1. Hong Xiuquan seems mentally ill—schizophrenic, perhaps. There was great competition to see who would succeed him.
2. A group of rebels who only knew rebellion now had to lead and settle.
3. The new examination system is ridiculous

Zeng Guofan is primarily responsible for suppressing the Taiping rebellion. After attaining the highest degree, he returns to the country to mourn his mother’s death. On the way, he passes through regions occupied by the Taiping, and realizes what a threat they are to the Confucian way of life. He requests official leave to organize local militias to meet the threat of the Taiping, called the Xiang army. They are well paid and well trained. By 1856 and through 1858, they retake considerable amount of Taiping territory.

Li Hongzhong and Zuo Zongtang have bases in the south and are his understudies. He instructs them to raise similar armies, which descend together on Nanjing at the same moment when the Taiping are collapsing, in 1864. By this time, Hong Xiuquan has died, and thousands of the Taiping soldiers commit mass suicide.

The final impact the Taipings have is:

1. Anti-Manchu sentiment to the political stage.
2. Increasing militarization of Chinese society
3. The Manchu and the Chinese elite manage to create a new form of legal tax. The elite extract this tax locally and use this tax to supplement local militias. Now, local people can collect taxes and build private armies.

The west didn’t get involved in the Taipings—so any history or rumor that they were defeated at the hands of the west is wrong. However, the west is involved in China at this time, already.

• Tribute System
• British East India Co.
  • 1761: 2.6e6 lbs tea to GB
  • 1783: 5.8e6 lbs tea
  • 1800: 23e6 lbs tea
• Opium Trade
• Lin Zexu

The early east-west trade worked by bringing trinkets or non-essentials as token gifts to the emperor, who returned gifts in like in a farce of trade called a “tribute system.” By the 19th century, the Jesuit missionaries are gone, and protestant missionaries have come. They believe they have access to everyone in China without having to appeal to the elite. This is hard because of the Chinese government’s restrictions on foreigners’ movements. Also, there’s a lot of competition between traditional Chinese sects and the Christians, who demand exclusivity.

The British emerge as the most powerful sea going traders. The British also decide that they must have their tea, and mostly from China. As they trade silver for tea, the value of silver goes down. Thus, the British decide to take Indian opium to China, progressively converting silver currency up to opium, and then up to tea, and up to more silver. There’s a great debate in China about how to handle this new opium trade. Eventually, the hardliners win out. Lin Zexu is made the new drug czar in Canton, and burns a large amount of opium as a message. A long letter is drafted to the King of England, and the Queen never sees it.

After this, the British incite small incidents with local traders to strengthen their local power by claiming assaults against their citizens. Beginning in the early 1800s, the British keep sending ships to maintain their opium trade. The Chinese navy cannot stand them, so they engage in dialogs. The British, who just want to sell opium, ask for more open borders, open ports, presence in the capital. And, the British always got more and more concessions. Finally, the Chinese realize that the Qing are too weak to keep out the British, who have technological and infrastructural advancements. Ultimately, the notion that science and technology cannot be separated comes to light.

Terms:

1. Late imperial economy
• “Sprouts of capitalism?”
• “high equilibrium trap”
• increasing social violence
2. Taiping Rebellion
• Hong Xiuquan
• Hakka
• 1833 — County/Prefect level exam
• 1836-7 — Fails Provincial exam
3. Zeng Guofan & Xiang army
• Li Hangzheng & Zuo Zongtang
4. White Lotus Society

Lecture Notes:

1. Late Imperial Economy
• When Marxist historians look back at China, they must look for the moment when capitalism occurred (because it must go through capitalism before it gets to communism)
• Imagining the ideal agrarian society; low emphasis placed on commercial activities
• Commerce thrived in the beginning of the Song, and continued to grow, but the government didn’t tax it very well so they did not benefit from the growth
2. Sprouts of Capitalism
• Capitalism existed, but other notions like Confucianism stopped capitalism from maturing — this is the theory some Marxist historians have claimed
• But do sprouts necessarily grow into cabbages? There’s no indication that capitalism truly existed in China as the Marxist historians claim.
• There is a surplus in the economy (people are getting more land and such) but they tend to bear another son instead of doing anything else (like doing something capitalistic and open an enterprise)
• Surplus does exist but no one thinks to invest them into enterprises. Instead, people use the money for memorials, or other more culturally important things
3. Taiping Rebellion
• Begins in the southern region of China (near Hong Kong); led by Hong Xiuquan (who was “probably mentally ill”)

