CHAPTER FIVE

The Textual Life of Savages

From their horses' flanks hung the heads of men, While their women were carried behind. -attrib. Cai Y an

In zoo B.c., the Han emperor Gaozu fi'1J tEl launched a punitive expedition against the Xiongnu ~ fJ.Y..., an alliance of northern tribesmen who had been disrupting Chinese settlements north of the Yellow River. Sima Qian gives the details in chapter no of his Historical Records:

At that time, the Han had just brought peace to the empire. [The general] Han Xin ~~ f~ was transferred to Dai f-1(:, with his capital at Mayi .~ {3. The Xiongnu launched a major attack on Mayi and besieged it. Han Xin surrendered to them. After the Xiongnu obtained his services, they led troops southward past Mount Juzhu 1J] ?.:t, attacked T aiyuan 7,:;. ~~ and advanced to below Jinyang ';; ~. Gaozu himselfled troops to go and strike them. Just then the winter was bitterly cold and snow fell. Two or three out of every ten soldiers lost fingers from frostbite. [The Xiongnu khan] Modu ~ ~Jl feigned flight in order to lead on the Han forces.1 They pursued to the attack. Modu concealed his elite forces and presented his weaker men. The entire Han army came after them, accompanied by 320,000 infantry. The emperor reached Pingcheng IjZ- :t,ii_X ahead of the infantry. Modu then unleashed his cavalry, 400,000 strong, and surrounded the emperor at White Slope 8 ~ for seven days. Those outside the encirclement could not provide assistance to those within.... The emperor secretly sent an emissary to bribe the khan's wife.2 She then said to Modu, "Why should you two create difficulties for one another? You may have taken Han territory, but you'd never be able to live there. Besides, the Han have their own protective deities. You should consider the matter carefully." The Textual Life of Savages

· Modu had previously agreed to link up with Han Xin's generals, Wang Huang .:E ~ and Zhao Li ffi!I fiJ, but neither of them had arrived with his troops. He sus­ pected that they were plotting with the Han, and so now he took his wife's advice and opened one corner of the encirclement. The emperor commanded his officers all to face outward with crossbows ready and go straight through the break, and he was finally reunited with the main army. Modu then led his army away. The em­ peror likewise brought away his troops and discontinued the campaign. He then sent LiuJing ~U "/ij)(. to arrange an alliance with the Xiongnu by marriage (heqin fD 3 m). (shi ji rro.25-27) Gaozu's attack on Pingcheng is the opening volley of a dramatic border war that continued on and off for the duration of the Han. The outline of events is well known: the initial weakness of Han forces in the wake of Xiongnu raids; the costly though somewhat effective military campaigns of Emperor Wu ~from 130 to 90 B.c.; the Xiongnu civil war that resulted in an improved Chinese position by 30 B.c.; a resumption of border conflicts that finally culminated in the north-south split of the Xiongnu in the mid­ first century A.D.; and their increasing weakness in the face of new nomadic confederations during most of the following two centuries.4 For this ac­ count, we are almost totally dependent on the official Chinese histories: Sima Qian's !§'].~~Historical Records (Shi ji 51:: ~c), Ban Gu's fiJI~ History of the Han (Han shu y,l ~nand Fan Ye's ffi ~ (398-445) History of the Later Han (Hou Han shu 1& y,l ~). Modern scholars can only speculate and hy­ pothesize in an attempt to fill in the gaps created by an official and Chinese­ biased historiography. Yet scholars have said little concerning the way the official histories pre­ sent the Xiongnu. Granted, we assume that they portray non-Chinese peo­ ples less than positively and that the Chinese worldview is "ethnocentric," to say the least. But Chinese attitudes toward this foreign "other" create a sub­ tler discourse of the alien as well, one that is intertwined with the historical narrative and continually surfaces in various ways; certain motifs emerge that both question and emphasize Chinese cultural distinctiveness. Of course, we can attribute this language in part to the obvious culture clash of Xiongnu and Han: the ancient historians do not invent a people ex nihilo merely for the purposes of creating edifying contrasts. But the "historical reality" (what­ ever that might ultimately be) is still refashioned into important ideological constructions.5 Even within the brief account of the Pingcheng campaign, Sima Qian manages to incorporate many aspects of this ideology. Gaozu must go on