A History of China (44 page)

The Jurchens, who would later play a vital role in Chinese history, were a Tungusic-speaking people with a mixed economy who were based in what was formerly called Manchuria. Those in the northern domains of the Jurchen territories hunted and fished for survival (an economy similar to their neighbors in Siberia). Those in the west were herders, and those in the south were farmers but also hunted and migrated with their animals. The Jurchens in the south had greater contact than their confreres with the various groups that arose in the post-Tang-dynasty world in east Asia.

The more organized Khitan Liao dynasty imposed a tributary status on the Jurchens, compelling them to provide annual payments of falcons, furs, and pearls. On the other hand, in 1042, the Jurchens signed an agreement with the Song by which the Chinese dynasty pledged to offer annual “gifts” of tea, ­silver, and silk. The Song also permitted a controlled system of trade under which the Jurchens received tea, grains, and rice and supplied pearls, ginseng, and horses in return. Despite these Song economic concessions, conflicts between the Song and the Jurchens flared up throughout the eleventh century and weakened both.

The Jurchens’ relationship with the Liao was even more volatile. Chafing under the Liao demands for tribute, the Jurchens often battled with their Khitan overlords. Such struggles with the Liao and Song required the Jurchens to develop a larger and more sophisticated military organization, which, in turn, necessitated a more complex administration to match those of their neighbors. The Jurchens learned from both, and by the end of the eleventh century could muster a huge military force to challenge the two dynasties. In 1115, they adopted the Chinese dynastic name of Jin, and in the same year defeated the Liao dynasty. The panicked Song leaders quickly agreed to a treaty that provided annual payments of silk and silver to the Jin. Yet the treaty did not lead to peace. By 1127, Jin troops had routed the Song, compelling the native Chinese dynasty to abandon China north of the Yangzi River and create the Southern Song dynasty, setting up its capital in Hangzhou.

For the next century, the Jin ruled north China, using Chinese institutions with slight variations. Jin rulers used the traditional Chinese civil-service examinations to select officials but also saved some top positions for the Jurchens. They devised a law code, conducted censuses, and developed their own written scripts. Increasingly influenced by Chinese institutions, they set up land and commercial taxes and imposed monopolies on vital goods, which they could then sell at a profit. Yet, like the Chinese dynasties, the Jin had officials who enriched themselves; the dynasty was plagued by considerable corruption, leading to revenue shortfalls. The government was thus unable to maintain the country’s infrastructure, and disasters, including catastrophic Yellow River floods in the 1190s, struck its lands. Peasants made homeless by the floods began to rebel against the Jin. Adding to such disruptions were the increasing conflicts with the Song. From 1206 to 1208, the native Chinese dynasty tried to regain control over northern China. Although the Southern Song failed, this period of unrest made the Jin vulnerable to other attacks.

Chinggis Khan arose at this point, and in 1211 initiated campaigns against the Jin. The Mongol ruler recognized a golden opportunity to capitalize on the splits between the Jurchens and the Southern Song, and on the Jin dynasty’s attendant weakness. Having already renounced his status as a Jin vassal, he began to challenge the established commercial relationship with the Jin. Conflict erupted in 1211 and, after considerable loss of life and devastation, in 1215 Mongol troops moved into the Jin stronghold in the area around modern Beijing. The Jin emperor fled to Kaifeng, but the dynasty fell to Chinggis’s son Ögödei in 1234.

Although many in the Jurchen elite had been attracted by Chinese ­civilization, the bulk of the population was not sinicized. Yet the Jin emperors restored Confucian rituals at court, supported productions of plays (including so-called
zaju
or skits), and sought legitimacy in China. Recent excavations of Jin tombs indicate that culture flourished during the dynasty. The brick carvings in the elaborately decorated tombs depict theatrical productions as well as local festivals. They portray dancers performing lion dances and musicians playing drums, flutes, clappers, and other instruments. The carvers created models of stages for these performances, but they also chose subjects such as paradigms of filial piety (a Confucian concern), scenes of daily life (including cooking and horseback riding), and even religious figures such as the immortals (who were virtually deified in Daoism). As more research on the Jin is conducted, it seems likely that additional evidence of Jin support of culture, literature, and the arts will emerge. Nonetheless, those Jurchens who remained in their homelands northeast of China and even quite a few within China retained their own identities. After the Mongol conquest, many Jurchens went back to their native lands, from which they would play important roles in Chinese history four centuries later.

Buddhism, with its pantheon and emanations of the Buddhas and ­bodhisattvas and its granting of merit for visual representations of its teachings, had inspired artists ever since its arrival in China and continued to do so. Daoism, with its message of mysticism and its evocation of nature, also provided artists with themes that could be illustrated. Similarly, Song Neo-Confucianism, with its emphasis on investigation and study as a means of attaining knowledge, influenced and spurred artists to produce realistic depictions of nature.

A large number of extraordinary painters appeared in the Northern Song. Several of them wrote essays that embodied their views of landscape painting. Guo Xi (ca. 1020–ca. 1090), one of a slew of impressive artists, wrote that the painter must study nature in order to depict it precisely. The true artist must convey the images of mountains, water, and trees as they appear at specific times during the day or in specific seasons. Yet, according to Jing Hao ­(855–915), a late-Tang painter and critic whose views were influential, surface realism is insufficient. The painter “must capture both exterior verisimilitude and inner substance.”
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The integration of the external appearance and the innate spirit constitute reality at any given time. Although the artist recognizes that these images are transitory and can never be considered “complete,” he still provides an opportunity for the viewer to examine, explore, and enjoy the mountains, hills, rivers, and bridges. The viewer should be transported out of his or her daily routine into a new vision of landscape and nature.