1. Hong was a member of the Hakka minority, with distinct cultural differences from the Chinese
2. Hong is very promising in his village, so he spends all his time and his village spends money on him to pass the exams
• 1833 – Hong passes the county exam which qualifies him for the next exam
• 1836 – Hong travels to provincial seat at Canton, but he fails the exam
• 1837 – Hong fails again; but the pressure was apparently too much and fell into a period of mental illness
3. Hong had a dream during this time of illness and apparently had some small basis in fact
• In 1836, Hong had received a pamphlet about Christianity which he apparently briefly read before his second exam
• When he returned from his second failed exam, he fell into a coma; he dreamed he ascended to Heaven
• In the dream, a woman washes him and brings him to a great hall with an old bearded man who introduces him to his brother
• The man chides him for listening to Confucius because he doesn’t tell the truth
4. Hong takes about 10 years to figure out his dream
• Hong decides that he is the second son of God
• Could only get ahold of some old testament passages which contain very firy brimstony descriptions of God’s wrath
• Begins to preach Christianity and doesn’t want Manchus to be ruling China
5. Hong acquires 10,000 converts
• A nearby army decides to attack them, so his converts run away to other villages, threaten non-Christians to convert by violence, acquiring about 60,000 more
6. The Empire of Heavenly Peace is established, with hundreds of thousands of people in Nanjing
• All members must renounce family ties; wealth is shared; men’s and a women’s armies
• They begin to extract taxes after settling in Nanjing

1. They believe that society is coming to a major epoch or the end of the world. Only those who know that this event is occurring ahead of time will be taken to the next world
2. Example of a society that seems to run completely independently of the government
3. An individual from this society decides that this end of the world is happening, and that they must kill everyone in order to institute their heavenly government but the Qing army crushes them pretty quickly
4. There are particularly violent outbursts during this time; their purpose is to get rid of the corrupted government
5. Many people are susceptible to this rhetoric because the government isn’t doing anything for them; they’re getting poorer and poorer, even if they didn’t originally have a religion

Announcements—the textbook stops at the end of the Ming and Qing. Therefore, I’ll be providing additional material. Also, classes will not be cancelled on Slope Day. Do not come to sections drunk. If my innocent TAs have to deal with someone drunk in my classroom, I will make sure you lose 10 points and get arrested for it. If they go to sections drunk on Friday, they’re going to get hammered bad for it. Out of 300 students, we usually get about one every year drunk.

The Qing was established by the Manchus in the far North East in 1644. They are linguistically, ethnically, and culturally related to the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty. They speak a language related to Turkish, but are distinct from the Mongols. At the end of the Ming, the Machus quickly move into North China and take the capital. They compose no more than 2% of the Chinese population, so they adopt Chinese ways and rule in the tradition of the previous dynasties. Because they promised to keep the old traditional Confucian values, they were accepted by the Chinese ruling elite. Often the positions were mirrored—1 Han Chinese and 1 Manchu holding the same office together.

The one difference that the Manchu kept were their own distinctive dress, hairstyle, and hunting and fighting techniques. They sealed off their Manchurian homeland and did not allow the Chinese to migrate there. They sent their young children back to Manchuria to learn the old ways. The only compromise they asked was everyone to get the Manchu haircut—a long pony tail down the back with a high-partly shaved head. Removing one’s queue (pony tail) is an act of sedition.

The second Qing emperor, the Kang Xi emperor ruled from 1662 to 1723—61 years. He is charismatic and intelligent. The third emperor, the YongZheng emperor rules for 30 years, but works hard on the details of government. He is a bit merciless. Followed by the Qianglong emperor, another 60 year reign, there’s a good 130 years of solid-minded leadership at the beginning of the dynasty.

