Song Dynasty
China, 1103-1128 CE
Main
Characters:
Zheng Mingcheng A Confucian scholar-bureaucrat
Li Qingzhao A renowned poet; wife of Zheng Mingcheng
Song Huizong The Emperor
Qinzong The
Emperor’s eldest son
Gaozong The
Emperor’s second son
Cai Jing Huizong’s
reformist Chancellor
Wang Fu Cai
Jing’s replacement as Chancellor
Li Gang Emperor
Qinzong’s Chancellor
* * *
In the Year of the Sheep, the fourth
year of the reign of the Emperor Huizong, twenty-two-year-old Zhao Mingcheng sat
down in the Examination Hall in Kaifeng, waiting for the test to begin. He had spent years preparing for this, but he
could not help being nervous. Like the
other scholars present in the hall, he checked his ink-pot and brush. Carefully, the proctors roamed through the
hall, examining the lunch each student had brought, looking for hidden clues
and notes that might be used to cheat.
At the front of the Examination
Hall, flanking the stairs, were two enormous statues depicting Mengzi and a
former imperial minister, Wang Anshi, who had served the present Emperor’s
father. Zhao Mingcheng was not
well-disposed toward this particular minister, despite the fact that he was
dead. A radical reformer, Wang Anshi had
removed from the Imperial Exam the two topics in which Zhao Mingcheng excelled
– poetry and history. It was all part of
the reform party’s effort to bring practical men into the administrative system
of the Empire.
Taking a deep breath, Zhao Mingcheng
glanced around the hall, trying to ignore the watchful gaze of the Magistrate
of Kaifeng and the other official examiners, including the Hanlin Academy
scholars who had devised this year’s questions.
There were young men here from every part of China. He knew quite a few of them, for they had
studied with him at the National Academy, the Guozijian. But there were aristocratic boys here, too,
from the noble families, who had trained at the great private academies –
Songyang, Yingtianfu, Yuelu, White Deer Grotto, Culai, and the newest of the
lot, Dongpo, founded by the late Su Shi during his exile on the far-away island
of Hainan. Here and there, he saw a few
older men, one or two in their fifties, taking the exam for the second or third
time. Some fellows, he knew – men with
more money than sense – made a life’s work of studying for the Jinshi exam.[1] Like him, they all had studied history and
poetry. Zhao Mingcheng’s father had inserted
these subjects back into the exam during his brief stint as Chancellor, but now
Cai Jing was Chancellor, and he had revived almost all of Wang Anshi’s reforms
with a vengeance. History and poetry
were not considered practical. Well....
The examination booklets were
distributed to the scholars while Chen Dong, the youngest member of the Hanlin
Academy stood and snapped out their instructions:
“All exam books must be closed until
you are told to open them. The first
question will be found inside. You will
have two hours to complete your essay.”
Zhao Mingcheng glanced at the exam
booklet, with its impersonal number. Not
only were the books numbered, but each would be recopied so that the Magistrate
and other officials who graded the tests would not recognize anyone’s calligraphy.
“Begin!”
Zhao Mingcheng opened the booklet
and read the exam question. “The Master
said: ‘When Ch’ih was proceeding to
Ch’i, he had fat horses pulling his carriage, and wore light furs.ʼ”[2]
He sighed, not because it was
difficult, but because it was so predictable.
While he noticed some of the other students rubbing their faces, staring
at the question, Zhao Mingcheng calmly dipped his brush and began to complete
the passage:
“ʽI have heard that a superior man
helps the distressed,” he wrote, “but does not add to the wealth of the rich.ʼ”
That part of the answer – completing
the passage from memory – was easy. The
next part – applying Wang Anshi’s commentary on Master Kung’s teachings – that
would not be so easy.
The
important thing, he thought, is to
pass the exam. After all, he had to
uphold the honour of the Zhao family, which always had provided
scholar-administrators for the Empire.
He had to pass for the sake of his father, Zhao Tingzhi, Grand Counsellor
in the Ministry of Personnel. But most
of all he did not want to let down his wife, Li Qingzhao.
They had been married two years
before, in the Year of the Snake, the same year that Su Shi had died. Li Qingzhao’s father was a friend of the late
Su Shi, but in happier times, before he had been sent off to rot in the humid
jungle of Hainan, the clever old scholar and scientific inventor had taught her
how to compose splendid little poems in the musical lyric-style.[3] She had sent him off to the exam with one
just this morning:
In the evening gusts of
wind and rain
Washed away
daylight’s embers.[4]
I stop
playing the reed-pipe
And touch up my face at
the mirror.
Through the thin red
silk my cool flesh glistens
Lustrous as
snow, fresh with fragrance.
With a smile
I say to my beloved:
“Tonight, inside the
mesh curtains, the pillow and mat are cool.”
Zhao Mingcheng was still daydreaming
about his pretty young wife and “gusts of wind and rain” when the time-keeper’s
stamp struck his booklet, leaving a garish, smeared red mark. He came to his senses and at once began to
write:
“ʽIt is the opinion of Wang Anshi
that it is necessary for the state to provide all possible assistance to the
labouring classes in order to prevent their being ground into dust by the
rich.’”
Zhao Mingcheng was clever, though. He remembered that although Wang Anshi had
been opposed to forced labor, Cai Jing was not.
When he stated his own analysis of Master Kung’s remarks, he made sure
to include a justification of the corvée labor system, linking the whole idea
to the notion of filial piety, like a good Confucian.[5]
One essay completed – there would be
others, but Zao Mingcheng was ready.
* * *
Zhao Mingcheng passed the exam, of
course. He had not really doubted that
he would. His name and score – along
with those of everyone else who had taken the Jinshi exam, was declared on a
poster stuck up on the wall outside the Examination Hall, in Horse Guild
Avenue, for all to see. As usual, most
of those who had taken the exam failed.
For many of them, in fact, this was not the first time they had
failed. However, the number of students
who passed was higher than it had been in the days when Zhao Tingzhi had taken
the exam – all part of the state’s program to diversify and enlarge the civil
service.
He
received an initial appointment to one of the yamens, or central government
departments, in Kaifeng. As a
functionary of the Ministry of Rites, serving under his father-in-law, who was
a division chief, Zhao Mingcheng was sent off to rural Shandong, his home
province, to report on the local magistrates’ efforts to put the Emperor’s new
religious decree into effect. Song
Huizong had decided that Chongning monasteries should be set up in each
prefecture to pray for the Emperor’s health and longevity. It was a rather bizarre request, coming from
a ruler who was himself only twenty-one years old. At Weifeng, he received the following poem
from his wife, Li Qingzhao:
In the little courtyard,
by the vacant window
Spring’s
colours deepen,
With the double blinds
unfurled
The gloom
thickens.
Upstairs, wordless
The
strumming of a jasper lute.
Far-off hills, jutting
peaks
Hasten the
thinning of the dusk,
Gentle wind, blowing
rain
Play with
light shades.
Pear blossoms are about
to fall,
But there’s
no helping that.[6]
Zhao Mingcheng tried to write a poem
of his own, in reply, but although he could find the rhyme, he knew his word
choice was not up to Li Qingzhao’s standards.
She was by far the better poet, which was one of the many reasons why he
loved her. Riding in his palanquin from
place to place, visiting magistrates’ offices and Buddhist monasteries, Zhao
Mingcheng wondered when he would be able to see her again. Meanwhile, he amused himself as best he could
pursuing his favourite hobby – collecting.
What had really attracted Zhao
Mingcheng to Li Qinzhao even more than her beauty and talent was her passion
for old, rare, and beautiful things. It
was their bond. Although his father had
served on the Emperor’s council, Zhao Mingcheng’s family owned only a modest
estate, and he was – after all – the third son.
The stipend he was given, while studying in Kaifeng, was rather meagre,
a stipend suitable for a third son.
However, he had been very careful with his money, staying in one of the
Academy dormitories, drinking weak tea and eating only vegetables with his
rice; he patched his scholar’s robes, and only occasionally indulged in the
luxury of wine. Instead of going out
drinking with his fellow students in the Entertainment District, on full-moon
festival nights, each feast day he pawned old clothes and roamed the back
lanes, seeking antiquities. He saved his
silver taels and spent them on shards of inscribed pottery and charcoal
rubbings of old inscriptions. He continued
this habit after marriage: indeed,
whenever a really desirable object appeared on the market, Zhao Mingcheng and
Li Qingzhao found themselves wondering what they might be able to sell in order
to afford it.
