A History of China (45 page)

Poetry was, on occasion, an integral part of paintings. For example, Mi Fu incorporated poetry and splendid calligraphy in his paintings. Although the Tang was the glorious period in Chinese poetry, the Song produced excellent poets who often dealt with the highly personal themes of love, sorrow, and frustration. Su Shi or Su Dongpo (1037–1101), the most renowned of these poets, was a multitalented calligrapher and painter but achieved fame in poetry. His poems often reflect events in his own life, including criticism of Wang Anshi’s New Policies. Exiled due to his opposition to these reforms, he wrote some poems about loneliness and longing. He also used his poems to reflect his personal relationships and career.

Li Qingzhao, a poet from an elite family who married a member of the elite, is one of the most renowned poets in Chinese history. Her early poems show the deep and loving relationship she had with her husband, which was in part centered on their shared love of intellectual and aesthetic pursuits. However, her later poems reveal the shocking changes in her life. In 1127, she and her family fled from north China when the Jurchens of Manchuria attacked the Song. Leaving her beloved artifacts and her former life behind, she headed south with her husband. Two years later he died, an event that transformed her poetry. Her writings became epistles of her sorrows and distress after these misfortunes.

Developments in Song ceramics and porcelain matched those in painting. The elegance and simplicity of the pottery resembled the same characteristics in painting, and these similar attributes may have been caused by the fact that the target audience – the scholar-officials, the intellectuals, and the landed elite – was the same for both arts. The wares, which many Chinese believe to be the most elegant and beautiful of their porcelains, were occasionally named for the locations where they were produced. Ding ware, in its original form a white porcelain, derived from the area around Dingzhou in the modern province of Hebei, and Jun ware, with its deliberate purple splotch brought about by copper oxidized in the glaze, was produced initially in Junzhou. Celadons were also prized throughout Asia, and Korean potters, in particular, borrowed the Chinese technique and began to develop exquisite celadons of their own. The veneration of antiquity resonated with the ceramics because potters used many of the same forms and shapes found on the Shang and Zhou bronzes. Similarly, some of the decorative motifs on the porcelains resembled the plant and flower motifs in Song ­paintings – still another example of the borrowing of shapes and motifs from one medium to another that has characterized Chinese art.

Knowledge of the extraordinary quality of Song porcelains spread throughout Asia and created a demand for them. Porcelain became an important commodity in trade. Although the Silk Roads to west Asia had become more precarious, partly because China had withdrawn from the oases and towns in modern Xinjiang in the late Tang dynasty, commerce still persisted. The mostly Turkic peoples residing along the northwestern borders of China transmitted goods to and from the Song. The quantity declined, but trade, including traffic in porcelain, was conducted. A contemporaneous Song account also reveals that porcelain was an important item in seaborne trade with Korea, Southeast Asia, Persia, and Arabia, reaching all the way to Fustat, adjacent to modern Cairo.

The Southern Song witnessed an even greater commercial prosperity. Expelled from north China by the Jurchen peoples of Manchuria who founded the Jin dynasty, the Song court shifted its capital to Linan (or Hangzhou), which became one of the world’s most resplendent cities. The bountiful agriculture and the seaborne trade fostered prosperity for the elite and the merchants. Improvements in navigation and mapmaking and developments in naval technology promoted shipping in south China. The use of a mariner’s compass facilitated Chinese shipping. Proximity to good harbors in the south offered greater opportunities for travel and commerce. The ports of Hangzhou, Quanzhou, and Fuzhou prospered and attracted merchants from west, south, and Southeast Asia. These cities eventually had resident communities of Hindus and Muslims who formed virtually self-governing units and maintained their own cultural identities. They built temples and mosques and even had their own cemeteries. The hospitable welcome they received in south China, as well as in the north, encouraged ever-larger numbers of foreign merchants to bring their goods. In north China, a small group of Jewish artisans and merchants settled in and built a synagogue in the city of Kaifeng.

Increasing commercialization in south China affected domestic markets as well. Merchants were no longer limited to the capitals of specific counties and thus traded in small towns and villages as well. Although government officials continued to supervise markets, merchants faced fewer restrictions in trade. Enclosed markets became rarer, allowing merchants to trade in neighborhoods that had earlier had restricted commercial areas. The growth in commerce led to an increase in the use of money, which in turn encouraged the government to collect taxes in cash. The quantity of paper money increased – another step in facilitating commerce.

The flourishing agricultural economy provided the foundation for this ­commercialization. Fertile soil in south China had attracted migrants from the north since the third century and had also generated surpluses, which were then transported to markets. The resulting prosperous economy created a wealthy elite who desired domestic and foreign luxury goods. As noted earlier, foreign trade grew, and some scholars assert that the Chinese had a favorable balance of trade in seaborne commerce. Yet not all groups benefited from what appeared to be a dazzling economy. Many peasants did not profit from the seeming prosperity, and the government itself often faced financial shortfalls. Thus, lying below the glittering surface of Southern Song court life in Hangzhou, the city that enchanted Marco Polo more than any other in China or perhaps in the world, were serious fiscal realities and great deprivation for much of the population. The remarkable achievements of the elite in broadening and contributing to Neo-Confucian thought and in creating beautiful paintings coexisted with the exploitation of much of the populace as well as the deterioration in the government’s performance of its duties. An economy of abundance, of paper money, of an expanding population (which reached at least sixty million by the early thirteenth century), of prosperous tea plantations and silk workshops, and of extensive foreign (mostly seaborne) trade nourished a small elite but left many at or below subsistence. Although “in the spheres of social life, art, amusements, institutions, and technology, China was unquestionably the most advanced country of the time,”
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only a small segment of the population profited from these advances.