To understand the problems that China will later face, you have to look below the court. At the county level, there’s a magistrate, the lowest paid official in the Qing government. There are only 1,679 magistrates. The numbers don’t change, but the population continues to explode. In 1400 to 1500 there is 1 magistrate for every 29,780 persons, but in 1800 there is only 1 magistrate per 238,237 persons, or 1 official to every 58,000 persons. This is a problem. In Russia, at about 1800, the ratio is 1 official per 769. In France, it’s about 1:200. How did it function, then? With the help of volunteers under the local magistrates. When you add up these unsalaried people, the ratio is more around 1:300, but it’s crucial to point out that these people are not on the government payroll. They are paid somehow, through graft and corruption, with money siphoned from various placed. It was understood that corruption was built into the system. At the same time, people are given the death penalty for corruption during crackdowns.

The Yongzheng emperor wanted to get to the bottom of this. Since the Kangxi emperor cultivated better relationships with the top governors, the Yongzheng emperor uses it to examine the fiscal system in China at the time. He figures out that the Qing has a growing crisis. More revenue should come in with more people, but there were so many elaborate tax-evasion networks that the richest people in China found ways to pass the tax burden onto the poorest members of society.

One solution he takes is to raise the county magistrate’s salaries dramatically, from 25 taels to between 600 and 100 taels of silver. Then, county projects became budgeted projects instead of unofficial projects. There was a head tax, land tax, and a third tax. Besides these taxes, all taxes were considered illegal and people encouraged not to pay it. This third tax goes to the provincial level and stops and is redistributed.

Why does the population grow so much? First, it’s a long period of peace and healthiness. Second, the Qing meets the limits of cultivable land in China. At some point, agricultural expansion is complete. However, there is the emergence of the World economy, and New World crops move into China: chiles, peanuts, corn, potatoes, tobacco, and others. Since these crops can be grown on poor land with high yield, population growth can be sustained.

Longstanding problems of bandits are only exacerbated by the diminishing ratios of officials to people. There are huge numbers of hard-to-deal with groups of men in the Qing. The natural ratio of men to women is 48:52, but the trend is reversed by social conditions in China, where the ratio is 53:47. With a small population, this doesn’t matter. With a large population, this leaves a huge number of men who cannot have wives and families. These men are trouble waiting to happen. Huge numbers of migrant boat pullers along the Grand Canal pull boats upstream. When there are no boats, or they go home, there are cities of young able-bodied men linking the capital to the south regions. This leads to increasing Qing violence.

Having an arch built for a chaste widow involves finding someone good at manipulating literary illusions to write an official report describing the young woman’s piety towards the elders and all her virtue.  The center of devotion should be her husband’s new parents—especially the mother in law.  Then, at some time, her husband must die an untimely death.  The daughter then has a number of options:

1. Caring for the mother in law
2. Resistance to remarriage
3. Resistance to suitors
4. Possible attempts at suicide
5. Preservation of chastity

These mirror the filial son stories from older times with a dramatic physical sacrifice required.  Then, story in hand, the local administration verifies the truth of the story, and embellishes it for the sake of his own advancement in the government, to catch the eye of people higher up, who are more educated.  As it moves up the levels to the governor-generals, it’s been enhanced with allusion all the way.  These men will launch another investigation, and if it turns out well, he will send a request to the emperor to build or rededicate an arch of temple.

The emperors saw so many of these things (perhaps three hours a day), that they rejected them wholesale, annotating their margins with critical comments.  Eventually, law was passed that made embellishment punishable by death.  In spite of the throne’s unwillingness to do this, they keep granting these symbolic recognitions.  This is happening alongside troubled financial times, as revenues stayed along the bottom of the government.  The government used monopolies of salt and other goods to bolster their funding, but it was never enough.  Graft and corruption became part of finance.

Pierre Bourdieu introduced the notion of symbolic capital.  Marxists say that everything is economic; Bourdieu said that can’t explain all human behavior.  For example, the guy who can’t afford to buy a Ferrari but does anyway.  Well, Bourdieu says we’re in competition over symbolic resources as well as capital resources.  The Ming and Qing are good examples of this, because a family can invest time into symbolic functions—feasts, the exam system, piety.  Then, the system of erecting monuments to improve a family’s symbolic capital can be leveraged by the government to use them as leaders to mobilize resources for various enterprises.