Other women might not have
understood Zhao Mingcheng’s passion for the past, but Li Qingzhao was not
merely indulgent: she was a full-fledged
collaborator. Every feast day, he bought
some fruit and a new artefact, and they would spend the evening eating the
fruits, fresh from the market, while studying and critiquing their latest
find.
“It’s not just that they’re pretty,
or interesting,” Li Qingzhao had said one day.
“Each one of these pieces we’re collecting has a story that needs to be
recovered and told.”
That was why Zhao Mingcheng, as he
travelled, quietly let it be known that he was interested in antiques,
especially anything made of stone or metal that had writing on it. He could not always afford to buy what was
presented to him, but most people did not mind his “capturing” the inscriptions
by making a rubbing using a piece of rice-paper and a stick of charcoal. The palanquin-bearers were grateful, too,
because paper was much easier to carry than ancient bronze.
When he returned to Kaifeng, Li Qingzhao
received him with a tray of tea in their inner quarters, looking out into the
central garden of their home. His
journey had been a long one, keeping him away for the Dragon Boat Festival, the
Lovers’ Feast of Double Seventh, and
the Feast of Hungry Ghosts. He was
unable to come back until just before the Mid-Autumn Festival in the eighth
month, when the Kaifeng bakers prepared moon-cakes for the crowds they
anticipated in the late-night Devils’ Market.
“Will the Emperor’s new temples be
ready in time for the New Year?” Li Qinzhao asked.[7]
“Yes,” Zhao Mingcheng nodded, “at
least the ones in Shandong will be.”
“Sihui Miaozhan has objected to
Furong Daskai being appointed to the Chongning Temple here in Kaifeng,” Li Qingzhao
replied. “He was banished for refusing
the Emperor’s gift of purple robes.”
“The abbots of the older Buddhist
monasteries are not pleased,” Zhao Mingcheng said, shaking his head. “They remember the Great Persecution under
the Tang, when it was decreed there could be only one Buddhist temple in each
prefecture.”
“Well, there used to be hundreds of
thousands of them, and all those hideous relics – the finger-bone of the Buddha
and what-not – it was ridiculous,” Li Qingzhao laughed. “And now we can all pray for the long life of
Song Huizong.”
“A Daoist on the throne,” Zhao
Mingcheng muttered, only now permitting himself a sip of tea. “These Daoists are obsessed with cheating
death.”
“Everyone is,” Li Qingzhao
smirked. “We Confucians cheat death by
claiming that life goes on, as an ancestor, after death: so, we spend all our time worrying about the
dead and placating them. The Buddhists,
meanwhile, try to cheat death by pretending the world doesn’t really
exist. As for the Daoists, they think a
man’s lifespan can be increased if he somehow has sex without reaching his climax. In Laozi’s day, they used to be more
sensible. It’s all quite absurd, isn’t
it?”
“Perhaps, but the Daoist surely is
the most absurd philosopher of all. What
could be more contradictory than claiming to esteem nature, and natural
tendencies, while at the same time denying a great principle of nature, which
is that all things inevitably decline and die.
It’s like believing in the Will of Heaven, yet doing nothing to uphold
it.”
* * *
Three years passed, during which Cai
Jing oversaw the imposition of new taxes on salt and tea, as well as the
organization of corvée labor throughout the Empire. These new measures were unpopular, and daring
officials all over China began to send in memorials urging the Emperor to
abandon the reforms. If he had not been
so intent on the study of antiquities, Zhao Mingcheng might have penned a
memorial himself, but his father urged him to be careful. It was sage advice. Nevertheless, the memorials continued to pile
up at the Office of Planning, where Cai Jing worked, and the Chancellor read
them with a sour expression and mounting irritation.
Taxes, one memorialist noted, now
were seven times what they had been
at the end of the Tang Dynasty. Another
official pointed out that two-thirds of the landowning families in his district
did not pay any taxes at all because they belonged to the elite or wealthy
tax-exempt classes, or else because they were rich and well-connected enough to
persuade the local tax-collectors to overlook them. The magistrate of one of the more prosperous
prefectures objected to tax-paying landowners in his district being assessed
for sixty percent more land than they actually owned, simply because they had
the good fortune to live in an area favoured by nature. Complaints regarding the corvée system
appeared from every part of the Empire:
mostly, they did not decry the conscription of manual labourers, but the
pressure put on richer peasants to serve as guards, office-runners, and local
tax-collectors, all duties considered onerous and demeaning by such
people. Indeed, in certain parts of the
Empire serving as Li-cheng, or Village Warden, was actually dangerous because
such men always were targeted by local bandits.
Cai
Jing immediately issued a decree, in the Emperor’s name, banning all further debate
on policy. To traditional Confucian
scholars, this was like being stabbed in the heart. Internal criticism of policy had always been
the soul of the Confucian state. Three
hundred officials were summarily removed from office or relocated to distant,
miserable frontier districts hundreds of miles away from their families.
In the Year of the Fire Dog, Song
Huizong decided to recast the Nine Tripod Cauldrons used in one of the most
important imperial rituals of all – the general veneration of the ancestors of
the Han people. Once more, Zhao
Mingcheng was sent forth on a tour of the prefectures east of Kaifeng. This time, he was to inspect the Chongning
temples and also collect the bronze tribute due from each district, for the
Emperor insisted that the Cauldrons must be made in exactly the same way the
Shang kings had made them – every part of the Empire would contribute, thus
making the Cauldrons themselves a potent symbol of both the Empire and the
Emperor’s authority. Everywhere he went,
he was troubled by glowering thunderclouds, although the countryside was full
of peach blossoms.
In Kaifeng, Li Qingzhao composed a
poem for her husband. She felt sad, for
her father, Li Gefei, has passed away recently.
The Feast of Cold Food,
A quiet and
peaceful spring day.
From the jade burner
smoke rises, up-curling,
The incense
dying.
Dreams returned as I
slept
On a
hill-shaped pillow, concealing
My
flower-ornament hairpins.
Sea-swallows are not yet
returned;
People
delight in vying for fresh herbs.
Plumb blossoms withered,
willows bear catkins;
Twilight falls, light
raindrops
Wetting the
garden swing.
His mission accomplished, Zhao
Mingcheng returned to Kaifeng, taking the southern road that entered the outer
city wall via the Dongshui Gate. Unlike
the middle gates, which had broad doors and straight entrances, the people had
to use the corner gates, which were narrow, zig-zagging through multiple
chambers clambering with guards who searched everyone. Zhao Mingcheng was recognized – nothing
unusual about that – but, to his surprise, the officer of the watch said:
“Honorable Master, I regret to
inform you that an order has been given for your arrest.”
Zhao Mingcheng was so stunned he
said nothing. What could he possibly
say? His palanquin was carried, under a
guard of imperial soldiers, to the Donghua Gate of the Palace City. He sat stolidly, waiting for the shameful
procession to end, and soon found himself at the Office of Planning – Cai
Jing’s office. Walking into the
Chancellor’s presence, he bowed respectfully, and waited.
“Zhao Mingcheng, you have been
arrested under suspicion of high treason against the Son of Heaven, Song
Huizong. Do you have anything to say?”
“What evidence do you have against
me?”
“We intercepted and transcribed a
poem recently sent to you by your wife, Li Qingzhao,” the Chancellor
answered. He at once opened a thin piece
of rice-paper and read the poem, which caused Zhao Mingcheng to smirk a
little. Cai Jing, an elderly man and a
thoroughly nasty fellow, did not have a voice well-suited to poetry. It was the poem about the Feast of Cold Food
– he remembered it well, and had commited his wife’s words to memory. “Well?
How do you explain this?”
“I am confident that an official who
has attained the rank of Chancellor is better able than I to analyze a poem,
Your Excellency.”
“Poetry is an indulgence of the
Literati. No practical administrator,
truly doing his duty, has time for such frivolities. I ask you again – what is the meaning of this poem?”
“Surely everyone in China knows what
the Feast of Cold Food is?” Zhao Mingcheng said. “Once upon a time, Duke Wen....”
“I asked you what this meant!”
