to travel between kingdoms. In all ways–the size of official script, measures and weights–the Qin create a single unified empire.

They both understand that they are imposing order on something, and also finding the natural order in things.

Magic square, numerology, and the five phases (earth, water, metal, fire, wood)

The elements were not physical things but rather physical processes–earth was pounding earth, for example, metal the process of smelting, wood the process of growing or bending. These were then mapped onto the five directions so that you can make easy associations with all kinds of other objects. The list never stops. Everything you can ever find in the universe can be mapped onto this. This becomes a proto-scientific way of categorizing the world.

The magic square:

4	9	2
3	5	7
8	1	6

Every directional sum = 15. But, for the Chinese, they believed this is divine revelation. It’s not just mathematical, it’s magical. The number three is aesthetically pleasing to human beings. Nine is one of the IChing manipulations, the nine tripods of Yu. Five maps to the number of elements. So, they decided to divide their fields to look like this, build buildings like this, and play board games that look like this.

Note: there a quiz next week on Tuesday, which we will review for a little bit on Thursday in class.

Warring States Period (478 - 221 BCE)

These dates aren’t meaning except that we call this the warring states period. These dates are not significant, except that Confucius may have died around 478, and the Qin dynasty is founded at 221. But, there’s a certain artificiality to the period. However, there are changes from the Spring & Autumn period, which saw the increase of the scope of war and the breakdown of nobility. Now, instead of lots of competing smaller states, at the start of 5th century BC you find conglomerations of larger states. Comparing to the Zhou King, who had a lot of symbolic power, had to spread his power diffused through the network of feudal ties, and is only real power in that the players in the game agree that symbolic power is real power. But, the warring states see rules who find new ways to create new administrative forums where they don’t have to divide their power among family but through appointed officials.

The Chinese invented bureaucracy, with more complexity until 17th century Europe. How do you govern your territories? Not like the Zhou did, sending out their relatives to rule them, thus creating competition for yourself. Instead, you hire bureaucrats you can dismiss on whim. Each of these minor cogs can be dispensed with or kept at the ruler’s will, thus consolidating power. However, this change took a long time. There is still patriarchal transmission of power as fathers in office found easier appointments in their sons.

Move from Aristocracy to Meritocracy

This matches the Confucian desire to evaluate men based on their inherent virtue, and not on their birthline. So now with the emergence of bureaucracy, rulers were looking for men of merit to bring into positions of power.

“100 Schools of Thought:”

• Confucianism: A group of people using rituals to train themselves to become moral and sagelike.
• Mohism: A competing school to Confucianism, but they disagreed with Confucians on grading concern for people based on familial hierarchies. I.e., I should be more concerned about my child than his classmate, or his classmate than a random student. The Mohists believed you should love all people universally; the Confucians believed this was ridiculous. Very influential, they argued against overspending on state festivals, rather wanting to give the money to the poor.
• Daoism: Not a school proper, because there were no students formal. Best defined by mystical interspection and physical meditative practices. They sit quietly and breathe, much like yoga. It seems to be that the Chinese came up with this before India. There is a set of physiological responses that can be mapped when you sit still for days and empty your mind and concentrate on your breathing, that you know the secrets of the universe. Zhuangzi would say that you can eat your granola or stick it in your nose–it doesn’t matter, just leave me alone! 1) There are text that obviously talk about breathing techniques and 2) In the eastern Han there is a religious form of Taoism with meditation that can only be explained by early Daoist principles.
• Legalism: Han Feizi, at the end of the Warring States period invents legalism by looking back to statesman and intellectuals and finding elements in them that contribute to his vision of statecraft. His point was you a ruler of the state, but you can’t trust anyone–the Confucians, your family–only yourself. You should become an omniscient ruler sitting on top of the machine of the state, but keep everyone under you relatively stupid except at the specific function they perform. The ruler should be completely mysterious, to prevent undue influence. This is vaguely similar to Machiavellian politics: all that matters is pure political power.

Everyone has already adopted legalism before Han Feizi writes down its rulers on paper, so Han Feizi is simply synthesizing the facts of the world around him and producing a summary.

Move to Centralization & a more complex form of Bureaucracy
Emergence of rational, orderly vision of cosmos

For the western Zhou thinkers, the universe was a moral place, for the Shang the universe could be approached through rituals and divination, but in this period it’s harder to believe that the universe operates in a moral or ritual fashion. In fact, people who do bad things often do well and people who do good sometimes suffer misfortune.

There are advances in proto-sciences that lead people to see that the cosmos is orderly and natural, that continue whether the sacrifices are performed or not. By the time of Xunzi, he himself embraces this notion, writing an “Essay on heaven” that says “if it’s going to rain, it will rain. If it’s not going to rain, and you perform rain rituals, it’s still not going to rain.” Every now and again, he says, there are storms which are part of the natural order of things.