What is the practice of foot-binding and why did it come about?  In small regions of the Song, very young daughters feet were bend-toe-to-heel and kept tightly wrapped, which breaks and wraps the foot-bone in.   It left women crippled and in pain their entire life.  For some reason, it takes off in the elite of the Ming.  There are regions where it never becomes popular (the Hakka).  For families that wanted to be socially upwardly mobile, it was a sign of affluence.  It said, “our daughters are viewed as products to be sold via marriage, so we invest in them to make better wives.”  It’s also a marker of the submission of the women to their families.  This tradition kept women inside houses, with only the men allowed to walk freely towards the outside.  The social role of women has been completely reduced to the background.  For 400-500 years, footbinding was the practice, and no mainstream voice argues against it.

All of China is thriving in the Song dynasty, the medieval period of great innovation and progress.  Westerners were always stunned at the level of sophistication of Chinese markers, cities, politics, and all other realms.  China was unquestionably the leader in world civilization at the time.  Today, we ask “What went wrong?”  However, this is a wrongly worded question.  To ask why China didn’t produce capitalism assumes all history is on the same trajectory, and is a very bizarre question.  We don’t have to assume that any civilization is on any particular path.

After the Song dynasty there was a brief period of disunity, and then the Mongols happened, everywhere.  They swept into central Asia and eastern Europe, and were militarily superior to any settled civilization.  It was quick and easy for them to win battles, so when they decided to hold the territory they conquered in China, they decided to Sinify, to settle down and adopt Chinese custom.  Their broader impact on Chinese society is not entirely clear during the Yuan dynasty.  They reify the four books of the Confucian tradition, and push more Chinese to the south.

Then, in the 1500s, there is the black plague, originating in central Asia.  Another invention that makes a big impact is wood-block printing.  Before, there were two ways to copy—by ink rubbing or copying.  Even though there are 5000 standard characters, laying them out in blocks for mass-rubbing was much faster to produce large quantities of text.  Over the next several hundred years, a handful of well-known printing houses emerge.  Eventually, by the Ming, the printing houses have figured out that even more than the elite literati whose sons are studying for the exams, there is an enormous population who is hungry to read.

With printing, it became possible to take oral stories and link them together into cohesive novels.

This new level of national unity in the Ming (1400s), and through the dissemination of the classical canon through books, is still diverse, with many languages and politics.  For example, Shanghainese is not just a dialect of Chinese, but rather a completely different language of the Wu family.  This has nothing to do with writing scripts, which can be used to render an arbitrary language through a symbol isomorphism.  Another way to think about the diversity in China is in the distance from the center, which could be a full week with good transportation.  On the fringes of China, there are few Chinese people and officials, and significantly less civilization and society.

The Ming continue the small number of government officials monitoring local officials who actually cooperate to form a government system.  However, this doesn’t always work well.

Zheng He was a eunuch in the main court—a Muslim—who became the commander of a fleet of ships that traveled all along the Chinese coast and southeast Asia, to India, and the middle east, as well as the coast of Africa.  In 1350-1450 China is the strongest world power, but for some reason there’s a withdrawal of Chinese expansion back into China.  We don’t understand why these trading trips shut down, or why there was a corresponding closing down in other ways in the mainland.  Ming society begins to become ultra-conservative, even more than neo-Confucianism.  Filial piety takes on enormous proportions, with stories of sons honoring their mothers.

There is another genre of stories about chased widows, who go through acrobatics to remain chaste and loyal to their previous husbands.  These two values are the ultimate representations of loyalty.

We’re going to talk today all about Chinese painting as a broad topic. The style of Chinese painting we’re all familiar with really has its roots in the Song dynasty, and is done in the rest of Imperial Chinese history. So, it’s a topic that lends itself to a general non-chronological treatment.

This atypical painting of the Emperor tilling the earth is that it’s a straightforward painting of a narrative scene and that it’s been influenced by European art. There are too many people for a traditional Chinese painting, it’s too dense, and only the clouds looks abstract and Chinese. Also, linear point perspective identifies it as Western.

If you look at a typical abstract Chinese painting, they’re basically monochrome with big empty spaces and then detailed space. Typically Chinese landscape paintings give a distinct partition of the white space, in contrast to small sections of dense, dark, intricate detail.