The Chancellor was losing patience rather quickly, and Zhao Mingcheng
suddenly realized that he was not the first person who had been
interrogated. This was but a small
episode within a larger drama.
“The incense refers to the tradition
of ancestor-worship,” Zhao Mingcheng said.
“And of course you know about the gathering of fresh herbs....”
“The Feast of Cold Food commemorates
a man who shirked his duties when called upon by his prince to serve,” Cai Jing
remarked. “It is an indirect accusation
against the state.”
Against
you? Zhao Mingcheng tried not to
laugh, for this would have been ridiculous if Cai Jing had not been so
powerful. “How is that possible, Your
Excellency?”
“Your wife’s poem accuses the
Imperial Government of hypocrisy and corruption.”
“Read the words, Your Excellency. None
of that is in there – nor have I ever
uttered any statements to that effect.”
Some people, Zhao Mingcheng thought,
would get an idea lodged into the brain, and then they would see confirmation
of their precious opinion everywhere they looked, regardless of the
evidence. Cai Jing, he could see, had
become such a man: this persecution
served some policy goal, and he was determined to drive onward even at the risk
of appearing to be both delusional and unjust.
Cai Jing mulled over Zhao
Mingcheng’s response for a moment, finally asking, “What does the wet swing
mean?”
“It rained?” Zhao Mingcheng offered the Chancellor an
exasperated look. “Playing on swings, in
the garden, is what people do during
the Feast of Cold Food, Your Excellency.”
Cai Jing stared at Zhao Mingcheng
for several long seconds, and at last sighed, making a dismissive gesture. “Go – go.
Clearly, we at present have insufficient evidence against you, but you
remain under suspicion.”
Zhao Mingcheng went directly home to
see Li Qingzhao, who was worried sick, waiting.
“They arrested your father!” she
cried. “Cai Jing interrogated him for
days. No one knows why... they won’t
say. The denunciation was too much. He resigned from the Council and has gone
home to Qingzhou.”
Zhao Mingcheng removed his
official’s hat and sat down, heavily, utterly drained by everything that had
happened.
“What will you do?” his wife asked.
“Song Huizong is a Daoist,” Zhao
Mingcheng replied, after a moment of reflection. “The wind of so-called reform is blowing a
cyclone. Daoism teaches us to bend
before the wind. It would seem that, for
now, there is no place in the Emperor’s administration for a proper Confucian
bureaucrat like me.”
He knew, without being told, that
the humiliation of arrest and interrogation has broken his father’s heart. He was not surprised to hear that his father
was ill, or to receive the summons from his elder brother, informing him that
Zhao Tingzhi was dead. In accordance
with the Law Code, he temporarily resigned from his post and returned to his
home town of Qingzhou, in Shandong Province, to observe the legally and
ritually-required twenty-seven month mourning period. No one was especially surprised, a few years
later, when Zhao Mingcheng formally resigned from the Imperial Civil
Service.
So
many scholar-officials had quit their jobs, in fact, that the state began to
unravel, and Song Huizong was compelled to ask Cai Jing to end the reform
movement. Hundreds of less-qualified men
had to be promoted beyond their competency levels to fill all the empty
posts. Thousands of years worth of
collective knowledge and experience were lost overnight, and the administration
of the Empire suffered as a result, becoming less efficient, slower, more arbitrary,
less just. Injured and slighted subjects
began to complain, bitterly; many lost hope, and others fled to the forests and
marshes to join bandits, discharged soldiers, renegade peasants, and exiled or
unemployed officials, an ever-growing hydra-headed army of the dispossessed and
disaffected.
Zhao Mingcheng and Li Qingzhao were
by no means wealthy, but even after only four years’ of service in the Ministry
of Rites he had amassed enough money, by living abstemiously, to live in
genteel poverty, at least for a while.
They were able to live with his elder brother at the family’s mansion in
Qingzhou, although later they acquired a large house of their own, which was
necessary to provide storage for their ever-growing collection of
antiquities. Before long, they had to
set aside twelve rooms solely for their collection of old manuscripts, and –
together – they dedicated themselves to the composition of a sprawling
treatise, the Jin Shi Lu, which was the first comprehensive study of epigraphy
ever written in China. Before it was
completed, it would fill thirty volumes.
* * *
In the Year of the Pig, under the
influence of the element of fire, the Empress Xiangong had given birth to a second
son, Gaozong. The need to celebrate the
child’s birth had compelled Song Huizong to order Cai Jing to curtail his purge
of the administration so that all the prefectural governors and district
magistrates could attend to organizing local fetes in honor of the new prince.
The Emperor completed a treatise on
tea production that he had been working on for some time, and the book was sent
at once to the Imperial Press to be published, allowing His Imperial Majesty to
return his attention to his other interests – painting, calligraphy, poetry, architecture,
gardening, and the acquisition and arrangement of works of art. He had collected already nearly six thousand
objects, and a splendid pavilion had to be built inside the Palace City to
accommodate them.
Empress Xiangong, however, became
withdrawn and sickly after the birth of her son. She had never really liked Huizong, and now
that she had fulfilled her matrimonial purpose, she made no secret of the fact
that she was utterly indifferent to her husband. Indeed, she urged him to seek out other
mistresses, but the Emperor did not accept this resolution. He waited, hoping that Xiangong would change
her mind, but he was deeply depressed.
Emperors, after all, are accustomed to having anything they want,
whenever they want it. To his dismay, a
year after the birth of Gaozong, the Empress died, only twenty-four years
old. With a heavy heart, the Emperor
went into mourning.
Many months passed; the moon waxed
and waned – festivals were celebrated, and the enormous city of Kaifeng pulsed
with life all around the walls of the Imperial City, but within the inner
chambers of the Palace all was quiet gloom, the only sound being the swish of
silk robes as eunuchs and courtiers hurried from one pavilion to another.
The Emperor brooded, and his youth
slipped away. He put on some
weight. His appetites grew more intense,
but his relish faded. He began to feel
the weight of his own mortality and the need to leave a mark. He married again – the new Empress was named Xiansui
– but she was a quiet, plain woman, selected only because the astrologers
proclaimed the match to be an auspicious one.
The wedding night was grimly perfunctory, and the Emperor stalked away,
summoning one of his favourite concubines.
“You need a change of pace, Sire,”
the concubine suggested. “You cheer up
when you’re creative. Make something – draw something – do
something! You float around the Palace
like a hungry ghost.”
“You’re right.”
I
shall build something, the young Emperor decided, in the morning, calling
for Cai Jing. “Chancellor,” he said when
Cai Jing appeared, “I wish to construct a new park here in Kaifeng. I want an artificial hill raised, overlooking
the Jinming Pond – something picturesque.
It shall be a representation of the Empire, filled with rocks and rare
plants from every corner of China.
Indeed, I want all of the prefectures to send shipments of their finest
specimens for inclusion in the new garden.”
Cai Jing considered the proposal,
but nodded quickly. The Emperor’s
fertile mind had been conjuring up one audacious building scheme after another
– new palaces, libraries, gardens, temples.
To keep the cost of these projects low, the Chancellor had established
the Exchange System, under which the state could require the summer tax,
normally levied in cash, to be paid in kind – in whatever resources the state
might require. Sometimes, Cai Jing simply
demanded building materials – cut stone, bricks, bamboo, lumber, lacquer, and
mortar – without compensation, defining these ad-hoc demands as an auxiliary
tax.
* * *
“Sire, one of the Jurchen[8]
chiefs along the Amur River[9] has
rebelled against the Khitan Emperor of Liao,” Cai Jing reported one day as the
Emperor sat down with the chief bureaucrats who formed the Council of State.[10]
“What is his name?”
“Wanyan Aguda.”
“A barbaric name for a barbarian,”
Huizong replied, and nothing more was said about the matter until, in the next
year – the Year of the Sheep – Cai Jing once more reported to the Council.
“Wanyan Aguda, the rebel leader of
the Jurchen, has proclaimed himself Emperor of the new state of Jin. The Liao generals seem to be completely
unable to deal with him.”
“Liao has always been our enemy,”
Huizong replied. “They humiliated us,
taking territory, bleeding us with their tribute demands. We should wish this up-start every success. This fellow is from the Amur, is he not? That’s rather far away. Let the barbarians kill each other.” After a pause, he raised his eyebrows and
regarded his ministers sceptically. “And
what about the internal disorders? I am
especially concerned about the situation around Liangshan.”