Hangzhou, the greatest capital city in the world, reveals much about the lifestyles and values of the elite. Situated between the Yangzi River and the port cities of Ningbo, Fuzhou, Quanzhou, and others dotting the southeast coast, Hangzhou was extremely attractive, bordered on one side by the man-made West Lake and on the other by the Zhe River. Yet its location on a nexus of rivers, lakes, and canals was clearly more valuable than its natural beauty. It could readily export goods while also being easily supplied. These fortuitous circumstances created a large population, probably more than one million (some estimates run as high as two million). Lavish multistorey houses; markets offering perfumes, spices, and bronze and iron vessels; and restaurants, taverns, theaters, and singing girls attracted many. Wealthy officials and merchants no doubt concurred in Marco Polo’s assessment that Hangzhou was “the most noble city and the best that is in the world.”
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Commercialization created a prosperous merchant class but did not result in the new socioeconomic system associated with postmedieval Europe. Despite their wealth, merchants did not have commensurate political power. A strong state that valued agriculture above all other economic pursuits did not permit much leverage to merchants and suppressed any assertions of ­merchant independence. The state itself participated in trade and officials clambered on to foreign ships before the entry of individual merchants and garnered some of the most precious goods. Then and only then would merchants be permitted to trade for the rest of the foreign merchandise. In addition, wealthy merchants would, on occasion, buy land as a possible first step toward their families’ eventual acceptance as part of the gentry. They also would aspire to have sons who passed the civil-service examinations.

Despite the civil-service examinations, the bureaucracy remained rife with abuses. Nepotism (which favored the sons of the leading families and officials) and sale of offices were rampant, particularly in the thirteenth century. Maintenance of a sizable military force to resist the encroachment of the non-Chinese dynasties north of the Yangzi River created fiscal problems, as did the elaborate and costly court and the elite’s craving for expensive foreign ­products. The government responded to these problems by inflating the currency. Its lower-paid officials generally received no additional funding, despite the inflation, and became increasingly corrupt. Deterioration in government efficiency and infighting among cliques at court contributed to the growing disarray. In the last few reigns, empress dowagers and their relatives sought to dominate the young and occasionally infant emperors who ascended the throne, and this fostered an even more negative image of the court.

The grand lifestyles at court and among the elite resulted in an unfavorable balance of trade, which necessitated the export of precious metals and money to foreign lands. The elite’s penchant for foreign luxuries generated ongoing fiscal problems.

To be sure, some peasants did well because they had land that was more fertile or were more enterprising or hard working or grew marketable products or had good connections with local officials. Most, however, either owned small plots or were tenants compelled to pay high rents. The government demanded stiff taxes, including nuisance or sales taxes on important commodities such as salt, and wealthy merchants also imposed higher prices for essential goods. Many peasants fell into debt to landlords or usurers and would often remain so for the rest of their lives because of the high rates of interest. A bountiful harvest was insufficient to rescue them from debt.

More and more peasants became unable to compete with the large and more commercial estates, and they increasingly abandoned their lands and migrated to cities. They served as laborers or servants to the wealthy. The servants, though economically dependent on their prosperous employers, were generally better off than the laborers, who often undertook backbreaking work under insecure conditions. The growth of urban centers, together with the flight of poor girls and women to these towns and cities, inevitably gave rise to increases in prostitution. A few prostitutes achieved fame and wealth as courtesans or due to ­talents as musicians or dancers who performed for the elite, and these women lived comfortable and secure lives. However, the vast majority were ill-educated, had scant talent, and were herded into singing-girl houses or teahouses or restaurants where proprietors served as their protectors but also pocketed much of the income for entertaining the establishment’s guests.

The new elite, which had for the most part dispersed the old Tang ­aristocracy, had achieved its success through the civil-service examinations rather than family or position. It naturally had a vested interest in the content and philosophy of the exams, which were intertwined with Confucianism. At the same time, the late Tang attacks on Buddhism diminished the Buddhist establishment’s ability to play the political role that it had earlier in the dynasty. Such developments offered Confucianism an opportunity to supplant Buddhism as the most significant force at court. Buddhism was not eclipsed as a religion and, in fact, continued to prosper. However, monks did not have the political power and economic leverage that they wielded in the times of the Empress Wu or other Tang rulers.

Recent research has shed light on Southern Song popular religions that accompanied what is said to have been an increase in localism in the country. After the fall of the Northern Song and in the context of the governmental problems confronting the Southern Song, local elites allegedly devoted their efforts to security and economic development in their own localities instead of focusing on positions in the central government, which due to corruption, weakness, and ineptitude was less effective. Popular religions mirrored that transformation, as the devout worshipped and appealed to local deities rather than to the more distant gods, who did not have the same personal relationship with the ordinary person and have been said to be as remote as the hierarchical bureaucracy that ruled the country. These local deities were, on occasion, recently dead figures and not the anthropomorphic deities or the heroes of the past. Popular Daoism and its deities and immortals, in particular, became part of and bolstered this new localism. There were exceptions to this emphasis on local deities. The growing number of merchants who traveled to distant areas prayed to regional deities.

The earlier deities were not abandoned. Guan Yu, one of the most popular of these gods, had been a real military hero during the chaotic times that led to the fall of the Han dynasty in 220
CE
. Defeated in battle and then decapitated, he was honored even by his enemies for his military prowess and his devotion to his leaders. By the sixth century, he had become deified as the God of War, and numerous shrines, with his image represented as a figure with a red face and long beard, were dedicated to him. His reputation developed so quickly that he became an important figure not only in popular religions but also in Daoism (as a guardian and destroyer of demons) and in Buddhism (as a bodhisattva). This depiction fit in with the syncretism of Chinese religions.