Prominent features include mist, twisted trees, and mountains. The distinct feature is the ability to render in 2 dimensions something lifelike and energetic.

Writing in Chinese calligraphy is said to reveal the moral nature of your soul. Until you are able to produce living words, you teacher will have you write the same character over and over.

“Shi” is a word that has not been well translated into English. This is a kind of potential energy that is inherent in the overall configuration of any given event or scenario. Imagine a crossbow cocked and ready to go—this has huge “shi.” Painters use this to describe how they hang large rocks over the heads over their victims, or rather, the potential energy of the layouts of their paintings.

Terms:

- Zhu Xi (1130-1200)

- 5 Classics – Changes; Poetry; Documents; Spring & Autumn; Ritual

- 4 Books – Analects (Confucius); Mencius; Doctrine of the Mean; Great Learning

- After Tang, An Lushan Rebellion, government backs off locally … how will court deal with this?

- Neo-Confucians

Lecture Notes:

I. Question of the Day: After the An Lushan Rebellion, the government is unable to exercise control over much of its territory;

a. It was never clear whether the Tang had complete control over their land

b. There’s an agreement amongst the families: we all want social stability and the status quo and peaceful society, which can be achieved through Confucian ideas such as filial piety and morals and values

i. It doesn’t matter whether they’re on the government payroll, and they can still collect taxes and have a say in the local government anyway

ii. Mutual responsibility system: a notion that in any village or community that agrees if any single individual does something wrong, everyone in that community is blamed for it; everyone keeps a check on everyone else

1. This allows the government to stay back from the rest of society

iii. Everyone is socialized to memorize and think like a Confucian (especially for the examination system)

iv. They’re convinced that these sagely texts contain the solutions to real world problems like floods and other disasters

II. Five Classics

a. Problems — The classics are very hard to read; the language is constantly changing over time; the language is very old and the examinations were written in this classical language which only made it more difficult

b. Some believed that Confucius had a hand in editing these five classics; but as time went on, they realized this was probably not true

i. Complex questions about the universe such as “how did the universe come about?” did not get answered by the five classics or by Confucius

ii. In the Song Dynasty, people began to think that Confucius needed a sophisticated response to such questions as how to deal with the converts to Buddhism, Daoism, etc. and political questions of the time

iii. The theory then becomes that the Han, celebrating the five classics, got it wrong; that they’re reading the wrong set of books

III. Instead they’ve looked to 4 books:

a. Analects (Confucian sayings) – very bizarre snippets of Confucius to get a sense of his personality

b. Mencius (the next great Confucian thinker) — human nature is good; juxtapose ourselves from Buddhism (Xunzi is too similar)

i. Zhu Xi really doesn’t like the Buddhist sense that life is just suffering

ii. Neo-Confucians will tell you that the basis of reality is li (principle); which is inherent pattern or structure

1. Li is like the veins in a jade stone

c. Ritual texts (Doctrine of the Mean and Great Learning)

i. The ancient sages began ruling with their own village; their own families, themselves

ii. You start with self-cultivation, and self-examination and then move on

d. A slow movement towards a reformulation of the Confucian texts; easier to manage, to read, to understand; more appropriate to the times

i. Reduces the amount of information that people will be tested on for the examination system

ii. Nowadays, most people go looking to study Confucius’ Analects and Mencius, but very rarely anybody studies the five classics

• 2 million registered households in 760
• 9 million in 755

Important news about the Quiz scheduled for 2 weeks from now.  There will be no quiz.  There’s a reason for this—most of you are doing well, but in recognition of the TAs hard work, we’re sparing them grading another round of quizzes.  That quiz will be treated as an extra 5 points on your grade.  This is the last good news, ever.

The medieval economic revolution!  We will see this topic appear over and over again, this chunk of Tang / Song time during which everything goes from whatever it was to whatever it’s going to become.

Improvements in irrigation, terraforming, economic changes, southern migration, and the change to rice all come together in this period and allow us and look back to say that the revenues in the Song available are dramatically higher than any previous time.  Strangely, the government doesn’t become richer; China becomes wealthier.  This will be true into the late imperial period.