“Sire,” Cai Jing said, speaking
slowly and carefully, “you refer to the area called the Water Margin. The bandits there grow more powerful every
year. They have built a fortified camp
on Liangshan Mountain, and they follow a leader named Song Jiang.”[11]
“What do we know about him?”
“He used to be a magistrate’s
clerk.”
“Ah!
A mean sort of person – lowly, the sort of man who fails the exam too
many times. And yet he has a heroic
name: just two characters long. Tell me, why
is the military unable to bring these bandits to justice?”
“The administrators do not know
whose task it is, Sire,” Cai Jing explained.
“The marshes straddle so many different jurisdictions... the boundaries
run through morasses, lakes, and sloughs that no one has ever surveyed.”
“Indeed,” the Emperor muttered. “Well, perhaps a new head is required to deal
with them. Who was the top-scoring
student this year?”
“Qin Hui, Sire,” Cai Jing said,
nodding.
“I want Qin Hui to be posted to the
Liangshan area, with troops, and with a special commission to pursue these
bandits back and forth across all the administrative boundaries, if necessary.”
Another year passed, and Cai Jing
was forced to report that Wanyan Aguda now was conquering the Liao territories
to the north and east, at the head of an ever-expanding army of barbarian
horsemen. As for Qin Hui, his initial
efforts to destroy the bandits of Liangshan had been remarkably
unsuccessful.
“Tell him to try harder,” Huizong
said, rather annoyed by all this unsettling news. “Clearly, my army has grown weak. I therefore propose that the Eunuch, Tong
Guan, be placed at the head of the Military Bureau, to have a seat in the
Council of State.”
When the others all heard that a
Eunuch was to be promoted to such a high office, they grew visibly
restless. All of them were products of
the Examination Hall, and all of them – at least to some extent – believed in
Confucian values, in particular the importance of family. Eunuchs were to them an abomination –
emasculated men without family ties, admitted into the Emperor’s presence
merely because they survived their mutilation, and fit only to be servile
drones in the Imperial Bedchambers, or pawns in palace intrigues. Worst of all, however, the Eunuchs tended to
band together against the whole of the outside world, always seeking to
separate the Emperor from the scholar-bureaucrats who administered the Empire. The only person who was not disturbed by the
news of Tong Guan’s elevation was Cai Jing, for the Eunuch had helped him
obtain the post of Chancellor.
“I must inform you that the
divinities have spoken with me in a dream,” the Emperor now said, startling the
Council of State even more. “The Gods
have informed me that a new network of Daoist temples – in honor of the Divine
Empyrean – are to be established.”
“But... Sire. That would be incredibly expensive.”
“Hardly,” Huizong retorted. “Existing Buddhist monasteries will be seized
and converted into Daoist temples. The
divinities were very insistent that this all be done immediately.”
* * *
In the Year of the Pig, the
nineteenth year of the reign of Song Huizong, under the influence of the
element of Earth, Wanyan Aguda – who now called himself Emperor Taizu of Jin –
sent an embassy to Kaifeng to discuss the possibility of an alliance between
the Jurchen and the Song Dynasty. Cai
Jing received the barbarian ambassadors with the carefully-measured, cold courtesy
normally accorded to foreigners. The
barbarians strode into the reception room of the Office of Planning in all
their uncivilized splendour – gleaming lamellar armor, furs, and felt
boots. They were brown-faced, with long
moustaches and pointed beards. The neatly-groomed
Song officials in their silk robes and scholars’ caps did not attempt to
disguise their contempt for these outsiders.
“We have seen the great mechanical
clock-tower, with the moving armillary sphere, built by the late Su Shi. We understand its creator was exiled by the
present Emperor’s elder brother.” The
Jin ambassador said this with the hint of a smile – it was a strange way to
begin negotiations, Cai Jing thought, but one could not expect barbarians to
behave with propriety.
“The late Su Shi excelled in all the
sciences, but in particular those dealing with astronomy and the reckoning of
time,” Cai Jing replied.
“So we have heard. And he is said to have discovered, while
visiting Liao, that the Khitan Emperor’s calendar was more accurate than your ancient
Chinese calendar.[12] And yet the Han call theirs the Celestial
Kingdom.”
“These errors have since been
corrected.” Cai Jing, rather impatient,
asked, “What bearing does this have on the topic under discussion?”
“The Han Chinese look down their
noses at foreigners. You call us barbarians. Yet, the Khitan Empire of Liao has grown
strong at the expense of the Song Dynasty.
This must rankle. They hold the
northern passes and occupy the Sixteen Prefectures. Our master, the Emperor Taizu, will return
these prefectures to your master, Song Huizong, if you agree to attack Liao
from the south in concert with our invasion from the north. Together, we will extinguish what remains of
the Liao state.”
The offer was brought before the
Council of State, who heard the news with great excitement.
“Sire,” Cai Jing urged, “possession
of the Sixteen Prefectures will allow us to move the northern border of the
Empire back up to the Great Wall. We
would have a secure military frontier again.”
“At what cost?”
“The deployment of two hundred
thousand men – a very short campaign,” said Tong Guan, the military Eunuch, who
now headed the Military Bureau. “We have
nearly seven million men enrolled in the militia, Sire. The fifty-eight divisions of the army can
muster one million, six hundred thousand troops. Half a million militia, in the frontier
provinces, are ready for immediate duty.”
“Very well – send the necessary
orders to the commanders.”
“Sire,” Cai Jing interjected. “If the militia are to be conscripted, there
may be widespread draft-dodging. Many
men already join the Buddhist monasteries in order to avoid military service,
taxation, and the corvée. I think that
for the good of the state we must impose a five year moratorium on new Buddhist
ordinations.”
“Why stop at half measures?” Huizong snorted, derisively, and said in a
rather petulant tone, “Tell the Buddhist monks that the Sangha is to be merged
with Daoism. All the monasteries of their foreign sect are to be assimilated
into the Daoist establishment as quickly as possible. They must turn their attention from the study
of Dhamma to the pursuit of the Dao, or they must rejoin the ranks of laymen
and taxpayers.”
It was a bold, breathtaking move,
but Cai Jing bowed, deeply, and said, “Yes, Sire – the Imperial Ancestors will
be overjoyed by this expression of filial piety.”
I
simply cannot do this anymore, Cai Jing thought as he returned to the
Office of Planning. He sat down, took a
deep breath, and composed his letter of resignation, declaring himself too old
to bear up to the stress of his post.
In family shrines, the statues of
the Ancestors stood inert and silent, smothered in clouds of incense. All across the Empire, magistrates read the
imperial order calling out the militia. Long
ago, even before the chancellorship of Wang Anshi, all the households of the
Empire had been divided into units called pao, each consisting of ten
families. All families with more than
two adult males were required to provide one recruit for the army whenever a
conscription order was issued. The
recruits were received at the induction stations in each district and
prefecture, being tattooed on the hand or shoulder to make it more difficult
for them to run away. Those who appeared
at the muster-grounds were sent to begin their training under the weapons
instructors, but everywhere lists were drawn up of those who failed to present
themselves. These lists were long and
disheartening.
In the village of Qixian in Shezhou
Province, meanwhile, a man named Fang La stirred up a rebellion.[13]
The initial reports regarding the
events in Shezhou came before Wang Fu, the new Chancellor, at the end of the
year. In official circles, a minor
peasant revolt was routinely treated as and referred to as banditry: only a successful, full-scale uprising was
considered to be a “rebellion.”
“So,” Wang Fu said to himself,
reading the reports that had reached him from terrified, overwhelmed
magistrates and prefectural governors.
He signalled his subordinate to attend him, laying aside the reports as
he pressed his fingers to his temples.
“Issue an order for the immediate arrest of the Magistrate of Qixian,
who is to be beaten to death for deserting his post. Issue another order to the Eunuch-commander
Tan Chen to proceed to Shezhou with a small body of regular troops. He is to apprehend the bandit Fang La, or
else send his head to me in a jar.”
The revolt at Qixian had occurred in
the tenth lunar month, during the collection of the autumn taxes. For five weeks, Wang Fu was able to censor
news about the uprising, but when the prefectural capital of Muzhou was overrun
and sacked by the rebels, it became impossible to keep the Emperor in the dark.