Figure 6.1
Fan Kuan (ca. 990–1030),
Travelling among Streams and Mountains
. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk. China, Northern Song, eleventh century. 206.3 × 103.3cm. This painting is amongst the most famous of all Chinese paintings, and is one of the best examples of the Northern Song “monumental” landscape style. Photo: akg-images / Erich Lessing

The culmination and embodiment of this unique conception of realism is the renowned painting
Travelling among Streams and Mountains
by Fan Kuan (fl. 990–1020). Fan had studied the works of such earlier Song landscape painters as Li Cheng (919–967), but eventually recognized the need to chart his own course. He retreated to the mountains of his native Shaanxi province, and after lengthy observations and study of the terrain emerged with his great painting. In this dramatic and arresting work, the viewer confronts a steep and majestic mountain, spectacular waterfalls, and massive rocks and trees. Dwarfed by this powerful landscape is a pilgrim accompanied by pack animals. This depiction of mankind fits well with the injunction to represent nature and humans in a realistic perspective. The dynamism and movement of nature, in the form of massive jutting mountains and waterfalls, propel the viewer into the active, ever-changing character of phenomena. The realism is so intense that “the very mountains seem to be alive.”
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The Qingming scroll, which has been dated to around the late eleventh century, yields perhaps the purest example of realism. Measuring approximately 5.25 meters in length, it depicts the countryside and suburbs of a great city and finally the bustling city itself. Although the city has traditionally been identified as the Northern Song capital of Kaifeng, its pristine quality, the omission of beggars or the ailing, the relative paucity of women, and the lack of police or other security officers have caused some scholars to believe that the artist intended to portray an idealized city, where everyone dressed and behaved according to social status. Nonetheless, even these detractors admit that the artist painted in a realistic manner. The stores, restaurants, warehouses, river, and bridge represented in the scroll convey the image of an authentic Song city, even if not the capital of Kaifeng.

Other styles of painting also developed and flourished. Flower painting, which had appeared in the Tang, now showed birds adjacent to or perched on bushes or flowers, creating a new style. Xu Xi, one of the pioneers as well as one of the most accomplished of the painters of this genre, was renowned for the grandeur of his works, which resembled in their monumental scale Fan Kuan’s “Travelling among Streams and Mountains.” His rapid and spontaneous style of brush painting contrasted sharply with the precise, realistic, and artfully colored works of Huang Quan (903–965), the other great master of bird and flower painting. The influential connoisseur and calligrapher Mi Fu (1052–1107) championed a style of landscape painting that differed from the genre reflected in the overpowering scenes in the paintings of Fan Kuan and other northern Chinese. He admired southern Chinese painters such as Dong Yuan (ca. 934–ca. 962) for their serene and clear representations of nature, which consisted principally of the gentler landscapes – meandering rivers, graceful clouds, and beautiful lakes. Although the painters of north and south differed in their conceptions of the natural surroundings, they shared the goal of realistic portraits of landscapes.

Li Gonglin (1049–1106), a high-born official, preserved and added to the genre of figure painting while also helping to create a respect for beautiful objects of the past. An acquaintance of Wang Anshi and other luminaries of his age, he gained renown as a collector of ancient bronzes and jades and was extraordinarily knowledgeable as a connoisseur of the great Chinese artworks of earlier dynasties. In line with this reverence for antiquity, he devoted considerable time to copying the works of painters whom he admired. Such copying made him vulnerable to accusations of derivativeness in his own painting. His detractors, particularly Mi Fu, criticized his lack of creativity. Yet, ironically, he shared the concern for realism of the landscape painters lauded by his critics. His paintings of horses, for example, were based on such exhaustive observation and study of the imperial stables that “he was warned of the danger in becoming so imbued with their images that he would transmigrate into a horse.”
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He also painted human figures, particularly as he began to focus on Buddhist subjects, but his interests did not encompass landscapes.

In other ways, however, Li reflected many of the themes and aims of Northern Song painting. His realism and attention to detail mirrored the similar concerns of landscape painters, though his subjects were different. His practice of copying paintings he admired was mimicked and persisted as a means of training young painters. His reverence for ancient Chinese objects was part of a rising concern for connoisseurship among Song artists. These objects served as models for aspiring painters, and the copies they produced with such remarkable care could not, on occasion, be distinguished from the originals, leading to an increased incidence of fakes and frauds. Unscrupulous individuals, be they artists or owners, would emboss the seal of a prominent earlier painter on works and pass them off as originals. Even the most knowledgeable curators, collectors, and art historians in modern times have ­sometimes been unable to detect these fakes.

Finally, Li continued in the great tradition of Buddhist painting. Here, too, he reflected a Northern Song genre; his subject matter and themes related to Buddhism, which persisted in inspiring the arts but not as profusely or innovatively as in earlier dynasties. Chan Buddhism, with its emphasis on meditation and sudden enlightenment, had begun to supersede some of the more popular sects of the past and gave rise to a focus on spontaneity and quietism in painting.

These developments in painting would no doubt have been remarkable even without government support, but imperial patronage created a favorable environment for artists. Such support had originated in the early Northern Song court but reached its height during the reign of the last emperor, Huizong (r. 1101–1125). An ardent patron of court painters, Huizong also demanded adherence to his aesthetic principles. Painters who sought the court’s favor needed to abide by the dictates he proclaimed. His rigidity helped to ensure that court painters selected only certain themes and produced works according to his specifications. Some merely copied the paintings of the emperor himself or sought his endorsement of works similar to his. Most of the paintings associated with him are precise and simple descriptions of birds on branches. The popularity of bird and flower paintings may, in part, have derived from their link with Huizong and the painters he supported at court.