By the Tang/Song period, the south is unified with north under a regular system.  A 20^th century scholar (Skinner) looking back tried to trace back various economic markets and networks.  He came up with a set of macro regions.  These overlap with the geographic people groups of the Neolithic and all of Chinese historical group categorizations.  These also delineate linguistic and cultural boundaries.  We can observe two kinds of trends:  increasing complexity of networks (religious, markets, transportation), and the founding of Tang infrastructure in these regions.  Then, what’s going on everywhere else?

The simple answer is they are hilly and remote.  When you get above cultivated land, you find a different ethnic group.  There was a constant encroachment on their territory by Chinese over the centuries.  However, it’s hard to distinguish them from Chinese after slow assimilation, because they pay taxes and serve the king, but sinification/sinicization isn’t total and they speak different languages than most of the Chinese.  So, there’s a long process of chipping away at diversity inside China.

Pre-sui taxation was done by equal-land share, where all land was divided into equal plots and lend by the government to your family.  You were taxed based on the number of plots you held.  This creates a predictable tax base for the early Sui and Tang.  To do so, they require annual census, a huge administrative process.  This changes in the An Lushan rebellion.

The Tang manage to survive the rebellion by allying with a handful of remaining groups to come together to prop that Tang back up, but the nature of the Tang state is radically changed.  At this point, the administration decides to offer the power to emperor in exchange for local autonomy and taxation.  The government also abandons artificial control over the markets.  Thus, there is a process of federalization.  However, the exam and value systems remained the same, even though the national elite lost their power base, because they are popular and useful.  A new set of players have come to the same game.

• Reunification under Sui dynasty (589 – 618 AD)

• Linking north to south
• Canal System, taxes, grain, and finance

• Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD)

• Move north to south
• New kind of economy

There is a shift of population towards the south, which was being increasingly developed over time, also due to immigration pressures from central Asia. In the Tang (742 AD) you see that two things have happened. First, there’s a general increase in population so everywhere is more populated, and more land is covered to the north. Second, the Yangtze river delta region has really taken off. Part of the reason is that powerful families from the North don’t want to compete with immigrant warlords from the north, and simply move south. Also, this warmer wetter climate is easier for growing crops, giving two to four harvests per year instead of the one in the north.

The reunification of China is a dream of all the lords holding former Han land. However, China at this time is a large, diverse region. At the end of the 6^th century, there was a state called the northern Zhou, who produced a charismatic leader (Sui Wendi) to found a new dynasty, the Sui, in Northern Zhou. Once he takes the throne, he has to put to death some 40-50 Zhou princes who might object to his dynasty. Then, he launches repeated military campaigns against the southern ministers. When Sui finally takes Nanjing, he forcibly relocates the migrated old aristocracy back to the old northern capital in Chang’an, and rules himself from Luyang. Thus, there’s a constant interchange of human capital between north and south.

However, reunification would require a reunification of the infrastructure of China. The Sui want to recreate the glory of the Han—that requires redoing the work of the Qin. Bringing southern revenue (the economic base) north was a major problem, as southern rice became the economic force of China. First, you must build canals to link the north and south to move grain. Behind all of this is a major change in Chinese economy and society that is usually hidden from view. Rice was not a big part of Chinese food until the Tang dynasty—it didn’t grow in the drier north. The basis of the economy shifts from millet and wheat to rice at this time, because rice more than doubles the yields of the grain. However, the standing water required to grow rice also breeds mosquitoes. Over time, the people become resistant to malaria, and choose foods to increase resistance.

Just as reunification exhausted the Qin over two emperors, the Sui lasted two emperors as well. The Sui tried to expand into Vietnam and Korea, but kept failing and trying again. From that, rebellion rose up uncorrected and an administrator was able to rise up and found the Tang dynasty. The Tang is considered a golden age because it contains the components we consider uniquely Chinese: Buddhism, Taoism, the southern economy, ties to non-Chinese groups, literati culture, and the examination system.

In the Han, you were recommended to office by a local who knew you to be evaluate for a position by higherups. In the period of disunity, you were born into one of nine ranks and stuck into a particular role based on your birth. The strategy was to slowly work up the rank of your family. In the Sui, since aristocracy was quite damaged, old aristocrats were on their was out. The Tang beefed up the civil service exam, making it the method of preference to put good people in high positions. You were tested on classical knowledge, and literary composition.