“What in the hell is going on down
there!” Song Huizong demanded, summoning Wang Fu to his presence. “Who is this man? Is he a rebel official?”
“The bandit Fang La is a peasant,
Sire.”
“A peasant?” Huizong scoffed, shaking his head. “What sort of peasant calls himself
Chen? Only Emperors of China take that
name.”
“He’s a rather well-to-do peasant
from the village of Qixian. He owned a grove
of lacquer trees.” Wang Fu sighed, for
the rest of the story was difficult to relate.
“He was required to serve as Village Warden, under the corvée. When he failed to raise the assessed revenue
demand, the magistrate in Qixian took him to task and told him he had better
make up the shortfall out of his own funds.
So... well, he... he took up banditry.”
“Am I supposed to believe that a bandit calls himself Chen... that he
commands thousands of men and captures prefectural capitals? How many districts have fallen into his
hands, Wang Fu?”
“We... Sire... we don’t actually
know. Dozens. Perhaps more – we just received word that
Hangzhou fell to the rebels without a fight on the twenty-ninth of last month.”
“Well, this is a very inauspicious
beginning to the New Year – a year in which we are supposed to fight a war
against Liao alongside our new Jin allies!”
Huizong was furious. “Contact
Tong Guan: order him to move at once
against Fang La’s stronghold with five divisions. And I want this peasant prankster who thinks
he’s too good to pay his taxes taken alive.”
* * *
The Emperor was growing weary of the
cold indifference of the Empress Xiansui, and increasingly perturbed by
annoying news. He sometimes wondered if Wang
Fu ever had anything positive to say.
Tong Guan’s well-trained, battle-ready troops – withdrawn from the
frontier – were marching to various points along the Grand Canal, where
hundreds of barges had been requisitioned to carry them down to the areas that
had fallen under rebel control. Over
fifty districts, now, had succumbed to Fang La’s revolt, and the fellow, not
content merely to call himself Emperor, had commissioned architects to build
him an imperial palace. Local commanders
had attacked the rebels, but one by one they had been cut off, slaughtered, or
routed. Those administrators who did not
flee, at the approach of the insurgent armies, were massacred along with their
families. Worst of all, the uprising had
completely disrupted the shipment of hundreds of thousands of bushels of rice
collected during the autumn tax season – rice that normally supplied the
markets of Kaifeng and the granaries of the frontier garrisons.
With great trepidation, Wang Fu
approached the brooding Emperor and said:
“Our latest intelligence reports, Sire, indicate that Fang La has
secured the loyalty of many of his key followers by advancing loans, or by
helping them evade their tax payments.
The mass of rebels, however, he has mesmerized or astounded with magic
tricks. He has set himself up as a
Daoist magician, but the few prisoners we have been able to capture speak of a
strange, dualistic doctrine. We believe
the insurgents are inspired by Manichaean beliefs.[14] They say that life has no value, that
morality means nothing. They claim that
a new dispensation is at hand – the learned and the rich will be destroyed, and
the lowly will walk in the sun, enjoying ease and plenty.”
“Magic?” Huizong scowled. “What kind of nonsense is this?”
“Yes, Sire. Many of the rebels do not have arms. But they believe they are aided by
magic. Our soldiers have reported being
attacked by mobs of men, women, even children, who had no weapons at all but
their bare hands. The rebels employ all
sorts of trickery. They have built huge
mechanical puppets, like monsters. Some
of them don costumes and walk into battle on stilts. They lob smoke bombs. One magician who has joined them even claims
to have a magical sword that can strike someone down at a hundred paces.”
“Our soldiers are behaving like
little boys who piss the bed because they see a shadow,” Huizong muttered. “Do the rebels have a stronghold?”
“Yes, Sire. Fang La has made his headquarters in a huge
network of caves called Pangyuan, eighty li to the west of Qixian.”[15]
“Attack him there – trap the rebels,
flush them out, annihilate them. But I
want Fang La alive. Do you
understand? I want him brought here to
Kaifeng in chains, with a cangue around his neck, to be decapitated in public,
where everyone can see it.”
Song Huizong tried to amuse himself
with his hobbies, but simply could not focus his attention. He was thirty-seven years old, his vital
energies were wasting away, despite the prayers offered on his behalf at all
the Chongning temples. The glass of
plumb wine that had become his constant companion, constantly filled by his
Eunuch attendants, clouded his thinking, rendering him by turns excited,
exhausted, and irritable. At last, he
came to the conclusion that there was only one cure for what ailed him – he
needed a woman.
Within sight of the Imperial Palace
there was a splendid restaurant called the Abundant Joy Pavilion, three stories
tall with its dining terraces connected by arched bridges. A subterranean escape tunnel led from the
Palace to this restaurant, and the third floor was closed to the general
public, as it happened to overlook the walls of the Imperial City. Huizong made his way through the tunnel,
bearing a torch, and climbed up to the empty third floor of the Abundant Joy
Pavilion by means of a secret staircase.
There, he found the courtesan, Shishi, who had been asked to meet him
here.
“Sire,” she said, bowing her head.
Huizong took a deep breath. Shishi was perfect – seven years younger than
himself, but old enough to understand.
Although she was by no means naive, she was experienced enough in
coquetry and manners to conceal her feelings.
Indeed, she was radiant with glamour.
“You are as beautiful as they
promised,” the Emperor said.
“Sire, I cannot consider myself
worthy of such praise.”
Huizong smiled, gesturing toward the
cushions and table that had been arranged for them. “Your modesty – although quite as false as
the reports I receive – is refreshing.
You’re also considerably easier on the eyes than the Confucian ministers
I have to deal with.”
“Why should I deceive you,
Sire? You are the Emperor of China. What am I?”
Huizong contemplated her brazen,
enquiring eyes for a moment, and at last said, “Can you drive thought from my
mind, Shishi?”
Leaning toward him, she made a wry
face and whispered, “I can do whatever you want me to do, Sire.” She moved a little closer, as if to kiss him,
but hesitated. “As you know, I am a courtesan.”
“That’s an improvement. My Chancellor’s a common whore,” Huizong
smiled.
“Then you must know that all whores
have a price.”
“And what is yours?” the Emperor
asked, unsurprised. “Name it, and I
shall give you whatever you want.”
“The leader of the Liangshan
bandits, Song Jiang, has sent me a message to give to you: they ask to be pardoned.”
Huizong lowered his eyebrows, for
this was not at all what he had expected.
“Pardoned?”
“They ask only that they be allowed
to redeem themselves – by leading the final attack against Fang La.”
Huizong pursed his lips, mulling
this over, and at last smiled. “So, Song
Jiang is willing to lead his men into a death-trap in order to obtain a
pardon? So be it.”
“The bandits will be pleased to hear
this.”
“The Emperor will be pleased to hear
of Fang La’s downfall.”
* * *
The courtesan, Shishi, was a natural
actress, adept at manipulating her audience, whoever it might be, but despite
the duplicity inherent in her profession, she was the most authentic person
Song Huizong had ever met. If nothing
else, she was able to convey to him the true feelings of the people of
China. The Emperor began to see the
world clearly for the first time, and he was horrified. The rosy fantasy that Cai Jing had
maintained, for all those years, turned out to be a lie. Huizong began to realize that he was a
distant, irrelevant puppet, surrounded by manipulating courtiers, perched on
the backs of millions and millions of over-taxed, downtrodden, alienated,
increasingly impatient people who no longer believed either in China or the
Song Dynasty. The Emperor watched Wang
Fu closely as the incompetent Chancellor tried to blame every problem that
arose on his predecessor’s policies.
The Liangshan bandits did not let
the Emperor down – half of them died in the bloody assault on Fang La’s
subterranean stronghold, where the trapped rebels fought back against
overwhelming odds with suicidal frenzy.
The rebel leaders were brought to Kaifeng in chains, as requested, and
executed with all due ceremony. The most
excruciating, lengthy, and disgusting of all imaginable deaths was inflicted
upon Fang La by the imperial executioners.