Chinese put their money into land and educating their children, as well as local religious institutions. Money given to the temple increases the family’s prestige. A family’s prestige allows them to build a library, hire tutors, bribe officials on the exams. That the exam system is a meritocracy is a myth—the reality is complicated by humans. It is popular because it allows the possibility of widening the pool for drawing up a meritocracy. It also allows the state to promulgate state values through exam preparations. Brainwashing! Cogs in the machine! Social harmony!

Mawangdui tomb finds (W. Han, 2nd Century BCE)

Mawangdui is in Central China in Changsha of Hunan, where there was the very well preserved corpse of a still-pliant woman. Then they disemboweled her and placed her and her organs into a museum. The most exciting thing from this find was a library of texts written on silk. Silk was more prestigious than bamboo for texts. There were two full copies of the Laozi text, some artwork and astrological charts, and charts of exercises with animal movements corresponding to the positions (see martial arts) found in the philosophical / cosmological portion of the library.

Immortality and Longevity

Dating back to the warring states period there is a growing fascination with immortality. Even the Zhou bronzes contained appeals of longevity for the family to the ancestors. In the Han, this notion has exploded among the elite, and you find that the Han elite are almost always buried in jade suits made from squares of jade sewn together with gold thread. To this day, Jade is considered protective auspicious stones. Cicadas carved from Jade were sometimes placed on the tongue, as the shedding skin is a symbol of rebirth.

How the journey to the afterlife was made is more complicated. There is a large silk banner draped over the coffin of the Mawangdui Lady Dai, an elaborate painting on silk. It took quite a while to interpret this properly, but over time we’ve learned more. From older dynasties back to the Shang we see two male and female deities carved in stone holding the Sun with a raven and the Moon with a toad.

Random rant: “Everyone seems to think humans are nothing but dirt.”

Another carving shows a 9-tailed fox arranged in an upper register, and human forms in a lower register. Xiwangmu (West King Mother), is found in the upper panel. By the Han, she is some kind of Queen mother goddess. There is also a mortar and pestle being ground by a hare in the top-left who is creating the elixir of life. This image of the hare reappears (sometimes in the moon) grinding the elixir of life.

There’s also an ancient Shang myth about there being 10 suns (they had a 10 day week). The notion was that each day was a different sun coming out, and there’s a myth where all 10 suns come out at once and an archer comes to shoot down the other 9.

Past two guardians we see something being pulled up in front of some deity in the silk. From the normal human realm, a creature is being pulled through the canopy of heaven into the celestial sphere. Indeed, the tomb occupant is drawn in the human register, and above, waiting for her, again is the tomb occupant showing her successful transformation into a spirit with a dragon tail, an arms length away from the elixir of immortality. There’s an additional register below which includes long-furry tailed turtles representing the watery depths, the underworld. Thus, this silk is a depiction of Han dynasty beliefs about the afterlife.

Alchemy (inner v.s. outer)

In a quest to transform themselves, members of the elite tried to ingest all kinds of things. In the west, alchemist wanted to turn lead into gold, but the Chinese notion of alchemy was more inclusive. They believed that there must be a process to turn a mortal into an immortal. Inner alchemy is a meditation to transform the energies inside of you to become immortal in a strange sort of way. This concern explodes following the Han.

For example, there are lots of sexual manuals (some of these are called “The manual of how to ride many young women in one day”) which describe how ?? de jing (essence, vital energy) can be saved to become immortal. Having sex will cause your jing to leave you and become depleted. Instead, they allow themselves to have promiscuous sex but never allow themselves to finish. This becomes a physical exercise, like stretching or eating foods. To most of us, this is an unattractive notion, but it was considered a legitimate method of attaining immortality.

Taoist religious practice

By and large, we associate these practices with the Taoists. Buddhist texts are generally critical of these activities. However, the deviant sexual practices and orgiastic sexual initiation rites of the Taoists are confirmed by texts from both sources.

Revealed texts to the Taoists come from the so-called spirits of former teachers initiating people into various techniques. Thus, Taoist sects take off at the time because a Taoist master can claim authority through the spirits of ancestors.

To this day, Chinese want to deny that Taoism has a link to breathing techniques, sexuality, or other practices that are non-philosophical and more religious.