However, Huizong drew no comfort or satisfaction from this, for the
damage was done. The withdrawal of Tong
Guan’s force from the Liao frontier, on the eve of the projected joint attack,
was seen by the Jin as a betrayal. In
the invasion of the Liao state, the Song troops had fared poorly, suffering several
defeats, while the Jurchen cavalry routed the enemy forces at every
encounter. The Sixteen Prefectures were
handed over, during the Year of the Rabbit, as promised, but the Emperor Taizu
demanded an indemnity of two hundred thousand silver taels and three hundred
thousand bolts of silk, to make up for the withdrawal of troops. Those at court who knew the general character
of the Jin leaders suggested that this was not the end of their demands.
The Year of the Dragon came,
influenced by the element of wood, and at the Lantern Festival, on the very
banks of Jinming Pond, the Emperor was accosted by a deranged fortune-teller,
who declared that the Will of Heaven was lost – the Song Dynasty, the man
cried, was finished! Only a few months
later, however, the new Jurchen emperor, Taizong, announced that his forces had
located and secured the Liao ruler, thus ending the war against the Khitan
Empire.
“This is splendid news, Your
Majesty,” Wang Fu said, smiling brightly.
“This is not good news,” Huizong replied.
“Now that all of Liao except the Sixteen Prefectures is in Jurchen
hands, who do you think they’re going to attack next? This year pairs the dragon with wood – we
must expect a conflagration.”
As quickly as troops could be
mustered, they were sent to the northern frontier. A large army was massed at the city of
Taiyuan in Shanxi, under the command of Tong Guan. The Song ambassador to the Jin court,
meanwhile, was informed that as far as the Taizong Emperor was concerned,
Huizong had violated the former treaty of alliance. In order to make amends, he was asked to
surrender the provinces of Hebei and Shanxi.
“We cannot possibly comply with such
a demand,” Huizong replied, outraged that the Jin would even consider so
egregious a request. “Hebei is our
northern granary, and necessary for the adequate defense of our capital; Shanxi
is our armoury. It’s where the Silk Road
enters China. To give up either province
is suicide. We would have to surrender
the Sixteen Prefectures, as well, for they would become untenable. The Jurchen might as well be demanding
everything north of the Yellow River, including Kaifeng, the largest city in
the world! No.”
* * *
In the Year of the Ox, the year in
which Fang La was captured and executed, the Chancellor summoned Zhao Mingcheng
from his scholarly retirement, offering him the post of mayor of the city of
Zizhou, near Jinan, where Li Qingzhao’s family lived.
“They must be desperate,” Zhao
Mingcheng laughed, perusing the Chancellor’s letter at his quiet country
retreat near Qingzhou.
“So are we,” Li Qingzhao
smiled. “Our savings have nearly run out
– you should take up the post. And
Zizhou isn’t far away, and it’s close to my family’s house. If we had more money, we could finish our
research.”
“What do you make of Wang Fu’s
calligraphy?” Zhao Mingcheng asked, handing the letter to his wife.
“Rubbish,” she replied, according
the note a mere glance. “Song Huizong
can do better, surely.”
“Moving our collection will be
nearly impossible,” Zhao Mingcheng noted.
“Leave it here – I’ll stay with the
collection, you go to Zizhou. And I’ll
send you poems – lots and lots of poems.”
Zhao Mingcheng went to Zizhou and
fell immediately into all the cares, worries, and annoyances of district
administration. The crops ripened in the
fields, and were cut down. Inevitably,
the Feast of Double Ninth came – the time for visiting ancestral graves and
climbing hills. Li Qinzhao sent him a
poem.
I climb up to the pagoda,
Below scattered, disorderly
mountains;
A fallow
plain reaches
Away into
light mist.
In the
light mist,
Crows
return to nests;
At dusk,
the evening horn.
Extinguished
incense, stale wine -
My heavy heart!
A
freshening breeze, at dusk,
The wutong
leaves are shed,
Again autumn
is beautiful,
Again my
heart grows lonesome.
One
month later, the Jurchen army crossed the northern frontier, moving swiftly in
two columns. One army struck southward,
across the Great Wall, directly into the Sixteen Prefectures and on to the
borders of Hebei Province, while the other marched west into Shanxi, heading
directly toward the Song garrison town of Taiyuan. Nothing was ready, and while the Song army
dithered, waiting for orders that never came, the roads leading toward the
south were filled with massive crowds of refugees, carts, and livestock, all
fleeing from the wrath of the Jurchen.
* * *
Li Qingzhao waited, anxiously, at
the country house in Qingzhou, hearing from her neighbours the most alarming rumours.
“The Eunuch-general, Tong Guan, is
besieged at Taiyuan,” was the first rumour, followed by, “One of our armies
tried to stop the Jurchen in Hebei, but was completely destroyed.”
“The Jurchen emperor has sent his
nephew’s army to attack the capital – I heard that some Jurchen patrols were
seen near Weifang, just north of here.”
The same woman, sipping her tea, at once changed the subject. “Do you think I should have my baby girl’s
feet bound? All the best families are
doing that now, it seems. Lotus feet is
what everyone wants.”
“You have to break the girl’s toes
to do that,” Li Qingzhao pointed out. “Their
feet grow to look like claws, and they smell terrible because they’re always
rotting. In times like these, if I had a
daughter, I would want her to be able to run away.”
The New Year came, and with it a
prose letter from Zhao Mingcheng, from Zizhou.
Relaxed Scholar,
An old school friend of mine, recently
arrived from Kaifeng, brings momentous news of the Emperor’s abdication. Feigning a stroke, for the sake of face, he
has compelled his son, Qinzong, to take the throne. The prince made a show of refusal, claiming
that to take the throne from his father would be unfilial. The officials and eunuchs eventually had to
wrestle the imperial robes onto him. Only
a few days after this, the scholar-examiners of the Hanlin Academy, rallied by Chen
Dong, led the students studying for the Jinshi exam on a protest march,
demanding the arrest and execution of six traitors, including Cai Jing, Wang
Fu, Tong Guan, and the corrupt official Zhu Mian, who has abused his office
connected with the collection of stones and plants for the new imperial
garden. Wang Fu has already been put to
death, and Cai Jing is to be exiled. Li
Gang, from the Ministry of Rites, is to be the new Chancellor, and he has
summoned me to report to Kaifeng to help organize the defence of the capital. The enemy is expected to arrive before the
city walls at or shortly after the New Year.
Li Qingzhao was appalled by this
news, but tried to console herself with the thought that Kaifeng was simply too
big to be captured. The city walls
extended for six thousand five hundred yards from north to south, and for seven
thousand five hundred yards from east to west:
over a million people lived in the capital – there were eight divisions
and one hundred and twenty sub-divisions.
The city’s militia force alone mustered over sixty thousand
men-at-arms. The walls had been rebuilt
recently – she had seen the construction going on as a girl: the massive new moat, the new outer wall,
well-sunk down into the ground, twenty-seven yards wide to deter mining. The Jurchen armies excelled in open field
battles, fighting from horseback; they were excellent bowmen, but what could
they do to a city like Kaifeng?
The Jurchen troops arrived two days
before the end of the year, but only the division under the command of Wo Li
Bu, the Taizong Emperor’s nephew. The
barbarian horsemen kept their distance, ravaging the countryside and setting up
their camps and patrols. Inside the
Palace, a terrified Qinzong asked his new Chancellor, “What shall we do?”
“Fear not, Sire – the enemy has
chosen an inauspicious time to begin their siege: it is still the year of the Snake, under the
influence of wood: nothing will come of
this. We must turn our attention,
instead, to the new complaints being raised by Chen Dong and the Hanlin
scholars.”
Qinzong listened, fidgeting, as Li
Gang laid out the jist of Chen Dong’s new demands:
“He accuses Cai Jing of kidnapping
your father – he says that you are being unfilial, Your Majesty, unless you put
Cai Jing to death. He also demands to
know why – at a time like this – Huizong’s court continues to spend so much
money. They are sending in bills for six
thousand strings of cash every day.”
“Perhaps I should have appointed
Chen Dong to be Chancellor – then he could rule the Empire and pull my puppet
strings as much as he wanted. Is the
Emperor of China to be bullied into submission by protesting students while the
imperial capital is surrounded by barbarian hordes?”
Li Gang bowed his head, but summoned
the courage to say, “Sire – they’re not just students: they are the future rulers of the
Empire. How do you want them to remember
you, and how you behaved during this crisis?”
The Jurchen army remained before Kaifeng
for thirty-three days, hoping to starve the vast city into submission, but the
markets and granaries were well-stocked, after the harvest. Moreover, the main Jurchen force became
bogged down while marching through Hebei and Shandong, where peasant guerrillas
harassed their supply lines. In the end,
the Jurchen commander agreed to raise the siege if Qinzong would supply the Jin
state with five million taels of gold, fifty million taels of silver, one
million bolts of satin, one million bolts of silk, thirty thousand cattle,
horses, and mules, and a thousand camels.
Moreover, Gaozong agreed to surrender the cities of Taiyuan, Zhongshan,
and Hejian. The new Emperor also handed
over his younger brother, Prince Gaozong, as a hostage.
* * *
The concessions made by Qinzong did
not end the war, however, because neither the Jurchen nor the Song were ready
to give up. The garrison of Taiyuan,
holding out under the Eunuch-general Tong Guan, continued to fight, refusing to
surrender. Likewise, Zhongshan and
Hejian also held out. Impressed, Qinzong
despatched a relief force to the latter two cities during the fifth month, at
the time of the Dragon Festival – ninety thousand men altogether. The Jurchen forces attacked, however, and
annihilated this army, killing its commander.
A second relief force of sixty thousand men, trying to break through to
Taiyuan, was also destroyed.
“Sire,” Li Gang said, bowing before
the young Emperor, “the enemy is resurgent:
we have lost one hundred and fifty thousand troops. Another three hundred thousand troops are tied
down in besieged garrison towns. The
latest communiqué from General Tong Guan says that his soldiers are
starving. He will have to capitulate in
twenty days if we cannot relieve him.”
“It is the Year of the Horse,
influenced by fire,” Qinzong sighed.
“There is nothing we can do to save Taiyuan: we must prepare Kaifeng for another siege –
the Jurchen will be coming. Make ready
to receive them, Chancellor.”
The Council of State met, and with
the aid of maps they discussed and argued for hours regarding the best possible
strategy to pursue. In the end, Qinzong
decided not to mass what remained of the Song army at Kaifeng.
“As we are on the defensive, our
numbers will work against us – too many mouths to feed. Our granaries were depleted during the first
siege, and the countryside now is so disturbed that new stocks of grain and
fuel will not be available for the coming winter. Kaifeng may fall. The armies should remain where they are,
defending the different provinces. If we
withdraw troops from any point, right now, there will be uprisings. The people can see clearly what a state we
are in: therefore, the defence of the
capital will be left to the Palace Guard and the militia. Fortunately, Prince Gaozong has been returned
to us, and cannot be used to raise up a puppet government: indeed, we can hold the Prince in reserve, if
necessary.”
From his desk at the Ministry of
Rites, Zhao Mingcheng wrote to Li Qingzhao, urging her to pack up all their
belongings and flee, as soon as possible, to some safe place south of the
Yangtze River. As the autumn festivals
came and went, celebrated with little cheer, Zhao Mingcheng waited stolidly for
news from his wife. At last, one of her
poems arrived.
Wind ceasing; fallen
flowers piling high.
Beyond my screen
petals collect, heaps of red
And snow-white.
I am reminded that after
the blooming
Of the
cherry-apple tree
Comes the lamentation
for dying spring.
Singing and drinking
come to an end;
Jade cups
empty;
Lamps flickering.
Scarcely able to bear
the sorrows and regrets
Of my dreams
I hear the mournful cry
of the cuckoo.
Li Qingzhao spent almost every tael
they had to buy fifteen carts, hiring drivers and horses, but even so she could
save only a few things: the ancestral
urns, the family heirlooms, the most precious documents... her surly family,
who fled to Qingzhou from Jinan. Her
instructions from Zhao Mingcheng were clear, however – let the enemy have the
house and furniture. Save the family and
yourself first, then the research notes, and finally the books, if
possible. In the end, however, the
flight to the south was complete chaos.
Bandits looted and burned the house, the fire devouring ancient
documents by the thousands, the wind carrying the embers and scraps of
smouldering rice-paper away across the snowy landscape.
On the twenty-third day of the
eleventh month, after the Winter Solstice, the Jurchen army appeared in
strength before the walls of Kaifeng, moving south. That evening, the lights of their encampment
could be seen, stretching for miles opposite the Nanxun Gate. This time, there were a lot more of them.
* * *
Several
days later, Zhao Mingcheng sat in the darkness of the Ministry of Rites,
looking out over the walls of the Palace City and the Inner City, toward the
outer ramparts, where the sky was flickering as fiery missiles were catapulted
back and forth; in the city, several buildings were ablaze, struck by explosive
shells[17]
lobbed into the city by trebuchets.[18] Tirelessly, the Jurchen warriors had advanced
their siege lines opposite the south wall, focusing their attack on the Nanxun
Gate, which was the widest and most difficult to defend.
The
Jurchen had begun their assault by digging a mine under the moat, up to the
part of the wall that was sunk into the ground.
Their plan was to burrow into the base of the wall and fill the space
with gunpowder, enough to blow up the foundation of the wall above, creating a
breach. The Song guardsmen, however,
heard the tell-tale signs of a mining operation and at once sank a
counter-mine: when they broke through
into the Jurchen mine-shaft, they employed bamboo nozzles and bellows to fill
the narrow, dark space with a thick cloud of poison gas, killing the enemy
engineers or driving them out.[19]
“So,” Zhao Mingcheng muttered to
himself, watching a fiery missile strike one of the tiered towers of the Dailou
Gate, “this is what it looks like when the Emperors lose the Will of Heaven.”
In the morning, it was snowing, and
a huge crowd broke through the police cordon, swarming into the new imperial
garden to cut down the Emperor’s trees for fuel. It was not just a matter of staying warm now: all the water had frozen. The snow intensified into a blizzard,
covering the surrounding countryside, the ramparts, and the rooftops of the
city, including the Palace. Icicles hung
from the eaves of the empty Abundant Joy Pavilion, and in Liu Shiquan’s casino
the rattle of dice was not to be heard – only the distant creaking of huge
wheels. Smoke billowed from the charred
wreckage of the tower above the Dailou Gate.
The tower above the Nanxun Gate was already a burned-out ruin.
Soldiers shouldering crossbows swarmed
up steep, icy ramps to the tops of the walls, peering over the battlements to
see three huge towers rolling toward them.
“What are those?” one soldier asked
his companion.
“Cloud-ladders,” the other soldier
replied. “The moat is frozen – they’re
going to try to storm the gates!”
It took the Jurchen soldiers several
hours to push and pull the enormous towers to the edge of the moat, labouring
doggedly under a constant hail of bolts as the Song guardsmen fired their
crossbows. All along the wall, Chinese
soldiers pushed to the battlements, each seizing a brief moment to lean over
and fire down into the thick crowd of Jurchen warriors. Aiming was impossible, the snow was blowing
so thick, but even so bolt after bolt hit its mark. As the fighting continued, the archers
carefully reloaded, frantically cranking their bows, while trebuchets went into
action, flinging incendiary bombs at the towers. Some of the pots burst, smothering the enemy
with thick clouds of noxious smoke, while others showered down sparks,
fragmenting against the huge iron plates that were hung over the sides of the
towers. When the lumbering siege engines
were close enough, the Jurchen archers began to return fire, through narrow
slits in the castellated fighting-tops of the towers, inflicting heavy
casualties on the defenders.
“The tops of the towers are higher
than the wall!”
Soon the towers were on the compact
ice of the moat. The captains manning
each fighting-top gave a signal when their tower was close enough to the wall,
and immediately a tension rope was severed, causing the ladders of each tower
to fly forward, bringing huge metal claws down onto the battlements with enough
force to smash masonry. With a great
cheer, the Jurchen warriors began to swarm up into the bottom of the siege
engines, clambering upward to the ladders before making a mad dash toward the
top of the city wall. Crossbow bolts
knocked several of the enemy off the ladders, but a few were able to jump down onto
the wall, cutting down defending soldiers until they were despatched with
pikes. The Song officers called for
fire-lances – weapons made of heavy bamboo secured with iron rings, operated by
a squad of men, which poured sheets of flame down upon the towers, setting the
attackers on fire as they emerged onto the ladders. And so the slaughter went on, hour after
hour. Thousands of Jurchen soldiers
fell, killed or wounded, in the snow outside the Nanxun Gate, which was
trampled until the whole area was a seething mass of blood-smeared mud and
mud-spattered warriors, all flailing and sliding about, so that it was
impossible to tell who was wounded and who was still trying to fight. However, the invaders removed their
casualties as quickly as they could, while the Song guardsmen who fell remained
where they were.
The Jurchen had lost ten men for
every defender they had killed, but even so hundreds of Song guardsmen were
slain: the invaders were tough,
battle-hardened men who had been waging war for years, while the defenders of
Kaifeng were militia, completely unaccustomed to this sort of thing.[20] The Chinese militia panicked and began to
abandon their posts, swarming down from the city walls.
* * *
Li Qingzhao and her family lost
almost everything they possessed trying to get across the Yangtze River. The whole of northern China seemed to be in
flames as the Jurchen armies, victorious, swept over the land. Millions of refugees fled, and hundreds of
thousands reached the great river, but only the fortunate, the daring, and the
well-to-do managed to cross. Thousands
died as over-crowded boats sank or capsized, and their bodies floated
downstream toward the sea for days and days.
Often, when there was a pause in their southward flight, Li Qingzhao
would sit quietly and cry, for it seemed like the end of the world, and – in a
way – it was.
The news the refugees heard was
horrifying. Both Huizong and the Emperor
Qinzong, together with the Empress and princesses, Li Gang, and hundreds of
officials were all prisoners of the Jurchen.
Taizong’s troops, meanwhile, ransacked Kaifeng, subjecting the city and
its inhabitants to rape, arson, and plundering that went on for days and
days. The captives, meanwhile, were led
away to the northern wilderness, to the Jurchen capital, where they were given
new, humiliating names and forced to pay homage to Taizong’s ancestors. Meanwhile, a puppet regime was established in
Kaifeng under a pliant official who had gone over to the enemy. The only good news was that Prince Gaozong
somehow had escaped – he reached Hangzhou, attended by loyalist soldiers and
officials, and there set himself up as the new Emperor.
Li Qingzhao and her relatives ended
up in Nanjing, nearly penniless, and months passed before she received word
that her husband was alive, and had been appointed to the governorship of the
Huzhou Prefecture. She travelled at once
to join him, but reached the town only to find her husband’s servants exhausted
and worried.
“He is ill, lady – you must go to
him at once!”
“Fever,” he stammered, shivering and
sweating simultaneously, lying prostrate in his bed. “It’s the climate here in the south....”
“This is awful – what can be done?”
“They say very few survive this,”
her husband whispered.[21] “These are interesting times, are they not?
You must do whatever you can to survive.
The order of things is unsettled.
Now is a time to be outwardly Daoist and inwardly Confucian. Bend before the wind, but stay rooted.”
“I promise, I’ll see that the book
is published,” she said, stroking his greying hair. But it was too late. The fever had taken him, and now she was a
widow, facing a very cruel world all alone.
Historical Note:
This
story is based on the extant poems and letters of Li Qingzhao, the dynastic
History of the Song, various reports and poems penned by contemporary
officials, and Chinese historical novels such as The Water Margin and
the legends of Yue Fei. Academic studies
of the late “Northern Song” period also were consulted, as were paintings
contemporary with the events described here. This story is set against events that remain controversial in
China to this day. The period has supplied the imaginations of Chinese artists,
novelists, and historians with a wealth of material and compelling problems. Research conducted on the deformed feet of
female skeletons found in upper class Song Dynasty tombs also suggests that
this was the first period in Chinese history when the controversial practice of
foot-binding began to become common among the upper classes.
All
the characters in this story are historical, as are all of the events and
places described, including the details about the Jurchen attack on
Kaifeng. Li Qingzhao, as foreshadowed
here, lived on into old age, but she did not accept the docile role of the
typical Confucian widow. Seeking escape
from her grasping, meddling, and disapproving relatives, she remarried – a
taboo that many widows were breaking in an effort to survive – but her second
husband was abusive and deceptive. She
eventually brought a charge of corruption against him, risking public
humiliation, and was even imprisoned for a short while. In the end, however, she managed to scrape by
after moving to the new imperial capital of Hangzhou, and she saw her husband’s
thirty-volume labour of love regarding Chinese epigraphy published, writing the
preface herself. Indeed, her lively and
candid prose provided many of the details used in this story, such as Zhao
Mingcheng buying fruit and rubbings on the full-moon feast days.
One
of the only concessions I had to make in this story was the use of one
consistent name for all of the characters.
In traditional China, however, people of high rank usually had many
different names. Apart from formal
family names, elites used pen-names, temple names, and formal “courtesy” names,
as well as posthumous names for use after their death. Using the real name of the Emperor was
actually against the law, to prevent it being known to sorcerers and thus used
in magical rites directed against the state.
Only once, when Zhao Mingcheng calls his wife “Relaxed Scholar,” do we
catch a glimpse of Li Qingzhao’s pen-name.
Some scholars, translating this pen name as “Lay Buddhist,” have
attempted to find strong, consistent Buddhist themes in Li Qingzhao’s writings,
but I have not uncovered much evidence suggesting that she was anything but a
Confucian, possibly with some Daoist tendencies. Religion of the Song period, however, was
very eclectic, and most people in China combined elements of Confucianism, Daoism,
and Buddhism.
[1] The Jinshi Exam was the
highest-level exam in China, taken only by leading scholars; it qualified a
person for a job in the Imperial Civil Service.
[2] Exam questions usually consisted
of part of a passage from a classical Confucian work like the Analects. Scholars were expected to complete the
passage, give the standard analysis according to the approved curriculum of the
period, and then offer their own analysis based on Confucian values.
[3] In the ci style of poetry, the poem had to be written like a song, employing
a common tune, although the poem and tune might have nothing to do with each
other.
[4] A common euphemism for sex, in
Chinese poetry, is “clouds and rain,” or any allusion to them. Li Qingzhao’s poetry, in fact, was considered
extremely risqué, which is probably why she later became so popular. Remember, however, that these poems were
private letters written for her husband.
[5] Corvée is another term for forced
labour, usually required for state projects and exacted as a kind of tax. Certain classes of people either were
exempted from forced labour, or could buy their way out of it.
[6] The reference to pear blossoms
suggests that Li Qinzhao wrote this poem in the early spring. The weather also suggests typical weather for
April in the Kaifeng area.
[7] Chinese New Year typically began
in January or February, according to the Lunar-solar Chinese calendar.
[8] The Jurchen were the ancestors of
the Manchus, who conquered Ming Dynasty China in the 17th
century.
[9] This river has traditionally
marked the boundary separating northern China (Manchuria) from Siberia.
[10] Liao was a state ruled by Central
Asian invaders who had adopted Chinese civilization and the Buddhist religion;
they ruled much of northern China.
[11] Liangshan was a semi-wilderness
area located east of Kaifeng, in the southwestern part of Shandong
Province. The bandits referred to here
are those immortalized in the Chinese historical novel, The Water Margin;
although historical, many legends have grown up around the Liangshan
bandits.
[12] According to the tale, Su Shi was
sent on a diplomatic mission to the Liao, but using the Chinese calendar
arrived a day late for an important festival.
He later helped revise the Chinese calendar to correct such problems.
[13] This revolt occurred in the
region immediately south of Shanghai.
[14] Manichaean beliefs had emerged
from Zoroastrianism, spreading both east and west from Persia. Some early Christian sects were influenced by
Manichaean ideas prior to the Council of Nicaea, while in China the sect gained
ground among disgruntled peasants by masquerading as a new school of
Buddhism.
[15] A li was the standard Chinese
unit for measuring long distances, being equal to one-third of a mile.
[16] The wutong tree was a deciduous
ornamental tree said to be the perch of the phoenix in Chinese mythology.
[17] The Song Dynasty was the first
state in history to use gunpowder.
Gunpowder had been known to the Chinese for about ninety years by the
time of the events described here, however there is no evidence that either
rockets or cannon were being used at this time.
[18] A kind of catapult.
[19] Recent evidence has shown that
poison gas had been used in warfare (especially in house-to-house and
underground combat) by advanced civilizations since at least the Roman
period.
[20] The Jurchen are thought to have
lost approximately 3,000 men, the Song Chinese about 300, but nevertheless the
morale of the defenders suffered more than that of the attacking force.
[21] Zhao Mingcheng probably suffered
from an especially lethal form of malaria.
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